Singles Going Steady: Blur, "Song 2"
You know how when you were a kid you thought how cool it would be if your best friend's mom or dad married your mom or dad? And you'd all move into the same house? And you and your best friend would be best friends AND sisters? (I suppose this line of thinking most often applied to girls.) Cool, right?
D-Money and I become friends our senior year of high school, but become really close once we both get to college, D-Money to Akron, me to Ohio State, and thanks to that wonderful new invention called e-mail, we keep in touch on a near-constant basis online and also over the telephone. D-Money and I talk one night and one of us says, "Wouldn't it be funny if our parents started dating?" As it happens, D-Money's mom is newly single again after ending a relationship with a guy who liked to flirt with girls our age, and my dad is newly single again after ending a relationship with a woman who liked her dogs better than she liked him. We both get a kick out of the idea; I call my dad and run it past him. The next I hear, dad and D-Money's mom have a date to get coffee. "Awwww! How cute," D-Money mails me. "They're gonna get married!!!!!"
Fast forward a few months and our parents are inseparable. Suddenly, we're spending holidays and weekends at each other's houses. Dad tells me, "This is serious, Pumpkin." Meanwhile, D-Money decides to transfer to Ohio State the coming fall and we're going to live together. We're going to be together all the time! She's going to be the sister that I never had and we'll be sharing clothes, CDs, shoes, weed. Lots of phone calls and e-mails follow, lots of "eeeee"s and "awesome"s and plans and a general sense that life is going to be a nonstop pajama-jammy-jam from here on out.
One year later, D-Money and I are barely speaking to each other, and when we are, it's usually, "Phone's for you," or "We're out of cereal," or "Here's my half of the rent." Where it all went off the rails, it's hard to say. There are too many reasons to count. All that I do know is that our parents are engaged and D-Money and I can't wait to get away from each other. This has become something of a challenge now that our parents live together, and we are sharing this apartment. Fortunately, our lease is almost up and we've both got summer plans. Summers past, we'd drive back to Warren together almost every weekend, the three-hour drive going by in a haze of pot smoke and good driving tunes. Now, neither of us can imagine spending three minutes together. When dad asks, "Are you coming home any time soon?" I hedge, knowing that I don't want to be there if D-Money is, saying, "Uh, I don't know. I have to see what D-Money is doing, first." Dad's too busy with the new house to notice the crack in my voice.
We are getting ready to move out of our apartment, everything is in boxes, save for my stereo. It's always the last thing I pack because I like to clean to music. I half-heartedly mop puddles of dirty water from one side of the room to the other. I stop mopping and look for a CD that will get me in the right frame of mind for cleaning. I put on Blur's "Song 2." It's difficult to not bounce around to that song, to not play air guitar and sing along with the "woo-hoo!" parts. When we first moved in together, that's exactly what D-Money and I would do. For the longest time, neither of us had a clue what the words were; something about, "And I feel metta metta. And I'm pans amma neels. And I lie amma easay…" It hardly mattered; it was plenty fun to yell out anyway. D-Money came home one afternoon all excited because she'd found the lyrics online. We were sort of close:
When I feel heavy metal /
And I'm pins and I'm needles /
Well, I lie and I'm easy /
All of the time but I'm never sure why I need you/
Pleased to meet you…
****
I lean on the mop, staring at the speakers, tapping my feet. When the door opens, I'm pretty sure D-Money is going to tell me to turn it down, that she's studying. She doesn't; instead, she hands me a beer and sits down, saying, "Start it over?" I do. Neither of us get up to dance or air guitar. We stand away from the puddles, bobbing our heads. When it's over, I turn the stereo off. We look at each other, but it's clear we don't have anything to say. "I have an idea," D-Money walks to the door, "Get another beer and meet me out back."
A few minutes later, we're standing in the parking lot next to our apartment. The lot belongs to an Italian restaurant, but because it's late, there are no cars parked there. There's a high brick wall that separates the lot from the apartment building on the other side. For some reason, there's barbed wire at the top of the brick wall, even though you can easily walk around the wall to get into the lot because there's no gate. There's an advertisement for the restaurant painted on the wall, a few rusty metal signs letting you know that it's a tow zone, reserved only for patrons of the restaurant. A banged-up Dumpster crouches near the back door. It's really quiet, save for a few sirens in the distance and some alley cats.
D-Money has a full beer and there's a box at her feet. "What's in there?" I ask. "Ah," she says, "it's those nasty plates. The ones we were going to give to Goodwill. They're too chipped up to give away, don't you think?" And they are. The box contains a motley assortment of plates, no less than four different patterns, and we were the third or fourth owners. She takes a swig of her beer and takes one of the plates out of the box. She hurls it like a Frisbee at the brick wall and it smashes with the most satisfying sound I've ever heard. It hangs in the air, like a kind of deranged bell. She stoops down and hands me a plate, "Your turn."
I don't hesitate. I fling the plate as hard as I can and do a little jump when I hear the crash. "Woo-hoo!" D-Money yells as she throws another one. "Aim for the sign," she says, as I get ready to launch my next plate. Back and forth, we take turns throwing the plates until the box is empty.
