Chapter 6
“Mos Eisley Spaceport. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious…” just means Obi Wan never made it to the pocket of Blackpool, or South London, where the carnivals gathered. If you have been to a Madrigal dinner, or Scarborough Renaissance Festival, well, you have never been to a Carnival. A Steam Punk carnival is even harsher. Most
‘civilized’ kids would be in bed at this time of night, but in any city worth its salt, there were the night kids, the kids that had been in the street begging, or selling gum, who would have been cleaning your chimneys except Parliament made that illegal, which left a whole class of little ones without employment, and some of those little ones grew up just enough to make their own little ones, and those little ones also lived in the night, and so the Steam powered Merry Go Rounds would never stop, except when it stopped to put down kids and pick kids up, and you would think some of the kids were too big to be riding Merry Go Round, but you really shouldn’t be so judgmental, as some of these kids didn’t have a traditional Dickens Childhood, and if you ever actually read a Dickens book, you would know even those kids didn’t have your childhood, so I dare any millennial child to time travel back to the before time and see if you could tolerate a day of what our ancestors dealt with, leaving your cell phone and facebook and twitter accounts behind, and you might find it was a miracle any of us survived at all.
Normally, Caractacus would have been very interested in visiting with the tinkerers, or looking at the gadget kiosks, or watching the fashion strip, or the side strips that sold funny mechanical things like lamps with the dancing hula girl, or the mechanical line up of dancing legs with hands holding up Victorian dresses just enough that you might have a hint of ankle socks going up a leg, which was fairly titillating for mechanical toy, and no proper place to show it, except the basement, where men sharing a smoke might gather and be crude, not that men did that in that day and age, but there have always been men’s club, with various degrees of exclusivity, while the rest just went to the pub at the corner, which was all inclusive.
At this particular carnival you would see clowns on stilts, a rare pickpocket, especially if he was awful at his trade, an occasional ‘spooky’ Jawa scampering through your peripheral vision, tough guys with their girlfriends, some of them girls were tougher than the men, and then there were the dainty women all tied up proper in their tight fitting clothing that would shape their bodies the way a mold does play-do, and some people just tied up and hanging about in real ropes, because that’s kind of fun, too, some people even hanging by hooks, and some of them tougher women had men holding onto they arms. It was a really a nice sight to see all the variety of people getting along. There were also snake oil salesmen, and magicians, all kinds of sweets and baked goods, and steamed popcorn which sometimes turned out popcorn so fast that it would explode and cause popcorn to rain down over the carnival, sometimes even as far as North London, so London birds and kids on the street ate well during carnival, and there were jugglers of all sorts, like knife jugglers, and kitten jugglers, and flaming pin jugglers, and there was a place for jousting, and sword swallowers, and flaming sword swallowers, men and women swallowers, and people amazed and scared and off hand jokes that go with swallowers and vores, and a place for swords fight, and Shakespearean theatre, and Christmas carolers, only they were not singing Christmas songs yet, because back then Christmas didn’t start before it’s designated date. There were ladies of the night who could steal you away for a bit of fun, or even boys of
the night, depending on your preference. There were the gypsies telling fortunes or selling mystical, esoteric items with a bit of history, and sometimes the history was more interesting than the items, just depends on what you’re buying. And there was a place for punk bands to get a chance to peddle their sounds, and poor Huey and the Steaming news didn’t get to resale his “Power of Love” whereas the one hit wonder “What are Words for” seemed to be doing okay, but she ended up being a Missing Person. And everyone here had a name and was in the credits.
But Caractacus stayed focused on his goal.
To give you further examples of the toughness, there was this space just as you entered the carnival properly where the band music and the Carnival music and the orchestra music seemed quitter than the rest of park, which reminds me, my movie will be the first movie where the dialogue is louder than the music and sound effects, so you don’t have to keep adjusting the volume on your set, in fact, we have a menu setting where you can even adjust the two so you can have you preferred balance, you’re welcome, and anyway, people were gathering to gawk at a ten year old boy soliciting money to care for his younger brother, who was chained to a crate by a sinister looking chain of unusual proportions and heaviness for such a little lad that lead to a neck shackle. Yes, this is true, kids can have it bad, and adults will gather and rubberneck, because not everyone is Truly who will interfere, but many people will and eventually, a person will step forward and tell the ten year old to ‘unchain that child’ and the child would be all dramatic and hold his hand out in a gesture to stop the man from approaching further.
