janradder

It's an odd feeling to be standing in a crowd and waiting to see a band play when you realize that not only are you the oldest person there, but you're more than likely the only person there whose age is north of twenty-three. It's a little like being the dad who accompanies his son to his first concert. He stands around with kids less than half his age looking uncool and feeling out of place as he realizes that the youth of today have their own culture and behaviors completely separate from his.

That was me Monday night at the 7th Street Entry when I went to see Titus Andronicus. And that feeling only increased when the band took the stage and started playing their first song.

In case you've never heard Titus Andronicus, they sound a lot like Bruce Springsteen if he were born in 1985 and raised on a steady diet of hardcore punk and Henry Miller. They rage, they scream, they spew out sloppy chunks of melted asphalt ripped straight from the Garden State Parkway that they kick up as they barrel down the highway doing eighty and leaving long streaks of paint and metal each time they sideswipe the barriers along the median. At the Entry, the band's singer stood onstage wearing his heart not on his sleeve but on his chest in the form of a hand-made Black Flag T-shirt, and with the first chords and the first pounding drumbeats, they churned out a raging punk rock assault that stormed off the stage to shatter against the back walls of the club. Which is why as they played all I could think was who could not want to slam to this music?

Apparently, the answer was the kids around me. They stood anchored to one spot, staring at the floor and shaking their heads and like spastic rag dolls. Inexplicably, they'd stop one by one, even though the band was still playing, and stare at the musicians for a few moments before going into another seizure. Occasionally, someone would accidently knock his neighbor with a flying arm or head, and then move over a little so as not to do it again. I started to pogo and bump into the people next to me, and when I did, the kids around me gave me a look that said I'd crossed some sort of mutually agreed upon line. Apparently, accidentally nailing the guy behind you with your flailing head is okay but intentionally bumping into the people around you as you jump around is being a jackass.

So I listened to the band as I avoided the jerking limbs of the kid in front front of me, and I watched the audience around me. Each one stood apart from the rest, engulfed in his or her own personal moment, shaking and trashing to the music. It was as if every kid were wrapped in his or her own pod so that nothing else existed beyond its walls. Which, in a way I realized, is kind of how most people go through their lives nowadays.

We've got cell phones and iPods and laptops, and through them we supposedly connect into a larger world. Instead, we exist apart from one another, chatting on the phone as we ignore the cashier who rings up our purchases, listening to headphones to shut out the lives around us, reading news feeds, Facebook updates, and blogs within a virtual world while we ignore the one outside. Like the kids at the show, we dance alone in our cocoons, oblivious to the people around us unless one of them knocks into us and breaks our illusion of solitude.

It might come across as sounding like an old fart reminiscing about the old days when I say this, but so what: Shows were better when kids slam danced. And here's why -- when there was slam dancing, even if you weren't there in that pit, there was no way you could ignore the people around you. You helped pick up the kid next to you that some asshole had knocked over after you shoved the asshole back into the pit. You watched for the stage divers not only so they wouldn't accidently kick you in the head when they jumped but also so you could catch them before they hit the floor. You pogoed with the crowd, bouncing off your neighbors, feeling the sheer exhilaration and joy of being alive. Going to a show was a shared, communal experience, regardless of whether you knew a single person there, and for however long a band was on the stage, you became part of a larger world.

Maybe I'm wrong -- maybe the kids at the Titus Andronicus show did feel like they were connected to one another, and maybe just I don't get it because I'm not eighteen anymore -- but I don't think so. Then again, most generations think they had it better than the younger ones. Still, I can't help thinking our lives might be richer if there was a little more slam dancing in them, if only because it would force us look up from the floor and see the world around us for a moment. At least then we'd know for sure if we really were missing out on something or not.

Top 5 Favorite Toys

1.  Mego Superheroes
By far the toys I played with most during my childhood.  Most of them had lost legs, capes, boots, gloves, and even costumes long ago but I still loved them n spite of their pathetic state.  For whatever reason, almost all of the stories I created with them involved one of them dying and the rest of the superheroes trying to figure out which one of them was the murderer.

2.  U.S.S. Enterprise playset
Kirk's bridge chair was cool and the bridge furniture, as was the fact that you could use the playset as a carrying case for all your toys.  But, by far, the most amazing thing about this toy was the transporter -- strap any 8" doll into it, give it a spin, then press a button and watch it stop on a dime just like magic. Thirty years later, I can still remember the thrill of watching that transporter whirl.

3.  Steve Austin:  The Six Million Dollar Man
Push a button on the back and you could crank his bionic arm over his head.  Look through the back of his head and you could gaze through Steve Austin's bionic eye.  Roll the skin on his bionic arm back and you revealed all the bionic chips (that you could remove and lose moments later!).  And he could kick Mod Hair Ken's sorry ass in a heartbeat.

