Debonair - the Airline for Blokes

News today that the trans-Tasman air-lift is going to drop in price. Australia-New Zealand air passage will soon be recognised as a "domestic" leg, therefore the ticket prices will be much lower. Good news if you're an early-retiree, or a sheep with a love of travel, or both. Also news that Virgin Blue's offshoot, V Australia, will fly to South Africa and Thailand. Ditto, hooray. Yet with all these improvements and lower prices I still can't help but think the airline industry has missed a big opportunity. And that's why I'm launching my own airline. Come Monday fortnight I’ll be breaking a bottle of champagne over the nose-cone of the first Airbus in the new fleet of Debonair.

Debonair will be this country’s first airline devoted entirely to blokes.

Businessblokes, tradesblokes, footballers, self-funded retirees, blue collar, white polyester collar, media professionals, and blokes from the agribusiness sector (formerly farmers). All blokes will be welcome; and I’m confident Debonair will be welcomed by all blokes.

This new airline has a suite of in-flight services that will certainly appeal to the bloke within each and every one of us. To begin with, we’ve revolutionized travel classes. The days of business versus economy are gone. Step into our Airbus and turn left and you will quickly find yourself in the luxuriant surrounds of Classy Class. Here, positioned around a large practice putting green, are 25 seats taken from as-new Holden Statesmans. Hostesses are all dressed in evening gown and are as happy to offer you as much cabana, cheese cubes and Crown Lager as you can swallow. Better still, all of Debonair’s pilots are former Australian test cricketers who, once the flight has evened out, are only too happy to wander about the Classy Class cabin, having a few Crownies with passengers and talking at length about their former sporting careers.

Of course, if this sort sophisticated travel seems a bit too rich for your liking then you can always buy a ticket for the back of the plane, otherwise known as Bloke Class. This is an entirely open-plan class around which runs a large horse-shoe shaped bar. At the very tail of the plane is a marine-grade stainless steel urinal. The bar is entirely complementary, which includes chips and beer-nuts. The only exceptions to this are the cigarette machines. These are bolted to the walls besides the urinal and can be operated with the aid of $2 coins. Should you need change to operate these machines then please ask our helpful barstaff. They are all young women wearing bikini tops and combat shorts. Should your enquiry be more personal ask to speak with one of the bar’s duty managers. These men are all former Australian test cricketers who will be happy to have a few beers with you and talk at length about their playing careers. For safety reasons no carry-on luggage or dogs are allowed in Bloke Class.

We’re confident that Debonair will enjoy clear skies and happy passengers, many of whom might just make our flights their new local. The fleet will expand quickly to a dozen planes by Xmas, after which time we are planning to pop a gaming room and a ladies’ lounge on each wing.

Roger that.

More thoughts on Le Tour

I’ve got a very strong feeling that my six-month old son will grow up to take second place in Le Tour de France, twice. The basis for this belief lies in the fact that he has been whinging and whining solidly for the last three weeks. Indeed, put him in some lycra and stick him in front of a TV camera and you’d struggle to pick him from our Cadel. At least until the six-month old spoke – his voice is a bit deeper than Cadel’s. Then again, so are most people’s voices. No, that’s not quite right. I’m forgetting Pat Rafter.

Our Cadel has been a high-pitched monotone of late. “I can’t say anything about how awful everyone’s been because that’d be unprofessional…”, he bleats.

It makes for more interesting reality TV than Bert Contador’s lines, however. “Otra pregunta, otra pregunta…” has been all that he’s really said. He seems to be getting sick of sports journalists asking him tricky questions. But if he keeps replying with Otra pregunta (next question) then I can’t see how this pregunta loop is going to be broken.

The find in terms of telly talent, however, is a German bloke called Jens Voigt. He had a bad stack coming down the mountain on Stage 16, and was knocked unconscious; but they seem to have plenty of Jens on his pre-recorded sizzle reel to keep his growing number of fans happy. Jens does German slapstick to camera effortlessly; and his silly German voice is hysterical. He’s popular with Australian audiences, of course, because he is Australian. Yes, he spent about 3 and a ½ hours here back in 1999, visiting the Australian Institute of Sport, so he’s more Australian than Heinrich Haussler.

One disappointment has been the performance of the non-identical Von Schleck sisters, Venus and Serena. A lot of cycling fans were hoping to see these Luxembourgers power through the two halves of the draw before meeting in the Women’s Final, but as it’s panned out, all they’ll probably take away from Le Tour is the Double’s title. One other annoying outcome has been Mark Cavendish. That SBS should overlook the need to have subtitles accompanying everything the man from the Isle of Man says is somewhat ironic.

Le Tour

Being a calendric sort of person occasions such as the solstices and the equinoxes always add a frisson of excitement to my year. But the annual event that frissons me the most is Le Tour. France’s national bike race. The Tour de France. And it seems I’m not alone in my enjoyment of watching slightly underweight men race bikes around Western Europe. Cycling is big. It is the new golf, as I heard someone say the other day. Indeed, cycling’s so big there are Australians now complaining about free-to-air Ashes coverage, as it is interrupting their TDFing. And the reason for this?

Unlike golf or cricket the Tour is hypnotic. One could assume it is all those wheels and pedals going around and around, but there’s more to it than that. The Tour seems to encapsulate a broader, more complete Frenchness – and SBS should be congratulated for this.

Firstly, whilst France is all about smoking, camping, and bicycles, it is also about food and wine. And Gabriel Gate’s Le Taste Le Tour is a TDF highlight. In the same way Marlon Brando became more like (and more of) Marlon Brando as each year rolled past, so too does Gabriel’s accent. At the current rate he will soon be speaking a mangled kind of Franglais neither a Frenchman nor an Englishman (or Tony Blair or Inspector Clouseau’s manservant Kato) can understand.

There’s also a strong travelogue component to Le Tour, and I love that angle most when it is practised by the warm-up commentator, Matthew Keenan. He is an encyclopedia when it comes to the race and the riders, but for reasons unclear he every now and then breaks his race line to inform the viewer about a chateau. “And the race is now going past Le Chateau Blancnoir, which was… built… by the… patron of Tarbes… Phillipe… Le Coeur… Rouge… in… 1382 when the chateau was… built.”

Keenan brings none of the tension and excitement of Le Tour to viewers like the two-headed commentating monster does, however: Phil Leggett and Paul Sherwen. They make the difficult look easy. It is probably impossible, in lay terms, to describe how these two blokes so effortlessly add such informed voices to the racing. Nevertheless, I’ll have a stab at it.

Leggett: “And here comes the Belgian champion Von Shlunk! He’s burst out of the peleton and he’s really putting the hammer down!”
Sherwen: Yes he’s put the hammer down, bursting out of the peleton, and it’s the man, Phil, I thought would do extremely well on this stage – the Belgain champion – Von Shlunk.”

This sort of language makes the rhetoric and oratory of Winston Churchill sound like an unsupervised kindergarten playground.

As much as we can bank on these re-occurring themes within the Tour every year, there are also moments peculiar to each Tour which seem to burst like fireworks and dominate Tour thinking for a few days. This year that’s what’s happened with echeloning.

I think the Sherwen half of the monster got the word out first, but then the Leggett half started applying it to anything that looked semi-vaguely-diagonal. The team cars were pretty soon echeloning along, as were spectators, helicopters, and the odd chateau. Interviewers started using the word in every question. Even the riders themselves began breathlessly spitting it out. At the coffee shop the next morning I’m pretty sure I heard a fellow customer slip “echelon” into his order for 250 grams of Free-Trade Guatemala Espresso Blend… The coffee roaster didn’t even blink an eyelid.

Vive le Tour.

Curried Egg Sandwiches and Psychotropic Dreams

A 'friend of mine' often enjoys a curried egg sandwich or two at the end of what has otherwise been a long day of luncheoning. "A frugal, light repaste", he calls the sandwich; but it has an overnight after-shock. NO, not from his bottom, but inside his resting brain. Herein the curried egg sandwich plays merry havoc with the dreamscape, causing 'my friend' to experience dreams that even a poet might find a bit off-putting. Forget about the alliterative charm of "as green as a dream and as deep as death"; curried egg sandwiches make your dreams go all psychotropic.

Amongst my friend's medical advisers tumeric was labelled the culprit, and now we have quasi-scientific proof.

Murali Doraiswamy, MD, a renowned expert on brain longevity and mental health, is head of Duke University's Biological Psychiatry division. He has just released some research findings concerning Alzheimer's. Eating a curry every now and then can prevent this form of dementia's onset. The key compound in the curry is curcumin, which is an active component in tumeric.

Curcumin is said to prevent 'plaquing' in the brain, whereby amyloids can shut down gateways to memory function. In other words, tumeric is a solvent that unclogs the brain's memory paths.

No wonder we have sex dreams after a curried egg sandwich.

(Mustard powders - containing tumeric - can be found in most supermarkets, over the counter, and at very reasonable prices.)

