It was a sunny morning in Santa Rosa, California in the Spring of 1985. I was six years old and had rosy cheeks. I had the requisite bad haircut, my mother still dressed me for the most part and I still thought that scientists built Frankensteins and giant robots. My world was still very small, happy and relatively care free.
My kindergarten teacher, Ms. Lewis was a seven-foot-tall puppet monster made of scouring pads, a green Captain Cody Elementary School soccer jacket and dry, dead skin who hated children with every fiber of her being (1). That morning, she announced that she had a surprise field trip for us. You'll notice that I did not call it a fun surprise field trip. Ms. Lewis did not do fun.
At 11am, this husk of a formerly passionate teacher ushered the class out of the olive drab double-wide that served as our classroom, along the metal staging that ran in front of building, down the steps and out to the grass in front of the school. A painted, decommissioned short bus was parked on the lawn, and folding tables had been set up all around it. As we approached the bus, Ms. Lewis introduced us to an individual that I'm going to call "Ranger Groovy".
Ranger Groovy was tall and skinny. The combination of his high-cut, brown, official-looking shorts and grimy Birkenstock sandals made his hairy legs look impossibly long, and an unwashed ponytail dangled out from under the ranger hat he wore on his head to the small of his back. I'm pretty sure that he was wearing a tie-dye shirt under a poorly buttoned boy scout shirt. He had come to teach us all about pollution using his menagerie of taxidermied animals who were killed by litter.
Ranger Groovy first walked us past a dead raccoon propped up on a log in a surprisingly lifelike pose. The poor little critter had a six pack ring draped around it's neck. Nearby, there was a rattlesnake on a square of astroturf with a bag of nacho cheese Doritos jammed in it's gaping maw. There was a trout with a six pack ring around it's neck and a family of chipmunks that had apparently become so distraught by the election that they also decided to commit mass suicide by six pack ring. An incredibly stupid beaver who had decided to chew on a can of Old Milwaukee instead of a log, and then died when he attempted to floss it out with a six pack ring sat in a kiddy pool full of crisp, white foam cups.
Lesson learned, Ranger Groovy. Six pack rings are the most efficient killing machines ever devised by man.
After we completed our stroll through his museum of crappy natural history, Ranger Groovy gave a speech about the responsibility each and every one of us has to make the world a better place. While his entire message genuinely had a profound impact on me, there was one phrase he used that has stuck with me for twenty nine years for all the wrong reasons. At the very end of the speech, he pointed at me and said "Remember, we're all captains here on Starship Earth."
Upon hearing the term "Starship Earth", I became skeptical of the horrors that Ranger Groovy had on display. It was possibly the dumbest combination of words that I had ever heard.
Don't get me wrong. People who litter are fucking douche bags and litter definitely harms and kills animals. I'm not in any way disputing this fact.
All that I am saying is that, given some of the other characters (2) that lurked around my school, I am not convinced that Ranger Groovy wasn't just some dude who lived in a bus behind Ms. Lewis's decrepit swamp shack (3) and did the poor old broad a favor by mildly traumatizing her students once a year by flinging the contents of an old Alpha Beta (4) bag from the back of his bus on a bunch of stolen taxidermy that he couldn't pawn for drug money.
(1) Okay, yes, that is probably a grossly inaccurate portrayal of the
woman, but she did tell me and my classmates that we were the worst
students that she had ever had (a statement she had notoriously repeated
to at least the last five classes she had taught).
(2) My music teacher, Mr. Hadlock for example, was clearly just a creepy drifter with an acoustic guitar. I say this because he had a photo of a topless hula dancer inside his guitar case and the only time I saw him outside of school, he was buying a rack of beer and snarled "Scram, kid." at me. Ere go, scary drifter.
(3) There's no way that she didn't live in a swamp shack.
(4) Alpha Beta was a California-based chain of liquor
stores. I don't know if they are still a thing. I wasn't allowed to go
anywhere near the Alpha Beta up the road from my house as a kid.
