|
| think I'm straightening out
think I'm finding my way
it's like I'm done with loud
done living like a stray
the sun can shine tonight
the seas can rise tonight
and I'll be fine
it's time | | |
| So I'm talking to a friend of mine today, and we get onto the topic of
martinis. Agreed on two things -- Cosmopolitans are Kool-Aid with a
kick. A proper martini, dry vermouth and gin stirred not shaken with an
olive at the bottom if requested, is a damn sexy drink. A classic drink.
A
good martini makes me wish for nightclubs that people dress up to go
to, you know? Glittering cocktail gowns next to sharp suits, a check
for your hat because you wear a hat because Kennedy hasn't killed it
yet, oak tables amidst honestly comfortable chairs. Actual instruments
playing by a dance floor scattered with people who know how to dance,
and in the black background cigarettes are flicking at trays and
business cards are sliding back and forth.
Nothing like
nightclubs today. Loud, uncomfortable, overbearing places designed
exclusively to get you so drunk on the way to the dance floor that you
forget about the milling crowds watching, assessing dancers like
they're cars or horses, wondering which one they're gonna take home
tonight. Bullshit with a five-dollar cover charge. Clubs these days are
peddling the miasma of plastic socialites under a gloss of LA-valley
fakery that's as loud as the creases in a cougar's leathery cleavage.
Warren
Ellis once talked about British talk shows in the '60s and '70s, where
people smoked and drank and held forth intelligently and entertainingly
on meaningful stuff. That's the shit I want to see in my clubs. You
know. Maturity. Adulthood. Where'd that go, anyway? What did MTV do to
us?
Closest place Winnipeg has to the kind of joint I'm talking
about is Rae and Jerry's Steakhouse, by Polo. It's a classic place,
hasn't changed at all from the Eisenhower years. You can walk in there,
kick back in a red leather armchair, and almost see the ghosts of
glittering cocktail gowns and suits from Savile Row sliding by amidst
the tables.
But then, it's a steakhouse upholstered in leather,
and we're all too informed and modern and conscious and twee for that
kind of joint. So let's show up to a place that's so loud we can't
talk, and so drunk we can't dance, eh?
What did MTV do to us? | | |
| As ever, a snapshot of what I'm doing on the Internets. Today, it's articles on American cultural decline and resurgence, which we still persist on calling "weird news". As if it's somewhere distant, out on the fringes, and somehow not indicative of where the continent is going.
Mahalo.
_ J
"No E-Mail Fridays"
Company sets out to do away with our "crackberry corporate culture" (nice alliteration, there) by banning e-mailing on Fridays. Hear, hear; nothing can replace personal contact for communication. We can only give it a walker and a giant announcer's horn.
"Showdown Over Unrest In Schools"
Philadelphia schoolteachers are being beaten and abused by their students. And they're taking a stand. Good; maybe if we pay attention, we can stop places like Philly and L.A. from turning into another Mogadishu.
"Mother Gives Birth On Sidewalk, Leaves Baby For Dead"
Headline says it all.
"Little Girls Carried Away On A Pink Wave Of Princess Products"
There's a growing trend in the States of little girls (with very well-to-do mommies) attending Disney-themed "princess parties", where they get all dolled up for tea in the afternoon. Dovetails weirdly with an article I read about D.C.-area kids' birthdays a while back; apparently, if you didn't have at least two or three "attractions" -- clowns, jugglers, magicians -- you weren't doing your patriotic duty as an American citizen, and were frowned upon by your neighbours. Decadent kids' parties as sign of cultural decline, perhaps? (And what is with the alliteration, today?)
"Bartenders' Best Pickup Advice"
Shut up, it's useful. ;) | | |
| Daedalus fashions an accidental heaven;
mechanical stars in a clockwork sky that
tick time past the day Icarus died.
The old man's beard tilts level
with heaven, halogen starlight aglow,
and he watches his moon move on
hollow heart's rails to a
place he'd rather not know.
To a hole he forgot in the
sky. A click--
tick--
and his clockwork sky clunks apart;
foliate cogs and gears, the heart of what
Daedalus would rather not know is
shown. The daylight where Icarus
went.
An accidental heaven, beyond all he's
wrought. A rent.
Halogen starlight fades on the old man's
beard, held level into his dawn. | | |
|
