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Unfinished Business: June 20, 2011

2011-11-09T11:39:00.002-06:00

This bit of Unfinished Business entails a bit of explanation; more so than I hope future installments will require. I will attempt to be succinct.

A Good Will Gesture.
As you likely know, we lost the great Clarence Clemons (left, top), the former saxophonist for Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band last June. I was surprised at how hard I took it. I was even more surprised at how difficult it was for me to verbalize my feelings as to why. I really shouldn’t have been so shocked, though; I’ve had difficulty in plumbing the depths of my affinity for Springsteen’s music for longer than I’ve been writing this blog.

As I’m sure he is to a lot of his fans, Springsteen has always been a borderline spiritual figure to me, not that I think the dude is god or anything, but for the extraordinary quality of his music; for what he stands for, both as a musician and as a human being; the honesty that flows from his lyrics; the raw passion that exudes from every musical pore of his being. It’s hard to summon up the words to describe the feeling that his work conveys to me — and for the longest time I tried, but couldn’t. I just couldn’t seem to do my own emotions the justice they deserved. That fact alone has hindered me from really saying much at all about him in this space; a place I originally intended to be my personal forum on the music and artists I love.

I’ve collected a lot of fond and funny memories over the years, relating to my Springsteen fandom that I’d always thought might make excellent blog fodder. However, before now I’d never managed to find the inspiration to break through that wall; to find the words that adequately described the feeling his music delivers to me. In another aborted post that I started nearly a year ago, I tried, but it simply wouldn’t come together as I’d hoped.

Then last June, Clarence died on the day before Father’s Day. I was devastated. Springsteen’s longtime friend, confidante, and musical partner in crime was a huge part of my affinity for Bruce’s music overall; his wasn’t simply an instrumental contribution that could be replaced by another sax player. To me, he was a major part of Springsteen’s musical appeal. Again, I wanted to render some kind of significant tribute; something significant to me if to no one else. A straightforward bio/career acknowledgement just wouldn’t do. It had to be more. I stumbled, struggled, and came up with nothing over two days.

Then I received a passively 'Willful’ assist from a guy I had the pleasure of meeting at a wedding I attended in 2008, who has since become one of my favorite personal bloggers. Will Stegemann (@betheboy on Twitter) offered a fun, yet poignant tribute to Clemons the day after his June 18, 2011 passing. His post shed the perfect amount of light on the dim confusion of my self-agitated bundle of emotion regarding Springsteen and the loss of Clemons.

Without spoiling the plot, the story delivers a tribute to Clemons as seen through the eyes of a sub-adolescent, as Will was at the time of his introduction to The Boss’s music. Will’s account of his own childlike sensibilities regarding his Dad’s favorite rock ‘n roll band helped to connect the dots of my over-complicated internal analysis of the place Springsteen’s work occupies in my own life. It allowed me stop thrashing about, mentally, and to look at things simply; identifying my relationship to the artist on the most basic of levels. Had I not read Will’s blog that day, there’s little doubt I’d still be wrestling with the concept even now.

Epiphanies aside, I still got hung up in parsing it all out, so the story sat unfinished for months until this week, when I finally decided to wrap it all up.

Melodramatic much? Oh, absolutely! But I embrace my inner drama queen; it’s a big part of what makes me who I am and I have no intentions to change.

I would hope, however, that after all this, you still have the intention to read this back-dated post, started on June 20, 2011, but finished just today:

Here’s to You, Big Man

* * * * *

finis

Prejudiced Against Prejudice (Part 2 of 2)

2011-10-03T04:40:00.000-05:00

The Hoosier hayseed as I was on my first day of 8th grade, I might have qualified for the subject of one of Norm Peterson’s (George Wendt in the 80s hit comedy Cheers) favorite quips.

Milkbone Underwear
This is another story I’ve related before — the one about my first day of school in California in September of 1969. We had literally just rolled into town two days prior, on Saturday afternoon, arriving in Long Beach at the conclusion of our cross-country journey from Middletown, Indiana. It was the first Monday morning of 8th grade; I didn’t know a soul and probably hadn’t made direct eye contact with anyone until the memorable moment that occurred while I was sitting in my first class.

There I was, arriving on the scene at Leland Stanford Junior High; a thirteen year-old boy who could have easily passed for ten, sporting a bowl-type haircut, a rather loud short-sleeve madras print shirt (top button buttoned, of course), and a pair of yellow-gold polyester pin-striped Sears Tuff-Skin bell-bottom trousers that gave way to about 3-4 inches of black socks and exposed ankle.

I might as well have been wearing a big ol’ bull’s eye on my back.

Norm Peterson of the classic TeeVee comedy Cheers might well have described my circumstance as, “livin’ in a dog-eat-dog world — and AJ’s wearin’ Milkbone underwear.”

On that early September Monday morning, after locating my 8th Grade homeroom in the 800 building, I took a seat on the far right-hand row of desks, about two or three seats from the front of class. I stared straight ahead as we all awaited the appearance of our homeroom teacher.

The class was abuzz in muffled conversation as excited adolescents described to one another what they’d been up to since June. I heard a few giggles coming from behind; I had an idea but didn’t want to turn around to see if they were being directed at me. It wouldn’t be too much longer before I’d find out.

“Hey…” a voice from the desk behind me whispered, accompanied by a pair of bony taps between my shoulder blades.

“Hey, kid…”

I sheepishly turned to my peer back over my shoulder, where a pair of maniacal blue-black eyes flashed back at me. They were attached to a freckle-faced boy with wildly mussed, long and stringy hair, featuring a grin that would have left Alice’s Cheshire Cat with an inferiority complex.

He didn’t appear to be much bigger than me, but more than made up for his lack of size with attitude. He wore an oversized plaid Pendleton flannel shirt, which I would later learn to associate as the uniform of the ‘hard guys’ as I referred to them; boys whom you definitely wanted to be on the right side of, socially.

Long before my first social studies class, I would be faced with my first social test in this brave, new world.

“Hey, kid,” my leering classmate continued, “Are you…a GEEK?” The peanut gallery behind him and in the row to my left erupted in laughter.

“No. No, I’m not,” I replied, as I turned back around, mortified, once again face-forward in my seat.

Fitting in — in a hurry
The good news is, I can now look back on that first day of school and laugh — almost hysterically. I would indeed find my way around in the social jungle that was junior High school, and before the year was out, I’d have the hard guys in their Pendletons coming to my defense on the thankfully seldom occasions in which I was picked on by other boys around campus.

By the end of the school year I would run for student council (for a term beginning the first semester of the following year) and would win. My personality blossomed and so did my grades. I went from C’s and D’s in Indiana to A’s and B’s in my new home — appropriately for me — nicknamed, The Golden State.

I opened up as a person in the 8th grade. I was transformed from a shy, introverted, often angry little boy into a socially confident, semi-gregarious, um…little boy.

I may not have been one of the ‘cool kids,’ but I was close.

Fortunately, I was a quick study. I learned from day one how to adapt; I lost the accent, unbuttoned that top shirt collar button and never fastened it again. Even later, in the 1980s, when the buttoned-down collar-look became fashionable, I resisted adopting it for the longest time; and for nothing more than that very silly connotation of geekdom that was still branded into the hide of my childhood psyche.

Funny thing though, in looking back on it all with the retrospection of now having lived in the south for 20 years, I realize how insidious that kind of thinking can be — and how needlessly damaging. Why did it matter that I spoke with a regional accent? Why did it matter that I wore ‘floods’ because my parents couldn’t afford to replace my pants before I out grew them? Why did it matter that the label on the back of my jeans said Tuffskins or Towncraft instead of Levis?

And why THE HELL did I, only months later, actively begin deriding and judging other kids for committing the same social sins that I had been guilty of?

Goin’ To, Music City, Music City, Here I come...
When we made the decision to move to Nashville, in my mind, it was for one reason and one reason only: to continue my career in the music business. The more-affordable cost of living and allegedly better environment in which to raise our two children were Michelle’s reasons, not mine.

I’d be lying to say that I was at all looking forward to the culture shock I knew was waiting for me. I did not want to leave California, but nonetheless, deep-down inside, I knew that it was something we needed to do as a family. So I went willingly, but with plenty of trepidation.

My social training told me that I was going to a very strange place; one that I was conditioned to look upon with disdain. You see, I had been this way before, but in reverse.

Given how I’d gotten to California in the first place, you’d think I would have known better. Sheesh — talk about reprogramming!

I guess I didn’t really know how prejudiced I was until I got here.

Again, I’m not talking about racial prejudice. I was raised to be colorblind. I can honestly say that race has never ever been an issue with me. However I’m ashamed to say that the same kind of social prejudice that was used against me as a thirteen year old coming into that brave ‘cool’ world of Southern California was something that I in turn would incorporate into my own worldview for many, many years.

I can clearly remember my biggest reticence to moving to Nashville was my perception of leaving the world of ‘enlightenment’ and plunging myself headlong into the land that intelligence forgot — or so I’d been told. I mean, everybody knows that Hee-Haw was the first reality show on TeeVee, right? People in Nashville really do walk around in overalls, wearing straw hats and hanging out in cornfields all day, telling each other silly jokes, don’t they?

And surely the only music they play in that town are those twangy Country songs about somebody’s long-lost hound dog with perhaps an occasional Johnny Cash tune thrown in for good measure.

These were the things that I was more-or-less convinced were either true or pretty close to the same. And as ridiculous as that is, to some degree, it’s at least the flavor of Nashville’s perception in other parts of this country. I know it was pretty much my pervading impression, despite the fact that deep down I knew how silly it was for me to acknowledge such bullshit.

But what if it was?

Imagine my surprise when I arrived here only to find that most everyone I met actually had teeth and lived in houses with indoor plumbing!

I’m obviously exaggerating here just a bit, but in my experience, the spirit of my little jibe was pretty accurate. People believe what they’re told — and sold; and this stereotype of Nashville and the deep south in general is one that hopefully in recent years has finally begun to die down. However, it never ceases to amaze me — largely via comments I read and hear associated with the assumptions of hockey fans from other NHL cities — that this derisive image still seems to abound in people’s minds, despite loads of evidence to the contrary.

Social stereotypes work in every bit the same way that racial ones do. Prejudice is the quintessential definition of ignorance because it not only presumes things that aren’t necessarily so, it promotes those beliefs as fuel for fear.

If political correctness is ‘correct,’ then it’s correct for everyone. No one person or group has a monopoly on the truth or the right to infringe upon another person’s political conviction, short of that conviction denying one’s inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

And while the aforementioned credo of the Declaration of Independence is said to be of broad interpretation, we know as well as its authors did some 235 years ago just how narrow it is in spirit. We can wrangle all we want about political ramifications surrounding the notion, but that’s all it is: wrangling; rhetoric; words whose intent is ultimately purposed to attain or maintain control in a political context, even when real politics aren’t even involved.

It’s the same for the ridiculous notion of social superiority based on geography, dialect (or the lack thereof), relative income, or other trappings of social status.

Nope, ya really can’t mess this one up, folks. It’s obvious that the preamble of the Declaration is all about respect — one human being for another; nothing more and nothing less. It’s the giving of respect that generates freedom, not the other way around; true, it’s a two-way street, but if it doesn’t start with me, it may as well not even exist.

It’s up to us to turn the other cheek; it’s up to us to respect others before demanding that they respect us; not to exclude and castigate them for being different, unless there’s real evidence that that difference is destructive and not merely a departure from prevailing opinion.

Apart from that, true freedom is a myth; and the pursuit of happiness is nothing more than another device we use to get our own way.

* * * * *

finis

Prejudiced Against Prejudice (Part 1 of 2)

2011-10-03T04:00:00.000-05:00

TeeVee producer J.J. Abrams is along those who have made it cool to be a geek these days, but it wasn’t always that way.

I know this sounds like a broken record, but…
I may not post very often, but I write all the time — really; although you’d never know that from my online output. The problem is, I do write often but I rarely finish what I start.

My more-than-occasional penchant for distraction applies to reading books as well. I’ve mentioned it before, but I honestly believe I’m at least mildly ADD, which might account for the fact that the only novel in my entire life I’ve ever read from cover-to-cover was The Good Earth, which I was forced to do a book report on in the seventh grade. It took me for freakin’ ev-ar. Truth be told I probably read it three times based on the number of instances in which I’d catch myself daydreaming and then, ten pages later, have no comprehension whatsoever of I’d just read. I’d have to go back and re-read the section and typically repeat the same situation in the next chapter or on the next page.

It’s a problem I’ve had for as long as I can remember and in the case of the colossal headache that was The Good Earth, it was sufficient to ruin me on book reading, period. That’s silly, I know, but really, that was it. Any subsequent books I was ever assigned in school I merely skimmed through and hoped for the best when it came to proving that I knew what they were about.

In recent years I’ve attempted to read books for pleasure, but nearly every time they’d end up sitting on a shelf, their bindings barely cracked. The most ridiculous example of this to date is my copy of Tom Brocaw’s wonderful work on my parent’s peer group called, The Greatest Generation. I wanted so badly to have it that I dropped numerous hints to Michelle suggesting it would make an excellent Dad’s Day gift; then once it was mine I read the forward and then proceeded to park it on a shelf for a month before even thinking about picking it up again. In the more than seven years since, I’ve read a grand total of two chapters of that book I supposedly wanted so desperately. And the worst part is that I really enjoyed those two chapters! I just couldn’t get myself to sit back down and finish the rest.

In subsequent years I have managed to successfully complete a few very short books (i.e.: 75 pages or less), but the number of those occasions I can count on one hand.

But here’s the weirdest thing of all in reference to my apparent reading hang-up: I’ve always loved to read the Sunday paper each week, and stranger still, I read and have read voraciously on the Internet for years. There just seems to be something — and I’d love for someone to clue me in on what that something is — that makes reading onscreen easier for me than focusing on a printed page for more than 15-20 seconds before losing concentration, my mind wandering, etc.

I just seem to have the hardest time staying on task when it comes to reading a freaking book — or making a freaking point, apparently — as my lack of book-reading prowess is not even remotely related to the subject of this post.

The only reason I mention it here is only because the subject of this post somehow sprang up in the midst of another post I was writing in the spring of 2008, which strangely enough, was about a concert I’d attended that April.

The more I expounded upon that maverick thought the longer the post grew and more off-track of its original subject it became. So I basically cut the post in half and set the off-kilter portion aside to re-visit as a separate story subject at another time; it‘s taken me three years, but here it is.

I believe that now, three years later, particularly in light of the fact that we elected of our first African-American President in U.S. History, the subject is as germane as it ever will be.

If your guess is now that my story has to do with prejudice, you’d be right.

But if you’re assuming that it’s racial prejudice I’m referring to, well, AHHHHHHNTTT! Sorry; no cookie for you.

There’s another kind of prejudice in our society that doesn’t merely single out differences in race as its target, but is just as damaging for what it does to our social sensibilities, in my opinion. It’s just as wrong as racial prejudice but far more subtle; and chances are, regardless of the color your skin, you’ve probably been not only a victim of it, but a perpetrator as well.

The ‘P-word’ comes in all flavors
As I’ve mentioned numerous times previously in concert-related blog entries, I feel extremely lucky to be where I am right now, especially with regard to the music scene here in Nashville. However Music City has been more than simply a place to indulge my musical appetites; it’s been a great teacher as well, particularly in light of where I came from.

Now before I get started, allow me to assure those of you SoCal’ers whose neck hair is already standing on end, this isn’t going to be an L.A. bash-fest. I believe my record is clear concerning the consummate love I have for my former homeland. This is about me, and the observations of my own change in attitude over the past 15-20 years; the way I saw things when I lived in SoCal, versus the way I see them now, just shy of twenty years after my family and I relocated to Nashville. It’s about what being away from life in the fishbowl has taught me about the rest of the ocean.

The only person I actually plan to bash here is myself, along with, to a lesser degree, the society and local worldview I grew up with from late adolescence in the early 70s through mid-adulthood in the late 80s/early 90s.

It’s the ooonly way to fly
Upon relocating to Nashville from L.A. over Christmas Break in 1991, nearly everything I thought I knew of my new home turned out largely to be lies and all-out prejudice — not the racial kind, but much more a cultural bigotry that ultimately required removing myself from its source to truly have its ugliness revealed. I certainly couldn’t have seen it for what it was while being indoctrinated in it as a teenager; my social programming was subtle, as is usually the case with any sort of learned behavior.

As is the case with most any great locale, Southern California not only exudes pride in being a great place to live, but in the 70s and 80s at least, local society there would have you believe that it was the only place to be.

However it went beyond mere regional partisanship; it wasn’t just about the way you looked, it was also about the way you spoke. Californians are proud of their lack of any kind of readily detectable regional accent, as opposed to those typically found in other parts of the country. In school, if you ‘talked funny’ you were definitely branded as ‘different.’ Even among adults, regional accents were often ridiculed in private conversation. This was particularly true of southern accents. It was almost as if folks believed that anyone who spoke with a southern accent was somehow lower on the evolutionary scale than ‘normal’ people.

“WHOAH…” you might be saying, “Isn’t that just a LITTLE judgmental on yourpart, AJ?” Perhaps; but it absolutely was, by implication, the indoctrination I was given throughout my late adolescence-to-early adulthood, an age period in our development as societal beings in which I’m convinced we are the most subject to suggestion, outside influence and ultimately, prejudicial opinion.

Welcome to FauxCal
Having spent the first thirteen years of my life in semi-rural Indiana, and accordingly having also carried with me a fairly strong regional dialect when we arrived in Southern California in 1969, I quickly learned the importance of losing that accent as fast as possible.

Indiana isn’t Tennessee, of course, but in the late 60s, pretty much anything that was linked to the south or rural midwest was cast in the light of ignorance and intolerance by those ‘enlightened’ members of the too-cool-for-the-room set in SoCal. It largely had to do to with south’s pronounced resistance to the Civil Rights movement of the 60s and early 70s, an extremely hot-button topic of the day. And being the ‘melting pot’ that L.A. had become, they prided themselves on being better than all those erstwhile confederate bigots down there in the south.

