L-O-L-O-L-O-V-E

One of the standing pontifications in my maternal household is the importance of George Martin on the Beatles. It’s not a debate because no party in the group can acutely pinpoint what is Martin and what is Fab.

For any Beatle-hater, the first argument often taken is that they were a product of the time. That their greatness has more to do with luck than it does talent:

1. The Kennedy Assassination was the most fertile ground ever possible for a musical group. Even more so that the rot compost of Hair Metal in 1991 that launched Nirvana, the overwrought (self-anointed) grandeur of stadium rock that allowed Punk to have an impact in 1975-1977.

There is a valid point here. The short answer is that nobody remembers Gerry and The Pacemakers. The fully developed contrarian argument should include the fatc that Jimi was big only in the states because he was big in the UK before. The long answer is that America still had the Beach Boys. Revolver begat Pet Sounds which begat Sgt. Pepper’s (and 40 years later, Smile). The US had Bob fuckin’ Dylan, and we had Don’t Worry Baby. I Wanna Hold Your Hand on Sullivan may have been a beginning, but we weren’t lacking.



And, I’m going to screw the rest of this.

The only problem with the Beatles is that they broke up.

Listening to the three major break-up albums (the active split being the Beatles as a group) now, 35+ years on, it’s a weird experience. [these albums being All Things Must Pass, Plastic Ono Band, and Band on the Run]

Plastic Ono Band is the most aggressive of the trio. It’s the most independent, the most fierce, and the most introspective to the public eye. While the “I don’t believe in Beatles, I just believe in me” statement was HUGE at the time, it’s now a passing moment in a weak song filled with nothing but statements set to music, and it’s aged horribly.

Band on the Run is the least connected to the Beatles. It’s just Paul doing his thing before he went completely pussy and decided that instead of writing great love songs, he’d write a song about defending crappy love songs.

From the title track, to Jet, Helen Wheels and 1985 it’s a great set of songs. It never quite reaches the triumphs of Band on the Run, which has one of the best guitar lines ever, it’s soaring, yet quiet and all it takes is a second to know what song it’s from.

And then there is George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass. In the pantheon list of great album titles, it’s hard to think of one better for a person and for their time.

Let’s do a list.

1. George Harrison – All Things Must Pass. Without being mean, spiteful, yet hinting to the content of the album, this one just says it all.

2. Bruce Springsteen – Born to Run. Escapism from doldrums to chase the American Dream. Sure it’s the title track, but it’s hard to discount that that single contains all that is needed to be said about the album and spirit.

3. Pink Floyd – Dark Side of the Moon. As in, we’re going to show you everything you never thought possible.

4. Radiohead – The Bends. A dual meaning about coming up too fast as a band because of a fluke single, and the underlying theme about having to deal with the headaches of heartbreak, being submerged in love only to come up alone again.

5. The Clash – London Calling. The original title was “The New Testament.” It was supposed to be a nod that this is what music is supposed to be, tongue in cheek, of course, but what emerged was maybe the epitome of English music, you can create it, we can perfect it.

6. AC/DC – Back in Black. From shoot to thrill to Rock and roll ain’t noise pollution, this was the first album of a band which had lost a singer, but didn’t lose it’s spirit.

7. The Strokes – Is This It? As if to say, is that all there is, are we worth hype? Yes, and Yes.

8. Marvin Gaye – What’s going on. Maybe the hyperbole of modern black music can be tied to this album on a generational level, but in an honest sense, it’s a bare response to the situation, like NWA’s Straight Outta Compton, as opposed to say 50 Cent’s Tha Massacre.. For all of the seeming self-righteousness that could be deemed from a title like that, it now seems less like a shout for recognition but a call for attention.

9. Rolling Stones – Exile on Main Street. As in, we’re fucked up, we’re in the spotlight, and yet we feel alone. For an album that seems to be about recovering from a hangover in life and doing so to the public… why not deem the experience exile.

10. The Notorious BIG – Life After Death. It’s just too surreal not to conclude with.

And well, the Beatles Love.

To call it a mash-up would be technically correct, because it’s a mashing of two or more different songs to make a new track which takes the best parts of one song and puts them with the best parts of another. With the exception that these songs are all from one artist, the term mash up is fair.

