On the Occasion of Blogiversary #6

and Spring Fundraising Day One, I wondered how I might best go about the business of separating the nice people who come here from their hard-earned cash.

And then, suddenly, a thought rang out.

Well, a memory, actually, heaved up unbidden from the recesses (or after school detentions) of my mind; the remembrance of a charmed ritual from long ago in the age of steam powered Walk-Mans (Men?) and rotary phones; a time when our local "drive-in" (a big, outdoor iPad that wouldn't work until sundown and with worse speakers) would offer all-night runs of horror movies that were, um, awful.

Really. Just awful.

And the deal was, you paid to leave.

In retrospect, it was kind of brilliant in its understanding of the relationship between the sacred space of the drive-in and the mating and drinking habits of the young adults of the surrounding communities.

Because they seemed like relatively safe places to parents (with all the signifies of suburban security; high fences, a business license, snacks, playgrounds, family-friendly features most nights, and drowsy, off-duty cops in case some unsavory elements tried to ruin everyone's wholesome good time), during good weather drive-ins became a unspoken-of refuge for ennuified and/or horny teenagers who did not otherwise have reliable shelter and privacy arrangements, but did have access to, say, a Camero under whose hood one could fit an ample supply of cheap beer and/or fortified wine as a hedge against the drive-in police finding your main stash in the trunk.

It was tricky business, but if you stopped 1/4 mile up the road and secured your booze correctly, it was a good bet that if you drove with care over the gravel lumps and tank-trap-sized pothole on your way up the driveway, you'd slide on in without bursting a bottle of Boone's Farm near the engine and reeking up your ride for a week.

It was also a good bet that if you were, like so many of us, a girlfriendless loser during much of your testosterone-berserk formative years, you were going to make the same trek using the same liquor-muling strategy, but with a carload of your fellow, bored, testosterone-maddened pals because it was something to do and anyway Brad's older brother had said that in some of the movies they actually show some nekkid girls!

Doin it!

Whatever the Hell "it" was supposed to be.

And so, as the sun ran away to the West, in the burnished glow of one of a rapidly dwindling number of pre-Reagan summer evenings, we would stop dandling on the swings while smoking and calling each other "queer" and punching each other in the arm and straggled back to our hulking American cars for the evening's entertainment, determined to hold out until the last credit on the last reel of schlock had rolled, and the eastern sky had given back its star-frosted black ninja peejays and picked up the color of new denim.

And there's the rub.

Because, sure, with enough beer and/or carnal distraction you might be able to laugh or chug or ignore or frottage your way through "Frogs" or "The Boggy Creek Monster".

But by 1:30 in the morning that little pre-hangover/smoke-too-much headache is starting to build real a sizable lead in the primaries. And the beer is warm or gone, and you have seen not one, single bare titty (let alone some nekkid girls doing it! Your brother's a liar, man!) all night , and your companions -- who had all nobly pledged to pass the night by your side in this Gethsemane of Roger Corman and Hammer Film gorestravaganzas -- are passed out or bored out of their minds...and suddenly slogging through "My World Dies Screaming" and "Vampire Circus" just to say you did it seemed like an amazingly dumb idea.

Again.

And so, once again, you all dig up the dough to buy your parole from horror movie hell from the sleepy guy at the exit and, as "Exorcist II: The Heretic" fades to an unlamented black and the opening credits for "Two Thousand Maniacs" flare luridly to life, you join the short line of cars waiting to roll out into the heart of a suburban soul's midnight, towards a bag of sliders and home.

And the "Paying to Make It Stop, Please" model prevails once again.

Now sadly I don't have access to something as perfect for this task as "The Corpse Grinders"...

(Oh wait.

yes I do)

...but I do have a fund-raising goal in mind, and an apparently unlimited supply of Republican political action commercials more chilling and terrifying than "Manos: The Hands of Fate" with a side of "Devil's Rain" (Thanks Koch Brothers!)

One of which will played here each day until my dreams of avarice modest goals are reached.

Or until I get bored with it and go get a bad of sliders.

So won't you please

help stop the horror :-)

Thank you.

Your pal,

driftglass