Left of the Dial

Eno and Stipe Lean

So I finally, finally found some Brian Eno Top Management will like. 

Homeboy really needs to sing more often. 

Don't Worry Baby

There’s just so dadgum much great music out there that sometimes some of it, no matter how wondrous, gets overlooked. I was music-crazy from the time I was in middle school, so I heard about Nick Drake, for instance, literally decades before I ever actually heard him—I wanted to, I always meant to, but he was a little hard to locate back when dinosaurs ruled the earth and there was always so much other stuff to listen to, or relisten to for the billionth time. There was a new REM import to acquire or an early and unofficial Springsteen live recording or the second side of Low, still waiting to be deciphered. 

I then went nearly 10 years between really listening to new music, either because familial obligations kept me from listening to almost anything, or because I went through years-long periods where all I’d listen to was classical or jazz.

And then when I did start actively seeking out and enjoy new music again, well, there’s just so much of it—as well as older masterpieces I’d never heard before, such as the aforementioned Nick Drake—that, well, you realize one day that you haven’t heard “Don’t Worry Baby” since the previous century. But you took the girls to the beach and you brought along a Beach Boys collection and a week later it’s still in the car and on the way to the dentist you turn on the stereo and out comes a song absolutely unsurpassed in its amazingness, so gorgeous, so lush, so complex yet minimal that you listen to it a dozen times in a row and, yeah, no, it's just...wow.

That's what this stuff comes down to sometimes. Sometimes you just sit back and listen for the three hundredth time and think: wow. 

So let’s say you’re crusing down the highway in southern California with the Beach Boys blasting and you’re singing along and it’s fine that other drivers can see you singing...but do you think they can tell, without hearing you, that you’re singing falsetto? 

 

Space Oddity

So I stopped Top Management dead in her tracks today. Literally. Well, literally stopped her in her tracks—not so much, fortunately, the dead part.

We were out on our morning walk, pretty much the most sheerly pleasant part of our day. We have about a dozen different routes we cycle through, and this was one of the less strenuous and just plain prettiest. We say hello to distant neighbors walking dogs or watering their flower gardens or hustling their late children off to school. We hold hands until my palm gets too sweaty and Top Management subtly removes her hand and dries it off on her jeans. I retaliate by waiting until we're passing someone—preferably a male—and then casually resting my hand on her ass.

Anyhoo. We're on our walk and somehow talk turns to the recent illegal but amazing adaptation of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" someone did, turning it into a children's board book. It was gorgeous and oh so spot on. "Except for getting the end wrong," I said. "Obviously."

Top Management looks puzzled. She'd only looked at the first few pages as, like me, only even more so, perhaps, she likes to have "her" version of stories and songs, without having someone else's images implanted in her bizarrely retentive memory. Since she had even gotten to the halfway point, she didn't realize that the illustrator had erroneously interpreted the song's ending. In his version, there's a mechanical failure, and Major Tom is stuck up in space, forever.

"Well...yeah," she said. "That is what happens. His ship malfunctions and he's stranded in space. Ground Control to Major Tom, your circuit's dead, there's something wrong."

"No," I said. "No. Though I'm past one hundred thousand miles, I'm feeling very still, and I think my spaceship knows which way to go. The circuit's dead because he turned it off. He looked down at earth from up above there and he decided to stay. And he's okay with that. He feels like he's finally home."

That's when she stopped, right in the middle of the street we were crossing.

"You used to listen to that song every day."

"Yeah."

"Every single day."

"Yeah?"

"As you were getting ready for school."

"Sophomore and junior year of high school, yeah. Ruined the tape, I listened to it so many times."

Her mouth dropped open. "And you listened to that song...and you thought he willingly decided to leave his wife down below on earth so he could die alone in space."

"Uh..." I said, suddenly realizing I was on thin ice. "Well...yeah. I mean, he still loves her and everything..."

She started to laugh as we began walking again. "You listened to that song hundreds, maybe thousands of times. And that's what you got out it. That was the interpretation that resonated with you." She shook her head. "If you had told me that part of the story when we first started dating..."

"...what?"

She shrugged. "Probably nothing." Improbably, unexpectedly, undeservedly, she stands on tiptoe and gives me a kiss. "I like a challenge."

 

I mean, come on! Listen to that! Clearly he decided to stay up there! ...right? How beautiful is that? 

 

Second Thoughts

"I'm DOOOOO-ooooone!" the five-year-old calls from the bathroom. 

I go in and she's cheerily singing a song Nick Jr's Moose sings between shows. I cannot help but clinically observe that she has taken a dump the size of Rhode Island. That kids as a matter of course pop out stool samples which would seem to have come from a professional linebacker never ceases to amaze.

