There's something in this universe I refer to as "The Recoil Effect". Most of us have experienced it at one point or another, in one manner or another. Usually though, we aren't aware that The Recoil Effect has taken place until long after the effects have taken hold.
The best way I can explain The Recoil Effect is to imagine a gigantic metal spring... so go ahead, imagine the spring.
Are you imagining the spring? C'mon, I really need you to imagine it, otherwise the rest of this blog might be lost on you.
Oh, wait. Wait. Before you solidify the imagined spring in your head, make sure that you're thinking of a metal spring much larger than something you would find in a clock or a mattress.
We're talking an industrial metal spring used for large-type mechanics; something used in the space program, perhaps. What NASA would so with such springs is beyond me, but that's the point you're imagining it. You don't need to know.
Now take your titanic spring and press down on it. Press down on it as far as it will go. No, no, no. You're not pressing down on it hard enough; it's not completely taut yet. Press harder. Harder! You know what? Just sit on the damn thing. Sit on it. Put all your weight on it. Pretend your imaginary coiling metal spring is over packed luggage and you'll be damned if those zippers don't zip.
Go ahead sit atop your spring. Coil it up good.
So here we are sitting atop our imaginary coiled metal springs.
And now we need to remember how The Theory Of Relativity goes? I believe it's that, "every action has an inversely proportional reaction." * Which means that as hard as you coiled that spring, eventually that same spring will recoil just as hard...
And it's gonna happen in about three seconds with you sitting on top, launching you into the stratosphere. Who knows where you're going to land?
The landing is what this blog is about.
* * * * *
From the years 1994 through 1997 my mother thought I was a homosexual.
She decided to enlighten me with this information last Christmas. She just kinda dropped it into a conversation like it wasn't at all noteworthy. We were talking about falafels or something and she mentioned how throughout most of high school she assumed I was gay. Apparently my team sports and slovenly dress as an adolescent wasn't enough to dissuade my own mother of my heterosexuality.
They say "mothers always know." Well, know what exactly, because my mother got this one all wrong.
It gets worse though. Apparently, my mom discussed her feelings with my entire friggin' family. At some point between 1994 and 1997 she had little side discussions with grandmothers, aunts, uncles, my dad, and perhaps my sister, about how they might feel if one day I came out of the closet. Would they still love me? Would the family be in shambles?
Holy crap! My mind is blown.
Everywhere I went, my family kept wondering what gay thing I might bring up. Every time I was sad, they probably assumed the football jocks beat up their queer son at school. Ohmigod, all the dancing I engaged in probably seemed so much gayer than it should have.
But wait, it gets even worse. Back then, I mainly hung out with two people outside of school. I won't name them here for obvious reasons but let's call them "Jack" and "John". Jack and John were brothers and all the three of us ever did was hang out and go to movies. Which means that if my mom assumed me to be homosexual during this period, she must have also assumed that either Jack or John were my gay lover.
Ugh! I dont know how to articulate a scream in unadulterated horrific disgust on paper, but if I could, you should know that I would have inserted it here. Okay, humor me once more with you imagination and conjure up the most horrific banshee cry you can and pretend it is coming directly from my mouth. That's how horrified I am at the thought of being romantically linked to Jack or John.**
I guess I manned up a little by the time I became a senior, but I also did theater then too and almost everyone in the theater was gay. I was one of the few straight guys. And considering that I played sports throughout my first three years in high school, I'm wondering if maybe my mom doesn't actually know what gay is.
Like flammable and inflammable.
That can't be right though. That would mean gay and straight meant the same thing.
* * * * *
So where's the recoil effect, you ask?
I think it's happening now.
When someone steps out in traffic and a friend sees that they are about to be flattened to death by an oncoming bus, pulls them back and says, "Holy Hell! You almost got smashed by that oncoming bus!" nothing immediately comes about this. Usually the saved person kinda laughs or gives their pal a pat on the back. The event seems over as quickly as it started.
But then the person starts thinking about how close they were to death. They start imagining all that they would have left behind if that single instant had gone differently.
It fucks with you, to be sure. And for a little while at least, they go about doing things differently.
Every action's equal and opposite reaction.
In a way, I was gay to my family for three years. I wasn't, but to them, I might as well have been. We were living in two different realities. My mom laughs at it all now, but not me. That gay bus almost hit me and even though it's way on down the road, I too am going about things differently now.
I'm interested in every girl I come across now. Every girl is dateable. Potential is everywhere. Picky is for closeted homosexuals (apparently).
I'm recoiling.
Give me a kiss for no other reason than that I am free from the shackles of homosexuality. Love me for no other reason than because we are not of the same gender.
You have a boyfriend? No problem, don't tell him about it.
We've been friends for too long? Great! You can trust me to call you back.
You don't know me that well? Fine. Call this step one.
You're not that into me? Cool. Turn the lights out *poof* I'm Clark Gable.
We dated and you're over me? Not true. Because I was gay when you dated me and I'm straight now. It's different.
The recoil continued yesterday while I was looking for jobs on craigslist.com. Going into the film/ television/ radio section of the website, I found it to be cluttered with ads titled "Hot Models and Actresses Wanted", or "Gorgeous Female Bodies Needed For Two-Day Commercial Shoot". I didn't answer any of those ads because my female body isn't as gorgeous as it once was. But it did leave me to wonder who was answering these ads. Are beautiful people really slugging their butts around the city just to model for Cranky Jim's Used Car Emporium?
Then it hit me: the recoil. The thought crossed my mind to answer the ad, find out where all the hot models are convening and y'know... just kinda hang out. I'm a talkative type of cat. If given enough models I'm sure I can convince at least one of them that I'm not gay.
The recoil is ugly.
As bad as it would be to be a model trudging her way around the city to get to Cranky Jim's Used Car Emporium, it would be far worse to be me standing outside of Cranky Jim's waiting for pretty girls to walk by. Is this life? What am I trying to prove? And to whom am I trying to prove it?
And haven't we all seen that über-sexual guy at some party hitting on every girl that walks in front of him? We've all spied this guy and thought one of two things: either he's French or he's in denial about his obvious homosexuality. And seeing as how my French accent is almost completely gone, my recent mode of thinking is only going to land me right back into the place that sent me in this direction in the first place.
Eh crap.
I wonder what Jack and John are doing tonight.
========================================
* Since the publishing of this blog, I have been made aware of an error. Newton's Third Law of Motion is what I am referring to, not Einstein's Theory of Relativity. This further illustrates why I so rarely discuss the sciences in an open forum... because I know very little about it.
** It should be mentioned here that I haven't any problems with homosexuals or the homosexual community. Please don't misread my disgust as some sort of judgment on your lifestyle. But to all you homosexuals out there, don't act like you wouldn't be equally horrified if all of a sudden people close to you assumed you had no fashion sense, hated techno music, and instead of noticing some woman's darling broach, she erroneously thought you were staring at her tits?
You'd be horrified too.
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Monday, August 28, 2006
Let the Man Dance
I recently watched the season finale of 'So You Think You Can Dance'.
For the uninitiated 'So You Think You Can Dance' is 'American Idol' that replaces tarty songstresses with limber effeminate hoofers. And if you're unfamiliar with American Idol, might I suggest you crawl out from under your damn rock.
I will not spend this blog knocking 'So You Think You Can Dance' because frankly (and guiltily) I really enjoyed watching it. I don't particular care for 'American Idol' because I don't particularly care for trilling pretty-boys karaokeing LeAnn Rimes songs for an hour.
'So You Think You Can Dance' on the other hand, I can stand.
Unless it's interpretive dance week, then I go running from the television screaming...
I am a bird. No, I am a babbling brook. My sashaying represents Turkish strife and now I'm a tree. I am a tree. And now I will end posed like a flamingo.
I am glorious.
I am important.
I am ethereal.
You are retarded.
But most other dances are cool. They're usually fast and energized, which is more than I can say for those American Idol sissies. But this isn't about 'American Idol'. It's not even really about 'So You Think You Can Dance'. I only bring up the show because it got me waxing nostalgically on my own personal history with the art of dance. I would like to go on record as saying that I don't sashay, I don't mintz and I rarely prance.
But I do shimmy. I always shake. And it's hard for me not to bounce.
* * * * *
Summer, 1986. I loved tennis. But not really. I didn't really love tennis. I loved tennis rackets, and I didn't love tennis rackets for any sports related purpose, I loved tennis rackets because they resembled guitars. For so long I had to settle for clipping my Speak'N'Say onto my cowboy belt while singing into it's oversized microphone. And although it gave me a certain feeling of rock stardom... it wasn't the same as having a guitar, or I guess, of having a tennis racket.
My Dad made me several mix tapes as a kid and they were all like striking oil. Almost every one of those songs can be found somewhere on my Top 100 Songs of All-Time List (revealed to the public several blogs ago). The summer of 1986 is the first of such tapes. When I was six years old, I never understood why anyone did anything. I would watch videos of Bruce Springsteen and I knew that for his song 'Born In the USA' he was real angry, he kept putting his fist in the air and he enjoyed the occasional bandana. I didn't really question any of it, I just knew that I liked it... a lot.
I also didn't question how a guitar actually worked. You moved your hand around the fat end, gripped tightly to the skinny end and you strapped the guitar around your shoulder like a continental soldier.
So there I was: I took off my cowboy belt, which was oversized on me and tied one end to the skinny end of the tennis racket, and clipped the other end onto the strings of the racket.
There. Now I could wear the racket without holding it. I could pump my fist in the air, just like The Boss, because he, like me, was born in the United States.
I also had a very high dresser-drawer. It was about five-feet high and I was a bit shorter. I wrapped my Green Blanket around my head like a bandana* and set the Speak 'N' Say on top of the dresser.
Voila! A mic stand.
So I've got the bandana, a mic, a guitar strapped around my shoulder, and Dad's mix tape.
Let's rock.
I'd kill to have video of the six-year-old me lip-syncing to Springsteen telling us:
"Had a woman at Kae-San/ Fightin' North in the Vietcong/ It's still there/ She's all gone!"
What the Hell did any of that mean to a child? Who cares, man? I felt cool.
==========================
* It should be noted that my Green Blanket was actually a green dishtowel that was ripped in half and given to me by my grandmother. It wasn't very large at all, but I loved both pieces more than my own feet or hands and pretty much traveled everywhere with it. This lasted until I was thirteen.
* * * * *
Autumn, 1989. Little kids are fairly ridiculous. The human brain doesn't fully form until a person is nearly an adult, so it's fair to claim that most nine-year-olds are essentially retarded adults. And that's cool, but it nevertheless makes kids fairly ridiculous. When I was nine-years-old, my best friend's name was Tom. No one called him Tom, though, everyone called him "Spike". Even our teachers called him "Spike".
What a cool sounding nickname for a nine-year-old. I was jealous. I wanted my own cool nickname, something tough like Spike. Something that could cut glass, or better yet, would shatter right through it.
I decided that Chainsaw was what I wanted my teachers and my grandmothers and everyone else to start calling me.
What was tougher than a spike? A chainsaw.
To the world, I wanted to say, I am a chainsaw and I will rip right through your body cavity...
...okay, I probably didn't know what a body cavity was as a nine-year-old, but that was the gist of my feelings.
Not only did I want the world to refer to me as Chainsaw, I wanted it shaved into the back of my head. You have to remember, Vanilla Ice was coming on the scene and MC Hammer was the biggest star in music. He was to popularity during the autumn of 1989 what Kelly Clarkson and Shakira would be to today's popularity is they decided to date and kiss in public.
Wicked popular.
This story doesn't end with my mother allowing me to shave the word "chainsaw" into the back of my head, nor does this story end with anyone referring to me as Chainsaw at any point, even just to humor me once. Hard as I tried, no one ever called me Chainsaw.
What the story does do is lend credence to my nine-year-olds-are-the-same-as-retarded-adults theory. Because as convinced as I was that Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer were cool for having their nicknames shaved into the backs of their heads, I was also convinced that parachute pants were the fuel that allowed both those artists to dance so well.
But if my mom wasn't willing to call me Chainsaw, she damn sure wasn't prepared to buy me parachute pants.
Thinking back on it all, my parents were very stifling when it came to allowing my inner-dancer to bloom.
I had to go about my passion sneaky-style.
I snuck into my mother's room and nabbed the sweatpants she had in her drawer. They were black and didn't glimmer or have any rhinestones on it, like Hammer's pants had, but they were big on me.
I put the pants on and tightened the drawstring as tight as I could around my belly (Hammer wore his pants high) and tucked the bottoms of the sweats into my socks, so that all ends of the pants were tucked and enclosed.
What happened next was a lot of sideways sliding across the floor shouting "Ohh! Ohh! Ohh! Stop!..."
"...Hammer time!"
I remember my mom looking for her sweatpants like, a week after I had taken them. I threw them in her hamper and never took them again. But for several solid days, even if I couldn't be Chainsaw, I could, at least, resemble Hammer.
* * * * *
Summer, 1992. Several summers of my youth were spent in a rented cottage in Door County, Wisconsin. Door County is a wonderful place of peace and tranquility. I won't go into too much detail; lakes, boat docks, white pants, hunting dogs, maple syrup, hummingbirds, hammocks... you get the picture.
The problem with this was, peace and tranquility could get a little lonely without friends to drown out the silence with some sort of noise. There was no one to pretend to be in the Vietnam jungles with (a skill I had no doubt perfected after listening to all that 'Born In the USA' stuff), no one to pretend I was lost in the Carolina wilderness with like in 'Deliverance', and no one to go dinosaur hunting with me.
Essentially, I went stir crazy. And from the depths of my madness came a spastic dance of heartbreaking genius. In 1957 a little-known band by the name of The Chips created a song called 'Rubber Biscuit'. The song is essentially a novelty of which lists several types of sandwiches that someone in a maximum security mental hospital might enjoy. A rubber biscuit is one such snack.
Anyway, by 1979 The Blues Brothers opted to do a cover version of this song maintaining it's madcap energy. The words are either really simple or really difficult to memorize, depending on how you look at it because it's mostly gibberish.
Howbubbahumbubbadigga-wahwah. That type of gibberish.
Anyway, my boredom in Door County and this song's insanity collided into a crescendo of jolts and turns and knee-drops and back bends and flailing and floor slides and kicks and jerks.
If James Brown were thought up by Dr. Seuss and made to slightly resemble Bob Sagat... my Rubber Biscuit dance is surely what would have manifested.
I'm older now, but I think I can still do this dance without hurting myself and the only way we'll ever know is if my friend Sam ever shows me his infamous Beetlejuice dance.
* * * * *
Autumn, 1994. This entry, centering around my Dances of the Decades class during freshman phys-ed, should be the largest and most expansive entry found in the entire blog.
It should be. But it won't be.
I had a crush on any number of girls in that dance class and therefore frankly, I can't remember much of it. There was a foxtrot and a cha-cha, somewhere in there.
My hands were real sweaty from 12:15 -1:00 every Monday through Friday. I think I moonwalked at some point. I know how to moonwalk now, so I must have learned it then.
Anyway, dance is fun and good for the respiratory system and blah, blah, blah, but at some point growing up, dancing makes the inevitable shift from "wiggling opportunity" to "ritual steps takes to better woo romantic interests". Boy or girl, gay or straight, dancing becomes sexual, something you engage in to get attention from those you fancy. But the girls were already there in my gym class. There were as wooed as they were gonna get.
There were also like, four or five girls I was absolutely in love with... remembering the steps to the Hand-Jive was certainly not at the top of my to-do list.
* * * * *
Fall, 1996. There is something called "schwerve" in the world of dance. You cannot be taught "schwerve". Schwerve is inside you and if you're not sure whether or not you have it, it means you don't have it.
Those with schwerve are fully aware of it, sometimes it scares it's owners. Schwerve is dangerous. It creates verbal stustification in babies and can cause hair loss in dogs. Schwerve creates no sound, but if bottled, it would appear to be fire-apple red. You cannot steal schwerve of battle it. Schwerve does not speak any single language and yet if you are in schwerve's presence, you understand everything it is trying to communicate to you.
I am proud to say that I have schwerve.
It's pretty cool.
I first realized I had schwerve my junior year of high school. There is a Paul Simon song from his Rhythm of the Saints album entitled 'Diamonds On the Souls of Her Shoes'. I was way into Paul Simon during my junior year and I absolutely loved this song. I loved it so much that I made a tape of this four-and-a-half minute song looped over and over and listened to it on the way to school.
Originally, I was just happy while walking to school allowing this song to permeate my ears. But after a week or so, something happened...
My feet walked differently, my arms swung wider. I would occasionally spin in rhythm. I was smiling.
I looked crazy. But I wasn't crazy.
I was infused with schwerve.
I found myself walking down the street with so much enthusiastic schwerve that people - completely in awe - would see me coming and - get this - cross the street so as to get a better look at schwerve in full swing. I'd schwerve down a crosswalk to an orchestra of car honks and bike horns.
Even morning commuters were impressed by the presence of schwerve.
It wasn't all nectar and ambrosia though. There were some naysayers. Every once in a while a fellow commuter would shout angrily at me, claiming I looked like an idiot. Small children, in their ignorance, tended to point and laugh.
Old women would shake their heads.
Dogs barked.
But I understood why this was. I knew that people feared what they could not understand. Schwerve is a scary thing and so was the power harnessed in my morning dance to school listening to my 'Diamonds On the Soles of Her Shoes' tape. I was bad. I was dangerous. I was intimidating. I was a dancer with schwerve.
Think James Dean.
Think Elvis Presley.
Think crack-cocaine.
Think pitbulls.
Think bazookas.
Think of these things when you think upon my schwerve.
* * * * *
Winter, 1999. I did a few musical theater productions in college. Not a lot to add here. My schwerve didn't leave me, so the ladies dug it. One of the plays was 'The Pajama Game', which was also a fine film with Doris Day.
I was not cast in the Doris Day role.
But they did give me a lot of opportunities to snap my fingers and fiddles with my suspenders, which only served to enhance my schwerviness.
The second play was a little known Berthold Brecht play that found me playing a singing and dancing thug, which is about as close to 'A Clockwork Orange' as I imagine ever being. I punched some dudes and then danced with my own nightstick.
It was a departure for me.
* * * * *
Spring, 2004. Everyone should attend Mardi Gras at least once. This is not a recommendation, not necessarily. It is just something I feel everyone should have in their emotional background, much in the same way I feel each of us should have at least six months of retail sales experience somewhere in our background.
In both cases, I feel it makes us better people.
My Mardi Gras experience was fairly normal. Lots of boobs, flashing lights, booze, fat guy man-boobs, beads, jester masks, purple, green and yellow, gumbo, crawfish, jazz, Cajuns, hot sauce, boobs, beads, a few more boobs, and a little more booze. Oh, and dancing. My rat pack of ten danced so much in the week we were in Louisiana that strangers tried to infiltrate our clique and become eleventh members.
The spring of 2004 was the height of Outkast's hit 'Hey Ya!'. And although I am fully aware that this song was popular throughout the world, very few earthlings are aware that 'Hey Ya!' is my song. Others are perfectly welcome to listen to it, but it is not theirs.
It's mine.
