The Last 40 Days and 40 Nights

The last 40 days and 40 nights

While a flood the likes of which the world has never seen will not be mentioned below, at some point animals and a boat do. Two for three I guess.

Starting off in Birmingham the second week of April, I was at my home club doing a cycle of shows anddrinking with various people of questionable morals. “Questionable morals” of course being a term I use in jest. In fact, the majority of the so-called ‘deviants’ I end up hanging out with, in any city, are actually much better people than those that deem them as such. And yet I laugh to myself as they too use this term as a means of self-description, and wear it quite proudly as a statement of mockery aimed at the social climate within which they are stuck… and I too. I will digress for a moment to clarify that I in no way intend to imply that such a social climate as aforementioned was ever produced in the last 40 days… though the popularity of the story eluded to in the title most definitively has something to do with it.

We sit at a moment in time I find awe inspiring. Not because of the moment itself, but rather because of the blatant obliviousness of it that I see in the faces of others everyday. I would almost dare to say that at no such time since mastodons were etched in stalactite furnished rooms have we collectively been so ignorant. We are having debates over words in the English language. Which I may need to remind you is but one of many languages currently being spoken throughout the world; but I guess the Mandarin equivalent for “cunt” is out of sight / out of mind. (That is of course if there is one that would translate with the same bravado). We have no more concern over the Mandarin equivalent for “cunt” today then we had for knowing that Mandarin was one of the two mainland languages of China in the 1950s… when we just called all of it either Chinese or “that ching chang language the celestials speak.” Or was “Orientals” the big term used in the 1950s for anyone from Southeast Asia? Maybe I should ask one of the senior citizens in the house of representatives what they called them back then… that’s where they (and roughly half the vocal population of the U.S.) is attempting to take us by the way.. in case you’re still sleeping. The 1950s. You may have heard an old man call it the “good ole days” while giving a suspicious eye to a person of different melanin content then himself. (Pretty sure the term they used for those guys back then was either Nigger or Negro…. Depending of course whether they were addressing him directly or stenciling it on a water fountain).

Don’t get me wrong; the 50’s were a grand ole time if your only introduction to them consists of Leave it Beaver. Never mind the fact that people still punched their wives, sole, murdered, raped, and every other atrocity… they had the decency not to talk about it. And as we all know, the second you talk about something horrible like that an angel is kicked off his comfy cloud chair and cast out of heaven to summon your soul to the devil… who in case you were wondering loves American Idol just as much as you do. 

So what have we learned from our ever-so-moral previous generations of the 1950s again? If something ‘unspeakable’ happens… it should, by nature, be treated as such.

Fast forward to my forgetting this rule on April 18th in Atlanta. The VA tech shootings were fresh on the news, completely drowning out all the Anna Nicole horseshit and Don Imus admitting that he has slaves on his ranch or whatever the fuck it was he said that was filling a slow news day that shouldn’t have been. (by slow news day I am of course admitting the fact that the whole war thing isn’t important to anyone, much like the rest of world politics you can only read about in English from BBC.com)

So a celestial/oriental/Korean/asian-american/shitbag (pick the term that makes you fuzzy inside) shot a bunch of people… a tragedy indeed. I mean I didn’t now any of those people, so I base this solely on the 24 hours coverage and the testimonials therein. One of them could have been a child rapist, but really… what are the odds. Anyway, like I said it was and had been all of over every news channel.. everyone in one way or another had heard of it. I had show. I brought it up. Not making the comments I made above (which I believe you can find in similar vein though much more fleshed out in a bit by Doug Stanhope regarding 9/11… I could be mixing it up with something else – doesn’t matter). I instead was poking fun at the ridiculous way those around me (while in B’ham) had been discussing this event with me. It was less about the shooting and more about the fact that I have some friends and acquaintances who cared more about the caliber of gun used than the people who had died. That’s a real fact, and point I believe I made quite entertaining if not funny. It was moderately received by about the sixth line of so, once people realized I wasn’t going to stop due to there horrified silence. WTF was the initial silence about? They were waiting to see if any angels showed up soul shopping. But at least they were waiting it out. 

Unlike the following Tuesday (in the Bahamas), where a small group of people old enough to have been pushed out the igloo and onto the tundra to quietly shuffle off long ago stormed out b/c of the following phrase “… is that a too far… well… I guess we’ll forgo the Virginia Tech material….” That of course got a bigger groan than the previous, but that was the point. The fact that they left doesn’t bother me… that they emphatically told the manager of the club how unfunny I was because of it I found disheartening. I almost thought, for a moment, that we agreed to disagree, they got scared as to what may be said next and quietly ’shuffled off.” As it turned out they wanted that particular topic to be left to Beaver… Anna Nicole being a whore and something about lacrosse players being rapists they were fine with however. (The latter being the only of the two actually slanderous… but a reverend said it so it’s ok I think). 
“Too Soon” I believe is the old comedy saying. Which if you haven’t looked into it really means: “We have sympathy, compassion, and self invoked sense of moral duty to consider this topic sacred right now… please wait a couple months until we’ve forgotten all of that part.” 

What I find to be sad in all of this is not my split seconds of irritation followed by laughter in regards to occurrences like these… it is what I know about those people just by that action. They did not remove themselves from the situation and move on (or shuffle on as I would prefer) but they instead held that anger and disgust they felt for possibly the duration of their vacation. I just hope no one delivered a newspaper to their hotel room door without calling for a suicide watch first.

[--quick side note, the rest of my two weeks there were quite enjoyable. I co-hosted some pilot for a reality show about beauty queens the first week during the day at Peter Nygard's house (I'll get some pics up –that place is fucking crazy); and the second week I drank with some old and new friends on the island and then took a cigarette boat out to a private island stood next to a guy hand feeding wild sharks. That's the short of it anyway. Back to the sarcasm:]

So in closing to this nearly 1500 words of ranting I would like to offer a little advice to those that wish to bring back the 1950s. First be prepared for the return of the 1960s. If you think
Woodstock was “out of control” try clamping down the lid of ignorance and censorship for a decade or two with the pharmaceuticals we have at hand now. Second, if you are really that afraid of words shut off the television, the radio, burn the books and periodicals, disconnect the Internet, and never leave your house. Just sit at home and play scrabble with the kids… right up until one of them figures out what the squiggles on the blocks are all about and manages to line up a C a U an N and a T. Then kill him and never talk about it.

God Bless.