It’s disturbing, getting older and being taken by surprise as your heroes die off. I do my best to talk mine up while they’re among us, but you know how it goes…so much greatness, a finite amount of time. Alex Chilton became my hero by way of my other heroes, The Replacements. They sang a song about him, so I listened to him and never looked back.
Maybe I was in awe of is his voice. It was a great voice, but more impressive was his control over it. He could evoke a range of emotions and produce the texture of a moment in the time line of musical history and then skip ahead or behind seamlessly. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think The Letter and Thirteen were sung by two different singers, men of divergent generations and life experiences. Genius.
I’ve been cleaning up the archives here, adding bigger, more beautiful images. I started at the beginning, methodical me, and I’ve been working my way forward. But last night, for some reason, I grabbed Left of the Dial out of order and went searching for the coolest Big Star picture I could find. Funny, that.
FDR: I started reading No Ordinary Time last year (enormous book) and this was quite a man and a people’s president. He never took impossible for an answer and that goes a long way with me!
Lincoln: A very smart and compassionate man who might have been a lot happier in another line of work and nonetheless held a divided nation together and helped to abolish slavery.
Kennedy: Despite not being his older brother Joe, having Addison’s disease and debilitating back pain, and having gotten by as the class clown of the senate, he restored the people’s faith in government and gave them hope.
Obama: Maybe it’s because I wake up every day rejoicing that I don’t have to bare witness to the previous administration ever again, but I love this President six ways ’till Sunday and then it all starts again. I never thought I’d see the day an American President would do that thing he did on C-Span, what with the out in the open calling a spade a spade, but I kid you not I used to dream about it at night as a girl. Government is distinct from politics, one is a matter of service and the other of self-interest. Not much good can come with the latter in domination and this President is trying to do something about that…and it makes me feel like this is the leader I’ve been waiting for my whole idealistic little life!
They had me pegged as Bunny Lebowski the first time and next her co-star in smut, Uli Kunkel (AKA “Karl Hungus”). First of all, no way. I’ve had my own bowling ball (specifically engineered for my personal southpaw grip, with my name engraved) since my 12th birthday. It came with powder blue professional shoes and a matching case and it’s sitting in my hall closet right this minute. So no way it goes down like that.
In a film that’s only women are a vapid slut and a militant feminist, we absolutely have to take gender out of the equation. So we’re down to men, who bowl. Obviously I’m far too bothered by this test to be The Dude. I was made an honorary Jew by my rabbi so I feel Walter on that one, but I’m not that paranoid or violent. I rock the look like The Jesus and I often do that little dance when winning in sporting events, but so totally NOT a pederast (and there’s no way I’d make it through eight months in Chino).
Lately I’ve been living on friends’ sofas because I rented out my bedroom to my roommate’s family for the Thanksgiving fortnight. The realization that I wouldn’t be out of town with the ex or squirreled away with him in the middle of nowhere, as we’d planned for so long, was at first quite painful. Yet here in my adorable hotel room in DC, all alone in my king size bed with my exile nearly over, it seems hilarious.
