Well, Which Is It Young Feller?

How to Be Strong - Roseanne Cash (mp3)
ELO Kiddies - Cheap Trick (mp3)

From Raising Arizona:
GALE: Alright you hayseeds it's a stickup! Everybody freeze. Everybody down on the ground.  (Long pause)
HAYSEED: Well, which is it Young Feller? You want I should freeze or get down on the ground? I mean to say, if'n I freeze I can't rightly drop. And if'n I drop, I'm gonna be in motion.

What do we as a country want our children to be?

Are kids better serving as consumers in a free economy or as innocent angels in a pit of vipers? Well? Which is it, people? What the hell do you expect from America's children and teens? They ain't super-powered, y'know.

A recent Washington Post article in the "On Faith" section points out the dilemma decently enough.

In much the same way that adults cram fast food and candy down the throats of children yet expect them to grow up with physiques like Kate Moss and Macauley Culkin, adults shove kids in front of millions of disturbing visual images and auditory sounds but expect them to grow up sweet and innocent. And I'm not talking just parents here. I'm talking parents in specific and culture at large.

The TODAY Show will run an expose on the scandal surrounding Bristol Palin and premarital sex at 7:10, followed by a Hardee's commercial at 7:14 that depicts a woman with her tits practically spilling out of her dress, eating a hamburger like she's fellating it, and then scooping some stray ketchup from her finger and sucking on that like it's sloppy seconds. And then Matt Lauer returns to the screen to discuss the "scandal" of Miss California taking photos in lingerie. And then they'll see a movie trailer where Uhura is straddling Captain Kirk, and he's about to boldly take her where no man has gone before. All before most children have finished their breakfast. Oh yeah, and then Meredith returns with stories about the Craigslist predator and John Edwards' wayward penis.

Can you explain this to me?

If we want to feel like responsible parents, we can't watch a single thing that remotely interests us on television if there's the slightest damn chance our children could walk into the room. We won't let them watch ANY show anymore unless it's been DVR'd ("TiVo'd") first, because we can't risk the kind of shit that will greet them during commercial breaks of "Wipeout."

Meanwhile -- and I mean no offense, my conservative friends -- I've witnessed a fairly strong correlation between how often one agrees with "Family Values" lingo and how often one exposes their children to questionably-appropriate material. The more granola and tree-huggin' the parents I know, the more likely their children are even more sheltered from pop culture than ours. And ours are pretty sheltered, especially compared to most I know. (In point of fact, I'm not terribly confident that sheltering them more or better necessarily guarantees anything substantial in the long run. It just soothes my conscience a little is all, so we err on the side of caution.)

I wonder if that's because conservatives are the ones who espouse both the family values and the free market, the belief that people have the right to make a buck any way they can.

Let's take Carrie Prejean as an example. Her parents instilled in her a belief that gay marriage rips at the stable fabric of society. And I'd bet you a dime to a dollar that they are against increasing taxes and gun control. Yet, those same parents were perfectly OK with their sweet darling getting fake tits and modeling in lingerie as a teenager. I don't mean to rake them over the coals, but I do awe at our collective inconsistencies that don't once seem to give us judgmental pause.

Likewise, why aren't Elliott Spitzer and Sarah Palin seen more frequently as partners in deplorable hypocrisy? Both stood on soap boxes and wooed votes based on a public stance that was clearly neglected -- at least in moments -- in their private lives. But apparently we give Palin more lenience because "Who can control kids these days?" Maybe that's valid. Or... maybe it's all the more dangerous to stand on soap boxes and preach parental values if your kids ain't sweet li'l angels.

As the article suggests, we seem to be much more capable, as a society, of objecting to gay couples and teenage sex than we are of actually trying to address what most reasonable minds should agree is a more serious problem -- the pandemic of illegitimacy, for instance -- head-on.

It's a foolish game to call out the hypocrisy of specific people to make a point, because I'm plenty hypocritical in my own right, as both a parent and as a general adult. But I must call this hypocrisy out. I'm doin' it for the children, dammit!

We want them to do as we say, not as we do. And we want them to be sex symbols only in certain situations. We want to market Britney as a whore and an angel (well, we did back in 1999), and we expect our kids to know wisely and magically differentiate the good Britney from the bad Britney.

Everyone always expects so much out of the younger generations, and almost as much out of other people's children as our own, yet we don't seem to want to do much, collectively as a society, to help them.

