Finally, some Olympic humour

At last - while Todd McKenny provides us with a whole new level of celebrity drug misadventure and ensuing wrangling via media, over at the BBC they've broken the best story so far of the Olympic torch/Free Tibet competition:

Police in southern China have discovered a factory manufacturing Free Tibet flags, media reports say. The factory in Guangdong had been completing overseas orders for the flag of the Tibetan government-in-exile.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner...

Otherwise, tonight's music will clean up the remaining taste of oatmeal from the 2020 conference, as well as some uptempo toe-tappers I've been ripping from hither and yon in the interwebs. Haven't seen the Courier today - the source of the most of the amusing material we tend to churn through on air. Although some songs for Todd do come to mind:

Drug Me - Dead Kennedies/Sepultura

Cocaine Decisions - Frank Zappa

Drug Sex - Machine Gun Fellatio

I Want the Drugs - The Supersuckers

Sling It, Bang It, Give it Cabfare Home - Andrez Williams

And Lenny says he's managed to get the taser and smokebombs for tonight's Chaser gig at the dearly named Her Vaj on Lydiard Street.... If he can manage walk natural through the high security Dirty Frank Callahan-style door arrangement, 'sgonna be a hoot.

And I think our man The Hack who has replied to the quest for an flamin' Australian fashion and music statement at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics may just get its own bracket of tunes...

Australian World Series Protest a Fizzer - Touring teams only

You'd have thunk the worldwide return (and return to Channel Ten) of a bunch of big brawny goons of either sex going at it with big rubber Monkey Sticks would have inspired something a bit more colourful and athletic - sadly the Australian stage of Olympic World Series Protest turned out to a match between two touring teams, with the home team off doing something else... (maybe all caught up on the reading from the 2020 conference)

World Series Protest Australia began in such nice fashion... By 4pm that day the only videos on Google Video were from Central China TV - saying it was all very orderly and pleasant.
Over at the Daily Telegraph, Garry Linnell's video report (watch it, it's good on the spot stuff) and the accompanying text painted a different picture... The Abe (excusee.. Ballarat term for the dear old Aunty Broadcasting Corp) in Canberra gave it a good nudge too, getting amongst it down on the front line for a good understanding of the vibe amongst the team members on either side.

The Away teams kicking off, rather than any real Home side representation meant very little further media discussion about it but also, as Mick so eruditely put it, no-one's used the Torch in a method that gives a bit of a singe to the contestants as they make their dash through the security cordon to help give the coverage more of a positive spin. Still, what a special sight to see all those Chinese flags waving in Canberra - jeez, can't see any insane redneck backlash coming there... where's Alan Jones when you need a good race riot?

And today the torch made a triumphant unimpeded tour through North Korea - a place where they really know how to put on a secure, heavily armed and Non-Attendance Fatal invitation to the public to come along and be supportive of the deal. You can see those Aussie Olympic patriots all quietly agreeing now that's how you organise a parade... where to next? I believe we're headed south to Vietnam, Taiwan (oops! cancelled!) then after a very exciting dash through Hong Kong it gets to light young James Packer's cigar in Macau before the glorious march through the Himalayas...

We need some rock and roll salvation - Midnight Oil got to wear the Sorry tracksuit - what outfit could we get for an Aussie band to play at the opening ceremony, do you think? We'll be pondering that and more questions in tomorrow night's Show... and answering the emails (none) and enquiries about what's happened to the show for the last fortnight (two).

Early reports on Australian Olympic World Series Protest

So far, it's looking exciting - Mel and Kochie doing their best impression of a one-party state media morning show, choosing to just highlight the happy stuff; reports of a protestor doing their own impression of the famed 1980s move by Dermie Brereton, bravely bursting through the other team's huddle; we'll have more reports as the day wears on - but first, here's the initial forecasts on the Australian Olympic Torch leg by our regular Show commentators Lenny and the Mick Dog:

World Series Protest: Australian edition

As we predicted, it is time.

Ladies and gentlemen we are under starter's orders. We have Chinese security who are determined to form a human ring around the torch. We have every remaining Kombi from the North Coast and patchouli-powered Corolla from North Shore Sydney along with every Private School Marxist from Melbourne gathered in the nation's capital. We've got a feisty Federal Police force determined not to have the Chaser make them look like dickheads. We've got roughly 10,000 Chinese members of Amway loose somewhere north of the Murray.

Ladies and gentlemen, suddenly we have some of those online rapscallions at Crikey even telling people to get into it:

China’s Foreign Ministry have warned against protests in Canberra because the torch "belongs to the whole world". That the corrupt thugs who run China (latest
effort – dispatching a boatload of weapons to fellow despot Bob Mugabe) object to expressions of dissent even in other countries is no surprise. But let’s get over this fetishisation of the Olympics.

Year after year the same faces, the Kevin Gospers and John Coateses who are apparently on the Olympics gravy train for life, stand up to declare that it’s all about the sport, or world peace, or the youth of the world. In fact it’s a giant media event designed to generate massive revenue which, this time around, is being employed to promote one of the world’s most brutal regimes.
And you can see where these sports administrators come from.

Just about every athlete or sports person parrots the same lines about sport having nothing to do with politics or, for that matter, morality, as if sports – professional, international sport, in all its cash-generating glory – is somehow a priori disconnected from basic ethics and standards of
civilized behaviour.

