FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1997. All Rights Reserved.
Old angst whine
It's been a crazy year, Charlie MansonThere are piles of Christmas songs (the one those dogs sing, the one about Batman & his many smells, etc), but precious few about Boxing Day. Ben Folds Five's "Brick" may very well be 1997's best Boxing Day song ("Then I walk down to buy her flowers/And sell some gifts that I got"), neatly capturing the Great Depression that follows the Christmas sugarhigh. It's a blue time.
Take advantage of the downtime, chum! Early, early Boxing Day morning is the perfect time to hide behind the couch (just in case St. Knick returns to loot the joint) and contemplate the year gone-by. Besides, if we get the dour introspectin' retrospectin' outta the way now, it'll free up New Year's Eve for happier activities, like puking in the backseat of a cab.
The year began (using a special Boxing Day-to-Christmas calendar) with a dead kid in a Colorado basement. Altho we'd all like to think that dressing up a child à la Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver is simply an innocent way to make the kid E-Z on the eyes as s/he bends over to play with blocks (hey, who doesn't love a sexy tyke now-and-then?), the whole pre-pube beauty pageant circuit/circus is really just creepy parents' desperate lunge at Celebrity. We got to kick off 1997 with a would-be celeb turned the real (dead) deal.
And so it went: we had benevolent nuns swinging from leather belts and rap stars crashing small airplanes into oceans. Shamed-yet-beloved princesses waded into swelling rivers, singing LedZep songs until disappearing under speedboat wake. Then there were the shockers, like fat guy comedians (who made a name for 'emselves by blowing gaskets 'til red in the face) keeling over thanx to bum tickers and, ahem, perhaps substances (drugs, booze, pork chops).
And what about the Tamagotchi? Sure, people said they liked to nurture the virtual critters, but the real appeal lay in watching the thing die horrible deaths. (We could unleash these horrible deaths at will, over&over&over again. It was like having an infinite number of drunken chauffeurs and an infinite number of Parisian underpasses at our twisted disposal.)
(Always light years ahead of the rest of the world, Japan unveiled its latest hi-tech innovation last week. 651 children were rushed to hospitals after an episode of The Pocket Monsters cartoon triggered convulsions, headaches, dizziness, the overwhelming urge to buy Pocket Monsters merchandise, and shortness of breath. A spokesperson for a US network reported that similar brainwashing technology will not be available in North American until next summer.)
It sounds weird, but 1997 wuz the year of Charles Manson (in spirit, if not deed). By murdering Sharon Tate, the Manson Family were pioneers in the dead celeb thing, and Charlie's lightning touch cropped up in the craziest places this year. (A grieving Roman Polanski would later drown his sorrows with a little sex-with-a-minor - there's that Sexy Kid thing again - and in '97, RP's anonymous victim granted an interview with Vanity Fair on the condition that the mag bankroll a Disneyland vacation. Ah: fame, creepy fame.)
Back to Charlie M.: first up, ya got that clown Marilyn Manson (named after you-know-who) trying to pervert the youth of our fair city, until We said, "We don't approve of what you did in Tiananmen Square, Mr. Manson, and We certainly don't need a cut of yer T-shirt sales. Please leave Larry Ryckman alone to pay his taxes in peace."
Then, after years of delay, the Pet Sounds box set finally saw the light of day. Finding a common interest in orgies, drugs, music and venereal disease, Beach Boy Dennis Wilson and C. Manson were roomies throughout much of '68. Dennis, a surfer lothario par excellence, is credited with influencing brother Brian's early cars'n'girls tunes - what sinister Manson presence lurks on Pet Sounds? (Even tho, uhmmm, it was recorded in '65/'66.)
Fact: in 1968 the Beach Boys took a Manson-penned song ("Cease To Exist," retitled "Never Learn Not To Love") to #61 on the charts (as the B-side to "Bluebirds Over The Mountain"). Fact: in '89, Black Francis opened The Pixies' "Wave of Mutilation" with the line "Cease to exist...." (He also recorded an obscure variation on Pet Sounds' "I Know There's An Answer" for his '93 solo debut.) Getting back to 1997, the new Pixies double-CD retrospective includes (gasp!) "Wave of Mutilation." Coinkydink? Or is a psycho's hand guiding our zeitgeist?
(Nah, it's just a string of hooey: I'm only rattling yer cage one last time for '97, gentle reader. Sorry!)
Anyway, crack the seal on that vanilla extract, m'man, and let's make a toast to 1998. Is it corny to wish for peace? How 'bout some quiet? Awww, fuggit: here's to TV-induced seizures.
(Note: This is not only the last "Mr. Smutty" of 1997, but the last one ever. In the New Year, Mr. Martin will concentrate on finishing his debut collection of poetry, entitled Nostradumbass.)
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