(R)adelaide Rules

It's in. The Economist has published its annual list of most awesomely radical cities and the winner is some Canadian place that I've never been to. It's probably cold up there so exactly why The Economist saw fit to put it at the top of the list escapes me. But check it. CHECK IT. Number 6. Adelaide. Or, as we locals like to call it, Radelaide. So rad. And Adelaide is perched there one rung above the so-called jewel in Australia's gleaming crown, Sydney. Suck on that Sydney-siders! How does it feel to be trumped by dour, boring Adelaide with all of its human carcasses stuffed into barrels of acid and general love a decent grizzly or unexplained murder? Somehow the eggheads who compiled this completely bogus and inconsequential list figured that living in a city that touts a "freeway" that only goes in one direction in the morning and has to shut down, clear the traffic and then reverse the flow for the evening is a really, really good idea. I'll bet you twelve Aussie dollars that even Bogota hasn't concocted such a busted-arse transport concept and tried to pass it off as a success, and they're scraping the bottom of the barrel on this list.

An old mate of mine once explained his disposition towards Adelaide in a way so elegant that I've never heard it matched. "Adelaide," he said, "is a lot like pissing your pants in corduroy: it's really warm and relieving but you're still pissing your pants." The interesting thing is that he's right, and I knew it. Stay there long enough and you'll either wind up floating down the Torrens after a late-night attack or you'll just slowly feel any drive and ambition ebb from your body. You'll rationalise that being tucked away in the capital city of a who-cares state in a country most citizens of the world think is located somewhere near Hungary isn't so bad. You can still get a reasonably priced yiros down the road and there's plenty of Farmers' Union iced coffee available to mollify the symptoms of the inevitable depression and anxiety brought on by your slow descent into anonymous mediocrity.

But hey, Melbourne's nearly at the top of that list. I hear that place is okay. Their cricket stadium is heaps bigger than the one in Adelaide and they like footy there too. Not like Sydney. They hate footy in Sydney. Wankers.

Pet Peeves - Upside Down Eights

The lazy posts continue unabated.

I hate upside down eights. Usually they rear their top-heavy heads on petrol station price signs, screaming to the world at large that whoever shoves the back-lit numbers up there on the board can't tell his elbow from his arse. Or at least his head from his feet.

Upside down eights are glaring markers of a fundamental lack of attention to detail in the life of the person who saw fit to confuse the big loop with the little loop. "Check me out," they say, "I can't work out how to read a fucking number. Guess what else I can't work out? Lots of stuff, I'm betting."

So I was walking down San Jose Avenue near my house on the weekend and no shit, this is what I saw bolted to the front of a house...

It's your house! Your fucking $800,000 house! Get it fucking right! I can forgive a barely employable and savagely undereducated petrol station minimum-wager for mucking it up, but when you're attaching these things in a more or less permanent fashion to the exterior of your San Francisco love-pad you should probably take a second or two to see which way is up. It's not hard. Pretty simple really. Little loop on top. Big loop on bottom. Christ!

Pet Peeves - More Custom Licence Plates

This is what I do when I'm either too lazy or too busy to write a decent post: I submit a new custom licence plate.Ric's alma mater-sporting (another pet peeve I've not yet addressed) Benz was found proudly displaying its pedigree at the Park-n-Ride by the Black Mountain Road exit off 280. Keep in mind that the Black Mountain Road exit serves to feed the well-heeled through to the palatial grounds of an exclusive golf course. And there you have it: Ric likes to mingle with the gentry and whack off a few tees, if you know what I mean.

Thanks for telegraphing it to the rest of us via your custom licence plate, Ric. We really couldn't give a shit.

Pet Peeves - Custom Licence Plates

Oh man, they're at it again with their custom licence plates. This one makes no sense whatsoever. Can any of you decipher it?I'm at a total loss. Is it supposed to refer to Luciano Pavarotti, "You, Tenor!"? Is the driver of the vehicle a big fan of the Under 10 Experimental Audio Research squad? I'm flat-out stumped when it comes to grasping the connection between the San Francisco Giants and whoever the fuck U10EAR might be. Now I feel as dumb as the person who paid the DMZ for this useless licence plate piece of shit. I'm going to go and dip my head in a pot of boiling oil right now. thx bye.

Anatomy of a Friday Lunch

In my erstwhile life away from blogging, I'm a web development manager at a Silicon Valley tech company. About 50 miles' worth of freeway separates home and work, so when Friday swings around I generally choose to set up shop in the kitchen of my tiny apartment, hip-and-shoulder the cats off the table, and work from home.

One of the perks of the work from home on Fridays scenario is the boozy lunch with colleagues both former and present. Today I got the call-up from The Brown Hornet. Here's an anatomy of a Friday lunch.

Visualise a computer running Yahoo! instant messenger.

The Brown Hornet: Wanna get lunch?

The Polished Turd: Um, yeah, okay. Where?

The Brown Hornet: Somewhere in the Mission. Zeitgeist?

The Polished Turd: Sure, that'll work. If we're not into it I guess we can pick somewhere else nearby.

The Polished Turd: Anyone else coming?

The Brown Hornet: I can check.

