Amish In The Airport, Failed Card Cheats, And My Imaginary Mail-Order Bride

Not long ago, I made an airport run to pick-up Paloma. As much as I loathe flying, I love airports.

Part of the allure of airports to me is the sense of possibility. One minute you're here and, in a given amount of time, you can be somewhere else - possibly somewhere far, far away. It's why I used to always keep my passport on hand.

However, it is the sheer human circus and the kinetic energy contained at airports which is also very appealing. This was immediately apparent as I sat near the baggage claim, trying to discern the difference, if any, between the flight designation "landed" and "arrived." (although, it would seem impossible, as well as undesirable, to land before arriving).

A small group, seemingly a family, passed my position. They appeared to be Amish.

I mean, based on what I'd seen in the movie Witness, they certainly fit the description. The women wore simple, ankle-length frocks and bonnets. The lone man, an older fellow, was sporting suspenders, a straw hat and wore his facial hair in the style of a beard sans moustache. He certainly looked like a Jedidiah or Ezekiel.

Of course, when I think of the Amish, I think of churning butter, pies, and raising the occasional barn. I do not think air travel.

Something else that caught my attention was the rather uncomfortable-looking footwear I repeatedly saw rather stylish women wearing. Snowshoes could be all the rage for all I know (although, I'd like to think I'd notice), but these women were wearing what I would describe as wooden shoes.

Wooden shoes? Is this something that the Dutch are behind? Do they hate Americans because we are free and, to retaliate, have chosen to dupe women into wearing ill-fitting footwear, leading them to be irritable and, thus, creating friction between the sexes and undermining our way of life?

My observations were leaving me with far more questions than insights.

Suddenly, a dodgy, little fellow sat down next to me. His twitchy demeanor, bushy moustache, and shifty eyes made me think that he would cheat at cards (and not well, at that). He quickly struck up a conversation that I really didn't want to have, finally inquiring as to whether I was waiting for someone.

"My mail-order bride is arriving," I told him.

"Mail-order bride?" The dodgy, unsuccessful card cheat had the nifty habit of repeating, as a question, almost everything I said. Perhaps he was a failed Jeopardy contestant.

"Yeah. She's coming here from Macadamia."

"Macadamia?"

"You've heard of Macadamian nuts?"

"Yeah."

"Her homeland is where 98% of all Macadamian nuts are grown," I said.

"Aren't Macadamian nuts from Hawaii?"

"Those are Hawaiian Macadamian nuts. Big difference."

"Have you ever met her?" my new friend asked.

"Who?"

"Your mail-order bride?"

"Paloma? No. We've exchanged a lot of e-mails, though, and I know she likes butter."

"Butter?" He furrowed his brow. "Ever seen her picture?"

"No."

His expression grew more quizzical. "Well, how will you know her?"

"She'll be wearing the native, ceremonial headdress of her country."

Paloma arrived and we greeted each other with a hug. We walked off, holding hands, quite possibly leaving the failed card cheat under the impression that somewhere there is a distant land called Macadamia whose women like butter and a baseball cap with a cartoon monkey is considered ornate head ware.

Drive-By Truckers - Shut Up And Get On The Plane
from Southern Rock Opera

Nanci Griffith - Outbound Plane
from The MCA Years: A Retrospective

Peter, Paul And Mary - Leaving On A Jet Plane
from The Best of Peter, Paul and Mary: Ten Years Together

M.I.A. - Paper Planes
from Kala

An Oasis Called Pizza Hut

There was no such thing as air conditioning when I was a kid. It existed, but we didn’t have it – not in our house, not in our school, not in the family car.

The last situation made for tense times on six-hour drives to Western Pennsylvania for vacation each summer.

Perched on the couch the other night, the drone of the central air was comforting, lulling me into a drowsy state. I was still coherent enough to have a personal revelation during a television commercial.

As a kid, Pizza Hut was nirvana.

Sure, it’s mediocre pizza, but how many times have you run across pizza that was truly inedible – especially as a kid?

(I could probably count mine on one had)

My hometown had Pizza Haus as the one establishment singularly devoted to purveying pie. It wasn’t bad but hardly the place you rave to friends about years later in one of those mindless discussions that occur shortly after one in the morning at some bar.

It was pizza. It was greasy. It was ours.

(and a place where we enjoyed heckling the town drunks)

The nearest Pizza Hut was twenty minutes away in a thriving megalopolis of ten thousand best known for the tree which grew from the roof of the courthouse.

Times were catatonic.

But there was a Pizza Hut. It was air-conditioned and dimly lit. There was pizza. And, once I was in high school and my friends and I could procure transportation (usually without prior consent of our biological guardians) and escape there, the juke box was of great importance, too.

Those treks rarely ended without souvenirs. One friend had a dozen of those red, plastic glasses at home (I believe he told his mom that they were free with a purchase). We once even made off with a pan pizza pan which another friend’s father was surprised to find in his trunk.

As much as those antics were important in keeping my friends and I occupied, it was those family vacations during which the familiar architecture of Pizza Hut was salvation – a brief respite from hunger, heat, and the drudgery of the road.

The (usually) annual pilgrimage that occurred in 1981 was memorable to me as radio was a new interest and, thus, a new way to pass the time with an eye scanning the horizon for that familiar red roof.

Some of the songs I recall hearing on that trip…

Kim Carnes - Bette Davis Eyes
from Mistaken Identity

I wasn't exactly taken at the time with Kim Carnes' mysterious, new-wave tinged take on this Jackie DeShannon song. That was unfortunate because it was simply inescapable that summer.

Over the years, it's grown on me considerably and I dig the raspy vocals of Carnes.. And, in a brush with semi-greatness, I once bumped into her at Kroger's. She was hidden behind a large pair of sunglasses, but it was definitely her buying a carton of eggs.

Jim Steinman - Rock & Roll Dreams Come Through
from Bad For Good

I like Meat Loaf. He seems like an affable, eager-to-please fellow whom you could depend on in a jam. I think I'd like to be his neighbor

The reason I mention Meat Loaf is because it was singing the songs of Jim Steinman that brought him to global fame. Rock & Roll Dreams Come Through was on Steinman's lone solo album, released during the long wait for Meat Loaf to follow-up Bat Out Of Hell.

It's gloriously bombastic. If you're going to go big, you might as well go Spectorian.

Journey - Who's Crying Now
from Escape

I distinctly remember hearing Who's Crying Now for the first time on that vacation and, by the time it finished, I was already surfing the radio dial in hopes of hearing it again.

I wouldn't even hazard to guess how many times I heard it during that two-week stretch. I am certain that it must have been enough times that had my family bludgeoned me to death with the lid from the cooler and left me for dead on the side of the interstate somewhere in West Virginia, they would have been acquitted.

Foreigner - Urgent
from Foreigner 4

You've got Junior Walker adding sax and Thomas Dolby playing synthesizer - on a Foreigner record. It's lots of fun.

Personally, Foreigner 4 is a fantastic, straight-ahead rock record and I never really understood the critical angst over their records up through this one. Of course, I grew up in the Midwest and, during the late '70s and early '80s, Foreigner on the radio was omnipresent.

Sheena Easton - For Your Eyes Only
from For Your Eyes Only soundtrack

I confess that the only James Bond movie that I have ever seen is A View To A Kill (it's a rather shameful admission, I suppose). I like James Bond, but, if he was a neighbor of me and Meat Loaf, I can't imagine he'd let us use his pool or go bowling with us.

Anyhow, Sheena Easton was a bit too unremittingly perky for me, but I did/do like For Your Eyes Only. Blondie actually was supposed to do the theme to the James Bond flick of the same name, and I like their song, too (even though it is an entirely different song).

Strike Up The Children's Choir!

Paloma accused me of being an aficionado of songs with children’s choirs. I found myself on the receiving end of this perceived slur when we chanced across The Lost Boys on cable.

As we watched the antics of ‘80s-styled vampires, the song Cry Little Sister played on the movie’s soundtrack; said song featured a children’s choir.

It was then that she made her allegation (despite the fact that the song means nothing to me – though the movie’s soundtrack was fun back in the day).

