I hate to deal in stereotypes, but there’s a certain kind of white-skinned, white-haired American gentleman of a certain age (55 and upwards) that I strive to avoid if at all possible. He’s a BAG (Boring American Guy), and he wants to talk to you because…well, just because he can and he’s nothing better to do. To exercise his tongue and fill the air with the kind of questions that make you stretch for the strychnine as a happier alternative to heaving your vocal chords into a quasi-courteous response.
I was on a plane from Frankfurt to Washington DC at the weekend, and I was thankful to be two seats away from a classic BAG. In between us was a bloke who’s my kind of air passenger – one who clearly doesn’t want to talk, at all. He had his headphones in, and his magazine open, right from take-off. We reached an unspoken No Small Talk pact right at the point of our initial curt, barely grunted greeting.
But the BAG two seats away didn’t get the message. My neighbour was reading Modified Mustangs magazine (“The Performance Magazine For Mustang Enthusiasts”). The BAG tapped him on the arm, and my neighbour turned off his music.
“You got a Mustang?”
“Yeah.”
“A friend of mine’s got a Mustang! Not sure how many horse power it is though.”
Silence. My neighbour turned his music back on, closed his eyes, and pulled his hood down over his head. About an hour later, the persevering BAG tried again.
“How many horsepower’s your Mustang?”
My own answer would have been, “About one, I think, not that it’s any of your fucking business,” but Mustang guy managed to dredge out a few answers until the conversation shortly after died a second painful death, the BAG now nursing his new knowledge about the power of a car he’s never seen, belonging to a man he’ll never know.
Around this time a meal was served, and across the aisle my youngest daughter duly ate her portion. When I leaned across to talk to her, the ominously perky voice of a male retiree came from the seat directly behind me.
“Say, is that you daughter?”
Oh Christ. Another one, but louder and smilier. “Erm, yes.”
“She’s a real good eater. She ate that whole meal up. Does she always eat that well?”
“Erm, not always.”
“Where you from?”
It’s hard to have a conversation with your back to someone, strapped into a seat, when you’re trying to read a book. Every time I thought we’d finished and put my head back down, the BAG chimed in with a new query. I know now that the Boring American Guy sitting behind me on the plane on Sunday was once stationed at a Royal Air Force base somewhere I’ve never heard of near Portsmouth, and that he now lives in Frederick, Maryland because his wife does something or other there. Once we’d exchanged that and a whole load more astonishing information, our new friendship petered out.
I know airlines are all cutting costs nowadays, but now that everyone knows there’s no smoking on board planes, can’t they just modify the No Smoking lights to read No Small Talk? Yes, and we’d still need to keep them on for the whole flight. In an emergency you could press a button that would make the light blink, and then a stewardess could come and issue a BAG-gagging order. Any persistent offenders would be arrested upon landing (preferably bundled to the ground and then silenced with a secure muzzle) and given a lifetime flying ban.
Soon there’d only be Miserable British Gits flying. There’d be peace at last above the clouds, just like in heaven.
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
Monday, December 17, 2007
Top 20 Albums, 2007
This year’s top 20, in words, with albums 21-40 in lazy list form. People who haven’t been paying attention always say it’s been a bad year. People who buy more CDs than they ought to always say it’s been a good year. I think it’s been a very, very good year.
20. Dan Wilson – Free Life. If this had been available on eight-track cassette in the early 1970s, would my Dad have been playing it in his car alongside Abba and the Carpenters? It’s really that straightforward – a singer-songwriter writing well-crafted songs to sing along to. In the back, the kids sing along too. Nothing not to like about that.
19. The Innocence Mission – We Walked In Song. The reason that The Innocence Mission exist is to provide an aural definition of the word ‘gorgeous’ in the musical lexicon. They haven’t changed their sound in almost two decades, and there’s no reason for them to. Only their sudden conversion to an industrial goth-noise outfit would prevent me unquestioningly buying their perfect and elegiac discs for another 20 years.
18. The Watson Twins – Southern Manners. Imagine two artistically talented twin sisters from the US south making guitar-based music, and I bet you know what this harmonic-Americana eight-song CD sounds like before you’ve even heard it. On its cover the twins pose in silhouettes as a simulated vulva, overtly suggesting a tempting surface of beauty that doesn’t disappoint once you’ve immersed yourself inside. I am enamoured.
17. Laura Veirs – Saltbreakers. Another unsung singer who effortlessly stamps her own identity on successive albums of bitter-sweetness all draped in intricately acoustic guitars. Looks like a librarian, sings like a nightingale. Or a "nattingale", as she so charmingly warbles.
16. Feist – The Reminder. Mrs Stay-At-Home Indie-Pop latched onto Feist after seeing her on Saturday Night Live, and she was all set to buy this until I pointed out we already had it at home. Tsk, she only needed to pay attention a little to the vast pile of CDs by the stereo with the invisible ‘2007’ marker. I sometimes wonder what working women do with their spare mental space. They should stay at home, bake cakes, raise the kids, and make wonderfully dreamy, singalong music like Feist.
15. Tracey Thorn – Out Of The Woods. The first Tracey Thorn solo album, A Distant Shore, came out in 1982, and I used to listen to its solo acoustic meanderings while staring out my bedroom window hoping that the girl from three doors up would walk past, think I was deep and sensitive, then snog me. With Everything But The Girl intervening (between the two Thorn albums, not me and the girl from three doors up), it’s taken a quarter of a century for her second, but amazingly (seeing as EBTG have been, to my ears, largely dull) it’s been worth the wait. Left alone, she’s still an outstanding songwriter, even if now the backdrop’s all R&B arrangements and enhanced production values. So, none of the scratchy guitar and whiny voice that leant her first disc its fresh-girl genius, but a worthy follow-up, even if it’s all grown up.
14. Maria Taylor – Lynn Teeter Flower. A second sweet slice of what I’d happily call cake-shop pop if it wasn’t stranded so high up on the banks of the mainstream by the vagaries of misled taste. If the world was a just place, this kind of music would be going gold. Go on, try it. Honestly, cake’s really good for the soul.
13. Jesse Sykes And The Sweet Hereafter – Like Love, Lust And The Open Halls Of The Soul. No one seems to have heard of Jesse Sykes, yet every time I play her records, people ask me for her name. Her lisping, whispering voice creeps into ears and rests there like a transient and benign underground pleasure you know might just wake up one day and kill you from within. Not that I can think of any better ways to die.
12. Kristin Hersh – Learn To Sing Like A Star. This one had the benefit of a release early in the year, otherwise I’d just have filed it along with all the other mostly stunning Hersh albums on the shelf -- some peoples’ genius you end up taking for granted. But with the benefit of iPod shuffle, it just kept coming back, and getting better and better, and all the paranoid frenzy alternating with soothing bedtime threnodies came through with its usual depth of emotion and sheer, shocking brilliance.
11. Au Revoir Simone – The Bird Of Music. Every year needs a lo-fi, home made electronic album composed by unlikely musicians who just sat down and started harmonizing for the hell of it. Player instructions: start the drum machine, press a synth button, then sing along. Listener’s instructions: sit back and enjoy. Just occasionally, as on this disc, it works almost perfectly.
