I have a lot of CDs. None of them interests me lately. Call it pox consumeris if you like. So I found a site called Radio Locator which is how I came across Alex and Tony & the Bluegrass Special. At first I thought Alex, who is a 13 year old boy, was some hopped-up-on-helium Tennessee chipmunk. Then I thought his accent was for sure fake. East Tennessee or no. But now that I’ve seen his picture, I suspect the accent is real and he mentioned that he has a cold, which explains part of it.
I went to Winners today because it’s upstairs from the grocery store and the commercials all said “you should go”. I was halfway through the clearance bin of size 12 pants, all of which were ugly because everyone is a size 12, so all the nice pants are gone. I suddenly noticed what I was listening to: John Mayer. My first reaction was anger, because I don’t like John Mayer. But then I thought: No! I must be happy! It is not XMAS MUSAK!
Winners has their own CD, apparently, which intersperses XMAS MUSAK with regular ‘ol comfort rock. Hot damn, I said out loud. But no one heard.
Apparently, I have lost my (small, but there) ability to keep my mouth shut in public when I’m alone. When I’m with other people, of course, we make snotty comments. That’s part of the fun of shopping. But today,as mentioned, I was at Winners, alone. I was staring blankly at the wall of atrocity that they claimed was the size 10 shoe section, when one of the aforementioned musical intersepersities came on. It was a crappy XMAS song with some woman wailing on about a christmas prayer, ya ya ya, christmas prayer. Then these children started singing! I have mentioned in these pages how much I hate children singing. But at least could we find children who can carry a tune if we’re going to record them?
The point of the story is not that I hate singing children. This has been established. The point is, I can no longer just think, “Goddamn it I hate singing children” and then remember to tell someone later. No, I have taken to verbalizing my frowned-upon-in-polite-society-particularly-among-the-rich-grannies-at-winners opinions. The woman who was standing back-to-back with me, staring at the abundant and beautiful selection of size 7 shoes, turned and stared at me and I totally understand why. It’s rude to say what I said. But it makes me wonder – if I live to be 85, what the hell am I going to do? I’ll just be walking around saying “my butt hurts! get the hell out of my way you punk ass! never seen a wrinkle before? goddamn it why are there still posters of jean chretien up here? sell me some good cheese, I know you’ve got it hiding in the back. and slice it thin, with paper betweent the slices. GO!”
We do become what we most fear becoming and what we most hate.
But I found a great shirt for $5.00. You should go.