« January 2007 | Main | March 2007 »

February 12, 2007

all fires have to burn alive to live

for those that don't keep up with the news of the day. i - the formerly not so young christopher - have been locked in the death throes of an creative drought for the better part of 8 months now. coincidentally this drought started around the time that i left nashville and moved in with my 110 year old lover at 4808. in an effort to be proactive i've been shuffling through old demo tapes and the like looking for a spark. but so far it's just been a whole lot of wet wood. in the meantime i've been immersing myself in music that i've been meaning to check out but haven't really gotten around to yet. and in the process i decided maybe i should cobble together a mix cd - i realize in the age of the i-pod a mix cd is about as useful as horns on a bull. but i don't care. i happen to enjoy compliations. also, in fairness it's not really a new mix cd per se it has been a work in progress that was meant to become with sexy results vol. 3 . but in its various incarnations i was never completely happy with the not so sexy results. it sounded like the same music i always put on cd mixes - so i decided to rebuild it using some songs that i've been enjoying quite a bit recently - and i have to say so far it feels like a wild success. the track list is as follows:

1. kissing the lipless ~ the shins
2. me and mia ~ tedd leo/the pharmacists
3. wasted state of mind ~ ...trail of dead
4. army of me ~ bjork
5. 10 gallon ascots ~ tapes 'n tapes
6. shut up i am dreaming of places where lovers have wings ~ sunset rubdown
7. weather reports ~ bright eyes
8. just like honey ~ jesus and mary chain
9. i found a reason ~ cat power
10. country mile ~ camera obscura
11. all fires ~ swan lake
12. army ~ ben folds five
13. once around the block ~ badly drawn boy
14. if you knew ~ neko case
15. let it ride ~ ryan adams & the cardinals
16. so much wine ~ the handsome family
17. in a future age ~ jeff tweedy
18. she may turn around ~ the innocence mission
19. salute my shorts ~ rilo kiley

obviously i'm not re-inventing the wheel here but i did stretch myself a bit. i never thought i would see the day that i could justify putting a the shits. song into a mix but what can you do. sometimes we are forced to evolve. but i evolve with my credibility intact. and really the point of this excercise is not musical snobbery - it's a contrived effort to whip myself back into creative shape because i'm fairly confident that at the age of 33 i still have a few cringe inducing power ballads within me. only time will tell.

Posted by young_christopher at 7:19 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

February 7, 2007

kicking television

it is one of the perils of my job that i am - on occasion - sent on business out of town. it's really not something that i mind all that much. i enjoy traveling and seeing new and interesting places - especially in the winter time when my 110 year victorian life partner takes on a chilly disposition. the problem is, the company rarely sends me to interesting places. during my most recent excursion i spent 6 days in baton rouge, la. actually, my hotel was in port allen which is separated from baton rouge by the mythical mississippi river. and by mythical i don't mean that it does not exist - obviously there was a large swathe of dirty water that i drove over every day. i just happen to believe that this particular river is man made and really nothing to fuss about. i mean seriously...have you seen that murky mess? no way that is a natural body of water.

anyway, with the exception of one glorious day it rained for the duration of my visit so i found myself holed up in my hotel room for large chunks of time catching up on all that cable television had to offer me. it should be noted that i am much too cheap to install cable television at 4808. also i've learned that you can watch cable television once every couple of months and not really miss anything at all. there are so many reruns and marathongs - it's simply not possible. some of my favourites during the week: engaged and under age; the bad girls club; rome; extras and my sweet sixteen

but far and away the show that piqued my interest the most was a little gem on spike tv known as pros vs. joes. the premise is simple enough: round up some average mildly athletic guys and pit them against formerly elite athletes and allow them to compete. the athletes on this particular program were michael irvin, jose canseco, kevin willis, and some ultimate fighting dude and of course the pros dominated the joes and it wasn't really entertaining at all but it got me thinking.

obviously - it will be a rare occurrence that an average man would be able to cover hall of fame wide receiver michael irvin on a post pattern...so why not change up the format of the show a little bit in an effort to level the playing field. i wouldn't advocate elminating the athletic competition because obviously that is an essential element. but maybe - just maybe there could be a classroom competition wherein the jocks would have to read and interperet
great works of literature. and how hilarious would that be - watching jose canseco struggle to wrap his steroid addled brain around proust or tolstoy - it would be completely riveting television. certainly more riveting than that fat kid on charlie sheen's sitcom pandering for laughs. sort of a pros vs. prose competition as it were. obviously spike tv executives are not capable of such enlightened thought but i dream of the day that all of this might be possible in post 9/11 amerika.

