I Never Met a Trading Card I Didn't Like

Ever since I read this article on Dinosaur Dracula, I’ve wanted a pack of the Fright Flicks trading cards.  http://dinosaurdracula.com/features/fright-flicks-cards/.

I love horror movies.  Not only did I grow up watching them, but in my late teens I became even more obsessed.  My friend, Kris Riley, and I used to wander in to the independently owned rental store down the street from us and rent the worst horror movies we could imagine.  You know, something, like, say this:

I remember that one in particular, because it had a button on the cover that turned on a green, blinking light in the eyes. Pretty sweet.  For 1990.  If I had any idea how to make an animated gift, I probably still wouldn’t, because I’m real lazy. 

So why in the hell wouldn’t I want a bunch of horror movie trading cards?  Especially horror movie trading cards with completely random one-liners written in.  But, while looking for Fright Flicks on EBAY I stumbled across something….well….maybe not better, but just as amazing.  Goonies trading cards!  And while looking to find the person who would give me the most Goonies trading cards for the lowest price, I found something definitely better.  A guy selling a mixed bag of Goonies, Batman Returns, Gremlins and some YO! MTV Raps cards.

When I got the cards, there was a surprise inside.  Maybe I overlooked it in the description, blinded with excitement as I was with the other cards.  Also included were a good 8-10 Baby: Secret of the Lost Legends cards, a 1985 flick about The Greatest American Hero stumbling upon some still living dinosaurs.  Not on a deserted island, but just hanging out in Africa.  And one of them is a baby.  Thus the name.  Apparently, in the 80s and 90s, they would make a trading card out of anything.

I just went to EBAY and typed in Freejack trading cards and nothing came up.  Still, it did give me a list of items I may be interested in based on the search and, while the complete randomness of the recommendations make it quite obvious it had no idea what to recommend based on that particular string of words, it did manage to recommend a full set of Seaquest DSV cards.  Based on this evidence I’ll let you decide whether or not the above statement about making a trading card out of “anything” is too strong or not.

I barely know where to begin with these cards, so I’ll start by saying the Gremlin cards are the clear winners, with cards that not only help tell the story of the film, but also depict scenes from the whereby it appears somebody painstakingly took the time to find stills from the film that would actually look presentable once placed on card stock.

Gizmo Surprised!  Rand Peltzer, dejected!  Crazy old lady, getting ready to get shot out of the side of her house like a cannonball!  Judge Reinhold, incarcerated!  Those four cards alone made the purchase price worth every penny.

The Batman Returns cards, on the other hand, oh dear.  Quite the opposite.  Looks like somebody just took every, say, 5 minutes? of film and, regardless of what was on screen, made it in to a card.  It has been a loooooong time since I have seen this film, but even in my small sample size I seem to have an inordinate amount of cards where penguin is wearing only long underwear.  And standing near a giant rubber duck.

I was a little disappointed there were only 10 Goonies cards which, I assume, was probably only one pack.  There was a close-up shot of the skeletal piano player and one of Chunk brandishing a sword.  A few more fairly generic offerings.  However, two of them were pure gold.  A pretty fair percentage considering I only got 10 cards, I think.

The first was a card featuring an action sequence of the octopus scene which wasn’t even in the final cut of the film.  I know this scene exists, but I have yet to see it.  I love the idea of a trading card with a scene from the film not even in the film.  Boy howdy, back in the heyday of trading cards, this one must have fetched upwards of $1.00!  The movie card equivalent of Bill Ripken’s 1989 Fleer baseball card.  Well, for some of us anyway…

 The next card is a cast shot.  I liked the shot, it frames everybody pretty well.  Except for Josh Brolin.  But, you know, what else did he ever do anyway? God knows he could never boast of having used the film to springboard himself to as successful a career as a Jeff Cohen or Martha Plimpton.

 The thing is, it's titled “The Goonie Pledge,” which automatically makes me think of the scene where they find the coins in the well and Mikey gives his speech (“The next time you see sky, it'll be over another town. The next time you take a test, it'll be in some other school. Our parents, they want the bestest stuff for us. But right now they gotta do what's right for them, 'cause it's their time. Their time, up there. Down here it's our time. It's our time down here. That's all over the second we ride up Troy's bucket.” *Insert heartfelt nostalgia here*).  The shot on the card, however, is clearly not from that scene.  So, my curiosity piqued, I turned the card over to see what they were talking about.  And oh, my, was there a surprise waiting for me there.

