Literally Reruns – Spam in a Can by David Lohrey

Leila connected with this piece on several levels – not least the Groucho jokes!!:

“I shot a Colonel Kurtz in my pajamas. How he fit in them I’ll never know.” To get the preceding lame joke it is necessary to know more about Groucho Marx than Karl, and it helps to remember the shape of the late 1970s Marlon Brando rather than the cut fellow who appeared in On the Waterfront. This sort of thing, in a weird and twisted sort of way, might make perfect sense while driving to Vegas in a bullet-riddled Datsun at the dawn of the 1980s.

Mr. Lohrey’s Spam in a Can is unapologetically loaded with top- and sub-references that the author probably knows might be lost on a great percentage of the readers. So what? This circumstance in no way detracts from this tale of three guys who are wound too tight for Vegas, and who are probably wound too tight for Gomorrah, as well. I say put your thumb out and see if you can hitch a ride in this story. At very least, you will be entertained.

Q: All right, goddammit, what’s with the unexplained bullet holes in the Datsun?

Q: For such a short piece, the MC’s thoughts travel back and forth through the timeline and seem to end earlier than the point he had begun to speak at. It is very well done. How did you arrive at the choice to do so?

Leila Allison

Dave’s responses:

Q: All right, goddammit, what’s with the unexplained bullet holes in the Datsun?

Well, we were students at UC Berkeley and lived in Oakland which had /has some rough customers. Somehow my pal’s car got sprayed with bullets one night… It wasn’t really the wild west, but it could be wild. We were there when Patty Hearst was kidnapped and the ransom required the family throw frozen turkeys out the back of a truck. They were meant to feed “the masses” but were taken by rich frat boys (members of the football and basketball teams) from the university. 

Q: For such a short piece, the MC’s thoughts travel back and forth through the timeline and seem to end earlier than the point he had begun to speak at. It is very well done. How did you arrive at the choice to do so?

 There is discussion of the Mafia period of Vegas (to the end of the ’70s) and the subsequent MGM/Corporate takeover…maybe this is what you mean. Yes. This gives the impression of which you speak. Right. So there is a double narrative, the trip itself  took only a few days and the historical arc that covers a 20-year span, from that trip in 1981 to some indefinite future when the narrator looks back and sees Vegas and his youth vanished. It’s a nostalgic piece really and I needed time to accomplish that.

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Spam in a Can