(or:
Another cheap rip-off from some rather more talented authors)
PRELUDE
In which forum member Futtocks reports from the set of the
movie being made of his book, Fear and Loathing in Huddersfield, in which Jack
Nicholson plays Dr Futtocks (yeah, right) and the author appears in a cameo
role, like any good little media whore. As no self-respecting thespian was
prepared to play the part of John Inverdale, out-takes of Jar Jar Binks that
were too irritating for 'The Phantom Menace' were acquired under licence from
LucasFilm. Futtocks ended up taking Nicholson's car and Amex Ebony on another
adventure. Fasten your seat belts...
I
think had upset some of my fellow flyers at Heathrow with the drunken screaming
and the speaking in tongues. I decided to relax them with some Coleridge.
"This is Xanadu, you lowlife scum. A goddamn king-hell masterpiece."
One more swig to set myself and I was off:
In
Wigan town did Chairman Mo
A
stately stadium decree:
Where
slow the sacred river ran
Past
Scousers measureless to man
Down
to a sunless sea.
So
twice five miles of Tesco's ground
With
Meat Pie stalls were girdled round:
And
there were shirts bright with red and white,
Where
blossomed many a 'gerremonside'
And
here was Ray French ancient as the hills,
With
Jiffy there to catch his false teeth.
But
O! that deep sporting chasm which started
A
century or more ago in Huddersfield!
A
sacred place! as holy and enchanted
As
e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By
Kath Hetherington wailing for her demon-lover!
And
from this chasm with League and union seething,
As
if this Earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A
National Broadcaster propagandised,
Amid
whose minor half-truths burst
Huge
falsehoods vaulted like rebounding hail,
With
old school ties 'neath genial mask:
And
'midst Scots and Home Counties accents
It
held up momently the Rugby League Dream.
A
Century and more meandering with hazy notions,
'Gainst
League and Cup their bullshit ran,
Then
reached the TV ratings measureless to man.
The
Greatest Game beset by arrogant BBC:
And
'mid this tumult Pat Younge heard from far
Ray
Gent's voice, prophesying war!
A
pretty black stewardess from British Airways tried to calm people and ease them
out toward the main terminal when she was rushed by a truly ludicrous figure.
He looked like a barrage balloon in a Springbok shirt with 'Zad' printed on the
back and was yelling racist abuse as he ran at her.
On
impact, she was upended and thrown across the counter at the Dunkin' Donuts
Express. The giant bladder of lard charged toward the rest of us as like a
buffalo on sulphates. But two security guards were quick to apprehend him. They
muffled his shouts with their nightsticks then dragged him through a set of
security doors. It was a headstrong display of severe security countermeasures,
and once they got him deep enough into the bowels of the airport he was sure to
be beaten severely, for the benefit of all.
No
one would condemn such punishment for the man's actions. It was like someone
donning KKK robes and trying to rush the Harlem Apollo stage in hopes of
crippling Ray Charles. Before they'd make it halfway to the first base line
they'd get gang-tackled by the bouncers, dragged out through the stage doors
and pulverised with billyclubs until they collapsed limply into a puddle of
their own piss and blood... then they'd be spit on and cursed at by the
bystanders.
Some
stunts are just stupid to the core.
CHAPTER
ONE
Being
a supporter of The Greatest Game Of All is a high-pressure gig for most people,
under any circumstances. It is like pumping hot steam into thousands of
different-size boilers. The laws of physics mandate that some will explode
before others - although all of them will explode sooner or later unless
somebody cuts off the steam. I love steam myself, and I have learned to survive
under savage and unnatural pressures. I am a steam freak. It is oxygen to me. I
cannot just take it or leave it.
I
have been here in this Hollywood hotel for several days now. On some days it
seems like I have lived here for half my life. There is blood on these hotel
walls, and some of it is mine. Last night I sliced off the tips of two fingers
and bled so profusely in the elevator that they had to take it out of service.
But
nobody complained. I am not just liked at this hotel, I am well-liked. I have
important people thrown out or black-listed on a whim. Nobody from the BBC, for
instance, can even get a drink here. They are verboten. There is a ghastly
political factor in doing any business with Hollywood. You can't get by without
five or six personal staff people - and at least one personal astrologer. An
edge - a power advantage is essential or you will drown in the bullshit.
In
Venice Beach I ran into a man who claimed to be Jack Nicholson's astrologer.
"I consult with him constantly", he told me. "We are never far
away. I have many famous clients: Anthony Mundine, John Hopoate, Paul
Davidson". He produced a yellow business card and gave it to me. "I
can do things for you", he said. "I am a player."
I
took his card and examined it carefully for a moment, as if I couldn't quite
read the small print. But I knew he was lying, so I leaned toward him and
slapped him sharply in the nuts. Not hard, but very quickly, using the back of
my hand and my fingers like a bullwhip, yet very discreetly.
He
let out a hiss and went limp, unable to speak or breathe. I smiled casually and
kept on talking to him as if nothing had happened. "You filthy little
creep," I said to him calmly, "I am Jack Nicholson!"
Outside
on the boulevard I saw a guy in a Rugby League shirt being pestered by two huge
fat union props. One wore a Harlequins shirt and the other a Leicester one;
they were apparently running loose without their mummies. Each had a greasy paw
on his shoulder, and the fatter one was wittering inanely about how Rugby
League was dying and lacked an international dimension. But apart from myself,
nobody else seemed to notice. Or care.
