The Big Issue Australia #641 – Olympics by The Big Issue Australia

24.

and WILLIAM SHATNER

14.

OLYMPIC GAMES

12.

HG NELSON

23 JUL 2021

641 Ed.

ALYMPIC MEET PARDALL IST GOLD-ME AND FELLOW L ACHL AN E SPORTING BIG IS SU NS... CHAMPIO

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NATIONAL OFFICE Chief Executive Officer Steven Persson Chief Financial Officer Jon Whitehead Chief Operating Officer Chris Enright National Communications and Partnerships Manager Steph Say National Operations Manager Jeremy Urquhart EDITORIAL Editor Amy Hetherington Deputy Editor Melissa Fulton Contributing Editor Michael Epis Contributing Editor Anastasia Safioleas Editorial Coordinator Lorraine Pink Art Direction & Design GOZER (gozer.com.au) CONTRIBUTORS

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Contents

EDITION

641

12 Go You Good Thing! HG Nelson (aka Greig Pickhaver) takes a look back at his favourite Olympic moments and heroes – including Fatso the Wombat.

EM ILY W ON S ILVE R AT TH SP EC IA L OL YM PI CS E

14 Fun and Games From naked champions to drug-taking marathon runners to the Melbourne boy who suggested the all-in closing march, we cast an eye over the extraordinary stories that make the Olympic Games.

24 Ultimate Tree Change

18.

We Are the Champions We speak to five Big Issue athletes who have represented Australia: cover star Lachlan, who won gold at Atlanta, fellow Paralympian Murray, and Special Olympians Genise, Jason and Emily – each and every one a medallist! cover photo by James Braund

cover illustration by Kelli Laderer @kelliladerer

SMALL SCREENS

Smells Like Team Spirit

contents by Daniel Carson

THE REGULARS

04 Ed’s Letter & Your Say 05 Meet Your Vendor 06 Streetsheet 08 Hearsay & 20 Questions 11 My Word 26 Ricky

27 Fiona 34 Film Reviews 35 Small Screen Reviews 36 Music Reviews 37 Book Reviews 39 Public Service Announcement

William Shatner, best known as Star Trek’s Captain Kirk, is 90, with a new album, a new film and a new ambition – to become a tree.

40 Tastes Like Home 43 Puzzles 45 Crossword 46 Click

Ted Lasso is back for a second season – and star Jason Sudeikis couldn’t be more humble, nor more pleased, for the goofy American soccer coach.

Ed’s Letter

by Amy Hetherington Editor @amyhetherington

That’s the Spirit

here are moments in life when time stops, the minutes forever imprinted in memory. Most of us remember where we were the evening of 25 September 2000, the night Cathy Freeman stormed her way into history, winning Olympic gold in the 400m and carrying the hopes of an entire nation over the line. Holding aloft the Aboriginal and Australian flags in celebration, it was a powerful moment, bigger than sport. Already a national treasure, days earlier she’d lit the Olympic flame at the Opening Ceremony. I was living in Sydney, watching Freeman’s triumph on a huge outdoor screen, enveloped by a wave of noise that felt like the whole country cheering her forward. In those six weeks, over the Olympics and Paralympics, the city was electric. The streets were overflowing with people from all

LETTER OF THE FORTNIGHT

over the world, there was such joy – a collective goodwill. The Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics, already delayed by COVID, will be a different, more subdued affair. But maybe they’ll offer us a distraction from lockdowns, a little hope, a reminder of the power of the human spirit, of unity – and a reason to scream excitedly at the TV. As Freeman told SBS last year, “I’m proud of the fact that when I lit the cauldron all those years ago, it was a symbol of hope for all young Australians, and it’s at times like these that I reflect and I wonder the power of sport and the difference it can make in all of our lives.” In this edition, we celebrate the life‑changing power of sport for The Big Issue vendors and Street Soccer players who’ve represented the green and gold on the world stage. As Paralympic bronze-medallist Murray from Canberra tells us: “I’m Australian, and I represented Australia. I loved it.”

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The Big Issue Story The Big Issue is an independent, not-for-profit magazine sold on the streets around Australia. It was created as a social enterprise 25 years ago to provide both a voice and a work opportunity for people experiencing homelessness and disadvantage. Your purchase of this magazine has directly benefited the person who sold it to you. Big Issue vendors buy each copy for $4.50 and sell it to you for $9, keeping the profits. But The Big Issue is more than a magazine.

Your Say

I started buying The Big Issue regularly only a couple of months ago. In the 25th birthday edition, I found it interesting to read about community programs that The Big Issue is involved in – Street Soccer, Homes for Homes, The Big Issue Classroom and Women’s Subscription Enterprise. TRICIA NOONAN ASHBURTON I VIC

Good on you Big Issue, for blowing your own trumpet (Ed#638). Here I was, enjoying and appreciating the brilliant content your editors put together each fortnight (and thanks to vendors particularly for their stories, pics and poems), little realising all the other wonderful and useful things you do. No, I’m not surprised, but I’m pleased to be informed. SUSAN MOIR SHELLEY I WA

The Big Issue should be congratulated for expanding its vision to additional programs such as Homes for Homes and the Community Street Soccer Program. But the linchpin of The Big Issue is its magazine. I hope it continues to support the vendors well beyond its 25 years. HILARY WHITFIELD PRESTON I VIC

• Our Women’s Subscription Enterprise provides employment and training for women through the sale of magazine subscriptions as well as social procurement work. • The Community Street Soccer Program promotes social inclusion and good health at weekly soccer games at 23 locations around the country. • The Vendor Support Fund will offset the cost price of products for vendors, allowing them to earn a larger margin on their own street sales. • The Big Issue Education workshops provide school, tertiary and corporate groups with insights into homelessness and disadvantage, and provide work opportunities for people experiencing marginalisation. CHECK OUT ALL THE DETAILS AT THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

Tricia wins a copy of Laura Elizabeth Woollett’s new novel The Newcomer. We talk to her about the book on p32. We’d also love to hear your thoughts, feedback and suggestions: SUBMISSIONS@BIGISSUE.ORG.AU

YOUR SAY SUBMISSIONS MAY BE EDITED FOR CLARITY AND SPACE.

Meet Your Vendor

Keith

SELLS THE BIG ISSUE IN LONDON COURT, ST GEORGE’S TERRACE, PERTH

interview by Simon Grammes photo by Ross Swanborough

PROUD UNIFORM PARTNER OF THE BIG ISSUE VENDORS.

23 JUL 2021

If you visit a session of The Big Issue’s Street Soccer Program in Perth you might hear somebody yelling out “The Magician” or “Rocky” and you might wonder who they’re talking about. It’s me! Those are my nicknames from the coaches at soccer, but I was born as Keith, in Pinjarra, about 30 years ago. Even though my mum and dad split up when I was young, my childhood was happy and uneventful. I lived with my mum growing up, but I have a good relationship with my dad too. I’m the oldest of quite a few siblings: a brother, a sister, a stepsister and three stepbrothers. I enjoy spending time with my mum and my brother; we see each other every week and Mum takes us on drives or to the shops. I went to school in Belmont and finished Year 12. The best part about that time was my work experience with the Salvation Army. I loved it. When I was 18, I moved out of Mum’s house into supported accommodation with other people who also have an intellectual disability. I share a part of the house with Gavin, and there are a couple more people living in another part. I like it there, but I’m hoping to have my own place one day. Our support workers do all the cooking for us, but I’m learning to cook some dishes myself – and they’re showing me how to keep my room tidy as well – much to the delight of my partner Tara, who’s been by my side for more than two years now. She has a seven-year-old daughter, and I also have two boys, William and Jaxon, from previous partners. One of my big wishes for the future is that I can build a more regular relationship with them when they get older. I recently did a parenting course to improve my skills in that regard. I spend a lot of time playing and watching sports. One of the best moments in my life was going to the national Street Soccer tournament in Sydney with the WA team. I’m not only into soccer, but also into basketball, cricket and footy. I’m a mad Perth Wildcats supporter, and also like Perth Glory FC. I play for the integrated footy team at Kingsway with my good friends and fellow Big Issue vendors Kellee and Jason, and basketball with another vendor, Hamish, and Jason. I’m going to have a crack at netball soon too. Jason was the one that brought me to The Big Issue in 2012, and I love the work. It gives me some extra money and I love being out and about connecting with people. But most of all it has given me lots of new friendships with other vendors and Street Soccer players. I hope I can play soccer and work for The Big Issue for many more years. I would love to save enough money to see my dad who lives over in Sydney now!

Streetsheet

Stories, poems and pictures by Big Issue vendors and friends

CLASSROOM SPOTLIGHT

SHANE

All in the Family I like selling The Big Issue because it keeps me in work. I like getting out and about and meeting people and enjoying the day, starting at 6.30am and going into the afternoon. It gets me out of the house. My son Robert and my brother Ronald also work for The Big Issue. My son also works for SecondBite, which is a great organisation reducing waste for supermarkets and feeding many people. People are always very kind and supportive. I get a lot of smiles and polite people. These people have restored my faith in humanity and keep me going. JOHN E RAINE SQUARE I PERTH

New Edition

A Perfect 10

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’ve just celebrated my 10 years as a speaker with The Big Issue Classroom. For me, it’s the best job I’ve ever had. Classroom is about raising awareness of homelessness. I share my story with the school students, of how I became homeless in my late thirties, and how easy it is to become homeless. In 10 years, I’ve spoken to more than 20,000 students. Every kid I’ve spoken to, I say: “Always ask for help. Don’t be afraid to ask – there are plenty of people around who can help you.” I can remember one kid, a few years ago… We hand out a magazine at the end of the session, and he said: “Shove it up ya!” “Okay, fine, don’t take one,” I said. “What’s wrong?” And he said he’d had enough of school and was getting out. And then three weeks later, I was having a coffee upstairs, and this same kid walks past and says: “G’day Shane. Mum and Dad wanted me to leave school to earn money, but I wanted to stay at school for myself – you encouraged me and that.” It was great. That’s one message that got out! When you hear things like that, you know you’ve helped someone. To me, that’s the whole Big Issue ethos: just get out there and make a difference. SHANE WORKS AS A CLASSROOM SPEAKER IN MELBOURNE.

I am new to The Big Issue, but I am starting to build up some regular customers. I also really like seeing them most mornings. I like having chats with them and getting smiles from people who seem too busy to stop. The surfing edition (Ed#633) was my favourite cover. Selling The Big Issue has helped me meet new people. I love it on new edition day; it’s busy and I have coffee with other vendors. Getting the new magazine makes me happy and I love selling the new magazine. I also go to Community Street Soccer on Wednesdays in Adelaide, which is fun. ANGELICA JAMES PLACE & THE BODY SHOP I ADELAIDE

Positive Journey A very big thank you to The Big Issue team for giving me this opportunity and keeping me going while I am studying Biomedical Science with a major in Forensic Science at university. It is a motivation and it is great that I can give back to the community. Positive journey of my life. Thank you. OWEN BROOKFIELD PLACE I PERTH

Mayor of Hawthorn! Every one of my customers is special. They make it happen. They make me feel special every time they buy the magazine – I feel as if in Hawthorn the customers totally respect me. They treat me as an equal, and I appreciate that. Some of them even become my friends. I’ve been invited into the homes of three of them for dinner. I’ve been working outside Readings for 10 years. They even say I’m the Mayor of Hawthorn! A lot of them say that. I was introduced to The Big Issue by my brother Ron, who was a vendor. It was the best tip he ever gave me! All the others ran last – this was the only tip he gave me that won!

getting the new edition. I love getting dressed up in theme and selling the mags. At Easter I wear bunny ears and on Australia Day I wear the flag with pride! The Big Issue has supported me and my children. You do have to work really hard, and for long hours. But I find that you get out what you put in. I love when the calendar comes out and we get to throw a Christmas party. I can’t wait to do a vendor profile to share my story with the world and hopefully empower other women to join The Big Issue and take control of their lives. ROCHELLE YAGAN SQUARE I PERTH

Lucky 13 It’s been an honour to have worked for The Big Issue for the past 13 years. It’s been a great experience meeting vendors and staff along the way and my journey with The Big Issue has been amazing. To all my customers, thank you for making my day great by buying a magazine. It makes my day totally awesome when I know I can interact with the public every day, spinning my magazine on my finger and counting down the lights. It puts a smile on my face. I’m looking forward to many more years with The Big Issue. GLENN WOOLWORTHS, CENTRAL STATION I SYDNEY

LES READINGS, GLENFERRIE ROAD I MELBOURNE

A Couple of Faves My life has changed in a good way since selling The Big Issue. It gives me something to do every day and gets me up and working. My favourite customer is Steve – I know him from church. He buys the mag and is very friendly. Another favourite is Rob – he and I sometimes go to Fasta Pasta for a meal. WAYNE THE BODY SHOP & HUNGRY JACK’S, GOODWOOD I ADELAIDE

SEAN STIRLING FARMERS MARKET I PERTH

Dress for Success A lot of people know about The Big Issue and often ask about new issues. People are always kind, and most are interested in

ST E W G E TS O L D SCHOOL

Big Fan One of my customers keeps every one of the magazines she buys. This one is Ed#56 from 1998. She’s a loyal customer. STEW SANDGATE & NUNDAH MARKETS I BRISBANE

23 JUL 2021

A big thank you to all my regular customers for keeping me employed. It’s a great opportunity to get to know people and to get to know myself. A big thank you for continuing to support me.

