Okay, I'm still on a nostalgia bend to be honest with you readers. My favorite things from my halcyon youth-related days of yore were basically Sports (with a heavy tilt towards Baseball), Video Games, and Wrestling. I don't lump Wrestling in the Sports world category, I consider Wrestling, even though it is a highly athletic display of skill, out of the Sports genre and more in the performance art entertainment genre.
I'm getting back into Wrestling lately which is something I liked as a kid that I never really kept up with as time marched on. A lot of Industry Insiders and Wrestling Speculators are on the edges of their seats of late ruminating about a development in the Wrestling world... namely they are openly pondering whether the AEW (All Elite Wrestling) is going to make a splash.
They have a lot of good wrestlers, they have good methods of presenting their art to audiences, and apparently have some deep pocket funds to build a budget around. You can't really say this about any Wrestling promotion in recent memory who's not the behemoth industy-leading promotion we all know of.
Everyone is watching AEW, waiting to see if it's just another flash-in-the-pan or if it is on to something....
A Rhodes Legacy of Immense Proportions
I didn't know it was gaining the steam it was until only very recently. If I saw people talking it about on trends on social media ...I just thought it was another independent wrestling thing like the half dozen other ones out there. Then I saw something that blew me away .... big time.
Before I talk about this match, I want it to be known that I'm not a very big fan of extremely pointlessly violent wrestling. I don't understand why an entertainer needs to incur ludicrous amounts of personal human damage and suffering just to make a crowd go "Wowie!" for like 3 seconds. I really don't.
Historically it is the wrestlers who can't make fans go "Oh Wow!" in any other way who turn to needlessly hurting or bleeding all over themselves. A good example would be Captain Lou Albano who I think is a very entertaining man (both as Super Mario and as a Manager) but if you watch old clips of the Captain wrestling in the seventies ... you very quickly realize he was not really a terrific stuntman by any definition. So what did he do? He cut big huge holes in his face and bled all over the ring to make the crowd go "Wow!" which worked too but not in the same way a Bruno Sammartino could do it (by making you root for him to win) or an Andre the Giant could (by being a Human Wonder) or a Tiger Mask could (by being an acrobatic stuntman) ... bleeding all over yourself is a pretty gruesome and exaggerated substitute when you think about it.
Hurting yourself excessively is not interesting to me either. I like guys like Mankind but I think it was guys like him that took hurting yourself to get applause by a crowd a bit too far. You really don't need to jam all your teeth into your nose just to make a crowd happy for a few minutes. You really don't have to go that far, guys. I feel extremely uneasy clapping or cheering people on who are doing this to themselves.
That being said, despite the excessive blood involved, I still will say with 100% honesty that Cody Rhodes vs. Dustin Rhodes at "Double or Nothing" was probably the most emotional match I've ever seen in Wrestling.
They had a few vignettes leading up to it, clips put on their youtube site, of the rift that had arisen between these two... and then the rift culminated in violence at Double or Nothing....
Yes, the blood is pretty uhhhh.... bloody here. But this blood, it's telling you a story. It's the combined blood, sweat, and tears of two once-seperate but now-once-again-whole Brothers, both sons of the American Dream Dusty Rhodes ... their blood and sweat and tears of the once common bond of their Ancestor Dusty ... flowing .... and then Cody tells Dustin that he can't retire yet ... that he can't rest yet ... and with the spirit of the Dream in the AIR ... the common bond of Brotherhood is renewed! Ooooooooh.... it's too much. It's just too much for old me. I need a second, I just need a second to recoup after watching this again.
Hard times. Hard times. There's always gonna be hard times. I know both of these men have seen Hard Times ... but with enough Blood, Sweat, Tears, and Trust ... they will always dig out of that hole, they will always swim back to the surface and learn to breathe again. There's still going to be Hard Times down the road for not only them but for all of us ... but I know in my heart that we will always find a way ... we will find a way to dig out, n' climb up, n' with nothing more than a deep love and trust in our hearts we can all walk past these Hard Times after Hard Times after HARD TIMES after HARD TIMES!
Now that they are a tag team, a united force, and with the triangulation of The Dream peering down from above ... can this triangulative force... this Tri-Force of a tag team possibly be bested in the squared circle? I'm not sure it can be.
Their next opponents are the Young Bucks, a brash youthful duo who are not to be taken lightly... who's high flyin' acrobatics, dynamic team work, cool outfits, and wicked tag finishers make for one of the most electric combinations in Sport.
Even if the Young Bucks wear the coolest of suits to the ring (which have included Street Fighter regalia and Elvis inspired regalia of late), even if their acrobatic tag maneuvers are both aesthetically awe-inspiring and equally physically devastating ... can they overcome a Tri-Forced Unity of Brotherhood and Ancestry bonded by the blood of previous struggles? I don't know...
.... I guess we'll have to wait for Fight for the Fallen to find out.
Kenny Omega
After being admiringly blown-actually-away by that match above... I started to look into the other athletes on the AEW roster and one that really really stands out is Kenny Omega.
I'm sure this name is severely familiar to wrestling afficiandos and the like ... but I haven't been following the wrestling world for over a good decade and he's not even on in America he's famous from Japan Proresu circles. There's a lot of good things in the Wrestling World in the last decade that are totally foreign and unbeknownst to me, it would seem.
Watching Kenny Omega matches from Japan over the last few weeks, I have to say that this guy is the complete package in Wrestling terms. He's a great stuntman, he has the look for the Wrestling World (that look that makes all the ladies go crazy!), he can be Good or Bad depending on what the situation calls for, he is incredible and synchronized with his cohort in tag team competition, and best of all ... he can do all this without really taking it super seriously ... which is a very unique ability that is usually only reserved to total stalwarts (such as Adam West).
I think along the way a lot of the actors in Wrestling start to forget that there is an inherent silliness to the art of Pro Wrestling and start to take it way too seriously. I think the most fascinating thing to me about Kenny is even though he is really a Complete Package in Wrestling proficiency all-across-the-board he is able to completely just break character and remind the audience that this is entertainment and you don't have to be taking it life-and-deathingly serious.
There's some very silly Kenny Omega matches in Japan. Very silly ones. There's one where he fights a puppet...
Personal Aside
I want to briefly interupt this section and relay to you a personal anecdote that is not related in large to the current section.
I used to make youtube videos with my friends in the day, zombie stuff, and we'd just go to a field and fool around. You start to notice when you make low budget entertainment that you need to be pretty inventive at times. If you're gonna make a short film on $0 dollars of budget ... you start to think of what you can get out of anything around you. You start squeezin' juice from turnips, bruddah.
One of the ideas I had for me and my friends to make fun but incredibly cheap youtube web-a-sodes was an idea called "Fruit Wrestling."
In my exceptional idea, the FWC (Fruit Wrestling Challenge), all we needed was some old matresses, a field, and some fruit from the grocery store. It's not hard to procure wares of this nature, you know? Now get this ... the FRUIT (actual fruits) are the Good Guys and us human actors would play the Bad Guys. We'd make some vignettes with Johnny Banana (an actual inanimate banana) where the banana would be all surrounded by ladies and being all cool ... and then we could film a short promo where one of the human actors would threaten to smash n' peel Johnny B. in the center of the ring! For the match you could have tied the banana to a string and like whipped it around and then it was incumbent upon the human actor to "Sell"* for the banana and LOSE to it.
This idea never came around to fruition, so to speak, but I think, as stupid as it sounds, it would have been funny.
(Note: "Sell" in wrestling means making an opponent's maneuver seem wicked and damaging when they preform it on you.)
Back to Kenny Omega
I was watching a Kenny Omega match in Japan the other day where he "Sold" for a puppet and it's basically what my idea of fruit wrestling was supposed to look like.
Man, Kenny can make a puppet look good in the ring, which is a skill, a skill that should actually be a prerequisite to be a Pro Wrestler. You should learn in wrestling training how to lose to a puppet.... you really should.
Those guys in those wrestling schools, who teach wrestling, should ask their flock of rookies the first day of class, "Yo, when you were a kid and wrestled your pillows in the basement ... were you ever able to LOSE to the pillow or did you just beat it up all the time?"... and any rookie who tells you that they were able to lose to the pillow should be shortlisted as having above-average Wrestling IQ.
You know who I would have LOVED to see wrestle a puppet? Mr. Perfect (Rest in Peace, My Perfect Friend)... Curt Hennig is maybe the best "Seller" of moves I ever saw. Ric Flair and Rick Rude (specifically selling the Atomic Drop in Rude's case) come to mind as well .... but man Mr. Perfect could sell those moves, man.
If you punched Mr. Perfect he was liable to do triple figure-skatin' lutzes all over the place, flop over the top turn buckle, looked dazed and disoriented for the briefest of moments, and then do it all over again. Mr. Perfect vs. A Puppet (or a banana even) could have been a "five star" match as they always say these days. I truly believe Mr. Perfect could have earned five stars losing to a puppet, 100%.
