Sinister: philly, t-shirts, soccer

[Goon Koch]

How to describe the anticipation I have for the upcoming shows?

There is constantly at least an inch of air between my steel-toed shoes 
and the ground.  When I’m sitting at my desk and staring at drawings and 
design documents there is only one thing going around and around in my 
head and it is: “central location for you is a must/as you stagger about 
making free/with your lewd and lascivious boasts” and just about the 
whole time I’m swiveling around in my chair and clicking my fingers.  
And as I’m staggering about, er, I mean striding purposefully about the 
grounds of the Great Benevolent Pharmaceutical Company (sometimes with 
hard hat and sometimes without) I quietly hum to myself and the whole 
time I’m thinking “all these people are probably thinking thoughts that 
could best be described in mathematical or chemical symbols and I wonder 
what they would think if they knew that I was thinking about girls who 
dream of horses.”

What I like the best about Belle and Sebastian is that for the first 
time this band-that-I’m-totally-into doesn’t make me feel cooler, or 
better informed, or ahead of my time, or endowed with better taste than 
the droves of schlubs who are taking off early from work as we speak to 
buy the new Alanis Morrissette album.  Belle and Sebastian make me:
-  glad to be alive
-  happy that there are other people who revel in the wonderful 
mysteries and minutiae that make life interesting.
-  want to keep a journal and do creative things.
-  want to treat people with respect and affection.

And I think it’s great that the primary agenda of sinisterites, as far 
as I can tell, is not record collection fetishism.  In fact, there is no 
main agenda.  Well, ok, this week it’s witty smuttiness . . . 

In a little more than twenty-four hours I will be one of the first to 
stand in line outside the Trocadero, jumping up and down to keep from 
freezing and generally working myself into a joyful frenzy.  I’m 
determined to stand up front because that way I will actually block the 
fewest people’s view.  And I will tell the band that everything is cool 
and that we all think they’re great and would they please come back real 
soon.  But of course we don’t want to put too much pressure on them or 
seem creepy or make the tour more stressful than it already is.  And I 
may offer them some PEZ.

I too have converted my sister to celebrate the gospel of Belle and 
Sebastian.  It was not a hard sell.  We’re very different, but when it 
comes to the really important things we’re on the same wavelength.

Where am I going to find some daisies?  How did this PEZ thing get 
started?

Can somebody who was at the Boston gig tell me about the commercial 
activities conducted there?  Is the full line of B&S merchandising 
available at the U.S. gigs?  How much are the shirts?  Is the blue Stow 
College shirt available.  Is it true that the shirts are available only 
in S, M and L?  Why is that?  Everybody else only makes XL so this must 
be a conscious decision.  I can understand that the band would want to 
enforce certain aesthetic standards and not encourage ghastly sartorial 
habits such as the lazy wearing of oversized shirts by the waif-like.  
But then there are those of us who genuinely cannot fit into a large.  
I’m six-three with wide shoulders.  Does this mean I’m damned to trudge 
through my dreary existence without the consolation of a Belle and 
Sebastian raiment?  And I really shouldn’t bring this up, but the 
dimensions of Americans have already been discussed at great length and 
with much bloodshed on this list . . .  (it’s a joke; don’t flame me; 
nobody’s fat but even if they were there wouldn’t be anything wrong with 
it)

What's this I hear now, the t-shirts are sold out?  All of them?

Oh, sad tomato is absolutely right.  I was at Disney World too recently 
and it was chock full of families invariably gathered around a short, 
belligerent-looking fellow wearing a brightly colored polyester top with 
either “Carlsberg,” “JVC” or “Sharp” across his chest.  Most Americans 
aren’t really familiar with this phenomenon and don’t get close enough 
to read the fine print on the little patch, but I have a red “Carlsberg” 
kit of my own that I wear on the pitch sometimes, so I can decipher some 
of these symbols.  I think the kits are worn in the Florida heat for the 
very same reason that Sir Edmund Hillary dragged a little Union Jack all 
the way up Everest.  I mean, wearing your colors at Anfield, Highbury or 
Old Trafford is a little redundant, but when you go abroad you’d like 
people to know that you have values and stand for something and can’t be 
counted on to do anything useful on Saturdays.  And also to express your 
contempt for everybody else.

Sorry about the length, but you know I am excited about those gigs . . .

-g. k.-
will not be wearing a blue "McEwan's" kit in the first row at the Troc.


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