Büsker Dü, or: The Most Uncomfortable of Discomforts

So I have this friend who is fairly unclear on the meaning of the word "awkward." I think she just happens to be the unfortunate victim of people online who have abused the word by applying it to every photo of a family that just happens to be less than conventionally attractive. Ugly doesn't equal awkward. They're just ugly. Granted, the site's use of the word was put to much more appropriate use at the beginning, when the visitor really was made horribly uncomfortable by viewing photos of father-daughter subjects who looked like they were about to get it on. But a family of pasty redheads in hideous matching sweaters does not necessarily awkwardness make.

At any rate, I've recently witnessed with regularity a situation which proves to be, unquestionably, awkward: The obliging busker watcher.

The Obliging Busker Watcher

Okay, just so you know, a busker is a street performer. Here in Austin, the only kind of busking you typically see is musical in nature, but if you ever hit up Boulder, or San Francisco, or Amsterdam, you'll see juggler buskers (I call them juggskers... no one else does, so don't go around Portland using this term unless you want to get your head stove in with a bowling pin by a dude in Zoombas), robot buskers (robuskers, a nomenclature the use of which might result in your being painted silver and driven to suicidal madness by the incessant whine of a toy mouth siren—wheeeEEEEEEEEEEEZZHHHHhhh!!!!), puppet buskers (the word busketeer once got me in trouble in Chicago... I ended up fighting a felt crocodile, two sock monkeys, and a zany Italian chef with a bushy mustache), or even the death-defying flaming hula-hoop buskers (even I will admit I deserved the beat-down I received in Venice Beach when I called one of them a fireybuttholesker).

One Crazy SOB

But like I said, here in Austin, the buskers are, for the most part, musicians. It's not like Dublin, where there is someone or some group of record-contract-on-the-spot quality on every corner (the greatest buskers I've ever seen were a string quartet of teenagers on Grafton Street playing Mozart as if he showed them how), but I have seen some pretty good stuff. Well, to be honest, I've seen ONE good street act here, and again, it was a quartet of teenagers, this time playing some pretty killer bluegrass. What we do seem to have plenty of are the crazy, in-your-face, no-talent, crappy-ass-sounding mandolin/guitar/banjo-playing creep beggars (I call them crazyinyourfacenotalentcrappyasssoundingmandolinguitarbanjoplayingcreepbeggarskers, or bums for short).

These creeps have one and only one game plan: make people believe that they will get hurt if they don't stand there listening to their trite, on-the-spot songs about the listener's pretty hair and her hapless boyfriend or about how weird and wacky Austin is, replete with dropped names of long-gone local heroes and a litany of all the old lunch counters and saloons that have also gone the way of the longhorned buffalo.

Hey! I'm a person, too!

The obliging busker watcher is easily ensnared. He or she somehow feels bad for this person who has spent the last fifteen years playing guitar and singing all day on the street but who has miraculously never stopped sucking at both. They don't want to hurt the bum's feelings. Now, lest anyone form a malopinion of me (new word), I have a very soft spot in my heart for those people who are down on their luck, can't catch a break, and are truly hurting for money. I really do. But there's no excuse for being a crappy guitarist when that's essentially what you do for a living. Of course, Carlos Santana has certainly gotten away with it. But I digress.

The obliging busker watcher is, of course, just trying to be nice, and I ain't mad at them for that. In fact, I hurt for them. Because, as I said before, it's the most awkward situation a person can find themselves in on a busy street. The watcher stands, arms folded until they remember their junior college sociology prof told them that folded arms is negative body language, then they drop their arms to their sides, which becomes so uncomfortable their arms feel as if they are four feet long and flailing about like ninth-graders at a school dance. So, of course, the hands go into the pockets, unless the watcher happens to be wearing a dress, and it's back to folded arms. The watcher tries really hard to look engaged, but all they can think is, "Oh god, everyone walking by me thinks I'm a total moron for listening to this guy. Oh god, oh god!!!" It's true, the watcher is a total moron, but what I'm thinking when I pass by is, "Thank god that imbecile took one for the team. Team Mankind. We all thank you for running interference long enough for me to walk by on my way to get coffee without either: (A) lying about having no money, (B) giving him money I need for coffee, or (C) giving him no money because I really don't have any and then feeling bad about it, even though I have absolutely no reason to."

