MY LIFE IN POP CULTURE:
A JOURNEY THROUGH MY PAST IN ESSAY FORM
by
MARK TRAMMELL
KERRY MADDEN, COMMITTEE CHAIR
JAMES M. BRAZIEL
KIERAN QUINLAN
DANIEL J. SIEGEL
GALE M. TEMPLE
A THESIS
Submitted to the graduate faculty of The University of Alabama at Birmingham,
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Creative Writing.
BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA
2014
Abstract
The following is a personalized look at my life as it has been affected by popular culture, in
particular movies and music, with additional asides regarding my work as an entertainment critic
and what led me to critique popular culture for a living. I also have included essays that delve
into personal anecdotes regarding the various cars I have driven, the jobs I have had, the concerts
I've attended, and my experiences with technology over the years. All of it is interspersed with
various asides concerning my background, upbringing, and general experiences as they relate to
the popular culture being discussed.
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Table of Contents
Page
ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………….ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS………………………………………………………………iii
1. INTRODUCTION: JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF MY MIND…………………..1
2. MY LIFE IN CRITICISM……………………………………………………………....3
3. MY LIFE IN HORROR………………………………………………………………....8
4. MY LIFE IN INAPPROPRIATE FILM………………………………………………..16
5. MY LIFE IN VIDEO…………………………………………………………………...27
6. THE DEATH OF THE KNOW-IT-ALL…………………………………………….....36
7. THE DEATH OF ELITISM………………………………………………………….....40
8. MY LIFE IN LOLLAPALOOZING……………………………………………………48
9. MY LIFE IN CARS……………………………………………………………………..55
10. MY LIFE IN JOBS………………………………………………………………………65
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Introduction: Journey to the Center of My Mind
As long as I can remember, film, television, music and literature have had a
prominent influence on my life, and not necessarily in that order. True, many can say the
same thing to a certain degree, but not everyone has chosen to devote a sizable portion of their
lives to the pursuit of these forms of entertainment to the point of it informing most of their
lives and what they do for a living.
As a writer, critic, and erstwhile filmmaker and musician, most of my life has been
in the pursuit of trying my best to make a living doing something I genuinely love, not always
successfully. Isn’t that what we all ultimately strive for: to make money doing something we
love? However, as the saying goes, it’s all about the journey, not the destination, necessarily,
and mine is a journey still in process.
As the foundation of this book began to formulate itself, I realized I wanted to do
something more than a mere collection of essays, entertainment critiques and past
remembrances. I wanted it to be all of those things at once, a sort of a paean to the things I
love and the life I’ve lived to date all in one.
As such, it was important to me to let people know exactly what they were getting
into, and, for that matter, why they should be interested in the first place. After all, critiques of
anything you could hope for are readily available online, and memoirs are dime a dozen these
days. What exactly does my book have to offer that others do not?
Well, the answer is easy. By combining both critique and biography, I hope to create
a new sort of approach to both genres, one that hasn’t been represented to a ubiquitous degree
in book form, and will hopefully make my work stand out from the rest in a positive way.
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For example, the essay “My Life as a Critic” functions as both an exploration of my
writing roots and an examination of what led me to be a critic in the first place. In “The Death
of Elitism: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying & Like Duran Duran,” I take a look at how
what’s cool musically has changed over the years, and how people learned to embrace even
their more embarrassing guilty pleasures without shame, myself included. As with the
previous essay, I likewise include biographical material within the article, making it function
as much as a memoir as a social commentary and critique of musical elitism over the years.
By applying a personal touch to the matters at hand, I hope to provide a different sort
of book of criticism- one that doesn’t just enlighten about mass media and the entertainment
industry, but shines a light upon my own history, be it embarrassing, melancholy or even
heartbreaking. No holds will be barred, no stone will be left unturned in my pursuit of my
main objective: to create a new sort of criticism. Call it autobiographical criticism, or selfcritical criticism. Whatever you call it, I want this collection to be at turns engaging, fun and
emotional, and hopefully, above all, informative.
So, please join me as I take you on a journey to the center of my mind. It may not
always be the most stable environment, but hopefully, it will never be boring. I hope you
enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it!
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My Life in Criticism
My life in criticism first began with my overall awareness of it. I remember reading
my first reviews in music magazines like Rolling Stone and Spin, followed by more general
entertainment-related mags like Entertainment Weekly and People. On television, it
admittedly started with At the Movies with famed movie critics, Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel.
For better or worse, these two average guys were it for criticism on television for the longest
of times, then eventually every Entertainment Tonight, Access Hollywood and Today show
had their own resident critics, not to mention entire networks devoted to entertainment-related
coverage, like E! and Reelz.
To be completely honest, I was never a big Siskel & Ebert fan. The thing was, they
hated almost everything I liked. My favorite genre was horror, and they hated, hated, hated
that genre with a merciless passion. I even discovered in an old back issue of the horror
magazine Fangoria that they’d hated them so much that, when reviewing the original Friday
the 13th, they not only gave away the ending, they encouraged viewers to write star Betsy
Palmer and protest her having appeared in such trash. Later on, they actively- and
successfully- called for the outright banning of Silent Night, Deadly Night, which was almost
immediately pulled from theaters across the US, even though it had done tremendous business
early on, and largely because of that harsh criticism. Siskel & Ebert were literally the protointernet trolls that spawned an entire culture of people going online to bitch about anything
and everything. They were the movie equivalent of a fiery letter to the editor about politics
and the like, only people actually listened to them.
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Okay, you say, so they didn’t like slasher movies. A lot of people hate horror movies
in general. This is nothing new, especially to horror fans themselves, who are used to such
reactions. But here are some other movies the recently departed Ebert also hated: Harold &
Maude, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Straw Dogs, Blue Velvet, Fear and Loathing in
Las Vegas, Leon: The Professional, Reservoir Dogs, and both A Clockwork Orange and Full
Metal Jacket, Kubrick fans! And get ready for this one, the English professors amongst you:
Dead Poets Society. That one stung, didn’t it? Honestly, if you don’t hold at least one of those
aforementioned films near and dear to your heart, I’m not sure I want to know you.
But therein lies the rub, doesn’t it? It’s just plain fun to disagree with all- or at least
some- of that criticism, isn’t it? It’s why a lot of us read reviews, especially after we’ve
already seen that movie or watched that TV show or listened to that album or whatever. We
like it when someone agrees with us, not so much when they don’t. But it’s fun to talk about,
regardless. And with the advent of the internet, now literally everyone can be a critic, for
better or for worse.
Honestly, I never thought I’d end up being a critic myself. I always saw it as a “those
who can’t do, critique” sort of thing. But life throws you curveballs sometimes. I was first
approached to be a critic by my high school newspaper’s editor.
“You write, don’t you? Stories and stuff?” she asked, a look of slight desperation in
her face.
I did. I wrote stories, sometimes novel-length pieces, and the occasional bit of poetry
or odd song lyrics. But I’d never written a review in my life, and had already developed a
healthy disrespect for those who did, as they often seemed to disagree with my own opinions.
The editor in question had no problem with any of this.
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“Good,” she said. “So write about the things you do love. That’s fine.” She added,
hastily: “We need content.”
I had no idea what this last part meant, but I would come to love that phrase, as it
afforded me the chance to fill it with whatever I wanted.
So, I did just that.
I wrote about horror movies, alternative rock CDs, and the occasional television
show. It was rare to see me write anything negative back then, because I only wrote about
stuff I loved. Things were a lot happier in those golden times, though sometimes you have to
have it good to appreciate how bad it can get. Needless to say, as my volume of stuff I had to
review grew, so did my level of relation to what poor Siskel & Ebert must have went through,
having to review pretty much every movie that came out. That may not have ceased my anger
at their negative reviews of movies I loved, but I understood how that could happen from time
to time. You see that many movies, at least some of them are bound to stink, no matter what
your tastes might be.
After graduating high school, I went to an arts college, the Watkins Institute, in
Nashville to study film. I wanted to do, remember? Not critique those who already had. I
directed some shorts, worked on a fair share more, and very nearly got to do a feature-length
film, which is an essay unto itself, for another time. But personal circumstances brought me to
Birmingham, and to UAB, and though I kept one foot in the film circles- such as they were
and remain in Alabama- criticism came calling once again.
I needed a work-study job, and looked at the options. I landed on Student Media,
where they made the school newspaper, ran the online radio station, and the in-house journals
like AURA. Been there, done that, I thought. That should be right up my alley. And it was.
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Becoming a fixture around the office, I steadily worked my way up the food chain, until my
supervisor, Amy Kilpatrick, asked me if I’d be interested in writing for the paper. Originally,
she wanted me to write about the local music scene, as I was rarely seen without my iPod on,
which holds true today, though I switched back over to a Walkman. Unfortunately, I didn’t go
to a lot of local shows, so, in order to get more articles, I switched over to album reviews.
Of course, what I really wanted to do was review movies. That was the job most
everyone wanted, I think, amongst the staff, or so I imagined, because it was certainly the one
I wanted. Alas, they already had a movie reviewer, so I pitched an alternative: what if I
reviewed independent movies? The ones that tend to slip through the cracks, you know? The
editor bit, and gave me my first professional film review assignment for actual pay: to review
the movie Thirteen.
Now, I didn’t know a lot about the film, save that it revolved around a group of
teenage girls, and was clearly intended for precisely that audience. I was a bit hesitant for that
reason, but my desire to review films outweighed my desire to do what I was doing, so I went
for it.
I learned a valuable lesson that day: as a critic, you’ve got to allow yourself to be
open to new experiences, because sometimes it’s precisely those experiences that end up
being the most memorable ones. Thirteen was a great movie, and it felt good championing a
film that few people probably knew about, least of all with it only playing in one theater in the
area. Alas, that theater is gone, and the one that took up the slack, indie movie-wise is also no
more, so truly independent movies are few and far between here in Alabama. It’s probably the
thing I miss most about Tennessee, where we not only had a few theaters that showed indie
films, but even a revival theater that showed old ones. (Yes, we have the Alabama Theater,
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but it’s rare that they show the kind of oldies I mean, such as classic horror movies and cult
films and the like.)
In time, I would learn to cherish those experiences, because that’s where being a
critic with a voice people can easily access in the paper or online comes in handy. Those little
movies are the ones that make the job worthwhile, since putting them on people’s radar is one
of the best perks of the job. If someone sees a movie, or watches a television show, or listens
to an album I recommended, that’s a pretty great feeling, especially if they let me know.
As our focus at the Kaleidoscope, UAB’s student newspaper, shifted from the paper
to the internet- we just won “Best in the South” in 2014 for our website at the SEJC
(Southeastern Journalism Conference), and I have also personally won various awards for
entertainment writing in the past there- that influence became greater in impact. I started
doing online video versions of my movie and television reviews, and even found myself
getting recognized on occasion. I’ve even been contacted by some of the people I’ve reviewed
here and there, mainly writers. It’s always nice to be appreciated by one of your own.
It’s crazy how some things work out. I certainly haven’t given up on my ultimate
dream: to make my own film or show; or to have a book published from my work; or to have
something I wrote become something else, like a television show or a movie. In the
meantime, though, in a sort of “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”-sort of way, being a critic is the
next best thing until that happens.
My Life in Horror
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Insofar as I can remember, my love of the horror genre sprang from a handful of
instances that occurred when I was a kid, definitely in my single digits, though I couldn’t
pinpoint an exact year. I suspect the first occurred when I went to Disneyland for the first
time, and went on the famed Haunted Mansion dark ride. This was the one in California,
which, as those who have been there know, looks far less sinister than the one in Disneyworld,
in Florida, which adheres to the more traditional idea that forms within one’s mind when they
think “haunted house.” Instead, it looks more like a traditional Southern plantation house,
which makes sense as it is located in the New Orleans Square part of the park.
For those who haven’t been there, it’s a combination of a walk-through and a ride,
which begins with a stroll through a cemetery (which also features a section for pets, which
I’m guessing caused some uncomfortable questions for some parents!). Then you move into
the foyer of the “house” (which is actually a façade) where you pile into a small room with a
group of people and a narrator fills you in on the house as the room, which doubles as an
elevator, descends into the ground floor, where the ride is actually located. (In the Florida
version, there is no elevator, but the effect remains, with the room only seeming to “stretch,”
as you don’t actually go anywhere.) You file through a lobby filled with pictures that
transform into disturbing things, like something out of Lovecraft’s “Pickman’s Model,” and
then board the ride itself, which winds through the house and the adjacent grounds, as various
spooks seek to both entertain and terrify you.
I was enthralled, and ended up riding it several times. I don’t doubt some kids
chicken out of the ride early on- they even have an alternate exit within the ride for precisely
this purpose- and I’ve even heard of adults who refuse to go on the ride. Some people just
don’t “get” horror, which was one thing I would eventually learn as I immersed myself into
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the genre. Upon returning, I remember going over to my grandparents’ house, where they had
either a set of Encyclopedia Britannica or of World Books (possibly both), and looking up
“ghosts.” Much like Amazon does today, at the end of many entries there was what amounted
to a suggestion in the “if you like this, you might like this, too” mold, which led me to all
sorts of other creepy stuff, like demons, monsters, and mythological creatures and the like.