ALL VENDOR CONTRIBUTORS TO STREETSHEET ARE PAID FOR THEIR WORK.

Always Learning

Hearsay

Andrew Weldon Cartoonist

“

My hope is that when people visit Bob’s statue, or as they simply pass by, that they will take a moment to remember that everyone deserves a second chance and that no-one is alone.

Belgium’s science minister Thomas Dermine, on his nation returning 2000 cultural artefacts to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where it was the colonial power. VICE I US

“Some people who raise wolves will actually kiss them. I knew one guy that basically French kissed his wolf.” David Mech, a senior research scientist with the US Geological Survey who has studied wolves for decades, on the evolutionary reason dogs do that kissy thing – as pups in the wild, they jump up to get food from their parents’ mouths. Good to be aware, wolf. BBC I UK

London-based author James Bowen on the unveiling of a bronze statue of his late friend Street Cat Bob in Islington, where they used to sell The Big Issue together. THE BIG ISSUE I UK

“I got in a car and I was the only kid of colour on the track. And I’d be getting pushed around. But then I could always turn their energy against them. I’d out-trick them, outsmart them, outwit them and beat them, and that, for me, was more powerful than any words.” Lewis Hamilton, Formula One’s most successful driver ever, on how go-kart racing was a release from the bullying and racial taunts.

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THE GUARDIAN I UK

“I actually never asked him how he found my shit. He just DM’d me one day on Instagram and was just like, ‘You got the sauce’, and I responded back and was like, ‘Yo, what’s up? I’m a big fan’. He liked my message and that was it from there.” The Kid LAROI, 17-year-old Indigenous rapper, on how he came to work with pop star Justin Bieber. NME I UK

“Getting regular coffee became an obsession. I made friends with a cleaner who, for a fee, agreed to make regular trips to Starbucks on my behalf. I paid other members of the cleaning staff to take my clothes home to wash, and learned to shower in the disabled toilets in the early hours.” Syrian refugee Hassan al-Kontar on living in Kuala Lumpur airport for seven months, the victim of a bureaucratic nightmare, because he didn’t want to fight in Syria’s war. THE GUARDIAN I UK

“It’s so meaningful to know the next generation will be watching the Olympics and can visualise a gold medal dream in surfing for themselves. I would tell them to hang onto that gold medal dream tight and work away at it every single day.” Pro-surfer Sally Fitzgibbons on her Olympics debut being more than a pipe dream, with the sport making its debut in Tokyo. She’ll do swell. WOMEN’S HEALTH I AU

“Space is extraordinary; the universe is magnificent. I want people to be able to look back at our beautiful Earth and come home and work very hard to try to do magic to it to look after it.” Sir Richard Branson, one of the billionaires getting into space travel, on his virgin voyage to the edge of Earth’s atmosphere. BBC I UK

“Everything that has been acquired through force and violence under illegitimate conditions must in principle be returned. Objects that have been acquired in an illegitimate fashion by our ancestors, by our grandparents, great-grandparents, do not belong to us. They belong to the Congolese people. Full stop.”

“Every day I wake up very motivated to spend time with them, to enjoy every second and moment with them.” Sara Rogel, on simply spending time with her parents. Rogel has just been freed from an El Salvadoran jail after serving nine years of a 30-year

20 Questions by Rachael Wallace

01 Who won the first-ever Academy

Award for Best Actress? 02 True or false? Manchester City won

the 2021 UEFA Champions League final. 03 What is the current world record for

the tallest stack of M&M’s? 04 What is the main export of El

Salvador? 05 What is the profession of Thelma

Plum? 06 Tanzania shares a border with how

many countries: a) One, b) Three, c) Four, or d) Seven? 07 What was the original name of

Joaquin Phoenix? 08 Who is the childhood idol of 2021

Wimbledon ladies’ champion Ash Barty? 09 Carson City is the capital of which

“My mother kept us safe like an umbrella does, from the heat and rain of life. I imagine her being close to me. That’s what keeps me going.” G Sonali Reddy, a 14-year-old in Pattapur, is among more than 3000 Indian children who have been orphaned during the COVID crisis. THE NEW YORK TIMES I US

“We start to see drop-off in reaction time averages as early as 22 years old or so. Once you hit 40 it becomes much more rapid.” Wayne Mackey, the founder of Aim Lab, confirms what you probably already know: it’s game over for

WIRED I US

“After I graduated, I saw a mysterious job ad in a newspaper. When I rang for more information, all they said was ‘hello’. I said ‘hello’ back, and they said ‘hello.’ It turned out to be my entry into the secretive world of intelligence.” Mike Burgess, ASIO’s director-general of security, on his recruitment. They had him at hello. THE AUSTRALIAN I AU

US state? 10 What percentage of the human

population has green eyes? 11 Which two actors who have both

portrayed Norman Bates in the Psycho films? 12 What is a zenkey? 13 In which Australian city was Whelan

the Wrecker well-known? 14 What is an eidetic memory more

commonly known as? 15 In which Gilbert and Sullivan opera

was the famous ‘Major-General’s Song’? 16 In which animal does the male

become pregnant? 17 Who was president of the United

“We want to be included. All we’re asking for is to have the option to have a piece of equipment that has been designed to cater to the issue of our hair, which is a significant barrier to participation in aquatics as a whole.” Danielle Obe, founder of the UK’s Black Swimming Association, on the International Swimming Federation’s decision to ban a swim cap designed for Black hair.

States when the Vietnam War ended? 18 What is the most common dialect

in China? 19 If you feasted on a turducken, what

would you be eating? 20 How many stars are there on the

New Zealand flag?

23 JUL 2021

VICE I US

gamers at 40. At least, that’s when your reflexes slow down.

THE NEW YORK TIMES I US

FREQUENTLY OVERHEAR TANTALISING TIDBITS? DON’T WASTE THEM ON YOUR FRIENDS SHARE THEM WITH THE WORLD AT SUBMISSIONS@BIGISSUE.ORG.AU

ANSWERS ON PAGE 43

sentence. Her crime: falling “Every day over during the I try to watch eighth month of a full movie her pregnancy, by midday.” which resulted in a heartbreaking Overheard by Grace from Lara, Vic. stillbirth – and violated her country’s extreme abortion laws. EAR2GROUND

My Word

by Anastasia Safioleas @anast

he sun shines brightly as I pull into the driveway of my childhood home. It casts a warm glow on this slice of post-war suburbia, with its nature strips and pruned rose bushes and narrow garden paths and tidy rows of rubbish bins. Our house is a red clinker, small and a bit charmless but built to last. They’re everywhere in Melbourne’s inner north, home to the families of Greek migrants just like my parents. It’s Mum and Dad’s pride and joy. The Corinthian columns they installed as soon as we moved in four decades ago are now crumbling – a close approximation of the ancient ruins back home. Everything else though is immaculate, including the freshly mown front lawn. The grass has been manicured right down to the soil, and dry dirt patches peer through the short blades thanks to my father’s uneven handiwork. He likes his lawns like the stubble on his chin, trim and slightly patchy. Dad’s nudging 80 and shouldn’t be pushing around a lawnmower. I tell myself I’ve got to hire someone to do it for him. Not that he’ll accept the help. It’s one step closer to admitting he’s getting old. “I’d rather die than go to a nursing home,” he’ll often announce in my direction. This is a man who has spent his life in countless factories doing the arduous and often dangerous work no-one else would. I let myself in and it hits me – the ghostly music of Greek composer Manos Hatzidakis. The notes rise and fall in a way I can recite in my sleep. It’s coming from the TV in the back room – and it’s loud. I already know I’m going to find my parents on the couch with my youngest son watching the Opening Ceremony of the Athens Olympic Games from 2004. The ethereal music of Hatzidakis is the soundtrack to much of it. It’s my parents’ favourite DVD. They’ve watched the Opening Ceremony so many times I’m amazed the disc still works. My two boys have also watched it countless times. It’s part of the arrangement – if Papou and Yiayia look after you, it means watching the Opening Ceremony at least once. The Olympics are a big deal in our family. Greece is the birthplace of the ancient Games after all, so every four years pride is at an all-time high. The competition itself is compulsory viewing, the athletics and swimming the favourites. But it’s the Opening Ceremony that captivates my parents. As soon as the torch bearer appears with

the Olympic flame, they begin to weep. Months earlier they’ve sat glued to the TV watching the flame-lighting ceremony at the Temple of Hera in Ancient Olympia, the high priestesses in their robes receiving the flame amid the temple’s ruins before passing it on to the host city. The appearance of the Greek flag, hoisted in honour of the ancient Games at the beginning of every Opening Ceremony, is what really tips my parents over. This is how they reconnect with home, with the family they left behind, with their identity in a country that occasionally reminds them that they don’t belong. Pangs of homesickness, despite almost 60 years in Australia, wash over them. Just before the 1980 Moscow Games, my parents returned to Greece for the first time. I met my father’s family, including my grandparents, six uncles and aunts, and countless cousins. I swam in the warm water of the Mediterranean and sat on white pebble beaches eating sun-ripened figs. I rode lots of donkeys. I was taken to Ancient Olympia, the birthplace of the Games, to explore the original Olympic stadium and the temples of Hera and Zeus. Yellowing photos show me scaling columns while skylarking in the temples. Good sense now prevails: tourists are no longer allowed to use the ancient site as their personal playground. It was the trip of a lifetime. Today there’s a story my dad loves to tell his grandsons. How as a 13-year-old he left his village built from stone on one of the southern tips of the Peloponnese to move in with his older sister in far-away Athens. He would often take the bus to the nearby town of Marathon to explore and hunt in the valley that was once the site of the Battle of Marathon. He tells them he would imagine the messenger Philippides taking off on foot and running full pelt across the valley and all the way to Athens without stopping so he could tell them that the Athenian army had defeated the mighty Persians. As soon as he reached the Athenian assembly and delivered the good news, he collapsed and died. The distance from Marathon to Athens is 42km, the standard running distance for marathons. The distance from Athens to Melbourne is 15,000km. It’s now time for another Olympic Games. My parents are ready. They’re older now, perhaps a little more sentimental, but the box of tissues has been purchased and the couch pushed closer to the TV. We can’t wait. Anastasia Safioleas is a Contributing Editor at The Big Issue.

The Olympic flame burns eternal for Anastasia Safioleas’ family.

23 JUL 2021

Greece Is the Word

There was the hiccup in the escalator to the cauldron in Sydney, when Cathy Freeman, carrying the torch, ground to a halt halfway into the ride. Hearts skipped a beat – if they were not in mouths. But it was a momentary glitch. It added to the drama. HOPE OF A NATION

From Fatso the Wombat to The Chiko Roll, HG Nelson of The Dream team recalls his Olympic PBs from Sydney to Salt Lake City. HG is a sports commentator. His colleague Roy Slaven makes him look good. They are the co-hosts of Bludging on the Blindside on ABC Radio, from noon on Saturdays. @hg_nelson

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ooking in the rear-vision mirror after over 20 years of involvement, the Olympics have produced an avalanche of stars, competition highlights, Olympic records, world records and PBs, with gold medals being handed out at the end of every clash by IOC greats and the international sporting good. Rampaging Roy Slaven and I have been lucky enough to be involved in the radio and television coverage of several Olympic Games. From our ringside vantage point behind the card table, these sporting highlights have drenched us in a golden shower.

ETERNAL FLAME

Beginnings are always great. The Opening Ceremony in London in 2012 was a banger. Music and show‑business stars kicked off the big parade and even the Queen got involved – that’s the Buckingham Palace Queen, not the ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ rock act, even though they were there and rocking too. Her Majesty’s jump from the helicopter started the hootenanny. If only she’d gripped the torch and lit the cauldron of the Olympic flame on the way through, it would have been magic. Talk about memories! Lighting the flame should always be memorable. That one shot, the flaming arrow in Barcelona in 1992, it’s still worth a YouTube peek. The simplicity was stunning, but so many issues. What happened if the archer missed, or the arrow went out in flight, or the gas tank at the far end was not turned on?

HELLO BOYS!

Speaking of great calls, how lucky were Roy and I to be tapped to cover the gymnastics at the Sydney Games? We did not have a clue how to do it because we couldn’t understand the language and the technical terms used in the code’s handbooks. To make it relevant to an audience who only thought about mat action once every four years during the Olympics, the terms Hello Boys, Honey I’m Home, The Spinning Date, The Crazy Date, The Party Date, The Dutch Wink, The Flat Bag and The Chiko Roll were all used to describe the action. Explained in those terms, suddenly everyone was interested.

