A Sort of Homecoming

Aaron Copeland--"Fanfare For The Common Man" (mp3)
Aimee Mann--"Wise Up" (mp3)

This bomb-blast lightning waltz
No spoken words, just a scream...

--U2, "A Sort of Homecoming"

I can't speak for Billy, but I haven't been able to keep up the blog for several days because I simply got overwhelmed by our ongoing football rivalry with another school in town. It's a week that involves shirt sales, button sales, orgiastic sign-painting, a bonfire, a luncheon with our sister school, a pep rally, a Michael-Jackson-based skit, a caravan, alums everywhere, reunion parties, and all of the many things students did that I don't even know about. Here a few random, ironically-juxtaposed thoughts on this yearly experience:

--Students from both schools engaged in at least the following--public urination, public defecation, drinking and driving, vandalism, theft, defacing of public property, retaliation on each other's campuses...and the list goes on. Thinking about this in the context of teaching A Clockwork Orange has made me rethink the ideas in that book a bit. I was inclined to consider the teenage actions in the book as too extreme, but I'm not so sure.

--I secured perhaps the most important business card from an alum ever! This former student of mine actually makes Smuttynose Beer up in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and has promised to load me up with several cases and a full tour of operations and who knows what else!

--As we ride an 11-year winning streak, it has become clear once again that winning is not something that gets old. Any feelings of, I hope they finally win, let's let them win for a while, or any of that were dashed quickly. Over time, perhaps the feelings get a bit more sophisticated, perhaps there is a "feeling sorry for them" aspect to basking in the victory, but perhaps not.

--The integrity of sign-painted messages must be carefully considered. Case in point: the opposing team's sign "We'll Blow _(insert school here)___ Away!" was one student guerilla mission away from having its last word removed and its meaning changed entirely.

--When you talk to alums, you encounter guys you taught as many as 20 years ago, and when you see them, in spite of their age, their gray, their wives and children, you tend to see them instantly as they were all those years ago when you were trying to get them to do their homework and you were busting them for drinking. But now, students who barely got through are web designers, radiologists, overseers of the family business, high school teachers and coaches, former Marines, former spies, you name it.

--If alums look that old, how do we look?

--Much as I might get nostalgic about the past, at the same time, I always find it kind of unsettling when alums return, because they undercut the notion we teachers share that we live in a perpetual present of students who range in age from 15 to 18 and who may change faces, but who never stop being anything but high school students.

Financial Steerage

Push It Along - Paul Weller (mp3)
You, Me & the Bourgeoisie - The Submarines (mp3)

Something about the hijinks of the last couple of weeks on Wall Street and in D.C. have me hearing Celine Dion songs in my head and picturing Billy Zane throwing little children off lifeboats so he can live. No, I'm not saying the US is a ship that will sink slowly over the next two hours while I have sex with a really hot, buxom red-headed woman in the back of a Model T.

What this feels like is that scene where Leonardo DiCaprio and all of those people in steerage are standing behind that gate, trapped, without any outlet for escape. And there's that bellboy or whatever on the other side of the gate, looking at us with this mix of pity that we're all gonna sink and relief that he's not trapped down with us.

I don't have the slightest freakin' clue what's happening to the economy, at least not in any technically detailed way sufficient enough that I can divine whether a $700B bailout is a vital "fix" or an awful mistake. In fact, it seems like the reason most Americans are against the bailout is because if the debate is presented as 50/50 on whether $700B in tax dollars is a good idea, most people seem to choose against spending it.

If someone came to me and told me that an investment of a year's salary might very well come back to me, maybe even with a little extra money, but they can't be positive. They can't even be sure I'll get much of my money back. I'm not sure I'd want to give them that money.

Perhaps the most ludicrous thing is how both sides of the political coin can scream about the problem being "partisanship" when both sides had people voting on both sides of the issue. As best I could tell from the House vote, it was the most bipartisan disagreement I've seen in D.C. in a long, long time. The Senate passed it yesterday, but the House is where the crazies lurk.

