The Organically Weird, Strange, and Just Plain Special Music I Enjoy

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This is not a complete list of my favorite albums of all time. To make that list, I would have to include popular, mainstream albums. Saying that I enjoy popular, mainstream albums might get me kicked out of some clubs, but I do like some of them. I just find it less interesting, and redundant, to write about them. This is a piece about some relatively obscure albums that I love so much that those who care about me ask me not to play in front of friends they hope to impress. I write the term relatively obscure because some on the list are certified platinum, and some might consider it odd to list any platinum selling album obscure. Others might see some of the albums listed here and say they are not obscure by any stretch of the imagination. My excuse for listing them is that age has led some of these albums to the dustbin of history, and experience has informed me that a wide variety of people have never heard of albums that I consider the greatest of all time. 

I’ve read seasoned musicians I respect list their favorite albums, and most of those albums are truly obscure. I’ve tried to listen to some of those albums, but I’m nothing more than a fan of music. I don’t appreciate music on the granular level that most seasoned musicians do. That having been said, I am a music aficionado, whose music appreciation is not that of a player or a critic, but greater than the casual fan who only appreciates the surface level of music that spent time on the Billboard’s top 100 or repeated on classic rock radio ad nausea. By the end of this, the reader might consider the albums selected purposely obscure. If I am purposely obscure, or I seek some level of contrived weirdness in my music, I have been doing so for thirty years, and I can now tell the difference between those artists who attempt to achieve something different in a less organic manner and those who just plain weird, strange, and special. Many have used those adjectives to describe me, at various times in my life, and if I do hit any of those marks (others consider me so normal I’m boring), all I can tell you is I’ve learned to embrace them in my life, and in the music I enjoy.

8) Captain Beefheart—Trout Mask Replica—This is the strangest album on this list, and one music magazine rated it the second strangest albums ever made (behind Todd Rungren’s A Wizard/A True Star). We don’t know what went on in the mind of Van Vliet, when he created this Joycean mess, that some call “anti-music in the most interesting and insane way.” The most listenable track, and that’s compared to the others on this album, might be Ella Guru. Cartoonist and writer Matt Groening tells of listening to Trout Mask Replica at the age of fifteen: “I thought it was the worst thing I’d ever heard. I said to myself, they’re not even trying! It was just a sloppy cacophony. About the third time, I realized they were doing it on purpose; they meant it to sound exactly this way. About the sixth or seventh time, it clicked in, and I thought it was the greatest album I’d ever heard”.

If Trout Mask Replica is one of the strangest albums ever created, Pena might be the strangest, most inaccessible song ever made. It’s so discordant, we might want to reconsider whether to classify it music. It is, but it stretches the boundary that much. If you convince a friend to listen to this album, prepare for the backlash, as they might consider it a mean practical joke. If you listen to this song, do not do so at high volume, for you will run across the room to shut it off. It might be one of the least melodic songs ever made from the least melodic album ever created. Friends don’t understand why I love this album, and to tell you the truth I can’t explain it, but it’s not weird for the sake of being weird. It has its own inexplicable mathematical appeal that very, very few will appreciate.  

If you brave all of these disclaimers and decide to listen to this album, and you find yourself getting “fast and bulbous” after repeated spins, you might want to reconsider recommending it to friends. Be prepared for some of them to hate this music with such feverish intensity that they hold it against you personally for recommending it to them.

7) PJ Harvey—To Bring you My Love—This is PJ’s strongest album to date. The two albums she made prior to this one were incredible, but To Bring you My Love made those two albums look like building blocks to this one. Her albums following To Bring you My Love run the gamut from relatively boring to fantastic, but To Bring you My Love was without question her peak. One album of note following TBYML is White Chalk. It’s the most powerful quiet album you might hear. The standout tracks on To Bring you My Love are: Meet Ze Monster, Down by the Water.

6) Mr. Bungle – Disco Volante— If Trout Mask Replica is the second weirdest album ever made, and I don’t think it is. I think it’s number one, I don’t think A Wizard/A True Star compares in the category of strange, but I don’t enjoy it as much as the others on this list. If Trout Mask Replica is number two, then music critics and writers should consider Disco Volante third on this list. This is an album of songs, as opposed to an effort with a cohesive theme. Each song is so different that they probably don’t belong on the same album. The only song that is less than brilliant is Everyone I Went to High School is Dead. I am not a track skipper, but I skip this song every time. The most brilliant song on this album occurs at the 4:42 mark on Carry Stress in the Jaw. Some listings, list it as [The Secret Song]. My advice, if you choose to accept it, is listen to this album from start to finish. Then separate individual tracks out in playlists, or what have you, to appreciate each song in its own right, until you obsess over them and you know every beat so well that you might be able to play them yourself (I say as an individual who hasn’t picked up an instrument in decades, and even then I couldn’t play them).