On the contrary, wrestlers who can't "Sell" are missing a valuable skill and have a huge flaw in their act. There's room on a roster for a few "impervious to pain" people ... you have a tag team like Road Warriors, a nut case like Ultimate Warrior, and a literal dead person a la Undertaker ... and that's enough impervious to pain people on a roster at any given time ... like three or four. I get it that if you punch Hawk, Animal, the literally titled ULTIMATE Warrior, and a Dead Person that they won't feel it... but once everyone starts being this character wrestling gets boring pretty fast.
The other thing in Wrestling I don't get in terms of "No Selling" is regional-specific No-Selling ... where people are like ... "Oh I won't lose a wrestling performance in Albuquerque." I see online there is a VAST tonnage of "Screwjob" videos and intense-takes and "shoots" on it ... I, to this day, have no idea why "the Screwjob" thing is a big deal. I don't.
Can you imagine a traveling theater group is going around North America doing "Hamlet" and the guy playing Hamlet's Father's Ghost one day wakes up and says ... "Hey, we're in Tucson! I don't want to die in Tucson! I have uncles here!" ... and he breaks script and doesn't die ... and then none of the other actors know what the heck to do because the play makes no sense now. The other actors are thinking ... "well now what do we do for all those ghost scenes?" ... and the guy's all "I don't care, all I know is I will not die in Tucson! I'll die and be a ghost again next week in Denver!"
Losing is surprisingly one of the biggest skills to accept and learn in wrestling. It's a performance, it's the emotion, the story, the acrobatic wicked moves, the colorful managers at ring side that make it what it is ... not if you win or lose... really. It's very different from say football or baseball where winning is everything. The storytelling in wrestling is more important than who actually wins or loses.
Kenny Omega can do it all ... and on top of all his talent he is still able to let a puppet beat him up. Someone get this man some kind of award. I was reading this guy plays Earthbound (History's greatest-most video game) once a year. That's cool. A lot of his moves are video gamed themed too. I dunno, man, this guy gets it. He really does. He gets it.
Kenny Omega is cooooooool. He's a very valuable asset on a Wrestlin' Wroster.
Conclusion
I'm weighing in with the opinion that the AEW is onto something and a lot of old fans are gonna get behind it and new fans too.
I don't think it is a gonna flash up for a few months and fizzle out. I think due to some of the financial security of the investors, the interesting personalities on the roster, and the brief glimpses of what it is going to be... that it is probably gonna have some lasting potential. When they start airing their TV show on old-school broadcasting I think it will tame down and add more reality-show elements but will still be good.
One thing I wanted to mention but forgot to is that the Updated 2019 version of Dusty Rhodes and Sweet Sapphire is about I'd say 10 million more times sexier than the 80s version. Brandi Rhodes and Cody Rhodes are going to produce some incredibly good-looking offspring if they mate, my word, and by gawd, are they ever. They're a real life couple, right? I don't think they are like a kayfabe-couple ... I think they are a real-life couple.
I also think the competition is going to be a GOOD thing for the wrestling industry. I think we'll see some interesting developments in the wrestling world in general due to the initial hype of AEW.
I still want to make Fruit Wrestling Challenge which despite how dumb it sounds on paper it is actually very smart and good. How it plays out in my head is pretty cool. The things the human heels do to poor poor "Precise" Paul Pumpkin is virtually in the realm of the atrocious ... seeds and guts EVERYWHERE ... wait a pumpkin isn't even a fruit ... nevermind.
This article was pretty short ... I might do two this month.
Alright, so I posted the current itinerary in the blog's intro portion above. As stated, we're not just gonna roll right on after Liberace and follow with Elvis.... that's heavy. It's too heavy.
Let's do some more jazzy fluff and some razzy-ma-tazzy filler to cleanse the reader's brain palette before we go Big Time with Elvis.
A few articles ago, I was talking about 80s and early 90s Nostolgia and how for people born in a very specific niche market (say 1977 to 1987) ... stuff from that era, even if just a simple commercial jingle, has the potential to really jog the mind into a nostalgia-laced adventure to the past.
I want to do one, a nostalgier, but I'm gonna add an extra caveat to make the article somewhat harder to do. I'm going to limit the choice to Canadian Content! Which makes the difficulty level for this article about 300% more harder to write ... which will then make it more funner to write.
If I did straight retro we could be here ALL DAY, gang. If I was let off the chain and just wrote about Ghostbusters, and Turtles, and Pizza Commercials from 1990 ... I could easily jam loose like 1000 words in less than twenty whole minutes. The Canadian Content Caveat not only limits the retro topics but it also, I think, makes the article more uniquer because I don't think the average retro 80s kid in the USA or elsewhere ever saw most of these "gems."
Alright so the conditions are to be from the 80s and/or early-ish 90s and it must have been aired in Canada Region.
I actually now think that some of these were seen by American audiences but not on a wide-scale. I know for sure some of the bigger Canadian Contented shows did breach the border. I think "Due South" where the Mountie (who's a very satirical version of a Canadian) teams up with a wise-cracking big city American detective to solve Can-Am connected crimes did. I know that was picked up and aired in America but I don't know as to what scale it was or if it was limited to obscure cable channels.
Let's write about what Canadian Content is first before we start:
Canadian Content, and I know this statement is going to maybe offend some people here, is basically American Content yet campier, cheesier, and with here-and-there mentions of Canadian geography or concepts (a la "Oh hey, let's go to Toronto this weekend" or "My cousin from Vancouver is coming over!")
So say you have an American thing and you want to Canadian-nize it ... It mainly involves making it cheap and campier... and mentioning a few Canadian landmarks. Let us now look at one of the first Canadian "sit-coms" entitled "The Trouble with Tracy" (circa 1971)...
This is competing with juggernauts in the USA such as All in the Family and the Jeffersons ... and what is the first thing you notice about Canada's Sitcom? It's.... it's..... funny for other reasons than the comedy. None of what the actors are doing seems like something that anyone would ever do in a situation that is comedic (i.e. a Sit-Com) ... they are doing forced bits that make very little sense.
That's not to say that all of them were cheesy... one that I liked was called "The King of Kensington" with Al Waxman ... that show was good. Even the intro shows it's good, look:
"Hey! Tikanis KING!"
That intro is fun, and the foreigners sound cool... everyone is happy and having a good time in Al Waxman's show ... and you can devise this simply from the opening.This show is a fairly rarer example of a good Canadian show. If you dig 70s sitcoms you'd like this one too. I wonder why no Ontario area rapper has never made a rap name called the "King of Kenzington" with a Z in it ... that would work as a rap name.
In modern times, now-a-days ... Canadian content varies .... there's some okay stuff like a "Corner Gas" which would be, I guess, a B- or C+ level sitcom in America ... and the most popular show now has got Eugene Levy and his son in it which is comparable to an Americanized sitcom in all forms ... it is called "Schitt's Creek" and is about these rich-wads having to live in some schitty Canadian town. Schitt's Creek is good enough to be aired in USA and probably is on some specialty streams or channels.
Anyways, now let's head into the specific time frame of Today's Article which is the 80s and talk about Canadian Shows from then!
Eighties Canadian Shows!
Various Kids Shows (80s)
Let's talk about the two good ones before we make fun of all the other ones. Friendly Giant and Mr Dress Up were good shows. They hold up to others of their comparitive genre. I wouldn't classify like Captain Kangaroo as being a better show than The Friendly Giant or Mr. Dress Up ... but I wouldn't go as far as to say either of them are PeeWee's Playhouse caliber (which to this very day is the pinnacle and hallmark of Kid's Shows).
So if you are interested in 80s Canadian Kid shows that were good you can watch some The Friendly Giant or some Mr Dress Up ... The Elephant Show was okay too, I guess ... Fred Penner had his moments as well ... and some pre-80s older good ones include Johnny Jellybean and maybe the best one is The Hilarious House of Frightenstein (which had Vincent Price in it!) but let's move on to some of the more memorable ones that were way less good but more memorable for being cheap and weird.
I'm not gonna do Polka Dot Door again. I wrote on the Door a few years ago with a great paragraph, which was 100% true and 0% made-up, about how three-year-old me would literally watch Polka-Dot Door with my Big-Bird Hammer in my hand at all times just in case that 10 foot mutant monster Polkaroo exited the TV screen. I was ready for it. That monster would not get far if he came out of the screen and into to where I was. Not. Far. At. All. That puppet scared kids, man. It did.
Here's some new content for you... let's talk about Anana. Now there's a puppet that could wig kids out...
Anana .... is not a friendly looking puppet.