I originally wrote "protect them," but I think the challenge is far more nuanced than mere protection. Instead of shielding, shouldn't we instead be aiming to equip them to do what they should, and more importantly to nurture them in an environment that helps them determine what the hell "should" is in the first place?

"How to Be Strong" is from the compilation album Mary Had a Little Amp. I can't find it anywhere for downloading, but the CD is good! The Cheap Trick tune can be found on iTunes or Amazon.com's mp3 site.

Athletes Need To Talk More Dirty

The Streets--"Stay Positive" (mp3)
The Hold Steady--"Stay Positive" (mp3)


The recent suspension of Manny Ramirez for 50 games serves as a great demonstration of how dangerous euphemisms can be. In this case, that is not only true for this particular athlete, but it is also true for all athletes and all those associated with sports, including agents, managers, lawyers, even reporters.

For the record, here's the story in a nutshell: Ramirez has tested positive for the use of a banned substance, which means he has violated the rules of Major League Baseball. Hence, the suspension. Hundreds of newspapers, television newscasters, and blogger have all retold the story using the same language:

Tested positive.

Hmmmmmm......he did indeed "test positive," but what he really did was to use a "performance-enhancing drug." No, what he really did was cheat. That's right. Manny Ramirez cheated. He took the rules of a sport he has played professionally for nearly two decades and he broke those rules. No one with even the slightest understanding of professional sports is likely to believe that he didn't know what he was doing.

Now, yes, I could go after "peformance-enhancing drugs" or "banned substances" or any of the other crummy euphemisms for illegal drugs, but I want to stay focused on the action here. What did Ramirez do? He "tested positive."

When that phrase becomes the sports-wide euphemism for using illegal drugs, it compromises the value systems of everyone involved. Notice what it says. It says that the athlete took a routine test and the results confirmed drug use. Notice what it doesn't say. It doesn't say that Ramirez acted in any way. He's just a pin cushion. We have no idea who tested him, when the test was done, where the test was done, or even, though we can guess, why the test was done. It doesn't even say that he used the drugs; he merely, though tragically, tested positive for them. He's passive in all of this, maybe a victim? Maybe just unlucky?

Most high school kids today know that if you eat a bunch of poppy seeds, you will test positive for heroin (urban legend? I don't know). But when we only say that an athlete "tested positive," how do we know that Ramirez, in effect, didn't just ingest the testosterone-increasing equivalent of a poppy seed bagel? So is he guilty of anything? Does he think he did anything wrong? It's hard to say.

Though he is "sorry" and says that the "mistake" is his "responsibility," his final words on the subject (would like to say more, but has been advised not to) are that he wants everyone to know that he has "taken and passed about 15 drug tests over the past five seasons."

Really, Manny? Congratulations!

I guess that means that the drunk driver who made it home shitfaced the last 15 times without getting caught was never a drunk driver. Until the 16th time when he hit somebody or got caught. If you really wanted to defend your character, why didn't you just say, "I DON'T USE ILLEGAL DRUGS???????" Why hide behind passing drugs tests? Unless you do use "banned substances" and have just gotten lucky for the past 5 years.

It gets more insidious. A relatively-distant voice on the topic, Mr. Frank Burke, who owns the Chattanooga Lookouts, our local minor league team, commented, "I never like to see anybody test positive, because it's bad for the game." Hell, yeah, it's bad for the game, but Mr. Burke's remark reinforces the confused value system. One might be tempted to think that what Mr. Burke thinks is "bad" is not the using of illegal drugs, but the getting caught, because he doesn't say a word about drug use. He only talks about getting caught. He never likes to see anyone test positive.

One of the few things that could perhaps help a guy like Ramirez, even at this late stage, is if he started talking dirty. And by dirty, I mean truthfully, because when you strip it all away a lot of the time, the truth of a matter is pretty dirty. Manny Ramirez and all of the others in every sport who "test positive" need to say out loud and very clearly so that all can hear: "I knowingly used illegal drugs and this means I cheated and am deserving of whatever punishment the league, or whatever, thinks is appropriate." No euphemisms, no equivocations, no poppy seed bagels.

Certainly, it would help the younger athletes coming up to hear that using illegal drugs constitutes cheating and will be punished. Unless, of course, that's how the game is supposed to be played.

The Hold Steady and The Streets are available at Itunes. Both entire cds highly recommended.

