Round 16,032. Priddis needs five votes. How will he go? I just had a look at twitter. Oh God. People are actually watching and tweeting about QandA. WHAT IS IT WITH YOU PEOPLE. THE BROWNLOW IS ON. Back to the vote. Adelaide v West Coast.... No votes to Priddis.
Nat Fyfe has just won the 2015 Brownlow Medal.
He has a broken leg and a walking stick to walk onto stage.
This is him walking onto stage with his walking stick to accept his Brownlow Medal.
Amazing.
He played that final last weekend with a broken leg but as he says to Bruce just now, you walk onto the ground and you're fit enough to play.
And he's a nice guy too. The interview is a bit slow because he is so nice. You can't not like him. He's just told a little story about almost crying when Richo didn't win the Brownlow years ago.
The way he thanks his team mates. "This medal is a friend to all of you." So cool.
Nat Fyfe has Pat Rafter charm and cool. Plays like a beast. Puts it all down to his team mates. What's not to love?
Round 20. I'm getting tired but I type on. Dangerfield gets some votes. Dane Swan onto 17. Mitchell onto 23. West Coast game. Lots of pauses.... No votes to Priddis. Three rounds to go. Priddis can still win it.
Michael Barlow does some joke material.
Here's a screen shot.
Michael Barlow doing jokes at the Brownlow, TV and Footy's Night of Nights.
No idea why but Bruce seems to think it's funny.
R15. Read by Daniel Hannebery. This is the round they rigged it for Fyfe not to be suspended. Players on all tables sucking back the Crownies. Who drinks Crownies anyway? But I would if I was at the Brownlow because THAT'S WHAT YOU DO. Priddis gets 2 votes! Onto 27. Needs to get 5 votes in two rounds.
Jobe Watson reads R18 very deliberately. This round was the round the AFL world (most of them) showed their support for Adam Goodes. The people who were still booing are racists. Votes. None for Fyfe because his leg had fallen off by this round. Hannebery gets 3 and moves to 22! Priddis onto 23! They need to keep going.
R19 read by Brownlow 2015 winner (according to the poor web admin person who accidentally hit publish), Sam Mitchell. I lost my money on Pendles winning this rounds and rounds ago. Paddy Dangerfield looking comfortable sitting with his ex team mates. Priddis gets 3 votes! 25 to Fyfe's 31.
R15. McLaughin' still going like the clappers. Any faster and he'll explode.
Fyfe 10 ahead of Blue Lagoon man and Sam Mitchell. I think Fyfe has won it. The others need to get three votes every round from now on. Impossible.
Now a Matt Priddis montage and an ad break.
R16. I think it's Sam Mitchell talking. He's good at reading. Goldstein on 13. Who put money on him today? Smart people. Waiting for McLaughin pausing at the right bits. Mitchell and Priddis no votes.
Hold on.
Hasn't Fyfe already won it?
I'm bad at maths.
Tayla Harris, another gun footballer, presents mark of the year to Nic Nat.
Here's Tayla.
R17. Crowd quiet. Bored. Fyfe is so far ahead. Priddis gets to 21. Fyfe on 31. Six rounds to go. I'm confused. Press publish, Glenn.
Matt Priddis and his partner watch proceedings from the Perth studio.
R14. Read by Luke Hodge. He punches the cameraman in the face. Matt Priddis doing well but not quite as well as Fyfe. But Fyfe's leg falls off in a couple of rounds. I have a good feeling about Priddis.
And then Graham Teasdale wins the community award!
Nice threads.
R15. Fyfe well ahead.
Patrick Keane has tweeted that they accidentally published that Sam Mitchell page. They had prepared six of them for the six favourites.
R10. I've missed a couple of rounds. I'm back on now. Fyfe on 20. Hannebery on 16. Cloke got votes. Yes, Travis Cloke got a best on ground. He has it in him. Oh well. Juddy out of the running because he did his knee this round. Bye Juddy, you annoying vote magnet.
Montage about Nat Fyfe. I get it. He's like a perfect person. Gorgeous blonde locks. Ball magnet. Plays with a broken leg.
The Sam Mitchell leak has made tonight interestinger. He dropped from 11 to 1 down to 3 to 1 in five minutes. Let's watch.
R11. Priddis on 19. Goldstein another supposed favourite only on something like five votes.
R12. Read by Marc Murphy. Straight reading. He would do Pinter well. McLaughin' not slowing down his reading. The girls should sit up straight with those plunging necklines. If you know one, SMS her. You'll be doing her a favour. Sam Mitchell nowhere near the lead. I have a feeling it's just a mistaken publish of one of several pages like that set up by a dumb web developer.
Sam Mitchell Brownlow 2015 Medalist (image altered)
You can buy a signed jumper by 2015 Brownlow Medalist Sam Mitchell here on the AFL online shit merchandise store.
Another round down and Fyfe gets more votes and we flick over to an ad about some doco channel 7 have made about footballers. It's all a bit drab and serious. It promises 'unprecedented access' with players talking to each other on the field and going surfing and shit. I prefer my footballers to be a mystery. I don't want to hear them speak.
I've gone back to that Sam Mitchell page. It's been taken offline. You'll hear about this quite a bit in the next day or two.
R4. Read by Pendles. Silky delivery. Weaving through the pack of shit words he's been given to read like slow motion. It's gorgeous to listen to. Votes? I've never heard of Alipate Carlile? Sure he's a thing? Priddis has four votes. Lin Jong got a couple. About eight players equal on six votes. Fyfe isn't leading.
There's a kid interviewing people on the red carpet. He's quite good. They should get him to read the votes.
OH GOD. I JUST GOT A LOOK AT TRENT COTCHIN'S HAIR. IT'S FRESHLY CUT YET STILL GLORIOUS.
I won't post a picture. Just close your eyes and think of something wonderful.
R5. Read by Dyson Heppell. Sounds like he's reading a form guide to his bored mum. Pendles gets some votes. I have money on him. Money I will lose. Hannebery got votes. Sam Mitchell got some votes. Ex Carlton players are getting votes all over the place. Fyfe leading with Hannebery on nine.
R6. Read by Joel Selwood. He keeps ducking off mic. Unprofessional. Fyfe onto 11. It's a bit annoying when favourites get votes. It's all so fast. It's like a dream. Everyone is in a hurry. Montage time.
One Brownlow tradition is my wife, Lucy complaining all night about TV and Sport's Night of Nights. Usually it's "I can't believe they televise this". I like that one but already in a group text she's nailed the Red Carpet with...
"I'm disgusted by it. This shit shouldn't happen in Turnbull's Australia."
Perfect.
And now it's...
"I'm going to do the dishes and clean the bathroom. I can't stand this anymore."
Lucy. It's only been 10 minutes.
R2. Didn't pick up which player is narrating. He sounds like he's pretty new to that whole 'reading' thing. Votes. Dangerfield gets one vote and moves to three. Fyfe gets his first three votes. Goldstein gets one.
R3. Rad by Fyfe. So much pizzaz in his reading. He is actually jiggling his hips to bring home the dud jokes provided to him. Who writes this shit? "I don't care, I'm a showman," says Fyfe. Pendles moves to three. Judd gets one vote. Definitely will win this Brownlow.
It's not. It will be exactly the same as it always is. A man reading votes, montages and blokes getting pissed on Crownies. It starts with James Blunt, rhymes with bunt, singing one of his shit songs.
Gillon McLaughin' calls quorum and away we go.
Fantastic footage of a body builder armor guard guy delivering the votes. He looks like Fabio.
VOTES AT LAST.
R1. Read by Matt Priddis. He's okay at reading. His hair looks like Fabio tonight. Does he wash it much? Bryce Gibbs getting the first vote for the night. He leads for 0.15 of a second. McLaughin' is fast. I hope he slows down.
You know what he sounds like? The LMCT 717171717117 guy in car dealer radio ads.
No votes for the favourites. And then a montage dedicated to Todd Goldstein. In the misheard lyric of some Black Eyed Peas song, tonight's gonna be a long night.
Apparently the hottest accessory for tonight's ladies is a baby bump.
No shit.
A grown up person said that on air.
The big phrase tonight is 'fashion forward' or as people in fashion call it, FF. I have no idea what it means. Well, it could mean wearing lots of black make up, hot pants under a see through skirt, having a dress made of all the shapes Pythagoras hadn't thought of, or in the blokes' case, a black suit and tie.
Here's Jack Reiwoldt doing his best impersonation of a full forward fashion forward.
There's been too many ads already. I know. This is the time you pay the most for ads because everyone is watching but some red carpet footage would be useful right now.
Quick observations. Jared and Clem McVeigh look stunning. Sorry, I meant hungry. James Bartel is wearing blue. Boo. Nadia Bartel is very perjures. Pendles and Alex Davis are didn't look like they enjoyed their inane interview. The McLachlan brothers are annoying. Oh God. One of them is reading the votes tonight.
Last year I was asked to write something for a glossy magazine. I don't write for glossy magazines anymore. This is probably why.
The brief was to write about music and unloved food. Sure, that's an odd brief. I was quite rusty at writing longer stuff and sometimes what I wrote doesn't make sense.
The nice editor didn't like it because it lacked 'literary structure'.
It didn't get published. That's why I'm publishing it here.
