"Waging heavy Peace" The STL Diner Book Review

Sooo...I think Neil Young is kind of a God.  This is reasonably well documented in these pages.  If not a God, than a demi god at worst.  Neil... burst onto my conscious self with the seminal “Rust Never Sleeps”.  It was 1979 and I was a senior in high school.  I had been dismissive of Neil because my sisters boyfriend, then her husband, had taken her to see his concert in 72 or 73 and it was right after “Harvest” and “After the Goldrush” and everyone was expecting a nice melodic show of hits.  But Neil was suffering from the deaths of friends Danny Whitten (original Crazy Horse Guitarist) and Bruce Berry (Roadie) and he was in a dark place.  He was out with Nils Lofgren and he took them all to Miami Beach in angry booze soaked, short shows where he was famous for yelling at the crowd “WAKE UP”.  I had read about it a few years before in a great Cameron Crowe article in Rolling Stone which I read (then) like other people read their text books.  Neil was very deep and soulful and interesting but, he had not grabbed me... until “Rust Never Sleeps”.

The album (yes kids, there were things called albums) moved me hard and fast and it moved me right in time to go away to college.  I had been a singer, songwriter geek in high school.  It was fine for being sensitive and trying to be a particular type of poser.  Jackson Browne, Dan Fogelberg..blah, blah, blah.  Neil was that as well.  Harvest was about as singer, songwritery as anyone could be but Neil also had an edge.  An electric guitar which he tore up and which, just as importantly every guitar playing friend I had ever known was tremendously dismissive of his style.  He was an anti-hero, an iconoclast.  There was not a trace of disco, it was all Neil and when he sand, “My, my, hey, hey”... whether it was out of the blue, or into the black, it was the real thing.  That caused me to go back an explore the portfolio.  Decade was a primer but eventually you needed all of his albums.  He reinvented himself... a lot.  He put out some tremendous crap but was always following the muse and he became an integral “godfather” of grunge and inspired much of the ethos and lets face it...grunge was awesome.

So I read articles and interviews (the Cameron Crowe Interview referenced above really is tremendously interesting and well written) and somewhat essential though in reading his new book, he seemed to lie a lot, especially about the drugs.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/the-rebellious-neil-young-cameron-crowes-1975-rolling-stone-interview-20110601

I have read several biographies of Young including “Shakey” by Jimmy Mc Donnough and “Neil Young” by Steve Simmins.  I think “Shakey” was an authorized biography.  Personally I would have been happier to have Crowe do it but my guess is he that he is too busy with other projects and that Neil might have just told him other lies this time.

So now we get Neil in Neil’s voice and the one thing I would like to assure you is that there is no ghost writer for this Autobiography.  If there is I would like to meet him and I would like to find out where he too grade school composition and burn down the school.  I love Neil Young.  I love his songs.  I would say he is a “brilliant” pop songwriter who has compiled a body of work that puts him in the top 5 for lifetime achievement in rock.  Dylan is of course Dylan but then there is Neil and then maybe Elvis Costello and then... I don't know.  But for all those great songs, the man cannot write worth shit.  His paragraphs amble around and he repeats himself incessantly throughout the book and as I said he just cannot write.  A typical paragraph will describe an incident with... Ben Keith, the awesome Nashville pedal steel guitarist that held up all Neils epic country work with the session band he put together for Neil called “The Stray Gators”.  About Keith he would recite a road trip and then end the section, and the paragraph with something like the following.  Ben Keith was one of a kind.  That guy really moved me.  He was a righteous dude.  I really miss him.  I seriously do.  You can only read so many things like that about people.  I acknowledge that he has met and is likely friends with everyone but get an editor!

The book clocks in at 500 pages but it reads more like 300.  There are a lot of chapters with blank pages between and there are a lot of cool pics from over the years.  His relationship with his wife Pegi is sweet and says a lot about getting let you get old enough and mature enough to handle a real relationship and his passion for his kids and especially his son Ben is heartbreaking and beautiful  That is really one of the hallmarks of the book is how Ben’s conditions changed Neils life and viewpoint and art.  

His passions run through the book though.  Neil is a sound Nazi.  A hater of the CD format (I remember he was one of those guys drawing green lines on their CD’s to improve sound) to the much reviled MP3 format that we all enjoy now.  Apparently it sucks.  According to Neil you get like 16% of the spectrum on an MP3.  he has been working on something he called PureTone to bring better sound to our listening devices but has run into an obstacle with Apple.  That is where the title comes from when he explains that he was asked if he was waging war with Apple and he replied, “More like waging heavy peace”.  He does know how to turn a phrase.  

