Word on the Street is, the man is coming down on the people
Ken Layne watched the Grammys last night so we wouldn't have to. His play-by-play is by turns funny, sad, thoughtful, silly, and insightful-- and honest: even he couldn't make it through to the end.
I almost wish I had seen Michael Greene's lecture on how the kids are sucking the lifeblood out of the other kids by downloading their "inspired work." Well Mike, my blood has been sucked. I got over it. The hootenanny thing sounds like it was pretty cool; I'm glad Lucinda won, etc.
Still, I "boycotted" the Grammys this year as always. This is not some kind of protest on the basis of deeply-held beliefs or anything like that. I boycotted it in the same way I boycott Touched by an Angel: being not at all interested makes it easy. Instead, my friend Tristin and I went to the King's X bar on Piedmont in Oakland and had a pretty good time drinking and talking about this and that. We had the room off to the side mostly to ourselves, which was nice. Unfortunately, the other occupants were these two unreconstructed lefties (a hippie and his "straight-looking" friend) who were blathering on and on about "the fascist pig government" of George WM Bush (the "M" stands for "monger"--get it?) who stole the White House in a "rich white person" coup, etc. Their verdict on the war was, not surprisingly, that we are the evil ones and we deserve what we get. I know Tris pretty well, and I could tell from the way she was clutching her wine glass that she was a centiliter away from throwing its contents into one or both of their faces. Since one of them was a vaguely refrigerator-sized goon, I'm glad she was able to resist; but I could see her point.
We tried to use the jukebox to drown out their idiotic banter, but sometimes idiotic banter can break the sound barrier, that is, it can make itself heard even over the ZZ Top. (Tris probably suffered more than me, since I'm a whole lot more deaf than she is.)
Anyway, the climax of their conversation was this: the hippie got on the floor to demonstrate his yoga technique. "This is what we call fire breathing," he said, going into a kind of Lamaze method puffer-fish woman-in-labor routine. That's a hippie for you. No sense, no morals, no human decency-- and above all no personal dignity whatsoever. I think we all learned something. The hippie learned a new word ("monger.") The hippie's friend learned some valuable lessons about his chakras or something like that. But Tristin and I learned the most important lesson of all: nothing breaks the tension like a bearded man in labor. We lost it: a wave of hysterical laughter swept the dusky environs of the King's X that night.
All in all, it was probably better than the Grammys as far as entertainment value goes, though I guess I wish I'd seen the hootenanny.
Posted by Dr. Frank at February 28, 2002 10:54 AM | TrackBack