“Sir, I cannot because I am a true humanitarian, but if you will hear my story and still decide to free him from his chains, I will personally give you the key,” the ten year old said. And the hook was stuck, and the reeling in began, so the child would continue: “My brother, though he may not look old enough to have been around during the time of child chimney sweeps, I can assure you on my word he was, because the practice continued in secret in parts, but also, he appears smaller because he refuses to eat but one thing. You see, we were employed by a duke to sweep, and this one duke was a very cold man, not mean, just cold, and impatient, and his previous sweep was doing his trade when the duke set a good chunk of coal on fire and cooked the child right there in the chimney.” The audience moaned appropriately, and the child said: “I know, right. My brother and I, powerfully hungry as we were, accepted the work of dislodging the plump and roasted child from the chimney, because, well we have no mother or father to look after us, and we were promised coin and food and so my brother was the only one of us who could fit, and so up he went, and mind you, the Grimm fairy tales don’t inform you about how wonderfully nice smelling a roasted child can be, like a proper ham on feast day, or how tender and delicate the meat is and how an arm or leg could just pull free like from a chicken on a steam roaster, and if you have never gone days without food, then you will never understand my brother’s predicament. All he had to do was drop the pieces for me to trash but what I received were just clean bones, with fresh gnaw marks, and now that my brother has eaten human flesh, nothing else will satisfy his hunger…”
And as the child spoke, people had gathered closer because the ten year old had grown softer in voice till he was almost a whisper and then suddenly “ROAR…”
Eston and Elizabeth screamed something fierce. “OMG,” they both said in horror. “Don’t do that,” Eston said.
“That’s not even funny,” Elizabeth said.
Though, the other adults in the room didn’t agree and were still laughing, but mostly because Fersia left the room in a fright as if someone had thrown a cucumber on the floor and was just coming back as Jon was trying to speak without laughing
“And if you think you were scared, imagine the faces on the poor people gathering closer to the child who suddenly ROARed,” Jon said, because if you get one you can usually get two, so might as well go for broke. Fersia left the room and the kids screamed again and Lester tapped his cane on the floor showing amusement but was also gathering up fear magic. “OMG, that never gets old, and anyway, the adults properly scared out of the reach of the child, and women fainting, and some men left the carnival completely, some leaving their girl, or even their own children, which is terrible that some adults can be so scared to leave their children, but that is a genuine survival tactic, and women had to be dragged out of the child’s reach, and there were a few heroes left to do such, and the child scratching and clawing as the chain went taught making an awful noise all in itself, and only then did he take off his own chain and take his brother’s hand and they would bow and accept some money, and reset the trap, with some people lingering to watch other people get scared because eventually someone who didn’t know it was a trap would walk right in and spring it, because most good people don’t have the common sense to look for traps.”
Caractacus knew about traps and smiled as he rolled right past the setup, as he was focused on his on way to earn coin, even gave them props and wondered if his two ever did somethi8ng that clever, because even while you’re doing your thing you still think of your children might be doing, but there were lots of other opportunities to be had, especially if you like fighting. As a trained military man, he considered he could probably make some money in the ring, maybe even do some boxing without too much damage to himself, but he really didn’t like hurting others just to prove a point, and when it came to fighting he was one of those that once you got started, he could fight, but it didn’t turn off so well and if it weren’t for uniforms letting him know who the opponents were, he’d like take out everyone, which is a good thing to know about yourself, especially if you want to show restraint, though he could sometimes intellectualize the event as training, and he was certainly willing to show them new ways to use an old bamboo, which he learned from an old China man who wipe out an entire squad of soldiers when he was in Hong Kong, a fight brought on by a street disturbance, but he was really opposed to doing that for sport, and if you show people new tricks, you may find yourself facing an opponent who knows what you know and that just makes things harder. So, all that to say doing it to protect life or limb was one thing, but just for fun wasn’t his thing, though he did admire people’s abilities and lingered for a moment as he considered the pros and cons of the various styles people were presenting. He could have helped the tinkerer fix things, or could have helped the antique seller identify things, but he couldn’t see doing that for money, because that was something he did anyway.
