Scooter of Hope, Scooter of Change

I Hope Tomorrow Is Like Today - Guster (mp3)
Election Night - Broadway Calls (mp3)

“How’s all that hopin’ and changin’ workin’ out for ya?”

Transporting a full Grande Misto via scooter is no simple feat. Most scooters, mine included, come sans cup holder, sans trunk. I have two locations for storage on my Yamaha Riva: a very snug and teensy glove box set into the steering column, and my “hard case,” the roundish clamshell-looking contraption behind the seat.

Thanks to Starbucks stoppers -- I once called it a “Green Coffee Buttplug” and received very disappointed looks from the barista -- I have created the fairly reliable practice of scooting back to work with minimal spillage using some 10 napkins and cocooning the cup in the glove box, where it fits quite snugly.

That said, the process takes a few minutes. And it was in the midst of mummifying my coffee and nestling it into the glove that I heard, muffled through my helmet, the quote above. I looked up, and there was this older man, a little bit oily or sweaty, probably in his early 70s, smiling out of his Caddy. Or maybe it was an Oldsmobile. I’ve never been good with cars, but I know it was Amur’can.

Being clueless, I said, “Excuse me?” because the quote seemed without context. I was trying to connect his comments to my attempts to store coffee in a scooter.

And he repeated himself. “How’s all that hopin’ and changin’ workin’ out for ya?”

I still didn’t really get it. So I said, “Um, fine I guess.” And I smiled.

The man was shaking his head before I had even answered, with the same kind of smile I tend to have when I see some moron on the other side of the road driving without headlights after dusk. Then he pushed out a few of those annoyed chuckles before saying, “I’m glad I’ll be dead before I have to see this country go completely up in smoke.”

So, at that point, I finally got it. By then, this old dude has rolled up his window and pulled out of his spot. Off, I guess, to sneer at other young fools and their idiotic notions of hope and change, preferably from the comfort of his enclosed air-conditioned American-made isolation chamber.

My scooter has seven stickers. Three are UNC-related. One is the ubiquitous Apple logo. One is for a band called The Rescues. Another is for the Good People Brewing Company of Alabama. And one is for the Chattanooga Football Club. None of these are of a remote political nature. I’m not much of one for political signs, because I tend to think religion and politics carry too much negative energy in first impressions. And, in those rare moments when either topic creates positive impressions, it’s at the expense of those who don’t belong to your imaginary club.

I don’t think anyone looks at my Good People Brewing Company sticker and thinks, “Ahh, a fellow beer drinker. We’re better than those snotty wine-drinking assholes.” No one sees my Chattanooga FC sticker and thinks, “Fuck the Titans and their oblong monstrosity!”

But put a cross, or a fish, or a “W” or an “O” on your vehicle, and you are painting a double-yellow line in the road that says, “You’re either on my side and going in the (proper) direction, or you’re not.”

Nothing too wrong with talking politics and religion, but not on a first date, and certainly not with people you haven’t even met yet.

This old man made an assumption: youngish coffee-drinking asshole on a nerdy scooter = Obama voter. That he was right makes him more lucky than brilliant. That he looks forward to dying before the US sinks into some Muslim apocalypse makes him exactly the kind of conservative that makes lots of people despise conservatives. (Just a reminder that I’m plenty guilty of this prejudgement habit.)

Why would someone be anti-change? As a species, we talk all the time about how dangerous it is to forget our past, yet so many of us use words like “tradition” and “the good ol’ days” without the slightest bit of irony. Tradition is for Druids. Want tradition? Go to a 3rd world Muslim country, because they’re steeped in tradition so ancient it would knock your great-great-granddaddy’s socks off. But in America? Seriously? Tradition for us is, like, McDonalds french fries. Or something even more shameful like watching an evening news program together as a family while eating TV dinners on TV trays.

As a country, very little of our history is based on anything BUT change.

But I get the whole anti-change thing. We get older. We wish Peter Gabriel and REM still ruled the music landscape. We detest those wacky R&B people with their wacky R&B booties and def cuts. We detest Faith Hill for being twice as hot and half as talented as Loretta Lynn. I get it. It’s kinda goofy, but with every passing year, I find myself fighting that very instinct to wish things were more like they Used Ta Be.

So it sucks to be anti-change, but it’s also an absurd curse of human nature.

But here’s what would really really suck: to be “Anti-Hope.” To be the person who is opposed, politically or otherwise, to hope. I’d like to think that one could be reasonably opposed to Obama and the Democratic Party without being Anti-Hope. Obama didn’t trademark the word. He doesn’t own it. I’m rooting for the guy, but even if you don’t want to, please don’t be against Hope.

Trust me. You don’t want to be that old man in the Oldsmobile. It’s not a happy or contented life.

Car Tattoos

Hummer - Smashing Pumpkins (mp3)

You know the new fad of putting stick figures representing everyone in your family on the back of the family vehicle? I kinda hate it.

I'm going to buy three or four groupings of these stickers and basically fill up my entire back window with them. Me, the husband. Four wives. And 18 children. Maybe a few dogs and cats thrown in for good measure. And I can a bumper sticker that says "If the YFZ Ranch is rockin', don't come a'knockin'!" How awesome would it be to get those looks of judgment and confusion from people driving past you?!

Car tats and bumper stickers are basically the wuss version of flesh ink. The worst ones are pathetic attempts at telling people you don't even give a shit about (a) information they don't need, or (b) things designed to piss off half your audience. At best, bumper stickers are telling a small percentage of people something to make you feel more connected or offer a 1-liner reminiscent of Henny Youngman jokes. That makes the "at best" option pretty God-awful.

These family stickers make Baby On Board seem old fashioned and quaint, pot from the early '70s compared to the more potent booty-kickin' stuff of today. No longer is a simple proclamation of a small infant inside the car enough for you people. We now need to meet every fucking member of your brood and, if we're lucky, learn their names? What an honor, letting us in on this. People shred their mail and won't let their children out of their sight in a mall, but we don't hesitate to reveal juicy child details - name, relative height, relative age - on the back of our car. Apparently child molesters aren't a threat in the express lane.

Don'tcha just know the Octomom (a.k.a. Nadya Suleman) has these damn things on her car? A sticker of her, her 14 children, three cameramen, a producer, an art director and a key grip. Or does she also pepper the outline of the window with little sperm stickers or frozen embryo stickers?

(My favorite responses when I put this observation about Octomom as my status update:

• "The 10 live-in nannies would have to go on the bumper."
• "Her uterus is like a clown car."
• "Her va-jay-jay is a Greyhound!")

Why do we do this? And I'm not talking about making fun of Octomom. I know why we do that.

I've never been big fans of those "My son is an Honor Student..." stickers, or the big softballs with the kid's name and number on them, but at least I get that. They're hardly any more ridiculous than the UNC propaganda I paste on anything I drive. Little trinkets of personal flair, like the buttons on those TGIFriday's overalls. But these family stickers? Is it just 'cuz they're "cute"? 'Cuz they're not. And this isn't just an opinion. It's fact. Go ask God, and He'll quickly tell you that those stick figure families are stupid as hell.

Speaking of God, why is it that so many of the people who have those Christian fish symbols also have those bumper stickers that joke about killing people who drive too closely or offering to give up their guns once their hands are cold and dead? And why has this damn thing turned into a bad Andy Rooney column?

To be fair, my scooter is littered with Tar Heel propaganda, and it also has several other stickers, one promoting a microbrewery and two others promoting The Rescues and Cheap Trick, 'cuz I think I'm gonna put any stickers I get at concerts on the scooter. But with a scooter, the rules change. Everyone laughs at a scooter. You notice them, and you chuckle. So at that point, what dignity do I have left anyway? Might as well decorate the thing with amusing little details.

But that Honda Odyssey? That Land Cruiser? Those are just two more large vehicles puttering down the runway. No one cares, and no one wants to care. So your little family stickers start looking a sadly desperate, like a 49-year-old cougar who wears too much makeup and no panties.

Now, if a dude or dudette drove a Ferrari and had family stickers on the back of that bad boy? Totally acceptable.

Will Hoge. Scooter. Bad.

A new experiment for the song postings... please be patient with us/me.

All Night Long - Will Hoge (mp3)

I'm Sorry Now - Will Hoge (mp3)

In my whole miserable music-lovin' life, I've never seen one artist as many times as I've seen Will Hoge. I've seen Patty Griffin four times, Rush thrice, and U2 and the Indigo Girls twice. I've seen a whole shitload of people once. I've seen Hoge eight times.

