Suffrage Succotash

It would appear that the political u-bend impasse created out of last month's hung parliament in the Australian Federal election will finally be unblocked today as the kingmaker independent MPs show their hands. With the two Green affiliated members already siding with Labor it is now up to the three country independents - Tony Windsor, Bob Katter and Rob Oakeshott - to decide who will form a minority government. By this evening we should know their answer.

Not only will this deliver us a government and relief from the endless hypothesising and second guessing by the media, but it should also curtail any further references to Windsor, Katter and Oakeshott as the Three Amigos. The sooner this trio make a decision and return to the shadows of the back benches the better for the good name of the actual Three Amigos, Lucky Day (Steve Martin), Ned Nederlander (Martin Short) and Dusty Bottoms (Chevy Chase).

Martin, Chase and Short: Never to be as funny again

I for one am not happy to have my heroes associated with this kind of political jiggery pokery and would like to carpae this particular diem to reclaim the good name of The Three Amigos by reliving some of their greatest moments through the glory of ¡You Tube!

• My Little Buttercup - The willing-to-please Amigos entertain the confused locals at the town cantina with a little pat-a-cake vaudeville song and dance
• Girl 1: "Which one do you like?" Girl 2: "I like the one that is not so smart" Girl 1: "which one is that?"
• "would you say I have a plethora of pinatas?" El Guapo gets technical over vocabulary
• Ned gets wasteful with his water canteen and lip balm whilst the others suffer in the heat of the desert

"Excuse us. We're Not Mexicans. We're from out of town."

• Ned, Lucky and Dusty summon the invisible swordsman to disastrous affect
• Flugelman "do you know what 'nada' means?" Dusty "Isn't that a light chicken gravy?"
• "Gonna make it" - painful physical comedy brilliance from Martin as he attempts to escape his prison chains
• "We all have our own personal El Guapo to face. For us, El Guapo is a big, dangerous man who wants to kill us" - Lucky inspires the troops with a rousing, confusing speech

"Seize Him!" - Lucky gets unlucky

• Rosita: "I was thinking later you could kiss me on the verandah" Dusty: "lips will be fine"
• The Amigos campfire singalong of Blue Shadows (On The Trail) accompanied by singing horses, dancing tortoises and shooting stars. Lovely
• "we raped the horses ... and pruned the hedges of many small villages" - Dusty tries to bluff his way out of trouble with El Guapo
• "Could it be that once again you are angry for something else, and you are taking it out on me?" - Jefe gets to the heart of his relationship with El Guapo

The "infamous" El Guapo receives a birthday sweater from his men

• El Guapo "El Guapo only kills men. [the Amigos shuffle nervously] He does not kill crying women! [The Amigos let out a sigh of relief]
• "I think it's a mail plane" - Ned forgets not to laugh at his own joke
• "In-famous? Wow!" The Amigos receive a telegram regarding the infamous El Guapo
• "Look Up Here" - Lucky tries in vain to secretively summon Ned and Dusty. (If you don't watch any other clip watch this one for a reminder of why Steve Martin used to be such a big star).

So Messrs Katter, Oakeshott and Windsor - your moment in the limelight is up. Time for you to face your El Guapo, make a call and then ride off into the sunset. Let's hope for all our futures that your decision making is a little better than that of your temporary namesakes. ¡Arriba!

Disunited States

With two and a half weeks to polling day in Australia I have officially had enough of this general election. It’s hard to feel inspired when the best outcome to hope for is that Labor can somehow compress enough of their gaping wounds and haul their political corpse over the winning line without having haemorrhaged every last drop of credibility. This combined with the media’s pretence that they wouldn’t treat Julia Gillard any differently to other candidates for the top job whilst explaining that they just have to talk about her hair, clothes, accent, femininity and her unmarried, childless status has used up all my rage and now I just want it to end.

