Tony Smith

Tony Smith and I went to school together. We weren’t in the same classes and we didn’t hang around together. We weren’t friends. I was scared of Tony.
He seemed to be an amalgam of every bully and tough kid I had ever known, since Scott and Mark used to push me around and laugh at me in reception.
Tony skipped classes. He swore at teachers. He wrote graffiti. He was dark and handsome in a cheeky, tough way. He had rough friends, got into fights, had lots of girls who liked him and he smoked. He didn’t like the school or the work (as far as I could tell).
He and I were complete opposites.
I never missed a class, instinctively sucked up to the teachers, had a few wimpy friends (none of whom were girls), hundreds of big, tough pimples and I’ve never been in a fight or smoked a cigarette in my life.
But, somehow we knew each other. I think we were in the same PE class for a semester. He was athletic and defiant and I was clumsy and vigilant, still trying to figure out how to make my newly long arms and legs work together instead of against each other. I once forgot my sneakers and did the class bare foot. Tony and one of his tough friends had a great time calling me a 'bum'.
Even so, he wasn’t really malicious towards me. He would often nod to me as we passed each other in the halls while I quivered in fear. I think I used to fancy that I was the Adrian Mole to his Barry Kent.

Two events hold firmly in my memory of Tony:
Number one was at the first proper ‘high school party’ I ever went to (translation: the first party with drinking, drugs and no parents). I went with one of my wimpy friends and was so nervous beforehand that my hands were shaking as we were dropped off. I wore all the things I thought were cool: red jeans (which later washed out to pink) and a t-shirt with security-blanket brand-name across the front. The party was held in a tiny little inner-city cottage with a back garden the size of a billiard table. A few dim lamps were the only lights on in the entire house. Huge bottles of alcohol stood on a table next to plastic cups and bottles of coke.
I think it was a milestone party for a lot of kids that night. There was a huge controversy because someone sporty and good had announced that they would try some *gasp* dope. It was a sort of defecting from the non-druggy group to the group of people who didn’t do enough homework and got in trouble with the teachers. I over-came my nerves after three short hours, two large bowls of chips and countless cups of coke and even asked a girl to dance at the end of the night. She was the daughter of a friend of my mother’s and we waddled around the floor together in a sort of speeded up waltz.
At one point I remember going outside for some fresh air. It was actually just an excuse to keep moving and avoid the wallflowers I felt growing up around me every time I stood anywhere, trying to work out what to do with my hands. While I stood out the front, planning my next casual pass at the chips and coke table, Tony suddenly appeared, lurching up the street with a girl under each arm.
“Oh my god!” one of them was saying. “He drank like, a whole bottle of vodka!”
“Oh my god!” echoed the other. “Are you okay, Tony?”
Even though he only seemed to able to use about one of his legs at a time, he still had that cheeky grin plastered across his face and was laughing his head off. He leant up against a wall next to the house while one of the girls trotted inside to fetch him some water. One of his rough friends, Chan, ambled onto the front porch and was appropriately appreciative of his drunken state (being drunk was a very big status symbol in year nine).
While Chan basked in the second-hand cool, Tony looked up and saw me. His face lit up.
“Ey Sammy! Whas’ up man?”
It took a second before I could work out what to say. “Not much man. How ya goin’?”
He collapsed into laughter again. “Wicked man! I wanna fuck Kerry-Anna!” (Kerry-Anne was the girl who had just gone inside).
Chan turned and looked at me blankly. I swallowed. What to do?
“Yeah, cool man," I ventured. "Go for it.”
Tony cracked up laughing again as Kerry-Anne came outside again with a large cup of coke. Chan joined in laughing while Tony draped an arm over each girl’s shoulder and used them as crutches to help himself inside. He spent the rest of the night lying on the host’s bed, puking into a bowl of chips.