PHOTOS BY GETTY

Go You Good Thing!

Occasionally sport gives the home crowd that unmissable highlight they have come to see. On 4 August 2012, Mo Farah from Great Britain won the 10,000m in the Olympic Stadium in front of 80,000 madly cheering fans. But one lump of gold from Mo was not enough. London got another golden serve when Mo won the 5000m seven days later. It is always good to get a gold in front of a home crowd. But very hard to line those dominoes up twice. This was the same intense feeling Australians experienced when Cathy Freeman won the gold medal in the 400m at Sydney 2000. This was the theatre of sport at its best. The politics of the build-up, the brilliance of the run, the drama of the final 100m, the weight of the nation. It was an unforgettable moment. And to do it in Sydney in a packed stadium at the best Games ever. Cathy carried the hopes of Australia on a night when time stood still for just under a minute. What a load to carry! A run that changed the nation! Bruce McAvaney got it right in the call, “This is a famous victory, a magnificent performance. What a legend. What a champion.”

ALL GLORY

Then at the opposite end of the spectrum, Stephen Bradbury’s golden success in Salt Lake City in the Winter Games of 2002 was a shock to the

BIG DEALS

Speaking of big finishes, I was lucky enough to be involved in the career of Fatso the Fat-Arsed Wombat, the hero of Sydney. Wherever he went he was mobbed by crowds of adoring fans, who recognised that famous arse everywhere. Fatso cashed the check he wrote with the Olympics-mad Sydneysiders in the mascot bomb-off for gold on the last day of competition in the Aquatic Centre. When push came to shove and gold was up for grabs, the other mascots Ollie, Millie, Dickhead and the dreadful Boxing Kangaroo were uncompetitive and powdered from the 10-metre level. They were pillows compared with the pure grunt and poke of Fatso. They could not compete with the wombat’s backside hitting the water, creating a record-equalling splash. The Battler’s Prince did not let Australia down. ENDLESS ENDINGS

As for Olympic highlights in song, well, it is hard to go past the unofficial anthem of the Sydney Olympics, ‘Go You Good Thing, Put a Gap in ’Em!’ by Endless Beginnings. The song says it all. But I could have dwelt on many other magical moments in this spray. Now, it is just a few more hours and the gun will be fired in Tokyo. Competitors will set off once again on the quest for gold. The 2021 Games lurking over the horizon will generate a new swag of great moments and improbable achievements.

DODGING ARMAGEDDON WITH ROY AND HG AIRS ON ABC RADIO 23 JULY–8 AUGUST AT 3PM WEEKDAYS, 12PM SATURDAYS AND 11:30AM SUNDAYS AEST.

23 JUL 2021

ALL GUTS

It is not always gold that creates a highlight – the sheer endeavour of Eric Moussambani’s swim in Sydney still brings a lump to the throat. Eric from Equatorial Guinea heard the call for the youth of world to gather in Sydney in September 2000. He got on a plane and lobbed into town. He had never seen an Olympic-sized swimming pool. He had trained in a river. He swam his heat in 1.52.72. He smashed a record when he touched the wall: it was the slowest time in Olympic history by some margin. He struggled over the final 50 metres but got there on guts and determination. He won his heat with a solo swim, as the other competitors were disqualified due to false starts. It may have been slow Olympic time, but it was a national record at home. No‑one can take that time from him. He represented the genuine Olympic ideal: it’s not about winning, it’s about taking part. And wasn’t that why the Baron set up the modern wheeze in 1896?

system. It was completely unexpected, but as they say, “You’ve got to be in it”. Stephen was slow compared to the stars on the ice that night. He had the sense to make the final. He needed luck to make the final. In the big one he had the sense to not do anything stupid, and at the death he had the sense to be the only member of that elite field to be in the perpendicular. He followed the field all the way home to gold. The most important thing in the race is not where you start, but where you finish.

The Dream team had a similar challenge when Roy and I were asked to run the eye over the synchronised swimming in Sydney 2000. To outsiders, synchronised swimming appears to be an underwater ballet down the deep end with clothes pegs on the nose. It’s hard to judge the technical details – it would take a lifetime of involvement in the caper – but if it is an old-school ballet, then it should be telling a story. Once we had cracked the code, Roy and I had enormous fun calling the Russian team performing the history of the Russian Revolution in water, followed by the Australian tilt with a routine that showed the construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Not sure if the international judging panel took the quality of the storytelling, which we believed was first-class, on board when dishing out the medal trifecta.

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by Michael Epis Contributing Editor

ore than 11,000 athletes from 206 nations – the vast majority of them vaccinated for COVID, and nearly half of them women – are set for Tokyo for the 2020 Olympic Games (yes, even though it’s 2021). It’s not only nations that are represented – 29 refugees will also be competing for honour and glory. Almost three millennia have

passed since the first Games took place in Olympia, Greece, and 125 years since they recommenced in the modern era in Athens. So a lot’s happened. Contributing Editor Michael Epis casts his eye over some memorable moments, from the comical to the magnificent, the dismaying to the heartwarming, the uplifting to the plain weird.

illustration by Donough O’Malley

FUN AND GAMES

ALL THAT GLISTENS

ST LOUIS

Nothing is more synonymous with the Olympics than gold, silver and bronze medals – but even here, things are not as they seem. At the 1896 Olympics it was silver to the winner, along with an olive branch and a diploma; bronze/ copper to the runner-up, along with a laurel branch and a diploma – and bad luck for third. The next edition awarded cups and trophies. The current tripartite system was established in 1904 at the St Louis Games. The three metals correspond roughly to the successively declining ages of mankind as recounted by ancient Greek writer Hesiod and Roman poet Ovid, referring to the Golden Age, when humans lived among the gods, the Silver Age, when people enjoyed one hundred years of youth while living among themselves, and finally the Bronze Age, when warfare reigned. Gold medals are not solid gold, and haven’t been since Stockholm 1912. They are 92.5 per cent silver, at least 60mm in diameter, 3mm thick and containing six grams of gold. And when you see an Olympian biting down on their medal – that’s the old-fashioned way of checking that you haven’t been handed lead, in which teeth would make an impression.

NO UNIFORMS The Olympics are full of traditions – one that’s gone out of fashion is competing in the nude. It would pose a health and safety risk to male hurdlers, and would turn the Greco-Roman wrestling (controversially dropped from these Games, then reinstated) into something out of a Borat movie. The ancient Greeks didn’t mind getting their gear off; they were also the ones who first thought that rubbing yourself down with (olive) oil was a good look – and who can argue. All of which has left its mark in the English lexicon – “gymnasium” comes from the Greek word gymnós, which means, you guessed it, “naked”.

BEST IN SHOW If athletes still competed naked, Englishman Mark Roberts, who has appeared at more major sporting events than anyone else – Champions League soccer, NFL Superbowl, Crufts dog show and the Olympics among them – would be out of a gig. Overweight and middle-aged, Roberts is no athlete, but rather, an exhibitionist. Yes, a streaker, who adds a few dance moves to his routine – the Riverdance, the Bog Swamp, the Moonwalk. He was a big hit at the Winter Games in Pyeongchang in 2018, taking to the ice in his skates, a pink tutu and not much else. Japanese officials will be keeping an eye out for him.

The St Louis Games of 1904 did not exactly cover themselves in glory. They were run in conjunction with the 1904 World’s Fair, which was also celebrating the centenary of the Louisiana Purchase. The Games were meant to be in Chicago, but St Louis threatened to put on a bigger and better athletics event if it did not get the Games. Modern Olympics founder Baron Pierre de Coubertin – who believed deeply in the character‑forming value of sport – had a deep sense of foreboding, but relented. He later described the World’s Fair as an “outrageous charade” for its racism and white imperialism. Meanwhile, in the Games proper, a guy who had covered half the marathon as a passenger in a car was almost declared the winner before he was called out. The eventual winner, American Thomas Hicks, was carried across the winning line by his trainers, hallucinating, perhaps from the strychnine he took – drugs were not yet banned. Strychnine was used as a stimulant at the time; today it’s more likely to be found in rat poison. In those same 1904 Games, German-American George Eyser won six medals in the gymnastics, with a wooden leg. The first disabled Olympian, these days he would have competed in the Paralympics, which began in London 1948 as a series of events for wounded soldiers, and ran parallel to the Olympics for the first time in Rome 1960.

The 100m sprint is the Games’ glamour event, singling out the fastest man and woman on planet Earth, but the marathon is the anchor event, and the strongest link to the ancient Greeks. It gets its name from the Greek town of Marathon, from which the soldier Philippides ran to Athens in 490BC to announce that the Greeks had defeated the invading Persians. Legend has it that he managed to get out one word – Niki! (no, not Nikki Webster, it’s the Greek for “victory”) – before dropping dead. An inauspicious start perhaps, but that hasn’t deterred people all over the world from running the equivalent 26 miles. Or to be exact, 26.2 miles (42.195km), a length that first began at the London Games in 1908, when the course was from the royal family’s Windsor Castle to White City Stadium (since demolished). The story goes that the marathon started on the castle lawns so that the young royals could watch, and ended in front of the royal box so that the monarch had a good view, adding an extra 0.2 of a mile – 385 yards – to the race. And that is why there is a tradition in the final stretch of the marathon of shouting “God save the Queen”.

23 JUL 2021

IT’S A MARATHON, NOT A SPRINT

YOU BETTER RUN The marathon at the first modern Olympics, Athens 1896, won to popular acclaim by Spyridon Louis, a Greek water carrier (now there’s a long-gone occupation), was in fact the first ever to be run at an Olympics. The ancient Greeks held their first Games in 776BC and their last under Roman rule in 393AD, yet never had a marathon – one perhaps they’d heard about poor old Philippides. Many of the ancient events do live on, however – 200m and 400m sprints, javelin, shot‑put, discus, long jumping, boxing and wrestling. The ancient Greeks did not do synchronised swimming and they also dipped out on beach volleyball, which had not yet been invented. Six sports have been added to the 2020 Games, with an eye on attracting young viewers: climbing, skateboarding, surfing, karate, men’s baseball and women’s softball. It’s a pity that chariot racing has fallen by the wayside, supplanted by three equestrian events, dressage, eventing and jumping (although not in Melbourne 1956, when good ole Aussie quarantine laws stopped the floats, which took the horses to Stockholm instead). Odd fact: chariot teams were known as “factions” – which is where we get the word to describe those indecipherable cliques within the Labor Party.

The Olympics are full of traditions – one that’s gone out of fashion is competing in the nude.

Against all that, there were the Friendly Games in Melbourne 1956, noted for the warm embrace given to international athletes by welcoming Melburnians, who had many of the visitors stay in their homes. One of those Melburnians was Dame Edna Everage, who in her first stage appearance offered her Moonee Ponds abode as accommodation, noting its “burgundy wall-to-wall carpets, lamington cakes and reindeers frosted on glass dining-room doors”. The rampant nationalism of the Cold War – which broke out in the water polo pool when the Hungarians, whose nation had just been overrun by the Soviet Union, assaulted their Communist opponents – was undercut by the inauguration of the closing march, in which athletes from all nations march – or stroll – freely with one another, no flags present. The idea came from a 17-year-old Chinese-Australian boy, John Ian Wing, when he watched as theatregoers left a play, mingling and chatting with one another even though they were strangers, from the room above his father’s cafe in Bourke Street, Melbourne. The anonymous letter – Wing’s identity was not revealed for decades – was received on the Friday before the Games closed on the Sunday. “I believe it has been suggested that a march should be put on during the closing ceremony and you said it couldn’t be done. I think it can be done,” he wrote. “During the march there will be one nation. War, politics, and nationality will be forgotten…what more could anybody want if the whole world could be made as one nation.” Now that’s the Olympic spirit.

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Speaking of politics, it’s been mixed in with sport since Aristotle was a boy. The ancient Games were held not in Athens but in Olympia – and so inevitably there were battles between the nearby towns of Elis and Pisa to control Olympia. Every four years the Olympic Truce was announced – suspending all military hostilities, allowing athletes free movement across the land to get to the Games. Adolf Hitler’s Germany used the 1936 Games to bolster its international image. Torches in the dark is a lasting symbol of Nazi rule – pity then that the tradition of opening the Games with the Olympic torch started in Berlin. Political boycotts have also been a thread – 29 nations boycotted the 1976 Montreal Games, because New Zealand was not banned for letting the All Blacks tour apartheid pariah South Africa earlier that year, back in the days when NZ was an international bad boy. The US led a boycott of 65 nations of Moscow 1980 for the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan (that rings a bell); and the Soviet Union went tit-for-tat, leading 14 Eastern Bloc nations in a boycott of Los Angeles 1984.

