Doug MacLeod's Blog, page 2

Mad as hell continues to kick goals

Though I know that Shaun mIcallef hates sporting metaphors, particularly ones that involve olympic swimming pools, I have to hand it to him. Mad As Hell is the best half hour on television, and I once again marvel at its ability to cram in extra jokes by resorting to flash frames. These microseconds of inserted footage are actually against the law, but only if they are deemed to be persuading or coercing an audience to buy products or commit any acts clearly encouraged by the flash frame. I think Mad As Hell is pretty safe with this one, taken from the iview of the show, hence, that white arrow icon pointing salaciously at Stephen Fry's groin, as featured in far too many episodes of QI.

Cell

Is your smartphone making you rude? Do you think technology is a distraction from manners? How do we use technology yet remain considerate?
These topics were discussed on ABC News Breakfast yesterday morning, and of course there were numerous tweets from viewers who thought that mobile phone usage had made people inconsiderate. Viewers complained about shop assistants who took calls in the middle of making a sale – thus, not making a sale. I commiserated. I’ve been on the number 96 ST Kilda tram alongside mobile phone users whose conversations are so loud that you can’t even hear the guy up the back who’s got a bottle of sherry in a brown paper bag and has remarkable recall of the collected works of Rodgers and Hammerstein. (Why do so many derros know every song from My Fair Lady?) Our favourite horror godfather Stephen King got so teed off with mobile phone users that he wrote a big fat novel, Cell, where mobile phones have caused their users to become insane, vicious zombies, pulling people apart with their own hands, but not without first checking their SMS’s or downloading a more beguiling ring tone.


As much as I enjoyed Cell, I think Stephen King’s novel seemed too much like the rantings of an angry old man. You know, the sort of guy who is always railing at the local kids for walking on his lawn. Nevertheless it will make a brilliant movie andf collect several billion dollars, provided Andy McDowell or Paul Rudd aren’t in it.
This week I finally joined the smart phone generation, or the ‘21st Century’ as Steve Jobs preferred to call it, during his zestier ‘alive’ period. I have a sweet, shiny iphone, which I am only gradually learning to use. And my stubby fingers will never be able to manage that tiny keyboard. But clearly it can’t be that hard. After all, I constantly see car drivers using their smart phones, which they obviously wouldn’t do unless (a) smart phones are easy to manage and (b) they’re homicidal idiots and Stephen King was right.
Most of all, people (including Mr King) seem to resent having other people’s phone conversations inflicted on them, when these conversations are generally about stuff that really doesn’t seem so urgent that the ringer could not have waited till he/she was off the tram or bus.
But there is a worse kind of overheard mobile phone call that can really weird you out. On one Tuesday afternoon when I took the route 96, all passengers were fixated on their tablets, iphones, kindles, or whatever they use to make their journey more pleasant. Suddenly a cry of anguish filled the tram. This wasn’t the sound of someone being attacked or harrassed (I know, because I live in St Kilda and that’s a sound I’ve heard before.) This was the sound of someone who has just received the worst possible news. It was news that physically hurt. Everyone on the tram, even the sherry guy, looked in the direction of the sound. It was being made by a young, tough-looking man who was wearing a suit that seemed a little too small for him, and that had probably been cleaned in a coin launderette once too often. The man in anguish cried out again into his iphone. It was a girl’s name. Let’s say it was ‘Brie’ because it usually is.
And what Brie, at the other end of the phone had just told the tight suit guy (we’ll call him Brad because he looked like he should have been one) was that their relationship was over. This obviously came as a surprise to Brad, because his cries of disbelief and horror were absolutely genuine. What followed was Brad trying to convince Brie that they shouldn’t break up, because he was so impossibly in love with her that he would kill himself if she left him. Seriously, the breakup by mobile phone was as dramatic as that. We passed Middle Park station and Brad was still threatening self harm. At Fraser Street he’d calmed down a bit. Then Brie obviously brought up some transgression that Brad had made, because he reassured her that this would never never happen again, they’d already talked over this. He didn’t even like Wendy. And he hadn’t pashed her, he’d just bumped into her at Southern Cross Station outside Pie Face. He could probably get the CCTV footage, if Brie didn’t believe him. ‘Just please don’t leave me.’ The mood on the tram changed from one of bland Tuesday afternoon indifference to genuine concern for Brad. His agony was palpable. It touched something in all of us; that terrible moment when we learn that a relationship is mangled beyond repair. And not just any relationship. But the only one that seems worth anything and that reassures you in the night at 2.00am when you used to get nightmares, which will no doubt return. I wonder how many commuters were thinking of offering advice to Brad? ‘Come on, you were too good for her anyway.’ ‘There’ll be other Bries.’ 'I know what really happened at Pie Face. It was innocent. You're a hulluva nice guy.' I know I wanted to, but Brad seemed in no condition to take comfort from strangers. And who could blame him? He was being dropped – by mobile phone! That’s almost as bad as being dropped by an SMS or a Facebook post. And he looked the sort of guy who doesn’t usually burst into tears in public and who only just tolerates the Twilight movies because Brie likes them so much. Even the sherry guy was stunned by what he had heard. He was silent. Clearly, he couldn’t think of an appropriate song, though I’m sure there are several. Blue Sunday springs to mind, though a Jim Morrison vocal is hard to pull off. You really need to be on bourbon, not sherry.Several people left the tram a few stops early at Fitzroy Street, to avoid Brad’s terrible, horrible ordeal. Before long it was just Brad and me and the mobile phone with Brie at the end. Brad howled into his instrument about how he would never again do what he had done that had so upset Brie. Then Brad stopped talking when he realised it could no longer serve any purpose. Brie had hung up. Brad immediately pressed return, but Brie had decided not to take calls. Now was my chance to say something to Brad, but how could it possibly pick him up after this epic separation? Brad walked toward me and the back doorway as the tram stopped at The Esplanade. This was Brad’s stop. Mine wasn’t till Luna Park. I wanted to tell Brad that things would get better, that he mustn’t give up on being a good human being. I made eye contaxct with Brad as he headed for the exit. Once I was on a tram with a young guy who was ‘chroming’, sniffing aerosol paint from a plastic bag. I remember seeing his eyes as he entered the zone of unhurting, the place that he needed so badly to reach and relied upon the paint fumes to get him there. The chromer had a dead face. He was no longer in the normal human dimension. He had mentally checked out. And that’s how Brad looked as he left the tram. I don’t think that anything I said would have saved him from how he felt. I just hoped that Brad wouldn’t throw himself under a car, or seek comfort in petrol fumes.
And when I woke up at 2.00am that night I thought about Brad and Brie, wishing they hadn’t made me an eavesdropper of their demise.

