Click images for desktop size: "The Flash" by DC Comics I had a song on the iPod yesterday. One of the band's tunes. It was good. We were good. I even remembered the choreography. On one of the podcasts I listen to I heard a band cover one of our old tunes. They did a good job. I didn't get any money out of it. Probably, neither did they.
We were always too good for the bars and the club circuits but not good enough for the big time.
We watched "Kurt Cobain - About A Son" a while back. It was a terrible pretentious, boring mess. The interesting part was hearing Cobain talk. (The movie only offers up a few stills of Nirvana and NONE of their music)
One thing he said was when he started up with the band all they wanted to do was to be popular enough to play a few times a week and pay the bills.
I think avoiding a job and meeting girls are the best reasons to start a rock band.

I don't hate Egypt. I don't hate India.
I certainly don't hate the people who live there.
My issues with Egypt are kind of shallow. I think its the dirtiest, smelliest country I've ever been to . . . and it has bugs and flies . . . that's it. Nothing else.
I hate bugs.
Egyptian bugs are big and desert tough. You can't kill them with a ball peen hammer.
Egypt also has some wonderful people. A girl (we were young enough then to be boys and girls) arranged for a midnight boat ride down the Nile. She had no ulterior motives other than to dazzle me.
It worked. There's little to compare when you consider a desert moon. Drifting down the Nile I escaped the stench of the cities. It was incomparable, silent and lovely.
When I got to walk up to the pyramids and the Sphinx I was disappointed, not in them but in the scandalous amount of litter and the graffiti.
India is more problematic for me. Its a huge country and while I've been through all the states I've only spent time in a few.
I lack the confidence of most Americans.
Click images for desktop size: "Eternity" by Antonis Fes I don't think that driving through an area means that I understand it or that I know it.
But some things can taint a memory. They can become a traumatic indic.
I was on a bus, passing through a town on the way to Nepal. The bus had to stop for a large traffic jam. Their were cops there. It was gridlock (a scary word to most Southern Californians).
From the bus window I could see but not hear the commotion on the street. A mob of about 200 people were chasing a man and pelting him with stones and bricks. Any hard garbage they could pick up on the street.
He ran, they chased. Until one projectile seemed to catch him. He stumbled and fell. The crowd surrounded him. Things kept flying through the air.
I couldn't see what was happening but I could imagine it. That was worse.
After about 15 minutes the bus moved forward about 30 feet. The crowd dispersed.
I was nonplussed as to why the cops or any of the people not throwing stuff hadn't intervened. An angry mob is a scary thing but . . .
When the bus moved I had a clearer view of the running ma's mangled body. We sat their for about 40 more minutes and I had to look at the dead body. No one moved to touch him or to see if he were actually dead. The cops were more concerned about getting traffic moving. I never saw an ambulance.
A decade later I was traveling through India with an Indian pal. He wanted to change my mind about his homeland, a homeland he had never been to before.
We were waling through the streets while he was chagrined that the language he thought he had learned from his parents wasn't being understood by many people we met. When suddenly we hit the fringes of a big crowd. We pushed through it for no good reason.
When we got close enough we saw a large group of men pushing a large bus and trying to tip it over. It was a hot sunny day and the gaily painted green and white bus should have looked cool. All of its windows were shattered. All of its sides were busted and dented. That and the angry mob kind of killed any cool factor.
The bus was full of people, men, women children. No one over 40 as near as we could estimate.
Things got uglier. There was a construction site nearby that was providing an unending supply of concrete blocks and pipes deemed perfect for bus throttling. There was also some gas and bottles I guess because someone bought some out and they set the bus on fire.

Click images for desktop size: "Final Destination" by Alex Iuss Even though the flames thinned out the crowd and forced the mob to pull back the mob refused to let the people off the buss, when the door opened the bus occupants were met with a murderous torrent of bricks and concrete.
A fire truck showed up and that caused the mob to disperse.
The fire truck didn't try to stop the fire, they just doused surrounding buildings. The job seemed to be more concerned with containing the blaze.
At least the people inside were able to start to get out. My friend, I, two other Americans and this crazy Canadian tacitly decided to go help pull the people free. They were in bad shape, more psychologically than physically. We led them away.
The crazy Canadian rushed back into the bus to make sure no one was left inside. As it was burning pretty solidly by now we were willing to just watch. He ran in and came out before we got too nervous for him. His black baseball cap was singed and he had no eyebrows left on his exit.
We never did find out what started the whole mess. It was good loud and exciting but did nothing to make me like India.
As to the crazy Canadian. He really was nuts. He was in the Canadian Army. None of us Americans were even fully aware that Canada had any army! Then we sort of figured they had to.
The Crazy Canadian said something that baffled us. Speaking about the bus riders, "They were probably the Indian equivalent of Quebecois!"
I told you he was crazy.
He traveled with us for a week. We watched him start five fist fights. Always with 3 or more guys.
What made this crazy is that he was a terrible fighter. They would invariably hand him his head. Now most of us, if we get beaten up once or twice we would tend to alter our behavior enough to stop getting beaten up! Or at least pick on smaller guys or at least pick on just one guy at at time.
That logic didn't work for the Crazy Canadian. It started to be fascinating to watch him.
Almost all of the fights we watched were started because he decided that someone in the group had been disrespectful to Canada! As in walking past the Canadian Consulate and spitting on the sidewalk or laughing amongst themselves . . .
He was nuts but at least he never asked us to help him fight.