Shortly after posting last Friday's missive (featuring the vid for "Breakaway" by the criminally undersung Big Pig), I managed to duck out of the office and scurry over to 40th & Third to board my weekly Hampton Jitney, rubbing hostile elbows and exchagning confrontation-baiting glares with the usual gaggle of cretins in madras and pre-crumpled gingham. Ducking my head into a book and -- ill-advisedly -- slipping on my headphones to distract myself from the experience, I routinely try (and often fail) to keep my pronounced distaste for riding the indefensibly expensive Jitney kept to a visual minimum. Stepping off the bus in Quogue an hour and a half later, I was immediately struck by an unexpected feeling in the air. Instead of the sweltering, heady humidity of recent weeks, a seemingly premature seasonal shift had taken place -- the air was crisp and cool. Summer is clearly on its way out. It may get a few last licks in this week, but Summer will very soon -- to paraphrase the otherwise ridicule-worthy Don Henley -- be out of reach.
Now, don't get me wrong -- I love the Fall. Hell, I was born in it (October 13th -- and yes, it was indeed fittingly on a Friday). The East Coast in the Autumn is a time of robust splendor and bittersweet, windswept melancholy. The Fall is also one of a couple of times a year when the planet Earth sees fit to go out of its way to torment me. Thanks to my so-diagnosed "oral allergy syndrome," the seasonal appearance of certain plants/fungi/micro-organisms that evidently flourish in the Fall sends my immune system into an embattled frenzy. All energy is sucked out of me, I lose my senses of smell, taste and sight, my eyes turn into acid-dispensing fawcetts and I ceaselessly sneeze with an intensity that replicates the sensation of being puched in the sternum with an anvil. Simply put, life as I know it becomes entirely no fun. I can dope up on Claritin all I want, but it never seems to make much of a difference. I've gone to see allergists, but their solutions have never really done a great deal to stem the tide, and I'm just not entertaining the notion of the treatment that requires a shot in the arm every week for two years -- that just ain't gonna happen, I'm sorry.
So this past weekend, as with the early shift in temperature, so too arrived my first seasonal allergy attack, making me wish I had an entirely different head. On Sunday morning, while strolling around Tanger outlet mall in Riverhead (it's a pretty horrible experience while you're doing it, but lemme tell ya -- shit's cheap there), I was struck -- as I'm keen to call it -- by "the hammer," reducing me to a sort of drippy, cranky somnambulist. Having already imbibed the recommended dosage of Claritin, there wasn't much else I could do but suffer -- and complain, of course. Both of which I did in spades, much to the delight of my loved ones. Hooray!
Anyway, waah waah -- poor me. Herewith some other items to ponder.
*Joining the ranks of diet, listening habits, stress and lack of proper rest, it seems my afore-mentioned allergies might also be playing a role in the recent increase of the Tinnitus I've been bitching so profusely about lately. Regardless, I've decided to re-double my efforts in terms of combating the ring, and am investigating the option of acupuncture. Honestly speaking, it has a debatable track record of success in treating Tinnitus, but what have I got to lose? At the very least, I'll be able to say I've tried it and sated my curioisty. And if sticking needles in my head will liberate me from the madness, fuckin' SO BE IT. If that doesn't work, I'll try the next option. I'm going to start documenting my effrots in a new category here which I'll be calling SCREAMING EAR. Look for that soon, Tinnitophiles!
*As if you needed any further indication that Punk Rock was indeed dead, while waiting for the train to whisk me back to NYC last night, I saw a guy pull up to the station in a fire-engine red Ferrari to drop off his unlikely-tanned girlfriend while cranking a noxious Nelly Furtado single at volumes normally associated with sonic warfare. Boasting slicked back black hair and a disquietingly mandarin-tinged ersatz-tan himself, this goob was also sporting a sleeveless green t-shirt emblazoned with the CBGB logo. Somewhere, Richard Hell is frowning (...more than usual).
*In less depressing news, please check out my colleague Kurt O's lovingly penned article about legendary American independent label, Touch And Go. Home to the trailblazing likes of the Necros, Scratch Acid, Big Black, Killdozer, Man…Or Astroman? and droves of other amazing bands, Touch And Go has been a home of vital and visceral music and is currently celebrating its 25th Anniversary. Read all about it by clicking right here. And for you younger little snots out there, why not forego picking up that new Fall Out Boy record (or whatever) and pick up Songs About Fucking by Big Black or Head by the Jesus Lizard. You'll thank me later.
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