Holy Bee of Ephesus

Moving house

2011-09-10T08:39:00.000-07:00

The Holy Bee of Ephesus can now be found at:

http://holybeeofephesus.wordpress.com/

Update your bookmarks accordingly.

Face-Off, #1: "Tombstone" vs. "Wyatt Earp"

2011-08-30T19:06:00.000-07:00

This has nothing to do with the highly believable John Travolta/Nicholas Cage action-fest of '97. What we are trying to do here is take two productions that are telling the same basic story and see which one provides the best viewing experience. Remakes don't count, re-boots are acceptable, and the closer together they came out, the better.

As is often the case with the Holy Bee, to understand the entertainment, we must start with the history...

People of Tombstone, Arizona remembered October 26, 1881 as particularly cold. A bone-chilling wind whipped off the nearby Dragoon Mountains, and many residents assumed a flurry of light, dry snow was on its way to the little silver-mining town. A storm of a different kind came instead. Two groups of men faced off against each other in a nondescript vacant lot. (The OK Corral, which would soon lend this confrontation its name, was actually on another street on the other side of the block. Its rearmost portion could be accessed by a tiny alleyway, the entrance to which was still several yards from the vacant lot. But, as author Jeff Guinn points out, "Shootout at the Vacant Lot on Fremont Street" doesn't have much of a ring to it.)

Animosity between the larger interests each group represented had been growing for the past eighteen months. A tangled mess of politics, personality clashes, and a long series incidents such as stolen U.S. Army mules, the semi-accidental shooting of the Tombstone city marshal, and a botched stagecoach robbery just outside of town limits all contributed to the tension that had been humming through the town since early the year before.

On one side were five men -- Joseph Isaac "Ike" Clanton and his younger brother Billy, brothers Tom and Frank McLaury, and Billy Claiborne -- who represented the "cowboys." Small-time ranchers who openly rustled cattle from over the Mexican border less than forty miles south, they were viewed with suspicion by the town leaders and businessmen. Most were legitimate ranch hands with a rowdy streak, coming into town to drink and raise a little hell. Dealing in stolen cattle was something everyone did to keep their ranches afloat, and most people looked the other way (especially if the cattle came from Mexico.) Other cowboys were more sinister -- genuine "bad men" from Texas, who fled that area when the legendary Texas Rangers started cracking down on outlawry. Politically Democratic and sympathizers to the old Confederacy, they also had many allies in the town who appreciated their free-spending business and admired their free-spirited resistance to authority.

On the other side were four men -- city marshal Virgil Earp, his two brothers Wyatt (a deputy federal marshal) and Morgan (deputy city marshal), and the notorious John "Doc" Holliday (a well-educated dentist-turned-professional gambler) -- who represented the order- and community-minded townspeople. The clannish, uptight Earps were never incredibly popular with the people they were charged to protect. Wyatt in particular was viewed as a dour, self-aggrandizing social climber, with a checkered past on both sides of the law, who spent most of his time running card games in a variety of saloons and investing in mines that didn't pay off. He viewed his off-and-on career as a lawman as a means to an end (that end being authority and respectability that would lead to wealth). He had formed a close, unlikely friendship with Holliday, who was slowly dying of tuberculosis. Holliday was known to have a vicious temper when drinking (which was most of the time by 1881), and his reputation for unstable behavior and violence preceded his arrival in Tombstone. Wyatt Earp's own reputation suffered in many people's eyes due to his association with what many considered a degenerate. But one of Wyatt's good qualities was loyalty to his friends. The Earps were politically Republican and staunch Unionists, perpetually on the make to enhance their status and make money. The cowboys were a threat to that goal.

The Earps and Holliday confronted those five cowboys that day to disarm them -- they were carrying firearms within city limits, against the local ordinance. It was a shaky accusation to make, as the cowboys were ostensibly on their way out of town, and therefore justified in taking the weapons (which they had lawfully turned over on their arrival the day before) with them. They were just taking an awfully long time to make an exit. Lingering. Almost trying to spark a confrontation. Harsh, drunken words and threats had been spouted in the saloons the night before (mostly by the loud-mouthed Ike Clanton), and the Earps had had enough. As they approached the vacant lot, they were stopped by county sheriff John Behan -- a friend and ally to the cowboys. He assured the Earps -- falsely and dangerously -- that the cowboys had already been disarmed. He was ignored, and wisely took cover.

Billy Claiborne fled at the sight of the approaching lawmen. After the tiniest moment's stand-off, either Wyatt or Billy Clanton fired their weapon. The unarmed Ike Clanton fled as soon as the shooting started. Thirty seconds later, it was all over, and the remaining three cowboys were dead or dying in the lot and the adjacent street. Tom McLaury was also revealed to be unarmed, but was shot several times as he desperately grabbed at the rifle in his saddle holster. Only Frank McLaury and Billy Clanton had weapons on them in the vacant lot that day. The worst of the cowboys -- true outlaws and killers like Curly Bill Brocius and John Ringo -- were nowhere near Fremont Street that day.

But it did not end there. Controversy and retributions continued for several months. The Earp party were tried and acquitted of murder. Virgil and Morgan were victims of fearsome ambushes orchestrated by Ike Clanton and the more violent-minded cowboys. Wyatt and Holliday led a posse of dubious legal authority to cleanse the countryside of cowboy influence. The so-called "Vendetta Ride" became almost as legendary as the shootout itself...

The story of the Shootout at the OK Corral was big news in its day. Contrary to Western myth and the fantasies of the dime novelists, shootouts in the streets of town in broad daylight were exceedingly rare. The incident faded from the headlines, but bubbled just under the surface of popular consciousness. There sprang up an entire subculture of "Western buffs" dedicated to debating who was in the right, who shot first, etc. The mythologizers portray the Earps as a force of justice and order, and the revisionists claim that the cowboys, although no angels, weren't that bad, and that the Earps were just as morally compromised, and on top of that, genuinely unpleasant people. (The argument rages on to this day, only instead of in historical journals and Western magazines, it's on internet sites.)

The shootout burst onto the scene again half-a-century later -- this time Hollywood-style. Fictionalized and simplified. There was no doubt in the mind of Hollywood (or what passes for its mind) who was in the right. The Earps were law & order, the Good Guys. The cowboys lawless, sadistic criminals, the Bad Guys. Westerns were kings of the box-office in the mid-20th century, and the Earp-Clanton shootout was terrific story fodder. The first major film to attempt the story was 1939's Frontier Marshal starring Randolph Scott. Then came John Ford's masterpiece My Darling Clementine (1946) with Henry Fonda as a serious, pensive, Henry Fonda-type Wyatt. John Sturges' Gunfight At The OK Corral (1957) gave the confrontation its inaccurate name once and for all, and Burt Lancaster played Wyatt in the typical, square-jawed moralistic hero mold. Hugh O'Brien also followed this pattern for The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, which ran on ABC from 1955 to 1961. Enjoyable as all of these were, none of them attempted to tell the story in any realistic way. And by the time Josey Wales ambled out of movie theaters in early 1976, the Western was pretty much dead. (For more on Westerns in general, why not check out the Holy Bee essay "In Defense of the Western"?)

Then came the multiple Oscar-winning Unforgiven in 1992, and Westerns were once again in vogue. Unfortunately, that vogue was short-lived because most of the films that came in the wake of Unforgiven were pretty terrible. Everything had to be a high-concept "Western with a twist." Posse (black cowboys -- an historical reality to be sure, but it was a wretched movie) and Bad Girls (gunfighting cowgirls -- the few that existed did not look like Drew Barrymore) were a couple of the more high profile ones, but a huge slew of them never made it to theaters. As a video store clerk in the early 90's, I handled every bit of atrocious, Western-themed trash that came down the straight-to-video pike at that time, and as a fan of the genre, I even watched a few, to my regret. (If you've got a hankering to see Rob Lowe as Jesse James, 1994's Frank and Jesse is streaming on Netflix. I won't spoil any surprises as to its quality.) Which is why I was excited to learn in the fall of 1993 that there were not one but two movies taking a serious, "historically-accurate" look at the frontier lawman Wyatt Earp and his role in the "OK Corral Shootout." The "competing Wyatt Earp projects" were big news for awhile in the movie mags. How do they measure up against each other?

Tombstone, released in December 1993, was what is commonly referred to as a "troubled production." In an interview with True West magazine, lead actor Kurt Russell estimated around 100 crew members quit or were fired during the course of production. It all started so promisingly: Oscar-winning screenwriter Kevin Jarre (Glory) crafted an enormous, multi-character, multi-subplot story giving equal time to the Earps and the cowboys. The finished film as written would have stretched well past the three-hour mark, and it was an actor's dream, with page after page of chewy dialogue. Jarre would also be making his directorial debut.

So with financial backing secured from Hollywood Pictures, eighty-five actors and hundreds of extras hired, costumes from 100% authentic materials stitched up, and extensive sets built on location in Arizona, production got underway. But then ugly truth occurred to the cast and crew -- brilliant writer Kevin Jarre couldn't direct his way out of a paper bag. After four weeks of shooting, he managed to complete only a single scene (the one at Henry Hooker's ranch) with hours of unusable footage and botched shots. The producers stepped in and relieved him of his directing duties. They were considering pulling the plug on the whole affair, but core members of the cast and crew pulled together amidst the chaos, and continued production. Russell, who had fallen in love with the project, began directing until a replacement for Jarre could be found. The eventual choice -- George P. Cosmatos, director of a couple of Stallone action flicks -- was no one's idea of an innovative filmmaker, but he could handle basic action scenes and could stick to a schedule.

What wasn't revealed until after Cosmatos' death a few years back was that Russell continued directing the film until the very end. He would secretly slip Cosmatos a shot list each night, and during shooting he would indicate what he wanted through the use of hand signals. (It has been reported that Stallone directed Cobra and Rambo in a similar fashion, using the amenable Cosmatos as a front.) Russell also began paring down the script to focus more on the Earps and get the shooting back on schedule. The other actors may have grumbled at the (sometimes drastic) reduction of their parts, but they went along with it, sometimes slipping cut dialogue back into their scenes as the cameras rolled. (Russell claimed he cut many of his own scenes, too.)

Tombstone is an action movie, no doubt about that, fudging facts or making stuff up out of whole cloth (the red sash worn by all the cowboys was a fictitious but handy bit of visual shorthand -- the equivalent of the "black hat" in the old B-Westerns). There is lots of "real" history in there, but its shuffled and compressed in order to amp up the story. (A prominent location in the film, The Birdcage Theater, was not built until after the shootout. Veteran Western actor Harry Carey, Jr., age 72, plays Marshal Fred White, who was 31 at the time. Just nitpicky stuff that non-history nerds would never notice.)

Wyatt Earp, which started production at the same time but was not released until April 1994, was supposed to be everything Tombstone could no longer be -- a true epic, with a measured pace and a majestic sweep that Tombstone was originally supposed to have, if its first draft is any indication. Jarre originally developed the Tombstone script with Costner, and when Costner decided to tell his own, more Wyatt-centric version with writer-director Lawrence Kasdan instead, he attempted to block the production of Jarre's film. Even as Tombstone finally got underway, the Costner-Kasdan movie was considered the "prestige" project, and everyone anticipated it would outperform the comparatively low-rent Tombstone artistically and commercially. Unfortunately, the whole reason Costner chose another Earp project is what works against the film the most: It focuses to the point of claustrophobia on a single person, rather than taking advantage of a cast of dozens -- and that single person is an unlikeable character played by a dull actor.

(POINTLESS SWIPE AT LAWRENCE KASDAN WHICH MAKES THIS BLOG POST EVEN LONGER: Kasdan is a truly gifted writer who can and should be revered and respected as the primary screenwriter of Raiders of the Lost Ark, and the writer whose final draft of Empire Strikes Back made it the best of the Star Wars movies. His work then began taking a turn toward the pretentious, culminating in 1991's Grand Canyon, one of the most self-serious, smug, faux-sophisticated, Baby Boomer-worshipping piles of "message movie" diarrhea ever squirted onto celluloid.)

Although the scope of the film is hamstrung by limiting itself to a lone central character, Costner's typical blankness actually works in making Wyatt Earp the character a more historically accurate portrayal. I believe Russell's enthusiasm and skill as secret director and uncredited script doctor are big parts of what made Tombstone a success. But his breezy performance did not really capture the true essence of the cold, taciturn man the historical Earp was. Russell can be a fine actor (check him out in Dark Blue), but he tries far too hard to make Earp a sympathetic, traditional Western hero. For someone described by another character as a "frowner" (Jarre was clearly familiar with the real Earp), Russell spends an awful lot of time grinning. I suppose it worked for the lightweight popcorn-y crowd-pleaser that Tombstone ultimately became. But I would love to have seen a darker Tombstone made a decade or so later, with a more grizzled Russell bringing the sense of menace he brought to his character of Stuntman Mike in Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof. The wooden, charisma-free Costner, one of my least favorite "major" actors of the 80s-90s era (his mega-stardom was a perpetual mystery to me), actually does a much better job of capturing Wyatt as he was -- kind of an asshole.

The buzz-generating performance of both films came from the actors playing the eccentric wild-card Doc Holliday. Tombstone's Val Kilmer is a little too chubby-cheeked to look like someone dying of consumption, and visibly weighs in at a hefty two bills, but a pallid complexion and permanently sweaty shirt-front are enough to convey his condition. Dennis Quaid, on the other had, looks suitably haggard thanks to a sixty-pound weight loss and a painfully hoarse croak of a voice. Both are superb. Kilmer's Holliday has the edge thanks to the actor's twisted charm and the many witty quips provided by Jarre's screenplay. Quaid's Holliday retains the insouciance of the southern gentleman gambler, but remains firmly grounded in reality. (Quaid received a well-deserved Supporting Actor nomination.) Kilmer's Holliday transcends reality. Indeed, he is likely a creature of pure cinema fantasy -- but he's riveting to watch. (Kilmer shockingly did not receive a Supporting Actor nomination, but had to settle for an MTV Movie Awards "Most Desirable Male" nomination. That a character who spouts geysers of sweat and coughs up blood through the final third of the film could be considered in any way "desirable" shows just what MTV thought of its audience, even back then.)

Veteran character actor Sam Elliott brings some old-school Western authenticity to Tombstone's Virgil Earp, but Michael Madsen is severely miscast and wasted as Wyatt Earp's Virgil. Sporting ridiculous gingerish hair and retaining his Chicago tough-guy cadence in the few lines the script sees fit to give him, Madsen is also clearly younger than the actor meant to be his younger brother. Tombstone's Bill Paxton brings his usual performance style (mildly annoying lunkhead) to the role of the youngest brother involved in the shootout, Morgan. The poor soul who plays Morgan in Wyatt Earp came off as a total non-entity with even less screen time than Madsen's Virgil. Dana Delaney is quite fetching and spunky as love interest Josie Marcus, and -- as is repeatedly the case -- the soap opera actress who plays Josie in Wyatt Earp is totally non-memorable. (And for those who love a Bill Paxton/Bill Pullman mix-up, Pullman appears briefly in Wyatt Earp.)

Wyatt

So in terms of filling out supporting parts with actors who are at least on some level colorful and interesting, give the edge to Tombstone's rep company. It's a crazy-quilt mishmash that runs the gamut from the ridiculous to the ludicrous but is eminently watchable and includes the likes of Charlton Heston, Michael Rooker, Frank Stallone, Billy Zane, Billy Bob Thornton, and Jason Priestly. The real standouts are the chief trio of villains -- Broadway veteran Stephen Lang as the boozy braggart Ike Clanton, the great Powers Boothe as head cowboy Curly Bill, and Michael Biehn as the psychotic, brooding John Ringo (sharp-eyed viewers will recognize him from similarly intense turns in The Terminator and The Abyss.) Robert Mitchum was slated to play Old Man Clanton, but was injured in a fall and had to withdraw. He provides the film's opening and closing narration.

Virgil

Wyatt Earp's supporting cast does have some good actors: James Caviezel, JoBeth Williams, Adam Baldwin, Tom Sizemore, and...uh, Jeff Fahey? Really? (Fahey starred in so many straight-to-video abominations he was a punchline around the video store.) But the film is intent on focusing entirely on its titular character, and the supporting cast has next to nothing to do, with a few exceptions. I did like David Andrews' performance as laid-back eldest brother James Earp, a full-time bartender who did not take part in any gunfights, but observes his younger brothers' tough-guy antics with a wry twinkle. (His character was left out of Tombstone.) Comedic actress Catherine O'Hara shows off her dramatic chops as Virgil's firey wife Allie (who despises Wyatt.) And the one spot where Wyatt Earp's casting totally outshines its predecessor was Mark Harmon (of all people), who deftly captures the smooth-talking, gregarious essence of Earp foe Sheriff Johnny Behan, without turning him into the hissable, unctious bowler-hatted dandy fop that Tomsbtone chooses to go with.

Morgan

Wyatt Earp pulled a dirty trick beloved by movie marketing teams where they take an actor in the film who's on a recent hot streak and boosting his billing way beyond the scope of his performance. Gene Hackman -- hot off his Oscar-winning performance in Unforgiven -- has about ten minutes of screen time as Wyatt's strong-willed father, but gets third billing on the poster and in the credits. Yes, Virgil and Morgan ended up as blank ciphers, but at least they were a ways down the cast list. Tombstone did something similar, but only in the TV commercials. The announcer would intone "Kurt Russell...Val Kilmer...and Jason Priestly in...TOMBSTONE." Priestly is officially listed eighth in the cast, but he must have had a great agent, because even that is far, far too generous for his blink-and-you'll-miss-it part as Deputy Sheriff Billy Breakenridge. If you recall, he was riding high as a cast member on the hottest show on TV at the time, Beverly Hills 90210, and playing up his appearance in commercials that ran heavily on Fox in prime time probably sold a lot of tickets. Hills fans who were duped into going to the movie thinking they'd see their idol in a large role were surely surprised by his almost cameo-sized appearance, and the fact that the filmmakers decided to portray Breckinridge as quite obviously gay. (Not that there's anything wrong with that, as Seinfeld would say, it's just that there was no historical or narrative reason for doing so.)

There are script-related weaknesses in both films -- usually where some purple-prose dialogue clunks on the ear. For every great line (such as Russell's "You gonna do something, or just stand there and bleed?", or Quaid's taunt to a group of snooty townspeople "Y'all can jes' kiss my rebel dick"), there's a cheesy howler. But it was the 19th century after all, before the birth of irony, and a lot of people really spoke in those super-earnest pronouncements that sound hokey to the modern ear. Costner's introduction of himself as "I'm WAH-ATT EARP!" as he cocks a shotgun is apt to inspire giggles, and Tombstone goes for the painfully cliched slow-motion "Noooooo!" not once, but twice. Some of Tombstone's weaknesses relate to the chopped-up nature of the shooting script, and a lot of Wyatt Earp's have to do with the air of self-importance slathered onto it by Kasdan.

Doc

THE WINNER? Tombstone. Its lesser regard for history is offset by its faster pace, more memorable supporting performances, and overall fun factor. The shootout is the centerpiece of film, coming about halfway through, with the Vendetta Ride being the true climax. Wyatt Earp is more realistic, with some great sequences from periods in Earp's life that Tombstone didn't cover. His ill-fated early marriage is used to explain his grim personality, his time on the buffalo-hunting circuit is well-staged, and his early days as a lawman in Dodge City are a major part of his legend, but the film has a somewhat ponderous air and lags severely in its final act. The shootout is placed awkwardly about 3/4 of the way through, and the Vendetta Ride seems like a limp afterthought. The film has a sense of over-inflated pompousness common to epics (especially epics associated with Kevin Costner.) And Wyatt Earp's resounding box office implosion almost single-handedly killed the "Western revival" less than two years after it began.

So, after spewing 3700 words on this topic, I can conclude no better than quoting Tombstone's Curly Bill Brocius:

"Well...bye."

Coming soon... The Hulk (2003) vs. The Incredible Hulk (2008).

Family Jewels

2011-08-13T17:18:00.000-07:00

Greetings.

I hope my summer hiatus from writing hasn't killed off what little readership I have. I know I said that in a previous post that my work ethic was virtually non-existent during the summer months, but that's not 100% factual. I have been working, sometimes feverishly. Just not on this blog. On what, you are justified in asking.

On my family history. The Big Summer Project has been scanning, digitizing, and organizing the thousands of family pictures that have come into my possession over the years. Doing this has also revived my periodic interest in genealogy.

Say what you will about obsessing over the Magic: The Gathering or the minutiae of Harry Potter, but exploring genealogy truly outranks them in sheer nerdiness. It's the hobby of Mormons and retired people (nothing against those folks, it's just that they're not your go-to for cutting-edge activities). But I suppose I'm one of them. The only lower rung on the hobby ladder is metal-detecting. Maybe next summer.

As someone with the last name of Isenhower, I have been subjected repeatedly to the well-meaning but irritating question "Any relation to the President?" These instances are diminishing greatly since those with any knowledge that there had once been a President Eisenhower are rapidly dying off. "No, it's spelled differently," I would always say.

Out in the retail world, I had a little routine. If there was an older person manning the counter, I would observe them always checking the "E's" first when I would go to pick up a prescription or my developed film. (The fact that I once picked up developed film is itself evidence that I, too, am heading into the "older person" zone.) I would let them look, and allow them to give me a puzzled, apologetic shrug, before I told them, with exaggerated patience as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, "Check the I's."

Yes, I was kind of an ass.

My parents would always say up front, "Isenhower-with-an-'I'," as if that were the full name. They had to deal with it much more than I ever have. Almost no one goes to the E's first anymore. It's kind of a relief, as I no longer have the energy to direct random maliciousness toward retail clerks. (Almost. Randy at Wingstop, there's almost no chance you're reading this, but you're an idiot and you annoy me to no end.)

Despite the different spellings, I discovered several years ago that yes, in fact, I am related to former U.S. President and Supreme Allied Commander of the European Theater of World War II Dwight D. Eisenhower (at right). I'll explain how in a moment.

The following section of text was found recently in a forgotten My Documents file-in-a-file-in-a-file in a dusty corner of my hard drive -- a Word document pieced together in stages from 2003 to 2008 or so during times when I caught the genealogy bug. I can't claim total authorship. Some of the writing sounds like me, some assuredly does not, and I've forgotten what I typed out and what was cut-and-pasted from several different sources. So with that disclaimer, here's the History of Isenhower-with-an-I:

According to tradition, early generations of the Eisenhauer family were horse-mounted warriors in the service of Charlemagne (768-814, at left), living in a hilly farming region of southern Germany known as the Odenwald, on the banks of the Rhine River.

During the years 773-795, reports were given of a massive ore mine situated right in the midst of the Odenwald, and even in modern times iron ore has been mined there. A picture dating from the early 18th century shows the primitive way iron and ore were exploited. The man below in the pit of the mine who breaks off the iron ore is the eisenhauer (iron-cutter). Derived from this professional term, the family name developed. Being a small municipality, the Odenwald was frequently overrun by rulers of more powerful countries, resulting in its people being oppressed and deprived of religious, personal and political liberty. Equally disruptive was the fact that in this locale beginning in the early 1600s, the population was about evenly divided between Catholics and the new Protestant Lutherans, with intense religious strife from time to time, including home and church burnings, business disruption, and mob violence.

Over centuries, the Eisenhauers evolved from warriors into pacifists. Many German Lutherans at the time were followers of the Mennonite movement (founded in 1528), which advocated pacifism and the rejection of materialism. The Eisenhauers were Mennonites, and were probably victimized during Germany's religion-based Thirty Years' War (1618-48) for their beliefs. At the end of the Thirty Years' War, Switzerland and Holland became independent and began to practice religious tolerance as did Russia under Catherine the Great a few decades later. Members of various Eisenhauer families fled to these areas to escape the carnage.

A Scene From the Thirty Years' War by Ernest Crofts

The line of American Eisnhauers is from Eiterbach, a small village northeast of Heidelberg. In the 1600's, William Penn made several trips to Germany to convince German farmers to emigrate to his new North American colony, Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania was filled with merchants and craftsmen, but very short on farmers. Penn founded his colony on the principles of the Society of Friends religion -- the Quakers. The Quakers and Mennonites had many similarities. (The Amish, still common in rural Pennsylvania, are an offshoot of the Mennonites.)

Hans Nicholas Eisenhauer (c.1691-c.1760), a native of Eiterbach like his father before him, had moved his family from place to place, avoiding religious persecution and ongoing border skirmishes with the French. It seems he made his home for a time in both Switzerland and the Netherlands. Unable to establish a permanent farming homestead, he supported his family as a weaver and lumberman -- and occasionally a reluctant soldier.

Heidelberg, Germany

William Penn's message of peace, religious freedom, and fertile farmland to be found in Pennsylvania outlived the man himself, and continued to find a receptive audience in war-weary Mennonites. Mennonites who emigrated from Germany in the 18th century, typically went down the Rhine River by raft or flat boat to Rotterdam in the Netherlands, where they embarked on English ships that then stopped briefly in England before proceeding to Philadelphia.

This relatively inexpensive and easily-managed route of emigration was the result of an agreement between the British monarchs King William & Queen Mary of Orange and William Penn. This was, in modern terms, a rescue effort for minorities who were being "ethnically cleansed." William, who was originally Dutch, sympathized with the Protestant exiles, but not enough to want to keep them in England. The emigrants had to agree to take an Oath of Allegiance to the English Crown before proceeding on their journey.

In the fall of 1741, Hans Nicholas and family followed this route aboard the ship Europa. According to "The Eisenhower Family" by Betty White (!?), the passenger manifest of the Europa listed 44 adult male passengers -- including “Hans Nicol Josshower (Iron cutter)" and sons -- embarking from Rotterdam, Holland with Captain Ludsaine as the ship's master. (Women and children were regarded more as cargo.) They had a rough arrival in America on November 17, 1741. The Europa ran aground in the port at Lewes, Delaware and sank. Captain Lusdaine and a cabin boy drowned but "the 120 souls on board" were saved and transported to Philadelphia by boat, where they took the Oath of Allegiance three days later. Hans Nicholas settled and lived the rest of his life in and around Bethel Township, Pennsylvania, about twenty-five miles to the east of what would be the state's modern-day capital, Harrisburg.

OK, back to words I know are my own...Much of the information I'm relating to you comes from a 1717 edition of the "Martin Luther Family Bible," carefully brought over on the Europa by Hans Nichoals, with a handwritten family history on the cover, inscribed by an unknown hand sometime later in the 1700's. It is currently in the Eisenhower Library in Abilene, KS.

Hans' son, Johann Peter Eisenhauer (1716-1802), was a blacksmith, gunsmith, and prominent merchant and landowner of Bethel Township, Pennsylvania, where he also served as constable. He married three times and fathered seventeen children through the course of his long and remarkable life. He is the common ancestor of both Your Humble Narrator and the revered General and President.

He became a naturalized British subject in 1752, but when the American colonies declared independence in 1776, he was firmly on the side of the revolutionaries. He was one of the few local merchants who provided supplies for General Washington's troops during their legendarily harsh winter camp at nearby Valley Forge. ("Two bushels of wheat and some forage" according to a surviving invoice.) His eldest son Peter (may have) fought the British (or, more likely, their Indian allies) as a part of the guerrilla group Paxton Rangers, and another son, Frederick, was killed at the Battle of Germantown.

Spelling, especially the spelling of names, was pretty fluid before the 19th century, which can be confusing for amateur genealogists. Around the time of the Revolution, Johann Peter began frequently spelling his name "Eisenhower" as opposed to the earlier "Eisenhauer."

Dwight D. Eisenhower was descended from Johann Peter's seventeenth and final child (another Frederick) sired by ol' J.P. when he was a few ticks past eighty. The Holy Bee was descended from Johann Peter's eldest son, the aforementioned...

Peter Eisenhauer (1745-1778), like his brother Frederick, did not survive the Revolutionary War. The date and place of his death correspond to an incident called the Wyoming Valley Massacre, where British-allied Native Americans and local Loyalists (colonists who remained loyal to Britain) attacked a group made up largely of the unruly frontier troublemakers called the Paxton Rangers (or variants thereof.) At times, the Rangers could generously be called a rough-hewn militia supporting the independence movement, but usually they were hard-living, destructive, Indian-killing thugs. Records confirm Peter's death took place at this time and place, but Revolutionary War records do not list his name among the official dead. It is not known if Peter was actually fighting "off the books" as a Paxton Ranger or with another militia group, or was just passing through and got caught up in the action, but he died along with 340 others in that obscure little river valley in northeastern Pennsylvania.

The Battle of Wyoming by Alonzo Chappel

(A poem, Gertrude of Wyoming, was written thirty years later to commemorate the event, and sixty years after that, a sentimental Congressman from Ohio was so moved by the poem he proposed naming the newly organized Rocky Mountain state "Wyoming" after it. To the puzzlement of all, his suggestion was accepted.)

Peter lived long enough to father at least one son, another Johann Eisenhower (c.1770-c.1830), about whom almost nothing is known, except his middle name may have been "Benjamin." Or Benjamin may have been another son of Peter. Or not. Genealogy can be a frustrating pastime. Anyway, Johann/Benjamin had a son, yet another...