Tele Francais was a show that was aimed at education and language skill precision acquisition rather than entertainment per say.... and it was fronted by a bird-beaked googly-eyed pineapple that lived in a garbage dump. I was older when I saw this so I was old enough to know that monsters can't exit the TV and murder you ... but I could imagine three year old kids being scared-to-the-bone by this thing. It's not a particularly well made puppet. That thing is no muppet, that's for sure.
The cool thing about Tele Francais though ... is they would show you this IN SCHOOL! Yes, and in the late 80s school televisions were gigantic! Not the screen but the apparatus that accompanied them. Some volunteer older kid from the media room would push in this rig that was about 7 feet high and loaded with VCRs to show the class videos ... the wheeling-in of the TV was an event in itself even if they were just going to show you a talking pineapple monster who lives in a garbage dump. Just the looks in the kids eyes when the TV rig was wheeled in was worth it ... we were all like "It's a TEEEEVEEEEE in school? Yes!" It was an EVENT ... watching TV in SCHOOL was always COOL!
The English language Canadian puppets of the era were no masterpieces either. Let's take a look at Today's Special (a show about a dept. store mannequin who would spring to life at closing time) and bear witness to some more less-than-muppet-calibre puppets:
Here we see a three-person bit where a security guard with a mop on his head, a rat, and a computer attempt to make children laugh. I'm not sure anything here is funny ... even to a small small child. I can see kids being scared by mop-man and rat-thing though. I've seen public-access American puppet shows from the 80s (David Liebe Hart style stuff) and I'd probably put Today's Special puppets in league with those shows if you're wondering what is of comparable aesthetics.
As time progressed Canadian puppets got a bit better with things like "Under the Umbrella Tree" which has better puppets but still gives off more of a David Liebe Hart puppet vibe than anything more muppet-esque. The Blue Jay puppet on Under the Umbrellla tree I'd rank as pretty decent.
The most popular kids cartoon which aired exclusively to Canada was The Raccoons ... which is a decent cartoon. To be honest though, I wouldn't place it in the top 20 even of 80s cartoons. It was okay ... but it was nothing to write home about. The writing and animation was good though ... it's not something you'd watch to laugh at, the Raccoons, was a top notch show in quality terms. The only reason I don't have the fondest of nostalgia for it is because when compared to its American or Japanese counterparts I don't think the Raccoons was close to being one of the best cartoons of the 80s not even by a long shot ... here's the intro if you are interested in what the show looked like:
I think they over-used the Burt character until he was an ad-nausea part of the show. I preferred the dog family, and the villain's son who was a nerdy character moreso than Burt who was really forced on you to like him ... he tried too hard, I think, Burt Raccoon.
My Secret Identity (1988)
Oooooh you'll never knoooooow my Secret Iden-tity!
I would be pretty surprised if this great show didn't bleed its way into the USA and other regions globally... this show was GOOD and not just for a Canadian Show I mean GOOD by any standards.
If you're not familiar with this show imagine you took Kevin Arnold and Super Man and made them the same person. Yeah. It's a cool show.
I think it might even be the inspiration for Doogie Howser in the States ... which I will admit was a show I did not like very much. The premise to Doogie Howser was, I guess, a super smart Kevin Arnold but in the confines of reality where he had no outworldish powers ... just he was smart. I find Doogie Howser to be less-believable as a premise than My Secret Identity to be frank with you. The premise to Doogie Howser is a stretch at best and grossly negligent at worst. Can you imagine in real life you take your grandma or grandpa in to get open heart surgery and some kid walks out and pretentiously tells you "Your Grandpa's in good hands .. mine ... the hands of a pre-pubecent wunder-kid!" ... most of us would be like ... "No way, Jose!"
Jerry O'Connell was not just a smart Kevin Arnold here ... he was Super Man! He could fly! He could run fast! He could punch adults! YES!
Man, this show invaded my day dreams at school in the early 90s like no other. I'd be like in gym class playing european hand-ball or some crap ... and then boom.... day dream time! All these snake monsters, worm mutants, mecha-godzillas, and spider gremlins would just INVADE gym class ... and I'd start flying and suplexin' 'em like it was nothing ... all the girls would be like "woahhhhh" and I'd turn to everyone and be like .... "Well, I guess you all just didn't knooooooow about my Secret Iden-tity! OWWWWW!" and then gently moon-walk out of the gymnasium.
I can't be the only one that had that day dream at school ... I bet most if not all Canadian 80s Kids did.I would even venture a fairly educated guess that to Canadian 80s Kids Jerry O'Connell is much bigger than Kevin Arnold. Much bigger.
T & T (1988)
You also could have called this "Cheesy A-Team."
This time around B.A., oops I mean T.S. Turner was framed for a crime he didn't even commit but is saved by a savvy Canadian lawyer who's name also starts with T ... as to which T and T recruit a band of street smart orphans, ex-detectives, street urchins and family members to solve crimes together!
You see in the intro stuff blowing up right? So you think ... oh wow Cheesy The A Team is going to have several explosions here and there, right? No, wrong. Mr. T solves crimes with orphans more than anything and I don't think, if memory serves me right, he ever built one single sports van into a battle-mounted artillery vehicle to bust out of a cave he and his team were trapped in.
Even though it's a decent show, part of you yearns for something more as you watch it. You're thinking things like... "Oh, this is it! This is gonna be the episode I bet where George Peppard will show up portraying retired Canadian General Hawk DesJardins and he will inform T.S. Turner of a secret mission to overthrow the Guatamala Government that will require T.S. to mount a missile launcher onto a canoe!!!"
....but no, the episode would just be like Mr. T helping one of the kids from Road to Avonlea find his dead beat dad or something.
I wish cross-overs were bigger back then. You know what would have been cool? A "My Secret Identity" and "T and T" cross over month where both shows combined. Jerry O'Connell would get into a mess he could not get out of, even with the help of Dr. Jeffcoate''s science.... and they'd hire the private investigation services of T and T ... and lo! Mr. T would trip over one of Dr. Jeff Coat's kooky experiments and re-gain the powers he had on the A-Team and MORE! "Hey keed! I can fly!? I hate heights! I ain't gettin' on a PLANE let alone flyin' like a damned bird, SUCKAH!" "It's okay T.... you'll get used to it... just I like I did. I was a regular kid at school, think about I must've felt after tripping over Benjamin Jeff Coat's kooky science experiments!"
"Dang, keed. Oh well... I guess we better go stop those criminals now that we BOTH have incredible Super Powers!"
Again, that never happened on T and T.... which again makes you wonder what could have been.
The Littlest Hobo (1979)
This one creeks into the seventies but it's okay we'll let it through just as an excuse to get this song into this article....
Hmm... I'm gonna put the lyrics in Italics too...
Theres a voice, That keeps on calling me Down the road, Thats where I'll always be Every stop I make, I make a new friend Can't stay for long, Just turn around and I'm gone again
Maybe tomorrow, I'll want to settle down Until tomorrow, I'll just keep moving on
Down this road, That never seems to end When adventure lies just around the bend so if you want to join me for awhile just grab your hat, come travel light thats hobo style
Maybe tomorrow, I'll want to settle down Until tomorrow, The whole world is my home so if you want to join me for awhile just grab your hat, come travel light thats hobo style
Theres a world just waiting to unfold brand new tale no one has ever told we've journeyed far but, you know it won't be long we're almost there, and we've paid our fare with the hobo song
Maybe tomorrow, I'll want to settle down...... Until tomorrow, I'll just keep moving on.................
Yes, that's Hobo-Style, friends. I would rank this show's opening in the Top 10 of ANY region. This is up there with the best of the best in terms of openings not just limited to Canadian ones.
I saw a guy on Twitter last year or so have this big Canadian Content Tournament where it was head to head polls and the winner would advance to the next round .. I can't re-find it now ... I only saw it because members of the Kids in The Hall were commenting on it on Twitter. Anyways, The Littlest Hobo lost in the prelimary rounds to ... DEGRASSI HIGH!?
It was one of the most effronterous elections I had ever witnessed in the entirety of my entire life. The Little Hobo, the greatest dog, losing in the first round to Degrassi? No. No. Noooo. No.
The theme song alone for the Littlest Hobo is probably the greatest Canadian-based Content ever made ... it can't lose to a syrupy high school over-drama. If you've never seen Degrassi High it's like Saved by The Bell but if they touched on such obscene and silly topics at the drop of a dime in the corniest of methods. Like say, Screech wakes up one day and catches the AIDS ... and everyone has to learn what AIDS is for a half hour ... that's what Degrassi was. Just content that was sooooo over the top.
That guy who hangs out behind the Raptors bench and keeps them exceptionally motivated was on Degrassi, Drake, playing like a kid in a wheel chair, I think... I don't remember ... it was not a show I would watch by choice and don't remember much of it.
I am very surprised DeGrassi is so fondly remembered by Canadians to the point where it would easily defeat The Littlest Hobo in a King of the Ring style online vote. I always found it corny to the point where you'd laugh at it ... instead of beautiful and great like The Littlest Hobo was.
