Bottom of the Glass

Look, Ma, I'm On TV!

2012-01-30T15:30:00.015-05:00

I spent a decent part of Sunday after noon looking for my brother-in-law. At a golf match. On television.

To accomplish such a thing is easier said than done, and there is no guarantee of success. He, a middle-aged member of a large crowd of golf watchers enjoying the 68 degree sunny weather near the coast, was going to be at the Farmers' Insurance Open golf tournament. And he had let his 85-year-old mother, who was staying with us, know that he would be at the tournament and that the tournament would be on television. "I'll be the one waving," he texted. So we started watching. When such a thing becomes a possibility, suddenly, somehow, it becomes paramount.

He was in San Diego; we were sitting in our den in Chattanooga, TN.

Actually, when we started looking for him, he wasn't even there yet. But we didn't know that, or that his girlfriend really didn't want him to go but that he felt like he needed to put in an appearance (he works for a professional sports team, so I suppose networking was involved). So we started watching the last day of the tournament and looking for him about the 7th hole on.

NOTE: If you never watch golf, the television coverage focuses only on the frontrunners or someone embroiled in scandal, just like the political primaries.

Then we found out that he had arrived. But he told us he was on the 13th hole, watching a golfer from the University of Florida. We could see that said golfer was not on the leaderboard, so we knew there was no chance. Hold on, we texted back, the leader, Kyle Stanley, is about to tee off at the 11th. We'll be there at 13, via television, soon.

Then we heard from him that he was at the 11th. Stanley hit his drive into the crowd and it bounced off someone's shoe and carromed back into play. Text him and ask him if that ball just him, I joked. No, he wrote back, he was on the other side of the green. Tell him to get on the side of the green where the balls are landing, I said.

After Kyle Stanley chipped onto the green, he took off his golf glove and handed it to the spectator he had hit with his drive. Quid pro quo.

And, then, a minute later, as the players were finishing up the hole, all of a sudden there he was. "I see him," I shouted. "He's right beside Stanley's golf bag! See him? He's wearing a dark blue shirt."

And that was that. Mission accomplished. And that was the ending of our watching of the golf tournament.

Now, I love my brother-in-law, but I've never shouted about having seen him before. It's a funny thing, isn't it, to know that someone you know might be on television and to spend your time trying to get just a glimpse of him? Why? To what end? Is it some verification of his existence several thousand miles away? Is it the chance for a mother to catch a glimpse of her distant son?

I'd have to say no. These days, a cell phone camera can take care of those needs in short order. Is it more that there is some famous event and I know someone who is at that famous event and that somehow that makes both him and, by extension, me more famous, too? Is it the bragging rights of "I saw my brother-in-law on TV yesterday"? I'm not sure.

There probably isn't much to it at all. And yet, if I get word that he'll be visible at the All-Star Game next year or that you are going to be in the audience of a Letterman taping week, I'll probably check out those as well. Much as I might malign television and as tired as I am of so much of it, it still possesses that strange ability to make us, if we're on it, or someone we know who is on it appear more real than however real we are. While the various native peoples who claim that having our images captured costs us a bit of our souls may be right, the fact remains that seeing ourselves or people we know projected on a screen counters the tenuousness of our presence.

Betrayed By Bueller

2012-01-28T00:19:00.000-05:00

Getting Away with Murder - Papa Roach (mp3)

“Never rub another man’s rhubarb.” -- The Joker

At lunchtime on Friday, a coworker I barely know rushed up to me and shoved his smartphone in my face. Like, while I was in the food line.

“You gotta see this,” he said.

Funny thing. I’d said those exact words not five minutes prior, thrusting my smartphone in the face of a coworker upon my arrival at our dining hall. Mine was a self-made video of a slutty but attractive young blonde sitting on a trapeze bar in the rafters of one of Chattanooga’s finest restaurants.

It’s the kind of restaurant that, when you say the name, everyone reacts, “Oooh, swanky!” Except when there’s a young hottie in a high-cut red evening gown swinging over the bar, at which point people say, “Oooh, skanky!”

So, when this cell phone flew in front of my face, I couldn’t help but assume it was video of this swinging lady from another angle, even though this guy wasn’t even at the party.

Instead, it was video of some dude in a bathrobe, in a hotel, walking to fling open the curtains.
And then, it’s Matthew Broderick.
And then, he says, “How can I handle work on a day like today?”
And then Yellow’s now-immortal song, “Oh Yeah,” plays briefly in the background with the date 2.5.12 on the screen.

And then I wet myself.

“No. Way,” I said, looking around for some napkins to dry my pants.

“Way,” he said. “It’s gonna happen. Facebook is going nuts!”

At my lunch table, we sat and discussed the topic for more than half the time, trying to imagine the plot to what would have to be the most amazing surprise sequel since the reelection of Grover Cleveland.

Would Sloane be in it? Nah. No way.

Cameron? Absolutely.

What about Principal Ed Rooney? Hell yes. A cameo at the very least, but likely some awesome part, like Mike Tyson in “The Hangover.”

Would Ferris be married? Divorced? An eternal bachelor? Married, we figured. Ferris, for all his antics and insanity, was at his core a man of principle and values. He wouldn’t be the kind of guy to totally fall in love with Sloane only go grow up and be a man-whore.

If Jason Segel’s “The Muppets” could pull of the miracle, reviving what had become torpid with a non-stop cuddlefest of perfect and clever cheese, then not even the demise of John Hughes could prevent the possibility, ever so slight, that we were on the cusp of witnessing a pop culture miracle.

I practically shoved adolescents out of the way as I hurried across our campus and back to my cave, where I plopped down in front of my computer with the eager look of Ralphie trying to decode that Little Orphan Annie message.

Mere minutes later, I was drinking my Ovaltine, and it tasted... a bit nutty.

It’s not the teaser to the Super Bowl trailer for the sequel to one of the cornerstone movies of my generation’s existence. It’s the teaser to a G**D*** Honda commercial.

Fucking Honda. Fucking Broderick. Backstabbing, disillusioning, sacrilegious bastards.

Please understand. I’m sure the commercial will be clever. I’m sure it will have parts where, despite myself, I’ll laugh. But the laughter will be the kind of laughter you hear at funeral visitations or in ICU, the laughter of people who are trying to distract themselves from the fact that something we thought was immortal has died right before our eyes.

If you think I’m exaggerating my emotions in this regard, you clearly haven’t been reading this blog. Movies and music are the dog-ears of my life’s journal. And although I arrived late on the Ferris train -- didn’t see it until it hit the dollar theater -- I never hopped off. Me and enough of my generation to fill 500 Hogwarts-bound trains found a kind of hope in that movie we keep desperately looking for in other films.

It’s not Hughes’ best movie, because that was “Breakfast Club.” Ferris was his most important, because it told us, more clearly and confidently and joyfully than any other Hughes film, that someone out there understood us and loved us enough to have fun with us. The movie understood how to make us laugh and relax without ever once resorting to our baser instincts.

Yes, there’s a moment of Mia Sara in the pool. And yes, there’s a moment where Jennifer Gray kicks the ever-loving shit out of Rooney. And that, my friends, is the complete extent of sex and violence in the film. The rest of the film is (save for some foul language that couldn’t have been more perfectly placed if Michaelangelo himself had served as artistic consultant) good and clean teenage escapism. The paragon of it, in fact.

If you think I'm overreacting, then you didn’t see the adults age 32-48 in my school cafeteria. Because every last damn one of us was so beside ourselves with a youthful glee at the thought of a Ferris Bueller sequel that you've thought we all got raises.

I own a Honda. Right now. A Honda Accord. It’s been a pretty good car, especially for the money. But for a few minutes on the way home on Friday, I considered crashing it over a guard rail and into the Tennessee River. I’m never speaking to my car again, and it’s not even the car’s damn fault.

But my car is now a part of the Hatfields, and I’m now a McCoy. Lines have been drawn. There’s hell to pay for this. I'm so mad I can't even proofread this.

Corporate bastards in an Odyssey ran over Bueller, and someone’s gonna have to get vengeance. Even if I have to hire Liam Neeson to travel the globe and find the people behind this. He will find them. And he will kill them.

If he did that for his daughter, just think of what he’ll do to the poor saps who murdered Ferris.

The

2012-01-25T20:35:00.016-05:00

John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman--"My One And Only Love" (mp3)

Let me be blunt: I want more "the" in my life.

Especially in reference to me. That's right, that most common of articles is something that I find myself craving everytime I pick up a magazine, especially a story about someone famous. I want to be "the."

I'm not talking about "the" pronounced as "thee," as in a professional athlete who introduces his college as "The University of Ohio" or some such. That's presumptuous and over-urging.

No, for you grammarians out there, I'm talking about "the" in an appositive phrase. You know, that statement that introduces the subject? As in, "the novelist Joe Schmoe" or "the painter Jane Floe." That's it. That's all I want. Instead of being Bob _____, I want to be "the teacher Bob ______" or "the dean Bob ______." Is it so much to ask?

Probably.

As far as I can tell, there are a few criteria that one must possess in order to get the "the." First, the person must pursue a craft worthy of the the "the." Popular ones that qualify, beyond what was already mention include "the poet," "the artist," "and, suddenly, the "journalist." I thought for the longest time that you had to be a creative type in order to get the "the," which is why seeing "the journalist _____ _____" in Newsweek tonight gave me both hope and the courage to write this post.

Second, the person must be married or living with somebody, because you rarely get the mention if you are the main focus. Only if you're being quoted, as in, "The poet Robert Frost once said...." Otherwise, you've got to have a significant other, and, probably, a more significant other. I can handle that: I'm married to a lawyer. Excuse me, I'm married to "the attorney _____ _____," which works right now since I'm talking about me, which makes her second banana. For once. At the very least, to get the "the," you've got to be the partner that the writer isn't writing about, even if you happen to have more cred, fame, cache, or whatever.

And finally, the person should have a "here's somebody you don't know but if you were cultured you would" quality about him or her. See, when a writer gives you the "the," he or she is elevating you at the same time that he's putting down the reader. He's saying, "Look, fugnut, if I don't identify his wife as a poet, somebody like you is not going to have any idea who she is. Embarassing, really."

I'm okay with that. Just give me the "the." I don't mind being a craft beer, a boutique offering, a niche product, an esoteric choice. I'll happily be the best place to eat that nobody knows about or the option that exists only for those in the know. Just give me the "the."

In fact, now that I think of it, my wife the attorney isn't ever going to get the "the." She's a lawyer, for God's sakes, making the big bucks while working herself to death, but grinding it out, not creating art. I'm sure she counts it as part of her good fortune that she's married to "the blogger Bob ______."

Yeah, the blogger. I like the sound of that. I'll take it.

40

2012-01-24T08:34:00.000-05:00

Resurrection Fern - Iron & Wine (mp3)

This is 40.

Fortune has smiled on me.

This is the sentence that repeats like a chorus in my head, in a manner as sublimely peaceful and mellow as possible.

I was a bundle of nuclear nervous energy at 21, but at 40, I'm very meh, and meh feels pretty damn good, I gotta tell you. It's a nice meh. Very chill.

If today is any indication, the reason I don’t “do well” or stand on ceremony on “big days” like birthdays and holidays is because I don’t enjoy placing undue expectations on people or moments. I don't want to get up tomorrow having to choose the Perfect Birthday Outfit or the Perfect Lunch Destination or the Perfect Birthday Party Plans. I just want a nice day, and even that might be asking more than I deserve. Expecting more just seems unfair.

Which brings me more joy, the movie I didn’t expect to be good but was sublime, or the one that lived up to its billing? Which brings me more joy, the discovery of a new band or the revisiting of one of my favorites?

Which brings me closer to God, the scheduled, regular arrival to church on Sunday mornings, or the everyday miracles surrounding us and waiting patiently for us to notice?

In 40 years, fortune has provided me, gifted me, with people to whom I will never be quite capable of expressing my gratitude and love. From parents to friends, from my wife to my children, from coworkers to acquaintances come and gone. I tried writing about them all last night, but what came out will stay with me. Sharing it felt tawdry. Moreso even than usual, I mean. But just trust me, little words like “parents,” “friends,” “wife,” “children”... they each create greenhouses of vibrant, flourescent beauty.

One of my two oldest friends in the world sent me a gift yesterday. A box of graphic novels and a demand that I not reciprocate. His gift was perfect. It was our friendship of 33 years in a brown cardboard box with my name on it.

How could he still think of me as his friend when I have all but disappeared into a life of domestic responsibilities and daily obligations and desires closer to home, where the two hours of distance between us often feels like an ocean rather than an easy Interstate? I honestly don’t know how he holds fast to our friendship, but I cherish that he has. I cherish how we humans are like that in our best moments, how willing and able we are to let go of the dirt and cling to the essence of what is good.

The longer I've known someone, the more opportunities I've had to completely fuck things up with them. A tornado moment of self-destructive stupidity or a never-ending monsoon of small mistakes. Betrayal or mere bundles of minor disappointment. Who knows which kind of natural disaster my goofy ways brings to those who cross my path; I only know my weather patterns come with risk.

Yet the ties continue to hold and bind. And I just shake my head at my good fortune.

On this day, perhaps the reason I'm not falling into some abyss of despair is because I can't even get deep enough into all the ways I've been wildly lucky. Health, love, security, more happiness than not for so many of the people I love and care for, and none of those could have received from me as much as they have given.

The midlife crisis will have to come another time.

I am forty.

I am fortunate.

People Don't Change

2012-01-22T21:29:00.009-05:00

Justin Townes Earle--"Nothing's Gonna Change The Way You Feel About Me Now" (mp3)

I really don't like to fly in the face of hopefulness, but I am strongly convinced that people do not change. Not really. Not at their core.

There are several reasons why this is on my mind. One is the several reincarnations of Newt Gingrich that are shocking the Republican establishment and leaving the rest of us shaking our heads. Another is my school's recent hiring of a former employee who shit all over our school when he left but who now is supposedly "humbled and changed" by his experiences at another school where he didn't achieve the kind of success that he had hoped to.

But mostly, it is how many people seem to think and feel the need to say that they can tell that these guys have really changed. People do not change. I'm convinced of that.

I can hear the naysayers now. There are all kinds of examples of people who have changed, they will say, people who were alcoholics, for example, but who now live better, sober lives. Or people who were obsessed with accumulating wealth, but who now realize the wrongness of that and who have dedicated their lives to ascetic lifestyles and humble surroundings.

Good for them, I say. I hope that makes them happier, but they have not changed. Not at their cores. It is my sense that, regardless of what happens, the little voice that speaks to us in our heads does not change. It may alter the message that it delivers to us, based on a change in circumstances, but it does not change the kind of message that it sends.

Newt Gingrich, for example, when he came to power after the American people endorsed his Contract With America clearly believed that he could do no wrong, so much so that he changed plans and directions at will, with little regard for the rest of his party or for what he had agreed to. It is instructive to remember that it was his own party, not the Democrats, who brought him down. If you think that he is a changed man because he is older, wiser, converted to Catholicism, and in the relationship of his life with his third wife, then you have not been paying attention. He still lets his mind run away with his mouth, he still takes a mean-spirited approach to life, he still refuses to take the blame for anything that he's done. He's still a man who leaves wives for women with whom he is having affairs. The fact that he is running out of time and sexual drive to continue that pattern is not a factor. He's still the same guy.

I don't doubt that our hire will be exactly the same way he was. A man who can win, but in doing so will toss aside players and other aspects of his job with impugnity is not all of a sudden going to turn into a soft saint after boys' hearts. A man who was a lousy colleague and teacher is not going to start getting interested in improving himself as a teacher or in being part of the larger team. I'm sorry, but it ain't happening. Oh, sure, he'll say whatever he needs to in order to cement his position, and he may give lip service to some of these programs, but he will ultimately be about himself and his program at the expense of everything else, just like he always was.

The voice in our heads tells us who we are. It explains, it justifies, it rationalizes, it forgives, and regardless of the path that our lives take, it doesn't really change. If we have a problem with alchohol, for example, it may help us to battle against that, but it will not adopt a non-addictive stance. It will simply steer us toward another addiction that is more acceptable or more healthy or a temporary substitute.

If we need to win, and we haven't been winning enough, it will tell us that we can win again, and it will show us why some of the things that stand in the way of that winning don't really matter. God knows what it tells us if we are a presidential candidate: the country needs me or I'm the only one who can fix this or forget all of the reasons it fell apart last time, this time it will all go better because I can paint myself as an outsider even though I'm rich and connected.

If you really disagree with me, take a hard look at your friends. Take a hard look at me. We continue to go through the same patterns over and over, regardless of the steps forward or backward that we have taken, regardless of whether we've been promoted or switched jobs or continue to do the same old things we've always done. Our gripes don't change, our morality doesn't change, our self-destructive behaviors don't change, even though we may have added children or significant others or health risks or tenuous job standings, even though we've added years and debts and disappointments, even though we've become hopeful about our future prospects.

The new man is nothing more than the old man who appears to be superficially different for whatever reason--new religion, new outlook, new clothes or hair, more or less money, advanced reading or complete lethargy.

I don't mean to offer this insight as a particular critique or sign of hopelessness. No, it simply is who we are. I bring up the subject as a reminder to all of how easily swayed we are into thinking that something has changed, when it hasn't. "Oh, ______ is so much happier now," someone will say, maybe a casual observer or parents who so desperately wants greater happiness for their child. "I think so-and-so is a changed man," a diehard member of his political party will say.

Okay. If you're trying to use that position to manipulate/influence other people, more power to you, I suppose. But if you're trying to convince me that the leopard has changed his stripes, good luck. We are who we are, for better or for worse, and no change in circumstance or religion or relationship is going to alter that. Not at the core, anyway. We are still the sum of all of our previous parts, much as we the lover or coach or politician might wish for those past selves to go away.

Ode to Ned and His Dustbin

2012-01-21T00:03:00.002-05:00

Suave and Sophisticated - Ned's Atomic Dustbin (mp3)
Spring - Ned's Atomic Dustbin (mp3)
Throwing Things - Ned's Atomic Dustbin (mp3)

It’s a bridge too far to claim Ned’s Atomic Dustbin was the most compelling creative force in rock music in the ‘90s. I’ll settle for claiming they were the most compelling creative force in the ‘90s that no one this side of the pond knew about.

I discovered them when they opened for Jesus Jones on their Doubt tour. What Jesus Jones had in polish and flash, Ned’s had in nuclear frustration, a more alluring kind of anger than the cliched rage vibe of most harder rock bands of the grunge era.

Half as drunk is twice as clever, appalled when tarred and feathered
Remarks upon the weather, will just retard endeavour.
-- ALL THAT I ASK MYSELF IS THAT I HOLD TOGETHER

Two bassists and a single lead guitarist in a five-man band places them in very rarified air. Only a handful of bands in rock history have carried two basses, but the sound isn’t so earth-shatteringly different. What it allowed, most importantly, was easier access to the vocals. You can hear and understand almost every word on Ned’s first two albums in an era of music where every band needed a lyric sheet to be understood.

Now you're tying up my heart strings / I've got no halo, got no wings
We've got verbal constipation; Let's start throwing things
-- THROWING THINGS

Combine John Penney’s minimal-range baritone vocals -- anyone can sing along! -- and the fact you can actually understand the words -- whoa! he made a clever pun! -- and I fell in love with them quickly. Clever turns of phrase, especially the slight tweaking of a previous line for a different purpose, totally ropes me in.

So here's the prediction. You get an affliction. You gain an addiction. You grab what you can.
-- WALKING THROUGH SYRUP

Another beloved theme in their music that pleased movie fetishists like myself was their penchant for inserting movie clips into their music. Al the cop from Die Hard. Dennis Hopper from Apocalypse Now. Duvall from The Great Santini. Movie quotes weren’t in every song but merely sprinkled in just the right spots.

You keep thinking I'm tired of you, but I'm just tired.
While I keep saying you're sick of me, but you're just sick.
-- NOT SLEEPING AROUND

The only thing that keeps us down -- It's the only thing that makes us sound.
So painfully humble, so painfully proud.
I'm one piece short of Legoland.-- LEGOLAND

Ned’s was basically a 3-album band. Bob and I have been discussing on and off whether any band can maintain their peak past three albums, and I’m not even sure most bands get past one. Listen to the first Boston album and then the second one, and they went from rock immortality to borderline mediocrity in the span of 12 songs.

Ned’s 3-album arc went something like this:
(1) God Fodder -- Youthful passion with a chip on the shoulder and a lot of growing up to do
(2) Are You Normal? -- knowing who you are and settling into it but not being entirely happy with the relationship
(3) brainbloodvolume -- wondering if who you are is good enough and, in panic, attempting to chart a new path

Each album title says so much about the band. The first indicates their love of movies and wordplay, the second on their embrace of oddity, the third to a confusion that took away my favorite part: the ability to quickly and easily sing along with some catchy lyrics.

You're my son. I'm older than you. You can't be a man too.-- WHAT GIVES MY SON

I know nothing about their lives and never did and never cared to. Perhaps the taste for Ned's is difficult to acquire -- they sure as hell didn't take the world by storm. But, as averse as I am to making lists and best-of's, I can't imagine a desert island list of songs or albums that didn't have this band somewhere in the short list.

SPRING

Could you mind be as shallow
As my five o'clock shadow?
Could things change this fast?
The one that you wanted is past tense
At present my presence no longer makes sense
At present you're too tense
Now I never said I'm the be-all and end-all
But you had to end it all, as soon as you'd seen more
I never said I was worthless or worth more

Does it have to be this ugly?
It's not like I stole your possessions or money
Things change this fast
The one that I wanted is past tense
At present your presence no longer makes sense
At present I'm too tense

Mac Attack

2012-01-19T00:01:00.004-05:00

Fleetwood Mac--"Go Your Own Way (Michael May mix) (mp3)

Inexplicably and out of nowhere, at ages 22 and nearly 19, my daughters have gotten into Fleetwood Mac. Why? Glee. Apparently they devoted an entire episode to the Rumors album, you know, the one that contains "Dreams" and "The Chain" and "Second-Hand News" and "You Make Lovin' Fun" and "Never Going Back Again" and "Gold Dust Woman." And that sent my girls to their old dad to see if he had any Mac on CD. So I hauled out my copies of Fleetwood Mac and Rumors (I didn't rebuy Tusk on CD, just a few favorite Lindsey Buckingham songs for the double-disker) and we started listening.

And now they're walking around the house singing Fleetwood Mac songs.

That isn't necessarily a bad thing. Coming back to these songs after so many decades of not paying much attention to them and certainly not listening to these albums as entire, self-contained entities, they still sound very fresh and capable of commanding radio airplay (which I'm sure they still do). But if you think I'm going to let the moment go by without getting all judgy and snobby, you are very wrong.

I'm focusing on the first two albums only; the wheels were coming off the bus by the time Tusk came out, though I still enjoy many of its messy pieces.

So here are my official Fleetwood Mac song ratings:

Stevie Nicks' songs: A
Lindsey Buckingham songs: B+
Christine McVie songs: C
The McVie/Buckingham collaborations "World Turning" and "Don't Stop": A- and C-, respectively
The whole band collaboration "The Chain" which sounds like nothing more than Buckingham/Nicks: A+

In other words, Ms. McVie, you are well-represented on these two albums, but your songs are insipid and all too similar, each to the other's mid-tempo blandness.

Let's get one thing out of the way: the revived, revised Fleetwood Mac that appeared in 1975 (Sorry, Billy, it's a much greater phoenix story/band comeback than Yes' 80's phase--remnants of one band audition a music studio and are captivated by the tape the studio uses to show off the studio, which happens to be the Buckingham Nicks album and leads to first band subsuming second band) is pop candy. Catchy songs, catchy riffs, catchy choruses perfect for 70 degree days in L.A., pot-smoking, or presidential inaugurations. Not a whole lot of weight to the whole endeavor, but, man, could they crank out the hits.

But almost 40 years later, I especially hear the quality of Stevie Nick's songwriting. Those are the songs that really hold up for me: "Rhiannon," "Crystal," "Landslide," "Dreams," and "Gold Dust Woman." There is still a depth there. Is it the minor key sound? Is it her quirky interest in white witchcraft? Is it that only her songs explore the the L.A. decadence of the day? Is it her gift for an opening line: "Do you always trust your first initial feeling?" Is it Buckingham's sensitive ability to create the settings for the songs (It is said that Nicks would hum the melodies and that Buckingham would build the songs from there) that makes them stand out? Or is it that I've just always had a thing for Stevie and am somewhat blinded by that? I really don't know.

Certainly, it is true that the most interesting guitar parts and the cleanest production occur on Nicks' songs. Buckingham's use of volume pedals and dropped-D tuning on the acoustic guitars make the Rumors songs, especially, sound as crisp and fresh now as they did three and a half decades ago. I have never gotten tired of hearing "Dreams." I don't say that about many songs. So production does have something to do with it.

Revisiting these old songs, it strikes me that Fleetwood Mac has aged surprisingly well. The songs don't sound like songs that I used to like; they sound like songs that I still like. And the pep of Buckingham numbers like "Blue Letter" or "Monday Morning" still makes me want to grab my guitar and tackle those upbeat numbers with a tenor voice and a quick guitar strum. Christine's stuff probably sounds just fine on adult-oriented radio and I don't even mind a little "Over My Head" once in a decade. And Stevie, well, she's the one who had a solo career, so her Fleetwood Mac songs, and her Buckingham Nicks songs before that, sound like the beginnings of a canon that I have stayed in touch with off and on over the years.

To hear one of my daughters singing "Dreams" as she walks through the kitchen gives me a nostalgic reassurance that all those years haven't really passed and that the old can become new again and that there is safety in familiarity. But then my wife will point out that actually thunder happens before it rains most of the time, trying to skewer the moment. No matter. I keep my visions to myself.

To Cosleep, Perchance to Dream

2012-01-17T23:28:00.001-05:00

Didn’t Leave Nobody But the Baby - Gillian Welch, Alison Krauss & Emmylou Harris (mp3)
Until I Wake Up - Dishwalla (mp3)

“Cosleeping” -- a practice in which babies and young children sleep close to one or both parents, as opposed to in a separate room. Also called “bed sharing.” Practiced regularly in many parts of the world.

A couple in Utah will soon face trial for the death of their 3-month-old child who died in bed with them. The baby suffocated. Their cosleeping is prime suspect number one.

I’ve known more than a few parents who regularly practiced the parental art of cosleeping. I don’t consider them bad or insensitive parents. If anything, perhaps they were too emotionally tied to realize the risks. Or perhaps they merely assumed what we all do at one point or another -- we’re smarter/better/more careful; ergo, bad things won’t happen to us.

I’m in irresponsible parent as well. All three of my children slept on their bellies in the crib.

Anyone who’s been or had an infant in the past 15 years knows this is a big no-no. In 1975, belly-sleeping was the recommended position of doctors, because that’s the position in which babies sleep more soundly. But as SIDS became a phenomenon, the best way to combat the crib death numbers, it seemed, was to force babies to their sides or backs.

To be fair, this change reduced SIDS and crib death. The change has been hailed a success of research.

But when you’re on your fourth or fifth night of tortured sleepless nights, and when your tiny infant refuses to sleep more than 45 minutes at a time, and when you have moments in the deepness of 3 a.m. where you curse God and your baby and everything else on the planet because you’re failing as a parent because you can’t even get your fucking infant to rest just two straight hours that’s all I’m asking please God tell me what the hell I’m doing wrong and I’ll fix it......

At times like that, there’s nothing more lovely, nothing closer to a Godsend, than the sound of a long-loved friend and pediatrician who says, “Maybe you should try putting her to sleep on her tummy... Just don’t tell anyone I suggested it to you.”

Of course it was a much longer conversation. Parents of first-borns are afraid every breath, every decision from laundry detergent to formula to color of blankie, can result in irreversible catasrophic damage to their sweet precious. So we made damn sure this doctor believed our child would survive the night before we went ahead with it.

The world changed the very next day. We slept. She slept. The house stayed quiet sometimes four straight hours, occasionally five. I don’t know if God had answered a prayer or we had callously broken the law, and I didn’t hardly care.

