A person who's been mentioned in this blog often but never really explored, either their life or more importantly their writing style... is one Jean Shepherd... who every Christmas we are reminded that he has certainly carved his way into the posterity of the ever lasting march of ever-ongoing humanity and thus has survived the old test of the times.
Unlike most who know him as the narrator and writer of "A Christmas Story," I have read his books and even listened to quite a decent amount of his radio show. I think as far back as the early 2000s, before podcast and internet radio was big, I was listening to his radio show. So it's almost 20 years I've on-and-off been a "fellow victim" on the march of humanity with him as a fan his show.
I remember I used to play the game Civilization II over broadband old-school modem with my friend ... and he used to have so many units that his turns took minutes to execute. I had a lot of time to wait, but in those days you couldn't really get like multiple applications going while you were waiting for a friend to do his turns in Civ 2... so one way I figured out was to play radio on a browser tab in the background. I would put on his old show in the background while my friend dispatched his triremes and phalanxes and whatnot.
I listened to a lot of Jean Shepherd while playing Civ II almost 20 years ago... and still will play video games with it in the background here-and-there to this day. Now podcasts are huge... but to me the archived Jean Shepherd radio show on WOR was basically the first podcast I was ever into.
I have pieced together something from these shows that I haven't seen recorded in any Wiki page or anywhere else... and I think I will share it because it is sort of interesting. It is an interesting little factoid about the movie "A Christmas Story."
...and that factoid is that.... this movie was almost something completely and utterly different all together!
The book Jean Shepherd wrote that most of this film is based on was written back in 1966. The book of course is titled, In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash. He would go onto to write a second book in 1971 (some content of his second book appears in the film as well).
Five years is quite a long time between novels... but there was talk about turning the first book he wrote in 1966 into a film very shortly after it was written. Yet, we know "A Christmas Story" was not made until 1983....so what happened?
In 1969, the director attached to making In God We Trust into a film.... died right before they were about to start making it. From what I understand this director was one Michael Reeves (known mostly for horror films... one which had Vincent Price in it). I am 95% sure of that. He was very young and people thought he was gonna be the biggest director ever. At 25, the age of his death, he already was regarded as a talented director.
What would the Reeves version of In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash have been like? It's suffice to say that it would not be ANYTHING like the 1983 film "A Christmas Story."
The book is about the lead character, one Ralph Parker, now a big city man, who goes back to his hometown, the fictional midwest town of Hohman. He goes to a bar owned by his old friend Flick... and he and Flick begin talking about the old days when they were just scamps in Hohman. Each chapter alternates between Adult Ralph and young Ralphie... the adult Ralph chapters are set in Flick's tavern (and are quite short) while the kid chapters are longer and set around Hohman in various places.
Now, The Jean Shepherd of 1966 was not the Jean Shepherd of 1983. The "Shep" of 1966 was known as a rebellious sort, with a whacky radio show, and who prided himself on being the honoree of Playboy Magazine's Humor Award for many years and counting. The Shep of 1966 would have wanted the focus of the film to be on the Flick's tavern chapters and the lead character to be older.
Also, after the wars (Vietnam etc.) of the 60s era ended, he was open about the original INTENT of his book, In God We Trust All Others Pay Cash... and he stated that one particular line of the book, on the last page of the book, that is supposed to hold the meaning of the text, is one that when he wrote it in 1966 had to be self-censured in some degree. This line is the following...
"Too bad Schwartz couldn't have been here," I said.
Actually, this needs slightly more context so I will type out some more area of where this line appears.
"[Flick] fiddled with the thermostat on the wall back of the bar. I swung around on my stool to look at what little remained of the day. It was now almost dark. Darkness comes early in Midwinter in Midwest Indiana. Kids shouted and shoved their way by the tavern front, going to the store, coming home from school, God knows what. Traffic had quickened outside on the street as the two lines of cars, one going to the mill, the other returning, crossed converged. I turned to Flick who was checking the cash register.
"Too bad Schwartz couldn't have been here," I said.
Flick grunted, busy with his change counting. We both knew that Schwartz had been shot down over Italy. They never found him. -J. Shepherd, In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash, pg. 263
To 1966 Shepherd, this was the point of his book summarized in a conclusion chapter at the end. A book about the memories of youth alternating with chapters of he and his old friend drinking at a bar. The contrast of youth and adulthood. This section of the book almost summarizes the whole book like a period on a sentence. They see kids outside the window of the bar, running around without a care .... and when they think of their friend who was shot down in the war... they just sigh it off and grunt. What can you do? What can we do, we fellow victims on the march of humanity? What can we do? Not much. Just acknowledge it with a grunt and move on.
People have to put themselves in the time frame of the era. Take the not-so-subtle "Johnny Got his Gun" book by Dalton Trumbo that was written in 1939 ... D. Trumbo was arrested over that book. So, Shepherd had to be guarded when talking about the pain and suffering caused by wars in this era.
The paragraph works though for what he was aiming for. You read that and think... "Huh, so that kid died in a war? Okay. That's too bad." I mean the sudden loss of the innocence of the entire book for just one paragraph in the closing chapter. It is a pretty profound thing he got in there....yet, you react to it the same way Flick does. With just a passing acknowledgement of it. It's almost mentioned so in-passing that it is in a subversive way to some extent.
The '69 film, if all went to plan and got made.... would not have resembled ANYTHING like "A Christmas Story." It would have been built off the building block of that tone, this contrast of joyful youth and through-the-wringer adulthood, for the film. Which is not the tone of the 1983 film adaptation that did indeed get made.
People Change.....
I was listening to a podcast the other day in the background while doin' some other computer stuff, it was... man, I forget now. So many people have radio shows now. I think everyone has one, almost. I think it was A. Richter asking T. Heidecker, on this podcast, if he believes that, after he had children... if his comedy style changed.
That question got me thinking. I really think that is the "change" that turned In God we Trust: All Others Pay Cash into "A Christmas Story" when it finally got made into a film in 1983. Shepherd was no longer a rebellious guy anymore. He changed. He now had children by this point. His humor changed into trying to make young people laugh rather than trying to make hep-cats and cool-chicks dig his stuff.
I honestly read a lot of the building blocks along the way to piece together the pieces of many things I think are good art. In regards to "A Christmas Story".. as weird as this may sound... I do not consider "In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash" as the proto-version/building-block of "A Christmas Story." I really do not. The text is core-content to the narrative of "A Christmas Story" but is not the proto-version of it.
This movie really takes shape in 1974, not in 1966, when an older, now a parent, J. Shepherd appears on the smash hit TeeVee show "Wonderama!".. to read his stories to Kids instead of hep-cats.
You can hear this appearance online... and within the children's laughter and reactions to his stories... you can even FEEL "A Christmas Story" being born.
(In this listing they are numbered 19 to 23, and are titled as Parts 1 to 5....
Did you find them? Did you listen to the Wonderama Monologues? THAT'S where the 1983 film "A Christmas Story" was born... the children were laughing, they were happy, the parents were happy, Bob McAllister's happy.... and that is where his short stories became tailor-made for young people.
.....that's what we see in "A Christmas Story"... a deep humorful look at life.... that will make kids laugh. The sighs/grunts of the despondent drudgery of the adult world are best left in "In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash" where those kids can grow up and find it if they want to.... but they don't really need to.
Other humorist works share this trait, the video game "Earthbound" that I have long considered in the pantheon of Great Humorist Works of the 1900s... according to author of the game... was made for his daughter to laugh at. The handwriting font used in the "Saturn Valley" portion of the game is his daughter's silly youthful handwriting. Humor works tend to share this. Wizard of Oz too.... it is aimed to make kids laugh. Not for Hip Cats to dig it.....but for KIDS to dig it.
Conclusion
I think we're almost done understanding the "Humorist" and its treasured place in a fun century called the 1900s and can move on from this running theme soon.
I apologize if the next time you watch "A Christmas Story" and see Schwartz in it.... you curse the unjust nature of the march of humanity... instead of just thinking "oh, he has a friend named Schwartz."
...but just like Flick, you'll eventually just grunt and move on.... move on to something else while humming a familiar tune.... the tune which is the marching song of humanity... the one that never ends..... the one that keeps drudging on....
This is Jean Shepherd's theme song, it even was his entrance music for his appearance on Wonderama in 1974. Apparently, he used to put this tape into a machine to kick-off and lead-in a show at a radio station he worked at as a teenager. A Hungarian radio station in Illinois... where he didn't know how to speak to the Hungarians guys well... his job was just to mash this song into the air every morning for the host to start the day with...
...he referred to it as the most mediocre marching song he ever heard... yet for some reason it seemed appropriate to score the march of humankind with....
Ra da ya ta da, ya ta da, ra ta ya ta da, da ta da ta da.......doo, doo, doo... doo, doo, doo.... and a ra ta da ta da ta da da ta da da da.... DA!
(after thought: I was looking into when his kids were born in regards to that paragraph where I suggest that the transformation into trying to make kids laugh instead of hip cats and college chicks dig his stuff... was brought about probably when he had children....
...but it seems an article written by his son in 2005 shines light on the fact that he didn't know his son very well after the age of 13.
Maybe his transformation had more to do with regret over his past mistakes?? R. Shepherd's 2005 article about Jean is well written, in his own style, and I should make that article present in this article for full historical accuracy).
Sticking to the two-topic per post format from last month, we're gonna kick out two-in-one this month too.
First off, in Section One, I am going to tell the world how highly I regard the Rocky and Bullwinkle show.
Secondly, I will use two frames from this show to try and explain my newly-crafted world-view that the common misconception that in trying too hard to find an opposite to something... we create more problems than we solve.
If you are one of the handful of people who follow me on Twitter, I was kicking the second topic around on there last week, and the second section of this essay shall be a longer more-thought-out version of that.
As for the first section...it's self-evident what that shall be.... for I cannot keep this inside any longer.... for I think I Love Rocky and Bullwinkle. I think it is a great show.
Rocky and Bullwinkle
A common theme of late on this blog has been the term "Humorist"... which has been thrown around in regards to George Ade, L. Frank Baum, Jean Shepherd, the video game "Earthbound" and a few others. I think "Humor" and the "Humorist" are terms that are taken for granted now but were terms that carried more weight in the 1900s.
I will go on record and say this, just like I brazenly (and with no regret) placed Earthbound (a video game) in the pantheon of Great Humorist Works of the 1900s.... I shall now make another brazen, and with even less regret opinion, that... Rocky and Bullwinkle belong in that category as well.
Now, I bet, a lot of people read that and wondered aloud how I can make such brazen pronouncements as this. How some rube with zero diction for the arts can start anointing video games and cartoons as some of the most masterful Humorist works of the last century. I might be a rube, and yes, I might have zero diction, and I might be of rudimentary intelligence and of only lowly wit....but.....
...when it comes to Rocky and Bullwinkle..... I know my stuff. This is not a gag, or the merest of boast, no sir, this is more like a hot butter on a breakfast toast!
