Meeting The Suburban Playboy

Trying To Get Out More, Part 1. The first in an occasional series in which I leave the house, only to end up annoyed by a fellow human being.

The other morning I’d finished up in the gym, but a man perhaps ten years younger than me was blocking access to my locker because he was taking his stuff out of the closet above. No problem, I can wait. Except that he wasn’t really accessing his locker, he was just standing there checking his mobile device for new e-mails. Obviously an important bloke - he’d been in the gym an hour, and someone could have sent him a crucial communication in that time. Except you’re not that important that work doesn’t miss you when you skip out to the gym mid-morning, eh? Irritation factor: 5%.

I notice a tattoo near his ankle of the Playboy bunny. Blocking me from getting to my locker’s one thing, doing it while sporting a crass symbol of overt vanity quite another. If you’re such a playboy, why’s it not tattooed on your forehead, super-dick? Let’s show some conviction here. Or do women look at your face, snigger at your feckless expression, look down in embarrassment and then think, “Oh wait, he has a playboy bunny tattoo, he must be a stud-butt after all.” Irritation factor: a steep climb to 60%.

Once I finally get to my locker and pack up and leave, bunny boy follows me out to the car park. You know how it is - you’re trying to just get away from someone, for good, for ever, and they keep hanging in there, as though they’ve been specially commissioned to irritate the crap out of you for the whole day. Finally, he goes the wrong way round the car park’s one-way system in his SU fucking V and tries to cut me off at the exit. But I step on it and get in there first and leave him behind at the next light. Irritation factor: a climb to a cuss-gorging 90% before levelling and descending in the rear-view mirror to zero.

How can I judge this man without having heard him speak a single word? Perhaps he was checking his messages because a family member had been in a car accident and he was awaiting a health status update. Perhaps he had a Playboy symbol tattooed on his leg as the result of a cruel hazing ritual at college where he’d been tied down and branded, and now he was having it slowly removed through long and painful laser surgery. What if I’d run over a little toddler as I accelerated to stop him cutting me off at the car park exit, and he’d then testified that it was all his fault for acting like an arrogant, SUV-driving, Blackberry-checking, Playboy tattoo-toting twat?

Somewhere, maybe, there’s a blog entry at wannabeplayboyblogspot.com about a single man’s annoyance at the sneering, impatient, middle-aged, Passat-driving lowlife that cut him off aggressively at the gym’s car park exit. All bitter just because he lost the race, ha!

Chilli Times Ahead

Here’s a picture of our guard dog, who sits on the front lawn warning mutts not to squat and void upon our grass, a gift from my family after the trials described in Great Suburban Traditions No. 3 - Dog Crap. Today our passive pet was messed on by the heavens, but at least it’s not as toxic as the excrement from his living, breathing and copiously shitting counterparts who are allowed to drop their plop on our property by their sociopathic, death-courting owners.

Although he’s been pretty effective since we got him a year ago, a couple of months back someone did allow their dog to evacuate right next to ‘No!’, perhaps misinterpreting the sign as encouragement. More likely it was a cussed cur-walker refusing to be told where he could or could not let his or her hound pitch a dog-log in a free America. I have a sneaking admiration for this attitude, in the same way I quite enjoy it when I let young drivers into the traffic flow, and they respond by accelerating with a grin, then showing me the finger. In recognition, I’ve let the rebel turd ossify over the winter months, although that’s mainly because I can’t be arsed to clean it up, and it’s been frozen and thus odour-free for most of that time anyway.

Come drier weather, though, I’ll be less forgiving, and plan to buy an industrial-sized jar of cheap but potent chilli powder from the Costco megamarket to spread around ‘No!’ so that he can enjoy the sight of spiced snouts on yelping yapdogs being frantically pulled into retreat by their suddenly contrite handlers. I should reiterate that I genuinely love most dogs. It’s just a shame for them that they don’t get to choose their guardians, many of whom would themselves benefit from restraint by leash and a strong-willed, whip-swishing enforcer to help them get accustomed to basic social norms. I am told such businesses do already exist, though probably not in this section of the suburbs. Here discipline is still in the hands of personally convenient gods; bulbous, braying mums; and the Neighbourhood Watch Zentralkomitee. None of whom, unfortunately, seem to want to take responsibility for illegally crapping dogs.

