Native American Pale Ale Rock (or, How I Came To Know The Great Unkown)

The February sun had set on Saturday night and Theatre 941 in Northern Liberties was becoming quite crowded with the weird beards and biceps cartoons that can so often be found wherever the mighty blue ribbon is served. Everyone was gathered that evening on North Front Street for the first annual Pabst Blue Ribbon Art & Craft Fair, which, for the nominal entry fee of $6, promised live music, an endless well of the beer being praised, and wall-to-wall PBR-inspired wares like red white and blue quilts, beeramid cupcakes, and bottle-lid cufflinks.

I had no intention of discovering new music that night. I was there to cover the event for Beer Magazine and around 7 p.m. found myself talking to Julie Roboczi, the show’s founder and organizer. Roboczi heads up the venerable Philadelphia Independent Craft Market and had, on a whim of inspiration, decided to launch this first of many PBR fairs to come. We were halfway into a chat about the event when a broken bathroom poet arrived on the scene to declare an emergency.

“I was sent to tell you there’s a problem with the bathroom,” said the young man in a brown leather coat trimmed with sepia fur. He had appeared from nowhere, leaned in, and spoke in an easy, calculated rhythm, like the bathroom was a lady and its problem was a broken heart. He wore dark country jeans with a rolled left cuff, workingman shoes, and a hapless fedora on a curly head of hair. His wide, unblinking eyes bounced from corner to corner. “I think you’ll want to attend to its needs,” he said. And then he smiled.

The purple costume feathers sprouting from the head of Roboczi twitched in time with her mild flustering as armies of ironic sneakers marched around her and so many tattooed fists clutched cans of warming Pabst against their patch-work hoodies and striped cardigans. The music was loud, the din beneath the buzzing fluorescent lights getting boozier by the minute. A malfunctioning bathroom was indeed an urgent matter. “Well,” she said, “I think I should go see to it then. I’ll be back. Excuse me.” And then she smiled. And then she was gone. I was left standing next to the messenger.

“You don’t want that tonight,” he said, still darting his eyes, still smiling. “Lots of PBR going down easy. Lots of pissing going on, I’m sure.” He took a sip from his can of Pabst and swallowed hard. “Like lava.”

“What’s that?” I asked. His voice was low and muted beneath the thundering of some punk outfit playing loudly in the adjacent room.

“Like laaava.” He drawled. “Laaava. Pissing lava.” I wasn’t sure what he meant by this. Not in the least. But whatever he was trying to say was clearly dear to him, clearly the most important moment of that moment because his eyes stayed wide and the humor of his internal monologue registered with every slink of his puckish frame. So we kept on talking.

This, I came to find out, was none other than Todd Henkin, and Todd Henkin’s band was about to go on in thirty minutes. “We’re The Great Unknown,” he said. “But we’re different than what you’re hearing right now. It’s nothing like this.”

“This” was thudding, post-Pixies metal mixed with a dash of slick Interpol angst, the kind that comes on at 2 a.m. after one too many PBRs. “We’re more like…Americana? Or uh, or like roots style music. Lap steel and all that. I don’t know. It’s…it’s not like this. It’s not PBR kind of music, I don’t think.”

“So what kind of beer should somebody drink to your music?”

“I don’t know. Maybe an IPA? Yeah!” Henkin liked every pet theory that came to mind. And he really liked this one.

“There’s your genre right there, man,” I told him. “IPA rock.”

“Right! Yeah. We’re an India Pale Ale.” He laughed a little and tossed off the moment with a shrug. It was then I realized that I wasn’t sure about anything he was saying. I had been at the craft fair for nearly two hours at this point, and to be sure, nothing breeds suspicion quite like these sorts of No Libs gatherings. Everything is a joke and everything is a serious edict at once. Sincerity and sarcasm do a mad, opium dance of the dead and suddenly all one is left with is the certainty that nothing is certain. Ever. For all I knew Henkin was full of shit. For all I knew he could have been a solo hip-hop free stylist who dressed as a clown on stage and rapped about Kierkegaard’s latent fascination with Muppets or accountants with Dixie Cup fetishes.

Or he might not be a musician at all. Who was to say? This was Northern Liberties. This was Pabst.

“Either way,” he continued, “I don’t really like the term ‘Americana.’ That’s not it. Maybe we need another genre. Like…like native American.”

“But then people might think about American Indians,” I said, noticing for the first time a subtle scar that ran from the corner of his mouth to the dip of his five-o’clock chin. “I don’t think that’s what you’re going for.”

“But…yeah! No, that’s it! Native American. American Indians. We are American Indians. I’m an American Indian. Like Bob Dylan.”

“Bob Dylan was an American Indian?” This, I knew, was certainly not true.

But then again…

“Hell yeah! He was an Indian.” Henkin laughed again.

“Dude, he was Jewish. You’re telling me he was a Jewish American Indian?”

“Oh…wait. No, yeah. Jewish! He was Jewish.” More laughter. More mad, darting eyes. He looked at me like he was on the lamb and I was about to call the cops. “That’s what I meant. Jewish. They’re so similar, ya know? Jewish. Indian. I get ‘em mixed up. So maybe Jewish American rock? Whatya think?”

The conversation continued like this for a few more minutes until Robosczi finally returned to tell us all was right with the flushable world. I shook Henkin’s hand and told him I was anxious to hear the band. He told me to find some IPA.

Later, while waiting in the back of the theatre for some more PBR to arrive (the natives growing restless) I began to hear the copper strumming of an acoustic guitar. The thudding of a country bass. The slick slide of a lap steel. The Great Unknown was warming up. When the new batch of beer finally arrived I grabbed myself a chilled, cozi-less can and made my way to the crowded front room, where I found Henkin and Co. already well into the second song of their set.

So he was telling the truth after all.

For thirty minutes I watched The Great Unknown churn out some of the most exciting and finely crafted American music I have had the pleasure of hearing in this city. Henkin lead the outfit with his loose acoustic and sharp vocals, backed all the while by a jangly electric guitar, sweet and subtle lap steel, excitable bass, and riverstone drums. They were harmonizing three parts, laughing between beats, and moving in mountain step with one another the way one imagines wolves might if they had smiles and voices and hands to play such sweet, rollicking tavern anthems to the night.

For thirty minutes I watched The Great Unknown conjure up images of its woozy urban cowboyism played against the mossy backdrop of an American forest, or through the smoky blur of a basement in the dark, pensive Pennsylvania hills. Henkin sang about love declared to sleeping ladies and whistled his way through a number’s closing. He made Tom Waits references between songs and all the while kept darting his wide, junkyard eyes from corner to corer, just as he had done when I met him less than an hour before.

For thirty minutes I watched the members of The Great Unknown have the time of their lives, as though every number was the closing of a concert given to celebrate the end of the world. I watched them inspire some in the crowd to belt out delirious rebel yells that would make the sober eyes of nuns rattle in their heads and young women shudder for the impossibility of affection. This was the young man music for which rock and roll was first invented. The music of getting drunk when it matters the most. The music of reckless love in dusty jukebox corners. The music of being snowed in by time and guarded against its sinister march. The music of long conversations that mean nothing, save for their assurance that long conversations still exist somewhere in the hearts of the young.

For thirty minutes I watched The Great Unknown restore my faith in the possibility of accidentally stumbling upon a band that makes you want to sing until your voice is raw and stomp until your feet are blistered and ghostly. I have spent many years seeking out such possibility, going from Philly pub to Philly pub with the hope that I might leave with the desire to tell everyone about the band I just saw. Sadly, that expectation is most often met with disappointment, and I wind up wondering if anyone is yet to be discovered. But last weekend I was treated to thirty unexpected minutes of The Great Unknown, and now I know the search has been worth it. And it is worth it still.

It’s unfortunate that the indie world has become so bloated with expectation and slavish devotion to novelty and irony these days, because what so many local outfits miss in their efforts to become the next Arcade Fire or Deerhoof (fine bands in their own right, don’t get me wrong) is the bliss of being enveloped by the simple, singular pleasure of solid songwriting and a band bleeding its life on stage. Consider that just last month I watched a seven-piece group crowd the North Star with a violin, three guitars, synth keyboards and marching band drums. In all of their expected grandeur, those guys and gals couldn’t manage to eek out a single melody that came close to even the simplest lines of The Great Unknown. These dudes know how to summon the muse, and they do it damn well.