“I will never betray my goon dock friends, we will stick together until the whole world ends.  Through heaven and hell, and nuclear, war.  Good pals like us will stick like tar.  In the city or the country, or the forest, or boonies.  I am proudly declared, one of the Goonies!”

An actual pledge, written and, assumedly, recited, to display one’s loyalty to the Goonies! 

I have never heard of such a beast.  I know for damn sure it’s not in the film and 1985 was well before we could ever start thinking about DVD extras.  So where did it come from?    I just can’t get the picture out of my head of a bunch of Topps employees sitting around a stereotypical oval meeting room table, brainstorming ideas for card captions.

“We should just use the speech from the well scene”

“Hell no, we’re gonna leave our mark on card #85.  It’s gonna be an honest to God pledge.  In rhyming couplets.  We’re gonna incorporate nuclear war and tar.  And damn the naysayers!”

I would love to find the guy(s) who wrote this particular card and see what they’re up too nowadays.  I’d like to think they own a small restaurant which sells nothing but hot dogs, and they are all named after characters from the film.  “The Chunk” comes with a little bit of everything on it, “The Mikey” is your all-American dog, with just ketchup and mustard, maybe onion could be optional, and “The Sloth” is prepared with nuts, caramel and chocolate.  But no nougat, because that’s just plain disgusting. 

I also received 4 UNOPENED packs of YO! MTV Raps cards, with TWENTY cards apiece in them.  Mighty impressive.  I grew up loving rap, but I’m not completely sure it jibes with the rest of this piece, so I am going to make it a separate blog sometime in the future.

However, I will leave you with a couple of the Baby: Secret of the Lost Legends cards.  I don’t have a whole lot to say about them.  I’ve seen the movie, but not in three decades, and had mostly forgotten about it until I opened my package.  I sure in the hell didn’t know the lead was Williiam Katt.  And the cards?  Well, they’re pretty much garbage.   About 50% of them just featured a close up of the dinosaur's neck and head.  Like he was just some big sock puppet.  Blech.  Dinosaur special effect in the 80s.  Just think, a mere 10 years later, an absolutely classic film about dinosaurs hit the silver screen, becoming one of the most popular films ever, redefining the way we looked at special effects, and spawning two sequels.  Of course I'm talking about Carnosaur, a modern day classic.  CLICK HERE FOR THE TRAILER!  

Mutant Turtles are Dead, Long Live the Aliens!

I’ve started to write this blog entry before, when the original announcement was made that a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie was going to be made.  At that time, a deafening roar of scorn was thrown up from every male age 25-35, so loud and indignant it reverberated off every mountain top and every grassy hillock from the Appalachians to the Cascades. 

“No, not the Turtles!  No not Michael Bay!  No, not aliens from another planet!  This must be stopped!”

As the rumors floated in, I gathered up all the contempt and vitriol I could muster, focused it not unlike Daniel Rand focusing his Chi to his hand, and with one, all-powerful, infinitely relatable gesture, I shrugged my mighty shoulders.

“Meh.  Who cares?”

Really?  Who cares?  What “serious” director wants to helm a NINJA TURTLES film?  Aronofsky?  Spielberg?  Nolan?  Maybe that’s how Scorsese would like to wrap up his career.  The reason the keys to the car have been handed over to Bay is because he has made three Transformers film and despite the pervasive bellyaching that none of them are worth watching, somebody is sure in the hell going to see them, as they have made a TON of money.  Hard though it may be to believe, the movie biz is usually about making money.

I’m not going to say some folks don’t do it for the art, they obviously do.  Another conversation for another time.  But, if somewhere in the deep reaches of your mind, you think for ONE SECOND any film based on a toy was made for any reason besides cashing in…well…you’re addled.

I always have trouble writing blogs like this, and the reason why is because I have problems compartmentalizing my ideas.  I need to get in to the original Turtles, the (bastardized?) cartoons, the movies, the actors, Sam Rockwell, the lucre; the filthy, filthy lucre.  Although this was a rant I wanted to save until the end of the piece, I think it’s crying out to be mentioned now.  Megan Fox as April O’Neil.

