There. It's done, as of about 20 minutes ago. 65,000+ words, in 33 days, with one long holiday weekend full of family and three nights of parent/teacher conferences, mind you. I am so looking forward to reintroducing myself to the idea of free time. I got my winner badge about a week ago, but as of today the manuscript is done. I am immensely proud of the story I've told, and I know I'll be even more proud once its in good enough shape for people to read. Because it's really just a first draft now, which means I haven't even started on the heavy lifting yet. And I'm not planning to for at least a couple of weeks. But for now, I can enjoy the fact that this stage of the process is complete.
So, are you one of the millions out there thinking you'd like to try writing a book someday? The only things standing in your way are finding an idea you want to work with and the motivation to get from start to finish. But what about doing it in just one month? That is a different animal altogether. Here's one person's version of how to get that done:
*Let it take over your life. Write every moment you're able, think about it when you aren't, structure everything else to fit that schedule. Seriously. It's only one month, after all. In the broader scope of your life and what you'll have to show for your efforts when you finish, that's barely a footnote. Suck it up, cupcake.
*Have the right soundtrack. I have three or four albums I became so dependent on over the past month that I'll never again be able to listen to them without visualizing specific scenes from the book.
*Let the caffeine win. I'm not saying this is a good idea overall, but it's a nice temporary solution to the lack of sleep you'll experience. On one hand, it keeps your brain firing off ideas long after it really wants to anymore, and on the other hand it will keep you moving throughout the next day when you're trying to get by on the maybe four hours of sleep you allowed yourself the night before.
*Set your goal and meet it, without excuse. I knew I wanted at least 60,000 words, so I set a goal of 2,000 a day. For those of you in the non-writing world, that's approximately six to eight double-spaced word-processed pages daily. My average at the end? I just did the math on this. 1999.3939 words. So technically I didn't meet the goal, but I got within less than a word per day. I suppose I could have knocked off 20 more words just to hit that mark, but I know I'll but cutting at least 10,000 of them when I start editing, so there wasn't much point. The story only needed what it got.
*Last thing: Have something to say you believe in. In this case, I had a story that has been with me now for over fifteen years in different incarnations. It started as a short story that I liked but others felt ended too abruptly, then it became a manuscript I liked more than the literary agents of America did. When I decided to give it some retooling, I found new things to try that I think have brought it at least close to the epic that I always wanted to tell but knew in my heart I hadn't achieved.
And frankly, I cannot wait for people to read it. Very soon I'll be hitting up a small circle of beta readers to give it a look -- these are the people I know I can trust to give me the honest reads and opinions I'll need before I get into the revision phase, the ones who will be able to see past the typos and misplaced punctuation that comes hand in hand with writing at this speed, and who will be able to read it as a book instead of as "A Book Written By Someone I Know." That's a hard filter to set aside for a lot of people. So, for anyone following my progress who's curious enough to see the final product, I hope to have something ready for you in January. And for the beta readers -- well, you pretty much know who you are at this point and since you're probably some of the few people that follow this blog with any regularity, you should be checking your e-mail very, very soon. I'll be very anxious to hear back from you.
But in the mean time... I think it's time to fire up some mindless XBox again. I believe I have earned it.
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Day 29 - I'm Going Slightly Mad
Okay, the title of this post isn't completely applicable, but I know my future self would deeply regret not commenting on the 20th anniversary of the day Freddie Mercury died -- which was actually five days back now -- so I threw in a little Queen reference just for good measure.
But it does kind of apply, because I am totally banging my head on the wall right now. The manuscript is just this {------------} far from the big climactic set piece at the end. Which is good. The problem is part of my wants to just tear into it, and the wiser, more measured part of me keeps holding back, thinking of the outline, of the pacing, of what needs to be established and accomplished to make this work. More than once today I had a little brainstorm moment hit me at school, and I had to hang onto it with both hands until I had the chance to dig out the phone and send myself a quick e-mail so I wouldn't forget the idea. Because when that happens? You have the cool idea strike and then you forget it? SUCKS. So much.
I would love to just knock my way through that 60,000 word wall tonight, and it's possible I can, but... arrrghh. Outline... mapping... resolution of building characters... moments of truth....
Maybe the title here fits better than I first realized....
But it does kind of apply, because I am totally banging my head on the wall right now. The manuscript is just this {------------} far from the big climactic set piece at the end. Which is good. The problem is part of my wants to just tear into it, and the wiser, more measured part of me keeps holding back, thinking of the outline, of the pacing, of what needs to be established and accomplished to make this work. More than once today I had a little brainstorm moment hit me at school, and I had to hang onto it with both hands until I had the chance to dig out the phone and send myself a quick e-mail so I wouldn't forget the idea. Because when that happens? You have the cool idea strike and then you forget it? SUCKS. So much.
I would love to just knock my way through that 60,000 word wall tonight, and it's possible I can, but... arrrghh. Outline... mapping... resolution of building characters... moments of truth....
Maybe the title here fits better than I first realized....
Friday, November 25, 2011
Day 25
It's nice to meet the goal, but I so wish this meant that even just this first draft was actually finished.
Friday, November 18, 2011
Day 18 - Opportunities
It's Friday afternoon. My weekend is light. I only have a few things to do around the house, a couple of errands to run, and most importantly, NO SCHOOL WORK. Next week is the best week of the year -- the week before Thanksgiving. It's awesome because it starts on a Monday and ends on a Tuesday. And even better, I have all of my plans set. I can show up Monday morning, look at my desk, and see everything ready to go.
So this means I have a huge opportunity to get some big time writing done over the weekend. I'm a little off my 2,000 a day pace because (a) I had my 3rd night of parent teacher conferences Wednesday so I was just too sapped to try and write when I got home, and (b) I decided to take Thursday night off on purpose so I could get all of my school work done and open the weekend for writing. Brilliant plan. I'm refreshed, energized, and know exactly where I'm going. It's just a matter of what kind of word count I'm going to put up over the next couple of days, and with so much time and so few other commitments, I have high hopes of covering a lot of real estate.
So if you read this from the link off Facebook, go ahead and post an encouraging comment or a like. Keep me focused. Keep my honest. I want big numbers by Monday morning, and it doesn't happen automatically.
Okay. Enough of my yakkin'. Here we go....
So this means I have a huge opportunity to get some big time writing done over the weekend. I'm a little off my 2,000 a day pace because (a) I had my 3rd night of parent teacher conferences Wednesday so I was just too sapped to try and write when I got home, and (b) I decided to take Thursday night off on purpose so I could get all of my school work done and open the weekend for writing. Brilliant plan. I'm refreshed, energized, and know exactly where I'm going. It's just a matter of what kind of word count I'm going to put up over the next couple of days, and with so much time and so few other commitments, I have high hopes of covering a lot of real estate.
So if you read this from the link off Facebook, go ahead and post an encouraging comment or a like. Keep me focused. Keep my honest. I want big numbers by Monday morning, and it doesn't happen automatically.
Okay. Enough of my yakkin'. Here we go....
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Day 12 - Shooting for Halfway
Last night was Friday. My day at school went pretty well until the final block, when one of my little hard cases who is going through a significant life change and isn't happy about it decided it was Acting Out Day. This made for a frustrating afternoon, but it's almost impossible to not feel sorry for how unhappy this kid is. Almost.... So by the time I got home, it felt like a good night to eat dinner in front of the TV while catching up on some DVR. This is the first time I have allowed myself to do that in almost two weeks. It felt awesome.
This is what my Nanowrimo Life has been like: Wake up sometime between 4:00 and 5:00 AM, drag my cloudy head out of bed and write for at least an hour. Maybe get back to bed for another hour or so when I finish, depending on if there's enough time to make it worthwhile. I try to keep this going, because I've learned I'm way more productive in the morning than I am at night. Then I go through my school day routine, beginning with the morning shower and ending with the drive home. I try to get home as soon as possible, but I know I usually will need to keep working until 5:00 or so, to make sure the next day is ready and I won't have to bring anything home to do. Because nearly every moment of spare time I have these days goes into writing.
And when I say writing, I don't necessarily mean upping my word count. The process of writing could mean reworking the chapter outlines I have from my prewriting to accommodate any story changes that have come up since I've started. These aren't major changes but there is a domino effect in play, so if one new spark of an idea came to me back in chapter 3, I need to think about how that's going to affect what happens between those characters in chapter 8. Then there's the non-revising, as I've come to think of it. To complete 50,000 words (or still hopefully at least 60,000, in my case) during 30 days you really have to keep the word count steadily climbing, and this doesn't allow for a lot of reflection as you write. If I wasn't caught up in such a sprint, I could take the time to think about why this one word I'm looking at doesn't capture what I'm trying to say as perfectly as I'd like it to. Not so much now. I can't take the time to craft the expression like I'd want to even if what I have really sucks, so I'll just go with the less-than-ideal placeholder phrase, label it with a comment so I remember to come back and fix it later, and on.
The word count push is going well. Even with one night of parent-teacher conferences under my belt, I've been able to maintain a 2,000+ words per day average. The first few days were rough. I had to struggle to find my footing, to figure out what direction I was going to go to make this version of the story as reinvented as I want it to be while still working from the same blueprint I had before. There were a few evenings when I'd sit down and just stare at the blank document and think, "So now what?" for a few minutes. I soon found it worked a lot better to consistently do what I know is a basic good writing practice: I had to make sure I was leaving off at a "good part," cutting myself off at a spot that I hadn't squeezed all of the ideas out of yet so I'd be able to jump back in when I returned. Having that starting point to return to helps a lot.
As I keep pushing forward, there are moments I can feel myself starting to ramble and get repetitive. Which usually isn't okay, but for now it is. I hate to get all artsy with the analogies, but all I need right now is the clay. I need something I can work with later, something I'll be able to sculpt and perfect into the story I already know this is, but just have to go through the little job of creating it. I know I can trim away all of the suck later when it comes to revising, so I'm not worried about it right now.
I'm a fairly goal-oriented person, so it's hard to not keep track of the word count as I write, just to be aware of what kind of progress I'm making. I was hoping that using the Pages full screen feature would help with that, but I was soon reminded that three things are displayed in full screen mode: The document itself, the word count, and the page count. So even though that mode helps get rid of several other distractions for me, it still lets that number keep its place in my brain. Which is sometimes good, and sometimes frustrates the hell out of me.
I've got the soundtrack pretty fine-tuned now, which makes a significant difference. For me, it's a big help to be listening to music while I write, if that music contains the same qualities I'm trying to infuse in the story. Being that this is a ghost story that in some ways is now leaning a little more toward a character-driven horror story, there has been some pretty dark and heavy music in my head lately: Black Sabbath. Metallica. The Cult. Dream Theater. Redemption. Tool. Coheed and Cambria. Judas Priest. Kamelot. Blue Murder. Dio. Iron Maiden. Even a little Ozzy and Nine Inch Nails. This is what I listen to pretty much all the time now -- when I'm writing, when I'm working out, when I'm driving, even when I have the ear buds plugged into my iPhone during prep time at school. I'm surprised I'm not having heavy metal nightmares from all of it.
To give you some perspective of the pace I'm at, I wrote this entire post between about 6:20 AM and 6:59 AM. I'm used to being up and working this early now. And this post alone will be close to 1,100 words by the time I finish.
What did you get done today before The Today Show even started?
This is what my Nanowrimo Life has been like: Wake up sometime between 4:00 and 5:00 AM, drag my cloudy head out of bed and write for at least an hour. Maybe get back to bed for another hour or so when I finish, depending on if there's enough time to make it worthwhile. I try to keep this going, because I've learned I'm way more productive in the morning than I am at night. Then I go through my school day routine, beginning with the morning shower and ending with the drive home. I try to get home as soon as possible, but I know I usually will need to keep working until 5:00 or so, to make sure the next day is ready and I won't have to bring anything home to do. Because nearly every moment of spare time I have these days goes into writing.
And when I say writing, I don't necessarily mean upping my word count. The process of writing could mean reworking the chapter outlines I have from my prewriting to accommodate any story changes that have come up since I've started. These aren't major changes but there is a domino effect in play, so if one new spark of an idea came to me back in chapter 3, I need to think about how that's going to affect what happens between those characters in chapter 8. Then there's the non-revising, as I've come to think of it. To complete 50,000 words (or still hopefully at least 60,000, in my case) during 30 days you really have to keep the word count steadily climbing, and this doesn't allow for a lot of reflection as you write. If I wasn't caught up in such a sprint, I could take the time to think about why this one word I'm looking at doesn't capture what I'm trying to say as perfectly as I'd like it to. Not so much now. I can't take the time to craft the expression like I'd want to even if what I have really sucks, so I'll just go with the less-than-ideal placeholder phrase, label it with a comment so I remember to come back and fix it later, and on.
The word count push is going well. Even with one night of parent-teacher conferences under my belt, I've been able to maintain a 2,000+ words per day average. The first few days were rough. I had to struggle to find my footing, to figure out what direction I was going to go to make this version of the story as reinvented as I want it to be while still working from the same blueprint I had before. There were a few evenings when I'd sit down and just stare at the blank document and think, "So now what?" for a few minutes. I soon found it worked a lot better to consistently do what I know is a basic good writing practice: I had to make sure I was leaving off at a "good part," cutting myself off at a spot that I hadn't squeezed all of the ideas out of yet so I'd be able to jump back in when I returned. Having that starting point to return to helps a lot.
As I keep pushing forward, there are moments I can feel myself starting to ramble and get repetitive. Which usually isn't okay, but for now it is. I hate to get all artsy with the analogies, but all I need right now is the clay. I need something I can work with later, something I'll be able to sculpt and perfect into the story I already know this is, but just have to go through the little job of creating it. I know I can trim away all of the suck later when it comes to revising, so I'm not worried about it right now.
I'm a fairly goal-oriented person, so it's hard to not keep track of the word count as I write, just to be aware of what kind of progress I'm making. I was hoping that using the Pages full screen feature would help with that, but I was soon reminded that three things are displayed in full screen mode: The document itself, the word count, and the page count. So even though that mode helps get rid of several other distractions for me, it still lets that number keep its place in my brain. Which is sometimes good, and sometimes frustrates the hell out of me.
I've got the soundtrack pretty fine-tuned now, which makes a significant difference. For me, it's a big help to be listening to music while I write, if that music contains the same qualities I'm trying to infuse in the story. Being that this is a ghost story that in some ways is now leaning a little more toward a character-driven horror story, there has been some pretty dark and heavy music in my head lately: Black Sabbath. Metallica. The Cult. Dream Theater. Redemption. Tool. Coheed and Cambria. Judas Priest. Kamelot. Blue Murder. Dio. Iron Maiden. Even a little Ozzy and Nine Inch Nails. This is what I listen to pretty much all the time now -- when I'm writing, when I'm working out, when I'm driving, even when I have the ear buds plugged into my iPhone during prep time at school. I'm surprised I'm not having heavy metal nightmares from all of it.
To give you some perspective of the pace I'm at, I wrote this entire post between about 6:20 AM and 6:59 AM. I'm used to being up and working this early now. And this post alone will be close to 1,100 words by the time I finish.
What did you get done today before The Today Show even started?
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Day 1
Yes, I know I just said I was going to take a break from writing here during Nanowrimo. But just this evening I decided it might be interesting to keep a record of the process as it happens, day by day, almost like some first-person journalistic perspective, if only for my own benefit. The whole thing moves so fast that it's all a blur by the end of the month, and I think I might like the chance to look back and remind myself of how it all happened. I don't know if this will happen daily, but we'll see how things go. I won't be putting any Facebook links here since I'm all but abstaining from that Time Hole while this is going on. Which will certainly slow down the hit count (not that it's impressive to begin with), but I don't care. If I do keep up with this, I'm doing it for me.
Day 1 - 2,024 Words
If I want to hit 60,000 words, I need to average 2,000 a day. Not impossible. I started early this morning, finding myself awake at 3:30 and just getting up and diving in instead of rolling over and turning on a WTF podcast to try and fall back asleep. I did eventually get in a couple more hours of sleep, and by the time I left for school I was already over 1,000 words.
I didn't really feel like I hit a wall until I started up again at night. One of the biggest challenges about writing is knowing where you want the story to go, but having to do all of the grunt work involved with planning out every footstep of the way it takes to get there. I've already spent a good amount of time sitting and staring, trying to get started. I have to remember at this stage it's all about word count. I can't be too picky. I have to leave the phone alone, no matter how many Words With Friends notifications I get. I don't need another drink. I don't have to delete this song from the playlist right this moment. I don't have to line up the desktop Sticky Notes so they're easier to follow. Just keep writing. This is just the beginning. There's a little voice in what I've got, but that has to be okay. I've got the outlines, and the character sketches, and the notes. I can always fix things later. I have to start strong and cover some real estate.
Hit 2,000 words and call it a night. Take some time to plan where you're going to start tomorrow so you don't have to face the blank page cold. Be ready to hit the ground running and build some momentum.
Day 1 - 2,024 Words
If I want to hit 60,000 words, I need to average 2,000 a day. Not impossible. I started early this morning, finding myself awake at 3:30 and just getting up and diving in instead of rolling over and turning on a WTF podcast to try and fall back asleep. I did eventually get in a couple more hours of sleep, and by the time I left for school I was already over 1,000 words.
I didn't really feel like I hit a wall until I started up again at night. One of the biggest challenges about writing is knowing where you want the story to go, but having to do all of the grunt work involved with planning out every footstep of the way it takes to get there. I've already spent a good amount of time sitting and staring, trying to get started. I have to remember at this stage it's all about word count. I can't be too picky. I have to leave the phone alone, no matter how many Words With Friends notifications I get. I don't need another drink. I don't have to delete this song from the playlist right this moment. I don't have to line up the desktop Sticky Notes so they're easier to follow. Just keep writing. This is just the beginning. There's a little voice in what I've got, but that has to be okay. I've got the outlines, and the character sketches, and the notes. I can always fix things later. I have to start strong and cover some real estate.
Hit 2,000 words and call it a night. Take some time to plan where you're going to start tomorrow so you don't have to face the blank page cold. Be ready to hit the ground running and build some momentum.
Saturday, October 29, 2011
A Few Things to Mention Before I Leave
It's the morning of October 29th as I write this, so Nanowrimo 2011 is hours away from beginning. I've been playing with different ideas over the past several weeks, looking for ways to build concrete ideas around collections of notes and random thoughts. And I seriously feel more prepared to begin than I have been for any of the three previous years I've taken this on. But right now that planning doesn't feel like it adds up to much, because the only thing I'm thinking as I get closer to the starting date is "Holy crap, is this going to be a lot of work." All that work I've done to try and wean myself off caffeine? Gone. Worthwhile sleep? Not so much. Too early mornings and too late nights? Here for the foreseeable future. It really makes me question why I'm bothering, and I don't mean participating in this particular marathon so much, but to question why I even bother investing the time it takes to try and write at all. The odds are overwhelming that anything I ever write, including any given post here, might read by maybe twenty people, tops, if I'm lucky. But I guess in the end it comes down to that in the life I've built for myself I simply can't see myself NOT writing. So forward I will go. Even if it means that 'Summer Vacation' will likely be taking a vacation of its own for the next month or so. I'll probably do a series of short posts to just clear my head from time to time and remind myself that the word count is actually moving forward, but seriously, knowing what I've got ahead of me this year, I fully know I'll be lucky to even get that much done here.
So today I'm doing another version of Take Out The Trash Day, or Big Block of Cheese Day. And even if the latter reference doesn't quite apply as much as the former, I like it better. And if you don't understand the references behind either of them, sit down and watch "The West Wing" already....
*I still can't wrap my head completely around this new level of social interaction called the Facebook friendship. I have several Facebook friends I see frequently, and yet we never mention anything to each other about anything that's come up on Facebook. Has commenting on a post, or even just reading one, or even clicking the Like button, taken the place of actual discourse? And how is it there are people you can have several common friends with but neither person pulls trigger to "friend" each other? For my part, I really hate the idea of trying to wedge myself into someone else's life in any capacity at all, even just being on a Facebook list, unless I'm positive I'd be welcomed, so I don't send out a lot of friend requests. And yes, I'll fully admit the collection of defense mechanisms that passes for my personality doesn't make it easy for even people I LIKE to reach my inner circle. But who are these people that have 900 or 1,000 Facebook friends? How do you even KNOW 1,000 people? Do you friend everyone you share a bus ride or a grocery store express line with? My point here is: Out of all these Facebook changes, I actually kind of like the group update thing. Even with the small number of friends I have, I can click those and see what's going on just with my family, or one particular group of friends, or whatever. It feeds my compulsive organization.
*Monday will be the Halloween party at school, which means the bunny suit will again be making an appearance. Based on the popular t-shirts at school this year, I'm curious to find out exactly how many people will be dressed up as Angry Birds or Wimpy Kids. I'm not sure how someone would pull off a Wimpy Kid costume, but something tells me the good people of the costume industry have already figured this one out.
*All week I've been listening to Coldplay's newest album, "Mylo Xyloto," which, even though it has a tragically awful title, is a pretty good album. Now, do I consider myself a Coldplay fan? Not really. If I'm a fan of someone, I really have to think they can do no wrong, or at least have a remarkably high average of doing things right. And Coldplay? Eh... not so much. I hate the song "Yellow" so much that if it comes on the radio it makes me want to scrape all of the skin from my face just so I will feel such an overwhelming pain I won't notice the song anymore. I bought their second album when I kept reading and hearing about how great it was, but when I listened myself I felt it was the musical equivalent of an empty notebook.
Being ever the optimist (?!) though, I still bought their third album "XY" when some of the radio songs were interesting. I hoped this indicated a new direction and they really were becoming a band close to as great as everyone kept saying they were, but it wound up having just a couple of interesting radio songs and more of the same dull. But then "Viva La Vida" came along, and yeah, even if that title song became ubiquitous in the summer of 2008, I liked the album so much it made me glad I gave them one more chance. It had a very strong progressive streak for a pop album and really broke around what was considered the template for popular music at the time. When they released the companion EP "Prospekt's March" soon after, I took the best songs from the two and made up my own playlist album that I think is better than either of them. So I was kind of psyched for this new one, since I expected they'd continue the more progressive trend and not fall back to the empty melancholy pop that defined them early on. And after a week, I'm very happy with this new one. Still prog-pop, but with a much stronger electronic sound to it. And I don't mind saying -- partly because I know it would offend the Coldplay antifans/musical hipsters of the world -- "Mylo Xyloto" has a musical sensibility to it that would easily let it pass as a lost album by Cloud Cult. And if you have issues with this? Shut up. My music can mean something to me without me caring if it means anything to you.
*I am completely addicted to the "Stuff You Should Know" podcast. I have few moments of zen more satisfying than lying down in my offce and playing Bejeweled Blitz or Words with Friends on the iPhone while listening to Josh and Chuck have their researched conversations about things like asteroids, the Nile River, Quantum Suicide, Scooby Doo, hiccups, samurai, breathalyzers, alien hand syndrome, how dogs perceive time, lobotomies, James Bond, innovation, mountaintop removal mining, igloos, venomous animals, Legos, Spam, Twinkies, anti-matter spacecraft, or any other number of seemingly random but surprisingly fascinating topics. It's almost enough to make me wish I lived in Atlanta so I could hang out with these guys, if I was smart enough to keep up with the conversation. If you listen to Podcasts at all or are even just curious, I highly recommend going on iTunes and finding one of these to try out. Most of them are only about half an hour long. Pick a topic that sounds interesting and you'll be hooked.
*And now to close, a special dedication to Mr. And Mrs. Bomani, in light of the rather significant week they've had. Perhaps you won't entirely agree with the philosophy of these lyrics, but I'm confident you'll appreciate the poetry and sentiment behind them:
Taken from "Living Proof," by Bruce Springsteen from the 1991 album "Lucky Town."
Well now on a summer night
In a dusky room
Come a little piece of the Lord's undying light
Crying like he swallowed the fiery moon
In his mother's arms
It was all the beauty I could take
Like the missing words to some prayer that I could never make
In a world so hard and dirty
So fouled and confused
Searching for a little bit of God's mercy
I found living proof
And thank you for not naming him Brock.
Okay folks. Talk to you in a month. Wish me luck, and if you do see me in the real world, stay on my back. It takes a lot of pushing to come up with 50,000 words.
So today I'm doing another version of Take Out The Trash Day, or Big Block of Cheese Day. And even if the latter reference doesn't quite apply as much as the former, I like it better. And if you don't understand the references behind either of them, sit down and watch "The West Wing" already....
*I still can't wrap my head completely around this new level of social interaction called the Facebook friendship. I have several Facebook friends I see frequently, and yet we never mention anything to each other about anything that's come up on Facebook. Has commenting on a post, or even just reading one, or even clicking the Like button, taken the place of actual discourse? And how is it there are people you can have several common friends with but neither person pulls trigger to "friend" each other? For my part, I really hate the idea of trying to wedge myself into someone else's life in any capacity at all, even just being on a Facebook list, unless I'm positive I'd be welcomed, so I don't send out a lot of friend requests. And yes, I'll fully admit the collection of defense mechanisms that passes for my personality doesn't make it easy for even people I LIKE to reach my inner circle. But who are these people that have 900 or 1,000 Facebook friends? How do you even KNOW 1,000 people? Do you friend everyone you share a bus ride or a grocery store express line with? My point here is: Out of all these Facebook changes, I actually kind of like the group update thing. Even with the small number of friends I have, I can click those and see what's going on just with my family, or one particular group of friends, or whatever. It feeds my compulsive organization.
*Monday will be the Halloween party at school, which means the bunny suit will again be making an appearance. Based on the popular t-shirts at school this year, I'm curious to find out exactly how many people will be dressed up as Angry Birds or Wimpy Kids. I'm not sure how someone would pull off a Wimpy Kid costume, but something tells me the good people of the costume industry have already figured this one out.
*All week I've been listening to Coldplay's newest album, "Mylo Xyloto," which, even though it has a tragically awful title, is a pretty good album. Now, do I consider myself a Coldplay fan? Not really. If I'm a fan of someone, I really have to think they can do no wrong, or at least have a remarkably high average of doing things right. And Coldplay? Eh... not so much. I hate the song "Yellow" so much that if it comes on the radio it makes me want to scrape all of the skin from my face just so I will feel such an overwhelming pain I won't notice the song anymore. I bought their second album when I kept reading and hearing about how great it was, but when I listened myself I felt it was the musical equivalent of an empty notebook.
Being ever the optimist (?!) though, I still bought their third album "XY" when some of the radio songs were interesting. I hoped this indicated a new direction and they really were becoming a band close to as great as everyone kept saying they were, but it wound up having just a couple of interesting radio songs and more of the same dull. But then "Viva La Vida" came along, and yeah, even if that title song became ubiquitous in the summer of 2008, I liked the album so much it made me glad I gave them one more chance. It had a very strong progressive streak for a pop album and really broke around what was considered the template for popular music at the time. When they released the companion EP "Prospekt's March" soon after, I took the best songs from the two and made up my own playlist album that I think is better than either of them. So I was kind of psyched for this new one, since I expected they'd continue the more progressive trend and not fall back to the empty melancholy pop that defined them early on. And after a week, I'm very happy with this new one. Still prog-pop, but with a much stronger electronic sound to it. And I don't mind saying -- partly because I know it would offend the Coldplay antifans/musical hipsters of the world -- "Mylo Xyloto" has a musical sensibility to it that would easily let it pass as a lost album by Cloud Cult. And if you have issues with this? Shut up. My music can mean something to me without me caring if it means anything to you.
*I am completely addicted to the "Stuff You Should Know" podcast. I have few moments of zen more satisfying than lying down in my offce and playing Bejeweled Blitz or Words with Friends on the iPhone while listening to Josh and Chuck have their researched conversations about things like asteroids, the Nile River, Quantum Suicide, Scooby Doo, hiccups, samurai, breathalyzers, alien hand syndrome, how dogs perceive time, lobotomies, James Bond, innovation, mountaintop removal mining, igloos, venomous animals, Legos, Spam, Twinkies, anti-matter spacecraft, or any other number of seemingly random but surprisingly fascinating topics. It's almost enough to make me wish I lived in Atlanta so I could hang out with these guys, if I was smart enough to keep up with the conversation. If you listen to Podcasts at all or are even just curious, I highly recommend going on iTunes and finding one of these to try out. Most of them are only about half an hour long. Pick a topic that sounds interesting and you'll be hooked.
*And now to close, a special dedication to Mr. And Mrs. Bomani, in light of the rather significant week they've had. Perhaps you won't entirely agree with the philosophy of these lyrics, but I'm confident you'll appreciate the poetry and sentiment behind them:
Taken from "Living Proof," by Bruce Springsteen from the 1991 album "Lucky Town."
Well now on a summer night
In a dusky room
Come a little piece of the Lord's undying light
Crying like he swallowed the fiery moon
In his mother's arms
It was all the beauty I could take
Like the missing words to some prayer that I could never make
In a world so hard and dirty
So fouled and confused
Searching for a little bit of God's mercy
I found living proof
And thank you for not naming him Brock.
Okay folks. Talk to you in a month. Wish me luck, and if you do see me in the real world, stay on my back. It takes a lot of pushing to come up with 50,000 words.
Friday, October 21, 2011
Return to the Lake
Nanowrimo 2011 is less than two weeks away. In case you don’t know what that is or have forgotten since the last time I got all self-indulgent about it, you can find out more here and here.
This will be my fourth time, and I’m proud to say I’ve come out on top each year I’ve taken it on. The dynamic will be different this year though: The friend who originally convinced me to try it is taking what may or may not be a temporary respite from the endeavor. This was a little concerning at first since taking on such a monumental project is easier when you have someone working in parallel to motivate you. But she’s out of the picture, and instead my writer cousin is going to be joining me on the Nano road. No, not that writer cousin -- I’ve leaned on him to try it before and he always finds some greased-pig way out of daring to take it on. I didn’t even bother asking for this November since I’m sure the little pansy would play the “Yeah, but my son was just born LITERALLY DAYS AGO so I’ve got other things to do with my time” card. And considering that, well, I guess he’s off the hook for at least one more year. So instead I’m going with my other writer cousin, my young protegé, the little Texas dude with a mind twisted enough to try reimagining the classics of children’s literature as ultra-violent revenge quest adventures. But since he has a few middle school commitments to attend to he’ll be taking part in the Youth program, for which he only has to produce 30,000 words or so over the month. Yeah, only. Ask yourself the last time you wrote something 30,000 words long. In a month. No small feat, especially when you aren’t even old enough to get a learner’s permit. But he sounds pretty keyed up to get started, which gets him over the biggest hurdle.
I remember my initial year of Nanowrimo as being a serious a battle. I focused on word count first and story second, and put together a manuscript that now sits in a folder somewhere, a cool idea with flashes of potential that was paired with an awkward execution. My second year went much better; I had a concept with a lot of emotion attached to it. And even though I had little idea about where the story was going, the whole thing just bled out of me once I started. That one turned out well enough to attract the attention of at least one agent, and now sits in a folder with scads of revision notes waiting for its turn to come back to life. Then last year, Year 3, I took on something far more abstract and experimental than I’d ever tried before, which stands as easily the most polarizing project I’ve ever finished. Some people loved it. Some hated it. Few were neutral.
The thing that each of these projects had in common was that I started working on them early in the morning of November first with no preparation other than a few vague ideas of what I wanted to try. This year is going to be different. In fact this year I’ve done such extensive prep that I’m planning on blowing past that built-in goal of 50,000 words and shooting for something just a bit beyond 60K. And I have no doubt I’ll be able to do it, mostly because, in a manner of speaking, I’m already more than halfway there.
Now, before anyone accuses me of cheating, let me explain... This year instead of starting over with a brand new idea and beginning a manuscript from scratch, I’m taking an existing one, arguably my strongest one, and rewriting it. Almost completely. Just over a year ago I thought I had it to a point where it was ready to go on submission, but twenty or so form rejections later I began to have second thoughts. As I ran it past a few people for second looks and took a hard look at it myself, I started to see it as more of a concept in a later draft form than a finished work. Comments people had made, both positive and critical, took on new life. Random ideas I’d gotten from different beta readers began inspiring new directions. Time spent reading different articles gave me ideas about how I could approach this, and before long it started to grow into something deeper, more fully developed, and... seriously? More frightening than it was before. (And if you’ve ever been one of my beta readers in the past, you’ve likely figured out which manuscript I’m referring to by now, and you probably get the title of this post.) Ironically, since I’m knee deep in revision planning, the same version of the manuscript that was dismissed so many times over has a little piece of life to it right now since it’s being read to a class of kids who are right in the target demographic, and from the updates I get about progress it sounds like it’s going over like gangbusters. A few kids have been creeped out by it during read aloud. One student came back to school telling of nightmares she’d had related to the story, and another hijacked a couple of characters to use as examples in a piece of his own writing work. Cool things for sure, but it all makes me think, “What until you see what’s still coming.”
The puzzle pieces came together to show me what I could do to make it into the epic I’ve always wanted it to be but knew in my heart it hadn’t quite become. But now? Not only do I see how to beef up everything I want to keep and revise everything I don’t, but I’ve found a third act that wasn’t there before, something that sprouted from an itch of an idea that remained after the last time I thought I was finished. Just a thin loophole of possibility that spiraled everything into bigger and darker levels.
So now I have goals. I really would like to see this project someday make a serious run at publication, and I believe it can. But to achieve that I have to methodically work my way through creating a story and a world so undeniable and powerful that it will be impossible for agents to categorically overlook and publishers to ignore. I want it to become the kind of story that people remember from their childhood, partly because of the impact it had on them and partly because of the nightmares it caused. I want it to be a story that I’m proud of, something uncompromisingly engaging that will pull its readers in so deeply they’ll feel disoriented by their surroundings when they pull back from their reading.
Lofty goals for certain, but that’s the vision I have right now, eleven days before I begin working in earnest. I know it can get there. I know it can achieve what I want it to be. The trick will just be making it happen.
This will be my fourth time, and I’m proud to say I’ve come out on top each year I’ve taken it on. The dynamic will be different this year though: The friend who originally convinced me to try it is taking what may or may not be a temporary respite from the endeavor. This was a little concerning at first since taking on such a monumental project is easier when you have someone working in parallel to motivate you. But she’s out of the picture, and instead my writer cousin is going to be joining me on the Nano road. No, not that writer cousin -- I’ve leaned on him to try it before and he always finds some greased-pig way out of daring to take it on. I didn’t even bother asking for this November since I’m sure the little pansy would play the “Yeah, but my son was just born LITERALLY DAYS AGO so I’ve got other things to do with my time” card. And considering that, well, I guess he’s off the hook for at least one more year. So instead I’m going with my other writer cousin, my young protegé, the little Texas dude with a mind twisted enough to try reimagining the classics of children’s literature as ultra-violent revenge quest adventures. But since he has a few middle school commitments to attend to he’ll be taking part in the Youth program, for which he only has to produce 30,000 words or so over the month. Yeah, only. Ask yourself the last time you wrote something 30,000 words long. In a month. No small feat, especially when you aren’t even old enough to get a learner’s permit. But he sounds pretty keyed up to get started, which gets him over the biggest hurdle.
