I'm racking my brain trying to come up with a place that I'd less rather live in than The Villages in Florida, a planned community and home to 130,000 geezers driving around town in golf carts and enjoying themselves plenty of fun, fun, fun.
What kind of fun?
Well, there's line dancing in the town square. Precision golf cart drill. Belly dancing. Tambourine shaking. Parrothead margarita meet-ups. Drum corps. Pickle ball. And a club made up entirely of women named Elaine.
Just watching it made me want to make myself a double-wide margarita.
Anyway, I learned all this by watching a documentary, Some Kind of Heaven, that focuses on life in The Villages through the prism of four residents.
There are Ann and Reggie, a long-married (47 years) couple from Tennessee. Once they moved to The Villages, Ann found herself a happy enough niche playing picket ball. Reggie, free to be you and me for the first time, began using recreational drugs and nearly landed in the hoosegow when he was busted for possession. His hell-bent hurtle along his new path may or may not have been fueled by dementia. You decide. As you can imagine, Reggie's new hobby has put a crimp in the marriage. I mean, there's Ann, a Tennessee straight-shooter, and here's her drug-addled husband, announcing on camera that he's going into the bedroom to jack off. Not sure whether this is before or after he got on Facebook to announce his THC and cocaine bust. (Only five bucks worth of coke! He never uses the stuff! Some friend gave it to him! He forgot it was in his wallet!)
Barbara and her husband Paul moved to The Villages from Boston. Unfortunately, Paul died shortly after the move and Barbara has been gamely trying to make the most of things there, even though it's meant she had to go back to working full-time since the two-person retirement income she and Paul were counting on was cut in half after his death. Barbara wears way too much makeup, and is probably a tad too introspective for The Villages, but she seems like she's on a path to shake off her depression and become a Villager. She mostly regrets the move there, but doesn't feel like she can afford to move back home. She has her ups and downs. It's unfortunate that she started to crush on the ladies' man golf cart salesman who owns the industrial-sized blender used to make the margaritas for Parrothead gatherings. He flirts with everyone.
There are 130,000 residents of The Villages, but Dennis is technically not one of them. He's an 81 year old con man who lives out of his van. Claiming to have had a career as handyman to celebrities - Gerald Ford! Dick Smothers! - Dennis cadges meals at churches and cleans up at outdoor showers. During the day, he hangs out at pools, looking to find a "classy lady". Someone with money. Someone he wouldn't be ashamed to be seen with. When he's cadging a meal at a church, the woman needs to be "godly." His hunt for a "chick" who'll take care of him takes on new urgency when he's informed that he can no longer park his van in The Villages. He finds a former girlfriend to take him in. Alas, while life's more comfortable living at Nancy's, he misses his freedom. In short order, he's back on his own. Not clear whether he left on his own or Nancy gave him the boot. Hope it was Nancy who gave him the heave-ho.
I'm sure that they could have found plenty of more mainstream residents to focus on, folks who are happy to be there, bustling around in their golf cards from one club meeting or get together to another. Who love the real-fake village-like downtown, which is straight out of Disney. Right down to the fake backstories associated with the ye olde-style buildings. Which, apparently, were demanded by The Villagers. It isn't enough to have an old time-ish saloon or apothecary that was built in 1995. You have to have a fake story about how it's been around since 1895.
But rather than find "normal" Villagers, the filmmakers had to find outliers. Actually, Ann probably isn't an outlier. And I suspect there are plenty of Barbaras there, too, who ended up with buyer's remorse but are still going to give it a go. But for every Reggie and Dennis, there are no doubt thousands of guys just happy to putter around in their golf carts and go golfing. Or to a Trump rally. (Trump beat Biden by a huge margin. Sort of the inverse of my neck of the woods.)
So majority Trump. Almost entirely white. Completely age segregated. (I.e., no one under 55, so no kids.) Manicured. Conformist. Fake.
Maybe the documentarians chose to focus on things like pickle ball and the Elaine Club. Maybe there are interesting lectures. Maybe there are book clubs where folks read interesting books. Maybe there are plenty of interesting volunteer opportunities.
Maybe I'm way too much of a snob. (This I know is true.)
But The Villages are my idea of pure hell.
The whole place strikes me as braindead and boring. Plus all that gaiety and frenetic activity strikes me as whistling past the graveyard. Attention Villagers: you can run but you can't hide. The big IT is coming for you, whether you care to admit it or not.
Overall, this documentary was more downer than laugher.
That said, I did find a few moments that were upbeat. Reggie's getting help and his and Ann's marriage seems to be in an okay place. And I was strangely buoyed by the monologue that Barbara gave in the acting class she decided to join. Her monologue was about a lonely child befriending a sick baby squirrel, only to end up with a dead baby squirrel on her hands. The monologue - a pretty standard one, I take it - ends with the mother telling the child, " “God always answers our prayers, Judy. It’s just rarely the answer we’re looking for.”
Me, I hope Barbara is one of the rare ones who does get the answer she's looking for. Good luck, Barbara. I'm rooting for you. If I see you back in Boston in the North End, I'll buy you a cannoli.
As for Dennis, good luck finding that "classy lady" you're looking for. Especially now that your story's out there for all to see.
Maybe the documentary will even become a club topic.
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