‘Redneck Riviera’

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Neil Postman – Amusing Ourselves to Death

The area south of Highway 98, North of the Gulf, East of Highway 59 and West of Pensacola Naval Air Station is Varg’s fatherland. Where a young Varg Lived out his formative years getting screwed, brewed and tattooed. This was before the cement monoliths overcame Perdido Key and before Ivan pretty much took out all the wooden, well built homes. The local kids spent their time at far-out oyster shell parking lots on the beach listening to the radio and cassettes tapes while getting to know each other.

The roads were straight, dark and isolated. We didn’t have a lot to do and service industry jobs put money in our pockets. I recall one summer, I smelled like french fries the whole time because I had a job at a seafood restaurant and worked the fryer. It was a simple job. I learned you batter the shrimp, scallops and fish and throw them in the fryer. When they float they are done. Serve it with a lemon and cale garnish.

I worked with rednecks, black folks, gays and lesbians and Vietnamese mostly. These people made up the middle class. The working folk. We worked together, played together, gave each other rides to work when our cars broke down or our licenses were suspended. We helped each other out. We weren’t stereotypes. There was a tinge of Reneck Riviera but it wasn’t who we were and it didn’t define us any more than the kids on Jersey Shore define the East Coast of that state.

We didn’t consider ourselves “Good Ol’ Boys or Gals”? We didn’t think that Southerners are underrepresented on TV? We didn’t talk endlessly about Nascar. We didn’t sport a rebel flags jacked-up pickup trucks. We listen to loud country and/or Southern rock (not exclusively anyway). We didn’t enjoy walking around shirtless or in daisy dukes? We didn’t consider “liberal” a dirty word? And the idea of the perfect vacation wasn’t going to Panama City or Daytona, buying Miller beer by the case, partying and dancing the night away among neon-lighted strips of bars while spending the day on the beach with a cold one in our hands and watching bikini bull-riding contests?

But I am sure there were people out there who did or will at least pretend to be one of those people so they can get on TV…

From the Web site Redneckrivieratv.com…

This is your opportunity to represent our unique Southern beach culture on a reality show all about you! It’s time to show the other coasts (and the rest of the nation) the place where the South parties and plays…where the sand is warm and the drinks are always cold.

So turn on your video camera and get ready to help us show ‘em how we do it down on the Redneck Riviera!

WHAT WE WANT:
Friendly, sociable, gregarious, and unreserved guys and gals between the ages of 21 and 30 who would be psyched about spending 2 summer months living in an all-expense paid beach house. We’re looking to represent the entire Southeast, so if you’re from the South, or grew up in the South, you should apply. You MUST want to be on a reality TV show and be willing to be taped.

I have always pitied the folks in New Jersey. The vast majority of them who aren’t “guidos” and aren’t in the mafia. The real people who live there and have to endure this micro-fraction of misfits who have managed to hijack the social identity of an entire area.

Now it might happen to the Gulf Coast and once again there will be another group of people added to the list of folks who have yet to realize the joke is on them – that they are the victims. Of course they aren’t the castmembers aren’t the only victims. The entire region becomes one too. I don’t blame the government of Gulf Shores for trying to stop the whole thing. They know it will be decades before the stigma wears off. And they are already reeling from an oil leak.

As if people from the South didn’t have enough problems with stereotypes. I faced them a lot out West. It can be heard whenever someone wants something to sound stupid, they always say it with an exaggerated Southern accent.

I’m so disappointed with television. I really need to get off that grid. Netflix and those new digital rabbit ears may be able to carry me through. If this show gets picked up I swear I will let it go. No Cox. No DirecTV, no provider. Just the public stuff and the Internet. It can be done. It MUST be done.