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In which Young Southpaw posits that Stephen Hawking must have been touched by the hand of Van Halen’s Fair Warning.
Taking in the nature of water, snow, Boston Celtics, Celtic Frost, TLC, a vast array of alcoholic beverages, Van Hagar, snake wine, and the film Titanic.
“Welcome to this third installment of The Young Southpaw Part Of An Hour. I hope you meditated on my koan from last time, you know. The water implied in that Melissa Etheridge song was of course, you know the Moon. You know, by the light of the Moon that she’s singin’ like that. All full of feelin’ and stuff. You know, the Moon controls the tides so Boom, there ya go…
Well there I was you know… Wait, now what did I wanna talk about now? Oh yeah, another water song… You know that one by TH, TLC… what was I thinkin’ of? ‘Don’t Go Chasin’ Waterfalls’? Well I mean I love TLC, you know. Saw em live at the Boston Garden, back right after a snowstorm. Snow was piled real high outside the cars. Well not that high, ‘pretty’ high, you know it was January. But one time I was in Boston – I wasn’t livin’ there anymore – went up to visit after the blizzard of 2013 and the snow was piled over the cars. It was 7 feet tall, it was insane. The snow coulda played for the Celtics, you know like that band Celtic Frost. Then there’d be the issue though of the way you pronounce the ‘C’ – hard or soft – like tacos you know. And then maybe an issue about Celtic Frost being a Canadian metal band and not technically in the National Basketball Association. Now wait just a second, Celtic Frost were Swiss, I’m thinkin’ of Voivod. They’re from Canada, you know like the Expos and Toronto Blue Jays. But those are baseball teams not basketball, but you just add a K and a T to baseball and voila, as they say in the French speakin’ parts. That’s a hard K like in Celtic Frost and not like Boston Celtics. But you know all that snow kinda relates to the song I wanna talk about… because… if the snow starts meltin’ real fast we would be getting’ some waterfalls, you know…
But my problem is – and again don’t get me wrong – nothin’ against THC, but ‘don’t go chasin’ waterfalls’ I mean, ya know… Waterfalls don’t move, you know. It’s always in the same exact geographical location. I mean the water moves. I mean if it said don’t go chasin’ the water in waterfalls, you know. It would kinda make sense. But I mean don’t go chasin’ water anywhere. I mean the water’s fallin’ but it’s still movin’ like it’s in a river or something, you know. I mean Stone Roses had that song ‘Waterfall’, that was real good, you know, I love that first Stone Roses album…
But uh you know, uh, I just don’t understand. That song, the THC one, was a huge hit. But it’s not gonna scan if you say ‘don’t go chasin’ the water in waterfalls’ cause you repeat water, sayin’ it twice, you know. That’s kinda redundant, not an oxymoron like, like I said it wasn’t in that first episode. Anyway I remember seein’ them at the Boston Garden, this was in January, then when my birthday rolled around in April I had my birthday cd shopping list and I had, well I think I had T Boz’s solo record on there. Already owned that crazy CrazySexyCool album, and you know what? I even had the Ain’t Too Proud To Beg cassingle cassette when it came out, you know, two spools one tape little cardboard box, heck of a long thing to name a product… But you know, I had that album on my birthday shopping list and I went to my birthday party and someone saw it and they were joshin’ me about it and I stood up and just said ‘I love THC’…
But I didn’t have as much of a problem with the Waterfalls song then as I do now. Now that I’ve had decades to reflect on it. You know years go by, flowin’ like the sands of time, like the water in a waterfall…like the liquid in a waterfall. That’d be an even worse song title – don’t go chasin’ the liquid in waterfalls. Might get confusin’. I mean people dump their, well people pee in water. That’s inappropriate to have a pop song on the radio like that… Except first time I was ever in Sweden… you know, we were sittin’ at some café listenin’ to the P3 POP radio show. Turned it on, wanted to hear that rock stone ‘cherry vanilla’ single and you know, first song we done gone hear is ‘pissing on the panda’…which blew my mind, still blows my mind, I mean that’s hilarious…