College Road Trip

Jerry Douglas (with Alison Kraus)--"Back In Love" (mp3)

First, the facts: 48-hour road trip to Kenyon College in Ohio and back. Some 1200 miles. 16 hours driving to and from, 14 hours sleeping, 14 hours with college child, 4 hours unaccounted for.

Here's what the road trip looks like. Gas stop. Denny's stop. Gas stop. Motel stop. Wal-Mart stop. Tim Horton's stop. Motel stop. Bakery with the incredible stuffed pepperoni bread stop! Campus stop. Mall stop. Trader Joe's stop. Motel stop. Bar to watch Kentucky Derby stop. Campus to see daughter dance stop. Friendly's Restaurant stop. Wal-Mart stop. Motel stop. Gas stop. Skyline Chili stop. Gas stop. Home. Such a blur.

Second, the road rage thing. Now, I am a bit of a road rager, probably more so on the interstate than around town. When I leave on a trip, I've got a particular E.T.A. (Estimated Time of Arrival) in my head, and I don't like things that stand in the way of that, especially truckers who are in the wrong lane, people who signal into the fast lane and go so slow that I have to take off my cruise control, people who shouldn't be in the fast lane at all because they drive so f---ing slow, two trucks that decide to drive side by side just to f--k with me, states that put up "Road Work Ahead" signs that cause me to slow down only to discover that there is no g-d, motherf------g roadwork, people who cause traffic to be back up for 5 sonofabitchin' miles because they are gawking at an accident that took place on the other freakin' side of the road!!!!!!

Anyway, I find those circumstances mildly irritating. Maybe you, too.

But on this trip, I found a solution. A few weeks ago, when my younger daughter and I were goofing around at home, she called me a "jerk," but when she said it, for some reason she said it with a British accent, so it came out "juhk." This may not seem like a big deal to you, but it has rescued me from road rage. All during this trip, when I would come upon and eventually pass one of the offending drivers or trucks mentioned above, I would simply give them a sideways glances, and then, with or without the rest of my family, simply say aloud, "Juhk." And that did it. In a calm and relaxed way, I had had my say and could move on without raising my blood pressure. Try it. It works.

Third, the words you never want to hear. We stopped on the way back home at Skyline Chili, a brand new one about as far south of Cincinnati as those franchises go. After we ordered, my wife and daughter went to the bathroom, which, as they eventually discovered, had only one toilet. When they reached for the door, it was locked. They waited. They waited some more. I had eaten all of the free soup crackers from my little dish, and I was starting to sneak them from the little dishes that belonged to my wife and daughter, taking one or two at a time, hoping that they wouldn't notice when they came back.

I waited for them. They waited. Finally, my daughter said, "Maybe we should just come back later." At that point, the door opened, a nicely-dressed woman walked out. She looked at my wife and daughter and said, "Sorry, guys."

Now, you never want to hear "Sorry, guys" from someone who is walking out of a bathroom. It is a statement that portends doom. And it did.

The bathroom looked like World War III, with toilet paper everywhere, skid marks of the brown kind, and overpowering smell. In short, a road toilet ambush. Who knows what happened in there? Who can even guess? Only the apologetic, nicely-dressed woman knows.


Fourth, the idiosyncracies of Ohio. Ohio has an excess of charm, with its well-kept small towns, its quaint Amish riding their buggies down speedy thoroughfares, its terrific Tim Horton's franchiese (think Dunkin' Donuts meets Panera), its Skyline Chili (which would be the ultimate road food if it didn't lead to such gastrointestinal difficulties. Sorry, guys.), and, most of all, the orgasmic stuffed pepperoni and mozzarella bread at Asetta's Bakery in Mt. Vernon.

But when I am in Ohio, I must also remind myself, 'This is the state that put Obama over the top. All sins are forgiven.' For the good citizens of Ohio are among the most sensible on the planet. So sensible, in fact, that they traditionally drive 5 miles below the speed limit. Especially on the backroads when there are no other cars around and when you drive behind them, you also travel at that same, sensible, safe speed. In fact, the top speed limit in the state of Ohio is 65 miles per hour, a sensible 5 miles below our Tennessee speed limit.

Juhks.

The method to the madness: Though "Back In Love" would seem to have nothing to do with this post, its constant refrain 'Everytime I move I lose' was quite inspirational for these traveling woes. Available at Itunes.

Can We Clone Dolly?

Cologne - Dolly Parton (mp3)
Knockers - The Darkness (mp3)

I'm not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I'm not dumb... and I also know that I'm not blonde.

