Fancy That
It has been suggested that, as the proprietor of even a tiny on-line organ, I should perhaps take time out from complaining about spelling errors, reminiscing about vanished home video formats, bagging out the Herald Sun and detailing minor altercations with shopkeepers and delivery men, to offer some sort of seasonal commendation both to our contributors and readers, even those who have bombarded me with complaints about our lack of an RSS feed (now rectified) and my rude comments about Slumdog Millionaire (ongoing).
At the very least, I should point out that this will be the last edition of the Fancy for 2009, which is slightly regrettable, given the recent unexpected increase in our readership. This Google-fuelled spike has been due to: a number of on-line recommendations by the ABC’s Ms Leigh Sales and the team at Crikey; our posting on Twitter of several cheap shots at the new opposition leader and clips of cats behaving like people; and the popularity of my rather lazy decision in October to run the text of my contribution to a ‘Books vs Bogans’ debate in place of a new column.
And, of course, our ragtag roster of Visiting Scriveners, all pounding out fine prose for little more than the chance to see their work typed up in a nice font.
For those who have arrived via the Twitpipe, the question is not so much ‘What exactly is this site and how did it come to be?’, but rather, ‘How long will it take and is it even that interesting? I really should be posting up a link to “Twenty Five Things That Smell Worse Than Lindsay Lohan”.’
Back in March, I had just finished writing a book, which, because of a throwaway joke on the Triple-M website, was reported in some quarters as being titled Quick, Before William McInnes Puts Another One Out!, when I received an e-mail asking me to contribute a weekly column to a major daily newspaper. I had declined previous offers to write a column, largely because of a quote by Tom Wolfe to the effect that by week three, most columnists are describing the contents of their fridge, and by week four, doing one about how they couldn’t think of a column this week. But this time, I had figured out how to do it: get to the fridge in week one. By calling the column ‘Scarcely Relevant’, I would have licence to canvass even the most trivial matters to possibly humourous effect. Like a puzzled urologist, the newspaper requested a sample, and so I gamely tackled the ‘problem’ of DVDs that come with a sticker marked ‘Alan Jones Recommends’. The reason for selecting this topic was fourfold: 1. Who, in Melbourne, cares what Alan Jones thinks about anything? 2. Bizarrely, one of the DVDs he recommends is Robert Altman’s Buffalo Bill and the Indians. 3. I myself like to make subsequent, possibly illegal, misuse of the offending sticker; and 4. Twenty years ago, I was forced to sign a document stating that I would not make any jokes about Alan’s famous toilet block arrest in London. But after I’d delivered the piece, I was encouraged to drop what I thought was the most interesting part, the story about the document, and get straight to the jokes about the sticker. It was also suggested that a better title for the column might be ‘Get This’ and that, rather than telling stories about myself, I should try to come up with lots of shorter gags about topical matters (eg, Twilight), much like those in Paul McDermott’s monologue at the start of Good News Week.
I politely declined, thus preventing my house from becoming home to the angry (though still apologetic) ghost of R. Marsland. But I quite liked the idea of ‘Scarcely Relevant’, of having something to force me to keep writing every week, of having it not always be the same, for it to be a different length every week, and for there to be the occasional swear word.
‘Well, get on the fucking Internet, like everyone else,’ are not words one expects to hear from one’s grandmother, especially when she’s been dead for fifteen years, but this is just the sort of made-up nonsense you can get away with in what is known, to everyone’s embarrassment, as the ‘blogosphere’.
My friend Avril Rolfe had taken several night classes in ‘How to Set Up a Blog’ but seemed more confused than Barnaby Joyce in…well, any situation, really. I soon realised that it would be good to have someone even grumpier than myself writing for what had somehow come to be called The Scrivener’s Fancy, and Avril’s columns about why people bother to do pretty much anything, whether thirtysomething will ever come out on DVD and why women should have a crack at prostitution, seemed a perfect match for my own largely irrelevant views about why there are so many Andre Rieu DVDs, where morbidly obese people get their pants and how Green Lantern would go in Not Now, Darling.
But two columns wouldn’t be enough for something with the word ‘Fancy’ in the title. So, as with almost every project I’ve worked on for the last twenty years, I called Matt Quartermaine and said, ‘Put down the controller and get on board a job that pays sweet fuck all.’ Although the idea was for Matt to donate his not-appearing-anywhere-on-line TV review column from The Big Issue, he has since knocked up over a dozen first-run beauties, including an account of what it’s like to stand behind Chopper Read at the supermarket and several columns where he miraculously tells funny stories about kids that don’t make you want to throw up. Although, it’s probably time to take down that ‘Dear Santa’ one. Matt’s already on holiday. Watch out, Duke NukeEm!
As for the Visiting Scriveners, where else would you find so many highly qualified writers penning original columns for the Internet and being paid absolutely nothing in return? (Click here to visit The Punch) Although many of their pieces have appeared before in print, over half are getting a first run here, like Tony Wilson’s 2000-word account of his own acting career. It’s a brilliant piece of writing. I wish I could say the same for his singing. Other choice originals from the likes of Shaun Micallef, Felicity Ward, Justin Heazlewood, Michael Witheford, Robyn Butler, George McEncroe, Leigh Paatsch, DC Root and Gary McCaffrie (also the poor bastard who has to proof-read all this. What’s that, Gary? No hyphen in ‘proofread’? Fair enough.) have floated to the top, although a piece by Pete Smith, written in the style of Jim Morrison’s An American Prayer, was judged unsuitable for a site not requiring AdultPass.
A few weeks ago, I was at a taping of something and I ran into one of the young folk from Hungry Beast. As he was speaking to me, he was texting someone with one hand and editing a short film on his laptop with the other. He complimented me on the site and proceeded to explain how I should be ‘monetising’ it and ‘focussing the brand’. Scrivener’s Fancy T-shirts were mentioned. I explained how all the ads are free (a friend of mine pointed out that if you don’t have ads, ‘it doesn’t look like a proper website’) and, because no one is making any money off it, the writers are happy to contribute – the no-word-limit thing and the chance to write about whatever the hell they want and not be told to change anything being rewards in themselves. At this point, I had to get the Hungry Beast guy a glass of water; he’d started choking back at ‘all the ads are free’.
But, hey, let’s not get too carried away here. It’s basically just four weekly blogs way overdressed by possibly the best website designers in the country. Although, I did have to smile last week, when the person whose rejection of ‘Scarcely Relevant’ as a newspaper column led directly to the creation of this website, signed on as a ‘follower’ of scrivenersfancy on Twitter.
But not as much as I smiled when I saw ‘Cat Sits Like Person on Bed’!
Merry fucking Christmas to you all.
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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