mirabiledictu's blog

What a golden age, what a time of right and reason! The consumer's king and unhappiness is treason!

Last time someone knocked on the door, it was Lesbian Neighbor #1 wanting to borrow a measuring cup. She ended up coming in and talking to Granny for about twenty minutes about Ellen D and whatever soap opera Granny was watching at the time. That was probably the most successful door-answering episode in recent memory. The time before that, it was a "college guy" who was trying to earn credit for his "Business class" by "practicing networking" with total strangers. I let him talk at me for ten minutes because I figured he was mentally ill, and then he tried to make me buy some magazines. All prior knocks involved a group of sixteen-year-olds who live(d?) on some other floor coming around to borrow a cake pan, and then some saran wrap, and then some tampons. They fascinated me for a while; I mean, they obviously weren't related to each other. Were they all sharing an apartment and paying for it by pooling their wages like in some inspirational dramedy? Did they spend a lot of time cleaning and cooking and hugging each other while some sappy, peppy inspirational music blared over the action? And why did they all have to be crowded in the hallway like that? At one point, I decided to actually ask them their names or something the next time I saw them, but they never came back.

This time, it was two nebbish middle-aged guys in Cosby sweaters.
"Um, hi."
"Hello, we're campaigning for--" he pauses, distracted by a leaflet that appears to be stuck. He's a pretty normal-looking guy, all things considered. He reminds me of Woody Allen. He turns to his partner and asks for one of his leaflets instead. His partner is rocking the classic (if less campaigning-friendly) "Mad Scientist" look. You know: frizzed out gray hair, bottle-bottom glasses, unnerving expression. Quickly, he hands me a glossy brochure for the Socialist Worker's Party. "Sorry about that. Uh, we're campaigning for the Socialist Worker's Party candidate..."
Oh.
He goes on to say a lot of stuff I like, such as "Most business owners don't give a shit about their workers and that needs to change!" and "We care about immigrants!" and "Fucking ruling class propagating bigotry to distract people from actual issues!", which makes me feel even worse about the fact that there's no way I'm actually going to read their leaflet or their weekly newspaper or vote for their candidate. When I basically say as much, Woody politely points out that of course third parties won't get anywhere if no one votes for them! I quietly agree, but am saved by my dog, who has heard some people down the corridor and feels the need to terrorize them.
"Sorry, um, just a minute...Frank! Frank!" I jog down to the other entrance, where my itsy-bitsy mutt has one kid pinned to the wall and four more clinging to the stair railing in fear.
"Sorry! Sorry! He doesn't bite! Sorry!"

When I return, they try one more time to get me to pay three bucks for a subscription to their paper. And honestly, I had three bucks in my pocket. I almost felt sorry enough for them to just get a damn subscription, but I was planning on wasting it on some Naked juice. Yes, world, I officially care more about overpriced^[1] juice smoothies than the feelings of nebbish middle-aged men in Cosby sweaters. I'm not totally devoid of sympathy, though, and I wish them well on their trip down the hallway. When I walk back into the living room, Granny asks who it was.
"Uh, just some people campaigning. For Barack. They asked if I was voting for him and I said 'Yep!'"
"Oh, that's nice."
She asks me to water some plants, and then I go back to my room and remind myself to never answer the door ever again.

^[1]But OH-SO DELICIOUS!

First I'm gonna make it, then I'm gonna break it 'til it falls apart!

So, some crazy Young Republican pretends to get mugged by a scaaaaary black man and then carves a backwards "B" on her cheek to make it all about Barack, and then confesses that she is just cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs McCain. Usually I'd gape in horror for a few seconds before laughing at the shitty job^[1] everyone's fave new nutso racist Internet Sensation did of demonizing Obama supporters, liberals, black people, people who don't belong in straitjackets, etc., but I honestly feel kind of sorry for her. I mean, this may be the weirdest, most pathetic thing I've seen a McCain supporter do this month! What the fuck!? She's obviously got some severe mental problems. I like to think that I'm an ethical person, and that mocking people with severe mental problems is a bit over the line where personal blogular ethics are concerned.