Teenager shows were really hit-and-miss in Canada. I wouldn't for the life of me have thought Degrassi had the fan base it did. Personally, I didn't like any of the Teenager Canada Shows. Though I do have a soft spot for the intro to Neon Rider which was a good song....
Get on up Off of them Streets!
Neon had a cool song but was aimed at a Central Canada demographic ... which means everyone has a horse on the show. Neon Rider was a guy who owned a ranch where he taught wayward deliquent teenagers how to ride horses ... it is one of a great deal of Horse Shows I can think of that have aired in Canada over the years. I think "Corner Gas" is the only show set in either Saskatchewan or Alberta where no one has a horse.
The Littlest Hobo transcended all demographics ... regional, geographical, age, everything else ... how can you not like the Hobo? He's the best. His song is the best, too. How he lost to Degrassi on an unscientific online social media tournament is so confusing for me... it really is.
Conclusion
Okay, So now you know what it was to be an 80s Kid .... In Canada! It must have been such an out-of-body experience for you that I will allot you a few seconds to recollect yourself.
It must have been fun to vicariously know what it was like to be a Canadian person and watch TV in the eighties! I'm sure it broadened your world view and made you feel more Wordly than you did yesterday.
Before we begin our Odyssey into the Mysteries and Mythologies of Liberace's Legend and Legacy, firstly, we need to display my credentials on the field of Liberacian Sciences.
My Credentials:
1. I have TWO accredited degrees from TWO DIFFERENT respected Las Vegas Universities regarding the Field of Libercian Science.
2. I have BEEN INSIDE the Liberace Museum!
3. My Grandma (with my "Oma" ) saw Liberace preform live and endlessly regaled me with stories of the concerto when I was a child. Part of me feels like I've seen him preform Live even though I have not....
4. When I close my eyes ... I can sometimes SENSE the Legacy, and the Legend of the Luminaire himself ... like a gentle wind whispering through the leafs of the trees.
Okay, so with the formalities now out of the way let's get started shall we?
Part One: Conceptualizing His Place in Human History and What Mark He Left on It
Before we can even begin to understand the Legacy of Liberace and the Legend of this Luminary in any tangible terms that today's society can grasp, we must, describe the generation which proceeded The Man, The Myth, The Icon ... Liberace. We must dive into a world slightly before Liberace was born and witness, nay FEEL, how sucky and boring it was.
Liberace was born 100 years ago on May the 16th of 1919 ... and the world changed forever that day but what was the era right before he was born like? Was it great or did it suck? Let's take a look...
-The Pre-Liberace Era (1,000,000,000,000,000,000 BC to 1919 AD)
The World started a couple billion or trillion or whatever years ago ... it was a rock hurling throughout space. The first life on it was microscopic worms that lived under the Ocean. These worms mutated one day into bigger weirder looking things. Some whacky off-shoot of the base proto worm things got bored eating moss and muck so it started eating the worms instead of the water gunk and it grew bigger. The cycle then kept going for a few million years with worms mutating and becoming bigger weirder worms until many species of worms were crawling around the bottom of the Sea...
Then, it got really really hot. A star blew up or our space-rock hurtled through some hot-zone where the Sun's radiation hit us better with less obstruction. The rock got super hot and in turn the Ocean got super hot... and the myriad of Worm Monsters at the bottom of the sea got super hot.
When Worm Monsters get Hot they do what anyone does ... they do sex and mate with one another. So with all the heat, radiation from the sun, and dirty worm sex going on at the bottom of the sea... WEIRDER-ASS MONSTERS started to off-shoot out of Nature's Gene Pool and cooler variations of Worm Monsters started cruising along the bottom as the aeons progressed.
Sadly, some of the Worm Monsters got really big and some of them ... the bigger ones ... couldn't eat the small ones anymore so a big famine hit. They simply mutated into genres of worms that were just too big to stay fed with the food supply available at the time. Some of these big hungry wormies noticed there were these green leafy Tree-like things on the other side of the top of the ocean ... so they tried to get on Land but couldn't because their fishy-worm-gills couldn't breathe oxygen.
Some mutant worm monsters eventually were born with lungs that could handle living off oxygen and these Amphibious Worm Monsters ventured unto Land... thus becoming Earth's first land-dwelling sea monsters.
Another big heat-wave hit ... and some Land Monsters died ... some lived ... some got heat-mad and sex-mad and went on a mating spree ... and after the heat wave ended EVEN WEIRDER MONSTERS WERE RUNNING AROUND. Some looked like Dinosaurs now! Big marauding beasts with little rhyme or reason.
Alright so we've gone through a few trillion years of Earth's history so far and nothing cool has happened yet. Keep this in mind, friends, the world was gross, boring, and covered with Worm Monsters for most of its existence. People think Dinosaurs were cool ... but they weren't. They were just murderous, mindless, over-sized, Monsters. Who cares? Let's fast forward through the Lizard-Led era of Earth and get to the Monkey part. HUMANS!
Humans came about at some point and started making tools and villages and castles. Which is cooler than anything any dinosaur ever did. So to all you Dinosaur coo-coos out there who are all the time "dinosaurs this" and "dinosaurs that"... how come not ONE dinosaur in millions of years couldn't invent one thing? Not even a hammer ... or a telephone ... or a boat .. or an 8-bit video game entertainment system? Why? Because they were not all that great. They really weren't.
Humans weren't all about inventing and being fun though .... this era of humanity was SUPER VIOLENT! A caveman couldn't walk a mile in cave town without some other whacked-out caveman, who was probably whacked-out on rotten naturally-fermented lizard's-blood, kicking his damned head in. Cave men might have invented sticks and stuff but they mainly used them to hurt other people ... which is DUMB and NOT NICE.... at all.
Early humans were smelly and bad. Eventually they invented newer stuff like bath tubs, guns, and ice cream makers along the way but right up to 1919 ... right up until before Liberace was born ... they were still pretty lame.
World War One started in 1914 ... and the Entire WORLD of pre-Liberace humans began to murder each other in record numbers. You know how many people died in World War One? This many:
From Violence: 40 million From Disease Pandemics: 50 million From Displacement, Famine, and general Degradation: Unknown Figure
So it's 90 million confirmed deaths in 1918 post-war totals and I'd tack on another 20 million from other things that I don't think were totaled back then.I'd say in 1918 when the War ended about 110 million people just died terrible terrible deaths...
...So the World in 1918? It was not very good at all. It was a place of terrible violence and horrendous degradation.
But then in 1919 .... Liberace was born and that all finally changed forever.
Liberace is Born.
-The Beginning of a Legacy ... A Legend is Born! (1919 to 1936)
(Note: this portion is historically dealing with the era of 1919 to 1936, okay? Great piano players like Mozart aren't going to be compared to Liberace because Mozart's era was the 1700s. Yes, Mozart was maybe a slightly better piano player than Liberace but he doesn't qualify for the Era being dealt with in the following portion.)
Liberace's hometown was West Allis, Wisconsin. His father was an Italian and his mother was a Polish lady. With such average origins who would have imagined he would become not only the Hautest Culture of the Midwest but of the World?
He was a prodigy at a young age ... and even at age five was already probably the best piano player in society. His teachers at music school were so jealous of him it wasn't even funny, really. They were extra mean to Liberace because they knew at his age he was already better than they were ... and they were Music Teachers! They scorned him and slapped him with rulers. They forbade Liberace from playing experimental and fun music on the piano ... he was limited to the "classics" and not allowed to even deviate from them an inch!
Liberace's parents, were supportive of the prodigy, and told him ... "Liberace you should defy the teachers and play whatever you want on the piano!" .... and he did!
At music school, at age 11, under the supportive bulwark of positive-re-enforcement by his parents, Liberace played a classic but with a MODERN twist, with an unfamiliar sound signature, and a creative finishing tempo!
.... and guess what? You'll never guess. Did the teacher hit him? Did the teacher faint? No! The teacher openly wept at how great it was! It was at that very moment that Liberace knew he had a gift that could not be contained! He had a Heavenly-Adorned ability that the World needed to See!
Liberace left Wisconsin.....
-Becoming the Era's Most Greatest Pianist! (1936 to 1955)
(As stated above, when we refer to the Greatest Pianist of
the Era, we are only including living and active ones from the years
1919 to 1955 ... Mozart and Beethoven can't be considered ... and I know
many of you are saying that they are better than Liberace, guys like
Mozart and them ... but that's not fair. Those guys just played piano all day. I
think one of them was BLIND too and couldn't go outside even so he just
played piano non-stop in the 1700s. When annointing the Greatest Pianist
of the Era we are only including living/active ones of said era ...
keep that in mind before saying things like "Ya, but what about
Beethoven??")
