Daniel85

So, my mum was in the car yesterday when she heard a news item about an attempted child abduction in Leopold earlier this week. It was also in the paper today: http://www.geelongadvertiser.com.au/article/2008/05/09/13765_news.html

It came as quite a surprise to her, seeing as the school had not seen fit to tell the parents of the 700+ kids who attend Leopold Primary school (my 10-year-old sister among them).

This incident occured on Monday, and only came out in the media yesterday. Even worse, my mum found out that the parents of the child involved did not immediately ring police, instead informing the school the next day, after which the police were contacted.

If you read the news article, there’s a detailed description of the car and suspect involved. Had the school community been informed, parents and children could have been on the lookout for this car if it had returned to the area. But no, these guys had free rein in Leopold on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.

I live on Kensington Rd. It’s chaos before and after school. Cars parked 500 metres up the street on both sides, hordes of kids and parents going every which way… quite easy for some psycho to grab a kid without anyone noticing anything amiss.

When my mum, understandably outraged, called the school to inquire as to why parents had not been told about this, the school’s line was that they ‘did not want to cause a panic’. Well, guess what? CHILD ABDUCTION IS SOMETHING TO FUCKING PANIC ABOUT.

I love this picture. The only way it could be better is if it had J.D. Salinger standing aloof in the background, towering slate grey over Chabon and Gaiman. Or maybe Thomas Pynchon pretending to hide under a baseball cap.

Found it when Googling to see what Chabon is up to these days, after I saw some girl reading his latest book (pictured) while I waited for 4 hours in the U.S. Consulate for a visa interview.

In addition to admiring her literary taste, I envied her foresight at bringing some reading material. She’d obviously been through the ordeal before. I’m totally toting a a tome next time I have to do that, to save myself having to watch the instructional video on U.S. Immigration procedure 400 times, or listening to twentysomething globetrotters affecting gentility.

Anyway, seeing Neil Gaiman’s spritely expression always makes me smile. It reminds me of something I’ve been thinking about lately; that nameless joy you get when you hit upon a writer who speaks truth/beauty to you from the first page, making you reevaluate everything from your worldview to your own style (I guess Arnold Bennett would say the two are inseparable), and causing you to wonder just how the hell this magic stuff could’ve sat in libraries and bookstores for longer than you’ve been alive without your being aware. I found that first with F. Scott Fitzgerald, then later with J.D. Salinger, thought I found it with Evelyn Waugh (but was sorely disappointed), and I’ve had a string of similar affairs with other writers since.

It’s been in my mind because of my recent discovery of Tom Robbins, whose Still Life With Woodpecker I’ve just started reading. It’s an amazing book (so far!), the kind of non-page-turner that keeps you in a constant struggle between wanting to see what the hell the writer is gonna do next, and wanting to go back and take another look at what the hell the writer just did. I’m definitely going to be tracking down some of his other books after this one, and severely hoping I’m not going to be disappointed. Tom- don’t Waugh me, bro.

So, what else is news with me… I got approved for a ‘limited visa’ (which means they don’t trust me and think I’m gonna try to stay in the States… yeah, like I really wanna drop out of school and go work at Wal-Mart) so I can spend the holidays with Laura. Definitely looking forward to that. I’ve been growing mistletoe hydroponically in my room.

And of course I’m pumped for the Cats’ Grand Final appearance on Saturday. I’ve been waiting for this ever since I moved to Geelong and they stopped the car (NSW plates, ya see…) just outside of Corio and demanded we pledge allegiance to the hoops.

CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARN THE CATTERS!!!

I was happy to see that someone put this peerless passage of play up on the YouTube.

Just look at all those Roos midfielders running around after our players ineffectually, like a group of unwilling VicKick kids. Awesome.

I thought Stokes’s disposal left a little to be desired, but it didn’t seem to worry Moons much.

Bring on the prelim.

Hey y’all. I’m back home now. I’ll post some more pics and stuff when I get around to it, but for now I just had to share something I came across in today’s Age.

I love it when sports writers try to act all cultured and literary. Check out this gem, from an article on Mark Blake’s role in the Cats’ defeat of Richmond by one Dan Silkstone (awesome name):

Yesterday’s encounter then, was a marriage of heaven and hell — a concept made famous by the 18th-century poet William Blake. It was his Geelong namesake, though, who wore the angel’s wings.

There’s a new concept in sportswriting– making literary allusions based on players who share names with famous writers. You just have to love The Age, don’t you? Even their sportswriters are pretentious fops.

The fact that The Marriage of Heaven & Hell has more to do with Blake’s appropriation of heaven and hell in his new mythology/philosophy than traditional ideas of the two can be ignored, I guess.

