When first approached to provide a contribution to this “Hell-themed” issue of Perraneu, I was initially puzzled even though I am feeling the hellish combination of desperation/anxiety/hopelessness from the barrage of contradictory information we are receiving surrounding our nation’s “new reality.”  

 

Oh, and I suffer from depression.  Not just the seasonal affective kind but the good ‘ole something “broken in my brain” clinical depression.  You mix circumstance and chemistry together, and the result can be a Sylvia Plath/Virginia Woolf “head in the oven, drowning in the river” level depression. 

 

Excuse the macabre wit, but my sarcasm has always saved me from a full swan dive into despair.  In spite of my dark humor, I do try to do everything to avoid the dumpster fire of reality by obsessing over other kinder, gentler things such as pop culture.  

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As a Gen Xer/latch key child, I learned early on how to entertain myself, immersing myself in my own little world comprised of my “babysitters” from influential television programs.  

 

My pop culture fascination/escape would begin at six.  My boomer parents had a much more lax approach on the type of media me and my brothers consumed compared to the “helicoptering” parents of today.  

While my mom slept a few hours before her night shift as a nurse, I would sit in front of the TV after kindergarten and watch my “friends” Luke and Laura and their improbable romance on General Hospital (disturbing fact: the character of Laura was raped by Luke but instead of a victim narrative, GH developed them into lovers, a popular trope that was repeated multiple times on many soap operas.)  

 

I grew up watching many television shows that would seem unconscionable for children to watch today including Dallas my father’s personal favorite about a wealthy, feuding and philandering Texas family and Miami Vice a crime procedural which focused on undercover cops in pastel suits busting cocaine cartels in Miami.  I have a vivid memory of watching an extremely violent episode during a birthday slumber party and one of my gifts was an enormous poster of Don Johnson and Phillip Michael Thomas from the series.  

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You know, normal 4th grade stuff.   

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When my Mom would go to work at night, my father was in charge of the parenting which was pretty loose.  While I should have been sleeping, I recall many night’s eating fried egg and salami sandwiches with my dad and watching late night movies like, "The Outsiders," a Francis Ford Coppola-directed classic about teenage gangs in the early 60’s featuring an unprecedented ensemble of young male actors including Patrick Swayze, Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio, Rob Lowe,
C. Thomas Howell, Tom Cruise and Emilio Estevez.  

 

When Ralph Macchio, as the tender-hearted Johnny, dies tragically after saving kids from a burning house, a hero was born in my heart.  Just a few years later his star would ascend even higher with the hit The Karate Kid and I would brag to everyone that I discovered this Italian dreamboat when watching The Outsiders and one day, we would marry.*

 

I was a pop culture know-it-all even then.

 

The early influence of pop culture in my life extended outside the perimeters of my home and spilled into my parochial school playground.  I surrounded myself with like-minded pop culture savvy friends.  My best friend Melissa had a Michael Jackson rhinestone glove she would sneakily wear between classes while I had about 100 black rubber bracelets I would wear under my Peter Pan collared button down in honor of my hero at that time, Madonna.  

 

My entrepreneurial buddies Chris and Frankie sold second hand Rubik’s Cubes at recess to the 5th and 6th graders.  To this day, I have no idea how they got their hands on these but I always respected their ability to capitalize on a national sensation.  

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* Ralph Macchio, star of The Outsiders, The Karate Kid and My Cousin Vinny, is a father of two, residing in Long Island with a wife he has been in love with since the age of fifteen.  Sadly, I never stood a chance.