Let the Blaming Begin: Reaction to the Tucson Tragedy

"Are there any queers in the theater tonight?
Get 'em up against the wall.
There's one in the spotlight, he don't look right to me
Get 'im up against the wall.
That one looks Jewish,
And that one's a coon.
Who let all of this riff raff into the room?
There's one smoking a joint,
And another with spots,
If I had my way
I'd have all of you shot."
- Roger Waters
"In the Flesh" 1979


In the wake of a senseless tragedy, human reaction comes swiftly and passionately and is fueled by the empathy we feel for the ones we love. In the days following the politically motivated shootings in Tucson, Arizona, photos of nine-year-old shooting victim Christina Green have surfaced on the internet. Articles relating her aspirations and her family's grief are now burned into the public's consciousness. We find ourselves pressed to make sense of the senselessness; an almost impossible task made even more difficult by our political convictions. Since the shootings, Sarah Palin and her Tea Party have come under fire for being the inspiration for the crime. The Sarah Palin Action Committee website published a photo with crosshair icons covering cities where Republicans hoped to win congressional seats in the 2010 elections; Tucson, Arizona was one of the cities. Palin's "lock n load" rhetoric is also a source of contention for armchair activists looking to crucify her and The Tea Party for "encouraging these imbalanced and violent people to take action" (Walker, 2011). I personally find The Tea Party's rhetoric detestable, but when we begin a campaign to censor the passions of people who are fighting for political and social changes, we become the fascists' greatest allies; we are advocating censorship. Insisting that a watchdog could have prevented this tragedy by ordering The Tea party to tone down their campaign is another blow to civil liberty. I can't subscribe to the idea that The Tea Party is directly or indirectly responsible for the Tucson shooting any more than I can subscribe to the idea the Judas Priest is responsible for kids killing themselves, and I find the victimization of the shooter to be a vulgar obstruction of social responsibility and critical thinking: a smokescreen, if you will, to skirt the issue of human injustice in order to start a political war.

I find it bewildering that so many Americans are shifting the focus from tragedy to politics by confusing figurative language as a call to murder. Are Americans so undereducated and under-read that they are disabled from understanding when language is being used figuratively? I understand that some folks may have difficulty identifying when a crosshair is being used symbolically, but the suggestion that all Americans are in danger of making irrational choices because public figures like Sarah Palin are god-like and speak with ultimate authority over their constituents is frightening. The idea that American citizens are susceptible to corruption because of an ill advised campaign slogan is asinine. The only exceptions are the sick individuals who do mistake political rhetoric as gospel truth, and I do not wish to be part of a society where the rules of the game are changed for sick minds. Most disturbing about the public outcry is this: the idea that the shooter is a victim and not an agent who acted by his own free will.

To suggest The Tea Party advocated murder because of their campaign tactics is to put our own individual means of expression on the chopping block. From our bumper stickers to our bibles, our right to passionately express ourselves is in danger of becoming an implication in someone else's irrational crime. I love my Dodge truck, yet I've never felt the compulsion to vandalize another's vehicle just because I saw a sticker depicting the cartoon character Calvin pissing on the logo of another automobile manufacturer, and if I did so something destructive to someone else's property, I can hardly believe that a sticker would indicate the automaker as advocating vandalism. I have also never been fired upon by a driver whose bumper sticker encouraged me to keep honking while they were reloading (of course I honked, just to be an asshole.) These are minor examples of self expression, but corruptors infiltrate society at its most simplistic level and work their way up the ladder, and once a precedent is set, the doors to tyranny are blown open.

One of the beautiful things about living in America is the freedom to express not only how you feel, but how strongly you feel about it. Unfortunately, there are some who would like you to believe that no American is discerning enough to understand parody and satire without knowledge of the words "parody" and "satire." Consider the lyrics which open this essay; I've been listening to Pink Floyd The Wall for 30 years, yet I've never murdered a homosexual or person whose ethnicity was different than mine. Although this portion of The Wall is satirical, I didn't know what satire was when I was nine, but I thought a lot about what those lyrics could have possibly meant before I truly understood them. It seemed far more irrational to me to hate people because of the lyrics to the song than to think about why those lyrics existed. I've matured to be a tolerant, non-violent adult, and I think most Americans would laugh at the idea of Roger Waters being accountable for any brutality against minorities since 1979, and there are far more people who continue to listen to his records than Sarah Palin's rhetoric.

The Tucson shooting was a violent crime and because the image of a slain little girl is etched into our memory, we long for closure. For most of us, closure can only come when justice is served, and because the weight of this crime is enormous, the apprehension and eventual conviction of one man does not satisfy our need to satisfy ourselves that evil has been thwarted, therefore, we blame. Placing blame is an activity in which every American participates, and the way they place their blame is largely influenced by what they've been taught. Consider education in this country and in the countries of our European allies; Since the Second World War, the emphasis of education has been on competition and production. Roger Waters criticized post war education in Europe. In "Not Now John," from the album The Final Cut (1983), he writes:

"Gotta compete with the wily Japanese / No need to worry about the Veitnamese / Gotta bring the Russian Bear to his knees / or maybe not the Russian Bear, maybe the Swedes / We showed Argentina, now let's go and show these / Make us feel tough and wouldn't Maggie be pleased?"

(Maggie is a reference to Margaret Thatcher.) Roger Waters is not an advocate of war. There has been little emphasis placed on critical thinking and problem solving in American education, and the result is the world which we have made. We produce and consume, we take our daily dose of entertainment news media to satisfy our need to know something, anything; and we blame who we've been taught to hate. Not much can be done about this in the present, but by looking to the future, I believe that great social change can come about through education which encourages people how and why to think, and not what to think.

Censorship already prevails in our educational institutions. You are not likely to find many history textbooks containing the information that scalping was an invention of the white man, and in Texas, they've considering referring to slavery as "Atlantic triangular trade" (Paulson, 2010). The novels I use in my classroom are an invaluable resource for critical thinking and problem solving: social, political, psychological, spiritual and so forth. At the moment I write this, there is an uproar in the literary community over the politically correct rewrite of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and rightfully so; this book illustrates the struggles of class and race the way a history textbook never could, because it is more honest. Some people find honesty offensive, and I find censorship to be the most evil form of bigotry. To erase or dumb-down the embarrassing part of our history is an injustice to those who were part of the struggle. If slavery is not to be mentioned, and all racial slurs are deleted from novels and stories, there are no more stories to tell, except lies.

