To Those Who Nit-Pick The Cool Things In Life

The internet has given us an absolutely insurmountable pile of opinions.  Besides porn, the internet’s true bounty is millions of opinions that are cast into the ether to be argued, disseminated, and mostly forgotten.  Everyone wants their voices heard, as I do.  I want people to know how I feel.  My friends and family aren’t enough.  I want strangers to weigh in, for some reason.  But that’s my problem.

Movies are one of the bigger targets because they are one of the last bastions of shared experiences we have.  We watch The Dark Knight Rises and we shuffle out into the hall and craft an opinion on smart phones before we get back to our cars.  I, personally, have class.  I wait until I come home.

 I love giving my opinions.  I have a podcast, for God’s sake.  I love when my kids ask me my opinion and I get to be a long-winded old fart.  It’s one of my only gifts. 

I cannot blame anyone for wanting to be heard and using the discussion or entertainment and its attempts to be art as a subject. But in the race to be different, edgy, or have your blog post get picked up by an aggregator or news site, we are all trying to come up with our own angle.  This film was fantastic, except…  The purists will love it, but…  It might be okay for a superhero film, but… 

I think we’re lying. 

I believe this because I don’t think we care as much as we say we do and I don’t think there can be millions of differing opinions out there.  Sure there can be…say…20 or so angles for the last movie in the Nolan trilogy, but 709 million results on Google?  For a Batman movie?  Somebody’s padding out there.  There are a few of you desperate to stand out so you are fudging the numbers and doctoring the books.  You are just looking for something to nit-pick.  If so, and you had that agenda before you bought your ticket, it’s not a legitimate review.  You’re a big faker-face.

I loved the movie. Here’s what I thought. I think I liked the previous one a little better because of Heath Ledger, but this stood alone as an epic with a brilliant villain and it was a successful finale to the franchise.  Are we having spaghetti for dinner? What’s next on Breaking Bad?

To the pseudo-hype: the notion that modern politics seeped its way onto the screen cannot be surprising to anyone. Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t. If it did, is this a shock to people?  Aren’t movies one of the first red flags of discontentment?  The sterility and McCarthyism of the 50’s, the generational clash of the 60’s, the frustration of Vietnam in the 70’s, and the cultural divide of the 80’s, all can be found in serious films and Spielberg blockbusters?  It’s in the air we breathe! 

But for this stuff, the superhero movies of the summer; the problem isn’t the studios.  We can’t decide whether or not we take them seriously or not.  We all know the stuffed shirts and old codgers out there who regard Batman as the spandexed goof who talks like Adam West and throws the Kiff! And Pow! jabs.  That’s all he’ll ever be to them.  Frank Miller never existed and Robin is always at his side.  Spider-Man is in his jammies all the time and Superman doesn’t deal with inner struggles of loneliness and abandonment, he kicks incoming asteroids into the sun.  You know, kid shit.

There’s a new generation who think differently.  The heroes are part of the psyche and the lexicon and the folklore.  This stuff means something to us.  We know they are stories and fables.  But they’re American and they are ours. 

Then the movies come out.  And we can’t help ourselves.  Our versions of the stories and characters and dialogues don’t match up and we have to blame Tim Burton and Christopher Nolan.  Sam Raimi and Joel Schumacher.  Zack Snyder and Bryan Singer.  Then we say they’re just superhero movies.  There’s no need to get our panties in a bunch. 

What happened here?  Are these our folk heroes in action or are they just movies meant to entertain us for a few hours every May through July?

Well, yeah.

Folk heroes are awesome and cool and fun and the impetus of young imaginations.  They are a root system for power and individuality and creativity.  But, in the end, you only need them for so long.  At some point, you take a step back and enjoy them as a whole.  As your life becomes more complicated you appreciate the stories for having endings and resolutions you wish were around the corner for yourself.

We shouldn’t nit-pick. It’s unseemly and douchey.  It isn’t becoming and it isn’t very manly.  I know Spider-Man 3, X-Men 3 and that Hulk movie were clunkers.  Yeah, that was a waste of money.  I got over it pretty quickly.  The latest Batman may have been a little long, but I don’t care.  It was a good film and I’m satisfied.  Maybe you thought differently and the entire 7 or 8 hours of Nolan’s superhero series was a giant waste of time.  You’re wrong, but you are entitled to your opinion.  What I’m sure of is, we’ll both get over it.

They’re Only Smoked Ribs If I Can Hang Them On My Wall

I received a smoker for my birthday this year.  It is a charcoal and wood smoker; not one of the fancier, smarter, and more efficient electric models.  This is basically a black water heater sitting on its side, propped up by four legs, with a stove pipe sticking out of one side.  It is as simple as can be for the smoking process.

