A little Humor if I may?…

Let me rant….OK, nobody is going to die if they have to use a tote for garbage (you still may get robbed) and yes, some communities require a tote for garbage collection but not cities. Chicago doesn’t require them nor should Peoria but if you live in a small community, I could see it.  Point is, making all Peoria use them and rent them from the local private garbage company makes for nice looking streets on garbage day with hundreds on neatly lined up totes, but it makes the garbage company richer.  If you want a tote and like them, fine, get one but don’t force me to get one when I have perfectly good garbage cans now. And then have the gall to raise a fee 133% and tell me the rent is included and that is why it is now really a garbage fee.  It would be better if my councilperson just showed up at my door and pissed on my leg. Speaking of close encounters…

I was watching the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) this morning for what I think must have been the thousand time and it got me to thinking a bit. Spielberg was a genius in many ways but I wonder what this movie would have been like if it was made today, not a remake or a sequel, but just thought up today.  You see I grew up mainly in the 60s and back then space and anything spaceship was it.  People in the know were telling us that by 2000 we would have flying cars, jet paks, cures to most diseases, and unlimited energy because the atom was a cure all for everything.  Atomic power! 

Ok, where is my jet pak?  Where are the flying cars? Thank God there aren’t any flying cars because have you seen the way people drive regular cars? I can’t imagine the carnage one might see if flying cars were around.  In fact your side mirror on your flying car might say; “Carnage is closer than it appears”  I could see it now. “What do you mean you ran out of gas at 5000 feet?  Look at the hole you made in my front yard!”  So maybe it’s a good thing flying cars didn’t happen.

Back to the movie, the one most unbelievable thing about the movie is not the flying saucers, the abductions of people, or that aliens first visit to Earth would be in Wyoming (Nobody goes to Wyoming even on a bet) , no, the most unbelievable thing about the movie is that Richard Dreyfuss dumped Teri Garr for that other chick with the kid named Barry. No way!  Terri Gar is way to hot and if Herman Cain hasn’t run  his hand up her thigh, then she’s part of the 1%.

Oh and there is more.  They clear 300 square miles around the Devils Tower in Wyoming because the Army says there is a dangerous gas poisonous gas leak to mask the alien landing,  and then, you see nothing but Piggly Wriggly trucks headed into the danger area like nobody could or would notice.  The Baskin Robbins truck would have tipped me off but after all that, a space ship, the size of New Jersey shows up and no one below would notice?  Maybe they did but the aliens land and the first thing they do is release people who were snatched years and years ago.  They come off the ship and look around and state their name and are hustled off.  Not one said; “What the fuck?” or if only one, just one, person came off the ship and said; “I’m Billy Jo Roberts from Peachtree Georgia, and they anal probed me!”  Nope. I fully expect the line: “Did you have a nice flight and what was the movie?”

So, if this happened today, there would be no film cameras, all digital.  The computer would most likely be a Dell laptop or an Apple Mac.  Hollywood loves Macs,  and they probably couldn’t play that little music melody they played over and over because Apple would have the Rights and it was available only on iTunes for a $1.99  no less. The aliens would shuffle off their ship and get into line for a new iPhone 4S at $600 each even though it didn’t work on their network, they just had to have it and we better have it in white at 32 gigs.

No it was the 70s, a time of wide ties and bad haircuts or lack of hair cuts.  I fully expected to see a “Nixon ‘72 “ bumper sticker on the space ship or at least a “We had drinks at the Whitehouse” sticker. You people that have seen the movie Space Balls know what I am talking about. “I love Uranus”

Near the end of the movie when Dreyfuss is walking towards the ship, a man runs past him into one of the port-a-podies. Now could you imagine you are at an event that would be the event of all mankind on the planet, when we meet a race from another world and someone asks you; “How were they?  What did they look like?” You have to say, well, I was on the shitter. I kind of missed the event? Earth shattering event and you are on the crapper. I mean, I would have just shit my pants seeing that thing land.  I guess I can relate and any guy who has been married any number of years can too. No matter where my wife and I go, no matter what, the first thing when we get there is; “I have to use the bathroom.”  That is when the most Earth shattering event of mankind will happen.  When she is in the woman’s restroom.  I always have said that if the end of the world comes, I’ll be standing outside the woman’s can.  My wife will step out and see the skeletal charred remains of me standing there and the destruction all around and say: “Which way to the shoe department?”   I joke of course.  She check for my wallet first.

Still, here we are, 2011 on the verge of 2012. We don’t cook our turkeys in Atomic ovens.  No, we use deep fat fryers and burn the garage down.  We don’t have jet paks unless it’s the ones full of juice the kids like and damn if I can get those damn things open and pierce that straw in the hole but hand it to a 6 year old and bam!.  They got it. Give me back the bottle. We don’t have atomic powered cars and thank the Lord for that as most people ignore the idiot lights on their cars now and I’d like to meet the brain that thought up the “check engine” light.  It should say; “Check wallet” but could you see an atomic powered call and you get in your friends car and there is an idiot light on the dash lit and you ask what it is.  He says: “Oh it’s the gosh darn radiation leaking light.  Been on for months. No problem.” Hey, is your hair falling out?  We haven’t cured one single disease yet and that’s sad.  MS out lasted Jerry Lewis and cancer is around more than ever.  Yes, they are making strides and I don’t mean to demean any sickness but I don’t want to live life with my kidney in a jar that has to be washed every 3 days.

In many ways aside from the fact that now you can fart in your house and your kid has it on Facebook in 5 minutes and everyone from your boss to your 3 ex-wives knows about it, it’s the same.  No, the more things change, the more they stay the same.  It’s just with all this interactive personal data bases and internet, it has become so unpersonable today.  Hell you don’t have to get off your ass to send a message out or look something up.  Nobody writes letters anymore and like in the old 60s song by Zager and Evans, In the Year 2525, let me quote a passage of the song:

Your arms hangin' limp at your sides
Your legs got nothin' to do
Some machine's doing that for you

So it could be worse, right?