let's poeticize

...few weeks ago, then. Long lost friend from La Grange Park posted a lyric from Van Morrison's Astral Weeks (1968) on his Facebook wall. I peepered on that verse and felt:

1) newfound respect for said friend
2) a vague urge to cry

Here's why 2) happened:

Back during summer ‘05, clown-carred into a middle seat of a Portland-bound flight out of O’Hare, I thumbed eagerly thru my new book (Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, a Lester Bangs anthology). Lester ain't a virginal blog topic; I referenced him here. Anyway, one of the articles in Carburetor Dung addresses Astral Weeks, Van’s second release as a solo artist. Here's how Bangs (an unabashed Van disciple) concludes his analysis of this seminal album:

"...it might be pointed out that desolation, hurt, and anguish are hardly the only things in life, or in Astral Weeks. They're just the things, perhaps, that we can most easily grasp and explicate, which I suppose shows about what level our souls have evolved to. I said I wouldn't reduce the other songs on this album by trying to explain them, and I wont. But that doesn't mean that, all things considered, a juxtaposition of poets might not be in order…”

[Lester then presents one Van lyric and a poem from Federico Garcia Lorca, a prominent Spanish writer who died in ‘36.]

If I ventured in the slipstream
Between the viaducts of your dreams
Where the mobile steel rims crack
And the ditch and the backroads stop
Could you find me
Would you kiss my eyes
And lay me down
In silence easy
To be born again

--Van (from the title track off Astral Weeks)

My heart of silk
is filled with lights,
with lost bells,
with lilies and bees.
I will go very far,
farther than those hills,
farther than the seas,
close to the stars,
to beg Christ the Lord
to give back the soul I had
of old, when I was a child,
ripened with legends,
with a feathered cap
and a wooden sword.

--Lorca

Tough-ass Mike lost his shit after reading Lorca's poem. It was just too much; I cried and cried. With those sixty-two words, Lorca issued my stale, sepian world a (much-needed) Randian shrug. I read and re-read that passage probably fifteen times whilst aboard the plane, tearing up every time. There's really nothing more life-affirming than a bare, minimalist work of art powerful enough to fell an emotionally armored man.

(…props to Lester for isolating two brilliant verses that warrant magnification…)

I'd like to give Lester the same treatment. One might argue that Lester (like a Nietzsche, say) was born posthumously. Though he boasted a rabid readership while alive, he's reached far more since his untimely death in '82. For us to ignore Lester's amphetaminic, electric prose would be to deprive our genius-starved society of a beautiful mind. In a crude attempt at an epitaph of sorts, let’s turn the mic on him as he sidles up to literary pioneer Mark Twain:

"It is a fact that nine-tenths of the HUMAN RACE never have and never will think for themselves, about anything. Whether it's music or Reaganomics, say, almost everybody prefers to sit and wait till somebody who seems to have some kind of authority--even if it's seldom too clear just where they got it--comes along and informs them one and all what their position on the matter should be. Then they all agree that this is gospel, and gang up to persecute whatever minority might happen to disagree. This is the history of the human race, certainly the history of music."

--Lester Bangs (from Carburetor Dung)

"When an entirely new and untried political project is sprung upon the people, they are startled, anxious, timid, and for a time they are mute, reserved, non-committal. The great majority of them are not studying the new doctrine and making up their minds about it, they are waiting to see which is going to be the popular side."

--Mark Twain (as quoted in the Dec. 22nd/29th New Yorker)

Someday, if I do it all right, if I tell it straight and true, perhaps someone will choose to juxtapose my words with someone of relevance…
...

psychotic reactions re: wenner dung

Rather than offer up the snide, vengeful blog I first intended to write (Rolling Stone, thanks for providing glossy shit-catcher for my parakeet, or something in that vein), I’ve decided to go all Bacharach on y'all by adhering to his love, sweet love credo. There’s enough madness and misdirected ire skulking about to last us another two World Wars; for that reason, I’ll try to keep this rant relatively civil. It’s nearly Christmas, after all, and I’ve had a very pleasant day.

But you ain’t off the hook, Wenner (Jann Wenner is the co-founder and publisher of Rolling Stone magazine). Let’s take a moment to consider how RS, cultural fossil and THE one-time titan of the music print world, has baited and switched into a fanzine for indiscriminate rock fans and/or fifty-five year old men and/or naïve Top 40 receptacles interested in The Killers and/or Jackson Browne and/or Beyonce.

RS’s most recent list (The Top 50 Albums of 2008) says more than any blog can. Here’s a few artists that made the cut:

Bob Dylan (Saint Bob!), TV on the Radio (a safe, polite pic at #1), Lil Wayne (Wenner: “Alright, staffers: We’re gonna throw this Carter nonsense way the hell up there--top 5, say [it got #3]--for all the black readers. Gotta bring ‘em back over to our side after that Eagles cover.”), The Jonas Brothers (!), John Mellencamp (?), Randy Newman (haha!), Jackson Browne (there he is again!), Nas (see Lil Wayne), Taylor Swift (erm), Guns n’ Roses (wow).

Let’s wade thru this whiplash sea of greying goatees and tweeny glitter and break it all down. What happened here?

Well, a few things. Rolling Stone--many, many moons ago--wagered every last chip on standard guitar/bass/drums rock n’ roll. Granted, it’s hard to blame Wenner for his fanciful astigmatism since we know what was going on in 1967 (the year RS debuted): Doors, Beatles, Hendrix, Cream, Floyd, Stones, Kinks, Donovan, Velvets, Who, Love, Beefheart, etc., etc. All powerhouse rock bands, every last one of them releasing disgustingly great vinyl within a period of about nine months. RS got in at the right time (Wenner deserves credit for capitalizing on a golden nugget of opportunity, though--admittedly--said nugget was nestled square in a crease of the most affluent pocket of rock history we’ve ever seen) and recruited a readership the old-fashioned way: thru stimulating, no-bullshit analysis of the mainstream music scene.

