Chapter 90

Up at 6, a big glass of cold water, tai chi, a walk with the dog, and off to work. The day’s music was entries 356 to 353, first it was a 1968 album called Gris-Gris by Dr. John, a bizarre eclectic mix of jazz and African percussion and all sorts of sound effects, I can’t say it wasn’t interesting. Then it was Black Sabbath’s first album, hell yeah, that’s an entry I agree with, though of course I’d like to see it placed higher. I listen to Paranoid and Master Of Reality way more than that self-titled debut, but it’s great, truly ahead of its time and considered the first metal album ever. Then it was two 1978 releases, a punk album by X-Ray Spex and the catchy “new wave” rock of The Cars, and I enjoyed them quite a bit. That Rolling Stone Top 500 is full of duds and overrated boomer shit but overall I’m glad I’m going through this exercise, I am discovering some fun music.

I listened to this through the day, between classes. I had three grade eleven groups in the morning, and taught them about ketones and aldehydes. Aldehydes are systematically named with the suffix –al: propanal, butanal, pentanal, etc. I’m glad my students don’t speak much English otherwise I’d have to deal with an avalanche of really immature comments.

Lunch was a baloney and cheese baguette sandwich, that I wrapped in foil and baked for 10 minutes before adding mayonnaise. One of my all-time favorite comfort foods. I watched the news, the trial of Derek Chauvin is taking place now, and it’s likely he’ll be exonerated. Boy, I wouldn’t want to be in an American city right now. If he walks, those summer riots will look like children slap fights in comparison.

I rode back to work, listening to the Boyscast. Ryan Long had a guest on, I didn’t catch his name, some kind of musician. He grew up in Saudi Arabia as an expat kid and talked about the aspects of life there that he liked, and how different countries value different cultural and social traits. It was very interesting and informative, and obviously something I can relate to, after living in China for so long.

I have a new period on my schedule, I’m merely supposed to supervise a grade 12 class. Two of them take economics in another classroom, and I thought it wouldn’t be fair to use the class to review chemistry concepts, plus, I already have them six times a week. As per yesterday’s vote, I gave them a presentation and started a discussion on hip-hop. I put on two music videos, the aptly titled Hip-Hop by Dead Prez, and then a Chinese underground rap track called Laobaixing (common people) by Xiao Ou and Alienkey. I made them brainstorm and talk about the differences between the former, a militant, in-your-face call for action, and the latter, a laid-back, positive fun track, but also the points they have in common and that define the musical genre. Then I talked about its origins in Jamaica’s rich musical tradition, showed a clip from a documentary about dancehall, and used them as examples. “So, imagine all of you live in the same block in a poor part of Kingston. Wang Yaoting here is the only guy who has enough money to own a record player, so at night, he brings it outside, and all of you go to his house so you can hang out and enjoy music. However, though he’s the richest guy in the block, he’s still not very rich, and only owns three records. At some point it can get boring, always listening to the same albums over and over, uh? So one day, Chen Wenzhu here starts singing over the music, and people like it, it’s something different. Then, Zhang Yan starts doing the same, and thinks she’s better.” I know it’s extremely oversimplified, but that’s the gist of it, and this culture eventually got brought to NYC in the late 70s. I showed a few pieces of key vocabulary, and ended it by showing a cypher with seven or eight underground rappers all flowing over the same beat in succession, and how it relates to those Jamaicans from fifty years ago.

I had a few more classes, doin’ my thang, then clocked out. For once, the girlfriend was off work before me, and she was at the park with the dog. She commented on how he’s always sitting and dragging his ass, I shaved the area around his butthole a few days ago so that there wouldn’t be specks of shit and urine stuck in all those long hairs, maybe I cut it too short. I hope it’s just mild discomfort and there’s no danger of infection or whatever.

I relaxed at home before heading to the gym. I watched a UFC fight from last weekend pitting a guy from my hometown named Marc-André Barriault against Abu Azaitar. First two rounds were back and forth, with a crazy high pace for the middleweight division, and then some weird fuckery happened in the last round. Azaitar dropped his mouthpiece, bent over to pick it up without waiting for the ref to stop the action, and “PowerBar” capitalized hard on the Moroccan’s mistake. He bludgeoned him with strikes from top position until he got a late stoppage. Quebecers in the UFC are now 2-0 since the beginning of 2021.

At the gym we drilled a few nice moves: leg drags, guard recovery, attacks from side control. I commented at some point “Man, when the blue belt demonstrates it, it looks so graceful, but when I do it I feel so damn clumsy, as if my limbs are installed backwards like Mr. Potato” and my fellow white belt said “Yeah, I feel like a sack of shit dropping on the floor” “Hey, I didn’t go that far!” We had a few nice rolls at the end, at some point the round ended and he was on my back. “Let’s keep going, deathmatch rules, until there’s a submission” I escaped, reversed the position, he reversed it back, and so on and so forth until he choked me. Good fun.

I made it home, threw my gi in the laundry, opened a delicious red imperial IPA from Oskar Blues, and cooked dinner. Oxtails in tomato sauce, macaroni, asparagus and broccoli, with a Tsingtao beer, as sometimes light pisswasser lager is the only thing that truly quenches my thirst. We ate while watching The Office and soon called it a night.