Open Letter to the Times Free Press Managing Editor

Lesson Learned - Brendan Benson (mp3)

J. Todd Foster
Managing Editor
Chattanooga Times Free Press
Chattanooga, TN

September 16, 2010

Dear Mr. Foster,

Welcome back to Chattanooga. Sorry I have to introduce myself under such negative circumstances.

The purpose of this email is to express my frustration with yesterday's story on National Merit Semifinalists. The story mentions 31 students who rank in the top 1 percent of the country -- the whole country! -- on a highly-respected test. These are the NBA lottery picks of the high school academic world. Yet they don't get their names in the paper. They hardly merit much space at all, really.

Almost every school in this city benefits greatly from an entire section dedicated to sports, and I do not mean to be ungrateful for the recognition you give students for accomplishments in that area. However, were a Martian to land in Chattanooga and read your newspaper (I figure if they have spaceships they can probably figure out English), they would have a very difficult time learning what exactly students do in school other than play sports. You occasionally run stories on community service or, once in a while, something like mock trial, but when it comes to the academic experience, and particularly when it comes to the academic "all-stars" of our city, those stories are the proverbial needles in a very large haystack.

If the city of Chattanooga wonders why so many of its best and brightest leave and don't return, it might be wise to start with the very clear indication that the paper offers: we simply don't, as a community, value them. If they can throw, hit, catch, dribble, or chip, they might earn our recognition and adulation. But if they're just smart? If they study hard and prepare for college exceptionally well? That's just not newsworthy to us.

Every varsity sport in this city ends its season with a series of features dominating the back page of your sports section. Full color. Lots of names and pictures. You even do two. One for the citywide kids and another for the kids in the perimeter counties. Every middle school sports team that wins anything gets a picture on the inside pages.

But if you score in the top 1 percent IN THE NATION on what might be one of the most important tests for anyone with ambitions for college? You don't even merit getting your name in the paper.

Sir, if you don't find something disturbing and misguided in this editorial decision, then I suggest you plug up your ears with some golf balls and put a helmet on backwards and just start running into a wall. Geeks don't have to deal with concussion disorders or repeated rehab stints on knees or dislocated joints. They might risk frying their brains, but I'm pretty sure that particular injury rate is minuscule at best. Apparently that makes them less newsworthy.

Perhaps you say, "We give people what they want to read, and our readers don't want to read about nerds. They want to read about sports." If that's your excuse, I recommend that you announce just that in some editorials. Take a stand. Be proud of your decision. In fact, you could start having reporters talk in schools to encourage kids to play more sports and get their stinkin' noses out of books, because what kind of pathetic nerd would study and learn when there's a hoop to aim for, a net to hit over? Stand up and be counted as Anti-Nerd. Most of the Tea Party would vote for you.

You know what would be nicer, though? If anyone with any real influence would get a grip on what's actually important about school and start finding ways to celebrate it. It might take a little bit of extra work. Actual reporting and such. But I bet you could find some smart kids out there and celebrate them in interesting ways.

What is undeniable about school is this: nothing guarantees a better chance of almost anything we define as "success" than a highly-motivated and hard-working STUDENT. Robert J. Samuelson says so and that dude's never wrong! Parents and teachers are powerful influences, but at the heart of academic success is a motivated kid. This isn't rocket science. Yet your paper does almost nothing to address this problem; it merely exacerbates it.

You are the media equivalent of Coke machines and candy bars in a school hallway. Worse, I think you know it but would hate to risk losing a revenue stream.

If I am unfairly crapping on the athlete, you can take the blame for that as well. Your newspaper assists in promoting that inequality, in promoting the superiority and greater value of an athlete over that of mere booksmarts. And when I say "you," I don't mean you, Mr. Foster. I don't even mean The Times Free Press. I mean 95% of newspapers in this entire pathetic country. You're all doing one disservice after another, and it makes it damn hard to mourn you as your ship sinks into the icy waters of financial ruin, because you could've damn well avoided all these icebergs if only you'd been paying attention.

Mr. Foster, you're new to your position as Managing Editor. You don't have to accept this status quo. You can change things. You can address this problem. You probably won't. But I'll hold out a sliver of hope.

Or, in sports terminology, the geeks will need a Hail Mary. Are you Doug Flutie? Or are you Ryan Leaf?

Hope you like our blog! Best to you and yours! Hugs and Kisses!
Billy

NERRRRRRDS!!!

Poor Misguided Fool - Starsailor (mp3)
Man's Gotta Do (Part I) - Dr. Horrible and Captain Hammer (mp3)
Stupid - Toad the Wet Sprocket (mp3)
La-La - Ashlee Simpson (mp3)

Even if I wanted to, I couldn't deny having a fantastical love of the movie Revenge of the Nerds. That film gave awkward adolescents everywhere a ray of optimistic sunshine in what at times could be a life clouded with the feeling that enjoying the academic side of life was shameful or embarrassing. Although I attended a school where keeping one's nose in books was hardly odd, we were still in the South, where more than anywhere else, intellectualism has somehow been equated with nefarious behavior.

In the days of Sherlock Holmes, the hero was the smartest guy in the room. But on the journey "across the pond," booksmarts seem to have made a hefty portion of Americans suspicious.

This notion that our heroes are street smart, like John Wayne, while Lex Luthor was the valedictorian... taps into some primal American fear. It's surely part of our struggle to constantly ignore and downplay the problems in our educational system. Have we created a culture where we simply don't trust anyone smarter than we are because we just assume they're trying to pull a fast one on us? Or have the smart people pulled too many fast ones, thus justifying the suspicion? (See: Wall Street, 2008.)



Think I'm wrong? In my neck of the woods, you know the easiest track to becoming the principal of a school? Coaching. There's not even a close second. Coaches move up faster and more often than your bookworms. To be fair, part of this is about charisma. Coaches are motivational, and coaches manage people -- the players, other coaches -- as part of their jobs. But there are some seriously stupid coaches who have moved up the ranks, leaving the more intelligent, more capable nerds in their jock dust.

Why don't we admire intelligence the way we respect the ability to hit a golf ball or shoot 3-pointers or diagram little plays with X's and O's on napkins?

Put simply, someone significantly smarter than myself should be in the White House. And I don't mean Peyton Manning smart. I don't mean Emeril Legasse smart. I mean Harvard Law Review smart. I mean Top of His F%#king Class smart. Do I mind if he lacks personality? Hell yes I mind. I want charisma, too. It shouldn't be too much to ask that our President be the Uber-Nerd, the guy who not only proved superior in the academic realm but also earned respect from his peers.

Apparently, it's liberal to want your politician to be intelligent. And I'm not being snide or picking a fight. Compared to their competition, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are friggin' demigods of academia. Both were highly successful in school. Meanwhile, George W. Bush and John McCain fought to keep from failing. Bush earned the infamous "Gentleman's C" (as did Gore) at Yale, and McCain finished third from the bottom in his class at Westpoint.

Is it too much for me to ask that Republican intellectualism not begin and end with the likes of Karl Rove, the living embodiment of the scheming nerd puppeteer?

It's not a problem exclusive to conservatives. Too much of black America distrusts the educational system and isolates their academically ambitious. This distrust is just one of many factors in the cycle of poverty. Poor white America holds similar misgivings.

Meanwhile, immigrants from Far Eastern countries like India or Korea come to America, often in extreme poverty, and overcome their economic struggles and often many of their cultural struggles because they embrace the value of succeeding academically. It's a cornerstone of their cultures.

Is our Western Cultural dismissal of intelligence the chicken or the egg? Are the academically successful too smart to become politicians, too intelligent to put themselves through such a sewage system?

I've been in a school long enough to know that grades don't always equate with intelligence. Sometimes the smartest kids are bored to tears and too busy splitting atoms to give a crap about geometry or Gertrude Stein. Sometimes the successful student just cheats his or her ass off. All of my Marion County relatives are reminders that very intelligent people sometimes never get the chance to prove their academic potential. But I'm not talking about smart people who failed in school. That's a different post.

What should concern us is our distrust of smart people who succeed in school. We don't like 'em as principals. We don't like 'em as Presidents. We don't like 'em in a boat or on a goat. We do not like Nerds, Sam I Am.



This ending still gets to me. When Goose -- er, Dr. Green -- asks, "Why? Because we're smart?" I wonder how much has changed, not just in the last 20 years, but in the last century.

God Bless the Freaks

Freak of the Week - The Marvelous 3 (mp3)

Slot Machine - Superdrag (mp3)

My friend of 32 years, author of the Maples Law of Wal-Mart Conservation, is a constant inspiration for written material. He wrote me this week to share his personal highlights from DragonCon 2008, Atlanta's slightly smaller and slightly geekier version of San Diego's ComicCon. He also shared the AccessAtlanta photo galleries, which are such a wonderful hoot.

Here's one of shots from the convention and the downtown parade.

Here's a series of "portraits" of various people in costume.

Some of his personal favorite moments from witnessing it all:

* Zod For President vehicle with election stickers: "Kneel before Power in '08!" the guy didn't look like Terrence Stamp. but i concede Zod makes a strong case for sheer ubermensch power.

* huge fairie group. lotta manga and Final Fantasy people. kudos for using the brain slugs from Futurama to turn political pollsters into staggering brain-controlled zombies.

* not as many Resident Evil/Umbrella Corp. shocktroops this year, but i loved the Racoon City news van, which looked like they drove it right off the movie set. no Mila though! (but presence of Lara Croft on scooter made up for that.)  

* lego Star Wars guys remain a HUGE hit by making their costumes out of cardboard boxes. there was a cardboard Chewie this year. i cheered lustily for the snowtroopers, my personal favorites. yes, the imperial troops of various ranks and stripes are still the caboose of the 40-minute-plus parade, with only a lone Mario-type janitor sweeping up behind them.

* i need to drink more to get the Tron guy out of my head. he has a 'stache.

* 3 Wonder Women, none of them up to the sterling standard of years past. but hey, they put on the costume, so i'm gonna give 'em some luv. couldn't find them in the Hyatt after trekking to the park and back, so i have no photo with WW this year. booo.

* When Worlds Collide: in my head, the Black Gay Pride Parade (in midtown, natch) and the Dragon Con parade would collide, and Black Panther and Black Lighting guys would discover exciting new social possibilities. but that didn't happen. the huge cultural collision was instead reserved for elder Crimson Turd fans who were milling around on Peachtree while the crowds for the parade were clotting and the cops were closing off the streets. it was great to see head-to-toe crimson and white folks looking uncomfortable or flat-out aghast at all the people who didn't fit into their myopic football world. "i thought all the goddam queers were in midtown" was what their faces said. it was gold and i wish i'd nabbed a shot of some of them hustling across the street with incredulity in their eyes. i didn't see Clemson fans freaking out at all. i'm just sayin'.

Football meets Fantasy. I can think of few things with greater sitcom potential than a bunch of Roll Tide football fans stumbling into a sci-fi/fantasy convention. One of the Bama fans falls for a chick dressed like Supergirl, and the series revolves around their attempts to get their utterly uncooperative and disparate friends to accept their new loves into their lives.

"So she wears a cape to Hooters. So what? She loves me, OK? Now pass me the pitcher and slap that waitress on the ass for me."

"So he watches football all weekend. That's when I'm on Second Life saving Nebulon City from the clutches of evil. Our relationship has a good balance, OK?"

It worked for Grease. It worked for Moonlighting. It worked for Mork & Mindy. I smell a hit for The CW...

Seriously, how awesome is it that these people get this one weekend where they get their freak on in a big way and have the streets lined with families and fans (and merely curious onlookers) who are mostly laughing with them, not at them? We can mock the goobers who in their 30s live in the basements of their parents' house. We can mock that Trekkie couple who speak to one another in Klingon. We can mock that woman who despises herself and agonizes at how socially clueless she feels. But DragonCon welcomes them. And when they parade down the 200 streets named Peachtree in Atlanta, people applaud them.

I feel like it's fair game for me to mock them, because in one of my many alternate realities, the Butterfly Effect most certainly would have me as one of them.

Don't we all deserve a few moments like that out of our years? Wouldn't the world be a better place if even the least and geekiest and most awkward of us were granted just a handful more of these moments in our lives?

I included "Slot Machine" by Superdrag because it contains the lines:
"I don't know what I'm to do
to get those pleasantries from you
but if you'll be my Princess Leia that's OK"

Both songs can be purchased through iTunes and Amazon.com's mp3 site.

Musical Heresy... or Not So Much?

The Bends - Radiohead (mp3)
All I Need - Radiohead (mp3)

One of my longest and closest friends hates pizza. Always has. Although it's generally considered an Italian-inspired dish, I can think of few things more un-American than disliking pizza. In my 36 years, I can't even recall another soul who disliked pizza.

I still love the guy, but who the f*#k doesn't love pizza? What kind of mutant freak who loves any kind of unhealthy food would dare deny his or her tastebuds the culinary orgasm that is pizza??

This is exactly how I feel when I admit to the following: I don't like Radiohead.

Now, there's two responses to this declaration. The first, as signified by my wife, is "Who's Radiohead?" (Yes, that was her actual response.) To the world of folks like my wife, my dislike of Radiohead is no more consequential than my dislike of red velvet cake or Abercrombie & Fitch. But then, my wife isn't very into music in remotely the same way many of my friends are, so her response and those like her are kind of irrelevant in the land of music blogs, no?

