The Dharma Bum

"I'm old enough to see behind me, but young enough to feel my soul" - Lenny Kravitz

Greetings and salutations true believers.

Long time, no see.

Did you miss me? I missed you. In the brief publication sabbatical of OFF! I've had time to contemplate, reflect, pontificate, and genuflect - all while having my daily dose of adventures and derailments. I spent a fortnight marking the passing days off in little red x's until I could breathe again. I joined a comedy troupe. I hung out onstage/back stage at Pointfest doing tequila shots with various members of the Everclear & Stir entourages (thank you Chad for getting me home - boys and girls, don't ever do 12 tequila shots within an hour or two without having eaten all day - trust me on this!) I've also had time to ponder the great imponderables but sadly, to no avail, have yet to figure out what the hell Douglas Adams meant by "42"?

Just to let you know, this is not the original column I'd intended to publish. Originally I had conceived to write a quirky little cynical piece on perception - which ended up turning into an eight page ontological/philosophical diatribe. But that was about as riveting a read as the how-to instructions on Q-tip boxes, thus I decided to spare you. So I sacked that and sat down at midnight with my 44oz. Cherry Coke, my Pure 80's cd serenading me to the tune of "Karma Chameleon" and started thinking about what I'd written in the past with the consistently underlying theme (or one of the) streaking across my mind - the 80's. So I thought to myself, "Self - why mess with a good thing. Your adouring legion of fans (all five of my friends, my girlfriend and my mum) have loved what I've done so far!" That got me to thinking about my own generation, which led me to the quote at the top of this piece, which derailed to this thought: Either I'm getting old (which I can deal with), or iconoclasts of entertainment today - video games, toys and a seeming modicum of the music - just plain suck.

Perhaps it's a healthy combination of the two. Perhaps it's just the perception that everything was so much simpler back then - no job, no bills, no student loan officer holding his faustian pen above my head, and certainly no worries other than what was going to happen on Voltron that day...or what would happen when my parents found out I used the footrests of their new reclining chairs as jumping posts for my imaginary WWF ring. Does every generation go through this? Not the WWF/reclining chair fiasco, but rather the somewhat elitist/mostly immuring aggrandisement that everything representative of their generation is the best. Wait a second, I think I just did that in the last paragraph, no wait, it was in the form of a question so I'm alright.

Do you want to know the entire impetus behind this little stream of consciousness diatribe of mine?

Stompers.

Remember Stompers? Those little battery operated trucks (and some cars) with the little rubber wheels that would literally run over anything, as long as it was under a 1/4" tall - unlike my friend Chad who simply drove them into entanglements into his sister's hair. Now that was a toy. Toys these days have the voice activated/aerodynamic/environmentally friendly vehicular concepts to where they're not even that fun. These things are powered by V-chips/Smart-chips/ heck, probably fish-n-chips. The point is toys don't need all that. We didn't have it and we did just fine. So I made up a little list of other paradigms of the 80's that have run amok in my brain for who knows how long and were more than anxious to belly flop onto the written page.

Remember when G.I. Joe with kung-fu grip was the sheer pinnacle of action-figure technology? Shortly thereafter it was bested by the Zartan figure that was able to change colours in the sun, and also by Action-Battle He-Man figures. Transformers actually transformed into planes, trains, automobiles and other refinements and you could instinctively figure out how to transform & untransform them within a matter of seconds. Then there was dear Voltron. What can I say about Voltron, other than that if he were to get into a fight with the Power Rangers, he'd make 'em cry like a little girl with a skinned knee.

Remember ping-pong ball guns? Those things were the absolute coolest! An obvious exemplar of the fecundity of what happened when the hippies of the 60's cut their hair, voted for Reagan and went corporate. Make a toy gun that doesn't look like a gun at all, that fires the most harmless thing one can think of (except of course for small furry bunnies, puppies, and Nerf - but we'll talk about Nerf and the perils of the ever-dreaded "Nerf-eye" later.) Anyway, the ping-pong ball gun was a great invention and was heralded as such, except in some Amish communities where it dramatically increased the percentage of pong gun related/drunken horse shootings. Speaking of Amish, did you know that they're online? I kid you not. Go to http://www.amishonline.com - I'll leave you to take pleasure in the hyperbolic irony there.

Remember that quintessential 80's heavy metal band Guns-n-Roses? Yes, I know their career extended into the 90's but after Appetite for Destruction they fell dramatically short of that unadulterated, raw, mindless, clandestine appeal that they so lavishly embellished...that or they sobered up, one or the other. Anyway, their first drummer, Steven Adler, was kicked out of the band for doing too much drugs. Aside from raising the obvious question of how much drugs does one possibly have to consume to be "too much" for Guns-n-Roses, one must ask themself, "What hell did Douglas Adams mean by 42?"

Remember Pong the video game? Now there was the penultimate experience in video game technology. No 64 bit, CD-ROM/DVD, virtual reality, 3-D character representation with sound boards and memory chips just to make the bloody things run. With Pong you had two rectangles and a square, and the same "BOINK-BONK" sound throughout the entire game. Pong was only slightly bested by Atari and Commodore who really did nothing more than add colour to the shapes...oh, and create Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Joust, Pole Position & Frogger.

Remember when ALF was the only alien truth that was out there?

Remember when Michael Jackson looked like the rest of the Jackson 5?

Remember Keds? Or even better....Zips?

Remember tv shows like Diff'rent Strokes and Silver Spoons before their stars went on their downward spiral into Dantean descent?

Remember when MTV showed videos?

Remember life before cable, the Internet, VHS, or even CD's?

Remember parachute pants, stone-washed jeans, tight-rolled pants & mall hair?

So anyway, now that I've derailed completely off track from what I'd intended to, and taken up enough column space - I should probably take my leave of you. All this just because I was thinking about Stompers...oh well. If you can't take a running leap down the slip-n-slide of memory lane then what fun is it? On a final closing note, I just want to wish my mother a Happy Birthday on Sunday, June 4th. Yes, the mother of the Dharma Bum will be a lovely, effervescent 27 again (don't do the math, you'll just confuse yourself.) Happy Birthday mama! So dear readers, as the sun sets slowly in the West, I bid you a fond farewell, from the caboose of my train of thought where Steven Adler and I are waving goodbye, aiming our ping-pong ball guns at ALF as he plays Space Invaders while listening to Michael Jackson wax pedantic about Billy Jean with kung-fu grip, and wondering...what the hell did Douglas Adams mean by 42?