LET’S BE FRIENDS

MORE THAN A GAME

WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS! Celebrate The Big Issue’s sporting superstars who’ve worn the green and gold. Elite athletes Lachlan and Murray achieved greatness at the Paralympics. Special Olympians Genise, Jason and Emily brought home the honours, too.

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MEN’S T32 100M GOLD

Lachlan OAM 1996 Paralympics Atlanta 2000 Paralympics Sydney 2004 Paralympics Athens

inning gold at the Atlanta Paralympics in the men’s T32 100m was the biggest achievement of my life. To this day, I still don’t know how I won the gold medal in the state I was in. I had a headache, and I wasn’t feeling 100 per cent. It could’ve been anyone’s race – but it just happened that I got to the end first – it felt awesome. They presented me with the medal, and I sang as the Australian anthem played. It gave me confidence that anything is possible. I started racing when I was 18 or 19. Before then, I was with the Special Olympics doing swimming for a little while, but my pelvis started giving out on me, so my parents brought home some information about other sports I might be interested in. I actually did powerlifting for a little while. As much as I hate to admit it, I was Australian champion – a one‑hit wonder – in powerlifting. Being a Paralympian was a full‑time job. I had a scholarship to the Victorian Institute of Sport. I had to get up early in the morning; I was training six days a week, eating pasta and meat and veg. You have to sacrifice pretty much everything. After Atlanta, they changed the classification, so I had to race as a T52. I knew I wasn’t going to win in Sydney, but I was in the 100m, 200m, 400m and 800m. I went to Athens and did a PB there. I’ve overcome many challenges, like people saying, “Oh no, it’s too dangerous” or “You can’t do this” – they think because I’m disabled I’m going to get hurt, but I’ve proven them wrong.

Lachlan sells The Big Issue in Carnegie, Melbourne.

WHAT A WIN! Watch Lachlan’s world-record race via this QR Code.

Murray 2000 Paralympics Sydney

F20 SHOT-PUT AND JAVELIN BRONZE

23 JUL 2021

Murray sells The Big Issue at various locations around Canberra.

PHOTOS BY JAMES BRAUND AND ROHAN THOMSON

was the youngest on the team in 2000 – I was 16 when I went to Sydney for the Paralympics to compete in shot‑put and javelin F20 events. Before that I was training every day with the Australian Institute of Sport. It’s a hectic schedule, when they’ve got you on scholarship. They push you. I’ve travelled to Germany, Brazil, Spain, Kuala Lumpur, Argentina – all to compete. I’ve held a world record and won gold at world championships in shot-put and discus. The Sydney Paralympics was a really good atmosphere, lots of different cultures. Seeing Kylie Minogue sing at the Opening Ceremony was a highlight. The Whitlams, that was pretty cool. I watched a few events too – murderball, wheelchair basketball. It was a social atmosphere; I got to meet lots of different people. When I was competing in the shot-put, after about the fourth throw, I thought yeah, I’m doing pretty well, since I had a knee injury about three months beforehand. I got third. Receiving my medal was awesome – I don’t have words to describe it. It was a very good memory. I keep all my medals and trophies locked away, very tight. I’m Australian, and I represented Australia. I loved it.

Genise 2007 Special Olympics Christchurch 2013 Special Olympics Newcastle 2014 Special Olympics Melbourne 2016 Special Olympics Hamilton

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FIGURE SKATING AND SWIMMING 3 GOLD, 2 SILVER AND 3 BRONZE

ice-skated from when I was eight and gave up when I was 40. In 2007 I ice-skated at a Special Olympics event in Christchurch. It was one of my dreams that I wanted always to get to the Olympics, and I achieved that. I had to do three different routines over there. I did well; I came home with three gold medals. Swimming I used to do just for the enjoyment, and then basically when I hung up my skates and got my achievements I thought, Well, where do I go next? And I got in the water and felt like, Hmm, this is nice. I’ll see where this takes me. I’ve represented Australia in my swimming as well – in 2013, 2014 and 2016. I’ve won two silver and three bronze medals. Routine is very important to me. I skated and I swim vision impaired, so I have to put a picture in my head of what I’m doing, basically tell my legs what I’m doing. When I was doing my skating, I had to put my pattern in my head of where everything went. When I think about the Opening Ceremony of a Special Olympics, I have happy tears. If I’m having a bad day, I can actually dream about what I’ve done – I know my routines still. It’s the same with my swimming: if I’ve had a bad day, I don’t have to be in the water, I can just focus on doing it in my head.

Genise sells The Big Issue in Queanbeyan, NSW.

Emily 2019 Special Olympics Abu Dhabi

23 JUL 2021

Emily plays with the Community Street Soccer Program in Perth.

SOCCER SILVER

PHOTOS BY ROHAN THOMSON AND DANIEL CARSON

hen I received the letter inviting me to represent Australia in the 2019 Special Olympics in Abu Dhabi, I was very surprised and proud to be chosen. I was the first female ever to play with the Australian men’s team at the Olympics. I was playing in defence and stayed true to my motto – “No grass stains, no glory, no bruises, no story.” My best on-pitch moment was me sliding to save a goal, scraping a ball off the line. I’m very proud that we came away with the silver medal, it has a special place on my wall now. Another cool thing I kept from the tournament was the coin that the referees used for the coin toss. Abu Dhabi was very clean, with friendly people, but the only grass there was on the soccer pitches. I ate some amazing food. I was very surprised hearing that the bacon I was eating for over a week was made of turkey. So good! I was lucky enough to be the flagbearer at the Closing Ceremony, but my favourite memory is my two sisters surprising me by joining my parents and brother on their visit to see me. So cool. I started playing soccer at the end of primary school and play three times a week – one of those is at the Perth Street Soccer Program. My idol is Sam Kerr. I hope to see the Australian basketball and soccer teams come away with a medal at the Tokyo Olympics!

Jason 2015 Special Olympics Los Angeles

23 JUL 2021

Jason sells The Big Issue in Nedlands and Joondalup, and plays in the Community Street Soccer Program, Perth.

SOCCER SILVER

PHOTO BY DANIEL CARSON

hen I heard the news, I was in shock – I couldn’t believe that I had been picked to represent my country and was getting to leave Australia for the first time. I didn’t even know they were selecting for the Olympics, so it was a complete surprise when I got the letter in the mail! It was 14 hours from Sydney to LA; that was a long flight and it tired me out. We were welcomed at the airport by a big crowd of people. Usually, We then got a police escort to UCLA. Los Angeles was big and busy. They drive on the other side of the road, the food was different, and everything was bigger. When I walked into the LA Memorial Coliseum for the Opening Ceremony, it was so loud and almost overwhelming. I had never seen such a big stadium before. Throughout the two weeks, I met people from all over the world, and everyone was super friendly, especially the local Americans. We had a great team, and everyone got along well. We all had a nickname. Mine was “Keeps” as I was the Australian goalkeeper. I am most proud of all the goals I saved! I was also selected to be vice-captain, which was a huge honour. We all shed some tears of happiness when we were presented with our silver medals. They were much heavier than I was expecting! I attended the first session of Street Soccer in WA in 2008 and I still play soccer weekly. I can’t imagine not playing soccer.

William Shatner’s Ultimate Tree Change At 90, riding horses and petting sharks, William Shatner seems fearless – but ask him if humans will live long and prosper on Earth and it’s a different story. Steven MacKenzie hears his plans to save the planet. by Steven MacKenzie The Big Issue UK

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@stevenmackenzie

t’s a pleasure to look at you. I’m sure many people have said you’re nice to look at.” They haven’t. “I think you should maybe get up on stage and say…look at me.” Captain Kirk famously explored a strange new female of a different species in most episodes of Star Trek. No wonder then that William Shatner’s opening line – simply to confirm the Zoom call is working – is a barrage of disarming charm. I explain that I couldn’t be like him, somebody who everyone turns to look at when walking into a room. That seems like a nightmare. “It is a nightmare!” he shouts. “Especially if you have a pimple on your nose. They would say, ‘Oh, look at him, he’s got a pimple on his nose, he must be human.’” But is William Shatner human? At 90 he looks astounding. His voice still distinctive. Recently he has spoken about collaborating with StoryFile, a company that turns people into life-sized holograms that can hold conversations. How do I know this is the real William Shatner? “You-don’t-know-that-I’m-not-ahologram,” he responds, in a robot voice. He explains the StoryFile process, spending five days in front of cameras answering close to a thousand questions about his life, the universe, everything. “Then you can press a button and ask your image a question. And based on what you fed the computer, the artificial intelligence selects the answer,” he says. “You could put it on your grave. And somebody could come along and say: ‘Bill, who did you love?’ And I would have an answer. Not surface questions: ‘How did you like Star Trek?’ but questions that somebody really yearned to know.” William Shatner is already immortal. A three‑year stint on Star Trek in the 60s guaranteed that. He trained as a Shakespearean actor in his native Canada, stopped off on Broadway and took countless bit parts in film and TV through the 50s before beaming aboard the Enterprise in 1966 as Captain James T Kirk. Though it seems highly illogical now, Star Trek stuttered in the ratings and was quietly cancelled in 1969. At the same time, however, real-life spacemen were boldly going where no-one had gone before. Inspired by the Apollo missions, a new audience of fans were primed for a series that tapped into an optimistic, hopeful vision of the

SENIOR MOMENT IS OUT NOW ON DIGITAL PLATFORMS.

23 JUL 2021

I’m petting a shark with my bloody bare hands. I’m in the midst of danger – and I'm loving it.

crossing that final frontier. He travels to conventions taking place across the US and up until COVID was touring the world hosting screenings of The Wrath of Khan. His attitude comes from the horses he rides. “Horses are prey animals,” he says. “They don’t worry about what the lion might have done yesterday; they’re not worried about the predator tomorrow. What horses give you is a sense of staying in the now. That’s what I try and do.” Not to say he doesn’t feel some effects of aging. “Everything is changing. The stars are burning. Eventually they’ll burn out, and new stars will form. We age ourselves. Our muscles stiffen up and our bones get brittle. I see it; I feel it in my body. But what I’m not feeling is intellectual change. I feel as creative and as alive and as perceptive of, for example, you, as I’ve ever been. Or even more so.” The only senior moment he’s having is the film Senior Moment, a lovely story where former test pilot Victor loses his driving licence but finds new love after being forced on to the bus, although Shatner can’t remember the last time he caught public transport in real life. In one of his many memoirs, Shatner wrote that the primary source of passion in his life has been danger, fear, anxiety. When was the last time he felt those things? “I have a sore shoulder,” he begins. “I fell off a horse running at full speed. Her left leg went into a depression, shoved me forward. The horse thought I meant her to stop so she pulled up; my forward momentum continued. I had my arm around the horse’s neck trying to hang on, she veered to the right because she didn’t know what I was doing. And I fell on my shoulder.” When was this? “Two weeks ago. There’s a bone right on the tip there. It’s not broken completely, but it’s cracked.” Then he decides we’re gonna need a bigger anecdote. “I went down, scuba dove to about 60 feet. And 10-15 feet away from me there were four 16- or 18-foot tiger sharks. “There was a woman, they called her the shark whisperer. For the last 30 years she’s been working with sharks to the point where she could pet a shark and she carried a shark over and put it on my lap. Now I’m petting a bloody shark with my bare hands. I’m in the midst of danger – and I’m loving it.”