Truth is, for me and millions of others like me, we have no idea whether the ship is sinking. We have no idea how to get out of steerage. We have no path to life rafts. We're just stuck down here, hoping the captain and his crew know what the fuck they're doing.

The only problem with this metaphor is that most of us don't even know if we're on the same boat as Wall Street. How else to explain the majority of Americans being either mildly or vehemently opposed to the government bailout? (While Congress is bitterly divided, Main Street America seems almost entirely unified in saying, "Hell if I know what's going on, but I don't much like the notion of giving a shitload of my tax money to a bunch o' fancy pants fellers with their hair all slicked back and wearing Rolex watches. I doubt they ever plan on returning the favor, so I say screw 'em.")

Are we on the same boat? Is the boat sinking, or is it merely overdue for righting itself on the turbulent tides of the world economy? Who is Kate Winslet in this analogy?

Meanwhile, at least in Chattanooga, the search for gas has become something of a scavenger hunt. Bags cover a majority of pumps. Yet people seem to be carrying on as usual, plus or minus a couple extra water cooler statements about how damned hard it is to find gas.

Perhaps the wildest part of all this? We keep dancing on our steerage tables, eating our steerage meals, and watching our steerage SNL skits. Ask one of us what's going on, and we're likely to give you this look like, "Well, I think we're all fooked, and royally. But no point worrying about it, so pass the Cheez-Its and let's watch the next episode of HEROES!"

Have we finally been lulled, as a society, into such a comatose state of entertainment-dependence that facing something this frightening and confusing leaves us no option but to continue searching for distractions and ways to ignore it?

No wait. The wildest part was that Henry frakkin' Paulson, who's s'posed to know shizzle from shinola when it comes to these matters, said that the $700 BILLION was determined fairly indescriminately. "We just wanted to choose a really large number." You can't make this shit up.

In light of that quote, I'd like to change my analogy. We're not on the Titanic. We're on the Exxon Valdez, and Paulson is that drunk bastard who's driven us straight into a rock, and we're leaking oil so quickly the damn gas stations can't hold onto it.

I'd keep writing and worrying, but I need to know what happened to Sweet Baby Caylee. Gotta prioritize.


"Push It Along" is from Paul Weller's 22 Dreams. "You, Me & the Bourgeoisie" is from Honeysuckle Weeks. Both could be purchased for the low low price of $8.99 at Amazon.com's mp3 site.

The Decline of Civilization, Part II

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers--"Room At The Top" (mp3)
Lisa Germano--"All Around The World" (mp3)

There's a great scene in the movie, Being There, where a randy Shirley McLaine is so turned on by Peter Seller's character that she completely misinterprets him. She's trying to get him into bed, but he is a simpleton, a gardner working at the White House, who has been mistaken as a genius of few words, and whose few words are dictating national policy. Shirley McLaine's character, of course, is intoxicated by the apparent power Sellers' Chauncy Gardner has. All Chauncy Gardner really likes to do, though, is to watch tv. And so, when he declares, in response to her advances and while staring at the television, "I like to watch, Eve," she takes this as a sexual preference of his and masturbates in front of him, to her own satisfaction, while he continues to watch tv.

Here's what most people like to do: watch.

That's it.

Far be it from me to extrapolate from the small, small sample of this blog, but I do think I notice a pattern that the more provocative a post Billy or I put up, the less likely it is to get a response. I can almost picture people squirming in their chairs. Does he really believe that?

I'm also basing this opinion on work and fantasy football message boards and everything else that leaves me convinced that's what people like to do (and not do). They like to watch to see what others will do or say. They'd rather hear an impersonation than try one. They'd rather acknowledge someone else's letter to the editor than write one. They like to stay out of the spotlight. They like to see and to report on the train wreck, but they don't want to be on the train. Oddly, it's not only a safe position, but it also can put them completely in the center, maybe moreso than the actors themselves. They can make an entire social career out of relating the crazy things that other people have done.