Ultimately, what I am saying is this; America, pick your battles, but before you do, make sure you understand what it is you are fighting and what the repercussions of the fighting will be, and if the repercussions and changes it brings will be long term or short term. Right now, we need a long term solution to exploitation by political means, and I believe the solution lies within education, and I am choosing to fight that fight. As for Palin and The Tea Party, it is enough for me to call them "a bunch of assholic morons." I felt this way before the shooting, and I continue to feel this way after the shooting, and I am inclined to call said party insensitive for, as of yet, not issuing an apology for offending some people. I say some people because obviously not everyone finds their rhetoric offensive. Still, apologizing to those who do find it offensive shows class, dignity and sensitivity: The Tea Party obviously lacks these, yet I cannot call them murderers, nor can I expect them to apologize for being partly responsible for the murders, because that is ludicrous. The shooter is responsible. The idea that the shooter is a victim who fell prey to the depraved words of monsters, and though as a liberal I am inclined to call them monsters, they are people: politicians with an agenda to change America, is to exploit a tragedy for political gain. And whether or not I agree with their call for changes, I cannot bring myself to blame a political machine for a demented individual's choices.



Works Cited

Paulson, Amanda. "Texas Textbook War: 'Slavery' or 'Atlantic Triangular Trade'? - CSMonitor.com." The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com. Web. 10 Jan. 2011. .

Sarah Palin's Official PAC | SarahPAC - Sarah Palin's Official PAC. Web. 10 Jan. 2011.
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Walker, Denova. "Giffords Shooting Is Life in the Era of Lock-and-Load Politics « SpeakEasy." SoapBox. Web. 10 Jan. 2011. .

Waters, Roger. In the Flesh. Columbia, 1979. CD.

Waters, Roger. Not Now John. Columbia, 1983. CD.

GRAZING ON OLD GRASS: Pink Floyd's "Sheep" Rear Their Heads in the Twenty-First Century

Even though I had know idea what the hell Roger Waters was getting at, as an angst filled teenager I felt the foundation of the establishment tremble in the wake of his rebellious ramblings within the lyrics of “Sheep,” from Pink Floyd’s 1977 satirical sound scape, “Animals.” When Waters resurrected the song for his 2006/2007 “Dark Side of the Moon” world tour, he used it to comment on the brooding political storm as the Bush era was coming to a controversial close. During the song, the famous Pink Floyd flying pig was introduced to a new generation of Floyd fans. Anyone who has attended a Waters concert understands that three quarters of the show is about rock and roll, and the remaining quarter is about his extreme left wing politics. Perhaps images speak louder than words…

http://www.the-emperor-has-no-clothes.com/images/pig2.jpg


http://californiafaultline.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/coachella_sunday_37_pig_blimp.jpg


http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2418/2451734690_8741f957dd.jpg?v=0


http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/10892169.jpg


…and if you were there, regardless of your political affiliations, it was difficult not to get caught up in the fervor of the crowd. But still, words – particularly the words of Waters’ compositions, dripped from the lips of Waters’ fan base as they sung along to a song that had not been preformed by Waters or the Gilmour led Pink Floyd for thirty years. To understand the significance of this resurrection, an explication of the lyrics is necessary.

Waters obviously intended sheep as a pseudonym for the blind patriotism of the far right moral majority. The connotation of the word in his song drums up the religious imagery of Christ as the divine shepherd, and waters brazenly alludes to this in his mockery of the twenty-third psalm within the song. Waters begins by painting a picture of an oblivious society too used to living well on the pasture of apathy.



“Harmlessly passing your time in the grassland away / Only dimly aware of a certain unease in the air.”




I always find it astounding that the Obama detractors are the same people who buttoned their lips during the obvious failure of George W. Bush’s presidency. The opening line of “Sheep” does not only illustrate the shameless denial of America’s right wing in the face of America’s arguably worst president, but also exemplifies Bush’s own obliviousness to the threat of terrorism. The verse continues with…



“You better watch out / There may be dogs about / I have looked over Jordan and I have seen / Things are not what they seem”



The first line of the second verse asks the question that was on the tip of my tongue immediately following the terrorist attacks of 9/11…



“What do you get for pretending the danger’s not real?”



And even after Bush’s bungled immediate response to America’s most deadly attack on continental soil, the right wing fanatics did exactly what Waters penned next…



“Meek and obedient you follow the leader down well trodden corridors into the valley of steel”



And the verse concludes with a hauntingly appropriate description of blind patriotic bravado…



“What a surprise / A look of terminal shock in your eyes / Now things are really what they seem / No, this is no bad dream”


After a considerably and uncomfortably long instrumental passage, Waters defiles scripture with the following sacrilege…



“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want / He makes me down to lie / Through pastures green He leadeth me the silent waters by /With bright knives He releaseth my soul / He maketh me to hang on hooks in high places / He converteth me to lamb cutlets,For lo, He hath great power, and great hunger / When cometh the day we lowly ones / Through quiet reflection, and great dedication / Master the art of karate / Lo, we shall rise up / And then we'll make the bugger's eyes water.”


…and I’m not even touching that. Besides, what comes in the last verse is what I consider to be the most haunting and controversial verse of the song. Please, if you come from a military background and have voted Republican your entire life because you buy into the notion that only under a Republican can the American military successfully protect us from the evil axis, stop reading now. Seriously.

The final verse of “Sheep” reads like a commentary on war: its purpose, the negative consequences it has on young American soldiers who witness the worst of humanity, the unquestioning loyalty of extremists, the profits paid in blood to war profiteers, the division of a people clinging to a fledgling democracy, the gross misinterpretation of the constitution, the vulgar hypocrisy of the think tanks that want you to believe individuals who protest war do not support the plight of soldiers who enlisted to protect freedom, democracy, and the American dream, and the psychological damage and post traumatic stress for everyone involved – the soldiers, their families, the civilians, and the psyche of a nation. In the aftermath of the attack, Waters writes that…


“Bleating and babbling we fell on his neck with a scream.”


