The Side of the Barn, at Midnight

"None of them knew the color of the sky."

-S. Crane, 'The Open Boat' (1894)

It's funny, living with light. You don't notice it when you're in them, but cities take a toll on the sky. Hillsdale might be a "hick town" but at least you can see the lights, however faintly, on the horizon. Jackson, Michigan. Hoo, boy. Sure, it's no Detroit or even Ann Arbor but it's comforting, those lights on the horizon. The only problem is, they taint the color of the sky.

Up North, you can actually see the color of the sky, and all the constellations. But suburban kids usually can't tell Orion's Belt from the Gemini Twins or the Sundlandic Twins or the Odd Couple, so it doesn't quite matter.

But hey, still. Stars. Natural light. No streetlights even. Can't see much of anything (but nothing to see anyway). You can hear dogs barking aimlessly and wonder why they bark. The only movement is the sound of your footsteps walking out the front door. The dogs are out back.

Country dogs have better noses, do they?, you mindlessly think to yourself, for some reason wanting to prove to them that they don't.

Getting around back proves more of a chore than you'd think. The grass is separated from the dirt driveway by about 3 inches so you lose your footing but don't quite fall, the dirt (more like sand, really) just engulfs the insides of your ripped sneakers and dirties your socks a little. You've been wearing them for two days already so they stick to your feet as you impossibly attempt to sneak into the backyard.

The dogs are caged in a short chain-link pen, and they seem to notice nothing as you crouch and watch from behind the car. They pant and sniff each other, you can barely make out their figures silhouetted in front of the barn. It casts a long shadow. In the daylight it's a dark crimson, but now it blends to the trees as everything does in total darkness.

You lean on the car, back to the pen, and look up again, vainly trying to find the Big Dipper. It's approaching midnight, you guess. No sense in rushing. There's nothing to do tomorrow. Nothing to do from now on - it's all like the side of that barn at night, blank and black.

Anything, you think, anything could happen. I can do ANYTHING I want tomorrow.

This has been true for weeks, but this "wilderness" makes it more apparent.

You hop up, light the cigarette that you originally came out for, and again try and beat those dogs at their own game. A dumb idea since the beginning, you realize, but invigorating nonetheless. You're doing something, yet doing nothing at the same time. Kind of like seeing something with nothing to see. (Or was it nothing and nothing? - you forget in the heat of the adrenaline rush.)

The dogs have quieted now, and you see your chance. You nimbly run on the tips of your toes to the barn, just around the corner from the pen. They're both sitting, licking at themselves. You take a long last drag and throw the butt into the void, then veer into a crouching run.

No signs of movement from the dogs, they still lie on their back paws, you decide to complete the run with a leap over the fence. An almost perfect execution, except the rip in your jeans snags at the last minute and you fall flat on your face.

By this point the dogs are already over you. They knew what was coming. A few licks and your face dampens.

A humiliating idea, you think. Who would do something this juvenile?

The dogs lick some more, your leg hurts, and there's no place for your pride in the pen.

Why were you allowed even to think about doing that? Why did you think you could win? This is their domain, you think, and I am trespassing. Why was I even allowed to see sand and trees and dogs?

There was no real chance of your success.

After a time - probably seconds, but a dog's tongue is known to distort reality - you dust yourself off and walk back to the house. The kitchen light's still on, and she's reading in the living room.

'Long cigarette?'

'Yeah.'

'You're filthy.'

'Yeah, those dogs are really dumb. They must've thought I was someone else.'

She goes back to her book. You stare into the single reading light, then back outside. You hear the sound of her parents rustling upstairs, music from her brother's room, and then the horns of a semi as it passes the small farmhouse.

Soon, the lights go out and the only thing you can see is Orion's Belt. There's nothing else to see.

There can be only one

I enjoy the fact that these commercials for the NBA Playoffs are so good and so popular (according to this article, they're directed by the same guys who directed Little Miss Sunshine) that now Time
has taken to ripping them off.