4.  Mod Hair Ken
With his hair sticking straight up in the air, how could he not be a loser?  Technically he was my sister's doll, but I probably playd with him just as much as she did.  In the Ken universe my sister and I created, Mod Hair Ken was a polygamist who kept a harem of Barbies at his beck and call (he later tried unsuccessfully to bring Princess Lea and Dorothy Hamill into his fold).  Ken routinely had coniption fits in which he announce he was about to die, then  dramatically call out  the name of  Connecticut's governor, Ella Grasso.  When my sister got Superstar Ken for Christmas, she promised that he was going to be a good Ken.  That lasted all of one day when Superstar Ken discovered he was Mod Hair Ken's idiot son.

5.  Hugo, Man of a Thousand Faces
I didn't discover this toy until I was in high school when my father's then wife brought a bunch of her old childhood toys to his house.  Seeing this freakish bald guy, I swiped him, and my friend and I made him a star of our dumb movies (we even wrote a song about him).   With the camera rolling, we squashed Hugo's head, subjected him to alien death rays, played the drums with him, threw him from one end of the basement to the other, and even (much to haddayr 's disgust) licked his head.  If you want, you too can play Hugo.  

Top 5 Kid's Show Theme Songs:

For me, these are the songs that immediately transport me back to Saturday mornings when school was just a rumor and weekday afternoons when homework may have beckoned but would instead languish forgotten in my backpack. Here they are, in no particular order.

1. Scooby Doo: Where Are You?
From the opening sound of screeching bats and that groovy drum fill, to the bubblegum vocals and a rhythm track lifted straight from "In the Midnight Hour," there's not another cartoon intro that says to me Crappy-early-seventies-animation better (and I mean that in a good way).

2. The Adventures of Fat Albert
Being one of the last cartoons of the morning, this was perhaps the one I looked forward to most if only because of this song (and Russell putting down Rudy). With that bouncing beat, that "Hey, Hey, Hey!" and that funky organ, I was hooked from the first note. The "Nah-nah-nah's" at the end were to me like a seven-year-old's "Hey Jude." Go ahead -- try not to sing along.

3. The Lone Ranger
The William Tell Overture? Nah -- it's the Lone Ranger! "A fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust, and a hearty 'Hiyo Silver!'-- the Lone Ranger." Ah, my pulse still quickens whenever I hear those horns.

4. Batman
How many kids haven't run around singing the Batman song? It's iconic -- even the Who and the Jam both covered it. In many ways, the actual show was almost a letdown after the opening credits, but then how could anyone actually live up to the excitement generated by a Peter Gunn-like theme whose only lyrics were "Batman" sung over and over? (And for those who may not know, the song's composer, Neil Hefti, also the theme song for The Odd Couple.)

5. Land of the Lost
It's hard to choose one favorite out of all of Sid and Marty Krofft's shows, but this would have to be the one(sorry Bugaloos and H.R. Pufnstuf). I mean, it's got a banjo, for crying out loud, and to paraphrase Steve Martin -- how can you not be happy when you hear a banjo?

So -- what are your favorites?

Yesterday the doctor gave me an albuterol inhaler (the same kind that you would use if you had asthma) because he heard a wheezing in my chest when I coughed. Today I realized it has the same after-affects as inhaling nitrous oxide -- a headache and an odd sensation in my chest -- without any of the fun aspects of nitrous.

A few weeks ago, we noticed a mouse just outside our house, running around our deck as we ate dinner on it. Over the next few days, the mouse would return, more than likely scrounging whatever food the boys dropped. Yesterday, we found the mouse inside our house (I'm assuming it's the same one). It's run up and down the basement stairs and into the guest room. This morning, I heard a scuffling sound in the kitchen and when I looked to see what it was, it was the mouse, squeezing underneath our stove. Where was the cat? About a foot or two away -- calmly, yet somewhat disinterestedly, watching the mouse.

Today our house has experienced:

One venetian blind that in half when I attempted to raise it;

Half a six-pack of beer that broke on our front steps when haddayr accidently dropped it;

And the glass dome of an overhead light that fell to the floor where it shattered into nearly ten-thousand tiny shards after the boys accidently hit it with a beach ball they'd thrown into the air.

This follows two other venetian blinds that met similar fates to today's just a few days ago. And the roof on the porch leaks. Again. At this rate I predict our house will be nothing but a tottering two-by-four frame filed with discarded furnishings and glass by the end of next month.

--On the way out we rode over Highway 55, crossing on the bike and pedestrian bridge per Arie and Éiden's request. "The bridge!!" they shouted in unison as I huffed and puffed, pulling them up the steep incline. "Yes," I managed to squeak out. "The bridge."

--Keeping with the bridge theme, we rode to the Stone Arch Bridge. "The Bridge Over The Mississippi River!" Éiden shouted, as he nearly always does when we cross the Mississippi (I still find it remarkable that my kids think of the mythic Mississippi River as being a regular part of their world).