The other response, likely offered by most anyone reading this tripe, is directly parallel to the one I get when I tell true music lovers that I love Hanson. They first look to see if I'm kidding, and then, when they realize I'm actually not kidding, that I actually like frakkin' Hanson, they get this look of nauseated confusion, as if everything they once assumed about me was now under suspicion.

I didn't always dislike Radiohead. In fact, they burst into my life like an unexpected supernova.

I purchased The Bends from a store near my house that was going out of business in 1995. I was just out of college and had just been "let go" from my bartending job at the time, so I wasn't exactly rolling in dough. But I needed to get my fix with music, so I just bought seven or eight CDs by bands I'd heard of, hoping I could milk enjoyment from them at massive discount. What a find. That CD is easily one of my five favorite CDs from the '90s.

I even went back several weeks later and purchased Pablo Honey, a damn fine album that didn't have quite the arena rock bombast of their second effort. When OK Computer emerged, I was definitely one of those making his way to the store that first day to see where Thom Yorke & Co. took their brilliance.

Although the critical raves were immediate, OK was a difficult pill for me to swallow. Oh, I learned to enjoy it. I grew to appreciate its brilliance, its ambition, its grasp. But it took patience and work, something anyone who knows my musical preferences will attest doesn't come particularly natural to me.

My patience and work in learning to love OK Computer would end up haunting me.

Kid A and Amnesiac followed. A hoarde of disciples and critics gushed praise, but even the biggest fans I knew kept saying things like, "It takes some getting used to" or "It's not what you'd expect" or "It's very experimental."

For me, the only kind of "very experimental" that generally results in my liking an artist more than before is when the bandmates sat around in the recording booth asking whether or not a song needs more cowbell. When albums from bands I love are described as "very experimental," what that really means is it has a 96% chance of sucking.

But with Kid A, I listened and listened and listened. You learned to enjoy OK Computer, you can learn to enjoy this, I said to myself. But, dammit, I was wrong. I am incapable of learning to love Radiohead v.2.0. After trying on and off for eight years, I can finally admit it.

Radiohead is the James Joyce of the alternative music world. In my very skewed opinion, a novel requiring detailed side study of the author's intentions or hundreds of footnotes ain't much of a novel. It's more of like a study guide with a plot.

Radiohead exists to provide musical "intellectuals" an easy Mason-Dixon line between their kind and the primates in their midst. Those who don't truly love Radiohead are posers, simple as that.

But here's what I can't escape. Here's what is incontrovertibly true: if some no-name band came out with any of these last four Radiohead albums, they would either (a) still be some no-name band you'd never heard of, or (b) the album would never have seen the light of day.

I mean, Patty Griffin, who's gotta be one of the more highly-respected and adored musicians in certain country-folk circles, had one of her albums shelved back when she was still up-and-coming. I've heard over half of it, and it kicks delicious buttock, but the dorks who sell albums didn't see the greatness and shelved it. And refused to give the stuff back to her, because music suits are bastards, which is precisely why lots of people don't feel so bad about kicking their financial teeth in when it comes to downloading music.

But back to my point, which is that her shelved album was pretty darn good, but it never saw daylight. If she'd somehow tried to release Amnesiac, it would never have seen daylight, either. No way. No chance. Kid A is a Richard Bachman book that Stephen King burned rather than publish.

I've spent the last three nights fiddling on this computer and playing my entire Radiohead collection -- everything but Hail to the Chief -- on random. All this did was serve to confirm that there ain't a single song on the last three other albums containing anything that holds a candle to their work on the first three.

Radiohead is a Tootsie Roll Pop, and I'm sick of licking and believing there's any candy goodness somewhere deep inside.

Wow. I feel better now. I've held that in for a long time. I'm probably out of the club now. I'm prolly blackballed from all the cool people music parties from here forward.

"The Bends" is off Radiohead's second album of the same name. "All I Need" is off their latest, In Rainbows, now available just like all other albums, proving that their little download ploy was more marketing trick than attempt to revolutionize an industry.

"But I Play One On TV"

Camera One - Josh Joplin Group (mp3)

Bully - Sugarbomb (mp3)

When you were a kid, did you find yourself watching certain movies over and over because you identified so strongly with one of the characters? Writing a post that never made the light of day got me thinking about an indelible movie from my pre-teen years. It was right after we got HBO in '82 or '83, and I watched this movie several dozen times: "My Bodyguard."