Hunter S. Thompson and Lester Bangs (pictured at right) wrote for RS, as did Cameron Crowe and Robert Christgau. Four resident badasses. Thompson, of course, will forever be associated with the “gonzo” label. He blurred lines between reporter and subject, observer and participant, as effectively (and humorously) as anyone before or since. Lester Bangs is Lester Bangs, the greatest rock writer of all time [an aside: Bangs hated RS, and for good reason. Wenner wanted his writers to lick the asses of the rock stars, and an ass-licker Bangs was not.]. Crowe, an intrepid, precocious reporter who lived out every teenage rock fiend’s dream, went on to become a noted filmmaker after many years of dues-paying music writing. Christgau ranks as one of the greatest (and most influential) rock critics of all time, an inarguable distinction.

I cite the above fellas only to remind all three of my readers that RS once meant something.

Depending on who you ask, RS forfeited relevancy sometime in ‘68/9 (when it failed to recognize hard rock and heavy metal as legitimate movements, choosing instead to champion singer-songwriters above all others), ’77 (when they laughed off punk as a passing craze) or ‘round the time that hip-hop and rap broke (since--you guessed it--they paid the genre no mind). Some insist they’re still relevant, but I have yet to hear a viable argument in the magazine's defense.

In short, RS has always been a few steps behind the pace car. For a publication that claims to worship the forward-thinking Dylans and Lennons of the world, RS seems content reclining in its well-eroded rocking chair, head bobbing along to--oh, I dunno--Eric Carmen?

What I’ve witnessed whilst methodically dissecting this whole RS fiasco (believe me, I’ve been watching closely) is an all-too-common trend in the corporate world: a glaring lack of direction.

Businesses tend to fail not for wont of money, but for absence of vision and order. There’s a reason the MTA, NYC’s transportation authority, is going bankrupt, and it sure as hell ain’t from a lack of disposable funds. Well over half of the city's 8 million inhabitants swipe at the subway turnstiles on a daily basis, yielding untold MILLIONS in gross income--every day! per diem!--for the transportation authority. Now they're crying for a bailout. On Sunday my buddy Lucas and I discussed this over a slice. Our conclusion? Plump, handsomely-revenued companies have no room to bitch about money. You can trace the roots of MTA's bankruptcy to the corrupt, incompetent managers decisioneering from their swivel chairs. Let’s face it: the most effective product/service in the world won’t realize its potential without a sound marketing strategy or well-crafted financial objective…

…which brings us back to RS. Has Wenner ever called a closed-door meeting to discuss the future of the magazine? I get the feeling he hasn't sent that memo in well over two decades. When rock--in the narrow, 60s sense of the word--branched off into all these other subgenres (metal, prog, punk, post-punk, synth-pop, grunge, hip-hop, indie, etc., etc.), RS still had a choice. They could’ve decided--then and there--to tack one way (“let’s stick to covering radio-friendly rock…”) or the other (“let’s isolate a niche and exploit the hell out of it…”). Wenner, though, never called that meeting; as a result, his precious rag suffers from an identity crisis.

That’s why modern, well-respected RS oil-burners David Fricke and Peter Travers have no idea what the fuck’s going on with their magazine (though they certainly wouldn’t concede that, for fear of the AXE). Those wee voices in their brainiums urging them to craft faithful, honest reviews are allowed hardly a syllable ‘fore they’re bound and quickly gagged by Big Brother (a.k.a. Wenner, shown at right in a rather old photograph). Next thing you know, Fricke and Travers (zombie eyes marked by a tired glaze) toss out stars in a confetti fashion. Three and 1/2 for you! Four for you! Album of the year! Album of the decade!

Where’s the continuity?

Wenner’s recent decision to cover all vaguely-important artists (even the burnouts who clamored around during RS’s formative years) has resulted in the muddled mess you see before you today. It’s a shame. A damn, damn shame. You could’ve done it so much better, RS.

In semi-related news, I really dig the album Tim by the Replacements. Fantastic record.

Love you all. Happy Christmas. War Is Over!


(If you want it.)

i award you no points, and may god have mercy on your soul

I don’t know you--to be fair, there was that time we “met” thru that one friend of a friend, but all we did was stiffly shake hands--yet I already know everything about you. See, I fine-toothed your profile when you sought out and befriended me on Facebook. Here’s what I discovered:

1) You are adamantly against country music, but you love “everything else.” This is highly coincidental. I, too, appreciate the late 70s/early 80s Manchester scene! We should talk about it sometime.

2) You like “wheat toat [sic] slathered with Smuckers strawberry jam,” but you do not like when the underside of the pillow is too cold. That freaks you out. Puppies, also, are great.

3) You do not read things unless they are glossy, colorful things with lots of pictures and exclamation points. I know this because you wrote “Us Weekley [sic]” when prompted to list your favorite books.

4) Some mysterious person with a one-letter name (-R) once said, “the blue one!” That is apparently one of your favorite quotations, as is “your [sic] totaly [sic] paying for that," a funnyism attributed to a person named -M.

5) You do NOT like when people ignore your phone calls. They are jerks.

6) You like sweet kisses.

7) I can tell by that heavily-shadowed, super-dramatic, overly-filtered profile pic of 1/8 of your out-of-focus face that you’re very, very beautiful. And, like, artistic. Look at all that negative space! Where was this taken? An aquarium? It's soooo ambient.

8) You're in a troubling amount of pictures, and I'm convinced you know every twentysomething in D.C. Wading through your indexed albums (SUMMER, FREINDS [sic], RANDOM), though, I'm having trouble differentiating one orange-skinned blonde from another. They all look the same to me. The babe--I mean, the girl--pretending to lasso that fauxhawked dude in album 2, picture 12…is she the same one spilling that obnoxious cocktail with the obtuse novelty straw in album 9, picture 48?

9) Politically, you are “moderate.”

10) Judging by your last four status updates, things are not going very well for you right now.

11) Emoticons? You’re for ‘em!

12) When it comes to religious views, you are “...”. (I have no idea how to punctuate the end of that sentence.) I don’t know what "..." means. Do you worship an ellipsis?

13) You “love to have fun” and you “love laughing.”

14) That David Nicholson guy wants to get in your pants. He’s posted on your wall six times since yesterday evening. He, like you, doesn’t shy from emoticons.

I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
...

i've decided that this:

is the greatest song of all time.
...

a life in sports, part three

Being an irresponsible hedonist, I’ve whooped it up with the best of ‘em.