10. Steve Earle – Washington Square Serenade. One of those discs I bought because it was another Steve Earle album, and I usually buy the new Steve Earle album because I just feel that I ought to. That’s not the best reason to buy a CD, but this time it worked, with this being his best since the mighty collaboration with the Del McCoury Band a few years back. Could be that his sixth marriage, to country singer Alison Moorer, has given him an inspirational kick aside from misery and litigation. ‘City Of Immigrants’ is vibrant, political and celebratory singalong all in one.
9. Rilo Kiley – Under The Blacklight. Pristine pop. You start off hearing all kinds of semi-familiar tunes from songs you think you know but can’t quite pin down. You end up not caring, because the crystal clarity of Jenny Lewis’ vocal and all that backs her up make you play this disc on multi-repeat. How can a song sung by a woman about a man being seduced by a precocious 15-year-old sound so breezy and innocent?
8. Wilco – Sky Blue Sky. I can never quite grasp Wilco or why people, myself included, tend to deify them. I wouldn’t know where to start in their catalogue of achievement while trying to convert a reluctant listener. I couldn’t, off the top of my head, sing my favourite refrain off ‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.’ Yet if I could only take the CDs of one band on an east-to-west coast road trip, they’d be Wilco’s. I could listen to them for four days and four nights and still find something new in every song. At least I reckon I could. I should try it sometime and see.
7. Iron & Wine - The Shepherd’s Dog. A beefed up sound was definitely the way to go for the bearded wonder that is Iron & Wine. There’s the same quasi-mystical aura that surrounds his songs, but there’s more effort to build them up, take them places, and fade them out again. One review I read complained some of the songs went on too long, but for me these songs could meander on their hypnotic way for hours, provided I was in the mood for sitting back, shutting my eyes, and staring at the dark in a world of breathy vocals and weaving guitars.
6. The Shins – Wincing The Night Away. ‘Phantom Limb’ is song of the year, and the problem with producing a song so magnificent is usually that the rest of the disc can struggle to stay in touch. Mostly the distance is close enough to make this a successful, if more expansive and more ambitious, follow-up to previous triumphs. The words are either dead profound or they’re nonsense - either way, I haven’t a clue what these songs are about, but it really doesn’t matter. In pop, context is king.
5. Robert Wyatt – Comicopera. Wyatt shifts our ideas of perceived musical normality and allows us to receive sound across new waves. The crown prince of atonality resides in the town where I was born (Louth, in Lincolnshire) and I like the idea of all this weirdness being conceived in the air where I screamed my first complaints. At times playful, weirdly flat, and jazzy, but mostly just on its own perfectly tempered wold of nasal beauty altogether.
4. Brandi Carlile – The Story. Need a seat on the underground? Try hitting the high notes when you’re listening on your iPod. Passion and pop rolled into one, with more than enough edge to stop songs that could, in the hands of the wrong producer, have lapsed into AOR. Or maybe it is, and that’s what I’m into nowadays.
3. Magnolia Electric Co. – Sojourner Boxed Set. Most boxed sets are compilations, live sets or outtakes. There are very few that are effectively quadruple albums of entirely original material, plus documentary DVD, wrapping paper and forged medallion. On top of that, the quality of its slow-burning melancholy is maintained pretty much throughout, and Jason Molina’s fixation with earth’s orbital muse stands as the most productive man-to-moon relationship in musical history. Ache to Z.
2. The National – Boxer. Vocals that range from a murmur to a growl, backed by a band never short on ways to accentuate the mood within the melody. The National Sound is a national asset that deserves its own listening booth at the Smithsonian.
1. The New Pornographers – Challengers. With more hooks than a hardware shop, this deserves the year’s best album award for its consistently strong songs and its peppy pace. Makes you move, makes you want to sing, deludes you that you’re young. Empowerment pop of the highest order.
The rest:
21. Jens Lekman – Night Falls Over Kortedala
22. Band of Horses – Cease To Begin
23. Dean & Britta – Back Numbers
24. Mary Gauthier – Between Daylight And Dark
25. Thurston Moore – Trees Outside The Academy
26. Anjani Thomas – Blue Alert
27. Josh Ritter – The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter
28. PJ Harvey – White Chalk
29. Ryan Adams – Easy Tiger
30. Evan McHugh – From The Second Chair
31. Jeremy Fisher – Goodbye Blue Monday
32. Caribou – Andorra
33. Over The Rhine – Trumpet Child
34. Zap Mama – Supermoon
35. Oliver Mtukudzi – Tsimba Itsoka
36. Sonia Leigh – Run Or Surrender
37. Richmond Fontaine – Thirteen Cities
38. Bright Eyes – Cassadaga
39. Of Montreal – Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?
40. Lucinda Williams – West
Other Years: 2006, 2004
20. Dan Wilson – Free Life. If this had been available on eight-track cassette in the early 1970s, would my Dad have been playing it in his car alongside Abba and the Carpenters? It’s really that straightforward – a singer-songwriter writing well-crafted songs to sing along to. In the back, the kids sing along too. Nothing not to like about that.
19. The Innocence Mission – We Walked In Song. The reason that The Innocence Mission exist is to provide an aural definition of the word ‘gorgeous’ in the musical lexicon. They haven’t changed their sound in almost two decades, and there’s no reason for them to. Only their sudden conversion to an industrial goth-noise outfit would prevent me unquestioningly buying their perfect and elegiac discs for another 20 years.
18. The Watson Twins – Southern Manners. Imagine two artistically talented twin sisters from the US south making guitar-based music, and I bet you know what this harmonic-Americana eight-song CD sounds like before you’ve even heard it. On its cover the twins pose in silhouettes as a simulated vulva, overtly suggesting a tempting surface of beauty that doesn’t disappoint once you’ve immersed yourself inside. I am enamoured.
17. Laura Veirs – Saltbreakers. Another unsung singer who effortlessly stamps her own identity on successive albums of bitter-sweetness all draped in intricately acoustic guitars. Looks like a librarian, sings like a nightingale. Or a "nattingale", as she so charmingly warbles.
16. Feist – The Reminder. Mrs Stay-At-Home Indie-Pop latched onto Feist after seeing her on Saturday Night Live, and she was all set to buy this until I pointed out we already had it at home. Tsk, she only needed to pay attention a little to the vast pile of CDs by the stereo with the invisible ‘2007’ marker. I sometimes wonder what working women do with their spare mental space. They should stay at home, bake cakes, raise the kids, and make wonderfully dreamy, singalong music like Feist.
15. Tracey Thorn – Out Of The Woods. The first Tracey Thorn solo album, A Distant Shore, came out in 1982, and I used to listen to its solo acoustic meanderings while staring out my bedroom window hoping that the girl from three doors up would walk past, think I was deep and sensitive, then snog me. With Everything But The Girl intervening (between the two Thorn albums, not me and the girl from three doors up), it’s taken a quarter of a century for her second, but amazingly (seeing as EBTG have been, to my ears, largely dull) it’s been worth the wait. Left alone, she’s still an outstanding songwriter, even if now the backdrop’s all R&B arrangements and enhanced production values. So, none of the scratchy guitar and whiny voice that leant her first disc its fresh-girl genius, but a worthy follow-up, even if it’s all grown up.
