Category Archive: LIFE
The Big Men Say “Bye”
Glenelg v Port @ Glenelg Oval, 13 August 2016 Port had a bunch of AFL stars back to bolster its attack on the finals and it looked in real race trim. After going the biff early, they discovered that the Tigers were more than equal to the hard stuff, so in the last half they broke free with superior football, outrunning and out-muscling the home side. The Bays missed 4 easy shots and blew the chance to impose some scoreboard pressure. But some Port ‘stars’ may have some explaining to do for the Match Review Panel. Certainly the umpiring review…
Continue Reading →Remembering Peter
Peter O’Toole (2 August 1932 to 14 December 2013) Peter was one of the great British drunks of stage and screen (he was born to play Jeffrey Bernard), with enough star power to bedazzle even the full moon in Connemara. We remember him on his birthday with affection (but not complete admiration – see below). He is terrific in Becket (1964) as Henry II, with fellow legendary drunk Richard Burton; and his off-the-wall, ecstatic approach ignites The Ruling Class (1972), (where he plays a man playing, in turn, Jesus and Jack the Ripper). He is superb as megalomaniac film director Eli Cross in The Stunt…
Continue Reading →Somewhere Over the Rainbow
"Wish upon a star..."
Glenelg v Norwood, Glenelg Oval 24 July, 2016 We stole this one. After a dour tussle carried out for three quarters in a chill, paint-stripping nor-westerly, that grew in intensity throughout the match, the Tigers had a lot of work to do at the last change: The Redlegs had a 25 point lead, having played the ground more intelligently and directly. In the first quarter, with the breeze blowing through all points of the compass at times, they snagged 5 goals without a miss. But the Bays kept at it, with the midfield (special mention to Snook and Earl) winning a lot of contested…
Continue Reading →Tiger Hunt
Those distant "Finals" seem to beckon...? (painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme )
Glenelg v Adelaide @ Glenelg Oval (Gliderol Stadium, or “The G”) 17 July 2016 A great win to the Tigers…and I wasn’t there. Maybe that’s an omen? In any case, while I was partaking of the lush decadence served up by the Richard Wagner Society’s function, Glenelg came from the back of the truck, again, and knocked-off top three wannabe, the Crows Reserves. I gather that our ebony gods, Tim Sumner and Terry Milera, got 4 goals each and helped us run-down a formidable quarter-time lead. With sterling support from the whole side, and extra goals by Josh Scott and Ziggy…
Continue Reading →Not so nice in Nice
Constantin Meunier, "The Removal of the Cracked Melting Pot"
Bastille Day on the Côte d’Azur, and some truck-driving, rancorous loon has deliberately ploughed through the revelling crowd, killing 80 or more people and spreading terror. Driving through my town on a sunny day, listening to “Melting Pot” by Blue Mink, I can’t help feeling dazed and confused. We at The Varnished Culture prefer love to war, art to violence, culture to confusion, but it seems we can’t have column ‘A’ without column ‘B’. How about Voici à Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité! Anyway, while there is no credible evidence as to motivation yet, we can take a wild guess, we guess: see…
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