Can in hand, fist punching at the sky, freakin’ to a verse or a sledge riff or a guttural yelp emanating from stereos so loud they oppress every ear in range, awash in sweat, dreaming romanticized dreams of supple women and rogue adventure and decades that now exist only on moving film and in photographs and dreaming also of Europe and any place that is not my own, spending money I do not have on things that might provide--if even for a fleeting moment--reminder of why I’m alive, voraciously researching life’s curious minutiae (what hue is mauve, exactly?) by reason of pride, driving far too fast on a too-dark road, staying out past hours of decency and trailing the sun, saying all the wrong things whilst cowering under the dubious umbrage of proper intentions, wondering how some electric human beings--those who “get it”--manage to experience two hundred years of life in less than forty, grasping profound epiphanies while intoxicated from lack of sleep or overabundance of stimulae (and beer), laughing at the world, in on the joke, back behind the curtain interrogating the wizard.

Anyway, the reason I got on about all that hedonism junk is that I took in a ridiculously good film over Thanksgiving weekend, one that realerted me to the single greatest pleasure--running--I’ve ever known.

Nothing approaches the organic, corporeal high of a brisk 10-miler in the dark. There's really nothing else like it.

Sarah Cate, this one’s for you. Thanks for telling it like it is.

About a month ago I received this message in my Yahoo! inbox:

Elwood! The long awaited sports blog #2 just came across my eyes! Ok. Here's the deal, I am unhappy with it. But this is a good thing. Now you know that I really mean "that's awesome" when I say "that's awesome" and it's not just me being a kiss up or something. Elwood, that blog was not awesome. I was really looking forward to some insight to this huge mystery about you---you ran cross country in college?? Damn right you were sick of writing.

Sarah’s right; that blog was not awesome. Here’s part three (there will be a fourth, too—one running entry probably won’t suffice).

The aforementioned film (“The Long Green Line”) is a documentary about Joe Newton (ultra-tiny pic at right), who may be the finest high school cross country coach in history. He’s helmed the York squad in Elmhurst, IL for 50 years; 26 of those years have yielded a state title. Quite simply, he’s one of the most dominating, inspirational coaches--of any sport, and at any level--the world has ever seen.

York and Lyons Township (my h.s. alma mater) share a conference, meaning we’ve been on the receiving end of York’s trouncings on more than a few occasions. To put things in perspective, allow me to relate a few cold, non-negotiable figures:

York’s top 5 guys placed 1, 3, 4, 6, 10 at State in ‘99, making for a 24 point total (to determine a team score, one takes the sum of the finishing places). For comparative purposes, consider that the second-place team, Schaumburg, scored 139. It’s disgusting how convincingly York flattened their competition. Illinois--like California, Texas and other large, densely-populated states--boasts terrific depth and quality in prep cross country, but you wouldn’t know it by those results. York's 24-point performance came during the fall of my senior year. I was in the race.

I worked my ass off to compete in that meet. As a freshman, four years prior, I’d barely managed a 6:00 mile. Completely neophytic in all things running and grossly underdeveloped (I entered high school measuring in at just over five feet and barely 100 pounds), I hadn’t yet shown any real promise. During practice runs I lingered at the rear of the pack, clopping along in ill-fitting shoes.

Four years and a few thousand miles later, I toed the line at the state meet representing our top 7 (we numbered about 85 in total), competing for a school that hadn’t reached the state finals as a team since the 70’s. To earn our berth, we’d subverted a decades-long drought by placing third in our Sectional meet the week prior.

Let’s rewind, though. I logged 508 miles in the summer of ’99 (works out to about 6.5 per day), and that’s on top of the miles I walked while caddying. Seeing as I worked nearly every day that summer, I probably averaged 50 miles a week over at the country club. After four or five hours of bag-carrying, I’d arrive home, switch over to running tee and shorts and set off on my evening run--a solitary, cathartic affair.

Day One. I was ready. We were ready. Things went accordingly. Every day we put one foot in front of the other.

A month before state, I clocked my best performance to date: 16:33 on a hilly, slow three-mile course, good for 4th on the team. I’ll be the first to admit that time isn’t particularly impressive, but I felt smooth and controlled throughout, suggesting that I was ready to uncork a biggee in the coming weeks. Three days later, I lowered my mile best to 4:51 during a time trial on the track.

Then disaster struck. For reasons unknown, I peaked nearly three weeks early. My 16:33 was the apex, the toppermost, the high point, the gold star of my season. After that, the ol’ bod let me down. I felt sluggish and fatigued during practices, competed poorly in the Regional meet and went from being our 4th guy to our 7th (only 7 run).

Sectionals was particularly painful, selfishly speaking. Our team got third, as I said, and pandemonium ensued. LT had eclipsed all expectations, but I’d run one of the worst races of my high school career. Struggling through a pathetically slow last mile, utterly spent, I was our 7th and final finisher. When I heard we’d made it, I cried as I hadn’t cried in years. It was one of the greatest feelings of my life, albeit bittersweet. All those miles, all those practices, all those late-nite runs borne of desperation and a vague vision, took on new meaning. We were actually heading to the state finals. I couldn’t believe it. There’s an amateurish home video floating around somewhere; one of the parents shot it that day on a camcorder. I remember seeing my face upon replay and being taken aback. Is that what I look like when I cry?

Days later, I faced the unenviable task of appealing to my head coach for the chance to compete at the Big Show. My performances in the preceding weeks hardly qualified me for the task, but I pleaded my case. I remember breaking down in tears in the locker room, overcome. Coach, I said, I put in the miles, I’ve put in four years of miles. I’ve dreamed of this moment since I first fell in love with the sport, back when I was a freshman. Hell, I've been in our top 5 for the majority of the season. He didn’t answer me just then. Mike, he said, we’ll decide this on race day. Be ready to go.

One week after sectionals we took a chartered van to Peoria, Illinois. I awoke on the morning of the meet with my fate still hanging in the balance. Warmed up with the team, breathed it all in (to this day, the smells of fall make me ache for cross country), laced up a pair of well-worn spikes, safety-pinned a paper number to my torso, right across the abdominals. Wasn’t until ten minutes before the race that my coach took me aside and told me I’d be competing.

