Oracle At-Large

I’ve picked up on a funny little trait that a lot of people exhibit: the apparent inability to accept that I just don't know. Observe:


Exhibit A: Music

THEM: Hey, what do you think of that new Fiery Furnaces tune? I can’t get it out of my head!

ME: Never heard it. I don’t listen to radio.

T: Oh, you’ve definitely heard it. You know, the one with the chorus that goes “da da–da-da daaaaaa….”

M: I don’t know the song you’re talking about. In fact, I couldn’t even pick that band out of a police lineup.

T: You must’ve heard it. You’d recognize it if you did.

M: Are you even in the room?

I don’t have a TV either, so this conversation is directly interchangeable with ones regarding TV commercials. What’s most confusing about that scenario is the other person will actually say “I know you don’t have a TV, but…”


Exhibit B: Directions.

THEM: How long do you think it’d take me to get to Warren Rhode Island? About an hour?

ME: I have no idea. I couldn’t even tell you how to get there.

T: What if I took 95? Think that would shave about ten minutes off?

M: I don’t know, maybe? I’ve yet to set foot in that town.

T: How long do you think it’d take if I took 195 instead? Forty minutes?

M: Sigh.

What’s with the refusal to accept that I just don’t know, despite how many guesses and variables they throw at me? The myriad of options will not suddenly awaken a dormant and forgotten skill of photographic knowledge of geography and space time continuum. The bottom line is always the same: I don’t know.

Wait, did you say go 195 AND drive with your lights on? Well that changes everything. Forty-three minutes, tops. Forty-two and fifty-two seconds if you only listen to NPR radio the whole way.


P.S. Happy Mardi Gras, y'all. See you in the next edition of Girls Gone Wild.

I kid!

Complains, Trains, and Automobiles, or Do The Left Thing

It was approximately seven degrees and rather breezy this morning as I waited on the train platform. The commuter rail was late again. The reason? Mechanical failure. Why does this affliction never happen when it’s, oh, seventy degrees out? The marquee on the platform scrolls a generic apology about inconvenience, sincerely something-or-other, blah blah blah. All I know is it was painfully cold and I was quickly tiring of the stock one-liners all around me about a free ride, heatwave, great way to wake up, etc.

The train arrives and it’s packed to the absolute brim because now there are probably 1500 people filling a train that’d ordinarily hold 900 comfortably. I got a seat because I miraculously got on first.

Before I continue, an aside:

I consider myself a chivalrous guy because I feel it’s just the way it should be. I offer my seat when appropriate. Pregnant woman boarding the train? It’s yours. Wielding a cane or crutches? I insist you take my seat. I sit at a computer all day and it’s only fair that you should be sitting here. I don’t offer these gestures to make myself feel good, appear magnanimous or heroic, make an example of those who don't offer, or because I’m taking pity. I do it just because.

But some days, I just want that seat, man. Nurses will get on the train, and I know they’ve been on their feet all day running around caring for people. What’d I do all day? Exactly what I’m doing on the train: sitting on my lazy rump. On occasion I crave a little shuteye, and not being equine, I can’t sleep standing up. After the train has made its first two stops, I’m ready to drink me in some delicious slumber. Well, as delicious as sitting upright with your head bouncing off the Plexiglas window with someone’s generous hips pressing into you can be, anyway. As I’m trying to doze, I can just feel the resentful eyes of the more worthy burning right into me.

Back to this morning. I grabbed that vacant seat because I have a tendency to not dress appropriately for unforeseen circumstances. I don’t layer because once I’m on the train, peeling off those layers is a major hassle when you have only the exact width of your body to move around. The alternative to peeling the layers is keeping them on and losing fourteen pounds from sweating underneath it all. My dress shoes are thin and seem to conduct the cold with alarming efficiency. Long story short, my feet were killing me because I was standing in the cold for so long and I just had to get off of them toot sweet. There are those eyes again.

We get to South Station and predictably the subway is at a standstill because yet another train has crapped out. There’s an ocean of people like I’ve never seen on the platform, and I know that even three trains eight seconds apart won’t make a dent in this crowd, and aside from punching out everyone in my path, I won’t be able to get on board anyway. Rather than be super-late for work, I decide to walk. It’s an hour walk and I didn’t account for things like walking over long bridges in a 17 MPH wind. Aces.

I know there are a lot of trains running at any given time (before 1AM, anyway). I know that a lot can go wrong. I also realize that running a statewide nervous system of public transportation can be harrowing and that it’s a very complex operation. But you know what? People have jobs to do just that. I’m done sympathizing and will no longer defend the MBTA. They drop the ball incessantly, make promises they can’t keep, and they’re raising the fares AGAIN. If they were more reliable, I’d just take it in stride. No more. And they wonder why people still opt to drive.