Oh yeah…there’s no racial prejudice in Southern California. Um…hello? Ever heard of the Watts riots of ’65? Rodney King? Yeah, everybody just gets along, right? Whatevs.

The fact is that there’s plenty of racial prejudice just about everywhere in America, and it comes in many different flavors. La-La land may have it better-hidden than other locales, but just like that old spaghetti sauce commercial used to say, “It’s in there.”

The good news is I honestly believe that racial prejudice as a social constant is on the way out in this country. A new, much more ‘colorblind’ generation is growing up and assuming more and more influence in the rethinking of race relations in the United States of America.

President Barack Obama is the proof of that puddin.

So will we — could we eventually become a nation of true racial equality? I hope so. I don’t know if it will happen in my lifetime, but I definitely see it in the offing for my children’s generation and beyond.

However that other kind of prejudice — the social kind — that’s the one that troubles me even more at this point; that’s the one I still consider just as dangerous, just as wrong, and just as insidious as ever.

Oh, and it’s not just about accents and making fun of hicks either.

It permeates everything; it raises ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ to an art form — one that I particularly allowed myself to be sucked into.

While the locals patted themselves on the back because they lived in stucco crackerboxes instead of the kind that have wheels and attract tornadoes, I gathered their cloaks at my feet and stood by, silently nodding my head in agreement. I drank the Kool-Aide alright; even though I knew in my heart that the punch was tainted.

Hey, I just wanted to be one of the cool kids, yo.

But country wasn’t cool, and country sensibilities were even less so. ‘Hick’ was every bit as derogatory a four-letter epithet as anything else one could be called back then. And after someone asked me if I actually was one on my first day of 8th grade, soon after our arrival in Long Beach, I was pretty damned sure that was not the way to go.

Next: Milkbone Underwear

A Temporary Interruption

2011-08-25T12:04:00.001-05:00

When real-life gets real...
Sorry ’bout that folks. Actually, I’m sorry about a couple of things. First I’m sorry it’s taking longer to wrap up the second part of my previous post, and second, I’m sorry I feel the need to explain that in the first place.

Just bein’ honest.

I’m really racing the clock to get caught up on a big project at work before being off half of next week for my daughter Amy’s wedding down in The ATL, so I’m kinda taxed for time, not to mention the fact that Part 2 of my Toad story really hit a rut this week that will be explained when I can finally post it. Hopefully again, it will be worth the wait.

Additionally, mucking up the waters time-wise, a big story that hit the national news yesterday (Wednesday) will be the subject of my following post — in fact, right on its heels. That one will be an important one for me, and extremely germane to how the subject matter of this blog has played out over the years.

I still have several other stories in queue, including another music-related one I forgot to mention earlier that I believe you’ll enjoy.

However, I just wanted to break the silence here briefly before some of you begin wondering if the boy who cried ‘BLOG’ was back up to his flaky old tricks. :)

BTW, if you’re not already, I invite you to follow/friend me on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+. I’ll be announcing all blog updates via all three of those social media channels. Or you can subscribe to my RSS feed and stay up to date on my posts that way.

Type atcha soon...

AJ

Reincarnation Song (Part 1 of 2)

2011-08-21T10:24:00.000-05:00

Mercy Lounge = House of Toad. Their reincarnation is complete. Saturday August 13, 2011, the continuously popular 90s Alternative/Modern Rock band, Toad The Wet Sprocket made their triumphal return to Music City; performing together in Nashville for the first time since 1997 and rocking a packed Mercy Lounge. From left, bassist Dean Dinning, drummer Randy Guss, lead vocalist/guitarist Glen Phillips, and lead guitarist/vocalist Todd Nichols did not disappoint; delighting the sold-out, standing room crowd. (Photo: Nancy Neil/www.toadthewetsprocket.com)

I Will Not Take These Things for Granted
As Toad the Wet Sprocket took the stage a week ago Saturday night at Nashville’s Mercy Lounge, lead singer Glen Phillips strode to the microphone with a grin on his face as wide as the Pacific Ocean. The group’s primary singer/songwriter was drinking in the sold-out, standing room crowd’s rabid applause as if it was a tall glass of lemonade on a hot summer’s day. The band was playing their 70th out of 74 appearances on the first leg of of a blistering initial tour to mark their full-fledged return to the contemporary music scene.

“I am SO happy to be an artist, playing Nashville, Tennessee WITHOUT a current song on the charts,” he announced, to further hoops and applause from the adoring masses. Phillips knew this group of fans was there for the right reasons. He and the band have nothing new to sell yet, really — and certainly nothing to prove. Each and every member of the audience knew why they were there; they were already completely sold.

Over the next three glorious hours, what ensued was much less a concert than it was choir practice, as the vast majority of diehard fans in attendance sang every word to every song with such fervor, that even from my position within the mass of humanity pulsing just a few feet from the stage, the sound of Phillips’ voice was nearly indistinguishable from that of the crowd’s.

If you remember the last time I reviewed a Glen Phillips show, you’ll know why I captured this song: Stupid, from Toad’s 1994 release, Dulcinea.

The band hails from Santa Barbara, California, a place far enough removed from L.A. to hardly be considered Southern California proper, but close enough to engender all of what we consider magical about life on the left coast. The surf community has always been a big part of the city’s mystique, and for me, as with most people I’d imagine, the beach is an integral part of anything that’s SB-related.

For my wife, Michelle and me, Santa Barbara is one of our favorite spots on earth. She attended college at University of California, Santa Barbara, and that time in her life is a part of her youth that can never be replaced. It’s also where we spent on our wedding night — in a little motel right on the beach, of course — en route to a two-week honeymoon trip up and down the west coast; thereby instilling in it for me a sense of romantic nostalgia that’s equally irreplaceable.

However, I take this little detour not to proclaim my affinity for Toad as merely based on where four former San Marcos High buddies grew up, forming a band in their teens that would become one of, if not the most endearing and successful of the Alternative Folk/Modern Rock era.

No, my appreciation for their music goes much deeper than that; the Santa Barbara connection is just an added bonus.

The reason I mention the beach and Toad in the same breath is in part because that’s where their music takes me, emotionally. The freedom; the soul-piercing clarity of thought; the sense that you can be one among a crowd of people, yet feel that the sole intended recipient of each song’s message is you and you alone.

Oh…and there IS one other reason… Glen Phillips came in looking as if he’d actually just come from the beach.

Crowing Although standing three feet from the stage definitely has its advantages, I’m beginning to realize that some of those advantages are better applied to a man considerably younger age than myself. This was the first ‘stand-up’ show I had been to in at least two years and as I indicated a month ago, sadly, I can no longer ignore the effects of Father Time on this ol’ bod ‘o mine.

Dude, I was sore!
Nonetheless I had a great time, and being so close as to get a shot of Glen’s set list (left) — and knowing that being situated in the second row of people standing in front of the stage, that there was no way in hell that the couple directly in front of me wouldn’t nab it first — was the next best thing to receiving it as a souvenir myself.

The 23-song set included all eleven tunes from their newly re-recorded greatest hits album, All You Want, released this past April, on the band's original, self-financed label, Abe’s Records, through which they also originally produced their initial project, Bread & Circus, before being picked up by Columbia Records that same year. The set also included a number of additional early Toad hits (from B&C, Pale, and their breakthrough release, Fear), which Glen openly dedicated to those diehard fans who had indeed been with them from the beginning.

The re-recorded greatest hits album (available for just $12/Digital or $15/CD at ToadTheWetSprocket.com — (get it NOW!). It is the band’s rightful effort to re-acquire the licensing rights to the songs from their Columbia Records catalog still held by their former record company.

Setlist Amplification
And just in case you can’t figure out the Toad Code of song title shorthand and chord/key designations, or perhaps you counted the songs in the photo and suddenly realized that ol’ AJ’s math isn’t quite right, here’s the set list in its entirety, including the album on which the tunes first appeared (and yes, there is indeed an extra tune the boys slipped in that wasn’t on the set list):

Something’s Always Wrong (Fear – 1991)
Whatever I Fear (Coil – 1997)
Crowing (Dulcinea – 1994)
Fly From Heaven (Dulcinea – 1994)
Good Intentions (In Light Syrup – 1995)
Stupid (Dulcinea – 1994)
Inside (Dulcinea – 1994)
Windmills (Dulcinea – 1994)
Is It For Me? (Fear – 1991)
The Moment (NEW! Yet Unnamed Album – 2012)
Friendly Fire (NEW! Yet Unnamed Album – 2012)
Way Away (Bread & Circus – 1989)
I Will Not Take These Things for Granted (Fear – 1991)
Come Back Down (Pale – 1990)
Nightingale Song (Fear – 1991)
All I Want (Fear – 1991)
Crazy Life (Coil – 1997)
Finally Fading (Glen Phillips solo release: Winter Pays for Summer – 2005)
Brother (In Light Syrup – 1995)
Fall Down (Dulcinea – 1994)

Encores

Come Down (Coil – 1997)
Ziggy Stardust (David Bowie: The Rise & Fall of Ziggy Stardust & Spiders From Mars – 1972)
Walk on the Ocean (Fear – 1991)

Bootleg Medley
Still don’t believe me? As I touted this piece in my previous blog entry, this post is a truly multimedia effort, And given the fact the Toad has always encouraged fans to record live shows if they’re so inclined (Glen has referred to the band as having a very “taper-friendly” policy), I decided to bring my hand-held digital voice recorder to the show. I was originally only going to use it to record snippets of each song so that I’d be sure to have an accurate account of the setlist. However, once I realized that I could actually get a photo of said list, i decided to do a mini bootleg of the entire show.
However, be forewarned, this audio ain’t exactly archival quality. Remember that thing I said earlier about this affair being akin to one really huge choir practice? Well, as you can imagine, when everyone in the house is belting out every Toad lyric in as high a volume as they can muster, in whatever divers pitch their little vocal muscles can squeeze into a sound, abetted by liberal amounts of feel-no-pain-inducing liquid refreshment, and I'm sure you get the picture.

But to be honest, after listening to and formatting this recording, I was surprised at how little major interference there is in the thing. You can certainly hear the guy standing directly behind me who unfortunately couldn't carry a tune in a wheelbarrow (yes I know the expression is ‘carry a tune in a bucket,’ but that’s how bad this dude was — trust me) but I'm here to tell ya, you won’t hear him nearly as well as I did (yikes).

Also, in addition to some decent-sized chunks of songs, I was fortunate to capture several choice bits of Phillips’ interaction with the crowd that I think you’ll enjoy. My favorite comes at the very beginning of Crowing (track #3), in which Glen offers a very entertaining lesson in physics, much to the chagrin of one very LOUD member of the audience. :)

The audio is mashed-up in medley format and condenses more than two hours of the concert down to 50 minutes, 9 seconds. However, I did decide to record in their entirety the two new Toad songs that will appear on their upcoming album due out next year. Thankfully, they're pretty much the only ones that the crowd shut up for, so they actually sound pretty good.

Note however, that the inline audio player below is flash-based, so you won't easily be able to directly download the MP3 file for offline listening. However, if you’d like a copy of my ‘mini-bootleg’ for yourself, feel free to leave me a Contact message (located in the navigation bar in the AYBABTU header) with your email address and I’ll be happy to send you the direct download link. It’s a fairly large file (58.7 MB), but shouldn't be too much difficulty for anyone with a good Internet connection to download . Enjoy.

And...PLAY STONEHENGE!

Toad the Wet Sprocket | Sat. 08-13-11 | Mercy Lounge | Nashville, TN

ShowPics
And of course, it would’t be multimedia without still photos, so from the Flickr Photostream below you can click through to my Flickr account and view the set of images I’ve uploaded from the show.

More to come
With all the added stuff, this post is getting long. You’ve probably got enough to keep you occupied for awhile with the audio, video and pics from this great Toad experience, so I’ll just let you play around with that for now. I’ve got lots more to say about Glen and the boys but I think I’m gonna save it for a followup entry a little later. Type atcha then.

Next: Stories I Tell

Oh, Have I Got A Lot to Tell YOU...

2011-08-16T12:49:00.005-05:00

Seriously Ready to Burst
Gotta do it. Wanna do it. Prolly shouldn't do it, but The Boy Who Cried ‘BLOG’ is back, making promises again — well, maybe not promise promises, but promises of intent, leave us say. I’m planning to crank up the ‘ol personal blog jalopy again real soon and against my better judgment I once again feel compelled to tell you about it instead of just doing it and keeping my big yap shut. It’s just that I’m so freaking excited about getting back to my first love that I simply can’t not talk a little bit about it with you first.

I have been all kinds ‘a busy this summer. Between my new(ish) job (which I began in January) and my daughter Amy's impending nuptials in just less than two weeks (August 29th) — and all the commensurate madness that accompanies such an event — needless to say, I haven’t had much time to think, let alone keep up two blogs.

And yeah, I’ll confess, I have been writing fairly consistently on my hockey blog, what with the continuous activity of the Nashville Predators’ deepest run in the Stanley Cup Playoffs in their history this past spring, followed by the surprisingly contentious re-signing of star defenseman, Shea Weber, there’s been a lot of compelling goings-on in that part of my life, and I’ve had to choose one blog over the other. Wish it didn’t have to be that way; perhaps it won’t always be; however I’m not making any promises about that right now.

On the other hand, I AM promising to myself and to you, that my backlog of AYBABTU posts will be seen to here in the next few weeks, and I am SO looking forward to it, I cannot express how much.

First on the docket will be a return to the original subject matter of this blog, a concert/lifestyle review on my recent experience seeing one of my all-time fave bands, the recently re-united, Toad The Wet Sprocket. Glen Phillips and the boys played before a sold-out Mercy Lounge crowd here in Nashville last Saturday night and it was magical! This will be my first (full-fledged) multimedia review, as I have both audio and video content to share. That should be coming sometime later this week.

Next, and possibly before, depending on how long the Toad story takes, will be the first in about a half-dozen partially written-but-never-finished posts from earlier this year and during my full-time work hiatus of 2010. Most of these stories are very close to completion but I really don’t know exactly how long they’ll each take to finish; so let’s just tease them as ‘coming soon.’

The story topics will range from:

My time spent in a very exclusive entertainment industry focus group that you probably hear references to on a weekly basis
Thoughts on the extremely disturbing way the radio industry works today, and how it’s changed in recent years
How blogging saved my life
Why the ‘Evil Empire’ is alive and well right here in the state of Tennessee
My thoughts on the end of a TeeVee institution

And there are a few others I’m still toying with that may or may not see the light of day. Some may be even too nerdy for me to stomach seeing in print. We’ll see.

Nonetheless, I wanted to commit myself here online to getting these stories finished and out, at least in part before Amy’s big day, ‘cuz I KNOW I’ll be writing about THAT!

So anyway, keep your eyes peeled for the next few days. I’m hopeful this will be the jump-start I need to get back on an at least one-post-per-week schedule. Wish me (and my schedule) luck.

Type at’cha soon.

* * * * *

finis

Double Nickels

2011-07-28T00:55:00.007-05:00

Run, rabbit run
Dig that hole, forget the sun
And when at last the work is done
Don't sit down
It's time to dig another one

For long you live and high you fly
But only if you ride the tide
And balanced on the biggest wave
You race towards an early grave

^{Breathe | Pink Floyd | Dark Side of the Moon | © 1973 Roger Waters}

The Daily Grind
It’s a complex dance, yet one so familiar and well-practiced that we rarely stop to even give it the briefest of consideration in our work-a-day world.

Gotta go to work.

The biblical account of Adam and Eve explains that it’s The Curse in action; the realization of God’s decree in Genesis 3:19, upon Adam and Eve’s expulsion from The Garden:

By the sweat of your face
You will eat bread,
Till you return to the ground,
Because from it you were taken;
For you are dust,
And to dust you shall return.

^{New American Standard Bible}

Some of us live to work, but all of us in one form or another, work to live.

For most in modern society, whether you’re a member of the nine-to-five, swing shift, or graveyard crowd, we all put in our time — figuratively or literally — punching the clock. We scratch out our existence; some of us working for The Man, and others of us, being The Man.

But while such harsh metaphors of employment are hardly the reality for most of us blessed to live here in 21st century America, the concept has, and always will be, relative.

And even as Roger Waters’ brilliantly poignant lyrics to the nature of our everyday existence speak to the more-or-less metaphysical aspect of the treadmill we call subsistence, yet another rock group, the 80s hair band, Loverboy ironically distills the concept to a much more immediate, corporeal, single statement (although they probably didn’t intend it that way):

Everybody’s workin’ for the weekend.

And indeed we are.

Ever consider the paradox in how many of us view our jobs? Every Monday morning we wish it was Friday, and every Sunday night we wish the weekend was just one day longer. Finally, one day we wake up and realize that every work week we pray will pass quickly is five less days we have left in our lives to enjoy; to experience; to celebrate who we are and why we’re here.

Kinda sobering, ain’t it?

Workin’ Fool
I hope I’m not overstepping my bounds in assuming that most people think as I do on the subject, but if you don’t, I’m sorry, however, I’m actually quite happy for you at the same time.

It’s just that after 33 years of official membership in the working class, supporting myself and my family, and being inexorably connected to the mass vibe of America’s commerce machine, I believe I’m qualified to go out on a limb and say that, given the chance, the vast majority of Americans would opt out of their usual existence if they could. In other words, we work because we have to, not because we want to.

Of course there are exceptions to the rule. Some people do indeed love their jobs and hopefully, not everyone hates what they have to do to earn a buck. I, for example have always loved the fact that I’ve basically made a career out of doing what I’ve always wanted to do. That’s a real advantage in the quality of life department for yours truly and something I am indeed grateful for.

