CWRU 50th Annual Science Fiction Marathon

Pizzazz was a short-lived pop culture magazine produced by Marvel Comics from October 1977 to January 1979. Any given issue might include articles about Mattel’s Slime, Spider-Man, Shaun Cassidy, or the film Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. It was also notable for including short comics of the first new Star Wars stories to follow the original film.

I had my tenth birthday during the all-too-brief print run of Pizzazz and I was absolutely the demographic. The June 1978 issue (“First National Edition!”) featured the article “Do-It-Yourself Guide to Day-And-Night Marathon Summer Vacation TV Watching.” A tongue in cheek piece (but I didn’t know that) it was intended for that kid who saw the summer as one long, boring stretch of nothing to do.

The story included tips on what to wear (ratty bathrobe), what to eat (and where to store it within arms reach), how to orient yourself in front of the TV, even what to use to change the channels without getting up (a grocery store stick) in the era before remote controls. Fans of Ferris Bueller might be interested to know it provides instruction on how to trick your parents into believing you are ill which includes making a tape recording of yourself coughing.

It Came From Outer Space

They even suggested using an egg timer to take naps during late-night commercials before the stations went off the air (they used to do that) and you could catch a couple hours sleep before sign-on.

After completing a week's worth of non-stop television viewing, the article concluded, “You’ve done it! You’re 10 times more bored than you were when you started. You swear you’ll never watch another minute of TV for the rest of your life. But just think how good the rest of the summer looks now!” Which is pretty much how I felt by the conclusion of the CWRU Film Society 50th Annual Science Fiction Marathon last weekend.

Since 1976, at this time of year, Strosacker Auditorium on the Case campus would be packed with nerds to watch non-stop flicks from Friday evening to some time after midnight on Sunday morning. I’ve been several times, usually to catch a few movies in a row depending on what was being offered. This year the rundown was so epic, I decided for the first time to do the entire thing.

Mars Attacks!

While I did not pack a ratty bathrobe, I did bring a change of pajama pants, slip-on shoes (not slippers) a pillow, and also a blanket that I never chose to use. I have been watching what I eat recently, due to an elevation in my bad cholesterol. For the marathon I brought no food of my own, only cash with a resolve only to consume what was made available. Before the show even began, that included a slice of Dewey’s pizza, a bag of popcorn and a Pepsi. It was luxurious.

We watched Ready Player One (2018) and It Came From Outer Space (1953) and for a midnight snack enjoyed a vanilla muffin with chocolate chunks. Every year there are two or three “surprise” attractions, and at 1:15 AM that was Mars Attacks (1996). I changed into my soft pants, settled in and promptly fell asleep.

One Million B.C.

I was a bit self-conscious about wearing pajama bottoms, I know the kids do but I’m not a kid. But then I saw grown men walking into the bathroom in their socks, so I stopped worrying about it.

In 1998, to promote the Dobams’s Night Kitchen long-form, sci-fi improv One Step Beyond, members of the company appeared at Strosacker during the marathon to play trivia and give away tickets. Thing is, we appeared twice: late Friday night, and again on Saturday morning. The thing we didn’t think of is that there’s really only one audience for the marathon. The second time I took the stage I was heckled; “Hey! I know why I’m in the same clothes I was wearing last night, why are you?”

I also slept through most of Disney’s The Black Hole (1979) and no one could blame me. By that time I had figured out how to curl into my lecture hall seat in the right way so that I could be comfortable. It was cute.

This Island Earth

One Million B.C. (the 1940 one, not the other one) started a little before five a.m. and that kept my attention, if only because of all of the animals that were harmed or mutilated for its creation.

The first time I brought my son to the marathon was in 2017, when we saw Arrival (2016) and Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2005). The boy was eleven, he said Arrival was the best movie of that year. He’s never said anything about Hitchhiker’s Guide.

Thankfully, I had brought a toothbrush to the marathon, freshened up and got a cup of coffee. And they had apples! We saw This Island Earth (1955) and breakfast was a whole everything bagel from the Cleveland Bagel Co. with cream cheese and they also had Malley’s stuff here so I had two milk chocolate covered pretzels. It was heaven.

Wall-E

January 2020, four of us came to the marathon specifically to see Twelve Monkeys (1995) and before that, the short French film it was based on, La Jetée (1962). By then, we already knew about COVID-19, it just wasn’t here yet. It was a disturbing evening.

