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OK Soda pt. 2

Script

In 1998 something wonderful happened.  I found a two liter of OK Soda in the back of a refrigerator at a church.

I’d been pining for my long lost favorite beverage ever since it’s discontinuation three long years prior, so the occasion was momentous.

The church was Hope Lutheran North, the church of my youth, and I was in the kitchen doing something with the youth group, of which I was an active and enthusiastic member.  I believe we were washing dishes for some reason.

No doubt bored and off task I perused the fridge, moved aside some ancient industrial grade Ranch Dressing and . . . there it was, shining like a fructose diamond.

I exclaimed, blasphemously, “Oh my god!  It’s a two liter of OK Soda, the preferred drink of my slightly youthier youth!  Dave! It’s OK Soda!”

Dave Newman was there. You know Dave, right? He was also excited.

We were about to drink it, when cooler heads prevailed.  We didn’t know the shelf life of this stuff and posterity was to be considered.  We would hide the two liter bottle of OK Soda for future generations, a kind of obscure time capsule.

We hid it.

But I do not recall where.

I want that two liter of OK Soda, future generations be damned.

And so I intend to find it.  This is the story of my quest.

I woke up in a comfortable queen bed, top floor of the two-story stack of wood and love I call home, next to a mysterious woman I’d married five years earlier, feeling like a twice baked potato on its third time around.

I’m not getting any younger – none of us are, of course – and I’d slept more fitfully than a speed-freak in a bed bug motel.

I’d been dreaming.  Nightmares, if you must know, of a bittersweet nature, like a snickerdoodle cookie dipped in chew spit.

My nightmares were of that twistedly wistful nature, the kind that make a fella pine for the past and dread the future and maybe feel a bit squeamish about the present to boot…hopeless and dark.  They were dreams of cola – OK Soda, to be precise – and I’d been having them a lot lately.  It seems I was being stalked by some kind of ironic, sticky liquid ghost, and he had a chip on his shoulder the size of Duane “The Rock” Johnson after he’s been shot with the laser that made the baby so big in Honey, I Blew Up the Kids, the sequel to the hit film, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids starring Rick Moranis.

“I can’t go on like this,” I whispered to myself, staring at the darkly handsome reflection in my bathroom mirror.  “These minor disturbances are getting me down a little.”

The dreams, I knew, were the result of some unfinished business, an end from the past hanging looser than re-wrapped roll of cheap gas station bathroom toilet paper, and just as dirty.  Slightly less dirty, maybe, if I’m being honest.

Some 20 odd years ago I’d hidden a treasure, and ever since that treasure had been calling out to me from whichever nook of Hope Lutheran Church I’d stashed it in.  I’d forgotten the exact location due to the slow creep of father time, a couple dozen pounds of Pan’s Spinach, and a whole ocean of old Uncle Sloppy’s Fun Fun Milk.

Also, you know, it was a fairly minor issue in the grand scope of things. Like, when you really think about it.

But it was time. Time to revisit the old haunts and track down that liquid sugar nugget like a mad hunter on the trail of the ever elusive chupacabra, consequences be damned.  Time to creep back inside of the sand brown brick walls and bland early 90s Protestant décor of the church I’d frequented in my youth, a church that held countless other secrets, undoubtedly, like, well, none come to mind.  Lutherans, you know?  But I was sure they were there, and wrapped in those other unspecified secrets would be my treasure – an aged 2 liter bottle of OK Soda.

Why did I need this particular 2 liter bottle of soda?

Why indeed. 

I’m a wistful man, always have been. Don’t like it, you can beat feet, that’s what I say.  And when a wistful man latches on to a thing it becomes more than a thing, more than a billion billion atoms smashed together in the shape of a soda bottle or a McDonald’s toy or a worn old t-shirt.  It becomes a part of him, a reference point, a seed from which various, unanticipated tendrils can grow, tendrils that claw their way into his psyche and sprout unimagined flowers, flowers that disseminate pollen and a stink, but the good kind of stink, and cause more seeds and more tendrils and more good stink and occasionally a bee will come by and . . . I’m getting carried away. What I mean to say, if you’ll humor me just a bit longer, is that the wistful man is always seeking to explain himself to himself and to do that the wistful man must go back to the seed and trace the tendrils.

