Andrew has no idea how to sustain a conversation. Whenever he feels the pressure of silence he'll ask something like 'so, how's everybody?' or 'how's the weather.'. Hmmm, we live in Phoenix - how does he expect the weather to be anyway???
I'll give him points for trying even though over the past year or more I've been encouraging him to break out. How is it going to look when he's having dinner with his girlfriends parents for the seventh time and he can still only ask about the weather?
So a couple of months ago we, that is Mom and I, decided that he should talk for two minutes at dinner each evening about any subject that enters his head so long as it doesn't relate to our health or the state of the weather. Seemed like a good plan.
After a few false starts he got onto the subject of his favourite band. I'll claim credit for the suggestion. With the smile of someone who is certain that his interests won't be shared he imparted the knowledge that one of his favourite bands is Slipknot[^] and dwellt at considerable length on some of their song titles. 'Pulse of the Maggots' for one! Uh huh, just what you want to be talking about over dinner!
I've been a subscriber to Rhapsody for some months now - great service for the kind of music I like - beats Urge and Napster and Yahoo!music hands down. So a little later that evening I checked if they had
Five minutes later the album is on my music player and I gave it a listen at the office the next day. I made sure to memorise some of the lyrics (and the tune) and, at dinner the next evening I was sitting there chanting 'I won't let it build up inside of me'!. Took him a few moments to catch on and when he did he asked where I got that tune from. 'Oh', I said, 'from that band you talked about last night, what was their name? Stinkbutt?'. Grin from Andrew. 'You know, Andrew', I said, 'they're quite good.'
You should have seen the amazed look on his face. 'You liked it??? Wow!'.
I didn't have the heart to tell him that anyone who grew up listening to rock in the late 60's wouldn't feel all that lost with Slipknot. About all that's changed is that nowadays rock bands have license to slip in a few four letter words. *shrug*
And nope, I very much doubt Slipknot will ever make it to my 'must listen' list. But I did enjoy it for a few listens.
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