Still Riding on the Storm

by Robert G. Barrett

  MARK-MARK-MARK. Thinking he’s saved, he crawls from his campfire over to the bushes, peers into the scrub and finds it’s a dog with a hare lip. There was another breakfast mob rabbiting away much the same on 2MMM only they were being saved by the man of a 1000 voices, Dave Gibson. 2WS sounded pretty much a clone of 2Day and then there was the NEW UW MIX. Good old Mike Carlton, straining that hard to be funny he’s giving himself a hernia, along with the full production treatment and some refried Club Veg, Mike came out with the best line I’ve heard on radio though. It was on 2GB and John Laws left to join 2UE when it was in its death throes. ‘Well,’ said Mike. ‘At least I don’t have to prop John Laws up anymore.’ 2UE and John Laws shot up to number one and Mike finished up rating below the Marcel Marceau hour on 2SFAFM. Then there’s 2JJJ. I’ve been interviewed on JJJ and I do listen at times. To me they’re about the best of a bad bunch. But don’t they love to take the moral high ground on JJJ. They must all be constantly dizzy with altitude sickness. And when they get a roll on about Mabo and gay issues the warm inner glow coming out of the speakers is enough to heat up an aircraft hangar. But at least they play some alternative music and give Australian bands a go. As for the others?

  As well as fascist and nazi, I’ve found another social definition I can slot into. Evidently I’m also something called a baby boomer. So I’m supposed to like baby boomer music. I flicked round the dial and in between egos, ads and oneliners I copped the following musical blanc-mange. ‘Band on the Run’ — Paul McCartney. ‘Monday Monday’ — Mommas and the Poppas. ‘Sounds of Silence’ — Simon and Carbuncle. This oozed into ‘Baby I’m a Want You’ — Bread. ‘Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me’ — Elton John. ‘Witchita Linesman’ — Glen Campbell and ‘By the Time I Get to Phoenix’ — Glen Campbell. By the time this dribbled into ‘Witchy Woman’, ‘Tequila Sunrise’ and ‘Desperado’ — The Eagles, I was ready either for the smelling salts or a bath full of hot water and razor blades. Then I got a full broadside of ‘The Rain in Africa’ — Toto, and ‘Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad’ — Meatloaf. This is baby boomer music? I reckon, to cut costs, all the FM stations have got together and bought one box of CDs.

  Hits of the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s etc, and The Best of Madonna, Phil Collins, Elton, America etc, and they swap them round between them. Possibly I’m wrong about this music. Maybe there’s people out there get off on this ooze. Then they must be either full of Valium and prozac and their brains have turned to meringue.

  Why are these wimp stations terrified to boogie a little, move into the ’90s and at least give some Australian music a go. And I don’t mean Johnny Farnham strangling ‘Burn for You’ to death every hour. What’s wrong with Nathan Cavaleri, Steve Hoy, Dave Hole, Deborah Conway, Kate Ceberano, Lee Kernaghan, Harlem Shuffle, The Cockroaches or The Poor. Play some tracks from their CDs so we can hear what they’ve got to offer. Why not give some of the new Aussie bands a go now and again.

  Okay, some of their stuff might be a bit iffy. But at least we’ll know they’re still out there trying to keep Australian music alive. And no matter what they play, surely it couldn’t be any worse than hearing ‘Don’t Worry Baby’ by the Beach Boys for the 6000th time. One newspaper article said the FM stations are panicking because JJJ’s grabbing the 18 to 25 market. Why wouldn’t they, not serving slop like that up day in and day out? Though I dare say the cutie pies on JJJ wouldn’t find the going so cute if they had to flog ads in between the grandiose. It’s nice to be a public servant. Something like I was when I was on the dole. Whatever, I threw the towel in before some myxomatosis-diseased DJ got a chance to dredge up ‘Into the Night’ by Benny Mardones and ‘Moscow’ by Genghis Khan.

  So that’s my whining and dining column for the week. All about nothing; except me sitting around broke and on my own listening to the radio. But don’t feel sorry for me. Even though I truly appreciate your sentiments, things aren’t quite as dim as they seem. Snookered away in Ramos’s flat I found a large empty sack with some writing on one side. I’ll describe exactly what’s on it.

