Flip This Dancing Storage Unit off Bridezilla Island

Mack Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Flip This Dancing Storage Unit off Bridezilla Island

Viewing reality television is rather like watching Republicans trying to dance to rock music, repulsive and yet somehow fascinating.

A current entertainment is the flatscreening of shaky images of people arguing with each other about other folks’ junk. 

Back in ye olden times television filmmakers hired writers who then generated scripts featuring plot, character, and setting.  Producers then hired actors, cameramen, set designers, electricians, carpenters, and other professionals to put together often-beautiful works of art.

Perhaps the ultimate Hegelian dialectic of television art now would be James Arness, Loretta Young, and Patrick McGoohan shrieking at each other while bidding on a cowboy boot that was once seen in Gilley’s Place, like babushkas squabbling over the last bowl of lentil soup in Petrograd in the winter of 1917.

What might the obsession with abandoned storage units symbolize?

“Look at this, dude – rare monaural recordings of Duke Ellington’s early work!”

“Who’s Duke Ellington?”

“I dunno; I guess we could get something for these old records from the recyclers.  But, hey, look at this old book. Nice leather.  Must be worth something.”

“That’s a Bible; someone will want that for a dashboard decoration, you know, along with fuzzy dice.”

“Okay, we’ll keep that.  Oh, hey, look at all this metal junk.”

“Oh, I know what those are – that’s a hammer, that’s a saw, that’s a folding carpenter’s rule, and those pointy things in that bucket are nails.  I’ve seen pictures of such things on my laptop.”

“But what are they for?”

“Oh, back in the Dark Ages, y’know, in the 1980s, people used them to, like, cut wood, and, like, build and repair their own stuff.”

“Freakin’ primitive, dude!  But how do you plug them in?  Or do they have batteries?”

“No, the cavemen used these things by hand.”

“So did they get to sue someone for that?”

“No, I think I remember being told that they felt fulfilled or something by work and sweat and creativity – totally old school.”

“Wow, that’s like, you know, existential and stuff.  People were, like, so spiritual back in the day when they did stuff with hammers and read books and stuff.”

“What does ‘Made in USA’ mean?”

“Back during the Civil War in the 1930s people used to make their own stuff in this country, polluting the rivers and killing the striped owls or something.”

“That was dumb.  Stuff comes from the mall, and doesn’t pollute.”

“Hey, what’s that covered by dust?”

“This?  Oh, it’s the soul of a civilization.”

“What’s civilization?”

“Oh, art, music, literature, faith – you could look ‘em up on Wonkiepedia.”

“Can we get any money out of it?”

“No.  Old stuff.  Forget it.”

“So the meaning of life is outbidding other people for old golf clubs and record players in an abandoned storage shed?”

“Gosh, dude, you make it sound so inadequate.”

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