Eric saves the blog

I am presently in the midst of revising (FTYPAH: "studying") for exams, so blogging has fallen way down the priority list -- still above housecleaning but well below watching "I'd Do Anything" (a). So, I was all set to let the blog go into its usual other-things-are-happening languishing state, but now Eric has given me something to post.

Here are a few videos from a recent performance of the Secondhand Ska Kings at Minneapolis' Fine Line. It's a group of people in their 30s pretending they are still in college. But they are betrayed by the fact that they are in tune:


On this one you get to hear funky, funky Eric sing. An interesting thing to note is that Eric is always like this. Watch his mannerisms and this is pretty much how he acts all the time. No, really. Go to his house and you'll see him acting like this while he's watching TV, making food, etc. Actually, don't go to his house. His wife would not appreciate my sending a load of people over to visit.


Apparently, the fellas have taken on Markéta Irglová. What's with the chick on keyboards? Who is that? Do I know her?

One of my favourite things about Secondhand Ska Kings is that I know most of the members. Eric has been my best friend for 20 years; Matt (the guitarist who hides to the left of the screen) used to live next door to me in Ballard Hall (b); Bryce (the trumpet player) used to live across the hall from me and Matt; Scott (the other trombone player and singer on two of the songs) is the guy who always riles me up by suggesting that Welsh is really Klingon. I am hoping that I do, in fact, know the female keyboardist and that I have shagged her.


(a) Yes, I realise that every time I admit to watching these shows I fall a little further in the eyes of Chris and Jenny. By now they almost certainly regret ever having let me stay in their home.

(b) Note that this is an all-male residence hall. Trust me, it's even worse than it sounds.

Oh, we were cool

A quote from me, age 12:

"Yeah, but I liked Metallica better when Jimi Hendrix was their lead guitarist."

I can't ever decide which I like more about that quote: that Eric bought it; or that I didn't know I was totally full of shit in saying it.

Random memory of a really surreal thing that didn't seem all that surreal at the time

Here's an actual thing that happened in my life: Some 15 years and six months ago, Eric and I were in the Dominican Republic, wearing wool marching band uniforms, and several hundred people were shouting, "guapo," at Eric's brother. That's the sort of thing you wouldn't think I'd forget, but I had until just now.

Is America ready for the Secondhand Ska Kings?

The other day I saw Suggs advertising fish fingers ("fish sticks" for those of you playing along at home) on television, which elicited a howling response from myself and a sort of roll of the eyes from the child bride. She did this because she knew that no matter what she did, I was going to insist on telling her who Suggs was.

My head is a Rwandan minefield of useless pop culture references -- it is almost impossible to hold a two-minute conversation with me without my working in a joke about some person or band you've never heard of. I don't really have a good reason for doing this. When you think about it, it's a stupid way to hold a conversation. What's the point of a wacky reference to Phyllis Diller (a) if it is no more relevant to the listener than a reference to Valerie Bell (b)? But I can't help myself.

"Dude! Suggs!" I shouted, when I first saw the 2 Tone icon on screen.

After a bit of giggling to myself in such a way as to convey that I was thoroughly amused, but not so thoroughly that I would refuse to field questions about the source of my amusement, I decided that perhaps my wife hadn't heard me, despite her sitting three feet from me.

"I can't believe Suggs is shilling fish fingers," I said, being sure to annunciate.

The child bride knows that I pride myself on retaining useless crap information and I live to share it with other people. After a long pause and an exasperated sigh, she asked: "Who's Suggs?"

"Cultural icon," I said, happily, knowingly. "I suppose you could blame him for Gwen Stefani."

And that's pretty much ska in a nutshell, isn't it? Suggs and Madness took the Jamaican sound, Anglicised it, made it poppy and sold a load of records in the UK. The 2 Tone sound carried over to the United States a few years later and fuelled the early 90s ska revival that gave us No Doubt.

Now Suggs is selling fish fingers and Stefani is No. 4 on my List Of Women I'd Like To Keep In A Shed For Personal Use. Funny how life works.