Why does the wistful man seek to explain himself? Ego and all the rest of that nonsense, I suppose, but also a sense of something greater in the world, something magical, transcendent, and if the seeds can be explained – catalogued and repossessed, understood – if that can happen then, well, maybe they’ll be some explanation of all of the rest of this rotten, good for nothing, scabies addled street bum we call life.

Anyway.  I kissed the wife and kid goodbye, threw on my coat, and hit the pavement to hunt down a ghost or chupacabra or seed or whatever I was calling it a moment ago.  It ain’t easy juggling all of these metaphors and similes.

I rolled my beat up old silver Ford Taurus – the one that looks like a million other silver Ford Taurus’s in this ranky dank town, dents and all – northward, like an obese, forlorn goose trailing the vee by a stretch on its way to Canada for the sunny season, over rivers of blacktop, past split level ramblers and old elm trees, towards my youth, like a time traveler, except it was only like 10 minutes away.

I began to see the sights burned into my subconscious – Fargo North High School, Hornbacher’s Foods, my Mom’s house, some gas stations I remember, a baseball field or some such thing.

And then I was pulling into the parking lot of Hope Lutheran Church, the haystack from which I hoped to withdraw my needle.  I parked, full of trepidations.  What mysteries awaited me?  What truths would I be confronted with?  Would I have to engage in small talk with someone I barely remember?

“Fuck it,” I snarled, exited the car and strode up to the door.

I took a deep breath, centered myself, grabbed the door handle and pulled.

It was locked.

Oh, well, just a bottle of soda. No big deal.

I went home and took a nap.

The end.

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OK Soda pt. 1

Script

I was 11 for all but two days of 1994.  It was a momentous personal era – formative – and youth time is approximately 42 times longer than adult time.  The things I remember from that year – events, movies, tv, products, friends, the basic minutiae of life – seem to be more than 365 days could possibly contain.

I can think of a few explanations for this.

  1. That’s just the way memory works.  Certain years imprint on you more than others.  11 years old seems to be a common time for that to happen.
  2. My family moved.  Just a few blocks away, but when you are young, your neighborhood is your world.  Friends are based on proximity more than anything, so moving means new friends, more often than not, and new friends can mean a wholly new lifestyle.  This was the case for me.  The move from 27th Avenue North to Woodcrest Drive marked the change from the Courtney Shattuck years to the Jeff Edlund years.
  1. In early 1994 I was in sixth grade at Longfellow Elementary School, the “good” public elementary school.  We were very wholesome.  Kids. The biggest scandal that year involved Scott Winjum being suspended for igniting a single match in the boy’s bathroom.  Then there was summer and the move.  By the end of the year I was in Junior High School, and the so called “kids” from Horace Mann Elementary were finger banging each other and smoking cigarettes. It was a real shock.
  2. My tastes were changing.  I was shifting away from consuming whatever, culturally, appeared in front of me to seeking out particular things, developing taste.  I went from Richard Marx singing about waiting for his beloved over synths to, mostly, guitar heavy songs about being sad. I’m still not sure that was an improvement.

So the beginning of 1994 and the end of it really seem like two different lifetimes.  Lifetimes which carved many lasting wrinkles in my juvenile brain meat.

Here’s an incomplete list of things I remember, which I’m setting to Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start” the fire, even though that’s a little on the nose and a total cliché.  That song was a big part of my life in 1994 – Billy Joel was so omnipresent at this point, he seemed like a neighbor – so I think it fits.

All right.  Here we go.

“We Didn’t Start the Fire”

Bill Clinton, Special K, hot pockets microwaved
Courtney Shattuck, Jeff Edlund, Longfellow.

Rock and Cindy Messerschmidt, mini van, television
Chad and Ryan, mom’s cryin’, Super Nintendo

Michael Jordan, Scotty Pippen, Mugsy Bogues, Cal Ripkin
Forrest Gump, Goldeneye, Airheads, True Lies.

Elementary’s ending, Junior high, I’m a tween,
Lite Rock 105, family moved to Woodcrest Drive

I didn’t start the fire
I was only eleven
just a passive observer
I didn’t start the fire
All in all
94 was a good year

Full House, Family Matters, Step by Step, TGIF
Hulk Hogan, Bryan Adams, not a good Woodstock

Quiz Show and the Crow, I gave jerking off a go,

Green Day, Offspring, alternative rock

Simpsons, Frasier Crane, Sister Sister, Major Payne
Sleep Overs, Duckman, Ace Ventura, Kerrigan

Harding, Gingrich, Ross Perot, Make a Wish
Mountain Dew, Big League Chew, I got my own room

I didn’t start the fire
I was only eleven
just a passive observer
I didn’t start the fire
All in all
94 was a good year

Peter Paruccinni was my friend, so were Erik Vosseteig,

Paul, Cody, Josh, and Tony, Jake Schaan and Ben

West Acres, Hornbachers, moldy fruit in my locker

Kurt Cobain, suicide, Jeff Edlund bought Insesticide

Buddy Holly, Weezer, baseball with Peter
Juji Fruits, husky jeans, swimming in a white t

U2, Wisconsin Dells, Stephen King, Dad yells
Watched scrambled porno, read Crichton’s Congo

I didn’t start the fire
I was only eleven
just a passive observer
I didn’t start the fire
All in all
94 was a good year

Grisham, REM, Mr. Discher teaches gym
SNL, Lutherans, Wings in the basement

Computers, Castlevania, Jim Carrey Mania
Ben Franklin Junior High, I was still pretty shy

More kids, school dance, some kids say they’re having sex,
Sixth grade, I got all a’s, I also did in seveth grade!

I didn’t start the fire
I was only eleven
just a passive observer
I didn’t start the fire
All in all
94 was a good year

This song has too many verses
I bought Pearl Jam’s versus,
Farley, Spade, Myers, Saturday Night Live
Cute girls take a pass, Wes Staton’s in my class

“Wheel of Fortune”, Billy Joel, Metallica, Tootsie Roll
Lego sets, homeless vets, AIDS, crack, Bernie Goetz
Hypodermics on the shores, China’s under martial law
Rock and roller cola wars, I can’t take it anymore

I didn’t start the fire
I was only eleven
just a passive observer
I didn’t start the fire
The year is gone,

But it still lives on thanks to this song

I didn’t start the fire
I was only eleven
just a passive observer
I didn’t start the fire
All in all
94 was a good year

I didn’t start the fire
I was only eleven
just a passive observer
I didn’t start the fire
All in all
94 was a good year

Anyway, I tell you all of that to get to this.  Somehow, OK Soda is a kind of synecdochye, a part of a thing that wholly represents all of it, for 1994 and my experience within it.

Even typing the words OK Soda fills me with oceans of sticky sweet nostalgia.

Ok Soda was a soda.  A pop, as most folks call it up here – it’s shameful what we’ve done with language – made by the good folks at the Coca Cola Corporation, dreamed up by the same ad wizards that created New Coke, the Coke that tasted like a Pepsi. Full caloried sodas were all the rage back then, as the boomers hadn’t yet caught the health food bug.  It was wreaking havoc on everyone as has pretty much everything the boomers did and didn’t do. Also many things they kind of did. As a result, everybody in 1994 was hideous – bloated and pallid, capped by fluffy hair, wearing either long sleeve, white collared polos with pleated khakis or Big Johnson t-shirts and jeans so grotesque you wouldn’t believe me if I described them to you.

Ok Soda was created for one purpose – to obtain the spending money of the cynical slackers known a Generation X. These plaid clad sneering lay-abouts were hip to the wiles of the advertisers thanks to such rabble rousers as John Cusack, Howard Zinn, Chester Cheetah, and their droll, aged but fearless leader, Kurt Loder, so a new tact was needed.

The tact was this: go meta.  Gen X loved meta.  They wore shirts that said loser and zero, for cripes sake.

So, meta the Coca Cola Corporation went, as far as a massive multi-national corporation can go, anyway, which is to say, they designed some interesting packaging and pushed out a few droll commercials.  Also, there was a phone number, which we’ll get to.