So there we were, a big circle in some bar somewhere in New Orleans dancing feverishly to Outkast when a man taller than myself and bigger than two of me stuck together weaseled his way into our circle. Odd as it was, he wasn't bumping his crotch against any of my girlfriends like most meatheads are known to do, he was dancing next to me.
He wasn't wearing pink. His hair wasn't masterfully coiffed. He wasn't drinking a mojito. From what I could tell about this guy - he wasn't gay.
But he sure wasn't leaving my side either.
I became uncomfortable. I wanted this guy gone. I angled my back away from him and shimmied our little circle away from his gyrations.
The meathead didn't like this.
Without missing a step, he rhythmically knocked my hat off my head...and continued wiggling.
His eyes were glued to mine. He was still dancing.
I picked my hat off the ground; the meathead was still staring at me, still swaying.
I was creeped out. I could taste a little of my own vomit.
Was I about to get punched or spun and then dipped?
He set his drink down and motioned for me to come toward him...
...Wait. Not come toward him, I was being told to "bring it".
Wait, "bring it"? But that would mean...
Ohmigod! I was in a dance-off!
Damn my generally awesome schwerve. Look what it got me into this time!
I was in a dance-off with Andre the Giant.
Andre the Giant knocked the hat off my head and wanted to trade move for move.
I don't really remember what happened next, but I very well may have "cabbage-patched" and then fell unconscious. I can't be sure. My friends pulled me away.
I don't dance-off with guys. Guys can't dance-off with anyone but girls. There's just too much that can go wrong. To this day, I'm still squeamish about the party dance circle. It always flashes me back to New Orleans meatheads and how threatened they become with my "schwerve" during 'Hey Ya!
My schwerve is dangerous, it's been known to break hearts and mold minds.
* * * * *
New Years Morning, 1998-present. This final example of my love affair with dance isn't so much an example of dance as it is an example of energy. For the last eight years, my friends and I have established 'Glory Days' by Bruce Springsteen to be played each year at exactly midnight. Auld Lang Sine is fine for your mama, but that song is an old acquaintance that needs to be forgot.
So we forgot it and brought in the Boss.
Rare is the January 1st where you will not find me on the couch screaming my head off that this-right now- is are our glory days.
Afterwards, we play The Who.
I don't care who you are (who-who, who-who... ahem, sorry) or how great of an air guitarist you think you are; my air bandmates and I will crush you. Six minutes of 'Baba O'Riley' and eight minutes of 'Won't Get Fooled Again' all complete with guitar, drums, bass, my schwerve, violin, and occasional keyboard (I mean honestly, when's the last time you saw an air-keyboard?) equates to our air band punk-rocking the plaster out of your air band.
I've watched many old Who concerts and have since noticed that Keith Moon, rarely drums straight through two complete songs. There's a lot of water breaks in there and they never play 'Fooled' and 'Baba' back-to-back.
I'm not claiming I'm a better drummer than Keith Moon, I am just claiming to be a better air drummer than you.
Eat it reader.
I'm out...
[ ...a loud screech pulsates through the arena as the microphone is dropped immediately to the floor and your noble narrator walks off the stage. ]
* * * * *
For the uninitiated 'So You Think You Can Dance' is 'American Idol' that replaces tarty songstresses with limber effeminate hoofers. And if you're unfamiliar with American Idol, might I suggest you crawl out from under your damn rock.
I will not spend this blog knocking 'So You Think You Can Dance' because frankly (and guiltily) I really enjoyed watching it. I don't particular care for 'American Idol' because I don't particularly care for trilling pretty-boys karaokeing LeAnn Rimes songs for an hour.
'So You Think You Can Dance' on the other hand, I can stand.
Unless it's interpretive dance week, then I go running from the television screaming...
I am a bird. No, I am a babbling brook. My sashaying represents Turkish strife and now I'm a tree. I am a tree. And now I will end posed like a flamingo.
I am glorious.
I am important.
I am ethereal.
You are retarded.
But most other dances are cool. They're usually fast and energized, which is more than I can say for those American Idol sissies. But this isn't about 'American Idol'. It's not even really about 'So You Think You Can Dance'. I only bring up the show because it got me waxing nostalgically on my own personal history with the art of dance. I would like to go on record as saying that I don't sashay, I don't mintz and I rarely prance.
But I do shimmy. I always shake. And it's hard for me not to bounce.
* * * * *
Summer, 1986. I loved tennis. But not really. I didn't really love tennis. I loved tennis rackets, and I didn't love tennis rackets for any sports related purpose, I loved tennis rackets because they resembled guitars. For so long I had to settle for clipping my Speak'N'Say onto my cowboy belt while singing into it's oversized microphone. And although it gave me a certain feeling of rock stardom... it wasn't the same as having a guitar, or I guess, of having a tennis racket.
My Dad made me several mix tapes as a kid and they were all like striking oil. Almost every one of those songs can be found somewhere on my Top 100 Songs of All-Time List (revealed to the public several blogs ago). The summer of 1986 is the first of such tapes. When I was six years old, I never understood why anyone did anything. I would watch videos of Bruce Springsteen and I knew that for his song 'Born In the USA' he was real angry, he kept putting his fist in the air and he enjoyed the occasional bandana. I didn't really question any of it, I just knew that I liked it... a lot.
I also didn't question how a guitar actually worked. You moved your hand around the fat end, gripped tightly to the skinny end and you strapped the guitar around your shoulder like a continental soldier.
So there I was: I took off my cowboy belt, which was oversized on me and tied one end to the skinny end of the tennis racket, and clipped the other end onto the strings of the racket.
There. Now I could wear the racket without holding it. I could pump my fist in the air, just like The Boss, because he, like me, was born in the United States.
I also had a very high dresser-drawer. It was about five-feet high and I was a bit shorter. I wrapped my Green Blanket around my head like a bandana* and set the Speak 'N' Say on top of the dresser.
Voila! A mic stand.
So I've got the bandana, a mic, a guitar strapped around my shoulder, and Dad's mix tape.
Let's rock.
I'd kill to have video of the six-year-old me lip-syncing to Springsteen telling us:
"Had a woman at Kae-San/ Fightin' North in the Vietcong/ It's still there/ She's all gone!"
What the Hell did any of that mean to a child? Who cares, man? I felt cool.
==========================
* It should be noted that my Green Blanket was actually a green dishtowel that was ripped in half and given to me by my grandmother. It wasn't very large at all, but I loved both pieces more than my own feet or hands and pretty much traveled everywhere with it. This lasted until I was thirteen.
* * * * *
Autumn, 1989. Little kids are fairly ridiculous. The human brain doesn't fully form until a person is nearly an adult, so it's fair to claim that most nine-year-olds are essentially retarded adults. And that's cool, but it nevertheless makes kids fairly ridiculous. When I was nine-years-old, my best friend's name was Tom. No one called him Tom, though, everyone called him "Spike". Even our teachers called him "Spike".
What a cool sounding nickname for a nine-year-old. I was jealous. I wanted my own cool nickname, something tough like Spike. Something that could cut glass, or better yet, would shatter right through it.
I decided that Chainsaw was what I wanted my teachers and my grandmothers and everyone else to start calling me.
What was tougher than a spike? A chainsaw.
To the world, I wanted to say, I am a chainsaw and I will rip right through your body cavity...
...okay, I probably didn't know what a body cavity was as a nine-year-old, but that was the gist of my feelings.
Not only did I want the world to refer to me as Chainsaw, I wanted it shaved into the back of my head. You have to remember, Vanilla Ice was coming on the scene and MC Hammer was the biggest star in music. He was to popularity during the autumn of 1989 what Kelly Clarkson and Shakira would be to today's popularity is they decided to date and kiss in public.
Wicked popular.
This story doesn't end with my mother allowing me to shave the word "chainsaw" into the back of my head, nor does this story end with anyone referring to me as Chainsaw at any point, even just to humor me once. Hard as I tried, no one ever called me Chainsaw.
What the story does do is lend credence to my nine-year-olds-are-the-same-as-retarded-adults theory. Because as convinced as I was that Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer were cool for having their nicknames shaved into the backs of their heads, I was also convinced that parachute pants were the fuel that allowed both those artists to dance so well.
But if my mom wasn't willing to call me Chainsaw, she damn sure wasn't prepared to buy me parachute pants.
Thinking back on it all, my parents were very stifling when it came to allowing my inner-dancer to bloom.
I had to go about my passion sneaky-style.
I snuck into my mother's room and nabbed the sweatpants she had in her drawer. They were black and didn't glimmer or have any rhinestones on it, like Hammer's pants had, but they were big on me.
I put the pants on and tightened the drawstring as tight as I could around my belly (Hammer wore his pants high) and tucked the bottoms of the sweats into my socks, so that all ends of the pants were tucked and enclosed.
What happened next was a lot of sideways sliding across the floor shouting "Ohh! Ohh! Ohh! Stop!..."
"...Hammer time!"
I remember my mom looking for her sweatpants like, a week after I had taken them. I threw them in her hamper and never took them again. But for several solid days, even if I couldn't be Chainsaw, I could, at least, resemble Hammer.
* * * * *
Summer, 1992. Several summers of my youth were spent in a rented cottage in Door County, Wisconsin. Door County is a wonderful place of peace and tranquility. I won't go into too much detail; lakes, boat docks, white pants, hunting dogs, maple syrup, hummingbirds, hammocks... you get the picture.
The problem with this was, peace and tranquility could get a little lonely without friends to drown out the silence with some sort of noise. There was no one to pretend to be in the Vietnam jungles with (a skill I had no doubt perfected after listening to all that 'Born In the USA' stuff), no one to pretend I was lost in the Carolina wilderness with like in 'Deliverance', and no one to go dinosaur hunting with me.
Essentially, I went stir crazy. And from the depths of my madness came a spastic dance of heartbreaking genius. In 1957 a little-known band by the name of The Chips created a song called 'Rubber Biscuit'. The song is essentially a novelty of which lists several types of sandwiches that someone in a maximum security mental hospital might enjoy. A rubber biscuit is one such snack.
Anyway, by 1979 The Blues Brothers opted to do a cover version of this song maintaining it's madcap energy. The words are either really simple or really difficult to memorize, depending on how you look at it because it's mostly gibberish.
Howbubbahumbubbadigga-wahwah. That type of gibberish.
Anyway, my boredom in Door County and this song's insanity collided into a crescendo of jolts and turns and knee-drops and back bends and flailing and floor slides and kicks and jerks.
If James Brown were thought up by Dr. Seuss and made to slightly resemble Bob Sagat... my Rubber Biscuit dance is surely what would have manifested.
I'm older now, but I think I can still do this dance without hurting myself and the only way we'll ever know is if my friend Sam ever shows me his infamous Beetlejuice dance.
* * * * *
Autumn, 1994. This entry, centering around my Dances of the Decades class during freshman phys-ed, should be the largest and most expansive entry found in the entire blog.
It should be. But it won't be.
I had a crush on any number of girls in that dance class and therefore frankly, I can't remember much of it. There was a foxtrot and a cha-cha, somewhere in there.
My hands were real sweaty from 12:15 -1:00 every Monday through Friday. I think I moonwalked at some point. I know how to moonwalk now, so I must have learned it then.
Anyway, dance is fun and good for the respiratory system and blah, blah, blah, but at some point growing up, dancing makes the inevitable shift from "wiggling opportunity" to "ritual steps takes to better woo romantic interests". Boy or girl, gay or straight, dancing becomes sexual, something you engage in to get attention from those you fancy. But the girls were already there in my gym class. There were as wooed as they were gonna get.
There were also like, four or five girls I was absolutely in love with... remembering the steps to the Hand-Jive was certainly not at the top of my to-do list.
* * * * *
Fall, 1996. There is something called "schwerve" in the world of dance. You cannot be taught "schwerve". Schwerve is inside you and if you're not sure whether or not you have it, it means you don't have it.
Those with schwerve are fully aware of it, sometimes it scares it's owners. Schwerve is dangerous. It creates verbal stustification in babies and can cause hair loss in dogs. Schwerve creates no sound, but if bottled, it would appear to be fire-apple red. You cannot steal schwerve of battle it. Schwerve does not speak any single language and yet if you are in schwerve's presence, you understand everything it is trying to communicate to you.
I am proud to say that I have schwerve.
It's pretty cool.
I first realized I had schwerve my junior year of high school. There is a Paul Simon song from his Rhythm of the Saints album entitled 'Diamonds On the Souls of Her Shoes'. I was way into Paul Simon during my junior year and I absolutely loved this song. I loved it so much that I made a tape of this four-and-a-half minute song looped over and over and listened to it on the way to school.
Originally, I was just happy while walking to school allowing this song to permeate my ears. But after a week or so, something happened...
My feet walked differently, my arms swung wider. I would occasionally spin in rhythm. I was smiling.
I looked crazy. But I wasn't crazy.
I was infused with schwerve.
I found myself walking down the street with so much enthusiastic schwerve that people - completely in awe - would see me coming and - get this - cross the street so as to get a better look at schwerve in full swing. I'd schwerve down a crosswalk to an orchestra of car honks and bike horns.
Even morning commuters were impressed by the presence of schwerve.
It wasn't all nectar and ambrosia though. There were some naysayers. Every once in a while a fellow commuter would shout angrily at me, claiming I looked like an idiot. Small children, in their ignorance, tended to point and laugh.
Old women would shake their heads.
Dogs barked.
But I understood why this was. I knew that people feared what they could not understand. Schwerve is a scary thing and so was the power harnessed in my morning dance to school listening to my 'Diamonds On the Soles of Her Shoes' tape. I was bad. I was dangerous. I was intimidating. I was a dancer with schwerve.
Think James Dean.
Think Elvis Presley.
Think crack-cocaine.
Think pitbulls.
Think bazookas.
Think of these things when you think upon my schwerve.
* * * * *
Winter, 1999. I did a few musical theater productions in college. Not a lot to add here. My schwerve didn't leave me, so the ladies dug it. One of the plays was 'The Pajama Game', which was also a fine film with Doris Day.
I was not cast in the Doris Day role.
But they did give me a lot of opportunities to snap my fingers and fiddles with my suspenders, which only served to enhance my schwerviness.
The second play was a little known Berthold Brecht play that found me playing a singing and dancing thug, which is about as close to 'A Clockwork Orange' as I imagine ever being. I punched some dudes and then danced with my own nightstick.
It was a departure for me.
* * * * *
Spring, 2004. Everyone should attend Mardi Gras at least once. This is not a recommendation, not necessarily. It is just something I feel everyone should have in their emotional background, much in the same way I feel each of us should have at least six months of retail sales experience somewhere in our background.
In both cases, I feel it makes us better people.
My Mardi Gras experience was fairly normal. Lots of boobs, flashing lights, booze, fat guy man-boobs, beads, jester masks, purple, green and yellow, gumbo, crawfish, jazz, Cajuns, hot sauce, boobs, beads, a few more boobs, and a little more booze. Oh, and dancing. My rat pack of ten danced so much in the week we were in Louisiana that strangers tried to infiltrate our clique and become eleventh members.
The spring of 2004 was the height of Outkast's hit 'Hey Ya!'. And although I am fully aware that this song was popular throughout the world, very few earthlings are aware that 'Hey Ya!' is my song. Others are perfectly welcome to listen to it, but it is not theirs.
It's mine.
So there we were, a big circle in some bar somewhere in New Orleans dancing feverishly to Outkast when a man taller than myself and bigger than two of me stuck together weaseled his way into our circle. Odd as it was, he wasn't bumping his crotch against any of my girlfriends like most meatheads are known to do, he was dancing next to me.
He wasn't wearing pink. His hair wasn't masterfully coiffed. He wasn't drinking a mojito. From what I could tell about this guy - he wasn't gay.
But he sure wasn't leaving my side either.
I became uncomfortable. I wanted this guy gone. I angled my back away from him and shimmied our little circle away from his gyrations.
The meathead didn't like this.
Without missing a step, he rhythmically knocked my hat off my head...and continued wiggling.
His eyes were glued to mine. He was still dancing.
I picked my hat off the ground; the meathead was still staring at me, still swaying.
I was creeped out. I could taste a little of my own vomit.
Was I about to get punched or spun and then dipped?
He set his drink down and motioned for me to come toward him...
...Wait. Not come toward him, I was being told to "bring it".
Wait, "bring it"? But that would mean...
Ohmigod! I was in a dance-off!
Damn my generally awesome schwerve. Look what it got me into this time!
I was in a dance-off with Andre the Giant.
Andre the Giant knocked the hat off my head and wanted to trade move for move.
I don't really remember what happened next, but I very well may have "cabbage-patched" and then fell unconscious. I can't be sure. My friends pulled me away.
I don't dance-off with guys. Guys can't dance-off with anyone but girls. There's just too much that can go wrong. To this day, I'm still squeamish about the party dance circle. It always flashes me back to New Orleans meatheads and how threatened they become with my "schwerve" during 'Hey Ya!
My schwerve is dangerous, it's been known to break hearts and mold minds.
* * * * *
New Years Morning, 1998-present. This final example of my love affair with dance isn't so much an example of dance as it is an example of energy. For the last eight years, my friends and I have established 'Glory Days' by Bruce Springsteen to be played each year at exactly midnight. Auld Lang Sine is fine for your mama, but that song is an old acquaintance that needs to be forgot.
So we forgot it and brought in the Boss.
Rare is the January 1st where you will not find me on the couch screaming my head off that this-right now- is are our glory days.
Afterwards, we play The Who.
I don't care who you are (who-who, who-who... ahem, sorry) or how great of an air guitarist you think you are; my air bandmates and I will crush you. Six minutes of 'Baba O'Riley' and eight minutes of 'Won't Get Fooled Again' all complete with guitar, drums, bass, my schwerve, violin, and occasional keyboard (I mean honestly, when's the last time you saw an air-keyboard?) equates to our air band punk-rocking the plaster out of your air band.
I've watched many old Who concerts and have since noticed that Keith Moon, rarely drums straight through two complete songs. There's a lot of water breaks in there and they never play 'Fooled' and 'Baba' back-to-back.
I'm not claiming I'm a better drummer than Keith Moon, I am just claiming to be a better air drummer than you.
Eat it reader.
I'm out...
[ ...a loud screech pulsates through the arena as the microphone is dropped immediately to the floor and your noble narrator walks off the stage. ]
* * * * *
Friday, August 18, 2006
Goodbye Beantown
On September 8, 2003 I left home for the first time in my life to live in Baltimore, MD. One of the most crime-riddled, poverty-stricken, drug-filled cities in America. I lived there for one year serving as a volunteer teacher in an Eastern Baltimore borough.
One year later on September 21, 2004, I left Baltimore to live in Boston, MA. A decidedly safer city, but one that caused me just as many emotional disillusionments. I stayed there for nearly two years.
Today is August 18, 2006. I will leave Boston in 77 hours to return to Chicago, IL. and I have no idea when or if I will ever come back.
I will not return home the same person as I left nearly three years ago.
Not even close.
* * * * *
"It's a damn shame, kiddo."
This is what comes to mind as J.P. and I stare absently up the trunk of an ancient oak tree located in J.P.'s backyard. J.P. is the student with whom I have spent the past fourteen months everyday after school doing my best instill common daily life skills.
The ancient oak tree was located in his front yard.
Located in the ancient oak tree was a brand-new basketball that J.P. tossed in between two of it's branches. The ball is less than a week old.
I continue, "It seems like everything oughta have some sort of fanfare, huh? Whether it's beginning or ending, everything ought to get it's proper due. Like a graduation."
J.P. grows bored with staring up at the ball in the tree. He sidles several steps away from me and plops exhaustively onto the freshly mowed grass. J.P. sits on his legs as if in prayer and rests his head on his chest like it was too heavy to hold up any longer.
I look at him for a moment. I've seen him sit like this before; like a tired child. It's annoying, especially for a 21-year-old man who hasn't done nearly enough physical activity to warrant such apparent fatigue.
"Oh. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Sure.", is J.P.'s only reply to my thoughts.
I don't know what response I was expecting for him. A miracle perhaps. I've been his best friend for fourteen months. I've taught him everything I could think of about becoming more independent. I've applied endless hours toward making him into what society dictates is "a better person".
At the end of 'The Usual Suspects' Kevin Spacey reveals that he is much smarter and more able than everyone gave him credit for. It took him until the end of the film to reveal it, but the revelation came nevertheless.
I guess I hoped for J.P. to appear the same way near that oak tree today... our final day together.
Instead of any such recognition that I've influenced his life, he spreads his body lying on the grass in a loose fetal position. If I allowed him to, he would fall asleep like this until his mother came home.
If I wanted that basketball out of the tree, I was on my own.
I continue as if we were actually engaged in a back-and-forth conversation, "It just doesn't seem right. Before you ever really had a chance to take advantage of the ball... it's gone."
No answer.
"It'll come down eventually, huh?"
Without looking at me, or even sitting up slightly, he replies, "Oh sure. Sure."
I continue staring upward into this massive tree, trying to figure out how this weakling launched the ball so high. It doesn't matter. None of it much matters, because this is the last contact I will ever have with this person. There is no work left for me to accomplish now.
I have spent more hours with this autistic person than anyone else in the past year; it seems a conversation is the least that the two of us can share, here. Now, with the minutes dwindling.
"Seems like we ought to have some sort of commencement for your basketball, man. We just got it and it's gone. You and I didn't get much of a game going."
Nothing I've said has anything to do with a basketball, really. J.P. gets up and walks toward the door leading inside to the den. It's almost time for his favorite television show, Oprah. Another habit of his I couldn't break.
"The game's over. Just like that. Without warning."
J.P. is already halfway into the house and wouldn't be listening even if he could hear me.
One last look up in the tree before I leave it there for good. One last hope for the Hollywood surprise ending. One last conversation. One last blog for my old home.
One last time.
One year later on September 21, 2004, I left Baltimore to live in Boston, MA. A decidedly safer city, but one that caused me just as many emotional disillusionments. I stayed there for nearly two years.
Today is August 18, 2006. I will leave Boston in 77 hours to return to Chicago, IL. and I have no idea when or if I will ever come back.
I will not return home the same person as I left nearly three years ago.
Not even close.
* * * * *
"It's a damn shame, kiddo."
This is what comes to mind as J.P. and I stare absently up the trunk of an ancient oak tree located in J.P.'s backyard. J.P. is the student with whom I have spent the past fourteen months everyday after school doing my best instill common daily life skills.
The ancient oak tree was located in his front yard.
Located in the ancient oak tree was a brand-new basketball that J.P. tossed in between two of it's branches. The ball is less than a week old.
I continue, "It seems like everything oughta have some sort of fanfare, huh? Whether it's beginning or ending, everything ought to get it's proper due. Like a graduation."
J.P. grows bored with staring up at the ball in the tree. He sidles several steps away from me and plops exhaustively onto the freshly mowed grass. J.P. sits on his legs as if in prayer and rests his head on his chest like it was too heavy to hold up any longer.
I look at him for a moment. I've seen him sit like this before; like a tired child. It's annoying, especially for a 21-year-old man who hasn't done nearly enough physical activity to warrant such apparent fatigue.
"Oh. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Sure.", is J.P.'s only reply to my thoughts.
I don't know what response I was expecting for him. A miracle perhaps. I've been his best friend for fourteen months. I've taught him everything I could think of about becoming more independent. I've applied endless hours toward making him into what society dictates is "a better person".
At the end of 'The Usual Suspects' Kevin Spacey reveals that he is much smarter and more able than everyone gave him credit for. It took him until the end of the film to reveal it, but the revelation came nevertheless.
I guess I hoped for J.P. to appear the same way near that oak tree today... our final day together.
Instead of any such recognition that I've influenced his life, he spreads his body lying on the grass in a loose fetal position. If I allowed him to, he would fall asleep like this until his mother came home.
If I wanted that basketball out of the tree, I was on my own.
I continue as if we were actually engaged in a back-and-forth conversation, "It just doesn't seem right. Before you ever really had a chance to take advantage of the ball... it's gone."
No answer.
"It'll come down eventually, huh?"
Without looking at me, or even sitting up slightly, he replies, "Oh sure. Sure."
I continue staring upward into this massive tree, trying to figure out how this weakling launched the ball so high. It doesn't matter. None of it much matters, because this is the last contact I will ever have with this person. There is no work left for me to accomplish now.
I have spent more hours with this autistic person than anyone else in the past year; it seems a conversation is the least that the two of us can share, here. Now, with the minutes dwindling.
"Seems like we ought to have some sort of commencement for your basketball, man. We just got it and it's gone. You and I didn't get much of a game going."
Nothing I've said has anything to do with a basketball, really. J.P. gets up and walks toward the door leading inside to the den. It's almost time for his favorite television show, Oprah. Another habit of his I couldn't break.
"The game's over. Just like that. Without warning."
J.P. is already halfway into the house and wouldn't be listening even if he could hear me.
One last look up in the tree before I leave it there for good. One last hope for the Hollywood surprise ending. One last conversation. One last blog for my old home.
One last time.
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Hello Beantown, part 3
The bar scene in Boston was unlike any I had experienced in Chicago. It wasn't dangerous or sleazy or depressing. It was comforting; a place where people from all walks of life could mingle and mix and ajoin. College-types and thirtysomethings gathered in various pubs throughout the city ( I assume. I can't say I was at every pub in the city) to escape the times recently thrust upon the world. The Second Iraqi War started ten hour previous to our departure toward the east coast. Seemingly, the best way to escape the anger and fear of what was happening was to cluster in taverns and watch the NCAA basketball tournament, which had also begun during our departure toward the east coast.
The stretch of bars near Fanneuil Hall had several places with big bay windows open to the public. We stood in front of the Ball & Hand Tavern which is purportedly the oldest pub in America and watched the end of a game through the window. The weather was unseasonably warm, so it was no sweat off our brow to stand there.
"I love the people inside not even watching the game.", said Lindsay as she noticed a couple having a conversation at a table while the impossibly jam-packed bar went crazy. Soon after this comment, a huge bald man, drink in hand, sitting inside the bar but seperated from us only by the open window turns to us and says, "If they're not careful, they're gonna get tossed out of here. Sheesh."
He shook his head and stared back at the television.
At that moment, a group of pedestrians on the opposite side of the street noticed the crowd of spectators in and around the bar and yelled to anyone who might be listening, "Hey, what's the score?!"
From inside the bar, a chorus would ring back, "61-58!"
The friends surrounding the man yelling from across the street began to laugh. The shouter wasn't satisfied yet though, "Who's up?"
The chorus rebuttled, "Michigan State!"
One last thing, "How much time is left?"
Only one guy inside the bar answered this time. I guess crowds have only so much patience, like when they are asked to clap in rhythm at concerts. The one kind soul to answer the shouter's queery said, "Less than a minute left!"
The shouter, taken aback, said, "Three points! Are you kidding?"
The shouter turned to his four friends, said something quickly and ran across the street to stand next to us in the window. Turning to Kelly, he said, "I can't miss this."
His friends continued walking down the street.
People say they believe in love at first sight. I don't know if I believe it, but I can pinpoint the moment I realized that at some point in my life, I will be living in this city, and that moment was when this guy decided to leave his friends and join strangers standing in front of a bar window.
I love this town. Wait, I'm sorry. I'm in-love with this town.
We regrouped back at the hotel with plans to venture out later in the night. All I had to do was put my shoes back on, but my two girls were adament about needing to "prepare", which was like watching a figurative reenactment of Darwin's Theory of Evolution! Kelly futzed with her hair for a torturous amount of time, while Lindsay switched between skirts and pants and then back again. Meanwhile I'm sitting all alone in the corner of the room like a small child wondering when I get to go outside and play. Enough time passed that I became paranoid. I began wondering just where we were going that these two girls were dolling themselves up so much.
Crap. I've seen how this plays out before.
Two girls - single.
One guy - single.
Girls get dolled up, guy keeps his ratty shirt on - all three go out for the night.
Guy camps Girls' style.
Girls ditch Guy and go flirting off on their own.
Guy sips Smirnoff Ice in the corner pretending he's having the time of his life.
Girls hit it big (the extra two hours in the bathroom pay off).
Guy realizes Smirnoff Ice is a girl's drink and is hit with the urge to go home.
Guy realizes he doesn't know his way home, suddenly wants a smoothie.
Girls have the time of their lives, Guy sleeps in the alleyway behind the pub until the Girls find him the next morning.
I ended up changing my socks and I ran a comb through my hair. I couldn't let those girls show me up.
One of the more pleasent evenings in recent memory was spent in the Italian neighborhood known as the North End. Seemingly one of the oldest parts of town, I noticed a lot of old men hanging outside the numerous italian restaurants. They would compliment all the young girls walking by and ignore the men. The concesus seemed to be that these old shop owners were sweet, but had this been the governmental district instead of the North End, I'm sure they would have been considered crazy.
It felt like an old movie here.
Paul Revere's house was in this neighborhood and it, much like 2/3 of the other buildings, were made of old battered brick that added what mom might call "a wonderful charm" to the city. So many of the restaurants we walked by (we had a hard time deciding where to eat) basked in the pride of their heritage and reveled in their "old country" ways.
It was right after we ate a fine Italian cuisine in the North End that the three of us decided to partake in a night of improvised comedy. Those of you who know me well know that there are few things I enjoy more than live comedy and I was grateful to Lindsay, for making the arrangements. As we arrived at the club, the bouncer asked to see all our driver's licences. We gave them to him; he noticed we were from Illinois (I said I lived right outside of Chicago), and he replied impressed, "Chicago? That's the home of improv comedy there, huh?"
He was correct.
But I suddenly got nervous. I enjoy live comedy, but I don't want to be a part of it and I worried that if word got around to the comedians that someone from comedy's homeland was in the audience, surely they would have zeroed in on me. My assumption was that we were lucky to score tickets on such a short notice and that we'd be stuck near the back of the theater. And as far as I know, they never call people fro mthe back to participate. the hostess showed us into the theater and told us that our seats are in A1, A2 and A3...
...Front row. Center.
Wait. Really?
The place was packed, how the Hell did we get seats right in front?
We spent the first half hour fairly nervous that we'd be asked on stage. And while no one was forced to do anything, Kelly did offer up a few improvosational suggestions. When she was brutally rebuffed by one of the performers both girls thought was cute, Kelly turned to us, embarrassed and said, "I'm never going to talk again."
It was getting a little later now but there was still enough time to visit a pastry shop called Mike's. This place stayed open as late as the bars and probably did better business. From there we went home, not greedy enough to ask anything more from the night.
It was wonderful.
* * * * *
There were a lot of things about Boston that I am leaving out here. I haven't mentioned the abundance of basketball hoops in Massachusetts, nor my follies (plural) at trying to order drinks in the wild pig-toss Boston calls it's taverns, I left out the fact that 2/3 of our little group are snorers, nor did I discuss many minute details of the city itself. This is a travelogue, why would I talk about the destination of my travel.
Often times, unless you live in or plan to revisit a certain place, a person's travel stories are boring and impersonal. Some of you have been to or live in Boston now - maybe you found an outsider's take amusing. some of you have never been and maybe I've convinced you that it's a great place to be. All I know is that I came to Boston with a friend to see a friend and expected very little from the town itself. I assumed that coming from the second City, nothing short of Italy or Spain would impress me.
I was wrong.
I fell in love with the town (take note: I'm saying "in-love" now. That's like four "likes" in a row).
In the end there are only two things that I am sure of. the first is that I had one of the best times of my life in Boston. The second is that I'll be back. I'm not sure when and I'm not sure for how long, but I need to be back so that my body can revisit the place my heart never left.
The End.
The stretch of bars near Fanneuil Hall had several places with big bay windows open to the public. We stood in front of the Ball & Hand Tavern which is purportedly the oldest pub in America and watched the end of a game through the window. The weather was unseasonably warm, so it was no sweat off our brow to stand there.
"I love the people inside not even watching the game.", said Lindsay as she noticed a couple having a conversation at a table while the impossibly jam-packed bar went crazy. Soon after this comment, a huge bald man, drink in hand, sitting inside the bar but seperated from us only by the open window turns to us and says, "If they're not careful, they're gonna get tossed out of here. Sheesh."
He shook his head and stared back at the television.
At that moment, a group of pedestrians on the opposite side of the street noticed the crowd of spectators in and around the bar and yelled to anyone who might be listening, "Hey, what's the score?!"
From inside the bar, a chorus would ring back, "61-58!"
The friends surrounding the man yelling from across the street began to laugh. The shouter wasn't satisfied yet though, "Who's up?"
The chorus rebuttled, "Michigan State!"
One last thing, "How much time is left?"
Only one guy inside the bar answered this time. I guess crowds have only so much patience, like when they are asked to clap in rhythm at concerts. The one kind soul to answer the shouter's queery said, "Less than a minute left!"
The shouter, taken aback, said, "Three points! Are you kidding?"
The shouter turned to his four friends, said something quickly and ran across the street to stand next to us in the window. Turning to Kelly, he said, "I can't miss this."
His friends continued walking down the street.
People say they believe in love at first sight. I don't know if I believe it, but I can pinpoint the moment I realized that at some point in my life, I will be living in this city, and that moment was when this guy decided to leave his friends and join strangers standing in front of a bar window.
I love this town. Wait, I'm sorry. I'm in-love with this town.
We regrouped back at the hotel with plans to venture out later in the night. All I had to do was put my shoes back on, but my two girls were adament about needing to "prepare", which was like watching a figurative reenactment of Darwin's Theory of Evolution! Kelly futzed with her hair for a torturous amount of time, while Lindsay switched between skirts and pants and then back again. Meanwhile I'm sitting all alone in the corner of the room like a small child wondering when I get to go outside and play. Enough time passed that I became paranoid. I began wondering just where we were going that these two girls were dolling themselves up so much.
Crap. I've seen how this plays out before.
Two girls - single.
One guy - single.
Girls get dolled up, guy keeps his ratty shirt on - all three go out for the night.
Guy camps Girls' style.
Girls ditch Guy and go flirting off on their own.
Guy sips Smirnoff Ice in the corner pretending he's having the time of his life.
Girls hit it big (the extra two hours in the bathroom pay off).
Guy realizes Smirnoff Ice is a girl's drink and is hit with the urge to go home.
Guy realizes he doesn't know his way home, suddenly wants a smoothie.
Girls have the time of their lives, Guy sleeps in the alleyway behind the pub until the Girls find him the next morning.
I ended up changing my socks and I ran a comb through my hair. I couldn't let those girls show me up.
One of the more pleasent evenings in recent memory was spent in the Italian neighborhood known as the North End. Seemingly one of the oldest parts of town, I noticed a lot of old men hanging outside the numerous italian restaurants. They would compliment all the young girls walking by and ignore the men. The concesus seemed to be that these old shop owners were sweet, but had this been the governmental district instead of the North End, I'm sure they would have been considered crazy.
It felt like an old movie here.
Paul Revere's house was in this neighborhood and it, much like 2/3 of the other buildings, were made of old battered brick that added what mom might call "a wonderful charm" to the city. So many of the restaurants we walked by (we had a hard time deciding where to eat) basked in the pride of their heritage and reveled in their "old country" ways.
It was right after we ate a fine Italian cuisine in the North End that the three of us decided to partake in a night of improvised comedy. Those of you who know me well know that there are few things I enjoy more than live comedy and I was grateful to Lindsay, for making the arrangements. As we arrived at the club, the bouncer asked to see all our driver's licences. We gave them to him; he noticed we were from Illinois (I said I lived right outside of Chicago), and he replied impressed, "Chicago? That's the home of improv comedy there, huh?"
He was correct.
But I suddenly got nervous. I enjoy live comedy, but I don't want to be a part of it and I worried that if word got around to the comedians that someone from comedy's homeland was in the audience, surely they would have zeroed in on me. My assumption was that we were lucky to score tickets on such a short notice and that we'd be stuck near the back of the theater. And as far as I know, they never call people fro mthe back to participate. the hostess showed us into the theater and told us that our seats are in A1, A2 and A3...
...Front row. Center.
Wait. Really?
The place was packed, how the Hell did we get seats right in front?
We spent the first half hour fairly nervous that we'd be asked on stage. And while no one was forced to do anything, Kelly did offer up a few improvosational suggestions. When she was brutally rebuffed by one of the performers both girls thought was cute, Kelly turned to us, embarrassed and said, "I'm never going to talk again."
It was getting a little later now but there was still enough time to visit a pastry shop called Mike's. This place stayed open as late as the bars and probably did better business. From there we went home, not greedy enough to ask anything more from the night.
It was wonderful.
* * * * *
There were a lot of things about Boston that I am leaving out here. I haven't mentioned the abundance of basketball hoops in Massachusetts, nor my follies (plural) at trying to order drinks in the wild pig-toss Boston calls it's taverns, I left out the fact that 2/3 of our little group are snorers, nor did I discuss many minute details of the city itself. This is a travelogue, why would I talk about the destination of my travel.
Often times, unless you live in or plan to revisit a certain place, a person's travel stories are boring and impersonal. Some of you have been to or live in Boston now - maybe you found an outsider's take amusing. some of you have never been and maybe I've convinced you that it's a great place to be. All I know is that I came to Boston with a friend to see a friend and expected very little from the town itself. I assumed that coming from the second City, nothing short of Italy or Spain would impress me.
I was wrong.
I fell in love with the town (take note: I'm saying "in-love" now. That's like four "likes" in a row).
In the end there are only two things that I am sure of. the first is that I had one of the best times of my life in Boston. The second is that I'll be back. I'm not sure when and I'm not sure for how long, but I need to be back so that my body can revisit the place my heart never left.
The End.
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Hello Beantown, part 2
The Bunker Hill Monument is a rounded tower with 250 stairs steeply spiraling upward. Upon our arrival, I assumed we would not be climbing up the wheeze-inducing steeple. Quick as a blink, and much to my chagrin, both Kelly and Lindsay were in the entrance to the monument and heading upward.
Awww. Crap.
So picture this: the two of them; the redhead who ran a mile everyday and the athletic brunette hacked and complained like a couple of old ninnies the entire way up the monument. On the other hand, the lanky kid with a penchant for potato chips ended up pushing past them and took the steps two-by-two.
I only include this detail here, not to embarrass those two sissies, but to motivate them for future physical endeavors. Either that, or to teach them from ever making me climb stairs that don't lead to anything, again.
I was honestly worried for a while that I was gonna hafta carry one or both of my friends all the way back to the hotel. They'd be all passed out and floppy, like dead carp. Boston is a walkable city, sure, but not while carrying duel hundred-pound dead carps around. Also, I needed them to stay awake and alert because the T-system in Boston is confusing and I wasn't sure how to get home from Bunker Hill by myself.
We mercifully climbed down the monument and somehow the girls had both secretly and silently decided that they desired and agreed to seek out ice cream. I'm not sure how they discussed this with one another, I never left their side. But as soon as we hit ground level both Lindsay and Kelly simultaneously announced, "We're getting ice cream."
Cool.
The girls got ice cream and I decided I was more in a smoothie mood. I was previously unaware that smoothies are girly drinks and was given quite a lot of flack for shunning ice cream. I tried to explain to them that this wasn't 'Sophie's Choice' and that I wasn't berating ice cream in favor of smoothies. I just felt like a strawberry banana concoction at that point in the afternoon.
For the next hour my two so-called friends kept asking me if I wanted a bottled water, or if I was hungry for a salad. We passed a pilates studio and they both turned around and asked me if I wanted to stop for a quick session.
Sometimes my best friends seem more like worst enemies.
Aw dang. I forgot to mention that before Bunker Hill, we went to visit the Navy ship, Old Ironsides. It mostly made me think about how much of Chicago's history was burnt down, whereas Boston has been able to maintain so much of theirs. Sorry about forgetting that. That's not good traveloguing I know.
I am also aware that "traveloguing" is not a word, and making up words is not good writing. And while we're at it, I'm also aware that speaking conversatorially with the reader is often lazy writing, which is also bad.
Jesus, who do you people think you are to be so critical of me?
I could hear my footsteps on the city streets of Boston as clear as if I were clapping. It might have something to do with the brick or cobblestones or maybe my feet are flatter than I thought. At any rate, I was fascinated with it. So fascinated in fact that, at one point, walking along Newbury Street, Lindsay pointed up at a building she found to be architecturally interesting. I didn't immediately respond to what she was saying (I can't listen and talk at the same time, dammit), she nudged me and said, "Kid, quit looking at your feet! Geez! You're on vacation!"
I was exploring and experiencing the city in my own way. Also, Boston doesn't seem to hold any kind of zoning laws in regards to the amount of stuff they can have on the sidewalk. Little trees, potted plants, sandwich board signs for every business on the block, outdoor seating, statues, benches, sparkling fountains, freshwater springs, squirrel zoos, everything you could imagine.
What I'm getting at is that the sidewalks were quite narrow and there was a lot of... stuff... cluttering them. All of this stuff, I'd like to mention, were items both Lindsay and Kelly tripped on and over while admiring the architure of certain buildings. Meanwhile, the soothing rhythm or my own footsteps served to insure that I would not be picking twigs and dirt out of my hair after a tumble into a well-trimmed topiary like both girls were forced to do.
I'm just sayin'...
Walking the streets of Boston was incredible, but soon enough, the walking got old. I was ready to see real Bostonians in their true element - where they felt most comfortable.
The three of us headed for the taverns.
In keeping with the honest tone that I am trying to set in this travelogue, I will admit that I have never consumed as much alchol in a single weekend as I did on this particular weekend. I can admit that. But it should also be said that I was never drunk... not really.
Not exactly.
I say this more for the benefit of my 14-year-old sister (whom will be reading this). Anyone with a younger sibling knows the exquisite burden of trying not to set a bad example for them. During this weekend, everytime a camera was hauled out, I set into a frenzied routine of moving any and all beer bottles out of the frame, facing a direction that had no beer signs in the background, and smiling really wide, so my eyes would crinkle up and hide any and all glaze coating them.
Most of you might feel this was a series of pointlessly retarded actions, but think back now, haven't you ever had your picture taken at an inopportune moment only to have it come back and haunt you?
Gee, rereading that last paragraph, I'm beginning to rethink things. Maybe collecting dozens of pictures of me all messy-haired, and red-in-the-face, sucking down a Pabst or some damn thing is exactly what I need to do. I'll collect these awful mug shots, hand them to my sister and say, "See! This is what happens when you drink too much! Don't leave the house until you're 25 or you'll turn out like me! Like me!"
I'm not sure why I'd scream this at my sister, but I would. I just know it.
Okay, where was I? This travelogue has kinda stalled-out. Your patience is waning, I'm sure. Alright, back to the great city of Boston.
Oh wait. No. We're still inside the bars. Getting to know real Bostonians in their element. Sorry. We'll head outside soon enough. You'll get your fix of Samuel Adams and Peter Fanuel later.
We were in a borough called Somerville, where all the cool kids hang out. The bar we plopped in was an Irish joint named The Burren and both Kelly and Lindsay were convinced I was drunk. There is little else in this world more frustrating than convincing two drunk people, that you, are not in fact, drunk along with them. Especially after you admit to feeling a little tipsy. The admittance of being tipsy is an immediate credibility forfeiture in gauging your own inebriation. Therefore the guage is passed on to those around you, and the drunks around me all decided I was one of them.
I began second-guessing myself:
Hell, maybe I am drunk. I don't feel drunk. I'm pretty sure I could walk in a straight line. I remember all the words to the plays I was in during college. I'm aware that Frank James and Jesse James were sibling criminals and Henry James was an author. Doesn't this lucidity mean I'm fine?
I said all this to myself, but I said it out loud. And talking to yourself seemed like a fair indication that I might be drunk.
Lindsay spilled beer on Kelly, not on purpose, but I would have laughed either way. There were no napkins at the table so I retreated to the men's room of this old pub to gather up a handful of toilet paper. As it was one in the morning, the men's room was full. I waited for one of the stalls to become free. There were two stalls and four urinals. Several guys left their urinals and the line moved up. I was at the front of the line and a third urinal became free.
So picture it: the guy leaving the urinal turns to me and says, "It's all yours."
To which I reply, "No, no. I don't need to use the bathroom."
There is an uncomfortable silence.
Then, to make my situation a little more uncomfortable, I turn to the guy behind me and tell him to go ahead of me. In my mind, I was there for toilet paper, in the mind's of the dozen drunk dudes standing in the bathroom with me, it seemed I was there just to watch them all pee.
To these guys I might be some perverted sex creep, but in my mind my actions were the same as politely declining a ride on a busy elevator.
So yeah... I guess I might have been a little drunk.
A stall became open and I dashed into it, having just realized how I might appear to my fellow pee-ers. I remember unfurling half the damn roll around my wrist. I wanted to make sure that I had enough toilet paper to clean the spill because I was damn sure not going back in that bathroom. It's one thing to explain why I was hanging out in the bathroom just seein' the sights, it's quite another to explain why I felt the need to go back!
I ran out of the bathroom like a loon.
I emerged from the bathroom, a little sobered and ready to clean up the beer. Apparently, in the five minutes I was gone, Lindsay and Kelly found a guy to clean it up for them (girls have that power) and somehow managed to spill a second time, only now it was all over my jacket!
Ladies and gentlemen - I give you Boston!
...to be continued.
Awww. Crap.
So picture this: the two of them; the redhead who ran a mile everyday and the athletic brunette hacked and complained like a couple of old ninnies the entire way up the monument. On the other hand, the lanky kid with a penchant for potato chips ended up pushing past them and took the steps two-by-two.
I only include this detail here, not to embarrass those two sissies, but to motivate them for future physical endeavors. Either that, or to teach them from ever making me climb stairs that don't lead to anything, again.
I was honestly worried for a while that I was gonna hafta carry one or both of my friends all the way back to the hotel. They'd be all passed out and floppy, like dead carp. Boston is a walkable city, sure, but not while carrying duel hundred-pound dead carps around. Also, I needed them to stay awake and alert because the T-system in Boston is confusing and I wasn't sure how to get home from Bunker Hill by myself.
We mercifully climbed down the monument and somehow the girls had both secretly and silently decided that they desired and agreed to seek out ice cream. I'm not sure how they discussed this with one another, I never left their side. But as soon as we hit ground level both Lindsay and Kelly simultaneously announced, "We're getting ice cream."
Cool.
The girls got ice cream and I decided I was more in a smoothie mood. I was previously unaware that smoothies are girly drinks and was given quite a lot of flack for shunning ice cream. I tried to explain to them that this wasn't 'Sophie's Choice' and that I wasn't berating ice cream in favor of smoothies. I just felt like a strawberry banana concoction at that point in the afternoon.
For the next hour my two so-called friends kept asking me if I wanted a bottled water, or if I was hungry for a salad. We passed a pilates studio and they both turned around and asked me if I wanted to stop for a quick session.
Sometimes my best friends seem more like worst enemies.
Aw dang. I forgot to mention that before Bunker Hill, we went to visit the Navy ship, Old Ironsides. It mostly made me think about how much of Chicago's history was burnt down, whereas Boston has been able to maintain so much of theirs. Sorry about forgetting that. That's not good traveloguing I know.
I am also aware that "traveloguing" is not a word, and making up words is not good writing. And while we're at it, I'm also aware that speaking conversatorially with the reader is often lazy writing, which is also bad.
Jesus, who do you people think you are to be so critical of me?
I could hear my footsteps on the city streets of Boston as clear as if I were clapping. It might have something to do with the brick or cobblestones or maybe my feet are flatter than I thought. At any rate, I was fascinated with it. So fascinated in fact that, at one point, walking along Newbury Street, Lindsay pointed up at a building she found to be architecturally interesting. I didn't immediately respond to what she was saying (I can't listen and talk at the same time, dammit), she nudged me and said, "Kid, quit looking at your feet! Geez! You're on vacation!"
I was exploring and experiencing the city in my own way. Also, Boston doesn't seem to hold any kind of zoning laws in regards to the amount of stuff they can have on the sidewalk. Little trees, potted plants, sandwich board signs for every business on the block, outdoor seating, statues, benches, sparkling fountains, freshwater springs, squirrel zoos, everything you could imagine.
What I'm getting at is that the sidewalks were quite narrow and there was a lot of... stuff... cluttering them. All of this stuff, I'd like to mention, were items both Lindsay and Kelly tripped on and over while admiring the architure of certain buildings. Meanwhile, the soothing rhythm or my own footsteps served to insure that I would not be picking twigs and dirt out of my hair after a tumble into a well-trimmed topiary like both girls were forced to do.
I'm just sayin'...
Walking the streets of Boston was incredible, but soon enough, the walking got old. I was ready to see real Bostonians in their true element - where they felt most comfortable.
The three of us headed for the taverns.
In keeping with the honest tone that I am trying to set in this travelogue, I will admit that I have never consumed as much alchol in a single weekend as I did on this particular weekend. I can admit that. But it should also be said that I was never drunk... not really.
Not exactly.
I say this more for the benefit of my 14-year-old sister (whom will be reading this). Anyone with a younger sibling knows the exquisite burden of trying not to set a bad example for them. During this weekend, everytime a camera was hauled out, I set into a frenzied routine of moving any and all beer bottles out of the frame, facing a direction that had no beer signs in the background, and smiling really wide, so my eyes would crinkle up and hide any and all glaze coating them.
Most of you might feel this was a series of pointlessly retarded actions, but think back now, haven't you ever had your picture taken at an inopportune moment only to have it come back and haunt you?
Gee, rereading that last paragraph, I'm beginning to rethink things. Maybe collecting dozens of pictures of me all messy-haired, and red-in-the-face, sucking down a Pabst or some damn thing is exactly what I need to do. I'll collect these awful mug shots, hand them to my sister and say, "See! This is what happens when you drink too much! Don't leave the house until you're 25 or you'll turn out like me! Like me!"
I'm not sure why I'd scream this at my sister, but I would. I just know it.
Okay, where was I? This travelogue has kinda stalled-out. Your patience is waning, I'm sure. Alright, back to the great city of Boston.
Oh wait. No. We're still inside the bars. Getting to know real Bostonians in their element. Sorry. We'll head outside soon enough. You'll get your fix of Samuel Adams and Peter Fanuel later.
We were in a borough called Somerville, where all the cool kids hang out. The bar we plopped in was an Irish joint named The Burren and both Kelly and Lindsay were convinced I was drunk. There is little else in this world more frustrating than convincing two drunk people, that you, are not in fact, drunk along with them. Especially after you admit to feeling a little tipsy. The admittance of being tipsy is an immediate credibility forfeiture in gauging your own inebriation. Therefore the guage is passed on to those around you, and the drunks around me all decided I was one of them.
I began second-guessing myself:
Hell, maybe I am drunk. I don't feel drunk. I'm pretty sure I could walk in a straight line. I remember all the words to the plays I was in during college. I'm aware that Frank James and Jesse James were sibling criminals and Henry James was an author. Doesn't this lucidity mean I'm fine?
I said all this to myself, but I said it out loud. And talking to yourself seemed like a fair indication that I might be drunk.
Lindsay spilled beer on Kelly, not on purpose, but I would have laughed either way. There were no napkins at the table so I retreated to the men's room of this old pub to gather up a handful of toilet paper. As it was one in the morning, the men's room was full. I waited for one of the stalls to become free. There were two stalls and four urinals. Several guys left their urinals and the line moved up. I was at the front of the line and a third urinal became free.
So picture it: the guy leaving the urinal turns to me and says, "It's all yours."
To which I reply, "No, no. I don't need to use the bathroom."
There is an uncomfortable silence.
Then, to make my situation a little more uncomfortable, I turn to the guy behind me and tell him to go ahead of me. In my mind, I was there for toilet paper, in the mind's of the dozen drunk dudes standing in the bathroom with me, it seemed I was there just to watch them all pee.
To these guys I might be some perverted sex creep, but in my mind my actions were the same as politely declining a ride on a busy elevator.
So yeah... I guess I might have been a little drunk.
A stall became open and I dashed into it, having just realized how I might appear to my fellow pee-ers. I remember unfurling half the damn roll around my wrist. I wanted to make sure that I had enough toilet paper to clean the spill because I was damn sure not going back in that bathroom. It's one thing to explain why I was hanging out in the bathroom just seein' the sights, it's quite another to explain why I felt the need to go back!
I ran out of the bathroom like a loon.
I emerged from the bathroom, a little sobered and ready to clean up the beer. Apparently, in the five minutes I was gone, Lindsay and Kelly found a guy to clean it up for them (girls have that power) and somehow managed to spill a second time, only now it was all over my jacket!
Ladies and gentlemen - I give you Boston!
...to be continued.
Friday, August 11, 2006
Hello Beantown, part 1
READER'S NOTE: In late March of 2003, my friend Kelly (introduced in the previous 3-part blog serial entitled "The Dress") and I visited our friend Lindsay in Boston, Massachusetts. We spent three days there and it made quite an impression on me. Such an impression, in fact, that I would find myself moving there a year-and-a-half later.
As I prepare for my exodus from my two-year stint as a resident of Beantown, I found it appropriate to revisit my original arrival into this wonderful town.
This is the ensuing travelogue I wrote several weeks after the trip.
==================================================================
The farther along in life we get, the more complicated our articulation of love becomes.
Think back to when you were younger. Weren't we all better at articulating our true feelings? There was no fear of being hurt or manipulated. Everything seemed shaded in a perfect black or a perfect white.
We all had a best friend and well all had people we disliked, and no matter which side of that line you fell on, it was always clear why.
"Oh gee... George eats paste. I don't like him much."
Case closed. Paste-eater.
George knew where he stood with you.
Contrarily there was, "Yeah, Judy is pretty funny. I like her."
No question there either, right? Funny-girl.
As we get older, things start complicating themselves. It is no longer safe for me to compliment Judy on her humor. I now have to qualify it. Making the comment, "Yeah, Judy is pretty funny. I like her", triggers new and unforseen suspicions from surrounding peers.
"Yeah, you like her, but do you likeherlike her?"
There it is.
The old "likeherlikeher".
Back in sixth grade there was Scooby-Doo. I liked Scooby-Doo.
There was also my classmate, Sarah Fuller. I likedliked my classmate Sarah Fuller. We built diahramas together.
And then there was Michelle Pfieffer as Catwoman in the second 'Batman' movie. I likedlikedliked Michelle Pfieffer as Catwoman in the second 'Batman' movie.
Y'see the difference?
But of course, like all else, our budding sophistication ruined everything. We all stopped speaking the same code. How many times have I expressed to a girl how much I like them only to have them look back at me with unblinking eyes and reply, "Yeah dude. I like you too. Duh."
Nowadays we have to express exactly how we feel or accept the consequences of being misinterpreted. Gone are those glory days of the universal scoring system. I can no longer tell a girl that I likelikelike her and have her a) understand what I mean or b) understand what I mean and still respect the manner in which I told her.
And apparently, liking and loving someone are just different hues of the same pallet. I certainly couldn't get away with saying, "Suzie, I'm madly in-like with you!" No. Love is the intense form of like, but they both signify friendship. So if "in-love" is the intense form of total loyalty and companionship, what is the less intense form of "in-love"?
It ain't "in-like", I assure you. I once told a girl that I was "in-like" with her and we didn't talk to one another for almost two years afterwards.
I am hereby lobbying for the adult world to adopt the layering style of the word "like" as a recognized and respected form of expression.
All that was pretext to better illustrate just what I mean when I say that I likedlikedlikedlikedliked the city of Boston, Massachusetts and I'm gonna tell you a little bit about my recent trip.
Hang on tight.
* * * * *
It has been my experience that most travel essays alienate the reader by boring them. Travel is a personal experience that cannot often be accurately recounted to an outsider. Hopefully because I understand this, it will mean that you are in good hands. On the other hand, doesan't it seem as if most travelers feel their trip is the one special experience that begs for the public's attention?
I know it's just Boston and not the moon, but you clearly have no more important use of your time, or else you wouldn't be reading some dude's travelogue.
Boston's Logan Airport is situated directly along the bay. This was information I was unaware of until I gazed out of the airplane window and it appeared we were nose-diving directly into the water. I'm a fairly calm guy and assumed that the pilots knew what they were doing, perhaps they saw a dolphin and wanted a closer look. By the time I realized that dolphins were not indiginous to this area of water, we had already touched down on what was clearly hard runway blacktop. Having not crashed into the water, I had to say - Logan's airport runway was quite picturesque.
Cheers, Massachusetts.
Once Kelly and I got to our hotel in Cambridge (home of the Harvard Univeersity), we took a stroll down to Harvard Yard, walking first along the banks of the Charles River and then into the heart of Harvard. What struck me more than the historical beauty of this old university campus was that everyone walking past me on the streets and sidewalks were probably much, much smarter than I was. Has anyone else ever experienced this feeling? I kept worrying that some smart Harvard kid was going to sense my dumbtitude (which isn't even a word) and decide to pop-quiz me on something literary or perhaps scientific: "Stump the Art School Kid"! It was a fear that never fully subsided.
It doesn't help either that I was clearly not from around the area. I am never more aware of my own accent than when I find that I am the only one speaking with it. Everyone around me spoke with either a slightly effeminate, subtly British accent that the smart Harvard kids have adopted or the blue-collar brogue the gang from 'Good Will Hunting' utilized (that was the first of many references to 'Good Will Hunting', I assure you).