He talks about hi “Geffen Years” and he talks about his producers and managers and backup musicians and of course he talks about Crazy Horse.  he loves the Horse in both of it’s incarnations with Danny Whitten early and Frank “Pancho” Sanpedro later.  it is amazing how many  people have sang with and backed Neil from James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt to Eddy Vedder.  It is quite a resume’.   He speaks of the early days in Canada with the Squires and takes us through Buffalo Springfield, Solo, CSNY, Crazy Horse, Stray Gators, Solo, Nils Lofgren, Solo, CSNY... it seems to never stop but it hammers home how long the guy has been brilliant and sought after.

He loves cars and the legendary story about driving down illegally from Canada in an old hearse is a classic but shit, he names more cars than he names bands.  He did not spend a lot of time on his Lionel debacle or the model trains and for that I was grateful but you can say one thing for sure, the man has passions.  As I said in the 75 and 79 interviews he was pretty categorical that he did not use drugs.  Kind of obnoxious about it (thing Lance Armstron and Roger Clemens) but that is all out the windows here.  It is also clear he settled on weed as his drug of choice and used pretty religiously until recently.  He is now trying to write songs without it and the results of that remain to be seen.

While this is a book for fans it is also a book for the pop music historian.  Neil has been on the scene for almost all of it and took us from “Sugar Mountain” to “Rockin in the Free World, and in between he might of slopped a few chords but he has never missed a beat.  Generally I feel about old rockers like I do about old athletes.  Why don't you just retire with some grace and class.  but with Young, I am happy that he is still thrashing around.  “It is better to burn out, than it is to rust.”  True dat.

Jury Duty?

Soooo....I have been a lawyer for 25 ish years and I have never been called for jury duty.  Over the years in St. Louis County I would say I have helped about 30-40 people get out of jury duty.  Historically in St. Louis County you could get out of jury duty with some fairly sime excuses, and a 

lawyer.  Over the years St. Louis City has always been more difficult and federal jury duty was almost impossible.  It got harder in St. Louis over the years and now it is a little bit of a struggle to get out of jury duty in the county but if you hire a lawyer who is a weasel (me), there is still the ability to avoid having to appear.

So... I got called.  And having lectured so many people over so many years about the importance of serving (since I didn’t have to) because when smart people get out of jury duty it leaves a pool of stupider jurors.  So I figured I would take my medecine and go and that I would get put on a panel amnd then during voir dire they would see i was a lawyer and I would be excused to go home.  It is calculus like this that allows for me to be paid absurdly high rates to dole out this kind of always right genius.

Instead, it went like this.  You get a summons and it tells you to show up at 8:30.  It gives you parking instructions but I am a pretty big deal and I knew where I could park close and steal tokens from friends to get out.  I am a cheap, bad person.  But becuase of this I got there on time.  I also know how to get through the security line quickly.  I then went to the mysterious 6th floor.  the land of the jurors.  I had only gone there once before and that was to get someone else off jury duty.  I arrived at 8:25 and stood in line and tore off part of my summons with my juror number (682) to put in a lanyard around my neck.  As i expected they tell you 8:30 because they expect people to trickle in and they do... till nine.  I don’t know why they know human nature so well but they calculate it just about right and by 9 the place was full with everyone having a seat.  I would estimate the room holds a little over 200 people or maybe more.  You all sit in chairs and it feels vaguely like you are waiting on a flight... perhaps to the strange and mysterious land of Division 20.

I was assuming that the people who actually serve on juries are like... The Island of Unwanted Toys.  I was ½ right.  After having gotten so many white middle calss businessman out of jury duty I expected a room full of unemployed women.  It was asurprisingly diverse group but most of the men that are there tend to be older and younger.  Not a lot of 50 year olds... or 51 year olds.  Still it was a good group and probably reflected the County pretty well.  

At 9:07 Judge Thea Sherry appeared and thanks us all for our service and then told us that they would be coming up in groups to get us throughout the day.  It looked to be a busy day.  You have nothing to do but I was smart enough to bring work and my iPhone so I was in touch tapping away and as I sat there an old bald man...(not that old and not that bald) a courtroom deputy came up and announced he would be calling a pool of 36 names.  I was not one of them.  Almost immediately another deputy came in and took a pool of 64 (I guess that was a bigger more complicated case that they expected to lose a lot of the pool to conflicts or because it was going to go on a long time).  I didnt make that one either and it was odd that I felt a little despair.  I realized that I wanted to get called and not just sit in that room all day.  Weird.  Another Deputy and another 32 people disappear and I am once again alone and then at 11:30 they release us for a two hour lunch.  I scrambled home to get my wall charger for my phone figuring I was going to be there the rest of the day, grabbed a lunch and did some additional work and phone calls at work before hustling back.  A reasonably productive 2 hours.  I then grabbed a desk in the work area, got plugged in and then another Deputy rattling off another group of names and... the called me.  I wanted to run up front like “The Price is Right” but I didnt.  I was VERY COOL.

