I had a weird moment of synchronicity just now. That’s been happening a lot lately. This morning after I got out of the shower I started up Winamp to play some music on the computer in the faint, passive-aggressive hope of disturbing my upstairs neighbor, who we’ve dubbed ‘Kid Rock’ due to his unneighborly redneck ways. Kid Rock likes staying up all night with his equally redneck friends who stomp around above and chortle at each other as “Dog” or “Hey, Dog” in their booming oafish voices. I’ve only seen him a few times in passing with his characteristic wife beater and distended beer belly, but I have had plenty of opportunity to study him and his many sounds while laying awake at night praying for his death. Kid Rock is fan of football I surmise because there can be no other explanation for the excited hooting and hollering that comes bouncing through the ceiling each night. He’s also a smoker judging by the noisy traffic in and out of his patio door every five minutes. There is an on and off girlfriend who comes over, or who did. Once she was beat on (so it sounded) and thrown out of the apartment where she laid on the landing along with a smashed PS2 leaning against the wall. Jody and I went outside to intervene and Jody called the cops on him. It looked like she had come over just to get the once unsmashed PS2 because her grey Altima was double-parked in front of the building. She didn’t stay long enough to speak to the cops. She just grabbed the PS2 guts and drove off. Despite their troubles they seem evenly matched, him with his wife beater shirts and her with her squat shape, ankle tattoo, and those ubiquitous black sandals with the foam soles so many squat women wear to look taller.
But I digress. Let’s just say I have a broiling, impotent hatred for Kid Rock and delighted in the opportunity to wake him up or to at least catch him while he drifted off to sleep since I was up earlier than normal and had some spare time. I heard him stomping around until about 4 am because I stayed up to read Deliverance by James Dickey after my marathon nap. Then he slowed down and went quiet around seven. That’s when I started playing Ashford and Simpson’s smooth 1985 soul anthem “Solid“. I’m not sure if it woke him up or not. Let’s hope so.
When I got to work, I started a pot of coffee and cranked up the XM Radio and “Solid” came on the radio again. This seemed weird to me, at least weird enough to mention.
The whole thing sounds like that old Beck song off of Mellow Gold, “Truck Drivin’ Neighbors.” The song contained a sample Beck recorded of his actual neighbors at the time who were fighting and trying to kill each other.