Okay, time to stop sulking

And from Maurice Saxby in Magpies:

'Read this great book and be intrigued.  Reread it and savour fully its mental, psychological and emotional riches.  It is worth it.'



Well, I see to have done what most bad book bloggers do. I've had a hissy fit, prompted by some less than perfect reviews on the frequently poisonous Goodreads. And to all those authors who have been trolling reviews of their own work or perhaps that of adversaries, shame on you! But I understand that there is a program out there which can actually de-anonymitise the reviews, so some trolls are in for a very nasty surprise when they discover they have been exposed as the source of the five-star rave review of their latest work. (it happened on Amazon a litle while ago.)

And I've carried on as though I'm owed a good review. Please forgive me. For a man who has written a novel using 'The nature of humour' as its theme, I've been showing a remarkable lack of humour in my posts about Tigers on the Beach of late.

As for the world's funniest joke, which I have included at the end of the novel, I told it last night at an AWG event where I was sharing a comedy panel with Steve Vizard and Peter Moon. No one laughed. And yet this is the joke that I told to Shaun Micallef, making him burst into laughter, which is what I always do when Mad as Hell is on TV. It's the funniest, sharpest, silliest show on the ABC. I honestly didn't know it was possible to shoe-horn that many jokes into a show. Mad as Hell
is quite an achievement, though I worry sometimes that worry that there are so many jokes, it might be difficult for the viewer to catch them all. Here is where ABC iView comes in handy. you can enjoy the show over and over, though I'm slow on the pause control and I still haven't worked out what the flash frames are about. (Actually, i just did manage to catch one from last night, but I don't think it would be decent rto include it on my blog. Here, instead, is a fussy old queen. Make of her what you will.

George I don't know who you are but thank you.

Just when I was sinking into the pit of despair, my editor sent me this Herald Sun review by a boy (or possibly a girl). You saved my life. Thank you, George, whoever you are.

TIGERS ON THE BEACHDOUG MACLEODPENGUIN, RRP $18This book is so excellent I read it in one sitting. Adam has just found the girl of his dreams. Plus, his grandfather has just died and his grandmother has moved in. Grandma is difficult and she’s upsetting everyone in Adam’s family. Adam has to keep his family from falling apart, stop his brother from doing dangerous things and keep the girl he loves. This is a great book and I think everyone will love it.George Murrihy, 12Verdict  Brilliant.