So, the deputy announces that he is going to march us over to “The Justice Center” which always sounds positively Marxist to me.  “You will now go to the Justice Center and receive justice”.  Shades of Orwell for me since I do not see a lot of justice but this met we were being called on a criminal matter which sounded more interesting than a civil case.  We went down to the 2nd floor, walked the ½ mile sky bridge and then up to the third floor and Division 40 and Judge Dennis Smith.  They sat the first 14 (they were looking for 12 and I was number 21) and then they started “voir dire” where they ask you questions and try and decide if you are a good juror or a bad juror (are you a good witch or a bad witch?).  They ask if you know anyone in the case or the lawyers.  they tell you about the case and ask about any history you might have that might impact your abiity to be fair and impartial.

It turned out it was a DUI case.  Huh?  No one tries a DUI case.  The defendant was a nice west county kid and a suit and he had an old school criminal defense lawyer.  He looked kind of like a Walter Cronkite who had let himself go and had a big booming voice they used to call “stentorian”.  His opponent though labeled a prosecutor was a private lawyer who serves as prosecutor for Town & Country.  I of course hate the speed trap in Town On Country. I do not have the best relationships with policeman generally.  The defendant himself really did not really look like a nice young man.  He looked like kind of a rich kid, grown up and in a suit.  I would guess he was about 24.  So they start asking us questions and these 5 grumpy old white men who are on the panel in front of me start to make noises that they would have a hard time being imparial.  One of them said:

“I don’t know.  I just kind of assume if the cops pull someone over that they are probably guilty”.
then the other old white guys start to nod their heads and say “yeah I think that is right”. And the judge said, “I have previously instructed you that the defendant is innocent until proven guilty.” The first old white guy says “I guess I am just kind of jaded but I assume if the cops arrest someone he is guilty”.  

The other old white me start to mumble that they too are jaded and really could not consider him innocent if he got arrested.  So they all got struck.  And between that and a couple of other abherrant personalities in the pool I was selcted as juror number 12.  I thought I was OUT but I was IN and i got to serve.  Monday was already gone to they sent us home and we were instructed to come back at the crack of 10:00 the next day for service.

The Judge was Dennis Smith and he is a nice guy and it seems to me like his job is hell as he only has criminal cases at this point and sadly in our court system that generally means drug and alcohol prosecutions.  At this point in my life when I see the resources and time we waste on these issues in our courts it is kind of sickening and this case was no exception.  I had heard of DUI cases getting certified for trial as a tactic to get a better deal, or on the hope that the State woul not be able to produce the policeman but seriously, what is there to argur about in most of these case, especially a DUI case.  But Judge Smith runs a nice courtroom.

It was one of the neww courtrooms in the Justice Center which we still refer to as new even though it is about ten years old.  They showed us the jury room and then called us out... opening statements by the Town & Country prosecutor and the defense lawyer.  The prosecutor made it clear he was going to show us a video and have the officer testify.  The defense lawyer asked us to keep an open mind.  The prosecutor put on the arresting officer who told us a tale of woe.  He saw the car swerving, got behind it as it exited, it made a wide right onto Ballas and then he turned on his lights... then the driver made an illegal left onto the off ramp and then almost made it onto the highway before he finally pulled over.

Now I have watched Cops before.  When my daughter was still at home and when my wife was working a lot, she and I would sit and watcher COPS.  I had never seen it before.  I had never watched any reality show before (they make you stupider).  But it was fun.  She and I would watch and bet as to whether it would be domestic violence, drug arrest, both... it was a bonding experience.  But it really never occured to me that EVERY police stop is now recorded.  The officer explained that it gets recorded constantly but then immediately erased, unless they flick on their lights and then it recaptures the previous 30 seconds and the tape runs and it is hooked up to their microphone so you hear...everything.

Cop walks up to the car.  Starts barking whether the driver was trying to get them both killed.  He looks in the car and then says, “please hand me the open containers”.  The guy was with a pal.  He sets two empties on the roof.  He then asks him to get out of the car.  He then gets annoyed because the guy cannot figure out where the door handle is.  He finally reaches inside and then lets him out.  He gets out and then he has him do the stupid human tricks.  The defendant said he had not been drinking, then told the dreaded “two beers” lie, then apologized for being drunk, then thanked the officer for pulling him over.  He could not walk the line.  He could not do much of anything and finally stopped complying and he cuffed him and arrested him.

