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Nobby-W said:
Not to mention Castlemaine XXXX and underarm bowling.
Now that was an underhanded trick if ever I saw one.
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We have lots of great aussie beer here, craft and mainstream
But XXXX isn't really one of them. And they brew it the Milton Castlemaine-Perkins Brewery in my home city of Brissy!

Well the XXXX Dry, XXXX Summer Brite, XXXX Thirsty Dog lines are pretty good; but I'll be the first to admit that their XXXX Draught and XXXX Stout are not particularly great. The saddest part is that their biggest commercial lines, XXXX Gold and XXX Bitter, are bloody awful :sad:
Well cold frothy XXXX on Tap (usually XXXX Draught) isn't too bad in summertime. Not my first choice in a pub, but it's beer on tap.
But it's wise to pause before ordering a XXXX Bitter stubby, and definately avoid the XXXX Gold 'tinnies (...shudder)

Still, XXXX is worlds above bloody Fosters! I have no idea why that is selling overseas, because we haven't seen it much here since its heyday in the late 70s/early 80s. Besides sporting event contracts, hardly anyone drinks that stuff here.
Agemegos said:
Mumble mumble sandpaper.
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Yes yes that was a lowblow, heh heh
You got us on that one; those bloody cricketers !!!
Still, you gotta admire anyone who can play sport with sandpaper around their crown jewels :grin:

****

Anyway, the Aussie Rock Scene is kickass, so I rest my case here when it comes to creditibility Down Under :grin: :thumbsup:
 
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Agemegos said:
One of the other participants suggested that one of the minor divinities who appeared in one of the strips might be significant in being based on an actual figure from real Norse mythology. I pointed out that the other was also based on an actual figure from real Norse mythology. We were both suspended for a few days for discussing real-world religion
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:ooh:
I was on a science forum and was banned after another user had mentioned X proved theorem Y and I stated in fact a Japanese professor had proved it a few years earlier first. This was considered to be "shoehorning diversity issues" into the discussion.

Some places have just imploded into the arse of the culture wars and it's best to get out.
 
spittingimage said:
As a kiwi, you're welcome.

PS. send back Gin Wigmore. I'm not kidding.
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yep ok I should of said the 'Australiasian' Music Scene', that's a fair call :thumbsup:

(But no, the travel bubble excludes Gin Wigmore coming back :grin:)
 
TristramEvans said:
I thought Fosters was Australian for beer?
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That's about as real as believing the Tooth Fairy - Fosters was briefly popular in Australia in the late 70s/early 80s

By the 1990s it was almost gone, except for sporting venue contracts and the occasional southern pub.

It managed to score contracts overseas and promotes itself as an iconic Aussie beer.

Fosters is definately not a popular beer in Australia, but it does show you the power of marketing

I have occasionally seen it on tap in pubs, mainly in Sydney and Melbourne, but even there it certainly isn't a prominent beer.

Lots of great beer lines in Australia, its very rich in that sense, plus it also had had an explosion in craft beer in this last decade.

So nah, Fosters isn't an iconic beer in Australia
 
Fenris-77 said:
Who here actually remembers the rules in BX for a braced weapon? That's why polearms rock.
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My players are going to get a taste of it next Sunday. Maybe one day they will figure out they should rank up their mercenaries and spend some $ to give them plate, shield, and spears. Per BECMI rules I allow spears and polearms to attack from the 2nd rank as well.

Edit: Hmm I might be getting the B/X rules on bracing spears mixed up with the rules in BECMI Rules Cyclopedia (which frankly can be a real mess). See below from OSE:

Brace: Bracing against the ground doubles damage against charging monsters.
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The wording seems to imply it only works against charging monsters that have the special ability to do so or mounted opponents using the charge maneuver.

Edit part two: OSE Advanced Fantasy Rules includes rules for charging! Yet again, these guys did a great job.

Charging into Melee
Once per combat, a character may charge into melee and attack, as follows:
▶▶ The character moves at least 20’ (20 yards in the wilderness) before attacking. There must be a clear run.
▶▶ The character gains a +2 bonus to attack this round.
▶▶ The character’s AC is penalized by 1 this round.
▶▶ Weapons that may be braced against charging monsters are also effective against charging characters.
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Mankcam said:
That's about as real as believing the Tooth Fairy - Fosters was briefly popular in Australia in the late 70s/early 80s
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I wouldn't even say "popular". I'd say that it was briefly "available on tap" in Australia in the late 70s and early 80s. For actual popularity it never came close to VB or Carlton Draught in Victoria, Toohey's or even Resch's in NSW, XXXX or Power's in Queensland, NT in the Territory, Emu or Swan in WA, Cooper's in SA, or Cascade or Boag's in Tasmania.