T-Mac/ Rip:
























B-Rock/ H-Rod:


























My only problem is, I have yet to see one with a Pistons player on the television. I mean, today I saw one that featured Peja freakin' Stojakavic! The man's first language isn't even English! I wanna see one that shows a split screen of 'Sheed with, say...Ben Wallace. That'd be pretty fucking sweet. It will never happen, seeing as how 'Sheed hates everyone (and the media doesn't like talking about the Pistons...the other day Sportscenter had 15 mins of Lakers/ Jazz coverage and maybe 5 of Pistons/ Magic).

I plan on posting on here more often. More literary things, perhaps. I just keep getting lazy. Sorry.

Black Flag's Hair

Econ sent me this:

"Hoes in area codes"

Ludacris has many hoes in many area codes, apparently. Someone took the liberty of mapping them.

I'dve booed them, too

Say you're a Major League Baseball team. Just say, for the sake of argument, that you were pretty shitty 5 years ago, got better, went to the World Series two years ago and are now a pretty hot team. Say that you make a major trade in the offseason, snagging two world series champions, one of whom happens to be one of the premiere players in the league. Your fans, anticipating a great season with offensive firepower and a dominant rotation, snatch up all the tickets to be had for the first week of the season. Say that one of the teams played this week is one of the worst teams in the league. What would you say you'd do? Would you LOSE EVERY SINGLE GAME IN THAT FIRST WEEK AND MAKE THE ENTIRE TEAM LOOK LIKE LITTLE LEAGUERS?

If that were to happen, hypothetically, how would you expect fans to react to that? Just take it mildly and shrug it off, despite the fact that in only one of these games did the team really look like the team with the second-highest payroll in the league?

No? Good. The Tigers deserved to be booed. The Tigers are making fools not only of themselves but of their fans - everyone who even marginally follows baseball and kind of likes the Tigers. Do you have any idea what I endured tonight? Do you? Tigers fans have been waiting for a team like this since 1984. We've been excited about this season ever since November's trade. This might be the most highly anticipated season in Detroit Tigers history, and what do you do? You catch us all with our pants down, rosy cheeked and blue balls as fans of other teams begin to rail in to us. It's not a good position to be in.

If you have a starting lineup with these kinds of names in it you better score some motherfucking runs. There's absolutely no excuse. What could you say? They keep losing the ball in the sun? The lights? It's colder here than in Florida? I'm not getting paid enough to hit something other than a weak line drive or fly ball? Seriously, I want to know.

The only excuse I can think of is that they aren't trying hard enough, which really isn't an excuse. There is no reason why they should be this bad right now. I think they'll come around, but these past six games aren't exactly confidence builders. If I could right now, I'd punch every single one of them in the face.

Top Ten Songs I Use If My Life Was A Series Of Movie-style Montages

I love a good movie montage. In fact, few things about movies make me happier than a well-edited montage with good music in the background (one favorite that comes to mind is the Margot montage in The Royal Tenenbaums. Maybe montages are cliche or kind of lame, but I love them. And if my life were a movie (or, at the very least, a series of montages), then it would have a pretty kickass soundtrack.

Usually montages are a good way at speeding along the time and setting of a movie and telling the story in a quick and (usually) painless way. So most of the so-called montages that I have created on the spot do this. This isn't a collection of background music during an extended and important scene (I might do that one sometime soon).

And I should note that once I get past the college portion of this it's all made up. I mean, most of it didn't happen as I would chronicle it in the movie. My life would be kind of boring if I did a memory-for-memory movie. And really fucking long.

In some sort of chronological order:

The event: Me growing up.
The song: The Kinks - "Do You Remember Walter?"
Why: It'd be like the intro credits of the movie, because I have a hard time thinking this far back. My childhood was really boring. So it will be mostly scenes of me doing kid things and playing with Ninja Turtles and playing basketball on my kiddie hoop. That sort of thing. There's not much else you can do with that than "whimsical." I had to pick an oldie because that's the only real music I was conscious of at that point. The Kinks it is then.

