My Gen X Playlist: Communication Breakdown – The Dickies

What’s the best and worst airport you’ve been to?

Monterey is a beautiful scenic city along the central coast of California. It’s absolutely gorgeous. The road up Pacific Coast Highway is picturesque and I highly recommend taking the long drive up the coast. As an alternative, you could fly in. It is more convenient. The only problem for me is I hate the airport.

I flew into Monterey for a client meeting years ago. It’s a small regional airport and typically only smaller aircraft fly in and out. I landed, had a good client meeting and was eager to fly home that same day. In and out. Easy peasy, just how I like it.

I buckled up and it didn’t look like a full flight. Or so I thought. Minutes later, about ten to fifteen middle aged men boarded the plane. From what I overheard, they just finished a three day golf outing at Pebble Beach. They were loud, sunburnt and drunk. Thank god it was less than an hour flight back to LA.

We seemed delayed for a bit. As I waited, I tried ignoring the loud golf bros. I was surprised when the flight attendant came down the aisle and stopped at my seat.

Excuse me, sir. We have too much weight on the airplane right now. Can I ask you to step off the plane?

I was confused. This was about a 30 passenger plane and we weren’t even a full flight. Seriously? Then a thought crossed my mind.

Are you calling me fat?

I complied and disembarked. Still confused, I asked the flight attendant for a better explanation. It turns out the drunk golf bros not only had their luggage, each also had a set of golf clubs checked in and this was tipping the scales. They needed to lighten the load. Once again, I thought,

Are you still calling me fat?

Since I was flying solo, they said I was the best likely candidate. Although they awarded me $500 in flight vouchers, it wasn’t worth the five hours sitting around in a rinky dink airport trying to kill time. This airport was so small, there were limited food options. And this was before streaming and an expanded list of things to do on a smart phone. I literally just sat there watching paint dry. I’ve hated Monterey Airport ever since, even though they were only guilty by association. Love the city, hate the airport. Besides, I never really got a straight answer.

Were you calling me fat?

A few weeks ago I went to a vintage vinyl and CD sale. As I was digging through the various collections, I noticed a twenty something in line to get her album signed by a guest band. Oddly enough, I recognized the album cover. It was the Dickies.

I first heard the Dickies in high school. They were a punk rock band whose songs didn’t hurt my ears. I had a few of their vinyl records that have long since been misplaced. For some reason I remembered the Stukas Over Disneyland cover art and was surprised to find a youngster to be a fan of this obscure punk band of the late 70’s and early 80’s. The dudes signing the albums were pretty old and crusty, but I give them credit being out and about still.

In honor of today’s blog post, I’m going to pull Communication Breakdown from the album. I’m choosing this song because I know deep down inside the flight attendant wasn’t really calling me fat. It was just a poor selection of words. Right?

Don’t answer that.

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For a complete playlist, please click here.

For the Spotify playlist, please click here.

hey girl
stop what you're doing
hey girl
stop what you're doing
i don't know what it is about you but i like it a lot
oh let me hold you baby feel your loving charms

communication breakdown
it's always the same
communication breakdown
i cannot contain

hey little girl
i really really think you're swell
what are the things about you that i know that i like so well
i wanna hold, i wanna hold i wanna hold you in my arms
i'm never gonna let you go baby yes i like your lucky charms