"Oh, wait," she says, smiling up at me beatifically. "Was this the potty you said not to use because it was clogged?" 

economic terrorism

It's considered impolite to post too large an excerpt of a piece. But I'm doing it anyway. Because this so perfectly captures the terrifying insanity taking over our great nation. It flies in the face of tradition, precedent, common sense and decency. The policies the hostage-takers are insisting on are foolish and contrary to ethics or morality.

The ones driving the bus are the same ones who took the largest surplus in US history, turned it into the largest deficit in US history (although the deficit really isn't all that important, as these things go, hysteria to the contrary—simply getting our economy back on track would take care of it without brutal cuts to services for the poor and the elderly), and are now holding a gun to the country's head, saying "do things which are ignorant and counter-productive way or we'll make things go from bad to horrific."

As I've pointed out time and again, I love my conservative friends and family, maybe because, in part at least, they understand that in life you have to compromise. This is something most of us learn by the time we're five years old. The current GOP believes that's a stupid idea. The result is going to be a seriously lessened nation. 

The notion of "it can't happen here" is a dangerous one.  

Josh Marshall made an interesting point in passing yesterday, asking whether conservative Republicans could achieve massive spending cuts through “old-fashioned majority votes.” Josh answered his own question: “Of course not.” The cuts on the table were only made possible by Republicans “threatening the health” of the United States.

I think this arguably one of the more important realizations to take away from the current political landscape. Republicans aren’t just radicalized, aren’t just pursuing an extreme agenda, and aren’t just allergic to compromise. The congressional GOP is also changing the very nature of governing in ways with no modern precedent.

Welcome to the normalization of extortion politics.

Consider, for example, the Republican decision to reject any and all nominees to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, regardless of merit, unless and until Democrats accepted changes to the agency’s structure. Traditionally, if the GOP wanted to alter the powers of the CFPB, it would write legislation, send it committee, bring it to the floor, send it to the other chamber, etc. But that takes time and effort, and in a divided government, this “old fashioned” approach to policymaking probably wouldn’t produce the desired result.

Instead, we see the latest in a series of extortion strategies: Republicans will force Democrats to accept changes to the agency, or Republicans won’t allow the agency to function. Jonathan Cohn wrote a good piece on this a couple of weeks ago, noting the frequency with which this strategy is utilized.

Republican threats to block nominees to the consumer board are of a piece with their opposition to Don Berwick, Obama’s first choice to run the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services; to Peter Diamond, whom Obama tapped to sit on the Federal Reserve Board; and most recently to John Bryson, Obama’s nominee to take over the Commerce Department. It’s nothing short of a power grab by the Republican Party — an effort to achieve, through the confirmation process, what they could not achieve through legislation. And it seems unprecedented, at least in modern times.

Republicans effectively tell the administration, over and over again, that the normal system of American governance can continue … just as soon as Democrats agree to policy changes the GOP can’t otherwise pass.

The traditional American model would tell Republicans to win an election. If that doesn’t work, Republicans should work with rivals to pass legislation that moves them closer to their goal. In 2011, the GOP has decided these old-school norms are of no value. Why bother with them when Republicans can force through policy changes a series of hostage strategies? Why should the legislative branch use its powers through legislative action when extortion is more effective?

It’s offensive when it comes to nominees like Cordray, but using the full faith and credit of the United States to force through desired policy changes takes this dynamic to a very different level. And since it’s working, this will be repeated and establishes a new precedent.

Indeed, it’s a reminder that of all the qualities Republicans lack — wisdom, humility, shame, integrity — it’s their nonexistent appreciation for limits that’s arguably the scariest.

 

 

Fall on Me

So. I read this recently:

One shortcoming R.E.M. had faced previously was that in spite of being able to create exemplary overarching works in LP and EP forms, the band had yet to write an individual song that undisputedly ranked among rock’s all-time greatest compositions—that is, until “Fall on Me”.

It’s an interesting, if mistaken, point in an otherwise fine piece—any band which had already recorded “Radio Free Europe” and “So. Central Rain” had already made their bones in the classic department.

But that’s not to say that it’s not a great song and if someone wanted to argue it was their finest to that point in time, or even still to this very day, I wouldn’t argue. (Much.)

It’s got a lovely and arresting opening, with the contrasting Rickenbacker arpeggios joined, seemingly slightly out of time, by a ringing acoustic. The guitars sync up ever so briefly before a ritard brings them to a temporary halt. Then, even more out of time, Bill Berry’s drums bash the song into instant high gear, spurring Michael Stipe to begin singing the first verse less than a second later.