Blur, "Song 2"
From the Album Blur
Purchased at World Record, Columbus, Ohio, Spring of 1997
D-Money and I become friends our senior year of high school, but become really close once we both get to college, D-Money to Akron, me to Ohio State, and thanks to that wonderful new invention called e-mail, we keep in touch on a near-constant basis online and also over the telephone. D-Money and I talk one night and one of us says, "Wouldn't it be funny if our parents started dating?" As it happens, D-Money's mom is newly single again after ending a relationship with a guy who liked to flirt with girls our age, and my dad is newly single again after ending a relationship with a woman who liked her dogs better than she liked him. We both get a kick out of the idea; I call my dad and run it past him. The next I hear, dad and D-Money's mom have a date to get coffee. "Awwww! How cute," D-Money mails me. "They're gonna get married!!!!!"
Fast forward a few months and our parents are inseparable. Suddenly, we're spending holidays and weekends at each other's houses. Dad tells me, "This is serious, Pumpkin." Meanwhile, D-Money decides to transfer to Ohio State the coming fall and we're going to live together. We're going to be together all the time! She's going to be the sister that I never had and we'll be sharing clothes, CDs, shoes, weed. Lots of phone calls and e-mails follow, lots of "eeeee"s and "awesome"s and plans and a general sense that life is going to be a nonstop pajama-jammy-jam from here on out.
One year later, D-Money and I are barely speaking to each other, and when we are, it's usually, "Phone's for you," or "We're out of cereal," or "Here's my half of the rent." Where it all went off the rails, it's hard to say. There are too many reasons to count. All that I do know is that our parents are engaged and D-Money and I can't wait to get away from each other. This has become something of a challenge now that our parents live together, and we are sharing this apartment. Fortunately, our lease is almost up and we've both got summer plans. Summers past, we'd drive back to Warren together almost every weekend, the three-hour drive going by in a haze of pot smoke and good driving tunes. Now, neither of us can imagine spending three minutes together. When dad asks, "Are you coming home any time soon?" I hedge, knowing that I don't want to be there if D-Money is, saying, "Uh, I don't know. I have to see what D-Money is doing, first." Dad's too busy with the new house to notice the crack in my voice.
We are getting ready to move out of our apartment, everything is in boxes, save for my stereo. It's always the last thing I pack because I like to clean to music. I half-heartedly mop puddles of dirty water from one side of the room to the other. I stop mopping and look for a CD that will get me in the right frame of mind for cleaning. I put on Blur's "Song 2." It's difficult to not bounce around to that song, to not play air guitar and sing along with the "woo-hoo!" parts. When we first moved in together, that's exactly what D-Money and I would do. For the longest time, neither of us had a clue what the words were; something about, "And I feel metta metta. And I'm pans amma neels. And I lie amma easay…" It hardly mattered; it was plenty fun to yell out anyway. D-Money came home one afternoon all excited because she'd found the lyrics online. We were sort of close:
When I feel heavy metal /
And I'm pins and I'm needles /
Well, I lie and I'm easy /
All of the time but I'm never sure why I need you/
Pleased to meet you…
****
I lean on the mop, staring at the speakers, tapping my feet. When the door opens, I'm pretty sure D-Money is going to tell me to turn it down, that she's studying. She doesn't; instead, she hands me a beer and sits down, saying, "Start it over?" I do. Neither of us get up to dance or air guitar. We stand away from the puddles, bobbing our heads. When it's over, I turn the stereo off. We look at each other, but it's clear we don't have anything to say. "I have an idea," D-Money walks to the door, "Get another beer and meet me out back."
A few minutes later, we're standing in the parking lot next to our apartment. The lot belongs to an Italian restaurant, but because it's late, there are no cars parked there. There's a high brick wall that separates the lot from the apartment building on the other side. For some reason, there's barbed wire at the top of the brick wall, even though you can easily walk around the wall to get into the lot because there's no gate. There's an advertisement for the restaurant painted on the wall, a few rusty metal signs letting you know that it's a tow zone, reserved only for patrons of the restaurant. A banged-up Dumpster crouches near the back door. It's really quiet, save for a few sirens in the distance and some alley cats.
D-Money has a full beer and there's a box at her feet. "What's in there?" I ask. "Ah," she says, "it's those nasty plates. The ones we were going to give to Goodwill. They're too chipped up to give away, don't you think?" And they are. The box contains a motley assortment of plates, no less than four different patterns, and we were the third or fourth owners. She takes a swig of her beer and takes one of the plates out of the box. She hurls it like a Frisbee at the brick wall and it smashes with the most satisfying sound I've ever heard. It hangs in the air, like a kind of deranged bell. She stoops down and hands me a plate, "Your turn."
I don't hesitate. I fling the plate as hard as I can and do a little jump when I hear the crash. "Woo-hoo!" D-Money yells as she throws another one. "Aim for the sign," she says, as I get ready to launch my next plate. Back and forth, we take turns throwing the plates until the box is empty.
Blur, "Song 2"
From the Album Blur
Purchased at World Record, Columbus, Ohio, Spring of 1997
posted by Iseult at 9:08 AM
1 Comments:
hey there i was just reading about you britpop bit i noticed something saying song 2 at the side so i clicked on it and starrted reading that and well id like to know after you smashed all the plates did yo make up?
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