Whether it was the stuffy Harvard brogue or the Southie drawl, I presented neither, opting instead to continue on with my own Chicago "Does aaanyone waaaant a Polish saaaaausage"-accent. I guess everyone's native tongue sounds ugly to them.
There.
I quickly finished the section where I point out how goofy the New England accent is. Was that so bad?
I was quite impressed with my first hour in Boston. Less than sixty minutes off the plane, Kelly and I had walked past a looming war commencement protest, bought a Harvard tee-shirt and ate at a genuine Irish restaurant. In less than two hours I had seen more cobblestones cobbled together and more bicycles U-locked together than the entirety of my life before that point. We spent several hours exploring Harvard when it dawned on me: not only have we not actually ventured into the city, but we haven't met up with Lindsay yet.
So we finally get into Boston and I'll be honest with you, I have no idea what order anything was accomplished. A trip this fantastically filled to the brim can only be recited as events come to me. I realize that this is unorthodox when compred with other travelogues. Then again, most travelogues are haughty.
I'm trying to break that pattern, it behooves you to ride the wave with me.
Also unorthodox to most travelogues, I'd like to first discuss all the things I never actually experienced.
We didn't visit Fenway Park. It was the one thing I was positive I would end up seeing before I left Boston. Nothing makes the Gods laugh harder than telling them of your plans. We didn't make it out to Cape Cod, or take the whaling tour near the aquarium, we missed the art district and "Southie" (rumored to be the ghetto and the stomping grounds of the 'Good Will Hunting' characters - which I believe is my second reference to that film).
There were plenty of things not experienced in Boston, and this seemed like a good thing; a reason to come back.
The first full day in the city was easily the best, best because it was one of the more jam-packed days I can remember ever having. We walked a large portion of the Freedom Trail, which for those of you who haven't been to Boston, is a line of either red brick or red paint extending along the walkways throughout historical portions of the city. Considering Boston's historical significance to our country, you can imagine how expansive the Freedom Trail must have been.
Having finally found Lindsay the night before, the three of us set out along the Freedom Trail the following morning. The trail itself, it should be noted, starts in front of the biggest Borders bookstore in existence. It was so big, in fact, that I assumed the trail started in front of it because the establishment had reached landmark status. I know that sounds ridiculous, but they've got a gas station sign in the city having reached the same status, so who am I to judge?
It seemed to work out several different times that something would grab our attention and we'd find ourselves suddenly off the trail. Twenty minutes later, without trying to find our way back, we'd be right back to following the red line.
Boston is the most walkable city I've ever visited. It seems as if it would be impossible to stay lost there.
Stemming from the Freedom Trail were the Commons, which are a bit like Central Park in New York (only smaller) or Grant Park in Chicago (only bigger) but more beautiful than both. It was also the location of the scene in 'Good Will Hunting' where Williams and Damon are sitting on a park bench together.
Hopefully that will be my last reference to 'Good Will Hunting', I just don't know that many Boston-based movies. 'Cheers' is the only other program that I can name and ironically enough, directly across the street from the Common was the Bulfinch Pub, the building that the 'Cheers' bar supposedly takes place in. And although the entrance is exactly the same as it appears in the television show, the interior is nothing like the Hollywood set. The bar itself is tiny and filled from wall to wall with sports memorabilia.
During this same afternoon jaunt, our little trio ventured up and down Newberry Street; a seemingly posh, snooty portion of Boston. Everyone wore nicer shoes than me, tighter fitting pants than me, and sunglasses that cost more than my car.
This was Boston's Magnificent Mile, 5th Avenue, Rodeo Drive.
That being said, the truth of Newberry Street was that it was more mom'n'pop than any of those other famous metropolis shopping areas. For every Burberry boutique, there was also an independent ice cream joint or Tibetan headshop just trying to make a little scratch for themselves.
We ended up stopping in an Eastern-influenced store with masks and zithers and beaded trinkets and what-have-you. Looking up at the springtime sale on all the wall masks, I began thinking, "I should bring a souvenir of Boston home with me. These are pretty neat masks, maybe one of these would do."
That's me in a nutshell.
I travel from the ethnic diversity of Chicago to the, er...um, ahem... paleness of Boston, head into a random Eatern-influenced head shop, buy a mask (on sale) and use that as the representative piece from my trip. Most people buy a Red Sox hat or a shot glass with Paul Revere on it. I'm a doofus.
But not too much of a doofus, because I didn't end up buying any masks.
Instead I almost killed myself at Bunker Hill.
...to be continued.
As I prepare for my exodus from my two-year stint as a resident of Beantown, I found it appropriate to revisit my original arrival into this wonderful town.
This is the ensuing travelogue I wrote several weeks after the trip.
==================================================================
The farther along in life we get, the more complicated our articulation of love becomes.
Think back to when you were younger. Weren't we all better at articulating our true feelings? There was no fear of being hurt or manipulated. Everything seemed shaded in a perfect black or a perfect white.
We all had a best friend and well all had people we disliked, and no matter which side of that line you fell on, it was always clear why.
"Oh gee... George eats paste. I don't like him much."
Case closed. Paste-eater.
George knew where he stood with you.
Contrarily there was, "Yeah, Judy is pretty funny. I like her."
No question there either, right? Funny-girl.
As we get older, things start complicating themselves. It is no longer safe for me to compliment Judy on her humor. I now have to qualify it. Making the comment, "Yeah, Judy is pretty funny. I like her", triggers new and unforseen suspicions from surrounding peers.
"Yeah, you like her, but do you likeherlike her?"
There it is.
The old "likeherlikeher".
Back in sixth grade there was Scooby-Doo. I liked Scooby-Doo.
There was also my classmate, Sarah Fuller. I likedliked my classmate Sarah Fuller. We built diahramas together.
And then there was Michelle Pfieffer as Catwoman in the second 'Batman' movie. I likedlikedliked Michelle Pfieffer as Catwoman in the second 'Batman' movie.
Y'see the difference?
But of course, like all else, our budding sophistication ruined everything. We all stopped speaking the same code. How many times have I expressed to a girl how much I like them only to have them look back at me with unblinking eyes and reply, "Yeah dude. I like you too. Duh."
Nowadays we have to express exactly how we feel or accept the consequences of being misinterpreted. Gone are those glory days of the universal scoring system. I can no longer tell a girl that I likelikelike her and have her a) understand what I mean or b) understand what I mean and still respect the manner in which I told her.
And apparently, liking and loving someone are just different hues of the same pallet. I certainly couldn't get away with saying, "Suzie, I'm madly in-like with you!" No. Love is the intense form of like, but they both signify friendship. So if "in-love" is the intense form of total loyalty and companionship, what is the less intense form of "in-love"?
It ain't "in-like", I assure you. I once told a girl that I was "in-like" with her and we didn't talk to one another for almost two years afterwards.
I am hereby lobbying for the adult world to adopt the layering style of the word "like" as a recognized and respected form of expression.
All that was pretext to better illustrate just what I mean when I say that I likedlikedlikedlikedliked the city of Boston, Massachusetts and I'm gonna tell you a little bit about my recent trip.
Hang on tight.
* * * * *
It has been my experience that most travel essays alienate the reader by boring them. Travel is a personal experience that cannot often be accurately recounted to an outsider. Hopefully because I understand this, it will mean that you are in good hands. On the other hand, doesan't it seem as if most travelers feel their trip is the one special experience that begs for the public's attention?
I know it's just Boston and not the moon, but you clearly have no more important use of your time, or else you wouldn't be reading some dude's travelogue.
Boston's Logan Airport is situated directly along the bay. This was information I was unaware of until I gazed out of the airplane window and it appeared we were nose-diving directly into the water. I'm a fairly calm guy and assumed that the pilots knew what they were doing, perhaps they saw a dolphin and wanted a closer look. By the time I realized that dolphins were not indiginous to this area of water, we had already touched down on what was clearly hard runway blacktop. Having not crashed into the water, I had to say - Logan's airport runway was quite picturesque.
Cheers, Massachusetts.
Once Kelly and I got to our hotel in Cambridge (home of the Harvard Univeersity), we took a stroll down to Harvard Yard, walking first along the banks of the Charles River and then into the heart of Harvard. What struck me more than the historical beauty of this old university campus was that everyone walking past me on the streets and sidewalks were probably much, much smarter than I was. Has anyone else ever experienced this feeling? I kept worrying that some smart Harvard kid was going to sense my dumbtitude (which isn't even a word) and decide to pop-quiz me on something literary or perhaps scientific: "Stump the Art School Kid"! It was a fear that never fully subsided.
It doesn't help either that I was clearly not from around the area. I am never more aware of my own accent than when I find that I am the only one speaking with it. Everyone around me spoke with either a slightly effeminate, subtly British accent that the smart Harvard kids have adopted or the blue-collar brogue the gang from 'Good Will Hunting' utilized (that was the first of many references to 'Good Will Hunting', I assure you).
Whether it was the stuffy Harvard brogue or the Southie drawl, I presented neither, opting instead to continue on with my own Chicago "Does aaanyone waaaant a Polish saaaaausage"-accent. I guess everyone's native tongue sounds ugly to them.
There.
I quickly finished the section where I point out how goofy the New England accent is. Was that so bad?
I was quite impressed with my first hour in Boston. Less than sixty minutes off the plane, Kelly and I had walked past a looming war commencement protest, bought a Harvard tee-shirt and ate at a genuine Irish restaurant. In less than two hours I had seen more cobblestones cobbled together and more bicycles U-locked together than the entirety of my life before that point. We spent several hours exploring Harvard when it dawned on me: not only have we not actually ventured into the city, but we haven't met up with Lindsay yet.
So we finally get into Boston and I'll be honest with you, I have no idea what order anything was accomplished. A trip this fantastically filled to the brim can only be recited as events come to me. I realize that this is unorthodox when compred with other travelogues. Then again, most travelogues are haughty.
I'm trying to break that pattern, it behooves you to ride the wave with me.
Also unorthodox to most travelogues, I'd like to first discuss all the things I never actually experienced.
We didn't visit Fenway Park. It was the one thing I was positive I would end up seeing before I left Boston. Nothing makes the Gods laugh harder than telling them of your plans. We didn't make it out to Cape Cod, or take the whaling tour near the aquarium, we missed the art district and "Southie" (rumored to be the ghetto and the stomping grounds of the 'Good Will Hunting' characters - which I believe is my second reference to that film).
There were plenty of things not experienced in Boston, and this seemed like a good thing; a reason to come back.
The first full day in the city was easily the best, best because it was one of the more jam-packed days I can remember ever having. We walked a large portion of the Freedom Trail, which for those of you who haven't been to Boston, is a line of either red brick or red paint extending along the walkways throughout historical portions of the city. Considering Boston's historical significance to our country, you can imagine how expansive the Freedom Trail must have been.
Having finally found Lindsay the night before, the three of us set out along the Freedom Trail the following morning. The trail itself, it should be noted, starts in front of the biggest Borders bookstore in existence. It was so big, in fact, that I assumed the trail started in front of it because the establishment had reached landmark status. I know that sounds ridiculous, but they've got a gas station sign in the city having reached the same status, so who am I to judge?
It seemed to work out several different times that something would grab our attention and we'd find ourselves suddenly off the trail. Twenty minutes later, without trying to find our way back, we'd be right back to following the red line.
Boston is the most walkable city I've ever visited. It seems as if it would be impossible to stay lost there.
Stemming from the Freedom Trail were the Commons, which are a bit like Central Park in New York (only smaller) or Grant Park in Chicago (only bigger) but more beautiful than both. It was also the location of the scene in 'Good Will Hunting' where Williams and Damon are sitting on a park bench together.
Hopefully that will be my last reference to 'Good Will Hunting', I just don't know that many Boston-based movies. 'Cheers' is the only other program that I can name and ironically enough, directly across the street from the Common was the Bulfinch Pub, the building that the 'Cheers' bar supposedly takes place in. And although the entrance is exactly the same as it appears in the television show, the interior is nothing like the Hollywood set. The bar itself is tiny and filled from wall to wall with sports memorabilia.
During this same afternoon jaunt, our little trio ventured up and down Newberry Street; a seemingly posh, snooty portion of Boston. Everyone wore nicer shoes than me, tighter fitting pants than me, and sunglasses that cost more than my car.
This was Boston's Magnificent Mile, 5th Avenue, Rodeo Drive.
That being said, the truth of Newberry Street was that it was more mom'n'pop than any of those other famous metropolis shopping areas. For every Burberry boutique, there was also an independent ice cream joint or Tibetan headshop just trying to make a little scratch for themselves.
We ended up stopping in an Eastern-influenced store with masks and zithers and beaded trinkets and what-have-you. Looking up at the springtime sale on all the wall masks, I began thinking, "I should bring a souvenir of Boston home with me. These are pretty neat masks, maybe one of these would do."
That's me in a nutshell.
I travel from the ethnic diversity of Chicago to the, er...um, ahem... paleness of Boston, head into a random Eatern-influenced head shop, buy a mask (on sale) and use that as the representative piece from my trip. Most people buy a Red Sox hat or a shot glass with Paul Revere on it. I'm a doofus.
But not too much of a doofus, because I didn't end up buying any masks.
Instead I almost killed myself at Bunker Hill.
...to be continued.
Thursday, August 10, 2006
My Life in Lists
If I don't know you very well and I find myself in your house for the first time, I want you to know that I'll be looking through your cd collection and then your DVDs. There is nothing in your home that will tell me more about you than those two items. You and I might sit across from one another for five hours chatting about our pasts and our futures, but none of that will be as honest as whether or not you own a Debbie Gibson album and if you happen to own a Debbie Gibson album, is the album a cd or tape or record?
I've convinced people that I was a 21-year-old lion tamer and a 34-year-old truck driver in the same night.
How people relay their information means very little. What they say, means even less.
If you tell me your ten favorite movies and your ten favorite songs, I'll know you better than an hour of conversation would have allowed.
Which brings us directly to this little blog I've been working on. I started writing my eccelctic and often scrambled thoughts here in hopes of better understanding myself. And to some degree, that is still what I'm working towards. But somewhere along the line, it became about the various people that I discovered were reading my ecclectically scrambled thoughts. After a while, I realized it was important that they understand me too.
Here, in this blog, I've compiled and updated many of the numerous lists I have worked on with my closest friends. I believe that when it comes to pop-culture, my 100th favorite song is more precious to me than the absolute favorite song of most other people.
Is that good? Probably not. It certainly isn't important. But it does define me, which is comforting on many different levels.
So here, for your enjoyment and frustration: My Life In Lists.
The 100 Most Awesomest Movies EVER
100. The Incredibles (2004) 50. The Blues Brothers (1980)
99. Clueless (1994) 49. The Royal Tenenbaums (2002)
98. Philadelphia (1993) 48. Beetlejuice (1987)
97. Out of Sight (1998) 47. Moonlight Mile (2002)
96. Toy Story 2 (1999) 46. Sling Blade (1995)
95. The Odd Couple (1967) 45. Barton Fink (1991)
94. Kill Bill, pt.1 (2003) 44. Jurassic Park (1993)
93. Mean Streets (1973) 43. Jaws (1975)
92. Father Of the Bride (1991) 42. Rear Window (1954)
91. Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (1939) 41. Do the Right Thing (1989)
90. Mister Roberts (1955) 40. Swingers (1995)
89. Old School (2003) 39. On the Waterfront (1954)
88. Lost In Translation (2003) 38. The Silence Of the Lambs (1991)
87. The Apostle (1997) 37. Apollo 13 (1995)
86. Boogie Nights (1997) 36. Pinocchio (1940)
85. Kill Bill, pt.2 (2004) 35. Cape Fear (1961)
84. Sunset Blvd. (1950) 34. Cape Fear (1991)
83. Jackie Brown (1997) 33. O Brother Where Art Thou? (2000)
82. His Girl Friday (1940) 32. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
81. Ocean's Eleven (2001) 31. Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988)
80. Eyes Wide Shut (1999) 30. Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
79. From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) 29. Toy Story (1995)
78. Noises Off! (1992) 28. A Christmas Story (1983)
77. High Fidelity (1999) 27. The Apartment (1960)
76. The Godfather (1972) 26. Bull Durham (1988)
75. Fight Club (1999) 25. Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
74. There's Something About Mary (1998) 24. Taxi Driver (1976)
73. Eternal Sunshine Of A Spotless Mind (2004) 23. JFK (1991)
72. Dances With Wolves (1990) 22. Rushmore (1999)
71. Double Indemnity (1944) 21. Cast Away (2000)
70. Lolita (1962) 20. Natural Born Killers (1994)
69. The Graduate (1967) 19. American Buffalo (1995)
68. As Good As It Gets (1998) 18. When Harry Met Sally... (1989)
67. The Big Lebowski (1998) 17. A Perfect World (1993)
66. A Straight Story (1999) 16. Stand By Me (1986)
65. Vanilla Sky (2002) 15. Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)
64. Good Will Hunting (1998) 14. To Kill A Mockingbird (1962)
63. Giant (1956) 13. The Seven-Year Itch (1955)
62. Albino Alligator (1996) 12. Back To the Future (1985)
61. Se7en (1995) 11. 12 Angry Men (1957)
60. The Quick and The Dead (1994) 10. Singin' In the Rain (1952)
59. Born On the 4th Of July (1987) 09. The Night Of the Hunter (1955)
58. Liar, Liar (1996) 08. Chicago (2002)
57. Goodfellas (1990) 07. Some Like It Hot (1959)
56. Casino (1995) 06. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
55. Ghost World (2001) 05. Almost Famous (1999)
54. Reservoir Dogs (1992) 04. Raging Bull (1980)
53. A Bronx Tale (1993) 03. Pulp Fiction (1994)
52. Dumbo (1941) 02. Ghostbusters (1984)
51. Fargo (1996) 01. Forrest Gump (1994)
Wierd statistical analysis of my unfortunate compulsion to rank everything:
* Of eveyone on this list, Robert DeNiro stars in the most films (8) with Tom Hanks behind him (4 and 2 voice-overs)
* Kevin Costner has the most films in the top 30 (3), but it should also be noted that there is no actor in history with a better six-year film career than Costner. Starting with 'Field Of Dreams' then 'Bull Durham', 'Dances With Wolves', 'JFK', Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves', and 'A Perfect World', no one has a better stint than him.
* Here's an oddity: The three most popular years in their respective decades were 1955 (3), 1975 (3) and 1995 (7). However, 1965(0), 1985 (1) and 2005 (0) were the three biggest duds in their respective decades. I can't wait until 2015!
* The average year-of-release date on the movies from this list is 1985.
* 21 of the movies on this list were released while I was in high school.
* 72f the movies on this list were released during my lifetime.
* 1981, 1982 and 2005 are the only three years of my lifetime not represented on this list. Thus proving my theory that nothing pop-culturally significant took place in 1981 or 1982. Nothing. I challenge you to find something.
* Billy Wilder and Quentin Tarantino lead the directors on this list with 5 films each. Martin Scorsese, Robert Zemeckis and The Coen Brothers are all tied for second with 4.