Look, this band isn’t going to push the limits of pop music evolution. The Great Unknown probably won’t rearrange the sonic landscape as we know it or woo the critics with its visionary scope. But I can tell you this: they will make you feel, they will give you one hell of a good show, and you’ll find yourself humming their tunes long after the others have packed away their violins and cut off the power to their canned orchestras.

With the PBR fair finally winding down I managed to catch up with Henkin as he and his mates packed up for a show later that night in Center City. But before I could get a word in to tell him how incendiary their set was, he looked at me and said, “So. Did it make you want an IPA?”

Check out The Great Unknown here. Or better yet, go see them play at Johnny Brenda’s on March 7. You won’t be disappointed.

Yes (I Think) We Can: Surviving Family Brunch In A Post-Election America

“So, grandmom. What’d ya think about the election? Ya know, about Obama winning?” The question seemed innocent enough. My grandmother is 92 years old, and it intrigued me to get the perspective of a woman who had lived through everything from the invention of Scotch Tape to the iPhone; from segregated troop battalions in World War II to the election of the first African American President of the United States. In other words, I thought she might have some wisdom to impart. But before she could even form an answer in her mind, my sister Erica turned to me with a look I imagine she would have given had I just asked our grandmother to expound upon the virtues of modern day sex toy technology, or the horrors of female circumcision in third-world countries. Apparently, I had just said something inappropriate.

“Are you insane?” my sister hissed.

I looked around the brunch table for understanding, only to find my mom hanging her head in despair. “I just got your father to come out of his coma,” she said, her head cast downward at her half-eaten omelet and cooling coffee. “And you just had to bring this up didn’t you?”

It was just after noon and we were gathered for brunch at the Flying W’s Avion Restaurant in Medford to celebrate my brother Tony’s 23rd birthday a week-and-a-half late due to his law school schedule preventing him from enjoying, well, anything besides law school. It was a cool, delightful, sunny morning in late autumn, but suddenly it seemed my question had cast a pall upon the proceedings. It was a buzz kill that could only have been topped had I just vomited on the table. “I may have to kill you,” Erica whispered under her breath. My brother just laughed while my father seethed a restrained seeth behind his gold-rimmed aviator Ray Bans.

I finally understood the problem.

***

Election night 2008 had been a prickly one at the DiUlio homestead. I visited my parents for dinner that evening and thought I would stick around to watch the returns. I thought it would be fun to see the night unfold alongside the two people most responsible for my political aptitude and passion. When I got there, however, my father, a devout, registered Republican, already seemed a little tense, even though not a single state’s polls had yet closed. I was beginning to question the wisdom of my decision.

“Where’s mom?”

“She’s a poll watcher tonight. She volunteered to watch the polls. To guard them. In Willingboro.” He said this as though my mother had decided on a whim to fly down to Darfur to host a tea party for rape squads. “She’ll be home around 8:30.” He paused over the pasta he was cooking in a large pot. “I’ll tell you what, this is not going to be good. Not going to be good at all.” I couldn’t tell if he was talking about my mother’s volunteer work, the election, or the pasta in the pot. It may have been all three.

After dinner I had a few calls to make, and when I had finished, a number of state projections had come in. Obama was in the electoral lead. My dad sat on the couch with a face that suggested his mind was already going down a list of possible ways to terminate its own existence. I think I caught him somewhere between gunshot to the head and slowly feeding himself to an office paper shredder. He didn’t say anything when I came into the room, just looked up slowly with more than a trace of both insanity and despair. “Not good?” I asked. He didn’t answer, just turned back to the Fox News broadcast and its incessant, gabbing heads of expert opinion.

I didn’t press the matter. Didn’t try to cheer him up or lend any “it’s not over yet” perspective. In 27 years, I have come to know that trying to interfere with my father’s modes of coping with an unpleasant situation can be like trying to take food away from a dog mid-chew. You just. Don’t. Do it. This was, after all, the same man who once took off a brand new Philadelphia Eagles sweatshirt after watching a particularly tough loss to the Dallas Cowboys, walked into the kitchen for a pair of scissors, and then proceeded to cut the garment into small strips he then tossed into the fire, one helpless, green strand at a time.

“I can’t believe he’s going to take North Carolina,” my father said. I took a seat next to him on the couch. “What are those morons down there thinking?”

“Well, look dad, first of all, they’re not morons just because they support a different candidate than you. And besides, North Carolina hasn’t even been called yet. So you can’t say he’s won North Carolina.” I looked at the fireplace and was pleased to see that it was dark and cold and fireless.

“Nicholas…he’s won it. Trust me.”

This was more or less how it went for the next hour or so while we watched the television and waited for my mom to return from her poll-watching duties, with every state that turned blue suddenly designated the moron capitol of America. When my mother finally arrived, she was in exceedingly bright spirits, her post-volunteerism glow radiating impossibly against the closing dark of my dad’s quiet rage. “It was really a beautiful experience,” she told us. “Just wonderful. I feel so uplifted right now. Apparently, everything is going very smoothly tonight. No problems with voting or anything like that. Very good to hear.”

I knew what was coming next. “Well, I guess you didn’t hear about the Black Panthers in Philadelphia tonight.” Oh boy. “They had billy clubs. Billy clubs, Elizabeth!” Here we go. “And they were trying to intimidate voters coming from coming in.”

“No,” she said. “I didn’t hear about any of that. And I don’t think it really matters.” My mom was getting dangerously close to her “keep bringin’ me down and I’ll take you down” tone of voice. My dad wisely backed off.

“Uh huh. Okay.” He went back to watching the returns and drawing further and further into himself as if there was a calm, magical land hidden somewhere deep in his body where a smiling John McCain was ready to welcome him with open arms and a smile that suggested, “Don’t worry Ed. Everything will be okay. Here. Come rest your head on my war-weary shoulder.”

***

Needless to say, my father never found that place, and once Ohio was called for Obama, the night was over. My mother had settled in with a glass of red wine and we both stole furtive glances at the mustached man beside us now rubbing his temples every two minutes and sighing a sigh that suggested the world was, in fact, about to come to an end.

“Are you alright, Ed?” my mom asked him. I could tell by the timidity of her voice that she was thinking about the burning sweatshirt incident too.

“No. I’ve got a splitting headache.”

“Well that’s ridiculous. You’re going to let this make you sick.”

“Too late.”

“Do you want a valium?”

“No.”

“Well look, relax. It’s not going to do any good working yourself up like that.” Then she whispered to me, “I’m really worried about him. He could have a stroke or something.” I patted my dad on the shoulder and rubbed his back. If there was an entry wound, I probably would have tried to suck the Democrat poison from his veins. He needed to relax. After all, how could I possibly deal with the fallout if my farther died because of this. Oh Nick, I’m so sorry to hear about your dad. How did it happen?

Well, it began with a simple headache on election night. And then he just stroked out as soon as they called Florida. Right there on the couch. Bam. He just lost it.

Who would ever take me seriously again?

Thankfully, my dad didn’t have a stroke. He just went up to bed, signing off with the cheerful adieu of, “Welcome to the People’s Republic of America. I hope you all enjoy socialism.” Before any of the speeches were made, before any of the confetti was tossed, before any of Oprah’s tears were shed, my father slept the sleep of one last denial, wondering if perhaps when he awoke the next morning news would greet him that a mistake had been made and that John McCain was the actual victor. Or maybe the entire affair would have been a dream. Or maybe aliens would have swooped down from the sky during his victory speech and abducted the senator from Illinois for purposes of interstellar probing. Just maybe.

***

But it hadn’t been a dream, and my dad’s face at brunch the following Sunday told of his resignation to that fact. Meanwhile, my sister still had murder in her eyes.

