Memories – Page 2

I Wanna be Just Like You – The Tales of The Geek Underclass Soundtrack Part 1

Back in the day when I was writing the Tales of the Geek Underclass I had the idea of putting together a soundtrack of songs that featured in the stories or evoked (for me at least) that particular period in history. I never did, mostly because I got a job, which cut down on the time I had to spend on writing, and I went on antidepressants which – although making me feel much better generally – affected my ability to write anything at all. The Tales stalled and getting perilously close to twenty years later I’m not sure if I could pick them up again. A lot of memories have faded, and not only am I no longer the kid who went through it all, I’m no longer the young adult who wrote what exists of them.

I’ll never say never, but the prospects of a Geek Underclass revival are – at this point – fairly dim.

The soundtrack project however is something that’s been hovering in the back of my head for close on two decades, and now that the data sucking behemoth that is Google hosts just about every song ever recorded by mankind on YouTube it’s a lot easier to accomplish than having to locate the tracks on Napster, spend a week downloading them across dial up, burn them to CDs, design and print covers and then distribute the finished items to people who probably don’t really understand what the whole project is about in the first place.

So, let’s get on with it…

(Yes, I could make a YouTube playlist but I am averse to willingly providing Google with even more info than they have already no doubt amassed on me. If they want this data they’re going to have to scrape it damnit!)

1: The King of Wishful Thinking – Go West – 1992

As a lovelorn teen I was very keen on the name of this song and adopted it as a personal title in relation to my long running crush on the girl I’ve glossed in the Tales as Lauren Alighieri. This was in spite of the fact that the song – as was repeatedly and vociferously pointed out to me by Ryan – was clearly about a guy unable to get over a breakup and there was no way I could “miss the way that [Lauren] used to kiss me” because we’d never even so much as held hands.

2: I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) – The Proclaimers – 1988

This was played on the bus to year 8 camp resulting in the entire year singing along with the “da da da da” bit – probably to the intense annoyance of the driver.

3: Enter Sandman – Metallica – 1991

No Tales soundtrack would be complete without something from Metallica, the favourite band of Satanic Shaun Bettar. He much preferred this to the other major cut from the Metallica album – Nothing Else Matters – which he described as a “soppy fucking love song”.

4: Just Like You – Robbie Neville – 1991

I clearly remember Ryan declaring this to be his favourite song ever. He equally clearly remembers hating it with the heat of a thousands suns. It’s funny how memory can mislead us.

5: Get Ready for This – 2 Unlimited – 1991

The early 90’s were when electronic dance music crossed into the mainstream. Most of it was appalling, and this major hit from the Netherlands was no exception. We hated it. It became for us a symbol of everything that was wrong with popular music. Its ubiquity throughout ’91 and ’92 and our burning hatred for it means that it cannot in honestly – despite its dreadful mediocrity – be excluded from any musical summing up of the Tales.

(Two additional notes: In a moment of random computer class insanity I re-coded the into music for a game where two giant gorillas threw explosive bananas at each other to the song’s synth riff, and I’ve never been able to shake the mental image that occurred to me when I first learned that 2 Unlimited were Dutch – that of two skinny old men in suspenders and flat caps with scraggly beards hanging down to their belts strutting up and down and performing dance moves on top of a canal boat.)

6: Winds of Change – The Scorpions – 1991

It’s probably difficult for anyone who grew up after the whole thing was over to appreciate just how momentous the end of the Cold War was. We’d all grown up with the fear of nuclear annihilation hovering over us, the world could end at any moment with only a few minutes warning and there was little to nothing we could do about it. Then, suddenly, in the space of a few short years it was all done. The Wall was down, the Russians were our friends and it was time to party! Paging David Hasselhoff!

Looking back from our post-9/11, Putin-on-the-warpath world the carefree days of the 90’s seem like another planet. But such has always been the way of the world.

