Off the Grid

They just don’t make scary movies like they used to. Maybe it’s because the ’10s are hell of a lot less dingy than the ’70s and early ’80s — or maybe it’s just because people ran out of ideas. Each time this year I am reminded one of the scariest movies of my youth — the 1983 b-movie (classic?), Curtains. Any movie involving a creepy porcelain doll and quite possibly the most terrifying mask I have ever seen deserves a second look. Even the trailer, cheesy narration aside, is pretty chilling.

While you’re at, check out this fantastic Modern Halloween mix tape (and some excellent holiday observational commentary) compiled by my blogger friend Steve Mavi. Some choice selections on here for the season.

The cabbage soup diet is billed as a diet ready-made to shed pounds quickly, efficiently and effectively. Unfortunately for people like my mother, it is not a seven-day stint of slurping a bland mixture of stock and veggies but rather a way of life–as if she may be preparing for nuclear war. I found the official Cabbage Soup Diet site on the Internet and was taken aback by the list of pros and cons. Case in point:

* You’ll lose weight fast
* The diet should not be adhered to for more than seven days
* The soup is bland
* People have reported feeling light headed, weak and have suffered from decreased concentration
*It provides a kick start to a moderate diet

Which is all precisely why my mother brews the soup on a bi-weekly basis and stock piles it in plastic tubs in the freezer. The eating is ritualistic. Soup has been a staple of her kitchen well before I came back to Chicago via Milwaukee. My girlfriend Tracy, before she moved to New York, used to amuse my mother by coming over and eating the cabbage soup, which I at first thought was equally amusing, but later found out that she actually liked the soup, with all of its nonexistent flavors and textures. Imagine.

More freezer burn.

The other day I found six tubs of it stacked amid an array of cleaning products including Pledge, Windex, some orange colored spray with Mr. Clean on the front, and a bottle of Simple Green. The juxtaposition struck me as both odd and obsessive. I immediately wondered if the two notions of “antiseptic” had aligned themselves in a blast of cosmic perfection. Did my mother spray the living room coffee table with waxy wood shine while juggling a bowl of soup in one hand and a rag in the other? My mother’s penchant for cleansing the system with cabbage can work congruently with such notions of cleaning the cabinets with Lysol. Then I began to wondering, “She has been doing this for so many years, hasn’t her life become as flat as the soup itself?”

Need salt?

I’ve tried the soup. It’s not bad after you shake about 30 hits of salt into it, some hot sauce and fresh ground pepper. Fresh slices of zucchini, carrots, onions and, ehem, cabbage all float their way around a flavorless broth. And while its freshness certainly stands on its own, I question the routine that she grinds herself in — cabbage and cleaning products alike. Is this a two or three-dimensional life? Sometimes I wonder. But then I think there has to be more to her private life than the demands of rigorous routines. After examining the soup, I went into the living room and started examining her self-styled DVD collection (which she is slowly upgrading to Blu-Ray). What I found was a laundry list of movies with dark undercurrents entrenched in sex, drugs, murder–hardly two-dimensional and bland at all. Among the head turners: Bright Lights, Big City (“There’s something I just connected with when I watched that movie,” she told me once while babysitting The Guys in Oak Park). Sure. Piles of coke, Keifer Sutherland, vodka martinis on lunch, 6 a.m. nightclub stints–very cabbage-centric, I see. Jagged Edge, The Door in the Floor, Against all Odds, Fatal Attraction–all of these titles are far exploratory cries away from the blandness of frozen soup or sponges.

So, what’s really going on underneath? Perhaps they are reminders of places I’ll never really see. Perhaps they are preludes to places she really wanted to go. But under the constraints of cabbage and cleaning and ticking time, I doubt either of us will ever see any of it fully realized. My mom’s been collecting cabbage soup for seven years–not seven days–too long to change now. Were there places she really wanted to go, ideas she wanted to explore? I only hope to never live with those same regrets. I’m working on it.

It seems as if the graveyard that was Santa’s Village is resurrecting its classy image with newfound glory. This week, the defunct amusement park in East Dundee, Ill., better known for snow globes and hayrides (I am not sure how the two ever converged) reopened as Azoosment Park. The latest article in the Chicago Tribune describes it as boasting, “an aviary, pony rides, and an assortment of exotic and domestic animals.”

When I heard the term “exotic animals” in correlation to the park, I immediately thought of an ex-boyfriend who I now fondly refer to as “exotic pet guy” even though I hardly held him in any kind of fond regard at the time of the break-up. He kept a boa constrictor in his bathroom, a sting ray by his nightstand and some reptilian thing near a glass bust of a human head. Maybe I was harboring resentment that “exotic pet guy” never took me on a date to Santa’s Village, because at the time, it was certainly still operating in all of its 1970s-inspired glory. Or perhaps it was ’60s inspired. Regardless, the last time I remember going there with my grandma and grandpa, it was well into the early ’90s, and by that time, grass and weeds and wildflowers had already started growing between the pavement of the concourse. Rides, like The Tarantula ( you may have ridden on its squid-like cousin, The Octopus, at the former Kiddieland Amusement Park in Melrose Park) creaked with squeaky movement, thirsty for oil and a new paint job. The sad eyes of the ride were chipped in at least 14 places. Not even the latest, garbled static from Paula Abdul could soften the noise.

But I didn’t care. I was 12 years old and all I wanted was to have my stomach turn again and again on old rides that made me laugh, even when I rode them by myself, which was often. The Tarantula had these curved, mechanical arms with spinning cars attached to the end of each one. The ride itself was supposed to resemble a giant, hairy arachnid. But framed by houses with faux icicles and plastic-snow dusted roofs, the big bug just looked dated and dead. The cotton candy machines (god, I HATE cotton candy) didn’t help. Everything smelled saccharine and sweet and I couldn’t help but wonder why no one had bothered to give any love back to such a mismatched place of themes and rusted rail cars.

Ornament Ride, a mid-summer day's dream.

The park, I remember, was divided into three distinct “worlds“ that had nothing in common: Coney Island (hot dogs, a hazardous roller coaster and balloon-dart carnival games); Old McDonald’s Farm (because who doesn’t love a good pig race?); and the flagship Santa’s World, which was always the most dated and freakish world of all. Plastic reindeer looked as if they could melt beneath summer heat while Christmas lights blinked in irregular beats even in bright daylight. And instead of Spinning Teacups, Santa’s World featured Spinning Snowballs that were painted in a powder blue and accented with exaggerated dark sparkles that reminded me of a family outing at Amling’s off of North Avenue. The snowballs had not been painted in years either, and I would watch as maybe three or four people boarded the ride each time, leaving a slew of empty cars rotating on empty time.

I almost forgot about the creepy snowman.

I use the term empty time here because going to Santa’s Village reminded me of lost time. And lost time, of course, is empty because there is no way to refill it. I suspect that the latest incarnation on the former Santa’s Village site will not carry such mismatched and unloved allure. I suspect it will be plastered with brightly colored signs, serve food from corporate food vendors and probably smell like poop. I suspect I won’t be paying a visit and instead keep my memories of me, laughing alone on The Tarantula, always safely guarded.

Santa sure looks hot to me.