The verses are typical for early-to-mid period R.E.M., or rather, an outstanding example of Stipe's writing from that time, with unusual words and evocative phrases which don’t seem to make much literal sense but which combine to create a mood both emotionally powerful and characteristically unique to R.E.M., a lesson not wasted on Kurt Cobain, one of their most attentive and successful disciples.

The band themselves have said the song was originally about acid rain, but as it developed, moved away and into what was, for R.E.M., a love song. How this qualifies as a love song is anyone’s guess, but that’s just part of what made them so magical at that point in time.

The chorus consists of Stipe crooning a plaintive but simple plea, asking the sky not to fall on him. Just as prominent in the mix, however, is Mike Mills’ backing vocals, singing a totally different and contrasting line. Mills takes over the bridge, which seems to harken back to the song’s acid rain origins, one of the bassist’s earliest starring roles in the band, and something which led to him even more widely being regarded as R.E.M.’s secret weapon.

(In reality, he wasn't, and that's without even getting into the question of whether or not a secret weapon can be a secret weapon if everyone knows about the fact that it's a secret weapon.)

The key ever so subtle ingredient which kicks the song from Great to All Time Classic? Drummer Bill Berry’s backing vocals. Mike Mills are far more prominent, and perfect and integral. But it’s Berry’s mumbled asides, first heard in the second chorus, which add an almost hidden yet vital contrast to the tapestry. Berry, who Stipe said was the band’s most conventionally "good" vocalist, is also the one adding a low and mysterious harmony behind Mills during the bridge.

But it’s that third vocal line during the choruses which add so much to the song. Buried during the first chorus, they’re noticeable only upon repeated listening the second time through. But it’s not until the final chorus that you can finally make out that he’s singing “it’s gonna fall.” It’s these three interlocking vocal lines which raise the song from great to masterwork.

It’s much clearer during their gorgeous acoustic rendition on MTV’s Unplugged.

For all their fame and popularity, R.E.M. is the most overlooked of any great vocal group—there are few bands ever who regularly created such intricate and lovely lines and harmonies, and none who garnered less acclaim for it. (Not that R.E.M. has ever lacked for critical esteem, or at least, not in their first 15 years.)

On several occasions, Mike Mills and Bill Berry recorded their backing vocals to a song without knowing what the other was going to sing. I’ve never heard it said that they took that approach with “Fall on Me.” But listening to this, I still like to think that's how this slab of pure pop perfection came about.

Fishing

“Man, there are a lot of little people in this room,” I say, cuddling with the five-year-old on the bed, watching as the two boys, currently ages 2 and 7, bash trucks into each other on the floor.

Top Management walks out shortly thereafter and, without a word, the boys abandon the violence to shadow her like ducklings.

Now it’s just me and the Golden Weasel.

She rolls overs and looks up at me. She smiles.

“Who’s the best little person?” she whispers.

Incomprehensible

“What do doin’s means?”

I look up from my email. The five-year-old, the preternaturally confident Golden Weasel, as I have taken to calling her, takes another bite of mini-wheats as she waits for my reply.

“What…wait, what?”

“What do doin’s means?” she asks again.

I don’t know how to answer this. I suspect a trap.

“What what, sweetie?”

“What do doin’s means?”

“I…I’m sorry, buddy, can you ask me that again?”

“What do doin’s means?”

“What does—“

“No. What do doin’s means?”

“Doin’s?”

“No. What do doin’s means?”

“What do doin’s means.”

“No. What do doin’s means?”

“What do doin’s means?”

“No. What do doin’s means?”

I am at a loss. I haven’t been this unable to understand her in years. Fortunately, just then Top Management walks in.

“Oh, good. Can you ask that again, please?”

“Sure. What do doin’s means?”

I watch Top Management’s face as she tries to process this. It’s delightful.

“What…what does—“

“No. What do doin’s means?”

“What do doin’s mean?”

“No. What do doin’s means?”

“What does—?”

“No. What do doin’s means?”

Through all of this, the Golden Weasel is remarkably calm and unflustered by her parents’ stupiditity, not even the least bit frustrated by their inability to understand basic English.

By now, several sisters have gathered around to try to help decipher.

“What what?

“What do doin’s means?”

“Do doin’s?”

“No. What do doin’s means?”

“Okay, wait. Where did you get this question? Is it something I just said?”

“No.”

“Is it…” Top Management looks at the computer, which is running through the morning’s playlist. “Oh! Is it something you heard in the music? Do-do-do?”

“No.”

We look at each and shake our heads. We’ve been doing the parenting thing a long time, but this one’s new and neither of us can figure out where to go from here.

“What does doin’s mean?” Top Management tries yet again, hoping to somehow force the question into some sort of syntax.

“No. What do doin’s means?”

I start laughing and Top Management just shakes her head helplessly.