When this casting choice was made, the voices, lulled in to complacency by a notable lack of activity on the subject, swiftly rose up to voice their disdain yet again.  I saw no less than a half dozen Facebook posts, no less than a hundred disgruntled fanboys making their discontents known on comment sections of various entertainment websites.  And, once again, with all the vigor I could manage, I gave an indifferent, “Who cares?”

Why NOT Megan Fox?  Is there really some female actress everybody is so intoxicated with that, had they hired her to play the part, everybody would have given a collective sigh of relief?  Like, “Oh, well, they cast Amanda Seyfried as April O’Neil, NOW I’m going to see it.”  What, you’ve sat down and watched so many Megan Fox films you just can’t stand her anymore?

“Oh, man, I just sat through Friends with Kids, Megan Fox is soooo terrible, so miscast.”

You were predisposed to hating the film.  It doesn’t matter WHO they would have cast, you would have attacked every social media outlet with the “bad” news.  On top of all that, if there’s one thing I’ve learned since Al Gore invented it, DON’T BELIEVE ANYTHING YOU READ ON THE INTERNET.

Hey, you remember just six months ago when all the online media reported this film wasn’t even going to happen?  Wait a second……..but………

In an age where all we do is read a snippet from a totally untrustworthy website who attributes an anonymous source “close to the project,” and then regurgitate it ad nauseum like it’s fact, I can’t help but be a little skeptical about everything I read.  What I’m saying is, don’t be surprised if Megan Fox “leaves” the project six months from now due to “creative differences.”  And by “leaves” I mean she was never really associated with the project and by “creative differences” I mean she was never really associated with the project.  Not saying it’s GOING to happen, just saying it COULD, and I would be nonplussed.

On a side note, I would TOTALLY cast Amber Tamblyn as April O’Neil.  Dear Hollywood, please contact me from now on when you need pure casting genius.  Thanks.

Assumedly, from what I can gather, Bay is getting ready to “destroy” the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  Here’s the problem.  As adults we are somehow unable to come to grips with a simple fact.  All the stuff we watched when we were kids?  It’s garbage.  It’s totally disposable.  It was marketed by capitalist giants to our younger, naive selves -- like Nino Brown waving crack rocks at Pookie. 

I was never really a HUGE Turtles fan growing up.  Well, the Turtles as most people know them anyway.  My next door neighbor when I was growing up, Evan Camp, was a few years older than me and he introduced me to the Turtles at a young age.  The original Turtles.  Black and white, violent, and foul-mouthed.  You could, really, if you wanted to be a purist about it, make the argument that Playmates ruined the Turtles in the first place, bastardizing Eastman and Laird’s dark, brooding mutants and creating colorful, kid-friendly, surfer dudes.  I’m not really here to do that, but it could be argued.

This isn’t to say I didn’t have a few action figures, or play the NES game, or the arcade game.  Yeah, I saw at least the first movie, and maybe the second, in the theatre.  But I wasn’t much in to the cartoon or the toys, really.  Looking back it feels like they were a little on the periphery of my childhood.  I was born in the late 70s.  I had a glut of He-man and GI Joe, and even though they didn’t quite have the same aggressive output volume-wise, I also loved the Thundercats.  And Ducktales.  But who didn’t?

Don’t worry, I’m getting to the point here.

You know what I have in my possession?  The Best of He-Man.  Volume 1.  You know what’s almost impossible to sit through?  A SINGLE episode of He-Man.  You know why?  Because it’s rubbish.  And because I’m not five anymore.

Eschewing a bunch of the points I have forgotten by now, this is the crux of the TMNT conundrum.  If anybody, ANYBODY, who is all up in arms about Michael Bay (who, by the way, according to “reports” isn’t even directing the film anyway) or Megan Fox being involved in this project  could name the actress who played April O’Nei l in the first film and ALSO who directed it, I would literally (read: figuratively) fall over dead.

Never happen.  You know why?  Because they were NOBODIES!  Hacks, paid to spend some screen time with MEN DRESSED IN FULL SIZED TURTLE SUITS in order to fleece children’s parents of their money.  Although to be fair the director, who I won’t name just in case it’s right on the tip of your tongue (slathered with sarcasm), did direct a slew of music videos.  Oh, and also one other really good movie.  “Coneheads.”  I’ll let you decide for yourself whether or not that’s sarcasm.

