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This last August, a Laramie, Wyoming landmark closed its doors forever, and honestly, the world is probably a safer place for it.  I'm talking, of course, about Bart's Flea Market, a dilapidated old grocery store building smeared through the shadow of a highway overpass, with possibly the grimiest collection of junk ever assembled by man inside.  Imagine the most poorly kept Habitat for Humanity or Goodwill store you've ever seen, expand it to the size of a football field and triple the prices, and that's close to Bart's. Stocked to the gills with suspicious old trash too chintzy for words, Bart's felt kind of like a time machine where a murder had taken place. Groanworthy tin signs, crude pewter belt buckles, sun-faded decorations from a retro 50's diner the health department shut down, books that looked like they'd been used to prop up a car with a bad oil leak; if it was sketchy and tasteless Bart's carried it. Row after row of mismatched shelves and cases hand-labeled with printer paper signs, under a galaxy of stains on the ceiling cork tiles that leaked like Niagra Falls whether it was raining or not somehow, the whole store was stuffed with crap even the corniest great-gramma would roll her eyes at.  It was the kind of flea market where you really ought to worry about actual fleas, not to mention whatever other horrors were waiting inside the rows upon rows of antique, amateur taxidermy. It just felt gross to be inside.  So of course when they went out of business and had a giant sale I had to go raid the place. I bought an embarrassing number of bizarre DVDs from the 7 or 8 different shelves of them randomly hidden around the store, but more on that in another thread. Today I want to concentrate on one of the weird old books I bought at the big Bart's finale: The Flintstones The Bedrock Connection  This 1974 "Authorized Edition" of a Flintstones mystery novella for children is possibly the most confusing thing I've ever read. It's not that the prose is difficult or the story is complex- definitely not either, actually. It's that author Horace J Elias really seems to have never actually seen an episode of The Flintstones or be even aware of its basic details, even tangentially. The Bedrock Connection reads like a Hardy Boys novel acted out with Flintstones chewable vitamins by a particularly mean older brother. The characters don't act or sound like themselves, the tone is darkly hateful and the setting is anachronistic even for the loving Flintstones. It's crazy to me that Elias apparently wrote a bunch of these books for Hanna Barbara including "The Flintstones The Computer That Went Bananas", but that's a mindfuck for another day. Today, we read about Fred and Barney (or, really some assholes who kinda look like Fred and Barney) getting mixed up with astonishingly cruel cave-man smugglers who may or may not be time travelers. You've been warned!  Here we see Fred giving away a plot twist before the book even begins. Great.  Right off the bat something is wrong: Fred and Barney don't work in a mine, they work in a quarry. I feel like the author understands this on some level because it's a "rock mine" but that opens all kinds of other questions: why aren't the rocks in the ceiling good enough to dig? Why would you risk digging tunnels just for rocks when you can have an open pit? Maybe Mr Slate had a stroke and sent his employees to die in a fissure of the quarry he now calls a mine, gently caress if I know. I just know something is already terribly, terribly wrong.  Rick Nicksun, Fred and Barney's new evil-visaged coworker, has a parody name but not a rock-themed parody name, so again, get the gently caress out of The Flintstones you weird monstrosity. Nicksun, who in a book from 1974 is clearly a good guy, immediately gets on our heroes' good sides by badmouthing the general concept of office work. Fred and Barney hate office work so much they assaulted their boss for trying to promote them. Take that, drudgery! We'll stay in the unnecessarily dangerous mine thank you very much. Fred is still gonna wear a tie to work though, I guess?   Things become heated immediately as Nicksun insults Fred and Barney's masculinity. I never thought about there being chauvenistic fist-fights in the quarry at lunch time but, I guess they are cave men. At this point I can imagine the poor 1974 child reading this and having their fun understanding of Fred Flintstone degrade into scary machismo and workyard brawls.  