All the Rage #45

Lately, I feel as though I've been at the Top of My Game.

What does this mean? Well, mainly that when I finish the three hours of primping that it takes to get ready each morning, I don't think I'm ugly. My clothes all seem to fit well. My acne's not raging too badly. I just got a haircut. I have enough black T-shirts so that no one has to see the yellow sweat stains that quickly develop on my white shirts. When I'm clean-shaven, I look pretty good.

Because of my shocking confidence in my own appearance--which happens even in spite of the baby beer gut I'm nursing to full health on a weekly basis--I stride through life with a bit of a glow. I talk to girls, some of whom I've never even met. I flirt like a madman. I summon clever quips with the ease of a highly-skilled comedy craftsman. I listen to lots of stupid pop songs about love and girls.

Which brings me to the new XTC record, due out on May 23, and their new song "I'm the Man who Murdered Love." First off, it's one fuck of a great song. Classic, classic XTC--and best of all, it's really classic, dudes and dudettes. The melody is the kind of catchy that makes you believe it's been secretly injected into your veins while you slept. Lyrically, it's everything the title implies--it's about a guy who has murdered love, "put a bullet through his sugar head," as Andy Partridge sings. They are beyond clever--both hilarious and vicious at the same time, a tough balance to strike.

As the description implies, it's not a "stupid pop song about love and girls," to quote myself. (Which is quite an autoerotic maneuver, if you catch my meaning--and I know you do, Ms. Reno.) It's a brilliant pop song in which both love and girls are both justly maligned for the injustices they have wrought upon manlykind. Real sob-in-your-Pabst kinda stuff. Strictly for the bitter.

There's the rub. It's May. It's sunny, getting warmer. You can taste a blissful three months of fantastic Chicago life in the air. It hangs in the air like a giggly fog. On top of that, I feel damn fine about myself at least seventy percent of the time--and I hate myself, so that's a big stretch.

But when I hear this great bitter XTC song, I go out of my head. I internally cackle with glee at how vicious I feel, how I can plaster this amazing sneer onto my lips that scares cute young ladies in neighboring cars as I drive. When I'm walking the streets in my finest JC Penney's Dockers and trendanista Gappish top, I'm Mister Cool. When I'm listening to this song, it's glorious fun to be bitter, even though I have no good reason to be. (Other than the fact that, like Herman Blume in that amazing teen epic Rushmore, I'm a little lonely these days.) It's like XTC has made it cool to be bitter.

Is it possible, then, to be happy and bitter at the same time? Not bitterly happy, or happy to be bitter; those are two separate states, and I probably drift in and out of those from time to time, too. Can a person be doing well for themselves and still be plagued by nagging feelings of bitterness? Can I have my "Happy Birthday, Happiness" cake and smush it into Happiness' face, too?

I certainly hope so, because it's a hell of a lot more fun than either mindless joy or intense frustration, which seem to be the only two alternatives at this point. I'll take walking contradiction over ticking time bomb any day. Summer, here I come.