The Culture Bunker
by William Ham
illustration by Rob Zammarchi
Yee-freakin’-hah, goys and boils. If I’m coming off uncharacteristically upbeat this month, it’s not just because they’ve fine-tuned my regular daily dosage. It just so happens that this here verbal micturition marks the one-year anniversary of this wee little column. I’d like to take the opportunity to thank all of you for your phone calls, faxes, telegrams, and suspicious-looking plain brown-wrapped packages of congratulations. True, they weren’t intended for me and it is a felony to tamper with all of those delivery companies, but mucho thankos anyway. Besides, I don’t think Letters to Cleo needs all that fan mail, nor do they particularly care about your pathetic, petty little teenybop illiteracies, whereas I do, as far as you know. So a big, wet Jim Lange Dating Game kiss to you all.
Anyway, as much as it all supposedly means to me, nothing has touched me as deeply and in as many hard-to-reach places as the gift basket posted to me by the very creative geniuses who sit on the velveteen throne of this very ‘zine. (Of course, they can only afford one used throne, so they have to sit on it in alternating two-hour shifts, but that’s okay ’cause I get to ScotchGard and Lysol it every week if I’ve been a good boy.) Seems that the whole staff has ponied up an item apiece for my personal use and enjoyment, and as long as I keep up the payments and don’t piss anybody off, these should give me many years of fun, educational value, and the occasional burning discharge. So with their kind consent, I’d like to share with you what the generous, big-hearted, and certainly not at all abusive or intimidating folks at Lollipop have bequeathed me. Burn with envy, plebes.
First, from our handsome editor/publisher, we have a freshly-duped videotape of one of my favorite bands, The R. Philomena Ng Near-Death Experience. I tell you kids, if you haven’t checked these puppies out, you should – they are, without a doubt, the ginchiest rockabilly/post-psych/neo-skiffle/quasi-santeria/metal band, but with a twist, that you’ll ever hear, and seeing them on this tape just adds cubic parsecs to their eminence. I particularly dug their 38-minute version of “I’m Smoking A Piece of Stiv Bators’ Epidermis and What Do You Think You’re Gonna Do About It?” It’s their most beautiful love song, from an old episode of Korea’s favorite dance-party show, Seoul Train. If you see a copy of it in your favorite record outlet, or clutched in the hand of a newly-executed mob informant, I suggest you pick it up immediately.
Our always politically-astute production manager has given me two free passes to Disgraceland, the home of Richard Milhouse Nixon, one of our nation’s 42 greatest presidents. I just went there last week, and what an adventure! Once you make it over the electrified barbed-wire security fence and outrun the slobbering Rottweilers (who all bear a striking resemblance to our departed former leader), you are greeted by a phantasmagorical wonderland that rivals the Universal Studios Tour and Heritage U.S.A. for thrills and nausea. I especially recommend the Phlebitis Wing, where, for a nominal fee and a small amount of chloroform, the tour guides will show you the transcript of the missing 18 1/2 minutes of Dickie’s Oval Office recordings (or the Debasement Tapes, as I like to call them). Turns out that all it consists of are G. Gordon Liddy’s family recipe for flaming placenta balls tartare and Tricky D.’s warbling rendition of “It’s Not Unusual,” erased strictly for copyright reasons. And if you get there before October 19, you’ll be treated to the photo exhibit in the Checkers Room, where, if you look close enough, you can make out the birthmark on Nixie’s forehead. Funny – looks just like three sixes.
Our fine associate editors pooled their resources and bought me a leviathan-sized tub of Generalissimo Franco’s Fried Animals. Looks like the last of the fascist dictators had more up his sleeve than whatever was in his sleeve in the first place, and we in the States now have 350 restaurants nationwide to prove it. Take any of a varied assortment of God’s creatures, plunge their carcasses into livid troughs of fat, let fry until the screams cease, and mmmmm! Have you got a unique dining experience! It’s available in Crispy, Not Nearly As Crispy and Thick Lumpy Puddle varieties, and if you guess the identities of more than 50% of the zoophytes within, Gen Frank’ll pay for your treatments in the ptomaine ward! Watch out, Subway, there’s a new…something…in town!
