United, stating
the obvious

by JACK OATMON

If I were to have begun speaking on, say, Tuesday, March 25, and I said about one word per second for every waking hour with only very short breaks for food and drink, by the time you read this, over one month later, I would have said about two million words. That may sound like a lot of words to say in just over a month, but some people—very good speakers—are capable of saying at least that amount every single day. Like Hillary Clinton.

“I say a lot of things, millions of words a day,” she recently said, “so if I misspoke, that was just a misstatement.”

That means she says aloud about twice the equivalent of the entirety of the Lord of the Rings series and both Bible Testaments combined, every single day. I’m a pretty talented windbag, but I’m nowhere near the jabbering juggernaut that Clinton is. I do, however, write a lot of things. Millions of words a day, in fact. So if I miswrite sometimes, it’s just a miswritement. Perfectly understandable.

That’s why it irks me when I get these people saying stuff like, “Hey man, you wrote that Free Blood was going to rock lobsters when they opened for Hot Chip and that Shy Child would slay it opening for Midnight Juggernauts, but those openers both totally sucked mule nuts.”

Well, sorry, bucko, but if someone had asked me on those days, are the members of Free Blood or Shy Child having any kind of sexual relations with a donkey—that is, asked me a question in the present tense—I would have said no. And it would have been completely true.

I think you can see where I’m coming from here. So now let’s put those sorts of inconsequential miswritements behind us and focus on the fact that tonight, Thursday, May 8, at le Parking, Ellen Allien and Sascha Funke are going to totally obliterate. I saw Allien at the MEG festival a couple years back and it was pretty darn awesome. More awesomeness than you can rattle a sabre at, in fact.

And there’s no miswriting about Tribe Hyperclub, boy I’ll tell you. Heck, I’d run ducking from incoming sniper fire just to get in there, even if the attacks were sufficient to interrupt a DJ set by Get Physical posse M.A.N.D.Y., Audiofly and Heidi. The choice is almost unbearable, in fact. Choosing between those two fantastic German minimal powerhouse crews, the BPitch A-Team and the Get Physical all-stars, would be like having an aggressive neighbouring nation choosing between the same two tyrannical, tongue-twisting, megalomaniac families for 15 years plus. Excruciating!

But it’s no matter, because in the end we’ll all get to enjoy ourselves, even if we can’t do it all. Regardless of which club we decide to go to tonight, the hills are going to be alive with the sweet sounds of top-notch Berliner minimal techno and soothing sniper rounds. Everything is going to be good as far as I can predict. Depending, of course, on what your definition of “is” is.

YOU’VE JUST READ 1/3600 OF WHAT I WROTE TODAY… jack.oatmon@gmail.com