Friday, August 22, 2008

I wake up in the morning and I look into your eyes - a post about obsessions, decent and indecent

It's not a great day at work, in fact, it's pretty deserted - oh wait, here comes an annoyance - it's passed, thankfully. My level of quality control today towards the general public means I could easily get a job for Boost Juice I'm afraid. And I'm stuck watching the 20km walk...anyway, other than that, I'm in pretty good spirits. Today, I feel inspired by the otherwise incredibly gimmicky Wil Anderson like aren't I tee hee ironic look I'm playing a Vanilla Ice song on Rage "9 Minutes Of the 90s" segment on all round "thank god people listen at work" station Sea FM (I play a game called segment! Music! with Sea FM, you can pretty much predict it will go Pop song, Rock song, ballad, segment! - or some variation of that theme). They just played X-Tinas "Genie In A Bottle", which is a salient reminder of a basic human principal. That is, everyone is capable of something good once in their life. I normally can't stand Christina, and her struggle to pick a note and stick to it, but Genie In a Bottle is one of the greatest pop songs of the 90s, and then it was all downhill for the little minx. I think for ages when I was a rock snob (well, who else rings Triple J at 10am to do an interview about Welsh music?) I would have said "That song sucks! :(" in my e-mails but luckily I've grown out of rock snobbery, Triple J, and of course e-mails with LOLZ and :) faces. However I have had a million little obsessions in my life - and probably all of them are really, really tedious for anyone except me. I went to school with this kid once who was seriously into WWF wrestling, and used to collate the results into a little scrapbook, broke his heart when he found out it was fake. I've mentioned before I had a mate who was obsessed with the Batkovicly bosomed female basketballer Mary Anne DiFrancesco, to the point he rang her up when she was manning the phone lines for a charity function. I was briefly (this is seriously mean) obsessed with telling kids who were annoying me that Santa Claus wasn't real. I was obsessed with the Push Pop for a while, that candy thing that you sucked in a really sapphic fashion. And I've been obsessed with the terrible form of Josh Fraser...for, oh, a decade? I love all the little obsessions and concerns that make up a local community, all the meetings that are held in town forums with people arking up, the trends the kids get into, and that one kid who, like, buys a Rubiks Snake when everyone else has the Cube. In short, I love obsessions. I didn't love Amiels 2nd single Obsession (I Love You) though - that was pretty rubbish.

We were friends with quite a prominent local family - well, they lived down the road and we used to go over for sandwiches, I guess that counts as friends - and if we're being honest, they weren't the most scintillating company. The woman as far as I know lost her husband or he was on night shift or...something. They were very nice, but incredibly dull. Her sons she was always bigging up, she liked her sherry and an early night, while my Dad as I've mentioned before liked whisky and talking about sport. We spent a lot of quite dull nights around there that blended into one, where she talked us through her carpet or her slides or summat, but there was one night, and keep in mind I was still a kid with an active imagination that was able to get me through the most boring nights so it was my Dad I felt most sorry for, she dragged her sons into the festivities, so it must have been a really slow night. I think her sons were gay, but I think everyone is gay, so don't take my word for it. They were equally as dull, although incredibly pleasant and decent people. The next day, when we were over there for lunch on a cold football free Penguin Saturday when even the local gossips couldn't be bothered getting outside, as I sat in the corner doing my Etch a Sketch, he took us down to the basement to show us his ham radio station. Now, these days, I'd probably have run a mile and kept going until I hit Avoca, not least just because the CI channel has given me great fears about invitations into peoples basements, but back then I thought, oh yeah, wow, why not - hey look, I drew boobs on the Etc...oh, sorry, it's all about you, let's look at your ham radio. Anyway, my Dad came down for a look as well, and he was showing us all the bits and bobs that make up a ham radio, and no doubt we were suitably ungripped - but we ended up picking up something after a while, and I can't remember whether it was a police chase, or a sailor in trouble, or a domestic or whatever, but whatever it was, it was really exciting, and I have a feeling that a shot was fired, and he was really stunned because he couldn't have scripted it if he tried, so it was definitely a big moment, at least comparatively to the other nights we spent there talking church and sherry and texas longhorns (the woman told us once that the reason the flower was called a texas longhorn was because it was grown first in texas and it had longhorns - my Aunty was suitably unimpressed and stormed around going "No! Really!"). It was his X-Tina once in a lifetime moment, a moment rewarding probably a lifetime of mediocre evenings in with his Mum. I don't know what became of him, he might possibly be still there, waiting for us to come back, standing at the door with a plate of sandwiches and his 10/4 baseball cap, discussing the finer points of shag pile carpet with anyone wandering past...