Over 7 years ago, I wrote passingly on Rocky and Bullwinkle with little fanfare. They are mentioned in the Writings on Subjects piece, "Stayin' Up All Night? Oh That's Alright...."
"......so then I thought, "hey now, I hafta be up for school in like 5 hours,
what the hell is the point of going to sleep for 5 hours?" Naturally,
the sanest thing to do was just to stay up all night long. After Conan,
I'd switch to the cable channel 18 who had the GREATEST all night
programming I'd ever seen to this day...
1:30 am to 2:00 am: Rocky and Bullwinkle (this show had class) 2:00 am to 2:30 am: The Young Ones (starring Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmonson) 2:30 am to 3:00 am: Bottom (also starring Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmonson) 3:00 am to 3:30 am: Speed Racer (oh man, this song was so catchy!!!) 3:30 am to 4:30 am: The Super Mario Bros. Super Show (with Captain Lou Albano!) 4:30 am to 5:00 am: Muppet Babies (shit's tight yo...)
Then I'd go to school and sleep with my eyes open in class. I heard of
that technique in a late night movie once where Toshiro Mifune and
Charles Bronson were walking through a desert. Mifune said he can sleep
while he walks...so I figured if he can do it while he walks, it
shouldn't be too hard for me to sleep while faking to pay attention in
class."
-Writings on Subjects (1.0)
Rocky and Bullwinkle was the lead-off show in my Stayin' Up All Night long routine in my high school years. This show has deep personal significance to me, as such. In the sense that I would at least sometimes make an effort to fall asleep while it was on... which worked 0% of the time from what I remember. After it ended they hit you with high octane stuff! The Young Ones was a rebellious punk rocky show with a catchy theme, Bottom was an out-of-control violent thrill ride, Speed Racer was beyond high octane...that theme song was impossible to not shake me back awake... then Super Mario Super Show? Forget it, there was no way I was sleeping through that. Then conclude with Muppet Babies on a half-awake note.... and then it was time to start "waking up."
Trying to fall asleep to Rocky and Bullwinkle, but failing to each time, has placed it in this odd Zone of Memories inside of my head. Episodes of this show, or even just still frames from it exist as this sort of window to a world of half-awake dream-like reality for me. It was a show I would watch daily (or nightly I should say) in a state of trying-to yet-failing-to fall asleep.
Between the main segments of the show, the commercials (that's a prime time to shut your eyes a bit), the mini-segments, the Identifier segments where they ID their own show a lot and it's different each time (Rocky and Friends, Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends, The Bullwinkle Show, etc.), the "Fractured Fairy Tales", more commercials, the Peabody and Sherman part, etc.....I watched a disjointedly presented show in a highly-lucid state of being half-awake.... every, single, night.
People don't believe it when it's stated that people can have "Lucid" highly controlled dreams. Lucid dreams are defined as having dreams where the sleeper KNOWS they are DREAMING and once they know they are dreaming they can CONTROL the dream as if playing a video game inside of their mind. I can attest that I can do this, easily. Watching a whacky cartoon which had disjointed sequencing whilst being half-awake as a young teenager (14-17) every single night.... had a pretty decent sized influence on that formulating hunk of cauliflower inside of my skull.
I know I have seen probably every episode of Rocky and Bullwinkle ...yet... if you were to ask me to describe in great detail one of the main plots of one of Rocky and Bullwinkle's adventures... I could not. I really couldn't. If you asked me to recite to you one of the shaggy-punch-lines from Aesop's Fables... I could not. If you asked me to describe any of Peabody and Sherman's plots in detail... I could not.
This show, honestly, exists in its totality in my brain... yet on a fractured subconscious level. I know it's there but in a Zone of Memory soooo strange that it's more conducive to a Non-Reality than to a Real-Reality. A Non-Reality with pale-pea-green, submarine-interior-grey, not-so-Van-Dyke-brown, and dis-jarringly-drab-orange Backgrounds.
I shouldn't feel bad for not being able to describe a plot of this show in detail.... for even if you asked the LEAD CHARACTER of the show to explain the plot of one of their adventures to the other LEAD CHARACTER.... they could barely even do it!
If you skip to the 20:21 point of the video below you can see what I'm trying to say...
Did you watch Rocky try and explain the plot of the segment that probably happened a commercial ago and a weird fairy tale or fable ago to his friend? If you've never seen or heard of "Our Boys" (as portrayed by Rocky and Bullwinkle) that scene above at the 20 minute mark is the crashest course on it you'd need.
This show.... was the Greatest. I love this show. It is beyond absurdity, it is beyond organized chaos, it is beyond REALITY even, it is a lucid dream about a flying squirrel and a moose... and it should be regarded as one of the greatest works of Humor of the 1900s....It truly should.
...and I will go as far as to say it may, without even me knowing it, it may be one of the most important subconscious influences on my view of the world. As weird as that sounds.
Half-awakingly watching Rocky and Bullwinkle in a state of lucid dream-like reality definitely had an impact on how I understand the world and how I interact with it. I'm not even joking. That's true.
I want the entire world to know it. I want the entire world to know that I....
...Love Rocky and Bullwinkle!
Society's Need and/or Obsession with trying to find Polarized Opposites in All Concepts
Now here's something that I hope you really like.
I really do, at times, observe some old Rocky and Bullwinkle still frames and let my brain zone out to back when it was a 13 year old kid's brain, when times were simple. Take my brain back to that pale-pea-green, submarine-interior-grey, not-so-Van-Dyke-brown, and dis-jarringly-drab-orange, World of Not-Being-Awake but Not-Being-Asleep.
I call it the Rocky and Bullwinkle Zone.
I was looking at two frames the other day, and I came to a stunning conclusion about Society, gang. In the Zone, my brain festered upon the notion of why we need an opposite for everything. I think it is a very unlooked-at problem in today's world, I do.
So many people NEED to find polarized opposites for they feel being the polar opposite of something they don't like will remedy a problem they believe exists. However, the notion of opposites to begin with is misleading and confounding though.
If you asked a person, what is the opposite of the following terms; Day, Down, and Monday.
They would more-than-likely respond with: Night, Up, and Friday.
I believe that to be a very rudimentary understanding of opposites. Let's look at a Rocky and Bullwinkle frame:
Here we see "Our Boys" (as portrayed by Rocky and Bullwinkle) in a boat, against a grey-purply-blue background, whilst Rocky points to his head whilst Bullwinkle looks confused.
Now this is a concept as much as any other concept is a concept.... indeed? Yes, indeedement. Now if our opposite-finding obsessed society was asked to conjure up a total polarized opposite to this concept.... they would say...
It's Boris, the polar opposite of the hero Rocky, pointing to HIS head whilst Natasha looks confused. Right? That's right, right? I don't think so.
We have to assume so many intangibles about Concept A (Rocky in Boat pointing to Head w/ Bullwinkle appearing Confused) for Concept B (Boris in Boat pointing to Head w/ Natasha appearing Confused) for this polarization of concepts to pass the litmus test of truth.
First of all, this is a TOTAL visual opposite. Who is to say a polarized opposite of something has to be visual? Who is to say the opposite of Rocky in Boat w/ Confused Bullwinkle would not just be something as simple as Rocky NOT IN A BOAT and Bullwinkle NOT IN THE SCENE AT ALL? That is perfectly as acceptable a polarized view of Concept A as the previous proposed opposite was.
Each concept is inherently born with a self-canceling out Non-Version of Itself... thus in the simplest form and terms... the opposite of any concept is its own self-cancelling concept of its own self.
Thus.... the opposite of "Day" is not "Night". The opposite of Day is the self-canceling concept of Not-Day or Un-Day. The opposite of Down is not Up. For when you are not Down you are simply Not Down or UnDown. The opposite of Monday is not Friday. It is Un-Monday, Non-Monday, or Anti-Monday.
How can Friday be the opposite of Monday anyway? Saturnalia (AKA Saturday), the precursor proto-version of Christmas, is far more the visual opposite of Monday than Friday is, no? Indeedement. Saturday under this polarized-oriented logic is more conducive to the opposite of Monday than Friday is.
I don't see Saturday or Friday as the opposite of Monday though... I see Not-Monday as the opposite of Monday.
The world can become so polarized under the weirdest of ground rules at times. In the Real-Reality of Everyday Life we have some of the most non-sensicle and un-logical polarized non-nuanced views of the world from millions of bizarre angles and think nothing of it. In this Black and White, Up and Down, Right and Wrong, Left and Right, Good and Bad World of ours.... we get hung up on what "side" of "things" we are all "on".
There's a common saying that Grey is the Balance between Black and White... that Justice is the Balance between Right and Wrong.... Forward is the Balance between Left and Right.... etc....
...but that's a bunch of hokey phony bologna too, Bullwinkle. There's so much more than just the Grey Area between Black and White, gang. There's endless color combinations that exist in between those polarized concepts. There's pale-pea-green, submarine-interior-grey, not-so-Van-Dyke-brown, and dis-jarringly-drab-orange... like the background colors in the World of Rocky and Bullwinkle. Colors that are disjointingly out-of-placingly almost uniquely odd in their own inherent nature.
In the silly polarization of Rocky/Bullwinkle in a boat and Boris/Natasha on a boat... what would society deem as the "Balance" between the two polarized concepts? Why this of course....
...Bullwinkle confused, on a boat, but not with Rocky... but with Boris (dressed here as actor Spencer Tracebeck). Now, how is this Balance? I mean it is the merged concept of both concepts .... but in the end doesn't it just leave us more confused?
What was I writing about again? I wish I had a Rocky to explain these articles to me as I write them... but I don't.
It seems we try our best to understand concepts, and sometimes we don't like those concepts we conceptualize... so we create polarized opposites of these concepts to try and cancel the original concept we conceptualized out....and then we feel the polarized opposite may have gone too far... so we trace it back a bit and attempt to find "balance" between these concepts we have conceptualized...
....yet in the end... it still MAKES NO SENSE AT ALL!
Now watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat, you guys. Have any of you ever thought that Life doesn't make sense but in a shocking shaggy-dog twist of fate... that not only does Life not make sense but that.....Life Is Not Supposed to Make Sense?
Is it fair to say that, under that logic, that the Notion that Life Doesn't Make any Sense... totally makes Life Make Sense?
Okay, I have to exit the Rocky and Bullwinkle Zone now. This is getting a bit out of hand here. Mayhap one day we shall return here.... but this is enough for now.
I was without power for many an hour recently, as a high-gust wind-storm decimated trees and power lines in my region. I didn't have TeeVee, video games, computer, lights, or even heat for a while.... which really reminds you how addicted to these things we are.
Suddenly, I remembered a Skeletor radio from 1986, that still works. It's a small transistor radio, with Skeletor's face on it... and his eyes are speakers that can output various AM and FM stations if you tune the orange wheel to recieve the signal.
You've gotten me through some tough times, Skeletor. You've gotten me through some tough times, Skeletor.