Why is Fred angry in all the art for this book? Maybe it's because his friendship with Barney is clearly on its last legs. In the 50's and 60's (BC, or, whatever) they were best pals but by the era of cave-disco they had nothing but insults for each other. Sad, really, but honestly Barney shouldn't have put up with this poo poo as long as he did. I imagine by now he goes home to a tumbler of scotch in a dark room every night, fuming and shaking his fist at nothing like the end of The Pledge.   Christ, Fred, what the gently caress happened to you? I can't recall a single episode of the TV show where he called Barney on the phone to tell him he was stupid and browbeat him into what is clearly a criminal proposition- why else would he not want to talk specifics over the phone? Fred has known Rick Nicksun for all of a day and he's already got him hiding contraband under his infant daughter's crib like he's Walter White. Barney's look of sincere disappointment is a profoundly unhappy drawing that you'd expect to talk about with a school counselor, not see in an official cartoon tie-in.  Like all good doomed literary characters Barney Rubble knows this is all a bad idea but can't stop listening. Even long after their friendship devolved into cruelty and violence he can't help it, Fred was once his friend. Wasn't he? If you ever wondered what The Flintstones would be like as a bleak Russian crime drama, here you go. I have no idea what Mahooley is but if you have to whisper in alleys about even just holding on to it, gently caress. You boys should have taken the drat office job. BoldFrankensteinMir fucked around with this message at 03:37 on Sep 27, 2022 |
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Sep 26, 2022 23:05
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 03:56 |
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Sep 27, 2022 03:55
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   Now it's Barney's turn to get pissed off, at what turns out to be Fred's belief in bullshit patent medicine that's technically a cleaning supply. We've all been here haven't we? Standing in the street in front of your house, in the middle of the night, screaming at a once-trusted neighbor about how their faith in criminal quackery really ought to be beneath them, and it's causing you to lose your respect for them? What a depressingly prescient domestic disturbance, thanks The Flintstones The Bedrock Connection, for capturing our modern era so succinctly.    I want to forgive Horace J Elias for not knowing that dinosaurs definitely had teeth, but it's tough to justify, seeing as Iguanadon was discovered in 1825 and its name literally means iguana-tooth. Okay so maybe Flintstones dinosaurs are not real dinosaurs, coexisting with humans and acting as household appliances etc, but even then, Fred's pet Dino clearly has teeth:  So really what we're watching is a Waiting for Godot type nightmare of misinformation. Next Fred is gonna tell Barney about how pterodactyl farts contain mind-control chemicals and Barney angrily rebuts dinosaurs can't fart you stupid jackass! Also I should mention, China existed in Bedrock times? Please God don't show the drawings of the Chinese cave-men, pleeease...  ... get this man to a hospital now!!!! Fred Flintstone is clearly not much of a drug mule if he taste-tests mysterious cargos (something he is not, he points out specifically, being paid to do). Maybe if he gets hit with a bowling ball he'll think he's Freddy Flintana, AKA Saurface, master drug smuggler? I honestly wonder if Fred's buried personalities are actually more competent than his dominant identity, since Fred Prime appears to think dragons are real but cabbage isn't.   Things go from bad to worse as Rick Nicksun surprises the boys, having them drive the sketchy black market medicine from the next city over in their personal vehicles. I don't know what exactly I was expecting from this book but it was not No Country for Old Flintstones, this poo poo is dire as gently caress. I know you have unanswered questions Barney but for your own sake I recommend shutting up before somebody puts a cigar out on your forehead.
