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2001-12-03 / 6:59 p.m. ~It wasn't what I wanted it to be~ I just ate one of the best frozen meals I've ever eaten...it was a Lean Cusine (which I did not buy because I need to be leaner) Portabella Beef With Potatoes something or other. The potatoes were actually seasoned, and had their skins on still, well, they were mashed, but with skins, red skins, and the beef was decent, like pot roast sort of, but better, the mushrooms meaty, the sauce thick and sort of wine-y. Yeah, I have a good feeling in my tum right about now. I meant to write last night after the show, but I didn't have a very good time, so I came home and went to bed instead. The last time I wrote was Saturday night, I think. I was going to watch some of "Deliverance" (I made it to the rape scene and it was time for "The Thin Man" - whew! That's hard to watch. Really.) But dammit if I didn't lie down on the sofa, with a throw 'cause it was actually a bit cool in here, and Norman, and at some point Gladysimus too, no, wait, Gladicus Andronicus, and shucks if that is not THE recipe for sleep. How old am I, anyway? Anyway? It's like I'm some old cat lady, falling asleep in front of her Nick and Nora Charles movie, lying with her cozy throw and her kitties on a Saturday night. I think there were sleeping pills, crushed, in the popcorn. That's what did it. Come to think of it....I'm feeling sleepy right about now too.....I think it's eating. All my energy goes straight to the tum, digesting away, and the head gets all light and empty, well, more so than usual anyway, and I just...want....to....lie....down........ Okay. Enough, I'm fine, for now. Right, so Saturday night it was sleep on the sofa night, wake up to Gladys' machinations and mischief, her trying to wake me up all night long, to tell me that the bed is THAT way, thank you very much!!! She's weird. "Stop it, Gladys!", every hour or less, the TV still on whatever channel was previously showing "The Thin Man". Fell asleep before the whodunit is gloriuosly solved by a for just a moment sober Nick Charles, then no doubt drinks are had by everyone. SO much drinking, that's the best part. That, and how much Nick and Nora truly love each other, and Asta of course. I love their relationship, and her gowns..... Yesterday I didn't do shit. Slept late, really late, and it was hard to get up. I knew I had to though. I basically just sat around watching "Guiding Lights"s on tape, and they are so good lately - there's this whole time travel thing involving Reva and a painting of a woman who looks surprisingly like Olivia. Turns out Reva is exploring her past lives, and those of her ex-husband and his cheating wife. Yes, it's good, it's very good - she's now in turn of the century England, whereas she just left behind Civil War New Orleans. Good, good, good. Then the concert. Ugh. Where do I begin? I love Me'Shell Ndegeocello's music. I have two of her CDs, which I have listened to over and over and over, put them on tape to listen to in the car, before my cassette deck broke, and I listened to them while driving until I got sick of them, had to take a break. So, I had to see her live. Had to. So did everyone else. It was crowded, very crowded, I had to park a couple blocks from the theatre, I had to stand in line just to get in, and a woman in a Mexican dress tried to hand me a card advertising the Isley Brothers in concert. She said, "The Isley Brothers are playing next weekend", and tried to hand it to me, but I hate people handing me crap, so I politely said, "No, thank you", and she says, "Oh, you don't like the Isley Brothers", like I'm just some stupid white person, some cracker, honkey, whatever, but no, I just didn't want to throw her card on the ground like everyone else did. Why do people hold out their hands to receive, blindly? I was the only white person around for miles. Okay, not miles, there were maybe 5 or 6 others. It was homogenous, and I can't stand homogeneity. Did I spell that right? Really, I am uncomfortable in a crowd of any ONE type of people. I like variety, spice, a mix, a good, healthy mix. This was not. I dealt though. I'm a big girl, I'm used to being a minority, I've written about it here, ad nauseum, it's something I deal with a lot, but I somehow wasn't expecting it. Neither was I expecting the "limited seating" notation on the ticket to mean that two thirds of the insanely large crowd would not have a seat. They/I would be forced to stand. The entire time. And there was an opening act. From 8:00 to 11:30, standing. Luckily, I found a railing to sit on. A fat railing that bordered what is usually a seating area, a platform that usually contains several tables and several more chairs. Empty of all of that, just carpeting and the railing. I got my Bass Ale, which I shouldn't have, because it made me tired, and kind of cranky, strangely enough, and I sat on that railing, in pain, for three and a half hours. I shifted, one cheek, my bone (coccyx?) to the railing, one leg part over it, leg bent, turning to the side, to the stage, all night, to see. My neck was killing me. And once Me'Shell came out, once she began plucking on her bass guitar and it was funky and good, I began to move with the music, couldn't help myself, and was shocked to see everyone around me standing perfectly still. What was this? All was good, besides the comfort level, and me asking myself over and over again, "What the fuck were they thinking? How could they charge people $25 and make them stand?" There is a section of seats affixed to the floor in the center of this theatre, and old movie theatre, a place renovated in the early '80s, re-opened as a first run theatre for independents and foreign films, like the theatre where I've been going to see "Amelie", but it didn't make money, so now it's for concerts, has been for years. So, there are those movie theatre seats down the center, and they were totally filled by the time I entered. The rest of us stood, or leaned, or sat painfully on fat railings. Horrible. Oh, Me'Shell was great, but she used the stage as her soap box, proselytizing about how materialistic we all are, how it's all about money, what kind of car you drive, what you have, how much, how many things, then the bible, and the real story, how Jesus was a Jew, how he was killed for doing the right thing, or something, I don't evern know. Oh, I agreed with