Echo & The Bunnymen - The Cutter

 

Still, personal blogular ethics and severe mental problems aside, I feel like posting the first song that popped into my head upon reading about this. Like most people, I spend a lot of time ranking and re-ranking my favorite Echo and the Bunnymen singles. For the past few days, "The Cutter" has been hovering around the number 3 spot, but I'm willing to put it in the number 2 spot for next twenty-four hours (at least!). I don't think there's much more for me to say besides "I'm childish and shallow and I think the chorus says it all:
Spare us the cutter! Spare us the cutter! Couldn't cut the m-m-muuuustaaaaard!"

^[1]She didn't even bother to go to the ATM she claimed to have been mugged at, for Christ's sake! She apparently thought to manufacture some foreboding Twitter updates full of foreshadow-y goodness, but it didn't occur to her that the police would want to look at the ATM surveillance tapes or her bank statements or anything? Hey, if you want to lie and race bait and beat yourself up to further the political career of your preferred presidential candidate, that's your problem. But for the love of gawd, don't half-ass it! 

No one's gonna play the harp when you die.

As you can imagine, I'm a regular reader of WorldNewsDaily dot com, "A Free Press For A Free People."^[1] It exclusively covers the kind of stories I care about, like the success of Rush Limbaugh's most recent colonoscopy and some dude's pita with the silhouette of Jesus burnt on to it. Plus, it features regular commentary from homophobic anti-feminist conservative wackaloon (and close personal friend!) Phyllis Schafly, ads for Kenoki Footpad knock-offs that "remove smog, cigarette smoke, chemicals and toxins from your body overnight!", and lots of moving clip art. I was digging back in the archives for some overlooked nuggets of wisdom when I came across this story called Angels' Singing Caught On Tape?.

It's a pretty wordy piece, so I'll paste the important parts here:
"I have four specific recordings of angels singing in church settings," Jim Bramlett of Lake Mary, Fla., told WND. "It happened supernaturally. There's no other explanation. It's either from God or from the devil, and I don't think the devil is in the business of worshipping Jesus. That is not in his job description."

[Assorted insanity and lunacy]

Dr. Steven Novella, a neurologist at Yale University School of Medicine and president of the New England Skeptical Society, analyzed the electronic voice phenomenon, or EVP, at WND's request.
"...the angels in this recording were playing bass guitar and horns, and at one point broke into a pretty funky beat. It's actually pretty laughable. Also, it was noted that the angel voices were not noticed until the recording was played back, so nothing was heard during the recording. This is a red flag for a recording artifact. The simplest explanation is that the recording was made over a prior recording of a choir singing with accompanying music, and they heard the two recordings superimposed when they played it back."

"I think his explanations are nonsense," responded Bramlett.

"Over the years, I have found there are negative skeptics and cynics out there on every subject. It is easy to find them. They are so predictable, and they typically reject anything supernatural. They have to, because to admit it would be tantamount to admitting to a God to whom they are accountable. They cannot permit that. It is as simple as that. Biblically speaking, you could say they are spiritually dead and they think everything must have a natural, material explanation."

[Assorted insanity and lunacy].

Crazy Grandpa brings up a good point. I mean, how dare this fucking Yale Science-ist smartypants reject a supernatural explanation for something just because it's factually bankrupt and is not at all based in reality? Hey, Steven! If you loooooooove facts so much, why don't you MARRY THEM? HUH? Steven and Facts, sittin' in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G!

Anyway, don't you love angels? What a bunch of lovable scamps! You'd think they'd be out, you know, doing shit to help humanity out of the situations that God puts us into or trying to save all the unbelievers from eternal hellfire or just trying to convince God not to be such a sociopathic asshole, but no! Instead, they're hanging around your choirs providing back-up! They're visiting women to tell them that they will soon be carrying the new Messiah whether they like it or not! They're up in heaven draping themselves over clouds like lazy Abercrombie & Fitch models, contentedly plucking at harps for the rest of eternity. You know, when I was a kid I thought that I'd turn into an angel when I died. All the people who died in comic strips and cartoons turned into angels, so it made a lot of sense at the time. It's really kind of too bad that the whole "religion" thing turned out to be a scam, because I still think it would be lots of fun to have wings and sit on my ass for the rest of forever.

^[1]"A Free People" meaning, in this case, middle class white Christian suburbanites with "Bush '08" stickers on the backs of their SUVs and severe paranoid delusions.

Open your parachute and grab your gun! Falling down like an omen, a setting sun!

