Of the Barking Strings: One Account of Growing Up in the 80s, Part I: Start with Nancy Sinatra Reclining on Stage in her Pink, Pseudo-Native American Dress and Pink Boots

The other day a friend asked me how I would start film about the old gang.  It was a reciprocal question; I'd asked all of them the same thing.  They gave me history--how it all started at Bill's Ice Cream in a large and sprawling city on a great, humid plain.  Now, what am I suppose to do with that?

I do feel the stickiness of dried ice cream up to my elbow from reaching way down into the square carton, making sure I "square dipped" appropriately so that we wouldn't have shrinkage.

I remember working the line on those hot August nights when it snaked around the metal bars and people stood with the glass front doors open waiting outside to get out of the heat and have some cool ice cream.  I remember picturing them as flies and wishing I had a great can of bug spray to knock them down, so we could sweep their buzzing, bumbling bodies out the door with a push broom and and shut down.  But the fools just continued to come in.

But what am I to do with that?

I remember Jim belching out the Boss while stocking the milk room--how it was low and muffled until Andrea opened the glass door to Windex it, and it then blasted through the store--

I ain't nothing but tired
Man I'm just tired and bored with myself
Hey there baby, I could use just a little help

Or I remember some chubby, blond punk-ass kid, saying "squeeze-me" for "excuse me" each time he passed a girl behind ice cream counter on his way to get a broom or rag from the back.

But what am I to do with that?

I remember one time Phil asked Andrea if she could invite anyone over for Thanksgiving, who would it be? and she replied, "Sid Vicious."

Okay, maybe I could use that.

But I think I'd start instead with Nancy Sinatra reclining on stage in her pink, pseudo-Native American dress and pink boots singing, "Bang, Bang--My Baby Shot Me Dead."  It's stark--that black background against that shocking pink; it's glamorous--oh that thick, deep 60s long, blond hair; and it has nothing what-so-ever to do with the story-line, which would have been my take on things at the time.

Then, perhaps, there'd be a shot of the gang at the zoo feeding flamingos.  Marsh, here after known as Swamp, would be looking into the camera with strait, dark brown shoulder length hair, Lennon-specs and a cheesy smile.  He'd be wearing a white U2 Joshua Tree t-shirt.  Andrea would be bending over the metal bar, wearing a bright blue t-shirt and blue and black checkered Capris talking to a flamingo directly below her. Here, her hair would be auburn and straight, but it could be any color from neon orange to purple.  Each scene it will be different.  The movie will end with Andrea as Nancy Sinatra, only she will be dressed like Sinead O'Connor and will have a shaved head.  She won't like that.  She won't like any of it.  Jim, I'm not sure what Jim does.  He wears a concert shirt of the Police.  It has the arms ripped off.  He's showing off his muscle.  Oh, I got it, he stands next to Andrea, but faces towards the camera while she faces away.  He looks down at the concrete wearing dark sun-glasses, the type Buddy Holly would wear if Buddy Holly wore sunglasses.  He's counting ants on the ground.  He's up to twenty-four.  I'm not sure why.

The Barking Strings are never sure why.

Phil is pelting the flamingos with bread.  Or, rather Phil, here after known as Glasses, is trying to pelt the flamingos with bread.  Bread doesn't make very good stones.  He looks like Neil Young.  He will hate that.

He doesn't hate Neil Young.  That will soon become very apparent.  But, he will hate that he looks like Neil Young.

Lucy, she now prefers to be called Lucia, will be telling Phil, I mean Glasses, to stop it, that he's mean.  She is the 1960s counter-culture type--two braided pony tails, leather headband, tie-died t-shirt, flowing skirt and all.

Me.  Well, I'm skinny with a white dress shirt that is big and sloppy.  I wear blue-gray dress slacks and canvas vans.  I have a bit of mullet, and if I looked cool, I'd look a bit like Cy Curnin of the Fixx (see video below), but I'm not cool.  I'm a geek with a great unused mind instead.

I hold up a copy of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, open the cover, and show the author's note to the audience.  The camera zooms in on the following:

I am not I; thou art not he or she;

they are not they.

--E.W.

There is a black and white shot of U2 by the Mississippi River.  "Heartland" plays.  Scene fades.