Local Hero
June 17th 2008 07:44
Ricky Gervais, when interviewed for Desert Island discs on the BBC, said (I am paraphrasing) that he was depressed by young kids’ desire for fame. Apparently when asked what they want to be when they grow up, most British kids polled said: “Famous”.
Poor Ricky found this distressing because all they want is the fame and not the hard work it takes to get there. What people only see, he says, is George Clooney on the red carpet and they forget how much fun George really had working hard to get there. (I don’t get the George Clooney thing by the way. I get Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep, but not George and Brad and Angelina.) All of this was interspersed by Ricky spouting forth all the appropriate rags to riches stuff he went through: “… working class up bringing, dad a labourer, raised by mum, a humble housewife…” Good on ya, Ricky.
He is right though, our sorry society is celebrity obsessed. We are sadly seeking out fame and fortune because somehow Paris Hilton and Corey Washington (I cringe that I actually know who these people are and that I am adding to the terabytes of space already devoted – literally - to them) get some limelight. And it becomes aspirational. To be famous, for no reason.
Now Ricky plays all humble and shirks the limelight, but you can’t help but think that there is a part of him that is saying: “Hey, look the f*%# at me." (As he would say, but which I have edited out as I suspect the Orble-filter has pended my publication. I am following up on this and you can count on a nasty letter to the times about censorship). "That is pretty terrific for a brick layer’s son from Reading.” And I have no problem with that. I guess there is a part of me that also wants to be famous. At the end of long runs I imagine I am running into an Olympic stadium somewhere and the crowd is chanting my name: “Za To Pek, Za To Pek, Za To Pek…”
In one small way I was a hero, at least in my daughter’s eyes, for a day. I was no Emil Zatopek but thankfully I was no Corey or Paris either.
Appropriately it was Australia Day 2008. We were down on the beach, as one does. Quietly waiting for another round of race fuelled riots, which mercifully never materialised. But I did have an ongoing sense of hyper-vigilism for the day mainly because of the droves of testosterone and oestrogen fuelled teenagers that flooded the beach and adjoining reserve.
Why do I feel so threatened by packs of teenagers?
Shrieking young girls egged (pun intended) on by the horrible squawk of male puberty drowned out any conversation we wanted to have. And they destroyed any opportunity to just sit and reflect on what Australia Day means, actually. An honest fire juggler struggled with his kerosene and childish abuse from these kids. There was persistent clumsy pawing at the girls. There was the usual acne-embarrassed-kissing going on. We sat on the plaza as the sun set behind us. Patiently minding our own business, quietly reminding ourselves that we too were once young. I tried desperately to see the same prankish innocence in their behaviour that I like to think marked my teenage years. Yet, somehow, this generation X (Y, whatever, as they would say) lot seem to have an edge to them: maybe desperation to impress, to be famous, and without care.
Somehow they represented the dashed innocence of previous youth, of my parents’ youth, of my youth, and worse yet, they set the tone for denying my kids the innocence of their youth.
It boiled over when one of these impress-my-mates-desperados who had been lurking around us stole a piece of pizza right from out of my 10 year old daughter’s hands.
Outraged. I was on auto-pilot as I gave chase, no thought of the damage that a horde of UDL soaked teens could do to a mild mannered office worker. The villain escaped momentarily, the pace of youth too much for an ageing marathoner. But slowly slowly catchee monkey. I returned assured in the wisdom that the offender will return to the scene of the crime. Sure as hell 5 minutes later he was back. All the sass, know-it-allness, tech-savvyness, face-bookness, i-Podism, and net information that these kids have and still this little speck of humanity in his over-confidence figured he wouldn’t be recognised.
It’s the real world you live in mate, not some cyber avatar society.
My loyal sidekick, Josh, spotted him and within a flash I jumped up and affected an arrest. It was the old style forearm clamp. I marched him to a cohort of NSW’s finest for a stern warning. Now I know a lot of people have issues with the law, but the young officers (some of them not much older than the tossers who caused all the trouble) who were out on that day battling scores of pissed revellers had a sense of innocence and justice that seemed old fashioned.
Anyway the offender was scolded and we were given the assurance by the police that his parents would be phoned. It looked like stern warnings all around. For a second there it was 1979.
