Seventeen In '88 - A story of teen angst, long walks, dirty jokes, haunted rooms, haunted psyches, records as refuge, roads like mazes, young love, bonding and unbonding, deep foreboding, senseless death, and innocence peeled away slowly, layer by layer.
Fall 1988 Recalled As A Series Of Random Glimpses, With Music
First day of school. Roger and
I try to ease the anxiety caused by the impending school year by telling
ourselves that since this year we’re seniors and we drive our own cars we’re
gonna be respected, dammit. At the
opening assembly there is a group of cute sophomore-year alterna-girls sitting near us.
We amuse ourselves by jokingly encouraging one another to go up to them, hold
up our keys and ask “Hey baby, you need a ride? I'm a Senior, you know.” During the early weeks of the school year, and beyond, Roger and I spend an inordinate amount of time each earnestly trying to cajole the other into actually speaking to one of the girls. Neither
of us will speak to any of them during the course of the entire school year.
Movie nights. Movies, movies,
boy do we love movies. Even completely forgettable ones. A group of us goes to
see a movie every Monday. Movie Monday we call it, ‘cos we’re not terribly
creative. Among the now-largely-forgotten movies we see in fall 1988: Eight
Men Out, John Sayles’ account of the 1919
Black Sox World Series scandal (a little dry but still pretty good, and fairly
historically accurate); Clean & Sober, with Michael Keaton as a recovering drug addict
(depressing, but fairly watchable, mainly due to Keaton’s performance - it
supposedly contributed to his landing the lead role in Batman); Heartbreak Hotel, with David Keith as Elvis Presley, kidnapped and
held hostage by teenagers in 1972 (Just…godawful. Director Chris Columbus would
go on to direct Home Alone, Mrs. Doubtfire, and several Harry Potter movies). The absolute king of forgettable
fall 1988 films however, is a little movie called Kansas. That title is just about the most compelling thing
about it, which says a lot. It stars Matt Dillon and Andrew McCarthy – Regina asked Max and I to see the movie because she had a crush on the latter – in a film
so unbelievably bland, so ridiculously uninteresting, that years later, when we
stumble across it on late night television, Max has no recollection of ever
even having heard of it, much less having seen it. I'd suspect the movie might be some kind of weird ill-remembered dream if not for the IMDB entry that confirms its existence.
My job at the radio station
requires that I endure some less-than-great music. In two different formats,
even. On the Adult Contemporary side I am regularly Rick-rolled – “Together
Forever” is Astley’s big hit in fall ’88 – and I probably hear The Beach Boys’
nausea-inducing “Kokomo” at least three times as much as the average American,
which is a lot. And way too much. On the Country end, while I have to tolerate
atrocities like Hank Jr.’s “If The South Would Have Won”, I also open my ears
enough to realize that not only is some of that old stuff pretty great, but so
are some of the more recent acts, like Randy Travis and Patty Loveless. Also,
Highway 101’s “Do You Love Me (Just Say Yes)” combines and countrifies the
unerringly sound musicality of classic Brian Wilson with the delicate, euphoric
touch of early Beatles. Which is a damn neat trick.
Regina has a part-time job
delivering newspapers after school. For the heck of it, I start to chip in and help. There’s
something relaxing about it – folding and rubber-banding all the papers neatly,
then making the rounds to all the same houses as the day before, the air
slightly chilly, leaves falling all around. The day after our friend and
classmate RD is found dead we have to look at his picture on the front page a
good fifty or so times as we fold each paper. There was nothing relaxing about
that.
NLCS Game 4. Dodgers down 4-2
in the ninth inning. Dwight Gooden cruising, on his way to giving the Mets a
3-1 series edge. I’m listening to the game on the radio in the car, but I get
home during the ninth inning. I consider staying in the car to listen, but I
figure Gooden’s about to wrap it up anyway, so I turn off the engine and head
inside. By the time I get inside and turn the game back on the crowd at Shea
Stadium has gone eerily silent, a sound that fills me with disbelieving joy.
Turns out Dodger catcher Mike Scioscia has hit a game-tying two-run home run, a
feat that sets the Dodgers up for a high-wire, against-all-odds victory, and
ultimately a Series win. As long as I live, Mike Scioscia is welcome to come
into my house, eat all my food, drink all my liquor and take any valuables that
he may like. I will merely smile and say, “Sure Mike, anything you want, and
thanks again for hitting that home run off Gooden back in ’88.”
