Are another thing they don’t make
the way they used to. In the good old
days, a mythical time usually associated
with the prosperity of after World War II,
when everything was perfect and kids
were innocent, and even walked home from
school, sometimes in the rain.
Folks tend to forget stuff like the Rosenberg
trials, McCarthy healings, and lynching as
an intramural event, but it’s crude to mention
those things so I won’t. Why spoil false received
wisdom with facts, right?
Roadside Attractions used to be everywhere,
and some of them were really cool, cheesy
before that was even a word. They used to promise
all kinds of stuff, were adult entertainment before
anyone could begin to conceive of how adult
entertainment could get. You were supposed to
be able to see honest to goodness freaks,
human oddities of the wildest kind: bearded ladies,
two-headed Siamese twin things and other oddities
that had a cobbled together look weird but actually,
weren’t. What do you expect for a dime, anyway?
Even an adjusted upward for inflation dime.
That most of these curiosities were excessive,
wrong sex hormone challenged, had bad personal
grooming standards added to the allure, rather than
acting as deterrent. Let’s face it, if it smelled really
bad, it had to be Bad, right? Regardless of how cheap
and phony, we fell for it every single time and shelled out
our hard-earned dimes that we got for stealing returnable
bottles and mugging first graders for their milk money.
“Next time it could be the real thing!”
was our thinking and it was just this kind of
thinking that made P.T. Barnum a rich man and
made television what it is today. What is the difference
between a Reality TV show and a Side Show, anyway?
Beats me.
Mostly it was the roadside signs that sucked us in.
Placards of varying degree of sophistication:
from free-style, hand painted ones, to professionally
made ones proclaimed: GIANT MAN EATING
LIZARDS, MAN MANGLING RATTLESNAKES,
KILLER COBRAS etc. 40 miles on your right.
By the time forty miles were up, dad was usually
so, redneck pissed off he was ready to stop and
feed you to the snakes or the whatever’s, and sometimes
we were pretty sure he meant it too. Now all we have
are super highways, chain restaurants, hotels, fast food,
coffee venders and destination markers for places that
have the exact same stuff there as they have everywhere
else, instead of attractions. Sign makers have been
trying for years to convince people that these places
are actually attractions, but without the cool signs,
who believes them? I know I don’t.
Back in the pioneering days of TV,
when everything was black and white, and there
were actual variety shows and there was wrestling.
And baseball and, okay a bazillion soap operas,
but you had to go to school and couldn’t follow those.
And, yeah there was News, though I remember once
a guy actually reported that, basically, nothing
happened today. Anywhere. Can you imagine
that happening now during a 24/7 news cycle?
Don’t make me laugh. Most of all, though,
there was Roller Derby. Even a nine-year-old
could tell pro wrestling was fixed. It remains
a mystery why sixty-year-olds couldn’t.
There was nothing fixed about Roller Derby.
Just lots of hard-core action, body slamming, and
banging mastodon people. And those were
the women. The men were beyond huge.
And rules of play, who knew, really what they were?
It was like Australian Rules Football on wheels.
Mostly, it was all about slamming people over walls
and punching people and stuff. Just like pro hockey
is today. I guess it mattered who won but that was just,
like, an extra. Maybe the confusion between the idea
of competition, and the content of the actual contests,
was what made “Rollerball” the movie (the original
with James Caan and bunch of formerly warm bodies
not that ridiculous excuse of a remake) so exciting
for all the wrong reasons.
What a concept! Bathing in 86 proof liquid
death, distilled from juniper berries, and
kerosene, and tasting about as bad as one
might expect of such a lethal combination.
It wasn’t as gory as bathing in blood like
Elizabeth Bathory was supposed to have
done to improve her complexion. Now there’s
a movie idea just waiting to happen:
Chainsaw 19, Chucky’ Revenge 12,
The Blood Countess 21… But the image makers,
better known as the movie industry, with
television on the side, once described as a
vast wasteland for good reason, would have
us believe the 20’s were one big happy party
of flappers and illegal night clubs, and spoil
sports with tommy guns shooting holes in
wooden barrels of spirits. Remember the TV
Series in the early 60’s starring Dorothy Provine
as some hot chick in spangled short dresses,
twirling beads around her neck, and wearing silly
tiara style headwear? Everyone was always shucking
and jiving and no one ever got sick, or died from
the bad booze, and everybody seemed to be having
a kickass time, even the no name actor guys,
except for one killjoy….? I thought not.
Why would you? Let’s face it, Prohibition was
not a fun era and anyone who suggests otherwise
failed American History or didn’t have relatives
who lived through The Depression. Remember
what happened to Gatsby at the end of that 20’s
saga? That was something like a real-life drama
of the times. Do they even Teach American
History anymore?
Well, you know what they’re like.
No matter how well-groomed, how innocent
they may appear, how genuinely friendly
and concerned seeming, they are all shiftless,
unreliable, gamblers, whore mongers,
drug users, drunks and perverts. Old time
movies always show them as middle aged,
having a waxed moustache of some generic kind,
an immaculate white shirt, held up from the wrists
by garters, a white apron, also improbably pressed
and clean (ever see where they work? Filthy,
vermin infested, dens on inequity!) and a pistol
at the ready. If there is a woman behind the bar,
she is always a floozy, dressed like a French Whore
on a Saturday night and about as reliable.
Later images of bartenders often include more
refined men, dressed in evening wear, who are
unfailing polite and proper, in all those
black and white movies of the early part of the
twentieth century but, underneath, they are all
the same. The ones you see in illegal gin joints,
and smoky overseas cafes, are no better than
the gangsters they serve. Modern day depictions
are more realistic, but bits and pieces of the old
images survive (think Lloyd and Grady in the movie
“The Shining”.) All in all, they have earned their
reputation, as word of mouth tales of woe assert.
A new guy in town, looking for a woman, knows to,
“Ask the bartender. He’ll tell you where to go.”
Some in the trade suggest he would have been off
asking the taxi driver. It’s their actual business,
after all, to take people around, instead of catering
to traveling salesman jokes. People love to point
fingers and blame it all on the bartender when things
go wrong but, who is the first person they ask
for information? And who is the person, after a few,
they will tell their inner most secrets to, stuff they
wouldn’t tell their boss, wife, lover, best friend,
psychiatrist or torturer? Stuff like: plans for the next
military excursion, or when, why and where the next
big mob family get together is going to be and what’s
going to happen (heads will roll, group!). You’ve got it.
Bottom line is: you are not going to get a drink if you
are not nice to the bartender.