For one of my side projects to become a more employable writer, I am rewriting the manual to use this behemoth.  The original was bare-bones; and the primary concern of the two pages of instruction was to keep you from burning your backyard down with a misuse of charcoal lighter fluid.  I was lost when it came time to smoke my first few chickens.  The manual detailed nothing of realistic cooking times, the size of the fire, the type of fuel that should be used, and extra equipment needed to actually complete the desired task. There was also nothing about how much of your day would be consumed by cooking your dinner.

This is a running theme in my life these days.  How much should food be a concern?   It is just fuel and deserving of no fanfare?  Eat the required vitamins, stay near your calorie count and get on with your hectic American existence?  Or, since there are entire cable networks dedicated to preparing, caring, exploring, and discovering food, is there more for the brain itself?  Can you spend time on the planet devoted to nourishing your palette? We have art and music for the eyes and ears, what about my tongue?  What did he ever do to be so ignored?  Nothing, I say!

In our house, we cook.  There are no prepared frozen entrees of anything, save an occasional store-bought pie.  We never made a formal decision to put some thought into our food.  It is just the way it is.  My wife is a chef; but there were never home-schooled classes on how to chop onions or sear meats in a skillet.  Both of us come from families who cooked whatever was around.  Nothing fancy, nothing too exciting or even worth passing on to younger generations.  Cooking was an effort. You burned a few calories before eating a few.

With that labor to create our own food comes an appreciation when it’s done with flair and expertise.  I know the precision it takes to achieve perfect uniform pieces with a chef’s knife.  I can tell when the seasoning is just right.  My kids now know that a dinner with a protein, a starch and a vegetable doesn’t fall from the sky.  It’s not a magic trick.  It takes practice and time.

When I smoke my first slabs of ribs on July 4^th, it took six hours of work.  The smoker’s fires have to be continually rebuilt.  I monitored the temperature of both the heat and the meat inside.  I have a remote thermometer that beeped when things were getting too hot or cold.  It was my afternoon.  I played some cards in between, but for an entire afternoon, I was tethered to my backyard.

I make homemade pizza when it’s a bit cooler outside.  My process for making pizzas for company can take up to three hours.  Preparing ingredients, dough work, and fighting with my oven to operate correctly.  My wife makes a giant mess to make chicken and dumplings.  She also discovered a fantastic fried chicken recipe that takes 30 minutes per batch to complete. There are no less than four batches whenever she gets the urge to fry.

There are rib places out there that serve them up hot in 15 minutes.  I could snag three pizzas from Costco for $30. I am renowned Popeye’s Chicken fanatic that has no qualms about the 20 minute drive to the nearest location.

So why?  Why all the effort? Why do people show up to all my wife’s restaurants over the years?   Why, in a time of chronic obesity, should we care at all about food? 

Like art and music and television and athletics, there is a skill to this.  Because an appreciation exists out there for a juicy hamburger, coq au vin, and leek soup, there are those of us who want to perfect them. It’s another thing we can get good at.  The entire willing world is out there ready to sample these creations.  You only need teeth and a modicum of bravery.  Most food needs no explanations, artist statements or librettos.  Granted, nuances are lost to the uninitiated.  But that distinction just upholds the similarities between art and cooking.

Whether or not you’ve ever spent ten seconds in a kitchen, you have some preferences to what you like to eat.  Keep an open mind.  It may seem insane for someone to spend a day working on chalk sketches on a sidewalk, or a sandcastle at the beach, only to have all the effort eventually washed away by the elements.  Is that so different from my wife’s chicken or my ribs?  Or a vegetable garden?  Or making mac and cheese from scratch? 

I’m going outside to smoke ribs now.  It looks like it may rain on me today.  In a few hours I will smell like sticky sweat and apple wood.  Before you even ask, I will tell you.  It is worth it.

Super Listy Part 2

             I wrote all of this before Adam Yauch died. It feels a little douchy that I left them off the list on purpose.  But I will say this right here up top.  Yauch has died and so has the band.  The Beastie Boys will remain one of my favorite things for the rest of my life.  They’re up there with Christmas, Disney World, fried chicken, and Sunday mornings. There probably hasn’t been a week that has gone by without me listening to something by them.  That’s a little crazy, I know, especially with their limited discography.  They were the soundtrack to so many daydreams as I took endless walks; they were the pick-me-up I needed when I was down.  I will miss him.  I will miss them.  They were the most fun band ever.

            Now, with the original post.

This is a tough one.  Everyone has a favorite music list.  A new one is written every four seconds.  That’s a true stat.

            I didn’t want to exclude music from my favorites lists, but constructing one always runs into a few snags.  First, there is the sheer volume of music I’ve heard in my life.  I can’t possibly remember everything I’ve ever heard and put it in order, so I need to choose criteria.  The specific criteria are as daunting to choose as the actual albums.  Best song? Artists?  Most listened? Desert island music?  Love songs?  Driving songs?  Songs to plant organic tomatoes by?

