Leap Years As They Compare To The Music Of Phil Collins

HI! And welcome to February 29, otherwise known as that-which-only-happens-once-every-four-years, OR, When-Blaiser-finally-gets-off-his-duff-and-posts-something-to-the-blog... 
In this case, a very good friend made a Facebook query as to the origins and/or implications of Phil Collins's seminal 1980s hit "Sussudio." Below is a meditation. Enjoy, for it comes but once every four years...

I think Mr. Collins is being coy. Rather than some throwaway nonsense, "Sussudio" actually makes tangible the ineffable angst one feels when one has, in fact, a girl on his (or her) mind, ALL the time. Such a feeling reaches its zenith of overwhelmance (thank you), usually when one is about 16--the most likely time in one's life where one believes both literally and figuratively that "she don't even know my name." 

Not many 80s #1 pop songs nail this existential crisis so concisely, for the solution to what appears to be never-ending misery can be found with ease and simplicity: "I feel so good if I just say the word..." Hence, the release of "Sussudio" in 1985 had its maximal effect on those of us born in 1969/1970, offering a smart, peppy balm for our self-hating, self-defeating romantic impulses. 

Other songs of the era fall flat. Animotion's "Obsession" (debuting on the charts a week before "Sussudio"), correctly identified ubiquitous hormonal malaise, but swiftly degenerated into a whiny complaint of sexual inadequacy and a lack of any actionable game plan: "Who do you want me to be / to make you sleep with me?" And chicks don't dig that.

Providing additional evidence that Mr. Collins was ahead of his time, by 1988 other pop songs had evolved so slowly that the best available strategy to resolve overpowering attraction was to attempt to curry favor with the objects of one's crush fantasies by luring them into one's personal method of transportation, as endorsed by a B. Ocean in his sinister suggestion, "Get Outta My Dreams and Into My Car." Leaving aside the legal implications of a possible felony offense, it was just downright creepy. It certainly never worked when I tried it… However, "if I just [said] the word, Su-Su-sudio," I invariably did feel better. Especially when posting bail.

If ignored, the problem continues into early adulthood: Even with time and maturity, if one finally found the confidence to plainly state a carnal proposition, as in "All I Want to Do is [have unprotected sex with] You," Anne and Nancy Wilson's Baby-Daddy power ballad of 1990, the effort was culturally misplaced. Given skyrocketing out-of wedlock pregnancies and the emerging HIV epidemic, such songs encouraged the moral equivalent of throwing a lit cigarette into a coffee can filled with gasoline. Or, at least rubber-banding an M-80 to the back of a Star Wars figure and filming the resulting explosion with a Super 8 movie camera… which chicks certainly dig.

In summation, although regularly denigrated (possibly by those for whose demographic was never truly aligned to absorb the self-empowerment soaked between its lines like teenage invisible ink), Mr. Collins' "Sussudio" is actually a buoyant rock to which one can reliably rig one's emotional sails--in a continuously nihilistic world--perhaps only outstripped by the paradoxical wisdom available in Jermaine Stewart's clever sexual koan of the following year: "We Don't Have to Take Our Clothes Off," of which I will be pleased to offer analysis on the next February 29th, 2016, some 8 months before Bobby Jindal loses in a landslide to Vice President Andy Cuomo.

Until then, I encourage you all to "Give me a chance give me a sign" and in return, "I'll show [you] anytime" ! 

Or, to just say The Word.


Thanks for reading. And please remember that even though No Jacket May Be Required, it's almost never a bad idea.

T-Minus 2 Minutes

STS - 135. . . Sounds like a concept car at the Javits Center.

The final launch of the Space Shuttle program is scheduled to light up the Cape Canaveral sky in a little less than an hour and a half. I'll aim to post by that time, and then watch it live via laptop. I'm looking at footage now--a bunch of guys in faux space suits, harnesses and baseball hats working through their checklists in the White Room, an "environmentally controlled" compartment from which the astronauts enter their rocket ship. The prep crew are periodically looking up at the camera and offering grins and showing off pieces of equipment, used for the last time, for the viewers back home. It's all a victory lap, but Atlantis has to safely launch and return before such a celebration is earned. Over their shoulders one can see the exposed hatch of Atlantis, with a caution-tape-lettered arrow pointing to a latch near a tiny porthole, that says "RESCUE." Still, around the launch area, this pre-liftoff limbodance, performed by hundreds of technicians for the last 30 years, has a few deviations this morning. They stop for photo ops with their colleagues and friends, imminently a former fraternity of space professionals...