And didn’t we? Are there more than a handful of Americans who can honestly say that they did not call upon George W. Bush to punish someone, anyone, who might have been responsible for the terrorist attacks on 9/11? Did we not believe justice should have come swiftly and tenfold? Did we think about the ramifications of war? I find the next line to pretty much sum up the ugliness that the war in Iraq has become.


“Wave upon wave of demented avengers march cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream.”


This line inspires its own essay. In an attempt to keep it brief, I will stay this – and this may piss you off depending on what you consider to be sacred – with the fulfillment of each tour of duty, our demented avengers return to a society which misunderstands them, a society that makes heroes out of cowards and cowards out of heroes, a society that seems to no longer understand what the dream is, or what it was, or that it has become a nightmare in which no patriot will allow themselves to awaken from. The men and women who enlisted as a means to get through college, or as a way to keep their family financially stable enough to live the dream, to have the big house and three car garage within the picket fence which harbors the 3.2 children from the dangers of the American streets, these ordinary human beings, our neighbors, relatives, and friends, these once obscure faces among the shepherds tending the flocks have bled into a demented type of celebrity, heroes for a cause no one is sure about anymore, and no one wants to admit to. We, they, all of us are the sheep. And perhaps the sickest punch line to this joke is that it took an aging rock star and a pig to get the attention of a generation so baffled beyond functionality that they, without question, pledge allegiance to a man with a bass guitar who made an entire rock opera based on three chords, they pledge this allegiance through the dope-smoke haze aglow in aggressive stage lights, flickering and beaming to accentuate the trivial scribblings on an inflatable sow, lead just as easily as the far right into the far left, my God is there no salvation? And just as we are about to abandon hope, the news from Murdochs’ emporium of insanity scrolls across the screen…

“Have you heard the news? / The dogs are dead / You better stay home and do as you’re told / Get out of the road if you want to grow old.”

WAR IS NOT HEALTHY FOR CHILDREN OR OTHER LIVING THINGS… But it makes for some profound pop-art

War results in terrible things. In spite of its occasional merit, its arguable inevitability, the solutions and resolutions it can result in, and the possible undesirable outcome which sometimes concludes it, war is a catalyst for provocative, meaningful art. Consider the era of the Vietnam Conflict. Some of history’s greatest films were a product of its disillusion. There is a relevant argument that only art can truly bring the catastrophes of war into tangibility for a culture. Art forces people to confront issues they may otherwise write off as trivial. It forces them to see the other side of an argument they might otherwise never change their position on. Since the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, and the downward spiral the war in Iraq appears to be on, popular film has once again taken on the heart of issues journalism and philosophy sometimes fail to report or comprehend. Films like M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village, Matt Reeves’ Cloverfield, Frank Darabont’s The Mist, and Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Night unflinchingly satirize the issues that endanger our crumbling democracy in the face of combating terror.


Shyamalan’s The Village was doomed to be misunderstood when Touchstone Pictures decided to market the movie as a conventional horror film with a trademark Shyamalan twist. Upon its immediate release, the buzz about The Village morphed from confusion to negativity. Sadly, I hypothesize that a great deal of the American public who bashed the film did not understand what the confusion was: and the confusion was and still is us, the people who carry the burden of preserving this endangered democracy. Yes, it is understandable that the American moviegoer expects to be entertained; what has been lost since the Hollywood Renaissance circa 1960 – 1980 is the idea that we are to entertain the possibility that what we’ve witnessed could possibly be a commentary on life beyond celluloid. In order to do so, consider The Village’s symbolic representation of what is happening in our culture.


In the case of The Village, the symbolism is hardly buried in the visual text. The plot is the most obvious device in Shyamalan’s film; a story about an extremely conservative society which has been paralyzed by the fear of what lurks beyond its borders. The society within the village adheres to strict, ritualistic guidelines which assure the citizens that the borders will not be breeched by the enemy. If it does not sound plausible that Shyamalan’s intention was to comment on the impact of terrorist threat, consider the color pallet of the film. When the villagers must travel near or beyond the border of their settlement, they are instructed to wear yellow robes. The characters call yellow the “safe color.” Yet when wearing the yellow hoods, the characters approach the travel situation with heightened caution and trepidation. The villagers recognize the color red as the “bad color.” The color represents the creatures that live in the woods beyond the border of the village. The director contrived the color pallet as a means of tapping the audience on the shoulder and saying, “Ever hear of the Homeland Security Advisory System?” According to the system, when the threat level is at yellow, the level is elevated; there is a significant risk of terrorist attack. When the color coded system reaches red, travel – particularly foreign travel – is strongly discouraged. It is equally difficult not to wonder if the fact that the village’s leader, a man named Walker, who by the way has two daughters, is a tongue in cheek reference to America’s beloved W. And if so, this is where Shyamalan achieves total greatness.


Much of the American public who scoffed at Shyamalan’s film did so because the plausibility of Shyamalan’s ridiculous plot seemed preposterous. Yet, this is the America we live in. This is the America we’ve become since 9/11. So the question is this: if the average American refused to buy what Shyamalan was selling, how did a man like George W. Bush get elected twice? How is it that America responds to the Homeland Security Advisory System without so much as a huge WTF? And perhaps this is what really pissed the audience off. The joke was on them. Yet, Hollywood cashed in at the box office with two other low budget/high grossing successes with social commentary just as blatant as Shyamalan’s movie, the first of which was much more easily accepted and embraced by the same public who lambasted The Village.

