January 28, 2004 - 5:32 PM

Take Time to Stop and Smell the Aberrations

Aberration- noun 2. A departure from the normal or typical.

I survived the 4 day session this weekend not unscathed, but any injuries I sustained, either physical or mental or spiritual, will heal in time. They informed me (more like warned if you ask me) that they will be back in February and maybe March to finish mixing the songs we worked on. *shudder*

In the meantime, I've caught up on my sleep (I worked around 16 hours each day, and made the stupid mistake of going to the gym on two of the nights after the session, so I was tired and sore every day), knocked off some laundry, zipped around in my rental Ford Focus (which I'm liking more than my Honda Civic, bless her low-riding soul, because it's got more kick and has a softer, cushier touch), and seen some strange things that are a departure from the norm.

1) Are you familiar with the new Honda Element SUV? It looks like a car built out of Lego blocks (in fact, I think that I, in addition to millions of other children around the world, built the same exact car with our Legos). I went to my work's business offices yesterday in order to drop off some papers and a timesheet. On either side of the residential street where I parked, directly across from each other, were identical Elements. One facing north, the other south. Same Burnt Orange/Burgundy color, same moldings, same everything. I swear, you couldn't have placed them any more perfectly if you tried. I wonder if the owners, when they saw the other car, covered their cylindrical yellow heads in embarrasment at not being the only "cool" person to have such an ugly SUV. When they got home, they probably went through their storage boxes of parts, and turned their vehicles into something different, like a fire truck, or a space-fighter, or a medieval castle complete with drawbridge and dungeon (extra figures sold separately).

2) Coming out of the gym this afternoon, two teenaged boys were walking towards me. They had the 50's greaser style going on, straight outta "Rebel Without a Cause" or "Grease" or "Deuces Wild" (Deuces Wild?! what the hell is wrong with me, referencing a crap-ass movie like Deuces Wild?). Tight jeans with rolled cuffs (but not skin-tight, because that would be the 80's style, now wouldn't it?), white t-shirts, oily pompadours, chain wallets hanging from their belt loops. The odd thing was, you could clearly see that one of them was wearing a wifebeater underneath his t-shirt. Hello? Faux pas! Sure you can wear a wifebeater as part of the ensemble (usually, it's the muscle guy of the group who does this, to better show off his guns...of course, the downside is that there is nowhere to stow a pack of cigarettes without the sleeves); but to wear one under the standard white tee, especially when it is so visible? Perhaps he's the "Indecisive" Greaser, or the "It's Too Cold For Just One Layer Yet Too Hot For the Leather Jacket (Plus I'm Too Poor to Afford a Leather Jacket)" Greaser. He certainly wasn't the "Muscles" Greaser, or the "James Dean" Greaser, or even the "Self-Confident" Greaser, from the looks of him. I dunno. He's gotta watch more old movies. Or more videos of Morrissey from the early 90's when he was going semi-rockabilly.

3) A minute after I saw the pseudo-Rebels, just before I entered the parking garage, another disaffected teen caught my eye. She was a goth girl, but she wasn't no half-assed goth girl. No siree, she was running it fullbore, with a black dress, black boots, black hair, and the topper, a black cloak with hood. Her skin was the requisite ghostly cream with flourishes of black around her eyes and lips. A bit stunned by her courage to be so fully decked out in her style of choice, I noticed a self-conscious twinge in her body language, and a pained look flitted across her downcast face. I think that the information booth security guards whom she had just walked passed had stared at her and laughed, causing her humiliation (they were still chuckling when I passed by them). It was too late at the point to go back and tell her this, but I so wanted to stop her and commend her bravery for not compromising who she is and what style she chooses because, at one point in my life, I too had a bit of a goth streak in me (not total, but I did accrue quite a collection of black t-shirts with fantasy and comic book images on them), but I was not comfortable enough to walk around in public dressed to the nines like her. Plus, she was wearing a friggin' cloak! You gotta give her kudos for that at the very least.

Well, that's it for now. I've been going through some old bits, pieces, and scraps of stuff that I've written on my computers in the past 6 years, and I think I'll do some refining and put some of it up here for you to read. Because, well, sometimes I get tapped out for things to write.

Now Listening To : Eddie Reader-Angels and Electricity
Random Thought : Vienna Teng and Odessa Chen tonight at Hotel Cafe at 8 PM. I'm there. How about you?

What I Just Wrote Before - What I'm About to Write

The Five Most Recent Entries

Here's a hand-picked playlist of 40-plus songs for you to listen to: