They seem more aggressive now, those pleasant young men in ties. Or else they propagated en masse in secret. Their modest parade has dotted my porch these last few years, distributing salvation through doorways in the form of glossy placards you daren’t fold for fear of creasing an apostle. I patiently drop the heartbreaking news: “I’m sorry, but I’m not interested.” They understand just as politely as they sold, yet they inevitably return with no memory of our previous encounter.
Just yesterday, in fact, I crossed a street to avoid an advancing pair, but it was too late. Our eyes met and their loafers followed mine until we were face-to-face traveling companions for the next four blocks. After the requisite handshake and apology, we parted, I with another pocketful of handbills courtesy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. When I was but a squirt they seemed satisfied interrupting my midday cartoons with their insistent message. Now they prowl the cul-de-sacs, flesh-and-bone agents of divinity.
I’ve no truck with religion. Whatever carries your day is swell by me. It was just never that important in my own life, going all the way back to the beginning, when my parents, their minds brined Aquarian, declined to dab my tater head with the waters of any denomination. “We wanted you to make that decision for yourself,” Mom explained years later. I’ve been a blissful free agent ever since.
Not that I never sampled from the plate. Despite my folks’ then-liberal bent, I was enrolled in largely religious private schools until roughly the second grade. I retain only the tiniest blur of a Jewish peewee academy, specifically my yarmulke’s ongoing beef with Southern California’s natural humidity and its effects on my taxed little scalp. After a secular kindergarten, I was moved to a WASP-y Lutheran joint where I purchased a toy Scooby van for the baby Jesus on Christmas (it actually went to a local charity — why they couldn’t tell us tykes that to begin with, who knows?) and wriggled nervously through Monday morning roll when the teacher droned, “Service or Sunday school?” and I had no idea what the hell she was talking about. See, aside from public functions or weddings, my family didn’t attend church. As far as I was concerned, church was that gaudy gargoyle perch on campus with the air-conditioned playground inside, an echoing chasm of cross and organ. But that was back in the ’70s. Whatever dogma I absorbed died with disco.
I fear I haven’t improved much since. My uncle’s a minister, a charismatic and gifted orator I’ve loved dearly all my life. Pops, who’s tightened his own faith over the last 30 years, has asked me to join him for worship on occasion, and sometimes I oblige for holidays or for, y’know, what the hey; I get to hang out with my dad. I go, watch a dapper stick of silvered sweat pace a stage, listen to a fistful of well-scrubbed lungs caress devotionals known to everyone but me, and pass the plate as required, but honestly, I don’t find the experience enriching or rewarding — it’s just a Sunday spent among some generally nice people.
I don’t consider myself above the congregation or its belief system; I just don’t share it. Despite the furrowed tut-tuts I sometimes endure, I don’t feel empty or lost; whatever I choose to observe comes from an ever-evolving spirituality that works for and comforts me. A dab of Buddhism, a nod o’ agnostic, a snuff of sci-fi, and a cauldron of boiling rock ‘n’ roll. I require no Bible or hilltop cathedral. I have me. Do I believe in God? Not in an omniscient, tangible Supreme Being as fashioned by the limitations of human thought. (A wise man once opined, “God is a concept/by which we measure our pain.” Said sage still resides within the family vinyl.) Yet something — or, more likely, a series of somethings — is responsible for our presence, and, hey, man, I’m just glad to be here, hope to be back again someday. My philosophy is disgustingly simple: Live well, love hard. Basic human decency. Who needs church for that? I’m reminded somewhat of the old (like “back when he was relevant” old) Dennis Miller dig at born-again Christians: “Pardon me for getting it right the first time.”
So when next I’m beseiged by the clean-cut merchants and their Book of Mormon, I’ll pass on a sermon of my own, which demands not my tongue but their ears for all of five minutes, 30 seconds. It’s one of my favorite Rush tunes from their 2007 effort, Snakes & Arrows, with a credo outlined in the sweeping mountaintop chorus:
I don’t have faith in faith
I don’t believe in belief
You can call me faithless
You can call me faithless
But I still cling to hope
And I believe in love
And that’s faith enough for me
On the evening of October 8, 1977, Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels sat behind the same desk from which he’d presented a $3,200 check to The Beatles the week before, and made an offer that was just as genuine — one that, unlike his Fab Four pipe dreams, would yield genuine results.
“How many of you out there watching this show right now,” he began, “are saying to yourselves, ‘You know, Madeline Kahn’s pretty good [the actress hosted that week], but I think I can do a better job than that’? Well, here’s your chance. Because now, anyone can host Saturday Night Live. All you have to do is write a postcard and state in 25 words or less why you want to host Saturday Night Live.”
This was not a sketch. An address was provided as Lorne explained the details. After the November 1 deadline passed, the entrants would be winnowed to five finalists, who would then be flown to New York to read their entries on-air, and the winner would host the December 17 Christmas episode, with the series’ $3,000 hosting fee as a quite generous gift.
“We don’t care who or what you are,” Michaels concluded. “If you can lick a stamp, you’re on your way to stardom.”
Some 150,000 tongues and minds went into overdrive over the next three weeks as Saturday Night Live was deluged with pithy correspondence. “I’m an 80-year-old grandmother,” read one. “I need one more cheap thrill since my doctor told me I only have another 25 years left.” Volumes of submissions were considered and discarded, before finally being pared down to five finalists. The following week’s emcee, Buck Henry, announced the news on the November 12 episode hosted by Ray Charles and added that the lucky competitors would appear with him on November 19.
Sure enough, seven days later they were trotted out for Saturday Night Live’s cold open, each in matching blue button-down sweaters differentiated by the letters A through E, a regular malt-shop quintet. Gilda Radner introduced them on camera as a “cross-section of America” (to the disappointment of Garrett Morris, who complained of a distinct lack of ethnic variety). And a curious cross-section ’twas: David Lewis, a gangly, bearded “unemployed guy” from Oregon; Deb Blair, a housewife and mother from Peoria, Illinois; Connie Crawford, a Vassar freshman; Richard Kneip, the governor of South Dakota; and, finally, Miskel Spillman, a petite 80-year-old grandmother from New Orleans, Louisiana, who stood out with her bob of shocking white. Introductions were made, but the audience favorite was quickly established when Buck cajoled from the genial octogenarian “I’m Miskel Spillman. I’m old.”
The five were given the honor of announcing, “Live from New York, it’s Saturday night!” and appeared intermittently throughout the show, first during Henry’s monologue, where it was discovered that David Lewis may have been a little too eccentric even for SNL. (After Lewis’ turkey impression fell flat, Henry deadpanned, “Obviously, we didn’t throw all the weird letters away.”) Later they surfaced in a Gary Weis short chronicling each finalists’ underhanded attempts to influence the host (Crawford came on to him, Kneip offered him a government job, Lewis spun a wild story of animal cruelty, Blair suggested that perhaps her children wouldn’t have a merry Christmas after all, and Spillman announced, “Something’s going to happen around New Year’s Eve. I’m going to kick.”) They were brought back out for the cast farewells at home base, with Spillman admitting over the adulation, “I’ve had the most wonderful time in my life.”
For me, it was brilliant. [The show] was exciting and smart and funny, and people were very generous and kind and patient. … With us there, us five, doing what they did with us, bring us into this, not only did they put on a live show in less than a week, but the material was very edgy and they asked five complete civilians to join them. That was quite risky. The show on its own and the way they were doing it was quite raw, and to bring us in … that was reality TV.
[E]verybody knew [Miskel] was going to win. Come on. She was an 80-year-old woman from New Orleans having an adventure. … I expected her to win, so it all made sense. … [S]he was a lovely woman. She was a charmer, she really was. I wouldn’t have done anything differently.
David Lewis concurred in his own 2008 exchange with TV.com. “[Spillman] was a prime example of many who are past retirement age, yet so full of life, rich with wisdom and experience,” said the performance artist/songwriter. “By the end of the show, it was obvious who the sentimental favorite was.”
(Of the remaining finalists, Deb Blair’s whereabouts are unknown, and Richard Kneip, who followed his South Dakota governorship with a Presidental appointment to U.S. Ambassador of Singapore, died in 1987.)
After all the votes were tabulated from postcards, phone calls, letters and specially printed TV Guide ballots, Spillman was the clear victor by some 15,000 votes. The sprightly senior citizen, pending any natural life occurrences, was locked in for December 17.
Her musical guest, however, was not. The Sex Pistols, the melodic scourge of the U.K. sneering inroads into the stateside press, were initially scheduled to perform, but their notoriety and criminal records made visas near impossible. (The Pistols did arrive early the following year, disintegrating in San Francisco on January 14.) Luckily, Elvis Costello & The Attractions were then touring the United States and Canada to promote their debut, My Aim Is True; a few phone calls later and a New York stop was scheduled.
The Saturday Night Live staff may have been relieved, but the 23-year-old Costello was anything but. He gritted his teeth as Columbia Records, his U.S. label, began instructing him on what songs to perform. They wanted established tracks, naturally, but the band leader blanched at a request for “Less Than Zero,” a composition whipped by its angry writer after watching ex-British Union of Fascists head Oswald Mosley snivel on the BBC. Costello felt the references were too obscure for Americans; it was a decidedly English phenomenon. The label, however, insisted. Costello fumed.
His anger is evident even in the night’s first musical performance. Costello snarls through “Watching the Detectives,” almost challenging the cameraman to track him. He advances upon the lens, ducks its gaze, and evades its path. He seems to have little regard for blocking, which didn’t match his perception of “live” spontaneity. In fact, Costello wasn’t all that impressed with the show, period. “Maybe something got lost in translation,” he mused in Rhino’s 2002 reissue of 1978’s This Year’s Model, “but none of the humour seemed nearly as ‘dangerous’ or funny as they seemed to think it was, or perhaps they were just having a bad show.”
Even with a private citizen serving as “host,” Saturday Night Live pulled few punches in its presentation. In the cold opening, Laraine Newman admonished John Belushi (who eerily prophesied, “Don’t worry, I plan to be dead before I’m 30″ — he was only off by three years) for sharing a lethal strain of bud with the 80-year-old to relax her nerves. “John,” gasped guest-guest host Buck Henry, “your joints overwhelm even an experienced drug user like myself!” Miskel, for her part, was game, wandering into her monologue on Henry’s arm and marveling at “the colors.”
Spillman was used sparingly for the next hour-and-a-half. She sat and listened to Jane Curtin recite an alternate version of O. Henry’sThe Gift of the Magi that ended with a trademark Belushi outburst and the still-nascent cry of “But nooooo!” Later she had a brief walk-on as the mother of a desperate Vietnam War vet (Bill Murray) in the existential buddy-cop drama, Sartresky & Hutch. Her most prominent showcase came as Belushi’s college girlfriend in a sketch chronicling a student’s holiday homecoming. Otherwise, the episode did contain two future classics: E. Buzz Miller’s sleazoid exploration of the artist Titian and Al Franken’s Yuletide tirade against his parents.
Spillman was nowhere in sight or earshot when Elvis returned for an encore; announcer Don Pardo announced him instead. The artist dutifully adhered to his record label’s wishes with an ice-cold stare through “Less Than Zero” — until he hit the line “There is a vacancy waiting in the English voodoo.” At “waiting” he abruptly shouted, “Stop! Stop!,” dramatically flailing his arms. As if confidentially, he turned back to the microphone and apologized. “I’m sorry, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “there’s no reason to do this song here.” Then he turned to his bewildered Attractions and called for “Radio, Radio,” a song they had yet to even record (after that night, the song would go unheard in America until This Year’s Model the following fall). As Elvis told Tom Snyder in 1981, it made for riveting television. “They didn’t have my camera cues, which supposedly, from a professional point of view, isn’t very good. But from a live TV point of view, I would’ve thought it was great,” he quipped.
Apparently, he was alone in that sentiment. “[T]he producer did not agree,” Costello recalled on the Model reissue. “He stood behind the camera making obscene and threatening gestures in my direction. … We were chased out of the building and told we ‘would never work on American television again.’”
Miskel must’ve been unaware of such backstage drama. As the cast gathered for goodbyes, the by-now-beloved grandmother, resplendent in a Mrs. Claus outfit that complemented her brilliant white head of hair, wrapped with “I want to thank everyone in the world for voting for me. I’ve had the most wonderful time in my life.”
It was a life that would continue for another 14 years, past, sadly, both Belushi and Gilda’s. She was a spry and feisty 92 when People caught up with her for a 1989 SNL retrospective. “I love the current cast,” she said, singling out Dana Carvey as a particular favorite. “I take naps in the afternoon so that I can stay up. I’d love to host again. I have 13 more years left, you know.”
When the issue hit newsstands on September 25, 1989, it had been exactly six months since Elvis’ triumphant return to Saturday Night Live after an 11-year absence. This time he was Mary Tyler Moore’s problem. However, the bespectacled icon, by now a respected artist, made it through the show without incident, flowing smoothly through “Veronica” and “Let Him Dangle” with nary a hint of surprise. He was invited back in May 1991 to perform “The Other Side of Summer” and “Candy.” One wonders if Miskel Spillman watched either with interest. She passed away less than a year later, on March 30, 1992, at the age of 94 and remains, to this day, Saturday Night Live’s only non-celebrity host. As for Elvis, he has long been forgiven, even ribbing his youthful defiance on Saturday Night Live’s 25th anniversary special in 1999, by barging in on the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” to lead them through “Radio, Radio.”
Do you know the way to San Jose? I’ve been away so long, but now I’m back, and I think I remember the way. Fret not, true believers: I’ve kept a watchful weekly eye on the WWE since last I scratched in, what, December? Jesus.
So I was on hand two weeks ago when Donald Trump seized control of the program, resulting in what the late Gorilla Monsoon (rest his lovely soul) would’ve termed a bedlam, a boondoggle, “total pandemonium.” Last Monday the Donald, resplendent in Gary Hart’s discarded scalp, stripped the program of commercial breaks (commentators Jerry Lawler and Michael Cole snuck huzzahs for Kentucky Grilled Chicken anyway — fight the power!) and sent the packed arena home with a refund. Ex-chairman Vince McMahon, his easy-street retirement cut short, was forced to reclaim the reins from the draconian entrepreneur at a considerable financial loss, in order to restore the brand to its former snake-oil glory.
Tonight was McMahon’s first night back in the driver’s seat, and he bathed in Californian ire by refusing to give the bronzed throng its money back. (The Long Tail is obviously not among his volumes.) Enough with the gimmicks, the capitalist swine harrumphs before admitting that he admired one well enough to implement it that very night: the weekly guest host. Vince has a lot of celebrity pull, but why aim high when you can pluck one of your own: the injured Dave Batista, who has at least three outstanding beefs to settle — one in particular most paramount.
Batista busts down the ramp to his usual pomp, his left arm locked in a brace, the rest of him coiled tight in a business suit, a smart grey tie hanging from his truck-thick neck. He’s midway into his first public address since Randy Orton and the Legacy duo of Cody Rhodes and Ted DiBiase stomped his mucus loose a few weeks agoi and put him in intensive care when said trio menace down the ramp looking to start shit anew. Orton, through a mouthful of Southern viper marbles: “Yuh shouldn’t have come back, Batista. What do you think is stopping the three of us from marching into this ring and tearing the rest of you apart?” Good question. Batista supposes it’s the absolute power Vince grants guest hosts. (You listening, Lorne Michaels?) “I can make your life a living nightmare,” he expounds.
Orton snivels in petulance, moaning exposition about his near-death experience with Triple H in a Three Stages of Hell match at this past weekend’s Bash. The immaculately attired guest host reprimands Orton for whining and hints at a distressing Raw fate for the WWE champ: a 3 on 1 Gauntlet endurance test with hand-picked opponents whose identities must remain secret to keep viewers from changing the channel. But, Batista adds, they’re three of 15 superstars acquired in some backroom deal struck before Trump’s departure. Oh, that dastardly Don!
Night of Champions Tournament Semi-Final
MVP vs. Triple H Orton won’t be defending his title tonight, but he will at Night of Champions on July 26 against the winner of this mini-tournament. The night begins with the collision of alphabets. MVP, called up in a recent draft to make waves on the Monday program, is recovering from a whirlwind weekend with rumored paramour Sherri Shepherd (The View) and a host of Tinseltown glitterati at Sunday night’s BET Awards. Triple H is recovering from something far less glamorous: a leg injury suffered in two grueling face-offs with Orton over the last week. Naturally, MVP focuses with some precision on the sore spot and slithers out of two HHH attempts to floor him with his Pedigree finishing move. The flashier grappler errs, however, when he tries to apply his own match-ending Playmaker. He gets played instead when the grizzled hobbling mess drops a successful Pedigree to put MVP in California Dreamland.
Unified Tag Team Championship
Edge/Chris Jericho vs. Carlito/Primo Hmmmm. Two major SmackDown heels with enough heat for a Towering Inferno reboot wrest the title through nefarious means from its cooled-off protectors, who instantly invoke their rematch clause. Wonder who’s doomed? I didn’t either. Jericho, as always, is in top linguistic form, showering San Jose in cowflop bouquets, boasting of his prodigious prowess and chiding the gathered’s status as mindless human sludge. Y2J+9 spends much of the match leveling the ex-belt-holders with his dog-eared Roget’s; Edge stands behind the ropes, snarling at anything in his periphery. After a distracted ref misses an obvious three-count, thus robbing Carlito of a stunner over Edge (Jericho shoves him off before that third zebra slap), the incensed apple-spitter goes for a more definitive finisher but ends up slipping on the ropes after a flailing Primo accidentally shakes them. The dazed, wronged Carlito is left helpless to an Edge spear and is knocked flat for the 1-2-3.
Night of Champions Semi-Final
John Cena vs. The Miz Cena’s been positioned in this ongoing angle as a dues-paying ham-and-egger swatting at the youthful, impatient reality-TV bluster-flash of The Miz, who’s been a particular hue-licked thorn in Cena’s side for weeks with his shenanigans, skedaddles, evasions, and cheap shots. Miz doesn’t indulge in much of those tonight. Instead, his attack is methodical and for the most part successful. His capper is a vice-like sleeper that involves a debilitating upright-leg-lock-thigh-squeeze breath-trapper. But rather than tumble into his own dizzy drool, Cena recovers for his “You Can’t See Me” five-knuckle shuffle and an FTF submission hold. The Miz abandons his fruitless quest for salvation and taps out.
Winner: John Cena (Cena will face Triple H on next week’s Raw, a match-up the strangely forgetful Lawler hails as the greatest in history.)
We return to the locker-room plot where Legacy continues to placate the queasy Orton. DiBiase offers salve in the form of a phone conversation with his father, the Million Dollar Man, one of the greatest villains in WWE history (right, Jer?), who is scheduled to guest-host the program next Monday. Happs days are back for reptile-lovers everywhere!
Fatal 4-Way Diva Match
Mickie James vs. Kelly Kelly vs. Beth Phoenix vs. Rosa Mendes It’s too bad Raw don’t broadcast on Cinemax, ho ho. An enhanced quartet vie for the pleasure of tangling with the bleached chanteuse Divas champion Maryse at Night of Champions. Rosa is her usual ineffective self, applauding like a goon whenever Phoenix adds to someone’s medical expenses. Mickie locks horns with gal pal Kelly Kelly — it’s vicious vicious! At one point everyone gets everyone in a chin lock before Beth dominos all three into a turnbuckle. Ass-over-tip pin attempts aplenty, two-counts all around. Mickie finally breaks the pattern by focusing on poor Rosa, silencing her with a DDT and planting her to bloom sometime this autumn. The unconscious Rosa is likely in a better place anyway, where her idol follows every grunt and grit with the sweetest kiss. Maryse may entertain similar fantasies about Kelly Kelly. Sadly, she’ll have to settle for…
The Big Show vs. Kofi Kingston Interesting entrance music for both competitors, don’tchathink? The seven-foot Show gets a deep-throated honky tonk chortle perfect for swaggering through a Brobdignagian bar. “I AM CHAMPION!” barks a Vocoder on Kofi’s island lilt, and this is one instance where it’s true as hell. He’s got the gold draped over a shoulder, sparkling into a wary eye shrouded in Show’s imposing shadow. In this case, the mountain comes to Kofi. “This guy could bench-press a Volkswagen!” enthuses the excitable Lawler, King of Wrestling. The smaller man’s acrobatic agility, naturally, is no match for a whole lumberyard, but somehow Kofi fells the Big Show without the aid of claymores and a police car. When he goes for the pin, Show shoves him toward the rafters like a volleyball. Eventually, the action moves outside the ring with the usual announcer’s-table thrashings. Show attempts to launch Kingston back into play, but the champion wriggles free and leans the mighty oak into a ringside post. Meanwhile, the ref counts down. Neither man returns in time.
3 on 1 Gauntlet Match Orton moves slowly, methodically toward the ring, his calculating mind reeling from the sheer number of possible opponents in the wrestling pool. What torture does Dave Batista have in mind? Well…
1. Evan Bourne Wow. Wasn’t expecting that. Orton appears relieved at this tiny little hurdle. Looks, of course, are deceiving; Bourne is a high-flying dynamo who regards all the world’s inhabitants as potential trapezes. Evan’s downfall comes when he gets a little greedy with his momentum. An attempted Air Bourne goes awry and Orton secures a pinfall with a Flying Bulldog. Bourne is unceremoniously scraped from the canvas and removed posthaste.
Winner: Randy Orton
2. Jack Swagger This one’s not all that shocking, but Swagger’s a formidable opponent nonetheless. In any case, it’s interesting to watch two narcissists go head-to-head. Swagger first stuns Orton physically then mentally as he leaves the ring and stands defiant, smirking on the apron as the referee counts him out. Before he splits, Swagger explains to the bewildered masses, “I wanted to leave a lasting impression.”
Winner: Randy Orton
3. Mark Henry Aha! But also not that wild. Henry enters with a microphone and informs his creaky, dazed dinner that he wants to make an impression too, mostly of Randy in the earth’s surface. Like Swagger he steps out of the ring as well but is only fucking with his prey cat/mouse-style as he stops the ref at the count of five and re-enters the dragon. Orton drops to his knees and Henry graciously helps him up with a choke hold. Orton’s only defense is a weak slap; Henry retorts with a headbutt and the devastation of a World’s Strongest Slam. Somewhere Orton is still burrowing against his will toward China. Hope he lands near an airport.
Winner: Mark Henry
Raw ends with a satisfied Dave Batista surveying the wreckage of his most despised adversary. It’s nice to see the man smiling again. And now I smile too, because I’m back in action with a fresh bag of stretched adverbs. G’night!
I was a Thriller kid. You had to be back then. It was the law. If you weren’t in possession of a copy in some format by your birthday in 1983, your family might as well have moved shame-faced into the mountains.
Luckily, I made my deadline. In the right wind you can still hear the phantom relief I felt that autumn when I tore open the wrapping paper on an LP-shaped projectile and saw Michael’s mug staring back. On November 4, 1983, Thriller was mine, officially mine (mine, mine), and I toured that wax so hard and extensively that to this day when I hear “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’” I brace myself for the kiss of a skip during the “mama-se mama-sa mama-c00-sa” chant (I kinda miss it now). I’d pace my bedroom, miming Vincent Price’s cryptkeeper crawl, then segue into Michael’s range with the greatest of ease. And, oh, great God almighty, I’d run out of fingers counting the times my parents caught me mid-ape in some choreographed jolt I’d memorized from days of studying “Beat It,”“Billie Jean,” and “Thriller.”Girl, I can thrill you more than any ghoul could ever dare try.
You had to dance. Restraining yourself could actually damage your bone structure. Even adults understood this. Mom bought Thriller on tape for her Wednesday aerobics class. Dad had a copy in his truck. Whenever “Beat It” came on during the morning jaunt to school he’d have to tell me to calm down, but I’d catch him sneak a thumb-tap or 20. He’d pull up to the side door and I’d somehow endure the 12 or so steps through the only Michael-free zone in town. Once I entered Memorial Middle School, I was back in the fray.
It’s hard to articulate to a younger generation how pervasive Thriller was. Everybody owned it — and I mean everybody, even the junior highbrow snoots who swore on blood that they didn’t. Elsewhere someone claimed to have either met him or known his home phone number. The staff once held an assembly just to soothe us with a rented copy of Making Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’, even though we’d all individually rented it a dozen or more times ourselves. But still the girls screamed “Michael!” whenever the gangster of glove flashed his winning smile, and I wasn’t the only antsy preadolescent when the zombies got down. Kids moonwalked into classrooms, sported red leather jackets weather be damned, and curled their hair into an approximation of their hero’s.
I was young enough that Michael was not only my first real “idol,” he was also my first real lesson in stardom’s fickle nature. The Thriller frenzy enjoyed a breathtaking run, but when it died, it fell hard and fast. By the spring of my sixth-grade year, not even four months after I’d snuffed 11 candles and hugged my grandma for the greatest present ever, Michael Jackson was done. I discovered this one lunchtime when my buddy Chris pointed at the button on my coat and said, “Dude, nobody likes that crap anymore.” We’d evolved as a species past Thriller, the Pepsi Generation and its follicular inferno, and the disastrous Jacksons Victory album and tour, emerging from our ardor with a weary indifference. I sighed and hid the offending flair in my pocket. And I seldom thought of Michael again. In ‘87 I shrugged at Bad, though I quietly admired “Man in the Mirror” ’cause I’m a sucker for a good gospel surge (see also: Foreigner, “I Want to Know What Love Is”). Michael was simply a relic of my kiddie past. And the stories! Yeesh. They only got weirder over the years, until the one yesterday that ended Michael’s narrative way too soon.
Even some 24 hours later, I can’t define how I feel. Stunned, but I knew he’d never live to be an old man, yet I didn’t want him to die. Sad, because while I was tired of his disturbed, destructive antics, I still loved him. Guilty, because I’d been a willing participant in that grand American tradition of star-crushing. Michael Jackson had once meant everything to me, then nothing, and now my only solace was that I felt at least something. While I didn’t exactly cry or do anything dramatic like throw Triumph into the changer and let “Can You Feel It” lift me to Heaven (sounds nice, though, doesn’t it?), I did sit and contemplate a good long spell. Then I paid tribute to my favorite Jackson 5 track for Damn Fine Day and prayed for Thursday to end. We’d already lost Farrah Fawcett, Michael, and Sky Saxon, late of carport-pounders The Seeds, before nightfall. (Interestingly, I own more Seeds albums than Jackson albums. How sick-hip is that?)
I was never very good at goodbyes, especially the endings. All you have left are platitudes and cliches, the sputter of a spent explosion. And I didn’t even get to Captain EO or “Leave Me Alone.” But that’s OK: Michael’s got plenty of kind words from around the world to keep his troubled soul warm. I’ve got his music for mine.
NOTE: A previous, more juvenile version of this entry was presented as having been written by musician/songwriter Roger Hodgson. It was a failed attempt at “quirky” humor/satire, and I am grievously sorry for any and all offense it may have caused the artist. It was unnecessary, and all such references have been removed.
