Wow, I enjoyed writing this book. It’s been 20 years, but I still love it. Solomon gets to work.

The introductions were worth the effort. He’d slept on the plane, so was reasonably fresh, and adrenalin-assisted by the new environment. He hadn’t been outside the States before, and it was all interesting, which obviously helped. 

Sol’s accent was a good excuse for taking a few pot shots at Al.

“See,” explained Carla , “this is a real American accent. To think we’ve been getting this-this forgery!”

“Be you a-sayin’ that us Midwesterners don’t done talk proper nohow, missy?”

“Yair. Yer don’t been had ter talk per-culiar like that.”

“This is a New York accent. It can open tins of tuna and do accountancy, and cause epidemics,” explained Solomon.

“Sort of a Swiss Army accent,” said Joe.

“I thought Aussie all talked like Mel Gibson,” said Sol, not at all subtly.

“Well, most of us are taller,” said Bill.

“Real Aussie is more fluent, like, “G’dayairgundidyerseethatfingonSaddy?,” said Felicity. “Meaning, “Good day, how are you going did you see that thing on Saturday?”

“It can also mean “Is your duck celibate?”  or “How is the cow’s acting class?” depending on whom you happen to be talking to,” added Joe.

“Conversation not limited by mere context,” said Solomon.

“Major social issue, in Australia, the terrible possibility that people might one day find out what they’re talking about. We’ve been working for 200 years to ensure that it never happens.”

“They even imported me,” said Al, benevolently.

“Things were tough,” explained Bill.

It was decided that since Solomon’s specialty at the moment was copy, he’d work with Felicity, and he could follow his stuff about as it went down the production line. He’d brought some of his material, and it was read with interest by all concerned. Somehow it had turned into a job interview, if a very friendly one, Al noted, apparently because Solomon wanted to be accepted on his merits, not his family relationships. Joe had obviously picked up that angle himself, and was looking approvingly at something which he passed to Al:

“Why spend the day setting fire to your leftover clients when they die of starvation trying to contact you and leave a smelly heap in the reception area?

We do a range of customer service initiatives which will allow you, and them, to do business and be alive at the same time. No more messy answering services and idiotic jingles. No more long distance séances with someone  on a help desk in another country, however plausibly sane. Nobody gets paid to wait for things. We’re Wildcard Services, and we do mean business.”  

“I think Sol’s going to fit in nicely,” said Bill.

It turned out later that Wildcard Services were livid that Solomon wasn’t going to be writing their copy and went elsewhere…..to David.

Solomon’s first challenge was also the first government work the agency had ever handled, a road safety campaign. Al, whose experience with US government agencies had varied from operatic levels of production to mass media based yodelings of pure ineptitude, was wary until convinced by the others that this was different. They explained that road safety was an area that the most hopeless of bureaucratic budgerigars could at least understand.

The government rep, Susan, was obviously not one of the terminally despairing variety of administrators that goes to work hoping one day to see something done properly. She was glued to her subject, and managed to get through the entire briefing without once descending to the banal. The problem was the fact that drivers aged under 25 were the main demographic for fatalities on Australian roads.

They had some mock ups, slogans, and some basic scripts. As advertising they were OK, but toothless. One, Grow Up! was sharp, but patronizing, and another, It’s Your Future, looked like a committee effort, and was too nondescript; it could have been about anything. The visual material was graphic, pictures of cars, shocked survivors, grim, really, but also within the band of forgettable. Al had seen a lot of stuff like this, and he did know what he thought. Susan looked at him hopefully. This wasn’t likely to be easy, but it had to be said.

“Ah, Susan, this stuff is OK, but it won’t work. I know it’s what’s called acceptable levels of shock value, but it’s like an action movie; see enough of it and you get case-hardened, you can’t find any more novelty in it after a while.”

He looked at her carefully, looking for the surefire, selfish, defensive, reaction that meant he was talking to a definite idiot. No; she was listening. Greatly relieved, he continued:

“I have an idea which we’ll get together for you at no cost to your agency, to show you what I mean. We can do the other stuff for you, any time, but my instincts are against it. This’ll only take a couple of days to put together, you wanna wait and see it?”

To a government rep, this question meant, “Do you have the final decision about this, and are you prepared to listen to options?”, which is like for proof of identity. Susan, to her credit, instantly agreed.

“Yeah…no cost, nobody’s going to bitch about that…..we do have time, and I agree that there is a sort of “seen this before” element to this material. We’ve done a few of these campaigns, and the results haven’t been encouraging. The teenagers in particular aren’t at all impressed.”

Bill commented, “They don’t like being treated like idiots. Never fails with any kid, talk down to them and you’ve lost them. This sort of thing really needs them talking to them.”

“Telling them not to do something is like giving them a written request to do it,” said Felicity.

Solomon emerged from wherever he was under that expression of intense interest.

“In the States you don’t try that sort of parental guidance routine, because it’s just too uncool. The market demands macho. You can’t be a pseudo gangster and a defensive driver. You’d have no sex life at all…..”

“So you have sex with roadkills?” asked Felicity.

“If they were in that demographic, yeah,” explained Solomon.

“Ah.”

They paused for Susan to stop laughing, which took a couple of minutes. As she left, Al handed Felicity and Solomon a handwritten sketch for what he wanted done. Joe received a storyline for graphics, and Bill a note.

Scene 1 : (Silent) A living room, a couple of male teenagers walk through, as parents and guests  talk. Father throws car keys at one of them. They walk out into the front yard where a little girl is playing basketball with a ball about the same size as she is. One of the boys grabs the ball and plays keepings off for a few seconds, making the little girl laugh. They drive off.

Scene 2 : (Silent) Two police arrive at the door. (Pan to father’s face, bleak, empty). (Pan to mother’s face, horrified, distraught). One of the police notices the little girl, standing still with her ball looking at them as they leave, and winces.

