The most Australian Interview ever. (slyt)

January 26, 2016 6:42 AM

Full Manlyness A couple of Australian Heroes stop a convenience store robbery. So Australian.

Stubby and Singlet Party = Beer party where you wear a singlet
Plugger = Flip flops

I need subtitles for the rest.

posted by helmutdog (36 comments total)

Further conformation that Straya is a fictional land that has been manufactured in some lab and entirely populated by actors pretending to be the most two-dimensional stereotypes humanly possible.
posted by vuron at 6:49 AM on January 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

That male TV presenter is the least professional person.
posted by asok at 6:51 AM on January 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

The video of the guys is great. The interview is shit. I kinda like ol' Karl but this is not his best. They're basically just mocking these guys for no good reason.
posted by h00py at 7:32 AM on January 26, 2016 [5 favorites]

That male TV presenter is the least professional person.

But he does produce good meme #content: Yeah! Fuck Yeah!

upon review, I'm not certain they're the same person.
posted by DGStieber at 8:35 AM on January 26, 2016

I want Australia, all of it.
posted by Oyéah at 8:36 AM on January 26, 2016

I want to live somewhere where people smile so hard you can't understand them when they speak.
posted by Oyéah at 8:37 AM on January 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

"Yip-yip-yip-yip-yip."
posted by sutureselves at 8:54 AM on January 26, 2016

The new Mad Max movie is probably being cast soon. I am just saying.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 10:07 AM on January 26, 2016

Something about every Australian I've ever met makes me generally mistrust but really, really like them. Admittedly it's a pretty small sample size. Maybe I just need to meet more Australians.
posted by echocollate at 10:14 AM on January 26, 2016

I heard this interview on the radio yesterday, back-to-back with an interview with a Newfoundlander and marvelled at the elasticity of the English language.
posted by looli at 10:15 AM on January 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

asok: "That male TV presenter is the least professional person."

Karl Stefanovic is an odd bird. He's a total muppet in character, but he's also the guy who wore the same suit for a whole year to make a point about the double standards in how men and women on TV are judged.
posted by langtonsant at 11:45 AM on January 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

This is like the definition of alternate reality.
posted by bongo_x at 11:49 AM on January 26, 2016

I'm Australian, and could barely understand what these guys were saying.

Try to take it in context:
a) It's trash breakfast TV, trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator.
b) The guys are from a relatively rural part of Northern Australia, where people can be somewhat ... rough around the edges.
c) They're all playing along with the joke of this incident being so ridiculously, over the top "ocker" / "bogan" / "redneck".
d) It was Australia Day.
posted by Diag at 12:33 PM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

'...haven't been to the gym in years, mate. The only gym I go to regularly is Jim Beam'

Well played...
posted by tim_in_oz at 1:56 PM on January 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

Sadly, as an American, the most remarkable thing about this is that they were only concerned that the robbers might have a knife.
posted by lucasks at 2:28 PM on January 26, 2016 [9 favorites]

They're basically just mocking these guys for no good reason

That's what I got from it. The guys are slightly bemused, but their dignity remains intact. I hope Karl Stefanovic does some other good work to make up for this. 'You guys are the reason I came back from my holiday'?*

I don't really understand why James takes his shirt off at the beginning of the clip though.

* Anyone on the Gold Coast during schoolies should know what to expect.
posted by asok at 3:15 PM on January 26, 2016

I'm Australian, and could barely understand what these guys were saying.

Same. I've never heard the term 'plugger' in my life.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 4:37 PM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

"That male TV presenter is the least professional person."

Previous idiocy from Karl Stefanovic with bonus Dali Lama.

This interview is very much in character.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 4:38 PM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

D'oh! Dalai Lama
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 4:48 PM on January 26, 2016

Dali Llama has apparently been taken as a band name a couple of times. Go home guys, we’ll work on it again tomorrow.
posted by bongo_x at 5:01 PM on January 26, 2016

Here's the Gold Coast Bulletin's account. Please everybody, heed the 3warning at its end:

“Police are specially trained to respond to these situations, they have tasers, capsicum spray and guns.

