dora tarted up

I don’t know if you spend much time with kids toys these days. I do, owing to having two very small kids.

They (the kids) seem to pick up, almost by osmosis, a million different bits of advertising. My two year old loves Thomas the tank engine, Bob the Builder, Fireman Sam, the Wiggles, Playschool, Little Red Tractor, Sesame Street, Postman Pat, and absolutely anything to do with trains, dinosaurs and (strangely) ballet.

Most of this makes me grumble and grind my teeth grumpily. Most kids stuff seems designed solely to teach kids how to pester their poor parents to buy more DVDs and crappy toys.

And the girls’ stuff seems to be pretty retrograde. Barbie, the Bratz and all the other things seem to prepare girls for a life of vapid Paris Hilton-ness.

Dora the Explorer, is a bit of an exception. She’s ordinary looking, if not plain, with a simple bob haircut and a basic outfit of t-shirt, shorts and sneakers: ie. the stuff you might wear if you were out playing. She also has brains and confidence.

So, it’s a bit of a worry to see they’re giving her “a makeover”.

She’s now a “tween”, with a pink dress, pretty shoes, jewellery and pierced ears. Why? Well, I know why. But I don’t like it.

If you don’t like it, there’s an online petition to fill out here: www.ipetitions.com/petition/Dora_Makeover.

Running
I was sick yesterday, but feeling good today. A couple of laps of the tan this morning.

bloody football

There are some things I will never understand about this city (Melbourne). Chief amongst them is football. Don’t get me wrong, I like the AFL. It’s not a bad game to watch and I can see the players are impressive athletes. But they’re not that good.

On my way to the train station I pass a little newspaper stall, and they usually have a sign up showing the top story from the Herald Sun. This morning it was “Revealed: Sheehan’s top 50″.

Revealed?

“Sheehan” is (I learnt this subsequently) a football journalist, meaning he gets paid to sit around watching football and write about it. Apparently, he’s sat around, presumably over a few beers, and worked out his top 50 players.

And this is news.

Not only that, it’s a revelation.

Running
A recovery run this lunch-time. There was a little bit of stiffness early on, but I started to feel good the second time around the tan. 12.5km in 55 minutes.

full moon

The people who run the stockmarket have grown huge tufts of hair on their palms and are ranting and raving and generally being dangerous to know.

Work, worryingly, gave me absolutely no trouble today. Everyone was sweetness and light. Eerie.

It’s a full moon tonight, or as near as makes no difference. It explains a lot.

Running
A good honest-ish hill session this lunch-time. Laps of Anderson Street. Joy. Bliss. Etc.

Sydney
I’m off to Sydney tomorrow for a conference. I’ve packed the running shoes and gear, so I’m hoping to slip off for a brisk 15km somewhere along the line. The hotel’s in some place called Coogee Beach, and those in the know (well, Beki) say there’s a good track along the beach there.

questions that don’t need asking

I don’t know if you saw this in the papers today?

Why did Ernie Dingo blast Kyle live on air?

I mean really, do you really need to ask?

He called Kyle Sandilands a “commercial wanker” live on the radio for two simple, obvious reasons:

1. Kyle Sandilands is a commercial wanker
2. He was too much of a gentleman to say what he really meant

He may be a wanker, but he’s dead sexy isn’t he?

Running
It might have been the wind, a lousy week at work, or perhaps just because I’m a lazy sod, but I had a pretty lacklustre run today. 9km, including a lap of the tan. Ho hum.

fags

Some of you may have read the title of today’s post and thought “oh-oh. JH has lost it – he’s going off on some sort of homophobic rant, Andrew Bolt-style”.

Others may have thought “oh good. A post about lollies of yesteryear”.

Both camps are sadly wide of the mark. It’s about cigarettes.

Way back when, back when I was at school and uni and for a while afterwards, I used to smoke. No, I used to SMOKE. I loved the things; couldn’t get enough. There were chimneys that envied me. I had yellow stains on all my fingers and other places too. I had a cigarette between my lips for most of the day, even before I got out of bed in the morning.

Have you ever seen movies with Humphrey Bogart? Well, that was me, except with lank, unwashed hair and faded Guns n Roses t-shirts. (I still can’t figure out why girls didn’t like me.)

I spent a rather entertaining two weeks kicking the habit aged 22 and never looked back. Now, ten years or so later, and I haven’t thought of a cigarette in years, which partly accounts for my superhuman strength and endurance.

So, I was a bit miffed today when, crossing Lonsdale Street in something of a hurry, I spied a pack of death sticks between the lanes and instinctively thought “god I’d like a cigarette”.

A wierd feeling, I tell you. It felt like vertigo, like I was being catapulted back to a time when people thought Friends was funny and that our way of life was under threat because we built a casino.

Ahh those were the days. (Except for the cigarettes of course).

Running
A couple of laps of the tan yesterday lunch-time, but nothing today. I wore that RFTK 2008 t-shirt for the last time. It’s C.R.A.P. I run for about 200 metres and thing miraculous turns into a ball of sweat; it weighs an absolute ton.

hobble

Not to worry – it wasn’t me hobbling. Not at all, it was Wayne Carey who was “hobbled” by Miami police in a recent trip to the US.

