Shoe Day next?

So . . . how was Boxing Day? I can't claim to understand the holiday, but I like that it extends things a bit. There's nothing more depressing than the sight of a tree still green and glistening out in someone's trash pile like a dead carcass. A bit harsh, but that's how it is. I'm with the Brits--make up something, anything, to extend the fun.

One thing I do know about Boxing Day is that it's when The Beatles aired their wacky, doomed Magical Mystery Tour. I say doomed because apparently it wasn't well received by the general public or fans alike, reason being the BBC aired it in black and white. But see, everyone knew The Beatles weren't green. I don't particularly buy the whole "it wasn't aired in color" excuse because most people didn't have color sets back then, but I can see how the film was beyond the pale for most folks' limited imagination. 

Here's a story, way back when I worked at Sears, Dorothy Dollarhide said she had a VHS copy of Magical Mystery Tour and being the crazy Beatles fanatic that I am, I begged her to lend it to me.

"It's really horrible," she said, pulling it out of her oversized purse with embroidered cats on it. "You won't like it."

"Thanks, but you don't know me at all," I said, though I did feel a tinge of insecurity. What if I did end up not liking it? Would it collapse my deck of Beatle cards so carefully put together--my illustrious BIG BEATLE FANDOM no one could pierce? Once a fan, always a fan. 

"I want it back in a week," she said, turning away with her long, white hippie hair swinging in a circle. I dodged. 

That night I went home and carefully shoved the tape into the DVD player--the old Beta was now on crutches despite the movie club commitment Mother had signed in blood. Just three more Beta rentals before she was free. I had the same commitment via Columbia House records and tapes. 

Near an hour later, psychedelic images and musical interludes had flashed before my eyes, and at the end of it I wasn't mad or disappointed. I was giddy. I loved it! I freaking loved Magical Mystery Tour and Dorothy could eat it! 

I don't think the problem was that it was a bad film, and neither did I it was Scorsese great. It was THE BEATLES, that's what. I truly think if you love the band as they are, or were, you'll love MMT. But if you only love the mop top Romeo specks in suits, you haven't a chance. Years have passed and though I have, my opinion of the film remains the same--it's still great and even more so as it truly encapsulates a specific time in history that will never come again: a renaissance of music, expression and love.

If nothing else, MMT had great songs in it, and a few not-so-great but still better than most. NO one can argue that "I Am the Walrus" isn't great and has stood the vice-like pressures of time. I think it's one of Lennon's best, lyric and music-wise. Its sequence comes off like an early version of an edgy music video, which Mike Nesmith (RIP sweet Mike) claims to have created. "Fool on the Hill" is an introspective wonder by Paul with a lovely sort of Kodachrome-ish sunspot dream sequence. I even love George's lackluster "Blue Jay Way" where he sits amid a fog punching keys on a chalk piano and near gets run over by a bus. The whole film is a farce, you see, that's the point. Victor Spinelli (Hard Day's Night. Help!) yells at cows and there's a strip tease at one surreal point. 

I honestly don't know who loves The Beatles and not Magical Mystery Tour. It sort of . . . baffles the Beatle brain. They should air it every Boxing Day and quite whining about the Black and White bit, heck, I didn't have a color TV until high school. But that's enough about my opinion.

Here's some facts for those of who you also love the film:

 

1     Year: 1967 Filming: 11 September thru 25 September 1967, straight after the unfortunate passing of dear Brian Epstein--who had helped plan the film and was looking forward to production. The idea was loosely based off Alan Ginsberg and fellow American poets who had driven around the States in a bus.

      Locations: shot in and around RAF West Malling, a decommissioned military airfield in Kent as it was not possible to book any London film studio at short notice-- the ballroom sequences for "Your Mother Should Know", were filmed in the disused aircraft hangars

7.   Airing: The film originally aired on BBC1  in black-and-white, on Boxing Day, 26 December 1967—but later was shown in color. Shown again in color in January 1968.

8.       Monty Python wanted to use it to start their live shows, but the plan didn’t happen. However, they were allowed a private viewing and some of the members went on to form the mock band The Rutles. 

