Rock N’ Roll Daddy-O
I was one of those kids. You know the ones. You hear them screaming and crying when they don't get the toy they want. Well, maybe I wasn't that emotive. My need and desire for a particular toy manifested itself in an elevated/anxiety fueled panic. There was a feeling that I might actually die if I couldn't take home that blister packed hunk of Taiwan made goodness...
My father told me something, a few years back, about how I cried and pestered him endlessly for toys - every single time we went to the store. The "store", for us, was Smitty's.
He portrayed me as some form of childlike harpie endlessly devouring the liver of his wallet to fill my insatiable action figure appetite. Avarice was my engine, mental manipulation was my weapon. Nothing was sacred, no line was off limits. If I destroyed my father financially and utterly to get my greedy mitts on a toy I wanted... well, that was just collateral damage. This was war, goddammit. If I had to lay down a suppressing fire of anguish followed by a napalm bomb of guilt or an agent orange dousing of manipulation... fukkit. Toys were all that mattered to me. Food? Baaah! I could still play with an action figure with my distended belly and withered fingers. I didn't give a tinker's damn If we had to live behind a garbage bin.
At least that was how he made it out to me.
I have serious doubts.
I think that it was more like I was a regular kid who, as a byproduct of capitalist commercial inundation - not to mention a seriously fucked-up childhood (i.e floods, divorce, a mother who had schizophrenia) had occasional bouts of brattiness. I certainly don't remember having an Imelda Marcos-type collection of luxury playthings, and the business of father/stepmother seemed fruitful... at least on their end.
My father and I both have the common trait of exaggerating things, so the truth is probably somewhere in the middle and not quite as... how shall we say? Colorful.
But I digress.
I was a greedy little bastard. In Dante's film Gremlins, there are three simple rules.
1. Never expose a Mogwai to sunlight
Not a problem. The 110 degrees Arizona sun saw to it that entire generations of kids just like me became indoor pets. I remember getting detention on purpose to be able to stay in the study hall a/c.
2. Never get a Mogwai wet
I think this one has something to do with the practice of asexual reproduction. I think this one might require a whole blog post unto itself. Maybe more than one.
3. Never feed a Mogwai after midnight
Aha! Now we're getting to it. Let's scratch out midnight and replace it with 6:30 in the morning. On a Saturday to be more precise. Feed = corn sweetened corn cereal with artificial chemical flavors and colors in a box that looks like the Merry Pranksters painted it, with a giant smiling cartoon character emblazoned on the front. Hell, just for kicks, lets put a cheap ass plastic toy at the bottom of the bag so that the unsuspecting little twit will have to either immerse himself elbow deep into this toxic cardboard container of genetically modified candy-coated foodstuff, thereby getting a contact high from a manufactured product that is actually created by people wearing goggles and masks and gloves and protective outerwear... not to mention soulless mechanical robots.
There are four main food groups in a child's diet as evidenced by the titans of cereal production.
1. Sugar
2. Corn
3. Artificial Flavors
4. Artificial Colors
Let’s take a look at the K mart model through a child’s perspective. So… as your Mom’s car turns into the parking lot, blasting the latest song sensation…
you are immediately hypnotized by the glow of the giant red “K”, coupled with the cooling glow of the sea foam blue “mart” in non-threatening lowercase font.
Before you even get to through the doors you are distracted by the greatest thrill ride your brain can possibly imagine.
If your Mom smoked, there was always the possibility that the combo of a leaking propane tank (see picture above) and a lit flame might rocket you to worlds beyond. After the joy of a ride with Woody Woodpecker…
when you finally entered the labyrinthine building proper, you would be greeted by a militarily precise line of coin operated sentinels promising a plastic egg full of toys and/or candy for the paltry sum of 1 quarter. Parents during those times must have had to carry heaping pocket loads of quarters in order to momentarily satiate their offspring.
My particular favorite was The Chicken Machine.
You would place a quarter (or two) in the slot, push the slot in… and let the good times roll. The Chicken would begin clucking and squawking and rotating and lights would flash and bells would ring and… it was almost like witnessing the terrible and majestic process of birth. Your hair would stand up, you would feel an electrical jolt traverse the course of your spinal cord and synapses would fire like a Napoleonic battlefield inside your brain… and then it would end.