MBTA - Most Broken Trains in America.

Luddy Duddy

Pictured to the left is a 1948 Porsche 356. I can say with great certainty that if I owned it, I’d weep with joy pretty much every day. Not only is it a vision in its simplicity and conservation of style, but it’s also representative of a bygone era-- an era I wasn’t even any part of but have wanted to be.

This was a time when people actually drove for pleasure. Cars weren’t merely a means of getting you from Point A to Point B, getting the kids to soccerhockeyballetviolinlessonskaratelacrossetherapy, grocery shopping, or your surrogate home while you endure a hellacious commute twice a day, every day. Sunday drives were an activity to be cherished, taking in the countryside at a leisurely pace and just enjoying a jaunt with the top down. I don’t think the practice of get there now now NOW! was in full swing yet.

There were no DVD players, adjustable soft ride suspensions, separate climate controls for each occupant, electronically controlled all-wheel drive, GPS systems, 400-watt sound systems, airbags OR seatbelts, practically mandatory automatic transmission, or satellite radio. Hell, you were lucky to even get AM radio. It was post-war, so gas was plentiful and prices weren’t really a concern. I won’t speak for American cars because they were already on their way to being the über-bloated rolling yachts that started the Bigger Is Better Revolution that hasn’t ever gone away. No, instead I’m speaking of early German, Italian, and British sports cars.

Technologically speaking, they were crude, of course. The tires were marginal at best in their construction and endurance. The ignition and fuel delivery systems were often problematic. Horsepower figures would be completely annihilated by most modern-day motorcycles. All of these shortcomings added up to one beautiful premise: purity. I think that the most recent example of the spirit the early sports cars embodied is the Lotus Elise.

The sports cars of yesteryear had to be treated with respect or the fragile components would fail. This wasn’t a time of going 100k miles before changing the plugs; they and the points (the what?) had to be replaced at pretty much every oil change. There weren’t computers metering and controlling everything without you even being aware. You had to know honest-to-God principles of mechanics in order to own one of these, or you paid someone a king’s ransom to fix it for you. The practice of filling the tank, getting in, and just going was decades away.

The romance of these cars is probably 2/3 of the allure for me. They weren’t merely punched out on an assembly line and fused together by robotic welders, then painted by even more robots. No, these gems were crafted using a time-honored tradition of pounding out fenders and bodies on a wood form, one at a time. The people making these cars weren’t mere assemblers but artisans. And what a mellifluous chorus of sheer mechanical joy these machines emit. They weren’t especially fast, and they didn’t handle particularly well either. But that was half the fun-- the danger.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a Luddite/technophobe. Strides in safety, longevity and fuel economy have been made, and mostly for the better. I just seem to be yearning for a time when the world wasn’t wrapped in sponge rubber for fear that we might hurt ourselves. While car companies have engineered all the safety in, it appears they simultaneously engineered the fun and adventure out. The beauty of simplicity is now a lost art. Or maybe I’m overestimating the intelligence of the driving public and the companies just know better than me.

I’m sure that’s it.

Cooperation

...is a beautiful thing.

(photo by Brad Wrobleski)

Wheedle On The Needle

The year was 1990. In this photo, I’m sporting a mullet, acid wash jeans, hi-tops, and a bomber jacket. All four components were already outdated by then, but living in the suburbs will do that to you. My car was a helluva lot more stylish than I ever was.

I’m listening to internet radio right now, specifically a mid-80s/early 90s station. After listening to it for a couple hours, I’ve determined that the playlist is solely comprised of what has been referred to as hair metal. Mention the term, and immediately Poison, Winger, or Dokken come to mind. There are a great deal of bands that are lumped into this generic, often embarrassing category. Some were added because they just happened to have crunchy guitar and sexual overtones in the lyrics. It’s an unfair categorization because there really were some great bands to come out at that time, and without the trappings of fashion and soulless wheedling on guitar.

Another stigma that’s attached to the genre is the Cheese Factor. I will admit there definitely was a healthy dose of that, but when it’s new to you and your tastes are still developing, you somehow turn a blind eye to it. The stuff you loved as a kid doesn’t always survive the test of time very well, and most of it all turned out sounding the same because of a universal formula.

But that’s just 1986-1990, and let it not be misconstrued—I loved it. I gather that every generation has suffered through that. If you listen to songs form the seventies, there’s often a feeling of “now why can’t anyone write songs like that anymore? There was so much variety to it.” That’s true, but only to a point. Take bands like Player, Ambrosia, and Little River Band. Their similarities are undeniable. But that’s because somewhere along the line there was a formula established that this is what the listening public wants to hear (harmonies, clean Strats, and usually a sax). The act of abusing a formula has been around since the dawn of classical music, I imagine.