It’s the Beatles as we know it, this time in a new life.

Watching High Fidelity with Steaze last week, I was reminded of a piece of my vernacular, and where it came from.

When Barry (Jack Black) and Dick (the other guy) are standing, hunched over at the register desk listening to the EP by the Kinky Wizards (the name of the skateboard punks musical outfit) Rob (John Cusack) asks who it is, and Barry tells him, and then says, in an apologetic and flabbergasted sentiment:

“It’s... it’s really fucking good.”

By all accounts, this should merely be a retread for commercial gains. It shouldn’t be an album that gets into the pantheon. A bunch of songs that we have heard 1000 times or more re-imagined for a full length album, and put out in the holiday season.

It’s…it’s really fucking good.

And it cements George Martin as a key part of the Beatles. He was like Eno to Bowie, Goodrich to Radiohead, Rubin to the Beastie Boys and Metallica. It’s not that he made them better, it’s that he focused the group and knew how to get the most out of the songs.

I don’t care if it’s playing off the highlights of a group, as I didn’t care when Danger Mouse made the Gray Album, but maybe that’s me giving the Beatles the credit.

It’s not the best album of the year, but god knows I’ll listen to it more than any other. It’s a clip show of an album that makes me remember why exactly I fell in love with a band years before me.

While I haven’t given testament thus far, I’ll say that now, on this version, Within You Without You is great if you are not stoned. That’s fucking progress. It's really good.

(continued...)

My father's Dam Bursts

Tonight at work, my subconscious suddenly reminded me of one of my favorite Far Side strips, I think it was the high school marching band competition groups staying in my hotel.

It’s one of my top 10 of the strips run. Actually, it's fighting with the strip where a group of devils read the suggestion box in hell and laugh maniacally for #1

The illustrated portion of the strip is an angry mob (armed with pitchforks) exiting their building - The Institute for the Study of Migraine Headaches- and marching on their neighbor, “Floyd’s School for Marching Bands.”

The text reads “The dam bursts.”

It’s one of the best jokes I have ever seen.

It’s about the fatality of life, the decibel level of marching bands vs. a preservation of silence, people only being able to love thy neighbor for so long, and the ultimate desire for one’s ideology triumph against natural rivals. When I think of this simple cartoon, it makes me laugh multiple times over the course of the day, sometimes on the same joke level, often on others.

The text is a perfect encapsulation “The dam bursts.” As in, “You know the inevitable? It’s finally happening. Grab your riot gear.”

I thought about this at work today, and a little while later I starting thinking about my father. After a while, the two began to run together.

And I remember one of the funniest memories of my life:

Flashback to spring break of either 1993 or 1994: My sister Kate was tired of going on Skiing trips for the break. She was a dominant presence in the house. She got her way and we went to Phoenix, Arizona for one of the weeks of my school’s break. This was the first or three years we went to the state, and the only solace my father could muster for himself was to also include a trip to the Grand Canyon.

This was in the first few years after my parents divorce. Since my father spent the lesser amount time with us, and because he also had the means to take us on the extravagant vacations, he was the sole parent of the trip for the first few days. To make adjustments to their split and to make us kids feel like we were still a family, my mother joined 4 days in to spend a night at the resort and then join us on the trip to the Grand Canyon.

I must note here that I am positive that this was due to the film Grand Canyon.

The first night there, we all ate dinner together. While I don’t have the strongest of memories about the dinner, I can remember it was in the inside part of the patio restaurant, and my father was struck with egg on his face due to my younger sister Julia (who I call Junior), who had decided the night before to take a Peter Pan jump down from the 6th or higher step of a giant staircase in the hotel and sprained her ankle (I also have to note, that the next year, this exact same thing happened, with my sister Kate).

At dinner we talked about the trip and we as kids were given soft reminders that this was still a family and that my mother and father still stood together when it came to parental rulers. I am sure this was pre-configured and game-planned beforehand between my parents, yet my father’s side was now immensely wounded due to the sprained ankle of my sister, and while it went off on their script, me and my sister Kate didn’t quite get, or buy it, due not so much to the ankle induced rage of my mother, but to the fake quality of it.