Herein lies the problem.  Nostalgia is such a weird thing.  When I think about how easy it was to make me happy when I was six it gives me a warm fuzzy, and we all want to be able to recapture the feeling.  In a futile attempt some months back, my friends and I attempted to watch 24 hours of movies based on comic books.  In general, it t urns out I’m too old for that shit.  But, more relevant, one of the films was the original TMNT film.  I had to leave the room.  Couldn’t sit through it.  Absolutely terrible.  Maybe some people can resurrect a warm, ebbing glow by watching the original TMNT movie, or some old cartoon.  I’m not one of those people and, in this case, I believe I’m probably in the majority.

This is a still from GI Joe.  No, really.

I watched the first Bay directed Transformers movie and I hated it.  I also hate the He-Man movie and the attempt to resurrect the cartoon a few years back.  I won’t even consider watching the GI Joe movie made in 2009.

It was a marketing ploy then, and it’s a marketing ploy now.  Michael Bay isn’t “ruining” the Turtles, he’s trying to take an old idea and reintroduce it to today’s youth in order to make money.  If you’re 35 years old and yelling you don’t want to see the Turtles as aliens from another planet, it’s all good.  Just means you’re not the target market.  And if today’s youth likes it, and the Turtles are resurrected, albeit somewhat differently, good on him!  And if not…who cares? 

Because, you know what?  All of those movies, all poorly made, in my opinion, have absolutely no bearing on how I remember my childhood.  As a matter of fact, my favorite recollections are opening up new action figures on Christmas and then sitting around and playing with them all day with my brother until it was time for bed.  When I reminisce, never once does Shia LeBouf jumping in to a Bumblebee Camaro ever sully my memories and I find it hard to believe I will forsake any memories I have of the Turtles based on a movie I’m too old to see anyway.

Go-Bots Vs. Star Wars

After a marked lull in activity on my blog for the last month during which time I was busy writing horror movie reviews at In the Queue, I revisited for the first time just a few weeks ago.  I was shocked to see, in the last month, the viewings of my site had doubled!  I’m not sure what I can attribute this spike in interest to except maybe people love tongue-in-cheek articles about meat products, since the majority of hits seemed to stem from my Goetta and Spam entries.

Or maybe, just maybe, it is time my self-depreciating, semi-acerbic wit, my tendency to carouse, my boundless knowledge of pop culture, and my ability to string together marginally related words to create partially coherent sentences to finally be truly appreciated.

Regardless, I best strike while the iron is hot, which is why I’m bringing out the big guns.  The GO-BOTS!

When I was a kid, I hated the Go-Bots.  To my recollection I had exactly two in my toy collection.  Screwhead (because he has a screw...for a head) and Pathfinder who, supposedly, is a female Go-Bot.  I was completely unaware of this until I went to look for a screen shot of her.  But now that I look at this pic of “her,” I totally see the feminine qualities.  Large, broad shoulders, some sort of bonnet, and a bow-tie.  Screams the fairer sex.  How did I ever overlook it? 

One thing was for sure, they sucked.  I wasn’t a kid who owned a bunch of Transformers growing up, so this wasn't the litmus test by which they were measured, although even with only a couple of each in my collection it was obvious Transformers were FAR superior toys.  Me?  I was a He-Man/GI Joe/Thundercats guy.  I'm telling you right now, the feminine wiles of Teela were much more enchanting than the blocky, cold, asexual feel of a robot.  That being said, who didn't have a little bit of a crush on Arcee?

The Go-Bots  were just so damned generic.  To transform Pathfinder you folded her in half and to transform Screwhead I’m pretty sure you just tipped him over.

I never knew the Go-Bots as popular toys.  I thought everybody felt the same way I did about them.  But they had cartoons, paint with water books, activity books, Nestle Quik tie-ins, cereals….oh, wait, no, they didn’t have a cereal at all.  They didn’t have Colorforms either, which is a PRETTY good measuring stick of popularity.  Maybe they weren’t so beloved after all.

But what they did have was MODELS.  Good thing, because I’m really tired of living vicariously through Dr. Wiley.  My deep seeded need to build a robot without any knowledge of how to actually build a robot can finally be fulfilled!

