Ornoth

It’s official: in six weeks TT the Bears will shutter and disappear, leaving Central Square that much more normal.

Right next door to the Middle East, TT’s booked bands that would have struggled in that larger venue. But that gave TT’s the freedom to feature all kinds of unknown but enjoyable acts.

And the tiny size of the club made the concertgoing experience that much more intimate, whether you wanted it or not! You couldn’t physically get more than about 30 feet from the stage.

I can’t say I was a regular at TT’s, but I did see my share of shows. My buddy Bob Corsaro will be glad to know that I was there to see his ska band, the Brass Monkeys, play no less than four times. Multiple shows by Boston ska royalty the Allstonians and Beat Soup. Inspecter 7. Dow Jones & the Industrials.

One of the more memorable shows I enjoyed was Mono Puff, a bizarre alt-rock collage orchestrated by John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants fame. As they might tell you themselves, “It was totally rockin’!”

But the most unforgettable moment was the night I met Greg Hawkes, the original keyboardist for the Cars. He was the only band member who showed up at a 2005 show celebrating the release of a Cars tribute album by a collection of Boston-based bands.

I was introduced to Mr. Hawkes by show organizer Andrea Kremer, and actually got to sit with him and chat before he took the stage as guest performer for “Just What I Needed”. It remains one of the most cherished memories of my time in the scene. You can read more about that show and see my other photos in my blogpost, “Life’s the same, except for my shoes…”

Now TT’s becomes another in a long list of legendary Boston music clubs that can only be spoken of in the past tense. But these memories remain.

Yes, I’m a cyclist and I haven’t owned a car for 15 years, but that doesn’t mean I hate cars. In fact, I was quite an automotive enthusiast for most of my childhood.

My father dragged me down to the local race tracks even when I was very young. I grew up with photos of my favorite racecar drivers adorning my bedroom. To this day I remember battles between local heroes—now enshrined in the Maine Motorsports Hall of Fame—like Homer Drew and Bob Libby at places like Beech Ridge, Oxford Plains, Wiscasset, and Unity raceways.

In addition to watching NASCAR legends like Richard Petty, David Pearson, and Cale Yarborough on television, I had a whole fleet of plastic model cars that I’d built up, and a slot car track to play with. I would spend endless hours pedaling my Marx Big Wheel in counterclockwise circles around the driveway in imaginary races… wearing out at least three Big Wheels in the process!

Naturally I had the full set of racing flags: red, green, yellow, checkered, white, black, and the blue and yellow “move over” flag. I sometimes confused people driving through our neighborhood by playing race car flagman at the intersection in front of our house.

At even that young age, I didn’t think I had the cojones to be a world-class stock car driver, so I chose the next best thing. When I grew up, I wanted to be a race car mechanic. Never mind that I had no mechanical aptitude whatsoever, nor any access to cars, parts, and tools to tinker with!

At eight years of age, I was already an avid reader of magazines like Hot Rod, Road & Track, and Car & Driver, as well as the wonderful and memorable CarTOONs comic book.

My buddy John Gousse and I would dumpster dive behind the local car dealerships, picking up discarded NADA blue books so that we could study the body styles and engine options of all the current models. I could not only identify any car’s make and model on sight, but also its specific year, options package, engine size, and zero-to-sixty time.

With that kind of upbringing, it shouldn’t be a surprise that I suffer from the typical American affinity for the automobile. Growing up, one of the biggest questions in the world was what kind of car I’d own once I got my drivers license.

Well, let’s talk about that a bit, because the main point of this post is to take a look back at the family cars that I remember most vividly. The photos that follow are close approximations of the vehicle we had, although the colors were often different. A couple of the later photos are of our actual vehicles.

There’s only one place to start this list. The first car I remember us having was also the one with the most character and style: my father’s 1961 Chevy Impala. Its gloss black body was in bold contrast to its fire engine red interior. But what captured my imagination were its lines: all fins, sweeping curves, V-shapes, and daggerlike arrows, with six bullet-shaped tail lights. Even the emblem carried crossed red and checkered flags! It screamed speed and class and elegance.

It also was the protagonist in one of my family’s most memorable misadventures. In the days before my brother was to get married to a girl from Texas, he and my father went to Boston’s Logan Airport to pick up the bride’s family, our future in-laws. The car’s engine had been replaced improperly, and as they drove through the Sumner Tunnel beneath Boston Harbor, thick black smoke started pouring from the tailpipe, and the car died just as they reached the end of the tunnel. Welcome to the family!

