Aussie Aussie Aussie!

Aussie Aussie Aussie! Oi oi oi!
Aussie Aussie Aussie! Oi oi oi!
Aussie! Oi! Aussie! Oi!
Aussie Aussie Aussie! Oi oi oi!

Not much better than the OLE OLE thing. Just as annoying. Here's the history.

OLE! OLE OLE OLE!

OLE! OLE OLE OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE OLE OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE OLE OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE OLE OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE OLE OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE OLE OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE OLE OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE OLE OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE OLE OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE OLE OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE OLE OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE OLE OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE OLE OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE OLE OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE OLE OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE OLE OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE OLE OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE OLE OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE OLE OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE OLE OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE OLE OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE OLE OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE OLE OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE OLE OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE OLE OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE OLE OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE OLE OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE OLE OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE OLE OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE OLE OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE! OLE OLE OLE! OLE! OLE!

Someone really needs to write some new words to that song. Today (tonight) Australia lost to Italy in a World Cup match. Serious underdogs who surprised everyone by even making it... losing to the champions of the past three years... in the final minute thanks to a weak penalty kick. Pretty sad game, especially for the Italians.

And once the drummer outside stops drumming we can go to sleep.

Aerial Ping Pong

Tonight we went to our first Aussie Rules games. I'm talking footy here. My friend Ian had two extra tickets, so Dana and I got to come along to the Olympic Stadium to watch the game. Australian National Football (as it's properly called) is a very exciting game. People taking the piss call it aerial ping pong and it's most often called simply Aussie Rules. It's very popular in Melbourne and it used to be called Victorian Rules. Well, no matter how many names it has, it's a good game. It's a lot like Gaelic Football but it's full contact... and it brings in a good crowd! There were over 60,000 people barracking* for the Swans or the Magpies. The Magpies proved to be the superior bird and football club tonight, beating Sydney 95-82. And the Olympic Stadium is a pretty cool building.


*You barrack for a team in Australia. You never root in public.

Kangaroo Stoo

Woops. The recipe said it would serve four so I doubled it. Dana and I have a lot of plans this week, so I figured it would make a good lunch. Looks like we'll be lunching on this for a couple of weeks! 12 red potatoes, 4 large carrots, 4 celery stalks, a quarter of a pumpkin, a big bag of mushrooms, a big bag of green beans, a big can of red kidney beans, four onions, a head of garlic, a big can of crushed tomatoes, a regular size can of diced tomatoes, a litre of tomato juice, a bunch of beef stock and 2 kilos kangaroo meat = enough to feed a homeless shelter.


And yes, I eat kangaroo all the time. In fact, there's some leftover kangaroo bolognese as well as kangaroo meatballs in my freezer right now. My favourite meal at the moment is a roo-ball hero. Many white Australians refuse to eat kangaroos because they're cute and on the coat of arms, but Australians have been eating roos for thousands of years... that, and the fact that it's tasty, make it a staple of my diet. I know there is a tremendous difference between my buying roo meat at Coles to make a stew and the traditional method of cooking an entire roo by burying it on hot coals. Still, there are many reasons to eat kangaroo:

• Healthy: very low in fat, very high in iron
  
• Economical: less than half the price of beef
  
• Availability: kangaroos are culled because of their high population
  
• Environmentally Friendly: cattle and other hooved animals (not native to the continent) destroy native vegetation in Australia
  

I eat kangaroo stew, so should you too?

Riveting!

This past Sunday we did the great Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb. If you're not in the know, it's a climb during which you ascend the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The parental units gave us two passes for my birthday last year, and the experience was great. First they led us through a human assembly line. Seriously, I think I know what's like to be a Ford Model T. As we walked through the building, staff members gave us jumpsuits, took our street clothes, gave us harnesses, clipped radios to our backs, clipped about 7 other items to us, including gloves, a hat, a fleece, a raincoat and even a handkerchief. Since we'd be walking high above traffic, they can't risk someone dropping a handkerchief onto the face of an unexpecting convertible-drive. At least not while the Farrelly Brothers aren't there to film it.


