The Love You Make Is Equal to The Love You Take

I just finished a biography of Paul McCartney (Fab, by Howard Sounes), and I feel like addressing it here because, well, Amazon doesn't truck with cursing in its reviews...dammit.

Actually, I wanted to address it here because I felt like more of an open-ended essay than a proper review, so here goes:

I have a complicated relationship with Sir Paul, dating back to when I first got into the Beatles and realized that, for all its many faults, the local library was stocked with Beatles-related histories and biographies for me to pursue. I gravitated towards Paul first because (do I really have to say it?) I play air-guitar lefty.

In my defense, I started doing air-guitar in my early pre-teen phase of liking music but not necessarily loving it, and I enjoyed doing air-guitar in the mirror because this was the tail-end of the hair-metal movement and everything that I saw on TV featured long-haired guys with wicked guitar solos, usually done in slow motion while they milked it for the camera. A towel draped over my head and any long, vaguly rectangular object (such as a ruler or even a stick) in hand, I would emulate these fellows, looking in the mirror and seeing myself reflected as playing right-handed, even though I was actually doing it wrong (I'm righty). I did it this way for long enough that, to this day, when I do air-guitar I favor my left hand, even though really I should be doing it right-handed.

There, now you know my secret shame...anyway, I gravitated to Paul for that most superficial of reasons, which is why, when I eventually rejected him as a false idol and turned to John instead, it was for an equally superficial reason (John and I have the same birthday). Plus, it doesn't hurt that, in his solo career especially, Paul has aimed for the easy buck, with schmaltz that was evident during his Beatle career taking over for the genuine songcraft he often exhibited when pushed to do better (usually by John). But the man wrote my favorite song of all time, "Hey Jude" (and I bet, if you're honest with yourself, you probably like one or more of his Wings or solo songs, too. They're just so damn catchy sometimes). So, like it or not, in addition to reading each and every new Beatles book under the sun (as well as the classics, of which Philip Norman's Shout! is hard to top even today), I find myself drawn, unwillingly, towards the collective literature around Sir Paul, of which Fab is merely the latest, if not the best, of the bunch.

Sounes does that rare thing for a Beatles biographer; he calls Paul out on his shit (see, there's the cursing!) that he produced in the Seventies and Eighties, as well as that stupid-ass mullet that Paul affected for way, way too long (in terms of rock-star hairdos, the mullet is the poor man's permed-up late Eighties 'do). But he also shows that, despite everything, Paul is perhaps the most decent guy in rock music, a man who genuinely loved his late wife Linda (who was, let's face it, a groupie, but one who was in it for the long haul), and was duped by Heather Mills into a marriage that made Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor look tame by comparison. He donates to charities, often without any public notice (except, of course, when you hear about it, through journalists, so maybe he does do it for the public notice after all), and he tries to perserve the legacy of the Beatles despite his insecurity over John's well-publicized canonization as a saint of rock and roll since his death in 1980 (various biographies of John pass muster or fail in terms of how much they stick to the facts about John's various issues, not in glossing over the nastier sides of the man).

After reading Fab, I kinda wanted to give Paul a hug, despite the fact that part of me loathes him and, in my darker moments, I always thought that if any Beatle deserved to be shot, it should be Macca. Nowadays, I can accept that Paul will probably be the last one left standing (Ringo is only a couple of years older, but he looks worn-out, and his All-Star Band tours do nothing for his standing in the eyes of rock and Beatles fans). I can even concede that maybe, if Paul were to ever buy back the rights to the Beatles' catalogue, his wish to change the credits around to "McCartney/Lennon" would probably happen. But I don't think I'll even hold him in the same estimation as I do John because (much like Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, where I discovered the films of the former through the work of the latter and, as I studied their lives, found more in common with Truffaut than I did Godard) Paul is a good gateway Beatle, but he's not the one that you want to say is your favorite, unless you're a former teenage girl stuck in arrested development.

So Sir Paul, while not okay in my book, is a decent enough guy, I guess. I hope his third wife isn't the pariah that Heather Mills was, and I found the story of his life with Linda touching (even if I would never, ever consider becoming a vegetarian. I come from a family of meat-cutters). He might be dopey, even a little creepy with his prenaturally dyed hair, but Paul is still a Beatle, after all. And the motherfucker could write great songs when he wanted to (see, I cursed again!).