  Across the top it says EXPORTACION. PUNTAS DE ORO.

  Beneath that is a woman’s head surrounded by a red and gold sunset, with a red and gold design. The woman’s wearing a red and gold top and radiating from her head are all these big green leaves. Underneath all this it says MARIJUANA. FINA CALIDAD. COLOMBIA. 50 KILOS. Which means Ramos has done a giant pot deal in the flat before I got him out of the country. There’s a garage that goes with the flat for which I haven’t got a key. It’s possible that in the garage is another big sack of ganja. Maybe more. All I’ve got to do is watch the Feds and the cartel and break in. There could be anything in there.

  One thing for sure though, no matter what I find, you’d need more than 50 kilos of Colombian heads to make Sydney radio sound any good.

  Things haven’t improved much. I couldn’t get into Ramos’s garage, it’s built like a fortress; which means there’s definitely something in there. So, I’m still holed up here on my own and with my money dwindling. Somehow I’m going to have to make a run back to Dogpatch and get my credit cards and a tin of coins I’ve got buried in the backyard. Something I’m not looking forward to. Though there is the odd ray of sunshine in my life. I’ve been getting some nice letters from the readers. You get the odd lemon now and again. But that’s okay. Sour ones always make the nice ones sweeter. One young lady, Jane Sheridan of Double Bay, even wrote a poem. I’m not into poetry, but Jane’s was so sweet and it was such a lovely thought, I thought I might try and get one together myself. A kind of ode to some women I’ve known and possibly this column.

  In Bondi it was Brenda.

  At Maroubra it was Flo.

  At Coogee it was Candy,

  the sweetest girl I know.

  At Bronte it was Sheila,

  the best of all the bunch.

  But as far as my accountant knows,

  they were all petrol, oil and lunch.

  When I say I’m not into poetry. What I really mean is, I can’t stand those punishing bores who come up to me in hotels or at parties and give me GBH of the earhole with their morose, boozy ramblings. Or when I read about poets like Les Murray. I can honestly say, I have never met anyone who’s ever read one of his poems or bought one of his books. Yet I saw in some literary column where he’s received around $500,000 in grants from the Arts Council. The literary dole office. If you think this is just sour grapes on my part because I had to work and wasn’t lucky enough to live on grants, get yourself a pencil and a piece of paper and work out how long it would take you to save $500,000 on your wages.

  Poets and such in Australia should try a strange and unique experience now and again which might even enhance their careers. Get a job and go to work, like everybody else. Apart from any literary dole bludgers — and you can quote me on this — poets are mostly boring, philosophical introverts or giggling fools. Poetry is mostly a boring ramble of words about misery and nothingness. If you can make poetry boring, miserable and nothing enough, but can’t get the words to rhyme, you pass it off as prose. However, all songs are basically poems set to music, and there’s a lot of great songs out there. Which still doesn’t say anything for poets. Only songwriters.

  Anyway, waxing lyrical doesn’t get this column together and I have to live. So with what little money I had, I got disguised as a Tibetan monk and went for a walk around Bondi to see what I could see. No one took any notice of me strolling about. Not even this one bloke I saw having an even more miserable existence than me. I was near the Ramada Hotel building in Campbell Parade and I stopped outside a small Thai restaurant called the Thai Breakers. There was a barbecue out front where a Thai chef was turning satay sticks. There was another barbecue inside with this surfie looking bloke in a pair of board shorts turning more satay sticks; millions of them. He was about seven feet tall with a face about as long as he was. I thought you poor bludger. The Asian hordes have finally taken over and got you trapped in there, sweating to death over a
barbecue for coolie’s wages. No wonder he looked so miserable. I wandered off, wondering where it would all end and was standing outside my old Alma Mater, Bondi Beach Public School, when I heard a woman’s voice. ‘Hey Bob, what are you doing walking around dressed as the Dalai Lama?’ It was a young glamour. Tall, long brown hair, nicely dressed in a white T-shirt and jeans, about 22 years old. She had to have me mixed up with someone else, but I nodded my head. It turned out she was the daughter of a bloke I used to work with. Her name was Julie.