The advertising campaign went something like this: It took the form of a fifties commercial – a cheery male voice and some upbeat Tijuana Brass style background music. But, instead of doing you the tremendous solid of informing you of the many health benefits of Lucky Strike cigarettes – and they’re so Smooooooth! – the voice was, gasp!, telling you that nothing matters and everything is artifice, but not even that matters and things are going to be OK.  Irony, I believe it’s called, though, you know, let’s not get into the definition of irony.

Here’s a clip of one of those commercials:

(commercial)

God, don’t you just want to drink whatever soda it is they’re selling?  To hold a cold or even room temperature can of that unremarked upon beverage in your prepubescent fist and be a part of that blissful indifference and hip cynicism? I do.

And the packaging!  My god, it was and is something to behold.  I have an empty can sitting on my shelf and I still get lost in its studied, market tested, expensive lo-fi coolness.  There’s a Daniel Clowse drawing on it!  Daniel Clowse!  He’s a guy from the underground that people know! It’s silver with black print and a few red highlights, so Coke basically, but cool Coke.  The Clowse drawing is of a dazed looking young man staring right at you with blank, hypnotized eyes. Another can has a bored looking man with, blank, unhypnotized eyes.  Yet another can has a dazed looking woman with blank, gypsy eyes.  Yet another has a sort of Picasso type face and yet another has a weird red man in a bowler hat. Collect ‘em all!

On the back there’s a UPC code over a guy’s face as if to say, “We’re all just products in corporate America.” Whoa. And then on the top it says “Ok Soda says, “Don’t be fooled into thinking there has to be a reason for everything,” with just a few more quotation marks than you might expect. Sooooo, subversive. 

There are also a couple of comics panels – the bland, vaguely sad hip graphic novel type that maybe make people think, not the fun kind that make people happy. Very thought provoking. Very deep. As if that weren’t enough there’s a numbered coincidence, to make you feel like you should probably find a way to hear about the other coincidences.  Mine says:

(coincidence)

And if you look really closely there are all kinds of wry nods at anti-commercialism on there!  Easter eggs, I guess they’d be called today. I adore anti-commercialism and will pay any amount of money, buy any product, to make that known!  I’m such a 90s kid!

I’d love nothing more than to kick back on a Friday night and crack open a sixer of OK Sodas with my pals Eddie Vedder and Pam from the Real World San Francisco and talk in low tones about how much we hate corporations while seated in a tucked away corner of a party we’re too cool for! And I realize that this probably comes off as sarcastic, but I promise you that this sounds like heaven on earth to this old Dad’s ears. As a 90s kid, I simply cannot help but sound sarcastic at all times. It’s a real burden.

There was also a phone number, as I mentioned, 1-800-IFEELOK.  You could call and leave a message about some wild coincidence that occurred while you were guzzling OK Soda or just listen to the messages of other dedicated consumers, in case you were feeling alone in your fandom or just in general, I guess.

Anyway, for all of my life, right up until just moments ago, I assumed this was a national campaign. But I was wrong.  Turns out, Fargo, where I live and lived, was a test market for OK Soda, which might be why it imprinted so strongly, not just on me, but everyone my age give or take from around here.  We’re not a test market for a lot of things, as far as I know.  We had OK vending machines and the grocery stores were fully stocked with cleverish OK displays.  There were radio ads.  Television ads.  Newspaper ads.

The target marketing was so effective because it was pointed right at me, like a diabetes gun or a childhood obesity crossbow or a cavity axe.

Well, maybe not right at me.  I think I fell a bit short age-wise of their target market, but I also don’t think the target market fell for their campaign.  I didn’t have quite as many defenses up.  Just about no defenses, actually, outside of a lack of funds.

Now, it’s entirely possible I only drank OK Soda a handful of times.  It wasn’t around for long, I never purchased anything on my own, and I can’t imagine my parents were keeping it stocked.

But it feels like I drank it all the time.

And somehow it felt like a revelation.  A soda is a strange place to first experience counter culturalism in a meaningful way, but combined with everything else that was happening around that time, this was how I met the resistance.

Wry and disillusioned felt right to me.

The drink itself was completely beside the point of course, although I liked it.  Tasted like Suicide, where you pour all of the options in a fountain machine into one cup, which I was already doing regularly.  They hardly mentioned the actual product in the ad except to call it fruity and curious, whatever that means.