Gallbladder Blues, I Got 'Em

In the wonderful world of Medical Oddities, it seems that my family is a prime carrier of a gene which causes the gallbladder in our bodies to periodically go out and try to kills us. Now it's my turn, and I couldn't be more thrilled.

No, really.

Back around this time last year, I suddenly started having trouble sleeping, on account of the fact that my stomach, once a trusted friend who could take anything I shoved down my gullet with a minimum of fuss (except Mexican food), started to...well, not hurt so much as make its presence felt, often at one in the morning, and abating only when I'd given up on getting that eight hours I felt I was entitled to.

I was in fear of it being something terrible (such as cancer, or an alien baby growing inside me. Neither option seemed attractive), but I was also in debt, and as the summer came around and I ate less in general due to the oppressive heat (hard to be hungry when it's 110 in the shade and you have to work in a sweaty place with questionable AC), the "attacks" as I dubbed them seemed to fade away.

Cue Christmas, when, among other things, I realized that maybe going back for seconds on that lasagna wasn't such a great idea. Gradually it became clear that, no matter what I tried (antacids, Pepto-Bismol, laxative, apple juice), all these were temporary solutions to what seemed to be a permenant problem. Finally, a few weeks ago I broke down and went to the doctor I'd seen about getting pills to take when I had my teeth worked on a few years back, because he's a general practicioner and he works with people who don't have health insurance (yours truly). I turned to him because, after a calm of two weeks, I endured probably the worst case of an "attack" after consuming two fried baloney sandwiches (which, in turn, turned me off baloney forever. I mean it, the thought of it makes me want to hurl). He surmised that it could be gallstones, but we wouldn' t know for sure until an ultrasound was performed.

Ultrasound? But doctor, I'm not pregnant!

Apparently they do those for gallstones, too, and as it turned out (my ticklish sides notwithstanding) it was a fairly easy thing to sit through as the tech scanned my side and stomach. The verdict that they gave me? Gallstones.

I plan to name them all "Mick" because they've got moves like Jagger.

In all seriousness, I'm relieved to finally have a diagnosis for my ills, and not one involving the "c" word. My well-meaning sister suggested I read Tuesdays With Morrie some time back, but the thing that stuck with me most was a description of Mitch Albom's uncle being in pain and "clutching his stomach" because pancreatic cancer was slowly killing him. Not sure I remember much after that passage, as I tried to both block it out with positive thought and let it overtake me with negative thought.

I've known people that had to deal with cancer; some of them licked it, some didn't. It's something to take very seriously. So I was happy to learn that, apart from a few cuts into my body to remove my gallbladder, I would be fine.

Wait, you want to cut into me?

Visions of various medical procedures in movies and TV that went horribly wrong flash thru my head on occasion (anyone who is familiar with the defibriliator scene in John Carpenter's The Thing or the chest-bursting scene in Alien can't take the idea of abdominal work lightly). But I read a really good biography of Humphrey Bogart over the weekend (Tough Without a Gun), and I think I can channel some of his world-weary nonchalance on the operating table and I'll be fine. I don't know when the cut date is (surgical consultation is tomorrow), but I look forward to getting it over with.

Because as my muse Kelly Clarkson might say, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Of course, I don't turn to Kelly for everything in my life, just decisions regarding major medical surgery.

Maybe I need a new muse.

Lin-Sanity

So in all the months of this year so far, I've been busy at work, at home, trying to balance my budget and trying not to run out of money, and personal stuff that I won't go into here but at this point (knock on wood) seems to be going my way. What have I forgotten?

Oh yeah, writing. Of the professional variety, anyway.

Not only haven't I written anything that's been publishable lately, I haven't written much of anything. I go into spells like this from time to time, of course, but lately it seems a little harder to get out of. Partly it's due to the financial hell hole I seemed trapped in until recently, when I started getting my tax refund (still waiting on the state, but the fed arrived Friday), but also it has to do with the simple question: what do I want to write?