Sunday, April 27, 2014
CHAPTER 183: UNTITLED DIALOGUE #12
AUTHOR'S NOTE: What follows is the result of a writing exercise where I attempted to create an original, funny idea for a superhero movie parody. It went horribly, horribly wrong, and in the end, I had to turn it into a conversation between two screenwriters.
...........
"How's the new Hulk project coming along, Steve?"
"Ugh. Why is it so hard to make a movie about a guy who gets mad, turns green and throws cars at an old man in a tank and maybe a monster or something?"
"Did you read my script?"
"Banner: Rise of the Incredible Hulk?"
"That's the one!"
"Yes. I did."
"Aaaaaand?"
"It... well it's... just... horrible."
"It forces you to confront your prejudice against people exposed to gamma rays. Is the metaphor lost on you?"
"No."
"But it affected you?"
"Yes, it profoundly affected me. It made me want to travel back in time and abort you with a coat hanger."
"Look, someone needs to change the dynamic of the summer blockbuster. Turn it on its head before everything goes stale and we're left with Paranormal Activity clones and Melissa McCarthy road movies as the tent poles. I'm juxtaposing heroism with the stark reality of life. This could be the Citizen Kane of superhero movies."
"Yeah, no. Not so much."
"Why not?"
"Because it's wrong."
"No. You're just closed minded. The Hulk can be a vehicle for drama. There was an episode of the old TV show where Banner was on a plane that was about to crash and he had to change into the Hulk to pull it out of a nose dive. It was amazing!"
"INTERIOR. DAYTIME. BRUCE BANNER OPENS THE FIRE DOOR OF HIS FLOOR OF STARK TOWER, pulling off his baseball cap, revealing green splotches. He hurries down the hall, passing HAWKEYE, pretending to scratch an itch in order to hide his condition from his teammate.
This is literally a script for Philadelphia that you pulled off of newsgroups. You just replaced the Tom Hanks character with Bruce Banner! Your climax has Bruce Banner losing a court battle against Tony Stark and Captain America, then Hulking out and brutally assaulting an already hospitalized MODOC. Having read that out loud, I am going to throw up on behalf of all humanity!"
"What if it were Wolverine, instead?"
"Now you're talking!"
...........
"How's the new Hulk project coming along, Steve?"
"Ugh. Why is it so hard to make a movie about a guy who gets mad, turns green and throws cars at an old man in a tank and maybe a monster or something?"
"Did you read my script?"
"Banner: Rise of the Incredible Hulk?"
"That's the one!"
"Yes. I did."
"Aaaaaand?"
"It... well it's... just... horrible."
"It forces you to confront your prejudice against people exposed to gamma rays. Is the metaphor lost on you?"
"No."
"But it affected you?"
"Yes, it profoundly affected me. It made me want to travel back in time and abort you with a coat hanger."
"Look, someone needs to change the dynamic of the summer blockbuster. Turn it on its head before everything goes stale and we're left with Paranormal Activity clones and Melissa McCarthy road movies as the tent poles. I'm juxtaposing heroism with the stark reality of life. This could be the Citizen Kane of superhero movies."
"Yeah, no. Not so much."
"Why not?"
"Because it's wrong."
"No. You're just closed minded. The Hulk can be a vehicle for drama. There was an episode of the old TV show where Banner was on a plane that was about to crash and he had to change into the Hulk to pull it out of a nose dive. It was amazing!"
"INTERIOR. DAYTIME. BRUCE BANNER OPENS THE FIRE DOOR OF HIS FLOOR OF STARK TOWER, pulling off his baseball cap, revealing green splotches. He hurries down the hall, passing HAWKEYE, pretending to scratch an itch in order to hide his condition from his teammate.
This is literally a script for Philadelphia that you pulled off of newsgroups. You just replaced the Tom Hanks character with Bruce Banner! Your climax has Bruce Banner losing a court battle against Tony Stark and Captain America, then Hulking out and brutally assaulting an already hospitalized MODOC. Having read that out loud, I am going to throw up on behalf of all humanity!"
"What if it were Wolverine, instead?"