After dinner, we were walking down a long corridor which was one of the showpieces of the hotel. It was a dual path walkway of about 300 yards, the middle barrier was filled with shrubberies of the Southland Deserts, and it was one of those immaculate jobs of landscaping that brochure designers drool over. Kate was tossing around a toy or some goofy widget and threw it 30 feet in front of her. I ran after it, I guess in an attempt to hold it for emotional ransom over my sister, and Kate did so for the same reasons (she was Machiavellian in sibling relations).

My parents launched a joined offensive. “Don’t run.”

Three seconds later, without as much as looking at each other, Kate and I took off at full blast to the end of the path, as if we were swimmers chased by sharks in a small pond.

++++

The next day we were headed to the Grand Canyon. My father left earlier in the morning to go get anothe, larger car for the next stage of the vacation, knowing that the Taurus or Corolla we were renting wasn’t going to suffice for the trip.

In my mind, as well as Kate’s, my Mom’s, and probably young Junior’s mind was an SUV. At home we had an Explorer Van reserved almost entirely for long vacations, and were expecting, at the least, an Explorer.

We were waiting in the parking lot when my father found us after his return from the rental car depot. The remaining four of us walked up to a nearby SUV. He quizzically waved us over to a Cadillac.

100 miles on the road, I was the first to speak up.

“I thought you were getting us a bigger car.”

My Father:

“This is a bigger car, it’s the biggest available from the rental shop.”

Kate:

“What about an explorer (these were in the blissful days when an offroad or 4 wheel vehicle were known as such, and before the term SUV entered our vernacular) or a Jeep.”

My Father:

“They don’t rent those.”

Junior:

“They do, I saw someone with one.”

My Father:

“They probably own that.”

Me:

“This is a four door. I mean, what about a van.”

This continued for a while. My mother stayed deathly silent.

Much later, Kate, always the provocateur, echoed what all of us were thinking:

“A van or jeep is bigger.”

The dam bursts.

In one of the most legendary Turner family moments, my father defiantly retorted:

“This is… THE BIGGEST CAR IN AMERICA!!!”

In arguments launched that may actually be true yet have numerous exceptions that can derail the facts of a statement, perhaps only Clinton’s “I did not have sex with that woman” could be proven more fallible even if they are true than that of my father's at that moment.

My father was beaten on every side of debate. My mother was suppressing her laughter to Battle of the Bulge Honorable levels.

In one statement, he had lost the trip. And more importantly, with him going, the parents lost the trip. My mother, wisely moved sides to ambassador, but ultimately found our plight too compelling to maintain the front.

So lost was he that he couldn’t even overcome the classic “I want Taco Bell, but they want McDonalds” argument.

We stopped at Taco Bell first. I think it was in an offshoot ramp of Tucson, and the odds of someone that far from corporate base caring about maintaining the code are slim to none. My father was given such a rough debate about hard vs. soft tacos and then a longer one about hot vs. mild sauce with the clerk and the family, if he had killed us, I am sure the jury would have been sympathetic.

When it came to the McDonalds juncture, he was in emotional chaos. He was ready to be nice and calm until the voice box went out and Junior made it worse by reneging not twice, but five times on her order.

When the voice from the box asked, “So, do you still want that McChicken?” my father let out the most definitive NO I have ever heard in my life. It was angry, but not pissed off, it was short but it resonated for moments after. It was as brilliant of a no as I have ever heard. But since he said this at an order box at a Mcdonalds , I burst out laughing. The rest of the car joined in, my mother as loud as anyone else.

Yet moments later, it was my Mother who calmed the car and came to her former husband’s side. She came to her senses as a mother and decreed, “Of the cars on the road today, this is the biggest sedan, and technically car, available. Sure a van or a 4x4 is bigger, but as a car, this is the largest option available.” She even went as far as to invoke motherly shame with, “you should be so privileged your father could afford to rent a car like this, imagine this trip in the car you had before I got here.”

She had saved the day for my father. And she stopped any further jokes at his expense and/or about the car for the remainder of the trip. We knew the joke was not to be mentioned again.