Belly-sleeping didn’t make all the problems of the world go away, but it sure as hell cut our sleep problems by half.

We put our second and third children on their bellies from Day One and never thought twice about it. Amazingly, here we are, with all three children safe and sound. You can call us lucky. I call us careful parents of children born healthy. Which is to say, we’re fairly lucky, but not because our children survived night after night on their bellies.

I am not President of the Belly-Sleeping Society. It is not a Cause for me. I merely rejoice in the notion that we are in a country where I’m free to make tough choices with the raising of my children, and I’m grateful all parents have such freedoms. And I’m grateful that doctors will sometimes color outside the lines and tell us things they’re not really supposed to.

So, back to cosleeping. This couple in Utah isn’t being put on trial because their 3-month-old son suffocated while cosleeping with them.

They’re on trial because this was their second child to die in such a manner.

Let me promise you something: if my first child had died of SIDS in our crib after we began placing her on her stomach, were we able to muster the courage to forgive myself and have another child, I sure as hell wouldn’t have put that next child on its belly in the crib. Not in a million gajillion years.

As George W. Bush so valiantly put, “Fool me once, shame on you; Fool me twice... won’t get fooled again.”

We have freedom and choices, and thank God for both. But if one of your freedoms or choices results more than once in the death of innocents... shame on you with sugar on top.

So, if you wanna cosleep with your infants, it’s your life, and it’s your child, and God Bless America. But...
If you drink a lot,
If you sleep in a smallish bed,
If you are a super-sized person or couple,
If you are a deep or heavy sleeper,
you’re playing a bit of Russian Roulette with your infant’s life.

And if you should lose that game, and you choose to play it again... well, God should have mercy on your souls, but the justice system shouldn’t.

Yes? Yes!

2012-01-16T23:31:00.001-05:00

Make It Easy - Yes

Play a game with me, music lovers betwixt the ages of 26-76. Think back to your youth. Think of some band, some album, that you kinda liked but kinda didn’t. Some band or album that got critical acclaim or heavy airplay yet never won you over. Maybe you didn’t change the station when you heard it, but you didn’t hunger for it, either. It was... meh.

For almost a year now, once every month or so, I play this game. I’ve played it with Billy Squier and Triumph. I’ve played it with Exile on Main Street, Houses of the Holy and Dirt.

But today, let’s just say YES.

Which Yes, you ask? The latter one of the five digits. (If you didn't already know, there was this trippy '70s Godfather of Prog Rock version with hair down to their butts and kimonos and bad watercolor art, and there was the glitzy mullet and shiny instruments '80s version with skin-tight production.)

When it comes to Yes, you can love both, dislike both, or like one and not the other. Or you can simply not care about any of it. But then you’re not much of a music person.

Scientifically, you can draw a number of accurate conclusions about someone based on where they fall on the Yes spectrum. In 1983, the year 90125 took over the airwaves and turntables of more intellectually-ambitious teenage music lovers, I detested the old, and I mostly disliked the new, but I was afraid to admit it because my friends seemed to totally dig it. Besides, I was only 12.

It’s been almost three decades. I’ve grownsed up. Time to revisit the album.

First, in order to give the album a fresh and fair shot, you have to start with Track 2. You can’t start with “Owner of a Lonely Heart.” You just can’t. It’s got too much gravitas, too many preconceived notions. Whether you loved it or hated it back in the ‘80s, listen to that one last.

“Hold On” is a great introduction to The New Yes. Everyone who knows of Yes knows the words “Prog Rock.” Yes is arguably the penultimate Prog Rock band. (The ultimate would have to be Pink Floyd, no?) It announces Yes as a rock band, but one that aspires to modernize progishness.

As with most great albums, Song #3 is where the rubber meets the road. “It Can Happen” is my personal favorite Yes song ever. Five minutes off meaningless pseudo-philosophical babble. I dare anyone to authoritatively state what the hell this song means, but that lack of clarity doesn’t prevent the song from totally winning me over. It is the pseudo-intellectual’s “Trinidad,” to steal from Bob’s post last Sunday.

Look up! Look down! Look around! There’s a crazy world outside... we’re not about to lose our pride! …. What. the. fuck. are they talking about?? I don’t know, but they sound so... so... certain!

It can happen to you. It can happen to me. It can happen to everyone eventually! …. WHAT? WHAT CAN HAPPEN??? Loss of pride? Death? Bad trips? Selling out? Loss of soul? I don’t know exactly, but you give me a handful of college kids, a long weekend, and a dime bag, and I guaran-damn-tee you we’ll come up with a million kickass interpretations.

“Changes” bats clean-up, and if I understand prog rock correctly, this is a brilliant ‘80s interpretation of the ‘70s concept. The band makes love to a xylophone for more than a minute to start.

“Cinema” was the first song they made. They were originally going to call their band Cinema, and this song is what you would expect their whole album to sound like. Prog Rock crammed into small microwavable doses. I see why they included it, but it’s the weakest thing on the album to me.

“Leave It” … you know this one already, so I’ll -- heh -- leave it.

“Our Song” and “City of Love” carry out the general vibe of what has been comfortably established. Neither are standouts, but neither are failures. They’re continuations.

They close with “Hearts.” I think it’s their apologia to all the dudes* who bought this because they loved Fragile or Yessongs. It’s the only 7+minute song on the album, and it dances naked in its proggy glory. It’s still poppy, but proggy poppy.

The Two Trevors -- Horn and Rabin -- were supposedly the masterminds behind much of this album’s sound. If so, they have my respect. Balls and/or insanity were essential to take this kind of leap. It’s like that scene where Neo is supposed to leap from one building of ‘70s prog all the way across the city block and land in the ‘80s, and he’s like, “whoa.” Well, Yes is the Morpheus character that actually makes the leap.

90125 might well be the closest thing to a Rock Phoenix ever heard and certainly one of the most successful. Yes emerged from the ashes with just enough of its old characteristics and characters in tact to claim its rightful name, but with so many new components and philosophies as to be an entirely new creation.

It’s the best kind of comeback and precisely why it was so successful. They weren’t trying to recapture former glory but came out with something completely unexpected and carefully crafted.

* -- "Make It Easy" is from the expanded version that includes original "Cinema" versions of "It Can Happen" and a few other nuggets. Trevor Rabin, who was slated to be the main vocalist, was apparently dissatisfied with the role and dragged Jon Anderson back in. I like Trevor Rabin, but it was still the right call. You can see why this song didn't quite make the cut.

The Problem With Parents

2012-01-16T00:01:00.003-05:00

The Gallerist--"A Parent Apology" (mp3)

I attended a conference once where the man hosting the conference enjoyed the idea of putting mental slides in the air, multiple thoughts or memories that we were supposed to visualize simultaneously as a means of getting a grasp on an important abstraction. And so, I offer you the following "slides" are precursors to my discussion:

SLIDE 1: The social architects in Huxley's Brave New World not only genetically engineer their citizens to fit into particular social classes and related occupations, they also very consciously destroy the concept of the family. Families, they find, are very inefficient social structures for a number of reasons, including the parents' inability to give each child enough individual attention, to avoid playing favorites, and to avoid inflicting their own neuroses on their children.

SLIDE 2: A parent I know, arguably one of the very worst parents I know, if lack of attention paid to one's children is any kind of benchmark, has by all external measures been very successful, with two __________ children, one ______________, the other one likely to be _____________ or one similar and also recently being named _________________ at _______________. The father in question never attended ____________ until long after _______________. (Cuts suggested by uneasy readers)

SLIDE 3: A pamphlet I bought a few years called "Understanding Independent School Parents" or something similar made the following statement (my paraphrase): If we love the students that we teach, then we must also love their parents.

And I do love my students. But I am very tired of parents. Sometimes, I think I am done with parents. I look at my three slides above and I cannot reconcile them either in my mind or with each other. They seem to suggest that parents are a concept that is primarily unworkable, with little or no positive influence, and whose presence, if tolerated, requires training on my part in order for them to receive my full embrace. After 29 years of teaching, I am still not there.

I don't mean to overgeneralize; there are plenty of wonderful parents out there. But there are a couple of types of parents whose habits have become especially irksome lately. And nothing has even happened. I have no anecdote, no recent occurence, no lingering phone call or conference. Like the slides above, these images just have come into my mind recently.

The first is the parent who, when you tell him or her how well his or her child is doing with something, must act like some kind of miracle has occurred, a miracle that isn't quite to be believed. Tell him that his son is turning in papers on time and he'll say, "Well, that's a first." Tell her how well her son gets along with adults and she'll say, "He isn't that way at home. He's rude to me. We barely speak."

The second parent has an ulta-high-achieving son, and a teacher's inclination is to laud that student's accomplishments, thinking that's what a parent wants to hear. But, like the top military brass in Catch-22, the parent keeps pushing the expectations higher whenever the student starts to come close to "accomplishing the mission." Tell that parent how good his or her son's college essay is, and he or she will tell you what's wrong with it.

On the surface, these two types seem like opposite ends of a parental spectrum. The first typically has a son who is struggling in some key ways; the second has one of the more successful boys in his class. But the two parents are actually very similar. Both are using their sons as a yardstick of their own embarassment, as a reflection of their own failure and disappointment. Where those feelings come from, I wouldn't care to speculate; probably their own parents. What I see, though I try to avoid seeing such parents actually talk to their sons, are parents who gauge their standing in the world using the ability of their sons to meet family expectations. I see parents whose children either make them cringe or who require constant fine-tuning and upgrading. I see parents who must either lay the groundwork of lowered expectations to save social face or who must portray their sons as works in progress. In either case, the core goal seems to be a desire to control the child spin for all social interactions. To avoid embarassment.

What parent doesn't do that, you ask? They exist. At the very least, any such feelings they have they keep to themselves or to bedroom conversations between husband and wife that go along with other family worries. They don't air that kind of thing in public. There is no doubt that children disappoint parents, just as parents disappoint children, but to make human failure the centerpiece of that relationship seems so barbaric that I almost think the social architects of Brave New World are right. Almost.

But it does make me question what impact we parents have on our children. And it does make me cringe when I, as a teacher, seek to accentuate the positive in a parent conference and find myself confounded by a parent who can't find a positive direction to travel with me. I guess they'll don't know that I'm looking at them thinking, 'you've done a lot of damage that I can't undo, but you'll be gone after this weekend, and I'll go back to the ongoing repair work.' Love you, parents? Some of you, yes.

The Inexplicable Essence Of Life (as not explained by Eddie Money)

2012-01-14T08:09:00.007-05:00

Eddie Money--"Trinidad" (mp3)

One of the most perplexing aspects of listening to music, especially popular music, is how a lesser, perhaps insignificant, perhaps stereotypical song can achieve pre-eminent status in our brains' internal playlists.

I can't stop listening to Eddie Money's "Trinidad." You probably know it, have heard it a time or two. One of his later, minor hits, it is also his most beautiful song. It begins with the sound of the wind driving soft waves to the shore, and then a mix of 80's style power chords and treble-hyped, aurally-excited lead guitar kicks in and plays the recurring signature after every line:

There once was a story
From a thousand yesterdays
I read it in this ancient book
When the old man passed away

I drifted through the pages
And its magic filled my eyes
I dreamed she once loved me
In the land called Trinidad

By the time the chorus kicks in with its abrupt two-chord announcement, I'm already long-since hooked. I'm ready to go. I'm not even sure where Trinidad is or what is so appealing about it, since the song never makes that clear. Somewhere near Tobago, I'd guess from my elementary school geography days. But there was just a woman there or, really, the dream of a woman. And that seems to make all of the difference. What the book was, who the old man was, what was even in the book are all details that the song doesn't, probably can't, flesh out.

Eddie Money is not Ernest Hemingway; he doesn't keep details that he knows from the listener like the submerged part of an iceberg. It doesn't matter. The song owns me. And I'm not even pining for a woman from a faraway land. Nor does the song connect with some special, emotional time from my past--the reason songs often connect with us.

And yet, the song stirs my soul.

At its best, "Trinidad" is Eddie Money's "Cortez The Killer;" more likely, though, it is inspired by Toto's "Africa," a bland, uninformed representation of an exotic land (or continent!). It is that tale of timeless love outside the boundaries of time, though without "Cortez's" additional weight of social commentary.

No, Mr. Money's song isn't ultimately all that much. But it is one of those songs that makes an uneasy mess of the hard work that "sophisticated" music listeners put in to learn how to tell good from bad. Even semi-regular readers of this blog undoubtedly have a fairly clear sense of the different, sometimes quirky musical preferences of its two writers.

Which is why "Trinidad" demonstrates, at least for me, that however much someone might argue for or try to develop a musical aesthetic, it cannot fully happen. Whatever standards one might try to establish will fall away in the face of a song that inexplicably touches the soul of a listener. It doesn't have to be a good song. The listener does not have to understand why it touches him or her.

By the way, I'm not trying to disparge Mr. Money in any way. This whole thing started because I got ahold of his greatest hits in a library down in Florida last summer, and, it must be said, when you listen to the man's hits, he has a whole lot more of them than many of his predecessors or his contemporaries. In the Eddie Money catalogue, no two songs sound particularly the same, which is one of my high praises for an artist. And he got Ronnie Spector to sing with him. And I'll bet he's still rockin' the casinos in Tunica or Iowa, still giving his all every night. But to call him either a great songwriter or an accomplished lyricist would be overstating the case. A lot. He's more of a "meat and potatoes" guy cranking out musical comfort food. Maybe that's enough. But, oh that Trinidad. Take me there now.

The Secret Layer Cake

2012-01-12T00:20:00.001-05:00

Lick the Palm of the Burning Handshake - Zola Jesus (mp3)
Faithfully Dangerous - Over the Rhine (mp3)

Nothing special. Just one more happy couple, holding hands, walking together in the French Quarter. Nothing attractive enough to notice.

But we noticed.

It was the first night of our annual trip to New Orleans, the annual expedition that inspired BOTG, and we stood in line outside ACME Oyster House, waiting for our fourth member to return with beer, waiting for a seat inside so we could finally eat some of the best chargrilled oysters ever to land on planet Earth.

“Isn’t that Lenny?”

Bob and I turned and looked where John was pointing. Yes. Yes, it was Lenny. And he was walking hand in hand with a woman who was most decidedly not his wife.

Last week, Bob wrote about secrets (“The Secret Lives of Nobody”). More specifically, he wrote about our lack of them:

“...we like to think that we can do things that no one will know about? Wake up. We're all watching each other all the time, and the slightest divergence from accepted behavior makes us wonder the tiniest bit.”

He concludes: “But it's worth reminding ourselves, even as we're sharing those little secrets, that there aren't any. Somebody already knows.”

But... do we know? What, exactly, do we know?

Without question, life in the 21st Century is about the constant potential loss of privacy. Anyone with money or savvy technical know-how can find out most anything they want about anyone else.

My credit card can be tracked. It could reveal my drinking habits, my unhealthy food choices, my family’s tendency to dine out a bit too frequently for our level of income, my addiction to the purchase of used DVDs.

My email can be hacked, as can my text messages. With knowledge or money, time, and an unhealthy obsession or motivation, one could surely find some juicy stuff. Critical comments I’ve written about close friends, my boss, my wife, myself? Inappropriate jokes? Who knows.

With a little elbow grease, someone could track where I go on the Internet. In my office, or when I’m at Starbucks, or when I’m at home at our desktop Mac. Every single location I visit in cyberspace.

Our encounter with Lenny in the French Quarter was the revelation of a secret that unraveled Lenny's existence. He apparently went home and confessed everything shortly thereafter. We can view this story as a prime example of how little privacy we have, but I’m haunted by this moment of discovery more because of all the things we’ll never know about Lenny.

How did he find himself in that moment? How did he, a married man with children I’m sure he loves, end up walking happily, hand in hand, with another woman in the French Quarter? Had he regularly used out-of-town conferences or trips as an excuse to find love in someone else’s arms? Had he known his married life was a sham early on, or did it disintegrate slowly over time? Or would he argue that his marriage was perfectly fine right up to the moment he got caught?

Was this woman a high school sweetheart, a long-unrequited love, an escort, someone he met at dinner last night? On the airplane or in the car on his way to New Orleans, did he know he would be holding this woman’s hand, smiling, enjoying some escapist fantasy, only to have the harsh hammer of reality crash on his head in the form of colleagues on vacation?

When he left us and got back to his hotel room that night, did he throw up? Did he sleep? If he had slept with her before seeing us, was it the last time, or would he try one more desperate attempt to pretend his real life away, to try and forget his second life had been compromised? Did he have friends who knew about this? Did his wife suspect anything before?

On the surface, Bob is right. Nothing is secret anymore. Our habits, interests and choices are ripe apples on the tree of information, easily picked.

But nothing is simple. My best friend in the world I see weekly if not more. We eat lunch, knock back beers, watch UNC games on TV, go to concerts. We talk all the time. I know him almost better than I know my wife. And there are still a million things about him that I don’t know, or can’t quite make sense of.

The moment we witnessed Lenny holding that woman’s hand? Yes, we discovered a secret and entered a room with hundreds of other doors, unknown secrets we didn’t even know existed before we saw that one.

At that revelatory French Quarter moment, we knew less about him, not more.

I'm An F---ing Genius!

2012-01-11T08:26:00.019-05:00

Eisley--"Smarter" (mp3)

I don't know if you've had a chance to hang out with me lately, but I'm pretty f---ing smart. Go ahead, put an "-er" on that statement. You know you were thinking it. 'There's something different about him,' you probably thought. 'I knew he was kinda smart, but he seems........smarter. What gives?' What you were picking up on is that I'm not only smarter, I'm quicker, I've probably raised my IQ, I'm pretty sure I know how to fix the economy, I'm starting to find flaws in Stephen Hawking's theories, and even though men are from Mars and women are from Venus, I think I know how to accomplish that inter-planetary travel.

Allow me to explain. I read Newsweek. Now, this could be a blessing in and of itself, especially if my old pal Jon Meacham were still at the helm, but recently Newsweek came out with a story that changed my life. Even though I had not changed my life at all.

The article is called "31 Ways To Get Smarter-Faster." Contained within are any number of tricks and techniques to get us down this path to greater smartivity. And, of course, reading such gospel provoked a little bit of self-analysis of the ol' Bob. Let's investigate together, shall we?

#11. Eat Dark Chocolate. Christmas Eve? Guess what I dipped my banana in? That's right. Dark chocolate. I've been gnawing, sucking, melting this stuff for years. Medicinally, of course.

#1. Play Words With Friends. Been there, done that. Know what I learned? Inside tip: they don't even have to be friends. It's just as fun to beat the mental crap out of people you don't necessarily like all that much.

#31. Get Out Of Town. Hey, you don't have to tell me twice. Even though relatives kept me stuck here for the break, I still managed to drag one batch of them down to Atlanta for the day, and, last weekend, when my daughter didn't want to travel alone to a wedding down there, I was like, "Hop in the car, baby, I'll be your chauffeur for the day." Got a good meal out of it, too.

#26. Zone Out. Huh? What did you just say?

#16. Eat Yogurt. I also drank some milk that was sitting in a glass in the den for a couple of days. I hope that counts.

#7. Download The TED App. Done and done. I hope it's not presumptuous to say that you'll soon be watching me on a TED App.

#10. Learn A Language. Voulez-vous couchez avec moi ce soir?

#22. Visit An Art Museum. Took my whole clan down to Atl over the break to see everything from Picasso to Warhol, though hearing Modigliani called "one of the greatest technical painters of the 20th century" for painting a series of vertical and horizontal lines wasn't working for me. I think I'll paint my name on a shovel, hang it from the ceiling and call it art.

#30. Write Reviews Online. Bottom-of-the-glass.blogspot.com. Be happy to tell you what I think of Alejandro Escovedo's concert or the Avett Brothers or the Stones after 1973 or movies like "Winter's Bone" or "Drive." Working on a review of Darwin's Origin of Species which should be ready soon.

#14. Play Violent Video Games. Dude, I'm working through Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 for the second time. It's all about timing that jump to get to Makarov's helicopter, throw his son-of-a-bitch pilot out of the cockpit, crash the damn thing and then hang Makarov from the ceiling. Oh, yes, he'll pay for for what he did to Soap and Yuri. Count on it.

#2. Eat Turmeric. Don't own any turmeric? If you canned pickles, you would. Do my teeth look yellow?

#23. Plan An Instrument. Dylan Night? Neil Young Night? I've been a guitar-playing machine for the last month!

#18. See A Shakespeare Play. Okay, I haven't seen one recently, but I've watched the trailer for Coriolanus. Looks pretty good, like an action flick.

#5. Toss Your Smartphone. I do. Every night. Onto the bed. So I can plug it in and get it all charged up for the next day and so that it can sleep next to my pillow.

#20. Hydrate. Those who know me know that I never order anything to drink except water when I eat at a Chinese restaurant.

#27. Drink Coffee. Just did. Still am. Third cup this morning. Do you notice my prose getting crisper, tighter, more focused? Here's the best news of all: the more you drink, the smarter you get.

#24. Write By Hand. Took notes in a meeting just yesterday. Actually, there are a lot of things I do by hand that I'm pretty good at.

#13. Wipe The Smile Off Your Face. I've never had much trouble looking down on the actions of other people. Ass.

#29. Become An Expert. Or, in my case, more than one. Which one do you want to know about?

#28. Delay Gratification. This was my favorite one, but I saved it for last. I also didn't start playing Call Of Duty until over a week after I opened it on Christmas Day.

Let me save you the counting; your slower brain probably can't handle that anyway. You probably use a calculator to add. I'm already accomplishing 20 of the 31 techniques, which has to make me practically the poster child of Smartville. And I'm going to do the other 10 tonight. How much Tae Kwon Do do you think I have to learn, anyway? And what the fuck is Al Jazeera? Sounds like a Middle Eastern place we used to eat at in Pittsburgh.

I hope you had a nice Christmas and got some good stuff. Know what I got for Christmas? Smart. That's what I got. A stocking stuffed with "Smart-er."

When I finished reading the piece, finished going through the checklist, I thought to myself, 'You know, Bob, you do seem a little quicker. Keep up the good work.'

Yes, I like working on self-improvement. Yes, I like seeing the kinds of immediate, tangible results that I'm seeing and feeling. My boss likes to think that he's the smartest person in the room. Little does he knows what's happening each time I sip my coffee, jot down a note, stare off into space, snack on a yogurt-covered pretzel or throw down the smack with a "Triple Word" score under the table on my phone during a meeting. Yes, I really do like all of the ways that I feel better about myself. Mostly, though, I think I just like validation for all of the wonderful things that I do for myself and others that take absolutely no extra effort at all. Who doesn't wish they had a smart friend like me? You should try it.

Peter Parker, Commie Bastage

2012-01-10T00:02:00.000-05:00

Save You - Matthew Perryman Jones (mp3)
Spiderman - Katrina & the Waves (mp3)

Spider-Man is liberal propaganda, and it brainwashed me.

How could I have gone my whole life without realizing this, that reading and obsessing over comic books throughout my childhood and along the road to (dubious) maturity would be the touchstone of my leftward political leanings?

My love of Spidey is why all followers of Ayn Rand should go fellate themselves, objectively. Spidey is why I think of the Kingpin when I see Newt Gingrich and why I see Doctor Octopus whenever Romney is on the prowl. John McCain would obviously be The Vulture.

In our modern greedy world of self-interest and narcissism, what could be more counter-culture in its message than a collection of people who regularly save the world from danger for absolutely no reward other than warm fuzzies?

Peter Parker is just a poor newspaper photographer. He wasn’t born rich like Bruce Wayne, and, unlike Superman, he has human needs for food and sleep. Unlike the X-men, who are supported financially by the inherited wealth of Professor X, Parker grew up poor and raised by his aunt and uncle. He was born on the edge of middle class, and he’s constantly fighting to get there or stay there throughout his adult life.

Not only is Parker poor, but in most versions of his tale, his heroic alter-ego Spider-Man is considered a public menace. The police are usually after Spidey, and the local newspaper is on a mission to ruin and malign him in every way possible.

The reward Spider-Man receives for saving people is internal. His motive was borne of the one time he could have stopped a criminal and chose not to, a decision that led to the death of his uncle.

“With great power comes great responsibility.”

Is there any more liberal motto in the history of superherodom?

Republicans and capitalists hate Spider-Man. He does all this hard work for no money. His heroism fails to give him power or respect. He does it for the pathetic reason that he just feels like it’s the right thing to do.

If Spidey’s raison d’etre was fighting abortion clinics, or defending America from evil immigrants, or vigilantly assuring that no teenagers were having sex before marriage, or ensnaring all homosexuals in his webs, thus ensuring that heterosexuals were safe to copulate quietly and privately in the dark of our wedded bedrooms, then I guess he’d be OK.

But you know what Spidey spends most of his time doing? Trying to help the same damn supervillains who work so hard to destroy him. Nowhere are supervillains more sadly tragic than in Spider-Man.

The Lizard is actually a scientist, Curtis Connors, who lost his arm in battle as a military medic. He was doing experimental research on limb regeneration, hoping to help those who have lost limbs like himself. A grave error restored his arm... but only when he turns into a wild and oversized lizard.

Doctor Octopus was also nuclear physicist who was physically and emotionally abused by his father. His arms were designed to help him manage highly radioactive materials from a safe distance. Once again, a grave error resulted in the apparatus being fused to his body and flipped him over the edge.

Morbius was originally a biochemist dying of a rare blood disorder. His experiments with bats were merely designed to prolong his life but turned him into a raving mad vampire-like thing.

Man-Wolf was the astronaut son of Daily Bugle publisher J. Jonah Jameson. He found a weird moon rock. He wore it as a special necklace when he returned back home and... guess what? It transformed him under the moon into a werewolf-type freak.

Time after time, Spidey’s villains are people with high intelligence and mostly-noble ambitions. They’re often successful and well-off, and they often are trying to better the world even if they’re also trying to cure or help themsleves. They are... very Republican.

Yet Spidey tries to help them, to rescue them from the devil on their proverbial shoulders, the beasts in their bellies. Not for money. Not for gratitude. Just to quiet the ghost of his deceased uncle. If Spidey were a conservative, he'd say these villains' poor choices are their fault, and they must pay for their errors with their lives. He'd carry a gun, shoot them in the head, and sleep well at night. He'd probably only save the city if the city agreed to pay him. But not with tax dollars from the hard-working wealthy.

But instead he's a softy liberal. Because he has great power, he therefore has tremendous responsibility. How pathetic. Or, as Dark Helmet would say, "Now you see that evil will always triumph, because good is dumb."

The Secret Lives Of Nobody

2012-01-08T13:43:00.027-05:00

Silver Swans--"Secrets" (mp3)

You only know what I want you to.
I know everything you don't want me to.
--"Poison and Wine" by The Civil Wars

The decline of our privacy as a society has become so much of a given that we barely even notice it. Satellites in space can see what we're doing in our homes, cameras on our roads and our workplaces can record any impropieties that occur out in public, our cell phones tell whomever needs to know where we are, our purchases in stores are tracked and logged, our Internet habits can never be erased. Our preferences and patterns, no matter how individualistic we might think that we are, fit easily into actuarial tables so that our lives and especially deaths can be predicted with near certainty based on where we live, where we work, etc. Even our garbage, should the media or the evil-minded choose to go through it, will paint a pretty complete picture of who we are.

In short, if we were books, we would be wide open.

But perhaps what is more interesting are the ways that we continue to fool ourselves in personal and local matters. However freely or not freely we may give away ourselves to forces and interests larger than our comprehension or focus, we still like to think that we can conduct our lives privately among the people we know personally.

Not so.

Or at least, I don't think so, based on my experiences. When I walk through my days, my mind and mouth must do any number of social juggling acts, probably even simultaneously, even though the brain isn't supposed to be able to literally multi-task. Whoever came up with that theory must not have to navigate the social paths of the modern world.

When I meet the people I know, I have to institute an internal series of checks and balances to keep me from saying something that might cause trouble. With me, I'm carrying things like this person's affair, that person's run-in with the police, someone's addiction, someone else's dislike of yet another person, her sexual orientation, his future with the place where we work, your dating history, my past drug use. I am lugging something you won't know for days or weeks, something that happened in another state, something I saw, heard, said, received by text or email, something that may or may not have happened online. I have files in my head on 29 years of working in the same place--the lies, the secret deals, the slights and unfairnessess. I remember things that other people who were there don't even recall happening. You are, no doubt, carrying all of those things, maybe more.