The climb itself took about 2 hours, and the views were incredible throughout. I couldn't bring my camera, but the images are right up here . There were also many interesting stories and facts about the bridge:

• The bridge was completed during the Depression.
  
• Only 16 people died while making the bridge. Of that, only 4 died on the bridge itself... the others died in the shops making the parts.
  
• The pylons (big stone things on the ends) provide no structural support.
  
• The bridge is actually supported by four massive hinges in the ground on either side of the harbour - and you can feel it moving!
  
• Only one person has ever fallen/jumped off the bridge and lived. Vincent Kelly was an Irishman working on the bridge when he landed in the water one day. He was pulled out unconscious, the soles of his boots had to be surgically removed from his feet and the uppers of his boots had to be surgically removed from... ahem. Many people think he jumped just to see if he could make it alive. He was a member of a diving club and asked many people around whether or not they thought he would make it. He did!
  
• There are more than 6 million rivets holding the bridge together.
  

So there you have it. If you get to Sydney, I highly recommend the climb. Oh, and from the top, it's 5.1 seconds away from the water.

Happy Birthday, Queenie!

Monday, 12 June is a public holiday here in Australia. It's not actually the birthday of the current queen... she turned 80 months ago, as evidenced by the pictures in the papers of her riding bareback on a horse and wearing big, silver "80" sunglasses. But I guess this day is a day to honour all queens, much like how they lumped Lincoln's birthday and Washington's birthday into "President's Day" and made it a public holiday in the US. "President's Day" sounds so much like "Secretary's Day"... so who takes the President out to lunch on President's Day? And does he get flowers when he gets to the Oval Office? Come to think of it, does he take all his secretaries in the Cabinet to lunch on Secretary's Day? If so, how do they decide who gets to pick the restaurant?
Bush: "Let's do Mexican!"
Rumsfeld: "Uh, not a good time, Mr. President... plus we did Mexican last year."
Condoleeza: "I just want a panini."

However they decide, I'm sure Tony Blair and Queen Elizabeth had a pleasant lunch today. Probably fish and chips or a curry, I'd imagine.

Response Honk

Here in Sydney I live on a major road in the CBD (Central Business District) and for years I lived on a very busy road in Brooklyn: Flatbush Avenue. I've decided that the 2nd human habit I loathe most in the world* is the response honk. If you've been in a car in a city, you know what it is. One person hits the horn for whatever reason - warning, surprise, anger - and the driver at whom the honk was directed responds with another honk! This second honk clearly serves no purpose, it's just like a little shout back at the first car. Then, sometimes, you get a response to the response honk... and another response... and soon it's as if the two cars are bickering. It makes me think of an old Disney cartoon I used to watch on channel 31 of Cablevision. The cartoon was narrated in a typical 50s style, explaining how when Goofy got behind the wheel of a car he turned into an animal. This struck me at a young age: seeing Goofy, clearly not an animal, become one once operating an automobile. This could be part of the reason why I hate cars and driving. Anyway, there are lots of Goofies around with their response honks. I wish these people could understand how their honk is portrayed. I would like to see response-honkers response-honking in everyday life. A response-honker is in line at the store and someone bumps into him/her, so s/he shouts "AGH!" at the other person. The other person, if also a response-honker, shouts back "AGH!" And so it continues for a bit until a clerk asks if anyone is making a cash purchase (or, in the holiday season, an exchange).
*The human habit I loathe foremost is when people laugh for a reason other than joy, amusement, happiness or even surprise. As in a malicious or sarcastic laugh.

Rainbow Roll

Tonight I found myself drinking green tea and watching sumo wrestling while I waited for my sushi takeaway. There had been some confusion when I ordered the rainbow roll over the phone. This place has quite good sushi, but the selection was limited until they recently started offering special rolls. After placing my order with three different people as the phone was passed from one confused waitress to the next, I started to think that maybe these rolls aren't available on Tuesdays. But the last person I spoke with assured me that they could make it. Fifteen minutes later I found myself with my tea and sumo, watching the sushi chef looking up how to make a rainbow roll on the Internet. I think this kind of triggered a moment. All of a sudden I became fully aware of my surroundings:

• This Japanese restaurant used to be a Spanish tapas restaurant, as is clear by the decor.
  
