Flashback to the Booty Call

Baby I'm Bored

Faux Dearies,

Okay, I’m starting with a GIF, because, why the heck not?¹

I am still kind of in wonder that I live in this new place, San Diego.²

I grew up close enough to the Canadian border that the Canadian flag hung in the hockey arena in my town.³

Now I live minutes away from the Mexican border.⁴

San Diego is the kind of place where you might see a big fish jumping out of the water like in the GIF above.

But it also affords plenty of vistas like the one below:

vacant taco joint on El Cajon Boulevard, east county

This picture could be any town in the USA, minus the palm trees, I reckon.

It actually reminds me of my beloved hometown of Duluth, Minn.

My son keeps insisting we should open a restaurant because he thinks I make a mean fried rice and breakfast hash.

I look at this vacant restaurant when I drive the kids to school and try to suppress any entrepreneurial urge that may flicker there.⁵

Stay in your lane, boy.

You are a purveyor of upbeat jangle pop.

That is what you do.

Except this week.

This week I am offering up a downbeat creeper of a tune.

If you are my parents or children, stop reading now.⁶

Actually, if you are reading this, guys, please understand that I have never experienced a booty call and barely even know what this song is about. That is why the spoken-word-acting thing sounds perhaps a tad contrived.

I wrote and recorded this bit 15 years ago⁷ and then left it alone after my guy ‘84 Caprice said he didn’t like the word “hypocrisy” in a song.

Actually, I just thought it was a little creepy for the Faux Jean brand.

This song was originally titled “Baby I’m Bored.”

This is one of the first songs I wrote and recorded by myself using digital technology. I didn’t have a way to hook up a microphone to the computer, so I sang and played guitar with my face right up against the keyboard and screen, using the built-in mic on the tiny laptop.⁸

One of the things that I learned when I started recording in the digital realm is how neatly music fits together.

You can grab little pieces and use them over or glue them in here and there and they just fit. Recording on analog cassette tape without a metronome as I had been did not afford the ability to use loops.

This song is built on a loop.

The working title for this song was “Baby I’m Bored,” and I generally use the working title when adding a track to “The Mixed Up Files of Mr. Matthew T. Schindler,” but that phrase has been co-opted by a divorce lawyer in San Diego in his billboard advertising, and so I grabbed a lyric for the title instead.

Here are the lyrics:

Flashback to the Booty Call

Now Flashback to the Booty Call x4

Just down from Purgatory
Coursing for a fight
Accidental Occident
The morning bright
The moon shone over
her hair and dress
she just put on a smile
and made her way
through the egress

Now flashback to the booty call...

"We'll never know if we don't try—
it's uhhh, you know, I mean, it's like...
Naturally it's very self-indulgent, it's...
but it's very selfless—
it's complicated.
I'm sayin' 'I know I'm a hypocrite,'
but I'm also saying 'I accept hypocrisy in you!'
and uhhhh,
sure, yeah, c'mon over, hahaha,
I'll put some tea on
Raspberry twist? Sure
that's awesome...
Call before you come up
yeah just, just gimme a call
alright
bye.

---

So yeah, maybe a little creepy, and in spite of this, I remain your humble servant

OX&C,

Faux Jean

P.S. I want to give a shout-out to the nice people at Folks Pizza in Costa Mesa, Calif, who a hired me to play their Labor Day party yesterday at the Gunwhale Brewery. If you are in Orange County, I shit you not, go to this place and taste their pizza.

Foil chafing catering vibe at the Folks party in Costa Mesa.

1. I claimed I was going to use this space to share some of my visual art, so there’s that…

2. I was just getting used to Orange County!

3. Which is also where I saw my first arena concert, the Canadian band Rush, while on their “Signals” tour. That was on October 7, 1982 in Duluth, Minnesota.

4. I love listening to the Mexican radio stations that play deep cuts of Echo and the Bunnymen and Soft Cell and then run strange PSAs directed at whom, I am not sure.

5. I’m creative, but not that creative.

6. Tee hee tee hee.

7. That’s a long time to ignore a song.

8. I wasn’t sure where the built-in mic was located; and there is a resultant hiss from the built-in mic.