  I bailed him out of gaol on a malicious wounding charge. The last time I saw little Julie she was about 12. Gangly, cheeky, covered in freckles and teeth like she had a mouthful of wooden clothes pegs. Little Julie was little no more. She was stacked like a timber yard with legs up to her neck. I told her my story and got hers. Dad was back in gaol, she was going to uni doing law and working part-time in Oxford Street as a dancer. She also mentioned she had two free tickets for the movies. The Dalai Lama’s brain clicked into gear. I said if she took me to the pictures I’d shout her lunch under $30. Julie suggested the Thai Breakers just across the road. That suited me, I got a bit of a taste for Thai food after the cookout and I could laugh at the poor, silly mug tossing the satay sticks.

  The restaurant does a booming takeaway trade, there’s chairs and tables outside but some people were leaving so we sat inside. It was bright and comfy, with blackboard menus and such with a bit of light music playing. Julie knew the poor surfie bludger chained to the barbecue, who turned out to be the owner Steve Turner. Poor bludger all right, I thought, as about another 500 satay sticks went out the door. Shows how much I know about people at times. Steve sort of nodded hello, but he was too busy to come over so we sat down and ordered. I won’t bother with all the Thai names, but we ordered barbecued octopus, prawns tamarind, vegetarian rolls, chargrilled chicken salad and stirfried chicken with cashew nuts. Plus steamed rice and two bottles of Orangina.

  What can I say. It was all senscrumptional. Lots of fresh veges with the prawns, the octopi were juicy and tender, the chargrilled chicken was spicy but with enough crisp salad to even it up, the vege rolls went down easy and the chicken and cashews had stacks of beans, carrots etc. alongside. And heaps of it. Chomp, snort, slurp; we hoed in. To top it off we had Glay Buat Chii. Bananas done in sweet coconut milk. Excellent. All up the bill was $29.

  That’s with two bottles of imported orange juice in a fancy bottle. I’ll stick to the local Hepburn Spa next time, thank you. We waved goodbye to the surfie on the satay sticks who waved back. But I could barely make him out between the smoke rising off the barbecue and the steam pouring out of the till. Poor bastard. Then it was off to the movies. Julie was calling the shots here and she liked Jack Nicholson so we went to see Wolf. Which suited me. I like Jack too and according to what I’d read in the paper about this film there was something here for me to relate to. Evidently Jack is a publishing editor who turns into a werewolf. I know my publishers are vampires. They’ve been sucking the blood from me for almost 10 years. And when they have to pay me my royalties cheque twice a year they howl like werewolves.

  The movie’s okay, I guess. But I’m sorry, Julie and I just couldn’t seem to take it seriously. Okay, Jack Nicholson’s a publisher who’s about to get the sack, his wife is porking another editor behind his back and he runs over a wolf which bites him when he does the right thing to see if it’s all right. But what do you expect? Jack drives a bloody Volvo. I felt more sorry for the wolf. Out in the middle of nowhere and it gets barrelled by some dill driving a St Ives Holden. Anyway, with his new found wolverine sensitivities, Jack gets his job back plus a raise and ends up in the cot with his boss’s daughter: Michelle Pfeiffer. It’s a long movie but the acting is first class all the way so that keeps you interested. It’s not in the least bit scary and the special effects aren’t overdone. It’s just Jack getting all hairy and he starts growling and leaping around all over the place fighting this other werewolf for Michelle Pfeiffer’s honour. I reckoned he looked like Zeke Wolf full of bad speed, and Julie said he reminded her of some giant, deranged flying fox with a severe case of male menopause. The ending after two hours? Well, silver bullets and police questions aside, let’s say the writers wriggled out of it okay. And so did Julie and myself.

  I dropped not so little Julie off at Waverley and said seeing as I was living in the area I might see her again. She said for sure. She was busy with her studies and dancing but keep in touch. She’d say hello to her father for me when they went out to Long Bay to visit him on the weekend.

  Do that, Julie. And while you’re there, ask him if he knows anyone around Bondi that’s any good at breaking into garages. All up, not a bad day, I thought, for a fat monk. The food was great, the movie was okay for nothing, I suppose. Plus how often do you get to take out a good sort and you’re almost old enough to be her uncle? Sounds all right to me.

  I don’t know about you. Owoo! Ow! Ow! Owooooh!

