Bonus points for originality...

Hitting to all fields like Jim Thome tonight…

1) Would like to announce that Cobra Kai, the most feared team in the history of fantasy football, will be drafting second this year. This is pretty much where I wanted to be as I should be able to choose between Shaun Alexander and LaDanian Tomlison as my main running back and then whoever is left as my number two back. I would like to see Reggie Bush fall down to my second round slot but I don’t see that happening. At least my draft strategy should be a little easier to prepare this year as opposed to last year’s “Draft Peyton and every other Colt up to including Ben Utecht” gameplan.

2) Oh, and of course the team motto is “Strike First, Strike Hard, No Mercy”. What else could it be other than maybe “You’re the best around.”

3) Ok, my friends at Deadspin.com (who make my workday bearable to the point where they are leading the “website most likely to get me fired” pool) posted the following story from the University of Kansas. Apparently a guy has tried out and made the Jayhawk dance squad. Seriously, go to the site as they have this great picture of him uh, training with the team. I am really torn from this story. While I can barely accept the concept of male cheerleaders (mainly because they are all built like trucks and serious athletes) a guy on the dance team just seems totally wrong. On the other hand, this might be the most brilliant move that a freshman guy has ever made to meet hot girls on campus. It’s like “Yeah, I’ll probably get the crap kicked out of me for this but it’ll actually be my job to be with the dance squad.” I can guarantee you this guy ran the plus/delta excel spreadsheet and said “Dance team wins over joining a fraternity.” I’ll put it to a vote, is this brilliant or deranged or both?

4) Personally, I feel if you are going all out you should try the www.settleforbrian.com approach. You got to like a guy who not only admits that “Hey let’s be honest, I’m not Brad Pitt” but then goes ahead and lists three pages of pros and cons for dating him. That is a level of self-inventory that is even beyond me. And you know what, I can guarantee that this works.

5) That’s what I need, a catchy slogan! Ok, a free CD to anyone who comes up with a tag line or a catchphrase for me. Yeah, I know that I’m in marketing and should do this myself but I can’t be creative when I’m off the clock.

6) The other news story of the day that I want to mention is that Nasa has lost the original tape of the moon landing. Not that big of a deal since they could just drive out to Arizona and refilm it. I’ve often said that my dream job is working for Nasa. It’s just something that a kid who grew up reading about space travel and becoming an engineer just has hard wired into his DNA. But this along with the fact that they also lost the blueprints to the Saturn V rocket makes me realize that maybe I made the right choice all along.

You can't keep a good planet down

I have some rather earth shattering news to share tonight. I saw something that will completely alter my view of the universe. After twenty two months, the white car in the parking space next to my garage was finally moved. Came home today from work and it was like, “What the hell? Am I in the right apartment complex?” I’m not sure if it drove off under it’s own power or if it was towed or if it was teleported in something that will be discussed for years in literature as “The Kansas City Experiment” but it’s gone.

This is really bothering me. I count on having constants in my life, touchstones that I can rely on to never change. Like The Simpsons on a Sunday night or a bar serving beer or the Royals getting trounced by the White Sox. And I knew that no matter what happened in my life that damn white car would be parked in that spot making it a challenge for me to pull into my own garage. I even gave people directions to my place using it as a landmark. Hell, sometimes I needed it to remember if I was at the right building or not. With it gone my life just feels empty.

That’s not the only big news on the wires today. My astronomer friends (ok, it’s more like I just drank with them a couple of times but close enough) are right now meeting to determine whether or not Pluto should remain a planet. This is of great concern to me because we really, really need to keep Pluto as a planet. One, because otherwise I’ll be continuously confused as to how many planets there are in the solar system. But the main reason is that Pluto is great for symbolic reasons.

See, Pluto is just this little rock way out at the far edge of the solar system. It’s like let’s say Lawrence is Saturn and Neptune is Wichita, well then Pluto is whatever the hell is actually farther west than Wichita. It doesn’t even have a nice orbit, it’s this weird off-kilter loop that cause it to intersect with Neptune every once in a while. But despite all of this it is still a planet, just like Saturn with its cool rings and Mars with the rock formation that looks like Kermit the Frog.

(I’m not kidding, I’ve seen the pictures. There is a rock formation on Mars that looks exactly like Kermit the Frog. Screw the face of Mars as proof of a former civilization, this shows that they’ve been watching us and believe that we view television characters as our gods. Which might be pretty close to the truth when you think about it.)

So Pluto is the ultimate underdog. Always looked down upon but still holding its own. I don’t care what those scientists say, Pluto is going to remain a planet in my book. Plus, we need planets named after Disney characters, if only because it might mean that Nasa will finally get that grant to figure out just what the hell Goofy actually is. Personally I just think that Pluto is smart enough to realize that talking is overrated because if he did he’d have to get a job and stuff and would rather have Mickey feed him three squares a day while all he has to do is lie around in the sun. Pluto, the ultimate slacker genius.

Reaching for the green light...

Sometimes you just have to give credit where credit is due. The cast of Celebrity Fit Club did an incredible job of losing weight, putting my measly pound and a half lost to shame. I mean, Goth Tina Yothers dropped like eleven pounds, which is something that I would like to accomplish over two months. Admittedly, they are all taking advantage of special diets while I tend to just try to institute portion control and cut down on my snacking. I’m sorry but I don’t go for the detox diet where I can only eats fruits and vegetables because, well, this is America and I get to eat steak.

I saw another really interesting show tonight. On Ovation (the arts channel, also known as channel 387), they had this BBC special from 2000 on The Great Gatsby. Obviously, this is something that keeps me glued to the television for an hour as Gatsby is the greatest American novel and what inspires me to keep writing in the hope that I will one day write something that is a tenth as good as that novel. What is interesting (and rather chilling in retrospect) is the discussion on American culture and how much the 2000 culture resembled Gatsby. Internet millionaires being created by the minute, wealth and excess everywhere, and just this sense that nothing could go wrong and this will last forever. On the show Hunter S. Thompson said, “I fear what will happen when this all collapses.”

Can you even remember what life was like back in 2000? It seems almost like another world to me. The biggest fear was Y2K and when that didn’t happen we all laughed and thought the world was ours for the taking. I remember flying to Europe that year with my biggest fear being how to deal with jet lag. Now I’m concerned about even the concept of getting on a plane without having everyone screened and rescreened a dozen times before getting onboard. Maybe that is the best analogy for what we are living in right now, it’s the Great Depression in more ways than one. We question our government, we question our leaders and there are times when you really wonder if there is light at the end of the tunnel. Just a thought that has been spinning in my head.

Otherwise this has been a bit of a blah weekend for me. As in I spent part of Saturday night doing laundry and cleaning my apartment, which is not something I imagine that Fitzgerald was doing when he was my age. I did get the liner notes done (finally) so expect the CDs to be in the mail this week. But it has just simply been too hot to really do anything. It seems like every day this past month has been 100 degrees and muggy and you don’t even want to step outside to pick up the mail. You’d rather just sit inside and watch preseason football because of the absolute joy that one receives by watching a fourth string running back who you’ll never hear of again. Still better than watching the Royals give up 11 runs in the first inning, though.

The five random CDs for the week (and it’s an alt-country quintuple play)
1) The Jayhawks “Hollywood Town Hall”
2) Jack Ingram “Jack Ingram’s Acoustic Motel”
3) Gear Daddies “Billy’s Live Bait”
4) Nickel Creek “Nickel Creek”
5) Whiskeytown “Strangers Almanac”

Royals Win?

First things before we get to the list. I want to wish a very hearty welcome to Jillian, the latest member of the extended Battling the Current Family. She and her mom Jen are still in the hospital for observation but everything looks to be ok right now. (If you could keep them in your prayers I would really appreciate it.) Oh and Jillian, just remember that I am your favorite uncle.

Anyway, time to close out the week with a couple of notes…

1) The above pictures are from tonight’s Royals game as I ended up, well, I basically ended up on the field. As a White Sox fan I really shouldn’t show these pictures because by law I am not allowed to get this close to a Royals first base coach. (Though that is what you get for trying to coach first base in our house.) Anyway, one picture is of David Ortiz on first base and the other is of the scoreboard after the Royals completed their sweep of the Red Sox. Yes, you read that correctly. I know that I give the Royals a lot of crap (and based on their record, deservedly so) but they pulled out another come from behind win on a team that is better and more experienced. It was a fun night at the ballpark all around.

2) For those reading this who know my travel schedule in the coming weeks I just want to state that yes, I am officially freaked out by today’s big story. I’m not typically at ease when I fly but knowing what may have been planned has my anxiety level at an all time high. I mean, I’ve risked a lot for my career in the past decade. I’ve stood next to signs that read “Danger: Contaminated Area”, I’ve been in rooms where if a siren went off I had one minute to get out before they sprayed CarDox and removed the oxygen, and I even lived in Kansas for a time. But this one really has me concerned.

3) Just a general comment. I’ve never left Royals stadium having a clue of what direction I was heading in and how to get to the expressway. It doesn’t help that I think that I take a different route every time. I think I ended up in Columbia this time around. I never quite understand why my default in those situations is to simply follow the guy in front of me in the belief that he knows where he is going. Odds are, he doesn’t live in my apartment building.

