Freitag, 30. August 2013

NO BONUS II/VI

By JAKOB SNOREWELL

I
Here I gotta make a parenthesis in this story to state I was born in the early seventies, and by 1986, aside of classical composers (what my mom had brought to my plate, quite systematically since I was a toddler) and The Beatles (which was what my younger aunties had in store for me, all the original vinyl’s –including the forbidden meat-and-doll-parts cover of a rarities collection named "Yesterday And Today", which, when e-bay got invented I saw priced in many many many moneys but by then may the devil know where my evil aunties or the record were– and which my dad had the patience to record on tape for me), and as actually most all the eighties pop-music from the radio ran like water off a duck's back from my brain because I was, back then, seemingly immune to the embrace of muzak, I had listen to no pop until an Argentinean guy in who's restaurant I ended up working (I was 14, the restaurant opened in the corner of my house, and I was a nosey teenager, specially around an Argentinean parrillada, so I ended up being some sort of joke-spewing mascot and catching pieces of beef as reward) had been introduced to British pop music by a friend he had made, of all places, fighting the Falklands War against England in the Patagonia, took me to his home and showed me The Cure's Pornography, The Smiths first album, Depeche Mode's Speak & Spell and U2's The Unforgettable Fire (then he also taped them for me, although not as professionally as my dad had taped The Beatles) and from that first batch of pop music I ever heard, the only item I didn't immediately engage with –not at all– was U2.

Dienstag, 13. August 2013

NO BONUS I/VI

By JAKOB SNOREWELL

I was in New York and had to make a delivery of a roll of fabric into a Chelsea building where there is a few floors of upholstery businesses –you know, the kind of shop where they use fabric to wrap furniture in it, that's called upholstery. It was late autumn of 2010 –and at this point in the story you must be told I've got a thermostat problem with my body and so have been known for my saying, albeit not-so-true: "Will wear a jacket when it snows"– so I'm walking around mid-November in windy-town-Chelsea with a 60 yard roll of fabric on my shoulder and wearing no more than a t-shirt and jeans, about to get into the building when I see this cute blonde and a fat man smoking a cigarette outside the main entrance, and the fat guy's wearing nothing but a short-sleeve Hawaiian shirt and the girl, also, is looking a bit underdressed for the weather, but neither one seems cold, and instead they seem excited, smoking, trying to be cool, looking summery, and anyway, what they were wearing is not important except for the fact that it made me notice them before entering the building, the cute blondy and the big fat guy. Then I go in, say hello to the doorman –a Caribbean guy with awful machete scars all over his head and part of his face whom, later I got to know this, also writes love poems to the good-looking Colombian woman who runs the upholstery shop I was delivering to, on the seventh floor– and head for the elevator, door opens, I walk in, push seven and, as the door closes, retreat into the far corner, but then the door does not close: two hands in a weird reverse-clap position enter the gap between the metallic doors just before the two sides meet, it's the hands of the fat guy in the Hawaiian shirt, who then proceeds to push the doors back into the open position, enters the blond, Bono from U2, the fat guy and the door closes.