Mad Skillz World Cup 2007

Our representative from the USA, Dan Dzoan with his world record, 17.9 second, one-handed Rubik's Cube solve. Later in the day Dan missed out on breaking the Razzle Dazzle endorsed, one-handed newspaper scrunching world record by less than a second.


From Japan, Bob McKenzie and Harry Fitzpatrick and their unforgettable rally in the 1993 Fukuoka Regionals semi final. I was there and boy, it was a terrific game.


Sweden's Niclas Ceder banging home an almost perfect 99.75 per cent on the stupidly hard Uber Rave DDR machine. Niclas lists the Nicholas Brothers, Glynn Nicholas and Saint Nicholas as the four blokes he'd love to invite to his bungalow for a dinner party.


"Ordemmysanchuabake! Ordemmysanchuabake! Ordemmysanchuabake!" were the cries from the commentator when Japan's Terrance McPhee succeeded in his world record trampoline basketball dunk.


South Korea's Aichi Jones spins around 89280 degrees on his head. Jones advises that to keep from getting dizzy it's best to close your eyes and think intently of puppy dogs wearing silly hats.


And the winner is....

Australia and Macedonia's Peter Daicos!

Daics can do all the crazy stuff the other competitors from Japan, USA, Sweden and South Korea do, but every time he goes to upload his trick videos to YouTube, he finds his kids have yet again exceeded the family's monthly internet bandwidth limit.

Plonker!

Ooh, I can't wait to get home and read my new Jim Thompson novel.

Ah, I hope it is as good a read as the one I have at home.

Oh, it is the one I have at home but with a different cover.

Um, I think I'm losing my mind.

Love Is The Rose And I Only Picked Seven

Writing his Real Footy series on how we watch footy in 2007, one of my fave writer blokes, John Harms, went to The Rose in Fitzroy to watch the freak locals watching the Collingwood v Brisbane game last Saturday night.

I was there too and we had a chat.

While I was at the bar, a local sidled up to me, to set me straight: "It's a f---en Richmond pub, mate. The publican brings out a big cup when Richmond wins. It gets passed around. You have to have a drink. He won't let you go home. It's the only time he brings it out." Then he corrected himself. "Oh yeah, and for buck's parties."

Yep, that was me.

Here's the link to the whole article. Read it and you'd swear you were there too.

Take Good Care Of The Poor Boys!

I've Got Me Sloan Ticket!

I'll be front, left, that bloke over there, rocking his head right orff!

Little known fact the song referenced in the headline of this post was written about another great Canadian and good mate of the band, Rufus Wainwright.

Corner Hotel, June 10.

Don't dare miss it.

Raimond, My Grand Father Struggles With Microphone Feedback

Romulus, My Father is a beautiful film.

Saw it at a special Readings preview at the Kino last night.

Afterwards Helen Garner interviewed Raimond Gaita, the author of the sad memoir the film is based on.

Their chat was like the film's imaginary ninth sequel where the little boy grows up to be a famous old philosopher/writer/ponderer who struggles with microphone feedback while speaking at literary functions.

Helen Garner however, had no problems with feedback.

She's a pro.

And I want to be her when I grow up.

Got home to see Margaret give it 4 stars and David, a begrudging 3.

By the way, Eric Bana was brilliant as Romulus and Kodi Smit-McPhee was extraordinary as the young Raimond Gaita.

Which leads to my favorite bit of Garner and Gaita's post movie discussion.

Garner: "Kodi Smit-McPhee was incredible in the role. Where on earth did they find him?"

Gaita: "Craigieburn."

Go see it.

Opens May 31st.

Dirty Bogues Gave Me This Headache

Fricken tradies.

Dirty dirty bogues the lot of ‘em. Especially the farkwits who woke me at 7am this morning to knock down the house two doors down from mine.

Mr Nightwatchman! Surely not all our fine citizens in the trades are….ahem… how you so finely put it, “dirty bogues”.

They are mate. And I’ll tell you why. One of the great measures of how bogue you are is how much you talk about how early you get up in the mornings.

“I get up at five so I can leave early and beat the traffic in the mornings!”

“No, I didn’t watch Foreign Corespondent last night. I’m usually out like a light by nine!”

What a load of shit.

Stop waking me up in the morning with your MIX 101 and heavy machinery and I will start to accept youse as the family loving, long time listener, first time callers you really are.

And now I look out my window to see a bunch of them standing around, smoking dirty Horizons and talking about their wives’ skin conditions and how pissed off that their kids' Auskick starting at 9.30am really stuffs around with their Saturdays.

Surely that could have been done at seven?

The NW's Lost Idol Audition Tape

The corpse paint worked a treat!

Austrian Idol. Thanks for asking.

I Poodle Spell On You

Found this little bit o' magic while looking for a photo of Witchy Poo.

Shazaam!