Another thing I did not know was that after you get put in the back of the car, the audio is recording everything you say and the guy said a lot of stupid things.  Fortunately the police station was not that far and as they pull in to the station he fiunally realizes that he is arrested and screwed and he says he is going to refuse to take the breath test and he wants to see a lawyer... end of tape. But he knew he was screwed and watching it, looking around at the jury, we all knew he was screwed to.  Tape is a powerful thing.  

Then it was time for the defense... and he had nothing.  So I immediately realized that there was nothing.  The defendant must have had several priors and they must have offered him nothing but jail time.  So they tried it I guess on the hope that maybe the cop would not show up, or the prosecutor would show up or... something.  But the attorney did not relly even give it a workmanlike effort.  It was kind of pathetic but... I get it and now my only worry was whether the rest of the jury got it.  Closing arguments were... nothing.

We retired to the jury room.  They knew I was a lawyer from voir dire and asked me to be the foreman and I respectfully declined.  We elected a nice woman.  She got us organized.  Three charges.  We started with the illegal lane change and (I didn’t give a shit) and since it was not on tape... they decided that there was a reasonable doubt.  No one liked the cop anyway.  Innocent.  Second charge was driving the wrong way and the jury instruction said if we found that he was driving the vehicle, and it was going the wrong way, you must find him GUILTY!  But we had one lady who was hung up on him not “intending” to go the wrong way.  One out of 11 and the crowd started to get ugly and voices starting going up and I was sitting next to the foreman and said “lets see what we think about count III”.  She said that was a good idea and we went around the table. Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty,Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty.  That was easy.  The video made it too easy.  there was no way he wasn’t drunk.  So we went back to count II and she wouldn’t change and once again it started to get ugly but I knew we had hung the guy and that driving the wrong way didn’t mean anything so I suggested we just be hung on count II and everyone agreed.  And that is what we did.

We went back in.  The foreperson announced and...we were thanked and dismissed.  Neither the lawyers nor the defendant were surprised.  And that was two days of my life I will never see again, and still, it is the greatest system, as bad as it is, in the greatest country in the world and the fact that young man and his lawyer could waste that many resources to get their constitutional right is really pretty awesome.  

Intolerance....The Gastro-Intestinal Story

Soooo... I have discovered that I am intolerant.  I have been having for lack of a more artful term, intestinal issues for the last 5 years.  I blamed the onset of these to a law firm I worked for that was very stressful.  Then I blamed it on the next law firm I worked at that was very stressful.  They were both defense firms.  They are stressful dysfunctional places but...perhaps it was not their fault.  After colonoscopy and endoscopy they diagnosed me with ulcerative colitis.  This is only a slightly more definitive diagnosis than “irritable bowel syndrome”.  After the colonoscopy I was told that there was “minor irritation” in my intestine.

Everyone has advice about this.  Eat this yogurt. Drink this shake.  Eat fiber.  Avoid fiber.  More fruit.  Fruit will kill you.  And all along my doctors telling me that my diet has nothing to do with my stomach problems.  They put me on medication that costs several hundred dollars a month.  4 pills a day.  Along with 6 Juice Plus, Iron and Folic Acid I was taking 10 minutes to gag down a handful of pills every morning.  And I did not get better.  Prior to leaving the other guy I had a pill cam which i got to swallow and they got to watch go through my stomach.  I also had an upper and lower GI and I still don't know what that means.  All of them came back with the Doctor telling me I had “minor irritation”.

I got frustrated and changed doctors.  The new doctor said “I need my own tests” and we did another endoscopy and colonoscopy.  Surprisingly the doctor got the results and told me that they showed I had minor irritation in my lower intestine but now I was prepared.  I had an iPhone and had taken a picture of my “normal” stool and said “Does that look like minor irritation?  It doesn't FEEL like minor irritation”.  He was...troubled.  I was angry.  I explained to him that I needed to fire him because I was not getting better and he was no quarterbacking my treatment but was just doing procedures that were not changing anyone’s thought process.  I suggested that every time I came back from the doc my wife (who is really tired of my shit...literally)and she has all kinds of questions.  Have they tested you for Crones? Have they tested you for ciliac?  Have they tested you for lactose intolerance? have they tested you for syphillis?  LOTS of questions.  And I come back from the doc with no answers.  So we embarked on a series of tests to rule things out.

