Busting the Nut (Postcards from Flemington IV)

She still wails, after all these years. At 47 years old, she is still the hottest female to front a rock band on the planet, bar none. Her presence made the men in the front row of the audience melt and the women look on in awe and well, they melted too. One woman in particular with a blond buzz-cut hairdo reached out and kissed the singer on the hand while her friends cheered on ecstatically. Suze DeMarchi and the Baby Animals were back together, and they were destroying the room with olds hits and new. Sure, the room wasn’t much. It was Southern Cross Club Canberra, with the same carpet it had 20 years ago, the same buffet, the same mopes playing the poker machines (which were the only new items in the establishment). But tonight, tonight, the Baby Animals breathed life into the venue, crazed thirty-something denim-clad fans raising arms and fingers in salute as Suze downed vodkas, broke hearts, and gave a master class in hard rock.

The Baby Animals. If you don’t know the band you don’t know life. Look them up.

So it was in the afterglow of Suze’s triumph that I stumbled through the early morning haze for a flight to Melbourne. As the plane circled and I looked down at the city with a headache born of iron-hard rock and too many beers, my phone began to buzz with text messages. I’d forgotten to turn off the phone for the flight and apparently hit some sweet spot above a transmission tower. It was Nick ‘Punter’ Tedeschi: bon-vivant, bearded hipster, gonzo sports writer and Making the Nut founder, peppering me with texts. He was demanding my arrival time, pleading for an answer. Old Punt was acting like a high school girl on the night of the Prom. Moreso. For this was Derby Day, and for Punter, Derby Day is like the Prom, birthday, bah-mitzvah, first BJ and last night on coke, all rolled into one.

“You’ll be 15 minutes late” he squealed, “we’re not waiting; we’re not waiting” he informed me over the phone as I landed. Well, he didn’t wait either, the damn fool, but fortunately a poker playing friend widely known for his calm demeanor managed to wait those extra 15 minutes with the Derby Day ticket in hand. The poker pro’s nickname was ‘Hollywood’. He earned the title from the time he got really stoned and ate a big red wax statue of an Oscar Award.

But this guy is one cool cat, for all his wax eating proclivities, and as we sauntered down to the train station we discussed Making the Nut and the year’s business plan – take our modest advertising revenues and plunge it all on Derby Day. How could a gang of tipsters, prop bettors and poker players do any different? So it was with great anticipation I walked through the gates of Flemington, ready to dice with the gambling gods.

Sure, there were other plans – it was the MTN partnership’s Annual General Meeting after all and we had intentions of discussing redevelopment of the site: new partnerships, new directions and edgy articles. With this in mind I was keen to table some important documents, “I have a business plan” I insisted part way through the day, waving around a piece of paper with ink scrawled ideas I had blotted the day before. “Shut up,” said Punt, matter-of-factly, turning away to view the track, “the race has started”. So, for our business planning, that was about the extent of the discussion. But for all that, Punter needn’t have spent so much time scrutinizing each race. For with one or two exceptions, events broke the wrong way all day and the gods were not with us.

But I was having none of this. If 15 beers in an afternoon will teach one anything, it is that there is always someone or something to blame. And as Making the Nut’s business strategy slowly drifted away in the smoke of six-figure pipe dreams, I found the obvious culprit – MTN’s racing tipster, the generally infallible Cliff Bingham. “You ruined the day. We’re broke” I slurred. “Listen”, said Cliffo calmly, approaching my irrational raving with the same cool logic he would apply to an algorithm or a rubix cube, “Horse racing is a bit like poker, you can’t bet on every race, you’ve got to know when to fold your hand”. I sat back, letting this cool cleansing wave of rationality wash over me. There really was only one answer in the face of this, “you fucking ruined Christmas” I roared, downing my Crownie in triumph.

The rest of the day passed in a haze. I remember later that evening entertaining the clientele at a Greek restaurant with a rousing version of Flame Trees, I remember Stuey the Tasmanian Strongman, after a mere 35 standard drinks, waving the white flag as he mopped sweat from his brow and telling one and all he thought he’d pooped a hammer. He left, unable to keep pace with the mainlanders. I remember the red wine flowed freely onto tablecloth and floor, and white wine too, ordered by some uncultured fool, which was mocked, derided, and drunk anyway. And I kept hearing sirens, wondering if they were coming for me. Someone was threatened with a trident (well, maybe it was a fork) and the Greek management decided things had really escalated and we had to be on our way.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re wondering why the hell I started with a story about Suze DeMarchi. And I say, what do you want as the accompanying picture to this article – four mug punters or the hottest woman in rock?

There were casualties that evening, my friends. None of us held up too well. The eternally stoic Cliff looked like death warmed over the next day, barely able to complete some simple long division. Tasmanian Stu was missing in action, no doubt passed out in a public toilet block somewhere. ‘Hollywood’ later told us he’d woken up in a suburb he’d never heard of before in the house of some elderly swingers (has anyone ever heard of ‘Alphington’?). A trail of Melbourne hipsters were left wounded and chagrined by the biting wit and belligerence of a making the nut writer. The reputation of our punting acumen was battered after an afternoon littered with broken quaddies, unfulfilled trifectas, and 70/1 shots that refused to come in.

So we’d busted our nut. We were done and finished. All was lost.

Until, I was offered a lifeline. You see, the gambling gods had seen my pain and decided to offer me one last chance. And that lifeline came in the form of a capricious leprechaun named Alan Joyce. You see, after this strutting little Napoleon had finished bathing himself in hundred dollar bills and cancelled every Qantas flight on the planet, I was left an extra day to experience one of the great joys of Melbourne. And what was that pleasure you ask? Well, it wasn’t fine dining in Fitzroy, or a live band in one of the city’s great local pubs, or even the poker room at Crown casino. No, it was video game proposition betting on Madden NFL 2004.

Now I enjoy a bit of prop betting. I recall with fondness betting on the outer courts at the Australian Open (service speeds, hits per rally, forced/unforced errors per game), on 1-day cricket matches (runs per over, wickets, four per overs, sixes per over), catch-phrases per episode and frequency of sightings of friends on Friends; but Madden NFL 2004 is really the crème-de-la-crème for the 8-hour hangover gambling session. So Cliffo, Hollywood, Punter and I sat down and played.

And played and played. The dollars were passed around as games were won and lost and over/unders were realized or missed. And for all that, it came down to the last second of the fourth quarter of the last game of the day. The. Last. Second. My Red Skins scoring a hail-mary touchdown in the corner. The electronic crowd roaring in triumph, the wide-receiver skip-skipping a dance in the end zone, my fists pumping as the scoreboard ticked over. Punter gasped, chocking, twisting the control in his hands with rage, eyes wide in disbelief before taking a pose reminiscent of Munch’s ‘the Scream’

And as he reached into his wallet and handed over the dollars I thought, “Ah, finally a win”.