It could be a bumpy ride …

 In my last post, with my usual hubris , I made up some mean and sarcastic reactions the critics would have to my new book, Tigers on the Beach. And hubris being what it is, it seems I’ve attracted some of the very quotes that were in the post.


I’ve been in a bad mood all week,Back in the days when I was making TV shows I had to steel myself against the reviewers, because some of them, like Robert Fidgeon and Bruce Elder, could turn seriously poisonous if your comedy show did not make them laugh. Bruce Elder said that I should have been sacked, after my cable quiz show about advertising, hosted by Mikey Robbins, failed to entice him. It was called Campaign and it was pretty much the seed that might have germinated into The Gruen Transfer. It had low production values, because cable in Australia doesn’t pay so well. It was hard for me to recover from that review, especially as Mikey took it so much to heart and believed the dung that Elder had flung, which was especially mean about Mikey. We got good reviews everywhere else, but of course the one in the Sydney Morning Herald was the one that all our family and friends read. I still shudder when I think about it, but I was under contract to continue making the show, so I had to wander round Fox studios all week looking brave and saying ‘I’ve had worse,’ which, in all honesty, I hadn’t. Mikey didn’t hide his contempt for me (I ws the producer). In a camera rehearsal before the taping I played the part of one of the contestants, so they could get the lighting and audio right. It was the day the review had appeared. Mikey was there as compere, tipping as much shit on me as he possibly could. It wasn’t a good experience, though I can still watch Mikey and find him funny. And guess what? The show really wasn’t that bad. It was really pretty good, all things considered. Elder had well and truly exaggerated its failings, but that nasty little shitspray was apparently ‘the talk of the advertising industry for a whole day’ (I’m quoting one of our judges, the remarkably funny and articulate Esther Clerehan, professional advertising headhunter).  This was a problem, as I relied on the advertising industry heavily to allow us to use their expensive, often witty and sometimes breathtaking TV ads.
So far, none of the thumbs down for Tigers on the Beach have been anywhere near as savage as Bruce Elder’s drubbing, but they’ve still been pretty ordinary. I suppose you have to be alarmed when members of your own family, who have read the book, comment on how pretty the cover is but don’t mention anything about the book’s content. I think they might be annoyed because I used a few old family adventures,  but I didn’t ask their permission to do so. Dredging up the past is something that most fiction authors do, and I thought that I used the stories in a way that was more disarming than dismissive. But I should have asked ...
I knowwe shouldn’t let the bad reviews hurt us, but we do. And yes, I also hate authors who moan about it on their blogs.
Even blogger Braden, of Book Probe, who was so nice about The Shiny Guys, said he found Tigers on the Beachdisappointing.  But then, if you’re looking forward to another book in the style of The Shiny Guys, I guess it would be disappointing.
Sometimes we make the mistake of thinking that if we are interested in a topic, then everyone else will be too. Comedy, which is really the book’s theme (dressed up as a romcom) has fascinated me since I was a young adult and first laughed at Monty Python’s Flying Circus, then wondered what made it so incredibly funny.
I started to analyse comedy, and even developed strange theories, such as it helps to have blye eyes if you’re going to be a comedian. This disturbingly Aryan view (not held for long) might have been borne from the fact that the funniest members of the Python troupe are the ones with blue eyes. Really, my theories of comedy go on and on. Not all are as inane as this. But when you try to analyse comedy, it often falls to bits. Just see if the well-meaning American presenter of thiscollection of Python sketches does anything to improve the humour of these Python moments, by somehow trying to explain them. And just for the record, I loathe and detest the Mr Creosote sketch. (See, there are those absolutes: ‘Hate’ and ‘loathe’. The words we use when comedy disappoints us.)

Anyway, do please read Tigers on the Beach and see what you think. It took an awful lot of work, I think I like it, and I’d hate to think that all I’ve achieved is a book that irritates people. I want to charm you and start conversations. I want to reach out to you. Oh God, fetch the bucket. I want to be loved.

Bring On the Tigers.

My YA novel Tigers on the Beach is out today. So I’m getting ready for these handy comments and quips: I'm in bold. Naturally.