Ballroom Burial

On Tuesday evenings I drive my daughter and three of her friends to choir practice. As they warm their voices up by talking fast or screaming simultaneously, four 12-year-old girls generate an unbelievable amount of noise, especially within the confines of a Passat. Once I’ve dropped them off, the drive home is a more relaxed, solitary affair, with no chorus of negative comment on my choice of music.

One of the traffic lights I stop at affords me a perfect view into the second floor headquarters of the Arthur Murray Dance Center in Bethesda. Between 7 and 8pm, it hosts what looks like a formal ballroom dancing class. Post-youth couples move gently around the room. This week they danced to Near Dark by Burial, at least from where I was sitting with my foot on the brake. The rhythm was slightly out of sync with the dancing, but that didn’t matter. For once in my day, I was not impatient for the light to turn green.

There are too many traffic lights, and way too few forms of entertainment to go with them.

The New Dark-Eyed Juncoes LP

The music industry, barely recovered from a night at the Grams, will be getting drunk again tonight to the sound of the Dark-Eyed Juncoes, one of the 'projects' on my anti-profit micro-label Paper Wasp Recordings. The group has just emerged from a self-imposed break (that is, they were too idle to go on a world tour) to release a new CD, 'Lost At Sea.' Listen to four of the songs here. If you want the whole album, just ask politely.

Hell's Smells

So yesterday was the first full day in Obama’s America, and already I found something to complain about. I expected the day to be perfect, but it wasn’t. It stank of fried chicken.

Like all suburban stay-at-homers, my day largely revolves around grasping for a spare moment to sit down with a book and fall asleep. I thought I’d found a 15-minute window at the Caribou Coffee Shop in between shopping and picking up the kids from school, with David Starkey’s ‘Six Wives’ the necessary vehicle to a brief slumber. I was just at drowsing point somewhere in the middle of the sentence, “Back in January 1526, with the major Household reforms known as the Eltham Ordinances, Wolsey had at last seemed to get full control of the Privy Chamber,” when in came a woman with a can of Coke and a plastic carton containing onion rings and deep fried chicken.

It’s the law of King Sodomy of the sod-happy Sodomites that she would choose to sit right next to me, and without even bothering to buy a coffee, open up her malodorous lunch virtually under my nose. The rank nutrition snapped the moment and the mood to doze. And like all Brits, programmed as we are to complain to anyone except the people who need to hear it (say, the coffee shop staff, or the woman herself), I got up and walked out, muttering foulest oaths that froze and shattered in the east coast winter air. Then I drove early to school, where I spent ten minutes in the car park sipping coffee and listening to Richard H Kirk while marvelling at people who have the shameless face to walk into a coffee shop and eat fried chicken.

I like the Caribou because it has free wi-fi and garrulous, friendly staff, but it seems to attract a weirdly anti-social and obstreperous clientele. A couple of weeks ago I settled down there to work one morning when a bloke behind me fell asleep and snored at a prodigious volume for full two hours, non stop from 8-10am. I bet even the fried chicken chick wouldn’t have raised him. Last week at my table an office worker conducted an hour-long informal performance review of a subordinate that was so vague and jargon-saturated that I couldn’t work out for the life of me what kind of company they could possibly be working for. But they were loud enough that I could understand every word, even if none of it made sense. And in the same seat last year a man speaking what I think was a Slavic language loudly enjoyed, via cell phone, live commentary from a friend several thousand miles away attending what must have been an important basketball game, judging by the frequent and borderline inasane yelps of jubilation he unleashed upon the rest of the innocent, cowering customers.

Well, it’s a small world with lots of people, and I can always stop at home if I’m bothered by people who like to keep a high profile. Alternatively, instead of shutting down Guantanamo Bay, the new president could convert it into a giant fast food outlet, and all the people who like fried chicken could go there and eat it all day. The stench would bring down the Cuban government, meaning an immediate and peaceful triumph for Obama’s foreign policy and, more importantly, I could publicly quaff caffeine-based drinks while reading pompous historians and taking an afternoon nap. It’s been two days now, and this administration has yet to get its priorities straight.

The Actual Top 30 Albums Of 2008

The music industry is, as ever, known to be in a state of tension and barely concealed panic in the run-up to the annual Stay At Home Indie-Pop nominations for the year's best music. This year, due to the linguistic recession that has resulted in the chronic global shortage of adjectives, and bearing in mind that there are now approximately 700 blogs to every internet reader, reviews have been curtailed to a succinct and time-saving single sentence.


30. Her Space Holiday - XOXO, Panda And The New Kid Revival
After several wonderful albums of bedroom electro-pop for depressives, HSH makes a quirky guitar album full of hooks and funny, strange lyrics.