Still, when people look back at this election the big question they will ask is surely this: what idiot decided to suspend the ABC’s run of The United States of Tara for six weeks in favour of a Chaser Election Special and a referendum-related adaptation of Wil Anderson’s Gruen Transfer? I appreciate that Gillard’s decision to call an early election might have changed a few people’s priorities but did the ABC really need to go all Channel 7 and just turn it off mid-run? Well, apparently, yes. Ratings for the Chaser’s Yes-We-Canberra and Gruen Nation have been through the roof, which just goes to show that people get what they deserve and that I’ll never get a job at the ABC.

I suppose I’d mind less if either show were as inspired or intelligent as say The Colbert Report, whose US election highlights included host Stephen Colbert’s on-off-on again presidential campaign, recognition of the Colbert Bump as a genuine influence on public opinion and a beautifully childish three-way punch-up with Conan O’Brien and Jon Stewart over who ‘made’ Republican nominee Mike Huckabee. The Comedy Channel’s coverage of the Obama-McCain election as Indecision '08 (subtitled by The Daily Show as Clusterf@#k to the Whitehouse and by Colbert as Don’t F@#k This Up America) actually made the most historic election in US history even more enjoyable.

Lest we also forget Saturday Night Live and Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin tour de farce. It’s fair to say our Tina played as big a part in reinforcing the public’s view of the Alaskan Governor as a gun-toting simpleton as Spitting Image did in ensuring David Steel and David Owen would never be elected in the United Kingdom. If you’ve seen enough of Fey’s impressions check out this slice of genius by an eight-month’s pregnant Amy Poehler on SNL’s Weekend Update, with Palin clearly clueless about what she is condoning whilst trying to look cool on TV.

Elsewhere this year’s Alternative Election Night on Channel 4 in the UK sounded great in theory. I’ve no idea if it was (feel free to let me know) but just the idea of Charlie Brooker, David Mitchell and Lauren Laverne on a show together excites me more than watching the past-their-best Chaser boys asking Julie Bishop to stare out a gnome.

So because I miss it already, and in the absence of anything better (Micallef, please stop messing around with Talkin' About Your Generation and use that brain for something important...) and because the ABC dropped their end of the bargain it looks like I'm going to have to take up my friend's offer from earlier this year of a downloaded copy of the United States of Tara. Sorry ABC; you can't say I didn't try. Your turn now...

Look at Me, Look at Me

So there were Mrs Custard and I, 5am in the morning wrapped up in a blanket watching the Socceroos come agonisingly close to getting through to the next round of the World Cup. In the middle of the first half I said 'you know what's been nice about this World Cup - it's meant that I haven't had to listen to Tony Abbott, Kevin Rudd or anyone else in Canberra droning on and trying to make us care about the election...'

So to me it looks like a bad case of attention deficit disorder from the pollies that the first thing I heard when i turned on ABC local radion today was that the Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard is mounting a leadership challenge against Rudd at 9am this morning.

I read the news today. Oh boy...

By the time you read this chances are Australia will have its first female Prime Minister. Which is ace of course, and sadly in many ways no more than Rudd deserves for losing the plot and touch with public opinion so needlessly and so drastically in such a short space of time... however I'm sure there are better ways with dealing with the fact that this week Australians care more about Tim Cahill, Harry Kewell - hell - even Brett Holman (who hell he? Australia's top goal scorer of the tournament, that's who) than our political leaders.

And if a certain flame-haired lady is reading this before her leadership challenge, remember - half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it just to reach you, Julia...

Intense Feelings of Disappointment

Folks, the argument about fashion retailers making clothes available in sizes that reflect the average woman has been well documented and dissected in the world's media. However here at Mint Custard we are sad to report an even worse trend than Size 0; that of tent intolerance.

