Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Wall of Voodoo--"Mexican Radio" (mp3)
Los Lobos--"Peace" (mp3)

I seem to add more holidays every year. This year, it's Cinco de Mayo.

Why? The reasons are really pretty simple. Because I power-washed my deck. Because I planted some dying pansies. Because there is leftover wood in my rusty outdoor fireplace. Cinco de Mayo now becomes a reason to rub some chipotle powder on some country-style pork ribs, to mix up some guacamole, to roast some tomatillos, garlic, and jalapenos, to soften up some tortillas, to fancy up some black beans, to chill some Mexican beer. In other words, to celebrate the season and the weather and a Monday with some food and fire under the pretext of broader celebration.

It is pretty silly for there to be a holiday and not to celebrate it, isn't it?

Holidays are special days, and to dismiss them with an "I'm too busy" or "I'm not into ______" or, silliest of all, "I'm not even Irish" borders on lunacy. I'll tell you what--stumbling through a packed Bourbon Street in between parade floats with a beer in one hand, a rubber duck dressed like an Irishman in the other, and two pounds of various green and white beads around my neck, I felt pretty damn Irish!

Even this morning, a guy was sitting in my office questioning why we even celebrate Cinco de Mayo. Let me put this directly: what kind of a people are we becoming if we are questioning the reasons for holidays? Or, does Cinco de Mayo somehow fall in the same category as MLK's birthday, where some of us give it tacit acceptance, but don't see what the big deal is?

Admittedly, I didn't know much about Cinco de Mayo before this year. I knew it was a kind of an "independence day" for Mexico, but the history is a little more complicated than that. But so what? Add it to my ever-growing list of holidays.

My own history with Mexico is brief. About 15 years ago, while at a conference in San Diego, we decided to take a brief trip into Tijuana. We had a convertible from the rental car company and a "guide" in John L., who assured us that the best way to visit was to park and walk over. But, he didn't see the turn and so all of a sudden, three ignorant-of-the-language, scared shitless gringos were cruising the street of Tijuana in a Chrysler LeBaron convertible. We immediately turned around and got back into the customs line to reenter the United States. But, it's quick coming in and slow going out. So we sat and sat and sat in a long line of cars while "entrepreneurs" of all kinds approached our vehicle, trying to sell anything you can think of, from flowers and trinkets to cases of that Mexican gum you see at Amigo's.

Holidays are on my mind for another reason. This year, for the first time, I'll be out of the country for the 4th of July. I'll be teaching in Korea, and on that day, I'll be walking the streets of a city of around 12 million people. Very few of them will give that day a second thought. But I will, and I'll do it through music: I'll have my Aimee Mann's "Fourth of July" and Dave Alvin's "4th of July" and Lucinda Williams' "Firecracker" and Bruce Springsteen's "Sandy (Asbury Park 4th of July)" and Neil Young's "Hawks and Doves" and "Rockin' In The Free World" and Paul Simon's "America" and a host of other songs. Perhaps I'll be able to locate a Budweiser or two, put on my Old Navy shirt with the American flag, and maybe, we'll have a little holiday over there after all.

Happy Cinco. Eat a jalapeno. Get crazy.

Wall of Voodoo's "Mexican Radio" comes from my brief foray into the original Napster. Los Lobos, which is the only Hispanic-flavored band I listen to with any regularity, seems to have peaked, but once put out a terrific series of cd's in the '80's and '90's. This version of "Peace" comes from a radio station's compilation, Rare on Air, Vol. 1, and is a live, in-studio performance.

If I Had A Mountain (My 10 Commandments for the New(ish) Century)

Bob Weir--"The Greatest Story Ever Told" (mp3)
The Long Winters--"The Sound of Coming Down" (mp3)

I'm not God. I've never played him on TV, nor have I been asked to assume the role in a bad Steve Carrell movie. Nevertheless, I've been pondering those commandments brought down from Mt. Sinai lately and thinking that if I had a mountain and someone came up onto it looking for a 10-point list of supreme knowledge, I would, by all the laws of divinity vested in me by the State of Tennessee, have to deliver.

The beauty of my list (and of not being God) is that my list is much friendlier than the original. Oh, I'd like to think that my dictums are serious and important and worth following. And most of them don't offer much wiggle room. But because I am just one of "you people," as I was called today, I can use the First Person Plural instead of the Second Person, formal or otherwise. Any commandment I issue forth unto you I also issue forth unto myself.