Oh... somewhere along the line I also got swollen lymph nodes in my stomach meaning I get to have CT scans every 3-4 months to see if they grow.  My internist suggested that it was natural after 5 years of inflammation that I would of course had inflammation.  My gastro-enterologist of course expressed to me that I should be much more concerned about that without being able to advise me on any other course of action I should take other than “monitoring them”.

So now I go in and get three hydrogen breath tests.  One for bacterial overgrowth, one for fructose intolerance and one for lactose intolerance.  Bacterial overgrowth means you have too much bacteria in your small intestine.  Evidently this is bad.  For these tests you eat a little bland food the day before the test and then fast for twelve hours.  I always go in as early as possible but it is a pain and an inconvenience getting ready for these tests and it is more than anything else annoying and time consuming.  You come in and the take you back and you blow into something and they take a baseline reading and then you drink something.  Then they send you back out and you come back every half hour and they take another reading.  For the bacterial over growth test I was there for three hours, blew 6 times and came up with....nothing.  For the fructose test it was the same drill but you drink a super corn syrup fructose powder mixed with water.  I blew the first time and had nothing and blew the second time and was told “we are done, you are highly fructose intolerant and you are going to have a very bad day”.  Fortunately with the nature of my problem it was not even that bad of a day.  I was happy to finally have a diagnosis, that was something I could conceivably figure out how to deal with.  I had the lactose test next week and came back again but I have eaten cheese and butter all my life and I was pretty certain this was not an issue.  

I came in like the other tests.  Took my baseline reading and blew.  I cam back a ½ hour later and blew a .02... then I cam back a half hour later and blew an .06.  Evidently it takes the stomach a while to start processing and creating the chemical reactions and gasses.  I was feeling a lot of things going on in my tummy.  I then came back and blew a .56 and she said “WHOA.  We are done and you know what I said last week about you feeling bad...you are going to feel REAL bad today”.  And you know what, she was right.  I guess when your intolerant it is almost like a full body allergic reaction.  Wow.  She advised that I go home but of course I missed a mornings work and really needed to catch up so I went into work and I sweated, and I ached and I evacuated the poison from my system for about four hours.

Si I am lactose and fructose intolerant.  What do I do?  Well, I don’t know.  Information is all over the board.  Everyone thinks you can just cut things out but both of them are in a lot of things so I have suddenly become a label reader.  I have never read ingredients on anything in my life.  Over the last couple of weeks I have tried to do this on my own and consulted numerous sources on the Internet and am ore confused than ever.  The process of intentional avoidance has offered some immediate benefits regarding general gassiness but my inflammation (diarrhea) is still sporadic.  As a person who formerly enjoyed sitting on the toilet for 20 minutes and getting some reading done, the last few years of 45 second shits has been very odd so transitioning back could be odd as well. One thing I am is very pissed off at a system that misdiagnosed and mis-treated me for 5 years. It is a portrait of our current health care system where docs get paid to perform procedures rather than try and treat the patient and the illness. I do not think they do this because they are stupid or because they with us poorly, I think it is just "the system". It sucks and it makes me think that tearing it down might be the only way to save it.

As I said the information on the Internet is all over the place beer is good, beer is bad, blackberries are good, blackberries are bad.  high fructose corn syrup is definitely the enemy but how this is listed as an ingredient is all over the map.  Almost any lays product has lactose powder in it. Cranberry juice cocktail is bad, or it is OK.  regular cane sugar is fine, or it is poison.  It all appears to be highly specialized to individuals and what their tolerances are.  I am keeping a diary of everything that I eat and what my symptoms are and that seems like a very self involved thing but the internet is universal in telling me that this is a requirement of my...."conditions". So I will see an a dietitian and talk with my doctor next week and try and figure out what this really means.  What it seems to mean is that my intolerance is going to make my life a like more bland.  When I think about what i see politically from our countries intolerance, that sounds about right.

Jeff Mangum at The Sheldon

Sooooo... it all comes down to guns, the guy from Notre Dame, Lance Armstrong and the budget, and Newtown and getting your own AR-15 to live in this dangerous, DANGEROUS country we live in...except it does not have to be.  There is always live music.

The other night I had the opportunity to go to a show at the Sheldon with my son Jon.  It is a blessing to do something you really like and when you can do it with your son it is even more better.  The show we went to see was Jeff Mangum who was the genius behind the seminal indie band Neutral Milk Hotel.  Magnum and the band were working the scene when they broke in 1998 with the seminal “Aeroplane Over The See” and it’s creepy beautiful “King of carrot Flowers”.  This kind of reminds me that radio was already dead even before the millenium.  Anyway the album was huge for indy rock and garnered critical acclaim when Mangum broke up the band and if lore is correct had a nervous breakdown.

If you listen to his music you would not be surprised.  He has a wailing voice with a sustain that is creepy when he carries the notes out.  It is just all angst and suffering and everything that made that brief, beutiful advent of indie such a heartnreaking thing... anyway... The Sheldon is a beautiful venue.  I think I have been there three or four times.  I saw garrison Keilor read poetry there and I saw someone do a Billie Holliday revue there which was cool and I think my son Patrick must have sang there or auditioned there or we went to see a play there or something.  Anyway, very cool venue.  Bathrooms are far from where you watch the show but comfortable seat and great site lines.  I do not know how many it seats but it cannot be more than 300.  It has a full bar attached next door in the gallery which is nice but again, a little walk for an old man.

And I am an old man.  the crowd for this show was trying as hard as anyone in St. louis can try to be hipster chic and cool.  It was interesting for an old man but ⅔ of the men had beards and when I say “beards” I dont mean david Ducovny “oh I forgot to shave have sex with me” beards but real beards.  Grizzly Adams (oops dating myself) bee hive type beards.  Seriously ⅔ of the crowd.  I had never seen such a thing.  I would say average age was about 32 and the crowd was pleasant and excited to see a hero.  The opening band was “The Tall Firs” and they were pretty cool.  two guys with electric guitars and it was kind of melodic.  they both sang like “The Crash test Dummies” with these deep mumbling lines but the songs and the guitars were excellent and I will check them out further on Spottify.

Mangum came on after a brief intermission and the crowd literally (for such a subdued venue) went wild.  One of the nice things about the Sheldon for an old man is the seating for everyone and the site lines, and the cocktails which you can bring in.  It is very much classy theatre with a nice stage with wooden panelling looking like a church (which I believe it was).  he walked out and sat down.  People hollered songs and he was pleasant and dismissive.  The cool thing about a show like this is that it is a guy with a limited but brilliant body of work, just coming out and playing to his fans.  He could sell more tickets at a bigger place (this was sold out) but the idea is just to deliver product, an event, a personal connection, and he does.  He started out right away with songs from “Aeroplane” and the crowd sang with him.  he apologized for being in bad voice and was taking hits from an inhaler and water bottle. He played “King of Carrot Flowers Part I” and had the crowd singing and then invited folks to come up closer.  No one (it being St. Louis) really wants to be dick and block other peoples view but when people did not move he chided them... and then they came.  We were in the balcony but about 40 people came up and either sat right in front or actually sat on the stage with him.  it was cool.  And all of them knew the words... to every song.  I remember being a fan like that and having a passion like that.  but barely.

This is the new model.  People of a certain age who have put out some quality music have the opportunity to continue to give their fans something of value, at a decent price and continue to make a living.  I don’t know whether Mangum is still writing anything but what he did is so famous and so meaningful to their audience that the opportunity to sit 5 feet away from his while he plays and sings, and they sing along.  It is creating these type of experiences that is the future survival.  Finding ways to connect that have nothing to do with record companies, or radio or selling albums or, god forbid, coming to play the local casino.  Mangum and the Tall Firs, with the help of a great local venue made memories.  Sometimes life is not about the 24 hour news cycle, and the stupidest athletes and guns and the budget.  Sometimes is can be about music and... pure joy.

Book Review: Richard Russo "Elsewhere"

Soooo... maybe I will read this year.  Or maybe not.  Seems like at best an even money bet if you could get someone to take it.  I have some optimism if I can find books like Richard Russo’s new memoir by one of my favorites Richard Russo.  I love this guy.  I have read everyone of his books and some of them twice.  He has a nice conversational style and his stories never go anywhere which is just...perfect.  Most of his books are set around dying New England towns and largely rely on family to provide the drama and it tends to show that family drama is the most compellingdrama and it is one of the constants in your life.  I also take from his books that heartbreak and regret are a constant of life... if your lucky.

His newest book is a memoir and it largely follows his life but if tracks his life through what is apparently the most important character in it, his mother.  Which seems like it would make for a boring sad story and though there is a somewhat momotonous repetition to the story it is not boring but it is pretty relentlessly sad.  He was raised by a single working mother who took pride in her “independance” from her alcoholic, gambling WWII vet of a husband who was never around and could never be counted on.  She read to Russo (an only child) and made sure he did his home work no matter how tired she was.  They barely made it by and did so as their home town died around them, with the help of her parents who lived downstairs.

it seemed heartening and problematic until he left for college in Arizona and... she came along.  From that point till the end the tables solidly turn.  Somewhere in college he comes to grips with what his father and grandparents had known but could never voice and that is that his mother is mentally ill.  The rest of the book is a catalogue of his (and his wife and daughter) coping with her mental illness as she traveled with them along as his career processed.  It is painful but riveting as you read occasionally and briefly of his long suffering wife and wonder why she tolerated her husbands devotion to this woman with so many problems who despite her proud independance was always a burden.  

