Turn That Frown Upside Down..

Sad sad news this week that Ryan Reynolds and Scarlett Johansson are to divorce after only two years of marriage.

Normally I wouldn’t give a shit about this kind of thing but I can’t help but perhaps I had something to do with it. After all, I did rate Ryan on this little list of mine and how could any marriage compete with that kind of pressure.

Oh sure, Scarlett is a good looking bird and a talented actress too; but I ain’t putting her in a Top 5 anytime soon so maybe, just maybe, that got to her.

So if you need a gaff to doss down in Ryan, then our spare room is free brother. We can spend our nights crying, comforting each other, comparing our abs and manicuring each other’s man beards. Oh and in the morning, I’m making waffles.

And that, is how we turn a frown upside down.

People In Your Neighbourhood: Crasians

So the Asian guy across the street was out mowing his lawn the other day, with a scuba mask on.

Now plastic bags tied around the shoes I can understand; who wants grass stains on their white Bata Bullets, but a scuba mask?! What’s up with that, for fucks sake?

Actually I know what’s up with that, he be a crazy Asian (Crasian) and that’s just what they do.

Do you remember that bit in Sesame Street they always used to do about ‘the people in your neighbourhood, in your neighbourhood, they’re the people you meet everyday’? And they had the strapping black guy who looked like, but obviously wasn’t, a homicidal rapist? My street reminds me of that sometimes.

Gardening day across the road is very amusing at the best of time. A small portion of the household – some 400 approximately – take a break from making car tyres or whatever it is they do in the garage all day and descend upon the front yard with all manner of garden tools and kitchen utensils.

The actual strip of lawn out the front of their place is roughly the size of the men’s toilets but my god do they go to town on it as if they were they attacking South Korea or something.

The funny thing is that when the dust settles - and it’s like Hiroshima over there for most of the gardening afternoon - it still looks a complete shambles. Shorter admittedly, but only in the front. They leave the sides long, just like a good mullet; Business on top, party down the back.

But there’s a strange comfort you have knowing that your friendly neighbourhood Crasians are watching you most of the day from behind their closed blinds, like they do when not scuba diving amonst the weeds. They see things, just like Jack off Titanic.

Not to be confused with jacking off to Titanic, because everyone knows you can only really do that to the one scene and it’s not even Kate Winslet’s hand for chrissake. And it’s a long wait till then too, all which makes for a pretty sad wank really. Especially the second time.

We have another Asian family in the street but they’re not so much crazy as they are nosey, but in a good way. The old guy, Mr Miyagi, keeps an eye on the street, literally. He smokes a pipe which is a wonderful excuse to get out on the driveway and away from her indoors I suspect.

He and I have a little ritual that is both respectful and amusing. He watches me get into the car and then turns away as if he hasn’t seen me. He’ll start making his way inside right up till the moment I pass when he looks back to see if I’ll wave.

I always wave and so does he, despite pretending he never really saw me in the first place. When I drive up the street he does the same thing. The other day we bumped into each other at the supermarket and out of instinct he turned and walked away. I didn’t let him down when he looked back.

Sometimes I really catch him out, like when I need to leave early for football and he’s not only out of the house but halfway up the bloody road. This leads to an awkward moment, like we’ve just walked in on each other in the nude, yet still the ritual beings, he turns away and I wait for him to reach the drive and look back...

But it’s neighbours like that you like. I know that if anyone is cruising up and down our little street casing the place then he’s going to notice the bastards and for that I’d let him walk in on me in the buff if he really wanted to.

Crasians might be indeed crazy and in some cases quirky, but they are the people in your neighbourhood that you meet every day and that you come to rely on, even if for a bit of light relief when they mow the lawns wearing scuba masks.

Looks like those damn puppets were right after all.

Karate vs. Ninja

The problem with people who think that they're ninjas is that they stuff it up for those of us that actually are.

This same rule of thumb can be applied to anyone professing to be a martial artist, like these guys who had their picture in the paper the other day:

Members of South Wellington Seido Karate Club braved the chill to punch and kick their way through a two-hour training session at Lyall Bay yesterday.

Head instructor Tony Gaeta said beach training helped students adapt karate to any situation. If the student was concentrating, the sand and cold waves shouldn't matter.

"If stuff is going to happen it's going to happen to you on the street, and you can't say to your opponent, `Wait, just let me put my karate pants on and then I'll be ready'. You have to be able to handle any environment, and do what you normally do."

No shit Tony. Is that why you all have your karate pants on whilst you're standing in the waves? And when was the last time, exactly, a three foot wave attempted to mug you on the street? And what will you do if you're alone when it does and you're not able to hold the hand of thirty odd other people in a defensive clothesline?

Best not let him know I said that though because it then becomes this whole Karate vs. Ninja thing and I've sliced and diced too many good men just to prove a point...

Football from Heaven

Non sports fans bear with me just for a moment. As usual croquet fans, there will be fuck all for you in this blog.

Quite possibly one of the best displays of football took place yesterday morning. Beautiful Barcelona played one of the best, yet gayest, teams in the world, Real Madrid, who just happen to be coached by one of the best in the business, Jose Mourinho, the self appointed ‘Special One’.