And yes, that's what my thought processes look like, right down to the serial parentheses. 

Of course, the obliging busker watcher is not a villain. They are, for the most part, innocents caught in a web of deceit that leads them to believe that in order to fully experience the city they are visiting, they must take in all the spices that city has to offer (lord have mercy even more so on the visitor to Austin, who thinks he or she will be damned for not partaking in every last morsel of the "Live Music Capital of the World." Trust me, Mr. and Mrs. Tourista, you're way better off giving your ten bucks to the door guy at the Mohawk who just looks homeless and seeing some truly good music). The true villain is the college douchebag beat-poet wannabe who sits next to the busker bum all day, snapping his fingers and rattling off the names of blues musicians he looked up online the night before, all in the hopes that those who see him will be struck dumb by his realness, his depth, his soul.

You'll know him when you see him. He'll be wearing a fedora.

 Cool, cat, cool! Play me the Street-Singer Blues! I'm in college!

Looks Very Masculine and Tough Under the Light

I left my house to walk down to Jo's coffee and at the last minute decided to hang a left and walk the extra half a block just to cruise past Guero's in search of material. I had almost reached the end of the outdoor tables when I saw, seated there, a semi-quasi, fairly-somewhat-popular local singer-songwriter who happens to look a lot like the rather-popular-at-least-in-this-town singer-songwriter whom I'm sure he gets compared to (visually) on a regular basis. 

"Man, I've been dealing with the same shit in this town for fifteen years!" he mouthfuls at his lady acquaintance. The Singer is so unsung. So unrecognized. So overlooked. His scruffy beard twitches above the righteous indignation his jaw is taking the full brunt of. His aviators are steamed from his rage. His v-neck white tee is nearly rent asunder. Top to bottom, like the curtain in the temple. As if torn by God himself.

Most at odds with the utter injustice of the hack singer's sentence of life in a shadow is the troubadour de purgatory's necklace. More specifically, his pendant. His turquoise bear-tooth set in the finest of Thai silvers, worn by gladiators in ancient arenas for courage and strength, and worn with equal pride by the shamans and medicine men of the olden Americas for wisdom and guidance during the hunt and/or spiritual quest. Or whatever.

This One Is Black. Deeper. Darker. Dangerouser.

In my sudden new-found obsession with this totemic piece of man-soul, I began a deep, involved, quixotic journey to find some record, some reckoning of these amulets of the sac in the world. About ten seconds' worth of Googling later (search terms: man necklace) I found a site that held forth only the most purely electrified tokens of sheer testosterone known to man, beast, and spirit. The Black Tooth above was but one of these.

Also on display for my examination was the "ring of barbed wire" pendant, which, while looking quite menacing, also promised to feel quite comfortable against my straining, tanned pec skin. According to the site, this is "just as well, as things could get rather messy otherwise." Ah, yes. Sex. This necklace WILL get you laid. You wanna know why? Because it "looks very masculine and tough under the light."

The "fossilized shark tooth" pendant, "is a piece of history being millions of years old. Mexican Silver... displaying it in all its glory." Wow. It is so comforting to know that there are people out there looking out for me, doing the archeological research that my schedule of working out, watching MMA, mixing creatine shakes, and shopping for designer jeans, long, square-toe Italian shoes, and breezy dress shirts with embroidered tribal designs on the shoulder restricts me from doing. I mean, if I weren't all shackled by these earthly pursuits of tanning, searching for the perfect flat-billed cap, and checking out my girlfriend's amazing new rack, I would have time to go on that African scuba trip or Balinese walkabout or whatever to find the ancient shark tooth on my own.

