Tar-zen's Day Off - Part III

 

Hello, Dear Readers.  It’s good to see you.

Last time on Philosophy for a Hungry Planet:  “In my case, things had really had turned out well, and at that point, all I had left to do was to walk up to Jennifer Batten, look her straight in the eye, and say, “Here’s your vintage Pez dispenser.”  And if I could’ve just done that, it would’ve been great.  But that, of course, Dear Readers, is a whole other story…”

And now, the conclusion of “Tar-zen’s Day Off”…

My adventures never seem to work out quite the way I plan them to.  And sometimes, that’s not such a bad thing.  I suppose it’s all just somehow connected to what an adventure comes down to for me. Now, my father is a guy who always expects the absolute worst, so if he goes on an adventure, and everything doesn’t just go to hell right in front of him, then the whole affair has been wildly successful as far as he’s concerned.  He’s a man constantly surprised and delighted by normalcy.

For my mother, though, a successful adventure is all about the plusses and the minuses.  It’s about the ratio between what went right and what went wrong.  And after a certain percentage of things have gone right, the adventure is a success no matter what else happens.  So, if she has two hours to go shopping and wants to hit five stores (and she could do it, too, because the woman is a genius at the art of efficient shopping—it’s like she was born in Terminator mode), lots of different things can happen.  If, of course, she just gets through the five stores, it’s a success even if she doesn’t find anything.  But if she goes through five stores and finds three things on sale, it’s cause for a medium-sized celebration.  If she finds something on sale in all five stores, that calls for a parade. However, if she gets through three stores without finding anything and then gets a flat tire, the adventure isn’t a success.  But that just basically means that she has to get the tire fixed and then claim “do-over” status for the next day.  I mean, my mom is not a woman who accepts defeat.  If, however, she gets through three stores, then gets a flat, then finds a pair of shoes on sale for 85% off at a store while she’s waiting for my dad to come and get her, then the whole adventure is a raging success.  I mean, 85% off anything pretty much trumps any disaster of any type when you’re shopping.  So, my mom never really knows if an adventure has worked out until she gets home and does the math.  

In a way, I’m kind of like a combination of both my parents when it comes to adventures.  Like my dad, I usually expect the worst.  I just don’t plan for it like he does.  I just sort of sit around vaguely fearing it.  And like my mom, I look at the ratio of good and bad things that happen when I decide if an adventure has been successful.  I try to take everything into account, and I tend to be rather generous with myself.  But I’m also very different than either of my parents because to me, every adventure comes down to a moment.  It comes down to The Moment. And whether or not The Moment comes off right is the biggest factor in how successful the adventure really is to me.  The only thing is that half the time, the moment that I think is the The Moment doesn’t turn out to be The Moment at all.

Driving into downtown Toledo with my friend on the Saturday afternoon of the guitar festival was like driving into the opening scene of an old Star Trek episode.  Now, Star Trek was interesting because you could tell what was going to happen just by the way the episode started.  If they got shot at before the opening credits, you knew the whole episode was going to be about outsmarting some vicious enemy race of green Orion pig-people, one of whom Kirk would inevitably fall in love with.  If they went into a time warp and found themselves sitting in paisley shirts in the front row of a Jimi Hendrix concert, you knew that they were going to have to figure out how to restart the warp engines and create a time distortion using nothing but some old tabs of LSD and a discarded bong.  If they beamed down to a planet whose atmosphere was composed almost entirely of milk, butter, eggs, and assorted breakfast meats, you knew that at some point, McCoy was going say, “I’m a doctor, not Paula Deen…or Jimmy Dean…or whoever!” and that the crew was going to have to eat its way out of danger.  I mean, science fiction is nothing if not predictable.

The Star Trek episodes that I liked most, though, were the ones that started off when the Away Team beamed down to a planet that was deserted but shouldn’t have been.  The first line of those episodes was always, “Where is everybody?”  and let’s just be clear that as least as far as TV shows go, no good ever comes from asking that question.  On Star Trek, it always meant that some nameless, faceless security guy in a red shirt was going to get attacked by some weird alien creature that looked like a big flying piece of barf.  And you always knew that was going to happen because any Star Trek character who wasn’t a regular was inevitably going to get killed or podded or disfigured in some horrible way before the first commercial came on.  Those people just never fared well.  And then no matter what form the attack had taken, the next line would always be, “What is that thing?”   That’s the most popular line in science fiction.  Oddly enough, it also seems to be the most popular line in teenage romance movies.  But I digress.