I
grabbed a fork off the bar and stepped outside to help him, giving the bogus
astrologer another slap in the nuts on my way out. When I got to the street,
the fatbacks were still boring the guy. I stabbed the big one in the ribs with
my fork, which sank deep into the tissue. The slob yelped crazily and waddled
off. The other one quickly stepped forward and grunted at me. I gestured at him
"Back off, Woody" I snarled. "I know Pie Kwon Do. You wanna end
up like Wasps at the Middlesex Sevens?" and that was enough. He backed off
and slunk away.
I
took the guy back to the Bunnyboiler Café and we talked TGG. The astrologer was
gone, and we had the lounge to ourselves. His name was Millward Is A Gurner, he
said, and he had just arrived in L.A. to do some preliminary research for an
American Stupid Questions League. It was the third time in 10 days he'd been
buttonholed by drunken rugger buggers on the boardwalk, and he was ready to
quit L.A. The place was getting to me too. I was not bored, however, and I
still had work to do, but it was definitely time to get out of town. I had to
be back in the UK in time for the Kiwi tour. He was a decent guy, but he was
also a little naïve about Hollywood. I saw at once though that he would be
extremely helpful on my trip north.
I
listened to him for a while, then I offered him a job as research assistant on
the movie. He accepted, and we drove back to the hotel in Nicholson's Porsche. As
we pulled up the ramp to the underground garage, the attendants backed off and
signalled me in. Nicholson's henchmen had left word that nobody could touch the
car except me. I parked it expertly, barely missing a red BMW 840Ci, and we
went up the elevator to my suite.
I
reached for my chequebook, but it was missing, so I used Nicholson's American
Express Ebony that I'd found in the glove compartment of his car. I wrote him a
healthy advance and signed Nicholson's name to it. "What the hell?" I
said to him. "He's probably running around out there with my chequebook
right now, racking up all kinds of bills."
That
was the tone of my workdays in Hollywood: violence, joy, filming and Rugby
League. At one club I played the Tibetan nose flute for several hours with Roky
Erickson and three former members of Annette Funicello's backing band. We spent
a lot of time drinking Vodka McGoverns on the balcony, entertaining movie
people and the ever present scribe from League Express magazine...
You
bet, bubba, I was taking care of business. It was the Too Much Fun Club. I had
Jack Nicholson's Jaguar and a green Dodge Viper in the garage, in addition to
the Porsche Carrera 4, but we could only drive one of them up the coast to
collect that bad Vincent Black Shadow for the movie. It was an uptown problem.
Nicholson,
meanwhile, was driving around town in my car and passing himself off as me. It
was part of the movie, he said, but it gave me the creeps.
Finally
it got to be too much, so we loaded up the convertible Jaguar and fled. Why
not? I thought. MIAG had proved to be a tremendous help, and besides, I was
beginning to like the guy.
CHAPTER
TWO
The
sun was going down as we left Malibu and headed north on 101, running smoothly
through Oxnard and along the ocean to Santa Barbara. We'd picked up Grinner
along the way, who was a little nervous about my speed, so I gave him some
tequila to calm him down. Soon he relaxed back into the seat, and exercised his
arm getting the Joe Crow down his throat. Johnny Paycheck was on the radio,
singing 'I'm The Only Hell My Mama Ever Raised', and the traffic was opening
up.
As
we approached the Lompoc exit, I mentioned that Lompoc was the site of a
federal penitentiary and I knew some guys who were over there.
"Oh?"
said MIAG. "Who were they?"
"Prisoners,"
I said. "Nothing serious. That's where they put League Freak and Diablo
Trout after their punch-up."
He
laughed and looked away from the prison walls, but I turned up the music and
settled back to drive and watch the moon come up over the highway. What the
hell? I thought. Just another couple of fans on the road to the Rugby League
Dream.
Things
started to get weird when I noticed Pismo Beach coming up. I was on the cell
phone with Paley, telling him about the time I was violently jailed in Pismo
Beach and how it was making me nervous to even pass a road sign with that name
on it. "Yeah," I was saying, "it was horrible. They filled my
eyes with Mace and beat me on the back of my legs. It was a case of mistaken
identity." I smiled at Grinner, not wanting to alarm him, but I saw that
he was going into a foetal crouch and his fingers were clutching the straps of
his seat belt.
Just
then we passed two police cars parked on the side of the road, and I saw that
we were going a hundred and forty-three. That is the Curse of Speed which has
plagued me all my life. I am a slave to it. On my tombstone they will carve,
"IT NEVER GOT FAST ENOUGH FOR ME." There is, after all, not a pig's
eye worth of difference between going head-on into a Mack truck or sideways
into a concrete wall. On some days you get what you want, and on other, you get
what you need. I have flashbacks of compound femur-fractures and large black
men in white hospital suits holding me down on a gurney while a nurse whose
name-tag says 'Alison' sews the flaps of my scalp together with a stitching
drill.
The
brain is such a wonderful instrument until God sinks his teeth into it.
"Slow
down!" Grinner was yelling. "Slow down! We'll be arrested. I can't
stand it!" He was gasping and clawing at the air.
"Nonsense,"
I said. "Those were not police. My radar didn't go off. Anyway, happiness
is a moving target." I reached over to pat him on the arm, but he swung a
fist at me and I had to pull over. The only exit led to a dangerous-looking
section of Pismo Beach, but I took it anyway.
CHAPTER
THREE
It
was just after midnight when we parked under the streetlight in front of a
burnt out Mexican Sports Bar on Main Street. Grinner was having a nervous
breakdown. There was too much talk about jails and police and prisons, he said.
He felt like he was already in chains. I reflected that spiking the booze with
peyote was probably almost as bad an idea as not telling him before he'd
finished the bottle.
