Jimmy Buffett at Jiffy Lube Live

"Narcissism on the Beach"

Saturday, September 1, Lori and I drove to Northern Virginia. We had been gifted with a pair of tickets to see Jimmy Buffett and the Coral Reefer Band at Jiffy Lube Live (formerly the Nissan Pavilion). My colleague and friend Alex Drumheller e-mailed the faculty at Heritage on Thursday asking if anyone wanted to take over his hotel room at the Dulles Hilton for Saturday night and go see Jimmy Buffett. Duh. But, seriously, thanks, Alex!  Lori and I have both seen Buffett numerous times, in both inside and outside venues but have lamented in recent years not having seen him for at least twenty years. Hmm, about the amount of time Hannah has been with us. Don't worry Hannah, we'd pick you over a Buffett concert anytime. With Hannah at college, however, the way seemed open to take Alex up on his offer and we were lucky enough to get to do so.

A little about the trip and then some comments about the concert.

The hotel was very nice and couldn't have been easier to find. We got there around three, went into their in-hotel lounge and ordered lunch, then went up to our room, showered and got ready to leave. The venue is only about 12-13 miles away, but we had no idea how to get in or what traffic would be like so we left around 6:30 and by 6:45 were off I-66 and in line to the facility. When we pulled off, we drove several hundred yards up a road to a line of cars in the left lane. Very quickly it filled up behind us until I'm sure the line stretched out onto the highway which was about a mile away. We were in this line, bumper to bumper for the next 45-50 minutes. Moving ahead a yard or two at a time we crawled the Police directed route into the parking lot. From there it was a very short walk to the gates and suddenly we were in the midst of a very familiar Caribbean-themed party. Now this we understood. The staff were friendly, but in charge, no closed bottles of any type, no chairs more than 9" tall (more about this later). So people were being handed large plastic cups (maybe 32 oz?) to pour their water into and the small collection area was filling up with chairs. Above us was a tall hill (maybe 75 feet tall) with stairs going up on each side. We showed our tickets and began the climb, marveling at the creative costumes people wore and the higher we went, more and more surprised by the size of the hill. I had read you could rent chairs for $5 so had elected to trust my reading and leave ours at home. Ours would not have made it in as they were taller than the allowed height. We got to the top and there was a tent where volunteers working for CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) were renting the chairs. $5 was the price and feeling we were contributing to something good in the midst of this bacchanal we moved over to the lawn to try to find a place to sit. The lawn was filling up very fast and spaces were limited but we found a spot to the right of the stage and set our chairs up. Now, here is the first lesson about the lawn for us aging baby boomers. At this facility, the stage was about 100 yards away. Buffett, when he came out looked to be about an inch tall. The other thing about the lawn is it was basically the seats of the great unwashed masses. It was an unbelievable mass of people, constantly moving, yelling, laughing, but more than anything, drinking. Heavily. No, very heavily. How they could afford it is beyond me because a beer was $12. They were huge beers and if you were in a bar, one would have filled an evening. I watched several people drink four or five. Multiply by 12, children and you've spent for beer more than the tickets cost. More about this later also. When the concert ended we waited in our seats for a half-hour or more to let the place empty out. At that point the Police were checking to see why people were still there (more to come) and we just picked up our trash and headed out. Leaving the facility was not the issue entering was. When we got into line, we were out and onto I-66 within fifteen minutes and back to the hotel in thirty. Very smooth and easy.

Now to Buffett. A few observations about the evolution of a Buffett concert and the passing of seats from boomers to the present post-college generation.

The show started a little late, probably because the traffic coming in was still dragging its way onto the site. But eventually "Hot, Hot, Hot" kicked off over the sound system and while the crew continued to fine-tune the stage setup the party kicked in out in the seats. The sky was turning dark but the lawn was absolutely covered with people and more were pressing in. Finally the drummer, Roger Guth took his seat and the rest of the band strolled onstage then our one-inch tall object of joy walked onstage and the band kicked into a very energetic and quite beautiful "One Particular Harbor," a great choice for a lead-in song and this was a charging, electric version. I remember giving my friend Betsy Mulderig a cassette tape copy of this album at FIT and her dancing around the studio on breaks listening to this. A great start to the show.

Now, Buffett has been doing this for 38 years (and he told us so several times) and has at least 28 studio albums. I began my interest with Buffett in the early 1970s with High Cumberland Jubilee, A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean, and Living and Dying in 3/4 Time. I was fascinated with his willingness to find new ways to use words and the combination with interesting country rock rhythms (I was well into my love of country rock). With 28 albums there have to be a few songs in a concert he simply has to sing. Think Fins, Margaritaville, Cheeseburger in Paradise, Volcano, Come Monday, Son of a Son of A Sailor. That's already a big list. So for longtime fans like Lori and I it was a question of which songs we loved (that weren't Buffett required performances) we'd get to hear. Now, I love A1A. I consider it Buffett's one whole album masterpiece. It's been a long time since that was released in 1974. Interestingly, probably my two favorite albums, albums I'd take to that desert island were both released in 1974. The other one is Jackson Browne's Late for the Sky. Decried at the time as "...public therapy" for Jackson Browne and "...too sad and depressing to listen to" it has become one of my favorites for its imagery and wonderful music. Now isn't it interesting that my top two picks showed up in 1974 and are both by guys with the initials JB? Okay, you don't care, I'll get back to the concert.

When Buffett came out, everyone stood up and remained standing for the entire concert. Thank god for the huge video screens to either side of the stage. Otherwise, we'd have seen nothing. We had found a nice place to sit, but as the lawn filled to bursting (I personally think the venue just kept printing and selling tickets as long as people kept ordering them). So many, many younger, early to mid 20's kept shoving in and of course a 6'2" guy wearing a silly looking porkpie hat (really?) shoved in front of us with several girls and kept pulling more and more people in as the night went on. They all had their phones out and were conducting loud conversations with friends in other parts of the place, "...yeah, we've got a nice spot, come on over..." and he moved back and forth between this girl and that, swaying to the music but paying no attention to the band. One minute he was blocking my view, the next, Lori's. But after about 8 or 9 songs, he and his entourage were gone and a new party of three moved in. Again, a guy about 6'3" tall, another guy about 6' tall and a girl. She was flirting with the taller guy, the shorter guy was busy the entire time taking photos with his phone of the two of them together. All three were involved in conversations at the top of their lungs with each other, laughing hysterically at various inanities involved in this flirtation process, and when unoccupied by their interaction, they texted and photographed each other with their phones. I only noticed one time they appeared to even know there was a band and it was during "Margaritaville" when Buffett's audience shouts "Salt, Salt, Salt" in this sort of hedonistic pseudo-gospel call and response section of the song. Other than that, they paid $50 a ticket to get absolutely fall-down drunk on $12 beers while doing what they could have done at a neighborhood bar. They were so unaware of everyone around them that the larger guy was almost stepping on us. Anyway, this lack of interest in anyone but themselves and willingness to pay a high price for a ticket to a show they clearly had no interest in was repeated ad nauseum all over the venue all evening which spurred some thoughts. This lack of awareness of others is the origin of the title "Narcissism at the Beach."

I thought  about the times I have already seen a Buffett concert and what this event has now become. Way back when, I was fascinated by his songwriting and that is what I went to see and hear. It has now become a huge, multi-hour singalong with the master of escapism and poet to hedonism himself, and a multi-hour standing ovation to boot. Did I sing along? Yes, I know all the words, so why not? I sounded good, too, not that anyone could confirm that. But I digress. Buffett's humor shines through every part of his music and the show is no different. There's a huge screen behind the band (the A-V Club is successfully employed) where the show started with a film of mermaids (in Sarasota Fla. swimming) and as the song moved on it slowly became apparent that Buffett was in there swimming with them with his hands above his head making the "Fins" sign. Subtle, but funny. I wonder if many people noticed? Mostly they are involved with their costumes, and fin-heads and getting drunk. Not that I look down on drunks listening to Buffett. The writer of "God's Own Drunk" deserves a little leeway if his fans like a beer I guess. Lori saw a guy standing there swaying in his own drunken haze with "God's Own Drunk" scribbled in large letters on his t-shirt. Like he wanted a Buffett shirt but would rather buy beers than merchandise. Funny. It was a place full of little interesting images like that. Loads of men wearing coconut shell bras and grass skirts, women in bikinis as if they were actually at the beach. It was hot enough for that, but...