For more on this disgusting phenomenon, check out these pictures from a recent trip to the Big W outdoor pursuits section. Look at the size of these tents. Who on Earth can sleep in these? Only tiny people, that's all. Really tiny people. The average Australian woman is a size 14. Do they really expect a size 14 woman to be able to fit into these tents? No, of course they don't - because they don't care about the real people, the normal people - people like you and me. No, they only care about magic tiny people who can fit into their trendy tiny tents... people like Kate Moss and Ruby Rose and Grand Denyer from Channel 7. Boo Big W. Boo to you for supporting this market fascism.

And it's not just tents. Look at these lovely sleeping bags. Duck down, lotsa togs, suitable for temperatures up to minus 10 degrees centigrade. Sounds good huh? Looks nice, right? Well dream on brothers and sisters because unless you fit with the media dictated hiking high set or you're part of the cool camping club, forget it. These tents come in just one size - super fucking small, so unless you're Dannii Minogue you can just ditch those plans for climbing Mount Kosciuszko in comfort and prepare yourself for chilblains and frostbite, you tubby suckers.

As we all know from Rick (the People's Poet) in situations like this there is only one option and that is to write to the lead singer of Echo and the Bunnymen and demand action... So for those equally as incensed as me at this hiking hypocrisy, please contact Mr Echo here...

Mint Custard - bringing back political activism one row of tents at a time.

"Because I Look Great in Tulle"

This Monday 17th May 2010 is IDAHO which stands for International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (kind of, but who's counting?) Several hundred people turned out at the State Library in Melbourne today to to mark the occasion and to support Equal Love, a year long campaign of action for same sex marriage in Australia. Here's a few pictures, including one of (Sir) Ian McKellen who got the crowd nicely hyped up before all the politicians and activists took to the stage.

The title of this post is taken from my favourite homemade banners on the day. This was another lo-fi gem. One I didn't get a picture of was the gently Church-baiting 'Jesus Had Two Daddies...'

Yo Gabba Gabba's Brobee shows his appreciation of the Lady GaGa stand-in

The Sir Ian love-in...

Lady Gaga (the no frills version) does her best to Sydney-up a Melbourne crowd

For more information on other IDAHO activities around the planet visit the official website here. For more on the Australian Year of Action for Same Sex Marriage check out the Equal Love website here.

Which Old Witch?

There were stories in the press this week about an 83 year old woman in the early stages of dementia returning home after a fall in which she broke a bone in her arm. Naturally I felt a bit sorry about her situation but almost immediately, uncontrollably I felt annoyance at myself for caring at all about someone I’ve spent most of my life hating. She may be a harmless and fragile old woman now, but Margaret Thatcher is, like those frail, white-haired old Nazis at 1980’s war crimes trials, still guilty of her lifetime’s actions.

Let’s get the silly stuff out of the way up front. I have a long standing commitment to celebrate the death of Margaret Thatcher by purchasing a bottle of champagne from the nearest bottle shop and sharing it with whoever is with me at the time. People who know me well understand the weight of this admittedly puerile act because they know I am a tight-arse who never spends more than $15 on a bottle of anything.

My pledge was first made in the middle of all the hoo-ha about the death of Diana (remember her? the Queen-of-our-Hearts princessy one?) That outpouring of emotion was so bizarre and unexpected one couldn’t help but wonder if anyone else’s passing could generate such waves. The spot-lit death of Jade Goody is the closest thing since to a post-Diana grieving frenzy (despite the Pope popping his clogs in 2005), but in those limited-internet and pre-reality TV days it seemed that only Thatcher’s demise was capable of stirring up British hearts all over again.

Of course the difference with Maggie is her position as one of the most celebrated and reviled politicians of the modern era, depending on which side of the tracks you hail from. Her passing will be unique because for all the solemn trappings that come with the death of a former Prime Minister (including most likely a state funeral) in many parts of Britain there will be partying in the streets.