By that late stage of year nine just about everyone had completely grown out of whatever child-like ways they entered high school with. Girls wore make-up and had older boyfriends. Boys destroyed school property for fun when the teachers weren’t looking and stole chemicals from the science labs.
The cool thing to do around that time was to try to open the locks on other people’s lockers with your own key. Some guys collected bunches of keys (who knows where from) and went around trying lockers all day to see if any would work.
One guy reckoned he knew how crack combination locks by listening for the clicks as he twirled the knob this way and that, but no one ever saw him do it.
Tony didn’t bugger around with random locker break-ins and fiddly bunches of keys. I joined The Group one lunchtime and he threw a Chomp bar at me. It hit me in the head and I sat down quickly, trying to ignore the small tide of braying laughter from the twenty or so other kids who were all eating their own Chomp bars and listening to one of Tony’s not-so-rough friends tell the story of how he had stood guard while Tony vaulted the canteen counter to nab an entire box of Chomps.

The second incident had a history which began later that year.
I had finally convinced my parents to buy me a pair of Nike Air Max running shoes. They were blue and white and cost $120. It was the most expensive pair of shoes I had ever owned. I didn’t need them for anything specific, it was just your average teenage insecurity expressing itself as an obsession with brand-names - a way of buying acceptance.
The only place I was permitted to wear them was once a week for PE. I would bring them to school in a plastic bag, lock them in my locker until it was time to go to the gym and then afterwards try to get away with wearing those soft, comfortable, expensive shoes for the rest of the day - as though I had simply forgotten to change back into my school-approved hard black leather lace-ups.
When I opened my locker to get my prized Nikes, they had disappeared. I remember physically crumpling up in heart-aching disappointment hiding my head inside the locker. I scrabbled pointlessly under the little pile of exercise books I kept in there, but no blue Nikes appeared. The all-too-sensible words of my parents kept playing and replaying in my ears: “They’ll get stolen!”.
When you’re fourteen, having the coolest shoes in the universe stolen from you is only fractionally worse than your parents being right.
I don’t remember what happened after that. I supposed I did PE in my stiff, leather school shoes (I had learned my lesson about doing PE in bare feet). I did find out who had done it though: a tall weaselly-looking kid with snaggled teeth called Daniel. He had one of the biggest bunches of ‘spare’ locker keys in the whole school and three people told me that it was him.
That only made it much worse.
I knew I couldn’t prove anything and there was no way I could have summoned up the guts to actually confront him about it. Not surprisingly, that was only the second-to-last time I ever saw those shoes and the last time I ever went near Daniel.
He knew that I knew he had taken my shoes and every time I saw him, I imagined him grinning at me, teeth like a handful of Tic Tacs, knowing that I was still too much of a scared kid to act without help from adults. I could prove nothing and that made him even safer.

Tony enters this story about a year later, sometime towards the middle of year ten. By this time I had new, not-quite-so-cool-and-expensive shoes and was looking forward to getting my braces off. Rumours had been circulating through the canteen lines and along the margins of classrooms when the teachers turned their backs that Tony hated Daniel. Loathed him. And things were coming to a head.
I never knew why the animosity had developed, but that’s where the battle-lines lay as lunchtimes grew colder and teachers began hassling everybody about wearing their school ties for the winter term uniform properly.
Suddenly, one windy day, it was on. Daniel was in deep deep shit and Tony was going to give it to him. At lunchtime.
Someone challenged someone else to a fight every other week, but it only ever came to blows about once a year, so no one paid any real attention. I was sitting on a bench next to the oval and eating my ham, tomato and onion sandwich and watching a group of boys kicking a footy. Tony and Chan marched past, but didn’t acknowledge me. Five minutes later, there was a brief, whirling scuffle on the opposite side of the oval from the school buildings. Daniel emerged from a flock of onlookers, bounding at high speed across the grass with Tony in hot pursuit. I remember very clearly at that moment noticing that Daniel was wearing a pair of dirty, old, blue Nike Air Maxes. They looked about a year old. I remember smiling slightly as the chase picked up speed. Tony ran with fury, but Daniel’s long, gangly legs were fuelled by fear and soon he had outstripped his pursuer and disappeared somewhere towards the front office.
That was the last time I ever saw Daniel, or my shoes.