‘I haven’t seen it in the bookshops.’Of course you haven’t. You won’t see anything in the bookshops. And please stop telling authors that.At least the cover’s nice. I like to think so. And by the way, you’re the eighteenth person today to tell me that. Did you nick the tiger idea from Richard Parker in Pi? No, but there’s no harm having a bestselling animal on the cover. How are going to cope with the critics?Okay, this is a bit of a leading question but … I’m getting ready for these: MacLeod is in very familiar territory here. Shame he tries so hard to be funny.Teenagers will find little to interest them. Is Doug MacLeod gay? Why do you ask? Well, a lot of his books have gay characters in the background. And so does this one.’I live in St Kilda, where there are always gays in the background, and occasionally the foreground. So I sort of write what I know. You didn’t answer the question. Neither did Ian Thorpe. Actually, he did. Oh, that’s right, he did I think. Is the book a piece of propaganda advocating gay marriage? Shut up! Oh god, so much for the Catholic market. The teenagers in his book don’t seem to talk teenagers. It’d like their IQ’s are about fifty notches too high. Doesn’t MacLeod bother to research the way they actually speak? I’m never going to use the word ‘whatever’ or ‘I’m like …’ except in their traditional contexts. Still, isn’t it stupid to have them swanning around, coming out with lines like Oscar Wilde characters. Maybe Oscar Wilde on a very bad day. But if I’m going to write fifty thousand words about a world I want it to be one in which I would like to live. I also borrow heavily on personal experience, because this dreadful history that I have in my head is really all I’ve got. And I lost a lot of it when I had the stroke. I‘ve never written a novel before, but I’m sure I could write a better one than this. You can’t. Does this novel have a serious message? No. Shouldn’t it? Hey, it’s my novel. Piss Off. Isn’t this book the third time that MacLeod has used this plot? Um, I was hoping you wouldn’t notice that. But yes, this is the third time I’ve written this novel Is MacLeod really the miserable old bastard he presents to the world? He’s actually worse than when he pretended to be Buddhist. Is it true that most of the stuff in this book actually happened? Absolutely and regrettably true. Dad really did blow up my face with gunpowder. But not deliberately. Or so he says …

Ear-ache My Eye

Yesterday was surreal. Life after a stroke is often surreaI, but this one had a sort of Kafkaesque surrealism to it, and as readers of my book, The Shiny Guys would know, I like reading Kafka. But I don’t like living it, which is sort of what happened  yesterday. 
I woke up with an earache and couldn't hear well. We couldn’t find any doctors who could see me, so I got a lift to the Emergency Room at the Alfred Hospital, which did seem a little melodramatic, but I was persuaded. It was 9.00am and the emergency room was completely deserted. I felt a bit pathetic, telling the triage nurse that I had a bad ear … I’m sure there were more important things they should be doing. She nodded. But since my stroke catastrophe of 2001 I’ve become vigilant about bits of my body that suddenly stop working for no reason. The nurse sent me to the waiting room and said I would probably be seen in about twenty minutes.The room filled quickly. No one had arms hanging off or anything that looked horrendously painful. The people were mainly parents concerned about something icky that their kids had picked up, or elderly people who seemed to have wandered in,  dazed after the punishing Melbourne heatwave of the past few days. My earache made it difficult for me to hear. After a number of other people were called, I asked the lady at the administration desk if my name had perhaps been called, since it was quite likely I wouldn’t have heard it. She wasn’t happy to be bothered by me. I can understand. She must get impatient people asking her the same sorts of questions again and again. She checked the computer and told me that no, my name had not been called.
Two hours later, I did get a chance to see a doctor. He was an enthusiastic young Indian man, and I told him what had happened. He asked if I was feeling pain I had to confess in all honesty that it was not unbearable pain, just irritation.  He picked up a torch and looked in both my ears then told me that my problem was a wax buildup in my right ear that had become very slightly infected. I asked what I should do and he told me that I should go to another doctor, that it wasn’t appropriate for me to be here at the Alfred Hospital with an ear infection. He recommended a clinic – the Prahran Market Clinic – located at the other end of Commercial Road, where I would no doubt be able to find a doctor who would fix my ear. I mentioned that I was eager to have the problem fixed, because I was flying to Sydney in a few days to work on a new SBS TV show. I was looking forward to working as a script editor on it. He mentioned that my work must be very exciting and I told him I was sure his job was far more exciting than mine, at which he scoffed, not unpleasantly.  ‘You think it’s exciting for me to be looking in your ear?’ He was aware of my stroke history since it was all on the computer in front of him. He reassured me that the blockage was a minor problem and any doctor would be able to syringe out the plug of wax that was causing all the trouble. I tried one more shot and told the endlessly polite Indian man that, since he was a doctor, perhaps he could have a go at syringing out the plug of wax? He asked his superior for a few items but was knocked back. My problem was really far too minimal for the Alfred. I should go to see a less important doctor. A final, desperate try: ‘But you’re a doctor,’ I said and added that I had waited four hours to see him. No, I still wasn’t sick enough to be helped. My malady was far too trivial. I must reiterate here that the doctor was charmingly polite and that everbody working at The Alfred was a little shell-shocked after the pressure they had been under in the  preceding three days, where hundreds of people had been treated for heat stroke.
So I took the young doctor’s advice and  walked down Commercial Road to the Prahran Market Clinic. It was probably a distance of only half a kilometre, but it’s the longest I’ve walked unattended since I had the stroke. I was careful to walk close to walls, just in case I might choose this somewhat inconvenient moment to pass out, since it’s happened before. I had my name and details on the little plastic bangle that the Alfred people had clipped to me. If I passed out I would do it in as safe a place as I could. Apart from the whole passing out thing, another gift of stroke recovery is that you rarely remember what day it is. It was Sunday, yet I believed it was Saturday and I found the Prahran Market Clinic closed. My bloody ear was driving me crazy. It wasn’t throbbing, or anything, it was just a bit sore and made me half deaf. So I hailed a cab back to my home in St Kilda. I visited one of our local chemists (Fitzroy Street has three, all the other storefronts are cafes. The chemist recommended  something called Cerumol: a solution that would loosen the wax. Then I asked him what I should do when the wax was soft enough to be expunged. He told me that I should see a doctor and not try anything myself, which might damage the ear.
And so, I’m typing this sniffy little post as I’m waiting for the St Kilda Men’s Health Centre to open so that I can, with any luck, snatch a missed appointment or even catch a doctor between appaointments. After all, syringing the wax from my ear was apparently a simple and trivial operation. One that I was recommended not to do. I needed an expert; but not one who was too qualified.