I have great difficulty differentiating between most bands of the fifties. Hell, even most of their names were practically the same, but my dad can whip off their names, song titles, what station played it first, etc. with aplomb. I guess when you’re in the moment, you just don’t care that you’re being musically bred to embrace the same old thing, over and over but with a different name. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, it’s pretty much all about the memory attached to it. For example, after “Baby Come Back” finishes, I half expect to hear:

“WABCeeeeeeeeeeeee! Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan Ingram!”

When the picture above was taken, hair metal was taking its last labored gasp for air, and unbeknownst to anyone at the time, Seattle was just about to become a household word.

Banal-Retentive

Speaking of things uncomfortably anatomical (yes, your host is really raising the bar this month), there’s a term that’s now a permanent fixture in the American lexicon, and its incorporation came a little too easily. If one is fastidious, appreciates a modicum of order to his or her life, or just likes to have things a certain way, they either label themselves or are labeled as “anal”, an abbreviated form of the term “anal-retentive”. Anal. Anal, as in ANUS.

From bartleby.com, a definition:

“Psychology Indicating personality traits, such as meticulousness, avarice, and obstinacy, originating in habits, attitudes, or values associated with infantile pleasure in retention of feces.”

Good lord. I hear my boss telling me all the time he’s anal. Frankly, I never, EVER want to hear that word come out of his mouth for any reason. The images are so disturbing and upsetting, it puts me off my feed for a good couple hours or so.

It has become so commonplace a term, it’s bandied about as if it were just any other word. Is it because all members of the human species, regardless of gender, are graced with such an anatomical component that’s it’s so widely used and universally accepted (the term, that is)? What if it were a different word? Imagine, if you will:

“Dude, the wire loom on your ‘23 bucket T looks totally sano, man. Super clean.”

“Thanks, brah. Yeah, I totally put a lot of time into it. I figured I should just take the time to do it right, and I’m pretty vaginal about that stuff anyway.”

"Sweet."

"Sweet."

OR:

“Eileen, it says here on your résumé that you’re a real stickler for detail.”

“Yes I am, absolutely. I guess if I had to list a trait that needed to be worked on, it’d be my tendency to be seminal to a fault.”

The mind reels.

A Public Service Message From the Bureau of Testosterone (BOT)

Guys—

Feeling a little, you know, less-than? Sure, you wake up in the morning with the requisite stubble, go through your morning constitutional and see that everything’s there and in working order. But do you still feel like something’s missing? Is your pickup shod with 35” tires and a 4” lift, Playboy air freshener, naked chick mudflaps, and Git R Done sticker just not doing it for you? Has Hooters become just another bar to you?

Let’s just tell it like it is: As a man, do you feel fraudulent?

Gentlemen, your prayers have been answered, in a variety of colors. So go on and up the ante on your manhood and put us back another 500 years.

Fantastic.

Music, Movies, and a Chevy.

My Lady Fair and I and I caught Flight Plan starring Jodie Foster on DVD. I had seen the trailer for it on other DVDs, but I thought the trailers were for the theatrical release, not the DVD. I now see why it was out of theaters so quickly. Good grief, what a noisome, steaming pile that movie was. I have a lot of respect for Jodie Foster, and she has put out some fine, fine movies. And great googily moogily is that woman intense. However, this particular movie could not be saved even by Jodie Foster. Or even Peter Sarsgaard for that matter. He’s a stunning dramatic actor, but evidently not in the action flick sense.

Of course, am I really qualified to gauge what’s good or bad? I also quite deliberately rented Modern Problems, and I had even seen it before. Why? Because I-hi-hi-hi-hiiiiiiiiiiii like it.

Have You Seen Me?

In the summer of 2004, I found myself in a situation where I needed to sell off most of my gear (who knew the Brooklyn Bridge wasn’t actually for sale?). Of the several basses I had, one was a DeArmond Pilot, pictured to the left. I had converted it from a fretted to a fretless bass, and I sold it to guy who resides in or around Boston. Freak that I am, I usually hang onto any and all information from a transaction such as this, but for the life of me, I can’t find any of the buyer’s info.

There’s a chance in approximately one in 31 quadrillion he’ll see this, but here goes:

Are you out there? Have you grown bored with it? Do you have no longer have time for it? Would you like to…

SELL IT? Because I tell ya, I’d love to have it back. I’ll even pay you what you bought it for. I’m the guy you met at Downtown Crossing. A most bizarre plea, I know. Email me if you’re out there: oceanbreakupAThotmail.com

Now, isn't there some kind of football game or something this weekend? I haven't heard much about it...