I watched Downton Abbey.

The lovely electronic people who operate the buttons at Foxtel are replaying the sixth and final season of my beloved Downton Abbey, the British historical period drama about a centuries-old estate in England in which a bunch of obscenely rich people sit around drinking tea and whinging about their society friends. It's exactly the same as 2019, but with less comfortable clothes.

In it's 2011-16 hey day, Downton Abbey was among my favouritest TV programs. 

I honestly don't know why Britian's ITV brought it to an end; they could have kept this ship sailing all the way to the 1970s, with Lady Mary now in her early 70s and rocking high cut boots and a technicolour cowl neck sweater. Mr Carson, the house butler, would be still ruling the roost at about 170 years old.

The final season is set in 1925, which will go well to explaining why not one person has a mobile phone glued to their hand. They just had to remain stoic in the face of great suffering without Snapchat filters to cheer them up.

If  they wanted to communicate with each other in 1925 they had to telegram each other, or travel by early, early model crappy cars for hours and hours to reach each other to communicate a thought bubble that could have just been texted with a smiley face emoticon attached. 

Or, and this is the worst of all, they had to pick up a thing that was attached to a machine that was attached to a wall and put it near their ear until they heard voices on the other end! Absurd! Thankfully, everyone in the West is now in complete agreement that  speaking to another person on a telephone is passé and no longer worth our time.

For context, other things that happened in 1925 include the release of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, The Great Gatsby, Phantom of the Opera and Ben Hur, giant tornadoes in the U.S., UKs Child Labor Laws, Mussolini took over Italy, an airship crashed over Ohio, lots of airlines were formed around the world, diptheria outbreak, scotch tape was invented. Scotch Tape! All the things.

For more context - because I acknowledge the last bit of context was not particularly helpful in following the show's storyline - the people who sleep in the comfy beds in Downton Abbey are very rich. They have significant material wealth and also significant mounts of butter on their toast in the morning. I have noticed. Rich in many ways. Both of which sort of kill you in very different ways. 

Downton Abbey, season six, episode 5 or something:

SPOILERS!

Action!

Lord Grantham is recovering from last week’s episode, when his ulcer came out of his mouth in a bloody explosion. Too much butter on his toast probably. He is bedridden and has to receive incessant visits from his family all day because Netflix wasn’t invented. I suppose he could have entertained himself with a newly minted roll of scotch tape.

Kitchenhand Daisy speaks something annoying and annoys me.

The Crawleys  - the custodians of Downton Abbey - are planning to open the house to the peasants to raise money for the local Hospital. Don’t do it, Crawleys. As it turns out, the Open House is a roaring success, except for the common people ambling around their grand home, looking at the artworks with their dirt-poor, commoner eyes and dragging their pauper backsides across the antique furniture and carpets.

All the poor people have to wear dogpoo brown and dogpoo grey because Supre and other synthetic clothes from China were not invented yet.

Everyone gathers in the drawing room over and over again for tea and tedious, fairly pointless conversation.

Mr Bates and Anna, two of the house staff, have a conversation after work in their dark and depressing living room. “What about a fire? It’s a bit indulgent but we’ve earnt it today”. Everything I hate about ye olden times in one handy sentence.

Again, sitting around drinking tea. Always sitting around drinking tea. But they still do that today in England, because it’s always cold, grey tea-drinking weather. I also like drinking tea, because tea is everything that is right and good in the world. Viva la Downton Abbey.

Thoughts from the Big Bash League

Last night I went to a Big Bash League (BBL) cricket game at Manuka Oval in Canberra. Cricket being the sport where two team play a game with sticks and balls and one team wins and the other does not. If you’d like me to describe anything else to you please let me know.

So this particular match was between Sydney and Hobart - the Sydney Thunder versus the Hobart Hurricanes, with Sydney hijacking the Canberra pitch as a lesser second-string home when their parents at Spotless Stadium have kicked them out for partying and cricketing too much.

BBL names are curious. While Sydney is very dependable with it’s thunder activity throughout the summer months, I’m not convinced Hobart has ever experienced a hurricane, but that’s not important right now. Well it is important actually if you are of the view that team names should perhaps vaguely reflect something about that city but, alas, nope. Maybe it’s a bit like Gandhi’s world view - be the stormcell you want to be in the BBL. 

Clearly the BBL Team Naming Gods were not concerned with the potentially adverse consequences for international tourism of giving Australian sporting teams names like hurricanes, thunder, heat and scorchers. Maybe in the future they’ll add terrifying spiders, deadly snakes and bogans to the comp to really give those pesky tourists the boot.