I
parked the car and hurried across the street to get a taco. The girl behind the
register warned me to get my car off the street because the police were about
to swoop down on the gang of thugs milling around in front of the taco place.
"They just had a fight with the cops," she said. "Now I'm afraid
somebody is going to get killed."
We
were parked right behind the doomed mob, so I hurried out to roust my fellow
travellers and move the car to safety. Then we went back inside very gently and
sat down in a booth at the rear of the room. I ordered tacos and beer for three
and tried to calm the situation down. MIAG wanted absinthe, and luckily I still
had a pint flask full of it in my jacket pocket. He knocked his first one back
greedily, then fell back in the booth and grinned. "Well, so much for
that. I guess we're really going crazy, aren't we?"
"Yes,"
I said. "Grinner was out of control. It was like dealing with a
vampire."
He
smiled and kicked my shin. "I am a vampire," he said. "We have
many a mile to go before we sleep. I am hungry."
"Indeed,"
I said. "We will have to fill up on tacos before we go any farther. I too
am extremely hungry."
Just
then the waitress arrived with our order. The mob of young Chicanos outside had
disappeared very suddenly, roaring off into the night in a brace of white
pickup trucks. They were not afraid of the cops, but they left anyway.
As
the waitress realised the gang had gone, she sat down in the booth between us,
shuddered and collapsed against the seat. "Don't worry," I said.
"Nobody is going to be killed tonight. This is the night of the full moon.
Some people will die tonight, but not us. I am protected."
Which
was true. I am a Triple Moon Child, and tonight was the Hunter's Moon. I pulled
the waitress closer to me and spoke soothingly. "You have nothing to fear,
little one," I told her. "No power on earth can harm me tonight. I am
the man on a Strange Horse. I walk with the King."
"Stop
saying that!" Grinner snapped, "Can't you see she's afraid?" The
girl began crying again, but I jerked her to her feet. "Get a grip on
yourself," I said sharply. "We need more beer and some pork tacos to
go. I have to drive the whole coast tonight."
"That's
right," said MIAG. "We're on the trail of the Rugby League Dream.
We're in a hurry." He laughed and reached for my wallet. "Come on,
Doc," he laughed, "Don't get cheap with Jack's money. Just give me
the plastic."
"Watch
yourself," I snarled, slapping his hand away from my pocket. "You've
been acting weird ever since we left L.A. We'll be in serious trouble if you go
sideways on me again."
He
grinned and stretched his arms lazily above his head and rolling his palms in
the air. "Sideways?" he said. "What difference does it make?
Let's get out of here. We're late."
I
paid the bill quickly and watched the waitress disappear into the kitchen. Just
as I stepped into the street, I noticed two police cars coming at us from
different directions. Then another one slowed down right in front of the taco
stand. "Don't worry," I said to the guys. "They're not looking
for us." All the same, we ankled smartly back to the Jaguar. There was a
lot of yelling as we pulled away through the circling traffic and back out onto
Highway 101.
CHAPTER
FOUR
My
mind was now very much on my work as we sped north along the coast to Big Sur.
We were into open country now, running straight up the coast about a mile from
the ocean on a two-lane blacktop road across the dunes with no clouds in the
sky and a full moon blazing down on the Pacific. It was a perfect night to be
driving a fast car on an empty road along the edge of the ocean with two
zoned-out passengers asleep on the white leather seats and Spade Cooley rasping
doggerel about screwheads who go out to sea with shotguns and ponies in small
rowboats just to get some kind of warped revenge on a man who was only trying
to do them a favour in the first place.
You
bet. My mind was wandering, thinking about Ike Turner. I was just with him in
Hollywood. He had a role in my movie, but Ike had a trailer and I didn't. I had
to settle for half of Nicholson's trailer, along with his C4 Porsche and his
wig, so I could look more like myself when I drove around Beverly Hills and
stared at people when we rolled to a halt at stoplights on Rodeo Drive.
I
lost control of the Jaguar about halfway down the slope. The road was slick
with pine needles, and the eucalyptus trees were getting closer together. MIAG
laughed as I tried to aim the car through the darkness with huge tree trunks
looming up in the headlights and the bright white moon on the ocean out in
front of us. It was like driving on ice, going straight toward the abyss.
We
shot past a darkened house and past a parked Jeep, then crashed near a
waterfall high above the sea. I got out of the car and sat down on a rock, then
lit up the bong. "Well," I said to the guys, "this is it. We
must have taken a wrong turn."
MIAG
laughed again. Then he sat down across from me on a log. "You're not
well," he said. "You're very strange - and you don't know why, do
you?"
I
shook my head carefully and drank some gin.
"It's
because you have the soul of a Rugby League fan in the body of a dope
fiend," he whispered. "That is why you have problems." He patted
me on the back. "Yes. That is why people giggle with anxiety every time
you come into a room. That is why you stabbed that rah-rah slob in Venice
Beach."
Well,
that explains a lot of things, doesn't it? We need look no further. Yes sir,
and people wonder why I seem to look at them strangely. Or why my personal
etiquette often seems makeshift and contradictory, even clinically insane...
Hell, I don't miss those whispers, those soft gibberings when I enter a
civilized room. I know what they're thinking, and I know exactly why. They are
extremely uncomfortable with the idea that I am trapped in the body of a career
werewolf loony who has already died many times. Sixteen, all documented. I have
been crushed and beaten and shocked and drowned and poisoned and stabbed and
shot and smothered and set on fire by my own bombs...
All
these things have happened, and probably they will happen again. I have learned
a few tricks along the way, a few random skills and simple avoidance techniques
- but mainly it has been luck, I tthink, and a keen attention to karma, along
with my natural charm.