But even I know that the notion of the truism, “Find the job you truly love and you’ll never ‘work’ a day in your life,” is little more than type-A-personality bullshit. Most of us are far too lazy and much too selfish to ever choose spending 40-60 hours per week making someone else rich over logging that same amount of ‘me time’ in its place

Than being said, just because I’m not stuck digging ditches for a living — not that there’s anything wrong with that, necessarily, mind you — don't think for a minute that if I ever won the lottery (or some other nonsensical pipedream that’ll never happen), that I’d miss the work-a-day grind for a millisecond.

No way, Jose.

I’m of an age in which I’ve accomplished more than enough to make me feel as though my life has been worthwhile. And while I might not be counting the days until retirement (mainly because it’s been a long time since I took math in school and I’ve sorta forgotten how to count that high), I am definitely looking forward to it when that time finally does arrive.

I still can’t drive…55
So why the even-more-intense-than-usual navel gazing post today, you ask? Well, today is my birthday, and for the first time I can honestly say, I’m not all that ‘happy’ about it.

I’m none too thrilled about the speed at which time is passing. I’m not jazzed that longing for time to think and to write and to do the things that I want to do is now, essentially tantamount to hitting the fast-forward button on my lifespan; skipping over the ‘now’ in favor of the ‘later,’ when life will be simpler; when I no longer have to run the treadmill; when I’ll likely be too old to really enjoy it.

And I guess what really bugs me is that I’ve finally reached the point in which I’ve become the person I always used to make fun of; the one who insists on re-celebrating his or her 29th birthday every year; the one who wants time to stop instead of embracing old age gracefully.

For me, this is the big one. Fifty was a piece ‘a cake; my life almost literally began at Forty; I was still trustworthy when I hit the big Three-OH.

But 55? Please. Somebody cue Sammy Hagar.

This is the day I officially hit the backside of the hill; this is the year in which all that follow it begin to accompany exponentially fewer chances that I’ll live to see another one.

I knew this day would come; I just thought I’d be more prepared; I always figured that I’d feel the part a little more — you know, like that I actually feeling 55?

Instead, it’s like someone went back to 1991 and threw me into some damned time machine; then dropped me off here in 2011 and announced, “Congratulations, AJ, you’ve hit double-nickels. You now have 22.9 years left to live — if you’re lucky. So sorry that the last 20 years have been a blur; the next 20 will go even faster.”

My Forties: The Good Ol’ Days?
I can clearly remember thinking about Y2K back in the 70s and 80s, realizing that I’d be the ‘ancient’ age of 43 when we finally hit the turn of the century. “Wow,” I thought. “I’ll be so old by then. I wonder how I’ll feel...” (as I imagined myself all wrinkly, with gray hair and liver spots).

Hell, the first five years of the New Millennium were among the best years of my life! Outside of my early 20s, there were no better ‘good ol’ days’ than my early-to-mid 40s. I felt a lot of things back then, but never, ever, did I feel old.

And to be honest, I still don’t; and that’s the problem — the calendar tells me otherwise.

Of course, I’m being more than a little melodramatic here. Again, everything is relative and particularly in our culture, hitting your mid-fifties is hardly tantamount to loitering at death’s door. Nonetheless, to ignore reality at this point in life and continue thinking that I’ll simply go on, unaffected by time’s incessant march is the most absolute of follies.

However, I’m not looking for a pity-party on my birthday. After all, there’s nothing magical — or fatal — about the age 55. It’s just that it’s such a major mile-marker on the road of my life that I just feel the need to acknowledge finally coming to realize that feeling like I’m still 32 doesn’t mean that I am.

My American Dream
Nonetheless, contrary to my heretofore sparkling optimism, this really isn’t a woe is me kinda post. It’s actually a celebration; a celebration of simple reality despite my not-so-simple way of dealing with it. I am actually much happier and satisfied with how my life has turned out than that twenty-something kid who used to wonder about Y2K ever imagined he would be.

Have all of my dreams come true? Hardly; but a lot of them did. And don’t get me wrong, I haven’t stopped dreaming. It’s just that now, my goals are more practical, and a lot less costly — both physically and spiritually. I’ve made a lot of mistakes; my greatest ongoing dream is to never make them again.

At this point, I figure I yam what I yam, financially; I’m firmly ensconced in the middle class and that’s more than okay with me. There are no Mercedes in my future — not that I have ever really wanted to own one. I have no more dragons to slay; no more mountains to climb. And to be perfectly honest, I never really had many to begin with. I’ve always been much more about keeping my life simple; about being happy, and humble, and most of all, realistic.

I’ve never made a lot of money, but I’ve been rich for quite awhile.

My American Dream is my wife, Michelle, my kids, Shawn and Amy, and the aforementioned fact that I accomplished my dream career; twice. I may not be the best at what I do, but that’s okay too; something else I did years ago filled that oftentimes silly compulsion that we Americans seem to feel is our birthright.

I was a collegiate national champion in my sport of choice, gymnastics. I performed a skill on the rings that, in the opinion of a few people who would know, has never been performed in the same way by anyone else in history. And that, right there, was more than most people would require to feel as though they’ve accomplished something.

But before you wag your head and say, “Oye, there goes AJ bragging about gymnastics again,” let me stop you and say that you’re missing the point. I don’t walk around the house, wearing my gymnastics medals nor is it the first thing I bring up in conversation with the man on the street. I don’t need to employ athletic accomplishment as a crutch to make me feel special, but there’s no denying that it does. I don’t live on past glories, but I am still fulfilled by them in a most wonderfully contented way.

However, that’s nothing compared to how rich and how blessed I feel to be married to Michelle, now for 32 and a half years and for having successfully raised two incredible, beautiful, and talented children. Buddy, that’s worthy of bragging about, right there. Michelle is the game-changer in my life; she is the reason you should ALL be bummed out that you’re not me.

Comparatively speaking, my rusty gold gym medal doesn’t hold a candle to that accomplishment.

The cynics among you may dog me for being so easily satisfied; for not pushing myself more, but you can’t touch how truly happy I am to have what I have and to have done what I have done. I may not have all the toys that often mark the success of men my age, but I also don’t have the bills, and the heartburn, and the pressure that follows them around like a pet.

I have fought the good fight; I have kept the faith, and I’m not finshed yet.

I am 55 and I am content.

It may all be downhill from here, but at least I know I’ll enjoy the ride.

* * * * *

finis

Here’s to you, Big Man

2011-06-20T13:35:00.000-05:00

Former Bruce Springsteen And The E Street Band member, Rock Sax legend, Clarence Clemons, seen here performing last November, died June 18, 2011 from stroke complications (AP/Rhona Wise).

A WILLful Assist
This wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been inspired by something that Will Stegemann wrote. You may know him as @BeTheBoy on Twitter, who, coupled with his equally brilliant and lovely spouse, TeeVee industry writer Nina Bargiel (@slackmistress), comprise a one-two punch of avant garde creative goodness that’s sometimes hard to describe, but always a party for the imagination.

And while I really dig both Nina’s edgy hipness and faster-than-your-own-neurons-can-fire wit, Will’s stories just have a way of ‘getting to me,’ particularly when he writes about his late father, who passed away in 2009.

Will seems to use his blog as a vehicle similar in style and purpose to my own; he doesn’t appear to seek engagement with an audience so much as with himself, particularly on subjects of family and his childhood memories. And whether or not that’s actually the case, it is how his posts speak to me.

Yesterday was of course, Father’s Day, and I was hit with a double-dose of BethePoignancy. Will posted a wonderfully-woven tribute to both his late father and the renowned Rock Saxman, Clarence Clemons, who died Saturday from complications of a stroke suffered last week. Clemons’ was a that loss I felt deeply but initially struggled to find a way to accurately express when I first heard the news late Saturday morning. He was 69 years old, a fact that alone was staggering to me. It didn’t seem possible that he could have even been in his sixties, let alone pushing seventy — which in and of itself is a testimony to the passion with which he lived and played music.

All in the Family
A number of aspects to Will’s story touched me profoundly, not the least of which was his experience of first encountering Springsteen’s music as a child in the 1980s, when he internalized his Pop’s everyday-affinity for the Boss’s sound to the extent of play-imagining the E Street Band as stand-ins for his own flesh and blood.

I was particularly tickled by Will’s reference to a live version of Springsteen’s Rosalita that was a particular favorite on his Dad’s car stereo cassette deck. It just so happens that the song was recorded at a club show in 1978 that I myself had desperately tried to attend, but was unable to get my hands on what few actual publicly-accessible tickets were available. I ended up having to settle for listening to the show being broadcast live on the radio, on now-defunct Los Angeles FM Rock station, KMET (I’ll relate the sad story of my own ‘Sunset Boulevard Freeze-Out’ at another time).

However, I mostly wanted to give a tip of the cap to Mister Stegemann for so accurately highlighting the concept of Springsteen’s band as a family, and as such, a pseudo-extended family that of all of the Boss’s fans can relate to — even through the eyes of a kid. It’s a most fitting metaphor and something that has escaped my ability to properly process over the years, as I’ve sought to find a meaningful framework on which to hang the feelings I’ve always had for Springsteen and Clemons in particular. To me, the two have always been a family; a nearly inseparable entity. And while Bruce’s solo work has always been great, I’ve never felt it matched the impact of that achieved together with he and his musical siblings: Clemons and the E Street Band.

Will’s post caused me to ponder just how much that connective vibe of Bruce Springsteen’s persona and early music resonated with me as a 19 year-old in the mid-70s, a point in time when Will’s life was just beginning.

I became cognizant of Springsteen’s music, late one August evening in 1975, hearing Born To Run on the radio for the first time, and as such, being immediately introduced to the soprano sax of Clemons (a.k.a., The Big Man), busting through the airwaves as a part of the E Street Band’s signature sound. For me it was a wonderful new discovery. However, compared to Will’s father, I was merely an AJ-come-lately.

Having grown up on Long Island, NY, Will’s dad (who was just two years older than me) had the unique perspective of being in the same geographic area as the Asbury Park, NJ phenomenon, perhaps knowing of him or actually being a fan before Springsteen hit the big time. Stegmann’s Pop had been a well-seasoned fan for years and went on to raise his kids with an appreciation for The Boss as well. Will’s blog post, Riding With The Big Man is required reading, whether you were an avid fan of Clemons or were only marginally acquainted with his contribution to the sound of the artist who quite frankly was The Beatles of his generation.

As part of my previously mentioned aborted blog post on Springsteen several months ago, I began to write about my initial encounter with The Boss’s music, of which Clarence Clemons’ dynamic presence played a huge part. I’d like to relate that anecdote right now, in The Big Man’s honor.

My World: Rocked
Like so many others, I was blown away by the sound of Born To Run, Springsteen’s third album — but the one that truly made him a household name when it hit the airwaves in the summer of ’75. For me it was one of the truly seminal musical moments of my lifetime; the kind of deal that makes it impossible to forget the first time you experienced something so different, so powerful, that you simply had to stop and say, “Wow! WHO. WAS. THAT?!”

And that’s quite literally what happened, late one night in August 1975, within a few days of when the album was first released. At the time I was three months into my first experience of living away from my parents’ house; sharing a two-bedroom apartment with a pair of roommates in a highly-questionable neighborhood in North Long Beach, California.

On the night in question, I was lying in bed, trying to fall asleep, but the chronic insomnia that was my constant companion during my teen and early-adult years wouldn’t allow me to. As usual, my clock radio was tuned to 95.5 KLOS in Los Angeles, and as also was my habit, I was listening to music while waiting for the Sandman to show up. Since it usually took more than an hour for me to fall asleep each night, I always figured that I might as well spend the time enjoying one of my favorite pastimes: listening to music. It never occurred to me that perhaps my indulging that fave pastime also had plenty to do with why I’d always had trouble falling asleep in the first place…but I digress.

Anyway, I remember just lying there, like so many other nights; staring at the ceiling. I had to get up at 3:00am to go to work at the grocery store the next morning; I remember feeling particularly anxious that I might sleep through my alarm if I didn’t grab some shuteye soon.

Then it happened. My little clock radio nearly jumped off the nightstand — or so it seemed.

The introductory signature blast of Max Weinberg’s booming drum beat, along with The Big Man’s foundational sax note, and Springsteen’s guttural, biting lead guitar riff sent a chill down my spine. Born To Run was rocking my world.

“Who IS that?” I thought.

Initially, I turned my head and stared at the radio, reaching in to turn the volume up and continuing to lean closer and closer until, by Clemons’ bruising mid-song staccato sax bridge, I was completely perpendicular, with my feet on the floor, seated at the side of my bed, fully engaged in a sound like none I’d ever before heard.

There was NO way I was getting to sleep now.

I’m not sure if the DeeJay ever gave the artist’s name after the song was finished, because I remember having made it a point to listen extra hard to the radio the next day, in hopes that I might hear it again and learn the identity of that awesome new band that played it.

I also remember that the part I liked best of all was the sax.

It was without a doubt, the most memorable moment from the five months I spent in that dingy old apartment on 56th and Orange, in an area bordering North Long Beach and South Central Los Angeles. We were located just a couple of blocks north of the gang-infested Carmelitos Projects and a few blocks south of the Compton city limits. It wasn’t a real fun place to be, but it served its purpose for the brief time that I was there. I roomed with a buddy I’d known since junior high school and another acquaintance from my church group, but at that point I probably would have shacked up with Freddy Krueger for the chance to get away from the Nightmare on Lave Avenue that was my existence at the time living at home with step mom Maxine.

I am most happy to say that my love affair with Springsteen and Clemons has lasted considerably longer.

A Window into the Soul
It’s abundantly easy to canonize the departed, especially artists, the output of whose professional lives have touched you in a manner such as that of something as accessible as popular music. It’s like falling in love with a painter, based entirely upon his body of work; never mind that in real life he was a pretentious jerk, who kicked his dog, beat his wife, and ignored his children in private — or even in public. All we know is how awesome his works of art made us feel.

By all accounts, Clemons was a genuinely good guy, and while I could be wrong, I rather doubt we’ll see any ‘Daddy Dearest’-type tell-all accounts from either his four sons or five ex-wives. Does that mean his closets were completely skeleton-free? No, but then, whose is?

One thing is certain; the bond between Clemons and Springsteen defined their music; which in turn defined my love for it from the moment I heard that first note. Even without having heard a note, you could see it in the cover photograph from Born To Run (above).

In a Huffington Post article, posted soon after Clemons’ death, entitled, Why Clarence Clemons Matters to Race Relations, Ben Mankiewicz offers a poignant rendering of the classic image, featuring Clemons & Springsteen:

“Iconic is a wildly overused word, but the cover photo of Born to Run — Bruce Springsteen grinning and leaning on Clarence Clemons' broad shoulder — is a powerful and memorable picture, one that meets the standard for iconic rock n’ roll images. And its status is rooted in the beautiful story that picture tells.

You’ve got this enormously talented, giant black man -- literally “The Big Man” -- saxophone between pursed lips, essentially supporting Springsteen. The look on Bruce’s face is honest and authentic, a genuine moment captured in a photo shoot. There's a giddiness in Bruce's smile: “I'm working with my friend,” he seems to be saying, “and our music has never been better.”

The photo made an instant impact on me, long before their music did.”

Actually, for me the events were reversed. It wasn’t until weeks after I first heard BTR that I actually saw the album cover, but I too was mesmerized by the volumes that photographer Eric Meola’s image spoke in just a glance.

The combination of how the music and the imagery made me feel was nearly indescribable; the feelings of joy, inclusion, friendship; a shared passion for life; an unbridled excitement about the future’s unlimited potential.

Thirty-six years later, my feeling of loss is nearly as indescribable, as no doubt is Springsteen’s. In eulogizing his friend via a statement posted to his website yesterday, Springsteen confirmed with insightful eloquence what I already knew, yet couldn’t express:

“He carried within him a love of people that made them want to love him.

“He created a wondrous and extended family.”

Here’s to you, Big Man, our big brother. Thank you, so very, very much. Rest well.

* * * * *

finis

Still Scratching My Seven Year Itch (Day 6 of 6)

2011-05-24T12:26:00.004-05:00

It's Tuesday, May 24, 2011, Day Six of my six-day blogaversary celebration for AYBABTU. Today actually IS the site’s seventh blogaversary, and as such I thought I’d change things up just a bit. Up to now I’ve been reposting of some of my more obscure, yet favorite stories over the life of this blog, however, today’s entry isn’t exactly all that obscure.

On the afternoon of Thursday August 6, 2009, I received the shocking news via a news alert email I opened at work. Filmmaker John Hughes had sustained a fatal heart attack at only 59 years of age. Hughes was best known for the coming of age film, ‘The Breakfast Club’, a touchstone classic for millions of GenXers. And while I wasn’t attached to his most famous work, Hughes’s demise hit me in way that was nearly as painful. I loved his work as well, not necessarily for the subject matter of his films, but for their essence and the way they made me feel.

Combine Hughes’s death with that of what seemed like half of Hollywood that horrendous final year of the new millennium’s first decade, and what you get is a fairly good representation of how all of 2009 went for me. At that point I was three months out from losing my job at The Company; already feeling the sand beginning to give way beneath my feet. I remember that day having that sickening sense that the loss I was feeling wasn’t an isolated happenstance; it was a wave that was ready to break over my head.

It’s a moment in time I wish not to forget, but rather, to celebrate.

It was was one of those periods of melancholy in my life that somehow have the opposite effect on me than they seem to on other people. No, I’m not a masochist, but just the same, I don’t run from pain either; I embrace it, because the sun will indeed come up tomorrow. When it does, the pain will subside, but I find that the memories of times you’ve had to really fight just to get through is always the best reminder that you are indeed alive.

That’s why this story is special to me, although that has little to do with its relative lack of obscurity.

There have been and continue to be, blog posts that receive more hits from the search engines on a cumulative basis, but no other post that I ever wrote received more traffic in the week that it was first posted than this one. And I can’t take credit for that either. A person I mention in the follow-up to this post, a young woman who had maintained a penpal relationship with Hughes over the years since ‘Breakfast Club,’ received a great deal of attention for her own blog’s reaction to his death, and was kind enough to link to my story, greatly enhancing its ‘Google juice.’