You kind of feel that Russo himself he had to write this book.  The cathartic feeling of it resembles a huge toilet bowl full of the dump of his psyche as he recounts the damage caused by his mother and his love of her.  He realizes as a 50 year old that he is a lot like her and that is probably the most painful revelation as he realizes that his wife and family suffer his less acute mental illness just as he has suffered his mothers and just as she was constantly hobbling herself with poor decisions, he was doing it as well, just with different decisions.  

Still, as in his novels there is a beauty here.  The writing style and the semse of pace and timing are always there.  The story reveals a lot about his history and his heart which are fascinating by a fan but interesting for anyone who is a reader because he writes so true.  Over and over again in this book, as in all his books there is an overwhelming love/hate relationship with family and all the baggage that ensues but despite all the pain and disasters there is an appreciation for the loyalties that can only exist in the context of family and it makes for a very good read.  It is relatively short and you can rip through it in a few hours if you are of a mind.  I was blessed with a nice mother who has always kept her problems to herself even now as she makes arrangements for she and my father to move into a retirement facility (so as not to be a burden).  But she likes to read, and she will like this book.  So will you.

Happy New Years! Lucky 13?

Soooooo....January 1, 2013 and the year opens like a book... or perhaps a comic book or perhaps even some kind of shabby pamphlet for a blood thinning drug your doctor prescribed. I am sitting in my chair, in my room watching a “Portlandia” marathon on IFC and it leads to introspection, a little self loathing and of course...abject fear.  We have parties to go to today.  We don’t care.  Sandy is needle pointing something for some child in California’s quilt (why do children in California need quilts?) and hoping to nap.  Our son Jon is in his house apparently watching parades with out of town guests our beautiful grand dog and his bastard cat on telivision.  Our son Pat just left to go back to KU (the shame) after a nice Christmas break.  Laura is driving back from and Arcadia Camp staff at the “apartyment” in Muncie.  What could have possibly gone wrong?

Sooo... January 5th.  What could possibly go wrong I asked?  Work.  Work can go wrong.  I am whine.  A fabulous whiner.  My friends tolerate me but only in small doses which is cool because of my ADD.  I am always complaining about work and I know this makes me sound stupid, ungrateful and lacking basic understanding.  The fact is that good jobs are hard.  I am lucky to have  a difficult job and I am lucky for having to been able to do it for this long.  Good jobs do not stop at 5 and start at 9 with 45 minutes for lunch.  I know this.  I also know that the reason i get paid is because I handle people in crisis very well but this week, the first week of the year they got to me... right away.  I am already behind for 2013.  I have not gotten bills out for November yet.  My “to do” list looks like a small town phone book (remember phone books?).  This week I had a lady meet with me for over 5 hours on various days who is convinced she is being followed, wire tapped, photo’d and burgled by her bank or someone on their behalf.  She in mentally ill and I have to shepherd her through losing her rental property empire.  But his lady broke me.

But now it is Sunday and I am looking to the new week.  It is another short week because I get to go to Hot Springs Arkansas for the opening at Oaklawn and one of my sons is going with the group and it will be fun.  Another short week at work kind of makes my chest constrict slightly but once again it is having a difficult, stressful job which allows me the benefit of being able to do things like this.  I forget that... a lot.  Laura leaves for school today, the ornaments are coming down, my wife’s busy season at work is starting and the holidays are... over.  But it was a good one and perhaps even a great one.  A fire is in the fire place and I look forward to an afternoon of watching football and catching up my time sheets and perhaps making some dinner.  
These can be melancholy times but somewhere, somehow I need to find a way to embrace change.  Especially changes that I don’t chose.  I think this year every blog post will need to have a song or a song lyrics or a song link or maybe all of the above and for today it is “Pick Up The Change” off of Wilco’s brilliant and often maligned first Album/CD (whatever you kids call them now).  Change in life, change in relationships, changes in jobs, friendships, seasons, health... almost all of it seems to suck when it goes down but if we can view it as the constant, and the positive (that it really is) we can set ourselves up for happiness rather than sadness.