The history is that "Foster's" was an attempt by CUB to produce a high-markup beer and market it to the middle class as the sort of thing you might buy to drink with a meal in a licensed restaurant. It was distributed only in bottles, not for sale on tap. Then in 1964 an Australian satirist living in London (Barry Humphries) created the character Bazza Mckenzie for a comic strip in Private Eye. To characterise him as a middle-class boor, Humphries made Mckenzie a heavy drinker of an over-priced canned beer, Fosters. Private Eye and a movie in 1972 (The Adventures of Bazza Mckenzie) gave Fosters a lot of free publicity, mostly in London and South-east England and among the US expatriate community in the UK. Bazza Mckenzie and cans of Fosters became a foreigners' stereotype of Australians. Canned Fosters became a fad in London and South England. Carlton United exported quite a lot of it to England from 1971 and to the US from 1972. Then starting in 1981 they licensed local brewers in foreign countries to sell a sweet, fizzy lager under the brand. And the English brewers came up with the "Fosters — it's Australian for lager" ad campaign, whihc people would have laughed themselves silly at, if it had been broadcast in Australia.

Because locally-brewed lagers with a "Fosters" brand were doing well OS and getting a bit of reflected publicity, CUB tried distributing "Fosters" around Australia in kegs for sale on tap, in particular in NSW where they expected resistance to the brand "Victoria Bitter". But it never took off. Everyone figured that since it was just another pale and fizzy 4.8%-alcohol lager like all other Australian beer except for Coopers, they might as well keep drinking their state brand. CUB switched the "Fosters" signs for "VB" signs on their tied pubs in NSW, and Fosters — though I suppose that I could probably still find it somewhere if I tried — pretty much vanished. Nowadays in Australia Fosters is not just not a popular beer, but not even a well-known one.

Nowadays Fosters is a sort-of Australian-style lager that is brewed in foreign countries, licensing fees being paid to the Japanese company that own the brand.
 
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Apparently the peak of Fosters' popularity in Australia was a 2% market share, when it was available in 6% of pubs.
 
Endless Flight said:
This is getting out of hand! Next someone will tell me that “Down Under” is not the Australian national anthem.
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Yeah I'ld be happy if it was! :thumbsup:
Stadium sings "Down Under!'
A fine cultured place we have down here
Australia hosting the next G20 Summit
Agemegos said:
Apparently the peak of Fosters' popularity in Australia was a 2% market share, when it was available in 6% of pubs.
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That sounds about right.
I do remember reading something about a Fosters Lager connection with Barry Humphries, so thanks for squaring it up.

Boomers: "I tried Fosters when it first came out, but never liked it all that much. I remember that they started pushing it to the Poms after they lost The Ahes again"

Gen X: " I remember Fosters, but hardly ever see it. Saw it more when I was backpacking in London. We're not missing much. We won The Ashes again"

Millenial: "Cricket's that game with a bat, ball, and sandpaper that I sometimes watch on my iPad. Looks like the green & gold side is holding that little silver trophy again, I think they call it some like The Ashes or whatever. BTW, What's a Fosters? "
:grin:
 
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Mankcam said:
Boomers: "I tried Fosters when it first came out, but never liked it all that much. I remember that they started pushing it to the Poms after they lost The Ahes again"
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Yep, that sounds about right.
 
Nobby-W said:
Could be worse. Could be Advance, Australia Fair.
New Zealand has the world's second worst national anthem, beaten out only by Australia.
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Yup given that Advance Australia Fair only became the official anthem in the late 1960s, most of us still disown that Funeral Dirge for an anthem

Which has only perpetuated lots of stand-in tunes that capture national spirit much better:

Waltzing Matilda
I Still Call Australia Home
I Am Australian
True Blue
Down Under

I can't see that changing anytime soon :thumbsup:
 
Mankcam said:
Yup given that Advance Australia Fair only became the official anthem in the late 1960s,
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1984.

In 1977 we chose it (ahead of Waltzing Matilda and Caroline Carleton’s Song of Australia) in a national plebiscite organised by Malcolm Fraser, but as a “national song”. God Save the Queen remained the official national anthem until 1984.

I think the people who voted for our dreadful current national dirge cannot have known how much the lyrics grovel to the UK. At yhe time of its choice it had lines about Captain Cook’s “true British courage”, about the British flag being “the standard of the brave”, about how we love Britain with all its faults, about fighting invaders to prove we’re still British, and “Britannia rule the wave!”. It was an awful choice. The government and the Australia Day Council have had to change the words about five times to remove sexist, racist, and grovelative bits, and as you say the tune is a dragging arrhythmic dirge.
 
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Most national anthems sound terrible, instead of countries invoking their own flair it's this really generic 19th Century pomp. Exceptions are some African countries have nice ones and I'll have to hand it to Eastern Europe countries where their anthems make you feel like saluting the screen.
 
Séadna said:
Most national anthems sound terrible, instead of countries invoking their own flair it's this really generic 19th Century pomp. Exceptions are some African countries have nice ones and I'll have to hand it to Eastern Europe countries where their anthems make you feel like saluting the screen.
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I do like Russia's national anthem; it's really quite a powerful choral piece.
 
Séadna said:
Kiwi one is actually very nice in the slower version not done at stadiums.
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I've heard good arrangements of it but it is just generic 19th century pomp (although I think Advance, Australia Fair is worse on a whole other level),. There are versions with verses in Maori that work a bit better.
 
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