It's hard to sit at night in the dark... with candles and stuff. Your world can quickly become more Edgar Allan Poe-esque or Vincent Pricey than you would ever want it to be. Darkness looming like a wave of human malfeasance all around you. The phantasms and ghastly forms of the next world begin calling out to you... as you are imprisoned in darkness. For all you know, the 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo, are just waiting behind the bathroom door to steal your soul and cast you from the Land of the Living forever and for always.
I ran frantically about the darkness, of my soul and of the house, trying desperately to escape the madness of night. Lo, what is before me? Surely not a Skeletor Radio? It is! Please Skeletor! Tune in to an AM talk radio station and through the speakers in your eyeless eyes deliver me from the darkness of my mind!
AAAAAAAAEEEEEEEEIIIIIIIEEEEEE!
I struggled to find a huge square shaped battery that this 1986 Skeletor Radio required, thankfully there was one. As I turned it on, the voices of talk radio show host Elias Makos brought me back to reality as his voice slowly emerged above the darkness through the eyes of Skeletor. Skeletor's eyeless eyes pierced the darkness and acted as a portal to a world of Light.... where people had power and were calling the Hydro people and asking them when people trapped in the darkness would regain their Light and be delivered from a world of fright.
So thanks you to Skeletor, Elias Makos and the rest of the CJAD talk radio gang, for helping me make it through a rough time where I couldn't watch TV or play video games for a little while.
That Skeletor radio unlocked some memories inside of me as well.... and if you want to follow me into the next section you will enter into the world of 1998... a world of natural disaster and movie theaters.....
Ice Storm 1998
That Skeletor radio reminded me of the last time his services were needed, back in 1998, during the Ice Storm of '98... which was not a joke, at all.
The Ice Storm of '98 was as if Hell literally Froze Over... and it sucked, big time. We woke up one morning to find a city entombed in a prison of Ice. Whole-ass trees....FROZEN. Whole-ass houses.... FROZEN. Whole entire cars.... just FROZEN in ice. Power lines? Forget it.... they froze and broke into millions of pieces like a sub-zero jigsaw puzzle.
It was a legitimate natural disaster, I'm not exaggerating. If you're from the North-East of North America... you probably understand that some winter weather related events can be classified as Natural Disasters.... and Ice Storm '98 was one of those.
According to this source, almost two million people were without power for extended periods of time and 600,000 people left their homes during that time.... mostly to go stay at someone's place who had power... or maybe a shelter.
It was not as bad as say an earthquake or a typhoon... or a more well-known Natural Disaster... but it was in its own way a total Naturally Occurring Disaster.
It was during this time, once again, that Skeletor acted as a portal to the outside world for a small family with no power. The youngest memeber of that family, me, being unable to go to school (YES!) but in an ironic twist.... not being able to watch TV or play video games whilst home from school. At that point, if you don't have to go to school, but cannot play ten hours of straight video games... then what is the point of not going to school, you know?
It was cold too. We had to make fires and pet our pets (Astro the Cat, and Cubby the Dog) to stay warm. My mom even used her super cool looking Fish Candle to get more light. This was the coolest candle I had ever seen and had been in our house for as long as I could remember. It was a burgundy, orange, red, yellow Fish of multi-colored layered wax....that looked cooler than you can picture in your mind right now. It was the coolest fish-candle I'd ever seen.... and we used it to make more light. I miss you, Fish Candle. Wherever you are, I hope you are burning brightly.
We had two transistor radios back then, a cool looking old-school grey one that looked like it fit the part of being an old radio.... and one that didn't fit the image of what an old transistor radio should look like....a radio, you guessed it, that was Skeletor's head and who's eyeless eyes acted as speakers.
Do you know what was on the other side of my Skeletor radio? You'll never guess. You won't. Do you really want to know? Okay, I will tell you.... it was ....
HE-MAN
Yes, the other side of the radio was another head, that of HE-MAN, which is really cool. Yes, the Skeletor (or HE-MAN radio if you prefer to call it), tuned us in to CJAD where Mark Rennie helped many get through the Ice Storm of '98. After looking up this broadcaster it seems he passed in 2006... he was a great man who thanks to Skeletor's eyes helped me through those lonely powerless days. Wherever you are Mark Rennie, I hope you are burning brightly.
Eventually, we gave in and went to my uncle and aunt's house who had power and chilled there with my cousins for a hot minute or two. My dog wasn't used to being in a new environment and I think he peed on their kitchen floor.
Yet, one thing we could not shake from our minds, was my paternal Grandfather, who went by the self-titled moniker of Paw Jack. He was a stubborn old man who didn't want to leave his powerless apartment. So, to get him out of there for a while we told him we'd take him to see a movie and then go eat something. He agreed.
There was a movie theater with power... so we checked the listing in the newspaper... it was January 1998, and the movie we went to I believe had Jack Nicholson, Helen Hunt, Greg Kinnear, and Cuba Gooding Jr. in it.... according to research this film was called... "As Good as it Gets."
I want to warn Mr. Nicholson, Mz. Hunt, Mr. Kinnear, and Mr. Gooding Jr.... that the following paragraph(s) of what my Grandfather thought of your film are not kind. He hated your movie so much. He thought it was the worst movie he ever saw.
I think because it was a Natural Disaster, that people in the theater weren't in full-society mode... and because of that the ensuing tirades my Grandfather hurled at the film were taken more leniently. I guess you get a free pass to be grumpy when a Natural Disaster is going on.... but... man, my Grandfather hated this movie soooo much. It was a memory I will never forget.
In 1998, I was probably like what? Like, 15, I guess, 15 years old. I was a shy kid, if you were to ask many people who knew teenage Me.... there's probably many students at my high school who spent five years with me who never heard me talk.... like, teenage Me was shy, and introverted... BIG TIME. What ensued in public, in a movie theater, by a person in my party of people in the theater ... .was something so foreign to me.... so unusual.... like.... the stuff he was saying... and how loud he was saying it.... it was just jaw-droppingly an event I had never seen before.
The things he was saying were so Unique though too.... I still remember some of his lines to this day... one of them was....
"A BABY COULD'VE WROTE A BETTER MOVIE THAN THIS WITH ITS LEFT HAND!"
-Paw Jack
Who says something like that in a movie theater? IMDB says James L. Brooks from the Simpsons wrote this film.... well, James L., I'm sorry to inform you that my Grandfather believed a BABY with its LEFT HAND could write a better screenplay than you did.
Another doozy that he laid on this film... for the whole theater to hear.... was this unique doozy,
"IF I HAD A VIDEO LIBRARY AT MY HOME... I WOULD NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS INCLUDE THIS IN MY VIDEO LIBRARY!!"
-Paw Jack
This is my favorite line, ever. He felt the need to assure you that he's not some geek who has a video library in his home (i.e. walls of VHS tapes)... but in the event that he did have a video library in his home.... he would not let a horrible movie like this be allowed in his collection... because this movie is that Bad.
So, to all involved in the making of "As Good as it Gets" ... I don't necessarily agree with him... but just to have some record of my late Grandfather's opinion of your film as recounted to me in a pretty full movie theater during a Natural Disaster.... for posterity .... so, to all involved in that film, in the case that my Grandfather owned a video library (which he did not).... your film does not meet the criterion to have been included in his non-existent video library.
Oh man, I miss that guy. I'm gonna jot down one more Bonus Paw Jack story which is of a similar vein while we're on this topic....
I went with him to a movie again a few years later... it was the year the first Harry Potter movie was out. Research says this film was out in 2001... so this story takes place in 2001.
My grandfather took me to Harry Potter 1, Harry Potter and the Gimmick of Eastwick, or whatever. Now get this, I didn't want to go.... I didn't know what a Harry Potter was. I was like already 18 in 2001... that's older than the age range for H. Potter....it was Him who wanted to see it very badly.
At first I didn't know why, I thought maybe he read it and liked the book or something.... but on the way there he told me why he wanted to see it. He told me that he read a newspaper article that said the Harry Potter series was getting kids to read books again... and he wanted to see what this gem was that was finally getting kids to open books up again. That was the reason. He had no idea, like me, what the books were about or anything.....and guess what?
....HE HATED IT!
When we got out of the theater he summed up the first Harry Potter film as so....
"WHY WOULD ANY KID WANNA READ THAT GARBAGE FOR!?!?!?!"
-Paw Jack
I don't necessarily agree with him... but for the record... if anyone involved in the making of Harry Potter is interested in knowing my Grandfather's opinion of your literature and films....
Mz. Rowling.... a BABY could probably write a better book with their LEFT HAND! As for the films, if my Grandfather had a video library (which he did not)... he would never put such a sub-par film series as the Harry Potter films in his non-existent video library. That's what my Grandfather thought about the Harry Potter books and films... not that I agree or anything... but it's just nice to have it recorded for posterity.
My Grandfather was from an older time, he was in World War II, and got a grenade exploded near him and shrapnel caught in his gut.... so he had a reason to be a grouchy man. I think these memories are dear to me just because of the sheer unique element of the statements. I've never heard any film critic describe film in such terms. The line about his non-existent video library is to-this-day one of my favorite lines I've ever heard anybody say.
Conclusion
Thank you Skeletor (or HE-MAN depending on what side your facing) for getting me through the Wind Storm of '19 and reminding me about the Ice Storm of '98.
I'm trying to write in this every month, I don't really have a barn-burning, house-a-fire, blaster-master article for you readers this month though ... just a short one.
If any of you aspiring writers in training want to look at a fun writing style with me, this month's article is another look at an interesting/unique writing style. We've looked at a lot over the years, recently with people like Baum and Ade... but this one is waaaay more obscure. Way more.
I'm not even sure who to attribute this Short Story to, even. It is a story written by a character in a video game inside of the video game's world... and this character is writing it under pseudonym (fake name) within the game. So, it's not even stated which character of the game wrote this GREAT short story, but, there are some hints laid hither-and-dither au soupçon as to which character wrote it ... if you look closely at it.
Before we celebrate the writing style of this character we shall first look at another instance of a Short Story within a video game ... just to give you an idea of what I'm talking about ... because that above paragraph doesn't sound as understandable as I'd like it to be.
Example of a Secret Short Story in a Video Game (this is not the "Writing Style of the Month"... we'll get to that later)
Shigesato Itoi snuck a Short Story of his, a chapter from "Let's Meet in A Dream," into his video game Earthbound. In order to read this short story he wrote in real life in the video game's world, you must do an outlandishly out-of-the-way task.
In Earthbound, a game where four youths go on a Journey to save the world from terrible aliens, you can buy a house in your hometown. This house costs $7,500.
The time-frame to buy this house is short.... once you leave your hometown, the shady real estate man sells it to someone else... so you have to buy it near the very beginning of the game. Now, let's make this clear, getting $7,500 in the first town of Earthbound is not easy. If you sell all your stuff, sell your baseball equipment, sell a can of fruit juice that you found in a garbage can, sell that hamburger you found in another garbage can..... you will have, oh, about, like 80 bucks.