I've taken my picture with the dude. He sat a row in front of me at the Ryman while we both wept and basked in the glow of Patty Griffin.At right, you can see how thrilled he was to be in the presence of my golden greatness.

To be fair, mine isn't a bona fide fan-obsessed following, although the picture might make you doubt that claim. I've seen him a lot because he's one of the few artists who regularly stops by Chattanooga and because his concerts are dirt cheap, usually running $15-20 if not less. For $15, Hoge puts on one serious show of energy, passion and talent. Hell, he even played the opening act at the school where I work. He opened for Vertical Horizon. They were on what increasingly looks to be the final tour of their existence, and their performance screamed their pending demise. By comparison, Hoge wowed the underage crowd with one serious, wall-crumbling rendition of "All Night Long," a cacophonous assault of a song about a teen grrl's rebellious youth. He repeated the line "She wears black lipstick... She's got a fake eye-deeeee" five times, just to get the kids all wound up.

Will frakkin' Hoge. He's stood up several times at the end of his concerts, not six feet from my presence, on a table in the middle of the crowd, to sing "Carousel" without any mike, without any instrumental back up, leaving a pin-drop silent crowd in awe, which ain't easy to do in the small drunken venues that are his specialty. He's sung "Woman Be Strong" like the bitch kicked him out that very afternoon.

So how spooky freaky ice in my veins chalkboard scratch down my spine is it when my wife informed me that Will Hoge was in a scooter accident that almost killed him last week.

You can read it straight from the horse's mouth on his web site. Or you can have the Cliff's Notes version: Scooter. Van. Crash. Hoge FUBAR.

"I'm Sorry Now," from his latest album Draw the Curtains, includes the very line for which our blog is named. (Even if it wasn't quite that intentional.)

Sometimes things are over,
Sometimes over doesn't last.
Sometimes i can't find my way back home
'Til the bottom of the glass.

Hoge became a first-time father just over a year ago, which makes his survival all the more emotional for me, having lost my own father when I was an infant.

Oh yeah, and one more thing that makes this story amazing: Neither Hoge nor the guy in the van that failed to yield were drunk. Or stoned. Or on any kind of illegal substance. Yes, a dude who fights for every penny he earns with his band, touring night after night so he can stay in his chosen line of work (and now, also support a family), actually travels from recording studio to home without being shitfaced drunk. You might not think it possible in the 21st century, but there you have it.

Both songs from Will Hoge are available on iTunes and Amazon.com's mp3 site, or you could even order directly from his site.

Recurring Scooter Thoughts

Hangman's Reel - Christie Burns + Butch Ross (mp3)
Flashlight Fight - The Go! Team (mp3)

Billy is away on vacation for nine days, but he will begin his two vacation musings with this reflection on Scooter Life.

Without question, the brain works differently on a scooter as opposed to inside the confines of an automobile. This is even more true when said individual is new to the scooting experience. Below are a collection of the Top Ten thoughts, realizations, notions, that sprout from my mind when I'm puttering around the town:

1. Bugs hitting your chest at 35 mph can leave a tiny welt. When they hit your face, it just itches.
2. People like talking to people on scooters. So far I've had at least six different cars, next to me at a stop light, ask me one question or another. Whatever innate mistrust or fear we have of strangers must be negated the pathetic harmlessness of riding a scooter. (I mean, whoever heard of someone conducting a drive-by on a scooter?)
3. Rain makes scootering more like an amusement park ride. Scarier, riskier, and more childish.
4. This thing really gets 80 mpg! This thing really gets 80 mpg!
5. I thought I'd miss A/C, but I don't. Even on 95-degree days with 100% humidity, the breeze is sufficient if you're not surrounded by metal and windows that have been simmering in the heat all day.
6. Whether you want to be, and whether you care, you are officially a member of the Sons and Daughters of Two-Wheeled Motor Vehicles. As such, you must acknowledge all of your brothers and sisters when passing them on the open road. The preferred greeting is a left hand, lowered to the waist, in a kind of ZZ Top send-off.
7. Rain also makes you blink a lot. I never knew I could blink that many times per minute.
8. Dust just doesn't taste very good. Not in any of its legion forms.
9. I'm much more attentive and alert to my surroundings and others on the road on a scooter. But that's 'cuz almost anything could kill or maim you.
10. I can scoot down to Starbucks, order a Grande Caramel Frappuccino, stick it in the little glove compartment, and it will make it all the way back to the office without spilling a drop! I can even do it with a White Chocolate Mocha without spilling more than a few drops! It's like that glove compartment was made for shuttling coffee!