Liberace after bringing his stuck-up teacher to joyful tears through sheer brilliance was ready to bring his pianistmanship to the World ... but was the World ready for his pianistmanship? No, it wasn't.
Critics ripped his interesting new pieces to shreds in the papers and it really took its toll on Liberace .. but it didn't deter the Legend at all. He kept playing sold out shows with his New Interesting Music and everyone loved it because it was really amazing ... especially the ladies!
Young Liberace, under his stage name "Walter" !
He rose the ranks of the Piano world like a surging bolt of incredible lightning! He was whippin' it loose on every big venue in the USA, slappin' the keys like an out of control wild fire, and meeting all the finest ladies!
Biggs (left), MacMillan (right)
He cared not that 1% of the USA's most stuck-up piano critics didn't like him ... he reveled in the fact that 99% of the USA's people loved him! He kept playing and playing like a man possessed.... until he was probably the third best piano player of his era.
At the time, his contemporaries who were considered "Great" and possibly in the poll position of the piano world were E. Power Biggs and Ernest "The Canadian Pianist Knight" MacMillan. E. Power Biggs was probably number One at that point and Ernest MacMillan was number two. They were good at it, no doubt ... but with a soaring Liberace getting better and better at piano by the second ... how long could either E. Power Biggs or Ernest MacMillan lay claim to being the greatest pianist of the era? Not long. Their time as being considered the greatest at playing the piano was fleeting and was soon to come to an abrupt end.
E. Power Biggs? Ernest MacMillan? Sorry fellas but there's a new kid in town and his name is Liberace! By 1950 he was hands-down better than either E. Power or Ernest ... here he is playing as fast as anyone else had ever played:
The Era's Most Greatest!!
By 1955 it was sewed up, sealed, and delivered ... it was official and undeniable .... Liberace was the greatest pianist on earth, yet, that was only the beginning of the Legend's journey into Legacy. The road to the top was now without obstacles... just smooth sailing into outright Fame.
For Liberace would become the Most Famous Person in the Entire World....
-Becoming the Most Famous Human in all of the World (1955 to 1980)
One day, Liberace was asked to perform at the grand opening of one of the USA's most expensive Hotel and Banquet Halls and a reporter asked Liberace, who was famous for both his black and white stunning tuxedos, what he'd be wearing for his upcoming performance.
Liberace froze in fright. He didn't know what to say.
Standing near him was his sister who ported a Golden Jacket ... under duress and pressure by the reporter Liberace said...
"Something like she's wearing ... but more extravagant and ostentatious!"
...and from that off-hand, under-pressure comment to local media prior to the opening of a banquet hall ... Liberace began wearing the most incredibly beautiful garments ever to grace the frame of a person.
The banquet hall was the embarkation point of Liberace's quest to become the most Famous Person in the World. His clothes kept getting better and better and then more better and more better! It was truly amazing. He very quickly became more famous than the Queen of England and everyone!
The Queen of England looked like an actual poor person compared to Liberace.... for he had acquired the world's most rarest of gems, expensive of jewels, and ancientest of artifacts in a short time. Much of the fare was piano-themed too ... which was cool. By 1965 he had Six Homes, Seventeen Dining Rooms, and a Pool with Piano Keys on the sides so he could play piano in his pool. Rich people like the Queen, or Oil Tycoons, or Railroad Barons probably had NONE of these incredibly cool things.
Here we can see Liberace fly into a show on his personal Hot-Air Balloon to witness his Majesty!
He is Truly Amazing.
By 1965 he was the first ever.... Super Star!
All of society was finally good. There was no more Worm Monsters terrorizing the oceans, or World Wars taking away our young sons lives well before their times ... everything was finally the way it should be... and to this day we are still living in the Liberace Era! The era of Complete Show-Biz, Complete Entertainment, and Complete Larger-Than-Life-a-tude!
Some people will say the ShowBiz obsessed society of today is wrong and bad... but when compared to the pre-Liberace world of war, famine, pestilence, and decay ... they are nuts to think that.
-The End of an Era and the Start of an UnEnding Legacy (1980 to 1987)
"I suppose I wanna feel that my presence on earth is going to be felt for a long time after I'm gone so in order to make this presence felt for posterity I have done certain things for example: I would like to feel that all the antiques I have collected will be enjoyed by people long after I have become but a mere memory. All the things I have acquired have been placed in my care to look after ... they don't really belong to me. They belong to the World."
-Liberace
Liberace was Liberace for one reason... because he dared to dream. What set him apart from the other extravagant characters of humanity's history was that it, all along, the entire time, it was all just a big lark. He enjoyed life, had fun with it, and because of that people had fun and enjoyed life as well.
He didn't take himself seriously. He knew life was just a big stage to have fun on. What a lot of people don't get about Liberace is that for the most part it was a comedic character he was performing.
There's no other entity in the vast inter-twining paths of History that instills the great basic notion in the human mind of total joie-de-vivre and also of total absolute ridiculousness. The entity which encapsulates this is Liberace.
When it comes to his vast collection of chachkies and gaudy gimickery, he never felt as though he really owned any of it, because he knew he couldn't take it with him. He believed he was the curator of a Living Museum ... the overseer of a life-like Mythology happening right before society's eyes. Today's trinkets are tomorrow's artifacts and Liberace's gaudy scarves and diamond encrusted piano-shaped watches are now artifacts of a bygone century called the 1900s on display for posterity.
Some ancient Egyptian Pharaohs wanted to be buried with their trinkets so they could take them to heaven with them ... no such luck King Tote-En-Whatever ... they're just gathering dust in some pyramid, my friend. Some Kings and Queens want their wealth sealed in an old tower so no one else can get what was theirs. Some pirates pillage and steal a fortune only to die with it buried in some stinky cave somewhere ... where no one will find it. You can't take your Wealth "With You" where you're going, friends. You can't take anything where you're going but you can leave something ...
You can only leave a Legend's Legacy.
Liberace's Legend's Legacy wasn't the gaudy, almost-ridiculous possessions he accumulated in his life time to be viewed at his personal Museum in Las Vegas ... Liberace's gift to the world was a Stardom that couldn't possibly be forgotten ... not even seven thousand years from now .... for he is still The World's Most Famous Man of All Time!
Part Two: A Post Liberace World? It's Great! But When Imagining a World without Liberace Would the Following Things Exist?
"......and Wavy Hair like Lib Ah Racheee!" -The Andrews Sisters (and the Chordettes)
In a hypothetical scenario where Liberace didn't leave Wisconsin and become the World's First Super Star and the Most Famous Person in History ... would a lot of great things we take for granted today even exist? Let's rapid fire out some Frequently Asked Questions on this matter.....
Would Sports Exist?
Yeah, they would without Liberace, yeah.
Would Wrestling Exist?
Wrestle Mania 1
Yes, but like old wrestling where two hairy, averaged-sized guys would just do a grip challenge for ten minutes, an arm bar for like fifteen minutes, and then the match would stop due to the time limit exceeding or something. That form of wrestling would exist but without Liberace the current form of it would NOT. I believe that 110%.
Liberace was even the Special Guest Time Keeper at Wrestle Mania 1, the event which catapulted Wrestling into the lime-light and spot-light of the magical eighties. I personally even believe that if Liberace didn't personally appear at Wrestle Mania 1 that the WWF/WWE wouldn't have soared like a lightning bolt the way it did.
Would Godzilla and other Kaiju exist without Liberace?
That's a fascinating one. I'm not sure about that. It's a great question. I think Liberace's larger than life persona inspired the likes of King Kong and other things of that nature but to flat out say that Godzilla and Kaiju wouldn't exist in a post-Liberace World yet one in which Liberace didn't previously actually exist? It's a stretch, I'd say. Good question though.
Did he once play a Piano on a Piano?
Yes, but this question isn't really on topic with this section. Please keep following questions on topic. But, yes, he certainly once played a smaller piano on top of a bigger piano. Which is probably a feat reserved to only him.
Playing a Piano on another Piano....
Some scholars say he was "meta" before "meta" existed ... but that's wrong. The genre of meta-this and meta-that is a tired one as old as time. Liberace was not "meta" ... he was above that childish schoolyard philosophical drivel.
Why would he do that?
Why would he play a piano on top of another piano? I don't know ... because it's cool? Obviously. I mean, why does anyone do anything, really?
Would Cartoons Exist in a Universe where He Never Was?
Yeah.
Would Reality Shows exist?
Probably not but who cares?
What do you think about Disney Land? Would that still be here?
Lee once described himself as a "One-Man walking Disney Land" or some-such-like equivalent. Honestly, I don't think there'd be a Disney Land or Disney World in a sans-Liberace situation.
Would World Wars III, IV, and V have occurred in a World Without Lee?