So then the gun went off, four years reduced to a race lasting just north of a quarter of an hour. I ran poorly, but the team impressed. Our top guy, Brendan Gaffney, grabbed 4th in 14:33(!), running the race of his life in the process. We secured 8th as a team, a solid showing. At the finish (I refuse to enter my time--you can look it up if you wish), we were greeted by an army of supporters, many of them crying those same tears I’d cried the week before. I grinned, stupidly, thrilled to be alive and fit and involved in such a beautiful sport, surrounded by the greatest friends and teammates one could hope for. As seems to be a trend, I look back on that day and wish I knew how to embrace such a scene in all its fragile, picturesque sublimity without sacrificing any detail. Alas, I’ve relegated it to fuzzed memory, a memory I’ve reconstructed for the better.
...

elwood runs for v.p.

A few nights ago I dreamt a very revealing dream, one that drew attention to the irrational nature of my being.

It was beyond bizarre, this dream. I’d decided to run for Vice President of the United States, a procedural impossibility for more than a few reasons: I a) boasted zero experience (local or national) in public office, b) was running at my current age of 25, which disqualified me on account of my being ten years too young for the position in question, c) had no campaign money and d) was running for an office that one cannot run for. One must be nominated by his or her political party.

Owing to a sitcomish series of events, Elwood advanced thru a few primary-like things without encountering formidable opposition of any kind. Suddenly, inexplicably, only one man remained between me and the veep chair. Nationwide polls showed me leading this dude by a very slim margin (52 to 48) hours before the final votes were to be cast. The Vice Presidency was all but mine! Oddly, I remember no debates, no public appearances, no television spots, no self-promotion of any kind. People kept voting me thru to the next round, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure why. I think I was still living in Brooklyn, just hanging out.

Here’s where things got weird. I recall a sudden, distinct urge to get the hell outta Dodge and forego the rest of my run. I realized--in a moment of panic--that I wasn’t cut out for the job, but my reasoning was completely ass-backwards. Rather than concede the obvious, blinding truth (that my political non-experience rendered me useless in high public office), I decided that I didn’t want to purchase a new suit and participate in debates and whatnot (in the flawed universe within my dream, the Vice President apparently debates after securing his post). That was my reasoning.

In other words, my fears were juvenile and utterly baseless. It's kinda like being afraid of spaghetti because someone mugged you once while you vacationed in Rome. In this dream, I was fully prepared to piss away my political dreams for something so petty as a wardrobe upgrade.

Well, that’s not entirely true. I suppose my most prescient fear was one I suffer from in real life: the fear of public speaking. There are few things which frighten me more than a lone, naked microphone turned away from three or four hundred expectant faces (an aside: Jerry Seinfeld once pointed out that, “According to most studies, people’s number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. Does that sound right? This means the average person, if you go to a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than giving the eulogy.”). The sudden realization that one of my duties as Vice President would be to speak in public settings--under America’s scrutinous eyeball--proved too much for me.

My dream reinstated something I’ve known for years; time and again I allow my fears to get the best of me, preventing me from taking definitive action. As a case in point, I’ve actually shied from jobs and social situations that might require me to get up in front of people. This cowardice shames me. Fears are to be isolated and conquered, not reinforced.

It’s one aspect of my being, however, that I’m determined to change. This dream woke me up (both literally and figuratively) and slapped me around a bit. Life’s too short to allow for the influence of unfounded fears.

A dream analyst would probably have something to say about me running for Vice President rather than going for the whole enchilada, too, but that’s a post for another day.
...

area grammar cop ruthless, uncompromising

Alright ever’body: shut yer yappers, flip those ballots and mark your selection with an X. Choose only one of the five, please…

1) ___You embrace the so-called Oxford comma (also known as the serial comma).
2) ___You reject the so-called Oxford comma.
3) ___You neither embrace nor reject the so-called Oxford comma, for you have no idea what an Oxford comma is.
4) ___You drown, all your writing, with as many commas, as you can, muster, because commas, are great, and, the more, commas the better, so you’re for ‘em, the Oxford commas, whatever they are.
5) ___U hate commas omg their so annoyying and given the choice U prefer to comunnicate ONLY LIKE THIS GRAMMER BE DAMMED HEHE LOVE U LIZA!!!

…and, while you’re at it, please X one of three options down at the bottom of the page:

6) ___You kinda like the innocuous Vampire Weekend, you guess.
7) ___You kinda dislike the innocuous Vampire Weekend, or whatever.
8) ___You have never listened to Vampire Weekend.

Now fold it up real tight and drop it off in one of these wooden boxes. We’ll tally* them all up later.

Your author, this blogger, very much disapproves of the Oxford comma and cares not for Vampire Weekend, band behind the breezy, weightless “Oxford Comma” (first line: “Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma?”). Within the confines of the above rubric, I’m all of a 2) and ¾ of a 7). That said, I grudgingly admit there’s a time and a place for that stiff-collared protuberance (the comma, not the band), though it’ll be a cold day in hell ‘fore I recognize Missour-ah as a state!

Before we proceed, let’s identify and define this grammatical eyelash I insist on blathering about. Lay your peepers on these two statements:

a) Soundgarden, Bush and The Toadies were all decent 90s bands.
b) Soundgarden, Bush, and The Toadies were all decent 90s bands.

Close observation of statement b) reveals an added comma after Bush; that, folks, is the Oxford comma. Such commas are employed after the penultimate item in a list, right before the conjunction. Both a) and b) are acceptable sentences, technically speaking. Just as a fellow might spell grey (my preferred spelling) with an e OR an a, one sha’nt be chastised for utilizing (or shunning) the Oxford comma as he sees fit.

The literary community seems a bit divided on the issue, and I’ve yet to detect a decisive trend in either direction. Author/pop culture enthusiast Chuck Klosterman proudly wields the comma, and you needn’t look further than the title of his most well-known book (Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs) to suss him out! His seemingly superfluous comma drove me crazy ‘fore I even cracked the spine.

Last night on the subway I thumbed thru this week’s Onion and came across Klosterman’s guest review of Axl’s Chinese Democracy (an inspired piece, btw). Here’s the caboose of a rather long-winded sentence from the review:

“…a few Robert Plant yowls, dolphin squeaks, wind, overt sentimentality, (←!!!!!) and a caustic modernization of the blues.”

There it is again! Newman!

