Keeping this in mind I now present a deleted scene from my first, only and bestselling (in Personal Best terms, anyway) novel The Greatest Blogger in the World. This ‘deleted scene’ was originally a character sketch that I wrote during the writing of Greatest Blogger to flesh out the relationship between protagonist-blogger Charlie and his best friend Phattius Beats.

I have given it a light copy edit for reasons of style and grammar, but it is otherwise untouched since I first wrote it. It wouldn’t have worked in the context of the rest of the book, but I did end up using a couple of lines in the final text.

So, enjoy. In an, ‘Oh, I see why he didn’t publish that, but it’s nice he put it on his blog for us’ kind of way.

DELETED SCENE

Featuring Charlie Ridge and Phattius Beats

I looked down at the address that Phattius had written on the back of a business card. I was just around the corner from the destination – the Splishy Café. I flipped the card and realised that it was Phattius’s own business card. Phattius Beats – Businessman and Professional Opinion Consultant. So these were what Phattius had been making in art class that day when he said he’d ‘thought of nothing good to make’, despite working hard for hours.

    I turned the corner and there was the Splishy Café, right next to the Mr Sploshy’s Hairdressers. Phattius was already seated at a metallic table in the sun out the front of the Splishy Café. I sat down opposite him and put my schoolbag at my feet.‘Good morning,’ I said.

    Phattius was sipping at a half-drunk cappuccino. ‘Morning, brother! I hope you don’t mind meeting me here before school?’

    ‘No, it’s fine.’

    ‘I would have met you at school but I just had a meeting with my accountant.’

    ‘Phattius, you have an accountant?’

    ‘Well, no. He was my dad’s accountant. I was selling him calculators. I got a whole bunch cheap the other day. You want one? Half-price for friends. Plus you don’t have to buy batteries because they work when you stand in the sun or near a microwave.’

    ‘No, no thanks. What did you want to talk about? I had to leave Joshua to feed Barcode this morning and to be honest I don’t know which of them will end up eating the most duck food.’

    ‘Well, I appreciate you coming this morning, brother. It’s not every bestie who would come to a meeting before school.’

    ‘Every bestie? You have others?’

    ‘I have a new product that I think I can start selling to the kids at school.’

    ‘Really? Is it more exciting than calculators?’

    ‘It is, but it’s a bit more abstract. I want to sell Childhood.’

    ‘Childhood?’

    ‘Childhood.’

    ‘Maybe you should stick to calculators?’

    ‘How often to do you hear adults saying, “Childhood was the best time of my life” or “Youth is wasted on the young”?’

    ‘Well, Grandma does say that a lot. She’s forever cursing Joshua’s soft, soft skin.’

    ‘His face is like a rubber mask.’

    ‘So elasticy.’

    ‘The point is that us kids are being forced to grow up really fast these days.’

    It was true. Lots of kids from school already had jobs. Cathy Oldbeck did a few hours every week behind the counter of her aunty’s carpet shop, Brent Looter worked at the Trunk Fast Food Restaurant and Rory Corey filled in for his dad sometimes as a security guard at the Schlock Pub of Excellence. That place is the worst. Its slogan is Get Schlocked at the Schlock.

    Phattius continued. ‘So how would you feel if I said to you, “Charlie, I have the solution to being a kid”?’

    ‘I would say, “I’m already a kid, I don’t have anything to worry about – least of all NOT being a kid.”’

    ‘Yes, but you’re more than just a kid. I mean, how often do your parents get you to wash the dishes, sweep the floors, take your little brother to kinder?’

    ‘All the time,’ I said, which wasn’t exactly true because sometimes I tell Dad I don’t want to walk Joshua to kinder and he sends Barcode off with Joshua instead. Barcode doesn’t mind – in fact he loves going to kinder with Joshua. Barcode is good at beak painting, he loves going down the slide and he takes to the lawn sprinkler like a duck takes to water.

    ‘You see,’ said Phattius, ‘apart from school a real kid’s time should be spent playing video games, drinking from the nozzles of slurpee machines and riding around on the biggest dogs in the dog park. You know – kid stuff.’

    ‘I hear you Phattius, but how exactly are you going to sell this Childhood thing?’

    Phattius reached down to his schoolbag and brought back a big pile of papers. He passed the bundle over to me. There were about 100 pages all stapled together. The first page read You Can’t Be Young At Heart If Your Aorta Is Old: 10 Steps for Kids to Reclaim Their Own Childhoods by Phattius Beats. It was a book. Phattius had written some kind of self-help book for kids.

    ‘So what do you think, Charlie?’ Phattius asked. ‘Do you think it’ll sell? I wrote it myself. Last night.’

    ‘I’m not sure if this will sell as well as red cordial,’ I said, leafing through the pages.

    ‘You don’t think it’s a good idea?’

    ‘No, no, it’s a good idea,’ I said, and it was. But books are a hassle to get printed and annoying to get into bookshops.

    ‘But…?’

    ‘But maybe it’s not a book,’ I said, looking up and smiling at Phattius. ‘Maybe it would be better as a blog?’

Copyright  Andrew McDonald 2009

The night was successful, nobody heckled me and a couple of people even giggled. Or maybe they were sneezing. Anyway, you can decide for yourself — giggling or sneezing — by watching the video of the ten-minute reading I did from The Greatest Blogger in the World below.

Wheeler Centre 4 EVA!

If you go to Google and search for something that begins with ‘how to…’ you will be offered the most commonly searched  ‘how to…’ phrases.

‘How to lose weight fast’ is popular and ‘how to tie a tie’ is up there too. But at the top of the list is ‘how to kiss’. I myself remember googling a similar thing a few years back, once the girl germ rumours were proved to be nothing more than rumours. And with Valentine’s Day scheduled for this Sunday it suddenly seems important to look at the hows and tos and fros of kissing.

Kissing cannot be satisfactorily achieved by simply running to first base on a baseball field or by sitting up in a tree and spelling out verbs with another person. There is no fail-safe plan of attack that can lead to kissing nor ensure that said kissing is enjoyable for all.

The best thing a person can do is think the right things whilst kissing. Kissing is a psychological activity controlled 98% by the brain and 2% by excess saliva. So here are some topic suggestions for thinking and not thinking about during kissing.

GOOD FOR THINKING ABOUT DURING KISSING

1. Butterflies
2. Eyelashes
3. Lips
4. A world without cold sores
5. Warm showers
6. Freshly-ironed pants
7. Baby horses
8. Foal
9. Sponge cakes
10. Anything dappled (exluding infectious diseases)

NOT GOOD FOR THINKING ABOUT DURING KISSING

1. Windmills
2. Jackhammers
3. Jack Nicholson
4. Gums
5. Bleeding gums
6. Helicopters
7. Stilt walking
8. England
9. Licking the spoon
10. Circular breathing

This meant that Melbourne needed to find an entity to be the centrepiece of the new City of Literature. After scouting around for people who could build such a centrepiece, the engineers that built the Collins Class submarines were eventually overlooked in favour of world-renowned arts manager Chrissy Sharp. A shame really because book readings in submarines are da bomb. Or at least, da torpedo.

Chrissy Sharp, who was fresh from a stint at London’s Sadler’s Wells Theatre, is the kind of authoritative international figure who should never be described as being ‘fresh from a stint’. She is not a footballer.

Chrissy hired local publishing guru Michael Williams to run the program, turquoise was chosen to be the official colour of the centre and things were underway. But there was one thing missing – a name.

The centre was eventually called the Wheeler Centre (a name that, for me, conjures up images of axles) after Tony and Maureen Wheeler, who founded Lonely Planet in Melbourne 30 years ago, and whom are donors to the centre. And no they didn’t name the centre after themselves. Where do you think we are? Pottersville?

The Wheeler Centre set up shop in the south wing of the State Library of Victoria and a number of Melbourne’s small literary organisations — such as the Emerging Writers’ Festival and Express Media — moved into the centre, where they are free to use the photocopier and coffee machine whenever they want.

Now we’re but days away from the centre officially opening with its big kick-off event – A Gala Night of Storytelling. It will be the first time in Australian history that the word ‘Gala’ has been used outside of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

Just two days after the Gala is the first Debut Monday – a recurring event that sees four new writers reading from their books on Monday evenings. I will be appearing at the debut Debut Monday event at 6pm on February 15th where I’ll be reading from The Greatest Blogger in the World. Bob Franklin, Sofie Laguna and Madeleine Hamilton will also be there reading from their books. It’s a free event, there will be wine on hand and I’m told that all the authors will be reading from their books out loud. I know, right!

If you’re in Melbourne or you’re going to be in Melbourne soon have a look at the Wheeler Centre program and pop by sometime. I’m sure they’ll be glad to have to. So long as you don’t tell them their state-of-the-art literary centre reminds you of axles.

www.wheelercentre.com

And of course the old favourite — as used here on poor Mary O’Sullivan’s novel — appears on a regular basis.

Here are a few of my favourite testimonials that pop up all the time on book covers. I’ve included a few words on each to help with that unenviable task of matching up the right book cover quote with the right book.

‘Unputdownable.’
Only use on the book’s cover if the movie adaptation is unDVDpausable.

‘A triumph.‘
Best used for musicals and muffin recipe books.

‘Enthralling.‘
Only to be used on the covers of books concerning vampires. It’s a thrall thing.

‘The must-read book of the summer.‘
This is for books that feature beaches and/or murders. Use on political memoirs at your own risk.

‘Unstopreadable.’
Officially retired from bookselling jargon these days, but was commonly heard in bookshops until ‘unputdownable’ was discovered.

‘Compelling’, ‘astonishing’, ‘astounding’, ‘amazing’, ‘thrilling’, ‘shocking’ or ‘disturbing’.
Best used on books that are so good that the reader needs to be warned not to start reading with malaise.

‘A work of genius.’
Use sparingly. It’s a big call.

‘A work of evil genius.’
Good for autobiographies of killers, mad men and anyone convicted of anything really.

‘Hilarious.‘
For use on EVERY SINGLE MEMOIR EVER WRITTEN BY A COMEDIAN.

‘A sensation.’
Again, only for musicals.

‘Epic.’
This is a good one for historical fiction as things in the past usually came in bigger formats, from mobile phones to reptiles. Ergo, epic.

‘Roll up for the Magical Mystery Tour.’
This is a Beatles lyric. Do not try to pass it off as someone else’s quote. Unless you’re quoting Paul McCartney.

‘Inspirational.‘
For rags to riches biographies, sports biographies and any biography of Nelson Mandela.

‘This is the best book I’ve read that combines aliens, the fall of the Ottoman empire and the “secret life” of Peanuts’ creator Charles M. Schultz.’
Spelling out the plot of a book in the cover quote isn’t always the best idea.

‘A fresh new voice in contemporary fiction.‘
Works best when followed with a comparison to another author. For eg. ‘A fresh new voice in contemporary fiction. A cross between Vonnegut and Kerouac.’

‘Unskimreadable’.
This quote has never been used on a book before. It’s yours if you want it.

The bus stop seat that gets you closer to a real estate agent than you ever thought you’d have to get. No matter where you sit on this seat, the real estate agent’s eyes follow you, endlessly peering over your shoulder as you check your phone, wallet, fingernails. This is the perfect seat to give up to an elderly person, lest you get any of that ‘property smarm’ stuck to your back.

From Batman #285: The Mystery of Christmas Lost.

Every year as Christmas gets closer I start seeing the Dark Knight everywhere; as if I’m wearing contact lenses with the bat signal printed on. Obviously this is founded on a childhood of Christmases that all featured Batman in some way or another – from playing with Batman action figures received from Santa to drawing pictures of Batman with Derwents received from Santa. But Batman and Christmas have a much deeper connection than just my own (probably common) Batmanania under the Christmas tree. Christmas, as it turns out, is a big part of the Batmanverse and the comicsverse too.

Both Marvel and D.C.  have a long history of putting out Christmas comics. Superman was at the North Pole saving Santa from Nazis back in the 1940s. D.C. has put out various Christmas With the Super-Heroes collections over the years. (That’s the cover of a 1974 edition above). And here’s twelve of the best D.C. holiday comics according to Comics Alliance.

Speaking of Christmas comics my favourite one of late is It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Zombies – an illustrated collection of Christmas carols told from a zombie’s point of view. It’s the latest in the trend of mixing zombies with well-known cultural cornerstones. But that’s a distraction from our Caped Christmasader conversation.

It’s not only the Batman comics that are inextricably linked to the festive season. The second Tim Burton Batman movie, Batman Returns, is set in Gotham City during Christmas. And one of my favourite episodes of Batman: The Animated Series was ‘Christmas With The Joker’. I recommend watching the whole episode below.

For me Christmas continues to the Bat time of the year. I already know that this year there will be Batman presents, chatter about Heath Ledger during Christmas lunch and quite possibly The Batman Board Game will get a play in the evening.

I suppose any popular cultural icon that has lasted for so many years is bound to make a big appearance during the gift-giving season. And when you walk through shopping centres and see little children decked out in full Batman costumes, holding Mummy’s hand as she does her last-minute Christmas shopping, it’s evident that Batman is going to be a yuletide fixture for many years to come.