If you want to buy the 7,500 dollar house... you need to fight like a million crows, wild dogs, and snakes.... and after you do, and you give that humbug real-estate man that $7,500 bucks.... you can go into that house.... and read one of Itoi's very-short Stories.
"Beak-Point Real Estate"
It is a short story about a guy who gets caught speeding, but luckily has a slightly over-weight wife, so he tells the cop his wife is pregnant and in labor, so the cop goes "Oh! I'll give you a police escort to the hospital!", and the guy's like "No thanks, I don't need one" or something like that... and then cop is like "it's okay don't worry, let's go"... and then the guy freaks out and tells a second lie that the baby is a DEMON child and the cop must stay away from it. THE END.
Many an Earthbound enthusiast enjoy to de-construct this scene in the game. It's interesting because, in this house, not only is the "fourth wall" down (i.e. the player's view into the World)... but also another wall is broken down within this house... both FIGURATIVELY AND LITERALLY! The author of the game is talking to you as the real-life version of himself within the game's world only once these two walls are both broken. It's kinda cool from an artsy sorta sense, no?
I was talking about "Humorists" last article... I really think Shigesato Itoi is a modern day Humorist... I think he is. There's stuff in Earthbound that is .... so good, man. I would place Earthbound, a video game, as one of the great Humorist works of the 1900s (199X in this case). I really would put it there.
Okay, so now you know what a short story in a video game is like....so let's talk about the Writing Style of the Month now!
Erk's Adventure by Hitman Bravo !!!
The Writing Style of the Month being celebrated today is a short story from the video game "Suikoden III"... written under the name of Hitman Bravo, but who even was this incredible auteur who penned this masterpiece within the game? It's a mystery.
Who penned this Masterpiece???
Erk's Adventure is a serial novel that updates every so often in the newspaper published by a character named Arthur within Budehuc castle within Suikoden III. It is buried in the back pages and no one knows who's writing it.
There's clues within the game, and if you do add them all up... it's clear who wrote it. Now, if you haven't ever played this game or don't plan on in the future... you probably won't care who wrote this masterpiece within the game's narrative ... but if you have played it and never pieced it together... the guy who wrote it is ...
Ace is Hitman Bravo.
....Ace.
If you're going to read the next few paragraphs it's probably going to be more interesting if you're someone who's played the game... whereas if you have not ... these conjections and evidations which are going to show it's Ace who wrote it.... is not going to have much use/sense to you.
If you pay the teenage-detective who lives in the second sub-basement of Budehuc castle to investigate Ace... after the third investigation he will inform you that...
"He's writing a novel under a funny pen name. Maybe it has already been published!"
-Kidd
Ace will mention that he loves reading and is working on a novel at one point of the game. The characters of his novel are based on himself and people he knows. Erk is Ace, Baker is Joker, and Marine is Elaine.
With the mystery of who wrote this short story now solved, let's read it!
The following is a short story written by Ace in the video game Suikoden III,
"The strongest Adventurer on Earth, Erk de Forever; walked into a trap at
the Cyndar Ruins and had to undergo trials. What were his trials? Pure
hell. He was caught in a hole, and hot water was poured onto him, Erk,
in danger
to be continued... After getting out of the hole, he turned the tap off to stop, the hot
water. It really was a close call. Once he calmed down, he heard a
strange sound from the back of the hallway. It was a huge, stone,
rolling toward him. "I'll be squashed!"
Erk in danger!
The big round stone was rolling toward him noisily, coming nearer each
moment. "Wow!" Erk jumped to the side and dodged the stone. "I was safe
because there was a lot of space, If the hallway was narrower, I would
have been squashed." Then the ceiling fell down on him!
Erk in danger! The ceiling falls right on the top of him. But Erk holding the ceiling
with both arms, stirred up his spirit. "How about this!" Erk with his
tremendous strength, holding up the ceiling and put it back into place.
"How about my strength?" Erk walked toward the back of the ruins, but he
fell, into another hole!
Erk in danger!
Erk was stuck in a hole again, "Ouch, Curse my luck!" Then, hot water was
poured onto him again. "I've botched it up!" The water was very hot and
Erk's skin became red.
Erk in danger!
After crawling out of the hole, he turned the tap off to stop the hot
water. "What danger! I was going to die!" Then a knife was pressed
against the back of his head. "Don't move , if you do, I'll stab you!"
said someone, so Erk gave a little laugh and bravely turned around.
There was a beautiful lady behind Erk. “Who are you? Hey, who are you?
I’m Marine. The treasure hunter. Won’t you treasure hunt with me?” “Oh
sure,” said Erk. “Then let’s go together,” said Marine.
To be continued.
Erk and Marine walk to the back of the ruins together suddenly many
needles stuck out, of the wall like crazy. They could be severed. “Look
out! The needles are sticking out! We’ll be skewered with them! Erk, do
something!”
Erk and Marine in danger! Many needles came out of the wall. “Damn you needles!” Erk grabbed the
needles, and with his enormous strength, put back into the wall. “Erk,
you’re really strong. You’re great.” “Yeah, I have tremendous strength.”
Erk was relieved, but suddenly a monster came out from the back of the
ruins!
To be continued…
From the back of the ruin’s a gigantic and strong looking monster came
walking toward them, “Erk! It’s a monster!” Marine was surprised, but
Erk stood in its way. “I haven’t seen you for a long time, Monster
Baker. I came to get rid of you.” The monster looked down at Erk.
Erk in
danger! "Die!" said Baker and knocked Erk Out! "Ouch!" Erk blew away. "Ha ha
ha!" Baker laughed really heartily, shaking it's body. "Pull yourself
together!" Marine said, then Baker drew nearer to Marine!
Marine in
danger!
Baker, the monster, attacked Marine. Then Baker chopped Marine’s head
with its steel arm. “Steel knockdown blow!” “Ah!” Marine fell down.
“Maaarrriiine!” cried Erk. Blood gushed from Marine’s head.
Marine in
danger! Blood gushed from Marine’s head, by the steel arm. “Ah, I’m going to
die.” “You won’t die just because your head cracked,” said Erk. “I love
you, Erk.” “I love you, too.” Then Marine died. “Maaarrriiine!” Said
Erk.
To be continued…
Marine died from Baker's attack. Baker laughed heartily and said,
"Hahaha! Frustrated Erk!" "Maaarrriiine!" Cry, Erk , cry "Damn it,
Baker! I'll avenge her! I'll avenge her!" Erk attacked Baker.
To be
continued. Erk attacked Baker. Baker was tired after attacking Marine, and ran away
in a mad rush. "Waaaiiit!" Erk wanted to revenge Marine’s death, and
chased Baker, who was running away toward the back of the ruins. Only
Marine’s dead body was left behind.
To be continued…
Erk ran after Baker, and then came out to a room full of treasure. “Hey,
Baker! If you don’t come out, all the treasure in this room will be
mine!” Baker replied, “I won’t let you do that!” and appeared. “Let’s,
fight to the finish,” said Erk.
“I’ve rested a bit, so I’ll give you another steel chop!” said Baker.
Then he threw his arm up in the air. Erk was brave, so he said, “I won’t
lose!!” and attacked Baker. “You nut!” Baker said and attacked Erk with
his steel arm. Baker attacked Erk with the steel arm, “Bang!” The arm hit Erk’s head.
“Ouch!” said Erk. “You bastard!” Erk angrily held Baker’s body and threw
him on the wall. “Nooooo!” Baker screamed, and died.
After a fierce fight, Baker died. “Good grief,” said Erk, and was
surprised by the treasure in the room. “These are the legendary
treasures that make people come back to life! Great! With these
treasures, Marine could live!” Erk was so happy that he ran out of the
room.
To be continued… When the treasure was placed near Marine's body, she came to life. "I'm
alive," said Marine. Erk said,"I'm glad you are alive, Marine." "Oh
you're being cute, Erk," Marine said. The ruins then collapsed, and the
two run away.
(The End)
Thank you very much for reading "Erk's Adventures" -Ace (AKA Hitman Bravo)
Obviously, Ace is not the greatest writer of all time.... and whoever wrote this short story in real life was trying to write as a person who is not necessarily very versed at writing.... but.... the combination of all these factors... the real life author trying purposely to write as a bad writer... the translator translating a poorly written short story into English... and everything else involved ... I think it comes out of the blender as being.... GOOD! I really do. I like this story.
I looked back and re-read my short story "The Swamp" that I wrote in this blog a few years ago... and I, re-reading that (a la Krapp)... see a splash, a smidgen, or soupçon of Hitman Bravo in there. I do, I think Ace's style is that good that it even sneaks its way into my brain as I write.
Wanna know something? Cheeseball writing is a guilty pleasure of most, if not all, readers. Do you know why, though? It's because we GREW UP on this stuff as readers.
Let me ask of you, my generation, 80s kids, what is the first books we all read when we were able to start reading whole novels? It wasn't celebrated works of the past... it was cheeseball stuff, guys. It was. If you were a boy ... you probably read stuff like The Hardy Boys, Encyclopedia Brown, and things like that... if you were a girl you probably read Nancy Drew, and... oh man, The Babysitter's Club! If you were a female reader in the 80s you must've read The Babysitter's Club. The Babysitters Club, from 1986 to 2000, sold almost 200 MILLION books!
Cheeseball writing is a guilty pleasure to everyone because we ALL, no matter what generation... grew up and were deeply influenced by greasy, sweaty, oil-dripping writing! We all were!
That's why I don't see Erk's Adventure as being "bad" writing... I actually sort of view it as a high-form of art in a way. I really, not jokingly, think it's a great short story. I do. Enjoying "bad" writing shouldn't be a guilty pleasure, you know? We grew up on this stuff, our first exposure to the world of fiction through words, for anyone in the 1900s, was greasy kid's stuff. The greasiest of kid's stuff. It's so familiar to us that we can't deny that we love it. We just can't! It's part of who we are!
So, I hereby award Hitman Bravo with this month's Writing Style of the Month award!
Conclusion
Don't deny your roots, gang. We all grew up on hokey writing. Whether it was the Bunnicula series, about a pet rabbit who turns into a vampire, or Encyclopedia Brown, or the Babysitters Club ... or going further back to greasy adventure or mystery works in the earlier half of the 1900s.... we all grew up on this stuff.
There's nothing wrong with it. We like it and we shouldn't be ashamed of it. So pick up a cheesy book and read it! Reading is good for you!
...But Don't Take My Word For It!
Sha-neer naaa-neer-neeer Anythiiiiiing! It's in a book, take a look! Ya!
I wrote in the itinerary "September: The Wizard of Oz" ... and to be honest that topic was almost chosen at random just to make it a challenge for me to remember to write in this.
This is going to be a bit of a challenge... I haven't seen the film in decades and really have no clue why I wrote that the Wizard of Oz is the next Subject for Writings on Subjects (New 2 Stronger) to cover.