PHOTO BY GLENN HUNT/NEWSPIX. TEXT COURTESY OF THE BIG ISSUE UK

future. Today, the future seems bleaker. Does Shatner think the human race will even make it to the 23rd century, when Star Trek was set? “No,” he answers. “Fifty years ago, I read Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring [on environmental degradation]. I remember vividly. What she said was going to happen has happened. “And I remember giving an interview saying, ‘Hey, this is what’s going to happen.’ And the interview that was published was, ‘This stupid actor thinks there’s going to be these terrible things.’ I remember resenting it. Because I’m an actor, can’t I have an opinion? “What we’ve done, all of us, is bury our head in the sand. It’s so awful to contemplate what’s going to happen. And it’s going to happen. “Recently I’ve been reading about the city of Miami thinking of erecting sea walls. All those port cities – England is filled with port cities – are going to have to erect walls, the way the Dutch have, to keep out the ocean. I’ve seen maps of what the ocean is going to do to Bangladesh. There’s 160 million people in Bangladesh? It’s going to be underwater! Where are those people going to go? That’s going to be the way it’s going to affect the world. And it’s going to be awful.” No stranger to saving planets, Shatner has a solution: “If somebody invents, Manhattan Project-like, the ability to withdraw the carbon out of the air, so that you can make solid carbon out of the carbon dioxide and then bury it, maybe we could mitigate the damage. “‘Let’s spend some money on global warming,’ says Biden. And the rest of the people say, ‘Oh, we can’t afford it.’ I mean, it’s absolutely ridiculous. Ridiculous! “It is going to be, not the end of mankind, but it’s going to be the decline of mankind.” Fans of Shatner’s unique vocal stylings will be delighted to know another album is on the way, Love, Death and Horses. On it he talks about his plans for voyaging to that undiscovered country. Am I right in saying you want to be a tree? “That’s exactly right. I am going to be a redwood. I have a place I want to be buried, some land I own, which is just below the sequoia forest in California. Of course, you want to be a sequoia, the biggest tree. But it takes the longest, a thousand years, so a redwood will be more viable.” We are talking tree burial – where cremated remains are placed in a pod and a tree planted on top. “I want my body, my ashes, to nourish the roots of a young tree and grow. I want to be a tree.” But Shatner is light years away from

Ricky

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I’ve always liked the comforting sound of Australian Rules sirens. Like cicadas in summer, they are winter’s suburban soundtrack.

by Ricky French @frenchricky

A Siren’s Call

rom the backyard of our home in the wastelands of Melbourne’s western suburbs you can hear the siren from the footy ground two blocks away. I’ve always liked the comforting sound of Australian Rules sirens. Like cicadas in summer, they are winter’s suburban soundtrack. When the sirens cease during lockdowns I feel sad and the world seems empty, incomplete. I kind of hate where I live but I love the routine of suburban football. It gives the community something to do other than go shopping, and in my most optimistic moments I like to think it maybe instils some sort of pride in our suburb, offsetting the dumped couches and burnt-out cars that line the creek, and the smashed glass that spreads across the football ground car park on weekends when no games are on. It was hella cold last Saturday. Even the dog didn’t want to go outside. But I never miss a game, so when I heard that siren I put on my down jacket and ski gloves and jumped on my pushbike. Cars crowded onto the hill, forming a ring round the ground. A few brave souls with utes backed up to the fence and opened the tray to use as a picnic table, fishing cans of VB from an esky and tearing open packets of chips. Kids never notice the cold, so a group of pals climbed the shipping container that contains the groundman’s tools and had a grand old time kicking a football from the ground to their perch and back again. It was an Indigenous round and the Aboriginal flag flew proudly, stiff in the cold north wind. The players lined up in their singlets and shorts and shivered respectfully through a speech that went on for 67 years. Then the siren blew and they scattered like seagulls to take up position, slapping hands together and yelling, “Let’s do it boys!” and “Go fucking hard boys!” A few car horns honked in solidarity with the sentiment and spectators waddled from the clubrooms

and battled to light up ciggies in the wind. The home team’s brains trust huddled around a whiteboard on the plush and sheltered side of the oval, while the away team retreated to their battered tin shelter in a puddle of wet grass on the exposed side, far from the food caravan. Footy is all about positions, so I took up mine behind the goal posts at the northern end. The wind was behind me and it tore down the field, keeping play at the clubroom end of the ground. The home team won the toss and elected to kick into the wind in the first quarter. It would prove to be a bad call. Whoever decreed that Australian Rules players wear singlets was either a sadomasochist or had never been to a suburban footy ground during a cold snap in July. I felt dreadfully sorry for the full-forward and full-back who stood frozen in front of the lonely goalposts at the northern end. They looked like they wanted to hug each other to stay warm. But then the away team broke free from the centre clearance and the midfielder punted a kick so powerful it broke through the solid wall of wind and dropped into the forward line, sending a flurry of bodies crashing in from all directions to meet it. The atmosphere was electric, but so was my heater at home, so I rode back for a late lunch, returning to the ground for the final quarter. The home team was down by three points with time almost up on the clock when the ball was kicked into their forward line. Their star player stood under the ball, poised to mark and take a winning shot for goal. But there would be no fairytale ending. A sound like an air raid warning rang out across the roofs of the sleepy suburb, beating the ball to its target. The final siren.

Writer and musician Ricky revels in the sounds of the suburbs.

by Fiona Scott-Norman @fscottnorman

PHOTOS BY JAMES BRAUND

umans. What is with us and our reflexive self-archiving? It’s easy to glance sideways at the guy who keeps his urine in jars, but who among us does not have a drawer, a box – a house and double‑garage – crammed with stuff we can’t bear to part with? I’m not talking clothes that don’t quite fit or “perfectly good” chairs that just need a sand down – they need to go, stat – I mean our life’s work: the proof of who we were. Scrapbooks, say, filled with One Direction pics, and dance trophies. Soft toys, your beer‑mat collection and your dad’s holiday slides. Do you still have the school bag with your crush’s name scrawled in biro? Who was Kev, we wonder now, and why did we “luv” him “4eva”? We are all, at heart, keen biographers and accumulators, determined to document wherever we’ve been – part boast, part memory. A key indicator of being middle‑class in the 1970s, besides key parties and vol‑au‑vents, was having an outsized brandy glass filled with books of matches filched from hotels and the local discotheque. The larger your balloon glass, baby, the more fun you’d had, until the house burned down… We’re attached to whatever we’ve done or made, which explains why a surprising number of folks have a trinket saucer tucked away containing handfuls of their kids’ baby teeth. Display these publicly with care, is my hot tip, lest an absent-minded guest mistakes them for a thoughtful offering of hard mints. I understand. It feels careless to discard something that was part of you. Who hasn’t stored their placenta in the freezer? When my long hair was chopped short, just before I was sent to boarding school aged 11, the hairdresser began by shearing my plait with one lop, and I took it home, cradled in my lap like a dead hamster. What do you do with that? I regret not chucking it immediately. It acquired talismanic qualities and lurked at the back of random drawers for decades.

A side effect of moving house for the first time in 20 years was, sure, wondering where all those half bottles of hair conditioner came from, but also discovering that I have kept everything on the off-chance. I am dazzled by my sentimentality and thoroughness at squirrelling. There’s a shoebox of theatre ticket stubs, a menu card from a cafe where I performed comedy skits of dubious quality in 1981, greeting cards by the metre, diaries, scripts, contracts, photographs, lanyards, research and school yearbooks. They’re a hoot. Ah, that’s right, I was in the boat building club. So popular. There would be more, but a trunk of possessions was left behind in the UK, and a stack of stuff I stored at my folks’ place in Perth was eaten by ants. The ants, alas, did not destroy the deeply average creative writing that I did at Curtin University. I found my output in a folder, and didn’t that stir memories! Mainly of me arguing with one of my writing teachers, a certain Tim Winton, about the correct length for a short story. Because I thought I knew better. God, the hubris. Sorry Tim. It’s a tender thing, discovering my past self, this determination that I was going to mean something. In my amateur theatre scrapbook, next to a venue program, I annotated it with “This is where it all began”. All! Bless my cotton socks. I guess everyone starts out convinced of their own fierce significance. We write determined pronouncements in our diaries, and eventually reach a tipping point where it’s apparent we’re not Kylie or Aldous Huxley, and no-one is going to want the cassette tapes of our (okay, my) community radio show from the 90s. But that’s fine. Everything goes to landfill in the end, everything turns to dust. Except baby teeth. They’re forever.

Fiona is a writer, comedian and legend in her own lunchbox.

23 JUL 2021

The Way We Were

The hairdresser began by shearing my plait with one lop, and I took it home, cradled in my lap like a dead hamster.

Fiona

Jason Sudeikis proves to be a good sport when it comes to goofy, feel-good comedy Ted Lasso. by Ivana Brehas @ivanabrehas

Ivana Brehas is a writer, actor and filmmaker based in Naarm/Melbourne.

PHOTO COURTESY APPLE TV+

Ted Lasso

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Smells Like Team Spirit

Ted Lasso emphasises the value of teamwork, refusing to hail its protagonist as a sole leader or hero – a refreshing change from the hyper-individualist storytelling that tends to dominate Western screens. Both Sudeikis and co-creator Brendan Hunt, who plays Ted’s stoic offsider Coach Beard, credit Lasso’s team spirit to their backgrounds in improvisation. “When I got into acting, I gravitated towards ensemble art like sketch and improv from the get-go,” Sudeikis notes. “Part of that might’ve been fear-based, but I think it was also the desire to succeed and fail with others – to either row that boat or sink in it together.” Comparing the teamwork of soccer and filmmaking, he says, “It’s all the same for me. Life is not a solo sport. There’s a big ol’ thing going on out there that we’re all a part of. A lot of the philosophies that we couch within the show are life philosophies. Sport is just a really nice metaphor to map team-building on.” “Improv philosophy doesn’t separate people,” adds Hunt. “It makes you part of a continuum of

TED LASSO IS STREAMING ON APPLE TV+.

23 JUL 2021

Life is not a solo sport.

people and ideas. Everyone’s constantly listening to each other and adding to what’s being said. Taking those philosophies into leadership, and leading from within, is far more interesting to us than leading from a separate, dictatorial place.” But it can often feel safer to separate yourself from others. Ted Lasso’s focus – unusual in the hypermasculine world of professional sports – is on breaking down walls, forming emotional connections and entering spaces of vulnerable proximity. Sudeikis compares it to an embrace. “Hugging can feel dangerous,” he explains, “because you’re bringing someone into your space. You don’t know what they could do. They could headbutt you. They could hug you, they could kiss you, they could bite your ear off, if it happens to be Mike Tyson,” he jokes. “But I think it makes it easier for the vibrations between a couple of human beings to exist when they’re in that embrace, metaphorically or otherwise. “I think Ted wants that for himself, in a selfish way, because it makes him feel good,” says Sudeikis. “Then other people see it and emulate it – but by no means is he a saint.” Season one offers glimpses into Lasso’s layered humanity, exploring his troubled marriage and allowing him the occasional burst of anger. This complexity is developed even further in season two. “There’s a lot of things coming at us to push away,” he continues, “and a lot of things that push us away. We go through that in these next 12 episodes.” A new character in the second season is poised to spark some of these internal reflections for the perennially sunny coach. Advising and guiding his players through professional and personal problems alike, Lasso was almost a therapist figure in season one. But with the arrival of a real therapist, Sharon (Sarah Niles, I May Destroy You), Lasso will be forced to confront the limits of his problem-solving abilities. “I would say the biggest challenge for Ted will be Ted,” says Sudeikis. “I’ve referred to this season as Empire Strikes Back, tonally. This is the season where the characters have to go into their inner cave and face things. Sharon is a vessel for change, not just for Ted, but for the show as a whole.” The overwhelmingly positive response to the series, which Hunt describes as “a real pat on the head”, has led to Ted Lasso already being renewed for a third season. “We’re going about making it with the same passion, work ethic and intentionality that we made the first season with,” Sudeikis promises. “Hopefully those things that we have control over will manifest in people’s enthusiasm and appreciation.”

ed Lasso is not a show,” says its star, Jason Sudeikis. “It’s a vibe.” The vibe in question is a kind of relentless optimism and goofy good cheer that’s proven to be infectious, leaking out of the world of the show and winning the hearts of even the most cynical audiences and critics. A regular on such shows as Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock, Sudeikis embodies this perpetual positivity in Ted Lasso’s titular role – a lovably inexperienced American football coach hired to instruct a British soccer team – for which he won a Golden Globe earlier this year. He’s nominated for an Emmy, the show for 20 of them. Its first season, in 2020, was a salve of comfort in a difficult year: if Lasso could stay upbeat through strife, so could we. “It’s a mentality,” Sudeikis continues. “We just labelled it as ‘Ted Lasso’, but it’s been out there forever. We’re not the first work of art, television show or film to engage in this type of storytelling by any means.” He cites some of the show’s spiritual antecedents: Ron Shelton, Nora Ephron and John Hughes. “Those are geniuses,” says the Virginia‑born, Kansas-raised comedian. “Those of us who created [Ted Lasso] grew up with their stories, and that’s what we’re aiming for.”

Mirror, Mirror… by Greer Clemens @greerclemens

Greer Clemens is a writer, student and musician from Melbourne. She was the 2018 recipient of the Melbourne Writers Festival Creative Writing Prize.

PHOTO BY ELLIOTT LAUREN

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Music

The Goon Sax

The Goon Sax’s latest album reflects their new sound: taut, smooth and cool to the touch.

iley Jones does not miss being a teenager. “I mean, sometimes I’m like, ‘Oh my god, I’m not 17 anymore. My life is over. That’s the only reason people liked me,’ just because people talked about it so much. But I’m very glad it’s over,” admits the drummer and vocalist of The Goon Sax. Finding success in their late teens, the Brisbane band’s early songs were of abject loneliness and lovesickness, defiantly simple and deftly wrought. The three-piece became known for disentangling acute observations from the hot mess of adolescent anxiety. Fans and critics clung to this youthfulness as The Goon Sax’s defining factor. But while making their third album Mirror II, Jones and her bandmates – James Harrison and Louis Forster, son of The Go-Betweens’ Robert Forster – reckoned with the confessional lyrics that they had become known for. In a close-knit scene driven by punk, noise and experimental music, they pushed themselves towards something more abstract before circling back. “We felt the need to obscure our feelings, maybe even to fit in. We felt like we’d given so much of ourselves on those [first two] albums and we felt like we weren’t getting much back,” Jones says.