The Scorpions’ anthem also makes it onto the album for another reason. I don’t know how the secondary school system runs nowdays, but back when the Geek Underclass were being forced through it the final two years – Year 11 and Year 12 – were optional. You generally only did them if you intended to go on to university. If you had an apprenticeship or job lined up (or if you just didn’t give a monkey’s) you could finish school at the end of year 10 and never come back. And if you stayed on, things got dead serious with only two years to prepare for the dreaded Tertiary Entrance Exam.

So for me at least, the end of 1991 was much more of an end of high school than my actual graduation at the end of Year 12 in 1993 was. It was the last time our class was complete, with a swathe of friends, enemies and bit players vanishing from the school stage. Our carefree childhoods ended and we became professional students, knuckling down and packing our brains for the TEE. Winds of Change felt like a commemoration of that transition, a graduation song a full two years early. I still remember sitting in a pew at the chapel down at Saint Brigit’s with it playing, although I can’t quite remember why we were there rather than at the school’s chapel/gym – maybe there was a volleyball game or something that day?

7: Friday I’m in Love – The Cure – 1992

There were two reasons we hated the Cure.

First of all they were Goths. Or at least they were listened to by Goths, which in our addled teenage minds pretty much added up to the same thing. Goths – strange, dark, and pale inhabitants of the GPO steps in Forrest Place – were the subject of much disdain, both in our day to day conversation and on Radio RTR’s letter request program Steregoround. We mocked them mercilessly, I even made up a Goth joke!

Q: How do you know when there’s a Goth in your freezer?

A: Face prints in the vanilla ice-cream.

I can’t think of a single reason why we despised Goths so. Possibly as close to the lowest members of the social heirarchy we just needed some group to look down on, and Goths were a convenient target. Particularly so in that there were no Goths (obvious ones at least) at the school, and hence we had no fear of reprisals.

The second reason we despised the Cure is that they were the favourite band of one of our enemies, a girl I shall call Carisse Halter. While most of the school’s female population saw fit to simply ignore us, there was a small contingent who went out of their way to harass and belittle us, and Carisse was one of their leading lights. We would exchange insults and invective on a regular basis, and one of the most effective ways to rattle her was to mock her beloved Robert Smith. In particular I used to do a Robert Smith impression consisting of spreading out my hands, affecting a look of weepy confusion and making what are probably best described as high pitched wookiee sounds towards the sky.

Friday I’m in Love being the Cure’s biggest hit made it – in our minds – the most Gothic song ever written, and we were scathing in our disdain of it!

The irony was I actually thought it was a fantastic song and just pretended to hate it. And as the years went by and I shed the more gregarious idiocies of my adolescence I came to realise that the Cure are an amazing band with dozens of other fantastic songs. Sorry Carisse! Sorry Robert!

(I also developed a bit of a thing for Goth chicks, but that’s neither here nor there…)

8: Mistadobalina – Del tha Funky Homosapien – 1991

This was probably the first piece of hip hop our white arses ever heard. It was so catchy that we even rewrote a version about Sarge, the Chemistry teacher (for the record it wasn’t very good…).

9: The Globe – Big Audio Dynamite – 1991

We were huge fans of both The Globe and Rush by Big Audio Dynamite, so one of the two would have to feature on the soundtrack. I was particularly proud of having memorised the lyrics behind the chorus (Tryin’ to – get out this rain…).

10: Runaway Train – Soul Asylum – 1993

As a moody teen there are times when you simply have to wallow in self pity about how awful your life is and how no one cares about your feelings. One of the best songs for this during our school years – in my opinion – was Soul Asylum’s mega hit. Even today it still stands up – particularly when you realise it’s not about how your parents just don’t understand you, but about depression.

11: Heart in Danger – Southern Sons – 1990

Another song I enjoyed sulking to, Heart in Danger has not stood up anywhere near as well. The tune is still pretty rockin’ but the lyrics read like every moody teenager diary entry ever penned – which is presumably why it appealed to me so much at the time. Now it’s just pure cringe, and as such must be included in the soundtrack to remind us all of what free-wheeling, artless fools we once were!

So that’s it for today. Tune in soon for more 90’s goodness in the Tales of The Geek Underclass Soundtrack Part 2!