Next up was Terminator 2: Judgement Day, which I hadn’t seen in over thirty years. Forgot how young Ed Furlong is in T2. After, we enjoyed a program of the opening credits to a dozen or so Saturday morning cartoons from the 60s through the aughts.

One year — I think it was 1999 – they showed Until the End of the World (1991) and that was a doozy. A somewhat futuristic noir from Wim Wenders, the obtuse, three-hour plotline was complicated by the fact that the film canisters had gotten out of order, the audience was in revolt. Lone voices in the dark would occasionally cry, “WHERE’S THE SCIENCE FICTION???” and “AUUGGHH!!!”

The Lost World

The Wall-E (2008) screening at 11:30 AM included a trailer for Hello, Dolly! (1969) and shawarma from Aladdin’s. Then we watched The Day the Earth Stood Still (1955) which is possibly the greatest science fiction film of all time. I know this because I have seen it several times, usually at the marathon because they play it so often.

During a tense but quiet moment near the end I loudly observed, “... he came back to life – and his name is CARPENTER!” My riff was met by a cascade of groans and catcalls.

Did you know ..? The Lost World (adapted into a silent film in 1925) is the only short story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle not to feature Sherlock Holmes? The midafternoon screening included a live accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis.

Godzilla

For dinner they brought in burgers, and I was surprised to see a large crowd of new audience members file in and fill empty seats for the 6:00 PM screening of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Rumor has it it was assigned for someone’s class, but who wouldn’t take the opportunity to see Kubrick’s epic? I hadn’t even seen it until last year when it was streaming, and I was excited to see it on a big screen.

There was a bit of acrimony as some joining us had little patience for the riffing coming from those who had been there for almost twenty-four hours. Meanwhile, one of the men’s toilets was down. By intermission the burgers were gone.

Our first CWRU Science Fiction Marathon was probably 1996. I can’t recall going before that time. The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension (1984) which was on this year’s bill played that year, too. The riffing when Ellen Barkin appeared got seriously rapey and my partner loudly told them to knock that stuff off, and they did.

2001: A Space Odyssey

Trailers and shorts before the feature are always references – or clues – to the feature about to play. For Secret Film #2 they included trailers for Gorillas in the Mist (1988) and The Whales of August (1987) and the Looney Tunes short Rabbit Fire (1951). The movie? The original Godzilla! (1954) I was asleep by the time he crushed Tokyo. With two flicks left I put my pants back on.

By midnight, I was ready to cash it in and head home, but then I decided what’s the point of having done this if I wasn’t going to see it through? We finish marathons. Besides, I still had that pillow. I dozed through a lot of Deadpool & Wolverine and by 3:30 AM we all staggered out into the frigid morning.

“You’ve done it! You’re 10 times more bored than you were when you started. You swear you’ll never watch another movie for the rest of your life. But just think how good the rest of the winter looks now!”

Monday night my wife and I went to the Cedar Lee.

Visit the blog of silent film composer and accompanist Jeff Rapsis for his own take on this year's marathon.

Just Kids (book)

Pengo’s 2022 Summer Book Club

“I was full of references.”
- Patti Smith, “Just Kids”

Earlier this month, Luke and I had a “New York City 1980” double feature (viewings spaced by seven days) where we watched Alan Parker’s Fame and Allan Moyle’s Times Square.

Fame is, of course, the fictionalized story of a few teenagers making their way through the School of Performing Arts, and as such it had a remarkable effect on me as an aspiring performer. 

Times Square, a lesser-known flick, is a rock and roll love story between the child of a rising NYC councilman and the street-dwelling kid she meets in a hospital as they are both treated for mental health issues.

While this version of Fame is not a musical, Parker employs his talents melding song with narrative, as he also did so successfully with The Commitments. Each tune is from a source – a rehearsal, a performance, a realistic moment alone creating a tune – but each could be its own music video.

Moyle’s film could have been a groundbreaking queer teen fantasy, had the producers not insisted on an alternate ending which is pure Hollywood bullshit. But it’s all worth it just for the scene in which our protagonists, Pam and Nicky, bop down 42nd Street to Life During Wartime.



They are both artifacts of a transitional moment in the history of the city, documenting a Midtown which no longer exists, but also in their own way setting the stage for the MTV era which was to come. Like the man said, don't you wonder sometimes about sound and vision?

“Today the city is populated by benevolent ghosts.”