Matt Reeve’s Cloverfield faired well at the box office. The cross over action adventure/sci-fi/horror film garnered high praises at the theater and impressive DVD sales after the theatrical run. How can this be accounted for? For one, it did not premiere until 2008. At this point, George Bush’s approval rating had gone down the tubes and public opinion about the lingering war in Iraq had shifted from blind patriotism to outspoken disapproval. Cloverfield fed off the changing tide of the public’s dissatisfaction. The commentary in Cloverfield was also buried deeper in the action of the film and the motivation of the movie’s gargantuan villain. The first report of the creature’s attack was of an oil rig being overturned in New York’s harbor: subtle commentary there. Next, the monster goes on to decapitate the Statue of Liberty, a mammoth symbol of America’s democracy. When the military are brought in to destroy the enemy, the battle is much more difficult that one would anticipate. A conventional barrage of aggressive military action was not enough to defeat what seemed to be an enemy that could easily be destroyed in spite of the massive threat it posed to America’s most weary city. It is also conceivable, given the disaster in New Orleans, that the nation’s military was spread too thin due to other conflicts. After all, the last thing the American Military could imagine being deployed for would be an unforeseeable disaster on American soil. In addition to the plot devices Reeves’ employed to tell his story, there is the unmistakable style in which the story was told.

The film’s first person narrative through the single video camera of a stander-by insinuates that perhaps the only truth behind a story can be told by the protagonists caught in the disaster. Government reports on the handling of the New Orleans disaster were greatly disputed by the residents who lived through the event. Surprisingly, especially after audiences’ negative reaction to Shyamalan’s twist ending, audiences were much more accepting of Reeves’ open ended conclusion. Reeves offered no resolution to the problem. The audience is led to believe that there is no salvation for the characters that they came to care for during the course of the film. And for the most part, audiences were fine with it. And why shouldn’t they have been? The conflict America is currently in the midst of has no ready resolution in sight. Perhaps the one thing that is shocking about the audience’s reaction to a film makers’ commentary is the mixed, if not mostly negative reaction to Frank Darabont’s The Mist, another film which chronicles an unexplainable disaster brought upon by mysterious creatures from another dimension.

Frank Darabont took Stephen King’s short story, The Mist, and beefed it up into what one could arguably identify as a two hour promotional reel for Hilary Clinton as president. One major theme that the movie touches upon is the failure of men to lead stunned civilians through an unprecedented disaster. Women are the true leaders and innovators in the film. Much like Shaymalan’s picture, The Mist was criticized for its plausibility. Is it really possible for human beings living in an age where technology is so advanced that weaponry beyond our wildest speculations could be left so helpless? Could they really be so clueless as to fail to find a means of rescue for themselves? If you find this hard to believe, again, I direct your attention to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In addition to this, Darabont paints a disturbing picture of how the far fanatical right wing moral majority are perhaps the greatest threat to democracy and civil liberty than any terrorist attack.

Marcia Gay Harden’s portrayal of the character Mrs. Carmody riveted theater goers into screaming at the silver screen. Her anti-climactic demise brought forth a burst of cheers from the audience I was sitting with during the second week of the movie’s theatrical run. And I’m sure that some of those spectators voted some of the same people into office that Pat Robinson funded. Darabont dared to do the same trick Shaymalan used in The Village: remove the audience enough from reality as a means of forcing them to confront a political issue they would typically support and make them see the folly in the character’s motivation. Darabont did this brilliantly. But he didn’t stop there. His criticism of the far left liberals was equally scorching. Bad decision after bad decision by Mrs. Carmody’s adversaries resulted in the protagonists finding themselves in the same dire situation in spite of their good intentions and liberal positions. And by the time the film reaches its remarkably shocking conclusion (which I will not spoil, but will say that it is easily the ballsiest, jaw dropping conclusion that I’ve seen to a film since the 1970s) the liberal party find themselves in what is an equally, if not more discombobulated state than their conservative counterparts. Interestingly enough, the final film in this analysis does something that its predecessors did not do as effectively; it presents the position of the conservative viewpoint and dares the viewer to consider the merit in conservative thinking, and allows the viewer to decide if the middle of the road is perhaps the safest place to be. Another film that challenges the viewer to take the mid-road perspective fared far better at the box office than The Mist, and won an Academy Award.

Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Night touches on a controversial topic. Nolan’s film doesn’t question the Patriot Act and its ramifications; it asks the viewer to question the ethics of the Patriot Act. Gotham City is besieged by a terrorist named The Joker. The Joker threatens to kill innocent citizens everyday until the masked super-vigilante turns himself in. Unable to risk exposure, Batman presses on in pursuit of The Joker. At one point, in attempt to protect the citizens of Gotham City, Batman uses technology which enables him to locate an individual by tracing the location of all the cell phones in the city. This is a gross violation of civil liberty, yet, it assists Mr. Wayne in finding The Joker and keeping Gotham City safe. Obviously, many liberals have watched and loved this movie. Though they may criticize George W. Bush and his tactics in combating terrorism, I’m sure they cheered Batman on as he captured his foe. And this is what good art should do; make the viewer question their own code of ethics and whether or not they actually understand what it is they love or hate about their respective parties, and whether or not they should be so easily partial because of party lines. Many of the same liberals who lashed out at conservatives for voting based on what left wingers would call non-issues, and many of those same liberals are one issue voters, and for most of them, their one issue is that they hated George W. Bush.

The most important thing art in the early twenty-first century can do is make us question everything. It is easy to get caught up in what appears to be symbolic propaganda, but many times when an artist appears to be supporting an issue, their true intention is to get people thinking about the issue, not to convince them to wear the issue as a mantle. In any case, twenty-first century Hollywood appears to be in the midst of a new renaissance. The bold social commentary of recent films has made a successful cross-over from the small indie-scene to the mainstream blockbusters, and this is a good thing. Many other mainstream movies are addressing issues with the intent of making the viewer think: Watchmen, though originally created to comment of the cold war fears of the 1980’s, touches upon a great deal of modern cultural and political concerns… but that my friends is its own essay, coming soon. If you do not have a tendency to watch films closely, I suggest you strive to see beyond the barrier of plot and mechanics. Even the film Orphan slipped a tongue-in-cheek cultural joke. When the couple is unable to bear a third child, they refuse to stop trying and eventually adopt a child. The third child seems to be the one who tipped the scales of balance in their home: the couples’ names are John and Kate. Films are fun and entertaining, but the modern film seems to want to re-introduce the notion that they can be intellectually stimulating as well, and that being intellectually stimulated is fun. And it is. And please understand, the issue that endangers our democracy is not the solitary issue that threatens us, it is America’s irresponsibility of not thinking outside the box which is the most horrific threat.