Books they Made Me Read at High School

Macbeth by William Shakespeare (Pretty good!)

The Legends of King Arthur by someone who I can’t quite remember (Plenty of fun to be had here)

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin (Two words – Kick. Arse!)

The Collected Poems of Bruce Dawe (Moving along…)

Hamlet by William Shakespeare (Awesome!)

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (OK, but a bit long winded)

Tess of the D’Urbevilles by Thomas Hardy (Not bad)

A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams (The Simpsons did it better)

The Go Between by L. P. Hartley (The past is a foreign country. They write fucking terrible novels there.)

Reflections

One of the most important things a parent can provide to their child is consistency.

I recall an incident from many years ago, back when I was a kid and still living at home. It was a Good Friday, and as good Catholics my brother, mother and I were fasting and abstaining from meat. Doing so makes for a pretty miserable day, but there was one thing that made it bearable, which was having a decent feed of fish and chips when dinner time came around.

So we phoned through and placed an order (nice and early, Good Friday being the peak day for fish and chip consumption nationwide) and Dad went off and picked it up. He bought it home and in the kitchen he and Mum divided it up onto the plates. I grabbed mine, and reached for the tomato sauce, only to be prevented by mum who in a very serious and pious voice declared that fancy condiments were forbidden on the day of Christ’s crucifixion, and that the only salt (representing the world’s tears) and vinegar (like that offered to Jesus on a sponge and hyssop stick) would be permitted.

So I doused my food with salt and vinegar and went off to watch TV.

A year or so later Easter again rolled around, and again we fasted and abstained until dinner time when Dad went off to pick up the fish and chips. Once again it was divided into portions and as I waited to grab the suitability pious condiments of salt and vinegar I was somewhat shocked to see Mum smear tartar sauce all over her fish, then reach for the tomato sauce bottle. In puzzlement I suggested that we should only have salt and vinegar on Good Friday, and Mum looked at me like I was insane.

It was one of very few occasions when I lost a bit of respect for her.

My brother and I had quite a strict Catholic upbringing. I didn’t actually realise this for many years, not until my brother mentioned it – ruefully – at a party. My imediate response was to laugh and declare “as if!”, but on thinking about it I realised – to my surprise – that he was right. We were sent to Catholic school. We attended church every Sunday morning and all through Easter. We were both enrolled as altar servers and inducted into the Guild of St Stephen. We received all the Sacraments when they came around. We said prayers every night, and instead of bedtime stories we got read the Bible from end to end. It would be hard to imagine a more Catholic upbringing without involving a drunken Irishman whipping us with a belt for the Sin of Disobedience.

Skipping church was, of course, a big deal. The only excuse was serious illness. I recall one Sunday towards the end of my schooling when I had a big exam coming up and I declared that I couldn’t go to church because I had to study. It took a good twenty minutes of arguing before Mum backed down, and even then she was in a foul mood all day and had Dad keep checking on me to make sure I was actually studying rather than goofing off.

In spite of occasional incidents like the former, my upbringing never really rankled with me. Call it autistic, but I accepted this state of being as the only possible state of being. I was born already having drunk the Kool-Aid. My childhood was one of earnest piety, and religious conviction followed me well into my teens – even as I modified my beliefs to deal with irreligious friends and raging hormones. I tend to think of myself as a rational being, and remember myself as a rational teenager, but I can also recall thoughts that seem quiet strange and alien to me now. Worrying about the immortal soul of a girl I had a crush on who was known to be sexually active, or being both shocked and saddened when my friend Ryan stopped going up to Communion at school masses.

Religiosity also affected my social life, or lack thereof. For much of my teens I tried to avoid romantic entanglements on the basis that they could only lead to temptations that couldn’t be fulfilled, sex before marriage being a dreadful sin and something I would never do. The lack of dating and social experience resulting from this philosophy turned it into something of a self fulfilling prophecy – by the time I revised my views it was too late to be the gawkish, shy, inexperienced guy, a problem that still has an effect on my romantic endeavors to this day.