MIRROR II IS OUT NOW.

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TH E GO ON S: HA RR IS ON , JA ME S LO UI S FO RSTE R, RI LE Y JO NE S

to do, how you’re going to look after yourself,” she says. “I think now I’m getting to a point where I know what that is more than ever. And it’ll probably keep changing.” Jones talks about the bizarre nature of playing in Brisbane to rooms made up only of acquaintances, where people come to a show to see their friends or for something to do, not necessarily as fans. She concedes that there’s a thrill to it. “Everybody likes to perform for each other and dress up for each other. And I like that about it… It’s like a social drama,” she says. That said, singing about your feelings to people you know is exposing. “We kind of strayed away from that. And then I think at a certain point, we felt like we weren’t getting enough from being obscure. There was something really lacking. And so we eventually found this balance between being playful and more poetic with our words and our feelings, but still trying to use it as a way to connect with people.” Finding thematic and sonic balance doesn’t necessarily mean making a record that sounds overly streamlined. With three songwriters, Mirror II is a mosaic, a satisfying sum of its parts: Jones helms driving, synth-led meditations, alongside Forster’s tight, incisive pop songs and Harrison’s ambling folk-punk. Jones says that sewing together the three perspectives comes naturally, despite their different approaches. “Louis has always had a very particular idea about exactly what a good song is. He will write 300 songs a year, and then he’ll like maybe three of them. James will write like a million parts, and maybe eventually [he’ll] pull them together into one song, but maybe never, and they’re just lost in his phone memos. And for me, the lyrics tend to come fully formed, all at once, but then the music is something that I just build on over time.” On the languid, yearning ‘Desire’, Jones sings, “I tried to listen to a/Pop song to get through the day but/The only word I heard was you/And the music took my heart away.” Speaking to Jones, she’s rapturous about the kind of catharsis that pop music can bring, recalling the moment that the lyric describes: a drive into Brisbane at sunset in heavy traffic, with someone on her mind as Lana Del Rey’s ‘Norman Fucking Rockwell’ played. Equally indebted to pop music as she is to the experimental noise artist Keiji Haino and the sprawling mythology of art and music collective Psychic TV, Jones finds inspiration in the ethereal, emphasising an awareness of the hidden energies in a room. “That’s what music is like for me – I can’t really explain how I write a song or how the writing process works for the three of us when we play music together,” she says. “There’s another element in the room, like there’s something else working on all of us, and maybe even thousands of external influences.”

Mirror II isn’t carefree by any means, but it has shed some of the weight of teenage dread that characterised the previous Goon Sax albums. It’s more often cool and smooth to the touch, the kind of tautly arranged indie rock that feels elemental. The band’s second album We’re Not Talking (2018) was, as its title suggests, constantly lamenting the unsaid, tortured by the fallibility of communication. Mirror II, on the other hand, can be caustically confrontational: “Didn’t have to sound so disappointed when I called/If you had ever saved my number in your phone,” Forster spits on lead single ‘In the Stone’. Recorded with John Parish (PJ Harvey, Aldous Harding), the new album is confident and self-possessed, even in its moments of uncertainty, and Jones is quick to acknowledge that coming of age is similarly both solid and dynamic. “It’s like you have this freedom, once you finish school and you have to work out what you want

Laura Elizabeth Woollett takes aim at the dead girl trope in The Newcomer, which tells a very different kind of crime story. by Dasha Maiorova @dashmaiorova

Dasha Maiorova is a Belarus-born writer living in Sydney. In 2020 she was runner-up for the Deborah Cass Prize for Writing.

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aura Elizabeth Woollett didn’t mean to write The Newcomer – she returned home from a research trip to Norfolk Island with plans to write an entirely different novel – but then Melbourne comedian Eurydice Dixon was murdered while walking home at night, and the tragedy triggered something in Woollett. “I’d started thinking more and more about victims’ stories, and wanting to write the ‘dead girl’ novel but in a way that made the victim not only just a character, but the most dynamic and charismatic and complex character in the book,” she reflects over the phone, “because I hadn’t seen that before. “I think in the traditional crime novel you have the dead girl and [she’s] just a prop or a puzzle to be solved – you don’t actually get a sense of living people, and I think to really get a sense of the injustice of murder and the impact of murder you need to have living people.” Woollett is experienced in examining some of the most disturbing crimes of modern history. Her first book, the short story

PHOTO BY LEAH JING

Laura Elizabeth Woollett

Books

Paradise Lost

collection The Love of a Bad Man, centred the lives of real women involved with serial killers, mass murderers and other “bad” men. Her second book, Beautiful Revolutionary, was inspired by Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple cult and the Jonestown mass murder-suicide that culminated in the deaths of more than 900 people. She does not have an explanation for why we are so interested with stories of true crime. “There’s a theory that people enjoy true crime because it makes them less anxious; it makes them feel more prepared when bad things happen. I don’t know if that’s true or not.” For her own part, she recalls her childhood fascination as “natural curiosity”. Set on a beautiful remote island in the Pacific – and influenced by her time on Norfolk Island, a place that had her “captivated” – Woollett’s The Newcomer alternates between the perspectives of Judy Novak, grieving mother to “problem child” 29-year-old Paulina, and Paulina herself. The moments of tenderness between mother and daughter render lightness to an otherwise brutal and unflinching look at the aftermath of violent crime. The novel begins soon after Paulina’s murder and follows both the investigation and the loss experienced by a bereft Judy. In parallel, Paulina’s chapters track the tumultuous two years leading to her brutal death. In her late twenties, Paulina upends her life and relocates to an island paradise. There, she will remain an outsider – by blood, by name, in every way that matters – and as Paulina engages in a series of relationships, some of which are disappointing, others violent to the point of life-threatening, Woollett makes it clear there is nothing simple about victimhood. Woollett describes Paulina as “divisive – people have strong reactions to her”. In so many ways, she’s an “imperfect” victim. She is mocking, impolite. She picks fights. Contemplates ending her life. Ugly cries. Gets drunk – a lot. Woollett describes her as “drunkorexic”, combining disordered eating with alcohol abuse. On the island, Paulina is transgressively “other”. A local reflects: “That girl likes being looked at. That girl will get herself killed someday.” While The Newcomer is emphatically not set on Norfolk Island, rather a composite of Norfolk and Pitcairn named Fairfolk Island, the story is a partial fictionalisation of true events. On Norfolk, Woollett visited the

THE NEWCOMER IS OUT NOW.

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location where Janelle Patton, a 29-year-old Sydney woman, was murdered in 2002. The first murder on the island since 1893, the crime made headlines internationally. Her murder struck a chord of personal significance for Woollett. On Norfolk Island, and in Melbourne, Woollett walked. She does not have a driver’s licence, and for her, walking is an act of freedom. On Norfolk Island she hitched. “I was walking everywhere, and I was loving it… That’s what happened to Janelle Patton and that’s what happened to Eurydice Dixon: they were just walking.” Misogyny in The Newcomer ranges from the undeniable – the murder of a woman – to the chillingly innocuous. Teen women are “broken in”, domestic violence is “Fairfolk chivalry”. Woollett says these issues are not unique to remote communities. “There’s a sense that these small, isolated communities are a microcosm – all the problems on the island are problems everywhere, but in a place where [people may be] related to each other, there is an impulse to conceal things from outsiders.” The Newcomer was a hard-won book. In her acknowledgements, Woollett cites how her “body put a violent halt to the writing process”. She was hospitalised during its creation, and describes how she was “a bit manic in the early stages of writing it… [this] lasted about two months and then I had a seizure and ended up in ICU”. This experience informs some of the most confronting scenes in the novel. Ultimately, The Newcomer is an uncomfortable read. Gendered violence, murder, grief – these should not feel comfortable. And yet Woollett believes that even in writing about murder, “there always has to be a balance of dark and lightness”. “I think when things go wrong, we’re like, ‘what happened?’ and there’s a natural curiosity around that. I don’t think that’s a good or a bad thing; if we try to condemn it too much that’s just making things cleaner than they actually are. It’s okay to have that curiosity.”

Film Reviews

Annabel Brady-Brown Film Editor @annnabelbb

nce upon a time, there was a movie villain who was simply villainous, who dropped onto the screen, fully formed, with nothing but evil in their heart. These days, such mysterious menaces seem to be out of fashion. Instead, studios are intent on providing backstories, colouring in the shadowy pasts of their most successful IP. This month, Black Widow is a case in point, though Cruella was also given an unnecessary dalmatian-flavoured traumatic inciting incident in the recent Emma Stone live-action adaptation. The trend goes back further, with Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) saddling Willy Wonka with an unhappy childhood to explain the chocolate mogul’s kooky ways (next up, Timothée Chalamet is reported to be playing Wonka in a forthcoming origin story, with action set before the legendary factory opens doors). This is something you really notice when you re-watch the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory movie, which is getting a theatrical re-release this month in honour of its 50th anniversary. Gene Wilder’s interpretation of Roald Dahl’s oddball entrepreneur remains enchanting (and terrifying!). But perhaps the most striking thing about the film today is the welcome way that Wonka – as in Dahl’s book – was left unexplained, a velvet-clad enigma. “We are the music-makers and we are the dreamers of dreams!” he tells Veruca Salt, deflecting her question with some much-needed nonsense. ABB

THE CANDYMAN CAN

NINE DAYS 

Edson Oda’s stunning and deeply original directorial debut introduces us to Will, a sensitive and quiet man (Winston Duke) who spends his days watching a bank of TV screens – lenses into the eyes of living people out in “the real world”. Living in a charming, Craftsman-style cottage in the middle of a vast desert plain, Will interviews five candidates – people not yet born, but fully formed – only one of whom will be selected to enter the world of the living. Quietly devastated following the loss of one of his subjects, Will and his fellow arbiter of souls, Kyo (Benedict Wong), prepare while people begin to trickle in from the desert. Will’s interaction with each candidate is at turns tense, moving and tender; among them, Zazie Beetz’s Emma shines brightest. A quietly ambitious film, Nine Days delivers on its high concept with standout performances, beautifully composed scenes, and a poignant and life-affirming vision. KHALID WARSAME

ROSA’S WEDDING

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Costumes to be sewn, a cat to babysit, an elderly father threatening to move in…45-year-old seamstress Rosa (Candela Peña) is busy with everybody else’s problems. More charming than actually funny, this award-winning Spanish comedy begins when Rosa finds a partner to respect her time and love her unconditionally: herself. She escapes to the idyllic seaside town of her childhood for a new start, and holds a small, symbolic ceremony of self-marriage. But it’s all quickly blown out of proportion with the arrival of her demanding siblings. Too much of the story takes place the day before the wedding, with Rosa struggling to get a word in edgeways as wedding guests squabble about her absent groom. But this sunny trip to Benicàssim beach still manages to delight, from the opening dream sequence – in which an exhausted Rosa runs past a marathon’s finishing line to flop into ocean waves – until the effervescent final scenes of auto‑matrimonial bliss. ELIZA JANSSEN

SPACE JAM 2: A NEW LEGACY ZERO STARS

Space Jam 2 is many things, but I don’t know if it is a movie. This live-action/animated sequel to the original 1996 Looney Tunes basketball caper (a kids flick that, for all its flaws, had far more charm) is an extraordinarily brazen work of advertising. It is a committee-born concept that should have never made it out of the committee room. It is a creepy postmodern nightmare. NBA mega-champ LeBron James, the story’s well-meaning hero, gets trapped inside a digital world, conjured by A.I. nemesis Al-G Rhythm, played by Don Cheadle. Inside this zippy, hyper-stimulated playground, the film shamelessly regurgitates Warner Bros studio’s back-catalogue, sampling Casablanca (1942) through to The Matrix (1999) before it eventually lands its animated players inside a crowded stadium, cheered on by everyone from the Penguin and Pennywise to the winged monkeys from The Wizard of Oz. When even my beloved gremlins numbered among those used and abused, I didn’t know whether to scream or weep. ANNABEL BRADY-BROWN

Small Screen Reviews

Aimee Knight Small Screens Editor @siraimeeknight

GIRLS CAN’T SURF  DOCPLAY + DVD

KANDISHA

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 KANDISHA

Schmigadoon starts with a strong premise: a couple get stuck in a 1940s musical, and the only way out is to find true love, which is a tough way to discover your current relationship isn’t working. Unfortunately, the show never lives up to its concept, or the promise of its cast. Keegan-Michael Key (Key & Peele) and Cecily Strong (Saturday Night Live) do their best with the inconsistently written lead roles of Josh and Melissa, but even the combined supporting cast powers of Alan Cumming, Kristin Chenoweth, Ariana DeBose, Jaime Camil, Dove Cameron and Aaron Tveit can’t save the show. The musical numbers lack the satirical bite of Crazy ExGirlfriend or the catchiness of Galavant, with stale choreography and camera work, and Golden Age-style sets that end up looking cheap rather than stylised. The first episode is particularly dire, as characters wholesale state plot and backstory. While later episodes are stronger, they can’t save the show from feeling like an SNL sketch that overstayed its welcome by three hours. TANSY GARDAM