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Sep 28, 2022 05:17
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  First trucks, and now cloth? My god those bags are a technological marvel, soon the whole world will be wearing this stuff instead of rough animal pelts, from Bedrock to China apparently! Of all the dopes to get involved with the Limestone city cartels. This part at least feels more like The Flintstones, Fred and Barney are so dumb they don't notice gangsters insulting them, Barney isn't really this dumb but he trusts Fred too much, and they mess up the job real bad, by announcing the names of their infant children they're hiding what they think are drugs on. Funny stuff. If they can just keep their heads above the tar pit of mutual loathing that is mummifying their friendship they might make it through this. I don't know if I can take many more multi-page jags of Cassavetes-esque angst starring the characters from the prize machine at my toddlerhood dentist.  Some of these illustrations are spot-on masterpieces. "I don't know what kind of a housekeeper Wilma is..." is this image's perfect title. Hang it in the Louvre.  You lie to your wives and then blame them because they're gossips, yeah that checks out, very Flintstonian. One of these days, Alice...  Yes! Fred and Barney screw up the bad guys because Barney is actually smart and Fred does ultimately listen to him when the clams are down. I'm not even gonna question how you dig all the rocks out of a mine, I'm just happy to see my old friends Fred and Barney looking happy again, now that's a drawing I'd have on a tippy-cup or a onesie pajamas. I would not dress a baby in scowling Fred and angry Barney arguing pajamas. What a monstrous experiment.  Lighten up Fred. Barney just invented cement, years before Kyle Maclachlan dies discovering it in the Flintstones movie even. Ow I'm giving myself a headcanon migraine.  drat it. Barney is now a hardened criminal, his "friend" ordering him what lie to tell his wife about where he's been. Double-blind stashing fifty bags of heavy powder he believes to be internationally shipped drugs, there is no ambiguity in Barney's mind about what they're doing here, he just broke bad. Mahooley means the good life Betty, you'll understand some day. And you'll forgive him...maybe...  Another masterpiece. Although the Falknerian "Wilma knew Fred was tired, because he came in without slamming the front door..." is a great title, I would hang this one as "It's a living!" I'm sure that our boys will "get what's coming to them" alright- the foul temper and emotional unavailability of criminals evading their families. What happened to honesty, Fred, Barney? When did something as stupid as mahooley become more important than your wives and children? I can not convey how sad it is to me, to ponder this kind of dour, dour story starring the God-damned Flintstones. I have spoken to Fred Flintstone on the phone personally, many times, and he is a national treasure, it is breaking my heart to see him do this to his loved ones. To all of us!! Turn back, Fred and Barney. It's a modern stoneage tra-ge-dy...
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Oct 1, 2022 05:35
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Oct 2, 2022 00:24
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 The author wisely omits enough details to allow the Bedrock Bulletin to be a stone slab, even though I suspect he intends it to be paper which doesn't exist yet, but he clears the bar. I'm having a harder time with a "famous gold coin collection" existing in The Flintstones. They can't be antique coins, it's the stone age. The idea of coins at all is amazingly futuristic, Flintstones people use shells for money, so that's the very narrow avenue my head-canon is forced into: this collection of prototype "coins" is famous because, if successful, they promise to revolutionize commerce. And metallurgy, which I'm sure Fred thinks is a fad because he works in an old fashion rock mine that tosses minerals aside as detritus. The RIGHT way to mine.   I'm no literature expert but it seems to me that if even the characters are noticing how repetitive their words and actions are, you should probably rewrite that story? And I'll tell you, Barney Rubble knows a thing or two about walking in circles, if he's sick of it then it must be bad. My "revolutionary new gold coins" theory is hanging on by a thread though. Maybe Barney is laughing at the idea of mining gold as a novelty? A gold mine who ever would have thought!? Will wonders never cease...  No, boys, no! Remember the good old days, when it was a quarry not a mine, and you liked one another! And Barney don't think too hard about these coins, you might...  ...oh no. So they're dollar coins, and explicitly old enough dollar coins to be worth significantly more than the value stamped on them. So we now know the coins are: 1-a government-backed currency already well established in circulation 2-the subject of aggressive inflation, which is 3-well documented to the people of the era (as in Barney reading about antique money exchange rates "somewhere") This raises so many questions my head is spinning. Was there some kind of caveman civil war a couple generations before Fred and Barney were born, and all the money from that era is worth a lot since the world regressed to a shell-based economy? I guess, if people don't remember how to mint coins anymore that would make the confusing relics worth a lot. But the idea of The Flintstones' primitive society being a devolution opens so many cans of worms, we'll never get through this cruddy gangster story if we don't keep pushing forward. Ow my brain.   "Sheddap, sausagehead" sneers Barney, as the last remnants of my happy colorful memories of him dissolve into mean drawings on yellowing paperback pages. Perhaps the Great Gazoo did something, that demon. Some evil force is contorting the primitive synapses of this poor hominid, making him a sharper, crueler second banana. A Barney Rubble not fit for high chairs and jelly jars; a vicious brute. At this point, Gazoo being a Yith is the easiest explanation for all the nightmarish contradictions in this story. He's mind-jacking all of Bedrock to escape the flying polyps. Oh and you can't use gold coins as money anymore, because Rick Nicksun hasn't been elected Cave-President yet to undo the laws against gold ownership put into place by Cave-FDR. I hate everything.  Barney insists calling the police is the worst of all plans. Always a good sign that things are going well.  Oh god what now? Is it the second cave civil war, is the cave-south rising again? Did the gold market collapse when everyone realized they no longer know what gold is? Did Gazoo finally make his move against the cave-whitehouse, what is happening!? Time doesn't even make sense anymore and Barney Rubble is a foul-mouthed turd and the Flintstones have a real TV not just a bird in a box with hand-puppets, why am I still reading this terrible book for children and why are my ears bleeding...
