Been to a Dairy Queen recently?Every time I visit the one closest to my home I am amused by an olde-tymey photo they have on the wall, "The Zonks at Diary Queen in Hope, Arkansas, 1967." Here's a cell phone photo. To my mind it perfectly encapsulates The Summer of Love as actualized in a small town. The dorky clothing, the earnest posing, the logo on the bass drum. That Fender p-bass (American made!) one of the Zonks is holding is worth several thousand dollars, nowadays. And you have got to admire the fellow in the goofy pants looking up towards... what? Peace and harmony? The Age of Aquarius? A dipped cone?
Google reveals that the philosophical fellow in the Spinal Tap pants is Buzz Andrews - here's his myspace page. He is still in a band! But... is this band - "the zOnks" - the same as the one in the Dairy Queen photo? From the website: "We had a band long ago, and admittedly we were, uh... less than amazing. Then we had a reunion in Texas one year ago and..." And... I don't care, really. Change subject.
(I will state for the record that prior to my Dairy Queen experience, the word "zonk" was known to me in conjunction with Monty Hall's "Let's Make a Deal" TV show, where a "zonk" was a bad deal. In about 1969 my Mom dressed like a hillbilly and she and I showed up outside NBC Studios in Burbank yelling and screaming in the hopes that she could be admitted as a contestant. She wasn't, but we were admitted to see the show. It was cool, watching Door Number One, Door Number Two and Door Number Three getting wheeled about by stage hands.)
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US
Ha ha! Am I not hip now?
See, what happened is this: yesterday a young friend pointed out a sequence of keystrokes on Facebook which, if performed, make goofy little lens flare circles appear when you move the cursor. Why? It's the Konami Code! (An artifact of bored, video game culture-involved software programmers.) So, I mentioned this to another young friend on the bus on the way home who invoked the phrase, "All Your Base Are Belong To Us." Huh? What's that? I've seen that before... and so I made a note to look it up. Here's the explanation.
I'm 53. Normally I have my nose in traditional culture books and literature - the classics - but every now and then I poke my nose out into the pop culture, become disgusted, and go back to my classical Greek or Civil War stuff.
What's the frequency, Kenneth?
I mean, is this the best we can do? People in the 19th century had the Tristan Chord, Transcendentalism and Romanticism. The ancient Greeks had Homer. Even those poor, unenlightened Eisenhower-voting mopes in the 1950's had the Beat Culture, which was at least literary. (Yes, yes, I know, the people voting for Eisenhower probably weren't reading Kerouac - don't bother pointing it out to me.)
Google reveals that the philosophical fellow in the Spinal Tap pants is Buzz Andrews - here's his myspace page. He is still in a band! But... is this band - "the zOnks" - the same as the one in the Dairy Queen photo? From the website: "We had a band long ago, and admittedly we were, uh... less than amazing. Then we had a reunion in Texas one year ago and..." And... I don't care, really. Change subject.
(I will state for the record that prior to my Dairy Queen experience, the word "zonk" was known to me in conjunction with Monty Hall's "Let's Make a Deal" TV show, where a "zonk" was a bad deal. In about 1969 my Mom dressed like a hillbilly and she and I showed up outside NBC Studios in Burbank yelling and screaming in the hopes that she could be admitted as a contestant. She wasn't, but we were admitted to see the show. It was cool, watching Door Number One, Door Number Two and Door Number Three getting wheeled about by stage hands.)
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US
Ha ha! Am I not hip now?
See, what happened is this: yesterday a young friend pointed out a sequence of keystrokes on Facebook which, if performed, make goofy little lens flare circles appear when you move the cursor. Why? It's the Konami Code! (An artifact of bored, video game culture-involved software programmers.) So, I mentioned this to another young friend on the bus on the way home who invoked the phrase, "All Your Base Are Belong To Us." Huh? What's that? I've seen that before... and so I made a note to look it up. Here's the explanation.
I'm 53. Normally I have my nose in traditional culture books and literature - the classics - but every now and then I poke my nose out into the pop culture, become disgusted, and go back to my classical Greek or Civil War stuff.
What's the frequency, Kenneth?
I mean, is this the best we can do? People in the 19th century had the Tristan Chord, Transcendentalism and Romanticism. The ancient Greeks had Homer. Even those poor, unenlightened Eisenhower-voting mopes in the 1950's had the Beat Culture, which was at least literary. (Yes, yes, I know, the people voting for Eisenhower probably weren't reading Kerouac - don't bother pointing it out to me.)
The best we can do, with all of the knowledge available on the Internet, FOR FREE, are video game references and Kenneth. This passes as knowledge.
Tell me we're not dumbed down.
Tell me we're not dumbed down.
3 comments:
Ah...Wes...This is some of your very best writing.
Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.
Constant Reader, Sherry K.
I appreciate it, but you were supposed to reassure me that we're not all dumbed down.
Hey I'm at that DQ right now and was inspired the google the zonks too. Long live the zonks!!!
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