Finally, the Golden Weasel realizes she’s dealing with very unbright people and is going to simply have to take matters into her own hands.

“What…do…you…do…in…meetings?” she says slowly, eliminating all contractions from the original sentence. I have the sense she’s wondering if we’re really fit to be in charge of young children.

“Oh!” we all say. “What do doin’s means?”

“That’s what I said.”

I nod. What can I say? When she’s right, she’s right.

“What do you do in meetings? Uh…pretty much just waste time. And money.”

She looks skeptical. "Then why do you go?"

“Well,” I explain. “Back when people first started having meetings, there was no email or phone. So if people wanted to get together to talk about the problem of the new sabre-tooth tigers in the neighborhood, they had to have a meeting. But now that there is email and phones, there’s really not much point in most meetings. But by now it’s just a custom. So.”

“Oh,” she says. She nods, but the look in her eye makes it clear that she’s now wondering if any adults are really fit to be in charge of young children, if they all seem to hold with such foolishness.

“Also,” I add, realizing the best part of meetings. “Sometimes there’s food.”

“Oh!” she says, her eyebrows raising. Then she narrows her eyes as she regards me, clearly wondering why I left the pertinent information for last. I suspect she's thinking about retaining a lawyer in a bid for emancipation, and wondering how much an attorney costs. And if there'll be cookies at each and every meeting.

 

Words of Love

So the ten year old says to me the other day, “Dad, will you teach me about music?”

This isn’t quite up there with a few other questions I’ve been asked in my life: “Would you like to write Batman?” "Want to go watch Bruce rehearse for Letterman?" “Honey, the kids are asleep: wanna join me in the shower?” But, man, it wasn’t far off.

“What do you mean?” I ask, having learned by now that when dealing with the better gender, clarity is oh so vital. “Do you mean, like, teaching you what a sonata is, or a blues, or do you mean more like about Bach and Beethoven and the Beatles and R.E.M. and stuff?”

She thinks for a moment, then smiles. “Yes,” she says.

Kids. 

So the next day we’re driving in the car and I’ve got Buddy Holly in the CD player. So I start to tell her about Buddy, his importance, his impact, some of his most famousest songs and so on.

“Words of Love” comes on.

She listens for a minute, then says, “you know, this sounds a lot like “Do You Want to Know a Secret?”

We’re off to a good start. 

 

The Blink of an Eye

The five-year-old comes out in just her Little Mermaid panties as I'm finishing up the dishes. "Can't find any pajamas?" I guess.

Any hope I have of her being impressed with my divine divination skills are shattered. "Well, Daddy," she says, and sighs slightly. "I can't find any pajama pants. Or pajama shorts. Either."

I can do nothing but shake my head. "Well, Daddy," she says. As if to say, "you see, it's like this."

When do they suddenly veer from being able to more or less deliver the information they want/express their needs and desires to this sophisticated, I'll-be-here-all-week style of conversation? Why, why, why do they keep growing up? Why do they keep getting older? It's so uncool.

Or would be if it weren't for the fact that, heartbreaking as each and every change is, signifying as it does the leaving behind of something wonderful, each new stage is pretty damn awesome too.

"Well, Daddy," she says, and I can hear the unspoken conclusion: "Enjoy me while you can. Because I'm leaving soon. Oh, it might not be for a dozen years, or maybe even, if you’re very very lucky,  twenty. But to you? It'll be the blink of an eye. So don't blink, or I'll be gone."

 

RIP Clarence Clemons

I’ve seen Bruce Springsteen at least once on each tour he’s done since Born in the USA, with one exception brought about by an offspring’s most inconvenient surgery. (Oh, Science. Sure, you save the lives of my children but, you know: rock and roll.) Each and every one of those shows had more magical moments than I can count: watching him laughing as he forgot the words to “Born to Run,” during a gorgeous acoustic version in 1988. Hearing him perform a duet with Roy of “Fourth of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)” for the first time on tour in 1992, minutes after telling Top Management he probably wouldn’t be playing this favorite of hers. (She’s still convinced he played it Just For Her.) Witnessing a surprising fall off a ramp in 2002, leading to him playing the rest of the show with blood dripping down his forearm. And so many, many more.

But none of them are more special to me than a different moment at that same show. It was the closest I’d ever been to the stage—we were about ten feet back, I’d guess. And at one point during the second song, “Lonesome Day,” I looked up at Clarence, the Big Man himself, who was watching Bruce, and just looked so happy. And I was just staring at his face, wondering what it felt like to be up there, doing what he was doing…and he looked down at me. He held my eyes for just a few seconds, but as he did, he kept smiling but it changed ever so slightly, and I swear he was saying, “Yeah…it just doesn’t get any better than this.” 