4) Ever notice how some cars have stickers showing the kids baseball or football team with their name and number? Well, while driving today I saw one for little Juston. Maybe it is the last name, maybe it is the first name with a really bizarre spelling. It’s reached a point now that you really can’t tell. Other than the fact that the Oklahoma Sooners license plate holder would tend to indicate the latter.

5) Oh and Rosemary, you are right. I need to play Thomas at linebacker. I simply have to put my best athletes on the field even if that means playing them out of position. Now I just need to figure out if that advice was for the videogame or not…

Have a good weekend everyone.

Feeling dumber by the minute...

I am just so bloody pissed right now. Lost at trivia and didn’t win money for the first time ever at the Flea Market. I just could not get it going tonight, missing questions that I should certainly have known. I mean, I actually missed an “Identify the wrestler by the picture” question and that is just plain embarrassing. Sure, it was a forty year old picture of “Classie” Freddie Blassie but I still should have known that. Man, I hate losing…

It doesn’t help that as part of my renewed weight loss kick I have reinstituted the dreaded beer limit. Yes, I now have a beer quota of only so many a week (the number is a mystery known only to myself). What that means is I have to drink less on a Wednesday, otherwise by Saturday night I won’t be able to go out. Apparently, trivia is a lot less fun when you are sober. Sure my recall might be a little better but overall the experience just isn’t as good.

(I missed a freaking wrestling question? That’s twenty five years of my life spent studying that and I missed it? I can accept that I couldn’t identify a spoken lyric from Radiohead’s “Creep” but a wrestling question? Maybe I am succumbing to old age.)

Ok, the following bit was meant to go into the liner notes of the CD but sadly, I couldn’t figure out how to make an Iguanas song fit on the disc. But, this is a great story that I kind of feel like sharing this week. Not too many people know of the Iguanas, who are this great New Orleans band that features a dual saxophone attack. But you do know of one famous event that happened at an Iguanas show. It was with the Iguanas playing at Café Brasil in the French Quarter that Lyle Lovett got Julia Roberts to fall in love with him. That’s how freaking cool the band is.

Of course, when I took a girl to see the band earlier this year it resulted in her basically not wanting to have anything to do with me again. I really don’t want to analyze what that might mean, other than a biker bar in the middle of a train yard just doesn’t have the same flavor as a night in the quarter.

Yeah, I know, I know, I’m in this weird self loathing mood right now that isn’t good for anyone, especially myself. It bums me out and I actually had to stop working on the liner notes because I looked at what I was writing and realized a) this is crap and b) you know, your life really isn’t that bad. It’s just that I’m getting that feeling once again that life is passing me by and I’m about nine days away from waking up and discovering that I missed all the important bits. Maybe it’s because my birthday is in a month and my fifteen year high school reunion is in two but I’m really trying to figure out just what is going on. Sometimes you just need to go off and have a good ponder and maybe that is something I need to schedule very soon.

(Oh yeah, and I missed another one on what is the top selling ringtone in the world right now. As you can tell, my head really is in another place.)

As random as life can be...

It’s clip time…

1) As part of my research last week I came upon the following rather stunning discovery. The Backer has a web site. Given that they barely have electricity and I don’t even want to get started on the plumbing situation the fact that they have an internet presence is pretty amazing. Anyway, the site is www.backernd.com and click on the staff to get a picture and a biography of the often mentioned but never duplicated Donna, who on nights like tonight I miss a lot.

2) No, I’m not going into any further detail. It’s one of those ten percent of my life that I don’t post type of things.

3) Am I the only one who when he gets the latest copy of NCAA 07 immediately plays a game featuring the heated rivalry between the University of South Carolina and Oregon State?

4) So I’ve picked up volumes two and three of the official Beavis and Butthead collection. This means that I now have, by my count, fifteen Beavis and Butthead DVDs. Obviously, this means that I can leave the bar knowing that I’m going home to watch Beavis and Butthead every other night for a month without having to repeat discs. And trust me, it’s been done before. They have included a decent number of videos but one of the best parts is Mike Judge talking about how he would record those comments for the videos. It’s basically just him ranting and by the end he was basically so sick of videos he would just rip on anything put in front of him. Especially after Winger complained about their treatment.

5) Huh huh huh…Oregon State…

6) Wow, and I wonder why I’m dealing with point #2 right now?

7) On the Gen X theme from last night, I was wondering what tv shows out there right now could really be considered a Gen X show. Scrubs was a great one and How I Met Your Mother is another one in consideration but other than that there just aren’t many that I can think of. I’d even be more tempted to put the Adult Swim lineup on the list, which are cartoons made by guys my age for guys who won’t grow up (i.e. Family Guy). It is really strange to be in your early thirties and not really see anyone like you on television. I mean when Jim Belushi turns on the tv he seems himself and remembers that he must have sold his soul to the devil to get that gig but when I turn on the set I either see people in their forties raising kids or a twenty year old trying to vaguely sing and dance and doing neither well.

8) The track list for the disc is complete and I know they say a good mix tape should rise and fall but trust me, this one is all rise. It might be my ultimate get psyched mix. And should probably have a parental warning sticker on it just for the degree of awesomeness that it contains.

The present of Gen X

Third time’s the charm as I finally was able to get the cover image downloaded. As you can see I am keeping with a theme here as Joe Cool is quite an apt symbol for myself. Hey, a man can dream, can’t he?

(Two things I need to note before I start my main article. First, happy Picnic Day to all those of you in Australia and if you are not, add the film “Picnic at Hanging Rock” to your Netflix queue. Trust me on this one. And, I have to mention that yesterday was the fifteenth anniversary of the birth of the world wide web. For those wondering, I’ve been on for twelve of those fifteen years and have gone from watching the Hamster Dance to the Peanut Butter and Jelly song to neverending YouTube clips. What a world…)

Anyway, while waiting to get my haircut I was reading this issue of Details from last April and in it they asked whether time had passed Generation X by. They did pose the hypothetical of “Has Generation X jumped the shark?” It’s a very good question and one that I, as one of the last ones standing for the fabled 13th Gen, really should address.

From a pop culture standpoint, Generation X is definitely an afterthought. The Baby Boomers are still a big focus as they start retiring and twenty years after thirtysomething I get to see articles on how fifty is the new thirty. You know, all of those headlines like “Baby Boomers find life after work”, “The Boomers raid the social security system” and my favorite “Will you just go away already?” (Ok, I can dream). But since they are a generation that always focused on themselves it doesn’t surprise me that their media focuses on their state.

Their kids, either Gen Y or the Millenials depending on how you want to define them, have also taken control of the airwaves. They are the generation of Brittney and Paris and yes, even my beloved Lindsay. They are a generation where you can be famous just for being famous, where everyone can and should be a star and where there is no shame in selling out. Hell, that’s the entire point.

And that is why Gen X is seeming to fade into the background. We don’t sell out. We’d rather fade away than sacrifice what we hold dear to ourselves. Pearl Jam hasn’t retooled themselves for a TRL appearance, even though they’d sell a ton more discs if they did. You don’t see Richard Linklatter or Kevin Smith doing big summer movies; they’d rather film two separate takes on what life is like within the fast food industry. And by staying true to yourself you tend not to get a lot of press.

Here is my best example. Right now, the place to be if you are in Gen Y is on MySpace and you look at the average page there and it just screams “Look at me! Look at me! Aren’t I cool?” That seems so opposite from the Gen X viewpoint, where anyone doing that would be immediately called a poseur. Instead you get things like this blog, which is simple and holds no great hope for becoming famous by just existing. It’s just one person stating what is on his mind and if anyone feels like reading it, awesome.

Or think of it this way, could you imagine American Idol on the air in 1993? I mean, people absolutely hated the band Bush and Gavin Rosdale at least had some level of musical ability. Kids singing karaoke poorly would have been the dumbest thing in the world. Now it is the biggest entertainment franchise in the world due to a generation that prides fame over talent.

But has Generation X jumped the shark? Did we just have a few years in the sun that started when Nirvana asked us to come as we are and ended when Kurt left us? As the focal point of American culture that is probably the case. But typically when you say jumped the shark you mean that there is no more talent or skill or drive and that isn’t the case. We just don’t bring our own camera crews with us. There is still great art being made by my generation, we’re just quiet about it. Our movies are introspective, are music is lyrical and our goals are to find meaning and contentment in a challenging and often disappointing world. None of these things sell platinum records or fill up the googolplex. But it does make for a very satisfying life and I’m happy for that.

