The Ultimate Aphrodisiac
Page 43
Now a disclaimer. When I rang Williamstown RAAF base pestering the public relations person there about the ceilings RAAF F–16s and F–18s fly at over Australia, a delightful young lady there told me if I found out any more she would have to come down and shoot me. So if any agents from the CIA, KGB, MI6, or the Pakistani ISI want to shoot me, hold your fire. All that stuff about Umatilla and Silverdale I got watching SBS. MI6 HQ I found watching the ABC. So shoot the head of the ABC or whatever wog runs the programs at SBS. As to whether there’s any nuclear missile sites at Ussuryisk or Quazi Ahmed, I wouldn’t have a clue. I just got a detailed map of the world, checked some wind variations, took some measurements, and figured if I was a general, that’s where I’d put one.
Finally, for all the good people wanting Team Norton. The Possum Lady is with us no more and I have had to move the business from Tamarama to Terrigal. The new address is:
Psycho Possum Productions
P.O. Box 382
Terrigal NSW 2260
There’s no phone and there’s no VISA. There’s also no more bumbags and other tat. Just Australian-made T-shirts and caps exclusively for my readers. Pick what you want from the website. Write it down on a piece of paper with your name, full address and phone number and attach a cheque or money order. This eliminates wasting paper on order forms and faxes. Send it to the above address and we’ll get your order back to you ASAP. The Ultimate Aphrodisiac will be available as a T-shirt. Strike a light! I’d be mad not to do a T-shirt from this cover. I reckon the new artist, Mark Vesey, did a sensational job on it. Also, there is something new. I never realised till I moved things up to Terrigal just how many fit and healthy Australian women are wearing Team Norton. I discussed this with some women up here. So I’m now doing tank tops. Plus, I’m also doing the ultimate Team Norton put-down tank top, especially for women. Check this out on the website, girls. You’ll love it. Now for all the blokes that want Team Norton, both the good old big ’uns and the big old good ’uns, I’ll make sure there are plenty of XXL T-shirts to drag over your barrel chests and massive paunches. And you can stop crying and moaning in your beer, ‘Where’s bloody Les bloody Norton?’ Les will be back in November. After he lays waste to Narooma while he checks out the blues festival. I can’t tell you any more than that at this stage. But there will be the usual sex scenes, drug references, coarse language and constant violence. I’m also working on something for any of my readers into surfing or water sports. The Team Norton Turbo Vortex Wave Jammer. We’re still working on the prototypes, but I hope to have these things up and running well before summer 2002. Click onto the website and check out these little pearlers. I tell you, more than a butterfly kicked me in the head when I was at Nan Madoll. Finally, finally. Has anyone heard a CD called Wishbone by a bloke named Red Rivers? I bought one at an ABC shop. Have a listen. And have a look at the cover. See what you think. It’s a top CD. Thanks for reading my books. I do hope you like this one, and I’ll catch up with you again in the next one.
Robert G. Barrett
PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE — 14 September 2001
Robert G. Barrett
The Ultimate Aphrodisiac
PUBLICATION DELAYED
Due to the recent tragic events in the US, HarperCollinsPublishers are delaying publication of Robert G. Barrett’s new novel, The Ultimate Aphrodisiac, originally scheduled to be released in November this year.
The novel, set in a fictional island in the Pacific, includes scenes of military attacks on the United States, and the United States declaring itself at war.
‘Robert G. Barrett is known for his classic and irreverent humour, and The Ultimate Aphrodisiac is no exception,’ says HarperCollins Fiction Publisher, Linda Funnell. ‘But right now when our hearts are going out to Americans in the aftermath of the terrible events of this week, it is difficult to see the funny side.’
At this stage an alternative publication date has not been confirmed but HarperCollins hopes to release the book in the first half of 2002.
Robert G. Barrett has said:
‘As my readers and the booksellers know, I generally bring out a book every November. This year would have been no exception. I have just spent the last eight months writing a novel, The Ultimate Aphrodisiac. It is not a Les Norton, although the book is high farce and written with a humorous content. It involves the start of a third world war, UFOs and fighting against the American military and its NATO allies.
‘You can imagine how I and my publishers felt when, at the completion of the novel, the events I portrayed started unfolding on TV. It was eerie. Therefore, in consultation with my publishers, we are withholding the book. A week ago we all thought the book was an absolute hoot. Not now.
