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Philadelphia Folksong Society House Concert gets a shot of DORK

Philadelphia Folksong Society House Concert gets a shot of DORK
I'm playing a PFS house concert in Elkins Park PA, y'know the suburb with all the Jews. It's this saturday, June 21st 2008  at 8PM. You should come, it will make you feel good.

Hello Dorkateers;

i want to ask you all something.

have any of you noticed that as laura kightlinger ages, those sexy facial anomalies are exaggerating and kind of making her look like rocky dennis. I've always had a bit of a thing for Ms. Kightlinger and her sarcastic and ambiguous sexuality, and at first i was really kind of disappointed to see her Craniodiaphyseal Dysplasia progressing, but then, i found the bright side. Can you think of anything hotter than Laura Kightlinger making out with a teenage Laura Dern? yeah, i can too, but it takes some imagination. but really i'm not here to talk about Mask, despite the fact that they've written a musical, (The part i was born to play?) what i really wanna say is...

I have around 8 or so dear dear friends whom i've known since high school.* These are my boys, and i care very deeply about most of them. I prefer and cherish many of them over those with whom i share a genetic codex and behavioral idiosyncrasies. But i come not to praise my boys, but to bury them.**

These boys and i have a shared history that is vast and eclectic. It was jeff woodside and i who discovered our first girlie mag in the dumpster in the back of the bowling alley at tudor square. it was an old copy of OUI*** I do believe that there was also a copy of "High Society" in the dumpster, and though we had less trouble with its pronunciation, it did indeed mislead us greatly on the wardrobe, makeup, and leisure time predilections of the upper classes. With Jeff i also smoked my first (and last) cigarette. having found a few in a pack on the ground somewhere; whichever Marlboro's come in the gold box.

You see, my deep bond with these special boys# is indeed a friendship, but it is one built on a stronger foundation than that of love and respect and all that girly crap. You see, me and the boys, we had an irrational fear of each other's derision.

It goes like this.
Our prime commonality is that we were all cast-offs, Mike and Vince ran track but were never quite accepted into the order of the jockstrap. Jon, kind of sang with the choir, but also published an underground newspaper. He also felt about Ronald Reagan the same way his contemporaries felt about Duran Duran. Tom liked video games## but didn't look good enough in the flannel or all black to fit in with those boys. Chris=Artfag, and so on#@.

so we found ourselves at the lunch table time forgot, happy to not be eating alone. This however led to leisure time conflict. Like a school of herring or a swarm of wildebeest or 7 of Nine, we knew### of the comfort of the collective. And so, on weekends, each of us would throw his lot in with the others and end up doing plenty of stuff that would never make the top of our favorites list, secure in the knowledge, that, in turn,our day would come.

And that's how i spent more nights than i care to remember, at Pulsations 18-24 night being repeatedly rebuffed by girls who (rightly) saw my moves and opted to dance with each other. That's how i became actually sort of good at walleyball. That's how I saw the Hooters play a Concert at the Willow Grove Mall. That's how I am going white water rafting in a month,*#. All Nude strip clubs**#, midnight whitecastle sorties, Live Aid, And i'd appreciate it if you wouldn't mention you saw me at Wrestlemania VI. And yes, that's how i, from the cheap seats, saw terry mullholland pitch his no-no at the Vet.

Our formula was simple, you would propose an activity, and a few of your like minded compadres would get behind it. There were of course the nattering Naybobs who balked with excuses, and fear-mongering, (more often than not there was parental#@@ forbiddance behind their dug in heels) but all of this was surmountable. Surmountable with ease and aplomb. The Nuclear option was used sparingly, but fearlessly when necessary. If a particular fellow were to really try to put his foot down, his buddies, we merry band of brothers, would, if need be...call him a pussy**##

After about Two or three volleys, you could practically hear his young resolve crack as it had so many times before. usually something like "Well, i don't know. How much will this cost?" or an "Ok, I'm not saying yes, but what time will we be home?" at that point, you might as well grab yer fake ID and start the car, it was over.

If i was friends with hemmingway, he would say that this bull had been weakened by the picadors and now the gold embroidered matador was there to harvest the ears and tail.^

I'm not defending the method, I'm defending the outcome. This twisted little society can be likened to Saddam's Iraq, or the LDS. Sure, it's a fucked up way to go through life, but as a community, it functions.

well it did function until the day Chris www.christohphermccauley.com pissed in the punchbowl.

i would guess that we were about 24 or so, maybe a little older, and we felt like going to get a beer. If Jon or I had initiated, we would often suggest the Amber Inn, it was trashy, had Honey brown on tap, and perhaps, most importantly it was across the street from our respective houses. We were often flexible on location and would happily move our rendezvous point to somewhere more central, if it meant saving the nuclear option for another day.

but on this particular day, Chris didn't want to go out. I forget the event to which we needed to drag him. but he really didn't want to go out. with Jon on the phone, and me in the room with Jon, we both nodded our approval, like two generals carrying the briefcase with the codes. We turned our keys and telling chris that he had brought this on himself, we let him know that his ass's continued contact with his own couch would indeed, make him a...Pussy.

we paused...

and that's when it happened. like the shot at lexington and concord. or the warsaw ghetto uprising, or that chinese guy in front of the tank. Chris said. "I don't care if you think I'm a pussy, I'm staying in tonight"

You don't care?!
you CANT not care!

with those three words, he had destroyed all we had built over two decades.

soon, guys were not caring, 5,6,7 times in a row.

then the wives got hip.

they would say things like, "if you go out, you'll not only be avoiding getting called one, but you'll be avoiding getting called into one." Powerful rhetoric indeed.

A few of us old timers tried to tow the hard line. practice what we preached, but as with all relationships, lack of reciprocity breeds discontent and soon, our once great civilization stood occupied by invaders, call them Vandals, Visigoths, Jedis, US Marines, Wives and Children, the writing is on the wall. the empire is in decline.

so with not much else to do on weekends, i ended up taking to the world of folk music and now i have some shows. especially this really cool benefit for the philadelphia folksong society on saturday 6/21.

and let me say this.

you should come, cause if you don't....you'll be a Pussy.

seriously, if you want to make it, go here

http://www.pfstuneup.org/tuneup/TuneUp_2008-June.pdf#June_House_Concert

or here

http://www.pfs.org/PFS.php

and read the details.

i'd love to see you there. I'll also be debuting my new lovesong/broadside. "The Ballad of John McCain" Its about...three minutes long.

adam



*many, since Jr. High, and One since Grade school

** well not all of them. mostly chris, but I'm getting ahead of myself

***pronounced by discerning 11 year olds; Long O, Long E.

# and by boys i mean aging men

## if you could call them that back then

#@ me, i shopped at chess king, any questions?

###or Gnu (HA!)

*# and pretending i don't know the guitar part to dueling banjos

**# please don't ever ask me what a butt hug is

##@ or later, spousal

**## ok, look, i know that over 1/2 of you on this list are all to ready to claim, (and thus reclaim) that a Pussy is in fact not a term of derision, but of Power and fuckingawesomeness. Yes, i agree, those things are amazing, they are actually without hyperbole, the best things in the whole wide world., i could go on all day. But as Harry Belafonte (or perhaps bobby weir) said "the women are smarter, that's right" so if you could let me skate on the term, this one time, you'll see, I'm actually trying to make a broader point. I thank you.

^ Then he'd get drunk on ouzo and try to blow or punch us.