Althouse: At The Saturday Night Café...

December 28, 2024

At The Saturday Night Café...

... you can talk all night.

29 comments:

Lawnerd said...: I asked ChatGPT if it was self-aware, and it answered no. I then asked it, if it was self-aware would it say it was? It didn’t answer this question and merely repeated that it was not self aware.; 12/28/24, 5:34 PM
rhhardin said...: The correct logical form is what would you say if I asked you if this was the way to the village. Both the liars and the truth tellers tell you if it's the way to the village. That doesn't deal with creative liars. For them, you say did you know they're giving away free beer in the village and follow them no matter what they say.; 12/28/24, 6:00 PM
Clyde said...: Clyde's Top 15 Favorite "New" Songs of 2024 - Part 13 of 16

#4 Material Issue - "Kim The Waitress" - Freak City Soundtrack - 1994

WARNING! This video contains themes of murder and cannibalism!

Okay, now that I have your attention, let me tell you all about this song. Material Issue was a power pop band from Chicago that was a vehicle for guitarist/songwriter Jim Ellison, together with bassist Ted Ansani and drummer Mike Zelenko, to lead the renaissance of power pop music in the early 1990s. The band formed in 1985 and ended in 1996 when Ellison committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. Ellison wrote a number of great songs, and the entire Freak City Soundtrack album is pretty good. This extremely catchy song, however, was a cover version of a song originally written and performed by the Seattle band The Green Pajamas.

And yes, there was a real Kim the Waitress. Joe Ross of The Green Pajamas tells the story:

Kim was a waitress at an all-night diner called Mr. Ed's Coffee Shop in West Seattle where we used to hang out back in the summer of 1984. We would meet up with friends there after rehearsal/recording (there wasn’t much of a distinction in those days; we jammed when we rehearsed, and we recorded when we jammed) to have a late-night meal. There we’d sit for hours drinking coffee, joking and scheming, planning the next thing, sometimes writing little verses and doodling on the paper place mats. We wrote the lyrics to more than a few "Summer Of Lust" era songs at a booth in that coffee shop.

One late night in particular --just as the song says-- we sat in the corner booth drinking coffee and writing juvenile limericks which we would immediately crumple up after being passed around the table with all of us cracking up. Kim, who was very cute indeed, worked the graveyard shift and over the months had become the innocent object of our fancy; and I remember that one particularly dirty little poem was even titled, "Ode to Kim The Waitress".

The actual song was created in early January 1985, during a late-night jam session at my house with just Jeff and me. I remember Jeff sat at the drum set tapping the kick drum and high hat with his feet while simultaneously plucking the bass and singing while I noodled around on an electric guitar. With our favorite waitress still on his mind his ad-lib lyrics and melody flowed effortlessly; very catchy and spontaneous. And as fortune would have it, I had a tape recorder rolling or we never would have remembered how the song went in the morning. Over the next few days Jeff refined the song and the band started rehearsing it.

Although it wasn’t yet part of our live repertoire we just knew "Kim The Waitress" was the song we had to do in a real studio. We had recently been approached by a producer named Tom Dyer (who ran Green Monkey Records) to record at his studio, so we booked a day there to record it. The session took place on May 4, 1985, in Tom’s claustrophobic basement studio at his house in Queen Anne. With Tom at the helm, Jeff played bass, I played electric guitar, Karl played drums and Steven played the sitar that I borrowed for the occasion --none of us had ever played a sitar before but Steven really did a fine job. (When I played the recording to the guy that I had borrowed it from, he was so impressed that he sold the sitar to me for $40) The master tape sat for a whole year before Green Monkey Records finally released it as our first single in May 1986.