CHAPTER
FIVE
The
next day, we dug out the Jag and continued on our way. We drove all day with no
really major incidents and that evening I picked up the motorbike from a lockup
at Big Sur. I left the pair to return in their own time. They were flying high
on the Colonel Futtocks' 11 secret herbs'n'spices, so I hoped Jack wasn't too
attached to his car. I set off with the sun just dropping over the Pacific
horizon.
They
used to say that on the Vincent Black Shadow, you could outrun an F-86 jet
fighter on the takeoff runway, but at the end, the F-86 would go airborne and
the Vincent would not, and there was no point in trying to turn it.
That
is a fundamental difference between the old Vincents and the new breed of
superbikes. If you rode the Black Shadow at top speed for any length of time,
you would almost certainly die. That is why there are not many life members of
the Vincent Black Shadow Society. The Vincent was like a bullet that went
straight; a Honda Fireblade or a Ducati 999 is like the magic bullet that went
sideways and hit JFK and the Governor of Texas at the same time. On some days
that is about the most fun you can have with your clothes on.
Maybe
this is the new Café Racer macho. "My bike is so much faster than yours
that I dare you to ride it, you lame little turd. Do you have the balls to ride
this BOTTOMLESS PIT OF TORQUE?" That is the attitude of the New Age
superbike freak. The Vincent just killed you a lot faster than a superbike
will. A fool couldn't ride the Vincent Black Shadow more than once, but a fool
can ride a Fireblade many times, and it will always be a bloodcurdling kind of
fun.
I
reached the highway as total darkness descended and a torrential cloudburst
exploded over me. This did not look good news for your very own Doctor, but I
opened the throttle of the evil machine and pressed on South to the City of
Angels.
It
was just after 3am when I lost control. I was running about eighty-eight or
ninety miles an hour in a drenching, blinding rain on the Interstate with the
main headlight beginning to flicker ominously. I was soaking wet and my fingers
were like rotten icicles on the handlebars.
It
was a moonless night and I knew I was aquaplaning, which is dangerous... My
front tyre was no longer in touch with the asphalt or anything else. My centre
of gravity was too high. There was no visibility on the road, none at all. I
could have spat a cockroach a lot farther than I could see in front of me that
night though the rain and the ground fog.
Our
plan was to keep moving. Never slow down. Keep the Vincent aimed straight ahead
through the rain like a cruise missile... I felt strangely comfortable. There
is a sense of calm and security that comes with very fast on an empty road at
night... F*ck this thunderstorm, I thought.
There
is safety in speed. Nothing can touch me as long as I keep moving fast, and
never mind the cops: They're all hunkered down in a truck stop or jacking off
by themselves in a culvert behind some dynamite shack in the wilderness beyond
the highway... Either way, they wanted no part of me, and I wanted no part of
them. Only trouble could come of it. They were probably nice people, and so was
I - but we were not meant for each other.
Not
tonight anyway, I thought as I sped along in the darkness. Not at nearly 100
miles an hour at 3 in the morning on a rain-slicked coast road in California.
Nobody needs to get involved in a high-speed chase on a filthy night like this.
It would be dumb and extremely dangerous. Nobody riding a Vincent Black Shadow like
this was likely to pull over and surrender peacefully at the first sight of a
cop car behind him. All kinds of weird shit might happen, from a gunfight with
dope fiends to permanent injury or death... It was a good night to lay low and
ignore these loonies. Anybody on the proud highway tonight was far too crazy to
fuck with, anyway.
Some
people will tell you that slow is good - and it may be, on some days - but I am
here to tell you that fast is better. I've always believed this, in spite of
the trouble it's caused me. Being shot out of a cannon will always be better
than being squeezed out of a tube. That is why God made wingers ...
I
saw the truck loom up suddenly through the rain and fog. There is nothing more
terrifying than suddenly meeting a jack-knifed Peterbilt with no brakes coming
at you sideways at sixty or seventy miles per hour on a wet road at three
o'clock in the morning. There is a total understanding, all at once, of how the
captain of the Titanic must have felt when he first saw the Iceberg.
The
brakes were useless, the rear end was coming around. I sat up and tried to put
a boot down, but it made no difference, so I straightened it out and braced for
a serious impact, a crash that would probably kill me. This is It, I thought.
This is how it happens - slamming into a pile of rocks at 100 miles an hour, a
sudden brutal death on a fast motorcycle on a moonless night in a rainstorm
somewhere on the sleazy outskirts of LA. I felt vaguely embarrassed, in that
long pure instant before I went into the rocks.
Blackness.
When
I came to, I was clinging precariously to life, sanity, and a sheer cliffside
overlooking an angry sea. My only companions were lizards, iguanas, and the
pale light of the moon shining like a white, luminous buttock in the mariachi
sky. I tried to scramble up, but I found myself trapped between the tide and
the darkness.
By
this time I was dehydrated, delirious, and waving frantically to every fishing
vessel I could see, many of whom waved back cheerfully or held up their catch
of the day. Because I was trapped, ironically, on a private beach beneath
luxury homes, they had no idea that the date on my carton was rapidly expiring.
Late
in the afternoon, my hopes were fading. If I survived, I vowed, they could give
me a goat's head and I'd dance all night. Once again I began scrabbling upward,
lost in the rocky landscape, trying to find a way to the top of my upscale
death trap. Suddenly, while climbing a steep ledge, I was miraculously plucked
from my precipice by an intrepid band of Mexicans who were rappelling downward.
