G Flip sends Americans wild over 'weird' Aussie tradition: 'It feels like winning the lottery'
G Flip sparked an amusing discussion on social media after detailing the classic pub raffle prize that many Americans find 'weird'.
The Aussie singer-songwriter, who goes by they/them pronouns, has been living in the US after marrying Selling Sunset star Chrishell Stause.
And so they find it entertaining to see how Americans react to their story about how Aussies take home a tray of assorted raw meats, including steaks, chops and sausages, from the pub after having the winning raffle ticket.
Participants typically buy a raffle ticket at a pub or sports club, which usually costs $2, and they go into the draw to win a butcher's meat tray. If the number on your raffle ticket is drawn, you get to go home with a variety of meats.
'I'm an Aussie who lives in America and I have an American wife... I think one of the funniest things to explain about Australian culture is that you can win a meat tray at the pub,' G Flip (born Georgia Flipo) said in the video.
'So you go to the pub and you can buy raffle tickets to win a meat tray - and you just win a tray of various uncooked meats like steaks, chops and sausages from the butcher, completely raw. You get to go home with a meat tray.
'And everyone I ever told that to who's American is like... "What the f***".'
The singer reflected on the first time Chrishell was introduced to a meat tray.
'(The) first time my wife came to Australia, I took her to a pub in Darwin, we didn't win the meat tray,' they said.
'Anywhere else in the world have this going on?'
Their video has been viewed more than 400,000 times - with wife Chrishell chiming in, joking: 'Even though I know it will give me meat sweats and likely food poisoning, I still want to win one.'
Many Aussies shared fond memories about winning a meat tray in the raffle, with one saying: 'And if you win the meat tray you act like you've won $3million dollars.'
'Even funnier when you have to carry it around for the rest of the night/pub crawl and get random photos taken with the meat tray being carried by different people all night,' one shared.
'My parents won three ham legs at the Christmas RSL raffle and were acting like they won the lotto - handing out ham to guests for weeks,' another revealed, laughing.
'As someone who won the meat tray last week, there is nothing quite like the euphoric feeling of winning it,' one added.
'The walk up to collect the meat tray like you've won a Grammy,' another joked.
'As an Aussie, I never realised this was weird,' one said, laughing.
Surprisingly, many revealed meat tray raffles were popular in other countries, including the UK, Canada and some parts of the US.
'We have that in small northern Minnesota towns. Meat Raffles are for sure a thing,' one revealed.
'Meat raffle at the local Wisconsin pub. Used to be a Thursday after work happy hour with friends,' another shared.
'We have meat raffles in Pennsylvania,' one said.
'This happens here in Canada at our Legions and some pubs where you buy raffle tickets for cheap in hopes to win steaks, roasts and chicken... in these times why wouldn't you,' another added.
Meanwhile, many shared amusing stories about the first time they discovered what a meat tray raffle was.
'I was a total tourist in a small town in NZ and we won the meat tray and I got such side-eye from the locals, I didn't even know what it was or what was going on. I definitely had them redraw, can't take meat on a great walk,' one shared.
'My American boyfriend seeing a meat tray for the first time had him absolutely shook,' another revealed.
'As a Texan... I'm shocked this isn't a thing here,' one shared, laughing.
'As an American, I am so confused by this,' another added.
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The Guardian
20 minutes ago
- The Guardian
The end of the road? What The Salt Path scandal means for the nature memoir
When The Salt Path came out in 2018, it was a publishing phenomenon, going on to sell more than 2m copies globally. As even those who haven't read it are likely to know by now, the book charted Raynor Winn and her husband Moth's emotionally and physically transformative long-distance walk along the South West Coast Path in the wake of utter disaster: a financial collapse that cost them their home, and Moth's diagnosis with an incurable neurological disorder. Winn followed it with two further books in a similar vein, The Wild Silence and Landlines, also bestsellers. Earlier this year came a film of The Salt Path, starring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs. That original book by a first-time writer had become what writers, editors and booksellers all dream of: a bestselling, spin-off generating brand. But it wasn't the first nature memoir to top the charts, by any means. In 2012, Wild by Cheryl Strayed described the 26-year‑old's hike across the west coast of America in the wake of her mother's death and the end of her marriage, and after soaring up the book charts it was made into a film starring Reese Witherspoon two years later. That same year, H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald was a surprise bestseller, telling the story of a year spent training a Eurasian goshawk as a journey through grief after the death of their father. In 2016, Amy Liptrot's The Outrun saw her return to the sheep farm on Orkney where she'd grown up in order to recover from addiction through contact with nature; it was also recently filmed, with Saoirse Ronan in the lead role. Meanwhile, in last year's bestselling Raising Hare, foreign policy adviser Chloe Dalton describes moving to the countryside, rescuing a leveret and rediscovering her relationship with the land. There is clearly a thriving market for this particular blend of nature writing, personal memoir and a specific form of self-help in which the embattled individual – or in the case of The Salt Path, a couple – finds solace, sustenance and even redemption by withdrawing from everyday society and launching themselves into the great outdoors. It's not difficult to see why such narratives are attractive, but what do they tell us about ourselves and our relationship with the natural world? And what damage might The Salt Path affair do to this genre of nature memoir? It is not given to any of us to know the definitive truth, of course, and any memoir is subject to the pitfalls of perception, memory and judgment. But the two most significant accusations levelled against Winn are that, some time before the journey described in The Salt Path, she embezzled large amounts of money from an employer, and that she exaggerated the severity of Moth's illness. She denies both, and is particularly insistent that neither she nor Moth intended to suggest that their travels were a miracle cure for his condition. However, the book tapped into a strong desire among readers for narratives of healing through nature. For Melissa Harrison, author of novels for adults and children as well as nonfiction ranging from memoir to nature guides, these kinds of nature books represent 'proxies through which we can relate to the natural world in a way that most of us don't have the time or the inclination to in real life'. Reading about someone else's deep dive into forest, field or water furnishes us with the sense that we're participating in an environment that, for much of the time, is at arm's length. 