Nov 15

There comes a time in every man’s life when he looks across the crowd at a packed casino bar with a shitty cover band playing “I will survive” and sees John Adams wearing a neck brace, sitting on a stool in the corner of the room, gazing menacingly around the room.

At that moment, I knew I had to post on this sweet blog. It was a watershed moment, a seminal moment, a moment when I realized “shit, if John Adams lived in the 21st century and for some reason wore a neck brace, he’d look like an angry assassin who had just sprained his neck while being foiled in his latest attempt at sniping whomever John Cusack was supposed to kill in Grosse Pointe Blank.”

Anyways, for some reason it inspired me to post this little snippet that I’ve been sitting on for a while…

I stopped at the Sheetz gas station on my way home from work this evening for the bare essentials (the simple bear necessities) — fierce grape gatorade, orange-strawberry gatorade, trashbags, windshield wiper fluid.

The purchases were unrelated, mostly.

I was standing in line, trying to act very cool and casual while listening to my ipod. (You may be thinking, hey, here’s the tenuous music connection. Wrong, sucker. It was a Bloomberg economics podcast I downloaded that morning. Who’s the nerd now?)

I was understandably exhausted after avoiding work for most of the time I spent at the office on Monday, and certainly all of the time I spent at various coffee shops outside of it. I spaced out, waiting for the cashier to handle this woman’s purchase of a $198 money order, paid in cash; ice cream for her kids, paid with a credit card; and $5 in gas, paid for with a different credit card.

It was then I saw a hooded figure in the doorway. Black hood, black mask. I tensed. Stephen Roach chairman and acting chief executive of Morgan Stanely, Asia, was talking about the the bailout plan on the podcast.

I dropped my fierce grape gatorade. The cap broke. It spilled. Tragedy. But, I was more worried about what my sleep-deprived mind thought was a ninja about to bust through to door. In one of those split-second slivers of time where your mind can make dozens of illogical leaps from synapse to synapse, I thought “which would better deflect a throwing star, wiper fluid or gatorade AM? The wiper fluid bottle is bigger, and the gatorade would probably make a better return volley than a shield, I figured.

I shifted my feet - left foot forward, right back slightly, putting myself in position to throw the gatorade, if the need should arise, or box with my dominant hand in the preferable cross position.

In walked the Muslim woman, wearing her black robe, hood and veil, and three little kids. No throwing stars, no gatorades in return. But it took me a moment to wipe the idioticly tense look from my face, and I got a disgusted look from the woman in return. It was all in the eyes.

So that’s the story about how I got fierce grape gatorade all over Sheetz. Also, I don’t mean to diminish the amount of bigotry and insensitivity in this country. But, couldn’t some of it be chalked up to misunderstandings like this one?

Misunderstood

PS - I was just making up annoying tags for this article and, through the auto complete feature, realized I had already used the “gatorade” and “lots of gatorade” tags. Sad, sad business.

PPS - How sweet is that “Gloria” song by Patti Smith? G-L-O-R-I-A. Woooo.

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Aug 19

This post is a little late in making the internets, but I spent a fair amount of time piecing it all together.

But first, just a few quick asides.

I have a lot of respect for the writers of Tailspin. How many practical uses for cloudsurfing can one team of writers come up with? That takes real skill to keep Kit Cloudkicker relevant in that day and age.

And this question has been making the rounds in the NEPA speakeasies. What’s the tougher sell: In the butt or on the face? Take that femenisim, eat 1950.

Now, for my tale of Wal-Mart and woe.

I woke up Sunday afternoon on an air mattress in my sun room. The sun room is really the link between the fire escape/back stairs and my kitchen. It’s airy and pretty open to the public. There’s no lock on the door that leads to the outside. Lots of windows.

My ironing board, which is usually set up in my living room, was upside-down in my regular bed. My TV was on, but tuned to some random input setting that you only use if you have an uplink to Soviet spy satellites. Ahh, Natasha. My desk chair was on my couch. And I was joined in bed by Haynes Johnson’s latest book “Age of Anxiety.” It’s a good read. Haynes is a ridiculous dude — Pulitzer winner at The Washington Post and journo prof at UMD. He used to look like the dude from Office Space. Now he’s old and has one insane eyebrow and one slightly less insane eyebrow.

Aaaaaaanyways, I was parched. As you have probably guessed by this point, I spent a fair amount of time drinking Saturday night, and cheering for Michael Phelps in a bar. And watching a chick get her ass hit with a stripper belt (no buckle for easy release) in a bar. It’s a weird bar. Swimming is cool though.

So I rolled off the air mattress and made my way to the kitchen to find means of hydration. There’s usually not anything in my fridge except for two half-filled egg cartons that have been floating around there for at least eight months, some apples and individually wrapped American cheese slices, but I checked anyways. Lo and behold, I scrounge up an orange Gatorade. 32 ouncer. Good find. A most pleasant surprise. Sports beverage transaction benefits me today.

‘Rade in hand, I stagger through the hallway to my living room, still not entirely sure how I ended up on an air mattress in my sun room, and I discover shopping bags full of 32 oz. Gatorades in assorted flavors. There were about 30 full ones and five or six half-full ones.

After searching the bags I found the receipt from a self-checkout line in Wal-Mart. I paid 98 cents for each Gatorade. And then I apparently bought a bunch of other shit. Toilet paper (found in my trunk). Paper towels (still missing). Headphones (somehow found their way into my work bag). A few frozen pizzas (in the fridge, of course). Two pounds of potatoes (missing until later in the story). Another ironing board (still missing, presumed captured).

Best I can figure, I went to the 24-hour Wal-Mart after boozing, which I’ve been known to do, in order to pick up some toilet paper, which my apartment had been sorely lacking. Along the way, I picked up some other essentials and was easily suckered in by the swell Gatorade pricing at my favorite bargain retailer. And then I bought other shit.

Determined to find the toilet paper (two-ply, for her pleasure), I wandered out to my car and searched for about 15 minutes before I remembered I had a trunk. That’s where I found the 36 rolls of toilet paper that I was sure were hiding somewhere else in the passenger cabin. TP in hand, I hit up the bathroom, where the final aftershocks of my night were in full view. The toilet seat was ripped from its hinges and sitting in the sink. Those potatoes I mentioned earlier were on the back of the toilet, just in case I should need a raw potato while on the commode.

So, what does this have to do with music? Nothing. But while I was trying to clean up from this madness I heard two songs that I knew I had to share.

The Two Gallants are on Saddle Creek. Two dudes. Not sure if it’s Gallants as in Goofus and Gallant, or Gallant like the car. This little ditty is called Nothing to You

I first heard the song while driving around during one of my work avoidance periods last week. It was pretty sweet.

And I followed you into the party/That no one invited me to

Alone I made I made to my 40/And played make believe it was you

It’s less depressing when they sing it.

And then The Redwalls. They have this sometimes odd combination of the Beatles and The Strokes or The Killers. Lots of The’s. Kono wa They Are Among Us

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