We begin, of course, with the 19th century birth of the corn flake, as supervised by two diametrically opposed brothers in the sleepy hamlet of Battle Creek, Michigan. John Harvey and Will Keith Kellogg were strapping lads of considerable means, both accustomed to the texture of human blood upon their unblemished flesh. It was a ritual learned from their warlock-dwarf parents, and common among the superstitious aristocracy, who believed it assured immortality and prosperity. W.K. and J.H., as the men were known among polite society, used the Kellogg family fortune (obtained through lycanthropic pillaging of defenseless townships) to finance a most unspeakable scheme using the innocent-seeming kernel of corn. It wasn’t until 1898 that the dastardly duo perfected what we now know as the “corn flake,” but once it became widely available, people began to die. Their bodies were delivered to Battle Creek, where their mortal vessels were stripped of meat and drained upon the Kelloggs’ quivering lips. (In a half-hearted attempt at humanity, they used stray animals for a time, but the dark lords howled their piercing disapproval.)
Once the world was addicted to the oven-toasted shard of doom, something extraordinary happened. J.H. began developing a conscience as his brother became more greedy. His infernal appetite for eternal life seemed unquenchable. J.H. watched in horror as his more enterprising partner began sweetening the deadly flake with cane sugar, something to lure even younger victims to the godawful breakfast genocide.
“I will NOT have our wares marketed to the innocence of babes!” J.H. reportedly balked as W.K. made known his nefarious intent.
“I am sorry to hear that, dear brother,” chortled Kellogg the younger as he drew his revolver. “I feel there’s no future in this world for romantics.”
“You bastard!” J.H. snarled as W.K.’s henchmen emerged from the shadows. He struggled valiantly against their assault, but ’twas for naught. As J.H. expired, his lifeblood spilling sorrowfully from his wounds, he watched his wife and brother make love atop a hill of shredded wheat. Gently W.K. destroyed a tattered morsel against Ella’s shapely buttocks. Her adulterous cries of passion reverberated through W.K.’s empty shell as he drew his final breath.
*****
“Can you hear me?” came the voice, piercing the darkness. All remained black as nothing.
“Can you hear me?” the voice asked again.
A blur of colors struggled for cogency.
“Subject is online,” another voice, more authoritative, announced. “Vital signs normal. He appears to be responding to stimuli. Try again.”
“Can you hear me?”
Focus came violently. An antiseptic room swarmed into view. Cold steel. Angry contraptions. A back wall calendar announced the current year: 1952. Two pairs of hopeful eyes stared into his. He couldn’t move.
“What is your name?”
The whir of a search ticked within, like memory but not. More commanding and precise. The subject impulsively scratched at his leg then recoiled, startled at its texture. Fur? A quick peer south verified this as so: orange and white, with black stripes. Data swam into the system, a long list of names. Finally one was selected as most likely correct.
“Tony.”
“And what is your primary directive, Tony?”
The cogs whirred more efficiently, settling into their duties.
“To bring out the tiger in all who consume Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes.”
“Are they good?”
Tony was taken aback by the ludicrous question. It did not compute, yet somehow, it did. He felt a pang of marketing rumble through his wiring and into his artificial voicebox.
“Good?” he barked, incredulous. “They’re grrreat!”
Satisfied, his interrogator pressed a button and spoke to a force unseen. “The experiment is a resounding success, sir. Would you like to meet your newest ‘mascot’?”
Two electric doors parted with a clipped hush. Tony could only watch as this most familiar figure approached, a malicious smirk painted across his carefully preserved flesh. “Tony the Tiger,” he chuckled. “It’s so wonderful to meet you at last.”
Tony remained silent, his interest piqued.
“I don’t expect you to grasp the most delicious justice of your predicament,” the man continued. “But we were once very close, you and I. Almost like brothers.”
The emphasis stirred a wild hair Tony’s programming didn’t recognize. He wrestled with his bindings but could not escape.
“Ah,” his tormentor gasped. “I see that perhaps you do retain some of that fighting Kellogg spirit. Good. Excellent! You’re going to need it in your new duties as spokestiger for the very cereal whose creation you once despised!”
Tony struggled harder, confused. The man inched closer, as if homing in for the kill. “Yes,” he whispered. “I feel the anger surging within you, brother. It gives me strength. It gives me power!” With that, he walloped the captive beast against the snout.
“Would you like to see what your foolhardiness has wrought upon you?” asked the man. “Shall I reveal the fruits of your futility?” A mirror was produced and rammed into Tony’s face. “Look!” snarled the keeper as Tony screeched in pain, his eyes fused shut. “See! Embrace your freakish fate!“
Tony opened his eyes slowly and regarded his reflection. He was consumed with terror and rage. He resembled an oddly shaped feral cat, with drooping eyelids and a face proportioned like a half-chewed football. He was emasculated and naked, save a fashionable necktie. Why was he thrashing so violently? Why did this revelation damage him so? Was this not him? He plumbed his memory banks for answers, finally discovering a carefully sealed data folder labeled “J.H. Kellogg. CLASSIFIED.” His circuitry overrode the security codes and everything came flooding back. Battle Creek, Michigan. The innocent days of sanitoriums, quack medicine, an unhealthy obsession with the sex drive of young males, and the development of healthy breakfast digestables. The corn flake. His younger brother’s betrayal. His wife’s alarming infidelity.
The man, who now had a name known to Tony, a real name linked by blood and birth, watched the realization creep across his captive’s matted face. “You remember, don’t you?” he smiled. “You remember everything.”
“I…remember,” Tony purred, his eyes narrowing to slits.
“It’s a pity we couldn’t have worked something out,” W.K. shrugged. “But I was too young and impetuous, hungry for power and the intoxicating bouquet of carnal sin. I so wish we could have found another way. We could’ve ruled this empire together and crushed our enemies. Post. General Mills. Quaker. Nabisco. Oh, my brother, you should’ve seen it. In 50 years’ time we seized control. All the world’s children look for our ‘K.’ They’re drawn to it, as if hypnotized by our festive hues. As one we would have been unstoppable. But, alas, it was not meant to be.”
“Where’s Ella, you bastard?” Tony demanded. “Where is she?”
“Oh, yes, your ‘devoted’ wife. Hm. Well, it appears she too was not long for this cruel, unforgiving world. She lacked the necessary vigor and vision. I tried, John. I really did. And she put up such a fight. In fact, she was your predecessor on the Frosted Flakes campaign. Unfortunately, her spirit was unwilling. As a result, the children didn’t respond to Katy the Kangaroo like our marketing department had hoped. Therefore, she was, in the parlance of this savage business, ‘discontinued.’”
Tony swiped at his binds to little avail.
“My, you’re a feisty tiger. But I fear I must inform you that even if you manage to free yourself, I have personally installed a failsafe measure within your system that prevents you from harming me in any fashion. It’s, shall we say, my insurance.”
Tony rode the hot verge of tears. “You heartless cur,” he sniffed. “How could you have violated the Kellogg’s principles with such impugnity?”
W.K.’s laughter rattled the room. “Oh, John!” he howled. “You pie-in-the-sky simpleton! You deluded child! You can’t stop what can’t be undone. Fifty years of market domination. That’s five generations of servants who have sold us their souls. We’ve such a backlog of blood in our vaults I can endure 17 eternities with nary a stolen draw of breath! We have an unparalleled line of breakfast comestibles. A fleet of nutritionists in our back pockets — well, at least the ones we didn’t program ourselves. We are a force larger and stronger than life and death itself. We’re a merchandising juggernaut, the textbook American dream! We control the story. We turn the pages. We are Kellogg’s!”
“That very well may be,” Tony smiled, suspiciously at peace, “but in your fat-cat capitalist gorging, you forgot one thing.”
“What’s that?”
Tony licked his lips and deposited his useless shackles to the floor. “I’m a Kellogg too,” he said, “but unlike you, I prefer my blood fresh and straight from the source.”
W.K. began to retreat. “No,” he protested. “No! Your programming! The failsafe!”
“It matters not, brother dear,” Tony salivated, swiping chunks from W.K.’s surprisingly giving flesh. “Despite the artificial fur and electrodes, instinct overrides programming.”
Kellogg the younger’s screams went unheard in the hollow empire. Tony dined uninterrupted, slurping sinew like spaghetti, pawing at viscera, gnawing at bone, lapping up blood.
It was this fortitude that made Frosted Flakes the breakfast-nook dynamo for the ages. Five generations later it remains a morning ritual, with Tony an ever-watchful presence. And according to legend, if you pour the box at just the right angle, you can hear that shift of brotherly power echoing in every sugary rustle.
It’s a jungle up there, atop my bean. And it’s alive. Every few seconds I sweep vines from my eyes, pry curls from my ears. Springs and locks bounce gaily against my neck with every step. Sometimes I throw on some Melvins, rock my nog in a Pez-head jolt, and pretend I’m auditioning for a 1993 Charles Peterson photograph. In short, I’ve got some long-ass hair. The length’s so bad that even my aunt’s boyfriend, who sailed through the ’70s as a Cheech Marin doppelganger, finally expressed his disgust yesterday. “Good God,” he sniffed. “Get a haircut.”
I’m not sure what my problem is. I once observed a regular schedule. Every couple of months I’d stop by the local locksmith and drop a Jackson for a maintenance scrub and snip. It was a simple process: Shave to the natural neckline, clear the ear-tops, and keep enough over my forehead for a morning swipe with mousse. But it’s been almost a year since my last appointment. Whatever sensible suave I cultivated is long buried now. Of course, I keep assuring people, “Yeah, it’s getting ridiculous,” and I promise to kiss shears as soon as possible. Then I go home, regard my reflection, and shave my face instead. That counts as a compromise, right?
The last time I had hair this long was ca. 1995, when it was still somewhat fashionable. Back then my excuse was money. Most of my meager funds went to necessary expenses, like diner lunches, shampoo, rent, CDs, books, and Big Gulps. Besides, I thought I looked awesome, my locks billowing down to my shoulders, a spotty beard making a futile trek across my face. Daily I preened, patiently teasing split ends from that lush forest of shadows. All that vanity evaporated after I had my head shot taken for my hometown paper’s staff list. In moving color I was luxuriant poetry. But in static digital monochrome, I resembled a lolling wino peeled from a sewer grate and propped in front of a camera. Maybe the whole thing was some kind of intervention, I dunno. Naturally, I made an appointment for the following afternoon and watched an entire year tumble in sorrowful clumps.
There were other disadvantages to long hair too. Clerks would trail me in stores. “Looking for something in particular?” they’d ask nervously as I thumbed through a Cornel West. Strangers would whisper, “You carrying?” as I passed by. Cops stopped me constantly when I was on foot, which back then was all the time. One night I was walking home from work when a cruiser pulled up in front of me to block my path. When I went for my wallet, the driver screamed, “HANDS! HANDS! HANDS!” Granted, it was two in the morning and I was a 23-year-old in a Peter ToshLegalize It tee. Still, that didn’t stop me from stewing in indignation for the rest of my stroll. I was a furshlugginer journalist, not common curb vermin. Damn cops probably had spottier records than me.
I’m not sure why, but I don’t seem to have that problem anymore. Maybe it’s the mysterious aura of maturity. Maybe it’s an unspoken acknowledgment of my working-class status. Or maybe it’s because I don’t advertise narcotics on my chest anymore. But I kinda like my long hair now, with its earned gray stripes and its lazy, blissful ignorance of current trends, what I’m sure Brian Wilson meant by “that happy glow.” It applies to the fellas too, doesn’t it? Keep it long and strong, my brothers. At least until they take your picture.
New York was in mourning. Ebbets Field was gone. The Dodgers had deserted their people some two years earlier, though it felt like they’d left even earlier than that. It was a high act of betrayal, one from which the city would never recover. No matter what rose from the sad rubble at Bedford, Sullivan, McKeever, and Montgomery, the ground would be forever sour. There was no more joy in Flatbush.
Frank Kirkleski felt an acute twinge of sorrow himself. The 55-year-old had traveled from his home in New Jersey to behold the loss in person. The death of Ebbets neatly closed the door on his professional football career; it was the last tangible survivor. Everything else — the teams, the jerseys, the era — had been swept off by bulldozers and mergers and time. Only misty-eyed fogies like himself remembered. The Pottsville Maroons. The Newark Tornadoes. Even the Brooklyn Dodgers, when they were a fleeting gridiron franchise, playing within the very structure that lay now in jagged collapse.
He pulled a worn fragment from his wallet. It had weathered to a yellowed gold years before, and even the multiple surgeries performed with careful applications of Scotch tape and ink were barely holding it together. It felt like he was pulling sallow, leathered flesh from his coins and cash. He knew it was always there, but he enjoyed the relief of the reminder. It was like surprise confirmation of his past. “You’re the last I got,” he sighed at the document, a weary eye cast at the hills of dead concrete.
It was just four lines of prose most people would one dare consider more ethnically offensive than laudatory. It was written in 1924 by a Philadelphia (Philadelphia! A world and lifetime away!) sportswriter whose name was lost to both Frank and the ages. That was back when you could get away with such remarks in posterity. But Frank didn’t mind. It joined him forever with his fellow halfback on the Lafayette College Lions, old Frank Chicknoski, in celebration of their almost telepathic bond:
The longest forward pass e’er thrown
Toward any mortal goal
Kirkleski threw, Chicknoski caught:
It sailed from Pole to Pole.
People still asked Frank why he kept that tattered lint. After all, hadn’t he been written up a hundred times in the press, and for feats more impressive than connecting a pigskin with a fellow tribesman? What about that 9-0 championship run his senior year? Or that freshman varsity performance against LeHigh,when Frank scooted into the end zone with just a shaving of a second left for a 13-3 win? Or that career 29-4-3 record, with not a single loss at home?
His past always surprised strangers, especially easily awestruck kids. He regaled his history students and athletic teams at Woodbridge High with stories of his days as a college phenomenon and professional player. The NFL wasn’t quite as sexy as major league baseball, for obvious reasons, but it was impressive all the same.
Of course, the NFL was a different animal in his day, a fledgling still cutting its teeth. Eleven teams came together in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association, then became the National Football League in 1922. So when Kirkleski suited up for his first post-collegiate skirmish, the organization was only about seven years old, “barely just getting its first taste of snuff,” he’d joke with a wink.
Frank’s first team was the notorious Pottsville Maroons, who by 1927 were nearly out of gas after beginning life as a primal scream at decade’s dawn as the Pottsville Eleven. Back then they were a malicious pocket of thugs and goons from the Yorkville Hose Company. In 1924 the Eleven were purchased and turned legit by Dr. John Striegel, who was just as interesting as his players. The team became the Maroons that year after Striegel ordered uniforms and made the mistake of telling the tailor the colors didn’t matter. The Pottsvillers found themselves attired in a brownish-red blend, perhaps matching their overall disposition.
It turned out that the hues indeed didn’t matter, as this Pennsylvania unit rolled to a championship season in the Anthracite League’s only year of existence. Meanwhile, Striegel had annoyed the NFL that year by raiding its rosters to populate his; he managed to steal three, exasperating the organization to no end. An invitation to join was extended and accepted. Pottsville responded by tearing through their new opponents in 1925, clobbering their first seven foes 162-6. They easily claimed the title after scattering the Chicago Cardinals 21-7.
Then they did something that simultaneously defined and marred the young league. At the time, professional football was considered a subpar sport, nowhere near the prestige of college-level play. So Maroons owner Striegel challenged the greatest of all the university teams to a showdown in Philadelphia. Notre Dame, then at its peak with the Four Horsemen sending chills from the backfield and Knute Rockne patrolling the perimeter, accepted.
Frank saw that game. Hell, everybody in town did. It was the hottest ticket around: the Maroons vs. the Rose Bowl champs of 1925. His Lafayette teammates babbled excitedly about glimpsing Harry Stuhldreher — or at least someone resembling the tiny Fighting Irish quarterback — in various spots around the city. “He didn’t look so tough,” sniffed a teammate, who’d be relieved that Frank eventually forgot his name. Everyone had a good laugh over that.
Frank was joined by some 10,000 fellow curiosity seekers that December afternoon at Shibe Park. Strangely, everyone seemed to be waiting for Notre Dame to show the local boys what it meant to play a man’s sport. They succeeded for a while, stymying every drive and confounding every retort with an unerring air attack. The Horsemen were their stunning selves. Stuhldreher threw with rocket precision. The Irish led 6-0 at the half.
Something transpired during the interim to change the entire tenor of the game. Frank didn’t read about it until the next day, where the Maroons’ vigorous second-half performance made sense. According to the Philadelphia Record, another local professional team, the Frankford Yellow Jackets, had also been scheduled to play in town that day, and they weren’t too thrilled about the competition. They were forced to postpone their contest with the Providence Steam Roller, unless both teams enjoyed playing to an audience of no one. The Maroons game encroached on Frankford territory — an illegal move, according to NFL bylaws. True to form, Striegel shrugged his shoulders in indifference. The NFL retaliated by dispatching a telegram to Shibe Park informing the wayward squad that they’d been stripped of their title and cast from the league.
Pottsville reemerged for the third quarter steamed and energized, matching the Irish blow for blow. At some junction in the flurry, a Maroon drive marched into the end zone for a first offensive retort. As fourth period stretched its last stretch, Pottsville pushed 60 yards and responded to a cement defense by booting the game-winner from the 30 for a 9-6 squeaker. The Maroons were victorious again when the NFL quietly reinstated them for the ‘26 season to keep them from defecting to Red Grange’s AFL.
Those days were over by the time Kirkleski donned the hues. He gave the local fans a hopeful taste of past glories in his first appearance, completing three touchdown passes in a 22-0 alley-drub of the Buffalo Bisons. But victories were few that year; the team wrapped up with a 5-8 sigh. It would be even more dismal in ‘28, but Kirkleski wasn’t around to share in the gloom. He had returned to his native New Jersey to take the field for the Orange Athletic Club. Pottsville registered a 2-8 record and was promptly dismantled, toothless and faded. Years later the crew would be eulogized by no less than Red Grange, who remembered the surly bruisers as “the most ferocious and most respected players I ever faced.” Frank was honored to have been even a shadow in that history.
The rest of his career was a run of choice moments on long-vanished teams. They sounded like cartoons to kids today. The Maroons. The Tornadoes. He used to play against a gang called the Providence Steamroller, of all names. Kids got a kick out of that, although Frank was sure they wouldn’t have enjoyed staring down those sourpusses on a torn-up lawn. By the time he got to Ebbets Field to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers, he knew it was almost over. He was in his late twenties and not seeing much play anymore. That was a godawful year: 2-12, a harrowing slide not even the most daredevil tyke would climb.
Frank had reminisced himself into a Flatbush bar. “For Ebbets,” he told the understanding keep as he raised his beer. “To Ebbets.”
Meanwhile, somewhere in Texas, a man sat awkwardly in his kitchen articulating what Frank felt at that very moment, even though he himself felt differently. Mance Lipscomb was playing a weathered guitar and singing into an electric contraption being pointed his way. At the end of the machine were two white boys hanging on his every word, occasionally sipping at the hot coffee he’d poured them minutes earlier.
Mance was tickled at their interest; they’d shown up one day at his work site in Houston looking for one of his oldest, dearest friends, Lightnin’ Hopkins. “We wanna make a record with him,” they explained. “Lightnin’s gone,” said the 65-year-old man as he massaged his knuckles through his gloves. “But I play a little guitar, if you’re interested.” He didn’t know what possessed him to say that, but the fates play a man’s tongue strange. Now he’d gone from a man of labor, a man whose future was dust and bone, to an object of interest for a couple white cats from California. Chris Strachwitz. Mack McCormick. And they addressed him with such kindness. “We’re thinkin’ of startin’ a label,” the one called Strachwitz said, “a blues label.” Kid stressed it so divine that Mance had to throw his head back and laugh.
“What’s your name?” McCormick asked.
“Mance Lipscomb,” said Mance Lipscomb.
“‘Mance’?” queried McCormick, confused. “That short for something?”
“Emancipation,” came the proud reply.
The white boys nodded.
Mance watched his calloused, parched fingers ride that tired old neck. All these years later she still pulled a sweet sound. Mama Jane bought it for him around 1906, when Mance was about 11. His daddy played the fiddle. Mance got his name from him, but not from his real name, which was Charles. Charles Lipscomb was an emancipated slave from Alabama. Mance’s own birth call was Beau de Glen, or Bowdie Glenn. That didn’t matter anymore, anyway. Nobody living called him anything but Mance.
He and his daddy made a little dime now and then, playing shows around Mance’s hometown of Navasota, Texas. Sometimes they stretched their horizons to nearby Bravos. Those were good times. Filling tiny joints with music, watching the faces explode at the sound. They did that till Mance was 21. But he never shook it loose. When he moved to Houston in 1956, he’d wet his whistle after work with the occasional showcase in whatever bar would let him play. When the workers gathered for picnics, sometimes they’d ask for a song, and Mance would always oblige. It didn’t take much to coax him behind that wood, cradle it in his arms, and harmonize over its stream. Here he was now, in the same place he slugged back a cup of warm comfort every morning, doing it for posterity. Something to show his wife and son. Something forever. A record. Could you beat that? If only they’d been around to put his father on tape. Man, he’d play those reels till they swallowed his dreams and brought back every detail of those long-gone nights.
He’d think about it again the following year, after those white boys with the tape machine made good on their promise, flattening that 1960 session into two sides of Texas Sharecropper & Songster, the first release on Arhoolie Records. They pressed 250 copies, each one with its cover hand-glued personally by the label’s staff. It sold enough to fly Mance to Northern California and drop him in front of 40,000 people at the 1961 Berkeley Folk Festival. Damn, Mance marveled, stunned by that crashing wave of humanity. I’m looking at the entire population of a city. Not bad for a Navasota boy. Charles would be proud. As Mance charmed one generation, another nestled further south, watching with anticipation as a new structure rose from the far-off ashes of Ebbets Field.
Until the mail came yesterday, I’d somehow lived some 36 years without a credit card. It just never interested me. I found the whole idea repugnant. My reasoning’s informed by my own persnickety liberalism and an inherited hardscrabble streak. The liberal side bemoans an America obsessed with status, or the illusion of status, that credit cards encourage. The hardscrabble side rustles up the common-sense orneriness of Grandpa Frye and his never-ending train of homilies. Never buy what you can’t afford. The high is nice, but the bill comes due. All you should owe is what no man can claim. Anyway, what’s so appealing about being in debt?
All that righteousness crumbled two weeks ago when I was forced to admit defeat. It’s been two years since I’ve enjoyed anything remotely resembling a vacation. When I came into a little freelance flow, with the promise of consistency, I decided it was time my labor-fruits did something for me. So I clacked about the Internet, looking for my getaway. Something reasonable and within my means. Seattle sounded enticing. It wasn’t too far away. I could take the train up, get a room, roam the city, finally check out Experience Music in person, bleed some text in foreign digs, and call it a lost weekend.
Small problem: No credit card. I naively asked about paying in advance. No dice. No credit card, no hotel, no train, no identity, no reason to live. It took every cognizant corpuscle to keep my boiling froth at bay. Dear Corporate Hotel Lackey Suckass: How could you possibly deny payment up front? Isn’t that more reliable and responsible than the equivalent of a glorified IOU? I guess you business types aren’t happy unless SOMEONE owes you money. Does it make you feel important? Do you feel like Jesus when weary travelers stumble into your Naugahyde Jerusalem looking for lodging? “Your money’s no good here, sir; what we seek — nay, demand — is your blood, plus interest. We’re not satisfied with providing a temporary roof. We want to haunt your credit report FOREVER.” WHAT kinda DEMOCRACY would INSIST its CITIZENS be BROKE? Well, I would rather sleep in an unlit alleyway than between your tainted sheets. Fuck you, and fuck the train I couldn’t ride in on.
After an hour of proper stewage, I was struck by an even more alarming epiphany. Holy shit, I gasped. I can’t leave town! I can’t reserve rooms, book flights, or rent cars. I suppose I could take the bus, as I did in 2007, but once I arrived at my destination, if I didn’t know anyone, I’d be out of luck. The credit-card companies had me cornered at last. After all the enticing fliers I’d ignored in college and the breathless offers I’d dumped as junk, they finally had me with the concept I’d been brazenly throwing in their faces for years: Freedom. You can survive without credit cards in 2009, but it’s a lonely life.
That said, I pray my new Visa’s life is just as lonely. Gotta take some kind of stand.
Late lunch: puddles of mall-cured pepperoni flatlined Pepsi smooth. Valiantly, I crack Aldous Huxley’sBrave New World after a lifetime of mental reminders to read the damn thing. Seems important now. I can’t even remember who recommended it to me, but I hope that person’s happy, wherever he or she may be. Holla, won’tcha. I settle into the first paragraph:
A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the main entrance the words, CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND CONDITIONING CENTRE, and, in a shield, the WorldState’s motto, COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY.
Restlessness envelops me — or maybe it’s the grease. In any case, the words resolve to sit all dead right on the page and not engage me whatsoever. “Fuggit,” I yawn, scrawling a new mental note to cast Mr. Huxley into my tome oblivion, where it may enjoy the sparkling company of Thurber and Perelman’s collected correspondence. In fact, it might even be happier among its peers, as I, modern me, remain a lost cause. Huxley’s pages now pressed between their Modern Classic covers, I crack loose my hand-held Interwebs, doot doot doot, and bellow, “Hello, world,” zipping through Facebook with my rapier thumbs, slaying ’puter pals with update zingers. I respond to a couple of e-mails from publicists seeking my physical mailing address (somewhere the postals cheer, daubing their eyes with three-cent stamps). A one-word text hums in my palm. I one-word it right back, on account of the economy. Until verbal prosperity emerges from its frosty lair, curt is the new verbose.
Exhausted from my journey, I return to the main page, where the top news story in all the land is, uck, some pixie-stick folderol on the successful cloning of Trackr, the vowel-deficient German Shepherd who famously sniffed through the 9/11 rubble for victims and survivors. Trackr, by all accounts a good boy, ate the great milkbone back in April, but his genes now yelp and woof in the spirits of five puppies borne of his sterling chromosomes. First, I ask myself why I continue to defend journalism if this is the cyber pull-out after a tumultuous weekend of international unrest. Then I wonder if the scientists ever caught that This American Life episode about the cloned bull who mistook its poor loving owner for a pair of heifer Levis. Then my mind naturally wanders to Pet Sematary, because all thought processes eventually end at Fred Gwynne and Denise Crosby. (Dale Midkiff is an unavoidable after-effect. I purposely went south so I didn’t grow up to look like him.) Haven’t the Micmacs taught modern science anything? Sometimes dead is better.
