The Best Bygone Era

It has finally dawned on me: I am old.  Not “getting on in years” or “aging gracefully” or any of those other “euphemisms designed to not blatantly call someone a geezer”, I am just flat out old.  Now the random stranger on the street could run up to me, readjust his homemade tinfoil helmet and breathlessly exclaim, “But you’re only in your mid-thirties!” and then scamper off back into the alley that presumably spawned him.  This obviously aware yet rather insane derelict would be technically correct.  However, I’m not talking about age in years actually lived, or not lived in my case.  (This is also different than cutting me in half to examine the rings of aging that I’ve acquired.  After all, my contents would be far messier than any oak or maple tree so I wouldn’t recommend this method as a first choice in determining my age.)

 

Did this thought about aging come upon me due to the fact that I am steadily approaching 40?  Or is it because I’m married, have three kids, a mortgage, life insurance policies, a steady 40 hour a week job, a lawn to maintain, a broken snowblower, and/or anything else that falls into that getting older cliché?  Is it because I’ve lost a step or two compared to when I was a mere stripling?  Nah, I wasn’t that athletic or agile or even minimally coordinated in the first place.  Maybe it was a different story when I was around 6 or 8 years old, but for the majority of us it was all downhill after reaching double digits.

No, for me this revelation came thundering down while I was in Best Buy, looking at CDs.  I realized then and there that this action was the equivalent of hiking my pants up to my chin all the while demanding a senior discount for awful coffee that I wanted as hot as lava.  I was a doddering old fart and it was irreversible.  “Why then and there?” you might ask if you were still reading this.  Allow me to answer that with a question: have you been in a Best Buy recently?  And a follow up question: were you ever in a Best Buy 5-10 years ago?  Have you noticed quite a difference between then and now?  The CD and movie aisles of the past were titans, taking up floor space like Stalin “liberating” Eastern Europe.  They also filled their acreage with variety as well.  I remember the days when the music area had a jazz section, a comedy album section, and even an actual box set section!  Now the CDs are thrown haphazardly onto whatever dingy gray racks were available.  The only tenuous attachment to categorization is the alphabet, but even that is barely followed.  Unless of course Alice Cooper was in Pink Floyd and that would explain why his greatest hits album is jammed in-between the apparently bottomless supply of Dark Side of the Moons. 

 

Beyond that the selection is disastrous.  Any band with a large back catalogue such as The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Metallica, AC/DC, and Black Sabbath all get the shaft in the wide variety department. The same is also true for the Beatles.  Wait a minute, the Beatles?!  I’m definitely used to the Who not getting the love at Best Buy, or anywhere for that matter, but the emmer-effing Beatles?  That is a rather telling barometer.  (However, this barometer might be due to some cosmic karmic justice being served so the remaining Beatles can experience how Pete Best must have felt back in 1962.)  I just never thought that I’d see the day that Barnes & Noble would have a wide and varied assortment of albums and Best Buy would begrudgingly still keep a few of those pathetic CDs around just in case someone wanted to browse something that wasn’t a purple vacuum cleaner or a different purple vacuum cleaner.

 

There isn’t even a real attempt to keep DVD/blu-rays around.  Sure, they devote some space to them, but once again these red-headed media stepchildren are treated like their CD brethren if not worse.  The only movies or TV shows available are the ones that purchasers must have bought at least a decade ago and have been rereleased at least twice in the meantime.  However, stranger things have happened and I won’t begrudge anyone getting their favorite Breaking Bad/The Walking Dead/The Sopranos/Sons of Anarchy/Whatever the Hell is a Supposedly Hip TV Show Now DVD sets.  I just find it hard to believe at this point in time that someone will come barreling in because they finally realized that Billy Madison is on DVD and they just have to have it NOW!  (Of course, the movies that Best Buy overstocks would be Adam Sandler related.  Perhaps Sandler bought a majority of Best Buy stock and demanded that from now on 1) Push those clothes washer-dryer combos that no one really likes, 2) make sure that we hire more tattooed clerks in an effort to look sort of relevant to the fickle times we live in, and 3) only The Waterboy and maybe Little Nicky will be prominently displayed all year.  Eight Crazy Nights will be out in force around Christmas, ironically.)

