I went into the kitchen and thoughtfully picked out a healthy cinnamon roll, magical piece of hazelnut dipped in two-layer chocolate, and a calorie-conscious Diet Coke®, then set a creative bag of Orville's popcorn a-whirling in the cheerful microwave which is probably not actually mutating my dangly bits in spite of the product recall.
When I returned to the livingroom, I found that my channel surfing had landed on a delightful (have I used that positive-spin word yet?) vintage musical, which I found myself excited and inclined to watch.
Nope. Not working. OK, stripping out the bullshit:
I was vegging out eating junk food and channel surfing and landed on some backwater station that was broadcasting "Hair". The movie-musical, not the stage play. I decided to see if it was bad as I remembered.
It was.
But I was far and away too lazy to roll through the channels yet again, and turning it off was not a real option — well, it's TV, innit? Besides which, I vaguely recalled that Beverly D'Angelo occasionally got naked. (Not nearly often enough to make it worth it, as it turned out.)
OK, to summarize: I was in my formative youth in the late 60s when "Hair" supposedly took place. In those days, I didn't know anyone, including Hare Krishna adherents, who wouldn't have beaten Treat Williams like a Salvation Army Drum. He was possibly the most annoying thing in rank-assed hippy clothes EVER, with the possible exception of every other human in this celluloid turd. (Well, not Beverly. She DID get naked, after all.)
And the music. Holy freakin' God — REALLY?
When the moon is in the Seventh HouseWhat? WHAT? WTF is THAT supposed to mean? Ugh.
And Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars!
Black uniformsNow THERE'S a chipper little dance tune, the "three five zero zero" being the number of VC we were killing per month at that time, layered over an incomprehensible "performance art" piece involving a wad o' arteests in black jammies crawling all over each other while crowds of hippies and other ne're-do-wells watched in open-mouthed ecstasy. It's a wonder they weren't rhythmically waving little red Mao books in time to the chant.
Bare feet, carbines
Mail-order rifles
Shoot the muscles
256 Viet Cong captured
256 Viet Cong captured
Prisoners in Niggertown
It's a dirty little war
Three Five Zero Zero
Take weapons up and begin to kill
Watch the long long armies drifting home
At the end of the movie, I realized a couple of things.
FIRST: I knew practically all those people. I was in anti-war protests with them, occasionally smoked a little dope with them, hung out with them. This, incidentally, was almost solely due to the fact that I had not discovered redheads and therefore LUSTED after the blonde who was a primary radical organizer to such a degree that I was willing to pretend her mealy-mouth revo-speak was in fact making sense in order to hang out with her. She wouldn't fuck me, of course, or in fact much more than give me the time of day, as long as I was useful, so we can count that one as a "miss."
In the end I wound up in the military in Southeast Asia in the "Dirty Little War," which I would have in any event, but I'm standing by for the opportunity to tell her it was her fault, the better to jab her for her afore-mentioned "not fucking me" thing. Yeah, I can hold a grudge. She's a Republican Party chair in her district these days, still reasonably smokin' for an old girl. I spoke about her at some length a year or so ago (https://asbestos_dust.blogspot.com.tr/2015/11/flatulent-friday-13th.html)
SECOND: Viewing them all through this movie (and memory) all I can say is: Jumpin' Jeebus we were whiny little snots. I get it, we changed the world and all that noise, but GAWD we were embarrassing assholes. OK, yeah, it was a pretty good time. But I can't begin to tell you how glad I am that I didn't know shit back in those days.
In Our Next Episode: The "hair" I should have been paying attention to...
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