Fear & Loathing Becomes Da-da: The Brady Bunch

 
Now that it's officially summer, it's SO time for fetish rehashing. Don't worry, you all love fetish rehashing.

Speaking of entirely tenable segues, The Brady Bunch invokes both fetish and solace AND dread -- no, really -- in a combination Nietzschean/Xmas dervishnessity (what?) and Julie Andrewsian Halloween horreur sympathique that can only be removed with eloquence wax. Bad writing aside, The Brady Bunch conjures SOLACE in Da-da, as it reminds him of his insane, singular childhood, which revolved around his sibling, TELEVISION, and dreadwise as The Brady Bunch reminds Da-da of his insane, singular childhood -- and the horror he could've experienced if he'd not had the good sense to stop having psychotic children. Does that read right?

Yes, Da-da starts to sweat when he thinks about living in the same house with six kids, with each sex sharing a group room -- and those rooms abutt one another -- not to mention the fact that both factions share a common bathroom. Six kids + one bathroom = more dead spouses, provided one of the spouses doesn't go Freddy.

Then there's the unspoken question about what exactly happened to Greg and Carol Brady's previous spouses. It's never mentioned. They're both mysteriously labeled as, "widowers," both of them looking innocent with blue suitcases around them, but the details are always glossed over, and what's really in the suitcases? Are all these smiling, happy-faced white people closet axe murderers? Or schizoid poisoners? Recalcitrant, ham-handed pastry chefs? Unrepentant ROTARIANS?? Come on, anyone with three boys is a suspect for going off the deep end, three girls not so much: with three girls you pretty much just wake up with your toenails painted and your hair braided. Team up three boys and you've got Lord of the Flies.

And what, pray tell, happened to Fluffy, the girls' cat which they could not live without in the first episode? Was it, like the two dead spouses, stuffed and mounted in the Brady's secret family crypt, rumored to exist deep below the Brady manse? Or fed to Tiger, the dog? And did this unspoken tie-in between the dead cat and rotting spouses in the blue suitcases have anything to do with Florence Henderson hawking Wesson oil?? Disgusting.

So many unanswered questions. So little interest. Suffice to say that Da-da has an eidetic memory and has every inane theme song, smell and image from the '70s memorized, which might give you, gentle reader, some deep-pile shag understanding of The Gothic Horror that is Da-da.

An estranged and bitter Fluffy still stalks some of the Brady Bunch cast.

Parenting Horror 101: That Vincent Price Moment

What did you say, Timmy?

All parents have that Vincent Price moment of abject parental horror, that quick notion that occurs during endless tantrummage where even sane parents contemplate throwing their adorable rabid wolverine tot into that vat of acid, or that cauldron of molten wax -- or if you're a modernist, out the airlock. Da-da has mentally chucked his children out the airlock more times than you've had hot dinners. Like any sane and sober Rotarian robot parent, Da-da never actually does this (not that you know of), but it does occur to Da-da about a thousand times a day. And yes, Da-da does pass for SANE, at least on TV. Of course, instead of acting on this terrible impulse, Da-da writes about it, makes fun of it, keeps detailed notes about it for his trial, etc. All parents feel like launching one or all of their progeny into the sun on occasion. It's normal. But wearing a dracula costume all day and singing, "THE HILLS ARE ALIVE WITH THE SOUND OF MUUUUSICCC..." is not normal -- IT'S MANDATORY. Jeez, the neighbors are so judgmental.

Da-da doesn't always wear the cape. Or remember all the lyrics.

Applied Tiki Dynamics

What the hell does this have to do with anything? Just you WAIT, menehune-breath.

At six, Da-da's oldest boy, Nagurski, has developed a fear of monsters... which is a bit later than normal, but these things happen. To combat this, Da-da did three things:

1. He started numbering everything in sight
2. He told his boys that the family had INTENTIONALLY moved to the town they live in because monsters HATE that town, and also because everyone seems to be CAPITALIZING EVERYTHING for emPHASIS, and...
3. Da-da installed tikis.

What? Tikis, you say? Why's that? Because...

28 Seconds Later...

Been at the Hershey's again, Final Girl?

Like the quasi-zombies (they aren't technically zombies) in the movie, 28 Days Later, where a mad-monkey-kung-fu-RAGE disease spreads to postmodern Brits like a crack-froth Montezuma's Revenge through a cruiseship full o' Rotarians, there's another very real and very dangerous demographic that can quickly mimic this type of ravenously psychotic fast-moving zombie-crazed biteyness WAY faster than 28 days -- indeed, it can happen in a mere 28 seconds. Who and how? Kids and sugar, hello?

Feed delightful munchkins maple syrup, cake, cookies, cotton candy bongs, etc. and they fairly explode into raging, gibbering, pinballing zombies (the fast kind), sometimes quicker than 28 seconds. Typically, they erupt after about 12 minutes, especially if they're boys and there's more than one of them. Da-da thinks of these short ontological windows as short-fuze events, offering about 10-12 minutes to reach minimum safe distance. Alas, if they're your kids, you're in the blast event-horizon for the duration.

What can be done during one of these attacks? Nothing, of course. You have to wait it out. Like the ancients always said, "That which you cannot cure, you must endure," and parenting is nothing if not a marathon of painful zombie endurance. Experienced zombie parents deploy sugar tactically -- on special occasons -- prepared for the coming onslaught with various sugar-burning activities like towing the car to the top of Mt. Everest or building a giant Egyptian pyramid grill for Da-da from 2.2 ton stones in the backyard. You think the pyramids were built on grain and garlic? Nope. Those suckers were constructed via some kinda Pharoanic sugary whack-juice extracted from who-knows-what and fed to... you got it: CRAZED, SUGARED-UP CHILDREN:

"Get that finished or no SpongeBob tonight. I'm not telling you again!"

"HEY, YOU KIDS! After you finish your slushies and candy BONGS, go outside and BUILD ME A PYRAMID. Bigger than the last two. Align them with the three stars in Orion's Belt, and NO WHINING. Be sure to clean up and brush your teeth, afterwards. AND DON'T TRACK SAND IN THE HOUSE AGAIN."