Paris Hilton - Like Mother Theresa but cooler

Once again, I had planned on unveiling the cover art today but Google Images and my laptop are deciding to not cooperate in letting me get the image that I’m looking for. This is most likely due to the fact that I am the first person to use Google Images to search for something that wouldn’t be, uh, shrinkwrapped and sold behind the counter at a gas station. I’ll make another valiant effort at obtaining the file I’m looking for before starting over. But, I can share the playlist…

1) Chris Mills “Brand New Day”
2) Social Distortion “Ball and Chain”
3) Son Volt “6 String Belief”
4) Jump, Little Children “The House Our Father Knew”
5) David Ford “State of the Union”
6) My Morning Jacket “Gideon”
7) The Postal Service “The District Sleeps Alone Tonight”
8) The Sundays “Here’s Where the Story Ends”
9) Jon Dee Graham “Big Sweet Life”
10) The Arcade Fire “Rebellion (Lies)”
11) The New Pornographers “Star Bodies”
12) Richard Thompson “1985”
13) The Ditty Bops “Your Head’s Too Big”
14) Josh Rouse “El Otro Lado”
15) Sufjan Stevens “Chicago”

Things (especially the order) are still subject to change as I listen to it and make sure that all the songs are getting along with each other. That is a rather difficult task given that I have Social Distortion and The Ditty Bops on the same disc, something that I don’t believe has ever been attempted in the history of mix tapes. Josh Rouse is the only direct repeat from Volume 1, though Son Volt and the New Pornographers kind of are. And yes, after ending the first disc with “Lawrence, KS” I am ending this one with “Chicago”. So if you want to be the cool kid and get an hour of free music email me with your address at either a) my real email, b) my work email or c) the seldom checked email of kcgatsby@aol.com

Ok, there is one piece of celebrity news that I must comment on. I don’t know how many of you read the British version of GQ, I mean I do but that’s because I need to know what’s cool across the pond in case England suddenly becomes cool again. Well, Paris Hilton has an interview in an upcoming issue and let’s just say that she unleashes several bombshells. The first is that she states that she is celibate. Now before we bring up the video evidence that counters that fact she states that what she means is that she isn’t sleeping with anyone right now (and you do wonder if that phrase implies that “Since I’m not sleeping with the interviewer at this very second I am technically celibate.”) So, according to the British press, Paris Hilton is celibate.

She then went on to say that she has had only two, uh, partners in her entire life. Now I am a trusting soul so I will take Paris at her word. That would mean that for a certain typically private part of one’s life, Paris has had half of it videotaped and shared with the world. That’s a pretty high percentage for someone whose career does not solely involve work that is obtained in the back room of a video store. And finally, to cap off the interview Paris compares herself to Princess Diana. Because, you know, they both ride around in cars and have their pictures taken a lot. And they both…ok, seriously, outside of standard human functions like breathing what the hell do Princess Diana and Paris Hilton have in common? I am completely at a loss here.

Oh, and I need to switch gears and at least touch on the start of Celebrity Fit Club. This is the first episode so all we get to do is see who is on the show and whether there is anyone I can compare myself to (no real luck on the last part). We’ve got Isaac from the Love Boat, who actually looks pretty fit given that he hasn’t been seen for twenty years. From Wilson Phillips we’ve got Carnie Wilson, post-gastric bypass and Playboy shoot and now falling somewhere in between the two. Erika Eleniak takes over the Kelly Lebrock role this season as the “Whoa, what the hell?” contestant. And, in what might be the highlight of my viewing year, Tina Yothers from Family Ties is on Celevrity Fit Club. A Tina Yothers who died her hair black and looks like a goth, if you were like 35 and wanted to be a goth. This show is so brilliant and I vow to lose 15 pounds by the end of the season.

Coming tomorrow: Has Generation X jumped the shark?

The five random CDs of the week
1) Steve Earle “Essential Steve Earle”
2) Gomez “How We Operate”
3) Neko Case and Her Boyfriends “The Virginian”
4) Bruce Springsteen “Human Touch”
5) Martin Zellar “Scattered”

Free gift time!

(Rina: Thanks for the comment. It’s nice to know that there are a few people out there who will vouch for my being able to wield a crowbar with deadly precision.)

Ok, I had originally planned a really big to do about this but sadly my plans failed at the last minute. Still, I am proud to announce that in honor of the 450th post to Battling the Current that Battling the Current Volume II is now ready to go into production. Yes, just for reading the blog (or just saying that you read the blog) you can receive at absolutely no charge a CD filled with some of the best music you may never had heard of. Some of the artists included are The Arcade Fire, Sufjan Stevens, Social Distortion, The Sundays and Jump, Little Children. All I need from you is your address. If I don’t have it, please send it to me. If you think I do have it please resend it to me because I can almost guarantee that I’ve lost it. If you don’t have Volume I and want that as well just let me know. I still have a few copies lying around.

(Now, I had originally planned to unveil the cover art here but I discovered that it was a copyrighted image and the web site wouldn’t let me download it. I’ll keep working at it. Plus, I still have to write the liner notes so expect it to take a few days until everything is finalized. Yes, I don’t just provide you with a mix CD, I provide you with a mix CD that comes with ten pages of in depth discussions on the intricacies of each song.)

Anyway, it is nice to know that the week is basically over. It’s been a very long one and I could use a weekend off so I can do important things like get a haircut. Yeah, it’s getting a little too close to mullet length for my liking. The fun thing is I come home from work and I have a message on my machine saying “Your appointment is at 1 on Saturday.” I don’t even have to call in for an appointment, they are made for me by people who understand that I just need to get one. It’s like the universe has decided to be my assistant.

Oh, and there is one concert coming to town that I must discuss. In October I can go to see on one stage Aerosmith and Motley Crue. Yes, the two bands that defined…that defined… uh, using umlauts in the band name? Only using one guitar chord in a twenty year career? Having your lasting legacy be an appearance on The Surreal Life? Help me out here, I’m at a loss as to why people would want to attend the show. If Liv Tyler was going to be on stage, maybe, but even she has fallen off the pop culture radar. The sad thing is I can guarantee you that the show will sell out. If people went to see Poison, they’ll go to see this. Which just means that I can sit back and know that I’ll still be in a bar with thirty people listening to good music instead.

If I only had a beer....

I got some great news this morning that did not involve a small reptile discussing my deductible. It appears that the scarecrows have finally seen the wizard. Let me explain. The Kansas primary was last night and the residents of the great state of Kansas (or scarecrows as I call them, in what might be the most derogatory term I have ever invented) finally decided to elect a school board that actually believes in evolution. This should hopefully mean that intelligent design will no longer be taught in the schools and kids will get to grow up and become scientists without being ostracized in the process. Well, I mean outside of the fact that you are automatically going to be ostracized because you are spending all of your time studying math and science while your friends are taking bowling. It just kind of comes with the territory, like the requirement that you must wear glasses and memorize all the characters in Star Wars.

(By the way, I was watching a show this evening and they actually asked, “Which would win in a fight, a Star Destroyer or the Enterprise? Dude, talk about a no contest. A Star Destroyer would so kick the Enterprise’s ass. Oh no, here comes a photon torpedo. I’ll spot the Enterprise Kirk, Picard and Sam Beckett and they’ll still get beat.)

(Yeah, and sometimes I wonder why my social life is the way it is…)

A little more on the Notre Dame thread, which I should probably write in an email but I need to fill up space in the blog. Notre Dame buying up property on the south side of campus is really there only logical next step. It’s the one direction that they can grow in and as they want to improve the quality of the school they simply need more land. Turning that area into a campus town would create a lot of benefits. More housing off-campus would reduce the number of people in the halls and allow them to increase enrollment. An actual campus town would mean that the school would actually have a campus town, which is something that is completely missing right now. I know that the idea was that everything is already contained on the campus but that is not entirely a good thing. You need a Mass. Street equivalent to give the place an additional vibe.

But in what might be the strangest one for me to mention is I bet the school wants to buy the property just to make that side of campus look nicer. It’s why they moved the road just so they could build this more elegant entrance to the school. And I love the Backer and if I rank the top ten moments of my life a good half dozen took place there but it is not a good looking building. It’s not the impression you want to put in people’s mind when they visit the campus. And in a world where perception is reality that really means a lot.

Before we all get teary eyed over the possibility of our favorite bar going way just remember the one thing we should all have realized, it is the people and not the place that is important. It wasn’t the Backer per se that was important because let’s face it, it’s a dive bar and I still don’t trust Long Island Ice Teas that are pre-made in Gatorade buckets. What mattered is that I knew I could walk into there on a Wednesday night and run into a dozen of my friends, all of whom just wanted to hang out and have a good time. My memories aren’t tied to any physical part of the place (well, other than the trivia machine) but I’ll always remember the people I was with when I was there.

Signal to noise...

1) For those of you who are extremely curious: It took me 25 minutes to drive from my apartment to company property and then an additional 7 minutes to get to a parking spot. I have a feeling that there is going to be little variation in the first number but a great deal of variation in the second. Is it bad that a significant portion of my commute involves finding a parking space?

2) Note to readers of my monthly report: I try not to spread unsubstantiated rumors. Really, that is not my goal. Especially when said rumor will result in a great deal of psychological harm. I know that when I heard that the Backer might be closing I immediately called my therapist to see how I should cope. I don’t want to see the place go away. Hell, I’m raising money for a memorial plaque to be placed in the parking lot on the exact spot of what Super Dave called “The highlight of my two years of business school and it had nothing to do with me.” As Erik told me this weekend, I need to bring my kids to the place and explain to them just what happened because they just will never believe me. So, I hope that it is false but if ND is looking to buy a property I just don’t see us putting together a competitive bid.

3) Odd choice of music for a commercial: Coldplay being used in the World Trade Center movie trailer. I’m kind of mixed on artists selling their music for commercials. On one hand, I understand that you need to make your money any way that you can and if you can get noticed by a commercial, so be it. I mean, I know that more people heard Richard Buckner in that Volkswagen commercial (even though they probably had no clue who it was) than ever bought his disc. On the other hand, it really changes your view of a song. I don’t know if I want to connect Coldplay with the World Trade Center. I wouldn’t want to link it to Snakes on a Plane, either. I’d just like it to be a song.