So whether you are a fan of John Hughes or just want to get a better handle on why I’m so weird, here is final installment in my blogaversary reposts series for this year.

Happy Birthday, AYBABTU.

Enjoy...

SATURDAY, AUGUST 08, 2009

He Made Us Comfortable in Someone Else’s Skin

What a lousy year…
I’m really not in the mood to write today, but I feel I must. I need to do so in order to pay tribute on at least a somewhat timely basis to the passing of yet another luminary in our culture whose life has come to a premature end; a man whose movies defined a generation in a way that may never be duplicated: reknowned 1980s writer/director/producer, John Hughes.

_{Photo courtesy Cinetext/Allstar}

Over the past three months I’ve started and stopped at least four stories regarding the notable lives that 2009 has claimed; the list is staggering. It seems that each time I try to express my regret for one of the individuals who has passed, another one drops off and I’m once again crippled by grief and have to set it aside.

On June 25th we experienced the double-whammy of losing both Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson within mere hours of one another. And though these were the two who captured the attention of the TeeVee news magazines for weeks, there were others who preceded them. Giants of significance to me, in the personal, entertainment, pop culture, and political arenas; names like Ed McMahon, my Father In-Law, David Carradine, Dan Miller, Chuck Daly, Dom Deluise, Jack Kemp, Bea Arthur, Mark ‘The Bird’ Fidrych, Paul Harvey, James Whitmore, Andrew Wyeth, and the great Ricardo Montalbán.

But the Grim Reaper wasn’t finished in June; he kept right on going, and has in just the past six weeks claimed the additional lives of Walter Cronkite, Robert McNamara, Steve McNair, and Karl Malden.

Now if you’re looking at that list and either scratching your head because there’s a bunch of names there you either don’t recognize — or in whose passing you weren’t quite moved enough to really feel bad about, well, no worries here. Chances are you’re not 53 years old, have split your lifetime between LA and Nashville, and/or are married to the daughter of a late, former Apollo 11 Moon Mission engineer.

You Just Never Know
We all have our own individual list of people that have touched our lives; its not the same for everyone, just as we also wield our own sphere of influence that touches the lives of others.

Sometimes that influence is through incidental contact; other times it’s quite intentional. Sometimes it’s a part of our job; other times it’s none of our freaking business. Sometimes our influence is a good thing; other times it’s the worst thing that we could possibly do to another person.

There’s one constant in all of this however, and that is that we never know.

We never know how just a look from us can change another person’s day; how an encouraging word can either make or break a child; how the conscious decision to NOT let our ill mood affect our response can make all the difference in the outcome of an inter-personal situation.

We never know how years of direct exposure to another soul can either mold that person’s character for good, or cast an irrevocable die of pain upon their life.

We just never know.

My all-time personal favorite quote — the single greatest influence I have ever received from a poet, is displayed in the masthead of my blog. It’s not from a poem, but is from the heart of a wise and inspired poetess, Maya Angelou:

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

This has become my mantra; something I attempt to use to govern my actions; to make each and every contact with another person a positive one, because…you never know.

A Hughe(s) Loss
John Hughes probably had a clue, but I doubt he ever knew just how influential his movies were, or how much he would be missed when he left us this past Thursday.

I sure as hell didn’t know how it would affect me.

And the thing is, at the time I heard the news, I really didn’t know why I was so shaken.

Perhaps it was just the straw-that-broke-the camel’s-back of this god-forsaken ‘another one bites the dust’ kind-of-year.

Perhaps it was the fact that just a few days earlier I had actually done a Google search on Hughes to try and find out what he was up to. I hadn’t heard anything about him making movies in what seemed like forever. Was he ill or just laying low? Why had he dropped out of the limelight? Why had he not directed a single feature film since the early 90s?

And then came Thursday...and he was gone.

The irony was simply too sharp. I really had to swallow hard as I read aloud to my co-workers the news of John Hughes death from the press release I received via email late Thursday afternoon.

I felt as though someone had punched me in the gut.

The man was 59 years old — just six years my senior. I had no idea. I’d always assumed him to be was much older than that. I’d never even seen a picture of him prior to that news release.

I guess I knew a different John Hughes. The filmmaker I admired was perhaps different than the one whose movies you connected with as a teenager. I was well beyond my teens in the 1980s, but instead was traveling through my late twenties and into my thirties by the time Hughes’ films exploded upon the scene.

Hughes’ original Brats: (clockwise from left) Ally Sheedy, Judd Nelson, Anthony Michael Hall, Emilio Estevez, and Molly Ringwald
_{Photo courtesy WashingtonPost.com}

I was, by MY generation’s directive, almost ready to join the ranks of ‘those not to be trusted’ when The Breakfast Club hit the theaters in 1985.

Oh, and did I mention, I what an ASS I was back then, too?

In the mid-80s I used to bristle at Generation X, as they recently had been dubbed. The kids born after the mid-60s; those malcontents who listened to Punk Rock, dyed their hair chartreuse, and spent their time yakking about ‘No Nukes.’ These were the age and experience group that John Hughes’ films were directed to the most.

I realized at the time that this must have been how my parent’s generation felt about me and my mates in the 60s, when the first so-called ‘generation gap’ formed.

I was aware of The Breakfast Club, although not necessarily cognizant of Hughes per se. What I did know, however, was the ‘Brat Pack’ — this group of up-and-coming actors, and how they were being hyped as ‘the next big thing’ in Hollywood. The Breakfast Club was ostensibly the birth of the Brat Pack, as noted in the 1985 New York magazine cover story which popularized the phrase.

Yeah, they were brats alright, I thought. Kids these days.

I just rolled my eyes.

But as has so often in my life been demonstrated, I later realized that I needed to stop assuming things that weren’t necessarily true. I mean, you know what they say about ASSuming…

So I went to a different ‘Brat Pack’ movie that came out that same year: St. Elmo’s Fire. It wasn’t a John Hughes film, but its ensemble cast featured three of the Breakfast Club’s five principles, including Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy and Judd Nelson.

I loved it.

But enough about brats; back to John Hughes.

An Overdue Present
I may have given the Brat Pack a second chance in 1985, but would continue to be late to the John Hughes love-fest for another five years, until a screaming kid would force us to take him to a movie about another screaming kid: Macaulay Culkin in his portrayal of the precocious Kevin McCallister, in Hughes’ comedic masterpiece, Home Alone.

Our kids were ages eight and six in December, 1990, and Home Alone was all the rage among most of the young parents we knew. So after much cajoling from our son Shawn, we treated the kids to the now-classic Chrismastime flick — which they loved.

However it was I who received the long-overdue present at the movie theater that day: the gift of John Hughes.

There are two movies from the Early 90s that simply enrapture me, not necessarily for their production values, or even their story lines alone, but rather the aesthetics created by the combination of those two elements that infuse the mind of the viewer.

One film, about which I’ve written fairly often in previous stories, is City Slickers — both for it’s breathtaking cinematography of the West and its humorous-yet-gripping truths about a man saying goodbye to his youth.

Home Alone is the other, and probably for exact opposite reason. Oh it’s funny, silly, and all of those things that one would expect from a plot about a young boy who believes he’s made his family disappear, but there was something more in it for me.

Home Alone reconnected me to my childhood — not that I ever spent any time fending off burglars by greasing up the basement steps or pretending I was a gangster joyously filling my enemies full’a lead.

What I got out of the movie — and the numerous other John Hughes films I would subsequently rent and devour over the years that followed, was pure John Hughes; a guy who was a child of the Midwest, just like me; a child of the 50s and 60s, just like me; and a filmmaker who poured out just the right amount of that part of his life into every movie he made.

I don’t really know how else to define it, but the ‘feeling’ of Kevin McCallister’s neighborhood in suburban Chicago is exactly how it ‘felt’ in similar settings throughout the Midwest I grew up in. The flavor was unmistakable to me. And amid all the movie’s laughs and high-jinx was the poignancy of this connective tissue that bound it all together.

This wasn’t just a movie about a kid in suburban America, it was a movie about me. And I’m certain that the way Hughes affected me in Home Alone is the same way so many GenXers felt about The Breakfast Club.

He made us feel connected.

John Hughes didn’t just make movies about teens; he made movies about the human spirit — weaving characters into whom we could lose ourselves and identify; seeing our lives through their eyes for just a little while, and then returning us to reality a little more enlightened; a little more encouraged to go out and make the world our own. He had a remarkable ability to speak to the heart, whether in laughter or in angst, making us comfortable in someone else’s skin.

And he will be missed.

Next: John Hughes — addendum

Still Scratching My Seven Year Itch (Day 5 of 6)

2011-05-23T23:07:00.016-05:00

It's Monday, May 23, 2011, Day Five of my six-day pre-blogaversary celebration for AYBABTU, reposting of some of my somewhat more obscure, yet favorite stories over the seven-year life of this space.

I’m beginning to see a pattern here. It would seem that many of my favorite posts are thoughtful, rather sad tributes to people in my life who have died. Yesterday it was Johnny Carson, today it’s my step-mom Maxine, and tomorrow it will be filmmaker John Hughes. But I don’t want to get ahead of myself...

The one thing I wanted toast about today’s repost is how much I wish I’d taken Latin in school; it’s a fascinating language for me, largely because so much of our English words are based on Latin derivatives. And being the latter-day etymologist I’ve become in my old age, I could poke around a Latin/English translation website for hours – which is what it appears I DID in coming up with the title for this post.

However again, I don’t want to get too far off-track here, except to say that I now realize that when I wrote the story on June 1, 2010, I goofed a bit in my self-translation of the title phrase Secundum Memor, which is Latin for, In Accordance With Remembering.

The problem is that in actual Latin usage the words are transposed. It should be phrased, Memor Secundum, with the preposition secundum following its object instead of the other way around as had mashed it up via an online translator. Oh those crazy Romans; maybe I need to get to know their language a little better if I want to use it.

But all levity aside, this is another serious post, and one that’s especially close to my heart, as its subject is the woman with whom I shared a turbulent, emotional relationship in my youth. However, there was perhaps no person I more wished to be accepted by than my step-mother, and thankfully, in the end, I was. Enjoy...

TUESDAY, JUNE 01, 2010

Secundum Memor

For me, Memorial Day is always at least a day late
My father served in the army during WW II, but luckily for my family, didn’t see any time on the battlefield. He’s still with us today; a hale and hearty 86-goin’-on-87 year-old.

None of my aunts and uncles lost their lives fighting for our country either.
I didn’t have any friends or relatives who died in Viet Nam (that I know of, anyway), save for a high school buddy of my late brother David, Glenn Bailey, for whom I always say a prayer each time the calendar rolls around to the final Monday in May.

I don’t believe either of my kids have had friends who’ve lost their lives in Iraq or Afghanistan; nor have any of our family friends with children in current military service dealt with the anguish of such a fate.

Even my most famous soldier-relative, WW I’s most decorated, Sergeant Alvin C. York, who defied incredible odds and employed legendary valor, managed to come through his tour of duty in The Great War with life intact.
So, that being said, Memorial Day, apart from a general reverence on behalf all of the men and women who fought to secure my freedom, had never been all that personal a day of remembrance for me.

That is, until ten years ago today.

June 1, 2000 was the day my step-mom, Maxine was laid to rest.
She died that Memorial Day weekend from a viral infection, which suddenly overtook her body during recovery from a previous surgery. It was shocking; unexpected; devastating. She was 78 years old, but had always been in good health. However that began to change following a second knee replacement in 1999 and a subsequent series of complications, including removal of a benign tumor and a staph infection, which she was recovering from at the time that the secondary viral infection took over and ended her life.

The stormy relationship Maxine and I shared is well-documented, yet the loss I still feel each June 1st has never abated; and I doubt, ever will.

For the vast majority of my adult life, I was on wonderful terms with the woman who raised me; who taught me responsibility, and “the principle of the thing.” But it hadn’t always been so.

The lessons she delivered were hard and unrelenting; the same way that she had learned them, growing up during The Great Depression. I had every reason to rebel; every reason to hate her, but I endured, and eventually won her favor.

The years seemed to mellow her, but I’m not certain of that. All I know for sure is that her stance toward me changed after I became an adult. She often made it a point to let me know that finally, I had “done good” after years of not-so-subtly suggesting that I never would.

I learned the definition of forgiveness through my step-mother; not by her example, but rather by God’s provision of my opportunity to grant it unto her, despite all the reasons I had not to.

Ten years later, now with adult children of my own, with whom many of the same issues of will that my Mom and I battled having come and gone, I see things through different eyes; even more so now than I did ten years ago, when I stood at the podium of Forest Lawn’s Church of Our Fathers, delivering her eulogy.

There are always two sides to every story; dual points of view, both seemingly ‘right’ in the eyes of those who hold them. Whether it was hers or whether it was mine that was the correct one is immaterial.

What is important, and what is that part of the substance of my character gleaned from my relationship with Maxine, is that there is good in every situation, no matter how dark or daunting. A battle of wills does not always declare a victor, nor does it always brand a loser.

Maxine taught me that there is more than one way to love.

Thanks, Mom.

finis

Still Scratching My Seven Year Itch (Day 4 of 6)

2011-05-22T14:50:00.004-05:00

It's Sunday, May 22, 2011, Day Four of my six-day pre-blogaversary celebration for AYBABTU, reposting of some of my somewhat more obscure, yet favorite stories over the seven-year life of this space.

Seeing as though we apparently missed The Rapture, I thought that today I would reprise a story about someone who at least lives in Comedy Heaven: the legendary King of Latenight, the late Johnny Carson.

The post, The King Is Dead...Long Live The King originally appeared on Monday, January 24, 2005, the day after Carson’s passing, as my tribute to a longtime hero of both my childhood and adult life. Johnny Carson defined an entire genre of television and certainly, just as well defined a big part of the lives of his millions of fans throughout his show’s 30 seasons on the air.

It’s almost unbelievable that today marks 19 years since, quite literally, Carson’s swan song: Bette Midler’s rendition of ‘One For My Baby’ at the close of the penultimate Tonight Show With Johnny Carson (the actual final show the following night, on May 23. 1992, included no guests besides sidekick Ed McMahon and previous Tonight Show video highlights).

At any rate, in tribute to that, and because I’ve always considered this one of the most heartfelt stream of words ever to proceed from my fingers...Enjoy.

MONDAY, JANUARY 24, 2005

The King Is Dead...Long Live The King

Sorry to interrupt, but this can’t be helped.
It was my sincere intention to complete my current series before I went on to any other subject. The story of my brother’s current battle with Alzheimer’s Disease has taken more than six weeks so far, and it’s been excruciating to try and get through. As a matter of fact, I’ve got plenty of other story ideas I want to get to. They’re all lined up in queue inside my head just waiting to be written as soon as I can get this current gorilla off my back. However interruptions happen, such as my side posts at Christmas and New Years, because they’re holidays that merit such timely recognition. Now another event has occurred, which in my world deserves similar pause and reflection.

The King is dead.

No, I’m not talking about Elvis — he’s still working the graveyard shift down at the 7-Eleven. I’m not talking about some Middle Eastern potentate or even the King of Beers. I’m talking about the King of Late Night. I’m talking about Johnny Carson.

Johnny passed away around dawn Sunday morning in his Malibu, CA home, apparently due to complications from emphysema. It was no doubt the result of his many years of cigarette smoking, which makes it all the more disgusting and painful for me to take.

You see, I come from a long line of smokers. I am the only one of all my brothers who has never smoked. My Dad quit 22 years ago after having smoked on and off for 23 the previous 43 years. All of his family have been heavy smokers, including my paternal Grandfather, who himself succumbed to emphysema in 1973. I guess that makes Carson’s death a little more personal for me. And it also makes me a little more angry because it circles back to add a stinging reminder as to my own failure as a parent; the fact that despite the example of our family’s history I apparently couldn’t make a strong enough case to prevent my own children from becoming smokers themselves.

Shawn and Amy tell me that they are mostly ‘social smokers.’ They acknowledge that it’s a harmful habit and that someday, they will definitely quit. But as I’ve told them to no avail, I’ve grown up around it and would dare say that I’ve known quite a few more people in my lifetime who after only smoking for a few years have tried to quit and found it extremely tough. How tough, I can’t say, because thankfully it has never been my problem; yet it’s obviously something that’s difficult to deal with, so why start in the first place?

Okay, okay...I’m veering way off course here. It wasn’t my intent to make this post a rant about smoking. I’m not a cigarette-Nazi, and quite frankly it doesn’t bother me to be around it; after all, like I said, I grew up with smokers; I’m used to it; it’s not a major issue. What I do have an issue with is the fact that it has killed yet another person; a person I grew up with; a person I truly loved and thought the world of: Johnny Carson.

You all know who he was, but if you don’t have a clear recollection of actually witnessing him host The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, you likely don’t know what he was. He was a pioneer. He not only defined the genre of late-night talk, he was The Beatles of talk show hosts. He set the standard. He broke the mold.

In the 1960s, when I was between 8 and 12 years of age, there was no cooler treat than being able to stay up until 11:30pm to watch The Tonight Show. I always felt so ‘grown up,’ getting the chance to laugh at the sometimes racy, certainly ‘adult-oriented’ humor of Johnny and his guests. Carson defined the now standard concept of the comedic monologue to begin each show; now it’s standard practice. It may not have started with Carson, but he became the standard-bearer for its use to subsequent generations of comic talkshow hosts to follow.

I know that a lot of you thirtysomethings probably think that Johnny Carson was a little old-fashioned, compared to the raucous, zany or hip, urban styles of David Letterman, Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien and Arsenio Hall. Certainly they all fed off of the Carson genre and added their own special augmentations, most of which are both funny and worthy of praise in and of themselves. But if you were to ask them (and all have been asked over the years) who is the greatest of them all, to a man they point to Carson.