Peter Isenhower (1812-1881), who, like so many men of his generation, decided the eastern states of the young nation were already getting a little too crowded, and packed up his family and headed West. The census shows him in Carroll County, Missouri in 1851, and Steuben County, Indiana by 1858. It's this clown we all have to thank for the endless name-spelling trauma we would be forced to endure as a result of his seemingly arbitrary decision to drop the first "E" from the family name sometime during his journey west. (If things really run in families, he was probably dodging a creditor or irate mistress.)

Peter finally gave us a Benjamin Isenhower (1835-1909) to whom we can pin some facts. Benjamin lingered back east until about the time of the Civil War, then he and his young family joined his parents in Indiana, where he was a hardware store owner (and occasional postmaster) in the town of Ray. Benjamin fathered James Culder Isenhower (1859-1928), who has the distinction of being the first Isenhower to settle in Iowa -- specifically, Tama County, Iowa, which remains the "Isenhower-with-an-I" capital of the world to this day. Swing a dead cat in the county seat of Toledo, and you'll probably hit an Isenhower. (This is not recommended.)

James Culder Isenhower and wife Elsie

James Culder's son James Earl Isenhower (1891-1954) was the first Isenhower in my family line not to be born in our old stomping ground of Pennsylvania. A dyed-in-the-wool screen-door front-porch-swing Midwesterner. His son, Kenneth Earl Isenhower (1918-1986) was my grandfather. I never met him more than a few times, as he was a restless sort (like his ancestors), and he died when I was still pretty young. Having no fondness for endless vistas of corn, it was he who first rolled the Isenhowers into California. His eldest son, my father Spencer Earl Isenhower (b. 1939), was born in Iowa, but has been a Californian for almost sixty years now. The Holy Bee is a Golden State native, born in the state capital of Sacramento in 1974.

And wonders never cease, I've produced two more "Isenhowers-with-an-I"'s, one in 1998 and another in 2000. Odds are, that name will continue for at least a couple more generations, but those who look for it under "E" will be gone altogether, and we "I" types will be persecuted no more.

So there it is. The Charlemagne stuff seems a little far-fetched, but I'll leave it in. (You can excuse any old bullshit with the phrase "according to tradition.")

If you want to explore genealogy, it's easy and no one has to know. It'll be our little secret. Just download yourself some free family tree-making software. I recommend Legacy. If you want to pony up some cash, you can get the full version with some extra features, but the free version is just fine for most users (including myself.) Start plugging in what you know. Once you get beyond the facts you know about your parents and grandparents, it's time for research.

1) Ask questions of your elderly relatives. I know this makes your hobby no longer secret, but your elderly relatives will not judge you the same way your jackass friends will. Your elderly relatives will probably be delighted (unless there's some shameful family secret, which is always worth finding out.) Be prepared to pay a personal visit or talk on the phone, as your elderly relative may not be "on the e-mail." And be prepared to cross-reference and ask others, as an elderly relative's memory for places and dates may not have its former bite. They may not remember their parents' anniversary or where their late brother was born, but they'll remember that Great-Uncle Alec smoked Hav-A-Tampas, and the cold snap that killed their begonias, and what they wore to third cousin Ida's wedding (everyone knew it wouldn't last, as Ida had a wandering eye and the fellow she married was a plow-blade salesman who was on the road a good part of the year, and a good Baptist, but not a Reformed Baptist, etc. etc. until you start sneaking peeks at your watch). Precious memories, but not much good for filling in your family tree software.

2) Use the internet. If you go to the various family tree websites (Ancestry.com, Familysearch.org, and several others) armed with some names and dates of great-great-grandparents, you are bound to find some information on your ancestors, even if your family is totally non-noteworthy and unremarkable. I lucked out in sharing ancestry with a president, but I've found material on all branches of my family.

A word of warning: Much of the information may be wrong. If one person entered a wrong date or bad guess years ago, it can and will be re-copied and re-sourced ad infintum by lazy researchers until it sounds like gospel truth. Using the material on the websites as a starting point, do as much of your own research as you can, delving deeper into online archives. If you're patient and make some lucky mouse clicks, you can uncover new material and correct some mistakes without leaving your computer chair. (There's always the option of actually traveling to various county offices and nosing around in the records -- true original research -- but most armchair genealogists can get by without that level of commitment.) But never trust the first thing you find. It's a jumping-off point only. Mistakes and sloppiness abound. Double-check everything you get from the 'net whenever possible.

As always, you can learn more at your local library...

More to come...

2011-07-20T19:33:00.000-07:00

The Holy Bee hasn't forgotten you. It's just that his work ethic is at a very low simmer between June and August.

Keep the faith & stay tuned...Lots of new things cooking...

Holy Bee Recommends, #7: "On Writing"

2011-05-31T14:14:00.000-07:00

Stephen King...the name still conjures images of his 80's heyday, when his novels about vampires, re-animated corpses, haunted hotels, and psycho killers defined horror fiction. His work took a broader turn beginning about twenty years ago, giving a subtler, more psychological twist to his grim terror tales, and also expanding far beyond the confines of the horror genre.

I am an unabashed fan of King's work, but not for the reasons one would expect. Nothing that the printed word conveys can truly terrify me (this is the failing of my own imagination, not of King's skill), so I read King for the clever twists and turns of his stories, and for his authorial voice -- informal, highly descriptive, pop culture-savvy, and often laugh-out-loud funny.

2000's non-fiction On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft may be my favorite King book of all time, if we're judging by how many times something is re-read. It's under 300 pages, and divided into three parts. First is a (very) brief autobiography, focusing on the experiences that shaped him as a writer. Second is his thoughts on the craft of writing, suggestions and tips for novice writers, and the techniques that work for him. (Some of Part Two is an endorsement/re-statement of the seminal work by Strunk & White called The Elements of Style, which also graces the Holy Bee's bookshelf.) Third is a graphic, squirm-inducing account of the near-fatal 1999 road accident that crippled him, his painful rehabilitation, and the role writing played in his recovery. Life is not a support system for your art, King says. It's the other way around.

No matter if your audience is six (hi, guys!) or six million, writing is an enormously gratifying act of creation. Where before there was nothing, now there is something. Even if it is just ramblings about your iPod playlists. An oil painter or woodworker, I'm sure, feels a similar satisfaction, but they're working with tangible raw materials. A writer's raw materials are his or her thoughts, conjured up out of the ether, marshaled and organized, then expressed as eloquently and precisely as possible to provoke some kind of emotional or intellectual reaction from an unknown person, who could be thousands of miles away and/or centuries in the future. King compares it to telepathy, and believes it is the one true act of magic that exists in the real world.

Not that I'm saying writing is a "better" skill than painting or woodworking....OK, I kind of am. Deal with it.

"I am approaching the heart of this book with two theses, both simple. The first is that good writing consists of mastering the fundamentals (vocabulary, grammar, the elements of style)...The second is that while it is impossible to make a competent writer out of a bad writer, and while it is equally impossible to make a great writer out of a good one, it is possible, with lots of hard work, dedication, and timely help, to make a good writer out of a merely competent one." -- SK

I have re-read this book many, many times in the decade since its publication. What bits of advice does the Holy Bee try to bring to bear on his humble web log?

1. Reading is the creative center of a writer's life. If you don't have time to read, then you don't have the time -- or the tools -- to write.

Through reading, you begin to recognize the difference between good writing and bad writing. As King puts it: "We read to experience the mediocre and the outright rotten; such experience helps us to recognize those things when they creep into our own work, and to steer clear of them. We also read in order to measure ourselves against the good and the great, to get a sense of all that can be done." I still remember when I discovered that a published piece of work I was reading was not any good. I was in my mid-twenties, and it was a sci-fi novel from the Star Wars expanded universe entitled Rebel Dawn by Ann C. Crispin. I was about halfway through it when it hit me like a laser bolt. "This... is...horrible." Before, I had naively assumed publication automatically implied at least a base-level quality. Sorry, Ann, but Rebel Dawn blows.
All the things that stressed you out about writing in school -- things like proper grammar, good sentence and paragraph structure, and where to stick a semicolon -- are the things King calls your "toolbox," and your toolbox will gradually become fuller the more you read. These things cannot really be taught (as someone who struggled to teach grammar for four years, I can attest to that), apart from the labeling of the parts (gerunds, participles, etc.) but you can absorb it through your reading, and it will begin to be reflected in your writing almost automatically.

2. Avoid the passive voice. Doesn't "The hangman pulled the lever" sound so much better than "The lever was pulled by the hangman"? This kind of writing crops up all over the place. It will not be used by the Holy Bee. Oops, I mean, the Holy Bee will not use it.

3. Avoid using too many adverbs. If you're writing is clear and specific enough, you won't need that many of them. This is advice I'm always mindful of, but regularly (see?) fail to follow. Adverbs are just so user-friendly! My prose will continue to be littered with words ending in "-ly" until the end of time, but I do try to watch it. For every adverb you read, I've rejected two. In fact, I almost wrote "probably continue to be littered" two sentences ago.

4. Be honest. This can be applied broadly. Don't pander to or second-guess your audience. "If you expect to succeed as a writer," King says, "rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all is polite society and what it expects. If you intend to write as truthfully as a you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered, anyway." Don't second-guess yourself, either. If you're struggling to choose the proper word, the first one that comes to mind is usually going to be the best one. Trust your gut, and if on reflection it really doesn't work, that's what second drafts are for. "Honesty" does not always mean "factual accuracy," as any good fantasy writer will tell you. In writing, it means emotional truth. In my autobiographical essays, I sometimes expand/compress/fudge chronology or facts to improve readability (and no autobiographical writer can avoid this, like it or not), but my aim is always to stay true to my emotions and reactions to what I was going through at the time.

Those lessons I can easily apply to the swill you read here. King's other advice -- on character, dialogue, and his preference for "story" (flowing & natural) over "plot" (stiff & artificial) -- apply more to fiction writing. My last attempt at fiction writing was about seven or eight years ago, when I got the idea for a ghost story set in the trenches of World War I. I still think it's a good idea, but two or three pages into it, I realized I didn't have the literary flair (or discipline) to pull it off.

Another enjoyable part of the book is King's description of his own writing method. He prefers writing in the morning, alone in his writing room at a desk facing the wall, with loud music blaring. Although constant pop-culture jokes are made about King's frenzied, prolific output, he says his writing goal is ten pages (about 2000 words) per day, every day. Disciplined, yes. Superhuman, no. Because he enjoys the process so much, it rarely feels like "work." King says a book should take about the length of a season -- three months or so -- to complete, otherwise it will grow stale in the writer's mind.

The Holy Bee is not blessed with a "writing room," nor the time to crank out 2000 words a day in one if he had one. I try to get about 2000-2500 words per essay at a rate of two essays per month. Here's how a Holy Bee piece comes together:

My writing process often begins when an opinion or idea starts rattling around in my head like a BB in a tuna fish can (to borrow a simile from Dave Barry), and refuses to go away. This usually occurs when I'm in my back patio chair trying to read. Or in the shower (the Holy Bee is very clean.) After awhile, I will grab my yellow legal pad (contained in its battered blue imitation-leather cover) and a green Paper Mate felt tip pen, and get to work.

When it comes this way, white-hot and burning a hole in my cerebral cortex, often 80% of the complete blog essay ends up right there on the paper -- but totally out-of-sequence, as new points to make occur to me. I have to work fast, because I often envision a specific way of wording something, and I need to to get it down before I forget. I've forgotten before, and it puts me in a bad mood for several days. Tons of asterisks, arrows, and margin notes help me piece it together when it comes to second-draft typing time.

Sometimes it doesn't come that easy. If I'm writing something "to order" or on a deadline, I'll have to force-start it. Just grab that tablet and pen and start. Even if it's complete gibberish. The important thing is to start the physical act of writing. It will be the most boring, inane drivel for a paragraph or two. But I've learned if I make a start, the pump gets primed, the good stuff starts flowing, and I'll go ahead and make the switch to MS Word or the Blogspot site itself. I can always re-write or eliminate those opening segments at this point. Once it's up on the site, I re-read it about a dozen times, fixing errors (a few seem to always slip through), tweaking the wording, adding or subtracting a sentence or two. Then I announce the latest entry to the world via Facebook, and await the plaudits from my grateful readers.

Most of the "Playground" entries have started with a simple list of six to ten songs from the era I'm conjuring up, a couple of bullet-pointed notes, and one or two paragraphs of stilted, uninteresting longhand. Out of the corner of my eye right now I can see the skeletal, embryonic outline of "This Used To Be My Playground #20," still laying on the slab, inert, waiting for my muse to sprinkle her fairy dust on it and bring it to life.

According to my notes, the space and title for this "On Writing" essay were reserved on my Blogspot dashboard on April 17. The actual act of writing began on May 22. I'm typing these final words on June 12. In between those dates, work and family boorishly intruded like a gang of Capital One vikings. Almost two months between spark and fire. So it goes. I will be backdating this entry to May 30, to preserve the lie that I update my blog two times every month. Who says the Holy Bee doesn't do fiction?

(Should I remove the adverb "boorishly" from that last paragraph? Just can't seem to. And you can get my annoying parenthetical asides when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.)

Apocalypse Wow: The Gospel According To The Holy Bee

2011-05-22T21:50:00.001-07:00

"Well, I guess hard times flush the chumps. Everybody's lookin' for answers..."
-- Ulysses Everett McGill
O Brother, Where Art Thou

As our friend Col. Hans Landa would say, "That's a bingo!" I got my card early, found about fifteen of this guy's followers to monitor on Facebook over the weekend, observed their varying reactions, and marked off the excuses as they came up. (Actually, the most common one used by a factor of about 1000 was the "convoluted explanation" one, second down from top left, but it wasn't in a neat row like the rest.)

Religion as a topic of study will never cease to fascinate me, as the very title of my entire blog suggests. Within arm's reach of my computer at all times, along with my complete works of Shakespeare, is my King James Revised Bible (and my New Oxford Annotated Bible, and my biblical atlas and concordance.) Since the Holy Bee was in short pants, he's always said if you want to truly understand the history, breadth, and beautiful capabilities of the English language, you should have a familiarity with the speeches of Churchill, the plays of Shakespeare, and the KJV Bible. (Students of the English language's close American cousin would do well to know his or her Lincoln and Twain.)

Fascinated as I am by its history and sociological impact, for as long as I can remember, actually adhering to a religion has been anathema to me. I have always found it oppressive, creepy, cloying, and ultimately empty. I have no questions about my purpose or existence. I don't need any outside set of doctrines to give me a code of ethics or morality. (And as far as my moral lapses -- of which there are many -- as long as they are confined to victimless pettiness like snickering at the fundamentalist rubes on Facebook without their knowledge, who the hell cares?)

And yet, so many are driven to seek answers and purpose, and I confess to a total failure of understanding this. It's so simple for me:

I'm perfectly content to accept my own and all others' existence as random and haphazard.

There are no "answers" to the meaning of existence, apart from our biological need to perpetuate our species

Morality exists independently of religion. It's an instinctive way for homo sapiens to make their surroundings more pleasant and comfortable. Being robbed, assaulted, or killed can ruin anyone's day, so we avoid doing it unless driven to it by economic desperation or psychological deviation.

We have been blessed and cursed with super-charged cerebral cortexes, which have boosted us to the top of food chain, while at the same time gotten us into all kinds of trouble as we tied ourselves in knots concocting elaborate mythologies and constructs to answer all of the questions that started occurring to us before we had the means to answer them technologically/scientifically. We are also the only species that has a conscious awareness of our own mortality, and that scares the hell out of us.

Even the early forms of sexual morality made a certain primitive sense. "Don't screw a bunch of random people/animals/objects or you may end up with a disease that could endanger the tribe." (The development of the condom very early on in our history made this as obsolete as the sundial, but religious leaders love to cling to the sex stuff to this very day.)

By combining fear of death with our innate desire for safety and order (i.e., "morality"), we get religion. "Follow these rules, Jebediah, and you won't really die."

And then it all gets culturally conditioned into (most of) us for the next 5000 years, until even a person who seems rational in all other areas will express a belief in an invisible sky-king.

And even if I allowed for the possibility of a "god", the Canaanite deity Yhwh ("Jehovah" if you prefer the anglicized Hebrew), the God of Abraham, is not the one I'd back. His cruel, capricious, petulant, and downright psychopathic behavior all through the Old Testament should be enough for anyone to run to the more reasonable embrace of Zeus or Odin. But the people of the Ancient Near East have repeatedly proven themselves gluttons for punishment.

Fast forward a few thousand years...For the most part, your average modern Christian goes about their daily lives finding comfort, meaning, and a sense of community through their religion. They accept much of the Bible, especially the more unpleasant and/or outrageously fantastical parts in the Old Testament, as "allegorical." Which is kind of cheating, isn't it? You get to pick and choose, like a cafeteria. "I'd like a double serving of the love and charity, please, but you can keep the smiting and stoning." If you want to put only the bestest and nicest parts of the Bible on your tray, I'm here to remind you that there's still a shitload of headcheese and squid innards on the Big Menu that the Original Chef once insisted you eat if you wanted to be in the club, but you now feel free to ignore the unpalatable bits due to your own interpretation. (And it is your interpretation once you start to get picky -- you don't get to quote one verse to back up your point while ignoring the bloodthirsty lunacy of the verses preceding and following it.) But I understand the vast majority of religious folks in America are trying to lead a good life and abide by the Golden Rule, which is really what the whole she-bang boils down to. As long as they keep the more extreme stuff away from my genitals and science textbooks, I've got no beef with their beliefs. You see things your way, I see them mine, now let's have a beer and watch 30 Rock together.

Then there's the fringe types, who give all religions a truly bad name by doing things like flying planes into buildings (same God, different book), or holding "God Hates Fags" signs at soldiers' funerals. Which is wrong, according to all observable evidence. God seems to regard "fags" as, at worst, a minor annoyance. (He certainly allowed all those kid-touching priests to get away with it for decades, didn't He? All part of "His Plan," I guess.)

No, God reserves the full fury of His bottomless hatred for...poor people.

He's given the poor and impoverished such a royal (divine?) fucking-over for five millennia, it staggers the imagination. The pat response is that they get to go to Heaven after their suffering and receive their "eternal reward." The same Heaven that the wealthy Christians go to. The ones who lived their lives with Cadillac Escalades and granite counter tops and vacations in Cancun. If these rich folks were truly devout and believed with all their hearts, according to the tenets of the faith, they would go, wouldn't they? To the exact same place as some poor Haitian bastard who's lived in a mud hole and ate rat shit his entire life. There's no special Super-Deluxe-Heaven for poor people. It's the same place. Raw deal.

Out on the furthest whisker of the fringe are those that believed that an 89-year-old retired civil engineer, using some convoluted numerology, calculated Judgment Day from the date of Noah's Flood. (In other words, dating an event that never will happen from an event that never did happen. Can I please have a list of bridges that this civil engineer worked on so I can avoid them?) They said the date was May 21, 2011. There have been end-of-the-world doomsayers throughout history, but none got the attention these people did these last few weeks. They spent millions on advertising billboards, and a fleet of tastefully-decorated RVs (religious nuts love stickers!) to criss-cross the country (many of them quitting their jobs) to "sound the trumpet" for what they passionately believed to be the End of the World, which would begin with a massive world-wide earthquake, followed by their physical bodies being "raptured" skyward, while the unworthy stayed behind for five months of Hell on Earth before the planet was literally destroyed on October 21.

With very little effort, in the spirit of an anthropological study, I found some these people who had public Facebook walls, kept all their tabs open all weekend, and periodically checked in on them as they gradually realized they had been duped and the worldview they had clung to for who knows how long was totally invalidated. As the weekend wore on, and the Rapture failed to materialize, they kept coming up with more and more desperate scenarios for how it could still happen. Here's how it went down:

The Original Scenario: "The Rolling Apocalypse." When the earliest time zone -- represented by the island of Kiritimati in the South Pacific -- hit 6:00pm in the early evening hours of the 21st, the earthquakes and rapturing would begin, rolling westward so all the world could witness the destruction as it moved toward them, zone by zone, and the mockers and scoffers would "wail and tremble and gnash their teeth." (The fundies seemed to get a great kick out of this, if their wall posts were any indicator. They must have relished feeling like winners for once.) They began posting links to geological websites, noting with delight all of the seismic activity occurring. (Never mind that there's always seismic activity occurring, and that this is just the first time they've bothered to check.) As the hour approached -- about 9:00pm Pacific Time on Friday the 20th -- there were lots of goodbyes, and then it got real quiet. The appointed time came and went, with no apocalypse.

The Revised Scenario: "The Stroke of Midnight in Jerusalem." The lack of a "rolling" apocalypse only fazed them for a moment. They dismissed it as just a theory. In reality, a careful study of Scripture that they did in the last few hours revealed that the world will end all at once at the very last moment of Judgment Day in Jerusalem. Which would be 3:00pm Saturday where I was. The anticipation was intense. (I thought they would shit a collective brick when that volcano in Iceland popped off.) The zero hour approached, again there were tearful goodbyes, the throwing around of Bible quotes, and lots of "brother" and "sister"-ing each other. The clock chimed midnight in Jerusalem, and guess what? If you said "no apocalypse," come and collect your prize. The Facebook walls stayed quiet for a little longer this time.

The Revised, Revised Scenario: "As Long As It's May 21st Somewhere In The World." The flop sweat became visible, but the hardcore True Believers regrouped and said it wasn't over. The last spot on Earth where it would be May 21 was Pago Pago, once again in the South Pacific. That would occur at 4:00am Sunday morning my time. I wasn't going to stay up, and looked forward to what I'd see in the morning, when all the Whos down in Whoville cried "boo hoo."

The Aftermath: When I checked in at 9:00am Sunday morning, it was clearly all over for most of them. Some simply hadn't updated for ten or twelve hours. A couple of them gracefully admitted being snookered, apologized for bugging their friends and relatives for so long, and continued to profess their overall faith. Several more of them turned their walls private, or de-activated their accounts altogether. Larry "JesuswillreturnMay21" So-and-so changed his name overnight. Some spun May 21st as the "last available day of salvation" and the real shit would go down on May 22nd. Or 23rd. Or maybe the 24th, depending on how you interpreted a particular month in a particular version of the Hebrew calendar. Some are now preparing for October 21, when the Rapture will occur and the earth will be destroyed in a kind of 2-for-1 deal. Pretty much every statement on the bingo card above was trotted out at one point or another on the 22nd.

And through it all, making repeated smug and sometimes hateful posts on their walls, were the mainstream Christians, who either helpfully suggested they were going to hell for being blasphemers in league with Satan, or oozed their condescending okely-dokely sympathy all over them for following a "false prophet," and said there was always a place for them (and their wallets) in their church. They also never, ever got tired of throwing Matthew 25:13 or 24:36 at them. Over and over and over. I wish just one of them would have exploded, "Yes! Yes! I saw it the first nine hundred fucking times you posted it on my wall!!!" Alas, they're too nice. Deeply messed up, but nice.

Okay, we're nearing the end of Our Text for today. I ultimately found myself kind-of, sort-of sympathizing with these people. I want to know what they're missing, that they can't find in conventional religion. What happened to them along their life's journey? Did they come out the womb with one or two synapses that just didn't fire? If only for a few minutes, I'd like to feel like they do, just to see what it's like. Even though we occupy polar opposites of the religious spectrum, both atheists and weirdo doomsayers exist outside of the mainstream. I have no questions, require no guidance, and I love existing in this world, with all its flaws. They seem desperate for answers, will take guidance even from an elderly crackpot with an adding machine, and want nothing more to see this world destroyed in flaming violence because of all its wickedness and evil.

...And by "wickedness and evil," those types almost always mean "homosexuality." Sometimes "wickedness and evil" means gangsta thug rappers in saggy pants. But, really, 99.9% of the time it's homosexuality. It's their #1 go-to issue, leading the pack of other sins by a country mile. But guess what? Men have always been fascinated by their own penises and the places they could put them. It's nothing new. Gay sex is in the Bible of course, and was condemned, but it pops up (pardon the expression) so much in the Bible, it's a wonder any of those guys slept with a woman at all. The guy who painted The Last Supper was down with a little guy-on-guy action, as was King James himself. It's just that now, the fundies are bothered that it's all over their TV without being judged as sinful behavior. The easiest solution would be for them to get rid of their TVs and pretend it's not happening, the way people did for thousands of years. But then they'd miss The Young and the Restless. (No kidding. Looking at those people's profiles, you wouldn't believe the number of "daytime drama" fans.)

I'm afraid there aren't any "good ol' days" to which to return. Every era and epoch had its problems. There were none of these in the good ol' days:

But there were also none of these:

I'll take my chances against the gangsta thug for the luxury of crapping indoors any day.

So, the world will keep on turning, horrible and wonderful things will continue to happen with no particular rhyme or reason, people will continue to do horrible and wonderful things to themselves and each other, until our volatile species eventually fades into evolutionary obsolesence and extinction, which will happen long, long before our sun goes into red giant phase and burns our little blue-green ball into a lifeless charcoal briquette in about 5 billion years.

Amen.

This Used To Be My Playground, Part 19: Nine Inch Fails -- You Want To What Me Like A What??

2011-04-30T07:09:00.000-07:00

#133. “Closer” – Nine Inch Nails

#134. “No Excuses” – Alice In Chains

#135. “The Day I Tried To Live” – Soundgarden
For some reason, the summer of 1994 was a heyday for particularly grim music. Saturating the air were the negative vibes of “industrial” bands like Nine Inch Nails and Ministry (their 1994 offering was entitled Filth Pig. Indeed.) All the grunge knock-offs and second-generation shoegaze aided and abetted the general ambiance of doom. Which was fine by me. It matched my state of mind. I was in the grips of post-breakup grief, and things like the NIN magnum opus The Downward Spiral (“Help me – I’ve broke apart my insides/Help me – I’ve got no soul to sell/Help me – the only thing that works for me/Help me get away from myself...My whole existence is flawed...”) gave it a voice. The gritty Alice In Chains EP Jar Of Flies was also a favorite at this time, thanks to the song that may have summed up my feelings better than anything else. I almost wore out the CD on this one, so it’s worth quoting at length:

It's alright…There comes a time
Got no patience to search for peace of mind

Laying' low…Want to take it slow
No more hiding or disguising truths I've sold

Everyday something hits me all so cold
Find me sittin' by myself -- no excuses that I know

It's okay…Had a bad day
Hands are bruised from breaking rocks all day

Drained and blue …I bleed for you
You think it's funny, well you're drowning in it too

Everyday something hits me all so cold
Find me sittin' by myself -- no excuses that I know

Yeah, it's fine…We'll walk down the line
Leave our rain, a cold trade for warm sunshine

You my friend …I will defend
And if we change, well I love you anyway

Get the picture, skipper?

The “hitting me all so cold” bit was cruelly ironic. I remember it as especially hot around that time, but maybe that was because my bedroom was in the loft-like upper floor of my house, and the AC struggled mightily to keep up with the blast-furnace heat of a northern California summer. The heat rose in tangible waves to my poorly insulated sanctum, with its sloping ceiling tucked under the eaves. In the room’s defense, it was big (bigger than the bedroom I’m currently sleeping in as an adult with a career), with hardwood floors, which gave it amazing acoustics. I had recently acquired a set of 70’s-era Panasonic speakers. They were chipped, flecked with paint and other mysterious substances, and missing their mesh covers, so the pulsating cones were exposed in all their throbbing glory – and they put out an awesome sound, which was needed to be crystal-clear audible over the whir of the elaborate network of electric fans used to keep the room habitable. A beanbag chair placed right in the sweet spot between those beauties provided my primary listening/sulking area.

Future Oscar-winner Trent Reznor and future desiccated corpse Layne Staley were all very well, but it was Soundgarden’s Superunknown that was truly the soundtrack to my summer of '94. ("Cry if you want to cry/If it helps you see/If it clears your eyes"). I had bought it at the Wherehouse on the day of its release (March 8), but it didn’t have a real resonance with me until I’d had my heart ripped out and backed over by a Honda Civic del Sol (figuratively.) Almost any track from this album would work for the Playlist, but I went with the three of the five hit singles this monster spun off – “The Day I Tried To Live,” (noted here), “Spoonman” (see below), and “Black Hole Sun” (watch this space.)

When I wrote in my previous entry that I had never felt as alone as I had at that point, I wasn’t kidding. I had lost my high school friends through increasingly divergent interests, and the fact that too many of their invitations to hang out had been rebuffed because I was part of a couple and too busy doing couple-type shit. Although I had good times with Skot and Peyman working at First Run Video, Skot was now gone and Peyman was preparing to be gone, gearing up for his transfer to Cal Poly in the fall. The phone wasn’t ringing, and I was isolated, Howard Hughes-like, in my oppressively hot second floor bedroom – door closed, music blasting.

#136. “Rocks” – Primal Scream
Scotland’s Primal Scream were the chameleons of the British music scene. On their little-regarded first two albums, they veered crazily between two types of retro -- the flower-power Byrds and the gutter-punk Stooges. They finally hit pay dirt by latching on to the burgeoning “house music” fad with the acid/electronica/dance album Screamadelica. On their fourth album, Give Out But Don’t Give Up, they changed sounds yet again, now attempting to re-create the boozy riff-rock of early 1970’s Rolling Stones and Faces. There was only room for one Black Crowes, so this move left the critics and Ecstasy-gobbling Screamadelica-loving club-rats cold, but proved irresistible to the Holy Bee. Urged on by their repeated chants of “get yer rocks off!” I decided to rejoin the land of the living.