14. Maria Taylor – Lynn Teeter Flower. A second sweet slice of what I’d happily call cake-shop pop if it wasn’t stranded so high up on the banks of the mainstream by the vagaries of misled taste. If the world was a just place, this kind of music would be going gold. Go on, try it. Honestly, cake’s really good for the soul.
13. Jesse Sykes And The Sweet Hereafter – Like Love, Lust And The Open Halls Of The Soul. No one seems to have heard of Jesse Sykes, yet every time I play her records, people ask me for her name. Her lisping, whispering voice creeps into ears and rests there like a transient and benign underground pleasure you know might just wake up one day and kill you from within. Not that I can think of any better ways to die.
12. Kristin Hersh – Learn To Sing Like A Star. This one had the benefit of a release early in the year, otherwise I’d just have filed it along with all the other mostly stunning Hersh albums on the shelf -- some peoples’ genius you end up taking for granted. But with the benefit of iPod shuffle, it just kept coming back, and getting better and better, and all the paranoid frenzy alternating with soothing bedtime threnodies came through with its usual depth of emotion and sheer, shocking brilliance.
11. Au Revoir Simone – The Bird Of Music. Every year needs a lo-fi, home made electronic album composed by unlikely musicians who just sat down and started harmonizing for the hell of it. Player instructions: start the drum machine, press a synth button, then sing along. Listener’s instructions: sit back and enjoy. Just occasionally, as on this disc, it works almost perfectly.
10. Steve Earle – Washington Square Serenade. One of those discs I bought because it was another Steve Earle album, and I usually buy the new Steve Earle album because I just feel that I ought to. That’s not the best reason to buy a CD, but this time it worked, with this being his best since the mighty collaboration with the Del McCoury Band a few years back. Could be that his sixth marriage, to country singer Alison Moorer, has given him an inspirational kick aside from misery and litigation. ‘City Of Immigrants’ is vibrant, political and celebratory singalong all in one.
9. Rilo Kiley – Under The Blacklight. Pristine pop. You start off hearing all kinds of semi-familiar tunes from songs you think you know but can’t quite pin down. You end up not caring, because the crystal clarity of Jenny Lewis’ vocal and all that backs her up make you play this disc on multi-repeat. How can a song sung by a woman about a man being seduced by a precocious 15-year-old sound so breezy and innocent?
8. Wilco – Sky Blue Sky. I can never quite grasp Wilco or why people, myself included, tend to deify them. I wouldn’t know where to start in their catalogue of achievement while trying to convert a reluctant listener. I couldn’t, off the top of my head, sing my favourite refrain off ‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.’ Yet if I could only take the CDs of one band on an east-to-west coast road trip, they’d be Wilco’s. I could listen to them for four days and four nights and still find something new in every song. At least I reckon I could. I should try it sometime and see.
7. Iron & Wine - The Shepherd’s Dog. A beefed up sound was definitely the way to go for the bearded wonder that is Iron & Wine. There’s the same quasi-mystical aura that surrounds his songs, but there’s more effort to build them up, take them places, and fade them out again. One review I read complained some of the songs went on too long, but for me these songs could meander on their hypnotic way for hours, provided I was in the mood for sitting back, shutting my eyes, and staring at the dark in a world of breathy vocals and weaving guitars.
6. The Shins – Wincing The Night Away. ‘Phantom Limb’ is song of the year, and the problem with producing a song so magnificent is usually that the rest of the disc can struggle to stay in touch. Mostly the distance is close enough to make this a successful, if more expansive and more ambitious, follow-up to previous triumphs. The words are either dead profound or they’re nonsense - either way, I haven’t a clue what these songs are about, but it really doesn’t matter. In pop, context is king.
5. Robert Wyatt – Comicopera. Wyatt shifts our ideas of perceived musical normality and allows us to receive sound across new waves. The crown prince of atonality resides in the town where I was born (Louth, in Lincolnshire) and I like the idea of all this weirdness being conceived in the air where I screamed my first complaints. At times playful, weirdly flat, and jazzy, but mostly just on its own perfectly tempered wold of nasal beauty altogether.
4. Brandi Carlile – The Story. Need a seat on the underground? Try hitting the high notes when you’re listening on your iPod. Passion and pop rolled into one, with more than enough edge to stop songs that could, in the hands of the wrong producer, have lapsed into AOR. Or maybe it is, and that’s what I’m into nowadays.
3. Magnolia Electric Co. – Sojourner Boxed Set. Most boxed sets are compilations, live sets or outtakes. There are very few that are effectively quadruple albums of entirely original material, plus documentary DVD, wrapping paper and forged medallion. On top of that, the quality of its slow-burning melancholy is maintained pretty much throughout, and Jason Molina’s fixation with earth’s orbital muse stands as the most productive man-to-moon relationship in musical history. Ache to Z.
2. The National – Boxer. Vocals that range from a murmur to a growl, backed by a band never short on ways to accentuate the mood within the melody. The National Sound is a national asset that deserves its own listening booth at the Smithsonian.
1. The New Pornographers – Challengers. With more hooks than a hardware shop, this deserves the year’s best album award for its consistently strong songs and its peppy pace. Makes you move, makes you want to sing, deludes you that you’re young. Empowerment pop of the highest order.
The rest:
21. Jens Lekman – Night Falls Over Kortedala
22. Band of Horses – Cease To Begin
23. Dean & Britta – Back Numbers
24. Mary Gauthier – Between Daylight And Dark
25. Thurston Moore – Trees Outside The Academy
26. Anjani Thomas – Blue Alert
27. Josh Ritter – The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter
28. PJ Harvey – White Chalk
29. Ryan Adams – Easy Tiger
30. Evan McHugh – From The Second Chair
31. Jeremy Fisher – Goodbye Blue Monday
32. Caribou – Andorra
33. Over The Rhine – Trumpet Child
34. Zap Mama – Supermoon
35. Oliver Mtukudzi – Tsimba Itsoka
36. Sonia Leigh – Run Or Surrender
37. Richmond Fontaine – Thirteen Cities
38. Bright Eyes – Cassadaga
39. Of Montreal – Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?
40. Lucinda Williams – West
Other Years: 2006, 2004
Monday, November 12, 2007
Great Suburban Traditions No. 7 - Cocktail Hour
You have to say one thing in suburbia’s favour. It’s so fucking dull out here that every day at six o, clock, without fail, you’re dying for a good stiff drink.
Just think. The day’s behind you, and you’ve accomplished nothing besides getting half way through the laundry, buying some groceries, successfully managing the school run, drinking scads of coffee (and peeing it out again), and thinking vaguely about some much more fruitful, creative and rewarding projects that you’d rather be doing instead, but are currently putting off until the next decade.
Ahead of you lies the evening, when you’ve got dinner to make, and home to stay at. This could further involve activities as pulse-pumping as finishing off the laundry, watching a broadcast program on the highly popular electronic medium known as television, or trying to read a book or a magazine before falling asleep in the process.
In between, though, is cocktail hour. There’s no getting around the fact that this is the best moment of the day out here on Quiet Street. That keen rush of want, round about 1800 hours, is almost as delectable a hit as the first swig of the drink itself. It comes with the acknowledgment of the need - which is an integral part of knowing, recognising and ultimately enjoying your own weaknesses - followed by the decision on whether to succumb or defer the pleasure for a further 24 hours.
Either way is fine. Give in, and you get the drink. Resist, and you can allow yourself the brief and deceptive comfort that you are not, really not, in any way alcohol-dependent. This makes the following day’s cocktail hour all the sweeter. If you’re in that rare suburban club that can hold out until Thursday (otherwise known as The Big Fat Liars’ Society), then good luck to you and all, but you should know you’re severely missing out on suburbia’s greatest reward.
The ironic thing is that in US suburbia there’s rarely a bar (or anything else useful) within walking distance. One of my great schemes that I’m putting off until next decade is a chain of impromptu roadside suburban cocktail stands, open between 5.30 and 7 only, to be called something like The Shot Of Life. They should do roaring trade, and by the time every street’s spoilsport puritan has called the cops, we’ll have packed up and left.
This would require people to leave their houses, talk to their neighbors, loosen up, and publicly take part in something considered to be detrimental to one’s moral, mental and spiritual health. In the rest of the world it’s known as ‘drinking.’ Here it would be a revolution. Until then, we remain the silent majority, serene and satisfied for an hour each evening as we gratefully knock back our fool’s medicine.
Just think. The day’s behind you, and you’ve accomplished nothing besides getting half way through the laundry, buying some groceries, successfully managing the school run, drinking scads of coffee (and peeing it out again), and thinking vaguely about some much more fruitful, creative and rewarding projects that you’d rather be doing instead, but are currently putting off until the next decade.
Ahead of you lies the evening, when you’ve got dinner to make, and home to stay at. This could further involve activities as pulse-pumping as finishing off the laundry, watching a broadcast program on the highly popular electronic medium known as television, or trying to read a book or a magazine before falling asleep in the process.
In between, though, is cocktail hour. There’s no getting around the fact that this is the best moment of the day out here on Quiet Street. That keen rush of want, round about 1800 hours, is almost as delectable a hit as the first swig of the drink itself. It comes with the acknowledgment of the need - which is an integral part of knowing, recognising and ultimately enjoying your own weaknesses - followed by the decision on whether to succumb or defer the pleasure for a further 24 hours.
Either way is fine. Give in, and you get the drink. Resist, and you can allow yourself the brief and deceptive comfort that you are not, really not, in any way alcohol-dependent. This makes the following day’s cocktail hour all the sweeter. If you’re in that rare suburban club that can hold out until Thursday (otherwise known as The Big Fat Liars’ Society), then good luck to you and all, but you should know you’re severely missing out on suburbia’s greatest reward.
The ironic thing is that in US suburbia there’s rarely a bar (or anything else useful) within walking distance. One of my great schemes that I’m putting off until next decade is a chain of impromptu roadside suburban cocktail stands, open between 5.30 and 7 only, to be called something like The Shot Of Life. They should do roaring trade, and by the time every street’s spoilsport puritan has called the cops, we’ll have packed up and left.
This would require people to leave their houses, talk to their neighbors, loosen up, and publicly take part in something considered to be detrimental to one’s moral, mental and spiritual health. In the rest of the world it’s known as ‘drinking.’ Here it would be a revolution. Until then, we remain the silent majority, serene and satisfied for an hour each evening as we gratefully knock back our fool’s medicine.
Monday, October 15, 2007
Great Suburban Traditions No. 6 - Grocery Shopping
Yes, I know, it’s not just people in the suburbs who have to go grocery shopping. But the difference for suburbanites is that going grocery shopping is one of the few times that we get out the house. Ironically, we spend a lot of time pining to leave the house for a change of scenery, but the only time it happens is to do something we hate. Or, as I regularly express it when I’m on the way out the door: "I’m just off to the fucking shop."
That’s a sort of cry from the heart hoping that someone else might take the chore off my hands. But as my daughters are nine and 11, they’re no more likely to volunteer for the task than in future years when they’re 17 and 19 and in possession of drivers’ licences. As for Mrs. Stay-At-Home-Indie-Pop, she’s not home mostly (that’s why, alert readers will have noted, I’ve got the SAHIP gig), and at weekends she sensibly follows her daughters’ lead of ignoring my desperate appeal. If I’m lucky, a response may echo from some distant corner of the house, such as, "Bye, see you later" or "Don’t forget my hibiscus and broccoli tea-bags."
SAHIP. I’m a SAHIP. I’m saaaaaaa hip.
On weekdays, supermarkets are full of horny housewives who ‘accidentally’ bump into you, spill their shopping, and then after you’ve helped them pick it up, thank you by inviting you back to their place for no-holds-barred, no-emotional-strings-attached sex. I’ve lost count of how many times this has happened to me. Probably on average at least never in my eleven years as a SAHIP. Not that I’ve been looking for it, you understand.
It’s different at weekends, when you can see Clueless Saturday Dad wandering around the supermarket aisles with a crumpled list in his hand, accompanied by an irascible kid (usually a boy) trying to kick him in the nuts from his prime vantage seat in the front of the trolley every time Dad turns down his demand for something unhealthy to eat. Saturday Dad’s too pre-occupied working out why he’s now going down the same aisle for the eighth time and still hasn’t found shortening ("What the fuck is shortening?" he’s now finally asking myself) to listen to the increasingly shrill demands for the tropical fruits bubblegum maxi-pack. Eventually he caves in and thrusts the Superbowl-Sized Cheetos Jumbo Bucket into junior’s hand before breaking down in tears when he sees the length of the queue at the deli and realizes he’s going to miss the Tampa Bay Fratheads’ midday kick-off against the Chunkneck College Beefboys.
Anyway, as if going to the shops wasn’t already an unadventurous enough experience, there’s Morton.
I’ve changed Morton’s name in case he’s one of the three people that read this Blog. He’s a cashier at one of my regular local supermarkets. He’s a very big, morose lad in his late 20s, and he never smiles. When I say never, I mean never, as in ‘sex-with-horny-housewives-I’ve-met-in-the-supermarket’ never. It’s his life policy. I’ve been passing through Morton’s till for years, and not once has he hinted at any kind of internal or external happiness.
It’s now got to the point where I’d rather go to a cashier with a longer line than watch Morton dolefully scan my groceries. You may think I’m exaggerating, but the moment I see Morton, I feel profoundly depressed. It’s not empathy. It’s resentment at his failure to escape a job and a life he clearly despises (why can’t he find work as a SAHIP?), and the imposition of his misery every time I go shopping. When you catch a glimpse of Morton it’s like being physically struck around the head by an embodiment of all that’s hopeless in the human condition. Like the dementors in Harry Potter, Morton will suck your soul out, make your shoulders slump, and force you to feel, "Jesus Christ, what is the point of going on for another single fucking minute?"
