6000onions

i have been watching movies lately. Well, actually I’ve been dealing with a lot of insane family stuff lately and when I get done with that I’m too fucking emotionally exhausted to do anything else, so I’m watching movies. Also I really wanted to see Mad Max Fury Road because obviously, as a card carrying disaffected child of the 80s, I have seen all the Mad Max movies. In fact I have for long years now anticipated the moment in the slow dissolution of society when it would become necessary for me to dress in leather and spikes and soup up my 98 Saturn to unbearable heights of post apocalyptic glory. Which moment has not yet come but another Mad Max movie has and one that’s being touted as a feminist masterpiece at that. So Jay and I went to see it and it was pretty damn good. There were mutants and explosions and bad guys and so on, red dust, Australian accents and lots of cars, a guitar that shot flames and, best of all perhaps, Hell’s Grannies, so, yeah.

Then the next night I watched Kiki’s Delivery Service. What? I contain multitudes. The one does not preclude the other. But! They are the same movie. No, really, they are the same movie. A few spoilers from here on in, so if you are the sort of tender soul who is affected by such things, better click outta here now.

Kiki and Furiosa: two young women in search of an identity. Striving to make it alone without the help of family, building a new community all on their lonesome. They both encounter difficulties with their vehicles: Kiki has trouble managing her broom altitude and Furiosa’s war rig keeps getting overrun with mutants. They both have to fight at least three big battles: Kiki is attacked by crows, the perceived scorn of her peers and an overly zealous policeman while Furiosa is naturally nearly killed by a guy with a beard made of bullets and monstrous feet, her erstwhile owner who sports a white beard, a skull gas mask and a penchant for fertile women as well as another guy who I forget now because jesus, Fury Road, and it was like 2 weeks ago.  However! Both of them have a familiar: a talking black cat and a barely talking tattooed guy with an affinity for explosives. Both of them have friends who care about them, even if it means getting blown up or mildly embarrassed and both of them have older mentors, although Kiki’s are not quite so into motorcycles as Furiosa’s. And, to top it off, pregnant women play an important role in both movies. Same movie!

But Kiki’s Delivery Service does not have skeksis. Fury Road does and when I saw it, during the brief and hallucinogenic moment of calm when they appear, unexplained and at a distance, a sigh rippled through the theater: skeksis! Which says something, I am not sure what, about a demographic perhaps, who knows just exactly what a skeksi is.

ps some extra notes

if there was enough mud to bog down the war rig than there was enough water where they should all have been hanging out right there – weren’t several of the mad max movies about the hunt for water?

they collapsed that same arch twice

it would have been sweet to see the thunderdome in the distance and

13 is too young to send a child off to earn her fortune even if she can fly

In other non movie news things are far – whoa! way far! too fucking far! holy shit! – from settling down but as I was driving home tonight I thought, I cannot take this, I can’t handle it and then I thought that is a completely immaterial statement because it doesn’t matter if you can or not, you WILL handle it because you simply have no other choice. And so here I am, handling it, at least for certain definitions of handling. Which, I suppose, is part of the much vaunted wisdom of aging. Fuck THAT noise. Bring on the skeksis.

That last post was somewhat incoherent. Stress, the wonderdrug, strikes again! My apologies. I am trying to calm down and might even, given world enough and time, achieve that lofty goal. I can see where maybe it might be possible. That is thanks in large part to my very awesome friends who have been super supportive, even unto the point of making sure I got a ticket to the raffle for a night at the Grove Park Inn WHICH I WON and heading off on impromptu photo safaris. Yes! Thanks to Jodi, I won a free night’s stay at  the Grove Park! And thanks to Jay, I took this awesome picture of downtown from somebody’s driveway on Town Mountain Road, saw 2 wild turkeys, a graveyard and Redneck Igor, the Hellhound and the Batmobile. And all that was action packed into yesterday!

