Optimus Schmoptimus
I wonder if you can imagine what it would be like to awaken one morning, fire up the Internet and suddenly find yourself one of the most reviled people in the country. Matthew Johns, John Elliott and the Chaser team have all recently undergone this rapid transmutation. Sam Newman, Kyle Sandilands, the ‘Chk Chk Boom Girl’; they know what it’s like to make what you think are a few harmless comments, or let fly with a waggish prank, only to discover that what you had in fact done was to ‘spit in the face of a dying child’ or, perhaps worse, ‘defecate in a hotel corridor while nude’. (The footballer responsible for this last outrage later claimed not to have a drinking problem. To me, this only made it worse; a drinking problem is surely the only possible excuse). Last week, I myself experienced a limited taste of this overnight opprobrium. For twenty-four hours, I was a small-scale pariah, briefly abominated by members of a very specific demographic. But it wasn’t because of something I’d said. It was because of something I’d stood on.
***
A couple of months back, I was invited to take part in Channel Ten’s hit show Talkin’ ’bout Your Generation. My love of all things Micallef allowed me to overlook both the two unsightly apostrophes in the title, and the fact that, having been born in 1964, I was a. not really a Baby Boomer, and b. a year younger than the person they’d chosen to represent Generation X.
The show was a fair bit of fun, although I found myself spending more time waiting to see what nonsense would pop out of the host’s mouth next than actually answering any questions. One of the games required Amanda Keller and me to assemble various toys into a chronological formation. They were largely forms of pre-teen transportation: a Space Hopper, some Monster Feet, and something called a ‘Green Machine’ (which apparently dated back to the late seventies, although I’d never seen one before. I don’t think the Green Machine made it across the Tasman. If you’d showed up at my school pedalling something like that, you’d have been beaten senseless with textbooks and bundled into the kiln). Because we were on television, it became necessary for me to demonstrate the various conveyances as each was produced. The final exhibit was a small plastic lorry and, in keeping with the previous vehicles, it seemed only logical that I try to ride it, like a roller skate, to the front of the stage.
As soon as I stood on it, the truck shattered with a sickening crack. I knew that this would happen; it’s a comedy show. The audience laughed and that was all that mattered. Upon examining the wreckage, I realised that it wasn’t a truck at all, but a Transformer. This discovery proved no help to Amanda or me. We came last, by a large, humiliating margin. I’d spent too much time trying to think of stupid jokes and not enough getting the answers right. I even failed to recognise the poster line from my favourite movie. Mercifully, that bit was cut out.
By the time the show went to air, weeks later, I’d forgotten pretty much everything about it, except for the startling moment when the host took to a Henry Kissinger-shaped piñata with a baseball bat. The bit with the crushed Transformer had been left in, and got its explosive response because the audience recognised it for what it was: an act of desperation. I wasn’t complaining. As a newly anointed Baby Boomer, I’ll take the laughs wherever I can get them.
***
The next morning, I discovered my inbox full to bursting, and not with the usual offers to share in the boundless riches of the seemingly GFC-proof Nigerian economy. ‘Have a look what they’re saying about you over on the Talkin’ ’bout Your Generation forum’, urged one acquaintance, his gleeful missive bristling with LOLs. Piloting my way through a forest of pop-ups for The 7PM Project, I located the forum and beheld the posts, most of which began with the phrase ‘I can’t believe Tony Martin destroyed an authentic Optimus Prime!!!!!’.
Some sample entries:
genechan:
Seriously, he is a idiot to step on it like that.
OneMOD:
Yeah, I wonder how the owner of the toy feels.
clairejackson:
My boyfriend sat there, open mouthed, then said 'they have NO appreciation for how much that thing is worth'. And they say our generation (X / Y) are clueless.
I was aghast. And clairejackson’s open-mouthed boyfriend was right. I had no appreciation. When I’d stepped on it, I didn’t even know it was Optimus frickin’ Prime. It looked like an ordinary plastic truck, which, I guess is the idea.
As I was contemplating my extraordinary faux pas, the phone rang.
‘Mate, have you seen how everyone’s hatin’ on you on Twitter?’ said someone who I wouldn’t have thought would be familiar with Twitter, let alone the phrase ‘hatin’ on’.
