“So why was your mum shagging Fuckleberry Jones and your dad walking around disguised as Even Stevens?” I ask, genuinely interested.
“I can only guess that it was some kind of perverse sex-game. Probably designed to FUCK WITH MY BRAIN.”
“It’s a miracle,” I exclaim. “It’s like you’ve come back from the dead!”
I look at Booga as he leans against the tank, picking his nose, unaware of the incidents that nearly sealed his mortal end this afternoon. “It’s been a fucking funny day,” I declare, getting up from the ground and dusting myself down. “And now it’s time for tea.”
FIFTY-SIX
SMOKE FAST, LOOK COOL, LEAVE A SHORT BUTT
“Tank Girl,” says Booga, leaning into the cockpit of the tank, “I think you’d better come over and listen to this.”
It’s Jet Girl on the radio, rabbiting on about some old rubbish. “Sorry... a bit of a problem here... I managed to find an old warhead in one of my bomb-bays... and... er... I accidentally primed it and dropped it behind the town hall... not quite sure exactly where it went or why it hasn’t gone off... sorry... a little bit stoned up here...”
“Tank Girl, there’s one more thing,” adds Booga, “we still haven’t retrieved your copy of MAD Magazine.”
“Oh shit,” I remark, remembering the initial inspiration for the attack, “where the hell do we start looking for that? We might have blown it up already!”
“I know where it is,” interjects Tony, “it’s in a cellar room under the old bar. That’s where they were keeping Booga locked up.”
“Okay,” I command, “Booga, Tony, you’re coming with me... the rest of you, get on board the jet and meet me at Fred’s Café in about twenty minutes.”
We start walking.
It’s not far to the old bar.
There it is.
Man, there’s not much left of it. I hope we can still get in.
Tony is scrabbling his way through the rubble, doing the best he can with only one hand.
He shouts over to us: “Hey, I’ve found the passage.”
We run straight over.
Underneath a smashed-up door, there’s a dark and dusty stairwell.
“I’m not going down there,” I declare. “I’m shirt-scared of the dark.”
“I’ve got an idea,” says Booga.
He takes Tony by the arm and leads him over to a car wreck. He dunks Tony’s toilet roll into the puddle of petrol that is pissing out of the fuel tank. They come back over.
“Got a light?” asks Booga.
“Yeah, sure,” I reply, handing him my trusty Zippo.
He raises up Tony’s arm and puts a flame to the fuel-soaked bogpaper.
“Quick, let’s get a shift on,” says Booga, ushering us down the black hole. Tony goes in first, his blazing torch-hand held aloft. I follow on, holding tightly to Booga’s hand.
Man, it’s dark down here. It stinks too. Smells like death.
“Keep moving,” says Tony, “it’s right up at the end here.”
Tony opens the door to the end room. Booga gulps; this must be like a nightmare revisited for him.
“In here,” directs Tony.
We follow him in. The room is almost completely bare, apart from a simple wooden bunk, a bucket and a wall-mounted cupboard.
“Look in the cupboard,” says Tony.
I look. There’s a toothbrush with some brown stuff on it, a pack of cigarettes and my copy of MAD. Thank God. There’s another magazine inside it. “Hey Booga, what’s this?” I ask. “The November issue of Ginger Mingers. Anything to do with you?”
Booga turns bright red and shrugs his shoulders. “Never seen it before in my life,” he says.
I start the difficult walk back down the dark passageway. “Come on, let’s get the fuck out of here.” I notice that I’m alone. I go back to the room. “Bastards!” I shout. Booga and Tony are smoking tabs from the packet in the cupboard. Booga has tried to smoke his so fast that it’s turned into a three-inch long stick of ash. “Give me one of those, you bastard!” I demand.
I slowly slip the cigarette out of the pack. It looks good, still fresh. I calmly place it between my waiting lips. Mmmm. Feels good. Booga lights me.
Oh my God.
Yes.
I’m giving up New Year’s resolutions, they’re bad for my nervous system.
