Confluence City: Bootblogging #16: I will be your volunteer! (for Bob Slate)

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Bootblogging #16: I will be your volunteer! (for Bob Slate)

Like most sentient beings who lived to see a television, I have always been irritated at the phenomenon of someone talking back to their TV, though I somehow don't mind this when it comes across via Twitter.

Take my old buddy Bob Slate, a fellow Granite City boy who turned journalist, and like members of our tribe, has wandered the Earth from job to job.

Along the way, he developed an attachment to the University of Tennessee Volunteers, though unfortunately for his college football affections, he is now a Vols fan living in exile in Decatur, Alabama, where the people bleed a Crimson Tide.

This past Saturday I was not irritated, but rather amused, to find in my Twitter stream Bob Slate talking back to his TV, where his Vols were in competition, I don't care against whom.

Fumblllle!

Javier needs to break one.

Where's the flag in the end zone?

Now that was thrown with authority.

McElroy looking like he's confused. Go deep again.

What? What? Did someone say special teams?

Like I say, I don't care whom they were playing, nor who won or lost. But I was entertained enough by Bob's ejaculations at the game to ask him which team he was rooting for, which is how I learned about his thing for the Vols.

At that point, I remembered my favorite unknown and unreleased rock song, "Into the Teens" by Soda - a lost rock band from Milwaukee, Wisconsin - which has as its thrilling chorus "I will be your volunteer!"

I've no clue what the song is about, as the lyrics are suggestive and opaque. I'm pretty sure it's not about U.T. football, but I'm equally sure that a grown man who talks to his TV set through Twitter while the Vols are on the tube will be more than happy to roll down the windows, crank up my favorite lost rock band, and sing along at the top of his lungs, "I will be your volunteer!"

mp3

"Into the teens"

(Soda)

Unreleased