WORDCHASM

Welcome, Synopsis fans:

With shifting points of view, this is a semi-autobiographical tale of the entertainment juggernaut known simply as Yanstebangus. Focused loosely on how they come together, and why, this cautionary tale is fraught with portent—starring Mack Truck Assembly-Line workers Eddie Fraught with George Portent. How could we give any more away? And how could a semi truck write its own biography?

YANSTEBANGUS

1

I suppose it had to have happened.

Maybe I was glad it did. Maybe not. Maybe it didn’t happen, and we’ve just corporately believed it did, making reality up as we went along. That’s certainly worked for a former U.S. Presidential Administration or two, and more than once. I was there, though, so I saw it. I understand your disbelief… that’s the norm these days, anyway. I don’t have a wiki page to back me up, so your cynicism is well founded.

The only time I ever asked for trust, anyway, was that brief stint selling creampuff used cars to Social-Security-bound seniors in Florida. You’ve probably begun to imagine how that experiment turned out, too.

So how did all this come together, or fall apart? I’m glad you asked me… I’ll tell you all I can.

Remember good taste? It’s a vague thing, anyway, which was cultured for so many of us by an animated blue tuna fish. I believe so many completely skipped good taste because they involuntarily learned, as the tuna learned, that good taste wasn’t what the masses wanted… they wanted to eat the tuna himself. One day, of course, the commercials he appeared in vanished. Alas, poor Charlie; I knew him well. We served the last bastion of etiquette, education, and aesthetic ideals with mayo and chopped celery on whole-wheat toast.

I haven’t been able to eat tuna since.

But I’m straying from the story for which you hunger… the story of what’s happening now… and where we all seem to be headed.

If ever there was a time, now is it.

There was a time in the past when we were relatively safe from those sounds… but I suppose we’d better show gratitude for what we have, not for what we lack.

I was a small-time session guitarist, just trying to make ends meet and feed the family. Hey, it’s schlub work, but what the heck. Cheesy commercials need music, too. I figured I’d get around to producing something cool eventually. In the meantime, I added various styles of guitar music to the mix on things ranging from local bread commercials to public-access show soundtracks. Occasionally, I’d hire on with a singer trying to make a demo. Usually, their aspirations were no higher than American, Idle—you know the type.

Smarmy.

Sometimes smug.

The types who were raised by backstage Moms… the ones who were pretty popular around water-coolers and in living rooms. Many should have pumped gas professionally, or risen to the top of the fast-food management game. The perpetual volunteers… always “going out for” something. Like Antonio Salieri in the historical-fiction opus, Amadeus, these were the hard-working, diligent, “always-on” patrons and patron saints of mediocrity.

Taste was floating around, being good, and yet, it was seen as a supervillain. It was easy to vilify— a no-brainer. It was easy when a panel of synthesized, quasi-celebrity judges could wrap their disdain for creativity and good taste in the saccharine promise of making their victims into synthesized, quasi-celebrated hack performers.

“Mr. Withers!”

“Yeah… and I would’ve gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids!”

Ugh. Not another Scooby Doo Ending!

Let me turn the television off so we can converse in peace. Not that you can’t converse in peace with it on, but I get sucked into it so easily, I have to have it off. Besides, how many times can you see Mr. Withers get unmasked by Daphne, Velma, or Fred? OK, fathead, point well taken—Daphne, a lot. The others, not so much.

You do seem to be inquisitive. While you haven’t come to the right place for a straight answer, let me see if I can sum up faster than Inigo Montoya to a mostly-dead-all-day Dread Pirate Wesley. Where to begin…?

There was a movement at one time to be creative, inventive, and original. Unfortunately, it didn’t suit the needs of most of the population… or their abilities either. There were anomalies, like “the” Grateful Dead, They Might Be Giants and tinsel. Well, tinsel wasn’t really creative, inventive, or original, but I figured a shameless plug would be fun right about here. In any case, too much originality was looked at as bad.