In this political season, however, there is an enlarged subset, and that is those who bravely speak their mind on the "comments" section below various political blogs, using clever nicknames. Using the moniker "Thomas Paine" or "flowergurl," one can safely say the most outrageous or offensive or ridiculous things and all that will come back in return will be attacks against a false front. I doubt any of these pseudonymed posters ever even go back to see what others have said in response. It's guerilla warfare for the timid. I guess the authors of the Federalist Papers knew what they were doing, eh?

Still, I'm saddened to see so many of my countrymen sidelined in ways large and small. And I, unfortunately, share their passive fear and inactivity. Consider the brilliant challenge, "What issue or situation would it take to get you out in the street protesting?" I am as befuddled as everyone else while searching for an answer. Sometimes I feel all high and mighty because I don't waste as much time watching television as most other people I know, but I'm not sure I can claim anything better.

Let's face it. We live in a time when "putting ourselves out there" is just too great a risk. This is a problem in everything from relationships to blogs to message boards. And those are situations involving friends and intimates. God forbid we should be that person standing on the corner of Georgia and 3rd holding an Obama sign and waving at passing cars and showing our positions for all the world to see. No, we're the ones in the cars that pass, and maybe if we don't recognize anyone around us, we'll honk in support. But mostly, we just like to watch.

"Room At The Top" is from the Tom Petty cd, Echo, and "Around The World" is from the Lisa Germano cd, Happiness. Both are availabe at Itunes.

Malled to Death

Have You Ever Needed Someone So Bad - Def Leppard (mp3)

I went to the Chattanooga's primary mall today for the first time in at least two or three years. In the imaginary movie of my life, in which I'm playing the main character in real time, Hamilton Place Mall was once a central character.

The mall wasn't quite of the supporting actor category, but then, if Judi Dench can win an Oscar for six minutes in Shakespeare in Love, then the mall should get some consideration for its role in my adolescent years. It was, for me, the Central Perk of Billyville.

The movie analogy is only important because, having not been a regular at the mall in almost two decades (so help me God), and having only gone a handful of times since I became overwhelmed with children, I somehow managed to convince myself that the mall was losing its popularity. How could something survive if people like me, who used to go all the time, no longer go?

Yes, I know how foolish that seems, but I think most of us do it. We go to this restaurant everyone is talking about, and we don't know why everyone loves it, so we don't go back. And whaddaya know, six months later, the restaurant is closed. Coincidence? Sure. But we get the luxury of believing we have that kind of power, because it's our movie, dadgummit.

Yet there the mall was on a Saturday, just where I'd left it.

Because it was only two blocks from my house, I walked or rode my bike down there frequently, at least two or three times each week. I was not, however, a Mall Rat, because rats congregate in clusters, and I was a solitary explorer most of the time. I was more of a Mall Declawed Wolverine.

As a teenager, the mall was about possibility and variety. I would eat lunch there every Sunday after church. Dad would hand me a generous $5 for lunch, so my goal was to eat as economically as possible so I could max out the spare cash for use in the arcade, at the movie theater, or to help purchase a cassette or a book. I discovered the best stores to hang around to observe the alien species that was the Teenage Girl. If I wanted to try accidentally bumping into a GPS student, I milled around outside the Laura Ashley store. If I wanted to run into your more standard upper-middle public school girl, the Gap was my best bet. (There were no Abercrombies or Eddie Bauers in "Hammy" at that point.)

When I wasn't busy repeatedly viewing a single movie ("Young Guns" and "Die Hard" come to mind), the mall was mostly a venue for fishing. I was fishing to catch some incredibly attractive, lonesome teenage girl who was searching for some awkward boy milling around alone, one so appealing that she felt compelled start a conversation with me, maybe invite me to continue with her on her shopping adventures, offer her advice on how she looked in various outfits, maybe even get married and have a brood of children.

