Adventures in Suburbia: Spelunking with Schoolchildren

O, the little town of Bethlehem, PA… An unlikely series of events has deposited me in my hometown for two months, which is more time than I’ve spent here cumulatively in the past 8 years. It’s essentially a pit stop between Philadelphia and New York. The rolling hills are blanketed by quiet, cookie-cutter neighborhoods and every bar has at least four guys with mullets drinking Keystone Light (on tap for $1) in front of the Eagles game, the Jersey accent seeping through their conversation like battery acid.

I’ve found that it takes a bit of imagination to keep myself entertained here.

Fortunately I have my brother, THE AMAZING METRO! He earned this nickname at the age of 6 as an aspiring magician. His best trick was assembling family and fortunate visitors carefully in their seats around the room and then magically jumping up from behind a piece of furniture to announce “It’s THE AMAZING METRO!!” Applause all around, every time.

Luckily for me, as his muscles have grown over the years, so have his feats of legerdemain evolved from the existential to the practical. He can now consistently conjure fun out of Pennsylvania! No easy task, ladies and gentlemen, I assure you.

Just recently we re-discovered the joys of geology at Lost River Caverns, our perennial favorite school field trip. I am pleased to report that it has retained its magic and dank mystery. Stalagmites! Stalactites! Cave bacon! “Fun for the whole family… a stimulating day trip for residents of the Country Meadow retirement community… a unique way to make science come alive for your students!” I concur with the latter suggestion particularly. Limestone is fascinating. And 52ºF, the cave’s comfortable year-round temperature, seems to have a pleasantly sedative effect on children, especially after they recover from the shock of being greeted by several life-sized and slightly cartoonish velociraptor statues in the lobby. As an added bonus, the gift shop boasts the most astonishing selection of geological crap. Sadly, only the figurative kind of crap is for sale – the museum’s actual collection of fossilized excrement is kept in the glass display case amidst the special shiny rocks.

And here we have a hellalame segue from geology to… a band that "rocks!"

Mclusky. The muse of my inner bulldozer. This is music for smashing things, running from the law, and hucking tomatoes at rosy-cheeked MTV punk bands. The Welsh trio’s song titles are immaculately wry: “Without MSG I am Nothing,” “Falco vs. the Young Canoeist,” “Your Children Are Waiting for You to Die.” The bass riffs rumble like a rowdy ogre orgy, the lead singer screeches, quavers, and spits up lung tissue and wit in equal measure, and it’s all strung together with drums tight enough to slingshot you straight through your neighbor’s window.

Best of all is the glee with which they trash your eardrums. They’re unabashedly obnoxious, but not of the preening Oasis school of obnoxious arrogance polished to the luster of Armani leather. Rather, Mclusky buries their self-aggrandizement under a landslide of sublimely crass taunts, insults, and glorious shoutalong non-sequitors:

“All of your friends are cunts/ Your mother is a ballpoint pen thief.”
“You were such an ugly child.”
“The world loves us and is our bitch.”
“My love is bigger than your love/ We take more drugs than a touring funk band/ SING IT!”

Sing it, I shall… even if they don’t anymore. Sadly, Mclusky disbanded in early 2005 after the release of their third album, ‘The Difference Between You and Me Is That I’m Not on Fire’ but they will remain my band of choice for scoring the monster truck rally in my heart.


Recommended tracks: To Hell with Good Intentions, What We’ve Learned, She Will Only Bring You Happiness

My Own Little Big Bang

After years of heaping scorn upon the practice of blogging, I’m surprised to find myself here, tossing more junk into orbit. I’m not so vain as to think that anyone cares about what’s written here as much as I do, but I do promise you, dear reader, whether you are here because you’re my grandmother (hi Baba!) or because you got lost on a lonely midnight search for nude pregnant Britney pics, I will do my best to entertain you with some interesting stuff and to gain your trust with properly placed apostrophes. And, yes, I AM that much of a dork, but that’s why you love me.

And now without further ado, I present to you my Discovery Du Jour:
Balkan Beat Box and their recently released self-titled debut album

If the Basement Jaxx took over a UN committee on refugee resettlement in the eastern Mediterranean, it might sound something like this album, which is the most delightfully and indefatigably eclectic thing I’ve ever heard. Densely and danceably odd, it blows my genre classification system to smithereens... It’s Israeli accordion funk peppered with digital whooping and girls yelling “cha cha.” It’s a frenzy of klezmer horns surrounding the smooth rhythm of a happy African dude. There are Bulgarian angels charming muted jazz trumpet snakes out of disco baskets. We’ve got roosters, we’ve got cowbells, we’ve got reverb! We’ve got Hassidic Sephardic Arabic breakbeats! And above all else, this album has a sublime sense of how to shake your tochas.

Though I don't have any pictures of the actual band (the architects of this madness are Tamir Muskat and Ori Kaplan, denizens of the New York hardcore Hebrew underground scene), I thought I would submit a few helpful visualisation tools nonetheless. Imagine the lovely, fresh-faced youths on the left amping up their lutes, unbuttoning their blouses, and dancing until the thatch catches fire.
That’s kind of what this album sounds like.

Alternatively, imagine a heaving nightclub where this woman is the bouncer.


Recommended tracks: Hassan’s Mimuna, Adi Adirim.




Finally, in closing, I would say a few words of thanks to you for encouraging my little blog adventure. Thank you. This has been fun already. And in the words of Eddie Vedder: “I set a gnome what a whale and a paxil on the blegck. AhyayeeyayeeyayAAAA…”