Apparently he was:

“angry, drunk, and violent” and his speech was rapid.
from the age.

This was surprising: he hadn’t been hanging out with Amy Winehouse and Pete Doherty was nowhere to be seen.

The Miami coppers made the tactical error of waking Wayne as he lay passed out on his hotel bed. He reacted by punching and kicking them. Even after they managed to get him into the divvy van (or local equivalent) he carried on headbutting the windows, as you do.

That’s when they put him in a hobble, a “device used to restrain combative, violent, high-risk people”.

I’m always amazed by people who beat up police officers. It’s the height of stupidity. There’s no way it’s going to end well.

If I was going to beat someone up, they’d be the last people I’d choose. For one thing, they’re usually bigger than me. Also they have guns and hundreds of mates. Oh, and there’s the small matter of the judicial system, which tends to look askance at roughing up the constabulary.

It’d probably be wise to choose someone smaller than me, which limits things a fair bit. I don’t know, Lleyton Hewitt looks pretty small on tv and he certainly has it coming.

Moving on, the thing is, the Miami incident was on October 27 last year. The latest, erm, outburst was last weekend at his “luxury Port Melbourne apartment”. That’s one hell of a bender.

Fellow former footballer, Wayne Schwass, made an early entry in the “understatement of the year” awards:

His actions certainly suggest that there are a number of things going on in his life.

You think?

I must say, seriously, I’m very surprised and disappointed by the whole recent Wayne Carey situation. I’ve always looked upon WC as an example of grace and dignity, intelligence and moral courage.

Or something.

Running
What do doctors know eh? If I had have seen a quack this morning, he would have taken a look at my blood-shot eyes and snuffly nose, diagnosed a common cold and forbade me from running. As always, I knew better. I had an invigorating 14km run, including 7 jaunts up Anderson street. It took right on an hour, which was pretty pleasing progress.

Now I feel 100% better, chock full of vim and vitality and other things beginning with v.

nigella lawson, tyra banks and rotting fish

Before you say anything, I’m no starry-eyed idealist. I know about global warming, the war on terror, imminent global recessions and the like. But still, sometimes you have to say the world’s not such a bad place.

Take this: Marieke Hardy describing the experience of watching a Nigella Lawson cooking show as:

like being tied up with leather straps and flogged by Enid Blyton.

You know what: she’s completely, 100% correct. What’s more, it’s the kind of image that should brighten everyone’s day.

Or perhaps it’s just me.

Anyway, that’s one good thing. Also, I don’t know if you saw this but apparently on America’s Next Top Model tonight “each contestant is asked to hang upside down in a net filled with rotting fish.”

Any world that can turn Tyra Banks into a fetid sardine on prime-time TV is all-right by me.

Running
This morning’s lazy stroll around the Tan this morning was so enjoyable I felt I had to do it twice. The second time was even more enjoyable, if a touch sweatier than normal.

young fogy

I’m not sure either Em or I are old enough to be legitimately called “old fogies”, but we both independently seem to be taking on a number of fogy-ish traits.

The most obvious is the perception that “kids these days” are out of control and have no respect. From there it’s barely even a half-step to “back in my day”. At that point you may as well give up and don fawn coloured slacks and terry-towelling hats.

Apart from being deeply unsatisfying, this fogy-ness is completely unproductive. Does anyone think putting that moron from Narre-Warren on all the tv news broadcasts and the front page of the Herald Sun has taught him a lesson?

Being threatened with a $20,000 fine by the Chief Commissioner has exactly left him chastened and depressed.He’s convinced he’s the coolest thing since, well, cool.

The sad thing is: he’s probably right. There are probably tens of thousands of adolescent Melbourne boys out there wishing they did the same thing.

Media
The media do have a case to answer. Do you think it would possible to go more than 24 hours without a story about the increasingly bizarre and depressing elder Spears sister? She needs to be left alone for quite a while, preferably somewhere with white padded walls.

Also, surely the Sunday Herald Sun Magazine could have chosen someone better for the cover of their “Kids” edition than Jamie-Lynn Spears. A 16 year old girl famous for nothing other than being someone’s sister, who looks exactly like every other air-head “celebrity” and has nothing to say and who CAN’T EVEN MANAGE BIRTH CONTROL? Is this someone kids should be looking up to?

Rant over….

Running
An unusually satisfying hill session this morning. I did 7 reps of the Anderson Street hill plus a lap of the tan and the trip there and back. It worked out as 14.25km in just on an hour. More importantly, it felt good: fluent, in control and fun.

The bloody Carlton football club put in yet another appearance but seemed to have learned from last week’s terse words on this blog and refrained from blocking the whole path. Who knows, maybe even football players have a brain?

The only bad thing about the run is it left me absolutely starving. My stomach’s been making a series of alarming noises all morning. What’s worse is I’ve forgotten my lunch. I’ll have to venture out in the city and hunt down something edible.

If you hear what sounds like some sort of earthquake, don’t be alarmed: it’s just my tummy rumbling.