Longtime readers of the KOTCB blog will know that Rob "Meathead" Reiner has a lifetime pass on Clown Bell ringing due to his 1984 film "This Is Spinal Tap" which remains one of the most based and high-handed spankings ever delivered to Hollywood, celebrity culture and the "liberal" ethos (such as it is) in these United States of America. It matters not a whit that this evisceration of America's post-1973 corps was performed by comedic thespians possessed by the spirit of the times in an effort to ridicule the Anglo-Saxon, high testosterone, white supremacy of Heavy Metal Rock 'n Roll. This Mockumentary depicts the cultural revolution of "The 60's" and its degenerate 1970's aftermath with more unfiltered authenticity than reality itself. The unintended consequence of creating a work of art that gets interpreted by the audience in ways that the artist couldn't conceive of during production is a recurring source of merriment for the KOTCB and this project is a prime exhibit of this ironic phenomena. The truth is that the irrevocable ban on Clown Bell ringing directed at Rob Reiner is superfluous because no matter how hard he tries, and he tries pretty damn hard, the nepo-director, producer, screenwriter, actor, and liberal activist can never undo the lumbar puncture he inflicted on the sinistral nervous system. Diagnosis: Terminal.
"This Is Spinal Tap" was a collaborative effort including Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer who sketched out masterful improvisations to Riener's heartfelt questions and they also wrote and preformed a truly great collection of songs which play throughout the film. The soundtrack, released with a matte black record cover, is filled with hilarious songs like "Big Bottom," "Stonehenge" and "Gimme Some Money" that capture the quintessence of the British Invasion. For my purposes here I would like to focus on cut number 1 on side A of the record which is a catchy little ditty titled "Hell Hole" that truly conveys, in poetic form, something We the People have been living with since the year of its release (1984).
Hell Hole
The window's dirty/The mattress stinks/This ain't no place to be a man/Ain't got no future/Ain't got no past/And I don't think I ever can.
The floor is filthy/The walls are thin/The wind in howling in my face/The rats are peeling/I'm loosing ground/Can't seem to join the human race.
I'm living in a hell hole/Don't want to stay in this hell hole/Don't want to die in this hell hole/Girl, get me out of this hell hole.
I rode the jet stream/I hit the top/I'm eating steak and lobster tails/The sauna's drafty/The pool's too hot/The kitchen stinks of boiling snails.
The tax man's coming/The butler quit/This ain't no place t be a man/I'm going back to where I started/I'm flashing back into my pan.
It's better in a hell hole/You know where you stand in a hell hole/Folks lend a hand in a hell hole/Girl, get me back to my hell hole
I asked Grok AI for a synopsis of this song and the big brain algorithm went all Ted Kaczynski on me:
The writer of these lyrics, from Hell Hole by Spinal Tap, conveys a deep sense of disillusionment and alienation with modern life, contrasting the gritty familiarity of a "hell hole" with the superficiality of wealth and luxury. The first three verses depict a desolate, dehumanizing environment—marked by filth, isolation, and a sense of being stuck—where the narrator feels disconnected from society and trapped in a cycle of despair. The repeated plea to a "girl" to get him out suggests a desperate yearning for escape or salvation from this bleak existence. In the latter verses, the narrator briefly experiences a lavish lifestyle—jet streams, steak, and lobster—but finds it equally unfulfilling, with its own discomforts and instability, like a quitting butler and looming taxes. Ultimately, the writer suggests that the "hell hole," despite its hardships, offers a raw, authentic sense of community and clarity, making it preferable to the hollow opulence of a life that still fails to make one feel like a "man."
In 1984 I was living in Alston, MA in a hellhole on the ground floor of an apartment building which was robbed one afternoon by some enterprising criminal who busted through my bedroom window. Later that year I was robbed at knifepoint on the street by two fellow citizens in need of my money. A year after that I narrowly escaped being jumped by a crew of young hooligans who caught me at a phone booth (those still existed in 1986) at the back of a gas station parking lot but my 'spidey senses' were up and when they pounced I was fortuitously slipping through an open back door to safety. I also had a run-in with the mob when a guy in my crew pulled a hood ornament off of the wrong Cadillac and I was threatened with bodily harm until that mistake got fixed. And that's just 3 years in Boston from 40 years ago when the city, historic and beautiful though it is, was crawling with homeless lunatics, drug addled degenerates and criminals who lived in a symbiotic man-made ecosystem along with the police, courts and government social services industry.
FOURTY YEARS AGO! I'm describing Boston of the mid-1980's which was already 20 years in to the 50 Years Of Failure with 30 more years of this shit on deck. After Boston I lived in Washington DC, San Francisco and New York - also, a lot of time in L.A. - and even though I lived in the best locations those cities offered (Ward Circle, Telegraph Hill, UWS overlooking the Park) I still got robbed, assaulted and threatened in all of them on several occasions. The only dramatic turn around I ever experienced was the first 18 months of Rudy Giuliani's rule in NYC which taught me that civil order and relative safety can be imposed on a modern US city if the Mayor and his team have the political will to bust balls and hold the previously named parties (police, courts and social services) accountable. But even the resounding success of Giuliani's NYC cleanup did not prevent the people from turning on the Mayor who's approval rating had dropped to the high 30's in the days before the 9/11 terror attacks transformed him into "America's Mayor." To summarize: good deeds that require discipline and sacrifice are often resented and punished while terrorizing the people under a corrupt system often results in loyalty born of fear and a kind of self hatred that's difficult to comprehend.
Are American cities hellholes? Yes, but that's not news to anyone who hasn't been brainwashed into believing crime statistics from post-COVID lockdowns are a measure of safety. A person has to go back to a time that is almost extinguished from living memory but can be experienced through the simulacrum of pre-1965 films and magazines when the streets of American cities were safe. The cities have been hellholes for 5+ decades and the willingness of government bureaucrats, commie District Attorneys and compromised cops to run this elaborate extortion play on the citizens of our metropolis communities is an absolute disgrace. Fortunately, some Americans still remember what it was like to grow up in a safe and cohesive urban neighborhood and one guy in particular is determined to Make America Safe Again.
It's not going to be easy and a good amount of blood will likely be spilt to Make American Cities Hospitable And Pleasant Again (MACHAPA) but DJT and his supporters are nothing if not determined warriors. For example, battle tested Newt Gingrich identifies the longevity of the problem and fully supports Trump's bold action in an aptly titled thought piece: President Trump Confronts Corruption of Leftist Unions and Machine Politics To Save Washington and America’s Other Big Cities. The op-ed lists a number of cities including Washington DC, Boston and New York along with examples of their endemic corruption but ends with an observation on Chicago:
The next time you hear Governor Jay Robert “JB” Pritzker of Illinois complain about Mr. Trump’s anti-crime effort, take a look at the 2023 University of Illinois at Chicago report on city corruption.
The report, based on Justice Department data between 1976 and 2020, found that “Illinois remains the third most corrupt state in the nation,” and that the state’s federal Northern District, which includes Chicago and its surrounding suburbs, “is still the most corrupt metropolitan area in the country on a per capita basis.”
That report covers the 50 Years Of Failure and it singles out Chicago as the worst of some very bad places which, and this probably won't surprise you, is defended by its corrupt politicians as a wonderful place with no need of Federal help - unless that help is free money. Mayor Johnson signed a "largely symbolic executive order" titled the "Protecting Chicago Initiative" which does absolutely nothing to prevent the Federal Government from cleaning up Chicago. The Governor of Illinois, a fat ass named JB Pritzker, says that Chicago is fine, crime is down, everyone knows this and Trump doesn't even consult with him about the planned invasion of the New Confederacy.
Barack Obama who you might remember was a POTUS from Chicago is very concerned about the erosion of due process and civil liberties that might result by cleaning up the Windy City. It's funny to see the guy who lead a criminal conspiracy to deny his political opponents due process and trample civil liberties is now worried about protecting them as a principle. In his defense, the CIA didn't send BHO to Chicago until 1985 and he probably just coasted during his time in state politics checking off a to-do list that positioned him for the presidency. Barry Soetoro was living in Indonesia and Hawaii for the first 20 years of his life and doesn't have the childhood connection to "his city" so protecting the political machine is his top priority. But for Americans there is a memory, even if it only comes from old YouTube videos, nostalgic Pinterest boards and history podcasts, of a free country and we're willing to invade Chicago and every other hellhole city in America to rescue that spirit.
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