Slow Time in Fat City™, part 6: Bad Country Music.

[Doktor Howl]

It occurred to me yesterday, while I was bellowing gibberish into Alphapance's voicemail, that most of Tucson is a bad country song.  It's like someone took Nashville and drained out all the George Strait and the Johnny Cash, and all that's left is wreckage and Taylor Swift.

Sure, you can still find a little Hank, if you know how and where to look, but most of The City is made out of plastic, and tries unsuccessfully to project an image of youth, vivacity, and energy...Just like Taylor Swift.

It's bad pop, and it's what's driving us all to substance abuse.

Even the pervert shops have failed us.  Hydra, once a premier leather shop for degenerates, is now Hot Topic for 40 year olds.  It's a shame and a disgrace, and results in the rest of us having to watch some 40-something woman trying to dress like Miley Cyrus...And nobody wants to see that.

We're basically down to three remaining centers of serious brain damage:  The Meetrack (which has mended it's ways, and gotten back off the straight and narrow), The Venture Inn (which has always laughed at anyone who isn't 50+ years old and FABULOUS!), and the Bashful Bandit (A biker bar where you get stomped for NOT puking on the dance floor). 

Notice a pattern here?  They're all bars.  To get your weird on in Tucson, it has become necessary to smash your brain flat with shitty booze, or at least to hang out with people who have.  Everyone else is either dead on their feet from the sun, or so damned CHEERFUL that you have to physically restrain yourself from knocking their perfect white teeth out.

Bad country music, that's what it is.  There's no appreciation for misery and failure and heartache, even though that is the foundation this city is built on (Well, besides a bunch of Apache bones.).  No, it's all Cheerful™ and Young™ and/or Angsty™.  If Roy Orbison were alive today, this shit would kill him.

We can't get by on this.  We can't breathe this thin air, this horrible fucking slop that has replaced Filthy Joe's Porn Emporium with yet another shitty head shop on 4th Avenue.  No, we are fucking SUPERIOR MUTANTS, and we need MORE.  We will GET more, even if it means choking it out of the whey-faced "Good People" of Tucson.

Hank would have wanted it that way.

[Adios]

If Tucson is like Taylor Swift then I will never sour it's borders with my shadow. Seriously.

[Doktor Howl]

If Tucson is like Taylor Swift then I will never sour it's borders with my shadow. Seriously.

We aim to fix that shit, before this place turns into Portland.

[Adios]

Fire. Shit that bad must be purged by fire.

[Freeky]

Naw, Tucson burns just about every year, and it hasn't helped any.

[Adios]

Now I'm curious.

[Doktor Howl]

Now I'm curious.

IT'S A TRAP!

[Adios]

Now I'm curious.

IT'S A TRAP!

You always did know how to turn me on.

It sounds like it's time to David Allen Coe all over Tucson!

[East Coast Hustle]

If Tucson is like Taylor Swift then I will never sour it's borders with my shadow. Seriously.

We aim to fix that shit, before this place turns into Portland.

perhaps counter-intuitively (given it's absurd hipster population and propensity for fake greenness and over-civility), Portland is one of the only American cities left where the right kind of sleazy fun can be found in abundance.

Which is why, in spite of all the aforementioned things, I like the place. It reminds me of what Seattle was in 1992 before it was ruined by tech money and being the "next big scene". Before they turned Pike/Pine into a mall and built condo towers all over Belltown to provide shade for the needlefreaks.

[LMNO]

I'm really glad you turned that voicemail into this rant.  When I heard you bellow, "TUSCON IS A BAD COUNTRY SONG!" I started cackling.

[Kai]

It occurred to me yesterday, while I was bellowing gibberish into Alphapance's voicemail, that most of Tucson is a bad country song.  It's like someone took Nashville and drained out all the George Strait and the Johnny Cash, and all that's left is wreckage and Taylor Swift.

Sure, you can still find a little Hank, if you know how and where to look, but most of The City is made out of plastic, and tries unsuccessfully to project an image of youth, vivacity, and energy...Just like Taylor Swift.

It's bad pop, and it's what's driving us all to substance abuse.

Even the pervert shops have failed us.  Hydra, once a premier leather shop for degenerates, is now Hot Topic for 40 year olds.  It's a shame and a disgrace, and results in the rest of us having to watch some 40-something woman trying to dress like Miley Cyrus...And nobody wants to see that.

We're basically down to three remaining centers of serious brain damage:  The Meetrack (which has mended it's ways, and gotten back off the straight and narrow), The Venture Inn (which has always laughed at anyone who isn't 50+ years old and FABULOUS!), and the Bashful Bandit (A biker bar where you get stomped for NOT puking on the dance floor). 

Notice a pattern here?  They're all bars.  To get your weird on in Tucson, it has become necessary to smash your brain flat with shitty booze, or at least to hang out with people who have.  Everyone else is either dead on their feet from the sun, or so damned CHEERFUL that you have to physically restrain yourself from knocking their perfect white teeth out.

Bad country music, that's what it is.  There's no appreciation for misery and failure and heartache, even though that is the foundation this city is built on (Well, besides a bunch of Apache bones.).  No, it's all Cheerful™ and Young™ and/or Angsty™.  If Roy Orbison were alive today, this shit would kill him.

We can't get by on this.  We can't breathe this thin air, this horrible fucking slop that has replaced Filthy Joe's Porn Emporium with yet another shitty head shop on 4th Avenue.  No, we are fucking SUPERIOR MUTANTS, and we need MORE.  We will GET more, even if it means choking it out of the whey-faced "Good People" of Tucson.

Hank would have wanted it that way.

College Town is bad music also, Dok. But it's more of the alternative ambient popular noise sort. You can hear it the day of the football games.

First the strings, low and pulsing, bass and cello, screeching a bit. Thats the traffic, on the 4 lane street they turn into a one way entrance ramp.

Then the horns come in, the brass, the police sirens and the car horns when the inevitable accident and rerouting occurs, the smashing of symbals as the backed up traffic gets drunk and hurls wine cooler bottles off the road breaking in the ditches.

Next the sopranos, nasally, inevitably followed by the tenors and basses in fortissimo. Yelling and milling about with nothing to do, jostling about on the stage. Theres a call and return going on, songs called "That skirt is so skanky, did you see that?" and "WOOOOOOOOOOO! PAAAAAAARTAAAAAAAY!"

Eventually this comes to a climax, when 80 thousand screaming tenors, basses and sopranos gather in the center of the stage and cheer inane sayings while the strings and horns crecendo and break in waves.

After the mightiest of these, the whole process happens again in reverse, faster this time, until the strings fade into the night. There is no applause for this ugly, haphazard display, yet the participants applaud themselves the whole time, as you might expect.