I bought the Buggyman model off EBAY.  I picked Buggyman because he was cheaper than the other models I found on EBAY.  He must be the scrub Go-Bot.  For those of you who only speak Transformer, Buggyman would be the equivalent of Sideswipe.  Remember him?  No?  Neither do I.

I was kind of surprised when I received the package.  Kind of small.  I was expecting something at least the size of, say, a puzzle box.  It was more the size of the palm of my hand.  I thought, being a giant robot, it might be a little more grandiose.  Of course, for all I know, the Go-Bots were actually very tiny.  Like Transformers meets The Littles

.    

 My good friend Buffalo is going to help me build this bad boy.  Doesn't have the same ring as Jim or Jack, but just as effective and twice as tasty.

Here are all the pieces spread on my card table.  Looks pretty meager, eh?  You betcha’ it does.  But let’s just wait to see it when it’s done.  Just break out ye old instructions here.  Hey, there’s a description right on here of Buggyman! 

“Buggyman is a ferocious robot from the planet GoBotron, located in a distant galaxy.  With a few simple movements he is transformed into a dune buggy.  He’s a real mean machine!”

Ah yes, dune buggies, the meanest of all machines.  I guess, based on my viewing of Mad Max 2, he’ll be pretty important after the apocalypse. But for now only important for those times when you have to traverse a desert.  Or joyride on a beach.  Even in the lame world of the Go-Bots, Buggyman is at the bottom of the totem.  Unless “GoBotron” is rife with dunes.  GoBotron.  Seriously.

Let’s get in to the actual directions.  Step 1.  Check.  Step 2.  Check.  Step 3……cement?  Step 6…..paint?  Step 9…mild detergent? What the hell?  I thought this thing would just snap together.  I don’t have this crap just sitting around the house.  Damn, Dr. Wiley had it easy.

It took me 50 times longer to write the last 700 words then it did to be foiled in my original attempt at building the Go-Bots model.  But with a Dale’s Pale Ale and a shot of Buffalo already in my gullet, with my Les McCann and Eddie Harris record playing, I was inspired to build SOMETHING.

How about THE MILLENIUM FALCON?!  This has been sitting in my closet for about a year or so now.  I picked it up for $4 at the Goodwill.  It's a 3-D puzzle.  Seemed like a steal.  I’ve hesitated to make it because it touts “super challenging” right there on the front of the box.  Welp, no time like the present!

 Ugh, look at it.  Intimidating.  Kind of oozing out of the box, like The Blob.  Better turn all the pieces over.

Holy shit.  It’s just gray.  So very gray.  Painfully gray.  It’s going to be like putting together a black and white picture of the sky.  And 3-D puzzles aren’t like other puzzles, all the pieces don’t just go together.  Oh, no.  I gotta make the top, the bottom, the sides, the back, the wings, all separately then fold it all together like some sort of malevolent origami!  Not to mention there are too many pieces to fit comfortably on my card table, so I have them spread everywhere…some on the lid of a tote, some still in the box.  God knows if they are even all there.  A bit more daunting then I had hoped.  This calls for some more Buffalo Trace and another beer.

A couple more shots and another Dale's Pale Ale later.  The Blob has consumed me.  I Got about 6 pieces put together, but two of them were together straight out of the box.  Han Solo is somewhere crying in to his beer as we speak.

Friday the 13th

Despite all my talk about love of the horror genre, until October of 2012, I had never seen the original Friday the 13^th.  For a while I avoided it because I was scared of horror films, slashers in particular.  Then, when I got in to horror films, I avoided it because it was too obvious.  Too mainstream, too readily available, too well known.  Better to watch Night of the Creeps, or Slaughter High.

I have to say, about ten minutes in to the film, I was already taken with something astounding; Kevin Bacon was in this bitch!  I mean, it’s well known that Jamie Lee Curtis was in Halloween, and Johnny Depp was in Nightmare on Elm Street, so how can it be I had no idea Kevin Bacon was in Friday the 13^th?  Certainly Bacon is as important to the pop culture lexicon as Depp, right?  I think Tremors trumps any work by Depp, and what moviephile hasn’t played a rousing round or two of “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon?”