It's an important question, because I've never been "I must write the great American novel" except for brief flashes when I thought the great American novel could be set at a grocery store (it can't), or just run flat on ideas. I don't know that I have a novel in me. Maybe a memoir, based on various incidents in my life that defined me? Good, but I'm still being defined (at this point, it's "will I actually find something job-wise that my degree qualifies me for?" Because so far I've seemed to be in a career rut of sorts when it comes to that).

Questions without answers...hmm, sounds philosophical.

Anyway, the point is (apart from some Amazon reviews) I've been slack about writing in general, much less for publication. I have been reading a lot, however, and I know that I want to maybe try and get some essays out about things I care about or have impacted my life, because I might be able to make a book out of that.

Now that I've said it out loud, nothing will come of it ;-)

I've been hesitant to do so because I'm still of the belief that, in order to write about your life, you need to have done something to merit writing about it. But maybe just living in general, and the lessons you acquire, can be the source of your muse.

Anyway, here's hoping I got something publishable in me for the forseeable future, because I don't want to go back to selling crack on the streets of mean ole Walhalla.

Fearing and Loathing the Idea of Newt as President

I want to delve into the world of politics because, in case you hadn't noticed, this is what we call an "election year," and you probably can already guess that I'm none too thrilled that Newt Gingrich (a man who oozes sleaze) won big in my home state of South Carolina. Granted, none of his competitors would appeal to me any more than he does (Ron Paul is batshit crazy and isolationist, Romney is of the manor born, and Santorum is slang for anal discharge following gay sex...no, really, Google it if you dare), but Newt is something else entirely.

The guy has no moral compass except his own personal aggrandizement, he reeks of political corruption and financial misdeeds, he's a hypocrite who only sees what he wants to see, and he has a chip on his shoulder the size of Texas. Plus, he's from Georgia...just kidding, I have friends from Georgia so I know not all Georgians are like him.

But he's more than enough.

I went through a Watergate phase a few years back, possibly due to the release of Frost/Nixon, and my reading on Newt is that he's very Nixonian, and I don't mean that as a compliment. Richard Milhous Nixon might be the most fascinating president we've ever had, because at no point did he ever attempt to mask the fact that he was a bad, bad dude. Okay, in '68 he ran as "the new Nixon" much like Newt is running as somehow a minted hero of the '94 "Contract with America," claiming credit for Clinton-era reforms that by anyone else's logic would be...well, Clinton's achievements, not Newt's. But the American public, particularly the conservative bent, have short-term memory loss, and to them Newt is appealing. God knows why, but he is.

Newt Gingrich as the next president of the United States is both alarming and intriguing to me, alarming because it means a return to Bush-era hypocrisy in the name of "national security" and intriguing because part of me wants to see just how much Newt would out-Nixon Nixon. Nixon's mistake, in Newt's world, isn't that he covered up the burglary of the Democrats' national headquarters; it's that he got caught.

And now, thanks to my fellow South Carolinians, Newt isn't going anywhere fast. We sure know how to pick a winner.

Trevor

Tebowphenia

It's been a little while, so let me comment on the onrush of Tim Tebow madness that, up until yesterday's loss to the Pats, seemed poised to overtake the nation worse than a plague of mosquitos or Ron Paul political ads (sidenote: anyone catch the "hip, young" ad that's running now, full of flashy graphics and what not? I expected ole Ron to say "tubeular" or something at the end). Anyway, I am not what one would call a Tebowaholic, but in the aftermath of our long national nightmare coming to an end, I can feel more charitable towards the guy.

In our hyper-aware era of overblown praise and equally overdone criticism, it's easy to forget that the guy is just a quarterback for a major team, albeit one whose abilities at the position are questionable to say the least (hell, the guy has skills, I'll admit that. You try and get anyone else to pull off some of the wins he got over the season, you just can't). He's been bought up wholesale by the right-wing illiterati of this nation as some kind of "savior" from the mean, arrogant (read: black) professional athletes who dominate so much of our culture more with their antics off the field than on (though sometimes the two intermingle, as in the case of Terrell Owens). Does this mean that every gun-hating, baby-aborting liberal in the world has to hate him in return?