An unscripted film

Took two weeks to film

Shown on Boxing Day (December 26, 1967, Christmastide)

A failure at onset but loved in time

George Harrison calls it an extended home movie

Featured “I Am the Walrus” music video.

Mother's always right . . .

It was 1980s-something, and I had come home late from a Saturday-night babysitting job. My mother rented A Christmas Story from the local Pop-N-Go rental store and stuck a post-it note on it with the message, "Watch this, Amy, it's hilarious." Let me sideline for a second and tell you about the time she scored a sweet deal on twenty free rentals in exchange for the purchase of a Beta video machine--which I programmed to record live TV and little did we know the thing was a dinosaur the second the ink dried on her John Henry. Anyway, while I was gone on my job she and my older brother, on break from an all-boys Catholic seminary, had watched the movie without me.

I went to the kitchen to grab a snack and came back to start the movie. Scenes from 1940s welcomed me, a time that was my mother's and thus somehow my own. It's like that, isn't it? Your parents' time is yours, and vice-versa. And to be honest, I wasn't unfamiliar with the small town, nor the red brick school Ralph Parker attended--mine had rocking, bubbling boilers and a huge auditorium with red velvet curtains. I also knew that horrible feeling of the sun going down (perhaps forever) while walking through the snow-packed alleyways of town; a strange yet poetic hue of orangey pink pulsing through silver clouds lined with snow--more snow. I too had a bully and dealt with him or her, as well as the shame of poor grades and the fear that another Christmas would pass without getting the one gift I'd asked for, yet still I asked and believed. The loss of innocence would have been the worst depravation of all. A Christmas Story encapsulated all of this--hope, desperation, loneliness, agony, euphoria. Namely, I think it was the sarcasm mixed with a nine-year old boys' logic that got to me. Triple-dog dare . . . brilliant.  I hated to admit my mother was right, I mean, she was the one who frequently pointed at the TV, nearly missing my eye, to say that some random actress was so-and-so from a totally different movie. "It's not her," I'd say, but she always persisted. "It is, I'm sure of it." 

One Christmas mother and I went out to find a tree and she wasn't in the best of moods--finances, career, family . . . my father . . . who knows? We pulled up to the lot in her Pinto with the windows you had to manually roll down and no tape deck in the dash to peruse a small collection of trees all priced around $30, our breath freezing before our faces. "I can't afford these, and anyway, we end up throwing it away," she told me. I was upset--invisible tears burned my throat. We came back home treeless, and I spent the rest of the night in bed listening to Phantom of the Opera on headphones, thinking no one understood what it was like to have a mother like this, and life would always be a terrible ordeal. 

My rich cousins across town said they walked out of A Christmas Story after only a few minutes because, quote and unquote, It was horrible and no one acts like that. Sitting there in my mother's livingroom in that tender glow of 16, auburn hair permed to a frizz, freckles splashed across my Statue of Liberty nose and skin itching with a bad case of bacne, I watched the end credits roll across the screen of a black and white TV and thought to myself that I'd never seen anything more relatable. Who hasn't touched their tongue on frozen metal to see if it sticks? Who hasn't taken a dare, or been the aggressor? Who hasn't tried being the teacher's pet in hopes for an A or had someone hold your arm behind your back long enough for you to think it might break? And then the moment you lost it and go postal on your bully, vulgarities flying (the ones Mother taught you).

Years on, I read the short-story collection the movie had been based on called, In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash by Jean Shepherd who, ironically and fantastically interviewed The Beatles for Playboy magazine in the 1960s. You can't get more iconic than that. That is indeed Shepherd's voice in the movie, the adult version of Ralphie, and he is immaculate with his intonations. The guy had quite a sense of humor and a vivid way to describe life in the Midwest. Sadly, our dear Ralphie probably didn't grow up to squeaky clean, but the memories are great. Really great. My favorite story is about the time his mother and every mother in town collected Depression era dinnerware from the local grocery store, one piece at a time. It turned into a race, who could get every piece--a full of set to replace the chipped, mismatched collection they currently had at home. It was akin to the father's crazed leg lamp ordeal, though a bit more tasteful (pun intended). There was a coup at the local movie theater when the mothers found out the grocery store who had run the scam held no intention of giving them the last and final piece--a gravy boat. For me, this is brilliant writing. The best. A Christmas Story only shows a hint of Shepherd's storytelling. 