I stammered for a comeback to an accusation that was truly a first. My fifth-grade teacher said I was “as trustworthy as a rattlesnake,” but this children’s choir charge had me bumfoozled.

Could it be true?

The Stones’ You Can’t Always Get What You Want has a children’s choir. No shame in being a fan of that one.

The only other song that popped into my head was, of all things, Kenny Loggins’ Welcome To Heartlight. Aside from one, maybe two songs, I’ve never been a fan – his association with Top Gun pretty much demanded that I blacklist him – and I loathed Welcome To Heartlight when it was a hit in ’83.

If the only thing standing between me and a sullied reputation as a fan of children’s choirs was a dislike of Kenny Loggins, I was standing on shaky ground.

Some research quickly reminded me of The Carpenters’ Sing and Clint Holmes’ Playground In My Mind (“My name is Michael, I got a nickel...”). Both featured children’s choirs and I remembered hearing both as a youngster when they were radio hits.

Could affection for the dulcet strains of vocalizing urchins been ingrained in me when I was but an urchin myself? Is there something about the pint-sized choral harmonies of scamps and ragamuffins that cause my ears to perk up as though it was bacon sizzling in a pan?

I lost interest in researching pretty quickly. The results were inconclusive. For every song with a children’s choir that I liked, there was one that was not good.

Not good.

Actually, I didn’t even come up with a dozen songs. I have to have missed or forgotten some obvious ones.

However, here's an assortment of songs that do have children's choirs...

Sammy Davis, Jr. - The Candy Man

I think I was four when this song topped the charts. To a four-year old – when one of the few desires in life is candy – The Candy Man was as stirring as We Shall Overcome was to those marching for civil rights.

And though it wasn’t Sammy’s version, the song appeared in the movie Willie Wonka & Chocolate Factory, which seems to have quite a following with my fellow Gen Xers.

There must be a thesis in the relationship between that flick and slacker culture.

Pink Floyd - Another Brick In The Wall, Part II
from The Wall

Like the concept of candy, a dislike for being confined to a classroom is a common thread in the DNA of kids. So, when I heard Another Brick In The Wall blaring incessantly from the bowling alley jukebox, it resonated.

It was one of the first 45s I ever bought with my own money and, though I wouldn’t really get into music for another year or so, Pink Floyd’s unlikely hit song helped awaken that interest.

Pat Benatar - We Belong
from Tropico

Pat Benatar’s rise to start status coincided with my teenage years, so she could have been singing Bolshevik work songs and she’d have had our attention.

Nonetheless, I owned most of her cassettes and likely bought Tropico soon after it came out. And, I’ve proven adept at repeatedly buying copies of her albums on vinyl which we already own.

Gorillaz - Dirty Harry
from Demon Days

Why I haven't swooned harder over Gorillaz is a bit of a mystery to me. I love cartoons. Their music has always entertained me. And, I might be one of the few people that enjoyed the movie Tank Girl which was based on the comic book created by Jamie Hewlett who handles the animated aspects of the band.

I'd accept the blame except that would make me responsible. Instead, I think I need to devote more time to the music of Gorillaz. This should delight Paloma who is a big fan and - oh by the way - Dirty Harry features a children's choir.

Michael Jackson

(reposted from Saturday sans music)

Word spread quickly at our office on Thursday that Michael Jackson had been rushed to the hospital. Less than two hours later, while I was navigating rush hour traffic and dodging hobos on the interstate, the announcement came over the radio that Michael Jackson was dead.

The news was broken by the host of a sports talk show. Such was swath that Jackson cut through the world of pop culture and music for forty years.

I arrived home to find Paloma tuned in to the drama airing on CNN.

It seemed surreal.

I was too young to be fully aware of The Jackson 5, but there are grainy images of them in my mind. Michael’s solo breakthrough, Off The Wall, had run its course by the time I was beginning to care about music.

Then, Thriller was released.

I was still listening to Top 40 at the time, but my interest was skewing toward more rock-oriented music and the emerging New Wave acts. The Girl Is Mine, Thriller’s first single, didn’t do much for me, but its follow-up had me hooked from the opening notes.

