Daniel85

I love Eastern Park. Some of my earliest memories are of family Christmas gatherings under its comforting, grandfatherly trees. I remember a Christmas party from when my grandma used to work at Thomas Jewellers in the 80s. One of her co-workers wanted to pinch and kiss my 4-year-old cheeks. I was terrified. I tangibly, viscerally recall bolting through the ‘forest’ and trying frantically to climb an old oak to escape her clutches.

And of course, good ol’ Geelong High School is right next to the park, so I have a lot of memories from that time of my life.

Probably my favourite thing about Eastern Park is the wooden playground situated smack-bang in the middle of it, and the twin treehouses that made it such an awesome place to play.

Recently, I took the circuitous drive through Eastern Park for the first time in a long time. I’ve always liked driving through the park. It’s so relaxing, and invites reflection. That’s where I first learned to drive, stopping and starting in the filtered golden light on a winter afternoon, pushing mum’s old Falcon as fast as I was allowed (65 Ks! Watch out, Speed Racer!) along the wide, serpentine roads.

I thought I’d stop off for a visit to the old treehouses on my way through, but when I got there I was met by the sight of a new, fenced-in play area that looked like something from an inner-suburbs Melbourne primary school. I couldn’t believe it at first; I drove around a bit, second-guessing myself and hoping I’d just taken the wrong side-road (it is a big park). But no, it was the right place.

The feeling I got from the realisation that the treehouses were no more was the same as when my dad told me that Magic Mountain in Adelaide had been demolished for a ritzy new waterfront development. I’ve been lucky enough in life not to have lost any people close to me, but when I inevitably do I know it’ll put stuff like this in perspective. It still hurts, though.

My mum’s into the scrapbooking craze at the moment (sweeping the nation!), and she’s always saving photos she comes across that she knows I’ll enjoy. The best yet is a photo from an old family Christmas lunch in Eastern Park, circa 1998…  

To the left is our old ‘83 Telstar, which was handed down to me as my first car, but has since been consigned to the scrapyard. In the middle is my stepdad, camcorder in hand, and to the left is one of the twin treehouses.

I don’t know when they were built, or exactly when they were pulled down, but at least I have this photo to remember them by.

I used to love clambering up onto the roof, by way of the support posts on the side. It’s only like 8 feet up, but as a kid it felt like I was in one of those really high-up huts you can glimpse from the Ewok Village scenes in Return of the Jedi.

The fact that there were two of them, joined by a raised walkway, made for some great capture-the-fort battles. Errol Flynnish swashbuckling with sticks, lobbing pinecones at the enemy fort, leaping over the side as your fort was overrun by bandits.

Whenever I wagged class in high school, I’d walk through the park and read in one of the treehouses. I distinctly remember skipping Psych one morning in Year 11 to go read The Outsider. Kind of appropriate, except for the murder part.

I also used to like reading the graffiti inside the treehouses, laughing at the vulgarity and wondering at the lives of the people who’d sat there drinking or smoking or alone before me. I never left any graffiti or carvings, but even if I had been inclined to that sort of stuff it wouldn’t have been up for long.

The new play area that’s replaced it seems so bland and lacking, although I didn’t see much of it, because, honestly, I didn’t really feel like sticking around there too long. I understand that the old wooden playground was getting old, maybe rotting, but it always seemed pretty robust to me. I don’t know if safety concerns brought the treehouses down, or whiny yuppies complaining about the untrendy sight of it, or if it was just ambitious city councillors trying to make their stamp on Geelong.

I don’t know if perhaps it’s better that I didn’t know about the redevelopment beforehand. It would have been nice to go sit on the roof one last time, maybe rip off one of the planks as a souvenir. On the other hand, it would have been dreadful to know that they were coming down and that I could do nothing about it. 

More than any melancholy longing for my own memories of the treehouses, it makes me sadder to know that no little kid will ever be able to climb up on the roof and feel like king of the world, that no drunk teenagers will ever leave ‘ring a root’ messages on the walls, no bands of kids will ever wage ad-hoc warfare in the trees, and that no awkward GHS student will ever be able to wag class and find refuge in the treehouses again.

Any of you other Geelongians remember the Eastern Park treehouses? Or has anyone else had another sacred place from their childhood demolished?

My rule of thumb for Christmas products is: the tackier, the better. I love going into The Reject Shop and other dodgy discount establishments around this time of year and marvelling at all the crappy stuff they’re trying to hock.

