Did VHS skew your perspective?

I was led to believe college consisted of one or two classes a semester and then lots of hanging out, football games and partying.

Actually I tried something like that regimen at Alabama, minus the copious amounts of alcohol. Difficulties ensued.

 

The "You're The Best" training montage during Hundred Dollar Baby is, well, the best. Right up there with Electric Boogaloo reference in the Chardee MacDennis sequel and the flashback to Mac getting a Cabbage Patch Doll when his parents break into someone's house on Christmas morning.

 

Yeah, that movie got real in a hurry down the stretch. Still say the last scene--where they realize they're the outsiders (not The Outsiders) as their table is occupied by a new group of Georgetown brats--is surprisingly powerful for a movie that was barely surface-deep for the first 80 minutes or so.

 

Skewed it? I'd say "inspired it!" After graduating high school me and some buddies rented a condo on a beach for a week near Santa Cruz. We were drunk for the entire week, woke up drunk, yes, there were women, yes there was property damage, no we didn't get our deposit back. BUT, no police officers came to the door, we had friends popping through for one or two days all week. It was phenomenal. I'd say it landed somewhere between The Beach Girls and Bachelor Party.

 

American Graffiti knock-off that it was, still some funny bits.

 

Not sure if I've ever told this story here before, but my 8th grade friends and I were such devotees of "Up The Creek" that we tried to "replicate" the raft race from the movie.

It was our favorite by a long shot among a slumber party night featuring "Up The Creek", "Sixteen Candles", "Last House On The Left" and "Faces Of Death". It spoke DIRECTLY to the souls of the glue guys on the St. Sebastian 8th grade B-team basketball team in the winter of '85. Later, repeated viewings on HBO merely cemented its god-like status in our minds.

How could it not be with scenes like this?

Comedy gold.

Side note: Somehow, Gene Siskel gave "Up The Creek" a thumbs up, positive review.

"(Tim Matheson, Dan Monahan, Stephen Furst) play their roles with the same whimsical naturalness that made Bill Murray a star. They don't push themselves upon us, and that allows us to identify with them in a relaxed way. The result is a very tight script with breathing room. That's most unusual for a teen comedy, and that's why Up the Creek is one of the best."

I want the acid that Ebert slipped him.

In the summer of '85, we plotted the idea out. We would buy rafts. Living on the west side of Milwaukee and being well shy of driving age, we would take our rafts on the city bus to the Menomonee River in suburban Wauwatosa. We would then race about 3 miles where we added the element of a bike race back to my friend's house, a short mile or so away.

This map comes very close to the route. Find North Avenue to the river and head southeast. That was our route. All the way (off the map) to Hawley Road/55th Street.



Let me fill in some important details if you're unfamiliar with Milwaukee. First? My friend lived in Milwaukee proper. (60th Street and east off the map). Our starting point was a solid 2-mile bus ride from his house to the river.

Let's also talk about the Menomonee River in the 1980s. Were there rapids on this river? No, there decidedly were not. Was there scads of farm runoff and industrial pollution in this otherwise lazy body of water? You better believe there was. I mean, it wasn't the Gowanus Canal or Bubbly Creek in Chicago bad, but it was pretty fucking far from the land of sky blue waters.

We vaguely knew this, but we did not give a fuck. It was the closest river we had and we were going to live out this "Animal House" cum "Porky's" cum "Charles In Charge" cinematic opus even if it killed us. Death or glory.

Oh ... about the rafts. We had none.

So how to get a river-worthy raft? I asked my Dad if I could get a raft. Naturally he asked why. I told him my friends and I were going to have a raft race down the Menomonee River. I believe his response were words to the effect of "get the fuck out of here and don't bring up that stupid shit ever again."

Well, FUCK YOU, DAD! We will not be denied our stab to pay homage to the film that stopped Stephen Furst's film career dead in its tracks.

Necessity being the mother of invention, we decided sleds would suffice. You remember those long plastic sleds of the time? RAFTS!

We decided to abandon the bike ride part of this, since there was a high probability some hobo would steal them where we left them, so it was an all or nothing raft race down the Menomonee. Three warriors ready to tame these raging rapids! It was fucking rad!

On a hot summer day between our 8th grade parochial school graduation and our freshman year of high school, we set out to do this. Top secret as far as my Dad knew of course.

Right away, the inherent absurdity of this began to set in even for an 8th-grader. The bus driver looked at all three of us like we were mental patients for bringing these gigantic red sleds on to a city bus in the middle of the summer. Here we are ... rolling down the 21 bus route minding our own business as our fellow riders were utterly befuddled.

No matter. The methods of geniuses often confuse those with lesser vision. We get to the starting point and we were amped. Perhaps somewhere in my head? The dulcet tones of Cheap Trick's theme from the movie rattles through my mental cortex to fire me up.

Side note - from imdb's trivia section on "Up The Creek" ...

"Cheap Trick drummer Bun E. Carlos was once asked why their title song 'Up the Creek' to this movie had never been included on a Cheap Trick compilation album. He said: 'Coz it sucks.'"

Our friends and I did a Le Mans-style running approach to the river. Dive in head first? Hell yeah. We ain't soft.

I put full gusto into my dive. I had my technique down. Try to dive out in parallel with the water line so as to get the best push down the river.

It was at that moment that I learned an unforgettable lesson in buoyancy. You see ... red sleds have none. I hit that river like John C. Reilly hitting the pool with his back in "Boogie Nights" and then sunk like a rock.

I'll paraphrase "Shawshank Redemption" ...

"I'd like to think that the last thing that went through my head, before the realization of my monumental stupidity, was to wonder how the hell I didn't realize plastic sleds couldn't float?"

One of my friends actually had an inflatable pool ring of some cheap construction, so he floated. Myself and another friend just waded down the river ... defeated.

When I say he "floated" it didn't mean he was going anywhere. There was zero current on the water. Unless we conjured up an Evinrude and strapped it to our ass, we were going nowhere.

So we walked down the Menomonee River. To this day, I have never in my life encountered mud like I did that day. At one point, it was up to my waist. God only knows what we walked through. All manner of abandoned junk, dead bodies from mob hits, the possibilities are endless.

Not long after we started, we got to the Currie Park golf course. One of the holes plays over the top of the river. Some elderly duffers saw us and yelled at us something to the effect of, "what the fuck are you doing in the river?" By then muddy and pissed, we probably did something wise like flipped them off. They said they were going to alert the park authorities about our river incursion.

At that point, I really didn't care. Our dream was shattered. Were we up to the adventuresome spirit of Tim Matheson and Dan Monahan? Fuck no. We weren't even as good as Jeff East or James B. Sikking. Jennifer Runyon would not be waiting for us, aroused by our triumph.

At the first chance we could, we got out, caked in mud laced with god knows what heavy industrial metals were in the river and made the long walk of shame back to our houses. By then, the mission for me was to get home and clean up before my Dad got home. My brother and sister did see me in my muddy state. It was fucking ridiculous.

It's remote now, but is not out of the realm of possibility that exposing myself to that river pollution shortened my life. On my headstone it should say, "He died before his time ... because he was an idiot who wanted to pay tribute to the nadir of Tim Matheson's career."

But looking back on it? Maybe I just didn't try hard enough? I should have used my sister's round sled. Time to get the guys back together! Inspire me, Cheap Trick!