But anyway, you know, people it’s, you say liquid that’s a bit too vague cause you know people gonna be dumpin’ some beer, throwin their empties in with liquid. The water could go in the hole at the top of the can you know where you press that thing it opens and you drink the beer out of it. Throw it away there’s prolly a little bit a beer left in it… People be…people be…throwing that in the water, you know. It mixes in with the water, will flow with the waterfall, same thing you throw a rum bottle or a vodka bottle or a whisky bottle a gin bottle a champagne bottle a red wine bottle a white wine bottle a rosé wine bottle…a jenever bottle a Cointreau bottle an Armagnac bottle a cognac bottle a sake bottle a snake wine bottle – do they even have snake wine bottles? But uh, I think you get the point… And I’m sayin’ the liquid will mix in and then come out or maybe the whole bottle, you know the cichasa bottle the slivowitz bottle the lambiek bottle, the bourbon bottle – double B! – the Kirschwasser bottle the ouzo bottle the tequila bottle the poteen bottle the absinthe bottle the brandy bottle – another double B! quadroop! – the Old Krupnik bottle the Mad Dog bottle the Nighttrain bottle – GNR you know… Maybe the whole bottle just goes flowin over the waterfall. Don’t go chasin’ that, it’s litter it’s already been thrown out, why’d you chase it?… Unless you wanna recycle it like some eco warrior…I mean that’s…laudable... But you know why don’t you just wait at the bottom of the waterfall like with some giant net you know like the one Van Halen didn’t have on their live video video tape. You know VHS, you’ve got the Van Halen initials right in there, I’ve said it before you know with Sammy, it’s actually Van Hagar, let’s be honest, but initials stay the same… But when he first joined the band they had Live Without A Net recorded live in New Haven, CT… they opened with a Sammy Hagar song, There’s Only One Way To Rock and they’re runnin around, Eddie just smilin’, Sammy’s playin’ guitar on a few songs. They covered Led Zeppelin’s Rock N Roll you know ‘been a long time’ etc. It was real excitin’, wish I had seen that show… I never saw em with Hagar, I never saw em with Roth back in the day but my very first concert was Roth’s Eat Em And Smile tour Cinderella opening. They had that Night Songs you know, stage all dark and purple, you know what Cinderella song I always liked was that Shelter Me from the third album… But that’d be weird if they opened for Dave and Van Hagar, that never happened, I wonder if there was any band that ever did… I mean it’d be weird but prolly not that important in the brief history a time as Stephen Hawking might say, you know… I mean, I wonder if he ever saw Van Halen. I mean he must’ve, to be a genius like that I think you must be touched by the hand of ‘Fair Warning’… I don’t know, I’m not Stephen Hawking…
…But maybe he knows about snake wine. I mean I’m sure it’s in a bottle, have to be to ferment… Unless you do it in a bathtub and then once it’s ready people just come like pigs to a trough and lap it up. I guess you can tell I’ve never had snake wine before, never even seen it in the movies… Or maybe I have, I can’t remember every single scene a every single movie I’ve even seen. I coulda got up to use the facilities come back and when I asked what’d I miss no one wanted to tell me there were a bunch a people hovering and slurping over a bathtub full a fermented dead snakes… Or maybe they use straws. If they were real long straws it’d be a whole lot more civilized…
And speakin’ a civilized you’d think they woulda changed the name of iceberg lettuce after the Titanic happened… I mean I guess farmers can be insensitive just like anyone else… Or maybe the farmers don’t care and it’s the agricultural marketing people… And I guess agricultural marketing people can be insensitive just like anyone else… I mean they prolly don’t mean to be insensitive… Now I gotta go look see if there are any books detailing the long sordid history of the name of iceberg lettuce… But then again you woulda thought they woulda changed the name of the movie Titanic after the Titanic happened… But those Hollywood people I guess, well, they’re not just like anyone else but insensitivity knows no bounds. And who knows where the line between agricultural marketing and blockbuster films begins and ends… I surely don’t. If it hasn’t kept me awake at night before it sure may well do now… Not to end this on a sour note and I don’t mean to be distressin’ y’all… Go listen to some TLC, that Boston Garden show was real good… So until next week, have yourselves a fine one”