The year was 2003. The class, English with Mr. Kaberry (affectionately known as ‘Kabers’ or ‘Niles Crane‘). ‘Twas the day of the dreaded Oral SAC. School Assessed Coursework? Classwork? I know not the meaning of this arcane scholarly ritual, but we press on…

Julian had missed class the day Mr. Kaberry assigned presentation times, and so relied on me to tell him where his name fell on the list. I had only scanned the list for the next day to see if I would have to actually prepare my presentation, or get a few more days of precious procrastination, but I assured Jules that I had not seen his name on the list for that first day. All was well.

We were all settled in for a breezy couple of periods of ignoring our classmates’ boring speeches, when the word came, ex cathedra– “Julian Foord?”

I will never forget the look, that broken countenance of anguish, resignation, betrayal, and simmering hatred with which Julian regarded me after Mr. Kaberry summoned him to give the first presentation of the day.

Jules requested to be allowed to retrieve his saxophone, the vital prop for his presentation. I was expecting him to leg it and never return, save perhaps to appear from behind my locker door on a crisp Autumn morning, dagger in hand, muttering some Protoss epithet before exacting bloody vengeance.

But he was back within the minute, and proceeded to deliver a rousing extemporaneous lecture on some music bullshit that, to be honest, bored me senseless. Kabers (ever the man of culture) loved it, though, and gave him 29/30. Top of the class!

I never really apologised for my error until just a couple of months ago, when we were reminiscing about good ol’ GHS whilst playing some NES. Jules assured me all was forgiven, but despite everything turning out okay I still feel guilty. And I wish I had a photo of that look he gave me. Not that I need it- it’s burned into my memory- but just so I could show you all the face of a man betrayed.

My mum’s ‘a woman’.

It’s bullshit, though, cos mum and my brother both say the first driver was stationary and had no lights on, and a bike rider who had stopped to move the ‘rubbish’ (packing boxes are slightly more than ‘rubbish’… gotta love the Geelong Advertiser’s reporting) has concurred with that.

So I guess we go to court. Or they do, cos it has nothing to do with me. I’ll probably just go and do some mullet-spotting. The Geelong Magistrate’s Court is almost as good as Crown Casino for mullet-spotting.

So did all you G-Town types have fun on Tuesday?

I was out pretty much all day, helping mum gather stuff for Brother Tim’s birthday (which was on Wednesday, procrastination always being the order of the day in this house). We were at this one shop down in Belmont (cos it’s in the Barwon Valley, you see, so it’s “down”) and the guy at the counter was all apologetic that he’d have to write us out a receipt, because their power was off.

Driving home shortly after that, we noticed the lights were out at that massive intersection down behind where the old Go-Karts used to be (Hooly knows what I’m talking about…). We would’ve noticed sooner, but mum always takes the ass-backwards way home from Belmont.

Continuing on without incident, we were surprised to find the lights at Townsend Rd/Bellarine Highway out as well. Of course by this time we started to twig that there might be something of a blackout in progress. I put the radio on to find out what in tarnation was going on, but was met with static at every pre-programmed frequency. K-Rock, Bay FM… nothing. Total zombie movie shit there, essential services failing and all.

We got home, and mum spent about a minute pressing the garage door remote and getting increasingly frustrated while I laughed my ass off. I eventually managed to bark out “Power’s… bwahahaha… out… aaaaahahahahaha… mum!”

So we went inside, and like a really bad late-90s roleplaying game, family members popped out from corridors and side-rooms, telling us what we already knew. My sister had been at the movies seeing “Crappy Feet” (you guys can use that one, if you want), and the power went off half-way through. I can only imagine the sheer chaos of a depowered movie theatre full of harried school-holiday mums and confused kids. I bet it was hilarious.

We all pretty much sat around in the blistering heat, sans fans or cooling, saying ‘faaark’, ’struth’, ’spewin’!', and all the other disbelieving curses in the Aussie vernacular for a while, before just deciding to sit in the car with the AC on, cruising the dial for a functional radio station. The big boys like Fox and Nova were still operational, so we suffered through the homicide inspiring voices of the fuckwads they get to DJ on those stations to get the info we needed. Power out from the inner suburbs all the way out to Geelong? Faaark. Struth. Spewin’.

Heading back inside to the hellish sepulchre of a suburban house without cooling on an Australian summer day, we decided to follow Winston Churchill’s famous advice and ‘go down to the beach’. Well, Winston Churchill via Karl Pilkington anyway. Luckily I’d received a call from my boss informing me that there’d be no work that night, for obvious reasons.