A small plastic easter egg would tumble with lackluster aplomb out of the slot with a goodie of some sort, but it was inferior to the main event which was the show.
In “Schindler’s List”, Schindler leans forward in one scene and you can hear the leather of his jacket stretch as he delivers the line “I’m not good at the work, but the presentation... (waves hands in the air).”
No matter what you would find in that plastic egg, it could never match the majesty of the show leading up to it. It was like a shot of kid heroin. I wanted more, more, more…
I no longer cared if I got the toy, I would stand in awe and watch as another kid would put in a quarter. I would continue to do this until I was physically dragged away weeping at the hunger in my soul.
Nowadays the whole thing is mixed up and cross wired in my brain. My brain feels a bit like C-3PO from this scene when I think back upon it.
New associations mix with old and I find myself wishing I could go back and feel that same raw desire, but knowing in my heart it would never be the same. The shadows of childhood memories combine with images of Werner Herzog and Ian Curtis and I’m left contemplating scenes and images like this one.
If I could somehow understand the significance of this scene, is it possible that I might then wield a knowledge so powerful that I could not hope to control it and then become a destroyer of worlds? Possibly…
Anyway, we are not even past the entrance of one retail outlet and we see the tentacles of capitalist indoctrination winding their way around our collective throats. Do I even have to describe the K mart snack bar with the giant rotating ICEE machine and the popcorn? Or the toy department? Or cereal and toy commercials aimed at kids?
This is powerful stuff, especially when combined with our varied childhood experiences both good and bad.
Did you see the blonde haired/bearded badass popping a wheelie on his motorbike? That’s Rock ‘n Roll. His real name was Craig S. McConnell. He was born in Malibu, California.
Rock 'n Roll's primary military specialty was infantry, and his secondary military specialty is PT instructor. He was familiar with all NATO and Warsaw Pact light and heavy machine guns (he often used the M60). He graduated top of class from advanced infantry training, and received specialized education in covert ops school at Langley. In time, Rock 'n Roll moved on from being a machine gunner to a Gatling gunner.
A surfer, weightlifter, and bassist (my particular instrument of choice), Rock 'n Roll is cunning but naive, and forceful but shy. He possesses a strong sense of loyalty to his teammates and is sincerely concerned about their well being. Rock 'n Roll is a man of honor and integrity who can be counted on to hold the line.
Rock 'n Roll was first released as an action figure in 1982. His character was re-issued with a new action figure design in 1989, with a slight name change to Rock & Roll, however, his file card's content continued to maintain the code name Rock 'n Roll. The name change was temporary, as the next few editions of his action figure all used the Rock 'n Roll name.
This is a newspaper clipping of my dad who was drafted and served two tours in Vietnam. He often regaled the family with tales of his time there during family gatherings in which impromptu slideshows would inevitably break out.
This is an image of Rock n’ Roll from his blister pack. When I first happened upon him in the toy aisle at Smitty’s, my parents had divorced and we were living with my stepmother. Things were not well from my end. My stepmother’s perpetual paranoia of any shadow of my mother’s memory - what was I? - had made her come up with a crafty plan. She started to look at the differences between my father and I and then she began to exploit them. I loved books - he did not. That was a big one. He loved horses - I did not. That was an even bigger one. There were many of these. They were legion. Ill treatment from her combined with alienation from my father began to poison the well of our relationship.
With the passage of time, the divisions became fault lines that now and again threaten to shake our tentative connections from one another apart and have, on occasion, resulted in two or three year bouts of non-communication. It's tough for both of us to break free of the standard traditional roles that prevent us from moving forward. The inability to find resolutions for past grievances has forced me to seek deeper truths in my writing.
So let's recap. In one hand you had my then distant father - and, in the other, a plastic personification of him. Is it any wonder why I cried so hard to get that toy.
Hell, I’m tearing up right now thinking of it.
Next time you hear a kid screaming and crying in a toy aisle, think to yourself that the child might not be a horrible materialistic swine, but quite possibly a kid diseased by corporate influence and missing the Dad he used to know.