Big things and little things--who got invited and who didn't, what happened in a closet, why so-and-so's promotion is never coming. How alcohol entered the mix, what can't be taken back, transactions off the books.

I have a friend who, from his apartment perch, can see the comings and goings of an entire street. The people who live on that street live in blissful ignorance, never even considering those eyes in the sky, eyes that belong to someone who doesn't sleep very well and who sees the cars that leave and return at all hours of the night and morning. And sometimes he tells me.

And yet, we like to think that we can do things that no one will know about? Wake up. We're all watching each other all the time, and the slightest divergence from accepted behavior makes us wonder the tiniest bit. Put in enough years living here and you can't go 30 minutes anywhere in town without seeing someone that you know. Who knows what those people have observed that we don't know about. Sentinel cameras everywhere are one thing, but they are no match for a person seeing something and putting 2 and 2 together.

Sometimes some of us get together in a Chinese restaurant and talk. Talk pretty candidly. But I can't help thinking that the ears at the next table knows somebody that we know, somebody that we name--from church, from the neighborhood, from a friend of a friend.

It's hard to live like this. The eggshells are everywhere. Maybe it's just adulthood. Maybe it's a circumstance of a small city. But it's also a harsh reality. I have a friend who, when he and his wife bought a new car, bought the exact same car in the exact some color as the one that they already had so that no one would know that they had bought a new car. Who does that? Well, I guess the answer is someone who knows precisely the kind of world that he is living in or the one he's paranoid enough to expect. Why can't both be true?

These are things that we all know but pretend, by choice, that we don't want to know. I don't blame us. It's like when I hear something and I only tell one or two people who I know will keep the secret secure. They only tell a couple of people and it spreads close and near or far and wide, depending. Until I get burned from my very, very minimal sharing of a secret, I'll probably keep doing it. Or, since I did feel a little burned a month or so ago about, I'm probably still in my mouth-shut mode. But we all know that it won't last. We all want to know as much as we can about everyone and everything else, and being able to be the one who can share the information is local power. But it's worth reminding ourselves, even as we're sharing those little secrets, that there aren't any. Somebody already knows.

The Fugnuts

2012-01-06T15:39:00.000-05:00

Please put your political affiliations aside. This is a non-partisan commentary. In another year, I'd be talking about a different political party.

In the past week, a group of pathetic fugnuts have duked it out in Iowa. They're a pretty shoddy crew of adulterers and has-beens, men and women whose ideas and positions have not been able to take hold in the minds of the Republican electorate. For months, whether part of the fray or on the sidelines, we have watched one Great White Hope or Great Black Hope or Great Female Hope after another come and go, while the blandest candidate held back and bided his time and courted the big money and the establishment power. And he won. This "winner" amassed a whopping 25% of the vote, finishing only a close shave ahead of his closest contender. In real numbers, that means he got about 25,000 votes.

But his reward, now, is "frontrunner." He is the top fugnut. You can see it happening everywhere. Not only is he way ahead in New Hampshire (not a big surprise since he's from Massachussetts), but suddenly he's getting strong in South Carolina as well. A week ago, he didn't have a chance in Hell of winning South Carolina or any other Southern state, except Florida.

If you check the news stories online, already most of them work from the perspective of him being the guy to beat. Already most of the stories are, in fact, about him. The rest of the candidates have suddenly become the pack. Because that's what our media does. It reduces everything to its simplest terms. It doesn't like to have to talk about a whole bunch of candidates.

We are still in the first week of January and all of the focus has coalesced on one annointed man who will more than likely become the Republican nominee.

My father, who prides himself on his conservatism, put the Iowa caucuses in these terms: "Romney is a moderate. He got 25% of the vote. The conservatives got 75% of the vote." But he's wrong. The percentages don't matter at all. Romney won, and everyone else lost. And now Romney will convince everyone that he is indeed a conservative.

Ideology is almost out the window. Someone is holding it by its legs, dangling it, ready to drop it.

Within a few months, maybe less, people who disparaged this man, distrusted this man, hated this man, will be waving signs on his behalf. They will be willing to live or die based on his election. They will pour money his way to back up their new sense of conviction. They will fight for him. They will lie for him. They will threaten to move to a different country if he is not elected. He is the one who can save us, because the one we thought could save us didn't, and the one before that didn't, and the one before that...

For his part, he will "refine" his positions until they were nothing like what they were. He will say anything. He may even convert to Catholicism. People will be hazy at best about what those positions once were, and political ads from the other side that try to remind people of what those positions once were will be seen as "dirty politics." He will do whatever it takes to be their man.

People like to talk, every four years or so, of a third party, one that will rise on either the left or the right. Or could one rise on both sides and we'd have four? No time soon, I'd guess. Let's face it: our American brains can't handle three parties. We don't have room for more than two. This is nowhere more true than with our media brain. It can't manage more than pitting one side against another side.

Politics in America are like dogfighting. We send out the two dogs that we think can win. It doesn't mean that they are the best two dogs, just the two that we think can win. There is no room in the match for a third dog. That would confuse everything.

All because of 25,000 votes in a country of 300 million people.

Actually, those sorry candidates who couldn't find a way to take hold, they're not the fugnuts. We can blame the system, we can blame corporate power, we can blame the unions, we can blame the media, we can blame how out of touch politicians inside the Beltway are, but the blame ultimately only points in one direction--the people who swallow all of this shit. Sorry, my friends. We're the fugnuts.

20 No-No's For Real Men

2012-01-05T00:00:00.000-05:00

Coming Back to a Man - Dawes (mp3)
Missionary Man - Eurhythmics (mp3)

Tuesday at lunch, Bob made an observation that began with, “A real man would never...” Obviously, he was referring to frequent BOTG reader John.

His random comment (#12) gave birth to today’s entry. What better two men to make a list of 20 No-No’s (#18) for Real Men than the paragons of all things masculine that are Bob and Billy

Now, with a wink and a nod (#6), we offer you our list. It is without flaw. Suggested amendments are welcomed; however, as real men, we will quietly dismiss them.

1. Facial hair is a sad attempt to overcompensate for... well, something. (See also: Hummers, steroids, trophy wives, and over-the-ear Beats headphones.)

2. Real men don't get sick. As in, sick enough to miss work. Even if you have to tie a shirt sleeve around your mouth for the entire day, get your ass into work where you can talk about how sick you are so that everyone knows how sick you are but that you are still man enough to come to work.

3. Real men don't wear turtlenecks. Only real, real men do. They're the only ones who are man enough to get away with one. The rest of us end up looking like John Lithgow after he had the sex-change in The World According To Garp.

4. Fantasy Football : 2011 :: Cigarettes : 1958 -- If you’re a real man in 2011, and you’re not participating in Fantasy Football, you have barred one of the easiest and most universal male topics of conversation from your repertoire. You don’t have to like fantasy football or watch the games; just shut up and play, even if you have to fake it. If you can’t fake it, get some advice from your girlfriend; she’s an expert.

5. When watching “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” it is perfectly natural if you find yourself aroused by a scene where Lisbeth Salander’s erogenous zones are exposed. Never ever admit this to a woman, even if it’s just the scene of her screwing the ever-loving pea-snot out of Daniel Craig.

6. Real men don’t punctuate wisecracks with a wink and a nod. If the joke is funny, they’ll laugh. They don’t need your nudges. If you have a great signature laugh, it’s OK to laugh at your own jokes, because often your laugh is funny enough to make up for the shittier jokes.

7. Real men don't "go for a walk," don't own "walking shoes," don't call their walking "jogging." Jogging is really slow running and joggers can often be passed by fast walkers. Real men do PX90, or, better yet, talk about how they would be doing it if it wasn't for their backs.

8. Real men don't read novels. They read history, preferably Civil War, or books about sports or books about their work or their investments. Or better yet, books about how it's manly to be a Christian, about how Jesus was a manly man, about how men still need to go on quests and rescue women. Novels? Fuck. That's what movies are for.

9. Real men don't play tennis. There are more masculine ways to get women.

10. Real men don't Wii. That is "weak sauce." If you're going to be a gamer, at least use one of the macho gaming systems, preferably the X-Box 360.

11. Never Question Ben Affleck or Matt Damon. They are Real Men Gods. They are the contemporary celebrity versions of Leonaidas. They rule the legitimate movie landscape. Like all Real Men, they have had moments of imperfection and failure, but in the end they have managed to tame Hollywood and make it work for them rather than the other way around.

12. Never text the word “K” for “OK.” Expend that extra energy and type the fucking O. If you can’t type it, you can’t bring someone to it.
12b. Never use more than a single exclamation point in a text message. No matter how many sentences are involved. More than one, and you might as well dot them with hearts and smiley-faces.

13. UGGs are for women. Period. (See also: Dr. Pepper Ten, the 10-calorie drink not for women... yeah, right.)

14. To sing Lady Gaga aloud is to announce your sexual attraction to those of your same gender. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But if you are, get the hell out of the closet already and be a Real Gay Man.

15. Don’t argue about Tim Tebow. Not for, not against, none of it. Just don’t. If your hand is forced or you are threatened at gunpoint, keep your answers simple, lest you confuse his biggest fans.

16. Real men don’t compete “just for fun.” Entering that city-wide dodgeball tournament isn’t just for shits and giggles. Even if that’s the original intent -- “we did it for a goof” -- you’re a man, and you know damn well that by the time the tournament date arrives, everyone on your team will be dead serious about it. And if you’re not, you’re not a real man.

17. Never, ever, begin a conversation with “Yesterday, on ‘The View’...”

18. “No-No” is a no-no unless you’re communicating with a child under the age of 5, and then only if you’re in your own home and speaking to your own child.

19. Never blame others first if you had any part in the failure. Much like the oxygen masks that fall from the ceiling of airplanes, you must first take your own medicine before you go dishing it out on others. Real men take responsibility, but they never apologize.

20. Real men don't turn down a drink. Sip it if you need to or dump it in the toilet if that works, but don't turn the damn thing down because you don't feel like drinking. Real Men always feel like drinking.

Called To Duty

2012-01-04T00:01:00.002-05:00

Lana Del Rey--"Video Games" (mp3)

For the last three or four Christmases, the one present that I have overtly asked for has been the latest version of Call Of Duty or its rival, Medal Of Honor. As a result, I have fought in many WWII battles (both European and Pacific theaters), saved the world from nuclear disaster and Russian invasion in the present and future, and even done that dirtiest of work: black ops.

First, the admissions: 1) yes, I play these games on a Wii because that is the gaming system that we have had for many years and I'm not so committed a gamer that I need the latest, best system with the killer graphics and 2) I always play the 2nd level of difficulty, not the easiest, but not one of the hardcore levels. I would last about 3 seconds on one of those levels. Also, I like the play the single-player mode. These games are super hot sellers because of their online multiplayer options, but I prefer to play alone. Also, I suck at those online versions. I'm a slow lamb among wolves. I did like that zombie game last year, though, because instead of trying to do battle with super-gamers, we all teamed up to try to stop the zombies for as long as possible. Sometimes, I held my own.

Basically, what we're talking about here is that in the comfort of my den, I like to kill people.

Bad people, of course. Give me a noble cause and a gun and I'll happily pick up where Jack Bauer left off. Give me a chance to get a sense of the war my dad served in, and I'll take on Krauts or Japs. That was a good war. I actually prefer that war to the modern versions with their grey areas and civilian involvement (millions of civilians died in WWII, I realize, but not in the games).

The vibe in my house is pretty interesting. My daughters, especially, are very encouraging about the games. They will ask how it's going. They will sit and watch and ask questions. They will want to know where I am in the game. If there is a plot, they like to know what it is and who I'm currently enacting and why. They are intrigued by the locations and the scenarios.

Partly, that's because of their ages--22 and 18. They are of the generation that grew up on Goosebumps and Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark. They know about choosing your ending and the teller getting involved in the tale. They know about franchises like Harry Potter and Twilight and have an appreciation of the latest addition to it. They watch their share of reality TV, so they expect for everyday people like their dad getting drawn into international conflicts.

In short, they are used to the whole interactive mindset and the idea that their dad is immersed in characters and roles and scenarios where his decisions will affect (to some extent) the outcome of the experience is as natural to them as sushi. At the same time, they are highly amused by my participation, especially if they see me get worked up or unable to get the game out of my head and needing to keep going back to it.

And there is no doubt--as soon as I begin the game, I can feel my blood pressure going up, I feel the kill thrill, I have a hard time stopping just because I'm supposed to be cooking supper. I also enjoy the relative "invincibility" of the experience. There are times when I can hold back, but most of the time, the game wants me to take the lead and eventually that means saying "what the heck" and just pushing forward into a hail of gunfire so that the other characters on screen will move up, too. Yes, I suspend disbelief easily.

But this also isn't about me. We're talking about a phenomenon here, because it is not just me playing these games, nor am I the only one my age playing them, though admittedly the ranks are thinner up here. People like "first-person shooters" of which the war games are one variation.

The tendency, if you're on the outside, is to dismiss games like this as "boys will be boys" silliness. I suppose that's possible, even likely. But we're also talking about modern, post-9/11 entertainment. The WWII games hearken back to a time when things were simpler and more clear cut and soldiers knew that they had a job to do and they volunteered to do that job in droves. You can't tell me that gaming corporations aren't tapping into that nostalgic "service" vibe as we move forward in a world we barely understand. At the same time, the games that depict present and future events allow us to confront our fears, to mimic doing something about them, to gain some understanding of our elite forces, what they do and the weapons they use to do those awful, necessary things. I've heard it mentioned and I'm not surprised that the Osama Bin Laden mission may end up as a game. Why not? We have always demonized our enemies and that's not likely to end. But instead of boys, when I was young, killing Nazis or Commies in pretend games with guns across the neighborhood, now we can get those people in the sights of very sophisticated weapons.

Also, these games, and not just the war games, functions as kinds of novels, where you may not exactly get to choose your ending, but you have a pretty fair say in how you get there and what weapons you get there with. The opportunity to interact in the story is an important draw, and not just for me, I'd say, since the games have been working more and more on the "plots," carrying over characters from previous games. Modern entertainment is about involvement on some level, not just passive observation, and these games take advantage of that need.

Nevertheless, the irony of the whole endeavor does not escape me. I am rabidly anti-war, regardless of who is in the White House, and I believe that we would be better off out of current foreign entanglements as soon as possible. I also don't own a gun and restrain myself from acts of violence 99% of the time. So, my yearly obsession with Call Of Duty is perhaps odd. I'd explain it this way: WWII is the "gateway drug." I've been obsessed with that war since I was a young child because it was my father's war. Once I got involved with WWII games, when there wasn't one, I was willing to try whatever other war games were out there. Not Legos, though. I don't do Lego action games. That's not people.

The Zoo In You

2012-01-02T22:46:00.002-05:00

Animal - Neon Trees (mp3)
Hospital Food - David Gray (mp3)

“THIS IS BULLSHIT!”

My 10-year-old daughter sat on my lap. My 11-year-old daughter sat in the chair next to me, her head comfortably resting on my arm. We were huddled together in the darkness of the movie theater, watching WE BOUGHT A ZOO. And a boy on the screen drops the BS Bomb at high volume.

The boy, played by Colin Ford, screams at his Matt Damon father at the climax of a long-time-coming father-son argument. When he screamed out that agonized and angry invective, the entire packed audience gasped.

Whoa whoa whoa... this is a family movie! Precious little 6-year-olds were in there with their mommy or daddy to watch the cuddly zoo animals. Where’s Kevin James and all the cute animal fart jokes? These families didn’t come for a movie about a dead mother (not a spoiler) and an angsty teen son who curses at his dad.

Typically, when my kids and I co-witness scenes with sexuality or language, I self-consciously attempt to break the tension in some small way, or at least acknowledge that there’s this odd awkward thing going on. (Whether this is the proper thing to do matters not; it is what I do.) But in this scene, in this intense moment between two men in agony, I just kept them close.

I spent a majority of time in that movie fighting that gaspy shuddery rickety method of Weep Minimizing, hoping to prevent the eye trickle from becoming a full-blown flood. In a movie full of these moments, the fight atop the stairs was the toughest to get through.

We’ll be there one day, I thought. In a matter of years, if I’m lucky, I’ll be in the midst of verbal fisticuffs with one or both daughters that leaves both sides exhausted and defeated and emotionally bloody.

“We Bought A Zoo” has received lukewarm reviews from critics for understandable reasons, but it’s clear none of them watched with their children. It’s a family movie, not a movie for critics sitting alone. As such, it often goes a few extra steps in spelling things out along the way.

There’s almost a direct inverse correlation between the movies my kids enjoy and ones that receive critical acclaim. The movies critics love are, often, just a pinch over their heads. The plot is a bit too complex, or the relationships a bit too nuanced. What 10- and 11-year-olds need is a little bit more blatancy in their cinema. Critics seem to forget that. Or not care.

It’s the same reason many of the best middle school teachers are a bit cartoonish and two-dimensional, whereas teachers of juniors and seniors need to be more complex.

If critics would pull out of their own private screening room on occasion, they might see movies a bit differently.

All I know is that, when watching this movie while in actual physical contact with my daughters, all possibilities of the past, present and future of parenthood and childhood felt alive within me.

What if my wife died tomorrow?
What if I had died two years ago?
What if one of my children was hit with a fatal illness?
What if we all manage somehow to survive the next 30 years? (Isn’t that the least likely of all? Isn’t that horrifying?)

At the heart of the movie is how we cope -- or fail to cope -- with death and its inevitability. Matt Damon’s character refuses to let one of the elder animals fade, and he’s willing to spend whatever it takes to keep the animal alive, despite the advice of his animal expert (played by the yummy Scarlett Johansson). At first she’s respectful of his wishes, but she gets increasingly vehement that letting the animal die is the right decision and best for the animal.

Such a simple and obvious decision when it’s an animal. So much more complicated when it’s a person. And my wish, as I watched this movie, was that by the time my bell begins to toll, the experts and my loved ones treat me more like the animal.

Maybe my opinion will change over the next 20 years, but at present, it’s not death I fear. What I fear is a life of prolonged and extensive pain and suffering that bankrupts my family in the process. To die, to slowly break the hearts of those I love, and to drain every last penny on my way out. That’s a horror story.

Happy New Year!!

12 Musical Resolutions For 2012

2012-01-01T14:31:00.023-05:00

Eleanor Friedberger--"I Won't Fall Apart On You Tonight" (mp3)

Much as Billy and I like to wade into issues that we don't know enough about, Bottom Of The Glass always begins and ends with music. 2012 will be our 5th year; sometime during this year we will also "publish" our 1000th blogpost. So while I may have some other resolutions that I may keep to myself, I'm going public with my musical resolutions:

1. Play more live. The goal is pretty simple. Three performances of some kind in some kind of public place, meaning not me playing for my dog. If you play an instrument, then you know that you sound one way when you play to yourself (damn good) and an entirely different way when you have to swallow your nerves and perform (kind of tentative). New Year's Eve didn't happen, and that's a good thing, as I found out when I ran through some of the songs with one of the guys. The songs need way more practice. Neil Young Night looms on the horizon. What else?

2. See more live. I say it every year; I continue to believe it: it is always worth it to make the effort to go see music performed live. But the bones get old and the next day looms large when a mid-week concert beckons and the ears aren't what they used to be either. Still....always worth it. Except the Avett Brothers.

3. Actively seek new music. I was embarassed as a pseudo-music blogger to see the "Best Of" lists this year and to discover how many bands that I'd never even heard of topping people's lists. Whatever avenues for passive exposure to new music once existed, they don't exist no more and they ain't comin' back. Sampling the "charts" of eMusic ain't gonna do it either. I'm going to have to get out there. I'm not even sure what that means yet, but my thanks to superstar music bloggers Said The Gramophone and entrepreneurs This Is American Music for their respective commitments to good, new stuff.

4. Practice, for God's sake, and preferably with other people. It's one thing to say that I want to play more live music, but the real issue is the work I need to put in on my own and with other people behind the scenes. Otherwise, it's like trying to run a race with no training. Right now, there are calluses on my fingertips, I have three guitars in working order, one at a repair shop, one to be repaired, and one loaned to a college student with an ambiguous future, so I'd have to say I'm feeling decent about this one. I've played the guitar for at least 15-30 minutes every day this week. The key is to get those wood boxes out in the open where I can't help but see them and can't help but pick them up. The practicing with other people, well, that's a tougher proposition, not unlike seeing live music. It involves leaving the house to follow up on a commitment. I'm working on it, I promise.

5. Put in more time with the BOTG mailbox. It's tough work, as Billy or I have mentioned more than once. Before even sorting through the musical submissions, trying to come up with some kind of system for what is even worth clicking on (personally, I don't do remixes) requires a good deal of perusal and deletion. But, I also know that it's true that both of us continue to listen to music that we found in that mailbox, so I know that there is a payoff for that work. The question is, when can I work on it? Usually, there are three or four times a year when I can find the time to look, and that's it.

6. Try to figure out how someone got past me. I kind of think it might be Frank Zappa, but it may be someone else. What I'm talking about is revisiting one of the "greats" who I never got into and never figured out why. Take Zappa, for example: I always appreciated the guitar playing, but never got into the songs--they struck me as stupid or unnecessarily virtuostic or both. And Captain Beefheart? I was never going there. But there are many people that I missed, and I know it.

7. Write off. Billy alluded, in his favorites of 2010, to the concept of moving beyond favorite artists who seem to be played out. In his case, the potentials included giants like Paul Simon and a few bands who maybe were never that good in the first place. We always need to remind ourselves that rock music is like one of those unmanned NASA spacecraft that continues to send information back to us--it simply wasn't supposed to go on this long. It's no crime for us as listeners to acknowledge that there are musicians in their 60's or 70's whose music no longer seems to matter, whose lyrics seem to have little to say to us. It had to happen. It's going to happen more and more.

8. Write a song. I mean, c'mon. I'm not talking about a hit song. But I play around with chords all the time and I have at least an average ability to put those chords into patterns and rhythms that sound fresh enough and recognizable enough to catch somebody's ear. And I can write the words. But it's the words with the music and the melody over the chords. That's a lot harder than it seems, and maybe it doesn't seem easy. But I wrote a few songs about 25 years ago to capture the experience of a friend's suicide, so I know there's something still there.

9. Don't lose track. It's the easiest thing to do. Even NPR, that supposed clearinghouse for wonderful music finds itself leaning towards what is new, at the expense of what is old and good. For whatever reason, I took a break from Christmas music last week and listened to Dylan's Blood On The Tracks over and over. I'm pretty convinced, for the moment, that it's the greatest collection of songs of all time, that I wasn't able as a 17-year-old when it was first released to appreciate the power of the songs, that the best of anyone else's work can't touch it. Doesn't matter if you agree. What matters is that I revisit the classics and, hopefully, hear them with fresh ears, as I did with Dylan.

10. Figure out my CD situation (figure out my Ipod situation). How many crossroads can one person be standing at? My music is a mess. I've got songs on my phone that aren't on my Ipod, songs on a portable hard drive that aren't on any computer, a computer that is no longer set up that has different songs than the ones I use, albums that have never been converted to MP3, multiple Ipods with different songs on them, and a ton of CDs. I can't even get my head around how I could resolve this without putting in hours and hours. So I need to figure out how much time is worth and what is the best way to consolidate.

11. All we are saying is give hip-hop a chance. Since the beginnings of rock, one of the continuing themes of popular music has been songs about the double-edged sword of success and fame and the toll it takes. Yes, there are obvious benefits to being a star, but not without a toll. Right now, no one except for hip-hop artists (Drake and Frank Ocean come to mind) is exploring the modern day implications of this situation--medicating into oblivion, lovers who can't be trusted, the tenuousness of being on top. The songs are powerful and eloquent (if you don't mind a "fuck" or two) and contain a weariness that I can't help but empathize with, regardless of the sources of my own weariness. Permutations "So You Want To Be A Rock 'N Roll Star" and "Albequerque" five decades later.

12. Quit being such a snob. Yeah, like that's going to happen. But I really do have to get past some of my "rules," since I always hear something that breaks them that I like. Yes, the 80's sucked, U2 is bombastic and tiresome, the Stones peaked in '72, too much reverb ruins most songs, contemporary Christian music is awful, and any number of Bob-truths, but, hey, those are not terminal conditions. There's always an exception.

Jesus and the Detritus

2011-12-30T17:52:00.001-05:00

Christmas Must Be Tonight - The Band (mp3)
Shotgun - Pete Yorn (mp3)

Shepherds in the fields, tending to their sheep.

Those were the first people to hear the news of Jesus’ birth. Would gangsters be the modern-day shepherds? Were Jesus born in 2011, to whom would the angels deliver their first birth announcement?

Right about the time I first raised my candle into the air during “Silent Night,” sitting in my comfy spot in the choir loft of our almost-capacity church crowd for our Midnight Service, as angels were supposedly singing “gloooooooooooria” from on high at the birth of a savior, shots rang out in downtown Chattanooga.

Nine people injured at a Christmas Eve service slash party at a church slash nightclub called MOSAIC. In the aftermath, the city government has vowed to do whatever is in its power to end this farce of a church, and most of the city is understandably supportive of this, as MOSAIC has seen more than a few run-ins with pugilistic youth and young adults.

I celebrated the birth of a humble baby in a manger with a bunch of older, middle-class-and-up white people who were born believing in the baby in a manger. Nine out of every 10 people crammed into those pews on Christmas Eve had parents who took them to church, and they grew up in a culture happy to inundate them with stories of wise men and guiding stars and angels and virgin births.

We’re lucky if our celebration converted a single soul.

What if someone’s Christian soul was saved at MOSAIC on Christmas Eve? How much physical pain and human damage is a saved soul worth? Is it worth nine gunshot wounds?

Christopher Hitchens (RIP) and any number of atheists would say that a single gunshot, a slap in the face, even halitosis, is too high a price for conversion to Jesus, and there’s a practical and rational part of me that agrees.

But the part of me that believes -- in something more, in magic, in miracles, in God -- thinks nine gunshots with no deaths would be cheap bargain for a saved soul. This strange, twisted part of me believes MOSAIC is attempting -- perhaps feebly, perhaps failingly, perhaps misguidedly -- the very real work of ministry and evangelism the entire New Testament proclaims, the kind of ministry so few of us traditional American Christians actually do.

So is Tim Reid, the “minister” behind MOSAIC, a shyster? Is he a fool with good intentions? Is he precisely the kind of missionary our world craves, and the forces of our corrupt world are bearing down on him to try and stop something good and righteous?

My gut tells me he’s somewhere in that land between shyster and fool. My gut tells me MOSAIC is a crock hiding behind tax-exempt status to throw parties that provide neither sanctuary nor enlightenment. My gut tells me MOSAIC is the kind of place where cults like The Yellow Deli are given birth.

My gut, however, has been wrong quite a lot. And ever since I read this story on Christmas morning, I’ve found myself troubled my my own judgments on this man, on his church, and on our city’s reaction to all of it.

Shouldn’t professed Christians in this city be reacting to this event by wondering what we can do to reach the lost and forgotten? It’s obvious most of my Christian brethren and sistren don’t want gangstas or the smelly indigent sitting in the pews next to them, but that doesn’t mean we’re powerless to help them.

And if helping them only means sending Christmas presents and canned goods to their neck of the woods, I can’t help but think we’re missing something about our responsibilities. Canned goods are merely fingers in the broken dike, aren’t they?

A bag of Christmas presents given to a child who goes home and gets beaten, or who watches his mom get beaten by some boyfriend or druggie pal, or watches his older siblings involved in any sort of illegal activity... do they plant a priceless seed about the kindness of our fellow man and woman, or are they merely a nice and depressingly temporal distraction from the chaos of the everyday hell?

Nine gunshots at a Christmas Eve service. Something terrible is happening, and the way we are reacting, as a city, could be more dangerous and damaging than a single magazine's worth of bullets.