The strange element of Disco Volante defines strange people. Listeners who have a strong foundation of normalcy can listen to this album unscathed, but if you have any fear that you might be abnormal, be forewarned that if it gets around that you enjoy Disco Volante, your friends and family will consider you strange. That sounds like a joke, but I’ve witnessed it. Those who are totally normal will not enjoy this album, because it’s so weird, strange, and just plain different from any album of music I’ve ever heard. I know that goes against everything I wrote in the previous paragraph, but I think it’s that weird. Disco Volante is only for weird, strange, and just plain different listeners who are confident that they can survive all of the recriminations that will follow saying that you like this album.

[Writer’s Note:] When I went in search of this album, as a completist who needed to own everything attached to the names Mike Patton, Trevor Dunn, and Trey Spruance, I walked into a Music Land at a mall one day (yes, I’m that old), and I asked the employee if he had an album called Disco Volante. He stared at me silently. A small somewhat bemused smile began to curl at the corner of his lips. “It’s by a group called Mr. Bungle,” I said in the weird, somewhat uncomfortable space that followed. 

“Very funny,” the employee said. “Who put you up to this?”

“What?” I asked looking around. “I want to know if you have an album that I have been trying to find.” We stared at each other for an uncomfortable moment after I said that. “I’ve been to all the record stores in town, and they don’t carry it. None of them do.”

“Seriously, who sent you in here? Was it Sandy?” After a brief back and forth that consisted of me convincing him that no one sent me in his store, he said, “No, this place would never carry an album like that.”

The man was wary of me, as if he expected a group of camera men to enter the store to reveal the practical joke we were all playing on him. 

“Okay thanks,” I said. As I turned to leave, I said, “Why would you think it’s a joke to ask for an album?”

“That’s my favorite album of all time,” he said, “and a couple months ago I joked with my girlfriend that no one would ever come into a Music Land in Bum[fudge], Nebraska to ask for it. So, when you asked for Disco Volante, I thought she sent you.”  

5) David Bowie–Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars—Perhaps no musical artist in the history of music made the weird, more mainstream as well as David Bowie. He was an organically different man who made weird music. If he were alive today, he would confess that he wasn’t as original as critics often said he was. His music was an amalgamation of the weird.

Ziggy Stardust might be the most popular and least obscure album on this list, but it’s so old that I wonder how many people have never heard of it. A few mainstream artists in that era tinkered with the weird, but very few of them explored it as thoroughly as Bowie did while achieving some level of fame for doing it. I could’ve picked any of a number of Bowie albums to include on this list (Hunky Dory, Alladin Sane, Diamond Dogs, Low, Lodger, Scary Monsters, and even Blackstar), but Ziggy seems to be the most accessible starting point for Bowie novices.  

The best songs are the first four songs on the album, and the last six. The only song to skip on the album is It Ain’t Easy. I have to think Bowie had other songs to put on this album that he dismissed in favor of It Ain’t Easy. [Special Mention:] The best non-Ziggy Bowie songs that every Bowie fan needs to hear again and again, Alternate Candidate (This is a tough song to find, but I found it on YouTube) and Lady Grinning Soul.

4) Mother Love Bone—Apple—If I were a musician, this is the album that I would’ve created. I loved playing around with words, and I loved describing the normal in hippy, trippy ways. Apple is thirty-years-old now, and it doesn’t have the appeal to me it did back then, but the music and the lyrics that Ament, Gossard, Wood, and the rest created captured me in a time and place manner that no music had before and few have afterward. To say I was blown away is an understatement. I listened to this album in a way others listened to The Beatles, Elvis, and The Rolling Stones.   

Some critics, musicians, and others who know far more about music than I do, say Pearl Jam was better in every possible way. (A number of the members of Mother Love Bone gathered together and found a new lead singer after Wood died to form Pearl Jam.) I disagreed, and I still disagree, but when you’re a member of the screaming minority, you eventually buckle to those who know more than you. They didn’t change my mind, of course, but I recognize the limits of my musical knowledge, or my taste. I loved Pearl Jam, but Apple absolutely blew my mind.  

The story of Mother Love Bone is a sad “could’ve been, should’ve been” tale that could’ve and should’ve rewritten the narrative of the whole Seattle, movement in the early 90’s. Andrew Wood, the lead singer, died of a heroin overdose at 24, a month before the record company released this album. If this album received the promotion record companies normally put into an album in which they outbid five other record companies, coupled with radio airplay, touring, and all that, this album would’ve been the first multi-platinum disc coming out of Seattle in the 90’s. This album, this group, would’ve been bigger than the later incarnation Pearl Jam in my humble opinion. 