There's an epilogue here, but that will have to wait for another blog.

Did you know that our middle names have the same number of letters?

Inspired by and posted on Jono's post about the Sydney Writer's Festival:

"I like Writers Festivals for the hilarity of watching the middle-aged book-reading crazies, even after being told to keep questions brief, frame their own questions with a personal history that inevitably begins with:

• a childhood somewhere regional, usually with a dirt thoroughfare somewhere in the background (a road, a hallway, even a bedroom) and an encouraging parent stalwartly raising many children single-handedly,
• their own discovery of reading (sprinkled with author names so obscure and brilliant they never even wrote anything),
• an education-based upheaval (encouraging teacher, lecturer, tutor, uni book-group/slash key party)
  
• a personal upheaval (divorce, rat-bag kids, dissatisfying workplace, terminal illness),
• a thinly-veiled hint at their own bottom-desk-drawer-based novel (this hint is poetry itself: nowhere can you condense all of the above history along with a rigid self-belief in its importance, a rigid refusal to let anyone but the author read it and rigid, poisonous ire at the entire publishing industry, from paper-mill down to Borders delivery driver, for its stupidity in rejecting said desk-drawer manuscript in one throw-away line: "I've even dabbled with the word processor myself ..."), and
  
• the mandatory nudge-wink about some shared aspect of their own lives with the author's before finally, just as the chair is giving the secret signal to the sound techo to cut the mic and pretend it was a mysterious power-outage, the question itself tumbles out, all squished and over-baked and sounding like "So, where do you get your ideas?", but in the context of the previous 14 minute, inhalation-free monologue, actually meaning "You understand me. We are going to be great friends. Let's start now. NOW!"

My favourite Writer's Week moment was when Robert Fisk was roundly applauded after he told a man to go away and stop talking because the man had, after making a very long speech about how he and Robert Fisk could quite possibly solve all of the world's problems through a meeting of their easily-comparable minds and being politely interrupted, he grabbed the microphone off the next question-asker.
"I'm not finished!" he yelled into the microphone as he and the next senior-citizen bodily wrestled each other for the final three-and-a-half minutes of question time. This isn't an exaggeration - take about five years off those two fellows and they would have been throwing punches among the sunhats and signed copies. And this was after an hour-long, extremely fascinating and convincing talk by Robert Fisk, world-famous war correspondent, about the pointlessness and futility of violent conflict.

I love Writer's Weeks.

She said "Yeah?" I said "Aw Yeah."

I godda jawb.
Ahm gonna payda reynt.
An then she wuz so nais!
Lawd she wa' lubbydubby.

The sound of my phone ringing has always made me apprehensive. I hate to be the one without the info. I hate it when the tingle goes up and it could change your life. The wait after a job interview is in the top ten worst times for a phone to ring. At least when you get the little white letter, you know what's up before you answer the call.
But when the phone rings it could go either way.
Or it could also be a telemarketer. Especially at 5:15pm on a Wednesday.

"Hello, Franzy speaking."
"Hello Franzy, it's Mr Employer here. How are you?"
"I'm well." (gather strength, take deep breath). "How are you?"
"I'm fine, thank you. Would you like the good news, or the bad news?"
(Cover mouthpiece to muffle audible groan. Fail to muffle audible groan). "Uhmn. Gimme the bad news."
"The bad news is, my friend ... that you have the job."
(Access mental replay. Confirm information. Thrust fist in air). "What? That's great! Fantastic! Thank you!"
"No problem."
"What's the good news?"
"The good news is ... that you have the job! Aha!"

So, yes. The transformation is complete. We have moved back from Queensland and I am now employed at somewhere far less useless and more productive than The Coffee Club on Bribie Island. Now I'm drinking the coffee, motherfuckers!



Well - not quite. I start in January. And I'm apparently working for quite a prankster.
Thanks to Shippy for the job-search help. Points for you, buddy.

