Monday, April 16, 2007
RASFMBT: RIP
A friend mentioned that I sometimes use words that make typists slow down. Me too, my friend, me too. That’s as good a reason as any finally to share this piece of recycling with you:
Maybe I could remember where I found it if I really tried but frankly the memory is too painful. All I know is that it was a long time ago when many things were very different, and I - yes, I - was one of them. What a world it must have been - imagine, if you will, for it is no more. That which tied me to it has been lost, is gone, irretrievable. I am bereft. The era of the Ren and Stimpy Folding Metal Bed Tray now sleeps with our fathers. RIP.
The RASFMBT, as I affectionately acronomicize, was what I’d call an artifact. Hell, Ren and Stimpy were artifacts too, I guess, which would make the RASFMBT more like a meta-artifice, which is a concept I instantly totally love and enthusiastically adopt. So:
R&S, for the very old and the very very young, were an adorable early-’90s animated cat and dog team that engaged in the grossest, stupidest, crudest adventures imaginable to the mind of a boy in junior high school detention. The stories enacted by this disgusting duo emphasized all of the major body functions and excretions in every imaginable variety and context.
It was too excessive to be anything but hilarious. For about 10 episodes - one groundbreaking first season. A legend was born in the searing heat of a methanous flame that simply could not be sustained. I think no one at Nick had anticipated the kind of content, or response, R&S would engender - the instant cult status they’d achieved. They were a force to be reckoned with, to be sure, and that injected new factors into the artistic equation: money and controversy. People were outraged; they demanded censorship. Production of new episodes was delayed. Creative momentum was lost. The creator himself was fired. When R&S finally came back on air they weren’t what they’d once been. There were laughs, sure - but not as many. Sometimes they seemed to be being gross just to be gross - as if grossness in itself was funny. Well, sometimes it is, but sometimes it’s not. With the resumption of R&S, it was increasingly “not.” I didn’t get to see it often, and then I just stopped looking for it. The tide had risen; then it ebbed. A boogery vomiting sun had set on R&S: cultural phenomena, icons, artifacts of the late 20th century.
Anyway, at some point after R&S went south on me, I found something, somewhere - as I mentioned, I truly don’t care to reconstruct the details. The point is that I found a metal tray, about 24 inches across by 15, fitted with tubular legs that folded out into sturdy reliable bed-top support, lifting the tray about 15 inches above the comforters under which I could comfortably lie with my legs out in front of me and a steaming bowl of pho hovering resplendent over my lap as I recuperated cozily from some inconsequential infirmity. And, beneath that massive bowl of life-affirming broth, intrinsically embedded in the very surface of the tray itself, would be imprinted in clear vibrant colors a vivid promotional depiction of a delightfully benign Ren and Stimpy, smiling and waving at me. Indeed, it was a Ren and Stimpy folding metal bed tray, and it was a damn fine one at that. It wasn’t just a brilliantly colorful tool of great functional utility - it was a profound expression of the essence of Ren and Stimpy as icons, as artifacts. It was a meta-artifact, and as such I kept it close to my heart. Metaphorically speaking, I mean.
And so the RASFMBT was a treasured possession of mine for more than a decade, I’d guess. As I said, I’m not really sure when I got it. Regardless, I know I rarely, rarely used it. The proper occasion almost never came up. Kel preferred not to break it out when she was occasionally under the weather; she intimated that she doubted that her recuperation would be hastened by exposure to coprophagic cartoon characters. Consequently, it was up to me to utilize the RASFMBT - and pity my wretchedness and my hale constitution, I didn’t do it. I maintained it; I preserved it; and I cherished it; but it pretty much stayed in the closet behind the shoes or in the cupboards up above.
Every so often I’d stumble over it in search for something else or a fit of tidiness: “RASFMBT! Yeah! Looking good!” I’d fold and unfold the tubular legs a time or two, gaze into the four vacant eyes that stared up from its enameled surface, and then, culturally refreshed, put it back away again. I reveled in the having of it, and that was enough at the time.
A little while ago, I found it again - this time, in Zach’s vice-like little grip. I was confident he wouldn’t fetch himself some traumatic injury with it - no sharp corners, no springs, and Z’s got excellent sense about those things anyway. And I was gratified, paternally, to be able to add those two delightful characters to the menagerie of his other treasured artifacts, like Monkey George and Ehmo and those blasted puppets from Baby Einstein and all those others with which I have lately grown cloyingly overfamiliar. Safe tray, great characters, what could be the problem?
On second glance, the tray looked dirty. I took it from him for a closer look. That wasn’t dirt - it was rust. The thing I failed to mention about this tray was its very low grade of metal. One might say that it was stamped out of stiff foil, and it had long since begun to show noticeable dings and dents. I suddenly, that morning, also realized that the bright grinning visages depicted on its surface had visibly faded, looking abruptly washed out and wan. But most disturbing of all, several big rust stains were blooming in the bosom of the metal itself. It wasn’t just wearing out, it was actively self-destructing - albeit slowly. Z was now playing with a piece of rusty metal. I had to reassess why I was still saving it.
Kel had been on me for years to get rid of it, frankly, but I’d resisted till then. I’d clung to it out of a sense of obligation or some kind of compulsive quirkiness or something. Now, though, it seemed that I had treasured it for so long that it was no longer a treasure. It was obvious the RASFMBT had bit the dust. No point mourning it - I just walked it forward to the recycling crate in the kitchen and dropped the tray into its depths. When I rolled the crate back into place under the shelves, shadow fell over Stimpy. And also Ren, irrevocably. The end of an era.
I saw the former RASFMBT once more time, as I transferred the crate’s contents to the bin in the garage in anticipation of the pick-up early Monday morning. At that point it was all just recycling - bags of cans and bottles, sheaves of paper, stacks of flattened cardboard boxes, and a faded, dented, rusty metal tray. I’m not sure exactly where I got it, but I know where it’s gone.