This was fishing in the same way it is for thousands of drunk males in the South. Which is to say, they have to call it something other than "sitting in a boat and getting shitfaced," because that sounds pathetic, so they call it fishing even though they don't ever care to catch anything. Likewise, I was "shopping," but mostly I was shopping for something that was neither on sale nor even of the real, non-imaginary world: a spark-lit relationship built on nothing but a sideways glance across the food court.

If this comes across as agonizingly, uncomfortably pathetic, imagine what it must have been like to live as that person. Maybe that's why I don't go to the mall much anymore. Because I see the Old Me -- or actually the Young Me -- there, and I feel so damned sorry for him.

But maybe he'd feel sorry for me. All I see at the mall now is overpriced crap, old people sitting around staring into the ether, minimal numbers of rowdy teens, and no Frank & Stein's, where I could stare at the beer taps and long for the day I could legally purchase a beer and drink it in the mall (ohhhh, Glory Day!). But Young Billy saw potential, promise, hope. He saw fun in the arcade, possibility in the bookstore, adventure in the movie theater, and beauty in all the stores. He got nervous when the girl at the movie concession stand was cute, because maybe he could buy some popcorn and then invite her to share it with him, and maybe she'd say yes! He would walk around imagining the conversations that were never going to happen.

What is it in our natures that allow us to look back at such embarrassing, awkward, isolating and confusing times and think, "Geez, sometimes I miss those days..."? Whatever it is, I somehow think we oughtta be grateful for it. It probably shaves years from our lives.

The sad reality is, I'm very very grateful that the Internet didn't exist when I was a teenager. I don't know for sure what kinds of problems would have sprouted for me from the computer, but I'm damn sure I was just naive and desperate enough to locate my fair share.

Had the Internet been thriving in the late '80s, the video below would even more painfully mirror my own ineptitude:



(Yes, this is linked from a place called GodTube. And yes, apparently this song has deeper religious implications, although I can't seem to find them.)

To continue the hypocrisy and inconsistency of the above, I will admit to enjoying my fair share of Def Leppard, but I won't go promoting what album this song came from or how to best get your hands on it. If you liked Def Leppard, you prolly already have this. If you didn't, you prolly don't and hate me for using it in this post.

The Decline of Civilization, Part 1

Jason Ringenberg (with Steve Earle)--"Bible and a Gun" (mp3)
Tokyo Police Club--"Citizens of Tommorrow" (mp3)

From Wikipedia: In the United States, the X-rating originally referred to a non-trademarked rating that indicated a film contained content unsuitable for minors such as extreme violence or explicit sex and thus was for adults only. A Clockwork Orange (1971) originally received an "X" rating for its sexual content. Today, many critics recognize it as one of Stanley Kubrick's most important films. The uncut version of the film has been released on DVD with an "R" rating.

So I went to Target yesterday and bought A Clockwork Orange. Something about it just didn't feel right. Oh, I was happy to find it there (I had seen it there last week) because I wanted to use it for class. But I felt an odd disconnect.

See, when a long time ago A Clockwork Orange received its original "X" rating and I was only 14 years old, there was such a forbidden feeling I had about such a movie, not a forbidden fruit, but something different. Which is odd, because it felt very different from, say, the X-rated sex movies we would go see at the drive-in within the next 2-3 years. Because we knew some little info about sex by age 14, but a movie like A Clockwork Orange, which would be nominated as Best Picture for 1971, seemed to be a completely different kind of mystery. We knew there was probably some sex in it, but that didn't seem to be the point. Instead, there was something about the movie that was so "adult" that we couldn't possibly hope to comprehend its meaning. What was it about? Divorce? I certainly didn't know anyone in 1971 whose family had gone through that. Children out of wedlock? Nope, I didn't know anyone. Interracial marriage? Ditto.

We really couldn't figure out what the mystery was, but Malcolm McDowell's face on the movie ads looked as unrepentantly evil as anything I knew to that point. In my 14-year-old mind, I drew the hazy conclusion that the movie was about something that was far more real and monstrous than anything I had seen. I wasn't that wrong.

Now, any fourteen year old with $20 can grab a copy of the movie off the rack at Target and take it home with no one blinking an eye.

Now, I'm showing the movie to my class of seniors in a high school setting, as a supplement to our reading and study of the book.

Now, on some scale, the movie is considered somewhat tame.

For what was once "X" is now "R," and so I guess we are supposed to think that Clockwork's scenes of rape, orgy, full frontal nudity and completely random violence are commonplace enough to merit the lesser rating that the film now gets.

But anytime you move an "X" to an "R," you are acknowledging that something has shifted, and encountering the movie at Target has called that to mind for me. Now, I don't pretend to be one of guys who bemoans the downward spiral of society; in fact, I'm usually in the other camp, claiming that openness, honesty, reality, invisibility, all of those things are good and far be it from any of us to try to censor the world for ourselves or anyone else. But Clockwork.....

Kubrick's novel, to me, is highly flawed, because he first explores a world where teenagers left to their own desires do the most awful things, and then after an interval of attempted societal rehabilitation, he concludes that the problems will solve themselves, that the only things needed to turn amoral teenagers into responsible, upstanding citizens are time and age. In short, the kids are alright, they'll grow out of it. The American versions of the novel cut off the chapter where that conclusion is reached, and the movie doesn't go that far either.

But either way, you're left with an awful choice--either the criminal teenagers are conditioned by society so severely that they literally become sick every time they confront these primal evil urges and that is how they are "cured," or they are simply temporary monsters who then become adults. Both ways, to me, are downhill, and not a story I necessarily want told as casual viewing available on the shelves at Target.

House Concerts 4 Sale

Bill Mallonee--"Punk Rock's Dead" (mp3)
Vigilantes of Love--"This Time Isn't One Of Them" (mp3)

It must be disconcerting, if you've been even the slightest version of a rock star, to walk into the first suburban home for your first suburban house concert. 'Oh, my God,' you must think, 'is this really what the rest of the journey is going to be like? Am I really going to talk to mothers with a baby in one arm and an Amstel Light in the other instead of women of indeterminate age who wait after the show to tell me how much they love my songs? Am I really going to talk to men who preen like peacocks because they're hosting my show and they want to tell me about the time that they, too, were in a band? Where is the rider that guarantees me 4 chilled bottles of a vintage chardonnay, a tray of sushi, and a private dressing room? Will my car hold up for the trip back home?'

But, then you realize that you are going to make some money tonight and that you will be playing in front of a crowd of people who love your music, or at least who know someone who does.

Welcome to the world of house concerts. I'm pretty sure it's a late-to-post 90's phenomena, this idea that any of us can get a not-as-popular-as-he-or-she-used-to-be-singer-songwriter to come play a concert at our house for a pass-the-hat price of several hundred dollars. To us, it's a bargain, an exciting event. To the performer, it's money, maybe a chance to play, maybe a stopgap measure in a career that might revive.

Thanks to the initiative of our friend John, we've now hosted 4 house concerts among our friends here in Chattanooga. All have featured Bill Mallonee, former songwriter and lead singer of the band Vigilantes of Love. Bill is a good sport about all of this--house concerts have helped him to get through some tough times and he has the kind of engaging personality that allows you to feel like he really enjoys and appreciates the chance to play for you. He's also pretty receptive to requests, and, even though he write a fresh bunch of good songs each year, he has the sense to build a show that mixes favorites with new stuff. And, you get to know Bill and his wife, Muriah, and they remember you when they come back, so it gets a little more personal each time. In short, he's the real deal, and the ideal house concert performer.

From his perspective, house concerts allow him to maintain contact with a fan base (for who would initiate a house concert if he or she wasn't a big fan) and to build something of a tour, that would, no doubt, include some clubs and festivals, but would fill the time and space between with house concerts. All things, of course, are relative, but regardless of where you once might have been, $500 for 1 1/2 hours' worth of work is still a pretty good deal.