"Now you're talking!"
Saturday, April 26, 2014
That's Edutainment?
As a person born in California in the late '70s, every form of media that I was exposed to for the first few years of my life was at least moderately psychedelic. Regardless of whether it was a McDonald's ad or a Disney movie, The Electric Company or a Public Service Announcement, everything was just slightly groovy. Even the filmstrips about the pilgrims we were forced to watch had weird Moog soundtracks and Yellow Submarine character designs.
Things took a drastic change around 1984, when Nancy Reagan decided that she wanted to keep me off drugs. The conflicting environmental messages and survival tips (don't litter, but if you get lost in the woods, use one of the many discarded trash bags you find as a poncho) edutainment and public service messages suddenly shifted to very special episodes. Secondary characters on Webster became addicted to nonspecific drugs and wound up working as unpaid, one-handed meat packers. Margot on Punky Brewster was so wracked with guilt after the refrigerator incident that she cut off all her hair, crashed her mother's car and started her own infanticide club. Skippy never recovered from his experiences in El Salvador, and Screech became a nun. Mostly, it was about drugs though. And once people started warning me about the effects of drugs on the human brain, I put two and two together and it became obvious to me that anyone who had ever tried to simultaneously entertain and teach me anything had probably done a shit ton of acid.
Suppressed by the cold, hard reality of the '80s, my memories of "Free To Be... You And Me", "The Point" and "H.R. Puffinstuff" were crammed into the dark recesses of my brain, where they have festered for thirty years, occasionally bubbling to the surface and leaving me wondering if they were real or imagined. They are stored in a nether region of my subconscious, even more distant than that well-guarded utopian playground where I suspect "Shamelessly Happy Matt" skips and dances about. Here, in an abandoned, day-glo rock-n-roll church in a field of swirling sunflowers beneath a purple paisley sky, a faceless projectionist in massive, flower-print bell bottoms and a brown, fringed leather vest is playing a perpetual loop of rambling, senseless edutainment shorts, cobbled together from half-memories and engrams scarred into my psyche by well-meaning adults.
These shorts depict a rainbow colored Brooklyn and a technicolor alphabet hyphenation forest where Doctor John mercilessly torments and mocks your inability to find your way out. Crude proto-muppets representing babies tell me about the differences between their respective genitalia as Michael Jackson sings about self-acceptance. Six-Million Dollar Man Big Foot and Leonard Nimoy encourage me to go for nature walks and to seek out new age powers, but not to venture into construction sites. Papa John and Mackenzie Phillips sing songs about the importance of family, accompanied by sexually aggressive mimes and then Witchy-Poo suddenly segues in and tells a knock-knock joke.
Only it's never a funny joke.
Wendy Carlos music starts up and two teenagers in earth tone pants and blood red turtlenecks head into a locker room to have an awkward discussion about the changes their bodies have been going through. Next up, Wayland Flowers and Madame explain that your parents probably still love you, even if they are getting divorced while a lifeless Charlie McCarthy puppet sits in a corner collecting cobwebs. The Solid Gold dancers spill in, and Bootsy Collins tells a kid who can't play the sitar to never give up before a star wipe brings us more Witchy-Poo.
Oh, look! It's Alan Alda and a group of kids sitting inside a geodesic dome! And they're discussing aspirations. And they all want to be astronauts. Luckily, according to all the latest data, we'll all be living on the moon by 1991! Mamma Cass wants a pet alligator, but Meadowlark Lemon shows up on his flying phantom fire hydrant to tell her that it's a lot of responsibility. John Lennon dishes some parenting advice to Eric Clapton in an over sized nursery, then Robert Blake talks about resolving conflict with a parrot. Orson Welles stares at the camera for several minutes without blinking, breathing heavily while the Mummenschanz perform their infamous clay face genital routine. Finally, the camera fades to black, with only the continuing sound of Orson's breathing for another two minutes.
Now let us never speak of this part of my brain again.