 

While in the CD area, I took a look at everyone else that was in the media sections and guessed that the median age was about 36 years old.  This was an easy deduction on my part because besides myself standing there, there was only me, so a head count was not difficult.  I also double checked my age with my driver’s license and then called my wife to verify.  So there I was amongst some lonely copies of poorly recorded live Molly Hatchet CDs (for only $4.99!), and more blue polo-shirted Best Buy employees milling around not selling anything than I could record in just one sitting.  To add to my ever-increasing discernment that I was most definitely a duffer in that store: I was also the only person in there sans piercings, not wearing tight hipster-douchebag sperm-killing pants, and not concerned about my tablet/HD TV/iPod/iPad/iDon’tCareAnymore.  Then to make matters worse, my eyes then fell upon a lone copy of the 20^th anniversary edition of Nirvana’s In Utero album.  I recognized then that I am aging faster than milk left in the trunk of a car in Arizona in July that was now being driven to Death Valley in order to be abandoned there after being set on fire. 

 

I guess my generation would be one of the last that still enjoyed handling media, whether it came in the form of VHS tapes, music cassettes or CDs, DVDs or even blu-rays.  On the other hand, I think ours was also the first generation that wanted everything downloadable and right now and why is it taking so long?!  We wanted movies to stream, music to upload, and books that involve batteries and not pages.  Come to think of it, is there anything sadder than a Barnes & Noble employee hocking downloaded books?  Could their fake sales smile be any more forced?  Do they realize they are being paid to make themselves obsolete?  Remember what happened to Blockbuster video stores that were pushing for mailing DVDs and downloads instead of pushing brick and mortar stores?  I guess all the Blockbusters moved next door to the Hollywood Videos, Sam Goodys, and Borders stores…in hell apparently because they sure ain’t around here anymore.

 

These up and coming uncombed whippersnappers really truly won’t experience the thrill of discovering an album that you were hunting for with the raw passion of a U.S. marshal going after a suspect that claims a one-armed man killed his wife.  They will not realize that the real fun actually begins after you’ve purchased that disc.  Now you get to deal with the host of security devices that were incorporated to obviously prevent the mass theft of Metallica’s Load and Reload albums.  First, you have a go at attempting to unwrap the plastic that clings to the CD with all the passion of a lonely aunt at a family reunion.  Then you attempt to remove the sticker on top with a switchblade, then a chainsaw, then a bigger chainsaw, and then you finally succeed by melting it with a barbecue lighter.  Then you try to get past that holographic sticker that looked like the satellite from Mystery Science Theater that has welded the case shut.  In the end you would get it opened just long enough to quickly notice that the disc was loose in the jewel case from the get go. This of course resulted in the disc getting horrendous scratches that look like they came from a rabid bobcat that was attacking a reflection of itself in the backside of Green Day’s Dookie album.  And this was a brand new album you just bought.  Ah, memories!

 

I realized in that Best Buy that I was a dinosaur and the meteor that destroyed my way of thinking was already digitally uploaded into the world.  Apparently, I just ignored it and moved on, thinking that the status quo would remain.  I’m sure that fans of Super 8 film and 8-track players thought the same way back in the day.  (Although c’mon 8-track guys…did you really dig listening to Stairway to Heaven and hearing that “chunka-chunk-whirr-chunka-wrank-chunk” sound about 2/3rds of the way through as it switched tracks to finish?  You didn’t, did you?  You can be honest with me.  We’re all here to grow together.  And you’re welcome.) 

 

The fact is I like owning stuff.  Perhaps that is the capitalist American way of thinking which some buffoonish radicals think is an outright evil attitude, but I like holding the album I’m going to listen to, grasping the movie I’m going to watch, and perusing shelves of books to read.  Everything is right there in front of me, at my fingertips whenever I want to use it.  I don’t feel that way about uploaded streaming nonsense.  I think I’m buying nothing but air if I’m buying from the cloud.  It isn’t tangible or tactile; it is an illusion of ownership, a theory that you actually “possess” something. 