Also, my uncle’s room was as he had left it upon moving out, and he had lots of
magazines like Creepy and Eerie and comic books like Unexpected and House of Mystery and
so forth, which I devoured. The basement area of the house was almost always deserted, as
my grandparents lived on the top floor, which was also where the den, kitchen, and some of
the spare bedrooms were, so I often had that part of the house to myself. Oddly, nothing in the
area disturbed me beyond the playroom. It was located in the back of the house, and had a
cement floor, painted white, with white walls and foundation-style poles, also painted white,
giving the entire room a sterile feeling that freaked me out for some reason. I remember when
I saw The Amityville Horror, which was the first “adult” book I ever read, having a similar
reaction to the infamous “red room,” even though it was simply a room painted red.
Insofar as the white room was concerned, I think part of it was the toys, oldfashioned stuff like those monkeys with the cymbals that clap (Stephen King has a story about
one of them that’s- naturally- possessed) and especially the sock monkeys, which, if you don’t
know, are monkeys literally fashioned out of old socks. I don’t know why, but sock monkeys
have always kind of freaked me out. Maybe King should have gone with one of those things
instead.
It’s sort of hilarious because my sister actually had a stuffed clown that was a dead
ringer for the one in Poltergeist, but clowns never really provided the nightmare fuel for me,
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personally. In fact, my sister and I would sometime re-enact that infamous scene from the
movie, where the clown doll attacks the little boy. She also did a great possessed “Reagan”
voice from The Exorcist that always made me laugh.
The last thing I can remember that got me into horror was Fangoria magazine. I
remember going with my grandmother to the grocery store one day and seeing it for the first
time and thinking it was by far the coolest-looking magazine I’d ever seen. For those
unfamiliar, Fangoria is one the long-running horror magazines, and still publishes to this day.
It basically picked up where Famous Monsters (which was recently resurrected itself) left off,
and is sort of a line of demarcation between what horror used to be (monsters like Dracula,
the Werewolf and Godzilla) to what it had become, which was slasher movies and serial
killers and stuff that was more grounded in reality. Well, some of the time, at least.
Anyway, Fangoria is infamous for its covers (and pictures in general), which are
almost always something lurid and horrific. I couldn’t tell you which cover it was exactly, but
this would have been in the late 80s-to-the-early 90s. I still have most of my collection, but I
went back and bought a lot of back issues and they’re all boxed up, so it’s hard to pinpoint.
Whatever the case, they were filled with grotesque imagery and scenes of extreme violence.
You could ask what would possess anyone to let their kids look at such stuff, but as is the case
to this day, violence has rarely been half as much an issue as sex when it comes to parents and
their kids.
My sister and I have been hardcore horror fans most of our lives. She was a few
years older, so she would intentionally try to find stuff that would scare the crap out of me,
which absolutely worked early on, but after a while, especially with the slasher movies, you
realizes there’s a very distinct formula to it, and you learn all the tricks for when the scares are
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going to happen. Once that occurs, they become more fun than scary, and it becomes more of
a thrill ride than a nightmare-inducer. After that, you just amuse yourself with the creative
ways special effects artists come up with to kill people, a process that was exhaustively
chronicled in magazines like Fangoria and can now be found even on TV shows like Face
Off. Once you realize it’s all fake, and often highly predictable, it robs the films of their
power.
However, early on, they scared the crap out of me, especially the more unpredictable
ones. Who can forget the alien bursting out of the guy in the first Alien movie? Talk about
unexpected! Or the front-to-back insanity of whatever the hell’s going on in Phantasm? Or
the epic cringe-worthiness of something like Hellraiser or most anything by director David
Cronenberg in his early days?
But my sister and I lived for slasher movies. We didn’t care if they were practically
all the same movie, we would sit there and watch movie after movie, in double or even triple
features. When we saw the first Scream in theaters, we were blown away, because we thought
we were the only one who recognized, as Randy famously declared, “There’s a formula to it!”
We were talking back to movies long before we realized that was a thing people actually did
in theaters themselves.
I was also lucky in that my mother was supportive of this sort of thing. Early on, she
almost pulled the plug because I kept having nightmares and flipping out at night, running
into her room. I remember one of our old houses had those eye-like windows like in The
Amityville Horror, which was part of the reason I got into it in the first place. I was all like:
“Hey, that sort of looks like our house!” I actually lived in the “eye window” room, which had
a sloped roof, as that side of the house was triangular shaped. That one didn’t scare me that
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much, though. For me, the biggie has always been the original Halloween, from director John
Carpenter.
I’ll never forget the first time we saw it. My sister and I had seen it advertise, and
were all like “We are so watching that” and we made a date to watch it after our mother had
gone to bed one night. It was literally a dark and stormy night, and we cowered into the
kitchen and watched it on the small TV there instead of the one downstairs, which was right
below my mother’s room, so as to not wake her up. From the jump, we were transfixed.
Everything about the movie is perfect, from the ominous score throughout the film, to the
simplistic plotline, to the highly effective direction and casting. It’s the one movie I watch
pretty much every year, and I suppose that makes it the film I’ve seen more than any other by
default, as I can’t think of any other film I do that with. (Although Gremlins comes close,
with its Christmas setting, as does the original Black Christmas for the same reason.)
I love that the main killer, Michael Myers, is never really explained. Rob Zombie
would later remake it, and though the remake isn’t awful, it commits the cardinal sin of trying
explain away too much of why Michael is the way he is, which in turn makes it infinitely less
scary, IMHO. In the original, they hardly explain reasons for anything Michael does. He’s just
evil, plain and simple. That’s really all you need.
Anyway, at one point in the movie, the power went out for a brief second and it was
actually during the scene in the movie where Michael escapes the asylum, during which it is
actually raining in the movie, as it was in real life. The power flickered off and on and my
sister and I grabbed a hold of each other. Then it came back on, coinciding with the exact
moment that Michael jumped on the car and terrorized the nurse. We screamed ourselves
silly, but remarkably my mother never woke up. She did find out about it later on when I had
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bad dreams about it, which almost ended our reign of terror early on, but thankfully, we were
able to convince her it wasn’t really a big deal and were allowed to continue stuff I technically
had no business watching at my age, which was then my single digits.
Interestingly, it wasn’t the famous mask that got me, it was a combination of two
things: the fact that the closet Laurie (played by Jamie Lee Curtis) hides in looked just like my
own, and the oddball scene in which Michael, after killing the boyfriend of a girl he’s getting
ready to kill next, dons a sheet and the victim’s glasses, in order to pretend he’s the boyfriend
in question so that he can sneak up on the girl. It’s a bit of an anomaly in the series, as
Michael rarely does anything like it ever again, sticking with the infamous, canonical mask
instead. Whatever the case, it scared the crap out of me, especially since the glasses he wore
looked a bit like my own at the time, and that damn closet door in my room would never stay
shut. I was convinced Michael was hiding out in there, hovering in the darkness in his sheet,
like a disembodied ghost.
Naturally, Jason Voorhees (of the Friday the 13th series), Freddy Kruger (of the
Nightmare on Elm Street series) and, of all things, the miner killer from the original My
Bloody Valentine also made appearances in that closet over the years, until those slashers lost
their power to affect me anymore. But you never forget your first time to be scared shitless,
and Halloween will always be the first to do it for me. To this day, even though I know the
movie like the back of my hand to the point of being able to practically lip-synch it the way
Will Smith does with that movie in I Am Legend, whenever I watch it, I still get chills. I just
love that movie.
After a certain point, it became clear my love of horror wasn’t going away, but there
was still the problem of getting into R-Rated movies, which most horror movies tended to be
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at the time, before PG-13 became more of the norm with the movies that made it into theaters.
Of course, we had no problem renting them most of the time, though I do recall one
memorable occasion when we tried to rent Videodrome, which was released unrated on home
video, and the rental store clerk was all like: “Um, no. they can’t see this one.” That, of
course, make us want to see it all the more, but it actually proved to be the rare instance where
the clerk was right to stop us from seeing it, as it’s pretty high on the list of movies you
should never, ever let your kids watch under any circumstances. (Four words: S&M and a
severed penis.)
Anyway, my mother always hated horror movies, so whenever one came out we
wanted to see, she would take my sister and I or sometimes me and a friend to the movies and
drop us off, after having a word with the ticket sellers and usher. “I don’t want to see this
crap,” she’s say, “But I don’t care if they do.” Nowadays, that would be a lot harder to pull
off, short of sneaking into a theater after buying one for another movie (which we also did,
from time to time). The funny thing is, we rarely got any trouble from anyone, despite the
occasional usher coming into the theater and seeing us. I can only remember a few occasions
where they tried to throw us out, and each time the people who knew us would be like: “It’s
cool. They do this all the time” and that would be that.
To this day, I’m still a hardcore horror fan, even though they rarely scare me
anymore. Once you figure out there’s a formula to it, that becomes a harder prospect. My
sister is still a fan, as well, and for the record, her favorite is The Silence of the Lambs, from
which she loves to quote the “Put the lotion in the basket”-line every now and again, which
never ceases to make me giggle, for some reason. Yep, we’ve got issues.
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All of that said, I’m really glad our mother let us get away with all that as kids. I
think we were among the last generations to have a parent who was just politically incorrect
enough not to give a shit. Since then, parents have gotten a lot more overprotective and, well,
involved, though with what you can find on the internet these days, it’s no wonder. The
internet should be closely monitored, I think, not so much for horror-related stuff, but for the
more sex-oriented stuff.
It’s always kind of miffed me when people bag on horror, as if it’s going to stunt
people’s growth and turn them into lunatics or something. I’d wager a bet that people have
been inspired more to kill by the Bible than any horror movie you can name, and I don’t even
really mean that as a slight against religion, just as a simple matter of fact. Most people that
love the horror genre aren’t crazed psychos, they’re normal people with normal hopes and
desires, like most of us. If you’re legitimately crazy, then it doesn’t take a horror movie to set
you off. It could just as easily be, say, a dog barking, as was the case with the “Son of Sam.”
Anyway, I do love the genre, and I will defend it to the bitter end, even while I
recognize that some films are better than others. But then, you could say that about films in
any genre. Some people just don’t get the appeal, and I can see why they’d feel that way, but I
am unapologetically a fan, and my advice to those people would be: if you don’t like it, then
don’t watch. But don’t try to rain on our parade. Especially since there might well be a slasher
out there, just waiting on someone or something to set them off, just like Michael Meyers in
Halloween. And trust me, that is one guy you don’t want to meet on a dark and stormy night.
My Life in Inappropriate Films
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As is the case for many people, my love affair with the inappropriate began with being
told it was inappropriate to begin with. There’s something about being told you can’t do
something that makes it oh-so desirable, even if it’s potentially harmful to your very wellbeing, that just makes it irresistible. Or so was the case with this particular subject matter.
It’s one thing to be told: don’t touch that hot stove, you’ll burn yourself! Once one
does it, even if it’s inadvertently, you sort of get the point. Touching hot, fiery objects is bad.
Got it. Won’t be doing that on purpose anytime soon.
But then there are the other things. The cryptic things parents say, always with
qualifiers, saying you can’t do that because you’re too young. That’s adult stuff. When you’re
older, you’ll understand. That sort of thing.
It all started with a movie, couldn’t tell you which one and it’s sort of beside the
point. I was watching with my mother and a scene came on in which a woman started to
undress. Close your eyes! Um, why? Because that’s not for little boys to see! Why not? It just
isn’t. You’re too young.
So, like many before me, I just accepted it, and did as I was told. Then another day
came, and I got a very different reaction. I was watching a movie with my grandfather, and a
girl went to undress, and I, by then injected with the Pavlovian knee-jerk reaction to cover my
eyes conditionally, did just that. My grandfather looked down at me, and was like: “What the
hell are you doing?”
“My mother says when girls take off their clothes, I’m supposed to cover my eyes.”
He harrumphed and without missing a beat, said: “Not with me, you don’t. Hell,
you’re missing the best part!”
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I looked up, astonished. Then I looked up, astonished, and laid my eyes on my first
pair of breasts. Suck on that, Pavlov! Mine eyes had seen the glory of the light.
I realized later, it’s no wonder he did so. In the South, there’s only one thing worse
than not having an opinion on football- try telling someone you don’t care one whit about
who wins the Iron Bowl around here, Auburn or Alabama, and see where that gets you- and
that’s being gay. My grandfather simply decided to make a proactive move, that’s all, just to
err on the side of caution. It happens.
Of course, I know now, it doesn’t work like that, but back then, it sure worked on me.
I’d seen heaven and I wanted to see a lot more. Thankfully, this didn’t lead to any
questionable action like peeping or the like. Why peep when someone else can do the work
for you? Thank you, Porky’s. I owe you, big time.
I was already a hardcore film fan, so that was the obvious route to take. Back then, you
didn’t have your work cut out for you like you do with the Wild, Wild West that is the
internet. (Enjoy it while you can, people- Big Brother’s coming, and you’re going to stop
enjoying anything.) You had to work for it. There were two main routes to that: movies and
magazines.
I’ve always thought the film ratings system was pretty arbitrary for the most part.
Beyond knowing whether or not a film is for kids or for adults, it’s sort of useless. Have you
ever seen the reasons for some of those ratings? “Bodily humor”? “Cartoon violence”?