Needing a grammatical brush up (and preparing to cry foul on Klosterman), I appealed to Wikipedia. Turns out there are very specific instances where that extra comma resolves contextual ambiguity. For that reason (it pains me to admit this), the clunky Oxford deserves a fair shake.

Take Teresa Nielsen Hayden's book dedication (this was pulled straight from the serial comma Wikipedia entry):

To my parents, Ayn Rand and God.

The absence of that second comma makes for a bit of confusion. Who are her parents? Ayn Rand and God? Unlikely. Let’s airbrush in the ol’ Oxford:

To my parents, Ayn Rand, and God.

Ah, better!

Chuck's in the clear, as am I. We’re all** in the right, commatically speaking, so long as we're careful not to misrespresent the listed items.

------------------------------------------------------------------------


*Results not yet in. Appears several ballot boxes have gone missing.

**Except, of course, those who checked 4) or 5). I’m looking at you, Perez Hilton commenters.

i might like you better if we slept together...

Been well over a month since my last music blog. Too long, I say. Too long!

Let’s start with the shows.

Wire.

Badass Brits Wire (heyday: 1977-1979, a three-year span yielding three of the greatest albums—Pink Flag, Chairs Missing and 154—of all time) performed a free* concert at the Fillmore on October 9th. Only problem?

*tickets required for entry.

Naturally—no surprise, really—I found out about the show four days too late, meaning every last ticket had been released/issued to the general public ‘neath my unsuspecting nose. Shit, I wailed, forehead in palm. One of the greatest bands of the past thirty years playing a freebie in MY city and I’ll be sitting at home o'er a bowl of mac ‘n’ cheese!

Craigslist. Please, I pecked out, my tears messing the screen. Please! I’ll giveya 10 apiece for the pair, whatdya say? No takers. All’s I encountered were greasy opportunists asking 35 or 40 bucks or even higher, yellow bastards the lot of ‘em. Mike’s morale made for the cellar. Day of the show I spent the better part of the afternoon scouring Craigslist for one of those kindly samaritan types I’m always reading about, my hopes snorkeling about in a muddied puddle reserved for wagon tires.

But lo! a white dove nestled square on my checkered beret just as the clouds parted like a biscuit, revealing soft, buttered skies and all the nectars of the world. Some dude in Brooklyn responded to my desperate pleas via electronic mail, reaffirming—in one fell swoop—my faith in humanity. You want ‘em? he said. Come an’ get ‘em, but make it quick. Leaving for the Village in 20 mins. I Billy Ellioted to the train, heels clicking all the while in cartoonish fashion. Sure ‘nuff this swell fellow, an altruist of the highest order, handed over two golden tickets, two of ‘em, one and then another, a pair! What do I owe you, bub? I coughed out, weary from all the heel-clicking. Nada, said he. They were free, I didn’t pay nuthin’. Enjoy the show.

So no time for dalliance I rang my buddy John quick as you please, burbling all over the place: “John I gotta ticket for ya to Wire you know them right of course you do you were the one ‘ntroduced me anyway free Irving show tonight in ‘bout an hour let’s go I’ll meet you ‘round Union ‘fore sundown eh?” He bit. Sure Mikey, he said. I’ll be there.

Wire. One of the best shows I’ve ever seen. Top three even (Iggy's still #1). Wire were professional, tight. Nary a stray note, nary a wasted motion. All these Nickelback shits and pansy Daughtry dreamers could learn a thing or two from Wire. Rock is work. Rock ain’t easy. Rock is not G-D-A and then a chorus and some carboned Perry-esque falsetto thrown in for good measure. Rock is precision and energy and INNOVATION and sweat and subversion and determining when to scrap convention for five or ten or twenty seconds of sinew and grind and unhinged whammyage. Wire (all three of the attached pics, btw, were taken at the Fillmore show) exceeded all expectations, foregoing slower numbers in favor of aggressive, bass-heavy pulls from their early catalogue. For those new to Wire, I recommend you start with Chairs Missing, their 1978 sophomore release. Sonic perfection. Bands don’t get much better than this.

Here's "Heartbeat" from Chairs Missing.



A Place To Bury Strangers.

Saw these fellas twice during CMJ week (Oct. 21-25). In a fitting close to the summer, I attended both shows with my buddy Lucas, a dear friend of mine who I met ‘round five months ago at, um, an outdoor Strangers concert.

These dudes are super loud. So loud, in fact, that they’ve taken to distributing earplugs at the door like My Bloody Valentine. Faint of heart and faint of ear ain’t welcome in their parts. They’re damn proud of their well-endowed sound, too, proud enough even to (self-)proclaim themselves The Loudest Band In Brooklyn, a tag which ain’t misleading in the least.

Lucas and I (and Travis, who joined us for the second show) rocked the free earplugs, but I’d be lying if I said those mufflers were entirely necessary. During the second show (2 a.m. on the morning of the 26th, a mere eight hours after their afternoon set) I said sorry, ears to my ears and discarded all that foam after the third or fourth song. You know what? I didn't go deaf. No ringing/tinnitus. I’ve gone plugless at an A Place To Bury Strangers concert and lived to tell the tale.

To be fair, though, we were forty feet from the stage. My testimonial might not jive with those who braved the stacks full-on from three, four feet and had their ears blown off.

But, shit, enough about their volume. Great, Mike, we get it. Their amps go to 11. Why don't you tell us about their SOUND?

Well, they’re the real deal. Call them what you will, genrenize them how you will, but there's no denying they're one of the more intriguing noise acts emerging from the New York scene.

APTBS are NOT a shoegaze band, and to label them as such is to misrepresent them. They’re onto something else entirely. Yes, they’re into crunch and fuzz. Yes, they’re noise obsessives. Yes, they’re out to challenge and disrupt. That said, they have one thing that shoegaze bands, by definition, sorely lack: wicked stage presence (see top pic!).

Guitarist Oliver Ackermann tears a few pages from the notebooks of Sonic Youthers Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo (and Hendrix and Townshend and...), raping his vile instrument and wresting from its strings an irreverent, incendiary attack directed at the brain’s very core, probably the part that processes wonder and sublimity.

They make great use of strobe, too.

Check the vid.



Sure, there’ve been other shows, but none I feel like documenting at the present time.

