Cliques

One thing that has bothered me for all 25 years of my mundane life are “clicks” (spelled in some parts of the world as cliques). Why the hell are they so fraking important to us? Any place I’ve ever lived. Any place I’ve ever gone to. Any place ever even considered moving to, has “clicks”. If you were to travel to Hawaii, you would notice the locals even have a click. When you go to church and all the “holier than thou” clowns have their own click. College and highs school and even pre-schools have their own clicks. Being apart of a click, I guess is what makes us feel as if were really apart of the human race. Clicks remind us that we’re really alive. They give us purpose in living a somewhat normal life.

Granted the term “click” is mainly used while in high school, but the fact remains that clicks don’t just exist in high school. They continue into college, the workplace, and even religious institutions. (Hell, I personally believe that religious institutions are the biggest click). We just want to call it something different.

There are large clicks and little clicks. Some clicks become so huge they even petition the government to have their own rights.

Now, I’m not saying that I don’t belong to any clicks. I do. I in fact belong to all sorts of different clicks. I’m in a religious institution. I geek out on movies, music and comic books. I once belonged to a baseball and paintball teams. I’m involved in a online posse in RED DEAD REDEMPTION. I played D&D games when I was in high school. I work at a radio station. I’m even a Facebook junkie. Since I’m in so many different clicks, I see what they do to us as human beings.

I feel that catering to clicks is an injustice to all people. The more we allow ourselves to separate into are own clicks. The more we separate ourselves from each other. We should really start creating groups (like on Facebook). Groups that everybody wants to be apart. For example everybody seems to love Bob Marley. So we so have a Bob Marley group. He even wrote a popular song called “One Love.” This song has very positive message, let us all be one. One heart, one mind, one people. But no! We can’t do that because it’ll hurt our image in the other click. We have to be “one click.” When we get to involved in “our click” we just end up separating ourselves from others. Lets my groups or something that doesn’t feel so exclusive.

Time to change the subject.

Last night I went with my friend Lono to another Twilight Concert Series show. The two bands playing were The Twin Sister and Beirut. Both bands were brand new to me. I had heard a lot of good things about Beirut, but never gave them listen to. Lono and I tried to figure out why Twin Sister gave themselves that name for their band. You would just assume that with a name like Twin Sister that there would be twin sisters singing the songs. Well they weren’t.

Lono created a metaphor in which every time he would smell pot, he’d call it a skunk. “Where’s that skunk at?”

My biggest beef with out-door venues is all the pot smoke. I can barely stand the smell of cigarette smoke and so that bittersweet smell of pot is repulsive to me. Frankly I really don’t care what another person does. Just don’t blow your damn smoke in my face! There was one other thing that bugged me at the Beirut show. This fella smoking pot in front of me had the world's biggest nose. I’m not even close to joking when I say that his nose literally looked like one of those red clown noses’ you can buy in a costume shop. It was fraking HUGE! It could have been its own country. The worst part was I was so entranced by this sucker’s clown nose; I couldn’t even enjoy the show because all I could do was question how elephantiasis could only affect one part of the body. All in all, it was a fun night out in Salt Lake City.

I think I would let my dog sleep in my bed, if he didn’t get hair all in my sheets.

The Modest Mouse Adventure!

Here’s a summary of my adventure at the free Modest Mouse concert presented by the Twilight concert series.

I left work at 4:30PM to meet up with my friend Mike, so we could jump aboard the fast-tracks next to Union Station. Mike use to be my General Manager at KWCR, when Mike left he was replaced by a different Mike. Mike also lives right across the street from where I work. Once aboard the train we talked about all the crazy things we could write blogs about. The best idea was probably the one where I write a fake letter to Katy Perry telling her that I secretly listen to her music and if she would send me an autographed photo.

When the train entered Salt Lake City we walked down the street which hosted all the halfway houses. I put my guard up assuming that at any moment someone was going ask me for spare change, so they could run off to the closets drug dealer or liquor store for their next fix. One fellow we passed on our way to Pioneer Park was so mentally unstable that he walked down the sidewalk like an Egyptian, hands pointed straight and everything. The Bangles wrote the hit song about it, but I just figured that it was a joke, I guess not.

Inside the park were hundreds a pond hundreds of people. Half the vendors I talked to had been to Desert Rocks. (A magical place I’ll talk about in a different blog). Most of the food lines were a mile long and I never realized that so many lesbians liked Modest Mouse. A sixteen year old girl with green braces came up to me and asked if I wanted to go back to my place to make out. (She must of been turned on by my cheap wayfare sunglasses which I had over my prescription frames and the neon green sweatband I had on my forehead). In figuring out a spot to stand so we could watch the show, Mike and I decided to stand behind a dude in a wheelchair; doing so would allow us to always have a view of the stage. I’m always amazed at how many people get wasted even before the show starts.

In a nutshell here is what happened during the almost two hour Modest Mouse set. About fifteen different folks climbed the tree next to us. For some reason it was a real cool thing to do. A dude decided to relieve himself on the same tree. A five foot tall girl danced up on me for Modest Mouse’s hit song Float On. The Mayor called Modest Mouse, “The Mouse.” I might of got a contact high from the three different people smoking pot next to me. And at least a hundred people stepped on my foot while trying to pass me.

The worst and most disturbing part was seeing a 21 year old male getting it on with a 50 year old female. It was one of those things you witness where as badly as you want to stop watching, you just can’t take your eyes off it. It is what I call the freak-show syndrome. Whereas strange and weird it might seem, we as human beings can’t take our eyes off the so-called “freak” because we find it so fraking curious. I’ve seen some MILF’s in my 25 years and this 50 year old was no MILF. I couldn't tell if the motley cure couple were so drunk off their rocker that they couldn’t tell what was happening or if the 21 year was just that desperate to get some action.

At the end of the concert Mike received a call from his wife, telling him that she was feeling pretty ill. Mike decided that we should use our “manly courage” and take a three mile walk through the heart of Salt Lake City ghetto to get to his wife’s place of work. Boy! Was our manly courage tested because I could have sworn that a monster or hobo was going to jump out of the dark and shank us.

On the drive back to Ogden we talked about Christian rock music. I impressed Mike’s wife with my vast information on popular Christian rock artists. All in all a good evening.