Posted by young_christopher at 2:44 PM | TrackBack

February 5, 2007

camus' toe

after years of strategic planning and procrastination i have finally seated myself at the old mahogony desk – a family heirloom purchased from big lots to begin composing my first and only novel. so far i’ve only managed to expel the first line which might not seem like much but i’m here to tell you that the opening line of a novel is perhaps the most important one in the entire manuscript – the author’s b.e.s.t and only chance to capture the reader’s imagination. so i’m pretty proud of my accomplishment really. even though i have no idea what the novel will become.

it could be just about anything – a tragic tale of unrequeited love or true crime (both the same thing in my book), a daring adventure involving ninja throwing stars concluding with a happenstance fall over an impossible waterfall...i’ll stop there. because i don’t want to give anything away – nor do i want to paint myself into a corner. but i can promise that there will be plenty of dirty dirty sex disguised as elegaic prose that will serve no purpose within the novel itself – but you better believe it will be smoldering.

my current plight reminds me of a character by the name of grand in albert camus’ excellent novel the plague like me, grand is working on the opening line to his novel when a bubonic plague epidemic strikes the algerian town of oran – throughout the course of the novel he is continually revising to get the right verbiage and phrasing and it all seems so abusrd in the face of certain death – but hey, it’s a novel by camus and being absurd was always sort of his thing. and really i can totally empathize. because if the words are not pitch perfect all could be lost. of course all could be lost with an outbreak of bubonic plague – but i think i’m relatively safe from such a disease here in the tennessee valley.

but then again i could fall prey to some other pandemic – and really you will just have to pick one because unfortunately today’s global viruses (viri?) have the shelf life of a hip-hop song (s.a.r.s? ...anyone?). in fact the only sustainable threat to our existence as a human race would have to be those killer bees that have been on their way to us via the african continent since i was in 2nd grade. and i’m thinking they’ve got to be getting pretty old by now – probably nothing more than a small pile of dried up husks. correction. killer husks – nothing a broom and dust pan cannot conquer.

so i’m fairly confident that with a fair amount of diligence and divine inspiration i will be able to complete my novel within the next 3-5 years and it will be praised and lauded throughout the land and it will be discussed seriously amongst serious novels and everyone will understand that when they pick up a copy from the fiction & literature section at barnes & noble my novel will definitely be more identifiable as the latter. it will be so good in fact that when people sit down to read it with their favorite latte they will throw said latte away because upon reading just the opening line they will come to the irreversible conclusion that starbucks coffee isn’t even good and they will have the sudden realization that scarlett johansson cannot act – at which point rush home and immediately burn all of their pleated pants and they’ll write a letter of apology to mr. leonard cohen for ever intimating to a friend at a party that they actually preferred jeff buckley’s version of hallelujah. and what is it – what could i possibly say that would inspire such a sea change for all of human kind...well it goes something like this:

they say his love is like a windowless van – no woman could ever imagine such harsh implements of torture until she was hopelessly trapped within... oh. snap.

Posted by young_christopher at 1:05 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

February 3, 2007

meat is murder

it seems like a lifetime ago - but i still remember the first time step-pop turned the family van up beracah drive and we discovered for the first time that vast expanse that opened up just past the tree-line revealing a row of modest houses on the left a smallish blocky looking church building on the right. and interspersed amongst some taller weeds were a handful of star-spangled school buses - i'm guessing this was meant to be in keeping with the all-american theme of the aptly named all american christian academy even though none of those buses appeared to work. a telling metaphor if you ask me.

the school itself was inside what probably would have been a 3 bedroom 2 bathroom house if it had not been converted into a learning annex. the principle's office was in the garage - and the lunch room was on the back porch. at the height of enrollment we had maybe 14 students - a collection of kids whose parents were members of the church or kids like my brother and i whose parents were slightly nuts. and i'm here to tell you my parents were slightly nuts. around the same time my brother and i were enrolled in this school - mom and pop also got mixed up in a pyramid scheme that marketed freeze dried meals that replaced actual meat with large chunks of soy that were supposed to taste exactly like the meat that they were being substituted for - of course it was terrible and rubbery and did my parents talk about it with everyone they came in contact with? yes. yes they did. in fact the royal american food company encouraged its members to host dinner parties allowing them to prepare delcious dishes like chicken a la king and beef stroganoff for their soon to be former friends. and did my parents follow this advice with far too many friends and family members for my liking. you know it's true. in fact - it was probably around this time that i made the decision to never introduce any future friends to my parents. ever...

