July 19
 
 
 

I'm still so impressed with all the little tiny Turdmonsters I've got running around, I don't even mind when they gnaw on me at night.
 
 
 
 
 
 

I've been writing an awful lot about TV for someone who proclaims not to really watch any.  Last night, though, there was this show on VH1 about Def Leppard.  When I saw the commercial for it and learned that it was on at 9, I was all planning my evening around it.  I'm serious.  I played around upstairs on my laptop until about quarter to, and then became too excited to actually stay.  I came downstairs and flipped channels and jabbered happily, making popcorn and being annoying until it started.  My only reason for being even remotely interested in it is because, well, jesus, it's Def Leppard! The 7th Grade!  Alice, my best friend at the time and I were huge fans.  We had the posters, the Creem magazine, the records.  We listened to them with the obsessiveness only an 12 year old can muster up.  We guessed at "gunter glieben glauchen globen".   We had favorite band members.  Mine,coming in at a mere 17 or 18 years old, was the drummer, Rick Allen.

Who can say why pre teen girl crushes are formed? We were responding to something in the sexuality of a band before we really knew or understood what it was we were responding to, you know?  We were at the very cusp of a budding awareness of  something inside, not really fully getting exactly what it was.  In any case, Rick Allen did it for me.  Maybe because he was closest to my age.  Maybe because he wore those little tiny union jack shorts and nothing else and had to sit up there behind his drum kit with his legs all spread.  This is a perfect example of what I'm speaking of.  I have total recall of Alice and I sitting in the bedroom she shared with her (utterly obnoxious) younger sister.  In our hands, a Def Leppard calendar.  The month, March.  The photo?  Rick Allen.  Sweaty.  Legs apart.  Drumsticks in hand.  She and I, hyperventilating, trying to look up the shorts of the photo.  Retarded of us? Certainly, but we were 12.    Looking up the shorts of a teenaged rock star was the closest we were going to get to a fulfilling sexual experience at the time, and it was more than enough, but I digress.

I really, really liked Def Leppard.  They were cute in a way the other metal bands in the early 80's weren't.  They weren't too ridiculous, a la Twisted Sister (and please, don't get me started on that stupid Dee Snyder, he's a DJ for a local radio station here.  If he was even half as funny as he thinks he is, he'd be plenty damn funny.   Also, I do believe it's Dee the phrase "face for radio" described).  They didn't come off as a gang of misogynists, like Poison or Motley Crue.  They didn't seem titty hungry the way, say, Van Halen did.  They were just nice.  I'm pretty sure they weren't interested in being considered NICE.  Nice, to be fair, is not what a metal band is going for.  I do not believe that  horny 12 year old girls were exactly what they had in mind, but that's how old we were when Pyromania came out, and that's how it worked out.

Eventually, of course, we moved away from the metal thing when the ever fluffy  New Romantic bands came around a year or so later  Duran Duran?  They were sexual in a totally asexual way (except for that Andy.  Reer!)  and perfectly suited for the 'we're-still-not-ready-for-real-action-
so-the-bulge-in-Simon-LeBon's-speedos-in-the-Rio-video-is-enough' in us.  I became obsessed with Men at Work.  I found cuteness in a group of guys where no cuteness existed.   I squealed over their (utterly creepy:  have you ever looked at Colin Hay, the lead singer?  Have you taken a look at those eyes?  Those teeth?  Ugh.)  poster hanging over my bed.  I kissed it at night.  Oh, yes.  I did.

So, when an opportunity to watch the badly acted, "Jesus, look at the head on that guy! He's got midget head!! He's the biggest midget in the world!!  I can not believe they got THAT MIDGET HEAD FREAK to play my first love, Rick! He's gotta be pissssed!!"  VH1 rock story about Def Leppard comes around, you bet your ass I'm going to be glued to the TV.  We watch, inserting all appropriate snotty comments.  (Me:  "I see into your future, Def Leppard! I see a state fair in Connecticut...")  We are full of asshole-y things to say about this until it gets to The Scene.    You know the scene I'm talking about, of course, if you know anything about the band.  Here we  have Rick Allen, 20 or 21 years old, in a Corvette, driving under the influence of poppers (what do the kids call poppers these days? are they still poppers?), or what they've shown to be poppers, with his Jojo the dogfaced girlfriend by his side (bitter?  me?  get away from my boyfriend, bitch!)--she in fact, holding the vial under his nose, playing chicken or something (please note:  during the scene, they cut to a shot of the speedometer, which is shown to be going 80, when he's driving at his fastest.  80?  EIGHTY?  That's how fast he was going?  In A CORVETTE?  Man.  My Volvo would do more than that, and usually did.  But I'll say no more.  I think you understand.)  with another car who will not let him pass.  Next thing you see is the car crashing through a guardrail, flipping a few times in mid air, and landing in a ditch.

Lord help me, this is when it got funny.  They show the girlfriend wandering around like children of the corn and they pan into Rick, who's cut up and bleeding and--most importantly--has had his ARM RIPPED OFF.  He's mumbling "I'm a drummer! I'm a drummer!"  as two people (where DID they come from?)  run at him from  across the field.  The woman gets to his side, he's still mumbling, and she looks down at his...uhh....exposed shoulder bone all in the ripped apart leather jacket, and I lost my shit.  Nick and I guffawed.  We hooted.  It was perhaps the greatest moment on television.  Screw the moon landing.   Fuck the space shuttle disaster!  THIS IS TELEVISION, kids.  This, right here.  This lame-o, cheesy special effect of the ripped off arm.  The second funniest moment of TV history also belongs to this scene:    When the random running across the field guy goes off to call for help and scoots past the smashed Corvette and gets a look at the ARM outside on the ground.  He stops dead and just stares down at it like he's going to puke.  Holy shit, it was priceless.  The midget faced one armed bleeding guy, standing there in the field.  "I'm a drummer! I'm a ROCK STAR!"    There just aren't enough quality moments like that on television anymore.   It makes me sad.
 

The whole show was pretty awful.  ("Man, I'd be PISSED if I was any member of the band and I saw that THIS is what they're saying I look like!")  But awful in that way I love.  About a band I used to adore.  A band I wound up seeing at The Big E last fall.  My, how the mighty have fallen.
 
 
 
 
 

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I'd be your lover, if you were there
Put your hurt on me, if you dare
Such a woman, you got style
You make every man feel like a child, oh
You got some kinda hold on me
You're all wrapped up in mystery
So wild and free, so far from me
You're all I want, my fantasy