29. Sonya Kitchell - This Storm
19, gifted and beautiful, still feeling her way down different avenues -- her record company probably wants her to be Alanis Morissette, while she'd rather be Sonny Girl Williamson.

28. Lucinda Williams - Little Honey
Rocking, growling Lucinda got lucky in love at last, but she hasn't let that tame her style.

27. Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
Weird but brilliant modern medieval music.

26. Tift Merritt - Another Country
C&W prodigy moves to Paris with a piano and gets all grown up on us.

25. Dawn Landes - Fireproof
This year's statutory emerging, sensitive New York songbird.

24. Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago
We all know - written in an isolated shed for instant indie cred, but while it has its moments, it's too ponderous and maudlin to be as good as the critics wanted it to be.

23. Robert Forster - The Evangelist
Back solo from the Go-Betweens after Grant McLennan's death, a sombre, poetic effort built on Forster's unmistakable melodies.

22. She & Him - Volume One
Paste magazine made this its album of the year, an overly high accolade for what is a middling-to-good 60s pop revival record.

21. Toumani Diabate - The Mande Variations
Classical African music for meditative moments.

20. Yoav - Charmed And Strange
Accessible and at times exceptional electronica.

19. Paul Weller - 22 Dreams
Like a style-by-style career retrospective, but with entirely new and mostly fresh-sounding songs.

18. Portishead - Third
Closely related to First and Second, mixing brash with mellow deep inside the musical twilight zone.

17. Spiritualized - Songs In A & E
A record that only occasionally suffers from the scope of its ambition, with surprise largely accompanied by scarred sonic delight.

16. Tindersticks - The Hungry Saw
Oblivious to musical fads, still crafting the same quivering compositions of fragile beauty.

15. Giant Sand - proVISIONS
Low key, bass-driven soundtrack to the imminent greater depression - same formula, possibly better than ever.

14. Horse Feathers - House With No Home
Folk music scratched from the cold, raw earth with love and a battered fiddle.

13. Lie Down In The Light - Bonnie 'Prince' Billy
Upbeat enough compared with previous works that it should be subtitled: Will Oldham Finally Got Laid

12. M83 - Saturdays = Youth
Brimming with warm, vibrant synths - a record you can dig into like a bag of colorful, comforting sweets.

11. Old 97's - Blame It On Gravity
Plenty old, borrowed and blue, but you can't help but love a record full of lively, extremely singable songs.

10. Musee Mecanique - Hold This Ghost
Occasionally cloying, but mostly like coming in from the cold to hot chocolate and cake, all fuzzy synths wrapped in a soothing voice that envelops you in a blissful zone you may not want to leave.

9. Buika - Nina Del Fuego
You can almost smell the smoking danger in Buika's passionate, irresistible delivery.

8. Orchestra Baobab - Made In Dakar
Phenomenal musicians of unrelenting tempo and talent revelling in the usual maelstrom of joyous, soul-shaking styles.

7. Basia Bulat - Oh, My Darling
Delicate but lovely vocals underpin an album that slowly grows into a work of variety and finesse.

6. Kathleen Edwards - Asking For Flowers
Strong songs, tough themes and impeccable delivery from hugely gifted Canadian.

5. TV On The Radio - Dear Science
Much easier to like and listen to than any previous releases, this is an impressive series of rhythmic rides into the realm of the unexpected -- the result is a set of uniquely lifting songs.

4. Ane Brun - Changing Of The Seasons
Outstanding Norwegian singer-songwriter delivers fractured, emotional compositions never less than utterly beautiful.

3. The Weepies - Hideaway
The name and deceptively twee arrangements can't hide the fact that this is a collection of consistently excellent songs.

2. Damien Jurado - Caught In The Trees
Our greatest living songwriter works the magic of his misery once more using an acoustic guitar and the soul in his throat, backed by a band who, playing live, gives you a reassuring smile that sadly eludes the burdened genius at the front.

1. Sun Kil Moon - April
Hazy, sprawling songs of unfathomable gorgeousness.

The Grill Of The Unknown

At school I learnt the historically dubious claim that during the reign of King Alfred, an Englishman could leave gold jewelry hanging from a tree branch and come back to find it untouched one year later. In Barack Obama’s America, I have discovered, you can do the same with a George Foreman grill leant against the front bumper of a Volkswagen Jetta. Maybe not for a year, but at least for one night.

