Equine bong art, footy players with dicks out and glassing in Black Hill

Ah yes... in the spirit of the Enforced Culture of Inclusiveness that's all pervasive in our increasingly heated world, this week Victorians are expected to care about who wins a popularity contest amongst football players

Brownlow night is a chance to step out of your everyday world into the make believe

Excitingly, this contest has been expanded to their wives and girlfriends, who realise there are a few brief years where they too can be famous for nothing more than getting their tits out at a paid-for pissup before years of slow decline, the inevitable slide from the social pages after their meal ticket does a knee/groin/shoulder, the lessened interest from Woman's Day in where they're getting their hair done, and then they find themselves as just another jaded, coked-out former glamour who gets glassed while waiting for the guy to turn up with the pills.

It's a grand tradition, only just begun.

Regardless - here in Ballarat there are other celebrations apart from the ones where massed groups of blokes stand around drinking bourbon, watching boxing on widescreen and asking where all the pussy is. We call it 'taking the piss'. It's been going on for years - and here you can listen to a couple of descriptions about the folk culture of B-Town. The Art. And the Footy Players. You may remember an incident with a rubber marital aid and Brendon Nissan-Fevola. Our dear Len has the insight to it - and MickDog has his own anecdote of what really happens inside Ballarat Football clubs at a pie night.


Meanwhile - news that someone was glassed at Black Hill has only further enhanced our basic political point that the kids are not being taught the proper amount of respect they should be showing in licensed venues. It used to be the tribal call of "You, me, carpark NOW"...

Ballarat's first radio podcast goes live

Step aside, 3BA bunnies and your automated computer jukebox system on weekends! Move over, earnest government-funded ABC types and your Consternation Hour! Ballarat's shiniest radio show - putting bums on radio since 2006 - is now up and shakin' a leg in the online stylee.

The Committee For Not Having Fun In Ballarat continues its deathless battle against creativity in this town (no, Roland, wiping your dick on the Southern Cross flag is not creative) - and my freakly newspaper the B-Town Times tells me the Sovereign Hill Music Festival has changed its lineup so ONLY tired, jaded hasbeens from Mushroom get work (hey Deb Conway! That's you!).

The Show With No Name - normally broadcasting live from a loungeroom hideout on Tuesday nights from 6 - is now pumpin' like the latest Crazy Frog ringtone in living mp3 colour. We're excited. Call the doctor.



There's a shiiteload more to come - due to popular demand the Equine Bong Art segment is currently being rolled in a herb and cheese crust for baking until perfection. Play your cards right and we might start posting the music as well... who could say?

Dirty Frank says "The Show With No Name puts a lump in my pants everytime I hear the sounds of dirty rock and roll and unshaven bums slapping on my radio."

And who are we to judge the man's taste?

Ballarat asks: who is DB Monday?

Each week upon our shiny radio show Len introduces the team - Len, Mick, Vin, and DB Monday.

Emails have been flooding in (none), the phone calls have been running hot (none) and this guy stopped me in the street and asked Who is DB Monday?

He is a man. A concept. A way of life. He is the very binding neutrinos that hold together the Show With No Name team, a man not unlike myself who chooses to eschew the microphone and speak with his hands.

DB Monday is no relation to DB Cooper, although his evil cousin, VB Sunday, has been known to lurk with intent around the Show With No Name Dim Sim Research Facility.

While dear old Roland Rock-hard-jelly gets the gig on 3BA on Saturday morning to flog his wares (and sometimes his whens), and gets the Courier's page 3 treatment when he gets his kit off and wraps his tadger in this nation's only flag to represent democracy, it's DB Monday who really keeps this town going. It's DB Monday who came up with Wrongfest.

You may or may not have heard of Wrongfest, one of the quality cultural icons on Ballarat's fairly empty calender of events. Wrongfest is as Wrongfest does - and here's a couple of pics from this year's event, where people were asked to dress up as their favourite Ballarat councillors. It was wrong. Very wrong.

But I digress. There's more to this town than teenagers trouser-banging themselves on Myspace. There's even a gay piano bar just opened on Camp Street! I walked in there and asked could I see the pianist and got the fright of my life. Maybe it was my pronunciation... but I digress.

Now that Bob Dylan has put together his own tribute to Ballarat radio's evergreen talent Kank Wolverang (see below) we can expect a new addition to the Sovereign Hill Music Festival - remember that? The Ballarat Council dropped a hundred thou or so on a festival which nobody came to. The Sovereign Hill staff were paid overtime so there was a crowd to watch James Reyne. Nobody could be paid enough to watch the Bullamakanka Hasbeen Bush band though.

DB Monday, take a bow. Having just recovered from the emotional rolldercoaster that was the Beijing Win Gold Or Die fest, it's great to have you on board.

Bob Dylan salutes Kank Wolverang

Its that time of year again when everyone looks to the voice of a generation, Kank Wolverang, that's WolverANG, to explain the tears and fears of a psychotic and psychiatric winter in a manner that befits a softly spoken git with nothing to say. "Tangled up in dudes", traditionally an untraditional Turkish work song. "If it aint turking it's just beef jerking" (Traditional Untraditional old Turkish saying) has finally landed. Born from Wolverangs tiresome work for charity whilst chronicling a lifetimes experience of crossing this wide brown sandy deposit we call Dudeton, population: me, or him, or her, or you? "Dudes" was originally born as an unguided way of passing the time between that horrible stretch that is Yass and just outside Yass and now through the grime sweat and sheer bloody hard graft, that and 20 minutes to write down the verses, it comes fully formed in a Brady Bunch environment that shows unreservedly that Alice doesn't live here anymore.

Ballarat and Beijing: better and worse

Oh god. It just doesn't get any better. London journalist bags Ballarat athlete. London journo bags "our" (don't forget even American basketball coaches who stayed here for more 20 minutes are labelled 'Ballarat residents') Erin Carroll for being the first athlete to lose in the Olympics.

Carroll had not been in the original Australia team, but snuck in when some
spaces were reallocated by the International Badminton Federation. She has been
playing at the top level for a couple of years, so she was happy just to have
taken part. Which is not something you hear often from an Australian.

Ooooooooh! Fire up the jingo machine! Man the patriotic defences! Get someone famous from Ballarat to say those British people are mean and nasty and anyway we have a bigger tally than you andwhataboutourmineral richesandwehavenicerbeachesandexcellentfruitywines. At a reasonable price.

Here's the latest from the Show With No Name Studios:

Winter hits Ballarat and we crack the SADS

Seasonal Affected Disorder. The feeling that winter has gone on for long e-fucking-nough. It's hit Ballarat. And I shit ye not - a bomb has just gone off in the carpark not far from the Hamburger Cart. That's how shitful Ballarat is at the moment with this cold weather.

In tribute, the Show With No Name is back on the interwebs. From Redan to Sebastopol. From Alfredton to Golden Point. Ballarat's biggest little blurters of the truth on a transmitter you can't hear...

Happy 4th of July

Today, someone asked me what's good about America. Y'know, bein' fourth of July and all.
Pictures speak louder than words. First, the insanely good:



Then the howlingly good:


And the ridiculously good:


And the bad? Hmm. There's the obviously bad.


The just plain bad.


And the really, really bad.


Send in the clowns. Norman, bless America, please: