Familiar Comforts
The familiar comforts of the 1980’s and 1990’s sitcom lineup broadcast throughout the night on the Retro Roar Network were just the dose of upbeat predictability forty-year-old insomniac Austin Brennan desperately needed to combat a modern world that was increasingly hostile and uncertain. As Brennan noted the traditional structure and character arcs of such shows as the ten-season Spaceman, Familyman (1989-1998) and the now beloved He’s Got a Camel, a Mortgage, and a Badge! (1995), which was notorious upon its initial release for being a show that was so bombarded by low audience ratings and so reviled by critics that it was pulled from the air after only three episodes, Brennan often found himself wishing that all of life’s problems would be neatly tied up in the time frame of half an hour (including commercials).
What Brennan admired, more than anything, about these “retro” outings was that the father figures of these shows never got upset. Instead, they became momentarily disapproving. This is before taking their children aside and talking them into the right choices whenever the inevitable problem surfaced. The mother figures were equally attentive and caring.
Nonetheless, these so-called “commonplace traits,” as he heard some critics whine when addressing such characters, are ones he wished his parents, who Brennan would often find passed out from booze, drugs, or both when he came to them with any problem, would’ve had in the awkward haze of his youth. This was especially true of his teenage years.
If Brennan’s parents would’ve treated him in the same compassionate manner as of one of these aforementioned “sitcom stereotypes,” he might not have become a man who so powerfully feared change. He also might not have become someone who only goes out into the world when he absolutely has to do so (i.e. when work or groceries call or the rare in-person bill needs to be paid).
Thus, at 3 a.m. on the night of May 21st, 2024, after ten-year-old Andy Mitchner got into trouble at school and again tried to hide the error of his ways from his dad in the classically campy and unapologetically wholesome “Andy Cuts School…Again” episode of Don’t Tell Dad (1986-1991), Austin found a wide smile brimming on his face. He knew that his favorite show from the Retro Roar’s nightly lineup, I Can’t Do That! I Have Eight Kids and a Wife! (1990-1998), was the next program that was going to be shown. After the expected Retro Roar Network logo, a speech bubble that animatedly morphs out of a stick figure inside a hand drawn TV set that says, “Haha!” was showcased, Austin cracked open a can of Caffeine Rush!
Caffeine Rush! was on the market for a mere two weeks in 1990. It was reported as being the equivalent of drinking an entire pot of coffee in a can. Coincidentally, the drink was taken off the market after its fourteen days of sale because none of the kids drinking it could settle down or pay attention in class or in any of their other day-to-day activities. Angry moms and dads the world over, reiterated similar sentiments in equally angry letters to the C.E.O. of Just Drinks, the company that created Caffeine Rush!, Daffnee Jensen. Both lawsuit threats and full-blown lawsuits from parents of kids who had consumed Caffeine Rush! quickly became commonplace to Jensen during this time.
Being one of those overly caffeinated kids himself, Brennan relished ritualistically opening his frothy can of Caffeine Rush! every night at this time when drowsiness started to wearily tug at his eyes. He was just as enthused that he had recently found a twenty-four pack of the drink online for what Brennan believed to be the “bargain basement price” of $100 plus shipping and handling.
When the intro to his least favorite program in the Retro Roar Network’s late-night lineup, the trucker-centered Man, These Kids Are Driving Me Crazy, Man! (1991-1992) started instead of I Can’t Do That! I Have Eight Kids and a Wife!, a frustrated and groaning Brennan immediately went to his phone. He pulled up the listing for the night. Gobsmacked, he saw that the schedule for the night hadn’t been altered in any way.
Before disbelief could fully grip Brennan at what he presumed was a horrific joke aimed specifically at him on behalf of Retro Roar, he squinted and his incredulousness increased. The opening credits of Man, These Kids Are Driving Me Crazy, Man! were noticeably different.