“Smoking, involving teens”? What the what?
Back then, the best solution for this problem was an HBO guide away. You got the
rating, and then, conveniently enough, you have everything you need to know, with simple
letter abbreviations. L was for language, V was for violence, N was for nudity, and then there
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was the mother lode: SSC for Strong Sexual Content. If you were looking to catch a glimpse
of naked flesh, those last two were definitely the way to go. So, naturally, after my mother
went to bed, my happy ass was watching anything and everything with N and SSC listed.
Needless to say, this led to some blind alleys.
I was wondering to myself recently, as I watched the Olympics, where my affection for
Russians and Russian culture came from. Sure, I was a kid when the Cold War went down,
but where did that come from, exactly? Why did Anna Chapman make me more happy than
mad, besides the obvious reasons? Was The Americans really that good? Then, it finally hit
me: Reds.
When I was a kid, damned if I didn’t sit and watch a three-hour plus movie about
communism hoping to catch sight of a stray boob. Hey, it was listed in the HBO guide as
having nudity and “sexual situations.” Plus, Jack Nicholson! He’s cool. Alas, the actual sexual
content in this thing, as well as I can remember it, was limited to some photographs and talk
about screwing. That’s about it, but damned if I didn’t watch the whole thing. Clearly, I had a
problem, but I now knew way more about Communism than any kid in their single digits
should. Let’s hope there isn’t another Red Scare!
Thankfully, there was an antidote for these would-be sexually-oriented posers, and it’s
name was Cinemax. Or as it was lovingly dubbed by my male friends and I: Skinemax. On
Skinemax, they were getting things done. You turn on Skinemax after about ten in the evening,
you’re almost always gonna get some, well, skin. And plenty of it.
I remember particularly enjoying the repurposed fairy tales, stuff like Cinderella, Alice
in Wonderland,The Erotic Adventures of Snow White, and, um, Fairy Tales, which were just
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the same old stories we all know and love, with lots of boobs and sex. For me, and as an
unabashed Disney fan, this was a win-win. Except Disney didn’t make ‘em like this.
If I was in the mood for more refined tastes, there was the art-house stuff, imports from
all over the world, in particular England, France, Italy and Spain. We’re talking Lady
Chatterley’s Lover, The Sensuous Nurse, The Bitch, and, of course, the much-beloved
Emmanuelle. Emmanuelle has to be the most well-traveled ho in all of cinema history.
Originally, and arguably, most memorably, Sylvia Kristel; Emmanuelle was this rich girl who
traveled the world, banging everyone she met. Mind you, she was equal opportunity in this
department. Black, white, brown, male, female…bring that shit on. Emmanuelle was ready
for you. To paraphrase that great sage of our time, Ice-T, “If you are from Mars, and you got
the equipment, she will fuck you.” You gotta love it.
Nor was Emmanuelle herself content to stay white. Over the years, she has come in all
flavors and in every sense of the word. We’re talking French, African-American, Asian, you
name it. Back then, filmmakers didn’t let a little thing called trademark get in the way of their
Emmanuelle vision. They simply lost an ‘M’ from the name or a ‘N’ or what have you, and
let the girl plow her way through whatever exotic locales they could think of, and even
genres. You better believe Emmanuelle and all of her brethren have dealt with everything
from women’s prisons (duh) to cannibals to white slavery. Eventually, perhaps inevitably,
Emmanuelle ran out of places to screw, and so she naturally relocated to space.
Over the years, my finances have ebbed and flowed, but I’ll be damned if there’s one
thing you can count on every bit as much as death and taxes, and it’s that Emmanuelle will
persevere. It did my heart good when I was watching Skinemax during a free preview recently
and saw that, in fact, Emmanuelle was still up to her usual shenanigans, even after all these
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years. She’s now played by Brittany Joy, an attractive, modestly-endowed brunette, who, it
turns out, is actually the nom de plume of- what else?- a porn star, Allie Haze. (If that is
indeed her real name…oh wait, it totally isn’t, it’s porn.) Anyway, keep up the good work,
Emmanuelle.
There were lots of issues involving catching sight of a naked woman back then. Sure, if
you were lucky, you got to sneak a peek at your father or uncle’s adult mag stash, but I lived
with my mother more often than not, so that wasn’t exactly a viable resource. So, movies it
was, for the most part.
Back then in those heady days of pre-Internet porn, oftentimes parents would put a lock
on certain channels, which could only be cracked with a numerical code. By God, my friends
and I would attempt for hours on end to try and crack that damnable code, with all the
intensity of an attempted bank raid, with the cops hot on our trail. After all, there were only so
much unsupervised time to work on such things, so you had to move fast. My mother wasn’t
big on the coding, or the supervising, so getting away with it with little effort wasn’t hard.
Hell, half the time we would just rent something that we knew or figured had some sex and or
nudity involved and waited for her to go to bed and we were good to go.
Back then, you didn’t have frame-by-frame perfect picture DVDs or the like. It was
VHS, so if you got a tape someone else with like-minded prospects, you were more screwed
than Emmanuelle, because it was a safe bet that the parts you wanted to see were gonna be
fuzzy and snow-laden. For that reason, we often went with horror movies. Thanks to my sister
and babysitters trying to torment me with a steady diet of slasher movies, I knew the great
unspoken truth about the genre: it was manna for unsupervised nudity and sex.
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Indeed, that was one of the main tenants of slasher movie rules: if you got naked or
laid, you were gonna get it, and I don’t mean that in a good way. In horror movies, sex=death.
The funny thing was, those movies did more to scare kids straight about things like AIDS and
other STDs than any public service announcement ever could. Back in the olden days, parents
used fables and fairy tales as cautionary warnings to keep kids out of trouble. Slasher movies
were the modern-day equivalent.
And yet, you got the good before you got the horror, almost always. I feel sometimes
for the current generation, stuck with PG-13 lameness more often than not with horror. If
anything, those kids aren’t scared enough. Have you seen some of what’s going on on the
internet these days? It ain’t pretty. These kids need some horror in their lives, believe you me.
I’ll never forget the moment when me and a friend of mine were watching The Shining
with some other kids for the first time. My friend and I had seen it, and when it got to the part
where Jack Nicholson confronts the denizen of Room 237, everyone got quiet when we told
them there was nudity coming up. When the infamous old hag makes an appearance, I went to
signal my friends when my other friend stopped me, motioning for me to be quiet. I did, and
you could practically see the childhood trauma happening before your eyes. It was pretty
much the best thing ever. By God, if my mother had used The Shining as an example of why
little boys should keep their eyes closed when a naked woman was on the screen, she would
have gotten her point across much better, let me tell you.
You’ve heard the other old adage: if you don’t stop that, you’ll go blind? Well, we
learned the hard way how true that was through countless hours spent adjacent to the porn
channels like Playboy and the like, trying to spot a boob in all the white fuzz. Imagine our
surprise when what we thought was a breast turned out to be, say, a cartoon or something,
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which we only realized by turning the volume up ever-so-slightly so as to get a little vocal
stimulation to go along with our lack of visual ones, as if that were any better. I suppose the
only thing sadder was the fact that someone thought I meant that my friends and I were trying
to jerk off to such things. Now that would have truly been sad, indeed.
The actual sad thing about all this was that I didn’t even know what masturbation was
at the time. I mean that literally, not that I was doing it and didn’t know what it was called. I
was raised by women, after all, and, when I saw him, my dad wasn’t exactly forthcoming on
the information in that regard. By the time it was finally brought to my attention, it was high
school, and it was posited as something only losers who couldn’t get laid did. As such, it was
actually a while before I did it because I didn’t want to be a loser. So, all of this I’ve been
going on about…talk about a train gathering steam before it finally comes out of the station!
For a long time there, I was like all boned up with no place to go. It’s a wonder I didn’t
explode on impact the first time I came! (And yes, that was during my first sex act, FYI.)
As I grew older, my tastes matured as well, in a sense. Thanks to a few rogue video
stores in the Nashville area, I became more acquainted with the exploitation subgenre. I’m
talking about stuff like the work of cult film legends like Russ Meyer, Roger Corman, John
Waters, Jess Franco, Jean Rollin, and David Lynch, as well as a host of cut-rate filmmakers
like Ed Wood, Ray Dennis Steckler and David DeCoteau. The best of it runs from about the
late 60’s to the early 80’s, when filmmakers basically had the wherewithal to do whatever the
hell they wanted and could actually get the films into theaters and drive-ins. I may have
missed out on drive-ins for the most part, and I certainly didn’t see any of this stuff in the
theaters, save the tail end of some of the last gasps of exploitation in the late 80’s maybe (i.e.
some of the Halloween and Friday the 13th movies), but for the most part, I was of the second
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wave of slasher pics like Scream and the like, which were a different breed altogether. In that,
they actually were well-written, acted, and directed by professionals, not people flying by the
seat of their pants hoping to get a movie out of it somehow. So, in other words, I missed it the
first time around.
But oh, the glories I’ve reaped since! Talk about making up for lost time. I grew up on
a steady diet of trash, but discovering some of this stuff was like finding a treasure trove of
pure, unadulterated awesomeness. There is literally something to offend anyone and
everyone. Movies about sadistic, oversexed female Nazi torturers? Say hello to Ilsa, the
Wicked Warden. How about nunsploitation? Check out The Sinful Nuns of Saint Valentine,
among many, many others. I mean, they have a word for it, for God’s sake (literally). It has a
Wikipedia page and everything.
Don’t get me wrong, the internet be crazy. I mean, once you’ve seen something like
“Two Girls, One Cup” you can’t un-see it, you know? (If you don’t know what that is, trust
me on this: don’t Google it. You’ll thank me later.) And don’t even get me started on what’s
going on on some of those porn sites. You find things there you never wanted to see in the
first place without even going looking for it. Honestly, there should be some sort of warning
before they unleash some of this stuff on your unsuspecting pupils.
With exploitation movies, you almost always know what you’re getting into. Like
movies about women’s prison? There’s plenty to choose from in exploitation-land. Even
Oscar-winning Jonathan Demme, of The Silence of the Lambs fame, cut his teeth on Caged
Heat. How about sex-crazed midgets? (Excuse me: little people- as if that were much less
demeaning.) Check out The Sinful Dwarf. Or, if you must, Bloodsucking Freaks, which even
offended me.
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I think my favorites might have to be Russ Meyer’s stuff. Say what you will about
Meyer himself, but the guy knew what he liked, and what he liked were buxom women
kicking ass, and by God, his movies are filled with them. That ending in Quentin Tarantino’s
Death Proof? Totally swiped from Meyer’s infamous Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, a title only
surpassed in awesomeness by the couldn’t-possibly-hope-to-live-up-to-it’s-title-and-doesn’t
The Incredibly Strange Creatures That Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies.
One reason I’ve had trouble taking Roger Ebert seriously as a critic after a point was
seeing Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, Meyer’s epic of awful cinema that features the most
florid and over-the-top dialogue you’ve ever heard in your life, courtesy of one Mr. Ebert.
You know that line in the Austin Powers movie: “It’s my happening and it freaks me out!”?
Totally swiped from Dolls and written by Roger Ebert. There’s plenty more quotablyridiculous goodness where that comes from, believe you me. Those who can’t do, critique,
indeed.
That said, I just love Meyer’s stuff, and the way it revels in strong women who
eventually come out on top in the end. Sure, they might be man-handled, verbally berated,
raped, beaten, and have all manner of atrocities committed against them, but by God, at the
end of the movie, you just know they’re going to get theirs, and how. Meyers may have a
thing for over-the-top pulchritudinous ladies, but at least they’re real, naturally-gifted ladies
with no plastic surgery-enhanced facades to deal with. These are real women in all their glory,
kicking all kinds of men’s asses, and it is to die for, especially with all the fake shit we have
to deal with in this day and age. Meyer’s okay in my book, even if I have my issues with
Ebert.
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Equally amusing in a wholly-different way is John Waters, who I had the pleasure of
meeting at a UAB art gallery not too long ago, and couldn’t have been cooler. He’s the one
that led me to Faster Pussycat, having deemed it one of his favorite movies of all-time. His
early works are something to see, as enjoyable as the more recent ones are. Long before his
Hairspray became a Broadway sensation and a big-time Hollywood remake, he was churning
out gloriously trashy spectacles like Desperate Living and Pink Flamingoes. It’s hard to
believe he’s been embraced by the system to the extent he has, but I can only image what
audiences at the time must have thought about his insane world in which actors ate actual dog
poop, full-grown women wore diapers and sat in a baby crib whining, people literally talked
out of their asses, and his main lead actress was a man in woman’s drag acting like an actual
woman and that was treated as being perfectly acceptable. Now it kind of is. Go figure. We’ve
come so far to sink so low. But Waters did it first, and you’ve got to give credit where credit’s
due. For better or worse, there would be no gross-out humor, no Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler,
Farrelly Brothers, Kevin Smith, or Judd Apatow. He really was the pioneer in the field of
tastelessness.
So, what have we learned here today? That we shouldn’t mind our mothers, or we’d
miss out on some great stuff? That grandfathers know where it’s at? That you might have to
wade through some awful, awful stuff on the internet, but at least we’re not trying to get off
on scrambled porn anymore? That drag queens are the new norm? That there’s something out
there for every perversion, no matter how dubious? All of this and plenty more, and I owe it
all to my love of the inappropriate.