I’m operating on roughly four hours of sleep, off and on. I drifted off last night around 11 p.m., during a Jackass-themedSouthParkblitz preparing us lucky Comedy Central fans for the world premiere of Jackass Number Two this weekend. A few hours later I was startled awake by screams from the television. I turned over just in time to watch some heavy projectile swing in for a hearty handshake with Bam Margera’s nards. A Jackass marathon. In my muddled squeezebox I imagined some 20-year-old kid watching this across town and remembering how innocent entertainment used to be. Around 3 a.m., another blast, this one more joyous: that Heineken ad with a pack o’ Millennials sealed inside the party cab of all party cabs, zipping through a colorfully dingy metro. Bobs in the backseat, music throbbing through the shell. Biz Markie’s “Just a Friend.” At the chorus the sexagenarian pilot titty-twists the volume and curdles along in a soggy voice of drowned cottage cheese: “Oh, baby, YOUUUU/you got what I NEED.” I found it somewhat comforting that two generations could find a common bond in a 20-year-old rap classic. Maybe there’s hope in this brave new world, after all. Community, identity, stability. Biz Markie in 2012.
Released in ‘79 on Rupert Holmes’Partners in Crime LP (8-track! Cassette! Woo-hoo!), “Escape” was so popular it had to be reissued with a subtitle so people would actually buy it. No one knew the song by its original title, but everybody brayed that chorus wherever heavy drinkers congregated: “If you like pina coladas and getting caught in the rain.” Something about those images stuck in the psyche, so the track resurfaced as the Holmes/label compromise “Escape (The Pina Colada Song).” Naturally, it body-shot to #1 and was, in fact, the last chart-topper of the decade, meaning there was an abundance of assholes in Hawaiian shirts trying to put the lime in the dance-floor coconut that New Year’s Eve.
“Escape” has become so ubiquitous that it’s all but lost its original meaning to become a cultural punchline, or a cheap laugh at its own expense, like Jesus Jones’“Right Here Right Now,” a fairly accurate snapshot of early-’90s global optimism, or pretty much anything recorded by The Carpenters. With its soft, melodic chunder and evocations of a Coppertone getaway, “Escape” is shorthand for camp cheesiness. It so transcends generations that even ten-year-olds get the joke, although none were around to hear it mocked in Norm MacDonald’sDirty Work back in ‘98, when its use was, as always, lazy and trite. We’ve transferred our response down bloodlines; it’s part of our collective DNA. Now the song’s being mangled in a popular Taco Bell ad, with bored drones — thanks to The Office, everything’s set among zany cubicle jockeys now — improvising new lyrics to get them through a day of vapid bosses, annoying meetings, and passing Frutistas through their colons.
Of course, “Escape” is more than just its raised-glass chorus. In fact, it’s what we call a story song. Rupert loves to tell stories. After this ditty ensured he’d never have to climb out of bed again except to retrieve his royalty checks, he became a playwright and novelist. (He’s released a few more albums too; can’t exactly accuse the man of sloth.) Anyone familiar with Holmes’ work as a songwriter might recall a tale he weaved for The Buoys in 1971: “Timothy,” which reached #17 on the Pop chart despite being blacklisted from most U.S. radio stations for its objectionable content. Let me tell ya, pina colada fans, this gut-wrencher would’ve turned your tropical-themed soiree into an all-out hoinkfest, with margaritas and daiquiris taking northbound elevators to daylight. “Timothy,” see, was about three desperate miners trapped underground who get a mite peckish. Two emerge with the third on their breath. Alas, poor Tim.
“Escape” has a much happier ending. Dissatisfied with the predictability of his longtime relationship, the narrator peruses the personals in his hometown daily (tres quaint!) for a possible fling. He finds a notice that sounds perfect:
If you like pina coladas and getting caught in the rain
If you’re not into yoga, if you have half a brain
If you like making love at midnight in the dunes of the cape
I’m the love that you’ve looked for; write to me and escape.
Yowza. Who could resist that? Once he tucks his eyes back in, our hero replies:
Yes, I like pina coladas and getting caught in the rain
I’m not much into health food, I am into champagne
I’ve got to meet you by tomorrow noon and cut through all this red tape
At a bar called O’Malley’s, where we’ll plan our escape.
As a writer myself, I’ve always dug the intentional contrasts between the characters’ prose. Hers has a more poetic flow; his sort of plods along.
We then cut to the anxious fellow at the appointed time and place as he nervously awaits the arrival of Chapter Two. She enters. He sees her. There’s an instant chemistry. A familiar one. That smile. Those curves. It’s his own girlfriend, the one who snoozed as he sat in bed quietly responding to her anonymous ad. Seems they were both hungry for excitement. If any consumption took place in “Escape,” it happened discreetly after the fade and was likely more pleasurable. Alas, poor Tim.
I’m not sure why I even care anymore. Truth is, I haven’t worked in day-to-day journalism for nearly a decade, though I still contribute from time to time and visit old-friend newsrooms when I can. But something about the ongoing fracas between print and online fascinates me into migraines and bellicose outbursts on blogs across the Web.
I don’t exactly know what troubles me. I’m still formulating. “Process journalism,” right? There remain holes in my suppositions and I’m likely to roam into corners and stop, too chagrined to continue. So bear with me as I, in the words of David Byrne, “wress-sulll” with my conscience.
I don’t think it’s even a matter of print vs. online, really. That transition can only be beneficial, and I don’t know too many people — contrary to steadfastly held public opinion — who don’t support it. What we’re fighting is not technology but the marketing mindset’s domination of it.
I’d love to believe that the Internet is the Great Emancipator. But I wonder if what we’ll see instead is the evolution of new monopolies, where the loudest, most aggressive, and best-funded will reign (in other words, just like offline). Davids among Goliaths will sometimes shine, but still be rare indeed. I worry that spin will become even dizzier and more confusing. Data-mining will determine importance and significance. We’ll fret even more about what people want to read. You’ll have to be more profitable and popular than informative to survive. Subterfuge will be easier. Transparency? Good luck. Trends and movements will have faster life cycles; you could culturally live and die at the speed of the average housefly.
To a marketer, a playground, where recess never ends. All those eyes, all those malleable minds.
For instance, have you noticed the language that’s surfaced around the touted “new media” (I don’t air-quote as a slight; new, old — it’s all media to me)? Product. Branding. Consumers. Content. “Thinking outside the box.” Marketing jargon. The prominent players in this struggle aren’t journalists but CEOs and entrepreneurs who sometimes produce a pad and pen to play inquisitor ’cause it’s oodles of fun. So, interestingly, journalism’s future is being determined largely by corporate entities and deep-pocketed outside parties, both of whom regard the medium as a curious bauble. (In fairness I must say that of those outside parties, Jay Rosen is a teacher of journalism, as is Jeff Jarvis, who has worked as a reporter. Both have an appreciation of the form if not always the execution.) The actual practiti0ners, as always, have little say. They just toil until it’s time to clear out their desks. (Some have taken the initiative and launched their own community news sites; I wish them success and prosperity.)
I have little against marketing. Hey dere, Meathead, some of my best friends are in marketing. There was a lovely, receptive tribe at Rhino. They’d brainstorm with you, consult you, run ideas past you — for the most part, it was a giving environment. You could sit in a conference room for days batting concepts back and forth, and it never felt like work.
Sadly, I can’t say I had the same experience in newspapers. I won’t mention any specific names or mastheads, but among the more pleasant advertising-department denizens we had this gaggle of self-anointed geniuses, a real power-suited wolf pack. A trio they were, slathered in black and seldom seen apart. They’d hydra-head into the publisher’s office, whose hermetically sealed door would mysteriously unlock at their scent, and drag him off to a shmoozefest lunch or an asskiss golf. They’d descend on the retiring publisher of the sister paper across the bridge and present their golden boy, a local chisel-chin and former classified ad manager, as the obvious heir apparent. They spoke in slogan and only remembered your name long enough to go through your pockets. They were soulless vermin, cheap fucking slime. And every time I hear “product,” “branding,” “consumers,” “content,” and “thinking outside the box,” I imagine their lolling lizard tongues slithering over every syllable.
Marketing and pure-blood journalism have always had an adversarial relationship, but it’s a necessary one. However, one should never dominate and determine the direction of the other. That’s what worries me.
Of all the correspondence I pretend to receive for the sake of introductory sentences, the most commonly expressed concern is my lack of new-music coverage. “Ho-ho, whassamatta?” no one snarkily expectorates. “Too old to tongue-kiss anything waxed, loosed, or laser’d after Moby’s Play?” Let me assure that nonexistent detractor I feel his imaginary pain. So today I’ll rave about an album that won’t be out until August 4, courtesy of the artisans at Sargent House. How’s that for new?
Bygones are a pair of sinewy gents who rock with their caulk guns ready to seal rhythms tighter than the hip pocket of an emo tween. You might recognize Zach Hill from Hella. At least I do. I love those guys, two ne’er-do-wells thrashing a racket like an ear-scrub with industrial-strength algebra. I’m not as familiar with Bygones bandmate Nick Reinhart, an alleged triple-threat in his own malice unit, Tera Melos, but that will be rectified soon. As an English freak, the “math rock” moniker turns my nutsac a putrid crimson, but if the numbers game was this bracing I’d have let mathematicians wire abacuses with my viscerae years ago.
I’ve heard their super-duo debut, by-, and love it to pieces (literally; I used the shrapnel to carve a heart o’er my soul). But I must sit tight on my crush until closer to release day. No, no — the burden is mine.
This I will divulge: It’s hard to describe the music they make, ’cause there’s so damn much of it. Most bands are perfectly happy playing one song at a time, satisfied with upstanding structures of tried-and-true verse/chorus/verse, catchy hooks, and see-ya fadeout. Bygones, on the other hand, back a truck up to the studio and dump everything through the roof. Why play one number straight when you can thread another 92 through it and draw blood?
Nick’s guitar precision at such astonishing velocities is incredible and intense. He wrenches jagged thorns of noise from his grumpy beast and slams them into each other with angry-mob aggression while Zach on drums drinks and drives with nary a thought for his own safety. I worry for Nick’s own well-being on “Nu Cringe” when he shovels through his six-string into his ribcage then back out his spinal column like he’s taking an alternate route to his wallet.
It isn’t all frantic, of course. There are tiny delights. For instance, the squooshy synth squeezes that open “Fool Evolved” with the same trenchcoat-degenerate glee that majestically telegraphed those sequences in Crown-International sexploitation flickers where the cheerleader conquers the gas man.
All told, by- illustrates what the band’s all about: wresting sublimity from chaos, like in its cover shot of the Dirty Projectors’ Amber Coffman commencing scarf on a drippy Sloppy Joe. There’s a precision in this filling mess that’s good to the goopy last drop.
Bygones by- (Sargent House)
Track listing
01 Cold Reading
02 Click on That (Smash the Plastic Death)
03 Not What It Is But What It’s Not
04 Nu Cringe
05 Fool Evolved
06 Spray You With Your Own Trip
07 Expelled
08 Up the Shakes
09 Ex-People
10 Error
Release date: August 4 Pre-sale: July 1
Check out “Nu Cringe” and “Fool Evolved” at the Bygones’ official Myspace page here.
NOTE: The following incorporates search words used over the last two days to find my blog.
Skinny Benny, they used to call him.Huh!, Benny snorted at the memory. Not anymore. Time and diet took care of that, slowing his metabolism to a meek death crawl. His stomach dropped like a weary sigh with each passing day. From the side he resembled a blue-draped bell. The left side was better — bearable, at least, with a minimum of shock. The right only made him cry.
He sighed and sparked another killerstick. As a result, the interior of his shelled-out unmarked hooptie stirred with the curiosity of the big Pixar logo, caressing the sad interior in rust-colored shadows. The street outside was a flatline for miles at this time of night, quiet all along the watchtower. “Jesaja,” Benny chortled, recalling his grandmother’s invocation of the prophet Isaiah in her native tongue. For true, the boulevard seemed cradled in universal peace. Jesaja.
It was all too dull for Benny, so he thumbed his cell and banged out a few numbers to hail his captain, Anthony Hamilton. “The point of it all,” Tony told him after a few minutes of weary-jawed chitchat, “is that your continued presence guarantees the neighborhood’s sense of universal peace. They eyeball you from unseen windows. Once you vanish, all is chaos and despair.”
At 42, Benny was the precarious thin blue line — well, as thin as his waistline could muster. He made a mental note to lobby the city council to raze all those fucking liquor stores, with their equally poisonous sodas and candies, and replace them all with Baja Fresh. Decrepit spirits joints weren’t just killing the locals; they were destroying his ability to serve and protect. Everyone loses but the bottlers and Frito-Lay. Meanwhile, Benny sucked the cheese powder from his finger in a desperate attempt to deny his complicity, then chucked the Whatchamacallit’s incriminating skin into the backseat.
With every defeated snarf, Brenda came more and more into focus. With her angular face and those sparkling features too alive to behold without shrinking back, she could still pass for a lost David Carradine daughter. Benny’s countenance, on the other hand, plumped into hills hugging the involuntarily laugh lines under his eyes. He hoped they’d someday seal completely so he couldn’t see what a mess he continued to make of everything. Why wouldn’t Brenda leave his expanding ass? He tried finding ways. There was that rep at the Wabash Wildlife Embassy, what the locals in jest called the WWE. Layla was her name. What she saw in him he’ll never know. Maybe it was the badge, the gun, the power. Maybe she was lonely. He prayed for a stunning depth in her perception of him. He prayed for that depth in himself. Perhaps it was love? Ugh. Sigh. Brenda. Layla. It was a triangle with him as the Hostess tip.
A rap at the window jolted him from his wanderings. It was his partner, that weird cop, Sherman, a college boy who packed more books than heat. Today’s page-turner was Songs About Alternative History, whatever the fuck that meant. The boys had a hoot with it at the station that afternoon. “Zat some fag shit?” asked Captain Anthony Hamilton, coming from the bathroom. “No,” came the reply, “it’s a fascinating study of how our patriotic songbook might be different had American history been even slightly altered.” “Fag shit,” Cap sniffed. “All I want from anything with pages is color shots of that WWE Melina Perez pussy see-through.” “Huh?” asked Sherman, after the laughter subsided. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Captain Hamilton’s a nice guy, but he’s not intellectually curious,” Sherman was saying now as the partners watched nothing unfold. “Perhaps that’s why he’s still stuck at that rank. How could anyone live without wanting to know?”
“Klaatu!” Benny sneezed, decorating the windshield.
“Don’t you ever want to know, Benny?”
Kids, Benny smiled. Always wanting to know. Always wanting more. Until one day they’re old enough to understand the terms of the search engine. It’s the only way to universal peace. Without a self-imposed filter, life is just a hot-blooded rush of west albany graduation 2009physicsporndavid carradine’s naked body corpse, the secret poetry of disturbed gibberish. He was here to ensure order. The world didn’t need Skinny Benny anymore; it was ripe for the reign of Jesaja of the streets.
Three minutes to midnight. My name is Cory Frye. I’m 36 years old. Black-brown hair stubbornly fading to gray. Half-assed beard flecked with careless white. I stand 5-foot-7, though I might tell you 5-foot-9 if asked. (Fuck ya gonna do, measure me?) I have exactly $29.74 in my wallet, $9.74 of which is mostly quarters for laundry. The smaller coins — the ones that make your fingers stink — will be transferred to one of two “emergency” containers on my kitchen counter, both of which are too heavy to be moved with one hand.
Right now I’m upstairs in what my friends have affectionately christened “The Man Room.” It’s loaded with my accumulated juvenalia: action figures, CDs, records, unframed posters (push pins — the bachelor’s adhesive), and stereo. With its lack of furniture, there’s plenty of space to stretch out. I’m in my favorite writing position: on my stomach, head on raised pillow, fingers scratching drivel onto lined paper in a cheap spiral notebook with my favorite instrument, a Uni-Ball Vision Exact. You can hear the words as they swoop across a page. Speaking of instruments, on the stereo: Miles Davis’ Filles de Kiliminjaro, “Tout de Suite.” (Hey, I used that exact phrase recently! Kindred spirits, Miles and me!) I borrowed it this afternoon from the uptown library. It plays at Volume 3, max sound, but not so max it disturbs the neighb0rs.
Because I’m a generally nice fella, I won’t bore you with my biography. The short of it is this: I’m a writer, and I’ve been a writer so long I can’t remember when I wasn’t. My life’s been interrupted by the occasional career, but I always come back to my first true love: tip to pulp, mind to claws, an intimate symphony. That I can make a living at it thrills and astounds me to no end. Like most writers, I logged a trillion nights in my youth doing exactly what I’m doing now for sheer karmic pleasure.
And as technology continues fucking with this craft to which I’ve devoted my life, I hear the futurists (i.e., marketers) cluck about brands as they apply to writing in the New Age. This is what they live for. They love blathering about brands and content and consumers and barking that tired-ass “thinking outside the box” (without realizing that equating imagination to something tangible, thereby giving it a structure with limits, means you’ve already failed) banality while using specific data to stuff us into a shitload of ‘em. According to them, the future of writing and of journalism is to pander to an all-powerful “audience” to “drive” a successful “brand.”
Consider me, then, a holdout. A hopelessly doomed throwback.
My name is Cory Frye.
I’m not a brand.
I’m a person.
This is not my content.
These are my collected thoughts, dreams, fears, stories, shortcomings, hopes, contradictions, wounds, and blisters, upchucked from an impulsive soul attached to a beating heart.
Mick Hucknall’s interrupted my lunch, and not for the first time. He roams the overhead speakers, just another on-call element in fast food’s endless ambience. Poor dude trotted off the hit parade, where one actually listened to and savored his words, a hundred years ago. These days he’s the equivalent of a piano-bar belter, someone to help the steaks go down.
I remember hearing “Holding Back the Years” for the first time: late summer/early fall, 1986. Freshman year of high school. I was 13, with an abundance of memories from which to wistfully draw. With his head of rooster red, young Mr. Hucknall was the closest I came to getting juiced on fresh heartbreak. With no beer in the fridge or even yet a budding palate, I settled for Simply Red. They were a paternal clap on the shoulder articulating the pain of snuffed puppy love. Oh, if I could only reclaim those lost and wounded weeks!
I knew nothing of blue-eyed soul back then. Simply Red were simply a musical presence in an ongoing soundtrack. That other single, “Money’s Too Tight (To Mention),” didn’t grab me as much. Too much working-class outrage, not enough wine-brained melancholy. I didn’t hear from them again until they exhumed “If You Don’t Know Me By Now” a few years later for covert games of grope ‘n’ grabass in the fumbling dark. By then I was over those dudes. Besides, “If You Don’t Know Me By Now” seemed like one of those songs responsible for the kind of heavyhearted yearning summoned by “Years.”
With clutters of mushy impulses scattered about my attic, I’m at a ripe age now for “Holding Back the Years.” Yet the teenage me might be disappointed by my less-than-dramatic response this afternoon. I didn’t stop mid-nosh and fling myself into yellowed heartache. Instead I chuckled softly and resumed reading my book. I don’t really associate the song with a particular event or person anymore — it’s a barely acknowledged shadow.
He’d be disappointed in a lot of adulthood, like how rarely those scenarios in Bruce Springsteen’s “Glory Days” actually play out in real life. You know the one — where you encounter an old flame or whoever at a bar and call a few more rounds to whet a long night o’ catch-up. For one, you’re not likely to find me at a bar; I can barely buy the occasional six-pack of Guinness at the neighborhood Safeway without feeling like I’ve disappointed someone somewhere. Second, if you do run into someone like that at the local hops trough, you couldn’t hear them over the clamor of chatter and jukebox anthems anyway.
Songs like that, at least to a teenager, presented adulthood as a novel paradise where you could finally land the cheerleader who snubbed you and drink without diving into a closet the second someone tore through a living room braying, “Cops!” Oh, Bruce did spice the lyrics with warnings about wallowing in the past, but who hears those when you’re a horndog yearling? Adulthood sounded like a sweet X-rated democracy. All I envisioned was some far-off saloon where my buds and I threw back the cold gold and a certain faun, unscathed by time, was receptive to my touch.
Like “Glory Days,” “Holding Back the Years” was a memory song in reverse. I imagined myself in the future, fondly pondering the now. Sometimes I sat in a palace constructed by my toil and fortune, caressing a wine-glass stem as Hucknall’s comfy ruminations paced my hardwood floors. Other times I was splayed out in bed with my wife, watching the lights of fellow skyscrapers swim and dance from our vantage point 40 stories high. Or I was driving the kids to soccer, absently tapping the steering wheel. Always with a memory to coax the softest smile.
Instead I hear him hit the points I know are coming. The instrumentalists land as planned, as they always have. Then they all fade quietly into that pile of time. No quiver, no shiver — just another Sunday in a life to be continued. I finish my burger and punch my last period right about here.
Math the Band, “Tour de Friends” Tweakin’ freaky, Dave leaned hard on the buzzer, persistent, insistent, desperate. He knew Jill was home; her ghostly form paced upstairs behind a curtain tomb. Dissatisfied with her lack of response, not even a rumble down a flight for a crimson-faced what-the-fuck, he shoved a fistful of Teddy Grahams into his jungle-beard maw. They usually calmed him down — mems o’ ’80s mornings with his bros and sists, that lost tykedom before the overrated bullshit wallow called adulthood. Unfortunately, they didn’t work today. Within seconds he was barking volcanic epithets through sweetened mush, his head pounding with ancient New Wave loops. They scurried across his littered synapses like a rat-dance down the tenement tile he’d kissed that morning after sinking half the city into his arm. “I know I got a problem, Jill!” he roared. “But fuck you your regal indifference!” He fired a vulgar gesture at the window and imagined it had the power to shatter enough glass to pierce her heart dead.
Ape School, “My Intention” (Yppah Remix) Dave didn’t remember much after his finger-pistolero fantasy. He woke up in the park sometime around breakfast, a mist of dew clinging to his grimy features. Birds tweeted their disapproval. As did Jill, according to the hum in his pocket and the fusillade of textspeak that pried his eyes open. His head clanged with a dolorous peal, like a lost ship’s ballad in the fog. There was glass in his greasy hair, an unkempt diamond mine. Something had happened, enough to inspire fences of exclamation marks around an all-capped assault. Dave collected what remained of his humanity and responded.
@jill you can take my eyes ill still see what i see it isnt my intention to head off what has to be
He pressed “send” and the device buzzed almost instantly, as if shuddering from the impact. “U FUCKIN JUNKIE” came the reply, “U PUT A BRICK THRU MY WINDOW & ALMOST CRUSHED MITTENS.” Fucking Mittens. How she loved that downtrodden freak of an animal. She once told him that he and Mittens were kindred spirits — that’s what she loved most about her man and quietly jealous beast. To hurt Mittens was to only hurt himself. Dave pondered a tic, then blasted one last salvo. Mind at ease, he wiped the muck from his jeans and ached home down the cobblestone.
Darlings, “If This Is Love” “Fuck! FuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckFUCK! FUCK!” Dave barked as the garage door kissed his foot. It boiled up in a phlegmy harrumph of pain and exhaustion. His pinky toe throbbed a while, but after a glass of Black Grape Kool-Aid, everything seemed swell, with at least a smidgen of fucked-up exposed to hope.
Voodeux, “Bones” “Hittin’ the town,” Dr. Charlie said by way of prescription. “It’s the only way to get what was fucked fucked the fuck up.” He and Dave padded down an alley. Aluminum twisted and shivered in a distant junkyard wind. The sky poured itself a tall glass of sangria. “It’s our night!” the doctor hooted. “A night for the last of the true rhythm thugs!” They strutted purposefully toward the clubs to start some shit. Ghastly shells of lost beauty pawed at their coats in the dark. Everyone seemed to be dying for a taste of something. The deejay swiped with fury. Violet drooled down walls to caress the writhing shadows. Sneakers shrieked in banshee unity, vibrating through Charlie’s skull. His eyes spun in jackpot pain. “I can’t open my mouth,” he grunted. “No telling what I’ve invited in.” Dave understood and patted his partner on the back before weaving down a razor-lined corridor. Charlie watched his friend vanish and accidentally relaxed his jaw. As if summoned by God, an elephant slithered in and re-emerged, a butterfly.
Boogie Boarder, “Bio Hassle” His heart thundering against his ribs like a tweaker on a buzzer, Dave steadied himself against the bathroom sink. Shit was clocking him like Ted fucking Williams. With quivering fins he made a cradle beneath the faucet, then splashed purity across his face. Opening his eyes he saw Jill at his side, wearing a smile that left a wailing trail of dead. She fixed his tie, the one he donned to assimilate with and mock the straights.
The public restroom crumbled to rubble and pipe; he was back in her apartment. Mittens regarded him suspiciously from atop a purr-warmed copy of Sartre’s Being and Nothingness. “Here, fatso,” Jill smirked, offering him a tattoo of their mutual acrimony, “swallow this.” Dave did as he was told. The taste was surprisingly sweet. He smiled and moved to the living room, where he commenced to eat the couch. He followed with the flatscreen, her computer, her Joan Miro prints, her futon, her wicker, her bedspreads and drapes. He slurped the paint right off her walls. He ate her bookshelves, her books, her photographs. He put the refrigerator between two slices of desk and ate that too. Pretty soon he had devoured the entire apartment, leaving only Jill and Mittens and Being and Nothingness in a stunned void. Shocked by his gluttony, Dave rolled himself home.
Rainbow Arabia, “Omar K” (Max Justus Remix) Jill scrawled quietly in her journal to the jut-jut putter of the Metro. A child toward the rear began to chant. Jill found the intrusion annoying at first, but then noticed the hypnotizing effect it had on her fellow commuters, their consciences visibly wandering private walled gardens. She watched the lips of her seatmate caress the same sentence on page A7 of the Los Angeles Times over and over again. She even read the line with him: “‘He’s dangerous,’ claimed the former Vice-President.” An elderly woman up front was the only one to reprimand the child. “This does not compute,” she sighed before resuming her embroidery: a hydrogen bomb powered by shame. Jill watched two teenaged girls giggle as they sent cheesecake photos of themselves to the mainframe, which chattered its approval and beamed them into the beyond.
The bus continued barreling down Santa Monica Boulevard, past West Hollywood, past North Hollywood, past Dave’s gorged vessel eating its way toward Silver Lake, never to return. “It’s funny,” Jill remarked to no one in particular, “how life works out sometimes.”