This misconception can come crashing down suddenly and without warning; especially if the company decides that they don’t want you to have their media anymore.  For instance look at the following scenario and think if it looks out of the ordinary: Universal Pictures might think that they haven’t earned enough revenue from Jaws (which is impossible to contemplate but bear with me here).  So they yank the availability away, while eliminating it from streaming and also deleting it from clouds.  Universal could then wait to release it later to earn more on a product that they created the demand for in the first place.  Sounds ridiculous, right?  Yet Disney does this very thing every year with their “Cinderella IV: Citizens on Patrol is going back into the Disney vault, so get it now before it is gone!” nonsense.  Why wouldn’t the other studios follow suit?  Perhaps with a movie or TV show or album you happen to love/like/not mind/tolerate?

 

Books aren’t safe either.  Look at the debacle that occurred when Amazon.com simply removed George Orwell’s 1984 from Kindle owners.  They were able to log right in and take it away from people that had rightfully purchased and downloaded it.  How’s that for Big Brother ironical irony?  That little digital event cannot happen with someone that owns a physical copy of 1984 or any book for that matter that is comprised of bound paper pages.  Besides, unlike owning a Nook/Kindle, books on your shelves at least give you the appearance of intelligence even if you haven’t read them. 

Did you know that paper books do not require those “hurtful to the environment” batteries, if that’s a motivation for you, you supposed eco-lovers?  Also as you will have a broken Nook/Kindle at some point: they aren’t very biodegradable either, unlike those seemingly nasty and terrible paper books.  Real books are also safer to take along for air travel.  After all, I don’t mind a terrorist reading a real book because odds are I can survive a paper cut attack, but I get a little twitchy when they come on board with something electronic-y with lots of buttons.  Besides if you survive your plane crashing and end up on an island, books can be used as a ready supply of fuel for your signal fires.  You can’t get that from a Nook.  (You also can’t dogear a Nook.  Well, let me clarify: you can’t dogear a Nook easily.)   

 

Speaking of crashes: What if your computer crashes and your downloaded copies of Laverne & Shirley are all gone?  Now you have to rebuy something intangible again and pray that it stays on your computer, unless you get malware that destroys those shows and replaces them all with episodes of Joanie Loves Chachi instead.  Now you’re even more screwed.  You could just have these shows on your shelf and never have your wallet experience more than the initial purchase price.  Furthermore you would not have to worry about being inundated with a different but still crappy Happy Days spin-off to boot. 

I’ve heard the argument that storage can be an issue when it comes to physical media and that shelves need to be cleared of all this nonsense.  So you download everything you listen to on an iPod and life is good, right?  But now what are you putting on those bare shelves?  Do you have that many photos of wonderful moments to stick around here, there, and everywhere?  Are your friends and relatives attractive enough to warrant spraying your home with images of them?  Are you just going to have a Spartan lifestyle that consists of your iPod, a bedroll, a dish, a bowl, a spoon, and ramen noodles?  Gosh, that does sound fun!        

 

I do realize that this all makes me sound like the crotchety old geezer in my raccoon coat wagging his finger at those teenyboppers and bobbysoxers, knowing that someday they’ll pay for not listening to my sky-is-falling rhetoric.  Meanwhile I’ll be still shuffling around with my cane in the Best Buys of the world, accumulating media that my wife just shakes her head at.  One day perhaps all those uploads and downloads and sidewaysloads will come crashing one day and everything will be irretrievable.  This will be a sad day for the world due to the loss of technology that can provide easy pablum entertainment.

 

It won’t be sad for me however.  I’ll be cackling away in my bunker with my discs and books having a grand old time.  Now that’s how I’m going to get nice and comfy with getting older!  You just wait and you’ll see.  Flocks of entertainment starved peons with amazingly clear shelves are going to be just begging me for a peek at something from the third season of The Dukes of Hazzard.  At that point I will be completely magnanimous and state unequivocally, “Sorry, but those good ol’ boys are back in the vault.”  I would then yell at them to get off of my lawn and scream passionately “Stream THAT, you tight-panted wankers!” 
 