Things took a drastic change around 1984, when Nancy Reagan decided that she wanted to keep me off drugs. The conflicting environmental messages and survival tips (don't litter, but if you get lost in the woods, use one of the many discarded trash bags you find as a poncho) edutainment and public service messages suddenly shifted to very special episodes. Secondary characters on Webster became addicted to nonspecific drugs and wound up working as unpaid, one-handed meat packers. Margot on Punky Brewster was so wracked with guilt after the refrigerator incident that she cut off all her hair, crashed her mother's car and started her own infanticide club. Skippy never recovered from his experiences in El Salvador, and Screech became a nun. Mostly, it was about drugs though. And once people started warning me about the effects of drugs on the human brain, I put two and two together and it became obvious to me that anyone who had ever tried to simultaneously entertain and teach me anything had probably done a shit ton of acid.
Suppressed by the cold, hard reality of the '80s, my memories of "Free To Be... You And Me", "The Point" and "H.R. Puffinstuff" were crammed into the dark recesses of my brain, where they have festered for thirty years, occasionally bubbling to the surface and leaving me wondering if they were real or imagined. They are stored in a nether region of my subconscious, even more distant than that well-guarded utopian playground where I suspect "Shamelessly Happy Matt" skips and dances about. Here, in an abandoned, day-glo rock-n-roll church in a field of swirling sunflowers beneath a purple paisley sky, a faceless projectionist in massive, flower-print bell bottoms and a brown, fringed leather vest is playing a perpetual loop of rambling, senseless edutainment shorts, cobbled together from half-memories and engrams scarred into my psyche by well-meaning adults.
These shorts depict a rainbow colored Brooklyn and a technicolor alphabet hyphenation forest where Doctor John mercilessly torments and mocks your inability to find your way out. Crude proto-muppets representing babies tell me about the differences between their respective genitalia as Michael Jackson sings about self-acceptance. Six-Million Dollar Man Big Foot and Leonard Nimoy encourage me to go for nature walks and to seek out new age powers, but not to venture into construction sites. Papa John and Mackenzie Phillips sing songs about the importance of family, accompanied by sexually aggressive mimes and then Witchy-Poo suddenly segues in and tells a knock-knock joke.
Only it's never a funny joke.
WITCHY-POO
Hey Kids! Knock-knock!
KIDS CHORUS
Who's there, Witchy-Poo?
WITCHY-POO
Butter!
KID'S CHORUS
Butter who?
WITCHY-POO
Butter not get in a car with a stranger or they'll find your waterlogged, severed head floating in a canal!
Wendy Carlos music starts up and two teenagers in earth tone pants and blood red turtlenecks head into a locker room to have an awkward discussion about the changes their bodies have been going through. Next up, Wayland Flowers and Madame explain that your parents probably still love you, even if they are getting divorced while a lifeless Charlie McCarthy puppet sits in a corner collecting cobwebs. The Solid Gold dancers spill in, and Bootsy Collins tells a kid who can't play the sitar to never give up before a star wipe brings us more Witchy-Poo.
WITCHY-POO
Hey Kids! Knock-knock!
KIDS CHORUS
Who's there, Witchy-Poo?
WITCHY-POO
Cha-cha!
KIDS CHORUS
Cha-cha who?
WITCHY-POO
Cha-ch-cha-challenger explosion!! Deal with it.
Oh, look! It's Alan Alda and a group of kids sitting inside a geodesic dome! And they're discussing aspirations. And they all want to be astronauts. Luckily, according to all the latest data, we'll all be living on the moon by 1991! Mamma Cass wants a pet alligator, but Meadowlark Lemon shows up on his flying phantom fire hydrant to tell her that it's a lot of responsibility. John Lennon dishes some parenting advice to Eric Clapton in an over sized nursery, then Robert Blake talks about resolving conflict with a parrot. Orson Welles stares at the camera for several minutes without blinking, breathing heavily while the Mummenschanz perform their infamous clay face genital routine. Finally, the camera fades to black, with only the continuing sound of Orson's breathing for another two minutes.
Now let us never speak of this part of my brain again.