* I am often ousted by my friends and loved ones for not including the following on my list: 'Shrek', 'A Clockwork Orange', 'Star Wars', 'Indiana Jones' or any of the 'Lord Of the Rings' movies. No Woody Allen, Orson Welles, or John Ford.
* 1999 is the most represented year on this list (7) followed by 1995 and 1994 both with 6. It should also be noted that 1994 has 2 of my 3 favorite all-time films.
===============================================================
Top 100 Songs To Download and Pretend You'd ALWAYS Liked Them
READER'S NOTE: Much of these songs' attraction to me can be explained in a previous blog entitled "Top 10 Things That Make A Kickass Song". If you haven't yet read that blog, I highly suggest you seeking it out and going through it, as you'll find the bulk of these songs follow those rules.
100.I Want To Help You Ann - The Lyres I'm not sure why Ann needs help, but her apparent distress served as the muse for this band's killer whammy-bar riff.
99. Little Willy - Sweet I think Willy was modeled after my sister, because whenever we went to family trips, she too would not go anywhere, would have to be chased down hallways, and when we tried tellin' everybody... it did nothing.
98. For What It's Worth - Buffalo Springfield
97. Worried Man Blues - The Carter Family
96. No Surrender - Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band 'No Surrender': "We busted out of class/ Had to get away from those fools/ We learned more from a three-minute record, baby/ Then we ever learned in schools" Paul Simon's 'Kodachrome': "When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school/ It's a wonder I can think at all". Do you think Bruce and Paul Simon hung out in high school and are singing about their secret friendship as hooky-playing Jersey hoodlums? Think about it.
95. Closer To You - The Wallflowers
94. Hey Mama - The Black Eyed Peas This song makes me think of Fergie pumping her hips like she's got a scorpion on her she's trying to shake off... and anything that makes me think of that is going to be on this list.
93. Houston - Dean Martin This is my "drunk" song. Everyone should have a drunk song; the song they sing as if they were drunk when they are actually sober and the song they sing well when they are actually drunk. It's mandatory to list your "drunk song" in your top 100, I listed mine at 93.
92. Cavaleria Rusticana Intermezzo Sinfonico - Pietro Mascagni Otherwise known as the 'Raging Bull theme'. You know it's gotta be pretty snazzy if I not only typed out that long as title, but spelled it all correctly.
91. Sh-Boom - The Chords. There was a black version and a "white" version, the white one was done by The Crew Cuts, and this version was better.
90. New York Groove - Ace Frehely Ace describes the beauty of the city and his Cadillac rides throughout the downtown area. Ace's belief in the awesomeness of New York is enough for me to believe that New York is, in fact, awesome. However, he never describes why he left the groove of New York in the first place.
89. Story Of My Life - Social Distortion
88. Tonight I Fell In Love - The Tokens What's that I hear? Clapping? Whopping? Bands dropping out? Only 1:48 minutes long? Yup. That's going on the list.
87. Pictures Of Lily - The Who The fact that somewhere in Shepard's Bush, England some 60-year-old woman named Lily has a song about some creepy kid that sat next to her in history class wrote about her, amuses me. I wish someone would write a song about masturbating while thinking about me.
86. Chain Of Fools - Aretha Franklin I did this in karaoke once. It didn't go well. Much respect to Ms. Franklin.
85. Mannish Boy - Muddy Waters The song consists mostly of Muddy spelling the words "man" and "boy" and somehow - miraculously - I still feel strong enough to rip a bus in half after hearing it!
84. Soul Meets Body - Death Cab For Cutie I think this song is about the lead singer (Mr. Deathcab) going crazy, leaving his body, coming back to sanity and being all turned around because of it. Which is a way trippy song considering I first heard it during a commercla break of 'Laguna Beach'.
83. You're Missing - Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band
82. The Day After Tomorrow - Tom Waits These last two songs are written from the perspective of someone who has lost a loved one (Bruce) and who is fearing the loss of a loved one (Waits) due to the current military situation overseas. If all art strives for the immediate impact of song, than there are no two better examples than from these two economic songwriters.
81. 12:51 - The Strokes It's a Strokes song. I love all Strokes songs, but I never know what any of them are really about. I'm pretty sure 12:51 is not a Bible passage. I think 12:51 is the time the narrator finds the guts to call an ex-girlfriend and beg her to hang out with him on a Friday night. If that's what this song is about, than THAT is why I love the Strokes.
80. Rosalita (Come Out Tonight) - Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band Rosie seems like a prude, and with the narrator of this song trying to woo her, who could blame her? He's standing at her window telling her everything that's wrong with him: All his friends are street-urchin hooligans, Rosie's parents hate him, but he nevertheless demands her to revolt against them, he's going to skip school, play some pool, and act real cool - so apparently he's not actually cool, he's just going to pretend he is. He hasn't any money, but he does have delusions of a record deal (which doesn't prevent his car from getting stuck in the swamp). I'm not sure if Rosalita actually came out that night, but if she did, I bet she didn't make it through the night.
79. Canon In D - Pachelbel
78. Gloria - Them Y'know it's damndest thing. I had a spelling test in 1st grade and one of my "think words" was Gloria. I couldn't, for the life of me, remember how to spell that proper noun. Then I turned on the radio...
77. Float On - Modest Mouse If this song were written in the 60's, it would have been written by Arlo Guthrie and called a "Hippie anthem". If it were written in the early 90s, Soul Asylum would have written it and it would have been called a "Slacker anthem". But it was written in 2004 and can only be called awesome.
76. State Trooper - Bruce Springsteen
75. Times Like These - The Foo Fighters Dave Grohl is confused as to whether he should love or run, be the bigger man or end it all in a fiery blaze. We are led to believe he choses the path of love, but who can tell 'cause he's always yellin' and stuff.
74. The Man Comes Around - Johnny Cash I hope when all is said and done with the legend of Johnny Cash that his last five albums get their proper due as among the very best of his career. These American Recording series albums are among the most haunting of any bluesman and more powerful than even Johnny at his most raucous.
73. Working On the Highway - Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band How most people are feeling about seeing Springsteen's name on this list so many times is about how I feel everytime I read someone else's list and it has either Dylan, Nirvana or The Beatles listed ten or more times. Consider us even.
72. I Don't Wanna Grow Up - Tom Waits
71. Knockin' On Heaven's Door - Bob Dylan I've always wanted to be a cowboy and someday I might still move to Tex-Arkan and become one. If that time comes and I get shot by some poachers or maybe an evil sheriff, I hope they find me lying in the dirt so I can request they put my uneeded guns in the ground.
70. Highway Patrolman - Bruce Springsteen
69. Rebellion (Lies) - The Arcade Fire Arguably, the best anti-sleep song ever written. What lies are the Arcade Fire being told about sleeping, anyway?
68. The Line - Bruce Springsteen I adapted this song into a movie script that basically got me through the rest of film school. Thank-you, Bruce.
67. Shattered - The Rolling Stones A) I don't believe that Mich Jagger couldn't "give it away on 7th Avenue" (in 1978 or now) B) I don't know what "schmatter" means C) What was Ace Frehley doing that The Rolling Stones weren't in 1978, because they have two very dissenting opinions on the city of New York at that time. One's getting in a groove and the other is in tatters.
66. The Wind - Cat Stevens Cat Stevens changed his name to Yusaf Islam and plays a lot of tambourine, but before he went all nutty he created this song which wa used in both 'Rushmore' and 'Almost Famous' and for that, I'll let Yusaf slide.
65. Bangs - They Might Be Giants Ohmigod! I totally love bangs too. That's so funny. I totally like bangs and They Mght Be Giants totally like bangs. We should totally be friends and only date girls with bangs and only date girls because of their bangs! Sweet! They Might Be Giants might be too smart for their own good. This barely 3-minute-long song utilizes the words "prosedium", "auto-flyness", "congruent", and "incline". It also gives a proper shout-out to cute little pocket t-shirts.
64. Silhouettes - The Rays I've listened to this song since I was a wee lad, but it wasn't until about five years ago that I actually paid attention to the last verse. For years - years! - I thought this was a song about a guy getting cheated on. Turns out, it's a song about a dumbass who can't remember where his girlfriend lives! Awesome! AWESOME!
63. Only Sixteen - Sam Cooke You wanna feel really icky? Stand outside a highschool and sing this to yourself as all the students pass by.
62. Airline To Heaven - Billy Bragg & Wilco
61. Werewolves Of London - Warren Zevon Wait. I get confused, is there a werewolf in London or is there a dance-craze called "The Werewolf Of London"? Some little old lady got mutilated by something, but then... what was Lon Chaney doing?
60. S.O.B. - AC/DC
59. Fanfare For the Common Man - Aaron Copeland If apple pie, baseball and Ford vehicles could all manifest themselves into some sort of auditory collection of sounds - I bet it would resemble 'Fanfare For the Common Man'.
58. Roadrunner - Jonathan Richman and The Modern Lovers Okay it's real simple. He loves Massachusetts, highways at night, the moon, his radio. Hell, don't we all love that?
57. Dope Nose - Weezer This song is for the times that you wanna bust rhymes real slow. Thank you for that, Weez. There should be about 15 songs of Weezer's on this list, but I couldn't find room. There has never been a time when Dope Nose didn't make me go wild, so it's going to have to be my list's representative.
56. Reason To Believe - Bruce Springsteen
55. (Today I Met) The Boy I'm Gonna Marry - Darlene Love Wouldn't we all be happier if we could be as sure as Darlene Love was in this song of the moment we see the person we should be with forever? I think that's why I love this song so much, it gives us all hope that this moment, even if for a very select few, actually exists. It's romantic. Unfortunately, I'm a sucker and I'm constantly humming this tune in my head at the bars, drunk off my ass, figuring it will magically cause the girl I'm going to marry to appear in a cloud of smoke. Note: this is not a genie's lamp, just a wonderful song.
54. Respect - Otis Redding Oh gosh! What's he doing? Does he know Aretha Franklin did this song too? He can't possibly prefer Otis' version over Aretha's, can he? Isn't that against some sort of rock ordinance? That's like preferring Dylan's version of 'All Along the Watchtower' to Jimi's. Well folks... Does Aretha Franklin's version of 'Respect' have the horn section that Otis' section has? No. Eat it.
53. Hey Tonight - Creedence Clearwater Revival Hmm, I don't think Fogerty is going to spread the gospel through the wee hours of the morning when he says, "Toni's gonna get religion all night long." Oh that crazy John Fogerty.
52. Kitty's Back - Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band
51. We Gotta Get Out Of This Place - The Animals The ultimate disgruntled employee anthem. It coulda been written by Neil Young or Kurt Cobain. It crosses generations.
50. Wasted & Ready - Ben Kweller So much of this song is confusing to me. I haven't got a clue as to who the narrator of this song is, I haven't a clue who "X" is or why spaghetti reminds anyone of sex. I don't know what being "maxed out like a credit card" feels like or how people say more with their hands. But, somehow when you hear the term "wasted and ready" intermingling with that powerchord hook... it all becomes so clear.
49. Someday Never Comes - Creedence Clearwater Revival
48. Cadillac Ranch - Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band
47. It's A Long Way To the Top (If You Want To Rock and Roll) - AC/DC Bagpipes. This song has bagpipes. Name another song with bagpipes. Not even ELO incorporated bagpipes in their songs and they were an entire orchestra of electric lights!
46. Born In the U.S.A. - Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band When I was five years old, my dad made a mix tape for me that I kept until I was ten. Side 1 ,track 1 of that tape was this song. There will never be a time where this song is not a part of me.
45. Ride A White Swan - T-Rex If before you put this record on, you had told me that my favorite cut would be entitled 'Ride A White Swan', I would have unplugged the record player and hit you with the chord. But life is kooky and so are T-Rex. What's up with T-Rex anyway? Each of their songs has two or three lyrics that seem lucid and somewhat poignant and the rest of it is this la-la frou-frou mystic hippie shit. David Bowie would be ashamed... but also kinda proud.
44. Hang Onto Your Ego - The Beach Boys Technically, this is an outtake of the official version called 'I Know There's An Answer'. But that was Mike Love's version and this is Brian Wilson's version and it makes more sense in the context of 'Pet Sounds'.
43. Sweetness - Jimmy Eat World I've got no clue what this song is about; none at all. But I bet it's sweet and I know it allows me to scream a lot.
42. Cupid - Sam Cooke
41. Cold Cold Ground - Tom Waits
40. Hey Julie - Fountains Of Wayne If I were a girl named Julie and I dated a man working in an office cubicle all day, this is the song I'd hope he'd write for me one day whilst sitting in his cubicle.
39. Sweet Thing - Van Morrison
38. When A Man Loves A Woman - Percy Sledge I like this song because Percy Sledge provides us with a checklist of what is supposed to happen when someone like me falls in love witha woman. A lot of it is common sense, but I was unaware that I am expected to lose my best friend if my best friend ever happened to put her down. And here I assumed I was only expected to mediate a face-to-face between the two, in hopes of letting them hash it out on their own.
37. Magic Carpet Ride - Steppenwolf This used to be my absolute favorite song of all-time. But you know what? There are a solid two minutes of wasted time in it, that I find inexcuseable. It cannot be in my top 30 with two minutes of time wherein I zone out and start thinking about my groceries or laundry or whatever. Edit Steppenwolf, edit.
36. The Weight - The Band This song is not called "Take A Load Off Fannie". Fannie (whom in the song is actually named Annie) was removing her weight, her load, if you will. The weight is southern living, I think. But not wealthy Rhett Butler, mint-julep southern living, but toothless, moonshine, William Faulkner southern living.
35. Hoe Down! (from 'Rodeo') - Aaron Copeland Beef: It's what's for dinner. 'Hoe Down!': it's what's for kickassitude.
34. More Than A Feeling - Boston Why does Massachusetts get such a cool band? That's an awful lot of pressure to represent a whole damn metropolis. Do you suppose Illinois is dissappointed with their band Chicago and Kansas is dissappointed in Kansas?
33. Hey Ya! - Outkast There are songs that will never leave you, will always remind you of a time, a place, a feeling. This song might not be Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Woody Guthrie or Nirvana, but it's ours. For better or for worse, this song became bigger than a radio hit, it became a timepiece.
32. Badlands - Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band Rarely do songs have a heartbeat after the song is over. Songs like this are why I kinda hope I never make lots of money. Because there will be a part of me that is counterfeit for singing it. Even Bruce is counterfeit for continuing to sing this song. This is a working man's song, a loser's song, a desperate song. The passionate side of me never wants to let that go.
31. L.A. Woman - The Doors I know it's wrong to say this, but this song really makes me want to drink an entire bottle of tequila and immediately write a song, because I think that's what Jim Morrison did. And not only that, as I can only understand 2/3 of the lyrics, I think he recorded the song before the tequila wore off. Assuming the tequila ever wore off with Morrison.
30. Hurricane - Bob Dylan Brilliant storytelling from a brilliant storyteller.
29. Tulane - Chuck Berry
28. Summertime Blues - Eddie Cochran I'm a sucker for the baritone-voices interrupting oldies songs. "You can't take the car, because you didn't work late!"
27. Slow Ride - Foghat Foghat's not just a bunch of dudes in long beards and paperboy caps. No sir, they are a society of philosophical thinkers as well. They take our most base emotions and splay them out for us to ponder. 1) Take it easy. 2) Get your lovin' more than once 3) Rolling all night is simple as long as you move to the music. See? Simple. Zen.
26. Surfer Girl - The Beach Boys I'll tell you, after I found out that "woody" has several different meanings, it really changed many, many meanings of these Beach Boys songs. "In my woody, I will take you everywhere I go." I pictured something like an R-rated kangaroo.
25. Sinnerman - Nina Simone
24. Voodoo Child (slight return) - Jimi Hendrix If you don't get it, you never will.
23. We Will Rock You - Queen Do you hear the clapping? The stomping? The stomping and clapping? Yeah. You hear it. Everyone hears it.
22. Misirilou - Dick Dale & His Del-Tones This makes me want to drive fast. Drive fast or pick a fight with someone smaller and more of a physical coward than myself. Either way, it's a song to win by.
21. My True Story - The Jive-Five Earl loved Lorraine and Sue loved Earl and the moral of that story is that if you've got the blues, it's best to cry them away. Oh, and also, Earl is actually the narrator and Sue is actually the girl he's singing to. Pretty sweet twist, huh? God I love the 50's.
20. You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin' - The Righteous Brothers This song is so heartbreakingly saccharine, that 'Top Gun' felt the need to ruin it for every meathead wanting to woo some girl by singing it to her. Take that Righteous Brothers!
19. Moonlight Mile - The Rolling Stones
18. Be My Baby - The Ronettes Now seems as good of a time as any to mention that Phil Spector has 4 songs in my top 20, a feat that only Springsteen could accomplish. There was no better producer in the history of music. His use of castanettes alone deserves special mention.
17. I Love Rock 'n' Roll - Joan Jett & The Blackhearts This song doesn't really need to exist for me to even enjoy it, the title alone puts it in my top 50. The fact that there's sweet riffs and stuff is all gravy.
16. God Only Knows - The Beach Boys I can't explain why exactly, and maybe that's a good thing, but this song makes me think of my childhood, puppy loves, and fatherhood all at once, simultaneously. Usually all of these thoughts leave me weeping and huddled in a corner, but for some reason, its okay when The Beach Boys make it happen.
15. Smalltown - John Mellencamp
14. Then He Kissed Me - The Crystals
13. Stand By Me - Ben E. King
12. Tangerine - Led Zeppelin
11. Won't Get Fooled Again - The Who
10. Thunder Road - Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band. Best. Street. Address. EVER!
09. Bring It On Home To Me - Sam Cooke No singers voice makes more of an impact on a song than Sam's voice. I've listened to classic songs of his (including this none) without his voice and they're boring at best. Try one of his songs in karaoke and see how awful it sounds. I dare you.
08. Incident On 57th Street - Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band
07. I Wonder Why - Dion & The Belmonts Can I get a whoop-whoop for doo-wop; or should I say a dip-dip-dip, wah-whoop whoop?
06. Da Doo Ron Ron - The Crystals
05. Glory Days - Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band Wait. A curveball curves. A Fastball travels fast. What the hell does a "speedball" do. No wonder his highschool friend made everyone look like a fool when he threw that pitch - no one had ever seen anything like it!
04. Up Around the Bend - Creedence Clearwater Revival Absolute best opening riff in rock history and one of the best songs to burn down country roads to.
03. Baba O'Riley - The Who "Baba" is some sort of mystical nickname given to Irish healers. 'O'Riley' is the name of Pete Townshend's mentors who guided him through his demons. This song is so good, I'm willing to completely ignore all that bullshit and air-violin for nearly seven minutes!
02. Johnny B. Goode - Chuck Berry Every Chuck Berry song sounds like either this or 'Maybelline'. The man wrote over 200 songs and they all sounds like one of these two. You know why? 'Cause it's the second best sound in the history of auditory registers. They shot this song up into space along with Mozart. You hear me? Mozart, for Godssake!
