Excellent Adventure?

Do you remember the movie Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure?  One online critic summarizes the complex plot of this 1989 gem like this:

“Two seemingly dumb teens struggle to prepare a historical presentation with the help of a time machine.”

Okay, so you might think that the film probably did not do much to strengthen our cultural fiber, aside from giving us the phone booth as time machine (which makes sense; hot tub, DeLorean, phone booth-check).  But Bill and Ted does contain an intriguing idea; bringing iconic, historical figures into our present time and watching their reaction to our unremarkable world.  For instance, in the movie, Bill and Ted kidnap Napoleon and bring him to a suburb in Southern California.  Left with no foreign powers or grand geographical features to dominate, Napoleon begins other conquests; he overtakes a mountain of ice cream sundae (earning a badge), he becomes a tyrant at a waterslide, he does battle, and loses, at a bowling alley.  Remembering these scenes from the movie (Thanks, Youtube!), I’ve started wondering how I would use my own telephone booth-time machine.  Who would I bring from the past into my present?  While the possibilities are endless, my favorite answer to this scenario would be introducing members of the surrealist movement to contemporary Midwestern American culture.  I imagine giving a tour of my home base, South Wichita, to someone like the artist Max Ernst.  Ernst, who celebrated the incongruity of life, would surely have a blast.  Inspired by the writer Comte de Lautréamont, he explained that his approach to making art was encapsulated by the author’s phrase “Beautiful as the chance meeting upon a dissecting table of a sewing machine and an umbrella.” Ernst elaborated:

A complete, real thing, with a simple function apparently fixed once and for all (an umbrella), coming suddenly into the presence of another real thing, very different and no less incongruous (a sewing machine) in surroundings where both must feel out of place (on a dissecting table), escapes by this very fact from its simple function and its own identity; through a new relationship its false absolute will be transformed into a different absolute, at once true and poetic: the umbrella and the sewing machine will make love.

Well, as I was saying, anybody that can reflect so deeply into the incongruities of life and find morbid beauty (Really? An umbrella and sewing machine making love?) would appreciate a tour of South Wichita.  Consider, at the local Quick Trip, the chance meeting of:

·        fountain pumped cheese and Mexican peppers on a roll-tisserie German sausage knock-off

·        carbonated corn syrup and fried pastry on a breakfast menu

Or, at payday loan center, the chance meeting of:

·        a kangaroo mascot and a t-shirt on a electronic flashing sign

At a Wal-Mart Super Store, the chance meeting of:

·        pajama pants and a leather jacket with a Glamour magazine

·        a hoody with skeleton motif and body toning shoes on a grandmother

·        a “have a nice day” vest and a sad, empty, stare on a semi-retired senior citizen

And on my block, the chance meeting of:

·        a shopping cart and a plastic Big Wheel in front of an illuminated American flag

Oh, the possibilities are endless.  The question is, as Max Ernst stepped back into the phone booth- time machine, would he go home inspired?  Depressed?  Would he be hopeful for the future, or would he just feel shown up?    

Please visit my work at kevinpkellyart.artspan.com