How could you? How could you link the author of an American classic, with a character actor?
My blog. My rules.
Truth is, we're all equal in death and I'm sure Mr. Salinger would be the first to acknowledge that you could do a lot worse.
I read 'Catcher in the Rye' like everyone else, and frankly, it was so spot on, I actually wondered "what's the big deal? Isn't that how we all feel?" The alienation. The confusion. The fear, really. The fear of growing up.
My brother Jim, who was eleven years older than me always used to tell me, "I just think of you as a kid. I think of you as someone who goes to the arcade and plays video games."
I still am that kid. I'm still this young boy who just happens to have five kids of his own. A big kid with a big family. OK, sure it feels good to make the mortgage payment. And unclog the sink. And shovel the driveway. But, in general, being a grown up sucks.
Because you're just a little bit closer to dying.
Enter Zelda Rubinstein. She spoke to the dead, ya know. I saw her do it at an old movie theater in Kingston, NY, where Poltergeist played.
The thing about that movie...one of its central movements was about television stations going off the air, which is kind of a quaint idea in this day and age.
Of course now we know that TV stations don't stop. They just go and go. They do not sleep. They do not die.
But the Poltergeist TV did go off the air. And when it did, the ghosts came to visit. And dammit, if they didn't go and take young Carol Anne. So, long story short, they bring in Tangina (played by Ms. Rubinstein) and she gets to the bottom of all the nonsense, speaks the the dead, and ends up saving young Carol Anne. By the way, you gotta love the Kim Jong il shades Tangina wears in the flick.
The real Carol Anne, actress Heather O' Rourke, never made it through adolescence. She died at twelve, slightly younger than Holden Caulfied, the protagonist from 'Catcher in the Rye.'
So, there you have it. I have successfully linked J.D. and Zelda. But, in reality, it's all a sham. Crazy talk, really. So, while we're talking crazy, I'm thinking about the whole Phoebe bit of Catcher, and I am reimagining Phoebe as the young Carol Anne from Poltergeist.
"You can't even think of one thing."
"Yes I can Yes I can."
"Well do it, then."
"I like Allie," I said. "And I like doing what I'm doing right now. Sitting here with you, and talking, and thinking about stuff and-"
"Allie's dead-You always say that! If somebody's dead and everthing, and in Heaven, then it isn't really-"
"I know he's dead!" Don't you think I know that? I can still like him though, can't I? Just because somebody's dead, you don't just stop liking them, for God's sake-especially if they were about a thousand time's nicer than the people you know that're alive and all."
Old Carol Anne didn't say anything. When she can't think of anything to say, she doesn't say a goddam word."
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