NW's Footy Comeback Dream Shattered

Another torn Anterior Cruciate Ligament has ripped apart my dream to return to amateur football this year (and maybe again).

I was due to return to my beloved Bloods reserve grade team this Saturday but no, instead I will be going on a big bike ride to get ready for yet another fricken knee reconstruction.

I ran and rode so many kilometers, did hundreds of sit-ups and even mucked about with weights in the preseason only to get my ACL ripped while paying for a ticket on a tram.

Gutted.

My notoriously bad luck is starting to get dangerous. Stay the hell away from me if you're scared of black cats, ladders and unlucky underpants.

Pussy Cat Pussy Cat Where Have You Been?

Big adventures in the past week have kept me away from The Nightwatchman.

Hell started Tuesday.

After a particularly tough day of dealing with a difficult laptop computer, even more difficult friends and writing about sustainability (who isn't writing about sustainability these days?), I was super duper excited to get a table with a less difficult mate at my fave-ever counter meal establishment, The Robert Burns.

The Robert Burns seafood paella is the best in Melbourne but not Tuesday's.

Nope, on Tuesday I copped a bad arse hit of food poisoning, losing 3 kilograms in 24 hours.

Which brings me to the ANZAC spirit. When walking the Kokoda our diggers often suffered from bad cases of the trots like mine. With hand under their trousers, they would march through the mud and up the hill.

Uppiddy up up and downiddy down down.

It was this kind o' spirit that got me through the ANZAC game. In the pub before the game I was a wreck. No beers and I could barely concentrate on me footy mates' conversation. Whether Chris Egan was to play or not, I didn't care.

More compelling- what if I have to rush to the Gary Glitter during the game? Not even the hardiest of soldiers would dare use a MCG cubicle. Visiting the London Tavern's was scary enough but the MCG my frickin' sheesh.

After advice from mates to get in the car and get the hell away to a bogue house with a TV in the toilet I decided to drag my leakin' behind to the game.

Only had to visit the MCG khazis twice.

First visit and I queued behind a 19 year-old bloke who urinated into the toilet WITH THE SEAT DOWN.

As my fave Catherine Tate Show character, Nan Taylor would say, THE FUCKING LIBERTY!!

And what a surprise, the kid was no Elvis Costello, his aim being nowhere close to being true. If I wasn't so rushed to wipe the seat and get down to business I would have beat up the little freak.

For all of us.

Second visit no problem. Didn't miss anything. Only a few ball ups apparently.

Top game too.

Tears came to my eyes when Heath Shaw won the ANZAC Medal.

It wasn't the first time for tears that day and neither was it the last.

My arse was on fire.

The Greatest Ever Footy Parking Spot

Directly outside front door of the London Tavern one hour before the Collingwood and Port Adelaide game last Saturday.

2P, 9-12.30pm, Saturdays.

Doesn't really matter it rained all day and we lost the game.

Look at that spot for frigsakes!

Fighting Dire With Fire

On Friday the 13th my lovely big ibook went blank. Rang all Melbourne's official and authorised Apple fixeruppers and they agreed on the one thing.

The logic board was stuffed and the fix will cost about the same as buying a new computer. Oh, we have a few second hand ibooks in stock for about $700 if you're interested.

Dire.

Checked the internets and it turns out the fixeruppers weren't bullshitting. This happens regularly to G3 ibooks and because a new logic board costs upwards of seven million dollars, disgruntled ibook owners happily start again and buy a new one.

However, there are a few dissenters.

Some geeks found a fix to the faulty logic board.

It involved fire.

Apparently the fault is that the solder used to stick the logic board (which does all the graphics) to the main board comes unstuck a little after a couple of years.

Their solution was to SET FIRE TO THE LOGIC BOARD which melts and revitalizes the solder underneath.

So I call my tech enthusiast cousin.

"Wanna set fire to my ibook? I heard it fixes it."

"Sure. Sounds fun."

So we opened the ibook up and set fire to the logic board with the blowtorch my mum uses to make creme brulee.

Closed the computer up (Which took ages. Fricken screws!) and pressed the button.

THE IBOOK WORKS!

This is the finest piece of computer geekery I've ever been involved in.

73 Things Or People I've Decided I Don't Like Anymore

One day cricket, William Burroughs, Cherry Bar, music magazines, record fairs, record shops, the advertising game, blogs, my inbred mates, fishing with soft plastics, the TV news (all channels), music on the radio, the psychedelic west coast, hippies, The Doors, Terry Wallace, shuffle, tennis, sleeping in the afternoon, Loaded Magazine, Yumbo’s, thongs, marshmallows, chicko rolls, The Nightwatchman, The Labor Party, Oasis, dates, gossip, loneliness, card games, Agatha Christie, Commonwealth Games, Olympic Games, Roy & HG on the radio, Beat & Inpress, talking about music, Big Brother, using two pillows, Steve Gutenberg, dancing, central heating, Bagatelles, this list, Seek, A2 section in the Saturday Age, chess, egg flip Big M, complaining, Led Zeppelin, unrequited love, Peter Carey, students, most Rolling Stones t-shirts, Monopoly, freelancing, Tony Blair, sustainability, Eminem, The Comedy Festival, 3RRR and 3PBS, pro golf, avid recyclers, Ikea, my clock radio, 64, stir frying, superlatives, 774 drive slot, writing in pencil, environmentalism, MTV, Channel V and writing this list.