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Oct 4, 2022 19:11
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 drat, a warrant-less search of every house in the city. I had no idea Bedrock's laws were so... oh, right. They're cave people. All this talk of metallurgy and centralized banks and cargo trucks, it's easy to forget, law hasn't been invented yet. Police, yes, and crime sure, but laws, no. I really kind of hate thinking of the Grand Poobah of the Water Buffalo lodge as a neanderthal warlord who can declare prima nocta but this is where we're at. God help us.  I'll saddle up your dinosaur. Never mind that Fred's industrial sauropod at work has been shown consistently as having not a saddle but a howdah:  Literally for decades, with remarkable consistency.  I'm starting to think the author vaguely remembered seeing one episode of The Flintstones on with no sound at a bar, or maybe it was someone else recalling it to him, he can't be sure. gently caress this stupid book I hate it. How is there still so much of it left, what child would read this...  Please please no more angry Barneys, I can't take it. I want to remember him smiling on a sippy cup, not scowling in chipped paperback. Maybe I need angry Flintstones shot glasses to remind myself of the sad truth of our harsh reality, shortly before forgetting again. Glug.  Good entry to the "draw the Flintstones from memory with absolutely no reference" thread. Did they ride dinosaurs like horses? Kinda? Whatever who cares, we just have to get through this mess.  Oh good Wilma is now an accomplice. She doesn't get any lines in but she does get some crimes in. They're a regular stone age Bonnie & Clyde (Bonie and... Club?), I hope the police don't shoot their rock-a-car up in an ambush with twenty automatic woodpeckers.  Dammit Mad Barney you're killing me here. And no, The Flintstones The Bedrock Connection, I refuse to buy this last minute revelation as some kind of mystery story. Of course the bad guys wanted you to take the heat, that's why they're paying you. What did you think, the smugglers would rush to your aid hiding their contraband? How, by asking someone else to hide it? Think, Barney, think, if you're gonna be a criminal monster at least be a smart criminal monster. I expect more out of you and Fred than to be stone-age Cory and Trevor.  No, no don't do it! How can there be an antique coin store in Bedrock if...  California. New York. Not stone-age versions of them, just the modern places. Even just their names are enough to suggest enormous histories, which we can now assume had stone-age equivalents. Cavemen named Stone New York after old Stone York Town (I can't even bring myself to just call them New York and California, the writer in me immediately says "they're supposed to be stone puns" on autopilot. Calciumfornia and... Oldest York?). This is the point where I guess I have to relent, The Flintstones is clearly post-apocalyptic. Fred Flintstone is about to uncover a Shi plot to kidnap Snake Plisskin, thank goodness the Beforetimes Munny collector in Bedrock traded him the info for a tank of liquified pig methane and tickets to thunderdome. They say Blaster's new master is a kid that just yells Bam!
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Oct 13, 2022 01:59
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teen witch posted:fan theory: the flintstones, in the canon of the books, is in a Village-like sitch. remember - a modern Stone Age family drat, its' highly possible. Maybe Bedrock is the failed free-thinking community that Mustapha Mond was talking about. No matter how many times they run the experiment it's like the community takes a bowling ball to the head and forgets what it is...