And so:

1. We should not take credit for something that we didn't do.

2. We should be generous. Being cheap, especially in our treatment of other people, is offensive.

3. We should not let economics dictate our ethical standards.

4. We should no longer fully embrace capitalism. It is based upon ever-increasing consumption in a world where resources are finite.

5. We should be godly people and so should not lose touch with our planet. I'm not talking about recycling plastic bottles; I'm talking about getting in the dirt, the grass, the forest, the stream, the ocean, the snow, the hills, the mountains, the mud.

6. If we are men, we should treat women equally; if we are women, we should help our men to be men, thus ending the simultaneous gender wars.

7. We should find the boundaries of gossip. Zero gossip is impossible, but pointless gossip is manageable. If it has no impact on us, why should we seek to know about it?

8. We live in an information age; therefore, being uninformed is a sin. Especially about the workings of our government and about the conditions of the rest of the world.

9. We should seek to be enlightened beings, and so should put away barbaric things--the spanking of children, misogyny, racism, waste, entitlement, and anything else that corrupts us through the dual seductions of power and force.

10. If we say that we are going to do something, then we should do it. If we are not going to do it, then we shouldn't say it.

I would enjoy hearing your feedback, your additions, your deletions. By the way, "Bob" spelled backwards is "Bob."

Bob Weir released his first solo cd, Ace, back in 1970, and like the early Jerry Garcia solo cds, it's really just an extended Grateful Dead record. Not that that is a bad thing. "The Great Story Ever Told" comes from that release. "The Sound of Coming Down" is from the Long Winters' second CD, When I Pretend To Fall. Both are availabe at Itunes.

Missed Hits #2

Alejandro Escovedo--"The End" (mp3)

Alejandro Escovedo has really flown under the radar. Songwriters know him. Fans in the Southwest know him. Even Hank Bramblet knows him. But that gives you a sense of his relative obscurity. There are probably any number of his songs that would qualify as missed hits, but this one was actually released as a single. To add insult to injury, I only bought the CD single because it came with a bunch of bonus songs, live acoustic covers of things I like, including Peter Case's "Two Angels," V.U.'s "Pale Blue Eyes," and Mott the Hoople's "I Wish I Was Your Mother." I had heard of Escovedo at that point, but hadn't actually heard him. But maybe it isn't really an insult, since those cover choices hipped me to his hipness.

"The End" is available at Itunes on the CD, Thirteen Years. Those cover songs are available, too, as part of the expanded edition.

The Art of Talking or Not

Badfinger--"Perfection" (mp3)
Babyshambles--"You Talk" (mp3)

We were sitting in Mama Leone's in Venice, Florida over Spring Break. They have terrific pizza and other pasta offerings and the place is a big hit with "the Oldies." I'm sorry, that may not sound like an appropriate label, but you have to call them something. It is not normal to be in a place with such a preponderance of the elderly. All of the Seinfeld jokes come to mind about "the eventual left turn" being legal in Florida and the "I survived, let's see if you can, too" method of elderly drivers pulling out in front of you.

Anyway, at the next table three elderly couples chatted back and forth, the gist of the conversation being one couples' upcoming trip to Italy. It sounded like they had spent a lot of money on a villa and were trying to recruit at least one of the other couples to come along.

I've spent a lot of time in Florida, observing these social groups. Often, there is an alpha female, rather than an alpha male, who runs things. I guess by the time we pass 65 or 70 years, the women are even more in charge than ever. We're just happy to get a steady stream of urine.

In this group at the next table, there is a definite alpha female: she has more jewelry, blonder hair (her true age not a factor in hair color), and clothing that she didn't buy at one of the old lady boutiques down on Venice's main street.

So. She is saying, as if this will close the Italy deal, "And, Edward, you will like this. There is a separate exit for the boys, in case you boys want to head out at night."

Everyone looks at Edward. I think he smiles a little, but I can't really tell. There is a silence that follows, and we can hear it at the next table. Our salads are long gone, our pizzas nowhere in sight.

Edward's wife intervenes. "I try," she says, "I try and I try but I just can't get him to talk."

Then I realize that the alpha female knew this and that is why she spoke to Edward in particular, in hopes that he might speak.