In other news, though, I have assumed the Iron Throne, which is to say that I guess I’m in charge of the family now, inasmuch as anyone can be in charge and the family such as it is, which is to say diminished. My older brother has been very ill and is still in the hospital and the Queen of Bohemia now lives at Arbor Terrace, which is a really wonderful assisted living for seniors place in South Asheville. This has been a pretty rapid transition – two weeks, to be specific, and they have been rough ones. Today when I went to see the QOB she was pleased that I wasn’t my evil twin. She said “Oh, but I like you. I don’t like her. I’m glad that wasn’t you! I was confused about who was the head of the family now but it’s you, that’s okay!” My evil twin – Efficiency Felicity; she gets things done but she can be a little scary – has been out in full force lately when not being supplanted by Anxiety Felicity who mostly weeps a bit and shivers. It’s confusing, yes, even for those of us who supposedly spend the majority of our time in consensus reality. And so are we all confused, but it’s being sorted. I hope.

Because somehow in the next couple months I have to get the QOBs house sorted and tidied and some stuff fixed and emptied and then, I guess, put up for sale. I might have to do the same for my brother’s house; we don’t know yet. I have to clean up my own damn house, which is in a ridiculous state of disarray as usual and worse than usual because of my fleeting notion back there in January that I could somehow sell this place and escape the Iron Throne. Ha ha! Such a crazy notion! There will be no escape! Bah. And while I sulk about that, I still have to get the garden weeded and the dogs their yearly shots and so on and so forth and continue to hold down a full time job at our busiest time of year. The lists just keep getting longer – tires! Transfer the paper! Get a phone in the QOB’s room! Find those round wire things for Perdita’s collar! I have absolutely no idea how I’m going to accomplish all this and I suspect it’s a good thing that I don’t own a computer capable of playing Minecraft anymore.

I would, however, like to go on record as stating that I never wanted the Iron Throne, I don’t like being in charge of anything or anyone, and all I have ever wanted was a small ivy covered cottage, or, preferably and lately, a mobile version, wherein I could mutter around and fiddle with stuff like the creepy old crone I am fast becoming. But you just don’t often get what you want in this world. Unless you are a dinosaur.

so it’s been a fairly awful week. Perhaps one day I will write about it in full grisly detail but not today, not here. Let’s just say I have now been involved withe the professional mental health world on a much more intimate level than I ever wanted. And I have met with lawyers and doctors and cops and social workers and EMTs and bankers and financial managers in suits, thus using up a couple of my hard won small allotment of PTO on a heart rending, scary, most thoroughly horrible family crisis. Everybody is, basically and as far as I know right now, ok. But things have changed and change, as we know, is scary. Fucking terrifying actually particularly if you have anxiety anyway and know that you have permanently and irrevocably pissed off – albeit necessarily for everyone’s continued health & well being – someone much scarier than you will ever be.

Is that vague enough? Whee! Vaguebooking! 

What all this has reminded me of, though, was my unhappy yearlong encounter with the criminal justice system. That system, as I believe I have mentioned elsewhere on this blog, is fucked and I do mean truly, deeply and probably irrevocably fucked.  Well, mental health, as best I can tell, is just as bad. It’s a terrible piecemeal patchwork that doesn’t make any sense. You cannot have somebody involuntarily committed unless they are an actual threat to themselves or others. And by threat I think they basically have to be wearing a hockey mask, holding a chainsaw in one hand and a three page sworn affidavit naming the people they’re going to eviscerate  in the other. If they don’t go quite this far but agree to treatment, then they can go into the hospital. Can they then get out again? Who knows! Due to HIPPAA, they may or may not contact anyone or let anyone contact them.  And they can change their mind on that one as well, because even though they are not judged able to make some decisions, like healthcare powers of attorney & living will stuff – the kind of thing you might want in the hospital you know – while in there they can make others, like who gets to know what’s going on medically and logistically with them, no problem.  It is a big old mess. 

The social workers shrug and say oh well! The banks shrug and say oh yeah fraud but oh well – like when my debit card number was stolen some years ago and we found the culprits Facebook page, address and phone number. Look, I said to the cops. Oh well! That’s in California, can’t do a thing. But man let a poor teenager mouth off to a cop or buy a blunt wrap and watch the hammer of the law descend. Watch the traffic fines as they mount  up and up forever on the poor. Watch all the rehab facilities go private and cost thousands to get into and watch Medicaid not pay for Alzheimer’s care. Watch the working poor call around to friends trying to score antibiotics and never quite make enough money to get stable let alone ahead.

