A warm July evening in the park with the Decemberists

It’s not often you hear a pop or rock band drop words such as tryst and pachyderm with the same matter of factness rappers spray f-bombs - much less rhyme verandah with Miranda.

Such are the ways of The Decemberists. Named after a Russian revolt from the 1920s and hailing from Portland, Oregon this is what passes for orchestral pop these days - and that’s a good thing.

And while I heard they once opened for a hip-hop act at a New Year’s Eve party back home, there is no truth to the the rumor The Decemberists have a running feud with the archly literate The Junes, who prefer Southern Gothic to Euro-lit.

While still fey, the Decemberists’ thang is way more tolerable than Yes or Emerson, Lake and Palmer or other groups from the 70s that used cellos, spun pianos and evoked elves and fairies. It’s mopey, to be sure, and the soundtrack for mopey college kids who actually read books, not only for the joy of it, but to impress possible sex partners into bed.

The crowd was thick with such pale people Wednesday night in Millennium Park. the older brothers and sisters of the Naperville kids heading to the Harry Potter night, no doubt. The air was thick, too, but that’s Chicago in July. They should have sat the audience by how they scored on their ACT or SAT tests. The dumb ones would be in the back in their hand-me-down AC/DC t-shirts.

The band played with the Grant Park Symphony, so there was a program that treated the performance as if were REALLY IMPORTANT AND SERIOUS - like Mozart or Elvis Costello in one of his moods.

We know this because a full page listed the compositions to be played and band leader Colin Meloy listed as composer.

Meloy does have a way with a melody, though he seems to borrow a bit from “Losing My Religion” era REM with a touch of Talking Heads thrown in for good measure. And you know he wants to write an opera, or at the very least one of those bittersweet musicals like Stephen Sondheim even if he occasionally, dangerously veers into Neil Diamond "I Am I Said" territory.

This may sound mocking, but it’s not. I can mope with the best of them and this is perfect music for staying in such a mood.

Case in point, this lyric: It was ten years on when you resurfaced in a motor car. And with a wave of an arm, you were there and gone.

Now who the hell hasn’t been there? OK, the song is called “The Bagman’s Gambit” and is about some sad sack pining over a robber or spy he helped out who shot a cop and is holed up back in Russia. And your not really sure if he’s singing about a chick or a dude, because he’s all arty and singing from his nose. And who the fuck calls a car a motor car?

Now that part, while evocative ain’t necessarily a universal experience. But missing someone you really should be glad is gone is.

Alone is a crowd of smart kids, the rain falling, humid like a Russian bath. Oh God - I’m writing Decemberist lyrics.

I better cleanse the palette with some Ramones before I take up painting and start wearing thrift shop suits.

There are worse things.

Civil War Saturday or To the Sweaty Past in Short Pants

I’ve said it before, and I will say it again. Though I am hardly perfectly happy at the moment (and who really is?), I am glad to live in a time with running water, indoor plumbing, heating, air conditioning and for those of us who can afford it, good medical and dental coverage.

Yet, I remain fascinated by those among us who decide to spend weekends living in the past – in wool clothing in 90 degree heat, mind you.

So this past weekend my Irish buddy Shay invited me along to a Civil War reenactment on the grounds of a forest preserve in Lake County. As if forest preserves and reenacting weren’t scary enough, there was a magician doing rope tricks making jokes about the rope in his bedroom while intertwining the twine in a box.

A girl played with a wooden bear that looked more like a squirrel making it dance on a piece of wood, which was just mildly more entertaining to me than any Playstation game I’ve seen.

There were old fashioned carnival games. In one you had to toss coins through small holes or a brass frog’s mouth to win prizes, including tickets to the Ford’s Theatre. OK, that’s a lie. You could win a paper fan, a top, or a Jacob’s Ladder, which is just squares of wood tied together.

The other was “Splat the Rat” where you had to whack a toy rodent before it landed in a basket. What guy hasn’t spent a rainy Saturday splatting a rat or two?

I wonder if the entertainment was as eco-friendly at the Rock Concert for Mother Eart or whatever Al Gore's World Part was called? Save the planet - drive to a concert and drink overpriced beer in the hot sun with people not wearing shirts who should keep them on.

But, hey, I have spent a Saturday being too lazy to take a shower, but many of the guys here had me beat. Not only were they wearing the aforementioned wool outfits. Some of them explained that they never wash their wool pants. Never, as the wool is untreated, meaning it still has natural water-proofing oils.

