Blackmoor Vituperative

Last Saturday Susan and I went to the Naro for a show called “Night of the subversives”. The schedule was to include a one-act play, “Green”, a band called “Everybodydies”, and the movie Suburbia (which has had the title “Rebel Streets” every time I’ve seen it on the big screen).

It was really, really bad. It started out with the incoherent “play”, which mainly consisted of people moving props around and one guy yelling profanity at someone in the projection booth (which wasn’t part of the performance). Why did anyone think we would want to watch that for an hour? It was like watching someone get evicted from their apartment, but without any of the drama. I wanted to laugh (lots of people did), but it would have been mean laughter, like when you see that Star Wars kid embarassing himself on videotape for the world to see. Okay, I laughed a little, but mostly I was just bored and irritated. At least Star Wars kid had enthusiasm.

The band was okay. If I hadn’t had to sit through the previous wasted hour, and if there had been a bar, the band might have even been pretty good. As it was, I was annoyed and waiting for the damned movie to start. Another hour wasted. One good thing about the Naro is that you can bring in outside food, so I took off about midway through “Everybodydies” to get some victuals from the 7-11 down the block. That made the rest of the wait more bearable. On the other hand, the admission price for “Night of the subversives” was only five bucks, so I shouldn’t complain but so much.

Finally, Suburbia started. If you weren’t into the punk scene in the mid-1980s, this movie really pegs it. Sure, it’s over-the-top melodrama, and it’s easy to find faults with it (like the cop father — could he have been any nicer? I sure never met a cop like that when I lived in Orange County), but overall it’s a great snapshot of a moment in time. It was even worth waiting through two hours of grief to see it. I may get the DVD from Netflix to listen to the commentary. I hear that Spheeris really does mock the poor girl who got stripped in the first club scene (I guess she symbolized New Wave, or posers, or something). And yes, some punks of the time really were that violent. Not me, of course.