Pink Floyd vs. Amir Odom: The Dark Side of the Moon...and of Dark Money

 

"All Lovers Are Deranged" by David Gilmour

In the late 90’s, there were two things I believed to be true: love wasn’t worth fighting for and Pink Floyd was the greatest band in the world. I needed a theme song that combined these two staunch beliefs and that song was “All Lovers Are Deranged” by David Gilmour, the guitarist and co-vocalist for Pink Floyd.

The Pink Floyd fandom was easy for me, especially after they published a song called “Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2” (we don’t need no education). I hated going to middle school in the late 90’s, so Pink Floyd earned a lot of brownie points with me.

The part about resisting romantic love was also easy for me back then because I had a father who owed alimony and child support to multiple ex-wives. Okay, so there aren’t many 11 to 13-year-olds who have to pay alimony, but the idea of it happening one day scared me to death.

This was also during a time when I watched the movie Happy Gilmore (no relation to David) and I learned how the IRS punishes people who don’t pay their taxes: by taking their stuff. I was very protective of my property (especially my Legos and videogames), so sharing them with a girl was out of the question.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t tempted by these girls in middle school, though. I took a special liking to women who walked around in shorts and sandals. I didn’t know why at the time, I just liked that about a woman. I would later find out by a special invention called the internet that I had a foot fetish. All questions were answered.

But no matter how many times the girls in my school dressed in shorts and sandals, I turned down every one of them who asked me on a date. Again, I was very protective of my personal things. Add to this the idea of being controlled by someone and the paranoia was even stronger.

I didn’t learn how to fall in love until I turned 15 years old. I went away for a summer retreat in Bellingham and they held dances. I showed up looking for something to drink and from out of nowhere, this pretty girl comes up to me and asks for a dance to a slow song. Also from out of nowhere, I said yes to her. I enjoyed being close with this woman in an intimate way even if it was only for a few minutes. If I can get a little graphic for a moment, there was even a time where…you know…it moved. Ahem!

So now that I know how to fall in love with women, I also know how much it hurts when I know I can’t have the one I fall in love with. I had so many crushes in high school and college that I wanted to duplicate that intimate feeling with. At the time, I thought rejection hurt worse than never trying. I still believe that to this day.

That’s why I consider myself lucky that I was able to have a relationship with a woman named Brianna and feel good about having it. We held hands, hugged, and I even got my first kiss from her. Yes, it took me a long time to get my first kiss, but I got it, by god. That milestone felt good. What didn’t feel good was never seeing her again after an awkward date in which she got in a political argument with my liberal mother. Still, given the awkwardness, I enjoyed every minute I got to be with Brianna even if it was only for a few months.

It’s not the late 90’s anymore and I still have David Gilmour’s music burned to my computer. Are all lovers deranged? It takes a certain craziness to think that love conquers all. Then again, who ever said I was sane? I’m the same guy who believes Mickey Mouse Clubhouse is a cute show and the real world is faker than professional wrestling. Would I do it all again in a heartbeat? Absolutely. Broken hearts can be mended, but lonely ones can’t.

　

***WRESTLING QUOTE OF THE DAY***

“Marriage is a lot like a deck of cards: in the beginning, all you need is two hearts and two diamonds, but in the end, you wish you had a club or a spade.”