The Brown Hornet: I'll be there at noon.

The Polished Turd: I'll check with a few others to see who's coming. See you then.

For those not familiar with the great watering holes of the City, Zeitgeist is a San Francisco dive bar institution. Boasting a great selection of beers on tap, including a few choice ales from the Russian River Brewing Company amongst others, Zeitgeist draws in a large crowd of thirsty punters, especially on a sunny afternoon.

I arrive on my bicycle a fashionable seven minutes after the appointed hour of noon. The Brown Hornet declares that has already ordered and that I should do so too.

"What do you want to drink?"

"Um," there are a lot of beers to choose from, most of which are exceptionally tasty, "how about the Mount Tam Pale Ale? That's a good one."

I fully expected The Brown Hornet to emerge with a pint each. Instead he's toting a pitcher and three glasses. As he drops the pitcher on the wooden bench in the expansive beer garden a few drops spill over the edge.

"That's probably more beer than we really need."

He's right. It is. The Brown Hornet goes on to explain that The Brit is likely to make an appearance at any time and put that third glass to good use, but this is The Brit we're referring to, and those who know him will attest that he rarely does anything either quietly or on time.

The golden liquid disappears as if there's a leak in the bottom of the glass. We discuss the departure of the incumbent CEO at my place of work—a place where The Brown Hornet spent about five years of his working life prior to absconding for a rival start-up—and our personal and career aspirations while the meniscus on the pitcher drops steadily lower.

Finally The Brit arrives, somewhat flustered and almost complaining about the mountain of work that's being heaped upon him.

The Brown Hornet and I have done a fine job of getting through that pitcher of high-potency ale. There's barely enough ale left to half fill The Brit's glass.

"Shall I get you another drink?" he asks, realising that his own thirst needs more slaking than the remnants of the pitcher can provide. Besides, there's a kielbasa sausage with sauerkraut and mustard on the way. I'm about two thirds the way through mine but The Brit's hasn't hit the table yet.

Mentally I run the calculations on how much beer I've already had, how much more I'm likely to drink in the company of The Brit, and how much I really shouldn't drink if I'm to return to my make-shift office setup in the kitchen. This would be the time to let common sense kick in, deny The Brit and be responsible. But it's a sunny afternoon at Zeitgeist. The beer's cold and the burgers hot. Ah, crap, who am I kidding?

"Sure, why not? It's Friday afternoon. I can handle another."

Donald Trump Trumped

OMGWTFBBQ!!1!11!!! Donald Trump could stand to take a few lessons. Holy shit for shit, I could stand to take a few lessons. My mind is blow'd. He doesn't have that much mass on his head to begin with. Somehow the dude has mastered string theory and torn a rift in the space-time continuum, and he's now drawing on additional mass from one of the ten or eleven alter-dimensions. There's no other reasonable explanation. I need to take a break before my whole being dissolves. This just isn't scientifically possible.

My Terrorists $tarve Osama's SUV

About the only thing more amusing in this world than a self-righteous licence plate is a self-righteous bumper sticker.

Driving back from LA yesterday I caught this little display of haughty superior-mindedness plastered across the back of, you guessed it, a Prius.

"My car $tarve$ terrorists, does yours?"

The use of the dollar signs drives the point home with alarming efficiency, doesn't it? I really wish I'd been able to snap a photograph before the vehicle tore off ahead of me at ludicrous speed. On the scale of superciliousness it even beats my previous favourite Prius bumper sticker for the top spot...

"Osama loves your SUV!"

It might as well read "America! Fuck Yeah!" I can picture Osama in his Pakistan border cave right now, hunched over his laptop and masturbating furiously while he downloads grainy pictures of big-haired Texan mothers driving their home schooled pre-teens to bible camp in the recent model year GMC Yukon Denali. He loves it so much.

Hairs would need to be split to find the difference between left wing and right wing bumper sticker propagandists. Leave either a self-satisfied Prius driver or an "America Über Alles", flag-waving monster truck driver to boil on the stove for a few hours and the residue left at the bottom of the pot comes out the same.

Don't Make Me Do It Again

I'm heading down to Huntington Beach this weekend and there's no way I'm getting in a plane. I'd rather drive the I-5 than put myself through the excoriating experience that now constitutes flying within the continental USA.

Adding up the hours and factoring in getting to the airport a couple of hours ahead of the scheduled departure, allowing for the inevitable delay at the gate, allotting for the stress of being herded like sheep through the dip at the security check, and finally suffering the me-first push-and-shove of the exit from the plane, I've decided to drive. We're usually most comfortable when we're the masters of our own destinies, or at least secure in the belief that we're the masters even if we're not. And that's the illusion served to the masses careening down the nation's highways. I'm buying into the fantasy.

Mr. Loverboy (of www.lacubanagringa.com fame) was due to join The Great Organiser and me for the ride down to HB. He was in Palo Alto. We were mere minutes away. My mobile phone rang.

"Hey, Polished Turd, how's it going?"

"Not bad. We'll be there in a a minute."

"Hey, you know what? I don't think I'm going to head down there with you tonight. They're setting up a crazy party here and I think I'll just get a plane ticket and head down tomorrow."

