PULP was correct at the time of
The views in this publication are not necessarily the views of the USU. The information contained within this edition of PULP was correct at the time of printing.
This publication is brought to you by the University of Sydney Union.
Issue 07, 2023
While there have been many Olympic Games hosted over the decades with creatively distinct iconography and merchandise (see: Atlanta 1996, Mexico City 1968), none, in my opinion, rival that of the Sydney 2000 Summer Olympics. With its garish primary colour schemes — characteristic of the late ‘90s — striking visuals, and iconic characters, the 2000 Olympics reign supreme.
I was a mere three months old when my parents took me to the opening ceremony of the Sydney Olympics. Everyone in attendance went home with a briefcase full of printed programs and Olympicthemed freebies. My dad pulled down the case from its shelf in his office and blew off the dust, accumulated after years of neglect and a lack of Y2K nostalgia — the mustard yellow faded to a pale, off-white thanks to sun damage.
My obsession with the memorabilia and the imagery of the games only surfaced a couple years back. While working at a charity store, a stranger donated an Olympics volunteer shirt alongside a pair of gold and green socks. I later found a Coogi shirt with a Sydney Olympics patch on the sleeve, and from there, I would spend my days saving every depop find and eBay link I could, of merchandise, collectibles, and knick-knacks.
The look of the games is what immediately drew my eye.
The emblem, consisting of a humanoid athletic figure with a boomerang for legs, was influenced by First Nations designs, with its stripped back shapes and bold
primary colours. Dots and circles signify the Australian landscape, and the sharp spikes above evoke both the Opera House but also the torch relay that commences the ceremony. I am reminded of the vibrant, polychromatic scribblings on bus seats or movie theatre carpets.
The loose brush strokes of the salient athlete carries over into the amorphous shapes that appear on the tickets, shirts and stickers. Pools of ink of various arrangements bleed and meld into each other, reflecting the shores that border our country; a vague outline of the Opera House is prominent on the volunteer uniforms.
The mascots — Syd, Ollie, and Millie — were composed of a duck-billed platypus, a kookaburra, and an echidna; forming a palette of the various Olympic colours. Their cartoonish designs make Australia more fitting to host an ABC3 show instead of an international sporting event. It’s a shame they were only around for a single Olympic Games, they could have been a great addition to tourism adverts and graphic tees.
Flicking through my Dad’s case on my bedroom floor, I am transported back to an era with turn-of-the-century aesthetics. I swim in a sea of tickets, Kodak camera coupons, and torches that are expired, broken, or both. I can never return to this place, and I doubt Brisbane will either. We can only hope that by 2032 there will be enough 2000s nostalgia to reanimate the long dead Syd, Ollie, and Millie.
Until then, I’ll always have my Dad’s yellow briefcase.
It’s 2016, you are 14, it is minus two degrees, and you are freezing to death with a condition well known to the XC community — lycra induced hypothermia. To make matters worse, you just found out that Snowy Mountains Grammar got special hoodies for cross country. You are furious. Moving your skis in the tracks to no avail, you accept your fate. Death. Or more likely, a hyperactive race marshall — with long dead dreams of Olympic glory, shouting at you to move to the blue line. You can see your teammate approaching, cow bells ringing in your ears, and you skid like Bambi on ice to the centre of the relay change zone. Clumsily, you get a pat on the back, almost knocked to the ground, and then it goes quiet. The race has begun.
I participated in cross country skiing from the ages of 11 to 17, and within those six gloriously harrowing years I have witnessed some absolute scenes. To the luckily uninitiated, cross country skiing is like regular skiing, minus the benefits of gravity and exponentially warmer clothes,
with the added bonus of year six stress meltdowns! Instead of skiing down the hill (the fun version), you ski up a hill for the grand reward of…spiritual fulfilment?
I got roped into this godawful sport in year five, but little did I know I was about to be thrown into a community rife with addiction (of the fudge variety), corruption (of the insidious sport parent variety), and petty crime (rampant cowbell theft).
Cross country skiing was a sport defined by its sheer insanity. I will never forget when, midway through a relay race, as I neared the top of the final hill, a fellow skier stabbed her pole into the bindings of my ski, sending me sliding down the hill with my second ski flying down the snowy planes to the carpark almost 500 metres below. As she cried breathlessly, “On your left,” I have never felt so much homicidal rage. This sport is insidious. I have lost my faith in humanity on that track. Whether it be getting tripped up or shouted at by an ex-pro coach through a walkie talkie
WORDS China Meldrumwith the sound up to ear-drum-destroying, my young soul has been darkened by this sport.
