The day before yesterday was a beautiful Spring day here, so all the windows and the front door were open all day. And from time to time, I kept hearing the unmistakable "Help" cry of a tiny kitten. But every time I went out the front door to try to track down its whereabouts, the mewing stopped. When Donna got home from work and stepped out of the car, she heard it too, and the hunt was on. After a few minutes of intermittent cries, we were finally able to triangulate the signal and take a bearing. Broadcast origin--under the rosemary bush in our front garden. This is what we found: Do not attempt to look directly into the cuteness without goggles--you will go blind. The vet reckons she's about 4-5 weeks old and in good health. The vet also agreed with us that she's a veritable black hole of cuteness, in whom the cute matter is collapsed so densely into one 16 oz. point, that no cuteness can escape her gravitational pull. As of yet she has no name and is referred to only by her astronomical designation, Black Hole Cygnus X-1. We've been slowly introducing her to her step-siblings Porter and Greta (yes, of course we're keeping her), who are fortunately two of the most amiable animals on the planet. As you can see from the footage below, although Cygnus X-1 has yet to be in the house for a full 48 hours, Porter has decided that--as far as stepsisters go--she'll do.
Hey fellow earthlings, today is Earth Day. You know, Mother Earth only gets this one special day every year, so how about honoring your one and only place to live by taking her out for a special dinner, or maybe picking up after yourself without being asked JUST THIS ONCE ALREADY?! Flowers are an entirely inappropriate gift for Earth Day, as they simply remind Mother Earth of her own mortality. Kind of like giving your mother a lovely bouquet of her own hair and nail clippings. And guys, don't get her lingerie; Mother Earth does not want lingerie for Earth Day. This is her special day, not yours.
A friend of The Broken Stove needed help--and my pickup truck--to get to the local metal scrap recycling center with her totally non-metaphorical broken stove. At first I thought it would be just a typical favor from a friend with a truck to a friend without one. Not a big chore, but not exactly a barrelful of monkeys. But then I saw THE CLAW (see picture). It turns out that at the center you can pull in with your bed full of scrap (just one stove in our case), get weighed, pull up to THE CLAW, and THE CLAW WILL REACH DOWN TO YOUR TRUCK like the Harvester in Terminator Salvation, and effortlessly lift your scrap away. It was very cool. Then you get weighed again on the way out and paid based on the difference in weight. My friend got four whole American dollars! OK, not much, but as she pointed out, it beats paying the county for the privilege of throwing it in their pile. Now I find myself looking around the house for stuff that I can break, just so I can OFFER IT TO THE CLAW. "[It] has been chosen, [it] must goooo!"
OK, you know you have too much time on your hands when you spend about an hour and a half at (an admittedly very fun) website called Xtranormal.com creating an existential, text-based, minute-long "movie" about God and Santa. If you're a normal, busy, productive person, I beg you not to click the link. It's a total timesuck. Nevertheless, GretaPorter Productions proudly presents: "A Crisis of Faith: Santa vs. God."
1) possessing the claimed or attributed character, quality, or origin; not counterfeit; authentic; real: genuine sympathy; a genuine antique.
2) properly so called: a genuine case of smallpox.
3) free from pretense, affectation, or hypocrisy; sincere: a genuine person.
--from Dictionary.com, emphasis mine
As I continue my extremely intermittent alphabetical stroll through the music in my iPod, I now find myself at the songs that begin with the letter "G." There are 148 such songs on my iPod right now, and as has been true for most of the other letters, they represent a broad range of my musical interests and vary in quality from disposable to indispensable. As I searched through the titles for some kind of unifying theme to wrap this post around--good, goodbye, ghost, give?--I was instead struck by a word that didn't actually appear in the titles at all: "genuine." "Genuine" is a pretty slippery term to toss around in music criticism--or any other kind of criticism for that matter--because its evaluation depends upon purely subjective criteria, and its application doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the quality, good or bad, of the music being discussed. The pop songs of Miley Cyrus may be catchy, good pop songs (though not my thing), but few, I think, would apply the adjective "genuine" to what she does. She and her songs are mass market products, slickly produced, tested, and marketed to a very specific demographic by a powerful entertainment company that knows its business. The Sex Pistols, on the other hand (also not my thing), though they could barely play their instruments, were "genuine." Their music may have sounded like their instruments were being sawed to pieces by angry, tone-deaf sociopaths, but they were an organic product of--and reaction to--the musical and cultural scenes of their day. With that in mind, here is my list of the most "genuine" G-songs from my iPod, songs that seem to me to best fulfill the above definition in that they are free from pretense, affectation, or hypocrisy, and, like Linus's pumpkin patch, absolutely drip with sincerity.
"Good Work (If You Can Get It)" by BoDeans The BoDeans were one of my favorite bands in my college and grad school days, and while I don't have them on "heavy rotation" anymore, I can still pull out their first few albums from time to time and marvel at the freshness they've maintained. They attracted a lot of critical attention for their straight-forward roots rock sound when they debuted with "Love & Hope & Sex & Dreams," but though they've always been a college radio mainstay, they never were able to make a big mark on the charts. The video here, terrible sound notwithstanding, shows them at the height of their powers in the late 80's, tearing through a Berry-esque raveup with David Letterman's band. Paul Shaffer even gets excited enough to put his foot to the keyboard รก la The Killer. Genuine three chord rock and roll.
