Friction and Harmony

Oops, looks like Kim Jong Il forgot to turn out his light to honor Earth Hour.  He was probably up late watching Team America again…

If the Global Warming fruitcakes were to have their way, we would all be living by Kim Jong’s example…

I finally got around to watching a movie that has been on my “to-see” list for quite some time.  It’s called SLC Punk!, and tells the story of “the only two real punks in Salt Lake City,” circa 1985:

“Cool,” I thought, “I wonder if I’ll recognize anybody.”

You see, I was on the punk scene in the eightes – as early as 1981.  Loved the music.  “Slammed” at the Indian Center and the Fairgrounds arena and Horticulture Building.  Fronted the attitude – Anarchy was more than a political (mis)direction, it was an expression of gritty teen angst and wanton aimlessness.  We didn’t care that it was irrational or stupid.  We were teenagers…  WE were irrational and stupid – though at the time we were certain that it was THEM, not us.  Had the colored hair.  In fact, my hair was up to three different un-natural colors at one time: blue, green and purple.  Had a blue and sliver mohawk for a brief time – they’re pretty hard to maintain, and “fashion punk” wasn’t my gig, either.

Was I “hardcore?”  Hell no.  But I was defiant.  I attended the only parochial Catholic high school in the Salt Lake valley at the time.  I introduced punk to that institutionalized populace.  I was the first to have the guts to walk through the doors with more than a fucking notebook with an Anarchy symbol on it­.  But I didn’t do it to be “cool.”  I wasn’t punk to attract anybody.  I was punk to keep everyone else the fuck away.  Punk for me was an escape, a barrier to everything I hated and feared most.  It was soul-ripping, hard driving music that told the world to fuck off and die.  I loved it with every fiber of my teen-angst ridden being.

The upperclassmen certainly didn’t understand my visage.  They called me “Devo” in the hallways, since that was the closest thing in their experience they could label me with.  Ozzy, Iron Maiden and Judas Priest, Scorpion, Poison and the emerging 80′s hair bands…  Those where where the general populace identified.  They didn’t understand that Devo wasn’t even in the same music galaxy as CRASS, Black Flag, Dead Kennedys, T.S.O.L., Rudimentary Peni and the Crucifucks.  “New Wave” alternative rock was just gaining popularity, and a shocking, colored hairstyle must mean I’m one of those.

I hung around the Cosmic Aeroplane book store and head shop.  CD’s hadn’t yet surfaced, and surfing the bins of imported vinyl for something new to listen to was as necessary as foraging for food – and I was hungry enough to circle the sleaziest music shops in some pretty unsavory areas of town.  Raunch Records was located under the 4th South viaduct, where the homeless often congregated around burning barrels in the winter time and slept on old shipping palettes when it was warmer.  The best music, however, came on bootlegged cassette tapes.

Drugs weren’t my thing, and though I was straight and clean, some of the people I hung out with weren’t.  I was so hardcore and daring, I got my ear pierced.  But I knew a guy who wore a diaper pin in his cheek and a rounded over, rusted nail in his ear.  I saw plenty of LSD and pot, “crosstops” and other shit.  Cocaine didn’t enter my world until I got chased by a drug dealer in a Corvette in a case of mistaken identity (he thought I looked like the guy who stole $30k in cash and stash from him.)  I even carried a gun illegally – for good reasons, though this isn’t the post for that story.

But back to the movie…  SLC Punk was actually a pretty accurate depiction of one important facet of social atmosphere in one of the most socially repressive cities on this continent in the 1980′s.  The Mormon-influenced socio-political scene was a pressure-cooker that brewed some pretty crazy shit at that time.  While I recognized a good bit of embellishment and artistic license with respect to the details, the bizarreness of it all – the people, “tribes,” the attitudes, the social atmosphere – was more or less spot-on.  Of course location names did not reflect reality, but seeing many of my old haunts on screen was just creepy.

While the characters were colorfully fictional, I could spot elements and parallels of people and lives that I had witnessed more than twenty-five years ago.  Of course the seeming fictionally-absurd but God-as-my-witness concrete elements of the story had me laughing out loud.  The beer run segment and “Stevo’s” explanation of why a trip to Evanston, Wyoming for some Mickey’s Big Mouth was so necessary had me in hysterics.  I had to wonder if I had ever crossed paths with the writer of SLC Punk.  He had obviously been there, drifting the same landscapes of my past…

As I watched the credits, my jaw dropped.  James Merendino.  Ha!  I quick ran to IMDB and found his page.  When I saw his picture, I was certain…

No shit.  So here’s what James looked like in my Senior year (1984) yearbook:

He was a year behind me in high school, and I remember him hanging on the fringe of our little group.  I remember him as a pretty cool kid – quiet and a little quirky (i.e., just like the rest of us) – he didn’t draw too much attention.  He hung out with, among others, an underclassman named Paul who lived in my best friend’s neighborhood, and who frequently hitched a ride.  (How’s that for a peripheral association?)  I can clearly picture James with braces and a porkpie hat with buttons on it, hanging out with us at some music venue – probably a school “stomp” or a minors club we frequented, but which name I can’t recall.  I want to say he was also in one of the school music groups (Jazz Ensemble?), but despite my greatest efforts, I discovered that I was dismally retarded when it came to musical talent, so I didn’t spend too much time with the people who could.

All in all, SLC Punk was a good indy film that brought back a LOT of memories, and some uniquely in the know laughs.  I can see why the movie has a cult following.

James, if you should ever wander by and see this – I’m sorry for the yearbook picture.  Though I barely knew you, the movie is definitely a keeper.  I ordered my DVD copy from Amazon today.  Congratulations on your success.

Hey, at least one of us made it out of that asylum with a future!

I ran across this while excavating some memories (more on that later – perhaps).  This irreverent magazine illustration (Playboy, as I recall) was stuck inside my Senior year high school yearbook.  It was one of the many bizarre decorations adorning my adolescent “personal space” – my locker door at the Catholic high school that I attended in the early 1980′s.  I still think it rocks:

Ah, 1984.  Miss it, but you couldn’t PAY me to go back and do it again.  Well, maybe if I could go back knowing what I know now… but even then.

“Be vewwwy, vewwy qwiet!  I’m huntin’ a good for nothin’ wascally wabbit!”

Uh,  I think you mean bunny, Mr. President.

(What?  What did you think the link would be?)

We heard from Recruit Goob last night.  He’s in “Reception” still – where he’ll be waiting until his platoon actually moves “across the railroad tracks” into the barracks for Basic Training.  He’s been issued his uniform and had his head shaved, but they’re “just chillin’ for now.”  And then he sent me his picture as proof he’s made it this far: More »

A foreign substance was reported at two Interstate Rest Stops in Alabama.  In both locations, a suspicious substance was found in the soap dispensers of the public rest rooms.

Department of Transportation officials, however, reported that the substance was harmless, and both rest areas were soon re-opened.  The mystery substance was actually…

Soap!

Perhaps folks were alarmed because it wasn’t the “soap” that one expects to find in Rest Area restrooms: More »

Today’s  Day by Day cartoon by Chris Muir made me laugh, because this has actually happened to me.  I’m frikkin’ 43 years old now, and I got my first AARP “invitation” sometime last year.

(Shameless plug.  I heart Day by Day – Thanks Chris!  BTW …I’m waiting to see Sam on a Harley!  *pant*)

Then I found this and I felt better, realizing I’ve been a member all along!

Hooah!