I think Apple would’ve been so big that it would’ve divided Seattle into two camps, those who loved the silly, rock star side versus the serious, sad, and angst-ridden Nirvana side. It would’ve been Mother Love Bone versus Nirvana, and Nirvana probably would’ve hated Mother Love Bone the way they came to hate Pearl Jam. (They may have hated them more, due to the contrasting styles of the two, as Pearl Jam wasn’t such an exaggeration of differences.)

The tracks on this album might all have a certain familiarity to them, as glam rock, arena rock fans will recognize some Queen, with a dash of Zeppelin, a little Elton John mixed in, and a big morsel of Aerosmith mixed in the stew, but Mother Love Bone combined these influences with a heavy dose of individual interpretation mixed in. I’ve read commenters on Allmusic.com say that the Apple has not aged well. As I wrote, thirty years has dulled the magnitude of this album for me, but I still do not have such perspective on this album, for I am an adoring fan boy who cannot view Stargazer, Captain Hi-Top, Gentle Groove, Crown of Thorns, or Lady Godiva Blues from an objective perspective. When people talk about how they still love the music from their late teens/early twenties, this album is one of the primary ones that formed that inner core of my favorite music.  

[Writer’s Note:] Some suggest that the Seattle music from the early to mid-90’s killed rock and roll. If we look at the timeline of rock and roll, we could easily make that leap with them, but I would suggest that the Seattle music, that some call grunge, might have been the last gasp from a dying beast. Seattle music was retro. It was Black Sabbath, KISS, T. Rex, and various other artists from the 70’s. It was a return to the music before the glam, heavy metal 80’s redefined everything. If we could go back through the timeline and remove grunge, rock and roll would’ve died earlier after the damage the music of the 80’s did to it. Grunge was the chemotherapy that kept a stage 4 cancer victim alive for a little longer beyond its life expectancy, and I suspect that if Andrew Wood hadn’t needed one more heroin fix, rock and roll might have remained on a life support a little longer.   

3) Pavement—Wowee Zowee— This album might form the basis of my album oriented preferences, for I find it difficult to pick just one track to note. This album should be listened to top to bottom. Rattled by the Rush might be one of the few songs on the album that follow a traditionally accepted song structure, but I find it hard to hold one song out for individual praise. This album is a collage album, a collection of songs that didn’t quite fit on their previous albums. Some call them pastiche albums. Whatever the case is, I loved this album so much that I honestly don’t care that some might consider it inferior to their two prior albums, and I loved (and I mean LOVED) their two previous albums. This album achieved something so different that it achieved the hallowed status all artists strive for with their fans of being “my music”. The previous two albums might have been better on the scale critics use to rate such albums, but I love Wowee Zowee more for the intangible qualities that leads us all to prefer some albums more than others. I won’t write that every track is perfect on this album, but that’s its appeal. Wowee Zowee is a raw, flawed album in serious need of better production, but seeking perfection with more production would also ruin whatever raw intensity the fellas in Pavement captured here.

2) King’s X—Gretchen Goes to Nebraska—Some grunge artists say this was the first grunge album. Some suggest that Alice in Chains took the sonic formula of this album and applied it to their album Dirt. Listen to the two albums back to back, and you’ll hear a surprising number of similarities. One of the members of Alice in Chains joked about it with a member of King’s X, saying, “We need you to come out with another album. We need a new sound.” (The author loves Alice in Chains, and the album Dirt, and he does not intend to diminish the band or their best album.)    

The Burning Down and The Difference are the only two songs on GGN that I skip. Other than those two songs, I’ve gone through phases with just about every other track on this album. The uninitiated should start with the hit, Over My Head, move onto Summerland, Everybody Knows a Little Bit of Something, and then work their way through the rest of the album song by song. By the time the intrigued listener is done, I don’t know how anyone could say these guys didn’t write beautiful, transcendent, and timeless music.

Normally, I couldn’t care less if an artist makes it or not. Mainstream music is just that, and as this list indicates, I am not a huge fan of mainstream music. The idea that King’s X didn’t achieve mainstream success, and others did with their formula pained the members of the band and their producer Sam Taylor. I doubt that any of the others on this list, save for Bowie who achieved worldwide success, experienced depression as a result of the lack of sales. They had to know, somewhere in the production of their album that it would not appeal to the masses. King’s X wanted it, expected it, and they experienced some depression as a result. The idea that very few regard King’s X as one of the top bands of its era, however, seems like an historic injustice to me that it needs to be rectified.