My actual life (the movie) would probably start here, in high school:

The event: Me discovering indie music (for better or for worse). Lots of shots of me at record stores, leafing through vinyl and CDs, with shots of those bands and album covers interspersed on the screen. Maybe a few of me sitting in my room with headphones.
The song: Pavement - "Stereo"
Why: I still remember the instance. I was hanging out with my friend Geoff and we were looking at the internet and we stumbled across Pitchfork. We were both already kind of starting to get into better music, him more than I (at the time I believe my favorite bands were Nirvana, the Foo Fighters, the Beatles, and Bad Religion or something. Not bad, but could be better). He had seen Pitchfork before, and apparently he had already heard about Pavement. He played me some and then gave me his burned copy of Brighten the Corners. And that was that. So if anyone ever wants to know why I'm such an ass about some of these things, I blame Geoff.

The event: Going downtown for the first time and taking it all in.
The song: The Beatles - "Got To Get You Into My Life"
Why: I'm not sure this actually happened, per-say. I mean, there was never one instance of me going on a subway by myself for the first time and exploring the city. That's probably mostly because Detroit doesn't have subways. Either way, I always think that "GTGYIML" is the perfect "going and exploring on a summer day" type song. I I mean, I've done that in Detroit before. So fuck you guys.

The event: The sports montage. I never actually was on my high school baseball team, but this is a hypothetical "what-if-I-was-and-what-if-we-won-state?" sort of thing. (If you couldn't tell, this movie has no real plot).
The song: The Count Five - "Psychotic Reaction"
Why: I like sports montages. I have no idea why. One of my favorites is in "Little Big League" where it shows the Twins (as managed by a 12 year old kid) suddenly clicking together and making a bunch of sweet plays to the tune of "Move to Japan" by the Band. There's another equally good one in there to the tune of "Runaround Sue." I wanted a montage that felt like that. So this could be good.

The event: College. Lots of scenes of fun college things. Minus a lot of the partying, which will be the next scene.
The song: The Strokes - "Reptilia"
Why: I made a list freshman year that was "Top Ten Songs I Listened to Freshman Year of College." I can't find it anymore but I'm pretty sure this was number one. Even if it wasn't, any Strokes song would do. I listened to a lot of them freshman year. I don't as much any more, but when I do it's always enjoyable.

The event: Getting really drunk for the first time. I could incorporate all the vices in there: first cigarette, first drugs. And then chronicling a lot of (probably ill-advised) scenes of partying. And then just me taking swigs of Old Crow while I write papers alone in my room. (This scene could concievably be before the previous Strokes scene.)
The song: It would begin with Uncle Tupelo - "I Got Drunk" and then fade into Modest Mouse - "Polar Opposites."
Why: The first song might seem like the title is too obvious, but damn, is it appropriate: "I got druuunk / And I fell down!" It just highlights the "don't give a fuck" attitude you sometimes get when you drink a lot. The Modest Mouse is there for when it becomes a problem ("I'm tryin' / To drink away the part of the day that I cannot sleep away"). I think we all feel like this sometimes.

The event: The relationship.
The song: Wilco - "Kamera"
Why: A perfect "everything is awesome" song. It's just so damn happy. Lots of cliche relationship scenes. But then...

The event: The breakup / girl getting back together with the old boyfriend / girl breaking up with him again / girl trying to keep flirting with you but still saying she doesn't want a relationship
The song: Local H - "No Problem"
Why: "I've always been an easy in / And easy out the door again / I know it's only because you're down / That you'd ever want to come around / Just a little secret in a little town / You had me but it's over now / You'll get my attention again somehow / It's no problem." That's why.

The event: Roadtrippin'
The song: Bob Dylan - "Nashville Skyline Rag / "To Be Along With You"
Why: Well, not depressed anymore (the movie works that out in the actual dialog - girl and I are cool now), single again, and once again carefree. So I take a roadtrip with friends (not necessarily any one road trip that happened...but incorporating parts of roadtrips that I've had). This is a good roadtrip song. Or at least I usually pop in Nashville Skyline when I'm roadtripping.

The event: The movie's final scene. I'm not sure where it will be yet. Probably somewhere where we finish our roadtrip.
The song: The Replacements - "I Will Dare"
Why: This is the one that isn't actually a real event (yet). But the idea is we finish the roadtrip and we're somewhere neat, some random place, and we go somewhere where I meet a beautiful, cool woman. Maybe going from a record store to getting coffee to being at a minor league baseball stadium with said woman and friends. Roll credits. As the song starts.

