Rock and Roll Hall of Fame reflections…

…from my recent trip there:

1) At two points during the tour, I turn and see something in an exhibition case, and I just start automatically crying – one was Michael Jackson’s jacket from Thriller, and the other one was Stevie Nicks’ dress from the cover of Rumours. I never expected to cry during a visit to that museum, but I just did…  Both are just like these massive things that were only ever intended to be seen in image, and yet you turn and practically walk into them and there they are in front of you, as a thing.

And, I’m not even particularly a huge Michael Jackson fan, although me and neighborhood friends loved it during the late 1980s when MTV would play that video.

And, with Fleetwood Mac, I mean, I like their music, but it was just more about how big the album was and is, and suddenly there in front of you is the dress from the cover…

A (Kuwait-raised) (second-generation Indian) friend from grad school says she understands my reaction, since she had something similar happen to her recently on seeing Madonna in concert; Madonna was forbidden to her in her youth as music for bad girls, and back during that time she heard and liked the song “La Isla Bonita” without knowing what it was, and then as an adult she heard the music but only engaged with it as such, and to go to an arena and actually see Madonna was just this huge weird experience for her, to interact with the actual person behind all of these things that were just these big huge parts of her life.

Interestingly, my parents are not music people, but my parents both knew the exact jacket I was talking about, when I told them that I had seen the jacket from Thriller. I mean, that’s how big it is, for it to manage to push itself into their consciousness.

2) Oddly, Bruce Springsteen’s leather jacket from the cover of Born to Run did not elicit a strong crying reaction from me, nor did Clarence Clemon’s saxophone that he played on that album and that is also pictured in the fuller version of the photo that’s the cover for the album. And yet, I have that album and play it a decent bit, and I like it a lot, a heck of a lot more, even, than anything by Michael Jackson.

I wonder if it’s because that album was big but not quite the same mega-legendary status, or if maybe because it’s just a regular leather jacket and not some type of special clothing that you never expect to see in real life.

3) It was wonderful to see Ronnie Spector honored by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame… She was always a great one, and people like the Rolling Stones loved her and really respected her, but she went through some hard times in her life.

Years and years ago I had the chance to see her live, and when I was doing a pre-concert drink across the street, it turned out that 2 guys at the bar next to me were from Minnesota and had gotten to know her during some of her worst days, since they showed up at all her ill-attended casino shows and she started recognizing them and would come to talk with them after her sets, and through that they all got to be friends, and they kept coming to her shows even as she started getting more recognition and traction and she got back on her feet and on her way up again.

And man, she was a performer, just the way she held out notes and would feel them and would sing from her body and even make a little kick with her foot, after a small climax when she held out  "I wish I never saw the sunshine..." 

A number of years after that, too, I found out that my one (art school) colleague who wears (women’s) clothes had been at that same Ronnie Spector show with a friend of his, and we were both there in that same small venue that same night watching her, years before we ever met each other in person and became friends.

In any case, it seems that Ronnie Spector finally achieved some sort of wholeness in her life before she passed, and I’ve always been glad for her for that, that that finally happened for her.

Mormon culture:

When I’m touring a midwestern Mormon history site on my recent trip, the two (white) (female) missionaries start asking where everyone is from, and people start saying random stuff like “St. George” and whanot, and I have to whisper to someone, “Is that like Utah?”.

(It is -- -- -- people from Utah would list off the specific random towns they were from, whereas otherwise people who weren’t from Utah would be like, “I’m from Idaho” or whatever, and that would be enough.)

A Christmas thought:

I pre-load posts for sometimes weeks or months ahead of time, so one day if I die unexpectedly - like, I get hit by a car - my pre-loaded posts will keep going for a while, and then there will be some random one that will be the last one, and then this blog will fall silent.

. . .

(That is, if I don't stop it first for some reason, or if I don't get a lingering disease that will give me foresight into my deteriorating condition and the accordant ability to wrap things up, on my schedule, while I can still control things.)

Conference trip minutiae:

1) I keep my fish-oil pills in a little plastic daily medicine container, but by the end of the trip they’ve started to stick to the sides of the plastic container and you can smell the fish oil on them, even though they’re manufactured with orange essence or what have you, to keep you from tasting the fish oil when you down them.