The main angle I was thinking of was "Things from youth that are different after you re-view them as an adult" ... and I narrowed it down to three choices...
1. Summer Rental (1985) starring John Candy
2. Waiting for Godot
3. Wizard of Oz
Summer Rental was a film I always considered as a B-rank Candy offering as opposed to his A work (Planes/Trains/Automobiles, Great Outdoors, Uncle Buck, etc. being his "A" work). I wanted to give Summer Rental a try and see why I filed it away as one of John's lesser works ... and even after re-seeing it... I don't think I was wrong ... it's a B+ Candy film if anything more than a B.
Waiting for Godot was something I didn't like at all when I watched it as a 26 year old person ... I thought it was boring, contrived, and pointless. This 36 year old version of me re-watched that ... and holy crap ... I got it about 1000% more than 26 year old me did.
In one sense, going back and watching Waiting for Godot again and comparing what 26 year old me thought of it to what 36 year old me thinks of it ... made me feel like I was a living version of one of Beckett's other works, "Krapp's Last Tape" ... which is a solitary play about this dude listening to old recordings he made on a tape recorder of what he thought of life many years ago ... and presently ruminating and lamenting them to the audience (sort of what N. MacDonald does in "Dirty Work" if you young folks are looking for something you'd be familiar with).
Me just Krapp's Last Taping out big time to Godot ... would be a good article ... but man alive, man.... it'd be too heavy. Way too heavy, man. I could probably Krapp out pretty loose for about a few thousand words for Godot but it'd be pretty heavy, guys.
If you wanna Krapp out for Godot... you guys can watch "Krapp's Last Tape", and then "Waiting for Godot" ... and you can Krapp the heck out for Godot yourselves in your own time.
So If we're not doing Summer Rental (1985) starring John Candy as this month's topic, and we're not doing Waiting for Godot... looks like we're gonna do the Wizard of Oz after all.
Sections:
1) Formula
2) Then and Now ... my view of it as a growned-up person as opposed to my view of it as a young person 3) What would a modern day version of it be?
The Wizard of Oz's Formula
Let me clue you guys in on something that ALWAYS works in writing... and that's the Four Person Journey and it is maybe the hallmark style of fiction.
I remember I closed this blog like a few years ago because I was gonna write a book and actually like try and "make it" as a writer... like a Pro Writer, you know? I was gonna do a gigantic four-person journey that would have been like eight million words. I gave up on it early because fiction is not something I am really versed in. My short story from early 2019, "The Journey", was a short 3-person Journey (with parts 3-80 left blank in case one day I do want to turn it into a full-out booky-book).
Most Pro Writers have done good 4-person Journeys. A more modern one is Stand By Me which is S. King's 4PJ where four teens wanna go see a dead guy in the forest so they embark on a life-altering adventure.
I'm surprised, after playing Final Fantasy XV the last few weeks, that "Stand by Me" is huuuge in Japan. I think the guy from "Legends of Localization" did an article on this. Stand By Me is maybe bigger in Japan than it is anywhere else. I don't think it's the formula of the movie that they wig out for... I think it's the dead body part though. There's been a lot of articles lately about this spooky forest in Japan where you can see a dead body most likely .... and that forest has been around Japan folklore for a long time... so I think the idea of four teens going on adventure just to see a dead guy is relatable-to for Japanese people. Still, the popularity of Stand By Me in Japan is slightly baffling ... maybe the localization of the film was just well-done or something.
Speaking of Final Fantasy.... that's a Four Person Journey as well. The most recent one is a total Four Person Journey with a car too. I put-off playing Final Fantasy Fifteen for a few years because I didn't think the Final Fantasy series has really lived up to its name for a good while. I think The Tenth One (FFX) was the last one I thought was good.... for the record I believe 6, 7, and 4 are the best ones. I really thought Fifteen was going to be an emo-laden snooze-festival but that is not the case... it is a great game... and even if the emo-style character designs are off-putting at first these four bros became my bros pretty quickly and by the third gas-station I felt like I KNEW these guys in real life.
The most popular of all time Four-Person Journey is probably Journey to the West. In that Chinese Epic, Sanzang must depart China and travel to India to retrieve ancient Buddhist scriptures ... and along the way makes the most unlikeliest of amigos... an out-of-control Monkey King, a lecherous Pig man, and a Swamp Monster who roils the waterways and eats travelers. It's the most well-known, epic, and at times strange Four Man Walker you're ever gonna get into.
It's so long, like millions of words, and there's some whacky stuff in Journey to the West. There's a chapter where they are at this all-women town with no dudes in it.... and Sanzang drinks a bunch of water because he's thirsty... then asks how the ladies make babies if the town has no dudes... and they say they have a special holy water that makes them get pregnant without doing any sex at all .... and Sanzang just spits out the water he's drinking and is all "OH CRAP! I'M PREGNANT!!!" ... but it's okay because Monkey King sneaks into a secret cave that has anti-pregnancy holy water to stop Sanzang's pregnancy.
I wonder if the Wizard of Oz's author one L. Frank Baum read Journey to the West. It was compiled from vocal legends into the text we read today in the 16th century... but I don't think there's a real translation of it to english until well after L. Frank's time. There is a part of Wizard of Oz that leads me to think L. Frank may have read Journey to the West somehow (maybe he could read Chinese, I don't know). The Monkeys of the Wicked Witch. She controls the out-of-control winged-monkeys with a golden cap, Sanzang controls the out-of-control Monkey King with a piece of golden head-wear entrusted to him by Guan Yin.
Gold head wear to control out-of-control monkeys. It could be a coincidence or it could be a shout out by Baum to the most epic Four-Person Walking Text of All Time.
I do feel the unlikely comrades Dorothy meets is slightly similar to Journey to the West. She meets three troubled compadres as well... a Scare Crow who feels he has no brains, a Tin Woodman who feels he has no heart, and a Cowardly Lion who thinks he lacks courage. They are not ex-criminals banished from heaven who are trying to find remorse as the compadres to Sanzang are in Journey to the West ... but they are very odd and even possibly frightening characters in their own right.
Another similarity is the main character is the "driver of the story" and in some regard is NOT the main character, per se, as the other characters have more depth. Sanzang is almost a place holder in Journey as the "Why" they have to go on this Journey... and most of the book is Monkey flying around the damned earth to bail this guy out of all the messes he gets into ... such as getting pregnant even, as mentioned above.
In Wizard, Dorothy is definitely more of a "story driver" than a main character. She's the "Why" they have to get to the Emerald City and the other characters get more depth and text/screen time devoted to them. In Baum's later Oz works, he opens his books by thanking his fans and in one he notes that from the mail he received from children... they don't like when Dorothy is not given a lot of text time in an Oz book and he vowed to make her the central character again ... it is in that sense that this "driver" worked... the children experience the text AS her... as a normal person from a normal world (Kansas in this case) who is transported to a land of imagination. The young reader doesn't view Dorothy as a character from Oz, she is from Kansas in the USA in Actual Reality. They experience the world of Oz through the "main" character of Dorothy.
In Journey, the vulnerable, innocent, and "real" Sanzang is who the reader "becomes" as they travel through the text. This "driver" main character, I feel, is another similarity between them.
This is not to say that despite a bit of over-lap that these two texts are very similar or anything. I don't think the themes, dialogue, nuances, style, or very much else is similar between Wizard of Oz and Journey to the West. They are just Four Person Travel books ... with possibly a slight shoutout here and there by Baum to Journey which is considered the gold standard of the genre.
Due to Journey not being well-known in the Americas and Europe... I'd venture to say that L. Frank Baum's four person travel text, first published in 1900, is the most well known of the Four Person Travel genre in the Western World.
Anyways, the next section will look at how young-me viewed it and how old-me now regards it. Also, the differences between the text version and film version will be highlighted as well.
Then and Now (One important note that needs to be noted is that Young Me saw the Movie while Old Me read the book.... so there's that involved also.)
The 1939 film, the Wizard of Oz, was basically the first blockbuster movie. It was not just in full color but it was vivid as all heck. I mean, one thing I notice about other "first color" events in movies and TV is the novelty of getting to work with color was not lost on the artists of the era. If you watch TV's first big-time full-color shows like Batman (1966), or Ultra Man (1966) ... you notice very fast that they use vivid and contrasting colors out of the wazoo.... the intro to Ultra Man features paint mixing even! This 1939 film is similar to those TV color firsts in the 60s where they really got everything they could out of their chance to work with color.
I think why it was chosen for the first color film adaption of a text was because it is very colorfully written but almost using standard primary colors more than anything. The munchkins were a pale blue society, the winkies (who don't appear in the film) were a full on yellow society, and the citizens of the Emerald City were a green folk*.
The movie was an aesthetic event more than anything. It is a good movie and made the epic Four Person Journey genre hugely popular for another century... but the movie and book are not the same cup of tea, really.
As a kid, I never really learned very much from the Wizard of Oz film... it was just a cool fun movie that I knew was old and looked cool for something that was that old.
Reading the text as an adult, you pick up on the themes of it more quickly... and yes most of them are well shown in the film but in text these themes and the opinions of the writer come through more clearly.
In the film, the audience does realize that the Scarecrow was smart all along, and the Tin Woodman was a nice guy all along, and the Lion was actually pretty courageous all along... but it's not as pronounced as it is in the book.
Throughout the 1900 narrative, before they even make it to Oz, the reader picks up that these three characters are just being too hard on themselves and are over-compensating for the character flaws they perceive is wrong with themselves.
The Scare Crow from the get-go is basically the party's strategist. He is so hung-up and worried that he's not smart that he has basically devoted his entire being to overcome this perceived flaw in his person that all he tries to do in every chapter is think up ways to help his friends get out of difficult-to-manage situations.
The Tin Woodman, is so worried that he is an emotionless automaton that he does nothing all day but think of how to project himself unto the world in a manner that is perceived as being caring and full of empathy because he believes he has no heart and is deeply worried about that. As they walk he looks down at the yellow brick road to see if any ants are on it, even, so as to not step on any. He really over-compensates his behavior to mitigate his perceived weaknesses.
The Cowardly Lion, in the film is a scaredy cat but in the book he's a regular walking-on-all-fours lion's lion. He is definitely scared of the other monsters in Oz (in the book there's way more than "Lions and Tigers and Bears" in it, there's legit monsters).... and in Oz a Lion is not a big deal when there's flying monkeys and kalidahs and other fantasy monsters. In the film its not really told to the viewer that a lion is not a huge deal in the Oz universe. In the text, he's worried about monsters stronger than him, and over-exagerates his constant fear by roaring and putting on a big show. In that sense he's cowardly in the book ... but not so much as in the film where he's really a more innocent man-lion guy. In order to overcome this constant fear he never runs away from a battle in the Oz book ... he fights a gang of kalidahs (who do not appear in the film) in one chapter and those things are vicious.