This morning, I was lying in bed trying to figure out if my dreams are live-action or some sort of hyper-realistic animation. It never occurred to me before, but now it seems obvious that everything in my dreams seems a little softer and rounded and brighter. Anyway, I was just trying to get back to sleep by thinking about the last thing I remember from my dream^[1] when Frank started scratching on the door and being a pain in the ass. The moment I let him outside to pee, I noticed Colin Powell was on the TV in the living room. Some guy was saying, "Aren't you worried that as an African-American^[2] coming out in support of another African-American^[3] blahblahblahbullshit?" And Powell was all, "Well, you see, you're just an idiot blahblahblahwe-should-all-be-proud." And I was like, "Aw."

Out of all the evil, deluded warmongers we all got to know and love off the first season of Bush Administration: The New Generation, Colin Powell was the one I hated least. He remains the cuddliest! I remember watching him point out those supposed trailers full of WMD materials and thinking, "Maybe he really thinks that. Maybe decorated war hero^[4] and Secretary of the fuckin' State Colin Powell is actually stupider than a thirteen-year-old kid watching this all unravel from her classroom in Iowa on Channel One: ~Newz 4 Teenz~. He just can't be that evil. Look at that face!" And really, at least he came out about his lie later on. I know that isn't any consolation to all those Iraqis who were/are being blown up, but at least I can feel a little better about cheering a little inside when I found out he was voting for Barack. 

^[1]For the curious: opening the trunk of a car and finding a bunch of mannequin heads. You know, for my many wigs. 
^[2]Wikipedia says that Powell is the first and only Jamaican-American to serve in the Cabinet.
^[3]Or evil secret A-rab one-man terrorist cell! Whatever you happen to believe!
^[4]Loath as I am to use the term "war hero." You see why I had to, though, right?

You can trust me not to think and not to sleep around.

Artie, The Strongest Man In The World

My fave local supermarket prints really horrible coupons on the back of their receipts, I suppose as some sort of warped act of community service. I mean, two dollars off a meal at Big Bad BBQ Joint No One Likes? Really? Or a dollar off the Executive Wash^[1] at that unfortunately named car wash that I hate? Thanks a whole fucking lot, local supermarket. But the other day as I was picking trash off the floor of the passenger's side, I was shocked and delighted to see a brand new coupon. "BUY THREE GAMES, GET THREE FREE! SATURDAY NIGHT: COSMIC BOWLING!"
I have not been Cosmic Bowling since 7th grade. I haven't been bowling period since 7th grade. See, some genius on the school board decided that our physical education would be incomplete without a bowling unit, so we spent three weeks schlepping out to Bowl-o-rama every morning to throw eight pound balls at the gutters and (once!) our fellow classmates. The last day was Cosmic Bowling, and we all wore white t-shirts and "ooooh"ed over the way they glowed in the blacklight. It was lots of fun and whatever, but I was a particularly inept bowler and that B minus killed my bowling career. But hey, bygones! Considering the direction my life is currently taking^[2] , it seemed like a good time to take up Cosmic Bowling again. 

So, Mother and I rolled in at ten to eleven. Earlier this afternoon, I broke out my glow-in-the-dark nail polish that supposedly also reacts to blacklights, anticipating some hot Cosmic Bowling action. It was a dud, and so was my game for a while. The next table over was teeming with overgrown frat douches, and this one guy kept turning to me to explain what was going on in terms that my little lady brain would understand. I wanted to say, "Hey, I got a B minus on this unit in Phys Ed, okay? I know what's going on! I'm just a crap bowler!" but I am very stupidly polite. Eventually they ran out of beer, though, and whooped their way out of my life. Suddenly, the white stripes on my shirt seemed to be glowing brighter and...is that "Paint It Black" I hear chugging out of the speakers? It is! I swash over to the ball corral and pluck my ball off the belt, singing along with Mick and staring the pins down with this wholly unfamiliar sense of confidence. I can do this! I send the ball flying down the lane and knock down my first eight pins. It is a goddamn miracle! On my next turn, "3 AM" by Matchbox Twenty^[3] is playing and I knock down another eight. I start throwing a few gutterballs, but as soon as the radio guy announces a Spice Girls Megamix is coming up, I know my glory moment has truly arrived. I'm practically shouting along to "Wannabe" as I walk down to the lane, but the place was so loud that I probably just looked like a lip syncher. On "If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends!", I send the ball crashing into a whole THREE PINS. "Make it last forever! Friendship never ends!" Imagine this next part in super-slo-mo, okay? "If...you...wanna...be...my...lover..." [Shot of the ball slowly rolling down the center of the lane] "...you...have...got...to...give" [Shot of the remaining pins flopping over, then a lingering shot of me punching the air above my head, my arms making a giant "V" for "Victory!"] "Oh...my...gawd!" I shout. "A SPARE."

