Well, dear readers, how often have we heard the expression, “These kids today!” I’d venture every generation’s older folks have railed on against “These kids today!” Well, I think we’ve hit the nadir of “these kids today,” ladies and gentlemen and I say this because every day on the Tube of You I see an endless parade of entitled twits being entitled, stupid, mindless, dangerous (I’m looking at YOU, YouTube prankster channels) and have I mentioned entitled. A decade or two ago, the joke was “thirty is the new twenty.” As the years went by, I began to amend that to “thirty is the new fifteen” then “thirty is the new ten.” Which makes twenty the new one. And if you want living proof of what I’m talking about I encourage you to watch something far scarier than any horror movie – a drunk, drugged-out girl pulled over by an officer for driving in loops in a parking lot and expired tags. She’s clearly either intoxicated or on drugs. She won’t follow his orders, and instead of getting out of the car when he asks, she fights him and he pulls her out of the car to the ground, at which point she begins hitting and kicking the officer. That’s the calm part. You’ll probably not be able to take much of her screaming jag, but I just sat there astonished how many of these late teens/early twenty-somethings are like this – driving while under the influence of something, not giving a crap, not listening to the officer and then behaving like nothing you’ve ever seen before, I guarantee you. In case you don’t make it to the end (fast forwarding is fine), she was charged with two felony assault charges (kicking and fighting various officers) and took a plea deal that reduced it to two misdemeanor charges – she was given probation only if she attended drug rehab, which she did. Will she learn anything from this? Well, maybe if she was made to watch the video every day. I just sat with my mouth on the floor. This is our youth. These kids today.
https://youtu.be/ihOEzxucJ6s?si=_DvVdiA3zHVF385T
Right? It’s like a movie where someone is possessed by an evil spirit inside of them, like The Exorcist, except this girl gives Mercedes McCambridge a run for her money. If this was a one-off video, I wouldn’t even talk about it, but there are hundreds of these entitled young people doing exactly what this girl is doing. I bring all this up because I watched a motion picture last night that I’ve never seen, although it opened at the Wiltern and therefore maybe I did see it. Although, I know there were other movies I saw that week at my neighborhood theaters, so who knows. The movie was called Because They’re Young, and yes, it was an authentic “These Kids Today” movie circa 1960. Based on a book called Harrison High by then twenty-year-old John Farris (The Fury), it’s about high school kids and their new, idealistic teacher who does have a couple of demons of his own. The teacher is played by Dick Clark, in his first motion picture – he’s not an actor, he’s basically just playing himself the way he was on American Bandstand. But the supporting cast is the thing here. We get Victoria Shaw as a secretary in the school and love interest for Mr. Clark, we get Warren Berlinger, Tuesday Weld, an impossibly young Doug McClure, Philip Coolidge (star of The Tingler) as the father of a bad boy who comes around in the end, Chris Robinson, fresh out of LACC as the worst of the bad boys, Roberta Shore, and guest stars Duane Eddy and James Darren, who do musical numbers at a school dance. But I saved the best for last – Michael Callan, who just two years before filming this film had been on Broadway, where he created the role of Riff in West Side Story. In this film, he plays a character named Griff, the bad boy who sees the light. It’s basically Riff with a G. He must have been a great Riff. There’s even a knife fight a la The Rumble. And if you want to know just how great a dancer he was, take a gander at his musical number in Pepe. It’s all very earnest. When Dick Clark pulls up to the school at the start of the film, I was sure it was my high school, Hamilton. But it’s not, it’s apparently Hoover High in Glendale. You wouldn’t know that at all now, because all the original front buildings are gone, replaced by more “modern” and quite ugly buildings. Anyway, worth it to see the original Riff riffing on Riff.
Prior to all that, I got a whopping three hours of sleep, followed a couple of auctions that were interesting, tried to go back to sleep, failed, ordered a bacon cheeseburger, onion rings, and three chicken tenders from a burger jernt near Gelson’s. I’ve enjoyed their burgers and onion rings before. I only added the chicken tenders because you had to spend a certain amount to have a thirty-percent discount kick in. Anyway, the burger was not as good as it’s been before – passable, but just blah, really. The onion rings were a bad joke. They were way to well done and therefore falling into little bits, almost impossible to eat and really gross. I guess I ate about three of them. I ate two of the tenders, which were so salty I, BK, who love salt, almost gagged. All in all, a waste of a meal. Thankfully, I had a tiny bite-sized (three bites) little itty-bitty, teeny-weeny cheesecake thing and I ate that. But it didn’t really get the nasty taste out of my mouth. Otherwise, I was so tired I just sat here like so much fish, completely zoned out. I’d intended to see Doug Haverty in his play but I put that off until Saturday.
Today, I’ll be up when I’m up, I will either go to Gelson’s and get something I know will be good, or I’ll order from somewhere that I completely trust. Mostly, I need to catch up on sleep. At some point, I’ll watch, listen, and relax.
Tomorrow, I’ll see Doug in the play and then we’ll probably grab a bite to eat – if not, I’ll grab a bite to eat but in a proper restaurant. Sunday can be a ME day, and then next week I’m hoping that the newly beautified Benjamin Kritzer is done (I got a galley yesterday in which they used the old title page rather than what I sent them – baffling why they would do that. I send a finished PDF that they don’t have to do anything to. Baffling. Also, I need to find another four or five kids. Thankfully, I finally found someone to play the August show.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up when I’m up, go to Gelson’s or order from somewhere I trust for food, eat said food, rest up, and then watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s Friday – what is currently in your CD player and your DVD/Blu and Ray/streaming player? I’ll start – who knows? Your turn. Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, as I yell to the heavens, “These kids today.”