Why Folsom Sucks: An update on the people.
I recently had lunch with an old colleague and old journalist sage of mine, his name is not important. He is a far more level headed and sober journalist I’ve come across in my five degrading years of chasing this stupid profession. He helped me get some gigs and in return I helped him get one of the worst jobs in the industry, a real shady business run by people who should be employed by Dick Cheney. Both he and I were working at the same entity which will remain unnamed, a business providing services to newspapers that don’t ask questions apparently. The owner is a creep, a loner of epic proportions and has a scorching case of Asbergers syndrome. I can only speculate that he fell victim to Munchausen’s by proxy as a child. The only remedy for people like him is force feed them lithium, show them slides of Rorschach prints, and train ‘em to care for bunnies.
On the rare occasion we do meet for lunch we typically head to Manderes the only respectable establishment in Folsom. This one place still doesn’t make Folsom moderately tolerable, so don’t jump to any conclusions or look for ‘holes’ in my rants.
We met early in the afternoon talking about everything from literature, to the news industry, to academic deconstructions of hipsters as per Bill Wasik, and the overall the ever perplexing personalities and surrealist nature of Folsom, which was nice for a change. I don’t run into many people who read, let alone read anything I’d enjoy. I have to hear people brag that they read Eat, Love, and Pray, or whatever that tripe is, in their book club. This is why I’m not in them. Apparently everyone in this town reads the bullshit Oprah is shoving into her vag.
“It’s a strange place” he went on to say, as if no one else saw it except for him. He himself is very much a part of this unearthly place, living in and working here. The subject of the Folsom Rodeo had come up, and to my knowledge, for the first time ever the Rodeo featured a laser show on top of a firework show. Naturally the conversation evolved into talking about the type of people that patronize the Folsom Rodeo, bottom feeders, dudes that wear those straw cowboy hats with the extreme brim curl usually meant for slutty chicks boating and pounding Coors Light cans on Lake Havasu.
During one of the fantastic little rodeo nights he and one of his friends set out one night to shoot some pool at the Sutter Club. While shooting pool he noticed this phenomenon, the people. The salivating Freaks, are they from here or not (I read on some shitty blog about one in five bar patrons are from Folsom)? Either way he was befuddled by the dimwits that come out of the woodwork with their miscalculated finery. He mentioned something like, they’re not cowboys, but preppy adults wearing cowboy hats trying to co-opt or include themselves into this realm. The realm which doesn’t exist.
My colleague wrote a story about the strange humans that reinvent themselves for a special holiday of shit kickin’ and beer swillin’ in Folsom, he decided not to post this phenomenon on the Bee Blog. Not so much for fear of reprisal or that most everyone would probably take offense to what he wrote, but rather he is just putting this one in his back pocket. He raised his hands and said it might cause a stir, sarcastically being trembled at the thought of people disagreeing with him.
Luckily I only got stuck in traffic during this charade, I tried like hell to avoid these vampires whose only source of nourishment for life is the acute blandness for annual events. It’s difficult not to see these people as a freakish and unnecessary amalgamation of everything that sucks, a style and mental critical mass about to implode on itself, genetic mediocrity fast forwarding to the parallel universe of vapidity.
We finished up, I felt good that there was at least one other person in this world, even just for the moment (the time it took to eat a salad) that appreciates and even reads literature, and has something slightly more profound to talk about than flat billed hats with Monster energy drink logos on them and MMA fighters. This is Why Folsom Sucks, people from outside are ruining Folsom Faster than an ex-pat in a developing country, and they all like stupid shit.
~get weird~