The second thing I was struck by?  The outfits.  Oh, dear, the outfits.  Here’s screen shot number 1:

Holy crap, what is that guy wearing?  Bright red socks and a red kerchief with MATCHING RED SHOESTRINGS!  Quite the little accesorizer.  No shirt and cut-off jean shirts.  What do you do in an outfit like that?  Cut down trees.  In this thrilling scene they are getting ready to remove that pesky stump.  Slasher films always start out so innocuous.

Hey look at this snazzy dresser.  Plain white pants, plain white shoes, bright red suspenders with no shirt.  The modern man in the early 80s.  Before they invented belts, I guess.  Damn, looks like I left the play time on this one.  It actually bothers my sense of aesthetics, but I’m too lazy to go back and fix it.  But it reminds me, these two dapper fellows appear about three minutes apart in the film.  Talk about sensory overload!  Not to mention just a scant few minutes later, on the dock you can see right there in the background, Kevin Bacon will be seen cavorting in a pair of blue and yellow Speedos.  I like to refer to that particular scene as “superfluous batch.”

Speaking of snappy dressers, I swear when our killer first shows up she (oops, spoiler alert!) is wearing a tweed jacket and a pair of slacks.  That doesn’t seem very threatening, and I’m sure those little burrs get all caught up on the tweed.  Still, I guess slashing throats in the woods with a huge butcher’s knife probably adds a bit of menace regardless of one’s poor choice in wardrobe.  I wanted to make a Mr. Bean joke here, but I already messed it up by revealing the gender of the killer with my spoiler alert joke.  The choice of jests available for the early 80s slasher-film blogger is abundant, but only one path is true.  I hope I have chosen the correct one. 

God I hate Rowan Atkinson.

Let’s get this whole “spoiler alert” thing out of the way.  Chances are you have seen the original Friday the 13^th at some point in your life.  And if you haven’t, there’s a pretty good chance you aren’t reading this review, in 2012, for advice on whether or not to watch it.  Either way, seen it or no, you’re probably just curious what I think of it so, yeah, I’m going to spoil the hell out of it.  I’m going to tell you Kevin Bacon’s character dies and I’m going to post a picture of it.  I’m going to tell you they play strip Monopoly at the camp but, even with such a ripe opportunity to explore burgeoning teenage sexuality, nobody gets naked.  Most importantly, I’m going tell you the killer is Jason’s mom and Jason, for all intents and purposes, isn’t even in it. 

Now that there have been nine Friday the 13^th sequels, a remake, and a crossover, all of which (ugh, most of which, I know he isn’t in the 5^th one either) revolve around the character of Jason Vorhees, he has become the embodiment of the films.  It seems weird, in retrospect, that he did not appear in the first film and I have it on good authority (thanks to Mr. Kris Riley) didn’t even don his iconic hockey mask until the third film.

That being said, I actually rather enjoyed Friday the 13^th.  My expectations for the film, considering it has now reached its 30^th anniversary, were very low.  I assumed it would be much of the same slasher dreck I have seen before and even though Friday the 13^th would in all actuality have been a precursor to those films, it wouldn’t matter since I hadn’t seen it until after.

To a degree, that turns out to be absolutely true.  It is very similar to any slasher you’ve ever sat through.  It was, however, unexpectedly gory with a few over-the-top murder scenes, there’s death by knife, arrows, and axes, the direction is competent enough and almost suspenseful at times (almost), the soundtrack is quite memorable, and it has the decency to be laughable instead of boring during downtime.

The climax of the film is a bit of a letdown, as our sole survivor Alice (Adrienne King) grapples with Pamela Vorhees (Betsy Palmer).  I know in this sort of film it might seem silly to complain about how foolhardy the heroine is, but I can’t help myself.  See, first Alice hits her with a fireplace poker, than runs to a shed.  Then Vorhees finds her, so she hits her with the butt of a rifle, and runs away.  Then, oh god, can it be true?  She hits her with a FRYING PAN.  And runs away.  Come on, give me a break.  She’s unconscious every time.  You better tie her up or bludgeon her with that frying pan, one or the other.  At least the final, killing blow is so ridiculous it will probably leave you in stitches.

After seeing a ton of cheaply made slasher films, I was surprised this film left any sort of impression on me.  I'm not going to tout it as a "must see," but as a pop culture phenomenon it is definitely worth a watch.  KEVIN BACON, LOOK OUT!

Next up, Halloween review at In the Queue Reviews.

Or, if you feel froggy, jump ahead to my review of The Burning.