Recently I caught a new addition to the franchise, a movie based on a now adult Ralphie--wife, kids and all--who comes home after his father's passing. At Christmas, of course. All the familiar faces are there, and some of the same schtick, but it works. I like the idea of seeing Jean Shepherd on film, even if it's a bit glossed over. He did not have a perfect adulthood. What is perfect though, is the sentiment they capture in A Christmas Story Christmas. It makes you feel all the same happy feelings from the original, like you came home again. What's really uncanny is the voice--adult Ralphie (Peter Billingsley) narrated not by the (sadly) deceased Jean Shepherd, no, it's . . . Ralphie. He sounds just like Shepherd. I can hear my mother say, "Hey, isn't that so-and-so from the original?" Yes, Mother, you're right. It is." Though, it's not. It's the kid. But it's such a close timber I want to believe . . .

I'd love to see them make another movie about Jean Shepherd amid his Playboy days interviewing the likes of The Beatles and Rolling Stones. Wouldn't that be great? I hope they get on it. I triple-dog-dare them.

Do you or don't you?

 

This is serious, do you love fruitcake or don't you? It's a yanni/laurel type of thing, this. You either love the crumbly packed full of nuts and dried fruits loaf or you don't. Well? Okay, I love it. Don't tell anyone, but every year around this time I go a bit nutty and fruity for the dessert (?). I guess . . . you could call it that. A dessert? The Romans ate it for energy pre-battle like Popeye ate spinach before busting Brutus' obnoxious ass, so I guess to them it was more of a power up, Mario style. Not a dessert. Rum must have changed that. Aye, matey. Hand me that spiced fruit sweet rock before the scurvy hits. But then, there are real reasons to have it around. Rat killer. Free doorstop. How did this start up again? Romans . . . 

Can't remember the first time I tasted fruitcake, but it was probably at a family dinner and when I saw it alone among the puddings and pies I felt some kin of sympathy. I'll try you, I said, then willed my young buds to muster excitement. You're not weird or oddly shaped. There I stood in deep consternation a tall, wiry and freckled auburn-haired teenager still with a Hail Mary on her lips. Let's be honest, if you've already forced yourself to eat the Brussel sprouts, fruitcake isn't that far behind. Anyway, I tried it, and *secretly* went a little wild. Why wasn't anyone gobbling this stuff up like Dan Akroyd sniffing cocaine at SNL second season? The Irish lass in me was aghast and confused. Memories came to the surface--memories of a past life and many hardships. Mashed or fried--loam that is. Hey, fruitcake ain't that bad. But the others . . . seemed to prefer the more obnoxious whipped cream covered cheesecake--sort of a blasé option if you asked me. Boring. Trite. The whole thing was mysterious . . . 

Well, I've never been like the rest, I thought while shoveling it in. 

So there I sat while the others nursed their heart-stopping dairy confectionary and I thought, how can one get back to a buffet without being noticed? Surely, they were all too sauced to care but alas my return sojourn brought ire and much cachinnation: "Look at Amy, she likes fruitcake." Oh, God. The shame. 

As many others, I went into the fruitcake closet (a good place to hide and consume) and suffocated my appetite to a once-yearly limit. Which is good, because that's the only time it's available. By the way, there's mince pie, rum cake, plum pudding . . . Then came an obsession of consuming it with every Christmas Carol adaptation known to man. Let's see . . .  musical or theatrical? Alistiar Sim or Albert Finney . . . Surely, this is okay and perfectly normal. 

You, uh, haven't answered yet. Do you like fruitcake, or don't you? No, no . . . really . . . it's okay. I understand (wink). You don't to have to say. Some things are better left known only by the strong rum, butter and candied fruit vapor coming from your face orifice. 

 

John Lennon's spirit as it has appeared to me--just a few pictures.