(Fuck you. It's my life and my movie.)

The Question

Today on Intensities in Ten Suburbs, Andrew Unterburger tries to respond to the question that serious music listeners hate most: "What kind of music do you listen to?"

This topic got me thinking. I replied to the post, saying that it's almost exactly the same question as "What's your favorite band?" - only the latter question, I might argue, is even more difficult. When someone asks you the simple genre questions, they're probably not expecting something more in-depth than "I listen to rock/ indie/ folk/ trip-hop/ etc." There's a certain amount of ambiguity implied right from the beginning.

While I agree wholeheartedly with what Unterburger says (and I'd suggest you read the post, it's very accurate), I always find the "favorite band" question even more difficult. The main essence of this question is: "I would like you to pick one musical artist that you admire over all other musical artists, always and forever." There's no flexibility or ambiguity there. It's a "gun to the head" type question. Other than the fact that most "serious music listeners" favorite bands change frequently depending on time of day, time of year, weather outside, mood, books currently reading/ just read, and state of intoxication, there's no simple way to answer this question even if you COULD pick one absolute favorite.

Example: "I like the Rolling Stones."

Now, this poses a multitude of problems. If you're talking to a music geek like yourself, there's a chance that he'll assume that you really don't like music that much; that you're one of those people that is actually dumb enough to pay 70 bucks for lower-bowl Stones tickets at Ford Field, the kind who truly believe that the Stones are still the greatest rock and roll band in the world.

On the other hand, if you're talking to someone who isn't a geek, they'll assume the same thing - except they'll be one of them and start trying to talk to you about that time they saw the Stones in '99. You'll then attempt to explain that they really aren't very good after Exile and utterly unlistenable after Some Girls, and then that your favorite album is actually Between the Buttons and then they'll look at you funny and say that they don't have that one. Of course they don't, because people like that use Hot Rocks as their record of the Stones from 1962-1968.

You can see the sort of problem this poses. I really do love the Stones, but it's a pain in the ass to specify that you only love them until 1975, and really hate them after 1979.

It's the opposite problem with artists that aren't household names. I won't go into detail here, but try answering the "favorite band" question with someone like Bad Brains or Guided by Voices or Sonic Youth. I don't know if it's harder to hear the awkward "Oh...cool" dismissal or to answer the equally difficult "Oh, I've never heard of them, what do they sound like?" question.

I'll spare you more bitching about this, though. After reading Unterburger's post, I really thought about it and came up with an answer that I could probably get away with as being somewhat definitive. People that ask me this question won't like this, but fuck 'em. They've started enough trouble as it is:

(conversation, turns to music)
"Yeah man, I saw your picture in the Collegian. You, like, write about music and stuff?"
(note: I have made this conversation as stereotypically "worst case scenario" as possible...most people that ask me this are fairly nice, smart, and normal people...not stupid frat boys. But this is my blog, so that's how I'm writing this example.)
"Yeah, a little bit."
"Aw, cool. So, like, what's your favorite band?"
"Uh, well, I donno, I have a lot."
"Ah, c'mon bro, Tell me at least one. EVERYBODY has to have a favorite."
(I scowl)
"Fine. But I don't have one favorite. I have five musical artists that, if I HAD to choose, I would probably name my favorite. But let me warn you, I listen to various types and kinds of music, and various bands. At any given hour I might change my mind. You might not have heard of these bands. So don't say I didn't warn you. I really like the Rolling Stones -"
"Oh, cool man I - "
"I'm not done. I told you I had five. The Rolling Stones, Joy Division, Elvis Costello, Sonic Youth, and R.E.M."
(silence. I realize that these bands aren't really, in the scheme of things, all that obscure. He does too. He opens his mouth to say something but I remember something else.)
"Oh, yeah, and almost anything by present or former members of the Wu-Tang Clan."

"Cool..."
(he walks away)

I realize that I'm a bigger asshole than I give myself credit for.

Remind me never to talk about music with anyone else ever again.