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Speak of the Devil: Do You Hear The People Caterwaul?
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Gilligan Must Die
SLIGHTLY OFF THE MARK
Gilligan should have died.
Hold that thought, I’ll get back to
it.
When I was young I couldn’t understand
why girls were attracted to bad boys. Then I finally figured out that this
phenomenon isn’t limited to me not being able to get a date: It’s a part of the
very fabric of our society:
We like bad
stuff.
By that I
mean, we like good things that are bad, and we like bad things that are fun. An
example: Put a can of Mountain Dew and a glass of water in front of me. Now, do
I know which is better? Sure I do – unless it’s from Love Canal, water’s much
better for me than any soft drink. So which do I pick?
Yep.
Because
Dew’s not good for me, but it’s good.
Drugs, alcohol, scary movies, driving fast, voting for morons – you name it. We
almost always choose to do the wrong thing, take in the wrong thing, or watch
the wrong thing.
We also
like bad things that are fun. Racing? We want crashes. Football? Big hits.
Political debates, or live shows, or anything featuring Charlie Sheen? We’re
wishing for a train wreck. And what kind of movie has been hugely popular for
decades? Disaster films.
Which
brings me to television.
I was happy
to learn that The Walking Dead was coming
back to TV for another season. The show, based on a popular graphic novel, is
about a zombie apocalypse.
Zombies!
Apocalypse! Two fun things! Together!
In my home
we enjoyed the first two seasons (except for the lame second season finale),
which were filled with great characters, gripping plotlines, mind-blowing
effects, and icky stuff. About half the cast got killed off, and the rest spent
most of the time on the run from the flesh eating undead. Good times.
I got to
thinking about that, and reflected on the other TV shows I’ve enjoyed over the
years. It’s a fact of story writing that you have to put your characters
through the ringer – otherwise you have no story. Of course, “the ringer” is
relative.
When I was
a kid, I loved to see Godzilla stomp on Tokyo, and big Irwin Allen disaster
movies. I graduated to the same thing on TV: on Buffy the Vampire Slayer I learned the plural of apocalypse. More
recently, half the shows I watched seemed to have regular characters getting
killed or almost killed, as on Bones
and Castle, while the other half
involved fighting off the end of the world, as in the dueling apocalypses on Fringe and Supernatural. Anything else is just a Walking Dead in the park.
So, what
does this have to do with Gilligan?
Well, I
wondered if this pattern might hold, so I took it all the way back to my
childhood TV watching. At first I thought it didn’t hold on some shows: In what
way is The Brady Bunch a disaster,
except when the dog ran through some kid’s science project?
But what’s
the setup of this show? A widow meets a widower and they get married. What
horrible thing happened to their former spouses? Murder most foul? Aren’t the
kids traumatized? How do they deal with eight people (and Alice) sharing one
bathroom? I guarantee you, ten years after that series ended half the kids were
in therapy or jail, and the other half had already suffered some horrible doom.
Which
brings us to Gilligan’s Island.
A comedy,
right? Light laughs, fun for the whole family.
Oh yeah?
These
people were caught in a horrible storm, then slammed onto an uncharted island
with nothing but the clothes on their back, a hold full of luggage, and
apparently the Professor’s entire lab. Every week they’re attacked by
cannibals, giant spiders, or mobsters, or the island sinks, or a volcano blows,
or Gilligan accidentally hands an atomic bomb to a gorilla. (Come to think of
it, this show was the original Lost.)
Willy Gilligan, the so-called
naïve, innocent first mate. (Yeah, he had a first name.)
Think about
it. Was there ever a more calamitous disaster than Gilligan? Every time the
castaways came up with a way to escape that cursed island, Gilligan screwed it
up. I mean, he destroyed the boat with what he claimed to be waterproof glue. The whole boat! After that, it was a
series of disasters as he drove away would-be rescuers and broke every item
that might have gotten them off.
Was he a
screw-up? Or a saboteur?
I maintain
that Gilligan wasn’t happy with his life in the real world. Here, on that island
named after him, he was put down and unappreciated … but he was also the only
real worker (unless you count Mary Ann), and the one who would save everyone’s
lives even as he kept them from getting away. They depended on him. They needed
him.
The man was
a criminal mastermind. The others? Merely his playthings.
And not
smart playthings, either. Let’s face it: They should have killed him by the end
of the first month. Smothered Gilligan with his own pillow, late at night as he
slept. One trip to a shallow grave, and within days they’d have jury-rigged
some piece of equipment that would have summoned help.
Yes,
Gilligan should have died.
Since he
didn’t, he provided my very first experience with a true disaster story, the
kind of thing you watched every week to see what new hardship would slam down
on the poor characters. Ever since then – thanks to Gilligan – I’ve been one of
those enthralled by bad things happening to good people.
Still
another case of me picking bad things. And now, I’m thinking remake. Check this
out:
The Walking Dead – on Gilligan’s Island.
Just wait
and see.