They had been working on Sly Stallone's house and fortunately, they knew
exactly where to look: The same thing had happened to another person just weeks
earlier. To paraphrase my father, it felt almost good to be alive.
CHAPTER
SIX
Gentle
Reader, by this point you may think that I was overdue a checkup from the neck
up. Well, yeah; I had been nudging the turps more or less constantly for
fifteen straight hours and I was beginning to feel mildly amphibious. I had
been out where the buses don't run for longer than usual and I was in the
implacable deathgrip of the Thrill Kill Pixie. I have been a slave to
adrenaline for much of my life and the effects will show through the veneer of
civilisation from time to time.
The
life of an adrenaline junkie - a Rugby League winger for example - is not
dissimilar to that of the Jackrabbit. Zoologists who know something of the
Jackrabbit will tell you they are primarily motivated by Fear, Stupidity and
Craziness. In Rugby, that translates as Fear of failure, enough Stupidity or maybe cussedness to come inside and
face the opposition pack and the Craziness of flying the razor's edge of the
touchline, a gnat's crotchet from being smashed into roadkill against the
hoardings.
But
I grew up in the country and I know Br'er Jack too. Most of them lead pretty
dull lives; they are bored with their daily routine; eat, f*ck, sleep, hop
around a shrub and back... No wonder most of them drift over the line into
cheap and vicious thrills once in a while; there has to be a powerful rush in
crouching by the side of the road, waiting for the next set of headlights to
come along, then streaking out of cover with the split-nothing timing of a
Matthew Gidley offload and making it just inches in front of the speeding front
wheels.
Why
not? Anything that gets the metabolism going like a 240-volt blast from a naked
copper wire in a bathtub is good for the reflexes and keeps the veins free of
cholesterol... but too many adrenaline blasts in any given timeframe have the
same effect of the nervous system as electroconvulsive therapy applied directly
to the medulla by some white-jacketed sadist straight out of 'One Flew Over The
Cuckoo's Nest'; after a while you start burning out the circuits.
When
a Jackrabbit gets addicted to Roadrunning, it is only a matter of when, not if,
he gets smashed - and when a fan starts to track down the Rugby League Dream,
he will sooner or later start raving and babbling in print about things that
only a person who has been there can possibly understand.
CHAPTER
SEVEN
There
is something more disturbing than an adrenaline junkie and that is the
diametric opposite - a Rugby union apologist. Many show the classic symptoms of
a condition known as 'Twickenham Bloat'; a gruesome syndrome that is connected
to failing adrenal glands.
The
swelling begins within a week of accepting the BBC's shilling, when the victim
begins to realise that his sport of choice is essentially as meaningless and
dull as his entire life. At that point, the body's supply of adrenaline is
sucked into the gizzard and nothing will ever cause it to rise again... and
without that stimulus, the flesh begins to swell, the eyes fill out with blood
and sink back into the face, the jowls puff out from the cheekbones, the
neck-flesh droops and the belly swells up like a frog's throat... The brain
fills with noxious fluids, the tongue is rubbed raw against the molars and the
basic perception antennae begin dying like hairs on a bonfire.
One
of the best things I took in while I was in America was an AMNRL match, between
Glen Mills and New York. Two all-American teams under a brown sky; the
fierceness of their struggle brought tears to the eyes of sports-mad Americans.
They
were two teams that were somehow more than men; they were giants, idols,
titans.
Behemoths.
They
stood for everything good and true and right in the Rugby League Dream. Because
they had guts, and they yearned for ultimate Glory, the Great Prize, the final
fruits of a long and pain-filled campaign.
They
were hungry for it; they were thirsty. For a whole season they had fought for
the glittering trophy... and when they saw that prize they were ready for it.
They could almost taste it. The smell of triumph was stronger than a ton of
rotting mangoes. Their nerves burned like open sores on a dog's neck.
White
knuckles.
Screaming
eyes.
Outside
the stadium, gangs of Seconal-crazed teenagers prowled through the parking lot,
beating the mortal shit out of late-comers.
Seconal.
'Reds'; a vital ingredient in the classic young derro's cocktail of Seconal,
cheap wine and Bennies was as old as the hills, old as Stephen Jones' wig, old
as a Vodka Martini, but cheaper and a deadly combination for anyone who crossed
the user. The reds removed the harsh reality, the wine gave a mixture of buzz,
aggression and numbness, the bennies gave you the energy to let you stamp on a
rival gang member's nuts all night long.
CHAPTER
EIGHT
MEMO
FROM: Markoff Chaney, PA to Dr F.
TO: John Drake, TRL.com
CC: The Council Of Armed Rabbis; The John
Dillinger Died For You Society; The Invisible Hand
The
Following memo arrived shortly before deadline date for this chapter. Because
of the implications, we felt a certain, we felt a certain obligation to lash up
some form of communications link with the Doctor.
The
Circumstances have been a carefully-guarded secret until now. After posting his
last bulletin, Futtocks almost drowned when his SCUBA tanks unexplainable ran
out of air while diving for black coral off the Yucatan peninsular.
He
was immediately rushed into a decompression chamber which made it initially
impossible to converse with him except by means of handwritten notes held up to
the chamber's viewing port.
Eventually,
a laptop was introduced to the chamber and this missal comes to you somewhat
tardily due to these unfortunate circumstances.
In
these troubled times, I am currently citing as my inspiration the text of a
McDonalds newspaper advert, no less, from the early seventies. It was printed
during Richard Nixon's run to the White House and the text runs thus:
PRESS
ON. NOTHING IN THE WORLD CAN TAKE THE PLACE OF PERSISTENCE.
