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| Spring Street in Midtown Atlanta, December 31, 2018. |
appy new year I suppose.
It is raining outside this morning and that has been the case for almost
a solid month now. We completed one of the rainiest Decembers that I
can remember with 12.02 inches of rain and for the year it
was 67.22 inches. That yearly total was 14.25 inches above normal. It rained and rained through fall and into early winter
after a dry summer.
On a drive over to my brother's house in northeastern Alabama on Sunday I
noticed that all of the rivers and streams I crossed were close to
flooding the landscape.
It has been mild since Christmas day and I am ready for the cold to return after this mild to warm spell. I bought a new black wool coat for the winter in early December and I have only had a few occasions to wear it so far.
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| Another new glass tower in Midtown pushes the old to the curb. |
Yesterday walking around Midtown I saw teenagers sitting on a bench eating ice cream cones while wearing short sleeve tee-shirts. That's not normal, even for Atlanta, on New Year's Eve.
Since I was last here I have read six books:
Lost In Hollywood: The Fast Times and Short Life Of River Phoenix by John Glatt
Eruption: The Untold Story Of Mount St. Helens by Steve Olson
The Book Of Matt: Hidden Truths About The Murder Of Matthew Shepard by Stephen Jimenez
Skin Lane by Neil Bartlett
Being There by Jerzy Konsinski
The Devotion Of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino
I enjoyed Skin Lane the most out of those books followed by The Devotion of Suspect X. Despite Being There is one of my favorite films I was not so impressed by the book on which it was based. It
was one of those rare cases where the film was better than the source material. I felt the same way about the film of The Shining which was better than the original book.
The last few months I have been exploring more punk and post-punk music.
Somehow, I'm not sure really, I discovered this band called Pink Turns Blue.
They are a band from Berlin that began in the mid 1980s and are still
performing today. They would be considered a "post-punk" band and some
categorize them as a "dark wave" band. I think of their sound as
post-punk and I have been enjoying immensely their 1987 album If Two Worlds Kiss.
Pink Turns Blue - When It Rains
I got a pair of Dr. Martens boots last month, so I'm totally hardcore punk now, just kidding. I do like the boots though and have always
wanted a pair and they are to my surprise so comfortable. It is a bit of
a style departure for me to wear combat boots, but I find the punk
aesthetic so appealing. I have not gone as far as to get a black leather
jacket yet or to shave my head into a mohawk, but the leather jacket
could be a possibility.
By the way there is no similarity between punks and skinheads so please
don't confuse the two. The politics of those two groups were polar
opposites despite some being confused about the two groups. Skinheads,
real skinheads, would just as soon as exterminate my kind as look at me.
The photography book Skins And Punks Lost Archives 1978-1985 by Gain Watson is an excellent visual resource about the differences between skinheads and punks.
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| Image source: Wikipedia |
In the 1980s and the 1990s there was a gay subculture of skinheads
in the United States and Europe. It was a movement that
was about appropriating the look of the skinhead with the shaved heads
and combat boots. It was about adopting the look without the
politics. I remember seeing gay men wearing the skinhead look back then
and I thought it was rather hot on certain men.
I will not be shaving my head, I like my hair too much for that.
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