Dumb Fifth Graders

Pre-season running
A change in running tactic meant a slower crawl up the Anderson Street hill in last week’s circuit of The Tan that meant, with 1km to go, I was 40 seconds behind my previous time. Not having burnt all of the fuel however meant that after burners could be engaged and I finished strongly, making up 37 of the 40 seconds. This of course still meant that I was slower than last time (with a time of 17:04) and still some way (it would seem) to breaking the “magical” 17:00 barrier. My boss still ran a 16:30 ish sort of time which seems harder to crack every week I try. “Onwards and upwards !” Next week we’ll employ a new tactic, hopefully one that is FASTER.

Love/Hate
What I really hate is people who walk slowly, perambulate in front of me and add insult to injury by premeditating my walk-around by drifting from their pre-aligned path into mine. A situation where a laser guided rocket would be a great add-on to completely remove them from ever walking this earth again. By contrast, one thing that I love is breakfast, and in particular, a warm bowl of porridge (call me Goldilocks if you must), sweetened with brown sugar.

Rant
Have you seen this latest insult to low brow entertainment, masquerading as “family viewing”, ‘Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?’ ? We all accept that a quiz show is what it is and rewards general knowledge. Sale of the Last Century did that better than most for years. People enjoy it. Millionaire plays to the same kind of crowd and at least the questions get harder the longer one contestant plays. We also acknowledge the, ‘it has nothing to do with a quiz show’, versions that are game shows that ask dumb-ass questions to pass the time. The questions asked on the ‘5th Grader’ show are genuinely questions that primary aged kids might be expected to know or answer in a classroom. Now I passed grade 5 some years ago. And grade 6. And grade 7. And so on. {didn’t do so well in some other years but that is not the point – I AM SMARTER THAN A 5TH GRADER}. It seems that the questions asked are not especially difficult, one just has to take care how one answers. Think it through again. There’s no trick. Not like the trick questions we used to ask each other in grade 5, example, “an electric train … how much smoke, etc.” Take an example of a question I heard on Nova this week : which STAR is the closest to planet earth. Hughesy, not thinking, thought PLANET and said, “Mars”. WRONG. The Sun of course is the closest star to planet earth. See, it sounds tricky but its not really. The silly adults that appear on the show really deserve their public humiliation of being stupider than a 5th grader because they don’t know the answers ! “The largest dinosaur was called a T___ Rex.” I mean, Come On ! Get this dross off !

Brownlow blues

There is nothing inherently wrong with a time of 17.01 around The Tan running track, a distance of 3.85 km. In fact, by all accounts, its quite a good time. And its not the fact that I ran exactly the same time two fortnight’s in a row, both times I knew I couldn’t have run any faster to lessen the time. However the ridiculously competitive spirit within me wants to make every attempt a PB and (more significantly) beat my boss who is also running the Tan regularly and is now 30 seconds ahead of me. So, I’m disappointed with that time and will be looking to beat it next attempt. Not sure if I will by 5 seconds or 50 but I will !

There was plenty wrong with the Brownlow presentation on Monday night. As you know, I am a bit of a sucker for Award shows, Oscar’s night and Brownlow night feature prominently in my annual viewing calendar. The anguish on the faces of those who really want to win (such as Scott West last year) and the round by round highlight packages form a great recap to kick start Grand Final week. But the Funniest Home Videos-like commentary framing the highlights was the first on a long list of what to hate about that coverage this year. Bruce really needs a good smack in the head for his incessant blabbering about “did you knows” and “what abouts”. We really haven’t missed him while the footy was at channel 9. Even Eddie must have been kicked after his first year calling games because he has toned down his oh-so-interesting stat talk. The player interviews were as vacuous as ever; Bruce’s “interview” with Bartel the second it was apparent he had won was cringe-worthy and gratuitous as he would be on stage in just a couple of minutes more (“We just wanted to say, well done Jimmy. Congratulations from all of us. Well done”); and Ricky Olarenshaw managed to sideline whatever female viewership was left by 11pm with his take on partner’s use of their man’s credit cards. It seems that Demetriou was given instructions to read out the votes at double pace however that seemed redudant when ch.7 filled in the “extra” time with an unfunny cross to Stephen Curry (of the Toyota grand final highlight ads) and interviews with retiring players Hird, Kouta, Riccuto and Archer via a video tape and then have them on stage to ask them the same questions in person. And finally, the red carpet show preceding the medal count was as disappointing as ever with very few dresses actually being shown. It can’t be that hard to show what every woman in town wants to watch ? Show the frocks! Show the frocks. Don’t show Garry Lyon, Sam Newman or any of the other has-been meatheads in a not-so-witty piece to camera.

And in a new segment, I would like to name some things that I hate. Celebrating this time of year, I hate the Royal Melbourne Show. The rotten, over-tired, crashing from too much sugar darlings crowd on to my train at going home time, take up all the seats, carry way too many show bags/balloons/giant stuffed animals and talk way too loudly when all I want to do is get home quickly and quietly.
I do love the Grand Final parade however. It is my one day a year when I can be a starry eyed groupie in the crowd, cheer on the footballing heroes as they drive by in the backs of the sponsor’s four wheel drives and sing along to the club songs played out by the marching bands.