Cockhead Footy Sexism Must Stop

Cockheads, not cokeheads ruining our game


Spent the weekend listening to a lot of footy on the radio and just sat through the new train crash Channel 9 show, Footy Classified and sheesh, I'm angry.

LAY THE FUCK OFF CAROLINE WILSON.

The fuckwit and gutter journo pictured, Craig Hutchison is the worse. The way he belittled her during Footy Classified was bullying at its most puerile. He was almost as bad on 3AW.

And it's quite obvious most of the bullying from Hutchison and many other footy blokes comes from the SAD IN THEIR SAD LITTLE MINDS' FACT, that Caroline Wilson is female.

Wilson is a great journalist- The Age's chief footy writer for the past eight years for frick's sake. She writes well and breaks stories. Has been for years, covering her first Commonwealth Games for The Age when Hutchison was in primary school.

Face it fellas.

Anyone notice that half of all match reports in both Melbourne newspapers are written by women?

Women watch, know, write and speak about footy.....well.

Now deal with it and start treating Caro with the respect she more than deserves.

And if anyone wants to comment on her braces and lippy, fuck.... look at "Hutchie's" dodgy lookin' scone.

My mum got it right tonight when she said he looks like "a snake".

If You So Much As Touch My Bike, I'll Kill You

Darryl Somers' bicycle locked to a Carlton primary school yesterday.

No, Trust Me. It Really Works.

John Billings, the founder of the natural contraception system, The Billings Method or to some, the Vatican Roulette, has died at the age of 89.

He was survived by his wife and EIGHT OF THEIR NINE CHILDREN.

I'm On Ur Newspaper, Stealing Ur Artickles!

Folks, meet Milo.

I've been looking after Milo for the past couple weeks while his mum's been cavorting with a bunch of bad lieutenant mates in lovely Thailand.

While his mum's been away, Milo (or Miles, Fatima, Dog or Maaaate), has been a great help to me writing this Nightwatchman stuff.

Just now he walked on the computer keys and did a Google search for "totjnnnnnnnnnn".

We were both surprised when nothing came up.

Here's a Boing Boing link to a bunch of cat pics with poorly spelled 'funny' captions.

Must go.

Milo wants his chicken now.

Notes On A Jandal

Nina talks funny.

She writes funny too.

Here's what the pleasantly mannered New Zealander wrote about Flinders Street Station in her brand spankin' blog thingy.

"She is the only station with a gender. She is a grand old dame, full of pigeon shit and criminals, but the pigeon shit spells out great expressions like 'carpet-bagger', and the criminals are Dickensian pick-pockets with fingerless gloves. Apparently there's a big old dance hall up there somewhere that no one uses. You can buy a greasy potato scallop there and feel like history."

Nice one.

Big In NY: Toe Cleavage

Over at the witty as heck publishing/gossip/style/stuff site, Gawker, there's a big debate on the yays and nays of toe cleavage.

Like here, in New York those horrible (but I hear, useful if you work in a kitchen or a boat) crocs are infesting, thongs (they call 'em flip flops) everywhere and people still wear those ridiculous lookin' brown velcro sandals (Tevas, apparently).

There may be the odd attractive foot walking around out there but I'm mostly irritated by any sight of toe in a shoe.

Always said it, everybody no matter how attractive they may be has an imperfection, and if you want to find that imperfection real quick, look down to the feet.

Gawker commenter, Ian Spiegelman agrees:

"Toe cleavage is like anything else: it's attractive on attractive people--and by that I mean attractive women. No male should ever show his feet except at the beach. Period"

I'm with another commenter, Meredith who reckons:

"Toe cleavage: nice in the right shoes.
Those shoes: not nice.
Flip-flops: never, ever, ever. Men or women. No. Unless you're on the beach.
Tevas: Are you fucking kidding me."

Tevas and Crocs?

Both abominations.

Fasthugger:

"Honest to God, I've always assumed that anyone in Tevas inherently smells like feet.

It is what it is."

IBentMyWookie:

"I will see your Tevas and raise you Crocs. I maintain that they were created for the sole (geddit?) purpose of destroying my spirit.

Mine too.

Please, make your notes about jandals in the comments bit below.

Don't Cock It Up Fellas!

Life resumes this weekend.

And a big welcome from the the wittier folks at the Collingwood outer to exciting new recruits....


Brad Dick


Shannon Cox

and drum roll please.....

TYSON GOLDSACK!