Scooby Dooby Doo, where… oh, forget it

My latest ramblings revolve around a staple of American culture… Scooby Doo.

Apparently, during the late 60s, there was a crime wave of people dressing up as monsters.

The purpose of this was to scare people away from one of the following: 1) a treasure, 2) a competitor in the inn/resort/theme-park business, or 3) an inn that was about to be forcibly purchased or repossessed from an owner who was no longer able to make payments.

Enter the Mystery Machine, a large green van filled with four people and a talking dog with a speech impediment. None of them (the stoner aside) ever believed in the existence of the supernatural, but they didn’t seem to mind the fact that their dog had a fourth-grader’s vocabulary.

The four could never agree on what climate they were in: Velma and Fred both wore heavy sweaters, Shaggy always wore the same t-shirt, Daphne dressed like she was going to a nightclub, and Scooby, being a dog, was naked.

They’d show up and, after practically destroying the place they were supposed to be protecting, they’d unmask some wretched old fart who would inevitably utter some variation of the phrase, “and I would’ve gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids.” This, apparently, was the most spiteful way the culprit could express his frustration at being foiled in his elaborate scheme by a few high school kids and a dog.

The perp, by the way, was always the only one other than the kids and their client to have been introduced by name.

I can swallow all that; stranger things have happened. What I can’t swallow, however, are the holographic projectors.

Even to date, we have not been able to perfect the projection of three-dimensional holographic images. We must have merely forgotten how; in the sixties, apparently, they were available at your local Radio Shack.

Somehow, the guy who had been dressing up as a Yeti to scare the bank away from repossessing his ski lodge managed to afford eight or ten holographic projectors and a luminescent body suit. Not only that, but he had built a highly expensive and complex control system with video cameras in the basement, where no one thought to look.

What’s even more disturbing is this: at the end of every show Velma (it was always Velma) would instantly know the precise location of each holographic projector. And when she activated them, they always played the same 30-second loop of action, over and over again. Never mind the fact that the “holographic” monster had thrown a table at them during the show.

I always respected the so-called “villain” more than the stupid kids. After all, this guy — who turned out, after the mask was removed, to be an 80-year-old gimp with a Pacemaker — had just moments earlier been running up and down the length of a football field, trying to strangle Shaggy and Scooby.

That kind of effort takes commitment, and to be foiled by a group who only had one member with an IQ above room temperature… well, let’s just say my heart went out to the guy.