LOOK AT LIFE / COCO HAMES

Notes from the road while on tour in Europe: why the Ettes frontwoman's not eating the bratwurst in Germany this time around.

By Coco Hames

I dropped out of college after my first semester because it was horrible and I hated it, and when you do that, not only is it complicated to go back, but you lose your right to live in the dorms.  Yes, it is a privilege to live in meningitis and crabs infested hellholes with Stachybotrys being pumped through the filthy air vents so you constantly have bronchitis and insulation so poor that your bed sheets are always damp and there's a film of cold, dirty water on top of everything, AND your roommate climbs uninvited into bed with you so you punch a window and face disciplinary action from the university OR your roommate is in ROTC and needs wakeup calls from her fellows every morning at 4am, right after you've gotten home from drowning your loneliness at a bar called BALLS...

When I came back to Gainesville -- after a few months back at home, working at a boutique where, when I go back there with my mom, the shopgirls stare at me and whisper audibly "SHE'S the nastiest one", meaning, evidently, both my sisters are mean and nasty, but I'M the worst, and mind you, these are people who don't know me or my family to begin with -- I found a room open in a big brick house near campus (it's here: http://maps.google.de/maps?hl=de&tab=wl).  It had 6 bedrooms and was occupied by an art student, a library sciences student, a really strange older student whose bedroom was actually a closet, and two Cuban cousins whose nicknames were Kiki and Pipa.  Pipa was a nursing student, and Kiki was studying film.  She made a student film and my boobs are in it.  Fact.

Kiki has always been a major lover of animals (I've mentioned her before, we used to foster dogs together) and has been vegetarian for as long as I've known her.  Except when we got Jennie-O turkey corn dogs, but that was a long time ago.  My older sister was vegetarian for a long time, refusing to "eat anything that had a face" and rocking her Greenpeace AND Depeche Mode t-shirts.  And world... I have now joined their ranks.  It's been a couple of months.  I am a vegetarian.

You can read my blog a couple posts back about my issues with the factory farming of animals, and while I really don't think investigating and becoming cognizant of that terrible system pushes to change you from meat eater to veggieoid, it did heighten my awareness of my own concept and process of meat eating.  And I thought to myself, self, do you like eating meat?  And myself said "Shit yeah I do!"  I love an obscenely rare, bloody steak, I love Chick-Fil-A (who I imagine are major supporters of factory farms/CAFOs, Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, their term, though I do hate birds, and don't care very much about chickens) and I'm Southern, so how in the hell can I possibly exist without pork? 

So I thought about it.  And I thought about how I don't cook or eat that much meat anyway, because as a wary consumer and vaguely compassionate person I am uncomfortable with the unanswered question of how the animal was treated when it was alive.  And I wondered whether my body needed meat or did not need it.  So I kind of thought, okay maybe I'll try not eating meat and see if I care, see how I feel.  So I did that, and I told my friends and fam I was doing so, and everything was fine.  And then my brother-in-law gave me Alicia Silverstone's new book for Christmas, which is a cookbook/manifesto suggesting "The Kind Diet" which would of course be totally free of animal products (that's eggs and dairy, too).  And honestly, I was totally offended, I was like, Alicia Silverstone seems like a very nice girl as far as actresses go, but she is also most likely a BOOB and has her head up her Hollywood ass, and her advice could not possibly apply to me, UMEBOSHI PLUMS ARE $18 FOR ABOUT AN OUNCE.  But check it yo, it did.

I'm pretty sure Alicia Silverstone the person is exactly like she is in Clueless, which seems very pleasant to me actually, because I love Clueless and love her in it.  But she very passionately and enthusiastically suggests, politely, that you might try a diet free of animal products, just for a few weeks, and see how you feel.  Alicia Silverstone notwithstanding, if you asked me (I won't come at you unsolicited, not my style) I'd suggest the same.  I don't really feel like going into it, all the statistics, not just about the animals but the way animal products generally adversely affect us humans and our planet, links to cancer, diabetes, heart disease, pollution, poisoning epidemics that kill children, global warming, you name it.  I'll just tell you a vegetarian diet suits me, I feel better, the personal is the political, and there you have it.

So anyway, not like you care, but I no longer eat meat, taking it day by day.  If Poni gets that rare steak, I look at it, and it neither offends me or turns me on.  Not like it used to.  I just don't want it.  So that's me, I shant devolve into a postulating preacher man about how much better I feel bodily or how my head is clearer, my moods better, my bod a bit foxier, whatever.  Though I will tell you that I understand why people are preachy about it, just like people are (annoyingly) preachy about anything they're passionate about, religion, rock climbing, etc. 

I've never been rock climbing, though I did just stupidly (and soberly!) risk my life climbing up a giant tree on Dog Island (http://wikimapia.org/165081/Dog-Island) because my little sister's childhood friend dared me to.  What an idiot.  I was not safe.  In Phillip Pullman's epic and glorious trilogy His Dark Materials he speaks of the "grace" children have, that innocence that protects them and informs them their beautiful, poetic, prescient knowledge, the elegance of their sensitivity to the spiritual and magical world around us all.  Yeah, I do NOT have grace anymore, that shit was scary and MAD dangerous.

Off to Stuttgart tomorrow, you never know what the future might bring.

Jarvis Cocker and Air wrote that Charlotte Gainsbourg album everyone's been talking about??

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Blurt "co-co-editor" Coco Hames fronts The Ettes - Hames on guitar, Jem Cohen on bass and Poni Silver on drums. Their Greg Cartwright-produced album Do You Want Power arrived in stores last fall, their music was featured in the Drew Barrymore-directed film Whip It, and you bet we've got a big feature on the band in the latest issue of BLURT.

The band is on a European tour currently then upon returning to the states will be headed to Austin for SXSW. After that they'll be opening for the Dead Weather throughout April. Check out the band's MySpace page for music and tour dates.