2) I don’t need as much sleep as when I’m in the college town where I live now – seven hours or so is fine – perhaps because I’m not working at the restaurant a lot and using up all of my energy there, walking back and forth across the restaurant all day.

A visit to New Albany, Ohio…

…which is where Les Wexner lives and Jeffrey Epstein had a house, and which is like this hyper-planned Stepford Wives yuppie community where they have all sorts of uniform requirements for what you can build and where and what it must look like (i.e., sterile brick Georgian, even the CVS):

1) In the far outskirts beyond the planned parts, neither a bartender nor a gas station attendant know anything about how Les Wexner lives around there, even though he’s super famous in all of Ohio.

2) In the hyper-planned Stepford Wives yuppie downtown area, a (mid-20s) (white) woman pushing a stroller turns out to be a(n Italian) nanny there working on some sort of exchange, so I practice my (Italian) with her and am like, “Ho letto, che Jeffrey Epstein viveva qui” (“I read that Jeffrey Epstein lived here”), and she honestly had no idea that that was the case.

3) In the library in the hyper-planned Stepford Wives yuppie downtown area, the librarian on staff at the front desk says that they are forbidden from talking about any specific residents.

4) In the updated Pride flag-brandishing Starbucks in the hyper-planned Stepford Wives yuppie downtown area, the (early 20s) (white) (female) barista who had recently moved there from the Pacific Northwest had no idea about how Epstein had lived around there for a bit, and when I relate one of the more lurid trafficking allegations that was linked to the locale, she’s like, “No way! Now that’s some history.”

5) In the hyper-planned Stepford Wives yuppie downtown area, there’s a dentist’s storefront, with an oddly foreboding name outside: NEW ALBANY SMILES.

The life-approach of a(n early 30s) (Latino-American) customer...

…at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, where he’s picking up takeout and we get to talking and it turns out that it’s his 32^nd birthday that day and I tell him that I hope that he has something special planned:

He says that he’s going to chill and then go to a horror movie later that afternoon and then maybe go drink with friends later on, that’s what he usually does, anyways, since he tries to make sure that he never works on his birthday.

. . .

(Tries to make sure that he never works on his birthday – what a window into his life, and the types of jobs that he must have.)

Plans with bad vibes.

When I was getting ready to go to my conference, I was trying to figure out a good gift to bring the conference organizers and then an archivist who I was seeing later on the trip, and I decided to try maybe bringing some heirloom tomatoes and some small soft French-style cheese with a rind from a local specialty cheesemaker.

And, the weekend before my trip, I get to the farmer’s market on the early side, and although I was able to get this one type of heirloom tomato all summerlong, this kind that has a cool dark-and light-green striped appearance and has a wonderful taste and keeps well at room temperature for like a full week, they’re out that day, since someone had bought them out a few hours earlier, like super early in the morning.

So, I have to improvise and I end up getting a thing of organic cherry tomatoes from another vendor, since those will last a while unrefrigerated as well.

And, at the local specialty cheesemaker, I raise my travel plans with the (older) (white) (yuppie) woman and how I was planning to transport the cheeses for like a period of 5-10 days, and I double-check and ask if they’d keep, and she just gives me a bitchy laugh like I’m overthinking it and is like, “They’re soft round cheeses,” which in the context of the previous conversation meant that they’d be fine unrefrigerated as long as you reasonably take care of them.

And, I get a bad feeling from that interaction, but I buy them anyways since my departure date is nearing and I can’t think of anything else special that I could bring, and I try to convince myself that maybe I’m just neurotically over-reacting, and that the cheeses will be fine.

And, as it turns out, at least the 2 cheeses of the archivist had the rinds broken and were spoiled, even though I kept them in a canvas shopping bag that I tote along at my side and never left them in the car when I was traveling, and otherwise I kept them in the refrigerator at my hostel or hotels, even though they technically didn’t need to be refrigerated….

That’s like at least $22 of spoiled cheese right there, and no gift for them to enjoy to boot.

F*ck that vendor and her shitty condescending customer service, I say!

What a bitch.