Other artists, and some critics, adored King’s X. A compendium of quotes from them suggest that on talent alone, coupled with the producer Sam Taylor, and the combined and consistent efforts found in the first five albums that King’s X created should’ve led them to the hallowed Beatles status. Upon discovering King’s X, reports state that Sam Taylor said he thought he found the next Beatles. King’s X were a combination of progressive metal, funk and soul, combined with vocals that remind one of gospel, blues, and the various groups in the British Invasion.  

It confounded critics, and other artists, why this band never broke through to the mainstream. In my experience, King’s X had two strikes against them, their looks and the “God thing”. Anytime I introduced my friends to Gretchen Goes to Nebraska, it blew them away. “Who are these guys?” they would ask. When they investigated them on their own, and they saw them on MTV, they soured on them to the point that they didn’t buy their album. The lead singer (Doug Pinnick) had a funky look. He had a high mohawk, and he was black, and there was something different about him. (He was/is gay.) Coupled with that, King’s X lyrics were uplifting and spiritual, and some critics labeled them “God music”. Sam Taylor and King’s X had gorgeous musical arrangements, Beatle-like harmonies, top-notch production, and the record company supported them, but Doug Pinnick looked funky, and their lyrics suggested they had a “God thing”.  

King’s X might have been one of the few bands who were hurt by the video age of MTV, for when people saw them they thought they were weird, and not in a good way. To further this thesis, Alice in Chains took the King’s X formula, and they fit the mold better than King’s X did. As much as we hate to admit it, the idea that the lead singer (Layne Staley) was a junkie and on the verge of overdosing had/has enormous appeal to some, their look was more socially acceptable, and the idea that they were obsessed with the dark elements of death had far more appeal than King’s X spiritual and uplifting lyrics. I consider that opinion so based in fact that I don’t consider it debatable.  

Alice in Chains was also cool in all the tangible and intangible definitions of the term, and King’s X were the antithesis of cool. What’s interesting, on this note, is that most of those who bought AiC’s albums, considered themselves the opposite of superficial. They considered themselves deep, thoughtful people who wouldn’t buy an album based on the band’s look. They loved the music on Dirt, but they didn’t buy music equal to, if not superior, to that on Dirt, and it all boiled down to looks and a packaged commodity that they considered nonconformist. 

 

more consumable, and the idea that the latter was “God music”.     

1) Mr. Bungle—California—This album, particularly the songs None of Them Knew They were Robots, Retrovertigo, The Air-Conditioned Nightmare, Goodbye Sober Day, and Ars Morendi, are timeless classics. As opposed to most of the albums I’ve listened to on this list that I’ve played so often that I have to remember how much they affected my life when I first heard them, California sounds as fresh and vibrant to me as the first day I listened to it. Pink Cigarette and Sweet Charity were, of course, my first loves on the album, but to my mind there’s something wrong with people who fail to recognize the greatness of those five songs.      

Gorillas and Lions and Wolves, Oh My

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When I watched a gorilla scoop some dung out of his brother’s anus to eat it, it modified my thoughts on taste. This gorilla didn’t just ingest his brother’s dung, which is disgusting enough, he did so in such a deliberate process that the observer couldn’t help but note how much he savored that moment. He ingested that dung in the manner I might that one perfect strawberry I find in every bushel. We might think if he loved his brother’s dung that much he might suck it down quick to go in for another scoop before the other gorillas find out about it. He didn’t. This gorilla stopped for about three seconds moving it around his tongue to touch every taste sensor, with his eyes closed. And he closed his eyes slowly, and they fluttered. I didn’t imagine it. I saw fluttering. We all hate it when people assign human characteristics to animals, anthropomorphizing them, but there was no mistaking the idea that this gorilla was savoring the taste of his brother’s waste matter before going in for more. 

They’re our distant cousins right? How far removed from this species are we? We go on primal diets, like the paleo diet and the primal blueprint, and those diet entrepreneurs pitched their diet by saying that early humans had lower rates of obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and other chronic health conditions due to differences in diet. Dietitians now state that one of the problems with the paleo diet was that it can lead to cancer, heart disease, loss of bone density, and fatty liver. What’s the difference between the diet of modern man and Paleolithic man? What if we found that one key element to Paleolithic man avoiding such maladies was eating each other’s bodily waste? And did we invent toilet paper to keep our backsides clean, or were we trying to remove temptation? Out of sight, out of mind.

