Not A Real Job...

So movie award season has come and gone again and thank fuck for that.

Only the fashion industry surpasses their movie counterparts for gratuitous self congratulation and yet both are one big inside joke that we common folk don’t get. So you made two, maybe three decent movies in a year? Get over it.

I think things like the Academy Awards should be held every four years, like every other actual celebration of achievement i.e. sports. Because swanning around for three months in makeup speaking the lines someone else has written for you is not something worth celebrating every year, it really isn’t.

But like fashion, it’s the industry built upon the industry that laps this shit up. What would that silly bitch from TV3 do for example, if there were no award ceremonies for her to swan around at pretending she’s on txting terms with the A list? Heaven forbid they might have to replace her slot with something newsworthy.

What would the E Channel do without the source for their endless drivel about who wore what and then did whom? What would Ryan Seacrest do for fucks sake if he didn’t have The Dictator accidentally pouring Kim Jong’s ashes all over his perfect suit? Mind you, I’d tune in to see something like that every year, the highlight of this years ceremony.

What would we do as a nation if our small minds couldn’t get excited about the fact that some NZ company is up for ‘Best Catering’ or something on Tintin? Weta would still win shit but then they’re awesome. Where else would Brett McKenzie get to play the quintessential simple Kiwi boy? Again.

And just on that, why is it that actors continue to perpetuate the whole Muppet myth long after the cameras have stopped rolling? Why do they even buy into it in the first place? We all know they’re puppets, heck even the puppets know they’re fucken puppets, so why pretend they’re great actors or performers and it’s an honour working with them?

But just in case you needed further proof that the whole thing is arse then look no further at the latest post ceremony viral sensation: Angelina Jolie's superimposed right leg everywhere. It’s garnering more interest and hits than the awards themselves. Yep. Somebody is laughing but it ain’t you or me.

One of the most nominated flicks this year was a black and white silent film. That's right, two hours of silence in a room full of people masticating. Least they could have done was coloured the damn thing. But it's a novelty isn't it? No one is going to say a bad thing about it because it dares to be different. It dares to be bold. It proves the industry has run out of ideas is what it is.

Oh and the speeches and the tears and the emotion. Don't you just want someone to break it all up by yelling out "But it's not a real job, you cunt". But they never do.

Like I said, an in joke that none of us are in on.

"Muppets I say. Farken Muppets."

Getting On My Tits

My god some stuff round here gets on my tits.

1. Like ads for ad space which always promises that many millions will see your ad if it’s placed at the very same point that you’re reading it.

Only it won’t will it, because there’s no real ad there, only the promise of a real ad. Clearly there aren’t enough real ads to fill the space because their promises are complete bollocks. These types of ads are always above mens urinals as it happens, the last great untapped bastion of captive advertising.

2. Packaging that is ‘new and improved’.

So you haven’t done anything with what’s actually inside the cardboard box around the outside? No? Fuck off then.

3. ‘Welcome to your new Blackberry’

Which is not a lifestyle, not a luxurious property within some gated community and most definitely not something that came about from your man’s milk. It’s a phone. That’s it. Just a fucken phone.

4. The show / movie / book that 'critics are raving about’.

Now before we endorse something with a shout out like that let’s just ask ourselves who are these critics and what is their track record like? Are they haters or do they take all the promo material they get right up the arse, because objectivity is important to me. Or maybe I’ll just make up my own mind, fuck you very much

5. Kendra Wilkinson

Has not one, but two books on the shelves. What could she possibly have to write about that would fill a post-it let alone two paperbacks?! You might know her as one of the three stooges who hooked up with Hugh Hefner, starred in the reality show of it and the subsequent spin off after being upgraded by The Hef, for something younger and dumber. You might know her on account that she regularly gets her massive mammaries out. Or you might not know her at all. Chance would be a fine thing.

6. Printouts posted to shared noticeboards about shitty bosses.

Which are almost as big a waste of space as the person who anonymously put it there. It’s no different than writing - and sketching as a visual aide - on the toilet wall at school about just how massive Bruisers testes are when you were 10. Mind you, they were. But what purpose does it really serve other than to give someone a chubby for their perceived hard core defiance of authority?

My feelings on such matters are that if it’s a problem, do something about it. Unfortunately if your only plan of attack is to pin an unfunny print out up in the work place, during work time, using work stuff, then you’re part of the fucken problem. Why not grow a pair and man up?

A big pair, like Bruisers.

My toilet wall drawings of Bruiser were uncannily anatomically correct..

Gareth Says; Up Yours, Norway.

Move over Colin Meads, NZ has a new authority figure on everything; multi millionaire, philanthropist, the very nasal Gareth Morgan.

