James Graham Grinding on an Old Lady

There is nothing more terrible than the NRL season yielding to another filthy and relentless Australian summer. Well, some things maybe. Being tasered to death by fucking cops when you’re just a Brazilian boy on acid.  And cops in general, the cunts. Tussling with the Kafkaesque qualities of Telstra. The faces of people in food courts. A guy I work with who I blather to about what cars I see myself owning in the future telling me he’s started pissing blood. Watching my littlest cat Gepeto crying and writhing on the carpet after an apparent but unfounded snake bite and thinking he was about to die right while I was watching Intervention (Michael, meth addict) last night. These things are terrible too.

Anyway. Summer is a horizon-less wasteland. People seem to enjoy it. I don’t understand this but I have also never understood people in fact I pretty much hate them uniformly.

Wanda – I can’t stand people. I hate them. Do you hate them?

Henry – No. But I seem to feel better when they’re not around.

-Barfly

Still, it’s not like there’s nothing going on. Just yesterday I say photos of the Kangaroos. In training shirts. With necks and shoulders spilling out of every outlet. JT, and Billy. Good stuff, this. But insubstantial. Not enough.

I also saw photos of a gathering Tigers  Sharks coach Shane Flanagan had orchestrated; a meet, greet and get elegantly soused in the yacht club event to welcome the entire Tigers team minus Robbie Benji and Lote all the incoming recruits. And Todd Carney and Luke Lewis were seated together looking fucking lewd and generally bringing credit to their entire species just by sitting there. They can’t help it. They just have a seedy air of salaciousness about them that renders them automatically awesome.

(My brother took a long range punt on a Sharks Bulldogs grand final next year, with Bulldogs for the win. If they make it to the grand final it will totally inspire me to go out and get a commemorative neck tattoo. I don’t go for them or anything but they’re that kind of team. A team to, I don’t know; bring you to your happy place just by having a go.)     

And naturally the Bulldogs Mad Monday fallout bullshit continues. I say ‘continues’ but I mean ‘is now being perpetuated by radio stations and the like who in admirable attempts to really get to the crux of the sensitive and contentious issues at hand have started asking highly qualified media commentators and social analysts LIKE LAURYN EAGLE to comment on said issues and then immediately reporting on her comments and having others pass comment on her comments and reporting dutifully on that and so on and so forth seemingly forevermore until suck me off you dumb dog becomes, like, this decade’s Carpe Diem or whatever’. I don’t know. It’s cannibalistic and unseemly. I love it. (Not really, though.)

Probably what really happened at Belmore version #1

& #2

Things have strayed into Woodward and Bernstein territory what with talk of tapes and recordings and allegations of highly sophisticated spy equipment and meticulously researched revelations like did you know there is a 91 second YouTube video of that fiend James Graham grinding on a very old woman in the lounge area of a northern English pub that culminates in the very old woman putting her hands down his pants and going the grope and that the Bulldogs are attempting to argue that the whole Mad Monday incident was a misunderstanding stemming from this video whereby a player who is recounted as  saying “There are some ladies here to stick their heads in your pants” actually said “There’s no old ladies here to stick their hands in your pants”???

I didn’t know this. Did Channel 9 know this? Did it really happen like that or are the Bulldogs attempting to create an entirely new version of reality? Does it even matter now?

I do not have the answers to these questions but I too grapple with the underlying issues of truth and reality on a daily basis and understand the elusive nature of both. For example, today I finished one squeeze-bottle of sauce and opened a fresh one and the old one was labelled 40% lower in sugar and salt but I hadn’t know that when I bought it otherwise I never would have bought it because I love sugar and think very highly of salt too I mean for much of human history the pursuit of salt drove men to every edge of the world and anyway I hadn’t thought the reduced sugar and salt sauce tasted particularly different or particularly offensive until I opened the regular sauce and holy fuck it tasted amazing it was sweet it was salty it was altogether delicious and in that moment I knew that the sugar and salt reduced sauce had been a lie and  that I had lived that lie but hadn’t known it was a lie until I tasted the truth. 