Why? Because everything is broken in this country. It is like the sort of stable world I grew up in in the 70s and 80s, which was not perfect, mind you, but at least contained some sort of systems that more or less worked, is gone now. I don’t know if this is because there are just so many people now and stuff doesn’t scale up well or – as I suspect, years and years of goddamn crazed greed head right wing free market capitalist agents of evil have been chipping away and chipping away at the infrastructure that kept civilization together and it is now about to collapse. They want no schools, these people, no schools, no hospitals, no libraries, no museums, no roads, no fire fighters and no police, just standing armies of thugs ready to herd the poor to their deep fryers. Welcome to the new feudalism. We’re almost there. And it sucks.

Today is my birthday – yeah, yeah, I know, the fourth is always with me, look, my birthday didn’t used to be so annoying until some genius came up with that Star Wars thing about five years ago – but despite that it has been a lovely day and here I am – as of last night actually – wearing the oh so fabulous sunglasses and earrings that my daughter gave me. Not bad, I think, for an old broad, which is something my father used to say after smacking my mother on the bum. Gently, I mean, gently but with gusto, as it were, and then he would say NOT BAD FOR AN OLD BROAD. And right now I agree, because a) I have engaged in gigandorly self esteem building activities over the last couple of days and b) there has been an outpouring of birthday love that has left me all verklampt.

And, on top of that, a Carolina wren has built a nest in that urn that you can see in the picture behind me, the one with the artificial flowers in it. In this nest are five lovely speckled purple eggs, all wrapped around with artificial leaves and some glittery bits & pieces from off my porch – you can often find glittery bits and pieces and pom poms on my porch – and that is pretty damn cool too.

Self esteem building! Yesterday I went to the herb fair at the farmers market with Jodi, came home and proceeded to get the whole garden going, which is to say I dug up and weeded all the raised beds, weeded and tilled the front flower bed, weeded most of the roses and planted all the seedlings and the beans. My butt hurts. However, not as bad as it could have because yesterday, I discovered earbuds. Full disclosure: I had never used earphones (headphones, earbuds, whatever you want to call them) before. No. I am a weirdo. I heard some radio thing and read an article  about how they would destroy your children’s tender eardrums when I was in my early impressionable teens and I never used them or allowed my children to use them. Yes, okay, a weird hill to die on but it was mine own. So it was very exciting for me to get some from my son, put them in my phone and then get Amazon music up and running. Just in case you are unaware, Amazon music does or did this thing whereby they will keep a digital copy of any CD you ever bought from them in perpetuity right there in their Amazony cloud. Which is why I did my gardening rocking out to Dead Prez and the Roches Christmas album. You haven’t lived until you have gotten suddenly hit with A Child Is Born while under the rosebushes in May. But the garden looks AMAZING. And then Audrey and Celeste and Jodi and Jay came by and we drank wine on the porch, discovered the birds nest, ate squash casserole and it was thoroughly wonderful.

Today, which was my actual birthday, I tore out the carpet in the hallway and painted the stairs white.

No, really, I did that. See, my friend the realtor came over a couple of weeks ago and gave me the bad news: yeah, despite living in one of the hottest real estate neighborhoods in the country, my house STILL sucks and I cannot get giant piles of moolah for it. It is just not all that. Boo. I have been sulking ever since but also it has sort of woken me up: if I have to live here for the rest of my life then fuck it, I am going to finally do all the things I said I would do when I moved in seven – 7! – years ago. Thus, I did those two things and soon I will do more. I even bought a book – this book, it is a big bestseller right now and I am a sucker – on decluttering and I’m all on that too (although clutter is not really my problem so much as just basic disgusting grime, glah.)

And then after showering and hanging out briefly with the Queen of Bohemia, who handsomely invited me to take anything I wanted from her house for my birthday (I declined although tempted by the super fabulous Indonesian jacket she has dug up from somewhere and been wearing lately) I met some friends for drinks at the DeSoto and then went with my kids, Jodi and Charles for Korean food at Korea House downtown. I had never had Korean food before and it was delicious and all in all a very very fun night with lots of Vinho Verde and I didn’t fall down despite wearing my once a year fancy high heel shoes. Plus lots of people have called and texted and so it would seem that everyone doesn’t hate me after all, although I cannot imagine why. Probably they should. But I am very glad that they don’t, and also deliciously full.