"My Mom Loved Me So Much She Held KISS for Ransom" or; "The Sunday Night Six-Pack"

If you were to ask anyone that had known me for some time about my destiny, they all would tell you the same thing. I was going to be a rock star. Even my ex-father-in-law who’d only known me since my early twenties would tell you right out that I screwed up my life when I was young “trying to be a Beatle.” At age three, I could sing most of the lyrics to Elton John’s “Bennie and the Jets,” and a good portion of “Jet” by McCartney and Wings. Even though I couldn’t read or write yet, I knew what buttons to press on the Jukebox at Choke’s corner store in Centralia to make those songs play. My seventeen year old aunt used to stand me up on the counter there, and I’d sing the lyrics to those songs into a glass Coke bottle. By age six, I was standing on my Father’s bar singing the entire “Rubber Soul” album into a gear shift he’d taken off an old machine at his work. By eight I was playing the jingle from John Carpenter’s Halloween on relatives’ pianos. In sixth grade I started taking formal lessons. By eighth grade I was playing in my first rock band. Throughout my teens I was in and out of various garage ensembles, and at age twenty-three I was recording what was supposed to be an EP with Easter’s Eve for the Shimmy-Disc record label. In my later twenties I found Jesus and rocked out with Resembling Trees and The Tell in his name. When I was twenty-nine I blew a couple grand that I didn’t have on recording equipment. I figured, if no one was going to sign me, I’d sign myself. For those who don’t speak rock star lingo, getting singed is the equivalent to getting laid when you’re a teenager; even rumors of it make you somewhat legit, if not legendary. So basically, I fucked myself to the tune of bankruptcy.

I was almost a rock star. I was almost a lot of things. I was almost a factory worker, a home builder, a care taker for the mentally retarded, a youth pastor, a phonebook-maker, and a missionary. Truth is, I’m not any of those things. They’re just things that I’ve done. What I am is this: my father’s son, a teacher, a writer, an ex-husband, sensitive, obsessive compulsive, creative, nurturing, slightly manic depressive, and most importantly, happy. I wasn’t always all of these things, particularly happy. Most of my life has been falling back on plan B.

I was five when I first saw Kiss on television. Everything my Father had tried to instill in me went down the drain for a couple of years. “Destroyer” was the first record I ever purchased with my own money. I took the payload I received for turning six to Woolworth, and proudly stood at the register with my Dad and that glossy, shrink wrapped record in my hand. Before this, it was all Beatle records: my Dad’s American original pressings that I scratched and ruined on my carry-case, mono phonograph. But this music was different. It was loud, irreverent, and written for six-year-old-minded people.

Before “Rock and Roll Over” came out that same year, I added “Alive,” and “Dressed to Kill” to my collection. And by the time “Love Gun” came out, my mother was concerned. Not just with the affect this music was having on me, but with the half naked women on the album cover. That was the first time I saw Peter Criss in the white, X-shaped shirt. I wanted to be him.

My mother used to beg me to sit down and do my homework. I didn’t want to. I wanted to listen to Kiss. I wanted to talk about Kiss. I wanted to stare at my Kiss lunchbox. I wanted to draw Kiss. I pretended I was Kiss. She began using the token-barter system. If I did my homework, I could stay up until nine-thirty. I could listen to one Kiss record before I went to bed. I could buy another Kiss record. And finally, I could listen to Kiss while I did my homework. That worked. Sort of. My mother loved me so much, she held Kiss for ransom.

It was almost quarter to nine and I still hadn’t finished my penmanship homework. I was listening to “Love Gun,” the cover on the table next to my notebook with one of my eyes on it while I wrote out the alphabet: the lower case letters reaching and not exceeding the light blue dotted line. I almost made it. I was so close. I got all the way to x, and as I was writing the capital Xs I proclaimed, “Look mom, just like Peter Criss’ shirt!”

That did it. She snapped. The last thing I coherently heard was the needle scratching over the vinyl during “Plaster Caster,” then it was all her screaming and me screaming, writhing on the floor as she took all of my Kiss records, and my phonograph, walked out the front door with them, and locked them up in my Father’s tool shed. Now I had to do homework in complete silence before six o’clock for about a month. And I did. And I remember the night I got the records back, the stack of them as ice cold as the January wind, and I clutched them to my chest, held them against my face, and listened to side three of “Alive” six times in a row.

There were numerous attempts to thwart my fixation on Kiss. Sister Ramondine, my first grade teacher, told me that Kiss stood for “kids in Satan’s service.” I wasn’t scared of Satan yet; I was scared of the Devil.

Kiss convinced me that I was a rock star already. My entire fantasy life was me hanging out with Kiss, and joining the band. Eventually, because of creative differences, I had to leave the band. My lingering Beatle influence ruined our relationship, so after “Alive II” came out, I quit the band.

My first solo appearance was on our back deck, in front of thirteen trees. It was a windy day, so the applause was thunderous. I strummed my baseball bat left handed as a tribute to the other Paul, a publicly defiant statement to my old band. It didn’t come off without a hitch, I forgot the lyrics to “Lo Caw Morris,” a song about a fictional British war pilot that I sang to the tune of Electric Light Orchestra’s “I’m Alive.” I was rock royalty. No one dared sue me over stolen melodies. “Rock and Roll City,” and “Don’t Do It,” were both sung over Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Satruday Night Special.”

Even though I was cured of Kiss, inspiration was everywhere I looked, so concentrating on mandatory tasks was impossible. My next big hit, “No. 2,” was inspired by the pencil I wrote it with.

My music was becoming eccentric and mature. I saw a picture of Ritchie Blackmore in a music magazine with a caption that read, “I can’t put up with incompetence,” and that became the title of my next single. For Christmas, my Aunt Sonja bought me what would be an otherwise useless gift: a notepad with numbered lines and a heading that said “Dumb things I gotta do,” but that phrase became the title track to my next album. But my biggest hit, the one I was beckoned to play at every concert, was “When the Weather was Cold.” I can remember the lyrics like it was yesterday: “A long time ago / when the weather was cold / and the people didn’t know what to eat / (killer guitar lick similar to the intro to Billy Joel’s “Big Shot” goes here) / a big fat man / ran down the road / after a big fat toad / a big fat ugly toad / a big fat pregnant toad.” I can’t remember the chorus, but I know I sung it to the chorus of The Little River Band’s “Lady.”