TALENT
WILL NOT: NOTHING IS MORE COMMON
UNSUCCESSFUL MEN WITH TALENT. GENIUS WILL NOT:
UNREWARDED GENIUS IS ALMOST A PROVERB. EDUCATION ALONE WILL NOT: THE WORLD IS FULL OF EDUCATED DERELICTS.
PERSISTENCE
AND DETERMINATION ALONE ARE OMNIPOTENT.
And
so much for that, eh? To nutshell the message of that mildly psychotic
apothegm; don't give up. Bite ye the foot that crusheth you - kick against the
pricks and strut thy stuff through the Valley of the Shadow of McDeath. That is
all ye know and all ye need know.
Where
was I? Okay...
One
of the very few things that Rugby union fans actually know about The Greatest
Game Of All tends to come up near the end of their largely ill-informed rants
against the Code That Evolved: "The people that run Rugby League"
they opine sagely "are shite. Really really shite". They then fold
their arms and smirk triumphantly, as if expecting up to strike our foreheads
in amazed realisation.
They
are right, of course, on this one matter and we all know it. I have seen my
share of disasters over the years; the raping of Sheffield and Gateshead, the
ARL/SuperLeague wars, the Three Stooges' craven whoring for Twickenham's lucre
and so on. I lived through them all. So did you. Think of all the conceivable
misfortunes that can arise from combinations of folly, cowardice, greed and
sheer bad luck and I can give you chapter and verse.
There
have been many born fools throughout history - Lord Cardigan, William Hague,
General Custer, Timmy Mallett, George Dubya Bush, Darren Day, Mike Davis - but
I'll state unhesitatingly that for pure vacillating stupidity, for superb
incompetence to lead, for ignorance combined with bad judgement - in short, for
the true talent for catastrophe, Rugby League administrators stand alone.
They
would contend that their job is not an easy one, and they are right. It is not
easy. You start out with an exciting attractive game, athletes of matchless
skill, fitness, courage and motivation, new nations eager to play The Greatest
Game Of All, an uninspiring and soon-to-financially-implode adversary in Rugby
union and many many opportunities to advance the cause of the code.
But
they, with the true touch of genius, swept these obstacles aside and out of
promise wrought disaster time and time again. With the arrival of Richard Lewis
we shall not, If the Good Lord's willin' and the creek don't rise, look upon
their like again.
CHAPTER
NINE
Flashback
to July 2001: Interlude in a London Bar (or Thank goodness we have freedom of
the press, or we wouldn't know Rugby League was a dying Northern-only sport.)
What goes on in the media's corridors of power? Yours truly was sent off on a
mission to plumb the depths that these morally deviant pigfuckers regularly
inhabit.
So...
yes well, and here I go again. I affixed the fake press ID to my jacket and
entered the bar. It read 'Bill Harrigan, Melbourne Tribune'. As I pulled up at
the bar, a red-faced man with a bouffant wig squinted at the badge.
"Bill,
eh? Come join us! What're ya drinkin'?"
I
forced a neutral smile. "Something real strong."
I
was welcomed with a flabby pat on the back. "So how are you enjoying
England? Not like back home, ha ha!"
I was introduced around.
"Stephen
Jones, of the Sunday Times. Been here since I had my own hair."
"John
Inverdale, the face of Grandstand. If everyone thinks Rugby League is only
played in the North of England, you can thank me, heh heh!"
Nicky
Campbell, the Scottish Steve Penk, came over, saying "I'm writing a book
on Rugger, and no matter what Jonesy tells you, I'm not dating him."
"Pat
Younge, head of sport at the British Rugby Union Broadcasting Corporation.
Remember that piece proving the Rugby Union World Cup got 3 billion viewers?
That's one of mine, y'know."
I
shot back a double brandy. "Best thing I learned in college was how to
drink," I said. "They sure as hell didn't prepare me for being a
Rugby correspondent." I took a deep breath and steadied myself for a
little shit-stirring. "By the way, I can't believe the stuff I read in
today's papers about Rugby League. Some of those hacks should be writing
fiction for a living! Those poor League fans. Is it always like this?"
No
one answered. The other journalists gaped at me, and then at each other.
Campbell found his voice first. "Uh, Bill. Let's not forget, a Rugby
journalist put lot of hard work went into making up those stories. He missed
lunch. Yet another victim of the split of 1895."
Jones
cut in. "You don't understand what's going on here. Nothing's obvious.
I've got great sources, and they told me those Bradford rigged the Middlesex
Sevens to make Rugby Union look bad. Of course, the Bulls denied it, they
always do."
"But
I saw -" I started.
"You
saw?" Younge had taken over the tirade. "Jeez, what are you, an
innocent bystander? Someone knew you were there, and they gave you something to
write about. If a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it, did the tree make
a sound? If the Rugby League World Cup goes badly and we're not there to make
hay about it, does it matter? Yes! Casual viewers might get into the game. You
have to tell them they're not interested. Every. Single. Day. (he punctuated
the last three words with thumps on the
bar)
Let
me put it the other way around: their 1995 tournament was a success, but we
didn't tell anyone about it, so who cares? It's like it didn't happen, and the
world remained the same."
"Boy,
I sure have a lot to learn about being a Rugby correspondent in England,"
I said.
Jones
popped a few peanuts into his mouth. "It's rather good fun,
actually," he said breezily. "We'll be having a slow day. My editor
is howling for a story. So I call some friends, and tell them I need something
positive. An hour later I get faxed a set of nicely rounded-up attendance
figures. They include all the freebies and corporate tickets, of course. Then
we add all the season tickets, regardless of whether those fans have turned up
or not, to the total, just to be on the safe side.
