South 12th

Back in Louisville, there was a radio station run out a local high school across the river in New Albany. During school hours and into the early evening the kids would operate it, taking call-in requests and playing different types of teenage-oriented music. It was almost always a lot more interesting to listen to then any of the other local stations, because teenagers, for all their hormonal unpleasantness, are generally really inventive. They’d play Rage Against the Machine and then “What is Love” and then Weird Al and then something from Use Your Illusion II, all in a row, because that’s how teenagers are. 

When the kids went home at night, though, the station became fully automated. Computers would cycle through the station’s enormous library, playing music uninterrupted except for station identifications. With no kind of curatorial hand, the selections were even more wildly unpredictable than the teenage DJs, because the music library comprehensively spanned the last five decades of pop music. All sorts of weird juxtapositions would turn up.

There is still one juxtaposition in particular I think of to this day, two songs that you typically never hear back-to-back. But I did, and it completely transformed the way I think about both of them.

It was “Ode to Billy Joe,” by Bobbie Gentry, followed by “Ghostbusters,” by Ray Parker, Jr. In a narrative sense, it made “Ghostbusters” the sequel to “Ode to Billy Joe.”

If you’re not familiar with “Ode,” it’s a beautiful, creepy bit of ’60s Southern Gothic country, a story about an illicit love affair and the resultant suicide. A girl comes home to dinner one night, and her parents break the news to her: “Today Billy Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge.” And, it turns out, before he’d died, Billy Joe had earlier been seen throwing “something” off the bridge with a girl that “looked a lot like you.” What was that “something”? Well, the general consensus is that it was a baby.

So the song ends with the strings fading out, you reflect on it uneasily for a minute, but when I heard it in this context, one second later: more ghostly sounds, and then a familiar synthesized sax riff. Ghostbusters! Almost making a mockery of the song that came before it.

It’s more complex than that, however. Despite Ray Parker, Jr.’s good cheer, consider some of those lyrics:

If you’ve had a dose of a
freaky ghost baby
Ya better call
GHOSTBUSTERS

An invisible man
sleeping in your bed
Who ya gonna call?
GHOSTBUSTERS

Oh my god! Billy Joe and his/your illegitimate child are back! In spectral form! That invisible man sleeping in your bed was once a visible man. A visible man that you loved, and who is the dead father of your dead child! The air of dread in “Ode” infuses the pop trifle of “Ghostbusters” with an undercurrent of real terror, and the supernatural phenomenon described in ”Ghostbusters” soldifies the aura of menace in “Ode.” The insistence that ”I ain’t afraid of no ghosts” rings hollow. So, too, does the boast that “busting makes me feel good.” Busting makes you feel good temporarily, but it’s really just another way of not having to confront the messy, horrific past, which is what “Ode to Billy Joe” is all about.

Anyway, the computers played this sometime late at night, and it scared the shit out of me. Now I can’t hear one song without thinking of the other.

…As the series progressed, it made a significant shift from being primarily a comedy to becoming far more drama-focused. By the eighth season in 2017, the writing staff had been totally overhauled, and Cougar Town displayed a different feel —consciously moving between comedy and drama, unlike the seamless integration of years gone by. While this latter era showcased some fine dramatic moments, the attempts at pure comedy were not as successful as compared to the first five seasons. In addition, the episodes became more political, and the show was often accused of preaching to its viewers. At the same time, many episodes from the later era were praised for its experimentation with the half-hour sitcom format, including “Point of View” (an episode shown from the POV of a sexy 19-year old boy), “Dreams” (which show the lyrical and eventually disturbing dreams of Gulf Haven), “A Cougar For All Seasons” (which takes place over the course of 1951), and “Life Time” (which takes place in real time).

Another change was the infusion of story lines based on actual events and emotional developments that materialized during the period. Considerable research was done by the producers, including interviews with actual cougars to develop story lines rooted in the experience itself.

While the series remained popular through these changes, it eventually began to run out of creative steam. The producers would get phone calls from actual cougars, telling them experiences they had and wanted to include those into upcoming episodes. According to Burt Metcalfe, they had to refuse some (if not all) storylines from the cougars, saying they had used them up in previous episodes. Ultimately, ABC persuaded the cast and crew to produce half a regular season of episodes for the final year (making an official run of eleven seasons) and end the series with a big finale, which ultimately became one of the most watched episodes in television history. 

This is based on an idea Molly and I had, where Cougar Town would eventually and gradually transform over a dozen seasons into the most celebrated, sophisticated and beloved sitcom in history. It could still happen! Or not. I don’t know — I have never seen Cougar Town.

A few weeks ago I went to Oak Street Cinema to see The Baader-Meinhof Complex. Since I work right in the neighborhood, I headed over to buy tickets early, even though the screening wasn’t for another hour or so. The front doors were still closed when I arrived at the theater. I stood outside a moment, trying to figure out if I should come back, when a person in the lobby saw me and walked over to open the door.

“Are you Bill?” she asked, poking her head out.

I must be honest. Whenever I am confronted with questions like this, where the answer is a very unambiguous “no, I am definitely not Bill,” I am always tempted to bite my lip, look around, and then say “why yes, I am Bill.” Just to see where things might go.

Of course I didn’t do this. “No,” I said. She told me to come back in an hour to buy a ticket.

Sitting in the theater an hour later before the movie began, the same person from the lobby walked to the front of the theater. “Thank you for coming out tonight,” she said. “Before we start the film, we’ve invited the head of the German Studies department at the U to say a few words about the Baader-Meinhoff gang. Please welcome Dr. Bill So-and-so.”

Ah ha! Bill! She thought I was the head of the German Studies department at the U! People are always mistaking me for a professor. I can’t imagine why.

I was a little sad I hadn’t gone along with her initially. The opportunity for mischief would have been great. As I listened to the professor talk, I wondered how much I could credibly bullshit about Baader-Meinhoff unprompted before a crowd. A little bit. Not a lot. What would have happened? Would I have been smoked out before the screening when the real Bill showed up? Who would they have believed? Would it have gotten far enough that there might have been a scene in the theater? Where he’d be introduced, and we both stood up?

“This man is an imposter!” the real Bill would have yelled, pointing out me.

“What an outrage!” I’d have yelled back. “That man is the imposter! He’s with the Stasi! He’s here to fill your kopfs mit lies!” Who would the crowd believe? Would they take a vote? Would they call die Polizei?

I am sure it is a scenario that would have ended badly for me. For many reasons other than that, I am glad that didn’t happen anyway, because Bill’s remarks about the Red Army Faction were very informative, and the film itself was enjoyable. I would have hated to miss it, and besides, it would have been rude to deprive filmgoers of a thorough background on the historic events they were about to see portrayed.

Just because you look like a professor of German studies does not give you the right to act like one — a lesson I have learned the hard way many, many times.