I'm A Game-Playing, Russian-Killing Vegetable

2011-12-28T21:15:00.006-05:00

There is a pleasant overwhelmingness to the holidays, a sense of more things to do than there is time, a plethora of preparations, a ferment of family, a gaggle of gifting. And then it's over and you think, this wasn't a vacation at all. This was exhausting.

I'm not much good today. Not much good for anything, save Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, which requires me merely to do whatever my current officer tells me to do (so far, I've been three different characters in the game). There is a pleasant word which appears on the screen of the game most of the time. That word is "follow."

How different following is from hosting out-of-town family who mean to apply no pressure but who wait expectantly for every next move. I had "snacks" waiting for them when they arrived--wine, smoked chicken wings, cheeseboard and crackers, edamame hummus, homemade onion dipped, chargrilled oysters, habenero-roasted pineapple dip, pickled shrimp. I had Christmas dinner for them a few hours after that--cream of garlic soup, smoked ham, homemade rolls, shrimp and crawfish etouffee, shrimp and oyster dressing, pear-cranberry-pecan salad, smothered greens, maque choux, chocolate mousse. The next day we ate out a couple of times, which only involved negotiating restaurants that fit the various desires of foodies, veggies, pickies, and all of the other eaters out there, and a trip to the movies. The next day, I took them to Atlanta to see Picasso to Warhol, as well as a restaurant, again only a cheese and cracker spread before a late Champy's supper, then Christmas cookies and a roaring fire before bed. Today, a final outing at the Blue Plate.

But I am exhausted. Half-heartedly, my family and I have been putting the house back together, a house that we busted our asses to get ready for days before their arrival. Much of our preparations were undermined by a cat allergy.

Yes, the crazy holidays can wear you down. The planning, the preparation, the logistics.

But it is all good. This is certainly no complaint. A gathering of family with minimal politics and maximum conversation is very rewarding. But tiring. And all-consuming. My father proclaimed last night, "Well, shall we do it again next year?" I am not yet ready to consider that possibility. He took most of the time off, not accompanying us either to lunch and the movies one day or to Atlanta the next, so his vision is a little different. And, frankly, while acknowledging that families like to create all kinds of traditions, I had already created one--going to New Orleans the day after Christmas. So this one conflicts with that one.

Families are large, unwieldy things. Mobilizing 11 people to do anything takes a good deal of effort, a fair amount of compromise, and plenty of good old wheedling, so I am forgiving myself for being more worn out than energized right now, for dwelling on the meaningless details, instead of the meaningful connections, for nodding at comments about what a great time it was (it was) while looking at the mopping up (none more than emotional) that still needs to take place.

So if you call and I am less than excited, if you try to catch me in a conversation about a career decision while I am wondering how me and my men will be able to retake Paris, if you look for coherence from me while I am looking in the refrigerator for leftover wine, please know that this is something of a temporary condition and that, soon enough, I will be ready for people again.

Oh, yeah, the wireless router blew out, too. Dead. So if you've been wondering where I've been, I've been here just incommunicado for one more reason, one that I spent the day fixing. Hello, blog. Hello, world. The holidays are over, for the most part. New Year's Eve is nothing compared to Christmas. I'll be back up to speed by then. See ya.

The Gift Card Debate

2011-12-27T00:49:00.002-05:00

Shake Me Down - Cage the Elephant (mp3)
Any Other Heart - Go Radio (mp3)

A fondue set. A briefcase.

A fucking fondue set, and a damn briefcase.

My wife and I have been giving one another gifts for going on 17 years now. She knows me better than anyone save for, possibly, one or two friends. Nothing about our affection or familiarity guarantees the success of our present-buying efforts.

My wife is almost impossible to shop for. She has few hobbies, few obsessions, basic fashion sense and a practical nature that renders most traditional gifts comical. The perfume I bought her three years ago, perfume she actually likes, still sits more than half-full on our bathroom counter. (“Half-full” is optimistic unless you’re talking about a bottle of liquid purchased three years ago.)

Her friends, both sets of our parents, all of us lament the challenge of trying to find presents to please this great gal. This challenge is one of the many reasons I fell in love with her, because she was never terribly haunted by her paucity of material goods, and this was going to be a priceless and essential gift of any woman willing to marry me, if we were to remain married.

I’ve missed the mark many times, and she has missed on me as well. While I might crave new golf clubs or the complete series of LOST on DVD, I occasionally get a damn briefcase. I even had to drag the thing to my office, every damn day, for 18 damn months, just so my wife and my mother, who went in on this gift together, would think I really liked it.

These acts of false appreciation are, believe it or not, proof of love. This is what we do for those who care for us.

Sometimes love means taking a shot in the dark with your gifts. Sometimes love means acting or convincing yourself of being grateful for that which you don’t really appreciate. And I love that about love. That it would cause someone like myself, who is gifted at being selfish and self-centered, to go through such acting to prevent my mother and wife from seeing my distaste for what they so earnestly purchased.

Growing up, my two best friends and I would intentionally go and find albums or books we knew would be loathed and/or mocked (Debbie Gibson, Winger, Air Supply, etc.). It was like a clever gift card. We didn’t do this merely for the humor value, but because deep down we couldn’t really be sure what to get one another.

If it’s such a challenging if not impossible task for our spouses and parents to know what gifts might bring us true joy, what chance in hell do mere friends or more distant relatives have at pleasing us regularly?

Over 400,000 have seen the song “Present Face” on YouTube, and by next Christmas it’ll be into the 1.5-2 million numbers, because it’s so sadly funnily beautifully spot-on when it comes to people and their gifts. We’ve all made that face. It’s as ubiquitous a part of the holiday season as fruitcake and cranberry sauce.

So why do so many folks hate on the trustworthy, if vanilla, gift card? In spite of our universal acknowledgement that so many of the gifts given to us out of love suck a big hairy donkey dick, we decry the credit card as somehow deficient, lazy, unloving. We can’t have our cake, nor can we eat it.

Here’s why I don’t like shopping: I rarely need something badly enough to shop for it, not badly enough to justify, in my mind, the expenditure of my hard-earned cash. This is especially true for clothing, because I have zero confidence in my fashion sense, and with historical reason. Why should I spend my hard-earned money to make a dubious fashion decision?

But someone gives me a gift card, and the paradigm has shifted! Shopping is no longer about guilt; it’s about obligation! It’s no longer my money! It’s just this piece of plastic that has absolutely no value unless I take it to a specified location and buy shit with it! And if I don’t go shopping, I’ve not only wasted money, but I’ve insulted the person who gave me this gift and spent their hard-earned money on it!

With the exception of Starbucks cards, I prefer to Stuff cards to Food & Drink cards. Food is a necessity, so I prefer paying for that myself. Stuff is rarely essential, so gift cards are my permission slip to indulge in them. Starbucks is probably an exception because, if we're being honest, paying $4 for a cup of fucking coffee is beyond indulgent no matter how acceptable it's become for me and millions of others.

Gift cards are to presents what singles are to baseball. They're underrated. They're far more essential to a successful team than home runs. Aiming for the fence results in a far higher strike-out ratio and a lower OBP. Winning teams get on base. They buy gift cards.

So, here's my permission slip. Buy me a gift card. I won't be insulted by your laziness.

BOTG Music Superlatives for 2011

2011-12-23T10:13:00.000-05:00

In 2011, I acquired over 1,100 more songs. Most new. Some I burned off CDs to “complete” my collection of songs from certain beloved bands. Some were added as I filled in missing gaps from decades past.

In years past, I’ve attempted, with feeble skills at music criticism, to offer up a BEST OF list. Usually albums. Sometimes songs. Never with much confidence. Instead, this year I’m going to pay homage to what I know, which is how to pretend I’m in high school. And yearbooks never did BEST OF lists. They made SUPERLATIVES. So I’m going with it.

ALBUMS

Most Likely To Continue Heavy Rotation In 2012:

The Belle Brigade - The Belle Brigade
Runners-Up:
Foo Fighters - Wasted Light
Florence & the Machine - Ceremonials

The Belle Brigade were the best thing to serendipitiously land in my eardrums since the Stereophonics fell into my lap at a Tower Records listening station back in 2001. They not only earned more earplay in my iPod than any other album this year, but they had me going back and reacquainting myself with Fleetwood Mac's Tusk.

Dead On Arrival:

TIE: Paul Simon - So Beautiful or So What
Army Navy - The Last Place
Runner-Up:
Eisley - The Valley

Metacritic gave Paul Simon's latest an 85. As in, 85 out of 100. As in, one of the best 20 albums of the year. So I was excited. I'm quite the Simon & Garfunkel fan, and I played both Graceland and The Rhythm of the Saints so heavily that the tapes broke. I listened to it the first time with my eyebrows raised and ears perked up, like a dog eager to hear his master. All I heard was... well, it wasn't shit, but it certainly wasn't terribly impressive. To me, Paul sounds tired. And depressed. And unsure of himself, musically. The guy is an amazing talent, and what he compiles is musically sound, but there's no punch to it. It's an entire album of resignation. Maybe that's what critics love about it.

Most Likely To Go To Eleven:

Sleeper Agent - Celebrasion
Runners-Up:
Foo Fighters - Wasted Light
Dropkick Murphys - Going Out in Style

I don't know if Sleeper Agent is punk, or post-punk, or just irreverent garage rock. I only know their music deserves to be played loudly. In a car is preferable, but alone at home is fine as well. This is the kind of album that resurrects Beavis and Butt-Head just so they can headbang a little more.

Proof The ‘80s Are Neither Dead Nor Evil:

TIE: Lady Gaga - Born This Way
M83 - Hurry Up We’re Dreaming
Runners-Up:
Florence & the Machine - Ceremonials
The Book of Mormon Soundtrack

Proof That Some Artists Have Reached or Passed Their Expiration Dates:

Paul Simon - So Beautiful or So What
Runners-Up:
Stereophonics - Keep Calm and Carry On
The Go! Team - Rolling Blackouts
Fountains of Wayne - Sky Full of Holes

Still Water Albums (Artists Whose Work Neither Hurt Nor Helped My Opinion Of Them):

Coldplay - Mylo Xyloto
Runners-Up:
The Mountain Goats - All Eternals Deck
Mates of State - Mountaintops
Gillian Welch - The Harrow & the Harvest
Matt Nathanson - Modern Love

My "Expiration Dates" list is my official announcement that, barring some minor miracle, I have cut those artists off from ever receiving another penny of my song-purchasing dollar. They're nice people, and they have plenty of talent, but as albums go, they're spoiled, and they need to be removed from my musical fridge.

My "Still Water" group isn't dead... I'm just not sure I need to buy anymore of their stuff. I suspect they have branched out as far and wide as their talent will allow them, and what I own of their stuff to this point will likely suffice. Fans of these groups, fret not. I'm not dissing you or them. The three Mates of State and Matt Nathanson albums I own continue to get a lot of playtime, and I love them both. But I'm not sure I see them doing anything on their next albums that change anything for me... unless they put out shit, at which point I guess they'd sink.

Yeah yeah, Coldplay is massively uncool. I get it. But I happen to enjoy them a good bit. However, with this latest album, I felt like I've acquired sufficient amounts of Apple's Daddy to get me through the rest of my years.

Best Album I've Never Listened To Start to Finish:

Hurry Up We’re Dreaming - M83
Runners-Up:
All At Once - The Airborne Toxic Event
Mission Bell - Amos Lee

Hurry Up We're Dreaming is a really really really amazing and bold concept double-album. It's over 73 minutes long. Anthony Gonzalez has stolen some of the '80s most over-reaching syntho-orgasms -- including not just a few highlights from Queen's soundtrack for the movie Flash -- and creates a Dreamscape meets Legend world. The sound and the feel are cool, and I wish to hell I was still a teenager who could go into my room, cover my ears with some badass big headphones and disappear into the whole thing from start to finish sans interruption. But that ain't how my life works in 2011. So instead I just have to settle for knowing it's an amazing and daring album that I'll never be able to enjoy as much as I oughtta.

Best Overdue Classic to Be Added to My Collection:

Rolling Stones - Exile on Main Street
Runners-Up:
Prince - Sign O' the Times
Yes - 90125

The Best Album of 2011:

Adele - 21
Runners-Up:
Foo Fighters - Wasted Light
The Belle Brigade

Now listen. I'm not saying Adele is my favorite musician ever, and I'm not even claiming that she's who I want to sit atop my Best Of list. What I'm saying is this: Adele is the rare modern artist who transcends both genre and demographic. My 70-year-old mother enjoys Adele. My two tween daughters love Adele (at least they did... but they listen to radio, which is guaranteed to numb passion for any pop artist eventually). I love Adele, because she's very much got what Roger Daltry acknowledged as the ability to front a band. She's more than an American Idol finalist. She's a distinct voice with tidal wave power.

It's possible, if she can hold onto her voice and her passion, that she could be a modern Frank Sinatra. So, while I might personally like and listen to the two runners-up more frequently, Adele was bigger than me and my personal musical leanings.

SONGS

Most Likely To Get Me Weepy While Driving Alone In My Car:

The Most - Lori McKenna
Runners-Up:
Poison & Wine - The Civil Wars
I Will - Dar Frampton & Blake Shelton

Few things are as precious in my heart as songs that give me the excuse to cry. The odd exhilaration of music that makes me short of breath, that makes the road get blurry in my over-moistened eyes, that makes my voice crack and split when I try to sing along. These three aren't the only weepers from 2011, but they're my favorites.

Song Most Begging to Be Played By a Talented High School Student or Students:

The Graveyard Near The House - The Airborne Toxic Event
Runners-Up:
Gracefully - Antigone Rising
I Will - Dar Framption & Blake Shelton

Song Demanding the Volume Go To Eleven:

Walk - Foo Fighters
Runners-Up:
Shirt - The Belle Brigade
Fire & Dynamite - Drew Holcomb & The Neighbors
Peg O’ My Heart - Dropkick Murphys (w/Bruce)
No Light, No Light - Florence & the Machine

Most Criminally Overrated SONG of the Year:

Pumped-Up Kicks - Foster the People
Runners-Up:
Party Rock Anthem - LMFAO
Moves Like Jagger - Maroon 5

So "Pumped-Up Kicks" is about a kid who's gonna shoot up his school. Or kill some popular kids. Or whatever. I don't really care about the amoralistic vacuous or disgusting nature of the lyrics. I just know it's the most venomously and annoyingly repetitive song of the year. This song is the very essence of Earworm. I'm pretty sure people don't even LIKE the song... they just can't get the fucking thing out of their head, so they finally give in and claim to like it.

Life As An Office

2011-12-22T14:08:00.017-05:00

The Horrors--"Still Life" (mp3)

One of the many ways that I have ended up wasting hours of "down time" during the first days of this Christmas break has been watching episodes of The Office.

It's so easy. On Netflix, as played through the Wii, as soon as one 22-minute episode is finished, we simply click on the next one and keep going and keep going and keep going. It's like crack, or, as Ryan on the show says, "I love how people who have never done crack compare everything to crack." So maybe it isn't like crack. Maybe it's more like inertia--it's far easier to watch one more episode than it is to get up and do anything else, so there's always that one more. Until we got to the end, and then we had to face our loss.

I'm not even kidding. I started out, all those years ago, as an Office snob. Big surprise. Yeah, I was one of those who experienced The Office first through the original British version created by Ricky Gervais. For years, I refused even glance at the American version. "The British version is superior, " I would pronounce, without proof. Then Netflix happened and soon I was "cracking" my way through one episode after another of the first season on my computer (the TV hookup was a year away at that time).

Some 150 episodes later, it's very easy for me to pronounce the American version as by far the superior reasons, for the very reasons that undermine the original:

1. The characters are endearing.
2. The characters are endearing.
3. The characters are endearing.

While the British version was like cringing at an accidental stumbling upon a bad wreck that you don't want to see but that you can't turn away from, the American version, perhaps simply because it has been around so long, turns these walking disasters into people that I can't help but care about. If that violates the original comic conception, so what?

What happens instead is that as longtime viewers connect with the characters, the characters become more and more real. Based on the last couple of days, I would say that this quality really shines when one watches many episodes or seasons back to back. Sure, some of the characters are static and somewhat one dimensional, but the main characters develop all kinds of nuances over the course of hours.

There's one episode in particular that haunts me with its illumination of reality. In it, Michael and co. are being repeatedly bested by a rival salesman (Timothy Olyphant), so they attempt first to outsell him, second to spy on him, and, finally, to hire him for their company, Dunder-Mifflin.

What intrigues me so much is what happens when Michael Scott hires him. The people who work at the office, including the salesmen who are losing sales to him, are outraged. To attempt to win them over, Michael asks this question: "How do you want your life to be? Better? Worse? Or the same?"

Naturally, he assumes that they will say "better." Naturally, he is wrong. Almost in unison, when asked if they want their lives to be better, worse, or the same, they respond, "The same."

The same. That one answer, that one episode, whacks me like Maxwell's silver hammer. "Oh, my God," I think, "these aren't just caricatures, these aren't just characters being played for comedy. These are real people. These are me and the people I work with and the mass of men." And that is powerfully painful. The ways that ambition is either overarching or underwhelming, the inability of all of us to get beyond ourselves, the petty rivalries and slights and infighting--all are too real.

(And do any of us really want to see a "rival salesman" or any other outsider have to come in and rescue us?)

Saddled with a narcississtic boss, a dysfunctional workplace, a dead-end job and a local living and working world where things happen for all kinds of reasons that have nothing to do with fairness or logic or hard work, people would rather that things stay as they are than risk a change that appears it would make things better. With very few exceptions, that is my office, your office, and The Office.

The powerful impact of The Office is, at best, bittersweet. While I would not hesistate to give the show the label "comic genius" and while I can just as easily not count the number of times that the show has made me laugh until there were tears in my eyes, the show has also forced me to recognize that the lives it depicts, the ways that it reflects my life are hard to acknowledge as true. There are some mirrors that I don't necessarily want to look into.

Western State of Mind

2011-12-19T15:34:00.000-05:00

Helplessness Blues - Fleet Foxes (mp3)
Wild West Hero - Electric Light Orchestra (mp3)

“He squatted before a slight body. ‘This one here can’t be more than sixteen, I’d say. Well, he should have known better than to travel with such hotheads.’” -- Charlie Sisters, commenting in the aftermath of killing a small group of riders.

Charlie and Eli Sisters are hired killers in the Wild West. They are the protagonists, or anti-heroes, or main characters, in Patrick deWitt’s novel The Sisters Brothers. The book follows these two men on a journey to their next deadly assignment, a road trip story with horses and pistols.

It is literally impossible to read this book and not think of the Coen Brothers’ adaptation of True Grit, as both juggle the intermingling of the absurd and amusing with the harsh and unforgiving. Having just left the pseudo-medieval-fantasy realm of A Game of Thrones -- a gun-metal grey land wherein lies little hope, and wherein that smidgen of hope is doomed to be treated like a sissy in maximum security prison -- the Wild West feels technicolor giddy.

Name a Western-themed movie or TV show from the past decade, and odds are I've watched it, and odds are that I like it much more than the average viewer.

A frontier without laws. Normal people -- sometimes families, sometimes small groups of men -- venturing out into uncharted land, or into territory unfamiliar to them, hoping for the best or just desperate for better. A struggle for meaning and connection when nature, and often most of humanity, seems indifferent.

Everyone in these tales seems to posses a level of self-reliance we can’t even begin to grasp in our 21st-Century world. Their need for self-reliance is an assumption, because the ones who don’t fail to live very long. We think self-reliance is using Google Maps rather than stopping to ask for directions.

Above all, the lawlessness of the Wild West is ultimately what makes everything so compelling.

In the America of 2011, we are drowning in laws. This isn’t a judgment or a criticism. Beyond a minor neglect of our roadway’s speed limits, I am a staunchly and predictably law-abiding citizen who feels guilty even stealing music from the Internet. So I support our laws and sympathize with those charged with upholding and enforcing them.

But...

Our every move and decision seems to be tracked or observed by someone, often by an authority figure. The actions that aren’t tracked, we record for ourselves and then post them to Facebook for everyone to see.

If, as the saying goes, “Character is what you do when no one is watching,” then modern Americans have ever-fewer opportunities to discover our character. The Wild West is the closest thing we get, as a backdrop, to a complete control of our character. Most of what happens in Westerns is witnessed only by one or two people, and often most of the witnesses wind up dead.

Us modern folk spend 90% of our lives being watched. If there’s a single way I believe teenagers of today “have it worse than we did,” it’s in this: they are infinitely more supervised, policed, guarded. Maybe that’s why so many of them fly off the deep end and go wild when they finally escape the imaginary camera eye, the judgmental supervision of their provincial existences.

And maybe many of us adults do the same stupid self-destructive things for the same reasons. Many of us feel like the overprotected preacher’s daughter whose life is so controlled and locked down that her only escape is through wildly irresponsible explosions. Rebellion as an almost instinctive Tourette's tic. (NOTE: If you think I’m projecting my own issues outward, so be it. I’d originally written this all in first-person but thought it too narcissistic.)

In the Wild West -- be it the fictional imagined version or the real one -- a man had time to think about shit. Time to decide what kind of character he wished to be, time to determine what kind of light or darkness he wished to project onto the world, time to reflect and mull by the fire on the open range, the soundtrack of coyotes and owls in the background.

Most people in Westerns are virtuous and good, even when no one is watching, even when they are not governed by The Laws Of (sexist) Man. Inevitably, however, even the good people encounter the bad ones, and the drama almost always involves how far good people can or will go when stuck in the path of evil.

Ultimately, more often than not, the best Westerns are about redemption. The greatest heroes almost always have dark secrets, checkered pasts, burdened souls and bear a compulsion to set things right, to make things better, to see justice done.

The freedom to form character, for better or worse, in an environment hungry for those desperate for redemption. This is why I love them.

Oh I wish I was a Wild West Hero...

Santa Claus Vs. The Moms

2011-12-19T00:01:00.004-05:00

Blues Magoos--"Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" (mp3)

At first glance, second glance, third glance, fourth glance, and fifth glance, I found the Best Buy ad campaign to be distasteful. If you have turned on a TV in the last three weeks, there is no way that you haven't seen it. In each of the commercials, the Mom of the family gets the better of Santa Claus by buying gifts that her family really wants, while Santa shows up planning to drop off the same stock gifts as always (cologne for Dad, etc.).

What makes the ads so irritating is the sort of "Game on, Santa" attitude that each of the moms has. She is always waiting for Santa to show up, almost ambushing him, with a smug, gloating expression on her face and an aggressiveness that leads her to infringe on Santa's turf in a number of different ways--pointing to her superior gifts, eating or drinking the snacks that have been left for him, etc.

Who needs you, Santa? is the basic message of the ads. She can do better simply by going to Best Buy.

The ads make me feel sorry for Santa, and I had to figure out why. Is it because he's a respected icon beyond reproach (what does he get out of being Santa Claus?)? Is it because he's an old man and it looks like he's being picked on? Is it because the ads make him look like he is out-of-touch and no longer essential? Is it because he's a man?

For the last 120 years or so, we've been living under a particular paradigm: man in red comes down chimney and delivers presents to everyone (I think it started as toys for children) as a symbol of kindness, goodness, and generosity. Regardless of who was actually buying the presents or where they were actually coming from, their presence was attributed to this universal (at least in Western civilization), larger-than-life, magical being who only appeared once a year and then returned to some unknown place (which is probably why a North Pole was need as the center of toy-making operations). A wizened, white benefactor from beyond our imagining.

Imagine if you're not a man. Imagine you're not white. Imagine you've busted your ass to put a bunch of things you can't afford under a tree because because society demands it or, more likely, you can't stand to disappoint your children that deeply.

You might want to stick it to Santa. Or you might not want whitey in your house. You might be so tired of yet another circumstance where an old, white male comes to the rescue, where he knows your own children (and husband or wife) better than you do, where he takes control of an important moment and decides for you.

I've started to see those commercials as the Moms finally striking back against Santa Claus in a way that is not necessarily bad or wrong. Santa isn't a benevolent figure. Santa is "the man."

Now, I have no belief at all that Best Buy is pushing this underlying social agenda that I've probably created out of thin air. If they were, Santa wouldn't be getting his comeuppance from Mom outshopping him. She wouldn't be boasting to him using gifts that cost far more than what he was bringing into the house. Nor would she be saddled with all of the shopping, because we all know that, in reality, she works. Or did.

I hope she's not getting that shit, lowbrow diamond from Zales from hubby, 'cause that thang ain't much.

Still, I've gotten a kick out of the "rise of the planet of the Moms" that is taking place in a number of commercials this season. Think also of the Wal-Mart commercial where the Mom gets everything on her Christmas shopping list the first time around.

More power to ya, babe. Though not intended, this recognition of your triumph has been a long time coming and is well-deserved. Anyone who is not noticing the increasing power of women in our society in every way is not paying attention. When my students haul out their tired, stereotypical comments about the role of women or the way that their marriages will go, I just laugh. There's nothing more ironic than thinking that you're in control when you're not. Right, Santa?

A List of Thanks

2011-12-17T20:14:00.003-05:00

Sly and the Family Stone--"Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)" (mp3)

One of the yearly columns that used to annoy me the most back in the old Chattanooga News-Free Press before the two papers merged was this guy's piece around Thanksgiving or Christmas that consisted of nothing more than a tedious list of all of the things that he was thankful for. So, of course, I'm going to steal the idea.

Ready?

1. I am thankful for the Italian rosemary ham at Costco.

2. I am thankful for my wife's explorations into veganism and how it forced me to adapt my cooking.

3. I am thankful for Neil Young's example.

4. I am thankful for the firepit in my back yard.

5. I am thankful for people who rise to the occasion when I am "beating the bushes;" I hope that I do and will do the same.

6. I am thankful for the Pittsburgh Steelers.

7. I am thankful for my younger daughter's social intelligence, my older daughter's vision.

8. I am thankful for the hope that a garden brings every spring.

9. I am thankful for friends that push me.

10. I am thankful for President Eisenhower's interstates.

11. I am thankful for foreign students.

12. I am thankful for Emily Dickinson's poetry, which makes the world new with each reading.

13. I am thankful for dreams that scold me.

14. I am thankful for a new kitchen.

15. I am thankful for Bob, who made me get a guitar 36 years ago and for Jeff, who makes me play it now.

16. I am thankful for the salad at Lupi's, the onion rings at Ankar's, the Eggs in a Basket at Cracker Barrel, the bologna sliders at Urban Stacks, the nachos at Taco Roc, the chicken at Champy's, the Sonoma Chicken wrap at Greenlife and all of the other go-to food in this city.

17. I am thankful for community service, which did not exist when I was in high school and which has now largely transcended its usefulness on a college application.

18. I am thankful that I did not follow my major and pursue a business career.

19. I am thankful for the companionship of my dog.

20. I am thankful for Monday Night Football gatherings.

21. I am thankful for Garden and Gun magazine, which continues to present our South in its best light.

22. I am thankful for the Ebonys, Big Star, The Weepies, Rilo Kiley, Calexico, Frightened Rabbit, Meaghan Smith, and The Walkmen for surprising, stunning additions to the Christmas song canon. And, of course, Sufjan.

23. I am thankful for my father's wisdom, even when I don't agree.

24. I am thankful for this blog and how it keeps Billy and me searching. And that people actually read it.

25. I am thankful for the influences that New Orleans has had on my life; America would be stale and pale without it.

26. I am thankful for Bud's Thursday nights and how they help to maintain friendship.

27. I am thankful for the Walnut Street Walking Bridge.

28. I am thankful for my daughters' colleges and how fortunate both girls were to find such good fits.

29. I am thankful to have so much Bruce Springsteen and Led Zeppelin on the soundtrack in my head.

30. I am thankful to know how to bake bread.

31. I am thankful for live music, how it is always worth the effort; even when I don't make the effort, I know that I have missed something.

32. I am thankful when I am not intolerant.

33. I am thankful for a job that requires me to reread books I like and to discover new ones.

34. I am thankful for the iPhone. It has become my timer, my reminder, my GPS, my computer, my network, my Kindle, my Netflix, at times, my lunch companion.