Naturally,
I then alert John and the TV crews. Next day, the whole world is told that
Rugby Union will overtake Football in 10 years. Works every time."
I
did my 'agog' face. "You mean it doesn't just happen? You orchestrate the
stories? You make up the figures?"
Campbell
was getting impatient with my obviously convincing naïvety. "Nah,
sometimes we actually get an exciting match. Yeah, right. Look, how d'you think
we always get to the right place at the right time? I can write my story
without leaving the barstool, but the photographers have to be on the
spot."
I
looked askance at him. "And I thought I needed a drink before."
"You
gotta tell 'em what they want, then give it to them" Jones smirked. "You
write any positive stories about Rugby League in this country and you'll be
covering art exhibitions in Skagway, Alaska by the next week."
"Ooh,
careful, Jonesy," Pat chided, "you sounded a teensy bit biased
there." The others howled in raucous laughter.
I
eyed them and decided to stir just a little more. "Why don't you go to a
Rugby League match and just write what happened? Or are you afraid the fans
will recognise you?"
Campbell
leaned over to me and lowered his voice. "Just a hint; in this country, be
careful what you say. This isn't Australia; you can't just report things that
actually happen, for God's sake."
I
acted utterly bewildered. "Tell me what I don't understand. On one side,
we have a sport that's never tried to harm anyone else, and on the other side,
a privileged society that glorifies cheap shots on and off the pitch which
would be objectionable anywhere else in the world. But you guys - you not only
disregard professional impartiality, you justify, no you glorify their actions!"
Well,
they weren't exactly speechless this time. This new kid dared to preach to them
about journalistic integrity and challenge their belief in sportsmanship?
"We
believe in Rugby's right to dominate the airwaves, whether the public wants it
or not!" Inverdale yapped. "What's wrong with that? Once the licence
fee leaves a pleb's bank account, it's ours!"
"As
journalists," I reminded him, "you're not supposed to believe in
anything but the truth. Besides, don't most people in this country follow
Football?"
"You
know," Jones retorted coldly, "if we were sitting at a bar in
Twickenham, you wouldn't get out of here alive."
I
grinned at him. "I see now; the RFU don't approve of unbiased reporting,
so you meekly comply with reams of non-critical praise, but the laws of this
country allow freedom of the press, which you abuse against Rugby League every
chance you get. And which side do you, as fiercely independent journalists,
admire? Your poor, ignorant public wouldn't know your objectivity is
compromised, because you don't tell them. You are a righteous bunch, aren't
you?"
"Ah
for Christ's sake!" Jones exploded. "You been here, what, a week?
You've got a lot to learn."
"Red
Hall probably got to him," Younge
suggested.
"Have
you ever watched Rugby League with an open mind?" I asked.
Campbell
bristled. "Hey watch it! I'm a serious broadcaster! I've got Andrew
Neill's private phone number. I'm not going to submit myself to their
propaganda, however much evidence they back it up with! You'll lose me that
hospitality box at Murrayfield!"
I
summoned the bartender for the tab. I wasn't about to wait for anyone to say
"drinks are on me, pal!" I didn't think I had made a very good
impression on these sorry old lushes, which was, after all, the only reason I
was there.
CHAPTER
TEN
By
the time I got back to the movie set, Ike Turner was muttering and waving a
Magnum at his P.A. I had to do some smoothing over and break a bone or two, but
in the end everything was copacetic.
Bulltige
had arrived; he brought me up to date on the Rugby Referendum that was rocking
the British establishment. The vote, which had been rushed through parliament
during the Six Nations while the right-wingers were being wined and bribed at
Twickenham, was "Should the BBC & the London-based Media be punished
to the full extent of the law for the crime of abusing & perverting the
freedom of the press?" Following an independent exposé, the Fatbacks and
the Pinstripers were being blinded by a very public, very unwelcome limelight.
The vultures had come home to roost with a vengeance.
Gangs
had been formed to suck, f*ck, intimidate and cajole the public into voting for
a whitewash on the whole affair, but countermeasures were already in place.
Bulltige had organised teams of poll-watchers; two inside each voting station
at all times, with plenty more close by in vans full of checklists, coffee and
copies of the voting laws.
The
idea was to keep massive assistance available at all times to our point men
inside. The reasoning behind this heavy and public display was the sure
knowledge that the rah-rahs and their pussywhipped buttboys in the media would
try to engineer some kind of ugly scene and rattle the uncommitted voter.
Each
poll-watcher was given a portable cassette recorder that he was instructed to
stick in the face of anyone who asked anything beyond the legally allowable
questions.
And
since Stephen Jones, no less, had threatened to face down what he referred to
as "A handful of pleb commie northern agitators", Bulltige and the
boys had decided to force the issue as soon as possible. If the bastards wanted
a confrontation, they were going to get one.
The
man in charge of that particular polling station was a man called Frank
Keating, an ancient and senile old hack who still thought of himself as a
respected sports journalist. Martin Bormann may have fled to Brazil, but the
majority of his fellow-thinkers ended up in south London. He has devoted much
of his life doing down the sport he regards as played by 'untermensch', so
Frank was waiting eagerly for Jones to arrive in his RFU-sponsored limousine.
The
car glided through a silent gauntlet of our people. Bulltige had surpassed
himself, mustering a small group of the scurviest-looking legal voters he could
round up - and when Mister Jones arrived, these guys were lining up to vote.
Behind them, lounging around in the car park were at least twenty others, most
of them large and menacing and several so eager for retribution they had spent
most of the day making chain-whips and loading up on crank to stay crazy.