“A gentleman with a busted thong just doesn’t have the same capabilities.”

posted by Joe in Australia at 6:54 PM on January 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

A gentleman with a busted thong

Saw it in person. Interesting multimedia piece, but seemed more about titillating than enlightening. Also not enough penis.
posted by bongo_x at 7:02 PM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

I don't really understand why James takes his shirt off at the beginning of the clip though.

The description on the second video covers this:

James: "There wasn’t much time to think, the first thing I did was rip my singlet off, it’s Aussie to be shirtless in a fight and I didn’t want my shirt to get dirty."

posted by foobaz at 7:35 PM on January 26, 2016 [5 favorites]

I hope Karl Stefanovic does some other good work to make up for this.

Well, there is his totally open gaped response response to a huge Great White shark.

"stuff summer" and the cage quote are frequent phrases around our house now, actually
posted by barchan at 9:22 PM on January 26, 2016

As a linguist, I've heard a few conference talks about the Australian /ae/ vowel getting lower and backer, but all the examples I'd heard so far were from teenage female speakers. The dude in this interview has an amazing /ae/ that is nothing like what I expect from an Australian guy: listen to "tavern" at 1:15, "had" at 1:47, "'appened" at 2:13, to give just the first few examples from the video. Holy shit, that's a vowel change in progress! Queensland is the best accent.

But yeah, I've lived in Aus for 10 years now and had never heard "plugger" before. Maybe it's regional?
posted by lollusc at 10:50 PM on January 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

Oh, and in that final example, if you play from 2:11, you can hear the contrast between /ae/ prenasally in "plan" and then in a non-nasal environment in "'appened'". The sound in "plan" is what I am used to hearing as an Australian /ae/.
posted by lollusc at 11:02 PM on January 26, 2016

Yeah plugger is regional I assume - it's certainly something I've heard (queenslander).
posted by geek anachronism at 12:25 AM on January 27, 2016

not slyt
#justsaying
posted by kisch mokusch at 12:28 AM on January 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Just confirming that a stubby and singlet party is no more a thing this Australian knows about than a plugger. The idea that this is titled 'so Australian' is...a bit annoying.
posted by jojobobo at 1:53 AM on January 27, 2016

Since when is the Gold Coast rural? Or northern for that matter? It's basically on the NSW border. It's got rural bits, but in general it's pretty solidly suburban and is basically an exurb of Brisbane these days. It's the sort of slightly seedy beach area people go to when they want to get very messy and make a nuisance of themselves. It's resident population is also fairly working class, which is what's going on with this accent. It's kind of unapologetic (and pretty hammed up) working class.

I've always understood "plugger" to be a southern term that's come up with worker migration in the last ten years or so - you know, people moving to Queensland from New South Wales for the lower living costs and the weather.
posted by Jilder at 5:09 AM on January 27, 2016

Not a southern term as far as I know. I've lived my whole life in VIC and NSW and never ever heard "plugger". Then again, I don't get out much.
posted by valetta at 12:18 AM on January 29, 2016

Another Australian here, in my 50s, lived the majority of my life in rural/regional Oz, and never heard the term 'plugger' before.
posted by Pouteria at 7:08 AM on January 29, 2016

I asked around at work today and everybody had never heard of "plugger" ... except for one person, who explained it was more correctly "double plugger", a thong with two plugs holding each strap at the back instead of one, making it stronger and longer-lasting than the original thong. Also her husband has been wearing them for years.

For confirmation I refer you to the Ozwords entry on Australian footwear, which states:

double pluggers: rubber sandals (see thongs below) with a thong attached to the sole by two plugs. The term is first recorded in the 1990s and is often found in the context of a celebration of Australian informality: ‘Australia day is a time to relish your own cliches…. Take off your double-plugger thongs and frisbee them at your mates.’ (Canberra Times, 20 January 2008)

posted by valetta at 9:08 PM on January 29, 2016

Addendum: another colleague present thought we were talking about underwear. Hmmm.
posted by valetta at 9:15 PM on January 29, 2016

Addendum: another colleague present thought we were talking about underwear. Hmmm.

I’m curious about their underwear that they pluggers. But don’t ask them.
posted by bongo_x at 12:07 AM on January 30, 2016

That they call pluggers. Never mind.
posted by bongo_x at 12:17 AM on January 30, 2016 [1 favorite]