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So, remember kids: sometimes it pays not to listen to your mother. You never know
what you might be missing out on, after all. But chances are, it’ll totally be worth it, if it
involves the inappropriate.
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My Life in Video
With the closing of the last Blockbuster video rental store, I realized that another part of
my childhood was officially over, much to my chagrin. It’s happening again, I thought- only
now I’m actually aware of it. It must have happened to my parents, too, I realized. Probably
around my age now, in fact, which is my thirties, as I write this. As record vinyl gave way to 8Tracks, then cassettes and compact discs (which I grew up mostly buying and recording on), so
must they have felt a knee-jerk reaction to these tiny things taking the place of their beloved
record collections. Or not, as they didn’t seem too concerned when they gave them to me.
Maybe it’s just me.
I first felt a twinge of this when videotapes starting becoming things of the past. I
loved videotapes; still own a ton of them. I recorded all sorts of stuff over the years, and every
now & then I haul one of the more varied ones out and watch it to see what all’s there, which
makes for a fun time, save when the quality is low. I’ve even transferred some of them to
DVD on my VHS-to-DVD player, which allows for dubbing from tape to disc.
Aside from the expected movies and television shows- which are mostly useless now,
thanks to DVD, web streaming and services like Netflix- there are a treasure trove of musical
performances and talk show appearances and other such artifacts of my youth. Watching them
is like a journey into my past. From what’s on there, you can determine exactly what year it
was and what I was into at the given time, be it the music or celebrities being interviewed. It’s
almost like my version of a scrapbook.
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Some are even grouped, almost like a visual mix-tape, although in reality, it was
simply whoever had something to promote at the time. This hasn’t changed to this day, but
you do get to see certain people at a certain time in the lives, and that’s like a cool window
into where they were at as well, which can be nearly as rewarding, especially if you catch
someone early on in their career, before they broke big- if they did at all. Sometimes the fallen
soldiers are as valuable to me as the ones still standing.
I loved recording stuff, and some of the times I can remember being the most upset
where when someone who didn’t really get what I was up to, would accidentally- or at the
very least, uncaringly- tape over something I’d recorded that meant a lot to me. I can
remember one specific occasion in which my mother recorded over a one-time-only concert
by a favorite band I loved that had reunited. The thing was, she recorded footage of my
sister’s recital over it. What was I supposed to do with that? Get too upset- which I definitely
did at the time- and I’m the bad guy, because I’m placing a personal moment in my family
over a fleeting moment in time revolving around a rock band I might not even be into a few
years later. Not get upset enough, and she might do it again.
In fact, I still get upset over some lost interviews or concerts when I think about it,
even though, thanks to things like YouTube, pretty much everything I can think of that I ever
recorded is probably right there at my fingertips, only a web search away. In fact, ironically
enough, the one I remember getting most upset about was when my mother recorded over part
of the series finale of Twin Peaks, my then favorite show.
“You did what?!!! You promised to tape that for me while I was out of town! Can’t
you do anything right?”
It’s no wonder I went to live with my father shortly thereafter.
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It still stings even to this day, because I went out of my way to record it, and that
should mean something to people. I mean, there is such a thing as buying a new tape, you
know? You don’t have to screw mine up, am I right? Never mind the fact that all of Twin
Peaks would be available on DVD and Netflix mere years later. It was the carelessness of the
whole affair. If it hadn’t meant a lot to me, why would have I asked to tape it? Was I really
asking that much?
To be fair, though, trying to explain even simplistic VCR technology was a task for
my mother, so it doesn’t surprise me that she would make that mistake in retrospect. I’ll never
forget trying to teach her how to set up her new VCR to record something like Oprah or
whatever on a weekly basis. Mind you, this was over the phone.
“Okay, now push the button on the top right hand side. No, not the red one, the black
one!”
It was like Chinese Water Torture- it just went on and on and on, relentlessly. I mean,
it’s like: kill me now, please. It’s a miracle it ever got done in the first place. You can only
imagine how her mind was blown when I told her DVDs were playable on a Blu-Ray! Or her
frustration that you couldn’t use one to record anything. Forget trying to explain to her what a
TiVo or DVR was.
Which brings me back to video. I remember when DVDs first came out, my being
extremely dubious. This is like CDs all over again, I thought. Same thing, just more
expensive. What eventually sold me was that it was first pitched as a geek medium, when
sales didn’t take off right away. As a die-hard film lover, the revelation that movies came, a la
Laserdiscs (which were slightly before my time), with often bountiful extras- like
commentaries by the cast and/or crew, behind-the-scenes footage and deleted scenes- was like
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manna from Heaven. It was an opportunity to dive into your favorite movies like never
before, and as an already die-hard movie geek, I was hooked sooner than later, initial
reservations a thing of the past.
Another thing that was great was that DVDs highlighted movies that weren’t typically
given such notice beforehand, like horror films, cult films, and various B-movies. Sure, there
was plenty of foreign films and more high-brow releases, but DVDs were the first time I ever
saw B-movies given the A-movie treatment, and that was really great for someone who was
typically used to being told that horror movies and B-movies were trash. Finally, someone
was taking these movies I loved seriously, and treating them as actual art, and not just inferior
product that was only out to make a quick buck and full of exploitation and offensive
material.
Interestingly, as Blu-Ray continues to struggle to get off the ground, I’ve seen another
shift happening. Now, it’s precisely those sorts of movies that are coming out with all the
bells and whistle on Blu-Rays, and that sort of thing is being phased out on DVD and video
rentals. If you’ve ever rented a movie at Redbox or the like and seen extras pop up, only to
click on them and get a message saying: “These features are only available on Blu-Ray and
deluxe edition DVDs!”- You know what I’m talking about. Blu-Ray is the new DVD, and
DVDs have become more like VHS used to be when it first came out, I imagine, down to the
slightly more inflated prices.
I do remember reading up on this and discovering that VHS used to be crazy highpriced, with a single movie fetching $50 or even as high as $100! Thankfully, by the time I
was buying them, it was more in the same range it remains to this day. You’ll get the
occasional sale for less than $15, but the prices haven’t changed much for a while. Basically,
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DVDs and Blu-Rays are now what VHS used to be when I was a kid, price-wise, just as
downloads are about the same as CDs and cassettes were when I was a kid. Same thing with
recordable media.
However, the great equalizer has always been the video rental. From when I was little,
I can remember one of the great thrills for me was to go with my family or friends to pick out
movies at the video rental store. Long before binge-watching became a thing, we would rent
double or triple-features to watch over one long evening. If it was my family, we would either
rent something we could all enjoy, or make plans to watch them separately in our rooms, if
need be, or after the others went to bed. I was the night owl, so I didn’t mind waiting until
everyone else was asleep to watch stuff, though depending on where we lived that could be a
different kind of problem, i.e. the TV might wake someone up if the movie got too loud.
We would have theme nights, watching a marathon of Halloween or Friday the 13th or
Nightmare on Elm Street movies, or grouping them by certain aspects, such as movies set on
prom night (Carrie, Prom Night, etc.), in the backwoods (Evil Dead, Texas Chainsaw
Massacre), or with a holiday theme (My Bloody Valentine, April Fools’ Day, Mother’s Day,
countless others). It was really a blast, and if the movie was bad, all the better, as we simply
made wisecracks throughout the feature, Mystery Science Theater-style. Slasher movies were
more fun than scary usually, so it was great to watch them in groups, just as seeing them in
packed theaters later became a lot of fun for similar reasons.
Of course, food was an important part of the whole affair as well. Pizza was common,
as was popcorn, though I’ve never been able to abide by the stuff. I know, I know: sacrilege.
But I just can’t, with the kernels or whatever always getting stuck in my teeth. It’s just not
worth the trouble. I do love candy, which I suppose one could make the same case against, but
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to me, it’s a bit more worth it, if not the resulting trips to the dentist’s. Give me a roll of Sweet
Tarts and a box of Raisinets and I’m good to go.
Another thing that has vanished from that era was the art of the VHS box. Back then, a
cool picture on the cover of a movie was all you needed. Well that, and maybe a hook-worthy
title and premise. I can remember renting some movies on the strength of the cover art alone.
One of my favorites was the cover of a movie called Frankenhooker, which is as awesome as
it sounds, at least if you’re into that sort of thing. It had a button embedded on the front,
which if you pushed it, exclaimed: “Wanna date?” I certainly did. I couldn’t rent that one fast
enough, believe you me, and not even for the obvious reasons, which is saying something for
a teenager.
Gimmicks were big as VHS started to fade out in earnest from the competition of
DVDs. I remember there being cover holograms and red or green eyes that lit up or blinked. I
can’t remember the last time I’ve seen that in real life on VHS, but I’ve never seen that on a
DVD box, period. In fact, they’re only just now getting around to clever packaging, as with
the skull-shaped Masters of Horror set or the Walking Dead box set that looks like the
Governor’s head aquarium. (If you have to ask…)
I also miss cover art in general. Sure, you can still see that on the occasional movie
poster or special edition DVD release, but I can remember the time when a cool bit of art was
enough to get you to rent something, if not buy it outright. If it had something nightmareinducing or sordid or trashy on the cover, I was in.
I was never much for the big video chains like Blockbuster, really. I only went there as
long as I did because the mom-and-pop stores I preferred had all but died out, and the likes of
Blockbuster and Hollywood and Movie Gallery were all that was left standing after a point.
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But the fringe stores were the best, places like The Bad Seed and Backwoods Rentals in
Tennessee, where they emphasized genre stuff like horror, action, cult films and the like.
Where else were you going to find an Asian horror section, way before that was a thing? Or a
zombie section, also before that became popularized? Or racks dedicated to respected cult
filmmakers like John Carpenter, David Cronenberg, or David Lynch- three of my all-time
favorites?
Those stores and places like them had the stuff you just couldn’t typically get at a
Blockbuster, movies that were obscure or out-of-print or generally left-of-center, and that was
a good thing in my opinion.
And now they’re gone. I mean, don’t get me wrong. Even though I like the fact that I
can go to my TV and have the equivalent to an entire video rental store right at my fingertips
on Netflix and the like, or go down to the local convenience or grocery store and check out a
movie on a Redbox machine, it’s just not the same. It’s super convenient, to be sure, but not
the same. I miss the whole communal experience of it all, you know?
Same thing with buying music. It used to be I’d go to a local music store and buy CDs
and cassettes. Now I download them online or buy them on Amazon. I remember distinctly
just in the last few years or so, hearing people ranting and raving about “Black Friday” and
Christmas shopping and being like: why the hell would you do that anymore? Why, when
you can go online and take care of an entire family’s shopping in one afternoon, have them
ship it to the door and be done with it? Sure, they have some in-store only specials, but is it
really worth potentially getting in a fight or trampled or worse for, say, a dollar-priced towel?
Um, no thanks. I’ll stay at home, and do it on my computer.
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So, believe me when I say, I can roll with the times, and get fully behind the
advancements being made thanks to computers and the internet. I love the new technology
that’s developed within my lifetime, and I wouldn’t go back to the old ways, if I could. That’s
not the issue.
The issue is, there’s a crucial social experience that was lost when Netflix and Redbox
and so on became a thing. We used to have to get in the car or walk down to the closet place
to get these things, and now we don’t have to. Even though it’s a plus being able to access
those things from your own home or, at the very least, closer to it than ever before, it does feel
like we skipped an essential step.
No longer do we stumble upon that rare gem hidden in away in the dusty rack of a
locally-owned video rental store. No longer do we get helpful recommendations from sales
associates who noticed the kind of things you rented. No longer do you get into extended
conversations with fellow movie fans about what’s new or that rare flick you might have
missed that you absolutely, positively had to see or you were missing out.
Now, it’s all user reviews, or “If you like this, you’ll also probably like this!”
recommendations- many of which are greatly misinformed, often terribly-written, and
sometimes completely off-the-mark. We’ve lost the human touch in all of this change and
supposed “advancement,” and it took the closing of the last Blockbuster to make me realize
that.
So, let us once again raise our glasses to the passing of a place that no longer really
exists: the video store. Music stores, watch your backs! It’s happening with you, too! And
sooner than later.
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I may not miss you on those rainy or snowy nights when I get to rent a movie without
leaving the comfort of my couch, or when I’m too sick to go out. But I damn sure will look
back on you fondly for all that you have given me over the years, and I certainly loved
trekking down to your hallowed walls to find that old favorite or that new find that changed
my world.
RIP, video stores. We hardly knew ye, but you will be missed.
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The Death of the Know-it-all
Let us raise a glass and toast the death of the know-it-all. Oh, you know the type. The
type of guy who can tell you the lyrics to that obscure song from the 70s verbatim right off the
top of his head. The one who knows each and every horror movie that featured a famous actor
made before they hit it big. The one that can tell you exactly what movie that was with that
actor…you know the one…where that thing happened with that guy?
Why, yes, they do know. They know and are all too happy to share that information
with you, and oh so much more. If there’s a bit of arcane knowledge to be found on some
random bit of entertainment trivia, they know it.
My name is Mark Trammell, and I was once one of those people. Oh, don’t worry.