Woah, woah, woah. I just got lost in some sort of primal man fantasy. Who am I kidding? I don't have the courage, the wisdom, or the hormonal wherewithal to don a pukka-shell choker, wear a bedazzled bandanna across my forehead, or bear the pain shared by real god-men through the centuries of having Chinese-tribal-Native-Celtic scribery needle-punched into my skin! But I will try. I will learn to take that pain and be a man. I will earn the right to wear jewelry as mannish, honorable, and glorious as this:

And I will stand with Achilles in the bow of his black-sailed corsair as he calls to me and my fellow Myrmidons, "We are lions! The future is there! Take it! It's yours! AND YOU KNOW THIS, SON!!!"

Peace, broheim.

Staying Alive, or, Vinnie Barbarino In Leg Warmers

I've made the following statement before, but because I really don't think this sentiment of mine can be adequately driven home by anything less than regular, dedicated haranguing, I'll say it again:

"JOHN TRAVOLTA" is the most badass name anyone, anywhere has ever had the honor of writing on a "Hello, My Name Is" sticker. Yes, I've said this before, yes, I will probably say it again, yes, you may disagree, yes, I find that odd, but the name simply sounds like a black 1976 Corvette with a crimson lightning bolt painted on the hood. Real Badass.

But the Cosmos simply aren't satisfied with John Travolta existing as a real person with a real badass name. The Cosmos take it further, out of reality, out of the confines of Mother Earth and Brother Sky and Father Time and Third Cousin Space-Age Polymer straight to the Schermo D'argento, gifting J.T. with the role of a movie character whose name also happens to sound like pure midnight electric turbocharging.

Tony Manero. 

Believe you me, "Tony Manero" sounds exactly like the name of a man who would strut down the street in a white, three-piece dancin' tux and woo you with his perfect pomp, his flashing eyes, and dynamite smile. Oh, and his moves. What moves! Mr. Manero, hardware store employee, son, brother, lover, friend, had it all. He slinked, he slunk, he pulsed and swayed. He turned the noun "hips" into some other part of speech we pundits of linguistics have yet to define! And he did it all with lungs swelled by cigarette smoke, veins coursing with strong cocktails, and a bellyfull of spaghetti. Man-o-man.

But let us not forget the Tony Manero of five years later... The Tony Manero who danced his way out of the mean streets of Brooklyn and into the emotional war zone of Manhattan... The Tony Manero who had once been carefree, egotistical, living-for-the-glowing-squares-of-colored-discofloor ecstasy and who had learned to care (in all fairness, the old Tony cared about nice old ladies buying paint), left a bit of the ego behind, and began to live for the colorless and oftentimes lonely floor of the Broadway audition stage.

The Tony Manero of Staying Alive.

Look in his eyes. Feel his pain. Feel his longing. Feel his bone structure. It's five years later, the dancing has morphed into something beyond classification, he was Danny Zuko, Vinnie Barbarino (another badass name), and some fake cowboy named Bud in some parallel world, and Tony Manero has emerged a man. A man torn between the woman who loves him and the bitchy, quasi-british chick who gets the lead dance parts, a man who tortures himself in search of the true dancer inside, a man whose goal in life is to impress Red from That 70's Show, who apparently was a dance instructor in another life. Oh, and a cop killer.

But don't let Kurtwood Smith's beautiful face make you forget about the names. The names that were forged by Vulcan in the fires below Mount Etna, pounded out of the metals of ancient mines formed by the cleaving of rock by thunderbolt, hardened in the cold waters of the Atlantic and embraced by Lady Liberty as she welcomed these names to the New World: Manero, Barbarino, Zuko...

TRAVOLTA.

All heralded unto our shores by the angelic choir of these dudes:

DYNAMITE.

Hey, Rocky! In Staying Alive! In a fur cape! Pure TNT!