***

Everyone who was madly searching for The Mysterious Seven Story Structures can take a clue from a wonderful series I recently read called Action Philosophers! Joseph Campbell did many interesting things, but one of them was to analyse stories and myths from a lot of cultures and came up with A Definitive Story Structure, otherwise known as The Hero's Journey. I have scanned it in with complete disregard for copyright below, but please, click the image and have a good look.



That should settle a few arguments.
Or start them.

Update - Ryan Dunlavey, Illustrator of Action Philosophers! has somehow found me! And directed me towards the real deal full colour Hero's Journey poster available for just US$3 (plus postage) (which makes it about $AUS4,507) from the Action Philosopher's website (please click on the image above). I urge everyone to either buy a poster or get their hands on Action Philosophers!

***
Far be it from me to heap scorn upon my learned brothers and sisters but mostly brothers in the sciences, but these two news items couldn't have popped into my reader with finer congruity or better timing.
The first "From nerd to word: maths geeks reclaim their cool" is about a new campaign by the Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers to boost the previously "dorky" image of maths. They are attempting to sell the many exciting and lucrative careers options offered by maths.

"It's all to do with imagination," says mathematical stand-up Simon Pampena.
"Most people if you say, `What attracts you to maths?', they wouldn't say, `Imagination'.
"It's usually what repels you from maths and they'd say `Because it's not cool, I'm not going to get a girlfriend doing maths'."

Which brings us neatly to news item number two:
"Male science students uni's most likely virgins: study"

Apparently maths can teach you many things, but good timing isn't one of them.

***
Enthusiasm for last week's movie clippette was so dramatically blunt that I have decided to take my revenge upon you readers who refused to inundate me with copy about your memorable movie moments so that I could rest upon my laurels.
What would you call the scariest movie you've ever seen?
The Grudge?
Saw?
War of the Worlds?
The Ring?
The Omen?
The Sixth Sense?
Scary Movie?

Nuh-uh. Be prepared for a new champion. It is only three and a half minutes long, but trust me on this: you will be curled up in horror as you watch. Many of you may not even make it through. Some of you may actually throw up.
It's safe for work and there's no gore. Just an ill feeling about your entire existence.
Think I'm joking? There's no punchline.
Just watch The World's Scariest Movie.



***

GTH - Points to Kath for the mental image of me busting a shit capoeira-style over a rural French toilet. Or 'toilette'.

I just want to contort with my shirt on

The wonderful thing about being unemployed and looking for a job is ... um ... well ... nothing, actually. It sucks Major Dogs Balls. It does lead to interesting little adventures though.
Last week my friend, Captain T the acrobat called and asked if I could still touch my feet to my head.
'Of course,' I said. 'I haven't done it for a few years, but you never lose that kind of talent as you get older, right?'
'Right,' he said sceptically. 'Anyway, shall I pass your details on to this woman? She's a casting agent.'

An hour later Angie was explaining to me that she needed a male aged around twenty-five who could touch their feet over their head for an ad. Suffice it to say that I had given it a few wobbly goes between the first phone call and the second and confirmed that I could.
'What do you look like?'
I challenge anyone to come up with a straight answer to that question. My first thought was 'Like Seth Green, but without the evil dad'. I didn't say that, of course, and ended up sending a photo. Two photos, actually. A blurry, ten year old one of me doing The Trick with my face in silhouette, and a professional shot of me from quite far away, on my wedding day, from the waist up, to convince her of my low visible-growth count. Above the waist.

