L u n a t a l k

There are some combinations that are just flat-out wrong. I found one this week. Both recommendations from the same friend.

First item: a salad. Specifically, the grilled Asian chicken salad from Jack in the Box. This friend, normally a rational person, came under the influence of the salad recently and wouldn’t let the subject drop. “It’s got crunchy things” were words that would come to haunt me. There would be no peace until I tried the salad.

There is a Jack in the Box near me. There was an empty lot on the corner for years and then suddenly, Jack’s sinister bobbing head loomed over the movie-going traffic. I turn that corner regularly, but never noticed any construction. Do fast food places splorp into being like pod people from Night of the Living Dead? However it came into existence, I did not have the excuse of lack of opportunity. In fact, I’m convinced if I had put it off longer another Jack in the Box would splorp even closer to home. And then another. Until…

I got in the car, drove over and, under Jack’s staring blue eye, bought the salad. I drove it home.

The salad does indeed have crunchy things. All in all it was a completely inoffensive salad and reasonable choice on a menu long on grease and dead cows.

I settled in for a munch and a read. This brings me to the second item: a book.

Now here’s a piece of advice I hope you’ll take to heart. “Man’s Search for Meaning,” Viktor Frankl’s heartbreaking memoir of survival in Nazi concentration camps, while excellent and even “must read” is not what you want going into your eyes while crunchy salad bits are going into your mouth.

World War II may have ended over sixty years ago, but the Germans still have a lot to answer for. And now they can add ruination of a salad to the list of war crimes.

Popularity: 2% [?]

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Imagine that you, an American (in this example), have uprooted yourself from your home digs and bopped off to live in some pleasant but remote backwater. It’s so remote that you haven’t heard a song in English since you arrived. One day you happen upon a small restaurant and hear familiar music wafting out onto the sidewalk. You peer inside. A waitress is plopping plates of burgers (burgers!) in front of a few patrons lounging at small tables. And just inside the door, in the corner by the window, there’s a band - also locals. But they’re playing American music! Songs you know but haven’t heard for years! But… they’re playing music you HATED back home. You not only hated it, you hated anyone who liked that music. You’d cross the street to avoid being contaminated by accidental earbud bleed from one of them.

But now… you’re far from home. It’s been years. Can you really remember why you hated those songs so much? Would you roll your eyes and walk on? Or would you waft in, grinning and singing along? And those people you hated - the ones who loved the songs you hate - would you turn away? Or would you sit down and shoot the breeze? Even if it was someone who’s favorite song was Achy Breaky Heart, I bet you’d share a drink and a chorus.

I haven’t talked much here about my other band, Balkanarama. We play hot gypsy nightclub music various places around the Seattle area but mostly (monthly) at a local Greek restaurant and mostly for immigrants from Eastern Europe. We played there Saturday night.

I didn’t have high expectations for the night. It was a drop-dead gorgeous sunny spring day here and the sun was still up when we started at 7 pm. Predictably, the restaurant was largely abandoned by hordes hungrier for a little sunlight than a little souvlaki. But things picked up as the sky grew dark and we ended up playing a full four hours.

Lots of requests. The Bulgarians had their faves and we played every one. Then a table of Albanians trouped in and we played everything on their hit list. Then the Serbs. And so on. I feel like we’ve reached some kind of landmark as a band, that people from any of those countries can come in and ask for a tune and for a whole evening we know every one. Maybe it was just luck.

But even more fascinating to me is that the Albanians were singing along on the Macedonian songs, the Serbians were requesting Bosnian songs, the Greeks were dancing to the Turkish tunes. Back home, these people are at each others’ throats - and worse - but here they are all equally adrift in foreign seas and suddenly the similarities are so much more important than the differences.

(A Serbian woman tucked forty bucks into the pocket of our sax player for playing that Bosnian song out on the floor while she danced.)

Popularity: 3% [?]

See more like that one:

• Stop the Sketch!
• Cash from Nigeria
• 100 Words
• A Piece of Pi
• Gack Moment

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