Posts filed under 'deer in the headlights (concert commentary)'
May 28th, 2008
Hi everybody, we’re the South End String Band and we’re pretty pleased to be playing for you all on your 100th anniversary. We almost didn’t play for you tonight. Some of the younger band members thought maybe they’d wait til the 2nd hundred. By then, they figured, they’d get new pickin fingers, hi-tech hearin aids, plenty of transplanted organs, practically start over, they hoped. Have built-in instruments, programmed for maximum velocity.
The NEXT hundred years will no doubt be very different from the first hundred. Altho we did have Kitty Hawk and the first flight, and we put a man on the moon. We invented computers and cellphones and spam. And most amazing of all, we made the 2 Stanwoods into one tow. Well, sort of. Okay, truth is, now we got 3. In the next hundred years, maybe we’ll get that merger done…..
I guess I’m old fashioned. Or just old and tired. I wouldn’t want to be around another 100 years. Oh I know, I’m gonna miss some amazing stuff. TV’s planted in my head. Stereo systems in all 4 ears. Cellphone stuck in there too. My head would look like a Mars rover robot. And who knows who’d be surfin with the remote.
No, I’m stickin with the low tech cowboy hat and the 40 watt IQ, thank you anyway. This next song, we’re gonna sing about how things used to be on the South End before things got so all fired complicated. ROLL IN MY SWEET BABY’S ARMS
February 8th, 2008
Now we crusty old timers on the South end, being somewhat less touchy-feely than our good neighbors to the north, we aren’t squeamish about our crab killing protocol. When our friends visit for a dinner of the 8 legged killing machines and ask how did I euthanize the monsters, I usually spare them the awful details. Graphic descriptions aren’t going to sharpen an appetitie.
But now we got folks lobbying for the humane treatment of crab, the PETI crowd, People for the Ethical Treatment of Invertebrates, card carrying crab huggers who want to use a soybean based faux seafood diet to replace our traditional crab boil.
I say we got to nip this in the claw. We got to stand up to these radical vegetarians and say enough is enough. You put crabs on the endangered sensitivity list, you’ll find em soon on our manicured lawns like slugs with machetes, maybe just a pekinese at first, but then kids, the wheelchair bound, and finally a full blown suburban siege. The PETI people don’t care. They’re probably building crab proof fallout shelters. The may even believe they can befriend them, teach em tricks, stand on their hind legs and click out a castanet cha-cha-cha.
We got to stop this. Our South End way of life is a crabcentric culture. Diet, art, myths —- all revolving around the Dungeness. Lawn ornament shrines abound. Crab pot buoys hang from deadeyes and 1 inch thick boom chains. Crab salt shakers and crab image shower curtains — proof that the crustacean is a totemic being.
Means nothing to the PETI people! They’re enlightened — we’re savage. You think they won’t succeed, they already put a stop to eating dogs and cats. Gotta keep em for companions now, not dinner. We got people eating Hungry Man dinners and Lean Cuisine with a 60 lb. dog for companionship. Well, I for one, am not waiting for the sad sorry day I’m eating tofu burgers, watching TV with my little crab Dungy. I’m not giving in without a fight and I hope I can count on you folks to join me. Meanwhile, eat up!
February 8th, 2008
Like I said, the days of the Great Crab Drives are over. Stanwood fell into a century of decline and its heydays were lost in the mists of time. The great undersea Serengetti of Saratoga Straits gradually succumbed to overharvesting and illegal hunting until finally the entrepreneurs of the South End rurned to aquaculture for economic viability and the days of free range crabbing were doomed.
For awhile we had the range wars. Fence cutting was common and violence too. The old South enders didn’t take kindly to seeing the tidelands sectioned by barb wire. Devil wire, they called it and went out by moonlight to cut it open. Might as well try to stop the Gated Communities of today for all the good it’d do.