That's not a straight forward question, do I believe these three Wars were totally outright averted due to Liberace having been alive in the World during the time-frame in which they theoretically would have taken place?I wouldn't go and say that these three disasters were averted totally thanks to him but I do believe he played a part, I'm not sure how big or small, in keeping these Wars at bay, Yes.
Youtube Stars? What about them?
Without the encroaching over-taking of Show-Biz on Society in a non-Lee Universe ... they'd all be working at the photo copy store or selling matches in the street like the commonest of street urchins.
Would Cosplay and fastidious ad-hoc Not-Even-On-Hallowen-Even costume Dressing-Up people exist without Liberace?
Maybe ... yeah, probably.
Why would he live his entire life in a gaudy, extra sensational, tour-de-force, fashion?
I dunno, maybe because he wanted to?
Was he a good cook? I heard he was really good at it...
Yes, he was an exceptional chef ... maybe one of the greatest ever. He has a good cookbook where he teaches people how to make "Liberace Lasagna" and other culinary wonders. Here he is on the first incarnation of the fantastic David Letterman program cooking up a storm whilst in regal dress....
Yes, he was an excellent cook.
Would the over-the-toppingly extravagent bosses accompanied by symphonies at the end of the Final Fantasy games exist without Liberace being in the World in a prior Era?
Great question! Hmmmm....I'll go with No on that one. They wouldn't exist without Lee.
Dragon Ball Z?
Yeah ... it would still be able to creatively exist in a non-Liberace scenario-Universe in and of its-own. Yes.
The Muppet Show?
Maybe ... he was on it though.... and its a GOOD episode of the Muppet Show that I highly recommend to readers.
Stand Up Comedy?
Vaudeville pre-dates Lee ... but Liberace's crowd work is emulated by comics in modern times, I find. It was NOT common for performers of any sort to talk to the audience and make them part of the show prior to Lee. Liberace spent a good portion of his concerts walking through the audience, meeting them, asking them about themselves, showing them his diamond piano-shaped rings, etc, etc.
Forest Fires?
That's a dumb question that does not dignify an answer because it makes no sense.
What about Elton John?
No. I heard he's getting a bio-pic now which I'm sure will present him well. I can't say the same thing for the Liberace bio-pic ... which warrants its own section so let's move out of this section now.
Part Three: The Underwhelming Liberace "Movie" and my Proposed Better One.....
Many people openly wonder why the Liberace-based film starring M. Douglas* and M. Damon was so awful and why nobody at all liked it even a little bit.
To explain why the Liberace Movie wasn't very good would take weeks or even months to properly deconstruct. I, off the top of my head, could list almost 5,000 reasons why this film didn't work ... and at some point you have to wonder if anyone involved with the film had any understanding of who Liberace even was.
Yet, we must always look for silver linings in art though, even very poorly made art. For me personally, the Liberace Movie helped me identify with religious folks a lot more than I previously did as a discorned teenager. I get why people so immensely hated Martin Scrosese's "The Last Temptation of Christ", for instance now, where a great Larger-Than-Life Mythos-Man was portrayed as just being this regular guy who does bad things. They are removing the Mythos around this character and making him this regular run-of-the-mill figure. Last Temptation sparked not only controversy but even riots and led to people burning down movie theaters.
When your working with figures who's Myths proceed them ... it is sort of cheap and underhanded to de-mystify them ... and for me the Liberace Movie really made me understand that and really made me understand why people would be so incensed over that Scrosese film. Scrosese is good at crime-lore, and making gangsters into mythological anti-heroes ... that's his talent ... he's good at that ... so why he would even tackle a topic like Jesus of Nazareth is beyond me. It's fun to branch out and try a new style and that's probably what Martin had in mind, I'm guessing.
The people behind the Liberace Movie (I think it's called "Behind the Candelabra" or something) de-mystified Lee to the point of ludicrousness. He was not only de-mystified but VILIFIED! Absolutely vilified into being a Lecherous Howler or a Lascivious Prima-Donna .... not the Legendary and Legacious person he truly was.
The mythos genre isn't for amateurs, it really isn't. To work in the art of the mythos genre takes a different approach. You can't apply your well-honed skills at crime-glorification to make a Jesus movie ... and you FOR SURE can't apply your skills at absolutely nothing to make a Liberace movie.
A good Liberace film would be 70% exaggerated over-the-top almost-ludicrous gallavantary and total gallantry. The other 30% for "drama" and note that word is under heavy-duty quotations. You know what was a good movie? You know what it was the Freddie Mercury movie? That was good that movie. I was worried going to the theater what is was going to be at first that Freddie Mercury Movie. I was thinking they can only go down two roads with it ... one road where it's 20% fun concerts (music centric) and 80% drama where he's like Tom Hanks in Philadelphia trying to crowbar an Oscar loose from the Academy by suffering and dying of illness. The other road as 80% fun music scenes ... and only 20% or less drama scenes of him trying to wiggle out an Oscar.
I was happy that it was the latter, that film, that it was 80% about fun, music, rock, roll, and HUGE CGI CONCERTOS, a true Bohemian Rhapsody in the purest of sense. It really was a good movie. The actor from the Freddie Mercury movie still made it to the Oscars, I think, even though the movie was 80% fun instead of 80% drama. Can you imagine? The Oscar going to a fun movie that people actually like? What a concept. In a good Liberace movie, the 30% of drama that should be assigned to the mythos is a sibling-related drama with his respect for George and Angie. I think it is really interesting that it seems the Liberace Musuem was constructed not only to house Liberace's assortment of famed memorabilia and exquisite relics ... but also to keep George Liberace, his far less living-legend of a brother, in the Liberace Universe in some manner as the Liberace Train was really starting to leave the station and Liberace Mania was taking foot. I find that to be a very interesting portion of Liberace History.
I would even go as far as to name the good version of a Liberace Movie something like "Wladziu-Valentino and George" where the lead actor playing Lee can be all over-the-wall and off-the-top and the George character can be a more serious actor who plays it very serious-like. That way, the actor playing Lee can win the Best Actor Oscar and the actor playing George can win Best Supporing Actor Oscar come awards-season. Plus, since it would be a music-based film ... it'd probably rack up all the music-related Oscars ... and since it is a mythological film with Godzilla-like special effects ... it'd rake in all the Special Effect Oscars too. My prognosticated "Good Liberace Movie" would probably be the first film in history to rack up and clean sweep the entirety of the Oscar trophies.
Liberace ... and George.
Here is a sample of dialogue from a key scene in this movie that's playing in my head right now, it's a scene where Liberace and George Liberace discuss how well Liberace Mania is going, George feels like a he's becoming excess baggage in the whole scheme of things, yet Lee convinces George what a great and trusting person he has been in the Road to Liberace Mania and how he would never have got to where he is without him and Angie.... Alright here's a sample dialogue between Wladziu-Valentino "Liberace" Liberace and George "Plain Old" Liberace from my movie (that only exists in my head):
Scene 24.1(A): Brother, I Wouldn't be Liberace if it wasn't for you and Angie!
George Liberace: Val, the show's making so much money, you have Six Homes and almost Seventeen Dining Rooms as the Seventeenth is almost completed at your Las Vegas Villa ... I think it's time you shed off some dead weight, Val....
Vaelntino Liberace: What do mean, dear brother?
George Liberace: Hmmm, you don't need me. You're Liberace now ... and I am ... I'm just George. I'm not one for the Lime Light. When I go to renew my driver's license ... do you think there's thousands of people screaming "Libber-Rach-EEh!" at me and clamoring for autographs? No, they don't even recognize me for the most part. In fact, to avoid being called an imposter, I don't even pronounce it in that way ... when I renew my driver's license, I tell them my name is George "Libber Ace" like the playing card. It's not for me anymore this world of glam and glory ... Val. You can soar to greater heights if you only had less of a kind heart and were able to send me to road side....
Vaelntino Liberace: George.......
George Liberace: You have achieved dreams greater than any reality before... and you can still soar to ever-more greater skies and climb higher and higher above. You don't need this old chunk of dead weight, this hunk of charcoal, holding you down any longer .... you must fly! You must fly to your peak! You must soar like a multi-colored rainbow up, up, and away to bigger dreams! You are the Golden guy, Valentino, you are truly the Golden Guy!
Vaelntino Liberace: Golden? Oh golden schmolden, George. Do you know why I wore that Golden Jacket the night before the opening of the Hotel Banquet Hall all those years ago? All those years back when I still just wore a plain black tuxedo with you on our show? Do you want to know why I wore that amazing Golden Jacket that night at the Hall opening, do you George? Golden.... gold schmold. Gold .... schmold.
George Liberace: Why?
Vaelntino Liberace: A reporter asked me a question, something along the lines of "what manner of extravagent wear shall you adorn for the concerto celebrating the opening of the new Banquet Hall, Liberace?" .... and I pannicked, George, I didn't know what to say to this High Society newspaper man ... I didn't want to let the Hotel folks down ... you know? I wanted to promote the concert, that's all ... and ...