“Let’s go.”
We make our way past several doors and openings.
“What was that noise?” asks Booga, motioning to a closed door. “There’s a someone in there.”
“Well take a look then,” I reply, too scared to look myself.
“I’ll fucking do it,” says Tony, bashing the door open. He stands motionless in the doorway, his flaming hand held high. Then he utters one single word, a word that we seem to have been hearing a lot this afternoon: “Dad.”
Me and Booga take a look inside. And sure enough, there is Tony’s dad, the real Even Stevens, Bound and gagged in a straight-backed chair.
“Look, Tony,” I say hurriedly, “we’d love to stick around and help you untie your dad and everything, but the town could blow up any second and I could really use a cup of tea. So... see ya later!”
And we leg it. As fast as we can. Down the passage towards the light, up the stairs, back outside and straight round the corner to the tank.
We’re in our seats in a second and the doors are shut.
“Put your fuckin’ foot down!” screams Booga triumphantly.
We shoot out of the Town Square like a bat out of hell, hang a sharp right and welly it straight down the main drag towards the outskirts of the town.
Man, we did that just in time. I can feel the ground rumbling underneath us. I look in the mirror and see a small mushroom cloud puffing up from where the Town Hall used to be. I know that in a split second the sound of the blast will catch us up.
And it does, shaking the world like the wrath of God and smashing the glass out of any remaining windows as it works its way out of town.
The blast seems to have given us some extra oomff and we’re doing fifty billion miles an hour.
The blast subsides.
Nothing but calm now.
I slow the tank right down, there’s nothing left to run from.
“Do you think that Tony and the real Even Stevens would’ve managed to get out before it went up?” asks Booga with a worried frown.
“I dunno,” I reply casually, “why don’t you ask someone who gives a shit?”
We look in our mirrors and check out the aftermath.
In less than three hours, we’ve managed to reduce an entire town to a pile of rubble.
Nice.
FIFTY-SEVEN
RIGHTEOUS & TRUE
“Pull over...” says Booga, as we trundle past the sign that says
WELCOME TO CHANKERS
“...there’s a little amendment I need to make.”
I stop right by the sign and Booga hops out. He reaches into the long side-pocket of his trousers and whips out a can of spray-paint. He spins it expertly in his palm, snatches hold of it and pops the lid off. He gets to work on the sign, moving quickly with the experience of a seasoned graffiti artist.
He jumps back in the tank and gives me a little smile. “Done!” he says, with a note of self-satisfaction.
I drive away slowly and check out his handy-work in my mirror. It takes me a few seconds to figure out the modified text...
...it reads...
WELCOMBE
YOU WANKERS
FIFTY-EIGHT
OH YEAH
Fred’s Café is totally empty except for us lot. We’ve got our favourite table by the window. Off in the distance we can still see plumes of smoke rising from the smouldering remains of Chankers.
The waitress comes over to take our orders.
“I’ll have a B.L.T.,” says Booga.
“Me too,” says Dobson.
“Me three,” adds Barney.
“And can you do me a D
.L.T.?” I ask hopefully.
“What’s a D.L.T.?” enquires Dobson.
“Dogshit, lettuce and tomato,” replies Booga.
“Actually,” I tell them, “it’s daikon radish, lotus root and tamari soy sauce. It’s a very Zen recipe. I feel like I need to go through a period of spiritual cleansing after that bloodbath.”
“Fuckin’ hippy,” whispers Dobson to Booga.
“Dobson?” I ask, fixing him with one of my serious looks. “Can I have a word with you in private?”
“Sure baby,” he says, getting up with me and walking outside. We stand on the porch of the isolated café. A little breeze is blowing strands of hair across my face. I brush them aside and tease Zulu with one of my sexy pouts.
“Dobson, you know the Sensory Saturation Tank thing that you made for me today?”
“Yeah, what about it?”
“Well, if you were to use it, what would be the sixth sense part of it? I mean on your one it was your mate playing knock-down-ginger, but what would it be for me?”
Dobson smiles and shuts up.
“Well?” I ask again.
“Okay,” he says, “I’ll tell you... I was gonna take your photo out of my wallet and have a wank.”
“What?!” I burst out laughing.
Dobson starts to chuckle.
Now he’s falling about, crying with laughter.
The rest of the guys come outside and join in on the mirth-making, even though they don’t know what they’re laughing at. Booga’s laughing too: “Hahahaha.” That just makes me want to laugh even more.
The sun is starting to set.
What a beautiful end to a beautiful day.
FIFTY-NINE
THE ONE THING THAT NEVER CHANGES
Booga’s beautiful twinklin’ eyes
shining lights in the darkness of my life
brighter today than they’ve ever seemed before
since they faded to grey and now are restored
And they’re flashing dazzling beams at me
sending messages sweet and tender
he’s no longer the tryer, the attempter, the failer
no longer the great pretender
I ask him what he’s got on his mind
he says, “The One Thing That Never Changes”
is it the Moon, the Sun, the stars, or Mars?
is it God, the rock of ages?
But the words don’t need to come from his mouth
you cannot verbalise something so true
I lock onto his eyes and translate the glow
that says
I
am
in
love
with
you
Even Stevens appears courtesy of Minty Parlour Records. (The rights to his flop single ‘Countdown 2 Christmas’ with the novelty band The Snowballs are still available for a very, very cheap price; please contact the author for further details.)
SOUNDTRACK
(a two LP set available soon on Minty Parlour Records & Tapes)
SIDE ONE –
‘Wonder Girl’ – Sparks
‘O Fortuna’ – Carl Orff
‘Talking in the Canteen’ – The Moondogs
‘Refugees’ – Van Der Graaf Generator
‘It’s Not Time Now’ – The Lovin’ Spoonful
‘Truck, Train, Tractor’ – The Pastels
‘Silver Lady’ – David Soul
‘L.O.P.H.E.’ – Cud
‘When I’m Dead and Gone’ – McGuiness Flint
‘Come into the Darkness’ – Clearlake
SIDE TWO –
‘Friends’ – Tiger
‘Spinnin’ Wheels’ – The Crescent
‘F-‘oldin’ Money’ – The Fall
‘Turn it Down’ – The Sweet
‘Roger Robot’ – Frank Sidebottom
‘Teenage Head’ – Flamin Groovies
‘Surf Route 101’ – Jan & Dean
‘The Ducks With Some Bombs On’ – 1969
‘Fountain of Love’ – Mike Sarne
‘F.B.I.’ – The Shadows
SIDE THREE –
‘Time Bomb’ – The Ramones
‘Addicted to Love’ – Ciccone Youth
‘Kansas’ – Melanie
‘Give a Little Bit’ – Supertramp
‘At the Ball, That’s All’ – Laurel & Hardy
‘I Can Do It’ – The Rubettes
‘Thatcher’ – Thee Unpopulars
‘Only the Stones Remain’ – Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians
‘Phantasmagoria In Two’ – Tim Buckley
‘And the Trouble with Me’ – Linda Flavell
SIDE FOUR –
‘(I Wish it Could Be) 1965 Again’ – The Barracudas
‘My Wave’ – Surf Punks
‘Take What You Can Get’ – Makin’ Time
‘Yellow Spot’ – The Freshies
‘Messages’ – OMD
‘Rocket Girl’ – The University Smalls
‘I’m a Little Dinosaur’ – Modern Lovers
‘(My Baby Does) Good Sculptures’ – The Rezillos
‘Where Did His Eye Go?’ – The Dickies
‘Armadillo’ – Swell Maps
‘Lord of all I Behold’ – Robin and Barry Dransfield
BIBLIOGRAPHY –
The Guinness Book of Sitcoms – Rod Taylor
Seeing Things – Oliver Postgate
Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron – Daniel Clowes
Hit Parade Heroes – Dave McAleer
Look-in Television Annual 1972
The Art of War – Sun Tzu
Ingenious Pursuits – Lisa Jardine
The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight – Thom Hartmann
Monkeemania – Baker/Czarnota/Hogan
Adbusters Magazine
Elizabeth the Queen – Alison Weir
Stephen Potter on Lifemanship
Slaughterhouse 5 – Kurt Vonnegut
The World at War – Mark Arnold Forster