4) Sox beat the Royals in extra innings. I don’t really have anything to add here, I just wanted to put it in print.

5) Though I have to say that the Royals recent promotion of having one of the last surviving munchkins throw out the first pitch does have a stroke of genius related to it. Because I know when I think of major league baseball, I think of the Lollipop Guild. Sure, it doesn’t rank up there with handing out t-shirts that say Ketchup on them but then again I don’t think you could ever come up with something that brilliant again.

Month end download...

Since it’s the end of the month it means that I have just finished another magnum opus e-mail so the blog is forced to deal with whatever random thoughts are in my head at any given moment. Here goes nothing…

1) Ok, another 90’s musical question that no one is asking: If you’re too sexy for your hat shouldn’t you at least wear a hoodie? Because otherwise you’re going to catch a chill. What do you think about that?

2) On the list of celebrity meltdowns that I wished there was a video camera present, Mel Gibson’s DUI arrest is almost certainly at the top of the list. It wasn’t the fact that he got pulled over for a DUI. It’s not because of his rants about who may or may not be conspiring to rule the world. I just want to see footage of him pretending to take a piss in a jail cell. Now that is a judge of your acting chops. It’s situations like that where you really prove that you are an Oscar winner.

3) Oh, and once again I must come to the defense of my beloved Lindsay who was so unjustly attacked by the head of the studio for her being exhausted on set. Look, that was clearly a case of heat exhaustion. Sure, the hospital treated her by giving her an injection of Vitamin B, which isn’t done for exhaustion but rather for uh, over-inbibing, but who are you going to trust? Doctors or publicists? It’s the studios fault for a) filming in Los Angeles and b) making her work for upwards of three hours a day. That’s just inhuman, no one should be forced to work that hard. Especially Lindsay since she is such a delicate soul.

4) I read this over the weekend and sadly I know that I am going to do this in a manner that will frighten random strangers. See, Wired had an article on improving your life and in the section on shortening your commute they discussed varying your start times and keeping detailed notes to determine the optimal time to drive. Yeah, I’ve already built the spreadsheets. With automated graphs. And some multivariate regression analysis. All of this to save five minutes a day. I could just move closer to work but why do something that complex?

5) Oh, and an album recommendation to close out the night. If you are into the Damien Rice/David Gray style of music you’ll probably want to check out David Ford. He’s another British singer songwriter and I saw him open for Gomez and he put on a great set. Plus, his disc is called “I sincerely apologize for all the trouble I’ve caused”, which is just awesome. Definitely worth checking out.

Last group of Nola pics...for now

Ok, here are the last group of my pictures from my Nola trip. I know that this is the equivalent of subjecting you to my vacation slides but otherwise I’ll be forced to write about Mel Gibson’s DUI tonight and none of us want that. So, from top to bottom

Picture 1: That is basically a day’s worth of work in terms of tearing down a house. I dumped a decent portion of that trash as well as I took it upon myself to do garbage detail a lot of the time. Don’t take that as being a noble endeavor on my part, it basically was an attempt in order to get outside and be able to take off the mask every once in a while.

Picture 2: The Superdome with the sign stating that it will be ready for the Saints home opener in September. If you remember the week of Katrina you’ll remember the images of people camped out on the overpasses outside the Superdome. Well, that is where this picture was taken from. You still get a little bit of a chill up your spine when you realize what happened there as you drive down the road.

Picture 3: Another picture of our handiwork including the floorboards, which I swear if I ever have to do again I am going to outsource like mad. Either that or I need to start working out because that was really, really tough work.

Picture 4: One of my favorite pictures of my favorite place in the world, Pirate’s Alley. I have a professional version of this view above my CD collection and one of the things that you notice when you compare these two pictures is that all the trees are gone. But, the most important thing is the history of those buildings. William Faulkner wrote his first novel while living in the yellow building. In the red building (directly behind the statue of Jesus) lives Declan Mulrooney, the last in a long line of mystical Irish shaman (or at least, that is who lives there in my novel). The grey building next to it is where I want to live and it is still for sale. It is a very tempting proposition.

Picture 5: If you want a sense of the devastation in the ninth ward this is it. This was a house moved a far distance off of its foundation. Just jaw dropping.

Picture 6: When I talk about gutting a house this is what I mean. We took down all of the walls and the floors until all you had left was the frame of the house. Luckily, we were able to save the ceilings in this house, which wasn’t always the case.

Picture 7: I don’t know if it will be readable but this is the front door of Pat O’Brien’s with a sign on it stating the new hours and that it is closed on Tuesdays. Now the French Quarter is back but until Pat O’s (the place you just have to stop in when you are in town) can afford to be open seven days a week, it really isn’t back.

Picture 8: Part of the group standing in front of Jackson Square. Now I have shown people my photos before and they have looked at this picture and have questioned whether or not I may have had ulterior motives in going on this trip. I can neither confirm nor deny those statements.

The five random CDs for the week:
1) Blake Babies “Sunburn”
2) Robbie Fulks “Country Love Songs”
3) Emmylou Harris “Stumble Into Grace”
4) Moby “Play”
5) Scott Miller and the Commonwealth “Upside Downside”

TGIT once again...

Hey, have I ever mentioned how completely infuriating it is to drive in the state of Kansas? Because wow, I know that they probably learned on tractors but for crying out loud it should not take me ten minutes to move two blocks. Just because it is raining doesn’t mean that you can’t move forward. I swear that I am becoming convinced that the entire state is made up of scarecrows…

Very strange occurrence of the night: As I was cleaning my apartment and organizing things I decided to throw in a random disc from the “Best of the 90’s” box set that I picked up a few weeks ago. Which meant that I was cleaning to Hanson’s “Mmmmbop.” I’m not quite sure what it means that I am in my early thirties, graying around the temples, and I do dishes while listening Hanson. I’m sure that it can’t mean anything good.

Wrestling note of the week: Triple H and Stephanie McMahon had a daughter this Monday night and named her Aurora Rose. The official statement is that they took the name from the story Sleeping Beauty. All I know is that is also a name that you would hear announced in uh, some of the more interesting clubs on Bourbon Street. (Though I don’t care what anyone else says, Rick’s does have a surprisingly good brunch…)

The Big Break comment reference: Good to hear that your sister is getting a chance at the show. I did watch the last season of the show and it is actually a really good show. It’s a good golf competition and over time you really begin to have your favorites. If you have the Golf Channel you really should check it out. Of course, your sister would have to be on the season after the girl from Australia who I had a huge crush on was on the show. I mean, I would have had an in… Or maybe not…

90’s musical question that no one is asking but should: Why can’t I touch it? Is it protected by some sort of force field?

(I’ll try to get another list of those going one of these days.)

Ugh, as you can see I am really at the end of my creativity for the week so I’ll probably just call it a post. I will do my best to get the CD together this weekend and get the pictures uploaded. It helps that this is also laundry weekend for me so I know I’ll be stuck in my apartment for hours on end. Still, since we are talking about me here I’m sure that I’ll still find a way to get into much mischief. Have a good weekend everyone.

Still the champs...

It’s random comment time!

1) Yet another victory for the Kai Badgers tonight in a thrilling, last second victory caused by the fact that I didn’t argue to change our team’s answer on a Russian author question. I still stand by my claim that Chekov is a playwright and not an author, though. Seriously, on the very last question we went from being out of the money to winning it all. Quite a rush and it means that once again I’ll be eating at the Sizzler this weekend. My best answer that helped with the victory: Who was the first runner that Nike signed to a contract?

2) My team’s dominance at the Flea Market is incredible. In all the times that I have played there we have always finished in the money and won all but twice. That just should not happen. The bigger thing is that the games are almost always like tonights in which it always comes down to the final question. Only once did we have it wrapped up before then. It’s rather stunning to think that over 50 questions we are consistently one question smarter than the other teams.

3) And yes, I know that I spent all of last night discussing how horrible it is that my job focuses on trivia. This is just one of the dozen or so internal conflicts that I am currently dealing with. My idea is that I try to learn everything that I can in order to better understand the bigger picture. How being able to quote Family Guy verbatim fits into that is a question I deal with very late at night over copious amounts of alcohol.

4) Oh, the answer is Steve Prefontaine by the way.

5) Lance Bass of N Sync announced that he is gay this afternoon. I for one am stunned that a member of a boy band is gay. I mean, who would think that of someone who is best known for highly choreographed and synchronized dance moves? But, props to the guy for being open about it and for apparently dating Reichen from The Amazing Race. See, everything really does revolve around reality television.

6) Here is my best story from the Lyle Lovett show last night and it had absolutely nothing to do with Lyle. This was an expensive show (with a nineteen piece band you have to charge a lot) so I came in with the assumption that the people there would be into the show. I take my seat, joke with the couple to my left and right at the last moment before the show starts I see the couple who takes the seats to my right. It is a guy with a woman who, and remember, this is coming from me here, looks to be way out of his league. Like a AA guy dating a major leaguer. I take note of it and sit back and enjoy the show. Or as much as I could enjoy because about every ten minutes I could see the woman flip open her cellphone to check the time. Continually throughout the show she had absolutely no interest in what was going on. To the point that they left before the encore. There is a deeper meaning to that story, I’m just not sure what it is just yet other than it might explain why I go to concerts alone most of the time.

Goods and services...

