Sex, God, and Rock n’ Roll – plus Ron Paul and Devo!

Below is the Devo entry.  If you were looking for the entry on NYPost (and NR vs. Ron Paul), go here (and sorry to lead you astray on Twitter).

Dating political people can go awry over strange issues that wouldn’t affect normal people’s lovelives (consider the hubbub over the Alabama Republican politician who may not have fully informed his spouse about his sperm donations to lesbian couples in New Zealand, to take a story pointed out by Dan McCarthy – though Bruce Bartlett argues the man did nothing wrong unless you consider sperm donations to lesbian couples an inherently bad thing, and I’m just wondering where Rachel Maddow stands on the whole thing). 

The main lesson gleaned from my own dating of conservative types, I suppose, is that women who are simultaneously enthusiastic about sex, God, and rock n’ roll may just be a tad unstable in multiple directions (and I’m not calling them all bad people), whereas my naive initial assumption was usually that those forces must all sort of balance out, making them well-rounded moderates – you know, like an assassin who loves baby bunnies in cups (the cutest thing of which I am currently aware).

In an era in which most people (at least in this city) have gotten pretty systematic and methodical about dating – and sifting, sometimes callously, for ostensibly-perfect matches – I have never (A) done Internet dating, (B) picked up strange women in bars, or (C) knowingly engaged in casual sex (there’s only so much I can do to influence the woman, though). 

I imagine my schedule would become very hectic if I took the time to do these things in addition to my usual low-key approach (facilitated by knowing a lot of interesting people) of meeting about one friend-of-a-friend, friend-of-a-coworker, coworker-of-a-friend, or such per year with whom I click and end up in a fairly pleasant relationship of a few months’ duration before she decides she wants kids after all, has a compelling reason to move to a distant state, goes insane (in only one or two cases, really), realizes she can’t date an atheist after all, or just loses interest in me but remain friends (which I’m almost always happy to do). 

It’s actually been fairly calm and normal most of the time, I swear (and I don’t mean boring).  Not quite permanent yet, but few disasters – for which I should be grateful in a city so strange and diverse that some people who I know oppose premarital sex while others don’t see anything untoward about women taking poll-dancing classes from strippers.  And the low-key approach enables me to avoid stressing over the question of whether men and women can be just friends (addressed in amusing fashion, with interesting results, in this bit of college video journalism). 

Ideally, though – perhaps even inevitably, if that doesn’t sound smug – it would be nice to end up one half of a “creative” couple, sort of like newlyweds comic book writer Neil Gaiman and Dresden Dolls lead singer Amanda Palmer (the latter of whom I am told is not the steampunk dancer in that steampunk/Christmas Justin Bieber video, though it would increase the video’s cred immensely if it were). 

There is that “Bowie Ball” taking place downtown this Friday, but it may not be the best place for straight people to meet.  But enough about dating: for the duration of this blog entry, let us rock. 

(I have only just noticed, by the way, that there is a “BBC Radio Version” of “Suffragette City” that is slightly different from the album version, if you would enjoy the thrill of hearing the song again for the first time)

•••

Last night, I saw Devo in concert at Irving Plaza, and

they were fantastic – and (much like the Cars) know how to arena-rock despite their nerdhood.  But the most amazing part of the experience may have been the polite security guards at Irving Plaza letting my companion in despite me stupidly bringing the wrong part of her ticket because they were thrilled she was wearing a Ron Paul 2012 button. 

Please, please tell every voter in Iowa you know – and every media professional capable of getting word to them – that victory may be within reach.  I’m usually too conservative in my thinking to suppose that the future course of civilization hinges on the events of a single day, but the Iowa Republican caucus on Jan. 3 may be an exception – we can keep fiddling with the welfare state while DC burns or, maybe just maybe, we can MAKE RON PAUL THE GOP PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE and end the drug war, the war wars, government-corporate cronyism, insane deficit spending, and the intrusive regulatory state in a single strategic blow. 

I’ll set aside all our past divisions – right, left, and otherwise – and root for this if you will (that goes for “liberaltarians,” Marxist anti-imperialists, neocons, Reform Party candidates who used to be in rock bands, and more).  AND REMEMBER: tomorrow (Thursday) on Fox News is the final currently-scheduled GOP debate before the Jan. 3 caucus, so Paul’s performance could decide the fate of the world.  Do you dare not watch?  Or at least DVR?  Better yet: tell your relatives in Iowa to watch. 

By the way, the political and musical fellow-traveler who joined me for Devo also recently had the amazing close-escape experience of telling an undercover cop on a train that she wouldn’t show him I.D. simply because he claimed to be a cop and had seen her smoking between cars.  The cop tried in vain to get the engineer to stop the train over the issue, then got out at the next stop to complain to the engineer through his window – so the engineer deliberately closed the doors on the guy and left him there on the platform, to the cheers of the other passengers.

That’s a little bit of everyday rebellion right there, my friends (though she should really quit smoking).

Oh, and the Devo encore was introduced with the shout “We could not leave without reminding you to use your fucking ‘FREEDOM OF CHOICE’!” (and as you may recall, that was the first rock video I ever saw, which explains everything).  A good night all around (and a mere day after the comparably-neat media experience of telling a certain director that it’d be a shame if Bane’s dialogue remains muffled-sounding in the final cut of a certain movie next year, lest people think the Bane in Batman and Robin was better – but no more about that for now).