My father’s next car was a green 1970 Plymouth Fury III. The contrast with the Impala couldn’t have been starker. Big, boring, bland, and boxy, the Fury (or “Furry”, as I’d call it) was a typically sturdy but boatlike American Chrysler sedan.

What scares me is that this car actually stands out in my mind. After the Fury, my father went through three consecutive Oldsmobile Delta 88s, none of which had any personality whatsoever. They were big, comfortable, and reliable, crossing the continent numerous times, but it still makes me sad. My father must have been quite an automobile enthusiast himself, but the last four cars he owned were utterly mediocre.

Over his lifetime, I believe my father owned eleven cars, none of which were imports. On the other hand, five out of six of the cars my mother owned before my father’s death were imported. I vaguely remember a green Volkswagen Beetle—my mother’s second one—in the driveway of my childhood home.

But the earliest car I truly remember was a yellow 1970 Datsun 510 sedan. A very basic Japanese econo-box, at the time of the 1973 Mideast Oil Crisis, it must have been a blessing for my folks. It was nothing but a curse, however, after they sold it to my brother, who claimed it misfired, overheated, and ate oil. The Datsun mark eventually was incorporated into the Nissan brand.

The Datsun was followed by my mother’s only American car and first brand new car: a 1975 Chevy Vega. It was bright red, with a black vinyl top, kind of reminiscent of that old Chevy Impala. This was the car I learned to drive on, and the car I took my license test in. My mother liked the color, and I generally liked its sporty styling; it was, after all, our first car with any character since that old Impala. Its aluminum block engine burned oil, though.

The car my mother—and therefore, I—had during high school was a white 1981 Subaru GL wagon. I nicknamed it “Ur-a-bus” for its utilitarian design and because that’s what you get when you spell Subaru backwards!

A grossly un-cool car for a high school student to have, it made up for it in one key way: it had a neeto space-age glowing amber dashboard with digital readouts and an overhead schematic of the car that indicated open doors. This earned it the nickname “the Starship” from my friends, who then referred to me as “the Admiral”.

The Starship accompanied me through gaming conventions, SCA events, move-ins and -outs from college, and many dates and late-night returns from girlfriends’ houses. Unfortunately, it was also the victim of my “learning experience” of causing two accidents within two weeks. In one, I rear-ended someone while driving a girlfriend to a concert; in the other, I attempted a U-turn on a busy street from a parallel parking space, and got hit from both directions. I still have a piece of paint that flaked off from one of those impacts in my scrapbook for 1983!

Despite the number of times I bounced it off other vehicles, my mother kept that Subaru until my father died, at which point she adopted my father’s habit of buying American: a mid-sized Olds, and then a Buick. Only in 2005 could I convince her to buy a Toyota Camry. It’s served her well, despite Toyota’s current recalls and troubles.

Meanwhile, once I started living off-campus at school, my girlfriend Linda and I needed a car of our own. With college bills and student jobs, our choices were limited. We wound up with the used blue 1982 Mazda GLC you see at right: basically, another underpowered Japanese econo-box. My buddy Mike Dow co-signed for our car loan.

The one cool thing about the GLC—the “Glick”—was that it had a moonroof. That was tremendous! It was the car we took off in after our wedding, and our transportation for several trips to Pennsic. Along the way, we made our own air conditioning by turning canisters of compressed air upside-down and blowing the freon onto ourselves.

We used that GLC hard. We dented the driver’s side door by throwing it open without catching it. And one Christmas Eve, an entire rear wheel assembly flew off on the highway and we spent the rest of the day frantically looking for someone who would perform the repair so we could get to my parents’ for the holiday. It was a good car, but when I got my first job in the real world, it was time to splurge.

But before I get to that, I have to mention one other used car. With Linda and I both working, it became clear that we needed our own cars, and Linda found a friend who was getting rid of a maroon 1984 Dodge Daytona. It wasn’t in great shape, but it was functional, and certainly sportier than the GLC. So she drove that car for a couple years, eventually taking it in the divorce. I only mention it here because yeah, it was in a sense one of the cars I’ve owned.