D and Non-D

I’ve become very indignant about the way everyone knows everything about wine nowadays. Rather than saying ‘yes’ to a glass of red or a glass of white, people now agonise over whether they should order the pinot grigio or the pinot gris.

In much the same way that the English novelist Nancy Mitford used ‘U’ and ‘Non-U’ language to help recognize the different elements in English society during the 1950s (that is, if you were upper class you were ‘U’, and you called the toilet the lavatory; but if you were lower class you were Non-U and said serviette instead of napkin…) I want to re-introduce some wine terms that might help fellow wine indignants recognize one another. Wine indignants? Yes. Wine indignants are people who are thoroughly sick of the phoney professionalism that’s crept into wine, stealing from it its dignity. Wine is increasingly not enjoyed, but moralized over.

‘D’ and ‘Non-D’ – that’s how we should divide the world of wine snobbery. Drinkers of wine – the people who enjoy it, and lots of it; and Non-Drinkers of wine – the people who agonise over it, in constant pursuit of getting the wine right.

So out with the nomenclature of the contemporary world of wine and in with some new blanket terms. These terms will help ‘D’ drinkers find one another across a crowded room. Convivial fellowship might then proceed.

Hock, sack, white burgundy, burgundy, claret, hermitage, tent, port – and champagne as a blanket term for all sparkling wine, of course... ‘D’ people will be from now on use these terms whenever they order or offer wine. On the other hand, ‘Non-D’ people will be easily identified (and ignored) by the use of their infuriatingly precise and geographically brutal jargon – champagne has to be from Champagne, and that sort of thing. The ‘D’ terms are a form of jargon in themselves, of course; but they are also determinedly vague, facetious and never – ever – serious. This is how I plan to use them.

Hock. Hock is named after the German town of Hochheim, in the wine region of Rheingau. Hock was once known as rhenish, but only very silly old men use that term today. Hock is German white wine, so use it as an easy term for all the riesling or semillon/sauvignon blanc blends you drink.

Sack. This was of course Falstaff’s preferred drink. As Shakespeare has him say in Henry IV Part II: “If I had a thousand sons the first humane principal I would teach them would be to forswear thin potations and addict themselves to sack.” Sack back in the 16th century was a pretty heady Spanish white wine, an immediate ancestor to sherry. Which is why I’ll be now calling the greater volume of Australian chardonnay sack. It’s heady enough, and with any sort of bottle age it looks worryingly like sherry. Sack is also quite a useful term for viognier, whether it is old or young, it matters not.

White burgundy. If you actually find a semillon/sauvignon blanc blend you like drinking, call it white burgundy; otherwise this is a handy term to apply to any dry white wine. If the grapes used to make the wine are semillon, then call it ‘chablis’.

Burgundy. This is red wine that you can see through. We drink a lot of pink wine, or rose, in this country nowadays. Call all of that burgundy. Most merlot is burgundy – albeit from a ‘good year’. Grenache is also burgundy, but from an ‘exceptional year’. Anything reddish in hue and from Tasmania is burgundy. I think you get the picture.

Claret. This is red wine that is quite dry and quite tannic. Anything that has cabernet things in it is claret. There is one sub-category: luncheon claret. This is old cabernet wine from what is imagined to be a poor year. Claret comes from the old French, meaning ‘clear’, or ‘light’, which tells us something. Keep all your claret in a cellar and only drink it when it is ten years old. Then it is light luncheon wine.

Hermitage. This is shiraz. Very simple. Why we ever let this term slide I have no idea. Forget shiraz; forget syrah; stick with hermitage, or even ‘ermitage.

Tent. This is a 17th century term for deeply hued red wine, from southern Spain. Tent comes from the Spanish ‘tinto’. It more or less means a red grape. But it is hot in Spain, and the grapes get very ripe. Hugh Johnson has recently suggested that the English re-embrace ‘tent’, using it to describe all the shiraz from South Australia, and all the zinfandel from California. True story. So the next time you order some Barossan red, ask for ‘tent’.

Port. We are now set to rename this wine style ‘Dry Red Australian Fortified Wine’. This has happened under a recent Australian/EU trade agreement. Forget about it. I drink port. I use a biro. And I hoover the carpets. Language is more powerful than bureaucrats and administrators. And drinking wine can make language sing. But now it is time for my breakfast glass of hock.

An AD-free ABC

There are no ads on everyone’s ABC TV, thank goodness. That would be dreadful, and, well, too commercial. But how delightful to see, in between each and every show, those wonderful thirty second insights into ABC TV’s world-class, on-screen talent. They’re so good that, quite frankly, they should loop them together and run them as a show all in their own right, say at about 8pm Tuesday nights.

