Any Color You Like - Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon - 1973

So my ladyfriend and I did the diabetes walk yesterday, as we both have a fair number of family members that are affected by this. All in all, it was a quick and easy five miles and they gave us lots of snacks. The walk was basically just from the South Street Seaport up to the Brooklyn Bridge, over the bridge, around the courthouse, and back. We both took a great deal of amusement at the number of guides positioned on the other side of the bridge, basically at every corner, to make sure timid Manhattanites didn't get lost in the "horror" of downtown Brooklyn. But hands down the funniest bit of the day occured when we were walking back.

Being the impatient NYC-ers that we are, we didn't wait for the starting gun, but instead just started walking. This meant that we were coming back over the Brooklyn Bridge just as the bulk of the walkers were heading over. Standing in the middle of the observation deck at the midpoint of the bridge was a smallish camera crew. The object of what they were shooting was standing a few feet away; a perma-tanned russian girl in booty shorts and a frilly top. She was standing on top of an equipment case and attempting to lip synch through whatever bad euro-tech song she was trying to shoot a video for...however, niether her nor her crew seemed to be aware that today might have been a bad day to shoot a video on the bridge. The waves of people coming over the bridge seemed to terrify her and annoy the camera crew to no end. I didn't even make an effort to not step in front of the camera when I passed...cause seriously...fuck those guys.

Anyway, Pink Floyd doing an instrumental from Dark Side...either you like it or you don't.

Another Brick in the Wall - Pink Floyd - The Wall - 1979

From 2000-2002 I worked for a small dot.com down in the financial district. Our boss/CEO was easily one of the most odd people I have ever encountered in my life. He was a former Israeli tank commander who kept photographs of the people he had killed on his desk. He was a rabid stoner, who would shut the door and smoke up in his office and then come out yelling and screaming that we weren't working hard enough. Despite having lived in this country for many years, his English was still awful and his spelling worse. I wrote most of his emails for him...and the ones I didn't write were nearly unreadable.

So one friday evening we were all sitting in his office with a six pack when he opened with one of his usual bizarre non-sequiters. He was speaking to the british salesman in our office and he says something to the effect of "Ehhhhhh (he always begin with a long "Eh") Chris! I feel bad for you British people...it's like, when you are school kids, ehhh, you have to walk into that thing that grinds you up. Makes you hamburger It seems very sad."

Now, to this day, I'm still not sure if he honestly believed that british school children had to walk into a meat grinder as part of some intiation, or if, he actually understood the metaphor (or even what a metaphor was) of the school system as part of british societies culture of repression but either way, it was an odd moment from an odd man.