I think I've mentioned the fantastic Lawrence Welk show previously on here. I will now search to bring it up... I know which one it is... it was the one with Macho Man. It's called:
"The Deceased Celebrities that I Miss the Most"
"I went to an old folks home this one time and I was very shocked to see all the oldoes just sitting in the dark and thinking about stuff and being boring. People think old people in these homes are on their last legs and the blood doesn't pump anymore in their veins but you're wrong. In the frail chassis of each elderly person beats the heart of a person who wants to flip out and do flips and do the funky chicken and get fucking crazy. These old motherfuckers just want to hot-diggity-damn set it off but they just can't find the spark that'll spark up their asses and make them lose their shit anymore. They wanna be young again, they wanna turn it up and turn it out to some Myron "Mother Fuckin" Floren like in the olden days. You think these oldoes were always old? No way, they used to fucking flip just like you do but now their brains and their hearts just lack the spark to make 'em kick out the jams and lose it, that's all....but it's still there somewhere....deep down in the bowels of their souls the need to get buck is still there.
Volunteers at old folks homes should do a test and play Macho Man's rap album and see what effect it has on their old brains. I bet you 80% of the time, even if they don't understand it at first, these old fuckers will get up and get down and smash some shit up. These old sons-of-bitches and old hoes'll fucking start launching their rockin' chairs around the crib and just plain power-slamming their pillows onto their beds and just getting fucked up and wild. All of those Oldoes n' Grannies will be back-flippin'."
-Me (5.5 years ago)
Now, 5.5 years ago Me's writin' style was quite different. It was a more youthful joie-de-vivrier time to some extent. I have like joie-de-vivre now... but back then I was more young and vivrier. I haven't swored in like over three years I think in any article here. Swearing is Old Hat, I find. It's not edgy or fun anymore. When the internet first started, or satellite radio went this road too... and it was like "you can say whatever you want"... people wigged at first... but later we noticed that if there's no line in the sand to begin with (like, where the "edge" is).... there's no point to cross the edge because the edge no longer even exists or really means anything anymore.
I first noticed how Old Hat swearing was long before I stopped though. I remember Beetlejuice used to not know any of these words like "F" and "S" and stuff were bad to say on the terrestrial radio Howard Stern Show... and it would be such a big deal when they'd just ask a question like "How are you today, Beet?" and he'd respond with "Me? Oooooooh, I'm pretty f'n good. Pretty f'n good."
...the show would come to a halt and almost stop and everyone would be like, "Beet, no, no, no... please don't say that, Beet." It was a big deal when a line in the sand existed and when they moved to satellite and you could just say "F" and "S" a million times without a care ... it just felt pretty Old Hat and kind of cheap.
It's kind of cheap now and Old Hat, swearing is. It is.
Reading that Macho Man portion of the article I wrote, I didn't mention Welk there, I mentioned Myron Floren the head Accordionist of the Welk show in that swear-filled joke in 2015. Those familiar with Myron would know that this was a reference to the Lawrence Welk show, though.
Anyways, my first idea to go with this article was the following, my thesis was going to be:
"The Lawrence Welk show is fascinating to me as one of the leading 1900ists of the era, because it was from the 1960s yet somehow managed to feel like it was from the 1930s."
My big hook-line-n'-sinker joke was gonna be this:
"No one had seen such a juggernaut of entertainment that the Lawrence Welk Show was providing... since the days of Lauritz Melchior!"
-Me, thinking about lines for this a coupla days ago
I thought this joke would kill, like, a Lauritz Melchior reference in 2020? Readers would do a double-take! It would be placed in the meatiest and led-into paragraph of my article too. That's like so anti-hip that all the kids are gonna wig at how super lame it actually is. All the cool kids and cats would think I was so anti-hip and thusly more hip for how anti-hip I was for layin' out a Lauritz Melchior reference in 2020... they'd be all like, "damn this guy doesn't care about anything, which is so cool, he's so irrelevant and lame to the times that he's actually relevant and not lame at all... in a weird way!"
