Please enjoy Paul Rudd, Bill Hader, Wyatt Cynak, Ted Leo, Kevin Corrigan, John Hodgeman, Jon Oliver, Donald Glover, Horatio Sanz, and tons of others in this video for "Moves" by the New Pornographers.
I'm pretty sure your SmartPhone is smarter than your dumb ass.
I was there to see the comedian, not watch your phone light up and buzz when your idiotic friends sent you texts. (And even though I can't imagine what inane crap you were discussing, I couldn't be bothered to lean over and try to read it because I couldn't look past your insanely hyperinflated sense of entitlement.)
You wanna send texts during a performance? Save it for the Harry Potter movie, shithead.
When you're in a comedy club, shut the fuck up and listen.
I don't even care that you were hot. I won't fuck people who are so disrespectful.
The screen door that leads into the yard that leads into the shed that leads into the path that leads back to the screen door that leads through the living room and back to the screen door.
Shuffled, mixed up, put back together.
Thrown into the air in an instant as a smell returns you to that time. That place. That warm lost instant.
When Joe Strummer was buried, his friends put two bumper stickers on his coffin. One said "Vinyl Rules" and the other said "Question Authority."
Julie was cool. She had the first Clash album (the UK import, not the American version, which she said was inferior, thus winning instant punk cred with everyone she knew). She bought London Calling on the day it was released and is one of the only people I've ever known who owned Sandinista on vinyl (and regularly listened to all six sides). She saw the Clash live once and proudly argued with anyone who'd listen that they really were "the only band that matters." The politics went right over her head, but she tapped directly into the passion that exploded out of her speakers when she played their records and that was really all that mattered. (And she was so committed that you could overlook the absurdity of a suburban American blonde girl singing along to quintessentially English punk songs.)
Every March, Julie would celebrate the release of the Clash's first single ("White Riot") by skipping school (or later calling in sick to work) and watching her old VHS tape of the movie Rude Boy and listening to her old records (vinyl only, no CDs) for hours. That's what she did in March 1987, on the tenth anniversary of the Clash's first record being released. Then she went out driving in her beat-up (but still gorgeous) white convertible, top down despite the winter weather, her long hair buffeted by a cold wind, listening to this song, written and first recorded by Sonny Curtis -- now better known for writing "Love is All Around," the theme song for the Mary Tyler Moore Show (link for Gmail subscribers):
Now I'm not a physicist, but I'm pretty sure Sir Isaac Newton said something about how impossible it is to drive slowly when you hear songs like this. And Julie was flying. A State Trooper pulled her over and said he'd clocked her going 86 in a 60 zone. He asked why she was speeding. She's pretty enough to have gotten out of the ticket by flirting, but instead she explained she'd been listening to the Clash because it was the tenth anniversary of their first record coming out. The Trooper then told her about how he had discovered the Clash and how he'd seen them exactly once. As it turned out, they went to the same show. So he let her off with a warning.
Joe Strummer died before the Clash were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2003. Later that year, there was a Clash tribute at the Grammy awards. It took Bruce Springsteen, Dave Grohl, Steve Van Zandt, and Elvis Costello to take Joe Strummer's place (link for Gmail subscribers):
Julie reminded me recently that, when Joe Strummer died (a few days before Christmas in 2002), she went driving again. Different car, this one not a convertible, her hair a little shorter and the heater blasting. Also blasting was "London Calling."
Again, impossible to drive slowly with a song like that.
So Julie was pulled over; this time clocked at 70 in a 55. When the cop asked why she was speeding, Julie explained that Joe Strummer of the Clash had died. She talked about the band, she talked about the show she'd seen, and she even mentioned that she had just listened to Sandinista on vinyl. All six sides.
The cop patiently listened to Julie's story, eyes hidden behind mirror sunglasses, face stripped of emotion. Finally Julie asked him what type of music he liked.
The cop thought for a minute, then said "Britney Spears."
Rolling Stones Mick Jagger, Brian Jones, and Bill Wyman are fined 5 pounds each for urinating against the wall of a gas station in 1965.
Thirteen years later, Elvis Costello releases his debut album My Aim Is True, backed by the band Clover (which would later form the nucleus of Huey Lewis's backing band the News).
The pictures are still on the wall. Taped. No one seemed to mind.
The postcards are all in a row. Also taped. Above the photos.
The window is open and the cleaning crew has come through.
Everything will be boxed and someone will come pick it up.
The word will spread out from this spot.
And the awareness floats upward. Freely.
The nurses talked for a few days. Then they moved on.
There were other people, other problems.
One of them wondered about the strange visitors, the phone calls, the people with accents.
But she didn't say anything. She just wondered.
Some immediately forgot how cranky he could be, how difficult. They only wanted to remember the positive. Which is nice, but it's not real life. In trying to be nice, they unwittingly diminish the humanity.
Meanwhile, doctors and administrators talked about the family and speculated why so few of them had come.
Many questions remained. Questions that would never be answered.
Still the palm trees waved in the gentle ocean breeze.
They know the answers -- but more than that, they know when it's time.
Julie was cool. She had the first Clash album (the UK import, not the American version, which she said was inferior, thus winning instant punk cred with everyone she knew). She bought London Calling on the day it was released and is one of the only people I've ever known who owned Sandinista on vinyl (and regularly listened to all six sides). She saw the Clash live once and proudly argued with anyone who'd listen that they really were "the only band that matters." The politics went right over her head, but she tapped directly into the passion that exploded out of her speakers when she played their records and that was really all that mattered. (And she was so committed that you could overlook the absurdity of a suburban American blonde girl singing along to quintessentially English punk songs.)
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