An Unloved Piece About Unloved Food And Music
Let's sing a song about the back of our pantries. Let's sing about those crazy little jars of whathaveyou that just stay and stay. I might need that! When did we buy it? Has it got a date on it? We bought it when we moved in. Kurt Cobain was still alive when we moved in. So is this. Open. Sniff. Okay. That died when the music died. Burn it. Get it miles away from this kitchen.
Most songs you love about food are about nice things like peaches, strawberries and ice cream. Have you seen how many songs there are about ice cream? Enough for months of ice cream headaches.
But there are a few good ones.
There's the intro to Tom Waits' Nighthawks at the Diner when he tells us about after three months on the road to "come back and everything in the refrigerator turns into a science project."
Then there's the depression era classic, "Yes! We have no bananas?", written as a desperate sales pitch by a hapless market guy who ran out of bananas, stuck trying to sell string beans, cabbages, scallions and potatoes instead. He wouldn't have much trouble selling any of these now because they're hip and fashionable. Market guys have had it easy lately. They can even sell brussels sprouts and.... I'm not here to talk about kale.
My anthem of the pantry's unloved is Harry Nilsson's Coconut song. You know the one. That wacky early 70s ditty. You heard it in The Ice Storm and Reservoir Dogs. If you need a refresher, look for it on youtube. Ridiculous video. His band are dressed in ape costumes.
I'll tell you why this is the anthem of the pantry's unloved in a minute or two.
First let's look deeper into the deranged recipe of stupidity and half baked story this song celebrates.
We start with a brother who goes to the local market to buy a coconut. It's a bargain at a dime. His sister, and good on her for this, buys her own coconut and a lime.
Limes were cheap so good on her, you can't buy too many limes. They pop up in all sorts of recipes, especially when you're not expecting them to.
What she did next starts a precarious chain of events.
She puts the lime in the coconut and she drank them both up.
That's right, she put the lime in the coconut and drank them both up.
She does this again and again.
Here's the problem. She gets greedy. She drinks too much lime in the coconut and gets crook in the guts.
So she calls her doctor. It's late. She wakes him up. This is an expensive night call. Nurses on Call hadn't been invented yet.
She says, "Doctor, ain't there nothin I can take to relieve this belly ache?" The poor doctor asks her to repeat herself. She does. Several times.
"Now let me get this straight," he enquires. "You put all that lime in the coconut and you drank them both up." He says this several times because this is a song.
People repeat themselves a lot in songs.
"Yes. Yes I did. And now I have a belly ache. What on earth do I do, Doc? Ain't there nothing I can take to relieve this belly ache?"
She asks this again to make sure he's listening, and because this is a song.
So far, everything makes sense - a fairly normal health query of which most of us are in and out before we can find our Medicare cards.
But here's where the song takes a strange turn.
The doctor's prescription? Drink even more lime in coconut.
Much against current medical opinion, he tells her to, "put the lime in the coconut and you'll feel better," and if pain persists, "call me in the morning." Ridiculous.
What happens next? Of course the brother and the sister drink lime in the coconut deep into the night.
It's a lime in the coconutbender of superb proportions. It gets ugly. The brother gets sick. He calls the doctor. Doctor says sink more lime and coconutand well, you know the rest. Everyone gets very very sick.
In the morning they call their doctor. Unbelievably, he prescribes more lime in the coconut.
I suspect this doctor has since been deregistered.
So here's why I think of this song when I think of all those forgotten things way back in the pantry.
Thai cooking.
I always hum this when I'm cooking Thai and there's never a can of coconut cream in the back of the pantry when you you need it. But you can always rely on the ghosts of past Thai disasters to occupy the back half of at least three of your innermost pantry shelves.
Palm sugar: Everyone's got a big block of this somewhere hanging around their pantry. Recipes ask a lot from us when they ask us to shave two tablespoons of the stuff. And ask yourself. When did you buy that block you got? Yes, Kurt was still alive back then.
Dried red shrimp: Actually essential if you want to nail a great thai curry but open that stinky jar at your own peril.
Belacan powder: A dried and roasted red shrimp powder I've had in my pantry for an embarrassingly long time. Worse stink than dried red shrimp. I've used my belacan powder twice. Most times when you open the jar, it's like that end scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark when they open the Ark. Facemeltingly stinky.
A shrivelled up piece of galanga: Nothing terribly wrong about this other than it just looks disturbing.
Tumeric powder: I know it's useful, but is there a reason why there's four different jars of the stuff in your pantry? If you don't believe me, go now and count them. You will be surprised.
I really need to clean my kitchen. Maybe you do too.
Make sure you throw out that shrimp paste lurking in the side door of the fridge. It turned years ago. One teaspoon of the stuff in your red next duck curry and you might need to call a doctor. But not the doctor from that song.