My brother, I think, had it worse however. Where I was happy to spend much of my teen years as some kind of contemplative monk, he rankled under the rules and restrictions.He was social and outgoing, having his behaviour tested and scrutinised through a religious lens must have been excuciating. On top of this, coming to terms with the fact that you’re gay is not easy for any teenager, let alone one raised in a Catholic household and attending a Catholic school. Discussion of feelings and emotions is just not done in our family so I don’t know the full scope of his suffering, but I knew at the time that he had some kind of problems, and looking back I see that they must have been awful. I don’t think that I was much help either, floating along in my self assured little cloud. The depression and anxiety that I’ve been bedeviled with since my early twenties really makes me despise some of the ignorant attitudes towards mental suffering that I had – and expressed – as a teenager.

So, here we are at another Easter. I no longer consider myself a Catholic, I’m more of a sort of agnostic-pantheist who believes in a Deity but will happily admit that no hard evidence for such a Deity exists, and therefore I could very easily be completely deluded. I’ll more than likely attend church at some point this weekend, if only to hold up the traditions and to keep Mum happy. Then I’ll eat my chocolate and wish good to all those who wish good unto others.

Happy Easter!

The Court of Ancient Grievances

Order! Order! The Court of Ancient Grievances is now in session!

It is hereby alleged that on or around the 9th of October 1998 the music reviewers of the Sunday Times newspaper stated that the song Thunderbirds are Coming Out by TISM contained “speculation about the sexual proclivities of the Thunderbirds puppets”, indicating that said reviewers had either not listened to the song, or when listening to the song did not pay even cursory attention to the lyrics.

It is furthermore alleged that on or around the 26th of February 2001 the music reviewers of the Sunday Times newspaper stated in relation to the song Heat Seeking Pleasure Machine by Paul Mac that “Paul Mac has a sexy voice”, indicating that said reviewers did not carry out any research or even bother to read the back of the CD case – both actions that would have uncovered the publicly available fact that the vocalist on said song was Tex Perkins of the Cruel Sea.

It is also alleged that on or around the 12th of June 2002 the music reviewers of the Sunday Times newspaper stated that the song Satisfaction by Benny Benassi was a cover of the Rolling Stones song (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, indicating that said reviewers either failed to listen to the Benny Benassi song, failed to listen to the Rolling Stones song, or equally likely failed to listen to either.

Therefore, it is the opinion of this court that the music reviewers of the Sunday Times between the years 1998 and 2002 were a bunch of complete fart-artists labouring under the weight of a total and systemic contempt for music, the music listening public and their responsibilities as employees of the Sunday Times.

How plead the defendants?

(Note: The Court of Ancient Grievances acknowledges that this all happened a long time ago, and that it might in fact have been the music reviewers of the West Australian Newspaper who carried out these crimes against fact. If so, the Court apologises unreservedly to the music reviewers of the Sunday Times who presumably did not have their heads completely up their arses.)

A Televisual Feast

As inspired by Reddit, some TV shows from my childhood…

The Goodies: Kitten Kong, Frankenfido, Apartheight, Clown Gas, Black Beauty, Timita, The Funky Gibbon, Rolf Harris – back in the 80s every Australian kid watched these guys religiously.

Monkey: If you were an Australian kid in the 80s, then you watched “Monkey Magic”. No exceptions. The nature of monkey was… IRREPRESSIBLE!

Catweazel: Electrickery and Telling-bones! Twelve are they that circle round, if power you seek they must be found, look for where the thirteen lies, mount aloft the one who flies…

The Mysterious Cities of Gold: Awesome! Until the Olmecs turned up, anyway. And some of those documentaries at the end were a bit dodgy. But even today I’d kill to have that boat!

Worzel Gummidge: Worzel Gummidge scared the shit out of me! He could take his head off! No!

Secret Valley: Kind of naff, but we still watched it, even while claiming that it sucked. And who didn’t want a cave base like the Spider Gang? The sequel/spin-off on the other hand was an abomination whose name I shall not even repeat. Just note that the theme song (somewhat ironically) used the word ‘poop’ a lot.