Patti Smith’s 2010 memoir Just Kids is (tangentially) about another point of major transition in the city. The focus of this book is primarily her relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, it is also therefore about their paths, together and apart, as young artists in the very late 1960s and into the 1970s.

Photo by Norman Seeff, 1969

I believe I was only first made aware of Smith when someone produced a lab production of Cowboy Mouth, which she wrote with Sam Shepard in 1971, a roman à clef of a play, a thinly veiled examination of their brief time together. Yes, I knew the song Because the Night, which she wrote with Bruce Springsteen, which was a hit when I was ten years old, but I couldn’t have told you who sang it.

And I first became aware of Mapplethorpe when a retrospective of his works, many of which feature images of a sexual nature, became a convenient focus of attack by those authoritarian forces that are currently Panzer-blitzing their way over a half-century of American civil rights and progress. This, when the artist had died only four months earlier, in March 1989.

What is charming and affecting about Smith’s book, fulfilling a promise she had made to her friend and former lover decades earlier to tell their story, is how unaffected it is. It’s a sweet tale of a young woman and a young man who meet cute and have Downtown boho adventures as they make art and aspire to greatness.

Smith is one of those rare artists who had to become an artist because, by her own admission, she couldn’t hold down a steady job – though her ability to find rare books for cheap and sell them high is a skill I find enviable.

Patti Smith in Cleveland
(Photo by Judie Vegh, 2017)

But as I was saying, transition. Brief encounters with Hendrix and Joplin, shortly before they died. Dylan and Ginsburg make appearances, too. Rubbing elbows with the 1960s as it vanished into the new decade which would entirely define them as icons of rock and art.

“The gratitude I had for rock and roll as it pulled me through a difficult adolescence. The joy I experienced when I danced. The moral power I gleaned in taking responsibility for one's actions.”

Five years ago, we took the entire family to the State Theatre to see Patti Smith perform Horses, her first album, in its entirety. 

At the age of seventy it were a fearsome performance from a white-haired punk, full of grit and passion. Our children, aged 15 and not yet 13, recently traumatized by the election, were electrified and inspired by the performance. It was a balm for the parents, too.

Source: “Behind the right’s loathing of the NEA: Two ‘despicable’ exhibits almost 30 years ago” by Travis M. Andrews, The Washington Post, 3/20/2017

Queer Eye (TV show)

"If you can't change the world, change yourself.
And if you can't change yourself, change your world."
- The The, "Lonely Planet"

2018

Footloose (1984) was the original makeover show for men.

Through the travails of Ren MacCormack, boys all over America learned the importance of grooming, fashion, attitude and most of all, dancing. Kevin Bacon gave the straight guy permission to dance.

The first incarnation of the reality-show Queer Eye for the Straight Guy premiered on Bravo in July 2003. My daughter was not yet six months old, I was turning thirty-five, and precisely the right age dynamic for this new makeover show for men.

I was a big fan of that first season. I found it mildly subversive, though even at the time I, like a lot of people, thought it played into some unhappy stereotypes about gay men (and female queer eyes need not apply.)

But as a maturing Gen Xer I had fallen into a lot of comfortable habits and this was a playful guide to gentle self-improvement. I watched the show, I bought the album, I got the book for Christmas.

Even today, there are tips each of the original “Fab Five” had given me which I still employ.

• Food & Drink: Ted taught me to reheat pizza on a skillet, and to always serve in glass.
• Style: Carson gave permission to mix patterns.
• Design: Thom showed me how to clear and own the home space.
• Grooming: Kyan taught me how to keep my scalp clean.
• Culture: Jai showed us all how to easily get the wrapper off a CD case.

2002

Okay, the “culture” guy has always been a problem. Four dudes guide us through an adventure of self-discovery, and Jai is there with tickets for a play.

By the second season I started to lose interest, and the main culprit was branding. This show has been scorned -- then and now -- for the suggestion that if a guy buys enough things, he’ll be happy. And that is a legitimate reason for criticism. But what about me? The show did not make me go out and purchase a load of skin care products, I learned how to properly use the products that are already in my house!

But the show had become popular enough that more time was spent showing off logos than providing helpful advice. It truly did become a show that was all about buying stuff.

When Netflix announced a reboot I was skeptical. Fifteen years ago, it felt cheeky. Yes, the idea that gay men are neat and clean and stylish and bitchy are long-held stereotypes -- but 2003 was also the year before Ohio voters decided to approve an amendment banning “gay marriage.” The pros of seeing these men making life better for heterosexual men outweighed the cons of reinforcing relatively innocuous impressions of the homosexual lifestyle.