Now, I've exposed myself as someone who leads a very active fantasy life. I don't feel comfortable discussing my feelings with real people, so I pretend to have in-depth conversations with my favorite musicians. I can't just think about my opinions; I have to rework them as humorous anecdotes to tell on TV shows. And now that I'm completely cut off from people my own age, I can't just crush on celebrities like everyone else. No! I have to briefly fall in love with one random person everywhere I go. I generally pick the most attractive girl I see in my age bracket and concoct elaborate scenarios in which we meet and are perfect for each other and fall in love and then break up for some horrible and dramatic reason and then get back together in a really groovy and kick ass way. Sometimes it's difficult, though. For instance, the bowling alley is a surprisingly unpopular hang-out among cute nineteen-year-old girls who like Futurama and wanted to be Jewish when they grew up. I know! Even on Cosmic Bowling night! So whenever it's not my turn, I swivel my chair in every possible direction, desperately trying to find someone with whom I can have a quick love affair. Eventually, my eyes land on this girl a few lanes over with a short black ponytail. She seems a little old for me, but she's doing a dorky dance to this horrible Smashmouth song on her way to get her ball, so she can't be too bad. She throws it awkwardly toward the pins, and I cringe. It bounces all the way down, but she gets a strike and does a celebratory fist pump. For a second, she notices me looking at her, and I smile nervously and turn away. 

By the end of the game, our love affair has not gone very far. I'm too distracted by my total lack of skill to even come up with an interesting reason to break up with her. On my way to do my last roll, I notice Ponytail and her friends are standing around the ball rack directly behind me with their coats on, ready to leave. I kind of want to wait for them to get out the door before I inevitably make a fool of myself, but they don't seem to be moving. Well, shit. I trudge over to the foul line and toss the ball right into the gutter. Well, shit! My only option is the laugh it off. I whip around. "HAHA, MOTHER!" I shout. Usually, my voice is respectably low and sarcastic-sounding and awesome. Suddenly, I sound like I'm twelve again. It's too late to do anything about it, though. "HEY, MOM! Wasn't that HILARIOUS, ha ha?" Ugh. In my head, David Byrne is yelling, "My god, what have I done!?"^[4].

On the way home, I pop in Outside Looking In: Best of the Gin Blossoms and we take the scenic route. There is something very calming about driving past all the rich people's ridiculously ugly giganto-homes accompanied by the soundtrack to my 8th grade angst. Of all the mediocre pop rock bands of the mid-nineties that inexplicably released "Best Of"s, the Gin Blossoms are without a doubt the greatest. By the time we pulled into the apartment complex, the shame of doing The World's Worst Gutterball in front of my imaginary girlfriend was totally washed away by the bland pop stylings of Arizona's or New Mexico's or General Southwestern Area's biggest mid-nineties pop rock group.
 
^[1]The one with the tri-colored foam!
^[2]"None."
^[3] My fave jam when I was eight, of course.
^[4]As he is wont to do any time I do something particularly regretable. No, seriously.

Stick-up! Highway robbery! It's a felony! Heartbreak in the first degree!

Worst Things To Happen To Me Today Since Waking Up At 9:12 This Morning (Early Afternoon Edition):
- Getting a strawberry Italian ice that was super light on the strawberries
- Taking my three greasy slices of gas station pizza up to the clerk, realizing too late that the clerk is super-cute and most likely thinks I'm a weirdo and/or a pig for buying three slices of greasy gas station pizza.
- And then feeling ridiculous for thinking that me and my three slices of greasy gas station pizza are the weirdest or piggiest things Super-Cute Clerk has seen in the past fifteen minutes or so.