Though displaying the usual scenes of a middle-aged man being bombarded with his kids throwing things at him as he goes through the routine motions of his day without emotion or surprise, with the most comical moment being when he is driving his big rig, as the overly upbeat, late-1980’s pop song “Why Can’t these Kids Leave a Brother Alone?” by the one-hit rock wonder Hiyah! pulsates in the background, Brennan immediately realized that the names had been changed. William Smith no longer played one of the leads, John Everyman. Barry Barryford was no longer the writer-director. Instead, the names in the opening credits had been changed to people who were among Brennan’s greatest artistic inspirations.
Avant-garde maestro Paul Hywer was noted as director of the program. Anna D. Light, who had won several Academy Awards for her work with such acclaimed Italian directors as Pier Paolo Pasolini and Federico Fellini, was heralded as the cinematographer. Brennan’s favorite actor from the 1950’s, George Rebellson, whose dark, slicked back hair and babyface had won the hearts of women all over the world in his heyday, had replaced Carl Blandworth as the lead of Man, These Kids are Driving Me Crazy, Man!.
Still, nothing prepared Brennan for the screenwriting credit that ended the opening of the show. It was Brennan’s name in big, bold letters. They seemed to scream out to him all that he wanted to and could be with just a little time and effort.
Seeing this in bright red, Brennan shook his head in disbelief. He moved closer to the television set. He hadn’t sat that close to “the idiot box,” as his grandfather on his dad’s side, Beiderbecke Sull, used to lovingly call it when Brennan was “just a lad,” since he was all of nine years old. Once Brennan got the contacts he desperately needed, ones that his narcissistic father, the ironically named Koy Brennan, kept putting off because he was secretly hoarding every cent the family had, the need to sit this close to the TV only came when he was immersed in old episodes of the classic western Gunsmoke (1955-75).
Staring at his name on-screen, something Brennan had desperately wanted to see since he began scribbling poems and short scripts in his notebook while his first grade teachers droned on about inconsequential, “real life” things, Brennan couldn’t tell if he was hallucinating, being mocked, or once again reminded of his “unmet potential.” Though these words were often used in an inspiring manner by most parents, Brennan knew that everything his father said was meant to insult him. It was one of the many polite-sounding putdowns Koy tossed out like live grenades to his son during his childhood.
For once in his life, Brennan chose the route of positive thinking. He chose to see this as a reminder of all that he was meant to be and not an extended insult befitting of his father. In doing so, he yearned to run to the nearest notepad and pound out his next volume of verse as quickly as possible.
As was the case with all genuinely joyous things in Brennan’s life, this ecstasy was short lived. This was a wet, snapping sound that commanded Brennan’s ears. This almost taciturn splosh-splosh became a sound that reminded Brennan of the duck falling sound on Nintendo’s Duck Hunt (1984). It was then that Brennan saw what had occurred: the channel had entirely disappeared.
Shaking his head, Brennan typed 103, the number of the station he was just watching, into the remote control on his phone. All he saw was static. A low-key hiss had replaced the odd sounds he heard before.
With the black box of his phone, an aging Android, in his hands, Brennan searched for local television problems. Nothing came up. He searched the Retro Roar Network’s schedule for the night again. Nothing came up.
It is then that he turned his eyes to see the stack of old TV Guides from the 1990’s. He kept them as a reminder of the few joys of his childhood. Namely, the many summery days he had spent with his grandparents on his mother’s side, Elda and Arnold Brennan, at their house in Canfield, Ohio. From out of his peripheral view, a stomach-twisting horror hit Brennan as he saw the slim collection of TV Guides vanish in a blue zap. It was like an effect from an old Roger Corman movie.
“I’m being erased!” he thought without delay.
Then blackness occurred. It was as if someone had snapped their fingers. When awareness washed over Brennan, he saw the powerful 7 a.m. light of the late-May sun pulling his eyes open.
“I’m being erased!” echoed once more in his head. As if on instinct, Brennan reached for the remote on his phone, turned to channel 103, and saw static.
Frantically, he flipped through every station. They were all stuck on the same fuzzy image. This was accompanied by a loud hiss seething like a baby rattlesnake over the soundtrack.
Ignoring the impulse to chuck his phone through his television, Brennan remembered the last three words that rippled through his psyche before he passed out last night. They were, eerily enough, the same ones that he awoke to this morning. Before he could realize the what or why behind his actions, he ran up to his room, pulled out his drawers of banned and rare VHS and DVDs, and held a hand to his mouth to suppress a scream. They were all gone.
“Was I robbed?” he wondered.
Then, as if his own mind were answering him, he tried to think back to what films were in his vault. Nothing came. He then attempted to remember any particular scene from any of the pictures he had owned in his now vanished VHS and DVD collection. He did this to trigger a memory, any memory, of what features were in his decades-in-the-making cinematic collection. Nothing came.
His brain then went to Elda and Arnold Brennan. They had passed in the early 2000’s from Alzheimer’s Disease. He wondered if this was what was starting to seize his brain, but quickly shook away the deliberation.
As all the things that made his solitude, his personal time so special such as his television, his books, and his pens and pencils and the artistic freedom they symbolized began to disappear in a waft of blue smoke, Brennan caught a glimpse of his front door downstairs. It was wide open. Yet, he had no remembrance of leaving the front door this way.
From where Brennan stood, he heard the furious honks from impatient drivers behind noisy cars, kids laughing, parents screaming, and birds offering their merry treetop commentary on what was transpiring below.
Running downstairs, Brennan quickly adorned himself in the thin, black and red coat with his name on the left breast his mother had bought him two decades ago. Afterwards, he turned the brass knob of his front door, breathed in deeply, and instinctively reached into the right pocket of his coat. Memories of all the drinks and snacks he would hide away in this tiny area when he went to the movies as an adult filled his mind. They, too, were familiar comforts. When his fingertips hit something, he smiled and, unaware of what it could be, pulled it out to inspect it.
It was a ticket to the first film he saw in theaters and one of the few unshakably joyous memories he had with his parents before “the dark times” overtook the pair, the 1993 movie version of I Can’t Do That! I Have Eight Kids and a Wife!. The picture quickly became his all-time favorite feature. The familial memories, the best type of familiar comforts, this particular bit of cinema brought to him as time passed on, only increased his admiration for the movie.
Staring at the stub in disbelief and lifting it up to the sun to read its faded print and ensure that his mind and eyes weren’t deceiving him, a strong wind tore the ticket from the pinched together thumb and pointer finger that were ensnaring the printed page. The breeze blew it down the sidewalk, past kids playing Double Dutch, and towards what Brennan could’ve sworn were the watchful eyes of the ghosts of his arm-in-arm parents.
The duo waved at Brennan, looking healthier than they ever were in their physical forms, and Brennan smiled as the ticket lingered in the air around their necks.
Wanting to capture the ticket and speak words of forgiveness to his parents, Brennan went running out into the unorganized chaos of the real world and, for the first time ever, embraced its boisterous unpredictability.
The inexplicable fall leaves and kids trick-or-treating in a perpetual loop, another one Brennan’s familiar comforts, certainly helped matters.
The uneasiness of the situation hit Brennan when he realized that it was supposed to be the end of May. It wasn’t the end of October as the leaves and trick-or-treaters suggested. All he could think of to explain this bizarre change in month and in season was all the joyous memories he shared with his parents every Halloween as a kid. It was another one of his familiar comforts. Nonetheless, this one seemed to be staying with him and not flatout vanishing like so many of his personal reassurances in the last few hours.
This strange disquiet only increased as the movie ticket which once lingered around his parents’ necks kept going through his fingers. It was almost as if he was a ghost himself.
As Brennan raised his right hand to his face, refusing to let the ticket fly away, he saw it waft away into a puff of blue smoke. Then, the ghastly thought hit him fully, conclusively once more: “I’m being erased!”
Fiction by Andrew Buckner
Andrew Buckner is a multi award-winning poet, filmmaker, and screenwriter. His short dark comedy/horror script Dead Air! won Best Original Screenwriter at the fourth edition of The Hitchcock Awards. Also a noted critic, and author, Buckner runs and writes for the review site AWordofDreams.com.