Scene 3 : (Sound) Hospital ward, some young people are visiting one of the boys. All are quiet but:

One asks, “How yer going, John?” 

John: “Been better, mate. (Grimaces) Jim didn’t make it.”

(Pans to picture of John, leg missing, eye covered, both arms in plaster, bandages on head).

YELLOW CAPTION (silent) IT’S NOT DYING YOU HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT. 

Scene 4 : (Silent) The little girl stands alone in her front yard.

Scene 4 was Solomon’s idea. 

HARVEY WHITE, LAST CHANCE

We have now finally got back to the main plot line. WordPress has just sent me on a hide-and-seek exercise for a sans-serif font, and it’s not accepting changes. What’s wrong with you morons? Nobody’s got the time for this crap.

The silence from the US end had become unnatural. For a verbose business, even David with all eight ears to the ground, couldn’t find out a thing. Stone Gold White were acting like a normal workplace. Everything was being done, it was like nothing had ever happened, which led prophets to say that something was inevitably going to happen. Keith and Harvey were now speaking to each other, which was worrying enough, because the normal undertone of abuse was missing.

Therefore when Saul rang Al it was natural that Al thought it was something big. It turned out to be one of the least usual conversations they’d ever had. Saul was a very nice, friendly, guy, always ready to have a laugh with Al and David, and if not the world’s leading extrovert, was a pretty easy-to-talk-to person, on any level. The tone of his voice, which sounded tense, alarmed Al more than a few small wars would have. 

“Al? Sorry to bother you, but I need you to do me a favor.”

“Uh…sure, Saul, name it.”

“This is personal business, Al, and I want to say first off that I wouldn’t ask you to do anything I thought unnecessary.”

Getting better by the second, thought Al.

“You remember my daughter, Janet? Her son Solomon, you’ve met once or twice, at least, is trying to get some experience in the business, and I needn’t say that any sort of nepotism here would be in pretty poor taste, particularly now. He’s a pretty good copywriter, with a decent bit of taste, for a Manhattanite,  but……”

“…  But he needs to do the basics and it might be a little less painful if he wasn’t tripping all over everything in the family name in the process, and maybe dropping any major clangers would be better done elsewhere?”

“Yeah. Added to which, I hate to say this, my daughter is protective to a degree I think is lethal. The kid’s suffocating. She treats him like a five year old, and he’s twenty four. I want to turn him into a biped, now. I thought of David as a sort of adman-godfather, but his current stuff is too advanced. Actually, David knows Sol pretty well, they’re almost neighbors, and they buy the same sort of bagels….”

“This sinister bagel-brotherhood thing is starting to spook me, Saul. What do they do, go to cult meetings, or something?”

“They wear robes….it’s pageantry, you know…and the choir…”

The conversation stayed there for a while, with a few suspicions of David’s likely ability to turn a bagel society into a world dominating power. Al meanwhile was thinking about Solomon, who he knew slightly better than that. He’d met him at David’s and they’d had a fairly broad talk which had shown Al that Sol could talk but was personally a bit awkward. Sol was actually a friend of David’s, and the natural move would have been for him to help Sol find his way, but David had for the time being morphed into a very high ranging technical production consultant/specialist, and his stuff was just too complex for a beginner.

Saul had said precisely nothing about the current state of play and Al wasn’t about to ask. So the next line opened up a few lines of thought.

“…Of course it would also be a bit undiplomatic of me to start introducing family  members into the equation, too….”

“Undiplomatic? Since when are you a diplomat?” The use of the word “equation” had only one context.

A gargle of laughter.

“Since it became practical to be one. This isn’t just any old pantomime we’ve got happening here. This is full opera, about which I hope to be able to enlighten you soon.”

“H’m….Gilbert and Sullivan, Gold and Stone….. I see it all now.”

“You always were brighter than most, Al. I can take it we’re OK to wheel Sol over to you?”

“I would think so. The others are all full partners now, but I don’t think anyone would mind, we’re really busy and we could use a few extra hands, anyway. Er… we pay him basic scale, of course?”

“If you think he’s worth paying, yeah, otherwise you’re doing him a favor, which is what he’ll be told.”

“OK, barring major cosmic events, we’re on.”    

The conversation only ended after Al had told Saul how the business had evolved, with the supply of anecdotes using up an hour or so, and they rang off. Al emailed everyone with the news, and asked if anyone could see anything wrong with the idea as it stood, to which all Bill, Joe, Carla, and Felicity all promptly and independently replied that if there were any other family members they better send them too, because they were snowed in. 

David, inevitably, was the other person to talk to, and was informative.

“Al, he’s actually a very talented guy, and Saul is perfectly right, Janet’s killing the kid with cotton wool. He reminds me of a sort of nice version of me….(Al interrupted to ask if David could really remember that far back, to which David said no) ……but more of a humanitarian. He doesn’t set fire to people, or feed them to his goldfish, or glue them to interstate trucks…..”

“Then what’s he doing in advertising?”

“He’s a fairly normal New Yorker; media is part of being alive. He likes the glitz, provided it’s paying him, and it’s fun. Outside of the Janet-event-horizon he’s trying to find his feet. I won’t trash her efforts in other areas, though. He’s been so well brought up that it’s scary. Seriously, the guy has manners that the etiquette books haven’t heard of yet. Even worse, he’s actually intelligent, and you know what a liability that can be.”

“Yeah, I heard about that on the news. Terrible. So no kid gloves?”

“Kid gloves where he really can’t handle it. He’s a bit shy, which is odd, because his work’s good enough to crow about. He’s better than most at basic copy, which is probably a better indication of being able to grasp the ideas. He may just be a decent person.”

“Egad! Decent! Warm up the monastery! I’s a-comin!”

