Twistin' by the pool

I might be grey bearded, old school, balding and better than you but I haven’t abandoned the modern world altogether. There are a few things/devices/cons that I don’t mind in this modern, technological, I spy, its gotta be digital and bigger and better and 36 months interest free, world - like the internet for a start – it sure makes looking at porn a hell of a lot easier and I can always check boxing results from damn near anywhere in the world as well as keeping up with TNA rasslin’ and other shit like that. And I got an mp3 player and I’ve got limewire (though I had some help from my 11 ½ year old daughter beezlebubby to get that damn thing workin’) so now can I download music off the wires… it’s just that I’m searching for Molly Hatchet, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Hank Jr., Joe Walsh (pre Eagles softcock era) cos I’m putting together files of pure redneck country southern boy blues for the Sunday arvo lounging at the pool sessions while beezlebubby and her friends frolic in the over chlorinated manmade waterhole where the boys bomb and dive, ducking each other’s heads and generally being loud and stooped trying to get the girls to notice them while the girls play cool and pretend not to notice but secretly giggle and nod and smile to themselves at the attention.

And I’ve got ZZ Top and Trace Adkins buzzing out of those tiny tinny speakers in my ears while I keep one eye on the beezlebubby and the posin’ boys ready to step up if need be to scare the little jack-offs away and the other on the mamas, still crammin’ themselves into the two piece bikini though they mighta gained a little more weight over the winter since they bought that little green number at last year’s post xmas sale. Not that I mind cos I’m at an age where the waif like, smack whore, bleach blonde and ribs look does nothing for me anymore anyway – gimme a woman with just a little to hold onto, a woman who fills out the top shelf, spilling some flesh o’er the edges of the (straining) elastic, someone who’s maybe lived a little, knows what it’s like to wake up swearing never to do tequila shots again before cracking a beer cos it’s the only thing that’s gonna take the edge of the morning. A full bodied, life lived type o’ woman in last year’s colours but who’s still got the know how, despite the hangover and the kids nagging to get going to the pool as soon as the sun is up, to pack some sandwiches, chips, watermelon and two bottles of softdrink into the jim beam esky that was a give away when you bought two 700ml for 52 bucks from some beer wine and spirits barn in the burbs and the bourbon wasn’t even for her last boyfriend, the one who fathered the little redhead boy who’s running around on the grass right now, no way, that jim beam was hers for Friday night when the girls get together while the boys are at the club picking Sunday’s team or when he’s on arvo shift at the car factory, and when the men folk get home the women folk are buzzing on spirits and coke and laughing lewdly, watching Friday night footy and that young gun full forward in his tight shorts or already asleep, snoring blissfully and that little smile on her face ain’t for you, oh no, that’s for the young gun full forward, who, in her dreams, is peeling off those tiny shorts.

And I watch those women from behind my $10 mirror shades cos I refuse to spend more than a blue note on something I know I’m gonna lose sooner rather than later, and they seem so relaxed, so ready for whatever comes there way, whatever gets thrown at them and I wish I could relax like that, just take what comes, step over the bad, soak up the good and truly lounge like I want to. Cos I’m still too fucking uptight despite the mp3 full o’ loungin’ country redneckin’ music and the ability to waste a full day at the pool (hell a whole week) without barely moving except when my foot or my arse gets numb from sitting in one spot too long. It would be something to pass on to beezlebubby who has all the technological know how already at eleven and a half but still can’t peel an apple properly and is only just working out how to make me a decent coffee. She needs some lesson in redneck lounging, hell her whole generation does! So me eyeing these women, watching them as they pour the drinks, one bottle sugar free, colour free for the kid the doctors have decided is a.d.d. or a.d.h.d. or some other bunch o’ initials but who really is just full o’ beans and bored by the rules… watching as she plunges into the pool, or lays in the sun, all that extra flesh glistening with sunscreen and water, the scraps of cloth straining in defiance of her winter bourbon and cokes and lunches with the girls – all that is just research, is just me studying the true loungers, just me learning to really let go and relax so I can pass those lessons onto beezlebubby, help her to chill a little and to roll with it. Of course, that vague idea I have of that internet site with the MILF’s that’d probably do it for the 2 for 52 bucks deal and cooler or maybe even the commemorative tin shaped like a car, is still fermenting in the back of my head too but, hell I still cant’ work out how to download music properly let alone set something like that up so I can’t see that getting off the ground. Anyway sounds too much like work and I ain’t goin’ there again. No, this is research pure and simple so we can all learn to lounge it redneck style and do it properly. And some song just came up on the player that I sure as shit didn’t download – who the fuck are fallout boy anyway?! BEEZLEBUBBY!!!

Damn I gotta learn to chill...

Back In My Day...

You know I used to hate it when my old man would raise his glass, take a long drink and then say, “Back in my day things were better.” Fuck I hated that, I still do but you know what? When I say, “Back in my day things were better.” I’m fucking right!

Cos that lame arse shit they’re trying to tell you is music right now… it ain’t! Not even close. If y’re lucky it might make a decent ring tone or maybe even a new car jingle that’ll having you humming along for that 45 second attention span all you little shits seem to have these days but it no way could you call that crap they dress up, ink up, slap a video clip to and then churn out to pimp yr dollar for, music.

Hiphop exists just to get dumb ass black kids laid and even dumber ass white kids thinking they might get laid – and it ain’t even threatening anymore, Christ its just sampled r&b popsongs with some bling thrown on top, skinny black boys trying to look gangsta, bitches shakin’ their fake breasts and you’ve forgotten the toon before the two and half minutes is up anyway. Punk, hah, a bunch of rich white boys who won’t come out of the closet, getting tattooed, putting on eyeliner and expensive t-shirts, waiting for that big break with some bleached blonde movie actress who’s fallen off the wagon so they can get their own reality show together, singing generic rebellious teen anthems about being individuals while all wearing the same labels and then trying to tell us they’re rebels!? Oh yeah, I’ll buy that (especially if they endorse it) Shitty singer songwriters who know both chords and are so lame they actually make Ben Lee sound threatening, Pop Divas who can’t hold a note without computerized help, backing tracks and a lot of overdubs, country singers who don’t even look like they shave let alone know what a honky tonk is and who have probably never played a footy cabaret in their lives…

So fuck all this new shit – I’m going back to vinyl (and no I don’t mean that cheap fake biker jacket you bought at the markets to get girls to talk to you) I mean vinyl records – big, black, shiny 12 inch slabs of grooves kinda vinyl, now that will get the girls talking to ya. Redneck glory like ZZ Top, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Joe Walsh before he turned pussy, old school punk like the Dead Boys, Richard Hell, Black Flag, some decent nigga soul and Motown grooves, art grant free noize loops and hell, you wanna hear a singer/songwriter? Pick up Tim Bukley’s Lorca album you limp dicked poseurs. He makes his son sound like the tofu eating, pussy whipped, lame ass 90’s ‘troubled soul troubadour’ wimp he really was.

Yeah, that’s what I want – real musicians, real feeling, real soul, real pain – a bunch o’ miscreants who had the choice between jail, pimpin’ their ass or rock and roll and made the right choice. I don’t want some lame arse anonymous producer/geek type sitting behind a desk remixing every fucking decent beat he can find into some generic mishmash of soulless, sexless robotic 3 minutes of fame for some plastic fantastic whose name we’ll have forgotten before the songs even over. Christ, when did I get so jaded?!

Oh yeah, that’s right… every time I turn on the radio, watch the tv or read the music press.

Jeezus, you can’t drink a cold beer with a bourbon chaser to that shit. No siree. When the redneck lounge opens its doors, it’s old school vinyl on my twenty dollar market bargain turntable with the block o’ wood under the back right hand corner to keep it balanced, jacked into the shitty amp/tuner that I’ve had for twenty years now that still works if you let it warm up first. And I’m droppin’ the needle on "Country Stampede" or "Atomizer" opening that first beer, flickin’ through the box of old Ring and Boxing Digest mags I picked up in Melbourne and I’m not even thinking about yr ringtone muzak.

Back in my day… don’t you fucking hate it when your parents are right?

welcome to the lounge

Yeah, I know that redneck ain’t a particularly Aussie slang word and it conjures up American type images and stereotypes but bogan lounge didn’t quite have the same ring to it nor did feral manifesto and hell, I am a fucking redneck, no denying it, just not the racist, dumbass, backwoods, backward stereotype mountain cracker that they portray us as on TV and in the movies. I’m an old school, shaved head, touch o’ grey in the beard, if you don’t dick me around I won’t dick you around, misanthropic, I’ll hate you purely on your lack of intelligence not yr skin colour, creed, religion, sexual preferences or aspirations type o’ redneck. And my neck is always red even when I wear a collar. And until recently I only owned two collars anyway, both polo shirts, both free, a coopers pale ale shirt and a port power shirt. I don’t particularly like the beer or the team but I’ll take ‘em when there’s nothin’ else left. Then I picked up a coupla more collar jobs – my Mt Burr Football Club Polo shirt that I paid money for and the Millicent Country Music Association shirt I picked up form Lifeline for $4. Them babies I wear with pride.

And now, I gotta admit, since the goodwife has continued her climb up the corporate ladder, the one I jumped off of some twenty years ago, well, I’ve had to buy a coupla more shirts, good ones for social occasions when I play the stepford husband and keep my mouth shut while nodding and trying to get some of that free beer in before she notices and warns me not to get too tanked. But only for those occasions you understand.

I’ve spent the second half of my life in the city after the first 21 years were spent in a town of maybe 500 people where every one knew everyone else and the grocery store was the post office, the newsagent, the toyshop and there was a bakery over the road where they baked on the premises and we went to footy every weekend and everyone else called us ‘zooeys’ cos we were animals and the parties continued on at our house until the wee small hours and you could leave the front door unlocked (at least for the first twelve years or so then some jd’s started making their tiny presence known) but when I got to the city I sorta forgot my roots. Hell, I was still proud of being a ‘country boy’ and all that. I mean I was a ‘zooey’ for fucksake but I was living in the big smoke now so I toned down my redneck roots, got rid of the flannelette shirts and the cowboy boots, didn’t listen to Slim Whitman or Johnny Cash (although JC was still cool apparently). I had to find some clean city type jeans and t-shirts that didn’t have crude sayings on em, even polish my damn shoes every now and then. But I still leaked redneck every now and then. I was blunt, up front and loud and I could hold my booze pretty well if not my mind or my mouth. In fact The Publisher, another country boy from the Tuna side of the state, and I have a theory that we did better with the girls than our city brethren and fellow drinkers cos country boys are plain blunt. We say what we think while our nancified city friends are too busy trying to weasel their way into the girl’s affections with lies and deceit or at least just being plain suck up nice to em. We just wanted to get back to the drinkin and partyin’ so we were up front about our dicks and our ambitions and more often than not it worked. We both regularly got women well above our stations, we still do and all we can put it down to is country charm cos it sure as shit ain’t our looks or our wallets, I can tell you that.

Now I’m at an age where I don’t seriously care what other people think though I still gotta be careful at the good wife’s work functions cos she needs to keep climbing that ladder so I don’t have to even think about puttin’ a foot back on it.

And hell why am I making excuse for owning a coupla Ed Harry shirts? I already know I’m better than you, have been for a long time now and the sooner you realise it the better things will be.