Anyway, YouTube is the greatest invention of our generation. Yeah, there are tons of new vaccinations and our bombs are better and we have shoes with built-in iPods. Big whoop! Vaccinations are nice and everything, but vaccinations aren't going to allow me to show you this amazing performance of one of my all-time fave pop failures, are they? I feel bad calling them "failures" because I love them so much and they had a moderate level of success. Maybe I should just say "all-time fave pop group that failed to catch on in any meaningful way, like they totally should have"? I mean, I've heard Honey Cone's "Want Ads" on the local oldies station a staggering one times since I first started tuning in a year ago. Considering where most '70s acts are, I guess that's pretty good. But still, they had HOLLAND-DOZIER-HOLLAND on their side! It's like failing to get your Harry Potter rip-off novel onto the Bestsellers list despite having a blurb from J.K. Rowling on the back. It's like a miracle in reverse! That such a catchy soul pop trio backed by H-D-H is relatively ignored by the general public is the absolute best proof that if there is a god, he's a vengeful, petty fuck.

 

Honey Cone - Want Ads

Honey Cone - Stick-Up

Now I can shoot a gun to kill my lunch and I don't have to love or think too much!

Semi-Embarrassing Factoids About Me Collide In A Convenient If Not Particularly Meaningful Way:

I have always spent an outrageous amount of time interviewing myself. If I'm not obviously doing something else, rest assured that I am secretly in a room somewhere, sweating pools of pancake makeup into my lap under the studio lights and laughing it up for the cameras. I've got a billion prepared answers for every question that no reputable host would ever ask me. I practice telling interesting anecdotes and nice-sounding sort of truths that will allow the public to both feel closer to me and understand my worldview. I've made guest appearances on every show I've ever watched, usually popping in to take the place of some unfortunate dullard who just keeps giving one word answers and talking about their shitty new single. I don't even know what it is that I've done to be interviewed so often by so many talk show hosts; maybe I'm in a hip new band or I wrote one of those self-help books for middle-aged men. Maybe I was on The Real World: Saskatchewan! Who cares? Everyone knows that what you do is totally irrelevant to your level of celebrity anyway. The point is that I'm on TV, and in effect, everyone cares about what I have to say for roughly five minutes. I generally try to make it count by talking about important social issues, but of course I take the occasional break to make potshots at, say, Kid Rock and my arch-nemesis, Bono. I have been doing this for years and no one has ever caught on.

And then the other night I'm in the bathroom on Never Mind The Buzzcocks. I like to stand in front of the mirror sometimes just to make sure that my eyes don't look too funny when I laugh and to see how engaged the viewers at home will be with my expressions and mannerisms. I'm practicing this gutbustingly hilarious^[1] scenestealing sort of-monologue when my mother knocks on the door.
"Hey, are you done yet? What are you doing in there?"
I'm immediately reminded of every sitcom ever. You know, teenage boy has been locked in the bathroom for way too long. Mom knocks on the door. There's a strangled yelp and you can hear him scrambling around to pick his pants up so he can walk out and pretend he hasn't been masturbating feverishly for the last hour or so. How did I become that teenage boy? Suddenly, I'm acutely aware of the fact that I'm standing two feet away from a litter box talking to myself like a nut. It's not a situation I can easily explain away with a soundbite. "Oh, nothing! Just masturbating my ego, you know!" So I scramble around to make it look as if I've been messing around with my hair all this time and walk out. "Just brushing, combing, styling, etc.," I say, hoping she doesn't notice that my hair looks like crap. I go back to my room, but I can't get back in the moment. For the billionth time, I decide to really look into ending this ridiculous extended adolescence lifestyle I've got going on. How will I ever advance in the biz if my rehearsals are constantly interrupted??

The next day I'm waiting in the car outside a Chinese restaurant. The car is parked illegally, but Mother's just walking in to get an order of fried rice, so who cares? I'm on the set of some local coffee talk program talking about my childhood and what a crapshoot that whole thing was, when this little kid walks by singing "Hot N Cold"  by Katy Perry. I go into another shame spiral! I used to find it so easy to hate Katy Perry. I mean, "I Kissed A Girl" was so incredibly un-catchy I couldn't even be won over by the video. "Oh, ha ha, you're petting a pussy cat. You subversive minx, you!" And her penchant for wearing sparkly granny panties and bustiers in an attempt to get people to confuse her with some classy '50s pin-up? Embarrassing! So I'm finding it really hard to deal with the fact that I love "Hot N Cold." I don't even know how it happened. Like, it's four in the morning and as usual, I'm watching MTV Hits and listening to other music and before I know it, the cool music^[2] is off and I've turned up the volume and am totally sucked into this crappy Katy Perry video. I disregarded it as early morning mindsickness at first, but when I woke up that afternoon, it was still in my head. I tried not to download it, I really did!