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Oct 13, 2022 03:54
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 Oh good more Fred and Barney bickering with mean short tempers. I needed more Grumpy Old Flintstones. I'd forgotten this unique variety of disappointment. Also, "Stop saying 'Right' and talk!" is, I believe, the title of a Talking Heads film translated into Chinese and back again.  Nope. I refuse. I refuse to believe that Fred and Barney's dinosaurs at work are named Crunch and Mangler. MANGLER. Who the gently caress names the crane at their quarry/mine job "Mangler"??? Is this a Topsy the elephant situation, has Mangler killed before? Nope. Not buying it. According to the Flintstones wiki, "Brontosauruses were of utmost importance to caveman society, serving a wide variety of essential uses to them, with one of the most essential uses of all being construction and food, and as such many brontos were domesticated and very few wild ones were ever seen, but those that were young and wild were very aggressive. " I'm so glad that all this work was poured into understanding Brontosaurus Flintstonus, while the Wikipedia articles on some state capitals are stubs. Society has its priorities in order. There's no mention of dinos named Crunch and Mangler on the wiki, though one of the first images in that brontosaurus article is of Fred riding one like a horse from The Flintstones Comedy Hour so, I can't complain about that aspect. I'm curious how a dinosaur gets named Crunch by people who don't think dinosaurs have any teeth but, screw it, we'll never get out of here if I look up every stupid thing that makes me mad on the Flintstones wiki. Quiet, picklehead!   ...brakes? But they're powered by... Never mind never mind never mind we're almost through. And I will say, this is my favorite piece of art in the whole book, it's like the perfect drawing for an entry in a gritty Flintstones tabletop RPG system's QM (QuarryMaster) manual. Rockmobile Mobster Squad Point total: 400 ST: 18 DEX: 8 IQ:5 HT: 15 Advantages: Allies/Rick Nicksun, Combat Reflexes, Hard to Subdue, Less Sleep, Rank/Rockmobile Gang 1, Speaks with Animals, Striking ST, Talent/Smooth Operator, Terrain Adaptation/rock-road, Unfazeable Disadvantages: Alcoholism, Bad Smell, Bully, Callous, Enemies/Bedrock PD, Ham-Fisted, Sadism, Selfish, Semi-Upright, Trickster, Yabba/Dabba (D0) Skills: Brawling 14, Carousing 12, Counterfeiting 12, Driving/Rockmobile 15, Fast-Talk 10, Garrote 16, Intimidation 16, Sex Appeal 12, Traps 10 Drops: Rockmobile Mobster wallet x3, 3d6 clams, key to Rockmobile, 1d6 pictures of Betty  Robbers robbers robbers robbers... chap??? You can tell the author is spent by the paragraph about Fred and Barney also going to jail but whatever they explained things, it was cool that they had taken money from gangsters to hide contraband because in the end they also led a dangerous high-speed chase through residential neighborhoods. They cancel out, see? Case closed. Even Wilma felt safe enough to come outside for a bit, that's rare these days.  "I've not a clue old bean" said Barney as he polished his monacle on a clearly modern garment. "Frightful business this numismatism wot wot, could get a chappie killed eh?" I don't care how it ends anymore I just need The Bedrock Connection to be over. PLEASE. I can't put up with any more of Fred and Barney devolving, they're already cave-men the only step left under that is foul ape and this book had foul ape Flintstones to beat the band. The last thing I need is Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble swearing and punching each other like Sexy Beast or something. Be done with crime boys!!!  No!!!!! And so, the thrill of crime got its hooks into Fred and Barney, and they ended up breaking rocks in Sand Quentin rock-a-prison for trying to rob the first Granitional bank. The end. - Now you know the confusion and terror I felt upon first reading The Flintstones: The Bedrock Connection, a cruddy little half-a-mystery novella with off-sheet drawings of Barney Rubble scowling on every other page. I don't know how to describe such an object except as cursed, or possibly hexed? Something tremendously wrong is going on the world of Flintstones books apparently, thank goodness we're done there forever. I wonder what else I can find on the Flintstones Wiki... ...oh for the love of Gazoo...
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Nov 1, 2022 04:51
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baka fwocka fwame posted:so in the end there was no harm done except to the quarry mines safety record There was immense damage to the town from this. Fred and Barney, on Crunch and Mangler, "galloped wildly through town, knocking down trees, benches and light poles." It was like GTA Bedrock for most of a night there, who knows how many injured or killed.
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Nov 2, 2022 00:54
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 03:56 |
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What the gently caress is even happening in these crazy Flintstones books???  Am I having a stroke? Why do I taste chewable vitamins?
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Nov 2, 2022 01:01
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