After being viciously assaulted by her ex, Amélie (Mathilde Lamusse) draws a pentagram of blood on her shower wall and summons a demonic Moroccan legend: Aïcha Kandisha, a very fun name to say five times into a mirror. Like a French take on Candyman (le Bon-BonGarçon?), this supernatural slasher sees a vengeful spirit stalking the towers of an urban housing estate. But once Kandisha has helpfully disposed of one man, she wants more, enacting a bloody “girls rule, boys drool” philosophy on all the male friends of Amélie and her extremely cool graffiti-artist besties. It’s hard to convince these macho youths to take the threat seriously, though. One meathead scoffs, “I spend my life at the gym. Do you think some Arab dame scares me?” With wince-inducing gore effects and a trio of heroines worth rooting for, Kandisha rises just above the standard “be careful what you wish for” horror narrative – but it’s unlikely to become an urban legend worth passing around the playground. ELIZA JANSSEN

ave you ever heard of the “Handwich”, also called “the sandwich of the future” circa 1988? I certainly hadn’t – not until watching one of my favourite YouTube channels, Defunctland. Founded in 2017 by host Kevin Perjurer, Defunctland began as an online repository of sorts, documenting the forgotten histories of decommissioned theme park rides. It has since grown to excavate all kinds of Americana curios, capturing in digital amber such Disney tidbits as the Handwich: a savoury bread cone filled with meat and cheese, once hawked at Disney World in Florida. While that umami monstrosity was dropped in the mid-90s, Mickey is still ubiquitous on the pop cultural landscape (well, if not the mouse himself, then his hungry, hungry House, gobbling up intellectual properties left, right and centre). So I get a sick little thrill from learning of Disney’s flops and failures, its misguided business moves and staggeringly weird ideas. In that vein, some of my favourite Defunctland episodes include ‘The History of Disneyland’s America Sings’ and ‘The Failure of Disney’s Chuck E Cheese Ripoff, Club Disney’. Perjurer and his team have also produced some neat (if speedy) explainers on the niche histories of non-Disney chattels like Wonderland Sydney, the Nickelodeon Hotel and New Jersey’s infamous Action Park, aka “Class Action Park”. But unlike that deadly pleasure centre, Defunctland’s stronghold is growing, with spin-off series DefunctTV uncovering relics of kids’ entertainment, and a podcast featuring interviews with Disney Imagineers who design the happiest place on Earth. AK

23 JUL 2021

SCHMIGADOON!

FUN AIN’T ALWAYS FAIR

Be it on land or sea, with racquet, ball or foam board, there’s nothing as woefully ubiquitous in the world of sport as gender inequality. Girls Can’t Surf proves this to a tee, providing a deep dive into the world of professional surfing and the rampant sexism entrenched within. Using grainy archival footage, Christopher Nelius’ documentary chronicles the historic, precarious rise of women’s surfing from the late 70s onwards, featuring surf icons like Jodie Cooper, Pauline Menczer and Lisa Andersen, who share the barriers they’ve had to overcome over the course of their careers. While it’s wonderful to hear the story told almost entirely through the voices of these women, the lack of an overarching narration and structure renders the documentary a little confusing and unfocused, especially to those unacquainted with the tournament calendar. Nevertheless, powerful discussions of prejudice and bigotry are universally felt. Surf fan or not, it’s impossible not to be moved by the might of hope and nerve that tides this tale. VALERIE NG

Music Reviews

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yler, the Creator’s latest mixtape Call Me If You Get Lost, is a testament to the 30-year-old rapper’s singular gifts, another triumph in an always fascinating career. Tyler got his start around 2008, as the leader of caustic underground rap collective Odd Future. But his solo studio debut – Goblin (2011) – really cemented his ascent. Ultra‑bleak, ultra-violent and gleefully chaotic, the album was embraced by teenagers, who related to its superlative display of nihilism and confusion. The album was praised by critics, but also greeted with controversy over its aggressive and slur-laden lyrics. A moral panic – that had begun with Odd Future just a couple of years prior – swelled around the star. But since his debut, and as media hysteria has subsided, he’s proven to be an enduring talent, especially on the lush Flower Boy (2017), and the exceptional and surreal IGOR (2019). Like many of his previous records, Call Me If You Get Lost meanders in the best possible way, never settling on a particular sound, mood or perspective for very long. It’s an album of tangled feelings and conflicted personas, which embraces its contradictions with drama and total charm. There are chronicles of lascivious travel (‘Hot Wind Blows’ featuring Lil Wayne, and ‘Safari’), references to French poet Charles Baudelaire (‘Sir Baudelaire’) and a 10-minute tale of tortured romance (‘Sweet/I Thought You Wanted to Dance’). IT

BE TY LE R LE T TH ER E

Isabella Trimboli Music Editor @itrimboli

ETERNAL HAILS…… DARKTHRONE 

As pioneers of black metal, best known for their morbid, genre-defining album Transilvanian Hunger (1994), Darkthrone’s latest offering seems worlds away. They’ve prefaced Eternal Hails……, their 19th album, with a sentimental statement – it’s the sound of “five heavy dinosaurs looking in wonder and bewilderment at the stars”. Since The Underground Resistance (2013) they’ve been moving away from the extreme metal of their earlier work towards a doom-y sound that’s more in line with classic heavy metal like Black Sabbath and their avowed inspiration Candlemass. Eternal Hails…… doesn’t deliver on the bleak intensity of Darkthrone’s earlier music; the throwback metal approach feels flat and sluggish, especially with every track pushing the seven-minute mark. The few moments that integrate synth (a first for the band) are the most engaging, but its brief appearances leave listeners wanting more. In a time when we have so many compelling approaches to black metal – think: Liturgy and Dispossessed – Eternal Hails…… is an adept album, but shows few signs of the band who were once titans of the genre. ANGUS MCGRATH

I KNOW I’M FUNNY HAHA FAYE WEBSTER

TO ENJOY IS THE ONLY THING MAPLE GLIDER

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Faye Webster perfects her brand of hopeless romanticism in I Know I’m Funny haha, a selection of indie-rock tracks that sulk more than they serenade. The bratty self-awareness of her lyricism provokes introspection, and offers an easy entry for listeners to indulge in their own feelings of loneliness. First released as a single in 2020, ‘In a Good Way’ is a helpless call of devotion that stands as the album’s most evocative and crushing song. “I didn’t know that I was capable of being happy right now/But you showed me how,” she sings. “You make me want to cry/In a good way.” The lengthy pedal‑steel guitar outros offer moments of reprieve, but quickly become tiresome when paired with the repetitive crooning of tracks ‘Kind Of’, ‘Cheers’ and ‘Better Distractions’. Webster may have gone too far in proving her point – that the joke will forever be on her – but such is the danger of leaning too far into heartbreak.

Maple Glider’s debut album swims with longing and loss. Inspired by two departures – from an upbringing in a religious cult, and a relationship – Melbourne’s Tori Zietsch wrote the record while travelling, and lays herself bare across its nine tracks. Her ethereal voice floats over delicate, finger-picked guitars and gentle piano; there’s a haunting quality to the music, almost as though she’s communicating from another planet. It’s a largely subdued affair – the only louder moment comes with ‘Good Thing’, detailing the painful yet necessary extrication from a relationship (“I’d rather kill a good thing than wait for it to die”). Even then, it’s barely more than a whisper. Elsewhere, like on ‘Baby Tiger’, Zietsch layers her vocals to stunning effect, relying on repetition to create a disorienting calm. It’s an incredibly affecting, intimate album that peels back the layers of a complex life to reveal the fragile humanity beneath. Fans of Cat Power and Marissa Nadler will find much to like here.

OLIVIA BENNETT

GISELLE AU-NHIEN NGUYEN

Book Reviews

Melissa Fulton Deputy Editor @melissajfulton

HOUSE OF KWA MIMI KWA

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Amandla has grown up not knowing her family or her heritage: she is “too black. Too white. Never quite right.” But Amandla is about to learn the truth about where, and who, she comes from – with a little help from the Sugar Town Queens. Sugar Town Queens is the second YA novel from South African-born, Sydney-based author Malla Nunn. Her first, When the Ground Is Hard, explored similar themes of identity, class and friendship, but lacked some of the finesse of this book, which manages to hold space for humour, violence and compassion at once. It is an affecting story about what it means to come into power, and how women draw strength from other women – their mothers, sisters and friends. Amandla is an outcast at the outset of the novel, and her progression towards being brave enough to look into the shadows of her family’s past is supported by a cast of unexpected friends who give her strength and confidence. Nunn’s latest is a celebration of female resilience and capacity for great love. BEC KAVANAGH

Aside from the prologue, Mimi Kwa does not appear in this memoir until page 140. Instead of using only her own perspective to tell the story of how her father came to sue her, Kwa takes us back to 1800s China and begins with a tale about her greatgrandfather. What follows in House of Kwa is a captivating story of four generations of Kwa family history – the good, the painful, the everyday and the triumphant. A story that is, at its heart, about breaking the cycle of intergenerational trauma. Kwa is an exquisite writer and expert storyteller, which made this book almost impossible to put down. Even more impressive is the empathy and understanding that Kwa brings to this family saga. Despite the trauma of her childhood, Kwa doesn’t use this memoir to demonise her family members; instead she seeks to simply understand them through a lens of love, loyalty and healing. The result is a powerful story that will captivate you from start to finish. SARAH MOHAMMED

LATE BLOOMER CLEM BASTOW 

Clem Bastow’s debut memoir Late Bloomer recounts the author’s long and complicated path to an autism diagnosis at 36. Bastow vividly captures the challenges and confusion that come with living so much of your life without understanding who you are or why you react to the world in the way you do. It’s a wide-ranging and well-researched book that incorporates the work of autistic self-advocates, disability studies scholars and clinicians to capture a rich image of autism. Bastow’s writing on how women and gender-diverse people all too often slip under the radar, failing to get diagnosed, is particularly vital. The book is carried along by a readable and witty style, and is itself pleasingly autistic in form, peppered with echolalic pop-culture quotations and frequent digressions. Which is to say that Bastow’s writing always feels authentic and is especially welcome in a broader cultural landscape that’s more interested in portrayals of autistic people crafted by neurotypicals, rather than in listening to what we have to say. JACK ROWLAND

SUGAR TOWN QUEENS MALLA NUNN

23 JUL 2021

his lockdown I’ve been reading Deborah Levy’s Real Estate – the final instalment of her excellent Living Autobiography trilogy – which this time takes a look at the relationship between her writing practice and notions of home. This one’s a little more bougie and inflated than the previous two, but I just love the way Levy writes: she’s so generous, so awake to all the tiny details. Another comfort has been Schwartz Media big dog Erik Jensen’s debut poetry collection I Said the Sea Was Folded, love poems dedicated to his partner the musician Evelyn Ida Morris and the first three years of their relationship. In the vein of Mary Oliver and Emily Dickinson, these are tender, hopeful and deceptively simple – little shining jewels to be plucked from the page – perfect for gloomy weather, looming uncertainty, and the insect-like attention span that the pandemic can induce. For those who’d like to smash out a raucous, gonzo read, Jenny Valentish’s Everything Harder Than Everyone Else hits the spot, a full-throttle tour of the boundary-pushing extremes some people pursue in order to find their limits – including she herself. The follow-up to her addiction memoir Woman of Substances, Valentish hangs with bodybuilders, BDSM dominants, ultramarathon runners and porn stars, among others, in her quest to understand endurance, identity and obsession. MF

Public Service Announcement

by Lorin Clarke @lorinimus

The other day I was driving in the car alone, and I looked out the window and saw two pelicans folding themselves sideways over a lifting breeze, and I wished there was an excited child to share it with. I was the excited child. A kid asked me recently: “Why do we learn to speak?” It was a question I hadn’t ever really thought of. The answer I came up with – that the instinct to communicate is learned and mimicked and corrected and morphed as a kind of unspoken group project over time – did seem rather unlikely once it was pointed out to me that an alternative might be possible. There’s a woman who lives near me who has white hair and who dresses immaculately every day in entirely one colour. The colour changes. Sometimes it’s green. Sometimes it’s lavender. Sometimes blue. Usually it’s pastel. I have shared a footpath with her a couple of times. One of those times, she was singing gently to herself. You know who stops and talks to her on the street? Children. There’s a decision she’s made, in life, at some point, and children seem to understand it, or know how to talk to her about it in a way adults don’t. She seems quite happy about that. There’s a whole area of study – decades of it – that illustrates the importance of the early years of a child’s life in shaping the adults they become. They learn through playfulness (running around, chasing each other, climbing things, making clubs), things like collaboration, negotiation, empathy and creativity.