GoettaFest 2012

Every year, in my hometown of Evansville, Indiana, the first full week of October is commemorated with a huge street festival.  It is touted as the second biggest single street festival next to Mardi Gras.  This bit of trivia is accredited to the late radio personality Paul Harvey, so make of it what you will.

Fall Festival, bird's eye view

It’s known as the West Side Nut Club Fall Festival…although all the denizens of southern Indiana simply refer to it as the “Fall Festival.”  Although the Fall Festival boasts its fair share of carny-run games and rides, the real draw is the food.  According to this article:  http://matadornetwork.com/nights/the-worlds-most-ridiculous-food-festival/  last year’s festival contained 135 food carts culminating in over 400 menu items.

When it was first recommended by Mr. Bob Thacker I do my next blog on goetta I had to come clean: I’ve never had it.  Now, there’s a good chance you have never had goetta either and probably, quite frankly, never even heard of it.  Probably because it is only produced and known in the greater Cincinnati area.  It’s more or less ground meat, sometimes pork sometimes beef sometimes a mixture, mixed with oats.  Yeah, I said oats.

So people around here are often aghast when I mention such a thing.  Their jaws drop.  They scratch their heads in a puzzled manner.  “Haven’t had goetta?!  Well I never!”  And then the obligatory recommendations: Have it here, have it there, buy it at the grocery and cook it up yourself at home.  Etcetera, etcetera.

As luck would have it, right around the corner from the goetta blog recommendation lay Glier’s GoettaFest, a hearty street festival centered around celebrating the much heralded meat product.  After perusing the website, I felt this would be akin to Evansville’s Fall Festival: Games, live entertainment and, most of all, food and drink, even if on a much smaller scale.

It's more crowded than it looks....

So it was on a hot and humid day that my wife and I trudged down to the Newport Levee where, right on the river, Glier’s, the world’s largest manufacturer of goetta, was holding their fest.  As we climbed down the stairs towards the merriments, the sights and smells brought with them a strong sense of nostalgia washing over me like a wave.  A crashing, thunderous, catastrophic tsunami wave.  And there, practically swimming through the 90 degree heat and oppressive humidity, the truth of the matter came rushing back…I fucking HATE street festivals.

Looking down the street I saw the swarm of sweaty, unwashed humanity, standing in long lines to buy food so enormously bad for you one might imagine you are inviting a spur of the moment heart attack.  There were those swilling overpriced beer to wash down their overpriced food.  There was a completely mediocre live band, so loud it was near impossible to speak to any of the nearby vendors.  There were those who brought along their broods of children, assumedly so they could ply them with food so greasy and fattening by the time they would get home they would be nearly catatonic, so mom and dad could watch the newest episode of whatever completely reprehensible reality TV program is currently moderately popular in peace and quiet.  You know, something like Swamp People or, God forbid, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.

Even when I lived in Evansville, I could never understand the giddy excitement that descended on the town come October.  Literally thousands and thousands of people, elbow to elbow, perusing overpriced rubbish, most of it deep fried.  I printed out a copy of the menu from last year and there were FORTY-ONE items incorporating the term “fried” or “deep fried,” including such delicacies as Snickers, Klondike Bars, Kool-Aid, cookie dough and dandelions.  This doesn’t include items that are deep fried but just don’t say so in the description. 

I like food.  I like it a lot.  I am certainly not saying I don’t sometimes like to eat food that isn’t really all that good for me, because I most certainly do.  But when we went to GoettaFest we spent about $40 on food which left me feeling fatigued and borderline nauseas .  $40.  For goetta products either so deep fried or so covered in cheese I couldn’t actually be 100% sure it was goetta at all.  For all I know it could have been Soylent Green.  Forty dollars should actually be a pretty nice dinner out in a restaurant, where I don’t have to either eat my food standing up or fight for a seat at a picnic table next to a complete stranger.  Where my eyes wouldn’t be stinging from the sweat running down my face and the menu is well thought out and the food comes with actual flavor instead of the sickly taste of overheated Crisco clinging to it.

Upon first entering the festival I encountered this signage describing goetta:

Your fork breaks the delicate crisp and moves carefully through the creamy middle of the morning circle.  Every bite sends you deeper into total sensory engagement, and allows the mind to skip through the collection of stories that decorate your family’s history and your own.  In a moment you are at your grandma’s counter enveloped in tales of her grandma’s kitchen.  Your heart sings.

