Ah yes, it’s just 3 days to Ye Olde Yuletide, 4 days to Boxing Day, minus a certain brewery-sponsored yacht race, and you know what, I’ll play one last classic Christmas song to begin the Tithbits, and this time, I’d best play a song that best reflects an Australian attitude towards the Festive season…

Obviously Rolf Harris and Six White Boomers are about as culturally acceptable as Gary Glitter these days, How To Make Gravy by Paul Kelly got covered to death yesterday, as it should be on December 21 annually, and I’m apparently supposed to limit my use of Hey Santa Claus by Kevin Bloody Wilson, even though it’s a song plenty of parents can relate to, so bugger it, I’ll go for something everyone knows:

Colin Buchanan and Greg Champion, aka Bucko and Champs, with Frosty The Yobbo.

“He’s a snowman with an attitude, and a carrot for a nose.”

To think that tomorrow is the first Festivus in history without Jerry Stiller

The Airing of Grievances won’t be the same without Mr Costanza.

A sign of the changing times for Australian sportspeople overseas

I say this because the NBA season starts tomorrow morning (Our time), and with Josh Green getting drafted by the Dallas Mavericks, there’s going to be 7 Australians in the NBA this season, while over in England and the Premier League, the only Australian left is Socceroos goalkeeper Mat Ryan at Brighton & Hove Albion, and his future on the South Coast looks limited after originally getting benched, then totally dropped from the Seagulls squad altogether on Sunday.

To think, it wasn’t even 20 years ago that we were lucky to have 2 Australians in the NBA (Chris Anstey and Luc Longley), and there was always at least half a dozen Australians were playing in the Premier League…. with most of them being at Leeds United and Middlesborough.

The ever-changing demographics of Australia at work – Our basketballers are superb, and our footballers hate the UK.

A Christmas roast gone wrong on Cornish Crescent this morning

Interestingly, it was sprouting up from around the part of Cornish where Logan McDonald lived before he got drafted by the Swans… maybe they were clearing out the stink from his old room:

For the record, it got put out before the firies got there.

“Exciting plans” for Don Bradman’s cap

Those exciting plans could be any one of:

“I’m going to take a crap in it and send it to Scott Morrison”

“I’m going to drill my missus while I wear it and play Lithium on Kurt Cobain’s guitar at the same time”

“I’m going to follow in Bill Lawry’s lead and let it get covered in pigeon droppings”

“I’m going to wear it like a backwards baseball cap”

“I’m going to extract Don’s DNA from the inside and clone him so Australia can have Marnus, Steve and the Don in the same team, because I’m an evil genius”

It looks like Jed Betts copped a hammering out at the Bathurst dogs last night

Not on the punt, but from a few of his mates sponsoring the races:

Now that’s a quality stitch-up.

The West Australian preaching to the Fremantle choir through the power of Photoshop memes

Good to see The West’s journos bang on about the TV scheduling of 6 games…. out of 22.

Mitch Wishnowsky dropping a hip and shoulder on an unsuspecting Cowboy (Rico Dowdle)

You can take the boy out of Gosnells….

F1 Animated Commentary, 2020 Edition

You’ll notice Daniel Ricciardo makes a few appearances – His Warm-up broadcast before Sakhir kicks off the video, and the timeless Holy Mac And Cheese Balls after he finished 3rd at Imola.

Those are my sentimonies Jon Ralph

Bloody NewsCorp journos reading The Age…

Merry Christmas Ben Melham, have 8 months off:

Abuse to anyone pointing out the truth – That’s called the Endresz Defence.

Santa Ana Lane finally gets a well-earned retirement right down Santa Ana Lane

Normally Santa is getting ready to work around this time of year… but this Santa has been given a well-earned retirement by the Freedmans after 5 Group 1 wins and about $8.2m in stakes.

To think that in the Autumn of 2017, Santa was going around in the Wagga Town Plate against Lord Von Costa, which he won, and within 5 months was a Group 1 winner at long odds, and just to prove that wasn’t a fluke, he would go on to win 4 more – The Goodwood, The Stradbroke, the VRC Classic and the TJ Smith – Confirming himself as one of the best sprinters in modern Australian racing, even though he seemed to absolutely shirk running well at single-figure odds.

As I found out many times.

In all honesty, Anthony Freedman probably should’ve made the call to send him off to a happy retirement at the end of last Spring, because his 2020 results showed that outside of a fine 2nd in the TJ Smith to Nature Strip, he had nothing left to give, and ended up running 6th at each of his last 5 starts.

It was that trip to Hong Kong in the Autumn of 2019 that really took it out of Santa… the exact same thing happened to Chautauqua a few years earlier.