But, of course, it did have moments of greatness: there was nothing more fulfilling than getting to the top of the menacing Valley Trail hill, upon which sat a tree infamously riddled with shrapnel from the detonation of a Vietnam War-era hand grenade (don’t ask). And despite Australia’s inadequacy on the XC world stage (where anything above the bottom 10 is a victory), I would recommend XC skiing to any sadist willing to give it a shot.
Above all, I remember my time in the XC scene fondly, from my proudly hanging snowflake medals, to my bitter hatred of the infamous sprint loop, that wasn’t so much a sprint than a 4 minute hike up a hill that would make Norwegian two year olds scared. Alas, it will not be remembered fondly enough to take my skis out of storage — even if a custom hoodie was on the line.
The Billycart Derby. A biennial event of Olympic proportions for every five-to twelve-year-old growing up in my small town. With prizes for speed, costumes, and cart decor, the Derby was an opportunity to express both creativity and athleticism.
A chance to prove oneself a sprog above the rest.
My first Billycart Derby took place in the cool sunshine of late term three when I was a tender six years old. I was lucky enough to have my parents greenlight the construction of a bright pink, Barbie dream cart for me and my friend Rose.
At the hardware store, sturdy wheels and two-by-four were carefully curated. Rose and I were given a full run of the paint aisle. Hot pink would surely be the obvious choice for a Barbie-themed cart, but how passé! We selected an exquisite baby pink whose hue would mingle excellently with the bright patterned canvas we chose to upholster the seat. We perused ribbons, fake flowers, and self-adhesive gemstones — anything to elevate the glitz of our cart.
“Mum, my bike helmet’s black!” And with that, a fuzzy pink helmet cover was thrown into the shopping cart.
Derby day really started the night before Derby day, when nervy little grasshoppers hopped about inside my stomach and made it impossible to sleep.
Will our cart be the prettiest?
Will we win the race or will Rose slip and make fools of us both?
Was Rose a bad pick for a partner?
Of course she wasn’t. But the thirst for glory does strange things to a kid in year one.
We arrived at school in the morning to see that the billycart track had usurped the playground. Outlined by witches’ hats, it wound between trees in Grandma’s Woods and crested the ridge by the veggie garden.
We were called to the starting line by age group. To avoid any trickery or nasty interceptions, we were made to run the race one team at a time.
Too bad, I’d have kicked that rock into the spokes of Jake and Annie’s cart wheels. There was no time for me to consider the competitive monster I had become. With a rough-and-tumble readiness, I jammed on my helmet and a set of knee and elbow pads.
We pulled the cart up to the starting line, where Mrs Harold held an air horn. I leant down with gritted teeth. Rested my hands on the back of the cart as Rose clambered inside. With the squeal of the horn I took off, thudding along the frost-hardened grass with all the speed my squat legs could gather. I heaved my full weight to the side to help Rose steer us around each corner. When we finally crossed the finish line, she hollered from our humble pink throne.
We did not win the race that day. Nor was our cart deemed most beautiful. But I was not deterred. No, indeed, I was spurred on.
It was another two years ‘til the next Billycart Derby; there was no time to waste.
Australia is a less than ideal market for a professionalised baseball league. There is very little grassroots engagement — often thought of as ‘boring cricket’. If you ask someone wearing baseball merchandise if they’re a fan of the team, they usually respond with a non-committal “I-wentto-their-stadium-once-and-bought-thiscap.” After the financially disastrous and experimental Australian Baseball League of the 1990s ceased playing in 1999, the Australian Baseball Federation could have accepted their second-rate bat-and-ball sport fate. Instead, in 2011, it decided that the perhaps masochistic experiment should continue. With that, the ABL was reborn.
Initially consisting of only six teams across Australia, modest success allowed the ABL to expand to two new cities — Auckland and Geelong. There was clear justification for New Zealand expansion — the professionalisation of Baseball New Zealand and the extension of the league into new markets.
The reasoning behind Geelong-Korea, on the other hand, is less clear.
Yes, Geelong’s baseball team is called Geelong-Korea.
Geelong-Korea is the brainchild of cross-collaboration between the Korean marketing firm Happy Rising and the ABL. Every player, coach, and the majority of its management are Korean citizens, largely players who have been released from the highly popular Korean Baseball Organisation.
But they play in Geelong. Geelong, of second largest “city” in Victoria and 250,000 people fame.
