Holy
crap in a Bundt pan...
Due to the
recent well-publicized shortage of
amateur websites produced by assholes who consider themselves to be
clever, I
have been called into action. My name is Jeff Kay, and I’m an
Ugly American living
on the cusp of a mid-life crisis, near Scranton, PA. And I’m here to
serve, baby.
The
State of My Fat Ass A journal of
sorts, updated every once in a while.
--
So I was mowing the grass last night and started thinking about the Steely
Dan concert that Steve and I will be attending in August. I don't go
to too many shows these days, since I'm old and broken-down, and have a
tendency to get a little over-excited when I do.
But for several years live music was one of the most important things in
my life (hey, immaturity is the fountain of youth), and I guess there's
still a bit of the old passion buried somewhere beneath the scar tissue?
Yeah, I'm fully aware that a Steely Dan concert in 2006 isn't exactly
like seeing Cheap Trick in 1980. I know that there probably won't be an
abundance of scary-ass holler-dwellers there with glassy eyes and muscle
shirts, hoisting plastic cups of piss-warm Budweiser, and screaming,
"ROCK N ROLL!" before exploding in a spectacular vomit
supernova.
And I seriously doubt that I'll go to the bathroom and find a hundred
guys shoe-horned inside, all pissing simultaneously into anything even
mildly bowl-shaped: a trashcan, a sink, a floor drain, a stranger's back
pocket....
No, it'll probably just be a bunch of middle-aged yuppies standing
around in golf attire, sipping white wine and talking about the
improvements they're doing to their beach house at "the
shore."
But I don't care. I like the music, consider Donald Fagen to be a freaky
little mad scientist (that's a compliment), and plan to have a good
time. I'll be confident in knowing that I hate wine, couldn't give two
shits about golf, and wouldn't be caught dead in a pastel-colored polo
shirt. And I'm not even certain I know what "the shore" means.
Is that some pretentious way of saying "the beach?" Whatever.
It got me to thinking though.... Steely Dan was at the height of their
popularity in the mid to late 1970s. And that was roughly thirty years
ago. So, when I was seventeen, in 1980, if I'd gone to see an artist who
was popular thirty years before, it would've been somebody from the
pre-rock 'n' roll era(!). Like Bing Crosby or Patti Page or somebody.
And that freaks me out a little.
Do you younglings out there view Steely
Dan as some dusty old relic from a forgotten era, the way I
would've looked at Rosemary Clooney or Perry Como back in the day??
Fuck!
Here's a list of the most popular songs from 1950. Really weird, man.
Were the Mills Brothers the Steely Dan of 1980? And is Cheap Trick the
Mills Brothers of 2006? I just don't know, but it's making me a little
sad for some reason....
-- And speaking of bathrooms at rock concerts, can you imagine having to
take a crap in such a setting? I once had a nightmare in which I was hit
with sudden-onset diarrhea at an early-1980's ZZ Top show, and woke up
with my heart racing and sweat cascading down my face. Completely
horrifying.
Do you have any arena rock bathroom memories to share? 'Cause I'd sure
like to hear them. Use the comments link below.
And I know this is a short update, but that's the way it goes sometimes.
There's always tomorrow, right?
--
So I was mowing the grass last night and started thinking about the 