Anyway, I’ve been to the cricket before, and I always find it a mirthful experience - what’s life without MIRTH! - except I always get wet because it always rains, and I always get cold because it always gets cold, even though it’s supposed to be summer, and my brain apparently can’t be bothered reminding me of these facts before I go.

So last night was no different - wet, cold, yet mirthful - and also a kid got hit in the head by a cricket ball. If the world of cricket is foreign to you, the balls are made of the hardest substances in the known universe and they are whacked at a very, very hard speed. 

The crowd announcer always thoughtfully tells us to watch out for balls that may fly into our heads. Look, thankyou for the threatening heads-up, but it’s kind of difficult to avoid when you’re constantly being distracted by the endless advertising, adorable little attention-seeking robot cameras zooming around, dance cams and crowd waves. Also, head injuries are highly likely when the you’re working within a framework that rewards a player with a ‘six’ for clubbing a ball into the crowd. It is, in fact, a work, health and safety nightmare.

The offending ball. Maybe.

Onto other burning matters. I almost forgot how most excellent Australian sport is at promoting the junk food industry. It actually does a better job at promoting the $20 billion a year Australian junk food industry cash cow than the industry does. Last night was KFC’s turn to turn us all off healthy options and be less health conscious consumers. 

Last night the crowd announcer - who had seamlessly moved on from a kid getting hit in the head with a ball - told us excitedly that if a ‘six’ was caught in the crowd we could all win free KFC. Because that’s the way to earning yourself a cricketer’s physique, kids. Fairly confident the cricketers are not eating that for supper, ever.

Anyway, my team won - the dependable Sydney thunder activity - so yay.

A Culturally Iconic Bowl of Gridiron

America loves its bowls. While most bowls are round, the Americans seem to favour the rectangular ones. They believe their bowls are quite magnificent in their properties and hold things really good. They even go so far as to call them Super Bowls. Once a year, they put all the food and drink in America in a really big bowl and 100,000 people sit there and eat it and cheer on men with footballs. Such great craic.

Such a huge coincidence that I write today of awe inspiring containers typically used to prepare and serve food because that Super Bowl brouhaha has just taken place again - Los Angeles Rams took on the New England Patriots and lost.  There were broken bits of china bowl everywhere. And I watched a bit of it, like I often do, without a darn clue as to the nature of any of those player’s business on the field.

I don’t understand the end game of plays in gridiron at all. What are they trying to do. No-one will tell me. The commentators are really of no help whatsoever. I have to use my knowledge of other codes of football and just assume they are trying to get to each other’s end to secure points by being there with the football.

I don’t even understand what the name of the game means. I’m sure Wikipedia could tell me but I don’t care that much. Okay fine. Wikipedia says gridiron is “a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end”. Oh that’s extremely helpful, Wikipedia. Can you please explain astrophysics to me? Wikipedia also says gridiron is an instrument of torture on which people were secured before being burned by fire back in ye olden days, so that’s lovely. I feel like watching gridiron could also be considered an instrument of torture.

I always say I don’t understand this at all, and then it occurred to me that watching the national sport of another culture is like visiting another culture, so the least I can do is try to understand it.

So how does one begin to understand another culture? Become self-aware of your biases? Oh, I’m very aware that this game is stupid and makes no sense. But why is that? Should I do my own research to try and understand? Okay. I’ve done that. None of the plays make any sense. Should I talk to someone from a gridiron background? Um, the commentators are confusing the fuck out of me.  Here are some examples of their lingo:
 “2nd and 11” - I think this is basic gridiron. I don’t understand what those words mean. 
“Rams converted on their last 3rd downs” - that doesn’t mean anything.
 “62, 345, first of 20” - what. 
“The longest 3rd down the Rams face tonight” - not a thing. Not words that should be uttered in a sentence, because it’s not a sentence that makes sense.

Alright, back to the game. From what I can tell, there is only one footballer with any talent on the field. The quarterback. He’s literally the only skilled employee on the books. The rest of them just run into each other like I do all day if I don’t wear my glasses. Is that unfair to the rest of the players? I don’t know.

Oh now another timeout. The players, coach and Other Unnecessary Sideline People are all going to group together to try and figure out what the actual heck is going on.

I have to say that, culturally, I just don’t find it that interesting. But I get it, you know. The hallowed ground of Superbowl is a cultural place of significance. They have their own language, wear different clothes to sporting teams I’m familiar with, the land markings are different, the crowds have a different vibe, the stadiums are…huge. The stadium in Atlanta, Georgia, where this game is being played could fit 3 Australias in it. 

This is not a stadium; it’s a mothership.

