funny or sad


imagine, in spite of surrounding yourself with all sorts of greatness, in spite of being in and around one of the most popular rock bands of a generation, you are known in the minds of most adults my age for one super-blunder. imagine throwing a big, heavy bass way up in the air during the mtv music video awards in 1992. you've thrown and caught your bass too many times to count, but this time you miss. imagine it hits you in the forehead, knocking you silly. you would say in interviews after the fact that you were fine, just playing when you stumbled off-stage and into infamy. imagine all of the shows you played, records you created and lives you changed, you with your band and your influence, but all anyone remembers is that time when you let your bass smash your face. you've just imagined my memory of krist novoselic.

i laid on the couch this afternoon watching a horribly frustrating documentary on kurt cobain. for over an hour i waited to see the face responsible for the interviews that i was hearing cuts and pastes from, but all i received were images from cobain's past, towns he lived in, people he may have passed on the street. maybe i was missing the point. maybe it was more arty than i was in the mood for. maybe all i wanted was to see cobain talking. but since i couldn't see him, my mind wandered through my own memories of the band and the way it had influenced me during my middle and high school years. maybe that was the director's point. if so, screw him. i hated his movie.

i do love the contradiction in metaphor that novoselic always was for fans of the band. it didn't help matters that he always wore kind of a dumb look on his face, let cobain do most of the talking in band interviews, loped around the stage like he was only into playing about half the set. the one time i saw nirvana in person, i found myself amazed at how little fun the bassist seemed to be having. i remember my friends and i talking about it afterwards. then again, we were young and our expectations were that this life that this band was living was the ultimate. who wouldn't want to tour the country, tour the world, and play music every night? well, come to find out, as a unit, nirvana didn't more than they did. as people, they got along and understood themselves and their sum to be greater than their personality quirks and conflicts. they made great music with hooks to spare and found themselves in the rare air of pop-culture immortality. and together, they will always be remembered for what they were. a band whose fame transcended even their way-better-than-average talent, just so happened to be in the right place at the right time, and fell predictably into the cautionary tale category.

singularly, they were much less interesting. and singularly, they are annoying. cobain's backstory never really did it for me. the tale of hardship and angst and life on the outskirts rang all too familiar, but the fact that he gave up on it all completely lost me. dave grohl found his own voice, i guess, tried his hardest and continues to find fame with his very lame rock band. i attempted to like foo fighters. i really did. i just couldn't. i just can't. they're too much "i've heard every one of these songs before" and the only time i find them entertaining is when they are playing some stadium-massive charity event and, for schtick's sake, grohl climbs behind the kit and bangs away at his drums. out of the three, nowadays, i find novoselic's story the most intriguing, only because it is the most tragic in my opinion.

one fuck-up. one moment in time. one time he threw a bass up in the air and missed it. one time, as far as i know, it hit him on the head. and because of that one time, he's forever labeled as a goof. not worth our time. not worth our attention. no longer immortal. for once and for all, just like us.

when things like his "moment" go down and when they happen to the people that find their way into our life or conscious, you find yourself into one of two groups. the first? the group, like sixteen year-old me in 1992, that laughs, points fingers and completely dismisses the rest of his or her life as a joke at worst, at best not credible. the other? the group capable of empathy, realizing that we are all a joke at our worst and at our best, we are not very credible.

sitting here sixteen years later, i want to believe that most of the time i am in that second group. i caution my staff all the time to look at the context and not the clue. see the bigger picture. the customer isn't an asshole, he or she is just having a bad day.

laying on the couch today, i was reminded otherwise. during my most instinctive moments, i think i am still very much in the first group. i still think of that bass hitting his head and laughing. i still remember that time you talked about me and you didn't know what the shit you were talking about . i still dwell on that time i thought you forgot about me. and most of what you say to me must fight it's way through a very defensive filter before i let you back in.

this is something i'll keep working on.