Stuff like this, for example:

I think I just about fell in love when I found this in Go-Lo yesterday. A big ol’ plastic Santa head full of lollipops. It’s just right on some cosmic level.

The thing looks like a cross between Olmec from Legends of the Hidden Temple:

Thud Butt from Hook:

With maybe a bit of MODOK from Marvel Comics thrown in:

Bizarre.

The lollipops are just standard clumps of sugar on a stick, in Christmas colours, but let’s face it– anyone who buys this is not buying it for the lollies, but for the awesome kitsch value of having a giant fucking Olmec Santa head to put on their mantlepiece.

Perhaps the only thing more disturbing than Santa’s nightmarish visage itself are the mysterious curly black hairs I found at the bottom of the bowl:

Tasty.

Also at Go-Lo, I came across the famed ‘Projector Pop’.

These were out last Christmas, but I wasn’t blogging then so I had no need to waste my hard-earned cash on dumb novelty items.

I was always pretty obsessed with light-up toys as a kid, probably because of the ‘Macaulay-Calkin-In-Michael-Jackson’s-Black-Or-White‘ rebellious aspect of being able to continue playing well into the night, even after your parents have ordered you to turn your light off. I guess it also comes from the fact that I was terrified of the nighttime, and having stuff that cast beams of light across my room felt like some kind of talisman against things that go bump.

 That’s the shape that they reckon this little contraption will cast. There was also a Santa Claus and a flying sleigh, but I chose the snowman as the character I’d most like to make dance across my living room wall at night.

I was a bit skeptical of the projector pop’s claim to be able to ’shine 10 feet’. Yeah, right, just like the Super Soaker can shoot 50 feet. Cut five hours to that night, though, cos you know the night time (night and day!) is the right time for conjuring luminous snowmen up on your walls.  (I’d apologise to the memory of Ray Charles, but I don’t think Mr. Diet Pepsi Uh-Huh Uh-Huh You Got The Right One Baby would mind.)

I was pleasantly surprised…

That’s from about six feet away, and the snowman was about one or two feet high. Even from about ten, twelve feet he’s pretty visible. The photo can’t really do it justice, it really does look great. (I should note here that my camera doesn’t like autofocusing in the murky blackness of night, so I had to manually focus it while keeping the snowman up on the wall. I had to put the projector pop in my mouth and depress the button with my teeth, all the while fiddling with my camera for good focus. The things I do for this blog! I’ll be jumping out of a fucking plane on a skateboard next.)

All told, the projector pop is pretty good value for $2.50. The lollipop part is watermelon flavour, which is kind of icky but strangely addictive. Once you lick it, you can’t kick it.

The awesomeness of being able to turn your house into some kind of Victorian-era magic lantern show cannot be overstated. I think I’m gonna go buy the other two projectors so I can re-enact ‘Frosty The Snowman’ on my bedroom ceiling. But in my version, Frosty will never melt *sniff, sniff*.

Oh, and as a bonus, here’s the Jackson 5’s rendition of ‘Frosty The Snowman’, from their Christmas album. Don’t say I never give youse kids nothin’:

Download Jackson 5 - Frosty The Snowman.mp3

One thing you can always rely on at Christmas (other than Uncle Steve having a little too much ‘holiday cheer’ and proceeding to tell every family member exactly what he thinks of them) is the big consumer products corporations cashing in on the season by plastering their wares with Christmas colours and imagery. The Mars Corporation is just about the most soulless of them all when it comes to stuff like this, right up there with Coca-Cola and McDonald’s.

Mars has always been pretty hip to the Christmas thang, bringing out M&M character ornaments and those big ol’ buckets of M&Ms, but it wasn’t until last year that they actually made a Christmas-themed M&M proper. I remember seeing them in the supermarket and praising the Lo’d Jesus. I actually took a couple of bags of them to my family Christmas dinner, in lieu of any constructive contribution. Other people bring potato salad or legs of ham; ol’ Danny Boy brings M&Ms.

Last year’s Christmas M&Ms were just regular red and green M&Ms repackaged in a grudgingly holidayish bag. It’d be funny if someone with too much time on their hands found a marked decline in the number of red and green M&Ms in regular bags during the year. Funny and hatred-for-mankind-inducing.

The bag is actually pretty pimped out this year, with an actual character appearance. I do have to disagree with the tagline, “Christmas is better in colour”, though. I think you’ll find the original Miracle on 34th Street is a superior film to the 90’s remake. John Attenborough is awesome, sure, but his effect is negated by the presence of that annoying little bitch from Matilda.