Great, I think, the pants won’t get wet or absorb your sweat. You’ll just be standing in self-created puddles all day. And imagine how smelly and itchy body parts must get.

If I were to Civil War reenact, I’d be the one to say, hey, let’s put this cotton to good use and make some pants, some short pants even, for our days fighting pretend enemies on government-owned and operated land.

Another guy from a group from the aptly named Plainfield, a town which seems to haunt me for some reason (maybe the name – it’s so ordinary), was busy polishing his triangulated bayonet in the shade. His buddy explained that such arms were banned by the Geneva Convention as it’s much more uncivilized than, say, a depleted uranium weapon or a car bomb.

We ate lunch in the shade as myriad moths hovered through the trees, drawn to the fabrics of the past, no doubt.

On the way home my buddy stopped for cigarettes, because he didn’t find any hand-rolled ones to his liking at the campground. OK another lie. The clerk did attempt to talk his ear off about the reenactment thing, so I told Shay he should have said, “Listen, we just shot the pretend President. You forget you ever saw me or I guarantee, your name will be Mudd.”

It was the humidity talking.

Sure I make fun, but my kid’s son, who is going into 7th grade, gave good reason why we actually probably need reenactors. The boy had yet to learn who fought in the Civil War or what the war was about.

He did like the toy pistols, though. That’s a start, I guess.

Pedro the Nigerian Cabbie

So we’re standing along Foster Avenue in Chicago in Albany Park Saturday evening waiting for a cab, and my friends say how lately when they hail one it turns out to be quite the experience.

Proving their point, up comes this cab driven by a big NIgerian with a deep voice and an infectious laugh. He asks us where we are headed, which is to a movie.

You made my night, he says. He’s been looking for an excuse to see Live Free or Die Hard, and since he’s gonna be there, he might as well. He talks about needing to see something where stuff blows up real good, or words to that effect.

But we tell him we are heading to see the Michael Moore opinion piece Sicko.

“Oh I love that man,” he says.

He was going to be a pharmacist, until he realized machines are and will be doing more of that work. He became cynical about Big Pharm having a drug for everything, and the side effects from those drugs.

“If you are sick and tired, they should tell you to drink some water and get some sleep,” he says.

He has the passenger side window down and includes people in cars at lights next to him in the conversation. When he drives aggressively he asks passersby if he hurt their feelings.

He gets on a roll about Bill Clinton’s use of the English language and Monica Lewinsky and it all sounds funny coming from a guy with a baritone and a thick accent.

But he loves Bill Clinton, he says, how the man had flaws but knew what he was doing. Or words to that effect.

We wind up at the theater and sure enough he heads in to join us at the Moore movie. He even insists on buying us popcorn and sodas with the $20 we just gave him as fare.

Now I’m thinking this could be really weird, mainly because I am not used to strangers being so Goddamn ebullient. I’m thinking he might act up in the show, judging by how he talks to people in elevators and in concession lines.

But I really do worry too much.

Our new buddy Pedro kicks back and watches the flick, blending in as if we have known him for years.

This is a great way to see a movie, I think, knowing your ride home is there with you. And I can’t wait to hear what he has to say.

He loved it. He tells people we get in the elevator with (coincidentally, the same three we rode up to the lobby with) they should see it, too.

What he likes is the courage he says Moore has. Though I might agree with some of what he has to say, I think Moore is often full of shit,. But Pedro has a point to the point that Moore has been hammering in his last three films. That is, too much in American life is predicated on fear.

In terms of health care, Moore touches on how people now leave college with debt piled up to their ass, so they have to take a job and won’t make waves because they need to money and the health insurance.

Moore also makes France, England and Cuba look like workers paradises, which is what the right is going to be harping about. But who hasn’t had a personal experience with how dreadful the current system can be?

Anyway, Pedro tells us again how we made his night, that cab driving ain’t paying the bills, so it was a nice break.

I think he said he’s been in Chicago for at least 15 years. He came here for the architecture, or something like that. Art. For art’s sake, as he’s from the part of NIgeria that was the cradle of African culture.

He paints and sculpts and will be playing guitar from a couple hours to unwind when he gets back to his place, jazz on an acoustic guitar in fact. He tries another genre every year or so.

We try to pay him, but he won’t take the money. To be honest, there is no amount that would have done him justice. So we get his phone number instead.

If I were a religious man, I would think moments like this are why I am a writer. At the very least they are why I need to get out more.