The Frogmarch

"I've got to pull up my stakes and roll, man." --Jean-Jacques Libris de Kerouac

Thursday, June 07, 2007

God Bless America

Just last night a group of men vying to be President of the United States stood onstage and faced the TV cameras. Some of these men, when asked, averred that they did not subscribe to the "theory" of evolution. To our enormous discredit as a society, these men were not immediately laughed off the podium or removed by means of a giant offstage hook a la The Muppet Show. (They were not asked for their position on gravity--after all, just a theory--or whether the earth is round, flat or hollow). Is someone who is so blindly obeisant to their interpretation of the dictates of their religion that they ignore simple scientific fact even qualified to be President? Why do we meekly accept this? What kind of idiots are we? How have we slipped so far that this type of question even gets asked at a presidential debate? Look, you can read any number of rants on the dumb-assification of America, so I'm not going to subject you to mine. But we should realize that to the rest of the world, the US is like the kid in the Twilight Zone episode who makes poor, capricious decisions yet wields such incredible power that everyone else is afraid to say anything about it.

Yet.
I love my dumb-ass country.
I miss my dumb-ass country.
So much so that instead of going off to Corsica or Italy or Spain for a summer vacation we're coming home for a visit, for 3 weeks starting June 18.
And I'll probably run down Franklin Street like Jimmy Stewart in It's A Wonderful Life: Hullo, Pepper's Pizza! Hullo, old Varsity Theater! Hah-ha! Hullo, you old Schoolkids Records!
You're welcome to join me, of course--send me an e-mail at mylastnameandfirstinitial at iarc point fr, and we'll get together.

The list of things I want to do while I'm home--and it is still home to me, something I don't think Lyon could be if I lived here 50 years--is pretty long, and V's list is long as well (though many items on her list begin with the word "Buy"). But it's very interesting that the things I'm looking forward to doing are the types of things I was tired of doing just a year and a half ago.

(By the way, while googling to see if I could use my European driver's license in the States, I ran across this piece by a German computer scientist who worked in SF for a while. Interesting perspective on living in the US. Also, if he thinks a US supermarket is inefficient he's obviously never been to a French one.)

7 Comments:

  • At 7:49 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I recently discovered that the world is shaped like a fast-back Frisbee.
    http://www.discfly.com/ProductInfo~productid~K9FASTBACK.html
    The little plateau in the middle is were we live. The phenomenon noticed by Columbus in which the top of a ship appears before the bottom is easily explained by this. There's just a little drop before the big drop at the edge of the Earth where you fall into oblivion with the other morans.

    BTW: That guy was just not a fan of Jazz Pianist Jason Moran.
    http://www.jasonmoran.com/home.html
    His fans are "MOrans" like Nine Inch Nails fans are Ninnies and Grateful Dead fans are Dead Heads. Pavement fans are "potholes."

     
  • At 6:59 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Go Cards!

     
  • At 4:10 PM, Blogger Judson said…

    Just so you know, when you're running down Franklin St. hollering like Jimmy Stewart, Pepper's has moved. I know, I know, it's sacrilege really, but what you gonna do? It's now in the space formerly occupied by Miami Subs. Just so you know.

     
  • At 7:50 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Judd, my man... it's truly a terrible thing. Being a resident of the Hill in the early '60s, I mourn the loss of Kemp's Record Shop, the Carolina Coffee Shop, The Porthole, Julian's, the Varsity Theatre, the Intimate Bookstore, Danzigger's, the Tempo Room, etc.

    That's why You Can't Go Home Again... it ain't there any more.

     
  • At 10:56 AM, Blogger Frogmarch said…

    Judson--

    suuuure. Next thing you'll be trying to tell me there's a luxury hotel where the bus station was.

    "Big Bertha was the first to go."


    majordad-

    the Varsity is still there; it's the Carolina Theater that's a Gap now. Julian's is still there, too--proud supplier of ugly suits to Roy Williams.

    Or at least they were as of last March.

     
  • At 4:10 PM, Blogger Judson said…

    Actually, Julian's has moved across Frankin to the spot that was briefly Rugby, or Cricket...hmmm, some silly Ralph Lauren offshoot I don't remember the name of. And even the Gap isn't on the corner anymore (thank heavens); but alas, the storefront sits vacant and has for some time now. In fact, that whole corner underneath Top of the Hill is vacant: Gap, First Union, Sunglass Hut, and the new/old Carolina Theatre--all empty. I truly rue the absence of Pipe's by George in the Courtyard; other than driving to J&R or the stinkin' Tinder Box at the mall, there's nowhere to get a decent cigar around here. George's is currently inhabited by Sandwhich (sic). What? I don't even get that. Why the funky spelling? Is there a connotation I'm missing? Unless it's, "Which sandwich will I be overpaying for today?" Yep. That must be it. Nine-dollar roast beef? Huh? And chips are extra? It just plain hurts.

     
  • At 7:20 PM, Blogger Pat F. said…

    Bah! I'm always late to the party. You're probably gone again by now, but I hope you guys had a great time while you were back in the Land of Free Refills. And you probably needed them, too, given how damned hot it's been!

     

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