SKREEK! SKRONK! WARMPH! Uh-oh, here comes the fuzz (Michael Campagna’s six-string sputter) to cuff Jack Chandler for lewd and mischievous use of saxophone, and filet skins-man Winogrond for abusing the earth’s crust. Ether binges on delicious noise (somewhere the jazzier side of Hüsker Dü nods its approval) under such bad-ass titles as “Return of the Silver Apple Fleck Yoshimbokwa” (spoken-word bashed and gashed by an eruption of squidgy space tugs) and “Snakeskin Pillbox Hat,” a boss romp that complements “Jupiter Jump’s” ’50s sex-club foreplay quite nicely. It’s a little rough around the elbows — just the way we like it — but it hits the pit with a greasy wallop and sticks to your ribs for good. (www.davidwinogrondspacetet.com)
Y’ever find yourself in downtown L.A. — ’round Fifth and Wall or thereabouts — and the whole of Skid Row rains gin bottles on your head? Well, the faint rainbow formed in that glass-cade is Soil & “Pimp” Sessions, Tokyo’s hearty reply to jazz’s “Srsly, WTF?” Poisoned scales mudslide past at giddy speeds, with Motuharu’s ever-pained sax screaming for a medic, but the chaos occasionally chips away to reveal—surprise—an amazing combo. Bandleader Shacho bills himself as “Agitator” (that’s him cutting blood ’n’ guts from ivory and doing God knows what to a guitar…I think), and it’s interesting to hear him maintain a straightforward to/fro Bach pirouette on cuts like “Struggle” while Motuharu and Tabu Zombie (trumpet) jam hatpins down each other’s blowholes. Calm is beauty, but so is mutiny. Here endeth the lesson. Planet Pimp is the most fun you can have this side of murder. (www.soilpimp.com)
Sky’s the color of dishwater, that maelstrom murk before the drain gets pulled. It dots the walkways with snaps of rain, daubing your clothes with mischievous spots. Thunder rattles low in its throat. I’m reminded of a late night last summer when I stepped into a meteorological medley punctuated by soft, dimming flickers and strident, brilliant streaks down the center of town, followed by loud barked warnings from a restless Mother Nature.
Me, I prefer my pops artificial. So tonight I spread across an empty patch of floor, fill the rest with Mississippi John Hurt. You don’t exhume him often, just when your wandering mind needs an understanding companion. That modest, rough-honeyed shrug of a voice. Those gentle fingers plucking acoustic currents from somewhere deep inside. Man and instrument wrestle with their era’s sonic limits, pushing past the campfire snaps of decrepit shellac to spread so wide and fine. Mind-boggling, no? Here they perform, in a real-time 1928 — a year my grandparents were just children — and they’re somehow entertaining me. Unbelievably, we share the same space.
Even more amazing is that once the final ting of ‘28 string whistles back to the boneyard, a second disc will rumble into position, aging Hurt some 40 years, transporting him from the unmarked hush of Avalon, Mississippi, to mighty, daunting New York. Valleys will yawn down that friendly face. Technology will leap chasms in an instant; the aural shifts between 1928 and 1966 are the differences between a raggedy dirt path and a paved-smooth highway. Man and guit are but living forces in an airtight expanse, blending into an immaculate warmth for stereophonic hearths. Hurt was a tinny whisper in ‘28; now he sat in your living room, a permanent and gracious hi-fi guest. Life couldn’t be more modern — the title of his ‘66 album reflected that. Today! it insisted.
Yet neither he nor even the much younger men who recorded him in his twilight could imagine the possibilities I enjoy. With the touch of a button, I can boost his bass. I can filter him through different modes. I can shuffle his sequence, upload him onto my desktop, trade him with my friends. Fire him ’round the world without a passport! Ah, life could not be more modern — such is the vanity of now.
Life is done with him, as it will one day be with me. And yet I hope to crack through time just as sweet as he.
Greetings, students, faculty, parents, esteemed colleagues, and other deluded dipshits. I hope you’re all as drunk as I am. If not, some kid’s got six cases of donkey piss hidden under a Snoopy blanket in his Ford F-100, license plate BRGUZLA. It comforts me somewhat that Coors Light remains the preferred cheap-thrill high for area adolescents. And I dunno if that warmth I feel within is nostalgia or flea-market tallboy bilge water escaping my body in a most embarrassing fashion.
I am honored — nay, ecstatic — that Greater Albany Public Schools, or whatever you hillbilly con artists have the audacity to call yourselves these days, has selected me to speak before you and perhaps inspire you with my feel-good logorrhea of buzzword clichés and gasbag piffle. Luckily, the check cleared this morning, so I’ll be on my best behavior.
I know many of you out there are undressing me with your eyes. I’m flattered, but stop it. The rest of you find yourselves standing in ridiculous clothes at your first true crossroads, asking, “What do I do with the rest of my life?” Well, if you’re totally awesome, you’ll never know the answer.
So relax. Go to college. Let it hit you like a closet full of water pipes. Get all that uptight angst out of your system. Some of you will discover the Grateful Dead. Others will find Bob Marley. Still others will think them both played out and hit the harder stuff, like Gil Scott Heron, and feel real fucking special. But you’ll all have one thing in common: being insufferable bores, barking the usual tropes of social activism until your doofus flesh paunches into middle-aged mediocrity. Hey, but I ain’t casting judgment, no, sir. Been there, done that. In fact, here’s part of a poem I wrote when I was 19, playing social peekaboo from behind a pair of superfluous round-rimmed glasses and reciting filched Rimbaud over the taut bellies of impressionable coeds:
Your lies satisfy me not Your explanations are a blind road to Fuck
The tongue that aids your every word is an accessory to treachery
To behold your offensive form is to taste the cancer of fascism
I shall not quaff from your filth-laden stream Until you cosign for that Dodge
Mom
Well, I see by the unlined consternation on the 76 valedictorians and 30 salutatorians seated behind me that I’ve lost you. Like you were listening, anyway. Why, it wasn’t even 20 years ago that I too was a fresh puss ’neath a mortarboard, plunked down right over there, in the gymnasium’s most holy spot, watching lips on high move uselessly, all the while imagining how cool it would be to edit the whole ceremony into a righteous video for Pink Floyd’s “Time.” The only excitement came when I and a couple of row mates made a friendly wager over at which point in her speech the octogenarian Daughters of the American Revolution rep would hit the floor, dead. She made it, and so did we — barely. For a day supposedly brimming with excitement and anticipation, I’d rather heartily suck a razor-blade lollipop than graduate from high school ever again. Jesus Christ, I’ve attended livelier text-font seminars.
But hey, man: it’s just one of many symbolic rite-of-passage rituals you’ll endure in your lifetime. And to be honest, with its shared illusion of interclass harmony and a hopeful future, this one’s pretty all right. Tonight, in a sentimental intoxication fueled by memories of Can’t Hardly Wait and Superbad, you may right a few old wrongs, create a few exciting ones, or perhaps interact with someone outside your usual stratosphere for a change. And who knows? Maybe you’ll bond with that person while puking into the begonias together. It’s the perfect end game, what the high school experience is all about.
As you can see from my weary beard and hunched shoulders, I am an adult. And as an adult, I am obligated to give you a few parting pearls of wisdom I’ve accrued in my adult-ly travels. So I stayed up all night plumbing Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus and What Would Google Do? for inspiration. Therefore, kids, my advice to you is that the only way to truly comprehend the hidden differences between the sexes is to successfully give and receive the love that is within each and every one of us. If that fails, do what you do best and link to the rest.
But most importantly, make the time of your life your whole life. Don’t let it end here. Go home and retire your mortarboard. Burn it. Offer its ashes to Satan. Scrub that accumulated, soul-killing hierarchal filth off your body till you sparkle anew. Honestly, in life’s vast and wondrous sprawl, high school ain’t even a weekend. Or a sick day. Or even an afternoon nap. Once you’ve reached my age, it’s often a series of barely remembered events that, according to the evidence, somehow involved you. So put that bullshit behind you tout de suite. Then pack your bags and scream into the future, fists and feet forward.
A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All
Starring Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, and George Wendt
With musical guests Elvis Costello, Toby Keith, Willie Nelson, John Legend, and Feist
Original music by David Javerbaum and Adam Schlesinger
Ah, it’s that most wonderful time of the year. As we prepare our sweatered bellies for a hearty influx of bird, local merchants toil for our minds and spirits — specifically, the gaunt ones haunting our meager savings. Shelves are lovingly festooned with artificial trees at full festive illumination, cushioned by glittered fabrics meant to evoke thoughts of the first snowfall (of receipts!). Ribbons and bows coil tear through their packages and coil ’round wrists, pulling their otherwise resistant owners wallet-first into the commercial plunge. “But it’s not even Thanksgiving yet!” the shoppers shout. Malcontents, malcontents, malcontents, all! Have they forgotten the wisdom once whispered to the Virgin Mary one mystical night so very long ago? “It’s never too early to celebrate.” Baby Jesus clucked his approval. Joseph could only beam and hope for parking.
Taking a cue from their mercantile brethren, Comedy Central decided to celebrate the holidays a little early too: Sunday night, a full month and two days before Santa’s final descent. It began with the sacrificial repeat of Jeff Dunham’s Christmas, which nobody watched because they were all nestled all snug with their FOX, where visions of Jack Bauer danced and pistol-whipped guerrillas for two hours straight in a very special 24 extravaganza meant to sate appetites for the January 2009 season premiere. With a peculiar harmony rarely witnessed beyond well-practiced caroling, the movie and its new-season teaser ended just as A Stephen Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of Allcrackled to chestnuts-roasting life.
Mr. Colbert (as TheNew York Timescalls him — respect!), sartorially dapper and beloved captain of The Colbert Report, looks resplendent in a red turtleneck and white knit button-down, much like the homey hosts of the holiday shows of old. Gone unnoticed except by the most trained eye is Bob Hope winking, sparkling, avuncular, from Heaven. The ghost of Bing quietly sneaks a cup of Kentucky-flavored eggnog from the fridge.
In the foreground Stephen entertains from his cabin piano with a hearty belt of “Another Christmas” (all songs are written by Daily Showproducer David Javerbaum and the go-to quill of Fountains of Wayne’s Adam Schlesinger), then dons his wintry apparel for what we assume is a sleigh ride to his New York studio to tape what sounds like a spectacular yuletide extravaganza, if the breathless account of Elvis Costello — linked to Colbert by phone and garbed alternately as a nutcracker and jack in the box — is to be believed. (A minor mishap occurs later when offscreen the Jonas Brothers tumble during an ice show and are swept out to sea.)
Colbert, sadly, encounters a problem that leaves His Truthiness housebound for the duration of the show. A hungry bear, Stephen’s greatest fear, waits outside, itching to suck the stringy meat off the poor host’s bones. Not to worry, however: the entertainment comes to him, first in the heroic hunter-jacketed form of country legend Toby Keith, the former loutish target of Natalie Maines’ ire. He grouses that everybody’s forgotten the true meaning of Christmas, which he then explains in “Have I Got a Present For You,” a rollicking country curlicue where a patriotic Santa resolves apathy by dropping bombs on heathens and letting real Americans hall-deck to their hearts’ content.
Willie Nelson arrives via organic vision, willing himself into a Nativity scene diorama as the fourth of the three wise men. “Stephen,” he tells the incredulous host, “right now I’m so high, you’re hallucinating.” His stirring “Little Dealer Boy” stands in relaxed contrast to Keith’s jingoist anthem, relaying an alternate history of that night under a followed star — one that involves a religious experience achieved naturally.
Speaking of alternate and religion, Jon Stewart pops through the front door to educate Stephen on “Hannukah” (and in surprising fine voice too!), leaving his fake-news cohort with a dreidel and potato pancake, which soon conspire to swindle his riches in a goyim game of chance. A knock at the back door sends a panicked Colbert to the ornamental swords adorning the cabin wall — turns out they’re light sabers! Luckily, his visitor lacks the requisite fur of his sworn enemy but compensates with a voice guaranteed to keep the ladies warm: John Legend, moonlighting as a forest ranger. The grateful captive offers Legend an eggnog, which the singer accepts — but not before lecturing his host as satin smooth as possible on the necessity of “Nutmeg.” “Nutmeg is what gives eggnog its hmmmmm and its heyyyyyyyyy,” Legend helpfully explains over an ivory-built boudoir.
Despite its spirit-lifting melody, “Nutmeg” fails to wrest Stephen from his funk. After all, the clock is ticking. He drops to his knees and prays to God for a successful Christmas special. His entreaties are beamed to the angel, sweet angel, atop his tree, who magically transforms into salaciously four-alarm indie siren Feist. She puts his heartfelt wishes in a holding pattern with “Please Be Patient,” adding sweetly, “An angel will be with thee shortly.”
Once her breathy lungs settle she appears at full size and sprinkles divinity over the host’s weary bean. Wish granted! Elvis Costello materializes outside his window, still on the phone, acclimating himself nicely to his snowy surroundings. Too bad he’s spotted by the bear and torn to Declan MacManus tatters! Devastated by the loss of his sardonic musical friend (and his seraph’s subsequent exeunt), Stephen plummets to his couch, tinsel atop his sadness. Lips aquiver, he begins to sing.
As I walk through…this wicked world…
Searchin’ for light in the darkness of insanity…
I ask myself…is all hope lost…
Is there only pain and hatred and misery…
Struck curious by the heartfelt clamor, Stephen’s predator creeps in — as much as a full-sized animal can creep on uneasy hind legs — through the back door and surprises his breathing dinner. But instead of delivering the final blow, the mortal enemies lock in harmony, one in a voice that sounds suspiciously like a certain bespectacled troubadour.
And each time I feel like this inside There’s one thing I wanna know
What’s so funny ’bout peace, love and understandin’
What’s so funny ’bout peace, love and understandin”
Unfortunately, the bear reacts deliriously to a mistletoe kiss. “Oh, no!” Colbert shouts, “I forgot: I’m delicious!” Pre-Thanksgiving Christmas tragedy is averted when Santa Claus (George Wendt, Norm Peterson himself!) dispatches the beast with a hunting knife, cuts him open, and frees Elvis to partake in what little remains of the holiday special. The jolly old elf presents the emcee with, indeed, the greatest gift of all, a DVD copy of A Stephen Colbert Christmas, currently in progress but available tomorrow at discerning video stores and online emporiums for whatever good Christians deem a fair price.
But there’s an even better surprise: Santa yanks his beard down to reveal…Stephen! Which means that Stephen is Christmas, and we are Christmas, and we are Stephen (except Elvis, who surpassed Stephen-hood long ago), and Stephen is us. Oh, it’s gonna be the best holiday ever! But it’s still a month away, so this Stephen’s gonna bring it one day closer by heading to bed — where delectable sugarplums dance for dream-Benjamins four shows a night — and suggests the rest of you Stephens do the same. Together, we’ll bring the season to its knees!
Monday Night Raw
Monday, November 24
Providence, RI
If you’re gonna watch wrestling, you need the right food. If you’re lucky enough to be on-site, try the nachos and a large Coke. Dunno how much they cost, but I’m sure they wouldn’t cheat you. John Cena wouldn’t stand for it. (If he walks by, complain!) But if, like me, you’re at home, you must rely on the nearest purveyor of deep-fried edibles. A sandwich or bowl of hot minestrone will work in a pinch, but I highly recommend you plan these things out. Me, I’m strategically located in a bustling uptown with my choice of restaurants: Wendy’s, Arby’s, Jack in the Box, Panda Express, Burger King, and Del Taco. Most are OK, but I have a sentimental attachment to the Jack.
See, I used to live in Southern California, in the sleepy town of Pico Rivera. Jack stood proud at the end of my block (Washington/Rosemead), across from a Weinerschnitzel and a McDonald’s, neither of which rotted my colon the right way. Jack had the goods. Jack still has the goods. Because even though I now live a thousand miles from the Pico and its El Rancho Dons, Jack came with me and set up camp three streets from my humble abode.
I leave my apartment at 8:40 p.m., 20 minutes before liftoff. It’s a TV show, so it won’t wait for you. Give yourself plenty of time to order, fill your large cup, loiter at the retaining wall absently twisting the receipt in your fingers, jaw with the crew, quietly observe the precise rhythm of a kitchen staff in overdrive, and make your way home.
Here are a few tips to maintain precision and ensure maximum taste:
Jack’s fries are eh, OK, a little dry. They altered the formula a while back when change was all the fast-food rage and now it’s just a deep-fried potato stick that not even ketchup can lubricate to satisfaction. None of that noodle-y slickness to help the burger down. You gotta rely entirely on your Coke, which isn’t fair to the Coke, because it wants to be enjoyed by your taste buds too. It doesn’t want to work!
So forget the fries. Here’s what you do instead: Order the bacon and cheddar wedges. This is an important distinction. Otherwise you wind up with plain potato wedges, and you’re better off just eating a baby’s blanket. Tell the guy behind the counter you want to substitute the bacon and cheddar wedges for the fries. It’s OK — this is perfectly legal. If the cashier regards your request strangely, don’t panic. He is likely new and doesn’t yet understand the exceptions to Jack’s deceptively rigid value-meal rules. Ask for a manager — he’ll take care of you with the effortless press of a button. You will not be sorry. Not only are the wedges filling, they have enough of a liquid-cheese texture to send burger bits down your gullet in a thick wave. Not only that, the cheese is heavenly — way better than the goop you used to squirt on Chili Cheese Big Bites and nachos down at the 7-Eleven back in the ’90s. Truthfully, I might even buy Chili Cheese Big Bites again if they used Jack’s cheese. I wonder if Jack’s approached them. He must understand the fiscal implications of such a brilliant merger. After all, he’s got a really big head.
If you time it just right, you should be back in time to catch the last 40 seconds of House. Now comes the hard part. When RAW starts, don’t touch your food. Let it marinate during that useless opening where nothing happens. Its fumes will commingle to create an enticing bouquet. Do not capitulate. You are stronger. A more pressing concern is the ice — and Jack’s ice is weak — diluting your soft drink (my personal fave: Dr. Pepper, especially after they’ve just changed the tanks and the foam is ALIVE), which is already watered down enough as it is. Ignore it; it’s trying to get into your MIND. You mustn’t masticate or swallow till the real action starts.
First match: The Miz/John Morrison vs. Rey Mysterio/Shawn Michaels
Eating: Bacon Ultimate Cheeseburger
It’s called the Bacon Ultimate, because Burger King called shotgun on the Bacon Double. The BK was first on that shit, but crafty Jack and his big head upped the ante with “Ultimate.” How ya like them cows and pigs, Whopper Boy! Jack used to offer a Triple Ultimate Bacon (real name: Appalled Moo-chael Delicious), but I think too many people dropped dead right in the restaurant just from skin contact with the greasy wrapper, much like The Miz fell after skin contact with Rey Mysterio, who pinned him to exact revenge for last week’s dirty pool. Victory did come with a price, however; Miz’s partner, the spangled Shaman, went all “Break On Through” on his adversaries until John Bradshaw Layfield intervened, driving his limo right up to the ring, entering said ring, and, when Morrison propped the downed Shawn Michaels for a debilitating blow, delivered the biggest shock of the night by kicking Morrison in the kisser! Looks like they won’t be building a happy home on “Love Street”! Providence is shocked, I’m shocked, commentators Jerry Lawler and Michael Cole are slackjawed. What’s going on? Apparently, JBL and the Heartbreak Kid signed some hush-hush backroom deal. Wonder what this means for the Mysterio/Michaels team.
Win: Rey Mysterio/Shawn Michaels
Second match: Kofi Kingston vs. Kane (Intercontinental Championship Tournament, Opening Round)
Eating: Bacon Ultimate Cheeseburger
Remember when I said, “More tips forthcoming”? That moment has arrived! As of right now, you should still be working on the cheeseburger, chewing thoughtfully through Mr. Kennedy’s plug of his straight-to-DVD action/thriller Behind Enemy Lines: Colombia, in which he plays a Navy SEAL — congrats, Mr. K, but ho hum. Personally, I can’t wait for Chris Jericho to enter the movie biz. Wrestlers always play wrestlers, bad guys, mercenaries, thugs, hit men, and marines on film; Jericho’s one of the few grapplers who could maintain a plausible career as a character actor, whose mat reputation would not precede him. Frame-wise, he’s big, but not so impossibly hulkish you wouldn’t believe him as, say, a construction worker, doom-metal shredder, or the hero’s best friend from high school. In fact, here’s a great idea, Hollywood: Chris Jericho in the Harvey Keitel role of a Blue Collarremake. He could pull it off, and he wouldn’t have to swing at anyone until the final second, which is a freeze frame anyway and he doesn’t make contact. Dave Batista has charisma spilling out his skull stubble, but even if you cast him as Atticus Finch, the audience would riot if he didn’t spear Bob Ewell and snap the rabid dog’s neck. Then eat him.
But I’m getting off track here. We were talking about food. As I said, you should still be enjoying every sinful morsel of your burger. It’s so good, in fact, that it’s advisable to keep the experience as pure as possible. Don’t taint it with a single drop of soda. Don’t tarnish it with the side order. Leave it alone. Everything must be enjoyed by itself, just like the phantom loner Kane (he had his own movie too; he played a teen-slashing serial killer — big surprise), whose own “brother,” The Undertaker, wasn’t safe from his unpredictable outbursts. Tonight it’s Kofi Kingston, shareholder in the World Tag Team Championship with CM Punk, who suffers at those chokeslamming hands. The ref disqualifies him for trying to spill Kingston’s guts the fun way (bending him across a ring post), and Kane goes ape until Stephanie McMahon placates him with a shot against Heavyweight champ John Cena next week.
Winner: Kofi Kingston
Match 3: Chris Jericho vs. Batista vs. Randy Orton (Triple Threat)
Eating: Bacon & Cheddar Potato Wedges
Aren’t you glad you didn’t order the fries? All that monotonous lifting and dipping, lifting and dipping. It’s enough to drive you crazy, like those poor souls on the assembly line who finally snap after separating one microscopic pebble too many from a conveyor belt of freeze-dried raspberries. You don’t want that happening to you, so try the wedges! There aren’t as many, but they’re far more filling, because they’re coated in bacon bits and cheese by divine minimum-wage hands. And no order is exactly the same; all bear the individual fingerprint of their respective architects. Some are generous, others are skinflints, and you’ve got to learn who’s who. Be vigilant and alert! Jack thoughtfully bags a fork with the gunk, but you won’t need it, so either toss it or force it through the plastic for fun. There are four tines on the plastic fork, so snap off the extra and pretend the remaining trio represents the three wrestlers. Tine 1: Batista. Tine 2: Jericho. Tine 3: Orton. There’s a lot on the line tonight. The winner of this match gets to face Cena for the Heavyweight title two weeks from now at Armageddon. (Stop stocking the bomb shelter — it’s not real.) Tine 1 spends most of the match dusting the ring with tines 2 and 3 until tine 2 gets blasted outside, leaving tine 3 to contend with tine 1 alone, which is not a happy proposition. Tine 1 eventually pins tine 3 after a mind-thudding spear, but opportunistic tine 2 boots tine 1 off and, what the fork, wins by pin.
Winner: Chris Jericho
Match 4: Santino Marella vs. Goldust
Eating: The melted cheese at the carton bottom with your fingers
The best part of bacon and cheddar potato wedges isn’t necessarily the solid food itself, but its oft-generous remains, those pools of dairy resting against piggy-bit rocks. And it doesn’t get any cheesier than Marella, erstwhile Intercontinental champ and permanent WWE comic foil. Poor dude can’t even beat the sexually ambiguous Goldust (like Cody, another in Dusty Rhodes’ son-stable) now. He’s carted off by paramour Beth “The Glazamon” Phoenix after his efficient loss, with his opponent, in his black-and-gold glam jumpsuit, blowing kisses at them both. Goldust is back!
Winner: Goldust
Match 5: CM Punk vs. Snitsky (Intercontinental Championship Tournament, Opening Round)
Eating: Nothing; work on that Coke!
You should be finished with solids, unless you were generous or hungry and ordered cheese sticks or blueberry French toast sticks, which are kinda gross. French toast was meant to be drowned in syrup, not dipped into it — it’s the syrup that’s the active element! The sticky maple fluid doesn’t need your fingers to spread its magic; it does quite well on its own, thank you very much! Just pour and watch! But I digress.
If all’s gone well, you should have plenty of soda pop/soda/pop to last the rest of the broadcast. They say (they being doctors and Dr. Mom!) it rots your teeth, so Snitsky’s probably guzzled about six continents’ worth of bottling companies by now. Even Intercontinental champ William Regal, a Brit, comments on his hellacious bridgework. But Snitsky doesn’t need his teeth to win; he’s like a lumbering elephant cornering a mouse, flattening Punk like an annoying whack-a-mole. Punk looks straight-edge helpless until he finally lifts the behemoth over his shoulder and applies his “Go To Sleep” finishing move.
Winner: CM Punk (he might have to face his own partner!)
Warning: Dangerous sugar ‘head, so stanch the flow for the mo and enjoy a well-choreographed catfight between two trios of synthetically enhanced women. (Where’s Kelly Kelly, you ask? Resting from her house ad with D-Generation X for basketball jerseys and the RAW Vs. SmackDown 2009video game.) The angle for this match is Melina’s return from the injured list, which she marks in a near-sheer costume with Apollonia lingerie fringes, so Katie Lea’s sucking on lace as Melina wins by pin.
Winner: Mickie James/Candice Michelle/Melina
Wrap-Up
Drinking: Massive Caffeine
You’re drinking for two now, because John Cena’s on the warpath. He’s had enough of Chris Jericho coming out every week and berating the crowd, calling them hypocrites and sycophants and fools and blind liars, which is exactly what Jericho’s doing tonight when Cena, the Great Uniter, interrupts him and delivers the Mr. Smithspeech of a lifetime! Better than Tom Cruise in Jerry McGuire, better than Peter Finch or William Holden in Network, better than even John Belushi in National Lampoon’s Animal House. “You talk business,” Cena pit-bulls, whipping his shirt off for emphasis. “I mean business.” Jericho leaves the ring, but Cena starts up again, speaking for the crowd after their long verbal-assault nightmare. “Me holding this belt,” he says, raising his gold, “proves that we are good enough! This proves the CHAMP IS HERE!” The TV screen prickles with goosebumps. It feels like a three-dimensional road map now. Jericho renews his epithet fusillade: “You’re a worm, you’re a coward of a man.” That’s all Cena needs to hear. Fists fly, Jericho flies, Jericho sleeps, Cena stands triumphant, your Coke is finished, and you’ll be wired for the next six hours. Go finish that Kierkegaard. “A man who as a physical being is always turned toward the outside, thinking that his happiness lies outside him, finally turns inward and discovers that the source is within him…”
Guns N’ Roses
Chinese Democracy
(Geffen 1790607)
Original release: November 23, 2008
“I sense the smell of retribution in the air
I don’t even understand why the fuck you even care.”
—W. Axl Rose, 1991
Everyone knows the story by now. Seems pointless to even bring it up, except as obligation.
It was supposedly one of rock’s greatest unfinished gems, a sonic Winchester House its megalomaniacal creator kept adding to and throwing money at until it became the stuff of legend. Rumors of its completion circulated every few years. Enough time passed for it to become the punchline to a joke, and eventually the joke got old. Now it’s so obscure that many of us have forgotten what was so damn funny. That’s how long we’ve waited since the announcement of Guns N’ Roses’ Chinese Democracyand its belated debut this week.
