Page M6 Juneé,1990, This Week

HUMOR

The King was ahead of his time
when it came to channel hopping .. .

here are two things I will always love about
Elvis Presley. One is the way he sang
That's Alright Mama. The other is the way
he shot up television sets.

Story goes that whenever Elvis played Vegas,
there was an unspoken understanding with the hotel
management that the King might need a new TV on
very short notice. In fact it wasn’t inconceivable that
he might require two or even three new ones sent up
to his suite in a single night. That’s because when it
came to channel changing, Elvis was ahead of his

time.

If he was watching TV and
somebody came on that he
didn’t like, ol’ Elvis would
haul out a gold-plated Colt 45,
squint down the barrel and
dust that program — and the
TV tube — straight into va-
cuumland. Legend has it that
the TV icon Elvis most en-
joyed blowing away was Ro-
bert Goulet, but that’s proba-
bly too delicious to be true.

I can’t count the number of

times I’ve wanted to shoot my
television — or at least put a
Greb Kodiak through the
screen. I never do it, of course.
You have to be rich or psycho-
pathic to get away with that.

Toward the end there, Elvis
kind of had both bases cov-
ered.

My TV isn’t the only hunk
of hardware that fuels my
homicidal fantasies. I’ve often
dreamt of drop-kicking my

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Ronson electric, cuffing my
clock radio and slap-shooting

‘my bedside alarm clock right

out the bedroom window. My
eight foot Amana side-by-side
is too massive for a simple,
unarmed frontal assault, but
that doesn’t stop me from en-
tertaining reveries of dropp-
ing a burning tractor tire over
its top and necklacing the
mother into the big display
room in the sky.

What characteristics do all
of the aforementioned chunks
of technology share? Trea-
chery. They have all, at one
time or another, betrayed me.
Usually when I needed them
most. Not being rich — or
owning a gold plated Colt 45
— I have forgiven, but not
forgotten.

But I’ve got a hunch the day
of reckoning is at hand. In
Atlanta, Georgia there is a
place called The Bullet Stop.
It’s a shooting range where
you are the hunter and the
quarry is — well, your sock-
eating washing machine,
maybe. Or perhaps that stu-
pid toaster that skims burnt
crusts across your kitchen
like a skeet shoot. At Bullet
Stop you can rent shotguns,
handguns, semi- and full au-
tomatics and then proceed to
riddle the utility of your
choice. And some of them are
rougher than they look. One
disgruntled housewife lit into
her vacuum cleaner with a
Thompson submachine gun.
It absorbed 50 rounds before
it finally hoovered its last.

Is mankind about to over-
throw the technological ty-
rant? Last month some Pasa-
dena, California neighbors
threw the world’s first Sledge-
Q-Matic Party. Participants

NOT CONTENT WITH SHAKING up the music scene, Elvis was
no dog when if came jo figuring out the best way to handle

trash television.

gathered up all the machines
in their lives that either didn’t
work or performed perversely,
put them in a big pile and
then kicked hell out of them.
Balky gizmos that breathed
their last at this year’s
Sledge-O-Matic included a

self-winding wristwatch that
didn’t, a cassette player still
non-functional after nine cord
replacements and a color TV
that went on the fritz during
the NCAA Final Four Basket-
ball Playoffs. Where are these
aberrant appliances now?
Ground to techno-rubble,

every one.

Frankly, I like the concept
— and I approve of Bullet
Stop too. So would Ned Ludd.
Ned was a splendid anarchist
who led a band of merry
pranksters through the north
of England in the early 1800s,
smashing textile machines
wherever they found them.
The Luddites lost the battle of
course. The Industrial Revo-
lution swallowed us all, and
sometimes when I’m sitting in
a car that won’t start, or an
elevator that won’t elevate or
contemplating the gray, blank
stare of a computer monitor

that’s just eaten my newspa-

per column, I dream of throw-
ing my own Sledge-O-Matic
party and inviting Ned and
his gang.

It would be a grand bash.
We'd have music.

Elvis, of course.
~ On a hand-cranked Victro-
la.

colts me SS SS,

= ee

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