If there’s no avoiding Morton’s queue – say, for example, there are 16 people in line at the checkout next to him, and he’s completely free – then I’ll always be polite and friendly to him, though I won’t bother trying to waste an attempted joke, which would be like pissing on a Californian forest fire. Not because I want to be nice to the sad fuck, but because the day he comes to work with a plastic carrier bag full of heavy weapons and goes on the rampage, aisle by aisle, he might just notice the bloke who politely answered his drawled and automated query of "howyadoin" with a chirpy, "I’m fine thanks, how are you?" and finish me off cleanly with at least ten bullets to the head rather than letting me bleed slowly to death through a single, careless shot.
It’s the kind of exciting outcome grocery shoppers secretly yearn for.
Great Suburban Traditions: Number 1 – The Piano Recital
Great Suburban Traditions: Number 2 – Neighbourhood Watch
Great Suburban Traditions: Number 3 – Dog Crap
Great Suburban Traditions No. 4 – Asexuality
Great Suburban Traditions No. 5 – Limited Guilt
That’s a sort of cry from the heart hoping that someone else might take the chore off my hands. But as my daughters are nine and 11, they’re no more likely to volunteer for the task than in future years when they’re 17 and 19 and in possession of drivers’ licences. As for Mrs. Stay-At-Home-Indie-Pop, she’s not home mostly (that’s why, alert readers will have noted, I’ve got the SAHIP gig), and at weekends she sensibly follows her daughters’ lead of ignoring my desperate appeal. If I’m lucky, a response may echo from some distant corner of the house, such as, "Bye, see you later" or "Don’t forget my hibiscus and broccoli tea-bags."
SAHIP. I’m a SAHIP. I’m saaaaaaa hip.
On weekdays, supermarkets are full of horny housewives who ‘accidentally’ bump into you, spill their shopping, and then after you’ve helped them pick it up, thank you by inviting you back to their place for no-holds-barred, no-emotional-strings-attached sex. I’ve lost count of how many times this has happened to me. Probably on average at least never in my eleven years as a SAHIP. Not that I’ve been looking for it, you understand.
It’s different at weekends, when you can see Clueless Saturday Dad wandering around the supermarket aisles with a crumpled list in his hand, accompanied by an irascible kid (usually a boy) trying to kick him in the nuts from his prime vantage seat in the front of the trolley every time Dad turns down his demand for something unhealthy to eat. Saturday Dad’s too pre-occupied working out why he’s now going down the same aisle for the eighth time and still hasn’t found shortening ("What the fuck is shortening?" he’s now finally asking myself) to listen to the increasingly shrill demands for the tropical fruits bubblegum maxi-pack. Eventually he caves in and thrusts the Superbowl-Sized Cheetos Jumbo Bucket into junior’s hand before breaking down in tears when he sees the length of the queue at the deli and realizes he’s going to miss the Tampa Bay Fratheads’ midday kick-off against the Chunkneck College Beefboys.
Anyway, as if going to the shops wasn’t already an unadventurous enough experience, there’s Morton.
I’ve changed Morton’s name in case he’s one of the three people that read this Blog. He’s a cashier at one of my regular local supermarkets. He’s a very big, morose lad in his late 20s, and he never smiles. When I say never, I mean never, as in ‘sex-with-horny-housewives-I’ve-met-in-the-supermarket’ never. It’s his life policy. I’ve been passing through Morton’s till for years, and not once has he hinted at any kind of internal or external happiness.
It’s now got to the point where I’d rather go to a cashier with a longer line than watch Morton dolefully scan my groceries. You may think I’m exaggerating, but the moment I see Morton, I feel profoundly depressed. It’s not empathy. It’s resentment at his failure to escape a job and a life he clearly despises (why can’t he find work as a SAHIP?), and the imposition of his misery every time I go shopping. When you catch a glimpse of Morton it’s like being physically struck around the head by an embodiment of all that’s hopeless in the human condition. Like the dementors in Harry Potter, Morton will suck your soul out, make your shoulders slump, and force you to feel, "Jesus Christ, what is the point of going on for another single fucking minute?"
If there’s no avoiding Morton’s queue – say, for example, there are 16 people in line at the checkout next to him, and he’s completely free – then I’ll always be polite and friendly to him, though I won’t bother trying to waste an attempted joke, which would be like pissing on a Californian forest fire. Not because I want to be nice to the sad fuck, but because the day he comes to work with a plastic carrier bag full of heavy weapons and goes on the rampage, aisle by aisle, he might just notice the bloke who politely answered his drawled and automated query of "howyadoin" with a chirpy, "I’m fine thanks, how are you?" and finish me off cleanly with at least ten bullets to the head rather than letting me bleed slowly to death through a single, careless shot.
It’s the kind of exciting outcome grocery shoppers secretly yearn for.
Great Suburban Traditions: Number 1 – The Piano Recital
Great Suburban Traditions: Number 2 – Neighbourhood Watch
Great Suburban Traditions: Number 3 – Dog Crap
Great Suburban Traditions No. 4 – Asexuality
Great Suburban Traditions No. 5 – Limited Guilt
Friday, September 28, 2007
Everything Connects To Lincolnshire
Last night I was watching the wonderful Watson Twins sing at the Black Cat in DC, with a couple of black German beers taken at the nearby Saloon pub (the friendliest, beeriest watering hole in the city) swishing through my grateful veins, and generally feeling that if I was born to be enlightened in any way, it was during moments like this.
The twins were acting as more than adequate support to the rock-n-soul-country-blues fusion (a new coverall category for every CD I own) of the equally magnificent Magnolia Electric Company, the only band I like whose genius lead singer-songwriter looks like the kind of bloke who used to stop me outside English rural pubs in the early 1980s and say, “Be you wantin’ a foight?” Jason Molina in his various guises brings out more records than I’ve got time to listen to, the latest being a five-disc genuine wooden box with a free medallion and MEC wallpaper. I haven’t actually played it yet, just fondled it.
Anyway, after the Watson Twins had played I ambled over to buy a t-shirt, and started talking to the twin with the flashing smile, Chandra. She asked me where I was from, and when I said Lincoln, UK, she said, “Oh, that’s near Grantham.” Alarmed that she should even have to know of Grantham’s existence, I asked her how she’d heard of the place. Turns out the Watson Twins once spent a term there on a study exchange. “I think they sent us there so that we wouldn’t have a chance to go crazy or anything.”
She said some kind things about the Lincolnshire countryside, and that she was aware Grantham was the town that had spawned and raised the most destructive, and most hated, British prime minister of the 20th century. Fortunately, I resisted the impulse to ask her if she’d been to watch Grantham Town FC during their Lincolnshire sojourn, thus avoiding the Instant Idiot label I’ve historically found plastered to my brow when talking to attractive women.
This post needs a conclusion. It’s this: I feel certain The Watson Twins were the best thing that ever happened to Grantham. Lack of comments below will serve as confirmation.