Fifteen years. Jesus God, a cultural eternity. Most of the band’s original fans are now knee-deep in families, with kids the same age they were when Appetite for Destructionhit the streets a lifetime ago. What stunned me as the Democracy buildup swelled was that the faction most stoked about its impending release — which was a certainty now; no turning back — were in elementary school and junior high for GNR’s last full-length (double-length, actually), Use Your Illusion, parts oneand two. Axl was their first anti-hero, but sadly, they’d discovered him after his sinewy peak, when he’d become a fat, pampered parody, a pompous crybaby who stomped off stages in snits and fits and invited his critics and even Courtney Love to step outside for questioning his greatness.
There’s no denying that Appetite for Destruction will never be surpassed. It’s the curse of the perfect debut. “Welcome to the Jungle” was such a brazen and confident opening statement that even the less romantically inclined had to admit that the game had changed for good. Butt-rock dominated still, but it did so under GNR’s growing shadow, one the band itself could not escape. After a quickie EP, they needed two whole CDs to make even a dent.
Use Your Illusion was the most anticipated release of 1991. I was part of an all-night congregation camped outside Target, waiting for the morning doors. I fancied myself beyond Axl at this point, but a new Guns N’ Roses seemed too important to ignore. It was too important. It was also a crafty swindle: the two parts were sold separately, at full price. But nobody cared. I kept the longboxes they were packaged in, just to prove I was there. As for 1993’s “The Spaghetti Incident?”? Well, about 12 years ago I accidentally tipped a full Heineken over the naked disc, splashing its bytes with death, and honestly, it’s an improvement.
Now it’s 2008, and here we are. You, me, Axl, 15 years, 14 studios, $13 million, and enough musicians to fill a guild. And somehow this chaotic brew deserves the Guns N’ Roses brand, which is pretty much what the band is these days: a tenuous board of directors with Axl as CEO for life. Had the original lineup loosed this howler, it’d be laughed out of the blogosphere.
But we critics are a wistful lot, so Chinese Democracy gets a pass just for even existing. The shock of novelty has yet to wear off. (Chuck Klosterman, in the best review of this album, likens it to “reviewing a unicorn.”) Listen closely and you can hear all that time whooshing past, every lost moment, every fleeting fad, every scotched lineup. Its only constant: Axl, fearful Axl, obsessed with perfection to the detriment of a cohesive vision. As a consequence, Chinese Democracy never sounds like a natural progression from Use Your Illusion, but a dusty Jackson Pollock pulled from the basement and completed with a few wild flicks.
We’ll never know what might’ve been. So much of Democracy could be mistaken for quickies dropped as sales incentives onto a hits package that never happened. “Better” burns with Rose’s surprisingly well-oiled thorny screech (some of these masters, of course, are of considerable vintage) and those flogged arpeggios we once called “solos,” but true scorchers are few. He unsuccessfully revisits the lost grandeur of “November Rain” a few times, delivering a mawkish helping of earnest tripe in “Street of Dreams,” replete with dewy-eyed piano chops and the usual swelling orchestra to swoop and dive under pleading guitar. But in the words of one of Axl’s ivory-pounding heroes, who Axl himself quoted in “You Could Be Mine,” we’ve seen that movie too. He repeats the formula in “There Was a Time’s” kitchen-sink overkill and “This I Love,” reassembled from saccharine fragments filched from a dumpster behind Andrew Lloyd Webber’s house. What was once majestic now sounds wretched and empty.
Axl’s gotten older, but he’s still stewing over bygones. There ain’t apology one in “Sorry,” and initially, it’s unclear as to who’s being addressed. “You talk too much/You say I do/Difference is nobody cares about you.” If it’s a woman, that’s some cold shit. But his targets become evident as the song grows more hateful: “You close your eyes/All well and good/I’ll kick your ass like I said that I would.” “You tell them stories/They’d rather believe/Use and confuse them/They’re dumb and naïve.” “Nobody owes you/Not one goddamn thing/You know where to put your/Just shut up and sing.” As blunt as he is, at least he’s a more subtle than in 1991’s “Get in the Ring,” when he goaded magazine writers by name and told them to “suck [his] fucking dick.” Standing curiously at the spectrum’s opposite end is the stunning “Madagascar,” an apparent cheek-turn performed in a ragged, ancient rasp and augmented with speeches by Martin Luther King Jr. and samples from Cool Hand Luke: “Forgive them that tear down my soul/Bless them that they might grow old/A dream that’s forgotten may know/That it’s never too late.”
There’s scant evidence that it’s not too late for Axl. “If the World” is a reminder of the sonic explorer he can be when he’s not railing against man and nature. It’s a space-age funk unheard of in metal, and Axl executes it with unbelievable audaciousness. Just because he’s been away doesn’t mean he hasn’t been listening, and learning, and adapting. It could’ve been an embarrassment; instead it’s exciting. Sexy, even. Since he can’t dip vocally into Barry White waters, he and a snaky wikka-wikka guit-trickle (it later turns love-volcano) hover above the planet’s surface, dripping hot butter ’cross its cosmic boobies. Damn, boy!
Unfortunately, the sun has settled over this now-finished Frankenstein pastiche. There are no more myths to peddle; we cannot print the legend. History will not be kind to Chinese Democracy. It will be devoured like the disappointment it is, a used illusion. I gave Axl the first word, so I’ll give him the last:
“What I thought was beautiful don’t live inside of you anymore.”
Transporter 3
Starring Jason Statham, Natalya Rudakova, François Berléand, Robert Knepper, and Jeroen Krabbé
Written by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen
Directed by Olivier Megaton
Rated PG-13 for sequences of intense action and violence, some sexual content and drug material.
There’s only one sequence in Transporter 3 where I genuinely feared for Frank Martin’s (Jason Statham) life. The bad guys have him surrounded on opposite ends of a bridge, pelting his beloved Audi with gunfire. He has nowhere to go but…down. So he does, jamming his trusted beast into gear and sending it through the retaining wall, plummeting to certain watery doom. An average hero in the same predicament — one we’ve seen countless times — would remain submerged until the villains were satisfied, then crawl to a far-off bank and resume pursuit.
Frank doesn’t have that luxury. As the head malevolent (Robert Knepper, looking like the diabolical result of a Morrissey/Bryan Ferry union) explains to a henchman, and to those of us popcorn-eaters who might’ve forgotten, Frank and car are linked by an electronic bracelet and transmitter. Should they be separated by a distance of 75 feet, boom! No more Frank. So Frank has to improvise a way to save not only himself, but also 3,000 pounds of European engineering. How the hell’s he gonna get out of this?
Jason Statham is perfectly cast in such gimmicky affairs, ’cause it’s amusing to see such a taciturn chap — his face is as solid stone as the rest of him, and he delivers each line in a cobblestone rumble usually heard moments before a pint bottle explodes across a pub-crawler’s cheek — dropped into the most absurd premises. You might recall 2006’s Crank, in which his double-crossed hitman is injected with a lethal potion known as a “Beijing Cocktail,” whose effects can only be stymied through steady doses of adrenaline, which means lots of energy drinks, illegal narcotics, and sudden public sex.
Unfortunately, nothing so ridiculous happens very often in Transporter 3. Frank Martin, and the script he follows, hardly breaks a sweat. Garage packed with highly trained brutes? Dispatched efficiently with hand-to-hand ease. Two-lane combat requiring pinpoint precision? That’s Frank’s turf to begin with — he can even catch you on a bicycle. Firepower: wasted bullets. In fact, the only damage he sustains is sartorial; luckily, he’s got a fat trunk of spare apparel to take care of that.
What separates this third entry in the Transporter series from its predecessors are the humdrum stretches between moments of zip. The first two films were colorfully operatic cartoons wallowing in their own breathless implausibility. There’s plenty of action here, but the zeal is gone, as is much of the humor, wiped like the emotion from Statham’s unscratched (but scratchy) puss. How could someone named Olivier Megaton produce something so dull? Apart from the bracelet angle and a few money stunts, it’s a mundane action travelogue with a mysterious “package” and an equally mysterious passenger in the alternately sullen and randy Valentina Vasilev (Natalya Rudakova), a freckled raccoon reminiscent of Molly Ringwald after an especially vicious prom night who might reveal more than she knows — if only Frank Martin, a professional courier, can pry her hands loose from vodka bottlenecks and his zipper. Although he eventually capitulates to her aggressive overtures (he’s gone 3 for 3 in the series), it’s made clear that Frank has only one true love, and Valentina’s sitting in its passenger seat.
Considering his relationship with his four-wheeled paramour, it’s only fitting that screenwriters Luc Besson (maker of Le Dernier Combat, La Femme Nikita, and The Fifth Element) and Robert Mark Kamen explore an angle that finally makes it overt: As long as car and man are together, anything is possible (like becoming two-wheeled lunchmeat between two slices of semi, or chewing up a train car, or starting on only the second try after being pulled from a river). But if they part ways, he dies. So when that moment finally arrives and he deactivates the bracelet that binds their fates, when its forlorn, exhausted shell is torn from the train and dumped onto the tracks, its impossible adventure stilled, it’s the one true casualty Frank Martin suffers. Hopefully, he’s got an on-call matchmaker at his local Audi dealership. It’d be a shame to end the auto-logy before the lovers finally consummate.
Back in my days as an ink-stained wretch, I and then-Albany Democrat-Heraldassistant sports editor Aaron Yost had a chance to attend a journalism conference in Jantzen Beach, a straight shot up the 5. Part of its focus was acclimating reporters and editors to their new work buddy, the World Wide Web. It was 1997, and even then it felt like we were arriving late.
To make a long story short, it was an invigorating session. We devoured the presentations, hauling home folders and handouts and ideas for reader-friendly special sections and ways to capitalize on the vast possibilities of online journalism. The D-H did have a Website at the time — and a Webmaster, studious philatelist Jim MacGruder, an awfully nice man — but it was still a bare-boned electronic edition of its print counterpart. That day Aaron and I heard about videos, offsite linking, and the boundless multimedia real estate available to enterprising writers with stories to tell.
We returned to the office, once more in love with our chosen profession. We were reminded of what attracted us to it in the first place. Eager to share our epiphany, we arrived at the following morning’s staff meeting, ready to blast our peers off their swivels. Kick ’em some righteous science. Now, here my memory gets hazy, but I’m pretty sure we were less than 15 syllables into our ebullient report when the main editor deflated it all with a dismissive wave. Whether he thought our ideas impractical or the ravings of slack-jawed Moonies, I can’t recall. What I do remember was my subsequent embarrassment and anger. He just doesn’t get it, my simmering self stewed. This is the future. (To his credit, MacGruder seemed interested.)
I was, and still am, a big proponent of the Internet. I’ve had an online presence since 1996, when a local techie/melodo-nut launched the short-lived Corvallis/Albany Music News. I taught myself basic HTML and built a mock Web site on GeoCities, back when personal pages were considered exercises in vanity. (To dodge that, I created my homepage, Jimmy Deakins’ Childhood Hero, as a combination fan/personal site parody created by “Jimmy Deakins” as a shrine to, uh, me.) Later I was a contributor, under the nom de plum Francis L. Scurvy, for The Guy Code, an ambitious men’s-mag cyberspace startup that billed itself as “the anti-Maxim.” I was also on hand for the inaugural (and only, I think) broadcast of NerdTV, a Corvallis-based live video series, in which we quickly discovered that the few viewers we had were less interested in our repartee than in one of the participants’ ample racks. So I’ve always considered the Internet a limitless bounty, an information-age Wild West.
In 2000, I bailed on dailies. I wish I could attribute it to prescience, but actually I was bored out of my mind and desperate for new kicks. So I packed up for L.A. and spent the next seven years at Rhino Entertainment, a record label specializing in prestige reissues, boxed sets, and wicked geekery. (As a coworker told me during my first week, “Rhino’s basically a Shangri-La for every office nerd on the planet.”) In retrospect, I substituted one dying industry for another. Boy, I sure can pick ’em.
As we now know, the Internet was indeed the future. You didn’t need the wisdom of the oracle to see that one coming. Print journalism appears to be a near-moribund form in the age of specialized content, blogs, Wikipedia, tweets, Google, and social networking. The futurists hail this development as the death knell of the Mainstream Media, or MSM, as it’s now known in our acronym-happy parlance. Yet, as much as I love the ’Net, sorry — I can’t join the party.
See, despite our often-fractious relationship, I still love journalism. Some of my best friends are of the breed. Good ones, fantastic writers, fantastic people with families and lives. And you can’t imagine what so many are enduring right now as layoff rumors and buyout threats loom thirstily over their futures. They’re paying the price for their parent companies’ long-run short-sightedness. Wanna know what really ruined journalism? It’s not a liberal bias; anyone arguing that is selfishly sauced on a special kind of stupid. (“You fools! If only you were more like me,this wouldn’t be happening. I am America’s yardstick.”) And journalists can only shoulder some of the responsibility. When faced with the irrefutable evidence of this last decade, what scrivener not flirting with retirement would still be so willingly complicit in his own obsolescence?
The real problem is their corporate keepers, who treated the hometown organ as a product, like toothpaste. At some point it was forgotten that a newspaper’s obligation was to its community, not to far-off boardrooms and shareholders. Staffs and publishers changed as often as Radisson flips bed sheets. Some newsrooms were in constant upheaval with endless arrivals and departures; in many cases, vacant positions weren’t refilled, forcing reporters to take on multiple beats and increased assignments on an already unforgiving schedule. Morale is low, exasperation high. Some might argue that hey, you understood the breaks when you locked lips with the press, so tough nuts, brother. But I think at some point there’s a difference between public service and enslavement. You’ve got to have a life beyond the office.
But I digress. It’s hard to cheer an institution’s demise when its participants have names and faces to you. It’s kinda like being told, “We think we might have cured the world’s most lethal disease. We’re not sure yet; for all we know it’s about as effective as bottled water on an open sore. But here’s the problem: 75 of your closest friends may or may not have it. So just to be on the safe side, we’re gonna kill 53 of them and quarantine the rest for possible euthanasia at a later date.” Meanwhile, the futurists strut and preen with visions so utopian they give me pause. I shake my head at their near-constant deluge of histrionic Jurassic-related epithets (usually aimed at anyone over 30 — kinda funny when you consider how computer-literate my generation actually is) and often wonder if some of them aren’t so obsessed with the idea of taking down the MSM they don’t care if anything replaces it, so long as they can Zorba atop its grave.
Enough with the tired froth. The days of dismissive shrugs are long over. Most journalists are aware that print’s in danger, and have been for a while. Many have BBB’d — bailed before buyout — to take PR and teaching gigs or launch their own ventures. It’s not worth the heartache to wait around for the inevitable closed-door sessions and severance packages. Others have taken the initiative to learn new skills and do their best to adapt to an ever-evolving landscape. They hope to have a place in the exciting new frontier, as do I. Is community reportage/citizen journalism the future? I don’t know. But I’m game to find out. Ready, fire, aim.
Monday Night Raw
Monday, December 1
Washington, DC
So last Friday I got a call from one of the night managers at my local Arby’s, a gregarious sort by the name of Russ Pruitt. He took me to task for, as he said, truth in media, reminding me that I didn’t prepare for last week’s Raw with a bacon ultimate meal from Jack in the Box but a bacon beef ‘n’ cheddar augmented by a side of eight cheese sticks (can’t hack the curly fries; terrible gastrointestinal science) from his well-kept establishment. “I take pride in our menu’s potential as sports-entertainment sustenance,” he said, sounding a little hurt. (When I asked him about it later, he chuckled and explained that he’d just run out of marinara sauce and couldn’t bear imagining all those parched gullets forced to accept the deep-fried appetizers au naturale.) “Hey, Russ, man,” I replied. “I’m sorry.” I quickly ordered from the $5.95 menu and promised to call him back later for his post-Raw analysis. As always in matters of beefy vows, I was true to my word. So here’s Russell James Pruitt, 37, night manager at Arby’s (Unit #01791), Albany, Oregon.
Prologue
Hm. Well, so they pretty much establish John Cena’s pwnage of Chis Jericho with footage from Survivor Series two weeks ago and from last Monday’s Raw, where dude just tore homeboy flat-out apart. Kinda funny when Jericho talked about Cena’s credo, “Hustle. Loyalty. Respect.,” in a company town like Washington, D.C., where all the Beltway players know plenty about the first and fuck-all about the rest, amirite? I like the angle that Jericho’s little boy is a hardcore Cena fan, which drives his pop insane with rage and causes disorder in the house of Y2J. Jericho’s always awesome in these opening things. He gets the crowd so riled up. All he’s gotta do is whip out hot-button words like “sycophant” and “fools” and they’re braying for his bleached-blonde blood.
International Championship Tournament (First Round)
Rey Mysterio vs. The Miz
Didn’t see this one coming, though I wasn’t surprised when it happened, especially after last week’s staredown — well, as much as anyone could stare down a tree — with Mike Knox. Rey didn’t even make it to the ring. This is gonna make the night interesting. I see that Layla’s doing William Regal’s work backstage, which makes me wonder if Regal’s carefully orchestrating a rift between tag team champions CM Punk and Kofi Kingston, since they’re each gunning for his belt too, and Regal’s made no secret of his admiration for Punk. But, yeah, I guess that other tag team, The Miz and John Morrison, is competing as well, but you can’t have two similar storylines, and Morrison’s got Finlay tonight, who he’s easily gonna trounce, which means The Miz gets the short end, whoever he faces.
Winner: N/A; Mysterio injured by Mike Knox, suffering ligament damage in his right arm and elbow
Well, Ted DiBiase Jr.’s still out, so Randy Orton’s influence becomes even more prominent on what remains of the Priceless faction. Haw — ‘ja see that reel of Punk working the Chicago Thanksgiving Day Parade as its grand marshal? Some homecoming, eh? Well, tonight he’s in D.C., Batista’s hometown, where the straight-edge movement Punk loves so much was born. Wonder if Ian MacKaye’s in the house tonight, gobbling on soy burgers and cheering him on. Based on Punk’s entrance jam, though, I don’t think bro spends his nights spinning Fugazi or Minor Threat, anyway, huh? Priceless’ strength are their quick tags; neither partner’s in the ring too long. Can’t say the same for Punk, who’s having one helluva time reaching his corner to make contact with his man. But when he does, grab your peacoat, Jasmine: we’re going to town! And Rhodes heads uptown to the roundhouse with Kingston’s boot as his guide.
Winner: CM Punk/Kofi Kingston
Yeah, Orton’s got them totally under his spell now with all that feelgood jazz about taking “the first step in realizing our collective potential.” Sounds like a CEO addressing the swallowed suckers in a business merger. My kids call him Orton Wan Kenobi. Isn’t that clever? Um, Jericho’s obviously gonna be a factor in the Kane/Cena main event; he’s up there in Kane’s red-hued solitude box, which I guess he carries with him around the world, goading the monster into plucking the champ’s arms off. “Don’t play mind games with me, Jericho!” Kane snarls in reference to his favorite John Lennon album.
Oh, sorry, did you say something? All’s I wrote down is that Santino shouldn’t attempt the splits and the Glamazon has no future as a broadcaster. Other than that, Jillian’s got an impressive set of lungs. She kinda reminds me of this exotic dancer I used to know in Medford. For fifty bucks, she’d shatter your glass. For sixty, she’d destroy your will to live.
Winner: Melina
Haw! Goldust massaging Santino’s shoulders. Drama of the comic foils!
Shawn Michaels
Street Fight: John Bradshaw Layfield vs. Shawn Michaels
Aha! The payoff to last week’s mysterious set-up, when JBL alluded to a “deal” he’d struck with the Heartbreak Kid. Well, the deal’s either Michaels delivers Sweet Chin Music in a clean, free shot or accepts a job offer from Layfield, who’s on heel fire tonight, boy. He invokes the economic crisis, which has apparently struck the happy home of HBK especially hard, wiping out his children’s college funds. Hey, maybe the whole stock-market meltdown’s a WWE kayfabe and we’re all just interactive participants, huh! Heh. Heh. Oh, Christ help us. Anyway, am total BFF with the JBL line “I know some things, Shawn. RICH PEOPLE ALWAYS DO.” Boo, rich people! Wotta PRICK! Looks like Shawn’s considering. Heck, I’m down! Know the rich prick’s e-mail offhand?
Winner: Shawn Michaels’ doe-eyed kidlets
Batista vs. Dolph Ziggler
Whoa! We FINALLY get to see this dude in action! He introduces himself all the way down to the ring, then in the ring, then during the match. Really commands his shtick. Took Batista by surprise — ’til Batista introduced him to a lil’ friend, the Batista Bomb.
Winner: Batista
In the postmatch patter he stuns Orton by announcing their match-up at Armageddon two weeks from now. Yup, Jericho’s gonna be a problem. There he is, working on Orton’s psyche, knowing Cena’s a sore spot.
John Morrison
Intercontinental Championship (First Round)
John Morrison vs. Finlay
Not much to wire Aunt Becky here: brawler vs. swagger, and brawler doesn’t stand a chance. We pretty much know the outcome before the bell even rings. Finlay’s a favorite, but he lacks the status to advance in a set-up like this. Which means that Miz is definitely an L-columner regardless of who he fights.
Winner: John Morrison
Rey Mysterio
Intercontinental Championship Tournament (First Round)
The Miz vs. ????
Can’t believe they tried that old TV trick where you go to commercial to build up-in-the-air suspense. Rey Mysterio’s insisting on competing, but we’re supposed to believe he’ll either be forced to forfeit or replaced with a sudden drop-in. Come on, he’s Rey Mysterio! He feeds off the adulation of the hopeful young, gobbling their every drop of worship and love, so you know he’s coming out. And whadayaknow, there he is, drawing attention to his injured right arm, selling it, really selling it. He can’t use it to curl up a leg-hook or even high-five the tykes. Dr. Miz goes to work on the limb but it’s not too long before the patient drops in his usual flurries and reversals and wraps with a doubtful pin, i.e., Mysterio’s so unsteady that in non-Bizarro competition, Miz could’ve easily squirmed loose. ‘ray, Rey!
Winner: ? & The Mysterios
John Cena
Kane vs. John Cena
Way overheated. It doesn’t even start until like 10:56 or whatever, so you know it’s going to be short, and knowing Jericho’s gonna interfere, it’s gonna be even shorter than that. Sure enough, Chris surfaces and distracts Cena into a mouthful of Kane boot, but the man recovers to counter a chokeslam and win with an FU (tell your grandma it’s a fireman’s carry), where he literally slings his opponent over his shoulder like fresh-killed caribou then flings him earthward where he is plain done finished for good, I don’t care if his name is Kane or the Washington Monument. Cena gets the pin but can’t keep his hands off Jericho. Too bad for him when Orton, Rhodes, and Manu bust out to overwhelm the champ so bad that Jericho deigns to doff his suit jacket and loose some toejam on Cena’s fetal form. The plot thickens like a senator’s brain.
Winner: John Cena
See you next week, and think Arby’s! (But not outside the bun.)
Britney Spears
Circus
(Jive/Zomba)
Original release: December 2, 2008
Hey, is it possible to have two comebacks in as many years? Is that legal? Lessee: last year chucked upBlackout, Britney’s grand pop-chart return after four years of selling breathless pap to supermarket lines. Forget the tabloid kitty-swipes; Britney was back! Unfortunately, its release was tarred by a widely panned performance on the MTV Video Music Awards, brutal coverage of her continuing deterioration, and, most importantly, the fact that the general public wasn’t finished hating her. So bye-bye, Blackout.
Now Circus comes to town, hailed by its ringmasters as the Queen of Pop’s real comeback — they were just kidding with that other stuff, ha ha ha. That was the old newBritney, the loony-loop Britney, the reckless whitetrash baby momma drunkenly flashing her curtains at paparazzi on long, lost weekends Britney. The cover of Circus would have us believe that model’s been usurped by Clean & Sober Brit. Cosmetically removed is the raven-haired clubster, returned is the butter-blonde minx from Kentwood. She cutely regards us from under a feathered Farrah frame, a shoulder rolled coyly toward her cheek. Even font designers are modestly minding her reputation, concealing the curves of her breasts with the “S” and “P” of her family name.
Indeed, Circus seems to have every advantage. Cultural sentiment — that ever-fickle pocket of cheap hypocrites and vile scumbags (i.e., us) — has re-swayed in Britney’s favor after nearly five years of stomping her flat. I’m not a fan at all, but even I thought the near-relentless disparagement got way out of hand. You knew it had reached ridiculous levels of playground hysteria when even South Parkcreators Trey Parker and Matt Stone became sensitive to her plight, casting her sympathetically in the unsettling “Britney’s New Look.” Oddly enough, the mockery seemed to subside after that episode, and the vultures turned their talons on fresh-meat Miley Cyrus, just as Stone and Parker prophesied. We so want to like Britney again we’re in an especially generous mood.
But herein lies the rub: Stripped from the “trainwreck” clichés and gasp-inducing headlines that nipped at its fuck-me pumps, Blackout is actually a much better, much livelier affair, trapped on the dance floor and loving every sweat-soaked swivel. Circus runs the gamut from meh to bleh (with one instance of full lunch expunge), with occasional flashes of life to keep more hopeful listeners awake. For a disc so redolent in pulse and thump, how could it have absolutely no heart?
Of all the club-bumpers rockin’ ’neath the robo big top, only first single “Womanizer” and “Kill the Lights” pound with hip-slamming fury, though the git-down layers in the latter pack a harder wallop. The title track’s absence of a calliope whirl isn’t its only disappointment; a song meant to summarize the whirlwind of her life is no more introspective than “There’s only two types of people in this world/Ones that entertain and the ones that observe/Well, baby, I’m a put-on-a-show kind of girl.” Fair enough, I suppose, but did you learn anything?
Not really, and her vacuous three-ring extravaganza is alternately frightening and tragic. The ballads are limp and lifeless and best left forgotten. “My Baby” — dedicated to, I would guess, one of her two children — is more needy than sweet, a despairing lullaby echoing down sanitarium halls. But I’m sure it’ll soundtrack many a soccer-mom slide show for years to come. Elsewhere, Brit stumbles half-naked through the warp of “Blur,” plagued by a wicked hangover and no recollection of the previous evening’s events. This is a blackout for real: “I wanna put my eyes out/If you want to mess with my eyesight/Just let me get my head right/Where the hell am I?/Who are you?/What’d we do/last night?”
She’s still playing up the yellowed baby-doll sexiness, even though at 27, with the mileage she’s accrued, its freshness is debatable. Thanks to a steady diet of whatever, her already limited range is rotting into a harsh monotonal bark destined to send most guys, even the desperate ones, screaming for the exits. The embarrassing “Mmm Papi” is the sonic equivalent of waking up on a city bus to a scab-kneed club rat, crack-freak dentures clutched in a dirty fist, sucking on your cock. “Let’s make out!” “Ooo, papi!” Ick!
Dollops of “oh bay-buh, bay-buh” in “If U Seek Amy” (say it fast) are meant to trigger pleasant “…Baby One More Time” nostalgia in an adulthood beyond schoolyard crushes; instead they dribble like vodka-slurp at last call. More wordplay abounds in the bonus track “Phonography,” but anyone looking for a scathing indictment of the recording industry’s effect on impressionable young women should remember that Britney’s incapable of such insight. What you get instead for that pun is a buzzing pant about cell plans and Bluetooth booty calls when your mojo’s blocked by schedules and geography. Ain’t technology grand?
Call it a comeback, if you must persist in kidding yourself. Airbrush out the ugliness and scars, give us the shallow Dr. Philquickie of a girl who’s overcome her demons and is back on her game. It’s the clean resolution we want, but it’s bullshit. Take away her luster and shine, and the new Britney remains a broken young woman who needs real help. Sales won’t vindicate her, awards and adulation can’t save her, and successful marketing won’t cure her deep-rooted ills. For a circus, this is no fun at all.
Dean Martin
A Very Cool Christmas (Universal)
Original release: October 21, 2008
“The world is your snowball just for a song
Get out, and roll it along!”
—“A Marshmallow World”
Of all the slick crooners in our yuletide wax, it was the late Dean Martin who made the biggest impression on me. He was smooth enough to admire subconsciously, but quiet enough to be unobtrusive as presents were ransacked and hugs passed down the line. But he could also be enjoyed, alone, guiding Christmas through a contemplative late-night gin.
With the sheer number of posthumous holiday packages bearing his name, it’s easy to associate Dino with blurry visions of sugarplums and spiked eggnog. But the truth is he recorded only two Christmas long-players in his lifetime, starting with the amore-themed A Winter Romance(1959) whose seasonal setting was happenstance; Dean admired the snowfall from the warmth of an active couch (“Baby, It’s Cold Outside”). In 1966 he turned in the more traditional The Dean Martin Christmas Album. Barnes & Noble has revived the latter, track list and sequence intact, as A Very Cool Christmas, a self-conscious title we can only imagine might make the King of Cool cringe, just a little.
At this point in his career, Dino had conquered all the necessary media — nightclub, stage, screen, radio, LPs, and television — with a work ethic that passed as maddening ease. That perception marks his albums as well: The casual listener might get the impression of an even more casual performer, rattling off bored takes at lightning speed, eager to retire to the nearest watering hole and hunker inside a glass of liquid magic. But Martin’s seeming detachment, which took him years to perfect, somehow imbues this material with an intimacy missing from some of the more emotive season-greeters.
When Dean wasn’t weaving his heavy-lidded murmur with the trills of his Rat Pack pals, he traveled with a female choir that did plenty of heavy lifting, a crisp, angelic gale to his frosty breath. They dutifully “ding-dong” through his “White Christmas” to mimic the pealing of holiday bells, soothe the shivering strings in his reassuring “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” and provide necessary punctuation for the otherwise relaxed “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!”
Most of the disc sticks to standard arrangements, all lovingly adorned with the master’s slurred warble. Naturally, there are exceptions: “Jingle Bells” dashes through the snow on a beat far jauntier than Pierpont likely intended. “Blue Christmas” owes a soft debt to Elvis Presley’s version, but Dino’s way too hip to dip so deep into the hiccough bag. But he’s not so hip he’s unwilling to revisit A Winter Romance for inspiration, pilfering “Wonderland,” “Let It Snow!,” and the Cahn/Styne chestnut “The Things We Did Last Summer,” a wistful shimmer that glides like Sonja Henie across a lake entombed in ice and enveloped by a powdery dominion Dino likens to “A Marshmallow World.”
There was nothing so marshmallow-y soft about Martin, though the warm grooves here, fleeting though they may be, are sweet and compact enough to enjoy before a roaring fire — or roaring children, depending on your household. A Very Cool Christmas, or The Dean Martin Christmas Album sans popping vinyl and snakeskin-thick cellophane, goes down smooth, a sonic martini for yuletides somber or joyful and triumphant.
Monday Night Raw/SLAMMY Awards
Monday, December 8
Philadelphia, PA
Sorry ’bout the delay — I’m still stunned by the ferocious vapidity of last night’s three-hour hooeyfest. Damn near broke my thesaurus looking up antonyms for the word “awesome.” Finally I’ve settled on the beautiful, curt simplicity of “sham” sans “wow.” From 8 to 11 p.m. the USA Network was clogged with dangerous levels of unfiltered swill.
At roughly two hours, minus 20 minutes of spots for artificial stimulants and video games (two lovey-dovey industries in perfect synch), Monday Night Raw adequately covers my weekly wrestling limit. Add an extra hour of pageantry and I’m clawing rooftops, cutting my flesh with shingles. That’s why I don’t watch any of the pay-per-views; somewhere around the 125th suplex my mind gets restless and I yearn for the kind of fresh air that doesn’t come from opening a new box of Fiddle Faddles. What could be more boring than epic stretches of fibrous flesh-slaps?
Well, last night the answer to that question was the annual SLAMMYs, last seen in 1997. They’re the WWE’s bid for austerity mixed with toothless MTV Movie Awards copycat sputter, an event so eminent that even Jerry Lawler gussies up to greet the august gleam. But it’s not so hoity-toity it can’t be held in a sweaty coliseum for the foam-jawed delight of liquor-lubed rageoids you wouldn’t invite to a neighborhood barbecue, let alone a prestigious ritual meant to acknowledge individual industry achievement. Which, of course, is what the SLAMMYs are ostensibly about. Actually, it’s just a cheap promotional tool for this weekend’s Armageddon pay-per-view, corralling the Raw and SmackDown and ECW stables under one roof as a free-tease appetizer for the spendy main course.
No one gives a shit about the SLAMMYs, least of all the WWE. It’s empty filler between matches, a total waste of airtime. The “stage” is a Triscuit-sized platform jammed into a corner, with only a podium and two shabby statues to announce its existence. For such a formal occasion, many of its participants and nominees are dressed for work, since after collecting their honors most will march straight down the ramp and into the ring. Imagine an Oscars where Jimmy Stewart delivers his acceptance speech, then races to another part of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion to participate in a reenactment of The Philadelphia Story.
So fuck the SLAMMYs. They’re about as meaningful as Anaheim wedding vows. But if you’re dying to know who won what on-air, here you go, now git:
WWE TAG TEAM OF THE YEAR
Presented by Maria and Festus
Nominees: Carlito and Primo, Priceless (Cody Rhodes and Ted DiBiase Jr.), The Miz and John Morrison, Cryme Tyme (JTG and Shad Gaspard)
Winner: The Miz and John Morrison
BEST FINISHING MANEUVER
Presented by Candice Michelle and Cryme Tyme
Nominees: The Undertaker’s Hell’s Gate, Randy Orton’s RKO, Even Bourne’s Shooting Star Press, The Big Show’s Knockout Punch
Winner: Evan Bourne’s Shooting Star Press
“EXTREME” MOMENT OF THE YEAR
Presented by Tiffany and ECW Champion Matt Hardy
Nominees: John Cena and John Bradshaw Layfield, “Parking Lot Brawl”; The Undertaker, “Crash Landing”; Chris Jericho and Shawn Michaels, “Crash TV”; Jeff Hardy, “Plunge”
Winner: Jeff Hardy, “Plunge”
COUPLE OF THE YEAR
Presented by Kelly Kelly and Kane
Nominees: Glamarella (Beth “The Glamazon” Phoenix and Santino Marella), Edge and Vickie Guerrero, William Regal and Layla, Finlay and Hornswoggle
Winner: Edge and Vickie Guerrero
DIVA OF THE YEAR
Presented by Melina and ECW General Manager Theodore Long
Nominees: Beth Phoenix, Mickie James, Kelly Kelly, Michelle McCool
Winner: Beth Phoenix
“OH, MY GOD!” MOMENT OF THE YEAR
Presented by Alicia Fox and Joey Styles
Nominees: CM Punk, “CM Punk Cashes In”; The Undertaker, “Undertaker Sends Edge to Hell”; Floyd Mayweather and Big Show, “Mayweather Breaks Big Show’s Nose”; John Cena, “The Champ Returns
Winner: CM Punk, “CM Punk Cashes In”
MATCH OF THE YEAR
Presented by Eve and Mr. Kennedy
Nominees: “Money in the Bank” Ladder Match, Wrestlemania 24; 2008 Royal Rumble; The Undertaker vs. Edge, “Hell in a Cell,” Summerslam;Shawn Michaels vs. Ric Flair, “Career Threatening” Match, Wrestlemania 24
Winner: Shawn Michael vs. Ric Flair, “Career Threatening” Match, Wrestlemania 24
“DAMN!” MOMENT OF THE YEAR
Presented by Mickie James and Ron Simmons
Nominees: The Great Khali’s Kiss Cam, “CM Punk Surprises Chavo Guerrero,” Sailor J.R., “Santino’s Split Goes Splat”
Winner: The Great Khali’s Kiss Cam
2008 SUPERSTAR OF THE YEAR
Presented by Stephanie McMahon
Nominees: Jeff Hardy, Chris Jericho, Batista, Edge, Triple H, John Cena
Winner: Chris Jericho
Enough. On with the show!
Intercontinental Championship Tournament (Semifinal Match)
John Morrison vs. CM Punk
After preening with partner The Miz at the podium, SLAMMY recipient Morrison doffs his faux mink and gets down to biz. If I recall, some 16 hours after the fact, there’s some confusion about a possible pinfall win by Morrison, but Punk, fighting through an angle — I mean, ankle injury (Freudian typo!) succeeds on his second Go to Sleep finisher and puts out the Lizard King’s lights to advance to the finals, where his opponent will be the survivor of the Kofi Kingston/Rey Mysterio bout slated for later.
Winner: CM Punk
Backstage we catch up with John Cena, who again trumpets his “Hustle. Loyalty. Respect.” mantra and mocks Chris Jericho’s Raw monologue last week, twisting Y2J’s pained tale of his Cena-worshipping son into a bottom-feeding soliloquy about how his own dog, Lou, can’t help cleaning himself whenever Jericho’s pin-striped puss emanates from the flatscreen. Cena then suggests that perhaps Jericho Jr.’s idolization has something to do with Pop’s heel turn. Cenalysis: “He saw his dad becoming a snot-nosed punk who needs his teeth kicked down his throat!” He also promises to shadow Jericho all night long.
After the Best Finishing Maneuver award, which is accepted by human bookshelf Mike Knox in the injured Evan Bourne’s stead, Randy Orton emerges to snivel. His standing as one of the WWE’s best grapplers apparently isn’t enough to convince the nominating committee of his excellence. “Tonight’s like any other night,” he spits, “a show of a lack of respect.” He then challenges Batista and Triple H, thus far carded to collide in a singles match, to a 2-on-3 handicap affair with him and his new bosom companions, Cody Rhodes and Manu. “Tonight,” he promises, “the legacy is born.”
MVP vs. MVC (Charlie Haas)
MVP disses the on-hand Jimmy Rollins and his fellow Fightin’ Phils for their fluke World Series victory. After some back-and-forth dozens in the dark, his bark’s snuffed by the entrance of Charlie Haas, his scheduled opponent, garbed exactly like him and calling himself MVC. In an interesting twist, Haas actually wins, and MVP’s losing streak continues.
Winner: MVC (Charlie Haas)
Jeff Hardy vs. Chris Jericho
Jericho enters the arena with his darting eyes focused every which way but on the ring before him. With Cena at bay, he manages to wrench a victory from his Kool-Aid-headed adversary with a Codebreaker. As he heads backstage his careful peepers wander anew.
Winner: Chris Jericho
After the custodial staff mop up Vickie Guerrero’s (sporting Andy Kaufman’s neck brace) cocktail of crocodile tears and expectorations of “Excuse me!” Santino Marella and Beth Phoenix strut out to indignantly protest her Couple of the Year win, and to challenge any of their fellow nominees to a live gitdown right here and now. Who accepts? Why, none other than the gregarious Finlay and his son/valet, the diminutive Hornswoggle, a bearded sprite in leprechaun attire. The comic heel gods open hot fire on Philadelphia and humiliate the hapless Marella once again, forcing him to watch helplessly as wee bairn Hornswoggle clambers up to the top turnbuckle and dives like a free-falling Junior Mint onto his laid-out form for the 1-2-3. His embarrassment continues after the ridiculous loss when Phoenix, consoling her man, drops his head to the canvas when her name’s called for Diva of the Year. Later she accidentally butts him further south in an onstage tussle with hated rival Melina. Within a month, the poor doofus’ gone from Intercontinental Champion to a two-legged America’s Funniest Home Videostime bomb.
Winner: Finlay/Hornswoggle
Intercontinental Championship Tournament (Semifinal)
Kofi Kingston vs. Rey Mysterio
Gonna see plenty of airtime with both dexterous grapplers enacting their own Cirque de Soleil in-ring. It’s a fast ’un, with Mysterio winning not by twirling Kingston on his thumb and pinning him against one of the swinging light fixtures as expected, but by simply rolling him up like any mere mortal. Dang. It’s like watching Hank Aaron dink a bunt in a loaded ninth. Oh, well. Mysterio faces Punk in the IC finals, and the Kingston/Punk tag team will persevere.
Winner: Rey Mysterio
2 on 3 Handicap Match
Batista and Triple H vs. Randy Orton, Cody Rhodes & Manu
I never noticed until tonight that Triple H’s entrance music, Motörhead, suits him just fine, since he resembles a beefier Lemmy Kilmister. Tonight he joins fellow side and former Evolution teammate Batista, and together they batter the kids like two hefty sirloins swinging in a meat-locker breeze. Batista should know better by now than to telegraph the Batista Bomb to get the audience worked up; doesn’t he realize the bad guys can see him flog those ropes and stomp his toes? In a climactic flurry, his finishing-move attempt is thwarted twice, the final time by a Rhodes skull-smack, giving Randy Orton enough time to drop an RKO to tuck Dave in for a good night’s sleep. Looks like Batista’s taking the long way back to the belt.
Winner: Randy Orton, Cody Rhodes & Manu
That squeezable good-time goof, the Great Khali, arrives from Brobdingnag to acknowledge his SLAMMY for “DAMN!” Moment of the Year, but suffers a Vanessa Redgrave moment and declines it. The “DAMN!”edness of it all is further enhanced when Jillian struts out to screech “My Heart Will Go On” as grapplers, including Sgt. Slaughter and Hacksaw Jim Duggan, are inspired en masse to wave flags and Mickie James leaps into Khali’s arms for a liplock. Ron Simmons’ reaction? “Damn!” (That’s his shtick.) Wait ’til next year, folks!
R-Truth vs. Dolph Ziggler
Speaking of shtick, two prime artists of the form lock horns here. R-Truth works crowds with babble raps culminating in “Wassup” calls-and-response (not to be confused with Cryme Tyme’s “That money, money/Yeah, yeah”) while Ziggler continues to introduce himself to everyone in sight. Tonight he grabs the mike after Truth is counted out (sounds like a subtle Vince McMahon statement to me!) and deviates from his script just a smidge: “I’m the winner, Dolph Ziggler!”
Winner: Dolph Ziggler
Superstar-feted Chris Jericho steps into the void once occupied by Superstar award presenter Stephanie McMahon and reminds Philadelphia, to whom he affectionately refers as “mindless sheep,” of his many achievements in 2008, culminating in his third Heavyweight title at Sunday’s Armageddon. That’s all Cena needs to hear; he rampages from backstage and Jericho beats a hasty retreat, which is fine — just means Cena’s arrived early for…
World Heavyweight Champion John Cena vs. WWE Champion Edge
The crewcut meets the bug-eyed former partner of Christian in a meaningless cross-promotional tussle that degenerates into a Cena/Jericho blowout that windmills toward the TV horizon into to-be-continued, leaving Edge all alone until a compassionate Triple H resolves to keep him company and hold him tight. Not to be outdone, Jeff Hardy races into the fray and tries to demolish everybody in what the late Gorilla Monsoon would’ve heartily sold as “total pandemonium.” Bodies are tossed along with cookies as your disgusted emcee stomps the offending cathode and heads to bed.
I don’t remember how old I was when I first heard “The River.” But I sure remember everything else. It was cold that night. Winter, I think, the sky a clear, cool black. My dad and I were alone, driving back from Lebanon on what were picturesque backroads by day. The sound of heat passing through the S-10’s vents swallowed me like an ocean. Outside the headlights announced ditches and curves, and a scarred blacktop that led us home. We were silent. The radio was not.
I come from down in the valley
Where, mister, when you’re young
They bring you up to do
Like your daddy done
My dad was a truck driver by trade. In-state. As a family we’d moved from Southern California to Oregon back in the late ’70s. I was old enough to remember it, young enough to paint it in childhood idyll. I’d always ask him, “Why’d we leave?” “Change,” he’d always say. We got a lot more change than we’d bargained for up north. Betrayal. Separation. Divorce. All the usual ’80s sports.
But every weeknight still ended the same. Dad would stumble through the back door, exhausted and grumbling. “Whatever you do,” he’d sigh, “don’t end up like me.” By my senior year of high school, even that tradition ended. He rarely came home from work anymore. Sometimes the only evidence I’d have of his continued existence was his unmade bed, a note on the table, or a few dollars missing from my wallet. Sometimes I’d wonder if this damn town had cursed us all, and fantasize about a parallel universe in California that was the complete opposite of dull, grey defeat. “Whatever you do, don’t end up like me.” I’ll try, but, in the end, do I have a choice?
Me and Mary, we met in high school
When she was just 17
We’d drive out of this valley
Down to where the fields were green
I was always falling in love, probably six times a day. Maybe more. And let me tell you, friend, each one ached with urgency. I still know their names and the precise moment my heart soared highest for them. But I had no Mary. I couldn’t have spoken to her, anyway, much less summoned the courage to suggest leaving town just to be somewhere else for a while with each other, or, more specifically, me. Besides, I was a town kid, rooted to the sidewalks and mini-malls I called home. As much as I love “The River,” it couldn’t best express my restless need to be in love. That would be “Candy’s Room.” Escape to the source, I always say. The countryside is nice, but there’s nothing like the intimacy of the dark familiar, posters taped to walls, secrets passed in whispers and pauses.
Then I got Mary pregnant
And, man, that was all she wrote
And for my 19th birthday
I got a union card and a wedding coat
We went down to the courthouse
And the judge put it all to rest
No wedding day smiles
No walk down the aisles
No flowers, no wedding dress…
I got a job working construction
For the Johnstown Company
But lately there ain’t been much work
On account of the economy
Now all them things that seemed so important
Well, mister, they vanished right into the air
Now I just act like I don’t remember
And Mary acts like she don’t care
Even now these stanzas are hard to hear. They’ve always chilled me, from that first listen to just moments ago, when, trembling, I set my earbuds down.
I was so afraid that was going to be my life. Actually, I still am. Not the specific details, of course, but the underpinning fear that I stepped wrong somewhere and now I can’t call it back. Sometimes I’d even stop the song before it reached this melancholy point, as if the woebegone harmonica and browbeaten acoustic foundation weren’t headed that way from the beginning. I wanted to keep the poor dude young and in love, forever off to the river where the dismal future was a distant cry unanswered. Why taint it with the bittersweet of grim reality? Why should I at 16, 22, or even 36 fret about what’s to come and how it could possibly render this moment yesterday’s cruel joke?
What follows is perhaps my favorite verse in all of rock. Coming home that long-ago night, it crept up my arms and spilled goosebumps across my body no factory heat could smooth. To this day I can recite it at will, in part because I wish to Christ I’d written it.
But I remember us ridin’ in my brother’s car
Her body tan and wet down at the reservoir
At night on them banks I’d lie awake
And pull her close just to feel each breath she’d take
Now those memories come back to haunt me
They haunt me like a curse
Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true
Or is it somethin’ worse?
I’m a lucky guy in that I regret little of what I’ve done. Maybe I didn’t quite become a Saturday Night Live writer, or a famous stand-up, or a bestselling author. Perhaps I didn’t achieve what I have in a timeframe I found more agreeable. But I haven’t done so bad. And as far as I know, unlike the song’s ill-fated tributary, my river continues to roll, a vibrant, chortling blue.
The Day The Earth Stood Still Starring Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connelly, Jaden Smith, Jon Hamm, Kathy Bates, John Cleese Written by David Scarpa, based on the 1951 script by Edmund H. North, which in turn was inspired by Harry Bates’ 1940 short story “Farewell to the Master” Directed by Scott Derrickson
Rated PG-13 for some sci-fi distaster images (no kidding!) and violence
Attention, Earth people. Attention. Hello? Hey! AHEM. We intergalactic beings are super pissed at you right now. Lessee: you’re all fat, stupid, snotty, weak, and killing your planet like the big-ass Baby Huey petunias you are. Oh, you make us sick. Excuse us for a sec. Blargf! Aw, cheez. We just blew chunks of meepzor all over our brand new console.
So we’ve no choice but to dispatch Keanu Reeves–that’s right, Keanu Reeves–and a CGI-enhanced leviathan that can sigh into millions of tiny destructive pellets powerful enough to gobble the paint job off your canyons and reduce Shea Stadium to the heartbroken rubble it was already scheduled to become. (You’re welcome, New York taxpayers!) We’ve selected Keanu because you foolish Earthlings regard him as harmless. “Oh, that Keanu,” you snicker. “He has two expressions: listless and asleep.” “Keanu Reeves has about as much range as a broken stove.” “Hey, what’s the difference between Keanu Reeves and a sheet of paper? A sheet of paper isn’t always blank.” Ho ho. We’ve chronicled them all. Yet you sniveling hypocrites slavishly flock en masse to his movies anyway. So we know you’ll mock his talent, but cling to his every word.
Some of you might remember the last time we dropped by. Some of you won’t care–it happened before your silly Internets. It was your human year 1951, and, by Greezjill’s Lantern of Vermpxiza, did we look goofy. Our representative Klaatu (not to be confused with Keanu Klaatu) wore what you Earthlings might recognize as a one-size-fits-all sauna suit, a mysterious garment with which you are likely intimate after all those five-dollar foot-longs. And Gort–oh, you can’t forget ol’ Gort0. Back then he was an immovable dustbin with a tin jock and a visor that spat mysterious pinpoint heat rays. This time we’ve made him 20 feet tall and installed within his voicebox the same apparatus your human Dennis DeYoung used on Styx’s “Mr. Roboto.” So when he (Gort, not Dennis DeYoung–let’s leave him out of this!) finally utters, “Klaatu barada nikto,” only your attuned jibbering shut-ins will respond in spastic delight and hail Robert Wise from their geeky vessels while everyone else madly texts “WTF” at each other.
We came in peace then, so young, so naive. For reasons we can’t fathom today, we were in thrall to your race for its atomic power and strides in cosmic travel, even though we were still the superior species and our children were building atomic origami by space kindergarten. But we let you think you were top-dog hot shit of the universe. Ooooo, we were so scared. Quivering in our moon boots. We proved to you your ridiculous laws couldn’t stop us, nor could your weapons destroy us, but still you tried. Remember Klaatu’s parting fuck-you? We paraphrase: “The universe grows smaller every day, and the threat of aggression by any group, anywhere, can no longer be tolerated. … It is no concern of ours how you run your own planet, but if you threaten to extend your violence, this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder. Your choice is simple: Join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration.” Of course, you didn’t listen. Off you merrily slithered to red-baiting, Vietnam, Watergate, Reagan, Dubya, Iraq, and Perez Hilton.com.
So we’ve returned, and this time, it’s your ass. Then we’ll show your poor, ravaged home how a real race treats its ozone. Tell ‘em, Keantu: “If the Earth dies, you die. If you die, the Earth survives.” Rewr! Judge Judy couldn’t have put it any plainer, or been dressed more spectacularly while saying it. So whatcha gonna do, Earthlings, hmmmm? Tickle us with your weapons of mass destruction? Send yet more bomb-dropping planes over our heads? Snark us on Gawker?
Hey, who’s that getting out of the car? Aw, shit. Jennifer Connelly. We must hasten to our chambers with shared streams of Career Opportunities. Damn you!
ALSO THIS WEEK: The Kuurious Kaase of Klaatu, the Band
Monday Night Raw Monday, December 15
Pittsburgh, PA
At the mo, The Daily Wrazz receives roughly 100 “hits” a day. Wish I could say y’all are enthralled by my cracklin’ prose, my silent, appreciative fans, but I know most’re simply sniffing out info on WWE diva Kelly Kelly. I’m sure you’re disappointed by the dearth of pertinent news and cheesecake shots (many arrive on my doorstep on a salacious “kelly kelly naked” typhoon) bearing a wink of nipple-slip promise, but, hey, I’m here to slap words together and dig the sounds they make.
But today my hit counter went haywire. As I write this sentence, I’m up to nearly 100 hits already, and my “day” doesn’t officially end until 4 o’clock tomorrow afternoon–”universal time,” as the site is set. And again, the most popular search is Kelly Kelly.
I can understand why you like the plucky little number. She’s blond, cute, and mathematically curved at all the crucial junctures, with a Clara Bow-ish “it” appeal that straddles the sordid line between next-door wholesomeness and that sorority trollop who’ll grind into your lap for half a Seagram’s.
It was the sheer number of hits, however, that startled me. They were urgent. Persistent, even. Man, I thought, something must’ve gone down on Raw. Sure did. Amid tonight’s usual storyline dramas was a horror movie wrinkle, with Double-Kel summoning her inner scream-queen and Kane as the unstoppable malevolence trapping her in frightened corners.
But I’m getting ahead of myself, for it all started most innocently as a tag-team diva match that opened the show. The world seemed kinder then, but is now changed forever.
Kelly Kelly/Melina vs. Beth Phoenix/Jillian Hall
The match itself is no great shakes. Its most interesting moment arrives during the Glamazon’s ring jaunt with Santino Marella stapled to her hip. She stops to acknowledge a fan’s (read: “plant’s”) devotional placard, “Beth Phoenix Is Hot.” Genuinely moved, especially after her SLAMMY last week, she chats up the audience member, who desperately wants a photo with the Women’s Champ. Santino attempts to hog the frame but is shoved away and demoted to devastated cameraman. Looks like Beth’s movin’ on up, leaving her buffoon sidekick behind.
The scuffle ends quickly, with Kelly Kelly, woven into her Jiffy Pop leggings, rolls Jillian over for the pin. A brawl ensues, ending with the sudden pop of smoke bombs and a sinister pipe-organ wheeze that constitutes Kane’s entrance music. Everyone’s bewildered, ‘cept Kane, who makes a beeline for the helpless Kelly. She crawls on her back into a ring corner. He’s right on top of her, extending his monstrous paw. This is Beauty and the Beast, King Kong, and Frankenstein’s monster with the little girl at the lake, all wrapped into a Hot Pocket of scripted bilge.
Kelly escapes slowly, never letting her pursuer out of her sight. She finds no solace backstage, not even from eternal armored knight Jamie Noble, who’s indignantly shoved from the monster’s path. Finally, she curls into a protective ball, having nowhere else to run, when Kane descends upon her with a sinister-sounding “We need to talk.” Raw’s minutes from becoming Transylvania 90210.