Barca demolished the pretty Madristas. Absolutely blitzed them. Made them look like part timers. Five nil once it was all over and 98,000 fans - yes that’s right; the stadium holds that many - went home to hit the piss deliriously happy.

Meanwhile, back in little ol NZ we followers of football made our way to work and cracked one under the desks as the goals keep rolling in via the live text updates on the world wide intraweb. The one thing we have to live for at moments of inappropriate arousal like this is that we’ll be able to catch the goals on the telly during the lunch time news.

Only today they had other priorities, like fucken cricket.

The Ashes to be exact, contested between two countries that aren’t even New Zealand! I know we’ve got a lot of Poms and Aussies here but fuck ‘em, Brisbane is three hours away by plane, if they want to catch the score they can piss off and go get it in person.

And why is some guy named Michael Hussey called ‘Mr Cricket’? Did he invent the game? I think not. It strikes me as one of those nicknames you give yourself to appear way cooler than you actually are. Mine was GreatBigHardCock.

Mind you, if you’ve been called ‘hussy’ all your life anything will do. Just ask my first shag; Tracey, from Waipawa.

So fuck you very much TV3. I’ve seen the game and the goals now but I shan’t be watching your lunch time news ever again which is okay by me because TV1 has a far sexier financial news presenter before the sports news anyway.

Barca vs.Madrid. Quite possibly the best football you’ll never see (unless you have Sky).

Five star Barca - better than a Hussey anyday.

Sonny Bill & The Mormons

Sometimes, just sometimes, I wish I was a Mormon.

Not because I have a hankering to find God, it’s just that I just love their uniform. And they wear it so well; rain or shine you’ll go a long way before you find anyone wearing the classic white shirt and black tie combo quite as sharply as a Mormon does.

Cyclists could take note from the Mormon too for he doesn’t need to invest in those silly “I’ve got more pretty labels than you” lycra numbers that so many of you wear. Oh no, all the Mormon needs are two bike clips (one for each leg) and the truth.

I once had a divine moment with the Mormons.

It all started when I contracted chicken pox at the grand old age of twenty. I was consequently holed up in the flat feeling rather sorry for myself, watching daytime TV, going through the flatmates underwear draw – that kind of thing – when there came a knock at the door.

On the doorstep were two Mormon girls, one of which was a gorgeous, blonde, American girl.

Maybe it was the fumes from the cream they give you to rub on the scabs but for some reason I thought she was an angel and after politely declining their offer of a chat on account of said blistering, porous rash, invited them back for a cuppa the next day.

Needless to say I spent most of that next morning prepping myself for a meeting of porno proportions. I can’t recall the number exactly but I probably took the edge of twice, maybe three times. Yes, I may well have been sick with the complexion of a kid working at McDonalds but I was betting on working the ClubDes charm that day I don’t mind telling you.

Imagine my complete surprise and I’ll admit, terror, when the knock came and I noticed out the corner of the lounge window, not one, not several, but tens of Samoan Mormon boys converging on my doorstep.

Now I know they say God works in mysterious ways but he damn well knew what he was doing that day. Either they were going to leave having converted me or it was going to be one hell of a gang bang. I never did answer that door that day, or any other time the big fulla has knocked.

But I love that Mormons are what they present themselves as. If they knock on the door you know what you’re going to get, which is more than I can say with Rebel fucken Sport, the weakest sports store ever.

They’ve spent a lot of money this year on having brick shit house and all round hunk of man spunk, Sonny Bill Williams, do their ads. I think they should’ve spent their money on organising their stores so that you can actually find something and stocking the place for if and when you do.

This is what happens when you have a virtual monopoly of a retail genre like Rebel do. You can pretend to have sales which are really nothing more than a slight reduction in overpriced stock and you can hire staff more interested in dancing to the radio playing in store than knowing where the shin pads are kept.

Because where else are we going to go aye? The guy on the High Street who sells fishing rods, rifles and aertex shirts, in that order? He wouldn’t even know what a T90 is if you showed him a picture, even then he still wouldn’t give a shit. He certainly wouldn’t stock it any time soon.

But, just like the Mormon, what you see is what you get. Amen to that.

Damn You James Blunt

Damn you and your new song which I tried so very hard not to like.

But you got me again with your catchy lyrics, your sun swept video and that strangely alluring effeminate way you carry yourself. Not to mention that mouth of yours that looks big enough to hold a couple of balls in it.

I’ve since bought it off iTunes, dammit, but I nearly didn’t because I’m almost sure I can make out that somewhere in the back ground, some poof (other than you) is playing a ukulele. Which has to be the most deeply disturbing trend in music these days. Or as my mate Marco put it so aptly “Ukuleles. What’s up with that shit?”

Ukuleles are right up there with surfers who then go on to be musicians in my big book of things that fuck me right off.

As are clowns who decide to take over the stereo at small intimate gatherings and play some reggae dub step rubbish that you’re most likely to hear blaring out of cars in the Coromandel. Not cool bro, not cool.

