I really enjoy, and find nothing offensive or backstabbing about, Against Me!’s shift into unapologetic pop-rock fit for Top-40 radio. I don’t know if it’s just that I’m smarter or less interested in distinguishing myself from others because of an elite, and unapproachable taste in music, but as I get older, I enjoy straight ahead guitar-based pop music more and more. Doesn’t everybody? Green Day, Tom Petty, Elvis Costello, the Beatles. That’s all good shit. The recreational practice of listening to music shouldn’t be an exercise in self-inflicted punishment. I just want to listen to some good tunes that I can sing along to while I drive. I invite anyone to challenge me on that assertion.Getting around the conference kind of sucked because I’m still on crutches, which effectively makes already socially thorny circumstances all the more ungraceful and awkward. The crutches simultaneously impair my ability to partake in the conventional set course of moving from classroom to classroom and banquet hall to cocktail lounge, while drawing attention to my clumsiness. Being able to walk would’ve undoubtedly improved the conference by 25%.
The worst part of the conference was probably the first night at the Sheraton Hotel. It was the cocktail hour meet n’ greet which sucked because it’s impossible to hold a cocktail while commuting on crutches, and it’s impossible to hold a conversation with a stranger without a cocktail. And you can’t really confidently stand alone when you’re suspending yourself with crutches. It just looks dumb. It was cool, however, to see Emily Lewis, the person whose job I took over when she graduated. The best part of being an adult is hanging out with friends you know from one state in another state. Particularly when you each came separately from other states. When I was in 6th grade, the only place I saw my 6th grade friends was in our 6th grade classroom. Now I see friends 3,000 miles away from where I know them from. It’s the coolest.
The first panel was the only one I really remember. But it started off really bad. The first speaker was Peter Stevenson. He was some British guy that talked about enacting international legislation that would limit animal abuse which was essentially like standing up and reading a Spiderman comic like it was fact. First of all, enacting international legislation on anything is nearly impossible, secondly, enacting animal abuse legislation in any arena is even more impossible. I was amazed that a guy so out of touch with reality even made it on to the plane that took him to Logan Airport. Furthermore, I didn’t know there were direct flights to Boston from Fantasyland. Zing!
Everyone else on the panel was really good. Dr. Norwood was some agricultural sociologist that had a cartoonish Okie accent that made everything he said hilarious. Dr. Brown, from Stanford, had some sort of science background and gave a predictably science-y talk. Carter Dillard and Bruce Myers were both attorneys (I think) and gave true to form smug lawyer lectures, which I of course found totally relatable.
The rest of the conference was sort of a blur. It’s easy for 30 different talks about animal abuse and the law to bleed together. And with 2-days worth of incessant lecturing, it’s easy to drift off and focus on something totally unrelated, like this woman:
Bob Barker was supposed to be the keynote speaker, but I guess there was some medical emergency. I started the rumor that he OD’d on Columbian Marching Powder. This guy filled in:
He was no B.B., but he did land an extremely well placed, and well timed “the price is wrong, bitch!” that brought the house down.At the end I walked away with the feeling that animals are screwed for atleast the next half-century and a nagging sense of regret for not having tried to go to a better law school.
At least I got a meal out of it. And a Hearsay submission:
Thank you, A.L.D.F.
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