Frank Zappa and the Mothers of
Invention’s We’re Only In It For The Money.
From its Sgt. Pepper take-off
cover to it’s smarmy version of “Hey Joe”, retitled “Hey Punk” (as in “Hey
punk, where you goin’ with that flower in your hand? / I’m goin’ down to ‘Frisco,
gonna join a psychedelic band”), it’s a record by smartasses for smartasses. As
a budding smartass, I fall for it hard. The music is inventive, colorful, and
funny, and the skewering of the hippie peace, love, and drugs ethos is
especially attractive to my seventeen-year-old punk-besotted self. Also, song
titles like “Hot Poop” are especially attractive to my inner five-year-old. It
wouldn’t take long for my mindset to readjust, though, and nowadays while my
sense of the puerile is still for-better-or worse intact – “Let’s Make The
Water Turn Black” is still pretty funny – my tolerance for smarm has waned
considerably, and as topical humor tends to do, most of the satire has aged
poorly. It might be worth pointing out that the ugliest part of the body is the
mind, but isn’t it also worth pointing out that the mind can be endlessly
creative, useful, beautiful? And if simply asking that question makes me a damn
hippie, I don’t give a rat’s ass.
One night while browsing for
video rentals we stumble across a little gem called Attack of the Killer
Bimbos. Being wholeheartedly in favor of stretching the bounds of pure, senseless stupidity to maximum, we rented it, of course.
Everything about the movie has faded from my memory except one thing - an extra's delivery of one fantastic line. With all of the gusto of someone who’s been
waiting his whole life for one big moment in the spotlight, and all the
flatness-of-delivery of someone who has never acted in his life, a
cowboy-hatted gent declares, southern drawl drawing out each syllable: “Oh, no!
A bimbo with a gun!”
Emily’s brothers have a
Nintendo game set. Since we hang out there all the time, Max, Elliot and I are
all soon enough completely addicted to Super Mario Brothers. Our world for
weeks on end becomes a blur of giant mushrooms, coins, fireballs and evil
turtles. We’re so enthralled with the
game that Emily becomes irritated with us, as we frequently end up
staying at her house well past appropriate hours, sometimes even making
ourselves late for work. When we finally figure out how to win the game, the
feeling is anticlimactic, even bittersweet. Luckily, we soon discover Tetris.
Randy Newman’s Sail Away.
Based on his fiery, blood-and-guts reading of Danny Whitten’s “Gone Dead Train”
on the soundtrack to Performance,
I pick up Sail Away expecting a
raw, blues-based rock’n’roll experience. Instead it’s full of piano ballads and
smooth orchestral arrangements. What it lacks in liveliness it makes up for in
humor, with plentiful dashes of empathy to chase away any bitter aftertaste
left behind by the also plentiful irony. Newman ends the album with “God’s
Song”, an easy-target tune in which The Creator appears as a megalomaniacal
beast who laughs at man’s prayers. More effective is the simple, piano-backed
“He Gives Us All His Love”, which comes across as a straightforward hymn, like
The Velvet Underground’s “Jesus”. But there’s a sadness in the sound that calls
into question the singer’s sincerity, and a beauty that in turn calls into
question whether the degree of sincerity even matters. Also, there’s “Political
Science”, where the narrator wants to nuke everybody outside the good old USA.
Everybody, that is, except Australia. "Don't wanna hurt no kangaroos."
The crystal ball, blurred.
Elliot, Max, Roger and I have been discussing for months now the idea of
starting a rock and roll band. As the weeks progress, the idea snowballs,
taking on a seriousness that feels a little deeper than it probably should for
guys so young. Before most of us (Max already played guitar) have even picked
up an instrument, we have a name – Myth, taken from Robert Lynn Asprin’s Myth
Adventures series of comedic fantasy books.
One night I’m driving home and I stop by the park. The onset of autumn, with
the cooler weather and dead leaves all around, has made me feel reflective,
uneasy. I feel like a band, a life in noise and creativity, may be the only
real way out of an otherwise hopelessly mundane existence. I walk over to a
flat stretch of sand. Using a nearby stick, I write the word “MYTH” in big
letters in the sand. I walk off wondering how long it will take for rain to wash it away.