Is it possible, that among the many things that fall away as we get older, the need to talk is one of them? I don't know. I'm just a nosey eavesdropper at the next table. But it doesn't seem like Edward had a stroke or anything. It's more like he just lost the need or lost the interest in talking.

Sure, it must make for a hell of a marriage, but what a circumstance. I think of the lines from the Neil Young song, "You know, I keep getting younger/My life's been funny that way/Before I learned how to talk/I forgot what to say." What if a person can simply run out of ideas for conversation?

Each night, or at least each work night, I seem to hit a magic hour when the idea of talking and listening becomes less and less attractive to me. Usually, that happens around 9 or 10 o' clock. Maybe it's something about having a job where people walk into my office all day long and want to talk about whatever's on their minds. Pastoral care, they call it. In an informal way, at least. Those of us who, however correctly, are identified as good listeners must have ears that are more like cisterns than anything else. Maybe we can only fill them so full.

And so, at some point, we don't have have anything to say anymore, and don't really want to listen to much either. Many things, we know, are finite, but we don't really think of talk, of speaking, of needing to get some point or some information across, either in a given day or in a lifetime, as one of those things.

If Wallace Stevens is right that "[t]he world is ugly and the people are sad," then how much of that can we stand to hear about? Maybe no more, I would argue, than most of us have to say about it. Maybe our internal mechanism tells us that we can only take so much, and much of our conflict, especially with our spouses, comes when that other person doesn't realize that we have had as much as we can take that day even though he or she has something about that ugliness or sadness that has to be said, to be emptied into someone else's cistern. But, we have so much more to hear tomorrow, and we have to have some time to get ready for that.

Of course, the alternative, though interesting to ponder, is awful. Trying to imagine the need to say nothing, ever, for weeks and months, like Edward, is almost more than most of us can imagine. "Successful conversation can take you very far."

"Perfection" comes from the Badfinger album, Straight Up, not currently available on Itunes and probably caught up in those Beatle song negotiations. "You Talk" is from Babyshambles' last CD and keeps alive the hope that the Libertines might one day reunite if Pete Doherty doesn't die. By the way, turn up that Badfinger song, converted from a vinyl album, and listen to how good the old technology sounds!

(In)Glory Days

Young America - Jump Little Children (mp3)
Teenager - Better Than Ezra (mp3)

"The Infamous El Guapo."
"Infamous? What does that mean?"

"IN-famous is when you're more than famous."
-- The Three Amigos

For most people, adolescence -- particularly high school -- is an IN-famous time. William Shatner's melodramatic acting style holds nary a candle to the minute-to-minute emotional roller coaster of the starship U.S.S. Teenager. On that spaceship, a strange odor can make a girl cry. The clearing of a throat can start fights between boys. A shirt that doesn't fit right, hair that doesn't brush right, and zits that don't pop right are among the WMDs hidden in the ship's crawlspaces. All passengers on board are required, at least one time during their service, to claim that they hate their parents.

Hormones are the engine that keeps the U.S.S. Teenager in hyperdrive through space. Many on the crew can handle exposure to lighter levels of this radiation, because they have the opportunity to release them through physical interaction with the opposite sex. Unfortunately, some of us work on the engineering crew, where we had to stay below deck, incapable of getting lai-- uh, are forced to merely absorb the radiation without an appropriate outlet for releasing it.

The strangest part is that I find myself spending the better part of my life in that world, like a Tribble that has snuck aboard the U.S.S. Teenager as a castaway. That's kinda what teachers are, I think.

Teachers are all stowaways. Not all of us really love that particular starship, nor did we all adore our time as teenagers. This just happens to be the ship that's taking us where we were hoping to go at one point or another. Some of us have chosen to remain on board indefinitely.

Not only do I work in a high school, I find myself voluntarily emerged in books, movies, TV shows about adolescents. "King Dork" was one of the most enjoyable books I read in 2007, but I also read "Be More Chill," "Looking for Alaska," and "Hacking Harvard," and at least three or four more teen-centric books. The first season of "Friday Night Lights" has me absolutely mesmerized in spite of the fact that I romanticize neither high school football nor towns obsessed with it. "Freaks & Geeks" and "My So-Called Life" are two of the three best single-season television shows ever, both very much about the miseries of high school.