But the car I bought when I joined the working world was another Mazda: the blue 1990 MX-6 GT sport sedan shown below. It was my first new car, and it too came with a moonroof—one you didn’t have to hand-crank! It was nicknamed the Toxicmobile after it’s licence tag: 869-TOX.

The best part about the MX-6 was its turbocharger. After the Glick’s feeble 98 horsepower, the MX-6’s 145-hp was delightful. The only issue was its horrible turbo lag; you could literally floor it, then count four seconds before the engine suddenly kicked in. But it was a wonderful car, and I thoroughly enjoyed my daily ride to work, which concluded with a fast, downhill slalom through Westborough Office Park. Finally, a car that handled, accelerated, and just overall kicked ass!

Sadly, the Toxicmobile’s story doesn’t end well. It suffered a couple rear-enders on infamous Route 9, and had to have the whole transmission replaced. Then, when I moved into Boston proper, it sat unused for months, except for the times I had to drive it to the shop after some Red Sox fan smashed a window. It became clear that I didn’t need a car in the city, and I’d save money by renting a car whenever I needed one.

I miss the Toxicmobile a lot. As my first new car, it was a mark of success. As a sport sedan, it was just a ton of fun to drive. And it was an integral part of my life from 1989 to 1995, a period that saw my first real job, my divorce, a two-week road trip to Austin and back, a new career at Sapient, a new relationship with my first girlfriend from high school, turning 30, moving into Boston, and lots of involvement in the local music and alternative scenes.

But I also just miss driving. For now, I have to limit myself to enjoying the cars I rent for business and pleasure, although I rarely get to drive them very hard. I managed to scrape up a little Honda Fit econo-box on a recent work trip. And figuring out how to pilot the right-hand drive car we rented in the Caymans was a learning experience, that’s for sure! And I totally fell in love with the Jeep Wrangler we rented in St. Thomas; those things are just stupid fun!

It still amazes me that after being such a car freak as a kid, I’ve lived without a car since 1995. Fast and unique cars always seemed to be one of the great pleasures of adulthood, but now that I’m here, I find them an extremely expensive luxury. But if money weren’t an object, I know two things that would be at the top of my shopping list: a Jeep Wrangler for bouncy, sun-drenched fun, and a 263-hp Mazda Speed3 for screaming fast fun.

Mmmmm… Cars!

I’ve already mentioned how ironic it was that work assigned me to a two-month project in the US Virgin Islands shortly after Inna and I scheduled a tropical vacation to Grand Cayman Island, so I won’t belabor that again.

That vacation took place this past week, and it was really enjoyable. Despite having been in St. Thomas for four weeks, I’d only had one weekend there, and that was the only opportunity I had to do anything recreational down there. So having a week on Grand Cayman, with no work obligations, was still quite a treat.

The only snafu we had getting there was when Inna had to sprint from her arrival gate and just barely made our connecting flight out of Charlotte. During our descent into GCM, it was delightful to see Seven Mile Beach and the cruise ships in George Town harbor. After so many fruitless trips to St. Thomas, I finally got a new stamp in my passport at immigration, which was quick and painless.

The rental car presented some challenges, tho. I’d gotten used to the oddity of driving on the left side of the road during my time in St. Thomas, but Grand Cayman added two new elements. The first was the presence—absolutely everywhere!—of clockwise-flowing rotaries / traffic circles / roundabouts. I think there were seven in the couple miles between the airport and our hotel. The other was that the driver sits on the right side of the vehicle. That made passing easier than in St. Thomas, since the driver was toward the middle of the road, and thus able to see ahead around slower traffic, but it also meant all the controls were reversed. It took a while for me to get used to using my right hand for the turn signal, rather than my left, which was the wipers. And I never really got used to having the gear selector on the left. But I caught on well enough, and didn’t smash into anything, unlike in St. Thomas…

It wasn’t until later that we sat on a second floor porch in George Town and took an inventory of the cars passing by that we realized that about 60 percent of the cars had the driver’s side on the left (US-style), while only 40 percent had it on the right (UK-style).

The hotel—Sunshine Suites—turned out to be much better than expected. It was clean, bug-free, had both hot water and towels. It was, as advertised, across a very busy street from the beach, but that saved us about $200 per night, and with food and gas and everything else at ridiculous Cayman prices ($150 for a two-person dinner wasn’t uncommon), that mattered.

