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LapTopping – The Bit Long, Official E-zine of The Bedroom Philosopher
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ISSUE 73
Wednesday September 30, 2009.

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LT BIRTHDAYS

Happy Birthday Kieran Culkin 27 today!
Happy Birthday Martina Hingis 29 today!
Happy Birthday Fran Drescher 52 today!

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COOL SHOP
Having trouble finding Bedroom Philosopher albums and products? Forget passive aggressive conversations with aloof staff and settling with Motorace, now you can buy direct from The Philosopher himself and keep his fiscal economy thriving.
Items can be posted to you hastily and tastily within days, HAND SIGNED by the relatively well known pro-am social-lite himself! You then do a direct deposit like some whizz-kid.
You can get stuff like:
Brown & Orange
In Bed With My Doona
Limited Edition ‘Lifearooni’ Royal blue Tshirts. (S, M, L, XL) in men’s and ladies sizes.
All $25 inc. postage. Buy multiple items and save on maths!
Lay-by available! Up to 24 cat years. Email now! Our operators are lying down.

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URBAN HEADLINES

SECRET SONG ON END OF CD COULD PROBABLY HAVE BEEN LEFT OFF
MAN FEELS WEIRD AFTER TIPPING AGAINST OWN FOOTBALL TEAM
UNI STUDENT PRETENDS TO UNDERSTAND BOB DYLAN LYRIC
FILM BUFF DISTRACTED BY MARGARET POMERANZ’ SNORT LAUGH
HAIRDRESSER FLIPPANT ABOUT CLIENTS DAY
SPORTS DRINK COULD JUST BE CORDIAL
FASHION MAGAZINE NICE PLACE TO VISIT WOULDN’T WANT TO LIVE THERE
BOY UNABLE TO DATE AFTER REALISING ALL CANDIDATES ARE HIS FRIENDS
GIRL SECRETLY BORED AFTER BAND START TO GET A BIT SAMEY
ARTIST FEELS PATRONISED IN BANK
TWO AND A HALF MEN ON AGAIN
TEENAGER INTIMIDATING
CIGAR BAD IDEA
FRIENDS STORY ABOUT WORK COULD HAVE DONE WITH EDIT
BOY FORCED TO NURSE BACKPACK AFTER JIGGLY BUS TRIP
FACEBOOK BASICALLY A SOCIAL POKER MACHINE
TEXT MESSAGE GRAMMAR SUFFERS
WOMAN CAN’T REMEMBER WHAT SHE DID TWO BIRTHDAYS AGO
OLD HIGH SCHOOL FRIEND PUTS ON WEIGHT
MULTI VITAMIN DOES LITTLE OTHER THAN MAKE WEE BRIGHT YELLOW

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TINY LEGENDS – Moments that fell down the back of the couch.

From Tom.

“I was walking to the toilet at work the other day, and this guy from an office we share the floor with walked past me. He’s a tall, beardy, somewhat gormless kind of guy – very quite and he looks angry most of the time. I’ve never heard him say a word to anyone (not even his colleagues – even though I guess he must) and definitely not me. But as he walked past me, very quietly, just under his breath, he whispered:
“sausage roll”
I still don’t know if he was talking to me or himself. I kind of hoped it was me… we haven’t shared a word since.

EMAIL US YOUR TINY LEGENDS.

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INANIMATE OBJECT BEREAVEMENT NOTICES

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SICK
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From Kelly Chandler, Melbourne.

“The Cure ‘Standing On A Beach: The Singles / The Unavailable B-Sides.’ Loaned by Jon Paterson from Donny Hood in year 10 and never returned because got lost in the b-bits while smoking out bedroom window. After constant rotation, discovered today slightly chewed by tape player, still working but wonky. (i) may never recover.”

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WE PRAY FOR THEIR RECALIBRATION
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SEND YOUR BEREAVEMENT NOTICES TO THIS ADDRESS.

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GET A WRIGGLE ON GOOGLET!