George Liberace: And...?
Vaelntino Liberace: I was with Angie, she was wearing a Golden Jacket ... and it was spur of the moment. I told the High Society newspaper man something like "That! That, but only 100 times more dazzling!" ... and they printed it in the paper that I would wear something more bedazzling than even a gilded jacket!
George Liberace: What of it? You're still the Golden Guy, Val ... just because you became Him by accident doesn't change the reality of it all! You're Him, the Golden Guy, you not need ask why. You need not try to under-sell it or justify it down... You're Him, Val. You are Liberace!
Vaelntino Liberace: Even before the opening, even before the Golden Jacket ... before it all. Do you know why I even left Milwaukee, George? Do you know why I left Wisconsin and came to Vegas?
George Liberace: Why, Val? Why?
Vaelntino Liberace: Do you wanna know why? Do you really wanna know why? Dooooo you wannnnnaaaa knooooooooooow why-high-high-high-high!? (an Extended Music Interlude breaks out here: 1. Liberace plays a short Piano Solo that is cool and good.
2. A group of sexy female dancers storm in and sing a powerful number where the chorus is "Do You Wanna Know Why-High-High-Eye-Eye-High-Hiiiiiigh!"
3. The Musical interlude ends and the dialogue continues as if nothing extra-ordinary or incredibly cool just happened)
George Liberace: Tell Me, Valentino! Tell me Why! WHY!?
Vaelntino Liberace: You were doing the club scene there George, and I was lonely in Milwaukee, I wanted to come see you.... because ... I missed you, George.
George Liberace: ....
Vaelntino Liberace: If you never ventured out here before me, George, I would still be in Milwaukee calling myself Wlad Libber Ace ... instead of LIBERACE! George Liberace: (George isvisibly over come by powerfully positive emotions)
Vaelntino Liberace: I just wanted to be like you, and now you are telling me I am too big for you. Do you remember when I was on Batman, George? I made them write in that I had a brother named Harry ... a simple name ... my name was Chandell on the show ... Chandell and Harry. I personally asked Lorenzo Semple Junior to work you in ... in some way ... I made them mention you in some way, George ... without you there is no Liberace. Do you think me standing on a stage in a tuxedo was a big deal? It was a big deal because your drabness made me look spectacular even if I was anything but .... without you George don't you see .... there is no Me ... there is no "Libber Ach Ee" there is only Libber Ace ... like the playing card as you say.
George Liberace: I understand that. Still, you can't take your foil to top with you. You can't take an Earthbound fellow like me to the Promised Land you are boldly headed to ... and deep down, even if you don't like it, you know it is true....
Vaelntino Liberace: No, George I need you to do something. I am opening the Liberace Museum next month. It will feauture many of my most treasured artifacts and historically-significant relics that I have accumulated on my vast travels ... I need someone dependable to curate the Liberace Museum, George. I know you're the only one I can trust to watch over my most prized possessions and show them to the adoring public. You're the only one I can trust to over see the Liberace Museum!
George Liberace: I'll do it. You can trust me to preserve the honor of the Legend and Legacy of Liberace for thousands of years to come!
Vaelntino Liberace: With all of the fibers of my human heart .... I thank you from the bottom of it, George!
George was the First Curator of the Famed Liberace Museum in Las Vegas...
(End of Section Notes:
*Though they share the same namesake (both firstmost and last) this M. Douglas is not Lee's close personal friend Mike Douglas the interviewer ... this M.Douglas here refers to the one that's married to C. Zeta-Jones.)
Conclusion
A dirt-poor son of immigrants who became the Most Famous Person to Ever Live. If that doesn't inspire you then you are uninspirable. So many of you are at home, reading this, feeling sorry for yourselves that life isn't giving you what you want out of it... but it's there ... it's really there... what you want.
The Legend and Legacy exists within all of us ... deep down inside of us. We are all Legends .... each and every one of us. There's a super star inside of each of us just waiting to become More, just waiting to become Great ... to step up to the plate and hit a big Homerun right out of the park! Whether you want to believe it or not... you can be Somebody. When you close your eyes I know you can feel it burning inside of you ... every one has it! Everyone has potential in this life. Whether you work at the Bowling Alley or the Store or Whatever it is... even if you don't know it ... IT'S THERE!
IT is THERE. If you DREAM IT then you can BELIEVE IT! It's really THERE!
The Legend of Liberace ... is always there.
May 16th marks One Hundred Years of Liberace. It is a Centennial Fair!
Been reading a lot, of late. Two things have interested me of late in the world of words. I've been reading a lot of Haikus lately for one thing.
I never got Haiku previously, I always, honestly, thought they were dumb. Not really "dumb" really but I'm sure something is being lost in translation and there is some sort of disconnect when these Haikus are translated.
You know, you read a Haiku, and you know it is supposed to be 5-7-5 in the syllables sequence ... and that's mostly what Westernized people know about it ... it's all I knew about it. So when a Westerner tries to write one it is usually bad like something I can cook up now ... something like: Walking Down Old Road Saw Nice Candelabra There Thought Liberace
-A Haiku by Me, D.
That is a Haiku but it is not a good one. That's the Western World's understanding of the genre. I only very recently started to get why they are a big deal over in Japan. I used to think it was like an aristocratic or high society thing but it is actually the opposite. The original Haiku Masters (Basho, Shiki, etc.) were pretty beat and just commonpeople.
Matsuo Basho is the writer that really made me finally "get" Haikus. Basho was a guy who's house burned down so he just started walking around for the rest of his life. He was a wondering soul ... a real rambling man ... an aimless wanderer. You might even call him a hobo. The Haikus he wrote were small fleeting moments of his wandering life.
A good Haiku is a small fleeting moment in the life of the wandering soul ... and in the end ... aren't we all just that? Just wanderers enjoying fleeting and finite moments in our life's journeys? Check out this Haiku by Master Basho right here:
Winter solitude... In a scenery of one Color ...The sound of the Wind.
-A Haiku by Matsuo Basho
Wow, that's nice. All of his moments from his aimless wanderings are personal to him but also personal to history. He was alive, in the world, and he left Writings on things he experienced whilst being on this world. Time, a topic I wrote about last year, is the main theme of Haikus. The opening line is usually a subtly nuanced opening statement to let the reader know what Season it was when he saw something on his wanderings.
I finally get the ending to Mega Man 2 now. I always found it sort of humorous that this robot man would walk through all the seasons at the end of the game and finally make it home. Mega Man in the second Mega Man game on NES just became a Wanderer after beating all the robot bosses ... just like Matsuo Basho before him. It is actually a very noble ending.
True Beauty. Beauty has no Truer Form. Does it not?
Once you "get" Haikus and understand why they are good ... this ending takes on a whole new level of Artistic Greatness. I'm glad I have beaten this game like a hundred times and have seen this Ending one hundred times. Let's finish this Haiku section off with a Mega Man 2 Haiku:
The Changing Seasons...
Journey Home flashes quickly
Rest now Robot Man...
-A Haiku by Me, D.
Alright, so if anyone is scoring at home, I "get" Haikus now. So.... let's move on.
George Ade
The other thing I've been into lately in the Wide World of Words has been the works of George Ade. I started reading a Goerge Ade book and like Haikus ... I didn't get it at all at first. I thought it was so stuck in its Time Period that a person reading it in 2019 would just see 1914 as like a Foreign World that made no sense. I didn't give up though ... I tried to place myself into the Flow and the Pacing of the Time so I cranked up some Knuckles O'Toole on the youtube and then re-attempted to read the works of George Ade...
Light-Hearted Turn-of-the-Century Piano-Stylings
... and they started to make a ton of sense. The choppy pacing and silly clunking of the George Ade style started to flow a little better with some Knuckles slappin' the piana as accompaniment. Similar to Haikus ... the "George Ade" style is pretty unique. The paragraphs range from one line to five lines and then some broken half-line stanzas sneak their way in at times. It's like the Rag-Time of Writing I'd call it. The other key component of the George Ade style is Capitalization is assigned to just about every slang noun or portmanteau word he writes ... and he writes about two or three of those per sentence so the Caps are Flying. The Capitals are Flying all Over the Place.
Similar to the Haiku section above ... I want to do a "George Ade" fable right now. I need to cleanse my brain of Haikus and catch a little Ades right now ... gotta give my brain some George Aids for the next half hour or so....
....Okay, I think I made the switch. Let's outline what I believe is the crux of the style first off ... in case maybe you want to catch some George Aids yourself and write an Ade Fable of your own.
I think he writes the "Moral" first ... then the three or four somewhat poetic broken-line stanzas ... then he envelopes the stanzas with nonchalant rag-time silliness ... then gives it a Title. So what I think his (and I can't prove this by the way) process was is:
1. Moral
2. Three Stanzas to Set Up main Story
3. Asinine Small Talk inserted between the Stanzas
4. Title
Okay so I can handle that. This following story is written by me ... it is only my suspected Process of how he constructed the fables that is being emulated here.