It’s a thought most people probably don’t dwell on much, but there is already a large groundswell of anticipation for the big day. Songwriters have long-imagined the day, notably Elvis Costello’ in Tramp Down the Dirt (“when they finally put you in the ground, they’ll stand there laughing and tramp the dirt down”) Morrissey’s Margaret on the Guillotine (“people like you make me feel so old, when will you die?”) and Hefner’s The Day That Thatcher Dies.

More recently there were two fairly well publicised British plays; Maggie’s End and the unambiguous Death of Margaret Thatcher. Both explore the possible reactions of the British public, one take on which you can probable guess from a lively Facebook group called ‘We’ll only pay for a state funeral for Thatcher if she’s buried alive.’

There are clearly a number of us on death watch. Thatcher cannot cough, sneeze or collapse embarrassingly in public without it making the news. There is always a barely concealed subtext: Not Long Now. The right speak of her brave battle against dementia, whilst some on the left joke that she’s been senile for decades. It’s clear that both sides are preparing the ground for what will be a pivotal moment in defining Thatcher’s final legacy.

My own reaction to hearing that Thatcher had dementia last year was one of sympathy. Dementia in all its guises is a terrible, disorientating and crippling disease. I realised that despite it all I truly don’t wish it on my worst enemy. This unexpected sympathy initially made me question if it’s not time to grow up a little. After all, no one wants to sound like Rik from the Young Ones. My champagne pledge was made as an idealistic student, big on talk but small on walk. It’s a crude idea (I don’t even particularly like champagne) that has stayed with me mostly because it sounds funny. Surprisingly it can also still shock people, horrified at the thought that a death – any death – could be celebrated.

But in truth it does still serve an important purpose because it reminds me what was and what shouldn’t be forgotten. My hatred was never arbitrary, nor was it naive. True, it came from growing up in a family that would perform a comedy ‘spit’ every time her name was mentioned, but it was also born of experience. It came from watching Thatcher’s revenge-based policies tearing apart communities she knew nothing about; my communities. It came from seeing an industry that my dad and his dad had devoted over sixty years to developing divided up by accountants and sold off for pittance. It came from watching miners practically having to beg to stay alive because she had to have the last word. It came from seeing people robbed of their jobs and being left with nothing else to live for. My family still live in a town where decades of under investment in infrastructure and industry has created unemployment so chronic my sister hasn’t been able to get a job for over six years. Time and distance has put Vaseline on my lens so anything that knocks me out of my stride and makes me remember the viciousness of her attack on a way of life is a good thing.

Why? Because until very recently the argument went that Thatcher was the change that Britain needed to have. She modernised, deregulated and cleared the way for years of prosperity enjoyed by millions in the UK. No need for council homes when everyone can own their own home. Industry regulation, unions and tight-knit communities were obstacles to the freedom that the UK needed to prosper and only Maggie had the balls to take them all on. It may have been a Labour government that oversaw the good times, but Blair was really a good little Thatcherite with a red tie. Deep down Thatcher’s dream was our dream. No society; just individuals looking after themselves and all doing alright, thank you.

Had Thatcher died in 2007 she would no doubt have gone to her grave with obituaries trumpeting these sentiments and lauding her courage and vision in shaping modern Britain. What joy then, that having stuck around she has lived long enough to see the dream fall apart. Far from freeing up the UK to the unfaltering benefits of the market, she can now be seen as being responsible for throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Years of deregulation and unfettered greed have left the UK tragically under-equipped to deal with the global financial crisis, with the recession striking hardest against homeowners encouraged to borrow more than they could afford.

Unsurprisingly the world has lurched left. We have seen nationalisations of banks and building societies, calls for greater levels of government intervention from within all manner of private industry, caps on executive salaries and general decrying of businesses who put profit over people. Were Thatcher in her grave she'd be spinning pretty fast.

There is never closure in politics. The only thing certain about governments is that one day they will be elected out. Tides will turn; strong opinion poll ratings will become landslides to the opposition; theories and policies will drop in and out of favour. There is no such thing as the last laugh, as Gordon Brown and the champions of New Labour are currently finding out, and as David Cameron will understand when the public see past his novelty and realise he stands for nothing. We can only acknowledge and learn from our mistakes during the bad times, and enjoy the good times as they happen.

So it may be childish and it may be morally wrong, but I will make sure that bottle of champagne gets bought when the news of Maggie’s death finally comes through, and I’ll make sure I share the enjoyment with as many people as I can. To give the final word to Hefner

We will laugh the day that Thatcher dies,
Even though we know it’s not right
We will dance and sing all night

Prime Ministers’ Questions Time

Does anyone know at what point it became necessary for world leaders to comment on the activities of two-bit celebs? Hot on the heels of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown taking time out from the imminent collapse of his Labour Government to share his thoughts on Susan Boyle, the Scottish singing housewife, we now have Kevin Rudd weighing into Ramsaygate.

The events and circumstances surrounding chef Gordon Ramsay’s childish slagging of Tracy Grimshaw are irrelevant really. If he used sexist or homophobic language he’s a dickhead. I’m not interested in him, and I’ve no respect for her as the face of one of the most vile shows on television in A Current Affair.

What rubs me up the wrong way is journalists looking for sound bites from people who (in theory) have more important things to think about. Honestly, does anyone truly care what the Prime Minister thinks about Grimshaw or Ramsay? Of course he’s going to say it’s a bad thing. Anything else would be seized upon by the various parties and used to give him bad press.

He could just have said nothing but sadly Kevin 07 can’t resist a chance to prove he’s an everyman. He also seems to have inherited John ‘Fair Dinkum’ Howard’s irritating knack for dropping Australianisms into his official statements to make him seem more like a man of the people - this time calling Ramsay’s behaviour ‘low life.’ What next? Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a flaming galah?

Similarly Gordon Brown. Faced with the biggest political crisis of his career and the nigh on certain end of Labour’s time in power, Gordon was on breakfast television expressing concern for the wellbeing of reality TV star Susan Boyle who collapsed after she lost in the final of Britain’s Got Talent. His concern stepped over a line when he revealed that he had personally called Simon Cowell and Piers Morgan, just two of the shits responsible for exploiting Boyle, to make sure all was fine. "I hope Susan Boyle is OK because she is a really, really nice person and I think she will do well," Brown added – presumably with a mournful puppy dog look at the camera.

PR already has too much influence over our political systems. Politicians spend more time playing the PR game than doing the work we need of them. One cannot help but laugh at the assurances from David Cameron, leader of the UK Conservative Party that his favourite bands include Radiohead and the Smiths. Of course they are David, you jumped-up pantry boy…

Elsewhere politicians are expected to have such populist views, tastes and opinions that their own personalities fade from view. Do we truly expect them to watch the dross that is A Current Affair, or even to know who Gordon Ramsay is? Would we begrudge Kevin had he said ‘sorry, never heard of him?’ More importantly, would it honestly affect our vote? Is this truly what we want from our leaders today: false emotions and moral outrage, on tap? And does being in touch with the public have to mean the lowest taste common denominator?

An unpleasant anti-intellectualism theme ran through the 2008 US Election coverage, with some areas of the media accusing Barrack Obama of being elitist and out of touch with the people. When it came down to the crunch the American public decided that actually, Obama was very much in touch with them, despite having a showing a preference for cellist Yo-Yo Ma over Fall Out Boy and Rihanna. It was the media who had it wrong.

In the end most politicians are chameleons who will adapt to any cultural climate to get elected and then stay there. It is up to us as a society to set higher standards for them to live up to. We should have higher expectations of our journalists, something we can demonstrate through consumption of a better class of media rather than rags like the Telegraph and Herald Sun or ACA / Today Tonight muck raking. Maybe when they stop asking the pollies silly questions they’ll have more time to hold them to account for the things that do matter.