So it was that one fresh Australian summer day there was shoveled off the plane one American, in overcoat, not actually wearing ski clothes but looking as if he was. Felicity and Carla went to pick him up and walked him through Customs, and drove him to the flat that Al had found for him in the city, then to the office. Sol’s thick New York accent wasn’t Bronx or Queens, but it was Noo Yok, sort of an Americanized purr, and it varied from rapid to vague accordingly. Fortunately he made a crack about having subtitles installed, which was enough for Carla to hear David in the background, and Felicity to stop thinking about Seinfeld re-runs. 

I’d forgotten about this one. It’s about the market image of politicians. Fun, though. I have no idea why this has a Serif font.

“He’s a politician,” admitted Bill.

“What do we need with a politician?” asked Carla. 

“Nothing at all, but this one’s a bit of a specimen. He’s an ex-Labor, ex-Liberal, ex-National, and now, strangely, an independent. It seems his minders are looking for someone in advertising who can work with him, and they heard about us doing cheaper work. He’s still a sitting Member of Parliament, but the party gravy trains aren’t running and he’s stuck on his allowances.”

“This isn’t Steve Cleary, is it, or Steer Cleary, as he’s known?” asked Joe.

“That same mess himself. He might not be much of a catch, but it’s interesting that we’re getting any sort of profile in the political arena, since we’re probably the only agency on Earth that doesn’t do something in politics.”

“What is he, politically?” asked Al, with an idea of where this was heading. Bill’s instincts were good, and election years are like the salmon spawning season in the industry. It might well be worth finding out who had taken an interest in them.

“Used to be a very conspicuous extremist, like most of them, then he became a highly publicized moderate, then a conservative, then a middle-of-the-roader. Then he was a rural icon, for about five minutes, then himself, as he is now, famous for his ambiguous position on everything.”

“A politician is a person who makes a career of being able to agree with anything, and being responsible for nothing,” commented Carla.

“In which case, Steer Cleary is highly overqualified,” said Dorothy.

“Who’s his minder?” from Joe.

“Bloke called Parrot Smith, called Parrots Myth by his friend, singular, and a lot of very unprintable things by Canberra lobbyists. He’s a poll-fornicator, incredibly verbose, and about as exciting as a blow by blow description of a fly with diarrhea to talk to, on any identifiable subject which has a noun attached to it.”

“How did we get involved with this invaluable reference to insect regularity?”

“We’re in the phone book. Actually, the way Parrots talks, you’d think that he’d been to a séance at some criminal reunion, and the medium had discovered us through the spirit world. The guy talks like everything’s a secret. If he told you he was going to the bathroom, you’d board up the windows and have a gun ready. He did say we’d been mentioned by someone. I don’t know who. After five minutes of Parrots, the idea of total incomprehension becomes irresistible.”

“More or less the industry norm, then. Yeah, might be fun. We don’t have anyone to throw rocks at this Friday.”  

That look of entirely unconvincing insincerity should have a patent, thought Dorothy, as Steer Cleary and Parrots arrived, the former looking like a fat politician and about as interesting, the latter like a bookie with constipation. Joe, she noticed, was trying not to stare. There was a reason for that. Graphic artists, when they work for long enough drawing people’s faces, start to see everyone as a portrait. That’s very hard to live with if the people are that ugly. Carla watched her husband’s face hammering itself into a neutral shape as he greeted them and admitted with a well hidden wince that yes, he was Ian’s son, etc., and flicked the two pariahs over to Bill, explaining that he’d join them later. How much later was understood by Bill from Joe’s quick flicker of expression to be shortly after the Great Pyramid of Cheops learned to tap dance and figure skate.

As they entered the conference room, Carla lovingly stuck some blue tack in her husband’s hair. Attached to this blue tack were some feathers and pencils and biros and erasers and just about anything else that it could hold. Joe smiled.

“What’s the occasion?”

“It’s 14 months to the day since I first glued anything to you.”

“You’re really a romantic at heart, you know.”

“No, I’m a pervert.”

The story in the conference room had become equally adhesive, if not as romantic. Cleary had a problem with his image, and it was going to be tough to be re-elected if he couldn’t connect with his voters properly. Parrots, who did not only the talking but the silences as well, made it plain that he was worried about the future of the strange ineffectual bit of flab he called a client. Cleary just nodded, probably a learned skill from Question Time. The one useful bit of information to date, such as it was, was that the person who’d mentioned the agency was Featherman. 

The problem, as Parrots saw it, was that Cleary’s past, vague as it was, was becoming a liability. Labor, Liberal, and National voters saw him as a defector. Apparently the minor party voters didn’t see him as anything but a politician, and a greedy, slimy one. The added bonus to this fairly understandable view was documented by a poll Parrots had commissioned. The polling agent had played safe, and stuck to routine voting intention questions, and had just asked a multiple choice question regarding Cleary’s tenure as the local representative, i.e., Good, Bad, Neutral, Don’t Know.

It was the last question which had created a quite unique situation for the pollster. It’s customary for a polling agency to provide details about the sampling base, when and where the polls were done, and statistical breakdowns. As it happened, one of the polls was done at the local mall. The pollsters were quite surprised to note that every single adult shopper, when they saw the booth, did a survey. There were literally thousands of people, and being a Saturday, it was a fairly good representative survey. At first they’d been alarmed by the numbers, but as any statistician knows,  a bigger survey isn’t necessarily more accurate. However, it is a head count of sorts, and can be interpreted as such.

Their problems started when they did the count. Eight thousand one hundred and seven people had done the questionnaire. The voting preferences were for major parties, which was no surprise, if not what Cleary wanted to hear. The question about his tenure as the local member, however, was informative. Of the total survey, all but two of the respondents had written in their own comments. Of these comments, 24% consisted of the word “bastard”, 37% had written “idiot”, and the remaining 37% were unprintable, even when translated from the various languages.

The polling agents, in having to address this result in their summary, had managed a form of tact not usually seen in demography:

“It will be seen from the data that local issues feature prominently in voter consciousness. It is evident from this survey that Mr. Cleary’s market image is well established, and that his tenure has significantly raised political awareness in the electorate. The sample incurs the normal statistical error factor of 5%.”