Anyway. I don’t see the sense in asking Todd Carney’s girlfriend (Lauryn Eagle that is) what she thinks about women’s role in society, even if she is an ex-waterski champion. Personally, I would have approached Kochie’s Angels for comment long before asking for Eagle’s opinion. You know, step off Catherine Lumby and Eva Cox.    

I understand though, all of this inanity. It’s the off season, after all. The Daily Tele sports section seems to be experiencing a slump similar to the one currently over/underwhelming me. This is why they did a full page article on balls. Nuts, I mean. Not, like, Steedens and Sherrins and the teeny tiny child fingers that stitch them in unlit and unregulated hives of exploitative labour all over India in an appalling but all too common example of fat first world manufacturing industry’s reliance on and exploitation of developing nations and their heinous role in perpetuating global inequality and repression.

No.

“League star proves he’s one tough nut.”

Well, shit. You don’t buy a meat pie for the meat. Nor do you buy the Daily Tele for the (metaphoric) meat.

As it happens I think balls are great in both a general and specific sense so an entire and alarmingly graphic article all about them and the injuries they are evidently able to withstand was and remains very pleasing. Some of my favourite phrases and sentiments are as follows:

 “When trainers performed an X-ray on Livers, they found his testicle had ‘shattered like a light bulb’”

“…had his scrotum ripped open”

 “…had his scrotum torn”

“…leaving one testicle hanging free”

“…after being rucked viciously by a Frenchman”

“…had the physio stitch up his scrotum, then returned to the field before he was concussed by a blow to the head. Shelford does not recall any of that game”

“…was struck by a knee to his groin and his testicle exploded”

 “Surgery was performed to remove his right testicle”

“He returned to the rink two days later to the chant of ‘Balls of Steel’’  

“…his scrotum swelled up so badly he could not run properly”

“Livers recovered to father two children”

I love You Lleyton Hewitt

Summer. Uggh.

I’ve lived in this part of the country for a long time. You’d think I’d be getting the hang of things by now. But no. The specifics of the seasons continue to surprise and unnerve me. And by ‘surprise and unnerve’ I mean ‘make me feel suicidal/homicidal of a morning and, as my energy levels drop through the afternoon, wearily nihilistic by nightfall. So, summer. It just gets so goddamned HOT. Even if you’re lucky enough to lose consciousness at some point you eventually come to feeling like your internal organs have undergone a session in a thermally-heated slow-cooker, which in a way they pretty much have. The punishing nature of my work means that I am left devoid of the energy and inclination to do anything much of, oh, say, anything other than watching boxed sets of HBO television series and reading four and five day old newspapers with that kind of glazed immobility that comes over you when you are bone weary busted.

Summer is not the ideal season for those of a morose persuasion. All those people who seem to be inexplicably enjoying themselves? It’s irritating. No, summer is not for me. I prefer cooler weather. I can coat myself in goose fat and legitimate my melancholia.

I live in a town that fills with people from Melbourne’s outer suburbs over summer. Bogans. They swarm in and set up elaborate camps all over the banks of the Murray and amuse themselves hurling their obnoxious water crafts over the water at high speeds. Occasionally they crash them; run them up banks or wrap them around submerged trees and such. This leads to deaths and various forms of paralysis but it never seem to thin out their ranks any. Every year, more and more holidaying bogans; they come and they come. And every year the town runs out of meat and ice and bait and parking spaces. They all seem to have a terrific time, crashing about in the bush and crashing about on the water and drinking like fishes and emptying the town of its vital supplies.

Because I work outside every day under the brain-boiling sun of the punishing nature of my work out under the sun I tend to look at their zealous commitment to al fresco leisure as the last word in lunacy. I stagger to the supermarket after work looking like a walking autopsy and am made twitchy by plague proportions of boardshort wearing bogans exuding their special kind of frenetic, abrasive energy; buying huge quantities of sauce and Reef tanning oil and pre-mixed pasta salad and, out in the car park, staggering and reeling under the weight of the two or three slabs piled against their chest and obstructing their vision and mobility. Good people.