How far removed are we from scooping dung from our brother’s anus? If we listen to science, we’re not as far as we choose to believe. We all marvel at the good things they do, and we associate with them in this vein. When they do awful things, like eating the product of another’s bowel movements, we don’t claim them as one of ours.  

Why? Well, it’s disgusting. Who would want to associate with a species that eats another’s waste? What this points out, more than anything else, is that taste, flavor, and preferences are relative concepts. What sounds and looks disgusting to us is something to savor for our distant cousins.

Everyone is trying to appeal to our taste when they write, painting, cook, and changing their lifestyle to try to appeal to our taste, but what do we find appealing? Something that makes our brain tingle, does not do anything for our brother. Do you have this brother, raised in the same home, talk all the time, and he’s almost 180 degrees different. That’s an entirely different article, but the point is that taste is so relative that it’s almost impossible to create a flavor that has widespread appeal. The word flavor should have a capitalized (‘F’) on it, as it focuses on such a wide spectrum of taste. Food and drink have a flavor of course, but so do music, literature, and all of the arts in the sense that some of it creates the same but different brain tingles. 

Our own tastes are relative too, relative to need. Does water taste great? I don’t think so, most of the time. If you played through a particularly grueling athletic contest, you know how great water can taste. Anyone who has run in a marathon knows water can taste like liquid gold. My guess, just looking out in the audience today, is that nobody here knows anything about that, but you do know what water tastes like after a night out. It’s the same but different, but the point is that need often dictates flavor. The polar bear prefers the seal over the fish, because of the fat content of the seal, something the polar bear desperately needs. 

Animals eat for survival right. They don’t enjoy taste, or if they do on some level, they don’t savor. They eat to fulfill their need to sustain life. Savoring requires a level of cognition that recognizes the limited quality of something extremely enjoyable. We all love the taste of a perfectly prepared rib eye, the perfect strawberry, and the clean, smooth taste of a cold drink of water. I think we can all agree that the strawberry is one of the best tasting fruits in nature, but there are always a few, in every bushel, that are perfect. Savoring that perfect strawberry, for just a second before eating another one, recognizes that limited supply. This gorilla not only ingested the dung slowly, he appeared to pause for just a moment to savor whatever that other gorilla ate and whatever that other gorilla’s digestive system added to it. That elongated, almost spiritual closing of the eyes might have been a coincidence, but I thought the gorilla enjoyed the concoction so much that he wanted to savor it for moment before going back to the dispenser. There was a full tray of food awaiting this gorilla, in the southeast corner of his enclosure, but he preferred to go back to the dispenser before him. Watching that gorilla appear to so enjoy it so much that he went back for more, I realized that individual tastes are so relative to the flavors we create that it’s pointless to try to fashion our work in such a way that it pleases everyone. We can only create whatever it is we create from our own dispensaries and hope that others enjoy it for what it is.   

The roles those two gorillas played in this enclosure defined for me what proved to be what I consider one of the most unusual and artistically successful pairings in music history that of Ben Folds and William Shatner. I’ve been a fan of Ben Folds for a long time, but my taste in music is such that I’ve never listed him one of “my guys”. He has some fantastic songs, but if I were to run into Ben Folds, and I informed him how frustrated I am that he comes so close to reaching me, I’m sure he wouldn’t care. Not only would he not care, he shouldn’t care. If I met him and told him that most of his music misses the mark for me, he should say, “That’s on you. I can only do what I do. I can’t worry about pleasing you, offending you, or entertaining you. If it pleases enough people that I can make a living at this game, that’s great, but I’m not going to change what I do to please you or Betty Beatle from Idaho.”  

William Shatner is not one of “my guys” either, but he’s always around. He’s the green bean casserole of the entertainment world. I doubt anyone who has yet to try green bean casserole would look at it and think, “Yum!” but it’s at so many family get togethers and potluck dinners that we eventually “what the hell” it, until we discover it’s ain’t too bad. As long as we don’t overdo it, repetition can even lead to a level of fondness for it, until we look forward to the next get together or potluck dinner that has a tray of it. Similarly, William Shatner has been in so many movies, TV shows, and other formats that we now look forward to seeing him in various productions.

No one should confuse the term “my guys” with a description of talent. I’ll drop the typical line that people drop to explain the discrepancy. “I respect the heck out of what Folds and Shatner do, but it just doesn’t reach me on a personal level.” I know people who love John Lennon so much that they suggest Paul McCartney is not talented. I understand that we all take sides in any rivalry, but to suggest that a talent on par with Paul McCartney has no talent is ludicrous. The Silly Love Songs vs. Important Songs debate rages on in some quarters, as Lennon fans suggest Lennon was not only more important he was more creative. These people relate more with Lennon, and because of that Lennon is “their guy”, but to prove that point, some try to so by belittling McCartney’s Silly Love Songs talent.

