Heat by Rob O’Neill

After a concerted campaign of shock and awe the Girlie has totally capitulated on the kitchen front and my forces are about to march on the last bastion of resistance.

Her bedroom is my Baghdad.

While timid appeasers claim my “coalition of the appalled” will be bogged in a quagmire of old Michel’s Pattiserie cheesecake, make no mistake, victory will be mine. Intelligence sources say the enemy is in total disarray, morale is low, she hasn’t eaten for weeks.

Actually, I made her a pizza last night as the kitchen has been relatively clean for a week or so. I think the threat of docking her pocket money was what really did the trick.

Now, I’ve been extraordinarily busy of late so I apologise for the slow-down in my postings. But there is something that has been on my mind that I wanted to share with you, my public. It’s not something I do very often but last week I got totally fed up and decided to go and buy some new undies. The old ones were even offending me!

So I head down to Gowings, which is like Farmers but better – actually more like Rendells for you oldies. You remember? The great one up on K Rd with the little man in the manual lift?

Anyway down to Gowings I go, straight to the undie department. Clearly it had been a while since I last shopped for such personal items. Imagine my shock and awe on discovering everything has changed.

No longer do you buy your undies in a range of sizes and styles (small, medium, large, obese; G-string, Y-front, sports brief). You have a range of brands, of course, and a range of colours too. But now, drum-roll, you can specify your “pouch size”. Yes, some dastardly marketing bastard has decided to play on men’s legendary insecurity about the size of their tackle.

So now you can buy “full front” and “double front” undies, specially designed for the manly man, the XYY man, the donkey-boy. So what do you do? What can you do? You pick the biggest damn pouch you can find! A pouch the size of a fucking football for the man who usually wheels his testicles around in a barrow! Find the sexiest little checkout chicky there, sidle up with a smile and a wink …

Alternatively you could go all sheepish and embarrassed. Take ten minutes to approach the same checkout chick and ask, in subdued tones, if they have anything in a slightly smaller size, you know, pouch-wise… Something for the man with a micro-penis.

Just for the reaction of course. Ahh, life’s such fun.

I’ve also discovered a foul-tasting soft-drink that goes by the name of SARS, believe it or not. I bought the last three cans at our local super-market, so obviously there’s a few of us with the same sense of humour. Buy some and give them to your friends.

Anyway, all that has precious little to do with Sydney. It’s been raining heavily for a week. I try and grab gaps in the weather to go ouside but as soon as I do it buckets down again. When I was a kid it was always the other way around. My rain luck has gone.

Unfortunately, the rain, solid though it is, has unaccountably missed Sydney’s main water reserve, the Waragamba Dam where water levels have actually fallen. Unbelievably water restrictions are still likely. I’m convinced there’s some sort of Chinatown thing going on. Might head up there at the weekend and investigate.

Girlie’s in a mood. I asked her to clean up the mess in the kitchen from her dinner on Saturday, and breakfast and lunch on Sunday. Somehow she finds this unreasonable, even though her one and only chore, the one I pay her pocket money for, is to keep the kitchen tidy.

Anyway, I’ve now gone on strike. I’m not cooking or making her lunch until she cleans it up. Or paying her pocket money until she gets her act in order. That’s it. Out brothers out!

Which all reminds me I’ve been asked for some teen parenting tips by Wendy, who happens to be the Girlie’s aunt. So here goes, Rob’s Top 5 tips for the modern parent of surly teenagers.

1. Getting them to clean up the kitchen: see above.

2. Getting them out of bed: There are number of methods here but my favourite is to play music really loudly, especially if any of you have a copy of Sweet’s Ballroom Blitz, the sirens are a killer. Alternatively you can always throw cold water over them.

3. Keeping them out of your stash: Well you could keep it better hidden, but they usually find it anyway. You could increase their allowance so they can go buy their own, or just buy some for them and take it out of their allowance. Hell, if you do this you could even start raiding their stash! I was around a mate's place a few years ago when he rolled into the lounge furious and shouted at his kids: “Will you little bastards stay out of my drugs! Go and buy your fuckin’ own.” Truly admirable, I think.

4. Dealing with the boyfriend: this one’s easy – embarrass the hell out of them and you won’t have them hanging around. I did this with my elder daughter’s boyfriend (yes there are really two Girlies, just the other one’s a Sneebles). He waltzed in with his pants hanging way down low to share his buttcrack with me. Sneebs was obviously pretty proud of him, but, just as they were about to head out, I offered him the loan of a belt. They were aghast. “No, seriously, I’ve got a spare one.” Never saw Mr Buttcrack around ours again.