Why a tiger?

Here'e the press release for my next Penguin, which audaciously takes on the theme of comedy and how it unites and divides us. Hmm yes. That's why we put a tiger on the cover.

On my website you will find a book called My Extraordinary Life and Death. I used an old trick, where I added silly captions to some unlikely pictures, in order to build up a story. Here is the finished product.



I started doing it on my blog for Inside a Dog, the website of The Centre for Youth Literature at The Melbourne State Library. I was supposed to blog about my life three times a week, but really there wasn’t enough to blog about. I don’t review books, so I couldn’t fill my blog with literary critique.
I became obsessed with Project Gutenberg, the on-line repository for books that are out of copyright and therefore free to the public to download. One particular title, ‘Banbury Chapbooks’ gave me a vast quantity of curious pictures that assisted me in coming up with a bizarre story of my life. Here are some examples of pictures that caught my eye and suggested curious moments from someone's insane biography.







I know it sounds easy to make a story out of pics with silly captions, but it wasn’t. I’ll see if I can explain why.

COMEDY ISN'T EASY

The theme of Tigers on the Beach is comedy and how it unites and divides us. Just to remind you, Tigers on the Beach is my next Penguin novel, not the collage book we are currently discussing, for the purpose of analysing comedy, something that Mark Twain suggested you should never do.
Paul Collins owns and runs an independent publishing company, and we're very glad he does, because it gives us authors one more shot at getting published. Paul has been of great help to a number of authors and illustrators, and continues to publish with enthusiasm and aplomb. His books always look good, largely due to Paul’s strong working relationship with designer Grant Gittus. When Paul saw my blog story about the bizarre things that purportedly have happened to me in My Extraordinary Life and Death he very kindly offered to publish it as a book. I wasn’t sure about this, until Grant Gittus showed me how the book would be treated. It looked fantastic, so I went about the task of augmenting the story, and giving the whole thing a ‘comedy pass’. (That’s a film and TV script editor’s term. It simply means adding more and better jokes.)
I wanted to make the book as funny as possible. Which brings us to why it wasn’t easy to do this book. Everyone insists they have a sense of humour, but everyone’s is different. I did about seven versions of My Extraordinary Life and Death, all of which reside on my hard drive. I think a couple of them are actually funnier than the finished product. The reason I had to redo the book over and over is that Paul and his entourage (he tends to rely on quite a few helpful people and has interns) kept disagreeing with me on what was actually funny. I suppose that when comedy is presented so simply – a picture with a funny caption – everyone believes they can do it and that their way is better.
There was stuff that I thought we could lose, for the benefit of the overall ‘story’, but other people wanted to keep it. And I was obsessive about ‘plotting’ the book so that it really did cover an entire life. I had a war chapter and a school chums chapter, which I thought were both good, along with a few pages describing how the subject of the story (‘me’) made his vast fortune, enabling him to lead a life of eccentric luxury. But some people wanted to drop these chapters. I remember arguing with Paul about whether to use the word ‘tavern’ or ‘pub’ for this picture:

