I Let It All In!

A Sunday essay about filling your hands with pop culture

Let it all in! At some point, I must have decided this. The 1980s deluge of TV shows like Alf and movies like Weird Science and Zapped! (A lot of exclamation marks crept in on the back of that decade).

Schmaltz, trash, lite — we used to hear words like these, and melodrama too, and it was meant to signal something ‘bad’. But no! These are honest feelings writ large in neon. And when you learn about John Waters, or watch Mommie Dearest, or read Clan of the Cave Bear alongside Quest for Fire, and have grandparents watching variety TV shows, and Benny Hill and That’s Incredible! …well, suddenly it seems so.

When I was at primary school, I wanted the Optimus Prime transformer and a silver That’s Incredible! jacket. I didn’t get either of those things, but I had Masters of The Universe and a huge collection of Smurfs, and books for Africa, as we used to say. And I listened to almost every kind of music — and that happened quickly.

I must have said to myself, “Let it all in!” At some point.

And I’m saying it still.

The TV movie, the novelisation, the op-shop tribute album where surf-rock band The Ventures plays instrumental covers of The Carpenters. All of these things as important in their way as The Godfather, The Rolling Stones, and War & Peace. More so to me. Especially these days. Michael Mann’s best movies are just remakes of his earlier failings. And the music from Taxi and The Young and The Restless and the theme song from Cheers and the TV show Alice and the 1981 Guinness Book of Records where I learned that a man took a month to eat a small plane.

I let it all in.

And I’m still trying to do that.

I have my own floodgates. And if something is not allowed in, I genuinely think it cannot be worth it. That’s someone else’s runoff. Be it Taylor Swift, or How I Met Your Mother. Those things are doing fine without me. Robbie Williams could not believe I thought he was shit. But he is shit. So utterly. So thoroughly. So, fuck him, and his dumb-cunt music for absolute idiots. It’s all National Government approved in New Zealand which is the final clue it’s for morons.

But me and my bad taste? We’re fine. We’re swirling in worlds where Bobby McFerrin is so much more than just Don’t Worry, Be Happy; where Larry Bird and Rod McKuen and Ripley’s Believe It Or Not all have exclamation marks. Where Cyndi Lauper is on hair and makeup for everyone, and Bless The Beasts And Children plays on a loop on a big screen in a bar where everybody knows you’re lame! And all the people are insane! (Sing it!)

And that’s the new normal for us all.

Where you can listen to all ten minutes of Disco Inferno by The Trammps, and all you ever hear is how hard that hi-hat is going. Where you post your story and it gets three likes. And that is enough to warm your heart, to keep you going; to remember that Karen Carpenter died on her parents’ bedroom floor.