Cingular Wireless, Worse Than Hitler
Cingular Wireless, Worse than Hitler
A little hero worship...
This is a song, about a girl... well ok, no, its a blog, and I was going to reference a Mr. T Experience song but who the hell would know what I was talking about? Basically this is a very long explanation of the above video clip.
Friday afternoon I went to see Frank Portman, author of the fabulously funny, sarcastic and painfully true high school novel "King Dork" (READ IT. ALL OF YOU. OH JUST SHUT UP ALREADY AND READ IT) and frontman for the long running East Bay punk band Mr. T Experience. Portman, hereafter referred to as Dr. Frank, was doing a free book reading/solo performance that had been very poorly advertised-- only a handful of flyers in the library that I happened to stumble across while dashing in to use the internet one day. The book is basically a "coming of age" novel that skewers the school system, dating, high school socialization and the "cult" of the Catcher in the Rye. I think its that last one that has won it some serious attention.
I arrived a little before 4 and there were a little more than a dozen people seated in a smallish auditorium in the basement of the main SF library. Although the book is ostensibly "Young Adult," and the event was billed as a teen event, everyone in the room at that point was in their 20s or 30s. Later on, a couple actual teens wandered in, but mostly, seriously, all grown ups, and all sortof punk grownups at that, sporting mohawks and piercings and punk rock tshirts and geeky hipster glasses and the like. I am willing to bet nearly all of them could say, as I could, that they saw Mr. T Experience play back when they were in high school. I suspect Frank must get tired of hearing that, must make him feel old.
Frank himself was on stage, jeans, black tshirt and black low top Chuck Taylors, looking basically like a grownup 12-year-old, with an acoustic guitar, doing a sound check with two other guys. The place was small and well lit enough that I felt like a dork sitting there grinning and staring at him and ended up sort of staring at the ceiling or the far side of the room whenever he looked my way. Totally dippy fangirl behavior on my part, throughout, as is this impulse to run home and blog. Oh well.
The librarian who introduced him, in fact, said _she_ had seen him play when she was a teenager. And then she got a bit of a laugh by saying that next week's teen program would be on "How to make a wallet from duct tape!" She wasn't kidding.
So he stood up and looked pretty endearingly nervous (and please forgive me, SO CUTE) for a guy who has made a living in a band-- I guess standing up by yourself to tout your own novel is a different thing-- and he read a passage from the book and then played a song as written by the main character in the book, which I thought was a very nice touch-- basically kind of a teenage boy punk love song, "I wanna ramone you."
Read another passage, then played one of his more popular songs from Mr. T Experience -- "Even Hitler has a girlfriend." (you can hear it on their myspace page, I think) Took some questions from the very happy smiling audience. Did that funny little toes and knees pointing inward thing when he played, like Elvis Costello.
Someone asked -- so, you're not a big "Catcher in the Rye Fan," what was your "catcher," the book that really meant something to you. And he said something like, "well honestly, I graduated from hobbits to rock and roll. My "Catcher" was the Ramones, I guess." (At which point someone asked "which Ramones" and he rattled off a list of their albums in order from best to worst, which I was too slow to get down.)
I asked "Was high school really that bad?" To which he said, um, yeah, uh-- basically, yes, I think if you came out of it alive you did pretty well. He said "It was so clear to me there was nothing of value being taught. I think if I'd been locked in a room with the Encyclopedian Britannica for six months I would have gotten more of value out of it."
"And the only other reason to go was for socialization, and I was a failure at that," he added.
When asked what he would tell his own kids about high school if he had them, he looked stumped, said I don't have kids, I haven't thought about it-- strummed the guitar a moment-- "I dunno, maybe arm them? I'm not sure."
He said people from his old school would come up to him to say hi now and he always felt awkward because he didn't remember anyone and didn't feel any real attachment to the place. (He grew up in Millbrae, just fyi)
He also said that, as in a key scene in the book, he played in a band in a high school contest, and they did in fact win entry into the contest by submitting a fake tape with Foreigner on it. And they were also shut down after two songs and they busted up their equipment.
So after reading a few more passages and playing a little, he finished up with a story about how he only had two songs that mention Hitler, the girlfriend song he'd already played and this other one, but that some interviewer (for a "San Mateo paper") recently had gotten the wrong idea and decided he was fascinated with German history because of it or something, so he was thinking now of making it a trilogy.
But the second Hitler song, his big finale number, came with a story, about how this wireless company had been convinced that he owed them $1200 and he was absolutely certain that he didn't owe them that much and he spent hours on the phone haggling with them and arguing-- at one point even pretending to be his own lawyer on the phone, which apparently got $200 knocked off the price but otherwise didn't help settle it. And eventually he apparently told the customer service rep that he was an internationally famous rock star whose songs were sung by children around the world and he was going to write a song about the experience. And it could be a good song or a bad song, it was all up to her....
He said he called back to play it for her, and she hung up during the bridge. The song was entitled "Cingular Wireless, worse than Hitler." And I have been humming it ever since...
So that was my Dr. Frank Experience. Oh and then I stood in line to get him to sign my book and I felt like a great big dork and mumbled something about "I havent' seen you play since I was 16," to which he said somethign equally awkward like "yeah, that happens.." I don't know if I've ever done the celebrity autograph thing before, and now I know why, I feel like a big cheeseball cliche, nervous grin and all... but oh well. "Cingular Wireless, Cingular Wireless, Spawn of Satan! Worse than Hitler!..."
---
And just quickly, I won't blog the whole Bluegrass Festival, its too long ago now and there were too many bands and things to name. But Gillian Welch rocked my world...
A little hero worship...
This is a song, about a girl... well ok, no, its a blog, and I was going to reference a Mr. T Experience song but who the hell would know what I was talking about? Basically this is a very long explanation of the above video clip.
Friday afternoon I went to see Frank Portman, author of the fabulously funny, sarcastic and painfully true high school novel "King Dork" (READ IT. ALL OF YOU. OH JUST SHUT UP ALREADY AND READ IT) and frontman for the long running East Bay punk band Mr. T Experience. Portman, hereafter referred to as Dr. Frank, was doing a free book reading/solo performance that had been very poorly advertised-- only a handful of flyers in the library that I happened to stumble across while dashing in to use the internet one day. The book is basically a "coming of age" novel that skewers the school system, dating, high school socialization and the "cult" of the Catcher in the Rye. I think its that last one that has won it some serious attention.
I arrived a little before 4 and there were a little more than a dozen people seated in a smallish auditorium in the basement of the main SF library. Although the book is ostensibly "Young Adult," and the event was billed as a teen event, everyone in the room at that point was in their 20s or 30s. Later on, a couple actual teens wandered in, but mostly, seriously, all grown ups, and all sortof punk grownups at that, sporting mohawks and piercings and punk rock tshirts and geeky hipster glasses and the like. I am willing to bet nearly all of them could say, as I could, that they saw Mr. T Experience play back when they were in high school. I suspect Frank must get tired of hearing that, must make him feel old.
Frank himself was on stage, jeans, black tshirt and black low top Chuck Taylors, looking basically like a grownup 12-year-old, with an acoustic guitar, doing a sound check with two other guys. The place was small and well lit enough that I felt like a dork sitting there grinning and staring at him and ended up sort of staring at the ceiling or the far side of the room whenever he looked my way. Totally dippy fangirl behavior on my part, throughout, as is this impulse to run home and blog. Oh well.
The librarian who introduced him, in fact, said _she_ had seen him play when she was a teenager. And then she got a bit of a laugh by saying that next week's teen program would be on "How to make a wallet from duct tape!" She wasn't kidding.
So he stood up and looked pretty endearingly nervous (and please forgive me, SO CUTE) for a guy who has made a living in a band-- I guess standing up by yourself to tout your own novel is a different thing-- and he read a passage from the book and then played a song as written by the main character in the book, which I thought was a very nice touch-- basically kind of a teenage boy punk love song, "I wanna ramone you."
Read another passage, then played one of his more popular songs from Mr. T Experience -- "Even Hitler has a girlfriend." (you can hear it on their myspace page, I think) Took some questions from the very happy smiling audience. Did that funny little toes and knees pointing inward thing when he played, like Elvis Costello.
Someone asked -- so, you're not a big "Catcher in the Rye Fan," what was your "catcher," the book that really meant something to you. And he said something like, "well honestly, I graduated from hobbits to rock and roll. My "Catcher" was the Ramones, I guess." (At which point someone asked "which Ramones" and he rattled off a list of their albums in order from best to worst, which I was too slow to get down.)
I asked "Was high school really that bad?" To which he said, um, yeah, uh-- basically, yes, I think if you came out of it alive you did pretty well. He said "It was so clear to me there was nothing of value being taught. I think if I'd been locked in a room with the Encyclopedian Britannica for six months I would have gotten more of value out of it."
"And the only other reason to go was for socialization, and I was a failure at that," he added.
When asked what he would tell his own kids about high school if he had them, he looked stumped, said I don't have kids, I haven't thought about it-- strummed the guitar a moment-- "I dunno, maybe arm them? I'm not sure."
He said people from his old school would come up to him to say hi now and he always felt awkward because he didn't remember anyone and didn't feel any real attachment to the place. (He grew up in Millbrae, just fyi)
He also said that, as in a key scene in the book, he played in a band in a high school contest, and they did in fact win entry into the contest by submitting a fake tape with Foreigner on it. And they were also shut down after two songs and they busted up their equipment.
So after reading a few more passages and playing a little, he finished up with a story about how he only had two songs that mention Hitler, the girlfriend song he'd already played and this other one, but that some interviewer (for a "San Mateo paper") recently had gotten the wrong idea and decided he was fascinated with German history because of it or something, so he was thinking now of making it a trilogy.
But the second Hitler song, his big finale number, came with a story, about how this wireless company had been convinced that he owed them $1200 and he was absolutely certain that he didn't owe them that much and he spent hours on the phone haggling with them and arguing-- at one point even pretending to be his own lawyer on the phone, which apparently got $200 knocked off the price but otherwise didn't help settle it. And eventually he apparently told the customer service rep that he was an internationally famous rock star whose songs were sung by children around the world and he was going to write a song about the experience. And it could be a good song or a bad song, it was all up to her....
He said he called back to play it for her, and she hung up during the bridge. The song was entitled "Cingular Wireless, worse than Hitler." And I have been humming it ever since...
So that was my Dr. Frank Experience. Oh and then I stood in line to get him to sign my book and I felt like a great big dork and mumbled something about "I havent' seen you play since I was 16," to which he said somethign equally awkward like "yeah, that happens.." I don't know if I've ever done the celebrity autograph thing before, and now I know why, I feel like a big cheeseball cliche, nervous grin and all... but oh well. "Cingular Wireless, Cingular Wireless, Spawn of Satan! Worse than Hitler!..."
---
And just quickly, I won't blog the whole Bluegrass Festival, its too long ago now and there were too many bands and things to name. But Gillian Welch rocked my world...