The Culture Bunker
by William Ham
illustration by Dave Coscia
With your kind indulgence, I would like to set aside the usual linguistic monkeyshines for one month so that I may share a very fascinating conversation I recently had with you. Not that I had the conversation with you, I mean, most likely I didn’t, of course, you’d know that, wouldn’t you? I mean, to say that I had the conversa… ah, just shut the hell up and read it.
It was a dreary Sunday afternoon, one made all the more depressing by the fact that it was Thursday evening. I was relaxing in my hyperbolic chamber (a dome-like, fully self-contained bubble which aids in the preservation of my staler concepts and more pungent puns), when, through the triple-density Perplexiglas and clogged whimsy filter, I heard a muffled knock at my door. Startled from my deadline-pressurized reverie, I disconnected my lucidifier, exited my sensibility-deprivation tank, and made for the door.
“Well! If it isn’t my favorite pupil, I guess it must be you.” It was none other than my mentor and tenth-grade full-contact English teacher, Mr. Fries. He was the man who took me under his wing (which has since been removed), single-handedly metamorphasizing me from a no-account juvenile delinquent into one who uses words like “chthonic” and “verisimilitude” in a sentence. He was the last person I expected to see that day, although if, say, Pol Pot and Mamie Van Doren had shown up with a tray of blintzes and a bottle of escargot-flavored liqueur, I probably would have been somewhat surprised as well. I was shocked.
“Oops! Sorry,” Mr. Fries said as he pulled me off the floor, “that damned stun gun goes off at the most inopportune moments sometimes. I was just in the neighborhood, handing out 120-page leaflets for the Paper Conservation Society, and I thought I’d pay you a visit. How are you, son? Still Assistant Manager at the highway-cone headwear boutique?”
“Ah, no,” I replied when I regained the capacity for speech. “That never quite caught on the way I thought it would. And after that incident at the show where we introduced the new fall line, when that pack of student drivers got on the runway and started practicing their three-point turns around our models… well, I just figured I’d get out while the getting could still be gotten. You know what I mean.”
“Thankfully, no,” Mr. Fries said. “So, what have you been doing with yourself? Aside from your, uh, ‘wrist exercises’, I mean.”
“As a matter of fact,” I said matter-of-factly, “I’ve been contributing to New England’s finest music and entertainment magazine. They haven’t taken any of my stuff, though, so I guess I’ll be writing for Lollipop for a while longer.”
“Oh, yes, Lollipop,” he chuckled. “The National Review of the self-mutilation set. I know it well. I understand it’s now nationally distributed.”
“Indeed it is.”
“That’s wonderful. But I might say, it’s also somewhat disturbing.”
“Sure you can.”
“Thank you. It’s also somewhat disturbing.” Mr. Fries eased himself onto my electric sofa (for the ultimate in capital comfort – why be a dead man walking when you can be a dead man lounging? New from Terminal Furnishings, Extremely Ltd.) and lit up a carob cheroot. “It has long been my experience that commercialism has invariably tainted the viability of that which was once pure and unfettered.”
“Eh?”
“Things start out cool but end up biting the fleshy fajita.”
“Oh, I see. Well, that may be true in most cases, but I don’t think it’s going to be in this case. We have no desire to sell out.” I offered him an octoroon (America’s new favorite snack treat – eight-sided cookies with a small but significant touch of chocolate. Miscegenation was never this tasty! The new dessert sensation from Salt and Pepperidge Farms, the makers of High Yellow Snack Cakes!), which he politely refused. “I understand what you’re saying, but do you really think that all underground movements lose their purity and get corrupted by money?”
“Certainly. Whether you intend to or not, it always happens. I’ve been doing a study on it at Electoral College. You see, the desire for profit at any cost is actually genetically pre-disposed in 95% of all Americans born after 1955. It’s chromosomal. The spermatozoa of a North American male is thirteen times more ambitious than that of the nearest industrialized nation. It’s all in my new book, Upward Motility (Schuman and Shyster, $25.95 hardcover).”
“That’s very fascinating,” I said, passively drumming my fingers on my brand new cellulite phone (organic technology at its finest – shaped from adipose cells and fat globules left over from liposuction laboratories, frozen at temperatures under -350 degrees Celsius, then painted in your choice of colors at our factory in Missoula, Montana! A great Arbor Day gift from FAT&T [Warning: Do not use in tropical climates or if the sun is directly overhead. All sales final.]). “But I still think we can avoid those pitfalls.”
“You may think so, but when you count on advertising revenue and newsstand sales to survive, it’s astounding how easily you find yourself subtly corrupted, pulling punches and so on. You may find yourself writing ecstatic reviews of albums you don’t really like because the record company’s taken out ads in your magazine. Anyway, speaking of music, what’s that we’re listening to?”
“Oh, that’s the new Vanilla Ice album, I Just Drank Some Malt Liquor And Shot A Guy – Am I Credible Now? (Oscilloscope/Ithsmus) – the return to form we’ve all been waiting for from the cocksure Caucasian. Don’t let his seeming inability to keep a beat or write a line that isn’t wholly inane fool you – Mr. Ice is in fact satirizing the pale stereotype that rap music has become, and every monosyllabic clichĂ© he mouths in his knowing monotone is actually subversion of the highest order. A profound commentary on the state of the arts disguised as desperate pandering to a disinterested public. This disc is so trancendently brilliant that I advise you to buy at least three copies to get the full effect. Highly recommended. (See full-page ad on pg. 72)”
“Hmm, interesting. You know something? Your sincerity impresses me. Perhaps you and your magazine are the exception that proves the rule. I don’t often say this, but duck sauce torpedo filaments of angry gelatin packets.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe that’s why I don’t often say it.” Mr. Fries stood up to leave.
“Look, I really have to be going. I’ve been invited to the premiere of the new Jane Austen-inspired teen flick, Sense and Sinsemilla (opens nationwide April 3), and I don’t want to be late. Good luck to you, son. I know you’ll maintain your integrity.”
“Goodbye Mr. Fries.” As I closed the door and returned to my hermeneutically-sealed dome, a feeling of deep accomplishment welled up in me. Money, profits, residuals – none of those things are important to the true artist. The real creators will not be swayed by the almighty dollar. And I now know that I am one of those people. Thank you, Mr. Fries.
(The Audiobook version of this column, read very slowly by Leonard Nimoy, is now available from Culture Bunker Enterprises: $79.99 plus $13.00 postage. Also available are: Culture Bunker T-shirts (including a freshly-laundered white Hanes Beefy-T and black magic marker with which you can write the words “THE CULTURE BUNKER” on it in large block letters): $37.95 plus $7.50 postage; the companion volume to the Culture Bunker series, The Companion Volume To The Culture Bunker Series, featuring a variety of facts, stats, and erotic lithographs of the author in flagrante delicto with rusty farm equipment: $79.95 plus $42.50 postage (add $35.00 for the version with pages in it); and the Culture Bunker Grab Bag, a box full of things the author found in his closet and underneath his couch cushions: $135.98 plus $62.65 postage. Send to: The Money Laundromat, Third Bathroom From The Left, Tijuana, Mexico. Allow 6-8 years for delivery. Cash only, please.)