I remember my initial year of Nanowrimo as being a serious a battle. I focused on word count first and story second, and put together a manuscript that now sits in a folder somewhere, a cool idea with flashes of potential that was paired with an awkward execution. My second year went much better; I had a concept with a lot of emotion attached to it. And even though I had little idea about where the story was going, the whole thing just bled out of me once I started. That one turned out well enough to attract the attention of at least one agent, and now sits in a folder with scads of revision notes waiting for its turn to come back to life. Then last year, Year 3, I took on something far more abstract and experimental than I’d ever tried before, which stands as easily the most polarizing project I’ve ever finished. Some people loved it. Some hated it. Few were neutral.
The thing that each of these projects had in common was that I started working on them early in the morning of November first with no preparation other than a few vague ideas of what I wanted to try. This year is going to be different. In fact this year I’ve done such extensive prep that I’m planning on blowing past that built-in goal of 50,000 words and shooting for something just a bit beyond 60K. And I have no doubt I’ll be able to do it, mostly because, in a manner of speaking, I’m already more than halfway there.
Now, before anyone accuses me of cheating, let me explain... This year instead of starting over with a brand new idea and beginning a manuscript from scratch, I’m taking an existing one, arguably my strongest one, and rewriting it. Almost completely. Just over a year ago I thought I had it to a point where it was ready to go on submission, but twenty or so form rejections later I began to have second thoughts. As I ran it past a few people for second looks and took a hard look at it myself, I started to see it as more of a concept in a later draft form than a finished work. Comments people had made, both positive and critical, took on new life. Random ideas I’d gotten from different beta readers began inspiring new directions. Time spent reading different articles gave me ideas about how I could approach this, and before long it started to grow into something deeper, more fully developed, and... seriously? More frightening than it was before. (And if you’ve ever been one of my beta readers in the past, you’ve likely figured out which manuscript I’m referring to by now, and you probably get the title of this post.) Ironically, since I’m knee deep in revision planning, the same version of the manuscript that was dismissed so many times over has a little piece of life to it right now since it’s being read to a class of kids who are right in the target demographic, and from the updates I get about progress it sounds like it’s going over like gangbusters. A few kids have been creeped out by it during read aloud. One student came back to school telling of nightmares she’d had related to the story, and another hijacked a couple of characters to use as examples in a piece of his own writing work. Cool things for sure, but it all makes me think, “What until you see what’s still coming.”
The puzzle pieces came together to show me what I could do to make it into the epic I’ve always wanted it to be but knew in my heart it hadn’t quite become. But now? Not only do I see how to beef up everything I want to keep and revise everything I don’t, but I’ve found a third act that wasn’t there before, something that sprouted from an itch of an idea that remained after the last time I thought I was finished. Just a thin loophole of possibility that spiraled everything into bigger and darker levels.
So now I have goals. I really would like to see this project someday make a serious run at publication, and I believe it can. But to achieve that I have to methodically work my way through creating a story and a world so undeniable and powerful that it will be impossible for agents to categorically overlook and publishers to ignore. I want it to become the kind of story that people remember from their childhood, partly because of the impact it had on them and partly because of the nightmares it caused. I want it to be a story that I’m proud of, something uncompromisingly engaging that will pull its readers in so deeply they’ll feel disoriented by their surroundings when they pull back from their reading.
Lofty goals for certain, but that’s the vision I have right now, eleven days before I begin working in earnest. I know it can get there. I know it can achieve what I want it to be. The trick will just be making it happen.
Friday, October 14, 2011
Wasted (?) Rewards
I really kind of like my credit card this year. Not because my interest rate is super exceptional or anything, but because of my rewards program. As I accumulate points, or whatever virtual currency has been assigned to me in this system, I'm able to trade them in for so, so many different rewards, and they really do have a little shopping mall worth of options for me. But predictably enough I always fall back to a standard choice: the iTunes gift card.
What could make more sense for me? Music is awesome. Free is awesome. Free music? Super awesome. I get free music and suddenly I turn into Andy from "Parks and Recreation" with my excitement. My latest iTunes card showed up in the mail today. I scratched away the little silver bar on the back to reveal my code and put that baby to use right away, downloading the new album from Evanescence, which was just released earlier this week.
You remember Evanescence, don't you? Sure you do. A band led by a female singer with a very strong, melodic voice singing over some depressingly goth/vaguely self-pitying songs built around some minor-key piano lines and crunchy guitar chords. They had a monster album with a couple of big radio hits back around the turn of the century, give or take a couple of years. "Bring Me to Life?" "My Immortal?" Yeah, well, you'd know them if you heard them. The second album came out a couple of years later, well after typical narcissistic infighting decimated the band, leaving only the singer to rebuild it all by pretty much replacing all of the other musicians. Unfortunately, from my perspective at least, one of the best things about the band was the musical composition that went into the songs, and after the big ugly break-up scene sent some of the more pivotal songwriters packing, that was more or less lost. That second album was an okay rock album; it stayed in my rotation for awhile but didn't prove all that memorable in the end. And after that, the band fell off the map for several years.
Until recently, like in earlier this week recently when this new self-titled album came out. I'm listening to it as I write this. And you know what? A lot like that second album. It's a serviceable rock album with some decent little hooks to it, but overall its showing itself to be just as forgettably generic as I expected it to be. Which begs the obvious question -- why did I even buy it if I had such low expectations?
Because there was a chance it would be good.
I've learned over the years that I'm something of an explorer when it comes to music. I read a lot about it, I follow the careers of different musicians, and this way I find myself led into discovering albums I don't or artists I'm not familiar with that could have some kind of connection, however tenuous, to an artist I already know and like. iTunes is really good at exploiting this weakness, so it turns out I will download a lot of music purely on spec -- maybe because of the user reviews, or the editorial write up, or some professional reviews, or the listing of similar artists, or maybe even just the name of the band is kind of cool and I'll decide they must have something going on if they were bold enough to name themselves something like Spock's Beard or The Airborne Toxic Event or Fair to Midland or even The Poodles. (The Poodles are a pretty awesome band playing an updated European knockoff version of 80s metal, by the way. Try and imagine the convoluted thread that led me to that discovery.)
So, to reflect upon this odd proclivity of mine, I'm going to give you a list of artists I've discovered simply because I took a chance, even if I knew next to nothing about them before I gave their music a first try, and I wound up with at least one more album that I really enjoyed. I'm deciding to limit myself to 20, just as a nice round arbitrary number. Here they are, kind of alphabetically I guess:
*The Airborne Toxic Event: Found from an iTunes link. Saw them described as "literate." I was hooked. Three great albums later they are one of my big discoveries of 2011.
*The Answer: A British hard rock band, very old-school and bluesy. iTunes. I can't imagine why they were never played in the U.S.
*Black Country Communion: Heard of on VH1 Classic's, "That Metal Show." A hard rock supergroup from just a couple of years ago, including one ex-member of Dream Theater playing rock so deeply intrenched in the 70s you can almost smell the incense. Two great albums released in about 14 months.
*The Dead Weather: I saw them perform on Letterman or Conan a month before their first album came out. The performance was electric. I didn't realize until it came out that Jack White was in the band.
*Glen Burtnik: Heard a single on the radio back in the 80s. Bought the 45 (I KNOW!) and put it on many of my 80s mix tapes. Found a good back catalog years later.
*Grace Potter and the Nocturnals: Just learned about them this summer when Todd Park Mohr of Big Head Todd and the Monsters mentioned on Facebook his band was about to play a show with them. I figured, if they can keep up with BHTM, they must have something. They do.
*Hum: I heard one song on a radio show and found the album. You know the song -- you'd recognize the hook from countless television commercials. Not a great album overall, but the songs that got to me really, really got to me.
*Kamelot: Found them on Pandora on my Dream Theater station. A little too theatrical, but not necessarily in a bad way.
*Marah: I heard a song on the radio and picked up that Bruce Springsteen was doing a backing vocal. That made it worth checking out.
*Matthew Good: iTunes reviews said he was HUGE in Canada. Some sort of ambient but very good songs.
*Nine Days: A one hit wonder for most people; "Story of a Girl" from the 90s. But I have five or six albums, and they have two or three of my favorite songs.
*The Poodles: Already covered. Awesome and ridiculous at the same time.
*Porcupine Tree: A band that was traveling in the same circles as some of my other favorite bands, so it was inevitable that I checked them out. They are now one of my favorites on their own.
*Ryan Bingham: Heard him on Letterman. Got out of bed and downloaded the album.
*Savatage: When I was wondering where the hell the Trans-Siberian Orchestra had come from, I learned that whole project stemmed from this band. If you think you would like that bombastic, operatic hard rock outside of Christmas songs or forced theme albums, here you go.
*Spock's Beard: I heard they were touring with Dream Theater. A large percentage of all of my favorite music can be traced back here.
*Taking Back Sunday: I liked the band name and saw they'd been around awhile. I figured if they had staying power there must be a reason. Gave it a shot. Good summer driving album.
*The Twilight Singers: Letterman. Immediate download. No regrets.
*30 Seconds to Mars: I was too curious about a Hollywood prettyboy like Jared Leto posing in a ridiculous pink mohawk and trying to say he was a serious musician to not see what it was like. And I'll give the dude his credit -- Fight Club is not the only cool thing he's ever been involved with.
So sometimes it can really pay off to step outside of the comfort zone and see what else is out there, music wise. However, I have to say with full disclosure that my music library has at least twice as many of these exploration artists or albums that turned out to be mostly awful. But I try not to think about those so much....
What could make more sense for me? Music is awesome. Free is awesome. Free music? Super awesome. I get free music and suddenly I turn into Andy from "Parks and Recreation" with my excitement. My latest iTunes card showed up in the mail today. I scratched away the little silver bar on the back to reveal my code and put that baby to use right away, downloading the new album from Evanescence, which was just released earlier this week.
You remember Evanescence, don't you? Sure you do. A band led by a female singer with a very strong, melodic voice singing over some depressingly goth/vaguely self-pitying songs built around some minor-key piano lines and crunchy guitar chords. They had a monster album with a couple of big radio hits back around the turn of the century, give or take a couple of years. "Bring Me to Life?" "My Immortal?" Yeah, well, you'd know them if you heard them. The second album came out a couple of years later, well after typical narcissistic infighting decimated the band, leaving only the singer to rebuild it all by pretty much replacing all of the other musicians. Unfortunately, from my perspective at least, one of the best things about the band was the musical composition that went into the songs, and after the big ugly break-up scene sent some of the more pivotal songwriters packing, that was more or less lost. That second album was an okay rock album; it stayed in my rotation for awhile but didn't prove all that memorable in the end. And after that, the band fell off the map for several years.
Until recently, like in earlier this week recently when this new self-titled album came out. I'm listening to it as I write this. And you know what? A lot like that second album. It's a serviceable rock album with some decent little hooks to it, but overall its showing itself to be just as forgettably generic as I expected it to be. Which begs the obvious question -- why did I even buy it if I had such low expectations?
Because there was a chance it would be good.
I've learned over the years that I'm something of an explorer when it comes to music. I read a lot about it, I follow the careers of different musicians, and this way I find myself led into discovering albums I don't or artists I'm not familiar with that could have some kind of connection, however tenuous, to an artist I already know and like. iTunes is really good at exploiting this weakness, so it turns out I will download a lot of music purely on spec -- maybe because of the user reviews, or the editorial write up, or some professional reviews, or the listing of similar artists, or maybe even just the name of the band is kind of cool and I'll decide they must have something going on if they were bold enough to name themselves something like Spock's Beard or The Airborne Toxic Event or Fair to Midland or even The Poodles. (The Poodles are a pretty awesome band playing an updated European knockoff version of 80s metal, by the way. Try and imagine the convoluted thread that led me to that discovery.)
So, to reflect upon this odd proclivity of mine, I'm going to give you a list of artists I've discovered simply because I took a chance, even if I knew next to nothing about them before I gave their music a first try, and I wound up with at least one more album that I really enjoyed. I'm deciding to limit myself to 20, just as a nice round arbitrary number. Here they are, kind of alphabetically I guess:
*The Airborne Toxic Event: Found from an iTunes link. Saw them described as "literate." I was hooked. Three great albums later they are one of my big discoveries of 2011.
*The Answer: A British hard rock band, very old-school and bluesy. iTunes. I can't imagine why they were never played in the U.S.
*Black Country Communion: Heard of on VH1 Classic's, "That Metal Show." A hard rock supergroup from just a couple of years ago, including one ex-member of Dream Theater playing rock so deeply intrenched in the 70s you can almost smell the incense. Two great albums released in about 14 months.
*The Dead Weather: I saw them perform on Letterman or Conan a month before their first album came out. The performance was electric. I didn't realize until it came out that Jack White was in the band.
*Glen Burtnik: Heard a single on the radio back in the 80s. Bought the 45 (I KNOW!) and put it on many of my 80s mix tapes. Found a good back catalog years later.
*Grace Potter and the Nocturnals: Just learned about them this summer when Todd Park Mohr of Big Head Todd and the Monsters mentioned on Facebook his band was about to play a show with them. I figured, if they can keep up with BHTM, they must have something. They do.
*Hum: I heard one song on a radio show and found the album. You know the song -- you'd recognize the hook from countless television commercials. Not a great album overall, but the songs that got to me really, really got to me.
*Kamelot: Found them on Pandora on my Dream Theater station. A little too theatrical, but not necessarily in a bad way.
*Marah: I heard a song on the radio and picked up that Bruce Springsteen was doing a backing vocal. That made it worth checking out.
*Matthew Good: iTunes reviews said he was HUGE in Canada. Some sort of ambient but very good songs.
*Nine Days: A one hit wonder for most people; "Story of a Girl" from the 90s. But I have five or six albums, and they have two or three of my favorite songs.
*The Poodles: Already covered. Awesome and ridiculous at the same time.
*Porcupine Tree: A band that was traveling in the same circles as some of my other favorite bands, so it was inevitable that I checked them out. They are now one of my favorites on their own.
*Ryan Bingham: Heard him on Letterman. Got out of bed and downloaded the album.
*Savatage: When I was wondering where the hell the Trans-Siberian Orchestra had come from, I learned that whole project stemmed from this band. If you think you would like that bombastic, operatic hard rock outside of Christmas songs or forced theme albums, here you go.
*Spock's Beard: I heard they were touring with Dream Theater. A large percentage of all of my favorite music can be traced back here.
*Taking Back Sunday: I liked the band name and saw they'd been around awhile. I figured if they had staying power there must be a reason. Gave it a shot. Good summer driving album.
*The Twilight Singers: Letterman. Immediate download. No regrets.
*30 Seconds to Mars: I was too curious about a Hollywood prettyboy like Jared Leto posing in a ridiculous pink mohawk and trying to say he was a serious musician to not see what it was like. And I'll give the dude his credit -- Fight Club is not the only cool thing he's ever been involved with.
So sometimes it can really pay off to step outside of the comfort zone and see what else is out there, music wise. However, I have to say with full disclosure that my music library has at least twice as many of these exploration artists or albums that turned out to be mostly awful. But I try not to think about those so much....
Sunday, October 2, 2011
The Annual Dop Memorial Excerpt Post
We're closing in on October 5th here, which many of the people who might sporadically read the blog should recognize as the date my sister Erin finally lost her battle with cancer. Seven years ago, which isn't an anniversary number that carries any added gravity on its own, but just seems like such a long time for us to have been without her now.
Yesterday I went to see the movie "50/50" with Nephew #1. It felt more than serendipitous for that movie to be released within a week of the date she died, so I really wanted to go this weekend, but I didn't want to alone. Ideally I would have gone with my sister but it was her weekend to work and I was too anxious to see it to wait for another time. Luckily Nephew #1 got off his McDonald's shift in time to make a matinee (and when did Andover matinee prices go up to $7.00, by the way?), and he really would have been the next best choice for me as far as who I'd see it with; after all, I'm his godfather and she was his godmother. He was ten years old when it was all happening and a pretty bright ten at that, which meant he was all too aware of what was going on at the time. After seeing the movie -- which is excellent, by the way, if you can stand more than a few jokes about medicinal marijuana -- I wanted to ask him how much he remembered about that time. But he's a senior now and had to read "Beowulf" over the weekend, so he had places to be. Yeesh. Can I just say how glad I am I'm not the student anymore?
I really expected this year was going to be acutely painful for me, with the recent death of my dog still compounding all of my emotion related to this. But so far that hasn't really been the case, and honestly I'm kind of disappointed by that. A part of me wants the hurt. Feeling that pain again brings me back to that experience with real clarity. That specific October pain is now a part of my relationship with her, and if time is separating me from that and the pain is beginning to fade, it makes me a little concerned to think it will be something else I might have to face giving up eventually. And you know, damn it, I've already had quite a bit taken from me here as it is.
I was working this out yesterday over e-mail with a friend of mine, who pointed out that maybe, just maybe, Erin would probably be looking down about now and wishing I would just try being happy instead of looking for ways to trigger the pain again just for the sake of reliving it. Which brings us to this year's quotation. Last year I posted a short excerpt from the memoir manuscript I wrote in the aftermath of the whole experience, and decided this year I would again. To reflect the idea that maybe (!) I'm better off looking for happy instead of hurt, I'm presenting a passage that shows my cousin trying to make that same point with me several years ago, right in the middle of everything while it was happening.
**********
I was dreading summer vacation that year since I was fully expecting Erin to die before the fall, but at the same time I couldn’t wait to get out of school. As the year ended I was caught in a pattern of bizarre dreams, many of which were all too fresh in my memory after waking. A lot of these dreams had a recurring theme -- the people in my life were pitying me behind my back, but few ever stepped forth to do or say anything about it. On rare occasions someone would, doing exactly what I needed even though I hadn’t known myself that I needed it. It felt so comforting to know someone cared, even if it was only in a dream.
