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11/15/05: STFU Part Deux Wisconsinites love listening to their iPods. "It's like my own personal soundtrack," said Devin Roy, 19, of Fond du Lac. "It takes me away from all my worries, and puts me in a world where it's just me and my music," said Oscar Schmehling, 24, of DePere.
"It's amazing," said Hans Bungle, 36, of Sturgeon Bay. "When I've g I was walking down West 15th Street on my way to work today, a half hour late because the guy had come to put in the bathroom tile. A half hour late, blasting my iPod on shuffle, listening to "The Modern Age" by The Strokes and thinking that I had been right to defend that first Strokes album against the inevitable backlash and the dismissive cries of "derivative" and "phony" and all that. Those songs are just good. Nothing to take too seriously, just good tunes. Almost every one of 'em. If you don't like 'em, fine. But it seemed like a lot of people were looking for reasons not to like 'em. If you have to do that, then it must be pretty good. So I'm walking along, bopping my head, and suddenly someone comes up behind me and kicks me in the ass! I turned around, and it was my boss! He was angry at me because there was a work situation brewing and he'd been unable to reach me on my crappy cell phone that I never seem to feel when it vibrates*. Then he sees me, twenty steps ahead of him, blissfully lost in the musical madness of 2001, still not picking up the cell, not responding as he repeatedly calls out my name -- well, it was enough to make him kick me in the ass. All in good fun, right? I hope so. So the workday got off to a bad start and I hadn't even made it to work yet. It's been like that for about two weeks now. Lots of stuff to do, slow periods of progress interrupted by long meetings where nothing all that important gets discussed. At one of those meetings this afternoon, our department head was discussing something and I kind of got lost in a daydream. It's not that I wasn't paying attention -- but something he said got me thinking, and as I let my imagination slowly wind its way towards wherever it was going, I guess I tuned him out. Then, sure enough, like John Houseman in The Paper Chase, he just called on me out of the blue. "Hans...what do you think?" he asked. To be honest, I hadn't listened to a word out of his mouth for like five minutes before that, so I didn't really even know what he was asking. But rather than choosing:
Option A: come clean, admit that you had drifted off into goofytown and and that you had no
idea what he was asking, or: I instead chose: Option C: give a long-winded, meandering answer that touches not only on what you think he might be talking about but also on whatever is on your mind at that moment. I just started talking about like ten things at once, certain that one of them would strike a chord. I was looking around the room for one head to begin nodding, if not in actual agreement with me then at least recognizing that what I was saying made sense. But the nods didn't come, so I just kept talking. It was terrifying. I answered at least three questions, none of which had apparently been asked, because all I got was stupefied looks. Finally I decided to cut my losses by saying, "If you're asking me what I think about the meetings, I definitely think small groups works best." Everyone just kept staring at me like I had doodoo on my chin. Does it still somehow surprise people that I'm a moron? How is that possible? Dan K. sends in this excellent link from his hometown paper (quick registration req'd), and asks the question, Did the locals in Madison ever call ol' Hans Bungle a "Coastie"? Short answer: not to my face. I'll give a longer answer in a minute, but first let me say whatI think that article is dancing around but is afraid to actually come out and ask: "Do Wisconsin residents dislike Jewish people?" I say this because the off-campus dorms the article refers to such as The Statesider have heavy Jewish representation. The state of Wisconsin has approximately 28,000 Jews, compared to a million in "Coastie" California, half a million in "Coastie" New Jersey and a million and a half in "Coastie" New York. Out of Wisconsin's 28,000 Jews, 4000 are undergrads at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Many of them are the "Coasties" whose personal style and cultural background clash so strongly with the Wisconsinites' sense of what's right. So for the article to write it off to some kind of "Coastal" bias is a little bit dishonest, IMO. I guess asking the question above would make for a much more serious article and a pricklier debate. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think there's a little (possibly subconscious) overtone of anti-Semitism in dressing up as a "Coastie" for Halloween. It's a nice little Petri dish to see how stereotypes develop. One guy grows up in Wisconsin, perhaps he's never met a "Coastie" before, and then he meets one who's an absolute douchebag. His immediate hypothesis: Coasties are douchebags. Too bad he didn't meet Hans Bungle first, we could have shared some laughs over an Old Style or two and I could have sent him down the path of righteousness and love of your fellow man. Because I must say my experience at Wisconsin was far from any of the stuff mentioned in that article. From the moment I arrived on campus in 1987 until I left town six years later, I was treated with nothing but love and kindness by nearly everyone I met. Sure, there was BC MI's truck driver roommate who often said things to me like, "Of course you don't want to go get ice cream -- you're from NEW YORK!" But he was just an idiot. I will give myself some credit; I definitely did not come to Madison thinking I was better than anyone because of where I came from. I was excited to meet new people from a different background than me. Truly I was. And from what I saw people felt the same way towards me. In many ways I was much more innocent than most of my new Wisconsin friends. They seemed like real men to me. They'd been drinking since they were 12, they could all drive stick shifts, and most of them had fucked multiple women in their young lives. Some of them could dunk basketballs on ten foot rims. They were like a race of supermen. I was fascinated by them and they taught me most of what I know today. I wouldn't have wanted to go anywhere else. I don't know what they saw in me. I guess I had a few New York stories to tell. None of them had ever seen a guy get shot dead on the sidewalk in broad daylight. None of them had nearly as much fisting experience as I did. But I think what they liked about me was that I was a Midwesterner at heart: I dressed like them, I talked like them, and within a few weeks I was drinking like them. Maybe my positive experience stems from the dorm I lived in. Remember, this was in 1987, so there were no internets, and no real way to find information without going to a library or making a bunch of phone calls or something. Forget that. So when I got my campus housing application, and it asked me to rank my top three dorm choices, I started with Ogg Hall and moved on down the list of Southeast dorms from there. My reasoning: Ogg and the rest of the Southeast dorms were right across the street from the SERF, the spanking, then four year-old rec center where I assumed, correctly, I could play some good basketball. I didn't know that the Southeast dorms were the less desirable place to be. The Lakeshore dorms were older, quainter, quieter, and had infinitely more character. The Southeast dorms were cold, modern, and devoid of charm. But the Lakeshore dorms were for angsty guys who listened to the Smiths and wore all black before that look even had a name. The Southeast dorms were for alcoholic hell-raisers who unironically wore University of Wisconsin sweat pants and weren't afraid to throw in the Steve Miller Band or The Kinks when the situation called for it. In Lakeshore you might hear an earnest freshman gently strumming an acoustic guitar on a Friday afternoon. In Ogg, we had 20 year-old father Tim K., singing Whitesnake songs at the top of his lungs in the stairwell until 3am while emptying pack after pack of cigarettes. In my soul, even if I wanted to, I could never have been anything but an Ogg man. And between those ugly concrete walls I met about a dozen fine men who I still consider friends today. Looking back, I could not have found a more welcoming, unbiased, unpretentious, fun-loving, good-hearted, open-minded bunch of dudes if I'd tried. So here's to finding common ground: Sweet Mother Alcohol's nurturing breast. And a mutual love of Ugg boots. Upon review of cW's appeal, the board of bungle has decided to award him 11 points for his correct answer of "Planet Claire," and will award Deion one point for at least naming the band correctly. Deion may appeal the appeal, but it won't get far. For nine genius points, tell me what hit song I am reminded of every time I look at my Lowepro camera case? For another four points, what beverage am I drinking in the picture above? As someone who cut class one day in high school so I could see Code of Silence (best line: "If I want your opinion, I'll beat it out of you.") this (via Metafilter) cracked my ass up several times. * I keep it on vibrate because I work in a field where a cell phone ringing at the wrong time can fuck everything up pretty good. But after the ass-kicking incident, I turned on the ringer again. And promptly got burned when the intro to "Immigrant Song" came blasting through during an afternoon meeting. |
ot my ears
(earphones) on, the rest of the universe can take a number. Yeah, baby. You know
what the fuck I'm talking about."