Was it ever a fun week for media-watching! Day by day some absurd tragedy after another, and damn near all of them were in amusement parks! Indeed, accidental deaths at places where people take children to have the times of their little lives are tragic and rare, with theme parks always shrouded in some wistful magical slogan like Disneyland’s “The Happiest place on earth” or bent on creating some kind of magical kingdom or cartoon wonderworld replete with larger than life familiar-from-Saturday-morning characters skipping around, posing for pictures, tickling the kids and creating just a joyous bright and happy happy happy colored world, it just shoots things to hell when a strap isn’t tightened just so or a cable snaps or a ride operator smokes PCP or has a Vietnam flashback about his missing arm and wham, blood splatters across the happy face of American family style leisure, from the baby’s stroller to mom’s sun hat and all over the kids cotton candy! So what does it mean when there are five such amusement park deaths or accidents in one week? Hmmmmm. A lot of changed vacation plans for many an American man, wife, and 2.3 children over Labor Day weekend maybe? I know I’d think twice before considering packing up the brood in the family sport utility vehicle and heading off towards Six Flags Over oh-my-God-there’s-been-an-accident-that-will-take-years-of-therapy-to-stop-the-panic-attacks-over-the-mere-mention-of-the-word-vacation. In one dark week towards the end of summer there were four separate incidents of thrill rides ending in death, injury or sky-high rescue operations in various theme parks across this proud nation, and upon investigation of each incident there’s a quite a few very real, even disturbing details that make you wonder about the parents of the victims, the ride operators, the park employees, the corporation that owns more than one of the parks where accidents occurred, and the ever-present and obvious question, why did this happen?
The most curious of these cases would have to be the death of the 12 year old boy in Santa Clara who perished falling from the famous ride called The Drop Zone. As I read the story in the newspaper my mouth sort of dropped open with the information, “both severely mentally and physically handicapped.” It struck me as odd that such a child would be placed on a ride where one is elevated to the top of a tower then dropped to a high speed free-fall broken just before hitting the groundlevel, for his personal enjoyment, especially with out a parent next to him. As I understand it, the person next to the boy on this ride was by coincidence an employee of the park, not specifically on duty to aid the handicapped patrons or anything, he was technically off duty….or was he?
This situation brought to mind a particular movie I saw for the first time recently, Andy Warhol’s Bad, a very dark comedy about a woman who runs a boarding house/electrolysis clinic full of lowlifes who she commissions out to clients to commit acts of violence, like killing a neighbors dog, killing an unwanted baby, killing a wealthy couples autistic child, etc. In one memorable scene a young mother talking on the phone and awaiting the arrival of another woman paid to kill her crying baby, gets tired of waiting and throws the screaming child out the window herself from a height of probably three or four times that of the drop zone. When it hits the street a mother with an unruly child walk by and the mother says, “See, that’s what will happen to you if you don’t stop being such a brat.” In another scene Perry King sets out on a job to kill an autistic child at the request of the child’s mother but he just can’t go through with it and storms into the parents room and throws the money at the mother and says “Do it yourself.” Well, I know these are pretty absurdly dark themes in this film but I couldn’t stop thinking about them and that said person in the seat beside the accident victim. Wouldn’t he have noticed during the 25-second plunge that the boy had squirmed free of his safety restraints or whatever led to his falling from the ride? Just exactly what was his job title there at Six Flags?
It’s all still under investigation but I have a theory. It applies as well to another tragedy of a few years back, the airplane crash of little Jessica Dubroff the would-be first seven year old pilot to fly cross country. Remember how Jessica’s mother didn’t seem really very upset over her daughter’s death? It was that resolute calmness that prompted me then to believe that her mother was merely exercising her reproductive rights by taking the life of her fetus not in the seventh month but rather the seventh year of her life. Well perhaps the harsh tactics and moral policing of rabid Right To Lifer’s for the past couple of decades has pressured so many pregnant women to go through with delivering children that were not planned or wanted or were even the product of rape or incest that the formation of a secret ring of pro-choice post-natal assassins has developed to make right some apparent wrongs by getting rid of children that were never really wanted but came to be out of fear, fear of being judged by others, fear of being ostracized as a sinner, or even fear of taking shrapnel in an abortion clinic bombing. What better place could there possibly be to set this situation straight than an amusement park? Take out an unwanted kid here and there, throw in an occasional adult death to cover it up to a certain extent, command a performance for the media by the grieving mother and it’s a done deal—one step forward for the Pro-Choice Movement, just a bit after the fact but taken care of finally. The ring of assassins could be employed by the park as a sort of undercover security crew, snapping cables here, safety straps there to rid their clients of unwanted pregnancies that progressed well past the in vitro stages. The service could be attained much in the same manner as illegal abortions used to be, ask Frank Sinatra’s mother or take a trip to Tijuana or seek the advice of that one doctor that every girl in town has the number of hidden in the very back of her address book.
This whole situation reminds me of a time when I actually attended a Solano County Fair for some godforsaken reason and I noticed in a long line for a thrill ride called The Drop To Hell, a woman tightly holding on to the hand of a screaming child who was obviously scared to death of getting on this ride. The laughing mother with the iron-strong grip was chuckling and saying, “Ride with momma on The Drop To Hell!” Indeed.
On to other things, by the time this is out, I will have just seen a great band at Bottom of the Hill who just released their second LP and are stirring up quite a bit of attention, called Verbena. From Birmingham, Alabama, this trio’s latest Into the Pink, is one of the most enjoyable and thoroughly strong releases I’ve heard this year. Produced by former Nirvana drummer And Foo Fighter Dave Grohl, and bearing certain stylistic similarities, the music press is already trying to tag them the “new Nirvana” which is such an awful thing to do to a band. So they are three-piece rock band with a song or two about guns, so what! All I know is this disc just rips and the first single from it is called “My Baby Got Shot.” This record could easily be a very big hit and it’s definitely worth a trip to the record store right now.
Another Bottom of The Hill show that I can tell you about in advance so you won’t miss it is the return of The Bellrays. This band of riff slinging rough and dirty Detroit-style rockers Ala MC5 and Stooges had the brilliant idea to match that rock-monster sound up with a soulful kick-ass female vocalist with R&B pumping through her veins. The results are phenomenal, especially live, and recently they were named Best Band by The L.A. Weekly. When I caught them live the first time I was amazed at how young they all were to be sounding so gritty and traditional and real. This is another band to watch out for, making a mighty real noise. The Bellrays will show you quite clearly what is soul and what is soul-less, and where a tank of soul-lessness ain’t gonna take you. The show takes place September 4 so get your tickets from ticketweb.com.
One final note, a friend phoned me up the other day to tell me that he was watching Bravo profiles the other day and they were doing Madonna and when the interviewer asked her who she most admires she said, “It used to be Hillary Clinton but now I’d have to say P.J. Harvey. I think she is visionary.” Right the fuck on, Madonna! That made my day.