35. I am thankful for Linda's Produce, for its figs and tomatoes and red peppers and Christmas trees.

36. I am thankful for Barber's Adagio For Strings and the many settings it is perfect for.

37. I am thankful for Christmas Eve and all of the ways it is better than Christmas.

38. I am thankful for the quirky behavior of cats.

39. I am thankful that Paul McCartney met John Lennon; neither would have or did flourish without the other. I am thankful that, even now, George Harrison continues to reveal new listening pleasures to me.

40. I am thankful for the hours from 5PM to midnight, the second life after work.

41. I am thankful that Americans never stop investigating what they don't believe.

42. I am thankful that my wife found a church.

43. I am thankful each barbeque joint, each region of barbeque can do it so differently, can take the basics of meat and smoke and transform it in wonderful, different ways.

44. I am thankful for the ways that holidays energize life.

45. I am thankful to live in a city that has the finest fresh apple cider that I have ever tasted.

46. I am thankful for the anchor of my wife and daughters.

47. I am thankful for students with ideas; they are my work's blood.

48. I am thankful for the solitude of my backyard in the early morning.

49. I am thankful for how what I think I believe is always put to the test of experience, and how the smallest events and things can carry such meaning.

50. I am thankful for pretzels.

I'm finished for now. When you make a list like this, it's what you leave out that gets you in trouble, so I'll add that I'm thankful for everything else, too.

Lost and Found

2011-12-14T20:41:00.013-05:00

Rich Robinson--"Lost and Found" (mp3)

I am sitting in my basement with my Ipod on shuffle, listening to a mix of 431 Christmas songs, a full 24 hours of Christmas tunes, if I so desired. The problem is that it isn't my current Ipod, or even the one I owned before that. It's a cast-off Ipod that one of my daughters bequeathed me when she opened a perfectly-packaged new Ipod three or four years ago.

The other problem is that the Ipod in question's screen is a Rorschach blot in the shape of an oak leaf. No words will ever appear on this screen again, as all of the ink, or whatever it is, has pooled into the above shape in the lower right corner.

The only way to use the Ipod is to connect it to a computer and run it off that computer's Itunes. The other other problem is that the computer in question is a cast-off computer from my daughter's last 6 years at private school. It doesn't work without a power cord; I have no idea where the battery is. And, for some reason, it defrags itself every other night or so, wiping out anything that I have attempted to store on it.

Currently, I sit trapped between the power cord on my left and the adaptor plugged into the headphone jack and running to the Bose sound system on my right. It's quite a set-up.

Most of the Christmas songs I have ever owned are on this Ipod and can only be played this way. It is nice to have them, but I know full well that their time on this Earth is completely dependent on a portable machine whose ticker could go at any second. I only found the Ipod recently, as it was stacked in the pile of lost (but is there still a chance they might work someday?) Ipods in some dark corner of our house renovation last spring and summer. So I have the songs, but I don't. Most of their parent CDs are nowhere that I know of; most of the individual files I picked up here and there exist nowhere else.

Yesterday, the hard drive on my school computer crashed. All of the music files that were on the computer are gone. Much of the email. In addition to that, all of my Word documents are gone. By my estimation, I have lost some 15 years of words.

It's an interesting prospect to ponder. The first thing you realize is that you have no idea what you have lost because you had no idea what you had. You just kept saving it.

Then you start to focus on the "highlights," those pieces that you do know that you wanted that were stored on that computer. I know that I was supposed to back all of it up, but I didn't. Over the past three or four years, my problems with the computer centered on it getting too full, so my focus has always been on the quick fixes that would get things off of it. My maintenance of my computer involved looking for things to delete so that it could operate at a decent speed. So, yeah, I am stupid.

Anyway, the highlights, for me, were a cookbook I wrote for my 50th birthday, a variety of stories and poems in various states of disrepair, a play that was still waiting for its final act. I had hundreds of college recommendations that I had written and that were no longer of particular use, and probably thousands of handouts, essay prompts, quizzes, worksheets, exam topics, tests and the other daily papers of decades of teaching English classes.

You probably think that I am morose. For whatever reason, I am not. Early in the renovation process of our house, I dragged a file cabinet outside and went through four drawers of paper that represented my earliest years of teaching before the computer was so central to creation and storage. I threw at least 95% of that stuff away, and didn't give it a second thought. I had no nostalgia for it--I am now teaching different books and I am now a different teacher.

I remember when my friend Steve retired a few years ago and basically gave everything away or threw everything else out. Though I was kind of shocked at the time, I feel pretty much the same way now. My old schoolwork probably does not merit a saving for posterity. Whatever good ideas there were have probably been passed on orally, the same way others' good ideas have been passed on to me. The other stuff, whether missteps or unrecognized genius at the time, can disappear safely into posterity. Someone else will either figure the same thing out or will figure out something better.

What I do miss from today's word holocaust are the things that I had written. The loss of those, like the taking of a photograph for some natives, feels like I have lost a bit of my soul that cannot be regained. Unlike the other teaching selves that I freely abandon, I am always interested in my previous writing selves, just in case there was something there that I didn't notice at the time.

Oh, this digital world is a strange world, one in which we don't own anything, even though we think that we do, even though we think that our "possessions" are as safe as those we keep in drawers and cabinets. It is a world where what we do own, we do not always own on terms that are easy for us. The music, for example, may be ours to listen to, but not ours to share. In the very next few years, all of this will change even more. My daughter declared today that if I had Spotify, I would not need anything else. But that is not true. Not yet. What I need is the ability to hold onto what is important to me and to cast off what no longer matters. I feel that power slipping away.

Wanted: Dance Chaperones

2011-12-12T23:58:00.000-05:00

And We Danced - Hooters (mp3)
Get Low - Lil Jon & the East Side Boyz (mp3)

Wanted: High School Dance Chaperones

Must be on staff of school. Must be willing to stand and watch teenagers dance for extended periods of time, including girls age 15-18 in ridiculously tight-fitting dresses, but finding the scene neither arousing nor disgusting, but rather merely just what teenagers do these days. Especially teenagers with overly-permissive parents who apparently don’t mind their daughters looking like expensive escorts from Thailand or some poor section of what used to be Russia.

Must be willing to say the following to teenagers jacked up on hormones:

“Please stop grinding” up to 20 times, knowing full well they will go back to grinding as soon as you are more than five feet removed from their presence
“Please consider returning your skimpy dress down to its intended location, thus covering your backside and preventing your thong from being seen by others”
“No I was not looking at your girlfriend’s bare ass”
“OK yes, I was looking at her ass, but only because it’s my job. And because you were showing it to me and everyone else and even using your hands to point to where I should apparently be looking. And I’m asking you to remedy the situation so that I may no longer have the free show”
“No I do not enjoy this job. I needed the Christmas money because I’m a teacher, you little prick”
“Yes, when you’re in college, you can fellate yourself in the main quad for all I care, and you can have group orgies disguised as a dance in your frat basement, but this dance is organized and sponsored by an educational not-for-profit institution, and we are in some small way responsible for your behavior while at this event”
“No, we’re not violating your fucking privacy. You have no privacy on a dance floor”
“No, the $30 you paid for you and your date does not purchse you the right to do whatever you like while you’re here”
“Yes, it is our business. Now please cover up your girlfriend’s breasts so that I can go back to looking you in the eye when we’re talking”
“And say no to drugs”

If you are capable of saying these things to sometimes large teenage males and their dates -- young innocent flowers who certainly have no responsibility whatsoever in these acts because they almost never say anything in protest or anger but merely shrug and return to their grinding activities -- please apply as soon as possible. We’re running short on adults willing to do this job.

Sincerely,
the School Administration

Yes, this was inspired by my weekend. I again chaperoned one of our dances. And all reasonable minds seem to agree that, as high school dances nationwide go, ours is relatively tame. (Then again, so was the tiger that mauled Sigfried's pal Roy.)

At the end of the dance, we all decided the grinding at this year’s event was less disturbing and less all-encompassing than it had been at last year’s event. However, considering a ban was enacted on grinding at dances, and considering that decision was made by and demanded by people who were nowhere to be found chaperoning this event, I found myself getting angrier the farther I get from the experience.

One of the boys, an absolutely great kid who danced in completely appropriate ways the entire evening -- hell, he even actually talked to and looked his date in the eyes -- told me, “I really don’t see how anything we do out here is your business. I know you’re all claiming to look out for us, but I think it’s pretty clear we can take care of ourselves, and all you’re doing is proving to these guys that you’re out of touch.”

His honesty was painful, refreshing, and downright infuriating the farther I get from it. His generation is more sexually responsible and no more slutty than any recent previous generation, from what I've read on the subject. So maybe he has a point. But he's also rubbing my face in it. Literally. And I'm not getting paid enough to have his point rubbed in my face, not by a longshot.

No matter. His point won't scare me away. I’ll be attending every single dance I can when my daughters hit high school. They’ll get their friggin’ dance floor privacy when they move far far away to college.

A Tale of Two Christmas Songs

2011-12-11T22:26:00.014-05:00

Ramsey Lewis--"Here Comes Santa Claus" (mp3)

"I hate "Here Comes Santa Claus," my daughter said yesterday. "It's the worst Christmas song. It's so lazy."

You know how it goes:

Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus
Right down Santa Claus Lane
Vixen and Blitzen and all his reindeer
Pullin' on the reins, etc.

Not even knowing that the song was written by Gene Autrey, the singing cowboy, I immediately rose to the song's defense. "I like it," I said, "it's the only song that connects Santa Claus and Christianity."

Can you think of another one?

"Here Comes Santa Claus" makes a Christian connection to Santa Claus throughout its verses, with lines like "Hang your stockings and say your prayers/'Cause Santa Claus comes tonight" and "Santa Claus knows we're all God's children/That makes everything right" and the one that I remembered immediately when my daughter criticized the song, "Let's give thanks to the Lord above/That Santa Claus comes tonight."

Autry boldly goes where other Christmas songs don't do--they're either religious or secular.

"Here Comes Santa Claus" reminds us of that sometimes-forgotten need to create religions that human beings, as a species, have. It reminds us that the more "modern" religions are, of course, going to draw on some of the characteristics and stories of the older one and try to blend them into something coherent. Jesus and the Easter Bunny. Grendel and Cain and Satan. Most of the time, we like to think that, yeah, we're basically done with religion, that all of the good ones have already been created, but even something as annoying as the primary campaign of Mitt Romney tells us that, much as we may not like it, we will have to confront religions that are "too new." Maybe not this time around, but soon.

Meanwhile, "Here Comes Santa Claus" slips innocuously into our consciousnesses each year and posits God as the power behind the red-clothed man slipping down chimneys. I kind of like that. Just as Cotton Mather spoke of the "unseen world," many of us in this modern, over-analyzed, supposedly-quantified world still hunger for the mystery of things. It probably explains why my friends' children have such a hard time letting go of that elf. For all the talk of Santa, they never really see much tangible evidence (parents gobbling down cookies and carrots aside), but the elf who moves and gets in trouble and responds, well, maybe, just maybe, there's a chance. As with the other cosmic unknowns we hope might be true.

**********

For as much Christmas music as I listen to, there is only one song that can actually move me to tears, or at least to misty eyes. Oh, there are many that I respond, remembering nostalgically my childhood or my deceased mother or my lost youth, there are ones that make me wistful, contemplative, even worshipful. But only one stirs my emotions so much that I tear up.

The surprising thing is that the song is "Fairytale of New York" by the Pogues, with Kristy MacColl.

Set in a New York jail, in a "drunk tank," it's a kind of flashback/reminiscence/update of a relationship between a man and a woman who started out their relationship with such hope and ended up, well, in a drunk tank. When they talk of how they first met and kissed, their language is positive and romantic, when they ponder their current state, they are downright hateful as they trade insults back and forth:

You're a bum
You're a punk
You're an old slut on junk
Lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed
You scumbag, you maggot
You cheap lousy faggot
Happy Christmas your arse
I pray God it's our last

Hardly the stuff to make people weep, eh? Perhaps as much as anything, it's the melody that gets me, especially the soaring part where the "boys from the NYPD choir still [sing] 'Galway Bay'/And the bells are ringin' out for Christmas Day." But I don't think so, though I do love that part. There's something sweet about the song, something that has both parties acknowledging that the American Dream didn't quite come true and that they've seen the worst that each has to offer to the other, but they still haven't quite given up.

The song says that the birth on Christmas offers a chance for rebirth for the rest of us, and the song, for all of its vulgarity, hammers that point home. It's a reminder of failure and defeat, disappointment and despair. But somehow that also makes it a celebration of a special day, a day of hope against hope. And I'll always cry for hope.

This post is dedicated to the memory of the late, great Kristy MacColl.

And the Shelf He Rode In On (Part III)

2011-12-09T16:00:00.001-05:00

In the Bleak Midwinter - Beth Whitney (mp3)
Where Are You Christmas? - Faith Hill (mp3)

Part One -- "The Origin of Laura Jane," wherein I mention our transgendered hero/heroine, Nicole Kidman, late night elf pornography, and Gmail

Part Two - "Bad Dad," wherein I experience the stages of grief, emotionally abuse my daughter, and am reminded why the Christmas season is so despicable

My second daughter continues to write to Laura Jane, our transgendered Elf on the Shelf and the ever-present reminder of a failure of my fatherhood.

She wrote that damn elf five times in November, each time desperately (but as patiently as her little heart would allow) anticipating Laura Jane’s response. My eldest hasn’t mentioned Laura Jane. We’re fairly certain she’s aware that the elf has no clothes, so to speak, and she's hinted as much, but we can’t be sure, and there’s no easy way to ask that question without giving it away.

And this story, split into three lengthy parts, sums up why I tend to despise “special” days, most especially Christmastime. We create these days where things have to be more. They have to be bigger, and better, and greater, and more important. Why? Because people need bigger, and better, and greater, and more important. Because normal isn't good enough.

This is proof that too many people allow their everyday to slip into something bad, something negative and undesirable. They then look to Special Days to rescue them from their monotony and boredom. It's like the abusive spouse who justifies his daily cruelties by being super-sweet on birthdays and anniversaries. I prefer trying, sometimes feebly, to value each day and to not save up my happy karma for Special Days, but rather to celebrate my joys whenever I can find them.

Wednesday, Bob wrote about being sick of winning. But isn’t Christmas, like, the World Heavyweight Champion of Days? Haven't we manufactured Christmas into nothing more than winning? Our entire fucking economy depends on it, fer cryin' out loud. Families depend on it to spend time together, to invest in one another, to think of one another first for a change. Moms (and some dads) need it to get out of the house at midnight on Thanksgiving as some sad proof that they must really really love their families.*

[* -- On the day after Thanksgiving, one of my friends had written on Facebook, “I’m in Target at 3:42 a.m. I can’t believe HOW MUCH I LOVE MY CHILDREN!” If you aren’t bothered by this leap in logic, I pity you. Fortunately for him, some 30 people responded that they, too, were out and about, and that they, too, desperately loved their children enough to invest in Black Friday.]

Christmas has become some maniacal race. It’s become competitive. It's become about winning.

How we got from the story of a family who couldn’t afford a room in an inn and had to sleep in a barn, to elves on shelves made in China but born in the North Pole and who mess up houses and hide and write emails that make children cry is truly beyond my grasp, but almost nothing about this holiday makes me feel one bit more religious.

My goal isn't to sap your joy, dear reader. If you find Christmas in Walmart, bully for you. I'm actually a bit jealous.

For me, however, the only times in this month-long stretch when I feel closer to God, or like a somewhat better version of myself, is at the dinner table with my family and in church singing hymns... and neither of these are seasonal.

And then, finally, at 11 p.m. on Christmas Eve, we get our service when I finally get the chance to feel undistracted, undiluted joy. Our standing room only church of people raise candlelights above their heads as they sing “Silent Night.”

That service is the very opposite of Black Friday. We pause. We reflect. We listen. And we do it all together in the middle of the night as a way of finally -- one hour before the Most Important Day of the Year -- clarifying for ourselves what the whole damn day is really supposed to inspire in the first place.

Not iPads, not a Lexus in the driveway, and not something from Jared.
Families. Huddled together.
Candlelight.
The acknowledgement of a world in desperate need of hope and meaning.
A communal feeling of love surging through people like a strong gust of wind, carried through them from the notes of a pipe organ or a hammer dulcimer or the sound of a choir.

Christmas finally arrives, deux ex machina, and rescues us from the previous 30 days of misguided obsessions and pepper-spraying our fellow consumers. And nothing, no matter how much bile and bitterness and anger they invoke in me leading up to that evening, can shake the power of the Day itself. It's bigger than we are, and we can't ever completely screw it up.

For that, I am eternally thankful.

And the Shelf He Rode In On (Part II)

2011-12-09T00:00:00.000-05:00

You Gotta Get Up - Five Iron Frenzy (mp3)
Please Daddy (Don't Get Drunk This Christmas) - John Denver (mp3)

Part One -- "The Origin of Laura Jane," wherein I mention our transgendered hero/heroine, Nicole Kidman, late night elf pornography, and Gmail)

November 29, 2010. My elder daughter -- let's name her Billie Jr. -- writes a letter to Santa and places it under our Christmas tree. In it, she requests a new Elf on the Shelf of her own so that she doesn’t have to share Laura Jane (our gender-transformed female elf who looks like all the other male elves) with her sister.

You see, my second daughter was always far more obsessed with Laura Jane writing her emails almost every month... and we didn’t know it because we didn’t check Laura Jane’s email account until Thanksgiving Perhaps because Billie Jr. was resigned to never be capable of loving Laura Jane quite as ardently as her sister, she was hoping to start over with a new elf.

And this is where I morph into the bad guy. Here comes my Tragic Flaw.

I crafted an email from Laura Jane that started something like this:

My Dearest Billie Jr.,

I read your note to Santa because I thought it was for me.

Have I done something wrong? I am feeling quite awful about this and wonder how I have failed you. Just this morning you want to know about my life at the North Pole, and then this evening you are asking for a different elf. I am trying not to cry, because I must have done something awful or mean for you to want another elf.

The email went another two paragraphs. Laura Jane was heartbroken. Santa can’t send multiple elves to households. It’s one or none. She might lose her job. The sky is falling, and the Pole with her.

We have struggled with Billie Jr.’s increasing inability to attune to the aches and needs of others, to empathize and to grasp the depth of The Golden Rule. What better way to address that level of selfishness, I thought, than to let the voice of absolute North Pole innocence address it?

Her mother and I had sat her down on numerous occasions to discuss this matter with her, but we had gotten nowhere. Perhaps Laura Jane could accomplish what we could not.

If results can be measured by the level of psychological and emotional distress inflicted, then I earned a gold medal. My daughter looked like death warmed over for two days. She lost the ability to speak in complete sentences, and it was obvious that every time she emerged from a moment of privacy that she’d spent her alone time crying.

Her first email to Laura Jane first thing in the morning was a panicked apology. Her second reply, later that evening, was this:

you have made me cry even more.now i am very sad.I am so so so so sorry!i wrote that note because (my sister) & i argue about who has you and so on,but i am truely sorry.My thoughts have changed so much and thank you for reading the note. it has made me relize christmas even more.

You'll need to trust me on this: Billie Jr.'s apology was more about the fear of losing everything than about an appreciation for what she had. Her concluding sentence was more platitude than truth... although I think she really wanted to believe it.

The 72 hours after Laura Jane’s heartbroken email involved a gradual evolution of personal assessment for me. At first I was proud. Laura Jane’s email had worked. The message had penetrated. The seed would grow into something good.

Then I was defensive. My daughter needed to be taught a lesson, dammit, and some lessons are hard. But sometimes you can’t learn about a stove eye being hot unless you touch it and burn your hand, and human emotions are the same way, and she needed to learn about selfishness.

Then I was panicked. Had I just embodied the persona of one of Santa’s elves and crafted a note intended to stab a psychological knife into my own daughter’s heart? Nooo, of course not... no. Not quite. No no, nothing that awful.....

Then I was horrified. What kind of father does something like this? Isn’t what I did, in some way, even more dangerous and harmful than if I’d pulled out my belt and lashed her a few dozen times, something I would never in a million years do? Isn’t inflicting emotional scars far more cruel and dangerous?

Not to mention the hypocrisy of me -- ME -- having the gall to try and teach someone else about being self-centered or selfish. Who the frick was I to go judging my daughter so much more harshly than I’ve ever been willing to judge myself??

Suddenly I was eyeball-deep into a state of despondency not unlike that which had overtaken my daughter the first day of Laura Jane's “lesson” to her. Except as the puppet-master and supposed adult, my sadness went deeper, and my self-evaluation was unflinchingly brutal. Everytime I heard or thought “Merry Christmas,” I cringed. The season was suddenly a symbol of deception, heartbreak, manipulation... nothing good.

A week later, Laura Jane was dead to me. My wife didn’t handle my resignation very well. I have little doubt that I failed to share in any adequate way my internal nuclear chain reaction with her. I probably mentioned to her once or twice that I was bothered by what had transpired, and the next thing she knew, I was quitting, and it was non-negotiable. That jump from "bothered" to "done" seemed extreme and unfair, I'm sure. (Like many men, I'm not fond of breaking down in the presence of others.)

She begrudgingly and angrily took over Laura Jane duty and carried that seething frustration with her like a sack of coal, thus adding one more body to the list of Christmas casualties, all borne from my single heartbroken manipulative scheming late-night email.

Now it's the 2011 Holiday Season. Daughter Number Two has continued her pen pal devotion to Laura Jane...

Part Three - "The Night Before," Wherein at last shines a faint glimmer of hope.

And the Shelf He Rode In On (Part I)

2011-12-08T09:43:00.001-05:00

We Wish You a Merry Christmas - Shonen Knife (mp3)

A f*#king elf might be the death of me.

Have you seen the Nicole Kidman movie “The Others”? In it, she’s the mother of two special-needs children whose skin is hyper-sensitive to light, and they have become recluses and shut-ins in a mansion/castle in the UK.

(SLIGHT SPOILER ALERT... although if giving away the surprise ending to a decade-old movie is a spoiler, it means you didn’t plan on seeing it...)

The big catch of the movie, and one I failed to properly appreciate the first time around, is that the terrible mean ol’ servants aren’t the enemies in the film. They’re the heroes. The enemy in the film is their mom.

Back to the f*#king elf. Laura Jane arrived by box, purchased from a store by a relative seeking revenge on us for some previous crime, three years ago.

My children had many times over witnessed a box precisely like it in one store after another, constantly begging us for one, a special elf for our house. We’d heard of these damn things, and we were certain it was a terrible idea. But now one was in our house, wrapped up without our knowledge or approval. We had been infiltrated.

My daughters unwrapped the package. They shrieked and screamed. They opened the box. Inside the box was, encased in mixed paper and plastic, an Elf on the Shelf. Much like Stormtroopers, all these elves look exactly alike. Which is to say nothing like any other elves on any other Christmas shows. They look like Justin fucking Bieber.

My daughters opened the box. They removed the Elf from his bondage. They hugged him and tested to see if he had any special features, sounds, or moving parts. They then, right there at that moment, mutually agreed that this Elf was female, and that her name was Laura Jane.

How, you ask? How can children of relative intelligence and sanity open a box “Made in China,” pull out a cloth mass-produced creature, and convince themselves that this thing came from the North Pole? I do not know. I only know it happened, and I didn’t have the courage or the cruelness to crush their enthusiasm like a grape.

From that day to Christmas, we became a predictable stupid American family. Laura Jane hid at night. She messed shit up. She ate cookies and spilled milk and snuck into the computer room and watched porn late at night. She was a cute adorable deviant menace.

She disappeared to the North Pole after Christmas, and we thought that was the end of Laura Jane, the transgendered fabric elf from China. But no, the next Thanksgiving, the girls were literally frothing at the mouth for Laura Jane’s return.

Although I’m not competitive about most things in life, I can’t say that about creativity. In my mind, I am hands-down the single most creative living mind not currently working in Hollywood, the book publishing industry, the comedy circuit, the newspaper-column industry or the big-time blogosphere.

So if regular normal boring parents could make their elves hide and mess shit up and be all playful, then I would by God kick it up a notch.

Therefore I created a Gmail account for Laura Jane, and she started sending nightly emails to the girls. Probably after she was done watching all that elf porn, but how would I know, right? Laura Jane even stole our camera and took a few pictures (clean, safe) and attached them to her emails. Ours was a technologically savvy elf.

The season was fun. Everyone enjoyed playing with the elf. I was super-cool creative, and we were awesome parents. Yada yada.

But something happened on the way to heaven.

(You can read my post foreshadowing all of this, from November 2008, here.)

Part Two - "Bad Dad," wherein I experience the stages of grief, emotionally abuse my daughter, and am reminded why the Christmas season is so despicable

Part Three - "The Night Before," Wherein at last shines a faint glimmer of hope.

The Winning Trap

2011-12-07T00:01:00.007-05:00

We are suckers for a beautiful woman, a handsome man, and winning. Myself susceptible to the first, admiring of the second, and guilty of the third, I nevertheless must retreat (or better yet, recoil) from the obsession with coming out on top. At least right now.

I like to think that I work around, live around, people with reasonably strong moral codes. They will likely shout down racism, recycle whenever possible, attend church far more than I do, and exhibit any number of neighborly traits that they don't have to, except that they have probably been raised right and seek to live out the traits that were instilled in them when they were young.

But give them a chance to win, and it will all go out the window.

The purchaser of the lottery ticket, the sports fan, the irate parent whose child has been "wronged", the hardcore ______ (insert political party here), the friendly arguer who turns unfriendly--all have to emerge victorious.

Some aspect of our lives, and maybe it's our capitalistic lives, has convinced us that there are some things that we absolutely must win. There are rivals that we must face down. There are paybacks that we must not concede. There are affronts that cannot be tolerated. There are situations that must be corrected, situations that are unimportant when compared to the amount of time and/or money that we are suddenly willing to invest in them.

Even though most readers of this blog are not Japanese, we nevertheless have mostly embraced the concept of "saving face," which is its own form of winning, but our face-saving is a perverted form. Somehow our pride has come to depend on the outcome of contests that we have not participated in or battles that we have not fought, but ones that are associated with the reputation of the institutions that we work for or live under, the academic institutions we attended, or, in the worst case, teams and organizations that we simply share geography with.

And our only hope of seeing the stupidity of this is if it is a situation where we don't care whether or not we win. I exist right now in that rare void. I see the folly of sacrificing personal and societal values in order to win. Right now, the desire to win that surrounds me concerns sports. And I am miserable. Sweet Jesus, I am miserable. I am so consumed with the wrongness of what I am watching that I can barely think of anything else.

Of course, if this were a situation where I did need to win, then it really wouldn't matter if Satan incarnate was driving the race car or passing the football or running for the office that is important that I have put my hopes behind. I, too, have been consumed by the desire to win sports. If you are a Steeler fan as long as I have been, then you have tolerated a member of the "Steel Curtain" taking pot shots at cars on the freeway back in the late 70's and you have tolerated your quarterback assaulting a young woman in Georgia just in the last couple of years, and any number of misdeeds in between.

But it feels different right now, because no matter where we work, whether it's the U.S. Post Office or Bennigan's or some corporation in a high rise building in a large city, that place of employment espouses some set of institutional values, and however hokey those values might be, however overwrought a mission statement might seem, we still grab for those values as some kind of a benchmark. And if we feel like we are not hitting that benchmark, then we start not to believe.

Because nowhere, even in the most cynical, profit-driven Wall Street firm does the motto read "We will win at all costs" or "We will chuck our values out the window in order to win." No place is that outwardly craven.

Winning is a trap. It becomes its own goal and casts aside any benefits or lessons or silver linings or whatever noble might have inspired a desire to win in the first place. Left instead is just the winningness itself, an unpolished stone, which brings only the briefest of satisfactions, which is all that it can do, because when we are left time for any kind of reflection, we can't help but remind ourselves what it cost us to get there. By the time that stone is cut and polished, we haven't the interest and can barely look at it, so focused are we on the next stone, the next win, that we must attain.