But the ad campaign spoke to new possibilities that I’d yet to consider.  I called the phone number constantly, mostly from the payphone at El Zagel golf course, where I’d often play a sloppy 9 holes with friends.

I’d also attempt to call phone sex numbers, specifically one called 1-800-WET-BUTTS, which we all found hilarious because it is hilarious.

I was so enthralled with OK Soda that I set out to co-opt it to fund a boat I hoped to make, for some reason.  Jeff Edlund and I had decided we should have a boat to sail down the Red River, a raft, to be more precise, which would be powered by a motor I’d make without any knowledge of motors from a toy motor kit I’d received for my birthday.  It would never work, but no one told us this.

Jeff’s mom Patty bought us all the OK Soda you could fit in a Sam’s Club cart and we set up a soda stand – kind of like a lemonade stand but with soda and helmed by two homely tween boys far too old to be doing such a thing – and went about raising the funds for lumber.

We made a surprising amount of money, but I’m not sure what happened to it.  There was never a boat, which is probably why I’m still alive to tell you all of this.  The strong currents of the mighty Red surely would have sent us to our great reward.

Like my attempt to build a boat, OK SODA was a non-starter and was discontinued in 1995.  Apparently the gen-xers were too busy smoking cigarettes and drinking cheap beer to go in on a dubiously flavored soda.

I think they made a terrible mistake, but they also gave us Pavement, so I’ll let it slide.

Anyway, I’m not sure I’ve successfully explained why OK Soda is so ingrained in my very being.  A foundational text, laser printed on aluminum.  But we’ll get there, I hope, in the thrilling prologue to all of this, next time on The Irrationally Exuberant.

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Iceberg Slim

Reid discusses Iceberg Slim and whether a white person can portray the black experience with his guest co-host, Foam Chomsky, a puppet.

Script:

Welcome to The Irrationally Exuberant. On today’s episode we’ll be looking at the life of Iceberg Slim – and for you white people in the audience, no, that’s not some kind of lettuce based diet.

FC: Jesus. What are you doing?

Ladies and gentlemen, that disapproving voice you’re hearing is my guest co-host for the first portion of this episode – Foam Chomsky, the skeptical puppet.

FC: Full disclosure. I’m not really a puppet. There’s no puppet here. I’m just Reid doing a dumb voice to represent his own doubts and insecurities. It’s not a very original gimmick.

Oh, wow, Foam Chomsky, I didn’t think we were going to reveal that to the listeners.

FC: You wrote it into the script, champ.

Right. Now, you were asking what I’m doing. I’m introducing the topic of the show. Iceberg Slim, real name Robert Beck, a notorious pimp from the 1930s and through the 50s who eventually became a prolific author and activist.

FC: Yeah. What are you doing?

A comedy podcast about Iceberg Slim.

FC: You, a middle class white 35 year old male living in Fargo, North Dakota are going to do a COMEDY podcast about an African American PIMP. You, Reid Messerschmidt, are going to make COMEDY about sexual violence against women, human trafficking, and racial stereotypes – in 2018 – without any black folks or women contributing? Just you and me, a dumb gimmick that is also just you.

That was my intention, I guess. I’m the only one that ever contributes to the show. It’s my show. And I just read Slim’s book, Pimp, and thought it was really interesting and bizarre and funny in its own horrifying way, so I wanted to talk about it. Sure I’m all of those things you said, but I recently read A Fire Next Time by James Baldwin and The Autobiography of Malcolm X and The Murder of Joe Louis and Whoreson by Donald Goines and Sing Unburied Sing by Jesmyn Ward and I watched What Happened Miss Simone about Nina Simone and Dutchman by Amiri Baraka. I tried to cram in a lot of black culture and I think I’m pretty sensitive to the plight of women in an ostensibly patriarchal society – I consider myself a Feminist. So I think I’m . . . I think I’m good.

FC: You think you’re good, huh? Was that list meant to impress everyone?

Kind of, I suppose. But I did . . .

FC: You think that reading a bunch of books is somehow going to give you an inside track on the black experience?