01. Born To Run - Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band C'mon. Who didn't see this coming?
=================================================================
Top 20 Shows My Mother Wished I Never Watched
20. P(ardon).T(he). I(nterruption)
19. Picket Fences
18. The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson
17. The Dukes Of Hazzard
16. Mad About You
15. Perfect Strangers
14. The Muppet Show
13. Saturday Night Live
12. Survivor
11. Six Feet Under
10. Seinfeld
09. Baseball Tonight
08. Muppet Babies
07. The Real World
06. The Gilmore Girls
05. The Simpsons
04. Lost
03. The Sopranos
02. The Wonder Years
01. Homicide: Life On the Street
==============================================================
My Favorite 30 Books That I Can Remember Reading
30. Fargo Rock City by Chuck Klosterman
I don't particularly care for most hair metal bands from the 80's and early 90's and this book is basically a meditation on just that, which must mean that Chuck Klosterman is a helluva clever writer. Anyone who can get me to care about Ratt and L.A. Guns and Lita Ford should be mentioned on this list.
29. Lindbergh by A. Scott Berg
Charles Lindbergh is one of my favorite figures in history, this Pulitzer winner confines his unimaginable life in a wholly readable way.
28. A Light In August by William Faulkner
The first of seven books I read by William Faulkner. This represented who I was in college. I didn't get along with most of my classmates and so instead of having peers dare me to drink ten beers in an hour or squeeze some stranger's butt, I befriended my professors and they dared me to read nothing but Faulkner all summer. I did and it was worth it.
27. A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn
Zinn doesn't write sins, he writes tragedies, otherwise known as American history from the perspective of the tired, hungry and poor. It's not a tome of truth, but it's just as important as any textbook our high schools forced upon us.
26. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
25. Civility by Stephen S. Carter
I've always had a soft spot for sociological studies and ruminations on human behavior. This meditates on why we're so damn rude to one another.
24. Rolling Nowhere by Ted Conover
Undercover journalist Conover has made a career of becoming something for a year and then writing a book about his experience. This one has the author assuming the life of a trainrail hobo. Fascinating life.
23. Killing Yourself To Live: 85 Percent Of A True Story by Chuck Klosterman
22. High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
The first tableau that give creedence to the desire for list-making (!). The best fiction makes it's reader feel as if they are being directly communicated with, Hornby captured this feeling. He mentioned Springsteen three times!
21. The Kite Runner by Khalid Hosseini
20. Republic by Plato
Chicks dig Socrates
19. Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer
18. Moneyball by Michal Lewis
I imagine that this is the only business-related book I'll ever read. to be fair, it's about the business of baseball and thinking outside of the box. A wonderful read for baseball fans, an awful read for business-hating, sports-detractors.
17. Newjack by Ted Conover
This one takes Conover to Sing-Sing prison as a guard. I hope to be this type of journalist someday. Maybe once I mature and stop watching MTV.
16. Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
If you haven't read this book, you must. If you have kids and they haven't read this book, you must read it to them. And if you've read this children's classic and don't like it... well then, you can go straight to Hell!
15. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
My literary colleague Sammy "butterblade" Nekrosius, seems to think that Streets Of Loredo is a better portion of this trilogy and although I'll agree that it's a fine book, everything that Dead Man's Walk and Streets Of Loredo built, was in some way put to rest or set aflame by the trilogy's finale. I always prefer tension release to tension mount, but neither are very fun without the other.
14. An American Dream by Norman Mailer
Dude tosses his wife out of a Goddamned window! and that happens in the first three chapters! Badass.
13. The Corner by David Simon and Edward Burns
A great miniseries and even better journalistic endeavor of Baltimore's (and America's) drug culture.
12. The Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters
Technically it is considered poetry, but it is more like 120 small vignettes written from the grave of townspeople from the fictitious Spoon River. Complicated and extremely clever.
11. A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius by David Eggers
Ugh. I hate David Eggers and, in fact, disliked this book the first time I read it. The fact remains however, that there are some people that have enough passion walled up inside them, that no matter who they are or what they do, that they can will you to feel what they feel. This book felt like an anthem of our times, expressing so very much of what people in and around my age feel and are afraid or unable to articulate. This book means a lot of things to a lot of people, including - begrudgingly - myself.
10. Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
09. Sex, Drugs & Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman
If I were to write a book tomorrow, this is the BEST version of the book I would write.
08. Straight Man by Richard Russo
07. Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk
Possibly his least known book, but also probably his grossest and most disturbing.
06. King Bidgood's In the Bathtub by Don & Audrey Wood
Best illustrations of any book in the world... that I know of, anyway. Story is cute too.
05. Catcher In the Rye by J.D. Salinger
04. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
03. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
One of my favorite fictions and a big lender to many of my personal philosophies on life. "At least I tried, Goddammit. At least I did that much."
02. Empire Falls by Richard Russo
Smalltown America is never better than it is in the pages of fiction written by people from New England. I'm just saying.
01. Homicide: A Year On the Killing Streets by David Simon
I read this book five years ago and it has since dictated the trajectory of my professional goals. Great book, great show, great execution, wholly engaging and fascinating. Perfect.
==================================================
TOP 25 SONGS of 2005
25. THE BIG ONE - Nellie McKay
24. GET RIGHT - J.Lo
23. HEY MAMA - Kanye West
22. MY STYLE - Black Eyed Peas
21. OFF THE RECORD - My Morning Jacket
20. LYLA - Oasis
19. HELL YES - Beck
18. BLUE ORCHID - The White Stripes
17. I PREDICT A RIOT - The Kaiser Chiefs
16. IN THE MORNING - The Coral
15. HERE HE COMES (CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKEN MARIONNETTE) - The Wallflowers
14. BE EASY - Ghostface Killuh
13. THE FALLEN - Franz Ferdinand
12. GOOD PEOPLE - Jack Johnson
11. SPORTING LIFE - The Decemberists
10. WE GOT TO LEAVE - The Ceasars
09. THE OTHER WAY - Weezer
08. GOODNIGHT, GOODNIGHT - Hot Hot Heat
07. ALL I'M THINKIN' ABOUT - Bruce Springsteen
06. IT'S NOT THE FALL THAT HURTS - The Ceasars
05. MY DOORBELL - The White Stripes
04. PICKIN' IT UP - Hot Hot Heat
03. THE HITTER - Bruce Springsteen
02. GOLDDIGGER (feat. Jamie Foxx) - Kanye West
01. SOUL MEETS BODY - Death Cab for Cutie
TOP 10 ALBUMS OF 2005
10. TWIN CINEMA - The New Pornographers
09. MAKE BELIEVE - Weezer
08. LATE REGISTRATION - Kanye West
07. PICARESQUE - The Decemberists
06. GET BEHIND ME SATAN - The White Stripes
05. GUERO - Beck
04. MONKEY BUSINESS - The Black Eyed Peas
03. ELEVATOR - Hot Hot Heat
02. DEVILS & DUST - Bruce Springsteen
01. PAPER TIGERS - The Caesars
===============================================================
Ugh. So there you have it. You now know more about me than the thirty blogs I've previously written combined. And now that you do, I can only say, it was nice knowin' you.
I've convinced people that I was a 21-year-old lion tamer and a 34-year-old truck driver in the same night.
How people relay their information means very little. What they say, means even less.
If you tell me your ten favorite movies and your ten favorite songs, I'll know you better than an hour of conversation would have allowed.
Which brings us directly to this little blog I've been working on. I started writing my eccelctic and often scrambled thoughts here in hopes of better understanding myself. And to some degree, that is still what I'm working towards. But somewhere along the line, it became about the various people that I discovered were reading my ecclectically scrambled thoughts. After a while, I realized it was important that they understand me too.
Here, in this blog, I've compiled and updated many of the numerous lists I have worked on with my closest friends. I believe that when it comes to pop-culture, my 100th favorite song is more precious to me than the absolute favorite song of most other people.
Is that good? Probably not. It certainly isn't important. But it does define me, which is comforting on many different levels.
So here, for your enjoyment and frustration: My Life In Lists.
The 100 Most Awesomest Movies EVER
100. The Incredibles (2004) 50. The Blues Brothers (1980)
99. Clueless (1994) 49. The Royal Tenenbaums (2002)
98. Philadelphia (1993) 48. Beetlejuice (1987)
97. Out of Sight (1998) 47. Moonlight Mile (2002)
96. Toy Story 2 (1999) 46. Sling Blade (1995)
95. The Odd Couple (1967) 45. Barton Fink (1991)
94. Kill Bill, pt.1 (2003) 44. Jurassic Park (1993)
93. Mean Streets (1973) 43. Jaws (1975)
92. Father Of the Bride (1991) 42. Rear Window (1954)
91. Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (1939) 41. Do the Right Thing (1989)
90. Mister Roberts (1955) 40. Swingers (1995)
89. Old School (2003) 39. On the Waterfront (1954)
88. Lost In Translation (2003) 38. The Silence Of the Lambs (1991)
87. The Apostle (1997) 37. Apollo 13 (1995)
86. Boogie Nights (1997) 36. Pinocchio (1940)
85. Kill Bill, pt.2 (2004) 35. Cape Fear (1961)
84. Sunset Blvd. (1950) 34. Cape Fear (1991)
83. Jackie Brown (1997) 33. O Brother Where Art Thou? (2000)
82. His Girl Friday (1940) 32. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
81. Ocean's Eleven (2001) 31. Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988)
80. Eyes Wide Shut (1999) 30. Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
79. From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) 29. Toy Story (1995)
78. Noises Off! (1992) 28. A Christmas Story (1983)
77. High Fidelity (1999) 27. The Apartment (1960)
76. The Godfather (1972) 26. Bull Durham (1988)
75. Fight Club (1999) 25. Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
74. There's Something About Mary (1998) 24. Taxi Driver (1976)
73. Eternal Sunshine Of A Spotless Mind (2004) 23. JFK (1991)
72. Dances With Wolves (1990) 22. Rushmore (1999)
71. Double Indemnity (1944) 21. Cast Away (2000)
70. Lolita (1962) 20. Natural Born Killers (1994)
69. The Graduate (1967) 19. American Buffalo (1995)
68. As Good As It Gets (1998) 18. When Harry Met Sally... (1989)
67. The Big Lebowski (1998) 17. A Perfect World (1993)
66. A Straight Story (1999) 16. Stand By Me (1986)
65. Vanilla Sky (2002) 15. Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)
64. Good Will Hunting (1998) 14. To Kill A Mockingbird (1962)
63. Giant (1956) 13. The Seven-Year Itch (1955)
62. Albino Alligator (1996) 12. Back To the Future (1985)
61. Se7en (1995) 11. 12 Angry Men (1957)
60. The Quick and The Dead (1994) 10. Singin' In the Rain (1952)
59. Born On the 4th Of July (1987) 09. The Night Of the Hunter (1955)
58. Liar, Liar (1996) 08. Chicago (2002)
57. Goodfellas (1990) 07. Some Like It Hot (1959)
56. Casino (1995) 06. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
55. Ghost World (2001) 05. Almost Famous (1999)
54. Reservoir Dogs (1992) 04. Raging Bull (1980)
53. A Bronx Tale (1993) 03. Pulp Fiction (1994)
52. Dumbo (1941) 02. Ghostbusters (1984)
51. Fargo (1996) 01. Forrest Gump (1994)
Wierd statistical analysis of my unfortunate compulsion to rank everything:
* Of eveyone on this list, Robert DeNiro stars in the most films (8) with Tom Hanks behind him (4 and 2 voice-overs)
* Kevin Costner has the most films in the top 30 (3), but it should also be noted that there is no actor in history with a better six-year film career than Costner. Starting with 'Field Of Dreams' then 'Bull Durham', 'Dances With Wolves', 'JFK', Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves', and 'A Perfect World', no one has a better stint than him.
* Here's an oddity: The three most popular years in their respective decades were 1955 (3), 1975 (3) and 1995 (7). However, 1965(0), 1985 (1) and 2005 (0) were the three biggest duds in their respective decades. I can't wait until 2015!
* The average year-of-release date on the movies from this list is 1985.
* 21 of the movies on this list were released while I was in high school.
* 72f the movies on this list were released during my lifetime.
* 1981, 1982 and 2005 are the only three years of my lifetime not represented on this list. Thus proving my theory that nothing pop-culturally significant took place in 1981 or 1982. Nothing. I challenge you to find something.
* Billy Wilder and Quentin Tarantino lead the directors on this list with 5 films each. Martin Scorsese, Robert Zemeckis and The Coen Brothers are all tied for second with 4.
* I am often ousted by my friends and loved ones for not including the following on my list: 'Shrek', 'A Clockwork Orange', 'Star Wars', 'Indiana Jones' or any of the 'Lord Of the Rings' movies. No Woody Allen, Orson Welles, or John Ford.
* 1999 is the most represented year on this list (7) followed by 1995 and 1994 both with 6. It should also be noted that 1994 has 2 of my 3 favorite all-time films.
===============================================================
Top 100 Songs To Download and Pretend You'd ALWAYS Liked Them
READER'S NOTE: Much of these songs' attraction to me can be explained in a previous blog entitled "Top 10 Things That Make A Kickass Song". If you haven't yet read that blog, I highly suggest you seeking it out and going through it, as you'll find the bulk of these songs follow those rules.
100.I Want To Help You Ann - The Lyres I'm not sure why Ann needs help, but her apparent distress served as the muse for this band's killer whammy-bar riff.
99. Little Willy - Sweet I think Willy was modeled after my sister, because whenever we went to family trips, she too would not go anywhere, would have to be chased down hallways, and when we tried tellin' everybody... it did nothing.
98. For What It's Worth - Buffalo Springfield
97. Worried Man Blues - The Carter Family
96. No Surrender - Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band 'No Surrender': "We busted out of class/ Had to get away from those fools/ We learned more from a three-minute record, baby/ Then we ever learned in schools" Paul Simon's 'Kodachrome': "When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school/ It's a wonder I can think at all". Do you think Bruce and Paul Simon hung out in high school and are singing about their secret friendship as hooky-playing Jersey hoodlums? Think about it.
95. Closer To You - The Wallflowers
94. Hey Mama - The Black Eyed Peas This song makes me think of Fergie pumping her hips like she's got a scorpion on her she's trying to shake off... and anything that makes me think of that is going to be on this list.
93. Houston - Dean Martin This is my "drunk" song. Everyone should have a drunk song; the song they sing as if they were drunk when they are actually sober and the song they sing well when they are actually drunk. It's mandatory to list your "drunk song" in your top 100, I listed mine at 93.
92. Cavaleria Rusticana Intermezzo Sinfonico - Pietro Mascagni Otherwise known as the 'Raging Bull theme'. You know it's gotta be pretty snazzy if I not only typed out that long as title, but spelled it all correctly.
91. Sh-Boom - The Chords. There was a black version and a "white" version, the white one was done by The Crew Cuts, and this version was better.
90. New York Groove - Ace Frehely Ace describes the beauty of the city and his Cadillac rides throughout the downtown area. Ace's belief in the awesomeness of New York is enough for me to believe that New York is, in fact, awesome. However, he never describes why he left the groove of New York in the first place.
89. Story Of My Life - Social Distortion
88. Tonight I Fell In Love - The Tokens What's that I hear? Clapping? Whopping? Bands dropping out? Only 1:48 minutes long? Yup. That's going on the list.
87. Pictures Of Lily - The Who The fact that somewhere in Shepard's Bush, England some 60-year-old woman named Lily has a song about some creepy kid that sat next to her in history class wrote about her, amuses me. I wish someone would write a song about masturbating while thinking about me.
86. Chain Of Fools - Aretha Franklin I did this in karaoke once. It didn't go well. Much respect to Ms. Franklin.
85. Mannish Boy - Muddy Waters The song consists mostly of Muddy spelling the words "man" and "boy" and somehow - miraculously - I still feel strong enough to rip a bus in half after hearing it!
84. Soul Meets Body - Death Cab For Cutie I think this song is about the lead singer (Mr. Deathcab) going crazy, leaving his body, coming back to sanity and being all turned around because of it. Which is a way trippy song considering I first heard it during a commercla break of 'Laguna Beach'.
83. You're Missing - Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band
82. The Day After Tomorrow - Tom Waits These last two songs are written from the perspective of someone who has lost a loved one (Bruce) and who is fearing the loss of a loved one (Waits) due to the current military situation overseas. If all art strives for the immediate impact of song, than there are no two better examples than from these two economic songwriters.
81. 12:51 - The Strokes It's a Strokes song. I love all Strokes songs, but I never know what any of them are really about. I'm pretty sure 12:51 is not a Bible passage. I think 12:51 is the time the narrator finds the guts to call an ex-girlfriend and beg her to hang out with him on a Friday night. If that's what this song is about, than THAT is why I love the Strokes.
80. Rosalita (Come Out Tonight) - Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band Rosie seems like a prude, and with the narrator of this song trying to woo her, who could blame her? He's standing at her window telling her everything that's wrong with him: All his friends are street-urchin hooligans, Rosie's parents hate him, but he nevertheless demands her to revolt against them, he's going to skip school, play some pool, and act real cool - so apparently he's not actually cool, he's just going to pretend he is. He hasn't any money, but he does have delusions of a record deal (which doesn't prevent his car from getting stuck in the swamp). I'm not sure if Rosalita actually came out that night, but if she did, I bet she didn't make it through the night.
79. Canon In D - Pachelbel
78. Gloria - Them Y'know it's damndest thing. I had a spelling test in 1st grade and one of my "think words" was Gloria. I couldn't, for the life of me, remember how to spell that proper noun. Then I turned on the radio...
77. Float On - Modest Mouse If this song were written in the 60's, it would have been written by Arlo Guthrie and called a "Hippie anthem". If it were written in the early 90s, Soul Asylum would have written it and it would have been called a "Slacker anthem". But it was written in 2004 and can only be called awesome.
76. State Trooper - Bruce Springsteen
75. Times Like These - The Foo Fighters Dave Grohl is confused as to whether he should love or run, be the bigger man or end it all in a fiery blaze. We are led to believe he choses the path of love, but who can tell 'cause he's always yellin' and stuff.
74. The Man Comes Around - Johnny Cash I hope when all is said and done with the legend of Johnny Cash that his last five albums get their proper due as among the very best of his career. These American Recording series albums are among the most haunting of any bluesman and more powerful than even Johnny at his most raucous.
73. Working On the Highway - Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band How most people are feeling about seeing Springsteen's name on this list so many times is about how I feel everytime I read someone else's list and it has either Dylan, Nirvana or The Beatles listed ten or more times. Consider us even.
72. I Don't Wanna Grow Up - Tom Waits
71. Knockin' On Heaven's Door - Bob Dylan I've always wanted to be a cowboy and someday I might still move to Tex-Arkan and become one. If that time comes and I get shot by some poachers or maybe an evil sheriff, I hope they find me lying in the dirt so I can request they put my uneeded guns in the ground.
70. Highway Patrolman - Bruce Springsteen
69. Rebellion (Lies) - The Arcade Fire Arguably, the best anti-sleep song ever written. What lies are the Arcade Fire being told about sleeping, anyway?
68. The Line - Bruce Springsteen I adapted this song into a movie script that basically got me through the rest of film school. Thank-you, Bruce.
