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Now available for preorder:
The San Francisco Panorama.
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Which is why Maureen McCormick, aka the original Marcia Brady of "The Brady Bunch" fame, scurried out of the Ten's Show Club up in Salisbury Beach the other night. Apparently, the squeaky clean star had no idea she was in a strip club! Maureen, who was ushered into the VIP lounge along with co-star Christopher Atkins of "Blue Lagoon" fame, appeared shocked when one of the dancers began doing that thing they do. Apparently, the former child star doesn't get out much. . . . Anyway, our G-stringed spies said McCormick jumped up and ran out of the club, saying she was afraid the local gossip columns would get wind of the fact that she was ogling the exotic dancers... Oooops, sorry Maureen, you just weren't fast enough! —"A 'Brady' gal at strip club? Oh, Marcia, Marcia, Marcia" - - - - 1) Although the closeted gay actor Robert Reed (Mike Brady) was tolerant of his child co-stars, it is widely known that he was not happy with the moronic quality of the Brady show scripts and storylines. To alleviate his frustrations, Reed would sometimes storm off the set and reportedly end up at a nearby bar, returning to the studio only when shattered enough to endure the debasing ordeal of shooting the remaining scenes. 2) Back in the 1980's, when Salisbury Beach used to be a raucous summer tourist town rife with fried food, cotton-candy stands, decrepit theme parks, rigged carnival games, constant fist fights, biker bars, and numerous arrests, Ten's Show Club used to be named The Bowery. Ironically, business is better at the newly renovated and renamed girlie bar now that most of the oceanfront amusement mecca has decayed and a number of condemned pavilion buildings have fallen off their pilings and into the Atlantic. 3) Sam The Butcher had a severe thing for longtime Brady housekeeper Alice, but the TV couple never married. In real life, meat mogul Allan Melvin went on to act in commercials as "The Liquid Plumr Man" and did the TV cartoon voiceover for Magilla Gorilla. Ann B. Davis became a born-again Christian and dropped out of show business entirely. 4) Hard by the beachfront boardwalk, you can get a great view of the Salisbury surf and sand just by stepping outside the Ten's front door. But if you turn around and face the other way, the view is marred by the squat, surreal reactor towers of the Seabrook Nuclear Power Station that jut abruptly from the salt marsh two miles away over the state line in New Hampshire, overshadowing the strip joint and everything else on the seacoast. 5) Although The Brady Bunch aired during one of the most unstable political and social eras of 20th Century America, the show's creators took great pains not to let reality interfere with the shielded lifestyle of the country's favorite TV family. In 117 episodes, Brady characters never once made mention of racial tensions, political upheaval, violent protest marches, inner-city rioting, psychedelic drugs, sexual experimentation, the Vietnam conflict, Woodstock, Watergate or the energy crisis. 6) It's pretty much an open secret that local teenage sweethearts lie about their age for the privilege of performing at seacoast strip clubs. For many, such a career move may be their best and only chance to escape Salisbury. It's either that or work at the dog track up on Route 107. 7) Barry Williams (Greg Brady) was once so stoned after smoking marijuana during a 1972 Brady Bunch shooting that he flubbed his lines and ended up spending the entire scene fascinated by the spokes of a revolving bicycle wheel before tripping over an air pump. Perhaps the liberal reefer use helps explain his well-documented but often exaggerated crush on TV mom Florence Henderson. 8) "Ten's Show Club, Salisbury, MA" is an anagram for "Marcia below shy, snubs slut." 9) Approaching Salisbury via I-495, there is a huge blue-and-white highway sign proclaiming RESORT AREA—EXIT 54. Every time I drive by, I get the clever idea to add the word LAST to the top of the sign to provide a more accurate description to passing motorists. But instead of actually doing it, I just think about it over shooters of Scotch at whatever local dive happens to be closest. 10) Youngest Brady sibling Cindy never spread her legs in Penthouse magazine, as is widely rumored, nor has she starred in a secret second career as a porn actress. But X-rated movie aficionados swear Susan Olsen is a dead ringer for the leading lady in the 1986 skin flick Crocodile Blondee. 