"Heroes"

So I read one of those “best of” lists recently. Silly as those lists tend to be, I do love them so, and not just because they frequently give me an excuse to get angry. But this one—a list of “best covers ever”—was worse than most, if only for the inclusion of The Wallflower’s version of David Bowie’s “Heroes.”

A great cover brings something new to the table. Sometimes, as with the Beatles version of “Twist and Shout,” it brings an irrepressible energy, and perhaps the greatest single vocal from one of the greatest singers in rock history, a performance so powerful you can literally hear his voice shredding by the end. Others successfully recast the composition itself, pulling it from genre to another, as with Jimi Hendrix’s cover of “All Along the Watchtower,” a reconceptualization so effective that Bob Dylan himself adopted it.

The Wallflowers do none of this. Instead, they perform the song as though it were a full band karaoke.

It’s a fine performance, in some respects: the drummer is your typical 90s post-grunge drummer, which is to say, he bashes enthusiastically. The aural background relies much more heavily on mildly distorted guitars than Bowie’s original, with its emphasis on synthesizers. If the musical backing doesn’t add to  anything to our understanding of the song, neither is it especially embarrassing.

That’s left up to singer and bandleader Jakob Dylan. He starts the song with the kind of jaded, slacker ennui that’s practically a parody of the era. Later, when the “emotional” part kicks in, he can finally be arsed to sing above a seductive whisper, but even here his voice has a kind of blank, dead-eye stare quality to it. It seems to imply he doesn’t mean any of it, but his phrasing of the final chorus, with its long, drawn-out assertion that they can indeed “be heeeeeeeeroes” would belie that interpretation. The result is a bunch of pretty sound and half-hearted attempts at fury which mean less than nothing.

Generic mid-90s and flawed as their version is, it’s made even worse by the video, a mix of lip synching and footage from the Godzilla remake. Bowie, of course, was one of the first artists to realize and explore the possibilities of video, as well as the most nakedly savvy about the potential for commercialization of not just one’s art but one’s own self, as when he sold stock in his own back catalog. But this video make it absolutely blatant that the Wallflowers viewed the song as nothing but commerce, with not even a nod to actual art, as Dylan sings about being a hero while casually dodging Godzilla’s tail—a particularly humorously unironic bit of stupidity, as Dylan is, in fact, doing nothing heroic, not even bothering to warn his band members that they’re about to be crushed to death. It’s crass and vacant, which makes its inclusion on any “best of” list perplexing, to say the least.

Compare and contrast Bowie’s various versions. His original studio version has a cold, mechanical backing, made up largely of washes of synthesizer, and highlighted by Robert Fripp’s slippery lead guitar. His opening vocal, detached and chilly, fits in perfectly, its resigned air somewhat frightening.

As the song progresses, his emotions begin to change, to become rougher and more open. In the second verse he laughs gently, as though the idea of making plans when the future is so uncertain—and the most likely outcome unpleasant—is darkly ironic, yet all the more attractive for that. “We can be heroes,” he says to the song's fantasy queen, “forever and ever. What you say?” The only response is Fripp’s echoing guitar lines. Come the third verse, Bowie takes his doomed daydream even further, wishing his dream girl could swim like a dolphin, convinced they could be heroes if only she could.

And then he gets to the fourth verse and Bowie lets loose vocally in a way he rarely had before or would after, taking the melody up an octave and almost shouting his determination that they should be rulers, if only for a day. The fifth verse clues us in to what it is that has him so beaten down, and yet determined to fight back—he and the female to whom he's singing are standing in the shadow of the Berlin Wall, and soldiers are firing and reality has crashed down and there’s no chance they’re going to make it: they’re never, ever going to be king and queen, they’re not going to swim like dolphins and they’re not going to be heroes. And, yet, in his refusal to meekly acquiesce, even if in his own heart, there is something heroic, something noble, in his defiantly doomed stand.

Or so it seems. Because after you think the song’s over, a last verse comes in out of nowhere. “We’re nothing,” he admits. “And no one will help us. Maybe we’re lying.” There’s a reason the punks never turned on Bowie, the way they did the Beatles  and Stones and Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd—this is every bit as true to the spirit of punk as anything by the Clash or the Pistols. 

It’s instructive to note how Bowie himself has approached the song in subsequent years. During his fabulously successful 1983 Serious Moonlight tour, he approached it, as with most of his catalog, in a sort of Elvis-Goes-to-Vegas manner. But whereas that same approach was horrifying when Dylan tried it in the late 70s, in Bowie’s case it felt more like an affectionate look at his own history, sharing it at last with the mass audience he’d so long craved and sought. Kicked along by Tony Thompson, the most powerfully aggressive drummer he’d ever play with, if the performance is a long way from its origins, it’s still enjoyable—the jaunty horns may undercut, rather than provide a fruitful juxtaposition of, the lyric’s theme…but, on the other hand, you know: horns. Horns are pretty much always good.