Adults are playful too. Some of us are playful with our language or our conversation. Some of us are playful – like the pastel woman – with our sartorial choices. Some people like to play by riding a bike through a forest or canoeing down a river. The genuinely playful tend to be mocked, though, for being unserious or odd. You can’t be an adult and join a historical re-enactment club or do cartwheels or sing at the top of your lungs, stone‑cold sober and for no reason at all, without having to answer a bunch of questions about it. This is one thing the internet has been good for. Little communities all over the place full of people doing their strange, playful things – like building tiny model houses or doing regional accents or recreating famous art using only shirt buttons and so on. There’s another neighbour of mine. I have only noticed him recently, so perhaps he is new or has changed his walking route. He is in the other direction from the pastel woman, and he walks at night rather than during the day. He is just as noticeable as the pastel woman, though, because he’s lit up from the overhead lamp he has attached to the book he reads while he walks. He walks with the book at arm’s length, and he walks a dog alongside him. Around the dog’s neck is a lit-up collar. If this man is reading this, please consider this column my doffing of my hat to you. Why buy an e-reader? Why hide your reading behind closed doors? Why not multitask? You are walking that dog and reading that book and those are two of life’s most excellent activities combined into the one. Congratulations to you, sir. Public Service Announcement. We don’t all have to be pastel people or dog-walking-night-readers, but most of us are focused on a to-do list, or a routine, or what’s happening tomorrow. This is totally fine. Sometimes, though, it’s nice to notice a couple of pelicans or ride a bike through a forest or sword fight with someone you meet on the internet and think: Hey! Would you look at that – I’m the excited child!

Lorin Clarke is a Melbourne-based writer. The second season of her radio series, The Fitzroy Diaries, is on ABC Radio National and the ABC Listen app now.

t is a boring cliché that boring clichés are often boring clichés because they’re true. Two of the most boring clichés are (1) that adults have suppressed their inner child; and (2) youth is wasted on the young. There is, admittedly, a little bit of truth to both of these. Sometimes what would be useful is the perspective of a kid, but the wisdom that comes from having made decades of mistakes. A middle ground, so to speak. Public Service Announcement: chances are you’re either too young to appreciate what you have, or too old to remember to enjoy it. Neither of these states of being is inevitable. Look around. What are the bits you aren’t noticing?

23 JUL 2021

Born to Be Child

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

Tastes Like Home edited by Anastasia Safioleas

FOOD PHOTO BY ELEANOR OZICH

Tastes Like Home Eleanor Ozich

Fisherman’s Pie With Flaky Filo Crust Ingredients Serves 6-8

Warm the butter or oil in a large saucepan over low heat, then sprinkle over the cornflour and spring onions and stir to combine. Gradually whisk in the milk, and cook, while stirring, until thick and creamy. Remove from the heat, and stir in the fish, spinach, peas, herbs, salt and pepper. Pour the filling into a baking dish, and spread out evenly. Lightly scrunch up each filo sheet and place on top of the pie filling until completely covered. Brush the top with olive oil. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until bubbling around the edges. The recipe can easily be halved and cooked in a smaller dish if you are feeding only a handful of people.

TIP

PLAN TO RECREATE THIS DISH AT HOME? TAG US WITH YOUR CREATION! @BIGISSUEAUSTRALIA #TASTESLIKEHOME.

can’t imagine a recipe more homely than a comforting and rustic fish pie. My parents have a 40-foot yacht named Sappho, and growing up in New Zealand, my summer holidays were spent sailing from island to island, with plenty of fishing along the way. I always remember returning home with an abundance of fresh fish to freeze, meaning we’d have to get creative with different ways to cook it throughout the year. I have fond memories of all the various kinds of dishes – thank goodness my father is a trained chef and could come up with different options! During the colder months, fish pie was a particular favourite, usually topped with a buttery potato mash and plenty of parsley. This is my variation that’s quick and easy to prepare, featuring a crispy filo crust that offsets the creamy, rich filling inside. This recipe is brilliant for when you are looking for maximum comfort but with minimal effort! You’d be surprised to hear that it can be whipped up in less than 15 minutes! The first time I served it to family was at my in-laws’ place and it was thoroughly enjoyed by all. I love how it seems rather fancy with the scrunched filo crust, which is actually a clever time-saver. Even better, it’s economical to make and can easily feed a crowd. So, now you’ve heard all the reasons why I love this recipe, I hope you enjoy it as much as I do! SIMPLY FOOD BY ELEANOR OZICH IS OUT NOW.

23 JUL 2021

Method

Eleanor says…

3 tablespoons butter or olive oil 3 tablespoons cornflour 12 spring onions, finely sliced 4 cups whole milk or almond milk 1kg white fish, cut into chunks 2 cups baby spinach leaves 2 cups frozen peas Bunch of chives, finely sliced Bunch of Italian parsley, finely chopped 1 teaspoon sea salt ½ teaspoon cracked pepper 15 sheets filo ⅓ cup olive oil for brushing

Puzzles

ANSWERS PAGE 45.

By Lingo! by Lauren Gawne lingthusiasm.com MELODRAMA

CLUES 5 letters Idolise Level or rank Nasty (remark) Transmitter Turn into powder 6 letters Banded, circled Grandly decree Grounds of a house Male goose Slightly burned 7 letters Small oily fish Studying books 8 letters Notice to drivers (2 words) Struggled to decide

E N G I

D A

O R S

Sudoku

by websudoku.com

Each column, row and 3 x 3 box must contain all numbers 1 to 9.

1 2 8

1 9

7 1

6 7 1 8 5 9 3 4 3 6 3 4 8 6 4 3 1 9

8 5

Puzzle by websudoku.com

Solutions CROSSWORD PAGE 45 ACROSS 1 Tragic 4 Academic 10 Muscovite

11 Siren 12 Lard 13 Ozone layer 15 Talking 16 Prison 19 Jaguar 21 Clement 23 Percentage 25 Faze 27 India 28 Tangerine 29 Auditors 30 Ordeal

DOWN 1 Template 2 Australia 3 Iron 5 Clean up 6 Disclaimer 7 Merry 8 Centre 9 Zigzag 14 Lieutenant 17 Operative 18 Ethereal 20 Rotator 21 Cogent 22 Optima 24 Redid 26 Peer

20 QUESTIONS PAGE 9 1 Janet Gaynor 2 False – it was Chelsea 3 Five 4 T-shirts 5 Singer-songwriter 6 D) Seven 7 Joaquin Rafael Bottom 8 Evonne Goolagong Cawley 9 Nevada 10 Two per cent 11 Anthony Perkins and Vince Vaughn 12 A cross between a zebra and a donkey 13 Melbourne 14 Photographic memory 15 The Pirates of Penzance 16 Seahorses 17 Gerald Ford 18 Mandarin 19 A denboned chicken, inside a deboned duck, inside a semi-deboned turkey 20 Four

23 JUL 2021

Using all nine letters provided, can you answer these clues? Every answer must include the central letter. Plus, which word uses all nine letters?

by puzzler.com

Word Builder

The original melodrama was a performance where the dialogue was accompanied by music. An Italian word, a melodrama in the late 17th century is what we would think of as opera today. The melo- is the same Greek word for “song” that gives us melody, and also hides in dulcimer, a musical instrument whose name literally means “sweet song”. Melodrama first made its way into English in 1784. A century later the focus was less on the music, and more on the sensationalised drama and happy ending. By the early 20th century any over-the-top behaviour could be described as melodramatic, either on stage or not. The early 20th century also gave us the phrase drama queen, first recorded in 1923.

Crossword

by Steve Knight

Quick Clues

THE ANSWERS FOR THE CRYPTIC AND QUICK CLUES ARE THE SAME. ANSWERS PAGE 43.

9 10

13 14

17 18

ACROSS

1 Disastrous (6) 4 Scholar (8) 10 Russian citizen (9) 11 Alarm (5) 12 Fat (4) 13 Protects Earth from radiation (5,5) 15 In conversation (7) 16 Jail (6) 19 Large cat (6) 21 Mild (7) 23 Proportionate amount (10) 25 Disconcert (4) 27 Asian country (5) 28 Citrus fruit (9) 29 People appointed to review business

performance (8)

30 Tribulation (6) DOWN

22 23

25 26

1 Pre-set format (8) 2 Oceanic country (9) 3 Metal (4) 5 Tidy (5,2) 6 Statement denying responsibility (10) 7 Cheerful (5) 8 Middle (6) 9 Alternating changes in direction (6) 14 Military rank (10) 17 Functioning (9) 18 Delicate or exquisite (8) 20 A mechanism that moves in a circular

motion (7)

Cryptic Clues

Solutions

1 Retro cigar bar is awful (6) 4 Dean Martin’s second dog terrorised mice (8) 10 Foreign voice must be Russian (9) 11 Vamp and Sir Elton on vacation (5) 12 Pad on Hollywood Boulevard, perhaps? (4) 13 Radiation protection from 2dn single hen (5,5) 15 Faulty link stops tag in conversation (7) 16 Cooler advertising is working (6) 19 Barb, you are sounding like a cat (6) 21 Fine to be left in concrete (7) 23 Proportion of 8dn letters occupying page (10) 25 Bother commentator on stage (4) 27 I hear Kool-Aid is back in the country (5) 28 Argentine bananas or another fruit? (9) 29 Checkers board essentially is Tudor

1 2 3 5 6

Model agency worker tardy? (8) Teetotallers hold strange rituals at home (9) Press Club on course… (4) …to make tidy win (5,2) It says I’m not responsible for record sounding worse (10) 7 Happy to admit screw up is mine (5) 8 Middle of auditor’s nose? (6) 9 Chew crustless pizza, gag on hairpins (6) 14 Officer called John Lodger (10) 17 Agent Orange film captures private suffering (9) 18 Meet here alone; matter is delicate (8) 20 Turner looks the same after promotion (7) 21 Businessman is convincing (6) 22 Ideal conditions to pick one master’s degree (6) 24 Communist papers modified… (5) 26 …to look contemporary (4)

SUDOKU PAGE 43

9 6 7 3 2 5 1 8 4

1 8 3 9 7 4 6 2 5

2 4 5 8 1 6 9 7 3

4 3 2 6 8 1 5 9 7

6 1 9 7 5 2 3 4 8

5 7 8 4 9 3 2 1 6

7 9 6 2 3 8 4 5 1

3 2 1 5 4 7 8 6 9

8 5 4 1 6 9 7 3 2

Puzzle by websudoku.com

WORD BUILDER PAGE 43 5 Adore Grade Snide Radio Grind 6 Ringed Ordain Garden Gander Singed 7 Sardine Reading 8 Road sign Agonised 9 Grandiose

23 JUL 2021

DOWN

ACROSS

in design (8) 30 Alternative arrangement is torture (6)

21 Convincing (6) 22 Ideal conditions (6) 24 Modified (5) 26 Equal (4)

Click 2000

Eric “The Eel” Moussambani, Sydney

words by Michael Epis photo by Getty

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

very four years the Olympics serves up the best that humans can achieve in athletic endeavours – and every now and then they deliver heroic incompetence, which the crowds enjoy just as much. No athlete departed the Sydney 2000 Games more loved than Eric “The Eel” Moussambani – precisely because he was a very, very bad swimmer. It didn’t hurt that he had a winning smile, which betrayed the fact he was a little shy. Spectators would not have been expecting much on the Tuesday morning in the first heat of the 100m men’s freestyle. Only three swimmers stood on the blocks. Nerves got the better of two, who dived before the starter’s gun, and were thus disqualified. That left only Moussambani, swimming by himself. But boy, did he put on a show. After fumbling with his goggles, he dived in. It was immediately clear that Moussambani could not really swim. He had taken up the sport only eight months earlier, when he heard a radio spot appealing for anyone who would like to try out for Equatorial Guinea’s swimming team. Moussambani was the only one to turn up.

His country did not have a 50 metre pool; Sydney was the first time he saw one. Until then he practised in a 12 metre hotel pool, rivers and lakes. He had prepared for the 50m event, but his coach entered him in the 100m. “In that last 50 metres, to be honest, I was so tired I was going to stop,” he said years later. “I couldn’t feel my legs or arms, everything was very heavy. When I had people clapping and cheering my name, that gave me more power to finish.” Indeed, lifesavers stood by, ready to render assistance. So exhausted was Moussambani that he returned to his room and slept for five hours. “When I woke up, on the television I could see my pictures. I thought I did something wrong.” To put Moussambani’s time of 1 minute 52:72 into perspective, Ian Thorpe swam twice the distance in seven seconds less the day before. In the words of one American journalist “nearly every man, woman and child…of the largely Australian crowd were probably capable of swimming faster” than Moussambani. Four years later he tried again, his time by now respectable. It fits the legend that passport problems meant he did not get to Athens 2004. These days, The Eel is Equatorial Guinea’s national swim coach.

23 JUL 2020