“You always have to be the agitator, don’t you? Always have to stir it up.” The thing is, Erica had a particularly significant stake in the matter and was no more anxious to talk post-election sociology than our dad was. See, she had made it known since September that she was going to buck the paternal Republican trend and vote for Mr. Obama. I knew how significant that was. I was there when my father found out about this conviction of hers, and the entire time I had my fingers on the ready to dial 9-1-1 because of how deeply I feared his head was going to erupt into a gruesome explosion of blood and bones right there on the spot.

“Hey, everybody simmer down.” It was time I started defending myself. The tension was getting rather ridiculous. “I was just wondering what grandmom thought about the whole thing, okay? The woman’s 92, alright? Aren’t you interested in that at all? This doesn’t have to be a whole big, freakin’ ordeal.”

Silence. All eyes were now on my grandmother; my sweet, little Italian grandmother who clearly had no concept of the war zone into which she was about to walk. “Well,” she started, diminutively, “I think some of his ideas sound very good. And—”

“I’m sure the Germans thought some of Hitler’s ideas sounded pretty good as well.” It was a muted retort from my dad, but everyone heard it. Thankfully, everyone also ignored it.

“Mom, I think he means what do you think about Obama being the first black President?” My mother was steering a sinking ship. “Does that mean anything to you?”

“Oh, well, yeah. It’s…well…I mean—” and here my grandmother looked to me. “Wasn’t there a black man back in the 1800’s or something who won the election?”

Good grief.

“Mom, are you kidding me?” My mother was doing all she could not to take her mother-in-law by the shoulders and shake some sense into her feeble frame. “Are you seriously asking this? You think we’ve had an African American president before?”

“Well, Elizabeth, I was just saying…”

My grandmother may be 92, but she’s neither unintelligent nor senile. She knows fully well that no African American man has ever been elected to the office of President. She knows the historic significance of what occurred on November 4, 2008. I like to think her confusion was nothing more than the result of being blinded by the maelstrom of DiUlio chaos surrounding her that morning over brunch. It could happen to anybody, really. I mean, if I were in her shoes, I probably would have begun wondering if the Oval Office wasn’t made of cheese and that it was once run by a cat named Ginger along with his trusted sidekick Twinkles.

After my grandmother’s 1800’s comment the conversation dissolved rather quickly. My dad began raising the inevitable right-wing, talk-radio-inspired topic of questioning Obama’s proper citizenship (a petty one, for sure) while my mom gave her mother-in-law an abbreviated lesson in American political history. My sister, all the while, continued shooting me dagger glances and whispering surreptitious threats—“Sleep gangsta style tonight brother. One eye open, one hand on the gun.”—as my brother took up his usual Swiss neutrality in the entire matter. Me, I just continued enjoying my plate of strawberry pancakes and french toast with whipped cream, laughing to myself about what an interesting four years it’s going to be.

Let Us Now Praise…

Music For Coming Down:

David Mead and the Post-World-Series-Election Hangover

 

Fade In: Interior. Nick’s Roast Beef. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Wednesday Night. 7 p.m.

The clocks have been turned back. Another hour has been saved. Second Street in Old City is dark and desolate and wet with rain. Just one week ago to the day this place was clamorous with the delirium of hundreds in the street weeping and clapping to everyone, to no one in particular. Just one week ago to the day this place was filled with what seemed to be potential for new birth. With beer-stained hearts on fire. With senseless love overflowing. With the careless inspiration only triumph can bring forth. Just one week ago to the day, Second Street was alive.

Just twenty four hours ago, Second Street was alive, brightened by the hope of change in America, of change in the city of Philadelphia, of change in our dusty, cynical hearts. By this time yesterday, Barack Obama was already on the doorstep of victory. By this time yesterday, everyone braced for the eventual collision of history and expectation. By this time yesterday, legions of the lesser angels of our nature seemed poised for destruction. By this time yesterday, Second Street was yet another temple at which we could all worship the deity of possible hope. By this time yesterday, Second Street was alive.

Now, sitting inside Nick’s Roast Beef, Second Street is tired and alone. The bar is virtually empty. No music plays on the speakers. The Phillies already seem a distant memory. Two small televisions hang from a brick wall. One broadcasts a silent, subtitled Charlie Gibson, who guides America through replay after replay of last night’s Presidential victory, parsing every second down to the fabric of the dress Michelle Obama wore on the stage. On the other screen, a prime-time Hollywood program silently displays a montage from a new Broadway musical staring Chazz Palminteri. The disparity of the two images seems at once both obvious and obscure. There is something that connects them, I’m just not sure what that is.

More than anything else, what strikes me is how exhausted I feel—how exhausted the entire city feels—overwhelmed by a month that went by in a blur and culminated in a championship victory for a beloved baseball team and the election of the first African American to President of the United States of America. In the course of just one week, both of these events took place, and there is an overwhelming, atmospheric sense that the peak of joy has been reached, and now we must all come down. We must all swallow the bitter sweet fog of the morning after.

That’s why we’re going to see David Mead at the Tin Angel.

Some friends of mine arrive and we share a few pints over talk about quantum physics and Mr. Rogers; over the previous night’s election and the virtues of ketchup; over getting old and electric cars; over cheesesteak hoagies and the small entertaining bits of our own personal histories only we find important or funny. I know we are children of this time, I’m just not sure what that really means.

When our rambling comes to a close we leave for the show. Two doors down we climb some narrow stairs and order some more pints. First to take the stage at the Tin Angel are The Sways, a Nashville-based husband-and-wife duo comprised of Carey Kotsionis and Adam Landry. Carey’s got her acoustic, Adam’s got his medicine-red electric, and just two lines into their first song I am struck by both the beauty of their harmonies as well as the undeniable pleasure of lines like, “Knowing what to wear doesn’t make you a lady/ Showing up at my door doesn’t make you my baby.”

It would be easy for me to call this duo a marriage between the Innocence Mission and She & Him, so I won’t. Instead, The Sways are a fragile little outfit with the icy edges of their tender sound rimmed in traces of southern attitude and rust. They’ve got California flowers in their hair, but they’ve also got dusty, Memphis boots on their feet. It’s sweet, American swaying, music perfect for the autumn and summer both. They are a pleasure to watch and I would recommend checking them out if they come to town again.

When it comes to the headliner, I am as ignorant as a man can be. Going into the night, I had only ever heard one, maybe two David Mead songs in my life; but the show came by way of a zealous recommendation from my friends T. David and Kristine Young, and since I trust their respective musical tastes so implicitly I figured it was worth the $12 admission fee. And friends, after sitting through an 90 minute set of this man’s music, I can honestly say that I would pay twice as much to see him again.

Oh that dastardly breed of man known as the so-called “Singer Songwriter” is everywhere, and usually I do not suffer him kindly. Look, he’s got a lot to live up to, so I think it’s only fair to be so critical. Every college-aged crooner strumming his acoustic guitar in a coffee shop or on a lawn full of pie-eyed ladies is cooing in the shadow of geniuses like Jackson Browne, Ricky Lee Jones, James Taylor, Joni Mittchell, Cat Stevens, or even Ryan Adams. It’s not their fault the genre has been so well mined, it’s just a fact. All of that being said, when David Mead takes to the cozy, dimly-lit stage at the Angel, my skepticism is tempered only by Dave and Kris’s admiration for him.

Now watch as David Mead lifts the glass statue of my vapid cynicism, hurls it across 90 miles of jagged rock, and allows it to shatter into pieces so small and numerous as to be indistinguishable from the air surrounding them. For the entire length of his set, I am as captivated as I have ever been by a performance. Mead is a master songwriter, crafting everything from bittersweet ballads about looking out of windows at girls walking away to traveling songs about rambling to lovers and friends in drivers seats as the landscape of America unfurls its lovely, lonely distances. He even covers “These Days”, giving an apropos nod to the man to whom I believe Mead is the obvious heir apparent.

Moreover, Mead’s stage persona is a delight. Irreverent, erudite, commanding, humorous, and humble. Watching him in the intimate confines of the Tin Angel feels like being part of a sublime secret. I look forward to nights that will surely unfold with Mead’s music lining the walls of my house and of the mornings over coffee and new love wherein his tunes will kiss the moment with the tenderness for which it begs. I’ve got him on right now, in fact, and I can think of no better soundtrack for coming down from the chaotic hand life has dealt me in recent weeks.