I missed Folds and Shatner’s collaboration for years, because they weren’t “my guys”. When I eventually heard the album Has Been, however, I was blown away. It reminded me of one of my favorite concoctions: cranberry granola and banana flavored yogurt. Banana flavored yogurt is too sweet for me on its own, and while the cranberry flavor of granola is tasty, I probably wouldn’t eat it as a standalone. When I put the two together, however, I enjoy it so much that I’ve considered submitting it to the overlords as my reward for living a decent, moral life. When I pass on, I want to meet my long-deceased relatives of course, and I wouldn’t mind it if someone played a Brahams Sonata on the harp to signify my entrance, but if you’re wondering how best to reward me for a life well lived, might I suggest that the floors and walls of my reward taste like the banana-flavored yogurt and cranberry granola concoction I created.

When we eat concoctions like these, we spoon too much of one flavor most of the times. Some of the times, we spoon too much yogurt, and some of the times, we spoon too much granola, but there are occasions, at least once a container, when we hit a Goldilocks spoonful. The album Has Been is the Goldilocks concoction of talent for me, and when I listened to it often enough to recognize its brilliance, I closed my eyes and savored the moment. I did so, figuring that this production would be a one-off. I loved Has Been so much that I went back to the other concoctions they’ve made together, and I went back to their solo work, but neither of them hit the mark in the same manner. On their own, Shatner and Folds create interesting, quality material that doesn’t quite hit that Holy Crud, brilliant mark, but together they created what I consider their Goldilocks moment. I would think that such moments are so fleeting in any artist’s career that when they hit one, they would immediately run back into the studio to dispense another collaboration, but perhaps they don’t think they can create another Goldilocks moment together. I know they did singles together before and after Has Been, but that album was so good that I would think it would drive them right back into the studio to do another collaboration. We know that Folds’ affinity for Shatner brought them together, and that their work together impressed Shatner so much that he called Folds a genius, but we don’t know why they never made another album together. Perhaps they think that fate and whatnot only permits one one Goldilocks moment a life.

Carnivores in Cartoons

Yesterday, I thought carnivores were the mean, bad guys of the wild. Today I realized that the cartoons we watched conditioned us to believe that when a lion, shark, alligator, or any animal at the top of the food chain eats one at the bottom, they do so with some sort of evil intent. We can find a definition of this in Aesop’s fable in which a mouse removes a thorn from a lion’s paw. After the mouse removes the thorn, the lion states that it will not to eat the mouse as a display of gratitude. The mouse does something nice for the lion, and the lion, in turn, agrees to do something nice for the mouse. The inference is that if the lion betrays this agreement, and the lion follows its instinct and eats the mouse, that means the lion is mean.    

In another fable, on the theme, a frog agrees to assist a scorpion across a pond. Before doing so, the frog says, “Wait a second, you’re going to sting me.” 

“If I stung you, we would both drown,” the scorpion responds. 

The frog reluctantly agrees to help the scorpion across the pond, and the scorpion stings the frog. As they’re both drowning, the frog says, “I thought you said you weren’t going to sting me.”

“What do you want me to say, I’m a scorpion. This is what I do.” 

Some allege that the moral of the story, for young people, is that there are vicious people in the world who, no matter how nice you think they are, will stab you in the back. While I think that is a valuable lesson to learn, the more valuable lesson is that which exists in nature. No matter how nice and cute that wild animal appears, and no matter how many cartoons we watch that display that animal as cuddly, they will probably scratch and bite us if given the opportunity. They might not understand why a seven-inch gash in our skin prompted our decision to stop playing with us. If they could talk, they might say, “C’mon, I was just playing.” The point is, in most cases, they did not intend to hurt us, and they’re not being mean. They’re relatively brainless creatures, compared to us, that operate almost entirely on instincts. Biting and scratching is just what they do. 

Think about all the cartoons we watched and books we read in our youth. They depict carnivores with jagged teeth and menacing growls. As we often do, we confused being scary with being mean or bad. Today I learned that they’re not mean, or bad, they’re just hungry, and like all other animals, they eat when they’re hungry. Regardless what it does to their reputation as a beautiful animal, wolves enjoy eating fluffy bunny wabbits. They do awful things to bunnies if they’re able to catch them, but that does not mean they’re mean or evil in the manner we define such terms. By teaching young humans lessons, using animals as main characters, some of us anthropomorphize these characters to such a degree that we assign them human characteristics. Lions, tigers, and bears aren’t nice, they aren’t mean, and they don’t make decisions on what to eat based on how other animals interact with them.   