The twins were acting as more than adequate support to the rock-n-soul-country-blues fusion (a new coverall category for every CD I own) of the equally magnificent Magnolia Electric Company, the only band I like whose genius lead singer-songwriter looks like the kind of bloke who used to stop me outside English rural pubs in the early 1980s and say, “Be you wantin’ a foight?” Jason Molina in his various guises brings out more records than I’ve got time to listen to, the latest being a five-disc genuine wooden box with a free medallion and MEC wallpaper. I haven’t actually played it yet, just fondled it.
Anyway, after the Watson Twins had played I ambled over to buy a t-shirt, and started talking to the twin with the flashing smile, Chandra. She asked me where I was from, and when I said Lincoln, UK, she said, “Oh, that’s near Grantham.” Alarmed that she should even have to know of Grantham’s existence, I asked her how she’d heard of the place. Turns out the Watson Twins once spent a term there on a study exchange. “I think they sent us there so that we wouldn’t have a chance to go crazy or anything.”
She said some kind things about the Lincolnshire countryside, and that she was aware Grantham was the town that had spawned and raised the most destructive, and most hated, British prime minister of the 20th century. Fortunately, I resisted the impulse to ask her if she’d been to watch Grantham Town FC during their Lincolnshire sojourn, thus avoiding the Instant Idiot label I’ve historically found plastered to my brow when talking to attractive women.
This post needs a conclusion. It’s this: I feel certain The Watson Twins were the best thing that ever happened to Grantham. Lack of comments below will serve as confirmation.
Saturday, September 22, 2007
"You Haven't Heard of APB? Really?"
I was driving down Democracy Boulevard in Bethesda yesterday, listening to a retro-compilation CD of early 80s Scottish indie-funk boys APB. It was a warm day, so the windows were down. At a red light, a pick-up truck stopped to my right. ‘What Kind Of Girl?’ was blasting out. The bloke in the driver’s seat was staring at me, not in a hostile way, but like he wanted to ask me something.
“What year’s that?” he shouted, pointing vaguely.
“1984, I think,” I shouted back.
He looked baffled, began to mouth something, and pointed again, this time at the car. Then I realised. “Oh, you mean the car?” I said. “Passat, 2003.” He looked relieved, began to talk something auto-technical, I switched off immediately, then the light changed and I sped off (I was running late).
That’s the ridiculous mental world that I live in. I genuinely believe that when someone in a pick-up truck stops next to me, he may have enough knowledge of an obscure early 80s band from Aberdeen to not only recognise one of the songs, but to be genuinely curious about what year their biggest hit came out.
This is the same mentality that has seen me waste much precious life-time making compilation tapes and CDs of music I think other people ought to know better. And that they will come to love that music and thank me for culturally enriching their lives. Occasionally it works, a little, but never as much as I think it’s going to.
If it had been a film, the pick-up truck driver might have been into APB. In scripts, characters are supposed to say things that surprise us and confound our prejudices. In real life, though, it doesn’t happen quite so often. Not that this is something I’ll ever learn.
“What year’s that?” he shouted, pointing vaguely.
“1984, I think,” I shouted back.
He looked baffled, began to mouth something, and pointed again, this time at the car. Then I realised. “Oh, you mean the car?” I said. “Passat, 2003.” He looked relieved, began to talk something auto-technical, I switched off immediately, then the light changed and I sped off (I was running late).
That’s the ridiculous mental world that I live in. I genuinely believe that when someone in a pick-up truck stops next to me, he may have enough knowledge of an obscure early 80s band from Aberdeen to not only recognise one of the songs, but to be genuinely curious about what year their biggest hit came out.
This is the same mentality that has seen me waste much precious life-time making compilation tapes and CDs of music I think other people ought to know better. And that they will come to love that music and thank me for culturally enriching their lives. Occasionally it works, a little, but never as much as I think it’s going to.
If it had been a film, the pick-up truck driver might have been into APB. In scripts, characters are supposed to say things that surprise us and confound our prejudices. In real life, though, it doesn’t happen quite so often. Not that this is something I’ll ever learn.
Thursday, September 06, 2007
Standing Still At The National
Concert audiences of my generation stand mostly still. In my teens I would bounce and spit at the front. In my 20s I’d get drunk beforehand, then bounce and ruck somewhere in the middle of a sweaty, heaving mass of leather jacketed indie-boys. In my 30s, I started watching from further back. Now I could just as easily be at the front again, if I politely eased my way forward, because nobody up there at the lip of the stage is moving either. The most mobile people at an indie-concert these days are the bar staff.
Last night at the 9.30 Club in DC, the captivating and richly voiced indie-sextet The National played plenty of mellow songs to sway to gently while contemplating The Great Existential Posers (now there’s a band name, although I tend to contemplate more obscure stuff - last night it was a game of football I played badly in 17 years ago). But there were also more than enough fast and loud numbers to which, at one time in musical history, you might have expected people to shake their heads and wildly move their bodies. And you could tell that some of us still wanted to, as though the mind was willing, but the body wasn’t. Because we’re all in psychological straitjackets.
I can’t speak for all the other inconspicuously leg-jerking but chiefly static pundits, but my own feeling is that it’s unseemly for an Indie-Pop of my age to be throwing himself around at a night club. First, I’d only had one beer because I was driving. Second, if you touch anyone at a concert nowadays, even just brush past them, you feel obliged to apologise. So knocking them over in the thrall of a speedy, thrash-led song is just no longer part of indie-etiquette. People drink, but you never see them drunk. No one caterwauls the lyrics. Instead they sing quietly to themselves.
Although the cheers and applause at the end of every song were loud and spontaneous enough, the crowd behaviour during the songs themselves reminded me of a classical music concert, where the unstinting bourgeois norm has always been to sit rigid and noiseless, internalising any emotion that you might be experiencing at the beauty of the music. A discreet tear at evening’s end may be allowed to modestly display one’s sensibilities.
The live concert used to be an experience you took part in by moving and screaming. Now I feel I might as well buy the requisite technology - massive screen and surround sound technology - and watch the concert DVD at home. With no one there to watch me, I might even dance.
Last night at the 9.30 Club in DC, the captivating and richly voiced indie-sextet The National played plenty of mellow songs to sway to gently while contemplating The Great Existential Posers (now there’s a band name, although I tend to contemplate more obscure stuff - last night it was a game of football I played badly in 17 years ago). But there were also more than enough fast and loud numbers to which, at one time in musical history, you might have expected people to shake their heads and wildly move their bodies. And you could tell that some of us still wanted to, as though the mind was willing, but the body wasn’t. Because we’re all in psychological straitjackets.
I can’t speak for all the other inconspicuously leg-jerking but chiefly static pundits, but my own feeling is that it’s unseemly for an Indie-Pop of my age to be throwing himself around at a night club. First, I’d only had one beer because I was driving. Second, if you touch anyone at a concert nowadays, even just brush past them, you feel obliged to apologise. So knocking them over in the thrall of a speedy, thrash-led song is just no longer part of indie-etiquette. People drink, but you never see them drunk. No one caterwauls the lyrics. Instead they sing quietly to themselves.
Although the cheers and applause at the end of every song were loud and spontaneous enough, the crowd behaviour during the songs themselves reminded me of a classical music concert, where the unstinting bourgeois norm has always been to sit rigid and noiseless, internalising any emotion that you might be experiencing at the beauty of the music. A discreet tear at evening’s end may be allowed to modestly display one’s sensibilities.
