The whole truth
It is argued by some that people who habitually swear lack ability with language, in particular with adjectives, and equally that comedy which relies on profanity lacks real substance, but I disagree. There is something quite splendid about vulgarity and the Perth Wold West Comedy Festival’s opening gala night was evidence of this very special form of art. In fact crude gags, swearing and general coarseness gave the gala night an edge that had the audience baying for more.
I was reminded of the time we saw Billy Connolly with work colleagues and one insisted her twelve year old daughter come with us. We cautioned against it, suggesting that a live performance by the irrepressible and bad-mouthed Scot might not be suitable for an impressionable teenager, and then watched the daughter during a fifteen minutes portion of the performance which dealt with oral sex in a particularly graphic fashion. Daughter was doubled up with laughter throughout while the mother sat stony-faced. The following Monday her only comment was that Mr Connolly was very rude, and who could argue. We simply asked how her twelve-year old came to understood so much of the performance.
It must be hard work being a stand up comedian. Far from the gala night glamour and a packed house at the Astor Theatre in the leafy suburb of Mt Lawley, we ventured into darkest Northbridge (the home of glassings, the latest Australian sport) to the Brass Monkey pub to watch a young comedian who plays a guitar and writes cleverly acerbic songs about ordinary life. It was evident this wasn’t going to be a packed show; a few tables up front for the early arrivals and special guests and a dozen rows of chairs in an upstairs bar and at the allotted start time, nineteen people not counting the sound man, and that’s one thing that makes it so hard. The tables were filled but only one row of chairs. It must be difficult for an eager young man to bound onto a stage and enthusiastically work the crowd when playing to an eighth-filled room, particularly when it turns out that the largest group present were family. And that’s where it got even tougher. Most of the show was of observations about growing up with a stepfather and mother, family conflicts, wicked thoughts (mainly about the stepfather) and the mundane actions of life. The show itself was competent without being overly engaging, so we entertained ourselves watching the family and that in itself was worth the entry fee. Mum was, as would be expected, delighted that her pride and joy was on stage oblivious that there were only ten people there besides family, the sister cackled with delight at the naughty bits and stepdad just looked plainly unimpressed, and even less so at every crack or observation made at his expense. It was as well the last song was about flatting because stepdad did get a laugh about the lad's unhappiness at flatmates leaving pubic hairs on the soap in the shower, ginger ones at that. We laughed too.
An unintended comedian making waves nationally is our old friend Tony Abbott, the leader of the Liberal Party, the Australian equivalent of the New Zealand’s National Party. On television the other night, he told an interviewer that the only time people can be sure he is telling the “gospel truth” is when he is working from a carefully prepared script. He explained, in effect saying that he gets carried away in the heat of the moment in some situations and exaggerates or goes further than intended. During the interview he was explaining the contradiction between saying there would be no new taxes if his party was elected to government at the next general election, but that there would be a new levy on employers to pay for a proposed quite generous new parental leave scheme (something incidentally he announced on the hoof much to the despair of his colleagues). The West Australian described Mr Abbott’s interview as “shambolic” but, curiously, some commentators have described him as honest for telling the truth when he says he doesn’t always tell the truth. Figure that one out.

What the world needs now is love
Bunbury is just a couple of hours drive south of Perth, down the unusually named Kwinana highway, and it is in Bunbury that the Western Australia’s latest attraction can be found. A new “space age” public toilet at Koombana Bay beach welcomes visitors through a sound system and then plays a version of Burt Bacharach’s tune; What the World Needs Now is Love. How splendid is that?
Some unsupportive people have taken umbrage at the spending of $250,000 on the new toilet, the Sunday Times reporting that, at the same time this is happening, 3 percent is being cut from State expenditure in areas like the health service. It turns out however that the funding for the new toilet comes from petroleum royalties earmarked for regional initiatives and this is just one of them; along with 80 fibreglass cows in Margaret River and a few golf carts down at the Boolbardie Country Club.
It seems just a distant memory but was only a week ago that the land of the long white cloud was sighted through the window of flight DJ60 from Melbourne to Christchurch. And it was a timely visit. The first item on the radio news was an announcement by the seventy-two-year-old Jim Anderton that he would be standing for the Christchurch mayoralty, his impending campaign the perfect prompt to ponder a return. And that’s not to forget a grandson who insists on calling his grandfather grandma, a goddaughter who has had to find an assistant godparent to compensate for an absence and, of course, Kaelene trimming the buxus hedges to within an inch of their lives just to ensure the place looked familiar.
And mostly Christchurch did look uncannily familiar. The airport is still a dog’s breakfast and the billboards explaining the painfully slow reconstruction process which read Change is Good, are unconvincing. Down the road from home, the Beckenham shops have been bowled over and replaced with a new block of functionary buildings, thankfully they still retain Tandoori Palace the second best Indian food outside of India to GoGo’s Madras Curry House in Perth. At the University of Canterbury most of the experienced and best qualified library staff are being sacked to make way for digital replacements. It seems that in the new world order librarians, including a head librarian, aren’t really needed to run a library, the irony being that, despite the unstoppable move towards information technology, IT staff are also being shed by the university. The once-called Lancaster Park, now AMI Stadium, has been reconstructed and looks fantastic but is being blandly re-branded Stadium Christchurch for the Rugby World Cup. Whatever is wrong with Lancaster Park?
Almost as quickly as the trip began it was over. Air New Zealand to Auckland, a brisk walk to the international terminal and a seven hour flight back to Western Australia to find that mining magnates, each worth billions of dollars, are moaning about a proposed new tax on “super-profits” for mining companies and one of those magnates, Gina Reinhart, reportedly the richest woman in Australia, is calling on the Government to cut award wages for immigrant mine workers so they can be hired more cheaply than locals, of which there is no shortage. It’s as if she needs more money.
Closer to home, the owner of The Basement, an inconspicuous and usually empty bar across the road from work has been murdered allegedly at the hands of his bar manager. Curiously the manager was sacked but not charged and given that degree of liberty has taken the opportunity to flee interstate. The State Premier is reportedly furious.
And even close to home, there was a sighting in the backyard last night, the curious mix of a gorilla, Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz and a pug now named Toto.

It's been a while
There are times when you want to sleep, and there are times when you want to sleep but deep in the subconscious there is awareness that something is not quite right. With one eye hesitantly opening there was, in the row immediately behind, a young man in distress, surrounded by flight attendants being bottle-fed oxygen and having his head mopped. From premium economy, there is no business class here, appeared a doctor who took charge for the remainder of our midnight flight from Perth to Melbourne. Whatever had happened, this young man was in good hands as they cleared out a row of seats and he lay prone still with oxygen and still having his head caressed.
If this had been Jetstar that young man would probably have been charged for the three seats he lay across and for the blankets and pillows they fetched. Heaven knows what the oxygen would have cost, and they possibly would have invoiced the doctor for working on their airline. Fortunately this was Virgin Blue and for a budget airline (even though my seat cost more than for the Air New Zealand return flight) they deserve a nod.
Right from check-in the service was impeccable; the helpful young man at the booking counter spent time running through available seats, offering the emergency row with plenty of legroom on the trans-Tasman sector. He thought our pet didgeridoo may be too big for hand luggage, so went away, got tape and secured it so it could go as checked luggage and then didn’t bat an eyelid as the baggage weight snuck cheekily over the limit. On first impressions, and they count, Virgin Blue is right up there with the best, even the New Zealand-made food was agreeable.
Once awake, there was little to do but browse the West Australian, known for its high-quality journalism and in-depth analysis of world events. In Germany a postman married his obese and asthmatic cat, saying he wanted to marry her before she dies; in Perth at the weekend a Catholic priest lay a mentally and physically disabled young woman on an altar and ordered her to walk and talk and in Oxford, England, an Australian who has spent 37 years in prison for pedophilic offences against boys has been filmed leering at children just down the road from my cousin's house.
Mid-journey, at Melbourne airport, an Emirates flight to New Zealand was being called. It must have been careless of me but just before leaving I received notice that a cluster of Emirates air points were about to expire. That was only after I had booked and paid for a seat to New Zealand, but if there was one good outcome I did donate the soon-to-be-expired points to a seeing-eye charity, so as a result some poor young child possibly has vision. Next, the last remaining passengers on an Air New Zealand flight to Auckland were being called. The land of the long white cloud was getting close.
International travel requires a passport, no secrets there, but what many people may not realise is that there are many countries that do not permit entry to their borders if the intended travel is not completed within six months of the passport expiring. This begs the question of why have a passport of a particular duration if it is virtually useless for the last six months. Mine is close enough to that six month period to mean immediate travel to places like Thailand and Bali is out of the question, but at almost ten years old, it tells an interesting and exotic tale. In no particular order and without repetition; Greece, Switzerland, Korea, Sri Lanka, Great Britain, Australia, United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Germany, Hong Kong, Macau, China, Barbados, Oman, Holland, the Republic of Ireland, Japan, Hungary, Croatia, Italy, Belgium, France, Egypt, an unused visa for India, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia. There may be more but some stamps are indistinct, and then there is New Zealand. On the immigration form a question asks how long the applicant has been out of the country. At one year, four months and about twenty days, its been a long time.

Another "c" word
Crusaders. It has taken a week for the trauma to subside, to get over such abject failure, but over it we are. This was the ME Bank stadium in East Perth, Friday a week ago and there were six of us, prepared to taunt supporters of the Western Force rugby team, habitual losers, as they prepared to take on the mighty champion Canterbury Crusaders. We were decked out in black and red among a sea of blue; the temptation was to ask these people, 20,000 of them in all in their team’s colours, what it feels like to live in expectant hope every week and be perpetually disappointed as your team faces defeat. Again and again.
Uncharacteristically my tongue remained still, even as the Crusaders strolled over for a soft try after only two minutes. Fortunately so, that was the only good moment. The first half was lacklustre at best and even though “our” team was ahead 13 nil at halftime, it was less than convincing. And then we watched as that lead ebbed away in the second half, the Force outplaying the Crusaders at every step to win by about ten points. A Crusaders team littered with All Blacks a cause for concern a year out from the Rugby World Cup.
In hindsight, there were some dead giveaways for the loss; insipid grey and red jerseys have replaced the red and patriotic black of the past, but worse, there were players with iridescent yellow boots and even white ones. These lads may be just too big for their fancy coloured boots and the only salvation for us was that rugby union is such a minority sport in Western Australia that even a rare Force victory failed to get much media attention.
If media attention counts, then the funeral in Melbourne of gangland killer Carl "family man" Williams last Friday was a real attention grabber. Carl could have been a Crusaders’ player such was the glitz; his $30,000 oversized coffin was gold and bronze plated, and his grieving widow turned up in a menacing-looking black, stretched Hummer, about forty feet long. Television cameras and news teams weren’t permitted into St Theresa’s Catholic Church in Essenden for the service, not because there was no room (even given the size of the police contingent present), but because all indoor filming rights were reserved for a documentary crew; it seems that even the rights to the funeral had been auctioned off to the highest bidder.
The funeral goers were an interesting looking lot, big burly men mainly, shaved and tattooed heads being the order of the day, and the women, either very elegant or as rough as guts. The exception was the slightly bizarre figure of a woman outside the church dressed to look like Judy Moran whose family and associates, about fourteen in all, were decimated in a series of reprisal killings by Williams and colleagues. Judy Moran’s husband and one of her sons were direct victims of Williams. It isn’t quite clear who she was or exactly the point she was making as she prowled up and down the footpath but there she was.
But if life continues to imitate art, Matthew Newton who starred as New Zealander Terry “Mr Asia” Clark in the second series of Underbelly entered rehab this week at a private hospital dealing in drug and alcohol addiction. It seems that, since playing the infamous drug baron on the television series, he has become a regular at Kings Cross, developing friendships with nightclub bosses. Newton was seduced by Sin City, according the Sunday Times.
Not the be outdone, Firass Dirani who plays Kings Cross lynchpin John Ibrahim in the Underbelly’s third series, The Golden Mile, currently playing on Australian television, was named as Cleo magazine bachelor of the year.
Fremantle is a quieter spot than Kings Cross, it played host to Mayday celebrations on Sunday and, as the weekend paper advertised, gave the public a chance to see “big burly unionists” marching through the streets. With advertising like that, next they’ll have these unionists on display at the local wildlife park, although hopefully not as an endangered species.