Everyone watched Carson. Of course the fact that there was no cable in all but a fraction of U.S. households in even the latter years of his run didn’t exactly hurt his ratings. But the fact is, Johnny Carson was the definition of water cooler discussion. His show was what everyone talked about in the office the next morning. His monologues were often the topic of discussion for morning radio DJs throughout the country. And perhaps as importantly, all America knew that if someone made an appearance on the Tonight Show, either as an interviewed guest or a musical performer, that person or band was important. They had made it. That’s how significant Johnny Carson’s influence was.

Johnny & Ed
I had actually been thinking about Carson recently, and wondering how he was doing; it seemed amazing how time had flown since he left the public eye. After leaving The Tonight Show on May 23,1992, he basically went into seclusion, making public appearances very rarely and television appearances almost never.

Carson’s sidekick for over 30 years, Ed McMahon would go on, following The Tonight Show to enjoy perhaps his greatest celebrity with the syndicated Star Search TeeVee series, while also putting his face on seemingly any show or product he could throughout the decade of the 90s.

Yet even as McMahon’s public presence began diminishing over the past few years, I was still hopeful to see Johnny to resurface at some point. Unfortunately he stuck to his guns just as he’d said he would when he announced, “When I retire from television, I’m going to stay retired from television.”

And now he’s gone...and I feel like shit.

I feel as though someone just reached into my soul and ripped out a huge chunk of my childhood, not to mention a good part of my adult life. I don’t know anyone my age who didn’t think the man was The Man. He was, quite frankly, a hero to my generation; someone to be admired.

Johnny Carson was 79 years old; not exactly a spring chicken, but three years younger than McMahon, who is now 82. Not that I would have ever wished it upon him, but I always figured that Ed would be the first to go.

The Boy Who Would Be King
When we were kids, my brother Alex and I would pretend that we were Johnny and Ed. I was Carson, of course.

We would do imaginary interviews with greats like Jimmy Stewart (with me doing double-duty with an extremely lame Jimmy Steward impression). Of course Zha Zha Gabor would always stop by with her legendary cat and her even more legendary question to Johnny (which I would learn only years later are merely urban legends). And of course, Carnac the Magnificent would make an appearance as well, giving the answers to Ed’s questions before they were even asked.

But now all these years later I hold in my hand the LAST question. It has been hermetically sealed inside a mayonnaise jar, sitting on Funk & Wagnall’s porch since noon today.

The question is a simple, “Why?” However, we’ll never know the answer. Carnac won’t be making any more appearances.

The King is dead.

Long live the King.

_{Photo Courtesy Carson Productions, Inc.}

Still Scratching My Seven Year Itch (Day 3 of 6)

2011-05-21T22:10:00.004-05:00

It's Saturday, May 21, 2011, Day Three of my six-day pre-blogaversary celebration for AYBABTU with some reposts of some of my somewhat more obscure favorite stories over the seven-year life of this space.

Today's entry is one of my favorite music-related posts, a concert review from November 4, 2004, of one of my all-time favorite rock guitarists, Joe Satriani.

Surfin’ with the Aliens

Rock ‘N Roll’s Mister Clean
Joe Satriani. If the name doesn’t ring a bell, it could be for a number of reasons:
a.) You're a not a man.
b.) You don't play electric guitar.
c.) You’ve never played air guitar.
d.) You were born after 1987.
e.) All of the above.

If those five items don't describe you and you're still at a loss, perhaps the title of his breakthrough 1987 release, Surfing With the Alien will roust your memory. Perhaps now I've got your attention, if for no other reason than because you're wondering, "What the hell could a song with a title like that be about?" And of course, the answer to that is, "It doesn't matter," because the song has no lyrics, like nearly all of Satriani's body of work, covering 18 albums and spanning 18 years.

Without getting into an unnecessarily involved history of the term, “heavy metal” as a definition of big-sounding genre of guitar music was first coined in 1969 by John Kay and Steppenwolf with the phrase, “heavy metal thunder” in their classic hit, Born to be Wild. Since then artists from Alice Cooper to Lamb of God have etched their mark on a genre that has ambiguously flowed in and out of the pop mainstream.

Despite hitting its pop stride in a big way during the mid-to-late 1980s and early 90s, Heavy Metal has typically existed on the outskirts of the establishment; a rebel without a cause; rife with testosterone-driven power and élan. Metal can be liberating, but can also be dark and tedious. A stalwart of rebellion from the 1960s on in one form or another, it’s the kind of music that teenage boys feed upon; and that which typically drives their parents up the wall.

Metal can be gritty; raunchy; nasty even — and that’s not always a bad thing. It’s
also not always a good thing either.

Joe Satriani’s sound, on the other hand is “clean” Metal — in nearly every respect — from his shaved head to the seemingly endless procession of gleaming guitars he pulls out to play onstage. He is, quite rightfully known as "the guitarist's guitarist." He actually used to teach guitar in San Francisco, attracting the likes of Metallica's Kirk Hammett, Larry LaLonde of Primus and the acclaimed Steve Vai as students. He is in my opinion the preeminent Rock ‘N Roll guitarist of his generation, bar none. Eddie Van Halen? Puh-LEEZE. Joe has both the improvisational and melodic chops to carry his music without vocalist in his act. His guitar does the singing. His albums are 99.5% instrumental. And they rock!

Joe Satriani is different. Some Metal digs ditches. Joe’s Metal soars above the clouds.

Rock ‘N Roll Heaven in the Mother Church
Last week I saw Joe Satriani in concert for the first time after loving his music for 17 years. It was a decidedly different crowd than I was used to seeing at the Ryman Auditorium on a Thursday night. The gender ratio was about 20-1, male-to-female. There was a decided tinge of male essence in the air; and for the first time in the ten years that I’ve been attending concerts at The Ryman, the lines into the men’s restrooms far exceeded those of the women’s.

It was an older and largely blue-collar crowd. I’ve probably not seen that many work shirts all in one auditorium since the union strike vote meetings I attended back in the 1970s as a member of the AFL-CIO. It was almost comical to see all these pudgy, graying, middle-aged guys standing and pumping their fists after nearly every song. You could just about guess that it was all they could do to resist the urge to break out their air guitars and play along with ‘Satch.’

And just as the crowd had a blue-collar makeup, so did Joe Satriani’s work ethic onstage. He played from 7:30pm sharp until 11:00pm with only a 15-minute break in-between. This dude is no glam-rocker. His look was understated and cool, with his signature wraparound shades, a plain black t-shirt, blue jeans and black boots. His backup band featured drums, bass, and rhythm electric & acoustic guitars, but they were clearly in the background.

Not really knowing what to expect, I was sort of expecting a little more in the histrionics department from Satriani, but to his credit, he’s not a very ‘showy’ performer. He does however really step into his music; the deep emotion and joy of his instrumental intercourse is readily apparent in his body language and the incessant smile on his face. The only thing that’s ‘bigtime’ about Joe is the quality of the sound emanating from his axe. Whenever he graciously addressed the crowd, he almost seemed embarrassed by the cheers, which on this night were more than raucous.

I couldn’t have asked for a more enjoyable experience, unless it were possible for me to be close enough to catch the dozen or more guitar picks he showered the first few rows with throughout the night. Nevertheless, my vantage point was more than adequate to see the man and capture the experience.

As I had hoped, Satriani borrowed most heavily from his still most commercially successful album, Surfing With the Alien, performing five of the album’s ten songs and finishing the show’s final encore with the classic title track .

A week later that concert is still ringing in my ears. I had always wondered whether or not Satriani would be able to match the output of the recording studio in a live setting, and I wasn’t disappointed.

Much has been made of the fact that a number of Satriani’s former students have now gone on to greater fame than he has. For all of his acclaim in guitar player circles, due to the lack of marketability of all-instrumental rock albums, Joe, while often nominated, has never won that elusive Grammy Award. He has long since been given the playful title of the ‘Susan Lucci of Rock Music.’

Yet the oversight hasn’t bothered him enough to consider combining his efforts with a vocalist (à la Carlos Santana), to produce an effort that the general public would more readily embrace. I really respect him for that. He has said that doing so would detract too much from the music in the way he conceptualizes it. He really does write his music with the idea that his guitar has a voice.

And I’ll always love to hear it sing.

finis

Still Scratching My Seven Year Itch (Day 2 of 6)

2011-05-20T16:54:00.003-05:00

It's Friday, May 20, 2011, Day Two of my six-day pre-blogaversary celebration for AYBABTU, reposts of a few of my personal favorite posts that you may have missed, and a few that I, quite frankly, had all but forgotten about myself until I decided to do this retrospective.

Andy And Me
Today’s retro post is another in what I consider to be one of my more personal back-glances at my professional career, and yet another reason why I will never feel as though my life hasn’t been absolutely full.

For anyone my age, the image below is unmistakable; its artist as easily identifiable as a Renaissance master. Andy Warhol was perhaps the best known pop artist of my lifetime. And inasmuch as his timeless, ‘Marilyn’ is perhaps his best-known work, his greatest contribution to pop-culture may in fact be a written quote rather than his trademark painterly photographic treatments.

_{© 1962 Andy Warhol}

In a 1968 exhibition catalog for his exhibit at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Warhol penned the wildly-famous and oft-used pop-culture maxim, “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” The quote’s popular paraphrase, “15 minutes of fame,” is attached to seemingly every ephemeral, one-hit wonder-celeb that comes down the pike these days, in essence, giving prophet’s credence to Warhol’s famous line. And while its sarcastic, quasi-derogatory inference may be an insult to those who crave fame’s fickle favor, for regular folks like you and I, it can be a subtle vote of accomplishment to actually see the product of your own hard work reflected in even a modicum of recognition; to realize even your five minutes of fame.

For when it all comes down to it, in my opinion, sometimes close is more than close enough.

Enjoy.

Still Scratching My Seven Year Itch (Day 1 of 6)

2011-05-19T15:54:00.002-05:00

A Royal Awakening
Today is Thursday May 19, 2011 and I just got a jolt of adrenaline from my visit to the blog of a dear old friend; someone with whom I rarely communicate anymore. She was the very first person to let me know that this blog was more than merely an online diary; that there actually was someone out there. She became AYBABTU’s first commenter, in my third post on May 25, 2004.

This isn’t the first time I’ve made reference to the story about Queenie’s inaugural comment, but now, years later, I come back to it because it holds such a strong place in my heart.

We each started our blogs that same month, as did thousands of others during Blogger’s historic upgrade of early ’04. We became enthusiastic supporters of each others’ work for several years thereafter, but gradually, as has been the case with many, we each eventually fell off the pace as life took precedence.

However on a nostalgic whim today I decided to check up on Queenie’s blog and was delighted to discover that after having dropped out completely for more than a year, she has recently begun posting again.

And just as great (to me, today, at any rate) is the fact her blog still looks exactly the same now as it did in 2004, so I was immediately transported back to seven years ago, when this wonderful adventure of blogging began for both of us.

And then suddenly it registered that the anniversary of AYBABTU is just a few days away, as is Harold Camping’s prediction of the coming of The Rapture, supposedly happening this weekend, on Sunday May 21st.

So, I decided that just in case the world comes to an end as we know it a few days before my seventh blogaversary on May 24th, I wanted to mark the occasion a few days early.

As a matter of fact, I think I’m gonna make this a running theme this week; a sort of ‘The Six Days of Blog-mas’ if you will.

Each day I’ll post a brief blurb regarding the life of my blog along with a link to one of AJ’s (other) Greatest Writs that's not listed in my ‘best of’ page (in the nav bar above). To be honest there are a few favorite stories that I’d been considering regurgitating anyway, so this seems like as good a time to do that as any. Hopefully you’ll find them enjoyable to read again, or for the first time.

Blogaversary Post #1
Anyway, for today I give you, Random Ruminations of A Man Left To His Own Devices (Part II). It’s the humorous part of an early two-part post from June 2004, on a pair of topics that came to mind while I was left on my own by my wife for the weekend.

Part two is a site more enjoyable read than part one, which now in retrospect I find to be a rather bitchy whine about the shortcomings of male friendships. You can read it if you want, but don't forget to wear your hip-waders.

Enjoy, and I’ll seeya tomorrow!

Technical Writer?

2011-04-29T10:27:00.001-05:00

Hello again, old friend.
Y’know it’s amazing, but I almost feel like tearing up every time I sit before Blogger’s ‘New Post’ interface and begin to type. You see, this blog really holds a special place in my heart, although you’d hardly know that by how often I post here.

Anymore, it seems whenever I go into the Blogger post editor (which has certainly changed since 2004 — but not all that much) it’s kinda like seeing an old friend with whom you share a warm, yet long-distance relationship. Every time you see each other, the memories of good times; the way you supported each other; the way you completed each other — the emotions all come flooding back.

Then, after spending a little time together, you say, “Man, this has been great. We really need to get together more often.”

Nonetheless, before long you find yourself continuing on with your busy life, never quite breaking away from the now-hardened habits that took you away from your old friend in the first place.

Then, the realization; that for me, I’ve found a new friend — two, really. I write for a paycheck now, as a technical writer at a local software company, and in my spare time I write another blog about hockey, and my local NHL team, the Nashville Predators.

Both circumstances have been a tremendous blessing to me and have provided a great deal of satisfaction to me as a wordsmith.

I've even gone so far as to finally launch my own domain, ajinnashville.com. I've moved my free Wordpress.com-hosted hockey blog there, and originally intended to do the same with AYBABTU. In fact, that was the original intent of this post, to announce the fact that this space was moving.

But now, after looking deeply into the eyes of my dear old friend for the first time in months, I’m not so sure. I’m gonna have to weigh the pros and cons. We’ll have to see. Aside from the sentimental value and longstanding loyalty I feel for Blogger, there is a more practical reason for me to leave AYBABTU in place. I’m rather proud to say (and was totally shocked when I discovered it recently) that I now occupy the #1 Google search position for the term, ‘personal blogger’ and I’m not real sure I want to risk the possible surrender of that with a move to a new domain.

The advantages of moving the hockey blog made it a no-brainer. While I still do it purely for my own enjoyment, I'm now being approached by sponsors and want to take whatever opportunity reasonable to at least make a little dough from blogging (although I sincerely doubt it will ever be more than chump change). At any rate, it was necessary to move away from a fixed platform to a self-hosted circumstance to really take full advantage of sponsorship opportunities and requirements, so I finally went ahead and made the leap.

I'll need to do some research on the ‘google juice’ aspect of a potential redirection from blogspot.com to ajinnashville.com, but my initial thought is that while I may at some point create a second, more narrowly-themed personal blog on my new domain, I’ll likely just leave this one be.

Not that I expect a whole lot of SEO geeks will be reading this post, but if there are, and you’d be kind enough to weigh in with an opinion on what the best way for me to go would be, I’d certainly appreciate it.

Re: The Awkward Pause
As far as the future of this blog is concerned, as always, I have nothing but the best of intentions. I have a backlog of story ideas, including a number of ‘Unfinished Business’ stories left that I’m doggedly determined to complete and back-post.

I am not finished with you, my old friend. Somehow, some way, I’ll make the time. We’ll remember the old stories, as well as the ones that have yet to be told.

...And we’ll get together then, yeah. Ya know we’ll have a good time then.

finis

For the 11,680th Time, Marry Me?

2011-03-17T15:51:00.008-05:00

Mixed Messages
I know I haven't officially announced it here yet, but something wonderful is in the offing. This past February 14th, my daughter, Amy, became engaged to a young man that Michelle and I both approve of and like very much. No official wedding date has been set as of yet, but if the stars align properly, it’ll be sometime late this fall.

Naturally, for about a month now, the wheels have been spinning in earnest amongst my two favorite females. It’s an extremely exciting time for Michelle and me. We, like most parents, I would assume, will be experiencing a rite of parental passage unlike anything else in seeing our daughter make that all-important next step in her life; in many ways becoming the complete person she’s always dreamed of being.

But believe it or not, that’s really not what this post is about.

There’s another blessed event to be celebrated, today, as a matter of fact. It’s an annual event that is at the same time exhilarating and frustrating for yours truly: Michelle and my wedding Anniversary.

Exhilarating, because it still gives me the same goosebumps and lump in my throat that it did on St. Paddy’s Day, 32 years ago today, when I stood before a brightly sunlit window, gazing into the morning sky and pronouncing, vocally, “I’m getting married today, and my life will never be the same.” And 11,680 days later, indeed it has not been.

However, it’s frustrating as well, as this year, like many of the years before, the most we can afford to do to celebrate our anniversary is go out to dinner and exchange heartfelt sentiments via the poignant-as-we-can-find anniversary cards from the local card store.

But this year (knock on wood) the reason is a good one; I started a new job after more than a year of unemployment, after being laid off by The Company I had worked for eleven years previous. I’m still in my 90-day probationary period, so I don’t have any available vacay days until the first of next month.

So we’ll perhaps postpone any plans of a real celebration for later on in the year, when I do have plans and will take Michelle on a genuine vacation. We just can’t do it now.

However, to be honest, it’s not like we never do anything special on our anniversary. We’ve managed to celebrate the ‘big ones’ like the 10th, 20th, and 30th in style. The most recent of course being the weekend we were able to enjoy at the Opryland Hotel two years ago. Now THAT was fun, and something I really want to do again. I guess once you get the taste for something like that, it makes subsequent occasions when you don't do it seem that much less satisfying. But no doubt I’m being harder on myself than I probably need to be.

Michelle is no diva. She’s not high-maintenance. She is as unassuming and undemanding as a man could want in a life partner. Each and every day she makes me realize what an incredibly lucky guy I am to be the man she chose to love for the rest of her life.

And thus is revealed the twain of my daughter’s impending nuptials and the anniversary that marks 59% of Michelle’s and my current lifespan, spent together.

Wait. Did I say twain? I meant Train.

Early Adoption
I could (and likely will, someday) devote an entire post to my longstanding admiration for a band from San Francisco that was more or less discovered in Nashville.

