Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

Dec. 19, 2002: Heathen Gingerbread

This past weekend I did the devil's work, some would say. I prefer to label it the work of an unruly God.

A friend and I were heading back from seeing Star Trek: Nemesis, which we agreed was an action movie for aging geeks. We were discussing such erudite subjects as "Why did Worf get all the stupid lines?" and "Why do only bad guys wear black leather and studs?"

Driving through a small town, my friend remarked that he'd once played a gig at a nearby coffee shop. So we decided to see if any live music was going down.

As soon as my friend saw that the place was filled with teenagers, he balked. But I insisted we see what kind of music was on the bill. I grabbed a cup of Egg Nog coffee, which was as nasty as it sounds, and we took the table nearest the stage.

Several bands were slated to play; they were all doing sound checks that demonstrated their negligible abilities. Then again, maybe they were trying for piercing feedback.

At about this time, somebody my friend knew came up to us and said hello. He was the promoter who had put this concert together, and he seemed surprised to see my friend there. He kept giving me the eye and even asked if my friend and I were there "on a date." The phrasing was so old-fashioned and out of place that I laughed loudly and turned my attention entirely onto the magnetic poetry board at the table, so that he woudn't confuse any future eye contact with an interest in going "on a date" with him.

At about this time, the first band started. They were hardcore, and their music inspired us to such rampant poetry flights as:

      what mad raw garden she said
      under the thousand tiny
      chanting lights
      sing above essential days

Of course, my friend, who hadn't been "on a date" in longer than I had, took out his frustrations in verse:

      you produce delirious leg juice easy
      one could swim in it
      like hot milk
      spray from a smelly place

By this point it had become sort of a competition, where one tried to either surprise or amuse the other with turns of random words. We were laughing madly, every once in awhile pumping our fists to the hardcore beat.

"No wonder his friend was surprised he was here," I thought. My friend is a folk musician and rarely listens to anything harder than Rufus Wainwright.

The next band took the stage and started off with a syrupy ballad. I was disappointed; it was stunting my creativity. I came up with a weak pseudo-rant:

      two beneath chain language
      have sordid mean sea
      soar languid life then ask ask take leave stop
      next some true men
      hair death rips you these thousand moments dan
      & you think my car will soar

Its incoherence wasn't entirely my fault, since my friend by now had begun invading my compositions with his own contributions. I was busy pondering the words for another blazing opportunity when the lead singer started talking.

"This next song expresses the real reason we're here tonight. It's about how the Lord saved us and about what he can do for everyone here. Because, as the Lord Jesus Christ said, no one cometh unto the lord but through him."

I snickered loudly, partly in response to some word play courtesy of my friend, but also in the Beavis and Butthead sense of "Heh-heh, he said cometh."

Wait a minute, I thought, did he just say what I thought he said?

That's when I finally looked up at the rest of the room. It was filled with farm boys and sweater types; the coolest looking teenagers were the ones from the hardcore band, and I now realized the lead singer had the emblem of a cross on his black T-shirt.

But I still had some Egg Nog coffee to finish, and dammit, I'd paid for it. So we stayed a couple more songs and I tried to ignore the woman with straight blonde hair at the next table, who kept eyeing me intensely, fixing me with a sort of challenge in her eyes.

We left in between songs, pushing through the crowd to the door. Outside, we burst out laughing. "Well, now I know why the promoter was surprised to see me," my friend said. You see, my friend is Jewish.

As we were driving away, I was laughing hysterically. "Can you believe we were sitting down front writing naughty poems and snickering during their gospel rock?" I said.

That's when I remembered the T-shirt I was wearing, from the latest David Bowie tour.

The name of the tour? Heathen.

All I can say is, God has a sense of humor.

Even more impressive was the huge tree in the middle of the room, festooned with decorations. There were actual toys under the tree, toys so lame they knew no one would steal them. There was actually a punching bag lumberjack. And yes, it was as cheap looking as it sounds. And yes, it probably also was as old as me.

I'm sitting here thinking, "For this, I'm paying $10 a drink?"

But 'twas the season, and it was kind of fun to hobnob with the rich folks. Or at least, to hobnob with other people who thought hanging out in the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton in Philadelphia was a posh thing to do.

We were trying to figure out why the waitresses were wearing Chinese silk shirts. One of my friends insisted they were still wearing them from a tea ceremony the hotel holds every day. It didn't sound right to me either, but my friend seemed serious enough about it.

Of course, it was probably karmic payback for the time I convinced a friend that the original title to War and Peace was War, What is It Good For?

So we're leaving the hotel lobby, a little tipsy, and we realize that the life-sized gingerbread house is actually made out of gingerbread. Or at least, it had real slabs of gingerbread glued to it.

We're up close taking a good look when I realize there's a hunk of gingerbread missing, right at hand height. "Somebody ate the gingerbread!" I said. "Hansel was here!"

My friends dragged me outside while I demanded to know what the hotel staff had done with Hansel.

Later, we told another friend about the life-sized gingerbread house and the missing hunk of gingerbread. He insisted mice must have done it.

"It wasn't exactly at mice level," I said.

"They could crawl up the wall."

"Yes, and just HAPPENED to steal a hand-sized piece of gingerbread right at a comfortable height for tearing off a piece."

"They could have."

"Well, then, what did they do with Hansel?" I asked.

He had no answer.

Moral:
If you're losing an argument, use a non-sequitur.

If you're listening to Christian hardcore, for God's sake stay away from Egg Nog coffee and poetry.

Copyright 2002 by Alyce Wilson

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