Everybody's Working for the Weekend, Pt. 3

THE DELOREAN

My friends, never underestimate the power of the DeLorean. It will earn coveted stares, questions and build up to a furious, gossipy buzz. Even if it's just a picture on a "Back to the Future" T-shirt.

For those who don't know or perhaps, you were too busy watching Sesame Street during the '80s, a DeLorean is a rare automobile known for it's gull-wing doors and stainless steel design. It was only made from 1981 to 1983. It was bizarre. It was gorgeous. It was ambitious. It was tacky. It was daring. It starred in the film "Back 2 the Future."

It was also ultimately disastrous as the fellow how founded the DeLorean, former General Motors engineer John Z. DeLorean, was accused of trafficking cocaine in order to finance his company — DeLorean Motor Co. Even though he was later exonerated, one doesn't rebound from being accused of drug trafficking. But the moral of this story is, if you're driving around in a DeLorean people will look at you. Heck, if you wear a T-shirt with a DeLorean on it people will look at you, as I learned Saturday night at the sneak peek of an independent film.

I wanna go back in time ... to Saturday night when I wore "the DeLorean" to the film premiere of "Youthanasia" at the Empty Space.

I did not dress up because I was lazy. Even though I knew I was going to a film premiere. Even though I knew I was going to run into everyone and their grandma. Even though I knew there was an after party that I was planning on not going to but would probably go to anyway — I did not dress up. I put on a denim skirt and the "DeLorean" and told myself I was going home THE MINUTE the movie ended.

Yeah. Sure ... I'm like Star Jones at Sizzler with a two-for-one coupon when it comes to a party and a group of unnaturally pretty people. It was there with those pretty, pretty hobohemians I discovered "The DeLorean Theory of Rightness and Wrongness," which is essentially the idea of something that works despite the fact that it is both interesting and flawed. Like for example, despite all my efforts at becoming invisible at these sort of things, my personality does not lend to it. A DeLorean gaudy and loud and overdone and demands your attention. So do I. ... So do I with beer. And there was a keg at the Empty Space provided by the directors of "Youthanasia," the brothers Runnels, and their star, Bakersfield's Justin Zachary.

Justin is very much a DeLorean, although a very different kind from myself. An unnaturally pretty man with warm affecting eyes, he's all wrong and right in the ways an actor should be. He's tall but slouches; pretty, but masculine; seemingly oversized yet unbelievably thin. He's nice to look at, yet he's wearing flip flops and clothes from the thrift store. He could basically toss on an "I'm With Stupid" T-shirt and somehow make it look muy rica con irony delicioso ... while if anyone else wore it they'd look like an idiot wearing an "I'm With Stupid" T-shirt.

Yes, he's all wrong and right and still has it all come together and work marvelously in the end. Very DeLorean.

I spent a good part of the hour before the film started yacking with Justin about nothing, then retelling the story of how I was dumped for Jesus my first year in Bakersfield to a perky Empty Spacer. Like a seasoned comic, I have a lot of material I throw out at parties to people who haven't heard my 50 billion stories before. "Dumped For Jesus" is usually enjoyable, despite being bittersweet since I really did like the guy who essentially dumped me for Our Lord and Savior.

My tag line at the end of that story is always, "If you're going to get dumped for someone, it might as well be Jesus" which the woman I was telling the story to picked up on before I could even remember to blurt it out. I was distracted by the long line of people waiting for beer and snacks while I stood behind the counter gossiping. Working the booth was Empty Spacer/actor Doug Cheesman managing to completely screw up a bag of microwave popcorn. Doug, a handsome, gangly man who's about 90 percent smiley teeth, knees and elbows is the human personification of a giraffe ... with totally ripped abs. And now the buff giraffe was burning popcorn. It was very DeLorean. Mesmerizing even, as noted by Empty Spacer, Guinevere Park-Hall's beaux, whom I was chatting with. Watching poor Doug try to juggle a gargantuan line of people and Gwen trying to show him how to manipulate the aging microwave to pop the popcorn right with those cups of beer everywhere was awe producing. Leaving you to often bemuse, "how did that giraffe get his hair to moose up like that?" But who hasn't stared into the abyss of a DeLorean and thought, "It's strange, but I like it?"

It's strange, but I like it and it works.