I am putting it out there: I don't like the guy more because of what he's become to the other side than what he is, or who he is. Who he is is a son of missionaries who returns to the Phillippines (hope I spelled that right, that's one country whose name defies my internal spellcheck) to assist in making lives better for the children there, with the mission of spreading his view of God's word (which is Christian, in his case) as a side note. The guy has never been in trouble with the law, he's never been known to do anything that would reveal him as a hypocrite, and he's never been afraid to put his opinions out there...as opinions, not as truths that other people have to buy into. For that, I can't fault him.

What I can fault him for, or what I can fault his handlers for, is the way in which it's either "you're with us or against us" in the current political climate that surrounds the poor kid (and let's remember, he's a kid, still). When the debate over his abilities as a quarterback became personalized (i.e., as a question of whether his moral faith was a help or hinderance to his reaching fans), I began to feel almost beholden to dislike him. Not because I disagree with him about his right to hold an opinion contrary to my own, but because those who put him up as an example made it a litmus test for patriotism or faith or whatever. When you reduce someone to a soundbite or a catchphrase, you negate the very important, very conflicted sides of a person's nature and render him a statue (someone much smarter than me must have come up with that or something similar, I don't feel like it's an original thought).

More importantly, the Tebow debate raises an important point that I think needs addressing: our almost psychopathic need to first have someone in a heroic position and then to remove said person from our esteem, most notably with an act so deplorable that we can never look at him the same way again. For the haters as much as the lovers, Tim Tebow is a lightening rod, and unless (or until) he suffers some public humiliation akin to Tiger Woods, Bill Clinton, or some other public figure who has faced the level of both adoration and dislike as he has, they won't forgive him his position as a figurehead for morality in the eyes of many.

I can remember when O.J. Simpson and Michael Jackson were still regarded in their previous light (awesome athlete and musical superstar, respectively) before we learned that OJ was at best a wife-abuser (and at worst, a multiple murderer) and Jacko liked little boys...really liked little boys. That sense of betrayal with both guys (whose falls from grace were almost simultaneous) colors the way we see them now, even if our loss of faith is rewarded (as in the incarceration of OJ on unrelated matters...see, he was guilty!) or denied (Jacko went to his grave never really vindicated in the eyes of many, despite his aquittals and/or settlements).

With Tebow, we're all caught up in the first rush of a love (or hate) affair; we only know what we're supposed to know, how he's doing incredible things and also telling us how we should live. Until we see him as more human or less god-like (whichever comes first) we're gonna carry around that image of him, come hell or high water. I don't want to actively root against the guy, but I'm not comfortable rooting for him, either. When my dislike of him began, he was still at Florida, and Urban Meyer's health was related to whether or not Tebow (who can be something of a drama queen himself) came back to play (you'll notice how quickly Urb left town when Tebow jumped to the NFL). His beliefs didn't really play into that, though I can see where some will find issue with his soapbox. But I ask those who support him because of his beliefs, weren't you the same people who got irked every time some Hollywood celebrity bashed Bush or said something you didn't like? Isn't that hypocritical of you to say that his opinions should be respected when you couldn't afford the same to Kanye or Alec Baldwin?

It all seems like we're living in a hyper-realized age, and we just need to take a step back. Maybe now that Tebowpocalypse doesn't seem to be happening anymore (well, at least not this season), we can take a step back and let the kid's game speak for him. Because when all the lovers and haters jump off their respective bandwagons and move on to the next thing, we'll be left with a kid who's much better than a lot of people gave him credit for, but who isn't all that yet. I hope that Tim Tebow has success in his career, that he isn't exposed as a fraud or worse, and that he can survived the scrutiny of our over-sensitive age. He isn't Jesus with a football, but he's not the anti-Christ of quarterbacks either. He's just a dude, like you and me.

It's The End of the World As We Know It (Wait, Did I Use that Title Already?)

So uncreative of me...

Anywho, 2011 is winding down, and 2012 is knocking at the door like the drunk uncle you didn't invite to your New Year's Eve party because you were sure he'd proposition the women in your apartment with crude sex jokes related to his work as a novelty toys salesman (if I could think of any such jokes right now, this would be an excellent metaphor, but my brain is on vacation today for some reason), but he shows up anyway. And it's awful.

The Mayan calendar runs out in 2012, which means a lot of easily-led people assume that the Mayans foretold the end of days. Granted, try asking a Mayan what he meant; you can't, their civilization vanished centuries ago.

Or did it?

Anyway, if next year is the end, at least I can say that I'm a damn good uncle. Oh, and I want to write a book next year, though I say that every year and so far I've done bupkus.

But that's what a resolution is: before it's an empty promise that you made at the beginning of the year which looks untenable as the months coagulate, at least it holds the promise of something new.

Also, there's a very good chance that we'll elect a white man to the White House. I wonder how the media will handle that earth-shaking story, a first in American politics (I'm an Obama guy, but I'm not optimistic. Granted, the guy got Osama, but in case you haven't noticed, a lot of Americans are uncomfortable with him. I spell Tea Party "K-K-K" myself).

But 2012 beckons, calling to us that no, it will not end in a dramatic CGI-palooza of dread and doom. I hope it doesn't, anyway.

Ned's Atomic Dustbin of Crap

The season is over for Clemson football...and we're ACC champs. I know, I know, I don't know that I believe it either.

Clemson is used to...well, how to put it nicely? Stinking. Not just choking, but downright self-murder, especially as the season winds down. And we damn near did so, not once but twice, first at NC State (making their back-up QB look like Dan Marino and Tom Brady's love child) and then against South Carolina (where the new guy most definitely is a love child of Aaron Rodgers and Peyton Manning). So going into last weekend's ACC Championship game against Virginia Tech, to say that I had little hope would be an understatement.

I had lost faith entirely.

It's always sobering coming back down to earth, when you had been on a magical carpet ride of 8-0 football, against opponents who weren't terrible (but maybe weren't as good as they were before, ahem, looking at you Auburn). Doubt is a painful emotion, not because it comes around suddenly but because it creeps under your skin until the next thing you know, you can't even look in the mirror anymore at your orange shirt because deep down you know the wide-eyed innocence of pure unadultered fandom is no longer yours. You have questions about the special teams, you moan the inefficiency of the defense, and your quarterback is not really "your" quarterback so much.

So while I enjoyed the fact that we won last weekend, I couldn't really take any credit for believing that we'd do it. I didn't even watch the game until the fourth quarter, preferring instead to catch up with an old favorite of mine that I hadn't seen in a while.

(500) Days of Summer is, to my mind, the coolest, intentionally cool romantic comedy of our current age. But when I first saw it, and on subsequent viewings, I missed the point; I thought the film was indeed a love story, despite the protestations of the voiceover at the beginning. But upon rewatching it, and after experiencing a personal epiphany of which I may or may not elaborate later, I got it: the film isn't about love, but how to fall in love, and how not to fall in love is ably demonstrated by Tom, the protagonist with whom I couldn't help identify because we have both been known to misread The Graduate and wear Joy Division t-shirts. Behind the indie-rock soundtrack and Zooey(sic) Deschanel's blue eyes, it's the story of how we often talk ourselves into believing things that just aren't so.

Fans do that a lot, in the sports world: we want to believe that our teams are better than they are, or if they're not, that there's an explanation for that that's easily definable (i.e., the curse of Bambino, or the Billy Goat). For a lot of Clemson fans, it's just more comforting to believe that we suck, and that we will continue to suck, with occasional flashes of non-sucking thrown in to suck in the new fans year after year. My niece will be surrounded by Clemson fans, so the poor child will have no choice, you see. But I remember the Boston Red Sox of '04 deciding not to overthrow the Bambino so much as ignore the hell out of him, and just keep playing baseball. You do recall how that turned out, right?

For the longest time, at least over a year, I've not had the confidence to be myself around women. I've tried to "woo" them, or whatever, just failing miserably because deep down, I didn't believe any of it. But now, I have to say, my confidence is sorta back. And while I don't think it is any of your business to say what all brought this about, I suppose it will suffice to say that I'm not looking for someone else to make me feel better about myself anymore. Getting fired might have been the best thing that ever happened to me, because it forced me to take a long look at myself and realize that I'm often the reason I can't get anything I want. Self-defeater, party of one. And that's not what falling in love should be about, this urge to define yourself through someone else's eyes. It should be about you saying...I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.

Okay, bit cliched there at the end, but you catch my drift, imaginary audience to whom I feel I am speaking?

Anyway, time to get back on that horse, only this time I think I'll be a more confident rider. If I'm not...believe me, I'll probably bitch about it here.