Before the end of the book, you are already shown that these three characters are not flawed at all. The guy who thinks he's dumb is very smart, the guy who thinks he's heartless has more empathy than anyone, and the guy who thinks he's a coward will fight solo in outnumbered battles against tiger-headed bear monsters.
In the film, this is shown to a degree... but I find the awarding of the gimmicks to them at the end is a little forced. In the book the "You Had it All Along!" theme grows with the characters from chapter to chapter... and by a certain point of the book you know these guys got it even if they think they don't. The other portion of the awarding of the gimmick-trinkets in the film that is totally different from the text is that ... the characters kind of dig the trinkets in the movie and they feel like they've succeeded in their journey.
The BIGGEST difference in the text and film of Wizard of Oz is how big of a bozo, or a "humbug", the Wizard of Oz actually is. In the film he's a bit of a let-down but still a likeable character to some extent... but in the book.... after reading many chapters (which takes longer than watching a movie)... and finally they get to meet this guy they wanted to meet... and guess what...he's a bum! He's not even anything at all.... he's not even from Oz... he's from Omaha which is even LAMER than Kansas is!
Older me loves this book. It's a pretty shaggy dog ending... well it's not an ending in the book actually, there's a few chapters after the Oz let-down part. In the film the Used Car Salesmanhood of the Wizard of Oz is not as memorable to the viewer. The movie is really beautiful, with the colors, the music, etc... but the best part of the book is the total humbugerry of the Wizard. I think many children who grew up reading the L. Frank Baum's children books probably grew up to be adults with a great sense of humor and also a great understanding of the how Life Itself is sometimes in such bad taste and is for the most-part such a Let Down.
I'm not surprised American literature is one of society's most humor-based bodies of literature. If you take the George Ades, the Mark Twains, and the L. Frank Baums (and even to a lesser extent the Thorne Smiths and a couple others) ... you have some real Humorists here.
The Humorist is not the same thing as a Comedian. If life was a current-era video game... the Humorist is what you level up to when you gain 15,000 experience points as a Comedian and have already used another 15,000 experience points to unlock all the skill-branch tree slots in the Comedian skill set.
L. Frank is a Humorist, 100%. I don't even think there's that many, especially in now-a-times era. I really think young people in the 20th century (1900s) grew up versed in Humor from a young age. I'm not sure that's the case in present era times.
To me, the Humorist understands that Life Itself is a Big Letdown and that we have to make the best within ourselves to make light of an otherwise bland and unjust world. The Humorist has no political slant to his or hers view of the world... the Humorist makes light and humor out of the difficulties of life using mostly base-emotions and universally relatable-to themes.
Previous to recently, having only seen the film and never read the book from 1900 it was based upon, I would have never known L. Frank Baum is in the Humorist category ... If you would have asked me what the book of Wizard of Oz was like as a kid who only saw the movie, I'd probably say, it was probably just some run-of-the-mill fairy tale ... but no... this is a real Humorist text.
Anyways, we forgot a character above. We didn't look at what Dorothy was worried about and trying to over exaggerate in her understanding of herself and the world around her. That is to say, what is the "driver" of the text over-compensating for? Thus to say, the driver character of the text being the "reader" themselves. That is to say... what is the reader of the text of the Wizard of Oz trying to overcome?
To me the answer is "boredom" for the Dorothy character. She lives in Kansas at a farm of her adoptive parents (Aunty Em) and is completely bored with life. She is one day transported to a land of total imaginative excitement and adventure. This is one of the things the film gets 100% right, even better than the book does.... because her world is Black and White prior to arriving at the land of Oz in the film... which to describe how well this must have worked in 1939... the first block busting color film ... that starts out on a black and white farm in Kansas ... and then the viewer is whisked away to an aesthetic bounty of color and adventure. That's something story-telling wise and technology-advancement-wise that cannot be recreated. The first big budget color film using the theme of Dorothy/Reader's lame life and then blasting it with visual stimuli that to-that-date had never been seen before? It's a storytelling event that could only really exist once at the level that it must have worked so well in 1939.
Dorothy, the driver of the story, the eyes/ears/nose/hands of who's the reader experiences the World of Oz from... always had that imagination inside of them.... they could have "went home" whenever they wanted... whether by clicking the Ruby Slippers a number of times or just by simply closing the book and putting it down. They picked up that book and were drawn into it out of boredom, they wanted to escape to a land of interesting adventures.
Just like the the other three characters (Scarecrow, Tin Woodman, Lion) who had it in themselves the whole time... the reader had that imagination inside of themselves the entire time even if they thought they didn't ... for in the end, the Wizard of Oz, was just words written down on paper. It was the reader's own imagination that brought those words to life.
*(Note: The Emerald City in the text of Oz is such a sham that our heroes are given goggles when they enter the city which tint the world green ... the "Emerald City" in the book is actually all Pale White like a paint primer white. I'm not sure this is inferred to the viewer in the film version.)
A More Modern Version
I would still like to write a really long Four Person Journey genre of text one day... but I think as experimental with writing as I am that it would not be very similar at all to the Wizard of Oz. However, it is interesting to think of what a modern version of it would be like.
Is today's society hung up on the same relatable-to problems as society was in 1900? Is boredom really a big deal in today's fast paced, stimulus over-loaded, world? Not really.
Are people walking around scratching their heads over if they are smart-enough, or kind-enough, or courageous-enough? I guess but I'm not sure you'd classify those as the top three mental hang-ups of 2019's world.
It would be fun to think up base human emotions that create deep-seeded problems for people in today's society and think up antithesis emotions for them ... and then write a story about four people who suffer from difficulties common in today's worried brains ... but who in the end were not actually suffering from it and were simply over-compensating for perceived faults in their character.
I could think of some, but I don't know, I'm sure you can think of some of your own. What are you worried about all the time that you perceive is a deep-rooted character flaw in your own heart? Maybe you think about it so much because being the opposite of that is important to you. If that something is important to you ... and you're trying hard to overcome your personal struggles and achieve that... then maybe it's not even a character flaw at all. Who knows.
Conclusion
Those are the main themes of the Four-Person Walking-Arounder genre. Four people on a long almost-never ending quest to find "something." It is a genre that's endured for so many centuries because it's very fulfilling personally for the writer to write one, I think.
I know you guys, the few readers I have on this thing, are saying it ... you're saying "That guy's finally bitten off a topic that's too large n' difficult for him to do." You're saying things like "Ya, his Liberace article was okay, I guess, but Elvis? No way, he can't do it. He's not good enough a writer to write about Elvis."
.... and you know something? You're probably right. I don't think I can do it. I don't think I can write about Elvis. There's some topics that are reserved for good writers, you know? Not two-bit bums like me. Topics like this are for good writers.
I can't do it. I can't write about Elvis .... and now you're all like ... "I told you so!"
Ya well, go ahead kick me while I'm down, reader! Kick me while I'm down, I don't care reader! You can knock me down! You can step on my face! You can slander my name all over the place! You can do just about ANYTHING to me, reader! But don't you .... tell me I can't Write about Elvis!
I feel it, like a hunka hunka burning soul-fire almost about to erupt in my soul! I know I can do it even if you tell me I can't! Oooooooh let's go cat! Walk the dog!
Oh you can burn my house even! I won't care! Not a bit! You can steal or even eat my car! You can drink all of my liquor from an old fruit jar! You can do anything that you wanna do ... but please ... do not tell me that I cannot Write about Elvis!
Because I .... CAN WRITE ABOUT ELVIS!
Okie dokie, so, now for your reading enjoyment I now present to you Elvis in Four Persons: An Essay about Elvis.
Elvis in Four Persons: An Essay about Elvis - Index of Contents
We shall be summarizing previous Elvis research from prominent musicians in the first Three Persons of Elvis ... and in the Final Person I shall relay to you my own personal opinion of Elvis and tell you once and for always what he was Truly the King of.
Part 1: Elvis as Philosophy
Within Part 1, the first Person of Elvis, we shall look into the Residents philosophical view of Elvis by examining their popular album, The King and Eye. A look at the King in a deeply philosophical and inward manner.
Part 2: Elvis as Entity
Within Part 2 of Elvis in Four Persons, we shall examine the Second Person of Elvis one in which Elvis is regarded as Entity, a force larger than any of us could comprehend. This section shall be highlighted by looking deeper into famed Elvis enthusiast Mojo Nixon's seminal Elvis as Entity piece entitled "Elvis is Everywhere!"
Part 3: Elvis as Friend
Within the third part we shall deconstruct Wesley Willis's famous Elvis song entitled "Elvis Presley" and witness the Third Person of Elvis ... Elvis as your Friend.
Part 4: Elvis as..... ???
Within the Final Person of Elvis, I shall summarize everything we learned about Elvis on our long-winding Elvis Journey in Essay Form and relate to you Elvis's Final Person. The Fourth Elvis.
Elvis as Philosophy
Elvis, was definitely The King... but the King of what? Some folks say he was King of Rock and Roll but then there's other Elvis Aficionados who say he was The King of Truth while others think he was the King of Happiness. I recently transcribed all the spoken word portions of The Residents' highly interesting lectures on what thy ruminate he was the King of ... and here is that transcription....
This is the Life of Elvis as presented as a children's fairy story. I find it to be not only a very nice story but also a very truthful summation of Elvis in a philosophical sense.
This Story is From the King and Eye. I'm transcribing this by ear so there may be some audible misunderstanding possibly...
"Once, there was a baby and the baby wanted to be King because kings were good and kings were strong and kings were the best of everything. Wouldya like to be a King? You would huh? Well, he worked and he worked and worked so hard to be a King and never let go of it in his mind all the time... he kept thinkin' 'I'm gunna be King, I'm gunna be King I'm gunna be King' ... and he was still a baby because really only babies can turn into Kings ... because Kings are good and Kings are strong and Kings ae the best of Everything. So, a Stranger came and the Stranger said "follow me.... and I'll make you a King..." ... and He did, and the Baby became a King.... and for one bright shiny moment... He was Happy. Do you know who the King is? Do you? Okay we're gonna talk about the King, but y'know, I got a question first, and maybe you guys can help me with this question, He's the King of What? The King of What? I don't know either, but, if he was the King he must have been King of something important, huh? He must've been King of Something Important.... but the King of What? "The King of Caring" ... you think so? Well caring is pretty important, hmmm, you think he could've been the King of Caring? You think so? I don't know. He didn't care very much about anything except being King, so, he must not have been King of That. You think maybe he was King of Happiness? Well, I dunno, maybe so ... but you know he really wasn't very happy so he must not have been King of That. So, I don't know, he was King of Something but King of What, I dunno.
Everybody's got a Mommy, y'know? Everybody loves their Mommy. Do you love your Mommy? Do you? Good. Well, he loved his Mama sooo much ... he loved his Mama a lot more than anybody else. He loved his Mama so much that he turned her into a Madonna and in his mind she was Mama-Madonna. Mama-Madonna... but you know sometime sooner or later your Mama's not gonna be there and someday you're gonna have to take care of things yourself. Someday, it's a long time, but Someday. So, that's what happened to Him and he didn't know what to do ... so he went and he got a Girl ... and he Worked and he Built and he worked sooo hard to make her into a Mama-Madonna, but you know what happened? She turned into a Woman. She turned into a Woman and that's not what he wanted. That wasn't a Mama-Madonna. So .... she left.... and then He was all Alone.