America should clone Dolly. Not the sheep, mind you. Dolly Parton.

I'm being totally serious. Dolly is, as best I can figure, the greatest Renaissance Man of the modern world. It just so happens that the greatest Renaissance Man of the modern world has a set of 40DD breasts attached to her front side.

Dolly Parton has managed to prove her prowess as a songwriter, a singer, an actress, a business manager, a philanthropist, and perhaps more than all of these, as a marketing genius. And in all of these various endeavors, she has not merely succeeded, but succeeded wildly:

• 37 awards from BMI for her songwriting;
• 26 #1 hits;
• 40 Top 10 Country albums;
• 42 Grammy nominations;
• (at least) 2 Golden Globe nominations for Best Actress.

And then there's Dollywood. Dollywood turned what was once Silver Dollar City (a.k.a. struggling) into one of the most successful theme parks in the country, and can be credited as the single most important factor in turning Pigeon Forge from a Gatlinburg afterthought into its own destination for millions of white people every year (and a few dozen minority families). I can mock Pigeon Forge and Dollywood, but I can't deny its success.

She's been in the public eye since 1967 when she jumped on The Porter Wagoner Show, and she's hardly left it a day since.

Some of my dreams are so big they would scare you.

If, as Keyser Sose once said, "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn't exist," then Dolly's greatest trick has been to ride the train of fame and fortune and celebrity for four decades without ever getting irreversably slimed by her own publicity.

Perhaps she's done this the good ol' fashioned way, through squeaky-clean livin'. She's been married to the same dude since 1966, and they don't have children, and she constantly leads us to believe they're happy and content with her on the mountaintop and him hidden in a very private life. Hey, whatever. Whatever the woman has or hasn't done in or out of bedrooms with or without other people doesn't make a lick of difference to me (NOTE: My fellow blog partner might disagree with that... see link above). My point is, one way or the other, she's managed to avoid one of the deadliest career-killers in the business while simultaneously throwing her (always-covered) hooters out there for the world to gawk and oogle.

If I had career ambitions in politics, I would encourage Dolly to hold seminars on how to please all the people all the time.

She's one of the wealthiest women in this country, and the undisputed financial Queen of Nashville, but you wouldn't know it with all her stories of humble childhoods and tin cans and rundown cars. She's sung the theme song for a movie about a pre-op transsexual but has made most of her money off the very God-fearin' Bible-thumpin' folks who hear the word "transsexual" and run screaming the other direction. While Dolly has plenty of people who couldn't care less about her, she seems to have a paucity of enemies. And the enemies she does have seem wise enough to know not to make their spats public.

If I see something saggin`, baggin` or dragin`, I`m gonna have it nipped, tucked or sucked.

Seriously, do you realize how rare all of this is?

I grant you, singin' and actin' and Dollywoodin' isn't exactly going to cure cancer or AIDS. Dolly won't go down in history as a true changer of fates like Marie Curie or anything. But the woman has managed to remain on the radar of pop culture consiousness for FORTY YEARS, and she's hit it in almost every way imaginable save for a Pulitzer Prize.

She's got career legs like Elvis and Marilyn and didn't need to die young to do it.

The worst things I've ever heard about Dolly Parton come out of her own mouth. She lovingly romanticizes her extremely impoverished beginnings, but she doesn't lampoon them. She jokes that her entire body is fake at this point. And although no one has accused her of being a World-Class Diva, she's admitted to having her own bad moments. She said as much when making an appearance on Larry King to defend Jessica Simpson (who got all fat and whale-like, we're led to believe).

Let me go back and repeat that. Dolly was out there defending Jessica Simpson. That's pro-bono work if ever I've seen it.

I'm not like a real person. I love being artificial. I think there`s a little magic in the fact that I`m so totally real, but look so artificial at the same time.

One of our culture's stoopidest and most enduring myths is somehow believing we can know people better just because they show up on our TV and movie screens. I betcha fewer than 200 people in the world could describe Dolly Parton's actual hair color, and I suspect fewer than that have seen her without makeup.

But Dolly offers enough of herself, this sense of amazing openness, that we buy what she's selling, metaphorically. We want to believe she's genuine in spite of the costume. She emits this aura that she's beyond being ashamed or scared, that you're a dang fool if you judge that book by its cover (even while she herself seems to think having a very intricately-mined cover is important).