When I finally emerged, blinking and mole-like in the mid-July sunshine, I was at loose ends. I was starting a new social life from scratch. Luckily, I soon discovered good ol’ Skot working at a hole-in-the-wall Mom & Pop video store in a strip mall. It was as if I hadn’t seen him in years, when in reality, it was more like five months.

He had an apartment, and it was now that I felt the first stirrings of desire to have a place of my own as well. His roommate’s name escapes me – he was a butcher’s assistant in the meat department of Food 4 Less – but he vacuumed (with carpet powder) twice a day, carefully wrapped the stove burners in foil, and dried his whites on a clothesline on the back patio. Skot said it was like living with his grandmother. One of the other things I remember from hanging out at his apartment was a single CD that kind of blew my mind.

It was a compilation of Chess blues artists on a budget-line MCA album originally issued on vinyl in 1963 called simply, The Blues, Vol. 1 – a mere 12 songs by Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Little Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson, John Lee Hooker and others of their ilk. It was absolutely revelatory. The sound had all the primitiveness of DIY punk, and all the rawness of an exposed nerve (Little Walter’s overdriven harp and Hubert Sumlin’s guitar were always deep in the red and threatening feedback). And it was blues, so I certainly relished the lyrical sentiments at that point in my life. Skot kept saying he was someday going to spring for the lavish 4-disc box set Chess Blues on display at Camelot Records at the mall. I ended up getting it before he did (if he ever did.) I was now a blues aficionado. Not that fancy, jazzed-up Chicago shit with the horns. I loved primitive blues. Delta blues. Moaning in the moonlight. Lifelong Obsession #1 for this entry.

Skot also took it upon himself to repair my love life. Over the last two years, I had encountered many young women in high school and junior college with whom I felt a slight spark, but could not pursue them because I was already in a relationship. One evening, Skot announced we were going to track some of them down and put me “back in the saddle.” He squeezed some last names out of me, and began cheerfully flipping through the phone book, calling everyone by that name, as I curled up on his floor, crippled by equal parts embarrassed agony and glee.

“Hello, does by any chance ****** live there? Oh. Ok, sorry to bother you.”

Next person by that name in the book.

“Hello, does by any chance ****** live there? Oh. Ok, sorry to bother you.”

I could never in a million years have been that bold, and I don’t know what we would have done had we actually contacted one of our targets. Set up some kind of sad date, I guess. But we struck out. He also wamted me to take a shopping trip to Sacramento to pick him up some cologne that was only available at a certain store. The shopping companion he arranged for me? A drop-dead gorgeous 21-year-old employee of the Underground record store that he was friends with. Fire-red hair, alabaster skin, and a bell-like voice that liked to sing Sam Cooke songs. Dreamy. We streaked southward at ninety miles an hour in her Volkswagen Beetle as she blithely told me she lacked both a license and insurance. I don’t know what Skot expected would come of this, and I appreciated his insanely optimistic efforts, but the ingenue in question had eyes only for Skot, and the Holy Bee’s little 19-year-old nerdy self never felt more like a monkey in a sidecar in his life.

#137. “Spoonman” – Soundgarden
Let’s see… “Spoonman”… another track from the great Superunknown. How do I connect it to my next little vignette? Spoons stir coffee!

This Used To Be Mahler's

Lest we forget, the mid-nineties was the height of the Great Coffee Shop Boom. The Friends gang and its devotion to “Central Perk” would make hanging-out-at-an overpriced-café-with-bad-art-and-big-cushions a legitimate societal phenomenon when their show debuted that coming fall, but they were reflecting the trend, rather than leading the way. Every street corner, even in Yuba City, boasted a coffee shop by the middle of '94. I began hanging out at a place called Mahler’s on D Street in Marysville. Laboring behind the counter at Mahler’s was a friend-of-a-friend. Caspar* was a close companion of my high school associate McKinney, the fireplug-sized loudmouthed eccentric (he resembled Elroy Jetson with Tourette's) I have written about a few times already.

Caspar had grown up on various Air Force bases throughout Europe. When he would pal around with McKinney junior and senior year, he kept his blond hair piled high in an annoying Morrissey pompadour, wore bizarre golf knickers that exposed a generous length of argyle sock, and tooled around in a second-hand 1970’s model Porsche 915. Before I knew his actual name, I used to refer to him as “Hitler Youth Boy.”

In the year since graduation, he had toned down his Euro-trash style, and was now usually clad in a Primal Scream (Screamadelica) t-shirt (at right) and simple cargo shorts. The blond pompadour rode a little lower (and, I noted with a chuckle, had already begun to thin noticeably at the temples), and he seemed a great deal less pompous as he schlepped mochas behind the counter at Mahler’s. Though he never lost his touch as a world-class know-it-all and self-proclaimed master of many dark arts (when I first watched the American Office a decade later, I was convinced the writers had spent some time with Caspar, and created Dwight Schrute as an affectionate tribute), as I wore a Norm Peterson-style groove in the corner barstool that summer, I found him a congenial conversation partner and a sympathetic ear. His girlfriend, Audrey*, whom I had known in high school much better than Caspar (she was the object of my friend Anthony’s affections way back in Part 3) often joined us, slurping down free coffee and commiserating.

Ever since Audrey was unceremoniously tossed from her parents’ home around her nineteenth birthday (they didn’t believe in “keeping adult birds in the nest”), the couple had been shacked up with Caspar’s dad (affectionately known as “Dud”), but in the market for their own place.

#138. “Longview” – Green Day
Like McKinney, Caspar was once a member of the YCHS Choir. Nowadays, this type of person is popularized by shows like Glee, which celebrates choristers’ “uniqueness” and “quirky individualism,” but I’m here to tell you that in real life, they’re just damned weird, and not in always in a pleasantly goofy TV-show way. Clannish, cliquish, and addicted to drama, they only seemed to date and socialize with each other, which resulted in an incestuous little closed-off society, similar to those found in the more remote Appalachian "hollers." Some of the ambitious ones went off to universities, leaving the more socially crippled and lame that remained behind at Yuba College to close ranks still further. Their creepy little touchy-feely coven also spilled over into and tainted the college drama department, which played a big part in my not pursuing the interest in acting I'd had back in high school. Both Caspar and McKinney had left the choir fold after high school -- and thus had a shot at a normal life -- but one night I was invited along to a Yuba College Choir party by Caspar. At a nondescript apartment of an unknown chorister, I came face-to-face with Lifelong Obsession #2.

It wasn’t love at first sight. Hell, I didn’t even finish it (gasp!). But I did have my very first beer on July twentysomething, 1994. It was a Miller Genuine Draft, which Caspar assured me was the closest American mega-breweries could come to European-style lager. (I have since had reason to doubt this assertion.)

The Green Day album Dookie was the soundtrack to this particular party, and it played over and over. I bought it the next day. Its tuneful, pop-punk songs about moving out of your parents’ house (“Welcome To Paradise”), neurotic self-pity (“Basket Case”), and total slackerdom with a healthy dose of self-pleasure (“Longview”) definitely hit a nerve.

Another party attended around that time was at the home of Stacy, the first person hired after me at the video store, relieving me of my status as “new guy” and inheritor of the “Trainee” name tag. Stacy could have been twenty-three, or she could have been forty. No one could quite tell. She lived out in the middle of nowhere with with a fellow cat-obsessed spinster -- her mother. She invited all of us co-workers to a shindig she was throwing in her barn/garage somewhere between Marysville and Gridley. None of us wanted to go, but neither could we stand the thought of her sitting alone in her barn surrounded by snacks no one would eat. We formed up a guilty, reluctant carpool and headed her way. “Longview” came on the radio on the way out, and I remember being impressed that they played the uncensored version (I guess it was late enough at night.)

#139. “Big Empty” – Stone Temple Pilots
Upon arrival, it was about as bad as we expected. Triscuits and ping-pong in a poorly-lit equipment shed. I had my second beer of the summer (a Michelob), and finished it this time. We caught occasional glimpses of Stacy's Mom (ha!) as a Mother Bates-style silhouette in a bedroom window. Stacy owned nothing resembling decent music (Michael Bolton and Jon Secada were her faves), and only a cassette player from which to play anything. We all checked our pockets for random cassettes, and someone came up with a cut-out promo copy of The Crow soundtrack. The Crow was one of the first “serious” comic book adaptations, and was a dark, nihilistic, incomprehensible, headache-inducing buzzsaw of a movie notable for killing off its star Brandon Lee in an on-set accident (meaning he didn’t have to sit through the final product like the rest of us poor bastards.) Its equally stupid soundtrack was immensely popular throughout the seedier side of Yuba City/Marysville. I’m sure many a batch of meth was cooked up to the sounds of Machines Of Loving Grace and Helmet barking away in the background. When STP’s “Big Empty” is the most listenable item on the menu, you know you’re in trouble.

I was now on the prowl for that elusive third beer. As always, to be continued...

* Not their real names. If they should read this, they'll certainly recognize themselves, and anyone who knows me well knows who they are, but why run the risk of embarrassing them as I dig up all this old stuff?

This Used To Be My Playground, Part 18: A Fantastic Voyage With Cousin Bob (Loser Chronicles, Vol. II)

2011-04-13T23:45:00.000-07:00

“I have thought of fifteen hundred or two thousand incidents in my life which I am ashamed of, but have not gotten one of them to consent to go on paper yet. I think that that stock will still be complete and unimpaired when I finish these memoirs, if I ever finish them.” – Mark Twain.

It was one of those rare three-cigar afternoons of the early spring, and I sat mulling over my Great 90’s Playlist. It dawned on me that I seem to spend as much time thinking/writing about

“This Used To Be My Playground” as I do crafting the content itself…

#127. “Selling The Drama” – Live

Every once in awhile, I am confronted with the question what it is, exactly, I’m trying to do with this particular blog series. It has taken an unplanned drift from pop-culture commentary to almost pure autobiography, and the songs that are ostensibly under review have an increasingly tenuous connection to the life events I’m writing about. If all of these musings and reminiscences were scribbled down in a personal journal, the question of purpose wouldn’t be raised. But I’m throwing all of this out there in a public forum, and for some time I didn’t have a satisfactory answer to my own question of “why.” What is the point of an autobiography of a non-noteworthy person? I am the opposite of the guy in the Dos Equis commercial…

…He has two kids…he drives a ten-year-old Corolla…he teaches middle school and watches Top Chef…he is…The Most Boring Man in the World. “I don’t always drink beer, but when I do…I prefer…whatever’s on sale. Stay thirsty, my friends.”

So why is this little project – originally slated as something to keep me occupied during my summer break of 2009 – now celebrating the start of its third year, and still not halfway done? (And, if you’ve noticed, is now unfolding in almost real-time. I wrote about April/May of 1993 in April/May of 2010. We’re now in the spring of 2011 reviewing the spring of 1994. I gotta work faster. I will work faster.) What demon is driving this engine? The answer is pretty simple. The concepts of me writing this stuff and a dog licking his testicles have many parallels, but first and foremost: We do it because we can. I like to write. Internet technology allows me to have the illusion of an audience. Those two things are enough to keep me going, and I do hope the music I’m selecting is not lost in all the navel-gazing. I want the reader to let the songs trigger their own memories, or at least be aware of how different their “memory songs” are from mine. (You won’t find a lot of Fugazi or Tupac on my playlist. I wasn’t that cool.)

That being established, the next issue is – if this is truly an autobiography, how bluntly honest I should be about myself (and others)? I set out to tell the unvarnished truth all the time, but I find myself dissembling and omitting. And if I downplay certain unpleasant truths, what is being exaggerated on the other end of the spectrum? To what extent am I merely “selling the drama”? (See above, re: tenuous connections.) And the answer to that is -- it doesn’t matter. It’s my story. If you think you can write multiple 2500-word chapters of unflinching honesty about yourself, and also manage not to exaggerate anything, I’d love to see your attempt. (Of course, you could simply lie to me and say it was total honesty and no exaggeration. And therein lies the true magic of autobiography.)

These musings have been triggered by my acquisition of the recently-published Autobiography of Mark Twain. (It’s the first of three-volume set, and it’s a five-pound, 700-page monster, chock-full of Twain’s own ramblings and copious amounts of explanatory notes and appendices. I’ve only just finished the 58-page introduction, and look forward to a pleasant summer wrestling with the rest.) Twain struggled with similar issues of honesty and exaggeration. He dealt with the question of being honest about other people by not allowing the full text to be published until he’d been dead for 100 years (he died in 1910), and long after the death of anyone whose feelings would be hurt. The question of being honest about himself was something he never quite resolved, so he took a compromise position of being honest about not being honest. And exaggeration was, of course, Twain’s stock-in-trade, so no one expected anything different.

An excerpt from a letter from one of Twain’s friends in response to his idea of writing an autobiography: “…I fancy you may tell the truth about yourself. But all of it? The black truth, which we all know of ourselves in our hearts, or only the whitey-brown truth of the pericardium, or the nice, whitened truth of the shirtfront? Even you won’t tell the black heart’s-truth. The man who could do it would be famed to the last day the sun shone upon.”

One last note before I let go of your sleeve on this topic. Twain’s autobiography refused to be tied to chronology. He wanted to be able to wander all through his life without a map. If an anecdote from his boyhood reminded him of an incident that took place when he was in his forties, then he would tell about it right then and there, and then return to his boyhood (or his twenties, or the previous week.) I have sadly committed to a more structured format. So many tales have occurred to me, and then I think, “Damn, I already wrote about the fall of 1992.” But Twain’s loose approach has at least given me permission to be as rambling and discursive as I wish, and not worry too much if I leave something out. And my promise to you, Gentle Reader, is that I will cleave as closely to the whitey-brown truth as I can.

#128. “Girls & Boys” – Blur

An early preview of the “Britpop” that would envelop even the American music scene in another eighteen months. I heard this song occasionally, kicking around on KWOD 106.5, or popping up late nights on MTV, never quite cracking the mainstream. I did not, at the time, pay any attention to the artist or what album it was from. Its repetitiveness skirted the line between catchy and irritating.

#129. “Vasoline” – Stone Temple Pilots

These guys would not go away. This was the fifth in what would end up being a run of seven monster hit singles in ’93-’94. The white-hot hatred they engendered amongst alt-rock diehards during the“they’re just a Pearl Jam rip-off” era of late ’92 was starting to fade, and while we would never love, or even much like, the band themselves, we grudgingly accepted that they had some good songs.

#130. “Backwater” – Meat Puppets

We learned in a previous entry that one of the primary reasons I got dumped was my complacency in remaining in my childhood bedroom in my parents’ house and my refusal to “grow up.” But Steph and I were a pot and kettle that shared a very similar shade of ebony. She herself had thus far made only one token attempt to break free of the parental household. It seemed the mere attempt to live in her own place with a roommate garnered her grown-up points, even though she became tearfully homesick after two weeks and fled her new living situation. I found out (much) later that she was hoping all along that I would man up and move in with her, but even though I was technically an employed adult, that particular move was still as foreign a concept to me as opening a 401K or having a gallstone removed.

Some time around her 20th birthday (this would have put it circa February of ’94), she acquired a sketchy, dirt-cheap apartment in the backwaters of east Marysville, and an even sketchier, dirtier roommate. I spent a few evenings there watching Frasier (still in its first season!) and being generally uncomfortable. The roommate was a piece of work. She somewhat resembled Janine, the Ghostbusters receptionist memorably played by Annie Potts. She wore glasses about a size-and-a-half too big for her face, was a self-proclaimed “lush” who emptied a box (yes, box) of red wine per night, collected “small things” (she had a shelf full of random small items), and provided a convenient excuse for Steph to move out when she (the roommate) came home with a raging case of scabies from her job as an attendant at a sub-standard nursing home.

#131. “Fantastic Voyage” – Coolio

Remaining at home with her parents (for the time being), but working a full-time job that would provide decent independent living for any twenty-something single gal certainly provided Steph with disposable income. So when she decided she wanted to go to Hawaii, it only took about four or five months of saving to get a travel agency package of first-class plane tickets and hotel lodgings right on the beach in Honolulu, and have enough spending money to act like minor central European royalty.

By the time the arrangements were finalized, we had split up. But paid-for is paid-for, so we decided to be mature and go as “friends.” We hoped to model our new relationship on Jerry and Elaine. On the first of June, we jet-setted out for a week of melancholy-tinged fun in the sun. A “fantastic voyage,” if you will. (See above, re: tenuous connections.) The in-flight movie was Four Weddings And A Funeral. And we did have fun. Fine dining. Shopping at the massive three-story Ala Moana center. A visit to Pearl Harbor. Snorkeling in Hanauma Bay. (Out among the waves and coral was the first of two times in my life that I've been propositioned by a gentleman of the gay persuasion. I was too freaked out to be flattered. I'm flattered now, looking back on it, of course.) Plus a couple of days set aside for just laying around Waikiki Beach. Any illusions I had about a week in tropical paradise healing the rifts in our union were quickly dashed. Steph put a strict ban on any “relationship talk” during the course of the trip. And the trip was pretty much on her dime, so I had to comply.

This Used To Be Me -- When it was still OK for me to be shirtless in public. On further review, it was probably a bad idea even then.

The one miscalculation on the itinerary was a bus tour around the island of Oahu – and folks, the island of Oahu is much bigger than you would think, so the bus tour became an incredibly tedious full-day slog through the “non-tourist” parts of central Oahu. Much of Hawaii doesn’t look like the Hawaii of popular imagination. The lush bits are around the edges. The central portions look a lot like the northern California I had just left, only with pineapple instead of tomatoes growing in the endless fields. Our bus driver, “Cousin Bob,” wasn’t shy about working the onboard P.A. system, either. Most tour guides are content with a quick “if you’ll look to your left, you’ll see the start of the trail that leads to the top of Diamond Head, which winds its way over 750 feet above sea level” and then leave you to ooh and aah. Not Cousin Bob. If he pointed out Diamond Head, he included lengthy lectures on minerology, Polynesian mythology, a detailed comparison of real estate prices on Oahu and Maui, an unrelated tangent on a piece of statuary he bought for his front yard, a second unrelated tangent about this guy he knew at bus-driving school, etc. His long-winded narration concluded just in time for him to point out the next interesting sight, and expound at length on it and any other unfiltered thought that flitted into his skull.

Also on the bus were a gaggle of sixteen- to eighteen-year-old Bible camp students, out from under close adult supervision for probably the first time in their lives. I thought only animals could smell hormones until I was trapped on a bus with a group of co-ed repressed Christian teens, trying to rub up against each other without looking like they were trying to rub up against each other, and filling the bus with exclamations of “hecka cool” and “gosh!” The musky pheromone scent -- a blend of giddiness, shame, and guilt-heavy erections -- was almost thick enough to see.

Taking a break from Cousin Bob

Before I knew it, the whole trip was over, and we were winging our way home, red, peeling, and sandy. The in-flight movie was Guarding Tess. The knot in my stomach over the break-up began to grow.

#132. “Loser” – Beck

Late in the evening Monday after we got back, I went over to her house to plead my case to stay together one last time. It didn’t work. Like a lot of guys at that I age, I really believed there was something I could do or say, some magic button I could push, or some puzzle I could unravel and be rewarded with a continuation of how things were. It was almost as if she had nothing to do with it. It was all on me, I had to pull the plane out of the death-spiral. The reality was that it had everything to do with her, and she wasn’t budging. She wanted out. I ended that evening on the same front porch that I had ended hundreds of previous evenings with her, only this time I was sobbing and clinging to her. Not the most dignified display. She finally managed to peel me off (to her credit, her eyes were full of tears, too) and send me on my way. I’m sure she had to wash the shirt she was wearing immediately.

The rest of the month is a blue haze. I remember O.J. Simpson fleeing the authorities in his white Bronco a few days later. (The memory is mostly auditory – I was at work and listened to the coverage on the radio.) I remember Pierce Brosnan being announced as the next James Bond. I remember it taking the Houston Rockets seven games to knock out the Knicks, me watching the games sprawled listlessly on my family room floor, a tiny electric fan blowing in my face, my stomach knotted. And I remember all of the songs listed above, but especially “Loser” by the oddball little newcomer Beck, which was the soundtrack to my blue hazy June. Its surreal stream-of-consciousness lyrics and bluesy acoustic slide guitar played in my head incessantly – the chorus rendered in my own voice as bitterly as possible. I made another couple of deeply pathetic visits to Steph’s house that month, to once again try out the “Jerry-&-Elaine-friends” relationship.

It lasted until I discovered she was already seeing someone else. Then I left, and never went back. I had some pride.

I didn’t even set eyes on her for another year. She vanished, became as ephemeral as a ghost, a figment of my anguished imagination, and I was alone as I’d ever felt. I’m a loser, baby.

Life went on. I’ll tell you a little more the next time you stop by. It gets sort of depressing for awhile, but I’ll try to make it funny (for both of our sakes, Gentle Reader.)

And hey -- get your copy of The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 1 if you have the slightest literary bent or take an interest in the history of American letters.

I’m no nearer to opening a 401K, by the way.

Tales From The Apple Box, #1: Voodoo Lounge

2011-03-31T21:19:00.000-07:00

Alternate title: Unjustly Forgotten Albums.

In compiling the creepily self-indulgent and onanistic blog series known as “This Used To Be My Playground” (Alternate title suggested by the ex-wife: “How Dare They Not Like Me”), I have been listening to a lot of old favorites from the one decade that seems doomed to inspire almost no nostalgia at all. According to the annoyingly still-prevalent Baby Boomers, the 60’s were the pinnacle of Western Civilization (can we unplug their feeding tubes, soon, please?), the 70’s garner a certain shameful, shaggy-dog affection for their hideous aesthetics in all things, the 80’s are now the super-cool decade for the new generation too young to really remember them, but the 90’s are passed over with a few grunge-flannel-Monica Lewinsky references. Maybe not enough time has passed for true nostalgia to really set in, but since VH1 has already trotted out their “I Love the 90’s” series a couple of years ago, it seems they’re fair game for a little “remember when” encapsulation.

Music buying has come full circle since the 1950’s and early 60’s. Once again, thanks to iTunes, “singles” are the dominant format. Only instead of a flat ring of vinyl that spun at 45 revolutions per minute on a record player, we have audio files that can be downloaded at a buck or two a pop. Budget-friendly and hook-heavy, the single was – and now is again – the go-to. But for at least two generations, beginning in the mid-60's, the album was primary format of music consumption. Which places the 1990’s in the final quarter or so of the “Album Era.”

Some albums are immortal. The Beatles’ Revolver. Led Zeppelin’s IV. Michael Jackson’s Thriller. U2’s The Joshua Tree. And they’re immortal as albums -- that is, entire collections of songs, even if certain individual songs from the albums may not be up to scratch (anyone waxing rhapsodic over Thriller’s “The Lady in My Life” or Joshua Tree’s “Trip Through Your Wires”? Didn’t think so.) But as recently as ten or twelve years ago, the album was still the thing, and if you were interested in an artist, by God, you bought their album. Vinyl was (temporarily) dead, so singles existed in the form of “cassingles,” which were for twelve-year-old Latinas with lots of jelly bracelets, or “CD-singles” which were for no one. If a song or an artist interested you enough to want to own it, you tended to go with full commitment – shelling out fifteen bucks for a dozen or more songs. (Usually more than a dozen. Albums got longer in the CD era. Value for dollar aside, this was not always a good artistic decision.) As someone who loved the antiquated ritual of going to a store, buying a CD, and racing home with it, I bought albums far more often than I should have without being too discriminating, so I am thus the owner of hundreds of CDs of 1990’s vintage. They currently fill a half-dozen apple boxes wedged deep in the back of my storage unit. (See pic at right.)

Some of them were not worth the polycarbonate plastic on which they were pressed and are not worthy of further attention (Hum’s You’d Prefer An Astronaut or Jawbreaker’s Dear You, anyone? Anyone?), some of them entered the pantheon of Classic Albums (Nirvana’s Nevermind, Radiohead’s The Bends), and others became the lost middle ground – and that’s the topic of our little visit today. These are albums that came out big, sold well, were reviewed well, and then…forgotten. I own a lot of these.

From the informal feedback I’ve received, it seems my loyal readership skews either a little older or a little younger than myself, so hopefully this will prove informative. Those of you who are pretty much my age will know what it’s like to be rooked for fifteen bucks for the Possum Dixon album (what a piece of shit.)

Our first entry in “Tales From The Apple Box” is the Rolling Stones’ 1994 album Voodoo Lounge. The Rolling Stones had been announcing themselves as “The Greatest Rock & Roll Band in the World” since 1969 (when the Beatles were conveniently breaking up). What began as a pretty ballsy statement of chutzpah has been argued with less and less as years turned into decades and the Stones showed no signs of slowing down. But we all know they stumbled badly in the 80’s – and even their 1989 “comeback” album Steel Wheels sounds hopelessly dated and a slave to the worst elements of 80’s production: heavily-processed drums, cheesy keyboards, unnecessary horn sections, etc. After Steel Wheels and its subsequent world tour, the Stones went one of their increasingly-frequent hibernations. Original bassist Bill Wyman quit, Mick and Keith released well-regarded solo albums (both also now-forgotten), and when it was time for the Greatest Rock & Roll Band in the World to come back out of mothballs in ’94, they made the correct decision to stop chasing trendy sounds (a habit of theirs that's both a blessing and a curse), and acknowledge the classic works of their past. Mind you, not by ripping their younger selves off and making an album of simple re-hashes, but by using modern techniques, a fresh perspective, and a new co-producer, Don Was, who favored leaner, simpler sounds to create an album reminiscent of the spirit of everything from 1966’s baroque Aftermath, through the balladry of 1971’s Sticky Fingers, all the way to the lazy, decadent funk of 1976’s Black And Blue.

“Love Is Strong” – This is a riff-heavy slow-burner, which rumbles along in low gear, driven by a cool harmonica lick, interlocking guitars (a Stones trademark), and Jagger’s sly, purring vocal. An obvious attempt to create a new “classic” single in the mold of “Satisfaction” or “Start Me Up,” it almost succeeds in that department. It definitely succeeds as a strong album-opener.

“You Got Me Rocking” – As simple as they come, this track rushes through its kinda dumb rough-draft lyrics to get to the chant-along chorus – a song designed to get an entire arena on its feet when performed in concert. No points for nuance, but that was not the intent. Again, crunchy guitars to the forefront of the mix.

“Sparks Will Fly” – Third riff-based rocker in a row – the Stones know their signature sound and aren’t afraid to rub your face in it. But the attentive listener will feel the pace picking up. “Love Is Strong” was heavy and lackadaisical, “You Got Me Rocking” was just a little beyond mid-tempo – but “Sparks Will Fly” finally pushes the pedal to the floor, and drummer Charlie Watts might actually be breaking a sweat. The lyrics are a leering, gleeful tribute to, um…a certain type of sexual congress that, um…involves certain anatomical areas…that are normally, uh…off-limits for the most part. If you get my drift. The song gets pretty damn explicit about it, so you’ll certainly get the song’s drift. Or thrust. Oogy lyrics aside, the sound is intense and infectious. (The main part of the riff is currently being used as the intro music on one of my favorite podcasts, The Mike O’Meara Show.)

“The Worst” – As “Sparks Will Fly” screeches to a close, the tempo winds way down, allowing the presumably sore and bow-legged listener to catch a breather, and Keith Richards takes his first lead vocal of the album. Basically a gentle acoustic country song, with some subtle Caribbean overtones, “The Worst” warns any potential mate that the singer is not good boyfriend material. Keith’s raspy voice has never wrapped very well around a melody, but he’s great at emoting and creating a mood.

“New Faces” – For the first time on the album, the Stones' past sounds are not an underlying subtext, but emerge as an overt pastiche of the Aftermath era. “New Faces” blows the dust off the circa-1966 harpsichords and harmoniums and channels the ghost of Brian Jones to create an Elizabethan-sounding background to the tale of an older gentleman feeling threatened by his companion’s attraction to a younger man.

“Moon Is Up” – An interesting track, and truly unclassifiable. A ballad of sorts, but heavily percussive, with phased, watery guitars, shimmery vocals, and Watts’ “mystery drum” (later revealed to be an aluminum trashcan lid). I guess there’s touches of 80’s style blue-eyed soul mixed in there, but nothing in the Simply Red discography is this off-kilter.

“Out Of Tears” – The Big Ballad – every major rock band of the 80’s/90’s was expected to have one of these as their album’s centerpiece as a concession to the MTV audience, who gobbled them up like Skittles. Aerosmith came to specialize in them. Although no one would accuse “Out Of Tears” of being in any way subtle, it perfectly nails all the expected marks (soaring chorus, lyrics lamenting lost love) while being mercifully free of the ham-fisted power chords that made similar work by Aerosmith and Bon Jovi so grating. A great slide guitar solo by Ron Wood, too.

“I Go Wild” – Another pulsating, mid-tempo rock anthem designed to be played on tour. “You Got Me Rocking, Part 2.” Although Keith has always been the Stones’ resident Guitar Hero, second fiddle Ron Wood once again proves his worth with those tasty slide guitar parts that nestle so neatly against Keith’s churning chords.

“Brand New Car” – The real love-it-or-hate-it moment on the album. Jagger pushes the car-as-girl, driving-as-sex metaphor to almost comic extremes. (“Jack her up, baby, go on open her hood/I wanna check if her oil smells good/Mmmmm, smells like caviar.” Shame on you, Mick.) However you feel about the lyrics (c’mon, they’re actually pretty hilarious), they play out over one the meanest, funkiest, bottom-heavy grooves the band has ever laid down.

“Sweethearts Together” – A simple, sentimental love song with a very Euro/waltz flavor, playing out over mostly acoustic guitars, accordion, and possibly finger cymbals (!). Reminiscent of a relic from the earliest days of the Jagger-Richards songwriting partnership (think “Blue Turns To Grey” or “As Tears Go By”), it sounds like it would have ended up on the odds-and-ends collection Flowers from 1967. The words may be a little saccharine, but this is an impeccably arranged and produced track. It’s also nice to hear Mick and Keith sing together again, instead of relying on professional back-up singers to provide the harmonies as they had been doing recently.

“Suck On The Jugular” – Sweaty grindhouse funk of the Prince variety, with chugging wah-wah guitars, a reggae-tinged organ, squawking horns, some more X-rated lyrics, and Jagger wailing on harmonica in a way not heard since the days of “Midnight Rambler.” A second-half highlight.

“Blinded By Rainbows” – Voodoo Lounge’s first real misfire, an attempt at making a U2-style quasi-religious, socially-conscious anti-war song that’s so vague and muddled that even a pretty chorus and the usual stellar playing (including yet another awesome Wood solo) can’t really save it. Lyrics about Semtex bombs and severed limbs don’t really belong in a Stones song, but kudos (I guess) for trying something new.

“Baby, Break It Down” – For all the great guitar playing we’ve heard so far, Voodoo Lounge took until Track #13 to give us an insanely memorable, simple riff that could truly be described as a “hook.” This song is a good place to acknowledge the talents of new bassist Darryl Jones, whose prior work had mostly been in the jazz field. His playing was not as frisky and bubbly as Wyman’s (listen to Wyman’s bass on “Start Me Up” or even “Rock And A Hard Place” to see what I mean), but definitely took the Stones sound to darker and funkier territory.

“Thru And Thru” – As much as I love Keith, his second lead vocal on the album must stand as misfire #2. Meandering tunelessly for six minutes, Keith’s melody-free vocal compares his love to all-night fast food service. No thanks. Even the guitar-playing seems half-assed here.

“Mean Disposition” – The band closes out the album by going back to their earliest days as a scruffy R&B cover band working the London nightclubs of ’63 and ’64. “Mean Disposition” sounds like a lost Chuck Berry outtake from the heyday of Chess Records, complete with Berry’s trademark blues-meets-country guitar licks and Johnnie Johnson-style piano tinklings.

So it’s no Exile On Main St. It’s no Let It Bleed. Or even Some Girls. But it’s a damn sight better than the three hideous 80’s albums that preceded it, and the two that followed it. (The Stones returned to flavor-of-the-month trend-chasing with 1997’s Bridges To Babylon and its Dust Brothers techno production and drum loops. 2005’s A Bigger Bang was an improvement, but the Stones have been quiet since then.) And you know what? I think Voodoo Lounge is better than “classics” like Aftermath and Tattoo You. It’s certainly one of the best albums of 1994, it was the very first album to win the Best Rock Album Grammy Award (a new category that year – now known as the “Foo Fighters Award,” since they’ve won it three times, and seem to be the only mainstream rock band left in existence), and for that, Voodoo Lounge deserves to be remembered.

This Used To Be My Playground, Part 17: Parker Lewis CAN Lose or, The Perils Of Clinging To Adolescence

2011-03-22T23:09:00.000-07:00

#121. "She Don't Use Jelly" -- The Flaming Lips
#122. "Cut Your Hair" -- Pavement

"Alternative" music had become mainstream. What was the alternative to the alternative? Acts that were far more edgy than those that the record labels had decided were "alternative" began edging their way into earshot around this time. The loopy, acid-fried Flaming Lips were not yet the untouchable critical darlings they would become in the next decade, but were rather a minor annoyance with this deliberately abrasive ditty that garnered them one-hit-wonder status in the MTV Buzz Bin. And there are those that will tell you they bought Pavement's landmark Slanted and Enchanted the day it came out, but don't believe them. About 50 people bought Slanted and Enchanted the day it came out, and you're not one, I'm not one, and neither of us know any of them. I first heard Pavement the same way a lot of people first heard Pavement -- observing their video for this song get shit on by Beavis and Butthead.

So...

Adolescence – even the late adolescence to which I was clinging at 19 – imparts a certain degree of emotional masochism. Sometimes it feels so good to feel bad. But in the early spring of 1994, I had very little to feel bad about. Hindsight tells me I must have had some subconscious inkling of a train wreck ahead. I created, and spent a lot of time listening to, a bizarre mix tape: An unholy mélange consisting of key tracks from Derek and the Dominoes’ Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, Pink Floyd’s The Wall – and, uh, “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

Layla stands as Eric Clapton’s towering achievement (sorry, “Tears In Heaven” fans). The ill-fated Dominoes band he assembled to bring this mix of blues standards and searing originals together stands as the best group of musicians Clapton ever worked with. (Sorry, Cream fans. By the way, Cream is intensely overrated. Psychedelic horseshit, mostly. Stuff your ten-minute drum solos where the sunshine of your love never penetrates, Baker.) Despite classic-rock radio overkill, the song “Layla” is still intense, the yearning “Anyday” and “Bell Bottom Blues” perfectly encapsulate the feeling of a broken heart, and “Little Wing” manages to top Hendrix’s original, which is saying a lot.

On my mix tape, the Layla songs bleed into the Wall songs, with a bit of overlap. Pain and sadness give way to anger and isolation. A much colder, more cerebral work than the heart-on-sleeve Layla, there’s no doubt that The Wall works very well in terms of ambiance (and high-end production so crisp and clear it’s almost antiseptic – which I’m sure was the goal). I never had any interest in “concept” albums, so I don’t care a fig for the “story” told by The Wall (typical prog-rock codswallop about the problems of a depressed, self-obsessed millionaire rock star with oedipal issues. Boo-freakin-hoo), but man, does it set a mood. And that mood is “I can’t decide if the world or I should fuck off and die.” I cut out most of the little narrative songlets that usually litter concept albums, and kept the showpiece numbers like “Another Brick In The Wall Pt. 2,” “Young Lust,” “Hey You,” and the crowning achievement, “Comfortably Numb.” My version of The Wall ends with “Run Like Hell,” thus eliminating the lame theatricality of “The Trial”…

…in favor of the lame theatricality of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” To me, the explosive catharsis that is the final third of the song is the logical conclusion to the harrowing ninety minutes of sorrow that had preceded it. Once you get past the rather silly pseudo-operatic midsection, the song thunders into a statement of self-assertion and I’m-gonna-be-okay-no-matter-what attitude.

A great soundtrack for wallowing in self-pity, which I liked to do even with so little to pity myself about. I had been with Steph for over two years at this point and the relationship seemed pretty stable, so I rode the emotions of the songs on my tape like a roller coaster – with all the speed, twists, and spills of something dangerous, but without the real danger. A vicarious, virtual-reality sensation of heartbreak. It couldn’t really happen to me, right?

It was right around this time that Kurt Cobain chomped down on a shotgun barrel and embraced his true future – appearing in hundreds of Rolling Stone retrospective pictorials with Jimi Hendrix and John Lennon. Talk about clinging to a late adolescence! Cobain continued to act the bratty, willful teenager into his late twenties. Most people get over Mommy and Daddy’s divorce and the mean jocks in middle school by the age of 27. Cobain, unfortunately, existed in an occupation where arrested development is actively encouraged. Even as he railed against the music industry like a true voice of juvenile punk-rock alienation, the industry cosseted him and encouraged him (and paid him by the truckload) to remain a sulky fourteen-year-old at his core. In every interview (except maybe his last major one, in Rolling Stone #674, 1/27/94) he sounded like someone who desperately needed to provoke, and never, ever once voiced any approval or satisfaction about anything (except a handful of bands he admired).

I remember Nirvana played MTV’s big New Year’s Eve party at the end of 1993 – a performance that didn't get much re-airing, even in the wake of Cobain’s death, when every single clip of the band ever committed to videotape was trotted out and repeated ad nauseum. An agitated Cobain gave a wretched, half-assed performance, and concluded by spitting a fat glob of saliva onto the nearest camera lens. Way to stick it to the man, you rebel! He proceeded to live another four months, a period in which the Snotty Kid was rapidly devoured by the Pathetic Junkie at frightening speed. Peter Pan-ing his brains across the back wall of his garage, cowardly as it was, may have been the most mature, measured decision he ever made. It ensured Eternal Adolescence, which seemed to have been his goal all along.

#123. "All Apologies" -- Nirvana
Nirvana may not have been the best band of the nineties, but they were the most important. (There’s a This Used To Be My Playground entry entirely dedicated to them.) Cobain may have been all of the things listed above, but he was also a genius whose potential was never realized. A creative melodicist, a poetic lyricist (of the William S. Burroughs "cut-up" school), a talented visual artist (a lot of his material can be found in Nirvana’s album artwork), and a moving, powerful vocalist. No, they may not have been the best, but they were my favorite at the time. (Or maybe they were the best. I always try to open this up to reader: Who do you think was a better band in, say, 1992?)

I realize that the amount of ink spilled on this topic could give the Gulf of Mexico a BP-sized slick, and it’s kind of like closing the barn door not only after the horse has left, but left, been recovered, sold to a breeder, sired two dozen offspring, died, been buried, the burial site sold, paved over for a Hollywood Video, the Hollywood Video gone out of business, torn down, and replaced by a strip mall with a questionable massage parlor. I’m pretty late to the party, in other words.

It was a Friday morning – April 8 – when the story broke. I either had no class scheduled that day out at Yuba College, or decided that the class did not require my presence that morning (God, I loved college!) I was in the darkened family room of my house watching Al Pacino in Carlito’s Way – a new release I had brought home from work at the video store the night before. The phone rang at about 11:00 am. It was Steph with the news. “Put it on MTV,” she wisely instructed. No CNN for us at that age! Sure enough, there was a grim-looking Kurt Loder at the MTV News desk reporting that the driving force of the greatest band of the era was no more. I muttered “damn” to myself a time or two, watched the coverage for about twenty minutes until it started repeating itself, then shrugged and went back to Carlito’s Way. I guess I’m not a candlelight vigil kind of guy.

Cobain’s death was a prophetic meteor streaking through my sky, an omen that heralded the end of childhood. Eternal Adolescence was not in the cards for me. The signal that my life was going to change drastically over the next sixteen months had been given. It all started in that April of ’94, when two atomic bombs went off in my life back to back…

Just this past year, Robert K. Elder did a fantastic book called The Film That Changed My Life, and I’m about to tell you the story of mine. Atomic Bomb #1:

#124. "Sabotage" -- The Beastie Boys
"Sabotage" finally won me over to the Beastie Boys. I realized that I had been judging them by the quality of their fans, who, in the early nineties, were still mostly lunkheads who thought "Paul Revere" was the height of wit. The Beastie Boys themselves were in the process of trying to change that reputation, and their brilliant Ill Communication album was a huge leap in that direction. By the mid-nineties, the Boys had won new fans like me, and their early fans either grew along with them, or switched their allegiance to acts like 311, defiantly continuing to wear backwards baseball caps and pukka shells. The award-winning "Sabotage" video was an homage to 70's cop shows like Starsky & Hutch and The Streets of San Francisco which I don't remember watching, but I guess I must have caught them when I was three or even two years old, because the visual aesthetic was instantly familiar. (My mom has told me that when I was three, I was a huge fan of Emergency!, and knew all the characters' names. I have no conscious recollection of this. I do have a conscious recollection of watching Barney Miller, which is pretty much the reason I'm as awesome as I am now.)

Gritty 70's crime movies received their homage via the intriguingly-titled Reservoir Dogs, which had been kicking around on video store shelves for the better part of a year by then. Although the influences and antecedents were quite clear, no 70's movie, or any movie, was like this. And it took me the better part of forever to finally sit down and watch it. My choice in movies had not yet become experimental. After eight months at the video store, and working their free-rentals-for-employees policy pretty hard, I had educated myself on some old classics (Lawrence of Arabia, The Maltese Falcon, Bullitt, etc.) and burned myself out on bad action movies. (Anyone remember Fortress? Christopher Lambert was a rancid ham, but this close to superstardom thanks to mid-range action flicks released every nine months and gobbled up by teenage boys in the days before X-Box). However, I had not yet dipped a toe into the modern indie-filmmaking movement currently gathering strength. Movies like Richard Linklater’s Slacker, Neil Jordan’s The Crying Game, Abel Ferrera’s Bad Lieutenant, and Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs were putting distributors like Miramax and the Samuel Goldwyn Company on the radar, and were getting the ink in the relatively new mags like Entertainment Weekly and Movieline (I was a proud subscriber to both), but they certainly didn’t play at the Yuba City multiplex. Patriot Games played on three screens, but there was no room for Peter’s Friends.

I finally brought home Reservoir Dogs. And when I say brought home, I mean I brought it to Steph’s house, as by this point I was treating her living room as if it were my own. (Her family tolerated my watching all four hours of Gettysburg on their TV a few weeks before, so who says it wasn’t a great relationship?) What finally caused me to seek it out was the trailer that appeared on the home video of Chaplin. I had already seen Chaplin in the theater back around Christmas '92, so I was in no hurry to rent it and re-watch it. But when I finally did, the preview for Reservoir Dogs caused me to dash back to work and pick up that video as well.

Reservoir Dogs completely changed my relationship with movies. Most of you have seen it, so I don’t need to recap anything about it, and you know how it starts: A conversation around a table at a coffee shop. But listening to that conversation is like putting your hand on a steel rail as a freight train approaches from a mile or two away – hot, heavy, thrumming…alive and dangerous.

The first voice we hear is Tarantino himself, playing the minor character Mr. Brown: “You wanna know what ‘Like A Virgin’'s about? Let me tell you what ‘Like a Virgin’'s about. It's all about a girl who digs a guy with a big dick. The entire song. It's a metaphor for big dicks.”

I was no stranger to crime flicks. I was no stranger to profanity in movies. But when was there ever a first line like that? Pop-culture obsessiveness, raw sexual crassness, and a slight veneer of menace based on automatically knowing the guys around the table weren’t cell phone salesmen or middle-school teachers (they were, in fact, jewel thieves) combined into a cinematic gut-punch. I was now a cinephile. I began devouring movies, and thinking about them. Was there other stuff like that out there? What had I been missing? If you haven’t seen Reservoir Dogs, go watch it right now. I had long since figured out how to rig two VCRs together, so I could copy any video I brought home from the store. Reservoir Dogs went right into the collection, and I almost wore out the tape. I finally received an official copy for Christmas or birthday at the end of that year, which went missing under circumstances I'll discuss later.

(When either one of my sons come into money, their first instinct is buy a gift for someone else. I don’t know where they got this idea from, but I’ve been the beneficiary a few times. The first Blu-Ray I owned after getting a Blu-Ray player was Reservoir Dogs, bought for me by my son Cade, who is nowhere near old enough to watch it.)

#125. "Shine" -- Collective Soul
This song existed.

#126. "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" -- Crash Test Dummies
Atomic Bomb #2: Steph and I broke up after two years and four months of what I thought was happiness and stability.

The Crash Test Dummies -- a Canadian folk-rock band whose lead singer's ridiculously deep baritone vocals had them flirting with novelty-act status -- was the album I bought the week we had the "talk." As in "we have to talk," a phrase no one wants to hear.

We had the dreaded talk at the food court in the Yuba-Sutter Mall, and it was as brutal as expected. Out of her grocery list of complaints, the one that I did not anticipate was that I was doing everything I could to delay the onset of adulthood. She worked full-time at a hospital in the medical records office. She had a car payment. She ironed her outfits. I was still a goofy, childish part-time video store clerk who hung out at Lyon's until four a.m., quite content to reside in my old bedroom in my parents' house until who-knows-when. In another time-honored tradition, she told me we were just "taking a break."

"Like a TV show going on I hiatus?" I asked.

"Exactly," she smiled reassuringly.

She had walked into my trap. "HA! Do you know what happens when shows go on hiatus!? They never come back! Look what happened to Parker Lewis Can't Lose! It went on 'hiatus' and you know it's gone forever!" Parker Lewis Can't Lose had been one of our favorite shows to watch together (along with SNL, The State, and Seinfeld), so I was hoping my metaphor had a little sting in its tail.

She would not be swayed. I knew a "break" at our age was the kiss of death. The melancholy rumble of the Crash Test Dummies' singer was the perfect voice for the strange emptiness I suddenly felt. I was really quite shocked at how little I felt. But I was in that nether zone that exists between the time an injury occurs and the time your body's pain receptors send the signal.

The pain would come.

But first, we had to go to Hawaii...

The Holy Bee Recommends, #6: "Marry him, murder him, do what you like with him."*

2011-02-28T21:32:00.000-08:00

I freely confess that I am a library junkie. I realize that this puts me in a category with lonely spinsters and elderly men who can only read a newspaper if it’s threaded through a wooden baton, but it got its claws into me early.

1985? 1986? I know I was barely into the double digits in age when I forsook the beanbag chairs and Betsy Byars books in the children's section in the basement of the old Woodland Public Library for the adult section upstairs, with its musty-smelling stacks and high-arched windows. And the fireplace! On cold winter days, there was always a blazing fire in the periodicals section (in the fireplace, not actually amongst the periodicals, which would have been quite alarming), and those high-arched, iron-banded windows seemed made to have rain spattered against them. It always seemed to be raining on days I visited the library. The Woodland Library was one of the hundreds of libraries all across the U.S. founded in the early 1900s through a grant by original gazillionaire Andrew Carnegie, when he wasn’t busy betting entire Pennsylvania towns in poker games against Rockefeller, or lighting cigars with fistfuls of cash. (For those of you who don’t know, Carnegie was born dirt-poor in Scotland, basically invented the U.S. steel industry from scratch, then spent the last twenty years of his life literally giving his fortune away to worthy public institutions and charities. What did you do today?)

I remember sitting and reading things for hours, hunched over until my back ached on those little wheeled stools in the aisles. I used my dog-eared library card (with my address neatly typed on it) to check out my first grown-up books – the original Beatles biography by Hunter Davies (the first book I read with the word “fuck” right in it. Wow! What a start! Eat that, Betsy Byars!), the autobiography Harpo Speaks by Harpo Marx…and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle, which was recommended to me by my fifth-grade teacher.

The checking-out process did not include a laser scanned over a bar code. It was a rubber stamp (attached backward to a pencil) that applied a date two weeks in the future to a card that was then filed in the mysterious library archives. If I was horribly irresponsible and missed my due date, the librarians always knew, and I was fined a nickel. It was a pretty good system. The library habit was cemented in college, where I certainly spent more time in the library than the classroom, earning the history degree that’s garnered me enormous amounts of material wealth thus far. The Woodland Library underwent an enormous renovation in 1988, and lost a lot of its character. It’s still a library, so I still love it and make a lot of trips back there even though I live in Sacramento, twenty miles away. Sadly, on those rainy winter days, the fireplace is still there, but is now ignored and cold.

A fireplace is almost an even trade for the modern library system. The greater Sacramento area has twenty-three libraries, and I’ve been to about twenty of them. A book checked out in one branch location can be returned to any of the others. The full catalog for all locations is online, and with the click of a mouse, a book in a library across town will be transported by some underpaid public employee to the branch down the block from my house within a few days. Or, if I’m too impatient, I pay a visit to a far-flung library and nose around. I usually look for books on my pet subjects (general history, pop culture), but best of all is when a single book on a random topic caught out of the corner of my eye jumps out at me and sends me deep down the rabbit hole of a certain area of study that will consume me for the next several weeks (serial killers, Old Testament history, Celtic mythology, Antarctic exploration, Shakespeare analysis, etc.)

Getting back to Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes tales, let it be known that my three-volume set of the annotated Holmes short stories and novels is one of my prized possessions (and weighs as much as an eastern European compact car), and that my purpose here is not to extol the virtues of Doyle’s work, which has been done repeatedly by writers much more esteemed than myself. No, what I want to do here is talk about pastiche – a literary (or dramatic, or musical) piece of work created in direct imitation of, or homage to, an original. During one of my recent random wanderings down a library aisle, I spotted Sherlock Holmes For Dummies by Steven Doyle (no relation) and David A. Crowder. It dedicated an entire chapter to the hundreds of Holmes pastiches written over the years. I tracked down a few of them. Here’s the two I read recently:

Dust And Shadow by Lyndsay Faye
The general conceit of the original Holmes stories is that they were first-person reminiscences written by Holmes’ associate and friend Dr. John H. Watson. Most pastiches are written in the same manner, often purporting to be one of Watson’s “lost manuscripts.” This is one of them, and Faye captures Watson’s (or, rather, Doyle’s) prose style perfectly. It starts, a la Indiana Jones, in the midst of an earlier adventure, and then settles in to a story on a subject that Holmes pastiche-ers find hard to resist: The Victorian era’s greatest detective versus the Victorian era’s greatest criminal: Jack The Ripper. Both the fictional Holmes and the all-too-real Ripper did their work in 1880’s London, and it was inevitable that they should meet. (Pastiches have also brought Holmes up against that other great Victorian baddie, Count Dracula, but the less said about them the better.)

Much like Harrison Ford growing to despise Han Solo (and suggesting that he die at the end of Jedi), or Paul Sheldon wearying of Misery Chastain and killing her off, Arthur Conan Doyle himself was never very fond of his most beloved creation. When an American actor/playwright asked Doyle if he could make some changes in the character for a play he was writing, Doyle responded in so many words that he didn't give a rat's ass*. The labyrinthine mysteries and clever solutions that make the stories such great reads were part of the problem. Doyle frequently complained that they were just damned hard to write, and each short story took as much effort as a novel. Plus, he wanted to move on to other literary endeavors. So he attempted to craft a heroic end to Holmes' life in the story “The Final Problem.” Annie Wilkes-like public outcry (including Doyle's most loyal reader, his mother) forced Doyle to resurrect him a couple of years later, with a glib Holmes explanation of how he faked his own death in an elaborate subterfuge, and spent the intervening years traveling incognito through the Far East. The Holmes adventures then continued without missing a beat.

The Shadow of Reichenbach Falls by John R. King

This one tells the story of Holmes’ “missing years,” and includes another, lesser-known fictional detective, Thomas Carnacki, created by author William Hope Hodgson in 1910 as a kind of Sherlock Holmes knock-off – but one who specializes in paranormal phenomena. King alternates first-person narrators (primarily Carnacki and an amnesiac Holmes), and includes some spooky supernatural elements that manage not to ruin the whole thing. Tough to pull off, because despite Doyle’s belief in spiritualism and even the existence of fairies, his Holmes stories epitomize down-to-earth, logical skepticism. It doesn't pack nearly the wallop that Dust And Shadow does, but it's a fresh approach, and about as original as something meant to be unoriginal can be.

Unread or briefly skimmed by me, but also good possibilities:

The Seven Per-Cent Solution by Nicholas Meyer, published in 1974, kicked off the modern era of Holmes pastiches, and inspired two sequels and a film.

The Italian Secretary by Caleb Carr (author of the excellent Victorian-era mysteries The Alienist and The Angel of Darkness.)

Sherlock Holmes: The Missing Years by Jamyang Norbu is another look at the mysterious era between Holmes’ “death” and resurrection. A Tibetan named Huree acts the Watsonian assistant/narrator and tells of Holmes rendering assistance to the Thirteenth Dalai Lama.

A minor Holmes character, grifter and con-artist Irene Adler (the closest the asexual Holmes has come to a romantic interest), has been given her own series of novels by Carole Nelson Douglas. (I skimmed the Irene Adler novel Chapel Noir, which also deals with Jack the Ripper, and it seemed pretty good. Other Holmes vs. Ripper tales are the third-person The Whitechapel Horrors by Edward B. Hanna and Watson-narrated The Last Sherlock Holmes Story by Michael Dibdin, which I plan on reading soon. Probably should have waited until after I read it to write this blog entry, but the Internet is a harsh mistress, hungry for content.)

Another series featuring a female protagonist is the “Mary Russell” series by Laurie R. King, in which the heroine receives counsel and training from the aging, retired Sherlock Holmes. The Beekeeper’s Apprentice is the first in a series of eleven (so far) novels.

The most well-known Holmes pastiche these days is the 2009 Guy Ritchie film Sherlock Holmes. Stuffy Doyle purists got on their high horses and sniffed disdainfully at turning their beloved stories into a loud, big-budget, effects-heavy action film where stuff blowed up real good, and having the great detective himself played by the American Robert Downey, Jr., who bore absolutely no resemblance to the literary Holmes. I actually liked it quite a bit – and if you read the original stories carefully, there’s all kind of references to wild action that Holmes takes part in when not witnessed by faithful biographer Watson. So all the more outlandish stuff merely alluded to in the stories is placed front and center in the film – and cranked up to 11. Although he’s not tall, gaunt, and aquiline in the way Holmes is described by Doyle, Downey is a good enough actor to allow suspension of disbelief for two hours. And even purists praised Jude Law’s note-perfect portrayal of Watson.

All of this brought to you by glimpsing the eye-catching yellow spine of Sherlock Holmes For Dummies while looking for something else. I love it when that happens.

Top 20 Albums of 2010: #9-1

2011-02-24T21:29:00.000-08:00

Well, this is thoroughly shameful. Every website, every major music magazine, even the goddamn Grammys, have already weighed in on the best of 2010. My excuse for not posting the second half of my best-of in a timely manner is pretty much unacceptable: the demands of a day job, plus too many good books to read and shows to watch in the hours off from the day job. And a lot of single-parent crap (despite my fervent wishes, enormous slag-heaps of laundry do not do themselves). Some of the material you will be reading below was composed months ago for the the official Institute of Idle Time website, some was composed over the last few hours in a hazy, sweaty white heat fueled by vodka, over-the-counter Benadryl, and desperation.

#9. The Walkmen - Lisbon

The Walkmen's recordings are sparse -- simple but effective tick-tack drumming, flashes of almost flamenco-style electric guitar strumming, and Hamilton Leithauser's straining rasp -- but they weave a melancholy spell that stays with the listener long after the last sad song has faded. The Walkmen have attempted to flesh out their sound a bit before (2006's A Hundred Miles Off owes more than a little to the cluttered, rustic sound of the Basement Tapes-era Dylan*), and although their stock-in-trade is wistful meditations on loss and regret, they certainly do have a sense of humor (witness their track-by-track re-recording of Harry Nilsson's 1974 cult classic Pussy Cats), but here they play to the more subtle strengths that have carried them since their 2002 debut.

#8. Dr. Dog - Shame, Shame
Philadelphia's Dr. Dog has been a band I've been listening to for quite some time, just waiting for them to do something great. The potential was always there, but they seemed content to work within a certain template, where their classic rock influences (usually the Band, late-period Beach Boys, and the Beatles) were paid respectful homage, and they ended up chasing their tails. Now, their training wheels are off, and they've broken through with an original sound, and their influences -- great as they are -- are finally where they should be: buried deep, seeping into their material like an unseen, underground spring feeds a river. Shame, Shame is a fast-paced, jittery album for the most part, percussion and rag-time piano in the forefront, with a clarity of purpose and unity of theme that previous albums lacked. Even if the material was weak, Dr. Dog could always rely on its secret weapon to put a song over -- gorgeous, harmonized backing vocals -- and that trait is out in force and better than ever on Shame, Shame.

#7. LCD Soundsystem - This Is Happening
About six weeks from when this blog entry is posted, LCD Soundsystem will be no more. Their last performance will be April 2, 2011, with founding member James Murphy declaring his desire to do other things. LCD Soundsystem is (was) one of the few electronics-based bands I truly enjoyed. I usually just lump all of them in under one genre name -- "electronica" -- but I'm sure there's someone out there only too eager to tell me how and why LCD Soundsystem isn't electronica, but one of the other two-hundred-odd sub-genres currently listed on Wikipedia. Whatever. It's a shitload of keyboards, a dance beat, and songs that are, frankly, a little too long for listening at home -- but possibly just right for a crowded dance club. I wouldn't know.

All that aside, what Murphy has concocted with This Is Happening is really a major achievement, weaving in touches of David Bowie's late-70's Berlin trilogy, familiar 80's synth-pop ("I Can Change"), 90's big-beat ("One Touch"), and Murphy's own peculiar punk-rebel sensibilities (all over the place, but especially the album's masterpiece "You Wanted A Hit") that are more rock & roll that hundreds of other "rock" bands out there -- rock bands, that in 2011, fewer and fewer people are listening to. Which is why it's such a shame that we're losing LCD Soundsystem.