• One of the sumo wrestlers on the TV is Caucasian.
  
• The song playing is Hotel California by the Gypsy Kings.
  

So a Spanish-speaking band is singing an American song while a white guy is sumo wrestling on a TV in a Japanese restaurant that used to be Spanish. And the sushi chef is looking up my rainbow roll on the Internet.

Home in July. Christmas in July. Hanukkah in July

In a little over a month I'll be tipping my hat to the Statue of Liberty as my ship sails into harbour on Manhattan Island. Well, not quite... we land in Newark. But I'm still looking forward to it. This will be my first time in New York in a year and half. I'm quite curious to see how I take it after living in Sydney for so long. Considering I still punch cabs here in Australia it probably won't be too much of a shock to me.

Before leaving we'll be throwing a Christmas and Hanukkah in July party. Complete with egg nog and latkes! I finished the invite tonight. Check it out.

So I got on the blog bandwagon primarily because Dana's been researching it for work, but I've been slack about my Web site. My parental units were visiting for a month and I never sent an impersonal mass email to the friends and family I have not called in over a year directing them to photos of their trip! I'll have to get on that after I finish this. The photos from South Australia lack descriptions, which I usually love to attend to, but, as mentioned, I've been slack.

I do have to mention that this is an echidna

Americans & Big Balls

Tonight Dana and I met with a fellow Yank from Melbourne and his dad. We played pool at James Squire Ale House on King Street Wharf. My Aussie mate Glenn came as well and he got a kick out of our reaction to the size of the billiard balls: they're small. They're not snooker-small, but they're certainly smaller. The pockets are smaller too, so the game is no easier. Maybe it just goes along with the saying that Americans have to make everything bigger: cars, houses, and even balls.

Five Picks from Video Sleazy

Our local video store - 15 walk to the other side of CBD - offers a deal of 5 non new release movies for 7 days for 10 bucks. Since Netflix doesn't exist in Oz, this ain't bad. And they have a pretty good selection of DVDs, even if a Hal Hartley film will be in Arthouse/Cult one week, foreign the next, and comedy the next. We usually get a broad range of films to watch and this past week was typical: The Matrix, Barry Lyndon, Dead Man, The Good Thief and I Heart Huckabees.

My attitude towards any film is firmly based in expectation. I enjoy most movies I watch because I usually know what I'm getting into. I understand that this often makes me more forgiving of certain films and critical of others. But have not found this to lend any preference to big-budget Hollywood films over some poor Polish guy making a film about living in Siberia. Anyway, this week's films were solid across the board. Keeping in mind that I think each of these are worth watching, here's my summary in order of "you should see" onwards:

Dead Man
Jim Jarmusch - 1995
This is definitely in my top ten, so it's an easy favourite. Jarmusch's take on the western genre is as exhilirating as an open wound on the shin held against a sea breeze. The dialgue is pure poetry, like Johnny Depp's William Blake would write.

Barry Lyndon
Stanley Kubrick - 1975
Kubrick takes on the costume drama. I was exhausted when I watched this three hour epic but I never felt close to sleep. Every establishing shot calls to mind a panoramic painting. You find yourself curious about the outcome of the semi-interesting main character, and you feel as though you have lived an entire life by end.

I Heart Huckabees
David O. Russell - 2004
I didn't expect much from this film but I was pleasantly surprised. A Charlie Kaufman without Charlie Kaufman (or Spike Jonze) - but it kind of works. You can believe the cast most of the time, though sometimes you feel like they are in on the joke. It's a pretty successful mind-throttler.

The Matrix
The Wachowski Bros - 1999
The once revolutionary action film is now a classic worth enjoying for the great fight scenes and laughable dialogue.

The Good Thief
Neil Jordan - 2002
This is a remake of a French film that was released in 1979. Perhaps this is a victim of my "expectation" application of film enjoyment. It's very well-written, very well-directed, very well-acted and the soundtrack by Leonard Cohen is haunting... I think the music is what does the film in, though. Leonard Cohen singing to a non-tragedy? Misleading.