But the point of this post is that sound: ska. These days it is all too often the sound of concrete basements and cheap beer; the sound of Welsh-language activists who are too untalented to master or develop their own folk music. But occasionally it will show up in an Amy Winehouse or Lily Allen cover and I'll grow all wistful.

Whereas interest in ska had ebbed elsewhere by the late 90s, it was the sound de rigeur of Midwestern college bands. It was easy to play and easy to dance to. The quirky/catchy Midwestern brand of 2 Tone was the soundtrack to my Moorhead years. And whereas I suggest that most modern purveyors of ska are crap, the ska I was listening to in those days was great. It was great because everything is great when it's in the past and because most of my friends were in ska bands. And as we all know, people who are in bands are cool; if you have friends who are in bands, you, too, are cool. So, I was great. Everything was great in Moorhead and I never wanted to leave.

Not really. But the music was good. Long-time friends of the blog will remember my tome to 3 Minute Hero, one of the bands of the time.

Anyway, a few years ago, guys from 3 Minute Hero and Suspect Bill and The Smoking Jackets decided to relive the good old days, when they could jump around on stage all night and not wake up the next morning with aching backs. They formed Secondhand Ska Kings and started playing gigs mostly to their ever-suffering girlfriends and wives.

Things have moved on a bit and these days they occasionally play to crowds of people with whom they have more than one degree of separation. Sometimes these people even give them money to play. As evidence of this big-time success, the band has released an album, Ale to the Kings (iTunes), and I think you should buy it. Here's why:

1) The music is actually good. What they've done for this album is something that's a bit different from what a lot of ska bands do -- they've practiced. You can spot this in the lack of chipped notes.
2) Four of the guys in this band have bought me beer. If you buy this album, they will probably buy me beer again.
3) The guitarist, Matt, once nursed me back to health when I got the flu. If you buy this album, you will be supporting the idea of my being alive. If you are one of my ex-girlfriends, you should buy the album anyway.
4) Trombonist Eric has been my best friend for almost 20 years, is a frequent commenter on my blog, and is the guy that everyone loved in the documentary about me. If you buy this album, you get to hear him implore a woman to "take that, take that skirt off."
5) The cover art is cool.

For the low-low price of $9.99 (less than the cost of a pint in many London pubs), you get 44 minutes of the good-time sound that was in part popularised by a man who now sells fish fingers.

Perhaps one day a strangely impossible-not-to-look-at beautiful girl will be inspired by the Secondhand Ska Kings and will produce music that is at once brilliant and insufferable. It's not that far off an idea. Matt's first band, Ten Cent Fun, is mentioned in the liner notes of one of No Doubt's first albums.

(a) Female stand-up comic whose career peaked in the late 1960s and early 1970s
(b) Girl I had a crush on in kindergarten.

Precious moments

I added a link to it a few days ago, but I want to draw your attention to my favourite blog at the moment: Overheard in Minneapolis.

It's actually a collection of things overheard in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area, but that probably wouldn't have as nice a ring to it.

The quote that had me laughing this morning was this one, which I imagine is the sort of thing that Eric's wife, Kristin, would say if she had children.

Happy birthday Eric

Being away from the internets this past week meant I didn't get a chance to wish Eric a happy birthday.

Actually, that turns out to be pretty convenient -- it is much easier to with Eric a belated happy birthday than sending good wishes on the day. Because I'm not entirely certain when his birthday is. After 19 years of friendship, I am able to state with unsteady confidence that his birthday falls somewhere between 17 July and 21 July.

That four-day window of possibility is better than I can claim for Paul, who I've known almost as long. I think Paul's birthday falls on 12 October but I could be off by as many as 15 days.

They're the posture posse

Here's a clip I found on YouTube that's pretty much for Eric exclusively. Do they still teach posture in schools? I remember Mrs. Turner constantly yelling at me to keep my feet on the floor.

Reminder

For those of you living in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area, remember that the mighty 3 Minute Hero will be performing tonight (Friday) at Bunkers and Saturday at Fine Line. If you don't go see their show the terrorists win.

I say spider, you say monkey

Sometimes the world is not fair. We all know that, but sometimes it is more glaringly obvious. Sometimes the unfairness of this life looks you square in the eye and doesn't even flinch when it stabs you in the gut.