But too often this wasn’t happening in the real world, and this misplaced feeling of abandonment carried over into my daily life. As the last day of school drew closer I became increasingly withdrawn, ignoring several of my friends, not wanting to give them the chance to do it to me first. I convinced myself most of the people at school weren’t going to be there for me and weren’t worth the time or effort it would take for me to hate them over it. I bitterly thought I was doing them a favor by cutting them off, which would make it easier for them to pretend my problems and I didn’t exist, saving them the trouble of making promises of support they never intended to keep.
The last day of school was a harsh reminder of the previous year when Erin’s cancer had returned, so I just wanted to pack my classroom and get the holy hell out of there. I spent most of the day plugged into my iPod, a perfect way to completely ignore people. If someone tried to talk to me, all I had to do was give them a blank stare and say “What?” which was usually met with a laugh and a dismissive wave. I couldn’t avoid everyone though, and a few people got past my defenses. They wouldn’t simply wish me a good summer, but included some generic attempt at wisdom, like “Enjoy the time you have with your sister,” or “I hope your family has a lot of good times together.” Which I usually took as “Thank God I’m not you.”
Was it fair for me to categorically write people off this way? Not at all. There were definitely cases where it applied, but it was far from being as universal as I made myself believe. But that’s where I was. Anger feels better than despondency. It’s a dark way to look at things, but it’s true.
From: Kelly
Date: June 5, 2004
I don't see anything so weird about feeling less close with people who really can’t have any idea what you're going through, no matter how nice they are and how much they want to help. I'm sure it's hard to get nothing but pity from people who probably would rather be anywhere than standing there thinking about what to say. That doesn't mean they don't care about you, it's just uncomfortable for people to go from daily banter to serious issues. So maybe you're catching weird vibes from others and that’s what is making you avoid them. It might not be you, or at least not all you. Anyway, God knows you have every right to be having a difficult time dealing emotionally with everything and to go back and forth between something so serious as Erin's cancer and daily conversation. So don't beat yourself up. I just hope you aren't keeping yourself from enjoying everyday things. I'm sure Erin would want you to continue to have normal daily pleasures such as moronic and unimportant fun conversation with your friends.
**********
Okay, so you see what I mean about pain? Just pray you never experience anything like my family had to go through. It's not pretty.
But now maybe this week I'm just going to acknowledge that this awful thing happened once, and that it more or less dismantled what my life was at the time. But instead of dwelling on it, I'm just going to keep my head up and notice that most of life and the world surrounding me now really isn't all that bad.
After all, life happens the way it does, and sometimes it sucks. But we keep on living it anyway, because sometimes it doesn't.
Yesterday I went to see the movie "50/50" with Nephew #1. It felt more than serendipitous for that movie to be released within a week of the date she died, so I really wanted to go this weekend, but I didn't want to alone. Ideally I would have gone with my sister but it was her weekend to work and I was too anxious to see it to wait for another time. Luckily Nephew #1 got off his McDonald's shift in time to make a matinee (and when did Andover matinee prices go up to $7.00, by the way?), and he really would have been the next best choice for me as far as who I'd see it with; after all, I'm his godfather and she was his godmother. He was ten years old when it was all happening and a pretty bright ten at that, which meant he was all too aware of what was going on at the time. After seeing the movie -- which is excellent, by the way, if you can stand more than a few jokes about medicinal marijuana -- I wanted to ask him how much he remembered about that time. But he's a senior now and had to read "Beowulf" over the weekend, so he had places to be. Yeesh. Can I just say how glad I am I'm not the student anymore?
I really expected this year was going to be acutely painful for me, with the recent death of my dog still compounding all of my emotion related to this. But so far that hasn't really been the case, and honestly I'm kind of disappointed by that. A part of me wants the hurt. Feeling that pain again brings me back to that experience with real clarity. That specific October pain is now a part of my relationship with her, and if time is separating me from that and the pain is beginning to fade, it makes me a little concerned to think it will be something else I might have to face giving up eventually. And you know, damn it, I've already had quite a bit taken from me here as it is.
I was working this out yesterday over e-mail with a friend of mine, who pointed out that maybe, just maybe, Erin would probably be looking down about now and wishing I would just try being happy instead of looking for ways to trigger the pain again just for the sake of reliving it. Which brings us to this year's quotation. Last year I posted a short excerpt from the memoir manuscript I wrote in the aftermath of the whole experience, and decided this year I would again. To reflect the idea that maybe (!) I'm better off looking for happy instead of hurt, I'm presenting a passage that shows my cousin trying to make that same point with me several years ago, right in the middle of everything while it was happening.
**********
I was dreading summer vacation that year since I was fully expecting Erin to die before the fall, but at the same time I couldn’t wait to get out of school. As the year ended I was caught in a pattern of bizarre dreams, many of which were all too fresh in my memory after waking. A lot of these dreams had a recurring theme -- the people in my life were pitying me behind my back, but few ever stepped forth to do or say anything about it. On rare occasions someone would, doing exactly what I needed even though I hadn’t known myself that I needed it. It felt so comforting to know someone cared, even if it was only in a dream.
But too often this wasn’t happening in the real world, and this misplaced feeling of abandonment carried over into my daily life. As the last day of school drew closer I became increasingly withdrawn, ignoring several of my friends, not wanting to give them the chance to do it to me first. I convinced myself most of the people at school weren’t going to be there for me and weren’t worth the time or effort it would take for me to hate them over it. I bitterly thought I was doing them a favor by cutting them off, which would make it easier for them to pretend my problems and I didn’t exist, saving them the trouble of making promises of support they never intended to keep.
The last day of school was a harsh reminder of the previous year when Erin’s cancer had returned, so I just wanted to pack my classroom and get the holy hell out of there. I spent most of the day plugged into my iPod, a perfect way to completely ignore people. If someone tried to talk to me, all I had to do was give them a blank stare and say “What?” which was usually met with a laugh and a dismissive wave. I couldn’t avoid everyone though, and a few people got past my defenses. They wouldn’t simply wish me a good summer, but included some generic attempt at wisdom, like “Enjoy the time you have with your sister,” or “I hope your family has a lot of good times together.” Which I usually took as “Thank God I’m not you.”
Was it fair for me to categorically write people off this way? Not at all. There were definitely cases where it applied, but it was far from being as universal as I made myself believe. But that’s where I was. Anger feels better than despondency. It’s a dark way to look at things, but it’s true.
From: Kelly
Date: June 5, 2004
I don't see anything so weird about feeling less close with people who really can’t have any idea what you're going through, no matter how nice they are and how much they want to help. I'm sure it's hard to get nothing but pity from people who probably would rather be anywhere than standing there thinking about what to say. That doesn't mean they don't care about you, it's just uncomfortable for people to go from daily banter to serious issues. So maybe you're catching weird vibes from others and that’s what is making you avoid them. It might not be you, or at least not all you. Anyway, God knows you have every right to be having a difficult time dealing emotionally with everything and to go back and forth between something so serious as Erin's cancer and daily conversation. So don't beat yourself up. I just hope you aren't keeping yourself from enjoying everyday things. I'm sure Erin would want you to continue to have normal daily pleasures such as moronic and unimportant fun conversation with your friends.
**********
Okay, so you see what I mean about pain? Just pray you never experience anything like my family had to go through. It's not pretty.
But now maybe this week I'm just going to acknowledge that this awful thing happened once, and that it more or less dismantled what my life was at the time. But instead of dwelling on it, I'm just going to keep my head up and notice that most of life and the world surrounding me now really isn't all that bad.
After all, life happens the way it does, and sometimes it sucks. But we keep on living it anyway, because sometimes it doesn't.
Monday, September 26, 2011
The Ideal Woman
So I’m out of the building today for some staff development. During one of the breaks I got out my phone to show a friend of mine a new favorite app, Larry the Talking Bird. It’s quite possibly the stupidest thing ever created, but I can’t stop using it. Anyway, I ran through a quick Larry demonstration and put the phone away. Then one of the women at my table, someone I work with, said, “Tom, we really need to find you a woman.”
In other news: Water is wet, the sky is blue, and we’re all going to die someday.
After privately crowning my colleague as the day’s Queen of the Obvious, I assured her I would certainly not get in the way of that mission, should she choose to accept it. She came to life a little upon hearing this, and began speculating about what sorts of qualities might be on the list of what I’m looking for. Now, I don’t know how serious she was about any of this, but I appreciated the thought all the same. It’s nice whenever someone gets that seed of an idea in their head and I’m able to even momentarily ignore the truth that God has designated me to spend my life as a quietly bitter, unappreciated relationship leftover. But just in case she was serious, and turns out to be a Summer Vacation reader (which I’m pretty certain she isn’t) I thought I should get my list out there and on the record.
I’ll preface this by pointing out how I’ve noticed my priorities undergoing a seismic shift as I’ve entered my early forties. If you wind up this age and you’re still single, like me, you have to give serious thought to what kind of person you’d like to spend the rest of your life with, since, let’s face it, I’m running low on quality years here. So the list I have now has changed dramatically from what it would have been in my twenties, or even my thirties, and I’ve had to narrow it down to the things that really matter the most. All right, enough of my yakkin’. Here we go. My ideal woman:
- someone I could carry on an intelligent conversation with
- lives a life based on responsible, adult decision-making
- would make family a priority
- is reasonably well read and literate
- has an understanding and general concern about the events currently shaping our society
- is about my age with similar life experience, unless she’s smoking hot and in that case I could overlook the age difference pretty easily
- manages her money responsibly
- does not consider US magazine to be journalism
- would compliment the life I’ve made for myself
- doesn’t have morning breath that would smell like a small animal had burned to death in her mouth the night before
- willing to always let me choose what’s on TV
- could already be a mother; I realistically have to accept that possibility. But if she has kids she can’t have more than two, they should be quiet, well-behaved and smart enough to do their own homework without my help, because that’s the last thing I want to deal with in the evening
- is open to having pets someday, if those pets are dogs and nothing else
- and I name the dog (or dogs)
- has a good sense of humor, and gets mine
- understands she’s going to owe me big time if we have to see a movie I’m not interested in
- is reasonably healthy; I’m not going into a body part analysis or anything -- that would be inexcusably crass -- but it would help if she looks like someone I might quickly check out at the Y
- can understand the importance of my personal values, even if she does not necessarily share all of them
- hair should be between four and seven inches long
- at least knows who John Petrucci is; this one is kind of a deal breaker
- drives a car that is (a) paid for and (b) no more than five years old
- doesn’t wash her hands in the soda fountain dispenser at Subway
- is good enough at Words With Friends to give me some competition, but not so good that I don’t win most of the time
- knows which is the working end of a vacuum
- doesn’t ask me what I’m thinking about, unless I really want her to
- is able to fluently speak the language of any European country she wants to visit so I’ll know what people are saying and I won’t feel like a complete idiot while I’m there
- does NOT try to finish the Sudoku puzzle just because I walk away and take a break from it
- likes to hold hands
- understands that our summers together are going to be a whole lot more about me playing XBox than us socializing with her friends from work or college
- plays either saxophone or guitar so my family can finally start a band
- takes time to enjoy sunsets
- agrees to spend Thanksgiving with my family; the other holidays are up for grabs
- doesn’t want to paint the bedroom every other weekend
- pays for her own car insurance
- has confidence
- doesn’t base her political ideology on what cable news pundits try to feed her
- can bench press at least 120 pounds
- can cheer for any sports teams she likes without having to get drunk and paint her face
- doesn’t expect me to dance with her during the fast songs at wedding receptions
- understands how important my career is to me and places the same value on her own, unless she has a really stupid job
- won’t expect me to spend a lot of time with her family, unless I like them; then maybe
- has hobbies and interests that allow her to be well-rounded and happy
- flosses
- will do the driving any time we go into the city
- gets that my iTunes library is non-negotiable
- has just that magical shade of light tan that keeps her skin from being revoltingly pale but doesn’t overdo it to where she looks like a tanning bed victim in a horror movie
- treats everyone she meets with kindness and compassion
- smiles, even when she doesn’t feel like it
- can appreciate me for me.
That should cover it. Now I just have to hope that nobody who reads this takes it seriously. Really. Don't hate me. All a joke. Except for maybe three or four items, but I’ll let you figure out which they are.
(Hint: I’m not kidding about that XBox thing.)
In other news: Water is wet, the sky is blue, and we’re all going to die someday.
After privately crowning my colleague as the day’s Queen of the Obvious, I assured her I would certainly not get in the way of that mission, should she choose to accept it. She came to life a little upon hearing this, and began speculating about what sorts of qualities might be on the list of what I’m looking for. Now, I don’t know how serious she was about any of this, but I appreciated the thought all the same. It’s nice whenever someone gets that seed of an idea in their head and I’m able to even momentarily ignore the truth that God has designated me to spend my life as a quietly bitter, unappreciated relationship leftover. But just in case she was serious, and turns out to be a Summer Vacation reader (which I’m pretty certain she isn’t) I thought I should get my list out there and on the record.
I’ll preface this by pointing out how I’ve noticed my priorities undergoing a seismic shift as I’ve entered my early forties. If you wind up this age and you’re still single, like me, you have to give serious thought to what kind of person you’d like to spend the rest of your life with, since, let’s face it, I’m running low on quality years here. So the list I have now has changed dramatically from what it would have been in my twenties, or even my thirties, and I’ve had to narrow it down to the things that really matter the most. All right, enough of my yakkin’. Here we go. My ideal woman:
- someone I could carry on an intelligent conversation with
- lives a life based on responsible, adult decision-making
- would make family a priority
- is reasonably well read and literate
- has an understanding and general concern about the events currently shaping our society
- is about my age with similar life experience, unless she’s smoking hot and in that case I could overlook the age difference pretty easily
- manages her money responsibly
- does not consider US magazine to be journalism
- would compliment the life I’ve made for myself
- doesn’t have morning breath that would smell like a small animal had burned to death in her mouth the night before
- willing to always let me choose what’s on TV
- could already be a mother; I realistically have to accept that possibility. But if she has kids she can’t have more than two, they should be quiet, well-behaved and smart enough to do their own homework without my help, because that’s the last thing I want to deal with in the evening
- is open to having pets someday, if those pets are dogs and nothing else
- and I name the dog (or dogs)
- has a good sense of humor, and gets mine
- understands she’s going to owe me big time if we have to see a movie I’m not interested in
- is reasonably healthy; I’m not going into a body part analysis or anything -- that would be inexcusably crass -- but it would help if she looks like someone I might quickly check out at the Y
- can understand the importance of my personal values, even if she does not necessarily share all of them
- hair should be between four and seven inches long
- at least knows who John Petrucci is; this one is kind of a deal breaker
- drives a car that is (a) paid for and (b) no more than five years old
- doesn’t wash her hands in the soda fountain dispenser at Subway
- is good enough at Words With Friends to give me some competition, but not so good that I don’t win most of the time
- knows which is the working end of a vacuum
- doesn’t ask me what I’m thinking about, unless I really want her to
- is able to fluently speak the language of any European country she wants to visit so I’ll know what people are saying and I won’t feel like a complete idiot while I’m there
- does NOT try to finish the Sudoku puzzle just because I walk away and take a break from it
- likes to hold hands
- understands that our summers together are going to be a whole lot more about me playing XBox than us socializing with her friends from work or college
- plays either saxophone or guitar so my family can finally start a band
- takes time to enjoy sunsets
- agrees to spend Thanksgiving with my family; the other holidays are up for grabs
- doesn’t want to paint the bedroom every other weekend
- pays for her own car insurance
- has confidence
- doesn’t base her political ideology on what cable news pundits try to feed her
- can bench press at least 120 pounds
- can cheer for any sports teams she likes without having to get drunk and paint her face
- doesn’t expect me to dance with her during the fast songs at wedding receptions
- understands how important my career is to me and places the same value on her own, unless she has a really stupid job
- won’t expect me to spend a lot of time with her family, unless I like them; then maybe
- has hobbies and interests that allow her to be well-rounded and happy
- flosses
- will do the driving any time we go into the city
- gets that my iTunes library is non-negotiable
- has just that magical shade of light tan that keeps her skin from being revoltingly pale but doesn’t overdo it to where she looks like a tanning bed victim in a horror movie
- treats everyone she meets with kindness and compassion
- smiles, even when she doesn’t feel like it
- can appreciate me for me.
That should cover it. Now I just have to hope that nobody who reads this takes it seriously. Really. Don't hate me. All a joke. Except for maybe three or four items, but I’ll let you figure out which they are.
(Hint: I’m not kidding about that XBox thing.)
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Autumnal Imprinting
Hello again. I was thinking about giving this post some really sensational title as kind of an experiment, just to see how much the newest reinvention of Facebook will affect the traffic to this site. But, eh. Maybe another time.
It seems my posting is becoming less frequent now that we're knee-deep in the school year, but I suppose that's to be expected. The weather has been cool this week, cool to the point where I've actually considered switching my thermostat over to 'heat' for the first time in not enough months. But so far I've resisted, much in the same way that I continue wearing shorts right up until the day it becomes completely ridiculous for me to do so instead of just mildly ridiculous like it is now. But hey, 70s on the way next week. If we saw temps like that in March, the beaches would be populated by college kids looking to get head starts on their spring break tans.
