Smiley's Tropical Escape

Everytime I Think I Know What's Happening

nobody@vox.com(Smiley) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 23:11:45 +0900

Years ago, in college, I had this boss named Jerry. He was a great guy; he was the kind of guy who kept a paper bag loaded with tylenol, electrolites, apple juice, and a candy bar in his desk drawer for those days you showed up to hungover to be of any use. And he never looked down on you for needing it. That kind of guy.

Jerry looked a little like Michael Keaton. He had the same cheeks, the same eyes, the same hair. I used to ask him, on a daily basis, to say "I'm Batman" but he never would.

I showed up to work one day, more hungover than usual, after having just had a massive fight with my girlfriend, who worked in the same building. Jerry picked me up, metaphorically speaking, and dusted me off and got me functioning again. Then, in an effort to put a cap on things, when I said thanks he said, "It's what I do." He paused just a beat, looked directly into my eyes, said, "I'm Batman."

I damn near died laughing.

Jerry and Groove Neuter had to pick me up off the floor, literally this time, where I had collapsed, and I could see that Jerry regretted having said it. I wanted to explain that I was not laughing at him, instead it was a combination of being touched that he had said it and a release valve for pent up stress from the day before, but it was too late. I was up and at work and he was off somewhere else. I stopped asking him to say it and he never mentioned it and that was that.

I had a cold a couple of weeks ago that made me lose most of my voice. I could speak only in harsh whispers and grunts.

My wife, being kind and taking pity on my, made a nice, thick soup for dinner. After eating I said thanks and she asked if I could say "Gottsan desu," a variation on the traditional post meal "gochi so sama deshita," meaning thanks for the food.

I said it, without really thinking about and only when she collapsed with laughter did it occur to me to ask why.

"It's what sumo say!" She gasped out between laughing fits. I joined her in laughing, because, really what else could I do? And she was not being mean, or cruel; I often make jokes about myself being sumo sized and we both laugh at the idea of me in the sumo dohyo. So I laughed with her and it was a good joke.

But it reminded me of Jerry, and that I should e-mail him, see how he's doing, see if he ever looks in the mirror and thinks "I'm Batman."

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Dumb

nobody@vox.com(Smiley) — Fri, 09 May 2008 16:12:57 +0900

In November of 1993, while Nirvana were in New York recording their Unplugged performance, Groove Neuter and I were working for a college radio station in our hometown. A few months later, when the performance aired, Groove came over to my house and we spent a few hours rigging a VCR and a cassette recorder to the t.v., bootlegging the entirety for our radio show.

A short while after that, I came home to find my dad listening to the radio news. "Hey son. Did you hear that Nirvana kid shot himself?"

"What?" I ran to the phone and called Groove at the station.

He laughed, the way he always does when there's something emotional he doesn't want to deal with. "Yup. It's true." He said, then read me the story straight off the news wire. I hung up the phone and went back to the living room where my dad was waiting.

"Jesus, Dad. You just don't know how this feels."

"Yeah, probably about the same way I felt when Elvis died." That was enough to jolt me out of my shock. That my dad, who was never to really appreciate the grunge and punk that I loved, could never-the-less empathize because of his own musical idol's self inflicted deification penetrated the fog in my head. I got back on the phone with Groove and we started planning our Nirvana hour, a combination tribute and mourning.

The funny thing is, I had not even liked Nirvana when I first heard them. A friend had a copy of a copy of Bleach and I thought it was a mess. Back in 1989, Guns 'N' Roses was still the be all and end all of my musical universe. I had grown up with an aunt, who, at only eight years my senior, built my early musical tastes. I listened to Adam and the Ants, later Clash, the Pretenders, and other early 80s New Wave. By the time I hit junior high school I had abandoned all that for the pop metal tastes that my friends preferred: Poison, Warrant, Bon Jovi, Ratt, Cinderella. And then I heard Guns 'N' Roses and my tastes shifted again. By the time high school started I was into Metallica, Iron Maiden, and other, harder, metal.

My sister gave me Nevermind for Christmas the year it came out. Another gate opened and now I began adding grunge albums into my collection, from there punk, from there...Nirvana changed their sound. They did an Unplugged show, with several covers by bands I had never heard of (Vaselines), or from people my mom liked (David Bowie). And now the gates were hanging off the hinges and I was grabbing any kind of music I could. I got into the Ramones and the Clash and even Bowie.

And perhaps I'm not explaining it well, but Nirvana's acknowledgment of their influences made it ok for me to like things outside my chosen genre; the performance made it acceptable to have diverse and eclectic musical tastes.

And then he shot himself.

Groove and I carried on with our radio show for another year or so before moving on to other things, but for years after, whenever there was something untoward happening, one or the other of us would look at the other and just say, "fucking Kurt" as a way of summing up whatever fucked up situation had just arisen

My last trip to the U.S. I bought a copy of the just-released DVD of Nirvana's Unplugged performance that I hoped Groove and I would have a chance to watch together but, the way things go, we did not have that chance. We chose to spend our limited time hanging out and finding new things to bullshit about, new situations to bitch about, new things to bond over. That's a good thing of course, but I do wish we had had a chance to reminisce over this performance, especially as I sit here now with the DVD playing in the background.

My dad called me up a few years ago for no real reason other than to tell me he had just gotten Elvis' Comeback special on DVD. I get that now.

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120% Awesome

nobody@vox.com(Smiley) — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 11:09:21 +0900

Dead Milkmen - Punk Rock Girl

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QotD: The one that got away

nobody@vox.com(Smiley) — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 23:21:07 +0900

Everybody hates Jr. High School. Even the kids who were popular or thought they had it all figured out hated Jr. High at one time or another.
I entered Jr. High shortly after my twelfth birthday and hated it immediately. I was shorter than a lot of the other boys, and pudgier. I did not really know anyone as most of my friends from elementary school were either at a different school or in a different town. The classes were boring and the teachers seemed determined to make me talk as much as possible, when I just wanted to be left alone in the bac of the class with a good book.
And then, there was Debbie. We were students together at a local martial arts school. She out-ranked me and could have kicked my butt pretty easily if she had ever decided she felt like it. We had a habit of hanging out with each other at tournaments and after class and I really liked her. However, I figured that she would never even be willing to talk to me at school. Where, you know, other kids could see us.
So, when she walked up to me with a folded up note during that first week of school, my first response was "Who's this for?" Figuring she wanted me to pass it on to someone else in my next class.
When she said "For you dummy," and rolled her eyes with that grin as she walked away, well, you could have knocked me down with a feather. Or just looked at me.
We kept passing notes for most of that year and I even worked up the guts to dance with her at the school dances a few times. But she moved at the end of the year, about sixty miles down the road, but, when you're twelve, 60 miles may as well be a thousand in a town with no public transportation and limited phone services. Of course, we kept up a correspondance that lasted, off and on through the end of high school when my family moved and a lot of forwarded mail never found us.
She was never girlfriend because I was too young and too shy and, well, yeah. But I have always felt that she could have been.
Or maybe just should have been.

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