Encounterculture

In which I capitulate and try to start a blogmeme

So. A few nights ago, I ended up at a roller skating rink of all places for my friend Deidre's birthday. Before you ask: yes I did skate, yes I did fall and bust my ass, yes I'm sure it was hilarious to watch, and yes I will kill you where you stand if you give me shit for it. Imagine trying to balance a stack of four or five large pizzas on the tip of a pool cue and you've got a pretty respectable analogue for what it must have looked like to watch me on goddamn roller skates. Let's not make a thing out of it.

(I take solace, however, in the knowledge that my comical flailings were NO MATCH WHATSOEVER for the hilarity of the people there who actually knew how to skate. Keep in mind that this place had designated Tuesday night as "Adult Skate Night", meaning that a bunch of Valley denizens crawled out of their meth labs to hit the roller rink and show their shit off. Unfortunately for them, I was there to point and laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh and preserve their presence for posterity and then go back to laughing, thus entering into the record the presence of:

1. The unexpected exuberance of the guy who looked like the world-weary lovechild of an unholy tryst between Rob Halford and John Malkovich. In all fairness, he was less comical than most and probably would have escaped my Spidey Sense for Hilarity had he not tried to run skate-rink game on Michelle earlier in the night, thus prompting me to take every opportunity to point out the moves of her gentleman caller. He was rockin' out. It was fuckin' funny.

2. The woman who, upon hitting the rink with all the dead-eyed idle intensity of a hooker lining up at the free clinic, prompted a flurry of Courtney Love comments from everyone else, flat-out beating me to jokes that I'm still mad at myself for not making (although in the spirit of accuracy, she looked less like Courtney Love than a rode hard and put away wet Lita Ford, which is saying something).

3. Spinning Man, my personal favorite. Every so often, Spinning Man would seize the center of the rink and do the most gut-bustingly sinciere twirl taken from ice skating* that you can possibly imagine, and yes, all the appropriate Graceland jokes were made ("Good lord, he's spinning to infinity! Does he have a baboon heart?") Furthermore, when he was REALLY feeling his oats, he'd bust out this TREMENDOUS leap into the air and then go into the spin, and of course you wouldn't be reading a blog entry if he didn't fall in classic fashion (my exact words to Michelle: "Oh yeah, time to be mean-spirited.") What you DON'T know about the situation is that I swear before God and all the angels that this guy had to be the long-lost brother of that guy who buys all those beef jerky sticks in Ghost World, down to the indeterminable stains all over his wifebeater (my best guess was coffee, although how someone can manage to spill coffee into a lopsided triforce on their back is beyond my powers of understanding). I will be eternally grateful to my self-preservation drive for keeping me from going up to him after the rink closed down and going "WHOO! Gawdayum, that done lef'me tahrd! I'm 'bout hungry 'nuff to chew the crotch out of a ragdoll!" and such. I leave the decision as to which was the funniest in your hands, Gentle Reader, although you know how I'm betting.)

BUT I DIGRESS.

What was perhaps most striking about the whole experience, however, was the unearthly familiarity of the rink. Now I have neither been to nor thought about a skating rink in well over a decade, but even so, y'know, the world's changed a lot; I guess I kinda assumed that skating rink technology would have taken a correlative Great Leap Forward (I mean fuck, they've even figured out ways to gussy up bowling). But it was fucking uncanny; I walked through those doors and stepped back into middle school, albeit without the packs of kids decked out in floodwaters and giant shirts with g'd up Looney Tunes characters throwing poses (and yes I had one and yes so did you so shut the fuck up). The skates were all the same, the video games were all the same (I had honestly forgotten that that crappy Simpsons game existed, but there it was, waiting to ambush me), and of course the music was absofuckinggoddamncanyounotseeIamseriouslutely the same (with the surprising exception of the Basement Jaxx' "Red Alert"). I mean, I'd have to mark the time in years between occasions on which I hear Montell Jordan's "This Is How We Do It", but yep, there it was. I half-expected myself to go home and google Erin Becker just for old time's sakes.

As you might expect, it took about three songs before my Arrogant Nerd Reflexes took over. "Self", I thought to myself, "you know and I know that it's time for a change; a roller-change. Yes, 'Brick House' is a fine song, but dammit, you could do better. Go thee to the blogosphere and make thee a list of, oh, let's say twenty songs that you would play at your own personal roller-skating rink, and don't forget to denote songs for all the stupid shit like Backwards Skating and Couples Skating and so on. And keep in mind that you have to play to The People, so don't go running off to throw together a playlist full of Black Dice and John Cale and Suicide. And don't forget that you still have to mail off your check for your dental insurance." And I stood up and said YES in the scene that played out in my mind, and thus came up with:

HIPSTER ROLLER DISCO
(a work in progress)

1. Eddie Holman, "This Will Be A Night To Remember" 
2. Notorious B.I.G., "Mo' Money, Mo' Problems"
3. Dexy's Midnight Runners, "Come On Eileen"
4. Dogs Die In Hot Cars, "Godhopping"
5. Basement Jaxx, "Plug It In" 

(Over the PA: "Awweh, then effu sons arkabefr bagwods-skaying! Yeah! Cleedefor ifu dunno hoto bagwa-skay! Annnnd...yeah! Bagwads! Awright!")

6. Babe Ruth, "The Mexican"
7. Donna Summer, "Upside Down"
8. Gloria Jones, "Tainted Love"

(Over the PA: "Annow wr baga reg'ar skaying! Eeveeboduh go thuruglar way!")

9. Metric, "Dead Disco"
10. The Strokes, "Last Nite" (a roller-skating anthem waiting to happen and you all motherfucking KNOW it)
11. The Happy Mondays, "Tart Tart" 
12. The Scissor Sister, "Comfortably Numb" 
13. Stevie Wonder, "Superstition" 
14. Andre 3000, "Hey Ya" (GEEV THE PEEPLES WHAT ZEY WANT, I guess. But Hey Ya still rules and I don't care how many parents love it.)

(Over the PA: "Arrite, nowwurgana playsim sohns juffurfa cubbles! (uncomfortable pause Roggon!")
(lights get embarassingly dim, feels are shamelessly copped)

15. Oasis, "Don't Look Back In Anger" (ah, memories)
16. David Gray, "Say Hello Wave Goodbye"
17. Israel what's-his-face, "Somewhere Over The Rainbow/What A Wonderful World"

(Over the PA: "Okee, thabaduzzit furgupillskayeen! Annnow wegoh taykit on nome!")

18. LCD Soundsystem, "Beat Connection" (and because I am a sadist I would play all nine minutes of it. And I guarangoddamntee you that it'd get people up.)
19. The Fox, "Ride On" (ATOC dub)
20. Double Exposure, "My Love Is Free" (the Tom Moulton mix)

So, uh, yeah. That happened. Discuss amongst yourselves.

(and FYI, I haven't forgotten about the real-time project; my monitor on my home computer just died so I have to fix that before I can write anything thurr. Content forthcoming, usual excuses, etc etc etc.)

*I forget the actual name of the move because freestyle snowboarding aside, the Winter Olympics are for suckers. In a perfect world, the Winter Olympics would just be the exact same games of the Summer Olympics, just held on ice. You KNOW you want to watch Ice Javelin and Ice Boxing and Ice Baseball and such. You KNOW it.