But it isn't March. And as of Friday, we're officially in autumn. The days have slowly started becoming darker and cooler as the world almost imperceptibly begins slipping into another long period of dormancy, ushering in what has always been my favorite season. And even though some pretty dark times have changed the way I see Autumn now, it probably still is my favorite season. The world here starts huddling together, reintroducing a level of fellowship between the start of the school year and the more generic communal bond of football season beginning at so many different levels. We feel the cold on the horizon, and make the most of however few beautiful days are left, and even appreciate them that much more because we know what's to follow. Autumn almost feels like a closing down and a renewal in the same breath. Maybe that's the reason why I have so many albums that I associate with it.
I think I covered this ground way back when, writing about music that I associate so closely with specific events of the summer. The same is true with autumn, and maybe even more so than summer. It's usually comes from my discovering a new album and overplaying it so much that my brain programs a connection to it. That isn't always the case though; I feel I have to point out that my four favorite albums of all time were autumn releases or discoveries for me, but they became such critical strands of my music DNA that they superseded any seasonal attachment. I don't know why it works out that way -- maybe that will be a round of self-analysis I'll attempt another time. But for now, here are some of the albums that have the stronger ties, and how they bind me to the season.
**"Scarecrow" by John Mellencamp. A high school standard for me. Listening to the rootsy rock music he was doing back then while I drove through the rustic landscape between where my family lived and the town where we did everything built a connection impossible to avoid. This one actually has a counterpart: "Nervous Night" by the Hooters. I bought these two albums on the same day, on cassette, at the Mariner Mall in Superior, Wisconsin. Some similarities but not a lot, and yet they're forever linked for me.
**"Brothers in Arms" by Dire Straits, particularly side 2, the one that didn't have any hits. When saw the "Two Cathedrals" episode of "The West Wing" for the first time and heard them using the title song to the album in the background, I flashed back to varsity soccer games, played in the dark, steam rising from our faces, most of us halfway wishing the season would just end already since there was no chance we were seeing any post-season play.
**"Bat Out of Hell II" by Meat Loaf. The album that led to Meat's short-lived comeback and Celebrity Apprentice appearance. Epic, operatic, and anything but subtle. I nearly wore this one out.
**"The Downward Spiral" by Nine Inch Nails. I had only heard the song "Closer" on the radio a couple times but read so much press about the album I had to check it out. It was unlike anything I'd ever heard before, particularly the apocalyptic combination of "A Warm Place/Eraser" opening Side 2. I remember listening to those songs after seeing some awful sci-fi movie on a Saturday afternoon as I drove home. That music, along with the golden light outside and the typically seasonal cloudy sky made the whole world seem beautifully menacing.
**"Secret World Live" by Peter Gabriel. One of my favorite live albums, and a good example of the live album reversal syndrome for me -- this one had several songs on it I hadn't heard before, so the live tracks became my definitive versions and the original studio tracks always seemed a little off to me when I eventually heard them. The side 2 sequence of "Secret World / Don't Give Up / In Your Eyes" might be one of the most epic live sets ever recorded by anyone.
Wow. You know what I just realized? Every example I listed here has something surprising in common -- these are all albums that I originally owned on cassette. I wonder if that has anything to do with the imprinting. I suppose cassettes lend themselves more to playing the whole album, or at least one side of the album in its recorded continuity instead of picking out favorite songs to shuffle through over and over. Hmm. Maybe that will be a post for another day....
It seems my posting is becoming less frequent now that we're knee-deep in the school year, but I suppose that's to be expected. The weather has been cool this week, cool to the point where I've actually considered switching my thermostat over to 'heat' for the first time in not enough months. But so far I've resisted, much in the same way that I continue wearing shorts right up until the day it becomes completely ridiculous for me to do so instead of just mildly ridiculous like it is now. But hey, 70s on the way next week. If we saw temps like that in March, the beaches would be populated by college kids looking to get head starts on their spring break tans.
But it isn't March. And as of Friday, we're officially in autumn. The days have slowly started becoming darker and cooler as the world almost imperceptibly begins slipping into another long period of dormancy, ushering in what has always been my favorite season. And even though some pretty dark times have changed the way I see Autumn now, it probably still is my favorite season. The world here starts huddling together, reintroducing a level of fellowship between the start of the school year and the more generic communal bond of football season beginning at so many different levels. We feel the cold on the horizon, and make the most of however few beautiful days are left, and even appreciate them that much more because we know what's to follow. Autumn almost feels like a closing down and a renewal in the same breath. Maybe that's the reason why I have so many albums that I associate with it.
I think I covered this ground way back when, writing about music that I associate so closely with specific events of the summer. The same is true with autumn, and maybe even more so than summer. It's usually comes from my discovering a new album and overplaying it so much that my brain programs a connection to it. That isn't always the case though; I feel I have to point out that my four favorite albums of all time were autumn releases or discoveries for me, but they became such critical strands of my music DNA that they superseded any seasonal attachment. I don't know why it works out that way -- maybe that will be a round of self-analysis I'll attempt another time. But for now, here are some of the albums that have the stronger ties, and how they bind me to the season.
**"Scarecrow" by John Mellencamp. A high school standard for me. Listening to the rootsy rock music he was doing back then while I drove through the rustic landscape between where my family lived and the town where we did everything built a connection impossible to avoid. This one actually has a counterpart: "Nervous Night" by the Hooters. I bought these two albums on the same day, on cassette, at the Mariner Mall in Superior, Wisconsin. Some similarities but not a lot, and yet they're forever linked for me.
**"Brothers in Arms" by Dire Straits, particularly side 2, the one that didn't have any hits. When saw the "Two Cathedrals" episode of "The West Wing" for the first time and heard them using the title song to the album in the background, I flashed back to varsity soccer games, played in the dark, steam rising from our faces, most of us halfway wishing the season would just end already since there was no chance we were seeing any post-season play.
**"Bat Out of Hell II" by Meat Loaf. The album that led to Meat's short-lived comeback and Celebrity Apprentice appearance. Epic, operatic, and anything but subtle. I nearly wore this one out.
**"The Downward Spiral" by Nine Inch Nails. I had only heard the song "Closer" on the radio a couple times but read so much press about the album I had to check it out. It was unlike anything I'd ever heard before, particularly the apocalyptic combination of "A Warm Place/Eraser" opening Side 2. I remember listening to those songs after seeing some awful sci-fi movie on a Saturday afternoon as I drove home. That music, along with the golden light outside and the typically seasonal cloudy sky made the whole world seem beautifully menacing.
**"Secret World Live" by Peter Gabriel. One of my favorite live albums, and a good example of the live album reversal syndrome for me -- this one had several songs on it I hadn't heard before, so the live tracks became my definitive versions and the original studio tracks always seemed a little off to me when I eventually heard them. The side 2 sequence of "Secret World / Don't Give Up / In Your Eyes" might be one of the most epic live sets ever recorded by anyone.
Wow. You know what I just realized? Every example I listed here has something surprising in common -- these are all albums that I originally owned on cassette. I wonder if that has anything to do with the imprinting. I suppose cassettes lend themselves more to playing the whole album, or at least one side of the album in its recorded continuity instead of picking out favorite songs to shuffle through over and over. Hmm. Maybe that will be a post for another day....
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Flashback and Resolution
If you're one of the two long-time Summer Vacation readers, you might remember a time long, long ago when I noticed something interesting about a new car I'd bought and wrote about it. If you didn't see this before, you can read it here.
Well. Anyway. As unrelated to that as this is in the big picture, I am feeling pretty darn good about that car today. Turns out that when I sit down to pay the bills this afternoon, I'll be writing the last check needed to pay off the rest of what I owe on my loan, and I'm doing this a year and a half early.
Feeling pretty good about this. It's nice to know that, on occasion, I am able to pull of the kind of thing that normal, responsible adults would aspire to. Just sayin'.
Well. Anyway. As unrelated to that as this is in the big picture, I am feeling pretty darn good about that car today. Turns out that when I sit down to pay the bills this afternoon, I'll be writing the last check needed to pay off the rest of what I owe on my loan, and I'm doing this a year and a half early.
Feeling pretty good about this. It's nice to know that, on occasion, I am able to pull of the kind of thing that normal, responsible adults would aspire to. Just sayin'.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
A Dramatic Turn of Events
I love it when I get a new album from a favorite band.
Ever since I gave into the iTunes store, I download so haphazardly and impulsively that I’ve probably purchased more music in the past three months than most people reading this have in the past year. So new albums are in my rotation almost constantly. But when a new album shows up from a favorite band, particularly a long-awaited album that has all kinds of back story and context attached to its release? It’s fair to call that an event.
I found Dream Theater about twenty years ago. They had a song, “Pull Me Under,” which was getting some airplay on rock radio. I liked the song well enough but didn’t think of buying the album until my cousin Kelly gushed at me about how awesome it was. I bought a cassette (back then, my personal symbolism for ‘I’m not committing myself to this band just yet’ because cassettes cost a few dollars less) and it soon started getting some serious Walkman time at the Moore Lake Athletic Club. The song that stood out was “Metropolis, Part 1,” which had so much musical complexity on display I would just listen to it and wonder who these guys were who could compose that kind of music and then actually play it as well.
The following years saw “Awake,” which wasn’t the commercial breakout it deserved to be. But it was the album that, years later, was the first step in converting my friend Dax into a disciple after I convinced him to check the band out. They followed that with an EP, “A Change of Seasons,” which was a collection of live cover songs and one new song, the title track. Which was just over twenty-three minutes long. I had never come across a rock song like that before, one piece of non-classical music that was that long and continuous, broken up into different themes and movements. It was a revelation. The album after that, “Falling Into Infinity,” was the record-company directed attempt at a money grab. Commercial songwriters were hired, the keyboard player had been replaced after the previous one had quit, and tensions within the band nearly broke it up. But instead they followed that up years later with “Scenes From a Memory,” a concept album that to this day stands as one of my three favorite albums of all time. And that doesn’t mean it’s in third place -- it means I have three albums that I love so much in different ways I can’t choose one over the other two. And if you had a glimpse at the volume of my music library, you’d know this is really saying something. They toured with that album and I saw them play for the first time, playing that album straight through, note for note. And if you knew the album, you’d know this was no small accomplishment.
I couldn’t think of how they’d follow that up, but they managed to with “Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence,” a 2-disc package that saw one forty-two minute song taking up the entire second CD. Each subsequent album that followed saw the band go in slightly different directions, putting their own musical interpretation to whatever influenced them at the time: “Train of Thought” was heavy and intense, “Octavarium” was more melodic and a little poppy (though it did have a 24-minute closing epic), Systematic Chaos was dark and intense, flirting a little too much with some of the less than appealing conventions of modern rock (you’ll want to do a search for “cookie monster vocals” here). And then in 2009 they released their most recent album, Black Clouds and Silver Linings, which I wrote a little bit about back here. A great album, and significant because this was the first time a Dream Theater album had cracked into the Top 10 for sales. We fans were ecstatic about this. They were finally starting to get the recognition they deserved.
My greatest appreciation for this band is the musicianship. Each player is one of the best there is at his instrument, and the singer holds his own just fine in that company. But when you have five guys performing at that level of consistent virtuosity, egos will inevitably play a part. And a year ago, ego got the best of one of them. The drummer, Mike Portnoy, had been the leader of the band for a long, long time, and for reasons that I suppose will only ever be truly understood by him, he decided the band should go on a five-year hiatus. He felt they needed a break from each other, and after that break they’d all come back stronger than ever. Well, the other four guys didn’t see it that way, and when Portnoy saw the rest of the band wasn’t going to play by his rules anymore, he picked up his ball and went home.
It was a huge shock to find out that one of the founders and defining personalities of the band had quit, but I was comforted when they quickly announced they’d be auditioning new drummers and planned to record a new album in early 2011. The auditions brought forth an insanely talented replacement, Mike Mangini, who gelled with the band so immediately they felt they could have played a show with him the night he auditioned. Months later Portnoy reportedly had a change of heart and tried to get his spot in the band back, but things were going so well for the band with their new drummer in place, they declined his offer. So now, predictably enough, he doesn't seem to have much positive to say about his former band mates all over the Internets. (And by the way, his new band is truly, truly awful. But that’s just my opinion.) Which is kind of tough for me, because I'm a big fan of the band, and I'm a big fan of Portnoy. It's tough to be caught in the middle like this, but it just seems to me that he hasn't handled this as well as they have.
So, enough prologue. The new album, “A Dramatic Turn of Events,” came out this past Tuesday. I have listened to nothing else since downloading it late Monday night. I’ve gotta say, there are few joys in life like getting to learn a new album that you love. I have different parts of songs in running through my head before I realize I’m awake in the morning. I choose which song I want to play during my drive to school in the morning so I can program it into my head for the next eight hours, even though half of the songs on the album take longer to play through than my drive to school is. I almost feel like I’ve conquered something when the lyrics start coming together for me, because that means I’m finally learning the album as a whole. It’s a great experience for someone who lives and breathes music the way I do.
And even though I openly admit that I’m still deep in the throes of new-album infatuation right now, I really think this one will stand up over time. Does this mean it’s accessible? Hardly. It is decidedly a rock album that has more than a few moments that border on being full-on metal, but it also has quiet, gentle acoustic songs that are driven by understated guitars and piano virtuosity. In fact, instead of labeling it accessible, I’d go the other direction and call it challenging. When you hear two guys playing guitar and keyboards and identically matching each other note for note through more time-signature changes than most music majors could keep up with, you’re either going to be amazed by the talent or decide it’s too much for you. And I get this. Dream Theater is not a band for everyone. But for the people who can appreciate what they do, this album is, in many respects, a masterpiece. Whether you think about the cinematic quality of the epic songs or the reserved nature of the quieter ones, this album really doesn’t miss a beat anywhere.
“On the Backs of Angels” -- The opening song and the single they released midsummer. In a nice little twist, Dax and I got to hear this for the first time at the same time when I was visiting Seattle when it was released on YouTube. It was the first taste we had of what the Post-Portnoy band would sound like. Very familiar, but also something of a battle cry from a band making sure the fans knew they weren’t going anywhere.
“Build Me Up, Break Me Down” -- This one could almost pass for a rock radio song, which is rare for a band that has songs that commonly stretch over ten minutes long. It has a rare touch of electronic music to it that isn’t overplayed, and really works well. This one was added to the workout mix almost immediately.
“Lost Not Forgotten” -- The first epic. It opens with a grand piano sound, and soon transitions into the steam-engine chugging orchestral rock song it really is. A story song about ancient battlefields and the culture surrounding them. That’s right. You aren’t going to hear anything about a Bad Romance or Fireworks here.
“This is the Life” -- Introspective, very much a quiet ballad with occasional eruptions of guitar work. A very effective song that doesn’t come across as a pandering attempt at the rock-ballad convention that so polluted radio back in the late 80s and early 90s.
“Bridges in the Sky” -- Right now my favorite song on the album, though that could change by tomorrow. Just over eleven minutes. A song so powerful and spiritual that it had me choking up a little on an early listen. So complete and atmospheric it almost feels like a novel could be written about it.
“Outcry” -- Another huge, broad epic of a song. Again with some electronic touches and some very hardcore guitar. This one has an instrumental passage in it that is (and I have to watch what I telegraph here, but there’s no better way to describe this) completely bat$%*! crazy that I think the band actually had to invent some new time signatures to finish writing it.
“Far From Heaven” -- Shortest song, not even four minutes. Quiet, palette-clearing. Voice, piano, some backing strings. Peaceful.
“Breaking All Illusions” -- The last epic, and the biggest; over twelve minutes long. I got to this one and was just amazed to think that after everything that had come before it in the album, they were still able to put together something this complete. Everything the others before it were, but in completely different directions.
“Beneath the Surface” -- The closing song, and again a quiet, mostly acoustic one. This one is driven more by the guitar melody and supported by subtle keyboards and strings, but all of it works together to serve the lyrics and the overall song.
It’s going to take something historic to come along and knock this one out of my rotation any time soon. A year ago I was concerned about what was going to happen to one of my favorite bands in the wake of losing one of the key members. Not so much anymore.
Ever since I gave into the iTunes store, I download so haphazardly and impulsively that I’ve probably purchased more music in the past three months than most people reading this have in the past year. So new albums are in my rotation almost constantly. But when a new album shows up from a favorite band, particularly a long-awaited album that has all kinds of back story and context attached to its release? It’s fair to call that an event.
I found Dream Theater about twenty years ago. They had a song, “Pull Me Under,” which was getting some airplay on rock radio. I liked the song well enough but didn’t think of buying the album until my cousin Kelly gushed at me about how awesome it was. I bought a cassette (back then, my personal symbolism for ‘I’m not committing myself to this band just yet’ because cassettes cost a few dollars less) and it soon started getting some serious Walkman time at the Moore Lake Athletic Club. The song that stood out was “Metropolis, Part 1,” which had so much musical complexity on display I would just listen to it and wonder who these guys were who could compose that kind of music and then actually play it as well.
The following years saw “Awake,” which wasn’t the commercial breakout it deserved to be. But it was the album that, years later, was the first step in converting my friend Dax into a disciple after I convinced him to check the band out. They followed that with an EP, “A Change of Seasons,” which was a collection of live cover songs and one new song, the title track. Which was just over twenty-three minutes long. I had never come across a rock song like that before, one piece of non-classical music that was that long and continuous, broken up into different themes and movements. It was a revelation. The album after that, “Falling Into Infinity,” was the record-company directed attempt at a money grab. Commercial songwriters were hired, the keyboard player had been replaced after the previous one had quit, and tensions within the band nearly broke it up. But instead they followed that up years later with “Scenes From a Memory,” a concept album that to this day stands as one of my three favorite albums of all time. And that doesn’t mean it’s in third place -- it means I have three albums that I love so much in different ways I can’t choose one over the other two. And if you had a glimpse at the volume of my music library, you’d know this is really saying something. They toured with that album and I saw them play for the first time, playing that album straight through, note for note. And if you knew the album, you’d know this was no small accomplishment.
I couldn’t think of how they’d follow that up, but they managed to with “Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence,” a 2-disc package that saw one forty-two minute song taking up the entire second CD. Each subsequent album that followed saw the band go in slightly different directions, putting their own musical interpretation to whatever influenced them at the time: “Train of Thought” was heavy and intense, “Octavarium” was more melodic and a little poppy (though it did have a 24-minute closing epic), Systematic Chaos was dark and intense, flirting a little too much with some of the less than appealing conventions of modern rock (you’ll want to do a search for “cookie monster vocals” here). And then in 2009 they released their most recent album, Black Clouds and Silver Linings, which I wrote a little bit about back here. A great album, and significant because this was the first time a Dream Theater album had cracked into the Top 10 for sales. We fans were ecstatic about this. They were finally starting to get the recognition they deserved.
My greatest appreciation for this band is the musicianship. Each player is one of the best there is at his instrument, and the singer holds his own just fine in that company. But when you have five guys performing at that level of consistent virtuosity, egos will inevitably play a part. And a year ago, ego got the best of one of them. The drummer, Mike Portnoy, had been the leader of the band for a long, long time, and for reasons that I suppose will only ever be truly understood by him, he decided the band should go on a five-year hiatus. He felt they needed a break from each other, and after that break they’d all come back stronger than ever. Well, the other four guys didn’t see it that way, and when Portnoy saw the rest of the band wasn’t going to play by his rules anymore, he picked up his ball and went home.
It was a huge shock to find out that one of the founders and defining personalities of the band had quit, but I was comforted when they quickly announced they’d be auditioning new drummers and planned to record a new album in early 2011. The auditions brought forth an insanely talented replacement, Mike Mangini, who gelled with the band so immediately they felt they could have played a show with him the night he auditioned. Months later Portnoy reportedly had a change of heart and tried to get his spot in the band back, but things were going so well for the band with their new drummer in place, they declined his offer. So now, predictably enough, he doesn't seem to have much positive to say about his former band mates all over the Internets. (And by the way, his new band is truly, truly awful. But that’s just my opinion.) Which is kind of tough for me, because I'm a big fan of the band, and I'm a big fan of Portnoy. It's tough to be caught in the middle like this, but it just seems to me that he hasn't handled this as well as they have.
So, enough prologue. The new album, “A Dramatic Turn of Events,” came out this past Tuesday. I have listened to nothing else since downloading it late Monday night. I’ve gotta say, there are few joys in life like getting to learn a new album that you love. I have different parts of songs in running through my head before I realize I’m awake in the morning. I choose which song I want to play during my drive to school in the morning so I can program it into my head for the next eight hours, even though half of the songs on the album take longer to play through than my drive to school is. I almost feel like I’ve conquered something when the lyrics start coming together for me, because that means I’m finally learning the album as a whole. It’s a great experience for someone who lives and breathes music the way I do.
And even though I openly admit that I’m still deep in the throes of new-album infatuation right now, I really think this one will stand up over time. Does this mean it’s accessible? Hardly. It is decidedly a rock album that has more than a few moments that border on being full-on metal, but it also has quiet, gentle acoustic songs that are driven by understated guitars and piano virtuosity. In fact, instead of labeling it accessible, I’d go the other direction and call it challenging. When you hear two guys playing guitar and keyboards and identically matching each other note for note through more time-signature changes than most music majors could keep up with, you’re either going to be amazed by the talent or decide it’s too much for you. And I get this. Dream Theater is not a band for everyone. But for the people who can appreciate what they do, this album is, in many respects, a masterpiece. Whether you think about the cinematic quality of the epic songs or the reserved nature of the quieter ones, this album really doesn’t miss a beat anywhere.
“On the Backs of Angels” -- The opening song and the single they released midsummer. In a nice little twist, Dax and I got to hear this for the first time at the same time when I was visiting Seattle when it was released on YouTube. It was the first taste we had of what the Post-Portnoy band would sound like. Very familiar, but also something of a battle cry from a band making sure the fans knew they weren’t going anywhere.
“Build Me Up, Break Me Down” -- This one could almost pass for a rock radio song, which is rare for a band that has songs that commonly stretch over ten minutes long. It has a rare touch of electronic music to it that isn’t overplayed, and really works well. This one was added to the workout mix almost immediately.
“Lost Not Forgotten” -- The first epic. It opens with a grand piano sound, and soon transitions into the steam-engine chugging orchestral rock song it really is. A story song about ancient battlefields and the culture surrounding them. That’s right. You aren’t going to hear anything about a Bad Romance or Fireworks here.
“This is the Life” -- Introspective, very much a quiet ballad with occasional eruptions of guitar work. A very effective song that doesn’t come across as a pandering attempt at the rock-ballad convention that so polluted radio back in the late 80s and early 90s.
“Bridges in the Sky” -- Right now my favorite song on the album, though that could change by tomorrow. Just over eleven minutes. A song so powerful and spiritual that it had me choking up a little on an early listen. So complete and atmospheric it almost feels like a novel could be written about it.
“Outcry” -- Another huge, broad epic of a song. Again with some electronic touches and some very hardcore guitar. This one has an instrumental passage in it that is (and I have to watch what I telegraph here, but there’s no better way to describe this) completely bat$%*! crazy that I think the band actually had to invent some new time signatures to finish writing it.
“Far From Heaven” -- Shortest song, not even four minutes. Quiet, palette-clearing. Voice, piano, some backing strings. Peaceful.
“Breaking All Illusions” -- The last epic, and the biggest; over twelve minutes long. I got to this one and was just amazed to think that after everything that had come before it in the album, they were still able to put together something this complete. Everything the others before it were, but in completely different directions.
“Beneath the Surface” -- The closing song, and again a quiet, mostly acoustic one. This one is driven more by the guitar melody and supported by subtle keyboards and strings, but all of it works together to serve the lyrics and the overall song.
It’s going to take something historic to come along and knock this one out of my rotation any time soon. A year ago I was concerned about what was going to happen to one of my favorite bands in the wake of losing one of the key members. Not so much anymore.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Just Got Back
Some things I’ve noticed about the first week back to school:
*When you have eighty-five students, you really have to work at getting to know them all. Some stand out early for different reasons: The sneaky kid who’s surprised when you catch him doing the same stuff you’ve caught sneaky kids doing for two decades; the one who is slightly less animated than a sack of potatoes; the one with the distinctive voice you’ll hear echoing in your head while you try to fall asleep at night; the one who seemed so pleasantly energetic at first but is already overwhelming you by Day 3, and so on. I consider it a major accomplishment if I can remember every name away from the visual context of the seating chart by the end of the first week. I think I might be there so far. Maybe. Probably not.
*In my building, at least in the past few years, there’s been quite a turnover in the staff. We were pretty stable for a long run there, which explains why even though I’m twenty years into that staff I might not even be in the top third when it comes to building seniority. But having so many new adults show up can really be confusing. It takes me a lot longer to learn and remember the adult names because many of these people are in positions that will have our paths crossing so infrequently I might actually go an entire academic year without exchanging anything but incidental passing greetings with them. It takes me so long to match the new adult names with the new adult faces that descriptors just begin to build in my head to help me keep them straight: “Sunflower Hat Lady,” or “Body Glitter Neck,” or “Transparent Blue Water Bottle” or “Machine Gun Laugh” to just invent a few off the top of my head that I’ve never actually used but are somewhat indicative of the types of descriptors I'll use.
*I’m not doing a commercial or anything, but Vitamin Water Zero is way better than Propel Zero when it comes to keeping your throat lubricated when you aren’t used to talking for six consecutive hours and suddenly have to start doing it every day. Gum works pretty well too, but you have to time that well. The class will inevitably whine if you try chewing gum in front of them, and using the comeback “Hey, you try talking all day and see how your throat feels afterward” is usually seen as an invitation.
*I’m always intrigued by the way the school lunch menu gets a few rewrites every year. Sometimes new items are added, but usually they just put a little twist on the old name to build anticipation until you see it’s the essentially the same thing it was last year. For example, I’m not certain about this but I strongly suspect that when the menu promises “Herb Seasoned Broccoli,” the herb to which the menu refers is actually steam. And I’m a little nervous about where we’ll be going next week when the “waffle cut sweet potatoes” make their debut. I think I would kind of enjoy the challenge of revising the names of some lunch menu items. I wonder how you get that gig.
*My school benefited from our previous principal making new technology a priority, which means that every classroom is wired with a sound system that has the teacher on a microphone. The differences in the volume levels people use make me question if we’re all using the same standard for what is considered appropriately loud, or if perhaps there are a few people beginning to experience diminished hearing.
*If anyone can explain the physics to me about how a kid can have a desk so messed up that it won’t even close when they have spent fewer than six total hours sitting at it, I’d love to get that cleared up.
*In the first week of school when the temperature is still comfortably in the 80s, everyone is an amateur meteorologist. Especially in a building like mine that is 95% non-air-conditioned and mostly made out of brick from the 1950s. Whenever somebody walks into a room or a hallway or a sunny patch in the hallway or a room that does have air-conditioning, they feel they have to comment on the temperature difference as if they are the only one who notices it. I admit I’m guiltier than most people about this. The forecast this week promises some highs in the 60s, which for me means sweatshirts and shorts weather. I am so psyched about this I can’t even begin to tell you.
*I always forget how many new people there are in the building when I read e-mails from the office, then I remember the secretary has to go over procedural points a lot of people don’t know about yet and it makes me so glad she’s the one doing that kind of thing and not me -- pretty sure I wouldn’t have the patience. I also forget that it’s easy to spot the people who have less patience with others when it comes to e-mail. I’m assuming if someone sends the entire building mailing list a message written in a 72-point font, they are reaching the end of their rope.
*My favorite moment of clueless innocence so far this year: One of my girls proudly showed me the tennis-ball shaped chicken she had securely suction-cupped to the inside of her desk. Perhaps only a day after I had made a point about how much I did not want to see anyone keeping toys in their desks.
And yet, I still so truly love my job.
*When you have eighty-five students, you really have to work at getting to know them all. Some stand out early for different reasons: The sneaky kid who’s surprised when you catch him doing the same stuff you’ve caught sneaky kids doing for two decades; the one who is slightly less animated than a sack of potatoes; the one with the distinctive voice you’ll hear echoing in your head while you try to fall asleep at night; the one who seemed so pleasantly energetic at first but is already overwhelming you by Day 3, and so on. I consider it a major accomplishment if I can remember every name away from the visual context of the seating chart by the end of the first week. I think I might be there so far. Maybe. Probably not.
*In my building, at least in the past few years, there’s been quite a turnover in the staff. We were pretty stable for a long run there, which explains why even though I’m twenty years into that staff I might not even be in the top third when it comes to building seniority. But having so many new adults show up can really be confusing. It takes me a lot longer to learn and remember the adult names because many of these people are in positions that will have our paths crossing so infrequently I might actually go an entire academic year without exchanging anything but incidental passing greetings with them. It takes me so long to match the new adult names with the new adult faces that descriptors just begin to build in my head to help me keep them straight: “Sunflower Hat Lady,” or “Body Glitter Neck,” or “Transparent Blue Water Bottle” or “Machine Gun Laugh” to just invent a few off the top of my head that I’ve never actually used but are somewhat indicative of the types of descriptors I'll use.
*I’m not doing a commercial or anything, but Vitamin Water Zero is way better than Propel Zero when it comes to keeping your throat lubricated when you aren’t used to talking for six consecutive hours and suddenly have to start doing it every day. Gum works pretty well too, but you have to time that well. The class will inevitably whine if you try chewing gum in front of them, and using the comeback “Hey, you try talking all day and see how your throat feels afterward” is usually seen as an invitation.
*I’m always intrigued by the way the school lunch menu gets a few rewrites every year. Sometimes new items are added, but usually they just put a little twist on the old name to build anticipation until you see it’s the essentially the same thing it was last year. For example, I’m not certain about this but I strongly suspect that when the menu promises “Herb Seasoned Broccoli,” the herb to which the menu refers is actually steam. And I’m a little nervous about where we’ll be going next week when the “waffle cut sweet potatoes” make their debut. I think I would kind of enjoy the challenge of revising the names of some lunch menu items. I wonder how you get that gig.
*My school benefited from our previous principal making new technology a priority, which means that every classroom is wired with a sound system that has the teacher on a microphone. The differences in the volume levels people use make me question if we’re all using the same standard for what is considered appropriately loud, or if perhaps there are a few people beginning to experience diminished hearing.
*If anyone can explain the physics to me about how a kid can have a desk so messed up that it won’t even close when they have spent fewer than six total hours sitting at it, I’d love to get that cleared up.
*In the first week of school when the temperature is still comfortably in the 80s, everyone is an amateur meteorologist. Especially in a building like mine that is 95% non-air-conditioned and mostly made out of brick from the 1950s. Whenever somebody walks into a room or a hallway or a sunny patch in the hallway or a room that does have air-conditioning, they feel they have to comment on the temperature difference as if they are the only one who notices it. I admit I’m guiltier than most people about this. The forecast this week promises some highs in the 60s, which for me means sweatshirts and shorts weather. I am so psyched about this I can’t even begin to tell you.
*I always forget how many new people there are in the building when I read e-mails from the office, then I remember the secretary has to go over procedural points a lot of people don’t know about yet and it makes me so glad she’s the one doing that kind of thing and not me -- pretty sure I wouldn’t have the patience. I also forget that it’s easy to spot the people who have less patience with others when it comes to e-mail. I’m assuming if someone sends the entire building mailing list a message written in a 72-point font, they are reaching the end of their rope.
*My favorite moment of clueless innocence so far this year: One of my girls proudly showed me the tennis-ball shaped chicken she had securely suction-cupped to the inside of her desk. Perhaps only a day after I had made a point about how much I did not want to see anyone keeping toys in their desks.
And yet, I still so truly love my job.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Pointess Observations 2: State Fair Edition
In case you missed the first of these a couple of weeks back, I'll catch you up. These lists of Pointless Observations are a sampling of my internal monologue during a time I'm running through a lot of snarky comments to keep myself amused. (And seriously, has "snarky" still not earned its way deep enough into the established lexicon to earn a pass from the online spellcheck?) So, I went to the state fair yesterday with my sister, her husband, and a couple of nephews. Here's some of what I was thinking:
**Whoa, whoa, whoa -- where do you think you're taking that stroller, lady? Cutting me off like that would be a bad move.
**I wonder how many of the t-shirts being worn here today are XXL or higher. I'm guessing 40%.
**We've reached the critical tipping point where I can't distinguish between the smells coming from the food stands or the body odor drifting off of the other 700,000 people here. The only thing that stands out anymore is when someone lights up a smoke. And usually when I'm five feet downwind.
**I think I now understand why Bruce Springsteen's "Girls in Their Summer Clothes" has been playing in my head for the past two hours.
**I don't think I've ever eaten anywhere less sanitary than the state fair food building.
**Oh! Thank you, state fair worker, who thought that dollar bill on the ground belonged to me.
**I am so thirsty I can feel the tissue on the inside of my mouth absorbing this Diet Coke like a sponge before I even have the chance to swallow it.
**Aaaanndd... it took me exactly 35 minutes before I saw some kid from school. Never fails. I think Washington State was the only place all summer I was able to experience pure anonymity.
**Are you kidding me?! The Space Tower is only three bucks? I am so talking at least Matt into going on that with me.
**This is ridiculous. St. Cloud State has a booth. St. Mary's has a booth. Education Minnesota has a booth. And despite all of the tuition and union dues I have ponied up in my life, none of them are offering pencils for my collection.
**Seriously? Who buys a salad at the state fair?
**Where else in the metro area would I be able to see a overdressed woman with botox and diamond earrings standing in line behind a tattooed goth couple who can't stop pawing at each other?
**The booth for MyTalk Radio 107 has a sign advertising a "Lactation Station." I've never listened to this station before, and yet I think I have pretty firm grasp on what their main demographic could be.
**I wonder what the ratio would be between people wearing tank tops and people wearing long pants?
**Hey, there's KARE 11's Eric Perkins, doing that "walk around with a cell phone to my ear so people will think I'm talking to someone and won't bother me" thing.
**I think there must be some kind of law requiring any carnival midway to play "Insane in the Membrane" by Cyprus Hill at least once every five hours.
**Wow. Going by the airbrushed art on that 'rock and roll jukebox' funhouse, Avril Lavigne and Steven Tyler have to be blood relatives.
**Matt! Holy cow! You won the biggest Skee-ball prize! At least your brother won't be jealous and cranky about that for more than an hour.
**I should have turned on my treadmill app when we got here. According to my feet, my back, my knees, and that knot in my calf that's going to be even worse tomorrow, I've walked at least 80 miles since we got here....
**Whoa, whoa, whoa -- where do you think you're taking that stroller, lady? Cutting me off like that would be a bad move.
**I wonder how many of the t-shirts being worn here today are XXL or higher. I'm guessing 40%.
**We've reached the critical tipping point where I can't distinguish between the smells coming from the food stands or the body odor drifting off of the other 700,000 people here. The only thing that stands out anymore is when someone lights up a smoke. And usually when I'm five feet downwind.
**I think I now understand why Bruce Springsteen's "Girls in Their Summer Clothes" has been playing in my head for the past two hours.
**I don't think I've ever eaten anywhere less sanitary than the state fair food building.
**Oh! Thank you, state fair worker, who thought that dollar bill on the ground belonged to me.
**I am so thirsty I can feel the tissue on the inside of my mouth absorbing this Diet Coke like a sponge before I even have the chance to swallow it.