#6. Band Of Horses - Infinite Arms
It’s not uncommon for a band to develop and grow from their first album to their third, but Band Of Horses does it the hard way — by changing almost their entire line-up between each album, the only constant being co-founder Ben Bridwell. He seems to think this version will stick, and I hope so, as this is Band Of Horses strongest effort to date. Like an aural version of those old 3-D posters, if you squint (with your ears? this metaphor needs work) past the beard-y folk strumming (which can be quite beautiful in its own right), you’ll find arrangements of surprising muscle, using a much broader sonic palette than their earlier work. Not really folk, but hearkening back to a bygone era. Not really country, but undeniably Southern. Not really indie-rock, but possessing a certain romantic earnestness and an echoing, shimmering production. This is the first Band Of Horses record that works all the way through, with no weak spots, and heralds the arrival on the scene of a new Major Artist.

#5. The Black Keys - Brothers
Blues is not popular around the Institute of Idle Time, for two reasons. 1) Acute distaste for the direction the genre has taken in the last forty years, and 2) complaints regarding the limitations and repetitiveness of the genre itself. The second is maybe a matter of taste. I happen to revel in all the little sonic subtleties and emotional nuances that can be wrung from within the blues’ 12-bar constraints, much like the beauty that can be found in a sonnet or haiku. The first is a legitimate gripe. The blues’ African-American originators have mostly abandoned it in favor of more “sophisticated” R&B and rap, leaving the gauntlet to be picked up by well-meaning white musicians who clumsily love it to death like Lenny with the rabbits. I don’t want to get into issues of “authenticity,” but my Caucasian brothers seem to be missing a key something when they try their hands at the blues. OK, it’s authenticity. If the ham-handed psychedelic bludgeoning of the 60’s wasn’t bad enough, then latter-day artists sanitizing it into a sonic sleeping pill perfect for a Starbucks compilation almost justifies all the disgusted dismissals I hear around here every time I try to slip something onto the list that has a little bit of a blues influence. And that’s the crux – influence. It’s all that remains. The genre itself no longer exists in any meaningful way, so the Black Keys don’t really play the blues. Every note from their buzzing amps is steeped in it and informed by it, but they don’t fall into the trap of trying to re-create it (at least not anymore.) They take their influences — specifically Delta blues, the most primal and primitive kind (and my favorite) – break them down, and re-build them into something entirely their own, like an old cabinet TV set turned into a tropical aquarium. The form is still in place and visible (or audible), but it’s purpose has been entirely gutted and re-imagined. If it’s not too politically incorrect to say, the Black Keys seem to exist in a parallel universe where the blues was originated by basement-dwelling white kids in suburban Ohio, and therefore bypass thorny issues of authenticity.

#4. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - Mojo
Seriously, who is a better American band? When you break it down, musician by musician, album by album, no American group has had a longer run of artistic success than Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. R.E.M? Perhaps, although the 1997-2005 era is tough to defend. The Replacements? A great run of 5-6 years at best. Aerosmith? Two words: Diane Warren. (And listened to Rock In A Hard Place lately? Or their "comeback" Permanent Vacation, beyond the three hit singles?) I'm very serious -- if you can name an American band that has had a better string of albums over thirty-five years than Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, please contact me and make your case. (It becomes even more difficult when you factor in two brilliant Petty solo albums, Full Moon Fever and Wildflowers.)

Petty is, of course, the Fearless Leader and General-in-Chief, but this is Mike Campbell's album. The 1958 model sunburst Gibson Les Paul is to guitarists what a Stradivarius is to violinists, or what the ATC Honus Wagner baseball card is to collectors: The Holy Grail. Campbell, one of the great unsung lead guitarists of any era, finally acquired one, and it leaves its scorch marks all over this album. This may be the Heartbreaker's most blues-oriented album, and if you can get around any difficulties in embracing that (see album #5 above), you are in for a good listen. You'll get rambling story-songs ("The Trip To Pirate Cove," "Running Man's Bible") reminiscent of Highway 61-era Dylan (**), throwbacks to Leiber-Stoller 1950's commercial R&B ("Candy"), classic-rock barnstormers right out of the 1970's Tom Petty playbook ("I Should Have Known It"), and a couple of slow-burn ballads to close 'er out. The album looks defiantly backward, and is a little overlong -- Petty suffers from the classic-rock-legend disease of shunning editing and believing all his ideas are worthy of release -- but it's still highly recommended as perhaps the best played album of 2010.

#3. The New Pornographers - Together

Like the Old 97's, the New Pornographers seem absolutely incapable of making a bad album (knock on wood.) The NP's -- and indivdual members A.C. Newman and Neko Case -- are all veterans of my best-of lists (or, in the case of Dan Bejar's Wolf Parade, my Honorable Mentions), and I don't have a lot of musicological insight or breakdowns to add to all the ink I've already spilled about them. Just know that they are a true mood-altering band -- I'm at an age where I still love music, but sometimes I lament it has lost the transcendent boost it gave me in my teens and twenties. Not so with the New Pornographers. I put them on, and my mood is instantly elevated. Newman remains a peerless bandleader, their songs are a sly, savvy melange of classic pop structure and indie experimentalism, and I am not a "huggy" person, but Neko Case's voice makes me want to hug her.

#2. Vampire Weekend - Contra
We are now far enough away from December that Vampire Weekend's "Holiday" -- a very charming song back in September -- is no longer being used to hawk Hondas in a winter-themed commercial that ran with brutal frequency. An issue that is a minor quibble for me, it is the sort of thing that makes Vampire Weekend the victims of a powerful backlash because they do everything wrong in the eyes of the Hipster Elite (eagerly licensing their songs for commercials, raiding traditional African/Caribbean rhythms to turn them into cash-cow pop songs), and because in those same eyes they simply are wrong (they're Ivy League trust-fund kids from wealthy families). But all of that is a sideshow. Music should be about music, not meeting arbitrary audience expectations regarding financial/educational backgrounds, and the songs of Vampire Weekend are as strong as they come, blending the aforementioned world-music influences with touches of classical and electronica. The insanely catchy "Horchata" and "Cousins" (and for that matter, "Holiday") counterbalance the slower meditations like "Diplomat's Son" and the utterly haunting "I Think Ur A Contra."

The Grammys already named the following as Album of the Year on February 13, so I feel like I'm following the elephant act with a shovel (check out their sloppy, migraine-inducing Grammy performance here -- it's unlikely to win them new fans***, but compelling for those already hooked), but there's no arguing the album really is awesome. The following write-up was crafted in early January, if that allows me to retain a shred of credibility.

#1. Aracade Fire - The Suburbs
The Arcade Fire (or at least chief songwriter Win Butler) are arguably products of a typical suburban upbringing, and have gone on to become the darlings of a very urban audience. Their ambiguous feelings about where they came from versus where they are now is the album’s recurring theme. Sometimes the suburbs inspire contempt for such a complacent existence, sometimes sweet nostalgia, but ultimately they are a place from which to escape. However, the big city that lures kids away with a siren song of excitement and possibilities is also full of deception, pressure, and a different, crueler kind of conformity (is the place where “the kids all stand with their arms folded tight” the regimented suburbs, or the detached, too-cool city?) And what does a band do with these concepts musically? Like the 600-pound gorilla in the old joke (Arcade Fire consists of seven multi-instrumentalists), anything it wants to. Songs that perhaps could be categorized as R.E.M.-style jangle (“Suburban War”), crunchy 90’s-style alt-rock (“Month of May”), or catchy dance grooves (the mighty “Sprawl II”) are infused with a peculiar, sweeping grandeur by the sheer size of the ensemble blasting them out. The genre-hopping sound is unified by the wistful heartache and clear-eyed detail captured by Butler’s lyrics, which grow stronger with every release. The Arcade Fire uses its big, big sound as a cudgel for an equally vigorous attack on both suburban shallowness and urban pretension, but the attack is always regretful, never hateful — as if they are fighting at the top of their game but against their will. Will Win win?

(*)(**)(***) The specter of Bob Dylan really hovers over a lot of what I've said here, but speaking of not winning new fans, how about his squirm-inducing Grammy performance? His vocalizations have always been, um, unconventional, but recently the man has been sounding like he's gargling razor blades. Unlike the Beatles, who broke up before they aged into a public embarrassment, I'm pretty sure that once the current (i.e., final) generation of Dylan supporters such as myself have died off, there will be few or none to take their place. Anyone unfamiliar with his early body of work is fully forgiven for wondering why this mustachioed, Yoda-ish figure is such a big deal.

Top 20 Albums of 2010: #20-10

2011-01-29T17:56:00.001-08:00

#20. Old 97's - The Grand Theatre, Vol. 1
The Old 97's continue their winning streak, even they did just squeak in at #20 (beating out all the Honorable Mentions, many of whom could realistically occupy this space.) This powerhouse country-rock quartet once again makes its traditional appearance on the Holy Bee’s Best Of list. The Old 97’s are my musical comfort food, and while they may never again reach the heights of Too Far To Care or Satellite Rides, their charisma and eminently agreeable blend of rollicking Tex-Mex and bubblegum power pop is something I can listen to at any time in any mood. Old 97’s are the old standbys. Bless ‘em.

#19. The Constellations – Southern Gothic
This mixed-gender collective presents a travelogue through the sometimes seedy nightlife of their native Atlanta. Harnessing a jam-band mentality to a hip-hop framework, the best Constellations songs are so insanely catchy that they border on commercial jingles (“We’re Here To Save The Day,” “Felicia”), and even their worst make you admire their moxie (a nine-minute cover of Tom Waits’ “Step Right Up”? Really?). A word of warning: visually, they’re a nightmare, encapsulating everything hateful about insufferably smug “quirky” hipsters. (Avoid pictures of them. They will make you stabby. OK, click here at the risk of ruining your enjoyment of their music.)

#18. The Black Angels – Phosphene Dream
You gotta be some kind of asshole not to love Nuggets, the compilation of obscure proto-punk garage rock singles originally released on mostly local record labels in the post-Beatlemania years of ’65 to ’68. Muddy production and primitive musical skill usually result in disaster, but damned if those kids didn’t make it work, even if they were something less than virtuosos. They were having a ball, and they inspired an entire sub-genre of rock music, exemplified in its modern incarnation by the Black Angels. Thudding tribal tom-toms, droning organ, and fuzzbox guitar slither and snarl under Alex Maas’ reverb-heavy vocals that declaim doom-laden lyrics in the best possible fake-Euro accent a Texas garage-rat can unleash.

#17. Belle And Sebastian -- Write About Love
Do they ever. I was never a fan of their earlier work. Far too precious and twee, and I'm suspicious of any band started as a school project (see also: the tiresome Dirty Projectors.) But beginning with 2003's Dear Catastrophe Waitress, Belle and Sebastian re-structured their sound (ditching that fucking cellist was a good start), discovered the fat groove and the bottom end, channeled the spirit of rock & roll (especially its glammier side), and went from the Holy Bee's Shit List to his #1 album of 2006 with The Life Pursuit. In all honesty, I can admit now I've gone back to re-listen to their earlier stuff, and it's not as odious as I remember. Guess I'm mellowing with age.

So I'm not too distressed to report that some of that earlier, chamber-pop style is creeping back in on Write About Love, along with more overt references to main songwriter's Stuart Murdoch's creepily intense Christianity (on "Read The Blessed Pages," he's not talking about Mad magazine). Also more pronounced is the group's gift for melody, which was always profound, but here reaches levels only hinted at on previous releases. The handful of weaker tracks drift into dreariness (never a problem on Life Pursuit), but the strong tracks ("I Didn't See It Coming," the title song) have the complexity of a film score and the deceptively simple sophistication of an old Burt Bacharach arrangement.

#16. Broken Bells – Broken Bells
The magic touch of super-producer/collaborator Danger Mouse is applied to the melodic indie-rock of Shins frontman James Mercer, giving us everything we want an album to be: A couple of great singles ("The High Road," "The Ghost Inside"), some stuff more suited to solo headphone listening ("Float," "Your Head Is On Fire"), and a sense of ambition and experimentation. Danger Mouse draws upon his DJ experience, laying beds of trip-hop beats and spacey keyboard flourishes under Mercer's vocals and guitar. Mercer, an avowed disciple of 80's mope-rock, stops short of full-on shoegazing, keeping his lyrics and voice introspective but clear and fully engaged. The collaboration doesn't always mesh -- the listeners remain aware they are hearing a somewhat calculated coming-together of two different traditions -- but hearing two great talents together at the top of their game is worth any minor bumps in the sonic road.

#15. The Gaslight Anthem – American Slang
They haven't changed their sound or approach from their previous two records, a post-punk roar that tempers its aggression with breathless romanticism. Which is fine with me, because it's a damn good formula. True to their name, the Gaslight Anthem want every song to be bigger than life. The easy comparison is to anthem-rock godfather Bruce Springsteen (who is known to be a big fan and has joined them on stage), but sharp ears will detect a lot of other influences as well. You could also describe them as "The Clash meets Billy Joel." Or "Social Distortion meets Cheap Trick." You get the idea. Pile-driving drumbeats and chanted backing vocals launch the tracks into rock-radio overdrive, and they also give the listener a few breathers in the moments where they do change it up slightly (the melancholy, atmospheric album-closer "We Did It When We Were Young," the pulsating "Queen of Lower Chelsea").

#14. The Hold Steady – Heaven Is Whenever
The face of the Hold Steady is Craig Finn, a guy who every music nerd in their mid-thirties believes could be them. But despite his history teacher-like appearance, Finn is a wild man -- or at least writes knowledgeably about wild men. The band didn't bother to replace their keyboard player, who bailed early in the year, so guitars are to the fore, creating a leaner, more stripped-down sound than the E Street grandiosity heard on earlier releases. Here, the Hold Steady combine the simple, ragged electricity of the Replacements with the literate wounded-heroism of Elvis Costello. The Hold Steady's trademark has always been tales of the dark side of a party-all-the-time existence. The good times are always followed by a bleary-eyed hangover, a passionate tryst is always followed by shame and regret (and possibly a trip to the clinic.) But the characters inhabiting Finn's narratives go out and do the same things the next night. Until now. The costs are finally adding up, and Heaven Is Whenever sports a hard-won new maturity.

In the arrogance of youth, we think we are indestructible, and have all the answers. The people populating the Hold Steady's songs have finally woken up and realized they're permanently damaged, and haven't even been asking the questions. Like everyone who's been following the overall arc of the Hold Steady's albums, I eagerly await the next installment.

#13. Cee-Lo Green – The Lady Killer
Cee-Lo’s two albums under the Gnarls Barkley moniker were pastiches of 60′s and 70′s soul and funk. The Lady Killer is similar, but without G.B. partner Danger Mouse’s techno tweaks and innovative knob-twiddlings, we get a much more straightforward alternate history of what old-school R&B might have evolved into were it not hijacked by operatic pop-schlocksters like Whitney Houston and bland hacks like James Ingram in the 80′s. Green’s warm, gospel-inflected voice on top of a batch of jams spiked with horns and sassy backing vocals make this a great listen. And of course, it has “Fuck You,” a monster of a summer sing-along single, which sounds like the 1965 Marvin Gaye, all tunefulness and bounce, teaming up with the 1979 coked-out Marvin Gaye, all bitterness and paranoia.

#12. Jamey Johnson – The Guitar Song
Occasionally, we all have to do things we’re not proud of to pay the bills. If you’re a professional Nashville songwriter, that includes writing “a lot of dumb-ass songs” (to quote Robbie Fulks), because that’s what modern country radio -– and by extension, the modern country audience -- wants. Since we don’t really have Fred Durst to kick around anymore as the poster boy for musical dumb-assery, the broad target that is mainstream country will have to suffice. Trace Adkins’ cheerfully brain-dead “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk” can serve as an example of the kind of steaming cowpat I’m talking about. The author of the song? None other than Jamey Johnson, when he was wearing his hack-songwriter-for-hire hat. Such crimes against taste should surely result in the hanging of Johnson from the nearest sour-apple tree, but when he’s wearing his other hat…the masterful singer-songwriter, he redeems himself.

The songs Johnson crafts for his own albums are literate and witty, sometimes with a touch of smoldering anger. He’s at his best when dealing with the country music staple of lost love (as in “Cover Your Eyes” and “That’s How I Don’t Love You”), or letting loose with a Merle Haggard-style polemic lamenting the exploitation of the working man (“Poor Man’s Blues,” “Can’t Cash My Checks”). There’s also duets, novelty songs, a few intelligently-chosen covers (like Kris Kristofferson’s “For The Good Times”), and a few anti-California red state songs that veer dangerously close to Toby Keith territory.

Make no mistake, this album is long, and far from flawless. The length is part of the fascinating spell the album weaves. The Nashville session pros that make up Johnson’s band stretch out and jam as if they’re off the studio clock and just hanging out. And the flaws are part of its charm. I certainly could’ve done without the ultra-corny “I Remember You,” a dialogue with God that gives “Christmas Shoes” a run for its money for nauseating mawkishness. The Guitar Song can be seen as a country version of the Clash’s Sandanista! – scattershot, overlong, sprawling, compelling, with total misfires nestling next to flashes of sheer brilliance.

#11. Surfer Blood – Astro Coast
Subtle it ain’t, but the explosive choruses and widescreen sound of Surfer Blood provide a catharsis…for a build-up that seems to have already happened before the songs start. In providing an out-of-left-field release the listener didn’t even know s/he needed, Surfer Blood implant themselves with devious cunning, relentlessly tickling the ear’s subconscious pleasure centers, refusing to be dislodged. Everyone knows a crafty hook and a big sing-along are what make a great pop record, but there’s something so uncalculated and unpolished about Surfer Blood that their pop savvy seems accidental and savant-like. There’s certainly no gloss or overproduction. In fact, their songs sound like deep cuts from the Who’s Sell Out being played from the bottom of an elevator shaft. In keeping with their moniker, there’s also some elements of surf music (particularly in the repeated nautical imagery and splashy echo) playing around the edges. This was the very first album I acquired in 2010, and I knew immediately it would be on the list at the finish line.

#10. Gorillaz – Plastic Beach
For all the Holy Bee’s railings and ragings about pretentious collegiates insisting their band is an “art project,” there are rare times when that construct actually works. Even if you aren’t aware of Gorillaz, or of the fact that it is not a real band – it’s the work of former-pretentious-collegiate Damon Albarn (founder of influential Britpop band Blur) and comic book artist Jamie Hewlett (Tank Girl) – you are certainly aware of what this “virtual band” is capable of producing. Their 2005 single “Feel Good Inc.” was one of those absolutely inescapable pop-culture atom bombs. Even if you don’t know it by title, if you hear two bars of it, you’ll recognize it.

You can jump into the whole fictional Gorillaz universe here, and thrill to the adventures of 2D, Russel, Murdoc, and Noodle (and her cyborg replacement). Albarn and Hewlett are behind the concepts and visuals, while the actual music is crafted and performed by Albarn, keyboardist Mike Smith, and drummer Cass Browne. They are aided by a revolving-door army of collaborators, many from the world of rap and hip-hop. Plastic Beach features input from Mos Def, Snoop Dogg, De La Soul, the Super Furry Animals’ Gruff Rhys, the Clash’s Mick Jones and Paul Simonon, the Fall’s Mark E. Smith, and music legends Bobby Womack and Lou Reed. Hearing the result is like opening a musical toybox – colorful, random, messy, and lots of fun. The album’s loose concept is an indictment of waste, both materially (overflowing landfills, etc.) and culturally (time spent on disposable celebrities.) The concept does not always come through in the music. This may not be a bad thing, keeping the album barrelling along and preventing it from sinking under the weight of its ambitions. (The concept of Sgt. Pepper doesn’t really come through, either. As Lennon pointed out, “It works because we say it works.”)

Is Plastic Beach a rap album? Sort of, but with an oddball British twist. It’s a musical scavenger hunt. Hip-hop has some rhythmic overlap with reggae. Follow that down the rabbit hole a bit, and we discover that the Clash put out some pretty striking (for white Englishmen) dub reggae cuts. Take a left turn and realize that neither the Clash nor Blur would have existed without the Kinks. The Kinks started as an R&B cover band, and we're right back where we started. All these elements and influences feed each other. (The New York visual-art aesthetic of Warhol and the Velvet Underground might as well squeeze in there somewhere, too. What the hell.)

Trumped Again!

2011-01-16T19:38:00.000-08:00

So once again, as happened back in October, an issue or concept first raised here in the hallowed halls of the Holy Bee of Ephesus blog has been upstaged by a website with a much wider audience.

Compare this, from November 2010:

http://holybeeofephesus.instituteofidletime.com/2010/11/this-used-to-be-my-playground-part-16.html

With this, datelined January 14, 2011:

http://popwatch.ew.com/2011/01/14/winona-ryder-reality-bites-popwatch-rewind/

And once again, the salt on the wound is that theirs is written much better than mine.

Goddammitsomuch.

Books of the Holy Bee, 2010

2011-01-08T09:55:00.000-08:00

Here's ten books of recent vintage (2009-2010) that the Holy Bee found especially entertaining and/or informative this past year...

BOOK OF THE YEAR for 2010:

Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow

Unlike the last noteworthy Washington bio, Joseph J. Ellis' brief 2004 His Excellency, Chernow's work is not a cover-the-basics summary for the casual reader. (Not a criticism. That was the book's purpose.) Chernow delves into amazingly rich detail, while never losing his grip on the forward momentum of the narrative flow. Interested in Washington's famous dentures? Chernow provides lengthy paragraphs on not only the materials used in their construction (not wood, you simpletons), but how they affected Washington's appearance and interactions, and deep background on his relationship with his dentists. (Washington was very ashamed of his dental deficiencies, and the letters to his dentists are in kind of a code language, to spare him embarrassment if his correspondence was ever made public.)

Chernow also sheds light on the difficult relationship between Washington and his battle-axe mother (who lived to see him become president, not that she seemed to care -- she was more interested in hitting him up for money.) His somewhat lazy, shiftless step-son also caused him much worry, although it seems doubtful that any offspring could live up to his exacting standards. He never had biological children of his own. His marriage to rich widow Martha Custis, though a happy one, was made as more of a business arrangement, which was the custom of the time among 18th century landowners. Washington admitted privately to a friend that there wasn't a lot of "fire between the sheets" (I'm paraphrasing, but not by much), but straying beyond his marriage would be unthinkable for someone of Washington's level of self-control and sense of honor. Chernow believes there's simply not enough evidence to confirm or refute the commonly held belief in G.W.'s infertility. A similar lack of evidence prevents Chernow from making any conclusions on Washington's much-ballyhooed (in previous bios) youthful dalliance with his married neighbor Sally Fairfax -- it seems the relationship was affectionate but chaste. [Anyone remember the '84 CBS mini-series with Barry Bostwick as G.W.? In an otherwise even-handed telling of Washington's life, former Charlie's Angel Jaclyn Smith (!) stuck out like a sore thumb, portraying Sally Fairfax as a panting, sex-starved seductress.] Whatever level on which his feminine relationships existed, Washington always preferred the company of women, where he felt he could be truly relaxed and less scrutinized.

The process of turning this flesh-and-blood Virginia planter into an idealized marble statue was well under way during Washington's own lifetime. Washington was very aware of the looming figure he would become in American history. With this weight on his shoulders, he seemed determined never to set a foot wrong. His agony over every decision, and obsession with making sure he appeared to have not an iota of self-interest or ambition sometimes gave him the whiff of the martyr. His letters to associates are chock-full of sad laments that "public duty" was costing him his health and happiness, but he felt he could not turn it down or the fragile new country would slide into the abyss.

Chernow does not shy away from Washington's one truly negative trait -- he was a slave-owner. A deeply conflicted one, one who made many private remarks expressing his desire that the slave system would someday end, but one who did not make any move to change the situation himself. (Unlike his protege, Alexander Hamilton, who helped make slavery illegal in his home state of New York. Chernow's 2004 biography of Hamilton is also highly recommended. The man on the ten-dollar bill is largely forgotten by those without an avid interest in U.S. history, but without him, the country may have turned out very differently, or failed altogether. Not that Hamilton was without glaring faults of his own, but that's another story...)

As a general in the Revolutionary War, G.W. was not a brilliant strategist or tactician, but kept a badly outnumbered and under-supplied army in the field for over six years through sheer force of will and personality. As the chairman of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, he was the only figure who all thirteen states -- each deeply enmeshed in self-interest and petty squabbling after the revolution, but in agreement in their distaste for strong central authority -- could trust to lead them into a new national government. As the first President of the United States, he proved a much more deft politician than usually given credit for, very much aware that every move he made would set a precedent. (The honeymoon period of hero worship wore off by the middle of his first term, and he was soon the victim of potshots taken by political opponents, just like every other president that followed.)

The world powers of Europe observed in astonishment as Washington voluntarily gave up absolute military authority when he retired as general of the Continental Army in 1783, then stepped down as Chief Executive of the civil government at the end of his second term in 1797. No one in their experience had disinterestedly walked away from so much power -- twice.

Chernow's work gives a portrait of someone who was aloof, class-conscious, overly-formal, sometimes humorless and ill-tempered. Also generous to a fault, fair-minded, practical, an avid theater-lover (even the bawdy plays), an amateur interior decorator (he took immense delight in selecting art and furnishings for every dwelling he occupied), a notably nimble dancer -- and most importantly for a young republic suspicious of centralized authority -- absolutely uninterested in power for its own ends, and absolutely incorruptible.

(Interested in other recent presidential bios? Ronald C. White's 2009 A. Lincoln: A Biography is a thorough and up-to-date look at the Great Emancipator -- but I still prefer David Herbert Donald's 1996 Lincoln. I wrote about Harlow Unger's The Last Founding Father: James Monroe and a Nation's Call to Greatness earlier this year.)

You Never Give Me Your Money: The Beatles After the Break-Up by Peter Dogget

Fab: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney by Howard Sounes

Beatles books have come in phases. First was the "authorized" biography, The Beatles, by Hunter Davies, published all the way back in 1968, before the group had even split. There was a relative lack of written work on the band in the 1970's. Apparently, many people were hoping that their story as a band wasn't over, and a reunion would occur. The scant handful of 70's books seemed to take a sociological approach, focusing on their impact on popular culture. After John Lennon's murder in 1980 ended reunion hopes for good, the floodgates opened, and Beatle-related books abounded in the 80's, including a new "definitive" band biography, 1982's Shout: The Beatles in Their Generation by Philip Norman, the gossipy "insider" tome The Love You Make by former Beatle assisstant Peter Brown, and the first major biographical works on the individual band members (Ray Coleman's 1985 doorstop Lennon, Chet Flippo's glib Yesterday.)

The Beatles books of the 90's and early 2000's assumed everyone knew the "story of the band," and tended to be technical, encyclopedic break-downs of their live appearances, recording sessions, and equipment. And now, we've come full circle, with the basic story being laid down again, with new research and perspectives, for a new generation. There has been a new band biography, once again entitled simply The Beatles, published by Bob Spitz in 2005, an excellent recent bio of John Lennon by Philip Norman (again) in 2008, and now two new McCartney bios.

The first one published, Paul McCartney: A Life by Martin Ames is the slighter one, laying out the basic story competently and succinctly, focusing attention on the Beatle years, which is the conundrum of any Beatle bio. Yes, these are the years that the casual reader would be the most interested in, but this era has been written about time and time again. Ames brings very little new to the table here.

Like Norman's John Lennon: A Biography, Howard Sounes' heftier Fab does the experienced Beatle-reader a favor and gives equal weight to McCartney's post-sixties career (including his wince-inducing, train-wreck second marriage to former high-class callgirl Heather Mills in the early 2000s.) Is the recording of Wings' 1979 album Back To The Egg as fascinating as the recording of Sgt. Pepper? Probably not. But I've already read about the recording of Sgt. Pepper 10,000 times.

Sounes is a typical British journalist, with all that implies -- impeccable prose and a clear taste for the salacious, while pretending to be above such things. He's not a particularly gifted music writer, though, and tends to inject his own opinions a little more than necessary. To his credit, he interviewed over two hundred people for this book, many of whom had never been interviewed before. Most Beatle aficionados know about all the trouble they got into in the Philippines on their 1966 world tour by refusing to attend a state reception given by the evil, dictatorial Marcos family. Sounes actually interviews Imelda freakin' Marcos about this "snub." Unfortunately, she's kind of an idiot and offers no real insight. But I appreciate the effort. Interviews with former Wings members such as Denny Laine and Hugh McCracken add much more to the tale.

For all that, does Sounes reveal anything about the McCartney personality that we didn't already know? Not really. Macca's a cheerful, dedicated family man, a driven businessman, frequently kind and generous, sometimes thoughtless and gauche, militantly (at times obnoxiously) vegetarian, with an overstuffed ego that few are brave enough to puncture. Heard it all before, but it's nice to have it set down in a meticulously-researched work that can stand as the go-to source for all things McCartney -- at least until the wheel turns again, and the next generation gets their "definitive" biography.

Spitz's The Beatles is a great read, but stops precisely when the band does. No epilogue, no "last chapter" about what became of the Fab Four in future decades. For those who are curious about the post-Beatles developments, Peter Dogget's You Never Give Me Your Money can be seen as a companion volume to Spitz's work. You can read the Spitz book, then jump into Dogget's at about Chapter 3 without missing a beat, and the story continues.