Anyway, it has been a great birthday weekend. I am sore, I am beat, I am probably dying from horrible weird ass 70s carpet dust inhalation, but my hallway looks GOOD, my garden looks GOOD and my stairs look GOOD.

Like me, the old broad.

Happy birthday to you too – and thank you for the birthday thoughts!

On Sunday Jodi and I went over to the Asheville Darkroom, which is a very cool place that I had been wanting to visit, for their celebratory event for World Pinhole Photography Day.

I had always wanted to experiment with pinhole photography and never done it so I was all excited and it was really fun! They gave us each a “camera” to use and sent us out on our own. I got there a little earlier and so took three images – the first one was a wash, totally overexposed, but I am quite happy with the second and third, above. And now I want to make my own pinhole camera – which is to say, a box with a hole in it, a project well within my mad technical skillz set – and make more.

In other news my friend Adam showed up from Baltimore and proceeded to fix all my gutters, hurrah. He may also have fixed the living room roof leak, let us keep our fingers crossed. And I have not one but two Schrodinger’s Lottery Tickets in my wallet because I have, over the last couple days, found fully $17 in the pockets of various pairs of pants, so I took it as a Sign that I was rocking in the arms of Great Luck and went and got a lottery ticket from the Gas Up. The Gas Up, by the way, apparently no longer sells gas and perhaps should consider changing their name to the Wine Up or Beer Up or possibly Snack Up. Anyway whenever I check the numbers – a fraught experience because of course that transforms a Schrodinger’s Lottery Ticket to just an ordinary lottery ticket – I should find that I am a millionaire and I am quite looking forward to it. But I think I will keep the anticipation going for a while first.

On the way home from work today I saved a family of geese. Then when I got home there was a completely unexpected out of the blue anonymous generous check in the mailbox and holy shit. Just, holy shit. Talk about crazy instant karma: become a goose family crossing guard! It pays super well! HOLY SHIT.

See, I was driving home on Swannanoa River Road and right by the U-Haul, almost at the corner of Tunnel Road, where I have seen a pair of geese before – and even photographed them, or almost photographed them in that I think I got part of a wing, early one morning a couple months ago – I saw a whole goose family hanging out on the side of the road. So I naturally pulled over and parked in the UHaul parking lot so I could take some pictures. I didn’t try to get very close – I am a little afraid of geese after an unfortunate episode one summer when I was like 9 – and I was in the middle of the parking lot zooming in with the phone when I realized that they were preparing to head across the street to the river. The busy street. The very busy, fast, rush hour street.

So I headed to the street as well, figuring that I would stop traffic because although I was afraid that I would get killed I was more afraid that one or more of the geese would get killed while I stood there because I don’t think I could handle that. Another car stopped and a lady got out. “I think we have to stop traffic!” I shouted and she waved agreement and then DAMN we stepped into the traffic and held up our hands and EVERYBODY STOPPED. And the geese walked across the road and we darted back out of the street while people smiled and waved and gave us high fives and one lady yelled “Thank you so much for stopping! They are so cute!!”

It was awesome. I felt like a hero. I have really not rescued many of, well, anything in my life except possibly spiders who I save from the house and put outside. (That is, except in that one Charleston apartment where I put them in the chandelier which ended up after a year of this being the most magnificently gothic draped chandelier you have ever seen, whoo yeah.) I like spiders, however, rescuing them doesn’t really ever make me feel particularly heroic. Maybe it’s because they are so much smaller than geese, even very small geese like these.

ANYWAY. Geese safely on the other side of the road, I came on home and got the mail. Hmm, I thought, what is this, the Give Initiative, probably a charity, handwritten envelope, feel sorry for that intern – and I opened it up and HOLY SHIT, LO, it was a CHECK FOR $500.