Anyway, Buffett writes in his songs about a time that those of us in our mid 50's and up can identify with. Our dad's and granddad's were World War One and Two vets and we can visualize the things he writes. He writes about "...sending the old man home..." (from WW 2 in the Pacific) "they'll mothball the whole damn fleet..." or gives us images of a steamship leaving port and faces fading until they are two small to identify. We are old enough to remember a steamship, and World War 2 and mothballed fleets so the writing rings true for us. The tunes match up and have the feel of something a sailor might call familiar in that time. To me, that is part of what I want to see and hear. To his newer, younger fans, the music and imagery of those songs is not the attraction. They come for the party. To be there and be able to say they were there. That's okay if that's what you want; he makes his money regardless. Okay, I have wandered again. A Buffett show now is a huge party, a debauchery in the seats, but still a job onstage. But there is still that connection to the past that the older members of the audience can remember so he's sort of straddling two worlds, worlds he invented to be sure, but at least one of those worlds can't put their phones down long enough to listen and that was a shock.

The setlist was great, and included an acoustic section with a video tribute to Andy Griffith that included "Piece of Work", "Pencil Thin Moustache" (another homage to the '40's and '50's) and finishing with a stunningly beautiful cover of Crosby, Stills and Nash's "Southern Cross". What a treat. He did all the expected songs and a few unexpected ones, "Who's the Blonde Stranger," "Banana Republics," and "A Pirate Looks at Forty" from my favorite, A1A. He also did several encores with a rousing "Brown-eyed Girl", a great version of "It's Five O'Clock Somewhere" with lead guitarist Peter Mayer doing a credible job as Alan Jackson and of course, "Fins" and a second, final encore by himself with an acoustic version of "Trying To Reason With Hurricane Season / Last Mango In Paris".

So to end this meandering piece looking for a reason to exist, it was great to see Buffett again. but the lawn is not the place for aging baby-boomers. The stage is too far, the sound was poor at best and the almost amazing number of fall-down drunks was just astonishing. Watching them trying to leave was just sad. There were people there who literally could not stand up. Not one or two. Dozens or more. So, yeah, it was a great show. Buffett is in great shape and looks like he loves what he does. But I cannot help but be wistful for the Buffett I grew up listening to.

Chesterfield Inn, Myrtle Beach.

Once again I waited several months since writing here. This time I am going to write about our vacation last week. Lori and I needed to get away. Returning to school in mid-August just wasn't an attractive idea without finding a place to clear our heads and put our feet up. Years ago our friend Tom Cassidy (from Lynchburg College Alumni Programs) had told me of a place he and Laurie visited. His description had always intrigued me but for some place it maybe didn't seem like a place our daughter was going to want to go. I couldn't remember why I thought that but since she wasn't going this time I e-mailed Tom, got the information and in sort of a cryptic statement Tom said to give it a try and see if they could fit us in. I had no idea how wonderfully descriptive that comment was until I started to look at the website and see when there was an availability. I started wondering what was wrong. No rooms available? Yogi Berra's statement describing a crowded restaurant as "...nobody goes there anymore-you can never get a seat..." ran through my head.  As did Tom's encouragement to keep at it and find a time. We got lucky. Two weeks before school started back there was one room available and Lori called and found the information accurate and we were in. Last week of July we would find ourselves at Pawley's Island in an Inn we knew only by Tom's description. But we trusted Tom and Laurie, with a friendship stretching back to 1972 (I actually met Tom in 1971 playing soccer for EC Glass against the LC jv's) so I knew he would send us to the right place and we went on living our lives waiting for a visit to a place we'd never been with the hope for a restful, healing week to get us ready for the demands of teaching for another year.

