Culture vulture

For those about to mock…
Of all the seasons of the year, autumm is my fave. And of all the autumn months there is none so lovely and rewarding to the ironically overendowed as the month of taunting parody and lacerating self-examination, Mocktober.

Ah, Mocktober. The month that allows us, nay, encourages us, to scoff at our fragile sense of accomplishment and ridicule with shameless honesty any pretensions of being superior in any way to any fellow creature winding its way through this all-too-mortal coil.

In Mocktober the leering, skeletal face of the entropic Universe may loom over us, an insistent reminder that the cycle of life has a seriously inevitable down side. And in Mocktober we can spit in Death’s necrotic eye and say, “Yeah, sure. Well I’m dancing at the Harvest Ball right now, so get your morbid freaking self out of my face. I deny you.”

The liberating value of self-contradiction cannot be denied. Not by Culture Vulture anyway.

If you can’t say anything nice…
Mixed emotions, while possibly intriguing as a topic of clinical observation, basically suck in the here-and-now. Take for instance Monday night’s Paradise concert by the deservedly acclaimed musical duo of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. A few songs into their show and I felt like Holden Caulfield describing seeing the Lunts in a Broadway play. He got annoyed because the very perfection of their performance gave them an aura of phoniness not attained by less accomplished actors. The musical duo’s unhomogenized blending of artily pretentious self-consciousness with drawling, awshucks, downhome stage persona just didn’t float my boat, but their harmony singing lifted them above such petty, ahedonic judgments. Those two conjure the angelic sphere with their voices, and if we ever needed angels we need them now.

In which the past creeps up and bites Culture Vulture on the ass
Culture Vulture teeters on the brink of nostalgia, and topples in! The question arises: Why must wallowing in memories of past be a guilty pleasure?

Who would have guessed that listening to a homemade CD of seminal Chico "hardcore" punk band Dog Killer, recorded 20 years ago, would inspire Culture Vulture to descend into a spiky spiral of Burgie flashbacks and maudlin mnemonics involving clove cigarettes, half-pints of peppermint schnapps and a deep respect for the adolescent aspect of the human universe. May all blessings descend on the hearts of Derek, Twelve Pack, Howard and Chris. Hats off to Mr. Tupper for reminding us that we are not immune to nostalgia, however unfashionable it is to admit it.