During the winter touring season, I played my bedroom a lot. The way me and my brother’s twin beds jutted out from opposite walls made for an elaborate stage set. When I wasn’t touring, I wrestled in the WWF on that very stage, every match ending with the victorious pile driver I laid on my baby brother. I also boxed in the no-punches-to-the-face boxing league. Winter mittens were the accepted boxing gloves. I was also a sitcom star on a 24 hour a day program: it was the first incarnation of reality television. My busy schedule eventually ended my long-term relationship with Deborah Harry. She never really understood me anyway.


At age twelve I retired from the industry all together due to the pressures of reality. My withdrawal from the rock world led to an addiction to Marlboro reds, and the occasional dangerous dip of Hawkins, mixed with a little Gold River for extra sweetness. I fell into a bad crown for a while. They were into the hard shit. Copenhagen and Skhol. For a while the trendy thing was Skhol Bandits. I gave up the Bandits after swallowing one in Immaculate Heart Elementary School to avoid getting caught.

Life was long and mundane, that is, until The Police and The Clash and Elvis Costello and Joe Jackson came along. I was often seen on summer evenings at my Father’s bar with Sting, Meatloaf, and Paul McCartney, and with Nancy Wilson on my arm. They all ditched me when I met Roger Waters. The only people who would hang out with me then besides Roger was the cast of Nickelodeon’s “You Can’t Do That On Television.”

My Father’s stereo pulled in WYSP from Philly through the cable. I spent the summer of ‘83 listening to the un-hip but too-cool-for-you playlists of post-punk artists and prog-rock bands. I didn’t see much of my friends (the real ones, not the imaginary ones) that summer. I slept until five in the afternoon on most days, having been up until five in the morning dubbing songs from the radio onto the eight track cassette recorder.

WYSP used to have a show called the Sunday-Night Six Pack. On this program, they would play six full-length albums. One night I sat through Dylan’s “Blood on the Tracks,” disenchanted because the man wasn’t living up to the myth. I was in the kitchen swiping another pack of my parents’ Salem Slim Ultra Lights when the deejay announced the next album, a double: “Pink Floyd The Wall.” I, like everyone else, knew the anthem, but hadn’t been exposed to the whole piece of work yet.

It was about three songs into side one when I realized I should have been recording, so right near the end of “Another Brick in the Wall Part One,” I hit the pause button and let it roll. It took up the greater portion of a ninety minute eight track. I was now twelve, and about to become far more obsessed with this record than I ever was with Kiss or The Police or The Beatles or anything else I’d ever heard before.

Because of Pink Floyd, I quit a real band. Defender was a power trio consisting of Jeff Cawthon on guitar, Jim Edmundon on drums, and me on a Lowery Micro-Genie keyboard. Jeff and I knew each other since first grade, got really close in sixth, and by eighth, formed the band. Jim was younger than us, but a hell of a drummer for his age. We wrote our own material – a whopping set list of four songs plus a half-assed cover of Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy.” And everything was instrumental. By the spring of 85, Bill Adams was playing bass in the band. Everybody else was still into Kiss, and Billy Idol and The Scorpions and Quiet Riot and Van Halen. I was into Pink Floyd. That’s it. So I split that scene.

By high school I was a complete progressive rock snob, but I compromised to form Relayer. Me, Ray Wyland, and Jim Oakum were the only people in the band that knew we were named after a Yes record. Bill Adams from Defender climbed aboard to play bass, I was still on keys, Ray was a fantastic guitar player for his age, and Jim was legendary. Two years younger than us but possibly the most advanced musically. Bands like Genesis and Rush influenced his drumming, and he was the master of his universe. Eventually we recruited Jon Boyer to sing and play rhythm guitar. The rest is history no one knows but five boys.

Relayer was on-again off-again throughout high school. After graduation, it was off altogether. And I had my first life crisis. I flunked 11th grade, graduating a year behind most of my friends and bandmates, and I was on my own. In desperation, I bought a four track cassette machine to make demos on. My dream of becoming a rock star was in danger. I couldn’t sing, and synth-pop was long dead.

More to come???...

Post-Post Modernism in the Public Consciousness: Part 1 - A Hatchet Piece

In the true spirit of the Post-Post Modernists, I present for your reading pleasure, a redux of a previous rant...

For lack of a better term, contemporary critics have begun to call post-9/11 art Post-Post Modernism. The more I think about it, the less it bothers me. After all, it was the Post Modernists who predicted that culture would endlessly recycle itself and great artists who produced great works of art would be forgotten. They couldn’t have been more accurate. The 1970’s brought forth a plethora of iconic images from the wild 1950’s; Grease was the word, Happy Days dialogue spilled over into the vernacular, and pre-Star Wars George Lucas had a hit with American Graffiti. When the eighties rolled around, tie dies were once again in fashion and there were two Woodstock revivals. The nineties gave album oriented rock its last hoorah while slackers in bell bottoms swarmed the traveling music festivals. The very beginning of the twenty-first century found itself sounding more like 1981 than 2001, and then the unthinkable happened. Pop culture logic would solemnly swear that 9/11 marks the beginning of a new artistic period. After all, if the rapid change in technology and World War I contributed to the Modernist movement, and the atom bomb ushered in a less optimistic period than its predecessor, then contemporary critics are right on the money. But what about that awful name: Post-Post Modernism. It sounds comical, uninspired, even lazy. Could there be a better moniker for a period that is basically Modernism 2.0? If Post-Modernism saw pieces of culture trickling back into the public consciousness, what would the Post-Modernists have to say about Hollywood’s recent trend of raping classic films, compromising their dignities by re-scribbling a screenplay and handing it to an incompetent director? Doesn’t it make sense that we would recycle the name of the era itself? I believe it does. So what, right? Not that all PPM art is artistically compromised, but there is a huge chunk of it that certainly is, and nowhere is it more prevalent than in the horror film genre. Every genre has its landmark achievement; you can’t mention the words “gangster movie” without The Godfather coming to mind. Gone with the Wind is the cookie cutter for epic drama. It’s a Wonderful Life contributed more isms to the Holiday Blockbuster than any other film of its kind. And then there’s the horror genre, and those of you who know me well know just where I’m going with this. Anyone could hear Michael Bay tripping over the rights to The Amityville Horror and Friday the 13th a mile away, but that comes with the territory. However, it is sacrilege that his first remake cha-ching was a hideous re-imagining of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Richard P. Rubenstine’s production team taking on a remake of George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead is sickening. Those of us who love these films knew damn well that the unthinkable would happen sooner or later, and it did. And Hollywood would be hard pressed to find a bigger jackass to defile the sacred. Yes, I am referring to Rob Zombie’s Halloween. Go ahead, yawn, have yourself a stretch, and when you’re good and ready, listen up.

