More About School

I have mentioned a bit about my time at school. I was always kind of a geek but had the good fortune of being considered funny so most people put up with me. I was happy with this arrangement because it was so easy to be funny at my school. There was just so much comedy gold everywhere to be seen.

Probably the best source for cheap entertainment in the entire school was the librarian we had for the first few years of my time there. His name was Mr Cox, which led to a lot of very obvious jokes from the student population. But in my humble opinion, his name was the least funny thing about him.

We referred to him as the Book Nazi. His demeanor was very similar to the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld except instead of soup, it was books. There had to be total silence in his library at all times. God help you if you were chewing gum. I remember a friend of mine once accidentally dropped a book from the library's upper level and I will never forget how terrified I was for her safety.

But it gets better. Cox the Book Nazi was, in his spare time, a reasonably successful square dance caller. Seriously. A few friends of mine looked him up on the internet and found that he released his own recordings of him calling square dances, giving it a bit of the old 'Dosey Doe and around you go!'. And people actually bought them. When we discovered this, it was an incredible revelation. Word spread around the schoolyard pretty quickly.

At some stage the school found out about this hidden hobby and dealt with it the way that high schools are legally required to deal with this things. That is, the way they are required to deal with these things if you live in a Saved By The Bell-esque sitcom. They put him in charge of our PE class for a week. I don't know if you've ever been given square dance lessons by a psychotic librarian with anger management issues, but it's a strange experience. He would be up on stage in a cowboy hat, dropping phrases like 'square your sets!' and throwing in a few rhymes while intermittently screaming at any student who dared displease him. There were a lot of detentions given that week.

Another of my favourite staff members was a history teacher whose name I won't mention, because it was a bit less common. Like many of the teachers at my school she was widely regarded as being totally and completely insane. Personally, I quite liked her. I remember our first history class in year 7, she asked everyone in the room to tell the class two things about themselves. A simple 'getting to know you' exercise. The girl sitting next to me (the same girl who had the misfortune of dropping that book, now that I think about it) mentioned that her favourite food was tiny teddies. We moved on. But our teacher, not so much. The next class she came in with a huge box of tiny teddies and gave them out to everyone in the class. Except for the girl sitting next to me. I should point out that there was literally no reason for doing this that isn't simply messing with a new generation of awkward teenagers.

She also sent me on the single greatest errand I ever carried out when I was at school. I loved running errands for teachers and it wasn't a brown-nosing thing - it was more to do with the fact that it got me a free ticket out of class for as long as I could stretch the errand out.

"Sarah, can you take this note to the front office?" she asked me in class one day, "Tell them it's from me, they should give you something to bring back."

I nodded and wandered out into the corridor. Obviously, I read the note. I was a bit confused when it only had three words on it: 'Bag Of Money'. I wasn't sure what this meant. Had my history teacher finally snapped and was sending the school office a poorly worded ransom note, using me as a messenger? Or did she just fancy her chances of them assuming someone else had ok-ed giving her a free bag of money?

Either way, I handed the note in to the front desk, telling them who it was from. To my surprise the office woman simply nodded and handed me an actual bag full of cash. I considered trying this for myself many times, just going up to the office with a note that said 'Every episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on DVD' or 'Free Maxibons for life' and seeing whether they reached into that cupboard and pulled out what I wanted. I was never game.

I got along well with that teacher, probably because history was one of my favourite subjects. I was always extremely interested in the way that ancient people lived. As I have mentioned, my aunt in England dabbled in archaeology (or, as I like to describe it 'Jetting around Europe digging up ancient remains with Baldrick from Blackadder'. In other words, my dream life) so I had a bit of an inside scoop on this whole ancient history business. It seems impressive in Australia to find something that's more than 50 years old, but over in Europe they're falling over historical artifacts. They can't build a carpark without having to do a full excavation. I remember hearing the story from my mother about how one of my aunt's neighbours had been digging up his backyard and had discovered a human skeleton. It was quickly cleared as not murder due to it being thousands of years old, probably Roman. It was a small country town and the neighbour wasn't quite sure what to do with the discovery, but knew that my aunt was involved in archaeology. He just gave the skeleton to her to deal with. My aunt, being a very busy person, put the ancient human remains in a box under her bed until she could find a spare moment to deal with them. She was that chill, she didn't mind sleeping with literal skeletons in her closet. Although it was even worse because they weren't in the closet, they were under the friggin bed.

Because she lived on the other side of the world, I didn't get to see her that often but I did speak to her on the phone sometimes. I recall a few months later remembering the skeleton incident and asking her how she had ever resolved it. I will never forget her reaction.

"Oh yeah," she muttered, "I should probably get around to doing something about that."

Best relative ever, seriously. Hopefully she did end up remembering to deal with it, because I never did hear what happened with that.

But back to school. As I say, I was very interested in history, but was also a slightly sarcastic teen who didn't quite understand the best applications for her sarcasm. I was in class one day, passing some judgement on an ancient civilisation. My teacher decided to stop me to teach me a lesson, as they tend to do.

"You know, we live in a very different society today. You can't judge those people by today's standards," she mused.

It was a very good point, but I would put what I said next as the single greatest academic comeback I have ever used.

"Yeah? Well, watch me because I think I just did!"


At least that girl who sat next to me got a laugh out of it.

-Smackie Onassis

A Whole Damn Article Of Name-Dropping

I have noticed over my time on facebook that there are a bunch of very popular groups and applications dedicated to the whole belief that only a few people stand between you and the cream of the celebrity crop. It's a nice idea, the whole "six degrees of separation" thing, but I've never once had one of those applications do anything other than ask me for my personal details. However, I woke up yesterday feeling like balls. Considering that doing anything useful was not high on my priorities, I sat down to work out some of my own celebrity connections.

The first one was pretty easy. You all know Jason Lee, right? From the Kevin Smith films, and the show 'My Name Is Earl'? Well guess what, he knocked up a girl I went to school with. She was in my brother's year so I didn't know her well personally, but I remember her alright. Let's just say: she had a reputation for being a total slut. And I'm not one to believe every high school rumour that I ever heard but the fact that she now has a son named 'Pilot Inspektor', fathered by a celebrity scientologist, is pretty damning evidence. The one thing I remember most vividly about this girl was her yearbook quote, because I laughed at it quite hard. I don't remember the beginning of it but the last sentence was something along the lines of "My favourite things are unicorns and my new leather jacket". I thought it was hilarious, especially considering that it was almost definitely not a joke.

So that gets me to Jason Lee. But that's too easy - I don't want to stop there. I could always just add one more connection and get to Kevin Smith. That's a pretty good one. But then I thought - Jason Lee is a scientologist. Beck, also a scientologist. I bet all celebrity scientologists at least have each other's phone numbers. They probably receive a print-out of them when they join, under the headline "Your New Family". So there you have it, a somewhat tenuous connection to Beck.

Then I thought, well, who is someone I would really want to meet? Stephen Fry was a name that came to mind pretty quickly. See, I have these "awesome fantasies". Not fantasies that are awesome, but fantasies in which I am being just that awesome. I don't really have sex fantasies like most people seem to, so I guess I have to replace that void with something. Anyway, one of my favourites is the fantasy in which I high five Stephen Fry on TV*. As a result, I am the coolest kid on the block forever and ever.

But how do I get to Stephen Fry? It was a lot easier than expected. You see, I remembered that my aunt knows Tony Robinson aka Baldrick from Blackadder. She has done archeological research with him, which you would know that he does if you have seen the show Time Team. That's not even what she does for a living, either, it's just a hobby. She actually does something along the lines of research in the field of veterinary science. But that just means that she is more successful in her hobby than most people are in their actual careers. Something of a humbling thought, that. I remember once a neighbour of hers found a skeleton in their backyard and after confirming that it was old enough to be a historical artifact rather than a gruesome murder, the neighbour simply palmed it off to my aunt. Who kept it under her bed for a ridiculously long time until she got around to dealing with it. I'm not sure if she WANTED to get haunted, but that seems like a pretty good way of going about it.

Anyway, you can see where the connection goes from there. Baldrick -> Stephen Fry. Done and done.

What about any others? I must have some from the old band days. 

I actually managed to (very tentatively) connect myself to Damon Albarn. When I was first in talks to join the band, they had just finished the Australian leg of a tour supporting the Specials, and were about to embark on the NZ part of the tour. As I have mentioned, I was invited on this leg of the tour but turned it down. Some people might get a bit confused that I turned down the opportunity to tour with the motherfucking Specials, but it was for three reasons:

1. I didn't know any of the songs, didn't want to embarrass myself in front of the Specials.
2. They hadn't kicked out their current sax player at the time, and I can't think of anything more awkward than touring with the dude I was replacing, who didn't even know he was being replaced at that point.
3. I was in the middle of a uni semester and couldn't really leave the country at short notice. 

But considering I did go on to be in that band for several years, I still count that as a connection to the Specials. From there, you have a list of all the artists ever connected to the Specials. I chose Damon Albarn, who apparently did something with them at Glastonbury one year. The band I was in also gave me a connection to the Whitlams, as our producer had worked with them. Also, the drummer (the only member of the band I still contact every now and again) knew Terepai Richmond and actually had drum lessons from him. I tried to see if I could get any more impressive connections via Tim Freedman, but just try googling "Tim Freedman's famous friends". Google just stops and stares at you. The only result is the word "Really?".

There were a few more that I'd worked out, but for what it is (an exercise in wishful thinking with zero practical applications) this entry is already way too long. Also: it is too easy to connect oneself with any Australian personality. I got to Paul McDermott, John Safran, Daniel Johns (for this one just put: I am from Newcastle) and John Laws with just two connections each. And that's not bragging, I am just saying that our population is so small I bet anybody could do it. 

-Smackie Onassis

*Other "awesome fantasies" include Tony Martin asking me to do a cult radio show with him a la 'Get This' and being the personal guest of Bill Bailey at the Glastonbury Festival.