As silly as a team called GeelongKorea sounds, the ABL is not entirely throwing wild pitches. The league already draws heavily upon other countries’ higher-quality development programs, to compensate for Australia’s inability to produce competitive international baseball players — or stop them from leaving when one miraculously appears. The inclusion of a Korean team allowed the tournament to expand to Geelong without having the league resemble European cricket. It also created stronger links with the KBO, which could attract better players to play for another Australian team in their off-season.
Baseball Australia even reckons that the ABL could start to attract an audience in Korea, with CEO Glenn Williams stating that the team could help the league reach “maximum exposure not only domestically
WORDS Ally Pittbut internationally as well.”
These hopes haven’t materialised, though. In their three seasons, GeelongKorea finished last in their division on every occasion, never with a winning percentage above 0.350. It’s hard for an established team with a strong connection to a local area to maintain an invested fanbase in such an unpopular sport. It’s even harder to believe that an Australia team featuring only Korean players could gain a foothold in either Geelong or Korea, given its half-removal from both markets.
Geelong City is convinced that GeelongKorea will attract baseball fans to the region. Its mayor Peter Murrihy claimed that international broadcasts of Geelong Korea are “expected to reach 20 million baseball fans in south-east Asia,” apparently demonstrating the lack of connection between Geelong and Korea by embarrassingly mixing up his Asian geography. My Geelongite housemate (notably, an avid Geelong Cats fan) says that not only do very few locals attend games, but many have never heard of the team. The ABL doesn’t release public attendance data, but the finals held in Perth earlier this year attracted fewer than 3,500 attendees. There is mental gymnastics involved in imagining the regional Geelong Baseball Centre’s stands
being packed full of international tourists ready to stimulate the local economy. Korean neither registers as a top five language or ancestry among Geelong residents, so it’s not like the region was planning on marketing the team as representative of the region’s diversity.
There is one thing Baseball Australia may have gotten right, though. The US has a strong history of minor league teams with exceedingly fun names — the Lansing Lugnuts, Fort Myers Mighty Mussels, and Rocket City Trash Pandas. Until now, Australia didn’t have its own answer to this; the Sydney Blue Sox, Adelaide Giants, and Perth Heat are boring names, and professional. Geelong-Korea may yet serve the ABL by making baseball relevant in giving fans one thing cricket can’t claim: the most fun name in Australian professional sports.
When I first started fencing, I hated it. I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing. The position felt strange. I couldn’t get a point. It was the utmost inconvenience on a Saturday morning.
Now fencing means so much to me. It’s arriving to training weary as a wet dog and leaving pumped up like a chihuahua on speed. It’s hitting my foot with my foil and bouncing on my toes to warm up. It’s the invincibility I feel in a plastic boob plate. It’s the sore hot spots on my fingers and toes that I always forget to tape. It’s chucking on music, stretching on the hotel floor, and cleaning my tips. Losing the miniature screws in the carpet then looking for them for hours. Re-taping my foils with an exhale. It’s dancing around to shake out the nerves that feel like little
bugs crawling around, infesting my veins and arteries.
It’s the noise-cancelling headphones working as a shield against forced social interaction at a competition. It’s getting the fifth point in a row that shoves your opponent emotionally into their grave. It’s going head to head with girls that could squash me with their thumb. It’s the breath that leaves my chest when some badass bitch absolutely wrecks me with a stunning point.
It’s the beep-laden voice memos that I capture hunched and panting over my bag at the venue, noting what I need to improve on. It’s learning how to set boundaries and how to push boundaries. It’s surrendering to the sweat and heat and burning thighs, finding voice and expression in the rhythm of my feet.
It’s the sexual tension with the girl across the piste from me, who turns my legs to jelly as I try to keep my cool while doing the hottest activity ever. Smirking at her from across the venue when no one knew, her cheering me on, calling me a queen… her voice when she said forza.
It’s the 15-hour layovers in Doha. It’s getting into the elevator with Olympic Champions on the way back from a grocery store run and managing to squeak out a “Ciao!” It’s the convenience store snack runs in a foreign country. It’s shoving the blue light of my phone in front of my eyes to fight the jetlag. Scalding my throat with hot tea because it’s worth the caffeine boost. It’s snow angels in Vienna and blurry late nights with chain-smoking strangers in Budapest. It’s whining as I drag my fencing bag — big enough to fit me inside it — banging up and down the subway stairs in Rome.
It’s the crushing lows that bring your feet back to the ground. It’s being able to scream at the top of my lungs and have no one blink an eye… It’s the 11-point comeback, the post competition headache sealed with salty tears. The awkward conversations about all the bruises I have. Having to pee in a cup and gaze at it with two strangers as it sits on my dining room table. It’s the visceral urge to show the other countries what Australians can do. It’s the delicious taste of drowning myself in Hydralyte. It’s the constant struggle to prove myself and justify the last ten years of sacrifice.