Anyway, going into downtown Toledo was just like landing on a planet with an infestation of flying alien barf creatures.  It’s not, of course, that there actually were alien barf creatures flying through the air.  That would’ve just been weird, even for northeast Ohio.  It’s just that the whole town was completely deserted.  I mean, I have never seen an urban area so utterly devoid of human activity in my life.  There were no stores open.  There were no cars on the street.  There were no people anywhere.  From what I could see, not even homeless people want to hang around in downtown Toledo on a Saturday afternoon.  And I was going to say to my friend, “Where is everybody?” but I figured there was no point in setting that tragedy in motion, so I just kept it to myself.  Luckily, though, neither one of us was wearing a Red Security Guy Shirt of Death, so I figured that we had at least a pretty good shot at making it to the guitar festival alive.

The festival itself was held at the Toledo School for the Arts, and it was actually a very nice place.  More than that, though, it was populated.  And I found that oddly comforting.  I mean, you can only watch so much science fiction before you need a good dose of regular old humanity to calm you down and reassure you that you are, in fact, on planet Earth.  A Valium often doesn’t hurt, either.

When we got into the actual festival, the first thing I wanted to do was to go up to the room where Jennifer Batten was chatting and signing things between shows.  But I just wanted to peek in.  I mean, up until that point, I’d only ever seen her on YouTube.  As far as I knew, she actually was only three inches tall and only appeared for five minutes and forty seconds at a time. I really didn’t have a sense that she was a real person.   To me, she was kind of like a tiny, on-demand eclipse.  Only with a guitar. 

So, I figured that before I actually had to talk to her, I should try to get my brain around the idea that she wasn’t just a musically-gifted little imp who had somehow escaped from my computer and run off to Toledo.  Otherwise, the only thing I could’ve thought to say to her was “What the hell are you doing here?”  And that kind of stuff just tends to make people think you’ve got a whole collection of tin foil hats somewhere.

Needless to say, then, I was perfectly happy to just hang around suspiciously in the doorway, looking scared and vaguely fearing disaster.  To be honest, I’m really quite good at that.  Luckily, though, my friend was with me, and it was (thank God) trusty companion to the rescue again.

Now, the thing about trusty companions is that more than just being the voice of reason, they’re also action-oriented.  They do stuff.  They’re brave.  I mean, think about it.  Was roaring out in the Batmobile to catch criminals really ever Batman’s idea?  Oh sure, he’d hang around in the Batcave and talk about what the Riddler was probably doing, but it was always Robin who basically said, “Holy ‘and-gee-we’re-just-sitting-here-scratching-ourselves,’ Batman!”  That was what really got things going.  And that always seems to be the way it goes.  The Lone Ranger would probably just ride around in circles shooting off his guns without Tonto to say, “You get that the bandits are right over there, don’t you?”  And even in the old movie Gunga Din, it’s the trusty companion/water bearer Gunga Din who takes the initiative during the final battle to climb to the top of the tower and signal for help.  Of course, he gets killed in the end (typical), but at least he takes action.

I think my favorite brave trusty companion, though, has to be The Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz.  He’s almost foolishly brave, but he’s also a guy who can make a decision.  After all, he’s the one who really leads the charge to steal the Wicked Witch of the West’s broom.  True, the others are there, but The Tin Man is, well, a little hesitant, and The Cowardly Lion is, well, cowardly.  And Dorothy just isn’t any good when it comes to doing battle.  I mean, she never even puts down her purse-basket.  It’s like fighting alongside the Queen of England.  But The Scarecrow has a plan.  He goes in there hell-bent for leather and flying monkey ass.  He’s kicking butts from the word “Go!”  And when you stop to think about it, his bravery is really something because it’s not like he is the toughest character around.  The Cowardly Lion at least has big lion teeth and claws.  And The Tin Man actually has a weapon.  But The Scarecrow is made of straw.  He’s fragile.  For Christ’s sake, he’s flammable.  But he’s the main trusty companion and the bravest one there.

But maybe even more than that, The Scarecrow is really loyal.  I mean, when you think about it, Dorothy Gale is really just a young woman from Kansas on a crime spree.  In the course of the movie, she kills two people and slaps an animal.  Of course, she doesn’t mean to kill The Witch of the East when she first gets there.  She just lands on top of her.  So, that’s like vehicular homicide but with a house.  But then The Good Witch of the North comes down, steals the ruby slippers, and puts them on Dorothy’s feet.  So, that’s conspiracy to commit robbery right there.  And of course, Dorothy doesn’t actually mean to kill The Wicked Witch of the West, either (although, let’s face it, she’s not too broken up about it).  So, that could just be second-degree manslaughter.  But then, she takes the broom.  So, then it’s felony murder.  I mean, if Jack McCoy had been running the D.A.’s office in Oz, he would’ve fried Dorothy Gale up in a skillet.  But The Scarecrow is always there for her, defending her actions and taking her side.  He’s like the perfect public defender.  And when Dorothy leaves Oz, she tells him that she’ll probably miss him the most.  And that’s probably true.  After all, given the string of felonies she commits as a teenager in Oz, she’s probably going to need a good lawyer at some point in the future when she gets back to Kansas.