Check out this video of him at the Tin Angel in 2004:

Phinally: The Victory In Three Acts

 

Act I: Purgatory

It was a cold, wet Tuesday morning, and by the tone of his e-mail I could tell my friend Red Dog was not yet convinced. He needed some prodding.

I watched the slick, fast, frenzy of October’s rain prick the windows of my office, thinking about the purgatory of the situation. Of the night before when the entire city of Philadelphia seemed poised for a delirious rebirth. Of the men and women walking through Old City to their favorite watering holes clad in red and white and pale blue. Of their eyes looking to that place in the distance where victory whispered its seductions. Of the slate sky. Of the pints of beer we all consumed through five-and-a-half soaked innings of senseless hope. Of the clinical tarp eventually covering the field. Of the cruel Doppler Radar, flashing. And of each of us—the men with their clenched fists, the women with their sad eyes—walking back to our cars through the rain, heads hung low, not in defeat but in the dissatisfaction of having to wait even longer for our moment of triumph.

I sat in my office that Tuesday morning and thought about all of this—and also of the eventual conclusion to the game. I knew Red Dog had to be there when it happened. We had started this series together and dammit, we would finish it together as well. But I also knew it would be a hard sell. The two of us had already spent far too much time and money on this World Series, and in Red Dog’s case the sacrifice was particularly great. He’s a teacher, which means his alarm begins blaring around 5:30 in the morning, two full hours before mine even thinks about waking. He’s also a husband and a father, which means his energy output requires significantly more precise calculation than mine. Nonetheless, he needed to give it one more go. He needed to meet us at National Mechanics and finish what was started.

So I responded to his e-mail (which had the perfect subject line of “Raining On Our Parade”) explaining why I thought it essential that we take one last shot in the arm and head in to the city for the 3.5-inning conclusion of Game Five of the 2008 World Series:

Dude, that’s a great headline! I’m really surprised it hasn’t been used anywhere else…

So yeah, tonight is apparently suspended until tomorrow, to which I think, yes, I will be going out. Tonight will give me a much-needed rest and opportunity to get some things done. And my rationale for tomorrow is this: it’s only 3 1/2 innings, which means it won’t be too late/expensive a night. Granted, it could go into extra innings and last much longer, but that’s a chance I’m willing to take. I mean, the whole point of being out was so if they won it in the city we would be there! If there’s still a chance to experience that, I’m there. Had they lost and it was going into Game 6, well, that would be a different story and I wouldn’t be going out. But this is STILL GAME FIVE!!

Anyway, no worries if you can’t swing it man. I understand. Let me know. But come hell or high, raging waters, I’ll be there. And I will scream out into the night. And the city will ring with the echoes of our elation. And the curtain of our sorrows will be torn in two. And all will be right with the world.

 

Act II: So This Is What Pure Joy Looks Like

And so it was. After a few more persuasive e-mails, Red Dog decided to come out after all, and when Brad Lidge threw the final strike of the evening, the two of us did indeed scream into the night. And indeed the city rang with the echoes of our elation. And indeed the curtain of our sorrows was torn in two. And all is, indeed, right with the world.

What occurred after that game can scarcely be put into words, as Philadelphia erupted into a scene I have never before witnessed. Along with three of my closest friends (sans Red Dog, who had to go home), I walked up Market Street from Old City, getting closer and closer to the din rising from behind City Hall. It was the kind of juggernaut rumble only tens of thousands gathered in a city street can create…and it sounded glorious.

Finally reaching the pandaemonium, we saw the entirety of Broad Street pregnant with a sea of humanity. Shirtless men running up and down sidewalks, screaming until voiceless. Women whistling from windows. Trucks and SUVs loaded with dozens of rabid Phillies fans spilling out of the windows and doors. Beer and wine bottles littering every spare inch of gutter and curb. Stoplights bending beneath the weight of those who hung from them like mad gargoyles. Overturned planters. Sidewalk trees shaken by those who wanted to uproot a piece of the evening. Fireworks slicing through the perfect dark of sky to explode and rain their sublime fire upon the cheering masses below.

We stopped into a bar serving three dollar whiskeys and toasted to our team. We gave high-fives until our palms were raw. We called our loved ones and tried to paint the scene for them with hoarse voices and the distraction of car horns honking perpetually behind us. We bummed cigarettes and stopped into Nodding Head, where we enjoyed dark pints of sticky Grog and sang “We Are The Champions” and watched replays of that final pitch over and over and over again on a small television. We saw an overturned car on the sidewalk and some firemen at the end of the block trying to put out a small garbage can fire. We hugged the homeless. We made more calls. We took photos and stood on planters like warriors on hilltops of victory. We visited one last bar—the Locust Bar, to be precise—and swallowed down some lager, still watching that final pitch. Still delirious. And then we all went home and slept one of the most peaceful sleeps we had ever known.

 

Act III: Tears at Broad and Federal

I wrote in a previous post about how silly sport is, about how its triviality and inconsequential nature cause so many to feel apathetic about the thing but that these qualities are what make it so wonderful to experience. So while I realize the Phillies’ 2008 World Series victory is not going to bring about world peace or an end to global poverty, I also know (and admit shamelessly) that it was one of the most beautiful moments of my young life, and that I am forever going to recall its sublimity as fondly as I would any fortune to befall me. It is good and righteous without condition and I am thrilled to have been a part of it.

The Friday afternoon parade down Broad Street was a far tamer experience than the Wednesday evening that proceeded it, but its sunny, measured execution was the perfect denouement to a release 25 years in the making. It was a moment of unhindered positive vibrations, of love overflowing, of new tides coming in for the city of Philadelphia and everyone who was there to see the moment unfold. Leading up to the afternoon, I wasn’t sure how it was going to feel once I finally saw this team I had been watching all my life finally showered with the unconditional attention all champions deserve. But then the parade made its way down to our post at Broad and Federal, and I had my answer.

Leading the caravan was the Philly Phanatic, and when his green, fuzzy paws became visible over the thousands of red heads bobbing up and down in frenzied elation all along Broad Street, I suddenly realized I was about to start crying. This was totally unexpected and I immediately tried to hold back, tried to tell myself how silly it would seem to have a grown man weeping in the streets over something as superficial as a baseball team; but then I realized how ridiculous the reasons for my resistance seemed and I let go of my insecurities and the tears started to flow. It wasn’t just the joy of the victory, or even the overwhelming sight of thousands gathered for this singular purpose, that brought me to tears. It was the Phillies game my father took me to see at the Vet when I was eight. It was watching the 1993 World Series in my childhood best friend’s basement at the age of 12, back when it seemed baseball was the only concern worth caring about. It was the baseball my entire family signed when I turned 13. It was Eagles football by fireside while my parents trimmed the Christmas tree. It was backyard home run derbies with my little brother, both of us wishing for the impossible. It was catches with my father in that same backyard. It was the watershed of 27 years coming to me in a flash of raw, unstoppable emotion at the hands of a silly, sarcastic mascot. And it was beautiful.

Thank you Phillies. Thank you for all of this. It is without a price and it will live forever in the hearts and minds of millions. Thank you.

Prostitution: Legalize It

 

Here’s the situation: San Francisco is on the verge of becoming the first U.S. city to decriminalize prostitution. And here’s the question: Why the hell not?

Trolling the Drudge Report tonight, I came across an interesting link to a news story about a ballot initiative, Proposition-K, that will be up for a vote next month in the city of rice and fog. If passed, the measure would forbid local authorities from investigating, arresting, or prosecuting anyone for selling sex. It would not, the article goes on to say, technically legalize prostitution since state law prohibits it, but it would eliminate the power of local law enforcement officials to “go after” prostitutes.

Oh yeah, and one more thing: The measure would likely free up $11 million the police spend each year on arresting prostitutes. Come on everyone, do your best Dr. Evil with me. That’s eleven meellion dollars…a year! Do the math. That’s a lot of bank, folks.