67. Shattered - The Rolling Stones A) I don't believe that Mich Jagger couldn't "give it away on 7th Avenue" (in 1978 or now) B) I don't know what "schmatter" means C) What was Ace Frehley doing that The Rolling Stones weren't in 1978, because they have two very dissenting opinions on the city of New York at that time. One's getting in a groove and the other is in tatters.
66. The Wind - Cat Stevens Cat Stevens changed his name to Yusaf Islam and plays a lot of tambourine, but before he went all nutty he created this song which wa used in both 'Rushmore' and 'Almost Famous' and for that, I'll let Yusaf slide.
65. Bangs - They Might Be Giants Ohmigod! I totally love bangs too. That's so funny. I totally like bangs and They Mght Be Giants totally like bangs. We should totally be friends and only date girls with bangs and only date girls because of their bangs! Sweet! They Might Be Giants might be too smart for their own good. This barely 3-minute-long song utilizes the words "prosedium", "auto-flyness", "congruent", and "incline". It also gives a proper shout-out to cute little pocket t-shirts.
64. Silhouettes - The Rays I've listened to this song since I was a wee lad, but it wasn't until about five years ago that I actually paid attention to the last verse. For years - years! - I thought this was a song about a guy getting cheated on. Turns out, it's a song about a dumbass who can't remember where his girlfriend lives! Awesome! AWESOME!
63. Only Sixteen - Sam Cooke You wanna feel really icky? Stand outside a highschool and sing this to yourself as all the students pass by.
62. Airline To Heaven - Billy Bragg & Wilco
61. Werewolves Of London - Warren Zevon Wait. I get confused, is there a werewolf in London or is there a dance-craze called "The Werewolf Of London"? Some little old lady got mutilated by something, but then... what was Lon Chaney doing?
60. S.O.B. - AC/DC
59. Fanfare For the Common Man - Aaron Copeland If apple pie, baseball and Ford vehicles could all manifest themselves into some sort of auditory collection of sounds - I bet it would resemble 'Fanfare For the Common Man'.
58. Roadrunner - Jonathan Richman and The Modern Lovers Okay it's real simple. He loves Massachusetts, highways at night, the moon, his radio. Hell, don't we all love that?
57. Dope Nose - Weezer This song is for the times that you wanna bust rhymes real slow. Thank you for that, Weez. There should be about 15 songs of Weezer's on this list, but I couldn't find room. There has never been a time when Dope Nose didn't make me go wild, so it's going to have to be my list's representative.
56. Reason To Believe - Bruce Springsteen
55. (Today I Met) The Boy I'm Gonna Marry - Darlene Love Wouldn't we all be happier if we could be as sure as Darlene Love was in this song of the moment we see the person we should be with forever? I think that's why I love this song so much, it gives us all hope that this moment, even if for a very select few, actually exists. It's romantic. Unfortunately, I'm a sucker and I'm constantly humming this tune in my head at the bars, drunk off my ass, figuring it will magically cause the girl I'm going to marry to appear in a cloud of smoke. Note: this is not a genie's lamp, just a wonderful song.
54. Respect - Otis Redding Oh gosh! What's he doing? Does he know Aretha Franklin did this song too? He can't possibly prefer Otis' version over Aretha's, can he? Isn't that against some sort of rock ordinance? That's like preferring Dylan's version of 'All Along the Watchtower' to Jimi's. Well folks... Does Aretha Franklin's version of 'Respect' have the horn section that Otis' section has? No. Eat it.
53. Hey Tonight - Creedence Clearwater Revival Hmm, I don't think Fogerty is going to spread the gospel through the wee hours of the morning when he says, "Toni's gonna get religion all night long." Oh that crazy John Fogerty.
52. Kitty's Back - Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band
51. We Gotta Get Out Of This Place - The Animals The ultimate disgruntled employee anthem. It coulda been written by Neil Young or Kurt Cobain. It crosses generations.
50. Wasted & Ready - Ben Kweller So much of this song is confusing to me. I haven't got a clue as to who the narrator of this song is, I haven't a clue who "X" is or why spaghetti reminds anyone of sex. I don't know what being "maxed out like a credit card" feels like or how people say more with their hands. But, somehow when you hear the term "wasted and ready" intermingling with that powerchord hook... it all becomes so clear.
49. Someday Never Comes - Creedence Clearwater Revival
48. Cadillac Ranch - Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band
47. It's A Long Way To the Top (If You Want To Rock and Roll) - AC/DC Bagpipes. This song has bagpipes. Name another song with bagpipes. Not even ELO incorporated bagpipes in their songs and they were an entire orchestra of electric lights!
46. Born In the U.S.A. - Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band When I was five years old, my dad made a mix tape for me that I kept until I was ten. Side 1 ,track 1 of that tape was this song. There will never be a time where this song is not a part of me.
45. Ride A White Swan - T-Rex If before you put this record on, you had told me that my favorite cut would be entitled 'Ride A White Swan', I would have unplugged the record player and hit you with the chord. But life is kooky and so are T-Rex. What's up with T-Rex anyway? Each of their songs has two or three lyrics that seem lucid and somewhat poignant and the rest of it is this la-la frou-frou mystic hippie shit. David Bowie would be ashamed... but also kinda proud.
44. Hang Onto Your Ego - The Beach Boys Technically, this is an outtake of the official version called 'I Know There's An Answer'. But that was Mike Love's version and this is Brian Wilson's version and it makes more sense in the context of 'Pet Sounds'.
43. Sweetness - Jimmy Eat World I've got no clue what this song is about; none at all. But I bet it's sweet and I know it allows me to scream a lot.
42. Cupid - Sam Cooke
41. Cold Cold Ground - Tom Waits
40. Hey Julie - Fountains Of Wayne If I were a girl named Julie and I dated a man working in an office cubicle all day, this is the song I'd hope he'd write for me one day whilst sitting in his cubicle.
39. Sweet Thing - Van Morrison
38. When A Man Loves A Woman - Percy Sledge I like this song because Percy Sledge provides us with a checklist of what is supposed to happen when someone like me falls in love witha woman. A lot of it is common sense, but I was unaware that I am expected to lose my best friend if my best friend ever happened to put her down. And here I assumed I was only expected to mediate a face-to-face between the two, in hopes of letting them hash it out on their own.
37. Magic Carpet Ride - Steppenwolf This used to be my absolute favorite song of all-time. But you know what? There are a solid two minutes of wasted time in it, that I find inexcuseable. It cannot be in my top 30 with two minutes of time wherein I zone out and start thinking about my groceries or laundry or whatever. Edit Steppenwolf, edit.
36. The Weight - The Band This song is not called "Take A Load Off Fannie". Fannie (whom in the song is actually named Annie) was removing her weight, her load, if you will. The weight is southern living, I think. But not wealthy Rhett Butler, mint-julep southern living, but toothless, moonshine, William Faulkner southern living.
35. Hoe Down! (from 'Rodeo') - Aaron Copeland Beef: It's what's for dinner. 'Hoe Down!': it's what's for kickassitude.
34. More Than A Feeling - Boston Why does Massachusetts get such a cool band? That's an awful lot of pressure to represent a whole damn metropolis. Do you suppose Illinois is dissappointed with their band Chicago and Kansas is dissappointed in Kansas?
33. Hey Ya! - Outkast There are songs that will never leave you, will always remind you of a time, a place, a feeling. This song might not be Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Woody Guthrie or Nirvana, but it's ours. For better or for worse, this song became bigger than a radio hit, it became a timepiece.
32. Badlands - Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band Rarely do songs have a heartbeat after the song is over. Songs like this are why I kinda hope I never make lots of money. Because there will be a part of me that is counterfeit for singing it. Even Bruce is counterfeit for continuing to sing this song. This is a working man's song, a loser's song, a desperate song. The passionate side of me never wants to let that go.
31. L.A. Woman - The Doors I know it's wrong to say this, but this song really makes me want to drink an entire bottle of tequila and immediately write a song, because I think that's what Jim Morrison did. And not only that, as I can only understand 2/3 of the lyrics, I think he recorded the song before the tequila wore off. Assuming the tequila ever wore off with Morrison.
30. Hurricane - Bob Dylan Brilliant storytelling from a brilliant storyteller.
29. Tulane - Chuck Berry
28. Summertime Blues - Eddie Cochran I'm a sucker for the baritone-voices interrupting oldies songs. "You can't take the car, because you didn't work late!"
27. Slow Ride - Foghat Foghat's not just a bunch of dudes in long beards and paperboy caps. No sir, they are a society of philosophical thinkers as well. They take our most base emotions and splay them out for us to ponder. 1) Take it easy. 2) Get your lovin' more than once 3) Rolling all night is simple as long as you move to the music. See? Simple. Zen.
26. Surfer Girl - The Beach Boys I'll tell you, after I found out that "woody" has several different meanings, it really changed many, many meanings of these Beach Boys songs. "In my woody, I will take you everywhere I go." I pictured something like an R-rated kangaroo.
25. Sinnerman - Nina Simone
24. Voodoo Child (slight return) - Jimi Hendrix If you don't get it, you never will.
23. We Will Rock You - Queen Do you hear the clapping? The stomping? The stomping and clapping? Yeah. You hear it. Everyone hears it.
22. Misirilou - Dick Dale & His Del-Tones This makes me want to drive fast. Drive fast or pick a fight with someone smaller and more of a physical coward than myself. Either way, it's a song to win by.
21. My True Story - The Jive-Five Earl loved Lorraine and Sue loved Earl and the moral of that story is that if you've got the blues, it's best to cry them away. Oh, and also, Earl is actually the narrator and Sue is actually the girl he's singing to. Pretty sweet twist, huh? God I love the 50's.
20. You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin' - The Righteous Brothers This song is so heartbreakingly saccharine, that 'Top Gun' felt the need to ruin it for every meathead wanting to woo some girl by singing it to her. Take that Righteous Brothers!
19. Moonlight Mile - The Rolling Stones
18. Be My Baby - The Ronettes Now seems as good of a time as any to mention that Phil Spector has 4 songs in my top 20, a feat that only Springsteen could accomplish. There was no better producer in the history of music. His use of castanettes alone deserves special mention.
17. I Love Rock 'n' Roll - Joan Jett & The Blackhearts This song doesn't really need to exist for me to even enjoy it, the title alone puts it in my top 50. The fact that there's sweet riffs and stuff is all gravy.
16. God Only Knows - The Beach Boys I can't explain why exactly, and maybe that's a good thing, but this song makes me think of my childhood, puppy loves, and fatherhood all at once, simultaneously. Usually all of these thoughts leave me weeping and huddled in a corner, but for some reason, its okay when The Beach Boys make it happen.
15. Smalltown - John Mellencamp
14. Then He Kissed Me - The Crystals
13. Stand By Me - Ben E. King
12. Tangerine - Led Zeppelin
11. Won't Get Fooled Again - The Who
10. Thunder Road - Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band. Best. Street. Address. EVER!
09. Bring It On Home To Me - Sam Cooke No singers voice makes more of an impact on a song than Sam's voice. I've listened to classic songs of his (including this none) without his voice and they're boring at best. Try one of his songs in karaoke and see how awful it sounds. I dare you.
08. Incident On 57th Street - Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band
07. I Wonder Why - Dion & The Belmonts Can I get a whoop-whoop for doo-wop; or should I say a dip-dip-dip, wah-whoop whoop?
06. Da Doo Ron Ron - The Crystals
05. Glory Days - Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band Wait. A curveball curves. A Fastball travels fast. What the hell does a "speedball" do. No wonder his highschool friend made everyone look like a fool when he threw that pitch - no one had ever seen anything like it!
04. Up Around the Bend - Creedence Clearwater Revival Absolute best opening riff in rock history and one of the best songs to burn down country roads to.
03. Baba O'Riley - The Who "Baba" is some sort of mystical nickname given to Irish healers. 'O'Riley' is the name of Pete Townshend's mentors who guided him through his demons. This song is so good, I'm willing to completely ignore all that bullshit and air-violin for nearly seven minutes!
02. Johnny B. Goode - Chuck Berry Every Chuck Berry song sounds like either this or 'Maybelline'. The man wrote over 200 songs and they all sounds like one of these two. You know why? 'Cause it's the second best sound in the history of auditory registers. They shot this song up into space along with Mozart. You hear me? Mozart, for Godssake!
01. Born To Run - Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band C'mon. Who didn't see this coming?
=================================================================
Top 20 Shows My Mother Wished I Never Watched
20. P(ardon).T(he). I(nterruption)
19. Picket Fences
18. The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson
17. The Dukes Of Hazzard
16. Mad About You
15. Perfect Strangers
14. The Muppet Show
13. Saturday Night Live
12. Survivor
11. Six Feet Under
10. Seinfeld
09. Baseball Tonight
08. Muppet Babies
07. The Real World
06. The Gilmore Girls
05. The Simpsons
04. Lost
03. The Sopranos
02. The Wonder Years
01. Homicide: Life On the Street
==============================================================
My Favorite 30 Books That I Can Remember Reading
30. Fargo Rock City by Chuck Klosterman
I don't particularly care for most hair metal bands from the 80's and early 90's and this book is basically a meditation on just that, which must mean that Chuck Klosterman is a helluva clever writer. Anyone who can get me to care about Ratt and L.A. Guns and Lita Ford should be mentioned on this list.
29. Lindbergh by A. Scott Berg
Charles Lindbergh is one of my favorite figures in history, this Pulitzer winner confines his unimaginable life in a wholly readable way.
28. A Light In August by William Faulkner
The first of seven books I read by William Faulkner. This represented who I was in college. I didn't get along with most of my classmates and so instead of having peers dare me to drink ten beers in an hour or squeeze some stranger's butt, I befriended my professors and they dared me to read nothing but Faulkner all summer. I did and it was worth it.
27. A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn
Zinn doesn't write sins, he writes tragedies, otherwise known as American history from the perspective of the tired, hungry and poor. It's not a tome of truth, but it's just as important as any textbook our high schools forced upon us.
26. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
25. Civility by Stephen S. Carter
I've always had a soft spot for sociological studies and ruminations on human behavior. This meditates on why we're so damn rude to one another.
24. Rolling Nowhere by Ted Conover
Undercover journalist Conover has made a career of becoming something for a year and then writing a book about his experience. This one has the author assuming the life of a trainrail hobo. Fascinating life.
23. Killing Yourself To Live: 85 Percent Of A True Story by Chuck Klosterman
22. High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
The first tableau that give creedence to the desire for list-making (!). The best fiction makes it's reader feel as if they are being directly communicated with, Hornby captured this feeling. He mentioned Springsteen three times!
21. The Kite Runner by Khalid Hosseini
20. Republic by Plato
Chicks dig Socrates
19. Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer
18. Moneyball by Michal Lewis
I imagine that this is the only business-related book I'll ever read. to be fair, it's about the business of baseball and thinking outside of the box. A wonderful read for baseball fans, an awful read for business-hating, sports-detractors.
17. Newjack by Ted Conover
This one takes Conover to Sing-Sing prison as a guard. I hope to be this type of journalist someday. Maybe once I mature and stop watching MTV.
16. Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
If you haven't read this book, you must. If you have kids and they haven't read this book, you must read it to them. And if you've read this children's classic and don't like it... well then, you can go straight to Hell!
15. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
My literary colleague Sammy "butterblade" Nekrosius, seems to think that Streets Of Loredo is a better portion of this trilogy and although I'll agree that it's a fine book, everything that Dead Man's Walk and Streets Of Loredo built, was in some way put to rest or set aflame by the trilogy's finale. I always prefer tension release to tension mount, but neither are very fun without the other.
14. An American Dream by Norman Mailer
Dude tosses his wife out of a Goddamned window! and that happens in the first three chapters! Badass.
13. The Corner by David Simon and Edward Burns
A great miniseries and even better journalistic endeavor of Baltimore's (and America's) drug culture.
12. The Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters
Technically it is considered poetry, but it is more like 120 small vignettes written from the grave of townspeople from the fictitious Spoon River. Complicated and extremely clever.
11. A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius by David Eggers
Ugh. I hate David Eggers and, in fact, disliked this book the first time I read it. The fact remains however, that there are some people that have enough passion walled up inside them, that no matter who they are or what they do, that they can will you to feel what they feel. This book felt like an anthem of our times, expressing so very much of what people in and around my age feel and are afraid or unable to articulate. This book means a lot of things to a lot of people, including - begrudgingly - myself.
10. Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
09. Sex, Drugs & Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman
If I were to write a book tomorrow, this is the BEST version of the book I would write.
08. Straight Man by Richard Russo
07. Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk
Possibly his least known book, but also probably his grossest and most disturbing.
06. King Bidgood's In the Bathtub by Don & Audrey Wood
Best illustrations of any book in the world... that I know of, anyway. Story is cute too.
05. Catcher In the Rye by J.D. Salinger
04. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
03. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
One of my favorite fictions and a big lender to many of my personal philosophies on life. "At least I tried, Goddammit. At least I did that much."
02. Empire Falls by Richard Russo
Smalltown America is never better than it is in the pages of fiction written by people from New England. I'm just saying.
01. Homicide: A Year On the Killing Streets by David Simon
I read this book five years ago and it has since dictated the trajectory of my professional goals. Great book, great show, great execution, wholly engaging and fascinating. Perfect.
==================================================
TOP 25 SONGS of 2005
25. THE BIG ONE - Nellie McKay
24. GET RIGHT - J.Lo
23. HEY MAMA - Kanye West
22. MY STYLE - Black Eyed Peas
21. OFF THE RECORD - My Morning Jacket
20. LYLA - Oasis
19. HELL YES - Beck
18. BLUE ORCHID - The White Stripes
17. I PREDICT A RIOT - The Kaiser Chiefs
16. IN THE MORNING - The Coral
15. HERE HE COMES (CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKEN MARIONNETTE) - The Wallflowers
14. BE EASY - Ghostface Killuh
13. THE FALLEN - Franz Ferdinand
12. GOOD PEOPLE - Jack Johnson
11. SPORTING LIFE - The Decemberists
10. WE GOT TO LEAVE - The Ceasars
09. THE OTHER WAY - Weezer
08. GOODNIGHT, GOODNIGHT - Hot Hot Heat
07. ALL I'M THINKIN' ABOUT - Bruce Springsteen
06. IT'S NOT THE FALL THAT HURTS - The Ceasars
05. MY DOORBELL - The White Stripes
04. PICKIN' IT UP - Hot Hot Heat
03. THE HITTER - Bruce Springsteen
02. GOLDDIGGER (feat. Jamie Foxx) - Kanye West
01. SOUL MEETS BODY - Death Cab for Cutie
TOP 10 ALBUMS OF 2005
10. TWIN CINEMA - The New Pornographers
09. MAKE BELIEVE - Weezer
08. LATE REGISTRATION - Kanye West
07. PICARESQUE - The Decemberists
06. GET BEHIND ME SATAN - The White Stripes
05. GUERO - Beck
04. MONKEY BUSINESS - The Black Eyed Peas
03. ELEVATOR - Hot Hot Heat
02. DEVILS & DUST - Bruce Springsteen
01. PAPER TIGERS - The Caesars
===============================================================
Ugh. So there you have it. You now know more about me than the thirty blogs I've previously written combined. And now that you do, I can only say, it was nice knowin' you.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)