A year and a half later, we were on vacation in Colorado over MLK weekend. My mother was once again along. The car my father had rented was an Explorer, and when we arrived at the hotel garage, Junior remarked, “Dad, I like this car. This is my favorite car we have ever rented.”

I looked at my mother, who was carrying bags along side of me, and I said, loudly enough to be heard by all, “Well, it's certainly not the biggest!”

(continued...)

The OC, brothers, and the connected high of friendship.

Watching the OC tonight I had a few thoughts.

1. Maybe some of the original appeal was the constant fighting. I mean, when the line “Welcome to the OC, bitch!” is in the trailer and the first episode, people may have come to expect fighting. Esp. since fights broke out in the first six episodes or so. While this seems like a back to basics season, maybe having Ryan be a cage fighter was a BIT extreme.

2. Seeing Kaitlin Cooper in $1500 fuck me boots. Just awesome. The blasé take from her mom may have been the harbinger for the rest of the season: “meh, she’s a slut. This is what they do.”

3. Jumping 5 months forward, and mentioning that Ryan wasn’t at Marisa’s funeral, just smart decisions. If season three is a wash, let’s get away from it as fast as possible. On a side note, Battlestar Galactica did this at then end of season 2, and they did it by a year. I think this is a smart choice. Sometimes, just make the jump. Actually let’s call it the bound forward. The leap is meant for when one person, show, or band suddenly becomes that much better, and the jump is meant for jump the shark. The bound forward should be saved for a logical movement of time past a seminal event. We didn’t need to see the people on New Caprica adjust, nor did we need to see the (or another) funeral on The OC. Smart move.

4. The comic book scene. Why I loved, then liked, then watched, this show, above all, and I feel it’s entirely the wrong reason to care about a TV show about richers, was the sense of family. LA and the OC represent a world where most of the people come here from a different place. Finding family out here when you are not of the culture was why I liked the show, and why I always felt I was more of a Ryan (the outsider) than a Seth (a music obsessed nerd who hates the superficial glaze to this town). Seeing Ryan trying to figure out where he is, and accept the change and love the area because of the people, that’s why I watched it, because I am trying to do the same thing. Having the best part of the show, distilled into an alternate media flashback hinting at all of the sentimentality behind the relations was not just a highlight of the episode, it may be series saving. They’ve realized what the crux of the show was again. As much as I miss Mischa, I don’t miss Marisa, both were a distraction, but this was about Ryan, Sandy, and Seth.

5. My favorite scene other than the above belonged to Summer. The moment she walked back into her room after being away at college, there is a look on her eyes that reveals the old axiom: “You can’t go home again.” The room is the same, save the fact that she no longer lives there. When she looks across through the open hallway doors and sees the visage of Coop; it was likely supposed to be a nod to her loss of a best friend and the fact she hasn’t dealt with that yet, but on the basic level, it’s coming back home to an old life and knowing some people aren’t there anymore.

I think of my first Thanksgiving my Freshman year of College. I thought it important to leave on Wed so I could go to classes. Of course, little did I know, most students leave after Monday night that week. I was one of 10 kids in the class of 75. It was called short, and I went home to pack.

I got home around 9pm Indy time. I grabbed my Ma’s cell phone to call my friends to meet up with them. I couldn’t wait to get back. While I made some good friends in the first semester of college, I had great friends waiting for me back home, most of which I talked to daily on IM.

Before I went out, I dropped my bags back at my mom’s house. I remember looking at my old computer and asking: “You changed the monitor! What happened to the bigger one I used?” Same monitor, same room. It was a place I had been in for 4 years, but I didn’t totally recognize it.

(side note) That house was sold and my mom moved out within 18 months. In a separate but connected twist of fate, the house my father built with my then and now former Step-mother would be gone before the end of my senior year of college. That Thanksgiving was the last I spent in the house my father had when I was in High School. Three houses lost in 4 years. Talk about change.

