a relatively shallow entry to get me started again

Hello LJ friends. I’m back in town and have so much to write about I don’t know where to start. First off, thanks to motel666, queenbeanna, and goodbadgirl for helping to entertain me in Seattle, Sara and Steve (too cool for LJ, those two) for hosting me for a night in Portland, and all the other people without an online presence who took me in or otherwise amused me.

Much will be coming in the future, including, but not limited to:

-Why I’m over punk houses
-Ideological problems with "Thomas the Tank Engine"
-Musings on "The Left" and the anti-war movement (If you haven’t read jactitation’s piece here you should right now
-Grand generalizations about Portland and Seattle
-Why Goths amuse me
-The cheese schmoozefests and related events I’m currently attending

But the first thing I’ll write about is the drive. Nothing really makes me feel more American than driving a huge white Pontiac Bonneville (free upgrade from the compact I reserved) 800 miles in a day. I’m not saying that in an ironic way either. I really do love it. And since I brought about 30 CDs (I try to over pack in every aspect of my vacations) it was a loud and fast drive too, my favorite kind.

So loud, in fact, that I blew out one of the speakers with my "Too Popular for their Own Good" mix CD. In the same way that I like to listen to Hank Williams and Wanda Jackson when I visit Germany, I figured that since I’d be traveling through some of the whitest parts of the country I needed the equivalent of KMEL (outside SF read as "Clear Channel urban format station") to help keep things in perspective. I think it was "How Many Licks?" by Li’l Kim that did it. All of a sudden, no more bass.

Luckily, I’m punk so I was well prepared. If there ever was a musical style that disdained bass it’s that of my chosen subculture. And while it’s satisfying to pull into rest stops with the bass thumping so loud that the bathroom trolls come outside to see what’s going on, I think the constant short-fast-loud cut an hour off my trip by raising my adrenaline level. Driving down I-5 at 85 MPH screaming along to Blatz* just made me so happy. . . I felt like I had finally relaxed after a week off of work.

Unfortunately, there’s that hard-to-rationalize, nagging thought that my (and most Americans’) ability to find such joy in driving alone is, on more than an individual, consumerist level, one of the reasons a whole bunch of people are going to die in Iraq very soon.

Sigh.



* Confidential to The Punx: I bought the new/old Blatz/Filth CD in Portland that packages all their records onto 2 CDs. I came to the conclusion that if you think of yourself as punk, and you don’t love Blatz, well, you must have no heart. "Homemade Speed", "Lullaby", "Fuck Shit Up", and "Berkeley is my Baby and I want to Kill It": pure classics.

Thomas, the tank engine that runs on false consciousness

I spent a lot of time in Seattle playing with my friends’ 2 year old kid.* I love it when taking care of a child is part of The Cause. Me staying home with A helped enable my friends to organize their neighborhood anti-war protest.

In the hours of day care I did, A only had one meltdown. Not bad considering I hadn’t seen him in a year and a half. The instructions I had were that if A got really upset and nothing worked to calm him, I should turn on the VCR and let him watch his train video. After the third viewing, I realized that I had some real ideological issues with "Thomas the Tank Engine".

I don’t know the technical term for the style that "Thomas" is made. I mean except for "cheap" and "bad". It’s kind of old-school, filming models of trains and people that just stand there expressionless while a voice over, which seem to all be done by the same person** says something. ("Oh my Thomas, I think we’re running late.") But it’s also partially animated, Thomas and all his engine friends have faces and moving lips.

What jumped out at me first was the sexism. All the engines are men, doing manly engine things. All the humans were men too, because, after all, who else would work on a railroad? It was so blatant that I, in my ‘90s way, was trying to see if their was a bigger irony that I was missing. There wasn’t.

Nor was there even a nod to multi-culturalism, as the engines all seemed English and white, mostly with proper English names.*** It is set in England, but you’d think they’d add one or two which acknowledged their colonial roots like "Mahatma, The Peaceful Train" or even modernized themselves with "Marley, The Rasta Engine". Their was however, one faggy train which kept asking to be polished over and over again when he found out his special friend train was returning from a long trip.

But overall "Thomas" is very invested in an "honor of work" ideology. By the third viewing I really couldn’t view Thomas in any way other than as a scab or company spy. The other trains complain about the workload, how they never get any rest, and how the company’s demands of them are unreasonable, but Thomas always comes to the boss’s defense. While the boss, Sir Toppumhattum (sp?) who looks exactly like the Monopoly board robber baron, must talk crossly with the other engines at times, Thomas is obviously his favorite, constantly brown-nosing him with a "Yes Sir" or "No Sir" while cajoling and scolding the other trains for their laxness. That’s right Thomas, work yourself into an early grave while Sir ToppHatt gets rich off your labor. Sucker. I, of course, explained to A that the whole video was a propaganda piece and warned him not to be fooled..

Most annoyingly though, I still don’t know what a fucking "Tank Engine" is or how it differs from other engines. I thought this was supposed to be educational.



*I was mocked at the food show yesterday for using the word "kid" for a human. Oh, those goat farmers. . .

**George Carlin actually. Can’t we set up a donation fund so such an established comedian doesn’t have to do work like this to feed his family?

***There was even a Gordon, though he had no speaking role.