Some of my fondest musical experiences in this town occurred in the late 90s, during a series of music festivals designed to highlight local and regional, unsigned talent: the late, great NEA Extravaganza. It was a week-long celebration of nightly, multiple-venue showcases that was wildly popular in Music City before petering out near the decade’s end. Music industry officials mixed with fans in packed clubs and concert halls throughout downtown Nashville, hoping to see ‘the next big thing’. For music hounds like moi, it was beyond great.

At NEA’s 1998 festival, Train headlined the Aware Records Show at 328 Performance Hall. Within a few months of that appearance, the band was signed, and hits like Meet Virginia were all over the radio, nationally.

Without hijacking the story any further at this point, let me just say, I came, I saw, and I was smitten, particularly when soon thereafter, Train also performed a free, Who’s on 3rd show, at 3rd & Lindsley Bar and Grill. That evening nearly everyone in attendance got the chance to meet the band, and came away really feeling as though they’d gotten in on the ground floor of something special.

From the subsequent release of their 1998 self-titled debut album to their current, 2010 smash release, Save Me San Francisco, Train has subsequently established itself as one of the great American pop bands of their era.

Lead singer, Patrick Monahan’s soulful, yet wildly resourceful voice is unlike any other I’ve ever heard, and particularly on their current effort, runs a gamut I previously didn't believe possible.

However, it was the lyrics to one of his new new songs, one bearing his trademark improvisational style, that really wowed me.

Guilty Pleasure
I’ll have to admit it, my wife has won me over on a few TeeVee shows I once swore to myself I’d never watch. One is ABC’s, The Bachelor. I started watching it with her three years ago while, in the midst of moving into our new house, we had to spend six months in an apartment, with but one decent TeeVee to watch.

This season’s finale was last Monday night, and as part of the final video montage of bliss, depicting glimpses of the reality series’ final contestants’ love connection, a tender ballad played in the background.

It was soft enough (and my hearing is bad enough) that I couldn't quite make out who the artist was. However, what was clear was the predominant phrase in the song’s chorus: Marry Me.

It was totally appropriate as The Bachelor season’s swan song, as Brad, the young man looking for love, made no bones about the fact that he was looking for permanent love; he was looking for a wife.

When we heard the song, Michelle and I immediately looked at each other and said, nearly in unison, “What a cool song!” We didn’t have to state the obvious; we were thinking bout Amy’s wedding.

Michelle immediately commissioned me to find out who sang that song and where we could get it. I agreed and began searching online. I was both delighted and embarrassed that top Google search result for “Marry Me” was a YouTube link to the video below:

I was obviously delighted because it was so easy to find. There were several links to Train’s official website in reference to the song. A little further down the page was yet another link to a The Bachelor-related blog that confirmed the song’s appearance in season finale episode, suggesting that “...we’ll always associate this song with The Bachelor.”

Weeel, maybe, maybe not.

By now you might be wondering, if I claim to be such a dedicated Train fan, why I didn’t immediately identify the artist when my wife asked; surely I already owned Save Me San Francisco, right? How come I didn’t know the song?

Well, that’s the embarrassing part. Fact is, I knew that Train had come out with a new album last fall. However, buying music wasn’t quite at the top of my disposable income budget during the previous year and a half, when I was out of work for 14 months.

Sorry, My bad.

However the song is definitely on my radar now; in fact I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it for the last three days.

After watching the awesome video and investigating the lyrics, I have decided that whether Amy wants Marry Me to be played at her wedding doesn’t matter; I now associate this song with my marriage instead.

You see it’s not about one special day. It’s not even about a single marriage proposal. It’s about the daily commitment; the daily renewal of the ever-elastic bond of marriage; it’s about is the way I feel toward my wife.

Thanks to Train for putting into words what was for me, a previously indescribable feeling; for one of the greatest Anniversary gifts I could ever receive, or give.

And today, for the 11,680th time, I give it to you, Michelle.

Happy 32nd Anniversary, Sweetheart.

Forever can never be long enough for me
To feel like I've had long enough with you

Forget the world now we won't let them see
But there's one thing left to do

Now that the weight has lifted
Love has surely shifted my way

Marry Me
Today and every day

Marry Me
If I ever get the nerve to say
Hello in this cafe

Say you will...Say you will

Together can never be close enough for me
To feel like I am close enough to you

You wear white and I'll wear out the words I love
And you're beautiful

Now that the wait is over
And love and has finally shown her my way

Marry me
Today and every day

Marry me
If I ever get the nerve to say hello in this cafe

Say you will...Say you will

Promise me
You'll always be
Happy by my side

I promise to
Sing to you
When all the music dies

And marry me
Today and everyday

Marry me
If I ever get the nerve to say hello in this cafe

Say you will...Say you will

Marry me

_{Words & Music © 2010 Partick Monahan and Train}

finis

Dance

2011-02-04T13:00:00.015-06:00

I love my wife, and I know she loves me. We love each other despite the respective compulsive behaviors we continually embrace that drive each other a little crazy sometimes.

For example, I acknowledge that I suffer from Dishwasher Palsy; that affliction in which a person’s hands cease to function beyond the act of setting dirty dishes in the sink (as opposed to continuing on that extra foot-and-a-half to place them in the dishwasher).

On the other hand, Michelle suffers from a malady that seems to run rampant in her workplace, called Office Email Forwarditis, in which she seems helpless to resist the urge to forward every chain email she receives to at least a dozen other people and then, in turn, to me as well.

These electronic missives of folly generally fall into a narrow range of categories. Many are somewhat offensively political in nature. Others are simply goofy larks involving some Baby Boomer’s waxed nostalgia for ‘the good old days’. And we've all seen those embarrassingly juvenile collections of silly images, featuring various snide and/or corny captions, usually screaming at you in 36-point Comic Sans or Brush Script (IN ALL CAPS, OF COURSE).

As a graphic designer, these emails often give me the urge to jump off a cliff. As a rational, thinking person, I sometimes have my doubts as to whether or not the originator employed those same capabilities at the time they were dreaming these things up.

Nonetheless, I never delete them out of hand. I always at least give glance to each email, because every once in awhile Michelle will surprise me with a winner; a chain email with a difference; one with a sentiment that rings true, regardless of its level of trite sappiness; a message whose aim to remind us how precious our time on this planet truly is and how we need to make every minute count; one that is right on target.

The email she sent me on Wednesday was like that. I really needed it too, as I had received news the day before that truly placed the whole concept of ‘life’ into perspective for me once again.

Another Episode of ‘Life Interrupted’
This past Tuesday, my morning oatmeal was soured by a Facebook message from my cousin Jeante, announcing that yet another victim had been claimed by our family’s curse of Early-Onset Alzheimer’s Disease (EOAD). Another of my maternal cousins has followed her mother and elder sister into heaven years earlier than she ever should have. She was 54; the same age as me. And even though we hadn’t spoken nor even occupied the same room since we were kids, this courageous woman was extremely special to me, via the familial and experiential bonds we shared on numerous levels.

‘Cheryl,’ as I’ve referred to her here in my blog, had battled the disease through active participation in AD research for the better part of the past 20 years. She was a pioneer, an invaluable asset in the field of Alzheimer's research.

Over the last quarter of her life, she had been in a unique and harrowing position of awareness, knowing of the death sentence that had been imposed upon her from birth. At age 35 she became aware that she carried the familial gene that has inflicted the horrible reality of EOAD upon generations of my maternal family tree. However in response, she didn’t retract in fear; she didn’t shut down but rather, became activated, and for the next 15 years, courageously volunteered in the research efforts of the Indiana University School of Medicine’s Alzheimer's Disease Center, as well as in clinical trials of various other institutions in her local area.

She had learned the devastating truth of her condition just prior to the round of tests involving my entire extended family back in 1992, where, under the auspices of IU’s Dr. Martin Farlow, a precursory test for the disease had recently been discovered.

Her decision to become an ongoing participant in the institution’s research involved at least two cross-country trips per year from her home in Oregon to Indianapolis. And while the experimental drugs she helped test likely lengthened her lifespan, in the end, they only postponed the inevitable.

Nonetheless, she considered it a worthy effort; and so it was, as the clinical trials in which Cheryl participated were among those involved in the eventual development of the now-commonly prescribed AD drugs, Aracept and Nemenda. These drugs serve to slow down the onset of Alzheimer’s Disease, and in cases of the longer-developing, non-hereditary, so-called ‘sporadic’ variety (most common in elderly populations), can indeed extend a victim’s mental viability a great number of years.

Unfortunately, the aggressive variety of EOAD that has plagued my family isn't nearly so inclined to be denied for very long. Cheryl’s onset was largely delayed into her late 40s, which is several years removed from the average typical beginning of onset in our family’s experience (usually between the ages of 39-41).

And to be sure, by comparison Cheryl would have no doubt been taken from us years earlier if not for the drugs that she helped to be developed. That her own onset symptoms were delayed for so long is no doubt a tribute to the drugs’ success.

At age 54, she lived at least 5-6 years beyond the established pattern of those in our family who had previously succumbed to EOAD.

Although she knew that she carried the gene indicating she would develop Alzheimer’s since 1991, Cheryl wasn’t positively diagnosed until 1999. I didn’t hear anything about her condition until about five years later, when she would have been around the age of 48 — the same age my mother and one of our uncles were when they died. Her elder sister Denise had passed at age 49, however Cheryl remained well-functioning for several more years.

Albeit only over the phone and via email, I finally got to meet Cheryl’s husband Mike a few years ago. He revealed to me that it was in 2005, after she’d gotten lost driving to the office of her longtime physician that they knew her disability was entering the final stages.

Another Long Goodbye
Cheryl was bright and vivacious; I’ve been told she could charm the spots off a leopard. She was a successful businesswoman, working as a manager and buyer for a major department store chain for more than 23 years. But most of all, her husband loved her. Mike, like many other spouses of AD sufferers, has gone through hell and back to be there for his best friend.

Upon realizing that her onset had progressed to the point that her faculties were deteriorating rapidly, Mike, still in his mid-forties, took early retirement from his career as a successful printing company executive to spend as much time as possible with Cheryl while they still had time to enjoy life together.

He purchased a touring motorcycle and the two of them set off for adventure, traveling the United States from Portland to New York City; from Arizona to Alaska; soaking in every moment, feeling every emotion, and bonding as never before. These were the fleeting memories that Cheryl carried with her unto the end; until her thoughts became a morass of brief glimpses and confusion.

Mike began fund-raising efforts in Cheryl’s name through Alzheimer’s Memory Walk events in his local community, consistently being one of the top money-raisers to benefit The Alzheimer’s Association.

If I had a vote to nominate anyone for sainthood, there’s no doubt in my mind who’d get the first nod. I can honestly say I’ve never seen greater love so obviously expressed by a husband for his wife than that of Mike for Cheryl.

Following the couple’s travels over 2006-07, by early 2008, Cheryl’s need for constant care grew to the extent that Mike had to enlist the services of a Memory Care facility in Portland, where he was able to still spend time with her daily, but finally receive a modicum of rest from his exhausting role as primary caregiver.

Cheryl’s earthly journey came to an end this past Monday morning.

Cheryl’s death obviously brings to the forefront of my mind, my younger brother Alex, who still clings to life, himself in the final stages of Alzheimer’s onset. He’ll be 51 in May.

Alex has been on the onset-slowing AD drugs since his diagnosis in late 2004, which has helped to delay his decline. However he was diagnosed comparatively much later in the process than was Cheryl, and is currently in hospice care, likely in the final months of his life.

No, I didn’t forget about The Email
As is my wont, I now circle back to the reason I began writing this post in the first place: the sentiment from the chain email that Michelle forwarded to me this week.

It’s a fairly corny, but poignant and sweet sentiment that I would encourage us all to heed, never forgetting that life is but a vapor and that there are no guarantees. I’m hopeful you’ll get as much out of this silly verse as I did.

And as far as forwarding it goes, do feel free to cut and paste. I think this is one that everybody needs to see.

This was written by an 83-year-old woman to her friend.
*The last line says it all. *

Dear Bertha,

I'm reading more and dusting less. I'm sitting in the yard and admiring the view without fussing about the weeds in the garden. I'm spending more time with my family and friends and less time working.

Whenever possible, life should be a pattern of experiences to savor, not to endure. I'm trying to recognize these moments now and cherish them.

I'm not "saving" anything; we use our good china and crystal for every special event such as losing a pound, getting the sink unstopped, or the first Amaryllis blossom.

I wear my good blazer to the market. My theory is if I look prosperous, I can shell out $28.49 for one small bag of groceries. I'm not saving my good perfume for special parties, but wearing it for clerks in the hardware store and tellers at the bank.

"Someday" and "one of these days" are losing their grip on my vocabulary. If it's worth seeing or hearing or doing, I want to see and hear and do it now

I'm not sure what others would've done had they known they wouldn't be here for the tomorrow that we all take for granted. I think they would have called family members and a few close friends. They might have called a few former friends to apologize and mend fences for past squabbles. I like to think they would have gone out for a Chinese dinner or for whatever their favorite food was.

I'm guessing; I'll never know.

It's those little things left undone that would make me angry if I knew my hours were limited. Angry because I hadn't written certain letters that I intended to write one of these days. Angry and sorry that I didn't tell my husband and parents often enough how much I truly love them. I'm trying very hard not to put off, hold back, or save anything that would add laughter and luster to our lives. And every morning when I open my eyes, tell myself that it is special.

Every day, every minute, every breath truly is a gift from God.

If you received this, it is because someone cares for you. If you're too busy to take the few minutes that it takes right now to forward this, would it be the first time you didn't do the little thing that would make a difference in your relationships? I can tell you it certainly won't be the last.

Take a few minutes to send this to a few people you care about, just to let them know that you're thinking of them.

"People say true friends must always hold hands, but true friends don't need to hold hands because they know the other hand will always be there."

Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we are here we might as well dance.

finis

A New Year, A New Direction.

2011-01-04T08:59:00.002-06:00

This is a note. This is only a note.
Yep, it's been several months since my last post, and there are a lot of reasons for that — good ones for the most part. However this is just a quick note to say that the significant things that have happened in my life since last fall will be addressed in this space shortly.

I’ve taken a new job, and with it, a new direction, professionally. I’m extremely excited about the challenge, but at the same time, somewhat daunted by what it means to me personally. Change is never easy, but the pains associated with this one are definitely of the ‘growing’ variety.

More on that later...but hopefully, not too much later.

I hope that everyone reading this had as spectacular a Holiday season as I did; and I look forward to detailing that for you as well, along with an update on my family, and some long-overdue stories that got shelved last summer, despite the best intentions of my well-intentioned modus operandi.

I yam what I yam, I suppose.

Type at’cha soon!

P.S./Update/Just a couple more words...(Friday, January 8, 2011)
Just wanted to say, I hopehopehopeHOPE that I have time to blog this weekend. I have so much to say, my mind is bursting. It's been a great week at the new job and I just can't tell you how jazzed I am about the future. Check back with me on Sunday, as I hope to have at least a couple new posts up by then. LaterTaterz.

AJ

That Damned, Unnerving Uncertainty of It All— A Miniseries (Part 4 of 4)

2010-09-15T12:47:00.008-05:00

Love’s Labor’s Lost
In my research of the major stories written about Penner’s death, including an unexpected conversation I had a few weeks ago with yet another of he and my brother’s co-workers at the O.C. L.A. Times, it is clear to me, if not to all who have commented on this sad tale, that perhaps the linchpin of Penner/Daniel’s ultimate demise was the one thing he couldn’t reverse; the devastation of the loss of his ten-year partner in marriage, fellow Times sportswriter, Lisa Dillman.

On July 19, 2007, exactly twelve weeks after Penner’s groundbreaking coming-out article, he legally changed his name to Christine Michelle Daniels. That same day, Dillman filed for divorce. Throughout the year in which Mike was Christine, those close to him indicate that he honestly thought the marriage could somehow be reconciled; that Dillman could eventually embrace his decision to live as a woman.

That reconciliation never came.

According to Friess, during the summer of 2008, as Daniels detransitioned back to Penner, he repeatedly told friends that it was his last-ditch effort to somehow reunite with Dillman.

Nevertheless, the divorce decree became final on October 24, 2008. The disenchantment and frustration endured as the impact of his life-decision registered, coupled with the reality that his true love would no longer be a part of his life, appears to have been the ultimate blow to Penner’s will.

A little more than a year later, the holiday shopping season’s official beginning would also be Mike Penner’s ultimate end. On the day after Thanksgiving — now so commonly referred to as, Black Friday — November 26, 2009, in his apartment building’s parking garage, Penner rigged a vacuum hose attached to the tailpipe of his running, parked car through a window, into the passenger compartment, ending his previously very vocal life in silence.

WHY? Can somebody just tell me, please, why??
It’s okay with me if you tune me out at this point, because I’ll give fair warning: I’m gonna wax quite a bit philosophical/metaphysical here.

The human interest aspect of the death of Mike Penner, as well as that which is imminent for my brother Alex, really have only the slightest of true relationships — that being that they were friends and that their lives ended or will end far too early.

I don’t really know why I was so compelled to spend the inordinate amount of time I did writing this post. I don’t know if it was simply because I felt the need to mourn the loss of Penner; someone I felt a great deal of respect for; someone I sort of felt I knew via association with my brother. Perhaps it’s just that it’s such a tremendously story, and it makes me realize how much I already miss Alex.

How very fragile, our existence seems at times; and though we actively acknowledge that this is true, we still ask, “why?”

Why am I losing my brother years — even decades too soon?

Why has the world lost a great writer and a great person in Mike Penner?

Why did Penner feel such despair in his life that he couldn’t bear to go on living?

It's almost poetic that prior to his death, Penner’s final regular assignment at The Times was writing the Morning Briefing column’s “Totally Random” feature. It seems the inexplicable machinations of fate that caused whatever physiological affectations responsible for laying askew my brother’s brain through Alzheimer’s and Penner’s self-image through his condition, known as dissociative gender identification, were equally ‘random.’