I guess I realised that while everyone is basically obsessed with their own obsessions (by definition captain obvious), it is gratifying to have that kind of validation that your interests are fascinating, when everyone else tells you "why are you messing around with that stupid ham radio, this floor needs sweeping!" or something. The man at the store down the end of the road, the one that had the Kiss Make Up set for a good solid decade and seemed to run out of Eskimo Pies every single day, he had a secret obsession, something that set him apart from all the other stores, and even though I always thought he was a little bit creepy, when we gave him a chance he was a pretty OK guy, and then one day, he let us in on a little secret. I think my Dad was a little worried about me being a little weedy guts and wanted me to get a bit more buff or something, and the guy in the shop piped up with "Oh, he can use our pool!" and yes, out the back, he had an indoor swimming pool (well, a heated pool in a barn, which is no less amazing is it? Who uses a barn for a swimming pool?) - now, I know what you are thinking, slightly creepy man with Kiss make up in the window offers a small child use of his swimming pool, Paul Gadd hijinks ahoy? Well, no, it was the 80s, he was just being nice (and he still writes). Besides, I went with Dad, and up and down we paddled, best of all though was the vast and wonderful array of kickboards he had at his disposal. I loved nothing better in this world than to get into a swimming pool and power myself along with a kickboard. So anyway, this guy was really proud of his swimming pool in the barn, and he was always around when I was swimming (stop it...) to make sure everything was good and that the pool was clean. For about two years, no one used the pool but me and Dad - so it was a massive shock when, towards the end of Penguin Stint #1, he began letting everyone use the pool, and charged 5 bucks a time to use it. This was high treason, corporate selling out, maybe I wasn't cute anymore I don't know, and it was no surprise I began swimming at the B-Qua (Burnie pool made fancy). However, it just wasn't the same at all, as I was forced to come out of my protected world, and swim with a better class of swimmer, muscly boys impressing skanky girls by doing bellywhackers off the 10, and of course small children pissing in the paddling pool, a perfect metaphor for my coming of age, out of the small town, into the world - well, it would be, except this was Penguin, we didn't do metaphors...they were really gay.

Of course, it's fine to be obsessed with ham radio, Push pops, the state of your swimming pool, Egg Flip Big Ms and DMCs (what the hell happened to them anyway?) but eventually obsession turns to people, the girl who gives you a Beth Orton CD or what not. Obviously ringing basketball players isn't particularly sane behaviour, but you never know - I found out the guy who won the fat blokes weightlifting met his wife when she e-mailed him, so why shouldn't it work for him? Anyway, there was this girl in Penguin that I really liked for ages, she was really cute especially when she straightened her hair, liked DMCs, all that kind of good stuff. Had strong opinions on the decline of the Violet Crumble. I like a girl with strong opinions on particular types of chocolate. I really thought she could be the one - certainly I was getting all the signals. We hung out talking at Hiscutt park for days on end, we spoke about a lot of different things - our hopes, our dreams, who was that bloke milling around on the railway tracks and why were his hands always in his pockets? I wrote poetry for her, well, I tried to find something to rhyme with her name and they all sucked so I just went back to drawing awful pigs during maths, and I quite literally couldn't talk to her...one day, I was due to go to movies with her and my friends one day and I couldn't make it to Burnie to go and watch because of a storm and...oh my aching heart. I couldn't stand it anymore, and I was all set to ask her out, 1992 style, pull her hair, run away, get one of my friends to say I liked her...and then, I found out something really, really bad, before I even got the chance to pull her hair. Her and her family were massive fans of Hey Hey It's Saturday, made family time every Saturday to watch it, and, to top it all off, had from an auction a saxophone signed by Wilbur Wilde. She even had tickets to go and see Hey Hey It's Darwin...I just couldn't see a future with a girl with such a terrible obsession. It's horribly shallow I know, but a Wilbur Wilde saxophone? From that point on, it didn't matter how pretty she was, and how opinionated she was on Push Pops...she was just the girl with the Wilbur Wilde saxophone...and now, I think she lives in Brazil, as a nun...and probably watches Red Faces comps on Youtube...

If I had a Push Pop right now, I'd suck it in her honour (matron)...I was obsessed with those things...

4 comments:

Fer said...

Have to agree with you about the Wilbur Wilde obsession. Mind you, he has redeemed himself a little since being on Spicks & Specks (maybe...).

Can't agree with you about Triple J though, especially when the only other alternative in Launceston is 7LA - need I say more? Besides, I prefer the songs on the J's and I've gotten out of the habit of putting up with advertising.

Miles McClagan said...

Well, with Triple J, it was Jane Gazzo who put me off, I rang up one night and she wouldn't play my request, which sort of put me off Triple J - then I found out they had a playlist - but compared to 7LA and 7BU, it's obviously spun gold.

As for Wilbur Wilde - it was odd, but when Russell Gilbert was on Tony Martins Get This, he was hilarious...maybe it was the setting. But this family had a Manson vibe in regards to how hilarious they found Darryl Somers...when you are quoting Ossie Ostrich, it's a worry...

Fer said...

They quoted Ossie Ostrich? Mind you he had more talent in one of his pink feathers than Daryl Somers and his over-inflated ego.

Did you ever see Russell Gilbert on 'Thank God You're Here'? Sad, very sad.

Miles McClagan said...

Oh yes, they could quote Ossie Ostrich, I like to imagine how devastated they were when he got the arse...

I don't remember Russell Gilbert on it, was he better or worse than Andrew G? That's my basic standard for that show...better be better than G...