Friday, June 19, 2009

"The Last American in Brooklyn"










Well it sure feels that way sometimes. Mind you I'm all for the Cosmopolitan way. It's just I miss hearing standard English sometimes.

I was walking along in my native town when I realized I hadn't heard my own language in I dunno when. Oh sure any number of dialects from the universe of languages. Just not mine.

I'm not being xenophobic,...I think. I'm just homesick for the United States of America is all. I'm feeling what an expat might sense after a while. That otherness thing. However I'm feeling it perhaps a mile from where I grew up.

I hear that Berlin, Hamburg, London, and a few other Cosmo capitals are much the same. The native cultures have disappeared into the mix.

I suppose this sort of thing explains them New Jersey bigots back in the 90's. Them nazi shits that Paki bashed or used to till they were eventually out numbered by Pakis, Indians, the Chinese, and Mexicans.

I guess I'm a bigot too.

Only a nicer bigot. I'd never hassle anyone. I like folks. Well,...um, I do kind'a put up a bit of a fight for the flag in my own way.

In my apartment building there's alot of music. Mexican, Haitian, and some stuff I can't figure,...Romanian?

Anyway lately when I'm being bombarded by Mexican rock or Romanian hip hop I blast back with Hendrix, and the Beatles. Would that 'all' ethnic wars were thus fought.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

'No', that stuff the tourists from Nebraska speak don't count.

Really?

Why is that?

You pine for 'American' and then put down a really, genuinely 'American' place? Weird.

I'm a little tired of metro-cool put-downs like that.

Sorry (not, really) but you pushed a button.

Franz

Zaek said...

Hendrix! Yeah!

Stan said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Bodmin said...

Since I first heard it, this is the only version of the American anthem I've been able to stand listening to: its tortured chords and screams perfectly represent what America was in the Nixon/Vietnam era when he first performed it, and things only got worse thereafter, particularly the last decade, when Nixon-era shit like Cheney and Rumsfeld returned to finish the job of world domination and the destruction of liberty and justice.

Zaek said...

You said it Bodmin. Not that I claim to enjoy the tortured chords and screams - I prefer Hendrix's standard songs like Purple Haze - but they do sum up the political picture nicely. I'd forgotten about Cheney & Co. being Nixon era trash. My impression is that Nixon would have liked to make the country as awful as it is now but was caught in time, unlike his successors.

Zaek said...

Oh, and let's not forget that for people like us the time since that performance has also seen the systematic destruction of anything like a pursuit of happiness. Not that we can forget it, even when we want to.

Uncle Sydney 2012 said...

Dear Franz,

I am so sorry to have offended you. Yeah it's my on going world view of urban obliviousness.


....ahem, what my client 'meant' to say was...

I guess what I meant by the whole post was that I miss the 1950's, 60's Brooklyn I grew up in.

This is a common problem for us that live in international cities.

One culture supplants another from generation to generation.

I always thought that there was an error at dispatch when I was born in New York.

I was supposed to be born in an unchanging quiet little town in the Canadian Northwest Territory,...the Gay part.

I think this explains alot about me.

Uncle Sydney 2012 said...

I was just reading the post again. Yeah that "Nebraska" thing was un-cool.

I edited it out.

Thanks for pointing the nasty gaff out me.

Mind you with other stuff I'm being nasty on purpose, but the oblivious crap ain't cool.

Peace.

Anonymous said...

Apology accepted.

I think it's really hateful when Letterman and O'Brien make their wisecracks about other parts of the country that are not as oh-so-kewl as NYC or the other arrogant, self-regarding "centers of the universe."

Thanks for the consideration.

And BTW, I really like the horsies in the VW. Hey! They deserve a neat ride, too.

Bodmin said...

A better reason for hating grass-roots Americans - just in time for the 233rd celebration of the Land of Liberty and Justice for All:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8110356.stm