Technically, I still am, but it’s a dying breed, and I’m here to tell you why.
It all started back in the day. An avid music and film lover, when I liked something, I
wanted to know more. No bit of knowledge was too trivial, no fact too obscure. Like many of
my kind, it began with the reference books. For music, there were the Rolling Stone guides,
the Encyclopedia of Rock-and-Roll and the ongoing Album Guide; the nifty Harmony
Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock; and my favorite, the Book of Rock Lists.
For movies, there were the standard critics’ guides by the likes of Roger Ebert and
Leonard Maltin, and the ginormous Videohound compendiums, which cross-referenced films
with their stars, directors, writers, and even their cinematographers and composers. For good
measure, the VH guide featured an appendix of films broken down by subgenre into
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categories like slasher movies, Christmas movies, and Christmas slasher movies, among many
others.
My favorites, hands-down, however, were the more cult-driven tomes, like The Gore
Score by Chas Blaun or the Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-In books by John Bloom, aka Joe Bob
Briggs; and especially the two editions of The Psychotronic Guide to Film by Michael J.
Weldon. These last few books were packed to the brim with information on films I only
dreamed I would get to see one day, and have seen more than I ever thought possible of,
thanks to the advent of DVD and their habit of releasing ever-more-obscure films over the
years.
Even better, said films and many other mainstream ones where that came from would
be tricked out to the brim with all sorts of bells and whistles, from filmmaker and cast
commentaries to making of’s and deleted scenes, not to mention the occasional super-sweet
Easter egg, like the one on the Memento disc that allows you to play the film in chronological
order. Such things are the film geeks’ bread-and-butter, their raison d’être.
And yet, therein lies the rub. That glorious technology, which gave us the film geek
cat nip that is the bonus-laden DVD is, alas, also sounding the death knell of the know-it-all.
Just like the Walkman, the VHS, the cassette-to-cassette dubbing double tape deck- and, yes,
that glorious precursor to the DVD, the laserdisc- most older technology has eventually come
to be outdated with time. Still, whoever thought such a thing could happen to the know-it-all?
I’ll never forget the day I realized it. A girlfriend of mine, one whose eyes never
ceased to glaze over whenever I went off on a tangent about some bit of obscure film or music
trivia, threw me for a loop and life has never been the same. We were sitting on the couch and
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a friend asked me where he had seen a particular actor. As tends to happen here and there to
even the best of us, I took a second to ponder the query.
Those few precious seconds were all it took. Out of nowhere, in chimed my girlfriend
with the answer, and plenty more than perhaps even I was capable of, in all my vast
knowledge, and seemingly right off the top of her head! I glanced over at her in dismay and
disbelief, and then it hit me. Of course, she didn’t know these things right off the bat. Instead,
she had gathered the information via the internet on her iPhone, no doubt from the online
equivalent to the Videohound guide, the website known as the Internet Movie Database.
I was stunned. Then the full weight of what had happened hit me over the next few
minutes. Not only that, but what the worldwide repercussions of such a thing was. Right this
moment, no doubt, there were fellow film and music geeks all over the planet whose power
was being taken as we spoke, just as mine had been. No sooner had a lost soul asked who that
actor was, or what that song was, or some other bit of entertainment knowledge, than he or
she were given the answer in full, and then some. Thanks to sites like Wikipedia and All Music
and plenty more where that came from, anyone with a laptop or iPhone or Droid (oh my) at
hand could come up with the answer in no time flat.
Just like that, the know-it-all has become…gasp!-obsolete.
Oh sure, the quickest amongst us had the opportunity to play “who can come up with
the answer fastest,” but let’s face it, the bells tolls for us all. We’re dealing with a generation
that is coming up and not going anywhere, one who is tied at the hip to their technology, and
lighting fast on the uptake of new knowledge. Know-it-all’s, your time has finally come, and
not in a good way.
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We are a dying breed, one that can easily be supplanted by any Tom, Dick, or Harriet
with access to internet-driven technology. Say goodbye to the accolades you received from
admiring friends and family when you answered that obscure query off the top of your head.
Say hello to being one-upped by random doofuses and bimbettes whose only real knowledge
is how to web surf on the fly, and type really fast. Say hello to the tech nation. They are
legion, and they are not going anywhere.
Know-it-all’s, we hardly knew ye. You will be missed, if only by your fellow geeks,
the junior league Quentin Tarantinos populating video rental, CD and DVD stores all over the
world that themselves will no doubt cease to exist within a matter of years, thanks to said
technology.
Say goodbye to being one of the few, the proud, the way-too-knowledgeable; and
hello to a world filled with minor-leaguers ready to steal your thunder at a moment’s notice.
Have a drink on me, won’t you, for I am one of you, and we are all one of a dying breed.
Hey, it was fun while it lasted, right?
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The Death of Elitism: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying & Like Duran Duran
I was a child of the 80s, and things weren’t as politically correct as they are
nowadays- or at least, what everyone seems to be aiming for in the grand scheme of things.
Back then, there were certain things you just didn’t do if you wanted to fit in with the guys. If
one were to do these things, you risked being labeled “weird” or a “freak,” or, worst of all,
“gay.” Mind you, none of us had any idea what actually constituted being “gay” at the time,
we just knew enough from certain older kids that it was something you didn’t want to be. (Let
it be known right off the bat that I didn’t share that opinion- even once I did know what it
meant, so save your letters!)
One of the chief ways you got yourself labeled as such was your taste in music. Even
without knowing what being gay really was, certain guys- and it was exclusively guys with
said opinion- had an instinct for what things fell into that category. (Kinda makes you wonder
why that was…but I digress.) For instance, it was all well and good to think Madonna was
hot, but to actually listen to her music? Not so much.
I wasn’t that big on Madonna, but I did love me some Prince, and in some ways that
was worse. Never mind the fact that Prince dated a succession of wildly attractive women any
of us would have given anything to go out with (Vanity, Apollonia, Mayte, etc.). Not that we
would have known what to do with them if we’d had the chance, mind you, but still. Never
mind that Prince could rip on guitar with as much skill as the likes of Eddie Van Halen or
Steve Vai ever did: witness “Let’s Go Crazy”- exhibit A.
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No, when my friends thought of Prince, they thought of his outré outfits, and- gasp! high heels. “Real” men didn’t wear high heels. Prince didn’t help matters much by singing
things like: “Am I straight or gay?” (“Controversy”), even if he answered that query in
another song: "No, are you?" ("Uptown"). One guess what my friends thought the real answer
to that question was.
If liking Prince was bad, liking someone like Duran Duran was flat-out verboten. (For
my younger readers, think Backstreet Boys or N’Sync or, more recently, someone like Justin
Beiber. In other words, boy bands or tween tunes, only a bit more rocking than any of the
above) “Those guys are totally queer,” said one of my friends at the time. “Look at all the
make-up they wear. They’re definitely gay.”
Well, perhaps needless to say, Duran Duran were, in fact, knee-deep in supermodels
at the time, so I’m guessing they weren’t too concerned with what my clueless friend had to
say about their sexual orientation. Nor did his argument hold much water, in light of what my
friends did like.
My friends were into Metallica & Slayer, sure, but they also loved Guns ‘n’ Roses
and Motley Crue and the like, bands that are now referred to as “hair metal” or sometimes
“glam rock.” Go back and watch some of those groups’ early videos, and you’ll see what I
noticed: these bands wore outfits every bit as out-there as Prince and sported way more makeup than the likes of even Duran Duran. I mean, have you seen the cover of Poison’s “Look
What the Cat Dragged In?” Google it, and tell me those guys don’t look like a bunch of
chicks. (No offense, ladies.)
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Don’t misunderstand. I’m not sinking to their grade school level of, “those guys were
totally gay.” Obviously, we know now (if we didn’t then) that those guys were running
through groupies like they were going out of style. But if they weren’t gay by the actual
definition of the word- or even the half-formed idea of what “gay” was, as defined by my
friends- then who was?
Once I confronted my friend about this incongruity, and he said something Beavis &
Butthead-ish like: “Sometimes you have to dress like a fruit to get chicks.” I pointed out that
Duran Duran and Prince did the exact same thing. “Yeah, but those guys really are queer.”
And he knew this how?
Perhaps needless to say, we aren’t friends anymore.
Now, mind you, I never let this keep me from listening to what I damn well pleased.
It was just the principle of the thing that bugged me. Why couldn’t I listen to what I wanted to
without being judged? I liked Slayer as much as the next guy I hung with. I just happened to
like Prince, as well. What was wrong with that?
Of course, hardly anybody thinks twice about liking Prince or Duran Duran. In fact,
that stuff readily qualifies as classic rock these days. Reality check, fellow former teens of the
90s: so does grunge rock. (Feel old yet?)
An interesting phenomenon has happened over the years, however. No one really
cares anymore. Labels, in a very real way, have gone out the window. I mean, look at today's
pop stars. Sure, Katy Perry and Gaga and Ke$ha have songs in the same wheelhouse, but
their approaches are considerably different. I mean, can you imagine Katy Perry spouting
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German, as Gaga does in one of her recent tunes? Can you see Ke$ha singing "I Kissed a
Girl" with any of the wide-eyed innocence that former Christian singer Perry does? The three
are completely different to anyone paying attention.
Indeed, most of the popular acts are so all over the place that they really are
unclassifiable. Bands like Best Coast, Sleigh Bells, and Foster the People get tossed into the
"alternative rock" category by lazy critics, but anyone who listens to them knows that the
three couldn't be more different. The younger generations that are rocking the charts
nowadays don't really seem to care about labels. Most of them think nothing of letting DJ's
remix one of their tunes for the dance floor. Can you really imagine someone from the grunge
era embracing that? No, they would have laughed at the very idea.
So, what happened? Part of it was what I like to call the Glee effect. One of the most
popular shows on TV today is Glee, a show that featured a group of people who sing
everything from The Doors to Salt 'n' Pepa to Neon Trees. The show could honestly care less
about sticking to "pop" music, genre-hopping with real aplomb.
Also worth a mention is that Glee wears its gay influences proudly on its sleeve. I've
watched the show on occasion and like it just fine, although they do lose me with all the
Broadway stuff and the like. (If ever I had any doubt about my sexuality, it went out the door
once I realized I genuinely hated show-tunes.)
Anyway, news flash: not all the people watching it are gay themselves, obviously.
Some people just like singing or teen shows or what have you. However, the show has gone a
long way towards helping people understand what the gay experience is like from the
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perspective of a teen, and that has gone a long way towards helping people sympathize
towards something they previously might not have. Not to mention understand it better. In
short, being gay isn’t that big a deal anymore. Hell, there’s even a gay pride parade in
Birmingham. Who’d have thought it?
Ditto the music of people like Lady Gaga. If you think that all the people listening to
her are gay, you haven’t been paying attention. There are kids, male and female, singing her
stuff online- not that kids can’t be gay, obviously, but there are a LOT of them, and they can’t
all be gay, in my estimation. I even took a class with an older lady that loved her that was
very much married with children and as “straight” as they come.
Hell, at this point, I’m not even convinced that those sorts of labels matter much
anymore either, especially to this generation that’s coming up. The very ideas of being “gay”
or “straight” may not apply much longer. Think of how many celebrities lately have admitted
to experimenting with their sexuality, without apology (i.e. Anna Paquin, Evan Rachel Wood,
Amber Heard). How about we call it “human” and leave it at that?
Look, as well, at the art of the so-called “mash-up.” It’s basically creating “new”
music from someone else’s work, sample by sample. Sure, sampling in rap has been around
for decades, but it was DJ Shadow, with the seminal Endtroducing back in ’96, that first
created a full CD completely out of samples of other peoples music, and made it sound
completely new in the process. Others followed slowly but surely, like Cut Chemist and more
recently, DJ Greg Gillis, better known as Girl Talk, whose Feed the Animals made many
prominent critics best of the year list in 2008, including my own.
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DJs are working on a whole next level nowadays, and they’re sampling anything and
everything. Girl Talk alone features everything from Miley Cyrus to Black Sabbath to
Ludacris, often within the same song. I knew things had changed when I witnessed an entire
packed concert hall, singing along with Kelly Clarkson’s “Since You’ve Been Gone” (over a
NIN sample, no less!) completely without irony that something had changed along the way.
My suspicions did not prove unfounded. I talked to more than a few people on
campus, of varying ages, asking them what they were into. It was sort of like one of those
“What’s playing on your iPod?” YouTube videos, except as I delved a bit further, and found
that, as suspected, most people don’t care about labels anymore. I know one girl that loves
both My Bloody Valentine and Ke$ha. My own tween-age niece thinks nothing of going from
Taylor Swift to hip hop without blinking. Her iPod playlist is all over the place.
Back in the 90s, it was so fashionable to sneer at anything that even remotely
resembled the mainstream. “Corporate magazines still suck,” read a T-shirt worn by Nirvana
front man Kurt Cobain, as they posed on the cover of Rolling Stone. Meanwhile, on The
Simpsons, one Gen X-type character asked another, “Are you being ironic?” His answer: “I
don’t even know anymore.”