And when I returned to my daughter, the look in her eyes was enough for me to imagine that I had a red cape, a forelock and I was wearing my underpants on the outside.
Poor Ricky found this distressing because all they want is the fame and not the hard work it takes to get there. What people only see, he says, is George Clooney on the red carpet and they forget how much fun George really had working hard to get there. (I don’t get the George Clooney thing by the way. I get Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep, but not George and Brad and Angelina.) All of this was interspersed by Ricky spouting forth all the appropriate rags to riches stuff he went through: “… working class up bringing, dad a labourer, raised by mum, a humble housewife…” Good on ya, Ricky.
He is right though, our sorry society is celebrity obsessed. We are sadly seeking out fame and fortune because somehow Paris Hilton and Corey Washington (I cringe that I actually know who these people are and that I am adding to the terabytes of space already devoted – literally - to them) get some limelight. And it becomes aspirational. To be famous, for no reason.
Now Ricky plays all humble and shirks the limelight, but you can’t help but think that there is a part of him that is saying: “Hey, look the f*%# at me." (As he would say, but which I have edited out as I suspect the Orble-filter has pended my publication. I am following up on this and you can count on a nasty letter to the times about censorship). "That is pretty terrific for a brick layer’s son from Reading.” And I have no problem with that. I guess there is a part of me that also wants to be famous. At the end of long runs I imagine I am running into an Olympic stadium somewhere and the crowd is chanting my name: “Za To Pek, Za To Pek, Za To Pek…”
In one small way I was a hero, at least in my daughter’s eyes, for a day. I was no Emil Zatopek but thankfully I was no Corey or Paris either.
Appropriately it was Australia Day 2008. We were down on the beach, as one does. Quietly waiting for another round of race fuelled riots, which mercifully never materialised. But I did have an ongoing sense of hyper-vigilism for the day mainly because of the droves of testosterone and oestrogen fuelled teenagers that flooded the beach and adjoining reserve.
Why do I feel so threatened by packs of teenagers?
Shrieking young girls egged (pun intended) on by the horrible squawk of male puberty drowned out any conversation we wanted to have. And they destroyed any opportunity to just sit and reflect on what Australia Day means, actually. An honest fire juggler struggled with his kerosene and childish abuse from these kids. There was persistent clumsy pawing at the girls. There was the usual acne-embarrassed-kissing going on. We sat on the plaza as the sun set behind us. Patiently minding our own business, quietly reminding ourselves that we too were once young. I tried desperately to see the same prankish innocence in their behaviour that I like to think marked my teenage years. Yet, somehow, this generation X (Y, whatever, as they would say) lot seem to have an edge to them: maybe desperation to impress, to be famous, and without care.
Somehow they represented the dashed innocence of previous youth, of my parents’ youth, of my youth, and worse yet, they set the tone for denying my kids the innocence of their youth.
It boiled over when one of these impress-my-mates-desperados who had been lurking around us stole a piece of pizza right from out of my 10 year old daughter’s hands.
Outraged. I was on auto-pilot as I gave chase, no thought of the damage that a horde of UDL soaked teens could do to a mild mannered office worker. The villain escaped momentarily, the pace of youth too much for an ageing marathoner. But slowly slowly catchee monkey. I returned assured in the wisdom that the offender will return to the scene of the crime. Sure as hell 5 minutes later he was back. All the sass, know-it-allness, tech-savvyness, face-bookness, i-Podism, and net information that these kids have and still this little speck of humanity in his over-confidence figured he wouldn’t be recognised.
It’s the real world you live in mate, not some cyber avatar society.
My loyal sidekick, Josh, spotted him and within a flash I jumped up and affected an arrest. It was the old style forearm clamp. I marched him to a cohort of NSW’s finest for a stern warning. Now I know a lot of people have issues with the law, but the young officers (some of them not much older than the tossers who caused all the trouble) who were out on that day battling scores of pissed revellers had a sense of innocence and justice that seemed old fashioned.
Anyway the offender was scolded and we were given the assurance by the police that his parents would be phoned. It looked like stern warnings all around. For a second there it was 1979.
And when I returned to my daughter, the look in her eyes was enough for me to imagine that I had a red cape, a forelock and I was wearing my underpants on the outside.
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