So today I found myself at something called a 'casting call'. This has a similar ring to 'cattle call' for a good reason. I gave my name to the lady behind the counter and she ticked me off as 'acrobat'. The next person was ticked off as 'yoga'. Then three more were auditioning for the role of 'bloke'.
We all sat in a small holding office with the table they used in the hit Aussie film, Breaker Morant. According to the plaque on the side. I hadn't actually considered the possibility of other people being able to put their feet on their head until the two men who'd had themselves ticked off as 'yoga' began doing all sorts of strange things: removing their shoes, warming up their tendons and even stretching. I had been busily chatting to a Cambodian woman who had been approached in a mall by one of the agents to be told she had The Look. Turns out that sometimes it's not just the world's worst pick-up line. The first yoga man to be let in soon returned from behind The Door, looking a little perplexed.
'They want a really good backbend,' he answered after we grilled him about how many casting couches we would have to dodge. We remaining two flexible gents smiled politely at each other and quietly but casually whizzed through all 48 possible back stretches, while maintaining the casual air of the seasoned performer. This is difficult to do cramped into a casting office wearing a sweaty Bonds t-shirt I'd chosen because it was the only t-shirt I had left that hadn't done that frilly skirt thing at the bottom that all tight cotton t-shirts eventually do.
Then it was my turn. Angie lead me through a couple of doors and stood me in front of a grey wall on some grey carpet. None of that music video, curved white backdrop today, mate.
'Sorry about the sweat-stains,' I said, indicating the large Jesus-shaped patch in the middle of my chest. 'I kept my warm-up jacket on until the last minute, to keep my shoulders warm.' I had hoped to impress them with my organisation and OH&S savvy. It seemed to impress them, but mostly of my sweatiness.
'That's fine,' they all said politely. 'We'll actually get you to take your shirt off, if that's okay.'
Like I said, unemployment does lead to some wonderful adventures. Or interesting adventures. I can't remember what I said. Point is: there I was in my daggy old soccer shorts in a windowless room with a bunch of smiling strangers wondering which one of them was going to ask me about my waxing habits first.
I shouldn't have worried. I did The Trick. I lay on the floor and did it a different way. I discovered that I can no longer hook both feet over my head from the front. Almost. But not quite. Not with dignity, at any rate.
Then they got me to sit in a chair (still with the shirt off, for some reason) and look like I'd just come back from the gym.
I sat in the chair. 'I feel awesome!' I shouted. 'Pumped! Not sore at all!'
'Sadder,' they said. 'More contemplative.'
I thought about sad things. I contemplated them.
'Do you drink beer?' one of them asked.
'What do you reckon?' I waved my wavy gut at them by way of reply. That went down well.
'Okay, that's great, thank you very much,' they said. 'If we could just get you to stand there, look into the camera and tell us your name and age.'
'Next to this sign with my name written on it?'
'Uh-huh.'
I didn't do my cute little trick of pointing out that introducing myself while standing next to a sign with my name on it was redundant. Instead I did the world's worst Robert De Niro impression. That went down a real treat too. Maybe because I still had my shirt off.

***
GTH - A point to River for keeping it clean, and a point to Shippy for growing a stunning Chop Chop Mo and for turning up to cricket. It would have been two points for coming to the cricket, but I'm going to take the second one away and give it to River to teach you not to slog my bowling over the fence.

I would be so proud if I turned out like my dad.

True story ...

I fear this "travel blog" might start becoming a "work blog", what with the work:travel ratio tipping in favour of wiping stainless steel benches over and over and away from flitting about the Glasshouse Mountains oohing and aahing at the rainbows and chasing bush turkeys.

I'm a bit remiss about just writing in the goings-on down at the cafe, simply because they're not terrifically interesting. A good writer should be able to make things interesting, but hey - I'm saving the A-game for my Phd thanks very much.
Kidding.
Not a lot goes on. The staff are all very nice and the one who I thought was a bit tedious has left.