Fire in the Belly – Sam Keen
The Magic Christian – Terry Southern
Titus Andronicus – William Shakespeare
The Complete Goodies – Robert Ross
Duchamp – Janis Mink
The Hero with a Thousand Faces – Joseph Campbell
Completely MAD – Maria Reidelbach
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying – Sogyal Rinpoche
Monster in a Box – Spalding Gray
Head-On – Julian Cope
The Bog People – P.V. Glob
Straight From the Fridge Dad – Max Décharné
The 1960s Scrapbook – Robert Opie
De Profundis – Oscar Wilde
The Elements of Style – William Strunk and E.B. White
The Boudiccan Revolt Against Rome – Paul R. Sealy
Happiness is a Warm Puppy – Charles M. Schulz
45 – Bill Drummond
The Indian Tipi – Reginald and Gladys Laubin
Kill Jason King! – Robert Miall
Smoothies – Richard Allen
To Sir with Love – E.R. Braithwaite
Guidance/inspiration was derived from -
Frink / Summer With Monika by Roger McGough
I love everything.
That’s not just the booze talkin’.
I know I spend a lot of time killing and torturing,
that just goes to show
I’m as screwed up as everybody else.
I want this world to work,
I really do,
but I get so fuckin’ angry
because all I ever see
is greed and intolerance
and stupidity
and people mooing
and bleating
like fuckin’ cattle,
“I want I want I want” is the anthem of the age.
Well fuck them.
Fuck all that shit.
Come back.
Come on in.
>
Come back to nature,
back to trees and grass and animals and the sky and shit.
It’s sacred.
It’s what you’ve lost.
It’s why you’re feeling lost.
It’s that fuckin’ simple.
You cannot buy it, steal it or claim it.
Just come back to it,
while it’s still there to come back to.
Throw everything else away.
It’s irrelevant.
It’s just shit.
Nothing more.
Come back.
I love you.
T.G.
armadillo n. any nocturnal insect eating mammal of the family Dasypodidae, native to Central and S. America, with claws for digging and a body covered in bony plates, often rolling itself into a ball when threatened. [Sp. dimin. of armardo armed man, hence armadillo little armed man f. L armatus past part. of armare ARM]
“There’s no escape from the ducks with some bombs on
Even Chuck Norris has to go to the toilet when they’re on
There’s no escape from a duck-bomb attack
You just can’t escape from a bomb that goes ‘quack’...”
From ‘The Ducks With Some Bombs On’
© 1986 Meehan, Martin, Bond, or someone.
PART TWO
THE BUSHEL
A COLLECTION
OF SHORT STORIES
AND TITTY-BITS
THE BUSHEL
AN INTRODUCTION
bushel basket n. a basket large enough to hold a bushel.
Welcome to The Bushel section of the book. Here we dispense with the niceties and conformities of traditional novel structure, taking story and prose by the ball-bag and swinging it around the place. The result is a mixed bag of ideas, templates, manifestos and concepts, their one common thread being that they would all be better off in a basket of some description.
Having put Booga through the wringer somewhat in the first section, I thought that I would let him mellow the mood by kicking off with his ode to early ’80s adolescence, ‘The Handlebars of My Racing Bike’. This is swiftly followed by an interview with Tank Girl in which she explains her prolonged absence from the comics scene and public life in general. After that, it’s pretty much a free-for-all, but I would like to drag your attention to the text of the un-drawn comic strip script ‘The Magic of Tank Girl’, this being the frankest, most open rendering of Tank Girl’s character, soul, and inner workings to date. Food for thought, if you’re feeling peckish.
Tank Girl Page 13