In an attempt to prevent something like that from ever happening again, I decided to skip the TV last night and just go to bed. By five AM, it was apparent I would never get to sleep. After six, I was sick of parsing out my hilarious and totally correct unreligious beliefs on Ellen, so I rolled over and flipped on the TV. I forgot to put "digital cable" on my most recent public list of things that don't make me want to kill myself, so consider this an official addition, okay? Because without digital cable, I would have never noticed that BILL FUCKING NYE THE SCIENCE GUY^[3] has a new show on Planet Green! It's called "Stuff Happens," and it's basically about how every imaginable aspect of my life contributes to polar bear death and the oppression of slave laborers in developing nations. I know it sounds like a downer, but having good ol' Bill Nye The Science Guy be the one to break the news helps a little bit. Sure, I just happened to eat some chocolates that were made from cacao beans harvested by oppressed and exploited people in the Côte d'Ivoire, but hey! Bill Nye's going to tell me to buy fair trade chocolate in a goofy voice! That makes me want to barf them all back up a little less!
But anyway, Bill Nye The Science Guy is the greatest. I have fond memories of watching his show in grade school. And yeah, maybe the only thing about his show that really stuck with me was the theme song. Isn't that enough?

^[1]I know this sounds really conceited on my part, but I'm counting on the fact that anything can be gutbustingly hilarious in the right environment. If I'm with a group of people, I'll laugh at anything and they'll laugh at anything right back at me. Just imagine the comedic ground I could cover with a studio audience!
^[2]Latest cool music: MGMT. I know, you're going, "THEY ARE NOT COOL ANYMORE. Their latest album came out in 2007! Way to be the last person to jump on the bandwagon!" And...yeah. I can't help it, though. I am notoriously late on liking anything. When I first heard everyone gushing over them, I thought, "Hip hip hooray! Another bland, derivative British hipster band that everyone will have to pretend to like until something wackier comes along!" I got curious enough to download it, however, and found out that even though they're bland and derivative, I like them! Also, I guess they're from Brooklyn.
^[3]Did you know that Bill Nye The Science Guy "has danced Lindy Hop for several years"? AMAZING.

The stars were bright, Fernando! They were shining there for you and me, for liberty, Fernando!

An Exhaustive List of Things That Make Life Worth Living (in no particular order):
- Cloyingly sweet pop songs with lots of synths and twinkly noises and people singing over each other
- Pizza
- The wall of hair dye and hair dying accessories at Sally Beauty Supply
- "Love, music, wine and revolution"
- TV shows on DVD
- Fruity drinks
- Cutting pictures out of magazines and making awesome collages
- Gaby Hoffmann, even though she never did much and still doesn't do much of anything
- Good books
- Impromptu late-night road trips with an ABBA soundtrack

As of the time we left for Kansas City last night, I had spent roughly five of the previous 24 hours singing at the top of my lungs. I barely use my throat in my real life, so I'm kind of surprised that it was able to keep going for another two and a half hours of car ride sing-alonging with no ill after-effects. But, you know, I'm amazing.

Anyway, last night we got the brilliant idea to drive up to the place we used to live, pick up good ol' Stepfather, eat breakfast, go to the flea market, and come home! I mean, what else are we going to do on a Friday night? Long story short: uneventful. Even the flea market, which is usually full of amazing crap, was devoid of excitement. I was so bored that I spent fifteen bucks on a couple of pins and necklaces! It's not as if they were worth it, either. I was just reeled in by the lady's sale pitch. "Oh, this is VINTAGE. This tacky strand of cheap plastic beads is from the FIFTIES. Two bucks! This pin? It's very dear to my heart. It's a lucky lady who gets to wear THIS piece. It's from the forties, you know. VINTAGE!"
Yes, I'm that easy.

