Confession time, sigh, again, sigh

Despite my lambasting of the Antipodes Festival, I must admit that for the first time in ten years or so, I did attend. This was on Saturday, mind. But it was only to help hand out free passes and such. Now, with a student union politics stint behind me - for the mighty Activate/Pride/Left that wasn't Socialist rich kids or drunk ALP Left kids that worked in Lindsay Tanner's office - I knew how to hand out pieces of paper to people who did not know, nor care, what it was stuck in their hand eight tenths of the time until they'd already wandered.

If you want to read a self-aggrandising pro-Antipodes rant about how to fix up the festival, you should head here. But me, I hate the sea and everything in it, if you catch my drift. Here are some of my highlights, in my just over two hour shift.

• Les Papasavas, son of the legendary Sam Papasavas, dropped in for a chat. Him not knowing who the hell I am, let alone that I have a half-arsed South blog (and me being supposedly on a short leash owing to the chaos I can cause - even though it's all fucken justified, farken), it's probably not fair for me to relay the conversation. But apparently we're irrelevant, and we should give up. Or something. I don't know, that's what I got out of the conversation. In my brief 'Form and Content' class last Thursday, someone reacted sarcastically when I said self-deprecatingly that perhaps I'm a bit more cynical about such things (in reference to global trends in television programming - Canadian Ice Hockey Thugs in a pairs figure skating talent show of some sort, used as part of an analogy about in the same way more roads doesn't lead to less traffic - despite everyone's best hopes - more channels and more programming time doesn't lead to better television shows - but I guess you just had to be there).
• People looking at the DVD footage on the television screen, looking at the stall title which was above the small tent, and then asking what it was all about. Even after they'd read their freebie double pass.
• One person took a pass, walked, had a look, then came back and gave back her pass. Well, it's a form of recycling I guess.
• There weren't too many young Greeks, as far as I could tell. Mind you, this was around 2pm to just after 4pm. Maybe they were all sleeping, or styling their hair or something. There were plenty of people of Subcontinental and East Asian appearance, wandering through mostly after having done their shopping.
• I like Thin Lizzy's 'Boys Are Back In Town' as much as the next person, but it's hardly Greek. Even if it is played by a Greek band, or band made up of Greeks or their descendants, and therefore I didn't heed the call from the announcer to be proud of them. 
• Rhodri Payne came past with a housemate carrying a relatively tasteful amount of booze. 
• One random loon came up and had some sort of rant about the game being the most corrupt in the world, and big business and something. While he was glad to have got it off his chest, I'm not sure what difference it makes to the broader argument about whatever he was rabbiting on about.
• Antipodes volunteers - who I assume were Greek, or knew something about local Greek culture - being given free passes and asking where Bob Jane Stadium was. 
• Something about Greeks and fickleness and shit. 

I was apparently quite lucky I didn't spend any time out there on the Sunday. A lot of naff comments, including a variation of one that I hadn't heard for years, about us being Melbourne Victory now. If you were out there at all over the weekend, please feel free to vent your spleens in the comments section.