Drawing on their pool of ever-popular presenters, ABC 1, in an informal and yet imaginative, multi-media sort of way, lets viewers get a glimpse of the celebrity behind the celebrity.

So good are these mini, Dentonesque, none-on-ones, that I find it hard to pick between them.

Long-time ABC radio and TV semi-women’s-religion correspondent, Geraldine Doooogue, sets the general tone. Sitting at a table on her patio, staring blankly into the middle distance, she holds a pen over a notepad, waiting for the Muse, or maybe even Mr. Muse, to visit her. An audio thought-bubble then opens and she tells us something about being so something or other. Her message wistfully moves us thanks mostly to its diamond-etched clarity.

Then there’s Ms. Doooogie’s longtime colleague, Kerry O’Brien. He is a red head but he is not a woman. He asks the questions on The 7.30 Report. He’s been doing that job for yonks. Which might explain why he is not much good at giving answers. His thirty seconds feature him sitting at the 7.30 Report desk whilst the camera tries to find him through some TV studio equipment. He talks humbly of being so lucky to be so humble and that’s why he’s so humbled by his lucky job.

Another stand-out comes from the Australian cricket team’s vice-captain, Michael Clarke, who also has a job hosting ABC TV’s The Collectors. He is a TV natural as he has a fixed smile, which’s probably got something to do with being photographed alongside Lara Bingle all the time. In his ad – sorry, I mean personal insight – he tells us the secret behind being a good collector of things: “When I walk passed something I often pick it up. That’s when you know you’ve got a problem!”

A woman who is not linked to Michael Clarke, Myf Warhurst, energetically gives us thirty seconds of her time. Wrestling a couch and a coffee cup, Warhurst manages to think aloud about her unique qualifications to be on a TV music quiz show – “As a kid I didn’t listen or buy or have anything to do with popular music.” She does all of this with her mouth tightly closed, as if she’s just been caught by the camera after taking a long drag on a cigarette.

The only one in this Insight Series that I’ve got a small problem with is Peter Cundall’s – the former Director of Gardening. He tells us in a very Confucian manner that “everyday is a celebration of life”. Mmmm… Touching. But why did they have to put him into slo-mo in post-production? Old people move slowly enough, don’t they? Or are the test-driving some footage for their Vale Cundall special? I hope they broadcast the service.

The TLA/GFC/RTD Nexus

Maybe it is the pre-mixed can of Bogun and Coke talking, but I reckon that RTDs are still on a roll. Despite our Federal government's tax attack on these evil, binge-drunk, violently-behaved beverages, they are still being created, as if from some kind of unstoppable torrent. Indeed, in so many different colours, flavours and silly names do they come that even a company like Hyundai would be shocked.

And the reason RTDs are still selling comes down to an odd nexus: TLA/GFC/RTD.

A Three Letter Anagram / Global Financial Crisis / Ready To Drink nexus.

Taken singly none of these TLAs really matter that much; but combined they bring to bear the power of everyone's inner bogun. That redneck snapping at each and everyone's heels. The linguistic shortcut that an anagram provides leads us straight to the antidote to fiscal uncertainty. Drink. Drink mixed with other drink. Drink and other drink mixed together in a can. An RTD. All you have to do is buy it and open it and drink it. Six of them. Then you swear at the government, fight with your mates, get thrown out of the pub, and - how should it be put? - become belligerent in your domestic environment.

This news is in no way new, however.

RTDs have their roots in cynical marketing and the stupidity of the masses. There is a neat Latin phrase for this, of course: Coca-Cola.

And if we are talking Latin, we might as well be in Atlanta. In Atlanta in the 1870s a druggist called John Pemberton was successfully selling an RTD called French Wine Coca. Successfully at least until the city of Atlanta decided to bring about a prohibition of all alcohol. The ban never went ahead, but in the lead up to its supposed enforcement Pemberton had to find a way to keep his business going. He removed the wine from his wine coca recipe and added distilled fruit essences. The formula already had kola nut extract in it, so Pemberton called the new drink Coca-Cola. Without the wine, the thing was a real winner, not too mention a real upper. Because it was a soft drink full of the coca plant's key attribute: cocaine. With no legislation for control of such drugs until WWI, it took off. Coca-Cola deny that their drink ever contained cocaine. I wonder if one day the RTD manufaturers of our own time will deny that their beverages ever conatined alcohol. Or that kids drank them. Or - worse than anything else - the drinks were really awful. To drink.

But they shoot Vegemite, don't they...