Fortunately, I was pretty sure that meeting Jennifer Batten wasn’t going to involve quite that much intrigue or anywhere near that level of violence. I mean, I just don’t have the delinquent potential of a Dorothy Gale.  And I haven’t got a house to drop on someone.  Besides, it was a guitar festival, not a scene out of Dog Day Afternoon.  Al Pacino wasn’t prancing around in the hallway yelling, “Attica!  Attica!”  So, it probably wasn’t the toughest challenge my trusty companion had ever faced, although it may well have been the strangest.  Anyway, my friend did a very smart thing and just started walking around in the room looking at various displays.  So, I managed to pry my bony fingers off the doorjamb and follow her.  And the next thing I knew, we were standing at the t-shirt and CD table…five feet away from Jennifer Batten.  The Moment was at hand.  At least that’s what I thought.

Both my friend and I had gotten t-shirts and CDs, and my friend stepped right over to have her CD signed.  Like I said, trusty companions are nothing if not action-oriented.  Then it was my turn.  I actually had a picture that I wanted to have signed, so Jennifer Batten signed it.  Then with all the coolness I could muster, I said, “Oh, and I have something for you.”  And then I pulled out…the Pez head!  I handed it to her and said, “I’m Retroversion on Twitter.  Here’s your vintage Pez dispenser.”  Now, I have to admit that it took her a second to remember the tweet exchange, but she seemed pleased nonetheless.  After all, adults are a lot like children in some ways:  giving them toys makes them happy even if they have no idea why they’re getting them.  So, she immediately put the Pez head in her purse and zipped it up.  I mean, even if there had been some terrible mistake, it wasn’t like I was ever going to see that Pez dispenser again.  It was like “Score!  Pez head!”  She actually did remember the tweet exchange, though, and she laughed, thanked me several times, gave me a high-five, and really did seem to get a kick out of the whole thing. 

So, it had gone off well.  And I got a kick out of it, too.  After all, Jennifer Batten is so good at playing the guitar that it’s almost scary, and even though I’d only ever seen her as just a little tiny bit of a person on my computer, she always seemed kind of larger-than-life to me.  But there at the Guitar Fest CD and t-shirt table, she seemed like a regular person who just liked to laugh and play music and write goofy things on Twitter.  Right at that moment, she didn’t seem so much bigger than I was.

And then she stood up.

Jennifer Batten, Dear Readers, is eighteen feet tall.  I swear to God.

And I don’t know exactly what it was that threw me, but let’s just say that if I had ever believed that she actually was just a miniature guitar player who lived in my computer, I was rather thoroughly disabused of that notion right then and there.  I mean, the woman is tall.  I felt like a kinder, gentler version of Dorothy standing right in front of the great and powerful Oz.  I started feeling around for my purse-basket and looking for Toto.  I had an almost uncontrollable urge to curtsy.  I began to wish I could just go back to Kansas.  And I’m not even from Kansas. 

And then it happened:  I had a vowel movement.  It was like I suddenly realized that I would likely never have the chance to talk to this person again in my life and so I needed to say everything I had ever thought of saying to anyone anywhere ever right at that moment.  It was like I opened my mouth, and the entire contents of every page on the entire Facebook website came spilling out of my head as one long series of incomprehensible guttural noises, grunts, and squeals.  And the whole time, I just kept thinking, “Is she getting taller, or I am falling down?” 

Luckily, my friend pulled me out before I completely lost consciousness.  It was like something out of a war movie where one guy gets shot and the other guy has to drag him to the nearest aid station.  Then again, this was the Toledo School for the Arts, not a scene out of The Guns of Navarone.  It’s not like there was a MASH unit anywhere around.  So, my friend dragged me down to the cafeteria and got me some water and chips, and that seemed to speed my recovery right along.  Food is always the best medicine.  My friend has a couple of kids, so she has special mom-knowledge and knows stuff like that.  My only regret was that I hadn’t thought to bring along an oxygen tank and a tranquilizer gun for myself.

Fortunately, with the encouraging words of my trusty companion, I got back on my feet pretty quickly.  True, I had wrecked my own moment, and under my dad’s theory of a successful adventure, there was no hope.  Everything had gone to hell right in front of me.  Under my dad’s logic, something like this was a perfectly good reason to just go out, find a cliff, and throw yourself off it.  But under my mom’s theory of adventure accounting, enough things could still go right to make it all a success. 

