Actually Decent-Seeming, Cis, Presumably Straight, White Dudes Quarterly

Hey, it happens!

Well, once again, to our chagrin, here we are praising two white, cis, presumably straight dudes for what they DON’T do (to our knowledge, at least, they nervously laughed). Actual Decency Among White, Cis, Presumably Straight Dudes is such a precious and rare thing, and while we do not think white, cis, presumably straight men need more praising and attention, these two specific guys are cool, worth knowing about, and not gross. May they never let us regret bestowing our imprimatur upon them.

Introducing Rodney Mullen, Sweetheart King of Intuitive Physics

by Dame Sophie

“He’s like Mr. Rogers in Vans! No, Mr. Rogers in Vans who’s also a quiet physics genius!” You do not want to know how many times I’ve written, thought, and said this little pitch line since Sunday. It’s mildly embarrassing on several levels, most intensely because I’ve had a long-running casual interest in skateboarding and skateboarding culture and skateboarders themselves for decades, and Iiiiii had never heard of Rodney Mullen until last weekend, when I watched Tony Hawk: Til The Wheels Fall Off (streaming via HBOMax). My interest was clearly more casual than I’d like to admit! 

And since my immediate impulse on learning something delightful is to share it in these pixel pages, here’s a little round-up of The Essential Rodney Mullen for you all. I don’t doubt for even a fraction of a second that we have many readers who’ve been hip to The Godfather of Freestyle Skating for ages, and if that’s you, please consider this an open invitation to suggest interviews, videos, films, and more that aren’t included below.

Tony Hawk: Til The Wheels Fall Off is as good a place to start as any. Rodney’s is the voice you hear at about 0:55 saying “watching Tony learn is more interesting than watching him land tricks.” The documentary includes interviews with many of Tony’s peers, talking about both his extraordinary contributions to the sport, and about its delights, challenges, and history. Rodney’s interview segments are strikingly different from most of the others because they feel like excerpts from a conversation with a particularly earnest philosopher who also happens to be a historically significant world-class athlete. One of my big takeaways is that it's good he did not become a megachurch preacher because he'd have been very, very dangerous. I kept thinking, Wait, this guy — this soft-spoken, gentle soul whose top priority is ensuring that you genuinely understand every word of his insights — is a competitive shark who won 34 consecutive freestyle skate titles? A fine reminder to imagine people more complexly!

Obviously, my next stop was YouTube, where I found Rodney’s TEDxUSC talk about using the ollie (*correction update from alert reader Marianne*: the ollie is a foundational trick invented in the 70s by a guy named Alan "Ollie" Gelfand. Mullen invented the *flat-ground* ollie in the early 80s; before that people only did it in bowls/pools) to create increasingly sophisticated and difficult tricks. It’s in the same vein as most other talks about building blocks, foundational skills, and creativity, but have you heard one before from a wry, shaggy-haired dude who’s short a few teeth and interrupts his own talk to say how tickled he is to be sharing it on the campus of a college he was escorted out of too many times to count for unauthorized skating excellence? I sure had not! 

At one point, he’s describing a particularly dazzling trick and it hit me that ohhhhh this guy has a marrow-deep intuitive understanding of physics that would make any teacher shed tears of joy. This impression is reinforced in an excerpt of the PBS show Physics Girl where he demonstrates and explains how his Impossible Trick (that is literally what it’s called) works. And then, in this video of his triumphant performance at the 1986 Freestyle Championship in Oceanside, you can see within the first 30 seconds that he could have been an outstanding figure skater, too/instead. 

Again, none of this is news to anyone with more than a glancing interest in skateboarding, but it’s made me realize just how profound the gaps in my knowledge are, and it’s exciting to think about how much there is to learn and appreciate. Next, I’m looking forward to reading his autobiography, The Mutt: How To Skateboard and Not Kill Yourself (co-written with Sean Mortimer, who also appears at some length in Til The Wheels Fall Off) and watching Bones Brigade: An Autobiography.

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My Lifetime With Jonathan Richman

by Dame Karen

Jonathan Richman was born in 1951 in Boston and went on to start his band, the Modern Lovers, in the early 1970s. In retrospect, he could actually have gone full incel judging from the hilariously self-pitying lyrics of many of his songs, but on the other hand, one of the few men in his scene and any early ‘70s proto-punk scene who wrote about the desire for true love and companionship. In fact, he famously wrote to Creem magazine to praise the Four Seasons, other “featherweight” performers, and spoke out against “masculine arrogance”. 

His most famous song, “Roadrunner”, is about driving, listening to the radio, and being in love with Massachusetts and “the modern world,” another constant obsession of his — it was later covered by both Joan Jett and the Sex Pistols, as heard in the Johnny Rotten sings for the first time scene of Pistol and according to director Richard Linklatter, who used it in School of Rock, it’s actually the very first punk song, period.

