what became of a few other visitors to Beirut who sat tight in the backs of Mercedes-Benzes, waiting to see where they’d end up, and trying not to dwell on what became of other visitors to Beirut who sat tight in the backs of Mercedes-Benzes, etcetera.
“Very good hotel for you.”
After blundering through another dozen dark, demolished blocks, apparently at random, we pull up in front of what does, we would normally be happy to agree, look like a very good hotel.
“Very good hotel,” grins the driver, triumphantly. “Very good hotel for you.”
Presumably he picks up tourists all the time who are wandering around Beirut of an evening with no baggage and no idea where they’re staying that night.
“We don’t want a fucking hotel,” explains Mat, barely audible over the sound of his teeth gritting. “We’re quite happy with the one we’ve got. We want to go HERE,” he says, pointing forlornly at the map.
“Very good hotel.”
We pay him and head off on foot. We ask directions from the soldier at the checkpoint we’ve been driving past, from a variety of angles, for the last hour. He’s got no idea, and the streets around here look depressingly unpopulated. On a unanimous show of hands, we admit defeat. We stop another cab.
“Do you,” we ask, broken men each, “know the way to the Hard Rock Café?”
5
EVERY WHICH WAY BUT MOOSE
Green Day in Canada
OCTOBER 1995
T HE PREMISE FOR this trip, originally undertaken as a cover story for Melody Maker , was that it was pretty weird that Green Day, of all people, were quite possibly the biggest band in the world at the time. The idea that Green Day might still have a plausible claim on that title fourteen years later would, at the time, have struck all parties concerned—including, doubtless, Green Day themselves—as entrancingly preposterous. While I don’t much care for Green Day’s recent umpty-platinum punk rock operas American Idiot and 21st Century Breakdown , I don’t begrudge Green Day their success: I’m always able to recall meeting three people whose hearts, it seemed to me, were lodged in the right place with unusual unbudgeability.
I’d like to conclude this introduction with an unreserved apology to the people of Fredericton, New Brunswick, for the fusillade of cheap shots taken at their town throughout this piece. They reflect far more poorly on the hapless assassin than his intended target, and while I did consider consigning them to oblivion with repeated, rueful tappings upon the “delete” key, I decided to leave the passages in question, not only in the interests of maintaining the integrity of the original piece, but also by way of visiting richly merited self-inflicted punishment upon the author for having flaunted his twenty-six-year-old smart-arsery quite so egregiously.
FREDERICTON IS THE capital city of the Canadian province of New Brunswick. When any place touts as its principal claim to fame the fact that it is the capital city of the Canadian province of New Brunswick, you’d guess that it’s not got much going for it, and in Fredericton’s case you’d be right. Fredericton consists mostly of the kind of wooden houses that have flagpoles in their front yards, and is populated largely by the kind of people who’d fly flags on those poles. The standard joke to make about a town like this is to suggest that it’s the kind of place where folks still point at aeroplanes, but there’s something stilted and slow-motion about the way people here talk and walk and think that makes me reckon they’d be more likely to fling themselves to the ground in supplication to whichever strange god has filled their skies with giant metal eagles. Older residents can probably still remember a time when local people ate hay and worshipped the sun.
Other than its status as the administrative hotbed of New Brunswick, Fredericton also boasts a university: the imaginatively named University of New Brunswick. Inside the
“Very good hotel for you.”
After blundering through another dozen dark, demolished blocks, apparently at random, we pull up in front of what does, we would normally be happy to agree, look like a very good hotel.
“Very good hotel,” grins the driver, triumphantly. “Very good hotel for you.”
Presumably he picks up tourists all the time who are wandering around Beirut of an evening with no baggage and no idea where they’re staying that night.
“We don’t want a fucking hotel,” explains Mat, barely audible over the sound of his teeth gritting. “We’re quite happy with the one we’ve got. We want to go HERE,” he says, pointing forlornly at the map.
“Very good hotel.”
We pay him and head off on foot. We ask directions from the soldier at the checkpoint we’ve been driving past, from a variety of angles, for the last hour. He’s got no idea, and the streets around here look depressingly unpopulated. On a unanimous show of hands, we admit defeat. We stop another cab.
“Do you,” we ask, broken men each, “know the way to the Hard Rock Café?”
5
EVERY WHICH WAY BUT MOOSE
Green Day in Canada
OCTOBER 1995
T HE PREMISE FOR this trip, originally undertaken as a cover story for Melody Maker , was that it was pretty weird that Green Day, of all people, were quite possibly the biggest band in the world at the time. The idea that Green Day might still have a plausible claim on that title fourteen years later would, at the time, have struck all parties concerned—including, doubtless, Green Day themselves—as entrancingly preposterous. While I don’t much care for Green Day’s recent umpty-platinum punk rock operas American Idiot and 21st Century Breakdown , I don’t begrudge Green Day their success: I’m always able to recall meeting three people whose hearts, it seemed to me, were lodged in the right place with unusual unbudgeability.
I’d like to conclude this introduction with an unreserved apology to the people of Fredericton, New Brunswick, for the fusillade of cheap shots taken at their town throughout this piece. They reflect far more poorly on the hapless assassin than his intended target, and while I did consider consigning them to oblivion with repeated, rueful tappings upon the “delete” key, I decided to leave the passages in question, not only in the interests of maintaining the integrity of the original piece, but also by way of visiting richly merited self-inflicted punishment upon the author for having flaunted his twenty-six-year-old smart-arsery quite so egregiously.
FREDERICTON IS THE capital city of the Canadian province of New Brunswick. When any place touts as its principal claim to fame the fact that it is the capital city of the Canadian province of New Brunswick, you’d guess that it’s not got much going for it, and in Fredericton’s case you’d be right. Fredericton consists mostly of the kind of wooden houses that have flagpoles in their front yards, and is populated largely by the kind of people who’d fly flags on those poles. The standard joke to make about a town like this is to suggest that it’s the kind of place where folks still point at aeroplanes, but there’s something stilted and slow-motion about the way people here talk and walk and think that makes me reckon they’d be more likely to fling themselves to the ground in supplication to whichever strange god has filled their skies with giant metal eagles. Older residents can probably still remember a time when local people ate hay and worshipped the sun.
Other than its status as the administrative hotbed of New Brunswick, Fredericton also boasts a university: the imaginatively named University of New Brunswick. Inside the
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