Cedar Point
We made the 3 ½ hour drive to Cedar Point in Ohio Tuesday,
thanks to Emily winning two free tickets. Naturally, photos ensued:
As usual, any and all vacation trips can provide plot
bunnies for the next novel.
I love a parade
Some photos I took of the
2013 Chain O’ Lakes Festival parade in Albion:
Smoky Days pre-order success
Here’s a photo of Emily and me at
the Albion Fire Department’s annual fish fry, taking pre-orders for Smoky Days and Sleepless Nights. We got 32 confirmed orders just at the fish fry!
Speak of the Devil: As Time Goes By
Speak of the Devil: As Time Goes By: It has been awhile since last I've done this. Maybe it's time to get back into the thick of it. Before I get to that, however, ...
Lilacs, Parades, and Henway: The Problem With Adults
SLIGHTLY OFF THE MARK
The problem
with adults is that we’re not kids.
Specifically,
we lose that wonder, that joy of discovery that comes with being kids. The
coolest things happen right in front of us, but because they happen every year
and we’ve seen a lot of years, we forget how cool they are.
One day you
walk outside and, after months of gray, black, and white, everything is green.
Spring is here. That’s so cool. Have
you seen all those colors, the flower blossoms and such? For a few weeks, my
back yard was a wall of purple lilacs. The lush grass looks as if last year’s
drought never happened. There’s a family of rabbits living in the brush pile I
was supposed to get rid of. It’s all awesome, except the brush pile.
Last spring
a bird I’d never seen just showed up, walking across my lawn as if it owned the
place. Based on internet photos, I think it was a quail. Maybe it was a henway.
(What’s a
henway? About five pounds.)
I’m not a
bird watcher like the eminent Neil Case, but I think he and I still maintain
something from our childhoods: We both think seeing something in person that
we’ve never seen before is just … neat.
But the
same stuff over again can be neat, too. I realize this depends largely on what
the stuff is, and on the circumstances. If you were in London 50 years ago and
saw a police call box, you wouldn’t think anything about it. If one
materialized in your back yard and a time traveler hopped out, it would
definitely be noteworthy.
(See, it’s
a Doctor Who joke … never mind.)
No call box
has blossomed this spring, more’s the pity.
But I
digress, which is hardly new with me. What got me on this line of thinking was
Albion’s Chain O’ Lakes Festival, which should be in full swing as you read
this. Indiana is the land of festivals: Churubusco has its Turtle Days, there’s
the Huntertown Heritage Days, Wolf Lake’s pungent Onion days, and various other
days of Marshmallows, Apples, and Chautauquas.
Chautauqua
is neither a snack nor a fruit. Or is it a brand of bananas? Hm … I don’t know
what Chautauqua is. Let me look it up …
A system of
education originating in New York? How do you like that – a summer festival
celebrating education.
When I was
a kid, I’d beg to be taken into town to the Chain O’ Lakes Festival, even though
I was scared of some rides. The carousel? Terrifying. But to me it was like a
country boy discovering the big city, except with cotton candy.
I don’t go
so much these days; I’m usually busy discovering new things in other places,
such as looking up the definition of Chautauqua on dictionary.com, or Googling
photos of quail. Still, whenever I drive by I like to pause a moment, look and
listen and smell and try not to steer into a utility pole.
Usually I’m
busy in the early part of festival week, because that’s when the fire department
has its annual fish fry. Well, fish and tenderloin fry, because some people
have no sense of humor when it comes to fish. (We have no vegetarian plate, unless
you want a plate of chips and cupcakes.)
This brings
me back to the point of how we should have more wonder in the things we see
often. We live in a country where people not only volunteer to fight fires, but
also organize fund raisers to help equip themselves. That’s awe inspiring. And
a little crazy, but awe inspiring things often are.
We take so
much for granted. Another example: When I started trying to sell fiction, I was
armed with a thesaurus, an encyclopedia that took me three years to pay off,
and about half a dozen dictionaries. Now I have the internet. You know what’s on
the internet? Everything.
It’s much
more fun to go to the library, but if I’m stuck at home and need to look up the
definition of, say, “internet” … well, let’s try it:
There.
3,950,000,000 hits, of which the fourth one is an actual definition and the
fifth one a history. They say one guy, one time, actually reached the end of
the internet. He’s now a time traveler, zooming around in a little blue police
box.
Where was
I? Oh, yeah. At the end of the Chain O’ Lakes Festival there’s a parade, which
is aptly named the Chain O’ Lakes Festival Parade. Sometimes I’m in it with the
fire department, but often I like to sit it out, and take photos instead. I
have almost as many pictures as there are “internet” hits on the internet.
Last year the
Fire Chief invited Emily and me to ride in his command vehicle with him. Other
years I’ve been in other fire trucks, and sometimes marched with the volunteers.
Now, think
about that.
I got to be in a parade. In a friggin’ fire truck.
Maybe the
adult in me has gotten used to that kind of thing. But the kid in me is in a
frenzy of ecstasy.
Don’t you
think the kid is the one with the right idea?
Quail, or Henway?
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