But compare it to his treatment of it on his 2003 Reality tour. Only about a third of the songs during a typical show were from the most popular parts of his songbook, with the vast majority being pulled from his less than blockbuster albums of the 1990s and 2000s—an interestingly deliberate act of non-pandering. “Heroes,” would be one of the last songs of the show, and it’s presented almost as a gift to the fans, a thank you to them for sitting through, say, the lesser known “Never Get Old,” rather than, say, “Space Oddity.”

Note the way he enters concurrent with the band, rather than allowing the typical musical intro to tip off the crowd. The backing is relaxed, sparse, and laid back, with few of the prominent synths and, initially, none of the classic guitar hook. He smiles, he croons, a master toying with…something. The song? The crowd? His own mortality? This was, after all,  Bowie’s last tour.

But then the band kicks in and he seems to get more serious. The playfulness disappears, replaced by a more searching demeanor. This isn’t the Bowie of the 1980s revue. This is closer to the tormented Bowie of the 70s Berlin grimness.

We get to the triumphantly repeated chorus, and he grins and claps…and then comes that final verse, and for the first time, he grabs the microphone and walks away from center stage. “We’re nothing,” he sings, off to the side and closer to the audience than before. “And no one can help us. Maybe we’re lying…you’d better not stay. We can be heroes, just for one day.”

And boom. The music ends on his drawn out last note.

The band kicks back in for another round of sing along, and Bowie joyfully holds the microphone out for the crowd to sing along—but it’s an odd place to have ended, even if the moment’s swept away.

That’s with the hindsight of repeated viewings, though. What strikes you immediately is just how happy, how beautiful, even how, yes, triumphant Bowie seems during those final moments.

Of course, one of the things that always must be kept in mind when analyzing David Bowie is how openly chameleonic he is—he’s always been open about being fascinated by the idea of personas, changing them every album or two. He’s interested in approaching rock and roll the way a writer approaches a novel—as a means to tell a story and explore various ideas, and not just to sing one’s diary. With his theatre background, it’s impossible to know when, if ever, he “means” something, the way we always assumed, when we were teenagers, our musical heroes meant the things they sang. So with Bowie, when you find an especially impassioned performance, it’s simply not possible to ascertain whether he was really that passionate during that particular performance or whether he was just doing an especially convincing job of being passionate.

David Bowie’s a genius when it comes to synthesizing disparate elements in a larger and more effective whole, and with this song he reached the kind of rarified air only the very greatest can ever hope to even glimpse. That lightweights like the Wallflowers even considered attempting this song illustrates as well as anything could just how hopelessly overmatched they were before they even started.

As a wise man once said, you come at the king, you best not miss. 

A Very Special Ferris

In which the Greatest Film Ever becomes even better. 

 

Sign o' the Times?

So we hop in the car and I'm driving the two middle girls to piano and they haven't stopped chattering once since well before we'd left the house. I've just pulled out of the driveway and as I flip on the radio "Sweet Child o' Mine" is starting up—it's the build-up as the drums kick in, right before Axl starts singing. 

The moment the song comes on, all talk stops instantly. After the first verse and one chorus, the Bean finally speaks. "Dad? What is this? I mean, what's the name of the song and who's singing?" 

I look back as I start to answer and I see the 12-year-old is gently headbanging, an intense look in her eyes.

Should I be worried? 

Fists and Roses

So the 2-year-old comes trotting down the hall. He stops when he sees me and beams. Some sister has carefully arranged a beautiful circlet on his head just so, its flowers half buried in his curly hair, the ribbons hanging down in ever so lovely a manner. 

He stands there a moment so I can admire. Then a gleam comes into his eye and he charges, slamming into me full force, trying as hard as he can to knock me down. Despite his best efforts, he doesn't. Instead, he bounces off and sits down hard and proceeds to belly laugh for half a minute before getting up and trotting off again. 

Boys are different. 

22 minutes and 25 seconds

That's how long it took me to wash the dishes tonight. I know, because it took me exactly as long as the first 5 songs of U2's War album. You see, that's pretty much my relationship to music these days—how long it takes me to wash the dishes or drive somewhere or rock someone to sleep. 

Used to be, back when I was an angry young man / pathetic young whelp, music and I were soul mates. We loved each other truly, madly, deeply. And it was a two-way street, no matter what music might say about me these days. You know how fickle music can be. Oh, it seems faithful, and it might be for a long, long, long time, maybe even forever with some people. And yet with others, suddenly one day, BOOM. It'll turn on you, without warning.

