Mister Faded Glory | www.misterfadedglory.com

Tool setlist in Kansas City, Mo. last night. They rocked the Sprint Center.

Third Eye

Jambi

Stinkfist

Vicarious

Eon Blue Apocalypse

The Patient

Intolerance

Schism

46 and 2 (close)

(encore break)

Lateralus

Aenema

Obviously, it was a great show. Featured more theatrics from Maynard than usual, and a bit more improvisation than I normally expect. Also, they played (-)Ions and I may be a bit wrong about Eon Blue Apocalypse’s placement, but even though I was OGT back in 92 with their first EP, I couldn’t perfectly place those two.

(Ed. note: This post was written more than a month ago. Couldn’t publish it till I was ready.)

It is May 5, 2010.

Yesterday I called my parents’ home, as I’ve done weekly since I moved away from home: Clear Lake, Iowa, in 1996. I suppose I’m a little proud of this, but not really. After all, it’s not difficult to stay in touch with me. If you comment on my blog, I’m likely to keep up an wordy email correspondence with you for months on end.

No one was home, and so I got the voice message. “Hello, thanks for calling the…” my mom’s voice began, bright, cheerful and clear. I swallowed, a lump in my throat. The phone’s eerie silence engulfed my mom’s voice almost before the beep. I could barely leave a message, and I hung up, realizing it was the final flicker, for me. The last, minor detail.

Up until a week ago, every time I (or anyone) called the house, and no one answered, my father’s calm voice would instruct callers to leave their voice message: “Hello, thanks for calling. We’re not home at this time, but please leave a message, and we’ll return your call.” My father never developed a nasally north-Iowa accent (though he did utter “warsh” instead of “wash”) and his voice message always was a source of comfort for me, a familiar voice, a bell’s clear peal within any din.

Read more

So here I am.

(looks around)

Believe it or not, I’m back. And I even apologize for the delay. Chances are, if you read me, you’re a close acquaintance of mine, and if that’s the case, you probably understand my extenuating circumstances during March, April and now May. Thank you for that.

Not that it’s an excuse, nor am I ready to discuss. But supposedly, writing and blogging and tweeting, and even ripping on lamebrained facebook updates should have kept me sustained, at least a little. After all, those outlets are supposed to be my joie-de-vivre. Lately, however, I’m more grumpy than ever.

Why is this? Well, I don’t have a pithy answer that uniquely somes up the cantankerous me. My life, for the most part, is pretty good. My wife rocks and yes, dweebs, she is hot. My cats rival only the Dynamic Duo as superhero crimefighters. I’ve moved closer to two (or by flight, all) of my favorite cities with favorite people. I live in Jayhawk territory instead of Wildcat (I think it’s a trade-up, though each fan base is uniquely grating.) I’ll cross the summer of 2010 off my list having seen both Pearl Jam and Tool for the third time, which is proof that god exists. (Or proof that he doesn’t, I suppose.)

Read more

Mister Faded Glory returns from hiatus, its author supposedly rested and relaxed after a weeklong trip to San Diego (no, not to punch Philip Rivers in the face).

Upon his return, he immediately squared off against a yard impossibly filled with leaves, and an irascible opossum taking up residence in his shed. Now victorious, he announces his return annoyingly in the third person.

Anyway, I’m here. And I’ll be blogging again, more frequently, and I might even discuss the Hawkeyes (Great season, would prefer aggression with 50 seconds left) and the Colts (Bet on the Texans tomorrow). But in the meantime, I spent most of the fall consuming new stuff – which I’ll be reviewing in staccato bursts during the next few weeks. In addition, I’m a bit more refreshed and a bit more certain These Monks will see the light of day, and I’ll be burning the midnight oil to make it happen. Moreover, I’ve got Book No. 2 in the works. I know, how pointless is that!

Still, in the next few days I’ll cover essentials released, chewed up, and spit out by me this Fall, including:

• Bill Simmons, The Book of Basketball.
• Chuck Klosterman, Eating the Dinosaur
• Jonathan Tropper, This Is Where I Leave You
• The Blind Side.
• Up In The Air
• Alice In Chains, Black Gives Way to Blue.
• Pearl Jam’s tour including show-stoppers in Philadelphia.
• V, the remake.
• Scrubs, the return.

And more, believe it or not. And I know you missed my exuberant schadenfreude at Bill Belichick’s maligned (OK, much-maligned) decision from two weeks ago. Suffice it to say Simmons is right, stat guys are wrong. I love the call if the Patriots are down by a point. With a narrow lead, it was reckless. Groin-grabbingly reckless!

Anyway, presented for your enjoyment is Pearl Jam’s L.A. cover of Hunger Strike with Chris Cornell. My heart melts. (Did that sound weird?)

In high school I got in trouble for wearing a Kurt Cobain t-shirt shortly after the grunge singer’s untimely death.

Well, not in trouble, exactly. As paltry tribute, I happened to buy the Cobain shirt almost immediately after his suicide. I loved Nirvana, like thousands of millions of others. And Kurt was great – surreptitious and wise when not indulging in narcissistic, destructive behavior — actually hilariously funny when not languishing in the spotlight.

I wore the shirt – Kurt D. Cobain, 1967-1994 – one spring day to school during my sophomore year. I thought nothing of it. Not to brag, but I was an A-level, honor-roll student, possibly a future college athlete, and pretty much an All-American kid. I didn’t even drink at age 15 and 16, and I couldn’t get any girls to look at me.

But I wore the shirt, and a teacher, the high school baseball coach, stopped me in the hall. Without quoting verbatim, he said something like, “Really? You really like Kurt Cobain? You think he’s a good role model?” Something crappy like that; like a bonehead parent would say or something.

I defended myself, brushing him off a little too snidely, but sufficiently well-behaved. And I really thought nothing of it. I think I wore the shirt maybe two more times, before it was replaced by that Black Nirvana with stoned smiley face T-shirt. Took me months to find that back in 1994, now they sell the same thing at JC Freaking Penney.

Fast-forward to now. Michael Jackson has died. Maybe you’ve heard.

Though his death isn’t surprising – is it? – I actually was fascinated by the outpouring of people, even within my generation – who immediately sought to remember Jackson’s indelible stamp on pop, R&B, and culture as a whole – casually placing any or all of his music within certain seminal events of their lives.

(Note: I was six when Thriller was released. But I rolled my eyes every time MTV would count down its Top 100 of all time, and you knew Thriller was No. 1, because the network would leave forty full minutes between No. 2 and No. 1. They’d always shorten the full-length We’re Not Going to Take It, but never Thriller.)

Like Chuck Klosterman and Bill Simmons discussed on podcast, this surprised me. Jackson’s relevance, to me, had long past. And his freakish descent into oblivion just grew, well, more bizarre yet totally uninteresting. Even now, I still can’t really quantify Michael Jackson – but probably no celebrity has seen his demons swept under the rug at his death faster than the King of Pop.

But who am I to criticize? Just as I wore a Kurt Cobain T-shirt in 1994, I suppose it’s OK that a fortysomething colleague brought a sequined glove to work the other day. (Note: This actually did happen.) MTV is now playing videos again, a friend reports, even if they are The Way You Make Me Feel at 5:30 a.m. with cut-ins from B-level pop stars remembering the importance of Bad.

I think this phenomenon – our investment in the cultural elite, even the otherworldly famous, is altogether gripping. Not surprisingly, a legend dies. Not surprisingly, a legend’s greatness is remembered. However, this legend’s greatness was forever past. Still, it’s almost as though the death rocks society as much as a legend passing in his prime – Jackson is Elvis compared to Cobain, Hendrix, Joplin, maybe Lennon. Neither has a more preferable epitaph, each one’s greatness still ushering the requisite amount of sad nostalgia.

To me, the seismic nature of Jackson’s death was actually best captured by Joe Posnanski. A whole legion of pre-Generation X inhabitants remembers Jackson and his music, as so overwhelming of their time – all-encompassing. Even though it may not have been their favorite, but, wow, it totally mattered.

… I don’t want to be the sort of 42-year-old man who looks back and reminisces about stuff that wasn’t all that great in the first place. … It isn’t that childhood is so great or so lousy. It’s all of that. To me the point is that there’s a certain feeling that goes with being young and full of hope/fear/grief/anger/loneliness. The sunny days of my childhood were bright yellow. It’s cool, I think, to get a whiff of that brightness again. …

If you grew up in the last 20 years, you would probably only know Michael Jackson for being famous. You might like the music, you might not, but either way you couldn’t hear it. There were only a few years there in the early-to-mid 1980s when you could have truly heard the music. I happened to grow up in those years. So, yeah, I was sad when I heard the news. He was a part of my life. It’s not like I want to hear Thriller again. But I wouldn’t mind hearing it again for the first time.

I totally get Joe’s logic, (And I love his final line) similar to my generation’s’ view of Cobain and his contemporaries. Nirvana was a great band, but there is no earthly way I consider them superior to Pearl Jam. Or even Alice In Chains. Dave Grohl, for that matter, has some superior stuff sprinkled through (way too many) Foo Fighters records. But Nirvana mattered during 1992 through 1994, much more than Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Guns N’ Roses, or Metallica ever will or did.

Cobain ushered in a new era of realism, self-awareness, and nihilism within music. Almost by accident yet somehow by morose, myopic choice – he totally represented all of us who came of age in the 1990s. Though I’m much more likely to queue up Jar of Flies on my Ipod, I totally understand that Nevermind is a vastly more important record. As consumers of culture, we all repeatedly search to re-create the moment when we heard Come As You Are for the first time, and how perfect that moment has become in our minds.

If not Come As You Are, maybe I Want to Hold Your Hand. Or Jailhouse Rock. Or, now, Billy Jean. Subconsciously we all understand where the legends fit within our memories, and how best to celebrate them within our perspective.

So it’s OK to listen to Man In the Mirror; the last 20 years and weird sleepovers be damned. And it’s OK to join a legion of Michael Jackson Groups on facebook; just as it was OK to wear a Cobain T-shirt. You revisit Rock With Me, I’ll go back to Floyd the Barber. Just so we’re OK with one another.

==

Read more

So we’re moving.

Nope, not a site change. Not a new header URL. Not over to Twitter. But physically moving. Fear not, nothing will change for you, the reader. (Although I might be a bit more testy.)

The impending move really isn’t even drastic – instead of lurking in K-State country, we’ll simply migrate east: to Lawrence, Kansas, USA.

That’s really it. Monumental, right? At some certain age, you realize the news and benchmarks of your life really don’t matter all that much to other people. I mean, I could barely care about Accounts Payable Rebecca’s new baby. I didn’t even ask what brand it was.

ANYWAY, as a full-fledged grown-up, a home sale predicates the move. I won’t bother to delve into the sham of realty, or the horrors of working with real estate agents. If you’ve been there, you’re nodding. If you haven’t, you’re lucky. Suffice it to say, however, today we launched our first reconnaissance mission – hoping to ensure our home viewing process is a success.

Not that I’m not trustworthy, but in the down real-estate market, I just wasn’t sure if I believed the agency when they called and scheduled a showing for this afternoon. I’ve sort of convinced myself they’ve been scheduling fake showings anyway, to keep Mr. Faded Glory’s temper (Read: Reasonable follow-through) in check. So today, I launched a counter-mission. You know, just in case.

After making sure the house was shipshape, and Franklin the Cat was prepped for any strangers snooping in his basement, I wolfed down a sandwich and left my house. I stopped in the shed, caressed a case of eye black, and quizzically regarded some foliage scraps. Instead, however, I decided only to stake the place out from my car. That’s right, I told myself. I’m now so narcissistic I’m stalking my own house.

About five minutes before the showing, I parked on a side street, just around the corner, the house barely visible through my Explorer’s back window.

I sucked in my last gasp of recirculated air, then shut off the car and the A/C. Making sure the coast was clear (it’s probably clear) I bolted around the Explorer, crouching behind the grill. I yanked the rear passenger door, folded down the backseat, and ducked inside, already breathing heavy.

It was hot. If you have ever been to Kansas in the summer, don’t go. I also failed to crack a window, so for those of you who have left your pet in a backseat without doing so – kindly jump off a cliff, you monsters. I dabbed my face with a golf towel, and waited for signs of life.

Time passed. My shirt became wrinkled, disheveled – my undershirt neck now hopelessly stretched, hairspray melted, slacks filthy. Undiscovered, I convinced myself the agency would pull a fast one – absolutely certain I’d discover the agency’s realtor darting into the house, dropping off a card, then bolting – a meowing Franklin yipping at his heels.

I imagined me firing my agent, leaping into the front seat, swerving my car in front of his and pointing, knowingly. I was ready. The humid air hung in front of me, the calm street quiet. Too quiet.

Then, people showed up. The realtor unlocked the house. They went in. Franklin meowed, audible through the windshield nearly 300 feet away. Relief! Happiness! Heat exhaustion!

Proud, I exhaled, my peace of mind sort of intact – at least for another day, anyway. And you might be amused. You might be disgusted. But in realty, you gotta do what you gotta do. You might also ask, wow, great. How long did the showing take?

Alas, I don’t know. Drenched in sweat, the group fully invisible inside, I contorted myself into the front seat. I started the engine, gulped the A/C, and I was a ghost. Now I knew.

And knowing is half the battle.

As you’re no doubt aware from years of reading about my exploits (often fraught with peril, or, alternatively, self-delusion), I have a bizarre aversion to classic literature of any kind. Though I like Catcher In the Rye, 1984 and select literary classics, I detest The Great Gatsby and countless others.

In fact, in late 2007 I alluded to a new year’s resolution in 2008 – an achievable milestone of reading five classic novels. Well, guess what. I’m somewhat unhappy (or contemptuous) to inform you I’ve failed miserably in this regard. I made it through five pages of Brave New World, I couldn’t handle The Sound and The Fury, I’ve started Slaughterhouse-Five seven times, and I never picked up the other two: The Grapes of Wrath and A Tale of Two Cities. (The blurst of times!?!).

I can’t explain it. I give up. I love to read. I voraciously devour pages, books, web sites, blogs, magazines and even message boards during Cubs season. But I cannot delve into classics without becoming totally bored, frustrated, lost or annoyed. I’m either exhibit A for the failure of the MTV generation, or much less intelligent than I think I am. Probably both.

Anyway, this is all prelude to today’s nugget of counter-wisdom. As you’ve probably learned from any number of news reports, our global economy lies in ruins. Just as nothing could stop growth in 2005, now doom and gloom and despair await for the balance of eternity. Each reactionary article piles on another in a vicious circle; stories built upon past performance and uncertain predication crafted by reporters who never went to business school nor worked in private sectors – nor who have the time or wherewithal to research any business background or context for their daily financial eulogies.  And how could they? Their dwindling news staffs spend more time spinning quaint soliloquys about the death of printed media than bothering to focus on newsgathering, much less journalism. (Hate to pick on Joe, but his was convenient. ED.: Wait, here’s another. Shut up.)

Regardless, it’s trite to complain about doom and gloom, I know, but even more trite to dismiss sweeping circumstances that affect millions of people today. We get that, and I’m sorry. Life does suck. Things are bad, and many people hurt; I attempt not to be callous. (Except about the newspaper stuff. Stop whining and search for a solution. Print died in the 1990s, you guys just never knew.)

But it’s not going to last forever. What goes left must veer right, what goes up must come down. Life is never as good as when it’s great, nor as bad as when it’s dire. (Ed. note: This is usually my rationalization for any pitfalls during any given Cubs season.)

And I bring up literature because I’m finally reading Jay McInerney’s Brightness Falls, the wunderkind’s 1980s follow-up to his brilliant Bright Lights, Big City – my favorite novel ever. The swirling, cast-of-hundreds follow-up occurs in 1986, within Manhattan, and, well, just read on:

It was all too much. The Dow Jones would probably hit two grand today, but Corrine thought it was crazy. The economy was in dreary stages; inventories high, GNP slow, but the Dow kept shooting up. It was a kind of mass hypnosis. Castles in the air.

She had to be careful what she said around the office. Wall Street was pumped up. It was like a cocaine jag. Everyone grinning fiendishly, talking to fast, not quite focusing on anything.  The clients, too. Especially the clients. Corrine tried to moderate their greed, urging them to look for real value. … But everybody wanted instant gratification. …  They wanted risk without downside. They wanted to get in on a takeover prospect right before it went into play and double their money in three days. They wanted whatever was in the headlines that week, preferably on margin. They wanted to be able to tell their dinner guests they sold short on a turkey. They wanted sex and drugs and rock and roll.

McInerney, Brightness Falls, p. 42, 1992, Alfred A. Knopf.

See? We never learn; we always want sex and drugs and rock and roll. The recently-passed Paul Harvey, a wise man, once claimed, “In times like these, it’s helpful to remember that there have always been times like these.”

Which is helpful, I guess, but doesn’t alleviate the doom and gloom. Nothing probably will, until later, until change, and until we’ve forgotten all about this. Someday it’s coming.

We think.

Finally, a great, revolutionary, phenomenal day. Right?

What a moment. It’s tough not to gloat, to waggle fingers, or to proselytize, but whatever. Tonight is great, and thanks to any of you who voted for the correct choice. Thanks to the state of Iowa, my home, for proving your intelligence.