Just got back from seeing Lyle Lovett (incredible show, chills up your spine moments at times) and I’ve been wondering how odd it seems that traveling musician is a career. All he has is some stories and some songs and some friends who are incredible musicians and that is all he needs to live his life. The Ditty Bops take it to the extreme where they can bike across the country and play shows along the way and it is perfectly normal for them to do so. It just seems bizarre when you look at it on those terms.

Of course, being a musician or an entertainer has been an option for centuries from the troubadour on down. People have always needed to be entertained, to listen to stories and to have someone attempt to explain to them what life is really about. They go out and make people happy or at least have an emotional release (I’m not sure if anyone ever went to a Cure show to be happy). It is a very noble profession and I mean that in the truest sense. I have a great admiration for people who go out and tell the world their story.

The reason my mind has been on this is because of a conversation I had back in Nola. We were sitting down at dinner and someone asked what everyone did for a living. So we went around and it was like “I’m a teacher”, “I work with special needs students” “I’m going to spend the next year volunteering”, which meant that by the time I got to me I was like “I’m pretty much pure evil.”

Ok, that is admittedly pretty critical but I have to admit I have a very trivial job. It pays well and I am surprisingly good at it but basically it is a role in which I encourage rampant consumerism. The positive part is that I am making rampant consumerism easier, which can be considered a good thing when looked at in a certain light. Still compared to the people I was with a few weeks back it seems kind of silly.

(Sidebar: I am still impressed and encouraged and inspired by the people that I met while working in Nola. These are people living the life that I would much rather see myself lead.)

It ties into Nick Hornby’s “How to be Good”, which I’m reading right now. In it he discusses what does it mean to truly be good in our world. I mean, though I joke about being evil I do think that I am a good person at heart. I donate money, I volunteer here or there, I get into few arguments, on the whole I would like to think that I am a positive benefit to society in that if you replaced me with a potted plant the world would suffer. But when you compare that to what I could potentially do, all of the good that I am capable of if I would just try, well then your life suddenly becomes a lot starker and a lot less noble.

It’s strange that most people would look at a musician and go “Why don’t you get a real job” and see me in an office and go “Now that is what a young professional should be doing.” In some ways I really feel that the reverse is true. There is a way to do good in every profession, a way to make your life as valuable as it can be, I just need to put the pieces back together again.

Westward the course of the empire makes its way...

Two other notes from The Ditty Bops show that I somehow failed to mention. First, since they were dressed up like Dorothy and the Witch they had to play Somewhere Over the Rainbow. Which they did. On a saw. Damn impressive. Second, they would bring volunteers from the audience to the stage to either a) dance, b) tell stories of their obsessive crushes or c) perform karaoke and sing the song for them. It all seemed to make sense at the time. Third, I used to just run into bartenders and Kristin and Bill at shows (who I did run into and yep, they’re still together.) Now I run into people I play trivia with and that is odd because we know each other but only by team names. Again, there is something to having random people reference you as Cobra Kai.

I guess that would be three things. Not like I ever knew how to count or anything.

So since I actually had some free time tonight in between doing dishes, cleaning my apartment and organizing my dry cleaning (as you should outsource laundry whenever possible) I discovered that they are now showing two episodes of How I Met Your Mother on Monday nights in the summer. Which is sweet because there are still episodes that I haven’t seen yet and since I had taken a few weeks off from watching the show it’s nice to go back and see how my life is playing out on television. And apparently they noticed that I find playing Laser Tag way too cool for its own good. I’m not sure if I’m proud of that fact or not.

And yes, I officially can’t wait until the start of the new season. Especially since Nakomis got voted out of Big Brother, which means that I don’t particularly like anyone in the show so it’s not really worth watching. I really don’t want to have to be forced to watch Project Runway in order to get my reality show fix but it might come down to it. If I can just make it two more weeks until the new season of Celebrity Fit Club I’ll be okay.

Actually, of all of my guilty pleasure shows that one is probably the biggest one. Partly because it is the only reality show that I have found useful in that I a) learned a couple of ideas on how to help lose weight and b) it is really nice to know that I can lose more weight on my own than celebrities can when they are actually being paid to lose weight. Plus, you are down to the D level celebrities who will admit that “Yeah, I’m fat but I’ll get more publicity by doing this than by eating another box of Ding Dongs.” Sure, it’s no Flavor of Love but then again, nothing is.

(Is it me or is anyone else amazed that more people know who Flavor Flav is than Chuck D? Does that say something very meaningful about our society? Or the importance of wearing huge clocks?)

Decisions, decisions...

(Amanda Barrett of The Ditty Bops portraying both the good and bad witches from the Wizard of Oz.)

Tonight was a night of choices for me as there were two concerts in town that I had been meaning to catch. The first one I had actually bought a ticket to and that was to see Toad the Wet Sprocket. The best band ever to take their name from a very obscure Monty Python sketch. Now I had missed seeing Toad more than a decade ago when they played literally a block from my dorm room and I felt that this would be a grand opportunity to make it up and finally get to say that I saw the band behind Dulcinea. Then I found out that The Ditty Bops were playing the same night.

And I guess you can see which one I decided to go see.

I’m sorry but seeing a Ditty Bops show just might be the most fun that you can have at a concert. Of all the bands that I have seen I can’t recall a show that makes you laugh and smile as much as these two girls do. I can’t call them a rock act or a pop act because if they are anything they are an old vaudeville act updated for the twenty first century. Because they sound like something you would have heard ninety years ago with all of these harmonies that are out of left field and props just fly out of nowhere (such as the fact that the entire band and support staff were dressed up like characters from the Wizard of Oz.) All of their songs are upbeat and poppy with some really good guitar work. The band really is just the two girls, one playing mandolin and the other picking at a guitar, with a little piano and keyboards in the background. They are well worth a listen.

Plus, there are two undeniable facts. One, they are touring the country on bicycle. As in they are riding out of KC tomorrow morning at 8 and going to Warrensburg. They’ve traveled 2500 miles so far, or as they put it “1000 miles farther than the ball of twine is long.” Second, they are, well, to put it mildly, gorgeous. And that is more than enough to make me a fan.

(So E, that was the solution to one of the quandaries. The second one also seems to be solved though not in the way that I originally anticipated. Still, hope springs eternal…)

Anyway, I know that I promised to accomplish the following this weekend: a) post the remaining pictures from my trip and b) put together the new CD. And I meant to do those things except that I forgot that this was the week that they released NCAA 07 for the Playstation and well that took up most of my weekend. Because you know that I need to enter the names of all the ND players and spend a lot of time learning the playbook and getting a sense of how the team will react. My thoughts so far a) Brady tends to throw a lot of interceptions in the red zone, b) that is probably a result of my always trying to get the ball to Szamardjia in those situations, c) basically if you can get the ball to Szamardjia he will catch it, he’s like a freaking superman in the game, d) yeah, the defense isn’t looking too good, e) nice to know that I could put up 66 points on Illinois and open a can of whoop ass on Kansas, f) hey, the fact that I turned off the game while I was playing Kansas State has nothing to do with the outcome of the game. But man, do I have ill will towards that school.

As always, I’ll be spending the next week updating rosters and improving the fan signs in the game, just because you need to see in a blowout people raising signs that read, “Screw this, I’m going to the Backer.”

The five random CDs for the week
1) Steve Earle and the Del McCoury Band “The Mountain”
2) Tift Merritt “Tambourine”
3) John Hiatt “The Best of John Hiatt”
4) Alejandro Escovedo “More Miles than Money: Live 1994-96”
5) Various Artists (mainly Aimee Mann) “Magnolia (motion picture soundtrack)”

No stamp without a cool theme song...

(And now, back to our regularly scheduled random programming…)

You want to get a sense of how friggin hot it has been in Kansas City this week? When I got to my car this afternoon I saw that the rear view mirror had fallen off the windshield. Yes, it was so hot that the adhesive failed. It probably didn’t help that I had been parking on the roof of the garage this week (it’s a lot tougher for me to get going after a vacation than it used to be) but still, how hardcore is that? And let me just say that it is a lot tougher driving without a rearview mirror than you can imagine. But yes, it is fixed now but I figure I’ll just continue to live by Satchel Page’s tenet of never look back because something might be gaining on you.

I had a concert going experience on Tuesday night that might be an indication that I have gone completely over the edge in terms of my music fandom. I drove to Lawrence (basically a 45 minute trip one way) to catch a 40 minute set by The Immaculate Machine at the Replay Lounge. The Immaculate Machine, a band out of Canada that I only know of because they opened for The New Pornographers last year and that I like for the sole reason that the girl who plays keyboards and sings in the band is really cute. So yeah, I think this means that I may have just gone completely insane when I will spend more time traveling than watching a band just because the vocalist has a nice smile.

They are a good band though and you should listen to their stuff. Admittedly, the Replay Lounge may be the strangest place to see a show in that the band was literally set up next to a bank of pinball machines that people were playing while the show was going on. Now Simpsons pinball is good and all but there is a band five feet from you, I’m not sure how you make that decision. (Oh, and Erik, this is another one of those shows where you and Zack played to larger crowds at CJ’s. And probably made more money.)

Finally, there is a big announcement this week that the post office is releasing official superhero stamps. Yes, finally comic books are getting their due as the legends are being represented on stamps. People like Superman and Batman and Aquaman…

Wait a minute, Aquaman is getting a stamp? WTF? How the hell does Aquaman deserve a stamp?

Let’s face it, there is no lamer hero in the history of comic books than Aquaman. The guy’s superpower is that he can talk to fish. And he can swim really well. That’s it, which might be useful if you need information from a flounder but doesn’t help in terms of saving the world. Imagine in a time of crisis hearing, “Superman, use your heat vision to cut through that door. Wonder Woman, use your lasso of truth to determine the location of the self destruct switch. Aquaman, uh, go over there and do the backstroke or something.”

(Now, Batroc the Leaper, there is someone who deserves a stamp. His superpower is that he can leap. Actually, it’s not even a power or anything. He’s just this French guy with really good hops. And that is still more impressive than being able to order guppies around.)

So just remember, when you are sending off that love letter to not use the Aquaman stamp. That’s if people still send letters. I’m sure someone out there still does. It still is cooler than e-mail and more permanent. Though permanence is not always a good thing…

Closing thoughts for now...

Note #1: For those of you who wonder about these things, I went 0 for 5 in the Notre Dame Football Ticket Lottery, which means barring a very unforeseen circumstance I won’t make it to a game this year. I accept getting a refund for the tickets I tried to purchase but can I ask for a refund on my donation as well? I mean, can’t I get at least one game? Oh well, I knew the year that I got four games would come back to haunt me eventually.

Note #2: Battling the Current Volume 2 will hopefully be put together over the weekend. For those who are new to the blog, this is a CD that basically doubles for the soundtrack of my life. Or the soundtrack to a Cameron Crowe film that hasn’t yet been made, it’s been described both ways. I’ll let everyone know when it is done and I’ll put out the request for addresses and the like so you can all get your free gift for reading whatever thoughts pop into my head on a nightly basis.

Ok, I’ll try to wrap up the New Orleans stories with a bunch of quick points. I’ll probably post more pictures over the weekend but I kind of have the feeling that the masses are just waiting to hear my opinion on the new Paris Hilton single and I can’t deny the crowd what they want. So, some closing thoughts.

1) Here is my description of the new Bourbon Street. Have you ever noticed that when you are in a packed bar with people just completely wasted all around you that you always feel safe. It doesn’t matter how drunk you are, you just feel at ease in the situation. But if you are in an empty bar and there are two guys in the corner who are really drunk you get really nervous about what might happen next. That’s basically the way that Bourbon Street is right now, it’s an empty bar with a few really drunk people in it. Whereas before you felt safe just because of pure numbers now if someone wants to make trouble there are much fewer targets around. It is really disconcerting and it is made worse by having places close at one in the morning.

2) I previously thought that I had done everything on Bourbon Street that was humanly possible and a few things that aren’t. But, I think I topped everything this year by walking down Bourbon Street while talking with a nun. Seriously, through the heart of Bourbon past all the clubs while talking to Sr. Vicki. There were so many opportunities for humor there that I basically couldn’t talk.

3) For those who know the story from last year and are wondering what happened this time: a) I didn’t run into her, b) while I didn’t specifically go out looking for her I did keep my eyes open and c) it does bother me that I didn’t keep my promise when she asked me “When you move down here, look me up.” That said, you can already tell what an ending to a story I’m working on is going to be.

4) Incredibly, if you asked me which stores survived Katrina completely unscathed it would be the tacky t-shirt shops in the Quarter. They are all back up and running like nothing ever happened (while my art gallery is only open on weekends so I was forced to stare longingly through the window at paintings I would really like to buy.) It’s amazing, some of the landmarks like Preservation Hall are still closed but you can still buy the same bad tourist t-shirt that you could a decade ago. Still, the best new shirt has to be “I stayed for Katrina and all I got was this lousy t-shirt, a brand new Cadillac and a plasma TV.”

5) We did hit Café du Monde as a group so I got to have my coffee and beignets like I always do. It does bug me that they actually cleaned the place and replaced some of the ovens post-Katrina since it was the first time that they had ever had a chance to in years. You used to be able to taste the history in that place. You don’t want a clean coffee pot, you want a coffee pot that has been working continuously for twenty years.

6) I’ll post the picture over the weekend but a) my place in Pirate’s Alley is still standing and b) it is still for sale. And yes, I was once again tempted to call up a real estate agent and figure out how many organs I would need to sell to be able to afford it. I mean, you don’t really need both kidneys, do you? Well, in New Orleans you probably would…

7) One of the best ideas of the trip goes to Julie (thanks for the comment by the way), who as we stood around Café du Monde trying to figure out where to go threw out the suggestion of Molly’s, which was awesome. Molly’s is the bar that did not close during Katrina, they stayed open without electricity and served warm drinks to anyone who would walk inside. It is a real place in the Quarter, which is a nice change after spending time on Bourbon Street. Plus, Pete threw a lot of money in the jukebox and that meant that I got to take over at one point and play Social Distortion, Wilco, John Hiatt, the Radiators and the Old 97’s. Man, that was a good night. That was one of those nights where you just got to wander around and talk to everyone as we took over the entire bar. Closest thing to the Backer that I’ve experienced in a long time.

8) I said it before and I’ll say it again, I can solve every problem in my life over gumbo and etoufee at The Gumbo Shop. If there was one place that I was very glad to see open that was it.

9) New Orleans is bruised and battered and much of the city seems to be missing. I spent a lot of time noticing what wasn’t there, like the children and the vendors and the people that gave the city it’s unique flavor. But you caught glimpses of it and you knew that everyone was trying so hard to bring it back. And the place still feels like home to me. It’s not the same city that I experienced last year but somewhere in my soul it is still my home. And I’m happy that that feeling still remains.

Ruins and rebirth...

(Top photo: My team of Megan, Natalie, EC, Julie and Keith. We lacked a fancy name but were universally considered to be the team most likely to be off searching for coffee.)

(Bottom photo: Miss Patty and sons along with a good portion of the Vincentian wrecking crew. EC is hanging out somewhere in the back of the crowd.)

Amy the lead Catholic Charities volunteer: “This is not a feel good mission. It is going to suck.”

Sometimes when you do volunteer work it is more for you than anyone else. It’s along the lines of “Let’s go clean up a park” or “Let’s paint a house” and while those are all very meaningful tasks and they take effort that most people won’t expend it is all a positive effort. This trip wasn’t like that. Our job was to basically dismantle someone’s home while they watched.

Think about that for a moment. You have worked your entire life to own this house and all of your memories are tied to this one place that you called home. You raised your kids here, you expected everything to stay relatively the same. Then you leave before Katrina hits and watch on television the water reaching the level of the overpass and know that your house is flooded. When you return it is still standing but everything inside is damaged or destroyed. And the only way to rebuild is to tear everything out and get back to the base level.

That’s where we came in. Over four days we gutted five houses down to the studs and the base floorboards and while I know that the owners (of which Miss Patty was one) were grateful for our work it must have been the toughest thing in the world to watch. Because we really were tearing out all that they had accomplished and tossing it in a dumpster and that simply was what just had to be done in order to move on.

To give you a sense of what the houses were like I would guess that there was probably a foot or two of standing water in each house post-Katrina and these houses were all raised off the ground to begin with. Each wall had visible mold growing on it to at least four feet and in some instances it reached the ceiling. All that could be done is grab a crowbar and tear out all of the walls to the studs. Which we did and while it was tough work there are always some good moments in the mix.

For example, tearing down dry wall is an awful lot of fun. Just grab a crowbar and start swinging until huge sheets of wall are crashing down to the ground (often smacking my legs and resulting in more bruises than I really want to admit that I have.) It was a nice way to get out some of that latent anger and have the thought in the back of my mind that “Wow, my dad would be really proud of me right now.” On the other hand, one of the houses was old, which meant that the walls were plaster on top of tile on top of more plaster on top of wood slats. It was brutal work just to get to the slats at which point you basically wanted to collapse and hope that someone else would take over.

Because remember, this is July in New Orleans. It is brutally hot out and you are wearing jeans and work boots and one of those protective masks that make it a challenge to breathe. After about twenty minutes you are just one big pile of sweat and are constantly stepping out to catch your breath and down another bottle of water. And while I am proud of myself for consistently churning out 5Ks on the treadmill every week I really have no stamina. That or I really have to ratchet up the workouts.

(That said, I still think I did my share of work. I wasn’t the best worker there, not by a long shot, but I still did better than I had hoped.)

Of course, all of the floors were ruined so we had to tear out the floorboards as well. And here is where I have to mention something about Amy again. Occasionally I mention something that I find that any woman can do to become incredibly attractive to guys. Like having extensive knowledge of the Star Wars universe or being conversant in college football lore. Well, I am going to have to add “The ability to tear out floorboards with her bare hands” to the list because, well, damn. That was impressive. The fact that she was simultaneously ripping into me for a) wearing a Notre Dame shirt and b) tiring out halfway through the room just somehow made it cooler.

I did avoid the job of ripping up the tile floors because, well, I’ve done that job before and it sucks. It sucked when my dad made me do it in our kitchen and if I could avoid it while volunteering I would. There was this fun moment of the women on our team ripping up the tile and I would just look over into the room and see a look of maybe not hatred but damn close to it sent back in our direction for not assisting in the effort. That is when I pretty much decided that I will stick with my trusty crowbar and rip up floors, which involves boards violently cracking and sounds really cool.

