We took a deep breath and descended deep into Sutherland Shire over the weekend, for a Saturday in Cronulla. Looks like we picked a good day to do it - not too hot, so it wasn’t too crowded around the beaches.

While strolling along the Esplanade which overlooks the beaches of Cronulla, I couldn’t help but notice that someone had oddly abandoned a leather jacket on the rocks. Then, a little further on, another piece of dead cow: some leather pants laid out flat against a rock. Quite strange! All this discarded leatherwear - and I could see were beachgoers in their swimming cossies. What sort of crackhead strolls down to the beach in only Speedos and a leather jacket? (A: Shire residents).

Then, another - a leather jacket reclining gently against some rocks. And yet another pair of leather pants on the beach. What was going on here?

“Have you been noticing all these abandoned leather jackets and pants on the beach?” I turned to Adam, sweeping my hand over the horizon.

“What are you talking about?” he replied quizzically. “Those are old people sunbaking.”

Politely, I turned my head away from the beach into a seaside palm, and discarded my lunch.

Of course, a day out to a town you’ve never visited before isn’t complete without a visit to the local RSL. By RSL standards, the Cronulla RSL’s beer prices aren’t that cheap, but you just can’t beat that pumping atmosphere of feverish back-to-back bowls contests and cautious playing of Keno.

So we sat down for a few beers and a slap at the pokies. Adam and I will occasionally play a few pokie games together if we’re out having a few drinks - this particular RSL featured some sort of bizarre Mexican-themed pokie machine. One of the icons was an animated dancing taco, which I couldn’t stop drunkenly guffawing over. A fucking animated dancing jackpot taco. Seriously, there must not be too many pokie ideas left. In the back of my mind, I was praying that my parents wouldn’t choose that moment to phone me for a chat, and force me to drunkenly stumble through hiccuping sentences like “We’re at the beach, there’s a magical Mexican taco, he dances the macarena! JACKPOT! OH HO HO HO!”

When Adam and I play the pokies together, we always win. If we ever play it on our own, big losses - but put us together and we’re like some sort of gambling Transformers. Or, as I loudly bellowed in a room full of scared senior citizens, “We’re like Mighty Morphin’ Gambling Rangers!” This was soon followed up with, “HOLY FUCK! The next Keno game is number 666! I’ll win this for sure! METALLLLLLLLLLLL.”

Perhaps it was my yelling, or perhaps they were simply ageist - but when I tried to cash in our winnings and (shock!) politely requested that they paid us out in $20 notes rather than $50s, it was like I’d just told the old lady that I fucked men and was about to get a part of my dick chopped off (which, admittedly, is all true). It seems that I’d broken an RSL rule of some sort - well, it did, until I noticed this survey on the Cronulla RSL’s website.

On the trip home, I saw way too many people with iPod Disease. We’ve all seen it - people who seem to think their iPod is powered by centrifugal force, and wave it around fuckwittishly in front of them as they walk down the street. I’ve actually switched my white iPod headphones with a pair of black ones, because I don’t want to be identified as a knob, basically. I’ve got iPod Shame Disorder.

What’s on my iPod right now? The Team Sleep album. It features Chino from the Deftones, and, Christ, who knows who the other guys are. If you’ve ever been into the Deftones’ more ambient and electronic tracks, this is most definitely for you. I’d say most A Perfect Circle fans would also be quite happy with Team Sleep. They’re like how the Deftones would sound if the band wasn’t constructed of 80% mindless meatheads, and were transported into 2030. And don’t you always feel so sorry for Chino in interviews? He’ll be calmly detailing the nuances of his favourite albums, then one of the other guys will pipe up with “Oh, Radiohead, they’re fucking lame, are they the ones with that Paranoid Toaster song?”

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