Parked in an orange beanbag chair located precisely between two big Klipsch speakers, seated an ideal 7.34 feet away for maximum stereo separation and sonic clarity, a double LP sleeve designed by Hipgnosis in my lap, I would not so much listen to the music as commune with the msuic, enter into dialogue with the music, become one with the music. Why, I was so hardcore, I didn't just reserve this sort of serious study for Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy or Pink Floyd's Animals or Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band or Astral Weeks. Oh, no, not I. No, I was so badass, I once listened to "Daydream Believer"—that's right, by the Monkees and, yes, this may be the first time anyone was ever described as badass for listening to the Monkees and that shows you just how badass I am or was because I love that song and am not afraid to admit it—for two hours straight, putting that one track on repeat, delving into the mysteries I was sure were contained within its saccharine lyrics and intoxicating melody. Okay, fine, so it was after yet another miserable dance sophomore year and I was pretty hammered on peppermint schnapps and I think I actually passed out after about the third spin and woke up around the 37th. BUT THAT'S NOT THE POINT. 

The point is...you know, I'm not sure what the point is, 'cuz between the last graf and this one I had to put two kids to bed. But I'm pretty sure there was a point and it was really cogent and insightful and oop, now someone needs help in the bathroom and I gotta run. Sorry, music: you've been replaced. Guess maybe I was the fickle one after all. But maybe someday, if you're willing to wait a while? I'll be back. I promise. Probably.

Expert Opinion

So we're driving home when I realize I've forgotten tortillas. 

"Well...rats," I say. 

"What, Daddy?" asks the senator from the back seat. 

"Oh, nothing, punkin," I say. "Just...well, I kinda screwed up what I bought for dinner." 

She's silent for a few seconds, considering. Then with the sagacity gained during her four and a half years on this planet, she says, "No...no, I like what we bought." 

Well. Okay then.

(And she ate every bite.)

 

Yu Ming Is Ainm Dom

I Love Tax Day

So a couple writers have new editorials about taxes. Friend of a friend Steve Almond's is here. And here's one from a writer named JK Rowling. And while I've had my issues with some of her other writings, I have to say, I think she hit a home run with this one. 

Here's a piece I first wrote a few years ago. It's still true, even if the glorious yet oh so dysfunctional state of California did totally sodomize our savings this year—perhaps even more so. Ah, the price we pay. 

I loves me tax day.

Well, okay, not really. I hate it just like everyone else, only even more so because, well, I’m me and I feel things more passionately than anyone else alive.

(Just like everyone else.)

I’m disorganized and hate details (unless they pertain to who played what on which song on this or that precise date). And, of course, I’m poor. But not quite poor enough (and clearly not nearly rich enough) to avoid paying taxes.

But paying taxes is simply how we invest in this great nation of ours. So when I pay my taxes, I feel good(ish) because I know I’m paying for some poor kid somewhere to have a decent breakfast and then maybe I’m the one who bought him the biology book he’s going to be using. And maybe he’ll grow up and cure cancer.

If you’re to the right of me—and there aren’t many who aren’t—be happy: when you pay your taxes today (provided you aren’t too rich to ever actually pay taxes, having your accounts off-shore and all), you’re buying body armor for our brave men and women fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Well, strike that: no one apparently pays for that except their families. But your taxes are what built our newest aircraft carrier, which keeps these here United States of America safe from them who plot day and night to do ‘em harm. And how cool is that?

I don’t exactly like shelling out a lot of money to buy my kids shoes, as happens every other month it seems. But it needs to be done because, well, it turns out after careful examination, children need to wear things on their feet so’s they can run and jump and be let into stores and it seems socks alone aren’t always quite enough. So you buy the shoes. Because you need to. And because you love your kids enough to want them to do well, and children without shoes, studies have proven conclusively, don’t do as well as children with shoes. Also? After a while? Their feets get kinda bloody and raw. Or so I've heard. And you do it because appropriately shod with a good pair of shoes, who knows where or what those kids’ll be able to do? You do it because you love them and it's the right thing to do. Still not a lot of fun, maybe, but more more than worth it in the end.

So. Thanks to all of you out there for buying my country a pair of shoes today.

(Metaphorically speaking, of course. As far as I know.) 

His Pain

I feels it. 

Artists Who Hate America

I love the internet.

I just read the following comment:

do the lirics to Springsteens song 
" born in the USA" bother anybody else besides me???

And I wanted to say:

Yes! Thank you! I thought I was the only one!

Although, you know what's even worse? Have you ever read The Grapes of Wrath? Oh my goodness! You won't belieeeeeve the way America is portrayed. 