The whole affair is complicated by the fact that earlier this year, the sexy green M&M character was introduced to promote the limited edition mint flavour M&Ms. Obviously then, putting red and green M&Ms together, alone, is not so innocent any more. Mars has addressed this; just check out Red’s Christmas list:

Red’s lookin’ pretty happy with himself, but that sultry temptress is having none of it. She’s all ‘talk to the hand’. Incidentally, is it wrong to be attracted to Miss Green? Those boots do things to me. I haven’t seen a circular character this sexy since Ms. Pac-Man.

Also this time around, the good folks at Mars have actually gone to a little more effort, and emblazoned the red and green pellets with various Christmas images. As you can see from the photo below, there’s candy canes, stars, holly, snowmen, pine trees, and presents.

I guess that provides about twenty-five seconds of added enjoyment before you scarf them by the handful. If you’re really bored on Christmas Eve, you could always try arranging them into larger mosaics of more Christmas symbols…

That’s a tree. A TREE! Not an arrow! The red ones are ornaments! I hate you.

I can’t really think of anything else to write about this product, so I’ll defer to a panel of experts:

A ringing endorsement. Thanks, Velociraptor from Jurassic Park!

What do you think, Christmas Troll?

Yes sirree, there’s magic in the air this Christmas.

And now, a very special message from Spider-Man.

Wise words. Wiiiise words.

All in all, the Christmas M&Ms are pretty good. The packaging is fun, and the decorations on the candies themselves are cute. It’s pretty disappointing that they didn’t bring in some new colours, though. White would be good, to complete the trinity of Christmas colours. They already have white M&Ms in the mint flavour packages, so it’s not exactly as if they’d have to hire a team of food scientists to come up with a whole new formulation.

But they could get those guys to make up some shiny silver and gold M&Ms for next year. Do it, Mars. Make 2007 the year of the silver and gold M&M!

Every day I make the hopeful trek to my mailbox, in wide-eyed anticipation of another Warehouse catalogue with more ‘Bandana Kid’ fun.

I especially needed the hilarity yesterday, when my Internet connection (and phone) were down due to AAPT’s crappy policy of giving you a 24-hour warning to pay your bill, and then proceeding to cut off your services three minutes later. Add to that the fact that I almost sliced my left index finger off and burned three fingers on my right hand at work, and yesterday was a pretty shitty day. Not even the unseasonal hailstorm could cheer me up, and I’d usually be out dancing in it like a pagan.

Here’s BK’s (we’re calling him that now?) latest:

I’m beginning to think, from his always wearing the same clothes, that they just snapped all of the photos in one session, and have been using them ever since. Or maybe he’s just po’, and these are his only clothes.

In any case, this week’s BK instalment is a bit disappointing. There’s none of the awesome pirate histrionics of last week, just some uninspired posing with plastic weapons. We’ve seen what you can do, Bandana Kid! Don’t waste your talent!

I posted before about how enamoured I was of Maccus, the hammerhead guy, when I saw POTC2. In fact, seeing how awesome he looked in the trailer was one of the main reasons I went to the movie. The other was because I’d come across the action figures in K-Mart a month or so before the movie was released, and decided any movie that spawned an action figure of a guy with squid tentacles on his face and a lobster claw for a hand was a must see.

I liked the original POTC just fine, but the sequel slammed the ball right outta the park. Davy Jones and his scurvy crew, the Kraken, that awesome sword fight on the island… so much coolness.

Maccus does not like photographs, because they haven’t been invented yet.

The Pirates toyline is put out by Zizzle, a relatively new toy company that does mostly licensed stuff, and that weird-ass iPod creature that looks like Orbity from The Jetsons.

I was pretty disappointed that there wasn’t a Maccus action figure available in the first wave of the collection. Another company, NECA, did put out a highly-detailed, collector-focused line that included Maccus, but toys being made for adult collectors really goes against my philosphy. I like toys because they’re toys. They don’t have to be works of fine sculpture, they just have to be cool and fun.

Anyway, after checking Zizzle’s website sporadically after the movie came out, I was ecstatic to learn that a Maccus figure was planned for the second wave of figures. There’s very little information or appreciation for Zizzle’s Pirates in the online toy community, so I had no idea when the second wave would make it down here.

