The Trash Lad

"Hammed Burger: Where the Burgers are Drunk!" in millennial font

Facebook post from Kaleb Horton, September 18, 2017: Toys R Us is probably going out of business this year. I'm fascinated by the collapse of retail, because what it really signifies is the collapse of the 20th century. The reason I pushed to profile guys like Harry Dean Stanton, Merle Haggard and Chuck Berry, was that writing about them is a way of writing about the 20th century, and how different it was from where we are now. How shockingly different, in retrospect. The migration out of the south, the descent of the Dust Bowl, which was a Biblical plague; the millions of people who were killed during World War Two. Monoculture, and the idea that a great episode of a television show would be seen by *half of all people.* The arrival of flight, and the end of horses. Homes without electricity. Coming of age without computers, without television. Listening to the radio for entertainment. The 20th century was a long time ago and it's a ghost now. It's a ghost you see in the places you wouldn't expect. It's seen in towns that were bypassed by the freeways, the dusty little towns out west that still have old diners and motels and payphones. It's seen in the places that we left, places where mines shut down, places where tourist attractions died off. It's seen in Bakersfield with Buck Owens' Crystal Palace and it's seen in Roswell, which stubbornly maintains the relics of the '90s UFO boom. Things like that won't be around forever. Someday owners will die and towns will burn and they won't be rebuilt. And it's difficult to suss out what those things are, because they're on roads, physical and metaphorical, that we no longer travel.

The ghost sightings happen in stupid places, unexpected places, and uncool places. A few months ago, I went with Marie to the Toys R Us on Victory Blvd. in Burbank, which still looks exactly like it did in Back to the Future in 1985 somehow. It's not nostalgia that you see there, it's just a customer base and economic model that's aging and won't be around a lot longer, and it's *boring.* There's no reason for anyone to ever go to Lancer's, the little diner by that Toys R Us. Because it's not good. People go there out of tradition, and old habits. 80 and 90 year olds go there. We were lining up for a Nintendo, which is still a hard thing to keep stocked in stores. Toys R Us was actually the best place to obtain one, because it's no longer a place children beg their parents to take them to. When we went in, wham, there it was. The ghost of 1996. I was 8 years old, for a fraction of a second. The feeling wasn't nostalgia, it was a kind of temporal dislocation. A confusion. But it wasn't an immaculate 1996, it was a fading 1996. It was lonelier than I remember it. It's time for Toys R Us to go out of business. It was time ten years ago, fifteen. There are reasons to be nostalgic about the 20th century. We weren't plugged into so many wires, so many screens. We were a little bit closer to the process of manufacturing and agriculture than we are now. We made more things by hand, and our goals as people were uniquely audacious and driven by mad, desperate power that was temporary and had to end.

But the 20th century was hopelessly cruel and soaked in blood. The 20th century gave us flight, but it also gave us bombs that can end the world and Richard Nixon and his evil sidekick Kissinger and it gave us new mutations of slavery and race and class subjugation and it gave us useless, disgusting monuments to Confederate slavers and traitors and cowards. It gave us President Trump, who wouldn't exist today without New York City's collective cocaine addiction in the 1980s. I want to find the ghosts, not because I miss the past -- the good old days can't return because they're imaginary and what you really miss is youth and if you're lucky a warm feeling of safety -- but because I don't even know what things we'll lose, or when we'll lose them, or how long we have to document them. I know ghosts when I see them. Toys R Us for the mundane side and the Salton Sea for the widescreen wasteland side. But I have absolutely no idea how many there are. I figure people go first, then places. Those are the things we have a limited time to physically document and historically examine and preserve on film. The ideas will go away much slower, and some of them may be eternal, like cold wars. But those are a lot less fun because you don't get to drive to them.

And now I'm just spelunking around and here's this Facebook post by Kaleb Horton from September 2017. It was three months after MTV dumped its freelancers. I'm sure it would have been a piece there; instead he posted this on FB just to have it written out: Toys 'R' Us as societal microcosm.

Thomas Frank...du er under overvågning for svindel, bror.

We're approaching "wand of a right foot" alert with Archie Gray

what da heck Palinha

pastry sky will cancel you for this one

Big Star Monday

Jeg elsker kampbold

professor x looking into wolverines mind and seeing that he has eaten 12,000 hot dogs in his life and going oh my god

@hoaagie.bsky.social u good m8?

YouTube video by Enter the cypha Bam....Peanut Butter and Jam!

youtu.be/fh8A98zfoKw?...

A photo of a football pitch in Halifax, Nova Scotia. It's the Wanderers Grounds and one team, wearing white, is taking a goal kick. The scoreboard shows a score of Tides 1 - Rapid 0

Not watching Tottenham today because we've got an electric Northern Super League matchup between the Halifax Tides and Ottawa Rapid happening here

Is Joao Palinha Thomas Frank's binky? We will be monitoring this story

never mind the maneuvers, just go straight at 'em

Nirvana the Band the Show the Movie is good

Press F to shake fist at an uncaring god

Ratatouille type scenario where the Turfies are controlling the actions of the Lewis Family Trust

Everyone is talking about the Lewis Family Trust pushing Levy out but what if the Turfies have finally had their revenge?

A bald man is looking up, wearing a vest and white shirt. There are climbing harnesses in the background of the picture on a grey wall. This man is Daniel Levy and he is saying "I'm not bad with heights,"

A bald man is looking at the camera, wearing a vest and white shirt. There are climbing harnesses in the background of the picture on a grey wall. This man is Daniel Levy and he is saying "it's only when I look down that sometimes, I feel a bit strange."

fare thee well

BOMBA

What the fuck???

Lead in a West Wing reboot

It's deadline day for transferring pesto to jars

Yeah man! They played here yesterday evening, final show of the tour, and did this shout out about FSU beating Alabama to a crowd of Canadians lol

It was the final show of their tour. What a spectacle overall

Can't believe I went to just listen to this outdoor Creed concert in Halifax and they had a roadie, who's an Alabama fan, come out to give a message about how the university where Creed was founded did something that day that they hadn't done in 23 years

what the fuck man

A man with light brown hair is sitting in a room, looking dishevelled and worn down. He is wearing an olive colored shirt. It's Mads Mikkelsen.

watching Tottenham

The absolute ledge Maud Lewis