It was, of course, Beat It, featuring a blistering performance by guitarist Eddie Van Halen.

For the next two years, the string of hits from Thriller saturated radio and Jackson dominated entertainment headlines. He was an inescapable musical juggernaut.

Some of the songs I liked and some less so, but I – everyone – knew them all intimately. In 1983, if my friends and I had managed to get hold of a car, it likely didn’t have a tape deck. It was radio that served our need for sound (and it served us far better than it was often given credit).

It was a time of far greater shared collective consciousness.

So, I didn’t own Thriller. There was no need to own it when any run through the radio dial was certain – completely certain – to result in hearing at least one of its songs.

By the time Bad arrived, I was in college and pop music had mostly fallen from my radar, but each Michael Jackson album was an event and, as it had been years before, something that managed to cut through the increasingly fragmented clutter of modern pop culture to burrow into the collective consciousness of much of the globe.

And suddenly his brother Jermaine was stating that Michael was dead.

Watching Jermaine struggle to maintain his composure, I felt sad. I have a brother and at that moment Michael Jackson wasn’t Michael Jackson.

He was Jermaine’s little brother.

Over the years, I’ve been mostly a passive, casual fan of Michael Jackson’s music, but, I’m a music fan and I appreciated the singer’s considerable talent, but changed the landscape of pop music - and the music business – as few acts ever have.

(or probably ever will again)

Some songs that stuck with me from when it was only his music that mattered...

The Jackson 5- I Want You Back
from Diana Ross Presents The Jackson 5

I probably first knew of The Jackson 5 through their Saturday morning cartoon. There's really nothing to write about the ebullient pop/soul/bubblegum classic I Want You Back that hasn't been said, but it's still amazing to think that it's a ten-year old singing the song.

Michael Jackson - Ben
from Ben

I seem to recall watching the 1971 movie Willard, about an army of rats, with a babysitter when I was about five. I don't recall seeing the sequel Ben which spawned Michael Jackson's first #1 hit without his brothers.

So, Ben is a song about a rat and it is syrupy. But it's also a song about aching to belong and, after reading this excellent piece by LA Times music critic Robert Hilburn, hearing the song again is damned near heartbreaking.

The Jacksons - Can You Feel It
from Triumph

Can You Feel It was one of the last hits Michael had with his brothers before becoming a solo superstar. Accompanying the anthemic disco track was a video that, at the time, was pretty spectacular.

Michael Jackson - Don't Stop Til You Get Enough
from Off The Wall

I don't dance - not even at gunpoint - but the unbridled enthusiasm and hypnotic groove of Don't Stop Til You Get Enough makes it impossible for me not to tap my webbed toes.

Michael Jackson - Human Nature
from Thriller

And then there was Thriller. You only get to discover fire once, but, apparently, Jackson was obsessed with trying to recapture the unparalleled success of that album for the rest of his life.

Personally, I always thought that the lush, dreamy Human Nature, despite being a massive hit in the late summer of 1983, was the most underrated song on the album.

"Something Profound Is Happening"

The universe truly offers up some unexpected and amazing moments and, less than three weeks after I wrote of how impactful it was to watch the events in Tiananmen Square twenty years ago, I’m again watching something happen with the same feelings of awe and wonder.

It’s the outmatched kid standing up to the gutless bully.

I’ve been riveted, following the events in Iran with the same attention to which I devoted to the student protests in China – only the medium has changed from CNN to the internet. At this point, I know who Mohsen Makhmalbaf is and I think I might even be capable of spelling it without looking it up.

During the first few days of protests, I wondered if there would be an iconic moment a la Tank Man in ’89.

And then there was Neda.

Many commentators have noted that these protests have no leader, no fixed point toward which the masses are marching. And as the government took a more stern approach in handling the crisis last weekend, I wondered if this fledgling movement would be cowed.

And then the powers that be killed Neda, delivering the opposition a perfect and powerful symbol, one that has resonated around the world.

It’s, obviously, anyone’s guess as what is going to happen in Iran and there’s no shortage of folks taking a shot at the answer.

“Something profound is happening,” one of the numerous experts opined in a calm, measured fashion over the weekend.