**Aaaanndd... it took me exactly 35 minutes before I saw some kid from school. Never fails. I think Washington State was the only place all summer I was able to experience pure anonymity.
**Are you kidding me?! The Space Tower is only three bucks? I am so talking at least Matt into going on that with me.
**This is ridiculous. St. Cloud State has a booth. St. Mary's has a booth. Education Minnesota has a booth. And despite all of the tuition and union dues I have ponied up in my life, none of them are offering pencils for my collection.
**Seriously? Who buys a salad at the state fair?
**Where else in the metro area would I be able to see a overdressed woman with botox and diamond earrings standing in line behind a tattooed goth couple who can't stop pawing at each other?
**The booth for MyTalk Radio 107 has a sign advertising a "Lactation Station." I've never listened to this station before, and yet I think I have pretty firm grasp on what their main demographic could be.
**I wonder what the ratio would be between people wearing tank tops and people wearing long pants?
**Hey, there's KARE 11's Eric Perkins, doing that "walk around with a cell phone to my ear so people will think I'm talking to someone and won't bother me" thing.
**I think there must be some kind of law requiring any carnival midway to play "Insane in the Membrane" by Cyprus Hill at least once every five hours.
**Wow. Going by the airbrushed art on that 'rock and roll jukebox' funhouse, Avril Lavigne and Steven Tyler have to be blood relatives.
**Matt! Holy cow! You won the biggest Skee-ball prize! At least your brother won't be jealous and cranky about that for more than an hour.
**I should have turned on my treadmill app when we got here. According to my feet, my back, my knees, and that knot in my calf that's going to be even worse tomorrow, I've walked at least 80 miles since we got here....
Friday, August 26, 2011
My Summer in Haiku
I'm not a fan of poetry, and it's fair to say the year I spent as a declared English major was more than enough to guarantee I never will be. But earlier this month I entered a little Facebook drawing in which I had to write a haiku about something. All the people who entered had their names thrown in a hat, and a winner -- who was not me -- was drawn. The idea inspired me to briefly set aside my poetry distaste and do a summer in review post with all of the events described through haiku, just for the writing exercise of trying something outside of my wheelhouse.
I thought about giving each poem a title but decided against it. If you were involved in any of these events, it's likely you'll identify them. If you weren't, they might be head-scratchingly vague. Which, I believe, is what poetry is all about anyway. And I think I have all of the syllables counted correctly, but in case I don't, keep in mind that I hate poetry so I probably didn't check them as carefully as I should have. So now that I'm sure I've built up such sky-high expectations in anyone reading this, let's begin:
********************
Week-long vacation
forests, mountains, and desert
welcomed by good friends.
The Turtle Lake Fair
family reunited
music, games, and food.
Nephews in tuxes
David joins the family
late and humid night.
The end of Borders
liquidation tragedy
I stocked up big time.
Still fighting cancer
we raised one thousand dollars
cut short by downpour.
Midnight Radio
in the car and at the zoo
summer soundtrack.
Unsettled moments
Long week in the hospital
Dad's back on his feet.
Crowded dance floor
seen through the camera lens
happy bride and groom.
Enormous summer feast
opening gifts for an hour
happy birthday Mom.
I thought about giving each poem a title but decided against it. If you were involved in any of these events, it's likely you'll identify them. If you weren't, they might be head-scratchingly vague. Which, I believe, is what poetry is all about anyway. And I think I have all of the syllables counted correctly, but in case I don't, keep in mind that I hate poetry so I probably didn't check them as carefully as I should have. So now that I'm sure I've built up such sky-high expectations in anyone reading this, let's begin:
********************
Week-long vacation
forests, mountains, and desert
welcomed by good friends.
The Turtle Lake Fair
family reunited
music, games, and food.
Nephews in tuxes
David joins the family
late and humid night.
The end of Borders
liquidation tragedy
I stocked up big time.
Still fighting cancer
we raised one thousand dollars
cut short by downpour.
Midnight Radio
in the car and at the zoo
summer soundtrack.
Unsettled moments
Long week in the hospital
Dad's back on his feet.
Crowded dance floor
seen through the camera lens
happy bride and groom.
Enormous summer feast
opening gifts for an hour
happy birthday Mom.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Stand and Deliver: A Credo for 2011-2012
I can’t relate to the idea of life without a school year.
My world has included the anticipation of that first day of school since I started kindergarten somewhere back in the early 1970s. I spent eighteen years as a student, then one year navigating the nebulous role of a substitute hunting and praying to find a job. And now this, the 2011-2012 school year, will be my twentieth year as a teacher. Even for someone like me who often looks too hard for ways to assign significance where it may not always be warranted, this number is empirically a landmark.
Twenty years. I can think of few other things I’ve done in my life that cover that span of time. In those two decades I’ve worked with well over one thousand students, in four different grades, in six different classrooms, under three different principals and all in one building. Without knowing how the story will eventually conclude, I figure I’m roughly about halfway through my career. Conceding that I still have a great deal of experience ahead of me, I feel safe in saying that twenty years has given me adequate time to collect some formidable background knowledge, develop my style, hone my art, establish my network and define who I am in this role.
Am I writing today to ruminate on my history, or go on about how great I am, or how hurt my feelings are because pockets of the population undervalue my profession? Not so much. I’ve got all of Year 20 to contemplate where I am in my career. And yeah, largely because of my experience I do think I can be excellent at what I do. I don’t apologize for this, because I know how much work goes into achieving those moments when I break through to a higher level of success. And even though I believe too many people in our culture marginalize the efforts made by those in education, I’m more or less okay with that. From my perspective much of that criticism comes from people who are either making oversimplified assumptions about school, or are operating with some kind of political agenda. I’ve accepted that nobody is going to be organizing a parade in my honor anytime soon, and I’m fine with this. I know how things really are, and for me that’s enough.
Instead I’m looking ahead to what the coming ten months might hold. And this school year, the big 2-0 for me, promises to be an interesting one in many ways. After closing multiple sites and restructuring the school district to accommodate the revenue losses and population decline of recent years, our community is faced with the decision of whether or not to renew a levy on Election Day. And this is happening in the middle of a rather tenuous economy. If this levy isn’t renewed, the consequences would be dramatic. Additionally, our district has been positioned as the front line of an ideological battleground between two groups with passionately opposing beliefs, which has garnered no shortage of media coverage. And these issues are to say nothing of what it’s like for teachers to work within a shifting political climate where we find our efforts met with increasing disregard. With all of these issues lining up to present challenges throughout the year, I think it’s best to sometimes step away from the big picture and instead focus on what is directly in front of you. Which is what I’m doing.
For my students: You can learn. I don’t care what happened last year, or the year before, or the year before that. I don’t care what you did on your summer vacation. I'm not concerned with which nights you have dance. I don’t care if your parents are going to come to conferences with excuses about how they weren’t any good in math either, and then take you to hockey practice at 10 p.m. twice a week. I will work with untiring resolve to make sure that by the end of the school year you will amaze yourself at how much you have learned. But you know what? That’s only my part of it. Because I can’t open up your heads and pour the smart in there for you. Believe me, I’d do that if it were possible; my life would be so much easier. But that isn’t how it works. I’ll break the content down into tiny pieces and sprinkle cinnamon and sugar on it if that’s what it takes, but in the end it’s up to you to decide whether or not you’ll pick up the spoon.
For my colleagues, both in my immediate circle and throughout the profession: We know what challenges lie ahead, and we know how important it is for us to meet them. This school year, like any other, will inevitably provide us with moments of triumph and frustration and humility and wonderment. Our methods and priorities will not always perfectly align, but our goals are ultimately the same. If we remember this, any level of collaboration in which we engage, mandated or voluntary, will be all the more valuable and constructive.
For the parents: You know your children better than I ever will. There are so many things I could say to highlight what a dramatic effect the involvement and support of the family can have on the success of the child, but instead I’ll just keep this short and sweet. Get your kids to school on time. Take care of their needs at home. Make sure they keep up with their homework, and please send a note about it if they get stuck. I’ll take care of the rest.
Twenty years in and I still look forward to the beginning of the year with a great deal of optimism. Things start for me officially this coming Monday, but I’ve already spent a couple of afternoons setting up my room, arranging the desks, hanging up the posters, all the while letting the ideas of what I will do to start the year gradually creep into my head and begin coming to life. I felt great yesterday, knowing I had finished most of what I wanted to accomplish at that point, with the sun and the wind pouring in through the open windows and nothing but blue sky and green fields outside. It put me in mind of how much I enjoy the progression that stretches itself out over the month of September. The students begin to gel, finding an identity as a new class instead of just a collection of carefully selected names on a list. The schedule begins to make sense and slowly becomes second nature. In short, everything starts to click. I’m looking forward to being in the middle of that, as well as the work that will follow once it has fallen into place.
And is much as I’m looking forward to getting started, I am feeling a little pressure as well. The bar is set kind of high this time around, for a few different reasons. And even though that adds to the stress that naturally accompanies everything else about teaching, I’m ready for it. The expectations, the accountability, the conflict, the meetings that can spiral out of control, the dark and frightening moments, the explosive laughter, the friendly waves in the hallway, the repetitive questions, the occasional glimpses at the moral quagmires that shadow the most unfortunate students, the debates and discussions, the jokes, the marker stains on my hands at the end of the day, the burning frustration, the peace and thrill of seeing my students reach the goals they have set for themselves.
I'm ready. Bring it on.
My world has included the anticipation of that first day of school since I started kindergarten somewhere back in the early 1970s. I spent eighteen years as a student, then one year navigating the nebulous role of a substitute hunting and praying to find a job. And now this, the 2011-2012 school year, will be my twentieth year as a teacher. Even for someone like me who often looks too hard for ways to assign significance where it may not always be warranted, this number is empirically a landmark.
Twenty years. I can think of few other things I’ve done in my life that cover that span of time. In those two decades I’ve worked with well over one thousand students, in four different grades, in six different classrooms, under three different principals and all in one building. Without knowing how the story will eventually conclude, I figure I’m roughly about halfway through my career. Conceding that I still have a great deal of experience ahead of me, I feel safe in saying that twenty years has given me adequate time to collect some formidable background knowledge, develop my style, hone my art, establish my network and define who I am in this role.
Am I writing today to ruminate on my history, or go on about how great I am, or how hurt my feelings are because pockets of the population undervalue my profession? Not so much. I’ve got all of Year 20 to contemplate where I am in my career. And yeah, largely because of my experience I do think I can be excellent at what I do. I don’t apologize for this, because I know how much work goes into achieving those moments when I break through to a higher level of success. And even though I believe too many people in our culture marginalize the efforts made by those in education, I’m more or less okay with that. From my perspective much of that criticism comes from people who are either making oversimplified assumptions about school, or are operating with some kind of political agenda. I’ve accepted that nobody is going to be organizing a parade in my honor anytime soon, and I’m fine with this. I know how things really are, and for me that’s enough.
Instead I’m looking ahead to what the coming ten months might hold. And this school year, the big 2-0 for me, promises to be an interesting one in many ways. After closing multiple sites and restructuring the school district to accommodate the revenue losses and population decline of recent years, our community is faced with the decision of whether or not to renew a levy on Election Day. And this is happening in the middle of a rather tenuous economy. If this levy isn’t renewed, the consequences would be dramatic. Additionally, our district has been positioned as the front line of an ideological battleground between two groups with passionately opposing beliefs, which has garnered no shortage of media coverage. And these issues are to say nothing of what it’s like for teachers to work within a shifting political climate where we find our efforts met with increasing disregard. With all of these issues lining up to present challenges throughout the year, I think it’s best to sometimes step away from the big picture and instead focus on what is directly in front of you. Which is what I’m doing.
For my students: You can learn. I don’t care what happened last year, or the year before, or the year before that. I don’t care what you did on your summer vacation. I'm not concerned with which nights you have dance. I don’t care if your parents are going to come to conferences with excuses about how they weren’t any good in math either, and then take you to hockey practice at 10 p.m. twice a week. I will work with untiring resolve to make sure that by the end of the school year you will amaze yourself at how much you have learned. But you know what? That’s only my part of it. Because I can’t open up your heads and pour the smart in there for you. Believe me, I’d do that if it were possible; my life would be so much easier. But that isn’t how it works. I’ll break the content down into tiny pieces and sprinkle cinnamon and sugar on it if that’s what it takes, but in the end it’s up to you to decide whether or not you’ll pick up the spoon.
For my colleagues, both in my immediate circle and throughout the profession: We know what challenges lie ahead, and we know how important it is for us to meet them. This school year, like any other, will inevitably provide us with moments of triumph and frustration and humility and wonderment. Our methods and priorities will not always perfectly align, but our goals are ultimately the same. If we remember this, any level of collaboration in which we engage, mandated or voluntary, will be all the more valuable and constructive.
For the parents: You know your children better than I ever will. There are so many things I could say to highlight what a dramatic effect the involvement and support of the family can have on the success of the child, but instead I’ll just keep this short and sweet. Get your kids to school on time. Take care of their needs at home. Make sure they keep up with their homework, and please send a note about it if they get stuck. I’ll take care of the rest.
Twenty years in and I still look forward to the beginning of the year with a great deal of optimism. Things start for me officially this coming Monday, but I’ve already spent a couple of afternoons setting up my room, arranging the desks, hanging up the posters, all the while letting the ideas of what I will do to start the year gradually creep into my head and begin coming to life. I felt great yesterday, knowing I had finished most of what I wanted to accomplish at that point, with the sun and the wind pouring in through the open windows and nothing but blue sky and green fields outside. It put me in mind of how much I enjoy the progression that stretches itself out over the month of September. The students begin to gel, finding an identity as a new class instead of just a collection of carefully selected names on a list. The schedule begins to make sense and slowly becomes second nature. In short, everything starts to click. I’m looking forward to being in the middle of that, as well as the work that will follow once it has fallen into place.
And is much as I’m looking forward to getting started, I am feeling a little pressure as well. The bar is set kind of high this time around, for a few different reasons. And even though that adds to the stress that naturally accompanies everything else about teaching, I’m ready for it. The expectations, the accountability, the conflict, the meetings that can spiral out of control, the dark and frightening moments, the explosive laughter, the friendly waves in the hallway, the repetitive questions, the occasional glimpses at the moral quagmires that shadow the most unfortunate students, the debates and discussions, the jokes, the marker stains on my hands at the end of the day, the burning frustration, the peace and thrill of seeing my students reach the goals they have set for themselves.
I'm ready. Bring it on.
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Classic Rock Defined
I’ve been thinking about this for awhile now.
When it comes to rock music, the word “classic” gets tossed around far too generously. Classic Rock is something that seems to have this floating definition that depends on the perspective of the person using the term. One person’s idea of classic rock can be dramatically different from someone else's.
A few years ago I was in the car driving around with Nephew #1, easily the most musically literate of the nephews. The CD that had been playing when I picked him was Nine Inch Nails’ brand new (at the time) album “Year Zero.” It had gotten very strong reviews, both for its provocative political themes and its consistent sound. In the landscape of popular music at the time, “Year Zero” was thought to be a fairly important release. Plus it was just a good album.
Nephew #1 hops in the car and listens for a minute. “Who is this?” he says.
“Nine Inch Nails,” I tell him.
He sits on top of one his trademarked thoughtful pauses. “Aren’t they... old?”
I was almost offended. I nearly shot back, “What?! Old? Come on, this isn’t Crosby, Stills, and Nash! It’s Nine Inch Nails! It’s electronic, industrial music with really dark themes and offensive language! This is the kind of stuff that moderately uptight parents rightly fear!”
Now, before you go gettin’ up in my face about being the uncle who plays music with f-bombs around my teenage nephew, let me refocus to the point. I did not shoot off that comeback because I thought about what he said and decided that, from his perspective, maybe the band WAS old. After all, the first NIN album, “Pretty Hate Machine,” had been released a few years before he was born. So I didn’t really have much of an argument to make. And if anyone wants to give me a hard time about being a Nine Inch Nails fan, I’ll point out that the guy who pretty much IS Nine Inch Nails just won an Academy Award for co-composing the musical score to “The Social Network.” Just saying.
Anyway. The point here is that I never would have thought to label Nine Inch Nails as classic rock, regardless of how long the band has been around, but maybe my nephew would have. So how exactly do people label Classic Rock? Would it be similar to the governmental pornography definition/cop-out, but just changed to “I know it when I hear it?” Because I don’t even think that’s good enough. Take KQRS for example, or whichever dusty old-fart station in your hometown still has a playlist that mixes Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and the Eagles with Head East and Canned Heat. The station calls themselves classic rock radio. I disagree. Music being old isn’t enough. I think songs, or albums, or even artists, need to earn their way into being considered classic. So I’ve been working on a list of criteria on this, along with examples that I believe will prove my points. Of course, all of this is opinion because love of music is completely subjective. But as usual, I’m pretty sure I’m right. To keep this post from getting out of control, I’ll limit myself to ten items. Let’s get started:
(1) It has to be at least twenty-five years old.* That gets an asterisk because this cutoff is always changing, but twenty-five is a good, round number. I picked this based on that’s how long an artist has to have been around before he/she/they can be considered for nomination into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. If you want to be classic, you need staying power. 2011 - 25 = 1986. Let’s take U2’s “The Joshua Tree.” That came out in 1987, so in a few months it will officially hit the 25 year mark. Hard to argue that album’s status as classic.
(2) Classic rock is accepted by a solid majority of people as classic. Take The Eagles and The Doors. Both of these bands bore me to tears. But that’s me. The Eagles have a huge catalog of beloved songs that can’t be denied. And on the day Kurt Cobain died, I remember thinking “He just became this generation’s Jim Morrison.” And he did. And I wouldn’t have locked on that comparison so quickly if Jim Morrison wasn’t so widely revered.