most everything she had to say, but...she went on, and on, and on, and on, and, okay, on. Add a few more "on"s. She apologized at one point, "I know I talk too much". But she has this amazing voice, and she has this lilt, this rhythm, this singsong way of preaching, and it was all to this great backbeat, it just kept going, then she'd break into one of her actual songs, and it would be really good, but then she'd break it off into a long jam, and it would become something else, and I just WANTED TO SIT DOWN and enjoy it. But, no. Then, she got nasty, sang this song, "Only you....can satisfy me", and it's such a great song, but she changed the lyrics, Me'Shell the bad girl, "Only you...I wanna FUCK YOU!", and she sang that over and over, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, and it was tiresome, and all the women cheered, hooted and hollered in the audience. Then another song about a girl only wanting her for one thing, apparently for the good cunnilingus she gives (Me'Shell is bisexual - and there were quite a few very affectionate lesbian couples in attendance.....nice to see), and she began talking about "eating pussy", asking the men in the audience, show of hands, who eats pussy; then the women, who likes it doggy style, and it was just kind of, I don't know, I'm pretty open, no, really open, but I think it was having to stand, and being by myself in a crowd of strangers, and having to stand, and well, all the talking, talking, talking she kept doing, and having to stand, but I was over it. It was raunchy for the sake of being raunchy. Finally, she began to talk about how much we suck, this country, in her own way, "America...KKK...." you know, like some anarchists spell it: "AmeriKKKa". And our role in Afghanistan, and I got scared, I thought, oh shit, she is for the war, I'm gonna be so pissed at her, but she was against it, talked about us being a country of murderers, and how we're out for revenge, and I sighed.....whew. And people cheered, slightly, they seemed confused. She was radical, raunchy, intense, on a soapbox, talking about how you shouldn't eat pork because it will make you smell bad, you should stay away from Hamburger Helper because there is already enough colon cancer.....and on and on and on and on.....and I was thinking how she and Moby should get together!!!!!!!!! They'd be perfect for each other, but I don't think she likes white people very much. THAT's what pissed me off, made me stop grooving, made me put my beer down and cross my arms in front of me...she said something disparaging about white people....afterwards I couldn't remember what, or if she really had, but it was the vibe, and I thought, walking back to my car, Why can black people get on a stage and put white people down all they want, but if a white person gets on a stage and puts black people down they'd be hauled off!!! Where? I don't know, but it's not cool for us to do that, but it suddenly is cool for blacks to demean "whitey" all over the place. I didn't do it, I'm not responsible for your pain, your suffering, I paid my $25 to stand and listen to you play and sing, and apparently talk, because I appreciate you as an artist and I don't care what color you are! Besides, I saw Moby in concert and he didn't go on and on about his beliefs - he saves that for "essays" in his CD liner notes, and on his web site, he would never assault people like that, people standing like cows in a pen. So, I guess I didn't have a very good time. I came home and got in bed, and the original "Planet of the Apes" was on, so I tuned it in, and fell asleep right before Charlton Heston is caught by the apes. I wish I weren't so down on the concert, on Me'Shell herself, but I just didn't like her shit, I wanted to hear her perform music, not give me her philosopy on life in AmeriKKKa. Even if I agree with most of what she said. And I don't ever want to be one of the only white people in the crowd, there to appreciate an artist, and be put down for being white. Stop telling me I'm white, and you're black. I thought a lot about it on the way home last night. And I realized that I have NEVER in my 40 years of being alive encountered so much racism as I have amongst the black people I've known. A lot more blacks hate whites, than vice versa. This is most unsettling. And, despite how I sound, I am not unsympathetic, I'm not. I'm just over it. It seems that they are perpetuating racism in our society, whilst the whites are ready to move on. Naive? Most likely, but that's how I feel. I've had good friends who are black, I've dated black men, my mom's best friend when I was growing up was a black woman, I've never learned to hate black people, but I've been hated by them, constantly reminded of what white people have put them through, lumped into that category because of who I was born as. (not a good way to end a sentence, but right now I don't know how else to word it) Okay, the shoe is on the other foot, are you happy now?? You want me to suffer as your people have suffered? And you speak of the US seeking revenge in Afghanistan? What is it you are doing to me? Revenge. For what? What did I do? Reminds me.....ol' Dan Rather is so in his element right now it's not funny. Boy is he digging this, wearing the khaki field jacket again, in Kabul now that it's "safe", broadcasting nightly from "the field". Such a brave warrior journalist! I am sarcastic here. I like him, always have, but it's comical now, he's a caricature of himself. So, I had to think about all of this today, or not think about it. I didn't want to write about it, because of this, me going on and on and on and on just like she did. But I would never let you pay $25, make you stand, and then do this. Even if I could play a mean bass!! At least now I have her out of my system. I may buy her albums in the future, but I don't need to see her live again, and I may never go to that venue again, that standing thing sucks when you're 40 years old. Even if you're not. No one wants to stand in one place, not even have room to dance or move, for 3 and 1/2 hours. And now......I'm going to watch TV, and get in bed, and spoon with Gladicus Copernicus, and feel Norman Rockwell pressed up against my side, and sink into a blissful slumber, not waking until the next time I have to do this all over again, live another day, tomorrow. Cost of the War in Iraq
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