Holy Bee of Ephesus

#115. “Streets Of Philadelphia” — Bruce Springsteen
The Holy Bee used to love going to movies. In the early nineties, a typical evening-show ticket was between five and six dollars. Matinees dipped as low as $3.5o. I probably watched two movies per week in a theater (and that total increased in late 1995, when I began working at a theater and could watch films to my heart’s content free of charge. More on that later.) Whatever the “big” movie was in any particular week, I was most likely in attendance. December/January was especially busy, what with all the Oscar-bait. (The weeks just before and just after the “summer blockbuster” season are probably the worst movie months. I was one of the maybe two dozen unfortunate souls who saw Folks! in the theater, just because I wanted to “go the movies” that night, and had already seen the other seven films playing at the Cinemark Movies 8.)

Tombstone was the movie I was excited about around this time, and I made a point of seeing it on Christmas Day, but Philadelphia was the big, prestigious Oscar-bait movie of the December ’93/January ’94 season. Like many “important” movies of that era, I let it wash over me without forming any strong opinions one way or another. I was a “movie-goer,” not yet a true film fanatic. That’s one of many evolutions the Holy Bee would undergo through 1994-95. These changes also included moving from a detached admiration for the work of Bruce Springsteen to full-blown fandom. Bruce was going through a rough patch at this time. The E Street Band was on hiatus, and the reviews for his ’92 double album release were middling. The muted, synth-heavy ballad “Streets of Philadelphia” won the Oscar for Best Original Song and put Bruce on the road to revival. (I still like Tombstone better than Philadelphia, and you know you do too.) Continue reading →

[2021 Ed. Note: I noticed in my website’s stats that this entry in the Playground series got a look the other day, and when I went back to re-read it…holy cats, is it tone-deaf and clueless about the R&B of the 90s, particularly the stuff by female artists. Rest assured, I have grown and learned in the decade since I first wrote this. I’ll leave it up, but this is not my proudest moment.]

I had been under the impression that my playlist followed the mainstream pretty closely, but clearly I was mistaken. Even as my memory faithfully recorded me as a tiny part of a massive movement — everyone blissing on the same tunes at the same time — cold, historical facts have proven me wrong. In preparing for this installment, I made the mistake of looking at the Billboard Top 100 Songs of 1993, and felt myself staring into foreign territory. Could this be my 1993? How could my memory be so at odds with reality? Nothing but mediocre soul, “New Jack Swing,” and novelty pop-rap as far as the eye could see. It seems like I heard none of it at the time.

I mean, I was expecting to run across the Twin She-Beasts — Whitney and Mariah — in my little journey, and felt those shrill harpies could be safely ignored. But, oh, there’s Janet. And Mary J. And Vanessa was still around? That minx. And just who the fuck was “Shai”? Shanice? Silk? SWV? And how were they clunking up not only the Top 100, but the Top 40? In the end it doesn’t matter, because they were all faceless and interchangeable, but how did I not at least know them as names — then or now? I thought I was on top of things. Peabo Bryson. Jade. H-Town. Paperboy. Robin S. All names on the ’93 chart, and names I heard for the very first time as I sat down to write this. I was initially stunned, then ashamed. They must have been blasting from passing car stereos, the jukebox at Round Table, the pink Barbie tape player of the little neighbor kids, and over the speakers at Camelot and the Wherehouse, my homes away from home. I somehow missed it all.

Continue reading →

[Author’s Note: Good God, I’m really starting to think of myself as some kind of Mickey fucking Spillane with all the novelistic bullshit this feature is starting to peddle. All I can say is, if you’re not into it, I’m sorry, thanks for sticking with it this far. If you’re just into the music and the YouTube clips, simply scroll down to the end. I’ve linked this site to a lot of other things over the summer, so if you’re new and want to start from the beginning — and why wouldn’t you — go to April 2009 for Part 1.]

Late August, 1993 — The manager of the video store sat enshrouded in a permanent fug of blue cigarette smoke. Basics. Two more packs rested on the desk. He could have been forty, he could have been sixty, his appearance betraying no hint of anything beyond a middle age where appearance is no longer a going concern. His tinted aviator-style glasses and drooping porn-star mustache were topped off by a truly heroic, unselfconscious Afro, the likes of which had been unseen on a white man since 1975. He jabbed a nicotine-yellowed finger at my resume.

“I liked your introduction letter,” he said. Which was a damn good thing, because the Employment History of the resume was a bit of a wasteland. The manager, Joe, had made a career out of managing small retail establishments — a Men’s Wearhouse in Pomona, a 7-11 in San Luis Obispo — and I’m sure he’d given many neophytes their first shot at cash-register jockeying. My letter, written in an embryonic, eighteen-year-old version of the chatty, verbose prose you’re reading right now, was my only chance to differentiate myself from the pimply herd.

Skipper Joe (as it turns out, a Navy vet) confirmed he’d like to have me “come aboard,” and thus began my introduction to the great dysfunctional family dynamic known as “co-workers.” As he popped open the door, great clouds of Basic smoke billowed out as if a pile of Christmas trees was burning somewhere in the depths of the manager’s office. Joe ushered me out moments before my blood turned into a sticky sluice of nicotine and tar. Continue reading →