You’re fourteen (and nine months) and you’ve just landed a job at a piratethemed mini golf course and driving range. It takes a while to realise that the older man smirking at you across the counter is asking for a bucket of one 100 golf balls at the reduced senior rate. This will be far from the last awkward innuendo that hangs in the air during your four and half years here and you will never quite work out which of these old gents are in on the joke.
I, like many teenagers who have just become legally eligible to work, was rabidly excited to enter the workforce, and where could be better than a mini golf centre pockmarked with pirate graves and water features running with Powerade-blue water. Despite being expected to teach children on holiday camps, I managed to end my tenure with only the vaguest and most basic golf knowledge. What I found far more interesting was the intriguing nexus of community that this place attracted — both its staff and patrons.
I learned a lot about the subtle politics of children’s birthday parties and the true heights of chaos they can reach. This was also an attractive date location for other teenagers and the awkward antics
of early dating made for excellent people watching. It was the driving range side of the business though that brought the most befuddling customers. Why, for example, if you had struck a magpie with a golf ball, would you bring its corpse in to hold up for the staff without any explanation?
Our first jobs often leave us with both terrible memories and wonderful stories and there is nothing like hindsight to highlight the absurdity of the scenarios we found ourselves in at such a young age.
WORDS Zoe BakkerBrazilian jiu-jitsu is a grappling martial art prototyped by a Japanese judo practitioner and developed by a Brazilian family in their garage. It exploded in popularity in the early ‘90s, which has placed jiu-jitsu in a strange place, not quite popular or admired enough to be an Olympic sport and not quite marketable enough to reach the cultural and marketable heights of boxing or MMA. However, this hasn’t left the sport short of big competitions or big personalities…
Competitions, once a stale and studious experience, would see a transition from pay-perview to free platforms. Subsequently, the online presence of jiu-jitsu began to expand: athletes were more active on social media, pre and post-match interviews became more common, and highlights of matches were now posted on YouTube and Instagram for free.
The culmination of the digital explosion of the sport was the formation of the supergroup ‘Danaher Death Squad’, led by infamously unforgiving philosopher-turned-coach, John Danaher. The group consisted of some of the sport’s most skilled and entertaining athletes: motor-mouthed Gordon Ryan, boisterous Rookie Nick Rodriguez and banterous “true-blue Aussie’’ Craig Jones. The team was highly interactive with the jiu-jitsu community, hosting events worldwide and making several of their own web series.
In early 2020, many of their content-producing contemporaries from DDS ventured to Puerto Rico, partly to escape the imminent expansion of COVID-19 as well as to make their experience more appealing online and for other athletes to
join them, almost like a testosterone-fuelled Hype House.
The group mysteriously and dramatically split halfway through their year-long training camp on the beaches of Puerto Rico. Rumours of systemic bullying, steroid abuse, and sexual experiments gone awry threw the jiu-jitsu-net into hysterics. In the eye of a gossipy storm, the Death Squad was silent…
They returned to America in schism. Ryan remained with Danaher, opening ‘New wave Jiu-Jitsu’ in Austin, Texas, whilst Rodriguez and Jones opened ‘B-team Jiu-Jitsu’, only 15 minutes away (awkward).
Speculation resurfaced during the lead-up to a highly anticipated competition when Rodriguez stated, “We had to cut the poison out and move on.” Rodriguez was the only former member of DDS set to face Ryan and lost.
Shortly after, on February 14th, Ryan posted a photo celebrating his victory with the caption “Happy valentines day… I’ve been fucking [Rodriguez] in every round and competition since we met.”
Rodriguez retorted “[Ryan’s] biggest thing is steroids.”
Ryan then graced ‘Jitstagram’ with a gift — a 62-slide story simultaneously admitting and denying his steroid use. A 63rd slide would detail his extensive gastroenterological complications. Rodriguez and Jones sent back several packages
of adult nappies. Jones shot a video, emerging from a mud bath, captioned “when [Ryan] thinks he’s finally safe, I’ll be in his toilet.”
Ryan and Rodriguez were set for a rematch. Ryan won via a controversial split decision, doubling down on Rodriguez’s use of steroids. Rodriguez
The ching of an emptied cash register. Bombastic EDM drops. Laser sounds heralding from the second-nearest galaxy.
