I live in a small house halfway up the next block.
I spend hours most everyday pouring over Vic and Sade
material - most of it is stuff I have written myself. There's no cure for me - the lure of being in the small town
halfway up the next block is too strong.
It's become commonplace for me to imagine myself as a fly on the wall at
the Gook house.
There's little plot.
What I hear are bits and pieces of stories, generally about people I
have heard of, but I don't "know."
Well, I DO know them because the Gooks talk about them all of the time.
The Gooks are not really doing anything - which may seem to
make the show slow. But what they are
actually doing is having a "conversation." And while they are having
their conversations, it's plausible to say that Vic is not really listening to
Sade and he sure isn't listening to Rush.
Sade is not listening to Vic or Rush.
Rush is reading from his books - outloud - and no one else really wants
to hear "that trash." Uncle
Fletcher is either DEMANDING to be heard or goes away quietly. Meanwhile, everyone is talking over each
other, striving for someone to hear what they say.
It sounds chaotic - and it is - but there is a magical
rhythm to it that becomes predictable after a while of listening. As a matter of fact, the show is all about
rhythms: Brainfeeble... Kneesuffer... Gutstop... Kissy Lunge... J.J.J.J.
Stunbolt, Y.I.I.Y Skeeber, for crying out loud. The whole secret of the show is acclimating yourself to the rhythm
of what's being spoken. Once you learn
that, you don't really care what they say.
The rhythm and the very silly names (Cupid and Stupid Golfbake, Robert
and Slobert Hink, Rishigan Fishigan from Sishigan, Michigan) are jumbled up
inside of the rhetoric - but then you soak up the ridiculous situations and reflect
on your knowledge that has been passed along before - because the continuity is
overwhelmingly good and you realize - yes, these friends of the Gooks are crazier than they are and everything that's been said is completely plausible.
Writer Paul Rhymer often took normal situations and made the
most ridiculous things happen in the 1940's; for instance, a set of four
idental twins call the Gook residence, think Rush is a girl, asks Sade how much
she weighs naked.
Vic's visiting lodge brothers might come for a visit; not 2 or 3 but 19 of them.
Or Vic -very intelligent yet a big "kid" trapped
in a man's body- having to have his wife participate in one of his strange
lodge ceremonies (he tells her to screw in a green lightbulb, make him soup and
serve it to him barefooted.) Then there
was the time that Vic complimented Sade's fat friend on a dress she was
wearing; the fat friend gains confidence because of this and buys a new
dress. The fat lady then invites the
Gooks over hoping Vic again will compliment her and he's reluctantly prepared
to do so until he finds a set of antique guns and a cowboy hat over at her
house - he dons them all and literally psychotically
escapes into a world where he looks to kill desperados. When the fat lady comes out to show Vic her
new dress, he doesn't give a flying fang about it - all he cares about are the
cattle rustlers he's imagined he can shoot.
Sade on the other hand, is all about some gossip. She loves to share it with anyone who will
listen; the family listens only out of being forced to. Sade is thrilled when she gets a boring,
predictable letter from her sister but the family could care less. Vic and Rush care less, eh? Well She'll guilt trip them and nag them to
death. And she does. And it's hilarious.
Sade is uneducated and doesn't understand even the simplest
math. Her vocabulary is short as
well. Yet, her enormous powers of
insight and observation make fools out of the much-better-educated Vic and Rush
almost every show.
The women in her sewing club can get furious at each other over the fact that one has smaller feet than the other.
Rush is "a big old high school boy" but cares
little about girls - he's enamored with counterfieting ___ (fill in the blank)
and movies at the theatre, which are at least 90% love stories. No, Rush isn't gay - I think he gets a kick
out of watching these movies as there are no other movies to watch. His adopted mother and father sure aren't
about affection nor listening to him, so he watches the love stories.
Sometimes, he and his father conspire to do dirty deeds like
draw a pencil mustache on a sleeping, silly neighbor who cries all the time and is afraid of
the dark.
Uncle Fletcher is a head case. But is he crazy, senile or are his stories so crazy that they only
make him appear nuts?
He knows an
endless line of inventors. He enjoys riding on the garbage wagon. He knows the ages of people when they got married. He seems to
be endlessly rich. Yet his passion in
life seems to be his friends and his family.
Everyone loves Uncle Fletcher even though he is bothersome, partially deaf and
probably as nutty as a squirel's house.
If it appears to you the family is disfunctional - think
again. They are simply quirky and they
all know quirky people.
©Jimbo 2010/2011
I guess you live in Illinois like me.
ReplyDeleteThe few shows I have listened to are like you just explained. It has a low key story line with emphasis on how the characters react (or do not react) to each other. They all go march to their own drummers. I do believe you live there as when I visit your Vic and Sade blog it has so much detail how could you not live there?
I do live there, I really do :)
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