Not to get all post-moderny on you guys anyways, but what is real anyway? That's all I can think of while on a two-day layover in Toronto going back home to Newfoundland from Vancouver. I get to catch a show in the big city, and it's IRON AGE, and smoke is billowing from a PA speaker on a stand, stage right, and the singer, between every song is saying "More vocals in the monitor, please." But isn't the burning plastic smell noticeable and indicative of why his vocals seem quietish? They are the opposite of blown-out and with a shitload of reverb. Is this how they always are?
My friend, a fellow but native Newf, is like "They were right wicked" and I say "But the vocals... " She's like "I dunno, I just figured something was broken."
I guess she liked it anyway. Me, I'm I defensively try not to like anything. Cool, well, being a snob is okay.
Prior to trip to which this layover belongs, I was having a quarter-life crisis. It was such a shock, I didn't know what it was and took it really to heart. I'd managed to avoid most of the usual growing-up milestones and invented my own. An older, wiser columnist (Al Quint, I think), once said, (I'm totally paraphrashing) "Shut about being 30. If I wanted to be bored listening to people talk about what they should be doing at their age, I'd go listen to my sister's boring friends talk about their biological clocks ticking." I totally agree. That shit ain't punk. Still, though, when I was given a printer by a 32-year-old friend who was giving up all his projects and moving to the mainland, and I surveyed the ways I could get ink into this printer, making it usable to me, and even the refill kiosk at the mall was beyond my current financial means. Then the name and logo rang a bell and I realized that this franchise, which had crawled its way, 5000 km, across this big stupid country, was started by this guy whose website I used to write show reviews for in 2000. It's like, one minue we're both high school kids fiddling around ancient versions of photoshop and reading CSS tutorials to make wicked websites while listening to FUGAZI or whatever, and the next minute, I'm 25 and unable to afford the "environmentally friendly" discount inkjet refills dude is becoming a millionaire from selling.
My reaction aims for self-righteousness but stinks a little of shame. On one hand, I'm a success snob, remember? I already don't like IRON AGE. I don't want a profitable business, fuck. Think about it: douche bag investors, boring meetings with charts and stuff. But I'm keeping it real, right? Right? There's nothing wrong with asking my boyfriend to borrow money for my antibiotics because I have impetigo again, right? Right?
So, then, just to throw a huge fucking wrench in my financial furies, I borrow too much money from various friends so I can impulsively fly cross-continent to Vancouver. It all started when my mom called me, crying, about her mom's health. Actually, I should clarify that: I called her and she was crying, because I stubbornly don't let her have my phone number even if this means she files a missing person's report on me whenever I ignore her facebook friend request. It's totally awkward, like it means a cop comes to my door looking at me with disgust whenever I drag myself to the door after a graveyard shit to prove to him that I'm not dead. This weird new routine has also maybe fueled the quarter-life crisis; at my age, you'd think I could maintain a relationship with my mother unlike that of a teenage runaway.
You'd also think the cop-calling would indicate to me a certain level of untrustworthy hysteria, but I panicked and flew in. I mean, it's my gran. She was the one related adult in my life who took all my teenage head-shaving with a total grain of salt and didn't constantly make me feel like a piece of shit for trying not to care about the small-town, high school bullshit standards of attractiveness and whatever. And she's 86, so you know. You know. I can't say it, but you know.
My aunt that she lives with and is her primary caretaker was totally annoyed. "You know," she said when I arrived, "it's not the first time she's been in the hospital. God, your mom called everyone. Even Great aunt fucking Helga's calling in from Mannheim."
But then she looked at me and realized I was like, older than 15, and possibly responsible enough for Gran-Gran to be left alone with me (meaning, my stick 'n poke pizza slice tattoo was strategically covered up with a cardigan), so she made up the guest room for me and went on a well-deserved three-day weed and wine binge. My gran and I had a lot of scrabble to play.
To my grandma, my life peaked when I was 11 and wrote a short story about a hamster that wrote detective stories that won me a $20 gift certificate to Coles bookstore, so she wants to know if I'm still writing.
"Yeah, Gran, I write a column for this, um, music magazine in San Francisco."
She stops the process of finding a tea bag to look at me, super wide-eyed. "Oh my gosh, wow, really, San Francisco. What do you write about?"
I shift my weight from foot to foot. "Oh, um, music, sort of. Feminism? Touring. My life, I guess."
"That's great."
"Yeah, I'm kind of late this month."
"Well, I know, I know a great story you could tell." She's stirring honey into her tea.
"What's that, Gran?"
"You could write about a girl.. a girl who lives in Newfoundland and her mom tells her that her grandma is dying so she flies allll the way there and her grandmother is just fine. I think that would be a very funny story and you could make people laugh."

Punks whose grandmas help them write their punky content, get it touch. Also welcome are offers to mail me the MENANCE - G.L.C. record. julsgeneric@hotmail.com