Deja Vu Two
For a second week in a row, I had a good weekend. I’m beginning to like this pattern. On Friday night, Jason came over to watch the DVD of Mean Girls (hilarious) and then to play a bit of Rummy (he won….I’m tempted to say he cheated, but that would be a lie and my momma brought me up better than that).
Normally when we play Rummy, we keep VH-1 Classic on in the background. Unfortunately, they weren’t playing fun 80’s videos so I came up with the brilliant idea to use my dusty VCR to play some actual videos on video. First up was a collection of Go-Go’s videos. Ah, such fun. Belinda sure worked that over-the-shoulder sweat-shirt look, didn’t she?
When that video was over, we started watching video tapes I had from when I worked at a record store (you may recall record stores as the predecessor to today’s CD shops). Record labels would send us tapes of various videos to play in the store to get people to buy their product. After the videos were deemed “old”, employees got to take them home.
Friday night was the first time I played these videos in over a decade. WOW – what flashbacks these videos brought: Head On by the Pixies, Hit by the Sugar Cubes, Accident Waiting to Happen by Billy Bragg, You’re in a Bad Way by Saint Etienne, Feed the Tree by Belly. There were smiles all around.
Still, we had more card playing to do and no more videos. I looked deep into the back of the shelf and found a tape containing things I could have sworn I had recorded over. Not sure that Jason would appreciate it, I put it in anyway. Much to my surprise, Jason loved it. I loved it. How could I have forgotten all about Electric City?
Electric City (AKA Cheap TV) was a show on San Francisco’s public access. When Matt and I lived there back in 1997, I would watch it on Friday nights at 10:30 PM. It’s a very difficult show to explain. Imagine Mr. Rogers Neighborhood hosted by an asian drag queen named Rice Patty and an older drag-queen queen with dentures and a Long-Island accent named Gypsy, mixed with the local news and Mystery Science Theatre. Oh yeah, and throw in a bit of gay porn.
I apparently had recorded the last three episodes of the show before we moved back to Boston. I had forgotten how trippy the show was. Jason couldn’t keep his eyes of the screen. Hell, I couldn’t, either. One second you’re watching an old, campy black and white movie (which the drag queens dubbed over with their own dialogue…something about burning incense until you realize that Incense was actually a woman). But the next minute the camera was following Rice Patty down the street interviewing gay men in San Francisco. As a man, Rice Patty spoke perfect English, but in character, she pretended to have a limited command of the English language and essentially smiled, nodded and said “Ah. Hi.” to everybody she met.
In between these street scenes and movie clips were dance songs interspersed with local nightclub scenes and gay porn. Ah – public access television. Electric City/Cheap TV definitely puts Wayne’s World to shame.
Of course, there’s no possible way to top a night like that, but I still managed to have fun the rest of the weekend. Rich and I got together on Saturday and went to Larz Anderson Park in Brookline. I’d never been (though I’d driven by numerous times). What a lovely splace. It’s got this enormous grassy hill where, from the top, you can see the Boston skyline above the trees. From this vantage point it makes the entire Boston area appear to be a forest (except for downtown, of course). It’s quite lovely.
Then we drove around Brookline and ended up out in Needham (don’t ask). We had “lunch” at Cambridgeside but it was so late in the day we decided to make it dinner and ordered twice as much food (rational thinking, no?).
On Sunday, I bought a few clothing items then had Rich over to watch some reality TV (Surreal Life, My Fair Brady and Being Bonaduce). Yikes – reality TV certainly has gotten harsh.
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Cambridgeside??? Tell me you went to the Cheesecake Factory! And you make Needham sound like it’s in another state; for crissakes it’s practically around the corner. But your tv night sounded like fun. When did you work in a record store? Because while I remember them, I do not remember you working in one… what’d I miss? 🙂
*Ahem* How dare you insinuate that my rummy victory methods were anything less than proper! And plus, you forgot the most important of the videos – HOME SWEET HOME BY MOTLEY CRUE! I went out and bought “The Dirt” the very next day. Thanks for introducing me to Cheap TV – I’ve been chuckling about Rice Patty ever since.
The whole thing sounds wild! . . . I think that the events of the weekend could very well be turned into a reality show called “Kool Karl” (much better than “The Osbornes” or “Being Bobby Brown”).
OK, I understand that breakfast and lunch combined is brunch. But what happens when you combine lunch and dinner? Lunner? Dinch? Doesn’t work somehow.
Ah, yes, Rice Patty. “Hiiii!” Actually, was just at that InTouch place where Rice used to film some of her stuff. …well, not in InTouch, but outside of it. We were chatting outside of it — I was lamenting over the loss of Hog on Ice. …that area is sooooo much nicer now. Even feels “kind of” safe now. We had great Korean BBQ.
The Surreal Life is still on?!?!? Who is on it now?