THE BROWN PAPER BAG
The following story is complete bullshit.
There were differing stories regarding the origins of the brown paper bag. My friend Jackson and my next door neighbor Randy both laid claim to it's contents - a half-full bottle of Mad Dog and an issue of Lesbian Fire.
It was June 1990 - the first week of Summer Vacation. Jackson and I had just completed fifth grade and Randy was going on to middle school. All three of us were at various stages of being eleven years old. As you can imagine, a half full bottle of fortified wine and a spank mag made for an epic discovery.
"I bought them at the Big Apple yesterday!" exclaimed Randy. "They must have fallen out of my backpack while I was riding home."
"Why would they sell you porn and wine?" asked Jackson.
"Because I'm cool."
That was a good argument. Randy was pretty cool. He was a year ahead of us, after all, and he had his own table saw. One thing bothered me though.
"So let me get this straight." I said. "They'll sell you anything you want, so you went with Lesbian Fire?"
Randy paused and looked at the two harsh looking women on the cover. They looked angry at each other and even angrier at us. This was some seriously gonzo shit, mind you, more of a Tijuana bible than a magazine. I distinctly remember thinking the two women resembled Markie Post and Amanda Bearce (Marcy from Married With Children) after nervous breakdowns and several years of hard drug use. It depicted what heterosexual idiots in 1990 assumed big-haired lesbians did with cool whip, sailor hats and riding crops.
"Lesbians are cool."
Atticus Finch couldn't have argued with that one, either.
Jackson's version of events was a little more down to Earth.
"Remember when I told you I had to mow the lawn before I came over this morning?"
"Yeah."
"Well, as I was mowing, a Trans Am pulled up next to me."
"What color was it?" Randy snarled, skeptically.
"Yellow. The guy rolled down his window, and spat. When I looked over at him, he yelled 'Eat Pussy!' and threw the bag at me. He then peeled out and sped off."
Randy proceeded to tear Jackson's case to shreds. "No one who is smart enough to drive a Trans Am would just throw away a bag full of porn and booze. That's insane."
"That's what happened!"
"Pfft. Bullshit."
The argument over the hobo wine and porn quickly escalated into a small scale civil war that engulfed the preteen male population of Vallejo Drive, Franklin and Pierce Street and several outlying neighborhoods.
Kyle Logan and Dewey LaChance, eighth graders we all normally regarded as bottom-feeding scumfucks, allied themselves with Randy and spent the next few days menacing Jackson. They eventually got bored with it and decided to huff gas, instead. Randy just spent a lot of time by himself building dead falls and Punji sticks in the woods like Rambo. He'd occasionally emerge from the woods, daring us to chase after him.
Jackson, Spencer Garnier from Pierce Street and Sasha Doak from up on Burton Ridge began making regular BMX patrols of the neighborhood. My younger brother and his friends Frank and Dwight Osajima and Scott Seltzer formed their own little clique that switched sides like Afghan warlords. I mostly tried to remain neutral, though at one point I nearly got into a bat fight with Kyle and Dewey because they wouldn't get off my lawn.
In the end, Jackson and Randy reached a truce when a new kid moved into the neighborhood and started stealing stupid shit like bike pumps, dodge balls and old hammers from people's garages. After we all threatened to beat the fuck out of the new kid if he stepped off his lawn, it was time to divvy up the spoils or war. Jackson got the booze, and Randy got the porn. Both precious relics had sat in a tree house in the woods behind my house for nearly two weeks.
The Mad Dog had spilled in the bag, and what was left had bugs floating in it. Jackson proudly downed the remaining swig, describing the taste as a mix of victory, cold medicine and orange crush vomit. We smashed the bottle on the train tracks running alongside Main Street later that afternoon.
Lesbian Fire had gotten wet from what I really hope was condensation. The last time I saw it, Randy had cut the magazine up and placed choice pages in a 3 ring binder with other bits of porn, which he referred to it as "The Dossier". I have no idea why he felt the need to show "The Dossier" to me, but he seemed genuinely proud of it.
Eleven year old boys are fucking weird, man.
