December 21, 2006
Today's Theme Song
DEVO, "Girl U Want"
I Was a Teenage Spud Boy
The songs I'm posting these days say much more than I can squeeze out right now, and I didn't really plan on saying much here, but I was really happy to dig up this rocking ditty by Devo from their 1980 record Freedom of Choice.
This goes to show how much of a geek, dork, nerd, and four-eyed pencil-neck dweeb I am, among other things. My sister can attest to the fact that I got stupid on Devo back in high school. (I even made my own dorko Devo hat out of construction paper. HA HA! Go ahead, laugh, fucko! Laugh!)
So be it: This track rocks! Soundgarden covered it, but I think the original is tougher than that.
I mean, these guys were from Akron, Ohio, and they rocked. That gave me hope, coming from the middle of nowhere, Texas. It was great to be a teenager clued into Devo's cruelly ironic, off-kilter, "weird for the sake of being weird," space-boy garage RAWK-n-ROLL...or at least, such was my consolation for never having a girlfriend, to put it nicely.
So what! Songs like "Through Being Cool" gave me anti-anthems to throw at the "pinko normals," as my adolescent bogus-religion, the Church of the SubGenius, derisively called them. I didn't have to be one of the "in crowd" or even try to act like I fit in, because Devo, punk rock, and obscure lit were my inspiration through the pimply years, the perfect vehicle for scaring the hell out of the easily scared and confusing the simple of mind.
(The video nicely captures my own secret nerdy history of pretending to rock-stardom. Of course, I would have loved to rock the house to a crowd of adoring, slightly psychotic and/or sedated female fans! And yes, I had NO rhythm to speak of! To rock the shit like Devo was my dream...)
Tomorrow, I will pull out their very first album, an ode to a century run aground on inhuman de-evolution, retrogressive war-mongering, and backwards self-righteousness. (Still relevant, no?) I will crank "Uncontrollable Urge" beyond respectable levels. ("YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH!") And I will run off into the sunrise like a jumping-jack firework.
Try and stop me.
POST SCRIPT
"She Burp"
(...from a private journal...)
She burps, immaculately, out loud.
I don't think she notices, how every time it happens I stop and stare. Does she see how in awe I am of her?
It never occurred to me growing up to burp in front of my grandparents. Surely, I heard all manner of bodily sounds from Grandma, especially in the dead of night.
But to this day, I am so reserved about gas noise. Even now, I burp under my breath or into my mouth. Guarding of gastric privacy, I bite my stomach's tongue.
But not her. She burps without fear, without care. I want to laugh, I want to kiss her, I want to write poetry to her, but does she notice my tiny bit of adulation at such a passing fancy?
Her burping does indeed inspire a haiku or two that I hide like my broken wind:
try burping like so
but like a winter-iced tongue
I cannot match her
Her burps remind me of her love cries, when she digests not food but me.
This is her "shit-house" style, as she calls it. When it comes to mind, I think of those sweatpants she wears with "METAL UP YOUR ASS" lightning-bolted to the butt. I tell her that shit-house is hot, because it is.
But I don't tell her that her burps are hotter, icing on the shit-house cake.
To me, her gas, sass, and sweat-panted ass symbolize just about everything that made me bang my head like a Metallica fan for her, secretly digging her shit-house symphonies. To me, she is like a rock star in a sombrero, and she doesn't even know it. Or does she?
Posted by Benjamin at December 21, 2006 12:21 AM
Comments