Which meant in an electorate of half a million people there were 25 thousand who might feel differently. Parrots had felt that bringing the survey to the meeting might help clarify the issues. Cleary, sitting opposite Al, looked like a child whose lollipop had been taken away from him. Parrots looked like a seedy little cretin. Al was looking forward to the weekend.

“We think Steve needs a change of image and some high profile issues to put him back in the voters’ good books,” enthused Parrots.

Apparently Parrots was the sort who will bet on a horse after it’s bolted and died of old age. It is possible to make issues out of nothing, but if your credibility is running at zero or less, no issue will do anything but remind people how little faith they have in you. Bill wondered for a moment if minders spent much time in denial. They obviously weren’t good at it. Al decided to end the discussion. How was another matter. It occurred to him that the only person likely to shut up Parrots would be Parrots. The quick way to silence the verbose is to ask them a question they can’t handle.

“How?” asked Al.

“Well…..we could do something about that water main that keeps breaking in the main street….no, that’s State…..we could try and get that sports center….except the ratepayers have taken out an injunction against the developer…..we could do a crime initiative……State, again….”

“Oh shut up, Parrots. This is the end. Forget it, I won’t bother standing,” said Cleary.

Parrots looked stunned, as did Al and Bill. That was three more sentences than Cleary had managed in the last two hours. It might well be more than he’s managed in years, mused Bill. Parrots now looked hurt.

“After all I’ve done for you…”

“All you’ve done…..you were the one who didn’t want to be on the Labor ticket, then we had to join, then leave, the Libs, then the Nationals….enough is enough. I’ve got more publicity by leaving political parties than I have joining them, and I’ve made more friends running over people than I have with all this crap. Get out of my sight!”

Parrots left, like a good whining cur should, and Cleary apologized to Al and Bill for wasting their time. They were starting to think that Cleary had managed to become a human being again as he walked with them out to the lift. In the foyer they encountered Carla’s excesses: Joe, blue tacked from head to toe, covered in most of the office fittings and several pictures from the coffee table magazines, including one of a well known model. Carla smiled and said,

“Al, Bill, I’d like you to meet Simian Ephemera, from the People Against Advertising Association.”

Cleary, without missing a beat, introduced himself and complimented Simian on the great work her organization was doing out there in the suburbs.

Joe and Carla have got married! It’s as simple as it sounds.

It was probably inevitable after Joe and Carla’s wedding that Dorothy and Al were the only show in town. Jane and Carla were talking to Dorothy, as indirectly as possible, about things, concentrating on talking about Carla’s wedding.

Carla had made a truly radiant bride, and it was the first time they’d ever seen Joe actually happy like that. The various parents had floated about blissfully on a sea of friends, and to both Joe and Carla’s surprise, had hit it off well. Joe was a far better ambassador for the Arthurson clan than he realized, and his first meeting with Carla’s parents had created some real goodwill. The irony of this was that they’d met during the plaster duck episode, and it was his obvious, stunned, reaction to Carla which had convinced them even then that he was someone they could trust with her. There are few things more obvious than a man in love surrounded by smashed plaster ducks. There was a tide of photos and things to discuss.

“There was a pre-nuptial agreement?” asked Dorothy, self consciously, since Carla had brought it up.

“Yeah, it was pretty odd, if you think that those sorts of agreements are always slanted to the one with the money. Ian, believe it or not, insisted that I be able to have some financial peace of mind of my own. The next thing I know I’m a millionaire, before the wedding. They did this like I was just being given a lift home, or something. Joe was embarrassed, severely, but they talked him round when they said this just evened things up a bit. It’s actually a mutual no-claim, on both sides, but I got all this as well.”

“So how do you feel about it?”

“Ah…. I was wondering for a while why the subject hadn’t come up. They’re so honest…. Sometimes it’s frightening. My worry was that they’d be suspicious of me on principle. It’s a bit hard to have money like that and not be pretty wary of the wannabe in-laws. Joe said that he was dreading the whole thing, and actually had an idea of his own to make me feel more comfortable. Seems he thought of something close to what Ian came up with, but not as generous or as thorough.”

Carla’s expression, usually closely guarded except under real stress, when she didn’t care, was that of a woman thinking about her next baby. It was so…. focused and relieved… that she seemed to have finished a decathlon and won it.

“Wow.” Dorothy was more than a little impressed. The Arthursons had obviously been thinking a lot about this, and for a while. A good idea, and a great way of making sure that money wasn’t the dominant factor in the relationship.

It was the very thing that had been a real bane of Dorothy’s love life for some time. Early boyfriends had had a strangely alien response to her family’s prosperity, and later versions, pre Al, had had a predatory air. It was very repulsive, eventually, and Al had really been a quantum jump, someone who was independently wealthy and personally at home in the larger numbers.

Dorothy, who was a romantic to her toenails, and a dedicated one, had been despairing of finding anyone in her income bracket who could prove that he was any more than a mindless collection of suburban values. Money isn’t class, and the tiresome parade of boyfriends regularly proved it. The only other male she’d ever met who really came close was Bill, who had always been a real person with real feelings, who she thought of as a virtual brother. Bill’s background was self made to a very large extent; they’d become close friends on personal grounds, not as a result of dipping in the same social thimble. She’d been overjoyed for him when he’d married Jane, another relative, unimpressed by anything or anyone who wasn’t as genuine as she. That had reassured her that it was possible to have a real working marriage without the hideous delineations of income and background which can be so poisonous.

Her money had been a real weight to carry, both professionally and personally. Professionally there was also no shortage of business people whose main aim seemed to be to attach themselves to money, in any way possible. That was a lesson her father had taught her well, although she hadn’t recognized it at the time. He’d just pointed out who the really useful people were, and who weren’t, and why. He’d started teaching her that when she was about ten. Her mother had also been a quiet conceptual construction site, with the timely reminiscences and bits of anecdote which make mothers so deadly.  At puberty her mother had just had a few memories of old boyfriends, and little romantic interludes, and fun they’d had. Nothing dictatorial, not sermons or edicts, no implied disapproval, just insights from someone who knew what she was talking about.

