Lyndon's 50th: 'The World's Whitest Rapper' - 2014

2014, Melbourne, Australia

Yeah I wanna thank God

He’s the universe maker

Sent his son to Earth,

Cos he’s the soul taker

Mum, I couldn’t do it alone

If it wasn’t for your pushin’

I wouldn’t be on this Earth we call home

And dad, you were there from the start

Kickin footy in the street

Kickin footy in the dark

Kardinia Park, even though we didn’t win

But we’ve won three premierships since then

I got two sister

Justine and Melinda

She’s in UAE and I kinda miss her

We started life under the same roof

I tried to hit her with a bat

But there’s no proooof

Boom boom shake shake the house

I might have played a little long

I might have played a little loud

On my electric guitar

Yeah I could make it sing

You said it sounded like an angel throwing up in the sink

We were mission kids,

Eating meat from a can

Eating weavils with our breakfast

Man it must have been Home Brand

Games with sticks

Salt lakes, big snakes

Feather foots, tribal fights and every fortnight motorbikes

YEAH!

By chance or design my rhymes are never rusty

I hadn’t heard of Slim Shady it was Whitman or Dusty

That’s right

Fast forward to 1992

I was lookin for love

The girls were looking right through me

The Man upstairs, he had other plans

While I was swimming in the ocean

Brea was kicking in the sand, we hooked up!

It was just a matter of time before

BOOM! We were married with a child

Now, this is a shout out to all my little homies

Y’all know what’s what and you all think you know me

Well kids listen up, you better keep your shizzle clean

Your dad’s the whitest rapper the world has ever seen!

Hey, I’ll pop some coke in your glass

My homeboy Finn, yeah he’s one for the ages

Give him a book and he’ll read pages and pages

And pages

For ages ... and ages

And Jet, can run and run and run all day

He wears wife beaters in the pouring rain

His brown kicks with white sneakers

There’s holes in his knees

He’s the kid in the jumper when it’s 50 degrees

My main man Mustang, he’s not fussed

When we’re all in hurry, no he’s not rushed then!

If I had believed in clairvoyancy

I’d be calling, ‘Hey catch up Datsun 180B’

Yeah, oh listen up y’all

Let me tell you about Imogen

She’s the love of my life,

My own little daughter

Me and her mum and her brothers adore her

Yeah she laughs

... like a rock rattling around in a can

And when she smiles every angel  in heaven turns round and y’all

Yeah every angel in heaven turns around

That’s right.

Keep your eyes off her.

Now I thank God

For all my family

Those who grew up with me

And those who put up with me

And now here I am,

The World’s Whitest Rapper

With the world’s shortest career in the history of ever!

That’s right

Just want to thank Neil and Kirsten Sacco

Just want to thank everyone that’s here

My family, thank youmum, thank you dad

 The is a shout out to all my relatives that aren’t here

Yeah, word up, y’all

Yeah, that’s right, we’re all doin the time,

When I’m wreckin the rhymes

So now I’m signing off for the first and last time

You won’t see me again, or remember my name

I won’t be beatin on Rhiannon or hangin with Kanye

I won’t be kickin’ it old school, or rockin’ on the mike

I won’t be pimpin’ with the homies in a suit that is white

I won’t be all like, ‘Wassup P-Diddy’

Not there’ll be none of that,

Maybe until I’m Fitty

That’s all y’all

Peace out!

for Harry's 21st: 'A twenty first speech is much like a circumcision', by Simon, Tony and Peter - 1994

April 1994, Melbourne

Good evening everyone.

A twenty first speech is much like a circumcision - both involve blood letting and it's best if the parents don't watch too closely. If we continue the analogy, which some might argue is an unwise move, I suppose we three are the doctors here tonight. I hope for Harry's sake we have steady hands.

There are a few things that twenty-first speeches are not about. They're not about justice. They're not about fairness. They are an opportunity to focus in on the 0.1 percent of a person's life that is basically of any interest to a drunken audience.

Take Harold Antony Burnett as a case in point. How many hours has he spent helping young kids. How many hours as he spent saying nice things and thinking nice thoughts about old people. He is a man dedicated to both family and community and has probably given as much to the cause of Dr Seussian poetry as anybody alive today. Nelson Mandela won the Nobel Peace prize last year. Harry must have been an unlucky second.

But are we going to pay homage to these hours of benevolence here tonight? Are we going to put up a slide of Harry helping a small child cross the road?

