Land of the Bizarre
I may have moaned at length about the ubiquitous Burl Ives, the constant crooning of Frankie, but there were times I actually retreated to the store floor just to hear some harmless carols for 15 minutes. The alternative was... Mick's music.
I don't mean Mickey Mouse, either. Mick, a fellow traveller in the Visual Department, was addicted to Alt Punk music the way some people are addicted to double-shot caffeine (which he was always proud to note was not one of his problems). Because he came in to work a good hour before either myself or the boss, he got to turn on the radio and tune it to the station of his choice, and that was almost invariably 91-X. As far as I could tell, the play list was about 91 tunes long, which made for some pretty regular repeats. If I heard Beck's Nausea, +44's When Your Heart Stops Beating, or Welcome to the Black Parade by My Chemical Romance, once, I heard them 287 times a week.
Change the station? Well, that might have upset the apples in Mick's rather fragile mental cart, and as a lowly temp, who would not have to clean up the consequences of such action, I hesitated to do so. His style was reminiscent of Captain Jack Sparrow, down to the manic hair and assorted skull-and-crossbones accountrements, but his face was as haunted as the manticore on the gatefold album cover of Tarkus (a fine old Emerson, Lake & Palmer LP, but more uneven than most of their output if you ask me). Anyone whose idea of a great party involves setting off molotov cocktails in a trash barrel in the backyard, or who can calmly describe a colossal New Year's Eve brawl with his housemates as 'just the lads larking about' (or the California equivalent) when queried about the scars on his forearms, is plainly someone not to offend. If Mick has a political position at all, I believe it must be 'anarchy rocks!'
Still, the week I was confined to the Visuals shop constructing endless beribboned towers of empty gift boxes, I insisted on the right of the person in situ to change the station: poor old Mick got an earful of NPR for five days straight... Adding insult to injury, it was Election Week, and I was plainly delighted with the increasingly Democratic composition of Congress. Even his constant grumbling that 'global warming is a fiction' or that 'Iraq should have been nuked back to the stone age long ago' did not dampen my determination to listen to all of Linda Wertheimer or Daniel Schorr's commentaries.
Thankfully, Mick's retaliation was limited to returning the radio to its previously uninterrupted diet of hard rock, acid punk, and Nine Inch Nails -- and maybe turning the volume up a tiny fraction -- the minute Election Week was over.
I don't mean Mickey Mouse, either. Mick, a fellow traveller in the Visual Department, was addicted to Alt Punk music the way some people are addicted to double-shot caffeine (which he was always proud to note was not one of his problems). Because he came in to work a good hour before either myself or the boss, he got to turn on the radio and tune it to the station of his choice, and that was almost invariably 91-X. As far as I could tell, the play list was about 91 tunes long, which made for some pretty regular repeats. If I heard Beck's Nausea, +44's When Your Heart Stops Beating, or Welcome to the Black Parade by My Chemical Romance, once, I heard them 287 times a week.
Change the station? Well, that might have upset the apples in Mick's rather fragile mental cart, and as a lowly temp, who would not have to clean up the consequences of such action, I hesitated to do so. His style was reminiscent of Captain Jack Sparrow, down to the manic hair and assorted skull-and-crossbones accountrements, but his face was as haunted as the manticore on the gatefold album cover of Tarkus (a fine old Emerson, Lake & Palmer LP, but more uneven than most of their output if you ask me). Anyone whose idea of a great party involves setting off molotov cocktails in a trash barrel in the backyard, or who can calmly describe a colossal New Year's Eve brawl with his housemates as 'just the lads larking about' (or the California equivalent) when queried about the scars on his forearms, is plainly someone not to offend. If Mick has a political position at all, I believe it must be 'anarchy rocks!'
Still, the week I was confined to the Visuals shop constructing endless beribboned towers of empty gift boxes, I insisted on the right of the person in situ to change the station: poor old Mick got an earful of NPR for five days straight... Adding insult to injury, it was Election Week, and I was plainly delighted with the increasingly Democratic composition of Congress. Even his constant grumbling that 'global warming is a fiction' or that 'Iraq should have been nuked back to the stone age long ago' did not dampen my determination to listen to all of Linda Wertheimer or Daniel Schorr's commentaries.
Thankfully, Mick's retaliation was limited to returning the radio to its previously uninterrupted diet of hard rock, acid punk, and Nine Inch Nails -- and maybe turning the volume up a tiny fraction -- the minute Election Week was over.
posted by CatzEyes at 9:30 AM
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