Now I admit that guys like Jack Johnson probably sound awesome playing their out of tune guitars when everyone is huddled around the camp fire, high on sea water, surfboard wax and whatever it is they’re all smoking but lets face it, who wouldn’t aye? Even Blunt and his lose-the-will-to-live-when-you-hear-it numbers about being somebodies lover would rock that particular party.

There’s just one thing I can’t get my head around regarding James Blunt and that’s the fact he was in the army for six years, as a Captain no less. He saw action in Kosovo and even stood guard at the coffin of the Queen Mum when she carked it in 2002. So at some point the guy had some semblance of an impressive life before he started singing about perving at strange girls on the train.

Knowing that makes me wonder what it was like serving with the guy. Did the other Captains wake each morning to find him serenading them, naked, from the end of his bed in the Officers Mess? Nakedness, by the way, is acceptable during wartime. Incidentally no one worries about trivial things like the size of your cock when there’s every chance you’ll be dead by bed time.

Did he sing to them whilst in the communal showers and in those poignant, quiet moments that always inevitably arise in times of conflict, did he try out new numbers on the troops and if so, what did they make I wonder, of the lyric ‘three wise men having a semi by the sea’…

Speaking of strange girls; I have this moral dilemma I feel I should share with the group.

Most days I drive past a not unattractive young, solo Mum struggling to make her way up the Mount Kilimanjaro that is our hill, pushing bubs in his / her pram. Often, depending on the weather which lets face it, in Wellington is usually shit, I contemplate stopping and offering her a lift.

Which I could easily do because I’m usually alone, drive a big booted passion wagon with plenty of room for a pram and usually have a car seat for when we pick up the niece. But the thing that stops me every time is the thought that it’s a fine line between being a well meaning guy and a well organised sexual deviant, at least in her eyes. So I don’t.

Ah well. At least the thought is there I suppose. She probably wouldn’t get in when she heard the ukuleles pumping out of the iPod anyway.

Damn you James Blunt.

Two balls minimum I reckon...

Appearances May Deceive

Nothing is safe from disturbing trend that is making shit cheap and nasty these days. Not even the king of such things; plastic utensils.

A plastic spoon broke on me today as I tried to extract the teabags from my cup. Yes that’s right, plural. I like my tea so strong it sometimes stirs itself. Anyhoo, it just snapped in half, midway up the shaft which as we all know, is the worst kind of break.

I managed to teabag myself, even with a broken shaft, but my god, it was messy.

How can we expect to maintain the fabric of society when even the simplest of things no longer function, for fucks sake? It used to be you could cut through an over cooked steak with a plastic spoon, or tunnel under the barbed wire perimeter fence. Then along came China and stuffed up everything through their mass production of everything.

I wonder if they use plastic utensils in Whitby. Or drink beer from cans. Did you know that beer in cans is sensationally cheaper than in any other vessel, but no bugger buys them because drinking from stubbies is far harder. And easier to throw at the neighbours / parked cars / cops, probably.

There’s nothing quite like a drive round a gated community to remind you just how inconsequential your little three bedroom number in the suburbs is, is there?

I had to pick something up from there this week and for a while there I wondered if I had taken a wrong turn and ended up in Beverly Hills. It is a place that suffers from split personalities; take the first turn in and you’ll find yourself in Shitby, take the second or third and you’re very much in Richby.

It’s suburban snobbery at its finest and something I am well familiar with. Growing up in the Hutt Valley Hills (see what I did there?) we had our fair share of it. The frightened Caucasians who found themselves living in ethnic suburbs like Taita, started calling their area ‘North Avalon’. Try and find that on a map why doncha.

I sometimes try it on myself. Where we live is on the border of a very well to do suburb on the one hand and a complete anus on the other. Even the council can’t work out where we are so why shouldn’t we play on that confusion, especially when we decide to sell?

Because even the most directionally challenged, blind guy is going to take one look and know we’re trying it on, that’s why. It’s a bit like internet dating and the blatant misrepresentation that happens in the biggest sausagefest of them all. Not that I’m into that but I know some who have been. Successfully too, I might add.

It’s a real meeting of some of this country’s finest minds, is internet dating, especially from the fellas point of view, who like to lie about the little things like, oh, overall physical appearance. How’s that going to work when you meet that special lady, do you think?

It’s not weird to find a partner on the net these days but it fucken was when Mrs ClubDes and I found each other. Quite what she was doing on there I don’t know but I was towards the end of my Meg Ryan obsession and had watched ‘You’ve Got Mail’ for the umpteenth time and figured hey, if it happened like that in the movies then it must be true.

I can’t remember what I wrote on my profile exactly but it certainly wasn’t the de rigueur of the modern day dating site douche. I wasn’t vague about my name, age, marital status or work situation and I’m pretty sure I didn’t have a picture of my chopper alongside a stubbie as a profile pic. I just wasn’t that classy back then.

And the ladies then wonder just why it is that when they make that particularly choice they find themselves in Shitby, not Richby...

"Yeah I'm six foot two, dark, work in marketing and my hobbies include windsurfing, rugby and masturbating.."