The bosses are interesting though. Hospitality bosses don't have a good reputation, by and large. I've had some arseholes. Other people have had worse. I've even heard of worse ones on the island. These ones are a married couple and, from what I can gather, have been in businesses of some sort for most of their lives. The other night it was the tedious one's last night and he was rushing me to get out of there. The next morning, both bosses were in and had the typical "This place is disgusting" reaction which all hospitality managers must necessarily have when they come in and find that the night staff, eager to leave, have left a surface or two unpolished by the recycled chux we all have to share. When I arrived at two, there was a long list of things that were left undone. My heart sank, just a little, because although I knew it wasn't (entirely) me, the tedious one had left and so all was going to have to answer for it. Instead of a telling off, a lecture or a lashing, one of them waited for a quiet period and then quietly walked me through all the things that I'd missed (we, actually - the tedious one was still the night manager and it's still their ultimate responsibility to make sure no one leaves a turd in the dishwasher). So, in spite of the shit pay, shit benefits and vague feeling that I'm wasting my life, it's not such a bad place to work.

Despite all this, I've got to recount a story that probably says more about this place than complimenting their managerial style.
There we all are, fairly quiet night, but both bosses are there, along with me and a couple of other staff. The talk turns to busking and homeless people and giving them money. One boss tells a story about how they were recently in Chicago and noticed a large homeless problem there.
"The people we were staying with told this extraordinary thing about the beggars on the streets," she said, wiping the coffee machine.
"Yeah?" I'm interested. I like stories.
"Oh yeah," male boss says. "Listen to this."
"They said not to give the beggars money, especially at night, because most of them actually have day jobs as brokers and traders," she says.
"Oh yeah," agrees male boss. "They do it for extra cash apparently, they get a couple of hundred a night!"
"Pf," I say. "Rubbish. That's an absolute urban legend. That could never ever ever be true."
"It is!" they both insist. "Our friend gave one bum ten dollars!"
"Think about it," I say. "If it were so lucrative, why wouldn't everyone do it? And a couple of hundred dollars a night? I don't make that in an entire shift!"
"I don't know," says male boss. "I was watching these two guy in particular and they were just too clean cut to be living on the streets ..."
"Come on," I say. "You're a businessman, think about how much they would make an hour, standing out in the cold freezing weather with a cardboard sign and a cup when they could be at home, resting up in their comfortable stockbrokers' houses relaxing for another day of trading. How much would they need to make it worthwhile?"
"Apparently it's true!" they both say.
I didn't push it any further. I went home and tried to find any evidence on the net, any stories anecdotes or lies about people with well paid white collar jobs for whom it is worthwhile to dress up as someone who's destitute and spend a good eight hours of rest and recuperation time begging for spare change. I found nothing. Not even snopes could help me. Snopes does, however, often provide a rationale for the reason these kinds of stories gain currency. They tap into the suspicion that it is possible to get something for nothing, a large reward for little or no effort. And I think for two people who have spent a large portion or their lives working very very hard for what probably doesn't ever seem like quite enough money, the idea that there are people out there who can make just a little more through cunning, minor deception and a clever idea is probably very appealing.

I'm not sure what this story was about. I just couldn't believe that two people who seemed fairly intelligent and resourceful could believe that kind of bullshit out of hand.

I'm now sitting, watching the rain and waiting for the repairman to come and fix my computer between 11 and 12. It's 11:35am. Mele's in the bath and I need to go to the toilet. Must .... wait ....

Wet Writing

Who else suffers in the heat? Is it just me? It's 1am and I'm exAAWWsted from a day of playing cricket, driving, hockey, more driving and stuffing myself with Greek food but I can't bear to lay down on a thick mattress because the sweat demons will get me. Sweat has only become an issue with me since my early-to-mid twenties. It must be hereditary because I have a very clear memory of going with Dad when he played squash and looking at the plastic chair that he sat in after a tough game and being amazed at how his sweat actually left a pool in the concave seat.
When I took up netball a few years ago I used to play it in a large tin shed without much airflow. After a forty minute game (36 minutes? Help me out here Moifey) I would literally be dripping. The moisture would run off my nose, eyebrows, elbows and knuckles and hit the floor as though coming from a leaky tap. I used to put away a two litre bottle of water per game.
That seemed to start the next stage in my development. Since then, I've become a sweater. All clothes, once worn in anything other than chilly weather, need laundering. When I first moved in with Mele this created a few arguments when she would do the week's washing and find herself hanging up ten or so t-shirts. The arguments ceased when she encountered one of my just-worn shirts.
At hockey today, an opposition player had cause to put his hand on my back during the second half.
'That's disgusting!' he cried, wiping his palm on his relatively dry shorts.
'That's what you get,' I replied. 'And good luck getting the stains off!'
I thought I had grown out of waking up wet, but here I am some undisclosed years later, coming to in the early morning literally drenched. I often have to shower twice in a row. Once to wash myself and again to rinse off the sweat that instantly covers me from head to toe when I step out of the shower to dry myself.

