My blogfather Andy, the man who inspired me to give life to this blog, has finally retired from his tireless blogging crusade at the World Wide Rant. I would like to take a moment of silence, which you are probably already doing unless you’re reading this aloud.
You will be missed, Andy.
This weekend was apparently one of the last that the Coney Island amusement park (as we know it) will be open, and I was lucky enough to grab a chance to hit the boardwalk before it becomes whatever kind of sterile park that it will next year.
I’m not gonna lie. I won’t say that it’s a truly fun place, or that it’s filled with the sweetly-scented nostalgia of childhood innocence, because it’s not. Coney Island is great, because it’s small, dirty, there’s really not all that much to do, and it’s got that wonderful sense of inevitable sleaziness that permeates the best Tom Waits songs. Disneyland may be the place where anything magical can happen, but Coney Island is the place where anything sordid can happen, which adds the all-important element of danger to your evening. And I like that, don’t you?
There aren’t many places in the world these days — much less in New York — where you’re able to sidle up to a bar and listen to the sounds of boardwalk-dwellers belting karaoke hits from “Xanadu,” at the same time as being begged to impress your girl by launching paintballs at the “Shoot the Freak” attraction. (At least, this is the only place in New York where they take safety measures before imploring people to shoot the freak.) I had a chance to check out the Wonder Wheel, which has been injury-free for seventy-eight years now, and even the horrifying Spook-A-Rama, which has been entertainment-free for roughly the same length of time.
As usual, the best part of the Coney Island experience is the Sideshow by the Seashore. That’s really the first thing I think about when anyone brings the park up in conversation, because a) it’s nearly the first real attraction you see on the way to the boardwalk, and b) the sign over the door is usually the last thing I see while sober. That’s pretty much how it works: Clark Kent walks into a phone booth and leaves as Superman, and I walk into the Coney Island Sideshow building and leave as 1968-era Richard Harris.
The inside is small, dingy, dirty, and has the kind of etched-in character that you only achieve by being small, dingy, and dirty for a really, really long time. It doesn’t so much look ‘run-down’ as ‘appropriately well-worn’; it’s like a lot of places you’d find on the Lower East Side, minus the grim perfume of hobo urine. The stage area is also nothing you wouldn’t find at any other small carnival, and the constantly-rotating shows are aimed pretty squarely at the short-attention-span 1968-Richard Harris crowd. To its credit, the announcer is named “Donnie Vomit,” which implies that this was a job he was truly born to do, so you can’t help but feel that you’re getting his all. In fact, since it was a Friday night in September, my friend and I were the only ones watching the show, and they still came up on stage and worked their carnie jokes with us. It takes dedication to have a man named Donnie Vomit pull wavy-edged swords out of your throat for the private enjoyment of two drunks.
Even better, we were invited back for an evening of burlesque, which ended up being even more fun than the sideshow. I remember there being boobs and wine, and I don’t know if I can possibly offer a more fitting explanation or recommendation. If you need more than that, I truly don’t know why you still visit this blog.
You’re goddamned right:
IT’S MONSTER SQUAD DAY!
After waiting for TWENTY years — that’s right, two-zero — my beloved Monster Squad has finally been released in a reasonable format, in WIDESCREEN, with a crapload of extra features. I don’t know how many of you have actually seen this movie, but if you haven’t, you’ve probably gone through life feeling like something special was missing from the world, a little void that should be filled with love and godliness. I am here to tell you that that empty space just so happens to be perfectly Monster Squad-shaped. My friends, that is no coincidence.
This movie is what happens when these guys try to take over the world:
And the only ones who can stop them are The Goonies Monster Squad:
This movie is basically The Goonies, but with monsters and much more awesomeness. If you haven’t seen either of these movies, then I suggest you restructure your life around the goal of seeing both of them. Cancel meetings, get divorces, whatever. Monster Squad is the truly important thing. It fulfills all needs.
Also: I dated the Mummy’s niece! SERIOUSLY. I knew there was something special about the girl when I met her, but I didn’t know that we were cosmically linked by Monster Squad.
Go. Purchase. Change your life.
It was in a Wendy’s, after school, on a Wednesday night.
I don’t know what happened in my brain, but everything about me that was timid and shy disappeared in an instant and I leaned over the table and kissed her.
She later married the guy she dated after me.
There’ve been times here on the blog when I’ve made a remark or two about how I essentially left my childhood wholly unprepared for the adult world. My parents were never exactly the ‘sit-down-and-impart-wisdom’ type of parents, but it wasn’t until I hit eighteen and left home pretty much for good that I realized how little I knew. About anything. From finances, coping skills, interacting with others, cooking, the law, allll the way over to what the clitoris was for, I was more or less left to find this stuff out on my own — especially that last part. I don’t know if my parents had wanted to let me learn about the world in my own way, or maybe just didn’t actually know much about the world to begin with, but I feel that I entered reality with a knowledge deficit.
Except for one thing.
There was one thing, one bit of information, a tiny single piece of advice that I was taught time and time again by my parents that embedded itself so deeply in my mind as to occur to me constantly, even in completely inappropriate circumstances. No matter how much head trauma I suffer, no matter how many drinks I have or how many times my brain implodes upon hearing someone praise “Fight Club,” I will never forget perhaps the single most pounded-in nugget of wisdom that my parents gave me:
“Don’t eat the red berries.”
See, there were these bushes at the end of my neighbor’s yard, with tiny red berries on them. Red berries that I should under no circumstances ever, ever try to eat, no matter how much they looked like little cherries, or how many animals I saw munching on them. Those are bird berries, not people berries. If I eat the red berries, I will get very, very sick. They are like poison to people, even if birds eat them and are fine.
So as an adult, as I struggle financially, emotionally, philosophically, and clitorically, I can’t help but wander by fruit stands thinking, “Hm. Red berries. Not people berries.”
Sometimes I’m surprised I made it to my late twenties.