"Have it your way. We'll see you there."

Evidently Mr. Loverboy doesn't share my disdain for the American domestic airline system. Either that or his mental calculus told him that the benefits derived from a night of partying with college students (read: girls) outweigh the detriments incurred by flying Southwest Airlines to Orange County.

Can you blame him?

Movies - Live Free or Die Hard

There's not a lot to do when in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, so The Great Organiser and I took in a movie: Live Free or Die Hard. Despite being totally preposterous, it's honestly quite a lot of fun. The movie is supposed to be about John McClane, but he never really shows up. Bruce Willis gets called "John" throughout the film, but in truth Bruce is just Bruce and that's good enough for the purposes of an action film that pretends to be nothing else. In spite of a smattering of desultory gestures towards character development, Bruce is served up to the audience as a relatively complete package, bald head and all. The director, Len Wiseman, understands that Bruce is a known quantity; we know what we want from him and he gets down to business and delivers. It's not a perfect film by any measure, not nearly as perfect as the first Die Hard, which stands to this day as perhaps the definitive text-book action movie, but it meets its own expectations and even exceeds them. Pixel-driven special effects are ditched in favour of good ol' stunts and props and the script, despite being obviously written as a feature removed from the Die Hard oeuvre and later shoehorned into a vehicle for Bruiser, moves along at a decent clip. Think about it too much and it all falls apart but not to nearly the same extent as Transformers. In this instance it actually makes sense.

In Defence of a Simple Wedding

Hello there reader. I'm sure there's only about one of you so I'll stick with the singular for now.

There's a lot to be said for the simple wedding ceremony. Big, bloated, over-stuffed weddings, choking on their own excess while toppling over due to the top-heavy weight of their self-importance aren't too hard to come by. Chances are that one of your closest friends is planning one of those affairs right now. I'm calling for a savage cut-back on all that perfect venue, perfect dress, perfect flower arrangement, perfect catering, aaarrrgh-the-stylist-totally-fucked-up-my-hair mayhem. Withdraw for a moment, relax, step back and do it simply and do it right.

That's what The Great Organiser and I had the pleasure of enjoying in New Haven, CT, last weekend. If you're looking for an opinion or a critique on New Haven from me then it's in. The place stinks. Take one of the nation's snootiest universities, stuff it full of a handful of cashed-up stick-up-the-arse social rung climbers and surround it with a teeming horde of impoverished bottom feeders whose meager existence it is to dutifully serve their ivy league overlords.

For the record I went to university in Australia—Adelaide Uni to be precise. I managed to dodge the whole American cult of university thing and for that I'm eternally grateful.

The Yale grounds are pleasant enough in a tony East Coast sort of way, but the rest of the city is more or less a dump. Skip it if you can. The wedding, on the other hand, hit the mark. If you're going to put on one of these things, and if you're going to do it kind of on the cheap, here's what you can skimp on.

• The Bride's Maids' and Groom's Men's Outfits — Let them hear hessian sacks if they want, nobody's really going to give a shit and you'll still get to say "I do."
• The Wedding Dress — Sure, you think you look totally rad in all that taffeta but again, at the end of the day nobody else but you is really going to be all that impressed. More to the point, all the other women at the event, including your own bride's maids, will be sizing you up and whispering, "she looks kind of fat in that, don't you think? I can see her belly bulge showing. There's no way I'm going to look that cheap when I get married," to one another.
• Music — Don't hire a band. Go and get one of your buddies who fancies himself as a burnin' up the dance floor DJ to spin a few discs.
• The Ceremony Itself — Keep it short. We're bored already.

Here's what you should NOT trim, skimp or reduce. It's just not proper.

• The Reception Dinner — Never, ever, EVER let the reception dinner fall short. EVER! Everyone attending a wedding reception is required by the laws of weddings to leave both full to the point of explosion and quite drunk. The Great Organiser and I attended a wedding a year or so ago hosted by two very lovely people who, despite being lovely, made the monumentally stupid error of trawling Craigslist to source their caterer. Dumb move. Craigslist is great for anonymous gay hookups and busted furniture, not good for wedding catering. By the time our table was called—we might have been last, I can't remember—all the grub had disappeared. We ate scraps of bread. It was completely shitty. Get a decent caterer. Spend the money. Get everyone plastered on good booze and feed them more than their guts can contain.
• The After Party — Now you can kind of skimp on this one, and if you obeyed the above rule about the grub then you can economise on the grog by snagging the leftovers from the reception (you remembered to supply more booze than could be consumed at the reception even if every attendee were an alcoholic, right?). All you're going to have to do is get the right venue, and if you're smart about it you'll do it at a hotel near the reception. Go a step further and hire a limousine or a bus service to ensure the army of pissheads gets from its wine-soaked and completely fabulous three course dinner to the party without causing a string of road fatalities.

Do these things and you're assured success. Luckily for us, the kind former San Franciscans who invited us to flee our liberal lifestyle for one weekend hit the right notes. The ceremony was short, practically devoid of religious sermons and loaded with good food and booze. Congrats, newly weds, you did it right.