(3) The music transcends its era. When you hear a Beatles song, does it sound like a 60s relic or does it sound like a Beatles song? How about Zeppelin? Okay. Queen, for crying out loud? Yeah, that’s right. Now, what about KC and the Sunshine Band? AH HA! Music from the 50s sounds like music from the 50s. Music from the 80s sounds like music from the 80s. It takes something classic to break out of that.
(4) The music transcends its genre. Metallica = metal. Motley Crue or Whitesnake = hair metal. Pearl Jam = grunge. Billy Idol = new wave, even if the wave subsided close to thirty years ago. Genesis = art rock or pop, depending on the line-up. Now, how about John Mellencamp? Not so easy to pigeonhole. The Sex Pistols and The Ramones were both huge punk bands. But which song will get people on the dance floor at the wedding reception -- “Anarchy in the UK” or “I Wanna Be Sedated”? Both songs could be called classics, but one of them is more strongly identified with that ‘punk’ qualifier.
(5) Classic Rock needs to come from established artists. No one-hit wonders allowed. Katrina and the Waves. ? and the Mysterians. Most of the acts from the disco era. Now, how about Van Halen? Or Bruce Springsteen? I’ll concede this is the point that could have the most exceptions to it; “My Sharona” by The Knack could be considered classic rock, and I might even call it that depending on my mood when I hear it. But all the same, I stand by the rule.
(6) Classic rock is not a guilty pleasure. This goes back to #2. If most people recognize it as a classic, you have nothing to feel guilty about. One of my cousins wisely pointed out years ago that nothing about music should ever be considered a guilty pleasure, which is an idea I try to live by, in theory. But that doesn’t mean I’m proud to have Quiet Riot’s Greatest Hits on my iPod.
(7) The music has to work as a whole. This is harder to define, but I’m trying to get at the idea of a song that doesn’t have something about it so distractingly bad it becomes the only thing about the song you notice, which takes away from the rest of the song. For example, I could never consider Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It” as classic because the drums sound like they were recorded in someone’s bathroom, and that has always bothered me to no end. You don’t believe me? Remember that point the next time you hear it. (Plus there’s no way Twisted Sister could ever break far enough out of the glam-metal genre to be considered classic, so Dee Snider winds up a two-time loser here.)
(8) Just because an artist or band is recognized as classic rock doesn’t mean every song of theirs earns the label. Take Styx. We’ve got “The Grand Illusion,” “Come Sail Away,” “Crystal Ball,” “Blue-Collar Man,” and “Lady” to name a few undeniable classics. But what about “Mr. Roboto?” Um, please. Really? No.
(9) Not every recording of a song can be called a classic. How many people are really all that familiar with the original studio version of “I Want You to Want Me?” I’m not even saying who’s song that is to prove a point -- I don’t need to. You know who it is. You’ve sung along with it at some time in your life. But I bet you’ve only heard the live version. And which version do you think appears on this band's greatest hits album?
(10) For a song to be considered classic rock, it needs to have a certain amount of cultural gravity. The song has to have, in some manner, left a thumbprint on society. “We Will Rock You” is a perfect example of this. But to make the argument, how about Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes?” Personally I think that’s one of the most perfectly written songs in popular music, and I think a lot of people would back me up on it being a classic. But how about “Big Time” from the same album? “Big Time” still stands today as one of only two songs I have ever called a radio station to request (back in 1986 when I was packing up to move out of my dorm for the summer). But does that make it a classic? Not hardly. The same could even be said about “Sledgehammer” from the same album, though I think that was too big of a pop hit to earn the classic label, and almost approaches one-hit wonder status since it was really the only monster hit song Peter Gabriel ever had. But “In Your Eyes?” Hard to argue.
And on the subject of arguing, I’m really hoping to stir up some Facebook comments from this post. Not because I need an ego stroke and want to see my hit count shoot up, but because I think it could be an interesting discussion.
So let’s see what you’ve got, people. Hit me with your best shot.
(Yes, I’d count that one, too)
When it comes to rock music, the word “classic” gets tossed around far too generously. Classic Rock is something that seems to have this floating definition that depends on the perspective of the person using the term. One person’s idea of classic rock can be dramatically different from someone else's.
A few years ago I was in the car driving around with Nephew #1, easily the most musically literate of the nephews. The CD that had been playing when I picked him was Nine Inch Nails’ brand new (at the time) album “Year Zero.” It had gotten very strong reviews, both for its provocative political themes and its consistent sound. In the landscape of popular music at the time, “Year Zero” was thought to be a fairly important release. Plus it was just a good album.
Nephew #1 hops in the car and listens for a minute. “Who is this?” he says.
“Nine Inch Nails,” I tell him.
He sits on top of one his trademarked thoughtful pauses. “Aren’t they... old?”
I was almost offended. I nearly shot back, “What?! Old? Come on, this isn’t Crosby, Stills, and Nash! It’s Nine Inch Nails! It’s electronic, industrial music with really dark themes and offensive language! This is the kind of stuff that moderately uptight parents rightly fear!”
Now, before you go gettin’ up in my face about being the uncle who plays music with f-bombs around my teenage nephew, let me refocus to the point. I did not shoot off that comeback because I thought about what he said and decided that, from his perspective, maybe the band WAS old. After all, the first NIN album, “Pretty Hate Machine,” had been released a few years before he was born. So I didn’t really have much of an argument to make. And if anyone wants to give me a hard time about being a Nine Inch Nails fan, I’ll point out that the guy who pretty much IS Nine Inch Nails just won an Academy Award for co-composing the musical score to “The Social Network.” Just saying.
Anyway. The point here is that I never would have thought to label Nine Inch Nails as classic rock, regardless of how long the band has been around, but maybe my nephew would have. So how exactly do people label Classic Rock? Would it be similar to the governmental pornography definition/cop-out, but just changed to “I know it when I hear it?” Because I don’t even think that’s good enough. Take KQRS for example, or whichever dusty old-fart station in your hometown still has a playlist that mixes Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and the Eagles with Head East and Canned Heat. The station calls themselves classic rock radio. I disagree. Music being old isn’t enough. I think songs, or albums, or even artists, need to earn their way into being considered classic. So I’ve been working on a list of criteria on this, along with examples that I believe will prove my points. Of course, all of this is opinion because love of music is completely subjective. But as usual, I’m pretty sure I’m right. To keep this post from getting out of control, I’ll limit myself to ten items. Let’s get started:
(1) It has to be at least twenty-five years old.* That gets an asterisk because this cutoff is always changing, but twenty-five is a good, round number. I picked this based on that’s how long an artist has to have been around before he/she/they can be considered for nomination into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. If you want to be classic, you need staying power. 2011 - 25 = 1986. Let’s take U2’s “The Joshua Tree.” That came out in 1987, so in a few months it will officially hit the 25 year mark. Hard to argue that album’s status as classic.
(2) Classic rock is accepted by a solid majority of people as classic. Take The Eagles and The Doors. Both of these bands bore me to tears. But that’s me. The Eagles have a huge catalog of beloved songs that can’t be denied. And on the day Kurt Cobain died, I remember thinking “He just became this generation’s Jim Morrison.” And he did. And I wouldn’t have locked on that comparison so quickly if Jim Morrison wasn’t so widely revered.
(3) The music transcends its era. When you hear a Beatles song, does it sound like a 60s relic or does it sound like a Beatles song? How about Zeppelin? Okay. Queen, for crying out loud? Yeah, that’s right. Now, what about KC and the Sunshine Band? AH HA! Music from the 50s sounds like music from the 50s. Music from the 80s sounds like music from the 80s. It takes something classic to break out of that.
(4) The music transcends its genre. Metallica = metal. Motley Crue or Whitesnake = hair metal. Pearl Jam = grunge. Billy Idol = new wave, even if the wave subsided close to thirty years ago. Genesis = art rock or pop, depending on the line-up. Now, how about John Mellencamp? Not so easy to pigeonhole. The Sex Pistols and The Ramones were both huge punk bands. But which song will get people on the dance floor at the wedding reception -- “Anarchy in the UK” or “I Wanna Be Sedated”? Both songs could be called classics, but one of them is more strongly identified with that ‘punk’ qualifier.
(5) Classic Rock needs to come from established artists. No one-hit wonders allowed. Katrina and the Waves. ? and the Mysterians. Most of the acts from the disco era. Now, how about Van Halen? Or Bruce Springsteen? I’ll concede this is the point that could have the most exceptions to it; “My Sharona” by The Knack could be considered classic rock, and I might even call it that depending on my mood when I hear it. But all the same, I stand by the rule.
(6) Classic rock is not a guilty pleasure. This goes back to #2. If most people recognize it as a classic, you have nothing to feel guilty about. One of my cousins wisely pointed out years ago that nothing about music should ever be considered a guilty pleasure, which is an idea I try to live by, in theory. But that doesn’t mean I’m proud to have Quiet Riot’s Greatest Hits on my iPod.
(7) The music has to work as a whole. This is harder to define, but I’m trying to get at the idea of a song that doesn’t have something about it so distractingly bad it becomes the only thing about the song you notice, which takes away from the rest of the song. For example, I could never consider Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It” as classic because the drums sound like they were recorded in someone’s bathroom, and that has always bothered me to no end. You don’t believe me? Remember that point the next time you hear it. (Plus there’s no way Twisted Sister could ever break far enough out of the glam-metal genre to be considered classic, so Dee Snider winds up a two-time loser here.)
(8) Just because an artist or band is recognized as classic rock doesn’t mean every song of theirs earns the label. Take Styx. We’ve got “The Grand Illusion,” “Come Sail Away,” “Crystal Ball,” “Blue-Collar Man,” and “Lady” to name a few undeniable classics. But what about “Mr. Roboto?” Um, please. Really? No.
(9) Not every recording of a song can be called a classic. How many people are really all that familiar with the original studio version of “I Want You to Want Me?” I’m not even saying who’s song that is to prove a point -- I don’t need to. You know who it is. You’ve sung along with it at some time in your life. But I bet you’ve only heard the live version. And which version do you think appears on this band's greatest hits album?
(10) For a song to be considered classic rock, it needs to have a certain amount of cultural gravity. The song has to have, in some manner, left a thumbprint on society. “We Will Rock You” is a perfect example of this. But to make the argument, how about Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes?” Personally I think that’s one of the most perfectly written songs in popular music, and I think a lot of people would back me up on it being a classic. But how about “Big Time” from the same album? “Big Time” still stands today as one of only two songs I have ever called a radio station to request (back in 1986 when I was packing up to move out of my dorm for the summer). But does that make it a classic? Not hardly. The same could even be said about “Sledgehammer” from the same album, though I think that was too big of a pop hit to earn the classic label, and almost approaches one-hit wonder status since it was really the only monster hit song Peter Gabriel ever had. But “In Your Eyes?” Hard to argue.
And on the subject of arguing, I’m really hoping to stir up some Facebook comments from this post. Not because I need an ego stroke and want to see my hit count shoot up, but because I think it could be an interesting discussion.
So let’s see what you’ve got, people. Hit me with your best shot.
(Yes, I’d count that one, too)
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Little Kids vs. R-Rated Movies
When I was in junior high, my family was visiting some relatives in South Dakota. I don't remember what the occasion was -- I think it was a cousin's high school graduation. Several families were there for it, as has always been the tradition in my extraordinarily large and close extended family.
This trip was important because it was when I saw my first ever R-rated movie: "Conan the Barbarian." I saw it with a couple of my cousins who were old enough to get me in, even though we knew my parents weren't necessarily going to approve. Well, some of us knew -- the oldest of us who went is someone so guileless that it wouldn't surprise me if he'd thought I had permission to go. And this was back in the days before things like VCRs and HBO were widely available, so if you were going to see an R-rated movie, your only option was the theater.
I went into this feeling a combination of exhilaration and fear, and for someone who today makes such an issue about people talking during movies in the theater, I was too energized to possibly keep my mouth shut. The movie, for those of you who've never seen it (which is probably many) wasn't great, but you couldn't tell me this at that age.
But you know, I was in my mid-teens here. I'm not someone who would really describe myself as socially conservative, but as a teacher I have a real problem with parents who let their young kids (I'm going with eleven and younger here) watch R-rated movies. As somebody who knows a little bit about the psychology of the pre-teen mind, I can tell you that being exposed to the stuff that goes on in these movies can have a desensitizing effect on young kids. There are literally thousands of movies PG-13 and down that are great and more appropriate entertainment for kids that won't twist their sensibilities inside out.
I read an interview with Zach Galifinakis in Rolling Stone. He said when little kids tell him how great "The Hangover" was, he tells them they have awful parents and he means it. Sure, there are much bigger mistakes parents can make other than letting kids see R-rated movies, but I respect his point. If I have a kid in class start loudly blabbing away about an R movie they've seen just to show off to everyone else how cool and mature and sophisticated they are, I'll shut it down point blank: "It's an R movie. You're ten. It's ridiculous anyone allowed you to see that. Stop talking about it. I'm not impressed."
Where is all of this coming from today? Well, I just read an article online that reminded me that a remake of "Conan the Barbarian" is about to be released into theaters. We're kind of in the dog days of summer movies now here in late August, so there isn't much to pick from out there that I haven't already seen. So am I planning on going to see the new version of Conan?
Probably not. Because I don't want to run into any of my recent students at the theater.
This trip was important because it was when I saw my first ever R-rated movie: "Conan the Barbarian." I saw it with a couple of my cousins who were old enough to get me in, even though we knew my parents weren't necessarily going to approve. Well, some of us knew -- the oldest of us who went is someone so guileless that it wouldn't surprise me if he'd thought I had permission to go. And this was back in the days before things like VCRs and HBO were widely available, so if you were going to see an R-rated movie, your only option was the theater.
I went into this feeling a combination of exhilaration and fear, and for someone who today makes such an issue about people talking during movies in the theater, I was too energized to possibly keep my mouth shut. The movie, for those of you who've never seen it (which is probably many) wasn't great, but you couldn't tell me this at that age.
But you know, I was in my mid-teens here. I'm not someone who would really describe myself as socially conservative, but as a teacher I have a real problem with parents who let their young kids (I'm going with eleven and younger here) watch R-rated movies. As somebody who knows a little bit about the psychology of the pre-teen mind, I can tell you that being exposed to the stuff that goes on in these movies can have a desensitizing effect on young kids. There are literally thousands of movies PG-13 and down that are great and more appropriate entertainment for kids that won't twist their sensibilities inside out.
I read an interview with Zach Galifinakis in Rolling Stone. He said when little kids tell him how great "The Hangover" was, he tells them they have awful parents and he means it. Sure, there are much bigger mistakes parents can make other than letting kids see R-rated movies, but I respect his point. If I have a kid in class start loudly blabbing away about an R movie they've seen just to show off to everyone else how cool and mature and sophisticated they are, I'll shut it down point blank: "It's an R movie. You're ten. It's ridiculous anyone allowed you to see that. Stop talking about it. I'm not impressed."
Where is all of this coming from today? Well, I just read an article online that reminded me that a remake of "Conan the Barbarian" is about to be released into theaters. We're kind of in the dog days of summer movies now here in late August, so there isn't much to pick from out there that I haven't already seen. So am I planning on going to see the new version of Conan?
Probably not. Because I don't want to run into any of my recent students at the theater.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
The Next Logical Step in 140 Characters
Kind of a throwaway post tonight -- granted, that's not the best way to engage the reader, but you can probably see already this isn't very long so perhaps you'll still manage to read all the way to the end.
So anyway. While having a night of "I'm kind of bored" not long ago, I decided to start up a Twitter account. Just kind of dove into the idea without thinking too hard about it; I know, go ahead and pick your jaw up off the floor now. Ever since I started thinking about starting an account, it became about what I was going to do with it. I seriously doubt more than a dozen or so people in my everyday life are on Twitter (maybe I'll be surprised), and I already have three or four ways to get in touch with anyone I'd care to reach.
So then the question was about my platform: Do I want to try and have one of these pages where I just post a bunch of off-kilter one-liners and try to gain a following? Do I use it to network with other deluded aspiring writers? Do I move my Facebook 10-Word Movie Reviews there instead? Does it become a networking tool for my career? So many possibilities. But in the end I just decided to set up the account and see what happened. This blog surely became something different from what I thought it would be in the beginning, and I think that's worked out okay.
So if you're curious, my Twitter name is Tomulroy424. Or is it supposed to be @Tomulroy424? Something else I need to figure out. Anyway, go ahead and follow if you're on there. I'll follow back anyone who follows me.
So anyway. While having a night of "I'm kind of bored" not long ago, I decided to start up a Twitter account. Just kind of dove into the idea without thinking too hard about it; I know, go ahead and pick your jaw up off the floor now. Ever since I started thinking about starting an account, it became about what I was going to do with it. I seriously doubt more than a dozen or so people in my everyday life are on Twitter (maybe I'll be surprised), and I already have three or four ways to get in touch with anyone I'd care to reach.
So then the question was about my platform: Do I want to try and have one of these pages where I just post a bunch of off-kilter one-liners and try to gain a following? Do I use it to network with other deluded aspiring writers? Do I move my Facebook 10-Word Movie Reviews there instead? Does it become a networking tool for my career? So many possibilities. But in the end I just decided to set up the account and see what happened. This blog surely became something different from what I thought it would be in the beginning, and I think that's worked out okay.
So if you're curious, my Twitter name is Tomulroy424. Or is it supposed to be @Tomulroy424? Something else I need to figure out. Anyway, go ahead and follow if you're on there. I'll follow back anyone who follows me.
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