Here's a new thing I figured I'd do.
First off, I should admit I'm shamelessly ripping off Matt Fraction's Mixtape Phrenologies with this. But hell, he hasn't updated them recently. (Still, Fraction's got a great blog going over there. Make with the clicky.)
Fraction'd take a sixty-minute playlist (15 songs or so) and riff on what each song meant to him. He'd do it once a month. For me... well, I prefer my writing exercises in bite-size chunks. So I put my iPod on shuffle and gave myself the length of each song to write something about it - just the first five that came up
I'm posting the second one I did here, because I thought the first one kinda sucked.
Oh, and feel free to rip off this game for your own purposes. But give props to Fraction.
"Who's Lovin' You," Jackson 5 - Certain artists have easy guides for their good material vs. their bad material. For example: Frank Sinatra albums, stick with the ones where he's wearing a hat. Michael Jackson albums, stick with the ones where he's black.
"Lullaby," Tom Waits - Friend's apartment, unseasonably warm and sunny Saturday afternoon in October. He decides that the perfect music to mark such a astoundingly beautiful day is "Mule Variations." He might be depressed. Anyway.
"I'm Hip," John Pizzarelli - College, my prematurely-cranky-old-man phase. Teaching myself to cook, as all I could afford was rice n' beans.
"What A Little Moonlight Can Do," Billie Holiday - Last Saturday, Barbes, watching the Moonlighters. Pretty drunk girl (pretty and drunk, that is) sitting next to me says, "Her smack years were the best. You know they were. Yes it's terrible, but just admit it."
So Billie Holiday albums = stick to the ones where she's on the horse.
"Some Kind of Friend," Barry Manilow - 4th grade. An all-boys private school on the Upper East Side, right off Museum Mile. I was short and had a bit of a mouth on me. Michael Schoettle was big, and dumb, and mean. He grabs me by my blazer and challenges me to a fight. "I'll meet you at the Guggenheim," he says, his voice full of menace...
...well, it's funny now. Back then it wasn't.
“Dancing Queen/Walk On The Wild Side/Angel of Harlem,” Moxy Fruvous – That’s a live bootleg there. Those wacky Canadians… my buddy from high school got me into the Fruvous. Now they’ve broken up, and my buddy’s moved to San Francisco. Sad.
“Bassooning,” Beau Hunks. That’s from an album of Little Rascals soundtrack music. I miss Our Gang. Seeing them all grown up on Court TV just isn’t the same.
“St. Louis Blues,” Big Bill Broonzy. Okay, I’ll admit it. I first heard of him through the end credits of “Intolerable Cruelty.” I’ll be turning in my Hipstercred Card now…
“If You Need Me,” Solomon Burke. Well… um… this one reminds me of an ex-girlfriend… I mean, not the lyrics (oh god no), but it’s just that this was playing when… you know, she might actually read this…
Look over there!
“Bushfire,” B-52’s. “What the hell are you doing listening to this?” my sister asked. “This isn’t your kind of music.” Shows how much you know, sis. Nyah nyah nyah.
So I’m writing this new thing… and I’m finding myself making fun of religion again. Well, if there ever was an institution in dire need of a metaphorical pie-in-the-face...
Me, I’m an anti-theist. I have no time for religion of any kind, and I think we’d all be better off if religion just went away. The existence (or non-existence) of a supreme being doesn’t enter into it, really. The prevalence of worldwide douchebaggery in the name of God is certainly a good argument against it – but as long as there’s no conclusive proof there isn’t a God, I’m willing to allow for its existence. Though if it exists, it doesn’t seem to care much what we do here.
But prevalence of worldwide douchebaggery aside, what’s really more important in forming my (or anyone’s) beliefs is my personal experience.
So – for starters, I was raised Roman Catholic.
Goodnight everybody!
Anyway.
My sister and I were extremely well-behaved children – that was mainly due to having a very strict, very crazy father. At church, I wasn’t one of those kids who could bring toys or go crawling around underneath the pews. My father wouldn’t stand for that. We’d get yelled at for fidgeting. My mother, on the other hand, would balance her checkbook during Mass – but she was a Protestant, so it was okay.
For me, there was nothing else to do at Mass but listen, which is just about the worst thing you can possibly do at a Catholic Mass.
Catholic Mass is redundant, monotonous, and incredibly dull. The idea is to bore you into a state of semi-hypnosis, then have guys with baskets come around to take your money. Paying attention isn’t recommended - especially when you’re hitting puberty, especially when your parents are getting divorced. At that point, paying attention might make you look around and wonder why there’s so many old people here every week, and hardly anyone in your age group. Paying attention might make you think that everyone’s monotone responses to all the usual prompts implies that no one is paying attention. Paying attention might make you realize that Catholic Mass is about as spiritual as a ham sandwich.
Then there was history class, where I learned that the dull monotony I had to endure every Sunday morning didn’t come from Jesus himself, but from a bunch of politicians about three hundred years after Jesus died the second time. So long, Catholicism. I learned later that Vatican City, the capital of Catholicism, was funded by selling people “get out of hell free” cards. (It’s true. Do a wikipedia search for “Indulgences” if you don’t believe me.) By then, history class was just confirming my beliefs rather than shaking them.
By thirteen, my belief in God was pretty shaky. My dad was now divorced, unemployed, and crazier than ever. And I was beginning to realize that he’d always been kinda crazy. And God didn’t seem terribly concerned about it, despite all the talking dad was doing at God.
As my dad was getting crazier, he was getting more religious. During our weekend visits, he’d go on and on to my sister and I about how prayer works… while I’d think that his current situation wasn’t a terribly good example of that assertion.
He’d demand we’d do rosaries in the car. A rosary is where you recite the Apostles Creed once, the Our Father once, the Hail Mary ten times... five times over. Hoo boy. Halfway through those, I’d half-expect my dad to pass a basket into the back seat and demand our allowance.
One time my dad started up a rosary as we were driving out of NYC. He had to stop part of the way through, as a gentleman right outside the freeway was washing windshields. The gentleman didn’t take no for answer quite fast enough when he got to our car, so my dad grabbed a baseball bat from under his seat, got out of the car, and chased him up the block.
Soon after that, my sister converted to Buddhism. And I became an atheist.