Nicole Alvarez and absinthe

I’ve been listening to and enjoying KROQ Los Angeles‘s “Rock of the 90s” weekend.  There’s a lot of reminiscing.  I’m one of the few people whose entire junior high, high school, and four-years-of-bachelor’s-degree-pursuing all took place in the 1990s (do the math if you’re so inclined — it’s hard to pull off.)

It’s a varied lot.  There have been acts and tracks that the intervening years have turned into classics — Pearl Jam and Nirvana.  There are bands the entire existence of which I’d forgotten — Sponge, King Missile, Dinosaur Jr., The Chemical Brothers.  There are songs that I’m pleased to say I liked when they came out and I found to have aged well — songs by Cowboy Junkies and The Prodigy, for instance — and songs that haven’t aged well at all — Green Day, Stone Temple Pilots (yes, as much as I fondly remember “Wicked Garden”, it sounds really tired.)  There are a few tracks I disliked at their release that I find more impressive now: Marilyn Manson’s “Beautiful People” sounds downright innovative when you consider the hordes of his clones that now clutter the scenes.  There are songs that I would have sworn predated the 90s but turn out to have just sneaked in (Jane’s Addiction, Depeche Mode) and ones I would have sworm postdated them (Incubus, Limp Bizkit).  There’s a lot of stuff I hadn’t heard since high school, a lot of memories.

I’ve also unfortunately been listening to the D.J. — Nicole Alvarez, I think her name is — whom I had never heard before.  She’s not very good.  She might be egosurfing and find this, in which case I’m a bit sorry, but really, she’s not very good.  She went off at one point about the drink absinthe, for instance, and made several errors in her soliloquy, claiming, for instance, that it was legal and that it had to be cooked before consumption.  She also claimed that it caused severe hallucinations and made one shoot one’s gun at “things that aren’t there”.  So I called the radio station.  I’ve never been treated nicely by KROQ when I’ve called — I’ve only done so a couple of times and haven’t done so in years — but I figured “what the hell”, right?  What’s the worst they could do?  Swear at me and hang up on me, I suppose.  I’m a big boy, and I’ve got nothing to prove to a radio station, and Miss Alvarez might appreciate my help.

I called, and the call went through.  Straight to Miss Alvarez.  And then something odd happened, something else that hasn’t happened since high school.  I asked if she would like to know more about absinthe, and she got a very false, very pretentious air, and said — I am not exaggerating — “No, I know all about absinthe, but there’s only so much time, you know.  But it’s good to know that there are other people well-educated about it.”  I was stunned for a split second.  What’s there to say?  I was tempted to respond, “Well, you made a couple of mistakes, would you like to know what they were?”  But I didn’t, I just said “OK, very good.”  After warning me to “stay away from it”, she thanked me and hung up.  Weird, eh?  This presumably adult woman tried to con me.  A complete stranger.  Over the telephone.  When she obviously didn’t know much about the topic.  I’m having trouble guessing what she thinks she had to prove to me.  I don’t think anyone has tried to do this to me since I was 15.  But the experience put a smile on my face for the rest of the drive home, and gave me a good story for mcgees.org, so I suppose it was well worth it.