Caractacus found an unassuming spot between a snake oil salesman and a kissing booth. Yes, there really were kissing booths in the days. Now, we have to emphasize this part, the technical and correct term is iterate, not reiterate, because if iterate means to retell something, then reiterate is a nonsense word that is more than redundant, anyway, because maybe you can imagine a carnival, with all the ‘tough’ people, and all the crazy stuff that can happen, and the variety of people you would encounter, but you have to realize this particular carnival is not for the faint of heart, as demonstrated in the above cut scene that didn’t make it to screen because people thought zombie cannibal kids was just too crazy, but there really is an unbelievable toughness to some of these folks, not societal rejects but definitely fringe, and very street smart, and sometimes you just got to be tough to survive the street, but being tough and looking tough did not equate to ‘bad,’ though some of the folks actually looked bad, but were really quite nice once you got to know them, as most people are, but you can also not be a nice person without being bad, and so there was this one prominent guy making a muck of things just because he could, which was truly an example of anti-social, not asocial, which is the opposite end of the spectrum, but the kind of anti-authority and anti-anything resembling structure, which he did in the most annoying, loud, public way as he could, which is an illness not an evilness, generally brought on by simultaneous abuse with a lack of nurturing, and so a person overcompensates for strength and meanness to make people go away, but the soul is so terribly lonely it engages aggressively in winning friends because negative interaction is better than no interaction, and it is truly the most lonely of conditions and a horrid place to be stuck, and a behavior that would exemplify the condition is taking the game where you use a sledge mallet and hit a button to ring a bell if you’re strong enough, and he knew he was strong enough, but his intention was to hit it so hard that the entire of London would know he was strong enough, and everyone heard that bell, as he hit it so hard the contraption fell apart, the bell going East of London almost as far Eston, which is a quaint little village, and West, well, it went to sea and scared a fish or two, the bearing going another direction and knocking some poor bloke out, and the rest of the thing splintered, and all the ‘brute’ did was laugh, like an evil god saying, ‘puny humans’ with no thought of how it hurt the vendor and his family. Seriously, it’s terribly hard to calibrate such a fine instrument to test and train strength, much less build one from scratch. And you may wonder why I even draw your attention to this brute in the background, but if you weren’t able to guess what was coming at this point, well, you need help. For starters, it’s hard to miss someone who is clearly as big as Andre the giant, but who is nowhere near as nice as Andre the giant, seriously, Andre was an incredibly nice and gentle giant, a mere kitten, to be more precise, who had affinity towards puppies and children and making rhyming words, but this is not about him but only so you might get an idea of how big this particular brute was, a giant of a man who was very accustomed to having his way, and not the guy in the Johnny Cash song, and pushing people around, and you’d almost wonder why the girl hanging on his arm liked him so much, maybe to the point you would even considered Stockholm syndrome as a solid explanation, only remember, she was a spy, but you know, even if she wasn’t a spy hired to discover if the brute was a hired henchman, because often genius hire brawns without brains because, well, they have their own issues, but there is love for everyone, also, and probably the main reason, I draw your attention to him because he ends up being a guineas pig for one of Caractacus’ inventions, and, coincidentally, or more likely consequently, his only customer of the night.
Also, you may find it helpful to understand, not that it’s absolutely necessarily true that you have to understand, but perhaps something you might appreciate, if you watch the thing being discussed here, there is quite a bit of evidence that this isn’t just a kid’s movie. There is some unbelievably adult content, like the Baron trying to kill his wife, over and over, and though you may not remember it, and maybe it doesn’t exist, and clearly doesn’t exist in any of the DVD sets as if someone had edited it out, there was a scene where Caractacus is carrying Truly from her car and deliberately drops her in the muddy puddle, which is kind of funny, and odd it would be edited out of existence, because it was really funny, except someone clearly thought it wasn’t funny or politically correct or maybe out of character for Caractacus, but not out of character for the Quiet Man, and wouldn’t beat an Irish girl with a stick across the country side where everyone could see, and though Caractacus was a ‘lonely’ man, in terms of adult company, he wasn’t really a quiet, lonely man, and yet, and this is the real bother when it comes to editing original prints, they didn’t edit the scene of the Baron’s wife being ejected and subsequently shot at by the Baron, which you would think would be more offensive, except its’ comedic overtones, because a dress as a parachute is just hilarious and you know, even Victorian ages, men were looking up hoping to see a spectacle in the spectacle. Maybe they really thought the good guy couldn’t do something so mean, but if you think about it further, it wasn’t the bad guy that did something mean, it was Chitty that ejected the woman, and Chitty is the good guy, or girl, because it’s a female, and so if the scene of Caractacus dropping Truly in the muddy puddle was cut because of that, that would just be wrong because it’s good to know even good men can do wrong, because, well, we’re men, but we can go further and say people are mixture of good and bad. Do you really want a world with only the appearance of good? Anyway, I am not saying with authority that that scene existed, or that it was edited out, but that I recall that being a scene, which could be just one of those memories children invented because clearly that was intended and there was hints of it, and when you only see it once a year, which was how it was back in the day, then maybe it is a false memory, and maybe just talking about it causes you to remember the scene, too, and you will be writing me, ‘yeah I remember that and I watched my copy and it’s not there, but I found my old Beta version and it was there!’ But because no one in the world remembers beta, no one will ever see the evidence. And thus, a new conspiracy theory is born.