            But then, all of a sudden, it hit me like that hackneyed record scratch sound effect.  It’s my damn list. And in what way do I connect to music? Emotionally.  I’m not a musician; I play the drums and I’ve written a bunch of stuff.  I know nine chords.  To me, music either makes the emotional impact or it doesn’t.  That’s probably how most humans relate to music without even realizing. I am also a very uncool person.

            I call it my David Bowie explanation.  Bowie is a legend with decades of great music.  He’s respected by industry, critics and fans.  I respect him, but I have almost nothing in all my stacks of music from David Bowie.  I don’t change the channel when his stuff comes on the radio; but I’ve never bothered to dig deeper because it really doesn’t do anything for me. I don’t feel anything.

            I also have failed to retroactively pretend that I liked the better music of the past.  I think certain music has to get its hooks in you early or you’ll never truly embrace it.  I can’t really get into the Pixies or Sonic Youth...I missed the boat.  Also, I think there are more people claiming to have liked Elvis Costello today than ever bought his records and showed up to his shows.  I like him fine, but I feel almost nothing.  I keep promising myself I’ll try Zappa and listen to a full Wu-Tang album and see what the big deal was with Van Morrison.  But I probably won’t.  And I’ll never get Lou Reed.  In fact…Lou Reed sucks.

           

            I will exclude music from the following bands: The Beatles, Beastie Boys and The White Stripes. Their stuff is so intertwined with childhood memories and the memories of my own children, that half the list would be from their catalogues.

            So here goes:

            My Top Twenty Emotionally Satisfying Albums Of All Time.

20 - Who’s Next - The Who  

            I know it’s not the hip Who album.  It’s not Sell Out or Quadrophenia.  But this is the album that comes to mind when I think of classic rock.  Power guitar and lyrics belted out like a banshee --- and ‘My Wife’.  I just think of myself as a long-haired teenager daydreaming with my headphones on whenever I hear ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’.

19 - Brighten the Corners - Pavement

           

            I have this habit of falling in love with the more unpopular records of a band’s catalogue.  I’ll have a few examples on my list.  I have never tried to be cool in my life and purposely venture off the beaten path; it just happens that way for me.  Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain is the seminal Pavement album, but I like BTC which came out after Pavement was hip.  It’s more melodic and sweet.  Malkmus’ lyrics are just as imaginative; but there is a cohesiveness here that I just love. 

            It came out in 1997, during the long gap between about 1996 and 2002 where the type of music I liked was nowhere to be found.  I have a few representatives on the list that got me through the drought.

18 - Blind Melon – Blind Melon

            Blind Melon came and went and are regarded as a one-hit wonder.  My wife and I listened to this album non-stop when our son was a baby, so I have powerful memories tied to it. They have a another album that some say is better, but this one doesn’t have ‘Dear Ol’ Dad’ and ‘Change’, which transport me to a much more carefree state of mind. 

17 - Apocalypse ’91 - Public Enemy

Public Enemy opened up for U2 on the Achtung Baby tour.  It was one of the coolest experiences at a concert I’ve ever seen. A stadium full of sweaty, bouncing Bono fans. I went home and got the album and it made me feel like a tough white boy.  Fans will say Fear of a Black Planet is the album to own, but it didn’t grab me like the follow-up.  A common theme.  Plus, ‘Shut ‘Em Down’ is still pretty bad-ass.

16 – Wildflowers - Tom Petty

            There a bunch of worthy Petty albums to put in here.  I believe this was the first one I really listened to over and over, beginning to end.  I remember the production was what drew me in…and I always like to hear Petty’s laid back lyrics. Listen to ‘Don’t Fade On Me’.

15 - Alien Lanes - Guided By Voices

            This is another album I got into in ‘The Gap’.  It’s almost a sister album to Bee Thousand which is the album you’ve heard if you know who these guys are.  I listened to a lot of this one when I was trying to write and play music myself.  It’s beyond classification, other than calling it lo-fi.  And anything goes lyrically when it comes to GbV. “I want to start a new life…with my valuable hunting knife…”

14 - Weezer – Weezer (Blue)

            I had absolutely no interest in power pop before Weezer.  I can’t remember if I liked this one right off the bat or not.  I was working in a record store when it came out and if I ignored it at first, the smarmy lyrics and fun, crunchy guitar won me over.  My daughter loves this album.  She’s been singing ‘Say It Ain’t So’ since she was in first grade.

           

13 -Yes - Morphine

            Everyone loves the album before this, I know.  Here’s the lyrics that kill me on this brooding and funky CD: “I had my chance and I let it go.  I had my chance and I let it go.  If I ever have myself another chance like that, I’m gonna grab it and I won’t look back.  I’m gonna grab it and I won’t look back…”  Awesome.     Plus, there’s a song called ‘Super Sex’.