Ah, that felt good to get off my chest!  You know, I think I’m going to like getting older…      

    

The Corpse Of Discovery

Please take the time to enjoy something that has been a labor of love for me and for my entire fictional writing staff here at BlatherCo Headquarters Inc.  This has been painstakingly reedited, flambéed, and then placed aloft on a high shelf and forgotten about until this very moment.  Savor every word like you would savor a lollipop, an aluminum pop top from a soda can, or those paint chips that you're pretty sure weren't lead.  And you're welcome as always.

Due to the uproarious clamor and urging from legions of people, especially my legal team, the prosecution’s legal team, and random high school mock trial organizers, I have decided to finally come clean and tell what might pass for the truth.  I shall reveal the details of an event from my life that at best I had hoped to forget about, at worst I would be reminded of it by whoever happened to recognize my name at the DMV when I would be erroneously trying to renew a CDL license that I never possessed in the first place. 
 

As I recall these events, a foggy flood of memories and varying reactions occur.  I start to feel rather embarrassed and then quite impish and spritely.  Finally I have a unreasonable feeling of dread, getting rather damp right around the ankles.  (For like all great people in history, I sweat the most around the ankles when frightened and/or intimidated.  For instance, Winston Churchill would have to wring out his pant cuffs every few minutes during the conference at Yalta.)  Now with this entire interminable introduction aside, I shall talk about the one and, to date, only time that I had ever killed someone.
 
Immediately I know what you're thinking, "Hey just wait one gosh durned minute!  He's definitely killed more than one person!  Who’s he trying to kid?"  Well that’s as maybe, however I should clarify.  I meant to talk about the only person I killed accidentally, not those that I had perish either by willful intent or by willful negligence or by the willful hiring of a professional assassin.  Because if I had to go over a list of all the souls that I have had a hand in exterminating, believe you me there are not enough bytes in the whole Wonderful World Wide Web ™ on the planet to contain that cornucopia of information.  If one had the time, resources, and gullibility, one could then make a family tree that could conceivably incorporate everyone that has died. 

 

Now if one goes back to trace the cause of several of those deaths, one could see that I had a hand in eliminating not only James Dean, but also General Charles DeGaulle, Helen Hayes, former tennis star Bill Tilden, and of course, Bing Crosby.  (But as I should think that last one is rather obvious, I am rather embarrassed I even had to mention it.)
 
Few people know of my past as a bouncer in Nebraska, and the less that do the better.  I mean once you bounce one cornhusker, you've bounced them all, right?  Those who have bounced a cornhusker know exactly what I'm talking about.  And all you tarheel and hoosier bouncers can just line right up and kiss my rear because you have no idea what kind of hell cornhusker bouncing is in the first place!  (Sorry by my brusque tone, but I cannot recall the volume of times that I have had to take a stand because I get sick and tired of all you other bouncers trying to hog the spotlight with your stories. These tall tales, which by the by pale in comparison to my well-crafted epics, prove that real cornhusker bouncing will blow you all out of the water.)
 
What was I talking about again?  Oh yeah, the dead guy.
 
Anyways, fortune had smiled upon me and with only 7 and ¾ cents to my name, I found myself near a tavern on the outskirts of Oxandplow, Nebraska.  You know the kind of town: small, two liquor stores for every church, several outdated strip clubs, an outdoor Jiffy Lube, an indoor Pep Boys, a couple of condemned massage parlors, an underground Meineke, and the world's oldest slice of Virginia ham on display in a pavilion near Lake Omigawdiamdrowninghere.
 
The tavern was called "Le Dijon Prix Mousse", which in Spanish-French means "You are standing upon my doorknob, fresher lawns".  Not the best phrase or even a concept understood by mankind, but the owners, The Turkmenistans, a couple of unquestionably dysfunctional people, thought the tavern's handle was catchy enough for Oxandplow.  Apparently they thought just calling it “Bar” would bring in a hoity-toity clientele that would demand upper class trappings such as clean glasses, clean ice to go into the glasses, clean bathrooms, and free popcorn that didn’t have abnormal levels of discarded peanut shells and animal hair mixed in with it. 