But don’t write me about that. There is better stuff to write me about, like where’s the letter-box edition of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory?! Seriously, if you watch the Oompa Loopmpas dance and how awkward that one guy gets butchered in the pan and scan version, you know there has to be a letter-box version somewhere, and anyway, the whole point of this is that in this version, it was not a haircut machine, which is funny enough in the way the movie executed it, but removed from what was actually intended, because there is no carnival in the book, and even I am watering it down from my first thoughts of a mechanical rodeo bull, which gets loose and causes a muck requiring Caractacus to show off his skill at being a rodeo clown and taming a wild, mechanical bully with glowing red eyes and blowing steam out its nostrils, and a lot of men got hurt in that scene, but mostly from watching Jennifer Connelly, which was really some scene, and so I had to bring it down a notch. There was also a version where a person, usually a female, had to ride an ‘orgasmatron’ while reading from classical literature without indicating anything was happening, which can be quite hysterical watching them, and yes, it was a medical device for hysteria that could be used with your clothes on, but also watching the gathering crowd puzzled faces while trying to figure out why the person is having so much trouble reading simple literature was also just as entertaining, some people even getting mad and saying they could do it, not knowing what they were climbing onto, which makes it the most profitable booth to have at a carnival, because men will step up and pay for any number of women to try and read, but he left that booth at home. So, in another version, just consider these alternative universes in a stream of parallel universes, there was this arm wrestling machine, but seriously, when a human is paired up against metal, metal wins hands down, no pun intended, which is not the origin of the expression, and too many people ended up with broken arms, which is not amusing in the slightest, and so the machine was dismantled.
No, Caractacus brought a trainer. A kissing trainer. In essence, it was a kissing booth with a robotic head and mechanical arms proficient at hugging and squeezing, and could be used to help measure the quality of the kiss. The trainer was capable of measuring and analyzing the qualities of a person kiss and making predictions about their characters, or rating them, and there was on a sign a ten scale with the most famous kisser on one end of the spectrum, and the worst kisser on the other end, all names that would have been well known at the time, but most people today would have to research the names, and so I won’t bore you with the list. The machine was also proficient at instructing a person on how to improve, and so it had multiple modalities and was really quite a versatile machine, and it was his hope that a couple could have two of these and through a wireless connection they could kiss each other, even if the husband was military and off on some lonely duty station, which Caractacus imagined would help improve marriages, as many marriages were long distance marriages in the day, which really skews the research on the longevity of marriages, because sometimes it’s easier to sustain a thing when you live apart. Anyway, such a device would be like a kiss message, or a messenger, or a kissenger, but that name is taken and there is actually such a product, which just shows you how far ahead
Caractacus was in thinking about the needs of people, as kissing is definitely a need people have, which would be expressed well in a future Beatles song, “all the lonely people.” Naturally, a big, strong, anti-social guy like this was more likely to smack the head and knock it out of the booth, but he simply made a face of disgust and comment.
“Well, of course, a big handsome guy like you, with a beautiful woman on your arm, you have no need for training. And, you probably wouldn’t be interested in the prize anyway,” Caractacus said.
“What prize?” the man asked.
“Oh, that my friend, is a secret, only for those who win, and also dependent on which game you enter,” Caractacus said. “If you enter contest mode, and you score a ten on a scale of ten, which means you are an expert level kisser, you win the contents of this here box. Or, if you care for the blind challenge, and prove yourself talented enough of discerning the difference between the trainer and your own girl, I will personally surrender the box, and the money you gave to play. But so far, no one has ever beaten the challenge, well, except the guy at the top of the list, and you beat him, I will make it an eleven scale with your name proudly listed as the best kisser ever measured in the world of men, and I bet ladies from all around the world will hear of your fame and be jealous of your girl, and maybe even seek you out, so probably not a good idea, especially if your girl is jealous, so, you’re right, this isn’t for you.”
The face of Cortana winked at the man, which was either an enticement or a challenge.
“I assure you, Sir, I can tell the difference between me girl and a contraption that isn’t even alive,” the man said.
“I would hope so,” the blond said. No, really, look in the credits. “And I am not jealous in the least. I have my own set of talents.”