Immediately upon arriving, we fell into a daily routine that never varied. We’d get up around 8am, get a light breakfast at the hotel’s poolside bar/restaurant, and make our way across the street to Seven Mile Beach, which was really quite spectacular, and not overly crowded. We’d soak up the sun and do a little swimming, which included getting out to the 200 yard buoy: a good achievement for Inna, who is a better swimmer than she thinks. The only problem we had was on our last morning, when we seem to have both been stung by some kind of no-see-um in the water.

Around 11am we’d head back to the hotel room to shower. I’d make bacon and eggs, and then maybe a little web surfing and a nap. This allowed us to avoid being out during the height of the day, which was a serious consideration given Inna’s fair skin.

After our siesta, we’d go out and do some late afternoon activity before dinner and bed. We really didn’t chase any nightlife, preferring instead to get ample sleep.

Grand Cayman’s main attraction is the diving, but since Inna isn’t a snorkeler, and neither of us SCUBA, that limited our range of afternoon activities. Still, we managed a few interesting expeditions. On Wednesday we drove around the entire island, taking in the surf at Breakers, the quaint little East End, and the vast mangrove swamps that constitute the majority of the island. We ended up at Rum Point, where Inna found her first hammock; she quickly developed an affinity for them. After that we joined in on the island’s huge Mardi Gras celebration at the beachside Kaibo bar. It was quite a press, and we managed to find a good spot to see a reggae band called Locomotion that was playing there.

On Thursday we went to a butterfly farm, which was moderately interesting. Since there were no cruise ships on Friday, we went into the capital of George Town and took in the soul-sucking tourist shopping scene, which was about as disappointing as one would expect.

Saturday we took it easy and ran a few errands, but on Sunday we had a special plan: we rented Waverunner personal watercraft. That set us back $95 for a half hour, but it was worth it, because neither of us had ridden one before, and it was something I’ve dreamed of doing for many years. Within minutes I was doing power-slide 180s through my own roostertail, and Inna was tearing up and down the beach with the throttle wide open. What a rush!

Monday afternoon I convinced a reluctant Inna to take in the Queen Elizabeth II Botanic Park in the centre of the island, which turned into a big hit. We saw the alien-looking ironshore coral that the island is based on, stood underneath an extremely toxic manchineel tree, sniffed aromatic lime tree leaves, saw some shy agouti rodents, and taunted the incredibly blasé iguanas. It was pretty cool.

As for meals… they were really mixed. We started out with the island’s one Indian place, which—after the lousy food in St. Thomas—suited me perfectly, but was nothing special for Inna. After that, things went downhill. We had very average experiences at local joints Champion House, Chicken Chicken (which proved to be about 30 meters further than we’d walked), the hotel’s barbecue buffet, and Breezes, where we saw the islands two official pirate ships and watched the sun set (despite arriving an hour too early thanks to my camera being on St. Thomas time). But we ended the week strong, with delicious meals at two nearby restaurants: Yoshi Sushi (where I had teppanyaki pork) and Deckers British pub (where I had Strongbow cider and the most amazing pork evar).

By the end of the week, there wasn’t anything left on our “must-see” list, and we felt we’d gotten everything a non-diver could get out of the island. Our routine was a perfect balance of restfulness, beach fun in the sun, and a little light tourism. And, of course, I got a whole boatload of photos, some of which you can see using the Grand Cayman tag or the 2008 Caribbean set on my Flickr account.

For those of you who don’t usually visit the Wikipedia Main Page… Today’s featured article is: bicycle!

A couple particularly interesting notes: By experimental spirit and technical challenges overcome in the development of the bicycle directly led to the development of the airplane. The Good Roads Movement, which established quality roads in America well before the invention of the automobile, was spearheaded by bicyclists. And the fact that skirts and bicycles don’t mix led to the invention of “bloomers” style slacks for women and other fashion changes. Combined with the increased independence that it provided, the bicycle made a noteworthy contribution to the liberation of women and nascent suffragette movement.

Yesterday, as I was driving Inna to the airport, we passed a billboard for the new movie "Enough". Inna made a comment about how she'd had more than her fill of the leading actress, Jennifer Lopez, who apparently is an all-pervasive mass media star. I shrugged and told her that there were definite benefits to not being saturated by the mass media; I couldn't have named the actress for any amount of money, nor do I have any idea what she's done before "Enough" or why she's popular.

