COKE BURN

OMG! Woke up Sunday morning and Mum was screaming her head off loud enough to wake the dead – or half of Yagoona which is pretty much the same thing. I rushed downstairs to see what all the fuss was about and (of course!) it was my feral half-brother Josh. He was trying to do some random skateboarding tricks on this ramp he’d built in the driveway out of old milk crates and our patio table – but that wasn’t the problem. The problem was he had also doused himself in lawnmower petrol and set himself on fire. His mates were screeching with laughter and one of them was filming him with his iPhone. Mum was doing her nut and trying to get the hose out of the garage but she hasn’t watered the lawn since the water restrictions began in 2004 and the hose was all rotten and crawling with redbacks. Josh went flying through the air screaming at the top of his voice with flames all over his body and then did this hectic jump over the fence and fortunately landed in the neighbour’s pool. Naturally, it was all my fault, and Mum went spaz at me. I felt really bad coz the night before I’d shown Josh all the award winners from Award to try and educate him about how sophisticated advertising is these days, coz Mum wants him to go to TAFE to do digital graphics and make shitloads of money doing websites and banners. Personally I think he’s way too stupid and smokes way too much dope but when I spoke to Head of Digital he said that neither of those things was a problem. I was really inspired by Craigy’s amazing speech about how we can use advertising for the betterment of humankind but then Josh asked me to show him a “cool ad not some gay speech” so I showed him Craigy’s award-winning Coke Burn ad which advertises how awesome it is to skateboard when you’ve set yourself on fire. Unfortunately Josh is kind of naïve and a bit susceptible to advertising and on top of which he has at least five cokes a day starting with brekky so he gets a bit excitable, and when he woke up he decided to emulate Craigy and immolate himself. I’ve never seen Mum so angry, well at any rate not since they barred her from the pokies at the Bankstown RSL. Anyway, on the way to Westmead Casualty and Emergency I tried to explain that setting yourself on fire wasn’t necessarily a bad thing coz that’s how they’d got democracy in Tunisia but she wouldn’t have any of it and said that if she ever got her hands on whoever was responsible for that Coke ad she’d set THEM on fire. (Hope Craigy doesn’t show his gorgeous face out in Yagoona any time soon!) Anyway, the hospital was fully booked so they gave Josh a tube of Stingos and told him to rub it into the burns, but he couldn’t be bothered and so we went to Maccas instead. On the way home he insisted I drive him and his mates up to Chatswood coz there’s this hectic high rise car park opposite an adjoining office block. Josh reckons he can build a ramp so they can skateboard from one skyscraper to the other. Just like in Craigy’s ad!