Hear this all at once and you may reach to call an ambulance, portending certain death. But if this conglomeration of sonoral chaos lasts precisely two minutes and forty-five seconds, rest assured that there are paramedics on standby (just to the left of the soft mat). Because you aren’t having an aneurysm, you’re at a cheerleading competition.
A far cry from the slow-paced varsity chants of old, modern cheer music cadences would find their own in Berghain. Many songs oscillate in rhythm, setting the tone for the different parts of a cheer routine. The highly technical main stunt section is littered with electronic booms to accentuate the flyer’s body movements. Laserbeams punctuate the baskets — where flyers are thrown into the air, contorting and twisting into pretzels before landing in the bases’ arms.
How can a cheerleading soundtrack so perfectly match the routine’s shape? The answer lies in a lot of effort. Composers are also sent a basic routine mark-through, tasking them with the meticulous labour of syncing zap-gun sounds with stunts. This accentuates every flyer’s pulled heel stretch, or cascading cradle.
Within the genre of cheer music, there is great variation. Like a fingerprint, no cheer soundtrack is like any other, distinguished by its unique sequence of mash-ups and random timing of tings and booms.
For low-level teams in Australia, cheer soundtracks are typically mash-ups of pop songs, often with a theme tying the selection together, like ‘girl power’ of ‘noughties hits’. Teams can submit specific lyrics to intersperse in
the madness; “slay” and “queen” are commonly heard. These mixes are familiar to anyone who has attended a bad rave or DJ set.
For the lucky cheerleaders who pack their bags for Worlds in Florida every April, their music ventures far beyond the ordinary. For each team, a new musical marvel is crafted — a song tailored to the routine. Each song has an innovative theme tying to its name: ‘Top Gun Revelation 2023’ lays the religious imagery on thick, with the opening phrase, “Say a prayer to all things holy!” and interspersed words, “Your soul is snatched — Gloriooouuuss!”. The ‘Top Gun Double O 2023’ music has a strong (folklarised) Spanish flavour — “Are you ready? Let me hear you say Olé!” and “Welcome to the bull fight..that’s some bull! (pun intended)” Closer to home, the East Coast Allstars Nightwings team from Sydney has a soundtrack serving as an ode to the fantastical bird: “When the sun sets, you know what time it is’’ opens the song. These soundtracks with their extended metaphors and cultural allusions are nothing short of spoken poetry, if the slam poet had a robotic super-serious male tone.
The future of cheer music has been thrown into precarity, particularly in the US, with allegations of copyright violation piling on like a human pyramid. But a cheer routine without a dazzling soundtrack and all of its auditory quirks is nothing but a glorified stampede. The music is the most essential ingredient, like birdsong to a choir of feathered alarm-clocks. As every cheerleader fights to keep their stunts in the air, we must all save cheerleading music from falling and hitting the mat.
WORDS Ariana Haghighi
Athleisure. Often used as a means of ‘dressing down’ an outfit, athletic wear comes in various shapes and sizes. New Balance 550s (or 530s, if you’re a feeling a bit “old school”), Nike ACG — the enduring textiles of All Conditions Gear — Juicy Couture tracksuits, but none come quite so close to the level of capitalist iconography featured on a soccer jersey, or — as would be more authentic to its cultural roots — a football kit.
This piece will not merely dissect the origins and trends of blokecore as much as it will discuss the broader use of jerseys to undercut, reappropriate, and subvert the shallow aesthetic of a trend
such as “blokecore”. For those willing and curious about observing the trend cycle, the rise in jerseys is inextricably linked to TikTok — that app where users share their outfit of the week, thrift finds, original kits, replicas, and create edits that draw from an aesthetic of a different era, area, or subculture. While the trend may have been led by fashionistas with a vicious support for their soccer — sorry — football team, the piece has gone beyond the realms of vicious sports loyalty — particularly for a game like football — and entered one disconnected from sports entirely.
Stripped of football loyalty, a jersey is reduced to strips of polyester panelling, likely colourful, and becomes a mere
canvas for the names of teams, players, sponsorships, slogans, and logos. The football jersey has made its rounds in the high fashion world: in 2014, Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto designed the Third Kit for Real Madrid, featuring iconic branding of dragon and bird imagery. We’ve seen the soccer jersey be repurposed as band merchandise: Black Midi released an exclusive run of ‘BLACK MIDI BLACK COUNTRY NEW ROAD SPORTS JERSEY’ for their Back in Black US Tour in 2022 and Nia Archives also released a ‘Baiana’ football jersey and scarf as a part of their latest merch drop.