“Holy crap,” I thought, “this stuff must be what God himself eats for breakfast!”  And I could picture him at a table of four, with Peter Falk, Sherman Hemsley and Richard Dawson.  Oh, the ribald tales they would share with God while drinking morning mimosas around a cornucopia spilling out assorted fruits.  Dawson would brag of the ladies, oh all the ladies.  Falk would tell about the time he lost his glass eye to a dog, and Hemsley would ironically proclaim about how he really had finally made it to a deluxe apartment………..in the sky-i-i.  And while they would all chortle with laughter and pat each other reassuringly on the backs, just as the morning feast seemed to be coming to an end and the angels were serving the morning coffee with pieces of apple pie, God would scream up the heavens, “Let there be more goetta!”

And so it would come to pass.

I had high expectations beforehand but this sign, this spectacle, this promise of a semi-hallucinatory state, this raised my expectations so high my first bite of goetta would have probably had to be accompanied by an orgasm in order to match them.  So it was, when I had my first bite of a goetta Philly Cheesteak (a contradiction in terms if ever there was one), it happened that my first thought was “This shit taste like hash browns on a bun.”

This, I think, is the most depressing thing of all.  For all my want to actually try and, hopefully, enjoy goetta, none of the items there really seemed to represent the meat.  The Philly Cheesesteak was so lathered with cheese and onion I couldn’t really taste the meat, but the consistency did come across as hash brown-y.  I finished the day with a “corn dog” because it’s a classic festival treat, but, as far as I could tell, the goetta sausage wasn’t ever covered in any kind of corn flour. It was simply dipped, naked, into its bath, leaving me to eat a thin layer of congealed deep fried grease tasting just like old deep fried grease.  I’m pretty sure God wouldn’t want his goetta sullied in such manners.  And, for that matter, neither would Peter Falk.

Oh, the humanity! 

On the way out of the festival we stumbled on a vending machine filled with pre-processed pounds of goetta for three dollars.  I wanted so badly to purchase meat out of a stand-alone vending machine and I wanted, even more, with all of my heart, just to hear the sickly thud of a pound of processed pig pieces slapping dully against the bottom tray.  But I just couldn’t do it.  On this day Glier’s had already stolen enough of my money, if not even just a little bit of my soul.

ADDENDUM

My wife was kind enough, in her spare time, to give a handful of honest reviews of the food she sampled.  So if you haven't had your fill of goetta, read on dear reader, read on...

Goetta mac & cheese…apparently an award-winning recipe.  I started with this dish, and I was a little disappointed with it.  First, it was a pretty big helping of mac & cheese. Second, I couldn't really taste any of the goetta sausage in it…I basically felt like I was eating mac & cheese with oats.  As a point of comparison, Ryan and I have recently been eating Hamburger Helper with spicy sausage instead of hamburger for a change, and there is a cheesy rice meal that is AWESOME with said sausage.  In fact, I would go so far as to say our variation on cheesy Mexican rice in a box would whip the goetta mac & cheese's ass in a head-to-head taste test.

Goetta spring rolls…just tasted like spring rolls.  All fried wrapper and cabbage.  I had to add a little spicy mustard to mine to give it some zing, and then all I tasted was spicy mustard.  Definitely not worth the $3 for two spring rolls that are completely basic.

I also got it in my sun-addled noggin that we needed to try Busken bakery's Goetta Goobers, which consists of small fried lumps of goetta-infused donut dough liberally sprinkled with powdered sugar.  What the hell, Voodoo Doughnuts has a Bacon Maple Bar… However, that is an actual donut, and these are just fried nuggets.  In general, all I tasted was frying oil and powdered sugar.  Since we got them to go, I was also stuck with the dilemma of how to store meat donuts.  I can't just leave those in the breadbox, no sir.  I had to put them in the fridge.  

The goetta chili cheese chilito from Chili Rocks was really good.  It was spicy, saucy and tasted just like a good chilito should.  The goetta was not a distraction.  And seriously, my typical gold standard chilito is one from Taco Bell.  That mystery meat is probably less appetizing than goetta.  So this dish gets the best in show from me out of the four goetta concoctions I tried.