Bad Ju-ju and a eulogy for Billy Mays

June and July have never been simple or easy for me. I've had more relationship break-ups, major house moves and general common-or-garden kerfuffles in the middle of the year, in both Hemispheres, than at any other time. Might be part of the reason I like Christmas so much...

Well, blow me down, what a hell of a month this one's been...the ground was laid back around March (yeah, I shoulda bewared the Ides, but I didn't bother to read the instructions until the thing started vibrating unnaturally, it could have happened to anyone), when we firmed up the dates for the long awaited visit of #1 Son...as fathers and sons go, we've had our share of moments, good and bad, and were both looking forward to a few weeks together with hope and happiness and some butterflies that all would go well...

...so, to cut a long story down to a hanging point, we had a ball; as road trips go (and I've had a few) this was senfuckingsational and so say all of us...and two days short of June, he'd gone off to the very same Big Apple of which I'd told him stories at my knee in decades past...and lo, the Sun penetrated further into the constellation of Gemini and the celestial bucket poured forth...

In the last 30-odd days or so:

· #1 son has moved on to NYC, hostelled in The Village and Harlem, started work, got an apartment in Brooklyn, and we've talked lots...this is all a Very Good Thing;

· I quit work on June 1st, because, well, it was time for me to move on from that job;

· I've re-arranged half the furniture in the house and created an office and a craft room out of 'spare rooms';

· with the help of a mate, I've finished painting the craft room and close to all the outside of the house - we sanded the window frames today, tomorrow we paint them and a job that's been 2 years in the making is finally come to its fruition;

· I got too close to a mate's dogs playing, and was lucky not to lose a finger tip...and for the first time since I packed it, the Travel First Aid kit suddenly paid for itself...the infection is under control, and despite being denied the sutures it deserved, the wound is slowly healing...man, have you ever seen hydrogen peroxide sizzle like that?;

· the strawberries, raspberries and lettuces in my first vegetable garden since the early 90s became, as the actress said to the Archbishop, good enough to eat;

· I got the Green Man tattoo that I've been considering since last Northern Fall, courtesy of my three kids clubbing together for my 50th birthday (it's all about the pain - the ink is just a souvenir);

· my boxes of Stuff that I packed back in 2007 finally arrived in staggered formation after 3 months At Sea, creating a feeling of numerous Christmases come at once and, it must be said, something of a Wherethefuckdoweputallthisshitordowecallitstuff moment that was ultimately resolved with the help of a receptive attic;

· my parents each turned 71 (Happy Birthday again!!!);

· I stopped smoking after 35 years at two packs a day;

· I've made contact with a dozen or more mates from High School that I haven't seen or heard from since 1976, it's been a hoot and it's wonderful to hear of all that everyone has been up to and no real surprise that there's a lot that hasn't changed;

· made some friends and let some go, sat, thought, stood up, spun round, fell over, got up again, made some plans, forgot a few others, welcomed the summer, took a gorgeous feral kitty and her 3 babies to the Humane Society's 'no kill' shelter (give it a rest, you'll have people thinking I've gone soft), and a bunch of other shit, big and small, that have slipped my chaotic mind for now, and...

Some icons died, all in the space of a few days...he may not be as well remembered outside the USA, but Ed McMahon, Johnny Carson's sidekick on The Tonight Show, was not unknown to night owls and cultural anthropologists elsewhere in the world...I remember McMahon, America's answer to Bert Newton. RIP to him and the variety show concept that gave a lot of fun to a lot of people over the years, and of which he was a pioneer...

Farrah's death was not completely unexpected but sad as hell...I was 16 when her red bathing suit poster came out, and the things I didn't do to that woman in my dreams aren't worth relating in this august forum...she was 29 at the time and, thankfully for her fledging marriage to Lee Majors, blissfully unaware of my spotty adolescent yet hopefully enticing fantasies...Farrah Fawcett Majors was an icon of health, hair, teeth and sexuality, a postmodern Marilyn who helped define the Seventies and pave the way for the shoulder padded, coke fuelled decade to come...talking of which...