I mean, think about it. These were two people in the prime of their careers, who literally had the world by the tail. Only good things appeared to lie ahead for each of them.

How does any of this make sense?

Both were betrayed by genetics — my brother, with absolutely no recourse. As for Penner’s circumstance, if you choose to judge him, that’s your business. I choose to judge neither his choices nor his biological reality, but only to regret his tragically mistaken notion that you can go home again, because truly, more often than not, Thomas Wolfe was right.

Who would have ever thought 25 years ago that anything so tragic could become the current reality for each of these talented and cherished individuals?

Why it happened, and to what purpose we can never know.

The only correct response, I believe, is to remember both of them for who they were, to say a prayer in support of their families, and realize for yourself that each day, each moment, each simple pleasure we experience in this life is a gift.

Never take it for granted; never assume it’s deserved.

Be grateful for it. Savor it, lest that damned unnerving uncertainty that stalks us all, be allowed to steal our joy.

Life is not fair. The sun is caused to rise on the evil and the good, and rain upon the righteous and unrighteous alike.

Here’s hoping that each of us can make the most of things while we’re still high and dry.

* * * * * *

finis

That Damned, Unnerving Uncertainty of It All— A Miniseries (Part 3 of 4)

2010-09-15T12:25:00.028-05:00

Old Mike, New Christine, Same Demons
It was...a curiosity when I first discovered on that morning of April 26, 2007, the latimes.com article Penner wrote, proclaiming to the world that he was finally coming out of the closet. He was a transsexual, and would in fact shortly thereafter be officially transitioning from male to female; from Mike Penner to Christine Daniels.
Alex’s former L.A. Times, Orange County Edition colleage, as Mike Penner (left), and in 2007,
as Christine Daniels (right). (Photos courtesy of the Los Angeles Times)

He wrote, “I am a transsexual sportswriter. It has taken more than 40 years, a million tears and hundreds of hours of soul-wrenching therapy for me to work up the courage to type those words. I realize many readers and colleagues and friends will be shocked to read them.”

Oh yeah, I was shocked. And my first thought was obvious: “Did Alex know?”

So I created a PDF of the story and emailed it to Seraph.

She said that she too had no idea but didn’t seem to be too surprised, from what she could remember of Penner’s demeanor in person. However she was ultimately saddened for the obvious anguish he/she must have experienced over the course of living, breathing, and being attached to what was decidedly a “boy’s club” atmosphere in his profession as a sportswriter.

When presented to Alex, she said he offered no reaction. Seraph would go on to explain that as being pretty much the norm for him at that point in his condition, now three-plus years ago. Although still somewhat conversant, he rarely spoke and was constantly distracted. However, as I would witness when I visited him later that September, he was even then, still capable of short bursts of semi-clarity; he may or may not have comprehended the article as Seraph read it aloud to him, but I’m certain that he thought about it, at least a little bit.

Late the next day, in another follow-up email, Seraph recounted a phone conversation she’d had with Alex earlier in the evening, trying to get him to put one of their kids on the horn to discuss dinner plans:

Seraph: Hi baby.
Alex: Good!
Seraph: How are you?
Alex: Yes!
Seraph: Who is home with you?
Alex: Uh, uh, (long pause) Mike Penner. (ok, so he WAS listening)

Public triumph, private torment
To their ultimate credit, Penner’s peers and bosses at The Times were as completely supportive as could have been imagined. The respect he had gained as a writer trumped any difference of worldview he might have otherwise encountered in a different workplace or setting.

Penner’s family at the paper didn’t abandon him, but embraced his decision to embrace his inner reality.

Christine Daniels arrived on the scene just a few weeks later, and all seemed well. The transformation from Penner-to-Daniels was in full bloom, appearance-wise, aided by hormones and electrolysis. However, the surgery necessary for completion of her physical transformation would have to wait a full year. Transgender-related law specifies that prospective trans-surgery candidates must live as their new gender, full-time, for twelve months prior to the surgery being conducted.

In May 2007 Daniels began a blog on LATimes.com (which about a year later mysteriously disappeared, both online and from the Times’ electronic archives) entitled, “Woman in Progress”, in which she documented her journey.

According to Times' writer, Christopher Goffard in a well-written but perhaps unnecessarily harsh essay this past March 27th, Public triumph, private torment:

"Daniels underwent electrolysis to have facial hair burned out at the root, took hormones, amassed a shoe collection and experimented with a variety of wigs: short, long, blond, brunet. She spoke in a soft, high voice, cried frequently, happy or sad. Daniels was "exuberant, dynamic, touchy, hugging, a vibrant, vivacious person," said (Randy) Harvey" (former Sports editor, now an associate editor at The Times).

With the obvious publicity of her new profile on brilliant display, Daniels became instantly adopted as an advocate and spokesperson for the transgender community and had already become close friends with a few trans male-to-females who helped to counsel her through the rapid changes flowing in and around her.

She was an instant celebrity and appeared to be extremely happy with the attention that seemingly followed her every step. She spoke and appeared at Transgender and LGBT conferences, gave numerous interviews, and continued on as an exceptional sportswriter; covering soccer and other sports just as Penner had done previously. And though the recognition seemed to be the tonic that Daniels needed to negotiate her transition, in retrospect, it was apparently way too much, way too soon.

The external pressures exerted by the transgender community as well as those applied internally by her personal life, were greater than she expected and ultimately more than she could bear.

A series of events, including a controversial and highly uncomplimentary characterization of her physical appearance at a press function, written by a local Southern California sportswriter, landed a painful blow to her still-fragile transitional psyche.

Lost in Trans-lation
Later in the fall of ’07, Daniels experienced a disastrous photo shoot for a Vanity Fair feature that was eventually aborted. She would later assert that she was convinced the photographer, “wanted to portray me as a man in a dress, my worst fear, as I expressed numerous times...I felt betrayed, totally abused, and very, very vulnerable and exposed and alone in the world.”

Things would only get worse. The Vanity Affair debacle resulted in Daniels drawing criticism from some in the Trans community for being unrealistic about her femininity; overly concerned about appearance as opposed to being true to who she was and to the political causes for which she was now their poster-child.

This too did not sit well with Christine. In the L.A. Weekly account, according to Friess, Daniels took umbrage to the idea of her being anyone “...who needs to ‘quote-unquote’ represent some undefined community,” and that according to her friends, “[Daniels] said she felt used by the trans community.”

Daniels soon began backing away from commitments, and later, asked The Times to discontinue her blog. She generally began to withdraw from the trappings that had made her an overnight sensation; the speaking engagements and conference appearances that just months before had offered so much confirmation of the legitimacy of her journey, now began to be replaced by depression, doubt, and seclusion.

Things finally came to an end for Christine Daniels, the reporter, in April 2008. She took medical leave from The Times, complaining of abdominal pain and additional emotional stress over the recent death of her elderly mother. She posted her final story under the Daniels byline on April 4th.

In June she entered the hospital and was diagnosed with severe depression. The stress of her previous year’s post-transgender announcement, coupled with the death of her mother had manifest itself in the intense stomach pain she’d been experiencing.

Apparently, it was all too much.

Fifteen months after coming out of the closet, Penner/Daniels began the process of attempting to un-ring the bell. She made the decision to cancel her sex-change surgery. She cut off all of her transgender friends, save for her closest throughout the experience, Amy LeCoe, who had herself been inspired by Daniels’ journey, to embark on her own. Daniels began the process of detransitioning.

LaCoe was closest to Daniels throughout that critical summer of 2008, when Christine’s tower of triumph began its steady and unrelenting crumble beneath her feet.

Friess quotes LeCoe’s recounting of the conversation in which Daniels admits that her life as a woman wasn’t working, and reveals what was certainly the ultimate devastation of her new reality.

Daniels shut out virtually every other transgender friend except LeCoe, who struck a nonjudgmental tone and persisted in demanding that Daniels let her help. Deep inside, LeCoe struggled to reconcile what it meant that the woman who had once been the role model for her own transition was crumbling. But she did her best not to let her doubts show.

“Don't decide so quickly,” LeCoe said. “Maybe you'll reconsider it when you feel better."

“I have been feeling this way for a while,” Daniels gasped through tears. “I can't do it anymore.”

“Which part can't you do?” LeCoe asked.

More silence, then: “I had the perfect life with Lisa, and I threw it all away.”

Upon returning to work at The Times, in October 2008, without comment or explanation, she dropped the Christine Daniels byline and returned to being Mike Penner, both in print and in person.

She eschewed the hormones, electrolysis and high heels of Christine, giving away her clothes, jewelry and wigs, and returning to the appearance, dress and demeanor of a male. However the single most important thing that the ‘new, old Mike’ wished to restore, he could not.

Next: Love’s Labor’s Lost

That Damned, Unnerving Uncertainty of It All— A Miniseries (Part 2 of 4)

2010-09-15T11:51:00.002-05:00

A Long, Long Times Ago...
Following the aforementioned email I rediscovered, I made a pointed search for a particular byline on the Los Angeles Times website. I was interested in learning about the current disposition of a writer who had been the subject of that email exchange I’d had with Alex’s wife in late April, 2007, when he had written a most unusual article about himself.

To my utter chagrin, instead of finding one of his current articles to catch up on, I discovered that Mike Penner, one of The Times’ best and brightest sportswriters by acclamation of all who knew and worked with him, following a tumultuous and very public two and-a-half year period in both his personal and professional life, committed suicide the day after Thanksgiving last year, November 27, 2009. It was Black Friday in more ways than one.

I was crushed, not only in stumbling upon the sad news, but even more so in the unjustifiable guilt I felt for having learned it so far after the fact.

Even more ironic, I thought, was that even coming in so late, the more I read, the more it seemed that I really wasn’t all that far behind others in commenting on what has rightfully become a blockbuster of a human interest story.

The saga of Penner's demise has obviously been big news at The Times, which published an expose on it this past March, but it has also been well-presented in major pieces by GQ Magazine in June of this year and, most recently, in last month’s article by Steve Friess in L.A. Weekly, posted on August 19, 2010.

Right about now you may be wondering why an L.A. Times sportswriter who who took his own life nine months ago has anything to do with a story about my brother Alex — or perhaps, why you should really even care. Well, the latter is up to you, but former, that's my bad.

I wasn’t aware of if, but apparently in writing about my little brother over the years, I’ve neglected to mention the career that he almost had; the one he dabbled in previous to his decision to make the practice of law his ultimate profession.

The Young Sportswriters of Orange County
While still a college student, Alex worked as a sportswriter for the now-defunct L.A. Times’ Orange County Edition from the early-to-mid 1980s. The late Mike Penner was one of his closest colleagues in that effort. They were good friends, well-respected, and appeared to both be on the fast track to local stardom as sportswriters in Southern California.

Penner actually came on a bit later, in 1983 and worked with Alex, often side-by-side, covering the local Orange County high school and junior college sports beats out of the L.A. Times Orange County offices in Costa Mesa.

My brother was a part of the same group of writers from which would emerge such current notables as Rick Reilly, Chris Dufresne, and of course, Penner; who went on to be a tremendous writer, and in most any other environment would have likely risen to the station of lead columnist.

However, due to the glut of organizational talent surrounding him at The Times, Penner had to settle for being just another great sportswriter in a department of great sportswriters. Nothing I have ever read or heard would indicate that he ever chafed at that status. That’s the kind of team player and non-assuming person he was.

Though their early roles on the high school/JUCO beat weren’t always sexy, both Penner and Alex were from time-to-time, given opportunities to write feature articles that appeared in both the Times L.A. Edition as well as its O.C. counterpart. Most involved the California Angels baseball and/or the Los Angeles Rams NFL football teams, both of which played in nearby Anaheim.

For Alex’s part, however, among his bigger splashes were a pair of rather controversial circumstances that didn’t necessarily feature his name in the byline.

The first occurred in 1983, when California Angels slugger Reggie Jackson was struggling through one of his worst seasons ever. Alex was gathering quotes for an article that would actually be written by another Times sportswriter, and in the course of the interview, asked Reggie a question that Mr.October apparently didn’t like.

The exchange quickly developed into a shouting match of apparently such epic proportion that the Hall-of-Famer to-be threatened to kick the young scribe’s ass.

But that was Alex. He was brash, confident, and knew B.S. when he smelled it (...and Reggie was usually full of it).

Then in August 1984, one of my brother's pet peeves, the Olympics came to town, being hosted in Los Angeles. In the midst of a sarcastic rant in the newsroom one day, a Times columnist absconded a quote from Alex that landed in a notes column appearing in the main paper’s sports section.

In it, Alex chirped, “The bad thing about the Olympics is that it legitimizes trash sports every four years.” It was but one sentence in a brief 61-word paragraph buried in a lengthy, four-column article, but the response to Alex’s statement ended up dominating the Times Sports ‘Letters’ section that week, as a host of angry readers took him to task for his contentious stance.

Yep. The boy was opinionated.

It’s important to note, however, that Alex wasn’t merely a shit-stirrer; that part of his persona wasn’t the norm. However he did have the balls as a writer to go with his gut wherever he saw fit; he wasn’t a yes-man; he couldn’t care less about being politically correct. he called it like he saw it.

He was as nice and as charming as anyone you’d ever meet, but cross him in an argument and you’d better remember to bring you’re ‘A’ Game. He was as skilled a debater as anyone I’ve ever witnessed — and as opinionated. His intelligence was almost annoying, but always as irrepressible as his vibrant personality.

When Alex went to work for The Times, huge sports fan that I am, I was as jealously proud as a big brother could possibly be for the direction his career seemed to be taking.

However after a few years, particularly when he and his wife decided it was time to start a family, Alex determined that the late nights, deadlines, and bar closings weren’t the ingredients of a future he wished to pursue.

He announced that he was leaving sportswriting behind in favor of a law career. He was subsequently accepted into a leading California Law school, where he went on to finish second in his class and serve as President of the Law Review his graduating year.
My initial reaction was mild disappointment over what I selfishly considered to be his giving up on a career at which he was obviously a natural to excel. However my disappointment quickly gave way to the awe and respect I felt in seeing him set his sights so high — and then going out and achieving them.

But then again, when he was a little boy, he always proclaimed that someday he’d be the President of the United States. Perhaps this was a logical first step, I remember thinking.

However if public office was an actual goal that he wished to pursue, it never got beyond the dream stage. He was indeed an outstanding attorney for 15 years, but appeared to be happy doing just that, while building a family and a life together with his wife, Saraph, including no further political aspirations (that he spoke of anyway).

Tragically that all changed once he began to succumb to the effects of Alzheimer’s. He officially resigned from the Bar Association in 2005.

Alex’s O.C. L.A. Times colleague, Mike Penner, on the other hand, would go on to great success with the paper. His life seemed to be the envy of anyone in his profession, with respect, great exposure, even the happiness of his apparent marriage-made-in-heaven to fellow Times sportswriter, Lisa Dillman.

But obviously things aren’t always what they seem; and as with my brother, Penner’s own set of demons would make themselves manifest a few years later.

Although I never met him personally, Alex’s numerous accounts involving the exploits of ‘The Penman’ (as they all called him), along with those of others in that stable of young sportswriters that now-Times Deputy Chief Sports Editor, John Cherwa had assembled in Orange County, made me feel as though I’d known him — and them — for years.

However the affinity I felt toward Penner was strongest for a couple of reasons; one being the fact that he and Alex were more or less partners in their duties during the entirety of the time they worked together. Just as importantly, Penner, went on to be The Times’ beat writer for my favorite baseball team, the somewhat schizophrenically-named California/Anaheim (and now, Los Angeles) Angels — which also meant that I read him religiously, even after I left Southern California.

I know how good he was and I know what a loss his departure truly is to the collective, quality fabric that makes up that outstanding newspaper.

But if you’re at all any kind of L.A. Times Sports aficionado, you likely also know that Penner’s intrigue as a person of interest didn’t just end with him being a fabulous writer; it quite literally ended with him being a tortured soul; it ended with him terminating his own life — as a man, when in fact he had lived most of the previous two years as a woman.

Next: Old Mike, New Christine, Same Demons

That Damned, Unnerving Uncertainty of It All— A Miniseries (Part 1 of 4)

2010-09-15T11:45:00.002-05:00

NOTE: I’m all about full disclosure, and if the title of this miniseries hasn’t at least given you a clue, I’ll just go ahead and say it: this is not a happy story, and I make no apologies for that.

This is a tribute to two people (…or is it three?); one you know — if you’re a friend of this blog — and another you might know — if you’re an enthusiast of Southern California sports media. What you don’t know, is that the principals are related — in more ways than one.

That being said, it has taken me just over three weeks to ponder, research and write this story, and now that I’m finished, not only am I drained, emotionally, I’m sorta asking myself why I did it, because it really isn’t anything other than bad news. However bad news still needs to be told, and sometimes, even bares positive fruit.

So go pop a Zoloft, put away the sharp instruments, and pardon my melancholy as you learn a little more about a couple of outstanding and complicated people.

Rude Awakening
Ever the electronic packrat, I have genuine difficulty in erasing personal emails. I have nearly every meaningful one I’ve either sent or received since about 1999 — and probably many more than that stored within even earlier system backups. They’re holed up somewhere in some old backup program’s format that I likely no longer have the software for, on ancient DAT tapes that will probably never again be restored.

However I just can’t bear to toss those old tapes, y’know? I keep thinking, “maybe someday…”

Emails are like electronic time capsules; some providing more valuable information than others, but for me, even the most mundane trivia of my past is something I can lose myself in for hours.

The problem is that I don’t spend nearly the time I should, sorting through and determining what deserves to be kept and what should have never made it to my inbox in the first place.

Three weeks ago this past Sunday, however, I was engaged in the semi-regular activity of weeding through some of those old emails; judiciously purging the inevitable junk mail and other useless noise that I’d unintentionally saved over the years.

In the course of that process, I came across an exchange of emails I’d had with my sister in-law, Seraph, back in late April 2007, some five months prior to my most recent — and likely, my final — visit to Dallas to see my brother Alex.