You Can’t Do That on Television: Somehow both the origin of Alanis Morrisette and Nickelodeon’s green slime.

Fraggle Rock: I particularly like the episode where they stopped eating the Doozer’s buildings. We had the version with the old inventor and his dog.

Peter Russel Clarke: Cook a shark or make a damper, feed your ego.. pack a hamper.. on a farm or out at sea, learn a recipe or threeeeeeeee… Come and get it! With Peter! G’day! Russel! G’day! Clarke! How ya goin?

Chocky: Weird and creepy! I used to spend hours drawing that picture with the spheres and pyramids.

Astroboy: OK, but more something we watched just because it was on rather than because we loved it.

Grange Hill: We thought this was kind of uncool and boring, but we still watched it because it came on in between other good shows.

Battle of the Planets: Naturally I had a crush on Princess. Nonetheless I really wanted one of those badges the bad guys wore.

Into the Labyrinth: Rothgo… Rothgo… Rothgo… Every episode was filmed in a cave, and looked like it.

Ulysses 31: Anime version of the Greek Myths. I drew picture after picture of that annoying little robot. That said, the Odyssey is one of the best spaceship designs ever!

Watch This Space: Cheaply made and pretty stupid, but they featured some amazing bands.

Kaboodle: Awesome theme music!

I am so old! 😀

Musical Monday – Final Thoughts of Latvia

I’ve always had a somewhat ambivalent attitude towards Nirvana.

My parents were in their 40s when they had my brother and I. They were children of the second world war rather than baby boomers and came from fairly conservative stock – as such they viewed the popular music of the latter half of the 20th century with disdain and did their best to inoculate this view into us. As a result my childhood was marked with a stubborn refusal to entertain the idea that that horrible “rock and roll” music that got played on the radio could be anything but degenerate trash, a view that persisted until I started to develop a personality of my own around the age of 11, a point at which I would reluctantly concede that Livin’ on a Prayer was quite catchy and maybe some other rock music might be OK in limited quantities.

In my teenaged years this prejudice evolved into a kind of carefully maintained contrarian elitism. If a new band came along I would be willing to give them a chance, but if the great mass of unwashed plebs (ie: everyone except myself and my close associates) were crazy about them they were clearly populist garbage not worth considering. Nirvana’s Nevermind arrived right in the middle of this phase and its sudden, massive popularity led to my declaring the band emblematic of the worst excesses of youth culture and an anathema to all right listening folk. I regarded Kurt Cobain as a talentless hack distracting attention away from more worthy musical acts such at the KLF and Dire Straits, and refused to even listen to his works.

By the time Kurt did himself in, the year after my high school graduation, my attitude had mellowed a bit, but not enough to have any sympathy for the hordes of my peers who fell into various states of hysterical grief. I thought it unfortunate in a general sense that he’d taken such a step, but really didn’t care either way. Kurt Cobain dead meant as little to me as Kurt Cobain alive, and I regarded the crowds of mourners with the kind of disdain we reserve today for Beliebers and Directioners.

Over the next decade my attitude towards the music of Nirvana softened while at the same time my attitude towards the ongoing apotheosis of the band hardened. Being told that Kurt Cobain was the voice of my generation, and Smells Like Teen Spirit was the anthem of my youth would drive me towards a state of apoplexy. I’d go out of my way to point out that there were plenty of us who couldn’t stand Nirvana and thought that Kurt was a dickhead – a dickhead who came out with a few decent tunes, sure, but still a dickhead rather than the tragic hero everyone was making him out to be. It was about this time that I discovered the Pixies, and I reframed my criticism of Cobain into classing him as a sad, Black Francis wannabe – someone who could ape some of the sound and style of Doolittle while missing the weirdness and bizarre sense of humour that gave the Pixies their edge.