Now you might say it’s better to have them round so at least you know they’re safe and comfortable. Fuck that new age horse shit! Kick ‘em out and let them do it all the old-fashioned shameful way, same as we did. Never did us any harm. Alternatively you can always throw cold water over them.

5. Keeping them out of your whisky. This one is closely related to point 3 but a different strategy offers itself. In the 50s and 60s if kids were sly grogging, they would top up their parents' whisky with tea to stave off discovery. These days it pays to be proactive in your parenting. Keep a spare empty bottle of whisky and fill it full of tea to start with. Then when they come looking... You could add laxatives if they’re persistent – or just for the hell of it.

Now another correspondent, a certain C J Bell, has pointed out that the term “mid-Atlantic” is often a term of mild abuse in Europe: “It was most often used ironically in the 1980s to describe those Radio One DJs of the Smashey and Nicey ilk who spoke with a painfully adopted American accent when they were actually from Epping or Ongar. Speaking as a bi (almost tri)-lingual European who's spent quite a bit of time in the States, man (and who has never done a lodda work for charriddy), I take exception at the notion that being mid-Atlantic is anything other than a big smelly blob of sargasso.”

Fair cop. You can't argue with such obvious sophistication. I’ve heard the term used in that way as well. This usage seems most common among nationalists of one form or another. I’ve read it used by Quebec French, for instance, when arguing for a more indigenous Quebecish theatre. Ipso facto, if you'll pardon my French, Quebec French, good; mid-Atlantic French (that is harking back to or hankering after European Frenchness), bad.

But I’ve also heard it used in a positive way too. So there.

Around the time the old Anzacs were coming to the end of their march down George St yesterday, the pubs were filling up. All across town young and old were gearing up for a few good sessions of two-up.

I went to the Sandringham (aka The Sando) in Newtown and after a promising start to go $50 ahead, ended $100 down. That put me about midfield among my mates with one losing $190 and another ending slightly ahead.

You can see why this game is so peculiarly popular in Australia – it’s social, you can play while getting royally pissed, you don’t need anything but a couple of coins. It’s an egalitarian game – a game that can be played everywhere and everyone can join in. And it’s so simple you can be a master in 10 seconds.

Also Aussies like to make a lot of noise. Two-up is all about noise.

According to my research the game originates from a British game called Pitch and Toss. Imported by the convicts this involved one coin. By the 1850s it had evolved into the peculiarly Australian two-coin game which was played with gusto by the Anzacs wherever they went.

The march itself is carried live on TV. Each unit passes marching behind their divisional banner telling where they fought. Mostly now the veterans are from World War II, so the names are Tobruk, Alemain, Borneo, Kokoda and Bougainville. There was only one Word War I veteran in the march here yesterday – one of nine left in Australia. Last year there were, from memory, 14. It is very moving, even if you can’t quite drag your sorry arse out of bed to attend at dawn.

Then there are the traditional sporting fixtures – Essendon v Collingwood in the AFL. It was disappointing, though, there was no Australia/New Zealand test scheduled in any code.

Now, if you’re like me you probably love a good magazine. The problem I’ve been having is finding one. I used to like the lads mags – Loaded, FHM etc but have gotten a bit bored with that lot. I still pick up a Vanity Fair from time to time. It’s hard to beat.

But generally I look at the shelves and walk out of the shop empty handed. I want to buy, but can’t.

Well, some magazine people apparently feel the same way. They’ve left their cozy lurks in the heart of the UK mag publishing trade and went out on their own with Word. The first issue, March, is now on the streets and it’s not bad. I won’t declare it a success just yet but there is some good stuff in here.

The editor says he didn’t want to do a magazine by numbers, so they didn’t do any reader research before launch. His aim was to produce the kind of magazine the Word team would like to read in the belief there were plenty of people out there just like them.

My only criticism is that while Word carries good coverage of music and figures a thirty-something would recognise (Nick Cave, John Peel, Neil Tennant) it doesn’t really deal with whatever the “new new thing” is. In other words if you’re under say 25 you might find it a bit crusty.

That’s a shame because the new new thing isn’t inaccessible even to thirty- and forty-somethings. I hope this will improve because the magazine I have been looking for is one that both understands where I am, like Word, but from time to time also takes me well outside my comfort zone.

Anyway, it’s a brave launch and well worth a look.