Rather, I’m gonna list a few songs that have been rockin’ my world:

Soft Cell—“Insecure Me”
COIL—“The Last Amethyst Deceiver”
Queens of the Stone Age—“Never Say Never” (cover)
Caribou—“Melody Day”
Yo La Tengo—“Moby Octopad”
Suicide—“Ghost Rider”
Yeasayer—“Wait For the Summer”
Grizzly Bear—“Knife”
The Doors—“The Soft Parade”
Gillian Welch—“Ruination Day (Pt. 2)”
Beach House—“Master of None”
CAN—“Vitamin C”
Morphine—“Let’s Take A Trip Together”
Paul Simon—“Slip Sliding Away”
Charles Manson (yes, THAT Charles Manson)—“Look At Your Game, Girl"
...

this grammar cop will billy club YOUR ass

Let's work on this, people.

Your = the possessive. Ex: Is this YOUR baseball glove?

You're = a contraction meaning "you are." Ex: YOU'RE quite an athlete.

elwood's a uniped

I come before you half the man I used to be, a humbled and broken vestige of my former self.

Times like these I’m reminded of that great thinker (a Bostonian, surely) who proffered,

"THOU shalt not, but for a fool, venture into faire New Amsterdam with only thy walking sticke and flimsee foote-cloth as companie, for foote of a pleasante flesh and con-crete of firmest tread ought never fratonise nor mairie. Walke, then, and paye no mind, but you’d well to bend thy ear and taketh note; ye shall henceforth suffer paine of the ankle and pull of the crotche. Wince ye muste, and wince ye shall."

Well put.

Today I pullethed my crotche and suffered great paines of the ankle while walking the entire length of Manhattan from north to south. I also bruised the lateral musculature of my left foot, resulting in a pronounced limp. Your protagonist chose unwisely his wardrobe: dubious footwear, thin socks and invasive, motion-restricting blue jeans. When the sky fell and Aretha postmaturely took to the stage for her song of death, I Tiny-Timmed into Battery Park nine hours and twenty miles removed from Broadway Bridge, victorious and beaten both.

Surely this warrants more discussion in a later blog, as it’s hilarious. Sleep, now, for the dawn will fast and soon and an invalid am I.

(Both photos are from today's adventure. First was snapped at 208th, the second at South Street Seaport.)
...

for the lobsters

This entry, though it’s gonna be about writer David Foster Wallace (and me, since I’m intrusive), is not an obit. Every major news outlet in America supplied one of those in the days following his death, so to attempt another would be redundant. I’m writing about Wallace because he’s blown my mind twice in the last month.

I’ve never read Infinite Jest, Wallace’s tree-killing doorstop, though I intend to do so soon. On two recent occasions—once with Marlo on a bench at Black and White tavern, the other with Travis over a burger at Applebee's (har har)—I’ve been alerted to his genius by literary people I know and trust. Bolstered by their endorsements, I pounded a fist in my brain on a table in my brain and shouted, “that settles it! I’m gonna read David Foster Wallace, that guy who wrote that freakin’ humongous book! Infinite Jest, you scare the balls offa me, but I’ll soon be cracking your spine.” Maybe he’s worth checking out after all, I thought. Maybe the hype is actually well-deserved, unlike, say, the curious praise for another Dave, Dave Eggers, and his Incredible Staggering Pregnant Ego novel of Genius, which—if I may borrow a few words from comic Lisa Lampanelli—sucks out loud. Eggers, you owe me $16.21 and an explanation.

My first exposure to Wallace’s writing came in a very unlikely way. While working at Fordham University back in September (this was a week after he commited suicide at 46), I sat around one afternoon on a plastic chair in a windowless room, bored as shit. My task that day had been to deliver mail to all the law professors, but when that wrapped at two pee em I had very little else to do so I flipped through a newspaper that I rarely understand and almost never read: The Wall Street Journal. That day's Journal ran Wallace’s commencement speech to the 2005 Kenyon College graduates on the back page. Here’s a passage:

“…our present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom to be lords of our own skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The real important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default-setting, the “rat race”—the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing…”

Before the day was up I’d read the speech four or five times, awed by Wallace’s intellect, message and choice of subject matter. Rather than offer up a generic, inspirational speech—“many of you will go on to do great things, the torch has been passed,” etc.—Wallace spoke frankly and matter-of-factly about the world, warning of pitfalls ahead and encouraging the graduates to subvert those “default-settings” we’ve been programmed with from birth.

There will be days, he said, when you’ll find yourself in a poorly designed supermarket, vexed and impatient. The overweight woman blocking the narrow aisle with her cart (and her body) slows your progress. You snatch at seemingly random items—some you need, some you surely don’t—and transfer them to a handcart, finally returning to the front of the store after fifteen minutes spent slaloming around oblivious housewives, crying children, teens broadcasting inanities into a cell phone...but wait! Your troubles have only just begun, because now you’re queued behind half a dozen sad-faced simpletons hoarding their pathetic, non-nourishing items (which they sadly load onto the sad conveyor) as the sloth behind the register receives on-the-job training. The music bleating out from overhead—a soulless, plasticine, FM-friendly waltz of death—sucks, all the lighting is yellowed and artificial and unflattering to the skin, and you want nothing more badly than to be home, away from it all. To top it off, the check-out line is six or eight carts deep and the woman in front of you has about twenty coupons in her white-knuckled fist.

Here, Wallace argues, choice enters the equation. You can CHOOSE how to approach this situation…it’s all a matter of perspective. Our first instinct, as anybody knows, is to damn the vile scenario and curse beneath our breath. We’ve cursed it before, and we'll curse it again. Sun rises, sun sets. However, Wallace points out, it’s actually

“…within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down. Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that’s capital-T True is that you get to decide how you’re gonna try to see it…”

A valid point. We spend most of our lives operating on autopilot. To approach a potentially awful situation with wide-eyed wonder (after all, we’re aLIVE!) is not easy, but should we defy all odds and pivot that scene for the better, we've succeeded in conquering the moment. On those rare, rare instances where I’ve been in a “consumer-hell” situation and marvelled at the wonderful madness of it all, I’ve known what it is to be a fully autonomous human being, ecstatic and fully sated.

I recommend you all check out the Kenyon speech, which can probably be found online somewhere.

