A simple question: When are we going to start controlling the weather? Would it be that difficult? I ask because this summer I spent 10 days at the beach, and on seven of them pesky local clouds kept the sun from doing its job and shining on me. This is highly inefficient by the standards of the United States tourism industry. You think it’s beyond our capability? Fifty years ago that’s what the cynics of the world might have said about Gawker and Lindsay Lohan. If they could have imagined them.
Anyway, it was good to get away, to, very simply, not be at the office. I had a view of the ocean—as well as the rain that pelted it mercilessly—and an even less cool car than last time: a Kia Rio that I doubt could have stood up to a deer in the headlights. It was tremendous. Here are a few other highlights before we leave the summer behind and get down to the tennis business that awaits us.
—Sighted on the beach: A kite in the shape of a shark. This was tempting fate too much for me. I moved away.
—Overheard on the beach: As a mother and her grown daughter walked by, mom gave her this advice: “I know it’s bad, but you just have to wait until he’s in the shower and go through his stuff. But make sure you put everything back the way it was.”
—Witnessed on the beach: A kid, maybe 10 years old, who was there with four adult women, would periodically walk off by himself with a paddle and ball, which he hit up in the air over and over. When he missed, he would take a second, turn the paddle over, and play a little air guitar on it. He got into it, head-banging, strutting, even baring his teeth. I was waiting for him to stick out his tongue and raise his hand with his index finger and pinkie up, but apparently he’s a nice kid and doesn’t worship the devil. I started to laugh, until I remembered: I’ve been there. I’m not sure what song he was pretending to sing; at his age, mine might have been “Hot Blooded” by Foreigner. I don’t think I ever worshipped the devil either, though I may have considered it in the early days of Motley Crüe.
—Read on the beach:Fathers and Sons, by Alexander Waugh. This is a family history by English comic novelist Evelyn Waugh’s grandson. Evelyn, of course, is the highlight. In despair as a young man, he tried to commit suicide by swimming out to sea, but ran into a school of jellyfish, was frightened, and swam back.
—Read on the beach:The New Yorker. Keeping up with this magazine is a full-time job. I typically fall five issues behind and then power through all of them in a week. But once I fall under the spell of the smooth prose—every writer sounds the same, and sounds great—I start to consume articles that at first glance would holdno interest for me. This summer I’ve found myself enjoying a history of Turkey’s rebellious embrace of fast food, by Orhan Pamuk, and finding out everything I need to know about the long-defunct whaling industry. Somehow it feels as essential as anything else in my life. And then the next issue comes.
—Heard on the radio on the way there: Columbia University’s radio station, WKCR, goes deep when a jazz legend has a birthday. They play his music for 24 hours straight. They go even deeper when one of those legends dies. Max Roach, drummer for everyone who mattered, died last week and KCR went on a three-day bender with his music. He started in the 40s with Parker and Gillespie and could still hang with the wildest experimentalists in the 70s. A friend once saw him walk by at a show at the Knitting Factory, dapper among the sloppy hipsters in a white suit and hat. As he passed, my friend asked, “How are you?” Roach smiled, bowed a little, and said, “I’m well. How are you?”
—Driven through on a rainy day: The village of Southampton—yes, one of the Hamptons—was not far from where I was staying. On one rainy day, I drove through immense traffic to see an art exhibit over there. I took a wrong turn in the town and ended up in the residential area. I’d stumbled on the serious Hamptons, up close and old school. Suddenly trees extended like a canopy over the road, sidewalks disappeared, and perfect hedges towered. Behind them you could glimpse massive—but tastefully massive—white houses with curved driveways (how did that become a status symbol, anyway?) and multiple tennis courts. The tacky commercial world was long gone; a rambling, idyllic billion-dollar village remained. I left, slowly, happy that someone got to live in a place like that.
—Heard on the radio on the drive back: How, exactly, did the 80s become the gold standard for modern music? When I was a kid—in the 80s—it was 60s rock and roll that was considered the real deal. But flipping past New York pop stations on the way back into the city, I couldn’t escape the soundtrack to my high school days. I’d feel honored if we hadn’t thought the music was such garbage at the time.
One all-request hour began with, naturally, Poison’s “Every Rose Has Its Thorn.” I’ve got a soft spot for C.C., Rikki Rocket, and the other wild, dumb, fellow Central Pennsylvanians of Poison. Hearing this made me give in a little and begin to consider that maybe the 80s really were the peak of musical creativity in this country, or any country. It’s hard to think of a more truthful moment in rock than Bret Michaels singing “every rose has its thorn,” and then, just as the drums begin, reinforcing the concept by speaking these somber words: “Yeah it does.”
The truths of the 80s didn’t end there, however. The next song requested was Madonna’s “Material Girl.” Of course my friends and I scorned this in its day; instead we tried to decipher scratchy Dylan records and wished we’d been born in a different decade. How wrong we were. What phrase has Dylan—or Shakespeare for that matter—turned that’s as immortal, as eternally relevant, as, “The boy with the cold hard cash is always mister right?” Driving into the city, with cars zooming around my Kia from both sides and the Empire State Building looming in the distance, all I could do was sing along. Vacation is over, but I know high school will never end.
Open preview coming shortly.