But this 2018. In the intervening time, so many more of our friends and family have come out to us, and have shown themselves to be just like us, or us like them, or really, are there us and them anymore? Most of the gay men I know are like me; middle-aged, unshaven, soft around the middle, average taste in music, with an unfortunate tendency to make stupid jokes.

You know. Normal.

For this Millennial version of Queer Eye they dropped the “Straight Guy” from the title, because one of the eight episodes is actually about cleaning up a gay man and encouraging him to come out to his step-mom.

However this is still a show all about guys. Frankly, I am surprised they did not include any women on the team. Surely, if we are playing with gender stereotypes they could have at least included a lesbian as the designer or something, right? They did, thankfully, tilt the percentage of people of color. How is it that there were no African-American men in the original Fab Five?

Karamo makes up for Jai’s meager contributions to the previous series by not only providing theater tickets (he actually does this is in one episode) and how to walk tall and look a person in the eye, yadda yadda, but also curating one’s professional online persona, how to fund-raise, and even opening a dialogue on race with the police.

Much has already been said about the unfair distribution of labor on the program with Bobby (design) re-imagining people’s entire houses while Antoni (food & drink) teaches you how to pit an avocado.

I was concerned Jonathan (grooming) was trying too hard to be the Carson of the group, with an over-the-top sassiness which felt a bit put on. The difference is Carson Kressley is a cutting quip-machine where Jonathan mostly says, “Yaas, queen.” He says it a lot. I think I was also prejudiced against his man-bun. However, by the end of the second episode I had accepted that he is adorable, that this is really him, and isn’t acceptance what they tell us right off the bat is what this show is all about?

In fact, it’s Jonathan’s grooming aesthetic that won me over. Whereas Kyan had a one-size-fits all approach to men’s hair -- clean shaven, no beard, no way -- Jonathan knows it’s the 21st century. Guys have beards. Your beard can be better, though. And though product is still the thing, he describes what it is, what it’s for, how to use it, and I didn’t see a single brand name. Because this is Netflix, I hope it stays that way.

Finally, the walkaway star of the program is Tan (style) not only because of his early 80s pop star British accent and his supernaturally styled salt-and-pepper hair. He’s the most self-confident of the team, he owns himself and every room he steps into, and the recommendations he makes for his charges are always spot-on and impeccable.

The questions linger; does this program continue to perpetuate the stereotype that gay men have superficial interests, that it’s all about being neat and clean and coiffed and organized and also catty?

The proof may be in that last, as this version has far-less mockery that its predecessor. Yes, there is still that part of the show where the guys invade their subject’s home, comment on its state and try on all his clothes. But they used to be downright mean, even making cruel asides to the camera. The cruelty is gone and with it comes this desire to form a connection.

I don’t remember learning anything at all about the original team’s personal lives. Off the top of my head I can think of Bobby’s religious upbringing, that Tan is married, and that Antoni has a thing about smelling everybody's stuff. I was impressed by the original Fab Five. But I like these guys more.

Most of all, in an era of divisiveness, to watch a so-called "reality" show where the goal is to bring people together and to love each other is a breath of fresh air. And when things seem entirely out of control, where do you start to reassert control but with yourself?

Wonderful Christmastime (song)

My father was a religious man, and growing up Christmas was a religious holiday. I have no memory of believing in Santa Claus, it wasn’t a story my parents told. But I believed in the nativity, the virgin birth, the love of Christ, no room at the inn.

It was a religious holiday, with presents. I had learned early on not to get too carried away. I would mark up the to section of the Sears catalog, circling all of the superhero action figures and had a particular interest in playsets with which you could make and ideally sell things for money. The snow cone machine, the easy-bake oven.

But I never got those things, my gifts were always very practical and age-appropriate. The gifts would accumulate beneath the tree over the course of days (because Santa wasn’t coming suddenly drop them in one night) and I would speculate upon their contents based on size and weight. The ABBA album I requested turned out to be the soundtrack to the recent TV version of The Hobbit. A RPG solo adventure was actually a wildlife calendar. My hopes were high, my expectations grounded.