Around that same time he also wrote a song called “Dignified and Old” in which rather than espousing a no future, live fast and die young lifestyle, he talks about how a girl he loved died, but he won’t, and “can see through this bleakness and gray and sadness” and hopes the listener won’t die either because “someday we could be dignified and old, together.” Imagine being in your early 20s and longing to survive in order to…be dignified and old?! That was Jojo. My best friend died last year and we recently held a celebration of her life at which we played her favorite songs; “Dignified and Old” was one of them, and it’s an extremely different situation to hear that song when you’re 16 and being old is a far-off abstraction and then thirty years later, to hear the lyrics “My girl and I used to stand on the mountain / And the sun shines, she's dead, and I cry / But I can see through this death and the sadness / And so I won't die now / Someday I wanna be dignified and old” at your dead best friend’s memorial, as sung by someone you both adored as teenagers. 

Hearing him as a teen, by the way, was an absolute revelation — as someone who was a real softy always on the verge of tears amid a bunch of seemingly self-possessed and emotionally rugged, always in on the joke friends (I am still friends with a lot of them and now know differently, of course), hearing someone sing about being proud to be soft and emotional was a TONIC, especially someone who was scrappy and spiky about it as opposed to dreamy and moony, which I didn’t want AT ALL. [In the most retrospectively hilarious moments of wishful thinking, I wrote a Pat Benatar-vibes inspired song when I was 8 called “It’s Stylish To Cry” for, well, crying out loud!]

On the other hand, Jonathan CLEARLY liked dangerous, mean girls, which came through in his songs, which I found discouraging, as I was really only mean and dangerous to myself and not in a way that anyone was going to pick up on and find fascinating and alluring. I would come to live out this pattern a few times, falling hopelessly in love with a fellow spiky, sad, emotional dude only to watch them falling hopelessly in love with the sorts of girls who Jonathan would immortalize in his 1995 classic “Vampire Girl”. (And hey, I get it, I liked those girls too, Jojo! And we are all more than our personas and images, which I didn’t fully get when I was 16!) Modern Lovers Jonathan had songs like “Someone I Care About” in which he snottily yet sincerely sang “Well I don't want just a girl to fool around with / Well I don't want just a girl to ball alright / What I want is a girl that I care about / Or I want nothing at all.” In “Girl Friend” not only does he inexplicably spell out “G-I-R-L-F-R-E-N,” but he sings “I walk through the Fenway, I have my heart in my hands / I understand a girlfriend.” The longing! The desire for connection and for someone to understand him right back! I related, hard.

He grew up and tamped down/moved past a lot of the angst and actually built a career on being an adult with constant access to pure childlike wonder. The final song on the classic 1976 album The Modern Lovers, released after the band broke up, gave a hint of what was to come. “Government Center” is a song about bringing happiness to the business district in Boston via rock and roll, which includes the lyrics “Won't stop until we see secretaries smile / We gotta see some office boys, they're jumpin' for joy!”

He’s stuck with this general vibe ever since. Not only did he write a song about how much he appreciates taking the bus, he actually covered the children’s song “Wheels On The Bus”. There’s also the classic “I Was Dancing In The Lesbian Bar” with the line “in the first bar, they were drinkin’ sips / in this bar they could shake their hips,” the surely pulled from a real life story “I Don’t Need To Let The Neighbors Run My Life,” in which he and a female friend are concerned that people will misunderstand their platonic friendship but ultimately decide they can’t worry about appearances, and “Not Just A Plus One On The Guest List Anymore” in which he realizes re: his partner “She wanted attention, she wanted fame / She wanted to not be just a Mrs. to my name” and to “Express her own personality / And do this without me / And explore anything she might have to explore.” 

These are not typical song subjects, obviously, but they are to Jojo and he’s still at it. It’s also not all dancing and twee, either; there’s quite a bit of sadness, introspection, and wistfulness in there, too, and I still relate, hard. He has a new album called Want To Visit My Inner House? and is touring to support it with his longtime sideman, drummer Tommy Larkins. I can’t recommend a Jonathan Richman show enough, as long as you wear a mask and be careful. My friend Pilar did the poster for his recent Portland, Maine show and they met and he requested a tour of her printmaking studio! They exchanged business cards and it turns out he’s taken up masonry and might make a fire pit or stone wall for you if you live in certain parts of California! Please enjoy this Modern Lovers and Jonathan Richman playlist — it’s certainly not definitive but they’re some of my favs. He has always been a balm during my troubled times and in these relentlessly troubled times we all need all the balms we can get.

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