Heartbreak Ridge

2011-12-06T00:28:00.001-05:00

The Future's Nothing New - The Alternate Routes (mp3)
A Circus - Army Navy (mp3)

Last week, one of the founding members of our fantasy football league announced his intentions to retire. This announcement -- which in the world of rational and reasonable thought should be about as significant as him saying he got new glasses -- was significant on several levels.

First, this owner claimed it was just time, that he was getting too old for it, that the experience was played out. Why? What’s wrong with him? How dare he desert us in this, our time of desperate need?? Is this some kind of Fantasy Football Owner Lockout, and we didn’t get the memo? Here I thought we were all, like, Al Davis, that the only way you could take our team ownership away was from our cold, dead hands.

The second level was even more disconcerting. Was this merely the first defection? Was the entire league either doomed or irreparably altered?

My thoughts then drifted to this blog. Even as we approach 1,000 posts and soon after that the completion of our fourth year (if it survives to March), death is on my mind. How old is a 4-year-old blog? It’s gotta be like dog years, except more like goldfish years, right? How long do we go until this has become a hobby that merely keeps us from trying other ways of exorcising our creative demons?

Things. Must. Change.
(Psst. this will be a running theme, off and on for the remainder of the year, possibly for eternity. It started with “William 4.0” and even showed up in my Oasis post yesterday.)

Must. It is inevitable. It is fact. The challenge for the wise, it would seem, is not to cling desperately to everything in our lives in some nutty attempt to prevent or dodge change. The challenge is to identify what we most value, what we hold most precious, and to figure out whether honoring and protecting those things requires holding fast to them or finding ways to adapt and evolve them.

I cannot be a good parent if I insist on treating my 11-year-old daughter the same as when she was six. I can’t be a good employee if I’m still sending snow alerts to radio stations as our sole advisory.

Oh crap. Know what I just realized? Maybe schools can’t be very good schools if we’re still doing 95% of everything we did back when my mother was 12. Maybe we’re clinging a little bit too tightly to too much? Ya think?

So maybe fantasy football and blogs -- and office environments and job descriptions and schools -- aren’t in and of themselves what I fear losing. Maybe it’s not about Calvin Johnson and shoddy opinionating. The challenge is figuring out what I need from these outlets, why they mean something to me, why my soul aches a little at the thought of losing them, and what I need to do to hold onto what’s important about them. In all likelihood, with just a little contemplation, I can find other ways to feed those parts of me currently fed by those pursuits.

When the day comes to say goodbye to fantasy football, were I wise, I would already know what my next step would be. I would know what it is I love about the experience, and I would already have plans to funnel that energy into some new endeavor.

Improvise. Adapt. Overcome. These are the words of the new normal and the essential. They are the words of the wise. They are the future, and we will be.

(I just made a reference to Prince/Batman AND a Clint Eastwood movie in the same paragraph! WOOOT!)

A Desert in the Oasis

2011-12-05T16:43:00.000-05:00

Drums of Death - Noel Gallagher w/UNKLE & Mike D (mp3)
F**kin' in the Bushes (live) - Oasis (mp3)

Beady Eye. High Flying Birds. Whether these names mean anything to you depends on where Oasis falls in your musical universe.

When Oasis split up in 2009, the world yawned. Back in 1995, my longtime friend and music nut told me of his love for this supercool new band by describing them thusly, “They’re like the world’s greatest bar band... only with a massive Beatles fetish.”

“World’s Greatest Bar Band” isn’t the most original superlative, I’ll grant you. But if NRBQ and Southside Johnny can lay claim to such a title, I’m happy to give one of my votes to Oasis. I’ll bet Oasis blew the f**kin’ windows out of bars and stripped the paint off the walls in their early days.

The problem with even the best bar band, however, is that eventually it’s closing time, and Oasis kept playing even as the lights went up, the chairs were turned upside down on the tables, and the manager swept up the floor and locked the doors.

The sibling drama between Liam and Noel Gallagher might have amused their fanatics -- it did a sublime job of inspiring a character in LOST -- and it certainly helped sell a few Brit tabloids, but for modest fans like myself, we didn’t give a flip. Make music and make it good, and whatever you do backstage to each other is beyond our fleeting prurient concerns. I’m more interested in what kind of stroller Jennifer Garner buys than I am about why the Gallagher brothers might be breaking bottles over one another’s skulls.

Reasonable minds can differ on exactly when the barlights went up on Oasis, but for me the answer is fairly easy: 1997. The following year, Oasis released The Masterplan, one of the greatest B-side compilations in rock history, which created the illusion of a band still overflowing with creative power. But they were already on the backslide.

Be Here Now, their third release, was less than highly regarded by critics. Not because the music was bad, but more because the Gallaghers didn’t know when the hell to stop a good song. Of the dozen songs on that album, only three dip below the 5-minute mark, and one of those is a 2-minute “reprise” of a 9-minute song. The other two under-5-minute songs clock in at 4:22 and 4:88.

Overlong songs are fine for a prog rock act like Rush, or for a jam band like Widespread Panic, but it’s deadly for a pop rock act or a bar band that idolizes the Beatles, a band who kept some ⅘ of their songs under the 3:00 mark and 95% under the 4:00 mark.

Had Oasis stopped drinking -- alcohol, and a little less from the cup of their own hype -- they could have cut this album down by 20 minutes and had a piece of pop rock art every bit as amazing and infectious as What’s the Story Morning Glory? and Definitely Maybe. Instead, you’re constantly pushing the NEXT button halfway through the song. Unless you’re drunk.

They lumbered through four more albums, each equipped with two or three catchy gems and a lot of forgettable crap, before Liam smashed Noel’s guitar backstage in The Moment That Killed Oasis for good in 2009. (Or at least until the 2015 “20th Anniversary of Morning Glory Reunion Tour.”)

In the past nine months, Oasis has emerged as a two-band Yin and Yang. Liam & most of the other Oasis band members formed Beady Eye and released Different Gear, Still Speeding last spring, and Noel and his High Flying Birds released their eponymous collection in late October.

And the truth of Oasis is in these two releases: Liam has the 'tude; Noel has the brilliance.

Liam was voted the greatest frontman in the history of rock by Q magazine (no, I’m not kidding) in 2010, besting all the names you, dear reader, immediately think of as the obvious choice for this title. While I won’t go as far as Q, I certainly appreciate the key factors that make Liam a helluva stage presence.

Different Gear... comes with plenty of self-confidence and moxie, but that’s about the alpha and omega of what’s good about it. Seriously, I can’t even remember the name of two songs, nor could I begin to hum the lyrics of a single Beady Eye tune. Until yesterday, I hadn’t listened to a single track on that album since the two weeks after I first bought it. Moxie is fun in the moment, but it’s the lipstick on the musical pig.

If High Flying Birds has a flaw, however, it’s the lack of lipstick. They’re the cute girl who could be a supermodel with a little bit of lighting and makeup.

Although neither brother was going to be immortalized for lyrical talents, Noel was definitely the more gifted lyricist, and he was also the one capable of injecting a diversely-inspired sonic assault that managed to wink lovingly to his Beatles while also stealing from hip-hop and electronica and numerous other styles. Noel is -- as most successful modern rock artists are -- a master thief who happily leaves his calling card on the table.

Listen to “Drums of Death,” one of the rockinest mostly-instrumentals ever to bleed out your ears. Listen to “F**Kin’ in the Bushes,” which is basically Noel telling everyone else in the band what to do. (Which, by the way, is exactly why they hated him, because he knows better than they do and probably wasn’t shy on reminding them of that fact.) With rock candy like this, who needs lyrics anyway? (Which probably annoyed the crap out of Liam, since nasally whiny vocals was basically all he brought to the table.)

If you’re not well-versed on the Oasis oeuvre and need a place to start, I recommend The Masterplan. If you want to start with their most recent best work, then you’re much better off starting with High Flying Birds and jumping straight back to Heathen Chemistry or even Morning Glory.

HFBirds, is IMO, the best non-B-side compilation album by a Gallagher in 14 years. If it just had a little more lipstick, it would be awesome. As it stands, it’s just really good.

These Are A Few Of My Favorite Songs

2011-12-03T19:32:00.000-05:00

Renee and Jeremy--"Sunny Christmas" (mp3)

How often in your life has someone asked you what your favorite song is? It can get pretty annoying, especially because you're put on the spot and expect to sort through everything you've ever heard and liked a lot and pick the one song (of the moment, I might argue). I can't imagine having a favorite song that transcends more than a week or two. A batch of songs, yes, but not one song.

Mathematically, all top 50 of my favorite songs are Christmas songs.

Think about it. Come December 1st, at my house, we tend to play nothing but Christmas music in the home and in our cars for the next three and a half weeks. We've got the Vince Guaraldi Charlie Brown, the Chieftain's The Bells Of Dublin, all of Sufjan's homemade Christmas songs (the only exciting addition to the ever-growing Christmas song catalog in the last 20 years) and a variety of other jazz, folk, classical, vocal, instrumental offerings. We've got the wacky stuff, too, though we don't tend to play it much.

So why are these tired Christmas tunes my favorites? Do the math. If your favorite songs are the ones you listen to the most, then all of mine are Christmas songs. By far. A new CD that I bought this year that I really liked I probably heard, at most, about six times. A classic CD that I love, I probably heard two or three times. But the songs of Christmas? It's not unreasonable to expect to hear the better-known ones 40 or more times during the month of December, and really even before, during those days in November after Thanksgiving.

They're everywhere! They're in the backs of our consciousnesses as we buy groceries, pump gas, shop in any store, watch television (which seems fixated on variations of that "it's the most wonderful time of the year" song, which I don't own). Last night, I went to listen to student performances of nothing but Christmas music during the annual Candlelight extravaganza.

And that doesn't begin to address my own playing of them. As I write this, I've listened to the last of the Sufjan songs, leftover from the other night, and now I'm listening to New Guitar Ensemble, whom I posted on this site last year (or was it the year before) right now. "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing!" in my head right now.

This month, I blew all of my eMusic "allowance" on new Christmas stuff. Not new songs, for the most part, but new performances by new people. I bought a kind of low-rent cocktail jazz set of Christmas songs by David Ian; I bought a new batch of solo piano Christmas pieces by . I bought a version of "The Christmas Song" as played by the late, great saxophonist Clarence Clemmons. Along with some other xmas detritus here and there.

Societally, we like to make fun of all of the Christmas music out there, all the cynical commercial decision-making going on behind all of those CDs, but, let's face it, the songs themselves, almost regardless of how they get tarted up, still hold a primal, nostalgic appeal, even in their most schlocky versions. Even artists I don't particularly like can still hit the "sweet spot" on a song or two. Because it's the song even more than the performer. To find versions that feel real, that feel sincere rather than obligatory, is bliss.

The other aspect of their "favoriteness" is that I've been listening to them for 54 years, even before I could walk or talk. Early on, my father indoctrinated us with the Ray Coniff Singers versions of classics that have now faded away like "Jolly Old St. Nicholas." For me, Christmas songs have 7 years on even the Beatles. How many thousands of times have I heard "Silent Night" or "We Three Kings" or "Oh, Come, All Ye Faithful"? How many listenings of Alvin and the Chipmunks have I endured? I couldn't begin to say.

So, yeah, many of my favorite songs tend toward nostalgic rememberances of Christmases that never were. I can't help it. I don't feel a need to try.

And as the years pass, I salute most those artists who try to add to the canon. Sufjan's "That Was The Worst Christmas Ever" (and about 8 more songs) and Shelby Lynne's r+b-ish "Xmas" and Jackson Browne's "The Rebel Jesus" and Shawn Colvin's digging up of "Love Came Down At Christmas" from somewhere all serve to freshen up the more traditional numbers when you're working through the same bunch of songs for an entire month. I also enjoy how different songs have moved to the forefront over the years. "O, Come, O, Come, Emmanuel" was not even in the mix 20 years ago. "Bring A Torch, Jeanette" and "Good King Wencelas" and "In The Bleak Midwinter" weren't either, and are all among my favorites now.

Among the many joys of Christmas is how the songs still transcend everything else. Regardless of their origins, they maintain a kind of purity now.

Why Are You Trying To Kill Us?

2011-12-01T00:01:00.001-05:00

Lupe Fiasco--"Double Burger With Cheese" (mp3)

In a quick stop at a Captain D's seafood restaurant over Thanksgiving break, I ordered a quick fish sandwich at the drive-thru. I knew it would be a fried piece of cod on a bun, with lettuce and tomato and some kind of mayo or tartar sauce. That's what I thought. What I got was a sandwich with all of that plus a slice of cheese, a pile of "onion straws" and another source of fat that I can't remember now. Maybe they buttered the bun.

Last Sunday night, while I was watching the Steelers play the Chiefs, I was bombarded with ads for two products in particular--both food. One was a Papa John's pizza boasting two layers of pepperoni, a normal layer with the kind of pepperoni you'd expect on a carryout pizza and then another hidden, secret layer of large "deli-style" pepperoni. The thing looked like it had more layers of sliced meat than the layers of wallpaper I took off my kitchen.

The other new product was "The 'W'," a new Wendy's sandwich with not only that catchy name but also two layers of beef and two layers of cheese plus a pinkish/orangish sauce that looked suspiciously like the Special Sauce that has been on Big Macs for years. In short, it looked a lot like a double cheeseburgerish kind of thing, only somehow bigger.

All I could think each time the commercials would come on was "Why are you trying to kill us?"

A slice of Papa John's pepperoni has 330 calories and 14 grams of fat, including 6 grams of saturated fat. That's pretty hefty considering that most of us are going to eat at least two pieces. But wait. Those numbers are for the usual Papa John's pepperoni. Their new double-layer version sneaks in 2 more grams of fat, and an extra gram of saturated. Why? Why do we want that extra layer of pepperoni?

The "W" is, in fact, not bigger. It's smaller. It is made with the Jr. hamburger patties and appears more as a snack than one of their bigger burgers. But here's what is on it:

Premium Butter Toasted Bun , two Jr. Hamburger Patties, 2 slices of American Cheese, Signature Sauce, Applewood Smoked Bacon, Mayonnaise, Ketchup, Mustard, Honey Mustard Sauce, Crinkle Cut Pickles, Red Onion, Tomato, Lettuce.

In other words, it is arguably the most condimented sandwich in the world with no less than 11 toppings. But all of that comes with a price, actually several. That little double cheeseburger sammy, that little snack, sneaks in under those two slices of Papa John's by 80 calories, BUT it's got 33 grams of fat (with plenty of saturated fat and even some trans fat) AND 1480 mg of sodium! That means that little sandwich contains 62% of the salt that you should have in a given day. Fries with that?

By the way, neither of these items are the flagships of their respective fleets--there a certainly specialty pizzas and triple cheeseburgers that pack a lot more fat and salt than these newbies.

And by the way, a quality cheeseburger from a not-so-fast place like Five Guys has 55 grams of fat. Put some mayo on that bad boy and you add another 11 grams and you're closing in on your fat allowance for an entire day. Want a couple of hot dogs instead of that heavy burger? 70 grams of fat for the pair.

So I ask you, restaurants of America, and, sadly, not just fast food restaurants, why are you trying to kill us? What's in it for you?

I mean, I kind of understand the economics of selling us oversized portions that we can either gorge on and hide in the back of our refrigerators in styrofoam containers. That allows you to charge us more for those larger portions and it's a lot cheaper to get us a to-go box than it is to sell us a much smaller portion. So, I get that. But why do you want us dead?

I would be disgusted with myself if I owned the restaurants that posted online the nutritional information about their products that I have been looking at. Disgusted. Like most people who cook, I'm worrying about the fat all the time, buying lowfat mayo, using olive oil, cutting the butter down or out of recipes, curbing the cheese. I look for ways to lower the fat in salad dressings or to use less dressing. The meats I do cook are chicken breasts and pork tenderloin, for the most part.

Heck, I quit eating beef and most red meat. But I do dine at the establishments of the secret slayers of America, so I doubt that has made a difference. Here's proof. That fish sandwich I had? Well, of course I got some fries, and they talked me into trying the gumbo. All told, I had 66 grams of fat and 3114 mg of sodium (2400 is the daily allowance) in that lunch. We won't even talk about supper.

William 4.0: In Beta Testing

2011-11-29T23:51:00.001-05:00

Different Truck, Same Loser - The Wreckers (mp3)
Different Girl - Daisy McCrackin (mp3)

In a friendly and traditional debate with my hard-right in-laws over Thanksgiving, my in-law proclaimed that this country had lost its way and that she was soon bound for another land, presumably a more conservative land where King Scalia and Queen Bachmann ruled and no one ever wanted for anything, because everyone in this land took care of themselves and shot only non-human animals and home invaders with machine guns, and no one needed public education or insurance.

She concluded that I was an ideologue. That is, someone whose views are unwavering, unchanging, and stubbornly or stupidly so, apparently based on my belief that tomato paste is not a vegetable because tomatoes are a fruit.

A few weeks back, I got into a fairly heated private debate on Facebook with a former elementary school classmate. (Only on Facebook, right?) We debated education, cost, and ways to best affect change. But mostly it was me calling her out, and her offering the implied comeback that I was a provincial “homer” compared to her worldly and evolved self.

Toward the end of her concluding retort back to me, she wrote, “I am a changed woman,” following it with all the ways she was clearly a different entity than the version I knew when we were kids and then teenagers.

Are my views unchanging? Am I unchanging?

Is change actually evitable?

I look different in photos than I did when I was in seventh grade. Different than when I turned 21. I'm pretty sure the differences went deeper than my epidermis. Maturity, spiritual beliefs, opinions on health insurance, whatever.

Is it even possible for people to stay the same? Do we just get older? Doesn’t that in and of itself count as change? Even the Matthew McConaughey character in Dazed and Confused, he of the wise words about “high school girls, man...” even he’s not the same guy he was in high school, no matter how desperately he wishes he were.

Twelve years ago, in my third year working at this school, I was a little bit restless, settling into the job and the place and grappling with the fact that I would soon be a first-time father. "Settling" was the operative word at the time, mostly in ways that induced a mild internal panic.

On the heels of two very popular talks to the student body and full of that youthful desperation to prove that anything was possible, I decided I wanted to pull the Evel Knievel of public speeches, the high school spoken-word equivalent of attempting to jump the Grand Canyon.

As the students took their seats, Chuck Berry’s “My Ding-a-Ling” would play over the speakers. Beginning with an exploration of famous pop songs on the subject, I would eventually delve into a wildly humorous discussion of the male need for masturbation.

I got 24 hours away from delivering this speech and was blocked -- some might say cock-blocked -- by several administrators. Despite their calm and amused explanations, I couldn’t understand. We all do it, right? We're not going to pretend guys don't, are we? The whole computer-and-porn thing made things more complicated than ever, right? So why the hell couldn’t I talk about it??

Thinking back on it cracks me up. How confident and certain I was of my daring, of my talent, of my ability to cross the onanistic river Styx unscathed! What the fuck was I thinking??

So, having pondered on politics and masturbation and time, I return to my elementary school classmate’s proclamation: “I am changed.”

Her words were not a proclamation about herself, but an accusation about me: “I am changed... (and ahem, you are not).” You are still that boy dressed like Samuel Gompers who plays tetherball at recess. You still live in the same town and have resided in the South most of your life. You attend the same church you did when you were six. You are the same.

More troubling, the very need to shout that claim, “I am changed,” is one of needling uncertainty. The chip remains glued on the shoulder and won’t budge. Much like someone who, while walking through the haunted house, keeps saying “I’m not afraid, I’m not afraid, I’m not afraid.”

Better to avoid such proclamations, such claims of difference or sameness. Instead, I'll go with the less debatable route: I am settled.

For now.

The Not One Percent

2011-11-28T23:59:00.001-05:00

Roll With the Punches - Lenka (mp3)
B is for Brutus - The Hives (mp3)

This is what happens when you don’t read your email thoroughly enough.

Several weeks back, I received an invitation from my daughter’s school. The invite was for a breakfast. Because the school has been quite intentional and proactive about connecting parents to the complete school experience on any number of occasions, I quickly assumed this was yet one more way for me to connect with my dear daughter within the school environment. And because I love seeing my children in these settings when possible, I swiftly replied to the email with a YES.

The day before, I mentioned my breakfast plans. “I’m looking forward to having breakfast with you tomorrow morning,” I said as I drove my sweet precious to school.

“What are you talking about?” she asked.
“Breakfast. A bunch of girls and their dads or something,” I said.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said.

Because tween girls often enjoy and intentionally attempt to have no idea what their parents are talking about, I dismissed her ignorance as being a lack of attentiveness and moved onto other topics. However, when I saw her that afternoon, she brought it up again.

“Daddy, I don’t think you’re eating breakfast with me tomorrow. None of my classmates know anything about it, and I even asked a few teachers, and they don’t know, either.”

At that point, I sifted through my Gmail trash to reread the original email. And yes, plainly and clearly, the email stated that this particular breakfast was intended as a “brainstorm session” for the school’s annual auction fundraiser.

Well, gently insert a chainsaw into a place intended for intercourse, as the ‘80s saying goes.

So I find myself the next morning at a table with four ridiculously well-off men in their 40s, one of whom I know because he sits on my school’s board of trustees. I was at a table, at a breakfast, surrounded by The One Percent.

I felt like one of those reporters who sneaks undercover to report on the Moonies, or on some abusive slaughterhouse, or on a top-secret tobacco company meeting. Not so much because I was jealous of their wealth or even begrudge it, but rather because I so totally didn’t belong. All of these other men had Stars On Thars.

Hi, my name is Billy, and I'm a plain-bellied Sneetch.

Our first assignment was to discuss, at our tables, those items we might be able to offer as part of the auction.

My school’s trustee, sitting to my right, went first. "We offered up our condo in Aspen last year. We can offer it again this time around."

The man to his right went next. They’d offered their exquisite lake house for a weekend getaway last year, and that offer was good this year as well. Counter-clockwise it continued. The next man had offered his four season tickets to an Alabama game in what was undoubtedly a sublimely awesome section of the stadium, and he’d do so again.

The man to my right was next. “My daughter’s new this year,” he said, “So I don’t know if what I can offer will work or not.” Yes! At last! Someone else who’s in the same boat as myself!!

“I’m a member over at the Honors Course (read: the sweetest and priciest damn golf club in town), so I could host a threesome out there.”

Well, gently insert a chainsaw into a place intended for intercourse.

The Men Of The One Percent all looked to me. I was the last man sitting. Their curious eyes looked past my sweater vest and edu-wonky glasses.

Well, I’m pretty tight with the Skee-ball operator at Lake Winnie. I think he could probably get us 2-for-1 on those tickets? Or maybe I could offer free tandem rides on the back of my scooter?

To their credit, I never got the impression that what had just occurred at the table was a swordfight, some duel of masculine offerings intended to one-up the next dude. Most folks in The One Percent don’t go around with this yearning ache to prove how wealthy they are, despite what some people want you to believe. They just don’t much feel the need to go apologizing for their ability to bathe in sparkling water, either, and they’re sure as hell not going to soft-sell their fiscal comfort just to keep some mid-level school dude from feeling uncomfortable and cemented in the middle class.

No, the issues at that table belonged 99% to me, and 1% to them. The discomfort was mine. The sense of inequality was mine. And they weren't feelings that were imposed upon me; I don't blame anyone in that room for it. It is, as they love to say, what it is. The perceptions and the problems: I owned that deed.

This, ultimately, is the political discomfort I have with my own views. While I sympathize with this mythological 99-percent, and while I lean farther left than right, I look to those I know successful enough to approach or enter into that One Percent, and I don't begrudge them. They're decent folks. The ones I know do (mostly) good things with their torrential downpours of freeflowing cash. And if they own some nice cars and a condo in Aspen, I don't really feel too good throwing stones at them.

Granted, at some point, when millions turn into tens of millions, I simply can't fathom that anyone really works hard enough or is so beyond brilliant as to "deserve" that gap of cash, but most of the One Percent I know aren't quite that high up the ladder and never will be. They're just rich.

No easy answers in this world, is I guess what I'm saying.

Except for Pakistan, I mean. That's a pretty easy one: they're bad.

Partyhoppers

2011-11-27T22:10:00.002-05:00

Marvelous Darlings--"I Don't Wanna Go To The Party" (mp3)

As we head into the holiday party season, I've been thinking about partyhoppers. You know who they are--people who are so popular(?) and so overcommitted that the night that you are having your party they have been invited to several others. And they intend to make them all.

So they'll drop in, exchange some pleasantries, probably make it very clear on the front end that they "can't stay" as they turn down or minimize various offerings from their host or hostess of a drink or something to eat or participation in some activity. Even as they say hello, the look in their eyes says leaving soon.

I suppose that this could be seen as a kind of sharing the wealth. If everybody wants you at their parties, then who are you to deny anyone? It could be seen as kind of a way of meeting all of the obligations in one's life, but in a sweeping, unsatisfactory way. Because here is the reality--even if you only partyhop to two parties, you're going to leave one too early and arrive at one too late.

There is no way around that. Maybe that's the way that it has to be now, but I don't think so. Is it really essential that you be everywhere on that one night? Is someone really going to be crushed if you let them know that you have a previous commitment?

Back when there used to be etiquette, there was a very simple rule that one followed: the social engagement that you were invited to first was the one that you went to. Period. Someones got their acts together and planned something far enough in advance that everyone had a chance to keep their calendars clear. And that was that. No need for haggling with your spouse or checking with pals to see where the action might be or coming up with righteous self-justifications for why it would be okay to go to these other places instead. That didn't mean, of course, that you had to accept that original invitation, but if you did, you were committed, regardless of what "better" offers might arise.

That would never work in today's world. We poor social butterflies, trapped between unpleasant invites and last-minute plans would never be able to guarantee ourselves maximum fun. Or maximum social cache. Or the ability to decide which location we absolutely have to go to, for whatever reason, at whatever moment prioritization strikes us.

Of course, if you know me, you know that there is one kind of partyhopper in particular that sticks in my craw. Yep, it's that certain kind of Christian. That Christian partygoer will determine that a Christian social engagement supersedes any other social engagement, even if it was only planned the day before and the other one has been on the books for months. Why? Well, because it's Christian. If I have to explain beyond that, I might as well move out of the South. Which doesn't mean that he or she won't drop in at your place or show up at your dinner party having already eaten, but it will become quickly clear that there is a broader agenda at work. If the people of the Lord summon, the concerns of the world must be set aside.

The other strange, perhaps related, permutation is the separation of husband and wife partygoers. This accomplishes two things: 1) it allows for much greater coverage for that family as social unit, and 2) it allows both partners to go to the place(s) that they really want to go. What it does not accomplish is that indefinable synergy that occurs when the couple is there.

I don't think that, most of the time, when a host invites a "Mr. and Mrs." or whatever, that he or she only wants one of them to show up. Most of the time. There are some spouses that never come, and so we all get used to them not being there, and when they do show, that is its own kind of awkwardness. But most of the time when couples come as a team, they bring a confidence with them that allows them to spread positive energy throughout a party, drawing single people into conversation, supporting the vibe. A person who comes to a party without his or her longtime supporter tends to be a different person.

In the worst case scenario, the person hosting the party has tried to create a careful balance of men and women and finds himself with, for example, a bunch of husbands, as happened to me on Halloween. One wife no-showed, one never comes to anything, one stayed 10 minutes, one was up the street at a high school friend's party, even though she had cornered me in an earlier situation and demanded to know whether I was having a Halloween party because she was inviting herself. She was at my house for about 15 minutes.

There is no doubt that managing a social calendar is a skill, but it has become clear, to me at least, that it is a skill that few people have. As always, I don't exclude myself from that criticism. But I do think that the more parties one actually hosts, the more sensitive he or she is to the unacceptability of having a bunch of part-time or part-couple guests giving lip service to what can be an exhausting and expensive endeavor.

The ultimate solution, dare I say it, is to throw your own party. Then you know exactly where you're supposed to be. At least for one night. And I will be happy to drop in, for a little while, but I've got this other place I need to go. Would it be okay if my dog dropped in for awhile instead?

Not much rocks these days. "I Don't Wanna Go To The Party" does. 'Nuff said.