Rob Zombie re-defines Halloween – that is undisputable. Unfortunately, this redefinition is a direct result of Zombie’s incompetence as a writer and director. Zombie’s re-imagining/prequel of John Carpenter’s 1978 masterpiece is yet another Hollywood victory in the attempt to convert art into eye candy for the attention spanless generation. Gone is the subtle social commentary; it is replaced with cheap cliché’ and conventions of shock cinema, only it isn’t all that shocking. Michael Myers has been reduced to the product of trailer trash rather than the evil sprout sprung from the seed of suburban complacency. And this is where Zombie’s deficiencies are most evident.

The opening of the original Halloween lasted all but five minutes: a mobile subjective camera shot, then a brief switch in perspective as a crane slowly pulled back to reveal what seemed to be the fully functional Myers family, in an uncomfortably long shot, where everything appeared to be normal with the exception of the bloody knife in six-year-old Michael’s hand. Enough said. But not for Zombie. Instead he gives the audience, who he obviously assumes is as ignorant as he is, almost forty minutes of exposition in an attempt to create a mythology for the Myers character. Michael’s step-dad is a meanie, his mommy is a pole dancer, and his sister is a whore. Somehow, Zombie felt this necessary to build Michael’s character. And at what point are we supposed to fear Michael? Certainly not when he brutally murders a school bully. Any human being that has been subjected to any kind of cruelty from peers, which is basically all of us, is going to identify with little Mikey sympathetically. The moment the audience starts rooting for the serial killer, the scares are gone. It becomes the same cheap slasher dung that plagued the eighties.

Judging by its thirty million dollar opening weekend, all of this is good. After all, Carpenter provoked his audience to look closely at the Myers clan and decipher the evil for themselves. But movie savior Rob Zombie has the solution in all of its vulgar glory laid out for his audience. Forget about the fact that the original Myers sprung from middle class America, far too concerned with production and consumption to recognize the result of person to person deprivation, a true demon of the Post-Modern era, which could be all the more relevant now in the age of the internet and i-phone than it was in 1978. This is where Zombie completely failed. Our culture may have actually been ready for a re-telling of the Myers story. Too bad Rob had to re-imagine it for us.

It’s a shame Rob couldn’t make up his mind whether Myers was white trash or the boogeyman. It’s also a shame that he took a character like Sam Loomis, so competently portrayed by the legendary Donald Pleasance, and turned him into a blubbering wimp. And as for Laurie’s friends, Annie and Lynda – who cares at this point. Slice ‘em up and get on with it. What’s the point of character development in a movie that is too over-developed for its own good? This deprived generation will never identify with Lynda and her overuse of “totally,” or Annie’s preoccupation with her hair in spite of the fact that she was wearing a man’s shirt and no pants. So what is the point of any of it? A thirty million dollar opening weekend. And that’s it.

Zombie and producer Malek Akkad new very well they had the attention of two generations: the first being those of us who loved and cherished this film as that rare achievement where good film making transcended the restraints of genre, and the second being the generation that grew up hearing about it from parents and older relatives. Perusing the message boards, I found that one defender of this film boldly stated that it was “never meant to be as good at the original.” I guess Zombie was shooting for the eighties “New Coke!” attitude. Remember how bad that sucked? Remember how quick “Coke Classic” took its place? Retracing the footsteps of Coca-Cola’s failure, Rob Zombie birthed a product that was all hype, and his taste-budless minions sucked it right down with the “new must mean better” mentality that plagues their generation. Other defenders challenged the naysayers to not compare the two films. Since when is comparing products a bad idea for consumers? If Zombie’s crowd doesn’t want his films being compared to classics he can’t possibly hope to improve, maybe he shouldn’t remake them. Maybe he should go back to directing cartoonish MTV versions of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and title them House of a Thousand Whatevers. Zombie is a tool. Really. A tool in the hands of a depraved Hollywood out of original ideas for anything besides making a couple million bucks.
Now that the unthinkable has happened, it is safe to say that the critics who have knighted this era Post-Post Modernism are perhaps more intuitive that I originally gave them credit for. But this is only the dark side of the Post-Post Modern age of horror. There is light at the end of the tunnel. With the same zeal that independent filmmakers impressed their indelible stamp of socially aware film making, there are directors attempting to do the same by recycling the mentality only, and not the art. Films like Cloverfield, The Mist, and M. Night Shalman’s The Village expose the failures of the Bush-Cheney era with genuine intelligence and unflinching attitude. And this is where the real art of the Post-Post Modern era finds its significance. Whichever genre you prefer, watch closely. Look beyond the plot. Revel in the filmmaker’s underlying commentary, and embrace Post-Post Modernism for what it accurately is.

For Every Atom Belonging To Me as Good Does Not Belong to You

If Jeff Lynne is remembered for anything, it will most likely be for ruining later era Beatle solo projects and latter day Tom Petty records. This, of course, is disregarding the seven or eight people, people I’ve never met mind you, that will insist he be remembered for the Electric Light Orchestra, his feckless contribution to the annals of rock and roll. Here’s the thing, if you truly and honestly love rock and roll, it is possible that you might stumble upon something slightly redeemable from the worst artists. And I mean if you really, really love it to the point where you’ve spent countless lost hours compiling CDs and mixed tapes that you know you are probably only going to listen to once – that kind of love. This kind of love can be brutal. You’ll buy records you would be embarrassed to show friends for that one red-letter song that you wish meant as much to your loved ones as it does to you. And sometimes when you’re listening to it, you pretend that it does. The kind of love that makes you willing to piss away a month of weekday-nights scouring the file sharing circuit knowing that when you finally find it you’ll be so ecstatic that when you finally hear it, it’s a letdown. Songs are like atoms; the entire fabric of your being is made up of them. On their own, they might pass as miniscule, but the reality is that the ultimate sum is made up of the parts, and if you take any away, the person you amount to is not the same person you are. And that’s where “Mister Kingdom” comes in.