11) Obscure fact: The fictional hillbilly town of Dogpatch in the once-famous Li'l Abner comic strip was based on downtrodden Salisbury and Seabrook, circa 1930. More relevant fact: Today, no one under 60 has a clue as to who or what Li'l Abner was, although the same seamy reputation still clouds the much-maligned seacoast village. 12) With the exception of the pilot episode, when Dad tells his sons "I don't want you to forget your mom," there is never any mention of the missing biological parents of the Brady children. Despite Dad's kind advice, it seems that the Brady kids do manage to develop selective amnesia regarding their absent kin. Incredibly enough, in a turbulent, forced family setting, with six adolescents raging with hormones, never once did viewers hear any of the teen siblings shriek "I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU! YOU'RE NOT MY REAL PARENTS! I DON'T HAVE TO LISTEN TO YOU! I HATE YOU!" 13) In the state of Massachusetts, Salisbury annually ranks at or near the top of demographic surveys counting the percentage of homeless people in each community. Some residents claim that this statistic is unjustly inflated because of the large influx of transients, runaways, and drifters who flock to the beach in the offseason to rent barren, dirt-cheap motel rooms by the week or camp out at the state reservation all winter long for next to nothing. Although many of these folks lack heat, running water, toilet facilities, or a permanent address, indignant town officials insist that the sanitized term "temporary residents" is more descriptive. 14) On several occasions, Maureen McCormick (Marcia Brady) and Eve Plumb (Jan Brady) reputedly flaunted strict Brady script regulations by attempting to appear on the show without a bra. The less-endowed McCormick had better luck getting away with this ploy, until her alleged deception was discovered one afternoon while shooting an outdoors scene on a particularly chilly set. 15) Years ago, I took a date to Salisbury Beach for the afternoon. As we walked barefoot along the shoreline, there were so many cigarette butts on the beach that the girl remarked in disgust, "It's like walking in a giant ashtray." That didn't spoil our day, though. The kicker came later, at high tide, when the waves washed up what apppeared to be a dead goat near our blanket while we were eating lunch. 16) In 1997, Mike Lookinland (Bobby Brady) pleaded guilty to drunken driving charges in Utah after an accident in which he rolled his Ford Bronco off the road. Had he still been on TV with the Bradys, he definitely would have been grounded for having a blood alcohol level more than three times the legal limit, even at age 36. 17) Thanks to the town's proximity to the nuclear power plant, all up and down the shore road ominous warning sirens sit atop the power lines and telephone poles. For years, one waterfront homeowner has posted a huge anti-nuke sign in his front yard warning DANGER—NO EVACUATION POSSIBLE. In spite of the precautions, the whispered local joke (alluding to the region's long-standing but undocumented allegations of incest) is that even if a nuclear meltdown did occur, no one would care because the radioactive disaster would only wipe out a single family. 18) After the Brady Bunch series ended, Maureen McCormick's first role was as a heroin addict on a "Harry O" episode. 19) One night my friend Terry and I stopped by Ten's for a few beers. After getting a good look at one of the dancers, Terry became convinced that the stripper was a girl who had grown up next door to him when he was a kid. At first, Charlene (stage name "CJ") pretended not to recognize Terry. After a while, though, she overcame her reticence and stopped by our table to try to sell us Jell-O shots. To be polite, Terry bought a blue-tinged vodka drink, which the dancer poured down his throat from a test tube. As part of the purchase, CJ gave Terry a complimentary, up-close flash of her breasts. "To think I waited my entire adolescence to see you do something like that," said Terry, a bit buzzed, to the girl next door. "Yeah," replied CJ, looking tired, used, and bored. "Imagine if you knew back then that it would only cost three bucks." 20) If Mike Brady was such a crackerjack architect, why only one bathroom for six kids?
OTHER McSWEENEY'S STORIES:
Notes Toward a Restaurant Review for the Living Section of the New York Times By Jamieson Mackie Christ Goes to Happy Hour By Duane Swierczynski Artificial "It Girl" By Deborah Haywood Issue 6 Has Arrived to Confuse You Remarks Made at An Accredited University in New York City, or, Ask a Former Professional Literary Agent, Part X By John Hodgman |
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