On Christmas Eve we would attend the late service, which was one of my favorite traditions. It always began with The March of the Wise Men, the lights dim, the choir entered in pairs bearing candles, processing up the center aisle to the quire, as their numbers increased the slow, steady, low hymn would build and build, rising to a tremendous pitch. It’s the kind of deep organ music which settles in your abdomen, and travels up your spine to make the hair stand on your neck. I believed in Jesus, this music was my proof.

This is actually completely awesome.

There were imaginings of Santa Claus, but it was hard to square them with reality. Accidentally missing any of the stop-motion, Rankin Bass animations, which firmly established the late twentieth-century Santa mythology, was cause for tears and deep regret. (The first few are canonical - like it or not, Mickey Rooney is the only voice for Santa - by the time they were creating nonsense like “Happy the New Year Baby” the bloom was off the rose.)

My first grade teacher had a glowing crystal ball on a pedestal through which we were told Santa could see us and hear our questions, like a benevolent palantir. The night of our school Christmas concert I peeked into my classroom and saw that it was not glowing. I walked over to it and saw the cord and switch which I had not noticed before, and what had been magic was rendered merely mechanical. I wanted to believe, but I knew better, even at six.

Christmas songs, as a child, seemed eternal. It’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Year (1963) and God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen (c. 16th century or earlier) were most certainly conceived of by the same man on the very same day, they are each found in the Bible, are they not? But as I grew into preadolescence and became aware of world events, so also did I begin to understand time and context.

I’d never heard John Lennon’s Happy Xmas (War Is Over) until that night he was shot and killed. I was twelve and it was December. Released in 1971 it is both Christmas single and a protest against the war in Vietnam. No one played it in the late 1970s, the anti-war message was dated, but suddenly it was given new life as programmers filled the air with the works of the slain artist, and after all, it was Christmas time. Now, of course, it is regarded as a standard.

Wings does not appear.

The following year I became aware of Paul McCartney’s Wonderful Christmastime, which had actually been released two years earlier. It hadn’t even charted in America that season, but by 1981 it was making its way into holiday pop rotation here. It is very of its time, almost entirely synthesized, it was recorded entirely by McCartney, by himself, and sounds like it.

This piece, like so many others, could easily be dismissed as just another British holiday pop song (they make so many more than we do, seriously) except that coming from a former Beatle the recording is held up for particular derision and is even regarded as the worst Christmas song ever made, which, considering company, you have to admit is pretty harsh.

My own lingering affection for this song is a matter of timing, really. Wonderful Christmastime was popular in that season when I had my first girlfriend. Christmastime is many things to many people, deeply sacred, a midwinter celebration of light and joy, it can also be a time of great romance, and like it or not this is my first romantic holiday song.

The moon is right
The spirits up
We're here tonight
And that's enough 

It is evocative of walks in the snow and through the woods, of holding someone, having someone. Taking comfort in knowing you belong, that you are special and that you have someone special. Feeling love. Being happy. And it’s got sleigh bells in it and I love those.

If there must be secular holiday songs, Sir Paul's unbreakable chestnut ticks all the boxes. Its message is basic; the people I love are happy together, here at this moment. This season, that is all the Christmas I need.


You know you want to.

Time of Marvel

My Great-Grandfather Johnson first brought his family to Flood’s Cove in Friendship, Maine in the early 20th Century, sometime around 1910. My mother vacationed here as a girl. My children are the fifth generation to summer here.

The cabin in which we stay is named Barnstable. It was, once upon a time, an actual barn. Timbers bear gnaw marks from livestock that were housed here more than a century ago. Around 1900 when the land changed hands it was converted from a farm into this summer destination.

Until I was almost seventeen I visited every year with my family. The cabin is still quite rustic, though not nearly as much as it was when I was a child. The plumbing was updated around 1990, prior to that you needed to fill jugs at the spring for drinking water, the shower was also installed about that time. Before that you needed to sponge bath with the help of an electric kettle.

Plus ça change. I take my son in the motorboat to fish for mackerel, so my Grandfather Baker did for me. We sit on the porch and look out at the cover through a trio of birch trees my Grandfather Henrik painted some decades ago, a painting which hangs in my parents home in Lakewood.

Twenty years ago the woman I would marry and start a family with, we made our first journey here together and she just fell in love with the place. Since then we would visit every couple of years, and once the kids were a certain age made it an annual thing. Spending a week or two in Flood’s Cove with members on my side of the family has become their annual tradition, too.