Watching a sport you are not familiar with is like visiting a foreign country or culture, which brings me to the final hot tip to understanding another country’s sporting cultural icon. Travel. Go there. This one I have got covered. I’m planning on going to Disneyland later this year, which won’t help me understand gridiron at all, but it can’t hurt.

I saw movie: First Man - that time NASA opportuned the moon

I went to see a movie. It was this one. In First Man, Ryan Gosling answered the call to be the guy who accepted the mission to boldly go where no man had been unhinged enough to go before.

And like any blockbuster feature film featuring Gosling as a NASA astronaut who winds up being the first man on the bright lunar ball, this one was no different.

There’s something about a movie that, in the first few gripping, harrowing minutes, forces you to hold your breathe just long enough for the hero to get out of the messy scrappy culsterfuck the so-called rocket scientists at Houston Space Centre have gotten them into. 

Not out of anticipation; just mainly to see if you can hold your breathe for the time it takes NASA to build a proper rocket that’s not a diabolical lemon (4-10 years).

First Gosling on the moon

In First Man, it’s Gosling’s portrayal of moon pioneer Neil Armstrong causing the turbulent breathe-holding, as he spins out of control, in an out-of-control spin in his space rocket thingy, but handling it a stoic, 1960s I’ve fucking got this kind of way. 

People were tougher than titanium alloy back in the day. People were Neil Armstrong, but with just about all of them lacking his skill, talent, brains, confidence in ability, determination, perseverance and space rocket.

By the time the opening sequence is over, you’re a quivering mess in your comfy cinematic chair, mainly due to the photographic department's overuse of The Shaky Cam, the new cinematography effect favourite of the biopic action-drama-thriller. And I Like It Very Much.

In fact, my new thing, when filming myself on Snapchat with adorable filters featuring fluffy dog ears or panda bear eyes, will be to the use Shaky Cam, as used on Gosling’s good looks. He could have been dressed as a pirate for all I know, with a patch on his eye and a squawky parrot on his shoulder; I never got a good look at him in the first 10 minutes in his spacial rocket.

The cinematography in this flick is ace, and kicks you right in the prefrontal cortex. It was immediate, visceral, very personal and demands – DEMANDS! - your attention.

You were there on the lunary surface of the moon, sitting on your Hoyts deluxe recliner with a bag of popcorn, getting cranky that your shoes were soiled by white moon dirt and glaring occasionally at the moon martian morons in front of you who was loudly discussing everything they had just seen like they were in a cinema back on earth.

It’s okay folks, I got rid of them by shooting off a couple of powerful rays of moonbeam, which stirred up even more moon dust and aggravated my allergic rhinitis, which was annoying but necessary.

I did appreciate all the cinematic shots of the space rocket’s buttons and levers and magical devices and appliances, but it really wasn’t necessary. No-one in their right mind knows what any of those buttons do. Not even Ryan Gosling. Maybe 3% of the mass audience had a clue. It’s a language that’s almost as hard to fathom as basic English, folks.

While the fake moon landing loonytunes claim Armstrong's setting foot on the lunar surface was fake and set in a movie studio, let's just note that a fake landing would be almost impossible to cover up, given the Soviets were on USA's tale in the Space Race. 

I can in fact confirm, however, that claims Gosling shot the moon scenes in a movie studio are fake. It was actually shot on the moon. Life's confusing.

Final note - agoraphobes, agrophobes and moonaphobes need to beware this movie. It does all the bad things you don’t like. Constantly.

🚀🚀🚀🚀
4.5/5 spacey rockets.

Can Tiger change his stripes?

A few days ago Tiger Woods won a golf game by being the best at whacking hard little white balls into a hole. His first professional win in five years, as I understand it. It was a HUGE DEAL game in the big PGA Tour series, with the winner’s loot coming in at a staggering UDS $1.62 million; which is really just maintenance money on his USD$54 million private jet. 
 

If there was one thing Tiger probably wishes he could do with the enormous mountainous alps of golfing cash he’s earned over the years, it’s deleting his internet history. I don’t know much about The Golfing, but I do recall the sensationalised history of Tiger Woods, and The Internets is only too keen to remind me.

As we can recall from our previous experiences with Tiger, he is a tiger. Arguably the most recognised of the world's large animal species, he has widespread popular appeal. He spends his days stalking his prey and charming the tigresses. It's a jungle out there.

 

It's hard to believe that it's been nearly nine years since the world discovered that the golf world’s golden boy  - the human Tiger - had an off-duty hobby that took up nearly as much time as his golfing commitments. 

