Side Dish: The Branson, Missouri Experience > May 14-15, 2008

We are truly blessed, we Americans. Bestowed by a beneficent universe with sprawling vistas, abundant soil, and purple mountain's majesties, fruited plains and all that, we also live within the borders of a nation where an entire town - not a street, building, or block, but AN ENTIRE CITY - is devoted to crap. Not just the mildly objectionable, but a kitsch sandwich dipped in cheese, fried, coated in sugar, and served with a side of head-slapping shame. It's as if Las Vegas itself regurgitated the acts even they found too appalling to stage. It's the worst of America, the worst of humanity, yet the best of entertainment. Where else can two silly fools from Denver drive along an endless stretch of road and see wax museums, cat shows, celebrations of the Lost Cause, has-beens opening for the never-weres, Elvis impersonators, go-kart parks, buffet emporiums, and a life-size replica of the Titanic? Where everything is inherently unwatchable and worth any price, all at once. It's Branson, and it's time.

Don't let the above photo fool you. As much as Branson is, in fact, tucked in the beautiful Ozarks, it's as if the scenery retired to Florida, while letting everything else this part of the country is known for come to the foreground: crazed crackers looking to spend a bit of their lottery winnings on something special. Very special. Where to start? Well, after checking in to the world's last remaining $200-a-night hotel that charged for internet access (and had a lovely view of a brick wall), why not spend a good $50 at a fire-trap-in-waiting: a wooden go-kart park where the cars cruise at a healthy 45 mph. At least that's what it felt like. Sure, I'm an old man getting older, but I love go-karts as much as the next teenager. Sure, it's the only real way to secure the most undignified pictures possible in a town that ran dignity out on a rail decades ago, but I'll never again have the opportunity to leave so many young women in my wake when not running from a lynch mob.

After an hour or so of burning rubber, we turned next to Titanic: The World's Largest Museum Attraction. And so it is. Packed to the rafters with authentic artifacts (a deck chair here, some dishes there), it is also crawling with costumed maniacs who, from all appearances, believe they are still on that bloody ship. As we poked around the facility, we were attacked, bushwacked, and given the bum's rush by at least a half dozen minimum-wage mental patients who, when not affecting dime store British accents, seemed to speak of their lives before they died horribly in the cold Atlantic waters. As if to add to that sense of somber reflection, each tourist is given a boarding pass of a real passenger, which means you can wait until the end to find out whether or not the six-year-old pixie you've since bonded with ever saw her hysterical mother again. I'm pretty sure both of our passengers met a grim fate, though one was in first class, meaning she had a lifeboat all to herself. There's also a full-scale replica of the ship's grand staircase, a meat locker-like room where all are free to touch an honest-to-goodness iceberg, and a gift for the masochist in your family, in that a person can stick his bare arm in a freezing bucket of water that approximates the temperature of the Atlantic Ocean that fateful night. Finally, "cold as a witch's tit" has new meaning.

After trivializing the death of 1,500 souls with what amounts to an amusement park ride, we were off to the pinnacle of fine dining in the Branson area: Shoney's. If you've never been, it's fair to say that in few other locales are you likely to find a wider selection of breaded foodstuffs, including something that was labeled fish, but spurted hot cheese. So with a belly full of salad, jello, waxy green beans, and burrito soup, we drove up to the 8pm performance of The Baldknobber's Jamboree (though we simply could not miss the 7:15 comedy pre-show). Befitting our desire to be tortured with maximum effect, we purchased front row seats, a decision we soon regretted as we would be obligated to feign interest and applaud when necessary. And so we did, like seals, along with our fellow packed house of white, middle-aged Americans. In fact, it's likely the whitest gathering in history outside of an albino family reunion. The crowd went wild for the comedy (every third joke was some racist jab at Mexicans), which, to these ears, hasn't aged a day since Hee-Haw went off the air. After asking all military personnel to stand and receive a rousing ovation (begging the question - they died for this?), the show veered to music, which is a kind way of saying we went from laughter to tears. Southern anthems, Christian hymns, and patriotic pagaentry filled the air, and from our privileged perch, we were able to witness the sorts of old, haggard women who plaster on their make-up with a trowel. They danced and dipped, shouted and whooped, and not for a single moment were we engaged or even conscious. Two hours have never passed more slowly. In many ways, I feel as if I'm still there. And yet, these sadists asked us to buy a DVD of what we had just seen. Only if it's packaged with a razor blade, Fucknobber.

What would any sane person do who had spent an evening being assaulted by bad music and even worse comedy? Why, get up at the crack of dawn to see a 9:30am show of Yakov Smirnoff, what else! Don't ask - yes, THAT Yakov Smirnoff, the very one who last tickled our funny bone when Ronald Reagan was both above ground and president. But damn the past. Hell, it's still 1985, the Soviet Union threatens to pull the world behind its iron curtain, and jokes about the KGB and bread lines are not only topical, but uproarious to boot. So by all means, get us two front row seats for Russian dancing, juggling, and more flag-waving sentiment than a 4th of July parade. You see, Yakov loves America. I mean, Really Loves America. "What a country!" he once cried (and again, here, two dozen times), which, for him, meant that a patently unfunny human being could make a good living, not be booed into oblivion and suicide, and eventually get his own damn theater in the nation's most inexplicable city of the damned.

So after a good sixteen hours of hearing about the ineptitude of communism, Yakov dazzled us with some pseudo-scientific claptrap about the differences between men and women, nothing with more depth than the idea that women like to shop and nag, while men are obsessed with power tools. Somehow this presentation involved magnets, which was so confounding that I forgot about Yakov's incessant sales pitch. Every five minutes, the born again capitalist shilled for his DVDs, t-shirts, trinkets, and autographed babooshkas. Like vultures on a rotting corpse, the rubes bought everything not nailed down. Then the crowd stormed the stage, set fire to the seats, and tore Yakov limb from limb in an orgy of mindless savagery. So much for daydreaming. Rocked back into the awful, awful present, I rubbed my eyes and, I'll be damned, ran face first into a sobbing, hysterical Yakov. Yammering on about his grandmother and other immigrant tales, Yakov's patriotism burst forth with the water works. He simply would not stop. Oh shit, where's he going now? Into the crowd? Wait, we're in the front row! And so Yakov came, shaking hands with every last person, salty mist staining his bearded cheeks. I love being alive, but right there, right then, I wanted to drop stone dead. Not even crawling under the seat could have saved me.

And that's all she wrote. And yet, despite the pain, shock, and worldly disgust, we had fun. Branson is, above all, utterly unique, even though it traffics in the second and third-hand from top to bottom. Ever wonder what happened to so-and-so? Yep, he's here. And thriving, while you continue to look for work. It's where the Civil War rages on, with the Confederacy edging towards that final, well-earned victory. It's about country music, country values, and country pride, and as such, the densest collection of mouth-breathers in Christendom. Thankfully, I argue, because now, more than ever, we know exactly where to find them. And as we got the hell out of Dodge, leaving our cash and self-respect behind us, I had but one, pleasing relief. Elvis Presley, for all of his late-career bloat, knew exactly when to die. Had he lived, he'd be belching here still. My god, he'd all but own the place. Oh wait...before I go....one more picture, which might work without explanation, but for your curiosity, was found in the lobby of the Yakov theater. I think it's Jesus, but then again, it might be Barry Gibb. Maybe it's both. It's that kind of place.