Look, for those of you who know me, an endorsement of this measure will probably not come as a surprise, as I have always been of the mindset that our government (locally and federally) already possesses far too much control over the degree to which we can exercise our inherent, victimless vices. I have long been of the mindset that this control is not only insulting, dangerous, and severely hypocritical, but also a provenly absurd waste of time and resources—and I believe precedent is on my side here. For an example, simply survey the effectiveness of the so-called “war on drugs.”

This multi-billion dollar effort on the part of the United States government has not yielded any quantitative decrease in the use of drugs in this country and has only served to continually drive up the financial and criminal consequences of an inevitable black market and the criminal activity it inspires. It has overflown our prisons with unnecessary inmates, ruined the lives of those who need help (not jail) and wasted our tax dollars in the process. And why? Because the pale, ignorant, ghostly bastards and bitches who roam the halls of Congress like moaning spectres of intolerance are beholden to the monstrous masters of the money that flows in and out of their fusty campaign offices like endless blood down a drain. There are no principles at the core of these efforts to wage witless wars on our so-called depravities. There are no convictions at the center of these ineffective laws that seek to limit what we, as free individuals, can and cannot do at our leisure. If there were, the NFL’s chief sponsors would not be beer companies. If there were, pharmaceutical companies would not be bombarding our prime-time television hours with myriad chemical solutions to spiritual problems. If there were, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now.

But I digress.

Look, the philosophy of just and righteous law is based on the necessity to govern a society in as much as that society wishes to legislate and live within the basic tenants of universal morality, and the first (and probably only) tenant worth considering in this regard is how our individual behaviors affect others not voluntarily associated with the choices we make. Speed limits exist because the roadways are public spaces filled with individuals who should not be forced to inherit the potential dangers of others driving recklessly. Murder is illegal because no one has the right to take another individual’s life without his or her consent. Rape, theft, drunk driving, witch hunting—all of these actions are illegal because each of them involves the victimization of an innocent individual. Drug use, prostitution, euthanasia—these, most certainly, do not.

To be sure, I am not in favor of the decriminalization of prostitution because I endorse the practice itself (no more than I am in favor of the decriminalization of certain drugs because I partake in them). My support of measures like Proposition-K is grounded in a belief that a society is not fundamentally harmed or devalued because of individuals who choose to engage in behaviors that, while potentially not in line with my own standards of character, have no direct impact on the course of my life. In other words, if my next door neighbor is visited by a different prostitute every night for the rest of his life, that action does not affect my life in any measurable way.

Now, I can already hear the rebuttals: But Nick, prostitution leads to a dangerous and damaging lifestyle for countless women every single day, and the legalization of the practice would only further encourage that spiral of desperation and damage! And to that, I ask a very simple question: Has the historic illegality of prostitution lead to its demise? The answer is no. They don’t call it “the world’s oldest profession” for nothing. And if we are resigned to the inevitability of its continuance (and really, I don’t see how we can’t be), shouldn’t we strive for a system that “legitimizes” and regulates this potentially dangerous profession in order to make it as safe as possible? Since there will always be women (and heck, I suppose men as well) that choose to earn their living through the sale of sex, is it not morally imperative to provide them with the protection they deserve?

And to the point that legalization inevitably encourages previously illegal behavior, I ask  another question to those of you who have never sought out a lady (or gentleman) of the night: Is that because it’s been illegal? I am willing to guess the majority of you would answer “no.” Speaking from my own experience, the reason I have never been with a prostitute has absolutely nothing to do with its illegality. I’m 27 and have lived in a major city several times throughout my life. If ever I wanted to purchase sex, I certainly could have. Without trouble. But I didn’t. Not because it was illegal. Not because I feared getting caught. But because I did not think it was right to do so. This is the standard of character and personal integrity toward which we should be striving as a society, and no amount of legislation will ever be able to bring that about. I have heard it said many times that the true test of a man’s character is what he will do when he knows no one is looking. Note that the government’s watchful eye plays no part in the truth of that axiom.

It is a dangerous and slippery slope down which we slide when we endorse legislation based not on the potential victimization of a behavior but instead on the relativistic and shifty ethical concerns of a few in power. Prostitution is as victimless in its execution as the publication of a particularly incendiary novel or piece of journalism. It is as wholly harmless to a society as a work of disagreeable art. Would we not shudder at the thought of our government prohibiting these expressions? Why then do we not shudder at its odious assumption of moral authority when it comes to matters of individual sexual choice?

Here’s to hoping Proposition-K passes next month, as it will make this country a safer and more humane place to live.

XPN’S Most Essential Mistake (A Repost)

88.5 XPN began it’s annual countdown this week, so I think it’s an apt time to repost one of my earliest entries from this summer. Why? Because it outlines precisely why this countdown is, well, kind of a dumb idea. Let me know what you think…

ORIGINALLY POSTED JULY 29, 2008:

For those of you not keeping score at home, it’s been a few days since Post Number One. Days pregnant with the pressure and tedium of deciding what Post Number Two was going to concern. Throughout that time, I kept making subtle promises to myself that it would not be wasted on the banal or superficial. That the post would center on a “big idea”, like the recently dreadful irresponsibility of the media as it pertains to the status of America’s economy; or that maybe it would elucidate the virtues I have recently discovered are inherent in the act of walking; or perhaps it would poetically eulogize Tony Snow, or maybe showcase an exciting and exclusive interview I had with Beck, wherein we discuss everything from Scientology to his new album “Modern Guilt”. But after all the internal haranguing and wringing of hands, I have finally settled on a topic—and, ironically, it concerns perhaps one of the most superficial creations of modern times: The countdown list.

To put a finer point on it, the particular list I’m thinking about right now is 88.5 WXPN’s forthcoming countdown of the “885 Essential XPN Songs.” No, this is not a matter that will make or break the evolution of mankind for centuries to come, or one that will most likely even register on your radar of importance so much as five minutes after you’ve finish this reading this. But when I heard this countdown theme mentioned on the radio yesterday morning while I was enjoying a delicious bowl of Craklin’ Oat Bran, my body responded as I would imagine it would were I having a stroke. And this was when I knew the issue could not be avoided.

To be sure, the fact that I would even express of modicum of concern over this matter—let alone care enough to make it a post on my blog—says more about me than it does about the countdown itself. But life is full of moments when one is forced to decide whether or not he will be the bigger person and ignore an evil obviously lesser than the strength of his own character, or give into the temptation and wage a losing battle against a pettiness sure to make him seem smaller than he was at the start. In this case, I have sadly succumbed to the temptation. I have chosen to wage a very silly war.

Without equivocation, I adore XPN. If the radio station were a woman (and personally, I think she would look something like Natalie Portman), the two of us would have been married for almost ten blissful years by now, with a beautiful brood of talented, ambitious children to boot. To extoll its innumerable virtues here as one of the greatest radio station in the tri-state region would be a waste of both our times. But if thiswere a marriage, the countdown about to occur would most certainly send us both into counseling (or force me to cheat).

The extreme guilty pleasure I derive from countdown lists is no secret to those who know me. I can recall numerous evenings as a child when, during dinner or after brushing my teeth, I would casually posit questions to my mother or father such as, “What are your top ten favorite scary movies of all time?” Or, “Who are the five worst worst quarterbacks in the NFL?” I didn’t know it at the time, but thinking back on those moments now, I realize forcing my parents to categorize their preferences so succinctly was just another way for me to make sense of an increasingly chaotic world. In other words, it was impossible for me to conceive of a universe wherein Bob Dylan was no different than Jimmy Buffet, or Joe Montana was no different than Randall Cunnigham. Such a world would be unjust and insane, and I needed my parents to assure me this was not the case.