Such is the case that 3 Minute Hero never became famous.

They were good. I mean really, really good. Originally formed as yet another ska band, their horn section was just too powerful for such staid musical confines. In its prime (1997-2000), the horn section was fronted by two trombones -- instruments that, when played right, produce a brutal sound; a sound that punches and leaves you standing dumb like Peter Manfredo Jr. against Joe Calzaghe. This was supported by trumpet and sax and keys that swirled around the jabs and pulled you in. The whole thing fell together so perfectly that you found yourself not really hearing the different instruments, just this immense, immense sound. It was a sound that you could feel in your chest, a sound that felt too large for your head.

Fuelling the immensity was the sort of if-Animal-were-real-and-angry-and-100-feet-tall drumming you would expect from a guy who taught himself to play by listening to Kiss records. Atop it all was a larger-than-life frontman who stood as ringmaster, wailing and bellowing through the songs.

Obviously, with such a dynamic sound they were difficult to categorize. They were sort of a cross between stadium rock, Barenaked Ladies, Mighty Mighty Bosstones (circa Let's Face It), Parliament, and the first time a girl let you put your hand up her shirt. The lyrics were rapid-fire funny and brilliant, the music was incredible, and their shows were explosive in energy. They remain my favourite band of all time.

OK, true, I went to high school with three of the band members, one of whom has been my best friend for 19 years*, and I wrote the lyrics to one of their songs. I am biased. Even in the face of this they were good. In my mind, they had everything they needed to be big and I very seriously believed that one day everything would drop into gear and they would be touring around the world.

That never happened, of course. They played in bars in forgettable towns in forgettable states, bounded across North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin in an old school bus that they had won in a battle of the bands competition, until growing up became inevitable. The band split in 2000 and the members became husbands, fathers, home owners, teachers. A few of them joined other bands and achieved equal levels of success (most notably Jack Brass Band, where the two-trombones-kicking-your-ass-with-sound format was again used), but the 3MH experience remains wholly unique in my eyes.

The story of 3 Minute Hero is an almost bittersweet tale; evidence that incredible talent can exist and go unnoticed. It forces you to realise that there are authors more brilliant than Shakespeare who will never be published, songs being sung that would fill your soul but that you will never hear. It's unfair.

But there is hope: They're back, bitches!

Well at least for two performances. One will be in St. Peter, Minn., which became a sort of spiritual home for the band, and the other will be at Minneapolis' Fine Line. Their meteoric rise to fame will still probably never occur but at least a few more people will get a chance to finally hear the greatest band they never knew existed.

3 Minute Hero's Fine Line show is June 9, so you can expect to see me going on about this for a while. I am very serious that when I got the e-mail from Eric today I spent about half an hour trying to figure out if it would be at all possible for me to fly back to the U.S. to see the show (sadly, ignoring the $1,500 cost of a flight, I still have exams at that time).

There are a goodly number of Upper Midwesterners who read this blog, though, and I would encourage them to make the trip. No, really. This is a band worth driving several hours to see. Tickets are only $11, so you should have some extra money to buy Eric a beer.

*19 years, Eric. We are old.

Let's all laugh at Eric's dog

As the three regular readers of this blog will already know, my best friend, Eric, has a proud tradition of sending me pictures of his dog. And I have a proud tradition of making fun of him for doing so.

Now he's sent me a picture of Bear looking like this. She is biggest geek in all of dogdom. OK, chwarae teg*, I may be partially to blame for her already having been a bit awkward in the dog hierarchy; I taught her Welsh. But this satellite dish is doing her no favours. Bear will never get asked to the dog prom now.

The more amusing picture, however, is this one, where Bear's body is missing. If I weren't so incredibly lazy, I would Photoshop that picture to make it appear that her head has been mounted above some rich chap's fireplace, next to a rhino. As is, the picture has a certain Salvador Dali quality to it. All it needs now is a naked woman, melting in the distance.

(22:52) UPDATE: Weirdo has just sent me this picture that brilliantly interprets the above-mentioned Photoshop (the weird deer picture is what sells it). I'm glad to see that, like me, she's really working hard to earn her university degree.