Then I read Wallace’s “Consider the Lobster,” his 2004 essay for Gourmet magazine, which is all sortsa brilliant. He was assigned to cover the Maine Lobster Festival, an event held every July in the state’s midcoast region. As you might expect from a writer of his intellect and ingenuity, Wallace submitted a highly unconventional article, one that almost didn’t go to press.

Now, I’ve never read Gourmet, but I’m assuming it’s a relatively straightforward cooking mag for food aficianados. In all likelihood, its readers are not after dense, challenging literature...what they're after are fresh recipes (looking back at these last two sentences, I realize Wallace would have tsk tsked my journalistic passivity). Wallace’s article on lobster was a dense, challenging dissertation of the highest order. Anything you’ve EVER wanted to know about lobsters was included within—anatomy, mating habits, history in the culinary arts, brain capacity, pain threshold, preparation of, etc. Brilliant approach, for two reasons:

1) Wallace researched his ass off for this article. You have to admire the guy for his commitment to furious study.

2) His decision to cut straight to the lowest common denominator (lobster, obviously) is what separates him from many of his contemporaries. Let's face it: most writers assigned to such a festival would likely provide a detailed piece concerning the menu, venue, crowds, ambience. Not Wallace. When his brain runs off, he encourages (rather than apprehends) his spastic imagination, which accounts for nearly 80 percent of this article being about a crustacean, not a festival.

To top it all off, Wallace fades out with an open-ended ethical question involving lobsters and their ability to feel pain. Many cooks prepare lobster by dropping the still-living creature into a pot of scalding water, a process that may or may not torture the soon-to-be entrée. Wallace points out that we really don’t know enough about the inner wirings of the lobster to determine their capacity for discomfort, or whether they even "feel" discomfort in the traditional sense of the word. Though he doesn't chastise those who feast (Wallace himself is not a vegetarian), I applaud his decision to explore the issue. Once more, he's encouraging us to adopt an alternate perspective, if only for a brief while.

See ya, David. I’m gonna read your big-ass book soon.
...

the piano has been drinking

This afternoon on the 4 train I finished reading Charles Bukowski’s The Night Torn Mad With Footsteps, a collection of his later poems. It failed to impress, but only cuz I’ve read enough of his prose to know what I was in for (i.e. the same old themes, this time cut up into stanzas and disguised as poetry).

To be clear, I'm not launching a polemical assault on ol’ Buk. The man knows how to write, and he’s most always—to quote Modest Mouse—a “pretty good read.” I'm hard-pressed to name a writer more approachable on a minimal, guttoral level; Buk chronicles his own failed, depraved existence with humor and self-flagellating earnestness, a rare feat. Joes from all over encounter his poems and adopt the “if that old pervert can do it, I can do it too!” credo, and why not? Buk’s just like them! We’ve all met a prospective Bukowski or two, it's just most of ’em don’t take time away from their leering and their farts to write it all down. What’s to hate about a writer who drinks mammoth amounts of beer, lives out a paycheck-to-paycheck existence and, when he does write, mercifully refrains from Updiking you with his muscular vocabulary?

He's not out to fool anybody. You know what you’re getting into when you pick up a Bukowski. There's no aces up the sleeve.

But.

Back to the book in question. Near the end—the last forty pages or so—I tired of the poetry of Mr. Buk. I’ve always figured that If you’ve read one Buk, you’ve read them all. Booze, women, whores, horses, Los Angeles, stained sheets, Mahler, etc., etc. Repeat. I know the formula, but that didn’t stop me from breaking out the whine (no pun intended…ha!) today on the train: "C’mon, Buk, shake it up a bit!"

But then ol’ Buk came thru in the clutch! Yanked up the rug and sent me flying on my ass. He closed the collection with this poem, a dandy, in response to my gripe:

wine pulse

this is another poem about 2 a.m. and I’m still at the
machine listening to the radio and smoking a good
cigar.
hell, I don’t know, sometimes I feel just like Van Gogh or
Faulkner or,
say, Stravinsky, as I sip wine and type
and smoke and there’s no magic as gentle as this.
some critics say I write the same things over and over.
well, sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t, but when I do the
reason is that it feels so right, it’s like making love and
if you knew how good it felt you would forgive me
because we both know how fickle happiness can be.
so I play the fool and say again that
it’s 2 a.m.
and that I am
Cezanne
Chopin
Celine
Chinaski
embracing everything:
the sweet of cigar smoke
another glass of wine
the beautiful young girls
the criminals and the killers
the lonely mad
the factory workers,
this machine here,
the radio playing,
I repeat it all again
and I’ll repeat it all forever
until the magic that happens to me
happens to you.
...

a life in sports, part two

...
So much for chronology. I’ve forgotten a few.

2.5) Golf—the kilted feller who dreamed up this clownish pastime was a masochist of the highest order, a sick jokester. I wouldn’t wish golf on my worst enemy. Most of the golfing populace—myself included—doesn’t have a clue what they’re doing out there. Tiger Woods we ain’t. Charles Barkley we is:



I’ve never been much of a golfer. My all-time best for 9 holes stands at a laughable 46, a score Mr. Woods posted at the age of 4. That being said, I know a great deal about the game, the result of twelve years of humble service as a caddie. Allow me to relate a story, fill a little white space. Why not?

When i was 14, 15—somewhere in there—I toiled one impossibly hot summer day for a grease-haired man named Furlong. He was rich and he liked his drink and my sole duty was to maneuver his golf cart and replenish the beer when it got low. He made this very clear from the start: “Mike, I don’t want yardage or conversation, and I really don’t require any help on the greens—you’re gonna be Watcher of the Beer. Drive the cart or whatever, make sure we have ice.” Furlong gulleted inhuman amounts of Budweiser that afternoon and got hisself good and wobbly. We’re talkin’ bubbles out the mouth whenever he burped and three of everything where there once was one.

