A Rock and Roll Christmas

The Rolling Stones play Paint it Black from a recent tour (well, recent by their standards, like, in the past ten years)... they really have gone down hill, Mick Jagger sounds like some jerk off the street that has just walked in and started singing karaoke. Before that it was No Doubt before their superstar album, Tragic Kingdom when they fancied themselves a ska band with a song called OI! to the World back when Gwen Stefane wore those mid to late 90s super baggy pants with a wallet chain that reached her knee. I liter never seems like much like say in a plastic bottle or some such container designed to carry soda or milk.. Now a westside sign waves in the air to an unbeknownst to me until now pseudo boy group's song Cupid's Chokehold, you know that song that goes ´take a look at my girlfriend shes the only one I got not much of a girlfriend never seem to get a lot´... anyway, until that is you order a liter beer in one of those German style mugs that are a workout just to lift it to your thirsty maw... then a liter seems like a lot. A german man with curly greasy hair to his shoulders, glasses sliding down his slick nose, is singing along to, now Iron Maiden, while his date watches the screen in the mild amusement that doubles as mild impatience. Thinking about it I realize that I have been guilty of that look on more occasions than I care to count. I can't help but wonder if my friends have noticed and have seen it as patronizing and/or condescending. I find myself wishing for/fantasizing about being a spy in this place, pretending to write in this journal but actually sending highly confidential data to headquarters. In this fantasy world, I await my partner, a sensuous curvy Spanish woman named some shit like Emerelda to arrive with our next mission, our relationship strictly platonic despite an obvious high level of sexual tension between us. As I walk to the bathroom, of course scanning the available exits, I tag small surveillance devices to underneath tables. I do this everywhere I go, expanding the ever-growing eyes and ears of my prescient organization. These devices also, with a high frequency transmission destroy any biological evidence of my presence, fingerprints, hair folicles, dead skin cells, oils, pheromones after I leave when I press a button on my watch.

We choose the Hard Rock Cafe as a rendezvous point on Christmas, because obviously no self respecting criminal mastermind would set foot in such a pedestrian establishment, especially on a holy day as this, our lord and savior's birthday (in my spy world, the criminal masterminds are always in cahoots with the vatican, that penultimate of criminal mastermind organizations. I'm not being blasphemous, what better of a disguise than the Catholic church?).

Yes, I am in the Hard Rock Cafe in Munich on Christmas. I was dropped off a couple of hours ago, dropped off my pack at the empty dormroom and set out in search of life and love and laughs, and this is what I found. You would think that in Munich of all places, you would be able to find a regular bar to have a couple beers at, let alone a normal restaurant to eat at, but after a couple hours of searching, walking randomly around the city center, I decided to just settle on the Hard Rock Cafe. It also didn't help that virtually nothing is open here on Christmas day.

I am finding a wonderful absurdity to being at this establishment on Christmas. Instead of my family, I am spending xmas with Roger Waters's guitar, a portrait of Phil Collins staring extremely intently at me (does he have any other way he stares?), Lenny Kravitz's guitar... countless other rock stars' guitars, and a drumset that says 'Dope' above me... is that a band? Also a very generic looking Christmas tree by the door. I wonder why they didn't do a rock and roll themed Christmas tree. A place where when you descend the stairs to the bathrooms, all of the tiles are diagonal which adds to the affect the music creates by sounding like it is underwater. Whether this is purposeful or not, I cannot say. Where even some of the music that I love turns out had some of the worst music videos I have ever seen (the 80s and 90s really did butcher a great deal of artistic expression) and realize also that this decade, whatever it is called, is not looking much better. Where I realize that, as much as I don't want to be a music nazi, and want to be able to find something enjoyable either intellectually or viscerally, it doesn't matter which (though not ironically, it is a tired cliche to have ironic love for a music you cannot stand, its patronizing and obnoxious (which could be the most elitist thing of all)), I just cannot identify with a vast portion of music that is out there. A place where thoughts like, 'I wonder what Pink's target audience is...' cross my mind. Ah shit. I gotta get out of here. These two liters of beer are going straight to my holiday head.

Merry Christmas.