So Saturday, July 28 we got up, threw our stuff into the car and off we went. Gas prices around here were about $3.28 a gallon, the Honda Insight was fueled up and with expectations of 5-6 hours in the car, we plugged in the iPod and began our trip. One of the things we both enjoy is traveling through little NC and SC towns.
But there was something more we needed. We hoped that this trip could somehow approximate the visits we both had made to Chesterfield Inn at Myrtle Beach. Chesterfield Inn was a destination for our family for almost 50 years. My parents went there on their honeymoon, Lori and I went there on our honeymoon and Hannah grew up in the same environment at the beach that I knew, only she was with her three cousins, uncles, aunts and grandparents and for me it was Mom, Dad and the four children. Chesterfield was an old style inn, creaking floors, cabana louvered doors, meals provided for breakfast and the evening meal with food that had to be tried to be believed. You dressed for meals - I remember wearing shorts and a jacket with a little red bowtie (clip-on of course) as a little guy with only Mom, Dad, my sister and me. When Chesterfield transferred to other owners from the Britton's, it lost it's luster and over a very short period of time it became a mere shadow of itself until it finally closed. Since then we've stayed in North Myrtle, the Outer Banks and simply skipped the beach and gone to NYC or gone nowhere. Nothing anywhere seemed to come close to the Chesterfield. The image to the right is my watercolor painting (prints available-contact me) of the back porch of the Chesterfield with all it's classic black rockers, where we waited for meals, relaxed after a day on the beach, made plans to take the kids somewhere, or when we were kids waited for Mom and Dad to decide if we had behaved well enough to take someplace. A most restful place for an adult, a way station on the way to someplace else for a child.

So we had begun to believe we were chasing a pipe dream, a place to replace 50 years of memories and meals. Could it conceivably be found anywhere? 



 

So to answer my own question, and who am I kidding, no one is reading this anyway, the answer is an emphatic yes. Lori and I spent 7 lovely days at Sea View Inn on Pawley's Island, a throwback to a better time if ever there was one.
Maybe the way to approach this is to talk about the similarities we found and go from there into what made this Inn unique and special.

So earlier I mentioned food and what I am referring to is the Chesterfield provided breakfast and the evening meal and they were included in your room cost. At Sea View the inn provided all three meals. The similarities were great. Both Inns provided excellent low-country cooking and one of the very interesting similarities is almost every evening meal featured some sort of pass around platter and a server who went table to table. Sea View provided three meals daily (one more than Chesterfield) and the rhythm of the week revolved around the bells being rung at 8:30 am, 1:15 pm and 6:15 pm. You could dine barefoot but no bathing suits were worn in the dining room unless you had on some sort of coverup so that was very similar to Chesterfield. The food in both establishments was exceptional.

On the back of both inns was a porch. Both porches had a grouping of rocking chairs. The Sea View also included a "joggling board" which is a Pawley's Island innovation, apparently designed to give a courting man and woman a way to naturally be slid together. A seat that takes away society's rules for keeping two young lovers from ever touching. If that's not a throwback I don't know what is. Here is a photo of one - although not the one at Sea View. Sea View's is about twelve feet wide to give you some idea of the scale and is painted Charleston Green which is a green tinted almost black. It is sort of a replacement for a swing. There was also a beautiful hammock at one end of the porch. Here's a shot of the hammock overlooking the beach.
On the beach the Sea view provided chairs, umbrellas, a couple of sea-going kayaks as well as private outdoor showers. At Chesterfield we had to rent umbrellas. We could use our own chairs but renting an umbrella each day could get pricey. So there's an immediate advantage to Sea View. We didn't have to haul anywhere near the usual amount of beach "stuff" so we were able to travel in a smaller car that got phenomenal gas mileage. We took our beach towels, a camera, our books and sunglasses and Lori's spf 50 lotion and we were ready to go. The beach behind the Inn almost has a secluded feel. The stone jetties every 200 yds or so seem to enforce almost a backyard feel. That can be good or bad. In this case it was mostly good. We did have several houses as neighbors and one about two to three doors down had a very out of control testosterone feel to it. From the first day two young teenage boys had jet-skis out in the surf going back
and forth with the attendant constant drone of the machines. One of them constantly broke down so there was a maintenance effort going on the entire time they were there. These riders would zoom around out on the ocean making their racket, but they also zoomed into the shallows trying to jump over the higher waves hitting the shore. They did everything at a high rate of speed and were oblivious to children being in the waves close to shore. Someone finally called the Police, who spoke to the boys and from then on the jet-skis were launched up island. The testosterone showed up now, though with the two zooming back and forth right behind the Sea View instead of down the back several houses. I guess they showed us. One day it rained heavily so lots of people were on the porch reading. That's when our jet-skiers hauled a huge tent out and started maintenance on the jet-skis. They didn't seem to understand that there were other people there also. So now we know that narcissists go to Pawley's Island also.
The Inn itself is an old building (1937?) with paneled everything, louvered cabana doors, ceiling fans, window fans, a toilet and sink in every room but the shower is at the end of the hall. Did I mention a TV? There is none. Did I mention AC? There is only AC in the cottage but we didn't miss it. We stayed out of the room during the day and by the time we went to bed the ocean winds had lowered the room temps to a very manageable level. Did it get hot at night? Sure, but it was definitely manageable. What's that about the shower at the end of the hall? That's right, no shower/bath in the rooms. The prevailing joke for Lori and I all week was which one of us had the room key since we never saw one. The inn's walls were covered with great artwork. There were at least two shelves of books with the instruction that if you don't finish it, mail it back sometime. Games, cards, loads of entertainment ideas were available also. When you enter the inn at the back, there is a cabinet. In one of the drawers are sticker labels and sharpies to allow you 
to label whatever beverages you brought with you. There is also a huge icemaker and huge refrigerator to keep your beer or wine, sodas, whatever, cool. Every evening, limes and lemons appear so you can mix your favorite libation. The inn also provided cups and coozies (wraps for beer bottles) for your use. In the "courtyard" formed by the "u" shape of the inn and the cottage, there were amazing flowers growing and at least three or four cats which the children there never ceased trying to pet. The cats, being typical card-carrying members of the the cat world, spent their week avoiding all entreaties.

