Down Under, Day 2: The Little Differences

If Quentin Tarantino ever feels the need to make a prequel and/or sequel to Pulp Fiction, he might set things up where the character of Vincent Vega (or the thinly veiled second coming of him) has just returned from Melbourne. Similar to Amsterdam, they got the same stuff over here that we have back in the states, but it's just a little different.

Examples?

Well, let's start with the answer to the fast food riddle "What would happen if Burger King married Jack in the Box and had a child?"


It looks like Burger King. It tastes like Jack in the Box. Do I recommend it? Not unless you happen to be stumbling home at 2:45 in the morning and are in desperate need of something greasy to scarf down. Despite the outward appearances of being some bizarro knockoff, Hungry Jack's is indeed Australia's Burger King, Whopper and all. No matter what you call it, however, Brian Kelly would advise that anybody who gets caught eating here at 3 AM is most definitely not an RKG.

Turning away from the greasy underbelly of fast food to the slightly more dignified world of the "Sandwich Artists" at Subway restaurants. Surely we can find the comforts of home there, right?


Wrong. You'd think the magic power of the $5 dollar footlong would be appreciated in any language, and certainly it would go over well in Australia considering they speak English here! Apparently not. Not only have they turned their back on the $5 footlong, their so-called "value meal" is a six-inch sub! The one positive we can take here is that this isn't some kind of drastic fleecing like it would be in the other country that puts Queen Elizabeth on its money. The US Dollar is actually slightly ahead of the Australian dollar, so $4.45 in Oz Bucks is basically $4.35 US (as opposed to Britain where the £5 footlong is really a $9.50 footlong before you include the chips and drink). Economic pluses aside, I'm not happy about leaving the footlong deal behind.

And speaking of being left behind:


Can't find it on shelves in the states. Readily available at every corner 7-Eleven in Melbourne. Which is ironic considering that it all began to unravel for Tiger when the alleged mistress was allegedly spotted allegedly checking into a Melbourne hotel...allegedly.

I may not be the world's most traveled individual, but I am definitely expanding my reach to the other side of the globe, where it certainly seems like the more things change, the more they stay the same. Just have to be aware and appreciative of all those little differences.

Down Under, Day 1

Sitting in the lobby of the Melbourne Westin, an ornately decorated hotel that would look right at home in any city of the world, it's a little stunning to consider how it was by my recollection yesterday that I left Connecticut, but in reality it was close to 55 hours ago. Time flies when you cross the international date line.

Melbourne, The World's Most Liveable City

For those of you who might be reading this in search of a context (and who could blame you, as I have fallen way, way, way off the wagon from my original pledge to put up one blog post per day) my assignment with ESPN's Event Production department has brought me to Melbourne as part of the team covering the 2010 Australian Open tennis tournament. Now that we're here, everybody is taking a moment to relax and re-charge before the real work begins over the next 17 days. Good thing too, because if I were asked to sum up the experience so far in a single sentence, here goes: "Anybody who ever said 'getting there is half the fun' has obviously never flown to Australia."

That's where the rift in time I mentioned already comes in. I left my house in Bristol around 11:30 AM on Tuesday, cramped into the regional aircraft that services Hartford's Bradley Airport and spent two brief hours within striking distance of home during a stop at O'Hare in Chicago. By the time I touched down again a little after 7 PM Pacific time at LAX, the travel portion of this trip was actually ahead of schedule yet - wasn't even close to being halfway done. Then things got interesting.

Upon arriving in Los Angeles the entire ESPN crew was greeted with the news that the plane's departure for Sydney would be delayed due to the purposely vague and always encouraging reason of "aircraft servicing". Those of you familiar with George Carlin may immediately be defaulting in your head to the phrase "BROKEN PLANE!" With a couple of extra hours already in hand I met up with First Lt. Paul Jacobs of the USAF and visited one of about four things I actually miss now that I now longer live in Los Angeles. You can all have three guesses as to what it was but if you need to use more than one you clearly haven't been paying attention.

The flight finally boarded around 12:30 AM, more than two hours after the originally stated departure time. At which point we waited...and waited...and waited, again being told that there was just some minor "aircraft service" that needed to be completed before we could officially depart. Is it just me or do the airline personnel have an unsettling talent for making a situation sound as dire as humanly possible even as they speak in an upbeat tone?

So the 14-hour flight took off four hours late and there weren't a lot of ways to speed up crossing the entire Pacific Ocean. The saving grace was setting my watch to Melbourne time before I left L.A., so I was mentally just trying to stay alive until about 11:00 PM Wednesday (Melbourne time) while in flight - 4 AM Los Angeles time. Then it was lights out until we touched down in Australia - which to my mild surprise we did, so I guess I have to pay homage to all performers of the aircraft servicing. Mild fear was a small price exacted for being able to get there safe and sound without crashing onto a mystical, shape-and-time-shifting island. (That will hardly be the last Lost reference during these two weeks of journals, by the way). It didn't exactly come as surprise though when one of my co-passengers said the flight attendant told them that, in-flight, there had been real concern we would have to divert to Fiji due to a lack of fuel. Where was Flight 815 heading when it first changed course in the pilot episode?!? That's right - Fiji!

At this point we were finally landing in Sydney around the time we should've been at a baggage carousel in Melbourne, so what was another hour or so delay - for, you guessed it, additional "aircraft servicing". There's a wonderful new addition to the great Carlin rant about the jibberish airlines use to cover up what they really mean, but I've been traveling for too long and don't quite have the wit to make it. Feel free to take your own crack at it in the comments section.

