Many of life’s endeavors reach a psychological end in advance of their formal conclusion. Take romance, for example! (If you must know, I do consider myself a master of the fleshly arts. As does your mom.) Long before a woman actually breaks up with you, there’s a winding-down period in which your emails go unanswered, your teddy bear bouquets are returned, and you’re forced to watch the object of your affections make out with some total dickhead at The Edison that night when she claimed to be hanging out with her aunt but you didn’t believe her so you followed her around and spied on her from a distance. All I asked for was a little honesty! Damn... chicks can be devastating, man. Let’s go shoot pool or something.
Sorry, where was I going with this?
Oh right: endings. My point is, relationships are over before they’re OVER over, you know? Same with certain pop songs. The Smiths’ classic teen anthem “Panic” clocks in officially at 2:18 in running time, but the last 45 seconds are just “Hang the DJ” over and over again. Why the drawn-out repetition? Was Morrissey just filling time because it’d be stupid to have a song that’s barely 90 seconds? Or is it a metaphor for the numbing cycle of failure in my dating life? I asked Morrissey himself when he was at my place watching soccer* earlier today, and he said the answer to both questions is yes.
(* = total lie. Morrissey and I don’t actually watch soccer together. We just drink and play Assassin’s Creed, which he sucks at by the way.)
Also: summer. Pretty good season, right? It’s easily in my top four. But for emotional and not-wearing-white purposes, it ends with Labor Day weekend, even though in astronomical terms it doesn’t end until substantially later. Not until November, I think. (What am I, a weather man? Go look it up. Oh you do too have time... you’re already reading Bru Velvet, so clearly your free time isn’t some rare and precious commodity.)
Article comments
1 - Matthew T. Sussman
Of course Oregon isn't a state. But they're one hell of a delicious seasoning.