  This week’s restaurant column should be a lot of fun. I’ve got food poisoning. Not all that bad, but bad enough. I got it from a cabbage roll I bought at a Russian deli not far from Ramos’s flat that’s run by two blokes I reckon are KGB agents. The bastards.

  However, even though I was crook, the worst case of food poisoning I’ve ever had was in Hawaii. The new book I got coming out involves these Korean hookers in Honolulu so while I was there I thought I’d sample the cuisine at this place behind the International Markets. It was a sort of self-serve and I got all these odds and ends including some chicken that was sort of a glowing orange colour and this green gunk I thought was spinach. The whole lot was off and what I thought was spinach was seaweed.

  As soon as I got a few mouthfuls down I knew everything was a bit suss. Especially the spinach. It tasted like when I fell over drunk one time down near the rocks at North Bondi and landed face first in this tidal pool at low tide, that had been baking in the sun all day full of cigarette butts and stale old seaweed. I bolted back to my hotel room and tried to get this Korean food out of me. But to no avail. I used epsom salts, soda water, hot salty water, milk of magnesia, bat’s blood: anything. Nothing worked, I was up all night on and off the throne, bucket next to the bed. When I did doze off from sheer exhaustion I kept hallucinating and having nightmares. The headaches and stomach cramps were just about indescribable. The only thing I could find to ease the pain was these tablets called Menudal. Sheilas take them for period pain. I took the whole box in two swallows. They’re good pills. They not only helped the food poisoning, they completely cured any lingering PMT I had. But that was the sickest I’ve ever been in my life and I’ve never eaten Korean food since. Nor do I linger near rock pools at low tide.

  So there I was, wandering around Bondi, not feeling a hundred per cent and trying to get a bit of fresh air. I didn’t bother putting on a disguise. My face and skin was all pale and waxy and with the kind of brown and black tracksuit top I was wearing I looked like Commander Data, the android that runs the console in the new series of Star Trek. I was walking near the pavilion when who should I bump into but a nurse I used to take out years ago — Mavis. When I first met Mavis she was a bit on the thin side, had a good personality and liked dancing. Now she’d filled out, wears glasses and her hair in a bun and in her cardigan and dress she reminded me of Mrs Doubtfire. But she was happy to see me again and she hadn’t lost her personality. She’d been married, now she was divorced and worked at the Glebe Coroners Court. I told her my story and how I wasn’t feeling the best. Mavis agreed. She told me the water police brought in bodies of eighty-year-old men that had been in the ocean for over a week looked better than I did. Thanks, Mavis. The good ol’ gal that she is. She slapped me on the back and said what I needed was a good night out on the piss and a bit of rock ’n’ roll. I said, yeah why not. I couldn’t feel much worse than I did at the moment. But first we’d go to the pictures. So we bussed and trained it into the city and saw Natural Born Killers with Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis, aka M
ick and Mallory.

  I honestly don’t know how to describe this film. It’s not a movie in the true sense of the word. It’s a kind of amalgamation of everything with a droning soundtrack and you view the whole schemozzle through a kaleidoscope. One minute it’s a film, then it’s a TV show, then it’s a rock video clip, then it is done like a scene from a TV soapie, then it’s a scene from an actual TV soapie, then it’s the 6 o’clock news, then it’s 60 Minutes, then it’s a cartoon and that’s not when it’s switching from colour to black and white and back to colour. It’s weird. I won’t bother trying to explain the story because there isn’t one. Mick and Mallory kill various people, get sent to gaol and escape. It’s entertaining in parts, I suppose.

  I liked it when Mallory punched out this redneck mug in a bar; for a skinny sheila she’s got a great straight left. And Mrs Doubtfire said she liked the part where the Australian TV journalist went mad during the prison breakout and got in on the action with a .45 himself and blew a few people away. After two hours of violence shot through a kaleidoscope however, along with Micky and Mallory’s droning, mid-west American accents we were both glad when it was over. What Oliver Stone was trying to say with his film I’m not quite sure. Some message against violence? But knowing your average seppo psychopath, I imagine it won’t be long before various American wallys run out with an automatic shotgun and a .45 Magnum and blow a dozen or so people away trying to emulate Micky and Mallory.