Gaga, Obama and a Pathetic Piece of Pot-Metal

HAPPY NATIONAL LADY GAGA DAY!

Gaga reminds me of the president’s state of the union address last Wednesday, because I guarded the America’s Cup when I was a mere lad.

It all ties in..  just wait and see.

I used to do security guarding to make ends meet. They never did, but I still managed to get by somehow. This was a long time ago when I was young and sprightly, and living in San Diego. I worked for a “contract security company,” which meant that I got sent all over the place to guard all kinds of things.

In 1987 a yacht skipper named Dennis Connor raced his yacht against other yachts and won a huge trophy called the America’s Cup, which they put on display at the San Diego Yacht Club. Then they hired the company I worked for to guard it and the company sent me.

This was a big friggin’ deal in San Diego at the time, but it was so long ago it’s all kind of lost in a swirling haze of pretentious rich assholes. But I remember a few things that stand out, like the good looking Brad Pitt kind of guy who came in with the gorgeous babe on his arm. She was wearing a skirt so short her legs reached all the way to the ground, and I think I might have drooled a little on my tin badge without meaning too. They didn’t notice because they were too busy fawning over “that magnificent trophy!”

They both went “oooh!” and “ahhh!” as they held hands and scanned over the shining edifice to the world’s most ludicrously indulgent sport. They asked me questions about it that I couldn’t answer and they stood there long enough to read every inscription, which was awesome because there are a lot of inscriptions due to it being a really old perpetual trophy, and she had a fine little butt for me to admire while they stared at the towering silver edifice.

Yes, this is how security guards entertain themselves. You knew that.

After they left, an older gent came hobbling in using a cane. He greeted me with a sly little wink and then approached the trophy, which he studied in detail for about three minutes. Then he shook his head and muttered, “What a pathetic piece of pot-metal.”

He didn’t like it at all.

He somehow took my silent grin as a prompt to go on and complain about what a waste the whole thing was, so he did, for about twenty minutes.

I remembered all this on Wednesday while reading Twitter and Facebook comments about President Obama’s speech. I thought how funny it is that some people liked what he said while others thought it was a steaming pile of festering donkey shit.

I realized way back when, while standing in front of the America’s Cup, that the hot couple had their reasons for liking it while the older gent had his reasons for not liking it, and it all had something to do with the context of their lives. Maybe the young babe had a brother who helped crew Connor’s yacht. Maybe the couple bought into all the hype on the radio at the time and just had to come down and see it for themselves. Maybe they both just liked tall, shiny things with names on them.

The old man hated it, but perhaps he’d been a yacht skipper who’d lost the cup years before to the Australians and was still bitter about it. Or perhaps he didn’t like tall, ridiculously expensive things with a cold, hard veneer because they reminded him of his first wife.

Whatever their reasons, they had them, and it affected how they saw the America’s cup.

Just like all the comments I was reading on Twitter and Facebook the other day that were streaming down the line during the president’s state of the union address.

I tend to only follow like-minded people to myself, as most of us do, but a few of my online pals likened the president to a retarded monkey flinging feces at the poor, beleaguered republicans.

Others thought he gave an excellent speech and they’re all “empowered” now. I’m wondering if they all heard the same speech. How can one group be so adamant that it’s all a load of crap while another wildly cheers him on? And of course, members of each group think members of the other group are “ill-informed” at best and brainless slug farts at worst.

To me, it’s all in the context again. Everyone has a bulging sack of reasons for thinking as they do, and sometimes those reasons are good while at other times, maybe not so much. Sometimes these reasons change; by an event, by what someone says or because an individual decided to just sit down and think about it.

That’s what I did with my opinion of Lady Gaga. For a while I was calling her “Lady GAG-ya” because I thought she was all ludicrous and showy. She is, but I didn’t like her very much then and now I do. Why? Because someone who likes what she does explained to me why they like what she does and what they felt she was trying to achieve.

Before you go thinking that I’ll just buy into anything that has a few pretty words behind it, let me assure you that I thought over the Gaga thing and came to the realization, with the help of my friend, that she’s just putting on a show. Always. She can’t just sit down at a piano and sing a song, she has to have the piano float while she wears wings and spouts blood out of her ears. It’s all symbolic of something, and trying to figure out what the symbolism is, is what makes her so intriguing.

She’s the Salvador Dali of pop music.

I still don’t fully understand Gaga (does anyone?) but I like a few of her songs and videos that I didn’t before. I’m kind of seeing them in a new light since thinking it over. I used to work in theater, so I had to apply all of my theater experience to understanding her. I get it now. I really do!

I fully realize that Lady Gaga and yacht racing trophies don’t carry the same significance as national politics, but they’re all the same when it comes to our reasons for agreeing, disagreeing, liking and not liking, loving and hating. We bring our lives to the table and apply them to what’s being served, which sometimes makes for a tasty dish but other times not, while all along we’re all eating the same food.

It may be an over-used saying, but we really are the sum of our experience.

By the way, I seem to have a kind of history with huge, perpetual trophies. I once had lunch with the Stanley Cup but that’s another story.

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Tagged as: America's Cup, Lady Gaga, President Obama