We're talking about The King, and we're trying to figure out, the King of What? Well, maybe he was King of Truth. You don't think so? Yeah, you're probably right. He hid away from the Truth, y'know. He hid in the dark from the Truth so he must not have been King of That. Maybe he was King of Love. That's pretty important. Well, he was King of Something ... and I think maybe ... it was Something like Love that felt like Love.. a lot of people get confused with Love ... but what it is ... is Need. Need, yeah Need. I think that's What He Was, I think, he was the King of Need ... and I think he Needed So Much, he Needed more than anybody else. He Needed so much that he made himself a King... and I think that people Needed Him... and that's why they made him a King and that's why he made Himself a King... and I think everybody that's out there listening Needs him a lot too. They've already made him a King... and they Love him and he'll always be a King... and he'll Love Them.
...and for one little Bright Shining Moment.....he was Happy.... because Kings were Good and Kings were Strong ... and he was The King. But, then the Stranger's Path got darker and darker... and the Baby lost his way... and the Baby got Old, and the Baby got Fat, and the Baby didn't like himself too much anymore... and he Died. Yeah, but we have to never forget that he was a Baby....
...and Babies are Good, and Babies are Strong, and Babies are the Best of Everything."
Long time Elvis fans know the characters in the story but if you're new to Elvis the "Stranger" is the Colonel Tom Parker, and his wife who turned out to be a woman instead of a "Momma-Madonna" was his wife Priscilla.
I think I'm still somewhat-stuck in George Ade style capitalization from that George Ade article from a few months ago. I capitalized words that I found to be importanter than others whilst transcribing this fable.
Happiness, Truth, Need ....
Elvis once said this,
“Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away." -Elvis
He understood Truth, he knew you couldn't run from it forever. No one can run from the Truth. It's true, he wasn't The King of Truth. He did indeed hide from it at times for better or for worse.
Elvis also once said,
“I wish, I just wish, that everybody could know the same kind of happiness I’ve known from all this. I wish that, more than anything, with all my heart.” -Elvis
He was definitely, at some point, or points, of being Elvis ... he was indeed Happy... and he wanted everyone else to be Happy. He loved his fans, and his fans loved him.... which makes the Residents' conclusion on what he was the King Of interesting. They think he was the King of Need ... but not only on a one-ended sense. He needed to be loved by his fans in order to be Happy ... but his fans also needed to be loved by him to be Happy. The Residents conclude that this two-sided give-and-take style of Need is what made him a King. They needed someone to make them Happy and he needed... he needed more than anyone ... he needed endless adulation .... endless super stardom to be Happy ... and in turn this symbiotic relationship made him a King. He was 100% the King of Rock and Roll, no one doubts that, but I also tend to agree with the Residents that he was 100% also the King of Need.
A person can live a life of total solitude and of non-action. Never doin' wrong and never doin' right ... and to some that's what life is about. Just a humble, quiet, stess-free, existence of total non-action. It's when NEED is entered into the equation that the Human Life starts to deviate away from non-action. Once the Human starts Needing to be Loved by other Humans in order to be Happy ... Life starts to become a whole lot more complicated. Security starts to be less about eating and sleeping ... and starts to be more about being accepted and liked by other Humans.
Who Needed who more? Did his fans Need him more than he Needed his fans? It's probably similar. It's probably pretty equal in terms of the tug-and-war of Who Needed Who More in that regard. That's how Kings are born.. Mutual Need. Mutual Human Need.
They're right about his End too. He did get old, he did get over weight, and he probably wasn't as Happy in those days as he used to be. We are all gonna get old, we are all gonna stop liking ourselves, and we are all gonna one day have to take a long break from being alive and accept the undeniable Truth that we're all gonna take a long vacation to that Graceland in the Sky....
...but we can't forget that Elvis was a Baby. He was Young, Hip, Elvis at one point. That happened, it's not washed away just because he got Old, or because he got less Elvitical in Nature as time marched on and he was no longer his Young Elvis Self. He was Alive, and he was the King. We can't forget that. Elvis was a Baby ... and Babies are Good, and Babies are Strong, Babies are the Best of Everything ... but most importantly ... Babies are the Future.
Every child born has the potential to be a King.... even your kid. You look at 'em and think "What are they gonna grow up to Be?" ... will they be rich? Will they be handsome? Will they stay in their rooms all day and play video games ... and never bother nobody... and live a nice quiet life of non-action? Or will they Need to Need ... will they Need to be Happy? Will they Need to be a King? Who knows ... que sera sera, bubba .... que sera sera, bubba. Maybe your Baby'll break free for a while, maybe your Baby'll travel down the wrong path for a while. Maybe your Baby will Need some Fame and a little bit of adulation .... and maybe they'll get it ... and then maybe your Baby'll get old, n' fat, and ruminate over the past. Who knows.
But just like Elvis, you shouldn't forget that all Humans were Babies ... beautiful beautiful babies. When I see an old person ... I think to myself ... that old person used to be a baby.
Baby.
Truth ...
Need .........
Happiness ...................... KING .......................................
Oooooooooooold ..........................................................................
Baby.
That's the Cycle of Elvis in a philosophical sense. Truth be told that's the Human Cycle in an Everyone's Sense to most degrees of the average human life. We can't vilify any of these terms. Without Need he had no Happiness. Without Running from Truth he might have had no Need. Without that Happiness he could never ever ever have become King.... and without being a Baby he would never have ever been a Baby, baby.
He returned to Sender, his address was unkooooooown but he found how to get it Back. From Baby to Baby, baby.... he got it back. We remember all of Elvis not just the Old Elvis. We remember Young Elvis too, Baby.
That's even all I really try to do in life. To me, Return to Sender isn't a song about a Letter ... it's a song about Rememberin' and a song about trying to Find Yourself. Sometimes I feel all Old, and all Fat, just like Old Elvis and I don't always really like myself that much either just like Old Elvis didn't like himself all that much. I just wanna Return to Sender ... to Center ... I wanna find myself just like Elvis. If I gave a letter to the Postman, and he put in it in his sack, could he bring me back? Could that letter Return me to "Center"? Or will he just bring that letter right on back? Even if I sent it Special D ... could I re-find the old Me? I dunno.
This introspective Personage of Elvis is getting a little sappy ... come on Baby ... let's move on to Part Two right about now ... Elvis as.....Entity.
Elvis as Entity
"Elvis is Everywhere. Elvis is Everything. Elvis is Everybody. Elvis is still the King.
Man-oh-Man
What I want you to see Is that the Big E is Inside of You and Me!"
YeeeeeeeeeeeeeOOOOOOOOOW!
Now we're talking, Baby. We don't gotta get all mired down and bogged down in Introspection, Baby. Elvis? Man, Elvis is More Bigger than those thoughts that mortals weigh themselves down with! Things such as Need, n' thangs like Happiness, n' blah blah blah and whatnot and what-have-ya and psycho-babble n' foo-foo doodily doodle!
Elvis was ABOVE all of that!
Elvis was BIG, Baby! Elvis according to Elvis researcher Mojo Nixon phd. was a Perfect Being! A Being who we are all attempting to Emulate to the point that One Day ALL WILL BE ELVIS! EVERYTHING SHALL UNIFY INTO ELVISNESS! All of Humans will probably MELT and we'll become this Goo ... this BLUE SUEDE GOOOOO .... a Hunka Hunka meltin' Burnin' Human Goo ... We'll ALL MELT BABY .... and when all of humanity boils itself down to this Blue Suede Goo and becomes a Gigantic Blob ... we'll all join together as One ... as One .... as One Gigantic ELVIIIIIIIS!
Elvis is not Mortal, okay? He doesn't suffer the same trivial sufferings that we do. He doesn't get all worked up and hung up about the silly trivial things we do! He's not worrying about Need and Happiness ... and if Happiness can exist without Need ... or if Need can exist without Truth.... Elvis is a Complete Larger Entity at this point moreso than a Mortal guy like you n' me.
As Mojo says, it 'aint even Evolution. Baby ..... it is ELVIS-LUUUUUUUUUTION, BAAAAAAAAABY!
As we all melt down into transcendent energy, a slop of Human Blue Suede Goo will from one leg, and then another batch of human melty blob will form his other leg, and then a hunka hunka burnin' slop will make his body, oooh and then a sloppa sloppa slimey blop will form his arms.... and then his HEAD and his HAIR and then his SIDE-BUUUUUUURNS!
....Oooooooh you know you left me! You know you left me! You never even, ever even, said even a word, baby! Never even said a word!
But wutcha gonna do when a Seven Thousand Foot Elvis shows up at your door, baby? Wutcha gonna do when a Seven Thousand Foot Elvis of Melted Humans runs wild on your house, baby? Seven Thousand Foot Elvis don't play by normal rules anymore, baby! He 'aint going to no Heartbreak Hotel! He's a Kanpek Chojin now! He's a melty melty hunka hunka burning robot Voltron Elvis. He don't get lonely! He 'aint going to no Motel! He is Bigger than This! He is above these common place emotions that bungle our minds down!
Perfect god-like Entities don't feel the pain of the common man. They do not feel the stress of the everyday walking individual person. Elvis is not a King! Elvis is a Larger-Than-Life BEING! He's a Perfect Super Guy!
Why do we waste so much time on deep introspection on Life and its minuscule problems when we can entrust all of our problems to a Bigger Entity that we Trust and that we know will take care of us? Help us, Elvis. Save us, Elvis .... let us all be born again in the perfectest of Elvishood and of Total Elvis Light. When I go to the Casino, Elvis, please bring me luck. Don't let me lose all my money n' my chips My Elvis. My own personal Elvis, heal me n' save me, baby. Let me get a Royal Flush on the computer poker, baby. Please?
Bring me down to a Bright Light City, Elvis. Bring me down to the Promised Land. Set my human soul on Total Fire, baby. I hope in this Promised Land up there, Elvis, that there's about a THOUSAND pretty women just waiting UP THERE! Let me play a little blackajacka poker and a bit of roulette wheel, Elvis. Give me nerves of Steel. baby. It's okay Elvis, even if I just wind up broke I will remember 'til the day I die that I had the most swingingest time! Just once, just once my Elvis..... please just lemme shout out a Seven on every single shot, baby!
Not just making money though, Elvis. Not just luck on some roulette wheel. I Need you in a bigger way than that. I need someone to talk to, someone who I can just close my eyes and say "Hey, lemme talk to you, Elvis ... I know I can trust you, baby... you're maybe the only One I can."
All those people praying? Like Mojo theorizes, they are just talking to Elvis. He's that Big, baby. Soon they'll be these old blue-haired ladies going to door-to-door with Elvis pamphlets asking you to repent your sins to the Glory and Light of All that Is. To repent your Darkness to All that Is..... Elvis.