So the work was tiring and messy but fun in a weird way. And in the end I didn’t feel bad for what I had done (or really what we had to do) because of something that Miss Patty said. She said that she was certain that they were just going to demolish the house. Just bring in the bulldozer and level the entire place, it was just that bleak when you walked inside the house. But she walked back through when she had seen the work that we had done and for the first time in a long time she had hope. She saw that the roof was still good and the outside walls were fine and there was an opportunity to rebuild. There was still a lot of work to be done but she had hope. She could finally see where that next step would be.

We certainly didn’t solve the problem in a week. Gutting five houses really is just a drop in the bucket given all that needs to be done. But to know that a few people feel closer to being home again, that they have the hope that everything will be ok in the end, that is what made all of the hard work and the sweat and the dust worthwhile. That’s what we accomplished at the end of the day, we provided hope.

Thoughts on the city

Well, I got my ass handed to me again in trivia tonight. I don’t like having to pay to have my confidence rattled. I mean, if I need to be reminded that I know nothing I could just go to work. But, I do take a small bit of pride in the fact that I knew none of the answers to the Sex and the City questions. Not as much pride as I took on Friday night when I knew all of the answers in the pro wrestling category but pride nonetheless.

(Yes, I aced a pro wrestling category and was damn pleased with myself for it. Whenever I complain about the state of my social life remind me to read that last bit over again. It probably explains everything.)

Anyway, I thought that today I’d give some of my impressions on the city of New Orleans and the way things stand right now. (More pictures tomorrow, it’s too late to deal with a dial up modem and large files.) I have a feeling that most people believe that the city is either a) a barren wasteland or b) perfectly fine. The answer is somewhere in between though probably a bit more towards the former than the latter.

We’ll start on the positive: the French Quarter is perfectly fine. From an architectural standpoint you wouldn’t even know that a hurricane came through town. There is still that sense of decay and griminess but that has probably been there for the past century. Canal Street is a bit of a mess, it always is but this time it is worse. Lots of boarded up store fronts and a sense of nothing has been cleaned up for a long time.

As you move deeper into the city the devastation becomes more apparent. To get to the church that was our base of operations we would go down St. Charles Ave. and as you made your way you would see businesses that haven’t reopened and buildings in various states of disrepair. Certain areas would be fine but there was a general sense of things being off, like the streetcar not running down the center of the road. Then when you made your way into the neighborhoods things just got worse and worse. I started looking for the water line on the exterior of buildings and where we were (mainly Uptown and the lakefront by UNO) the line was up a good four or five feet on the side of the buildings. And you know the water was that high for a week.

I did spend a little time in the ninth ward and I’m still not sure if I can quite come to grips with that. Houses were just completely destroyed, just off their foundations and left untouched for nearly a year. It really just tore at your heart, every direction you looked you knew that all of the houses were unlivable and each one had that dreaded X with the date it was searched and what was found inside spray painted on the side. I don’t think I even tried to comprehend what I was seeing there, my mind found it much better to just shut off at that point.

But the biggest thing that struck me during my entire time down there was the lack of people. It is really disconcerting to walk down a street in the Quarter and not have anyone around you. What got me the most was not what was damaged but what simply wasn’t there anymore. You walk into Jackson Square and no one was there. No painters, no fortune tellers, even the doors to the Cathedral were locked. No street musicians hanging out on Royal, no kids dancing on the sidewalk, no guys coming up to you betting that they can guess where you got your shoes at. All of those things that made New Orleans a unique place and really gave the city its soul haven’t made their way back.

Here’s my best example of the way the city is right now. The good news is that Pat O’Brien’s is open and has no visible damage that I saw. Walk in there and it looks the same as it always did. Except that the piano bar isn’t open, we had a group of twenty walk in and get our own section, and they are closed on Tuesdays. When Pat O’s can stay open seven days a week it tells you how few people are in town.

But there are still good signs. The areas that we worked had people living in FEMA trailers or in houses that had already been rehabbed. I did see some of the street musicians that I remembered from last year, though they were much fewer in number. And many of the stores (including my art gallery) are back open, just in much limited hours. So Nola is coming back to life, just not all at once. And that gives me some hope.

And hope is what I will be writing about tomorrow, when I discuss more of what I was actually doing down there.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation (Part One)

Ok, I lied…

Well, maybe lie is too harsh of a word but I definitely did not tell the entire truth. Let me explain…

See, when I wrote last time that I needed a sabbatical from the blog due to the fact that I had run out of material and could not find a way to write about Lindsay Lohan again and make it at all interesting is undoubtedly true. It was also true three months ago and probably five minutes after I first created the blog. So, while I needed a break that isn’t why I didn’t write last week. The real reason is that I knew that I was going to be spending the week sans laptop and I wanted to create an air of mystery as to what precisely I was doing.

(Why? Because while I have a lot of fun letting the entire interweb know the inner workings of my life I am a little paranoid about letting the universe know when I am out of town. Yes, I do greatly overestimate the number of people who actually read these posts.)

Still, this doesn’t explain the picture or the lack of posts. Here is the story.

A few months back I got an email from the young adult group at my church. A group that I am technically a member of in that I am a) arguably young, b) can questionably be considered an adult and c) too lazy to get off of their email list. In the email they mentioned that a group of people were organizing a trip to New Orleans to spend a week volunteering in the city and helping with the cleanup and restoration efforts.

I read it and I thought, “That is something I really should do.” Then the logical part of my brain went “Dude, it’s doing construction in New Orleans in July and you’ve been injured to the point of an emergency room visit while just walking down a street. This is not a good idea.” But later that night I ended up at the end of the bar in a pondering mood and thinking about how much I love Nola and how I never felt that I did enough post-Katrina. Sure I donated but it never felt like enough. And this was an opportunity that I just could not see myself passing up. So I signed up to work with a group of people I didn’t know and without a great sense of exactly what I would be doing.

Well, last week was my week back in the Big Easy and as you can see, it wasn’t my usual trip down there. But it was without a doubt one of the best things that I have done in years. It was incredibly good for my soul (moving the needle from my being “Pure evil” to now just being “Mostly evil”) and I got to feel like I’ve actually done something useful with my life for once. True, the usefulness involved my proficiency with using a crowbar, which I know that no one reading this is actually going to believe but I am surprisingly effective at taking down drywall. It was an unforgettable experience with some images of devastation that will linger with me along with moments of rebirth and humor and just that sense of the world finally making sense that always comes over me as I walk down Pirate’s Alley on a summer day.

I have a lot of stories to tell and pictures to share, so expect to see them throughout the week. I am back, though I am admittedly bruised and battered and tired as all get out. And while this might not be what most people would do on their summer vacation it certainly was the right thing for me to do.

(Even if it meant that I missed both “I Love the 70’s Part II” and “The World Series of Pop Culture” on VH-1 this week. I am so upset about that, especially when I saw how bad some of those pop culture teams were. I mean, they couldn’t name the dog on the Simpsons? I could win that competition by myself. Oh well, at least Flavor of Love 2 is coming up next month and that will be some quality television.)

The five random CDs for the week

1) Chris Mills “Kiss It Goodbye”
2) Loreena McKennitt “The Mask and the Mirror”
3) Howie Day “Australia”
4) C. J. Chenier “The Big Squeeze”
5) The Insiders “Fate in Action”

Not so good with names...

For the record, if Slugger was arrested for assaulting a police officer I would not consider it a sign of how Kansas City is a cultural backwater. Rather, I would consider it to be the coolest thing to happen in this town since Charlie Parker left. There is nothing better than a guy in a costume taking a swing at a cop and then trying to blend in with a crowd. That is brilliant on so many levels.

Ok, announcement time. After a lot of thought I’ve decided that the posts have been a little lacking in quality as of late. Possibly due to the fact that writing five days a week, every week, for a year and a half is a bit of a challenge in the material department. There is only so much about Lindsay Lohan that one can write without having charges filed against them. So, I have decided to take a one week sabbatical. That’s it, just a week off to recharge the batteries, build up a backlog of stories, and just remember what life was like before coming home from the bar meant that I still had to sit down at a laptop and write. I’ll be back in regular form on the 16th so please come back. I know that for my regular readers (and I thank all of you) that this may be jarring but trust me, it will be well worth it.

Anyway, here is my attempt at humor before my sabbatical. For the past two years or so it has been part of my job requirements to research a bunch of other companies. Yes, despite the fact that the two jobs are so completely opposite of each other I can’t believe that they are in the same company, I still end up looking at lists of company names. And after awhile you begin to wonder just who named these things and did they have any clue about some of the other connotations. Here are some of my favorites.

Hooker Furniture Corporation: I just want to know how the admins answer the phone there. Or the sales staff. “So are you interested in some hooker furniture?” “You look to be someone who needs hooker furniture.” The possibilities are endless.

Bi-Mart: Yes, the convenience store for people who just cannot make up their minds.

Fatburger: Come for the burger, stay for the pound of lard that we ladle on top of it. I assume their company slogan is somewhere along the lines of “Yeah, our product is probably going to kill you but at least we’re upfront about it. I mean, when you eat at Fatburger you know that you might as well sign up for the heart transplant while waiting in line.”

Kum’n’go: It’s a convenience store. Honestly, this is the name of a convenience store. Yeah I know, it certainly would be an appropriate name for a few other types of stores but it really is a convenience store. I just don’t want to know what may be inside that convenience store.

