Monkees on Mars

2-27-08 The Monkees on Mars

So do I try to impress the Martians with a box of CD’s – or should I just bring a domestic house cat? Or perhaps a buffet of Indonesian food? Rijstafel for the planet Mars!

The brain runs though all the ways to condense the cultural experience. “I can tell ‘em about Neil Young – well, “After The Goldrush”, anyway…” – totally possible to explain hippies without mentioning “Déjà Vu”? Will I say “Falling down drunk in public – and driving home” or A Certain Ratio “Force”? Or the day I pulled over on Hwy. 152 because it was raining so hard – and listened to “Media” by The Models? What does that get filed under?

Shouldn’t have drunk that rain-water; I could swear I tasted rust. I recall breaking into a Walgreen’s – after everything exploded, and I knew I was gonna need batteries to power my assorted digital music players, down in the shelter. The world ends – and I need a friggin’ dentist! I didn’t think all the food would rot so quickly! Or my teeth!

Crap. Should’ve had a better filing system. As it was, it was just a bunch of index cards (typed on a typewriter, no less!) shoved into a shoebox. The ‘life experience’ reduced to some 4” x 6” cards. Too bad there wasn’t any electricity for the computer.

When I croaked, I was on a train near Asagaya; all those firey souls, shooting towards heaven / hell – and my soul escaped with only some Hajime Tachibana MD’s. All my dreams of discovering feudal samurai record collectors – up in electricity, by the side of the train tracks. Neo-Tokyo. With no shoes. Purgatory forever, without any batteries.

Always feeling the need to explain myself. “What is all that stuff you are carrying around?” – “Oh, just my extended cultural identity. 8,400 compact discs.” – I’m going to solve everything, by explaining my 20^th century experiences with music. Real Charleton Heston “Omega Man” stuff. Hey, even he tried to watch “Woodstock”!

Like the creatures on Mars are going to care about books or movies or music! Or humans!

So, folks – let’s enjoy it all now. No guilty pleasures – just slap on Side One of the first Jo Jo Gunne album, and dance. Or laugh. We have to do this stuff now – ‘cause when we’re all re-colonized on Mars – I bet none of you brought your Lynyrd Skynyrd LP’s with you. The people who got here before us only brought Vangelis CD’s. And I’m getting sick of that guy with an acoustic guitar – it seems that all he can ‘play’ is the intro to “Stairway To Heaven”! We should’ve thought to bring more water – or toothpaste. When we looted the Walgreen’s at 36^th & Atlantic – there wasn’t even anything I wanted to take. I couldn’t see any point in stealing colored-paper CD envelopes…what was I going to do with that?

And we’re going to live for a very long time.