‘Like all Australians, I believe there is an affinity between our country and the United States of America. We enjoy a laugh at their expense, as well as having a drink with them, and I believe our hospitality towards visiting American servicemen and women is second to none. But deep down they have our respect and our appreciation for their help in our time of need.
‘At the present time they have our deepest sympathies and our admiration for the courageous way they have faced up to the barbarous act thrust upon them. So in respect to the American people and my readers we are holding publication of my latest book until possibly next year. All I can add to this is, good luck, America, and God bless.’
They Call Me Barbara
Gee it’s great being an awther. You travel the world, make heaps of money and get fan mail. After visiting some ancient ruins in Micronesia, I wrote a 400-page novel titled The Ultimate Aphrodisiac. A World War Three, UFOs, aliens-in-the-moon thing based around two Aussie surfers flying magnetospheric crystalline electronic grid scanners armed with anti-matter interferometers, firing destruction vortexes. And how they sink half the United States Pacific Fleet. The best part of a year I spent writing the book. Saturday nights and public holidays, I spent writing the book. Pills that make you write faster than a speeding bullet, I took to finish the book before Christmas and keep my publishers happy.
I sent the book in for editing and what a jolly laugh we all had about it. My action-packed send-up of a right-wing American administration run by a boofhead president was a hoot. Well done, Barbara, my publishers told me. It was the best thing I’d ever written. They’d have a nice, big, juicy contract for me to sign. (If you’re wondering, I have to cop Barbara from various people at my publishers. Because in jest, I once told a newspaper I’d make a great romance novelist, and if I wanted to I could be the next Barbara Cartland.)
Then Barbara’s world fell in a heap. Just as I finished the book, two trainee Muslim pilots, allegedly mates of Osama Bin Laden, got lost over New York and accidently crashed into the World Trade Centre. This probably sounds like the ultimate in political correctness. But after what happened to Salman Rushdie, I’m not taking any chances with Muslims. But it was uncanny. All this death and destruction in New York. Huge orange fireballs. Buildings imploding in on themselves. Thousands killed. Osama Bin Laden. Muslim terrorists. Chemical weapons. Everything I’d been writing about for almost a year started appearing on TV.
Naturally, my publishers shit themselves. Suddenly my book was about as funny as a Klingon feminist with PMT. It was in bad taste and highly offensive to our valued friends and allies, the Americans. Worse, Barbara was now the evil one. Barbara had foretold the prophecy. She could see dead people. Barbara was in league with the devil.
Bollocks. I haven’t got 666 tattooed into my head. And the book wasn’t blatant Yank-bashing. Okay, the two surfies sink five American aircraft carriers, three nuclear submarines, shoot down hundreds of jet fighters and kill over thirty thousand American military personnel, plus collateral damage. But they give the Frogs and Poms a serve too. I even called into the publishers looking like an alien, to explain the book was entirely fiction laced with gratuitous sex and drugs and rock’n’roll. It made no difference. Piss off, Barbara. Take your boo
k and stick it where the chiffon is pinkest.
So instead of publishing my book, they sent out press releases with me apologising for something I had nothing to do with, that I had written about months before it even bloody happened. And instead of an advance royalties cheque, I got a huge bill from Energy Australia and another one from someone called BAS. Now I was broke and going to have to write something else in a hurry. And being totally bereft of ideas after spending almost a year writing a 400-page sandshoe, it looked like I was going to have to resort to a little literary shoplifting. Plagiarism. But life as an awther isn’t always swimming against a river of frustration and misery.
I received a letter and a CD from Neil Mumme: Mummy. I’d never met him. But Mummy tours rock bands and runs the Great Southern Blues and Rockabilly Festival. I rang up Mummy and thanked him. He said he was touring my way with Johnnie Johnson at Mooney Mooney Workers Club. Would I like to come? He’d put me on the guest list. Would I what. I love Johnnie Johnson. ‘Drink of Tanqueray’ is one of my favourite songs. I told Mummy I’d see him there and shout him a couple of Team Norton T-shirts. He said make sure they were XXXXL. Then I went back to wasting my time writing a book that was coming along famously, and organised a lift to the gig.