So we piled into the car and headed to ‘The OG’ (I coined that term in 2003. Me. Now everyone’s fucking using it without giving me credit.) I’m too cool to look like I’m having fun, though, so I just sat up by the dunes, reading and taking photos of the beach to make a certain snowbound Seattle girl jealous.

We headed home just after 8, walking through the door to a beautiful cacophony of functional consumer electronics. LG. Life’s Good.

Anyone ever read this book as a kid? There was a TV series too, which I’m trying to track down. Gotta love late 80s Aussie bogans.

I guess the main/only reason I liked the book (and TV show) was because it was set in Geelong/Melbourne, and so all the references to things like Torquay, Kardinia Park, Eastern Beach, and school trips to the Old Melbourne Gaol were validating to a piss-ant little Geelong kid.

Anyway, I found a copy of the book at an op shop yesterday, and flipped through it for any mention of G-Town. I came across this stirring passage:

‘Carn the cats (sic),’ bellowed the crowd.

The rain poured down. It was freezing. I wouldn’t have been surprised if it was snowing soon.

Finally the last siren went, heralding the end of the game. What a match! Geelong had lost by a goal, and Jacko was standing on his head, kicking his legs in the air. He didn’t care. He was a cert to be up before the Tribunal for mangalating three Richmond players. By the time we got the train back to Geelong I was wondering if it had all been worth it. There were certain advantages to watching the match at home in front of the telly, except for Herohead, who kept telling everyone how to play the game all the way through.

‘Mangalating’. ‘A cert’. Hahahahahaha.

And ah… Jacko. Such a fucking lunatic.

“Oi!”

I’ve always liked Gala Day more than the flashier Geelong Show, for some reason. It could be the fact that there was none of that boring equestrian and farm animal crap (my grandad always made me go look at the cows) to detract from the two most important aspects of any Show: showbags and rides. (By the way, for those Americans on the blog, a “show” is kind of like the Australian version of a county fair.)

It could also be that the Gala Day fair used to be held in the coolest of places, like down by the waterfront (giving it a boardwalky feel) or right in the centre of town (giving it an uncanny, “this shouldn’t be here” feel, like a zombie movie set in a mall).

I’ve thought about this way too much, but another reason may be simply that it was a day off school (my tight-ass primary school only gave us Geelong Show Day or Gala Day; not both in the same year), and also marked the beginning of the end of the school year. Once Gala hit you knew it was just gonna be games of tee-ball and ‘projects’ until school let out before Christmas.

Like most things that were cool when we wuz kids, Gala Day has really been watered down in recent years. It’s been moved to the big pit that is Johnstone Park (don’t say “Johnsons’s Park”, or I will mock you till the day I die), and renamed the “Gala Christmas Fair”.

There’s only a handful of rather lacklustre rides (what you see in the picture above is the entire ride section), when once there used to be the Cha-Cha and the Ghost House and all manner of awesome amusements. There wasn’t even a set of those rotating clown heads. Hardly a fair/show/carnival without being able to pop balls in a clown’s mouth. That sounds so dirty.

The renaming to ’Christmas Fair’ accompanies the pushing back of Gala Day to early December rather than mid/late November. So now the centrepiece of the fair is a dodgy pageant show with annoying kids dancing and singing to Christmas carols. It’s not even cute like a school pageant, where the kids are charmingly out of their depth. These are those ‘professional’ kids from the acting schools and dance classes whose precociousness makes you want to go all Maddox on them.

But onto the most important thing, showbags. I used to love getting the pull-out in the newspaper the week before the Geelong Show and going through the showbag guide, circling and asterisking in order of preference. I’d never end up getting any of the showbags I wanted, but dare to dream, right? (”No, Dan, you don’t want that Ninja Turtles showbag. Here, get this Samurai Sam one instead.”)

I like this showbag stand. That’s retro characters 3, modern characters 1. Take that, children of today!

I wasn’t really too impressed by any of the showbags. There was a Pirates of the Caribbean one that looked kinda cool, but even I wouldn’t pay $21 for a bandana and a plastic musket. I got this Casper one instead:

I like how Casper gets second-billing to cousin Spooky. It’s cos he’s Tuff. He’s The Tuff Little Ghost. Casper’s afraid he’s gonna get whaled on if he tries to assert his place as Harvey’s leading ghost.

It feels good, owning a plastic bag adorned with Casper imagery. It’d make a cool trick-or-treat sack. 

Along ’showbag lane’ there was this little marquee full of inflatable cartoon/comic/movie characters. It’s funny how the Hulk and Wolverine have their backs turned on Venom. Poor Eddie Brock, he just wants a friend.