Mr. Kingdom is a throw-away track from ELO’s 1974 Eldorado pseudo-symphony, but I first discovered it as the b-side to their 1977 “Turn to Stone” single. Please be advised that the single was not mine, it fell into my hands through my father. You need to understand that my father’s single collection is made up of songs like “Break My Stride,” “I Touch Myself, “and “Come On Eileen.” He didn’t have bad taste in music; he was just neurotic enough about his taste to not give a shit about what anyone, including his own flesh and blood, thought of it. And I’m fortunate for that, because this is the same avenue that led me to discover songs like The Steve Miller Band’s “Shu-Ba-Da-Du-Ma-Ma-Ma-Ma,” and anyone who knows me intimately knows that I would not be the person I am without that gem of an atom in my repertoire. The same goes for “Mr. Kingdom.” You should also know that I was a child of seven years old, which meant things like lack of a tasteful melody, effortless production, and hookless choruses didn’t come into play when I fell in love. It was the kind of music that you absorbed by letting it absorb you; it was a vibe, a beautifully monotonous wave like the language between old computers and cassette tapes full of screechy blips. The computer just understands, you see? And so did I in that very same way. It made my wheels turn. It made me want to hear it again. It became something I heard in the endless chamber of my musical memory which derailed my academic endeavors in grammar school. I craved it like I crave cigarettes, and it charmed me like cheerleaders and punk rock chicks did when I was in high school.

It’s highly likely that I’ve never mentioned or attempted to play this song for many people because I, the lover of rock and roll that I am, understand that this is one of my atoms, or even a gene if you like, that defines my character in a significant way only known to me. But it’s time to tell the world about it. It’s time to give Jeff Lynne his due for the one thing he did right so that I could be who I am today.

“Mr. Kingdom” is one of those songs that went into hibernation for a considerable period of time, only rearing its head into the twenty-first century when I was compiling my 35 CD set, “The Vinyl Vault,” for my 301 Pioneer disc changer. And yes, it will play randomly from all 300 discs. Sure, I could buy an MP3 player of some sort, but fuck that. The atoms from which this lover of rock and roll is made of will not let the art of album producing and mix-taping die. Seriously, what the hell is a playlist? I’ll tell you. A play list is something that lazy people throw together hap-hazardly to fulfill whatever fleeting fancy they choose to half-entertain. I mean, really, you’ve never suffered over what song to cut from a playlist because you don’t have to, and I hate you for it. I hate you for not knowing what it is to love and lose, to desire and reject, to lie awake at nights justifying how it could be that not one damn Pink Floyd song made it onto your Desert Island CD for reasons like interrupting the flow of the desired vibe of the project. Pardon me, for I digress.

What is “Mr. Kingdom?” It’s function of the concept album from which it sprung is beyond me. And it’s sung by that other guy who’s name I don’t care if I ever know who sings some songs in ELO. I did at one time own the vinyl record of Eldorado, scooped it up at a yard sale just to recapture “Mr. Kingdom.” And come to think of it, that’s the real pleasure of album owning. I’ve owned hundreds, some of which I cannot trace the origins of their existence in my collection, but I’ve listened to them all at least once in the hope of adding another atom to my animal. Anyway, when my turntable finally died in the late 90s, that was it for “Mr. Kingdom” until the Pioneer changer needed feeding.

Here’s the answer to the question in the previous paragraph. “Mr. Kingdom,” is a mellow keyboard oriented number whose melody borrows heavily from “Across the Universe,” which is probably what made the other atoms react when I first heard it. It’s not quite as stringy as the other ELO crap. And one of the other major draws is the wonderful articulation of the lyrics and Burton Cummingsesque babbling that falls between the verses and after the hearty second chorus, a bit more restrained in such a way that you would imagine Cummings would do as he was going under for an operation. It’s the one song where Lynne’s lack-of-tasteful-production producing style shrouds the song in those unanswerable infinite questions: what-the-fuck-is-this-and-why-do-I-love-it-oh-so-very-much-I’m-giddy? And trust me on this; if I played it for you, you wouldn’t get it. That’s why I’m telling you, so you won’t fault me for this soft spot in my atomic structure, so you’ll still respect me the next morning when the drink wears off. And part of the reason it still resonates with my person is because, I can’t tell you who Mister Kingdom is, and I don’t care if you or I or even Jeff Lynne ever figures that out. It’s just a title that suits the song; another score for Lynne. It’s the kind of song you write a week into learning to play a new instrument. You're so happy to just have written the damn thing that you work up the balls to record it, and everybody loves it because it is so damn effortless, it just came to you because of your limited understanding of how to write it in such a way that it makes sense musically, and the lyrics came out of the necessity of having something to sing, and the title came from some stupid phrase you remember from a high school biology text book – I once wrote a song called Geothermalnuclearsolowater when I was in ninth grade. That, however, I didn’t work up the balls to record.

The point is, I want you to realize I’m writing this because of “Mr. Kingdom,” not for it. And there it is. That’s it. That simple. That’s the beautiful thing about songs. Some you extract from existing bodies of work and find a significant place for it in your own compilations. And then there are even some that don’t need the body. They are the body within the body, that atom next to another atom that in all of their various incarnations of mixed CDs and tapes, the ones you listen to for years, the one’s you care so little about you throw them on the car seat in direct sunlight, the ones you play all by themselves, sometimes over and over until it’s out of your system, but you know it never really is, and when you get tired of listening to it, you start thinking about why you needed it so badly in the first place, why you couldn’t just let it go for good. I mean, do you ever really think about that? Do you ever really wonder what the last time will be when you listen to a song? I do.