notes on summer [drive in intermission shorts]

anna asked me last weekend if it felt like summer to me.  i answered in the negative.  i suppose as a grown-ass man deep in to middle age summer is just another season.  i mean, i still have to get up to go to work every weekday.  no three consecutive months off for me, thank you very fucking much.  still, summer does have a flavor all its own.  the light outside changes to a bright fluorescent that has been known to blind un-sunglassed people.  the heat in Sac can get intense.  but at least it is a dry heat.  find some shade and you can sweat it out.  this city has two rivers, the American and the Sacramento, and a long bike trail on the American that is both respite from urbanity and a lure to the adventurous where you can see deer, coyotes, hawks, turkey vultures etc etc.  i hear the fishing in both the American and the Sacramento is pretty good.  oh!  you can rent kayaks to paddle about in Lake Natoma, and rafts to float down the American.

these are a few of the summer things that my beloved city has in abundance.  Sac also has one of the few working drive in theaters in the U.S.  casual readers of this blog know that i think the happiest place on earth is the Sac 6 Drive In.  a few years ago the manager of the Sac 6, earl, gave me and nick a tour of the projection booth.  a true bucket list sort of thing for me.  and it ain't summer in the city without the Sac 6 Drive In.

but the Sac 6 no longer plays drive in intermission shorts.  these are the live action and cartoon commercials to get patrons to the snack bar to load up on goodies like sodas, candy, popcorn, pizza, burgers etc etc.  i love these intermission shorts.  some are artless, a few are art.  the Sac 6 had a live action musical short about going to the snack bar where you could get pizza with 'mushy roomy room sauce' that played so frequently at the Sac 6 it has become something of a folk legend.  I haven't seen this particular intermission short for over 35 years.  youtube has thousands of hours of intermission shorts, i've watched many of these hours, and i have yet to find this 'mushy roomy room sauce' commercial.

still, it is summer time, and the living, if it ain't easy [and it ain't], is at least vivid.  i love the drive ins, i love drive in exploitation movies, and i love very much drive in intermission shorts.  these shorts are the personification of summer for this old man who grew up in a northern california city that was once the home of up to a dozen drive in theaters.    

below is one of my favorite drive in shorts.  i might have posted this video before.  and yes, this was a mainstay at the Sac 6.  i think the short was produced in the late 1950s.  hence the emphasis on flying saucers.  flying saucers were often in 1950s sci fi/exploitation movies that played in drive ins.  viva la summer!  this shit makes me happy.