So finally the eelgrass pastures, once stretching from South Camano to Bristol Bay, were gridded and barbed and the old timers gave it up as a lost quixotic cause. When I first arrived in these parts, the old growth nettle forests were gone and so were the wild crabs. Oh, I know what they say: these farm raised crustaceans aren’t really all that different, but the old boys tell me the taste is mostly gone now. They say they dye em red artificially before taking em to market. They say they’re escaping and breeding with the last of the wild Dungeness so the wild ones will be lost forever. They say antibiotics and the food they give me – chopped up crab mostly – might give rise to strange diseases. There’s rumors of Mad Crab every month over at Tyee Store. And I gotta ya, I’ve seen peculiar behavior there myself.
But the world changes, that’s the truth, and there’s no going back. Pretty soon we’ll get Chinese crab grown in the Yangszte, 10 legged crustaceans painted red with lead paint. Cheap though. Real cheap. And another South End industry will bite the dust. Or the sand. And the legends of the crabs will be lost as surely as the nettle forests. So eat up. And don’t worry about that Mad Crab. These crabs were government inspected. So you know they’re safe…….
December 4th, 2007
Now I don’t want to be one of those curmudgeonly Grinches who want to steal the heart warming, made-for-TV sentimentality of the Christmas holidays, but……. Well….. SOMEBODY’S got to stand up and say enough is really quite enough. I mean when you got folks sittin 6-8 hours the same night as Thanksgiving, 25 degrees out and they’re pitching lawn chairs and tents outside Tyee Store so they can get first shot at the Black Friday specials, c’mon, digest your 5 pounds of turkey, half ton of dressing, a bucket of mashed potatoes, a quarter bog of cranberry sauce and 3 slabs of pie with ice cream BEFORE moving into the next holiday.
Thanksgiving. That was the celebration where the Pilgrims offered the natives platinum cards, no annual fee, 2% frequent flyer miles, generous monthly minimum payments, wasn’t it??? Eat up, Chief, we’re all headed down to Plymouth Rock Mall tonight, be first in line at the Best Buy for their dawn opening, great sales on convection oven Franklin stoves before the Jamestown mob gets wind…..
The huddled masses parked outside the Tyee Store entrance, illuminated by the 75 watt yellow bug light, sure seemed festive, like maybe Don and Helen, the owners, were gonna be handing out free E-coli leftover rotisserie turkey dogs along with those Christmas specials. But you all know, like I did, the real meaning of Christmas is the camaraderie and the sharing of all those cheerful consumers waiting patiently for a real good deal. Oh, I know, they had a couple of altercations and some jostling at the door, and things did turn ominous when they discovered the specials were mostly in the outdated dairy department. But in the end nobody got more than their feelings hurt. Not enough to dampen the true spirit of the season/.
Christmas on the South End ……. It never really ends.
December 4th, 2007
I’m probably the last yahoo on earth who still reads a newspaper. Off line. Mostly cause I need the kindling to start my stove fires. I like the Stanwood News the best ———– for starting fires. The editorial page practically combusts BEFORE I can get it into the stove. Last week they ran a full page ad paid for som guy who really doesn’t seem to care who exactly is elected president so long as it isn’t Hilary. Ran her picture – or some horrible doctored up version that was less than flattering and probably actionable — and I guess he figured to scare us with it. Ugly woman. Bad president.
I’m scared all right. Way right. So far right I might vote for that guy Abra Cadabra Jihad, the president of Iran who disputes the Holocaust. Mostly tho, I’m scared to get this week’s paper. The editorials should torch off in my mailbox. Stores’ll probably go up in smoke. Vending machines will explode on the streets of Stanwoodopolis like IED’s. You Beach Patrollers will be on Code Red Alert.
Freedom of Speech is a great thing. Unless you’re the unlucky audience…………… wait! You ARE the unlucky audience. But lately I’ve been starting to rethink this whole idea that one man’s opinion is just as valid as anybody else’s. Course, I’m Jeffersonian enuff to know we can’t really impinge on other folks’ right to speak out. But you can’t yell fire in a theater and I think maybe Dave Pinkham, the editor of the Stanwoodopolis Gazette, will probably have to be more circumspect after this week’s editorial fires burn half the town down.
Next Posts
Previous Posts