I’d met a person up my way who didn’t drink and liked rock’n’roll. I told the person I’d shout the petrol and everything if the person would drive. The person was cool and picked me up on the day of the gig. The person didn’t drink. But didn’t the person like a hot one. We orbited along the F3 in some Japanese space capsule with a sun roof, ya-yas going around the car like a scene out of Fritz the Cat. We got to the gig and I fronted reception. Sorry. No R.G. Barrett on the guest list. Rather than put on a drama I paid the freight. I lost face in front of the person, but I’d just as soon pay. That way if the gig is lousy, you’re not under any obligation to say different. We found Mummy, I gave him his T-shirts and understood what he meant by XXXXL. But what a nice bloke and what a good gig in a top venue. And Johnnie Johnson was sensational. Afterwards I went backstage, met Johnnie Johnson and had my photo taken with him. And I just want to say, here and now, how pleased Johnnie Johnson was to meet me. He was ecstatic.
As a bestselling awthor, I get around and meet a lot of people. And of all the people I’ve met, Johnnie Johnson was the happiest to have met me. Then the person and myself zoomed back to Terrigal in the space capsule and I went back to wasting my time writing the best book I’d ever written.
Then I got a brochure from Mummy for the Great Southern Blues and Rockabilly Festival at Narooma. Three days of rock’n’roll over the October Labour Day long weekend. Heaps of bands, including Sleepy La Beef. I would crawl through barbed wire and roll in dog turds to see Sleepy La Beef. Sleepy doesn’t just sing and play guitar. He tears off chords and flings them at you like thunderbolts. If you haven’t heard SLB singing ‘Low Down Dog’, you’re living under a big wet rock. Okay — I admit I’m an old bodgie. I like rock’n’roll and I can’t get into today’s music. I bought a heap of Aussie CDs to research my new book. Everything from Powderfinger to SuperJesus to Killing Heidi and Skunkhour. They’re all right, but they ain’t got no lop-bobba-loo-lop. They ain’t even got the lop-bam-boom. And staying up to watch Rage on the ABC? Every band looks the same, they all go to the same singing coach as Marilyn Manson and they’re all croaking out the same angst-ridden blather. Life sucks, the world stinks, so I’m going to put a stud through my tongue and eat cockroaches. To me, rock’n’roll is Willie and the Poor Boys doing ‘Chicken Shack’, Dave Tyce and the Bar Kings doing ‘Down the Road Apiece,’ Johnno’s Blues Band doing ‘Bye Bye Baby’. Or a band up my way, the Bellhops, doing ‘Sick and Tired’. You can stick grunge and the garage it came in. I got a three-day ticket to the festival and rented a flat on the plastic fantastic and told Mummy I’d see him on the day. Then went back to my steaming computer and finished the book.
Despite the shit hitting the fan in New York and all the drama, I packed the ute and split for Narooma on Thursday morning, making one stop for petrol and two pies at Ulladulla. The culprits will go unnamed. But be warned. If you’re driving south, you wouldn’t give their bacon and beef atrocity to a lawyer. With the two depth charges mouldering in my stomach I arrived at Narooma and found my digs, right across the road from the lagoon and ten easy minutes walk to the gig. I called round and found Mummy. He asked me how the drive down was. I said all right and well worth it to see Sleepy La Beef. Sorry, Bob. After what happened in New York, Sleepy wouldn’t get on a plane. I was shattered. To cheer me up, Mummy gave me a tag to wear round my neck with GUEST on it. After what happened at Mooney Workers I was sceptical. But I thanked him, looking forward to Friday when the gig started.
The next morning I went for an hour’s walk around Narooma. In the original Aboriginal dialect, Noorooma means ‘Clear Blue Water’. You can see why. I stopped on a bridge over the lagoon and peered into the water at a school of fifty or more bream and blackfish sitting under a pylon and it looked like they were floating in mid-air. Later I drove down to Bermagui where they filmed The Man Who Sued God and on the way back I stopped at Mystery Bay, a strangely beautiful place complete with a big cave and an old disused boat ramp. Mystery Bay got its name because five men disappeared there in 1881. Their abandoned boat was found with the anchor and ropes missing, and the planks stove out, not in. They also found the men’s personal effects and a small blue vial containing a mysterious liquid deemed to be poison. The idea for a book hit me. I could plagiarise Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Mystery of the Abbey Grange. How about, The Mystery of Mystery Bay? Deducing the idea for a book, I galloped the horse and sulky back to Baker Street, had a few sherries with Watson then put on my deerstalker and strolled down to the gig.