That being his wild infidelity scandal involving a gazillion affairs, and the fallout in 2009, when the media drooled as one mistress after another crawled out of seedy Las Vegas and New York City stripclubs to tell their sordid Tiger tale.

 

Back in the day, he really took his most bankable sponsor’s logo to heart – Just Do It.  While the media tore him apart, much of the public merely marveled at Tiger's clearly superior time management juggling so many tigresses.  He really put wedding planners to shame with his organisational skills.

Amid all the scandal and the global media's insatiable appetite for celebrity sleaze, one thing confused the hell out of me. Apparently Tiger first met his wife Elin when she was the on-tour babysitter for Swedish golfer, Jesper Parnevik, and his wife.  At what point would Parnevik's wife have agreed to having a gorgeous, Swedish ex-model come along to look after their children on tour with her husband? 

For the past few years, apart from a few trips in and out of court houses, Tiger has done a great job - or at least his management company have - at staying off the radar to refocus and concentrate on the sport that enabled him to score with so many trashy tigresses young women in the first place. 

While Woods was once widely acknowledged as the best adulterer golfer in the world, he is currently ranked 13^th, up from the 55^th a few years ago, which is roughly the same number of women he had going in 2009 before he was caught with his hand in the skanky jar. 

Which begs the question; should we expect a return of strippers / cocktail waitresses / nightclub door tigresses now Tiger’s clawed his way back out of the jungle?

 

Coles mini shop obsessive-compulsive disorder

A few months ago, Australians were busy shopping for groceries wherever we damn well pleased. It was a great time to be alive. Coles, Woolies, Aldi, the markets, you name it, we were there, purchasing things, for no reason other than we needed things. 

And then the Coles marketing team came and ruined everything that is good about grocery shopping forever.

They stormed into our lives uninvited and, since July, they have been hunting us like prey. They threw out a silky web, made up of gross spider glands and other gross things, and also millions of those Coles Mini Shop Collectibles that have made us lose our collective shits with the excitement of all of it. (Don’t pretend you are collecting them for your kids.)

Me gently cradling my beloved Coles Mini
Shop Collectible Nescafé Gold.

We should have all kept our poker faces and shown only a vague, passing interest in the useless miniatures but, no, we’ve showed our hand and actually LOST. OUR. MINDS. over pointless pieces of plastic handwash. 

Bloody iconic products too, because Coles are not amateurs at this. This is not  their first time at the rodeo. Who turns down a mini Timtams or Weetbix? 

I haven’t read up on the Constitution recently, but it’s presumably in there as an Act of the Australian Parliament – if someone gives you free iconic Aussie shit, you take it, and you collect it, until you have all of it and, ironically, can no longer afford to buy groceries because you went and spent all your money buying minis on eBay. She’ll be right, mate.


Since the promotion came, saw and conquered I have become conditioned, like Pavlov’s dogs, to spend $30 or more in store when I just pop in to pick up some milk. But I think, eventually, I will be okay and come out of this fog. 

I’m popping in this afternoon to get bread, which, because I don’t buy the gluten free type, will come in under $30. I’ve got this.

But you just know there’s more to come. The marketing and advertising teams of the big companies now know how to catch their prey. Which, in my opinion, isn’t an accident.  

As if it couldn’t get anymore dire, the chatter on the street (in Coles aisles – I don’t go to streets anymore, unless there is a Coles), is that they are going to bring out a second range called Coles Normal Size Shop. 

Which is just grocery shopping, Coles. And we won’t play your game. We won’t no matter what (we will).

The Making of Cadbury

Once upon a time, many aero bars ago in like 1801, a man was walking through the forest near his village in rural England when he decided that he didn't like people actually at all really, so he devised a top secret plan to make them all very, very fat. I guess he didn't have access to the internet so had to troll his frenemies in person.

"I could bury some of those people!", he exclaimed to his cat, and thus Couldbury, or Cadbury, was born.

Unfortunately, for this plan to work, he would need access to sugar and a sugary food making machine. "Oh fudge!", he said to his cat. Fortunately, he then remembered he had in fact bought a sugary food making machine in the village trash and treasure last week, so that was a very convenient and somehow not pointless purchase indeed.

He spent weeks but mainly just a few hours reading up about the history of chocolate, modern techniques of whipping up a batch, cultivating, processing, marketing, production, the chemistry of flavours, tempering, dipping, decorating and molding, ganache making and fondue excavating. That last one isn't even a thing, but - guess what - I'm telling the story.

And thus Cadbury was born. And just like all demented fairytales where the storyline is terrifying and the antagonist is fucking crazy, this one was too.

*names, places, truth have been irrevocably altered to ensure a more captivating storyline.