My relationship with this place is a bit complicated, however. In spite of the simplicity, the calm, the quiet, my associations, my memories are tied up a great deal in the interior of my thoughts as a pre-adolescent, and early teenager. I cannot walk these paths or roam these unpainted rooms without being struck by strong reminders of pop culture from the late 70s and early 80s.

A great part of the inner world I created here had to do with the fact that I was often alone. My brothers are older than me, by several years. One stopped visiting entirely when he began high school, beginning in 1978. My eldest brother began visiting with his college-age friends, and I was not invited to be part of their events. Who could blame them.

There were other kids here, to be sure, and we played our games from time to time. But I never felt as though I fit into the special, summer cliques which formed here. I could go into the details, suffice to say I usually found myself creating my own, private play. This included creating artwork out of seashells, or using carbon paper to create a daily newspaper to distribute to each of the cabins.

Summer 1980, I was searching for a new comic book. Two years earlier my brother had gotten me interested in comics, but I only had the change for and interest in one single title, Howard the Duck. This is because even at the age of ten I was already a complete smart ass. However, HTD was discontinued in 1979, and so I needed a new storyline to follow.

That summer I collected every Marvel comic I could get my hands on. I did try reading DC comics, the kids in the Bungalow (an adjacent cabin) had a number of Batman and Superman comics, but those were terrible at that time, everyone knows that.

Funny, even my memory of DC comics is associated with this place, and not from home.

There was a newsstand in Waldoboro that was well-stocked in comics, and in my search for a regular thing I purchased plenty of them, auditioning the Marvel universe.

While several titles piqued my interest, like most kids at that time I became obsessed by X-Men. It helped that Marvel was currently peddling a series of reprints, so I was able to read the title from its origins in 1964.

One single issue, however, one story held me and haunted me and is one I remember to this day. Marvel Two-In-One #69: The Thing Battles the Guardians of the Galaxy was a story about a hero from the 30th Century who returns to our present to persuade his younger self not to become an astronaut and endure the living hell of being trapped in stasis for one thousand years, unable to move but mentally awake. Today a storyline like that one would no doubt be spread out over at least a half dozen issues.

Space Panic

Then there was my quest for video games. My son plays Pokemon Go right here in the cove, I had no such release. Every day-trip to Camden, Rockland or Damariscotta I would seek out those venues which would most likely feature Space Panic, Moon Cresta, or best of all, Crazy Climber.

The next year I turned thirteen. I had met girls. I had a Walkman. For hours I would sit in a hammock at the Birchview (yet another cabin) listening to cassettes. When we would drive I would commandeer the radio. Fortunately my father was totally cool with that, also in his mid-forties, he was at that time the most interested in popular music as he ever would be.

What was popular at that exact moment in time? Jessie’s Girl, Everlasting Love, and Sukiyaki, a cover version of a Japanese love song from 1961 that made my father wistful his time in the service. It was a time of interesting transition for popular music, just then beginning to swing away from introspective Baby Boomer brooding (Games People Play) to teenage Gen X angst and weirdness (Bette Davis Eyes).

I was shocked and surprised to receive a letter - an actual, physical letter - from a girl who I had been flirting with during Bay Days. She was not subtle, she was really looking forward to my returning to Ohio. I can’t remember if I had written her first or if she had gotten the address to this resort place from my brother. For the first time I desperately wanted to not be here, suddenly going away from home seemed a punishment and not an adventure.

My daughter is the same age this year as I was in 1981 (actually a half-year older) and upon arriving was distressed to realize that she wouldn’t be able to text message her friends from the cove, though she can still Snapchat. She was like, I dunno … like some astronaut trapped in stasis for one thousand years, unable to move but mentally awake.

My daughter has another thing I never had, for many years now she has had a friend here. They are almost the same age, they don’t communicate throughout the year (we have taken to negotiating with the girl’s parents to make sure we are in the cove at the same time) but spend all their time together when they’re in this place.

Nineteen eighty-two is lost to me. I can’t remember anything except feeling entirely alone. This is where my troubles began. My big birthday gift was an Apple II+ so that was cool, but it was also when I began to become peevish about having to visit.

Last year, when my son was ten, he taught the eight year-old staying here how to play a first-person sniper assassination video game. That’s nothing. When I was fourteen I taught a five year-old I was babysitting how to turn a can of bug spray into a flamethrower.

Can you see the bird?