I’m not sure I know anymore, myself. Somewhere along the way, more and more
people stopped caring what other people thought, and just starting enjoying what they wanted
to. I was watching Jimmy Fallon the other night, and actress Evan Rachel Wood cried, when
confronted about her interest in pop-star Justin Beiber: "I like Radiohead. I like Portishead. I
like the Requiem for a Dream soundtrack. And I like Beiber." Exactly. We're all different, we
all like what we like, but why should we have to apologize for it?
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Side note: Okay, I draw the line at Beiber...but I will say this. There was this girl on
that X-Factor show with Simon Cowell, who sang that "Baby" song- and if I hadn't know
what it was, I might have actually liked it, if I'm being honest. It sounded like one of those
ultra-sincere Tori Amos covers- as opposed to the ironically-done ones, like Alanis Morissette
(no pun intended) covering "My Humps." A good cover can really enhance the meaning
behind a song even better than the original- Tori's version of "Smells like Teen Spirit" comes
to mind. I don't think I truly understood what that song was about until I heard her version.
I'm not saying it's better...I'm saying I had no idea what the hell Kurt Cobain was going on
about, and there was no lyric sheet. Ah, remember those? I can't believe we're actually at a
point where I'm getting nostalgic for freaking CD covers being cool. If I close my eyes, I can
see that nifty Tool cover... Anyway, I digress- sometimes a good song shines through, even in
different forms. Like Britney's "Baby...One More Time." Hell, even Mike Patton covered that
one. (Yes, I just admitted to liking a Britney Spears song and Nirvana in the same breath.
Deal with it.) End of side note.
Say what you will about trashy reality shows- and I do indeed hate them- people
watch them, and many are unapologetic about it. Hell, I don't even like them and I've seen a
few here and there. During the recent MTV anniversary celebration, they re-aired some of the
old Real World episodes. It was remarkable how much had changed over the years.
The first episode, everyone was civil and reasonably intelligent. Even as far into the
run as the infamous "Puck" era, the people rationally sat down and discussed things, talking
out their problems at length. But "Puck" grabbed the ratings, and MTV bit. From then on, the
focus became on the idiots. The stupider, the drunker, the better. Cops meets Real World=
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Jersey Shore. Trash is culture now. Warhol was so right when he said everyone would be
famous for fifteen minutes. And then some.
Irony is a dead scene, man. So, forget what that snobby guy who says only what he
listens to is "cool." Join me in celebrating the death of elitism, and always, always, always, in
the words of those great philosophers, Digital Underground: "Doowatchulike."
We all have our "guilty" pleasures. On a given day, I might be just as likely to
listening to Katy Perry as Sonic Youth. I might even just be listening to Nirvana and Destiny’s
Child simultaneously. (“Smells Like Bootylicious,” anyone?) And I might even be watching
Pretty Little Liars while reading philosophy literature by the likes of Plato. (Totally did that
last summer.)
And maybe, just maybe, you might just find me listening to Duran Duran, fully
without irony…and liking it just fine.
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My Life in Lollapaloozing
I went to my first music festival, Lollapalooza, in the mid-90’s, when I was around
twelve or thirteen. It was a line-up of a virtual who’s-who in alternative music at the time that
toured every year for a good decade or so. It started around noon and went until around
midnight, with the main headliners at the first of the festivals being the band Jane’s Addiction,
who also started the festival. Back then, they took their show on the road to various cities, and
this particular one was in Atlanta. I lived close by, with my mother in Smyrna, and it was a
quick trip to the outdoor amphitheater the festival was held at. I had spent most of my life
going to concerts with her, including KISS when I was in my single digits, so my going to one
without her was no big deal. More likely, it was a way to get me out of her hair for the better
part of the day.
1994’s line-up was especially strong for me, as I was also a big fan of rap/hip-hop and
funk, and Beastie Boys, A Tribe Called Quest and P-Funk All-Stars were all being featured,
along with some of the best representatives of the so-called punk-rock feminist “Riot Grrrl”
movement, another genre I was a big fan of, including Hole, The Breeders and L7.
Courtney Love’s ongoing and oft-unpredictable insanity notwithstanding, I was
especially keen on seeing L7. They gained some notoriety back in the day for the time when a
guy yelled at the all-girl band to: “Show us your tits!” Singer Donita Sparks reportedly
responded by reaching down, retrieving her tampon from her nether-regions and tossing it in
the guy’s general direction. I thought this was the most bad-ass thing I’d ever heard and to
this day, the most punk-rock thing I’ve ever heard anyone ever doing- if also the most
unsanitary. Would she do something similar at our show? A boy could dream. Not sure what
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that says about me, but that that actually sounded like a good thing back then- I guess my
OCD hadn’t fully formulated yet…
Some older friends had rented out hotel rooms at somewhere like the Radisson or the
Hilton; in other words, somewhere that seemed nice to a bunch of kids, but wasn’t necessarily
as nice as I probably thought it was at the time. It was, however, a step up from the places we
stayed in on vacations to Panama City Beach, so compared to that, it must have seemed like
the Taj Mahal. Only with room service and hot tubs. Naturally, my mother had no idea about
this part of it. I just told her I was staying with friends overnight and we were going to the
show in the morning.
One thing that didn’t change between our visits to the beach and this particular
scenario was that we had way more people staying there than there was proper room for. As
such, that can lead to trouble, especially when it came to sleeping. Indeed, sleeping wasn’t
really an option, at least in terms of restful sleep. This was because if you were asleep, you
were basically an easy target.
A target for what, you ask? Anything and everything, to say the least. We’re talking
the whole nine: people drawing on your face with a marker- typically dicks and words like
“I’m a big faggot” or “I love to suck dick” or so on- people taking pictures of their ass in your
face or worse; people cutting your hair in bizarre ways; etc. I know one guy with a shaved
head who woke up to find someone had made up his pate like a globe, complete with an “X”
on it, and the words “You are here.” The guy actually thought it was funny, and left it therenot that he entirely had a choice, what with it being a permanent marker. I heard he even
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thought about having it tattooed that way, but I don’t know if he ever actually went through
with it.
Once, I myself woke up with a massive pile of chairs set up in an elaborate pattern
above me like some sort of twisted jungle gym, pinning me to the ground. And that was mild
compared to what a lot of people got. I suppose I should consider myself lucky.
On the night before the big show, some asshole named Rick pulled the old putting
shaving cream in your hand and then tickling your face so you would accidentally plop it
down there in your out-of-it state trick on me. Only Rick went the extra distance and got my
shoes. It must have been some industrial-strength shit, because the shoes were completely
ruined and literally un-wearable, and it looked like I wasn’t going to get to go to Lollapalooza
at all, seeing as you couldn’t really go to a festival without shoes.
I was not a happy camper, and went to drown my sorrows in the hot tub, after a wellintentioned but ultimately fruitless attack on Rick, who was older and held me at arm’s length
the way one would a wayward puppy that someone didn’t want in their lap. He might as well
have said: “Isn’t that cute?”
This did not help my mood.
Fortunately, a friend of mine, Allen, went and got an extra pair of shoes and brought
them to the show, as we didn’t have time to go and get some more at the store, nor did I
particularly have much money. Basically, I had enough for some concessions and a t-shirt if I
was lucky. We met at the gate and he tossed them over- why Allen didn’t just wait on me
instead of walking in with the shoes, I’m still not sure, but I put the shoes on, regardless, after
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suffering the additional indignity of being clocked in the head with one. As it was, I had
blisters already developing from walking around without shoes in the hot Atlanta summer sun
all day, but to make matters worse, the guy’s shoes were like planks: long and loose-fitting. I
got in the show okay, but spent the entire day losing the shoes over and over again.
On one particularly memorable occasion, I was in a mosh-pit on the lawn that was
going uphill- already a recipe for disaster- and someone stepped on the heel of one of my
shoes and it flipped up into the air, spinning around like a pinwheel high above us. I tracked
its trajectory the best I could without getting clobbered in the process, and saw it sail down a
fair ways away- and right into someone’s head. The guy, thinking someone behind him had
done it, didn’t even hesitate and turned around and clocked the poor guy standing there. His
friends rallied to his defense and complete chaos broke out, with their fight moving swiftly in
our direction until the mosh pit and massive fight became one.
Next thing you know, there’s this wildly revolving combination fight/mosh-pit busting
out, with some people trying to land punches, others trying to defend themselves and
everyone else trying not to fall down as the pit shifted up and down the hill in formation. It
was like a war with not-so-dope dance moves- if you want to call moshing dancing, that is.
Seemed kind of appropriate, what with us not being far from where Sherman marched in the
Civil War. There was nothing civil about this scenario- although I did notice that certain
people would at least try and pivot people up that had fallen down, only to inevitably throw
the moshing off-kilter, which only led to more fighting. It was self-perpetuating madness
personified. Naturally, I loved it.
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I managed to escape without injury- just barely- and eventually found the shoe a few
feet away, as most everyone else on our half of the lawn was in the mosh-pit. I got the hell out
of that insanity, somewhat bemused by the fact that the fight in question had broken out
during the Breeders’ set, which was a relatively mild girl-group that didn’t exactly inspire
thoughts of massive riots and fighting. When in Rome, I guess. There’s something to be said
for having the most chipper soundtrack to one of the undoubtedly ugly messes I’ve ever been
in. Hey, if you’re gonna get your ass kicked, why shouldn’t it be to the song “Cannonball”?
Although the much-anticipated L7 show went without incident- sadly, no flying
tampons made a cameo, much to my disappointment- later on, we got another highlight of
sorts when Courtney Love went on a rant and bared her boobs to the audience in some sort of
ill-conceived protest against people shouting out her late husband’s songs. I overheard some
people talking about it:
“Dude, did Courtney Love just flash her tits?”
“Big whoop. Seeing her tits is like a Groundhog seeing its shadow- that shit happens
every other show. That bitch can’t keep her shirt on. What do you think killed Kurt, bra?”
“Her tits? I thought he killed himself.”
“That’s just what they want you to think, man. Really, it was her tits. She smothered
him with ‘em, then shot him in the face to cover it up. Make it look like a suicide, you know?”
“That seems a bit extreme, man.”
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“Well, whatever the case, I haven’t trusted a girl with fake tits ever since. I’m big
naturals all the way, bra. Fuck that fake shit. That shit’s like false advertising, anyway. You
know what I mean?”
“Are you sure he didn’t just kill himself to get away from her crazy ass?”
“Yeah, that, too.”
Thank you, Lollapalooza, one of my favorite musicians did not die in vain. It was a
sacrifice to all the men tired of fake tits in the world. Mystery solved. Thanks, drunk people!
As the show proceeded, things only got crazier, or at least I got drunker. You better
believe being underage didn’t stop any of us drinking. It’s quaint to think that the eight dollars
per beer our older friends charged us seemed so high and unfair. At the last show I went to,
Rush, which was also at an outdoor amphitheater, the beers were twelve bucks for a freaking
tall-boy. Jesus!
The Beastie Boys, one of the biggest bands in the world at the time, were at their
absolute peak. I’m so glad I got to see them before founding member MCA died. I remember
they showed a clip of Twin Peaks before the show, which is my all-time favorite show. I
realized that the whole Tibet thing (The Beasties were avid supporters of the whole “Free
Tibet” movement) probably happened because the Beasties were also Peaks fans, which I
thought was the coolest thing ever. The Beasties, they’re just like me- they love Twin Peaks,
too!
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Given their former reputations as out-of-control, sexist, party-mongering douche-bags,
it’s hilarious to me now that my socio-political consciousness almost certainly started with the
Beastie Boys. And apparently, girls who threw their tampons at their own audience, however
warranted. Ah, youthful naivety, where have you gone?
By the end of the show, we were all pretty wasted. I has lost one of the shoes, perhaps
inevitably, and looked like a POW. I was covered in mud, my clothes were torn, and my pants
were irrevocably stained with all manners of nastiness, including dirt, blood and God knows
what else. I looked like an extra from a zombie flick and felt like the walking dead, besides.
But hey, at least I got to see some of my favorite bands and lived to tell the tale. Shoes be
damned!
Or shoe, rather. Sometimes sacrifices must be made to the Gods of rock and roll.
Better a shoe than being trampled by one, I suppose. There were other rock festivals, other
Lollapaloozas, but I suppose you never forget your first.
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My Life in Cars
The day I turned fifteen, I got a most unexpected surprise: my very first car. In
Georgia, at least at the time, when you turned fifteen, you were eligible for what is called a
learner’s permit. This allowed someone underage to practice driving in the accompaniment of
a licensed driver, which helped them be that much more prepared for the real thing, an official
driver’s license. For any of you who have driven in Atlanta, I probably don’t need to tell you
drivers in Georgia need all the practice they can get. Driving in Atlanta is like being in the
biggest bumper car ring in the States, only when you bump these cars, they don’t emerge
without a scratch on them. If ever there were an argument to make for the formation of a
bumper car that could be driven on the highway, it’s in Atlanta.
The car in question was a bit of a clunker, but I think that was probably wise for a
teenager’s first car. It was a shit-brown Chevy, with a tan hardtop and tan interior. It may have
not been the most eye-pleasing car in the world, but it was mine, and my father, wanting to
score as many cool points as possible in the wake of my coming to live with him, let me drive
it unaccompanied by anyone, so long as I just stuck to the neighborhood and school.