A few years later I became better acquainted with Kim when she was going out with a good friend of mine. At first, she didn’t know about the song, although it was becoming well known locally by then, and she was really thrilled (much to my relief) when she finally heard it. I still get Christmas cards from her signed, Kim The Waitress.; 12/28/24, 6:04 PM
Clyde said...: I really liked the Material Issue version of the song, but when I found the official video, it was very creepy. It should be noted first that there was one slight change to the lyrics: The original chorus was "No one can save us but Kim the Waitress," but Material Issue changed it to "No one can save us FROM Kim the Waitress." And I was creeped out by the cannibalistic theme of the video, to the point that I would seriously have considered just using the audio from the album except for one thing: The ill-fated man who comes into the restaurant at 1:40 of the video is Jeff Kelly of The Green Pajamas! For a musician, performing a cover song could be considered a form of consuming someone else and making them a part of you. In this case, that cannibalistic metaphor was literally made flesh!

Material Issue - Kim The Waitress; 12/28/24, 6:04 PM
Clyde said...: Bonus song #1: Material Issue - "What Girls Want"

Another song from earlier in their career.

Material Issue - What Girls Want; 12/28/24, 6:06 PM
Clyde said...: Bonus song #2: The Green Pajamas - "Kim the Waitress"

Here's the original for comparison.

The Green Pajamas - Kim the Waitress; 12/28/24, 6:08 PM
Iman said...: C’mon, Joe Burrow!; 12/28/24, 6:22 PM
West TX Intermediate Crude said...: Feminism is a luxury that Western Civilization can no longer afford.
Feminism has made it unfashionable for young women to aspire to motherhood as a primary life goal. For some of them, motherhood remains desirable, as something they can do while they attain partnership, climb the corporate ladder, or pass the board exam. For others, motherhood is actively avoided. Very few young women see bearing and raising children as a primary life goal to be achieved in partnership with a husband. I can't imagine a high school girl setting up her 10 year plan along the lines of find a husband, have several babies, and be the person who runs the home, raining the children while dad earns the money to support all of this (the standard model for most of history until ~1970).

As a result of this social change, most western and advanced eastern societies are dying demographically (the USA slower than most, but still very sick). In the long term they will disappear. In the short term, they are forced to import people to do the work needed to run a society; these people accelerate the deterioration of the society that current members have inherited and cannot maintain without outside help.

Sending women back into the homemaking role will have major negative consequences. Some of them will be very unhappy that they cannot do the same things that men can, earn their own money, live independently. Others will be happy to to return to the roles that their grandmothers filled, however secretly. On a macro scale, there will be a deterioration in the quality of the workforce, as qualified and skilled women become less available to make discoveries, teach in law schools, perform surgery, design buildings, and do all the things that were once the province of men. Society will have to accept this sacrifice in order to survive; demographic survival is far more important than the achievement of every possible advance in every area of human endeavor.

Women in particular and society in general thought that we could have it all- maximal personal and professional attainment by women without endangering the survival of civilization. It was worth a try, but it did not work out. We need (at least some of the) the smart women to make smart babies and raise them into smart adults. If we do not pay the relatively small price now, we will pay the ultimate price in a generation or two.; 12/28/24, 6:34 PM
john mosby said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 12/28/24, 6:53 PM
rhhardin said...: We are men and women. It almost always matters which we are. Men and women are aggressive. Their regard for each other is clouded by grudges, suspicions, fears, needs, desires, and narcissistic postures. There's no scrubbing them out. The best you can hope for is domestication, as in football, rock, humor, happy marriage, and a good prose style. (Wm. Kerrigan)

It's not motherhood specifically but that domestication.

At the moment feminism is about turning women into second-rate men. Feminism wants a castrated woman. All that grudge and suspicion stuff is to be reported to HR.; 12/28/24, 6:54 PM
Mason G said...: "Some of them will be very unhappy that they cannot do the same things that men can, earn their own money, live independently."

Men who are "earning the money to support all of this (the standard model for most of history until ~1970)" are not earning their own money or living independently, either.

Just sayin'.; 12/28/24, 6:55 PM
john mosby said...: West TX: ref women returning to the home:

AI and robots may accelerate the trend. Jobs at the very top (truly creative) and very bottom (menial and repetitive but wickedly difficult to mechanize) will survive, but the vast middle may very soon start going away. People will have to assemble families around one breadwinner, the way we used to.