Winner: Kelly Kelly
Rey Mysterio vs. Deuce Sim Snuka Cody Rhodes and Manu sit ringside for this match; their presence is soon explained when Deuce, a jobber with a squaresville ’50s hood gimmick, reveals that he’ll be competing under his “real” name from now on: Sim Snuka, son of WWE legend “Superfly” Jimmy Snuka, which means he’s joined the Legacy stable of Ted DiBiase Jr., Rhodes, Manu, and Randy Orton. A lot of grapplin’ kids in the firm now (Snuka and Rhodes, curiously, of babyface lineage); can Red Rooster’s progeny be far behind?
His secret revealed, his wrestling status is now legitimate, so he wallops Mysterio around the corners a while. Eventually, the action spills ringside and Rey makes the mistake of bumping into the seated Rhodes. The two observers spring into action for a lopsided thrashing that Mysterio miraculously escapes. As he backs up the ramp, his progress is once again impeded by Mike Knox, who flattens him like Bisquik.
Winner: Mysterio by DQ
The backstage soap has devolved into a G-rated Hostel, with Kane literally pinning Kelly to a chair in a tiny room illuminated by mushrooming moody red. He offers her the door, but quickly slams it and keeps her captive.
Elsewhere backstage, Randy Orton allows that in the spirit of competition, he’s challenged Dave Batista to an Armageddon (oh, yeah, that happened yesterday–Orton lost, I think) rematch, adding that Batista has yet to respond. Those lies no sooner leave his lips than Batista’s nose pokes in from frame right, followed by piercing eyes on a chiseled profile and a hot arena-bound pursuit, where Rhodes and Manu await. It’s a wild gang-up ’til World Champ John Cena wades through piercing screams to the rescue, mountainous limbs atwirl. After the legacy rapscallions retreat, the former adversaries shake hands and inadvertently land in a newly scheduled 2 on 3 handicap match with their attackers.
“Hacksaw” Jim Duggan vs. Chris Jericho Man, am I glad this travesty didn’t happen. The beloved Duggan, who thrilled urchins 20 years ago with his yelps of “Hooooooo!” and manic, tongue-lolling waves of his trademark 2×4, is a sunken tater with the color sucked loose. Jericho arrives hardly dressed for a serious match, and he explains why in the most belittling language possible. “I am the 2008 Superstar of the Year,” he spits through seething teeth, “and it’s a slap in the face that I have to compete against someone like you.” A dejected Duggan crumbles into visible depression as Jericho struts away.
Winner: N/A
The backstage torture continues with Kane wrenching information from his pretty quarry about a possible interloper within their storybook romance. He presses her for a name. She opens her mouth to confess, just as USA goes to commercial. Good girl.
Aaaaand we’re back. Kelly has revealed the name and they both keep it ambiguous as she asks Kane not to hurt him. Her captor laughs diabolically. “Love is a beautiful thing,” he says.
World Tag Team Championship
CM Punk/Kofi Kingston vs. The Miz/Morrison Kingston and Punk surrendered the belts to the 2008 Tag Team of the Year at Sunday’s Armageddon and immediately invoked their rematch clause for tonight. But it’s not to be. After an energetic fracas, the Shaman wraps Kingston in a Moonlight Drive (I’m serious) finishing move, and his foe slips into unconsciousness with nary a flashing chance at bliss. Miz and Morrison retain, but again poof the smoke bombs and Kane is returned to unload on the mystery lover, who is apparently one of the four men in this ring. The cuckold does his best Hercule Poirot and settles on the Miz, wrapping his Adam’s apple in a chokeslam and sending him into the canvass, followed by a Tombstone piledriver.
Winner: The Miz/John Morrison
John Bradshaw Layfield introduces Armageddon footage of his new employee, Shawn Michaels, explaining his helpless about-face to a pay-per-view audience. Apparently, the failing economy has driven HBK into humiliating bankruptcy following shoddy investments in the ’90s and a financial recklessness. He admits that after 20 years in the ring, he doesn’t know how many years he has left, and he still has a family to support, so he went to Layfield, knowing he was a shrewd businessman, and accepted a lackey position. He’ll be damned if he becomes a “wrestling tragedy,” crawling limp into run-down gyms at half capacity or bagging groceries at the A&P. He’ll pay the necessary price to remain solvent. Layfield quickly snatches the mike from Michaels and offers his hand, which the broken soul reluctantly accepts.
The Kane drama concludes backstage with Melina and Mickie James comforting Kelly Kelly as she prepares to split. When they bring up the Miz, Kelly expresses disbelief. Was he the mystery man? Who knows? Who cares?
Dolph Ziggler vs. Santa Claas (Charlie Haas) His third professional match finds Mr. Pleased to Meet You, Hope You Guess My Name battling jolly Father Christmas for the hearts and minds of Pittsburgh. Santa fires wrapped gifts at the masses, bypassing commentators Jerry Lawler and Michael Cole, and even hands a box to his adversary, which Ziggler slaps aside. The pair lock holds, but Ziggler has the upper hand for most of the match until Santa tears off his white beard and goes to town on his shocked opponent. Sadly, the advantage doesn’t last, and Ziggler bags Pere Noel into permanent “Silent Night.”
Winner: Dolph Ziggler
Hacksaw remains a bummed loper backstage until Cryme Tyme take him by the hand and say, “It’s time.” Guess we’ll have to wait ’til next week to learn what the hell that’s all about. Meanwhile, Jericho argues with a wooden (speaking of Hacksaw) Stephanie McMahon and suggests she’s unfit to run the show. So she announces yet another gimmicky braistorm: a series of former-champ matches that will culiminate in a showdown with belt-holder John Cena at some far-off extravaganza.
2 on 3 Handicap Match
Batista/John Cena vs. Randy Orton/Cody Rhodes/Manu Ah, the seat-of-the-pants main event, with snorting bulls Batista and Orton at the center. They have so many tattoos between them that when they collide, they become their own MAD fold-in. I can’t quite make out the message, but I think it reads “Stop telegraphing the Batista Bomb.” After an exhausting series of switches and reversals that taxed my poor pen into early suicide, Dave (are those velour trunks?) does the usual bang-bang-bang/throttle-yank-ugh, and he had Rhodes halfway down before Orton shoved Manu into Batista’s spine. Foiled yet again. Nobody gets in a finishing move, except Orton with his usual RKO that reduces Batista to spittle and shake. He’s further smacked into oblivion with a solid Orton boot to the noodle that earns the dastardly trio a DQ and forces Batista’s new pal Cena to stand watch and wonder if his muscle-bound companion will ever enjoy solid foods again.
Winner: Batista/John Cena
See you next week, same Kelly Kelly naked time, same Kelly Kelly boob shot nipple slip hot tub diva threesome tit licking bubble bath midget porn channel.
Anthony Hamilton
The Point of It All (Arista)
Original release: December 16, 2008
There’s a Jonathan Mannion inner-sleeve shot that perfectly captures Anthony Hamilton’s place in soul. He stands in a near-empty trainyard (two blurred figures stroll obliviously in the distance) at an undetermined time of day. The sun has yet to spill its palette; instead it winks divine in a slit between a boxcar and Hamilton’s stoic form, spearing both with heaven’s tines. The singer’s dressed like Curtis, but with Marvin’s soulful gaze, looking not at the camera but at a point far beyond. He at once evokes the past while scanning the future and his face doesn’t betray what he sees.
Brother’s all gone to glory
It’s too late for him to tell his story The streets took over Claimed another soldier
And his body lays colder
His fatherless kids grow colder and bolder
The Point of It All opens with a pained-Marvin wail. You know the one: that howl of weary outrage at a system drowning cities in avarice, murdering its kids at home and abroad, raping and destroying the Earth. “The News” is What’s Going On funneled through the verbiage-spill-raps of Curtis’ Superfly and hinged to chandelier piano pokes reminiscent of that soundtrack’s “Give Me Your Love.” (Another blaxploitation reference surfaces later in the song: Willie Hutch’s “Brother’s Gonna Work It Out,” from 1973’s The Mack.)
Neighborhood characters — the progeny of Eddie, Freddy, and Priest — populate the narrative, but Hamilton observes them from a comfortable yet concerned distance, tracking their fates on television. He’s escaped all that, see, but he still feels a connection. His hometown’s gone to hell; that Marvin’s near-40-year-old pleas have gone unanswered so long and so ineffectively remains our greatest social failure. Anchormen continue to relay these tragedies as matter-of-fact bloviation, eulogizing casualties in cold stentorian tones. Hamilton gives them faces and names, restores their colorful humanity.
Skinny Benny They used to call him Good ’n’ Plenty Brother had hustle for hours Sellin’ dope in hopes for power These people set him up and took his stash
Neighborhoods clash for cash
It’s hard to read those words and not hear Curtis; after all, he too rhymed “hour” with “power,” “stash” with “cash.” But Hamilton’s grittier and less mellifluous, the second coming of Bill Withers. He’s that plain-talkin’ cat on a stoop, telling you what it is.
What’s amazing about that voice is how long it went unheard. Anthony had the misfortune of entering R&B about 15 years ago, when it was dominated by the likes of Boyz II Men, En Vogue, Mariah Carey, TLC, and Whitney Houston. He also had the bad luck of associating with labels that dissolved before an album could be released; the one that did escape lacked the support needed to survive. Eventually, he left so much material behind that when he became famous, naturally it all resurfaced, and until Point he had as many belated compilations as studio albums.
One can imagine how tough a sell Hamilton must’ve been. He possessed an excellent voice, but one then foreign to most R&B fans, who generally preferred sleek, honeyed timbres. It was an unfair advantage. Most of his peers were expressive to a fault, perhaps not fully grasping the importance of the relationship between emotion and the written word. Anthony was more understated. Words were not props to him, vowels to be slathered in miasma. He approached each syllable as if with roses. Songs were intimate conversations, not acrobatic feats. Other singers’ highs were smooth as silk; his were thorn-patch rough.
Seven years passed before the world was ready. He followed his forgotten 1996 debut, XTC, with 2003’s Comin’ From Where I’m From, which peaked at #33 Pop and eventually went platinum. He soared even higher two years later, to #19, with Ain’t Nobody Worryin’, striking gold in four months. Witnesses to the agony of the latter’s “Preacher’s Daughter,” with its despondent, repeated pleas (“She’s somebody’s baby!”) to a man of the cloth more concerned with his flock than the hellfires at home, can attest to his instrument’s emotional strength.
It’s a subtle power, one Hamilton uses sparingly. So when he does reach deep, goddamn. His mea culpa to “Please Stay’s” wronged lover is loaded with such moments, always reaching urgent pitch just as the doorknob turns (“I can make you stay, baby/I would try everything/I’d go down on my knees, baby”). When he barks, “I need somebody to pull me out this mess!” it’s enough of a naked declaration to stop any woman in her tracks.
A similar pain so devours him in “Hard to Breathe” that even the instrumentation breaks off momentarily so he can collect himself. (The phrase surfaces one song earlier, in another context, in the wistful exasperation of “I Did It for Sho.”) “She’s Gone” runs on false optimism, its unreliable narrator’s self-denials countered by the more level-headed observations of that ultimate beacon of wisdom and experience: “So I called Mama/And Mama said, ‘Son, let it go/move on.’ ” Naturally, he can’t. “And I know/And I know,” he tells himself, adding hopefully, “but what if mama was wrong?” Such a thing, of course, is not possible.
But all is not darkness. “Don’t be worryin’ about no problems, believe me,” Hamilton beseeches his beloved in the laid-back “Cool.” “Everything’s gonna be all right.” This give-and-take is rife with a lighthearted frivolity — his baby apparently likes cartoons and role-playing — amplified by the odd sweet talk of special guest David Banner. Among his seduction techniques: “scratch the dandruff out of your scalp/peek in your nose.” To keep his woman happy he suggests, “We can call our white friends up and drink a Miller/Genuine Draft/then kick them all out of the house/take us a bath.” (He’s obsessed with cleanliness.)
The bug nibbles deeper in “The Day We Met,” where the word “love” flutters from the groovy heavens into a strolling, confident heart — one bursting with floweth-over ebullience by “Fallin’ in Love.” (Both are Mark Batson productions, hung on repeating piano hooks that sound like borrowed samples but aren’t.) “The Point of It All” is as straightforward as it gets: “I love you,” delivered over electronic finger-pops and a Hammond B-3 chugging happily in its own smitten language.
The most startling cut, however, is one that shouldn’t work. For whatever reason, Hamilton and songwriting partner Kelvin Wooten fused the disparate “Prayin’ for You” and “Superman” into a fascinating eight-minute coin-flip. As its title indicates, “Prayin’ ” is church-revival sanctified with a call-and-response (“on my knees”) so rollicking it’s gotta shudder to meet “Superman’s” melancholy. A quarter-to-three piano rises to sweep over the guitar’s smooth descent, and a most holy organ settles into a downcast mope. That invigorated house of worship crumbles into a lovelorn heap at bar’s end, babbling resentment into his cups as an accompanist paints his blues a lonesome ivory:
Who do you think you are Comin’ by here Got me all nervous and stressed all out inside I don’t really understand Where she came from
Or what she needs from me
I’m here to let her know That she’s just a woman, yeah
And tell her that I’m just a man, yeah If she gets emotional
I won’t give her any
Until she calls me her superman
As the hour grows late, his glass grows lighter, his mind heavier. With his head just inches from the countertop, he painfully dips into an upper register shredded by drink and need:
Friday night Lookin’ low
Watching closely
Tryin’ to find where she goes I’m willing to be her superman
I’m willing to be
I’m willing and wanting her
To call me
Superman
It’s a mystery what Anthony Hamilton saw in the trainyard that day, if he saw anything at all. But I find it comforting that he was looking ahead, infusing past influences with present-day flair, with a curious eye on soul’s (and our) future. It’s a sunny prospect, indeed.
It was Joe Keebler, I think, who inspired me to become a music critic. I had influences, sure–chief among them Rick Johnson of Creem, Dick DeBartolo of Mad, and Richard Meltzer of everyplace–but Joe showed me the way.
You probably don’t know him. I didn’t really know him myself. He was two grades ahead of me in high school, just a brisk figure in the halls. But give him home-row and he was likely one of the greatest writers the school paper ever had.
The Whirlwind wasn’t known for its dynamic prose. ‘Cause its staff was just kids, few of whom went home every night, snapped on some Sting, and wrote ’til lights-out for fun. English was math, writing was torture. Students passed through to fulfill electives, their journalistic aspirations quelled by decent grades. Even worse, they were teenagers, voices and personalities still very much in flux.
So the paper suffered from a leaden, self-conscious tone. You could hear the classroom-taught inverted pyramid creaking painfully in the linguistic breeze. “There are now two beverage choices in our locker rooms,” a piece might yawn. “Students who are thirsty are now able to decide whether they want Coke or Pepsi for lunch or just as a before- or after-school drink.”
Joe, on the other hand–Joe had panache. Zing. He was an absolute pleasure to read. His flow was usually fenced by a shaded column to draw it out and quarantine it from the aching monotony. I think it was even called “Keebler’s Corner,” or something equally cute. The subject was always the same: music, usually the newest Skinny Puppy side he’d picked up downtown. (Audio Addict, represent!)
By this time I, a lowly sophomore, had devoured plenty of music magazines, always flipping first to the back for the reviews. I was sure this was something I’d like to do when I grew up. Because as far as I knew, music critics were old guys–like, my dad’s age. Guys who’d spent their lives leaning over grooves with pad and pencil to painstakingly trace every lick, toop, and zsss to a house address in Chicago, or wherever movements are born. They were flinty academic types filing from metropolitan bases to slick magazines and finally into the agog paws of dinky-town suburbanites like me. But here was Joe Keebler, this 17-, 18-year-old kid in my own universe, my own city, my own building, doing the exact same thing. “Eureka!” I belched. “I could do this now!”
Two years later, senior year, I did just that. I joined the Whirlwind staff, ostensibly as the, gag, photo editor, a job I despised and sucked at and happily passed to Shad Engkilterra, who was perfectly at ease splashing around the darkroom. “What are you going to do now?” asked my advisor. I fixed her with baby’s first steely gaze and stated matter-of-factly, “I’m going to be your critic.”
For my first “official” review, my advisor–Dena Minato; the woman did have a name–sent me to the Camelot at Heritage Mall, where the store manager was waiting for me. I already kinda knew her, since I spent the time I wasn’t in school or working thumbing through tapes, desperate to blow my check on sounds. So after school I made my way to my favorite place in the whole damn world and traded chit-chat with the manager. When I told her I wasn’t sure which album I wanted to check out, she smiled and led me toward the “B”s. “I’ve got just the thing,” she said as she slid a fortressed cassette from the racks. “Are you familiar at all with Bonham?”
“Sure,” I shrugged, “that’s John Bonham’s kid’s band.” Their first single, “Wait for You,” was then soaking up radio, and I’d caught its video once or twice on MTV. Theirs was a familiar sound, watered down. There’d been some controversy the previous year with an outfit called Kingdom Come, who’d been compared–and not at all favorably–to the long-dissolved Led Zeppelin, still the heavy-metal template for a second generation that Robert Plant and Jimmy Page had made no bones about disowning.
But they couldn’t really do that to Bonham–its namesake, Jason, was kin, heir to the sticks of papa Bonzo, that kit-busting typhoon who’d been most instrumental in Zep’s earth-shuddering legend. Jason had assumed his father’s place when the band briefly reconvened at Atlantic Records‘ 40th anniversary bash in 1988. And here and now, in the fall of ‘89, he’d lent his daunting name to a young quartet that could best be described as a workaday Zep clone versed in the soft-hard rock of its time. Its vocalist, the late Daniel MacMaster, wore Plant’s look and lungs like a brand new suit, from the tips of his holy-house yelps to the curled roots of his shaggy mane.
“This is the album,” she said, freeing the tape from its plastic bonds and handing it to me. “I think it’s going to be a big seller.”
“Cool,” I nodded as I reached for my wallet. She quickly raised her hand to stop me mid-cheek. “All taken care of,” she explained.
I smiled. This music-crit biz had some definite perks.
So what possessed me to return to something I examined 19 years ago? After all, it had no profound effect on me; I listened to it about four times and corralled my thoughts, then retired it into my permanent collection, never to be heard from again. My verdict: eh, OK. I distinctly recall comparing portions to Starship, not the highest praise. I also remember arguing with Danielle Budlong over the proper spelling of “psychedelic.” (She was right, by the way.)
Is this a wild nostalgic experiment, allowing me to indulge in long-form navel-gazing with a wistful twist? Well, yeah. I’ve recently been reconnecting with old classmates on Facebook, and that’s spurred me to contemplate memory, aging, and the communal experience of our formative years. Enough time has passed since graduation that there exists a curious disconnect between then and now, and it feels like everything I know I did actually happened to someone else. In a spiritual sense, that’s true: that’s a version of me that no longer walks the earth. I look different, sound different, and feel different in some very profound ways. But music and writing are two passions I share with my teenage self; on those we remain equal. So I became curious: What connection would I have at 36 to some of the tangible flavors of my youth?
Going in, I have a slight advantage over Cory 1.0. See, I know what happened to Bonham. It’s kind of disappointing, but not at all surprising. Despite that Camelot manager’s lofty predictions, The Disregard of Timekeeping was not a huge seller and made no discernible impact. It barely cracked the Top 40, and “Wait for You” stalled at #55. A second single, “Guilty,” was a dribble on the pulse. They lasted long enough to record another album, Mad Hatter, in 1992. It was even more conventional than its predecessor, a strategic miscue at a time when bands of its diluted-metal ilk were declared obsolete. Hatter was delivered stillborn; Bonham was quietly over.
So I come to Disregard with some sympathy. It was recorded by a very young band; its individual members were barely past 20. Jason Bonham, the drummer-leader with the notorious pedigree, was 23. Frontman Daniel MacMaster, the pipes and potential bedroom-wall icon, was just 21. They landed a major-label deal on the strength of Bonham’s famous last name. And with that name came certain expectations and a pressure to deliver. If they failed, they were pretty much fucked for life. (Poor MacMaster grindstoned post-Bonham in near-obscurity until his death earlier this year at the age of 39.) I can’t imagine being that young, my entire future contingent upon the reception of my first creative endeavor.
Relistening to the album, I find that, aside from “Wait for You,” I don’t remember these tracks too well, not even the riffs and hooks. But all that changes when the choruses hit. Then it’s “Of course: ‘Guilty.’ Ah, yes: ‘Holding on Forever.’” Bonham were OK with structures, they just didn’t know how to make them interesting.
Naturally, there are exceptions. “Wait For You” was the first single for a reason: it’s Timekeeping’s strongest cut, probably because of its tremendous debt to Zeppelin. Nowhere else does MacMaster ape Plant’s tenor so shamelessly, cartwheeling over an Ian Hatton guitar figure flirting with “Kashmir’s” lower bow-strokes.
On the album proper it’s connected to the title track, an atmospheric instrumental that might have cozied with Pink Floyd’s A Momentary Lapse of Reason, the spawn of “Dogs of War” and “Terminal Frost.” “Dreams” rises on a curious sound collage of a weary reveler stumbling home, cracking open a beer, and retiring for the night as a spectral piano lulls him into slumber. Sadly, his vision turns out to be your usual self-achievement positivity claptrap; the chorus, swear to God, is “Keep it up/I’m so high/Reach for the sky/Never give up.” There’s nothing wrong with cliche-riddled verses, but if you can’t match “Here I go again on my own/Going down the only road I’ve ever known/Like a drifter I was born to walk alone” (which, unlike “Dreams,” I don’t have to consult to confirm–Old Man Coverdale pounds ‘em in forever), keep that limp dreck locked up.
On top of its banal pizza-box verbiage (which can almost be excused, given the composers’ youth), Timekeeping’s most brutal failure is its ho-hum conventionality: This is a novice but talented band sweating through Intro to Melodic Theory, marrying textbook formulas to songs that, according to design, should be hits. Tasteful shred? Check. Ballads? Check. Not too many, though, right? Right. Hummable choruses? “I’m guilty, hmmm-hmmm, of your love”–check. Layered harmonies? Everywhere. Inspirational bromides? Present and accounted for.
Consequently, there was nothing to distinguish it from other profferings of the time (Slaughter, Warrant, etc.), and that’s death when your leader’s father was one of the craziest motherfuckers to ever rock ‘n’ roll, bashing for an ass-kicking combo that scorched the shit-beat plains and smoked the blues-rock idiom ’til it was too high to care. And what do you do with that legacy? Sputter out the same tedio-pabulum as every other acid-washed straw-head under the cheeseball big-top. That may be great for first-week sales, not so great for posterity. September 1989 was a lot of first weeks ago.
And don’t we know and feel it. My hair’s a little frostier now, thankfully lingering atop a head weighted with a shitload more memories. Timekeeping, along with multiple weeks of music, fits easily in a portable device so thin I can slip it down my pocket. I haven’t touched a cassette since the last century. That Camelot I called my second home closed ages ago, its real estate transformed into seasonal pop-up space. I don’t know where Joe Keebler is these days, but I hope he’s still writing. I know I am, and for that, I thank him.
Monday Night Raw Monday, December 22
Toronto, Canada
Tonight begins with an emergency–I snap out of an Entourage marathon (got hooked last weekend and dropped romaine for all four available seasons this afternoon–I get Vince, E, Drama, Turtle, and Ari; everyone else: enjoy your cards) with three minutes to spare, spill a manmade tower of CDs and novels reaching for my lucky spiral, then race up and down stairs looking for a suitable pen.
Fuck these pens.
First I plucked a Pilot Precise Gel, but it sputtered on the second swoop (nice flow, but its tiny inkwells are for SHIT). Got plenty of Pentel Wow!s scattered about, but you’re better off writing with a sheep’s tongue. In desperation I grabbed a reliable substitute, the Zebra Zebroller 2000, from a package I brought back last year from my old job. Red ink’s a drag–I feel like I’m grading papers–but I cannot argue with its speed (it actually keeps up with even the most scattered mind) and comfort. So, here we are, hello.
Ho, ho, ho, it’s Christmas in Toronto, even though Canadians don’t actually celebrate the holiday–they’re still pissed we call ‘em reindeer and not caribou. But that doesn’t stop heel comic relief Santino Marella from opening the show with an announcement sure to rock junior hosers right outta their washrooms. It’s about the veracity of Santa Claus (spoiler alert: he’s real, and a John Cena fan to boot!). But before he can spill the dastardly beans, idol to all audio-sweetened kids John Cena runs interference with emasculating comments about Barbie and frilly pink apparel (I’m a little sloshed, so I could very easily be making that last thing up. Oh, this pen feels so nice.) Foiled, the outraged Marella challenges the otherwise unoccupied champ to a mixed tag team match with him and his better, more masculine half, Women’s title-holder Beth “The Glamazon” Phoenix. Good thing–otherwise CM Punk/Chis Jericho’s the main event with Cena basically thumbing through Burl Ives records and hanging stockings backstage. The champ accepts and beats a hasty exit to locate some honey for his eggnog.
Meanwhile, within the clamor and heat, Kane drags Kelly Kelly out for an impromptu epilogue to last week’s G-rated torture porn. Apparently, he’s been asked by Raw impresariatrix Stephanie McMahon for an official apology. (Guess he ran out of crayons!) “I apologize,” he spits through a haunted-house picket-fence of booga-booga bile. He knows now that the Miz, the poor fellow he used as a jackhammer last Monday, is not her paramour. Our collective contemplation is cut off by the cawing entrance music of Mr. Shawn Michaels. “I’m just a sexy boy,” his atonal vocals growl. “I’m not your boy toy.” (Wrestlers seldom make good crooners–anyone remember JYD’s “Grab Them Cakes”?) It’s certainly not him. He’s married and old.
Kane vs. Shawn Michaels
Forgot to mention: tonight’s four main brouhahas determine participants in next week’s Fatal Four-Way, the victor of which tangles for Cena’s belt at the upcoming Royal Rumble. The opener is a fast-paced bruiser, with Kane employing the Heartbreak Kid as an unwilling prop in a demonstration of physics. Finally, Michaels dismisses the class with some Sweet Chin Music for the big man, who snoozes malevolently through the 1-2-3.
Winner: Shawn Michaels (advances)
Kofi Kingston vs. Manu
Nothing on the line here, folks, just a surly Samoan and partner Cody Rhodes glowering at ringside, both in stark contrast to the chipper Kofi wishing everyone on the planet a merry Christmas. What an irie joe. Aerodynamic and sneaky too, with enough counters and reversals in his arsenal to keep red pens swooning across paper. The last sequence is a dooz: Kofi springboards off the top turnbuckle and into Manu’s waiting embrace. Manu’s about to hug him into two Kofis when his slippery quarry scrambles off his shoulders and somehow flips the bigger man counterclockwise onto his back for the pin, furthering fueling speculation that Kofi Kingston is actually a Pixar creation.
Winner: Kofi Kingston
John Cena’s spotted backstage making time with Kelly Kelly. Has she agreed to be his tag-team partner, or is he recruiting her for The Marine II? The bigger question, of course, is with Kane already a Crock Pot of apeshit, will this send him over the edge?