My sister got this random NBA t-shirt in her showbag. Love how the carnies just throw in whatever they have lying around their magical carnie village warehouse. I didn’t know there was just a general ‘NBA Fan Club’, either. For those indecisive basketball fans who couldn’t pick a team. “I’m gonna root for the whole league! Go teams!”

I could use the fact that it was like a million degrees yesterday to justify my purchase of a Mr. Whippee ice cream, but the truth is that I always check every ice cream van I come across, hoping I’ll find one that still has the ‘Agro Cone’ on the menu.

I picked the Choc Sherbert, cos it looked really cool on the display…

It didn’t look so cool in reality, though:

I want my neon pink glowing outline! It does look kinda like a volcano, however, which is cool. Volcanos are cool. They’re mother nature’s rock concert.

I disparaged the fair’s rides earlier in this entry, but there was one that was kinda mildly awesome. It was a humongous inflatable slide that loomed over the entire park like a licorice all-sort castle:

How majestic is that?! Pretty majestic, if you ask me.

The guy would let in 10-15 kids at a time, and they’d all clamber up a rope ladder (straight out of ”The Eliminator” on Gladiators) to the right of the slide. It truly was a sight to see. It looked like a diminutive band of Skeletor’s minions scaling the walls of Castle Grayskull.

Hmm.. there’s a plan I don’t think Skeletor ever hit on; recruiting children in his fight to rule Eternia. “Meet my diminutive minions, He-Man. My… Diminuminions!”

It was pretty crazy. I saw this one kid get kicked in the face so hard that he just rolled to the bottom of the slide limp, blood gushing from his nose. He was so messed up that his dad had to put him in a pram and carry the baby on his hip.

So that was Gala Day for another year. I copped out of blogging the Geelong Show, so I figured doing Gala Day would make up for it. Maybe I’ll do Pako Festa next February, too.

Note: I’m aware that I didn’t cover the parade, which is the original raison d’etre of Gala Day. I just can’t be bothered going to the parade anymore. Besides, it’s kinda hard to top a bunch of kids rollerblade dancing to “I Like To Move It” as featured back in ‘94.

I don’t think any Geelong locals would disagree when I say that Bay City Plaza is by far the king of the two shopping malls in Geelong’s CBD. Market Square has always been the poorer cousin of Bay City Plaza, although it has gotten better lately with the advent of JB Hi-Fi and EB Games. Still, for many years it’s been a boring, useless mall that no young person would willingly enter. 

Probably the thing that annoys me the most about Market Square is Harris Scarfe, the dumbest department store in the history of retail. They stock hardly anything, and what they do have is overpriced and from dinky brands that no-one cares about. I think Harris Scarfe is just a big scam to take advantage of country folk who’ve come down to the city and don’t know any better (or are afraid of the bright lights and flashy decor of bigger stores).

One thing Market Square does know how to do is celebrate Christmas. Bay City always stuffs Santa’s Village somewhere out of the way, usually upstairs. They can afford to snub Santa, though, with all their cool stores. Market Square, on the other hand, knows the only way it’s going to draw people in during the Christmas shopping season is to put on the biggest fucking extravaganza imaginable every year.

There’s always a big fuss about Santa’s arrival at Market Square, with a big parade and everything, but I loathe humanity far too much to stand on the street in the heat with the… is there a word for ‘throng’ or ‘crowd’ that rhymes with ’street’?

Anyway, Santa’s all settled in at Market Square, holding his usual pride of place in the centre of the mall:

That’s the same old tree that Market Square pulls out every Christmas. I wonder where they store it during the year. It’s pretty big, although my skewed childhood memory has it as more on par with one of the California redwoods, busting out of the ceiling and whatnot.

Here’s the set-up from ground level. I wonder if maybe they’ve scaled down this year, cos my memory from past years has the thing taking up way more floorspace than this. It could just be that it’s only November, and I usually see it during the height of Christmas action in mid-December, with hundreds of people milling around the centrepiece. Their seasonally-coloured clothing just kind of blends into a heaving biomass that looks like part of the display. Naked without the teeming hordes of shoppers, Santa’s throne room is pretty unimpressive.

I missed out on the reindeer, unfortunately. They only brought the poor things out in the pre-summer weather for a couple of days and then whacked them back in the freezer for next year. Bringing reindeer Down Under to please the gawking masses is almost as bad as all those assholes who keep huskies and malamutes as pets down here.

I still have to check out what Bay City has done for Christmas this year. There’ll be photos, if I return. Bay City security is pretty tight.