11,876. RUDIMENTS, pt. 733

RUDIMENTS, pt. 733

(maybe god only knows)

Faking out the beach scene

in Belmar wasn't that much

fun. Being freezing cold didn't

help but, at the same time, in

the first week of March it's

not much other than a cozy

nowhere, if you live there,

and not many do. At least

along that cold, blowy area of

bungalow beach front. (I go

back there now, and most all

of the old shore bungalows

are gone  -  a few coastal

storms, a few floods, new

people, complete re-builds.
Much of it has been replaced by
neat, in-a-row, beach homes.

The bars and crap-houses

still dot the roadway, Ocean

Ave. or whatever it's called,

and the streets with the low

numbers still run down. 7th,

6th, 5th, etc. Logical and

boring as anywhere else.

It's not like, or wasn't like,

being in sort of the same

boat in NYC. My mind

tried that connection. It

didn't work. As Gertrude

Stein had it about Oakland,

there's no 'there' there. The

whole idea of Summer sports

and Summer frolic  -  the

guts and games of girls and

boys on the beaches and at

the bars, never meant anything

to me at all. In fact, I couldn't

stand all that crap  -  noise,

sand, crummy food, banners,

bells, waves, the posturing

people and their piccolo

patterns. There never seemed

anything real about that life

at all  -  you could have your

keno games, Ski-Ball,

Sno-Cones and Frosties

and the rest. The whole

thing was a waste.

-

Much like along the bottom

of Manhattan, at what's called

the 'Battery'  -  oddly enough  - to
(speak anew of John and batteries)

people come to look, to stare,

out to sea; watching the works

of the harbor, etc. Well, they

used to. It's more difficult today

with the commercial development

of everything, new masses of

people, and the hordes now of

tourists and tourist amenities

everywhere, as well as tour

lines, boat tours, Statue of

Liberty stuff, and all the rest.

Most of that old Melville sort

of feel and solitariness is

gone now  -  masses and groups

all proclaim their hallelujahs
while they worship the dollar.

Trying the same thing in

Belmar, also, maybe, once

long before, could have been

a righteous experience too.

But the Jersey shore, for the

most of it, has long ago

succumbed to the plague

of nettlesome frolic. I don't

think anyone really these

days stares out and thinks.

I'm not sure they stare out.

I'm also not sure they think.

But what stuck in my craw

the most was the wide

misunderstanding and the

misrepresenting of the whole

scene itself. The shore area

was portrayed as a dark, fetid

area of crime, drugs, and unseen

dangers. I guess it all might very

well be true, but is that any reason

to portray the negatives and the

undesirable aspects, just to turn

some movie-coin for mostly

dim-witted studio investors?

Who otherwise mostly didn't

know what they were even

talking about in mixing up the

two : porno-biker-fantasy-babes,

drugs, low-life sluggos, and

creepy-crawly thugs on midnight

motorcycles. It was all a sham.

And in some awful aspect of it

I had become a part-time sham

master, voiding my waste into

what they offered  which was,

essentially, the promise of

ridicule, and free food.

-

'Badda-boom, badda-bing,'

as they used to say in the mob.

But there's no mob in Belmar.

Right? Ha. Ha. John had better

be wary of the things he touches.

If 'Sal' is watching and really

wants his batteries, anything

could happen. In this movie,

by the way, the Bikers were

portrayed as users, buyers, and

sellers of this new super drug

hallucinogen called 'chew'  -

dumbest name in the world;

but then no dumber than having

a film named Fathers and Sons,

and hoping people don't think

of Turgenev (don't worry, they

won't). Ivan Turgenev, in 1865,

wrote his own Fathers and Sons.

If this film was meant in any

way to resound with some echo 

of that, it too failed. The kids

portrayed in this movie would

chomp on this stuff and turn

immediately to idiot-zombies.

That's a pretty good summation,

in a quick instant, for the entire

society it was supposed to be

addressing itself. 

-

It was all too easy to take any

of this serious. It was too cold,

too cheap, too sleazy to be real.

It couldn't have had any sense.

The fortune-teller lady as presented

was an idiot, who couldn't tell the

moon from the spoon, nor the

cow that ran away with it. However

that is. Jeff Goldblum, supposedly

in the film an avid runner and

jogger, ran the boardwalk boards

with the gentle, toned step of a

female. There's one scene, later

on, by the Biker scene, where he's

punching some dweeby troublesome

creep, on the beach sand. He punches

as if his arm is disconnected from

his body. It's a visual nightmare.

The whole thing was. The female

co-lead, the one John had tried

jumping, in the trailer, looked

fatuous and already broken.

And God only knows what she

had to do, poor girl, to get the 

role, bad as it was. I hope God

knows anyway, because I don't.
-
The main point is that the entire
idea of having Bikers on the beach
was an add-on. Just a way to lend
some attractive low-life culture
to the film and maybe draw some
extra people in. I think it failed
miserably anyway. But, in any case, 
there was no justice, no meaning, no
need for the biker contingent to be
presented and then simply dropped, 
like some bad background noise, once
the movie's 'reconciliation' takes place, 
between father and son. It has nothing
to do with the dropped bikers in any
way, and could just as well have been 
set in a priest's home or a YMCA camp. 
As it is, I seem to recall the 'reconciliation' 
coming down to the reasoning that the 
father can now 'scramble' some eggs, and 
they can have their father-son breakfast 
together, while the rest of the world rots,
the bad-boy Bikers and their drugs still
on the loose. The miserable Biker-den still 
there and tolerated. Who owns it? Some 
slum landlord who cares nothing for 
the tenants? What's a Biker den anyway? 
Who  lives there? What goes on? Are there 
neighbors? No cops? I would think, true 
to 'Justice' and uplift, there'd have been a 
classier denouement and a better serve
to Justice if, in some Easy Rider sense,
the Bikers had been slain, or the house 
blown up, or the Justice of the day took 
place. Well, maybe it did  -  that justice 
being false, artificial, and do-nothing. 
But no real ends were served. It too was
all a sham. The same rotten world is
left in place. Hey, Jim Jarmusch, next 
time, don't call me. I'll call you.