Now I Have To Find A Good Real Estate Agent In Addis Ababa

I grew up landlocked and wary of what lurked under the dark, scum-covered surfaces of the few lakes/glorified ponds we had. If I can’t see the bottom, I’m not wading in.

However, a stretch of beach, preferably unpopulated, is a glorious thing. I think that a beach house would suit Paloma and me (and the menagerie) quite well. Fortunately, opportunity has presented itself and I am staking a claim to a stretch of prime beach for us now.

The downside is that it is in Ethiopia.

There is a thirty-file mile crack, as wide as twenty feet, in the deserts of Ethiopia. Geophysicists believe it will one day be an ocean. And oceans mean beaches and a beach is the ideal place for a beach house.

I would have to think that it’s a buyer’s market for real estate in Ethiopia.

(is there any part of that poor country that isn’t impoverished, famine-stricken, and/or at war?)

So, take a guess as to where the future beachfront property will be, purchase some land, and wait for Mother Nature and the “highly active volcanic boundaries along the edges of tectonic ocean plates” to work their magic.

I shall name our beach house Amity as homage to Chief Brody, Hooper, and Quint.

Of course, this ocean is scheduled to arrive in “a million years or so,” so that might be a problem.

Toto – Africa
from Toto IV

Is there a more enduring hit from the ’80s than Toto’s Africa? It seems to have seeped into the collective consciousness of most of the planet, including that of a Slovenian a cappella group.

Juluka – Scatterlings of Africa
from Scatterlings

Juluka, a racially mixed South African band led by Johnny Clegg, was likely the first “world music” that I ever heard and, not surprisingly, it was courtesy of 97X playing Scatterlings of Africa.

Clegg and Juluka is a fascinating and inspiring story, certainly worthy of more than a few scant words here. The interracial make-up of the band and the politics of their songs put the members in jeopardy simply to perform in a South Africa divided by apartheid.

Here’s a nice piece on Clegg from the early ’90s.

Zap Mama – African Sunset
from 7

Zap Mama was formed in Belgium by Marie Daulne, who had been born in Zaire. Weeks after being born, her father was killed in that country’s civil unrest and her family fled into the forests, taking shelter with a tribe of pygmies, before heading to Europe.

Years later, she returned to Africa and studied pygmy vocal techniques which she incorporated into the music of Zap Mama.

Enya – Storms In Africa
from Watermark

Enya is like Bjork to me in that if news broke tomorrow that either one of them were actually aliens, I think I’d simply shrug and say, “Yeah, that makes sense.” There’s just something otherworldly about her.

I was surprised to realize that I have half a dozen of Enya’s albums. I don’t think I’ve ever listened to any of them all the way through and I couldn’t name more than a handful of her songs, but they’re like dreamy little interludes when they pop up on shuffle.

Let's Make Money, Let's Grow Hair

Sally Struthers used to show up on my television, waddling amongst throngs of starving children in Third World countries. She also used to appear to inform me that we all want to make more money.

Aside from discovering oil (a la Jed Clampett), getting a government bail-out, or sitting on the board of Haliburton, there seems to be one thing that would make anyone wealthy beyond their wildest dreams…

…finding a cure for hair loss in men.

Aside from pills to abate maladies like restless legs and dry eyes, there is also an endless array of remedies bandied about by late-night television hucksters to achieve this end. Is such an elixir truly out of the grasp of modern medicine?

Hey, I’m no scientist (even though I do have a lab coat which doubles quite nicely as a robe), but it’s 2009. How difficult can it be to grow hair?

It seems inconceivable when I think about my years as a single male and the times when I have had male roommates. In such situations, I have seen amazing things grow in unbelievable settings.

Seriously, a bachelor’s living quarters is a science experiment onto itself.

I remember waking one morning in college, bleary-eyed, and stumbling into the kitchen for some Cocoa Puffs. Above the kitchen cabinets, a dark cloud of gnats flew in formation. I clambered onto the counter and peered above the cabinet to discover the source of their interest.

I found a large blob of brown matter which I ascertained had, in a previous life, been a bunch of bananas.

Another time, foraging for sustenance, I foolishly opened the bottom compartment of our refrigerator. There was nothing there but a two-inch thick colloid that could best be described as black Jell-O.

I went hungry.

OK. So reducing potassium-laden fruit to inedible bio hazard or creating a jiggly substance that would cause Bill Cosby to recoil isn’t exactly splitting the atom, but it should illustrate my point – somewhere, in the wilds of some apartment inhabited by single men, hair is growing on something.

I know it.

All it takes is someone with the vision and intestinal fortitude to search – possibly in a kitchen, perhaps in some dank shower – for an item sprouting fuzzy, hair-like follicles where none were before.

Once such a miracle of life is uncovered, it’s simply a matter of reverse engineering, submitting a patent application, and slapping a marketable name on your snake oil.

It’s certainly a more direct path to amassing a small fortune than relying on a late-night infommercial degree in welding (no matter what Sally Struthers might contend).

The Who – Cut My Hair
from Quadrophenia

America – Sister Golden Hair
from Hearts

The Heads (with Ed Kowalczyk) – Indie Hair
from No Talking, Just Head

Everclear – Short Blonde Hair
from Songs From An American Movie, Vol. 2: Good Time For A Bad Attitude