...but.... I'd throw the audience a curve-ball at the end because my Conclusion would be.... really out-of-nowhere and good (which would completely floor them by the way)... they'd be sitting there readin' it pretty much like...
"Man, these 1960s people wishing it was still the 1930s sure are lamezoids... but wait... what is 30 years ago from right now? 1990? Oh noooo.... am I, the reader, who's currently aged thirty-to-fifty years old who is currently reading this spellbinding conclusion ... the Lawrence Welk of my era? How can this be happening?"
Then, the reader would stumble from his reading chair and open his dimly lit room's lights until they are but slightly brighter, and face his/or/her mirror... pause... and be frozen in fear by who was now looking back at them... for thanks to their already-paranoid mind due to this weird-ass era of Rampant Global Disease that has made us all slightly mad ... they would not see their own reflection in the mirror before them...
...but they'd see ...
...Lawrence Welk staring at them with his somber eyes peering into their very fragile human souls like an ancient specter!
"Surely it is not me! But it is! I have become what I have dreaded!
Is this what I have become, my sweetest friend??
The reader would then be so taken aback by my constructive satire that they'd enter a self-introspective malaise that would last for days! All those days spent in the 2000s yearning for life to be more like it was in 1989... a year which is now more than 30 years ago... yes, the face looking at them in the looking glass... is a face they no longer recognize anymore... they have become Lawrence Welk... and they didn't even realize it or feel it as it gradually happened.
Frantically scurrying about their abode, the readers would pull themselves away from their own reflections that they no longer recognize, and in a daze, run to their closest family and friends and yell aloud... "What has become of me, cruel world! What has become of me!? Hath I becometh... lame?"
Yes, 1989 was more than 30 years ago. It is so long ago that it's a bygone era. There was no internet in that year. Life was not the same as now. I noticed when I watched the Lawrence Welk show recently... that living 30 years in the past is... odd. Yet, we don't seem to apply that oddness to today's standards.
But... that's not the article I want to write today. Because I realized something. When I mentioned Myron Floren in that paragraph in 2015 about the "Macho Man" Randy Savage it seems to have been in an intense and positive way. I know it was a joke to sort of poke fun of the past but part of me knows it wasn't. I think I like accordion music. I think that's why Myron was given an honorific nickname in that paragraph.
I notice as I re-read that paragraph from that Randy Savage portion from 2015... that I think Myron Floren is a cool guy. I watched a few Lawrence Welks to refresh my memory for this article and the numbers of the variety show ranged from.... fairly bad, to gaudy, to sort of good, to cool... and I'd say most of the cool numbers were on the accordion.
It's an interesting instrument. It's like somebody had a piano near a fire place and they took that thing that's sometimes near fire places that breathes air when you squeeze it to add air to the fire... and then must've looked at the piano next to the roaring fire... and wondered..."what if I remove the keys from my piano and fasten them to the air thing for the fire place? Would that be very cool? Yes, it would!"
It's a fascinating machine, the accordion, it truly is. I mean it's not an obsolete device. It is still a wondrous piece of music machinery. I don't think because something is old automatically makes it lame. I think my original idea for this article is short sighted. I like Old stuff. I'm a -30ist for the 80s n' 90s... and it's A-Ok. There's stuff from the past that sucks but there's also stuff from the past that rules and is cool... like accordions.
I will not make us aging folks feel all Lawrence Welky in this article because it serves no purpose. Instead here is just a memory from many years ago...