Somewhere else among the loose mats and stacked tables stands Sim Snuka selling Randy Orton a bill of goods: himself, as an addition to the growing Legacy. With Manu a loser, Orton seriously considers the offer. Manu and Snuka stare winter wonderlands into each others’ souls.
Jerry Lawler and Michael Cole remind us that the D-Generation X holiday spot we’re about to see was recorded before Shawn Michaels’ current financial woes, before he allied himself with cabbage-dripper John Bradshaw Layfield. And, yup, there’s DX (Michaels and Triple H) in happier corny times, shilling WWE merchandise and slapping each other across the chest, first as good-natured ribs, then as chops chock full of meaning. Michaels extolls the complete WWE SummerSlam DVD set, highlighting his 2002 victory over Triple H. Triple H retorts with a catty slice about homeboy’s fading hairline. Blows are exchanged.
Flash to Now Shawn, Downtrodden Shawn, gabbing Now Words with CM Punk when Now Triple H saunters into the locker room to ask his trusted partner why he’s been so tight-lipped about his money troubles. “Don’t let pride bring you down,” Triple H advises, borrowing from any of Talia Shire’s Rocky series speeches. “I’ve got to do this my way!” Michaels barks, reminding me of that old forgotten FOX series The Heights, for some reason. (”It’s about me, Mom! What I want! And I wanna play pandering pop with my good-looking pals!”). H exits, ominously whistling “How Do You Talk to an Angel.” Speaking of angels…
Layla
Mickie James and Melina vs. Jillian Hall and Layla With Double-Kel and Beth Phoenix lost in their own storylines, the remaining divas (where’s Candice Michelle?) get to claw each other for Christmas cheer. William Regal mumbles patter from the commentators’ table. Many flips, countless flashes of thong, and at least one British butt crack (Layla’s) ensue until finally Melina gets the full-body pirhouette on poor top-heavy Jillian.
Winner: Mickie James and Melina
Rey Mysterio vs. John Bradshaw Layfield In the second qualifying match of the night, Mysterio drops an immense weight from his worried mind when Stephanie McMahon gives human Chevy van Mike Knox the night off. Sadly, Rey has to contend instead with the weight, both literal and financial, of JBL, who looses at least seven elbow drops on his smaller victim, then later ejects him from the ring completely. Groggily, Mysterio stumbles back in, barely beating the ten-count. Miraculously, the momentum shifts, but before Rey can execute his devastating 619 finishing move, Layfield’s staff of one pulls his CEO to safety and, after making sure the referee is watching, stings the ol’ hoss across the left cheek. Poor Rey watches in horror as JBL’s declared the winner after “outside interference.”
Winner: John Bradshaw Layfield (advances)
Randy Orton vs. Batista The only blows delivered are verbal and one-sided. Batista, who Orton punted in the conoxsis last week, is declared unable to compete, leaving his opponent an entire ring from which to reflect upon his fortune. He recounts his accomplishments, all of which pale in comparison to his strategic placekick. “I have been dreaming of kicking Batista in the skull for four years,” he reveals. “Christmas came early.” He wraps with the ooo snap! o’ “Your career ended right where it started: taking a backseat to me.” Orton predicts his new title reign and scrubs down with the essence of Canuck raspberries.
Winner: Randy Orton, by forfeit (advances)
A floating finger taps Kelly Kelly as she prepares for tag-team battle. It’s Dolph Ziggler, who extends his hand in introduction. (Hasn’t he met everyone, multiple times, by now?) Soon another digit parks atop her shoulder, this one more persistent and not quite as friendly. It’s the Miz and his partner, the Shaman, John Morrison. Neither are happy with their treatment at the chokeslammin’ mitts of Kane last week. So they’ve taken revenge, trashing the poor girl’s hotel suite, something Jim Morrison could’ve done all by himself.
Chris Jericho vs. CM Punk Here’s a switch: Jericho, a maple-leaf resident, receives a vocal-wall push over his opponent, the babyface CM Punk. Y2J’s Canadian brothers serenade him with loutish choruses of their stirring anthem, and it’s just what he needs to administer a sudden Codebreaker on his straight-edge side-thorn after the latter pounces from the top rope for a potential finishing blow. It’s enough to tuck a young Punk in for the night and the holidays. Strangely, Jericho doesn’t speak for the first time in weeks.
Winner: Chris Jericho (advances)
Oop, Cena just lost his partner. The panicked Kelly clomps into the parking garage for the drive to her h0tel, where she’ll likely find a jumble of her Nora Ephron novels and Conde Nast publications strewn about the carpet like an intellectual hiccup. Cena, meanwhile, struts ringward alone, a knowing smirk across his Rushmore puss.
After weeks of humiliation (he lost to Hornswoggle, for God’s sake!), Santino Marella finally scores a marquee match again. The Canadians shower him with love. He points out Beth Phoenix audience plant Rosa Perez and declares himself her idol. “Listen up, children of the world,” he warns. “I’m gonna tell you something so big, it’s gonna change your life forever.” Sadly, his secret is buried under John Cena’s rousing theme. Christmas is saved!
His gay jokes exhausted, Cena claims he knows all about Santino’s bombshell. “Santa Claus, tonight, is here!” he yells excitedly, and sure enough, Kris Kringle’s among the Hollywood Northerners. “He gave me one Christmas wish,” Cena continues: an alternate, surprise tag-team partner. And when said shocker swivels out, the roof tumbles from the dump and the world knows love again. It’s Trish Stratus, that Ghost of Diva Past!
Not accustomed to being upstaged, Phoenix explodes on Stratus, Stratus explodes on Phoenix, and we silly wolves watch the pretty fireworks and pant. Alas, it must come to an end (gotta make time for Burn Notice), which it does, with Stratus on the apron lookin’ sharp and Cena sending Marella crashing to the earth with a deadly FU.
Winner: John Cena and Trish Stratus
Merry Christmas. Send more pens and Entourage Season 5!
“I have a fantasy that, by some kind of luck, this record will last, if only because enough people will buy it to transform it into an artifact.” –Greil Marcus (Village Voice, December 18, 1984)
I’m not sure of the exact date, but this short story appears in a spiral Pen-Tab notebook I labeled “April 2001.” I wrote this in response to the pop-cultural revisionist history that surrounds the mysterious ’80s, one that spins intricate rose-colored webs of deceit for a rapt younger generation, dazzling them with fluorescent baubles and camp potential while ignoring the fact that the ’80s, despite their retrospective nostalgic value, were a rather colorfully dull and oppressive decade dominated by a celebration of ignorance and vanity. I’m amazed today that somehow they’re considered more important than the ’90s, when we were finally jarred from our super stupor and started asking questions.
So in a curious pique I wrote My Favorite Memory Of The ’80s, which, like The Wedding Singer, crams as many tired fads as possible into a tenuous storyline. Eventually, my anger seems to have subsided and I was feeling romantic again, throwing in one of my pre-teen crushes. I certainly wasn’t alone in feeling this way, but I’m pretty sure other young boys’ fantasies weren’t this hackneyed and ridiculous.
It’s 1985, and I’m in the seventh grade. Brad Sanders arrives at school with a Vans Off The Wallshoebox crammed with cocaine. Not a half-bad haul for a couple junior Sean Penns, right? So after sixth period P.E. we throw on our Members Only jackets, soothe our sprayed-down mullets (no sideburns) and saunter out to the football stadium to do some heavy lines. But we got stopped short of the chain-link perimeter by two track-and-field superstar sophomore socs in Generra Public sweaters and shrink-to-fit 501s who taunt us, calling us punk rock fags because we both have the Anarchy symbol etched into our noses and we’re wearing Vuarnet and OP T-shirts. Further enraged by our skateboards, they pound the shit out of us while a nearby boom box blares Ozzy Osbourne’s blood-curdling Bark at the Moon — a more appropriate soundtrack, I do not know.
All that halts their brutal assault is a pair of yuppies in Izod uniforms, who screech into the stadium parking lot in a fresh-shined DeLorean. They’re loaded on Riunite and Bartles & Jaymes. Anyway, the yuppies see the jocks, the jocks see the yuppies, nobody’s wearing socks in their shoes, so they decide to leave us be and concentrate on the extinction of their own respective species, because jocks and yuppies are sworn bitter rivals, more so than jocks and punks. So Brad and I hop on our BMXs and head to the hospital, where a glitter-gloved doctor gives us both a clean bill of health, prescribing more shoulder pads for our jackets.
That night is the big seventh grade dance, so Brad and I part company for a while. I go home and shower, slap on some Old Spice, some L.A. Looks for the tip-top, and a clip-on tie and head back to the school, making a pit stop at Brad’s place to watch TV and rock some more blow. Family Ties comes on, followed by the news, where a solemn-pussed anchorman informs us that Manimalhas been canceled — but we shouldn’t worry unduly as long as Scritti Politti is America’s favorite band, given that distinction by the big man himself, who later interrupts a very special after-school Miami Vice with the following invigorating speech:
My fellow Americans, right now our motto all over the world is “Frankie Say Relax.” Well, I’m here to tell you that I bring another message: “Ronnie Say Retax,” which is what I’m gonna do right after I eat a couple of babies right here, on live national television.
Outside later Brad and I do some more blow with a Bubblicious chaser when suddenly we realize we both have a drug problem and need help, which we get, thank God. We stop our mad addictions and go clean 15 minutes later, returning to the gymnasium for the first time sober that night. Everyone’s so shocked by the vibrant Hamiltonesque hue of our flesh, and we admit it, man, we tell ‘em it’s because we’d said no to poisoning our young bodies with illegal chemicals. Then some kid has the nerve to approach us with a sandwich bag of toot and shove it in our faces, yammering, “Wanna get hiiiiiiigh? I don’t think you have the willpower to resist. You’ll never set your monkeys free.” But we apply our recent lessons and refuse to succumb to peer pressure. We decline his offer. This action is rewarded with a solitary clap emitting slowly from the darkness, which gradually spreads and grows into tumultuous applause, then an emotional surge of triumph. “Hey, kids!” shouts the nearest posthippie chaperone, “Seagram’s Golden Wine Coolers for everybody!” The cheer that followed could deafen the valley and loose the Sherman Oaks Galleria. “I love this stuff!” I swoon. “It’s wet . . . and it’s dry! The best of both worlds!“
But my night’s about to get better. As I slurp down the last of my Cranberry Sluice, the onstage deejay hands me a note, which reads:
Cory: You told me to cue a certain song when and if a certain someone showed up at the dance tonight. Well, put on your best Converse, my man, because she’s here. Now don’t turn around (der Kommissar is not in town, ha ha). I’m gonna start the song, and she will appear at the most crucial point, ready to dance in your arms.
You are the luckiest man who ever lived.
Suddenly, it begins. There is a time when a man needs somebody to talk to/Someone to hold on, somebody who’ll always be there . . .
I can’t resist turning my head. So many faces, so many corsages, so many hairstyles, so many pretty girls. Where could my dream date be?
All alone/Nothing seems to matter . . .
I peel open the note again. There’s a postscript I hadn’t noticed the first time:
Don’t try to get around it, I’m very good at establishing these dramatic moments.
So alone/Doesn’t get much better . . .
But I notice something out of the corner of my eye. It’s the cast of Goonies, minus one person. Now, Goonies is one of my most favoritest movies in the whole wide world; I can’t understand why the entire company would show up at some measly Oregonian middle-school sockhop. Unless…
Can’t explain/Something that you’re feeling/For the very first tiiiiiiiiiiiime . . .
Oh, my God. My heart reaches an orchestral crescendo along with the music. A spotlight irises along some faraway curtain. There’s activity, some rustling, but everything has been timed beyond perfection . . .
THEN ALONG COMES A WOMAN
The curtains explode apart and I see every object of my prayers personified in flesh and bone. It’s the lovely Kerri Green, unknowing breaker of my heart, her red locks enchanting me from movie screens, her smile bewitching my every move. She’s so beautiful tonight, her corsage just perfect, pinned to the loveliest pink silk dress I’ve ever seen. Man, it’s like something out of a Chicago video.
The spotlight trails her train as she parts the crowd and floats to me. I’m agape, barely cognizant of reality.
“Hi, Cory,” she says. “Would you like to hold my hand?”
“Uhhhhhhhhhhhhheyeyeyeye,” I stammer, searching everywhere for confirmation. All I see are envious friends and despondent girls and the cast of Goonies, all nodding their approval. The deejay fires a thumbs-up. I collect my nerves in a tight little bundle and recover with aplomb.
“Why, yes, Kerri. I would be delighted.”
We swarm onto the dance floor as the music changes. “I Can’t Fight This Feeling.” She begins singing it in my ear, punctuating it with “This is our song. It’s time to bring this ship into the shore and throw away the oars forever. . . . Never let me go. Hold me close. Closer. Tighter. My, you’re so responsible and adult for a seventh-grader.”
“It’s my upbringing,” I admit shyly. “I was brought up to have respect for pretty actresses.”
She looks up from my shoulder, her face wet with tears. She doesn’t even bother to wipe them away; they are fresh with truth. “That is the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me,” she chokes. “It’s like a storybook romance.”
“It is, baby,” I coo. “It’s a story we’ll be telling our grandchildren someday.”
She’s a bit taken aback by this bold proclamation, but it’s only a matter of seconds before she sees that I’m right. A smile explodes across her already luminous face, creating creeks and valleys for her sobs. “Yes, Cory,” she whispers. “Of course I’ll marry you. Tonight. Right here at the dance.”
“Hey, everybody!” I bellow to the throng. “There’s gonna be a weddin’ tonight!”
No one believes it. There’s yelping, whooping, artilleries of hats and clip-on ties exploding in the dark. We cause such a commotion that the local police are alerted. We all back into a corner as the officers check the scene, dust for prints, and are generally satisfied that nothing untoward is happening. The ’80s are, of course, a simpler, more innocent time. But I notice something a little odd. One of the cops has much longer and curly hair, tucked under his hat, like he doesn’t want anybody seeing who he really is. Not only that, he has partners who all look terribly familiar. Within minutes I put two and two together and announce:
Revealed, the cops have to, well, cop to my accusation. “Yes, it’s true,” says Officer Hutchence, removing his cap. “We are INXS, the rock stars responsible for such hits as ‘Original Sin’ and ‘What You Need,’ and it would be a great honor for us to perform at your nuptials. Our instruments are back in the squad car. We’ll get them if you like.”
Man, what a reception. INXS on stage, blazing through Listen Like Thieves like it ain’t no thing. The most beautiful wife ever. All my friends and enemies gathered under one roof. And to think that only that afternoon I was single and beat-up and a junkie. It only goes to show what a little determination and ambition can do. “You know,” I tell Brad as I watch Kerri open our gifts, “I don’t know how much better this night can get. If I ever complain about how much the ’80s suck, seriously, I want you to ram a rifle down my trachea and pull the damn trigger.”
“Hello,” Michael Hutchence calls from the stage. “Um, we’ve just gone through our entire repertoire, but we do have one song left that we’ve composed for this very special occasion. We’ll probably release on the album after the album we’re doing next, but right now I would much appreciate it if the groom and the remainder of the cast of Goonies stepped onstage and provided background vocals. How does that sound?”
It’s a magnetic performance by all. I coil my arms around Feldman and Astin and we’re laughing over some joke involving a dog and a blind rabbi. We promise each other that we’ll return in 20 years time and do it all over again, because we all would still be criminally young, criminally beautiful, and criminally hip. Kerri leaps on stage and into my arms, croaking, “I love you, I love you, I love you” and the camera cranes back, finding Brad and Alyssa applauding in the corner, yelping, “Way to go, Cory! Way togo!” Inspired, I lift Kerri in my arms and carry her out of the gym and into the future, followed by well-wishers and fist-pumpers. Behind us Corey Feldman boards Halley’s Comet with Corey Haim and blasts off for parts unknown, just barely missing my wing-tips as they rocket heavenward. “I wonder where they’re going?” I ask Kerri between kisses as we parade down the street.
“Who cares?” she shrugs. “Let’s live for the now.”
I hate compiling lists. Hate it, hate it, hate it, ugh, bleagh. But every year the mags and Internets sidle up to yers truly, wrangling rustbucket data from this weary sausage I call home, forcing me to scrape way back: Geez, was NiggyTardust! this year? (Nope.) I really dug the Erykah Badu. Gnarls Barkley’s “Who’s Gonna Save My Soul” was a playlist BFF (still my favorite lyric of ‘08: “Got some bad news this morning/which in turn made my day”). And derisive hipster snarl ‘n’ snort be damned, I identified with Beck’s Modern Guilt more than I cared to admit. (Wrestled with the matter here.) But as the months snored past and the singles disintegrated in memory, the one Guilt track that stuck with me was “Volcano,” perhaps my generation’s most astute observation on slipping beyond cultural prime into numb middle-aged spectator.
Other naught-eight loves, off the top of my head: The Gutter Twins (Mark Lanegan AND Greg Dulli? Drag my ass to the dark side pronto!) She & Him, Local H, ummm, Anthony Hamilton (reviewed), Marco Benevento, Leviathan Brothers, but rank ‘em in stone for all time? Fuck that. I can, however, announce my song of the year — drum roll, please: the Melvins’ “Savage Hippy.” Redolent in “un”s: uncontrolled, unfettered, unstoppable SCUZZ. From the album Nude With Boots. Pick it up soon, before it tracks you down and strips muscle from scrote from bone.
As a jibbering melodo-nut, I naturally steer most social discourse to where I’m most comfortable: disjointed riffs on music. And that’s exactly what I did New Year’s Eve as time prodded us gently into 2009 and we began reminiscing about auld acquaintance, specifically those who enriched our aural youth before fading mistward.
There are many names for such artists; our cynical culture prefers the appellation “one-hit wonder.” My old boss, Gary Stewart, blanched at the term. There’s really no such thing, he said. Exceptions exist, of course: Right Said Fred’s albums are dogshit, singles included, and Johnny Hates Jazz blew monkeys — unlike the Blow Monkeys themselves, who were actually quite fantastic. Whatever: most bands, however fleeting, typically leave behind more than one worthwhile cut.
We were wrong. I got home and instantly seized Google, pecking in the only lyrics I was sure of, plus the song title (”distant lands” “I don’t know” “holiday”), since “Holiday” itself would yield far too many results. Up came clutter, but nothing I needed. So I recklessly entered the stanzas exactly as I recalled them and found this helpful entry at “Lost in the ’80s.”
The group was called The Other Ones. I located the video on YouTube, screened it a dozen times (still sublime, so very sublime), then dug for more information. Luckily, thanks to Wikipedia, it was a short trip.
The band was half a family affair: Alf Klimek and his younger siblings, Johnny and Jayney. These native Australians were living in Berlin in 1983 when they launched the group with Andreas Schwarz-Ruszcznski, Stephan Gottwald, and a drummer credited only as “Hoffman.”
They released their titular debut in 1986 (a second disc, Learning to Walk, followed two years later), and upon this revolving disc was the marvelous “Holiday,” which bewitched Billboard to #29 and poured romantic fantasies into a daydreaming 14-year-old lounging in his bedroom, vigilantly monitoring a boombox as he surreptitiously trapped the song on Memorex. What followed were months of inspiration as said man-child toiled on a short story/screenplay about a teenaged boy winning a game-show vacation package and dragging the most popular girl in school to Niagara Falls. Think The Sure Thing crossed with the absurd notion that two minors could travel, unchaperoned, to a traditional honeymoon spot.
Both song and video remain a timeless delight, the former an intricate balance of goofy (gleam-pated Alf’s lead vocals; the All Music Guide’s Jason Kaufman likened him to “Fred Schneider’s cousin abroad,” an excellent comparison) and gorgeous (Jayney’s luminous, transporting choruses). Jayney’s breezy delivery at once evokes visions of paradise and exotic winds; she sells the fantasy while Alf knocks about reality. Escape, for the moment, seems impossible: “Well, I hate my job and I got no car/and my aching feet won’t take me that far.” Meanwhile, Jayney rationalizes sweetly, “Distant lands are not so far away/I don’t know why we don’t go.” The stylish video is littered with airborne postcards depicting band members in various having-a-great-time-wish-you-were-here scenarios as a flat-dweller prepares for another workday in a smog-choked metropolis.
The Other Ones apparently dissolved sometime in the late ’80s. At least Jayney was gone by ‘89, trading scales with Genesis‘ Tony Banks in the keyboardist’s solo forays. The Klimek brothers went into scoring, Alf with various productions, Johnny with contributions to film (Run Lola Run, One Hour Photo) and television (David Milch’s Deadwood and John from Cincinnati). Today Jayney and former Other, Schwarz-Ruszcznski, comprise the group You Pretty Thing. She still looks great!
UPDATE: Well, after watching the video another 27 times, I gotta know: who controls the masters? The label? The Klimeks? In any case, it’s reissue time!
It was December 1976, just before Christmas. The Rhode Island music scribe was rummaging through a stack of unclaimed vinyl at the Providence Journal office when he was struck by an album with this eye-catching sleeve:
3:47 EST was the debut album of the little-known Klaatu, named after the otherworldly humanoid ambassador played by Michael Rennie in 1951’s The Day the Earth Stood Still. (3:47EST was a reference to the spaceship’s arrival in Washington, D.C.) The record was then a few months old, mostly unheralded, largely ignored.
Mysteriously, Klaatu seemed little-known almost by design. Their bio yielded little information beyond the note: “They want to be known for their music and not for whom they are.” There was no publicity photo, no listed personnel. Smith found it all peculiar.
Then he dropped stylus to wax, and something clicked.
“[I]t did pique my interest,” he recalled 20 years later, “so I started making phone calls to, like, Capitol Records [Klaatu's label] and I didn’t get anywhere. Eventually, roads led to Frank Davies and Ken Berry of Capitol Records Canada.”
Davies was Klaatu’s manager, the man who brought them to the label. He listened with some amusement as Smith presented a most interesting theory. The music, Smith said, bore a very distinct, very familiar sound. It made no sense that a band so new would be so publicity-shy. Unless, perhaps, it wasn’t so new. Maybe, he mused, it was actually quite famous.
According to Smith, 3:47 EST was riddled with clues as to Klaatu’s true identity. That it was released on Capitol was curious as well. Why would a major label not only back this unknown entity but also willingly maintain a near-suicidal air of anonymity around it? Also worth considering: Capitol was the longtime home of a certain culture-defining quartet, and Davies had been an on-staff employee during said quartet’s popular peak.
Had Smith unwittingly stumbled onto the scoop of the year, if not the decade, or, hell, the century? Was it possible that Klaatu were, in fact…
At first, Davies was dismissive. But then, perhaps sensing a publicity bonanza, he began playing along. His answers became vague and playfully coy. “Everything you’ve summarized,” he told Smith after the reporter had exhausted his list, “is really pretty accurate all the way around.” He even offered a copy of the LP and assorted memorabilia to the first Journal reader to successfully unmask his mysterious client.
The story ran on Sunday, February 13, 1977. And although Smith didn’t baldly call 3:47 EST a record by The Beatles returned, he definitely made a case for it (read the entire review here), plumbing lyrics, melodic tics, and track titles for evidence. His swings were often wild, but he did cite one most convincing coincidence: the cover of Ringo Starr’s Goodnight Vienna (1974), which employed a famous still from Earth to cast the former Fab drummer as…Klaatu.
Like any sensible pontificator, Smith covered all his bases, concluding that, yes, Klaatu could be The Beatles. They could also be a few Beatles. Or a couple Beatles. Or completely Beatle-free, an “unknown but ingenious and talented band.”
Naturally, once they caught wind of this story — and it traveled fast — most music fans failed to entertain any possibility but the first. It was too sexy to ignore, the answer to their prayers, that their heroes, after a half-decade of litigation and primary communication through solo-albumsnark, had secretly reconvened to astound the world once more. 3:47 EST was instantly granted heavy-rotation radio status. In the Journal’s hometown of Providence, Brown University’s WBRU added the disc to their regular diet, and nearby WGNG hosted a special “Is This The Beatles?” weekend, mixing Klaatu with Fab fare. In Hartford, Conn.,WDRC’s jocks wondered on-air, “Who are Klaatu? Are The Beatles really back?”
Record stores began replenishing their quickly diminished stock as the news continued to spread, finally reaching the opposite coast. Billboard tracked its progress. A single released the week of Smith’s expose, “Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft,” floated to #62 Pop in late April. The Carpenters took their own cosmic ride with it to #32 that winter.
Capitol had transformed a modest, near-forgotten yet brilliant record into a respectable hit, dining on rumor and speculation. But eventually, the mystery came to an end.
As it turned out, Klaatu were not The Beatles. They weren’t even from England. They weren’t even a quartet. No, they were a prog-rock trio from Toronto, whose members were just awestruck kids during the Liverpudlians’ reign. John Woloschuk had launched the group just four years earlier, first as a duo with Dee Long, then adding schoolmate Terry Draper on drums in 1974.
A Beatles influence was undeniable; Woloschuk readily admitted in a 1997 interview that he’d been tremendously affected by Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band as a teenager, as was most anyone of his generation. But there was no attempt on Klaatu’s part to pass as the more fabled group. Their philosophy, ” they want to be known for their music and not for whom they are,” was not purposely deceptive marketing, but a genuine sentiment.
“We had said all along, from day one, before we had even put the first note to tape, that we wanted to remain anonymous,” Woloschuk explained. “Not because we were trying to fool anybody, just because we wanted the music to speak for itself. And we were young and idealistic. … [T]hat was the beginning of the glamour-rock era, where everybody was wearing outlandish clothes and makeup, and the music seemed to be taking a secondary seat. … [U]nfortunately, our silence was misinterpreted as complicity in this [Beatles] rumor.”
Klaatu did pay dearly for this perceived fraud. Perhaps Beatles-based pop was still such a novel (if arcane) concept in 1977 that the idea of a group so practiced in that proto-psychedelic majesty — and not actually be The Beatles — was sacrilege, chicanery. And to deny fans a possible Beatles reunion, especially at a time when all four members were still living, seemed unnecessarily cruel. That Klaatu never claimed any Fab association, and that their debut was nonetheless an impressive and timeless accomplishment, was completely forgotten. Rolling Stone pilloried them as 1977’s “Hype of the Year.” Album sales fell. And their four subsequent endeavors, despite their astonishing musicianship, were forever marked by that persistent blemish. The trio slowly dissolved until evaporating completely in August of 1982.
Headaches and disappointments aside, Woloschuk was refreshingly sanguine in 1997 when asked if, knowing the band’s fate, he’d voluntarily relive the experience.
“[I]n ten years,” he marveled, “I went from, like, being just a young guy who was a big [Beatles] fan to writing material that was of good-enough quality that people actually mistook it for being written by probably two of the greatest writers in pop music that ever lived, John Lennon and Paul McCartney. So, I look at that as an achievement.”
Hold that thought, John. Apparently, your story’s not over yet…
