Atlanta radio

I am in the car quite a bit and I have been listening to Atlanta radio for a few weeks now. I am driving our leased Mitsubishi Lancer. We had no choice in the matter, so we got what we got. A cherry red Lancer. Georgie seems to like it, and I have grown quite fond of it as well. I think it has two cylinders and when you give it some gas, it rattles and shakes like an old sewing machine. I think I might call it "Flame", like the Moped in the Jim Stafford song "Cowpatty". That is a great song, and if you haven't heard it you've missed a good laugh. Anyway, Flame (the car) gets about 100 miles to the gallon and I don't mind telling you, it turns some heads.

Lancer: one that lances, an instrument which is used to slice, cut, dice, chop or hack. Dr. Stevens eyed the festering boil and asked the scrub nurse for a #6 Mitsubishi Lancer.

Anyway, back to the music on the radio. OK, I get it, REM is from Georgia, but do I have to hear "It's the end of the world" so many times? And what is this fascination with The Red Hot Chili Peppers? And man do they love The Counting Crows, and The Black Crowes. Any band with the word "crow" in it. Thankfully, I have only heard 'Mr. Jones' once so I haven't had to consider offing myself. Actually, to my surprise, I have grown to like the C. Crows. Maybe it is true what my friend Bruce once said about some bands. If you strap yourself down and force yourself to listen to something that at first sounds awful, it sometimes actually grows on you. That seems to have happened to me with the Crows. Not that they are awful. Maybe I should try that with the Kings of Leon. Jesus. How can something so annoying be so popular?

Dave Matthews is also on heavy rotation here but this is OK. He has a new release and it sounds great. And too much Pearl Jam! Not even discussing if it is good or not, "Jeremy" is just an unpleasant experience and not one that should be repeated weekly.

I have found the rock station, the alt rock station, the pop station, the R and B station. Gudrun favours the pop station. I like a lot of what they play too, but I get confused by the Kelly Clarkson- Pink continuum. When Kelly tries to be rockin' and rough then it sounds like Pink to me. The reverse is true when Pink shows her sensitive side. 'Big Girls Don't Cry' by Fergie was one of my guilty pleasures during our first few weeks here. Another guilty pleasure was, "If today was your last day" by Nickelback.

It is not all bad but there is an absence of "foreign" music on any of the stations. Very little British music. Except Coldplay. And that's how I know they are gay. They listen to Coldplay. I actually miss Canadian music. I heard Blue Rodeo once here and almost fell off my chair. A little Bruce Cockburn, perhaps? I'd even settle for Tom Cochrane (just not the song that dare not speak its name).

Soon after I wrote the above, I would enter a dark period where I listened only to sports talk radio. I didn't know how bad it had got until I found myself actually caring about the NCAA basketball tournament. This was my wake-up call, my rock bottom. I am happy to report that I am back listening to music, taking it one day at a time. There are a lot of new songs out now so it is good.

I now actually appreciate the one station I listen to most of the time. Dave FM. They have a great program called, "Acoustic Sunrise" on Sunday mornings. It is great to hear the stripped down versions of songs. Pearl jam has a new album and I love the songs I have heard. They seemed to have eased back on RHCP and REM, and Kings of Leon seem to be on the fade. Thank god.

Mr. Canada
In our first weeks here we needed a plumber and so we met the friendly and colourful character Curtis, master plumber and MBA from Emory University. "I've been trying to sell it back to them for fifty cents on the dollar!" he said, gesturing in the direction of the campus. Curtis speaks in a big, booming voice, slightly hoarse, and has a flare for the dramatic. In the couple of hours he was fixing our sink, he offered kind advice and shared wisdom on life in Atlanta. It was his friendly welcome. He reassured me, "You'll find that most people in this neighbourhood are just like you,” he pointed at me and paused, “from somewhere else."

He, too, is an outsider, from Virginia. He is a proud southerner. When talking about folks up north (“you won't hear the word ‘Yankee’ come out of my mouth”), he said, "You can chase your tail all day, but you're still never gonna catch it".
He is a fan of Obama, an increasingly rare thing here in the south. "I cried when he was elected. At first I wasn't so sure about him but when he came to town and I saw the thousands of people lining the street to see him, I thought, wait a minute here..."
He cautioned us about the weather. In July, August and a good part of September, he said, "it is not to be trifled with". He told me, it is neither the heat nor the humidity, as formidable as they are, but the poor air quality. He likes to watch movies until late at night with a friend of his. After midnight, they step outside to "get some fresh air into the lungs." At this point he inhaled deeply and held it in for a moment. He let it go and said, “but sometimes, there is just no fresh air to be had".
When I told him I might get a job that would often take me to Alabama, he stopped and stared at me for a moment. "There's another thing I didn't tell you about Alabama,” (the topic had not come up), "don't go there!" In fact he shared his dislike for even venturing outside "the perimeter". Atlanta is divided roughly into downtown/ in-town neighbourhoods and the suburbs. "The perimeter" is a zone defined by the number 285 expressway which encircles the city. I had heard that the "in-town" neighbourhoods are where it’s at. They are liberal, progressive clusters of good restaurants, culture, a cosmopolitan feel and "character". The suburbs (outside the perimeter), I was told, are just the opposite. When I shared this, Curtis remarked that people "out there are just not very intelligent". He has a particular disdain for the suburb of Marietta.
He told me to be careful when south of Ponce de Leon after dark. Ponce is a major east- west artery in the city that traditionally divided the white neighbourhoods to the north from the black ones to the south. "You may be walking to your car after dinner, you've had a bit to drink, and there may be someone, now I am not racist, but it is usually a black man. As I say I am not a racist, that's just the way it is. I don't want to scare you folks but people have been shot. You just keep your eyes open"
And Curtis hates Ikea. He shuddered and recounted his one and only visit there. "Man, no windows, I felt like I was like a rat in a maze and I said ‘get me out of here!’" Probably needed some fresh air.
He has been to Vancouver twice. He stayed at the Sylvia Hotel and rode his bike around Stanley Park. He had a lovely time. He would like to return but is currently banned from our country. It seems on his last visit he was detained and interrogated for two hours. He was not given a reason. He sent a letter of complaint to the consulate here and was told he was lucky something worse didn't happen to him. He wanted my opinion on the matter. Why did this happen to him? Is this common for visitors to Canada? I didn't know what to say. I was actually a little embarrassed that my government would treat such a decent guy so badly.
He suggested some restaurants and family friendly activities. He wrote these on the back of his card. He also invited me to call him some time if I had questions or needed help. "I may not be the smartest person in the world, but I know some things and I have lived here for more than fifteen years"
About a month later he returned, when they had to dig up our front yard to replace the water main. He pulled up in his ‘70’s era GTO. It was a rough-looking vehicle painted in a dull primer. "Mr. Canada!" he said and shook my hand. He and Craig and I stood over the pit, shooting the breeze. It was an impressive trench, about 15 feet down through the Georgia red clay. Curtis talked about some folks who dig these trenches incorrectly, or at the wrong time, or after it has rained a lot. "You go down that hole, you may not come out. Usually you hear about it happening in Marietta or somewhere out there, there's a cave-in and they pull ‘em out, sometimes dead, sometimes not".
Somehow we started talking about our fathers. Craig said he does something and then thinks, "Oh my god, I’m becoming my dad." Curtis jumped in, "Not me! I will NOT wash my car when it does not need it. I will NOT cut my grass when it does not need it. No, I will not".
The trench has now been long filled in and the grass is slowly returning. I haven't seen Curtis in a while. I should give him a call.