It’s not hard to baffle your neighbours in suburbia. Last night the woman next door seemed perplexed that I was leaving the house after 8pm, just as she was coming home with her kids. In suburbia, people only leave the house to go to work, take the kids to school, go to their kids’ sports games, or head out for brunch on Mother’s Day. None of these activities happen after 8pm.
“I’m going to see Her Space Holiday at the Rock and Roll Hotel,” I explained. She didn’t understand what that meant, so I repeated it. This time she politely pretended to understand, but pointed out that this would mean I’d miss the final of American Idol. Still I endeavoured to wrench myself away from our leafy lane.
I’ve never caught it myself, but I’ve heard there’s a bus that transports sloping white middle-aged indie saddos in to town to see bands like Her Space Holiday. Once there we stand with a glass of safety beer, not talking to each other, and wondering inside for the fiftieth time if we’re getting too old for this kind of thing. Last night the bus must have broken down, or my contemporaries have ascended to unchartered plains of mid-life enlightenment. The Rock and Roll Hotel -- DC’s best, but least known, music venue -- was teeming with young people.
Wahay, I accidentally like a band that young people like! I wondered if this was the same Her Space Holiday that for years consisted of speccy nerd Marc Bianchi making wonderful lo-fi electro records with titles like ‘Home Is Where You Hang Yourself.’ In person, yes, but in spirit, no. Now HSH is a six-piece band with two drummers, two guitarists, a bassist and a sole synth. They play peppy, self-referential rock and roll, get drunk, and enjoy themselves. I’m glad for Bianchi that he no longer wants to hang himself. Unfortunately, his songs are only half as good as they used to be, but that’s the price of happiness in indie-world.
After 40 minutes I abandon my spot on a side wall and slip out of the club, away from all these young people getting drunk and dancing. This week my eldest daughter becomes a teenager. Next time I’ll send her down instead.
At school I learnt the historically dubious claim that during the reign of King Alfred, an Englishman could leave gold jewelry hanging from a tree branch and come back to find it untouched one year later. In Barack Obama’s America, I have discovered, you can do the same with a George Foreman grill leant against the front bumper of a Volkswagen Jetta. Maybe not for a year, but at least for one night.
Last night just after midnight I was emptying kitchen waste into my prized compost bin when I noticed a large cardboard package propped up against the front of our car, parked on the street. It was a windy night, so I assumed the package had been blown out of someone’s recycling bin. The next morning it was still there when I went out to get the papers, but I was too idle to deal with it as I was still dealing with the effects of several glasses of Rioja.
Just after 11am, a visiting friend brought the box inside. It wasn’t empty at all. It contained a spanking new George Foreman grill. “The lean mean fat reducing grilling machine,” it says on the box, without pausing for any commas at all. The neighbours claim to know nothing about it. Two sets of friends who visited on Saturday night said they hadn’t seen it when they left, and are clueless about how it came to be in the street in front of our house. Though one did say, “It happened to us once with an armchair. We kept it for 30 years.”
We are mulling all possible explanations. In Obama’s America, everyone gets free gifts. The CIA has planted a bug in the grill and wants to eavesdrop on me chopping onions, swearing at the radio and singing along to Her Space Holiday. God is in fact a divine hamburger and is rewarding his chosen meat-eating disciples with a heaven-sent culinary aid. The George Foreman grill is so crap that you can only give it away. It’s some kind of threat, but our enemies couldn’t find a horse’s head so they left the next thing they could get their hands on, the message being that if we don’t tread carefully, we could end up with our heads sandwiched inside a George Foreman grill. Or something.
I did a google news search to see if there were any other reports of mysterious George Foreman grill appearances or apparitions, but all I could find was actress Blake Lively telling W Magazine last week that, “I just made chicken breasts from Whole Foods on a George Foreman Grill, with asparagus and broccoli.” W Magazine is the publication for lame-duck presidents, by lame-duck presidents, I believe. If anyone can see a sinister connection in all this, please let me know.
It’s not hard to baffle your neighbours in suburbia. Last night the woman next door seemed perplexed that I was leaving the house after 8pm, just as she was coming home with her kids. In suburbia, people only leave the house to go to work, take the kids to school, go to their kids’ sports games, or head out for brunch on Mother’s Day. None of these activities happen after 8pm.