So, at that point, I pretty much had two choices:  I could hang in there and try to get enough other things to go right to make the adventure work out, or I could throw myself off a cliff.  In that light, it wasn’t such a hard choice to make.  I really wanted to live.  Besides, we’d left my friend’s car in Findlay at Jeffrey’s Antiques, so I figured that I at least owed it to her to survive long enough to give her a ride back.  I mean, even the worst disaster of an adventure doesn’t really justify stranding someone in Toledo.

Anyway, my friend and I went to see Jennifer Batten’s show about an hour later, and it was really great.  I’ve heard her describe what she does as “multi-media for ADD,” and it’s kind of true.  She plays electric guitar in sync with backing tracks that she’s already recorded while films that she’s made show on a giant screen.  And it’s not namby-pamby, make-you-feel-all-warm-and-tender-inside, New Age-y music.  It’s some serious hard rock and fusion.  So, you sit there and there’s so much coming at your eyes and your ears that it just overwhelms you.  And it’s really cool.  You just really get carried away by it.  I mean, it’s really something, and I have to admit that I was surprised at what a powerful experience seeing her play live was.  But even more than that, the whole show was a huge plus on the big adventure balance sheet.  I was going to be back in the black in no time.

After the show, my friend said, “Let’s go get our t-shirts signed,” and then she just walked over and started talking to Jennifer Batten.  And all I could think at the time was “You’re a braver man than I, Gunga Din (just don’t go up in the tower).”  And it was totally true.  If it weren’t for my trusty companion, I would’ve still been on the other side of the building clutching the doorjamb.   Either that or I would’ve been lying on the floor in front of the CD and t-shirt table.  Crying.  Whatever the scenario, it wouldn’t have been pretty.  So needless to say, I was really happy to have had such a good friend and trusty companion with me. 

Anyway, when my turn came to have Jennifer Batten sign my shirt, I just kind of thrust it forward and grunted.  That seemed like the safest move for me.  So, she signed the shirt, and I managed to mumble “Thanks” and started to walk away as someone else came up.  But as I was walking away, she said, “Hey, thanks again for the Pez.”  And right at that moment, all I could think of was that commercial from the ‘70s when the little kid gives Mean Joe Green a Coke.  Mean Joe just power-drinks that Coke, and as the kid is walking away, he says, “Hey, kid.  Catch.” and throws him his jersey.  Then the little kid goes, “Wow, thanks Mean Joe.”  I’ve seen that commercial a million times, and it’s so touching that it almost makes you cry.  But right at that moment, I really understood exactly how that little kid felt.  I very nearly said, “Wow, thanks Mean Jennifer,”  and I was almost surprised not to have heard the “Have a Coke and a Smile” jingle playing in the background.  Luckily, though, none of that happened.  If it had, I would almost certainly have burst into tears, and at that point in the day, I really felt that Jennifer Batten and I had been through enough together.

On my way back home, I was doing the adventure math in my head, but I already knew that in the end, this adventure had been a parade-level success.  It was right up there with finding something on sale in every store.  I mean, in all honesty, Jennifer Batten is an extraordinarily nice and friendly person, and the only thing even remotely intimidating about her is how well she plays the guitar.  And even though a few things on my adventure had gone wrong, more things had gone right.  My balance sheet was definitely in the black, and it was actually one of the best adventures I’ve had in a very long time.  When I got home, the first thing I did was call up my mom and tell her all about it.

The funny thing is that despite everything that had happened, I never quite felt like I got The Moment.  And I missed that because to me, The Moment is kind of like magic.  It’s the thing that makes me realize why I even went on the adventure to begin with.  It’s what made it all worth doing.  So, even though the adventure had been a success, I still felt like it wasn’t over.  And indeed, it wasn’t.  The next day, I went on Twitter, and there was a tweet from Jennifer Batten.  It said, “Thanx Ohioans for coming to the shows and esp 2 the ladies bearing a vintage pez!  It pays 2 tweet!” But what really capped the whole thing off and ultimately turned out to actually be The Moment of my whole adventure was the last line of the tweet.  It said, “Next time bring me a Chevy Silverado…”  I laughed out loud when I read that.  I thought it was cheeky.  And I like a little cheek in a person.  But even more than that, it made me realize that I love a challenge and that sometimes doing something goofy just because you can is reason enough.

Philosophy for a hungry planet.

Enjoy. 

© R. Rissler, 2011.  All rights reserved.