While I will still reserve one night during 2001 as the official end of the High School Era of my Indiana friends, this trip felt like the beginning of that end. I never believed I would return to live in Indiana, and for the first time in my life, the houses I lived in Indiana didn’t seem like my home. The final nail was that my school where I went to pre, lower, middle, and High School at (yeah, it was a private school and I was there for 14 years) was undergoing change, combining buildings, adding a coffee cart, revamping the cross country course. I haven’t gone back since, save playing wiffle ball in the parking lot in the Summer of 2000. That above all would be too damaging.

Those 4 days and nights were as wild as they came. I ate Penn Station 5 times; I was still hooked like a fiend. With the exception of Thanksgiving night, we went big every night. We had a 12 pack challenge that I and House won (thanks to my ingenious idea of cheating thru 2 cans of Naddy Light by dumping them out when we peed). We brought back the girls we used to hang out with; if being with the guys seemed like we never lost a beat and were just a bit older, being with the girls felt just like the old times, awkward, and everybody was wary of fooling around (then it was rumors, now it was fresh STD’S).

I was the last of our group to come in and the first to leave. We talked about the wild classes we were taking that actually counted to our degrees. We boasted about the girls we scored with. We screamed about the parties and the debauchery. Yet most of us were just happy to be back with one another. I remember in my yearbook, I left a Robert Kennedy Jr. quote:

“It usually happens at a party or some event I know I should be shaking hands meeting people, but inevitably I find myself surrounded by my brothers. I am drawn to them; It is where there is life. It is where I feel most alive.” Joseph P. Kennedy II- To my friends, you are my brothers and I am myself with you and only you.

With them I felt at home, as myself again. But the notion of going home to a computer screen I didn’t recognize (and for god’s sake, I wrote my first screenplay on this thing) seeing a family who looked at me waiting for me to show my new differences, and losing a house and more importantly a basement that I loved, didn’t feel that way.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Maybe, well, sure, yeah. The further you get from youth the more the mash of regular life draws comparison. But adulthood and youth are not two sides of the same coin, they are not even chapters to be reread, because with re-reading, the joy is living it again. Going home from college is when the playgrounds seem shrunken, too small for you to play on anymore. The kids on the basketball court appear to be 75% your size and it’d be like picking on 4th graders. When I go home now, I see the same family, I occasionally see the same friends, and I always come home with a slew of new stories, but I know I am talking a different language; it’s in the vernacular of David, but it’s coming from Indiana Dave.

Now, when I come home, we just go out. We’re too busy to organize croquet games like we used to, we try to play one handed drunken basketball, and we all pass on beer pong, and while we go to the movies, we don’t get to build like we used to. The movies and TV shows and albums we like aren’t shared like they used to be. We don’t live together anymore. We just don’t have that level of tedium which let us build like we used to. So we go straight to the riffs and chorus…we go get hammered. Then we can remember. Occasionally we make some great moments, but it’s not like the same, and it doesn’t happen as often… but even with that said, we still have that chemistry.

Klosterman tried to put this to point with friends by likening the Saved by the Bell episodes where there were secondary characters, and that there are shared emotions and moments that those missing were never there for. Like most of Chuck’s work, he’s right, and then wrong, but he’s right enough to prove a point. When one comes home after 6 years, it’s hard to talk to the same people you used to hang out with, because the stories aren’t the same, the wild paths taken may not include some of the group, and the hard part is remembering that you lived your life without them.

The falsehood of his statement was that he was the only one in his group that likely left, and that he wanted to go elsewhere because of them. Tying his friends into a TV show is an easy out, but it works because with Saved by the Bell, those characters felt like friends. My friends were not characters, they were my brothers. You know you’re going to part from them, you just hope your kids grow up together. To pretend they are part of a sitcom is to think that it will all end in the same situation.

About twice a year, one of my friends from Indy will make their way out here, and on this same notion, once Lady Portland Rose Royce comes back to LA, and we pick up just where we left each other. The trick to a happy ending is to know when to roll the credits, because nothings ends well, otherwise it wouldn’t end.

The trick to living is hoping it goes on past the goodbye. You just want to know you’ll see them again and maybe through the magic of life, and more so, the magic of booze, you’ll get home to the youth again.

Somewhere on another plain; some where beyond the stars, it’s not elegiac or amiss like Klosterman wants to put it, it’s hopeful and it’s loving, it’s a slow walk down the hall, wondering where they were when I was getting high in college.