When we approached the tee box for 16, a short par-four, greasy Furlong summoned me from the cart. “Mikey,” he said, “hit a drive.” He handed me tee, club, shiny-brite Titleist. I smoked the cover off that damn ball, Bunyaned the thing into the clouds. Still unsure how it happened, really, but somehow physics and Elwood collided in impressive ways for less than one second and that ball soared straight and true, high and far, cleared an oft-unclearable bunker with yards to spare. All told, the thing probably rolled 295 or so, a robust, executive poke from a midget with a concave chest. Furlong’s bloodshot eyes nearly popped from his sockets. It was (is, probably) the greatest drive I’d ever struck, the single purest swing of my life. Furlong urged me to play out the rest of the hole, convinced I was a freakish prodigy or something.

You already know the story that follows; it’s been Charlie Brown’s since 1950. I tripped over my own ankles, missed the football entirely and posted a double-bogey six, debunking Furlong’s Mike-is-golf’s-next-white-hope theory in a damn hurry.

2.7) Roller Hockey—yup, I played this one, too. Wasn’t very good at stopping. I spent a lot of time plowing into people.

4) Running—what to say? Running was my life. Still is, in small ways. I visit letsrun.com (a community forum/news site for runners) daily, though I haven’t trained in earnest since college.

I’m sick of writing, so the entry ends here.
...

a life in sports, part one

My advance apologies for the post you’re about to skim/half-read. It’s gonna be a) all about sports b) somewhat uninteresting and c) totally narcissistic.

For reasons unknown, I actually cared about last night’s Red Sox/Rays game and tuned in with vested interest, making for an atypical Saturday evening. You should probably know that I haven’t followed professional baseball in any real capacity since the strike in ’94. Perhaps I watched because two nights prior the BoSox had rallied heroically from seven runs down to force that sixth game, or perhaps it was the fact that my precious Cubbies Munsoned all over the place during their pitiable Series bid (leading me to the BoSox by reason of vicariosity?), or perhaps I still get off on the precocious joy of sport, regardless of the players involved.

Seeing as I’ve experienced a sporting rebirth of sorts—the Bears pique my attentions in small ways, as does George Will’s Bunts, his love letter to the game of baseball—it only seems appropriate to write it all down. What follows is my life in sports, told chronologically.

1) Baseball—no florid word(s) can adequately express my adoration for this game, nor the role it played in my life from the ages of 5-12. Jerry Seinfeld once monologued about how children think of nothing but candy, and how parents, friends, teachers, siblings become mere obstacles in the way of getting more candy. Well, that was my childhood, 'cept baseball superceded candy by many, many miles. Our old house in Brookfield, IL was flanked by a modest lot—we cleverly dubbed it the “side lot”—that acted as a ballpark of sorts. My neighbor and best friend, Brian Schmidt, joined me out there every day for batting practice with splintered bat and tennis ball. The goal? Hit it high and far, windows be damned. Sun, rain, wind, snow—didn’t matter. You'd find us in the side lot, decimating great patches of grass with muddied sneakers.

Then there was Little League, of course, and then a fall league, and then All-Stars (assuming I’d played well that year), and then, upon turning 13, the modern-day equivalent of a Babe Ruth League. In between games and practices, we’d spend entire days Wiffle-balling in Fontana, WI, pausing only to cool in the lake.

My folks, bless 'em, treated me to Cubs games, humoring me by being first in to Wrigley and last out so their idiot son could gape at batting practice and bumrush the players' gate after the game in search of autographs.

Somehow—it strains the brain—I collected somewhere between 300 and 400 Ryne Sandberg cards (I’ve forgotten the exact number). Every crinkled, desperate, sweating dollar that entered my palm during those formative(?) years went towards baseball cards. Worse than any junkie, I was. Up until recently, my bedroom in LaGrange Park sported full-on Cubs wallpaper, ceiling to floor, complete with full-sized posters.

But I digress.

Back to the field. I alternated between second base and the mound, even pitched a no-hitter once. The news clipping is in a scrapbook somewhere, probably sufficiently yellowed by now. My life plan was decided from a very early age: I’d get absurdly good at this game so Ryne Sandberg, upon retirement, would insist I succeed him at second base. I pitied all the other kids who didn’t know what they were gonna do with their lives.

At 13, though, we moved to a bigger ballpark and my batting average plummeted, infuriating me. Time to move on, I thought. Time to move on, I said. Enough! Just like that, it was all over.

2) Basketball—never really made any headlines playing basketball, but I certainly enjoyed playing. My first exposure to the game, if I remember correctly, came in 4th, 5th grade while on the playground at recess. I was far too small and weak to shoot correctly, so I began instituting the “shove,” an aesthetically painful two-wristed heave at the backboard. Wasn’t a very adept ball-handler, nor did I possess the height to hang out near the rim, so I chillaxed at the three-point line and waited for someone to pass it my way (they never did). While attending St. Louise de Marillac, I played on the 5th and 6th grade teams, accomplishing very little offensively (eight points scored in TOTAL) but a great deal defensively (dozens of steals). I was quick. I was fast.

Seventh grade. So many kids showed an interest that my junior high held a tryout. Very big deal. Three days and everything, even notebooks so they could write things about you. The lycra-shorted coaches, in a display of unimaginable cruelty, assigned me to the “A” squad, which is kind of like telling a kid to join in on a Miles session after three weeks of horn lessons. No question about it: I was the worst guy on the team, and by a significant margin.

Wasn’t ’til church league at St. Francis (this was in high school) that I came into my own and developed a wicked three-point shot, which became my bread ‘n’ butter. I still didn’t know how to drive the lane or handle the ball with any real proficiency, but I could shoot the lights out from the arc. During one game I had twenty-one points, all threes.

p.s. As an aside—cuz this is funny—my buddy Scott and I once played a one-on-one game to 1,000 in his driveway. Took over one full month to complete. The final score? Scott: 1,000, Mike: 996. This is where the story ends.

p.p.s. Ah, wait. Before I move on to sport #3, there’s one dig/jab I must administer, 'case he’s reading: Danny, my younger brother and a FAR superior baller, to this day cannot defeat me one-on-one. So, like, take that.

3) Swimming—Greg, a buddy, talked me into coming out for the freshman swim team at Lyons Township, a ludicrous idea. I lasted about one week. Fourth practice in, some muscled dude ‘bout twice my size, a captain or something, informed me I’d be swimming the 500 (not sure exactly how far this is, but it sounded like a damn long way) at the upcoming intersquad, so I peaced out, never to return. No Speedos for me, no siree.

Part 2 coming soon…
...