This is like one of my dreams, like it is an actual wish and toast that I say and have for years: “Here’s to large anonymous checks in the mailbox!” “I wish for a large anonymous check in the mailbox, with no strings attached that hurts no one and no one has to die for me to receive. (I am careful with my three wishes, yo, I have this shit planned.)”

I never really thought it would come true but, it has. It has.

And I don’t know what to say except, my gods, I am verklampt, I am overwhelmed, thank you, anonymous donor, thank you so much. There are tears of gratitude in my eyes and I am going to use this money thoughtfully: I’m going to use it to make more money – I have plans! Yes, plans! – and when I do, I will, as you asked in your letter, pay it forward.  Thank you so much. I think you may have changed my life and I know you have changed my outlook.

For one thing, I’m never thinking mean thoughts about a goose again.

• I had a yard sale. It was quite fun, particularly since my two best friends and my daughter and her best friend all helped out. And by helped I mean we started drinking bloody marys at 11 am. It is amazing how much vodka helps you deal with the public. In a related note specially to the lady who left a note on my door the morning after the yard sale, why yes, I am ready to hear your offer for my giant terra cotta plant pots which you thought were too expensive at $5 apiece! You’re right, the price HAS changed! I am now prepared to take $20 each for them.
• I was supposed to have a party after the yard sale but I didn’t. Instead, I turned off the lights, closed the curtains and put a big sign on the door that said PARTY CANCELLED TOO TIRED WE SUCK YOU GO HAVE FUN. Then Audrey and Jay and I, feeling retro, settled in with a pizza to happily watch Diva and several episodes of The Prisoner. Fortunately, none of my other friends showed up anyway! Turns out we all suck equally.
• I worked my ASS OFF for the four days preceding the yard sale and then again directly afterwards. My house is still filthy, horrible and stuffed with, well, stuff but slightly less filthy and horrible and crammed than it was before. I, however, am tired. But I’m not afraid of the garage anymore.
• David the real estate agent came over on Wednesday and looked at my entire house. I am now waiting to hear from him to see if I can actually sell this place or if I am fated to remain here forever, slowly crystallizing like Miss Havisham only with more vodka and louder music. He said, and I quote, “Well, Felicity, there are three key elements to real estate: location, square footage and condition. You have location and square footage!” Yeah.
• Home Depot, in a crazy lapse of sanity, gave me a ginormous credit card, so if I do end up staying, I might be able to do something about that condition issue. Or at least I could buy the materials and put them in the living room for a couple of years while I weep a lot.
• In quick news, the iMac died, which has sort of soured me on Apple altogether because, fuck that, my PC is twice its age and still chugging along. I have already spent the yard sale money on a crazy orgy of eating luxurious foods like pizza and subs and also I bought a skirt and top at Ross Dress for Less and a new canister of CO2 for the soda stream and a mandoline so I can make more of the thin refrigerator pickles – these, to be specific – that I have become hopelessly, completely addicted to. And, in other addiction news, psst, hey, kid – why don’t you try out Sim City Buildit? (evil laugh)
• And I think that’s it.

Before I begin complaining – and baby, I got some ‘plainin to do – I want to briefly review the Die Antwoord concert I attended on Monday night.

IT FUCKING ROCKED AND WOULD TOTALLY BE THE BEST CONCERT I HAD EVER SEEN IN MY ENTIRE LIFE if I hadn’t gone to see the Pogues, the Violent Femmes & Mojo Nixon & Skid Roper on the pier in NYC in 1990. Z TO THE E TO THE MOTHERFUCKIN’ F!!!!!

That is all. Except pictures are here.

And now, on to the complaining! So I went out on Monday night and then again on Tuesday night because I am in my early twenties and what the hell, you know, I might as well burn the candle – yeah, okay, I was about dead on Wednesday – but all good, except I came home to discover that there was a nice puddle of water in front of the kitchen sink. My daughter, lying on the couch, said “Oh well I thought Miles spilled something.” Good try at the blame shifting! But you see, if I am in my early twenties than she is only like five, so what does one expect? I opened up the cabinet under the sink to discover that it was, basically, underwater and if the cabinet door had been made of glass it would have looked a lot like the Baltimore aquarium R’lyeh display. I keep cleaning stuff under there, of course, fortunately in a couple of dishpans. The dishpan under the left side of the sink was brim full with water and floating cleaning supplies which did not for the most part mix well with scummy water: goodbye, bartender’s friend, box of anti static duster thingies and some unidentifiable other objects. Yeah. So I cleaned that up, which is what I just love to do at 1:30 am and then on Wednesday I made a couple futile stabs at fixing it, by which I mean I watched some Youtube videos and became depressed and went back to bed.