I’d almost given up when it seemed that department stores had stopped stocking the figures, but then last week I came across a veritable bounty (arrr!) of Pirates toys in Target, hidden away behind the Bratz section. They had the second wave, so I searched through looking for my Maccus and eventually found one. It was the only one there, too, buried among multiple Jack Sparrows and Will Turners. I had to stop myself from doing an elaborate victory dance right there in the aisle.

The good thing about the Christmas season is that losers like me can go into shops and rummage through the toy shelves without having to put on a big act, like pretending you’re on your mobile phone asking what toy you’re supposed to be looking for, or muttering (loudly) to yourself, ‘Oh, he’ll like this!’ And then, going through the checkout, there’s none of that burning shame and murderous intent towards anyone who may snicker. I really should stop carrying a flick-knife. 

The packaging is really cool, with the die-cut scroll/treasure map look and the simple image of the burning Jolly Roger. Another great thing about this line is the filecards on the back:

All the great action figure lines have filecards. I like the cynical tone, too. ‘Major Possessions: Time and little else.’ That probably would’ve made me laugh my ass off as a kid.

That is an awesome ‘come get some’ pose.

All Maccus comes with is a battle-axe, which is kind of disappointing. The other figures come with multiple accessories, like removable tri-corner hats, pistols, and swords. I know it’s kinda hard to come up with accoutrements for a mutated freak who gets around in cut-off pants, but still… At least you can put the axe in his belt thing for storage, for when he’s just standing around shooting the breeze with the other freaky-deaky pirates.

His hands are perfect to pose for air guitar, or even… axe guitar! I bet he pulls that trick at sea-shanty parties. You’d have to find some way to amuse yourself when you’re cursed to roam the seas for all eternity.

P.S. Dear Santa, I want this for Christmas you fat fuck:

I generally resist getting into the Christmas spirit for as long as possible. You’d think that’d get harder and harder as retailers push the horizon for Christmas back earlier and earlier every year, but it doesn’t. If anything, it’s hard not to hate Christmas when you start seeing tinsel and chocolate-filled stockings in Safeway in September.

My Christmas season really begins whenever David Jones starts playing its Christmas ads. I don’t think I’ve ever even been into a David Jones store, but those Christmas commercials always signalled the beginning of that wondrous time to me.  It could be the fact that David Jones is a big, glitzy, city department store that conjures up Christmas movie imagery, or even that David Jones is right next door to Myer in Melbourne. The Myer Christmas windows are probably my favourite thing about Christmas, and I always make time to see them.

I guess it’s really just that I knew when those David Jones ads started playing it wouldn’t be long before Santa would move into Bay City Plaza, the Myer windows would be up, and Agro’s Cartoon Connection and Cheez TV would start running Christmas specials.

Anyway, I saw a David Jones Christmas ad on TV last night, so I guess it’s Christmas time. I’ve spruced up the blog header into a suitably Christmassy theme, even though it’s usually 30 degrees celsius on Christmas day in Australia and we’re in drought right now.

Another essential part of the lead-up to Christmas is the good ol’ advent calendar. I still get one every year in some pathetic attempt to rekindle what I felt at Christmas time as a kid, but there’s really no way to engineer that kind of feeling. I used to have my advent calendar hanging up next to my bed, and each night I’d peel back the cardboard window and eat the crappy, cooking-grade chocolate before slipping off into greedy dreams of Nintendo or action figures. As I recall, it was pretty hard to keep the final chocolate down on Christmas Eve when your stomach was doing loop-the-loops in frenzied anticipation of Christmas Morning.

I like my advent calendars like I like my Christmas cards: cheap and tacky. It’s become kind of a tradition to look for the most terribly chintzy advent calendar I can find, and this year I’ve got a DOOZY:

Click to super-size it, so you can revel in the sickness.

It has all the classic Christmas imagery: the tree, the old-timey, gender-constructing toys (tin soldier for the boys, dollies for the girls), kids in their jammies (plus token minority child!), a snowy landscape out the window, and Santa with his bell and twice-checked list.

Probably the best thing about this picture is that the Christmas tree is fucking alive! I have never seen anything quite like it before, but I love it. It’s disturbing and awesome. Distawesome.

Santa looks pretty normal, but the kids are damn creepy. Especially that dude in the middle, with the whafro and painted cheeks. The bear is kinda weird, too. Is that meant to be a toy, or have they just invited a wild bear in for the holidays? It’s a Christmas miracle that he’s not ripping their throats out right now.