In the years since I’ve mostly made my peace with Nirvana and Kurt Cobain. As you get older you realise that what other people think about you and your ‘generation’ matter less than what you think about yourself and your place in the march of history. If someone looks at my birthdate and decides I must have spent my teenage years wearing plaid flannel and wishing I lived in Seattle, well good luck to them. Nirvana had some great songs and Kurt Cobain was a gifted, but troubled soul who didn’t get the help he needed. I don’t even mind Smells Like Teen Spirit any more, although it remains without any special meaning or significance to me. Which I guess is why I can enjoy madness like this so much, when many other people my age would regard it as absolute blasphemy 🙂

The more you listen to this insane mashup, the better it works, although even on my first listen there were bits that I found absolutely sublime – the descending chords during “oh no, I know a dirty word” for instance, and the “hello” chant after each verse. The smoky images of moshing teenagers somehow really seem to suit the epic 80’s buildup at the start and the Europe guitarists at 0:55 seem to have internalised the old axiom that when playing rock your guitar is every bit as much a weapon as an AK-47 or M16.

Well I’m all pooped out after all that reminiscing, and still need to include another music video, so – apropos of nothing – here’s Laimutis Purvinis.

A New England

People ask me when will you grow up to be a man? But all the girls I loved at school are already pushing prams.

So, on Saturday night it was my 20 year high school reunion.

I didn’t go to the 10th year reunion. I was – as blog entries from that far off era will attest – still bitter and twisted out of shape about the less enjoyable aspects of my high school career. But I’ve mellowed out over the last decade and decided to put in an appearance at the Rose and Crown in Guildford at 7:00 in the evening to see what could be seen.

As it turned out, what could be seen was a really good turn out, including in particular my old friend Mark who hasn’t been in Perth for a good five years. Justin also turned up (after I phoned him on the Friday to remind him it was on) and I divided the evening between lurking with them and wandering out to inveigle my way into various conversations and catch ups.

It was a really good night. Our principal Mr Mulchay turned up for a while, as did chemistry teacher Mr Sorge. About half the people looked the same – with some extra weight, a few wrinkles round the eyes and (for the guys) less hair (apart from Daniel who had a beard Ned Kelly would be proud of). The rest looked like complete strangers, but a good half of those were identifiable after comparing nametags (I had no idea who the hell the remaining 25% were, but that’s the way it goes I guess ;))

Particularly gratifying from my viewpoint was catching up with Renee, who’d been one of the main organisers of the event. She was a major part of my high school experience in that she was the most popular and beautiful girl in the year to pay me any attention at all. I was constantly half in love with her and remember being more or less struck dumb in her presence, but she apparently remembers me as being really smart and funny, and us sitting together at the back of the room in English with me continually making her laugh. So that’s nice to get another perspective on 🙂

She’d also read the Tales of the Geek Underclass at some point (I suspect due to Ryan’s pimping it on Facebook), thought they were great and demanded that I write more. As my old PCG associate Lincoln also complemented them I probably shall.

It was also nice when later in the night she wandered over to the table I’d sat down at (my feet were killing me at that point – one of the perils of letting yourself age for twenty years) put her arm around me and repeatedly told everyone “I love this guy!”. I must admit she was a bit worse the wear for drink at that point, but it still had the tiny ghost of 17 year old me doing cartwheels somewhere deep in my soul ;). As one of the major social hubs of the event her presence summoned a wide variety of people to the table and that same tiny ghost was overawed at hanging with all the cool kids for a while – including Sherri and Rebecca which along with Renee made up a two thirds reunion of my year 10 English table.

I caught up with plenty of other people too. One person I was particularly happy to see was the girl (I suppose I should really say woman shouldn’t I?) I had a major crush on all through year 12. In contrast to most of the rest of the attendees she hadn’t changed a bit – I recognised her immediately, and was surprised to find my heart briefly skipping a beat when I did so.

She also had exactly the same laugh, which – again to my surprise – made me come over all… well I can’t think of a suitable adjective, but you know how it feels when you hear someone you’re crazy about laugh. It took me back for a moment to when I was an awkward, nerdy 17 year old still trying to figure out the world – as opposed to an awkward nerdy 37 year old beaten down by it. That alone was worth the admission cost.

