Des Hasler's Hair - The Mane Event.

"Given Des's age and position, I'd probably suggest he's look better with the short back and sides"

 - Celebrity hair dresser Joh Bailey: 'Joh Distressed by Des's Tresses, Daily Telegraph, Wednesday. 

Is this the low point of the grand final coverage? Hardly. That rasping sound you hear, though? That's the Tele scraping the bottom of the barrel.

I didn't know Joh Bailey was still *ahem*, relevant, but since he so obviously is I feel I have to give pause to the fact that I instinctively dislike anyone with a deliberately misspelt 'distinguishing' name. Jodhi Packer/Mears? BITCH PLEASE! Sixty-five percent of those born since 1995? WE GET IT, YOU'RE A UNIQUE AND GIFTED INDIVIDUAL BOUND FOR THE WORLD STAGE. Or a shelf-stacking job at Big W. If i were a cat I would arch my back and hiss and stalk away from the offending name / bearer of name with my tail in the air and my asshole exposed. As a human, however, it is all I can do to roll my eyes and smirk, which is far less effective and yet another sad reminder of how much happier I would be if I were a cat and thus able to indulge my bitchiest instincts on a permanent and consequence-free basis. There's always old age to look forward to, but the oppurtunity is wasted somewhat, isn't it, when no one cares enough to listen / change your incontinence pad?

As it stands, I have no problem ridiculing and reprinting Bailey's searing, saucer-of-milk insights, and no problem with the knowledge that this makes me even more squalid and base and parasitic than those I deride. Make no mistake; I have a healthy grasp of the food chain and my place in it. The unpleasant realisation that I am - we are - on the edge of the off-season abyss is too terrible to bear thinking about right now so I am committed to keeping my snout buried in the tabloid's trough for as long as I possibly can. Still, let's pause a moment and reflect on Ellsworth Toohey - from The Fountainhead?

" 'You're a maggot, Elsie', she told him once. 'You feed on sores.' 'Then I'll never starve,' he answered."

This is a perfect piece of dialogue. He is a tabloid maggot, and what a wonderfully grotesque and familiar image. Tabloid hacks take note -  we may gobble your swill but we know which way the wind blows. Remember this.

Joh Bailey says that Des's hair looks genuinely unkempt and uncared for. Quelle Horreur!

"It's not as bad as a mullet, but it's getting there".

Huh? A mullet? Whatever, dick. But then, just as Bailey's inane comments grip me with the wincing pain of a miagrane, the next line offers redemption; swift and sweet:

"As for his thoughts on Warriors coach Ivan Cleary's do, Bailey said it was pretty bland and 'neither good nor bad' "

Wow. Way to nail Cleary's neither-here-nor-there 'personality' in just a few short words, Bailey. Is it possible I had you all wrong? Probably not, no, but props all the same.

On Cleary; and upon further inspection and several hours of not particularly restful reflection, it's come to mind that the man has that look about him most commonly seen in people who find themselves with something nasty in their mouth, in polite company, which excludes them from spitting it out with instinctive, explosive immediacy. Doesn't he look for all the world like he's - with glacial subtlety - using his tongue to roll a slightly rancid oyster from cheek to cheek? He just always looks.....faintly repulsed. Not that there's anything wrong with that, as Jerry and George would hasten to stress, it's just very unsettling, is all. Inscrutable people usually are though - and don't they fucking know it. Scrutinise this! *grabs handful of crotch*

So. Today the AFL, Sunday the NRL. My boss asked me who did I reckon for this weekend -

"who'd reckon for this weekend?"

 and when I asked him his code or mine -

"your code or mine?"

he said Ohh, right, you watch that other game don't you?, and flailed both his arms in the air as if he were summoning some higher power; a rain god perhaps, or Peter Garrett. This struck me as strange because I would think that between the two codes, surely AFL would be better represented, visually I mean, by a sudden, epileptic-esque arm waving interpretive dance move than NRL. Right? They do all that leaping and twirling and prancing already, it's really not that much of a stretch. What the fuck arm-waving do they do in league? NONE. Yet another reason why it is a far superior game, just quietly.

Anyway, mere trifles. I told him I thought the Cats might have it -

"I think the Cats might have it"

 and he said by-god he thought I might be right -

"by-god I think you might be right!" 

and we went on to have a lucid and reciprocal conversation about why we thought this was so and afterwards I was lightly troubled and strangely pleased, in equal parts, by the realisation that I had never sounded so Victorian in all my life. More so because we also talked about the Deni Ute Muster and I sort of, uh, enthused over it.

Plus, earlier, we had also shared this exchange:

- "Creeping Jesus isn't here yet - I fucken told him to come."
-"Who?"
- "Creeping Jesus."
- "WHO?"
- "CREEPING JESUS!"
- "Yeh that's what I thought you said."

The fuck??!