Kicking forward with the football resurgence, independent designers such as FERAL (@f_3_r_a_l) and pinupgirl (@ pinupgir1) adopt and rework the jersey into a garment stripped of genuine football loyalty. Instead, logos and icons traditionally present on a jersey are replaced with graphics, crests, and text that allude to the commercial aesthetic but truly exist just for aesthetic — poking some fun.
Designer Henry Johnson (@henry_ jawnson) takes it a step further and repurposes the commercial aesthetic of the soccer jersey to commentate on capitalism, market concentration, and monopolisation. In May 2022, Johnson released a mock-up of jerseys satirically clad with BlackRock, Exxon, Raytheon, minions, and miscellaneous fantastical backgrounds, titled ‘Post apocalyptic hell world mock-ups’. The mockups pose
a blatant comment on the ethics and decline of economy in a society plagued with doom of imminent climate crisis and war where ironic acknowledgement becomes a coping mechanism and tool of resignation. Grim.
The football jersey can be mapped with a clear trajectory — beginning as an indicator and identifier of a player in a game, and then an earnest expression of loyalty and passion for a team. In the case of FERAL, the jersey is a means of adopting a loose ‘bloke aesthetic’ where the sport itself becomes irrelevant to the aesthetic, or in Johnson’s case, a medium brimming with possibilities of criticism, commentary, and awareness.
Inspired by Sha’Carri Richardson’s sprinting slay, heavily manicured Y2K long nail extensions are juxtaposed with a basketball to celebrate the girls slaying in sports.
MODEL & NAIL SET
Miranda Xie
PHOTOGRAPHER
Justine Hu
Those of you who have not played netball for an independent school outside of Sydney might not realise what an enormous commitment it is.
It’s 5.30am. You and the rest of the inter-B’s netball team are huddled on a coach in the dark. High-beam light protrudes from the beast’s nostrils and petals of mist envelop its steely façade. Despite the many layers protecting you — the staticky dress, the sweat-wicking polo, and a tracksuit lined with fleece — the icy midwinter air prickles your skin.
You are chilly. You are sleepy. You are thirsty. Your tummy is empty and all that awaits it are an apple and a muesli bar, squashed flat at the bottom of your bag. Imminent is your departure — perhaps to Bowral or the Central Coast — and again you are faced with an unsolvable question:
How will you spend the hours for which you will be trapped on this bus? One may read a book, listen to the new Lana album, or fret over their essay on the alignments between The Odyssey and The Penelopiad. Or, one may write short poems, inspired by haikus, that will sit dormant in the notes app on their phone for years to come…
anticipation a wobbly breath blooms within stomach aflutter
shoulders. ribs. legs. arms. tied together tight, string taut is tense is terse is
i am endlessly taken by your majesty wash me all away
ceaselessly she moves never stops. where does she go? kinetic, futile
my tired little limbs they’re heavy and they’re aching i need hydration
it’s overrated his hollow chest, tired body he’ll sleep when he’s dead
restless. sheets crinkle heart thumping behind my brow awake. frustrated
skin prickled bright red sting in the balls of my feet forehead sticky, stuck
haikus are so rad get to the point, keep it curt am I a big nerd?
Fondly remembered in the hearts of those who can neither categorise themselves as millennial nor Gen-Z, the original Nintendo Wii met its definitive end in the latter days of Spring, 2013.
Durings its short run on Earth, the Wii introduced its users to subpar SD graphics, the wondrous world of Mii, and the most world-renowned and influential video game to ever be made: Wii Sports. Despite the warnings displayed before their mini-game of tennis began, many still recall the activation of their fight/flight/freeze response when their Wii remote flew towards the TV because they forgot to tighten the flimsy grey wrist strap. Others are still traumatised by a remote to the eye during a tense game of bowling, as they were standing a little too close to their sibling — who remains a sore loser to this day.
The Nintendo Wii was initially survived by the Nintendo Wii U and the Nintendo Wii Mini until 2017, when they too were discontinued. Currently, the Nintendo Switch remains its closest relative, for which a Switch Sports game was released, though it has not been able to surpass the glorious heights Wii Sports reached at its summer of ‘09 peak.
I sit in the venue change room, rolling out my calves with a drink bottle, pointe shoes and toe pads, ready for my audition. One leg is tucked in as I tie the ribbons of my leather flats. I hate how the leather bunches under my arches, my canvas flats for class hug my feet better.
“You have such nice feet,” what one might take as passive-aggressive, is often a compliment.