(Of course, even if I were to mistake those emotional echoes for anything real, she – like most of my former classmates – is married with a couple of kids. She seems to be doing really well for herself, which is the best you can really wish for anyone.)

The evening went on, with the crowd thinning out, until midnight, when the Rose and Crown staff explained that they’d really prefer to close. Someone who I recognised and had spoken to earlier in the night but whose name has escaped me took it on himself to climb up on a table and draw the night to a conclusion with three cheers for the organisers, and a call for those who wanted to keep partying to reconvene at the Casino. I was so tired by that point that I was becoming positively gregarious, so after some goodbyes (including hugs from Renee and Rayanne who… well, any guy who was there would agree that she certainly changed… I mean, wow!) got a lift home with Justin, with a stop off at Alfred’s kitchen on the way.

It was a great night, but in the end there was a little touch of melancholy. For one evening we were again those bright, brilliant, amazing kids of twenty years ago with our whole lives ahead of us. I think that’s why the night went on so long – if our 37 year old bodies would have held out and the Rose and Crown stayed open I think we would have stayed till the sun came up, just to try and hold on to who we used to be. But reality calls and we had to go back to our lives and on our separate ways. I suppose that’s always the way it is with reunions. You can’t go back, and – in the clear light of day – would you really want to? One night is enough.

That said, I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat. Roll on 2023!

The Tale Grows in the Telling

Back when I was in high school my friends told me of a horrible, horrible movie they’d seen, which involved people riding around on motorcycles (called “Death Machines”) and fighting with ridiculous oversized swords (called “whistlers” – apparently because they whistled). The pivotal scene was a duel between two of these freaks, the dialogue of which apparently went…

SHALL WE DUEL WITH DEATH MACHINES?!

Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnno.

WITH WHISTLERS?!

….I’ll drink to that.

Today I finally got around to tracking this movie, and the scene (at 5 minutes in). Inevitably it only has a vague resemblance to our memetic verison, but it’s still worth a laugh…

‘K I’m going to bed now.

30 Years and No Regrets

It’s 30 years since the release of first ever commercially available CD – a reissue of Billy Joel’s 52nd Street, which went on sale on October 1 1982.

The first CD I ever bought was the single of You Am I’s Soldiers.

The first full album was Dire Straits’ On Every Street.

I stand by both purchases.

Good Teachers/Bad Teachers

The discussion concerning last week’s post about my days back at primary school seems to have affected my brain, as I had another dream about them the other night.

I was back in year six, and working – in class – on an essay about some book. The problem was that I wasn’t myself from year six, I was myself from the modern day thrown back in time, and hence my knowledge of the book in question was very vague, it being over twenty years since I’d actually read it.

On the plus side, I’d managed to bring a copy of my finished essay – which, I’m pleased to report, had got an A – back with me, so all I had to do was copy it out. The teacher however, who was not my actual year 6 teacher Mr Murphy (arguably the best teacher I ever had) but my year 7 teacher Mrs M (arguably the worst teacher I’ve ever had) was patrolling around the classroom and would have spotted me. So I was stuck in the position of shooting furtive glances at the finished document while racking my brain for anything I could remember of the text to write about.

But that wasn’t all. I really didn’t want to be writing the essay at all, because there was a big storm due to hit that night. The Weather Bureau had classed it as a category one cyclone, but with the benefit of hindsight I knew that it was actually going to be a category three, and that the inadequate warning would lead to widespread destruction (including ripping the roof off the school) and over 100 deaths across the city. I was itching to get out and warn people, but instead was stuck trying to write this damned essay, and not get in even more trouble with Mrs M than I habitually was.

It was really rather stressful.

Eventually I got out of class and managed to warn (of all people) Dr Christopher Green who promised to take care of it.

In the words of Peter Venkman “Hairless pets….. weird”.