Knowing what I already know, I was fearing that Dogget's book would be mostly about the lawsuits and counter-suits associated with breaking up the Beatles' enormous and profitable business empire. And it was. But he made me understand the purpose of those cases, and why the outcomes were so important to the individual Beatles on a personal level. For years, Yoko Ono was painted as the Chief Villain in breaking up the Beatles, then her repuataion was re-habilitated in the wake of Lennon's death. She became the Sainted Widow and Misunderstood Artist for awhile. Now, the tide has swung against her once again. Ono was acknowledged by everyone Dogget interviewed to be a colossal pain in the ass during the Beatles' last couple of years, and while nothing could have stopped the Beatles break-up, she was a vocal and obstinate roadblock to any reunions that John was amenable to in the 1970s. (She also derailed McCartney's attempts to finally buy the Beatles' songwriting catalog from Michael Jackson's estate, for reasons that seem to be little more than spite.)

Life by Keith Richards
With his towering reputation for debauchery and decadence, and his slurred, mumbling speaking voice, Keith Richards rarely gets credit for his intelligence. But he may be one of the sharpest knives in the rock n' roll drawer. I was always a fan, but I came to truly believe there was much more to Keith than met the eye around the time Martin Scorsese's Rolling Stones concert film Shine A Light was in theaters. An interviewer asked Richards about working with Scorsese, and was treated to a lengthy, informed diatribe on film history and technique, and touched on everyone from Chaplin to Cocteau. This is the Keith Richards to which we are treated in Life. Film lover, history buff, blues scholar. A hardcore bibliophile, the one major trait he shares with the Holy Bee. And musician. His love for guitars, and playing them, permeates the entire book. What they feel like. How they make him feel. Different tunings, different sounds, different styles.

His personal relationships and history of bad narcotic habits are dealt with with unblinking candor. After the craziness of the 1960's and 70's, Richards was "clean" and one of the great rock music survival stories. But being "clean" for Keith simply meant "no heroin." Everything else was still fair game. This all changed after an accident in 2006 led to brain surgery, and now the strongest things he ingests are cigarettes and endless cocktails of Sunkist orange soda and vodka, a concoction he calls "nuclear waste." (Make that two things we have in common. This beverage has been a Holy Bee favorite since 2001.) Decades of pharmaceutical abuse has made him a cultural icon just as much as his music has, but he never comes off contrite or ashamed. He credits his survival to a strong genetic make-up, only accepting the highest quality (no "Mexican street shit"), and never trying to get just a little higher when we was already high.

What about his relationship with the other Rolling Stones? His love-hate brotherhood with Mick Jagger is complicated, to say the least. It's clear he respects Jagger, but every compliment he pays him (on his lyric-writing, his harmonica-playing, his business sense), is augmented by two complaints (about his fad/fashion-chasing, ego-tripping, and uptight-ness.) Like all right-thinking people, he reveres drummer Charlie Watts. He's fond of other Stones guitarist Ron Wood -- but clearly not as fond as he used to be, becoming increasingly exasperated by Wood's inability to manage his own substance intake. Richards confirms the general assessment of original guitarist and band founder Brian Jones as a musical prodigy, but a world-class asshole. Original bassist Bill Wyman might as well have been furniture for all Richards seems to think of him or acknowledge him.

Keith in his home library. Squint and you can see the cup of "nuclear waste" within easy reach

The book was put together by Richards and writer James Fox over several years' worth of interviews and taped conversations. Fox is no ghostwriter, but merely "put the stories in the right order." The words are Keith's, and they're fascinating.

Diaries 1980-1988: Halfway To Hollywood by Michael Palin
The Fry Chronicles by Stephen Fry
Several similarities tie these books together. Both are second volumes of proposed three-volume autobiographies, both are written by multi-talented British writer-performers, and neither are available in the United States. I had to get both from the British Amazon, amazon.co.uk.

The sort of person who's read this far into the Holy Bee knows that Palin is one of the founding members of Monty Python, and is now well-known for his travel documentaries. He is also an obsessive diarist ever since 1969, when he started keeping a daily journal as a way to help him quit smoking. The first volume (1969-1979: The Python Years) would probably make better reading for the casual fan, but Halfway To Hollywood is full of behind-the-scenes tidbits for the hardcore Python-head, written as they happened. Along with all the little everyday details a husband, father, home-owner, and businessman has to deal with, we get to read about the almost-simultaneous production of the final Python film (The Meaning of Life) and Palin's solo film The Missionary (which he also wrote and produced), which drove him nearly to the end of his endurance. He had deep reservations about the screenplay for A Fish Called Wanda, and ever after its enormous success, didn't seem to feel a lot of affection for the popular film. Palin chronicles almost a decade's worth of other writing and acting work, some ill-fated, some successful, all of it work. That's what comes across most forcefully in a diary format. Palin kept himself busy.

Stephen Fry is only slightly less well-known in the U.S. than Palin. Most Americans have either seen his face or heard his voice in something or other. In Britain, though, he's nothing short of a national treasure. From his sketch comedy show with Hugh Laurie (who is extremely famous in the U.S. now, of course) A Bit of Fry and Laurie to his current job as host of the game show QI , Fry has been a constant presence on British TV screens, cinema screens, and bookshelves since the mid-80's. The first volume of his autobiography, 1997's Moab Is My Washpot, chronicled his coming of age as a part of the last generation to get the true British public school upbringing. (As always has to be explained, a public school in Britain is actually an elite private school. Think Hogwart's without the magic.) Fry's tales of Latin lessons, canings, sweet shops, and rugby really are quite evocative of a dead or dying way of life. Less nostalgically, Fry ends his public school education in a manic-depressive haze of credit card theft and a suicide attempt.

The Fry Chronicles begins with Fry, newly sprung from a short jail term, getting a fresh start at what would in America be considered a junior college. He belatedly passes the entrance exam for Cambridge University, and the rest is history -- teaming up with people like Laurie, their classmate Emma Thompson, and guys like Robbie Coltrane and Tony Slattery for live sketch comedy, which blossomed into short-lived shows for regional television, which led to work on the venerable BBC. Fry's steady upward climb was offset by what would one day be diagnosed as bipolar disorder. The third volume promises cocaine addiction and a second suicide attempt. Fry, in his wry, wordy, very self-deprecating British way, can write about all these depressing things without ever depressing the reader. I'd hate for him to have to do it all the time though, and luckily, Fry's career has been a progression from success to success. (I've just found out that Halfway to Hollywood will be published in the U.S. in March 2011.)

At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson
All of Bryson's earlier travel writings, works on the English language, and layman's explanation of how how we went from the Big Bang to being modern humans (A Short History of Nearly Everything) were devoured eagerly by the Holy Bee over the years. In fact, he may be the primary influence on my writing style, much to his chagrin if he ever found out. (The second biggest influence is Michael J. Nelson.)

Bryson spent many years as an ex-pat American working on a British newspaper, which accounts for his blend of cheery American casualness and dry British wit. In his latest book, he moves from room to room in his own house, and explains how things we do in a particular room, or associate with it, came to be. The dining room, for instance. Why do forks have four tines, not five or three? Out of all the seasonings in the world, why, specifically, are salt and pepper always found on our tables? Wonderful digressions are the key here. Bryson takes us from his dining room to ancient Mesopotamia, to Victorian London, and back again, maybe with a few extra stops. Horticulture, paleontology, mathematics, chemistry, economics, and dozens of other disciplines are all brought to bear on Bryson's explanations, and somehow made relevant before he reaches the end of his topic.

What interested me the most is how recent our concept of "comfort" is. Until the last 150 years or so, people dressed in layers of uncomfortable clothing made of uncomfortable fabrics, and sat on unupholstered furniture in extremely dark rooms. (And the forks? Three tines = dangerous weapon. Five tines = structurally weak. Seems obvious when you think about it.)

Columbine by Dave Cullen
Denver-area reporter Dave Cullen spent the better part of a decade researching the shooting rampage at a Colorado high school that left fifteen dead and twenty-four wounded. The hard work shows, as Cullen not only provides a minute-by-minute breakdown of what happened throughout the 49-minute attack, but also guides the reader through the months and days leading up to the attack, introducing us to the people who would become the fatalities, the survivors -- and the perpetrators. Fascinating as all that is, it's what happened afterward, when the media took over, that provides some of the most gripping reading. Never has a mainstream news story been so botched, and the national news media the source of so much misinformation.

Some of the the conclusions these "journalists" and pundits reached regarding youth culture, high school society, and music would have been hilarious if the circumstances surrounding them weren't so tragic. Because these elements existed for them on a plane much lower than their Very Important Adult Things, the journalists seemed to believe they could get away with reporting on "kid stuff" without research. The reporters seemed to have taken the first few quotes from whatever terrified students they could grab as they fled, and built months', even years', worth of stories out of them. High school students are not the most reflective and articulate people under the best of circumstances, but in this case, their wild speculations were taken as gospel.

So let's take a look at the Media Myth of Columbine: The two shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, were friendless outcasts, bullied and picked on, who were members of the "trench-coat mafia" (wait, I thought they were "friendless"), a group of angry misfits who listened to the "goth music of Marilyn Manson." On their rampage, they targeted the "jocks" who made their lives hell, and evangelical Christians.

All totally inaccurate. Both were relatively popular and had active social lives. Both came off as thuggish, immature pricks, which is certainly no obstacle to popularity among high school males. They were far more likely to be the ones doing the bullying. The ridiculous "trench-coat mafia" thing was from one of those lame-joke captions in the high school yearbook under a picture of a small group of students showing off their London Fogs, and did not feature either of the shooters. It was seized on because it made a great sound-bite. I guess it was good enough for the media to simply equate "wears dark clothing" with "goth." Anyone who knows anything about the sublimely ridiculous goth "culture" knows that those pasty geeks wouldn't hurt a fly. And Marilyn Manson -- assuredly not "goth" for whatever that's worth -- was just the latest "shocking" musical trend that parents were up in arms over. Later evidence and interviews with more cool-headed witnesses showed that the shooters targeted victims completely at random. (Hell, fire off some shots anywhere in central Colorado, and you'll probably hit an evangelical Christian. The local mega-church's crass co-opting of the Columbine tragedy for publicity was one of the more nauseating after-effects.)

The Holy Bee spent some time as a high school teacher, and has encountered many kids just like the two shooters. Full of inexplicable rage, even though they lead sheltered middle-class lives. Fixated on guns. Casually homophobic (they would have called Marilyn Manson a "fag.") Almost all of them outgrow it, but you never know which 1% are the textbook psychopaths like Eric Harris, or the true manic depressives like Klebold, who saw the whole thing as a "that'll-show-them" method of suicide. This wasn't the lightest read of the year, but it may have been the most important.

The Holy Bee always promises himself he will read more fiction, and in 2010, he did a little better toward that end. Out of the handful of novels I got through, here's the two highlights...

Drood by Dan Simmons
Simmons has previously combined obscure historical events and sinister horror fiction to great effect (2007's excellent The Terror). He continues his winning streak with this look at the last years of literary giant Charles Dickens. History shows that after surviving a traumatic train wreck, Dickens spent his last few years working on an unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Simmons' tale is told in the first-person voice of Dickens associate (and fellow 19th-century author) Wilkie Collins. Collins begins to believe his friend Dickens has fallen under the sway of mysterious supernatural forces. Collins, the perfect example of the literary device known as the "unreliable narrator," has his own demons to deal with while attempting to help the Victorian era's Greatest Writer.

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
Two favorite films of mine are the Merchant-Ivory production The Remains of the Day and Robert Altman's Gosford Park. Both give us a glimpse at one of the most privileged existences in human history -- the landed British gentry of the 1920's and 30's. Huge country homes (palaces, really) set among hundreds of acres of fields and woodlands were tended to by an army of servants, while the owners didn't seem to do much of anything, except grouse-hunt and sit in their libraries in a cloud of pipe-smoke being as eccentric as they pleased. It couldn't last, of course. The social and economic upheavals caused by World War II ended this way of life. The fields and woodlands became housing subdivisions, the country homes were torn down or turned into public museums. The Little Stranger takes place as these changes are occurring. It follows a year or so in the life of a formerly wealthy family gradually shutting their lives down. Room after room in the manor house is sealed up, servants are let go, fields and property sold off. All the while, it seems something else is...not quite right. The Little Stranger is a ghost story, but the signs are so subtle the reader is not sure a haunting is taking place. The family may simply be haunted by a past that, despite its trappings of wealth, harbors a lot of sadness. They are certainly haunted by a grim future.

The Recipe For A Perfect New Year's Eve

2010-12-31T15:36:00.000-08:00

The Holy Bee has never been a fan of New Year's Eve parties. You usually end up at one where you don't really know anyone (it's your wife's or girlfriend's friends more often than not, and they're sort of assholes), and everyone is being extra loud, and the music is almost always shitty.

Unencumbered by any of that, I will be consuming a Papa John's Take-n-Bake, catching up on some sorely neglected movie-watching, and drinking three of those Blue Moons, plus an old-fashioned or two, and going to bed at 11:30, so I don't have to watch the shriveled-up, stroked-out corpse of Dick Clark slur the countdown through his yellow teeth as Ryan Seacrest manipulates his emaciated limbs Muppet-style to create an illusion of life-like movement. Then I'll be up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed on January 1st, ready for some bowl games and the remainder of the Blue Moons.

I've met my goal of 26 posts in 2010 for this blog, and expect more vital info, larfs, fiercely-held and poorly-defended opinions, and shameful self-revelations in 2011. This Used To Be My Playground rolls on (and on and on), the Top 20 Albums of 2010 will be revealed in January, Books of the Holy Bee for 2010 is coming soon, there are some new multi-part series in the works, and if you're interested in the music/pop culture collective I've misspent hundreds of man hours on since 2002, the Institute of Idle Time has a new website. Check it out at:

http://instituteofidletime.wordpress.com/

Leave a comment, shake a (virutal) hand, even contribute if you like. My big contribution thus far has been re-running This Used To Be My Playground -- now with minor (and I do mean minor) revisions and repaired You Tube links!

Happy New Year to all.

Top Albums of 2010: Honorable Mentions

2010-12-20T10:51:00.000-08:00

It's that time of year. For the fourth time, the Holy Bee presents its Top 20 Albums of the Year. (2007, 2008, and 2009 lists can be found in the archives to the left.)

As predicted, 2010 produced a bumper crop of good music. I struggled last year to come up with twenty albums I liked well enough to put on my list. This year, I had a quota of twenty by springtime, and several worthy contenders had to get the chop. Here, then, are some albums that didn't quite make the cut, but are certainly worth a listen.

Against Me! -- White Crosses
With its 2008 album New Wave, Against Me! managed to alienate its hardcore, politically-agitated "true" punk fans by abandoning social outrage and political sloganeering and embracing a more approachable (and more mature) viewpoint. White Crosses continues that trend, and puts a pretty fine point on it by titling its best song "I Used To Be An Anarchist." The point when a band pisses off its already angry, narrow-minded "core" audience is usually right when the Holy Bee jumps on board, because that's when a band has actually gotten good as musicians/songwriters, and has outgrown being the musical equivalent of spray-painting an anarchy "A" on the side of a Rite Aid, thinking they're changing the world.

Black Mountain -- Wilderness Heart
This Canadian collective leaves behind the soaring, fantasy-Zeppelin jams of their previous record (#7 on my 2008 list) in favor of a quicker, more casual effort. These concise hard-rock nuggets sometimes sound a little too tossed-off, and don't really stay in your head after hearing them. They certainly don't have that "sweated over" intensity of their last album.

Blitzen Trapper -- Destroyer of the Void
Initially a strong contender for the Top 20 this year, the Holy Bee's #1 act of 2008 also takes a bit of a plunge. Unlike Furr, there's no risk-taking here. One great song (the title song), several good ones, two with the word "lover" in the title (two too many), lots of mellow, acoustic strummy-strum -- with more than a stale, ganja-scented whiff of Crosby, Stills & Nash. But no Young. Furr brought the Young.

Hot Chip -- One Life Stand
Front-loaded with some classic tracks, England's electronica-with-a-soul act Hot Chip cannot quite sustain itself over the course of the whole album.

The Dead Weather -- Sea of Cowards
With what sounds like outtakes from last year's debut, Jack White's other other band tumbles from #1 in 2009 to right off my list. I guess I'm a fickle bastard, but in spite of a handful of killer tunes ("Hustle and Cuss," "Gasoline"), this may be one too many trips to the scuzz-blues well.

OK Go -- Of the Blue Colour of the Sky
YouTube darlings and practitioners of my beloved power pop contend for Single of the Year with "This Too Shall Pass." The rest of the album is just a big bowl of okay. (All things considered, my Single of the Year award goes to Cee-Lo's "Fuck You.")

Titus Andronicus -- The Monitor
A very interesting band, with a great theme for an album (the Civil War -- used mostly metaphorically rather than literally), and some longer epic-ish songs that actually go places instead of chasing their tails. But, in the end, it was a little too abrasive for my tender Beatle-trained ears.

Kings of Leon -- Come Around Sundown
Or Only By The Night Part II. KoL certainly aren't abandoning their billion-dollar formula. Much like Green Day's 21st Century Breakdown, Come Around Sundown follows its predecessor's template so slavishly, that in spite of the strength of individual songs, it seems stale. Also like Green Day, Kings of Leon are victims of their own platinum-selling status, with much venom and vitriol spewed in their direction by people who hate popular things. (Yes, I spew venom at Rascal Flatts and Nickelback, but if you like Nickelback better than Kings of Leon, this is probably above your reading level anyway.) I won't try to defend them (again) here, but I will continue to look forward to new releases from KoL, even if they just miss making my top 20. (So really, I'm not a fickle bastard. It takes a boldly stupid and horrendous self-immolation of Weezer-sized proportions to make me stop supporting a band later in its career.) Bonus points to Come Around Sundown for including a real, live, red-hot guitar solo -- a rarity these days -- on the song "Mary."

She & Him -- Volume Two
The Apples In Stereo -- Travellers in Space and Time
The Cute-As-A-Button award for 2010 is a tie between these two, each of whom are like rays of aural sunshine. Diabetics beware -- either one of these is liable to make your blood sugar spike before they're over.

Wolf Parade -- Expo 86
The National -- High Violet
The Indie-Youngsters-Like-This-Way-Too-Much award for 2010 (also called the Grizzly Bear Award) is another tie. Unlike previous candidates for this award (Dirty Projectors, the intensely mediocre Phoenix, and, of course, Grizzly Bear), Wolf Parade and The National were real contenders for my top 20, because they manage to combine both an original vision and undeniable musical chops. In the best cool slacker tradition, Wolf Parade seems too lazy to make these elements truly cohere, and the doom-laden, downbeat National seem content to allow Matt Berninger's hypnotic baritone vocals to be the whole show.

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti -- Before Today
We all know radio waves broadcast into space just keep going. Imagine if you will, some of it bounced back. Say a nugget of groovy psychedelic rock from 1967 ricochets back toward us when it hits the Horsehead Nebula. As the signal passes Alpha Centauri, it gets corrupted by some early-eighties New Wave. By the time we receive it back, it comes out of our speakers as a faint, hazy, pulsing, slightly alien sound. That's what Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti sounds like to me. I await my honorary degree in astrophysics.

Of Montreal -- False Priest
Eclectic indie-pop Elephant 6 veterans Of Montreal let rip with a full-on, bottom-heavy R&B dance album that's fun as hell for the first half and "enough already" for the second half. In fairness, the Holy Bee has a habit of getting bored at loud, dumb parties and leaving early.

Spoon -- Transference
If my list was a Top 21, you're looking at #21 right here. No one is a victim of their own success like Spoon (pictured at top), because they make it look so effortless. If they don't re-invent the wheel with every release, we feel they've let us down. Any other band would be rightfully proud of an album of minimalist-yet-soulful jagged-edge pop songs of this caliber. For Spoon, it's just another day at the office.

Jesse Malin -- Love It To Life
There will always be someone ready to step into Paul Westerberg's tattered boots as an iconoclastic singer-songrwiter who tempers punk fury with roots-rock classicism. As a veteran of NYC glam punk band D Generation, and a pal of Ryan Adams, the kinda goofy and perpetually sweaty Jesse Malin has been doing an intermittently competent job in that arena since his solo debut, The Fine Art of Self-Destruction, in 2003. His latest is a good slab of riff-rock to blast from your garage while washing your car. Nothing more, but certainly nothing less.

Check these out, too -- 2010 albums by:
Kanye West (every major magazine's #1, I just don't hear what they're hearing. It's a pretty good rap album, that's all -- certainly better than anything he's done since his debut), Rogue Wave, Fang Island, Mark Ronson, Robyn, Neil Young, Johnny Cash (his second posthumous album, American VI).

Some major re-issues of 2010:
My favorite album of all time, The Rolling Stones' 1972 Exile On Main Street got the deluxe re-release treatment in May, with ten bonus tracks. Read the Holy Bee's write-up here.

Bruce Springsteen's 1978 Darkness On The Edge Of Town got a re-issue that blows every other re-issue out of the water: the package comes with:

1. The original album -- ten of the best songs Bruce ever wrote ("Badlands," "Racing In The Street," "The Promised Land," etc.)

2. Two albums' worth of outtakes. (Bruce's outtakes were not sub-par throwaways. He would write and record dozens and dozens of songs for each album, then cherry-pick the ten or twelve that set a particular mood or fit a theme he had decided on. The rest were shelved. The 1998 four-disc set Tracks let some of these out of the vault. Now here's two more discs' worth, and we just ponder that these were not only left off the original Darkness, but also left off Tracks! Songs that could make the career of a lesser artist. Is the Boss' well bottomless? I hope we never find out.)

3. Blu-Ray #1 -- A feature documentary on the making of the album, with plenty of first-hand studio footage.

4. Blu-Ray #2 -- The 2009 incarnation of the E Street Band performing the album live in its entirety in an abandoned theater in Asbury Park, NJ.

5. Blu-Ray #3 -- A full, three-hour vintage concert from 1978.

All of this comes in a beautifully re-created facsimile of Bruce's original spiral notebook where he kept all his Darkness lyrics and notes. All the Blu-Rays have additional bonus features. If the music within weren't 33 years old, this would be Album of the Year, if not Decade.

And finally, another collection from Jimi Hendrix, who evidently recorded and archived every single note farted from his Marshall amp. West Coast Seattle Boy is another round of live tracks and alternate versions (the world does not need yet another version of his blooze-snooze "Hear My Train A-Comin'," a staple of every goddamn posthumous collection for two decades). What makes this collection interesting is its first disc, which highlights his pre-fame, pre-psychedelia career as a session guitarist/sideman for R&B acts like the Isley Brothers and Little Richard.

Coming soon -- #20 - #11: The Countdown Begins...

This Used To Be My Playground, Part 16: Bitten By Reality

2010-11-30T23:36:00.000-08:00

#115. "Streets Of Philadelphia" -- Bruce Springsteen
The Holy Bee used to love going to movies. In the early nineties, a typical evening-show ticket was between five and six dollars. Matinees dipped as low as $3.5o. I probably watched two movies per week in a theater (and that total increased in late 1995, when I began working at a theater and could watch films to my heart's content free of charge. More on that later.) Whatever the "big" movie was in any particular week, I was most likely in attendance. December/January was especially busy, what with all the Oscar-bait. (The weeks just before and just after the "summer blockbuster" season are probably the worst movie months. I was one of the maybe two dozen unfortunate souls who saw Folks! in the theater, just because I wanted to "go the movies" that night, and had already seen the other seven films playing at the Cinemark Movies 8.)

Tombstone was the movie I was excited about around this time, and I made a point of seeing it on Christmas Day, but Philadelphia was the big, prestigious Oscar-bait movie of the December '93/January '94 season. Like many "important" movies of that era, I let it wash over me without forming any strong opinions one way or another. I was a "movie-goer," not yet a true film fanatic. That's one of many evolutions the Holy Bee would undergo through 1994-95. These changes also included moving from a detached admiration for the work of Bruce Springsteen to full-blown fandom. Bruce was going through a rough patch at this time. The E Street Band was on hiatus, and the reviews for his '92 double album release were middling. The muted, synth-heavy ballad "Streets of Philadelphia" won the Oscar for Best Original Song and put Bruce on the road to revival. (I still like Tombstone better than Philadelphia, and you know you do too.)

I don't really go the movies anymore. Prices have gone way up, standards of human behavior in public places have gone way down. I don't want to see some slack-jawed fifteen-year-old girl in Uggs with those inexplicably fashionable bug-eyed sunglasses perched on her idiot skull constantly texting out of the corner of my eye. Nor do I want to hear the 400-pound hillbilly loudly explaining the plot points to his partially deaf sister-wife in between bouts of phlegm-clearing. Luckily, the other thing that's gone down in recent years is prices on home theater equipment. I have a better time watching movies at home, even if it's six months or six years after the original release of the movie. I'm in no hurry, and my theater has a bar.

#116. "Stay (I Missed You)" -- Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories

Speaking of movies, a big one in early '94 was Reality Bites, which was a bald-faced attempt at creating a kind of cultural manifesto for "Generation X" -- the post baby-boom kids born roughly between 1965 and 1980. Professional actress-turned-amateur thief Winona Ryder and decent actor-turned-hilariously bad author Ethan Hawke starred, with supporting turns by Ben Stiller (who also directed), Steve Zahn, and a star-making performance from Janeane Garofalo.

The attempt to make a Look Back In Anger or The Big Chill for my generation was alluring, but I didn't recognize it at as such the time. I was pushing to see Ace Ventura: Pet Detective that night, but lost out to Stephanie's choice for what we both took to be just another romantic comedy. As it turned out, Reality Bites mixed its romantic comedy framework with attempts to be au courant and timely in 1994 (cameos by Dave Pirner and cast members of season two of MTV's The Real World!) This made it an instantly dated artifact by 1995, and both fascinating and frustrating to watch forever after its six-month window of relevance. Screenwriter Helen Childress wants the audience to think the characters are cool and identify with them, but also to satirize them at the same time. The result is a painting in in the broadest possible strokes with a pretty heavy hand. According to Reality Bites, Generation X has simply intensified the selfish, "me-me-me" attitude of the baby boomers and then smeared it with an impenetrable layer of smirking irony. The characters listen to "Disco Inferno" and 80's rock ironically. They sing "Conjunction Junction" from Schoolhouse Rock ironically. Every action or statement from Ryder's and Hawke's characters is either ironic, whiny, or nakedly self-serving. (In a cool bit of meta-comedy, Ryder is at one point asked to define "irony." She can't.)

Ryder's character is a 22-year-old recent college grad who happens to be an aspiring documentary filmmaker. Her friends often remark at how talented she is in this regard, but all the audience sees is her filming random shit with her camcorder, with no real artfulness or style. She naturally feels this "skill" entitles her to a life of getting everything she wants. But, romantically, she can't decide if she wants the decent, hard-working, but sometimes a little clueless Stiller, a young executive at the "In Your Face" music video network, or the super-cool-grunge-slacker-coffeehouse-musician Hawke. It seems the filmmakers expect their audience to root for Hawke's character solely beacuse he's a super-cool-grunge-slacker-coffeehouse-musician, despite the fact that everything he does in the movie pegs him as a childish, petulant asshole. (His face in the picture above should tell you everything you need to know.)

On first viewing that night in the theater, I'll admit I was engaged with the story, and the film seemed unconventional enough to raise the possibility that Ryder would end up with Stiller. But no, in a punch in the gut to decent, hard-working but sometimes cluless guys the world over, the movie bows to Hollywood formula and she ends up with the pretty-boy slacker. (The reason she dumped Stiller? His network re-edited some of the shitty raw footage they paid her handsomely for.) She does this even after an ego-drenched and jaw-droppingly hateful monologue Hawke yells at her in the final act where he guarantees he will treat her like crap and come and go as he pleases because he's such an artistic free spirit. She then cheerfully, almost gratefully, hitches her wagon to this walking stain.

I left the movie upset. Not only was the whole thing suffused with irritating smugness, but it pointed out (clumsily at times) that my generation sucked, and it also pointed out that decent-but-sometimes-clueless guys have no chance competing with super-cool-grunge-slacker-coffeehouse-musicians. It hit home. (Obviously, by the length of this essay, I still have some residual anger.) I ranted about it all the way back to Stephanie's house, so it should surprise no one that she was already mentally packing her bags at this point.

The movie is worth watching for some funny moments. Swoosie Kurtz and Harry O'Rilley have great small parts as Ryder's parents, who tell her she can always get a job at Burger World because they "have a little retarded boy working the register." Ryder does break down and apply at Weinerschnizel, only to be shot down by manager David Spade (who encourages customers to "have a 'tude, weinerdude"). And Zahn and Garofalo are good as Ryder's roommates. (Garofalo's deadpan, midwestern-accented "Oh, Christ" when she role-played Zahn's mom to get him ready to come out of the closet was copied by me for years.)

On the whole, I may have been better off seeing Ace Ventura.

Lisa Loeb, with her adorable cat's-eye specs, became America's Favorite Weird Little Hipster Chick for a few months when this song off the soundtrack became a hit based on the Ethan Hawke-directed video of her flouncing around her Weird Little Hipster Chick Greenwich Village Apartment (TM), in quite a dither over her lost love. I never bought the soundtrack, but when I got an apartment later that year, my roommates had it, and I was able to indulge in my shameful secret habit of listening to this song a little more than a straight male should. I didn't flounce, though. (Full disclosure: When adding the YouTube link to the video above, I watched the damn thing three times.)