Caractacus almost said he could imagine, but then thought it best, “I will take you at your
word…”
Now the woman at the real kissing booth took offense. “That machine there is a bit sexist, don’t you think?”
“Why madam, there is a guy, too,” and at this Caractacus pulled a switch and Cortana disappeared into the box, and ‘Cortan,’ looking very much like the jinn ‘Zoltar’ that granted wishes in the Tom Hanks movie, Big, only it was creepier looking and more real, emerged. He wiggled his eyebrows and smiled knowingly at the brute. “And if you go for the triple bet, you have to be able to discern between Cortan, Cortana, and your girlfriend.” “You think you can replace us with a robot?” the woman asked.
“Oh, no, you’re very pleasant woman and I would love to see you free from the drudgery of having to kiss every stranger you met willing to pay,” Caractacus said.
“I don’t mind so much,” one of her friends said. She was missing some teeth.
“And, my booth is guaranteed not to spread communicable diseases…” Caractacus said.
“Hey!” the woman said.
“I am not implying anything about your esteemed self, madam, but can you tell the difference between a coal miner’s cough and pneumonia cough?” Caractacus asked. “No, and most people can’t. But no one can tell the difference between my kissing booth and a real person.”
“I can!” the brute said.
“Care to put your money where your mouth is?” Caractacus asked, offering a blindfold. “But if this is true, the machine will drive down the price of kissing and you may put us out of business,” the girl with the missing tooth said.
“You get much older, you will be out of business,” the brute said.
“Oh, be nice,” the blond said.
The challenge accepted the man began to put the mask on, stopped and said, “Bring the girl’s head back.”
“So, you wish the lesser of the challenge, very well,” Caractacus said, and pulled the lever that made Cortan go away and Cortana reappear. Once he was certain the man was properly blinded, he positioned his girlfriend and then asked permission to maneuver the man to his first challenge. The man was placed between the booth and his girlfriend, and all he had to do was turn to face one or the other, Caractacus turned him about in circles to confuse him and then stabilized him and asked him to proceed. The girl with the missing tooth was a jokester and wanted to switch out with the blond, but Caractacus said that wouldn’t be a fair test, and the crowd chuckled, and the brute was irritated, “what is happening,” and the blond assured him all was well. “Now, stand there and let the kiss come to you. The challenge begins. Who is the real girl, the one before or behind?”
And here’s where things began to go wrong. As the man kissed his girl, Cortana had second thoughts, because unbeknownst to Caractacus she and Cortan had a life of their own, and so she disappeared, but before she completely departed, she put a dog biscuit down, and Tesla, who had secretly followed Caractacus to the caravan, and would have made himself noticeable sooner, but he was following a nice trail of ice-cream that was melting in a child’s hand, and did get a chance to lick the child’s hands clean before angry, loud parents chased him off, was suddenly there and jumped up onto the both table to eat the biscuit, which Cortan and Cortana had trained him to do, and so when the man turned to kiss Cortana he got a mouth full of dog tongue at which point he loudly announced, “There’s me girl!” and there was an uproar of laughter that could be heard the entire park round even as the man was bragging on how good a kisser she was, even inquiring, “when did you eat ice cream?” because the smell of ice cream was still fresh, and it was a seriously affectionate kiss for being so publicly scrutinized, and when he removed his blindfold, well, there was a moment of bewilderment, even as he got more puppy love and then he screamed something fierce, and Tesla departed for home, because though the parents had been angry and loud, they were nowhere near the intensity of the brute’s anger and loudness, but Caractacus has been a bit slower on the uptake, mostly due to shock, and barely dodged being punched, but he was reasonably fast when he needed to be, and so the chase was on, spilling popcorn, making a child cry because of it, and balloons set adrift, which is not something one should purposely do because animals eat bits of plastics and rubbers, and so if they’re not biodegradable it can be harmful, just be more mindful, this notice from Elizabeth and Eston, and you should really consider paper straws and paper bags, if not reusable cloth bags, and maybe reusable glass straws, and in that moment of discussing environmentally safe products, we missed the scene where the brute lost sight of Caractacus, and was called ‘dog breath’ by one man and who was subsequently clobbered, and one of the real girls offered to kiss him, but loudly lamented she wasn’t dog enough in appearance, and he might have even clobbered her, but the blond yelled at him, and then he thought he saw Caractacus dodging into a tent.
One wrong turn of course, could put you in the middle of a song and dance, and you would think a band of musician dancers would have notice a stranger suddenly in their midst, but it was a hard time for singers and dancers, even if you had a gimmick like a bamboo pole, because robotic can-can dancers often stole the show,