12 - A.M. - Wilco

            I’m not a Wilco fan.  They lost me after Being There, which is also a great album.  If they kept it close to this countrified alterna-rock I would still be a fan.  I discovered my secret love of the banjo while listening to this.  It’s not connected to anything else; that’s why I like it.

11- Broken Boy Soldiers - The Raconteurs

           

            Yes, this is my way of squeezing Jack White on my list.  This was the first time I got to hear him wail in a full rock band and it did not disappoint.  Far and away my favorite musician of the last ten years, Jack White plays ferociously and writes tenderly with a smirk.  I love that shit.

10 - The Moon and Antarctica – Modest Mouse

            I’m pretty late to this indie rock staple.  My son Holden’s first venture into music at all was with Modest Mouse, and I think this is the sweet and scary gateway recording.  I absolutely love ‘3^rd Planet’. I’m not sure why they don’t get enough airplay of their older, meatier music.  M & A is disjointed and warm, like a late-night party that’s dwindled down to the most eclectic of friends.

9 - Rockin’ the Suburbs – Ben Folds

            Ben Folds should be much more popular.  Maybe it’s the occasional swearing.  I have no idea. This is truly happy and fun and deeply sad all at the same time. It’s one of those albums that make you sing along, and then you realize what the lyrics are describing, then you like it that much more.

8 -  The Colour and the Shape - Foo Fighters

            I love rock music.  There, I said it. I’m not afraid.  I like guitars both acoustic and electric, I love softly spoken lyrics and screaming refrains.  I love loud drums and songs that build dramatically. This is a fine rock album and deserves its place among the greats. All the hits are here, but “Enough Space’ and ‘New Way Home’ are my favorites.  Just pure excitement and fun.

7 - Automatic For The People – REM

            Reckoning, Life’s Rich Pageant, Document and Green are probably better than this one.  I love all of those, too.  But this one is also melded into the backdrop of my life.  My son was a baby and all we had was a stereo and a channel or two of TV to watch.  There is some sweet sadness on this recording that is too sappy for some.  I get it.  But there is also beauty and haunting production that makes it list-worthy.  Trust me.

6 - Billy Breathes – Phish

            I'm off to see the man Mulcahey!  I like several Phish albums but this one sits at first, second and third place.  I think it’s a success from beginning to end, and for a guy who doesn’t care to sit through nine-minute jams, it is damn near perfect.  I sing along to nearly every song.  There are emotional peaks and valleys in there and it was yet another record that got me through The Gap. 

5 – Guero – Beck

            Guero came out just a few weeks before I moved the family to Oregon.  I love this sequel to Odelay; it’s playful, fun, smart and ridiculous just like everything Beck gives us. 

4 – Physical Graffiti – Led Zeppelin

            After I listened to this a dozen times or so when I was seventeen, I know what type of music I loved.  I’ve been told Zeppelin ripped off riffs and lyrics.  I’m been told Page was sloppy.  I’ve been told that other bands deliver better blues-based rock.  Well, they are full of shit.  This double album has everything; electric guitar, slide, acoustic, instrumentals, banjo, you name it. 

            ‘In My Time Of Dying’ is eleven minutes of jamming and abrupt stops and starts that makes you feel something.  There are songs that are meant for stomping on a back porch in a rocking chair with good friends, and songs that are meant for a highway drive alone in the middle of the night.

            It’s just cool. 

3 - Yield – Pearl Jam

            Loved Pearl Jam.  Still love Pearl Jam.  The eight or so bands that the media categorized as grunge put out their best work by about 1995 or so.  Yield came out in 1998 when the band was deemed silly or forgetful.  This album has elements of punk and KISS, ‘70’s a.m. radio and arena rock.  It’s lyrically beautiful and it feels like the one truly rounded album by the band. 

2 – Odelay – Beck

            I never listen to a CD over and over again.  I always think I’ll spoil it.  I like to spread it out, savoring every track.  When Odelay came out in 1996, when everyone forget who Beck was, and it was getting 5 star reviews, I bought it as soon as I could.  I listened to it three times in a day.  I told everyone about it; that it was the sweetest thing I’d heard in years.  I wish there was more if this in music.  It is produced without sounding sterile; it’s fun and inventive and mature and silly.  You can rap to it, dance to it, and sing along with it.

1 - The Bends – Radiohead

            Just before OK Computer made this band one of the biggest in the world, The Bends came out when I seriously needed new music in my life. There a lot less electronic experimentation and a lot more emotional ebbs and flows on this album. ‘Bones’ is a song that gives me goosebumps every time I hear it. There are songs like ‘Sulk” and ‘Just’ that have no radio play but are better than most of the stuff on the radio in the late nineties.  This is one recording I could not enjoy my life without.

            (After reading through, I think I love albums with a little bit of everything. I love a good buffet.)