You see, I made a decision years ago to try an experiment. At the time, I was moving into Boston proper and decided to stop watching television, stop going to movies, and sell my car. That was eight years ago, and I've never had reason to reconsider.

Why? Well, let's start with the car. After I moved into town, I found that I really wasn't using it much. Then I calculated that it was costing me about $9000 a year to have, between car payments, repairs, maintenance, gas, parking, tolls, excise tax, tickets, insurance, and everything else. It just wasn't worth it. So I started buying MBTA passes, broke out the bike again, walked more, had my groceries delivered, and rented or borrowed a car for the rare times I really needed one. All in all, losing the car turned out to be a big win. I do miss it sometimes, simply for the joy of driving, but that's hardly worth $9000 a year to me.

Giving up movies wasn't a big deal, because I've never been a big moviegoer. I really only mention it because it's one of those things that people can't seem to fathom living without. But I find most movies, especially American movies, painfully formulaic and predictable, and my need for dramatic storytelling is well fulfilled by the reading I have to do for DargonZine. The way I figured it, there are better ways to spend $20 and three hours of my life. These days I do go out to see a few very carefully selected movies, but very few, and rarely anything that's "big" or mainstream.

But giving up television? That tends to shock a lot of people. Back in '94, when I looked at what I was going out of my way to watch (Jeopardy, NASCAR auto racing, and NBA basketball), I just couldn't justify spending $35 per month for cable. The final straw -- virtually the last thing I saw before pulling the plug -- was the pathetically overdramatized OJ Simpson "low-speed chase" along the highways of Los Angeles. So when I moved, I didn't bother ordering cable, and figured I'd see how long I could survive. Amazingly, my life did actually get better. I had more time for writing and DargonZine, cycling, concertgoing, work, and sleep. So it's become a permanent situation.

Often people wonder how I possibly get my news without television. Actually, I find myself far better informed about the things I care about then anyone around me, and I often "scoop" my friends with news they haven't heard yet. I get concert listings and local happenings from the Boston Phoenix, the local alternative paper. But most of my news comes from the Internet. The Boston Globe's Boston.com site is a great source for local and national news. I supplement that with My Yahoo! for local, national, NBA, financial, and technology news. I get local weather directly from the National Weather Service, rather than a dumbed-down version edited by a 7th grade dropout with a toupee and the pseudoscientific title of "Meteorologist".

But beyond that, I am able to get more detailed news about specific areas of interest that television could never provide. I get future show dates for all my favorite local and national bands. I get tons of international cycling news and remarkable photography, as well as all kinds of news about local cycling. I get to read the comic strips that I specifically want, including the bisexual, polyamorous, BDSM-oriented "Jake the Rake". I get in-depth local transportation news. Complete weekly open house listings for my neighborhood. Event calendars for local early music, classical music, art studios, and author signings and readings. Upcoming album releases. Visiting warships. Detailed user interface design and Web developer news. Tons of local news from Boston, or my original home town, high school, college, or places I'd like to visit. Live flight data so that I can pick friends up at the airport without waiting. Financial news as soon as it's released. Try getting any of that through your boob tube! But I shouldn't need to tell you about the value of the Internet as a news medium.

Instead, I'll tell you what I lost when I gave up television: saturation by the mass media. I gave up knowing (or caring) who the hell Jennifer Lopez is. I gave up being bombarded by the same old inane and intentionally-annoying commercials, repeated several thousand times per year. I gave up having to sit through the tedium of the news media's fixation on one event for months at a time (the OJ trial, the Florida election recount, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, whatever they're following this year). Apparently I didn't give up anything worth keeping, because eight years later, I still haven't called the cable company.

Well, except to hook up my cable modem, of course...

Yes, I admit that I take a reactionary pleasure in telling people that I don't watch television. I enjoy shocking people. But if that were the only benefit, it wouldn't be worth it at all. In all honesty, I'm now endlessly better informed, have become more physically active, taken a more participatory role in my community, and gotten rid of the truckloads of annoyances and pointless angst that come with television saturation. The reason why I don't watch television is because my life's immensely better without it, as was so obviously demonstrated by Inna's irritation versus my complete lack of reaction to seeing a billboard featuring Jennifer Lopez... whoever she is.

Kill your television.
It's a no-brainer.