Paul wanted to use ‘tavern’ because it was more suitable to the Victorian period in which the story seems to take place. And of course ‘tavern’ means ‘pub’. Most people would know that. So why did I fight for ‘pub’ instead of ‘tavern’? I’ve finally worked out what bothers me about ‘tavern’. It’s a fine and elegant word but it trips up the reader.  One is inclined to linger just a moment too long, meaning the rhythm of the joke is lost. Jokes are like music. And even the best gag in the world can collapse in an embarassing heap if the person who tells it doesn’t have the timing or understand the joke’s ‘music’. Arguing about this page became symptomatic of the whole book. I got angrier and angrier. So did the Ford Street gang until they started giving notes like, ‘None of us thinks this is funny’, to which I would respond , ‘I’m sorry, but I do believe it’s funny and it’s my bloody book, etc.’ A sort of compromise was struck where we made a website that people could visit and see the chapters that were deleted. I really like the one about war. And there are four pages in the ‘general offcuts’, involving how the book’s subject made such vast quantities of money. We'll come to those missing portions in a moment. I was pretty happy with the end product, and we certainly got our fair share of good reviews. One overenthuiastic critic even sompared it favourably with a new release from Joseph Heller.
The critic was clearly bonkers.

Here is a link that actually will get you to the secret missing chapters of My Extraordinary Life and Death. Don't get too excited. It's not like we just found Fury From the Deep in Ethiopia.
Paul works tirelessly to promote his product.  I did more interviews for My Extraordinary Life and Death than I have for any pf my other books. I’ve bought a fair bit of stock from Paul, because I don’t like to think that he is losing money on my title, which he was brave enough to bring into his stable. But he surely must be. I haven’t seen the book anywhere except on the odd sale table. I guess one of the problems is that the book is so beautifully made and designed, that it’s rather expensive. I had hoped that the book would be a ten dollar wonder, like the current crop of ‘Popular Penguins’. I think the book would have had a much happier and more commercial life if we had kept the unit price down. The quality of paper and binding is simply far too good for such a silly joke. It retails for twenty dollars, and I would urge you to buy it, if only to keep Ford Street from going under. Although you probably will get a few laughs out of it. Andy Griffiths, who knows a few things about comedy, is a fan, and the Oscar-winning movie director Adam Elliot has also sent me a lovely email, completely unsolicited, about how much he likes the book’s comedy.
I have an embarrassingly long history of producing mass market TV comedy shows. Look me up on It’s an award that many of my former employees would probably dispute. But it’s still a bloody award that I can hold up to the world to boast, ‘I’m good at comedy. I always have been.  And I bloody know why pub is funny and tavern isn’t in the context of page 110 of My Extraordinary Life and Death.

So it's come to this

It's disgraceful for a blogger to post the PR from his new book, but here we are. And there's a special bonus article that follows it.

On my website you will find a book called My Extraordinary Life and Death. I used an old trick, where I added silly captions to some unlikely pictures, in order to build up a story. Here is the finished product.



I started doing it on my blog for Inside a Dog, the website of The Centre for Youth Literature at The Melbourne State Library. I was supposed to blog about my life three times a week, but really there wasn’t enough to blog about. I don’t review books, so I couldn’t fill my blog with literary critique.
I became obsessed with Project Gutenberg, the on-line repository for books that are out of copyright and therefore free to the public to download. One particular title, ‘Banbury Chapbooks’ gave me a vast quantity of curious pictures that assisted me in coming up with a bizarre story of my life. Here are some examples of pictures that caught my eye and suggested curious moments from someone's insane biography.







I know it sounds easy to make a story out of pics with silly captions, but it wasn’t. I’ll see if I can explain why.

COMEDY ISN'T EASY

The theme of Tigers on the Beach is comedy and how it unites and divides us. Tigers on the Beach is my next Penguin novel, not the collage book we are currently discussing, for the purpose of analysing comedy, something that Mark Twain suggested you should never do.
Paul Collins owns and runs an independent publishing company, and we're very glad he does, because it gives us authors one more shot at getting published. Paul has been of great help to a number of authors and illustrators, and continues to publish with enthusiasm and aplomb. His books always look good, largely due to Paul’s strong working relationship with designer Grant Gittus. When Paul saw my blog story about the bizarre things that purportedly have happened to me in My Extraordinary Life and Death he very kindly offered to publish it as a book. I wasn’t sure about this, until Grant Gittus showed me how the book would be treated. It looked fantastic, so I went about the task of augmenting the story, and giving the whole thing a ‘comedy pass’. (That’s a film and TV script editor’s term. It simply means adding more and better jokes.)
I wanted to make the book as funny as possible. Which brings us to why it wasn’t easy to do this book. Everyone insists they have a sense of humour, but everyone’s is different. I did about seven versions of My Extraordinary Life and Death, all of which reside on my hard drive. I think a couple of them are actually funnier than the finished product. The reason I had to redo the book over and over is that Paul and his entourage (he tends to rely on quite a few helpful people and has interns) kept disagreeing with me on what was actually funny. I suppose that when comedy is presented so simply – a picture with a funny caption – everyone believes they can do it and that their way is better.
There was stuff that I thought we could lose, for the benefit of the overall ‘story’, but other people wanted to keep it. And I was obsessive about ‘plotting’ the book so that it really did cover an entire life. I had a war chapter and a school chums chapter, which I thought were both good, along with a few pages describing how the subject of the story (‘me’) made his vast fortune, enabling him to lead a life of eccentric luxury. But some people wanted to drop these chapters. I remember arguing with Paul about whether to use the word ‘tavern’ or ‘pub’ for this picture:

