Friday morning I drove Lila to school. Usually she takes the train, but I was headed her way in any case for Family Weekend. Naturally we left about ten minutes too late, causing Lila to fret that she’d be tagged tardy and assessed work hours for arriving at assembly after 8:30. The ETA on my car’s nav app was alternating between 8:33 and 8:34 AM—and that time, she noted, didn’t account for the ground she’d have to cover from the street to the Performing Arts Center. Practically speaking, this meant I couldn’t stop along the way to get my morning Diet Coke. And I was stewing about that probably a bit too much. Tired, sore from yesterday’s workout, running a bit on fumes.
We have a break at 11, Lila assured me. On the Friday morning of Family Weekend, we go with our kids to shortened class periods. We meet the teachers, they variously give a presentation, describe the course content and design to us, maybe run an abbreviated discussion or lab activity on the subjects they’re presently covering with the students. It’s actually pretty great. I especially love Lila’s Latin class, and while I was looking forward to plugging in with my kid’s junior-year academic program—fully expecting the Calculus to be incomprehensible—I didn’t think I had it in me (1) to stand upright in the back of these rooms for all these sessions, and (2) to be at best charming or at least polite to the parents of Lila’s classmates all the way through to the 11 AM break. Not without a fountain-poured Diet Coke in my hand.
Goddam I should have got up fifteen minutes earlier.
The Family Weekend agenda I had downloaded to my phone called for me to be in the Chapel at 8:30, to receive a Welcome from the Head of School. Papa, you’re gonna be late, too, Lila told me. Especially because you have to park the car.
Aw, hell, I thought. Parking. That’s going to suck. Parents at Lila’s school are generally speaking accomplished people with ordered lives. They get out of bed and arrive early to events, and they suck up all the parking spaces, so that by the time your tardy ass rumbles into town, there’s no more room at the inn. That’s another five to ten minutes winding through neighborhoods searching in vain for somewhere/ anywhere to ditch your car.
As we trundled down the Cambridge Turnpike toward Concord Town Center, I riffed a little about the forthcoming Welcome, which falls into that broad category of orations that are ever so predictable and say next to nothing:
I’d like to thank everyone who played a role in planning and arranging this weekend’s activities. [READ OFF A LIST OF NAMES] Who here is the parent of a first-year student? Raise your hands. We’d like to extend a special welcome to you, and we’re so pleased to have your children join our community …
Lila laughed along with me—authentically, I think.
Sure enough, as I pulled up on the street outside Concord Academy, every last street spot was taken. A sign pointed to on-site parking in one of the school lots. I didn’t even try it. Others in my organizational demographic (there are a handful of us) were completing their fruitless loops of these low-availability corridors and heading back out my way to forage elsewhere. I spilled out Lila and her gear in the drop-off circle and hung a right down the street. Eventually I found myself over by the train station, and—HEY! There’s a Cumberland Farms over here! This presented an opportunity to fill up my aluminum tumbler with the Diet Coke I had been craving. I made an on-the-spot decision to ditch the Welcome in favor of caffeination.
With my cup runneth-ing over, I still had to park the car. I had put off this project long enough—it was time now to match wits and lock horns with the Town of Concord, Massachusetts. It’s clear that Concord’s residents think their lovely and picturesque New England settlement would be still more lovely and still more picturesque if everybody else in New England—possibly including their own neighbors—just stayed the hell out of it. On an ordinary day, indicators of hostility to non-locals include:
The ongoing problem of weak, if any, cellular service anywhere in town. It’s the Year of Our Lord 2024, and Our Lord is Steve Jobs. If an American community of 18,000+ doesn’t have cellular coverage, it’s because the wrong people mobilized to block it at planning meetings. Or the planners themselves, elected officials carrying a mandate from their voters, are stolidly progress-averse.
The thousand various yard signs blooming to protest this or that entity’s proposed use of its property. STOP PRIVATE JET EXPANSION at Hanscom or Anywhere is the lead message these days.
On Friday morning a dozen Temporary No-Parking Signs, pounded into the ground on wooden stakes along the streets near Lila’s school, augmented my sense that Concord’s residents regarded me, an out-of-town Academy parent, as something of a Visigoth. Or what may be more spot-on, one of a battalion of invading Redcoats. Come to think of it, maybe I should have beelined to the Chapel to get the psychological benefit of that Welcome. As I looped around and finally found a stretch of Middle Street designated for three-hour parking, Classic Alternative spun up the Offspring’s “Come Out and Play (Keep ’Em Separated)” (Apple Music, Spotify) in my car.
This is one of those moments where you wonder if there’s a sentient observer running the streaming service’s shuffle algorithm—and one with a sense of humor at that. Here I am, parallel-parking flush up against the immaculate front lawn of one of these well-appointed and architecturally-interesting upscale New England homes, virtually certain its occupants are watching me through the window, speed-dialing the cops to see that I’m ticketed the second my car overstays the three-hour limit—SPOILER ALERT: I was—and I’m rocking the hell out to the lowest of lowbrow ’90s slacker skate punk. Played loud. At 8:45 AM on a residential street.
Brad: HEY, MAN, YOU DISRESPECTING ME?
Homeowner [into phone]: Take him out (you gotta keep ’em separated).
Brad: HEY, MAN, ARE YOU TALKING BACK TO ME?
Homeowner [into phone]: Take him out (you gotta keep ’em separated).
Brad: HEY, HEY—COME OUT AND PLAY.
It being election season, all of my experiences lately are colored by politics. And the order of the day is hypocrisy. Right-minded Concorders have surely spent most of October sipping Chablis, expressing disbelief at Trump’s creeping advance in the polls, and hatching plots to secede from Massachusetts and, ultimately, 21st-century reality. Immigrants built this country, they declare, even as at the same time they begrudge anyone but themselves driving down their streets and would bubble themselves completely inside an electromagnetic signal barrier.
Never am I so MAGA as when I am trying to use my phone or park my car—God forbid both—in Concord, Massachusetts. Oooh: that was an edgy sentence. To those of you who read it and are presently worrying about ideological slippage here, don’t. My MAGA capacity tops out at probably 3%; it just fills to the brim out here in Quaintsville, causing me to send texts like these to friends, soon as I’m able to reconnect to a Verizon tower:
Massachusetts should pass a law that says Concord residents don’t get cell phone service anywhere in the state
You know it’s 60-something women who wear N-95 masks in their own Subarus locking this down
If only HATRED HAS NO HOME HERE songs could pull down a cell signal
*signs
This is as close as I get to MAGA including all the typos
Maybe this post will get some legs and the New York Times will send a correspondent to my house, toward gaining an understanding of what cultural triggers prompt five-minute text bursts from aging suburban professional-class white males.
I carry this outsider vibe all the way to the registration table on the school’s back patio. By then I’ve passed into the warm and blessed protection of Concord Academy’s Wi-Fi footprint, a solid dose of caffeine is already in my bloodstream, and my MAGA quotient is back down to .00001% where it belongs. Chapel has concluded and parents are filing out slowly, making small talk to one another. Normie suckers who do as they’re told don’t get fountain Diet Cokes. They get tepid coffee dribbled through a tap into a paper cup. One lap around the courtyard before I spot my daughter and we lock arms and walk to her Latin class.
Veni, vidi, vici, bitches.
* * *
We actually had two Family Weekends this week—Lila’s pulling us to the west and Florian’s to the east, into Cambridge. As we’ve discussed (see “Mr. Blue”), this is Florian’s first year away from home, and Kate was determined that we should treat his Family Weekend as if he weren’t living fewer than four miles away. All that made sense to me, and I texted the Bird about making dinner reservations for Friday and Saturday. The first several of these of course went unanswered, but then he did write back basically leaving it up to me to decide, but noting as a postscript that at first he confused my suggestion of Blue Ribbon Brasserie (Kenmore Square, French-American) with Blue Ribbon BBQ (just what it sounds), and that had him thinking about barbecue.
So it was that we turned Friday night into something like a Reverse Family Weekend, wherein Florian took the #73 bus to our house, the four of us ate takeout ribs and brisket at our kitchen table, and then we settled in front of the TV to watch Step Brothers. Kate went up to bed and once the movie finished, I gave him a ride back to his dorm. Classic Alternative played “West End Girls” (Apple Music, Spotify) when we got into the car, and Florian commented that a while ago he’d installed that song at the top of the master playlist on this phone, and as a result it may be the single song he’s heard the most in the last year. That got him talking about how he’s been on the prowl for new music lately, and one or another algorithm had suggested “Modern Jesus” (Apple Music, Spotify), by Portugal, the Man. Had I heard that one before? he asked. I hadn’t.
So we put that on and listened to it on our drive across Belmont. About a minute in, Florian started griping about two lines in the chorus that he thought were weak. The rest of it is so good, he said. And then this. I was concerned at first that he was feeling self-conscious playing a new song for his obsessing rock-snob father. But as he went on about this—and he did go on—it became clear his tone wasn’t apologetic so much as expressing dismat and regret that they weren’t any better. So maybe following in his obsessive rock-snob father’s footsteps.
I started talking about New Order, which have been front of mind since my Joy Division post (see “Atmosphere”) and will stay there at least until Season 2 of the Transmissions: The Definitive Story of Joy Division and New Order1 (Apple Podcasts, Spotify) wraps up. The other day I found a copy of Low-Life at the record store up the road. It’s a perfect album I bought on CD decades ago and am rediscovering now. Complex, intense, masterfully produced, a perfect balance between straight-up rock and programmed electronica. And Bernard Sumner’s lyrics are, as always, borderline unlistenable. All of which points I made less cogently on the fly with Florian, basically just to say Don’t let quibbles with the lyrics wreck your enjoyment of a good song. This message may or may not have landed: after eighteen years on the job as a parent, I’ve come to realize that what a kid seems to ignore in the moment may well sink in days, months, or even years later.
Florian pointed at the Classic Alternative icon on the screen in my car. It says “the Offspring” under it. They’re not Classic Alternative, are they? I noted that they’re just on the edge of Classic—mid- to late 1990s—and I supposed the streaming service posted the band name there because it had served up “Come Out and Play” earlier in the day. And we both expressed surprise at how many songs by the Offspring we’ve heard and like. “Self Esteem” (Apple Music, Spotify), I said. And “The Kids Aren’t Alright” (Apple Music, Spotify). Both of those he acknowledged, but then he said he’s always liked “Why Don’t You Get a Job” (Apple Music, Spotify) best.
YES! That was the one. And I had forgotten all about it. It’s the Beatles’ “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” (Apple Music, Spotify) with guitars, distortion, and foul language. A total goof. Writing this up on Sunday night, I turned it on just now with Kate in the family room—MY FRIEND’S GOT A GIRLFRIEND AND HE HATES THAT BITCH, and she burst out laughing. Yeah—I told her. That’s tomorrow’s post.
Up Concord Avenue toward Harvard Square, Florian and I shared our notions about the Offspring. He said he thought they do the bare minimum and still come up with snappy pop songs. I said that take was most definitely what they were aiming for from listeners. They came out after Green Day blew the doors off with songs about lying around watching TV. ’90s American punk songs are by design one-dimensional and anti-poetic. They say exactly what they mean and no more. Right, Florian said. The bare minimum. And sometimes that’s all you need.
Pulled over into the customary drop-off point at the corner of Garden Street and Massachusetts Avenue. Florian jumped out and crossed the street, heading over toward Johnston Gate and his dormitory. When I lost sight of him, I searched up “Why Don’t You Get a Job” on my phone and jerked the car out into an open slot in the eastbound Mass Ave traffic.
I played that track three times in a row on the solo drive back home. On the way, I got to thinking: the Adam Ant post I was working on could wait. I don’t own any Offspring records, and honestly, it’s never once occurred to me to buy one. Even so, it is certainly true that on this particular day, singing songs of accompaniment to willful parking violations, 32-ounce Cumby pours, tardy arrivals, and Friday nights on the couch pounding Sour Patch Kids in front of raunchy Will Ferrell movies—you know, Family Weekend songs—the Offspring were the streaming band I needed and deserved.
Terrific podcast.
Next on the Mixtape Diaries podcast, Carla and Brad argue over the Offspring and Blink-182. ;-)