Two more elements of the Ade style must be included to make it a real homage short story though. The Capitalization Assignment will be Adian in nature and the theme of the story will be a George Ade theme. Thus, it should be noted that about 85% of George Ade's fables are about some pseudo-wannabe-rich-idiot who wants to get rich and be part of high society but always finds some way to fail or make a fool of his or herself.
Alright so let's begin our emulated Fable. First we need a Moral ... this is gonna be pretty arbitrarily chosen ... the song currently playing right now on my computer for me is "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue" by the powerful rock and roll group The Ramones. So, our Moral shall be...
MORAL: Don't Sniff Glue!
If you think that's a dumb moral ... believe me ... there's dumber George Ade morals than that. This is a quote of a George Ade moral for instance:
"MORAL: Don't get acquainted too soon."
Yeah, don't get acquainted too soon. That's a George Ade Moral. He's right though. My Moral of "Don't Sniff Glue" is perfectly acceptable along the lines of a George Ade Moral.
Next let's write three broken lined stanzas about our poor sap who at some point in the story will fall from Social Grace and become a Glue Sniffing Bozo... and probably die too.
Tommy came from a Good Family, he had three brothers
who enjoyed his Company and who engaged in Good
Hearted pursuits of Artistry together.
Their Social Standing was Great.
Walking out of the Hardware Store he noticed his brother Joey
had purchased a Model Aero Plane set to Construct
as it was his Hobby he was Pretty Enthusiastic
about. The Box contained two Squeezable
Doo-Hickeys of Glue to bond the pieces.
Tommy was Chilling at the local Chautauqua Center
just sniffing some Good Glue like a Big Idiot.
His Brothers took the Smell-Wagon upstreet
to the Speak-Easy on 53rd and 3rd but
Tom had more important matters to
heed. Namely the Sniffing of Glue.
Okie dokie. There's the story fleshing out now thanks to those three broken lined stanzas. Now ... all we got to do is write a few dozen paragraphs around them ... some paragraphs as short as one line ... and they don't even really have to be that tied to the story. I've read George Ade fables where he'll just start talking negatively about salad or just jam out some nonchalant fourth wall breakery.
Alright soooo. Here is a New Writings on Subjects II Stronger Fable:
In the Suburban Region of Up State New York once lived a man of Acute Social Learning who was for the most part The Talk of the Town. He was Cool and Everybody Liked Him Very Much. He always wore a sharp Leather Jacket and usually could be found in the CBGB and seen with Sun Glasses.
His Parents were Well-To-Do and Pretty-Darned-Smart. They owned a stake in the Coney Island and were never short of Dough or searching for Scratch-ee-oh-Lee.
His name was Tommy. Many women found him Fanciful and Dandy.
Tommy came from a Good Family, he had three brothers
who enjoyed his Company and who engaged in Good
Hearted pursuits of Artistry together.
Their Social Standing was Great.
His Tallest Co-Frere went by the Monicker of Joey and was Sickly-Looking and Spindly like a Shivery Worm. Joey was very High on the Ladder of The Punk Rock Scene and was very Able to Lean on Walls and wait for the Fairer Sex to Stroll on by on any Given Sunday. A simple wink and shimmy was all that was Needed To Seize the Opportunity.
Brother Dee Dee was a Man for All Seasons. A True Bulwark of the Era. Dee Dee could best be Tallied Up in Description by letting the Reader onto the information that he was Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Funky ... a Real Funky Man.
Dee Dee was A Reputable Fellow on All Accounts I mere-do say.
The Final-Most of his Respectable Brothers in Arms was that of Johnny. Scared of Basements he Never Entered Them. Not even A Once. Calling loose and out to Daddy-oh he Feverishly would say Hey Romeo in a clamor and outright Refuse to Go Down There!
What Farce you may think of him but Not Wanting to Go Into Basements is Short of No Crime or a Breach of Any State Laws.
One mustn't be Short on Smarts to divine that Tommy's Parents, being of a High Sort and who Dined Weekly on Chicken Vin-Da-Loo would Oft Pest their eldest Leather-Bound Progeny to Wed a Nice Lady and have some Young Children with.
Our Hero (Tommy) was not Jumping-Over-Boxcars to find a Crumpet to Stuff. He found many of the Maidens at the CBGB to be Somewhat-Ugly and didn't really want to Walk Around with Them.
Such Greatness on All Fronts and Kings of the Scene were these Brothers. Johnny at Fast-Glance at a board of Street-Signage provoking the advertising of some such concoction be it Gummy Bears or Wheat-Germ or What-Not-Have-You wanted to take a Fast-Five and/or a Hot-Second to duck into the local Bodega to purchase himself some Tasty Snacks to satisfy his growing Hunger.
He then swung into the Shop Next Door. Tommy et al. Followed Suit and All the Brothers entered the Hardware Store! It was a Splendid Sight to see all the Wares and Chachkies on Display in the Cases!
Walking out of the Hardware Store he noticed his brother Joey
had purchased a Model Aero Plane set to Construct
as it was his Hobby he was Pretty Enthusiastic
about. The Box contained two Squeezable
Doo-Hickeys of Glue to bond the pieces.
The Second-Of-The-Squeezable-Glue-Doo-Hickeys in the Package seemed to be Excessive and Joey did not need It even a Small Bit. He asked Tommy to throw it away into the Garbage's Can. Tommy swifted back and was about to heed Word of Refuse and Appoint the Doo-Hickey of Glue to an Early-Grave ... yet a Fantastic Aroma caught the undertappings of his Nose.
Our Protagonist (Tom or Thomas to his Folks at Times) was Caught-Short and Hog-Wiled by the Aroma of the Doo-Hickey's containments. He further-removed the Cap and took a Stalwart's Whiff of the Hickey's Interior.
Holy Smokes! All of the Sudden the World Began to Spin in front of He. Life ceased being Reality and Switch-Turned into being a Big Crazy Movie like those shown on the Orpheum Circuit! What manner of Merries-Go-Round had he accidently Got On? None! He was Not on a Ferris's Wheel in the Least for this was not Coney Island it was only the Exterior of the Hardware Store.
Poor Tom. With the Blink of Fate's Bad Eye and a Menacing Wink from Lady Luck's evil sister Lady Bad-Luck ... He had developed the Drug Habit.
Folly is that of the Mortal Man was a quote by Marshall P. Wilder (or at least this writer believes it so). Oh how it applies!
Tommy at Month's End was such a Dope Fiend to the Throws of the Glue that he would stop by the Hardware Store almost Nightly to acquire the Demon's Milk. He would consume the Illicit Make in the Alley Way and then be prone to bouts of fury and delirium like a Huge Moron.
His Three Brothers, of whom which were Getting on Great with the Ladies as of Still, began to grow Penchant with Worry for their dearest of Brothers.
"O Brother, Where Art Thou" is what they Said to One-Another.
In a Delirium's Bout caused by the Devil's Make, Tommy accused his brothers of being Garden-Variety-Gnomes out to steal his Brain and give him a Teenager's Lobotomy. But his Sure-Minded and Ever-In-Reality's-Realm brothers assured him his Menageries were nothing but Fairy-Stories.
Tommy on the other hand was Glue-Sick and Un-agreeable. His Insides were taking the turn for worser days. He could see the Light at the End of the Trail's Tracks. It was almost the End for our Favorite Guy.
His Demise was a Pauper's Demise. He died like a Dirty Bum and No One Even Cared. His family was so Sick of his Ways that they did not even afford the laggard with a Proper Man's Burial instead opting to bury our Hero in a Pet Cemetery with the Likes of Canaries and Rats and Beagles.
Oh what A Shame, Tom, but at least you didn't get buried next to a Gnat or something old friend.
MORAL: Don't Sniff Glue!
Conclusion
I like that. I think that's not bad. It's better than my Haikus at the Very's Least. I mean very least. Kids, listen, that Moral is funny and everything and goofy but it's not a joke ... you really really shouldn't sniff model air plane glue, okay guys.
Okay? Cool.
Oh wait, I forgot to give it a title. A needlessly long title a la Ade. My fable is titled ... "The New Fable of the Brother Who Took A Sniff of The Air Plane Glue."
Alright, so with the Basho training and the Ade training ... I think I am almost ready to tackle the topic which has hung over this Blog's head for almost 10 years now like an Albatross. The topic of .... Liberace.
He's been mentioned in probably dozens of these "essays" but never had even a section of one even devoted to him. As we all know, May 16th of 2019 will mark 100 Years of Liberace .. yes it's Liberace's Centennial Fair ... and there's no better time to gather all my rusty writing ability and see if it's actually worth a lick.