#117. "Canatloop (Flip Fantasia)" -- Us3

A well-regarded mash-up of pop-rap and jazz, in another fruitless attempt to make jazz palatable.

#118. "Whatta Man" -- Salt-N-Pepa featuring En Vogue
#119. "I Swear" -- All-4-One
"Whatta Man" saved time for me in that I could ignore two sassy female R&B groups at the same time. (I've already dealt with my White Guilt over this mindset in the last entry.) The All-4-One song was impossible to ignore because it was everywhere. Malls. Restaurants. Mailboxes emitted it from every street corner. You could be walking down the street and cartoon birds would start following you and singing it "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah"-style. Jesus, I got sick of that song.

#120. "Lemon" -- U2
U2 was becoming infatuated with disco-flavored Euro-trash at the expense of their big, earnest ballads. This second single off of 1993's Zooropa was a peek at things to come for the boys from Dublin.

A shorter entry this time, I know. If you want to kill more time, just read some of the comments people have posted on the YouTube videos above. They're so dumb they will make you feel dumb. It's an odd sensation.

The Quiet One?

2010-11-11T22:11:00.000-08:00

Reading the excellent recent book, You Never Give Me Your Money: The Beatles After The Break-Up by Peter Doggett, and the upcoming ninth anniversary of his death, got me to thinking about the Beatles' "third man."

“If I was ‘the quiet one,’ the others must have been really noisy.” – G.H.

Six long years before the worldwide cultural phenomenon known as "The Beatles" exploded onto the scene, there were the three individuals that banded together to form its core. History and fate chose two to put on the Mount Rushmore of Great 20th Century Popular Composers. The third, for various reasons, was shut out -- absorbing all the pressure, dealing with the all the chaos, but receiving far less reward, materially and spiritually.

Harrison in the Quarrymen, flanked by those two other guys, c. 1958

George Harrison had been teamed with John Lennon and Paul McCartney since the days of their acoustic skiffle band (“The Quarrymen”) in 1958. In their pre-fame stage performances, he handled his share -- a full one-third -- of the lead vocal chores right along with his slightly older cohorts. They were a triple-frontman threat. The Star Club live tapes and Decca audition recordings bear this out. But when they got a recording contract in the summer of '62, the pop music business of that era was focused on star vocalists and their anonymous backing bands. Beatles’ producer George Martin thought he was being quite groundbreaking for allowing the Beatles to have two star vocalists. That was totally unprecedented, and there simply wasn’t room for George to have the spotlight as much as he did in the smoky basement clubs of ’61. His super-thick "Scouse" accent and lack of songwriting chops sealed his exile from the front line. (The songwriting would come in time. The accent never went away, but once the music world became enamored of all things British, it ceased to matter.)

George was just as opinionated and articulate as the others, but a ferociously ill-timed flu bug on the eve of their first U.S. visit may have cemented his reputation in the popular consciousness. He was fighting a fever and sore throat during the Beatles’ very first American press conference at Kennedy Airport in February 1964 -- a few moments that introduced the Fab Four to the world beyond the British ballroom circuit. The news media then as now needed everything reduced to a soundbite, so while the others clowned and mugged, he blearily hung back ever so slightly, and earned the sobriquet "The Quiet One." Really, he was just trying not to vomit on the microphone bank. By the time they reached the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan that afternoon, he was bedridden. A Central Park photo session (above) and Ed Sullivan Show rehearsals proceeded without him the next day. Roadie Neil Aspinall stood in for him during camera blocking, and Sullivan threatened to "put on a wig" and join the band himself if Harrison didn't show for the all-important broadcast. A day's rest and a quick vitamin B shot allowed the Beatles' lead guitarist to make that iconic TV appearance for an audience of 70 million.

Let’s not forget that Harrison was the Beatles’ lead guitarist. From the countrified Carl Perkins-inspired rockabilly of his early solos to his fluid, almost Hawaiian-sounding slide parts in the later years, Harrison’s playing has always been distinctive. Just listen to the murky twangs under the wash of cymbals and hand-claps in “I Want To Hold Your Hand” or the descending series of jangly notes in “Help!” that were the envy of the Byrds and launched a thousand R.E.Ms in the following decades. If someone in a band asks their guitarist for a “George Harrison-style solo,” that guitarist will know just what is needed. (Speaking of the Cars, check out “My Best Friend’s Girl” for an early-George-style guitar solo, or Badfinger’s “Day After Day” for a late-George-style guitar solo.)

After the end came for the drained, exhausted band in late 1969, all of the Beatles were angry at each other for those first few years apart. One only has to read Lennon’s vitriolic, epic interview in the Jan. ’71 issue of Rolling Stone to see that. Lennon later retracted some of the nastier comments, claiming he was just venting while “stoned out of my fucking mind.” But George seemed to cling to some of those negative feelings toward his old companions -- and the toll that "Beatlemania" took on him. If not really the Quiet One, George seemed to be the most Embittered One.

Maybe it was the “invisible man” syndrome – not getting his due. Lennon-McCartney may have got the lion’s share of official songwriting credits, but session tapes reveal George’s contributions to the arrangements of dozens of Beatles classics were noteworthy. (Even McCartney said – much later – “George did a hell of a lot more than stand there with a pick in his hand waiting for the solo.” George Martin lamented – also much later – that George’s skills were very underutilized. Martin didn’t have the time for a genius when he was dealing with two super-geniuses.) Even his own songs don’t always get proper credit. Frank Sinatra repeatedly referred to “Something” as the greatest love song of the 20th century – and then just as repeatedly credited it to Lennon-McCartney.

Or it could be that his consuming interest in Eastern spirituality that began on the set of the Beatles' second movie Help! in 1965 and continued for the rest of his life caused him to be the most suspicious and critical of shallow rock music “fame.” (“I [lost] interest in being ‘fab’ at that point,” he remarked.) In his gloomy interpretation of Krishnaism, everything in the “material” world was found severely wanting.

Or his natural solitary and private nature could not cope with living in a fishbowl, and he was the most likely to lash out and respond negatively. I don't think his first credited solo composition for The Beatles was called "Don't Bother Me" for nothing. Even the notoriously testy Lennon strolling in Central Park the late 70's (as seen in the documentary Imagine: John Lennon) responded to some clueless New York mook yelling “Hey, when are da Beatles gettin' back together?” with a cheery “Tomorrow!” as he continued his walk.

As far back as '64, George took no shit from nosy photographers.

At first, Harrison was actually the most commercially and artistically successful of the solo Beatles, with his highly-regarded triple (!)* solo album All Things Must Pass in 1970, and his organizing and headlining the first major, all-star charity concert for the famine victims in Bangladesh in 1971.

But then he seemed to lose interest. He grudgingly put out albums because that’s what was expected of him, but the decade-long downward skid from 1973’s dour-but-still-melodic Living In The Material World to 1982’s disastrous Gone Troppo, audibly illustrated Harrison’s increasing detachment. When he decided to quit music in order to focus on running his film company, HandMade Films, no one was surprised…or disappointed, really. It seemed like there might be a comeback in the cards when he came out of semi-retirement in 1987 with the charming Cloud Nine album (which produced the final #1 single by a Beatle, “Got My Mind Set On You”), and he seemed to have fun recording with the Traveling Wilburys super-group the following year. Then…

Then…nothing. A descent into paranoid reclusiveness. A blink-and-you’ll-miss-it round of concerts in Japan in 1991, organized by his friend Eric Clapton, who hoped to revive Harrison’s interest in live performing. (It didn’t work. Harrison was miserable throughout.) A series of tired interviews and a two “new” Beatles recordings for their Anthology project in the mid-90’s. (It was revealed in Doggett's book that Harrison did it purely for the money. The implosion of HandMade Films nearly bankrupted him.)

Minor news items appeared in the late 90's mentioning his fight with cancer. It kept coming back. Throat cancer. Lung cancer. Brain cancer. Experimental treatments in Switzerland and the Mayo Clinic. The terrifying assault by a burglar in late 1999 that sapped the last of his strength. (All that paranoia now seemed to be justified.) Finally, in the cherished privacy provided by a nondescript rented house in L.A., the end came in November 2001. A posthumous album, Brainwashed, made up of tracks he had been tinkering with for the past decade in his home studio, was not the unifying Grand Summation that we had hoped for. It was quickly forgotten, and the Quiet was now permanent.

One hopes he loosened up a little behind closed doors, and it does seem likely. In the home videos taken of the Wilburys rehearsals, he seems happy and relaxed. His devotion to and friendship with the Monty Python group (HandMade Films was created in order to produce their Life Of Brian movie) indicates the sharp Liverpudlian sense of humor was still there -- but kept under wraps.

His son, Dhani, was one of the designers of the Beatles Rock Band video game, and made the publicity rounds a year or so back promoting it. He displayed an easy grace and affability that probably characterized his legendary father when he was in the cocoon of home and family. It was chill-inducing how much Dhani seemed to be a physical carbon-copy of George. When he showed up on The Tonight Show to play the game with Conan, it looked as if the line drawing on the cover of Revolver had come to life. (Of course, at 32, Dhani is now several years older than his father was when the Beatles split. The Beatles finished their career before George’s 27th birthday.)

The Holy Bee, bookworm that he is, is still waiting for the definitive Harrison biography to emerge. British musician-turned-music journalist Alan Clayson wrote a mediocre one (titled, naturally, The Quiet One) as part of his quadruple biography set on all four band members. (His Ringo bio, Straight Man Or Joker?, was pretty wretched.) And I recently tried to make it through one error-ridden piece of hackwork called Behind Sad Eyes that was downright unreadable. (Check out the Amazon reviews on that shit-pile. I’m not alone in my opinion…) George’s 1980 autobiography, I Me Mine, is, of course, totally unrevealing -- mainly a self-examination of his song lyrics, and some scanty reminiscences with co-author (and longtime Beatle mouthpiece) Derek Taylor.

In the end, it seems that the juggernaut known as "Beatles" simply wrung one person dry.

“You gave your money and your screams. We gave our nervous systems.” – G.H.

* The third disc in the "triple" album was actually a set of incredibly tedious instrumental "jams" typical of the early 70s. Far-out, man.

A Harrison playlist:
"My Sweet Lord" -- from All Things Must Pass (1970)
"All Things Must Pass" -- from All Things Must Pass (1970)
"What Is Life" -- from All Things Must Pass (1970)
"Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)" -- from Living In The Material World (1973)
"Crackerbox Palace" -- from Thirty-Three & 1/3 (1976)
"Blow Away" -- from George Harrison (1979)
"All Those Years Ago" -- his Lennon tribute song from Somewhere In England (1981)
"Dream Away" -- from Gone Troppo (and the Time Bandits soundtrack, 1982)
"Got My Mind Set On You" -- from Cloud Nine (1987)
"When We Was Fab" -- from Cloud Nine (1987)
"Handle With Care" -- from Traveling Wilburys, Vol. 1 (1988)
"Any Road" -- from Brainwashed (posthumous, 2002)

And, finally, check out George's solo scene in A Hard Day's Night

The Holy Bee's Halloween Special, Part II

2010-10-20T19:18:00.000-07:00

Chez Holy Bee, on a Halloween night sometime in the early 1980's...

Funnily enough, I don't remember any family trips to the pumpkin patch. I went regularly to our local patch as a school field trip in my early elementary years, but we only got to pick one to take back with us on the bus. I do remember a copious amount of pumpkins around the house each October, at least four of which went under the knife to become jack o'lanterns. They came from somewhere, but I was either not involved in getting them (pretty unthinkable) or this is a rare case of a holiday tradition of which I have no memory (equally unthinkable.) I don't know.

Flipping through one of my picture books sometime in 1980, I came across an illustration of a boy in a tiger suit. This, for some reason, went off like a rocket in my five-year-old skull. I decided then and there that the acquisition of, and proud wearing of, a tiger suit would be the focal point of my existence.

The cardboard witch cutout in the background was a mainstay of our Halloween decorations until at least 1990, along with the green skull in the Dracula pic below

The end result, hot off my mother's sewing machine, was a minor disappointment -- it was not the plush, upholstered, fuzzy theme-park-mascot-style suit from the illustration, but rather a limp, featureless thing made of the thinnest tiger-print cotton with a mask like a grain sack. My bare hands dangled from the sleeves instead of being concealed in paws, and my battered size 1 Keds gave away my humanness at the suit's bottom. The disappointment lasted only a moment, however, for this was an honest-to-goodness tiger suit. I decided I was immensely pleased with it no matter what. (In retrospect, I'm kind of glad it wasn't a deluxe tiger suit, as that might have spun me off into a life of being a "furry," and I'd be off somewhere yiffing right now instead of entertaining and informing you good people.) The fact that the tiger suit was completed close to Halloween was a happy coincidence. My tiger-suit mania could have hit me in January just as easily as late September.

Halloween of '81 saw me in a fairly generic skeleton costume, no photo of which exists in my dusty archives. It was also the year in which almost no one came to our house for trick-or-treating, leaving us an enormous stockpile of freakishly large Lifesavers lollipops, with flavors like cherry-banana swirl, strawberry cheesecake, and perhaps okra. I remember eating those damn things well into the New Year.

Allow me at this time to introduce a new player to our Halloween show -- my elementary school library. Not much bigger than a tennis court, really, it seemed to have everything. Presided over by the kindly Ms. Klinkhammer (long since gone to the Great Reserve Stacks in the Sky), it's where we dutifully trooped single-file to watch filmstrips about basic first aid and Not Talking To Strangers, or make our weekly pilgrimage each Library Day to get our two books for the week. Wise old bird that she was, Ms. Klinkhammer quickly recognized me as a Gifted Reader, and my two-book-per-week allotment was waived for the duration of my grade-school career.

Kids of my generation tended to go through a monster movie phase, and usually a dinosaur phase. I went through both around the same time in first grade, aided and abetted by the school library. My monster movie phase (with a particular emphasis on the famous Universal Studios monsters of the 1930's and 40's) was triggered by the Monsters series of books published by Crestwood House in the late 1970's. The books had a distinctive Halloweenish orange-and-black design, and contained detailed synopses of flicks like The Wolf Man, King Kong, Godzilla, Creature From The Black Lagoon, and several others. Plus, they were lavishly illustrated with black-and-white stills from the movies.

I'm told I have some younger readers out there in Holy Bee Land, and Beeketeers be assured, this was it. I'm gonna sound like an old codger (not for the first time), and you've heard this all before, but there was no Netflix, no YouTube, no way to actually see any of these movies. Even VHS rentals were a couple of years in the future. You had to hope to catch one of them on TV (see below), or read the Crestwood House Monsters series from your school library again and again. And I've since learned they were found in almost every school library, and are responsible for sending many a young boy (it was almost always boys) down the path to life-long classic monster movie fandom.

Most people my age and older are pretty familiar with the writings of childrens' author Beverly Cleary, who from 1950 until well into the 90's wrote of the misadventures of grade-schoolers on Klickitat Street in suburban Portland. I had a small collection of her books, and what I didn't have, the school library did. Regardless of the age of their target audience, I still maintain they contain some damn good writing, and I still vividly remember a chapter from 1962's Henry and the Clubhouse, because it described The Model Halloween, Halloween as I always wanted to celebrate it. Here is an excerpt, reproduced with no permission whatsoever:

"It was a perfect night for Halloween. The starts were bright and a north wind sent leaves skittering along the pavement. Jack-o'-lanterns grinned in front windows. Bands of boys and girls, some of them wearing costumes that glowed in the dark, trooped from door to door. Mothers of small children lurked in the shrubbery, while their little rabbits or ghosts climbed steps and rang doorbells. Henry felt so good he did a war dance in the middle of his front lawn before he started down the street.

Before Henry had time to ring a doorbell, he met a boy wearing a green cardboard head intended to look like the head of a man from outer space. Suddenly, the outer space man's eyes lit up in a fiendish and scary way that made Henry suspect his friend Murph must be inside. Murph was the only boy in the neighborhood who knew enough about electricity to think up such a costume...

Together the boys proceeded down Klickitat Street ringing doorbells and shouting, "Trick or treat!"...Gradually, their bags grew fat with candy, peanuts, popcorn balls, individual boxes of raisins, apples, and bubble gum. The boys no longer stopped at every house. They compared notes with other trick-or-treaters and soon learned which people gave jelly beans or all-day suckers. These houses they skipped. They did not like jelly beans, and Henry felt that a boy who had a paper route was too grown-up to lick a sucker."

What struck me the most, besides the fact that all the costumes were home-made, was that these kids were doing it on their own. Only the littlest kids had their parents with them. Otherwise, it was totally unsupervised. I vowed to myself that I would one day go trick-or-treating with just my friends, and no meddling adults.

Before we check out of the school library, I should mention it was the cause of another Halloween-related minor obsession of mine. Do-it-yourself monster make-up! There were two books on the subject in the library. The first was Make-Up Monsters, by Marcia Lynn Cox, and if you looked at the little circulation card glued to its inside cover, it would read "Matt I., 9/16/82. Matt I., 10/10/82. Matt I., 10/24/82. Matt I., 2/5/83. Matt I., 4/29/83. Matt I., 9/12/83..." and on and on. (My make-up experiments reached their peak at Halloween, but continued simmering year-round.) Originally published in 1976, and re-printed several times since, most of the models had horrible, shaggy Adam Rich-style bowl haircuts, plaid pants, and turtleneck sweaters, which provided additional entertainment. (The book's lesser sequel, Creaure Costumes, was available at the public library. In later printings, the two slim volumes were combined.)

The emphasis was on make-up made from household ingredients. Corn syrup was suggested as an adhesive for everything. There was this amazing "Frogman" make-up from layers of dyed-green paper towels and cornstarch -- with egg-carton cups for eyes! Try as I might, I was never able to pull this off. Chunks of rope (!?) were supposed to be used as the framework for the wide frog-lips, and I'm sorry, but even industrial-strength corn syrup (the kind they keep behind the counter) is not going to hold rope to your face while you pile on pound after pound of vile-smelling mushy paper towels and wait for it to harden. (If you look closely at the book cover, you can see ol' Frogman toward the upper left.)

There was also a colossal mess known as the "Melting Man" -- which consisted primarily of heaping warm yellowish goo onto your face, which was then supposed to harden into a horrifying visage. I've long since forgotten the goo ingredients, but I do remember a key feature was unpopped popcorn kernels. The batch that I tried never quite solidified, and dripped non-stop onto my shirt, my shoes, the carpet, the cat, etc. until I finally had enough and scraped it off into the kitchen sink, where the popcorn kernels played havoc with the garbage disposal for a few days.

The other book went by the unwieldy title of Movie Monsters: Monster Make-Up & Monster Shows To Put On by Alan Ormsby, published in 1975. The emphasis in this book was once again on the Universal monsters. I believe after a year or two of constantly getting it from the library, my mom lucked into a copy of it at a garage sale or flea market, and it occupied a place of pride on my shelf. The book not only gave make-up recipes -- including an amazing one for recreating the Frankenstein Monster's squared-off skull with a grocery bag and layers and layers of cornstarch-soaked masking tape and cheesecloth -- but it also provided a script for a little play you could put on. As you would expect, the play was as terrible as the make-up was great.

Mom eventually grew tired of my kitchen raids, and piles of noisome goop over every available surface, and provided me with a little kit of actual monster-make up acquired from the Avon Lady. There was a jar of basic white (with a goofy cartoon ghost on the lid), and Chapstick-style tubes of red, black, and blue. I seem to recall these lasting for years, but I don't know how, because for awhile I was putting that shit on every night, and going to school the next day with my eyebrows a little too dark and smears of white still behind my ears.

Dracula or a very angry mime?

The result of all this experimentation was a self-designed Dracula, which I trotted out for Halloween '82. I was quite proud of it, too, until our class Halloween party, where Art H. blew me out of the water with a much better Dracula. He had straight hair that could be swept back, Lugosi-style, and a grease-paint widow's peak drawn onto his forehead. It would take a small nuclear blast to sweep back my unruly mop, and it certainly wouldn't stay in place for long. He also used the barest hint of white make-up to give his face a pale cast, rather than slathering it on like a circus clown. His eyebrows were subtly darkened, rather than the intense, black Dan Hedaya-style eyebrows I had given myself. His lips were red, indicating his steady diet of fresh blood. My lips were black, indicating my possible genetic kinship with a German shepherd. I was inconsolable until it was pointed out by my friend Jimmy that Art had his mom come to the school and apply his make-up for him! Now you may have noticed, I was the very-indulged youngest child of my family, but even I wouldn't ask for that. Besides, what fun was it? None at all, and I ended up enjoying the party and the rest of my Halloween season.

One of the great television phenomenons of Days Gone Past was the Creature Feature Matinee on television. From the 1950's through the 1980's on Saturday afternoons, local television affiliates would air an old horror movie, hosted by someone done up in ghoulish make-up. Between film segments, they told corny jokes, put on sketches, and generally behaved foolishly. (These "horror hosts" were obviously the primary influence on Mystery Science Theater 3000.) And because these were local stations, each city had their own host with his or her own distinct look and personality. Kansas City had their "Crematia Mortem," Akron had their "Son of Ghoul," and so on. I was lucky enough to see the legendary Svengoolie (above left), who was actually based out of Chicago, but syndicated to San Francisco's Channel 44. I was able to pick up the Bay Area UHF stations on my little rabbit-eared black-and-white bedroom TV in Woodland. Thanks to Svengoolie, I saw the original Frankenstein (1931) and could finally fill in the gaps left by the Crestwood House summary.

I'm told that the local horror host tradition continues on some smaller stations (usually late at night), but they're getting scarce as hen's teeth. Channel 44 went Fox in '86, but I think Svengoolie was back in the vault well before then. (For California viewers, that is. He continues to host local shows in Chicago.)

Finally seeing Frankenstein that Saturday afternoon in '83 inspired me to take a crack at being the Frankenstein's Monster himself for Halloween. (Remember, kids, Frankenstein was the name of the doctor, not the creature.) To pull this one off, I finally succeeded in securing a full-head rubber mask. And I was all about the details, as usual. I always liked the fact that the Monster was usually portrayed as kitted out in a natty suit jacket. I remember reading that the average-sized Boris Karloff wore a jacket several sizes too small to make his body seem larger when he played the Monster in the Universal flicks of the 30's. I happened to have a too-small blazer, which I wore in combination with a very unfortunate clip-on bowtie for a relative's wedding some time before. The bow-tie, dyed black, had already seen service as part of the Dracula costume the previous year. Mom drew one of her infrequent lines at dying the blazer, so the Monster went forth to terrorize the countryside not in funereal black, but in a rather more pedestrian tan corduroy with elbow patches. I augmented the jacket with shoulder padding made from a pair of washcloths, and added a pair of genuine 80's moon-boots to round out the costume.

Nothing says "flesh-eating undead lunging at you from the bowels of hell" like a floral-print couch and a "Home Sweet Home" on the wall in the background.

By 1984, I had learned to apply my facial make-up with a lighter touch. I borrowed my dad's tattered work clothes to round out my zombie look, but I'm pretty sure I owned clothing just as busted if not more so. Why I thought everything on a zombie should be six sizes too big (including shoes) is beyond me. I went to my first non-school Halloween party on the 30th at my friend Jeremy's house, which was a huge, rambling old Victorian -- the perfect setting. We began decorating weeks in advance, building tombstones, dismembered corpses, scarecrows, and a ghost on a zipline from his second story window to the lemon tree in his front yard. It always seemed like we squeezed a full days' work out of the two-and-a-half hours or so between the end of school and dusk, when I would ride my bike three blocks to home and dinner. I'm glad I went to this party in full costume, because it definitely reminded me that I should wear shoes that fit for trick-or-treating the next night.

By 1985, renting movies was getting commonplace, and I was gorging myself on all kinds of films, from animation (Disney shorts featuring Chip & Dale, Donald, and/or Goofy were particular favorites), to the Marx Brothers, to the old monster movies I had previously only read about. Ghostbusters came home from the video store at least every other week. I hadn't given up on make-up experimentation, and I was getting better. I had outgrown the old Avon kit with the cartoon ghost. Using a little flesh putty and some carefully applied coloration, I gave Jeremy the appearance of a grotesquely swollen-shut eye, and nearly gave his mom a coronary when she caught a glimpse of him. My costume ideas were getting a little more out-there, too. I had the notion of wearing an actual carved pumpkin on my head, a la Return To Oz's Jack Pumpkinhead, and experiments toward that end resulted in nothing more that a sore neck, sticky hair, and three or four totally destroyed pumpkins.

What I ended up being that year was a werewolf, and what appears to be partially-congealed brownie batter on my face is actually brown cream make-up over a layer of liquid latex and tissue paper. Ever on the quest for more and more sophisticated make-up, on a shopping trip to Sacramento, I begged my mom to take me to a "real" theatrical supply store for "real" monster make-up. We ended up at Broadway Costumes on Franklin Boulevard, and I went home with a $4.99 bottle of liquid latex, which I thought was the greatest thing since indoor plumbing. Even though there was no call whatsoever for a werewolf to have the skin of a 90-year-old with advanced melanoma instead of fur, latex became a vital part of every monster make-up design I concocted from that moment until the bottle was almost empty and permanently gummed shut in 1988 or so.

Also undocumented with photographs is Halloween 1986 -- the year I finally got to trick-or-treat without adults. Everyone agreed we were old enough (sixth-graders) as long as we stayed together. My friends Mat (with one "t") and Colen and I dressed up as pirates, and hit the neighborhood around Colen's house -- on our own. We passed a Walkman back and forth, alternating between Run DMC's Raising Hell and Van Halen's 5150. Sadly, the night was kind of a letdown. The neighborhood was pretty empty, I no longer found candy all that much of a motivation, and I just got tired. I remember getting picked up on our designated corner, and riding home in the back of my dad's pick-up truck, shivering in the cold wind, thinking I think that was it. I'm done.

And that year really did sort of finish trick-or-treating for me, or at least the spirit of trick-or-treating. I ended up going through the motions for three more years. I moved to the tiny town of Robbins, where unsupervised trick-or-treating was normal, as everyone knew everyone else. You couldn't go further than five blocks in any direction without ending up in a tomato field. In 1987, my group of friends donned trench coats and fedoras and went as The Untouchables. (DePalma's version of the old TV show was the must-see movie for us that year.) It was more about socializing than the age-old, dogged door-to-door trek for candycandycandy. And there was an element of exhilarating danger, as we spent a large part of the night being chased through the darkened town by the older kids who were armed with bottle rockets and not afraid to use them.

My friend Nick and I got political in the election year of 1988 and went as Reagan and Nixon, through the magic of rubber masks and navy-blue suits with red ties. I was in a hurry to get home in time for Married...With Children. By 1989, I was living in Yuba City and considered myself retired from the trick-or-treating business, but was convinced by the girl I was dating at the time to give it one more go-round. My final Halloween costume was -- once again -- the devil. A simple white shirt and black pants, with a red satin cape and a set of horns. I managed about forty-five minutes before feeling very silly and packing it in. I was a freshman in high school, after all.

That was the end of Phase One. Phase Two began when I had kids of my own, and re-opened the Pandora's Box of make-up experimentation, pumpkin-carving, and candycandycandy. To my dismay, even Phase Two is now slowly ending as my oldest son announced this might be his last year of trick-or-treating (he's the same age I was when I was being pursued by a firework-wielding delinquent with my Untouchable trench coat flapping behind me).

My sons, Cade & Cameron, Halloween 2009

I fervently hope there's a Phase Three, because I love Halloween.

Epilogue (from my post on The Institute of Idle Time Message Board, 10/27/08):

Back in 1996, I was attending Chico State, but commuting from Yuba City. At the time, I was a bit tight with a dollar (not like the spendthrift make-it-rain maniac I am now), so I did not want to pay for a parking sticker. The result was my white '88 Dodge Colt with the black fender was parked about ten blocks from campus. That Halloween, my last class got out at 5:00. The sun was a blazing orange ball rapidly sinking toward the horizon. Walking back to my car in the hazy dusk, I became aware that the air felt…heavy. A peculiar electricity crackled around me. I could sense mischief and evil deeds being planned. The walk to the car seemed longer than usual.

These were the days when Halloween in Chico meant a long dark night of arrests, riots, vandalism and general mayhem. I remember thinking "I gotta get the hell out of Dodge before things break bad." I was moving at a pretty brisk trot when I finally reached my car. I hit the on-ramp for southbound 99 just as the sky went purple and the witching hour began…I will never forget the feeling that hung in the air.

It cropped up again just a couple of years ago. I was house-sitting for my parents on Halloween. My folks live in a pretty low trick-or-treat traffic area, and my sons were with their mom, so I was looking forward to a quiet night. Around the same time of evening as noted above, about 5-5:30ish, I felt that same peculiar heaviness in the atmosphere. Still quite light enough to see, but the dark was on its way. I wandered onto the front porch, lit the jack o'lanterns and a cigar, and just sat for awhile and listened as I sipped my whiskey. A few very distant whoops and yelps. Just some kids having fun, I'm sure, but distance distorts. It sounded creepy. A firecracker. A siren or three. Sounds of dark doings afoot. I shivered a little. It was getting cold…but it also felt ominous out there. I went inside to watch the Ghost Hunters Live nine-hour special, once again believing in the power of Halloween.

