“I Don’t Think I Was Speeding, Officer, Was I Weaving Or Something?”

Paloma shook her head at the commercial which promised three nights airing National Lampoon’s Vacation to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of Clark Griswald’s trek to California.

She knew that I – having not seen it in glorious HD – would be unable to resist the sirens’ song.

She has often heard me echo the query of Imogene Coca’s deranged Aunt Edna – “Am I gonna eat? Or am I gonna starve to death?” and is good natured enough to have not brained me.

There was a time that I could have recited damned near every line of dialogue from Vacation as could most of my buddies. Chevy Chase had been one of our favorites in Caddyshack a few years earlier but, in that movie, he had been a memorable charcter in a large ensemble.

In Vacation, he was The Man, an outlaw on the road, skinny-dippin’ with Christie Brinkley, who had brightened our winter days for several years in the early ’80s in Sports Illustrated‘s annual swimsuit issue.

(Clark Griswald could have been in the Olympics, man)

If lab animals were subjected to as many viewings of one movie as my buddies and I had watched Vacation, PETA would rightfully raise a ruckus.

It was not difficult to exhaust the possibilities for fun in our small town before the late news aired. At that point, there wasn’t much to do other than acts of vandalism involving produce and/or fireworks.

(it was a town of three thousand people in the middle of a lot of corn in the Midwest)

Often, a bunch of us would end up encamped in Kirk The Pyro’s den watching Vacation on late-night cable or VHS.

(his family had a spacious house and cable and VCR before most of us did)

We were beginning to get our driver’s licenses – Vacation had been in theaters the summer we took Driver’s Ed – and, like Chevy, we yearned for the open road and dipping skinnies with Christie Brinkley.

The farthest we usually got was Indianapolis or, more often, Cincinnati and there were no “pool waitress” supermodels frolicking in the coin fountain at the mall.

But we did make good use of numerous quotes – travel-related or not – from the movie and, at some point, usually when it was suggested that we call it a night and head home, someone would rally the troops with words of wisdom from Chevy.

(the more delicate amongst you might want to cover your eyes)

“I think you’re all fucked in the head. We’re ten hours from the fucking fun park and you want to bail out. Well I’ll tell you something. This is no longer a vacation. It’s a quest. It’s a quest for fun. I’m gonna have fun and you’re gonna have fun. We’re all gonna have so much fucking fun we’ll need plastic surgery to remove our goddamned smiles. You’ll be whistling ‘Zip-A-Dee Doo-Dah’ out of you’re assholes!”

Here are four songs from the soundtrack…

Lindsey Buckingham – Holiday Road
from Words & Music: A Retrospective (1992)

I can’t hear Holiday Road and not want to cruise through a desert of the American Southwest in a station wagon with a dead aunt strapped to the roof on the way to a theme park thousands of miles from home.

The Ramones – Blitzkreig Bop
from Hey! Ho! Let’s Go: The Anthology (1999)

Not long ago, a client was giving me his last name. “Ramone,” he said. “Like the band. Do you know who I’m talking about?”

He was surprised and duly impressed as I explained that I not only knew his reference, but that Paloma has a framed poster autographed by Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee, and Marky hanging in our treehouse.

The Pointer Sisters – I’m So Excited
from Greatest Hits (1989)

During the first few years of the ’80s, when I was really listening to the radio for the first time, The Pointer Sisters were inescapable. A lot of those hits still charm me when I hear them on shuffle.

But sometimes, the manic I’m So Excited is just a bit too perky.

Vangelis – Titles
from Chariots Of Fire (1982)

As part of the last week of school in eighth grade, our class took a trip to a multi-plex in Cincinnati to see Chariots Of Fire. The movie might have just won the Academy Award for Best Picture, but a slow-moving, British, period piece on distance running and religion surprisingly proved to be a buzzkill for us kids.

(I’ve meant to watch it again as an adult but…)

Vacation arrived just a year after Chariots Of Fire, so the spoof of Chariots Of Fire hadn’t yet become cliche.

Cheese, Crackers And The Voigt-Kampff Test

Some, to paraphrase Kramer, serve their dark master, the cocoa bean, but it is the salty snacks that I crave, particularly in the form of a cracker. Having had a reaction due to the ingestion of a certain plant-based substance, I once rampaged my way through several boxes of crackers, leading my housemates to dub me “Cracker Vacuum” (it was later translated into Chinese as the far more sonically palatable Bin Gone Kon).

Munchies-inspired nicknames aside, crackers are delightful and the addition of cheese was a great moment in humankind. My enjoyment of this combination has been tempered of late by my concern that – based on knowledge gleaned from numerous viewings of Blade Runner – I’m a replicant.

When I first saw Blade Runner, it was as on VHS a couple years after its theatrical release. I’m certain it didn’t get screened at our smalltown theater and I’m surprised my friends and I found it at our local video rental joint.

It bored me.

I certainly found it to be breathtakingly grim and it’s still visually stunning twenty-five years later, but I didn’t truly ponder the ramifications of the concepts at the time. When I did, the questions the film raised about consciousness and humanity were mind-bending.

[Did they have crackers in Blade Runner? I know that there were noodles (which are another wondrous foodstuff).]

Now, throughout the film, Gaff leaves origami animals for Harrison Ford’s character Deckard and these items – combined with the unicorn footage added for the director’s cut – strengthens the argument that Deckard himself is a replicant. The unicorn memory is one programmed into all replicants who are unaware that they are synthetic creatures.

My earliest memory of eating cheese and crackers was when I was four or five and it’s vivid. On a family vacation, I was allowed to stay up quite late with my uncle; we watched a movie about cartoon cats in Paris and ate cheese and crackers.

Unfortunately, when I reconsider the event, I fear it couldn’t have happened. The movie had to have been The Aristocats (is there another “cartoon cats in Paris” flick?), but this was years before VCRs and cable television. Would they have shown such a movie on network television following the late news?

More suspicious is the conflict between my memory and my uncle’s life rhythm. It was remarkably consistent as I recall – on the river fishing at dawn, an afternoon draining bottles of Iron City at the Moose Lodge, and asleep in his recliner shortly after dinner. I don’t remember ever seeing the man awake after dark let alone eating cheese and crackers.

And so, I have to wonder at the possibility that this memory is my “unicorn sequence.” Maybe lots of people have such a memory.

Maybe Edward James Olmos is someday going to leave a foil, origami Triscuit at my doorstep. Or maybe a Ritz.

Vangelis – Blade Runner (End Title)
Vangelis really captured the vibe of the movie with his score. My friend Chris, who had prompted our friends and me to rent Blade Runner, played the album into the ground.

White Zombie – More Human Than Human
The motto of the Tyrell Corporation set to music. I met Rob Zombie at a record store where I worked and he seemed like a good guy – very polite, very soft spoken.

Cracker – This Is Cracker Soul
I loved Cracker’s debut which included This Is Cracker Soul, but David Lowery was rude to Paloma once and it’s dulled my enthusiasm for Cracker’s music ever since.

Kenickie – Robot Song
I remember Kenickie being “the next big thing” for about ten minutes in the mid-90s. Coming across this track to post, I’m thinking I might have to go back and check out the rest of their debut, At The Club.