Those wacky kids in layout/graphics enclosed a coupon redeemable for a year’s subscription to one of the hottest new comix on the stands, Captain Inertia and the X-istential Men. The time is now-ish. The entire planet is gripped by crime, earthquakes, plagues, tornadoes, and the existence of Evan Dando. A few blocks over from the fray comes a new breed of superhero, imbued with powers beyond the grasp of mortal man, but too bored, wasted and altogether indifferent to do anything with them. So they sit around their one-room apartment with the shades drawn watching the Fox network and listening to the same Violent Femmes tape over and over again. Occasionally, one of them will flex their superheroic muscles by zipping out to the corner and buying cigarettes in under three minutes. But otherwise, not a lot happens. Neat costumes, though.
The copy editors went halfies on something for me called a “cock ring.” I must say, I had a devil of a time getting it on my pet bantam, Laertes, but now that I have, he doesn’t go anywhere without it. Has a hard time crowing, but that cuts down on the neighbors’ complaints, so thanks a bunch.
Our faithful f-stoppers in the photography department gave me an extremely rare (only two were ever printed, and the second one was bound wrong, so it wouldn’t open) copy of the little-known fourth book by noted photographer and Kids director Larry Clark. Entitled Reasonably Well-Adjusted Teenagers, it is a shocking and revelatory photo-study of the bright overbelly of American youth. The uncropped, unretouched black-and-white pictures depict a series of clear-eyed, drug-eschewing youngsters, wearing clothes that fit and sporting neatly-cropped hairstyles. If that isn’t frightening enough, the captions that accompany each photograph take the proverbial cake and eat it too: “I’m really doing well in trig this year.” “My parents are about to celebrate their thirtieth wedding anniversary.” “I’m up for an award for my after-school community service, but doing it is its own reward.” All right, all right, I’ll stop. I’m trembling myself as I write this. This book portrays a world that we’d like to think doesn’t exist, but it’s real. All too real.
To be honest, I’m not at all sure what it is that the other stagg writers got me. But it tastes like bluefish. That much I can tell.
Even our ed/pub’s cuticle masseuse got in on the gift-giving, presenting me with a gift pak of The World’s Least Expensive Fragrances. There’s Ernest, the cologne for men who don’t socialize a whole lot (“Now you can smell like Ernest Borgnine”); Placebo by Generivanni Ducksace (“Nothing in the bottle but tap water, but at least you feel better about yourself”); but my favorite is Oedipus Reeks, the new scent from Georgio Sophocles. One spritz and you’re temporarily blind with an uncontrollable urge to listen to “The End” a whole lot. I’ll be back to finish the column in a second – I’m gonna call my mom and tell her how much I really, really love her.
Okay, I’m back. And I’ve saved the best for last. Those wonderful cats over at Allied Petrochemical, the corporate underwriters responsible for keeping this mag afloat (not to mention supplying the whole Lollipop crew with the mildly-toxic inhalant that allows us to maintain our high journalistic standards), have set me up with my own exchange on the Internet. That’s right, the Bunker’s gone cyberific. So you can jack in to the Culcha matrix with your comments and suggestions at the following address: http:// www.cult.bunk.uhhh.gulp.yadda-yadda.scratch.chortle.hack.expectorate.splat.ohlook-afurball.@tee-hee.grunt.lather.rinse.repeat.yes.im.just.wasting.space.eieio-aflcio.urkelrules.ill.be.finished.soon.ipromise.-%#!&?.(laughs).here.it.comes-almost.done.homina-homina-homina.byte.me.com. So cast your nets out, and once I save up enough spare change to actually buy a computer (sometime in the next 15-20 years), I’ll be in touch. Catch ya on the backside, y’all.