The following year, 1983, was the end of the innocence and wonder. Only fifteen but my mind was older, I had a girlfriend in Cleveland to get back toand a desperate need to watch absolutely anything they broadcast on MTV. Making matters worse, there was an entire team of young adults here that summer, my eldest brother and visitors from Europe (former exchange program “family” members) and others from Bay Village who were just that much older than me to make my life miserable.

True, I was a complete dick that summer. But I was no longer the least bit interested in the bucolic setting, the sea, the trees, the quiet. I wanted music and dancing and fooling around. My solace was in trips to the towns where I could shop for records - records I wouldn’t even be able to play until I got home - and to immerse myself in cabinet video games.

Even then I accompanied my family to Maine for two more summers before graduating high school and breaking with tradition. Returning after a five-year break in 1990, I recall heading out to the great rock which faces Muscongus Bay. Even then I wasn’t ready to take in the landscape as it exists. I was wearing headphones and listening to Michael Penn.

Tonight.

My daughter loves it here. I have always wondered how long that would last, when the pull of home, of teenage interests would overwhelm the simple wonders of this corner of the world. My wife reminds me that she's not me.

The girl may have technological tethers to her life at home, devices which were not available to me, and a friend to look forward to seeing here. But she also finds beautiful places to sit and read, she loves to play the violin out-of-doors, to sit on a rock and sketch.

Tonight, our second-to-last night in the cove for the year, we had an extended social evening her at Barnstable. Wine hour with friends in the cove, a long dinner with family, a dozen sitting around the table, four generations represented (the youngest at ten months, the eldest eighty-one) my wife and I took a walk into the darkness, each step away from the light of the cabin the sky grew starker, the sky turning black, the most visible stars soon subsumed by an array of billions, the Milky Way evident and elegant, streaming across the heavens.

'S wonderful. 'S marvelous.

Memphis Drive-In

The Memphis Triple Drive-In at 10543 Memphis Rd. opened in 1954, featuring three screens and showing a double-feature each night. On Fridays and Saturdays, they would then repeat the main feature. The venue held 1000 cars.


In my experience I have attended three drive-in movies, two in Athens, but the first at the Memphis Drive-In in 1986 to see Ferris Bueller's Day Off with my girlfriend.

The Memphis Drive-In closed on September 30, 2006, purchased by the adjacent American Greeting Card Co.


Sources:
driveinmovie.com
CoolCleveland.com
About.com

Wedding Bells #3

From this ...



Spicy Mystery Stories, April 1936

... to this!



Wedding Bells, June 1954

Thank you, Dr. Frederic Wertham.

Bearden's (1954)

One of the iconic images of 1950s Americana is the drive-in burger joint. When we have visited car shows I have pointed out to my children the trays that some of the cars feature, often original "Big Boys" trays, with a clip to secure it to the window, with the tray facing either into or out of the window. I help them imagine what it might be like to drive up to a restaurant, park, and not have to get out of the car, to have it brought to you.

Never having sat in a car with seats a comfortable nor as large and unrestrictive as a living room couch, I do not believe they actually think this would be an enjoyable experience. And the truth is, I am too young to have actually experienced this phenomenon myself. A drive-in move is as close as I get,

My parents would have visited the original Bearden's in Rocky River, 19985 Lake Road. Anyone who has been there knows about the model train, set up high on a ledge running around the entire dining room, which was a feature left over from its original owner, Charlie Jackson. Then the place was known when it first opened in 1934 as Jackson Limited because of that train (and Jackson.)

When Ross Bearden operated the place in 1948, and changed the name, he kept the train. It's a great gimmick, as a kid I always thrilled to visit the place with the train. You will notice the restaurant was not renamed in honor of Gene Bearden's performance as pitcher in the 1948 World Series anymore than the team was named after an actual Indian.

From the website:

The 1950s were the heyday of the drive-in restaurant theme and Bearden's was no exception. Staying open until 2 or 3 in the morning on Friday and Saturday nights and having police direct traffic and provide parking lot security was the norm. To this day, we still hear stories of high school romances, first dates and hot cars. The popularity of the drive-in theme waned in the early 1960s and soon "Curb Service" was a thing of the past.

The food itself wasn't legendary, a greasy burger wrapped in paper, a milkshake and a basket of onion rings, but aren't those things everybody wants, after all?

Three years of extensive construction on Lake Road combined with a flagging economy forced the present owner to close Bearden's doors in December 2010.

UPDATE: Following a brief closure, Bearden's reopened in Fall 2011 !!!

Sources:
Bearden's Homepage
cleveland.com