That didn’t happen.
Yet, despite my flagrant disregard for his rule, I only got in trouble once, when I snuck
out to see a girl after curfew. Truth be told, at the time, I was a bit of a goody-two-shoes. I had
friends who already drank, smoked weed, and so on, but I wanted no part of all that. Maybe
all those horror movies I watched had an effect, after all. If you’ve seen a slasher movie, you
know what happens to people who party…
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That would change in my sophomore year, during which I got my driver’s license
proper. I don’t know that I was actually a good driver before that, so much as more cautious,
what with my dad having me on a shorter leash because of the questionable legality of the
situation. As a reward for not having gotten into trouble, or so much as a speeding ticket, I got
a brand spanking new car this time around. It was my then-dream car, a Camaro. (Yes, I
know, how very redneck of me.) It was my favorite color, red, only darker- more like
crimson, or even maroon. There were flecks of glitter in the paint, so that when the sun hit it,
it sparkled like Edward Cullen on a hot day date. It was faster, prettier, and far more of a
chick magnet than my last car would ever be on the best of days. It also lasted about a week.
Yes, in my not-so-infinite wisdom, I opted to press my luck by attempting to beat an
upcoming car across an intersection. I hesitated ever so slightly, but it was enough to screw
the pooch. Though my passenger and I were unharmed, the car was totaled. This is what
happens when you put a powerful machine in the hands of someone without the maturity to
handle it. Or the attention span of a dog surrounded by squirrels. Factor in the need to show
off to your friends and the ladies, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.
It was a harsh blow, but I had insurance, and we were able to send the car in for
repairs. In the meantime, my father let me drive his car, a vintage Mercedes that was older
than dirt, with a heavier-than-should-be-legal steering wheel. I’m told it’s called manual
steering, as opposed to the more modern automatic variety. In modern cars, the steering is
relatively easy and light to the touch. In the Mercedes, it was like doing reps on an abcruncher at the gym. It was not the easiest car to drive, in other words, and not at all the eyepleaser that the Camaro was.
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I know Mercedes has a certain cachet, but, trust me, this was no typical Mercedes.
My father had bought it as a fixer-upper and it was still very much in the process of being
fixed up. It had grey primer paint on the exterior and he was redoing the interior, so there
were only a few floor mats on the bottom of the car, and you could actually see the metal on
the floor boards where the mats weren’t. To me, it seemed like one step up from the car Fred
Flintstone drove. I halfway expected to hit the pedals and have one of my feet shoot out onto
the pavement. In other words, it was actually worse than my first car. I couldn’t for the life of
me figure out what my father would want with such a beast of a car.
By this time, I was partying a bit, and in my infinite wisdom, I was driving drunk one
night and decided to take the long way home. Two friends were with me and we were
listening to metal but one of them wanted to hear rap. The car had a tape player that was like,
quite possibly, the first cassette player ever created. It was ancient and clunky, and you could
hear the wheels of the cassette squeak as the tape played. The sound system left a bit to be
desired as well. It sounded like the music was being beamed in from another planet. As such,
the muddy sounds of metal suited the crappy acoustics of the sound system just fine. Rap, on
the other hand, sounded like one big distortion of bass that made hearing anything distinct
near-impossible.
“Beastie Boys!” chanted my friends. “Beastie Boys!” Over and over again, like a
mantra.
After a bit of back-and-forth, I finally relented, simply because I was tired of
arguing. Not to mention it was pretty distracting. The problem was, I had to rifle through my
tapes and I was driving at the time, and even in my inebriated state, I knew better than to let
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go of the steering wheel, what with it being the dead weight it was. This was one car that all
but required your hands to be in the nine and three o’clock positions.
My friend, Morris, who sat in the passenger seat, offered to steer while I looked for
the tape. It never occurred to me at the time that it would have made more sense for him to
look for that tape while I did what I was supposed to be doing: driving the car. This is why
you shouldn’t drive drunk, people. Logic has already exited the building the minute you set
foot in the car drunk, and it’s only downhill from there.
There’s a reason accidents tend to happen within a small radius of the driver’s home,
and that’s because drunk drivers tend to drink near where they live because they think it will
be that much easier getting home. I actually managed to add fuel to the fire by prolonging the
ride home, so what does that tell you?
I was reluctant at first to let Morris steer, but I finally gave in, if only to stop all the
arguing. He was a big guy, and I figured he could handle it. Nearly right off the bat, he
started playing around with the wheel, veering back and forth as we weaved to-and-fro in the
streets of a suburban neighborhood. I balked and he abruptly let go, not realizing how heavy
the wheel was. It swung back with a vengeance, and the next thing we knew, we were knee
deep in a brick mailbox, and then a tree, then back down over the mailbox again.
I was told later by the cops, if it had been nearly any other car, I’d probably be dead.
As the Mercedes was an older model, it was metal through and through, rather than the
thinner metal used in most more modern-day cars, so it managed to barrel through not only a
brick mailbox, but the huge metal post underneath, bending it first forwards then backwards
as we traveled over it and then back down the incline of some unfortunate suburbanite’s front
yard. Even the tree didn’t escape unharmed, as we took out a sizable chunk of it out in one fell
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swoop, and that was after the slowing down that had to have resulted from plowing through a
brick mailbox and a steel post!
After that, my father and I weren’t on the greatest of terms. I offered to, and actually
did stop drinking for a while, and vowed to never drink and drive again regardless, but the
damage was already done. Never come between a man and his vintage automobile. He opted
to save his car over mine, and ended up selling the Camaro out from under me. Of course, I
hadn’t paid for it in the first place, so it’s not like I had much argument for keeping it on my
end. I, in turn, eventually ended up with another clunker for my troubles, this time an old
Impala.
At first, I wasn’t thrilled, but it was a drop-top at least, and red, my favorite color. It
also turned out to be a popular favorite among my black friends, who called it my
“pimpmobile.” I’m not even sure I know what that meant at the time, but I actually learned to
miss that car, if only after it was gone, admittedly. They suggested hydraulics and the like, but
my father was aghast at the thought, so that didn’t happen. Whenever I hear that old rap lyric
about “cruisin’ in my ‘64/drop-top/ladies don’t stop…,” I think of that old car, although I
think ‘70s-era would be a more accurate description. “Cruisin’ in my ‘76” just doesn’t have
the same ring to it, though.
In some ways, the Impala was actually a better chick magnet than the Camaro.
Especially in Florida, which was where we moved late in my high school years. After all, it
was a convertible, and girls love a convertible. At least when the weather’s nice. After that,
not so much. No one wants to freeze their butts off, and the ventilation in a convertible leaves
something to be desired in the winter time. Some people seem to think it’s always hot in the
South, but I can assure you, having lived here all my life, that nothing could be further from
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the truth. We may not get much in the way of snow, but it sure gets cold here from time to
time, even in Florida.
As such, after the weather changed, the car went from the car everybody wanted to
ride in to the car nobody wanted to. Of course, I didn’t have much of a choice in the matter,
still being on my dad’s shit list. If anything, I was lucky to have gotten another car after the
one-two-punch that started out my legal driving days. Mind you, these two wrecks happened
within the first month of my getting my driving license.
This one lasted about a year, when I was coming out of my junior year of high
school. My father had moved out to Florida to run a golf course in Panama City, so he was
pretty occupied most of the time. I also worked there in the summer, and things had gotten to
the point where he treated me more like an employee than a son. We had never been close,
anyway, as my mother chiefly raised me. She only sent me to live with him because she felt I
needed some male influence in my life, but my father wasn’t much interested in providing
any, so a lot of good that did. I actually interacted more with my stepmother, who was closer
to my age than my parents, but who hated me with a fiery passion, so that didn’t do much
good, either. My constantly getting into trouble didn’t exactly help these matters. In short, I
was the only one in my corner at the time.
One night, I took the car out for a night out on the town with a friend, where we
hooked up with a bikini model and a Penthouse Pet at the popular night spot Club La Vila and
proceeded to party ourselves silly. We eventually ended up at the Pet’s trailer, where she
confessed her background and showed me the proof of her sordid past, which she had proudly
displayed on the walls for everyone to see. It remains the first and only time I actually saw a
girl naked before I saw her naked in real life, as dubious a scenario as that is.
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“That’s me, in all my glory,” she said proudly, beaming at me. It sure is, I thought.
Upon leaving the girl’s trailer, she asked to drive, and I relented, for obvious
reasons. Saying no to girls at that age was not an option, least of all a Penthouse Pet. She then
promptly plowed into a neighbor’s parked car. I flipped out, told her to get the hell out of the
driver’s seat, and thinking that the last thing I needed was to be involved in another wreck,
proceeded to fly like a bat out of hell out of there.
Or so was my intention.
Instead, I plowed into someone else’s car, thus making for a two-for-one wreck in a
fell swoop. We nonetheless took off, which is something I feel bad for to this day, especially
given the number that girl did on some poor sap’s vintage Mustang convertible, which had to
have been totaled.
My car emerged relatively unscathed, to the point that I couldn’t even tell anything
had happened to it at the time. However, it was night, so I really couldn’t see very well. The
next day, my father asked me for a ride for one reason or another, and when he rounded to the
passenger side, he did a double take to end all double takes. Turned out the damage may have
been unnoticeable in the back, but on the passenger side…not so much. The crazy thing is, at
no point do I recall the car ever being in the position to even mess up the passenger side door.
It was the front and back bumpers that had collided with the other cars, not the side doors. I
remain convinced that it was actually the doings of another hit-and-run perpetrator. If so, I
suppose it serves me right.
I tried to play it off as such, which certainly wasn’t far from the truth, regardless, but
he wasn’t having it. He took away the car for good this time, and told me I was on my own
from here on out.
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“Well, if that’s how you feel, maybe I shouldn’t live here anymore!”
“Maybe you shouldn’t!” he barked back.
“I’ll call my mother then!”
“She’s welcome to you!”
After a brief exchange with my mother, I did indeed move back to Alabama, where I
finished out my senior year of high school before moving to and attending college in
Tennessee. Since I couldn’t afford a car yet, I had to get a ride to and from school, though my
mom sometimes let me borrow her car here and there. Though I hadn’t been too thrilled with
her at the time for sending me to live with my father, I was happy to be back home, so I
behaved myself for the most part. On the plus side, my sister had become far more of a
nightmare than I ever was, so that in turn took the heat off of me. Thanks, sis!
Eventually, I saved up enough to get another car, a used clunker that I can’t really
recall much about, aside from the fact that it was an atrocious shade of aquamarine blue,
which caused my friends to dub it the “Fontainebleau,” after a dumpy hotel we had stayed at
in Panama City. It was a tank of a car, a Lincoln Continental, if I recall correctly. Had I
plowed into near-anything in that beast, whatever was on the receiving end would have been
in a world of hurt. Fortunately, I had learned my lesson by that point, and no wrecks occurred.
I upgraded to a Cadillac Seville for my next car, another used car. This one was
definitely nicer than the Lincoln, not that it was saying much. It also ran better, and wasn’t
near as unwieldy as the “Fontainbleau,” which was like driving a yacht. By then, I was
starting to gain some of my confidence back as a driver, but it was short-lived, I’m afraid. I
got into yet another wreck, which actually wouldn’t have been my fault if I had insurance, but
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by then my rates were so high, I flat-out couldn’t afford it, and no one was helping out at that
point, so I was pretty much on my own in that regard.
It was actually eerily similar to the first wreck I was in, except that someone had
waved me through in one lane, only to put me into the path of an ongoing car that was being
driven by an elderly lady who actually sped up because the light was turning red. I hesitated
ever-so-slightly when I saw her and paid the price…again. At the time, I couldn’t afford to get
the car fixed, so I paid off the lady who hit me to avoid a lawsuit, and that was that. I was
back getting rides from friends and my mother and the like.
My next car was a sleeker car, a black Pontiac Grand Prix that I bought used. I used
one of my father’s old connections to do so, but the conversation with him was terse. It was
clear he’d had enough of me for a lifetime. He helped me out a little with the car financially,
and had it brought up to speed via a mechanic he knew, but that was about the extent of it.
What can I say? We tried, and failed, to have a relationship, but it just wasn’t in the cards.
Maybe if one of us had put forth more effort, but we were both too stubborn to do so. Too bad
you can’t turn in fathers like you can old cars for trade-ins.
As it stands, he hasn’t tried to contact me in some ten years or so. I heard about his
having a heart attack via Facebook, from my stepsister, who he also stopped talking to ages
ago, when she came out as gay- the worst of offenses in my family. She might have well
married a black guy in my dad’s eyes, no doubt.
The Grand Prix proved nothing but trouble every step of the way. It was literally one
mechanical problem after another, to the point that it was costing more to keep the car on the
road than it was worth. After it broke down on the way home from Tennessee to visit my
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mother for the holidays, it was the last straw. I opted to sell the car to the mechanic for parts,
as I would come out better in the long run overall.
Since then, I’ve mostly depended on public transportation, as I haven’t been able to
afford a new one, or even a used car, for that matter. As my father filed for bankruptcy around
that time, he certainly wasn’t in the position to help me, and my mother wasn’t exactly rolling
in dough, either. Factor in the skyrocketing cost of insurance and my track record, and it has
become a near impossibility, unless I were to win the lottery or come into a large sum of
money!