Gareth pissed off a bunch of Norwegians last week when he went on record as saying that he wouldn’t rescue one of their sailors if the guy just happened to be drowning in the same spot of Arctic water the two plan to be in next month. Morgan is going as part of an expedition, the Norwegian because he’s a waster with a death wish and has track record of spectacularly fucking things up.

Gareth is dead right, like he usually is. The man made has many millions from mastering the things that put Coops and I to sleep in Economics class back in College and you just know that he didn’t get that much wedge from being often wrong. Like most people with a ridiculous amount of coin he’s not afraid to speak his mind when he feels strongly about something and I for one like that.

More recently he’s gone in on bailing out The Phoenix and naturally his fan base just went up by a couple of thousand because if there’s one thing football fans love more than a rich benefactor its one who’s not afraid of a good sound bite. He even took his top of when they were one nil up with 10 minutes to go, what a guy.

He’s called the Norwegian guy a bottom feeder which I think is one of the funniest expressions around but then I would, the word ‘moist’ cracks me up too. Naturally this has soured the atmosphere a bit in gay ol Norway in much the same way that if I walked into your house and took a shit in your fridge you might not be too happy about it and it might sour the atmosphere.

But let’s not take fridge shitting out of its cultural context.

As a fellow blogger tells me, in Uruguay for instance there are no such prejudices. Shitting in someone's fridge can be seen as a friendly act like meeting a friend in the street, raising the right hand and enunciating the words "Hello my old friend". Fridge shitting is a national pastime and its exponents are much loved, known colloquially as "turd fairies".

It's only when we displace the amicable deposition of frozen ordure into a NZ context that it is likely to be seen in a negative light, due solely to the triumph of PC sandal-wearing do gooders who knit their own muesli. The freaks.

Of course even in Uruguay in some circumstances shitting in the fridge can be offensive, for example on the cold meats shelf or into a recently made trifle. Bum mince left by the turd fairy which has dripped into the lunch boxes for the kids tomorrow is also not seen in a good light. But if one is careful to deposit ones chilled choc logs into, for example, the egg holders, then the owner of the fridge door will smile on opening it in recognition of a beneficent auspice.

So please let's not get these things out of context or out of proportion.

Hey, Gareth wouldn’t and he’s always right, so get fucked Norway.

Gareth has shown a lot of guts in bailing out The Phoenix...

The "But it's somebody elses" Excuse Fails. Again.

Dad plays porn instead of Smurfs at kid's party.

Police aren't filing charges against a father who briefly played a pornographic video instead of The Smurfs at his child's birthday party.

Tremonton Police Chief Dave Nance said the man had rented a copy of The Smurfs from a Redbox kiosk and loaded the disc into his laptop. But when he turned the projector on for the children, pornographic images flashed on the screen.

Authorities got involved when the father complained somebody had tampered with the DVD. Police found nothing wrong, saying the porn was probably on the laptop.

Nance says officials aren't pursuing charges because the incident was apparently an accident.

Heart Shaped Cable

Ah Valentines Day, that bastion of anonymously expressing one’s love for the stranger who’s kept your wank bank well stocked for months.

Nothing says ‘I love you’ more than a creepy bunch of flowers. Not that the flowers are creepy of course, but the cryptic card or in most case, no card at all, never quite has the same affect on a woman as it does in the movies. Funny that.

I’ve given my fair share of them bunches in my time. What a hopeless romantic I was back in the day. Unfortunately one man’s romantic is another womens stalker and much money was wasted freaking girls out in the pursuit of lustiness. Luckily that can be done for free on the internets these days.

One such story involved me sending a rose to an older girl at college in the mistaken believe that she would fall for the pimply younger boy in the fitting adidas track pants, the ones with stirrups. I sent it anonymously of course because I didn’t want to appear desperate and then proceeded to send her cryptic notes along the lines of “I’ll wear this top tomorrow, or be carrying this so you’ll know it’s me”. Yep, I was making her work for entry into my wonderland.

Eventually she found out my name but didn’t know me by sight so to speed up the pre-coital process I made Bruiser, the go between in this match made in heaven, call me by a different name. It was a stroke of genius and one that would ultimate leave me alone with the stroking. Again.

Needless to say that when she did eventually find out who I was she was disappointed on so many levels (story of my life). Admittedly she did get a nice rose out of it but by then it had wilted up and died, like my love for her. Yeah I fancied her but she was also a complete slut and I don’t mean to cast aspersions on her character, she really was. It would never have worked out between us.

These days I’m not so inclined. Every time I send the missus mystery flowers she knows it’s me on account of the frugal size of the bunch, or that I got them from the supermarket. We used to do alternative giving’s like CDs and stuff but you know how it is, after a few years together you’re pretty much in agitate, not placate, mode with each other.

Lancey spiced up his Valentines this year by blocking the toilet at home and leaving it for his missus. Not intentionally mind, but he got sidetracked by its girth, his inability to flush it and the need to get to work and tell me about it. Some four hours later and he hasn’t heard anything from the home front, no call, no txt*. Maybe he should’ve done it in a shape of a heart?

I for one like it though, it’s different. Nothing says love more than leaving something akin to the Cook Strait cable in a filled bowl for the missus to clean up. It’s true love when you’ve reached that level of comfort. In the early days you would’ve done everything to clear that sucker, including grabbing the whisk from the kitchen draw…

No Valentines day is not for us and let’s be honest, is just another Americanised holiday that appeals to teenagers, the desperate to be American and retailers who make a mint out of fleecing all of them. Fuck that, I’d rather have a blocked toilet.

*Lancey eventually did get that call and it cost him a dozen red roses. That's the most expensive dump he's ever had.

24 Sevens

Is anyone bored with the whole annual Sevens party yet?

Just me it would seem, or maybe the guy who got done for a streak but then he's not allowed there anymore so he might be done with it too.

My days of drinking 24 cans in a day are of course, long gone, but even I have to admit that in these, my mature killjoy days, that that’s a pretty good effort. Oh sure, it then lead the poor guy to go do something ridiculous like run onto the field in his gruts to try and tackle a 90kg Samoan, but it’s a fine advertisement for excess alcohol consumption: Beer. It gives you balls!

And the shits… but that last phrase would probably never catch on. It doesn’t do remorse either apparently, the fore mentioned guy received a two year ban from the stadium something he only feels ‘a little bit stink’ about.

Despite this overwhelming example of its many merits, getting pissed was a big ‘no no’ on the agenda of the organising committee for this year’s tournament and as such they took some radical steps; they offered prizes for the best costume and encouraged fans to get to the stadium earlier so as to hopefully drink less before arriving.

Amateurs.

Clearly no one on that particular committee has been shit faced whilst dressed in a toga because if they had they would’ve known that neither of those two initiatives would make much difference. For one, most people, when faced with dressing up need to be pissed senseless to handle the perceived embarrassment of looking like a tit and as such, if forced to arrive earlier will simply drink the same amount in a shorter space of time. Case in point, Mr 24 Cans himself.

What they could’ve done was banned the selling of alcohol at the ground, now THAT is an initiative. But these days the hand that giveth the beer earns far too much money from it to ever allow it to be taketh away so there’s no chance of that happening. But still, if anyone down at the Cake Tin was really serious about doing something about it that would be a pretty tasty start.

Incidentally my favourite Sevens story only exists thanks to the mindless consumption of liquor so I am somewhat grateful for the ever ready presence and availability of the demon elixir.

On Yer Bike Stu tells of the time he and a colleague were musing over just who would take the double pass to the Red Zone somebody else was offering up on the cheap. Stu eventually and somewhat regretfully, turned it down and let the colleague take it. Imagine his disappointment then when she arrived at work on Monday to tell him all about the whale of a time she’d had.

The guy sat directly behind her had arrived inebriated in his caveman costume, sans any form of underwear and proceeded to spend the next eight hours spilling, vomiting and urinating down the back of her chair. At some point in the evening he took to exposing himself and more than once attempted to teabag her on the back of the head....

Needless to say she’s never been back since and I for one empathise. Nobody wants to see a drunken mans junk. Why just the other week at Hixies stag do we were horrified to see a couple of hairy plums poking out of the undies from another stag there that night. He had been dragged on stage for the ritualistic humiliation on offer from one of the lovely ladies that he had been shouted by his very good mates.

Admittedly he was wearing ladies underwear but that’s no excuse. I didn’t pay my $10 to see gnads on stage, that’s a whole different strip club. Not even 24 cans would prepare a fella for that.

Football Fashionistas

The Phoenix are riding high this season and I for one am well impressed.

Not because I have any desire to have long warm showers with the lads but because they’ve got a lot of haters arund the place which is a shame really because of all our professional teams here in Welling Town, they by far, do the bizzo season in and season out.

This week they donned an all black strip which each player is auctioning of for his charity of choice. It’s a nice touch but you have to wonder if the fellas are doing themselves any favours in the mastermind stakes by allowing this to appear on each of their auctions:

The adidas strip was designed by players Andrew Durante, Tim Brown and Leo Bertos using adidas’ online customization tool miTeam.com.

Um it’s black. With adidas stripes. That are white.

I don’t think the fashion houses of Paris and Milan have anything to worry about just yet with these guys. Still, that’s why they’re footballers I suppose.

Andrew 'Dainty' Durante: Footballer, Fashionista, Good with colours.