*"Fair enough" in Welsh

The things that grownups do

For those of you following my life as if it were some ultra-important epic novel, you'll remember that Eric has been known to send me pictures of his dog.

On my fridge, I have a Christmas card from him featuring him and his wife in matching outfits*, standing with the aforementioned dog in front of their fireplace. The card says: "Merry Christmas. Love, Eric, Kristin and Bear." Apart from wondering how Eric managed top billing on the card, the thing that stands out to me is that Bear, the dog, wanted me to have a merry Christmas. How do they know that?

I have read that a dog can forget about you in as little as 10 hours. If I ever meant anything to that dog, she is soooo over me by now. In a way, it was very cruel for the Johnsons to send me a picture of a creature that never thinks about me. Why not just send me a picture of Sarah McDaniels, you heartless bastards!

I thought it was just Eric who did this sort of thing -- that some kind of domesticity overload had pushed him over the edge -- and that all my other friends were fine. I was wrong.

This is a picture of Paul's kitchen. As you can see, he and his wife live in a furniture showroom. Actually, that's probably not too far off. The lovely and talented Mrs. Kopesky is a medical doctor, and Paul is presently earning his PhD. This means of course, that no one ever has the time to actually use this kitchen. That's why it's so clean.

But I am still concerned that Paul would send me pictures of his remodelled kitchen, along with a description of how complicated it was to use glass tile for the kitchen backsplash. This sentence drew my attention particularly: "It was kind of a challenge to cut (you can't score and break like regular ceramic) and also to grout without scratching it, but we figured it out in the end."

That bit in the parentheses seems to assume I know what the hell he's talking about. Score and break? The who and the what now? I know nothing of home-improvement projects, seeing as how I've never owned a home. Thanks for twisting the knife, Paul. Why don't you just send me a picture of Sarah McDaniels in a house that isn't mine?

Paul sent a few other pictures of his place, and he appears to have done well for himself. There is not one bit of pity furniture. Pity furniture is the stuff that your friends give you because you are pathetic and they can't be arsed to throw it away. The couch, barbecue grill, and lamps that Paul gave me when we lived in San Diego were pity furniture. The television that the child bride and I spent the holidays staring at was a pity appliance from someone at her church (on a side note: I forgot to mention that the child bride and I were recipients of a Christmas hamper from her church. We didn't ask for it, it just showed up. Her church decided that we are so pathetic we need free food. As owners of a television, high-speed Internet access and a mobile phone, we felt a little guilty but we accepted it because, uhm, we don't have any actual money. The hamper was a strange hodgepodge of foodstuffs. There was a 9-pound turkey and apples and clementines, but there were also three packets of McVitie's Chocolate Digestives. The child bride decided that we should set some of it aside for food storage, so when the End Times come we'll be serving Kirk Cameron rice pudding and beans). The computer bits that Jenny gave me were pity computer bits. Without pity items, the child bride and I would own little more than a duvet, several CDs and six towels.

The picture that amuses me most is the one that Paul sent of his living room. As you can see, no one uses that either. And in some kind of taunt/challenge, they have furnished the room with lamps that I would almost certainly drunkenly stumble into and break if I were to visit. But the best part is the window. Look outside. Apparently Paul and his wife live in the opening credits of "Welcome Back Kotter."

Who'd have thought we'd need ya, Paul, back here where we need ya?

When did we get so old that it became OK to send each other pictures of our dogs and kitchens? And more importantly, what am I supposed to send them pictures of? In terms of things that I spend all my time and energy on, I have a choice between sending them pictures of essays written in Welsh, or my blog, or of me trying to convince the child bride to take off her clothes: "It was kind of a challenge to dupe her into shagging (you can't get her drunk and promise not to tell her friends like regular girls) and also to grout without scratching it, but we figured it out in the end."

*Matching outfits. That's almost as lame as this picture.

Lame pleasures in life

There is a strange sense of immense pride that comes from realising that my best friend's band is on iTunes. It's like he's talented and stuff.

EDIT: My best friend's band that he's not in but whose album you should still purchase because he gets royalties.