Every time "My Bodyguard" came on, I found myself drawn into the TV, even though I never would have said it was particularly beloved. I suspect it's allure was because I identified, even at the ripe age of 11, with the main character. The actor, Chris Makepeace, was also the pathetic outcast Rudy in "Meatballs." I identified with him in that film as well.

When I realized how pathetic it was, that at some point in my past I identified with this goober, I started going through a list of all the teenage movie characters with whom I identified during my pre- and prime adolescent years. It wasn't pretty:

• Chris Makepeace in "Meatballs" and "My Bodyguard"
• Andrew McCarthy in "Heaven Help Us"
• Ralph Macchio in "The Karate Kid"
• Patrick Dempsey in "Can't Buy Me Love"
  
• Ricky Schroeder in "Silver Spoons"
• William Katt in "The Greatest American Hero"
• Corey Haim in "Lucas"
  
• Jason Bateman in "It's Your Move"
  
• Anthony Michael Hall in "Sixteen Candles"
• Anthony Michael Hall in "The Breakfast Club"
• Anthony Michael Hall in... just about everything up to 1985.

It doesn't take Dr. Phil to look at this list and acknowledge I had a depressing and disturbing fascination with wimps, geeks and outcasts. Strangely, I never -- at least not before I watched that damn clip from "My Bodyguard" -- made the connection that I was so drawn to all these pathetic Loveable Losers. (OK OK, part of my obsession with "Silver Spoons" undoubtedly had to do with the fact that Erin Grey was one of the '80s hottest women.)

Although I absolutely adored Ferris Bueller, I never really identified with him. I simply held him in awe. Likewise with pretty much every role John Cusack played. He might have been an outcast, but it always felt like he had more coolness in his pinky toe than I could muster in my entire body. And I sure as hell never identified with anyone in "Dirty Dancing" or "Pretty in Pink."

And thus began a true Chicken vs. Egg debate: Do the characters with whom we identify shape who we become, or do we simply identify with whom are destined to be?

Did kids who grew up to be aggressive type-A jerks watch these same movies, but instead of identifying with the geeky protagonists, they secretly yearn to be Matt Dillon ("My Bodyguard") or Kevin Dillon ("Heaven Help Us") or William Zabka (Johnny from "Karate Kid")? Yes, the Dillons had the market on asshole bullies covered for several years.

Were there others out there who watched Alex P. Keaton and Gordon Gekko with this same glossy-eyed fascination? Did some girls feel their heart strings tug at Winona Ryder's Veronica while future witches found themselves drawn to Shannon Doherty's or Kim Walker's Heathers? Did most girls watch "The Breakfast Club" and find themselves inevitably identifying with either Molly Ringwald or Ally Sheedy, that movie's own version of the classic "Mary Ann v. Ginger" dichotomy?

Are there others who watch all movies and TV shows without making the slightest hint of a personalized connection to anyone?

There are only two encouraging silver linings to my obsessive cloud. First, lots of dudes in Hollywood clearly had these same hangups. So I'm not alone... but I'm not necessarily comforted by the company I'm keeping.

Second, these characters eventually stood up for themselves. They looked deep within themselves, found the strength beyond their doubts, and fought back against the bullies and the naysayers. But that hardly makes the obsession comforting. It's hard to find comfort in what breaks down to a Geek Fetish.

Yet something about these fanciful tales fed my soul. Awwww who am I kidding by using the past tense? These damn things still feed my soul. I still get misty everytime Elisabeth Shue rushes the mat to jump all over Daniel-San, too giddy to care about his wounded leg. I clinch my fist in glee everytime Anthony Michael Hall winds up locking lips with a girl five furlongs out of his league in "Sixteen Candles" or "Weird Science." Snot runs out my nose everytime the student body gives Lucas a standing ovation.

If you think I admit this with pride, you're very wrong. Acknowledging this is only slightly less painful than confessing my young devotion to Blair from "The Facts of Life." (While this isn't as embarrassing as if I'd been in love with Mrs. Edna. Or Nell Carter from "Gimme a Break!", it's nothing to go Tootie-ing my horn over.)

Perhaps our guilty pleasures, not our eyes, are the true windows to our soul.

(If you have any sympathy for my confession, please comment on your own guilty pop identifications to help me feel less... outcast.)

"Camera One" is off the Josh Joplin Group's debut big-label CD, Useful Music. "Bully" is off Sugarbomb's only album of the same name. Both are available on iTunes.