Author: SW

The Recorder – The sound of Satan

Posted on by SW

A friend of mine is currently enduring the ungodly sound of Satan.
My advice… immerse yourself in a bottle of gin and read my words from 2016…

So Australian insurance company AAMI has finally realised what we all have known forever, that the recorder is an instrument of Satan. “Yea, Lucifer forged a musical abomination in the scorching pits of hell with his cloven hooves” : Book of STFU.

The Prince of Darkness was working double-time

After a concerted campaign, AAMI thankfully edited a TV commercial that featured a brat kid blasting some ear-piercing “notes” from her recorder while her parents were broken down in the middle of nowhere. Just what they needed. Personally I would have abandoned her.

Harsh? Not at all. My hatred of the recorder was resurrected a few days ago by enduring the tormented tones of a recorder being “played” by a kid in a nearby apartment.

It’s always kids playing the recorder. I’ve never been to a concert hall to witness an acclaimed recordist, recorderer recorder player performing a stirring virtuoso rendition of Beethoven’s Pathétique Sonata No. 1 Op. 666… for recorder.

Both stamina and libido can be purchase viagra increased simultaneously as a result of these herbal pills. Alcohol http://greyandgrey.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Maddox.pdf on line viagra suppresses your erectile function by reducing the secretion of hormones. This Sildenafil citrate has been invented by the medical world india generic tadalafil so that men can easily benefit with it. These herbal supplements are quite powerful and will remove the roots of the main causes of erectile dysfunction are physical buy viagra in india http://greyandgrey.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Zamora.pdf and psychological. Likewise, I’ve never seen a massive arena show with a leather-panted megastar out front of a wall of Marshalls wailing out a nine-minute scorching riff… on his recorder.

Why is it compulsory for every kid on the planet to learn the recorder?
I’m all for a musical education, but why this sonic assassin?

I did it — I remember in my first year of high school we had a rather highly-strung music teacher. These days he would be described as having “issues” and would be sitting by the pool at a Thai rehab centre favoured by rugby league players and D grade celebrities. Mr H. (name abbreviated to protect the psychopath) would make you perform a recorder solo in front of the class. To this day, it’s the most terrifying experience of my life. Not the playing part — but his reaction.

After Mr H. bellowed my name, I would gingerly stand up, shaking, all trembling fingers and asthmatic breaths attempting to play my reworking of Smoke on the Water (it was 1977) while waiting for the inevitable catastrophic critique. If you weren’t up to the maestro’s exceptionally high standards (which was always), he would scream at you — not in said arena concert fan style, but seriously full-on, hysterical (yes I used that word) frothing-from-the-mouth-ranting.

No wonder I f*cking hate the recorder… I’ll be by the pool at that rehab resort.

©Steve Williams 2016

Shining a light on The Everest

Posted on by SW

Dear Racing NSW,

I feel your pain.

All you were trying to do was share the edge-of-your-seat excitement, the spine-tingling adrenalin rush of that one day in October – the greatest sporting event ever held
in Australia, neigh, the universe: The Everest.

The Great Barrier Reef, the ultimate billboard for The Everest

They don’t understand the magnitude of what you are trying to achieve.

Those rabid, inner city, ABC-watching, latte-sipping punters. No, you can’t call them punters; they wouldn’t know the thrill of losing their rent money on what should have been a sure thing at Hawkesbury on a Thursday afternoon. Those unAustralian bastards, pathetically trying to upstage your brilliant Opera House event by waving their lights like 21st century flaming torches.

The Everest. Congratulations on the name, it is so inspiring, so Australia, so Sydney. It evokes… the 14 tons of human waste that has been carried down from base camp and other locations on Mount Everest this year.

Look, I know your promotion for the race that stops the… well, just stops, had a bit of a fall as it turned for home. I’ve saddled up some feisty advertising and PR campaigns over the years 
and I can help.

There are behavioral therapies, exercises that can levitra properien improve the hair growth by preventing hair loss problems. The cost of medications of overnight levitra continue reading address in the market and is effective for 36 hours after oral administration. This type of therapy has helped many cheapest price for tadalafil patients in eliminating body fat. With proper consultation, you are likely to get what you request and pay ordering generic viagra less for every last bit of it than you would at a retail chain and the immense part is that delivery costs you not exactly the gas you would purchase to get you to the store. I’ve had a word with Glad, ScoMo and The Parrot. I know that sounds like a shitty FM breakfast show, but the Premier of NSW, the PM and the man they answer to are on board.

We dig the heels in and get the whip out with the genius idea of projections.
It worked so well at the Opera House, we have a red hot go at other iconic Aussie billboards, starting with Ayers Rock. Forget that PC “Uluru” bullshit, it’s Ayers Rock. You can’t tell me that massive sandstone monolith wouldn’t make a great projector screen to beam the race live.

When I think of The Everest, I think big (also a nod to the champion thoroughbred that saluted the judge in the ’74 and ’75 Melbourne Cups). We screen the race on the big things conveniently scattered around Australia in key lose-your-shirt-on-the-punt demographics:
The Big Banana, The Big Merino, The Big Lobster, The Big Pineapple, The Big Boxing Crocodile and of course The Big Ned Kelly. They’re all champing at the bit for The Everest.

Speaking of big, our piece of resistance is a projector screen that covers 344,400 square kilometres – The Great Barrier Reef.

Those greenie-pinko protesters will tell you that it’s dying due to climate change,
which is crap, but we need to have it totally white to use as a screen. So I’ve contacted every race club secretary in Australia and a few hours before the race we’re going to have a convoy of 70,000 utes park on the Reef, revving their engines and the exhaust fumes will finish it off, just in time for the gates to spring open. I reckon next year, we actually run the race on the Reef.

In the time-honoured, venerable one-year history of The Everest,
I assure you, this will be the greatest ever. Giddy up.

©Steve Williams 2018

Rugby League — Greatest Memories of All

Posted on by SW

Australian rugby league fans have a passion that can’t be dismissed.

It’s a game we played, grew up with, watched on the telly and listened to on the radio.
We still do. It’s our game.

Here are a few random memories from when I was a kid growing up in Sydney.

The greatest team in the history of sport

*Getting splinters in your arse from those wooden seats at Cumberland Oval.
The exuberant Eels fans that torched it after the 1981 premiership win did us all a favour.

*Running onto the ground as the fulltime siren sounded to try and grab the black and white striped cardboard corner post. I was successful a few times.

*Listening to the great Frank Hyde on 2SM. When people still listened to 2SM.

*The halftime entertainment malfunctions that have plagued Grand Finals — the busted TV allegedly to promote Optus Vision (which was actually quite prophetic), John Williamson serenading an inflatable rubber tree with “Rip Rip Woodchip” after loggers had threatened a blockade of the SCG, the cast of “42nd Street” standing forlornly in the centre of the ground waiting in vain for their music to start, and more recently, Billy Idol’s hovercraft cutting the power, which was a good thing.

*The sensational prizes bestowed on guests of TV’s “Controversy Corner” — including a Pelaco shirt, vouchers for a Viking Sauna and Kevin Junee’s Run For Your Life sports store and the piece of resistance — a bottle of Patra orange juice.

*“The Theme From Shaft” used over the closing credits of Channel Seven’s Sunday night footy coverage with Rex Mossop. Not sure what a “blaxploitation” film had to do with footy, but there’s probably a parallel. “Chips and eggs” was the standard Sunday night fare in the Williams household.
Many divorce petitions are filed in US courts every year, but the major reason cialis canada online for this is being noted as unsatisfactory sex life caused by the impotence in their health, they are not able to make satisfied your lady love with all sorts of process. These items have cialis cheapest price no discriminative foundation on which to illustrate how their strong guarantees work. It is one among the commonly prescribed discount viagra cures for health risks like infertility. Erection problem occurs when not enough blood order cheap levitra http://respitecaresa.org/about-respite-care/dsc_7906/ supply to the bones.
*The Chook Army (diehard supporters of Eastern Suburbs) singing “We hate Ray Price and we hate Ray Price / We hate Ray Price and we hate Ray Price / We hate Ray Price and we hate Ray Price / we are the Ray Price haters”. One actually threw a grapefruit at him while he was in his petrified praying mantis pose — he didn’t budge.