You can call it a spin-off, say it's a knock-off, title it "Part Two:"

This afternoon, I had a dream that I was standing up against a stage in a bright white supermarket. Last night's opening band was gathering up their instruments, and a few of us die-hards were waiting for the Joos to take the stage. They were just going to perform the same set as before, but it was a pretty solid set, so why not? I woke up too soon, but now I feel like writing even more about my Silver Jews concert experience. Might as well milk it!

Okay, imagine me standing in the crowd. I'm very stiff. I've got my hands in my pockets and I'm nervously eyeing the people around me. A couple of young white ex-suburbanites with dreads, some young-ish dudes in hipster hats, a tiny JD Samson look-alike in a poncho. Some people showed up in semi-western wear, but I was the only one in semi-western neon polyesther, so I was cool with it. Two and a half lifetimes later, the lights went down and David Berman was explaining that this was the 99th ever Silver Jews show. Crowd: wild. The band launches into "Slow Education" and everyone is grinning their heads off singing "And you got that one idea again, the one about dying."

As soon as I got back to the car, I wrote down every song I could remember on the back of a grocery store receipt. It's pretty much accurate, but I was occasionally distracted and probably screwed the order up somehow. Like, there was this girl in front of me who kept leaving to get beers whose spot I saved. By the third time, she politely stopped to tell me how unbearably awesome I am, and from then on we were occasionally mouthing lyrics at each other. During "Random Rules," she put a hand on my shoulder. "You are an AWESOME AUDIENCE MEMBER!" she yelled. Don't you love possibly-drunk people? Another girl kept trying to push me into pushing my way closer to the front. The first time, she just tapped me on the shoulder and yelled something at me. I leaned back, but I still couldn't hear her. Finally, when she was close enough to kiss me on the forehead, and I heard "Move up!"
"Oh, uh, no, uh. No. Saving it! No."
Then she decided to show me how to do it by squeezing through the young white ex-suburbanites with dreads, spilling their plastic bag of sunflower seeds all over the floor. All through this, Berman was sweating all over the stage and messing with the mic stand, just talking and singing without any thought as to whether or not I was able to follow what was going on enough to memorize it all; I'm sure you can understand why I might have made a few mistakes.

Anyway, the final moments were electrifying. We all went crazy once we heard that first note of "Punks in the Beerlight." "WHERE'S THE PAPER BAG THAT HOLDS THE LIQUOR," we shouted, "JUST IN CASE I FEEL THE NEED TO PUKE?" This guy who looked just like Craig Manning (circa the third season of Degrassi)  was practically having a fit. By the chorus, we were all pumping our fists and screaming "I'LL ALWAYS LOVE YOU TO THE MAX! I LOVE YOU TO THE MAX!" The lights went up, and Berman was scrambling around the stage to collect the set lists for everyone. I didn't even try to get one. I had a twice-signed copy of American Water and I'm 99% sure that he looked right at me during some part of "The Wild Kindness." Anything beyond that just seemed greedy. 

Set list:
Slow Education
Smith & Jones Forever
Suffering Jukebox
Aloysius, Bluegrass Drummer ("This is a risky song to play in a beef state.")
Horseleg Swastikas
Dallas
I'm Getting Back Into Getting Back Into You
The Wild Kindness
K-Hole ("Everyone knows 9/11, but I think another pair of numbers need to be remembered for all eternity: 11/7. Hopefully from now on, you'll all gather at this bar and drink something bitter on the anniversary of 11/7/2000.")
My Pillow Is The Threshold
Strange Victory, Strange Defeat
Trains Across The Sea ("For all the people who drove here tonight.")
San Fransisco, BC ("I guess this is the encore. Do you want it to be the encore? Oh, no? Okay. I don't know why we have to go through this little game all the time.")
Random Rules
Pretty Eyes ("Well, let's get it over with.")
------
New Orleans
Tennessee
Punks in the Beerlight ("Really, you guys are the friendliest audience we've had so far. I'm going to tell everyone to come to Iowa City now. Thank you!")

We had sarcastic hair; we used lewd pseudonyms. We got a lot of stares on the street back then.