"Flashlight Fight" is from The Go! Team's sophomore album, Proof of Youth. "Hangman's Reel" is from Christie Burns + Butch Ross' album Here to Play. Both are available as Amazon.com's mp3 downloads, or The Go! Team is at iTunes.

A Man Needs a Woman... Like a Swallow Needs A Scooter?

Closet - Pete Yorn (mp3)

Tony - Patty Griffin (mp3)

Rough Boys - Pete Townshend (mp3)

Last week was a very gay week for me. Over the weekend, I had a lengthy debate with a friend about homosexuality. Then my wife and I watched the latest episode of "30 Days," which focused on a woman vehemently opposed to gays adopting children living with two gay men and their four adopted children for a month.

The common realization in both is that beliefs about sexuality are tar babies (I use that in the sticky wicket sense, not the racial slur sense). I'm like the blissfully naive gay couple in the TV show, who sincerely believed if someone could just witness them -- their devotion to their adopted children, their love for one another that wasn't at all sleazy or bathhouse-inspired -- it would force a shift in prejudiced attitudes. But these beliefs rarely seem as malleable as we'd like to think they are.

The studies showing that homosexuality is linked to biology and genetics are piling up higher every year. Although there might be cultural or environmental factors, certain people are simply more inclined to be gay than others. To me these studies are simply confirming what I've anecdotally witnessed my whole life.

My friend disagrees. His argument is this, basically: (a) if it's hot and wet and you stick your dick in it, you will get off, so it's really a choice of which hot and wet places you find acceptable and which ones you don't. But it's a choice, regardless. And (b) just because studies show that some people are genetically inclined to find 7-year-olds sexually exciting doesn't make sex with children an acceptable lifestyle choice. We expect those people to either adjust themselves to our laws or suffer serious consequences. So why do we want to make it socially acceptable for one unnatural act and not another?

Considering that I don't get aroused at the thought of mounting a sheep, or at pictures of sheered sheep, or at videos of sheep doing it, and considering I don't get aroused looking at naked men, or the thought of a naked man mounting me or me him, or by watching naked men do it in any way, and considering that I get quite easily aroused when looking at an attractive woman in any number of stages of undress, and most definitely at the thought of sexual exploits with them... it doesn't feel much like a choice to me. (Not that, um, I look at pictures of women and stuff.)

I mostly think that "any hole will do" theory works only in prison or on deserted islands. But hell, even alone on that island Tom Hanks didn't try and rape Wilson. Or maybe they cut that part out of the final version.

An acquaintance of mine is most decidedly heterosexual by choice. Or, to put it another way, he's gay and in the closet. Let's call him Foster.

He in his 40s and has never been in a serious relationship. He will end his years on this earth as a single male, because the only choices in his mind are between Heaven & Hell. Foster could admit his homosexuality to himself, if not the rest of the planet, but to give that possibility any real estate in his thoughts would be sinful. So Foster will never know the love of a relationship based on sex and intimacy.

Maybe some people can joke to themselves, "What a lucky guy," 'cuz you think about all the crap and baggage we deal with in our intimate relationships. Just like Mariah Carey can talk about starving Somalians and say, "I'd love to be that thin, but not with all those flies and everything."

I'm calling him Foster because he is living an adopted life, a lie he hopes will keep his place in Heaven safe. Fortunately, he is so fanatically religious that sacrificing intimacy for his entire life isn't so bad. It's the much lesser of two evils, in his mind. A no-brainer.

But. If all we need, sexually speaking, is some place warm and damp and snug, then it would seem Foster has chosen the worst of all options. He has limited himself to warm locations in which he has no genuine interest. It's like me going to a Hummer dealer to buy parts for my scooter. And, when I realize they have no parts for my scooter, I just resign myself to not buying any scooter parts. Ever.

Except this is sex and intimacy. Which makes it a whole lot more fucking depressing than scooter parts.

Last week just made me kinda sad, because although gay rights are starting to make inroads, and progress is moving along slowly but surely, there are barriers that simply cannot be overcome in the perceptions of others. Most of them are religious, but not all. And although I used to believe that gay rights would be to the early 21st Century what civil rights were to the last 50 years, I'm starting to think gay rights won't get nearly the groundswell of protest or support, and the opposition won't fade into the shadows in quite the same fashion.