Sometime ago, the not-so-creative, solipsistic literalists took over power in the world, as well as in the collective semi-consciousness. It’s probably due to the fact that the creatives let them play house and run things (administratively, anyway) while they created music, art, gourmet cuisine, and all the other great things creatives busy themselves with. The exceptional were to be rounded up and put into whatever oubliettes could be found. This way, the masses wouldn’t feel inferior to them. Besides, if average-Joe, media-taught popular culture is culture enough, you don’t have all that anarchistic self-expression and free thinking going on.

Wine snobs were among the first to go, not realizing that their appreciation of the aesthetics of the fruit of the grape could endanger them. Heady, with a mellow smoothness and a vague hint of old oaken buckets was considered no way to describe grape juice. Fortunately, the wine tasted pretty good to me, legs and bouquet aside… but I digress. Ah, for some good wine. This swill here and now tastes like fermented Tang™. Wait… it is. Do what you can where you are with what you have.

Filmmakers eluded the cultural pogroms by methods such as Oliver Stone making World Trade Center and so on… the Ingmar Bergman TV movies never happened, but then there was Andy Warhol’s 24-hour Frankenstein to contend with. Wait, was that artistic or was that mediocre? I always mess that up.

Enough of this aged hipster rant. Suffice it to say that the exceptional needed to be suppressed, and the average were the ones deciding whom they were. But how could this average-ness be disseminated, let alone enforced? Mediocrity hung like a damp, chilly gray fog over culture as it was. But what was that strange machine up ahead, like a steam locomotive with 4 headlamps, looming in the mist and hoarfrost?

Out of the fog of mediocrity, coming together to nail the boundaries of good taste shut, the 4 heroes rode apocalyptic steeds…

Giovanni… possessed of masterful keyboarding skills, but possessed by a skeletal closet full of sinister shadows and drunken rages.
Bobby J. Memphis… Macho master of a thousand country melodies, washing up on modern Nashville’s sadly shallow shores and reverting to singing Southern gospel to make ends meet.
Billy P., the blower of the phone: able to make classic melodies and aesthetically aware people weep with his soprano horn.
Stefano… better known as his secret identity, Steve from Pittsburgh, the critic-confounding master of the quasi-Latin lounge guitar… if unable to use his prodigiously average playing as a weapon, he will revert to mega-marketing, honed by the ninja masters of The Shop At Home Network. He is the only one with a relaxed enough ego to lead this ragtag band of adventurers.

Together, this fierce foursome would join forces to defeat Taste.

~ — ~

2

Swoosh……………………….CRAAAASHHHH! tinkle.

The Ouzo bottle smashed into myriad tiny hailstones, spraying glass and droplets around the granite statue of Beethoven. Flicking his dark, mysterious mane in impatience, Giovanni glowered at her through darkened slits of eyes. The room started to feel somewhat like a gyroscope teetering under reduced inertia, then sort of stabilized. He exhaled loudly, the flare of blood rushing to his head just beginning to subside.

She looked at him, pensive, terrified, her teeth biting into her lower lip. She met his dark eyes with hers. A small trail of a tear glistened on the side of her face. “I’m—I’m sorry,” she whispered, voice quavering.

He glared hard into her eyes, then spun on his heel and crossed his arms over his chest, stepping to the piano in 2 long strides. He stood there, stone-faced, silent, and statue-like.

She backed away, slowly, keeping her eyes focused on his rigid back. She felt behind her for the doorknob, opened it quietly, and stepped out into the hall. She quickly, silently closed the door behind her. She leaned on it, head tipped back, eyes shut. She quietly said “Please, God,” in Greek. Softly, she strode down the hall to collect her bags.

~ — ~

3

Eddie scowled. “Who the hell installed all those damned injectors backwards?”

“Ummm… me and Johnny done it.” George shifted from foot to foot, looking up at the cavernous ceiling with its encaged mercury-vapor lamps.

“Aww, shit.” Eddie spat into a trashcan. “Last week, it was the damn wrong size glow plugs. Oh, well, screw it, it’s only 50 motors. Let QA pull ‘em. Just keep yer trap shut so Bob don’t find out.”

A gravely voice behind them croaked out, “Don’t find out what, jackass?”

~ — ~

TO BE CONTINUED…