To top it all off, when I finally arrived here I discovered that "universal power adapter" I bought several months ago had the plugs for all outlets except Australian ones. That wasn't a total loss though, because I got to go experience the "World Famous Arthur Daley's Clearance House" right across the street from the hotel. I have, however, completely exhausted the laptop battery writing this, so that's the cue to wrap things up.

Also, check out the VIDEO!!! portion of the blog at the other website. Why put these in two different places? Because if there's one thing ESPN has taught me it's that you've gotta branch yourself onto as many platforms as possible. And I want to see a lot of hits on two different websites, that's why.

New Year - New Journey

Sweetheart I'm bidding you fond farewell
Murmured the youth one day
I'm off to a new land my fortune to try
And I'm ready to sail away

Far away in Australia
Soon will fate be kind
And I will be ready to welcome the lass
The girl I left behind

Must we be parted this fair one cried
I cannot let you go
Still I must leave you, the young man replied
But for only a while you know

Whether it's success or failure
I will always be true
Proudly each day in a land far away
I'll be building a home for you

Daily she waits at the old cottage gate
Watching the whole day through
Till a sweet message comes over the waves
In a new world to join two

Far away in Australia
Soon will fate be kind
And I will be ready to welcome the lass
The girl I left behind

I'll explain later.

Why I Don't Miss Working in L.A. - Part 8,792

Parts 1 thru 8,791 are around here somewhere, but here's how the folks at 20th Century Fox Television chose to get everybody in the Christmas spirit:



The actors (or "characters") featured are the cast of ABC's new sitcom Modern Family. Thomas will no doubt recognize the second gentleman featured as Vice President and Former Governor of Pennsylvania Eric Baker, and Joe will easily spot Jack's ex-wife from Lost, but understandably the rest of you might be in the dark. The two knuckleheads who bring the music to a screeching halt (and really, is there anything more retreaded than using the "record scratch" to indicate a change in moods?) are Fox TV heads Gary Newman & Dana Walden, who no doubt think they're being hilarious with their little wink/wink, nudge-nudge routine. Problem is unless your an industry insider you not only don't have the pleasure of being "in" on the joke, but also may very well be one of the writers, actors, or crew members who can't find a job in what used to be a top time of the year for employment because fewer and fewer pilots are getting made.

It's not so much that I think this is patently offensive because it quite obviously was made with satirical, completely innocent intentions. It's just that this is such a lame & predictable exercise meant to cater to the "insider's crowd" to the point of not only failing to be funny, but being just plain stupid.

I've broached the subject before and I'll revisit it again in the future (bank on that), but it just makes me conjure up the quote from "What Just Happened", a surprisingly self-indulgent look at Hollywood that featured Bruce Willis as an actor named Bruce Willis. In the film, Bruce Willis (as portrayed by Bruce Willis) gives the following eulogy:

Hunter S Thompson once said to me, "The movie business is a cruel and shallow money trench, where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs.' Then he added, 'There's also a negative side'.

Let's Get Dangerous

Mental health break today.

If there is a superhero with a better theme song than Darkwing Duck, I would like to meet that superhero.

Armchair Quarterbacking

ESPN columnist Gregg Easterbrook's edition of "Tuesday Morning Quarterback" from last week caught my eye with a couple of really salient points. Among the questions posed in his exegesis:

Is coaching overrated? (Don't know that I agree, but Easterbrook's larger point - that it's easy as hell to second-guess, and just because it's easy doesn't mean you know what the f____ you're talking about - is above dispute.)

Do the football gods have creative ways of punishing those who defy them? (Scroll near the end and see the curious fates of Nebraska & Texas Tech in recent weeks.)

Should we be concerned about the upcoming palindrome day on January 2nd, 2010? (Look at it - 01022010...reverse the numbers and it's still...01022010.)

Most convincing though was the solid debunking of the myth that the "Wildcat offense" currently sweeping the offices of football coaches at every level - heck, even Notre Dame is running it - is some sort of trick-play gimmick.

Why is the Wildcat being called a gimmick? Nobody says it's a gimmick when the Patriots run the shotgun spread. Nobody says it's a gimmick when the Steelers or Packers go with an empty backfield. There's a presumption that only a conventional set with a quarterback standing in the pocket counts as real offense. Offense is yards gained! On Sunday night against the Giants, the Cardinals put defensive back Antrel Rolle behind center in a Wildcat formation. Surely the Cardinals' coaches thought Jersey/A would assume run, and be surprised when Rolle threw. This worked so well that Larry Fitzgerald even seemed surprised when the pass hit him right on the hands, and he dropped the ball. (A penalty wiped Rolle's attempt off the stat sheet.) Had the play worked, that would have been yards gained, plus pretty entertaining. Probably various touts and former jocks in the sports media object to the Wildcat because they didn't think of it first.

And really, what exactly was there to think of? It's a running play! Just because you cut out the middle man and the process of handing off doesn't mystifyingly make it some sort of triple-reverse gadget play. Follow the link for the full series of notes and musings, they're all worth your time.

Great Moments in CNN History

One day soon I'm going to rediscover my ability to blog and snark back at people (and things) who oh-so-richly deserve it. Pending that day, I have to let the inimitable Jon Stewart and Hulu clips do it for me: