tonight on sports center, thom yorke!

When I was sweeping the other day at Starbucks I thought I heard the opening of an Okkervil River song, “Our Life Is Not a Movie, Or Maybe.” My heart stopped, and then I realized it was a completely different song. Why did my heart stop? So what if the radio in Starbucks is going to play a song that I love? So what if corporate culture has latched onto a highly promising band? This should be a good thing rather than a bad thing. They’ll sell more records. Let it go.

“1,2,3,4” by Feist appeared in an iPod commercial last fall. The appearance of this song in this commercial had no bearing on whether or not I liked The Reminder. I already thought The Reminder was a weak record with a few strong-as-steel tracks, “1,2,3,4” among them. What angered me and made me wish I’d never heard this song was the fact that it played in every commercial break of every football game I watched. It appeared in every commercial break of every football game I watched. Everyone has their breaking point, and every love wears thin from repetitive stress disorder. I could only take so much. I still think “1,2,3,4” is a good song (even if that one part doesn’t make any sense, “5,6,9,10”; what happened to 7 and 8?). I just never want to hear it again.

I’m not the kind of guy who gets upset when a favorite song appears in an advertisement. Let me qualify that. I’m not the kind of guy who typically gets upset when a favorite song appears in an advertisement, or even in a movie or some other setting where “selling out” may or may not have occurred. What I look for is context, as I’m sure I’ve said before. What is your song about, and what is your context? Do they coincide? If they do, go with it. If they don’t, please find another song or write your own.

While watching ESPN at 4:50 this morning (still on the ESPN kick; sorry) I saw a commercial for their NBA playoff coverage. Manu Ginobli and Steve Nash share opposite sides of the screen, their faces cut in half and placed together to make one, and they recite the same lines about loving the game, wanting the championship, hungering for more. What made me sit up wasn’t my love for basketball, if there is any love to speak of. It was the riff. I was listening to “House of Cards” by Radiohead in an ad for the NBA playoffs. My first thought was, “Cool! The best song on the new Radiohead album is getting some major air play. Good for them.” Honestly, that remained my thought until I showered this afternoon. I got to wondering what “House of Cards” is really about. I have never sat down to read the lyrics, which is something I like doing when I listen to a new record. I love chewing the gristle of music. That’s where the best parts are.

Here are the lyrics of “House of Cards”:

I don’t want to be your friend I just want to be your lover No matter how it ends No matter how it starts Forget about your house of cards And I’ll do mine Forget about your house of cards And I’ll do mine Fall off the table and get swept under by denial

The infrastructure will collapse From voltage spikes Put your keys in the bowl Kiss your husband goodnight Forget about your house of cards And I’ll do mine Forget about your house of cards And I’ll do mine Fall off the table and get swept under by denial

Denial, denial Denial, denial (Your ears should be burning) Denial, denial (Your ears should be burning)

This is a song about an affair. Our speaker is a man (or a woman, possibly) trying to convince a married woman to cheat on her husband. “No matter how it ends”: I don’t care if your marriage collapses like a house of cards. Your part is to forget your home. My part is to love you. Your husband can live in denial while the house collapses from the electricity of our love. Denial – you already know what that is. Admit that you love me and let’s get this underway.

Nothing at all to do with basketball, but I know why ESPN chose it as their trademark sound for the NBA playoffs. It sounds cool. It’s mellow. It’s as cool and mellow as slow motion highlights of Steve Nash striding in for lay-ups or jauntily passing the ball behind his back to Amari Stoudemaire. Sure, it sounds cool. I don’t think ESPN meant to imply that either man – Nash or Ginobli – is trying to convince a married woman to have an affair.

Or what if they are? Think of the role advertising plays. We are coaxed into doing things we otherwise wouldn’t. ESPN shows commercials for the NBA playoffs to convince people who otherwise wouldn’t watch to watch. You can cheat on American Idol. Desperate Housewives can wait. Dexter will still be there when you get home. Just admit you want to watch some basketball and we can get this show on the road.

I just had an existential moment. I love music. I think that’s what’s supposed to happen. Thank God for the gristle.

PS- I’m still listening to Blind Faith.

tabloid sports journalism

I watch ESPN a lot. Probably too much. Even if Sports Center has NBA news I’ll watch. This time of year especially, every non-football sport is gearing up for drama. NHL and NBA playoffs are in full swing and Major League Baseball is getting airborne. I will watch anything sports related.

Ever since it came out earlier this year I have followed the Mitchell Report. I watched Senator Mitchell’s press conference, I paid attention when Andy Pettite came clean, I listened for Roger Clemens’s response and waited just as long as everyone else, I watched most of the Congressional hearings with Clemens and Brian MacNamee and found it a disgusting charade. This whole business has grown increasingly out of hand, and now we have a new storyline with an alleged affair between Clemens and country singer Mindy McCready. I just watched Best of Mike and Mike In the Morning, and this is the hot topic of discussion. It’s understandable. This is the big news and these two are supposed to discuss all the major events in the world of sports. When Senator Mitchell first presented his report, however, I don’t believe this is what he intended.

All this business is beginning to sound like the Whitewater investigation in the Clinton presidency. What began as an investigation into Clinton’s somewhat suspicious dealings in the world of real estate and land development turned into a media circus over lying to his wife about a blow job. Somehow the nation saw fit to impeach a president because he had an extra-marital affair. If one were to order all married men and women in the United States to stand down from their jobs because they had an extra-marital affair or lied to their spouse about something, the nation would be running at half strength. It was a long and convoluted process that took us from Arkansas land development to, “I did not have sex with that woman,” and I’d have a stroke if you asked me to map it out. What’s happening now with Roger Clemens and the Mitchell report is following the same path. It disgusts me.

One of the chief things Senator Mitchell said when he presented his report was that, regardless of which players he implicated in his report and regardless of what they had done in the past, the past is the past. Let the past be the past. Do not punish players for transgressions they committed years ago. Instead, let’s work towards preventing steroids from seeping into professional sports and becoming even more rampant than they are now. In other words, spare Roger Clemens from a media circus and let bygones be bygones. The future is what we need to worry about. Preventative measures must be taken to stop this from happening again. We’ll get tangled up in the past worrying about what these people may or may not have done. Concentrating on the present to clean up the future is what we need to do. Somehow, however, we have gone from Brian MacNamee allegedly supplying Andy Pettite and Roger Clemens with HGH to Roger Clemens having an affair with a barely legal, up-and-coming (no pun intended) starlet. This is media trash. This is the National Enquirer. This solves nothing with regards to steroids and HGH in baseball and professional sports. In tabloid fashion, a man’s private life has been pried open for all the world to see. The average citizen salivates for more, because the only news we crave anymore is tabloid news. I think it’s safe to say that we have adequately distracted ourselves from steroids and shown that we really don’t care. All we want is more juicy gossip. That’s what entertains.

Currently listening to: Blind Faith, Blind Faith. I found this LP at Plan 9 back in January. Out of all the Calpton I have ever heard, this is hands down the best. I haven’t listened to it for a while and I’m giving it another spin. I’ll spin it many more times before the day is done.

the best stories, the truest, and you just want to touch them

I went to Alexandria this past weekend for my cousin Heather’s wedding. It was a very succinct service, which worked very well, and Heather was absolutely stunning. I don’t make it home to see relatives nearly as often as I should, but the love never dies. Heather and Glenn will have many, many happy years together. I remember so many times way back in my Maryland years where the four of us – Heather and Chris, Tim and me – would torment our grandfather until he transformed into what he called the Mustard Monster. All he did was curl the edge of his lip in a twitchy sneer and chase us upstairs, but it scared us to death in that thrillingly hectic childhood excitement. We were small enough to fit in my parents’ bed, and we would hide under the covers and laugh and scream ourselves silly, or we would squeeze into a food pantry and laugh and scream ourselves silly. We weren’t very good hiders, and we inevitably had to find a new hiding place. We have grown so much since then. Heather lives in San Francisco and makes budgets for city programs. Chris still lives in northern Virginia and works for the federal government, also making budgets. Tim is a Lutheran pastor, going back to school to get his PhD. I feel like the straggler, grinding away with Starbucks and Plan 9, sending off agent queries for my novel while I’m getting closer to having two completed and unpublished works. Even when it comes to marriage and having the girlfriend (which is always Grampa’s first question when I see him: “So, Nick…is there, uh, you know”) I feel like I’m falling behind. I’m only twenty-six, but I’m watching family and friends getting married off. I shouldn’t sit here waiting for it to happen, but at the same time I shouldn’t force it. I’m happy as I am. Let me say it over and over again and maybe one day I’ll believe it.

While in Alexandria I stayed with my brother and his wife, Emily, and we were in close proximity to my parents. Saturday before the service we went to the Torpedo Factory. If I had a published book, or even financial security that I trusted farther than the end of the month, I would have bought at least three paintings. The artists in these galleries are good, and I use that bland praise in the most sincerely blunt way. If I had the guts to blow half of my checking account on a four hundred dollar watercolor I would have. I’d rather have a place to live with walls on which I can one day hang fine paintings. I snatched one lady’s card so I’d remember her name – Margaret Huddy. She paints in watercolors. I have a special place in my heart for watercolors. When you paint in watercolors you have to play with light, and her images are so lucidly real. I’m a fan of details. She paints a scene of the Capital building at sunset and you want to touch the dome, let your fingertips slide through the ridges, hold it to the light and watch the shadows play in each crevice. She had so many beautiful DC scenes and nature scenes, and each one succeeded on the strength of detail.

This got me thinking on why I love details so much, and I realized it’s because that’s where a good work of art lives or dies. It’s like Reservoir Dogs and the commode story. The story is in the details. Every artist deals in details in varying degrees. The vividness of detail differs for each artist and his or her subject, but the details are what sell it. While someone might paint a sunset heavy in oranges and reds with the landscape blurred in a fiery haze of color, the details may lie in each solitary brushstroke. Look closely at the texture and you may find a volcanic lava flow of color. What looks like a garbled mess up close blends beautifully from twenty feet away, but it’s the detail of each brushstroke that sells it.

It’s the same with telling a story, like Reservoir Dogs and the commode story. You have to know your details. When you tell a story – no matter what form your art takes, because all art is storytelling – you’re going undercover. You’re going to lie to your audience. You’re going to convince them that you are someone you are not. In order to do so, you have to know your details. For another movie reference, it’s like The Usual Suspects. “Convince me.” You are performing a role, and you have to see through it, see it inside and out, see every nook and cranny and wrinkle and wart. If you miss something or forget something you can blow the illusion. Make that story yours. Show them everything. Show the truth. Show the beautiful, the sexy, the sleek. Show the ugly, the dirty, the juicy. Show all the bloody details at once, but make them honest and correct. Make them delicious. Know your details and reveal them. Your stories will swell.

could there be better ways to spend my time?

I just finished watching four movies in forty-eight hours. Here’s a recap.

Austin Powers: Goldmember – How many careers ended with this movie? Tom Cruise, Gwynneth Paltrow, Kevin Spacey, Danny Devito, Brittany Spears – basically everyone from the opening credits. You haven’t heard much from Mike Myers lately, either. All that aside, I love this movie. Dr. Evil is my hero. I can watch him get hit in the crotch with a model meteor over and over again and it’s just as funny as the first time.

Traffic – Should have beaten Gladiator for the Oscar that year, but oh well. Such an ensemble piece when ensemble pieces can wear thin on connecting storylines. Every thread is linked. Topher Grace breaks our 70’s Show illusion with a wonderful performance, and Don Cheadle is Don Cheadle.

Robocop – I probably hadn’t seen this movie in nineteen years, and suddenly it’s on Encore Action. This is the best fucking action movie I have seen in a long time. It’s the best of those 80’s movies about future dystopian criminal states that have become hypnotized by violent media, better than Running Man. So much forgotten love, so much reacquired desensitization. “I’d buy that for a dollar!” Did anyone else notice that Robocop’s gun is in Sin City? And on a side note, “Robocop” doesn’t show up as a spell check error. Fuck yeah!

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters – Contrary to popular reviews, there is something of a plot to this movie. It involves intergalactic conspiracies to steal the most powerful exercise machine ever invented. And Cybernetic Ghost of Christmas Past From the Future really likes to hump things. The very end of the movie says it all in a song: “It’s the end of the movie and it’s getting late/ We know you didn’t come with a date/ You’ll probably go home and masturbate/ Because you can’t afford High-Definition Television because your crappy job doesn’t pay enough money.” Truth, except I already am home. Now if you’ll excuse me…yeah.

my favorite shows are gone, for now

Last night was the season finale of The Whitest Kids You Know. Along with Breaking Bad, these are my two favorite television shows. Both seasons have come and gone. Now I am TV-less once again. Both shows are available On Demand and air regularly, but I can only abide reruns for so long since neither show has lasted long enough to amass a collection of DVD sets. The Whitest Kids You Know only ran ten shows. Breaking Bad had fewer than that. It’s as though I’m not aloud to enjoy television anymore. Someone dangles a good show in front of me and once I latch on they yank hard enough to wrench it away.

The Whitest Kids You Know is one of the funniest shows I have ever seen. I heard a review recently that called it funnier than Saturday Night Live. That’s the truth. I can sit through an entire episode of Saturday Night Live and not laugh once. The actors on SNL are funny people on their own – on their own. On set for SNL they lose whatever spark they have and create a bland, lifeless lump. When I watch The Whitest Kids You Know, I laugh. That’s good enough for me.

I think the primary difference between the two shows is the size of the cast. SNL has always been an ensemble show. While this might have worked in the beginning, it’s gotten out of hand. A year ago they did a sketch about the Third-party debates, bringing out ten of their cast members to portray political parties ranging in absurdity from the Whigs (Andy Samberg dressed like an eighteenth century fop) to the Blacksploitation party (the Good Burger guy dressed like Blackula). It was an amusing sketch, but they took so long introducing each political party so that each cast member could get their chuckle that by the time the sketch got off the ground I didn’t care anymore. It had already been about five minutes. That’s a long time to wait for a laugh. We had to wait through ten people to get it.

The Whitest Kids You Know only has a cast of five. Sometimes only two of them are involved with a sketch, but when they do an ensemble piece they only have to worry about involving five people. There are no guest celebrities, so no one has to write a sketch geared towards making Peyton Manning funny. These are five kids writing comedy that makes them laugh. They are honest. Being on IFC does them a favor because they’re uncensored. They can write a sketch about naked women falling from the sky and they can write the world’s first song about getting stoned with dinosaurs. It’s funny every time. It blows SNL out of the water. Now its season is over. I found a show that I’m willing to catch every week and now its season is over. I found two shows that I’m willing to catch on a weekly basis, and they are both finished with their seasons. Good television is fleeting. Enjoy it while it lasts.

where have all the flowers gone?

I had something to write about. Honestly. When I was driving out here I thought of something to add to my blog, but somewhere between the thought and sitting down at my laptop the idea escaped me. Now it’s gone forever, floating somewhere in my mind, probably in the Dead Zone as Stephen King called it.

Everyone must have a place like that in their heads. It’s the dump, the trash yard of forgotten dreams, the place where all the brilliant ideas go to expire after we let them slip away. They can never be recovered, which is a shame. I wish that as they decayed they could seep into the water supply, like the juices of a landfill. Beneficial pollution, but it’s the residue of ancient ideas trickling into our conscience long after they’ve been abandoned. Unfortunately that isn’t the case, and all we are left with is ether. At least I’m able to wax poetic about it for a few minutes, so it isn’t a total wash.

starbucks puppetry

Today Starbucks unveiled their new coffee blend, Pike’s Place Roast, a coffee that is supposed to take us back to our roots as the world’s finest purveyor of coffee. Pike’s Place is a good blend. It’s very smooth and light, in a positive way, such that a non-coffee drinker could enjoy it. That’s the whole point of this endeavor. Pike’s Place is now our primary offered daily coffee. Along with that, our hold time on coffees has changed from sixty minutes to thirty minutes. Instead of brewing a fresh batch of coffee after sixty minutes we only wait thirty minutes. The coffee stays fresh and tastes better. Starbucks is fighting to remain number one based on taste. I think we can do it.

Listen to me, all corporate monkey. I sound like a walking, talking advertisement. Perhaps I am. But this wouldn’t be me if I didn’t see a few chinks in the armor. Part of our overhaul is a slight change in the logo. We are keeping our green aprons, but the logo on the cups is changing from green to brown. The mermaid is also slightly changing. Instead of seeing her from the waist up, we see all of her. It’s pretty explicit. Her hair covers her boobs, so there’s that, but our twin-tailed friend is sitting in a rather raunchy position. She’s holding her tails and spreading them open. There might as well be a sign with an arrow that reads, “Insert here.” I have to wonder if this crossed anyone’s mind. The new logo is a throwback to the original Starbucks in 1971. At least there is a method. All I can see is madness.

By way of a PS, I wrote in an earlier blog that I saw a number of celebrity look-alikes while working at Starkey Mill Mountain. In one month of working at Starbucks I have now seen an actual celebrity. Roger Clemens came through my drive-thru today. He ordered a Venti Caramel Frappucino with no whip and caramel drizzle. He apparently came through on Sunday, too. What the hell is Roger Clemens doing in Roanoke, Virginia?