Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/499110
APRIL 22-28, 2015 UCW 5 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM Do you have the uneasy feeling that your life is somehow incomplete? Are you troubled at 3 a.m. with worries that you are not as happy as you deserve to be? Is there an existential black hole in your happiness? Well, relax. You are not paranoid. You are right. There is a gap in your life. I speak of the late great actor, Jim Varney who played the heroic bumbler Ernest P. Worrell. Do you want something that will make you even happier than the newest version of Air Jordan shoes? Look on your right arm. Look on your left arm. Do you see a tattoo of Ernest? Nope. I didn't think so. If you had a tattoo of Ernest then your life would be complete. Sporting an Ernest tattoo, you will be even happier than if you drank the right brand of beer, hung out with the in crowd or took the right prescription medication for your social anxiety disorder. If you want to be twice as happy, get a tattoo of Ernest on both arms. Who says you can't tattoo happiness? How do I know that a tattoo of Ernest will bring true happiness and self actualization to you? Allow me to explain. I picked up a copy of this month's Skin Ink magazine. In the back pages of selfie tattoos, there was Ernest leering out at me from someone's arm. Eureka! I immediately felt happier. All my troubles were left outside. With an Ernest tattoo, the world is beautiful. Life is beautiful. The key to happiness is not to be found in Seratonin re-uptake inhibitors, but rather in being adorned with an Ernest tattoo. What could be more entertaining than spending the rest of your life with Ernest grinning up at you from your arm? If you are ultimately embalmed like an ancient Egyptian, you can even spend eternity with Ernest on your arm when you greet Anubis the wonder dog on the other side of this vale of tears. Let us ponder for a moment, the origins of Ernest. Many moons ago, Ernest starred in a series of commercials for North Carolina's own Pine State Dairy. Ernest was always getting into trouble, which usually involved a ladder during the commercials. He would relate a meaningless Zen story in an epigrammatic monologue and end by asking Vern his unseen side kick, " You know what I mean, Vern?" Vern never responded to Ernest's earnest inquiry. It was like waiting for Godot to show up. We never got to see or hear Vern. As far as I know, Vern never got his own tattoo. Unfortunately, the Pine State Dairy went the way of all melted ice cream cones and disappeared into the economic flux. Earnest was out of a job. He was down, but not out. Hollywood took note of his amazing talents and plucked him out of obscurity. Ernest starred in a series of poetic and enigmatic films in the late 1980s and early 1990s. My sons loved the Ernest movies so I got to see a lot of them, over and over again. Who can forget such great filmography as Ernest Goes to Camp, Ernest Scared Stupid, Ernest Saves Christmas and Ernest Rides Again? They just don't make viscerally kinetic movies like that anymore. My personal favorite Ernest film is the trenchant biopic Ernest Goes to Jail in which Ernest achieves comedy gold escape velocity by fiddling with a fountain pen in a court room. The pen develops a Titanic sized ink leak covering Ernest's face. Ernest unwittingly splatters himself with ink resulting in the best courtroom hijinx since Clarence Darrow duked it out with William Jennings Bryan in Inherit the Wind. The gripping leaking ink pen scene breaks the spatial limits of comic modality and bursts into the outer reaches of the Humor Zeitgeist. Initially appearing just to be a mishap between a moron and a writing instrument, the scene deepens into a comment on man's futile interaction with an ever-expanding universe. The scene peels back the onion layers of Ernest's humanity revealing a new world of fountain pen humor that will stand forever in the pantheon of cinematic court room ink blobs. The struggle between man and ink delivery device quietly evolves into a social and aesthetic analysis of artistic criticism of the overarching question of man's proper place in the cosmos and the jail house. If you only see one Ernest movie this year. You must see the searing Ernest Goes to Jail. The Importance of Being Ernest by PITT DICKEY PITT DICKEY, Attorney, Columnist. COMMENTS? Editor@upandcomingweek- ly.com. Register today to begin training for your new career! FTCC Barber Training: A Cut Above the Rest This course is designed for students who are interested in becoming N. C. State Board Licensed. Don't Delay! Call Today! (910) 678-0033. Get trained by the BEST.... So you can be hired by the BEST!