The effect of two dedicated parents working tirelessly for years on their much adored daughter was all they could have hoped. From both, she received a supply of positive inputs, all useful. They both practically danced on the ceiling when she became a vet. Her mother, even now, was staying off Dorothy’s toes regarding Al. Her sole comment about one of Dorothy’s earlier efforts, to the effect that “if I’m going to be a grandmother I’d prefer the grandchildren to be vertebrates, and if that’s a problem why not try that nice horse”, had made the only point she’d thought needed making.

Dorothy giggled. The other two looked at her expecting a Dorothy-ism, and they got one.

“I was just thinking. Al and I have never even mentioned money to each other, even now.”

“Joe was like that. It was as if he was embarrassed. He actually apologized to me for buying me my watch. I eventually got it out of him that he liked it so much he couldn’t resist.”

“Bill never said a word. He’s also never said “we can’t afford it” to me, even when he lost his job.”

“Did either of you ever have a vision of the guy you would marry?”

“When I was a kid, and Joe is the exact opposite. Funny thing is he’s actually so much more masculine than that. I thought guys were all, sort of, “blokes around the keg”, and ever since I’ve been discovering that the ones that really do anything are totally different. The idiots around the keg are just that, and usually lousy all round in any sort of relationship.”

“Until I met Bill, and he wasn’t even in the categories. Somehow the idea of a really loving, happy, maniac wasn’t what I was thinking about.”

“I had a vision of this wonderful, blonde, Bohemian, who was mad about kids and of course politically active. I met him, and he was the most selfish, conceited, jerk I think I’ve ever set eyes on. We spent a whole day discussing his wardrobe and hairstyle. Very good looking, but nobody in there worth knowing,” mused Dorothy.

She explained her mother’s reaction.

“That was all I needed to know. I already felt like I was a matching handbag to something, and the horse was spoken for…..”

“You do know that they don’t allow kids to run in the Melbourne Cup any more…..?” asked Jane.

“Curses. Now we’ll have to let them in the house, not just let them run around the paddock,” said Dorothy, not noticing the large number of Freudian slips.

“How many kids do you want, Dorothy?” asked Carla.

“Oh, a battalion or so should do it…..”

Trash is in the mind of the beholder. Therefore, this chapter.

“…So reality is now something you see on TV,” said Al.

“Must say it’s better than the formula shows,” commented Jane.

“Well, that’s not too difficult. The formula shows are basically reworks of story lines. Someone does something, someone reacts, in the context of the characters. So character A smashes up character B’s car; A is a dummy and B is the smart guy. Then they rework it with A as the smart guy…”

“Or Boy meets Girl: gets girl, loses girl, gets dog, gets girl back, gets business partner, gets another girl, loses both girls, gets bitten by dog or business partner…or more likely both…,” added Joe.

“Don’t they ever do anything original?” asked Carla.

Al winced.

“Not if they can help it. Originality is dangerously close to a requirement for talent. TV’s a form of bureaucracy. Plot Line A was accepted before, so the producers have more or less pre-accepted the ideas and the story. Plot Line B contains something relevant, like poverty, and is controversial, and hasn’t been done before, so they’re less likely to accept it. Plot Line C is purely sexual, so they’ll want to do it for the ratings but might tone it down a lot. Which is more likely to get accepted, and easier to write, and not have to rewrite? Obviously, A.”

A pause for a beer and some more biscuits.

“Reality TV, however, doesn’t require scripts, can be edited easily, and there’s no expectation of anything much. Reality TV is just a soap opera by other means. Think about it; why else would so many people watch a group of nondescript subhuman suburbanites having sex, or pretending to have sex? You wouldn’t look at most of them twice if you could help it. (Stands, looking messianic)This, I say unto ye, is the future of mankind…. ”

“Vague, isn’t he? What are you trying to say?” asked Bill.

“Ah, don’t worry about it. TV’s going to be like the net before too long. Millions of channels, and nobody watching anything except porn.”

“Yeah, I must say those copulation camps really got the safe sex message across to the kiddies. The age demographic for those shows was about 8 to 24, I think,” agreed Dorothy.

“Hideous thought. Two hundred hours of mediocre sex. It’d probably put them off the idea of sex forever,” said Carla.

“Or give them the idea that you’re supposed to have sex with whoever you happen to be living with,” added Dorothy.

“They’ve got that idea already. Why do you think that there was so much emphasis given to the idea that Holmes and Watson were gay? It’s a sales pitch using a familiar couple. On that basis, any two people of the same sex living together must be gay,” said Joe.

“So what’s it selling?” asked Al, interested.

“An image of gay relationships, interpreted through those characters.”

“Is this yet another conspiracy theory? The Beige Peril Lurks Among Us?” asked Al, interested.

“No. Most of the gays I know are literate enough to know that Holmes and Watson had a typical 19^th century relationship, and that Conan Doyle wasn’t professionally suicidal. That was Victorian England, remember, home of the sexual hypocrite. They even kept their kinkiest, sickest, brothels in France. Nothing that sexually honest, even by implication, would have had a hope of being published. I think the only reason they’d play along would be as a joke on the illiterate straights and a way of demythologizing their own relationships away from the straight perspective. I mean those two, gay, it’s a bit of a departure from the old drag queen routine, isn’t it?”

“Strange, isn’t it, the straight view of gays? If you speak like a human being, have any sort of education, and don’t dress like a corpse, and act like a diseased pig in public, you must be gay. I’ve always found that hilarious. All these stolid middle class types, conferring a sort of social superiority on gays, just because gays don’t act the way they do,” grinned Dorothy.