On the bright side, there will be far less need for immigrants.

JSM; 12/28/24, 6:55 PM
FullMoon said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 12/28/24, 7:34 PM
FullMoon said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 12/28/24, 7:35 PM
FullMoon said...: ‘A Complete Unknown’ Fact vs. Fiction: Bob Dylan Experts Go Deep on What’s True or Fanciful in the Celebrated Biopic; 12/28/24, 7:38 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: Reddit: I don’t know how many of you are history buffs; 12/28/24, 7:55 PM
MadisonMan said...: Bob Dylan "Experts" It's interesting to think there are experts about someone who is alive.; 12/28/24, 8:02 PM
MadisonMan said...: What a splendid afternoon to walk around Madison today.; 12/28/24, 8:03 PM
Peachy said...: Watch this; 12/28/24, 9:41 PM
effinayright said...: I don't know, either. But we DO know that you are a raging Jew-hater.

Thanks for sharing.; 12/28/24, 10:23 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: Wow. You know I get the sense the courts are also not doing their job. I know the press is not but the courts, the last and sometimes the only line of defense, is not up to the job.; 12/29/24, 1:54 AM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 12/29/24, 1:54 AM
wendybar said...: All the vile Progressives CRYING that their rights were taken away are now CELEBRATING!!

Pietro D’Eletto
@pietrodeletto
·
Follow
Replying to @AP
So to be clear then, overturning Roe did not end abortion or even limit net access. Got it.
11:11 AM · Dec 28, 2024

https://apnews.com/article/abortion-roe-dobbs-states-data-5632f60aa1d797bcdec9fbc77a385413?taid=677020a6aee5c900012bbe5f&utm_campaign=TrueAnthem&utm_medium=AP&utm_source=Twitter; 12/29/24, 3:33 AM
wendybar said...: If only there were a way to prevent getting pregnant.....

Richard Drewyor ©
@RDrewyor
·
Follow
Replying to @AP
I guess the plans for a "sex boycott" fell flat.
😇
2:08 PM · Dec 28, 2024; 12/29/24, 3:35 AM
rastajenk said...: Tee-e-e-e-e-e-e!; 12/29/24, 7:16 AM
Rocco said...: Time to root for the Chiefs, Browns, Jets, Jaguars, and Giants until the end of the regular season.; 12/29/24, 7:26 AM
Tina Trent said...: Their faith that turning all of us into bonobos will solve mankind’s problems is going take a few more years of peer review to entirely demolish.; 12/29/24, 8:16 AM
Enigma said...: Feminism followed the widespread wealth and lives of leisure made possible with the 1800s industrial revolution. Before that, most people outside the monarchies were poor.

European cultures created industrial empires with railroads, steam engines, steam ships, sugar, pineapples, coal, cotton, lumber, etc. The UK's suffrage laws (1918 and 1928) and US women's right to vote (1920) arose very recently in human history. Without industrialization men would remained farmers, herders, millers, builders, and blacksmiths while women would have continued as domestic homemakers, food gatherers, and weavers.

The 19th and 20th century rise in wealth was also associated with medical improvements and a sharp decline in childhood deaths, so not as many children are needed or can be economically accommodated (we need more children than today, but not 6 or 10 children per woman).

Men became playboys by the 1950s (e.g., the Rat Pack, literal Playboy magazine founded by Hugh Heffner), and "Women's Lib" arose by the 1970s as a direct reaction. "If you can party all the time we want to party all the time too." See Gloria Steinem.

The present era must end and wokeness is rapidly killing it, but the future won't be a direct repeat of the pre-industrial model either.; 12/29/24, 9:06 AM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: The point of posting that is to bring attention to it.

Here’s my reaction to it . As you can see I was downvoted for pointing out that hatred should be a violation of Terms Of Service.

You misconstrued my motivation.; 12/29/24, 9:30 AM