They're working to ensure the safety of the four souls as they rocket into low-Earth Final Frontier. They are Chris, Doug, Sandy and Rex. You can see their photos on the NASA site, their faces and profiles coming up like Marvel superhero dossiers, Fantastic Four style:

I was lucky enough to witness a Shuttle launch in February and posted some thoughts while they were in their landing approach.

Back to pre-lauch coverage. A comlink computer needs to be re-booted and the technician informs the Flight Controller with just a tiny, tiny note of hesitation in his description. They hold the countdown. Their computers crash just like this laptop... it's unsettling for the lay-watcher, for someone whose generational Kennedy moment came in the middle of 11th Grade English class on a January morning in 1986.

Now, the software's been re-uplinked, the countdown resumed, and then stopped for a built-in hold at T-Minus 9:00. The play-by-play is thrown to Houston's Mission Control, where a very reassuring, informed voice tells America the controllers have been at their desks since 4:30 this morning. Bet they drank their coffee. Atlantis has flown some 115 million miles to date. That's one hell of a lot of oil changes.

The Shuttle, nested in its Floridian launchpad is an elegant modern-art installation, seen in this way

Take the wider view, however, and its reality is also a bleak and lonely thing, a metaphor for some aspects of This Human Journey that we are all destined to take, indeed that we're taking right now.

This is also Atlantis, some 30 minutes from launch this morning

All we can do is hope for the best. They're professionals. No one on the planet is better at changing the Shuttle's oil, after all. And it's not a Marvel comic book. It's very, very real.

The Flight Director now polls all the departments, a flurry of acronyms and abbreiviations. One guy says, "Flight, I'd appreciate it if you'd come back to me and poll me last," like a not-quite-decided diner in a party of 12 might say to a waiter. Mere moments later, he's decided he'll have the salmon after all, and we're all agreed upon "Showing No Constraints." The complexity depth is dizzying, what leads up to a rocket launch. And yet it boils down to "Go/No Go," and of course, Alan Shepard's prayer, uttered 50 years ago from the launchpad of Freedom 7, and paraphrased here as, Oh Lord... please don't let me fuck this thing up.

Crew Orbiter Access Arm is being retracted. T-Minus Nine. All the announcers are invoking 30-year salutes and up-to-the-moment well wishes to the crew and everyone listening. What do I have to do today? Shave and then go watch my kid in his musical theatre day-camp performance of "SchoolHouse Rock, LIVE!"

Godspeed indeed to the bravest among us. We can only move forward. Thanks for reading and please remember: In the event of an existential engine failure, your closest RESCUE hatch may not be the one through which you entered.

Badass is the new Green

There are motorcycle guys, and then there are motorcycle guys. And then there's Van Asher, who hunted snakes at summer arts camp, and who is an excellent example of why "oner" shows up in the The New York Times  crossword puzzle. Ain't no one like Van Van, the Snake Man.

I met Van in the summer of '81 during my second summer at Camp Ballibay. Here are two memories: One of him wearing a knotted necktie as a headband ("My mother told me to wear a tie on Sundays!") Another cheerful comment when I got back from an off-campus trip without telling some of my couselors I'd be missing rehearsal: "Hey Blais! Everyone wants to kill you!"...perhaps the first time someone my age had called me by my last name. And the guy's name was Van! Exotic stuff for a kid from a one-stoplight town.

Fast forward to our adult lives. Van is all about helping the other guy: Van worked several years for the Needle-Exchange Program; is a motorcycle safety instructor; is training for EMT certification. Despite his Facebook manifesto (if you have fewer than four wheels, Van will race and--quite possibly--crash you), there's no one I'd rather have drive my bus, in the aftermath of calling 9-1-1.

So lend a hand to Wingnut Cycles --an organization for which Van is both a principal and test pilot, and a group of fellas who mean to fight the good fight from behind the bars of a tricked-out bio-diesel chopper. No matter what your culture, they will counter it. Cue Aerosmith's "Sweet Emotion," as the shot pans across a solo motorcycle tearing up the Brookyn Bridge, and our boat sinks slowly in the West.

All images in this post courtesy of Wingnut Cycles. Except the one of the cheeky 6th-grader flipping you off.... I took that one.