{"id":245214,"date":"2010-01-29T05:15:28","date_gmt":"2010-01-29T10:15:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stanforddaily.com\/cgi-bin\/?p=1037747"},"modified":"2010-01-29T05:15:28","modified_gmt":"2010-01-29T10:15:28","slug":"waxworks-and-roustabouts-how-it-ends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/245214","title":{"rendered":"Waxworks and Roustabouts: How It Ends"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhen the earth gapes my body to entomb, I justly may complain of such a doom.\u201d<\/em>–Voltaire, \u201cPoem on the Lisbon Disaster\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I can\u2019t fight this feeling anymore. I\u2019ve forgotten what I started fighting for. It\u2019s time to bring this ship into shore. And throw away the oars, forever.\u201d–REO Speedwagon, \u201cCan\u2019t Fight this Feeling Anymore\u201d<\/p>\n

My Sunday sing-along with the village delinquents had just reached the coda when there came a pounding at my door.<\/p>\n

The sound startled the young ne\u2019er-do-wells and sent our five-part harmony into a pitchy mess. Everyone stayed on key, but they lost their balance and fell from the risers into the inflatable pool of hot pitch below. I have found, in working with degenerate youth, that sometimes all it takes to bring out the golden voices slumbering inside their criminal bodies is a little tough love.<\/p>\n

Take the Three Tenors, for example: all products of the musical pedagogy of European fascism. \u201cLucky\u201d Luciano Pavarotti was a cracker thief in Mussolini\u2019s Italy until the authoritarian youth outreach program fed him the castor oil that brought his sweet tenor gurgling up to the surface. Placido \u201cSleepy Sunday\u201d Domingo was bastinadoed 16 times by the Spanish Falange before he could sing a melody instead of jimmy a lock. And Jose \u201cCareer Loiterer\u201d Carreras would still be standing on a street corner in the Barceloneta if Franco\u2019s Guardia Civil had not tended to his musical \u201creeducation.\u201d<\/p>\n

But back to my story: peeved that I would now have to refill the tub with freshly heated tar, I marched to the door to rage at the intruder whose knocking had interrupted my stern commitment to community service.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t you realize that I am trying to rehabilitate the malformed souls of our nation\u2019s youth through the formidable spirit of music!\u201d I shouted. \u201cAccount for yourself, villain!\u201d<\/p>\n

I concluded my greeting with a swift flick between the man\u2019s eyes delivered by my callused bludgeon of a fingernail.<\/p>\n

Only when his eyes failed to come uncrossed did I realize this villain was my twin brother, G.P. (Gross Product).<\/p>\n

\u201cG.P., you rogue! My apologies, but I didn\u2019t recognize you dressed in your clown suit. What gives?\u201d<\/p>\n

G.P. was real biz-casual kind of guy. He talked a lot about synergy, diversifying stuff, stimulating investment incentives in things and all the legendary nights out he had with his boys in Palo Alto. So, you can imagine my shock when I saw him swaddled in pink robes, his hair tied in a knot and a skull tattooed across his face.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe end is nigh, P.G.! Death has come to swallow our world, to gnash our guts betwixt his jaws.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat doesn\u2019t sound like you, G.P. You\u2019re usually so upbeat and of limited diction. What happened?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy real estate investments fell through, so I\u2019ve joined an apocalyptic cult.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, I\u2019m sure you\u2019ll get another investment opportunity,\u201d I told him.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t understand. My penthouse vacation condos in Port-au-Prince fell through all 15 floors below them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh,\u201d I said. But as soon as I tried to say something comforting, something remotely optimistic, a little serving of vomit would surge into my mouth. My mind desperately searched beyond the earthquake in Haiti for a current realm of human activity that didn\u2019t make me gag in despair. Politics, War, Healthcare, Education, Economy, Jobs, Media, Hollywood, Environment–these banal terms, fired into my brain hundreds of times a day, took on a ghoulish appearance that sent me cowering in the warm vat of hot pitch. Not even art–the cherubic voices of my village hoodlum choir singing \u201cWaltzing Matilda\u201d in the round–could draw me from the bilious depths of my black liquid sanctuary.<\/p>\n

My brother\u2019s return had sapped my resolve to live among men. In the days following his visit, I tried to carry on with my volunteer work as choirmaster for incorrigible derelicts. But I didn\u2019t possess the strength of will to cane the sole of even a single foot. As a result, the group\u2019s singing failed to improve and recidivism quickly replaced rehabilitation. Larceny and gambling returned to the choir room. By month\u2019s end, my Sunday sing-alongs had become wanton orgies of disorder. There would be no great Pavarottis or Domingos made by me–only tone-deaf cracker thieves and donkey-voiced loiterers.<\/p>\n

But, really, I\u2019m happier here. I\u2019m with my twin brother Gross Product, who now goes by Death Knell and all his apocalyptic cult friends. We have a lovely little stretch of hovel in the trans-Bay tube midway between S.F. and Oakland. I hear the view 300 feet above us is simply stunning. We have an ample supply of nettles and pass the time telling each other stories of the pending apocalypse and watching the BART passengers zoom by merrily on their crash course to inevitable disaster.<\/p>\n

One thing, though. I can\u2019t write these columns for The Stanford Daily anymore. Internet connection is too spotty down here. And ever since I\u2019ve stopped fighting this apocalyptic feeling, I\u2019ve forgotten what I started writing for.<\/p>\n

But, please, I encourage you to come visit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhen the earth gapes my body to entomb, I justly may complain of such a doom.\u201d–Voltaire, \u201cPoem on the Lisbon Disaster\u201d \u201cAnd I can\u2019t fight this feeling anymore. I\u2019ve forgotten what I started fighting for. It\u2019s time to bring this ship into shore. And throw away the oars, forever.\u201d–REO Speedwagon, \u201cCan\u2019t Fight this Feeling Anymore\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-245214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245214\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}