In any case, total respect to those who take charge of two tonnes of speeding metal over the Christmas and New Year’s period to drive hundreds of miles across the country in an insane pursuit of holiday happiness. Props. Also, I like people who appreciate inland beauty. This obsession Australians have with the coast perplexes me. The Murray is in something of a ragged and shabby state but it has a kind of faded elegance; it’s wide and serene and quietly majestic and goes about its timeless business of just rolling on and that’s about all you can ask of a river, isn’t it? There’s something to be said for people who chose to take their holiday somewhere out in the continental vastness, in indeterminate farming country, in the stinking summer heat, far from the cool afternoon sea breeze that blows over places like Lorne and Portsea of an afternoon.

Bill Bryson wrote something about the days before air-conditioning came along in America, and the special kind of grimy summer heat that used to characterise American cities, and how

“people spent every waking moment trying to alleviate it – wiping their necks with capacious handkerchiefs, swallowing cold glasses of lemonade, lingering by open refrigerators, sitting listlessly before electric fans.

The world has changed a lot since those days, of course.

Everywhere you go is air-conditioned, so the air is always as cool and clean as a freshly laundered shirt. People don’t wipe their necks much anymore or drink sweating glasses of lemonade, or lay their bare arms gratefully on cool marble soda fountains, because nowadays summer heat is something out there, something experienced only briefly when you sprint from your parking lot to your office or from your office to the luncheon counter down the block.”

I don't know about you but Bill Bryson has the uncanny knack of making me feel nostalgic, homesick, even, for a time and a place that I've never known. I'm not entirely sure I even know what a soda fountain is but he has me and my bare arms right there on it. Remarkable.

HOWEVER. January sees my horizon expand to such a degree that I have  Something! To Look! Forward To! I know. Talk about insane optimism. If that sounds like it's the sun-baked delerium taking hold and warping my perspective, you're only partially right, because January is also the time that the Australian Open comes to town.

I look forward to the Australian Open with a fervor that is vaguely religious in scope and intensity. Strapping athletes straining through a series of intense and increasingly grueling encounters and Andy Roddick throwing a series of strops is a perfect accompaniment to the rigorous do-nothingness that summer afternoons, evenings and nights demand. I have a very real and personal appreciation the opportunity it affords to sprawl hypnotized in front of the box for hours on end watching that little ball being pinged back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. It’s immeasurably soothing. It is cool balm for my fevered forehead. Sometimes it puts me into a state of almost narcotic bliss. What happens here is that sets and then games blend together so that they have no start or finish but are just continuous, like time. It's lovely. It's how I imagine heroin must feel.

I also appreciate the Australian Open for bringing John McEnroe back into our midst. That naff advertisement for his up-coming commentary role on Fox Sports? The one where he’s screaming “You have got to be KIDDING ME” at his answer phone - the veins of his forehead lively - as his agent leaves a series of messages suggesting increasingly ludicrous but kind of cool (“McEnroe – the musical”) career options? It excites my imagination every time. I know. My brain wants nothing to do with reason. It never has, especially during the summer months. Ergo: I look forward to Jim Courier, too. I like his egotistical waffle and his quiet but lacerating disdain for most things un-American and his poorly timed and mostly mediocre anecdotes. It goes without saying that I also like his carefully styled hair. I find it vulgar and tragic and perfectly suited to a man of his character and temperament – ie. a man who would greet friends and strangers alike with a non-traditional handshake. Yes, a knob.  

But you know what I look forward to the most? Lleyton Hewitt getting into the commentary box. My Hewitt-love is nothing short of strenuous. The poor bastard has had a torrid time of it, what with being cast by large portions of the population and media as a thorn in the side of the Australian psyche. This has always been unwarranted. God love him, though, he’s always stayed faithful to his own universe. It had long been my belief that Hewitt, along with Laurie Daly, is in possession of one of the sharpest sporting minds in Australia. This was brought home with some force last year when he did guest commentary at the Open and startled , oh, I don’t know; EVERYONE with the skillful truth, charm, grace and intelligence of his observations. Let me tell you something. There’s a reason that Hewitt and Daly have those sharp and darting laser-like eyes, and that reason is that they have spent their entire athletic careers seeing shit that other people - those in possession of slower-moving, bovine-like eyes - routinely overlook or misread. Fundamental truth #1. 