The live concert used to be an experience you took part in by moving and screaming. Now I feel I might as well buy the requisite technology - massive screen and surround sound technology - and watch the concert DVD at home. With no one there to watch me, I might even dance.
Monday, August 06, 2007
A Weak Apology For Giving Apple All My Money
My iPod is ancient. It’s almost two years old. It still works perfectly fine, but I can’t help feeling that soon I’m going to buy a new one.
It has a 20 Gigabyte capacity, and a black and white display. They stopped selling them soon after I bought it, and then you could only buy a 30GB device with a color screen. Clearly my model was considered way too limited – you can’t see the album artwork, and you can’t watch videos. All you can do is listen to music, which is all I wanted it for. But still, color’s better than black and white.
My ancient iPod has 4,579 songs on it at the moment, almost full to capacity. That’s more songs than I have time to listen to, but maybe only about one third of my CD collection. I get 30 new downloads a month off eMusic too, and a lot of the time I delete old songs to make way for the new ones. Which I don’t have time to listen to. But still, if I could get 20,000 songs on there instead of nearly 5,000, I would.
It’s a little grubby, and a little scratched, but I’m still in awe of all that it holds. I still love to cradle it in my right hand and marvel at the fact that there are almost 5,000 songs in this tiny little device. Though it’s not as tiny as the ones other people wear down the gym. Those slim iPod Nanos, like the ones I bought my daughters for getting good end of year school report cards. And which I didn’t mind buying because I love going to the Apple shop and looking around and writing them a fat check. In this respect, I’m a brand name sucker.
Obviously, I don’t need a new iPod. But I’m thinking, I could leave this one in the kitchen, in the iPod boombox, and then have a brand new, color, 80GB iPod for carrying around. You see, that would save me the huge hassle of ejecting the old one from the boombox, and putting it into the carrying case I have for strapping it to my left arm at the gym. Yes, it seems I really would pay $349 to cut out the bother of such a quick and simple task. Maybe I’ll get a third iPod for the car. And another one for the holiday cottage, even though we don’t have a holiday cottage.
There are no other brands or devices that seduce me this way, except possibly adidas t-shirts and training tops, which I think has something vaguely to do with the 1970s and my first ever football shirt. My iPod infatuation also goes back to my youth, when I dreamed of being rich enough to have a house with its own music room, and a giant jukebox that would play random tracks from my entire record collection, taking me by surprise at every new song.
I didn’t need to become rich. Apple invented something much better. All I’m doing is showing them my gratitude.
It has a 20 Gigabyte capacity, and a black and white display. They stopped selling them soon after I bought it, and then you could only buy a 30GB device with a color screen. Clearly my model was considered way too limited – you can’t see the album artwork, and you can’t watch videos. All you can do is listen to music, which is all I wanted it for. But still, color’s better than black and white.
My ancient iPod has 4,579 songs on it at the moment, almost full to capacity. That’s more songs than I have time to listen to, but maybe only about one third of my CD collection. I get 30 new downloads a month off eMusic too, and a lot of the time I delete old songs to make way for the new ones. Which I don’t have time to listen to. But still, if I could get 20,000 songs on there instead of nearly 5,000, I would.
It’s a little grubby, and a little scratched, but I’m still in awe of all that it holds. I still love to cradle it in my right hand and marvel at the fact that there are almost 5,000 songs in this tiny little device. Though it’s not as tiny as the ones other people wear down the gym. Those slim iPod Nanos, like the ones I bought my daughters for getting good end of year school report cards. And which I didn’t mind buying because I love going to the Apple shop and looking around and writing them a fat check. In this respect, I’m a brand name sucker.
Obviously, I don’t need a new iPod. But I’m thinking, I could leave this one in the kitchen, in the iPod boombox, and then have a brand new, color, 80GB iPod for carrying around. You see, that would save me the huge hassle of ejecting the old one from the boombox, and putting it into the carrying case I have for strapping it to my left arm at the gym. Yes, it seems I really would pay $349 to cut out the bother of such a quick and simple task. Maybe I’ll get a third iPod for the car. And another one for the holiday cottage, even though we don’t have a holiday cottage.
There are no other brands or devices that seduce me this way, except possibly adidas t-shirts and training tops, which I think has something vaguely to do with the 1970s and my first ever football shirt. My iPod infatuation also goes back to my youth, when I dreamed of being rich enough to have a house with its own music room, and a giant jukebox that would play random tracks from my entire record collection, taking me by surprise at every new song.
I didn’t need to become rich. Apple invented something much better. All I’m doing is showing them my gratitude.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Big Vans And Mad Pilots
I was traveling around the US last week, from DC to Denver to LA and back again. When you’re moving from place to place, your mental state alters as frequently as your location.
On the plane flying in to Denver, we started descending quite steeply through the clouds, which gives you a sudden scary sense of how fast you’re going, unlike on those nice smooth gradual descents. This served quickly to convince me that I was about to die, and all I wanted in the world was to be safely on the ground again.
Safely on the ground again, we parked on the tarmac for half an hour, because our gate was occupied. So I was all impatient. I was hungry because I forgot that airlines don’t serve food any more, and I refuse to pay for it, so all I'd had was a small bag of pretzels. And it was getting late and I needed to pick up my hire car and find my hotel before they closed the restaurant. Twenty minutes earlier, I’d been yearning for this very same secure, solid stretch of Colorado ground. Now, driven by my stomach (a powerful lobbyist), my inner bitching mechanism was in full whine.
So we landed at eight, and I was at the front of the car hire queue by 9.30. “We don’t have the compact car you booked, but you can have a van,” said Bob of Thrifty. Whatever, Bob, I’m hungry. Just give me the keys. I’ll be soccer mom for a couple of days. We did the paperwork (another ten minutes) and I went out back. So, turns out it’s not really a van, more of a truck. The sort of thing eight people would take to the mountains for a long skiing and mountaineering holiday.
It’s hard to drive around Denver faking an expression that implies you’re on your way to pick up a youth soccer team. In the end I gave up and came to begrudgingly like the monster. We went through some tough times, but we did it together. Like parking in a narrow space in downtown Denver and reversing back out with a 43-point turn. And driving the wrong way down a one way street as three lanes of gesturing drivers headed towards us. How we shrugged, and laughed.
Things couldn’t have been more different in LA, where this time Thrifty had my compact Kia. In fact they gave me a choice of four, which was fantastic, even though they all looked the same, so I couldn’t actually decide. It was like being offered four identical cupcakes. Does that one have slightly more icing?
Anyway, I drove around for two days with the windows down, listening to music, like a dude. There were streets everywhere. It was all very cool until I drove into a Sheriff’s Checkpoint one night. Want to know what that is? It’s a checkpoint set up by a sheriff to randomly check drivers’ licenses. Freedom ain’t free, buddy. But don’t worry, kids, I’m white, and they waved me through.