“Yeah, I used to get that a lot when I went to business college. It was truly pitiful. These guys, all from the fringe suburbs, all low income kids, all trying to be sophisticates, and of course they had no hope, because they had no exposure to any sort of culture that didn’t come from prime time. There were quite a few of them, and they couldn’t make any sort of time with the women, coming from the wrong planet and all, so they decided that all the other guys were gay, and used to sneer at us as we went around with our girlfriends,” said Joe.

“What happened?” asked Carla.

“Some of them formed a stock broking group. They had their own float in the parade a few years ago, Fags With Stags. I spoke to one of them and he said that he couldn’t imagine why he’d ever thought I was gay, I just didn’t have the sense of style.”

“Tends to take a lot of the sting out of the stereotypes, doesn’t it?” commented Jane

“Oh, yeah, I’d never have picked them for gay. Actually they were so macho at the time that I would’ve been more likely to think I was. Admittedly the guy wasn’t belching all the time like he used to, or waddling around like a belligerent chicken.”

“Does this mean, O Sage, that some people don’t know what sex they are?” asked Bill.

“Well, let’s face it, this society is really a one way street on most issues. There’s mainstream, be it whatever subject, … and everything else is “others”. Of all possible human things to oversimplify I think sexual behavior is probably the most ridiculous. People do have sexual preferences, whether anyone likes it or not. What’s normal for one person is actually abnormal to another. That’s not a theory, it’s a fact. Some people have sex lives that just don’t work, and that may well be because they’re the wrong sexual behavior for that person. That’s no revelation, but you can’t blame people if it takes a while to find their own style.”

“Which is a perfect justification for sex on reality TV; choice of partners,” said Al.

“Don’t mind twisting the argument around much, do you? How are you more likely to find your sexual preference on a TV show than anywhere else?”

“I think Al means that prolonged exposure to all the possibilities is more likely to find a niche,” said Dorothy.

“Yeah, a few thousand hours of some really interesting couples should give some sort of insight,” added Al.

“Might even make you appreciate what a really unhealthy person can do on camera,” said Bill.

“Or with an ironing board in the moonlight,” said Dorothy.

“Well, if you met an iron you really liked….,” said Al.

“Or a shirt in need of companionship…” said Bill.

“How would you market that, Al?” asked Carla.

“Needs a slogan… all shirts need slogans…that’s why we wear them….“More Than Just A Good Fit, It’s A Good…..”” He cracked up at the expression on Dorothy’s face.

“How about “Ironing, Your Passport To Wild….(wide eyed look) Frenzied… (grins maniacally) Building-Destroying… (brings hands together in praying motion) Goldfish-Annoying (bats eyelids fiercely)…  Romance,”” said Dorothy.

Al had been doubled up laughing from “Frenzied”. The others had joined him on the floor soon after. It took a while to remember to breathe properly. He looked at her, then at the others.

“You know, it’s a lot safer to get things dry cleaned, nowadays.”

Al and Dorothy enter into a conversation about media, which thankfully becomes interesting despite being about media.

In theory, watching the news is reasonably straightforward. In Australia, Al had discovered that it was also a sales medium of some note. The anchor started it this time:

“With Sydney’s rocketing home prices a local real estate agent, Sam Snow, of Older Rain Hooks, says that the smart thing to do is to go to a few auctions every weekend and look for an opportunity.”

Cuts to agent, in uniform, smiling.

Anchor: Well, Sam, nobody wants to miss out.

Sam: No, George, they all want to be part of the action I’ve been asking people at my auctions and they all say they want to buy now and maximize their exposure.

Dorothy walked in at this point, saw the TV, recognized the spiel, blinked and groaned. Al raised an eyebrow.

“Is this news, or am I watching a sort of free plug for these guys?”

“I doubt if it’s free. There’s quite a bit of cross fertilization between media and a lot of the big  money industries. You see it in cars, real estate, snake oil sales, someone must be doing quite nicely out of it. The real estate thing, though, is in all the newspapers, particularly the weekend ones, and there’s usually some sort of auction results page every Monday. Result, the market went through the roof. The pity of it is that it’s cut a lot of peoples’ kids out of buying their own homes because it’s just too expensive now.”

“This is pretty crass, though, even by advertising’s very low standards. “Be Part Of It”, “Everyone Wants”; stuff like that is first year media studies stuff.”

“It’s not a very demanding market. It’s in the life script, “Thou shalt be a suburbanite”, and so nobody thinks twice about it……except you, of course.”

“Yeah, I was against the wheel, originally.”

“What changed your mind?”

“Nothing. I’m still against it. I’ve decided to be magnanimous about it.”

“I won’t get you that unicycle for your birthday now.”

“I’ll accept it if it’s triangular.”

TV interrupted.

Voiceover: Tonight on Tomorrow Yesterday: The real estate buying technique that’s blitzing the auctions. See how your buyer’s IQ stacks up with our quiz. Meet the real estate agent who’s helping his buyers. And the little boy who thinks he’s a franchiser. 

(Cuts to host, manic looking 30 something-or-other.)

Host: Good evening, I’m Nola Vlost.  Real estate agent Sam Snow……..

Al hit the remote and the TV subsided.

“That’s pretty bad. What, there’s no news? I must say even in the States you’d get pretty tired of that in a hurry.”

“Yeah, but the industry suffers from a sort of unavoidable proximity incest here. This is really just business. The free plugs aren’t free, everyone is convinced they’re geniuses, and they all know each other. It’s a small market. Actually, if it were real infomercials, it’d be a bit more efficient and a lot more honest. Advertising and broadcasting standards are largely self-serving, anyway, aren’t they? You create a support mechanism disguised as a self regulator.” 

“Hm. Yeah…..to a degree. There’s a further angle, though, in that you don’t want the industry suddenly hit with regulation, so in theory your self regulators try to stay clear of any serious issues that might cause the censors or the police to get involved.”

“Idealism really becomes you.”