The people. Hmmm. Sea View has so many rooms booked by people who visit every year at the same time that for Lori and I it very much felt like we were intruding on someone else's vacation. I thought they were family until Wednesday night when one of the very friendly guests explained that they were all different families who came the same week every year. My response was that the shared experience over a number of years had made them  as close (if not closer) than many families. This is a huge reason the Sea View still operates I think. It is an anachronism in our time of large seaside hotel and condo developments but one which is so valuable. This is ocean housing of the '40's and '50's, probably not the thing for today's  20-somethings but valuable at the very least for the slice of americana it preserves. Lori and I weren't there an hour before several guests introduced themselves and brought us into interesting conversations on the back porch. I cannot begin to remember all the names, and one of our newly made friends tells me that comes after the second or even third year there, but a nicer group of people from a wider range of pursuits I don't think I'd ever be able to find. The connection across the board was the Sea View. I commented to a couple of them that I had never met nicer kids (from teenage to toddler) and how impressed I was with their "family." They said, "Thanks, but we aren't family." Maybe not by blood but the shared experience made them a family. Didn't make it easier to be there, feeling at times like we were intruding on their shared vacation, but as the week went on it definitely got better.

We started our  week at the beach with a folder full of mapquest directions which took us on the most boring travel part of the trip to Myrtle Beach we've ever experienced. So on the way home we went the old way. Much nicer. We got to within an hour of Myrtle Beach and spent about the next three hours bumper to bumper in a torrential downpour. Traffic was miserable, crawling at 20 mph with brake lights flashing all around us, wipers on full speed, hot and humid in a small hybrid. In the Honda Insight, when you touch the brake and the gasoline engine dies, the cooling part of the ac goes away and it blows outside air. Outside hot, humid, air mixed with auto exhaust. Not a pretty part of the visit. Every small town on our trip, all the places we have enjoyed meandering through for years had been bypassed by new highway construction. Anyway, we had to be there by 6:15 for the dinner bell and we rolled in about an hour early. The clouds were broken up and blue was showing through everywhere. The first problem we encountered was parking. There was no place to put the car except a small lot that said: "Absolutely NO parking for Sea View guests!" So we parked there, went in and got a short tour. The manager, Kip asked where we parked and said, "Don't worry about that, we have that worked out with them. You can park there." The car faced the salt march on the landward side of Pawley's and we made our way up to the first of many great meals. Sitting outside after dinner, one after another, multiple guests introduced themselves and asked how  and who we were so by early evening we alreay knew several folks. We walked out to the Salt Marsh and watched the sun go down. A more beautiful sight would be hard to find. The tide was in and that meant the marsh was full of water. There were crab baskets hanging from ropes and a kayak was tied up to the old, worn deck. The temperature was wonderful and we sat and watched the sun drop over the horizon. We had already unloaded the car and after a day of crawling in traffic we both were ready to end this day. Our room was an "oceanside" which meant it was in the main inn and had views of both the marsh and the ocean (with a little work). We got lovely breezes coming in both windows and with the full door open (a cabana door was there and latched) and the ceiling fan and two window fans keeping a constant breeze through the room and out the windows across the hall we were able to survive above average nighttime temperatures. Breakfast was served at 8:30. Too much to eat. We went out to the beach (there is no pool) and plunged into a day of reading and taking dips in the bath-like ocean. We lived by the bells calling us to meals and at 1:15 we had changed and showered and were sitting down to too much food to eat. The same goes for every meal and the spaces between the meals