No. We are in fact going to show you a shot of the fifteen seconds Harry spent standing naked in front of the Eiffel Tower.

Harry has always been a bit of a writer. Indeed, most people would agree that most of his work is quite alarmingly well-written. During his trip away to Israel he regularly wrote back, but very rarely did he ever say anything about either the trip away or Israel. He did however have plenty to report on green lemurs, eukeleles, whale penises and fridge lights. He is often silly, sometimes weird and nearly always strangely brilliant. Receiving a letter from Harry is a joy.

He also writes on his envelopes. Take the following examples.

- This one has an arrow pointing to the seal - "Please do not feed the seals".

- "Contents - coded message regarding the development of Tibetan nuclear

arms"

- "To read secret writing, hold envelope in hot flame"

- " Note to Postal inspector - do not open for inspection unless you really wantto. "

- "Dehydrated letter - just add water"

One month ago, he composed the following RSVP to a friend's 21st.

I'm coming. Let there be no mistake, I will be there. Drunken and joyous. Dancing the two-step with nubile beauties and mooning the moon in symbotic recognition of your transition from adolescence to manhood. I will also be there the morning after - sallow and forlorn, as together we attempt to stop various internal constituents of our manhood from escaping to fairer climes. I undertake to swill beer, spread cheer and decorate each of my ten digits with an encircling cheezel. I pledge to spar mercilessly with both proponents and opponents of VSU and to compel scholarly admirers of modernist fiction to retreat ashen-faced to their squatid academic hovels. I furthermore will endeavour to ensure that no party-goer leaves unaccompanied by a traditional cellophane wrapped lolly-bag. Thank-you for your splendiferous summons.

And yes, as good as his word, Harry did indeed perform some tricks with cheezels before departing - stone cold sober and before eleven o'clock.

At school Harry was at the bottom of almost every scandal and every big bust that involved Weet-bix cards. When he got his hands on card number eleven of the much sought after and often under-rated "Great Australian Motor Races" series, he was crowned the undisputed Mr Big of the Weet-bix card collecting fraternity. Which I think we'd all agree was some achievement.

What this passion of Harry's demonstrates is just how scary a place our school was in the late eighties. The closer one got to adulthood the more one felt like collecting cereal novelty items. Just ask RM. Or ask Simon here - he's still got his snap crackle and Pop 'Under the Sea' mobile'

Harry's car looks forever like it really wants to kick your teeth in. A meaner looking fender I've never seen. It has an attitude. It harbours grudges. There is some evidence supporting the thesis that this avocado green FJ has in fact a grudge against Harry. I refer in particular to one September night which as memory serves me was both dark and stormy. We were in Collins Street. The fairy lights were on the blink. Harry was doing a handbrake start on a fairly substantial incline. All of a sudden we started rolling.

"Harry we're rolling"

‘Yeah, I’m aware of that. The handbrake isn't actually strong enough to hold the car. It’s really only here for aesthetic purposes and to make that comforting handbrake noise."

"'When are we going to stop?"

"Oh soon enough"

Some of you might be acquainted with the concept of touch parking. Harry that night introduced me to an expansion on that idea - "touch stopping". We just rolled back into the Valiant behind us.

There isn't a lot you can say about Harry's music taste. He was once asked to list his top five songs of the eighties. Number one was "We Built This City" by Starship. Number Two was "Current Stand" by Kids in the Kitchen. That's either an indictment upon Harry or the eighties.

But Harry and I have shared several very special musical experiences. Musical here is to be taken in its loosest possible context. One day we decided to translate all the theme-songs to Australian soap operas into Latin. Soap opera operettas we called them. i think I can safely say that we have since that day proceeded to sing them in nearly every possible public forum. It seems a shame to stop here. Harry.

[Neighbours in Latin]

I've got some bad news - the songs just keep on a-coming. ! We have in fact put together another tune. It's song about hardship, it's a song about pain. In fact, this song could be likened to a circumcision .If you take the bits we had to cut...

[To Gilbert and Sullivan's The Very Model of a Modern Major-General]

He is the very model of a modern vegetarian

Eats cabbage lettuce-lentils-rice-brown bread-potatoes, never ham...

He never would profess to having kissed a fair librarian

He is the very model of a modern vegetarian.

 

For years we thought he was in fact a USA imperialist

But now we know that he's a zany madcap hip idealist

A shame to every self-respecting Camberwell Grammarian

He is the very model of a modern vegetarian.

