23rd and Willow

On the fourth beat of the fourth bar of “Fell in Love with a Girl” by the White Stripes there lives a flam.  It sometimes strikes me as amazing that I can describe the location of a flam as I would a geographical place.  As in, “You can buy a bag from the guy in front of the 7-11 on the northwest corner of 23^rd and Willow.”  The northwest corner of 23^rd and Willow and the fourth beat of the fourth bar are equally real places to me.

Do you guys know what a flam is?  According to the famous web site “drumsetfun.com” (I am not going to link to it because it is scary and I am worried that it will give your machine the same virus that you get when looking for Lady Gaga websites to jerk off to…I mean, not that I would know) a flam is “a distinct sound created by two successive drum strikes made by the two sticks. It is essentially a way to embellish any given note and play it in a ‘fancier’ fashion.”  I don’t know if I would have described it that way, but what happens to the snare on the 4th beat  of the fourth measure of that song is definitely a flam.   It’s a really good flam too.  You get four bars of heavily-distorted guitar intro before the flam.  If I had been drumming, I would have done some elaborate (as elaborate as I could manage anyway) buildup and fill.

Instead, Meg White gives me this clumsy, sloppy half-assed flam…and it is perfect.  In fact, this flam provokes an internal and  involuntary reaction every time I hear it.  I want to stand up.  I want to shred guitars and jump up and down and kick over microphone stands.  I want to fucking rock.  For a split second, I see a whole different existence inside that flam.  It’s the world that would have resulted if I had stepped on stage when I was invited up on that fateful day in 1999. According to Hugh Everett, in some universe I did step up.  I wonder how that turned out.  Too bad that universe isn’t as easy to find as the guy with the bag on 23rd and Willow and the fourth beat of the fourth measure of a silly White Stripes tune.

The spring semester started at school last night.  As a few of you know, I am pursuing a PhD at a school that is two and a half hours away from my house.  Once a week I drive for 5 hours and attempt to be “scholarly.”  I am only doing it to try to tear academia down from the inside, but they are smart and pretty quick to sniff out my ruse.  I have been working harder to fit in (and not flunk out) lately, but I am afraid I am about to go native.  I am going to end up as a pompous communist douchebag if you guys don’t help keep me sane.

Last night’s class was filled with the same people from last semester – a Korean guy, a Chinese guy and a lady that used to pursue patents for a living.  They all drive me insane…except for the time that the Chinese guy was pissed at the Korean guy and they were trying to argue in English.  They were so passionate about their views and so limited in their ability to communicate that they finally just ended up making nonsensical noises and furiously gesturing at each other.  It was awesome.

The highlight of last night’s class saw the professor suggesting that I quit my actual job and let my wife support me while I went to school.  I asked him for a teacher’s permission slip to take home to my wife.  This was especially funny to me because the guy is kind of famous in certain circles and was definitely not used to people hitting him with crappy one-liners.

The patent lady cackled, the Korean guy attempted to understand what was funny by tilting his head to the side like a collie at a whistling competition and the Chinese dude just sat there fantasizing about weird porn (probably).

So anyway…I know things aren’t off to the greatest of starts here at mockable 2.0, but I don’t really mind too much.  I have found that no matter how busy I make myself in a subconscious effort to garner sympathy and blow jobs, I need to write to keep from going nuts.  So I’ll write…and I hope you stick around.