In the Northern Hemisphere they have an expression, an expression that evokes the ultimate in urbanity and sophistication: mid-Atlantic. To say that someone is a mid-Atlantic person or that they have a “mid-Atlantic sensibility” is to say they have drunk deep of the two great troughs of Western culture, American and European.

Such people have probably lived on both continents; they will probably speak English and one other European language (preferably French even now). They will quote European philosophers and American popular culture interchangeably.

It has struck me how we do not have an equivalent term for someone who embraces both sides of the Tasman, a mid-Tasman person. This is of particularly importance to me, of course, because I like to think of myself as a prime candidate for the appellation.

As there is no such expression, the qualities a mid-Tasman person would have to display is up for grabs. But leaving that aside, I’ve come to realise there is one essential reason why the term will never catch on. Where up north there are two clear undeniable cultural power blocs, for Australians there isn’t anything very important on the other side of the Tasman to start with.

To coin such an expression is, in effect, to grant New Zealand and New Zealand culture some sort of parity. There is absolutely no reason why Australia would do that, especially as whenever something worthwhile comes out of New Zealand it is simply co-opted as Australian. This week on TV, for instance, we were treated to The Horse Whiperer, starring “Robert Redford and Australia’s own Sam Neill”.

This blatant cultural co-option is a common kiwi complaint, so common I don’t want to go on about it. Suffice to say it is particularly galling to the Girlie, who is still naive enough to believe in concepts such as decency and honesty.

But I do want to make a suggestion. In situations where there is a clear disparity of military power the classic response from the weaker side is guerrilla warfare. This can work in matters cultural as well. Guerrilla tactics worked for the Vietnamese, they can work for us kiwis too.

Sometimes the Aussies are genuinely surprised when you inform them Split Enz, Crowded House, Jane Campion, Sam Neill or Phar Lap are actually kiwis. If you mention Russell Crowe, though, they usually appear relieved.

What I do to liven up this ultimately boring and repetitive game is go one step further. I add Paul Kelly’s name to the end of the list and wait for the inevitable reaction.

“What?”

“Paul Kelly.”

“What do you mean Paul Kelly?”

“He’s a kiwi.”

“No he isn’t, mate. He’s true blue. He’s from Melbourne.”

“Brought up in Melbourne,” I reply casually. “But he was born in Taranaki. That’s not a tan, you know, he’s one eighth Maori.”

"No ..."

"Ngati Ruanui, mate."

This really slays them. The sudden insecurity on their faces is priceless. They walk off, head down, turning it over and over in their minds. “Could it be?”

So, I would now like to invite you all to join me in claiming Paul Kelly as a long-lost kiwi son. If we succeed, who knows, I may be able to start calling myself mid-Tasman after all.

There’s a certain bellicose right-winger who has taken offence at my last post, The Middle-Eastern Despot Challenge. I would like to assure NZPundit, and anyone else out there for whom English is a second language, that the post was written in a sense of deep, bitter and hopeless irony.

The neo-Reaganites have raised the issue of Saddam’s slaughter of muslims on several occasions, seemingly to divert attention from their own mounting tally.

Let me shout for the hard-of-hearing: such statistics are ridiculous and immoral! Are we to accept that as long as George W Bush kills less muslims than Saddam that makes it all A-okay? How many less should there be? If there's only a few, is that still okay?

Saddam may already be in his rightful place, but devout George's chances of going somewhere different when the reaper comes a-calling are approximately zero.

Anyway, I went out to Newtown today, got a haircut and went to see 24-hour Party People, which I found surprisingly good. The treatment of Ian Curtis’s suicide brought back some of the sense of shock at the time.

For those that weren’t in the world yet, you had to listen to late night Hauraki to hear any of this stuff. I was working at an Uncles burger bar and used to hang a little radio from the handlebars of my bike to listen to Barry Jenkins on the way home in the wee small hours. (If there’s ever a retro NZ movie there has to be an Uncles in it.)

Joy Division records weren’t even being distributed here – you had to pick up small import batches or get someone to send them over. The record companies ended up screwing themselves though: when they finally relented and released Love Will Tear Us Apart, the pent-up demand was such it went straight to number one and kept the Rolling Stones out of their “rightful” spot for two weeks.

Maybe it’s because I’m of a certain age, but I had to race home and stick some of my old Joy Division on. I did so only to discover Girlie has wrecked my stylus.

After bawling her out, she informed me it was our anniversary. She’s been over here exactly one year. So, to kiss and make up we went out to dinner at Bronte, a quiet beachfront between Bondi and Coogee. Fabulous.

That post wasn’t ironic, okay?