Saturday, September 24, 2005

Super Saturday

Today we began our short road trip by heading down to Pretty Beach, about four hours South of Sydney. Today is also the Grand Final of the Australian Football League, with the Sydney Swans taking on the West Coast Eagles. Not sure if it is West Coast of Australia or just the Western Victoria coast, but it is a huge event. 90 thousand in attendance at the Melbourne Cricket Ground for the match.

We've been joking with the locals, whenever they mention any sports team, regardless of league or standing, 'Yeah, I think they're going all the way this year' just to patronize the conversation a bit. The Swans actually have gone all the way, surprisingly.

As we're out of city limits at the moment, radio coverage is our conduit to the magic that Aussie Rules football offers. We found a broadcast that was being done by two drunk blokes. I kid you not, they had crowd noise on loop and were watching the match on TV or something. They couldn't have been more unprofessional, making fun of players ethnicities and carrying on like two teenagers. They'd pretend to ask the crowd what they thought of their broadcast partner, then press the 'crowd boo-ing' button. It was amusing but got a bit annoying fairly quickly.

FYI - the legitimate radio coverage just stated, 'Oh yes, the ball is covered in blood'. Great sport.

posted by ncawthon at 3:10 PM

Friday, September 23, 2005

Kids, They Wear the Darndest Things

The role of costume in this society is an elevated one. Young children come to the beach in full dress-up of a cartoon or comic book character. Picture a blazingly hot afternoon on the sand when a kid comes walking by in a Batman outfit. Then a girl dressed up as Spiderman. Followed by a 5-year old version of The Hulk, wearing a padded muscle suit.

I don't know how they can stand such heat, let alone walk around in a masked disguise. If the quality of children's novelty wear is anything like the imported numbers back home, there must be a number of youngsters that spontaneously combust each year. Warning: keep offspring away from open flame!

I am not sure what the allure is for the kids to dress up AND go to the beach. It seems as if one would be a sufficient activity by itself. Although the child's imagination is quite vast, I've never read a comic book where Superman shows up at the beach to protect the world from the deadly UltraViolet Man.

The trend continues in adolesence. School outfits are modified from the traditional formal, English institutional dress, with gaudy blazers (with emphasized external stitching), bad ties and hiked-up shorts. The fashion implications that must manifest later in life by wearing these get-ups has to be disasterous. The Aussie flavor is to add massive floppy hats to the ensemble, as to protect the pasty 'sons and daughters of Anglo' (present company not excluded) from a decidedly un-Britian like intensity of the sun. The combination makes it appear as if a Benedictine Nun decided to take a vacation. The sweater vests, however, are a classy touch. It gives an 'Angus Young' effect to every child, destined to a life of non-stop rocking.

Forwarding on to adulthood, where the court's magistrates don thy queen's royal funny robe and curly wig. Peggy and I were strolling down Macquarie street when we saw a judge in full garb battling the wind. His hairpiece got a bit of lift off his head, creating a pretty comical effect of surprise . Do judges who normally wear toupeés just swap out their natural colored rug for the court-appointed version, or do they go just two ply? I must know these things. Also, I am guessing that the more senior in rank you advance in the courts, the longer your locks get to be. The Aussie equivilant of the Supreme Court Chief Justice has waist-length dreadlocks.

We've got some friends that are having a Halloween party, so we'll be able to investigate the 'fancy dress' options to the fullest. I'm going as UltraViolet Man, Peggy as an Echidna.

I also realize that this post could be deemed somewhat incomplete without proper photographic examples illustrating various funny get-ups at all phases of Australian life. Yet, 'Excuse me, ma'am, may I shoot your children?' is not as effective of a line as one would think.

posted by ncawthon at 11:53 AM

Monday, September 19, 2005

A Whole New You

The Waverly Waves kicked off their 107th season on Sunday, playing the dreaded Cronulla Sharks down in the Southern Districts. Cronulla was a well-stacked team, having several divisons present to draw players from. They even had full-on coaches and signals, whereas we pretty were hodge-podge in both our appearance and approach, having none of the above luxuries. To my surprise, we did manage to field exactly nine players. It was a hard fought game, but the Waves rolled their way to a draw of 7-7. Being down six runs at one point, we rallied back to score the equalizer at the end. I managed to play a decent game at first base, going 1-3 with an RBI and stolen base. Hit the ball solidly every time and made no errors in the field.

The field itself was at Sylvania Waters, literally a swamp sitting below sea level, but an overall improvement compared to our home grounds. There were a set of power lines running across center field, with the tower marking as the foul pole in left. If one wanted to do a Robert Redford-esque 'Natural' moment and cause sparks to come erupting off a deep home run ball, it was certainly possible. Striking the right bolt might cause a line to drop and kill half the infield, including anyone that might be standing next to the metal fences surrounding the field. There's a good line in The Castle about the father of the family always doing his best thinking while looking up at those poles, marvelling at all mankind has accomplished.




















The photos above are from a road trip to the Northern beaches and national park we took a few weeks ago. We went up to Kur-in-gah (actually spelled like that, not just hyphenated for pronunciation) which lies an hour North of the city. The park itself is a network of hikes and trails, sitting at the mouth of the Pittswater, a popular boating and fishing spot. There's an interesting bulb-like peninusula called 'the Barrenjoey' that jets out between the river and the sea, full of luxury homes and surfing beaches. After poking around the park, as well as seeing a cool little boat locker which forklifted boats away for safe keeping, we headed out to the end of this strip for a look around and scavenging, since it happened to be large-waste recycle day. The Northern beaches feel much less populated, more like country living than the same distance to the south. It's a good place to come spend a day, going from surf break to surf break and maybe having a picnic on the way.

All is quiet on the cockroach front, Peggy has fortified our apartment and it is easily the most hygenically-secure in Sydney. On the rarest of occasion that a cokkah does poke its' attenae out at us, I greet it with a bum-pa-dumming of either ‘Stars and Stripes Forever’ or ‘Rise of the Valkries’, depending on if it is an American or German variety. That’s the last thing the cokkah usually hears before being flushed.

Peggy has posted some pictures from a kite festival last weekend at Bondi, the nearest beach to our own Bronte. There were aliens and fabric fish-a-flyin’ with horse rides for the kids. We had some friends from school over that day for some Cricket practice and electric BBQ. We’re looking forward to havings y'alls down fer sum good country cookin'.

For the record, I've never 'Loved Raymond'.

posted by ncawthon at 7:03 PM