In Tennessee and Atlanta, this wasn’t a big problem, as their public transportation is
pretty decent, but here in Alabama, it’s pretty god-awful. I understand they’re making some
progress to improve things, but by the time they’re implemented, I’ll probably already have
graduated and moved on.
My plan is to return to Atlanta or Florida and buy a car there, and hopefully stay out
of trouble from there on out. I’m the first to admit I’m not the greatest driver in the world, but
at least I’m trying to improve. Maybe to that end, Florida might be the way to go. I hear the
drivers are pretty laid back there. Or maybe just old. Same difference. Whatever the case, it
will be interesting to see where the road takes me in the future.
In the meantime, I’ll try and stay out of trouble, but just in case, you might want to
steer clear if you see me coming! Better safe than sorry, you know.
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My Life in Jobs
I’ve got a number of friends who just can’t seem to exist outside of a relationship. They
don’t date: they nest. To me, that has always been the case with the jobs I’ve had. I’ve just
never been a fly by night person when it comes to working. I get a job and I stick with it, for
better or worse. Oh, sure, there’s been the occasional flash-in-the-pan job working at a fast
food job or my very short-lived tenure as a server. But for the most part, I tend to be a nester
when it comes to jobs.
My first major job was at a Denny’s. I had been working next door at a fast food joint,
and my friend, Leonard, who was assistant manager there, said he was bailing on that job and
taking a job instead as a server at said restaurant. He also said he could get me and a few
others on as busboys, as they were understaffed all around, having just opened. Most of us
jumped at the opportunity, as the pay was more- though the hours were questionable,
particularly as I was still in high school at the time. We often pulled the graveyard shift, albeit
on weekends. That meant the occasional scenario where we’d go straight from a party to
work, which is never fun, especially if you’ve had a few too many.
I have this theory that most everyone who works in a restaurant almost inevitably covets
at least one of the other jobs they don’t have. If you’re a busboy, like I was, you long to be a
waiter or a cook, depending on what appeals the most to you. If you’re a waiter or waitress,
you long to be a host or hostess. If you’re a host or hostess, you long to be the manager; and if
you’re the manager, you wish you could be your own boss. Of course, there’s also the option
a lot of people have, and I was no exception, and that was to work anywhere but freaking
Denny’s.
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At the time, I thought the waiter and waitresses had it easier, which shows what I knew.
I would later go on to have that job elsewhere, only to discover I was patently terrible at it.
Astonishingly enough, I was a better busboy than waiter, and that’s saying something,
because I was an atrocious busboy, as anyone who worked alongside me then will tell you.
There was, however, a reason for this.
As someone who has long suffered from OCD (aka Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder),
being a busboy is one of the worst jobs you can have, and here’s why, for those unfamiliar
with either the job or the malady. The goal is to give each dish, item of silverware and
drinking vessel a quick onceover, and then send it on its way to the appropriate dishwasher.
The problem is, if you’re OCD, the very idea of letting a dirty piece of anything go through
was unfathomable. No, nothing was getting by me until it was already debris-free, dishwasher
be damned. It was spotless or nothing.
Now, if you’re reading this and you’re a consumer, you’re probably like: that sounds
great! Who wouldn’t want to eat at a restaurant where the busboys make sure everything is
clean as a whistle? Everyone, right? But there’s a catch, and anyone who’s ever worked at a
restaurant no doubt knows what it is. There’s a system to the way everything works, and if
any one element of that breaks down, the whole thing turns to shit. Guess who the weakest
link was in this particular machine? Yep, yours truly.
You see, there’s a reason you have to do things a certain way. Everyone works together
to ensure things happen in a certain way. The host/hostess seats the customer ASAP, the
waiter/waitress gets the order and sends it to the cook, who gets right into cooking it, and then
as soon as the customer is done, the busboy collects the dirty dishes and takes them to the
back to be washed. Sometimes there’s help, sometimes there’s not, so if someone isn’t doing
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their job as efficiently as possible, everyone suffers, things get backed up and chaos ensues,
typically in the form of angry customers. There were a lot of angry customers on my shifts,
especially during peak hours, when business was at its busiest.
Eventually, the manager figured out who the weakest link was, and dubbed me “Slomo,” as in “slow motion,” which was the rate at which he felt I moved. I did my best to
improve, but there’s only so much you can do if you’re OCD. Even if I allowed myself to do
the job the way I was supposed to, I would be unable to help myself from checking the results
and starting over if they weren’t done to my satisfaction, which was exacting and merciless.
Things did not improve and I was ultimately let go, but largely of my own volition.
“Shape it up or ship it out, Slo-Mo!”
I chose to ship it out, as it was really only a matter of time before I was fired, anyway.
Although I knew it helped my mom to be making my own money, even she knew the toll the
graveyard shift hours were taking on me- not to mention my grades- so she was okay with it.
Besides, I knew I wasn’t going to change my ways, because one doesn’t just flip a switch and
OCD magically goes away. (Though sometimes someone with OCD might flip that switch 36
times in hopes that it does.)
If anything, it made me that much more aware of my issues, and made me realize that
maybe that sort of work wasn’t for me, a fact that was driven home when I switched positions
to waiting tables later on and was equally overwhelmed. To this day, though, you better
believe my dishes are spotless.
Next up, I relocated to Florida to live with my father, where I worked at a golf course.
It was a relatively fun, if laid back job, and ideal for the summer. I did it for a couple of
summers and into the fall until the weather turned- yes, the weather does turn in Florida- and
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though the pay was small, I did get a few benefits, such as a free lunch and occasionally free
cases of Cokes and beer, even though I was a minor at the time. (Don’t tell anyone! Oh,
wait…)
It helped having my dad as one of the managers of the course, I might add. Though
we didn’t interact much with each other, more by mutual choice than anything else, this
ensured that the job was relatively stress-free, and that I had a fair amount of time to study,
listen to music and/or read on the job. I certainly didn’t mind being in Florida, but my father
had never shown much interest in getting to know me, so I didn’t show much interest in
getting to know him. I was more an employee than a son to him, if I’m being honest, but then,
he was more of a boss than a father to me, so there you go.
It wasn’t unlike the movie Caddyshack, only not as funny, and there weren’t really
any caddies, just on-site golf pros that worked with novices to improve their game. No
dancing gophers, either, to the best of my knowledge. (RIP: Harold Ramis)
Basically, my job consisted of a few major duties: bringing the golf carts to
customers, clean and complete with cards, pencils, and a bag of golf tees ready to go; making
sure said carts were kept clean and charged at all times; and occasionally chasing in the
customers who hadn’t come in before dark.
Sometimes, even after I told these determined golfers to come in, they didn’t. That
meant my manager at the time had to go after them, and as a golfer, you didn’t want that to
happen, especially if it was my father. He was not above cussing someone out- or more, if
necessary. I never saw him fight anyone over it, but I heard talk that it had come to that a few
times, almost all of them involving people playing in extreme rain or even snow! I never saw
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it myself, as someone had to watch the Pro Shop while he went out to fetch the offenders, lest
one of the people who hung around till closing get handsy with the beers or what have you.
In some of those cases, it was because the golfers had slipped on the ice/slick grass
or couldn’t see straight and had wrecked the carts, and the manager would have to get people
out there to haul the cart out from wherever it had crashed, and sometimes even a tow-truck.
This was slightly before cell phones were as prevalent, so I imagine the golfers mostly had to
walk back from wherever they were, rather than call for help as they would now. In those
cases, when both manager and golfer are mad, it’s a recipe for disaster. The worst I had to
deal with was a few of these wrecks and the occasional ornery drunk golfer. No fights on my
watch, thankfully.
There was, however, an amusing bit of drama involving the beer girl. My uncle,
Jonas, had the bright idea to sell more beer by hiring a local Hooter’s waitress to ride around
the course- dressed provocatively, of course- selling beers for more than they were selling in
the Greenhouse, plus tips for the girl to boot! It worked like a charm, even though the regulars
figured out they were being duped fairly early on. They didn’t care, it was a chance to interact
with a hot girl!
Other Hooter’s girls were quickly recruited. One girl, Stacie, would aid in getting me
free beer, in fact, which was doubly awesome, for obvious reasons. They looked like typical
Hooter’s girls- all baked tans and big, oft-fake boobs. There’s a reason they call it Hooter’s,
you know, and it isn’t because of the owl mascots.
Anyway, Jonas’ wife started showing up on the day one particular girl- the “original”
beer girl, Julie- was there, and it became quickly apparent that she was there to spy on her
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husband. Now, mind you, her husband had about as much of a chance with that girl as I did,
which is to say, none, but try and tell her that, and see where it got you.
I heard that one night she followed her husband to Hooter’s and stormed in and
dragged him out of there in front of his buddies, all of whom were being waited on by said
beer girl, cursing and screaming all the while.
“I’ll teach you to fraternize with that slut!” she screamed, in direct earshot of
everyone. Apparently, there were some kids around whose parents’ shielded their ears in
horror. It’s pretty bad when parents who are okay with taking their kids to a place that clearly
exploits women in a patently obvious way- see the restaurant name- are offended by
something else in a place like that. It made quite the scene and was the talk of the course in no
time, though not within earshot of me uncle, of course. Not that it stopped them from
sniggering about it behind his back, mind you.
I also remember the regulars that hung out in the Greenhouse and Clubhouse,
watching sports and the like on TV, playing cards or dominoes, getting drunk and rowdy and
talking shit about everyone, themselves included. It reminds me of this quote I heard from
some movie or TV show: “When you boys get together, it’s worse than the local sewing
circle.” It was, though I’ve admittedly never been to a sewing circle.
I have been to my grandmother’s and mother’s hair salon, though, and I imagine it’s
much like that, only with more cussing. And beer. Sort of a combination of a hair salon and
high school “snaps,” in other words, aka oft-vicious put-downs.You could always count on
this opinionated bunch to speak their mind, and they certainly didn’t care who heard it,
though, this being the South and all, they tried to refrain from profanity when women and
children were around, which wasn’t often back then.
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In some cases, there was no stopping some of the regulars from cussing up a storm,
however, much to whoever was manager’s dismay. This would be before women golfers
became more prominent, so the only situations that would bring about women and children
were family visits and couples golfing together. In the case of the latter, the guys never looked
too thrilled their girlfriend/wives were along for the ride, to say the least.
I also remember a lot of the regulars having wacky nicknames, like Stinky, Stymie,
Bogey, and, in the case of my own grandfather and father, Pooley and Butch, respectively.
My father also went the extra mile and named his various dogs after various golf
terminologies, like Ace, Bandit, and Birdie, which seems like a bit of a misnomer. That part
of it reminded me of my own friends, many of whom also had wacky nicknames and talked a
lot of crap about each other at all times and didn’t care who heard. I remember hoping that we
didn’t become the next generation of old guys that never seemed to leave the golf course.
Thankfully, we didn’t, though I wonder sometimes about the people who stayed
behind in Florida after I left. Have they joined the ranks of regulars that populate the golf
course? Are there still beer girls? Is the golf course still there, for that matter? (You never
know, in this economy.) My grandfather has since passed away and I’ve lost touch with my
father, but I know he stopped working at the golf course after a certain point and he
eventually opened a golf shop.
After that, I moved to Tennessee, where I did the server thing very briefly, before
landing a job at Books-a-Million in Murfreesboro, then after a relocation closer to Nashville,
working a similar job at Media Play. I was greatly suited to both of these jobs, because of my
background being heavy in literature, film, and music. As such, I was able to shift around the
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store at Media Play into various positions in various departments, where I was able to help
most anyone outside of the videogame section, which was never much my scene.
To be sure, I occasionally ran into trouble, it being the Bible Belt and all. I remember
people coming up to the customer service kiosk and asking for suggestions for their kids on
any number of occasions, and not caring for what I was pushing.
“I’m looking for something for my son. He’s about twelve or so.”
“Has he ever read the Harry Potter books?”
“No, and he’s not going to. That’s the work of Satan.”
One time, I even referred The Chronicles of Narnia to someone and, after telling
them what it was about, got the most hilarious reaction in retrospect.
“Sounds like black magic stuff to me. I’m not letting my kids read that trash.”
I was, like: “You do know who C.S. Lewis is, right? Most of his books are in the
Christianity section.”
“Doesn’t sound like any Christian writer I ever heard.”
“Oh, for God’s sake.” (Literally.) “Those books are classics.”
I even told them how it was kind of an allegory to the Christ myth. You can imagine
how that last word went over with these God-fearing Christians. Come to think of it, that is
when they transferred me to the video section.
Hmm. I wonder…
After that, I moved to Alabama, where I worked at another Books-a-Million, until reenrolling in college at UAB, where I eventually became a journalist, the tale of which can be
found elsewhere, in the essay, “My Life in Criticism,” which kicked off this collection. I
guess we’ve come round full circle.
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So, not that many jobs over the years, when you get right down to it. I am reasonably
dependable, it turns out, save maybe when it comes to doing the dishes fast and not pissing off
Bible-thumpers. But what are you gonna do? You can’t please everyone all the time, any
more than you can come up a winner in every job you tackle. But what can I say? I’m nothing
if not consistent, which is better than unemployed, I suppose.
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