If the Iranians succeed and gain more freedom - and no matter how much time might pass before such a thing happens - I have to think Neda will be there at every plot twist (and there will be a lot).

And if thirty years from now Iran is a stable, democratic society, then this girl who most of us didn’t know two weeks ago will have affected a number of lives that is staggering to ponder.

Peter Gabriel - Biko
from Plays Live

Sparse and haunting, Peter Gabriel's tribute to South African anti-apartheid activist Stephen Bantu Biko, who was murdered while in police custody, is powerful, poignant, and fitting for not only Neda, but for all of the people courageously taking to the streets in Iran.

"You can blow out a candle
But you can't blow out a fire
Once the flames begin to catch
The wind will blow it higher
Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko
Yihla Moja, Yihla Moja
The man is dead

And the eyes of the world are watching now"

It's Already Been A Long, Hot Summer (And The Thrill Of The Season Is Over)

It’s hot today.

It was hot yesterday.

And the forecast calls for this heat wave to persist for the next week.

Though Paloma and I have central air in our tree house suite, a glimpse at the unit’s guts when it was being repaired last summer leads me to believe that it has been built from surplus bi-plane parts manufactured in the ‘30s.

The fact that I am marinating on the couch leads me to question its structural integrity and cooling prowess.

The stifling heat makes thinking an effort. Each time I begin to follow a tangent to write about, it becomes a mirage and, if it doesn’t become a mirage, it’s an oasis far enough in the cranial distance that it doesn’t seem to be worth it.

And, given the events of the past week in Iran, time that would have been spent pondering nonsense has been devoted to following the history in the making.

Summer definitely had a lot more cachet as a kid.

So, I thought I’d pull up a Billboard chart from this week in 1982. Music was a relatively new obsession for me, Clear Channel was years away from homogenizing Top 40 radio and a heatwave simply meant more time at the pool.

Some of the songs I was hearing at the pool and in other places as summer arrived in 1982…

Human League - Don't You Want Me
from Dare

Had I had interest in music a few years earlier, either disco or punk might have been the "new" sound that my friends and I would have adopted as our own. I'm grateful that, instead, New Wave and synthesizer bands from the UK turned out to be our find.

Human League's Don't You Want Me had to have been one of the first songs by a synth band I heard and I was hooked. My friend Chris spent the next year or so focused on collecting every single, 12" inch single, EP, remix, and whatever else he could acquire by the Sheffield band. Personally, aside from a few tracks, my devotion to the band was uncommited.

Toto - Rosanna
from Toto IV

I have no qualms in acknowledging that I own most of Toto's albums up through the mid-'80s and I rarely hit skip when one of their songs pops up on shuffle.

Rosanna was a constant on the radio during the summer of '82 - all summer long - and I don't think I ever tired of it. It's still as joyously infectious more than twenty five years later.

J. Geils Band - Angel In Blue
from Freeze Frame

Although I was fairly lukewarm about the song Centerfold, I'd gotten a copy of J. Geils Band's Freeze Frame as a gift and most of the rest of the album I loved. I don't think any of us knew that the band had actually been around for more than a decade and was known to music fans as America's answer to The Rolling Stones (I, at that time, certainly didn't).

Although it wasn't nearly as big as Centerfold or Freeze Frame's title track, Angel In Blue - a wistful ode to a girl from the wrong side of the tracks with the obligatory heart of gold - was a favorite then and, like that waitress, it hasn't aged a bit.

Kim Wilde - Kids In America
from Kim Wilde

We didn't know much about Kim Wilde when she arrived with the New Wave bubblegum of her song Kids In America. She was a comely blonde and I imagine that's all we needed to know.

But we did love the song. It bounded along. It had a chanted chorus. It was about kids in America and we happened to be kids in America.

It had it all.

An Underrated Movie With A (Once) Much Sought After Soundtrack

Recently, I referenced an iconic scene from the movie Fast Times At Ridgemont High. And while that movie was a staple for me and my friends, the lesser-known film Valley Girl was on equal footing for us during that period.

I’m not sure how my friends and I were turned on to the movie. It certainly didn’t play in our hometown theater.