Jones
and Keating were horrified; it was the first time they had come face-to-face
with public opinion and they were faced with a bunch of super aggressive
campaigners who had taken shit for long enough. What had got into them? Why
were their beloved taken-for-granted public shouting "You're fucked,
Jones! We're gonna croak you - your whole act is doomed! We're gonna beat your
ass like a gong!"
The
two weasels hurried inside for safety, only dimly realising that the people had
taken all the crap they could take and were rising up against the
officially-sanctioned brainwashing of a century and more. They were immediately
faced by the unwelcome apparition of Ray Gent with a microphone. "Welcome
Steve; you're late. the voters are waiting... did you see them? And if you
wonder what I'm doing here, this little tape recorder is to record all your
little felonies and every word you say when you start harassing people"
The
dark side lost their first confrontation almost immediately. A clean-cut kid
tried to enter the poling booth; Jones started to jabber at him almost
immediately. Ray moved in with his microphone, but before he could intervene,
the kid began snarling at the two startled Rugger Buggers "Go f*ck
yourself! I know the goddamn law. I don't have to tell you anything! You're a
dying breed, Jones! Get out of my way, I'm ready to vote." It was Blood
Sweat'n'Beers' finest moment.
The
next voter in line was Alison. She'd been incredulous, not really believing the
Day Of Judgement had finally come upon the unrighteous. Keating's desperate
spin-quackery didn't have any effect on her; when she came out again, she was
grinning like she'd personally kicked Peter Salmon in the cojones.
After
that Ray and Bulltige held off. The RFU Goon squad had turned up with all the
cops they had on their payroll, but there were too many witnesses and they were
forced to stand around, sweating and fuming with hatred. The Pinstripers were
going to be beaten like a red-headed mule and the Three Stooges (Gary, Caisley
& Mo) would see their treacherous collaborationist dreams go down the
tubes.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
I
checked into my hotel room, but I couldn't sleep; a tremendous racket came from
the room next door. I loaded the Noguchi (a gift from Ike) and stepped into the
corridor.
Kicking
through the door of the next room, I surprised Peter Wheeler and Pat Younge,
apparently in the process of recreating a classic Robert Mapplethorpe photo. I
think we can all guess which one was holding the bullwhip and which was in the
receiving position. There is, after all, a big difference between kneeling down
and bending over.
"Well,
hello!", I chuckled, "Smile for Mister Polaroid, boys. You're gonna
make page one of every tabloid in Wapping." I left them squealing like
pigs and went back to my room, where I cranked the volume on my boombox. If you
can't get absolute quiet for your beauty sleep, then absolute noise will do
almost as well. Overload and blank out all sensory input. Yeah. I could sleep
and my neighbours could suffer.
That's
about it for now. This story is too much to have to confront professionally in
these morbid times as the end of the year grows closer... I have only vague
memories of Hollywood now, but as I wait for my flight back to England, I have
flashbacks about Christmas in London, and how it felt to glide in perfect
speedy silence around the Broadgate ice rink while junkies and winos in white
beards and sleazy red jumpsuits worked the crowd mercilessly for notes and
coins covered with Cocaine residue.
I
remember one Christmas morning in Docklands when Frank Machin & I got into
the Canary Wharf building, went up to the Executive Suite of some newspaper and
shoved a 600lb red, tufted-leather sofa out of a corner window on something
like the forty-fifth floor... The wind caught it, as I recall, and it sort of
drifted around the corner of the building, picking up speed on its way down,
and hit the striped awning of the kind of shop that sells everything from
cappuccino to Christmas trees. The impact blasted watermelons and foccacia and
yuppies all over the sidewalk. We could barely see the impact from where we
were, but I remember a lot of activity on the street when we came out of the
elevator...
It
looked like a war zone. A few gawkers were standing around, muttering to each
other and looking dazed. They thought it was an underground explosion - maybe a
subway or a gas main. Mike Davis had taken a direct hit and was pronounced
brain dead on the spot by paramedics. It didn't seem to slow him down much and
we later heard that the Sunday Times was still going to offer him that promised
job of cleaning Stephen Jones' brothelcreepers with his tongue.
Just
as we passed the scene, a speeding minicab skidded on some watermelons, slammed
into a telephone box and burst into flames. There was a lot of screaming and
wailing of police sirens Two cops began fighting with a gang of looters who had
emerged like ghosts out of the snow and were running off with hams and bottles
and big jars of caviar... Nobody seemed to think it was strange.
What
the hell? Shit happens. Welcome to the Smoke. Keep alert. Never ride in open
cars or walk to too close to a tall building when it snows... There were
Christmas trees scattered all over the street and cars were stopping to grab
them and speeding away. We stole one and took it to Paley's place because we
knew he hadn't bought one yet. But he wasn't home, so we put the tree out on
the fire escape and set it on fire with brandy.
That's
how I remember London; it was always a place of angst and failure and turmoil.
Nobody ever seemed to have any money come Christmastime. Even rich people were
broke and jabbering frantically on their telephones about Santa Claus and
suicide or joining a church with no rules... The snow was clean and pretty for
the first twenty or thirty minutes around dawn, but after that it was churned
into filthy mush by drunken cabbies and garbage trucks and pissing dogs.
Anybody
who acted happy on Christmas was lying - even the ones were getting paid £300
an hour... The Jews were especially sulky, and who could blame them? The
birthday of the Baby Jesus is always a nervous time for people who know that
ninety days later they will be accused by certain morons and inbred
fundamentalists of murdering him.
THE
END
FOR
NOW, ANYWAY