Being born with ballet feet can be a blessing and a curse. My screwed ankle would flare up a couple times a year; physios assessed me with some basic rises before lathering me in heat cream. “No wonder you’re sore, this poor ankle is dealing with some big arches and tight calves.”
A pointed foot in ballet lengthens the line of a movement or position, creating flow and continuity. Alongside hyper extensive legs and elongated arms, having arched feet and lengthened toes completes the line.
Before a ballet dancer reaches an incredibly special point in their career — to dance en pointe — they’d spend their foundational years of training in prepointe.
I spent 45 minutes a week, for over a year’s worth of classes, forcing my toes against a resistance band, massaging my arches with my elbow, and rolling out my calves with a golf ball.
In the second exercise of a standard ballet class, tendus (meaning to stretch), we focus on the feet, licking the floor as it articulates through every metatarsal. Progressing to faster movements in dégagés and jetés, later followed by centre allegro, featuring stretched toes and arches in the air. Once your cardio has been pushed to its limits, your legs
are jelly from adage, and you’re sweating in places you didn’t know could sweat. Then, you put on your pointe shoes.
“Those shoes are almost dead Nandini, it might be time for a new pair. But your feet look nice in them, save them for your exam.”
Dead shoes — a consequence of breaking in a pointe shoe with sheer sweat, stepping on the boxes, and the occasional wall bashing, but also a precursor to accentuating your arches and three-quarter pointe. The nicer your feet looked in pointe shoes, often the less supported they were, and the harder they were to dance in. Dead pointe shoes demand dumbbells of strength in your tiny
toes to articulate through the floor and perform that deliciously smooth roll-down from an arabesque.
Using affordable Chux to stop the rubbing between the calluses on your toes and the paper mache of a pointe shoe, taping up your healing ankle, placing makeup sponges or silicone toe spacers between the big and second toe, Band-Aiding your toe which lost a nail to bruising — these are all part of the desire for beautiful feet. Home remedies and suggestions from friends alike; you’d do anything to make your feet work in the shoes that made them look the best.
Before an exam, competition, audition, or performance, I’d think about that first step on stage, a strong start was led with the juicy-iest foot. A temps lié into fifth, a pirouette with your insteps locked or a balance in attitude croisé — you want the audience to marvel at your feet.
Have you ever found yourself dragged to an interfaculty sport match with nothing to do except support your mates? Look- ing to scratch that weekend punting itch?
Introducing the brand new SUSF sports wagering app: SUSFor the Win!
Similar to the TAB app, SUSFor the Win only works when physically on campus, so make sure to place your bets during lectures! Why care about catching up on class readings in the hallway of the Old Teachers’ College, when you can read up on our very hot interfac tips for better odds.
Can’t seem to scrape together the last cents of your casual pay slip? No problem! SUSFor the Win can convert your HECS debt into our in-game currency, CHAU CHAK WING-ITS™. Waging is way more fun when the numbers aren’t real anyway. Gamble with your future and wage the cost of Semester One 2023 on Engineering smashing CSA in ultimate frisbee with a five point margin. Why wait?
Let’s hear how SUSFor the Win changed the life of this punter:
Greg F. became really interested in horse racing after he turned 18, but he has admitted to the cheeky sneak-in with his Dad on occasion, “only for the big pony cups.” While his mates were socialising and having a couple drinks, Greg had his eyes glued to the massive TAB screens at the local. Starting university this February, he missed the adrenaline of a full quaddie score. Greg downloaded the SUSFor the Win app, and has never looked back!
“Thanks to the ease of CHAU CHAK WINGITS™, I managed to wage all my first-year fees on who won the kick off for SULS versus SUBS.” Regardless of if he won, we reckon Greg had a thrilling time, and so can you!
Find a new incentive to ensure immaculate attendance for tutorials this year. Bet on your mates with your classmates and become the next R.C. Mill-ionaire.
Dear Athletics Australia,
Congratulations! Sydney is officially in the running to become the next ‘World Marathon Major’ — joining six other cities as the world’s most elite marathons.
But the race is looking competitive. If you’re really committed to Sydney joining the prestigious ranks of the six ‘Majors’, there must be a radical route change.
Picture this: we start at Bradfield Park as usual, crossing the Harbour Bridge into the city. The NYC Marathon is already known for starting on the VerrazzonoNarrows Bridge, but at least nobody will be peed on. In NYC, when runners on the upper tier relieve themselves of their pre-race nerves, those on the bottom suffer. Then again, I’m sure there’s nothing quite like urinating from the tallest steel arch bridge in the world, overlooking the beautiful view of the harbour.