every day. It did rain one day and we took the opportunity to visit a few shops and a Piggly-Wiggly Grocery Store. Then it was back to wait for the bells. Good thing I know about Pavlov's dog. So there was more food per meal, 1/3 more meals per day means we were eating way too much. But we were eating way too much very, very good food. Collard greens to die for, probably the best fried chicken I have ever had, but Wednesday night they just upped the ante. A low-country shrimp boil. A large outdoor boiler filled with large shrimp, kielbasa, corn, potatoes, onions, garlic and other stuff along with two packages of crab boil. Incredible. This was all poured out on newspaper outside and the bell was rung. Excellent!
The people. From the staff to the other guests, we met some of the nicest people and I told several parents how impressed I was by their children. Remember, no pool, no tv, no cell phones, no computers. But these young people were so impressive. Wow. On Friday night as we were winding down and beginning to lament the end of our vacation, the kids scheduled a talent show and asked everyone to sign up. It was an amazingly talented group of people. They put on such a fun show. I cannot even begin to express how much I enjoyed it. There was one song about poisoning the pigeons in a park sung by a gentleman who added such energy and drama that a song full of multi-syllabic words but a pretty sick theme became hilarious. He sold it. There were poems and dramatic readings and I felt like I had turned back the clock.
Saturday we left early and came back to the world. But what great memories! Thanks, Sea View, we'll be back.
                                                                                  

School is out for another year, the Republican party is still at war with teachers, I'm watching the Wisconsin Governor state his very selective historical opinions about what Americans want and what our tax structure has been  over the past century. There's this Tea Party Republican idea that taxes used to be very low during the Golden years and they state it over and over. The tax rate during Eisenhower years on the richest Americans was 91%, Reagan raised taxes 14 or 15 times but we hear deadpan statements from Republican mouthpieces about how low taxes were way back when. So we end school with no chance for more money, our school lost 12 positions, while this year's graduating class was up 15% in numbers over last year's. Makes us wonder just how much education is valued in this country. We actually have a neighbor who told city council to cut teacher pay 15% and we could balance our budgets. So Virginia has become a love/hate relationship. Our Governor says otherwise, but he has this smarmy smile while he is talking that says otherwise and a message that confirms it. Our conservative politicians appeal to the lowest common denominator in society, the greediest of the greedy and the least able to understand a message that actually works against their own interests. So is this a political rant? It isn't but it explains the art I am including with this post. I need to make money. Daughter is in college. We need money. So I have begun producing a few more commercial pieces of art and doing it in a method that I haven't visited in years. And guess what? I am enjoying it. So much that I am going to try to start producing some smaller paintings for quicker sale. These last two have been rather large with the most recent one almost 4 feet square. The first one is a Sgt. Pepper's construction using a foamcore sculpture of each of the figures in this centerfold image with a 2 inch stepoff from front (Paul's legs) to back (Ringo). Approximately 3 ft wide, the construction was built with foamcore, the painting done on canvas and then split apart to adhere to the sculpture. It has already sold. Now I am working on a 48" x 36" painting of the "Let It Be" album cover. That one is almost finished but will need several more days of touch-up and detail work but it should get finished in the next week or two. Why the Beatles? I've always loved the music and my brother in law has a Beatles tribute band in DC that is quite good. Mark suggested I try the first one based on a construction I did of Van Gogh and another of Gauguin. So that made me think of my favorite album covers and I've always loved the "Let It Be" album design and I had this large canvas just waiting for me downstairs so it was a natural. Anyway, that's where I am right now and I don't know why I am bothering to post this, no one's reading it anyway.