Down Under's Taking Over

"You will all be our slaves," the fat Australian said. "You will never know the difference until it's too late."

"Hm, sure," said his unconvinced American wife. "We kick butt. Do you guys even have a butt? You don't. There's nothing there."

"Yeah?" he replied. "I sent 60,000 men to Vietnam. Their butts weren't measured before they left, I think. I dunno. Anything else? Pass me the pretzels."

"You went to Vietnam?"

"Not me, um, no dear. Did Somalia though. I'm 31. Missed out on Vietnam by 12 or 15 years, at least. Fathers of blokes I was at school with did the Vietnam thing, yes. One of them was a total screwball." "Oh," she said.

Such was said, more or less, by Mr. and Mrs. Hunter during the 2001 Academy Awards show and the endless Down Under hype leading to the 2000 Olympics in Sydney 16 months ago. The six-month respite between gold medals, opera houses and Oscars for squinty-eyed gladiators was far too short for Mrs. Hunter. She almost believed she could surf 50 channels and not find a sole reference to Australia and its people's cultural products (or "brands," as Rupert Murdoch would call them). Readers will recall that gentleman livestock-and-crop farmer Russell Crowe, of Coff's Harbor, about 300 miles north of Sydney, won last year's Oscar for best actor. He won for not being Charlton Heston or his whipped and ripped flesh. Mr. Heston, the hairy "damn them all to hell" astro-ape and oil-glistened charioteer of 60s shame, publicly admitted to voting for Mr. Crowe. This will be recalled because more Americans watched Mr. Heston applaud Mr. Crowe at the Oscar show than watched the scary athleto-freaks who won medals in Sydney a few months before. Ask Nielsen's.

Mr. and Mrs. Hunter live in New York, aspire to a Sex and the City lifestyle but cannot quite get there. Money tends to be a wee problemo. They cannot even afford a cellphone. They remain as far from their fantasy address at E. 4th St. and Ave. B as they were when Dubya was still a mispronounced letter among first-graders in the Bronx.

Their living room peace was recently ruptured again when Mr. Hunter's antipodean kith and kin continued their onslaught at the Golden Globe awards in Los Angeles. Mrs. Hunter thought it grossly unfair that Mr. Hunter's homeland of 20 million people won five of the Golden Globes. Mrs. Hunter's United States of 280 million won the same number. She thought this not just unfair, but also disgusting.

"You're all just wannabe Americans," she said.

"Yes, my sausage," he replied.

"You try to be Americans but can't talk right. You talk funny and shouldn't be in our movies."

"Yes, dear, if you say so."

This came to a head at 7A a few nights later, when a glossy cover photo of hunky Aussie actor Guy Pearce and the loud accent of Mr. Hunter prompted a nearby imbiber to heap praise on all Australian endeavor and produce. This born-and-bred New Yorker, an advertising art editor named Mark, said he had a fridge full of Australian candy bars as well as an Aussie $5 bill in his wallet, and was planning on moving to Melbourne with his wife and career next year. With so much cultural activity, and commensurate commercial goodies, flowing from Oz, he said, there was no point staying in the United States. "The way things are going here I'm better off over there. You're taking over the world and I want to be one of the invaders."

Mrs. Hunter grimaced and downed another cosmopolitan.