Working out the logistics for a house concert is quite interesting. Stop right now and figure out if you were going to host a live concert in your house, where would you put the performer? In the age of everything available on computers, are you going to allow die-hard fans whom you don't know to come be a part of your concert, or are you going to keep it private? Do you only invite friends who you think will appreciate the show or do you invite as many as you can to try to keep the costs down? Are you going to ask friends for money or are you going to trust that donations will take care of it? Food or no food? Are you going to provide the drinks? Are you going to suck up the cost if no one else helps out? Will you be able to host the show and enjoy the show?

Perhaps this is proof that the world truly is getting smaller. Or maybe that doesn't even matter. What if you could host a concert for your closest friends? What if you had a chance of saying, one of the best concerts I ever saw was in my living room? That's the lure of the house concert.

"Punk Rock's Dead" comes from Bill's solo record, Friendly Fire. Though he says it doesn't get much reaction elsewhere, it is a definite favorite at Chattanooga house concerts. "This Time Isn't One Of Them" comes from the Vigilantes of Love cd, To The Roof Of The Sky. Both are available at Itunes. Well, maybe not "Punk Rock's Dead." Bill's myspace page is here.

I Have 149 Friends

Nobody Knows Me - Lyle Lovett (mp3)
Friends/Sigmund + the Sea Monster - Tripping Daisy (mp3)

In the film The Princess Bride, criminal mastermind Vezzini (Wallace Shawn) repeatedly uses the word "Inconceivable!" when reacting to the Dread Pirate Roberts overcoming obstacles set in his path. Finally, after the umpteenth use of this word, Vezzini's swordsman, Inigo Montoya, says, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Facebook keeps using the word "Friend." I do not think it means what they think it means. "Friend" has been Vezzini'd by Facebook.

As of Wednesday, September 24, I had 149 Friends on Facebook. To risk coming across like a complete and total ass, I haven't had 149 Friends in my whole entire life. Even more awkward, at least half of the people I consider true friends are either not on Facebook, or we're just not friends on there. (The latter is entirely possible, because I have only twice ever searched for anyone on Facebook, and neither time was for one of my true Friends.)

The reality is, when you make a Friend on Facebook, you're really acknowledging an acquaintance. But even that's not quite accurate, because at least a dozen of my Facebook Friends aren't even people I particularly like. They're not bad people. They don't waterboard detainees or molest small children. But I've never even had what could be considered a "friendly conversation" with them. No small talk at all, not even about the kids or our favorite sports teams or anything.

But there they are on my Facebook. People who don't even rank as acquaintances. And now they're my Friends. Are Amigos falling from the sky?

As best I can tell, Facebook is really good at letting you feel more connected to people you're not all that connected to, but shitty at making you feel more distant from people who are actually your friends. Put another way, if I already know you really well, I don't get much from being your Facebook Friend. If I don't know you really well, or if you've moved away, then maybe I get little tidbits of friendly information that allows me to feel closer.

Maybe this is proof that I'm now older, that advances in technology has passed me by. But I don't think so. Why use Facebook to communicate with someone you'll see later that day, or the next day, unless they're not worth going out of your way for to begin with?

I'm not pooping on Facebook. I actually think it's a pretty brilliant creation. But when I scroll through that list of Friends, I find myself shaking my head and wondering, Why would you remotely care what my "status" is, or what my favorite '80s movie is? Why did you ask me to be your friend? When are we allowed to finally acknowledge that we don't care about one another and break this utterly superficial and meaningless cyberbond?

No seriously. Can you ever break up with a Facebook Friend? What are the requirements? Or are Facebook Friends like unsavory relatives, and we're forced to silently coexist with one another until one of us passes?

CLARIFICATION: If you're reading this, and you're a Friend of mine on Facebook, then allow your common sense to determine that you're probably not one of the people I consider a mere "acquaintance," since only about 20 people we know read this silly thing.


"Nobody Knows Me" is from Lyle Lovett's second album, Lyle Lovett and His Large Band. "Friends/Sigmund + the Sea Monsters" is from Saturday Morning, a compilation of classic Saturday morning show theme songs performed by various artists. Both are available at Amazon.com's mp3 site.