.......... but was Elvis a ...... hmmmmmm. No he wasn't. He was just Elvis. If you're that popular and cool does your Life Cycle somehow alter to something more like:
Baby.
Truth ...
Need .........
Happiness ......................
KING .......................................
Oooooooooooold..................................................................... Baby..............................................................................................................
Entity?
I guess.... but even this new Fire-Brand Elvitical Preacher that I have become over the last little while .... part of me harkens back to a simpler time when Elvis was just Elvis.
Yeah, yeah. I know the Adrenaline and Hope that is associated with Fire-Brand Elvangelicalism is fun and intense.... but part of me can't forget the deep burning introspective questions. Yes, Adrenaline and Hope can over-run and bulldoze over mortal qualms and deep feelings of the mortal Human Guy..... but do they really go away? Do they really melt away?
Does it is really cover that all up, all those philosophical meanderings, through its sheer fiery intensity? For a time, I guess.
Elvis as Entity in itself does become "Bigger" than the "Questions" .... but do the Questions stop existing just because something is more Bigger than them? Well, I dunno. I dunno. What do you think? You think so? Yeah, maybe. You could be right. Maybe.
Man, Elvis's Second Personage worked for me for a while.... I was bogged down in Philosophical mud by the end of the first section of this essay and Mojo's assertion that Elvis is not in the mortal world really helped me climb above that mud..... hmmmm.... but those questions are still in the back of my mind .... like an anchor.... anchoring me down. I know Elvis is Big but is he really an Entity of that beyond-mortal nature?
Sometimes questions just lead to more questions. Sometimes, I guess, I just have this suspicious mind, baby.
It's like, it's like I just get caught in this Trap ... a trap I just cannot walk out of, baby. Why? Why can't you see what you are even doing to me when you do not believe these words that I say. This 'aint a joke, baby, I mean these words. How can we go on in this essay with such suspicious minds? How can we build our common human dreams if we are bogged down with suspicious minds?
I know you don't know me in real life.... but if you did ... and I was this Old Friend who just stopped by to say "Hello" .... Would I still see the suspicions in your eyes?
Man, all these question just make more questions. We're caught in a TRAP! A trap that I cannot even walk out! Because I........... I dunno. I dunno why, Elvis.
How do We get outta It, Elvis????
Ooooooh Elvis, we tried to burn over the questions by making you Bigger than you Were, baby. We tried to make you Larger than Ever, more Bigger than Anything .... but the questions still burned inside, my friend. They still burn inside. The loneliness, the emotions.... the reality, baby. The reality of it all is hard for us sometimes, My Elvis. Are you really an Entity, baby? I can look up to the sky, wonder why, and ask you to let me win at computer poker in Vegas, baby. I can ask you to help me outta this mental philosophical trap, baby.... but in the End, baby .... can you, even?
Oh Elvis, I'm sorry Elvis... I didn't mean to place my hopes and dreams upon your already over-burdened shoulders, baby. I didn't mean it. I'm so sorry, My Elvis.
Forgive me, Elvis. I didn't mean it, Elvis. I know you were just trying your best, baby. I know you never wanted all these people to Need you, Elvis. I guess we are all just caught in this same never-ending loop of a trap, baby. I'm just cursed with this suspicious mind, Elvis. I can't break out. I just want Happiness, Elvis. But when I try, and I try, and I work, and I work, and I try ... I just make things worse, Elvis. Sometimes I curse this never-ending Journey, baby. I do. I really truly do.
But you know something? I understand that YOU did too, Elvis. You cursed this never-ending journey probably more than I did, my friend.
You didn't wanna be a Deity, my friend. You never wanted to be an Entity, brother. You didn't. You couldn't walk out, brother, you couldn't, daddy. Oh, baby, you Loved them too much, baby. It was a Trap. The Need, The Happiness, The Truth.... it was ... it was a TRAP.
A Trap!
Oh Elvis, forgive me, I shouldn't have placed you on such a pedestal, man. You didn't want this, man. You didn't at all, Elvis, you just wanted to be Happy. You just wanted to be our Friend......
To be Our Friend......
Elvis as Friend
We are over-thinkings things, gang. We need to De-Elvis loose a bit and see the man in a more purer window. Let's look now at Wesley Willis and his assertion on the Personage of Elvis as we begin our third portion of this Essay, here-so entitled, "Elvis as Friend."
According to Mr. Willis, W.......
"Elvis Presley was a rock star
He was the greatest He can sing his ass off Right on brother
ELVIS PRES-LEEEEEEEEEEEE! (x4)
He is my greatest singer He was my kind of guy He can really rock He can rock this place apart
ELVIS PRES-LEEEEEEEEEEEE! (x4)
That man can sing great That was the tone of his voice He can really get down He can really get in the groove
ELVIS PRES-LEEEEEEEEEEEE! (x4)
Rock over London,
Rock on Chicago....." -Willis, W.
Unlike our two previous Elvis Aficionados this one keeps it quite simple. Elvis, in Willisian terms, was a Rock Star, his kind of guy, and due to his tone of voice he could sing great.
He's not a philosophical fable to Wesley Willis nor a larger-than-life fantastical entity.... he's just Elvis, a cool guy who could knock it out and really tear the place apart. I tend to agree with this assertion ... though not more or less than the previous two assertions of the personage of Elvis.
Elvis in the Third Person is a simple man. He liked to sing, to rock, and from personal accounts of his friends and family ... he liked to go fishing and do common stuff any other fun-loving human of the grounded world engages in.
He was really a Real Guy. Many people met him, even. Just think of some of the people who met Elvis...
Liberace met Elvis...President Nixon met Elvis....Johnny Cash met Elvis..... James Brown met Elvis.... maybe even the person reading this even met Elvis when they were young!
He was just like a guy, you know? You could like talk to Elvis and stuff. He was just a guy who was good at singing and rocking and rolling. That's all.
He could really knock it out! He could Rock it and Roll it like a Rock and Roller! He was my man in the mix! He was my greatest singer! He was my favorite person! Rock over London and Rock on Chicago! Wheaties! BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS!
Elvis was our friend! He was just a guy like you and me!
That is the reason why so many people say he's still Alive, they don't want to believe he's a larger than life entity or a fable... they consider him, even if they haven't ever met him, as their friend, who can't possibly ever not be with them. You know, maybe Elvis IS still alive somewhere.... just being all Old and Over-Weight and just drinking coffee and eating bacon-jam sandwiches. No one could ever actually prove he's not doing that right now.
He might be playing cards with Bigfoot for all anyone really even actually knows for sure. People say they see Elvis to this very day ... 100% alive just Elvising around some town. Sure, maybe it was one of the ten million Elvis Impersonators that endlessly roam earth, but maybe it wasn't, maybe Elvis really is still Alive!
People want to think he was Elvis-this and Elvis-that... but we can't forget, ever, that this Elvis was just an Elvis!
We get bogged-down and muddied-out mentally by so many things now-a-times. We get philosophically hung-up on why he became who he was. Whether it by Need or Truth or attempt for Happiness. It is under this mental confabulation that we become placed under the grandest of collisions.... we try to climb out of these mental traps we create for ourselves.... and for the briefest of moments we find happiness through the Adrenaline and Hope we create through fire-brand soul-intensive assertions.... but, through it all, we just forget how Simple it all is.
There is a simpleness to Life to many extents. To Wesley Wills, unlike the Residents or Mojo Nixon, Elvis is a simpler man.... just a guy who could Rock and Sing. Is W. Willis and his interpretation of Elvis in a simpler sense any less interesting than the previous two assertions? No.
Elvis only becomes Elvis and the Elvinessness of Elvis only becomes supremely clear and apparent when all three of these Elvis researchers assertions are synthesized together to form a well-reasoned picture.
The third personage of Elvis... Elvis as My Friend ... a super cool guy you can hang out with.... is as important to the full synthesis of Elvis as the previous two entries. Elvis as Friend, Elvis as Entity, Elvis as Philosophy .....
.... it is only with these three components tethered down can I tell you my own personal opinion of Elvis as Elvis in Part Four....
Elvis in the Fourth Person: Elvis as Elvis
Elvis was Elvis. He got up in the morning and went to bed at night. He was born in Tulepo, Mississippi in the year of 1935.
He joined the army in 1958 and for two years had no fun. While he was in the Army his momma passed away.... he became bored and sad .... and when he got home from the army he decided to really have some fun with the remainder of his Life....
He made some cool music, filmed some cool movies, made some more albums..... got some gum stuck to his shoes while walking down the street after missing the train..... he slept, and ate, and stuff and lost some pocket change under couch cushions.
Elvis was a person. He was a Human Being. Yes, we need him to help us understand life, yes we even want him to be larger than it, and even with all that we just want him to be our friend... but in the end Elvis is just a Simple Human Being.
A human being who over his short time on earth sparked philosophical, meta-physical , and mundane notions about him for millions and millions of other humans right up to this very second.
He Needed Them.... and they Needed Him..... and even on a human-based Level...
...Elvis was a King.
The Fourth Elvis is The King.
Conclusion
I know they are making an Elvis bio-pic with Tom Hanks as "The Stranger", the nogoodnick Norwegian bloodsucker Colonel Tom Parker, and I have my doubts it'll be that good.
Tom Hanks has NEVER played a bad guy in a film. He's always a Good Guy. He's a mean-streaked guy at times like the coach from League of their Own where he yells at the pretty baseball ladies that there is no crying in baseball ... but he's a likeable character in the that film too.... by no means a villain.
To do Colonel Tom Parker .... Tom Hanks needs to really Heel it Loose, baby. He needs to actually want to be mean and bad... and at no point try to make the audience feel compassion for him. That Tom Parker is a bad man. He is. I know Tom Hanks is not used to audiences viewing his character-creations as Bad Guys and not liking the character. He's doing a Mr. Rogers bio-pic too now, and I know everyone will love Tom Hanks in that Mr. Rogers movie.... but....
Tom Parker is a bad bad man.... and if T. Hanks wants to play him he HAS TO BE A VILLAIN ... which is something he's never done before. We're used to liking Tom Hanks in film and it'll be hard for him to make an audience not like him on film..... it's going to be interesting to see the upcoming Elvis bio-pic.
I know no one wants to by personal choice, dislike a Tom Hanks character in a film. "Big" and "Forrest Gump" are such great movies.... but Tom Hanks, you have to mean to that Elvis in the Elvis movie.. You could even be looking at your next Oscar if you do, Mr. Hanks.
You gotta be mean to that Elvis, Tom.
Anyways, even if Tom Parker/Tom Hanks are bad n' mean in the movie we have to remember that both Tom Parker and Tom Hanks were once babies....
....and Babies are Good, and Babies are Strong, and Babies are the Best of Everything........
Yes.
And thus Concludes Elvis in Four Persons: An Essay About Elvis
