Wowsers

A moral panic is facing the City of Churches - a bar and lounge has opened in the CBD and its patrons are that most frightening subset of youth culture – the Gamer.

The opening of the Pimp Pad Gamers Bar and Lounge next to Eynesbury Senior College, smack-bang in the centre of down-town Adelaide, has provoked the far too oft-heard wowsers clarion call ‘won’t somebody think of the children’ to be trumpeted by long-time Adelaide City Councillor, Ann Moran.

The fun police troopers are heeding the call and assembling their forces to clamp down hard on the Gamers venue, staunchly opposing its liquor license. Fuelled by Councillor Moran’s claims that an adult entertainment venue next door to a senior high school will act as a ‘honey trap for kids’. Portrayals of violent and sex-crazed patrons in a venue of sleaze and strippers’ poles abound.

Continue reading "Pimp.tv: Moral panic in the City of Churches" »

At least once a week, when I open the newspaper there seems to be some fresh new panic about the tsunami of childhood obesity that is crashing on our golden sandy beaches which a generation or two ago were filled with healthy bronzed young men and women who were either training for the next Olympic Games or about to pull on a pair of battered Dunlop Volley sandshoes, borrow a beaten up old wooden racquet and fly off to win Wimbledon.

Yep, every time a politician opens his or her mouth (usually on the way to a four course five star lunch at a taxpayer funded Parliamentary Dining Room) they sadly shake their heads, wobble their double chins and lament the rise of the TV obsessed Generation XXL.

If you ask most people who they blame for this sad decline, they would nominate a man who might be best described as Richard Nixon, Colonel Sanders and Hannibal Lector all rolled into one. I’m talking of course about Ronald McDonald. He’s there, supersizing our kids against their better judgement till their belts burst open.

Continue reading "There’s no such thing as junk food, only junk diets" »

Wowsers sure had some great wins this week. The mid-life crisis now hits people in their mid-30s. The march of over-parenting continues.

The Heart Foundation wants us eating margarine instead of butter. Bikini races were cancelled on the Gold Coast (OK perhaps that’s a win for decency, but the reaction to it was way over the top).  And if all that wasn’t enough to make you cry, one of the most authoritative voices in world music, Britain’s NME, released a list of songs that is guaranteed to do so, at least if you’re a bloke. It’s a list of songs that make men cry the most. Top of the list is REM’s Everybody Hurts, which I would guess doesn’t make people cry because it’s sad, but because it’s so utterly rubbish.

Enough. At least for Friday afternoon. Punchers make excellent music lists, so with Stevie Wonder above and a bit of Jackie Wilson and others below to kick us off, try make a playlist that sticks one in the eye of wowsers everywhere. The only rule is that the song is a happy one: no heartbreak, tales of woe, or laments for injustice against puppies. Add your suggestions in the comments and we’ll build out the list.

Continue reading "Punch playlist: Songs to get back at wowsers" »

Butter is made by the simple act of churning cream.

Margarine is a fake food that originated in a laboratory as a result of food science. It commonly contains a lengthy list of ingredients, like hydrogenated vegetable oil and artificial colours and flavours, to control its taste, texture and colour. In fact, margarine is pumped full of artificial colouring agents so it looks yellow like butter (we’re so easily fooled).

There were once laws against dying artificial foods to look like natural foods. These days our governments are rarely bothered by chemically altered concoctions posing as food. We trust science now.

Continue reading "I can’t believe it’s not splutter" »

THE past week has been filled with some serious news from serious places. Luckily none of this need concern us here, as Suburban Tales presents you with men bearing flowers, cars bearing children’s play equipment, and tow trucks bearing your automobile.

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Sleazy or Cheesy: Where is the line between sleaze and old-fashioned courtesy?

Everybody has a pervy uncle. They’re part of the wider family ecology, along with the smarter, more popular alpha-cousin and the preternaturally athletically gifted niece who’s destined to represent her state in a sport no one cares about. We all know the tricks in the pervy uncle’s sleazy arsenal:

Continue reading "Suburban tales: Rules for the pervy uncle, and more" »

During the last six months I’ve had to stop drinking. Pregnancy and alcohol are a “no-no,” and I haven’t felt like it anyway.

Enforced “dryness” has been interesting. It’s made me think twice about who I want to socialise with and also made me reflect on the drinking habits I’ve established over the last few years.

When you’re not drinking and hanging out with people who are, and “getting on it,” the scene quickly becomes intensely boring.

Continue reading "I’m pregnant, sober, and seeing booze in a new light" »

If you wanted to write a short skit to satirise the insidious fan-hating culture of cricket ground managers, what would the plot be?

How about, say, Santa Claus being ejected after skylarking with a bloke dressed in a cancer-awareness tutu? That’s surely sufficiently exaggerated to make the comical point.

Bzzt. Try harder. That’s precisely what happened at the Sydney Cricket Ground on the first day of the New Year Test.

Continue reading "Killing cricket" »

Surely it’s some kind of peer reviewed joke. A researcher at Monash university has published a paper in the British Medical Journal saying it’s time to re-think Santa because he’s an obese, speeding drink-driver who spreads disease and is therefore a bad role model.

Ditto, obviously, for the tooth fairy who is doing a roaring trade in body parts. And the Easter Bunny must be a bad role model too because he brings chocolate and also makes no sense. And the bogeyman, who has questionable hygiene and engages in the potentially deadly activity of climbing up on rooftops to make things go bump.

There are too many bad role models around kids, but they’re much more omnipresent than Santa. The morbidly obese, the lazy, the cheats and liars of the world are everywhere and tragically some kids see this behaviour in their homes 365 days a year. And that’s before you get to rugby league players and drug-addled Hollywood starlets.

Continue reading "Save Santa from wowsers" »

We live in an environment where alcohol is under siege.

Every day we are assailed with stories of glassings, drunken and rampaging footballers, binge drinking and all manner of other incidents pointing to an alcohol-fuelled end of civilisation.

Every day our politicians are making new suggestions about how to solve the problem, including today’s suggestion from the Prime Minister: confronting advertising campaigns to warn young Australians about the dangers of excessive drinking.

Continue reading "Drinking less will let you drink better for longer" »

OK, so the headline’s a bit cruel - you wouldn’t use this material in the front bar unless you enjoy a public humiliation, but it’s a good potted guide to beer tasting and matching a brew with steak.

It comes from BigThink.com and springs off Obama’s beer summit, offering advice on etiquette next time you’re settling a major national issue over a drink. Enjoy.

If you’re a beer enthusiast, check out our own Matt Kirkegaard, The Punch’s resident lager-and-stout expert.

There are few occasions when beer and politics should mix.

Barack Obama has recently demonstrated one of the few times when it can work, diffusing a race row with the offer of a peace-making beer at the White House.

Any Federal politician gingerly holding a beer in an RSL or public bar in an unconvincing attempt to come across as a man of the people is an example of when it doesn’t.

Continue reading "Trouble brewing for cyclists’ beer in trademark row" »