I am one of the millions who worship at the altar of John Hughes, an altar all who worship him can tell you is located in Shermer, (Come On Feel the) Illinois, where Anthony Michael Hall is the Arch-Bishop, Molly Ringwald is the Mother Superior, and James Spader (left) is that Paul Bettany Opus Dei character (right).

Why is this? Why are we so drawn to that which most of us despised experiencing? Why, God -- er, Mr. Hughes -- Why??

"When you grow up, your heart dies," says the true love of my teenage loins, Ally Sheedy, in "The Breakfast Club." While that assertion is insultingly ludicrous, I totally adore the convicted fear behind it.

Most adults have been on so many emotional roller coasters, have experienced so much loss and lust and elation, that we often can manage to keep our emotional lunch down. We don't have to vomit our emotions every time that roller coaster does a loop-de-loop. When we get that Christmas bonus we've been desperately awaiting, we don't jump up and down like some overweight black woman on "The Price is Right." At 30, the dramas we need to escalate our emotions are far weightier than they were at 15. What once took a rip in the favorite jeans or rejection from the potential prom date suddenly requires a trial separation or the death of a friend.

But the fear -- and teenagers really fear this, because every emotion that courses through them is at an elevated threat level -- is powerful and obsessive. If adults fly at Emotional Mach 3, teens are almost always set for a jump into light speed. And jumping regularly.

Our hearts don't die. They just get pickier. Or, as a more cynical feller once said, The child is grown / The dream is gone / but I have become Comfortably Numb.

Working for a living surrounded by teenagers -- or even just reminding ourselves of what they're going through via books or TV shows -- can stave off this numbness. What better example of symbiotic beauty than this, to make a living by helping teens fight their fears of growing up while they help combat the numbness that can fester in our hearts?

We Have A Winner In Our First-Ever Contest, But Only By Modifying The Slogan From Outback Steakhouse: No Rules. Just Wrong!

Problem 1: So, we listed a bunch of entries, but, in reality, only three people entered (and one additional straggler who had some great offerings, by the way).

Problem 2: None of the contestants sent us a file of their music to listen to.

Problem 3: So we're judging a book by its cover. Yes, we're choosing a winner without ever hearing his song; it's just that the cover of the CD is so scary, and so off-target for the leader of the band that produced arguably the best song of the '80s.

Yes, this is the same gentleman who so forcefully sang "Come On, Eileen."

Our winner, Mr. Josh Edwards, argues just as forcefully that the songs on this album of covers, especially "The Greatest Love of All," are "scary." So, Josh, you win!

Problem 4: We don't have a prize, so we've decided that Josh can go to Billy and ask for whatever he wants and that will be his prize.

Problem 5: Some of you thought/hoped it was a best covers contest. Fear not. We will go there soon. But you have to outdo the obvious no-brainer: Hendrix's cover of Dylan's "All Along The Watchtower."

As Bartyles and James would say, "And thank you for your support." Congrats again to Josh. Peace out.

My Roy Exum Moment

Murray McLauchlan--"Child's Song" (mp3)

Because it's raining in Nashville.
Because I'm sitting in a French cafe where they don't offer refills on the coffee.
Because I miss my child at college.
Because morose French music whose lyrics I can't understand is playing overhead.
Because the air is chilly and it was still dark when I got up much too early and 4am is the most hopeless hour of each day, when you know you should be asleep, storing energy for the day to come, but instead the swirling events of the past days won't let go quite yet.
Because I live in a country where people apparently won't vote for someone because he is black.

Because of all of these things, I am thinking of a boy who died this week.

I did not know him well. I had supper with him once, teased him about a few things, asked him a few questions, mostly tried to put him at ease about what he would face in a scholarship competition the following day.

It isn't ever supposed to be like this. There is nothing more awful in this life than for a parent to have a child die before he or she does. There are larger catastrophes. There are dreadful imaginings. But this.

I don't know what I would do.

Would I be still waiting for miracles?
Would I happily send my little boy to heaven with a new set of wings?
Would I lash out angrily at anyone who might have had a hand in it?
Would I enshrine him?
Would I change the memory of him so that he would become in death those things that he never was in life but that no one dares contest?
Would I put a price on him?

Always, we think we want to react rationally to the irrational. But I don't know.

"Child's Song" appears on Canadian songwriter Murray McLauchlan's 2-record live set, Only The Silence Remains, long since out of print.