Last night just after midnight I was emptying kitchen waste into my prized compost bin when I noticed a large cardboard package propped up against the front of our car, parked on the street. It was a windy night, so I assumed the package had been blown out of someone’s recycling bin. The next morning it was still there when I went out to get the papers, but I was too idle to deal with it as I was still dealing with the effects of several glasses of Rioja.

Just after 11am, a visiting friend brought the box inside. It wasn’t empty at all. It contained a spanking new George Foreman grill. “The lean mean fat reducing grilling machine,” it says on the box, without pausing for any commas at all. The neighbours claim to know nothing about it. Two sets of friends who visited on Saturday night said they hadn’t seen it when they left, and are clueless about how it came to be in the street in front of our house. Though one did say, “It happened to us once with an armchair. We kept it for 30 years.”

We are mulling all possible explanations. In Obama’s America, everyone gets free gifts. The CIA has planted a bug in the grill and wants to eavesdrop on me chopping onions, swearing at the radio and singing along to Her Space Holiday. God is in fact a divine hamburger and is rewarding his chosen meat-eating disciples with a heaven-sent culinary aid. The George Foreman grill is so crap that you can only give it away. It’s some kind of threat, but our enemies couldn’t find a horse’s head so they left the next thing they could get their hands on, the message being that if we don’t tread carefully, we could end up with our heads sandwiched inside a George Foreman grill. Or something.

I did a google news search to see if there were any other reports of mysterious George Foreman grill appearances or apparitions, but all I could find was actress Blake Lively telling W Magazine last week that, “I just made chicken breasts from Whole Foods on a George Foreman Grill, with asparagus and broccoli.” W Magazine is the publication for lame-duck presidents, by lame-duck presidents, I believe. If anyone can see a sinister connection in all this, please let me know.

How Middle-Aged People Celebrate History

After whooping it up for a few minutes and dancing around the living room at Obama's victory last Tuesday night, we went out on to the deck to hear how the rest of the neighbourhood was celebrating. Silence. We whooped some more, but there was no response. It was raining.

"I have to go back in," I said as the historic moment slipped away. "My hearing-aids are starting to get wet." But by next morning Obama had made the rain stop.

Fiction Within The Simplest Game

A bloke in Australia is writing a PhD about football, and so naturally he wanted to talk to one of the world's best selling writers of football fiction. He couldn't find one, so he came to me instead. Read my pontificating on the subject at his blog, The Simplest Game.

Safeway Stories

"How are you doing today?”
“I’m good, thanks. How about you?”
“I’m good too, thank you.”

It’s a simple enough exchange, if somewhat moribund, and I’ve had it with thousands, possibly millions, of Americans in the service industry since moving to this country. But the other day at a Safeway in the aesthetically deprived exurbs of Maryland I stumbled across a new variation. The young girl scanning my bar of chocolate, a bunch of bananas and an energy drink (pre-match meal for over-35 year olds), looked like she was getting ready for Halloween a couple of weeks early. She had purple streaks in her long brown hair and a strange expression on her face. I thought it might be a scarily seasonal in-store promotion the cashiers had been reluctantly dragged into by the misguided goons of marketing and management.

She: How are you today?
Me: I’m good, thanks. How about you?
She (sighing): You know, not so good. I had a terrible night.
Me: Really?
She: Yes. I made the mistake of spending it in an abandoned house.
Me: (not making a sound, just standing with my mouth slightly open, waiting for a further explanation)
She: I didn’t fancy going home. So a friend and I ended up in this abandoned house. Big mistake. It was kind of scary.

I felt at this point as though I should say, “Yes, I know what you mean. Every time I’ve spent the night in an abandoned house, I’ve ended up thinking it was a big mistake too.” But as far as I can remember, I’ve never spent the night in an abandoned house, unless you count sleeping on the concrete floor of a bothy while on a Scottish mountain-hiking ‘holiday’. But given that the alternative was putting up a porous tent in a rainstorm in the dark and being trampled by several thousand sheep, the abandoned house option won the night.

I didn’t have the time to tell the girl in Safeway all this. I had my things in their bag, and kick-off was just an hour away. I needed energy and protein. Even though the next customer had her items on the conveyor belt, the girl was looking at me as though she wanted to tell me more. Much more. As though I was the only customer all day who had listened. But all purveyors of oral fiction know that when you’re staffing the ‘15 items or less’ checkout, the only tales to be told are short ones.

“You have a good day now,” I said as I walked away. What a disappointing ending.