 

A travellin' went our Harry to discover his identity

Instead his photos all reveal much unashamed nudity

He swears he simply imitated hairy well-Hung- garians ...

He is the very model of a modern vegetarian.

 

Our Harry loves his Turkish coffee, Weet-Bix and focaccia,

Although his favourite dish must be a lightly spiced young Kathya,

And if she were a mermaid she would live in his aquarium

He is the very model of a modern vegetarian.

 

Oh give him water, flour eggs and he will make you mallo'ach

If we were crass we'd definitely rhyme this with a word like fuck.

But we are really new age sucky touchy-feely caring men

Just like our very model of a modern vegetarian.

 

And so we wish the very best of birthdays to our dear old friend,

It's sad indeed lamentable that in our speech the truth did bend

But if we had the choice there is no way we'd ever vary him,

We love our very model of a modern vegetarian.

for Helen's 50th - 'I know mother and father had a special fondness for producing offspring', 'King Street Revisited', by brother Joe Kelly

Note: Helen is accused by family of living life as though trapped in a Victorian novel. Hence the theme.

The spring time shadows began their long march across the perfectly manicured lawns of Dandenong’s Kings Street Manor, only threatened in their approach by Henry’s prize geraniums.  The year was 2012.  Could it really be 50 years?

I had just taken my breakfast in the drawing room and was awaiting Henry’s return.  He had taken the Hilux into town to collect guests for the ball that night celebrating the dawn breaking on my fiftieth year.  While it was greatly agreed that the dawn’s light was extremely kind to me, my vanity – for now at least – would not prevent me a celebration of my years.

In these days I found I needed to keep a constant vigil against sentimental nostalgia, as if posting a sentry against the invading hordes of history.  As easily as I travelled between the rooms of King Street Manor I could find myself wandering through the years. 

Could it be 1973? I can picture Mother and Father.  Were their siblings?  I know mother and father had a special fondness for producing offspring, but no other siblings presently come to mind.  In the 1973 of my mind I am an only child; deliriously happy.  I am in Mildura, on the terrace at Walnut Avenue.  From the terrace I can see the lawns unfold toward the Murray river, on whose banks I spent languid summer evenings dreaming of becoming a rowing champion.  A dream I was later to achieve, but modesty dictates I reserve this story for another time. 

Who is that girl I now see at the Mildura roller-skating rink? Her hair as golden as a Pharaoh’s tomb, her flares as wide as a Monaro’s doors.  It is hard for me to say what is more hypnotic – her sculptured beauty or her dance moves that give form and shape to ABBA’s Dancing Queen.  What would this 50 year old woman say to this teenage dancing queen if she had the chance?  Of the lives I have lived, the lessons I have both learnt and taught, what would I say to this girl if my travels through memory were to dissolve to reality?   

Would I warn her against that one thing the sole province of youth? – how unique and quintessential it is! How quickly, how irrevocably, lost! Yes, should I warn her against the perm.  The zest, the generous affections, the illusions, the despair, all the traditional attributes of Youth – all save this – come and go with us through life.  These things are a part of life itself; but the perm belongs to Youth alone and dies with it.  But this she will learn in time.

Would I tell her about the fundamentalism of Youth – its pureness, its resolve, its ultimate corruptibility?  Would I warn her against university eulogising, of standing in the university quad and preaching to the God Squad?  Or would I warn her of preaching with far more fundamentalism about a power even greater than God, and slightly more expensive – I speak of course of Landmark? I would not warn her, for the lessons learnt in the hard pursuit of passion are the lessons that have paved my road to success.

Would I tell her that in her years dedicated to the advancement and teaching of the English language she would learn not only that there can be tangy chickens and zillions of trees, but most confronting of all; that her brother John can be right.  Do I need to tell her this now? I think not.

The answer is I would tell her nothing.  I would take her hand and wander with her through the many and splendid rooms of my mind, each room an aesthetic education in its detailed and studied design.  The Baroque rumpus room of regret, the Gothic study of solitude, the asbestos hazard of the Granny-flat of grandiosity, the apricot hue of the lounge of love.  I would travel with her through each room until we ended up here – in the dining room at the Wallace Hotel.  I would show her why I would change nothing.  Because in these four walls is the evidence of a life lived and loved.  Family, friends, Henry and a Hilux.