The funeral has ended; the eulogies have been spoken; the last shovelfuls of fresh dirt have been ladled over the coffin. Let the mourning period commence, brief as it may be in this Era of the Short Attention Span.
And yet before we turn another page in the Book of Life, relegating the story of Metro Pulse, Knoxville’s erstwhile alternative weekly, to just another Previous Chapter, I would first have my say. I was a part of Metro Pulse, as either a full-time staff member or a chief contributor, for a goodly number of years. Right up to the end, in point of fact. And mine is a perspective that can be freely shared, as there is no severance check held hostage to purchase my silence.
The Metro Pulse I will always hold dear in my heart was a wondrous place. Sitting in my cubicle on the third floor of the Arnstein Building—or maybe it was the fifth floor; time plays tricks, and all of that—on a weekday afternoon was akin to hanging out after hours at the carnie, with the barker making the rounds in his top hat, singing old war songs with a bottle of whiskey in hand, and the Fat Lady playing dice in the corner with Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Boy.
Perched in my cubie, it was not uncommon to see someone whiz past on a kick scooter, or saunter by whilst keeping aloft four or five juggling pins. Or—and this was always my favorite—tour the office quite un-self-consciously in a full-length gorilla costume.
Weird and wonderful toys abounded, shoveled into every shelf and cranny—oddments, like the aforementioned juggling pins, related to the weird personal obsessions of the people who worked at MP, or else items offered up by various entities seeking some free advertising. Or at least a little attention.
My own personal collection from years of working at Metro Pulse included a 12-inch Iron Man action figure complete with operational flashlight repulsor rays; a hollowed-out emu egg; a gaggle of life-like plastic insects; a rubber snake; countless rock-star publicity photos; and an 18-inch hard-plastic moving/talking robot-elephant action figure named “Robo-Ele-Man”—a Made-in-Japan oddity that spoke two phrases, in weird, broken English.
In one corner of the room, sitting lonely on a shelf, was a product sample submitted by some poor, lost soul, a tin of what was purported to be—and I am not making this up—Vegetarian Haggis. Which always prompted me to think: Anyone who claims to be vegetarian, yet still craves something as repulsive as haggis, is truly in a state of profound denial.
It has often amused me to listen to other people talk about Metro Pulse—particularly the paper’s editorial direction—as if they had some special insight into what was happening behind the scenes. At any given point, a certain number of people were prone to believing that the paper had taken a nosedive in quality as compared to some other, favored era of its publication, or that its editorial direction had been radically swayed by some particular malign influence.
The truth is this: We had our problems, from time to time, but for the most part, no one ever guessed what those problems really were.
So now Metro Pulse is gone, and I’m sad. Because I’m tolerably sure we’ll never see its like again. Print media is a dead horse anyway; most people now can’t muster the mental focus to read anything longer than a tweet.
Except for Scruffington Post readers, of course. You people are a sharp, discriminating lot, and I love both of you like I love my right arm. See you in two weeks.
To read Manhole’s complete piece check out www.scruffingtonpost.com
