Summer, Pamela Andersen, and Velvet Paintings

Mar 03 - When most people think about the Summer season, certain images come to mind: The beach, the sun, vacations, and backyard barbecues. Not me. Nope. To me, the very word “Summer” conveys an entirely different kind of image. It makes me remember the girl who ripped out my heart, ate it, spit it out and stomped on it... laughing. Let this be a lesson to all the guys out there: NEVER fall in love with a girl named Summer. I met Summer on a blind date set up by a friend of mine back in 1994. He saw I was kind of down as far as the dating situation was concerned and knew this girl liked me. We went out and instantly hit it off. After the first kiss, I knew I was in love. I had never felt so intensely about anyone in my entire life.

She was perfect... funny, smart, beautiful, very social and super confident. She had blond hair (which is almost a prerequisite for anyone named Summer), emerald eyes and skin that tasted like cocoa butter. Saying I was blinded by love would have been an understatement. It was more like love had come along and replaced my eyes and brain with that red goo found in Stretch Armstrong toys. One warning sign came on our first date. I told her that the only thing that was really important to me in a relationship was total honesty. She said: “Well, to be totally honest with you, sometimes I don’t always tell the truth.” Damn! That was the most honest thing anyone had ever said to me, and I knew I was in trouble. She inevitably grew bored with my doting on her and left me for the keyboard player in my old band. I was devestated, but the worst was yet to come.

Ever try to put someone out of your mind when relationships come to an end by taking a drive? Well, that’s what I did. Driving down the street, everywhere I looked, I saw her name: END OF SUMMER SALE!, YOU CAN’T BEAT THESE SUMMER DEALS!, SUMMER SPECIALS!, COOL OFF FROM THE SUMMER HEAT IN OUR AIR-CONDITIONED BAR!, BUDWEISER: OFFICIAL BEER OF SUMMER! It was like the universe was taunting me. I turned on the radio. Do you have any idea how many songs have the word “Summer” in them? It’s probably second only to “love”, “baby”, and “yeah yeah!”.

There’s “Summertime”, “Suddenly Last Summer”, “Summertime Rolls”, “Summer Nights” (from “Grease”), “The Boys of Summer”, “Summer’s Almost Gone”, “The Last Rose of Summer”, “The Summer of Love”, ad nauseum. Even movie titles were no help. It was as if every time I turned on the TV, “Endless Summer”, “Summer School” or “The Long Hot Summer” were on, each film featuring blond girls kissing guys who seemed to resemble my keyboard player. The curse of Summer took years to get over. Years. OK, I’m not really over it even now. Pathetic, right? Well, if my situation can serve as a warning to others, then my suffering would not be in vain. BEWARE OF PEOPLE WITH OMNIPREVASIVE NAMES AND NEVER FALL IN LOVE WITH ANYONE NAMED AFTER A SEASON! Have a great Summer.

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Name that movie: War is declared and tensions are high. In the center of the chaos is one small city which has deemed itself “neutral” to both sides of the conflict. Within this city is a nightclub where most of the movie’s action takes place. The owner of the nightclub is a strong-willed no-nonsense type who on the outside doesn’t take a stand one way or the other politically, but who secretly has ties to the resistance. One night, the owner’s ex-lover appears at the club with a new romantic interest. This new romantic interest happens to be a crucial leader of the resistance and is almost instantly threatened by the enemy.

The deperate couple turn to the club owner to help them get out of the city alive. What follows is a conflict between the emotional attachments and sacrifice for the greater good as the club owner has to decide between helping the two lovers to get out of town safely and turning the tables for personal advantage. Sound familiar? If you answered “Casablanca”, you’d only be half right. There is another movie with the exact same plot that you might have heard of. The movie is called “Barb Wire” and starred Pamela Anderson Lee. Don’t believe me? It’s true. The “Baywatch” star’s almost universally panned screen debut as a super hero clad in leather with tattoos and a motorcycle is actually an honest to God remake of the Bogie/Bergman classic.

Never mind the boobie shots that greet viewers almost instantly during the opening credits. Forget about the goofy catch phrases like “Don’t call me babe”. “Barb Wire” is an action movie bastardization of one of the greatest films of all time. If you see it, you’ll learn that in the year 2017 the USA is involved in a second civil war (probably with one side fighting for silicon breast enlargements while the other favoring saline. It’s never really explained what started the war, but who cares? Pam Anderson is NAKED!!!) The evil Congressionalist Army has taken over most of the country except for the small city of Steel Harbor, where Barb Wire has her biker-goth bar named The Hammerhead. It may seem like a far cry from Nazis, Morocco, and Rick’s place, but you can see the parallels.

When Barb Wire’s old boyfriend Axel shows up with his new wife Cora D, a resistance leader who is crucial to defeating the Congressionalists, it’s up to the augmented one to get the couple out of town to the safety of peaceful Canada. She does this by using lots of explosions and nudity in favor of secret dealings and innuendo, but the times have changed since 1942, and so have the movies. One can imagine film teachers in college screening “Barb Wire” and “Casablanca” for their students and asking them to write comparative essays on both movies. Perhaps this isn’t such a bad thing after all, as the Baywatch/V.I.P. star may even get some of the legions of her drooling fans to discover cinema by default.

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A friend of mine found the greatest velvet painting ever done when he went to Tijuana. It was a monster truck driving down the highway with Elvis and Jesus shaking hands in the clouds above it. This is symbolic on so many levels... Jesus taking the place of Nixon in the classic pose, the juxtaposition of the big rig on the endless road... Brilliant. Beautiful. True artistic genius. You can see it in your mind, can’t you? There’s something about the rich texture of airbrush on velvet that brings to mind a nostalgia for Mexican restaurants, hotel lobbies from the 1970’s, Tiki bars, naked women, big-eyed Keene children, American pop culture and clowns.

You can’t forget the clowns. Some people have particular velvet obsessions. There’s this one collector who only collects velvet Lionel Richies and has over 2 dozen different paintings. They range in portraits to full-body renderings. The guy goes to Mexico so regularly that he is now able to tell the difference between particular artists, noting that some of his “Lionels” were obviously done by the same person. I’m not making this up. I know you probably think that after my cartoon idea a few weeks ago about “Lionel Richie’s Mustache” that I’d make any excuse to mention the singer as often as I can... Well, that may be true, but... this isn’t B.S. There REALLY is someone out there with a collection of velvet Lionels. I’ll let you know if and when he puts them on display.

Probably the funniest velvet painting story I ever heard was told to me by Paul K., an art professor and a former member of the Los Angeles band The Imperial Butt Wizards. I noticed a giant velvet lobster painting he had up in his home and asked him where he got it. He told me: “The band was eating at this seafood place in Hollywood that had the painting prominently displayed over one of the tables. It was beautiful and we knew we had to have it, so we decided to steal the thing. They had it screwed into the wall, probably because of earlier attempts to heist the thing, so some planning had to be involved.

Our drummer and guitar player got ahold of some military outfits from World War II and decided to distract the maitre d’ while I secretly unscrewed the frame. My friends were making quite a scene, bothering customers with salutes and marching songs, and the staff was having a hard time trying to throw them out. Finally, I got the picture off the wall and we all bolted down the street with our prized velvet crustacean. The owner of the restaurant chased after us, screaming bloody murder. We all jumped in a van and drove away. We covered the van’s license plate with a cardboard sign that simply said: "LOBSTER”. This story might sound hard to believe, but I think it’s true. Paul has one of the world’s largest private taxidermy collections and used to blow up giant stuffed animals during his band’s performances. Stealing lobster paintings would not seem out of character for him at all.