"Goddamn Lonely Love" by Drive-by Truckers Drive-by Truckers is a country rock band that manages to avoid the worst excesses of a genre they share with the likes of .38 Special and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Song-writing duties are shared and the lineup changes, but their albums nevertheless maintain a signature sound and mood that make them something like Alabama's Bruce Springsteen--which, if you're not sure, is a good thing. If you can't get past the "goddamn," you'll miss a haunting song of yearning and regret that sounds like it was written on a beer-stained napkin at a really dingy bar at closing time. Occasionally, a profanity is just the best word for the job. "I could take a Greyhound home; when I got there it’d be gone, along with everything a home is made up of/ So I’ll take two of what you’re having, I’ll take all of what you've got to kill this goddamn lonely love."
"God Give Me Strength" by Elvis Costello Now you might think that performing a song with a full orchestra and Burt Bacharach on piano could violate the "no affectation" clause of my "genuine" definition. But you'd be wrong. "God Give Me Strength" comes from Costello's collaborative album with Bacharach, "Painted From Memory," and while the arrangements may be lush, the songs are none the less genuine for it. Bacharach may have that whole schmaltzy vibe, but he's a talented artist (see my Neil Sedaka discussion), and there's no doubting the feeling behind Elvis's performance in the video here. "I want him to hurt!"
"Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine" by The White Stripes Once again my iPod discussions lead me back to The White Stripes. Rock doesn't get much more "genuine" than when it's stripped down to a guitar and a drum set, and unlike the songs on all of my local radio stations, Jack and Meg's creativity and originality keep me from feeling old. There's still great music being made out there, fellow 40-somethings, but unless you're in a huge market or have a good community-supported station, it's probably not being played on your radio. But look...here's some right here! Spank that high hat, Meg, it's been very naughty!
OK, this might be a bit late for Valentine's, but not long ago I was going through some old writing files when I came across this piece that I first wrote in a slightly different form back in the 90's. It was for some kind of essay contest about "First Love" sponsored by Random House (didn't win, but got Honorable Mention). If you hate stories about couples "meeting cute," you should avert your eyes at this point.
There are people who don’t believe in love at first sight, who simply can’t credit the notion that such a life-altering experience can happen in the same time it takes to decide between paper or plastic. Many of these same people are fully capable of forming an instant dislike of someone—God knows I can—but somehow that leap in the opposite direction seems too farfetched. These people are idiots. Here’s how I know. The first time we ever spoke, she ran up to me frantically, grabbed the front of my shirt, and said, “Make it work! You've got to make it work!” There are, I suppose, some situations in which this could be viewed as a downright promising way to begin a relationship. The truth, however, was far from romantic. Like me she was an English Lit graduate student, only she was hopped up on Diet Pepsi and M&M’s, staring a major paper deadline in the face. As she clutched a fistful of my shirt in despair we stood in the computer writing lab, where I tutored semi-literate freshmen and baby-sat the bank of computers and printers that were available for the students' use. I followed her glare to where one of the printers gloated in malevolent silence, refusing to spit out the last five pages of her research paper. Her eyes cut to the clock on the wall. Five minutes until class. Five minutes to get those five pages. Her tone shifted, uncomfortably, from supplication to menace: “Make. It. WORK!” Fortunately for me and my shirt, the problem proved easy enough to fix; soon she was gathering up her paper and running out the door. On the way out, however, she shot me The Smile--a loquacious smile, I thought, bursting with meaning. “Sorry I was so rude,” the smile said; “Thank you,” it said; “My hero,” it said. And I still maintain that, as a sort of coda, the smile even added, “You're kinda cute.” My spirit instantly grew to a ridiculous height, and I fell in love. A Happy Ending, however, proved unlikely. We had a mutual acquaintance whom I literally chased down that day. “So-oo-o... has she got a boyfriend?” I asked nonchalantly, pretending that my every hope for a happy future did not hang on the answer. Oh yes. Long time. Very serious. Expected to marry. My spirit fell from its enormous height and made a nasty mess on the sidewalk. But all was not lost. She was back in the writing lab the very next day. And, as a “thank you/I’m sorry” present, she brought me a little bag of gumballs tied up with a red ribbon. Gumballs! The most romantic token of affection one can give short of an outright proposal. Better than diamonds. She had noticed me! I was no longer just an anonymous computer geek. Suddenly, I existed in her world as someone to whom you might give gumballs. My broken spirit leapt back up from its heap on the sidewalk and danced a little happy dance. I had a chance! So go right on denouncing love at first sight, you sad, lonely, dateless cynics out there, but know this: we celebrate our eighteenth wedding anniversary this week, and the printer on our home computer works just fine.
Update: This story has been picked up by The Science Creative Quarterly. Click the above link many times to increase my apparent popularity in their eyes. After a couple of days on the front page, it'll move to the archives, here.
Peter Waldron is a writer and bon vivant who currently lives in a tobacco field south of Raleigh. He enjoys cheese, homebrewing, and travel to those places not covered by various restraining orders. He has been a contributing writer for The Onion News Network, and his scribblings have appeared at Yankee Pot Roast, The Science Creative Quarterly, and in his head, where they never fail to get a big laugh.