"We used to have a lotta things in common,
But you know now we're just the same
“You always had more than I really wanted
Aw honey, help me,
Come on honey, help me pick up,
Aw honey, help me pick up the change

Aw honey, help me,
Come on honey, help me pick up,
Aw honey, help me pick up the change”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EV95HBtbGNI


So Jeff Tweedy shares some insight but on the first Sunday of the New Year a little wisdom from Christ probably would not hurt either, from my favorite part of the Bible, the “Sermon on the Mount”.  Matthew 6:25 selected....

25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life[a]?
34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

True Dat.  Lets have a great 2013 and make it a lucky one.

PS.  Currently my NFL Playoff brackets featuring the Bengals and the Seahawks are causing me to wring my hands and worry but... such is life in 2013.  

Book Review: Tom Wolfe, "Back To Blood"

Soooooo....2012 was a shitty year for books... for me.  I do believe that I am getting old and it is just so hard to get any serious reading done.  I get a little done up in Michigan but for the rest of the year I try and read before I go to bed and that dog is no longer hunting.  I read the Post Dispatch every morning (I like to wrap fish in it later), I try and read the Wall Street Journal everyday so I can their reasoned, non agendaized, fair and balanced editorial content (not) and that fucking New Yorker tends to arrive on most weeks and along with what didnt get read earlier from the Journal that day seems to leave me very little time for books.  Which makes me sad.

I love books.  I am prideful of my predigious reading.  I am arrogant and unlikable about it and dismissive of people who don’t read fiction.  I am a bibliophole asshole.  Which is bad, but it is worse now.  This was my first year for a Kindle.  I read “The Hunger Games”, Grishams newest (than it was “The Litigator”, a great book called “The Gun” and the early chapters of an upcoming book by our own David Kowert.  But the Kindle does not satisfy.  The Kindle feels to me like I imagine Methadon feels to a Heroin addict.  It fills a need but it does not satisfy the beast like riding the horse and holding a nice hard back novel in your hands with a dusk jacket and brief author biography.  So i have been buying books again and not reading them because...truth to be told.... I can no longer stay awake.  On the shelf as ladies in waiting I am already dealing with a formidable stack of:
Neil Young: “Waging Heavy Peace”
Will Self:  “Umbrella”
Jonathan Tropper: “One Last Thing Before I go”
Richard Russo: “Elsewhere”
David Foster Wallace: “Both Fless and Not”
David Byrne:  “How Music Works”
And I despair for the future.  I gave up on several books this year including Michael Chabon’s well reviewed “Telegraph Avenue” and this fills me with self loathing (and I don’t need more of that).

Which brings me to Tom Wolfe’s new book.  Wolfe seems like an ass.  His foppish pictures dressed as a white haired dandy make me kind of queasy and the length of his books barks of a self indulgence that we have not seen on display since Clinton’s second term but damn.  The man can write.  This book fits in nicely with his last three, “Binfire of the Vanities”, “A Man In Full” and “I am Charlotte Simmons”.  They are all slices of time and place but honestly the characters never change but they are still fun to read.

His characters are not caricatures, so much as they are caricatures of caricatures.  Every predictable, bigotted, small minded, over generalization about a type of person is drilled down on relentlessly and satisfyingly mercilessly.  Wolfe has a strong eye for our desire as a country to classify, seperate, sterotype and move on.  His characters never surprise, they never shock, they never show much more than a glimmer of self knowledge but they all move their their environments like mindless sharks, reverting to type and devouring and destroying in their way.

The subject this time is Miami and South Beach and from an outsiders perspective he hits it pitch perfect.  A city of immigrants profoundly uncomfortable with itself with every group feeling threatened and victimized now matter how dominant and in control they are.  The stage is set with a Cuban water patrol cop who rescues a guy trying to get a foot on dry land so he can legally emigrate from Cuba.  The recue is heroic and brave and makes him a goat in his community and he becomes immediately ostracized and through most of the novel continues to spin down as fate keeps zeroing in on him again and again.  He loses his beautiful Cuban girlfriend to a sex therapist, social climbing doctor. We get introduced to the Editor of the Miami Herald and Miami Art scene which might or might not have just been mightily swindeled by a Russian oligarch.

What amazes me is how easy it is to read and how fun it is to read.  Lots of heavy handed social commentary but but his narratives and his dialogue keep you turning the page and it just makes for a good read.  Especially in the snow.  So I thank Wolfe for giving me this.  I read a 700 page gook like it was a John Grisham 320 pager and in the end was much more satisfied because unlike Grisham, Wolfe knows how to end a story.  So I recommend this book, and this author, though I think if I met him in a bar I would want to punch him.  read it and get lost for a while.

7 ½ Slingers on the Diner Review 10 Scale.