Yesterday I learned that even if the animals at the top of the food chain are not the meanies we thought they were when we were kids, we should still consider doing everything we can to avoid one in the wild.

After watching videos that focus on animals biting humans, nature lovers qualify the instinctual actions of these wild animals by saying, “We are not on their diet.” The nature lovers then provide a number of theories regarding how these incidents often involve nothing more than a case of mistaken identity. These theories are true, of course, as most animals in the wild, and in the ocean, have never seen a human, and self-preservation is more important to animals than eating in most cases. Animals often take a pass on eating anything unfamiliar if they think they could get hurt in the process. Sometimes, however, they’re so hungry that they’re willing to eat anything that moves, especially if it moves slower than other prey.

Most animals don’t know what a human is, and that’s why they fear us, but we are also a point of curiosity for them. Thus, when they see us walking around in their domain, or floating on the surface, they’re curious, and that curiosity is almost exclusive to considering whether they should consider adding that slow moving case of meat to their diet. Yet, seeing, hearing, and smelling us might not be enough to satisfy their curiosity, and they obviously cannot communicate with us, so their last resort is to taste us to try to figure out what we are to determine if we are a delicacy they’ve never considered before.

The nature lovers further their argument by opening up the belly of a bull shark. “When we open up the belly of a bull shark, we find everything from license plates to cans of paint to packs of cigarettes. The bull shark, unlike other sharks, is not very discerning. They’ll eat anything they see floating on the surface of the water, even if it happens to be a human on a surfboard.” Translation: They do not intend to devour us. They’re just curious. They just want to taste us to see what we are. I see the nature lovers working here. I know they’re trying to relieve our fears about sharks, and in turn preserve the shark population, and I know wild animals are not bad or mean in the context humans define the terms, but it does not comfort me to know that all they want to do is taste me. If I happen upon one of these carnivorous beasts, and it’s clear that all they want to do is taste me, I’m still going to do whatever I can to get away. If I fail to escape, I’m probably going to shoot it, because I have to imagine that even though they’re just tasting me, it’s still going to hurt like the dickens.

Sprinting & Age

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Yesterday, I realized we’re all sprinting to old age. Today, I realized that those lucky enough to make it to old age should probably refrain from sprinting. The aging process is a relative progression, as we’ve all met young sixty-year-olds and old forty-year-olds, but no matter how old we are, we occasionally receive reminders that we’re aging. The aging process rarely hits us in an “Oh, my God I’m (fill in the age here)!” one day in the mirror. Aging is often more of a gradual process that hits us in tiny, little, and seemingly insignificant hits, every day.

We fell on a Tuesday doing something we’ve done our whole lives. We tripped trying to skip a stair on a Wednesday, and we’ve skipped a stair since our legs grew long enough to do so. (Mental note, skipping stairs may no longer be in our repertoire.) On Thursday, we caught ourselves making old man sounds when we sat, but we can’t even remember when we started doing that. We admired a beautiful person on Friday, and someone informed us that we’re probably too old to continue doing that. “It’s just odd,” they said, “considering the age gap.” Someone considered it inappropriate on Saturday, and on Sunday someone found it “Absolutely disgusting” that we should admire the beauty of a 20-year-old. “Because you’re old enough to be her grandpa!” they say. The progression didn’t occur that quickly, within one week, but on some days it seems like it does.  

We all know we’re aging on a physical, superficial level, but mentally we’re not so far removed from that energetic, wildly enthusiastic 20-year-old who was afraid to talk to girls. When they add, “And you should know better than to stare at a 20-year-old woman,” we realize how far removed we now are. We do “know better” on one level, we know how old we are, but their scorn is a painful reminder of how much we’ve aged. We do the calculations in our head, and we realize they’re right. We are, in fact, that old now. The realizations that we’re that old now are not about any of one of the matters listed here. It’s about all of them. It’s about that big old snowball that’s been accumulating over the years without notice.

***

“You know you’re old when you fall and no one laughs,” a comedian once said. You know you’re old when they surround you after a fall, and they’re not there to point and laugh. They’re there, because they’re concerned. You know you’re old when their raised eyebrows suggest that you might want to refrain from such activities in the future. You know you’re old when no one laughs about it later, even behind your back. People didn’t laugh when we fell when we were very young, and somewhere along the way, it turned full circle. People aren’t laughing anymore. They’re concerned. It’s humiliating. The science of their silence involves a calculation of our age and the impact of your fall. It’s no longer funny. It’s so disturbing to some of them that they consider it alarming.