Being misunderstood was all part of his package as a player, but it would be lovely if the weak chinned cowards with ashtray eyes to whom his singular, seagull-eyed intensity posed innumerable threats could see him as the huge-hearted fighter that he is and thereby marinate in their own uniquely Australian blend of guilt and hypocrisy for a while. That would be nice.

Fundamental Truth #2:

“It’s hard to be a decent person when you have your boot on someone’s neck”

– some old saying: origins unknown (to me at least.)

In any case, I am very fucking keen for the Australian Open to begin so that I can 'slip into something more comfortable' - ie. a glassy-eyed horizontal tennis-trance.

Off Season:Off Rocker - join the dots.

Greetings, friends. Welcome to the abyss. That certain haunted quality you see in the eyes around you and, worse, the two reflected in the mirror? This is what comes of looking into the face of something horrible - THIS IS WHAT THE OFF-SEASON LOOKS LIKE. Don't be alarmed. Stick with me, and together we will familiarise ourselves with some of the symptoms and sensations you are likely to experience. For those of you who already know not of what I speak of, I hate you. I also demand that you leave and go be functional someplace else. ToddBlog is no place for the well-adjusted.

Okay. Lets proceed.

You may now be recognising the grinding monotony of life without football, i.e. life devoid of weekly displays of heaving, unbridled masculinity punctuated by explosions of violence - and finding it completely unacceptable. I know you are, honey, I know you are.

You may be finding yourself bereft of a sense of purpose. Aimless, loose-ended, potentially lethal. You're not alone. We will know each other by the yellows of our eyes and the whites of our knuckles.

You may be reflecting retrospectively on your team's season with a roughly 70/30 ratio of artery-swelling, throat-gulping pride and simmering dissatisfaction and resentment - bearing in mind that this is a sliding scale that very much takes into account ladder position, off-field and back-room shenanigans, coaching ineptitude (hey Furner, whatup fool?) season-spanning injuries (Terry Campese, word) and the like. Brace yourself. This can be a long and complicated process spanning the entire summer. Fortify your rage - because there will be rage - with a series of stiff drinks. This will allow you to take charge of your grievances as they arise; then master them, lay them to rest and move on. Ideally. Individual results may vary.

You may be shuffling around saying "bum a light?" to strangers in the streets and you don't even smoke. You may still be subject to unannounced and aneurism-inducing flashbacks of Paul Gallan's Origin heroics at the most unlikely and inappropriate of times - and if you're not then your behaviour troubles me, frankly. You may be contemplating the long run of gloom known as the off-season and thinking that perhaps a boyfriend could be a good way to fill the next few months. You may be feeling very fragmented and irritable and when people call you out on this you may be liable to bark "LOOK I'M GOING THROUGH A PERIOD OF SERIOUS MENTAL READJUSTMENT OKAY?!" into their faces from very close range.

You should be thinking of all the exotic and unknowable promise that next season holds, and reveling in the romance of the slight rushes of blood to the head and heart that this inevitably triggers. When it gets especially grim you should roll a little reel in your head of Johnathan Thurston laughing that remarkable, full-faced laugh of his, or go one better and remind yourself of his eyes and the bad things they do to you. You may find yourself investing heavily in the Australian Open. This is perfectly acceptable. Fact: Male tennis players are really, really good looking nowadays. Embrace it.

You may now find yourself unwittingly taking your problems back to their actual source, and consequently finding that the source is usually yourself. After spending many months blaming, say, Matt Orford for all the ills of the world this can be distressingly confronting. Ride it out. The off-season has long been the time when our weaknesses and deprivations are starkly revealed. To what end is entirely up to you.

Of course, there is also the very real possibility that you may not be going through any of this. I've heard rumours that well-balanced individuals whose highly capable and rational minds don't snag on and then give themselves over entirely to certain thoughts or things or themes actually do exist. Well, good for them. And by 'good for them' obviously I mean 'those bastards will get theirs soon enough'.

Ultimately, know that the football-shaped void within cannot be filled. Paper over it as best you can - barbeques, party drugs, summer fruits, the cricket, whatever works - and I'll see you on the Other Side. In other words, if anyone needs me prior to March 2012 I'll be in my bedroom, rocking.