At the age of 27, the situation is no different today. I still engage in endless debates with family and friends over the qualification of artistic brilliance; and while in a few rare cases these melees of personal opinion have almost ended friendships (“Rush vs. Zeppelin 2003” comes to mind), most are superficial, forgettable, and, in the eternal scheme of things, a waste of time. But they are one my dearest addictions, and I cannot give up the habit. For this reason, I was quite excited when XPN announced its “885 All Time Greatest Songs” countdown in 2004 (in my opinion, “God Only Knows”). I was doubly excited in 2005 when they launched the “885 All Time Greatest Albums” marathon (in my opinion, Houses of the Holy). And I was giggly as a schoolgirl for the “885 All Time Greatest Artists” countdown in 2006 (in my opinion, Bob Dylan). But then, in 2007, desperate to keep the trend going, the station took a turn for the worse and started tallying the ridiculous list of the “885 All Time Greatest Musical Moments.” What the hell does that even mean? Music is not defined by it’s “moments.” It’s defined by its music! (And even if it were, why wasn’t “The birth of Mozart” number one on the list?). Now, in 2008, XPN goes and dives right into its own nascent pool of pretension and lays this egg on us. It’s a crime against the righteousness of the countdown art form—and I cannot abide.

As I said at the outset, it’s a silly war to wage; and to be sure, XPN is so transparently reaching in this case that its absurdity needs little exaltation. But I could not let the moment pass without crying out with my displeasure. On it’s Web site, XPN claims this countdown is supposed to highlight “the tracks that are at the heart of the XPN listening experience.” But since XPN prides itself on being relatively genre-less (which is kind of a lie anyway, since I can’t recall the last time I heard them play something from Mos Def or Rage Against The Machine) doesn’t it seem absurd to ask people what songs are “at the heart of the XPN listening experience”? Not only is it self-absorbed and severely affected, but it’s also no flippin’ fun. Arguing about albums or musicians or songs gives a person the thrill of taking ownership over the art in his or her life. This does not. Imagine the conversation:

“Yeah man. I think the most quintessential XPN song is ‘A Case of You.’”

“Hell no! How can you say that? There’s no way ‘A Case of You’ is more XPN essential than ‘Into the Mystic!’”

Bullocks.

The XPN “experience” is about the sum of its parts, not the parts themselves. I listen to the station because that experience includes everything from The Hold Steady to Bjork to Jackson Brown to James Brown to Sigur Ros. I can’t reduce it, nor would I ever want to. Debating the “885 All Time Greatest Songs” over a few beers is thrilling and reckless. Debating the “885 Essential XPN Songs” sounds about as exciting as arguing over the best way to cook asparagus, or why she really still is just “Jenny from the block.”

Holly Crap! We’re Going to THE SHOW!

 

 

Oh how sweet it is...

I can’t believe it. I really can’t believe it.

Oh last night. Last night was quite a night, folks. Last night witnessed not only the third and final debate between United States Presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama, but it also saw the fifth (and eventually final) National League Championship Series game between the Los Angels Dodgers and the Philadelphia Phillies. And which of these two events did I watch? Which one got the pleasure of my attention? Which one captured my heart?

THE PHILLIES OF COURSE!!!

Going into game four, I was slightly conflicted. Before the first pitch on Monday night, I didn’t yet know where my fidelity would eventually fall in game five. I had illusions of perhaps splitting the difference, of shifting between the two epic showdowns with mutual respect and regard. But then Shane Victorino hit his home run in the seventh inning to tie it up. And then Matt Stairs smacked a game-winning two-run slammer to seal the deal, and I thought, “Who am I kidding? Of course I’m going to watch the Phils!”

Going into last evening, I didn’t feel an ounce of guilt in potentially shirking my civic duty for the seemingly “more important” Presidential debate. Going into last evening, I didn’t give a toss for the frivolity of sport. Going into last evening, all I saw was red. And even if they had lost, even if this series had been forced back to Philly for a sixth game, even if the Phillies were not going to the WORLD FREAKIN’ SERIES, I would feel the same as I do right now. To some of you, this may seem silly, but let me explain.

To begin with, sports is silly. It’s a trivial and inconsequential passion—but that is what makes it so beautiful. The zeal for a sporting event or team is the only emotional investment in life that has no lasting consequence. To be sure, love, politics, finance—all of these are noble and worthwhile pursuits, but each of them carries the inevitable weight of cause and effect. In each, the lasting results of success or failure carry with them potentially heavy outcomes. When it comes to sports, however, the result has no genuine bearing on the future of one’s life. It is, after all, only a game.

But let me tell you, this feels good. Really good! The last time the Phils went to The Show, I was 12—and we all know how that ended. Last night, watching the game with my family, I was suddenly thrown back to those more carefree days of my youth, and suddenly I am faced with the chance to wash clean the stain my broken heart left behind in 1993, and suddenly this is the only thing that matters. At least right now. When all is said and done, I’ll go back to following this whole president thing. Hopefully I’ll be wearing red and white to the polls.

Way to go Phillies!!!!

Death By Self-Consciousness in America

 

“Dude, I really don’t give a shit. This weekend, I am going to blow every last cent of what I just worked for all week on fuckin’, ya know, some serious coke and some fuckin’ sick whores, man. It’s gonna be fuckin’ hot dude.”

“Totally. Good by me bro. Sounds like a plan.”

This is what I heard upon first sitting down at the bar inside Ten Stone last night, a brick-walled, semi-hipster, opened-windowed haunt on the corner of 21st and South in Philadelphia. I was there to meet my friend Katie for a few beers and to catch up on the life we had both lived in each other’s absence since graduating from Shawnee High School in 1999. I ordered a Wolaver’s stout and continued to listen to the conversation as I sipped; and during the twenty minutes or so that I waited for Katie to arrive, these two young men continued to talk about very little else save for the “whores” they were going to fuck this weekend and the ridiculous amount of money they had just plunked down for tickets to the second game in the unfolding playoff series between the Phillies and Milwaukee Brewers. Dressed in workaday jeans and t-shirts, both of them, I did not take these two guys to be exceedingly wealthy; and judging from the vernacular they used and the general vibe of their conversation, I also did not think them to be any older than me, give or take a few years. Just two late-twenties dudes living semi-modestly in the City of Brotherly Love, enjoying a Tuesday night trip to the neighborhood watering hole while talking about sex and sports and the disposable income of youth. No worries.

To my left, however, a completely different conversation altogether was taking place, this one between an older woman and two of her friends.

“I just invested in the market. Like three weeks ago. I’m talking about, I put in a lot of money. And now I’m like, Well shit—what the hell am I supposed to do now?” She had long, black hair streaked with touches of false, strawberry blonde, and her two friends—an early-fifties couple I took to be husband and wife—nodded and um-hmmed with foreboding sympathy. The woman who spoke was slightly overweight, weathered around the eyes, and of the same demographic (if maybe slightly older and less Rittenhouse polished) as her friends. She took up the next ten minutes of their time lamenting the potential woes of her fiscal situation. “I mean, do you know what I really want right now?”

What? they both asked with their wide eyes and shoulder shrugs.

“I want a stable, predictable, nine-to-five job.”

“Really?” the wife said with amazement.

“Yes! I mean, I’m seriously struggling in a starter job right now, working for myself, when I should be looking ahead to an easy, relaxing retirement. And it’s fucking hard.” For the next twenty minutes, these three continued to share their white wine and lamentations (“What the hell is wrong with Wall Street?” or “Where the hell have all the good leaders gone?”) with as much verve as the two young men to my right bragged to one another about the heedless irresponsibility they were about to enjoy this weekend between gulps of pumpkin ale (“I’m lookin’ to be double teaming some sick whores this weekend man.” or “Brian’s housewarming is going to be pussy to the eyes, dude!”)

As I sat and waited and listened to their respective conversations, I asked myself over and over again the same question I have been asking myself for almost a decade now: What is the purpose of this time in which I live? Or better yet, What is this particular time in humanity’s history teaching me about the truths of our inherent nature? And while I don’t think the following observation is a definitive or all-encompassing answer to that question, I do believe it is at least a piece of the puzzle.

Ready?

We are helplessly self-conscious creatures. If this age is to be dubbed with any sort of broad, historical sobriquet whatsoever, it should be dubbed “The Age of Ceaseless Self Consciousness.” Not irony. Not apathy. Ceaseless Self Consciousness. We are so incredibly self aware, so much more in tune than any other time with what has come before us, that both disaster and triumph alike no longer occur in any sort of pure present tense, but in a perpetual loop of the present as it relates to what we have already known; to the past and to what we assume will happen in the future. And I don’t know if this is good for us.