“What happened?”

“He was sprinting.”

“Ok, well, he probably shouldn’t be sprinting at his age,” they instruct one another.

You know you’re old when you’ve become the subject of group concern, and the group addresses the subject of their concern in the third person, as if to suggest that they’ll take care of this whole matter going forward, because it’s obvious that we can’t anymore. They addressed us in the third person when we were young, implying that an authority figure should’ve seen to it that that didn’t happen. Everything in between involved laughter, directed at us in the first person, because they knew we were old enough to know better but young enough to sustain the damage of our stupidity. We might feel some warmth when we realize how much these people care about us, but that fades when we realize their resolutions mirror those family members make when our loved ones reached a point when they were no longer capable of caring for themselves. They have no problem telling us when we’re too old to oggle, but no one instructs that we’ve reach a point where it’s considered ill advised to sprint until it should be obvious to everyone involved.

***

A game of ‘keep away’ developed organically. My nephew was in the middle, laughing as hard as the two adults were on opposite sides of him. He was laughing so hard, and apparently having so much fun, that another kid joined into help him defeat us. Another kid joined in a couple of throws later, then three, then four, then so much more. The game wasn’t young versus old, but it evolved into it. It started out friendly, but it evolved into a competitive definition of whatever remained of our athletic ability.

I started out tossing the ball from a stationary position. I was laughing and failing on purpose, giving the kids a chance, until one of them said a little something that I considered a provocative definition of my declining athletic ability. When it came time to catch the ball, I followed the same pattern. I went from light-hearted attempts to get open to employing quick, ankle spraining jukes. When I realized I couldn’t shake the nephew I once held as an infant, the quick movements evolved into some running. I ran every single day at one point in my life, so it was not a concern to me. I don’t know if I started losing, or if I sensed that the others were further questioning my ability, but I began sprinting to open spots to capitalize on the holes in their coverage. It dawned on me, while doing it that I haven’t done this in years. No one gave this a second thought for most of my life. Some people run, some people sprint. I didn’t see the spectators watching, but I could feel it. I even saw a couple stand with some concern. Did they see the game for what it was, or were they wondering if they should begin sprinting too? Did they stand to source the emergency that sparked my progression? I looked over to verify that they were watching me, but in that casual glance, I almost tumbled. I couldn’t look back at them. I had to be mindful of my feet. (Mental Note II, running now requires more focus.) Running was not my greatest concern. Stopping was. I had a myriad of little feet under mine, and I had to focus to avoid them.

I know I’m not as athletically inclined as I once was, but who is? I am smarter now. I know how to use my faculties much better than I did when I was younger. In the midst of these throws, my competitive juices got the best of me. I overdid it. I knew my best presentation could be found sitting on the lawn furniture with the other old people, talking about what old people talk about with lemonade in hand on a sunny day, but I didn’t decide to play this game. An impromptu game broke out and evolved into a character-defining match of my ability against theirs. I could not just quit. “Why did you quit?” I imagined one of them asking me. “Because I’m old and I can’t handle the physical requirements of such a game anymore.” Yeah, that’s not in my nature.

The nephew I once held as an infant was shutting me down in coverage at one point. I encouraged it verbally, but I also wanted to discourage it physically. I wanted to prove so dominant that he left our little game a little demoralized. To do so, I employed some of the know-how I picked up along the way, using the bag of tricks I developed in the decades I spent playing intramural football. Michael Jordan developed a fade away when his skills started to decline. I developed a few moves of my own over the years. “Youth is wasted on the young,” Winston Churchill said. What if I had this wide array of jukes when I was younger, I asked myself, would I have been better? I sprinted to the right, juked, and went further right. In doing so, my fellow old man led me well with a pass. My ability to stop on a dime and juke surprised my nephew. He went left to cover the traditional juke, and he did so right under me. To avoid taking him out, I had to adjust. (Mental note III, my ability to adjust on the fly has receded.) I tripped over his feet. (Mental Note IV: Studies show that the chances of tripping increase exponentially when we sprint.) Been there, done that. (Mental note V, watch out for ground, it hurts, but not near as much as a parked car.) I didn’t have much choice, in the stumbling and bumbling that followed. I decided to take on the car. (Mental note VI, the pain experienced from stationary objects increases when approached at top speed, and we should all try to avoid parked cars as often as possible. They can be unforgiving.) Hitting the car, and then the equally unforgiving concrete was humiliating, and I thought the people surrounding me with looks of concern was the peak of my humiliation, until my nephew called me up later that night to apologize for getting me so worked that I almost ended up impaled on a car.