Ever wake up and think, “oh, the hell with it?” No? Well you’re probably hiding a deep sadness so go see someone. I’ll wait.
…Ever wake up and think, “oh, the hell with it?” Yes? Yeah, it’s a gross, hands-in-the-air, “I’m moving to Paraguay to raise llamas at this rate” kind of feeling. So put this song on. I recommend very, very loud.
This song goes out to two dear friends of mine who are today beginning their cross-country moving trip to resettle on the west coast. (Pro tip: if you want to speed past the odd and theatrical intro, the music starts at 0:57.) Westward, ho, dudes! Pedal to the metal – no parking on the dance floor.
I’d like to learn how to fish. I don’t really know why. I guess it just seems like something a normal, calm, reasonably happy person would do in their spare time. I don’t know whether I’d classify my hobbies as such, given I don’t classify myself as normal or calm. Come to think of it, I don’t really know what my hobbies are.
The dictionary defines a hobby as “an activity done regularly in one’s leisure time for pleasure.” By that logic, the following things could be hobbies of mine:
Anyway. Here’s a song about a trout.
I’ve lived in D.C. for ten years now. Before that, I lived in the U.K. Both places have the same arresting, and misunderstood, quirk, which is this: everyone spends the first five minutes of each new interaction trying to size the stranger up. This manifests itself in different ways in both places. In the U.K., I was asked questions about what school I attended, where in New England precisely I had lived, and – delightfully – what my family was “in.” (That one in particular made me feel like I was at Epcot Center and the British person to whom I was speaking was actually an acting student from Gays Mills, Wisconsin.) The obvious purpose behind all this was to assess where in the crusty social strata I fell. Here is where the misunderstanding kicks in. I learned over the course of many years that it doesn’t stop there, that there was a further point beyond that one, which was to ascertain how much of their own life were they now going to feel comfortable divulging. It really didn’t have much to do at all with stereotypical snootiness, beyond the tacit acknowledgement of the existence of a social strata in the first place. They just wanted to know who they were talking to so they didn’t do anything stupid.
The exact same principle exists in D.C. Washington also has social strata, layered on top of which is the fascinating reality that no one just sort of ends up here: people come to D.C. by choice. Therefore, where you work can speak immeasurable volumes about who you are, and everything that means: your politics, your background, your values, your level of cultivation, your drive, your everything. So, the very first question you get asked in D.C. is, “So where do you work?” Again, like the U.K, this isn’t only a yardstick of how you stack up against this stranger as much as it’s a gauge of how much you can relax around them. Say you and your work friends from the E.P.A are out at a bar blowing off steam after a terrible day, and you run into an old college acquaintance who’s got some friends of her own in tow. You’re not going to ask people where they work so you can pat yourself on the back again for going to Bennington. You’re going to ask them where they work so that you know whether you can sound off about that coal country Senator who is still deciding whether or not to block the passage of muscular clean water legislation, or whether that new guy in the madras shirt is his legislative aide.
This is one of the many reasons I felt so at home in the U.K., and why I feel equally – if ironically – at ease in D.C. I like living a life that cautions me against gum-flapping about Russia because I might be sitting next to the new President of the German Marshall Fund at the symphony. True story. (It was so awesome OMG.) Puts me mind of my favorite Wodehouse quote, whose hilarious “Jeeves and Wooster” stories were turned into one of the best TV shows ever made:
“I’m not absolutely certain of the facts, but I rather fancy it’s Shakespeare who says that it’s always just when a fellow is feeling particularly braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind him with a bit of lead piping.” — P.G. Wodehouse, “Carry On, Jeeves”
So, I have this friend. I’m going to call her Alice. Alice is a pediatrician. Alice is a respectable, honorable, upright citizen of her community. She helps little kids stay healthy. Alice was my partner in crime in college. Alice was my go-to trouble buddy. One time I interrupted her studying for some “important” medical thing (like clinical exam or whatever, psh) because some disgusting sea slug had been dropped on the sidewalk by an over-zealous bird outside our dorm. Did she get shirty with me for interrupting her study time? Calumny! She ran down four flights of stairs, without her shoes on, to go outside and see said disgusting sea slug. And then she said we should put it in a certain person’s bed. And then she went back to studying. This other time? She helped steal all the traffic cones in town (it was a really small town), and the next day, the town council pasted a letter on almost every telephone pole issuing an amnesty for said missing traffic cones. I should have kept the letter.
My friend Lily? She biked through a blizzard to meet at a bar during finals in grad school. We had many rounds. Then she biked home. …In a blizzard. Charlotte? She and I had Manhattans on the roof of our graduate program’s central building the day before we graduated. Were we supposed to be up there? Are you kidding? Grace picked me up from work at 10:30pm at night, drove me to her house, set me up on her sofa in front of a roaring fire, woke me up the next morning at 7am, and drove me back to work. All so I wouldn’t have to spend the night at the office.
The older you get, the more the list of “Friends who will bail me out of jail,” and “Friends who will be in jail with me” blurs. I’m a (more) responsible adult now, and, for a whole variety of reasons, the likelihood of serious hijinks has seriously diminished. But knowing I have a group of women who I can call and say, “hey, you remember that time…” is the thing that will keep me young and happy forever.
So here’s something twisted: kids who were born in 1993, when this record came out, are old enough to drink now. They’re gonna be hitting the bars tonight buying drinks with real IDs. Curse you, relentless passage of time.