why did i bring this up? ah yes - the meat deficiency in my parents diet caused them to think that sending my brother and i to all american christian academy was a fantastic idea. in fairness to my brother - he wasn't even a problem child. he was a good student and enjoyed the other private christian school he was attending at the time. i was coming off a two year stint as an unruly home schooler/stay in bed mom - which immediately followed a two year stint as an unbridled hooligan during my 3rd & 4th grade years that caused me to be homeschooled in the first place...and so there we were - my brother and i - with our military haircuts and our spit-shined shoes...not to mention the absurd red white & blue ties walking into a two year polyester nightmare. an i can safely say that experience effectively scarred me for life - and not with one of those cool scars either - you know, the kind that you talk about on a 4th date when it's apparent things are getting sufficiently serious so you think it's probably a good idea to portend some emotional depth...not that this has ever happened to me.

in some ways the administration tried to make our time at aaca seem as normal as possible - we had a flag football team - we had p.e. every day - of course even these simple joys were robbed by all of their pleasure by the rigid dress code we had to abide by. i can safely say in 1987 & 1988 we were among the first males in america to wear shorts the fell mid-knee. for our younger audience members who may not be aware i should mention that in those days such shorts were not en vogue. in fact, they did not even make shorts at that length so we had to buy these really uncomfortable workout pants and modify them appropriately - and boy did we get laughed at. on occasion we would go to the local public high school to run on their track and...it's a miracle i have any self-esteem left at all.

also - i'm fairly certain that the excessive workouts stunted my growth and caused me to hate running even to this day. our p.e. instructor/principle/primary teacher mike mincielli had gotten his hands on the training program used by the miami hurricanes and thought such a program for training elite college athletes would be completely appropriate for a rag tag collection of jr. high and high school students. so we were doing 440 yard sprints and timed mile runs and on one particular sunny day i ran a 6:10 mile - and i don't know if that's good for a 13 year old all i know is that every day after that i had to do additional running because i could never break that time. and that additional running was done through through anthill (among other things) infested cow pastures with five lb weights in each hand.

after these rigorous workouts we had to fulfill an obligation known as project responsibility which included mowing - weed eating - livestock wrangling - and planting half grown trees. because my step-father was always late picking us up from school my brother and i were subjected to additional work that had to violate practically every child labor law ever written. seriously. we were doing a minimum of 25 hours of hard labor every week - and there was no loafing on the job either because all of the teachers/church staff lived on the property and they were always watching. the pastor/figurehead/cult leader/football coach lived in the palatial estate at the end of the road and always seemed to know everything that happened. and if anyone slipped anything passed him you could be certain his wife would find out about it. because she was the devil.

every year we attended an annual convention where kids from freakshow schools like our own would compete for supremacy in athletics, music, and of course preaching. i didn't do so well in the athletics portion but i managed to place 3rd in the piano recital. of course the asshat who got second place was more than happy to inform me that there were only 3 of us in the competition. but that's okay because in 2007 i'm awesome and he's probably still an asshat. anyway, the day we left i got into an ice fight with this girl named diane and i was chasing her with a handful of ice and because diane was a very skinny girl she managed to slip into the space between the ice machine and the wall and as i prepared to unleash a barrage of ice at her the devil walks around the corner and clucks disdainfully like a character in a novel that teenage girls enjoy reading - stating that i am in clear violation of the school's rigid 6 inch rule and should be punished as unjustly as possible. she actually didn't say that thing about unjustly even though you know it was totally true. by the time her husband arrived on the scene an innocent ice fight had turned into domestic battery with me standing over a cowering diane preparing to punch her and who knows what else - so i was threatened with expulsion and the pastor insisted that i write the following sentence 636 times: it is a sign of weakness for a young man to strike a young lady.

it's funny - even now now every time i reach for a handful of ice to freshen a beverage i think of diane and that silly little school with its star-spangled buses and i thank God we got out of that place alive and that my parents are eating meat again.

Posted by young_christopher at 5:02 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack