Shoes, Ships, and Sealing Wax

Up, down, and around

Please excuse the color changes, especially when they get ugly. I can't leave well enough alone with the templates, and this is my "test" blog. (The "real" blog is all about the rats, because that is how my priorities are.)

Victor and I went up to Bawl'mer yesterday to see Hairspray. It was frothy and cute, and had it not been rainy, would have been a totally lovely outing.

I am not a big Baltimore fan...I would probably like the city well enough were it not for the people I know who live(d) there. Because I self-identify as a Washingtonian, the Baltimoreans (I'm trying to be nice) I know take every opportunity to tell me why they loooooove Baltimore and hate D.C.

It usually has something to do with "Baltimore has character, Washington is dull." "Baltimore is friendly, Washington is snobby." "Baltimore is affordable, Washington is too expensive."

I must admit for the record: I live in Maryland, not D.C. I'm even outside the Beltway. I do, however, harbor a fantasy of buying my grandfather's boyhood home in Columbia Heights. And my sports allegiances are straight down the line Washington: Capitals, Redskins, Mystics, Freedom, United, Wizards. There's no baseball team on that list because we don't have a baseball team and haven't since 1972. I will not substitute the Orioles.

My blood pressure is rising, so I'll lay off that subject for now.

Anyway, went to play, had fun.

In the evening we went to the mall for dinner (I'm getting a lot of eating out because of the stitched-up finger) and to the record store. I'm too self-conscious to go out and buy CDs right after some major musical figure has died, because I'm afraid the clerk is going to make fun of me when I leave. "Hey, did you see that woman? She just bought every album Johnny Cash ever recorded. She probably didn't even know who Johnny Cash was until he died and now she's the Johnny Cash fan club..."

Total paranoia. It is much more likely that the clerk was ignoring me entirely and focusing on the 16-year-old behind me.

I'm remembering when I was a punk kid and my punk friends worked in record stores and we made fun of all the customers. (I mean "punk" in the "obnoxious youth" sense. I was never a punk in the music sense. I was probably listening to Johnny Cash.)

Victor doesn't share my self-counsciousness. He had no trouble buying a Johnny Cash box set and the new album, American IV: The Man Comes Around.

Whew. The Amazon review sums it up well...by the time the album was over we were both just slumped on the sofa too depressed to move.

Probably a good thing I decided to leave Warren Zevon's The Wind for another day.

Posted by Nic at 09.14.03 09:26