There were differing stories regarding the origins of the brown paper bag. My friend Jackson and my next door neighbor Randy both laid claim to it's contents - a half-full bottle of Mad Dog and an issue of Lesbian Fire.
It was June 1990 - the first week of Summer Vacation. Jackson and I had just completed fifth grade and Randy was going on to middle school. All three of us were at various stages of being eleven years old. As you can imagine, a half full bottle of fortified wine and a spank mag made for an epic discovery.
"I bought them at the Big Apple yesterday!" exclaimed Randy. "They must have fallen out of my backpack while I was riding home."
"Why would they sell you porn and wine?" asked Jackson.
"Because I'm cool."
That was a good argument. Randy was pretty cool. He was a year ahead of us, after all, and he had his own table saw. One thing bothered me though.
"So let me get this straight." I said. "They'll sell you anything you want, so you went with Lesbian Fire?"
Randy paused and looked at the two harsh looking women on the cover. They looked angry at each other and even angrier at us. This was some seriously gonzo shit, mind you, more of a Tijuana bible than a magazine. I distinctly remember thinking the two women resembled Markie Post and Amanda Bearce (Marcy from Married With Children) after nervous breakdowns and several years of hard drug use. It depicted what heterosexual idiots in 1990 assumed big-haired lesbians did with cool whip, sailor hats and riding crops.
"Lesbians are cool."
Atticus Finch couldn't have argued with that one, either.
Jackson's version of events was a little more down to Earth.
"Remember when I told you I had to mow the lawn before I came over this morning?"
"Yeah."
"Well, as I was mowing, a Trans Am pulled up next to me."
"What color was it?" Randy snarled, skeptically.
"Yellow. The guy rolled down his window, and spat. When I looked over at him, he yelled 'Eat Pussy!' and threw the bag at me. He then peeled out and sped off."
Randy proceeded to tear Jackson's case to shreds. "No one who is smart enough to drive a Trans Am would just throw away a bag full of porn and booze. That's insane."
"That's what happened!"
"Pfft. Bullshit."
The argument over the hobo wine and porn quickly escalated into a small scale civil war that engulfed the preteen male population of Vallejo Drive, Franklin and Pierce Street and several outlying neighborhoods.
Kyle Logan and Dewey LaChance, eighth graders we all normally regarded as bottom-feeding scumfucks, allied themselves with Randy and spent the next few days menacing Jackson. They eventually got bored with it and decided to huff gas, instead. Randy just spent a lot of time by himself building dead falls and Punji sticks in the woods like Rambo. He'd occasionally emerge from the woods, daring us to chase after him.
Jackson, Spencer Garnier from Pierce Street and Sasha Doak from up on Burton Ridge began making regular BMX patrols of the neighborhood. My younger brother and his friends Frank and Dwight Osajima and Scott Seltzer formed their own little clique that switched sides like Afghan warlords. I mostly tried to remain neutral, though at one point I nearly got into a bat fight with Kyle and Dewey because they wouldn't get off my lawn.
In the end, Jackson and Randy reached a truce when a new kid moved into the neighborhood and started stealing stupid shit like bike pumps, dodge balls and old hammers from people's garages. After we all threatened to beat the fuck out of the new kid if he stepped off his lawn, it was time to divvy up the spoils or war. Jackson got the booze, and Randy got the porn. Both precious relics had sat in a tree house in the woods behind my house for nearly two weeks.
The Mad Dog had spilled in the bag, and what was left had bugs floating in it. Jackson proudly downed the remaining swig, describing the taste as a mix of victory, cold medicine and orange crush vomit. We smashed the bottle on the train tracks running alongside Main Street later that afternoon.
Lesbian Fire had gotten wet from what I really hope was condensation. The last time I saw it, Randy had cut the magazine up and placed choice pages in a 3 ring binder with other bits of porn, which he referred to it as "The Dossier". I have no idea why he felt the need to show "The Dossier" to me, but he seemed genuinely proud of it.
Eleven year old boys are fucking weird, man.
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