Joos

We were too early by a couple of hours. Des Moines is a little over a hundred miles away from Iowa City; at the time it made sense to leave early in the afternoon so we'd have time to mess around town before the show. Unfortunately for me, the traffic was good and because I was in charge of the music, we seemed to get there even faster. We killed some time at the mall, but after the shoe shopping and cheesy photobooth mugging, there wasn't much else to do but leave. It was right about then that I started feeling as if I were going to hurl.

Yes, going to concerts always makes me want to hurl. I have this vague fear that everyone there is going to think I am a huge loser. I know this will come as a shock to some of you future people who are studying this text for your 21st Century History class or whatever. "Kate [SURNAME], the most beloved and revered person of the entire 21st century, secretly feared the silent rejection of a bunch of people she's never met? I can't believe it." Well, believe it! I know on an intellectual level that I'm being an idiot. I've watched my fair share of Degrassi: The New Generation episodes. I read all of those platitudes on the posters of my junior high guidence counselor's wall. I know that "cool" is a totally meaningless social construction and that it's important to be yourself no matter what! and if they don't like you, screw 'em! And that furthermore, these people don't know me, and that "me" is not my ridiculous shirt or my hair that won't sit like I want it to or my nail polish that is chipping off! There is (allegedly) more to me than the superficial! But, you know, who cares about what I know? None of that has ever made me feel any less like ralphing! So I spent the next couple of hours listening to Sam Sparro's "Black And Gold" and Bat For Lashes' Fur & Gold^[1] on repeat, internally hyperventilating and dreading when the doors would open at 9:00. But whatever, this isn't the fun part.

So, I am finally inside. I'm just standing there, gazing wonderously at all of the great Silver Jews crap I can buy: pins and t-shirts and posters and albums with little "Hooray Iowa!" messages written on them by David Berman in Sharpie. I'm trying to decide between the copy of  Starlite Walker with "Hawkeye Handjobs!"^[2]  on it and American Water when ohmygod it's David Berman!! As much as I love the guy, I've always expected him to be a major jerk, but no! He's standing around in his tacky brown suit talking to us peons and autographing our shit. Some guy asks for a large t-shirt. Berman pulls one out of the stack and says, "My father was in the gaaaaarment business!" It's magical. Then the other merch guy looks at me expectantly, and I jerk into action. "Uh, I'd like American Water and a poster and -- oops -- one of these -- ahh! -- pins." I briefly consider asking him to personalize my album, but then feel like too much of a dink. Then I leave and feel like a coward, so I think up a few moderately humorous things to say just in case and get back in line. Then I feel like a dink again. Then the opening act starts playing and it's impossible to hear anything. Then David Berman is looking at me expectantly and I step forward.

"Hi!" I scream. I'm chickening out. "Uh, well, I guess it's already sort of signed, but, um..."
"But I want to sign it to you! What's your name?" This is the exact moment that I realize meeting David Berman is, for me, like what a lot of Christians think meeting Jesus is going to be like. All of a sudden, there's this beardy Jewish dude I've heard so much about towering over me, and somehow it seems like he's being way nicer than a guy in his position is obligated to be. Magical! I don't actually remember anything else that happened besides "Kate? Just K-A-T-E?", but whatever. Signed Silver Jews record!

The actual concert was just as maaaagical. I was standing in a group of non-douchebags who also happened to know all of the words to all of the songs, and we all looked at each other in a "Hooray Us!" sort of way during the best parts of the best songs. The girls in front of me let me into a primo spot, and some boy to my left kept telling us which songs were coming up because he could read the set list. The music and banter were impeccable, as expected. The only thing that I found exceptionally amazing was the way Berman looked at Cassie^[3]. I know this sounds weird and maybe a little false, but I was suddenly convinced that in my entire life, I had never seen someone look so gut-wrenchingly and intensely in love. In retrospect, it was possibly just a delayed after-effect related to the whole Jesus moment thing. Either way, it was tremendous.
Well, I think I've made myself look ridiculous enough. The end.

^[1]There are a lot of justifications for picking that song and that album, but honest to gawd, this was my initial reason:
Sam Sparro -> Sparrow -> Wings -> Bat -> Bat For Lashes. I'm a fucking genius.
^[2]Actually, it was "Hawkeye Hideaway!", but I saw "Handjobs!" first and like it better.
^[3]Who I am no closer to knowing anything about, but who was wearing an adorable dress.