Actually, it doesn’t look like too difficult a fix, particularly if you have the whole sink upside down on a nice clean work surface and the right tools, just like the calm and unshakable guys on Youtube. If, however, the sink is right side up and you are upside down under it with water and scum dripping on you trying to fix things with, uh, your hands and a small pair of needle nose pliers, it is surprisingly unsimple! I put a note in there that says DO NOT USE and that is where I have left it. I get paid next Thursday and maybe I can get somebody to fix it then. Or just never use it again, which is a big pain in the ass – I have already poured most of a large stockpot of water all over the floor this morning. And this would be a drag, yes, but surmountable if it didn’t follow suspiciously closely on two extremely recent stopped up toilet happenings and if I hadn’t seen the water from the right hand side of the sink this morning well right back up in the left hand side, which leads me to suspect that we might be facing something much worse, much much worse: a real drain issue. In which case I’m completely, but completely, fucked and that is all she wrote.

And as if that were not enough, the fucking iMac is dead and I am typing this on my beloved old Windows 98 desktop, the one an ex built for me in 2004 and another ex rebuilt in 2010, the unkillable machine, old reliable itself. I had been slowly teaching myself how to use the Mac since my brother gave it to me last December and I had put most of my pictures on it and felt like I was finally getting the hang of that whole bassackwards OS – not to mention playing a shit ton of Minecraft which it does do better than this computer – when blammo, it will not start up at all. There was some kind of almighty power surge last night apparently and while here I am, typing away on my antique windows machine, the supposedly reliable Mac won’t even get further than 1/3 of the way along its power starting up line before emphatically dying. And this is the second time it’s crashed horribly in the six months I have owned it. Fuck that and the horse it rode in on, frankly but oh I will miss that big monitor something fierce. And Minecraft.

So, two sucky things – and now I am waiting for the third shoe to drop. Great! There is nothing like a feeling of creeping dread and horrid anticipation to take you into the weekend – particularly one of my weekends which are heavy on the work continuously and light on the “weekend” part. And off we go.

I have succeeded, yet again, at addiction: I have gotten myself well and thoroughly hooked on Sim City: BuildIt, which is an evil little game you can play on your phone, although I think you would have to have better eyesight than me to do that, or you can, alas for me, play on a tablet like the iPad I share with young Miles. This Sim City is slightly different than the one I was addicted to back in the 90s when computer games were oh so new and all, but it’s similar enough that I fell instantly into building obsessively. It’s one helluva game: just like life: there is never enough money to do the stuff you want and when you inevitably fail, everyone hates you! No wonder it’s so addictive! It is, however, even more evil: it’s “free” to “purchase” but like those other masters of addiction Candy Crush or Bubble Witch, they want you to buy stuff in game. Like, I could spend real money to buy simulated money for my simulated town, thus getting my citizens to love me, or I could, you know, spend real money on my real house, thus getting, well, at least the dogs to love me. But fuck that! Fuck, also, spending money in game. I don’t mind paying for a game I want – that seems only fair – but I don’t like being hit up sneakily. So I refuse to do that and that is why my Sims are not all that happy and why, I suspect, I never got to level 400 in Candy Crush. Also, a school costs like 60,000 simoleons and so far I have never amassed more than 16,000 before I give in to their anguished cries and get them something like a police station. The Sims are strangely pro cop but meanwhile, see, in Minecraft I’m building a tower so I can find my way back to the donkeys after I go back to my other house in the village that I’m fixing up to get the saddle I left there. And I’m playing, as usual, pacifist vegan Minecraft, which makes it considerably more difficult because, damn, it sucks to follow cows around waiting for them to fall into lava so you can get some leather to bind a stupid damn book.

