Yes, I know my cerebral and high-brow inner voice tells me selfies are dumb, but I took one today. I was behind the steering wheel of my car - not yet driving! - about to head off to some events being conducted at the Scone Literary Long Weekend. I was feeling glam - my hair was freshly laundered, and I was wearing make-up, something I rarely do since I no longer work in an office. I had on my fashionably large-framed sunglasses for protection and style, and took a selfie. I have duly uploaded that selfie to my Facebook page, and am wondering at the wisdom of having done so. The combination of the photograph's angle and my oh-so-fashionably-large-framed sunglasses have made me look like a mutant blowfly. Speaking of which, where in the blue blazes are they all coming from? They were swarming around my house this morning like the Luftwaffe, and I grabbed the spray and went on the chemical warfare offensive. Of course I have to spray them when they are on the windows, so I now have toxic residue on my panes, and the sills resemble the killing fields of Cambodia as they are stuffed to breaking point with the corpses of dead flies. Why do my kids not listen when I bark at them to shut the screen door?
But yeah, I made my excited way to Scone, although the trip was sullied by the song 'Bop Girl' being played on the radio. That nails-down-the-blackboard piece of Pure Pop Poop has been going around and around in my head ever since, like a squeaky poltergeist. I really get the shits when I hear this song. It gives me a similar reaction to getting a piece of aluminium foil on one of my fillings. It was devised, in a moment of pure brain fart, by Ross Wilson for his then wife. Ross is such a prolific figure in the Oz music industry, so I don't know what he was thinking when he decided to come up with this crud. Maybe he was inspired by a squawking cockatiel or something. The film clip for this inanity features some fat old bag pinning football socks to the clothesline in time with the beat which must be the most pointless piece of music footage since I saw the Monkees movie 'Head' some years ago. Come on, everyone: 'Head' stank, and if you've seen it whilst NOT under the influence of some drug, you know I write the truth. Oh, and the film clip for 'Bop Girl' also has a young Nicole Kidman dressed as a school girl in one scene, relining on a lilo and smoking a ciggie. As much as I hate cigarettes, I do feel a bit of nostalgia for the pre-PC days of the early Eighties when I see that, a time when we could actually make up our own minds without everyone losing their shit over some antisocial or potentially harmful behaviour depicted in a film clip.
My current book, 'Silver Studs and Sabre Teeth', doesn't have a lot of cigarette smoking. That wasn't deliberate on my part. It's just that it's not something I see a lot of, and therefore didn't really associate my characters with being smokers. It does have some Laughing Lucerne being choofed, and it suits the story. I'm reading from 'Silver Studs and Sabre Teeth' at the festival tomorrow, and again on Monday. The events were held in the Scone Arts and Crafts Hall, and there were some iffy memories as I looked out at the yard where the tables and chairs for afternoon tea had been assembled. The last time I was there was for a cultural event just after the launch of my first novel, 'Calumny While Reading Irvine Welsh' (I'd been invited to read from it), and I busted my prosthetic tooth on a piece of chicken bone that had been somehow included in the chicken/lettuce/mayo sandwich I had up to that point been enjoying. My lower left incisor is a prosthesis, and I was very glum to have to get another one made; both from a vanity perspective (seriously, who LIKES getting around looking like an extra on 'Housos'), and from a bank account perspective (it costs money).
The local book store had set up a table with books from local authors, and I was chuffed to see three copies of my second book 'Abernethy' on the table. As it happens, I had in my car copies of reviews for 'Abernethy', so I asked the stall's proprietor could I tuck them in with the books. He said, 'Yes'. I then chortled, 'As Bob Hudson sang in the mid-Seventies, never let a chance go by!', in a brilliant display of both my age and somewhat naff musical taste. Now folks, 'Abernethy' can be hard to obtain in paperback at the moment, so if you don't want to download it, I will give you the shop's phone number: (02) 65459330, and it is called 'Hunt-A-Book'. 'Abernethy' is young adult, and there is a link to the first chapter on my blog page, as there are to the first chapters of all my works.
Anyway, I definitely enjoyed the panel discussion, which was on the film being better than the book. I was able to get my two cents worth as an audience member, when I posed the question was it greed or arrogance on the part of the producers to totally miss the point of a book when making a character more likeable to an audience, and cited 'The Bonfire Of The Vanities', which surely must take the award for worst book-to-film adaptation in the history of film-making. One of the panellists, a screenwriter, agreed that was almost the textbook case of what not to do. I explained 'they' had wanted to make the unlikeable Sherman McCoy more likeable to the audience, thus totally fucking up Wolfe's intention (those weren't my exact words). He talked about the difference between making a character likeable as opposed to relatable, and so many producers just totally miss the point. Should my first work ever be made into a film, it sounds like I can kiss goodbye any creative control. I hope so much 'they' don't try to make my protagonist more 'likeable'. She's a cranky bitch of 22, with a burning intelligence. You know what? I created her as an antidote to the totally dipshitty Muriel in 'Muriel's Wedding'. I found that slug so loathsome and infuriating, particularly as everyone was raving about how sweet she was (WTF?), I set out to create the anti-Muriel.
Ciao for now.
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