The woman has made a career, a long and amazing career, out of riding every fence in the book yet coming across like she's out there running wild and fancy free. In the end, perhaps Dolly Parton's greatest gift is as a magician.

Mock her. Dislike her. Care nothing for her. But please don't dismiss what she's accomplished as anything less than stupefying.

We should clone her before she's gone forever.

"Cologne" is from Dolly's most recent album, Backwoods Barbie, produced by her own record company. "Knockers" is  from One Way Ticket to Hell... And Back. Both are available on iTunes and Amazon.com. Dolly's album is also available on eMusic.

You're My Kind of Asshole

Tom Waits--"Hang Down Your Head (live)" (mp3)
Tom Waits--"Innocent When You Dream (live)" (mp3)

"I think it has something to do with what kind of prick they are and how much of a genius they are. Van, Bob, Frank Lloyd Wright---they can be kind of pricks because they are artistic and justifiably egotistical because it allows them to do what they do. The Eagles and people like that aren't great enough to justify it. Somehow, too, there's a difference between cantankerous and douchebag."

--Jeff K., a friend

Recent rumors of Bruce Springsteen's affair with the woman at the left have revived my simultaneous needs to both defend and convict my heroes. Back in the late 80's, I remember a heated conversation I had with several friends when Springsteen left his model-wife Julianne Phillips for back-up singer Patty Scialfa. Though we disagreed on how we were supposed to react to Springsteen's music from that point on, part of our discussion was based on a partial lack of information and, therefore, a hope that Springsteen had "done the right thing."

Without knowing, it was possible, just possible, that he had fully closed the door on his relationship with his wife before he picked up with his back-up singer. Yeah. Right. He was not divorced, but he was "sharing his mike" with Patti in, as the current divorce papers of his lover's husband state, "places too numerous to mention." We sat in the darkening afternoon, four or five of us, trying to figure out what to do with a hero who had broken whatever code we had established for him.

Far too much time during my college years was spent daydreaming about the Platonic notions of love contained within the catalog and ethos of Springsteen songs--the pledges, the desperation, the give-it-everything-you-got, the sense that that love was part of and only possible in the great America. So, the news of his affair with Patti rocked me. It rocked me in a way that a Mick Jagger affair would not have. It rocked me in the way that a Pete Townshend child pornography story did. Bruce was not who I thought he was, and I abandoned his music for several years. When I came back to him, he had not only divorced his wife, he had divorced his E-Street band. But I was more jaded then, too, and so it kind of worked.

You see, Bruce Springsteen is my kind of asshole. There's no other way to put it. Like many other substantial artists whose work I admire, I started off by putting him up on a pedestal, and then when he has proved to be all-too-human, I excoriate him, but never fully abandon him. He now has a pattern of hurting people; he has a pattern of public, messy relationships. But I'm still there, (usually) still listening.

I'm sure you can put together your own list. Here's part of mine. Hemingway was an asshole, but he is my favorite writer. Zevon was an asshole, but his songs transcend that. Joyce was an asshole, but he convinced himself that in order for him to pursue his genius, everyone else had to take care of him. Maybe it was true. Van Morrison is a cantankerous, paranoid asshole who thinks everyone is stealing his ideas. Steve Earle--foul-mouthed jerk, 5 time married, former heroin addict--is one of my favorite songwriters. Bob Dylan, as far as I can tell, has become so weird as to place himself beyond judgement.

People like me are enablers of people like them. They live their sloppy lives in public and I acknowledge those, perhaps condemn them, and then keep on going along with them.

The problem is that I am unable to establish any kind of stable moral code to evaluate them, and that concerns me about my other evaluations.

When I sit in the bathroom and read through an issue of In Touch, I feel absolute disgust for the lives of the Hollywood stars, for the hook-ups, for the pseudo-dramas, for Matthew McConaughy's apparent desire to spend his entire life getting buff and throwing frisbee in the surf at Malibu, for the magazine's lame attempts to depict stars in situations that show they are "just like us."

But when my wife was getting kind of cranked up by the current Bruce fiasco last week and asked me something about it, I gave her kind of a "Yeah, it's no big deal" response, and she was taken aback. She thought I was pooh-poohing his adultery, but that wasn't it at all. It's just that I've now been down a 36 year road with Bruce Springsteen. I've seen the warts and I still like the songs. So,what?