When we find each other, it feels like home. You and I will never die, the world’s still spinning round….

In the end, we find each other.

Two clips:

One: it’s not the best video they ever did by far. It does get the rhythms right though. While the shots of Noel head on are a bit much, the backlighting always works when the whole group is in shot. Still love it.



Two: Going back to that hope that the connection never dies. You can’t go home again, but you can remember the old times.

My favorite moment of The OC.



Wipe that tear away from your eye.

(continued...)

Better Memories, Sweaters, back to basics, #25

For most of the memories of my life, if I am forced to think of them, I have a hard time figuring out what qualifies as a truly great day. I have many cherished days in my life, but it’s hard to tell if the moment was great because of the people who you were with at the time made it seem all the more wonderful, or if there was one hour so great that it made the day seem all the more rosy in retrospect.

But I can tie many things to certain moments, from an album (and I usually can remember what store I bought from), to a movie, to a girl, or to an event. I don’t claim to know how the human memory system works, and I am hardly the right person to do so, I have a better long term memory than anyone I have ever met. Not for information like a human sponge kinds of way impressive like a Ken Jennings, and my short term memory is terrible, but in matters about life no one I know is close, and I am not boasting, because this gift can wreck havoc on decisions most days. I can remember the first time I met most of the people in my life, from the place, what they are wearing, what I said, and what I was feeling. If you’re inclined, ask me, I’ll give you the story.

I look back at one of my favorite pieces of clothing. It’s a simple grey sweater from Abercrombie and Fitch. It’s a V neck cut, it’s made of wool of the semi rough variety, and while I have since bought a more in fashion grey sweater that is more comfortable, I still cherish it, even if it’s nearing 10 years old.

I’ll note first that for close to two years, the sweater smelled like smoke, not from cigs, but from a fire.

When I was 17 or so, me and my friends had a sleepover at my friend Will’s cabin. It was at best a shack, it was an early 20th century pump house Will facetiously said used to house slaves (both the dates and the state put this in the false category, but high school girls believed it). It had a front room about 12’ by 10’ and a back room that was 10’ by 6’. We partied there close to 100 times in college, and that night it slept 20 people, give or take.

This was during the winter months of Indiana, which, while not near the seasons in Canada or Wisconsin or Minnesota, they still get bellow freezing. Yet they come in deceptive ways, it’s not cold enough to freeze up a car, it’s cold enough for hypothermia. We had two space heaters for the little house, and both were monopolized by Will and four people in the back room. Leaving the remaining 16 or so of us to be heated by a fireplace.

There were a few highlights of this night.

We stole a fire hydrant a few months before. Watching the pee turn to icicles is a pure teenage joy.

My friend Josh and his girl (now wife) were opening fooling around in the dark. During the song breaks of an album I heard: “No it’s cool, take my pants off.” *fumbling of belt buckle* “It’s cool.” It was miserable then, but hysterical now.

I put on Disintegration by The Cure for all of us to fall asleep to. A few moments later Brad comes out and changes the CD. I ask him what he put on. He’s silent for about three seconds and then answers with “YEAAAAAAAAHHHHHH.” License to Ill by the Beastie Boys came on, full volume.

After the Beastie Boys moment, a few people stayed up. Since we were between 14 and 17, we were talking about sex. We started to come up with professions for our penises. Patrick Taurel trumped us all by saying, “Mine’s a fireman. He doesn’t come out to play. HE COMES OUT TO WORK!”

In the morning, most of the girls and couples had gone home. The core group of guys I hung out with were sitting there in the morning, nursing a hangover and shooting the shit. Everyone that night signed a brick in the fireplace. We looked over the signatures, and upon coming upon a girl that Brad failed miserably with, he suggested adding “No tits” in between her first and last name.

I do have to note, that I, and everyone in that cabin, owe my life to Josh’s wife, Erica, who got up in the middle of the night to go the bathroom. In doing so, she noticed that the smoke was a tad heavy, and she cracked the door open to let air flow in. We would have likely suffocated. I could have been a teenage tragedy, but all I got out of it was a cedar smoked sweater.

