Dinner at California Pizza Kitchen and dessert at Godiva to(Friday)night. The hostess area at CPK was like the Dumbo queue at Disneyland - total stroller derby. Our waitress was brusque, and some guys came into to lean over to the next table and have a quick chat with their mom, giving us the full pleasure of their baggy pant bums. (I took a camshot, but I doubt it came out.)
But, the food was good, and every once in awhile it's good to reaffirm that there's a reason I don't like to go out on Friday nights.
Godiva at Town Square is having a 50%-off sale. We got a huge tin of caramel hot cocoa powder for five bucks. Now we just need a day under 100 and it will nearly be socks-and-carols time.
(Paragraphs about teaching deleted because, damn, it's the weekend. Plus, it was all positive, and I feel like a deluded goon when I ditz on about the sunshine and rainbows.)
(And now some stuff about Bill Maher's show tonight deleted. I just can't talk politics. I feel like I'm always having to make sure that a dislike of Stance A doesn't mean I endorse Stance B.)
Hm. Can't sleep. Nothing to talk about. Been up 24 hours, save a 90 minute nap. This weekend will go fast.
Every book I'm reading is in the bedroom and I don't want to wake Mike up. Related: Yesterday I got to the chapter in Stiff where the writer (who is dang funny in a deft, tasteful way) visits the body farm in Tennessee. Is it gross that I just had to try to find it on Google Earth? (And succeeded, I think, but couldn't make out anything.)
I'm learning too much. In fact, the title of this post is a mortician's term for when the brain decomposes inside a damaged skull and comes out of your nose. Strewth.
Speaking of Australia (think about it), Mike and I have been working through the TiVo'd "80 Hours of the 80s" from VH1 Classic's marathon last weekend. They should call it "80 more conversations about what is really in the Eighties Canon," because that's where we always end up. Mike says The Motels have three songs, I say they have two, yadda yadda.
We did some of the Ms tonight, which meant Midnight Oil, which meant more pain for Mike who is already dreading waking up to face that the Labor party has just taken over Western Australia. (I guess there was an election today? And don't get me started on this weird Aussie thing of politicians just suddenly calling elections out of nowhere with, like, a week's notice. It's so peculiar to my American sensibilities, used to years of campaigning, that I can't even debate it, I'm so befuddled.)
See, we're both fans of Midnight Oil, but Mike has to grit his teeth about the politics of the lead singer, Peter Garrett, who is now Australia's Environmental Minister. Or something. It's late. I'm not opening any more browser tabs. Garrett, despite having abandoned his Green party when greener pastures (and positions) appeared with Labor, is very left on certain issues where Mike is not. But MO is still a hell of a band, so at least we all still have the music.
I saw Midnight Oil in Houston in, probably, the spring or summer of 1988. I didn't have a car then and my few local friends were all busy with college stuff, so I rode the bus downtown and wandered around the fountains and walked down empty streets (it was a Sunday), just meandering until showtime at the Majestic. I liked to walk for health back then, so I didn't get bored. Being in shape was its own preoccupying reward. (Ah, a little more insight on why I can't seem to bother now.)
Wait, I think I've told this one before. Oh well. Who cares? Anyway, everything was deserted, but I walked past the back of the Majestic, which was just a tiny emptyish lot with a picnic table, and there was Midnight Oil, having a chow down. If you've ever seen Peter Garrett, there's no mistaking that bald noggin.
If I'd known anything about Australians back then, I would've walked up and said howdy. But I didn't know that Aussies tend to be frank and friendly, so I kept walking, eyes (mostly) averted lest anyone stop enjoying their potato salad (or whatever) out of fear of having to meet-n-greet some fan. It was fun enough just to amble right past them there, on their own, eating.
(You don't want to know how long I spent looking for the Majestic just now. My memory must be dodgy, because the internet tells me that the Majestic was a famous Houston theatre that was heartlessly demolished in 1971. There's another former theatre now called "Metro Majestic," but it's a banquet hall with no backyard area. I'm now very cross: my Google-fu is going nowhere, <a href="http://www.midnight-oil.info/concerts/#1988">this huge list of old tour dates</a> doesn't evem mention Houston, and if it's not on the Internet, then I must seriously consider that I may have traveled back in time to see Midnight Oil 17 years before they came to the States. In a place they didn't play. Don't scoff! Why, just earlier today, I saw a man talking on a cell phone... in 1900! I wish the Doctor wouldn't toy with me like this.)
It was a great show, full of energy, and right after I retold this story, Mike said, "I hear it's a good show," like he's telling me, and I say, "Yeah, I just said that. And hey, let's think: who walked past Midnight Oil picnicking? Who shook Colin Hay's hand? Who has an email from the lead singer of the Expression? WHO IS THEREFORE MORE AUSTRALIAN THAN YOU? HA!"
And then I did one of those ghetto "uh huh, that's right" neck dances with finger pointing that I've learned from the students, being completely ignored because Mike was going on about the "Beds are Burning" video. Namely, shaking his head that I was bopping to that song in the 80s with just no clue that it (and every other track on that album) is about very specific issues. Issues that I don't have simple views about. Unlike Peter Garrett.
"I guess I thought it was just a general 'take action, don't put up with injustice' message." Look who's not so Australian now. Sniff.
Watching these videos twenty years later, yeah, I may have neglected the trees for the forest. Also, Garrett scares me in this video:
The music's still a treat, though.
After that I picked up my story again, the part where I felt I was making a lot of significant eye contact with one of the cute guitarists, but strangely Mike didn't seem to want to play the "what if?" game with that.
Mike says the albums before this were better, but I can't listen to anything "new" by them. (Here I write and rewrite and rewrite and finally delete a bunch of talk about political aversions making tall fences, but the songs I know being good enough to stay on the playlist.)
Meanwhile: forget Jewel of Medina. Did you know that girls aren't allowed to touch the big singing phallus? Some disagree. Some say it will make a woman barren. And so I think, hey, a purpose for that leftover Amazon gift certificate! What would Kate Bush do?
Comments