the news from the Canadas

(ivica)

:       greasers

 

"It's fun when you're winning."
(Jacques Plante)
"God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another."
(William Shakespeare)

When I first heard about it, I was off and running the same day. The word that caught my attention was "greasers". (I'd always thought that Ringo was actually a misplaced greaser...just trying to squeak through any handy openings in life. (Or a Japanese apple lost in loverly old Liverpool.)) When the great and wonderful Hogtown speaks, some people listen. I wanted to see for myself, anyway. I've seen things in that town that I would not have believed unless my own eyes started to try to convince me.

I've seen "The Batchelor" store there with iron-free clothes, one-person kitchen utensils, clothes that don't lose/use colour, self-addressed father's/ valentine's day cards, personalized alimony cheques, pizza-score cards, and old-maid calendars.

I've also seen front dentures for six-year-olds, terrorist insurance for bankers, organized crime health plans, private armies, Wednesday hookers, garage sales with used gun parts AND porno video cassettes, heated leather car seats, yuppie puppies, puppy yuppies, silk aprons, automatic weapons, fantasy storage bins, car-jacking children, cat-throwing drive-bys, et cetera. The bigger towns draw the bigger appetites.

Anyway, Hogtown had officially declared Greenwood Park as Greaser Park for this Thursday (during daylight hours). (On this particular Thursday Pluto took back the title of "farthest planet from the sun" from Neptune.) All the old greasers from the Fifties would now have their own time and place again. Some interest groups in this country have WAY too much power! (And some don't---it's kinda cold in February....) Like their little mayor, Mr. Omega Man, says, "What would you do?"

Well, I saw it first-hand, but I still don't believe it. I had grabbed my sneakers, jeans, and bated breath. I used to roam this park during my primary school days (ahh, good old St. Joe's! (I can still smell those used wooden desks)). These guys and gals were before my time (I was more of a Psychedelic Sixties type of guy---hey, how come we don't get our own Freaky Friday Park?) All the Citizens would agree (in their heart of hearts) that the Sixties were the best decade. My younger sister, for instance, loves the Sexy Sixties, but she grew up in the Disco Seventies (Poor Kid!).

Black T-shirts with filterless cigarettes up their sleeves. Beer bottles in their wrinkled already shaking hands. "Cool, Baby!" Very very early rock-and-roll (some of it semi-big-band and some very simple folk music). Rolled-up blue jeans. Boots. And grease. Lots of grease. And lots of black hair dye. And blondes of course. There are always blondes (in all the decades). I remember hoping that no one accidentally started up a wicked geezer stampede. (I never wanted to live through one of those again.)

"random variation and natural selection"
 (Charles Darwin)
"klaatu borada nikto"
 (klaatu)

So there I was watching this flashback, when other gangs started to infiltrate. Old beatniks appeared spouting "poetry, man!" Aged bobbysoxers swayed to any old music. Acoustic guitars strummed simply but loudly. Radios screamed. Spaghetto-blasters did their thing. (There's a reason why their coffee is half-sugar!) I tried to watch without too much staring. Some fathers with suitcases and pipes even showed up...with their quiet caring housewives. ("The play's the thing....")  I thought I saw Lucy and Ricky Ricardo too. I certainly saw Ethel and Fred. I talked to the oldest rebel in the Canadas: Two Roses Linda.

Two Roses Linda says: "Don't f*ck your life away, young man! Or you'll just wind up looking at a picture. It's just an image, after all. There's no kiss there anymore---just illusionary lips. It's just light and dark dots...it's a record...a memory. Nobody's kissing, loving, smiling at, dreaming of these lips now."

There's also a new diet in this town: The 40-days Diet. It's good for the body---it's good for the soul! Two Roses Linda, one of those Post-Neo-Platonic scientists from the West Coast (B.C.), tells me that the human skeleton is completely remade in about 4 moons. And the human skin in about one moon. In fact, every new year really is a new year for about 99 per cent of the human body and soul. I really don't want to imagine which one per cent of us goes on and on....

"Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendour in the grass...."
(William Wordsworth)
"Thank you! Thank-you-very-much!"
(Elvis Presley impersonator)
"Merci. Merci beaucoup!"
(Elvis Presley impersonator)
 "Danke. Danke schön!"
(Elvis Presley impersonator)
  "                                        "
(Harpo)

In watching these old greasers, I can't help but feel a certain loss. It's all so dated somehow. Dow Danny tells me that you can't go home again. Red Cap Johnny says that he never liked home anyway! And Mary-Lou, with the black bangs, concludes that when we're superpolite it seems like a comedy, and when we're superrude it just turns into another tragedy.

Mary-Lou further warns me that homes are like beauty and "beauty is as beauty does". Homes hate cool surfaces, wet surfaces, and dusty surfaces. What they love are dehumidifiers and germ cleaners and mold-resistant paint and clean people. I think that these wrinkled children, on this cloudy Thursday, on this field of wintered grass, in this city...are home (again).

 

I vainly try to remember if any of the hippies were as pitiful as this. And are they in the end the same creature? Pity (or even piety) can be a strong positive undertow sometimes. But it doesn't seem like a fair comparison. All of us have our fashions and buzz-words. Culture and language must go on.

Some of these greasers are still strongly rooted in their teen world. (It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.) And I learned that even though these greasers hold on tightly to their old culture, some of them also speak one of today's new cultures. Some of them are bilingual (or worse). Either way, all these different cultures and languages deal with the same problems and the same solutions. I stayed to the end and saw them go peaceably before the night came (with its peculiar occupants).

"Descent with modification"
 (Charles Darwin)
"Every one lives by selling something."
(Robert Louis Stevenson)

 

 

later 'gator, ivica-blue-jeans
 
 

"Le dernier acte [The last act] est sanglant [is bloody],
quelque belle que soit la comédie en tout le reste
[however beautiful the play is otherwise]."
(Blaise Pascal)

 

 [RINGO  RINGAS  RINGAT  RINGAMOS  RINGATIS  RINGANT]

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