7000 young leaders

I had a bit of a Monty Python moment yesterday during the NSW Young Leaders Day at the Sydney Entertainment Centre, organised by the Halogen Foundation. I was reminded of that beautifully satirical and ironic moment in The Life of Brian where Brian says: 'You're all individuals.'
Crowd, in unison: 'Yes, we are all individuals!'
Brian: 'You're all different.'
Crowd: 'Yes, we're all different!'
Man in crowd: 'I'm not.'
Crowd: 'Shh!'
Brian: 'You've all got to work it out for yourselves.'
Crowd: 'Yes, we've all got to work it out for ourselves.'
Brian: 'Exactly!'
(beat)
Crowd: 'Tell us more!'

I had this thought when Megan Dredge, the MC, was revving up 7000 kids to shout, in glorious unison, 'We're all leaders, yes it's true..!'


It was a great day, though, and a really well organised event which tours the country, with both primary days and secondary days. In addition to Mike Martin, the general manager of the Halogen Foundation, and me, the speakers were Bridie Carter, actor of McLeod's Daughters fame, Natalie Cook OAM, Olympic gold and bronze medalist for beach volleyball, and Mark Beretta, sports anchor for Channel 7.


Oh, and I also made a point of singing a few lines onstage, just so I could say this:

I've sung on stage of the Sydney Entertainment Centre.

So there.

You killed my father...

Nothing much to say. Just a picture, borrowed from roflrazzi.com:

Delicious discoveries.

Yesterday morning, cursed by an insomnia that is no longer funny or acceptable, I got up at 5.30am to go for a run. I figured it was early, the streets would be empty, I'd get to see the sun come up, and when I'm already up, the awakening world is a kind of groovy place to watch.

But I got more than I bargained for, because at about 6.20, just as I was nearing home, I came across a large thicket of blackberries. Now, in the Blue Mountains, blackberries are considered a weed, and as such Council sprays them. When they know they're there. These ones they clearly don't know about, because there are literally hundreds of berries that are ripe and plump and juicy and jet-black, and maybe three times as many as that red and ripening.

I have my reasons for loving wild blackberries, in addition to their obvious tasty merits. One is that they are so much tastier than those farmed hothouse hybrids which cost $5 a punnet. Second, they cost about $5 a punnet less than those farmed hothouse hybrids. Third, they remind me of my late grandfather, who used to come around to our place at Wyee Point, and disappear into the thickets that choked a number of the nearby vacant blocks. He'd emerge with scratches all over his arms, purple-black stains on his shirt and lips, and several ice-cream buckets full of these juicy little numbers.

But best of all, I love wild blackberries because eating wild fruit straight off the bush makes me feel all foragy. I feel like a resourceful nomad. I feel like Adam in the Garden of Eden, but with less nudity. And hopefully less snakes.

I'm going to head up there tomorrow with an ice cream container of my own, and I'm going to forage me several kilos of those bad boys, and I'm going to do it every two or three days until summer ends, or I get sick of blackberries, or Council realises they've missed a patch, whichever comes first.

New-clear. NEW-clear!

I just finished watching the excellent Channel4 documentary 1983: The Brink of Apocalypse, which deals with the events of surrounding the Cold War standoff between the USA and the USSR, and how close we came to full-blown nuclear war, seemingly caused in equal measure by paranoia, stupidity and an utter lack of communication.

What leaves me shaking my head is how the producers of such a painstakingly-made documentary can fail to notice that the otherwise excellent narrator, Gina McKee, repeatedly mispronounced the word 'nuclear' as 'nucular'. We've had eight years of this mistake with one George Walker Bush, but he is by all accounts a complete idiot. I'd have expected better from Channel4.

Dokic Dokic Dokic, oi oi oi.

Not much of a tennis fan, me. I like to play the occasional game, and I don't mind watching a 5 set classic between, say, the Fed and Raffa. But I have to admit that Jelena Dokic's next game is in my diary.

There's not much I can say here that hasn't been said by people who are more astute students of the game than I. But speaking personally, I didn't much like the girl the first time around. I wouldn't have booed her on Centre Court, but there was something about her that made me queasy. Her father, mostly, who is, by any estimation, a first class, bona fide, dyed in the wool dill-whacker. She hit 3,000 balls a day on the practice courts for him. She made unpopular comments in press conferences for him. Then she left Australia and changed her national allegiance for him. And now he wants to come back and play happy families. Someone tell the the customs guys - he should be stopped at the border to preserve the collective Australian IQ.