If I was to write about the venue and every band I saw over the next three days I’d be here forever. So I’ll be as concise as possible. There were three huge tents with ample seating, food stalls, other stalls, a booze stand and over thirty bands. I got into Johnno’s Blues Band, Rock Bottom James and The Detonators and Bob Patient. I saw and met Dave Hole, who has to be schizophrenic. He duckwalks across the stage, does scissor kicks and almost wrings the neck off his guitar playing scorching slide rock’n’roll. I met Dave and his wife Janet after, and you’d think they were the nice quiet couple who ran the corner shop and post office. I saw Thorpie, Blue Katz and a great new talent: Pete Cornelius from Tasmania. He sings the blues and plays the guitar like he was born with a Fender and he’s seventeen. Amongst the Aussie bands, I saw Rusty Zin and Little Charlie and the Nightcats from America. The Nightcats lead singer and harmonica player, Ric Estrin, as well as playing a mean harp, is the slickest, best-dressed dude I have ever seen on stage. While I was roaming around listening to bands and racking up CDs and T-shirts on the plastic fantastic, I checked out the punters. Definitely not your bottle of mineral water, disco biscuit, streaks and hipsters crowd. More — tight denim, leather, comfortable dresses, hats, Hawaiian shirts, T-shirts, beards and ponytails. JD, VB, steak sandwiches with extra onions and all into a rockin’ good time. I saw families, I met some of my readers. I even met a bloke called Spike with a dog named Grungle. When I wasn’t at the gig, I pumped some cash into the south coast economy at the local flea market and a secondhand shop.
Narooma’s got a good flea market where I bought two magnetised car seat covers for ten dollars. Here’s a handy hint from Barbara. If you work in front of a computer or whatever, put a magnetised car seat cover on your office chair. See if you don’t notice the difference. Immensely pleased with my bargain, I wandered happily through the stalls of cumquat marmalade, leadlights, old clothes and incense burners, etc. And there it was. Sitting on a secondhand bookstall amongst the Pamela Oldfields, Joanna Trollopes and Phillippa Gregories: one of my books on sale for four lousy dollars. This burnt my arse. So I fronted the two sheilas running the bookstall and demanded to know what was going on. Was that all they could get for one of my books? Four bloody dollars. The two w
omen stood up and they were as big as me, bigger — and not used to being mouthed off at by mugs from out of town. I quickly gave them my best syrupy awther’s smile and suggested if I autographed the book, they might get five bucks for it. The ladies, Caroline and Jennifer, were quite sweet and rather chuffed to meet a living, breathing author. They said if I signed the book, they’d never sell it. Caroline said she might even read it. I got out of that okay and drove into beautiful, downtown Narooma.
Then I found it. That one thing you’ve been looking for all your life. A stuffed parrot sitting in a secondhand shop. It was love at first sight. Another thing I like about country towns. As well as a pick up a bargain, you can always find people who speak Strine. I speak fluent Strine. Most people don’t know Strine originated from another, ancient, Aboriginal dialect. I fronted the owner and our conversation was both laconic and succinct.
‘Gidaymade. Owmujvithuparrad?’
‘Ohhshidmade. Igosmealoddamuny. Igoddagedadleez vive bugs verrid.’
‘Nowurriesmade. Erezyadoe. I’lldagidasidiz.’
Five bucks. What a bargain. Happy as a lark, I got the stuffed macaw back to my digs and thought, what another great idea for a book. I could plagiarise Raymond Chandler’s The Maltese Falcon. What about, The Narooma Macaw? I felt me and the parrot were looking good.
By the time the last band came on on Sunday night I figured out what the GUEST tag Mummy gave me was for. I could go backstage. So I did. For the closing act: Jo Jo Zepp and the Falcons with Wilbur Wilde on saxophone. I always thought Wilbur was just comedy relief on the old Hey Hey. No way, baby. Wilbur plays an educated axe. Along with Joe Camalleri, they brought the house down — or in this case, the tent. Another thing I discovered while I was roaming around behind the band, was the energy coming from the crowd. You can feel it. Bands must feed on this, which is why you see different entertainers put on such fantastic performances. It was something I’d never experienced before. The Falcons did two howling encores and I staggered home. I paid my way and I owe nobody a plug. But if you want a weekend of rock’n’roll, in a beautiful location, visit the Narooma Blues and Rockabilly Festival. You won’t be disappointed.