Second:

The first time I ever went out on a real date in high school (meaning it didn’t suck, and I cared about the girl) the night began with me going to Puccini’s in Indy on a triple date (bad already) only to have my (older, but younger than me) sister and her friends show up at the exact same restaurant. Being that me and my sisters were never really close, that the divorce of our parents cause a rift (I sided with dad, she sided with my mom more so, and my younger sister was too young to pick sides and ran in the other direction). We never trusted each other at home, and did so with a tad more venom than normal sibling rivalry. Having the family dynamic present itself (even if in my mind alone) during the first social moments of a physical relationship put me in multiball mode, trying to get everything done in a short moment of panic instead of trying to focus on one task at time.

At the end of the night, we walked out of the theater to find her mother on the hood of her car, and then running to grab her and shout to me: “I am sure you may be a good guy, but my daughter hasn’t learned how to be responsible enough to date yet.”

The weird thing is that I walked away from that night feeling a sense of relief. While I am a hopeless romantic at heart, most of my mind & the fight or flight systems seems hard wired for the one night stand.

When I got home that night, I was privy to an empty house. I got a call from my dad, and shortly thereafter one from my mother asking if I was alive or in trouble. This all stems back to the girl at the time, who misread the movie times, and while our movie started @ 8 or so, she misread the next showing at 9:30. It’s a simple mistake for a girl to make when telling her parents, and since I knew nothing nefarious was planned for that night, it was a mistake of naiveté and not of stupidity or rebellion (she went to Cornell or Princeton, and was smart enough to get away with fooling her parents). This gaffe however sent her first generation immigrant parents into panic mode, thinking their little girl was doomed for the worst on her first date. They had called both of my parents, multiple times, and did so thinking the worst case was the only likelihood.

So I got home, deleted the numerous messages, including one from my sister to my mother telling the family I was on my first date (see this wasn’t entirely in my mind, and if growing up with women has taught me anything, you only need two women in your life, a wife, and a mother, and the wife’s primary duty, even more important than being there for you, is weaning his mother away from their life until the first baby is born. Then they become a baby sitter.) and doing the message in the sing-song, I care, but I am going to taunt later message diction. And then my mind went into panic mode, wondering what Sunday with the fam would be like and worse, what Monday at school would be like.

And while it didn’t in the end, perhaps love conquered all in the moments after my dinner with friends ended, and the girl and I took coffee and then a movie.

Like I said, my body is wired to get the most of a situation if a deadline seems imminent. I went for broke because I knew that the end of the night would be soured, but that I still had three or more hours left with this girl, and goddamnit, I was wild about the girl – I botched a test in biology because my mind was solely on her – and went from fumbling teenager to the dating gambler, one step below Casanova in moves, but just as likely to fail as Ted the Farmer.

After coffee, I walked her to my car to make the short drive from the restaurant to the movie theater. Instead of opening her door, I halfway trapped her against it, leaned in, and kissed her. It was a risk, because she could have wanted to wait, but I didn’t care, and it paid off. We walked into the movie theater as lovestruck teenagers in the worst way. I can’t swear that we had our hands in the other’s back pocket of their jeans, but I’m positive we looked that adorable and annoying.

It was one of the few moments of my dating life I was not trying to impress the girl, not even trying to be me, but just there in a moment with her. I know the movie we went to see: It was Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. I had read the book over the previous summer. I’ll be damned if I remember anything about the movie. We were in full on make-out mode. If the school of thought that sex changes everything is to be accredited, I may never get a more pure kiss than those of that night. I still had no conception of what sex would even be at that moment, I was happy just with that moment there. And I remember her slowly caressing my arm with her free hand, we were shoulder to shoulder, and with the hugging embrace impossible, she made sure I knew she was there.

I could go on about the tenderness of the first time, and how it’s never the same after you turn post-virgin, or whatever, especially since I could argue that due to the importance of the moment, I didn’t lose my v-card until I slept with a girl who I loved, but you can only get a handful of those moments. I remember that sweater, because of the way it felt blissful as she graced the fabric of it, and slid it up and down with the movements of her tenderness. My favorite fringe benefits of being in a relationship are back scratches in bed (I like to sleep on my stomach) and when she rubs the semi-ticklish sensitive region of my arm on the opposite side of the elbow.