It's shameful, really. 

UPDATE: Ah, now I see why the lirics bothered the aforementioned internet poster. 

It always goes back to Glenn Beck, doesn't it? What we do without him? 

In Memoriam

The Defense Department last week identified the following American military personnel who died in Afghanistan and Iraq or from their injuries at a U.S. military hospital:

Marcus R. Alford, 28, of Knoxville, Tenn.; captain, Army National Guard. Alford was one of two guardsmen killed Feb. 21 when their OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopter crashed near Qayyarah Airfield West south of Mosul, Iraq, north of Baghdad. He was assigned to the 1st Squadron, 230th Cavalry Regiment in Louisville, Tenn.

Joshua H. Birchfield, 24, of Westville, Ind.; lance corporal, Marine Corps. Birchfield was killed Feb. 19 when his unit was attacked with small-arms fire in southern Afghanistan's Helmand province, on the Pakistani border. He was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in Twentynine Palms, Calif.

Michael David P. Cardenaz, 29, of Corona; staff sergeant, Army. Cardenaz was killed Feb. 20 when his unit was attacked with rocket-propelled grenades in eastern Afghanistan's Kunar province, on the Pakistani border. He was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division at Ft. Carson, Colo. 

Christopher W. Eckard, 30, of Hickory, N.C.; staff sergeant, Marine Corps. Eckard was killed Feb. 20 when a roadside bomb exploded near him in southern Afghanistan's Helmand province, on the Pakistani border. He was assigned to the 8th Engineer Support Battalion, 2nd Marine Logistics Group, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Marcos Gorra, 22, of North Bergen, N.J.; sergeant, Army. Gorra died Feb. 21 during a training exercise at Kandahar Air Field, Afghanistan, near Kabul. He was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division at Ft. Bragg, N.C.

Billie J. Grinder, 25, of Gallatin, Tenn.; chief warrant officer, Army. Grinder was one of two guardsmen killed Feb. 21 when their OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopter crashed near Qayyarah Airfield West south of Mosul, Iraq, north of Baghdad. He was assigned to the 1st Squadron, 230th Cavalry Regiment in Louisville, Tenn.

Matthias N. Hanson, 20, of Buffalo, Ky.; lance corporal, Marine Corps. Hanson was killed Feb. 21 when his unit was attacked with small-arms fire in southern Afghanistan's Helmand province, on the Pakistani border. He was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Daniel T. O'Leary, 23, of Youngsville, N.C.; corporal, Army. O'Leary was killed Tuesday when his vehicle overturned in Fallouja, Iraq, west of Baghdad. He was assigned to the 307th Brigade Support Battalion, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division at Ft. Bragg, N.C.

Adam D. Peak, 25, of Florence, Ky.; lance corporal, Marine Corps. Peak was killed Feb. 21 when he stepped on a land mine in southern Afghanistan's Helmand province, on the Pakistani border. He was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Lejeune, N.C.

JRSalvacion, 27, of Ewa Beach, Hawaii; private first class, Army. Salvacion was killed Feb. 21 when insurgents attacked his unit with a homemade bomb in Senjaray in southern Afghanistan's Kandahar province, on the Pakistani border. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division at Ft. Carson, Colo.

William C. Spencer, 40, of Tacoma, Wash.; sergeant, Army National Guard. Spencer died Thursday at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Landstuhl, Germany, of noncombat-related injuries suffered Feb. 20 at Combat Outpost Marez in Mosul, Iraq, north of Baghdad. He was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 146th Field Artillery Regiment in Olympia, Wash.

Gregory S. Stultz, 22, of Brazil, Ind.; corporal, Marine Corps. Stultz was killed Feb. 19 when his unit was attacked with small-arms fire in southern Afghanistan's Helmand province, on the Pakistani border. He was assigned to the 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion, 3rd Marine Division, 3rd Marine Expeditionary Force in Okinawa, Japan.

Eric L. Ward, 19, of Redmond, Wash.; lance corporal, Marine Corps. Ward was killed in combat Feb. 21 in southern Afghanistan's Helmand province, on the Pakistani border. He was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Triple Axe(l)

I've not watched even a single second of the Olympics. But if I'd known they were like this? I'd've been glued to the TV. 

Unanswerable Health Care Questions

Actually, that's not true at all: they're all too answerable. The answers are just too unpleasant for the mainstream media to face head-on. 

Eric Cantor: Don Martin character

Is it just me, or does Eric Cantor look like a Don Martin character? 

Here's Eric Cantor:

 

Now here are some Don Martin characters:

   

Here's what he could do with some relatively famous peoples. 

 

Yeah. No, it's not just me. 

And as a bonus, it also explains some of the stuff he says.