A Lawrence Welk Memory
In my youth, I wasn't as lame as now, I was a wicked cool kid who was fresh and happening with the times. In the nineties, PBS, starting showing reruns of the Lawrence Show at supper time around six'o'clock. I would watch this show, as a thirteen year old, deeply fascinated by it.... it was in color and apparently from the 1960s ... but something was very off. It felt so strange. It wasn't hip and cool like Adam West's Batman or that Hey! Hey! We're the Monkeeees! show that was on sometimes. There was nothing 60s about it. It was deeply strange to me... and I would watch it every day it was on...My mother told me that it was her least favorite show of all time. If it was on when we ate supper (which is when they showed it) she would NOT watch it. Apparently this was her father's favorite show... and as a kid in the 60s her and brother wanted to watch The Man from U.N.C.L.E. or maybe The Montreal Canadiens vs. The Boston Bruins or possibly a very special episode of the Brady Bunch... but their father would put the television on the Lawrence Welk show... which by any era's standards was a lame-ass show.
I wanted to watch it... because it was fantastically fascinating to me just how strange this show was.... I mean, it was completely different than anything else on T.V. and it captivated me like other "bad" shows did. The big bands! The solo singers that seemed to sing for what felt like hours... and of course, the outrageous accordion Polkas that would bring down the house!
I mean... it's almost like...
I would almost venture to say that it's likely that no one from the 1960's had seen such a juggernaut of entertainment that the Lawrence Welk Show was providing... since the days of Lauritz Melchior!
To observe it as a strange relic of the past is one thing... but I tried to put myself into the 1960s and into the place of my mother and uncle... and wondered what it would feel like to actually HAVE TO watch this while I knew that Lost in Space or like Gilligan's Island was on the "other channel" ... it must have been excruciating for a kid in the 60s to watch this show. Simply excruciating to watch this show instead of say Bewitched.
In the era of One T.V. per house at about three channels per T.V. that the sixties was... this show must have been like a jail sentence for kids...but that just made it ever MORE fascinating for me.
At around 24:23 (following a great accordion performance by Mryon) of the above clip... they have some fare for "the kiddies" down at the zoo (or "soo" as Mr. Welk pronounces it here) and it is not something a kid up at night would be into. It's not the sort of thing a young person of the sixties would dig, daddy-o. I don't know for sure... but maybe this is how young people feel nowadays with the sort of "Old Hat" content of yesteryear that is thrown at them all the time?
Do young people of 2020 think programming aimed at them is lame? I think so. I was reading an article that was saying ratings for Cable T.V. all across the board are way down and going down every year... but is the answer to hire some fresh new forty year old P.R. person who bills themselves as a young-people expert the way to go to try and save a sinking ship?
I think one thing Beef House (from the people who brought us Tim and Eric's Awesome Show) which aired this year, got right, was making fun of that whole thing... the idea that networks think they can save their sinking vessels and gain younger viewers with some "youth expert" who "gets youth culture" ... the parody sitcom world of the Beef Boys works this in well ... some lines in Beef House are read by the actors almost as if they don't even think these lines make any sense in the context they are used as they are saying them .... it is really hitting the nail on the head, that show, in regards to accurately parodying this current situation.
Kids can smell a non-kid for miles... just because a super-savvy network exec adds a few "WTFs" and "OMGs" to their show's dialogue isn't gonna help it pass the kid test. Kids know it is ungenuine and tune out faster than you could ever imagine to things like that.
I think it's time in many regards to pass the torch and let the young people decide what they want in the Mainstream World for a change instead of being relegated to the weird parts of the internet. We're Lawrence Welkin' these young folks, I think in some regards, sweet Society... and I don't know 'bout you... but when I look into the mirror lately.... I'm starting to see a little Lawrence lookin' back at ol' me...
...but I'm sorta pretty okay with it. I like accordion music and that's A-Ok... I don't have to stop thinking accordions are cool just because they are not hip anymore. To me they will always be hip. I don't fret when I see my increasingly lame visage lookin' at me in the mirror ... I've grown to be okay with him. There's nothing bad about aging... it's natural and normal.
When Mr. Welk appears in my mirror these days... I don't run and hide or wig out or tumble down the stairs or nothing like that... I just wonder aloud...
"Oh hey there Lawrence Welk... how's Myron Floren doing?"