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'There was this surge of nature writing that came through, and often, instead of it being career-long naturalists or academics or people who had been writing in this area for a long time, it was everyday people's engagements with nature. Which in a way was very lovely, and it democratised the genre quite a lot, but it got to a point where it was quite a saturated area of the market.' The challenge, he thinks, is to resist expectations of what a nature memoir should look like, and remain open to work from unexpected angles – he has recently been reading the poet Jason Allen-Paisant's nonfiction exploration of rural landscapes in the UK and in Jamaica, for example. 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Her debut book, Land Beneath the Waves, has been published recently, and she explains how she initially resisted the idea of writing about her family history and her own chronic illness in relation to nature, deterred partly by an awareness of the limitations of memory, and partly by a belief that her story was too 'ordinary'. 'I think perhaps even some of the books that are billed as healing narratives are more complex than that. It's just that this becomes sort of a trope that's talked about. And I think it simplifies things, and sets a precedent that other books are expected to follow, which is not helpful to [having] a diversity of voices within memoir, particularly within nature memoir, because the greater diversity of voices we have, the more people's individual experiences are validated and spoken to.' 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Daily Mail
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'Oh, that's an understatement. It's insanity. It feels like there's a civil war going on. And it makes me so sad because I love America. I have friends on both sides [of politics]. I think the media is the issue – they make money from polarisation.' He recalls the early days on Will & Grace, when death threats were a regular thing. 'They'd keep the worst ones from us,' he says. 'But there was one lady who got a pen, paper and stamp, wrote and mailed, 'You're all going to hell. You should be ashamed for putting this on television. You're all horrible people. But thank you for making the show. It's a riot. We love it.''' He bursts out laughing. When in 2001 George W Bush became president after opposing gay rights while governor of Texas, the writers gave Karen, played by Megan Mullally, a line to be delivered to Jack: 'Oh, didn't you hear, honey? Gay isn't cool any more.' 'Well, we're not here to be hip or not hip,' he replies with a shrug. 'But it is interesting how my life and my skin and my blood and my human-being-ness is politicised just by getting out of bed in the morning.' I list some of the Hollywood stars leaving the US to evade the Trump administration – Rosie O'Donnell heading for Ireland, Courtney Love taking British citizenship and Ellen DeGeneres trading California for the Cotswolds. Would he consider a similar move? He hesitates, his eyes wide, mouth firmly closed. 'OK, I love it here so very much,' he says carefully. 'It's been a dream my entire life to do a play in London in the West End. And to walk the streets my favourite bands walked: Depeche Mode, Erasure, The Smiths, The Cure, Oasis. I would love to move here. But my life is in America – my friends, my husband and my family, everything.' Hayes has nursed the idea of playing Oscar Levant since 2001. He identifies with him, he says. Levant discussed his mental-health problems and drug use on late-night television before confession culture was a thing. Hayes, born in a Chicago suburb, the youngest of five, says, 'I've been surrounded by anxiety and depression in my family and dealt with it myself,' he explains. 'My dad was Irish, so we were brought up not to communicate. My mum had cancer when she was two years old that we weren't allowed to talk about. She had one eye removed. We weren't allowed to ask her about that. My alcoholic dad left home when I was five. Playing Oscar is like therapy.' Initially he was reluctant to come out as a gay actor. 'We're all products of the time we grew up in,' he admits. 'It wasn't accepted when I knew I was gay, but I still came out at 18. My mum had a problem with it and all the drama that you'd go through. And then when I got Will & Grace and there were death threats, I didn't – at that stage – have the DNA to be a spokesperson for any group of people. I'd just say something dumb.' Coming out limited future roles to gay characters, until Broadway found him. Now, as Oscar Levant, he is a married father. There are similarities, however: Hayes is also beloved of the US talk shows (he guest-hosted The Jimmy Kimmel Show) and, like Levant after his role in the film An American In Paris, he endured a career dip following Will & Grace. The play is based on an appearance on Tonight Starring Jack Paar, a late 50s/early 60s late-night talk show. Levant is on a four-hour pass from a mental-health facility. Having filched opioids, he shocks the audience and complaints flood in over his quips about religion, drugs and celebrities. Then, in the emotional climax of the play, he holds his demons at bay long enough to perform a stunning version of George Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue. He has to show disdain and despair and love and beauty while hammering through the rapid notes and huge left-hand jumps on the piano keys. 'I didn't realise it was that hard,' he shakes his head. 'Even the people who do [play piano] for a living do it twice in a week. I do it seven times. I end up icing my arms every night. In America I had to have cortisol shots, which I'm going to try not to do here.' That seems a lot of work for a 55-year-old to go through every night. 'I'm finding in the last year or two that the chase of trying to procure work is exhausting,' he tells me. 'So I only want to do things that mean something to me. And if I don't, what a lovely life I've had. I'm happy going for a walk with the dog and hanging out with friends and watching a movie at home with my husband. I've won so many times and I want to keep winning. But if I don't, that's a win, too.'