On the flight back I had a window seat, and so I periodically stared down at America. This country’s clouds are under-rated. The pilot was as mad as a jar of crickets. He delivered a rapid-tongue monologue on how we should live our lives and love with a passion. But he got us home, so he got some applause.
On the plane flying in to Denver, we started descending quite steeply through the clouds, which gives you a sudden scary sense of how fast you’re going, unlike on those nice smooth gradual descents. This served quickly to convince me that I was about to die, and all I wanted in the world was to be safely on the ground again.
Safely on the ground again, we parked on the tarmac for half an hour, because our gate was occupied. So I was all impatient. I was hungry because I forgot that airlines don’t serve food any more, and I refuse to pay for it, so all I'd had was a small bag of pretzels. And it was getting late and I needed to pick up my hire car and find my hotel before they closed the restaurant. Twenty minutes earlier, I’d been yearning for this very same secure, solid stretch of Colorado ground. Now, driven by my stomach (a powerful lobbyist), my inner bitching mechanism was in full whine.
So we landed at eight, and I was at the front of the car hire queue by 9.30. “We don’t have the compact car you booked, but you can have a van,” said Bob of Thrifty. Whatever, Bob, I’m hungry. Just give me the keys. I’ll be soccer mom for a couple of days. We did the paperwork (another ten minutes) and I went out back. So, turns out it’s not really a van, more of a truck. The sort of thing eight people would take to the mountains for a long skiing and mountaineering holiday.
It’s hard to drive around Denver faking an expression that implies you’re on your way to pick up a youth soccer team. In the end I gave up and came to begrudgingly like the monster. We went through some tough times, but we did it together. Like parking in a narrow space in downtown Denver and reversing back out with a 43-point turn. And driving the wrong way down a one way street as three lanes of gesturing drivers headed towards us. How we shrugged, and laughed.
Things couldn’t have been more different in LA, where this time Thrifty had my compact Kia. In fact they gave me a choice of four, which was fantastic, even though they all looked the same, so I couldn’t actually decide. It was like being offered four identical cupcakes. Does that one have slightly more icing?
Anyway, I drove around for two days with the windows down, listening to music, like a dude. There were streets everywhere. It was all very cool until I drove into a Sheriff’s Checkpoint one night. Want to know what that is? It’s a checkpoint set up by a sheriff to randomly check drivers’ licenses. Freedom ain’t free, buddy. But don’t worry, kids, I’m white, and they waved me through.
On the flight back I had a window seat, and so I periodically stared down at America. This country’s clouds are under-rated. The pilot was as mad as a jar of crickets. He delivered a rapid-tongue monologue on how we should live our lives and love with a passion. But he got us home, so he got some applause.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
An Easy Way To Bring About World Peace
Ever since the anti-war rally to the Pentagon car park on a nut-freezing Saturday back in March, I’ve been haunted by two things. First, the looks of unbridled contempt and hatred from the pro-war counter-protesters. Second, by one of their signs, which read, “Fight them over there, not over here.”
I’ve got a better idea. If the legions of thick-necked, peacenik-hating, patriotic, steely-eyed hardmen are gung-ho enough about this war to show up and heckle as traitors those of us who are against it, why not let them just fight it? Over here, in America. What are they scared of?
Here’s how we could bring it on.
The hinterland rednecks have more in common with al Qaeda than they think. They’re both deeply conservative, and they both love killing people they disagree with, usually in the name of a non-existent God they believe will reward them for their combative endeavors. So jet all those jihad-loving enthusiasts professing to want to kill Americans over here (presuming they can resist the impulse to hijack the plane), and let them slug it out with those pro-war Americans so quick to back the “war on terror”, but not so keen they’re actually over in the Middle East to prosecute it.
There’s a huge open space at Gettysburg ready for the showdown. Simply arm both sides to the teeth, place them at opposite ends of the battlefield, blow a whistle and let the hand-to-hand killing commence. The alluring sight of fat, leather-clad bikers roaring towards their robe-wearing counterparts-in-hate could be broadcast with commentary from retired generals on the ESPN Xtreme Sports Channel (“Gettysburg 2 – yet again, the war to end them all!”). Sign up sponsors too. “This portion of the slaughter is brought to you by the National Rifle Association,” would make so much sense, not to mention cash.
The battle continues until one side has killed every one of its opponents. There’s no surrender, because that’s peacenik talk. The winners are handed a placard that reads, “Congratulations, you have won the Holy War!” They will be allowed to retire to the Aleutian Islands on a no-exit visa.
Final result: Peace. There will be no more pro-war rednecks, and no more pro-jihad terrorists. No more calls from South Dakota to back a war that’s thousands of miles away, and no more self-destructing scum left to blow themselves up in a crowded market. As all the self-declared warriors of God think they’re off to their respective heavens anyway, they’ll be happy to die as well. Everyone’s a winner.
This prototype combat scenario can be used in all arenas where two parties believe the best way forward is through violence. With reactionary pro-war philosophies nullified, the path for progressive thought is cleared at last, and the human race gets to continue evolving after all.
This Solution for World Peace is brought to you by an unread blog. You’re most welcome.
I’ve got a better idea. If the legions of thick-necked, peacenik-hating, patriotic, steely-eyed hardmen are gung-ho enough about this war to show up and heckle as traitors those of us who are against it, why not let them just fight it? Over here, in America. What are they scared of?
Here’s how we could bring it on.
The hinterland rednecks have more in common with al Qaeda than they think. They’re both deeply conservative, and they both love killing people they disagree with, usually in the name of a non-existent God they believe will reward them for their combative endeavors. So jet all those jihad-loving enthusiasts professing to want to kill Americans over here (presuming they can resist the impulse to hijack the plane), and let them slug it out with those pro-war Americans so quick to back the “war on terror”, but not so keen they’re actually over in the Middle East to prosecute it.
There’s a huge open space at Gettysburg ready for the showdown. Simply arm both sides to the teeth, place them at opposite ends of the battlefield, blow a whistle and let the hand-to-hand killing commence. The alluring sight of fat, leather-clad bikers roaring towards their robe-wearing counterparts-in-hate could be broadcast with commentary from retired generals on the ESPN Xtreme Sports Channel (“Gettysburg 2 – yet again, the war to end them all!”). Sign up sponsors too. “This portion of the slaughter is brought to you by the National Rifle Association,” would make so much sense, not to mention cash.
The battle continues until one side has killed every one of its opponents. There’s no surrender, because that’s peacenik talk. The winners are handed a placard that reads, “Congratulations, you have won the Holy War!” They will be allowed to retire to the Aleutian Islands on a no-exit visa.
Final result: Peace. There will be no more pro-war rednecks, and no more pro-jihad terrorists. No more calls from South Dakota to back a war that’s thousands of miles away, and no more self-destructing scum left to blow themselves up in a crowded market. As all the self-declared warriors of God think they’re off to their respective heavens anyway, they’ll be happy to die as well. Everyone’s a winner.
This prototype combat scenario can be used in all arenas where two parties believe the best way forward is through violence. With reactionary pro-war philosophies nullified, the path for progressive thought is cleared at last, and the human race gets to continue evolving after all.
This Solution for World Peace is brought to you by an unread blog. You’re most welcome.
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