The most surprising thing about the last month of 2019 is that we have not seen more “end of decade” coverage in the media.
Sure, we’ve seen a few “trends of the decade” and other listicles but I think most people, editors included, get that the new decade starts a year from now. Sur, it’s fun to jump-start it at the nice round “2020” number, but let’s wait 365 days.
Hah — 366! The fun of 2020 includes Leap Year Status, after all.
Buster and Buddy Bear at 9th and State streets say it well with their new sign this week: “May we all have good vision in 2020.”
As to addressing the decade distortion, I can’t put it any better than our good friend and Entertainment writer Jim Drake, who wrote: “The ‘First Decade’ of ‘people keeping track of decades with calendars’ consisted of the years ‘1’ through “10.” The ‘Second Decade’ consisted of the years ‘11’ through ‘20.’ Due to many people erroneously saying that 2019 is ‘the last year to do something for the last time in this decade,’ I say: No. We still need to go through 2020 to get to the next decade. And I believe the Farmer’s Almanac agrees.”
Perhaps society learned not to overreact to these “0”dometer years back in 1999. Remember Y2K and the fairy dust that settled out of that dire situation? I worked for a school district in Washington during that time and the last two months of 1999 was daily panic mode. We might have started a radio station and blared: “THIS IS Y2K! All Y2K, all the time!”
Let me start the final year of the Nineteen-teens decade with my list of band names inspired by a year’s reading. I make sense of each year by collecting phrases I hear or read and re-imagining them as band names and album and song titles.
Join me in this random recitation, this hymnal of hybrid ideas:
Mr. Haha Jones — A Truman Capote character — and Magic Winch Not Available (from a TV car ad.)
Invisible Zeroes — a spur of the moment original from my wife, Lorre, and My Gray Cells Are Red Hot — a reference I wrote down but cannot remember.
Riff Raft, from a canoe team name I read (or Rift Raff?) doing A Blow of Dice Will Never Abolish Chance (a Stephen Mallarme poem).
Riff Raft, from a canoe team name I read (or Rift Raff?) doing A Blow of Dice Will Never Abolish Chance (a Stephen Mallarme poem).
The Hapsburg Lips (a genetic mutation common among 19th century European royals) and their new album Mascots of Internal Divisions, (composer Robert Schumann’s term for the multiple ways his mind operated) and
Lorenzo Nevermind and Bad Spill at the Balloon Foundry — two cartoon references: Garfield and Rubes, respectively.
The Courtesy Loners — definitely a country band (got that idea waiting for my car to get fixed) would have to do Whiskey, Steriods and Softball (from a book title I saw — no, did not read). They would be a great double bill with ...
The Expired Pirates (auto-correct when I tried to type “expired plates”) and A Rattlesnake, Powdered Uranium and Kentucky Whiskey in My Dodge — a headline about an Oklahoma traffic stop I read around mid-year. (Hmm ... “Oklahoma Traffic Stop”.)
Frozen Zoo (an actual place in San Diego, my friend Jim Lund tells me) and Hallucinogens and Ukeleles, from a book I DID read, “Beatlebone” by Kevin Barry.
Code V — security parlance for vomit in the football stands — doing How I’m Arriving, How I’m Leaving (what I thought was a meme on the Internet or maybe one I just made up).
Head Tunnel or Tunnel Head — I can’t decide what is better — and their new album Small Animal Rule and Suffering Per Calorie. That combines the name of those inflatable structures athletes run through at football games and two concepts of vegan nutrition.
Moving on to ...
The Gospel Bird (Southern jargon for chicken, since it features heavily in Church casseroles) and The Adorned Fathomless Dark Creation — which is the translation of Powhei, a Polynesian name scientists applied to a newly-discovered Black Hole. Their recording would sample the Hank Williams line, from 1962 about the Russians, “They ain’t gonna win the next war. They can’t even spell.”
The Local Gnomes and their debut single His Cat Sunshine — from the sign on the care center door of a friend’s octogenarian, memory-impaired father, who has a beloved pet and likes to call himself “The Local Gnome.”
Witches Butter (fungi extruded by trees) and their concept album The Common Experience of Aimless Fury (a Wall Street Journal headline.)
Finally, The Extruded would be a great band name. Gotta be punk, and perform either “Dad Cat Bounce (a Wall Street term) or Pencil Shavings and Heartbreak. I loved that term — it’s actually a beer name from somewhere ...
Finally, The Extruded would be a great band name. Gotta be punk, and perform either “Dad Cat Bounce (a Wall Street term) or Pencil Shavings and Heartbreak. I loved that term — it’s actually a beer name from somewhere ...
No evidence on the Internet of “The Extruded” ever being used.
Same can be said, to my great surprise, for The So-Called. There is no band ever called The So-Called, and I really wonder why. Their first album would be: Not Sufficiently Impassive (what some producer said about Harvey Keitel in firing him from a film. The term is a masterpiece of reverse thinking.
Who else can we think of in 2020 who is Not Sufficiently Impassive?
Commented