Christmas cards

We got Christmas cards today from the Phins, and the Johnsons. I mention that just so they will know that the cards have been received and are muchly appreciated. We're putting all our cards on the modern hearth -- the television -- and are now running out of space, so we don't feel too lonely this Christmas.

For our part, we've been ridiculously slow in sending out cards. We got out all the ones to family last week, but I was still sending a few to friends today.

-30-

Ladies' man

I dreamt last night that I was staying at Eric and Kristin's cabin and playing Kubb in the yard when Kristin drove up in a white early 90s Renault; her passenger was an ex-girlfriend of mine.

She (the ex-girlfriend, not Kristin) had Kool-Aid red hair, so I had to stare at her for a second, but then it registered and there was a rush of excitement as I lifted her up in one of those "Oh, my gosh, I haven't seen you in ages"-type hugs.

It was actually her, not an amalgam of female features attached to a name, as can often happen in dreams. My memory of her was so strong that I could smell her as we hugged. Her smell is scored deep in my memory.

Dr. Handy once told me the technical term for a person who remembers based on his or her senses, but I have since forgotten that term because it was mentioned in an e-mail conversation; I couldn't smell her when she told me.

Either way, sensing that this "Oh, my gosh, I haven't seen you in ages" hug was lasting just a second too long and becoming an "Oh, my gosh, you still smell so good" hug, Eric piped in loudly with a comment about Rachel, putting emphasis on the phrase "your wife."

Not missing a beat, Kristin added that almost every column I write is about how stupid I am for Rachel.

This particular dream featured Sarah McDaniels, but it's one I've had countless times.

The dreams are little morality plays of the subconscious, and they almost always go the same way: I meet some girl I haven't seen in a coon's age and am too patient/accepting/happy to see her than perhaps I should be, and then Eric comes in as the voice of reason*.

It's perhaps an odd thing that Eric features as the metaphorical angel on the shoulder in my dreams. But of all the people I know, he has one of the most defined and clear senses of what is right and wrong. Remember that knowing right from wrong is different than choosing right from wrong. But he is still considerably beyond me. I often fail to identify that things I do are insulting or hurtful or inappropriate. It's probably not coincidence that the people who are closest to me are so thick-skinned.

My subconscious works like a poorly written Victorian novel, so these lessons in fidelity usually end with a sort of karmic reward for good behaviour -- I discover that while I've had seven and a half years of happy marriage, the ex-girlfriend has experienced a slow and steady emotional decline since parting from me.

Of course, the side-effect to these dreams is that I end up spending the next conscious day wondering what has actually happened to the featured ex-love interest. The thoughts bring a deep and wistful melancholy. I can feel it pushing against my ribcage; breathing feels laboured. I'm not totally sure why the feeling is so strong, and what it says about me. Most likely is says I am a big girl.

But it's strange to think that out in the world right now there are all these women, all these souls, who have been close to me, and the odds are quite high that I will never see or hear from them again.

"All these women." That makes it sound as if there are thousands upon thousands of them; as if they could all move to the Aleutians and set up a semi-autonomous state of jaded ex-lovers: The People's Republic of Fuck-Chris-istan. But, you know what I mean -- there are more than three.

They are women who actually liked me -- even if just for a tiny space of time -- enough to be close. They saw me as better than I have ever seen myself. They kissed me. They wanted to hold my hand. And, to varying degrees, I tore myself up over them. It's hard to accept that two people could have existed in such intense moments and emotions and then just sort of fade away and never know if the other is even alive.

I often wonder what happened to this person or that person. So much so that I will work their name into a blog post**, making their names Google searchable for all eternity. I have this stupid quiet hope that these little internet snares will lead to the person e-mailing me. But there's probably a reason I don't know where they are or what they are up to; perhaps they have no interest in hearing from me. I'm hardly a recluse; if Jeni Rodvold were to ever find herself wondering what the hell happened to me it would take less than a second to find out.

*His wife, Kristin, will often serve as a second voice of reason. Both are capable of speaking in the blunt way that is necessary for communicating to me.

**I have mentioned Sarah a few times: here and here.