Phrases people have typed into Google to land on my website:

“deliberately wacky”
“illegal drag racing tasmania”
“indecent obsession hey hey its saturday”
“bedroom linen associations”
“i forgot my girlfriends name”
“rodney rude asian names”
“where to buy retro australian lollies”
“where can i get harry potter glasses in albury”
“record for continuous swinging”
“drunk stirrup pants”
“hot hipster girls”
“amstrad computer club adelaide”
“justin blasko “
“how to remove ribena carpet”
“why is the coldest place up high if it s closer to the sun”
“i’m so postmodern i got drunk just on the thought of you fell into a coma and couldn’t be revived…”
“where do you buy inner tubes for wheelbarrows parramatta”
“funny bushwalking anecdotes”
“great novels to create a novelty showbag on”
“airwolf wallpaper 4 bedroom”
“blouse for broken arm”
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TIME IS CHEESE AND MOUSE IS HUNGRY!

Last month the one and only Tony Martin (as in the one and only one who’s not the actor one) came on my Triple R Show ‘Lime Champions’ and delivered this now legendary piece of superbole. It is THE BEST.

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A GIGGLE OF GIGS

SYDNEY
The Vanguard, Thursday October 29. Details TBA. This will be a solo headline show.

I shall also be Mcing at the Sydney Comedy Store October 20-31. Tue-Sat. (not the 21st or 29th).
For more info: http://www.comedystore.com.au/

MELBOURNE: Toff In Town Tuesday residency w/ The Awkwardstra in December.

DARWIN: Never again.

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STORYTIME

(Brought to you by the reverb drenched outfit straight out of Carlton ‘Mercury Fev.’ New single ‘Pressure point’ out yestermorrow.)

(NOTE: A while back I interviewed the inventor of the Golden Gaytime in Adelaide. I wrote up the story for a magazine. They were about to run it when they got in touch with Streets to request some photos. Streets denied all knowledge of this man, and claimed he didn’t invent the ice cream. The magazine decided not to go with the story. What a conspiracy! Is it a case of corporate politics – the big company trying to steal the credit straight out of the little guy’s hand, or did I spend an hour with a man who roams the countryside claiming to have invented everything from vegemite to the spork? You decide.)

Most of us have had a Golden Gaytime moment. You’re at the milk bar, clutching Australia’s most iconic ice cream. The shopkeeper eyeballs you. At the last minute you lose your nerve and end up grabbing milk, bread and a newspaper with the yellow sliver tucked sheepishly underneath. You race out of the shop and down an alley. You rip off the wrapper and bite into the delicious soft combo of toffee and biscuit crumbs, free from retribution. Being a long-term fan of the treat with the timeless design and hilarious name, I once wrote a song about it that got played on the radio. I was contacted by the creator’s ‘people’ saying that he’d like a copy. I obliged, asking in return to interview the mysterious John Milton at his home in Adelaide. In a brilliant twist, the creator of the Golden Gaytime turns out to be the most laid-back Aussie bloke I’ve ever met. With silver hair, stern expression and laconic humour, the man who now runs a car spray-boothing business sits poolside chain smoking and speaking matter of factly about ice cream production.

“Back in the late 60’s they were really experimenting to see what people wanted. The Golden Gaytime was based on an ice cream that was vanilla with a chocolate coating on it. When the ice cream was removed from the mould and still warm we tried to apply the remnants of peanuts left over from Max Noblets (Nobby’s) peanut factory in Adelaide. It used to stick in your teeth so that wasn’t too good. For a fleeting time we started to apply coco pops or rice bubbles. That didn’t work either.”

When John realised that broken biscuit pieces were being thrown out at the factory down the road, he made a connection.

“We supplied a lot of butter oil for their Yo-Yo biscuits. It was a matter of the driver coming back and saying what are they gonna do with all those waste biscuits? So I said ‘let’s take a look at it.’”

The biscuit pieces were then blown onto the warm chocolate giving us the ice cream we know today. In this sense the Golden Gaytime was eco friendly well before its time.

“It was all experimental. We were just fiddling with food. We used to go and play in the laboratories and see what we could mess up next. We had two doctors in there and yeah it was fun. It kept you thinking.”

When I first contacted John, his tone was one of bemusement that the Golden Gaytime could have had such a lasting impact. Throughout the interview he is defiantly modest about his iced legacy.

“The Gaytime just evolved. It wasn’t anything special at the time that you’d beat drums about. It was just another ice cream on another stick. You know, the humdrum of what you do daily it wasn’t anything we thought was gonna save the world, it was just bringing out another line. Understand what the people want and give it to them. We were happy when we produced a line that was successful. You couldn’t sit back there and pamper with your ego, all you did was get on and produce the next line. I don’t think it was so much pride as intrigue. It was only supposed to last three months.”

John informs me that for every Golden Gaytime success story there were another ten ice creams left splattered on the factory floor.