Consider the woman decrying the state of her affairs as it relates to the nation’s current economic woes. “I’m really worried that this is going to be another great depression,” she said at one point. “Really worried.” Aside from being a cliche, this statement is, of course, absurd. What we know of as America’s “Great Depression” will not happen again. It cannot happen again. Sure, the American economy may very well spiral into inevitable collapse, but even if such a tragedy were to occur, the results would look nothing like they did in 1929; not only because the global landscape of economic factors has changed radically over the last 80 years, but because we already know what the quote-unquote GREAT DEPRESSION looked like, if only by proxy of photos and written accounts. There would be no bread lines; no wasted landscapes; no “Grapes of Wrath”-style struggles for human liberation. Instead, we’d probably all stand around wondering why no one looked like the subjects of Walker Evans’s iconic American photographs.

So on the one hand, our self-consciousness has given us the overwrought melodrama of folks like the woman to my left. On the other, it has yielded the dangerous apathy of the twenty-somethings to my right. As members of my generation, I understand where they’re probably coming from. They could care less about the current state of America’s economic affairs, because to them the potential for tragedy has become a caricature of itself; a sad story of fall and rise and fall and rise that’s already been told a thousand times. They have no real, tangible fear of the present moment collapsing around them because they are already living in the future moments when we can all look back and share a laugh about how bad it once was. This generation—my generation—has become impervious to the possibility of real tragedy. It’s all a movie. A game. A story already memorized.

This is why September 11th was so morbidly invigorating (for lack of a better word) to both the United States, because it was the first time in a long time we were forced to process a singular moment without any context whatsoever. Even though there were inevitable comparisons to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, they were ultimately erroneous. The tragedy of September 11th had no precedent and therefore had no prearranged emotional response. The irony, of course, is that we so quickly turned the events of that day into moral and cultural cliche through our inescapable self consciousness. Look no further than the motion pictures already made about that day, all of which were released within just five years of the tragedy’s occurrence! Or consider how quickly the media packaged President Bush’s speech atop the rubble, as if to say, Look! Here is history in the making!

It is that sense of “history in the making” I think I find so troubling above all else, because it doesn’t allow us to merely let history take place, to be put in context at a later and more appropriate date, to be reflected upon when it is most needed. When Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address in 1863, the speech lasted less than three minutes, not even long enough for the photographer present to set up his camera. At the time, it was barely a footnote in the events of the day. In fact, Lincoln was widely criticized for being so brief that afternoon. Moreover, he himself felt fickle about the moment, turning to his bodyguard Ward Hill Lamon and remarking that the speech, like a bad plow, “won’t scour”. Lincoln thought the address wouldn’t be remembered the following week, let alone over a century later. But that is what made it so beautiful, so sublime. Lincoln was a man who lived in the perpetual present. He was not self conscious (at least not by today’s standards), nor did he have a desire to be; and that is one of the reasons his legacy has endured so.

I fear we’re in danger of thinking ourselves into oblivion right now. To be sure, it’s important to constantly learn from history while projecting the bright future we desire and deserve; but until we stop behaving with such masturbatory self consciousness, that future will never come, and the past we will be doomed to remember will be one that is littered with the bruises we suffered because we constantly kept tripping over ourselves.

Smoking In the Boys Room (Or, What I Learned From The Dandy Warhols Last Weekend at the TLA)

 

 

The Dandys Looking Dandy

 

 

Here’s the situation: I still have no idea what it means to be cool. And here’s the question: Does that even matter? Consider the following interaction during last week’s Dandy Wharhols show at the TLA in Philadelphia.

Another overly-priced Yuengling down the hatch and the the first of the two opening bands had just finished its set. The time had come to journey to the bathroom. I left my sister to stand guard over our spot at the TLA’s rather crowded bar and shuffled my way through the peculiar gaggle gathered to see The Dandy Warhols—an amusingly thrashed together collection of the in-the-know XPN faithful and the dangling remains of Philadelphia hipsters (of both the post- and pre-Iraq-war variety) sitting in ironic Indian style poses and sleep-stained, painted jeans. Tired eyes, all of them. Disclaimer: Of this scene I was far less cynical than my tone here would imply.

When I pushed open the door to the men’s room I almost hit a man with its swing. His inky black hair was slicked back and curly behind the neck, shining in time with his maroon leather jacket and complimenting to his rather sensible goatee. He was standing close to the entrance and smoking a cigarette over the sink; and what immediately struck me was the coolness with which he did this. Not cool in the way 1950s America once made smoking seem dangerous and sexy, but cool like a man standing on the top floor of a burning building roasting a chicken on the murderous flames while he composed one last love letter to the woman who stole his heart in Paris ten years prior. In other words, he was in no hurry and showed no signs of care for potentially getting caught. I suppose this means I still find disregard for authority cool, which probably also means I am still, in fact, young. In thinking this, I too felt cool, even though I had looked down at my black and white Chuck Taylors several times that night and thought, “Who the hell am I kidding. These are so 2004!”

I apologized to the smoking man—who looked to be in his late 30s—for the interruption, and made my way to the urinal. We were the only two in the small bathroom, and for some reason, as soon as I sidled up to the fount I cleared my throat. Suddenly, I could not have been less cool. In the seconds it took me to do this, I felt myself being transformed from a young man sharing this little corner of world rebellion with the smoking man to a thoroughly prickish dullard. A square. A jamoke. For only the most unscrupulous of individuals, I thought, would be so lame as to send an anti-smoking message by way of a high-pitched, faux cough of disgust to a man lighting up in a concert bathroom—even though this was not my intention in at all. I really just had to clear my throat at that moment. But I knew the man would probably interpret the act as my way of saying, “Um, excuse me, but I am highly offended by your obviously insatiable need to smoke, and the fact that you choose to invade my small, inescapable space with your odious addiction is beyond the pale, sir!” My Chucks might as well have been brown, laceless boating shoes. I might as well have just pissed on the floor like a child.

“I’m sorry man,” the smoking man said before my last throat-clear was even finished. He had an accent (Spanish, I believe) and spoke with even more cool, languid disregard than he smoked. “I’ll be done in a moment.” I immediately told him not to worry about it; told him I didn’t care in the slightest that he was smoking in the bathroom and that were I savvy (cool?) enough to have brought a pack with me to the show I would most likely have joined him on the spot. Go right ahead, I said. Smoke away. Enjoy it. Love it.

And this is when the smoking man started his speech.

“Fuck this place, man. Who are they to tell me I can’t smoke if I want to? Who the fuck are they.” This last line he uttered as if maybe I actually had a literal answer to the question. Like, Oh yes. I know exactly who they are, friend. Michael and Janet from Pine Street. Those non-smoking, oppressive bastards! Let’s ditch this concert and go show them a thing or two! Put a goddamn cigarette out right in their self righteous little eyes! “If I want to smoke, I’m going to fucking do it. And fuck them. They can’t tell me I can’t smoke at a fucking concert. Fuck them.”

I nodded my coolest nod, as if to say, Right on sir. Fuck them indeed.

Finishing, I made my way to the sink, where the Spanish smoking man was dipping the remains of his fag in a small, still pool of someone else’s handwash. I explained to him that I completely agreed. That I had always thought it was absurd for the powers-that-be to create laws making it illegal for free citizens to willfully partake in a thoroughly legal substance. That there was no difference between this concert venue and someone’s living room. And then, feeling proud to have shared this moment, I smiled a cool, rebellious smile, and made my way to the door. That’s when the smoking man put his arm around me.

“You know what I mean then, my man. You get it. You’re cool.” With a strange man’s arm wrapped around my shoulders in a cramped bathroom, I actually didn’t feel quite as cool as he made me out to be. Lest you think the discomfort had anything to do with a vibe of homophobia, rest assured, that was not the case. No. What made me uncomfortable, what usually makes me uncomfortable in these sorts of situations, was that the smoking man was overselling the moment; that his coolness was now coming into question because he couldn’t just let the moment happen and pass. He had a need to make it last, like a drawn-out ending to some twisted episode of “Full House” that concludes in  a sweaty, smoke filled concert bathroom. I listened for the swell of heart-string orchestration. Waited for Danny Tanner to make a cameo in the stall behind me.

