They Say You Can't Go Home Again

Lately I've been spending time writing on a NING website created by a person I went to high school with in Germany. It's another social network, but it actually works much better than Myspace, and seems more customized than Facebook or Myspace. Fun. Here's a cross-post from that site.
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After I graduated from Davenport North High School in the spring of 1987, I had the summer off and attended Iowa State University. After my first year, my Dad had the opportunity to go back to Germany, only this time, he would be working in Heidelberg. I always liked Heidelberg because of the kickass castle that was close to downtown.

The thing was, he was going to be going back around January ’89, the same year my sister was going to graduate high school. So the plan was Dad was going to go by himself, and find a place for him and Mom to live while my mother and sister stayed until school got out. Then we would all go over, move all of our stuff into the place he found, and we would stay the summer there.

Now, I’m all for free trips to Europe, however, I was pretty established at school and the downside was that I was going to have a job with Summer Hire. I had a couple of Summer Hire jobs when I was a sophomore and a junior. Back in ’85 and ’86, they paid you $2.90/hour. The sad fact was that in 1989, they were still paying $2.90/hour. I could have stayed in Ames and probably made close to $5/hour, but then I would have to pay rent, and I wouldn’t get the fringe benefits of being in Germany. Both the Summer Hire jobs I had involved foodservice work. I wasn’t looking forward to that.

Fortunately, I scored what was probably the easiest Summer Hire job EVER. I was working for some semi-secret intelligence agency as a file clerk. Occasionally, I was asked to file, shred files, or do other small tasks, but mostly, I was left to my own devices in an office. There was a radio where we played AFN, but it was never anything great. I do remember hearing Bang Tango’s “Someone Like You” on there, though. I had brought my electric guitar with me (no amp) and a suitcase full of clothes. So when I’d get to work, I’d roll a piece of paper into the IBM Selectric typewriter and just off the top of my head, bang out 10 song titles. I would look over the song titles and decide which ones had lyrical potential, something I could build a song out of, and then work on those throughout the day. I’d take my work home, and try to match up music that I had created to the lyrics.

Since I wasn’t watching a lot of TV, or listening to the stereo all that much, the weirdest thing started to happen…Songs were just flowing out of me. I think I ended up writing about 20 songs that summer, most of which became the basis for my first all-original band the following year in Ames, Exit Wound.

The other things I remember from that trip were hanging out with a couple of Canadian kids. My sister met this Canadian kid and we started hanging out. I remember going to the Canteen with him for lunch, and he stood over the jukebox pointing out the Canadian acts: “Bryan Adams, he’s Canadian. Corey Hart, Canadian, Glass Tiger, Canadian.” This was actually kind of hilarious. I never realized that Canadians could be so nationalistic. It sort of came off as defensive behavior to me. I realized that I was aware of artists being from a certain place; England, Canada, the U.S. I never really put any pride to it, though.

You may think that might just be a single example, but that Canadian guy found out that I had a bass guitar (put in the move to Germany – the original SG bass I used in Blackmail) and said he knew a kid who played drums (Canadian) and a German guitar player, who wanted to jam.
So I went over to jam with these guys. I think we actually knew about 2 or 3 songs that we could play. During a break in the music, the drummer said, “Modern Drummer voted Larry Mullen Jr. (of U2) as Drummer of the Year. What do you think about that?”

I said I thought that there was some merit to that. Sure, U2 had just released Rattle and Hum and so that was probably fueling the nomination for Larry, but he was a good drummer.

He (the Canadian drummer) said, “I think Neil Peart (of Rush) should have won. He’s Canadian.” Then he started a drum beat into the next song. End of conversation.

Overall, I had a good time that summer. The weather, as I remember, was cool, but I’m sure there were some warm days as well. We would go to the Officer’s Club on some base every Thursday for Taco Night (served “buffet style”; the meat was spiceless hamburger, the taco shells broken and stale), and I remember drinking lots of weizen beer.

I returned with my sister for her first year at Iowa State, and my third. I brought back six half-liter bottles of dunkel and kristal weizen in my backpack. I had them in socks. Shared with 3 of my closest friends.

Why Must You Be Such An Angry Young Man?

My longtime friend, Garry, who I hung out with while I lived in Germany, got a scanner and sent me a couple of photos from what I suspect is either my sophomore or junior year in high school.


Man, I was skinny back then. I think I just got my braces off as well, because those are as straight as my teeth have ever been (I probably should have wore my retainer at least another year).


Unfortunately, most of the photos from this era probably have me making a similar type of face. Not sure if I was trying to be Billy Idol or what. It's pretty understandable now why I didn't have a girlfriend back then. Walking around all the time being surly.


