End Of The World As We Know It

And I feel especially fine. Yeah, smooth and cool and damn sure happy to be alive. I just experienced the most wonderful sensation, one that's really stuck with me and replaced my usual scowl with a smile, and just made me feel all warm and sweet and fuzzy and kind-hearted to Republican relatives all weekend long.

"Good Lord, woman," I can hear you hollering. "Have you gone mad? Again?" No, no, no and no. I was just very surprisingly blessed by the eternal light of Jesus while at a kiddy party at a roller skating rink in freakin' Smyrna, GA as I watched rednecks and "urban menace" boy teenagers skate to rap music.

What other explanation could there be? I mean you take a laundry list of all the things I loath most in this world:
-rap music
-male teens
-rednecks
-kiddy birthday parties
-Smyrna, Georgia
and you put 'em all together in one place and what do you get? A thing of beauty. I am sooo not kidding you for once.

Actually, I chanced upon the junior-thugs while at Sparkles, a roller rink in Smyrna, Georgia, Suburban Hell On Earth Capitol Of The World, where I was required to take Ava for Skyler, The Neighborhood Menace's birthday party this past Saturday. The boys there, the ones who were good, were skate-dancing together to a smooth kinda rap with an R&B infusion. Something on popular radio any 15-year old would recognize in a moment. The kids were Jam Skating. And Lord Awmighty, it was just wonderful. I'm serious. They danced on their skates so pretty and smooth and rhythmically that I went into a trance watching them float-dance around the curves in perfect synch with the music.

Of course I went way on back to my skating years, about '76-'78 or thereabouts, when I used to sashay around the local rink to Baby I Love Your Way. I was a pretty decent skater. Fairly graceful and smooth and syched with the sounds they were spinning then: Shannon, Saturday Night, Fooled Around and Fell In Love, If You Leave Me Now... you get the picture. Could've been better if I'd had a chance to practice more, but there just wasn't much concrete 'round the farm in those teen years. Too many chores, too little recreational activities.

Enough nostalgia.... If I hadn't just seen for myself four black men on horseback (western style) leaving a convenience store near Ponce and Boulevard on a sultry Saturday night in late August, I'd sit and argue with you that the Apocalyspe was all a bunch of yadayadayada fundamentalist blather of hooey. Now I might just sit and nod my head, play an Eagles album and enjoy the end of world. At this point, it's all too pleasant to waste time arguing about.

You can see a bit of Jam Skating in the Sparkles video here.