Thankfully, someone else entered at that moment, breaking the connection. So the smoking man and I walked back into the lobby, still crowded with stereotypes and cynicism and the thudding of break music over the speakers. I looked toward the bar for my sister but couldn’t see her. As I started to walk back in that general direction, the smoking man stopped me again. “You like the Dandy Warhols?”

“Yeah,” said. “They’re pretty cool. I dig it.” This, even though I was honestly still unsure how I felt about the band, even after having listened to them for almost three years now. But what was I going to say? That I thought they were underselling themselves? That they continually seemed to resist being the great band they should be because of their unreasonable obsession with shoe-gazer tracks that seemingly serve no purpose in the grander scheme of their better pop repertoire? That would have been very un-cool.

“They’re alright. But do you know the uh…the Brian, uh, the Brian Jonestown Massacre? Like in that movie?” He was thinking of the documentary Dig and I told him so. “Yeah! Dig! The Brian Jonestown Massacre. They are the best band, man. The uh, the Anton Newcomb…he’s the fucking shit, man. His music is…his music is the genius because he makes the Sixties sound mix with today’s sound, man. Right? Am I right?”

Sure, he was recycling the same things everyone has said about the Brian Jonestown Massacre since they first burst onto the scene in the early 90s. Sure, he was bringing up a rather passe comparison between that band and the Dandy Warhols (so 2004 man!). And sure, he was taking up valuable beer drinking time with a conversation I had already had with many friends and acquaintances over the last three years. But I let my cynicism slide because the smoking man clearly cared about this music, and he clearly cared about how I felt about the music. To do anything else but shoot the shit with him would have made me no better than the disinterested hipsters I clearly, if only internally, lampooned since I first entered the TLA.

“Yeah man” I said. “You’re totally right.”

“Fuck yeah!” he said. “I know I’m right.” And then the smoking man put his arm around my shoulder one last time. Then he smiled and said, “Enjoy the show.”

He walked off into the crowd, not to be seen for the rest of the night. And while the Dandy’s were slightly less than impressive (I still don’t know how I feel about this band!), I think I learned another lesson in being cool, although I’m still trying to figure out what that is.

XPN’s Most Essential Mistake

For those of you not keeping score at home, it’s been a few days since Post Number One. Days pregnant with the pressure and tedium of deciding what Post Number Two was going to concern. Throughout that time, I kept making subtle promises to myself that it would not be wasted on the banal or superficial (e.g. how I believe the song “I Kissed A Girl” would be so much more interesting were it sung by Bjork). That the post would center on a “big idea”, like the recently dreadful irresponsibility of the media as it pertains to the status of America’s economy; or that maybe it would elucidate the virtues I have recently discovered are inherent in the act of walking; or perhaps it would poetically eulogize Tony Snow, or maybe showcase an exciting and exclusive interview I had with Beck, wherein we discuss everything from Scientology to his new album “Modern Guilt”. But after all the internal haranguing and wringing of hands, I have finally settled on a topic—and, ironically, it concerns perhaps one of the most superficial and banal creations of modern times: The countdown list.

To put a finer point on it, the particular list I’m thinking about right now is 88.5 WXPN’s forthcoming countdown of the “885 Essential XPN Songs.” No, this is not a matter that will make or break the evolution of mankind for centuries to come, or one that will most likely even register on your radar of importance so much as five minutes after you’ve finish this reading this. But when I heard this countdown theme mentioned on the radio yesterday morning while I was enjoying a delicious bowl of Craklin’ Oat Bran, my body responded as I would imagine it would were I having a stroke. And this was when I knew the issue could not be avoided.

To be sure, the fact that I would even express of modicum of concern over this matter—let alone care enough to make it a post on my blog—says more about me than it does about the countdown itself. But life is full of moments when one is forced to decide whether or not he will be the bigger person and ignore an evil obviously lesser than the strength of his own character, or give into the temptation and wage a losing battle against a pettiness sure to make him seem smaller than he was at the start. In this case, I have sadly succumbed to the temptation. I have chose to wage a very silly war.

Without equivocation, I adore XPN. If the radio station were a woman (and personally, I think she would look something like Natalie Portman), the two of us would have been married for almost ten blissful years by now, with a beautiful brood of talented, ambitious children to boot. To extoll its innumerable virtues here as one of the greatest radio station in the tri-state region would be a waste of both our times. But if this were a marriage, the countdown about to occur would most certainly send us both into counseling (or force me to cheat).

The extreme guilty pleasure I derive from countdown lists is no secret to those who know me. I can recall numerous evenings as a child when, during dinner or after brushing my teeth, I would casually posit questions to my mother or father such as, “What are your top ten favorite scary movies of all time?” Or, “Who are the five worst worst quarterbacks in the NFL?” I didn’t know it at the time, but thinking back on those moments now, I realize forcing my parents to categorize their preferences so succinctly was just another way for me to make sense of an increasingly chaotic world. In other words, it was impossible for me to conceive of a universe wherein Bob Dylan was no different than Jimmy Buffet, or Joe Montana was no different than Randall Cunnigham. Such a world would be unjust and insane, and I needed my parents to assure me this was not the case.

At the age of 27, the situation is no different today. I still engage in endless debates with family and friends over the qualification of artistic brilliance; and while in a few rare cases these melees of personal opinion have almost ended friendships (“Rush vs. Zeppelin 2003” comes to mind), most are superficial, forgettable, and, in the eternal scheme of things, a waste of time. But they are one my dearest addictions, and I cannot give up the habit. For this reason, I was quite excited when XPN announced its “885 All Time Greatest Songs” countdown in 2004 (in my opinion, “God Only Knows”). I was doubly excited in 2005 when they launched the “885 All Time Greatest Albums” marathon (in my opinion, Houses of the Holy). And I was giggly as a schoolgirl for the “885 All Time Greatest Artists” countdown in 2006 (in my opinion, Bob Dylan). But then, in 2007, desperate to keep the trend going, the station took a turn for the worse and started tallying the ridiculous list of the “885 All Time Greatest Musical Moments.” What the hell does that even mean? Music is not defined by it’s “moments.” It’s defined by its music! (And even if it were, why wasn’t “The birth of Mozart” number one on the list?). Now, in 2008, XPN goes and dives right into its own nascent pool of pretension and lays this egg on us. It’s a crime against the righteousness of the countdown art form—and I cannot abide.

As I said at the outset, it’s a silly war to wage; and to be sure, XPN is so transparently reaching in this case that its absurdity needs little exaltation. But I could not let the moment pass without crying out with my displeasure. On it’s Web site, XPN claims this countdown is supposed to highlight “the tracks that are at the heart of the XPN listening experience.” But since XPN prides itself on being relatively genre-less (which is kind of lie anyway, since I can’t recall the last time I heard them play something from Mos Def or Rage Against The Machine) doesn’t it seem absurd to ask people what songs are “at the heart of the XPN listening experience”? Not only is it self-absorbed and severely affected, but it’s also no flippin’ fun. Arguing about albums or musicians or songs gives a person the thrill of taking ownership over the art in his or her life. This does not. Imagine the conversation:

“Yeah man. I think the most quintessential XPN song is ‘A Case of You.’”

“Hell no! How can you say that? There’s no way ‘A Case of You’ is more XPN essential than ‘Into the Mystic!’”

Bullocks.

The XPN “experience” is about the sum of its parts, not the parts themselves. I listen to the station because that experience includes everything from The Hold Steady to Bjork to Jackson Brown to James Brown to Sigur Ros. I can’t reduce it, nor would I ever want to. Debating the “885 All Time Greatest Songs” over a few beers is thrilling and reckless. Debating the “885 Essential XPN Songs” sounds about as exciting as arguing over the best way to cook asparagus, or why she really still is just “Jenny from the block.”