Shoot The Generals

2011-11-25T15:36:00.002-05:00

Sam Spence--"The Equalizer" (mp3)

The Battle of New Orleans is one of the more interesting battles in American history. Beyond the obvious reasons (Andrew Jackson threw together a ragtag army of irregulars, pirates, and Indians, the battle was fought after the war was over due to a delay in communications, the victory made Jackson a presidential shoo-in a few years later, etc.) are the strategical issues. The British approach required them to march through swamps. The British split their forces to attempt a kind of pincer attack.

But most important, and most relevant to my purposes here, is the fact that Jackson's men shot almost all of the British officers as they marched into battle, leaving the soldiers in complete disarray and primed for the routing they received. Remember also that, at the time, these were the finest soldiers in the world. Fresh from the Napoleonic Wars, the British soldiers who marched toward New Orleans were experienced, battle-seasoned, and used to winning.

Such was not the case in Chalmette, outside New Orleans. Which takes me to the current crisis in the NFL.

Now, you may not think that a post about football is your cup of tea, but please realize that a game this large, this central to the American psyche, has things to tell us about who we are. And, if the NFL is any indication, we are an army without generals, or at least not enough good ones.

As I write this, some 19 of the 32 NFL teams have lost their starting quarterbacks for some or all of the season. A solid 50+% of the field generals in what is arguably America's most popular sport (certainly when you consider overall awareness, all sources of revenue, the full extent of television coverage, etc. this is so) are not or have not been on the field for significant parts of the season. While cases like Peyton Manning's are well-document and, I would argue, cast a pall over the entire start of the NFL season, just in the last two weeks, Matt Schaub and Jay Cutler, quarterbacks on two teams with strong reason to think that they could do some damage in the playoff, have gone down to regular season ending injuries. They are the latest, perhaps with the greatest implications.

While we all know that one player does not a team make, these are pretty important members of their respective teams, among the highest paid, if not the highest paid, players on their teams. Or, put differently, they are among the elite players that fans of their respective teams pay a lot of money to spend a Sunday watching. Their highly-skilled coaching staffs determined that these men leading their teams gave their teams their best chance to win.

And now they are not playing. This is not to minimize the rampant injuries at every other position as well. NFL teams in 2011 and for some years have been fighting a war of attrition. Whoever can cobble together the most coherent has the best chance of making it to the end. Yeah, skill's got something to do with it, but if you aren't playing, your skill level doesn't matter all that much.

If I were an NFL owner or part of management, I would be terrified. Because I would look at the game I work for and, arguably, love and not see any immediate solution. I would chart out the rest of the season and see its outcome decided by injury more than skill. I would see an organization's success dependent largely on its staff's ability not to coach the players it has but the fill the gaps created by the ones who are gone.

In the short term, this can be exciting. The unheralded quarterback who seems to come from nowhere to lead his team to victory is one of the great storylines in sports. The player who was cut and is now working selling real estate before getting the phone call out of nowhere that brings him back to the NFL is the second chance that few of us get.

But don't you think that at some point, and probably sooner rather than later, fans are going to start losing enthusiasm for their teams if those teams do not include their favorite players. I've experienced it personally this year, though not at the NFL level. The starting quarterbacks on both my local college team and my "elite" college team went down with multi-game injuries, effectively gutting their teams chances for D-III playoffs or a decent D-I bowl game. It's not that I have to have a super-victorious team to root for, but I do lose interest when my teams go from competitive to inept or one-dimensional overnight.

I don't have a solution. I don't necessarily blame the players who get fined from time to time for high-profile hits. If anything, I blame the size and speed of the game. Men that large and able to hit that hard should probably not be able to run that fast. It's a deadly combination. But it's what the game has become and I'm not aware of anyone putting limits on size or working too hard to find out how players are getting that big and strong and fast.

No, I'm afraid we love it too much to push too hard to call those issues into question. But maybe it's time. Being a participant of Fantasy Football for many years, I've been all too aware of the number of injuries and how they can undermine one's "team." But this year feels different. Maybe it's because Peyton is gone. Maybe it's because one night last weekend I sat with my brother and his wife and cheered for the Bears and for a quarterback who was maybe finally coming into his own. Until he broke his thumb and was finished for the season. Maybe it's because any fan who enjoys seeing his or her team develop a rhythm sees that rhythm shot to hell with a crucial injury.

Somebody's going to win this thing, and they're going to feel good about it. But I fear that it will be a pyrrhic victory, especially if the last man standing is someone nobody particularly likes or some team whose Super Bowl victory doesn't feel deserved. If Aaron Rogers goes down and his perfect season is ruined by an injury, it will hurt the game. Maybe people will wonder a little more about the game they love. Or maybe not. Maybe they'll just move on to the next quarterback du jour.

I do know that if Andrew Jackson were around and some team hired him as a defensive coordinator, this would be his strategy for team defense: shoot the generals. But then, he was trying to win the battle. The war was already over.

Down The Rabbit Hole, Part 2

2011-11-24T00:01:00.005-05:00

You demanded it, we delivered. For months, fans of this blog have been asking for Part 2 of my seminal "Down The Rabbit Hole" commentary on the Kennedy assassination and other relevant conspiracies. Finally, like the McRib sandwich, it's here.

Lee Roy Abernathy--"John F. Kennedy, The Greatest Of All" (mp3)

Three days ago, my wife said, "I'll bet you don't know what tomorrow is." And she was right, I didn't know, but I tried to stall for time anyway with a wrong guess. Stereotypically, such a statement from a woman to her man suggests that the man is about to forget some key (or not so key) milestone in their relationship. And so why I was being mildly chastised, I went through my mental calendar and there it was: November 22nd.

"Of course I know what it is. In fact, I just downloaded a book on my Kindle on the subject."

"Oh, yeah," she said, with mild weariness, "What's the angle this time?"

"It's the girl on the stairs. She left the Book Depository with a friend and went down the same back stairs that Oswald supposedly took at the same time, but she didn't see anybody."

What happened to her, of course, is that, primarily, you've never heard of her. And neither had I until I started reading The Girl On The Stairs by Barry Ernest. And that makes us skeptical. But without cause. Our skepticism, as always, should be pointed elsewhere. Oh, yeah, the Warren Commission talked to her after months of government agents following her and showing up at her doorstep demanding that she go over her story again. Oh, yeah, the Warren Commission discredited her. Even though she begged them to conduct time tests and to interview the other woman who was with her and who, she thought, could corroborate her story.

But that wasn't what the Commission was after. They were interested in creating a narrative that would make sense to the American people, and so anything that challenged that narrative became inconvenient. And so Victoria Elizabeth Adams became inconvenient. And they scared enough that she went into hiding. And perhaps the most amazing part of the story, whether or not you're into conspiracies, is that the author Barry Ernest spent 35 years looking for her. And found her. And told her story.

You probably think he's a lunatic. Who would spend that many years on something so futile, right? Well, if you start reading the book, he sure doesn't sound like a lunatic. He sounds like a young man who started out believing the Warren Commission report lock, stock, and barrel until his position as a college student at Kent State University gave him access to the pages and pages of transcripts and documents that were behind the Warren Commission report (92% of which have since been made available to the public, though redacted; the other 8% will not be released for another 27 years. National security? Right) and he began to doubt and doubt and become fascinated with Victoria Elizabeth Adams. Until he found her and she told her story and he published it, though by the time he did, she had died.

So I'm back to the same place I always am. And, most likely, you are too. This little story intrigues me. This little story either makes you yawn or shake your head sadly. At me.

Here's another way to look at it: aren't we really all the Warren Commission? Aren't we theorists at heart? Don't we invite others who share our theories to join our ranks? Don't we spend our days sifting through the evidence and rejecting any and all of it that stands in the face of whatever theory we are currently working on? Don't we do our best to discredit the "witnesses" who do not corroborate our version of events? If we're disgruntled about our jobs or stations, we certainly aren't interested in hanging out with the gruntled, people we would deem to be naive or, worse, playing along with the powers that be for their own advancement.

Or, wait a second, maybe we're not Warren Commissioners at all. Maybe we're all conspiracy theorists looking for the hidden truths that lie behind the party line. Either way, that is our luxury. We get to play those games.

Our government doesn't. Subsequent studies of the Warren Commission tend to conclude, regardless of whether they support the Commission's findings or not, that the Warren Commission did not do enough to examine and to rule out possible conspiracies. The investigation by the House of Representatives in 1978 concluded yes to Oswald and yes to a likely conspiracy. And stopped there. Of course, the pressure was on and the money had dried up by that point.

So you have to at least wonder, don't you, what other evidence they ignored? And that's all any conspiracy theorist really wants--the acknowledgement that if you don't realize that your government is lying to you, regardless of political party, has always been lying to you, then you haven't been paying attention. But you should.

See you next year at this time. The year after that will be the 50th anniversary of the assassination. That will likely cast it under the microscope once more. Plus, party at my house. Come dressed as a character related to the assassination. I'll be the one holding the open umbrella.

Take These Lies

2011-11-22T15:41:00.001-05:00

Fantasy - George Michael (mp3)

Cindy Crawford. Nude. In a bathtub. Sensuously fondling her upper half and literally rubbing in that all we can do is watch.

Hanging out inside Linda Evangelista’s sweater with her.

Christy Turlington, crawling across the floor ala Madonna in “Express Yourself”... but, like, in a more shadowy way.

And a bunch of George Michael’s cheesiest shit blowing up.

To claim that George Michael’s “Freedom 90” is the greatest video in the history of music videos would be slight hyperbole. But to claim it’s one of the best videos ever, directed by the greatest music video director ever, and for a song that has far more depth and nuance than anyone had reason to expect... that’s not exaggeration. It’s nigh-indisputable.

But let’s start with something simple. When this video debuted on MTV, I was a senior in high school. It’s quite possible I watched this video a few thousand times. I recorded it on my Betamax player (no, seriously), on my Great Videos tape. It landed at the end of the Golden Age of models, when everyone who had ever opened a Sports Illustrated knew names like “Cindy” and “Christy” and “Tatjana” and “Tyra.” No last names necessary.

My original obsession with this video was pure lust. I could have listened to nails on a chalkboard for hours so long as my reward for enduring it was watching Ms. Crawford in that tub. I didn’t really like George Michael or anything he stood for at the time, so I intentionally concentrated on not liking or even paying attention to the song.

Nor did I realize at the time that the mastermind of the video was David Fincher, easily one of my favorite two or three directors. Fincher fanatics know, but most normal people have no idea just how influential and omnipresent the man has been in the world of memorable, eye-candy-friendly music videos and movies.

Fincher made Paula Abdul. Think “Madonna video,” and I dare you not to think first and foremost of Fincher (both “Express Yourself” and “Vogue”). Fincher is the one who made “Cradle of Love” rock. He depicted The Rolling Stones as the size they occupy in our culture in “Love is Strong.” He captured Nine Inch Nails in six-inch desktop pin art in “Once.”

Everything lush, tightly-controlled, world-creating. Fincher. There simply isn't another director who would have me this excited about seeing the Americanized version of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" when I so thoroughly enjoyed the Danish version. But Fincher? Yeah, I bet it's gonna be incredible.

But back to his George Michael video without George Michael, who was at the height of his success mostly on the back of his ass and looks. Sure, they more than made up for the lack of George eye candy with the incorporation of eight of the hottest supermodels on the planet, but it was still a gutsy call.

And yes, on the surface, the song is about George Michael’s desire for liberation from his oppressive Sony recording contract, which became a serious lawsuit in 1993. He’s prisoner to the image he helped create, and he’s promising the listener: let me start over; the quality won’t suffer, and I’ll be a lot happier. I won’t let you down.

With the benefit of hindsight, however, we all can see a second story coming into play in this song, as George Michael begins to accept that the only way he can really be happy as a celebrity and as an artist is to stop lying to his fans (and possibly himself) about his sexuality.

When the go-go was supposed to wake him up, he was gay.

When he was the father figure, when he whispered carelessly, he was gay.

When sex was natural and sex was 1-on-1, he was gay, and he was enjoying "random anonymous sex" on frequent occasions.

I don’t know a single gay man who awoke to his homosexuality in his 30s, but George was 34 when he came out. He was gay long before, and he knew it, and he hid it moderately well enough, and if he hadn’t, none of us would likely know who the hell that talented guy was, because the British-Gay-Men-Named-George market was already well-covered in the ‘80s by Boy George.

I now hear the song as a plea. The video is a statement about models, about celebrities, about Platinum musicians, about how much we think we know and how little we want the truth.

George Michael could have churned out four more albums just like Faith and made millions upon millions of dollars. But he didn’t. He asked -- begged, almost desperately -- his listeners to help him create something closer to the truth.

I don’t have to like his music all that much or be a fan of his to continue to admire that moment of his career.

"Fantasy" was the B-side to the CD single of "Freedom '90." As B-sides go, it ain't damn bad.

Dead Sharks?

2011-11-22T00:01:00.002-05:00

The Pixies--"Where Is My Mind?" (mp3)

I've seen two concerts this month, which means it was a pretty good month. I saw the Pixies in Knoxville and Los Lobos (or just the songwriters with bass and drums) in Chicago. I've become a pretty tough concert critic, so as you read the remarks that follow, remind yourself, first and foremost, how much I enjoyed the two shows.

Both concerts were, in a sense, career retrospectives. The Pixies played their classic album, Doolittle, as well as a before-and-after of obscure B-sides. Los Lobos (actually David Hidalgio and Louis Perez) talked about their songwriting and played a number of their well-known songs as well a number of "newly-discovered" songs that they had written about 20 years ago and that have recently been released as a CD.

I'm sure you see the pattern. In effect, the "fresh" material was that which had rarely, if ever, been heard before, and certainly not live, though it was in no way new material. It's a technique that older rockers are starting to use more and more in various contexts. Neil Young has done it with his Archives, Dylan with his Bootleg Series, Springsteen with his recent release of Darkness On The Edge Of Town plus unreleased songs from those recording sessions.

On the surface, there is nothing wrong with the practice. It helps older artists stay on the radar in an increasingly-competitive musical environment and fans like me continue to clamor for songs from those days, so much so that I spent the better part of an afternoon a week or so ago converting old Springsteen performances from YouTube to mp3. I cherish those performances.

The problem comes, I think, when that is all that a band or an artist is doing. Dylan, Springsteen, and Young continue to record and release new material, and, regardless what you may think of some of those particulars, all are managing the twilight or near-twilight of their careers with grace, creativity, and energy. While I can't claim that any of their most recent releases blew me away, all three contained at least several songs that are worth repeated listenings and, in some cases, are top-notch.

The Pixies, however, don't have any new material. Since they reformed and began re-touring to fan and critical acclaim, they have not recorded and released new songs that give us a sense of where they are today. We only know that they can still play with tightness and skill, can still recreate their signature sound with what appear to be the same chops they had decades ago. Los Lobos I can't speak of with the same definitiveness. One of my favorite bands for decades, I lost track of them several CDs ago. Kiko was such a masterpiece to me, such a peak of their career, that I haven't checked in with them much since. What I do know is that their new material is old.

Woody Allen's script in Annie Hall talked of relationships as compared to sharks. As Allen's character tells Diane Keaton's character (Annie Hall),“A relationship is like a shark–it has to move forward or it dies. What we've got here is a dead shark.”

Is a band that doesn't have new material and doesn't seem to intend to ever have any a dead shark? Yes, I think it is. It is not moving forward.

I'm taking the liberty of bringing in two friend perspectives against their will. One friend acknowledges that the Pixies' tours over the past several years are a blatant, overt money grab, and he defends the idea based on the notion that the band never made any money the first time around and that they deserve to. The other friend, who sees every concert through the lense of a Bruce Springsteen show, thought that the Pixies played their show without joy. Though he postulated several theories for this, including a kind of 90's anti-rock concert concert ethic that the Pixies were undoubtedly a part of, he could not get past what he perceived as the band's indifference to their show and audience except on a proficient, workmanlike level (a charge he was unwilling to level at Dylan, who did the same thing).

I don't know who's right, and I must also mention that Los Lobos was the exact opposite: they went out of their way to engage their audience and the debt that the band owes the city of Chicago for over 30 years of continued support. They worked the crowd, paced the show beautifully, left us satisfied and grateful to have seen such a good show. Not unlike the Pixies.

So I return instead to a different fact, that neither band gave us anything new or recent. They worked nostalgia, they worked the past. And when I got home, something annoying about that surfaced.

Much ado about nothing? I mean, both bands played excellent shows that confirmed both their personal prowess and the strength of their best songs?

All I know is this. In 1974, I saw the Beach Boys do a reunion concert. Yes, in 1974, they were already in retrospective mode. The odd thing about the Boys was that they were still recording at that point, had lost Brian Wilson and perhaps another Wilson or two at that point, but they had new albums that they were still releasing full of new songs that they had written. In fact, one of their comeback hits, "Kokomo," wouldn't come out for several more years. The problem was, even though they were still alive in one sense, on stage they were pretending to be the band that had once been, not the band that was. It was an odd dichotomy. It was disconcerting, at least to me. It was weird enough that I can't really name any reunion shows that I've seen since then. Except the Pixies. And they were a new experience for me, since they didn't come on my radar until Frank Black's solo career.

I guess I'm with Woody on this one; I want that shark moving forward. Otherwise, what's the point?

NOTE: as this post was going to press, this writer discovered two interesting facts: 1) that the Pixies may indeed record new material and 2) that the Pixies have sold the above song to a commercial, its own kind of money grab.

"INP"

2011-11-21T00:08:00.001-05:00

Poised and Ready - Brendan Benson

A colleague’s school in Atlanta hands out something called INPs to students.

INP stands for “I’m Not Prepared.”

These INPs go on a student’s record. They are tracked, and garnering certain numbers of INPs result in a variety of disciplinary actions and parent meetings.

At this point, I told her to stop explaining this to me, because I wanted to imagine the Rest of the Story on my own. I didn’t want reality to get in the way of my fantasy, because I think the INP concept is FB (Friggin Brilliant).

INPs should be considered WTF (Worse Than F’s), because one cannot be properly graded if one has not properly prepared oneself for one’s obligations. In the sheltered bubble of school, few things if any are more counterproductive to learning than a lack of preparation.

An INP is like the John the Baptist of grades. No wait. It’s more like the Jeremiah of grades, the prophet who crashes your party and smashes a clay jar into a bajillion pieces on the floor and says, “See that jar? That’s you. That’s the grade you will earn if you don’t prepare yourself for what’s coming.”

With an idea this brilliant, I only wonder why it must stop with children and students. Why can’t INPs be a part of our daily professional lives?

We have a “calendar team” at my school, and we sit for two hours twice annually, paging through the upcoming year’s events. Members are given several warnings and told to enter all their known events into the system, but inevitably, the meeting rolls around, and several people have failed to enter key events, or they’ve been entered so shoddily and haphazardly that errors abound.

INP.

Twice in the last month, I’ve arranged meeting times where I could train someone on software. In both cases, I asked the other person to compile sample information prepared for use, because I’ve learned that the best way to learn is to watch your work have an actual and practical outcome, to see the training actually result in something useful. In both cases (and in numerous previous encounters as well), the person “was too busy” to prepare for the training sesson. Just didn’t have the time.

INP. Not to mention they’ve made a clear statement about what they think of MY time.

Herman Cain sitting for an interview without knowing how to find Libya on a map. Rick Perry, proposing cuts to departments he can’t even remember. (Hell, at least Reagan forgot stuff AFTER he did it rather than before.)

INP. Which could also stand for “I’m Not President.”

I realize that we all have times in our week, in our personal and professional lives, when we walk in less prepared than we oughtta be. All of us would earn occasional INPs in our weekly and monthly lives. We know it; we shrug it; we move on.

But how many INPs should a good and dedicated employee earn before they’re, well, neither good nor dedicated? How unprepared must one be to earn an INP -- grossly unprepared... or is being merely less prepared than necessary , or “noticeably unprepared” sufficient to earn one?

Four INPs a month? Is that a reasonable over/under? Should we expect even better of ourselves and our coworkers and demand no more than two INPs?

Employee compensation and raises should be tied directly to INPs. A lot of people at my school who regularly earn INPs are overstretched on responsibilities, juggling three or four large jobs, and they’re generally getting paid extra amounts of money to juggle those extra responsibilities. But you can only fit so many clowns in the Time Car, in your Mind Car.

They’re overstretched, but they keep getting rewarded for overstretching, despite the fact that their being overstretched results in less-than-quality performance.

It’s like this in most workplaces, I suspect, but especially true in private schools. I’ve met numerous heads and associate heads of school who teach one or two classes and coach teams. As if running an entire school is only a part-time job.

Hell, maybe it is. Bob isn’t even sure if I do anything all day, so what would I know about what it takes to run an entire complex organization? Maybe not nearly as much as I think.

But it sure would be nice to see just how often, how egregiously, how frequently with one obligation over another, we found ourselves walking in unprepared. A precious few brilliant mutants can wing it every day and get by, but most of us, our INPs cause damage and waste other people’s time. We should at least have to own up to it when we do it.

If you would like more information, contact Billy at INP Consultants, Inc. I’d give you my per diem charges, but I haven’t gotten around to writing them up yet.

Beating The Bushes

2011-11-20T00:01:00.000-05:00

Justin Martin & Claude VonStroke--"Beat That Bird" (mp3)

Sometimes people ask me what I do. I'm sure you've been in the same position. Regardless of our professions, there are always people who, while they may have heard our job titles before, have no idea what the actual job is behind that title.

Case in point: my blogging partner Billy is the Director of Communications here. He has held that position for seven or more years, I'd guess. He was the assistant director before that. And yet, day to day, hour to hour, I have no idea what he does. Not a criticism, just a mystery.

If you work with students, as I do, you discover that their questions are often clumsy and graceless. You usually get used to it. For example, they'll ask me things like, "What do you do all day?" or "Is this what you do all day?" or, as one of our most-entitled, least-aware seniors said to me a couple of weeks ago after camping out in my office for the better part of an hour, after eating my pretzels, after talking to me and to other students who were hanging out in here, too, and after most of all, meditating on my 12-string guitar, "I can't believe you get paid to do this!"

Do what? I pondered. Care for you? Tolerate you? Provide you a safe haven? Give you unconditional acceptance and a listening ear? Dad you?

Anyway, the circumstance lends itself to a variety of smartass answers to questions of what I do. "I run the school," I tell them sometimes. Or "I oversee every aspect of your school life" or "I'm responsible for everything that happens around you." They, of course, snort and shake their heads in disbelief. As they should. Sort of.

But I have another glib answer that offers its own kind of truth: I beat the bushes.

According to the Free Dictionary, the etymology of the expression is based "on the practice in hunting of having someone hit bushes with a stick in order to force birds hiding in them to fly up into the air to be shot." Though the practice is designed to enhance killing, it does make sense as a metaphor, not for the potential killing, but for the making birds fly against their will, at least initially.

Not to be confused with "beating around the bush," which can be a more roundabout way of exposing someone to danger.

Put the fact is that most people are initially reluctant to get involved in something. And these days we are also so nice that those of us who need help are equally reluctant to inconvenience others.

School life requires the lowest form of recruitment, which involves getting people to do things that they aren't necessarily inclined to do, things like planting trees on a Saturday morning or agreeing to serve on committees or leading summer reading groups or buy toys for poor children. There's nothing special to it. You just have to ask and ask and ask and ask.

You have to remind continually. You have to guilt. One of my favorite tactics is to send out my current partial list of people who are helping out, asking people to make sure that I have them listed. It forces others to look through the list, and, when they see who else is involved, that ol' guilt can kick in. One teacher sees that his friend is doing it. One team sees that another has gotten involved. The assistant sees that the head, or vice-versa, is represented and thinks it strategic that he also be part of it.

I'm not so cynical that I believe the people volunteer and help out for the basest of reasons. I have seen too much evidence to the contrary over the years. But if that's what it takes to get as many on board as I think we'll need, I'll use whatever manipulation necessary. Beating the bushes is a shameless occupation, and I'm good at it. I gaze with humor upon my "nicer" colleagues who can't close the deal because they not willing to be enough of a pain in the ass to get all up in people's grills and not give up.

It ain't like I'm trying to sell them cars. I just want them to help out.

Get Some Counseling!

2011-11-17T00:01:00.004-05:00

10,000 Maniacs--"Don't Talk" (mp3)

Some opening thoughts, snippets from three different conversations, one of them internal:

ME TO A FRIEND: I agree, I think you need to get some counseling about...

A FRIEND TO ME: I think every marriage should attend a marriage seminar every single year. Every kind of marriage.

ME TO ME: I don't really do counseling.

The fact that in the past two days I have found myself both recommending counseling and maintaining no interest in a marriage tune-up myself does not surprise me. After all, like the rest of you, I am, as Kris Kristofferson wrote, "a walking contradiction, partly fact and partly fiction."

If I see a friend about to plunge once again into a pattern that keeps getting repeated, then, yeah, I support the idea of counseling. Otherwise, I'm pretty iffy about it.

I am willing to concede that there have been a few times during my 29-year marriage that likely would have benefitted from some counseling, but the more general pattern of people seeking counseling for everything that ails them makes me very nervous. And not only personally-nervous (since I tend to be a pretty private person), but also societally-nervous, because I see the counseling boom as another potential crutch, like the plethora of prescription drugs that plague our society. Yes, they are a plague.

To complicate matters, my older daughter is headed for a graduate program to become a counselor. I think she will make a very good one; I think that she will do a lot of good. But she will become a counselor in the context of social work, where it is most definitely needed.

No, my concern is about the kind of "I'm depressed so I think I need to go see someone or take something" mentality that pervades our daily lives and mental patterns. Again, I am well-aware of the clinical diagnosis of "depression" and the profound ways that it can take over a person's life. What I'm talking about is surviving day-to-day ups-and-downs in outlook, in marriage, in motivation, in hope for the future, in worries about children, in sex drive, in faith, in the what-the-hell-am-I-doing questions that sometimes hit us in the morning shower. To me, those are things that you work through on your own, or with your spouse or partner, or with your children or your parents or your friends. Period.

I am sorry when someone loses a parent; I lost my mother. But that isn't a circumstance that requires medication. We should be depressed when that happens, we should feel like the rug has been pulled out from beneath us, we should feel forced to reexamine all aspects of life. Our bodies and minds are reacting to a massive physical, emotional, and mental void. We should have to learn how to reinvent joy. Over time. Not artificially produce it.

And I guess I look at marriage the same way. Marriages have rough spots. They're supposed to. They're supposed to because two people are never going to be perfectly in sync. They're supposed to because humans are probably not monogamous beings by nature, and to battle with our natures to try to find our better selves. And so, the idea of a marriage seminar, a marriage billboard, a marriage website doesn't do all that much for me either.

What is a marriage seminar but mass counseling? It's a place where two people with a very idiosyncratic relationship have to hold that relationship up to a) a created ideal and b) every other marriage in the room around them. Yeah, I might go for that once some time. Or maybe I should have already. But every year? Good God, no!

I suppose the idea is, at least in this specific case, some kind of Christian version of "the unexamined life is not worth living." While I agree with that idea on the surface as it applies to marriage, I would also amend it in two ways. First, I am certain that Aristotle meant that as an demand for self-reflection, not as a dictum suggesting that couples work through a workbook or listen to a series of CDs together. Someone somewhere with some other agenda created those tools for, dare I say, a capitalistic purpose. Second, examination requires time and action in between. To take on a yearly marriage check-up doesn't leave enough time for a marriage to actually live. It's like training for sprints, not marathons.

And while I'm mixing metaphors, I'll add this. Marriages are sometimes like wounds. They are raw and open and they need a chance to scab over and heal. A yearly seminar, at least to my thinking, does nothing more than rip the scabs off, the scabs of imperfection. I have no interest in that; in fact, I think it's unhealthy, likely to cause infections. May even potentially be fatal.

But beyond that, a marriage seminar, or any seminar, for that matter, is built on the idea that somewhere out there lies THE ANSWER and that maybe, just maybe, these latest folks pulling into town are holding that answer and will reveal sometime late Saturday night, or even early Sunday for a reasonable individual or group fee. If they gave it out any earlier, everybody would leave. So they've got to stretch it out, tease everyone, and then finally reveal that the answer lies within. Or without with Jesus. Things that people already knew, if they'd been paying attention at all during the previous seminars.

