Saturday, July 02, 2005

2 4 6 8, Geldoff is a wanker, Screw Live8.....

Huge concert….Millions of white people turning out to do something to influence something about something about Africa. Only 10k showed in Tokyo. BBC interviewed everyone in actual Africa with a telephone or an internet connection…..all 200 of them. They had not actually heard of the concert taking place, and were puzzled as to why…….BBC then pointed out that the Glorious George Whatever Bush had promised three billion dollars in aid to Africa a couple of years ago…..and actually delivered an entire……$100k. To Madagascar. I hear they have cute lemurs there…….And their Negroes are handsome and frequently abstain from fornicating……and never use condoms.

Needless to say….Actual Africans could not even muster the energy to be bored by a bunch of white people promising to eventually spend some money raised by propping up a bunch of has-been pop stars (George Michael?...well, he should know about AIDS….) on something something that might something something.

I listened to live8 on the way to the party in Salinas. (75th birthday for Norman, husband of Susan. Susan’s job ere these last 40 years has been turning out Misses….as in Miss Salinas, Miss California, Miss Artichoke……Don’t laugh: Marilyn Monroe was Miss Artichoke in Castroville when she was still Norma Jean. Lots of breasts….and Susan’s parties run to strippers, karaoke, etc. Tought to push through that crowd.)

Anyway, Live8 was on the BBC. Sting sang “Every Breath You Take” and sounded very good…..exactly like the record. I was thinking: why on earth would you go stand in Hyde Park on a summer day (England gets hot, people) with a quarter million other idiots and listen to records?

Then Pink Floyd came on….their first reunion in 24 years. They hate each other…The founding guy Sid lives under a weir in Cambridge, like a Harry Potter character….completely off his nut on the metric tons of LSD it took to make their first few records in the sixties. Whatever. They did “Money”…..just like the record.

Then they did “Comfortably Numb”……The vocals….Roger Waters….the guitar was magic. Even on an FM radio broadcast of a live concert over a car stereo…..admittedly a Jaguar stereo....blew me away. Wow. I got chills. I teared up. The song went on and on as I drove into Salinas. The guitar rang like a fuckin' bell.....When it ended, even the BBC girl announcer was sobbing. Wow. Those guys can PLAY. Even if they hate each other……

Then came the big finale……Paul McCartney…..Oh, Jesus, save us. He did “Get Back” (to where you once belonged…… I couldn’t have agreed more). I missed the next one while I was in the Missing Linen plant getting tablecloths……

The grand finale was: “Hey Jude”. Give me a fucking break. It is bad enough that Sir Paul had to come and piss all over this magic rock and roll Pink Floyd moment….but Hey Jude?

Hey Jude for me is the Jersey shore…..crushingly humid, salt-drenched nights sleeping under lifeboats on the sand…..battling squadrons of bat-sized mosquitos after having once again failed to attract the attention of any human female with intact chromosomes. Paralyzed on the Garden State Parkway in chockablock traffic with same….crushing sunstroke, melanoma and hangover added, no extra charge.

Forget Darfour. Where is Kofi Anan when this kind of social atrocity is taking place? I think any group of people that stand en masse and sing Hey Jude while swaying arm in arm should be taken immediately to Gizmo or whatever they call it, and have their HEADS flushed down those awesome Koran-sucking toilets.

What are young people to think of my generation? Hey Jude? Sir Paul? God, if they had to have a Sir Paul…what was Paul Newman doing? He could have at least handed out cookies, or balsamic vinaigrette. Someone needs to tell Sir Paul Mc. that Hey Jude is the Kumbaya of his generation……A fucking hideous embarrassment along the lines of bed pans and Thanksgiving table flatulence. No wait: that is unfair to Kumbaya. Nuns sing that on the beach. Hey Jude is the "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall" of his generation. Only 13-year old hormone addled Catholic school girls sing that when the bus breaks down…..

All that needs to be said about Sir Paul has been said, as usual, by a member of the Dallas Family. My buddy BK, momentarily deranged in his pursuit of…….the pharmacist?.....bought tickets to a Wings concert at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley. He struggled for breath on the walk in, surrounded by hordes of the nouveau yup: trophy wives, Birkenstocks, wall-to-wall REI stuff…smoking primo pot from ivory mini-bongs….not a foreskin in the lot……and not a circumcision to be found amongst any of their Snugli toted offspring.

AJ held his cool, though. The pharmacist was something else.....The last straw, however, came during the first song. Linda McCartney (God rest her frozen TV dinner mongering soul) had her mike turned way up, the other band guys turned way down. She howled like a beagle in heat to Sir Paul’s insipid Lennon-less lyrics. BK….who is an actual financial planner with a real job…..snapped.

He stood up and screamed at the top of his lungs:

THE WRONG BEATLE DIED!!

Amen.

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