I’ve often wondered about why I had such a problem with Mrs M (I’m referring to her pseudonymously both because she might still be teaching and while I can remember how to pronounce her name, I’m damned if I can spell it). There were, I believe, a number of factors, one of the most important of which being that, even at the age of 12, I was much smarter than her.

That sounds unbelievably arrogant, I know, but bear with me.

In all honesty, in terms of just raw processing power, I believe that my brain was a good smack faster than hers. Hell, my brain is a good smack faster than most people’s, but that’s not anything to be particularly proud about – it’s just natural genetic variation. More importantly I was much more knowledgeable about a much wider range of subjects that she was – her general knowledge about the world appeared pretty limited which I feel is a major flaw in any teacher, let alone a primary school one who is the only instructor a bunch of young minds will have for an entire year.

Now, a good teacher, faced with a student who can out-think them and displays a wealth of knowledge, will see an opportunity. This was the case with all the teachers I’d had up to year 7 – especially with Mr Murphy in year 6. I was encouraged to speak up in class, and if I contradicted what the teacher was saying, they’d hear me out. Mrs M on the other hand seemed to view this kind of behavior as a threat to her authority, and a student who kept doing it as a troublemaker.

For example – in year 6 we were set a humerous poem to read about ptarmigans, in which every initial letter ‘t’ was replaced with ‘pt’. Mr Murphy read the poem out to the class, and mentioned that the author had obviously ‘made up’ an animal called a ptarmigan in order to write the poem. I put my hand up and pointed out that this was wrong, and that the ptarmigan was a kind of arctic bird. Mr Murphy asked me how I knew this, and I gave my standard answer that I’d read it in a book we had at home.

Rather than take this correction at face value, he re-stated that he was sure the ptarmigan was fictional, but told me that I had permission to go to the school library and bring him back a book proving the existence of such a creature. So, I left the class, ducked across to the library, grabbed the relevant volume of the encyclopedia, located the entry for ‘ptarmigan’ and brought it back to him.

Rather than be annoyed, Mr Murphy told the class that he was wrong, and that you should never be ashamed to admit such when presented with proof. I took the book back to the library and we got on with analysing the poem.

This kind of thing was pretty standard for my education up until year 7 – in retrospect I was probably rather spoiled by it. With Mrs M however any attempt to contradict her was met with barely concealed hostility. Her attitude appeared to be one of “I am the teacher, you are the student, I know all, you know nothing”, and thus any student who tried to correct her was being willfully disruptive and should be punished.

It also didn’t help that she was very religious. I was also very religious – I remained so well into my teenaged years – but I followed a very free-wheeling, easy-going, inclusive version of Catholicism, whereas Mrs M seemed to advocate a straight down the line, exactly what the Pope says version. A student from the year above us for instance was praised often and effusively for not only shaking hands with the Pope during his visit in 1986, but for throwing a tantrum in the local video shop when they stocked The Last Temptation of Christ. She was also a believer in the most unlikely of signs and miracles – the year before I had her she’d gone on a pilgrimage to Međugorje and repeatedly claimed that a photo she’d taken of the hill where the BVM allegedly appeared showed a mysterious glow (she kept promising to bring the photo in to show us, but never did). When a TV current affairs show filled in a slow news day with a piece about peoples’ cheap rosary bead sets turning to gold, she came in the next day claiming that her set had undergone the same transformation – but insisted we not tell anyone lest they think she was crazy. I wasn’t shy about sharing my religious opinions, and the difference between our views appeared to make her regard me as not just a troublemaker, but as a potential victim of diabolical obsession.

So, this combination of a smart, previously-indulged, autistic kid and an authoritative, not-quite-as-smart-as-she-ideally-should-have-been teacher resulted in a rather unpleasant and traumatic year of schooling. The stress of the situation led to my developing migraine headaches, which I still occasionally suffer from. My previously spotless academic and behavioral record started to show blemishes – although the fact that the rest of the staff regarded me as a fantastic student (and, I suspect, Mrs M as a bit of a nut) prevented any consequences of this outside of her classroom. I still managed to graduate as second in the year and happily moved on to high school, where a whole new round of traumatic experiences awaited…