Michael I'm Bad Jackson...Michael Jackson was my age...unlike many of his more recent fans, I watched him singing 'ABC' in 1970, at the age of 11, and thought "what's he got that I haven't?"....you know, apart from talent and personality...I am often fascinated by power and fame, although I don't covet them - too much like hard work, in my opinion - and Michael Jackson was one of those artists, like Prince and a few others, of whom I could recognise their talent even though I really thought their music was shit...and, as with the Bee Gees, became a falsetto parody of their early work and a stark reminder of the dark side of The Dream...I'm with Ron White - I don't know for sure, but I wouldn't have let my kids sleep over at Neverland...and I am also sorry for the bugger, y'know? I'd occasionally trade my life, but not for his...Michael Jackson made Elvis look functional, and outlived him by 8 years...maybe we should be grateful that The King was spared that fate.

Then, yesterday, there was the unexpected death of Billy Mays. What can you say about Billy Mays? I hated his ads with a passion. Upon breaching America's shores in 2007, there was much of this fascinating nation to which I was unused...infomercials weren't one of them...I hate the self-styled 'pitch men' with a dark and violent passion...in Australia, I often satisfied my homicidal inclination toward "Television direct-response advertisement salesmen " by imagining Gerry Harvey, Big Kev and numerous other nails-down-the-chalk-board spruikers duct taped in a cellar and played, over and over and over and over, their own ads and finally let loose on each other....waterboarding is a very conspicuous demonstration that the CIA lacks imagination...

So, again, what does one do when someone at whom one has screamed "Fuck Off !!" and been restrained from throwing the remote through the screen for but one bright shining moment of blessed relief from "and wait!! there's more!!".....what do you do when he dies, the same age as you?.....this wasn't a guy who had incredible musical talent beaten out of him at a young age; wasn't a drop-dead gorgeous big-haired model whose time had come and got their lucky break on an international blockbusting TV series; and didn't die being remembered as the cosy, familiar old sidekick face of an American television legend for more than a generation....

I read one of the first press releases of Billy Mays' death, and someone was quoted as saying that Billy had a big heart and had helped a lot of people realise their dreams. I don't doubt it. No, seriously. Like many of us, I had a rush of blood to the head in the 70s and 80s, an era when Dale Carnegie had been reincarnated by corporate America, guys like Zig Ziglar and Tony Robbins were killing the pig, and JR Ewing personified the credo that if money couldn't make you happy, well, it could sure as hell give you the power to get back at everyone who ever pissed you off...on my path to being the next billionaire, to cut a long story short, I tried my hand as an Amway distributor, worked for a long time in sales, I sank a year's pay into a business idea that was doomed to failure, and generally made my own costly sacrifice to Greed...I may arguably be a better man because of my failure to realise those dreams, sorry, goals, but I sure didn't plan it that way ...Billy Mays left Pittsburgh and started hawking TV specials on the Atlantic City Boardwalks in his early 20s...if you've ever done any kind of cold selling, you know how hard a gig that is...

The past day or so I've been thinking a bit...about kids from hard-doer towns like Pittsburgh and Port Kembla and Newcastle Upon Tyne that bust their arse to make the most of the hand they're dealt, rather than sit on it and whine..Billy Mays had recently been filming a series called Pitch Men, a show I have seen advertised and for which I was torn between a bizarre compulsion to watch and a parallel need to stick matchsticks under my fingernails...this, from an interview just before he died:

"My hope and wish is that they get a peek into Billy Mays's life and they see that he's not just a guy who shouts," he said. "I'm not just a 'yell and sell.' I want the world to know that I'm a very generous guy. I'm a very humble guy. And I work hard."

I disliked his work with a passion. But I wish, for his sake, he'd got the chance to have his wish. RIP Billy Mays, you mad bugger. I'll take both harps and the steak knives, thanks.