“It’s my liver. I still have one, so naturally I’m an idealist. Actually, the thing that annoys me most about media worldwide is that people still don’t seem to understand what it does, and what it can do. A lot of social situations are effectively media-induced. Crime, for example. What do people see all the time, every day, from every available source? Crime. You get the “gangsta” thing, a lot of kids trying to be like the people on TV and in the movies. It’s a case of the medium being the fact that makes the message. Soap operas. Criminal soap operas. A lot of criminals are melodramatics; everything has that sort of theatrical air to it. Sleaze is major media, too, so the society, having lapped up a lot of sleaze, thinks it’s normal…..masturbation is one of the biggest global industries, thanks to porn….. a lot of sleaze is a sort of social norm.”

“Internet porn’s pretty big. You’d have to be pretty far gone to make it the big social event of the decade, though.”

“Yeah, third party sex. Sex by proxy. Very constructive.”

“I accidentally stumbled onto some bloody thing, I am not kidding, that involved some farm girl and a cow…..one of those popups….not doing anything, just her and her udders, and the cow and its udders……her smiling, the cow not smiling….. took me a while to figure out which was which…honestly, the freckles! It was horrible!”

“They say a culture can be defined by its main themes. So ours is crime, sex, and freckles.”

She threw a tennis ball at him. Al, not an expert at dodging tennis balls, retreated precipitately behind the chair and peered around the side with a totally unbelievable look of terror.

“You’ll never win the Davis Cup like that.”

“ I might get the sympathy vote. Just trying to survive and scuttling back to the conversation before I get killed again, one of the most sickening uses of media is I’ve ever seen is the propaganda that people put out. Media is by definition suggestion. It introduces elements into people’s thinking. Nobody would have known that the West was trying to take over the world, if someone hadn’t seen a use for making that sort of statement. Half of America doesn’t know where the rest of the world is, and the rest of America, which is paying for it, would rather it never had known where it was.    

Yet somebody found a way of making political capital out of the idea. An idea is planted, and someone grows a political movement out of it. Instant issues, just add media. Same thing as real estate ads, really. Conceptual territory. Never mind the facts, you can suggest an issue or a product without needing to do much more than say there’s an issue or a product. Subjects don’t matter.”

“A bit like some of those bloody alleged feminists. Actual atrocities, child abuse and slavery go utterly ignored, domestic violence never gets a mention, but if someone puts up a billboard, look out. Then it’s “Come to my seminar and get a pat on the head, girls, and buy a few books while you’re here”. Same methodology, anyway. The only issues they address are the ones that they can be safely outraged about on principle, in front of a camera. Real little cottage industry.”

“Just while we’re on the subject, do you ever run into boys’ clubs, or glass ceilings?” 

“Very occasionally. They’re pretty insipid, though. Tends to be older men, or younger ones who can’t deal with women. Doesn’t matter to me, anyway, I’ve got my own show, and they can like it or lump it.”

“Ever hear Bill on this topic? “One pack of old women doesn’t like another pack of old women.” Sound right?”

“Spot on. The Old Girls Brigade isn’t very appealing, either. Not, admittedly, that there’s much of a difference. I’ve never met a more sexless pack of people, in either case. Honestly, to listen to them, you’d think being a multi millionaire was a form of martyrdom.”

“There’s also the Gay Packaging version of media. It’s gay, so you have to watch it, and buy the merchandising, and wear the T shirt.”

“Yeah, well, in Sydney they’re not quite as naïve as that. I think they’d be a tough market. I’ve had a few gay friends over the years, and none of them are wrist flapping clichés-in-waiting. It’s more like “So The Chromosome Has Spoken, what else is on?” I think gay media tries to avoid being quite so patronizing. Although, some of it is pretty obviously niche marketing, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. The odd thing is that it produces the same sort of imagery. The couple, “us and them”, all the sort of demographic flag waving stuff. I must say, now that you’ve brought it up, that the gays I know aren’t necessarily impressed with that. Honey I’m Home Revisited, with techno music and some brand names…. No wonder they tend to be a bit choosy.”

“Well, same people and same thinking doing the production, same product.”

“Sickening thought. I’ve noticed that applies to a lot of things. Someone starts off with an important issue, then all the plodders and parasites get involved, and turn it into a circus. Everything gets dealt with the same way. Feminism, environmentalism, global warming, stem cells; the same sort of people monopolize the media, supposedly in the name of interest groups, but in practice it’s to make jobs for themselves. They tend to include themselves in everything. You see a lot of it with big names, famous people that have to hire six people so they can brush their teeth. Every press release, every ad, has one thing in common; it costs that much more because people don’t manage their own issues, they get these clowns to do it for them.”

“Cheerful bastard, aren’t you?”

“Well, would you handle any conflict they way they do? How about the market image of women? Do you like being told what you’re supposed to be, as a woman?”

“No I bloody well don’t. I don’t want to be a guy with boobs or a domestic servant or a sort of mindless baby-herd with no life, no aspirations and no opinions. I want to be who and what I am, and God help anyone that doesn’t like it.”

It occurred to Al that he’d always been sure there was a good reason he loved Dorothy.

“That came from the heart.”

“Blood oath it did. My ex-boyfriend, during the Cretaceous, before I met you, was one of those disgusting cavemen that simply didn’t realize that women were human. Did he go in a hurry. I’d never met one before, and I hope I never see one again.”

“Yet women keep having their children.”

“The idiots. Pure irresponsibility, disguised as a soap opera for apes.”

“I just can’t think of a relationship that way.”

“You’re pretty civilized, you know, for a Yank.”

It was a fun evening.

Meanwhile, back on the storyline, despite many requests, business happens.

Scene: Two conspicuously fossilized women on a TV set. One is wearing a blue outfit, a dress with matching everything and shoes, the other a red version. Both are in the terminal stages of makeup overkill.

Blue: You’re looking great, Snuffles.

Red: So are you, Sniffles.