Beautiful

Only a year late, but I found the album Angles by Dan le Sac v Scroobius Pip at the weekend for a snip and decided to take a punt. I loved the single Thou Shalt Always Kill – as much for the bleepy silliness as Pip’s post-millennium Howl!/The Revolution Will not be Televised rant – and was pleased that the album was of a similar quality and actually much better than the ‘new Streets’ reviews that people were lazily banding around. It’s got more in common with the work of Abdominal and DJ Format, with clever lyrics bonding with interesting and diverse beats in a way that makes you question why it’s not more popular.

One track in particular, Tommy C, made me appreciate someone with fresh ideas who doesn’t feel that they have to talk about the same old shit all the time. It’s essentially a tribute to how funny Tommy Cooper was, set against an argument that casually using the word ‘beautiful’ just leads to it being devalued. It describes the audience’s reaction to the (almost) true story of Cooper’s death of a heart attack on stage in 1984 (they laughed and applauded) with Pip challenging ‘Now tell me one fucking thing that's more beautiful than that... Cos' I’m sure I can’t think of one.’

I’m always up for a list, especially one that can’t be disproved or have any genuine purpose, but I just ended up reminiscing about nice moments in my life, and frankly it was all a bit sweet and gushing. That said here are a couple of times when the right thing just seemed to happen and my heart (and those of a few other people) was lifted:

Pulp headline Glastonbury (1995): my missus went to Glastonbury in 1993 where the headliners included Midnight Oil, a reformed Velvet Underground, Robert Plant, The Black Crowes, Lenny Kravitz, The Kinks and Van Morrison. You get some sense therefore of the beauty of the seismic shift that occurred in just two years that led to Jarvis standing before 50,000 people telling people that ‘if this lanky git can make it then you can too’ before launching into one of the finest renditions of Common People you’ll ever see.

Dennis Taylor beats Steve Davis: bizarrely this was the first sporting memory that came into my head when I thought of beauty, despite Dennis Taylor’s memorably style-free upside-down glasses. Taylor won the 1985 World Snooker Championship with the last black of the last frame against Steve Davis, who was then the all-conquering Manchester United robot-man of snooker. Taylor’s cue-aloft, finger waggling celebration and fucking HUGE smile still makes me tear-up. And it’s snooker!

Maxine McKew wins John Howard’s seat in Bennelong Elections suck. Great idea in theory but the bad guys always win. Some might say that they’re all bad guys, but there will always be those who care more about the people they represent than others. McKew’s victory in Howard’s backyard was all the sweeter because it had been said that if she won then so would Labor, and so it was. In the end Howard actually looked relieved, but not as much as the rest of us. See also UK Election Night, May 1997 and the US Presidential Election 2008. However history has these things ending up, it doesn’t take away the joy of how it started.

Sunderland 4-1 Chelsea, December 1999 After winning the Championship in 1998/1999 with a record number of points, Sunderland’s first game back in the Premier League was away to Chelsea. It’s fair to say we got twatted, 4-0, and were immediately listed amongst the favourites to get relegated (this is in the days before our very presence in the Premier League made us favourites to go down). Beautiful then to gain revenge four months later at the Stadium of Light and not just win, but play Chelsea off the pitch so comprehensively that it was 4-0 at half-time. Beautiful that the goals came from Niall Quinn and Kevin Phillips, whose goals had got us up from the Championship, and beautiful then that SKP’s second could still win Goal of the Year.

Arriving with the coffin at my Grandpa’s funeral to a guard of honour by the remaining few men from his army regiment. This is nothing to do with glorification of war. I don’t believe in it, and neither did my Grandpa. He didn’t talk about bravery or causes or military might, just the friends and comrades who made up his regiment and who he met up with once a year. He attended their every funeral, and when it was his turn, they were there for him. I don’t know what I felt that day; pride for him I suppose, pride for all of them, pride to be there as a member of his family. I don’t even know if I was entitled to feel pride in something I had nothing to do with, but I did, and it was beautiful.