Living in Germany was a good time. Especially in the 80's, during the high school years. The mark (DM - their unit of currency) was weak against the dollar. When most of you were buying your Motley Crue and Ratt records for $9 or $10 in the U.S., we army brats were hitting the local record shops or the PX and paying, at most, $6.50 for the same unit. Anyway, I could write a book about my experiences there, and should probably at least write them down just so the memories don't completely fade. For all you youngsters out there, keep a daily journal from the day you can write complete sentences and guard them like they were your kids. You will thank yourself later.

Beer vs. Wine

So I heard about this article at the Slate website, saying that wine has become more popular than beer. It's a decent article, but I think that they go waaaay further than necessary to explain why wine has grown more popular than beer.

You wanna know why people in America are starting to like wine more than beer? My friend, let me freely give you some opinions:

1) Ladies prefer wine to beer. As a child, I even thought of beer as a man's drink, I didn't think women liked beer. Plus, I can give you endless stories about women who don't really like beer. For the most part, I know two women that like dark or darker beers. Most of the rest prefer light, or fruity beers. My favorite personal experience occurred during a Christmas vacation in Germany.

While in college, my folks moved back to Germany, and my main homie, P-Mart, came over for a visit. We loaded up on what was to be a failed bus trip to southern Germany to see the Neuschwanstien castle and other sites where we paused to have a beer at the world-famous Hofbraeuhaus in Munich, BEER CAPITAL OF THE WORLD (Okay, actually, I think Plzen, Czechloslovakia is the real beer capital of the world, but at this particular time in my life, this is how I referred to Munich. And I literally mean it. "Dad, how far are we from Munich, BEER CAPITAL OF THE WORLD?" "Did you spend the weekend in Munich, BEER CAPITAL OF THE WORLD?"). We were drinking a beer around 10 in the morning out of a HUGE beer stein. A G.I. and his girlfriend/wife was sitting across from us and we were having some decent conversation. We started discussing beer, and the woman says, "I don't really care for German beer, I don't think it's very good."

Now folks, I'm not a religious man, but I know blasphemy when I hear it.

I learned to appreciate and drink beer in Germany, and as far as I'm concerned, after the Czechs, the Germans make the best beer in the world. I then calmly asked this young woman, who was wearing glasses and appeared to have a blond permanent wave, "What do you consider good beer?"

"Bud Light."

P-Mart and I were beside ourselves. I do believe we ridiculed her for a solid ten minutes.

2) They're not the only ones who like wine. Men do, too, and with the invention of the "wine refrigerator", which appeals to men's (not man's, but MEN's) want of new gadgets, it's no wonder wine has grown. Do you know how many times I've walked by one of these at my local Costco and thought to myself, "I could use one of those?" Even more intriguing to me is the kegerator. I would kill to have one of these in my basement. But if I had one, I'd drink way too much beer and it would make me want to finish the basement around it.

3) The majority of American beer SUCKS. Sure, there are some great American breweries out there. Leinenkugel's and Sam Adams are two of my favorite "big" breweries. The little ones are good, too, especially Three Floyd's. Lately, though, I have to shake my head when I see a Lite beer commercial. They are going on and on about how they won the 2006 Gold Medal in the World Beer Cup Best American-Style Light Lager. I looked up "American-Style Light Lager" in a beer dictionary I have. There was a one word definition for this: "Piss." The commercials show how proud they are for winning an award for being a shitty beer. This would be like me being proud that Iowa State advanced to the final four of the N.I.T. basketball tournament. If they would have won, they would have been the 65th best college basketball team in America. Who Cares? Furthermore, the ads that they've shown in the past where they are attacking Bud Light are baffling. I say to myself, "Wow, one can of piss is actually claiming to be better than another can of piss. Who cares?"

4) The cost of wine has come down the past few years. Beleive it or not, most people still want to get their drink on at the lowest possible cost. People are willing to give different styles of wine a try to see what it is that they like. Unfortunately, my wife's Aunt from upstate New York apparently thinks we like these ungodly sweet table wines because she brings us at least 4 bottles whenever she visits. Everyone's got their price limit. Me, I try to stay well below $15 for a bottle. I can get two decent six packs of beer for under $15. Lately, you can go to Costco and get cool things like a case of Pilsner Urquell or a Sam Adams Summer Sampler case for around $20. I can maybe get 4 glasses of wine out of a bottle, so if I spend $15, it better be pret-ty good. Otherwise, I got 3 words for ya: "Three buck Chuck."

For the record, here are some of my favorite wines and beer:

Wine
Toasted Head Cabernet Sauvignon
Any brand Pinot Grigio
Charles Shaw Merlot

Beer
Three Floyd's Gumballhead Wheat
Leinenkugel's
Pilsner Urquell