I never really cared too much about the games and activities on the back of the advent calendar, but they’re always there. Sometimes it’s a cut-out mask, sometimes a couple of crosswords and mazes, and sometimes whatever this is supposed to be:

Poor Santa. He’s so sad and confused. Why is my sack speaking? Why is it speaking in images? Why is my sack maintaining its shape even though it’s empty? Is this some kind of new memory-fibre? Did I invent it? Maybe I could patent it and then finally quit this dead-end delivery job, move to the Bahamas or something.

Imagine my surprise when, flipping through the latest Clint’s Crazy Bargains Warehouse catalogue, I was greeted by the sight of the Bandana Kid, back in all his manchildish glory!

Ooey-ooey-ooh… wah wah wah. Ooey-ooey-ooh… wah WAH wah. Ooey-ooey-ooh.. wah wah wah wah.

(That’s the stereotypical Western ‘duel at high noon’ whistle thing, if you couldn’t tell by my awesome onomatopoeia.)

That bandana has become this child model’s trademark. I can imagine a packed audition room with hundreds of kids and their vicarious stage-mums going for a K-Mart catalogue or something. Then the Bandana Kid rocks up and they all start whispering and pointing, cos they know that their presence has become futile– he’ll get the job.

He has such versatility… he can go from childish joy while jumping around in a green bag (don’t ask me what that’s about…), to pure evil:

That’s the role he was born to play!

This kid NEEDS a part in Pirates Of The Caribbean 3. 

It’d be the greatest film ever. It’d sink Titanic!

The McDonald’s on the Queenscliff Highway at Newcomb has been my ‘local’ McDonald’s ever since by family moved out to Leopold.

Seeing as I’m just a pathetic little crybaby, I was unreasonably angered when I found out a few months ago that they were renovating it to install a ‘McCafe’, which is probably the stupidest idea to entice grown ups through the Golden Arches since Mac Tonight.

Anyway, remembering how I wished I had photos of some other places from my childhood that have since been demolished (Magic Mountain in Adelaide; the Safeway in Market Square Mall) I took some photos of the joint to preserve the old layout forever. FOREEEVER!! HAHAHAHAHA I CONTROL TIME.

Gotta love those curvy, uncomfortable plastic benches. So good for sliding on.

And Ronald McDonald! What kid didn’t love sitting next to the ol’ pervert whenever they went in for a Happy Meal? No McDonald’s is a true McDonald’s without one of these in it.

I had to go in early in the morning so that there weren’t a bunch of rubberneckin’ assholes looking at me like I was some kind of weirdo (cos I’m not…) . It was still dark outside, so those gnarled, creepy looking trees were all shadowy and everything… it was cool. Dig the El Maco poster, too. (My final El Maco count was 4, by the way.)

That’s all been ripped out now. I wish I knew what they did with the chairs, cos I wouldn’t mind one of those benches.

I like how those McDonald’s Brand Bins™ say ‘Thank You’ for disposing of your rubbish in them. I like to whisper ‘you’re welcome’ under my breath as I slip the tray in, cos I don’t wanna offend them or anything.

How did they do it? That was the question on all Australia’s mind after the Japanese horses Delta Blues and Pop Rock swept in and took the top spots in today’s Melbourne Cup. I think I have the answer that not Damien Oliver, not Gai Waterhouse (hehe… ‘gay water house’), not  even Bart Cummings could provide…

Robots. That’s right, robots.

It all makes sense, when you think about it. I mean, who ever heard of a Japanese racehorse? I didn’t even know they had horses in Japan, much less horse-racing! And they love their robots over there. Astro Boy, anyone?

I know you’re all going ‘yeah, yeah, Dan… robot horses…’, but just take a close look at this photo finish snapshot, courtesy of The Age:

Have a good look. Notice the glowing red eye? The explosive rocket discharge? The speed lines?!

A horse may be a horse, of course, of course, but Delta Blues is 500 kgs of Tokyo circuitry, my friends.

***

So speaking of the ‘race that stops a nation’, how’d y’all go? Back a winner? I went with Pop Rock, simply because it sounds like ‘Pop Rocks’, and those are awesome. They’re like fireworks in your mouth! I bet $1 each way, cos that’s just how I roll. Kenny Rogers? He was thinking of me when he made that ‘Gambler’ song.

Mighty Chewbacca,
What is your bandolier for?
I think… sandwiches.