I do know that it was a movie that, once discovered, was one which we constantly rented on videocassette. Surprisingly enough for a town our size (three thousand people or so when everyone was home), we had a video rental joint even before most of our families had a VCR.

When we all saw Fast Times in the theater during the summer of ’82, it resonated with us, but it wasn’t a world in which we lived – not as we were two-thousand miles from its Hollywood setting in a town with one red light.

Valley Girl arrived a year later. It, too, was set in Hollywood, but its characters and vibe struck closer to our hearts. Most likely it was because a year in high school is a lifetime.

During the time between the two movies, we had completed our sophomore year of high school. We had gone from pedestrians and passengers to drivers and, therefore, masters of our own destinies.

And we personally knew some of these characters.

(not that we hadn’t wished we had known Fast Times' Spicoli)

I doubt if we really considered that Valley Girl was simply a modern-day telling of Romeo And Juliet with new wave music and Nicholas Cage in his first starring role.

(and now that I think about it, in a year Cage had gone from a bit role in Fast Times to the lead in Valley Girl)

That said, I would have a hard time choosing between the two movies, but there’s no hesitation choosing between their respective soundtracks.

Though The Cars, Tom Petty, and The Go-Gos have songs in the movie, and Cheap Trick, Blondie, and Van Halen are referenced (and were all favorites of ours), Fast Times’ soundtrack was loaded – after some purported label pressure – with the likes of solo Eagles (four of them) and Jimmy Buffett.

Valley Girl used music by The Plimsouls, Sparks, Men At Work, and Modern English – some of the artists we did know, but there were a lot who were unfamiliar and exotic.

(as opposed to, say, Poco, who appeared on Fast Times’ soundtrack)

Alas, Valley Girl's soundtrack was in print for about as long as the movie was in theaters. And during my years working in record stores, there was no title for which more listeners clamored for a CD re-issue.

Fortunately, the good people at Rhino Records rectified that oversight, releasing two volumes of music from the film in the mid-'90s.

And all was right with the world...

Sparks - Eaten By The Monster Of Love
from Valley Girl soundtrack

Sparks was an act for whom I needed no introduction. Though they never got radio airplay where I lived, I had seen them duet with The Go-Go's Jane Weidlin on Cool Places in '82 on Solid Gold. And, my friend Chris owned several of their cassettes like In Space, Whomp That Sucker, and Angst In My Pants.

Quirky and amusing, Sparks often had an uncanny knack for getting to the heart of life's truths amidst all of the melodic musical insanity.

Psychedelic Furs - Love My Way
from Valley Girl soundtrack

It seems to me that my friends and I discovered Valley Girl on cable during the summer of '84. My friend Brad had discovered Psychedelic Furs on Night Flight, the USA Network show which aired music videos over night on weekends. As MTV had just become available in our town, Night Flight was the only chance to see the new medium for music.

During the summer of '84, we wore out Psychedelic Furs' new album, Mirror Moves, but it was the dreamy Love My Way (which kind of reminded me of Thompson Twins' Hold Me Now) that was my first exposure to the Furs.

The Plimsouls - Oldest Story In The World
from Valley Girl soundtrack

The Plimsouls actually appeared in Valley Girl as a band in the club where Cage hangs out. One of the songs, A Million Miles Away, was a minor hit and is a staple on a lot of '80s compilations.

Here's the lesser known Oldest Story In The World. It's far more downbeat than most of The Plimsouls' stuff I've owned which is driving, guitar-driven rock. Like Valley Girl, The Plimsouls were under appreciated.

Modern English - I Melt With You
from Valley Girl soundtrack

Of course, I Melt With You is better known now than it was in the early '80s. My mother would probably recognize the song from its use in several commercials.

Modern English's album After The Snow, on which I Melt With You appeared, inspired the term Modern English Syndrome for me and a college roommate. It was our shorthand for an album which, while quite good, had one song which so dwarfed everything else that it made the rest of tracks seem almost mediocre.

The music of the '80s has been much maligned (and, at times, I would argue unfairly). I Melt With You is as perfect a pop song as any that came before or after it.