Mr. Travolta Would Like a Discreet Massage Now...

After some three months now of no gallbladder attacks worth mentioning (most of the ones I've had have been fleeting enough to barely register, thanks to my new diet of food that doesn't taste good, or more likely indigestion from the few times...okay, the many times I've strayed from said diet), I had something of a relapse into pain territory Saturday night. The beef stew or whatever it was that was prepared in house and advertised to me as "probably not anything that would upset your stomach" did just that. It's my own damn fault for eating it, mind you, but still...someone's trying to kill me (melodramatic music).

Okay, no one's trying to kill me, but if they were they'd likely find me a pushover if they offered me pizza. I miss pizza like the dickens (though not like I miss Charles Dickens, whose Great Expectations is about the only novel of his I've read, and that was a "dumbed down for high-school English students" version, with I'm guessing all the sex and nudity and random gunplay edited out. Right?). I miss spaghetti too, and hamburgers...god, I'd sell my soul for a hamburger with ketchup, pickles, onions mustard, general all-around greasiness, if I didn't know for a fact that it would turn my stomach into the Atlantic Ocean mid-hurricane season, and myself into the Pequod (look, two literary references in one post! I'm getting the English major feeling back in my bones, perhaps).

Living with my gallbladder over the last few months (now that I know what the issue was, thankfully nothing like an alien living in my chest as I suspected) has proven to be both stressful and managable, and as I consider the fact that yes, I'll have to get the sumbitch yanked out sooner rather than later, I can honestly say that I won't jump right away back onto the junk-food bandwagon that has gotten me into this mess in the first place. I mean, sure, I want to eat me some hamburgers, but not immediately after surgery. And I hope I can scale back once I do start back on the junk, because too much of anything ain't good for you. People say I've lost weight since I started not eating crap.

This means I must have been something of a fat-ass before.

Anyhow, with the support of my felloe Scientologists and L.Ron's wisdom to guide me, I'm sure that I can conquer whatever alien-created issues come my way.

What I Talk About When I Talk About Jay-Z: "99 Problems"

On my iPod, I have many, many songs of the indie-rock or alternative genre, with some more classic rock (as opposed to "classic" rock, a genre tag I despise because it seems to celebrate groundbreaking music by tagging it as unworthy of a youngster's time unless they want a history lesson) and other such songs from other genres. Perhaps the least well-represented genre (other than "singer-songwriter," which is odd because a lot of the music I listen to was penned by singers and/or songwriters, but I guess it was meant more for the James Taylor/Cat Stevens style of troubador) is rap, or at least it was initially. Growing up with it, via the Beastie Boys, Run-DMC, and Public Enemy, I felt like the inventiveness of the genre's early days had become lost amid the B-boy posturing and any old excuse to drop an F-bomb into the mix when a simple "Goddam" would've sufficed.

In order to get my iTunes account active, in August of 2008 (the same month I graduated from college and got my heart broken for the umpteenth time, though not in that order), I had to set it up via my brother's account, and let's just say our taste in music did not coalesce. Where he had Fall-Out Boy, I had Death Cab for Cutie, and so on. My mom had given me the iPod as a Christmas gift the year before, and I'd been content to play the games on there for only so long before it occurred to me that hey, this was meant to hold music. And so it was on one gray August day that my sister helped me set up the account, and I proceeded to delete most everything from my brother's/my account (don't worry, he was able to keep his music somehow, though I'm not sure of the specifics and leave that to my more techincally-minded peeps to ascertain), except for one song.

That song was Jay-Z's immortal "99 Problems (But a Bitch Ain't One)."

I was bowled over by the tune, which I'd heard before but only in edited versions on the radio, and was always fond of it. I like a good rap song, especially a good dirty one, and you didn't get dirtier than bitching about the cops, getting into fights that landed both you and your opponent in jail, and rap magazines using your black ass to sell copy. To be sure, I could not relate to any of these experiences, as a white kid from Bumfucksburg, South Carolina, but I could identify in Jay's story a sense of anti-authority rebellion that had appealed to me for a long time, since I read Catch-22 and heard John Mellencamp's "Authority Song" (you may laugh, but remember two things: Mellencamp was big in the Eighties, and the song kicks ass. Springsteen wishes he wrote that one).

Life throws you a lot of motherfucking curveballs; I've had jobs fall out from under me through no fault of my own, but I've lost jobs because I was a bit too loose with my views or eager to name names for my own amusement. In short, I've had more than 99 problems, and a lot of them have to do with things other than romance. Jay's swagger throughout the song is what I'd like to think I could feel like when dealing with all that life throws at me, though more often than not I've wanted to crawl into a fetal position and cry my eyes out. Rarely does this opportunity afford itself after you supposedly reach maturity, however, and the thing I've learned over the years is that no matter how many problems, or how often they seem insurmountable, life has a way of working itself out so that many times you wonder just what the hell it was you were bummed about that particular month or year or decade.

I kept "99 Problems" on my iPod, where it holds a revered status among my rap songs and indeed my entire collection. When "Empire State of Mind" came out, I got it too, and if I never buy another Jay-Z song it's not a big deal, I have the two best ones to listen to anytime life starts to give me hassles. I might not bust a grape in a fruit fight, but when the chips are down I like to think I could draw some strength from past problems and remember how these things too shall pass. For that, I owe Jay-Z some gratitude.

Ministry of Silly Walks

Just a quick one tonight, met up with an old friend I hadn't seen in forever to have dinner and catch up. Always nice to do that, I must say. I've been spending a lot of time with either co-workers or family, so to remember, however briefly, that I have a life beyond the demands of my family or the confines of my workspace is always welcome.

Anyway, HIMYM ended its season last night, and "New Girl" did so last week, as well as "The Office" (yeah, I still watch). That means that, with the finale of "Community" just around the corner, I'm all set for Rerun City when it comes to TV (i.e. lots of Travel channel or just spending more time with the TV off, reading).

I checked out a book about the Civil War recently, before remembering that I just finished Shelby Foote's massive trilogy and thus have no desire to read about the Civil War for the time being. Such is life...

Over and out

Where the Wild Things Be At

We lost another talented famous person (as opposed to just a famous person; don't expect me to mourn any of the Jersey Shore cast if and when they shake off this mortal coil, though I'll feel bad for their relatives). Maurice Sendak died this morning at 83.

What with Adam Yauch and George "Goober" Lindsay, it seems like a bad time to be a celebrity who has actual talent (My favorite thing about Lindsay was when he appeared on Newsradio to give testimony that a skull purporting to be his own was a fake. He handled the skull, paused to look at it, and answered "no"). It's the rule of three.

I only read Where the Wild Things Are a few years ago, when I was working at the local library, and I had ten minutes to kill. It's a quick read, from an adult perspective, but the real part of the book that sticks with you is the imagery, which is amazing. Having harbored aspirations of artistic talent (not really borne out by my drawings, though I think they're charming renderings of the Hindenburg in flames or a Sopwith Camel mid-pursuit of the Red Baron), I can appreciate good art. I love album covers that aren't just "this is the band, standing on a pier" or "hey, look, the band is making a pillow fort." My mom has a good eye for art, and underneath the picture I've seen of my dad, it says that he was an art major. Go figure.

Anyway, that's my view on the whole subject. Be sure to check out Paste Magazine online for my review of Levon Helm's book (I had a link to copy and paste, but I copy and pasted something else and I'm too lazy to go back and get it...or am I?)

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2012/05/this-wheels-on-fire-levon-helm-and-the-story-of-th.html

It turns out I am more industrious than I thought today.

To MCA, I wanna offer my love and respect to the end

I know it's unusual for me to write so much on here (I am not the most attendent blogger), but I feel like the passing of Adam Yauch merits a few words.

When I was a kid, rap music was the unknown, sounds emanating from an urban landscape that I and my friends in rural South Carolina couldn't begin to imagine. What's more, it was made by black people, and you didn't just listen to black people music in the South at that time, unless you did it while no one was paying attention, because it was odd.

(Of course, black music, be it jazz or R&B or blues or early rock and roll, was integral to any Southerners' soundtrack in the old days, but my perception of that time is that black music, especially rap, was not to be listened to).

The Beastie Boys were white, but playing rap. And they were good at it. And after all these years, my childhood enthusiasm for them remains. Paul's Boutique was my soundtrack when I went to work at Anderson at five in the morning, cooking food for tourists staying at a hotel who wanted breakfast. Yauch had been battling cancer for a few years now, but it was still a shock to learn that he passed today. He will be missed.

Living Blue In a Gray State of Mind

Last night, I achieved a milestone, of sorts. I finished the third volume of Shelby Foote's massive (like, a thousand pages per volume) history of the Civil War (or as it was taught to me by the finest educators Oconee County had to offer, the War of Northern Aggression). I consider it an achievement, especially as I read the previous two volumes, beginning this time last year when the 150th anniversary of the war's beginnings came around (what do you get for the War that has everything?).

I knew of Foote from Ken Burns' epic documentary about the Civil War, which aired when I was a kid and helped facilitate a lifelong interest in the War Between the States. He was the kindly grandfather figure, with a slow drawl, who waxed nostalgic about the war and how it affected everyone, North and South. His writing, as it turns out, is in keeping with this kindly grandfather storytelling, though Foote was a younger man when he began the endeavor (the books were published in 1958, 1963, and 1974 respectively). I started out being skeptical that I could keep to such a protracted project of my own devising, even though all it meant was setting aside time to read about the war (I had read thousand-page books before, but I don't make a habit of it). Nonetheless, a year after I started with the first page of the first volume, I finished the last pages on my front porch.

I feel like this deserves some notice.

Anyway, in the year that it took me to read all three books (I took a break inbetween volumes, to cleanse my pallate of all such 1861-1865-related materials in my brain, before embarking on the next), a lot of things happened. I got a niece earlier last year, for one thing. She has been a pretty big part of my life since then. I also got gallstones, though I didn't know it at the time (I will always associate Roy Blount's book about the Steelers, About Three Bricks Shy of a Load, with my first serious gallstone attacks). I went through ups and downs, then again and on repeat. And I discovered that Shelby Foote was a pretty damn good writer, if you could invest the time in reading his massive life's work.

Though written by a Southerner, the books are evenhanded, and I challenge anyone to find a better portrait of Abraham Lincoln in anyone else's writing. It's well worth all the time I spent in slogging through some of the less-interesting stuff to get to the things I found interesting. I might very well have saved the volumes at my local library from being deleted from the stacks, because I'm pretty sure I'm the first person in forever to check all three out at any time (and read them all the way through, to add to that).

I am awesome in my reading skills, then ;-)

Anyway, as a pallate cleanser (or is it "palate?" Spelling has never been my forte), I'm gonna read a Lewis Grizzard book.

Mormon Is the New Black

Some random observations about the upcoming election: it seems pretty much a certainty that President Obama will be facing a pretty tough opponent, one that will keep him up nights worrying about their next move, how to counter it, and what the American people will think.

I am speaking, of course, about Fox News. Mitt Romney? Can you say "four more years"?

But ole Mitt is more than just your cartoonishly out-of-touch rich guy; he's a religious out of touch rich guy, a Mormon, to be precise.

And that is causing some stir in the left-of-center blogosphere, of which I truck with even though I'm not gung-ho about Obama Version 2.0 myself (hey, he got Bin Laden, one year ago. What more do you want?).

It seems that Mitt is becoming the new JFK, by which I mean his religion is an issue (not his out-of-touch rich guyness, which I keep harping on because it's true. He has no idea how you or I live, fellow low-income holder). I won't pretend to know much about Mormons, other than that they own Utah, they can't have sugar or booze, and they seem awful smart (Ken Jennings is among the flock). I personally have nothing against Mormons because I don't know that I've ever come across much in the way of anti-me bias in Mormon theology (I'm a white male, I mean, of no deviant sexual practices do I partake, though there was that one time in Vegas...nevermind).

Mormonism is the punching bag in a lot of the "South Park" guys' work, I do know that. But they poke fun at anything and everything.

To me, what's important is not Mitt's Mormonism, it's his out-of-touch-rich-white-guyness. Is America ready for four years of that (again)?