It's the oldest question related to art of any kind: do you separate the art from the artist, or do you gauge the art based upon what you know about the artist? It's not always your choice, since sometimes you know nothing about the artist at all. Check the body of work, even on this blog, by Mr. or Mrs. Anonymous. But with most modern popular musicians, their lives, or at least portions of them, are played out on television, in books and magazines, on the Internet. And so, it's hard to separate, isn't it?

I think my friend Jeff has a pretty good handle on our odd kind of hero-worship of musicians. I even used the word "hero" myself up above. But there's something more to the modern listener-musician relationship. It's kind of like they become friends of ours. The Phish-heads who speak so adoringly and so casually of "Trey" know little of who he is, and what they do know, including his incredible problems with addiction, they likely dismiss as part of the territory. So do I. Whether you are a spokesman for a generation or a spokesman for a bunch of lonely, drunken boys in a Philadelphia dormitory, they and I are going to cut you a lot of slack if you can deliver musically, deliver in performance.

I don't know if that's the way it should be or not.

I was speaking with a friend tonight of Bruce's affair, and his dismissive comment was, "That's old news. That isn't a new affair." Of course, the story only broke in a major way in the press two or three weeks ago. But the fans have moved on. Bruce and his wife have made prominent public appearances, have sung significant duets together since then. If your best friend had done it, you probably would have told him he's an asshole; if your favorite rock star does it, it's as if you nod to yourself and think, as you buy his latest stuff, 'You're my kind of asshole.'

Tom Waits' songs come from a concert found online called "Glitter And Doom In Atlanta." A superb show.

The Death of Personal Reinvention?

Sorry - Nerf Herder (mp3)
Linger - Cranberries (mp3)

A March New York Times Magazine included an intriguing column on the impact of Facebook on the maturation process, an article suggesting that Facebook risks preventing the normal maturation process of adolescents and young adults because Facebook always keeps your past crammed into your present.

To this day, I distinctly remember the horrible nausea that washed over me my senior year when I visited Rhodes College in Memphis. I had a similar feeling when I visited Washington & Lee. The nausea stemmed from feeling that, were I to go to one of those schools, I would always be trapped as the guy everyone thought they knew in high school. Rhodes and W&L were, for all intents and purposes, slightly altered universes of the very school I was so desperately excited to escape.

At my high school, I completely identified with Anthony Michael Hall's character in Sixteen Candles when he referred to himself as "King of the Dipshits." My geeky nerdy classmate friends were just enough more socially awkward than I that they seemed to look up to my ability to communicate with other "regular" people. My less geeky nerdy classmate friends tolerated my presence with patience and bemusement, but it's not like any of them were at a kegger on the weekends thinking, Y'know, this party would launch into the stratosphere if Billy showed up...

Socially, high school for me often felt like I had a special backstage pass for High School Musical. I was allowed to witness all the cool people be cool and fun people have fun, but I wasn't ever really a part of the performance. I was part of the stage crew or something. Just be grateful they're letting you see it all! was kinda the vibe.

You remember the video for "Take On Me" by A-Ha? (Sure you do.) Remember the dramatic conclusion, where Lead Singer Dude is trying to escape his sketchy cartoon bonds to join that girl in the full-color real world? That's totally what high school felt like, like I was pounding the walls and beating the floors and desperately begging for a full-color existence. I was trapped in two dimensions -- academics, comic books, role-playing games and church stuff -- and couldn't ever seem to break into the real world of... well, girls. The parties weren't nearly as painful to miss as the girls. I just wanted to be around them, to understand how they ticked. They were such a mesmerizing mystery to me. I longed to be able to study them like I did math or English or German, but I couldn't seem to find the right teachers.

To say I felt awkward, was awkward, in high school is to insult awkward people.

I wanted nothing more out of college than to escape that image of myself, an image I'd helped create, and an image I was convinced might haunt me the rest of my life if I couldn't escape it.

With 20 years of hindsight, it's far easier to accept that almost all teenagers feel this way. Even the most popular kids can feel like outsiders, and even the sweetest and kindest girls can feel like they're tolerated more than loved, endured more than appreciated. I thought my high school misery was unique, but it was really just one verse from "Message In a Bottle" I was sharing with millions of my peers.

And now there's Facebook.

Hawthorne wrote "The past lies upon the present like a giant's dead body." With Facebook, we have revived the damn giant, and it's now a zombie who wants piggy-back rides all over town.

Who knows whether the woman who wrote NYT article is right to be afraid of Facebook, but it's worth keeping an eye on.

