Five Song Friday: Take a Look Around
This Week: Loser Food, Middle-Aged Frankenstein and Fuzzy Cocktails
I always believed the key to survival in a big city was situational awareness.
Use your eyeballs to identify potential threats. Scan the area. Understand your environment.
But apparently, vigilance is no longer cool.
I saw it for myself recently in New York City, where almost nobody cares about personal safety enough to break the almighty spell of the screen.
You don’t have to be a paranoid, scaredy-pants simp. I’m not saying you move from Bergdorf Goodman to the Nike store in a zigzag pattern. I’m not advocating for helmets and body armor.
Just watch where you’re going.
During my visit, the streets were full of power walking, smartphone zombies who hardly ever looked up. Pedestrians glided from block to block, buoyed by an almost arrogant air of Magoo-like invincibility.
I thought they should worry more about getting hit by cars, which, funny enough, were also driven by people who couldn’t be bothered to avert their gadget gaze.
But what do I know?
Maybe NYC pedestrians are taught from birth that all motor vehicles will screech to a halt, with inches to spare, allowing them to pound on the hood and holler, “I’m WALKING here!”
Maybe that’s how it goes down in the Big Apple.
But unlike pizza rats and underwear cowboys, this heads-down obsession is not limited to midtown Manhattan.
If you’re one of the few people in America who uses their eyes to observe their immediate surroundings, you’ll notice that most everybody else… does not.
We are locked in the digital tractor beam.
We are a nation with our noses to the Gorilla Glass, perpetually busy with “phone and finger stuff.” Crushing candy. Texting eggplants. Scrolling. Scrolling. Scrolling.
I think this is bad.
I think you should put the phone away and take a look around.
Because when I walked in NYC with my eyes wide open, I saw wonders.
A homeless man clipping his toenails on the sidewalk. Several human poops in places where there should not be human poops. And the great David Byrne locking his bicycle to a sign post!
Chins up America! You’re missing the good stuff.
Sometimes I wonder why I should even care.
I feel we’re doomed to the fate imagined by Wall-E, anyway. The 2008 Pixar film theorized that one day, human beings will become immobile, overfed meat sacks who tool around in hover chairs with virtual screens floating a foot from their faces.
We’ll sip oversized drinks, get fed by machines and whine like babies.
It would be hilarious if it wasn’t 100% going to happen.
But I can’t fret about where Earthlings will be ten years from today.
I’m worried about RIGHT NOW and how our chronic lack of situational awareness is putting us all in grave danger.
First, we have completely devastated our ability to connect with each other.
Not only do we spend more time than ever sheltered away in our private spaces, when we actually step out into the world, we take that private space with us.
We maintain a constant state of mesmerization.
We don’t make eye contact or engage. We go from place to place on automatic pilot and fill the spaces and silences with eyeball noise.
The result is that we’re more alone, depressed, friendless and angry than ever before.
Second, and this is very important, we are missing out on the “MAGIC.”
You can interpret “MAGIC” however you want.
If you want to think that I’m referring to the overwhelming beauty of ordinary things like sunsets, wildflowers and plastic bags dancing in the wind? That’s fine.
Because we absolutely DO miss those small visual miracles that happen everyday, because we can’t be bothered to pay attention to anything but Instagram and Solitaire.
FYI: If you give them a chance, birds are a goddamned joy to watch.
But none of that is the “MAGIC” that I’m talking about.
By losing ourselves inside a screen and living in a state of constant distraction, we make it almost impossible to witness UFOs and Bigfoots.
You heard me.
Some really weird shit is going down and hardly anyone is keeping watch.
In case you missed it, UFOs are a thing again. Now that the U.S. government has confirmed they exist, people are seeing weird stuff in the sky more than ever.
But what if those eyewitnesses never bothered to look up? What if they stayed lost in their TikTok rabbit holes looking up avocado hacks, how to fold fitted sheets and whether gargling with coconut oil makes you 10% hotter?