But all of that personal crap forms the backdrop to what is an astonishing and well-documented story. Getting to the quarter-finals of a Grand Slam after several years out of competitive tennis is amazing enough. But to do it in front of a crowd that booed you the last time you played in front of them, and to turn them around until they cheer for you, and then to use that support to go so far is gob-smacking. I truly hope she can keep going, and if Damir does turn up at her hotel room, I hope the Brothers smack him in the chops and tell him that Jelena doesn't live here any more.

Extortion

All right, so by the dictionary definition of the term it's not extortion. But it's still stupidly expensive.

Here's the thing. We took the family to the cricket last night. It was the Twenty20 final between NSW and Victoria, which ended up being a thriller, decided on the last ball by the third umpire's decision on a run-out. So in terms of script, it was a bit like the Mighty Ducks. In other words, as good as you could ever ask for, and doubtless a lot of the 17,000 spectators were converts to the newest and rock'n'rollest form of the greatest game in the world.

In the interests of saving even more of the hard-earned, I made sandwiches and went shopping for snacks and a big bottle of drink. However, in our rush to get out the door I forgot the drink. 'Never mind,' said Frou-frou, 'we'll buy drinks there.'

I bit my tongue. But mentally, I was checking my wallet to make sure I had enough. And here's why.

Not counting petrol and tolls, here's what our four hours at the cricket cost us in incidentals alone:
Parking: $20
4 x 600ml bottles of soft drink: $18
2 x 600 ml bottles of water: $7.80
4 x hot chips: $18
Total: $63.80

$63 doesn't sound too bad, except when you look at what we actually got for our money. It's not a meal, it's snacks.

Casual staff have to be paid, yes. Caterers have to rent the space, yes. Spectators can bring their own food and drink, that's true. But what parent wants to refuse their kids an ice cream because Daddy's too tight to spend another $20? 'Come on, Dad, we're at the cricket! It's a special treat!'

While I'm on the topic, let's talk about the movies. Considering that prices are driven to a large extent by what people are prepared to pay, when did we agree that paying $10 for a large box of pre-popped corn and a big paper cup of post-mixed soft drink was good value? Here's a rundown on a typical afternoon at the movies:

Movie tickets (2 adults, 2 kids): $50
2 x 'value' packages of popcorn and drink: $20
2 x small post-mix drinks: $7.60
1 x packet of Maltesers (for the grownups): $4
1 x packet of Starburst (kids): $4
Total: $85.60

It's expensive, but when you compare it with the humiliation your kids claim to feel when you produce a bag of microwave popcorn, it's still a small price to pay. God, I'm never doing that again...

But wouldn't it be really cool if everyone boycotted the candy bar at the movies? If, when the lights went down, the only sound was that of Black and Gold Choc-malt Balls being opened and counted out, value-pack chips and microwave popcorn being distributed, and mothers pouring soft drink into plastic cups held between their knees?

Who am I kidding? You can't go to the movies without having a choc-top. You just can't.

It's all downhill from here...

It's been some time, but this one I couldn't leave alone. From the Yahoo Answers site, I now cut and paste this gem, from someone called Carly H:

she i give girls dress codes checks everyday?

im an 8th grade teacher and theres alot of girls who wear shirts when they put there hands up there stomach shows or they have there belly showing without there hands up should i crack down on this if your a teacher do u crack down on this stories please

OK, where to start? Maybe at the beginning. 'She I give girls dress codes checks everyday?' It seems that Carly actually believes that when asking a dinner host how she might contribute to the meal, she's actually saying: 'She I bring anything?' or 'What she I bring?' Considering that literacy is partly dependent upon the osmotic effect of actually seeing stuff written down, has this 8th grade teacher (hopefully not of English) ever read a book in her life? Or maybe she's only read from that vast literary canon in which the word 'should' never appears?

So those are my thoughts on the first line. The rest u can work out 4 ur selfs.

PS: Mark Taylor, commentating the cricket, just misused the word 'bought' 3 times in one comment, ie 'The captain only just bought up that man from square leg.' This error is disturbingly common.

Here endeth the rant.