Help! Pop Culture Has Eaten My Brain

When I first heard on the radio that those Republic of Texas militants holed up outside Fort Davis, Texas, were claiming that the Lone Star State was illegally annexed by the United States government back in 1845, not long after winning independence from Mexico, it struck an immediate sympathetic chord with me.

You see, I believe my brain was illegally annexed by American pop culture not long after I was born, and, just like those Texas Republicans, or Republic of Texicans, or whatever they call themselves this morning, I want it back.

What’s more, I will fight to get it back, and so will my cat. OK, maybe not to the extent of having to live in a trailer with a bunch of other people with guns. If I could just stay in my apartment until I get my brain back, that would be OK. Pink Dot delivers.

Case in point: I was an innocent 3-year-old when my parents forced me to see Walt Disney’s “Cinderella.” Three years old! At least the original Texans had nine years of self-determination before they were gobbled up. As for me, ever since “Cinderella,” and right to this very day, this very minute as a matter of fact, I have not been able to get the words, “Itchikadoula, mitchikaboula, bibbety-bobbety boo!” out of my head. Now they’re in your head, too, aren’t they? That’s just how sinister this whole thing is.

At that time, I was so effectively brainwashed--I prefer the term “colonized”--I even persuaded my parents to name the family dog Cinderella, which was pretty embarrassing for everyone, especially the dog. And that was just the beginning, the advance guard of the invasion, if you like.

“You’ll wonder where the yellow went when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent,” “Trix are for kids,” “Mikey likes it,” “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing,” “You deserve a break today,” “Not your father’s Oldsmobile,” “Just do it.” There they are. Permanently embedded in the cerebrum. And no way to get them out, short of surgery.

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Over the years, in a slow, agonizing process, I have done nothing but cede larger and larger sections of cerebral real estate to pop culture trivia: Elizabeth Taylor’s husbands, in order, not forgetting Burton and Burton; the Seven Dwarfs; the members of the Partridge family; the stage names of the Spice Girls; all of Roseanne’s former last names; the reasons she doesn’t use them anymore.

It’s amazing that I have any brain left to perform simple counting functions or give my body tasking instructions, like how to button buttonholes or make the bed. No wonder I can’t keep track of my relatives’ birthdays--the brain cells that should be doing that job are busy remembering Beck singing, “I’m a loser, baby, so why don’t you kill me?”

The song lyrics are the worst. I just don’t have room in my head for any more lyrics--yet they keep writing more songs. Go on, try this simple test. How many of these lyrics will you ever be able to forget: “Louie, Louie,” “My D-I-V-O-R-C-E becomes final today,” “Stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive,” “I am woman, hear me roar,” “Tie a yellow ribbon round the old oak tree.”

Hmmm? Chances are, none of them--especially now.

Oh, of course, I could be the only one who’s giving long-term brain cell space to “Knock three times on the ceiling if you want me, twice on the pipe if the answer is no,” but somehow I don’t think so.

I once nearly succeeded in forgetting almost all the lyrics to “The Little Drummer Boy,” until I realized that they were just lying dormant, ready to recur every holiday season. But there are worse horrors hiding in my synapses: the Barney song, for instance. “Hakuna Matata.” The theme from “Friends.” They’ll be there for me, all right. Forever.

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One of the key demands of my personal secessionist movement is “All TV theme songs out, now!” As if it weren’t bad enough that I remember them, I also can’t help remembering that Rosie O’Donnell remembers them too. Oh, yes, a big chunk of cortex is given over to celebrity facts, or factoids, as Norman Mailer calls them. And there’s something else I can’t forget. Norman Mailer.

I know who is Batman now and why the others aren’t anymore. I not only know who the Artist Formerly Known as Prince is, I inevitably know what he was formerly known as, and that evidently Michael Jackson has chosen to name his baby what he used to be called. And every time I look at Eddie Murphy I can’t help thinking “good Samaritan”--although I don’t know why he didn’t just tell the cops he was heading for the freeway and wanted to be able to use the carpool lane.

Do I need to know any of this? Will it improve my mental outlook, my disposition, my quality of life? Hardly. But since the annexation, I can’t avoid it. I once read somewhere that one of Hillary Clinton’s favorite expressions is “Okey-dokey, artichokey.” And believe me, I could forget her involvement in Whitewater a lot sooner than I’ll ever forget that.

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This kind of brain invasion is more pervasive and devastating than bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, something else the media have made sure I will never forget. If you think you’re immune to any of this, I have one word for you: “Ellen.”

When did I first realize what was happening to me? Oddly enough, conspiracy fans, it was in Fort Davis, Texas.

I was driving cross-country with my friend Jane, and we decided to stop at the Limpia Hotel in Fort Davis on our way to Marfa, the town where they shot “Giant.” Fort Davis at that time consisted of the hotel, the drugstore, the Laundromat, the bank, the courthouse and the feed store, and I hear it hasn’t gotten much bigger since.

In Fort Davis, we met Texas Bob, owner and operator of Texas Bob’s Ardt Museum--he spelled it that way because “Some folks say it ain’t art.” Like some aboriginal cargo cultist, Texas Bob had created a shrine to pop culture in a few small very crowded rooms, stuffed with, well, stuff. Like Pez dispensers, Hopalong Cassidy cereal bowls, Edgar Rice Burroughs first editions, rock ‘n’ roll memorabilia, bicentennial beer cans, and virtually every Coke bottle and can ever made, including the short-lived and ill-advised “New Coke.” And that’s just scraping the surface of what was in there.

Texas Bob conducted tours by flashlight--the lights were on anyway, but he used the flashlight for emphasis. At different points in the tour, Texas Bob dressed up as the Fugitive and as Indiana Jones. And this was before Harrison Ford starred in the “Fugitive” remake. As the finale, he played a tape of the closing dialogue from the original “King Kong”: “It wasn’t the airplanes. It was Beauty killed the Beast.”

It was at this poignant moment that I realized what I was witnessing. The museum was just an externalization of my brain. Actually, it was Texas Bob’s brain, but it was close enough to my brain to be really, really scary. And the thought hit me that my brain, like Bob’s crowded space, had barely any room left in it. But pop culture wasn’t going to let up. It was just going to keep on going and going, like . . . well, you know like what.

The current owner of the Limpia Hotel, Joe Duncan, told me by phone that Texas Bob has packed up and moved on, perhaps back to his native New Jersey. It seems most Texas nuts aren’t home grown, after all. Duncan urged me to come back to Fort Davis for a relaxing visit, saying, “Things are quietening down again now.” It wouldn’t be the same without Texas Bob. But Texas Bob really doesn’t need to keep his museum open these days. It’s open in all our minds.

So how am I going to get my brain back?

Well, as I said, I’m just going to stay here in my apartment, order out, and issue my demands. I’m sure there are thousands of people out there who will join me. Although staying here without any media input may prove a little difficult. Not to say boring. I’ll probably end up just singing old songs over and over to myself in my head. Anything but the “Friends” theme again. . . . “Brusha brusha brusha, it’s the new Ipana . . . “ what am I saying? . . . hell with it, might as well just go and suck some tube.