Blue: (to camera, with offensive smile) We’d like to thank our sponsors, Death and Company, for our outfits today. This is their street wear range, and we love it. 

Red: (trying to figure out what camera she’s on, and failing utterly, looking over her shoulder) We’d also like to thank our makeup people and the wonderful people at Smarmy Little Closet Animals Cosmetics. I don’t know why I ever tried to live without it.

Voiceover: If this is your idea of a commercial, get lost. If you want real ads talk to HA Advertising, and don’t bring these turkeys with you. Try dying, it might help.

……….

Scene: Dried up allegedly male something in suit, in supermarket. Its hairstyle is about twenty years younger than it is, and appears to have encountered severe trauma in those decades. With it is a large semi anthropoid thing, possibly female, in a magenta cassock or perhaps the skin of some piece of furniture.

Desiccated Object: (voice similar to drain on last legs) We’re here to talk about mops. With me I have Ms. Neanderthal, an expert on domestic chores and common problems. Well, Ms. Neanderthal, we have a wide range here.

Ms. Neanderthal: (smiling, sadly enough, with voice resembling two cheese graters having an argument)  Not really, Dildo. There’s only one real mop here. The Superior Filth Buster. That’s a mop you can take to your children’s weddings. You can save your marriage with one of these, believe me, (close up due to poor personal hygiene habits of director) I know.

Desiccated Object: (wildly enthusiastic, resembling sexually fulfilled carrot) Oh gosh, can you? I’ve been looking for one of those.

Ms. Neanderthal: (appearing to reconsider, if the gaping mouth and bulging eyes are anything to guide us to such an elusive and probably temporary condition as her state of mind) Oh, I wouldn’t want to overstate the case, matrimonially. Barry’s a bit kinky, you see…..

Voiceover: (sighing sympathetically) It’s anyone’s guess who or what this ad is aimed at apart from deformed sexual perverts and mop fanciers. That’s what happens when you use a fifty year old American market demographic; if that audience ever really existed, they’re dead by now and probably in a museum. We use humans that have actual personalities and don’t resemble dung. We’re HA Advertising. We care, because we have to watch the bloody things too.

…………….

Scene: Pure Australiana, with three attached flabby male idiots. Lighting is bravely provided despite the beer guts, the quadruple chins and the laws of physics. Beer bottles abound around a hideously ordinary garden furniture mausoleum. A female, who resembles a human being in some ways, wearing a cotton print that screams tat, with dear little kitchen appliances embroidered on it, arrives.

Female: (heavy accent, possibly used to open cisterns) Oh, hello, I’m from next door. I heard you had a party last night. (She bobs her head from side to side with each word helpfully as she speaks)

First male: (uncertain of how to react to this bobbing moron, and losing the fight with gravity)  Oh.

Second male: (sticking up for his mate) Yeah.

Scene: This attack of testosterone inspired virility over, the two males subside back onto their seats. Their friend, fortunately face down, whom the lawn is rapidly overgrowing, belches inspirationally.

Female: (head bobbing reassuringly) I wanted to tell you about recycling. (Orchestra hit, with cornball piano cutting in for rest of her speech.) You can recycle all these bottles and save yourselves the trouble of cleaning it all up.

Scene: (Camera pans from above idyll to a picture of the female, in a swimsuit which howls for a nunnery to come and save it, or an asteroid strike. String section apparently survives severe constipation)

Female: (head/metronome utterly reliable) We can all help the environment. Recycle.

Voiceover: This isn’t an ad, it’s a sheltered workshop for archaeologists. Three boozers save the world. If any one of the three of them is capable of standing, let alone holding a conversation with words in it, they’re aliens. If that woman isn’t suffering from some serious disease of the nervous system, and is a normal person, the whole human race is in real danger. If this is the amount of talent and effort we use to sell something as important as recycling to the public, the whole country’s going to become a very large garbage dump, very soon. Try HA Advertising. At least we can recommend a good coroner.

………….

Scene: Picture of nose, evidently not in the best of health. Another charming vista for the discerning public. An adenoidal voice purrs over the enchanting nasal hairs.

Voice: Feeling bad? Feeling sick? Feeling like you’re drowning? Try Nostril Plunger, the hydraulically safe way of nasal irrigation without using a hose.

Second voice, (purring helpfully) Caution: plunger should not be used for other parts of the anatomy or as a birth control device.

Animation: Plunger, resembling an inhaler, but much more vicious, attached to a tap, is inserted into nose. A cartoon thumb presses daintily on a handle and liquid is shown flushing the nostril as a choir sings and a charming little live scene of nasal wastes being dredged out of the nostril. The revitalized nose now looks wonderful, the sort of nose that anyone would want to have its children.

Voiceover: Recent research indicates that if you use a hose to clear your nose, your chances of drowning are increased rather dramatically. For sinus, you need a doctor, not a hydrologist. If you didn’t need one before you saw the ad, you certainly will afterwards. First you’re told you’re sick. Then you get graphics to explain it all to you. People have to eat while watching this. It’s like one of those weight loss commercials, while eating ham and eggs. It’s hideous. Matter of fact, it also doesn’t sell too well. People tend to buy less when nauseated. Try HA Advertising, and get your message across without the need for a stomach pump. Or ring your lawyer, soon. You’re paying for this crap.

…………….

Scene: Still shot of logo, a garish horror of post-sanity-and-taste fluorescent colors with a foot-shredding dance number growling in the background as a set of pan pipes cavorts through the rhythm.

Voice: (helpfully) Hello, follicle fondlers? This is Bruce? We have great deals for you? Come and see us? Well, drop in anyway? If you’ve got it, we can do something about it?

Second Voice: (stridently) Free Nigel! Free Nigel! Free Nigel! Free Nigel!

Professional Voiceover: (slightly unnerved) This….?… Was an announcement… on behalf of the Free Nigel Association Of Bondi. Send your donations to FNAOB, care of Bruce’s Salon, PO Box…….

Al: let’s not say anything about that one.