Since I'm still up late I'll relate a little writing story that I've been practising on a few friends over the past couple of days. I'm not satisfied with the way I tell it, so maybe just explaining the events will illustrate it better. I see as a fine example of the unique juxtaposition of internal lives that writer experiences. I hope I can get it out before the laptop shorts out from my leaking wrists.

I have taken to writing in cafes recently. Despite the noise and the people and the cost of a cup of coffee, my work-rate increases hugely over whatever I achieve at home. I believe that this is because at home, no one is watching me so I can get away with checking my email, the weather, the news, eBay, my downloads, my email again, watering the plants, making a sandwich, stirring around pieces of important paper and checking my email for the third time in ten minutes.
At a cafe however, I am sitting there with my silver laptop open at a table and when people look at what I'm doing, if I don't at least appear to be hard at work, then I am just the wanker who brings his laptop to a cafe to check his email and look cool. I chose a particular cafe in Norwood primarily because it has no wireless internet and a comfortable row of bench seats along one wall. I generally sit next to the little staff table for no reason other than I'm a stubborn old creature of habit. The owner of the cafe recognises me and says hello on occasion, but none of the other staff really care to engage me otherwise (also a good work motivator).

This little scene happened just this week. I'm sitting at my table and working over a scene I've written out, but needs going over and tightening and finesseing. Missing words added, tenses fixed, over-long sentences torpedoed with a full-stop or two, that sort of thing. The owner comes and sits down next to me at the little staff table and this time he does engage me in conversation. He says that he has seen me working there a lot and asks me what I do (politely, not what I'm doing). I tell him I'm a writer and a student and he tells me that he likes to read and often thinks that he would like to tell a few of his own stories. I tell him that telling stories is why I'm studying writing and the craft of it is mostly down to hard work and slogging it out at the computer every day. We exchange further platitudes and he wishes me well in my work and I turn back to the sentence I was working on. I read it over and notice a missing piece.
'Aha,' I think. 'I know what this character needs to say to make this little remark make sense.'
I add in the word 'fuck' and feel very pleased with myself.

And that, my friends, is where twenty years of writing craft has gotten me: knowing when to schmooze and when to insert the word 'fuck'.

***
GTH - The points must go to Milly for the sad story.

Poor Old Heath

Friendly Fire's post has some interesting discussion (that I haven't looked into) that indicates that Heath Ledger's death may have been due to a self-medication mishap. It will all come out in the next few days I'm sure.
Days?!? Who am I kidding? Exactly two hours after I first read the supremely distasteful Age website headline "Dead in Bed" pasted tabloid-style over his smiling face (they've changed it now be in line with SMH's slightly more tasteful "Ledger Dies In New York: Pills found near star's naked body"), Mele reported that TMZ.com had posted the actual footage of his dead body being removed from the building in which he died.

I always liked Heath Ledger. Everyone did. I think the reason is because he wasn't a spoof or a character like your Gibsons, your Crowes or tabloid fodder. He appeared to be a professional actor who did his job well and that was about it. No weird churches, no awful publicity stunts and a respectable little body of work behind him. I believe the true measure of a celebrity's popularity is the amount of jokes that are made about their deaths. I'm betting on a score of zero for Heath.

I also have a little story about Heath that may or may not be true because it has been on to me second hand (which isn't bad, really): a few years ago two girls that Mele tutored went to Sydney. While they were there they decided to go to the movies during the day. While they were standing there, trying to pick what movie they wanted to see, one of them looks over and sees a scruffy looking young guy wearing a baseball cap and dark glasses doing the same thing.
"Excuse me," says the girl. "Are you Heath Ledger?"
Heath looks a bit sheepish and quietly admits that he is.
"Are you just here to see a movie by yourself?" she asks. Heath says yes.
"Do you want to come and see one with us?" asks the girl. Heath thinks about it and agrees. So they all buy tickets and troop into the movie theatre together and watch the movie. Afterwards he thanks them for their company and they go their separate ways. Heath didn't have to go to the movies by himself and the girls got a little celebrity story to dine out on for the next few years. I bet they're telling it as I type it.

That reminds me of the time ....

A while ago Audrey tagged me in a meme that asked you to think of ten things that you hate about people. Not being a particularly hateful person, I found it reasonably difficult and petered out after five.
Well, I've thought of a new one:

6. Bad storytellers.
I'm pretty tired, so I'll probably regret writing this, but there it is. My secret shame. And it's not getting better with age. I thought I could hold this one in and prevent causing awkwardness among pretty much everyone who knows me who might have a story to tell me in the future (don't worry - I've got some soothing words for you folks later), but I've just read a published young adult novel that I am to review that was literally the worst book I have ever read. Laughably, hysterically awful. And that got me angry about storytelling in general. There are a few things that steam my hams* about bad storytelling, and here they are:
The Number One bad story telling sin is when the punchline is "And it was so funny!" If you told the story, minus that last bit, and your audience isn't laughing, it wasn't funny and you're a liar. You know when you tell a joke, and then have to explain it? Same principle. I used to go out with this girl, most of whose stories ended with: "And it was just fantastic," followed by a reassuring nod. Rest assured that the just-related experience founded none of my dumbness.
Number Two is when stories are too fucking long. When the story turns into a biography, just finish the page you're on and pass the conversation stick to the next person.
Number Three is best illustrated by the surprisingly-lacklustre-of-late Toothpaste for Dinner.

I think this little cartoon shows a story-telling situation that is almost on par with possibly the worst story telling crime out there: recounting your dreams. At least with drug stories, there is the possibility that the person you're talking to will remember the happier times they've had on drugs and will be able to recall them while you explain in great detail how you thought the bean bag was hugging you with ants. Telling someone your dreams, however, is just as useful to everybody's further meaningful existence as stopping a complete stranger in the street and reciting a random string of letters at them.
Number Four on Franzy's Whining List of Storytelling Sins are the words "He/She/They then proceeded to..." followed by some vaguely foolish activity. This is a technique usually employed by people not used to public speaking, but who have been forced to recount an episode that was whimsical at the time and to people who were present or familiar with those present in front of a large gathering of people of varying dispositions and tolerances for the words 'penis', 'urinate' and 'raunchy'. It's actually not a bad thing, but it gets up my toff nose.

I am guilty of all of the above offences. I've encouraged people to react in appropriate ways when I've finished telling a story that didn't gain a reaction. Anyone who reads this blog knows that I carry on stories until the last person has fallen asleep. I've told meaningful, heart-felt, hilarious, life-changing drug stories and, being a dreamer of epic dreams, I've recounted entire hallucinatory journeys to whoever was around. I have then proceeded to stand up in front of a large crowd of people I only half know and attempt to win them over with pseudo-courtroom-speak.

Cue soothing words: And you should as well. Tell your stories. Don't be afraid. If it's interesting to you, it'll be interesting to someone, eventually. The point is to practise. Tell them over again, in different ways to different people. Emphasise the bits that people like and skip the bits where they start sending "Get me outta here" texts to their friends in front of you.
Maybe ease up on the dream reports, though.

*reference?

***
GTH - The points to the last entry go to Deadly Trently who correctly identified the place, the various timbers, the world's coolest shirt brand, its place of purchase and the settings of the watch. Well done, Hop-a-long.

New competition on this post's GTH: The winner is whoever guesses the most book titles in the picture.