So this is Christmas? Another year gone, and what have you done? You know, if I hear that played once more in my local shopping centre, I think that I’m going to have a psychotic episode and massacre several dozen Christmas shoppers with a sharpened Christmas tree. Don’t get me wrong – I like and respect the late John Lennon as much as the next man (unless he happens to be Paul McCartney). It’s just that I get sick and tired of the same old Christmas ‘classics’ getting played year after year: McCartney’s ‘Having a Wonderful Christmas Time’; Slade’s ‘Merry Christmas, Everyone’ and Wizzard’s ‘I Wish it Could Be Christmas Every Day’, to name the usual suspects. The latter two, of course, are played by radio DJs who want to be identified as ‘wacky’, whilst Lennon is the standby of the intellectually pretentious and ‘caring’ DJs. As for the McCartney, God alone knows who plays that, or why.
Can’t anyone show any more imagination as to which old time seasonal ‘classics’ they dredge up from the archives? I can’t remember the last time I heard Johnny Mathis’ ‘A Child is Born’, or whatever festive shite it was that the late unlamented ‘Boney M ‘ came up with. Thank God. But getting back to John Lennon, I thought I’d let all you little Sleazemaniacs out there know what I’ve been doing, if not since last Christmas, at least since the last editorial. So, here we go with the Adventures of Doc Sleaze! Well, since October, we’ve seen three traditional festivals/celebrations marked here: Hallowe’en, Guy Fawkes Night and now, obviously, Yuletide. Needless to say, jovial community minded chap that I am. I’ve been in the thick of the celebrations at each of them!
Hallowe’en – what I love about this particular event is the way in which it demonstrates Britain’s continuing commitment to multiculturalism, our willingness to embrace other people’s cultural traditions. I this case, those of our American cousins. I remember the old days when the best you could hope for on Hallowe’en was bobbing for apples. Hardly the most exciting of activities for teenagers (unless acid had been added to the water or razor blades secreted in the apples). However, nowadays kids get to dress up in costume and terrorise the neighbourhood by demanding money with menaces. Trick or Treat, I think they call it. Now, this is more like it – exactly the sort of thing I wanted to do as a teenager; find a good excuse to throw eggs at the house of that miserable old git at the end of the street! Just because I’m (supposedly) an adult these days, I don’t see why I should miss out on this kind of fun. So, when the little darlings come knocking on my door asking ‘Trick or treat’, I like to turn the tables by appearing at the door soaked in blood, wielding a meat cleaver and shouting ‘Trick!’, before chasing them down the street. Mind you, a couple of years ago it very nearly went horribly wrong when I decided to pay homage to two classic modern horror franchises with my costume, by donning a hockey mask a la Friday The Thirteen ‘s Jason, and sporting a chainsaw, in the manner of Leatherface from Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Well, just as chased this bunch of screaming children around a corner, chainsaw whirring ran smack bang into a couple of policemen. It took over half an hour to convince them that I was on my way to a fancy dress party as Eminem. The long and the short of it is, that I decided to adopt a different strategy this year.
Instead of the costumes, I bought up lots of those cheap eggs the supermarkets refuse to sell to under-eighteens at Hallowe’en, and fired them out of my arse at any Trick or Treaters foolhardy enough to come calling. In fact, I saved a few dozen eggs and fired them at Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, candidates for the Conservative Party and double glazing salesmen over the next few weeks. OK, I know that right now some of you are going back over those last couple of sentences saying: ‘Did I just read that right? Did he say he fired eggs out of his arse?’. Indeed, I did. It’s a neat trick I picked up from an old Buddhist dude I met when I was travelling in Tibet, right after I’d faked my death at… Whoops! I think I might have said too much there!
Moving right along to Bonfire Night, I know this is one that those of you in the US really don’t understand. But trust me, burning effigies of someone who tried to blow up the King and Parliament four hundred odd years ago is a great excuse to legally detonate small explosive devices in public on the grounds that it is a ‘firework display’. Now, in contrast to Hallowe’en, this is one celebration which has got far tamer for kids since my teenage years. Way back then, it was considered perfectly normal and legal for shopkeepers to sell highly dangerous explosives to kid throughout October and early November. It was bloody brilliant! The things we did with those fireworks! The old ladies we gave heart attacks to, the neighbours we terrorised, the atrocities we committed! But of course, the health and safety brigade have sucked the fun out of it now, with most displays being organised events and sales to children banned. However, if you are an adult you can still buy fireworks and have lots of reckless fun! Here’s one of my top tips for most effectively using one of my favourite fireworks; the rocket. I find these are most effective when fired at a target in multiple. One of the best ways of doing this is to get a piece of corrugated metal and set one end (the one facing your target) up on bricks. Arrange half a dozen rockets in the grooves on the metal, adjust the height of the front end by adding or taking away bricks until you get the right elevation to, say, skim the roof of your target house, or smash through the windows of your target greenhouse, maybe, the light the fuses and run for cover! An alternative for single firings is to build a bazooka-type launcher from a length of drainpipe. Just put it over your shoulder with a rocket inside, take aim, get someone to light the fuse and whoosh! I should add that you’ll need some kind of visor attached to the pipe to protect you from the back blast as the rocket exits the tube. When it comes to targets for such launchers greatly regret the passing of the open-platform double decker bus. If you aimed it right, not only could you get the rocket to fly onto the open rear deck, but also get it to deflect up the stairs and cause panic on the top deck! Ah, happy days!
Of course, I’m not admitting to actually doing any of those highly dangerous things, or even advocating that anyone else do them. This is, of course, an entirely made up narrative told for comic effect. (I think that covers us legally). All of this brings us, inevitably, to Christmas. As regular readers know, I truly love and adore this time of year. So you won’t be surprised to learn that only the other day, when I heard a lone carol singer outside my house, I leant out of the window and asked “What day is this, young man?”, thinking that I may have inadvertently missed the festive season. “Why, it is December the fifteenth,” he replied. “Well, fuck off then you little bastard, we’ve still got ten days to go,” I responded, firing an egg out of my arse. See, I’m definitely mellowing with the years! Until the next time -keep it sleazy!
Doc Sleaze
