Below is a rant about the Oscars and that silliness. I guess I’m grateful that Kristen let me know what’d happened so I understood the Internet the next morning. However, but March 29th we were well over it because it was time to go do an interview for WERA’s Stagecraft radio show. It was recorded in the basement studio of Don Zientara and this is one his strange and wonderful yard rabbits.
A beautiful afternoon in Arlington, VA. I felt sort of embarrassed : this interview had been booked a LONG time ago, and as with a LOT of things over COVID, had gotten canceled, rescheduled, moved, delayed – until the initial booking is a thing of distant memory – to the point that I didn’t remember the details of who we were actually meeting.
Last week I wasted some valuable breaths thinking about how I wished I took greater advantage of being a white male because apparently you can just say anything to anyone, demonstrably false or not, in a “solemn” setting of judicial confirmations and it’s cool.
This morning I’m reminded that actually I can’t. BUT if I’m rich and famous I can assault someone on Live television in front of a room of people and IT’S cool.
Please note that that’s not a statement on Chris Rock’s joke (or rather, the joke that the writers and editors or the Oscars gave Chris to deliver), Will Smith’s response, the appropriateness of any of the above nor of the devestating effects of alopecia. Just… you know, if I was sitting in the audience of a Chris Rock show (unlikely) and he insulted my wife (unlikelier) and I ran up there and smacked him (extremely unlikely) I wouldn’t be sitting happily at my home reading about the fallout online.
Setting up in Don Zientara’s basement studio for our Stagecraft interview. The above-mentioned embarrassment comes in because when the loomingly-tall engineer comes up and welcomes us and introduces himself as “Don” I hadn’t really connected that this was Don Zientara of Inner Ear Studio who recorded all of Fugazi’s albums and Jawbox and the Bad Brains. He made albums that sounded LIVE. I remember picking up Fugazi’s REPEATER and just being awestruck, and later, understanding just how hard it is to put a band like Fugazi in a studio and come away with a Living breathing cassette. Yeah. It was a cassette. Cassettes I bought with hard won cash at an underground skate shop in Georgetown. And now Don’s recording ME!There were a LOT of people interviewing us…We only played two songs, but we showed our best selves. ilyAIMY w Don Zientara (looming in the back) and one of the interviewbeests from WERA. Honestly, there were so many of them I lost track of who was who.
