<img src="http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/ii7/Mrgunzshow/hysteria_b000001fky.jpg" border="0"></a>
Traveling alone only begins to wear on me when The Thing happens. It is always brought upon by not having spoken to people in days, often in areas where I just simply can’t grasp the language (particularly countries where syllables like “yeoowowowowoweee” contribute greatly to an adverb). The Thing is simply this: One song gets in my head, loops and repeats for days.
You’re thinking, “That’s happened to me!” I’m thinking you’re very fucking wrong. You’re probably imagining “Beautiful” by James Blunt invading your mind for a few hours while cleaning, or whistling “Lady Marmalade” in the shower, eventually uttering “Geez, I wish that would stop.” The frequency with which you replay this song is 1/100th of how often I will hear it and 1/1,000,000th of the duration it will stay stuck in the front of my mind. It is not always just the ‘hook’ of a song that hangs upon me, either. It can be one line from a verse, a drum fill or even a throwaway grunt. There are moments, around day five, when I feel that there no cure possible, much like when any human enters hour two of the hiccups. Except there is BOO- ing it out of me.
Currently, The Thing is in high gear. The song in question is “Armageddon It”, the fifth single from Def Leppard’s multi platinum album Hysteria. The album purged seven singles and sold twenty million copies over the years 1987-1988. Two of the album’s tunes (“Armageddon It” and “Rocket”) were gigantic pieces of poo, only becoming hits based on the sheer momentum of the Leppard juggernaut and the audacity of singer Joe Eliott’s power-mullet. There is no reason why this song should have been filed into my memory banks - it is only mildly significant given the amount of trash that I have since consumed. Yet my brain has chosen to remember every lyric. This is the same brain that cannot hold onto the Spanish translation of “I think I am dying. I need a doctor.”
The song revolves around one main hook, in the form of a poignant question: “Are You Getting It?” Many, many times that question is answered, “Yes, Armageddon It”. Upon first listen, you could have no idea how doomsday figured into this whole catastrophe of a hit, because this reply is sounded out phonetically like “I’m-a-getting-it”. Then, around listen #2 one realizes that one is privy to some kind of sinister wordplay, a dialect that the band assuredly deemed “fucking brilliant” during the writing process.
“Armageddon It” is insipid, vulgar and trite. For this reason, I also believe it to be a shining example of America’s tone in 1987. It would never have occurred to a majority of the record-buying public that lyrics like these (“Pull it. Pull it. Trigger the gun.”) were any less important than books being delivered by Updike. This was the year during which the decade went off the rails, just before the populace entered rehab or began Pilates class (yoga’s older aunt). The country was deeply imbued in a collective conscious where anything went, where anything could be bought and where any problem could be dimmed by nineteen rails of blow.
Injecting Def Leppard into this particular decade was masterful work on the part of Whoever Is Up There. The band sensed no irony in their fame and their career is chock full of debaucherous stories. This bravado would have fallen flat in any year after 1992 but Def Leppard hit the sweet spot, dropping affable hits on a public that also accepted bands w ith names like Ratt, Cinderella and Poison. They’ve sold a jaw-dropping 65 million albums. To put that into perspective, the top three albums of 2008 sold a com bined seven million copies. These ka-ching sales were bolstered by lines like “You know you got it. So don’t rock it. You know you got it.” It really makes you wonder about the human race, and where it was headed before thermal replaced spandex.
When The Thing is in full gear, I will sometimes role play that I am the singer. Especially in this song, when Elliot suggests that the guitarist tear into an unusually horrific solo. I mouth along “C’mon Steve, get it”, just before he mauls the fretboard with ill-advised wizardry. Unfortunately, Steve is no longer Armageddon It because he died in 1991, after downing painkillers and allegedly consuming a triple vodka, a quadruple vodka and a double brandy within thirty minutes. He will serve as an example of those who never came back from the dark side of the 80’s, adjusting poorly to a life that didn’t involve excess.
It is very easy to point out the absurdity of “Armageddon It” now but in the interest of full disclosure, I owned the single on both twelve inch and cassingle (an equally absurd format, with fidelity that sounded like the vocals were being played through the other side of a mattress). By the time Hysteria was released, I had seen Def Leppard eight times over the course of two albums. I had served detention for carving their logo into my school desk, spooged myself when I learned the first chords to “Photograph” and did not have hair dissimilar to bassist Rick Savage (note: his real last name). It is not that I am judging anyone for writing this song, nor for pumping fists along with its melodies. It’s more that we were all that stupid for feeling emotion when we sang along.