For those planning to have a crack at disrupting the relay, or who just want to marvel at some wonderful security overkill, the event kicks off at 8.30am tomorrow morning.

Whoah, go Crikey! Somehow we don't reckon your mob are the kind to get out of bed early and loft a water balloon - but the sentiment's there. It's time we turned the Olympic Torch relay into something meaningful - and World Series Protest can begin with us here in Australia.

If Tintin and his crew manage to continue their shiny new Post-Hawkie/Labor Intellectual Love party, we're doomed to life without one last mass punch-on between bogans with slogans and gym-toned burly blokes whipped into a frenzy by the nation's tabloid press, radio and tv, and frankly, after 11 years of the Evil Bastards and the 2007-style Grand Final finish to the election, we deserve better than that.

It's going to be a kick-on, and I just know Australia's going to show the world how it's done.

Reasons to be cheerful...

Reasons to be cheerful, part-free: somehow it feels like there's at least some chinks appearing in the foundations after our initial Summer of Love here in Australia. The period where we knew we'd be able to look back and say It Was a Time Before Kev'n Co Fucked It Up. Now we find ourselves wandering into what's feeling like a period of intense change. Of suddenly considering what if the Big Lie of International Finance could actually come a gutser? What if China asks for the money back? Even better - what if Rupert Murdoch is losing his cool?







Of course, it's not all peace, love and no more Howard; there's the imminent sign on the horizon of how we'll see the next commercial virus attack on the ABC - the dear old Beeb have just announced their first international advertising team. We'll see that here in a couple of years, folks, according to the Principle of the 5 Year Lag for South Pacific Peasants...


No reasons to be cheerful come more plenty than that. The ongoing developing of a new world sport right under our noses - a sport I've wanted a television show dedicated to for years.


I'm talking about World Series Protest, folks, and its time has come.

For now we are embarked on our very first series of globally televised Olympic Quality protests as the torch makes its way around the world, and I for one, welcome it.

From the get-go I want pay my respects to some of the quality protests that have come before this year - of course thre's been some awesome protests go on throughout the world over the decades, but I want to pay my respects to the people at the S11 protest back in 2000 in Melbourne, who via the most superior use of non-violent Tetris-based logic, managed quickly self-organise into a chain and re-arrange those big arse lego-brick plastic wall bollards and boxed the rough-tough Special Squad detachment of leeather gloved bruisers in fair and square.



The leatherboys were forced to admit defeat, and in a most Australian demonstration of sportsmanship, were kindly thanked for coming as they filed back out from the gateway of Crown to the back of the fray. Upon the world stage of protests involving all sorts of thrown, belted, stomped aggression, it made me feel proud to be an Aussie watching a crowd tell a loudmouthed yob to shut the fuck up and give the coppers a nice round of golf-clap applause as they walked back to the vans.

But ye cannae deny the sheer simple genius of the mad bastard who ran at the Olympic torch with a fire extinguisher...




Of course, the French can bring the noise when it comes to community turnout for a protest - and I only managed to catch my initial impressions of how the Olympic Torch Protest series went in gay Paree via the glory of the AM radio show,

(Sound of protesters jeering)RAFAEL EPSTEIN: With protesters visible ahead of the convoy on a bridge, a very concerned torch-bearer in a wheelchair was
suddenly stopped by the torch organisers, and the flame was extinguished on the
orders of shouting Chinese officials.

It was with complete surprise that I happened upon this French video showing the Chinese security team stopping the torch and really pissing off the big burly French judo champion who was trying to jog with it. A far cry from what the dear old ABC showed us on Lateline...

Today, the Torch arrives in Islamabad. And with it, the hopes and dreams of a nation raised on the idea of protest. Local communities with a long association of taking to the streets and throwing shit at the blokes with the big sticks and the mean looks. Of course, it's going well so far:

"Plans originally called for athletes to relay the torch along a nearly
two-mile route from the white marble parliament building to Jinnah Stadium,
but that was changed to just a run around the sports complex itself."

What could possibly go wrong? It's due in India next week - New Delhi to be accurate - we shall see how the local teams there take to it. And still very little word on how the Aussies are going about preparations, though. We've got a lot of tryhards amongst the diehards - do the creative and the funny still outnumber the surly and vicious? What creative heights do you imagine our national commercial news networks will rise to?

Will Kochie be the one to extinguish the flame - on the kerosene soaked robes of Stan Grant?

Just don't forget that we could be doing this again in four years time - albeit on a bigger, more international scale. A worldwide invitation to the meek, to the downtrodden, to the forever fucked over, to the folk who've been cut off from the riches of the 21st century - come and see if you can put the torch out. Stand up for your people and bring your mates - we're going to have a world -representative goon team, with thanks to our sponsors Blackwater Inc.



I want to see a return to that protest I saw years ago from Italy - it was not long after the movie Gladiator came out - when the locals invoked their own forebears and formed the perfect Roman infantry shield wall and roof,and advanced upon the poor old team with the water-cannon trucks and tear gas guns.

And I want to see our friends from Indonesia allowed to bring those fuckoff big bamboo poles withe flags on 'em to the party. There is classic news vision of which I can't quite find yet... so I can't quite exactly show those 18 foot poles getting deployed upon the hapless uniforms about 20 people behind the frontlines. Tt's hysterical... And I wanna see it - much more - on the telly...