Today in a singular feat of procrastination I managed to spend several hours playing TWO video games at once: Minecraft, my old love, on the desktop and Sim City on the iPad. Both of them have day / night cycles so if you time it right, you can never look away from one screen or another. Meanwhile, my house crumbles about me and tumbleweeds of dog hair roll through the living room. Ah, how technology has improved our lives.

Tomorrow night I’m going to see Die Antwoord!!! I will have more beer spilled on me and become terrified by the magic bouncing Orange Peel floor! Big fun! I am totally psyched. It will be weird and weird is good.

I just watched Where the Boys Are with the Queen of Bohemia. She enjoyed it – at least I think so, anyway she giggled a lot – and I enjoyed it, despite the, uh, problematic subtext. But then I have always had a soft spot for that movie, based mainly on the clothes I think, or maybe on the fact that one of the characters thinks she is undateably tall, being exactly my height.

But! There is that problematic subtext and boy, is it ever problematic. This is old news, I know – everybody knows – that the point of Where the Boys Are is to let us all know that girls who drink and have sex will be raped and abandoned in squalid motels and then try to kill themselves inefficiently on busy highways. Then, I guess, they drop out of college – I just want to see my father, sobs the girl in question, my mother and father will tell me what to do! Yes, I just bet they will. After all, the problem couldn’t possibly be that people have been telling you what to do and you’ve been smilingly obedient, could it? Well, no matter. It’s all over for you anyway! Hopefully they’ll stone you right up and down Main Street, you little hussy. No more than you deserve! It’s really kind of an astounding movie.

The guys are all sort of universally horrible, too. There is the guy who gets drunk – the one with the tall girl, who won’t put out – and takes up with the mermaid from the fancy restaurant. Then he yells at the tall girl as she is sobbing on the beach. Well, naturally. I mean, she shouldn’t have sex, because it’s deadly for women, and just wrong, and she’s a Good Girl, but you can understand him getting angry and going for a sleazy ho. Of course she immediately loves him more when he shortly thereafter sees the error of his ways. Hooo boy, I bet that marriage worked out well. Serial infidelity, spiraling alcoholism, hovering on the brink of divorce by 1976 – I think they were friends of my parents! Or maybe they were my parents. Then there is the “boy” – he looks about 40 – who can’t see without his ridiculous glasses, so his new girlfriend (Connie Francis herself, always joking about how she’s not pretty, because having an amazing voice and looking damn good to my 2015 eyes clearly doesn’t make up for not being blonde) says she will keep him in the dark. Ha ha! He is so wrapped up in his music he doesn’t even know what she looks like! Ha ha! Another marriage that ended badly but at least she had a career to fall back on. And then there is the main character, who is Serious and has a High IQ – they actually ask each other about this, her and the Rich Boy. He is Understanding but he also Wants Sex. Does she give in? Not before the credits roll but as they are rolling they are declaring true love, so maybe. Probably not, though, and anyway I predict that their different social statuses will lead to trouble and he will never marry her, or his parents will steal the kid and have it annulled or something like that.

I don’t know, this movie was made before I was born and it is foreign to my understanding. Therefore when I got home I tried to watch Where the Boys Are 1984, but it turned out to be so alarmingly awful I couldn’t even make it 15 minutes in. As I was watching it I was thinking about my generation too, and figuring that if there had been a remake it was probably a slasher pic, because if the cinema has taught me anything, it’s that Gen X girls who hop in cars with guys usually get decapitated. Alas, the remake is not a slasher pic, or even very interesting, and the one star review said that there were lots of really dreary sex scenes. Yes, my generation: by 1984, in that weird little space of time before AIDS and after the sexual revolution, women were supposed to have sex with every single guy they met to show how liberated they were. Then on to the decapitation! Or at least to Porkys. So had it improved? Not so much. Has it now? I don’t know, because nobody has had the balls to make Where The Boys Are 2014 or even 2004 and that is kind of too bad in a sick or at least a sociological way.

Well. Where the Boys Are is still a great great song and the clothes? The clothes are a-fucking-mazing. But don’t take my word for it. You can watch it right here, or at least the first half and there’s a link to the second half on that page. Enjoy!