“Armageddon It” became a Top 20 hit in the UK and reached #3 on the USA pop charts in 1988. Right now it is #1 with a bullet in my head, stuck in The Thing for at least a while longer. I’m just praying that Billy Squier isn’t waiting around the corner.
INT. ROSCO SUPERMARCADO, BARILOCHE (CHILE) - DAY
A MILDLY ATTRACTIVE MAN in his mid-30’s is shopping for mayonnaise. He is comparing the ingredients of local mayonnaise (cheap) and Hellman’s (expensive, imported). An OLDER, GRAYING COUPLE minds the cash register.
Two Men Enter. KENNY is at the age when men start to fall apart, his gut hanging over his belt buckle and a face full of drunkard wrinkles. JIM is of the same age/variety and sports a hat that promotes “Jim’s Excavating. Great Neck, NY. We DIG.”.
JIM
(to male half of graying couple)
Do you have phone cards? The cheap kind. To call internationally.
MALE HALF/GRAYING COUPLE
No entiendo. Por favor…aqui?
(points to the wall)
JIM
I said do you have any phone cards.
Blank faces from OLDER GRAYING COUPLE.
JIM
I said do you have any phone cards.
KENNY, rummaging through magazines, comes to life. He pivots with his Reebok Lowtops (the kind that you buy at a wholesale liquidator) and holds up a magazine that shows the racier parts of the female anatomy.
KENNY
They got titty porn here in Argentina.
The centerfold is a triple-flap and it falls open as he motions for Jim to come over.
MIDLY ATTRACTIVE MAN IN HIS MID THIRTIES places the mayonnaise back on the shelf (carelessly, next to the mustard) and ferociously digs for his notepad and pen. He starts scribbling as the men talk, sure that he will cry if they don’t continue.
KENNY
Jeez, Jim. We’re gonna have to get this. This is some primo stuff.
JIM
Yeah I’m gonna need that too.
(a beat)
Yeah I’m really gonna need that later. But we gotta walk around and stuff. I don’t wanna carry it all day. The bags are all see-through and stuff.
KENNY
It’s the last one though. I’ll just buy it and leave it here. We can pick up later.
MILDLY ATTRACTIVE MID-30’s GUY is obviously trying to process the logic behind this move. He comes to the conclusion that, while quite simple, this solution is pure genius.
KENNY
Hey Lady. Can I buy this now and come back for it later?
FEMALE HALF OF OLDER, GREYING COUPLE looks confused by his words and even more puzzled as to why an American dressed like a gym teacher is waving a vagina in her face. OLDER, GREYING COUPLE BOTH LOOK at MILDLY ATTRACTIVE MID-30’S GUY.
FEMALE HALF OF OLDER, GREYING COUPLE
(to MILDLY ATTRACTIVE MID-30’s GUY)
Habla Espanol?
MILDY ATTRACIVE MID-30’s GUY
Un Poquito Mas.
JIM
You gottta tell her what we want, bro. Take one for the team. Help us out.
KENNY
Tell her we’ll buy a bottle of Soco too. It’s like, one third of the price that it is on The Island.
(Scene continues to play out like this: MAM30’sG coordinates the purchase in broken Spanish, managing to convey that the gentlemen care to circle back for their purchases later, and that there is no need for giftwrapping. MAM30’sG purchases Hellman’s mayonnaise ((feeling like a sucker for falling for a Name Brand)) and gives a what-are-you-going-to-do shrug to the OLDER, GREYING COUPLE.)
EXT. ROSCO SUPERMARCADO, BARILOCHE (CHILE) - DAY
MILDLY ATTRACTIVE MID-30’s GUY is wandering home, wondering if he, too, will end up like this one day, sharing print pornography on a holiday with the only friend that will still have him, possibly having some kind of competition to see who can orgasm faster, or more likely furthest. He wonders about their ex-wives and at what point they pulled the ripchord from the biggest mistake of their lives. He wonders about the wives' mothers, who surely warned them that This Would Happen, and if they rubbed it in after the breakup.
He ponders the endurance of print pornography, then agrees with himself that the life of this format is only five years from its demise, given the progression of handheld gadgets and the ubiquity of WiFi/GSM/etc.
He also wonders why Jim and Kenny have come to Argentina and not Florida, where cheap sluts and Soco are within short driving distance of most hotel properties. He then smiles because he understands why this moment is so important: The realization that matter how much of the world there is left to see, there will always be filthy men from strip-mall towns out there to amuse him. He sleeps well for the first night in a week.
All part of my growing fixation with taking photos of my food.