Perhaps it’s trite to claim Barack Obama’s win as a landmark. But I suspect most of us feel the same way about Mr. Obama that the devilish Baby Boomers felt about John F. Kennedy. In any case, as great a leader as we think President Obama; none of our pride, happiness, or thrill can even compare to the feeling African-Americans must feel tonight. I mean no disrespect; this is truly monumental, and I’ll never understand or describe it. But that doesn’t mean I can’t feel some empathetic pride.

Maybe this is the sea change for which we all hope. Maybe. Yes, yes, we can.

Thank you.

It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls, for the times, they are a-changing.

Not that I’m joining the rabble of conservatives eagerly slapping high fives after VP nominee Sarah Palin displayed effusive charisma (at least more than expected) during her speech last night. I simply wanted to write that headline. Hee!

Nor am I among certain insecure louts or bobbleheads who worry about Palin’s family and marriage and all that stuff, or chauvinists who call her shrill. Or old-boy proponents who lock themselves in the bathroom of their ivory tower and a copy of her Vogue mag article, thrilled to find a polished, eager young upstart within a cantankerous party of fossils. To read the media today, you’d think a seismic shift in voter zeitgeist occurred after Palin‘s address. News to them: it hasn’t.

I simply marvel at the swoon, swell, and circus following convention moments like these. This was a VP speech at a political convention. Everyone’s speeches, so far, at these two conventions, have apparently been AWESOME. Obama, Biden, Palin, Clinton, Giuliani, Michelle Obama, other Clinton – everyone is FREAKING FANTASTIC. Always, it’s JUST WHAT THE PARTY NEEDS. (Unless it’s Mark Warner’s snoozefest.) And again, predictably, last night, Tina Fey Sarah Palin was AMAZING  – and now the Democrats should be worried, writes Slate’s John Dickerson. Please, people.

Convention speeches always are absurd pie-in-the-sky pep talks, rousing a party and whipping up frenzy. To debate and analyze the content and delivery ad nauseum is a complete waste of time. It’s a political convention, designed to spark either party;s elite before the fall. The cheers and rallies aren’t exactly political mandates, binding contract, or sermons on the mount.

Secondly, Palin is a VP nominee. How is Sarah Palin going to damage a presidential ticket, either hers or Obama’s? Have you, as a voter, ever really cast a ballot based on the VP race? I know I haven’t. In what year has the VP choice ever really mattered?

As a voter, you don’t a choose the ticket as a sum of parts – you choose for one leader. You vote for one office, the president, and the head candidate. Sure, it’s nice if the VP happens to be a capable policy champion, but it’s not necessary he even comprehends policy in the least.

It’s simply astonishing to assume this VP choice is any more important than years prior, just as it’s counterintuitive to assume voters weigh VP candidates as eventual presidents. In no way, in no election is the choice of a backup paramount to the choice of the ACTUAL commander-in-chief who will, presumably, govern. Ludicrous. It’s a mistake as a voter, to “stockpile” a prez choice just in case we might see them later. That’s like pulling Carlos Zambrano after six innings, saving him for a possible game four. But you knew that.

Not unlike most sardonic, sarcastic, jaded members of some self-effacing generation (X or Y, whichever), today we solemnly note the death of George Carlin. Of course we weren’t privy to the complete rise of Carlin, but discovered him during reruns of Saturday Night Live, HBO, Bill & Ted’s E.A., and re-discovered him while immersed in law school’s First Amendment classes (No, he didn’t help us complete our education).

Carlin was a genius, sure, a brilliant comic with a wordsmith’s penchant for language, blue or colorful, surrounding his gift of observation predating Seinfeld‘s minutiae. Ranging from uproarious (What’s so great about sliced bread? You’ve got a loaf of bread. You’ve got a knife. Slice the fucking thing!) to sublime (Seven Deadly Words), to the football vs. baseball comparison noted today on several sports blogs, Carlin served as a master of his craft, a pioneer like few others.

To say a misfiring blog or unpublished debut novel owes him a debt is far too narcissistic or patronizing, and a comparison too vast. However, Carlin actually will be remembered for his assault on our perspective, a trouper who injected realism, cynicism, profanity, and individualism into my demeanor and nearly all of my bitter, jaded, slightly skewed friends – all of us.

After all, Carlin continually fought the establishment while working inside it, and for whatever establishment you toil, that made him one of yours. No matter who you might be.

“Scratch any cynic, and you’ll find a disappointed idealist.”

(Via NYT link above).

That’s George. That’s most of us. Rest in peace.