You a Lockdown Looney too?

I can only speak for myself but if I wasn’t a sandwich short of picnic before COVID19, I sure as hell am now! The whole world, including yours truly is still becoming familiar with their new normal. Practicing social distancing and spending more and more time at home. Living 24/7 in my own skin, without the distraction of travel or an overpriced coffee, is a sobering experience. There is only so much of a Netflix addiction I can take and believe me, I can take a lot. It’s not knowing when this pandemic will ease up, that’s let the kangaroos loose in my top paddock. (As they never say in Australia.)

You a Cooler King? It’s little wonder that the prison system has for years used social isolation, in the form of solitary confinement, as a form of punishment. In the Great Escape, The Cooler King played by the King of Cool Steve McQueen, was always being thrown into ‘The Hole’. Luckily for him, Zee Germans allowed him to take his baseball and glove with him, otherwise he might have tunnelled his way out using a teaspoon! In Castaway, social distancing was forced on Tom Hanks, as the sole survivor of a plane crash. On a Pacific island, he invents an imaginary friend called Wilson, a volleyball with a bloody palm print face, named after the manufacturer. Just think how crushingly dull that movie would’ve been, if Tom hadn’t had his Ball Friday to talk to? Zero dialogue, no Oscar nomination, no cigar!

Dostoevsky...Dustyesky? My favourite Coronavirus lockdown story has to be the fake/genuine Aussie/Russian choir, Dustyesky Russian Choir. (Get it? Dusty Esky = underused beer cooler.) This New South Wales boy band of middle-aged men, belt out Red Army battle hymns and traditional Russian folk songs. Sporting Lenin caps and beards, they look like a 1917 Revolutionary Poster come to life. Their only connection to Mother Russia is they are all partial to a drop of vodka…and that’s it! Other than that, they have no Russian ties whatsoever. None of them speak Russian or even have a Great great-grandmother who once received a postcard from Saint Petersburg in 1888. They’re about as Russian as Bundaberg Ginger Beer, only sweeter.

Mullumgrad? When asked why Dustyesky is the leading, genuine, fake Russian choir in all of the Southern Hemisphere, these Comrades-in-Song like to adopt Cod-Russian accents that make them sound like Cold War operatives from Russia With Love. ‘We are 28 middle-aged men, very hairy and living around the tiny hamlet of Mullumbimby or, as we call it, Mullumgrad.’ The brilliant thing about the boys in the band is that they belt out the lyrics, as if they know what they're singing about. It all makes a bit more sense when you realise Mullumgrad is not far from the Aussie, hippy-haven of Byron Bay. You know all Hot Yoga and mung beans. A place where you can lose yourself in a Red Army battle hymn or a sad lament about the proletariat. Songs that pick you up and sweep you back to the Steppes of Siberia, even if you've never been there.

One Night in an RSL. (Returned & Services League of Australia.) Like so many great ideas, Dustyesky was born over a few beers down the pub, on a Tuesday night. Some of guys were in long term relationships, some were co-parenting, all of them needed a good excuse to get out and whet their whistles. What better excuse then forming and performing in a Russian choir? They were picked up by the local Mullum Music Festival, who had wanted to fly in a Russian Choir but couldn’t because of costs. Then they were all over the Russian media and before you could say, ‘Путин отлично смотрится без рубашки!' (Putin looks great without his shirt!), Dustyesky went viral and were a household names in a million Russian households.