Wang Computers: An oldie but a goodie. A true story from back in my days at the electric company. Back in the eighties when people didn’t have computers and had to use their fingers and toes to count it was up to the secretaries to do all the typing. And since this was an engineering group the secretary was typically the only female in the department. So, it was a big deal when the secretaries got a Wang computer for word processing. It also meant that my boss was told by his supervisor, “To make sure that your secretary has a Wang on her desk.” Add that to the fact that they could drink during lunch and smoke in the office and you know why I sometimes feel like I was born a decade too late.

And finally, my new favorite…

BJ’s Wholesale Club: Because only suckers pay retail…

See you all in a week or so. Have fun and stay safe.

Ribbie and Rhubarb and Leopold and Loeb

Earlier this week I was talking about living in Kansas City versus living in Chicago. Well, there was another event in the news that reminded me why I miss living in Chicago. Benny the Bull, the lovable Chicago Bull mascot (who hangs out with the Luv-a-bulls) was arrested at Taste of Chicago for taking a swing at the cops. And then trying to evade police by disappearing into the crowd in a bright red, fuzzy bull costume. See, you just do not get that type of action in Kansas City. Slugger doesn’t challenge a cop, that Chuck E. Cheese reject that the Chiefs call a mascot never gets taken down by a taser, the Wiz’s mascot, well, who the hell cares about the Wiz anyway.

Incredibly, this is the second Bulls mascot to be arrested in the past year. Da Bull, Benny the Bull’s assistant (and yes, the Bulls require two mascots to keep the crowd occupied), was busted on drug possession charges a few years back. Now that my friends is why I miss Chicago. Even the mascots are hardcore.

Anyway, I’m bummed because we had another second place finish in trivia tonight and there were about a half dozen questions that we had right but screwed up, any of which would have won it for us. Just a lot of second guessing and misspellings that ended up costing us in the end. Still, it was a good time though if I could just remember who the current Royals are (which was one of the categories) we might have won the whole thing. Oh well, apparently I can’t win them all.

Otherwise this was a rather calm day back in the office. There were probably more people back than expected and definitely more people back than the cafeteria staff expected. I love waiting ten minutes to order my food and another ten minutes to pay for it, it makes eating at my desk seem productive by comparison. Still, I actually accomplished real work today, which for the first day back is pretty astounding. It’s like no one should ever be expected to be productive that first day back from vacation. It should just be “Show up, clean out your email, and try not to spend the entire time wishing that you were still out of the office.” That’s pretty much standard operating procedure.

Sorry, but I’m really short on ideas tonight. Tomorrow will be better and there will be a very important announcement as well. You’ll all find out soon enough.

In the year 2011...

A week or so back I was asked to write up for work where I envisioned myself in five years. I was so tempted to write the following.

“In five years I shall have accomplished the majority of my goal of taking over the world. Nations shall tremble at the very sound of my name. Armies shall be poised to act upon my every whim. Statues of me will be raised in the squares of cities around the globe with celebrations that will make carnivale appear to be a church picnic. Mothers will look into the eyes of their newborn and pray that their child could grow up to be just like EC.

That, or I’d like to have a cubicle with a window. Right now it’s pretty much an either/or proposition.”

Yeah, sometimes honesty isn’t the best policy.

(Why yes, The Brain from Pinky and the Brain is one of my favorite characters of all time. What makes you ask?)

Oh well, the long weekend is almost over and I’m almost looking forward to getting back to work. I said almost because, well, I am human after all. I’ll look forward to going to the office when going to the office implies sitting on my couch and watching ESPN Classic all afternoon (well, except for Arliss, how the hell did that make the programming chart?) But I am running out of things to do in my apartment. I’ve cleaned and organized everything that needs to be cleaned or organized. I mean, you can even see the floor now. Not that that is entirely a good thing but you can now be assured that my apartment actually has a floor. I give it a good forty eight hours before entropy returns.

I was never able to pull off that argument with my mom. “Clean up your room.” “But disorder is the natural state of the universe. By cleaning my room all I am doing is slowing down the inevitable.” For some reason, conceptual physics is not the best tact to take in an argument.

One last random note: last week Pandora.com decided that based on my vast musical collection that I was really in the mood for Shania Twain songs. I’ve never felt simultaneously depressed and embarrassed in my life. Years of searching out the most obscure and talented artists and all that means is that I really should be listening to vapid country pop from Canada. And it’s based on a computer algorithm so you know it has to be right.

Life on the dole...

Given the oddly placed holiday I’ve decided to make this a four day weekend and I’ll have to admit, this has given me a nice sense of what unemployment is like. And all in all, it’s pretty cool. I get to hit the bars on a Sunday night, sleep in on a Monday, go shopping in the middle of the afternoon, get in a nice workout at three and then spend the evening watching wrestling. That’s about as full a life as anyone should ever want to leave. If it wasn’t for the fact that I like having health insurance and at some point I do need an income since for some reason beer isn’t free I would start truly slacking. (Whether I am slacking right now is a whole other post altogether.)

Though even with my immense amount of free time I still am not accomplishing any of the things that I set out to do. Sunday was to be clean the apartment day and specifically, organize the home office. Yes, time to put all of my credit card statements in chronological order and store them neatly by card company for no apparent reason. Well, that was the plan on Sunday but instead I cleaned every part of my apartment except for the office. And I actually like putting things in chronological order so it’s not like I considered it a difficult task.

That’s just kind of the way this weekend is going. While out today I forgot to stop by the dry cleaners (even though I drove right past it) to pick up the shirt they forgot to include in my last order. Well, more like they switched my dress shirt with a woman’s jacket and well, I a) don’t like the pattern and b) I just don’t think it would go with any of my skirts. (Jeez, I hope people realize that last bit was a joke.) So I gave them the jacket back and they couldn’t find my shirt for a day but then they did and I completely blanked about it today and now I’ll have to remember to pick it up on Wednesday or they’ll probably just throw it out. I’m telling you, I need to hire an assistant to just deal with this type of stuff.

(And this is from someone who has already outsourced a good portion of his existence. If it’s good enough for a multinational corporation it is good enough for me.)

Oh, and for those of you who are big music fans there is something that you should probably check out. They just released Richard Thompson’s “1000 Years of Popular Music” concert on DVD. It is a recording of the tour that I saw back in ’04 in which Richard literally covers all the various genres of music from the past millennium, starting with an 11th century liturgical and ending with Brittney Spears. If you like music of all kinds and can deal with a show in which you simply have never even heard of three quarters of the songs then it is a very interesting DVD to pick up. There are some great moments in there and to see one of the greatest songwriters cover “Oops I Did It Again” has a rather forbidden thrill to it.

Time flies when you are attempting to have fun

Mark the Bartender: “So what’s your story?”
EC: “Just moved in to town a few hours ago and my furniture isn’t being shipped for two more days. So tonight I’m drinking until the floor looks comfortable.”
Mark the Bartender: “Let me get you a beer.”

Wow, three years already? That story, which honest to god is true and took place at Kelly’s, just turned three years old. Here is the explanation behind it.

I moved to town on July 1 making the drive from Chicago to Kansas City with a lightly packed car (basically whatever I didn’t trust with the movers). It was a pretty uneventful trip during which you realize that there truly is nothing to see in Iowa other than the wrestling hall of fame and that Iowa is a state that is much too big by a factor of ten. Anyway, I get to town on the first and move in to my place with the slight problem being that my movers and Benchmark Furniture wouldn’t be delivering my stuff until the third. That’s a slight problem in that for the first day I didn’t even have a chair in my place. Hence, off to the bar to get to the point where I figured that I wouldn’t mind that I was sleeping on the floor. And people wonder why I know so many bartenders.

But man, three years in this place. I don’t know if I should be amazed by how fast the time flies or by the fact that I survived three years here. And I know that last sentiment is a little harsh and I had a conversation with Erik about it over the weekend. I’ll readily admit that I give Kansas City and Kansas in general a lot of crap in the blog about things like banning evolution or not knowing how to build a sewer system in which the streets don’t flood anytime it rains or deciding that they should burn copies of The Catcher in the Rye. All of which still make me wonder just exactly what is in the water in this place and which makes me buy a lot of bottled water as a safety precaution.

But that said, I think that I’ve had more fun in this town then I realized or would have imagined. I’ve described this place as a smaller Chicago with everything much more convenient. While it means that there aren’t the crowds that I’m accustomed to (and there are times when you just want to be surrounded by two hundred thousand people in Grant Park) it does mean that I’ve gotten to do more things here than I ever would have back home. I can get to basically any concert I would ever want to attend in forty five minutes and be in the front row for ninety percent of them. I can go shopping or hit the museums in a matter of minutes. And if I want to check out the bar scene that is more than easy enough.

So I guess that after three years I have finally had it pounded into me that how much you enjoy a place is based on what you make of it. And the more I try to make something of it here the better things are getting. So it is nice to know that three years later I’m glad for a few more things beyond the fact that my furniture arrived. There just may be interesting times to be had in this town after all.

The five random CDs for the week
1) The Drovers “Little High Sky Show”
2) Jimmy Buffett “Feeding Frenzy”
3) Coldplay “A Rush of Blood to the Head”
4) Gillian Welch “Hell Among the Yearlings”
5) Sarah McLachlan “Fumbling Towards Ecstasy”