I punched my name into Twitter and scrolled past hundreds of comments, many of them grossly suggestive, about my newest namesake, the German cyclist who, to me, looks like a creation of the Gerry Anderson Studios. Below these was a slew of horrified Tweets from aggrieved Transformers fans.
Scottkeenan:
Every time I see Tony Martin crush the Optimus Prime on the TBYG promo I feel physically sick. Tony, what have you done?!
Benttothemax:
Can't believe Tony Martin just killed a classic Optimus on Talkin' bout Your Generation!!! Why would you stand on him?! Why?!
MarkVsMason:
Tony Martin just broke a 'most likely' collectible Optimus Prime toy from the early '80s…
N3urogod:
Tony Martin just destroyed an original Optimus Prime...shame on you Tony, SHAME!!!
WhiteOx:
Tony Martin just trod on Optimus Prime. It's like trampling on my childhood. Not cool.
WarHamster:
Not a big fan of Tony Martin anymore.
Oh no, I’ve lost WarHamster! And trampled on WhiteOx’s childhood! And who knows whether I will ever be able to win back the respect of Benttothemax?
I think that because of my nerdish credentials, and my most recent radio program’s continual ‘You've Got the Touch’ singalongs, people have mistaken me for a Transformers aficionado. But, as TBYG clearly demonstrated, I am way too old for that. I grew up a decade earlier. The only transforming robots I saw were on The Tomorrow People, Blake’s 7 and the TV version of Logan’s Run, in which skivvy-clad cyborg Donald Moffat had an arm ripped off and spent an entire episode with a suspiciously arm-shaped bulge down the front of his tight velour top. All I knew of the Transformers was the old animated movie, which featured the unlikely casting combination of Orson Welles, Eric Idle, Judd Nelson and the bloke who played Max the chauffeur on Hart to Hart, and the more recent live-action one, of which all I can recall is a scene involving Megan Fox and the bonnet of a car.
By mid afternoon, the Twitter hatin’ had escalated to the point where I wasn’t sure if it’d be safe even to pop down the shops for a carton of milk.
Codeape:
Tony Martin looks and sounds like his own gay older brother. I CAN'T BELIEVE HE BROKE OPTIMUS PRIME.
Things were heating up; now they were using Caps Lock. Incidentally, other recent Twitters by Codeape include:
Opera sucks more than firefox.
I just shat a tortoise.
Brisbane is Poo.
Eat a dick, Danny Katz.
I’m going to punch @twtrfail in the cunt.
And, despite his aversion to the gay:
OMG NO MORE WILL AND GRACE WTF
As he eventually admits:
I think I need to do something that MATTERS.
By evening, I was completely paranoid. All the blinds were drawn, and I was knocking back shot after shot of vodka. Is this what it was like for Salman Rushdie for all those years when he was hiding out in Bono’s back shed, the poor bastard? Had I really destroyed an antique? Had a crew member really lost a cherished keepsake? Had Codeape really shat a tortoise?
But, just as I was seriously considering Witness Protection, I received this e-mail from Nikki Hamilton, former producer of Get This:
Tell those Twitter Twits that the Optimus Prime that you stood on came from Highpoint Shopping Centre, could be replaced any day of the week and was all of $69.99 (Anna H. bought it herself - I was working with her today. She said there was a mountain of them and that they weren’t rare in any way.)
All this over a seventy-dollar toy abundantly available at any shopping centre? If these people were such big fans, wouldn’t they have known the going rate for an Optimus Prime? Then I realised that, like me, Generation X hasn’t bothered to keep up with developments down at Toys ‘R’ Us. Their idea of Transformers is forever stalled back in the early nineties. And it wasn’t the dollar value that concerned them anyway. It was, as WhiteOx said, their childhoods that I was shattering into tiny plastic splinters. And, believe me, I know what that feels like. I feel it all the time; most recently, when I saw the Get Smart movie. Not cool.
Tony Martin is the Melbourne-based author of ‘A Nest of Occasionals’ and ‘Lolly Scramble’. Podcasts of his radio show ‘Get This’ are still available for free download at iTunes (type in: ‘Get This: Richard Marsland Lives’). He is currently directing new episodes of ABCTV's ‘The Librarians’.
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