As I approach 40, I've begun to love all of my different personae over the years even as I've begun to realize that the awkward nerdy Billy in high school is virtually identical to the wacky goofy Billy in college who is almost exactly the same eager uncertain Billy who worked in Warner Robins who is a hair's breadth away from the austere handsome unshakable Billy who sits here writing this entry. What I thought was a series of substantial personal transformations were actually more about a single persona traveling through a variety of environments, each time with a little more experience and wisdom in his quiver.

Sure, I've changed over the years. It's called "growing up." But I have trouble believing Facebook or even "helicopter parents" can leash a kid to their youth forever. Eventually, growing up happens no matter how hard we fight it, no matter how strongly we deny it. The past may never be past, but it never stays completely present, either.

Neverland never had Wi-Fi, yet Peter Pan still never managed to grow up. So maybe it's a little quick to lay all the future developmental problems of today's youth on Facebook.

However, if I read another one of those dang lists, I might go postal, and prison would definitely curb my future growth as a human.

Go getcha some Cranberries or Nerf Herder on iTunes or Amazon.com! Support great music!

Tin Soldiers

Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young--"Ohio" (mp3)
Melanie--"Lay Down (Candles In The Rain)" (mp3)

Next year will be 40 years and they'll probably make some kind of big deal about it, reassess the situation, freshen up the context, etc. But for now, let us simply remind ourselves of the simple facts: American soldiers killed unarmed American students on American soil. It happened 39 years ago. It happened on this day. It happened in Ohio.

The National Guardsmen who opened fire were never convicted of anything. While I don't agree with that verdict, I tend now to see them as victims, too.

Recently, I read the book 1968 by Mark Kurlansky, a history of a year, and how the turmoil of that year spread all over the world, how the lessons and techniques of the Civil Rights movement fueled the anti-war movement, and then from there, the student protests around the world--in France, in Poland, in Mexico, and elsewhere.

The events at Kent State came two years after that, when the dream of non-violent student activism, like non-violent civil rights activism, had somewhat soured, while the killing in Vietnam had continued, while Nixon's secret expansion of the war into Cambodia had become public and, with it, Nixon's stated need for an increased draft. Students were incensed. By 1970, not only did they not want to serve in a war that appeared to be purposeless and brutal, but they also felt that the inclusion of Cambodia was unconstitutional.

The events at Kent State, where 4 students were killed and many others wounded, remain controversial. Yes, there had been violent confrontations with the police in town, yes the ROTC building had burned, but should the National Guard have been called in? Should they have had live ammunition? Did they turn and fire in self-defense? Were their lives being threatened?

I've read some compelling studies on both sides of these questions. But, as is often both my strength and my weakness, I like to zero in on a particular issue or a particular fact and try to base my understanding on one of those.

It doesn't always work, and it may not work here. But here's what still fuels my outrage: the closest student shot by the National Guard was 270 feet away; most of the others were between 300 and 400 feet away. Now, being a high school teacher and having stood at the sidelines of a lot of football games, I'm here to remind you that we're talking about the length of a football field, at the very least.

I know the times could be violent, and I know that the situation was tense, but 28 of the 61 National Guardsmen who felt "threatened" retreated to the top of a hill and turned and fired live ammunition at unarmed (or rock armed, if you will) students a football field away. The best pro quarterback ever would have hard time throwing a decent rock that far. How threatening was the demonstration?

My dad has the Great Depression. To this day, it colors much of what he is and much of how he reacts to our current situation. For my generation, we have the 60's, with its many assassinations and conflicts, and for someone like me who lived in Pittsburgh, so close to Kent State and the events that took place there, the lesson of May 4, 1970 lingers: our government sent our soldiers against our students and those soldiers opened fire and killed.

Looking at these pictures and hearing these songs, it all comes back for me, the tragedy as fresh as ever. It would be extremely foolish for any American to think that these events are reflective of a certain time and place and could never happen again. We've never figured out what to do with rebellion. Notice, in his response, how Nixon blames the victims:

"THIS should remind us all once again that when dissent turns to violence, it invites tragedy. It is my hope that this tragic and unfortunate incident will strengthen the determination of all the Nation's campuses--administrators, faculty, and students alike--to stand firmly for the right which exists in this country of peaceful dissent and just as strongly against the resort to violence as a means of such expression."

--President Richard Nixon's statement on the Kent State shootings

Neil Young's superb protest song and Melanie's romantic interpretation of Woodstock are both available at Itunes.