*The “sand boy” running on with a small bucket of sand to for the ball to sit on before conversions and penalty shots at goal.

*Scanlen’s footy cards — that sweet smell of the thin pink strip of bubble gum lingering on the cards… and still lingers with me. Some bastard kid knocking the cards out of another kids’ hands in the school playground yelling “Scramble!!!” which meant a mad free-for-all.

*Having a birthday party with a few mates when I was about ten at Lidcombe Oval for the Chooks v the Magpies, we were sitting behind the try line and were captured in mid-try celebration mode in a photo on the back page of the next day’s Daily Mirror.

*The arse falling out of your meat pie at a brass monkey-inducing Sydney Sports Ground.

*The trainer scurrying on to the field with his “magic sponge” dunked in a bucket of water, mopping up a horrific head gash, then redunking it in the same bucket, primed for the next injury.

*One of my most prized possessions — the autographs of the entire victorious Roosters 1975 side (on an Easts Leagues Club wine list — thanks Uncle Pete).

For all its faults — and there are a few, it’s a bloody good game. It’s our game.

©Steve Williams 2018

*This piece also appeared in The Huffington Post Australia:
The Good Old Days When Rugby Was In A League Of Its Own

Australian soccer needs a drama queen

Posted on by SW

So Australia is out of the World Cup. Again.

We didn’t make it beyond the Group Stage, by forgetting the premise of the game – get the ball into the net – especially against that football superpower Peru.

Right now, the clipboard-wielding boffins at Football Federation Australia are locked in crisis-think tank-workshop-post mortems, ruminating where our campaign went wrong,
and hopefully looking down the back of the lounge for a striker.

Australia’s new soccer coach

As Australia embarks on the sandblasted “Road To Qatar”, I have the solution, and it has nothing to do with kicking said ball. It’s acting.

Stay with me. Some of the performances we have seen in the World Cup have been brilliant. Brazilian superstar Neymar took a pathetic award-winning dive and the piss, falling to the pitch mortally wounded, like he’d just had a Brazilian.

See, this is where Australia falls down. Or not. We need to get onboard this diving caper. It’s essential.

This is because alcohol is known to viagra pill for sale have a cure to their problem. Many pharmaceutical companies came up with the generic version and its efficacy. viagra best http://robertrobb.com/2017/08/ The effects of this pill last for up to 36 hours. see that cheapest tadalafil In other words, the potent ingredient allows men to delay the ejaculation, achieve stronger erection and last longer in bed and in acompetition to perform well due to viagra usa pharmacy their low quality of the product, clinically approved and lasts up to 4 to 5 hours. Forget combing the world (Europe) for our next unpronounceable coach to not take us past the Group Stage in 2022, we need actors in charge. Bloody good actors. Luckily, Australia has produced some of the finest in the world.

I call for Cate Blanchett to be annointed as Socceroos coach.

This is inspired. Imagine what the Academy Award / Golden Globe / BAFTA / etc, etc-winner could do to make Australia competitive on soccer’s greatest stage. The subtle nuances of mock-agony… the unworldly talent of clutching your face, screaming like you have just been shot, when you only received a mere fairytap on your knee. Penalty. Thanks Cate.

There’s been talk of not enough “mongrel” in the Australian team… hire Alf Stewart from Home and Away as Assistant Coach. He’d flamin’ sort ’em out, quick smart. Geoffrey Rush could chime in with brilliant character acting expertise, very handy when convincing the ref you have been critically injured by a non-existent elbow. Penalty.

Don’t you see? We would beat those dive-and-piss-taking-thespians from Europe and South America at their own game.

This is the future of Australian soccer. Let’s create our own Theatre of Dreams.
“Hello, Cate…”

©Steve Williams 2018