That night in the cabin was a better night on the whole. Maybe because it had a coda moment in the morning to allow all of us to recap and better remember the full of the night. Drunken memories only solidify if they are refreshed within 24-48 hours usually. This sucks, because they always tend to be the ones worth telling the next weekend.

It’s a funny thing, because I remember the cabin night more often and usually in happier circumstances. The movie experience is almost a lost moment since I didn’t wind up with the girl and the night was mostly sour. This is why I am glad I kept the sweater… I don’t think of her often, if at all, anymore, but occasionally, when I wear it, I think of the moments in the movie theater and the first kiss outside of my car. Memories hold a long list of tangential feelings not related directly to that moment, yet it’s those feelings that didn’t matter then that embed the memory a little bit more securely. I’d gladly relive the movie theater again, but I’d take the chance to be 17 and with my friends in Indiana again.

Like I said, memories are a curse. If the impetus of this post was thinking about the 2004 Red Sox, sometimes a curse can be a blessing. Sometimes the great moments feel great because they erase the pain of the bad, those 8 straight wins, that moment in the movie theater wouldn’t be special if not for the pain of numerous other factors, with the Sox, if not for 2003, if not of the 0-3 deficit, it wouldn’t be the best sports moment of the last 25 years, and if I hadn’t been through those pains, I wouldn’t have the joy; if my moment in the movie theater wasn’t abruptly ended by her parents, and if I went on to marry her, it would have been a funny story about our first date, but I would have never seen it as the special moment that it was, just the moment when it started (which would likely be devalued by the socially bigger moments).

And so, why the hell not, I’ll give you all a video.

Bitter Sweet Symphony – The Verve

The song as a lyric sheet is as melancholy as it gets. I’ll leave it at that.

This lyric sheet is also composed upon a riff written and discarded by Mick and Keith, a fact that caused the Verve to have their biggest and only American hit to be rendered as a fluke and to only receive $1000 in royalties due to copyright infringement.

In the American history of hit singles that came from nowhere, ruled the charts, and then the artist never cracked the list again, this seems more part of a symptom trend than a song that got through on its own merits. It just sounded unique, which puts it in the bunch of Gnarls Barkley “Crazy” and Gorillaz “Feel good inc.” of the one hit crossover hits. Which means not that the Verve were a fluke, but that most Americans will view them at that. When it comes to being an American on music (and foreign policy of the Bush administration for that matter) I think I feel like what a self-hating Jew must feel like, I love and am proud to be what I am, but I hate my fellow constituents in this group most of the time, and mostly for superficial reasons.

Being an American music fan when most of the great music produced (that I like) isn’t American. Worse, even the stuff that is American that I like, few people have heard of in this country. This is why I spent 2 hours talking to a below average British chick last Friday night

I say all this, because in all likelihood, the odds of someone reading this blog that still owns Urban Hymns is low. Even those I know who read this blog who know of the band would likely state Ashcroft’s Lonely Soul as his best work… but whatever. I know British people like this album in the same way we like Nevermind or Ten, scaled down about 75%. This was an album that is solid, and one of the better of the Britpop scene of the 90’s. It’s not Morning Glory but it’s still better than most. The song wasn’t a fluke 6 minutes of brilliance, just the best 6 minutes the band ever wrote, which means people only compare the best to the rest, which isn’t fair for a lead single.

So it’s a gimmick, one-trick video. But it works. Single Shot style, and the only variation in theme comes at the end when Ashcroft is joined by the rest of the band to walk in unity.

Life is a miserable struggle, but it’s an easier and more enjoyable path when you have people that care about you and you to them likewise around you.

That’s the simple message of the video.

And it nails it.



The video is done in time to the single edit, it’s down to under 5 minutes.

And it’s one of the few videos I have ever seen that immediately after seeing it, I went out to buy the album.

Was it the band’s highpoint? History may be up there, as may be Lucky Man. But yeah, this was lighting in a bottle. They just had a few other bottles a little less bright.

Dave’s top 25 Videos: #25.

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