-Jerry “The King” Lawler-

Pink Floyd the Wall

Allow me to paint a picture for you. It’s the mid-90’s and I’m still extremely young. My dad plays a video cassette of various music videos he recorded off of VH1. The ones I’m waiting for particularly are those of The Police. Before that, I get a music video that could easily be defined as the most frightening I’ve ever seen. It’s a sequence from the movie Pink Floyd the Wall, particularly from Goodbye Blue Sky to Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2. It all begins with the Union Jack turning into a bloody cross, which is horrifying enough. But then they had to have a sequence where putty-faced children march through an abandoned cookie factory only to end up getting ground into sausage near the end. The very next day, I ordered a meatball marinara sandwich at Subway and I’m barely able to eat the fucking thing because the meatballs look like ground up children and the marinara sauce looks like blood from the Union Jack. Fast forward several years later, namely to my sophomore year of high school. I finally get to watch Pink Floyd the Wall from beginning to end. After the first time, I became an instant fan of the imagery that scared the shit out of me as a child. And then I would watch the movie over and over again as a means of escapism. That and I loved the music of Pink Floyd. Eventually, I began to call this movie my own personal bible, which might not have gone over so well in a town full of Christian conservatives such as Chehalis. The lesson I took away from this movie was not the obvious one of taking responsibility for your actions, but instead one of resisting everybody’s attempts to change who I am. During the sequence for The Happiest Days of Our Lives, Pink’s teacher reads one of his poems in a sarcastic and insulting manner before smacking Pink’s hand with his own pencil. That’s one way people try to change who you are: by insulting you and making you ashamed of your creativity. Folks, I’m here to tell you that no matter how many times someone insults your creative ways, never trade them for mundane conformity. Don’t put on a suit and tie when you can easily write poetry in your pajamas. Don’t put on a hardhat and overalls when you can write a movie script in your underwear. Ever since considering Pink Floyd the Wall my own personal bible, every insult I had ever taken in my life was construed as an attempt to make me a boring person. When a random kid started calling me a crackhead for instance, I took that as an insult of my character. So I did the one thing that every emotional, testosterone-pumped teenager did in those days: I ran up to him one day, kicked him in the ass, grabbed him around the neck, and wrestled him to the floor. I would have rained punches down on him, but I think he got the message. I never heard from him again. Thanks, Pink Floyd the Wall, for reminding me to continue writing offensive literature no matter what criticism it took in the past!

　

***SONG DIALOGUE OF THE DAY***

“Oh my god, what a fabulous room! Are all these your guitars?! God, this place is bigger than our apartment! Uh, can I get a drink of water? You want some? Huh? Oh wow, look at this tub! Want to take a bath?! What’re you watching? Hello? Are you feeling okay?”

-The groupie from “One of My Turns” by Pink Floyd-

"Joker" by Brian Azzarello

You don’t really need any confirmation as to how creepy The Joker can be. Just buy a copy of this graphic novel and look at the cover. That is not a mouth anybody would want to kiss, unless of course they were bulimic and needed a reason to throw up. Looking at the cover by itself, do you think that The Joker is someone you want to hang around with? Jonny Frost seems to think so, but even he has his pants-pissing moments when trying to figure him out. The Joker will step on graves, slash throats, pump people full of lead, and any other form of hideous torture that will earn him the control of Gotham City he once had. These underworld kingpins made the mistake of taking over the criminal activity while Joker was locked up in Arkham Asylum. Not very smart! Dead bodies are piling up everywhere and it all happens under the naïve Jonny Frost’s watch, who once said himself that The Joker is like a disease spread around Gotham City to which there is no cure. Sure, Batman can come in at the most inopportune time and save the day, but you know what? His nemesis will keep coming back for as long as he needs to. That’s how on edge the citizens of Gotham need to be, as well as Jonny Frost. It’s that level of creepiness that brings out the gruesome nature this graphic novel has to offer. You never know when The Joker is going to strike or why he does it in the first place, but you know it will happen eventually. Combine this frightening aura with a neo-noir backdrop and you’ve got a formula for a successful graphic novel. Noir is supposed to be a dark genre to begin with. Shadows cover the characters in order to retain their element of surprise for when they eventually come back into the light and scare the living crap out of whoever’s in front of them. If you need a reference, think of “Batman: The Animated Series” and turn the rating up to somewhere between TV-14 and TV-MA. If you’re not shitting your pants just from reading this graphic novel, you need to eat more vegetables.

　

***LYRICS OF THE DAY***

“On your own admission, you raised up the knife. And you brought it down ending another man’s life. When it was done, you just threw down the blade while the red blood spread wider like the anger you made. I don’t want this anger burning in me. It’s something from which it’s so hard to be free. And none of the tears that we cried in sorrow or rage can make any difference or turn back the page.”

-David Gilmour singing “Murder”-