Paul wanted to use ‘tavern’ because it was more suitable to the Victorian period in which the story seems to take place. And of course ‘tavern’ means ‘pub’. Most people would know that. So why did I fight for ‘pub’ instead of ‘tavern’? I’ve finally worked out what bothers me about ‘tavern’. It’s a fine and elegant word but it trips up the reader.  One is inclined to linger just a moment too long, meaning the rhythm of the joke is lost. Jokes are like music. And even the best gag in the world can collapse in an embarassing heap if the person who tells it doesn’t have the timing or understand the joke’s ‘music’. Arguing about this page became symptomatic of the whole book. I got angrier and angrier. So did the Ford Street gang until they started getting notes like, ‘None of us thinks this is funny’, to which I would respond , ‘I’m sorry, but I do believe it’s funny and it’s my bloody book, etc.’ A sort of compromise was struck where we made a website that people could visit and see the chapters that were deleted. I really like the one about war. And there are four pages in the ‘general offcuts’, involving how the book’s subject made such vast quantities of money. I was pretty happy with the end product, and we certainly got our fair share of good reviews. One overenthuiastic critic even sompared it favourably with a new release from Joseph Heller.
The critic was clearly bonkers.
Paul works tirelessly to promote his product.  I did more interviews for My Extraordinary Life and Death than I have for any pf my other books. I’ve bought a fair bit of stock from Paul, because I don’t like to think that he is losing money on my title, which he was brave enough to bring into his stable. But he surely must be. I haven’t seen the book anywhere except on the odd sale table. I guess one of the problems is that the book is so beautifully made and designed, that it’s rather expensive. I had hoped that the book would be a ten dollar wonder, like the current crop of ‘Popular Penguins’. I think the book would have had a much happier and more commercial life if we had kept the unit price down. The quality of paper and binding is simply far too good for such a silly joke. It retails for twenty dollars, and I would urge you to buy it, if only to keep Ford Street from going under. Although you probably will get a few laughs out of it. Andy Griffiths, who knows a few things about comedy, is a fan, and the Oscar-winning movie director Adam Elliot has also sent me a lovely email, completely unsolicited, about how much he likes the book’s comedy.
I have an embarrassingly long history of producing mass market TV comedy shows. Look me up on It’s an award that many of my former employees would probably dispute. But it’s still a bloody award that I can hold up to the world to boast, ‘I’m good at comedy. I always have been.  And I bloody know why pub is funny and tavern isn’t in the context of page 110 of My Extraordinary Life and Death.

More Fun with Rehab

Dear reader,I'm making brilliant progress in stroke rehab. Today I want to present you with one of the exercises.(It's okay, I'm not breaking any rules.) My therapist gave me a block of type that had been badly punctuated. There was barely a full stop in the whole thing. Anyway, my job was to make it read like English and retype it. It struck me as I was doing the work that the prose had a surreal beauty about it. It was basically telling people what to do on days where some sporting event you don't like is taking place. It's not an article that was created to be taken seriously, or they wouldn't have made the references to Julie Andrews. Everything under EXERCISE is my corrected version of the copy.

Julie Andrews shows her obvious contempt for gridiron.
Everything under ADDENDUM is the instruction I felt I had to add, just in case readers didn't get the gist of the article. In other words, it was me just pissing about. My therapist pointed out that I had made some mistakes in rendering the content of the exercise, but that it seemed like I hadn't made any goofs in the addendum, which I guess means I preferred typing it. I wanted to make my therapist laugh. She did, then we continued with Mathematics for Living. (I can't put those on the blog for two reasons. They are copyrighted for medical use only and they are as interesting as algae.)
Anyway, here we go with the exercise, which I believe Basil Fawlty would describe as a journey into the bleeding obvious.   

