Distraction 2011 – By LT Woodward

I can’t come up with a Pop Culture Top 10 of 2011. I paid no attention this year, due to extenuating circumstances.

My most memorable pop music experience occurred in April as I drove around my home town (Rochester, NY) the week of my mother’s funeral while the radio played the same songs it had played 30 years ago during my senior year of high school: The Cars, Cheap Trick, Steve Miller, Boston… turn the car off, we’re here.

Can that even be possible? It wasn’t an oldies station, or maybe it was always already an oldies station. There’s a reason they call it Classic Rock. Or did time warp and send me back to high school? My dad died junior year, so it was fitting hearing those songs, in that place, again.

Anyway, that’s the having parents part of life done now. I am not a parent myself, and so my question is: what next?

I didn’t sleep well all year. I woke up on the sofa in the middle of the night on a regular basis. One night SNL was on and this band Lady Antebellum (who, trust me, I had NEVER heard of) were playing. They’re soap opera pretty, with harmonies so sweet they don’t even seem human. Talk about an earworm.

Do you not find, every single time you hear a new band, that your first thought is about which old band they remind you of? These folks reminded me a bit of Fleetwood Mac, only, you know, cleaner.

Weird Life Note: the people I went to high school with and haven’t seen in 30 years (apart from Facebook) had more to say about my mom’s passing than most (though not all) of the people I’ve lived and worked with the last 20 years. That may be an East Coast/West Coast thing. Not sure.

I spent a lot of time in airplanes and hanging around O’Hare Airport this year. Listening to anything via headphones brings on a headache, so I was a prisoner of Headline News. However, I did notice a pop culture (if foodies are part of pop culture) innovation at O’Hare: Rick Bayless has a torta stand. And it’s right next to McDonalds. And the tortas are huge, spendy, and tasty.

My 2011 music purchases: Sex with an X by the Vaselines (at the Electric Fetus in Duluth, Minnesota—you should go there), Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables by the Dead Kennedys (a gift), and Entertainment! by Gang of Four (also a gift).

Best fiction read: Absurdistan (2006) by Gary Shteyngart.

Best non-fiction read: Nine Lives (2009) by William Dalrymple.

Best Movie: Beginners (2010).

Best TV: The new BBC Sherlock (2010) Season One.

That’s a strange list: paranoia; the inevitability of the impossible; the impossibility of the inevitable; and the hapless stumble toward…I was going to say the meaning of life, but I think I’m going to have to wait and see.

Hope you are well and looking forward to the holidays!

Peace,

– LT Woodward

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L–EsEiA3ec