After a couple kms, it’s time for our runners to replenish their electrolytes by indulging in Marrickville’s best breweries. At the Marathon du Médoc, they serve you French wine; at the Liège Marathon, they serve you Belgian beer. What better way to promote Australian tourism than a morning pub crawl?
Enjoy a schooner at 10km, skull a pint at 12km, and top off the big 15 with a shoey. Make Bob Hawke proud.
Then take a boozy 8.4km detour to Centennial Park and pay homage to the Welsh tradition, as you race horses from the Equestrian Centre.
Before heading to Coogee near the 30km mark, runners will be reminded that they “must run in their thongs from Coogee to Bondi.” Save the Nike Vaporfly for Berlin.
Now the final stretch. As we approach the Opera House, applaud yourself for running away from your quarter-life crisis.
If you follow my proposed plan, Sydney will be chosen as a Major.
Signed,
A proud one-time Sydney half-marathon finisher.
WORDS Lizzy KwokHas this ever been you?
It’s midnight on a Saturday night. If everywhere hasn’t closed yet, you’re surely not getting in. At this point, you’re lucky if you can find a kebab, and don’t get started with public transport. Things are looking grim, your feet hurt, ears are ringing. You ask yourself, “If God’s really dead, then what’s the point? What didn’t I just move to Melbourne?”
Then, it hits you, and hope is not lost. You have a group fitness class at 8am. Instead of writhing around online at home, you just may be the epitome of health and wellness.
But in a market where there’s a new gym on every corner, how do you choose? Which one will match your current aesthetic.
Follow this map to find out...
Does doomscrolling no longer cut it? How badly do you want to feel something? Give me dopamine
I crave human connection
Do you believe cigarettes are morally superior to vapes?
Do you wish to kinky curiousities?
I desire spiritual enlightenment
*insert pretentious statement about moral relativism* fruit juice air for the win
I’m here for the hot chips
How much house spirit did you have at school athletics carnival? Give me the coloured zinc
Do you form parasocial relationships with people online?
Go put on some and go bouldering running or
No fear, #healthandwellness can still be for you: How do you have your bone broth? for the
*acoustic* vices thank I just surveil detail of life
No, I just organise my life around a conscientious ‘aesthetic’
to explore your curiousities?
Choose a Kubrick film
You probably pretend to like techno and religiously watch ‘Berghain fit’ videos on TikTok. Lets not kid ourselves, instead try being degraded in a red-lit dungeon to Dua Lipa.
desire spiritual enlightenment
How do you like your inspirational quotes?
*acoustic* for me, thank you
some Bon Iver bouldering or something.
Only inadvertently
With the amount of baby tees you probably already own, reformer pilates is the perfect low impact exercise option. Add some ‘greens powder’, a slick ponytail and you can ‘That Girl’, while holding your feet over your heads with some very ‘50 Shades-esque stirrups.
You are probably skeptical about group fitness, and scorn it for likely not being effective. Try CrossFit, for a ‘science based’, ‘functional alternative’. You’ll become a Kettlebell objectophilic and probably make protein intake KPIs but at least you can say you’re an ‘athlete’.
You probably drink Cosmopolitans and pretend you’re in Sex and the City with your friends. You’re a boss bitch who don’t need no man, so rather than message Jake from Hinge, go follow the gospel of Coach Alex and thrash up and down to Queen Bey.
F45
just every of their life
Do you support the military industrial complex?
Is it not inevitable?
With studios in 45 countries AND a US naval base, you can finally feel true human connection while copying the man on the TV doing a backward-roll bear-crawl-intosquat-jump. While all working in sync, you can remember it’s not just a workout it’s *team training*.
Slay all day, girlboss
With a side of phonk and Patrick Bateman
@M1SS_KATE
@LIZZY__430
@VOH.ROX
@HUGOSUX
@CHINA.THECOUNTRY
@BELLAWELLSTEAD
@KIDROMR
@ALLY_PITT
@ZOEREADSANDTHINGS
@SANDRAKALLARAKKAL
SENIOR EDITOR
EDITORS
@MARLOWHURST
@P.L.MCKENZIE
@HARRY.GAY_
@POWERFULOWLER
@IAMNANDINOSAUR
@LOCALBONBON
@RHEASARA
DESIGN RHEA THOMAS BONNIE HUANG
ALEX MURRAY DESIGN ASSIST
EDITING SUBCOM VICTORIA GILLESPIE
MAEVE HOPPER
SONAL KAMBLE
ALEX MA
SIMONE MADDISON
JAMES WILY