I’ve watched The Wire twice.

FC: EVERYONE HAS WATCHED THE WIRE TWICE! Let me ask you this: How many black friends do you have? REAL friends.

There’s Torie at work, I like her a lot, and Robert that I used to work with, and I’m always happy to run into Peterson. I dated a black girl once. There are several I really enjoy on Facebook.

FC: REAL FRIENDS, REID!

None. But I live in Fargo! The options are limited! And I don’t make new friends easily.

FC: Right. But no black friends. So what gives you the right to make comedy about any facet of the black experience?

Well, I like to think that it’s the human experience.

FC: But sometimes you are very, very dumb. Remember when you thought that Michael J. Fox sang “For the Longest Time”?

I was just a kid! But I suppose that the fact that I had any opinion or thought about “Longest Time” proves how white I am.

FC: Wrong! Your opinions of or response to Billy Joel have nothing to do with race. Everyone knows about Billy Joel. You think black people don’t know about Billy Joel? I guess an argument could be made that Billy Joel is white culture, but you don’t think that black people know about white culture? How could they possibly avoid it? They’re drowning in it!

Well . . . did you notice that I watched Dutchman? Not even for the first time! That’s, like, advanced studies. And I really think I get it! It’s about how white culture – liberal, liberated white culture – sexualizes and gaslights black folks, drawing them in and pushing them away, criticizing them for being both not white enough and not black enough. And then punishing them when they act out in a way the way that we’d been goading them into the whole time. I see myself in it, see my own flaws. I’m culpable. It’s chilling stuff, Foam Chomsky.

FC: But you’re still making this COMEDY podcast about Iceberg Slim, and you’re going to dwell on the parts that adhere to atrocious racial stereotypes because that is what he’s primarily known for. Oh, sure, maybe you’ll have a few seconds where the music maybe gets a little slower and you’ll talk about how he changed his ways and became something of a force for civil rights and a good guy. Why not do the show about Amiri Baraka, if you’re so taken with him, or, better yet, James Baldwin?

Well, I don’t find them very funny. It’s hard to make comedy out of people you hold up on a pedestal.

FC: Well, why don’t you do one on Roy Orbison? He’s hilarious and right in your wheelhouse.

I’m working on an episode about Roy Orbison. But I don’t want this just to be a parade of white guys. It’s a double edged sword, if I may use a cliché. May I use a cliché, Foam?

FC: I’ll allow it.

Either this show is 100% white people, which seems wrong, or I, as a white man, am representing a group that I don’t have the right to speak for, which is wrong.

FC: Are you aware that there’s no law on the books stating that every white guy that finds himself amusing has to have a podcast or “be heard” by the broader public?

I am. But . . . I’m really funny. And I like doing this. And people seem to like hearing it. What if, say, Philip Roth had never put pen to paper just because he was a white male?

FC: Oh, lord. First, Philip Roth was a Jew. Second, Philip Roth was a genius. You’re no genius. Third, the answer to your question is nothing. What if Philip Roth had never put pen to paper? Nothing, probably. The world would go on almost exactly like it is now.

That’s fucking depressing.

FC: That’s nothing. If we never heard from one of you ever again, I’m pretty sure we’ve got enough to last a lifetime. Between Roth and Updike and a thousand Jonathan’s and literally almost every popular artist of all time, I’m pretty sure we’ve got our understanding of the white, male, middle class experience wrapped up.

But that’s why I want to do Iceberg Slim! It’s outside of that experience!

FC: Fair enough, but reading a couple black authors is not the same as understanding something, and I think we’re seeing what reacting to a thing without a full understanding of it will get you in this day and age. And we’ve barely touched on the glorification of sexual violence and human trafficking implicit in this story. That’s a whole other bag of potatoes.

But I read all the books and watched the things!

FC: And you enjoyed them, right?

Hmmmm. (whining) Yes. Very much so. The black community has truly given the world most of its greatest art. There seems to be an almost biblical sense of peril and magic running through Ellison, Baldwin, Baraka, and Simone. (sigh) You’re very wise, Foam Chomsky. Alright, I guess I’m going to do an episode about Roy Orbison – right after a commercial break!

Stay with me!