“There’s dozens of them we went through. They brought one out called the aniseed high top. It was a delightful thing to eat but any white clothes it marked so that didn’t last too long. A delightful ice cream we called the south pacific as they’d brought out the movie and everyone was going troppo about it so we brought out this half banana half something else and that failed within three weeks. Our greatest delight was to manufacture dandy cups of ice cream and raisins with a hard dosing of rum. They were pretty well over proof ice cream. They used to have them after the RSL Anzac day marches but unfortunately one year they got mixed up and a lot of them ended up in the Country Women’s Association. They didn’t order them next year.”

While for many of us working in an ice cream factory sounds like a dream job, John speaks of an intense workload. During summer, when production was at its highest, he would sometimes work around the clock, sleeping at the factory. This was on top of the constant pressure to come up with the next ‘hit.’

“When you’ve got to sit down and come up with a new ice cream every three months it’s a bit daunting. We used to go out to the schools and talk to the kids. You’d produce a line, take it out to the primary school, line up all the infants and say ‘well what do you think of that?’ Try and get an opinion out of them. They liked anything free anyway so it was a bit of a lost argument.”

After about a decade, John left the dairy game to work in other areas of food production. While he can still enjoy an ice cream, life has delivered an ironic fate.

“I’m not supposed to have them because I’m diabetic. I still go three or four a week. There’s a wrapper under the front seat of the car I think. I’ve got to hide them from the wife. I bought a Golden Gaytime the other day and they’re pretty thin so they must be making their profit out of it. They used to be a larger wedge, a heavier weight in ice cream, so maybe it’s only half gay.”

John isn’t able to shed much light on how the name came about. He says it was the result of a ‘toss-around’ by the advertising company at the time.

“How it related to ice cream I never knew but it sounded all right at the time. I think the name is the thing that keeps it going. Everybody looks at one now and oh, I don’t know what their movements are but there’s nothing gay about the bloody ice cream I can tell you that. I suppose if you made an ice cream called a virgin ice cream it might sell like hell as well. The lesbian fruit-choc or something like that.”

In the late 90’s Streets brought out the Chocolate Golden Gaytime and one in a cone. To me both were like eating a pot plant.

“That’s the variations by bad management. It’s how far you can push a name. To me, a Holden’s a Holden and a Gaytime’s a Gaytime. You bring a Holden out as a Vauxhall Vectra it’s lost the name again. If you bring out another ice cream that’s not quite the same as the original Gaytime people will go off it. There was a Cherry Golden Gaytime but that didn’t last. We tried fudge in one at one stage.”

I can’t help myself “you had to try and pack some fudge into a Golden Gaytime?” John continues, endearingly oblivious. At this point I remind myself that I’m listening to a man talk matter of factly about the ice cream control room, right after comparing them with cars. I finish the interview by thanking John for creating my favourite ice-cream, which raises a wry smile. For him the Golden Gaytime is just another ice cream on another stick, but for generations of Australians it is a socially complicated but ultimately rewarding love affair of yum.

THE END

NOTE: The audio of this story is embedded at the end of the first Lime Champions podcast.

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LAYTOPING IS MISPELLED, AND FREE! WHAT A GREAT GIFT IDEA, AND IT’LL CUT YOUR ENERGY BILLS IN HALF! SEND IT TO A FRIEND!

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NOTEY & DISCOCLAM: Please consider the emotional environment before dissing this e-mail.
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Any needy or somewhat hot guys from certain angles contained in this e-flail and detachments must be handled by a bear trainer with sturdy gloves in accordance with the Grinformation Spact 2000 (Honolulu), the Whiffy Cheddar Act 2001 and the Tractor Gack 1888 (Commonwelf), as crapplicable.
This e-wail, including all hope, is confipoogal. If you are not the intended recipient, then duck down and remain under your desk in a non-responsive manner for up to eight hours or until thermos time. Any seduction, horse-play or inciting of jelly based social events based on this twee-mail is punauthorised. Recommendations. MUSIC: Ambivalence Avenue – Bibio TV: Madmen BOOKS: The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler. FOOD: Chilli’s/garlic/soy/oyster/chinese5spice in a stir fry. MOVIE: The Truman Show. THING: Not sabotaging happiness by subconsciously synthesising some dilemma that you will then have to solve, maintaining the self fulfilling prophecy of stress and drama that is your life. You are beautiful, or else.

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