The Holy Bee's Halloween Special, Part I

2010-10-13T23:30:00.000-07:00

"This is the Holy Bee coming at you with music and fun, and if you're not careful, you may learn something before it's done. Hey, hey, hey..."

Americans claim to love tradition, but rarely have the patience to allow real traditions to develop. We have the media to force-grow traditions for us. Remember, Christmas was once a relatively obscure Catholic holiday, little recognized in the United States until the 1820s or so. What caused it to take off? The media. "The media" back then, of course, was print: books, newspapers, and magazines -- and their editors spotted a hot trend in the Washington Irving's "olde English Christmas" writings. Very soon, Christmas became safe, Protestant...and profitable. Don't try to say Christmas has only recently "gone commercial." Just take a look at the advertisements in any mid-19th century magazine's November or December issue. Christmas in America has always been a way for retailers to clean up, and there's nothing wrong with that -- it's still a special, awesome, cheerful time of year. You can ascribe that to the religious aspect of the holiday if you need to (I don't), but we needn't be ashamed of its media-driven, profiteering origins as a uniquely American holiday. There was no "golden era" to which we can roll back the clock. (Yes, there was a time when the commercialism was less brazen, but that's a reflection on society as a whole, not just Christmas.) And, please, don't get me wrong -- I love Christmas, and you should, too. My point here is we invent things over a very short period of time, and then pretend those things have always existed.

And that includes today's special topic: HALLOWEEN. I've written about my love of the year-end holidays before, and Halloween season is what gets my three-month-long party started each and every year without fail. It's still kind of a rebel holiday. Unofficial. No one gets the day off. Religious fundamentalists hate it (which is reason enough to celebrate it.) And on the other end of the spectrum, you "Wiccans" out there aren't off the hook either. You stand accused of piecing together a bunch of half-understood Celtic mythology, blending it with a bunch of new shit you made up yourselves, and passing it off as "ancient tradition." The verdict? GUILTY. I'd sentence you to being burned at the stake, but you'd enjoy the attention too much.

Anyway, Halloween celebrates all that is dark, twisted, and macabre. And the end result of a good Halloween night? Stuffing your face with the worst thing for you: Candy-candy-candy, to quote Garfield. Halloween rules.

After reading David J. Skal's Death Makes A Holiday: A Cultural History of Halloween and watching The History Channel's The Haunted History of Halloween, one thing is clear -- even the experts don't have a fucking clue where the American Halloween really came from. Yes, there's a handful of old European traditions (which we'll address presently), but they're so far removed from our version of Halloween -- a modern, 20th century American holiday if there ever was one -- the connection is as tenuous as last year's cobwebs. We may not know for sure how the holiday really sprung up in the US of A, but we sure as hell know how it was popularized: books, movies, cartoons, TV shows. Again, our media does not reflect our traditions. It makes them.

First, some historical roots -- three candidates for the official precursor to Halloween:

SAMHAIN (pronounced SAW-wain -- meaning "Summer's End" in Gaelic)
The Celtic New Year's celebration, in recognition of the final harvest of the year. Because plants and trees were dying or going dormant, and livestock was slaughtered to be salted and preserved for winter dining, the veil between life and death was said to be its thinnest at Samhain, and spirits were said to roam the countryside at will. "Guising," or the ritual disguising of oneself as a spirit to either placate the real spirits or hide from them, was said to be prevalent around Samhain, but by the 16th century the practice was restricted to the remotest backwoods of Scotland. Although the creating of a samhnang -- "spirit candle" -- by hollowing out a turnip and carving a face into it was said to date back to antiquity, no references to this particular practice are found before the late 1700s. And if you've ever tried to hollow out a turnip -- and I have -- you'll be forgiven for doubting if this ever took place, and also be forgiven for thinking the Holy Bee spends way too much time alone with turnips.

ALL SAINTS' DAY
Early Christians never met an ancient pagan holiday they couldn't take over and suck the fun out of, and Samain was no exception. November 1 became All Saint's Day, sometimes known as All Hallows' Day, and was established by Pope Gregory in the 8th century to commemorate all those who had been hallowed or beatified (i.e., achieved sainthood.) He cannily and deliberately penciled it in to occur during the various pagan harvest festivals, the better to ease non-Christians into accepting a new religion (Christianity as a major movement was still only in its fourth century by then.) All Soul's Day was November 2, when the good folk in the land of the living prayed for those souls still in limbo or purgatory. It was common for people to go door-to-door asking for a small token in exchange for a prayer for the dearly departed.

All very good and pious, but many still clung to certain pre-Christian beliefs, particularly the belief that spirits were abroad around this time, in particular on the night before All Saint's Day -- October 31. A date first recorded as "All Hallows' Evening" in 1556, and frequently contracted to "Hallow E'en" from then on.

GUY FAWKES NIGHT
Samhain and its spooky associations were the product of the Celts in Scotland and Ireland, but Guy Fawkes Night is as English as bangers and mash. Back in the 1600's, when the Catholics and Protestants were at each others' throats, what can only be described as a prototype for 9/11 almost went down. Catholic terrorist Guy Fawkes and several associates came within a whisker of blowing up the English Parliament building with an enormous stockpile of gunpowder. He was captured in the nick of time, tried, and executed. This triumph of justice is celebrated each November 5. The celebrations include fireworks and bonfires, and the custom of going door-to-door for small change. There is usually guising or "mumming" going on here too, but the ritual request in England is not "trick or treat," but "a penny for the Guy?"

[Remember, though, that door-to-door begging was associated with every medieval feast day.]

We also have England to thank for "jack o'lantern," a generic term for any wandering spirit that announces its presence with a faint, flickering light. (It's American cousin was the "will o'the wisp.") It had nothing to do with pumpkins yet.

Concise little history lesson there, if I do say so myself, but what does that have to do with our modern American Halloween? Almost nothing. None of these European holidays even came close surviving the journey to 20th century America intact. For the first century of the existence of the U.S. as an independent nation, there is almost no reference to a "Halloween." Samhain had been extinct for centuries, All Hallows' Day was ignored by all but the most devout Catholics, and Guy Fawkes Night still belonged exclusively to the British Commonwealth countries. Where did Halloween as we know it come from? We can only piece together fragments, and watch in wonder as this patchwork moved with a speed only Americans can achieve in forging tradition.

Only the concept of the line between the natural and supernatural being very thin at harvest time survives to connect Samhain to our American Halloween. This new Halloween first gains mention in the very late 1800's, and it is an oddly feminine holiday. It revolved around private parties, where the mostly-female guests seized upon the occasion's otherworldly nature by indulging in various divination games -- matchmaking and fortune-telling. There was some "masquerading," but the costumes were rarely if ever scary or grotesque.

"Halloween cards" became all the rage in the early 1900's, and featured witches, ghosts, and other familiar "horror" elements (arched-back black cats seemed a particular favorite), and these began being folded into the Halloween masquerades. Carved pumpkins--a plant native to America, and much, much easier to hollow out than a goddamn turnip--began to appear on Halloween cards and at parties, and were given the seemingly unrelated name "jack o'lantern." We were a magpie culture, picking up bits and pieces that were interesting to us, and creating an altogether new hybrid. (So our Wiccan friends are actually following a very American way of doing things.)

Another element was added to Halloween in the years after World War I and well into the Great Depression: it became a night of mischief and vandalism. Mailboxes were destroyed. Outhouses tipped over. Front gates knocked off their posts. Windows soaped. There were no costumes or candy involved at this point. It was tantamount to class warfare, as most of the vandals were of the poorer classes, making their attacks on the more well-off.

Here's where it gets a little fuzzy: The connection between rampant hooliganism and homeowners' bribery with "treats" to prevent it is a shaky one, and not fully documented or verified. Like many folk traditions, it just sort of appeared. By every verifiable source, the term "trick or treat" entered the lexicon just before or during World War II (1941-45 for the U.S.), but everyone cheerfully pretended it was a generations-old tradition even back when it was newly-minted. "Trick or treat" is an implied threat -- give us a treat or we will play a potentially costly "trick" upon your property, but by the time the term was actually in widespread use, the threat was empty, and the phrase lost all connection with the literal truth in less than a generation.

It's the first few years after World War II that "our" Halloween really came together, with the birth of the baby boomer generation. "Horror" movies as we understand the term were really only about fifteen years old at that point (the landmark films Dracula and Frankenstein were both released by Universal in 1931), and had just recently become an indelible part of American consciousness. War-time shortages and rationing were over, and candy became mass-produced and inexpensive. The middle-class was comfortable, the streets were safe, and a new invention called television was creating a new frame of reference -- "pop culture." By the end of the 1950's, every October saw a glut of old monster movies, horror-themed cartoons, and other spooky stuff pumped into our living rooms. For example, a very early Disney short, 1929's The Skeleton Dance, was not produced for nor does it reference the holiday of Halloween, but its imagery has become iconic and synonymous with Halloween due to thousands of October TV showings.

The Donald Duck cartoon Trick Or Treat (1952) also helped popularize the tradition. Halloween as we know it was finally here.

So what's my earliest memory of Halloween? 1977. That October, the putrid "You Light Up My Life" by Debbie Boone was atop the charts (followed closely by the disco version of the Star Wars theme.) TV viewers were hooked on Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley, and the one-season wonder James At 15 had just premiered. Moviegoers were lining up for Oh God! and Looking For Mr. Goodbar. The Holy Bee was two years old (going on three) and not old enough yet to make the candy-gathering rounds. I was allowed to open the door for the first trick-or-treater, and what did I see? A tiny, uncostumed toddler -- clearly younger than me -- greedily holding out a grocery bag. How come he got to make the rounds? I sensed he was probably cuter than I was, and perhaps more loved.

I slammed the door in his face.

The memory of that caused me to burn with shame for quite some time afterward. I eventually comforted myself with the thought years later that the door was probably immediately re-opened by someone in authority, little Swee'pea was given his treat, and my door-answering duties curtailed.

The next year, John Carpenter's Halloween introduced audiences to Michael Myers, music consumers of the 70's continued their decade-long run of poor taste by putting "Kiss You All Over" by Exile at #1 for the whole month, and 1950's Milwaukee was still our favorite TV locale. I made my debut as a trick-or-treater, and I did it with flair -- I went as a witch, complete with a long, black dress. There must be something in my genetics that causes once-in-a-lifetime cross-dressing, because my son Cameron went out as a witch when he was five. And wearing the exact same dress, which my mother had saved, presumably as evidence for my eventual commitment hearing. (Along with my paper dog-collar and partially gnawed rawhide chew toy dating from roughly the same period, when I thought I was a dog for the better part of a year.) Anyway, I'll have to ask my dad if he ever donned a dress.

Okay, the cross-dressing thing was twice in a lifetime in my case, but that's a story I've already told. (And I still kind of wish I was a dog.)

Eat your heart out, Eddie Izzard. The Holy Bee was a tranny before it was cool

So I was a witch in '78, and the devil in '79...clearly I was already being seduced by the dark side. Halloween of '79...Herb Alpert had a fluke hit with "Rise," and Fonzie was being replaced by Jack Tripper in the hearts of television viewers. My devil mask was of the molded plastic variety that covered the face only. The full-head latex masks were still prohibitively expensive (for now), but at least the interior always smelled overpoweringly of rubber. Not so with the plastic masks. When you wore them several hours a day for months at a time as I did, all the while breathing Nestle Quik breath and Ruffles crumbs into them, the inside begins to get a little funky.

Me (age 4) in my second year of trick-or-treating, and my sister (age 13) in what I hope was her last year of trick-or-treating (she looks capable of driving me around.) Dig that plastic pitchfork and those wee little boots

Around this time is when I first became aware of Halloween specials. The great thing about specials was that they came in pairs. One always ran from 8 to 8:30, followed by another from 8:30 to 9. When I leafed through that week's new TV Guide and saw the full-page ad for the first Halloween specials of the year, I knew the holiday season had officially arrived. CBS had a lock on the all the best holiday specials, and I could hear the audio of the rotating "CBS Special" logo (reproduced above) from several rooms away. The clattering drum-and-trumpet fanfare would cause me to come flying blindly into the family room like a cat hearing a can opener, no matter what I had been doing before. (I believe I heard it from the shower once in '83, and ended up watching both specials while wrapped in a towel with shampoo crusting in my hair.)

The original Halloween special was It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, first broadcast in 1966, over eight years before I was born, but repeated every year since. In my mind, the "CBS Special" logo is always followed by the piano melody of Vince Guaraldi's "Linus and Lucy" theme, as the titular pair head out of their house on a fall afternoon to select a pumpkin for carving (or, to Linus' mind, "killing.") The animation plays out against watercolor backgrounds of autumnal oranges and rosy pinks, there's a Halloween party and trick-or-treating (referred to as "tricks or treats," which shows the tradition was still somewhat nebulous as late as the mid-sixties), and a whole midsection involving Snoopy's "World War I flying ace" that's just music, sound effects, and pure atmosphere. In the days before DVDs (hell, before VHS, really), to recapture that Halloween feeling whenever I wanted, I had to rely on my trusty Great Pumpkin Read-Along book & cassette set, duly turning the pages when I heard the chime.

The power of tradition is such that this is the last vintage special still shown annually (it's on for the 45th time this year on October 28 -- on ABC, which seems wrong somehow.) As far as the rest of the specials go, the lucky ones still exist on YouTube, the rest only in our memories.

These include the The Fat Albert Halloween Special...

...and Casper's Halloween Special, The Flintstones Meet Rockula and Frankenstone, and the oddly nihilistic and disturbing Raggedy Ann & Andy: The Pumpkin Who Couldn't Smile, which I only watched once and avoided ever since. All I remember is those creepy-ass dolls dealing with a manic-depressive pumpkin (its squishy features indicated it was a day or three past its prime) that copiously wept seeds from its hooded eyes. (Can a pumpkin have hooded eyes? I swear this one did.)

My favorite cartoons were always from the Warner Brothers canon, but I remember being disappointed that they never embraced Halloween in the same way Disney, Filmation, and Hanna-Barbera did. Bugs Bunny's Howl-O-Ween Special was typical of Warner Brothers' holiday specials: just a collection of four or five thematically similar shorts from their glory days of the 1940s and 50s, force-fit into a narrative by a few minutes of new linking animation.

Oh, and I'd be remiss not to mention The Halloween That Almost Wasn't, a live-action special from '79. Children are typically uncritical viewers, but I distinctly remember thinking at age four, "this is really bad." Judd Hirsch as a disco-dancing Dracula? No, thanks. I also remember the night this was aired was the last night I wet the bed (as a child -- there will be tequila-fueled incidents later.) I had been in big-boy pants for almost two years at that point, and then as now, I blamed that fluke accident on the fever dreams inspired by the horridness of this "special."

And we all know The Last Great Halloween Special was Garfield's Halloween Adventure, which debuted in 1985. I was almost eleven years old by then, not too old for specials by a long shot (clearly, being almost 36 is not too old for Halloween specials), but the landscape was changing. Animation was aiming toward shorter and shorter attention spans and toy tie-ins, and cable was making more and more inroads into the hegemony that ABC, NBC, and good ol' CBS had on TV programming.

But we won't speak of that. We're here to look back, not forward. More silly costumes and cool stuff on tap for The Holy Bee's Halloween Special Part II coming soon...

Trumped!

2010-10-04T22:27:00.000-07:00

Hey gang,

If you want to read someone doing pretty much the same thing as I am with This Used To Be My Playground, only with far more wit, brevity (obviously), insight and all-around coolness, head over to one of the Holy Bee's favorite websites The AV Club and check out Steven Hyden's Whatever Happened To Alternative Nation?

Yes, I was doing something similar first, but...Hydrox cookies came first, and who eats that crap? No, we all eat Oreos.

Just to be clear:
Holy Bee = Hydrox
AV Club = Oreos

Bastard even mentions Urge Overkill in his very first installment. Good God, man, you build to Urge Overkill!

I guess I'm doing it wrong.

Goddammitsomuch...

This Used To Be My Playground, Part 15: Strictly 4 My R.E.A.D.A.Z.

2010-09-28T21:44:00.000-07:00

I had been under the impression that my playlist followed the mainstream pretty closely, but clearly I was mistaken. Even as my memory faithfully recorded me as a tiny part of a massive movement -- everyone blissing on the same tunes at the same time -- cold, historical facts have proven me wrong. In preparing for this installment, I made the mistake of looking at the Billboard Top 100 Songs of 1993, and felt myself staring into foreign territory. Could this be my 1993? How could my memory be so at odds with reality? Nothing but mediocre soul, "New Jack Swing," and novelty pop-rap as far as the eye could see. It seems like I heard none of it at the time.

I mean, I was expecting to run across the Twin She-Beasts -- Whitney and Mariah -- in my little journey, and felt those shrill harpies could be safely ignored. But, oh, there's Janet. And Mary J. And Vanessa was still around? That minx. And just who the fuck was "Shai"? Shanice? Silk? SWV? And how were they clunking up not only the Top 100, but the Top 40? In the end it doesn't matter, because they were all faceless and interchangeable, but how did I not at least know who they were -- then or now? I thought I was on top of things. Peabo Bryson. Jade. H-Town. Robin S. Paperboy. All names on the '93 chart, and names I heard for the very first time as I sat down to write this. I was initially stunned, then ashamed. They must have been blasting from passing car stereos, the jukebox at Round Table, the pink Barbie tape player of the little neighbor kids, and over the speakers at Camelot and the Wherehouse, my homes away from home.

I somehow missed it all.

Was it only on MTV during the rare times I had it turned off? Or when a, say, Xscape video came on did I completely -- and subconsciously -- glaze over and tune out? Aaaaand we might as well deal with the elephant in the room. All of those artists are black, and I am white, and most of the artists on the playlist so far are white. But everything I love about music flows directly from the taproot of African-American culture. (No blues = no rock 'n' roll. End of story.) What happened here? Why did I tune out? My God! In my youthful ignorance, did I miss something enriching and enlightening? Are my tastes not as catholic and well-rounded as I thought?

Naaaaaah.

I went and sampled the stuff listed above, and it's pretty much all shit.

My ultimate point is that I can no longer pretend I'm capturing a zeitgeist or speaking for the masses here. My playlist is as personal and idiosyncratic as the memories that inspired it.

We are now reaping the harvest sown back in '93. Shallow, bland R&B. One-hit-wonder rap. The current state of popular music can be traced to when the flannel wave of grunge finally broke against the shore of corporate MOR pablum, and rolled back, defeated, to become as big a cultural punchline as the hair metal it replaced. Rock 'n' roll True Believers of my generation weep for the early 90's the way old ex-hippies mourn the late sixties. We had a shot to change the game, and we blew it, man. By the turn of the century, all rockers were left with were "nu-metal" and, God help us, Train. The only difference between 2010 and 1993 is that now novelty rap aggressively denies being a novelty, and our bland R&B comes from American Idol, and makes one wish melisma had never been invented. (OK, OK, Idol-bashing is very 2008, but I had to get my shot in. Fuck that show and all it represents.)

So my 1993 drifts fuzzily into 1994. Nothing stands out in my recollection (which is why I attempted jog to my memory by reviewing the old Billboard charts in the first place.) I was settled into my job as a video store clerk. I finished my first semester of college. I turned nineteen. Uh... Wayne's World 2 came out. I was content. But trouble sneaks up on little cat feet, and this short period was like the hangtime before you take the plunge on a roller coaster. There were to be troubles innumerable in '94. And '95. And '96. And '97. Fasten your seat belts, and on to the music.

#107. "Insane In The Brain" -- Cypress Hill

To keep with the uncomfortable race theme, I think that African-American music struggled in the 80's, Prince notwithstanding. It may have been the first decade since recorded music was invented that black music didn't, on average, blow away its white competition. That super-slick glossy decade processed music like cheese food. White music turned shallowness into a virtue (temporarily), but black music was sapped of its vitality. Stevie Wonder was no longer superstitious in the 80's, he was just calling to say he loved you. Whitney Houston became the new standard-bearer of R&B, to the genre's eternal detriment. It became all about cold technical virtuosity at the expense of grit and true soul. "Listen to my song" became "listen to my voice." (This is also why no one really likes Steve Vai or Joe Satriani as guitarists. No one cares how fast your fingers go, Slick, if you don't move anyone.)

But by late '93, it was about to be good again, or at least good on a widespread, noticeable level. (Public Enemy and A Tribe Called Quest were already doing good work, but were always a little off the mainstream radar.) An "early clue to the new direction" (to quote the Hard Day's Night movie), for me, was Cypress Hill. This may surprise anyone who remembers me using "novelty rap" as an invective earlier in this very essay. Cypress Hill, I think, falls into that category, and their ridiculous -- and ridiculously infectious -- odes to guns and weed (not always in that order), delivered in B-Real's ultra-nasal whine, were totally foreign to anything in my experience, but I loved the song (and the Black Sunday album) anyway. Seriously, though, no one can love pot that much, can they? For that kind of single-minded obsession over a consumable, one usually has to enter the world of cartoon cereal mascots (Trix Rabbit, etc.)

#108. "Disarm" -- Smashing Pumpkins

From one nasal whine to another, Smashing Pumpkins and their sometimes grating/sometimes brilliant adenoidal mastermind Billy Corgan were building momentum on the back of their summer release Siamese Dream. "Disarm" was the third single from the album, but it was the first to catch my ear -- an overblown piece of bombast featuring tolling church bells, swooping cellos and thunderous timpanis. It was pretty great. The Chicago music scene that spawned Smashing Pumpkins was now being touted as the "new Seattle" (along with Portland, and -- for about three weeks in early '95 -- Sacramento), but Smashing Pumpkins were never really of a piece with their peers. Unabashedly careerist and unashamed of their prog-rock influences, Smashing Pumpkins steered a course that did not always garner them a lot of love from the prickly, noise-loving indie-Chicago underground. But classifying them as an "alternative" band in the first place was merely a savvy marketing move, even though there was nothing really alternative about them. There was a lot of that faux-alt labeling going on at that time (see Ugly Kid Joe.)

#109. "Sister Havana" -- Urge Overkill

Like the Pumpkins, fellow Chicago scenesters Urge Overkill also grabbed for the gold ring of mainstream success by embracing their inner Frampton and leaping aboard a major label. Smashing Pumpkins always aspired to an arena-friendly sound, but UO got there gradually. They first made us suffer through a Steve Albini-produced debut EP and album with the thin, flat noisepunk clatter that some misguided souls thought was more "authentic." Rightly discarding that notion as rubbish, they decided they wanted to be Real Rock Stars, and doggedly continued to sweeten and beef up their sound until they finally struck pay dirt with the 1993 album Saturation -- which had hooks galore and positively wallowed in big, crunchy Cheap Trick-style riffs.

Smashing Pumpkins went for grandiosity straight-faced. Urge Overkill did it with an ironic wink. Both ultimately collapsed under their own weight. More on both of them later...

#110. "Never Said" -- Liz Phair

Urge Overkill's first album concluded with "Goodbye To Guyville," which acknowledged more than a little gender lopsidedness in the Chicago music community. Liz Phair, also a member of the local scene, borrowed the term for her acclaimed debut Exile In Guyville. Blunt, confessional lyrics combined with spare, rollicking arrangements and resulted in a critical home run. I mean, music writers could not stop praising her. And for a brief moment, she really seemed to deserve it. She did not have a great voice, but she was a savvy enough writer to understand its limitations and craft the songs accordingly (Chuck Berry did this too.) And she seemed so guileless and open it was impossible not to fall under her spell. (Most of us anyway. Hi, Jeannie H!)

But all good things come to an end, and Liz came embarrassingly a-cropper by trying remake herself as a pop diva in the 2000s. Her new nauseating new style, coupled with the fact that she's always come off when she's not performing as mildly mentally-challenged, is enough to force us to go back and look at this album and ask "was it really that good?" And the answer is...yes, it's great. Some artists have enough creative fuel for a long haul, and others burn it up in one white-hot burst and have nothing left to offer. (Dark rumors have also surfaced that producer-guitarist Brad Wood is the secret genius behind Exile. One look at his other credits is enough to scotch that theory.)

#111. "Hey Jealousy" -- Gin Blossoms
Gin Blossoms were one of those bands that were always just "around" -- hoeing the same rootsy row as later-period Soul Asylum, but lacking a dreamy, poster-friendly front-man. Gin Blossoms were vaguely liked, rarely criticized, but nobody's favorite. (Although, I suppose, they were somebody's favorite, somewhere. Somewhere out there, by process of elimination, is the world's biggest Candlebox fan. Staggers the imagination.) Though I can't really say Gin Blossoms were an incredibly special band, this song kind of was, but I didn't really zero in on it until later. It was a song about 1) losing a girl, and 2) alcoholic excess. I was about to take a schooling in both of those things, and both of those things are the basic building blocks of thousands of songs, most of them self-pitying and maudlin. But here they're presented with matter-of-fact resignation, a musical shrug, which deepens the underlying sadness without miring the song in schmaltz. If you're interested enough to be reading this, you probably know the words, but re-familiarize yourself with them. It's short (two verses), but pretty damn solid, and include what I've taken as my personal motto: "If you don't expect too much from me, you might not be let down."

#112. "Low" -- Cracker
Cracker's follow-up to their jolly debut is a prime example of the problems of the album format in the CD era. Eighty minutes of space! The average number of tracks on an album was bloating up toward fifteen or sixteen, which is at least a cool half-dozen too many. Which leads to an issue we've all lamented. Say it with me: "a few good songs, and a bunch of filler!"

It got to the point where I considered an album "good" if it had four (!) songs I liked on it. And these damn things were list-priced at $15.99! By 1996 or so, I remember saying that the primary form of recorded music should be the humble EP. An artist could showcase four or five really good songs for five or six bucks a throw. When mp3 files and iTunes and all that came along, people of a certain age wailed and gnashed their teeth over "the death of the album." Admittedly, I was wailing and gnashing along with the rest, for awhile. But it dawned on me that I don't miss shelling out almost twenty bucks for four songs. I do miss the tactile sensation of opening a new CD and nosing through its little booklet. And box sets! (pictured at right, kids) Box sets were like a little chunk of heaven that fell to earth. But I'm willing to lose that in a trade-off that will save me hundreds annually.

Anyway, there were three good songs on Cracker's Kerosene Hat, and they were "Low," "Movie Star," and "Get Off This." (Tracks 1, 2, and 3, not coincidentally) and I'll be damned if I can think of another song title or recollect another note of music on that album without cheating and checking my iTunes.

#113. "Since I Don't Have You" -- Guns N' Roses
The long anticipated implosion of Guns N' Roses finally occurred in late 1993 with the release of "The Spaghetti Incident?", which was the type of album that is the traditional signal flare of artistic bankruptcy: the covers album. Punk covers, no less, a nod to the Gunners' totally nonexistent "punk roots." It had the scent of desperation wafting off it, but truth be told, it wasn't a bad listen. The New York Dolls' "Human Being" came off particularly well. There were only two non-punk/proto-metal songs on the album: One was a "hidden track" written by Charles Manson in his pre-horrifying-slaughter, hippie-dippie aspiring songwriter days. The song wasn't full-on dreadful, but Donovan needn't fear any competition from Manson-as-minstrel, and if we needed any more reasons why Dennis Wilson gave him a wide berth, here's another. Sadly, Guns N' Roses put the song on the album solely to manufacture a controversy because they sensed interest and attention moving away from them. Naughty little piggies. The other song that didn't fit the theme was "Since I Don't Have You," a 1958 doo-wop chestnut from The Skyliners. It was Guns N' Roses' last video to air on MTV.

By the spring of '94, GN'R's presence on MTV was reduced to replacement rhythm guitarist Gilby Clarke's participation in the annual Rock and Jock Softball Challenge, half-assedly shagging grounders hit by David Justice and visibly reading "I don't understand our videos, either" off a cue card during his intro.

#114. "Linger" -- The Cranberries
Another blandly inoffensive coffeehouse folk-rock band elevated to superstar status based on very little substance. In this case, a cute front-woman and the undeniable fact that Americans find everything Irish to be super-duper cool. I had to choose between this and their '94 hit "Zombie" to represent the 'Berries on the playlist. Both have their merits. "Zombie" features lead singer Dolores O'Riordan vocalizing meaningless vowels like a howler monkey in estrus, but "Linger" gives some insight to my girlfriend at the time, Stephanie. She would often parody "Linger" by singing the line from the chorus "do you have to let it linger?" followed by a gutbuster of her own invention: "like a booger on my finger." Some (mainly the Holy Bee himself) have said in retrospect that Steph lacked a real sense of humor. Well, let the naysayers be silenced. She had one. It was just, uh, rudimentary. Like a vestigial tail.

Yes, by February of '94, the cracks in my two-year relationship with Steph were starting to show. The First Run Video triumvirate was torn asunder when Skot was let go on Groundhog's Day (too many cash register irregularities.) So no more would I hear him clear the store of a lingering customer at closing time with a cheery clap of the hands and a call of "Wrap it up, sir!" Peyman and I soldiered on. And on an innocent movie-date night around Valentine's Day, I stared into the yawning, empty abyss that was the soul of my generation, as embodied by a little flick called Reality Bites. The abyss stared back. Stay tuned.