Ted's Polish-Mexican Page

here in Amurrica, 98% of all reggae music is listened to by hopelessly-overprivileged white college kids, usually frat guys, who are culturally .0001% black and/or Rastafarian (and i'm giving them credit there, too). as The Onion helpfully pointed out, 98% of that reggae music is Bob Marley's Legend comp. this affectation of Brotherly Hipness -- somewhat mirrored by white kids who like gangsta rap, even though there's something different going on there -- often leads to hilarious results. let's watch!

i spent a semester at ________ State ("your high school after high school!"), having followed my girlfriend, who was going to law school there. she had a group of friends who were heavily into reggae (probably as an extension of their being heavily into pot), which was quite ludicrous, as these guys were all upper-middle-class white kids, and members of the Future BMW Owners Of America Club. well, these friends all got an apartment together, which they tricked out rasta-stylee -- they painted a three-foot-wide red yellow and green band around the living room walls, and there were bongs and candles everywhere, and Bob Marley posters all over the walls, as well as posters and bumper stickers calling for the immediate freedom of herb from the strictures of The Man, and one of the guys favored a (wait for it, wait for it) rasta knit cap, which i have to tell you looked pretty funny on a guy wearing khakis and a white button-down. anyway, the guys took off a week to go somewhere (maybe it was fall break or something), and when they came back, they found that their place had been broken into, and was being occupied by . . .

a bunch of Rastafarians.

or at the very least, a bunch of black guys who liked reggae, and smoking an awful lot of dope. i never did find out which.

anyway, the white kids were very indignant about this, and called the cops, who came and arrested the black guys, who for their part didn't see why they had to leave. IIRC the cops asked one of the guys why they broken into the place, and he said something on the lines of, "well, we thought they were rastas. we figured it would be okay."

this story is in no way meant to disparage our reggae-loving frenz on Fallnet, as it is much less about reggae than it is about a unique class of Amurrican youth who are now identified as Trustafarians. among the ranks of those coddled, spoiled children of the wealthy, who may never actually have to work, and who are free to do pretty much whatever their daily trust fund allowance lets them do, Trustafarians are the ones who have decided to become bedreaded, patchouli-soaked hippie and/or rasta types -- driving the same Jeep, pulling the same pitifully-stoned black lab with bandanna around neck, listening to the same Bob Marley CD, living in Boulder / Aspen / Charlottesville / Chapel Hill / anywhere in Oregon / someplace you can't afford, and more likely than not moving to Florida at some point in the future. i suppose there's an Engerlish equivalent, but it's probably not as noxious as the Amurrican variety (who has a beautiful girlfriend, spends more money on pot than you'll ever make, and will become aggressively conservative and intolerant the moment he gets all of his money).

okay, i'll go now. c's wise injunction not to listen to reggae in a room full of nodding students who have UB40 queued up on the turntable just reminded me of this story, which i don't believe i've ever told before. and it happened 13 years ago.

damn, i'm getting old. maybe i should get all my good stories out while my brain is still working reasonably well.

other john, waiting for someone to ask him what _he's_ been smoking
:) <---his bonged-up mark

# posted by Tedski @ 8:30 PM