We may have gone another 50 years thinking we were all alone in this universe! Those alien bastards might have slipped by unnoticed! And don’t make me bring up the butt stuff!
What about the couple on a train in Colorado who recorded a Bigfoot prancing through the wilderness?
If they spent the whole trip taking duck-face selfies and laughing at poor people’s houses on Zillow? We’d still be drooling over that 55-year-old, grainy-ass Patterson-Gimlin footage like a bunch of simpleton weirdos!
I don’t want to sound like a broken record here, but our precious pocket computer gadgets are putting our very humanity at risk. We can’t afford to not pay attention.
If we don’t snap out of it and break the spell, we are most certainly doomed.
Once the supernatural world senses that the coast is clear, it’s game over.
Aliens will realize that nobody has eyes on the sky. They will come and do unpleasant things to us and harvest our sex organs for food.
The Bigfoots will emerge from the woods, eat our dogs and violate our leather furniture.
I don’t even want to think about what happens when the leprechauns get wind of this.
Sincerely,
DJ CrankyPete
Five Song Friday 086
“6 Pack and Cigarettes” - ALEXSUCKS
Would it be funny if I said something about a six-pack and cigarettes being the “breakfast of champions”? We could both laugh and do a high-five, because drinking beer and smoking are two great ways for cool people like you and me to bond. Is it also okay if I pretend I did it all the time? (Drink beer and smoke cigarettes instead of making cereal or scrambled eggs.) I’d like people to think that’s how I used to roll because it makes me seem more dangerous and edgy. You say breakfast is the MOST IMPORTANT MEAL OF THE DAY? I say only losers wake up and eat FOOD.
“Ooh, I Don’t Feel Nothin’” - Mande Dahl
Do you feel nostalgic for the good old days of 1980 New York City when hordes of punk/New Wave underground artists, writers and musicians ran wild in the streets and treated Manhattan like a sexy, substance-fueled, summer camp talent show? Is there a soft spot in your soul for fearless urban expression and the idea that as long as you have a guitar, an attitude, and a video camera, you can (and should) do anything and everything in the name of ART? Then this song will get you right in the CBGB’s.
“Former Future’” - Rob Sonic
Permit me to be gobsmacked. I get sucked in by rap beats and hooks all the time and took the bait real quick on this one. “Former Future” is a pleasant little nodder that holds up to repeated listens. And I thought that was all I needed to know. Well, it turns out that Bronx rapper Rob Sonic is not at all what I pictured in my head. Does that matter? Not really. Does the fact that he looks more like someone who was built from the spare parts of my middle-aged poker buddies than DMX or Nas make his music less dope? Not at all. It almost gives me hope that it’s never to late to fulfill my lifelong dream of becoming a dope-ass MC. Almost.
“Dirty, Dirty” - Crazy Horse
You might recognize Crazy Horse as the band that usually has a “Neil Young &” before their name. I don’t know much about them, except what I’ve read in five minutes and the forty times I listened to this song because I can’t help myself. This track from their 1971 self-titled album certainly sounds like they know what they’re doing, and even the quickest glance at their bio proves they got the goods. Joining the lineup this time: Wrecking Crew alum Jack Nitzsche along with future E-Street Band member Nils Lofgren and slide guitar legend Ry Cooder.
“How You Satisfy Me” - Spectrum
Nice to hear you again, old friend. Missing for decades from streaming services, this 1992 shoegazer classic goes down as smooth as ever. Spectrum is a side project for former Spacemen 3 member Peter Kember (other “Spacemen” went on to form Spiritualized) and this album sounds sonically familiar, like a fuzzy cocktail of My Bloody Valentine and The Stone Roses. Was I glad to have it back in my earholes? Absolutely. Can I put on my headphones, set it to play on repeat and wake up three days later wondering where all the time has gone? Theoretically, yes! And was I visibly excited when I heard it playing prominently in a movie theater trailer for the new Sofia Coppola film about Priscilla Presley? You betcha. Enjoy!
“It's no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently or if your favorite films wouldn't even speak to each other if they met at a party.” ― Nick Hornby