EXERCISEYou don’t have to be a football fan to love Super Bowl Sunday. You can have a terrific time without ruining the game for others. ‘It’s actually a great day for non-football fans,’ says Julie Andrews, author of A Woman’s Guide to Football. You can go places and do things in relative peace because so many people will be wrapped up in the game.  So, plan your activities and leave the football fans to their entertainment. Here are Julie’s suggestions for having a super time during the January 28 Super Bowl:Celebrate the end of the season by throwing a party for your non-football friends, with plenty of food, music and fun activities. Have the party at the home of someone who has no fans in the house, so you won’t be disturbing any serious football-lovers, Julie advises. Rent videos you’ve been wanting to see. It’s a good day to get those hard-to-find movies that are always out.  Enjoy them with your favourite snacks in a room away from the gridiron fans.  Go somewhere you usually avoid because of crowds. Shopping malls, amusement parks, hit movies and other attractions will be less crowded because the Super Bowl keeps many people away. Find a quiet place to enjoy one of those books you’ve been meaning to read. This could be a quiet time when you can read without interruption. Spend time with a friend who’s not a football fan. Plan an entire day that includes lunch at your favourite restaurant and other activities that the two of you will enjoy together. Consider joining the football festivities if you don’t really hate the game, but you don’t understand it enough to be a fan. Take some time before the super Bowl to learn about football. Julie suggests it’s not that difficult and you may discover you actually enjoy it.
ADDENDUMThings to avoid when planning your special non-Super Bowl Day:
Do not have your special gathering in the sporting arena where the game is actually being played as there will almost definitely be crowds there and you will find yourself in the very situation you were trying to avoid! If you have an acid-throwing machine at your house, make sure to switch it off before your non-Super Bowl activities take place. You probably shouldn’t have an acid-throwing machine anyway, as Julie Andrews argues at some length in her recent two volume bestseller, Don’t waste your Money on Stupid, Dangerous Machinery that throws Acid.
Julie Andrews adds with a note of caution that it is considered exceedingly poor form not to attend the Super Bowl if you are actually a gridiron player on one of the two teams competing. Also, remember that many people go to the game as a family, which of course will mean that their homes are vacant for the afternoon. Seize the opportunity to burgle these houses as you will meet little resistance, and you may also come away with quite a substantial swag of contraband. It is best to steal small, valuable things that are easily transported. Julie Andrews suggests it is unwise to steal refrigerators as these are large, cumbersome and difficult to maneuver. You will find it easier to hock items such as jewelry and up-to-date electronic equipment. If your husband insists on attending the Super Bowl, despite your imploring that he spend time with you, then you may care to pursue couples counselling, or indeed shooting him if this does not render positive results. Though Julie Andrews is quick to remind her readers that murdering your husband can lead to all manner of complications. There is also the very real possibility that your bullet may miss and Hubby may return fire, leaving you dead and bleeding on the settee. Hardly the Super Bowl celebration one would hope for! Toodle-pip!



ADDENDUMThings to avoid when planning your special non-Super Bowl Day:
Do not have your special gathering in the sporting arena where the game is actually being played as there will almost definitely be crowds there and you will find yourself in the very situation you were trying to avoid! If you have an acid-throwing machine at your house, make sure to switch it off before your non-Super Bowl activities take place. You probably shouldn’t have an acid-throwing machine anyway, as Julie Andrews argues at some length in her recent two volume bestseller, Don’t waste your Money on Stupid, Dangerous Machinery that throws Acid.
Julie Andrews adds with a note of caution that it is considered exceedingly poor form not to attend the Super Bowl if you are actually a gridiron player on one of the two teams competing. Also, remember that many people go to the game as a family, which of course will mean that their homes are vacant for the afternoon. Seize the opportunity to burgle these houses as you will meet little resistance, and you may also come away with quite a substantial swag of contraband. It is best to steal small, valuable things that are easily transported. Julie Andrews suggests it is unwise to steal refrigerators as these are large, cumbersome and difficult to maneuver. You will find it easier to hock items such as jewelry and up-to-date electronic equipment. If your husband insists on attending the Super Bowl, despite your imploring that he spend time with you, then you may care to pursue couples counselling, or indeed shooting him if this does not render positive results. Though Julie Andrews is quick to remind her readers that murdering your husband can lead to all manner of complications. There is also the very real possibility that your bullet may miss and Hubby may return fire, leaving you dead and bleeding on the settee. Hardly the Super Bowl celebration one would hope for! Toodle-pip!