Some beliefs are so powerfully instilled in people that no amount of heartstring-tugging or anecdotal convincing or scientific research can sway them. We are a stubborn civilization in that regard, and it makes me sad.

"Closet" is from Pete Yorn's debut album Musicforthemorningafter. "Tony" is from Patty Griffin's rawkin' second album Flaming Red. "Rough Boys" is from Pete Townshend's 1980 album Empty Glass. The first two are available on iTunes or Amazon.com's mp3 site. "Rough Boys" is available only on iTunes.

Other songs I thought about but didn't include:

• Michael - Franz Ferdinand
  
  


• Mama I'm Strange - Melissa Etheridge


• Androgynous - Crash Test Dummies



• Androgyny - Garbage

Others that actually were hits:

• I Kissed a Girl - Jill Sobule
  
  


• We Are the Champions - Queen
  
  


• Lola - The Kinks
  
  


• Freedom - George Michael
  
  


• Stand By Your Man - Lyle Lovett
  
  


• Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover - Sophie B. Hawkins
  
  


• Relax - Frankie Goes to Hollywood
  
  

Zoom Zoom

Fat Bottom Girls - Antigone Rising (mp3)

Motorcycle Drive-By - Third Eye Blind (mp3)

Got a little nippy going through the pass, eh Har?

Yup. Just call me Scooter.

After four years of oft-contemplation, two years of yearning, and six months of gas prices so aggravating and criminal that I could no longer stomach paying $50+ to fill up a f#*king Honda Civic -- uh, that's FIVE iTunes albums, for those who track their spending by the album -- I bit the bullet and bought a scooter.

Weeks of research, a visit to a local scooter dealer, and heavy scouring of the Craigslist both here and in surrounding cities, finally led me on Saturday to Acworth, Georgia, on the outskirts of Atlanta. There, I took a big gulp, forked over something shy of $2,000, and drove back to Chattanooga with my uncle as the proud owner of a 2001 Yamaha Riva 125cc.

For those of you ignorant of scooter culture -- and who could blame you -- "125cc" means "fast enough to stay out of trouble, and slow enough to stay out of trouble." It tops out at just under 60 mph, and I'm not required by TN law to get a motorcycle license, because it's just that pathetic. But it also gets, supposedly, 80 mpg. Hell, even if it's 7-10 mpg shy of that, that still means more than triple the in-town gas mileage of my Civic.

In other words, everytime I would need to fill up my Civic, this Riva will save approximately $100 in gas. OK, but since I still occasionally need to drive the car, let's just say the scooter will save me, oh, $75 a month in gas. In other words, the scooter needs only survive for two years to pay for itself.

And scooters are making the news in spades. Here's a CNN story. Here's an NPR story. Here's another. And another. Although this has been on my mind a while, I can't exactly claim my purchase is boldly going where no man has gone before.

The decision to Scooterize myself was made somewhat easier by the fact that, whatever the Dork Factor of riding a scooter might be, I'm pretty much already peaked out on the Dork-o-Meter, unless, like Nigel Tufnel's amps, the Dork-o-Meter goes to 11.

I was the last person to throw away my Jams. I have been photographed wearing wife-beaters in the past year. I truly love Hawaiian shirts. The only thing I don't do is wear colored socks with my shorts, but that's mostly because it's due to come back into fashion.

No amount of Gooberphobia can negate my ability to buy five more albums a month with the gas I save. Hell, this afternoon I learned I can comfortably and perfectly fit two Starbucks Caramel Frappuccinos in the front compartment, transport them 2.4 miles, and deliver them with nary a spill. And last night I drove downtown, picked up two pizzas and two salads to go, and delivered them back home in mint condition.

Go ahead and laugh, but I'm in love.

My first act to celebrate my financially ingenious decision will probably be to purchase the new Hold Steady album. But first I have to go fill up my 1.7-gallon tank. Or, in car language, I gotta spend $7 for my next 140 miles or so.

Thpttt!

"Fat Bottom Girls" is from the album Say It An-Tig-Uh-Nee. I got this from a friend's CD mix, and I can't find it on iTunes or Amazon.com. "Motorcycle Drive-By" is from Third Eye Blind's first album, 3eb. It's available in the usual places.