Without prompting whatsoever on my part, I was told later by the local drunken bishop that the Turkmenistans had married each other initially for tax purposes, then for rather nauseating sexual intercourse, then for tax purposes again, then because of the full moon, and finally because they realized a deep yearning betwixt them that caused recognition of the firmest foundation of all: they didn't want to spring for removing their monogrammed initials from the finest bidet drying cloths that money could buy.
 
I was blissfully oblivious to all of the claptrap contained within the previous two paragraphs when I waltzed into their tavern during the summer of '95, seeking nothing more than a tall flagon of putrid ale and an overflowing spittoon that doubled as a urinal.  Fortuitously, the tavern sported both of these grand items in spades.  Bobby Jo-Jo Turkmenistan, who if I squinted I could probably describe as the male owner of the tavern, took one look at me and then immediately proceeded to look at me again, this time with his glasses on.  As the lenses had no glass in them to speak of whatsoever, it got rather uncomfortable and whilst downing a glass of what one man would call bile and yet another would call spoiled bile, Bobby Jo-Jo offered me a job.  And then he clarified what he meant by “job” by offering me employment when he barely noticed my mentioning that I did not indeed swing that way.
 
"I need a bouncer…" Bobby Jo-Jo said.  Postulating that he was going the way of the aforementioned "job" again, I was about to turn him down outright. "…For watching the place and kicking the scruffy troublemakers out", he continued.  I inwardly said, "Whew!" and then I said it outwardly as well; I felt that confident in doing so.  Noticing my sigh, Bobby Jo-Jo said, "Great, you're hired!”  Apparently in the Turkmenistan clan or perhaps in the whole of Nebraska, sighs are definitive affirmative confirmations when given in response to questions regarding employment.

This of course presented a myriad of problems.  First off, I was fairly certain that there was no dental plan involved with this job.  I mean a dental plan beyond the rusty pair of pliers and the well-bitten and rather dingy leather strop that was obviously used many times prior to my walking into what passed for a tavern door in Oxandplow.  Also given the slovenly surroundings coupled with this rather corpulent owner of ill-defined hygiene, exactly which patrons would Bobby Jo-Jo Turkmenistan consider “scruffy”?  Or for that matter, how would this place define “troublemakers”?        
 
However, all of these questions would have to wait for what I hoped would be a future barrage of never-ending redundant management team meetings at this tavern because Bobby Jo-Jo Turkmenistan's wife, Draconia, appeared at the top of the stairs which I hadn't noticed before.  During her descent down the gilded gaudy balustrade that had mysteriously escaped my attention previously, I wondered if my attention might be better spent on this lady.  That notion soon left my head as I peered at what some would call a woman, yet what others would more than likely call not a woman, but rather a grizzled veteran goaltender from the 1925 Montreal Canadiens dressed in a gown that only a horse could make reasonably beautiful.  If pressed I would go with probably a Palomino, but not an Arabian for that would be too much to ask of the breed.
 
Our eyes locked and fortunately I had the key, a crowbar, and an acetylene torch to free myself so the look did not last as long as she would have liked.  Taking the hint that I wasn’t interested, she lustfully sauntered up to me and hoarsely whispered in my left ear, "Hey, there.  You wanna go get some Now 'N' Plentys?"  I wittily retorted with what some would call a shoulder roll over the bar, but I prefer to think of it being my interpretive way of saying, "No thank you, my little plumber's helper."
 
Oh and when I rolled over the bar, I stepped on the throat of a hitherto unnoticed bartender, killing him instantly.  He must have come down on the stairs that I hadn’t noticed beforehand.  And unfortunately that was the story of how I killed someone.  Turns out that the bartender’s name was Jack Turnester and he was married with three beautiful children.   
 
But if his wife or the authorities ever found out about that, he would have been locked up...but that's another story.