--Halfway across the bridge we were nearly brought to a standstill by nearly a thousand Mississippi Lions. I'm not sure who they are or what they do except wear white T-shirts that loudly proclaim their names and blindly wander through the active bike path without once looking to see if there was a bike coming or not (which there was, and quite a few at that).

--On the other side, after making it through the gauntlet of Lions, we were forced to turn around by the profusion of cobblestone streets and the overpowering smell of garbage. On the way back, having to once more make our way through the Leonine pedestrians, I nearly took one of them out when, with her back to us, she stepped directly into our path at the last second. Lucky for her, I'd expected it to happen.

--Riding along the West River Parkway, a driver yelled at me to get on the bike trail (which was more pock marked and potholed than the road) mere seconds after we both passed a sign depicting a bike and car side-by-side accompanying the words, "SHARE THE ROAD."

--Making our way back over the bridge over Highway 55, I observed that while dieting and exercise may help one lose weight, exercising on a nearly empty stomach makes one's stomach feel that much emptier.

--Back on the street, a few blocks from our house, a Minneapolis school bus almost took the three of us out when he pulled the patented Minneapolis move, "I-may-be-parked-on-the-side-of-the-street-but-I'm-still-on-the-street-so-I'm-pulling-out-without-looking-just-like-I've-got-the-right-of-way." Luckily for us, he looked at the last minute, otherwise I wouldn't be writing this now.

I had spent the morning and a good part of the afternoon cooking, repairing steps and setting up tables and chairs in my soon-to-be in-laws back yard on Long Island. I was wearing a pair of old filthy shorts and a similarly filthy T-shirt. Both of them were covered in equal amounts of dirt, sweat and food splatters. The guests had begun to arrive half an hour earlier and I'd greeted them brightly in my decidedly non-formal attire.

"Aren't you the one getting married?" nearly all of them had asked, looking at my outfit.

"Yes," I'd said brightly and with a smile. "I am!"

About twenty minutes before the ceremony was to start, I was still wearing my grimy work clothes when my mom grabbed me by the arm, led me to a room where my rented tux was hanging, and told me to get changed.

"If you don't, the wedding's going to start and you're still going to be wearing those ratty things," she said.

I stood at the doorway, staring at the tuxedo, took a deep breath, and changed. Though I hadn't felt the least bit nervous before, when I changed clothes I was suddenly overcome with horrible, gut-wrenching fear.

I pulled on the jacket, tied my shoes, and adjusted my tie in the mirror. Then I stepped out into the hallway where my mother was waiting to pin a boutoniére to my collar. There is a picture of me, taken as she did so, where I look sort of like Elvis Presley. I'm standing with my arms hanging back a little at my sides while my legs are spread slightly apart, stiffly. My head is turned to the right a little and looking down, sort of like I've grabbed the microphone and pulled it in close, ready to croon while the girls scream and faint. I didn't feel like Elvis when that picture was taken, though. Instead, I was absolutely terrified.

In spite of the terror, however, I walked out of the house into the backyard filled with gardens of flowers just about to bloom and joined haddayr at the top of the stairs we'd spent a week repairing. Then the music started and walked down them to a gazebo where we were married.

Though stepping into those clothes and out into the backyard was one of the most terrifying things I'd ever done in my life to that point, it's still one of the best decisions I've ever made.

It was a good show, though they started out a little flat on the first few songs, which was understandable in that this was the last show on the tour (and Exene was recently diagnosed with MS, which might have had something to do with the energy level as well). By about the fifth song, however, they found their groove, as did the crowd, and a slam pit opened up in front of the stage. I jumped in, bouncing off the people around me and getting shoved by the people around me until I had to take a break and get some water from the bar

Near the end of the show, during the first encore, some girl behind me on the edge of the pit literally started punching me in the ass. I have no idea why -- she and her friend weren't slamming, but they were kind of violently shoving any of us who got near them.

A few minutes later, my glasses flew off my face and to the floor. I backed up out of the pit to see if they were anywhere nearby, and the girl who'd been punching my ass started shoving me from behind again. I told her to quit shoving me, that I'd lost my glasses, and shockingly, she stooped down and tried to help me look for them. Soon, a bunch of other people asked what I'd lost and started to help me look for them as well. Even when I said to forget about it, that they were more than likely smashed to bits on the floor a group of people continued to search the floor with the lights form their cell phones, and a few minutes later, one of them handed me my mangled, lensless frames. I'm still amazed at their kindness in looked for them.

Left without my eyes for the two encores but with my now found frames, I jumped back into the pit for the last few songs, then wondered if I was going to have to call a cab to get home. After the band left the stage for the last time and the crowd cleared out, I searched around the now empty floor to see if my lenses might be anywhere around. And they were! Up near the stage, just lying there with only a few scratches.

So I've got my glasses back, though I do need to get them replaced now, and I've got a pair of filthy, beer-scented shoes to go with them. I'm tired from being up late and having to get the boys to school early, and my body is pretty sore, but I'm pretty happy too.