I realize that these notions put me outside the current norms of treatment and drug therapy (unless you count beer) and that you probably think that inside I am a mess of unresolved issues and unfulfilled desires. That may well be true. But if it's something that you think I need to work on, let's meet over a beer or a trip to New Orleans or a game of catch in my front yard. I'd rather talk it out that way. My wife will probably join us. We'll probably want to get something to eat, too.

Sideline Judges

2011-11-14T23:53:00.001-05:00

Sooner or Later - N.E.R.D. (mp3)
Truth Be Told - Chris Cubeta (mp3)

“Please don’t. Please please please.”
My ear was flush against the wooden door, and I couldn't move, almost as if it had been glued there...
_________

Nothing is easier than judging from the sideline. When you have no skin in the game, when you have no actual responsibilities, when you can create a fictional, hypothetical and heroic version of yourself, insert them into your own imagined version of real events, and play out every detail however you like, it’s easy to judge real people in their real moments.

He should’ve done that differently. How dare she allow that to happen. How can they go on with their daily lives and ignore that. And so on.

The story is long stale, I guess, but I’m still haunted by Penn State, by an alleged child molester, by the chain reaction of choices and reportage that fell short of sufficient, and by the flood of opinions from all over the country about how easy and simple all of this would have been if only they had been in the center of the hurricane rather than these power-hungry jock egotists at Penn State.

Having been a teenage victim myself, how could I let this story quickly die? I have great hope that this story is the beginning of a national wake-up call, that we might finally be at a place, as an entire society, where talking openly about male-on-male sexual abuse is pulled into the light.

I’ve had these conversations. With real people. It’s easier to talk about, to write about, to debate and discuss Two Girls & A Cup than it is to talk about being molested by an older man.

Think about that, please: adults are more comfortable talking openly about having watched a video where two women make out by orally swapping one another’s fecal matter while naked than they are about boys being raped or molested by other men.

The sooner we can talk about it, collectively, with greater comfort than we talk about decapitation or the N-Word, the sooner we'll reduce the number of victims and minimize the recidivism of predators.
_________

Another reason this story moves me is because I’ve also been the coward.

My first semester in college, I was in my dorm the final night of exams. Because I had to bum a ride from someone else headed back to Tennessee, I was there on a night when at least 90% of campus had gone home, and what remained was a random skeleton crew of students and adults. Four of us from my dorm ended up playing some drinking game and getting shitfaced in one girl’s room, and then I walked the girl I liked -- don’t worry, she was just a friend -- back to her room. On the way back down to my own room, some 20 minutes later, I walked past the room where we’d been playing and drinking, so I was going to poke my head in and say goodnight, but the door was locked.

I knocked. Nothing. I put my ear to the door and heard low mumbling.

The two were making out, and they clearly hadn’t even heard me knock. As I began to walk away, I heard her say something about how they had to stop, how it she couldn’t do this. (She had been dating one guy since she’d been a sophomore in high school, and we all knew it.)

I walked back inside the suite and put my ear against the door. You’d be amazed how thin those doors were. Her voice was scared, yet it also sounded like they were still making out, like she was OK with kissing him, but just not OK that he wanted more.

I felt like such a voyeur. Would they think I had been out here the whole time? Had anything really wrong happened yet? How long could I wait until it was really a serious problem? OhGodOhGodOhGod whatamIsupposedtodo???

It was a cowardly moment for me. No way around it. My "I've been molested" defense felt thin and still does. All my comic book worship and superhero study couldn’t excuse me from sitting out there in the hallway, frozen and horrified. To this day, I still refuse to believe my inaction was a crime. Cowardly, pathetic, perhaps even inexcusable. But criminal?

I can tell you things worked out. I can tell you they stopped, and he didn't rape her. I can tell you I had two future events in college that allowed me to make things right, karmically, to prove I'd learned my lesson. I can tell you lots of stuff, but in that moment, I was frozen, and useless, and utterly uncertain about everything. Most days, I think that feeling of fearful pathetic paralysis was even worse than being the victim. It's certainly haunted me more over time.
_________

To Mike McQueary: I’m sorry fate put you in that spot. I’m sorry you didn’t act, but I won’t judge you. I believe you sincerely tried to do the right thing, even if we can all look back and proclaim it “wasn’t enough.”

To everyone who thinks this is about football or power, I think you haven’t been paying attention. This is about a culture afraid to acknowledge predators, afraid of stirring up uncomfortable situations. It’s about a 28-year-old at the bottom of the totem pole in a country where, I’m sorry, the police would probably have done nothing once he reported it.

Let’s pretend he reports it. You think it’s some magic open-and-shut case, where the police arrest the former assistant coach, the leader of a popular non-profit group, where they lock his ass away forever based on one witness and a simple trial? I hope you’re all that naive as you pass judgment.

He could have reported it. The police could have investigated and arrested. They could have chosen not to press charges. McQueary could have lost his job for not going through the proper channels before making such a dangerous accusation. He would have been unhirable. The charges could have been dropped, and Sandusky could be right where he is at this very moment, just now facing justice for the same increasing and disgusting illness.

But it’s easier to not think. It’s easier to keep things simple, to throw that stone, to use words like “enabling” and “cowardly.”

It’s easier to tell ourselves, as we go to sleep as night, that we’re better people.

Sleep tight, better people. One day, your test will arrive, and I hope you have your Number Two pencil ready.

Me? I pray every night God is grading on one seriously generous curve.

The Big Food Lie

2011-11-14T00:01:00.001-05:00

Little Milton--"Grits Ain't Groceries" (mp3)

The book currently at the top of my "Personal Unwritten Bestsellers" list is called The Big Food Lie.

Here's the premise: the media regularly links obsesity and poverty, claiming that to eat well is too expensive for the poor, but I believe that the complete opposite is true. I believe that anyone can eat a very healthy, hearty, varied diet while being very frugal.

Case in point: buy a chicken. Not an uncooked chicken, but one of the ubiquitous rotisserie chickens that are available in most every grocery store in America. These, of course, vary in price and quality. At an exclusive grocery store, they are likely to cost as much as $7.99 for one; in the Wal-Mart or the Costco, you can get one for $4.99 (the Costco version has the added benefit of not being pumped full of the various chemical crap that taints its Wal-Mart counterpart).

Okay, so 5 bucks for the Costco one I bought last night. It must have weighed about 6 pounds, at least 5 pounds. I pulled all of the white meat off of it and put it on a platter, an ample display of copious breast meat, along with two wings, two thighs, two legs. I made a bowl of mashed potatoes from two large russets, and steamed some green beans, and heated some leftover bread from the freezer.

All four of us ate our fill, and when we were finished, there was still about a pound of white meat, plus all of the dark meat. Meal #1 complete.

Anytime I buy or cook a chicken, I immediately strip the meat, save all of the bones, toss them in a pot with an onion, a carrot, a couple of stalks of celery, two garlic cloves, a teaspoon of peppercorns and enough water to cover all of it. After I bring that to a boil, I let it simmer for about an hour and, unless I forget it and it really boils down, I usually end up with about 3 quarts of incredible chicken stock.

Last night, while I was making that, I was also making white chicken chili. From a mix. You know those overpriced soup mixes; you see them all over the place. Add a packet of spices to some dried beans and you can charge several dollars for them instead of a buck. This one was $2.99 for some white cannelini beans and an "all-natural" spice packet. But even for that price, I was making supper for my daughter's sleepover tonight by using those beans, that spice packet, 7 cups of water, and the white meat from my purchased chicken. When it was all done 90 minutes, I had Meal #2 complete. All it would need would be some tortilla chips and cheese and sour cream and whatever else was around (tomatoes, chopped onions, etc.) to make the white chili a complete meal.

In addition to the chili that I left in the pot for my daughter and her friend, I also froze two quarts of the chili. That's a couple more meals frozen, ready, and waiting.

There are a lot of uses for chicken stock and you may want to freeze some for another use, but when mine was finished, I strained it, added the dark meat from my purchased chicken, chopped up the celery and carrots that had gone into the making of stock, added about 1/2 cup of dried pasta from my cupboard, let all of that simmer for awhile, seasoned it, and then I had two quarts of homemade chicken noodle soup (and without all of the crazy amounts of sodium that are in the canned versions). That's Meal #3 and more.

I also froze a quart of the chicken stock. It will come in handy when I'm making shrimp and oyster dressing at Christmas.

How much did I spend in total? I don't really know, since I have a pretty well-stocked house, but in addition to that $4.99 chicken and that $2.99 chili kit, I didn't use much besides a couple of potatoes, part of a bag of carrots, part of a bag of celery, an onion, a little garlic, and a bunch of stuff (like cheese and chips) that most people always have around their houses. So, what, maybe 20 bucks? How does that compare with taking your family of four to even the cheapest restaurant in the country?

I served three meals for sure, with the potential for perhaps four more waiting in my refrigerator and freezer. Nothing was time consuming. Nothing was complicated. Nothing called for exotic ingredients or special skills.

And, of course, anyone could do any of this perhaps even more cheaply and naturally by doing all of the steps themselves, roasting their own chicken, etc. But I wanted to combine ease with economy to make my point.

There are a myriad of other foods, other ingredients, that would allow for this kind of meal creation and dollar stretching--a bag of black beans, a jar of pasta sauce, a head of cabbage, a carton of eggs. To pretend that eating well is somehow a privilege of the wealthy is the big food lie. I think it's a lie that we, as a society, are content with because it allows us to pretend that nothing can be done about obesity or malnutrition, that our poor are doomed to live on processed, salty starches, even though tackling obesity and malnutrition would be stepping stones to shoring up education and then reaping all of the benefits that would result from that. That's the biggest tragedy we accept.

Aftermath

2011-11-11T15:25:00.001-05:00

Hardliners - Holcombe Waller (mp3)

Let's imagine you and your family just crawled out of your nuclear shelter, having hunkered down in that space since the Cuban Missile Crisis. That's about the only way you could live in America and not know the name Joe Paterno.

What unfolded at Penn State University this past week -- over the past decade, actually -- has created a level of debate and discussion that football fanatics, detractors, or apathetic sideliners can jump in with both feet. The drama involves the destroyed innocence of children, the abuse of power, a well-known sports figure, and the world ending because of a whimper rather than a bang.

The perceived male mentor turned predator of boys -- unspeakable.

The downward-trending descriptions as the event went up the chain of command, from "rape" to "inappropriate contact" to "horseplay" -- uncanny.

The image of thousands of intelligent college students in a mild riot not because of children being victimized, but because of hero worship -- unthinkable.

But what's worth remembering this morning is that, alongside this quiet and slow-developing horror story is a another old as Whoville and the Grinch: the tale of what happens to a community when bad shit lands on the doorstep.

On Saturday, roughly 107,000 people -- a record crowd -- crammed into Beaver Stadium and locked arms. Every player, coach and staffer from both Penn State and Nebraska huddled in the middle of the field to pray. The level and potency of the collective grief was stunning to view, even from a living room in Tennessee.

The cynic could complain that everything was too carefully choreographed, that the entire scene was arranged by propagandists and marketing teams hired to improve a rock bottom opinion of all things Nittany Lion while also warming the confused and hurting hearts of its students, fans and alumni.

Maybe so. Maybe most modern pop music and everything my children encounter on TeenDisney or TeenNick is scientifically crafted by entire groups of songwriters to elicit specific emotional responses. But sometimes an event deserves and requires us to move a step beyond our cynicism.

Watching people of all ages mourning a flood of different issues was powerful regardless of whether the scenario was manufactured. The end of an era, the loss of innocence, the confusion and frustration that a string of events with only one clearcut no good terribly awful person could bring down a legend and possibly a program. But at least everyone in that stadium were in the same place, feeling the same things, in a communal way.

From national events like September 11 to local events like the tragic death of a student. Aftermath is a powerful, magnetic force. That it pulls us together doesn't make it a good thing, but in dark times, we reach and hunger for the tiniest bits of light we can muster.

For all the heavy judgment and debates going on like a hurricane around and inside the Penn State campus, and when the light is hard to come by, at least huddling together in the darkness provides some warmth.

Everyone deserves a little of that.

When a "B+" Becomes an "A" (Evaluations, part two)

2011-11-08T20:41:00.017-05:00

The Dogs--"A Decent Warning" (mp3)

I'm a B+ guy, maybe better than that in some areas, certainly worse in others. And I'm not talking about grades; I'm talking about the kinds of ratings, real or imagined, that come up in everyday life--marriage, friendship, work, etc.

For example, I'm pretty good at my job. B+ good. I might even be the best person at this moment to do my particular job, but I doubt it. And even if true, I'm still a B+. But I get told (in any number of ways that have nothing to do with salary) that I'm A good. You know, really, really, good. Indispensable. Vital cog in the machine and all that.

It isn't true. It's just what's convenient.

Certainly, I have enough self-awareness to be able to do a basic self-assessment. No false modesty necessary. I work at at B+ school full of B+ people. I'm one of those. I have more ideas than most, but not brilliant ideas, just seat-of-the-pants clever ideas. I can create something pretty workable at the last minute under pressure. I can rev up enough personality most days to make the school day more pleasant for our students. But that's it. I'm certainly not shaping pedagogy on a national scale or in a way that anyone should follow.

For whatever reason, we're none of us at the absolute top of our game. It may be institutional. A conservative, Southern school is simply not likely to be on the cutting edge of anything, and we're not. We're good, in some ways very good, but not great. That is no dis. Or it may be that for similar reasons, our school does not attract the absolute top candidates that are out there. It really doesn't matter, we make it work, and what I'm really after is for you to buy my basic point about the B+=A phenomenom that is going on, not my casual critique of where I work.

Are you really an A? Or are you a B+ like me? Are you super Dad or pretty good Dad? Are you great at your job or is it simply that whoever evaluates your performance doesn't want to get into the areas where you could stand to improve and that this lulls you into a sense of unsubstantiated self-satisfaction? To do otherwise is hard work, difficult work, threatening work. And that's my point: nobody wants to do that anymore.

Or is it that you are better than the people around you and that you are elevated beyond where you should be because of that knowledge? Are you a big fish in a small pond? Or do you have the power to keep anyone from really giving you a hard look? Either way, same result.

I'm deeply disturbed by this. This is another of those indicators, for me, of the decline of our country. How can we reform something as important as education when we can't take a hard look at what isn't working and when we can't have frank talks with each other about what we can do to get better? It's much easier to focus on logistics and pressing problems than it is to try to sweep an entire institution or country into major reform.

Because it isn't just education. We don't want to have to do the dirty work of evaluation anywhere. Politicians don't read bills. Citizens don't read politicians. We cede the argument, and therefore the evaluation, to whomever grabs the conch, to whomever gets control of the spin, to whomever owns the message. We listen to B+ music, celebrate B+ products, live B+ lives. If we can admit that even.

We have become so blunt as a society that the only kind of "evaluation" that we understand is winning and losing. We have reduced to a national language where things are either "awesome" or they "suck." The nuanced middle (my own brilliant analysis of "kinda suck" aside) is of little interest to anyone except a few remaining thoughtful journalists and the hosts of comedy news shows. And their voices are easily minimized or ignored.

And so, we want to believe that we are an "A" country when we are really a "B+." If we can win in whatever specific ways are currently important--wars, diplomacy, atomic dominance, technology, Christianity--then we can demonstrate, if only to ourselves, that we're still on top. God forbid that one of our politicians should suggest that we are not. That's not unAmerican, by the way. I'm certainly not claiming that there's a different "A" country out there. I'm just saying that we're no longer it.

Has there been in history anything that has been more dangerous than convincing a group of people, or even one person, that they are something that they are not?

I think there's a different kind of danger now. That a country, our country, that the world needs to play a powerful, positive role can no longer play that role because it is a diminished version of its former self, but it doesn't know it. I guarantee that if we are in that situation now, everyone else will figure it out before we do. We will be the last ones to see it. And rather than acknowledge it, we will look amongst ourselves to find out who we can blame. And because we think we are ''A"s, we won't be able to see our "B+"ness, will have to pin it all on those someone elses who didn't make the grade.

Evaluations (part one)

2011-11-07T06:58:00.007-05:00

Ivana XL--"Nobody Does It Better" (mp3)

Down here there's just winners and losers and don't get caught on the wrong side of that line.
--Bruce Springsteen

Is the art of evaluation gone? Has the tough analysis, the honest recommendation, the timeline for improvement been lost? Or have we lost not the ability to take a hard look at something and offer suggestions for improvement, but instead lost the fire in the belly necessary to carry it out?

On the one side, those who do the evaluating do not want to be perceived as the "bad guy," while those who get evaluated are so thin-skinned that they couldn't take the criticism if it ever came. We can't talk to power, and power can't talk to us, certainly not in any meaningful fashion.

Last week, our school had an accreditation team of school administrators from a variety of other Southern independent schools come take a look at our mission and our programs and our 5-year plan for self-improvement. They were a genial bunch, and I enjoyed talking with them on a couple of occasions. But when it came time for them to issue their final report, at least in its oral form, they had no recommendations of any kind to offer us. Even our headmaster, who enjoys things going smoothly and without conflict as much as possible, seemed a bit befuddled, at least initially, by this turn of events.

Those of us who draw our personal work energies from a constant awareness of the many and varied ways that our school needs to improve could not have been more disheartened. The critiques around the water cooler or over a beer need a little bit of validation once in awhile, some tiny support for the notion that conditions in the workplace need to get better. Heck, some of those critics wouldn’t mind being told that they need to get better!

There are many ways to process this:

1) We're that good. A fellow administrator told the faculty that the visiting team "had never seen a school so clear about its mission."
2) Our headmaster has just been elected president of the governing organization partly responsible for the accreditation that just took place.
3) It was easier for the team to rubber stamp what we are doing and to be able to return home to their own schools and issues without having to give us a real challenge.

My money is on the third possibility. Why not just head back home with a pat on the back and a few bland platitudes? After all, the members of the team are competitors, if not for actual students, then certainly for prestige and reputation. But, beyond that, there’s also a kind of “you’re a professional and I’m a professional and I’m not going to try to tell you how to do your job” kind of mentality at play.

And yet. I sat in one of the meetings, the last one actual before the oral non-report was delivered to the top dogs, and I heard them say, because I brought it up, that the students they interviewed thought that we are behind technologically and the parents they interviewed thought the same thing. And all of this because I told them that much of the faculty thinks we’re behind technologically (my comments undermining the colleague to my left who was towing the party line).

So where’s the recommendation? Where’s the simple statement, regardless of the plan we may have for the future or the philosophy that we articulate: “You guys need to get up to speed. Now. As an immediate priority.”

But this circumstance is in no way limited to this one event. Our situation is small potatoes. Especially when a CEO who screws up a major corporation gets shuffled out the door with a severance package larger than the yearly economy of a Central American country. Especially when a coach who has failed is still getting paid, perhaps still working for the organization, long after he has been removed from his position. Especially when we have no way to look our leaders in the eye and say, “You aren’t doing what you said you would do.”

Put me squarely in the camp of being for hurt feelings, bruised egos, performance ultimatums and good old callings onto the carpet. Let me lobby for performance reviews that mean something and for societal criticisms that let us know the full implications of our failings. But that has to happen globally--some mid-level guy can't really tell it like it is if everyone else is going to traffic in platitudes and the mildest of recriminations? Otherwise, how can we even try to get better?

Way to go, Billy, OR How To Ruin A Perfectly-Good "No Comment November"

2011-11-04T09:25:00.017-04:00

K. Flay--"Less Than Zero" (mp3)

Thanks, Billy. Thanks a lot.

I thought we had agreed that after "ROcktober" we were shooting for a "No Comment November," that we would try our best to write pieces and to post music that would receive no response whatsover, that we would numb our readers with mindless dithering about stupid topics like books that we like and global politics and the inability to get a good night's sleep.

Just had to do it, didn't you?

I thought we had agreed that people, known or anonymous, and their little remarks, insights, and observations about the issues that we raised were no longer important to us. That like true writers, we would put our stuff out there into the void, letting it stand on its own merits without us begging for scraps of recognition from readers.

But, you, you just couldn't hold back. You had to go and comment on my post about sleeping and now the perfect record of zero comments is shot for the month.

What's the point now? Why even write anything for the rest of November? Even if we can get back on our games and write stuff that no one, INCLUDING OURSELVES, will respond to, even if we can create a string of perfect "0 comments" for the next 26 days, we still have to look back at your blemish, your digital zit on the otherwise clear face of our "No Comment November."

You were feeling sorry for me, weren't you? You didn't think that I could go for two straight posts without a comment. Well, save your pity for another blog. Me, I'm all about the "0 comments."

I mean, what does your comment even say? That you've had your own issues with lack of sleep? That the reasons for those have changed as the stages of your life have changed? That you liked my post? Big. Fucking. Deal. Do you really believe that your personal connections to my piece are important? That anyone cares what you thought about it? That risking the chance that either of those were so was worth destroying an otherwise-perfect streak of "0 comments"?

If we're to continue this thing, I'd only ask that you think a little bit more before you actually ruin something so completely. I mean, I could delete your comment, but if someone clicked on the comments to check, they'd still discover that there was a comment and that the "blog administrator" intervened. Your digital footprint cannot be erased. It's permanent, pal. And it's stomped through the fresh white snow of an otherwise un-walked-upon field.

C'mon, Billy. Don't be that guy. Okay? I'm despondent.

The Murther of Sleep

2011-11-03T00:01:00.002-04:00

Amber Wilson--"Sleep" (mp3)

MACBETH:
Me thought I heard a voice cry “Sleep no more!
Macbeth doth Murder sleep”—the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,(50)
Chief nourisher in life's feast—

*I have a friend who can't sleep because of money.
*I have a friend who can't sleep because he's dissatisfied with where his life is heading.
*I have a friend who, like me, may potentially sleep in more than one location in a given night.
*I have a friend who leaves his house every morning by 5:30AM.
*I have a friend who responds to emails or Words With Friends in the middle of the night.
*I have a friend who takes a pill, or part of a pill, to help him sleep.

Talk to anyone over 35 or so, and they will tell you that their sleeping patterns have changed either drastically or gradually since the years that he or she used to go to bed, fall asleep, and remain in one of the various levels of sleep until it was time to get up.

I can't tell you when I last slept through the night.

That sounds like something that someone would say about a baby. "We can't wait until he starts sleeping through the night." Well, keep waiting, baby, 'cause it ain't happening anytime soon.

Last night, through no fault of her own (okay, well...some fault, from my perspective), my wife kept me pretty much awake from 1AM or so until it was time to get up. Actually earlier. I don't sleep until my alarm goes off; I wake up anywhere from an hour before to a few minutes before.

My wife is a cell phone junkie. If The New York Times sends her an update in the middle of the night, she'll pick up the phone and read the story. She thinks I can't tell. Like a child with a comic book and a flashlight, she thinks the lighted tent next to me can't be seen from the outside. But it can. But it usually doesn't keep me awake.

She's also an attorney, and attorneys seem doomed to abnormal sleep--the dark hours are the time to untangle arguments and to plan strategies and work out logic. So, she may well sigh or groan in her sleep, may even talk to herself (though more likely in the shower).

But that isn't really the problem. Just because something wakes you up doesn't mean, necessarily, that you can blame the rest of sleepless night on it. What I've figured out is that I have a limited number of "wake-ups" to use during a given night before I'm pretty certain I'm never going back to a satisfactory sleep. I can't tell you. I just get the feeling in my half-awake brain, like a kind of anxiety, when I've been awakened too many times and I know I'm done.

On a good night, I will wake up a number of times, maybe even check the clock and fall back asleep with the knowledge that I have several hours before I have to get up. I don't come fully awake; I just kind of readjust.

If it is not a good night, as in I have what feels like a big obligation or hurdle that I need to get past the next day, then I will go to bed a bit earlier, sleep soundly until some time in the middle of the night, and then, when I wake up, I know that I am up. At that point, my mind will focus on the task ahead and I know that I am not going back to sleep. But I do not get up. I will lie there and rest as best I can.

I have read somewhere that the best approach to sleeplessness is the counter-intuitive idea that I should try to stay awake and that this will make me fall asleep. That might well work, but I am afraid to try it, afraid that whatever activity I might engage in during this effort--reading, television, a game on my phone--will overstimulate my brain and doom me yet again.

It is ironic, I suppose, that as we get older and more tired, sleep flees from us more easily. But isn't that because our minds are clinging to consciousness more desperately? Or is it because our bodies just don't settle as easily, don't remain comfortable in the same position for as long? Is it because, as my friends and I like to joke, we've got "sin in our lives," a long-ago condemnation issued toward one of our ranks? I suppose it doesn't matter. Like an old, lonely person who suddenly finds a lover, we are simply grateful for sleep when it does come. Nor do we condemn it much when it takes its seductions elsewhere. What other choice do we have?

The Rain Dilemma

2011-11-02T09:41:00.000-04:00

Bottom of the Rain - Buffalo Tom (mp3)

“Don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining.”

Here’s my problem with that quote: we don’t mean it.

In Greece, a country that has collectively written a check its body couldn’t cash, people are rioting. They believe their bankruptcy is some secret German plot rather than the consequences of their own fiscally-irresponsible actions. They pissed on themselves for years but were OK with it, because they just kept calling it rain.

In America, The Great Recession might as well be called The Binge Drinking Hangover from Hell, because the entire situation can be summed up the same way: “How was I supposed to know that drinking the entire fifth would make me puke all night and leave me so useless the next day?”

Our wealthiest and most ambitious worked behind the scenes to cut corners and fly towards the sun, and our average Joes and Janes maxed out every penny and every piece of plastic we could find until, for one shining moment, our entire society -- our big family of 307 million -- was spending more than it was taking in.

Seriously. Let that fact swirl around in your mind for a minute. Appreciate the gravity of an entire continent, for the first time in our modern history, spending more than it earns. (We only once dipped below 5 percent before the mid-90s.)

By recession time, more than half of the 25-34 demographic in America had ZERO savings. Most of those, it was surmised, had never even grown up thinking a savings account was necessary.

Savings? Fuck that, the lease is almost up on my Scion!
Savings? Fuck that, they’ve just come out with 3D televsions!
Savings? Fuck that, I haven’t yet seen the world!!

You know what we do to people who tell us we’re being pissed on? We vote them out of office. And we replace them with people who tell us it’s raining.

Locally, we have Howard School (of Academics and Technology and Fluffy Unicorns), a school with a rich history that long ago became the preeminent eyesore of inner-city educational horror. Before desegregation, Howard was the shining star that the black community around Chattanooga held up as proof of African-American potential. The school educated and graduated untold numbers of highly- and moderately-successful and men and women of color and beat plenty of odds and sneers to do it.

Yeah, that was, like, 35 years ago.

Or, if you want to stretch the lie and include the era of Reggie White’s years as proof that Howard was not yet a blight, then we’ll just say 30 years. For the past 30 years, Howard has been a shame and a tragedy. It has failed tens of thousands of teenagers, almost all of them black, almost all of them poor. The crime of it being labeled a “persistently failing school” by the state is that this label is about 25 years overdue.

So here’s what’s funny: the people who are angriest about Howard earning such a label are the people the school has failed now for two generations.

“Now is not the time to pull the rug out from under them,” said Walter Williams, a former local judge and one of the school’s alums from its Golden Era.

Um, has he looked at this rug? It’s a shitty rug. They haven’t replaced that rug since he was a student. It's stained, moth-eaten, frayed, and out of fashion. It's never been shampooed or even vacuumed. You can’t help but wonder why anyone would want that damn rug, or why anyone would object to it being pulled out and burned.

But people don’t rally behind slow neglect and decay. We don't hate the dude who lifts a dollar from the cash register every day for 10 years nearly as much as the guy who steals $100. We only rally when someone pulls a fast one. Americans are like frogs in boiling water who get upset about the jump in the electricity bill.

I think we like being lied to. I think we crave being deceived. I think when we pick up that huge turd and sink our teeth into it, we want to be told it’s Hershey’s Special Dark. When we rub our face in shit, we want to be told it’s deep-cleansing mud. When someone pisses on us, we want to be told it’s just rain.

How else to explain our modern world?