I remember buying my first legal drink. I ordered a glass of red wine in a Legal Seafood restaurant in a mall. I didn’t get carded, the wine was a bit blech, it felt very anti-climactic. Ordering a drink at a bar, of course, was very different. I really did feel like I was getting away with something. I kept waiting for someone to tap me on the shoulder and give me a condescending “Okay, honey, let’s go.” But no one did. So, bars were no longer mythic – less Mists of Avalon, more Terminal B Airport Lounge.
So, a bar is a bar is a bar. (You of course are a bar, but were always a bar. (Robert Frost, up top!)) The best bar I have ever been to is basically an enormous living room, filled with squashy sofas and arm chairs. The drinks are reasonably priced, the food is delicious, and the service just desultory enough to allow you ample time to wonder if you’ll die in the chair you selected, and then realize you won’t really mind because it’s so very comfortable. In fact, the bar in “Tukka Yoot’s Riddim” slightly resembles this Elysium of bars. So, while drinking tends to cram a half-hour of loose amusement into three hours of unpleasantness, you might as well do it sitting in a blue velveteen low-rider sofa listening to an upright bass player. Word to the wise, newly-minted 21-year olds.
Oh and one more thing: shots are the Devil’s plaything. Shots are how the Saxons fell. Don’t do shots. Promise me. Ok? Look me in the eye. Ok. Now be home by 11. And would it kill you to wear pants that fit?
Normally I’m pretty perky on Monday. Today, though…man. The problem is, this weekend was particularly fun, and I know this week at work will particularly suck. So there’s really only one song I can think of that will make me feel like I’ve got a compassionate friend. Check out the horn interlude (you knew it was coming) at 1:43. I had this on my headphones when I was grocery shopping once in college and I actually literally started dancing down a vegetable aisle. I regret nothing.
It’s Derby Day, Tune-Up fans, “the most exciting two minutes in sport.” For my international readers who don’t follow or care about horse racing – unforgivable! – the Kentucky Derby is arguably the most important race of the year, and has been held on the first Saturday in May every year since 1875. It is the first in what’s called the Triple Crown: the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness (held in Baltimore, Maryland), and the Belmont (in Elmont, New York, and no, that’s not a typo). Whoever wins the Derby continues on to compete in the other two. Kentucky being the seat of American horse country, it makes sense for the race that begins the Triple Crown to begin here.
The Derby has a number of traditions. Official drink: the mint julep (which was invented in Washington, D.C., at the Round Robin bar, in case you had a trivia night planned later today). Official flower: the red rose. And, official song: My Old Kentucky Home. Some call it the most moving moment in sports when the horses take the field and this song is played. I think that’s a bit rich, and I love the Dixieland version much more. So raise your julep and have yourself a grand day. My money is on Wicked Strong (7-1 odds), by the way. Obviously.
To say this is one of my personal theme songs – me, a woman who lives for music – would be like a devout Christian saying that the ten commandments were the rules they lived by. It’s so obvious it sounds dumb. It’s not at all lost on me either that there are few well-known female funk musicians, so I also bow down to Ms. Davis for kicking it in a male-dominated field. And finally, she’s belting out a funk song about how people think she’s weird for loving the music she does. That’s a pretty baller combination. So, whenever I’ve been made to feel weird, or whenever someone patronizes me because I’m a woman, I lean on Ms. Davis for a little pick-me-up. Works like a charm.
—
They say I’m different ’cause I’m a piece of sugar cane
Sweet to the core that’s why I got rhythm
My Great Grandma didn’t like to foxtrot,
no instead she spitted snuff and boogied to Elmore James
Spit On!
They say I’m different ’cause I eat chitlins
I can’t help it I was born and raised on ’em
That’s right, oh, every mornin’ I had to slop the hogs
and they be gettin off humpin to John Lee Hooker
Gettin off!
They say I’m different ’cause I’m a piece of sugar cane
and when I kick my legs I got rhythm
My Great Grandpa was a blues lover
He be rockin his moonshine to B.B. King and Jimmy Reed
Rock on pappy!
That’s why they say I’m different
That’s why they say I’m strange
Talkin bout Big Mama Thornton
Talkin bout Lightning Hopkins
Talkin bout Howlin Wolf
I’m talkin bout Albert King
Alright
Alright
Chuck Berry, Chuck Berry, Chuck Berry
When I was sweet sixteen
And that’s why they say I’m different
That’s why you think I’m strange
I’m talkin bout T. Bone Walker
I’m talkin bout Muddy Waters
I’m talkin bout Leadbelly, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, Son House, and Freddie King
Bessie Smith!
Bessie Smith! Oh, Oh, Hey
Oh Bo Diddley have you heard it?
That’s why they say I’m different
That’s why they say I’m strange
and that’s why they say I’m funky
Little Richard, Wild Lou, sunshine you sure can sing
Robert Johnson, Robert Johnson, Robert Johnson!
You play the blues for me
That’s why, That’s why, That’s why they say I’m different
That’s why, That’s why, That’s why they say I’m strange
Vo is a Vietnamese musician who specialized in traditional music. The instrument she is playing is called the đàn bầu. The đàn bầu is a single-stringed instrument whose pitch you change by pulling it with the bar on the end, which is made of buffalo horn. Vo is an incredibly cool person for a whole variety of reasons, not least of which is that it is a seriously big deal to play traditional music as a woman – it’s (now almost) entirely dominated by men. After she emigrated to the U.S., she collaborated with a number of groups, most notably Kronos Quartet (one of the major interpreters of Steve Reich’s music), and won an Emmy for her music in the documentary film, “Bolinao 52.” Vo is a a big fan of blending eastern and western music, and this interpretation of the Johnny Cash song is touched with genius. A hearty thanks to a friend and colleague who sent this to me.
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