The email made me smile; but it was a smile wrapped in sadness. It returned to mind a bittersweet moment in both the life of my brother as well as that of a friend of his, who was actually the subject of that communication.

Following up on that discovery of a few Sundays ago, I was curious to find out about the current status of Alex’s friend, so I investigated further to hopefully gain some kind of idea of that person’s current standing, as it occurred to me that I hadn’t read or heard anything about them in quite awhile.

There was a good reason that I hadn’t, but it wasn’t because no one else was talking about it.

Stop me if you’ve read this already…
It’s been quite awhile since I’ve written anything about my brother, whom If you’re unaware, is in the final stages of the insidious strain of Early Onset Alzheimer’s disease that has plagued my family for more than two generations (probably a lot more).

Although several maternal-side family members (including my grandfather, aunt, uncle, and mother) succumbed to the disease, we didn’t know a lot about the nature of how it was passed on until 1992, when my family took part in extensive genetic testing at the Indiana University School of Medicine’s Alzheimer Disease Center, in an effort to find a means to test for it.

Heretofore there had never been any reliable way to even detect Alzheimer’s prior to physical onset, which in the case of our family’s “pre-senile” variety, usually becomes manifest during the victim’s late 30s-to-early-40s. Even then, the disease generally takes a couple of years more to present itself to the point that the victim or family members become aware that something is truly wrong.

Fortunately, identification of the causal genetic mutation responsible for our particular brand of AD came to light a year later, based in large part upon the comparative research of our family’s genetic material, including that of my second-eldest brother, David, who was in mid-to-late onset at the time but would become my immediate family's second victim just two years hence.

The results of the research were published in a 1993 Lancet medical journal article. My family reveled in the joy that we had helped accomplish something that would not only serve our progeny, but that of generations to come, both within and outside of our family.

However, that joy was later all but totally mitigated when we discovered that we’d misinterpreted the test results, which had seemed to indicate (unofficially) that we were all in the clear, but in fact had thrown out several family members by necessity of the rules of blind clinical trial method; a fact that we hadn’t noticed, but which simple arithmetic would have been revealed, had we’d been paying attention.

Sadder still was the reality that one of the two family members who fell between the cracks was Alex, who began showing signs that no one acknowledged — the least of whom being himself — back in the early 2000s. By the time we allowed ourselves to consider that Alzheimer’s could be the cause of Alex’s rapidly-decreasing ability to function normally, it was already too late. He was positively diagnosed in November 2004, a year or more beyond the disease’s initial onset.

Although the introduction of recent Alzheimer's drugs Aracept and Namenda have slowed the progress of the disease’s advance and in have fact likely added at least two years to Alex’s lifespan, they have only postponed the inevitable.

[It’s a subject that one glance at my tag cloud (in the left sidebar) will tell you I’ve written a lot about, so I’ll dispense with any more re-hashing and refer you here, here, and here if you’re interested in learning the lion’s share of background info regarding the family curse.]

Though four years my junior, Alex was someone I revered like an elder brother. He was my lifelong best friend. Although I helped raise him as a child, there was never anything but total acceptance as equals between us once we became adults. We married the same year, spent time together both alone and with our families, and never hesitated to constantly affirm to one another how much they were loved.

Alex was my chief confidante; we trusted each other with personal details that will never reach the ears of another living soul. Knowing that I have now lost that outlet has been more than sad for me, so much more than a simple loss, but infinitely less than that which has been experienced and will forever be felt by the wife and three children he’ll leave behind.

Alex is now in hospice care and has been for several months. It is a general rule that hospice enters when the patient has a year or less to live, and so that would indeed indicate that the end is near for my beloved little brother.

He is truly a shell of his former self; unable to speak, feed, clothe, or bathe himself. He still lives at home, as he has from the beginning, a triumph of determination that my sister in-law set forth from the outset; that her husband would not die in a nursing home or other undignified facility as did all in my family who preceded him in this supremely unceremonious terminus of life. Her circumstances have been immeasurably trying and she deserves so much more credit than could ever be given her.

However my intent wasn’t to make this entry a premature obituary for my brother, but to also acknowledge my sadness over the other sobering news that I learned that late August Sunday afternoon.

Next: A Long, Long Times Ago...

Oh-fer-August

2010-09-06T15:01:00.005-05:00

Nope…not gunna duuh it…Wudn’t be prudent
Believe me, I know. I know my tendencies. And if you’ve read this blog or have known me for any length of time, you know ‘em too. But I’m not gonna do what I normally do in this circumstance; I’m goin’ a different way.

Once again, it’s been a while — like five and-a-half weeks — since my last post; in baseball terms I did an ‘oh-fer’ the month of August, and as you may know, my oft-repeated wont after such a lapse in content is to come out spewing apologies for my absence, particularly in view of the fact that as recently as June I publically ‘rededicated’ myself to more regular blogging.

Yeah, I know. “Wolf.”

However I’m not feeling particularly apologetic today. In fact, as much as I would like to have done the opposite, I more-or-less voluntarily took a break from social media the past month or so, partially out of necessity — and partially to see if I could really pull it off.

In retrospect, I’m kinda proud of myself for doing the right thing.

The hardest part was reducing my Twitter stream to less than a trickle. To their credit, several people actually did miss me and expressed some concern that I was in fact alright, physically, which I appreciated a great deal.

But no, I wasn’t abducted by aliens or in the hospital doin’ the H1N1 tango.

I was workin’ like a mofo.

I chose to pour all my time into two freelance web design projects I’ve been working on, the proceeds from which are vital to my family’s bottom line. I decided to give them nearly all of my attention and I must say the results have been extremely positive.

I’ll be back with links when everything is finalized (I’m still in the very final stages of wrapping up both sites), but I can’t help but admit that I’m really proud of how everything is turning out.

In the Pipeline
I’ll have to admit, however, I did cheat — just a little. I spent a couple days two weekends ago, writing the lion’s share of what will be my next multi-part post — a miniseries on the death of a well-known journalist who was a longtime friend and colleague of my brother Alex.

Hopefully, shortly thereafter, I’ll have a belatedly-posted, Mowerly Musings piece of as-yet indeterminate length, that really, I’ve been thinking about for most of this long, dreadfully hot and humid summer that we’ve had here in Middle Tennessee. It’s part ‘tolerate thy neighbor’ rant and part moral object lesson; and I hope it sounds as interesting on paper as it does right now, rattling around here inside my head. You be the judge.

Then there’s hockey. Training Camp for the Nashville Predators starts in a week-and-a-half, and the regular season, just a little more than a month from today. I’ll definitely be jumping back up on the Zamboni and previewing the Preds’ upcoming 2010-11 season on my hockey blog as well.

Ohhh…and I may have a few things to say about my daughter, Amy, and a gentleman friend of hers whom we met this Labor Day Weekend...

So yeah, I’ve been away, but it was an absence with a purpose, and my focus on work, I believe has indeed paid off (no pun intended). I look forward to engaging your comments either here, on PMFF, or on Facebook and Twitter.

The summer of my dis-CONtent, for the most part, is over.

Catch ya again real soon.

finis

Happy Birthday...To You.

2010-07-28T10:01:00.007-05:00

Simulblogging
I really don’t have a lot of time to write today, so if you’ll forgive the cross-pollenization, this is a simulblog; I’m posing identically, both to All Your Blogs Are Belong to Us and Pull My Fang Finger.

This is a note directed at you who for the most part only know me as that goofy guy who wears his heart on his sleeve via his mostly sappy-yet-passionate, personal and/or hockey-related blog posts. And hopefully, you also know that I don’t take a lot of things for granted; usually going a bit overboard in my effusiveness on the various subjects I’m passionate about.

So if my PMFF readers will forgive the off-topic nature of this missive, the main reason I’m double-posting today is because I don’t want to miss anybody; I want to let all of my friends, both on Facebook, Twitter, and throughout the blogosphere, know how much I appreciate you, and how humbled I am at the many Birthday good wishes I’ve received this morning.

Yep, today is my birthday, the day I officially climb into the rarefied air of my mid-fifties. I turn 54 today, so I can no longer say with any conviction that I’m just in my ‘early’ 50s. And that’s kinda significant for people who are still in their 20s and 30s, because if they’re anything like me (and I’m pretty confident they are), they look at you pretty differently after you hit the half-century mark, and even more so as you inch closer to 60 — that magical age when everyone more-or-less officially becomes ‘old.’

I’m pretty confident that I’m as good an example as anyone in confirming the notion that ‘you’re only as old as you feel.’ And I do NOT feel any different now than I did, when I was half my current age. Oh yeah, my body reminds me — often — that I’m no longer that 20 or even 30 year-old who used to fly through the air with the greatest of ease as a gymnast, but it still hasn’t convinced me that I’m not the same person.

I only wish someone would tell that to the prospective employers who've apparently been casting my resumes into the circular file after discerning my age from viewing my job history.

Nevertheless I am indeed wiser for the years that evermore quickly seem to pass, which only intensifies my acknowledgment of the wisdom plied by George Bernard Shaw when he penned the lyric, “Love, like youth is wasted on the young.”

However, I know my love has not been wasted, nor my youth for that matter. It has taken me through a lot of stupidity and halfhearted attempts at self-definition, into a wonderful balance of accomplishment and failure; enough of both so as to fully appreciate the difference between the two; never, ever forgetting the path that brought me here.

I love my life, and the people who’ve allowed me to live it so well.

Thank you, my friends, for making this birthday and each one hereafter, a true reason for me to celebrate.

Cheers.

* * * * *

finis

Long Division (Part 2 of 2)

2010-07-25T14:47:00.002-05:00

Boom Goes the Dynamite
As you probably know, Michelle and I are Boomers. We’re a part of the vast, so-called Baby Boom Generation, generally tagged as including all persons born of American parents between 1946 and 1963 — those years of tremendous optimism and economic expansion following the Allied victory in World War II. The soldiers came home from the war to launch a brave new world and started making babies like there was no tomorrow.

I was part of a five-boy family while Michelle had two siblings. All the children in our respective families were born during that Boomer period.

What I’ve always found to be fascinating about my extended peer group is how widely-varying our respective worldview seems to be. My generation is the generation of change. We started and have fought for the Civil Rights movement and Affirmative Action, the Ecology movement and various ‘Green’ and other governmental initiatives and reforms; we initiated the battle to achieve equal rights for women, including their reproductive rights and ethical redress of equal pay for equal work.

I’m kinda proud of that.

However, we Boomers have also screwed up a bunch ‘a stuff as well, in my opinion.

We’ve led the way for the distortion of personal responsibility as a traditional concept, and instead of truly embracing it, have passed it off in an enormously irresponsible game of ‘hot potato,’ shrugging off our failures with of the insistence that nothing is ‘our fault.’

After all, The devil made us do it; we weren’t hugged enough as children; we were terrorized by the Nuns in our parochial schools. We’re all just victims, being held down by The Man, don’cha know…

We have conveniently reduced morality, in large part, to a relative equation, which, while imminently plausible, can cause a lot more problems than it solves if used as an excuse — which it is, all too often.

And while the above statements are indeed another topic for another time, they correspond poignantly to the subject of my story; the relative roles between men and women in our society, and in particular, my marriage.

Rolling With the Marital Role-Play
Michelle and were born the same year, in 1956, smack dab in the middle of the Boomer Generation. We both come from classic, conservative, 1950s-mentality households. Our Fathers both served in the military — mine in WWII and Michelle’s a few years later in the Korean Conflict.

The good news is, neither of our Pops saw time on the battlefield, although, Michelle’s Dad may have been involved with something even worse; he was a ground-zero soldier at the Nevada Proving Grounds during the atomic and nuclear weapons tests of the early 1950s. His subsequent years-long struggle with various forms of both topical and internal cancers may well have been a result of that portion of his service to our country.

Nevertheless, the kind of moral worldview my father in-law and Dad grew up with was, in a word, old-fashioned. Their wives didn’t work; they were homemakers. The woman’s responsibility was to keep the house, cook the meals, and raise the children; theirs was to bring home the bacon and to be the family’s authoritative figurehead, just as their fathers had been before them, and so on down the line.

Michelle and I weren’t completely unaffected by the changes that our generation was fighting for in the 60s and 70s, however we weren’t buying into it lock, stock, & barrel either. We came into our marriage in 1979 almost completely on the same page, roles-wise. We both wanted the same thing: for me to be the man, and for her to be the woman. There was no confusion as to what that meant.

And while things have certainly changed over the years, with economic realities making the dual income pretty much a requirement for middle class families in this country, Michelle held out until our kids were in middle school before taking on full-time work outside the home. However in the fourteen years since, she’s had a successful career working for Ford Motor Company’s leasing operations here in Nashville.

And obviously, once she started working, household responsibilities between the two of us were altered accordingly. However, I have to admit, when compared with the task-sharing habits of married couples a just a few years younger than us, and certainly in relation to the more typical habits of young people our kids’ age who are getting hitched these days, I’ve always had it easy.

I don’t cook (apart from grilling out). I do precious little housework, save for my vacuuming, and the only time I’ve ever really done laundry to speak of has been in very recent years whenever I’ve needed to make sure that my two sets of gym clothes were clean so that I could work out three times a week at The Company’s athletic facility.

Yeah...I know how spoiled I am.

However, by the same token, we each have our particular specialties; including some that people might really scratch their heads about.

Because I’m the Man
Michelle is adamant in her refusal to do certain chores, claiming they’re “the man’s responsibility.”

Most involve physical exertion, like vacuuming the couch as I mentioned earlier, but there are other, shall we say, less justifiable examples as well.

To wit: my wife will do little if anything to take care of her own car. Now I will admit that she’s gotten a lot better about it; I mean she is willing to pump her own gas nowadays, and geeze, she’ll even drive her car to the Jiffy Lube to get the oil changed — both major concessions in comparison to the stance she used to take.

However she still refuses to clean her car — inside or out. Never mind the fact that I don’t drive the thing more than an average of once a month; it somehow falls on me to wash, detail, vacuum, and empty out the ad papers and other trash that collects on the floorboards.

I’m also expected to put air in the tires and to check the oil and other fluids — all things that I’ve taught our daughter Amy to do for herself with her cars; responsibilities that she has accepted without incident and with a minimum of complaint.

Now obviously I don’t expect Michelle to be a mechanic any more than she expects me to be a seamstress, but this is just an example of the traditional norms with which we were both raised, remaining, well...the norm.

Taking out the trash is something else she refuses to do. Ditto on going near a lawn mower (they scare her to death).

On the other hand, she is the green-thumbed lady when it comes to the flowers. In that vein we actually make a great team in the lawn & garden arena, and our yard and flowers are usually the envy of the block.

I do anything that has to do with strenuous exercise, lifting, or anything mechanical. Yet for some reason, Michelle is perfectly comfortable using power tools, such as miter saws, or drills. She doesn’t let my availability to help, or lack thereof, stand in the way of a project she wants to accomplish.

She loves painting and decorating interior rooms in our house, and is well-capable doing so with no help from me. She’s even poured concrete (an abject failure of a venture that I will never allow her to live down) in the name of getting an outdoor project done once while I was out of town.

But hey — don’t ask her to change a light bulb or switch out an air conditioning filter; that’s my job.

As far as the finances go, I handed over the bookkeeper’s visor to her fifteen years ago, after I’d made such a mess of out of our finances in the 90s, while attempting to be the man but failing miserably.

However, to be quite honest, I’ve been happy as a clam ever since. I hated writing out bills and balancing the checkbook, probably because I was just so piss-poor at doing it.

I can honestly say, I generally have no idea how much money we have in our checking accounts from one day to the next, because I don’t want to know. I only want to know that when I need to buy something that we have the cash to cover it, and thankfully, we usually do.

How’s that for a role-reversal?

Michelle isn’t as meticulous a bookkeeper as I used to be, but that’s okay. She has her own system and it obviously works. We’re never been late paying a bill and she has never been dishonest with me about our money. I LOVE the fact that I don’t have to think about that part of my life. It’s a tremendous relief to me; a burden lifted.

And THAT, I believe, is just the point.

Harmony in the Workplace
Apart from just a tad of aggravation, there really is no avarice between Michelle and me with regard to our individual roles. It took a few years to come by it, but we have developed a system that works for us.

I’m not as proactive about some things as I should be, but my wife rarely has to nag in order to get me to do what I’m supposed to do. And I of course almost never need to nag her about her responsibilities.

We both do, for the most part, what we’re good at and/or are used to doing. It’s not rocket science, but it does require an genuine level of honesty to each other in order to implement. And once a plan comes together, it’s a very cool thing indeed — because it works.

My wife is, in my opinion, the perfect hybrid of generational influences. She’s old-school tools and new-world savvy. She is as liberated as she wants to be.

She’s never burned her bra (thank gawd) or complained about being discriminated against because of her gender. She appreciates chivalry and my lifelong habit of opening the car door for her — and indeed, she expects me to!.

She is a domestic goddess; literally famous as both a cook and a seamstress, and could have easily fashioned either talent into a catering or window coverings design career had she so desired (and in fact has spent time doing both professionally, part-time). She does impeccable, professional-quality work in most every endeavor she’s involved with.

She is kind and generous, and I know of no one who has ever spoken an ill word of her (well, except for her Mother, but that’s another story too).

However, she’s no wallflower. She can be scrappy, and doesn’t take ‘no’ for an answer when she knows that ‘yes’ is the appropriate response.

She is known as somewhat of a crusader at work, where she has bucked the higher-ups more than once, managing to reverse their plans for transferring her to departments within the company that she felt were contrary to the proper use of her skills.

This is no weak-willed woman, people; the lady has stones. Yet she still treats me like a king.

And I am indeed one helluva lucky monarch.

So yeah, Sweetie, I’ll vacuum that couch; and when I’m done with that, I’ll go take out the trash and clean your car.

It’s a fair trade.

* * * * *

finis