AFL Grand Final week is a maelstrom of media appearances, press conferences, photo opportunities, and the general brouhaha associated with the largest annual sporting date on the Australian calendar. Weird shit is practically inevitable. But thanks to a stop at the MCG a short while ago, we now have the most thoroughly confusing image you’re likely to see on this – or any – AFL Grand Final week. And it unsurprisingly involves the Black Eyed Peas.
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As you’re all probably aware by now, the Black Eyed Peas, along with Jimmy Barnes, are providing pre-game entertainment at the game this coming Saturday, most likely because the AFL’s booking committee pointed at a So Fresh Hits Of 2004 CD and demanded “something like that.”
So then. Because of all that, we now have this image.
Fucken… fair bit to unpack there.
So first of all, that’s Barnesy holding the Premiership Cup like he’s at a Cold Chisel gig in Sydney circa 1976 and trying to hold himself upright using the mic stand.
But that’s obviously the least-cooked bit of all this.
The story goes that only two-thirds of the Black Eyed Peas have made it out to Melbourne thus far; apl.de.ap and Taboo are in town, but will.i.am is not as of yet.
So to compensate, the band has presented AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan with one of those god-awful combined jerseys – half Collingwood colours, half West Coast – emblazoned with the name gill.i.am on the back.
Despite the fact that his name is not Gilliam, and despite the fact that I’d bet everything currently in my wallet (about $4.40) on the fact that Gillon hasn’t so much as sung in the shower in his life.
Make no bones about it, I would pay a tier 4 Grand Final ticket’s worth of money to see Gill try and belt out Fergie‘s old lines in Let’s Get Retarded It Started, but the fact remains that it’s all gone bung in a big hurry today.
The Grand Final. It’s an absolute marvel of a time, I tell you.
