Nerds, Guns, and Chicks

I'm a mass murderer many times over, and I must be stopped. I've shot numerous people, sometimes multiple times, beheaded innocents and slaughtered countless turtles and ghosts. I've hunted and been hunted, all in what might be best called "ways of killing time." I've taken on the Empire, the Russians, fellow British secret agents, and my own brother Luigi. When I haven't killed anything, I've watched others kill (serial killers with fey British accents, undead drowning victims with a beef against randy teenagers, space aliens, and Nicolas Cage) and done nothing to stop such crime waves. I am truly a monster.

I am being facetious, of course. But in the wake of the UC-Santa Barbara killing spree last week, and the revelation that the scumbag who perpetrated the attacks was posting his rants online prior to his dastardly deeds, the media has seized upon the pop-culture impact on the killer's state (instead of asking how it is that someone obviously deranged was able to get ahold of guns). You've no doubt heard a lot about nerd culture, nerd entitlement, misogyny, and how movies and video games turn otherwise harmless nerdy guys into stone-cold killers with no moral compass.

And to be fair, there's something to that: unbalanced people will take something that they see, read, or hear, and twist it so that they can "relate" to it. So will normal people, however. If you've never seen a movie or TV show and found yourself identifying with a character or two, then the people who wrote and made that show or movie have failed.

Because debating the gun laws in this country is hard to do without pissing off segments of society who make their bread and butter on protecting gun owners (and because Hollywood doesn't have a lobby as powerful as the NRA to back them up), we've decided instead to blame Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow for the killing spree. Well, alright, though I think that's a stretch. But it's far easier to say that culture has an influence on the way we think and act.

Of course culture has that kind of impact on us, if it's to be culture that sustains itself in the wake of countless imitators, usurpers and the like. Who doesn't like a good (or bad) action movie in which a lot of shit gets blow'd up? Who doesn't enjoy a movie where a good-looking woman gets naked for no apparent reason? I remember how, when the Columbine killers did their nasty deeds in '99, the media seized upon the fact that they both loved Marilyn Manson. It's far easier to look at what a killer likes or collects (besides victims) than to ask if the laws we have in place, the ones that are supposed to protect us, are faulty and out of date.

Much has been made of the killer trolling internet message boards, talking about how much he hates women. Sadly, he's just one of many such voices of frustrated and horny men who, for whatever reason, lack success in the romance department. I also suck at dating and relationships, and I've probably vented about that to friends, acquaintances, random strangers online. But I know that women aren't merely pieces of meat, there for our visual enjoyment and lustful gaze. Movies exist on the lustful gaze, of course, and it's no wonder that attractive women have had little trouble getting film roles since the dawn of cinema. And the quality of "to-be-looked-at-ness" is a major reason why we go to romantic comedies or raunchy sex comedies equally, because we want to see what the girls are going to look like. It's easy to forget, when presented with an unreality on several fronts (the expanded size of the woman due to the screen, the fact that she's an actress playing a character, the amount of make-up needed to render her blemishes invisible, etc.), that we're seeing something that isn't real. Movies have to suspend your disbelief in order to work, no matter how contrived the plots or situations (how many times has a community center *really* been saved by a dancing competition?). They have to suck you in; the problem occurs when you find it hard to get out.

Mental illness is a serious issue, of course, and just as serious as gun laws. So naturally we once again would rather talk about how bad Inglorious Basterds is on the minds of impressionable teenagers than the real issues (with guns, availability; with mental illness, unavailability of help).

No, it is easier to blame the boogeyman of pop culture, the countless images we see of murders and sex-crazed maniacs, than to ask if we should really have the right to bear arms. I'm gonna confess, I don't know what the solution is for killers like the guy at Isla Vista. It would be nice if we could ban all firearms, but Wayne LaPierre (who kills teenagers in their dreams in his spare time) and the NRA have a point: responsible gun owners deserve the right to have their guns. Mental health should be more looked-after, but it's hard to tell when someone is having a bad day and when they're gonna climb the nearest clock tower and unleash their rage on the world.

I know that, thanks to pop culture, I have been influenced in ways I didn't think I had been. Music is big for me, and I spend a lot of time thinking about it, reading about it, writing about it, and listening to it. I love to read, I love movies, and I enjoy the occasional violent film, no matter how many nightmares it might give me (the original Alien  especially; I'm too much of a pussy to watch it all the way through, though I've seen quite a bit of it). I do sometimes fall into the notion that someone onscreen is "like" me, because that's what a good screenwriter does: he makes the characters relatable. And I have my crushes on actresses whose physical appearance pleases me. But I know that pop culture runs on illusions, illusions that, no matter how convincing they are, are just that. This doesn't take away from their power to sway me, but I do need to keep it in mind (as do all people). No, Seth Rogen didn't kill those people, anymore than John Carpenter, Jason Vorhees, or the Super Mario Brothers. But it's a lot easier to blame them than it is to blame the guy who did it, the real monster who doesn't need fangs or claws when he's got guns and knives. Let's remember that you can blame all the movies and songs you want, but in the end it's the guy whose finger is on the trigger who is to blame, not the movies he watched.

Bruce Springsteen, "O Mary Don't You Weep"/The Rolling Stones, "Happy"

There's a chapter in Christy Mathewson's 1912 baseball memoir Pitching In a Pinch devoted to superstitions among athletes, one of which involved rubbing the head of a "colored" child if you wanted to have a good day at the ballpark (keep in mind, we're talking 1912 here). Superstitions aren't to be taken lightly, of course; for every time you ignore them, they seem to come back to bite you in the ass (then again, that could just be coincidence...yeah, keep telling yourself that).

A couple of football seasons back, I began a ritual that would end up forever associating the Bruce Springsteen song "O Mary Don't You Weep" with my Clemson Tigers. I believe it was the season when we ran off nine straight victories...only to lose the last couple of games and be humiliated in the bowl game we got to that year. But still...the song came into my life via a mix CD sent out by someone I knew (or "knew") through a mutual-interest website (a forum dedicated to discussing the American version of The Office). We would try to make mix CDs for the summer and send them out to whoever wanted a copy (my own participation in this ritual was curtailed two years ago when my computer died, taking with it countless iTunes mixes I'd made for the purpose of impressing my online friends with my sublime musical taste). And it seemed appropriate to cue up whenever the Tigers won their first contest of that season, as a means of celebration. And then they kept winning...

So of course, whenever my iPod was handy after watching the game, I'd cue up "O Mary" and blast it into my adrenaline-fueled brain. The song is Bruce's take on a Pete Seeger song (either one that Pete wrote or found, I'm not sure), and it's a perfect post-victory romp. I have mixed feelings about the Boss; I grew up in the Eighties and well remember his near-omnipresence on the radio during those times (which means that he was not cool, I guess, or that he was too big to be considered cool unless you were from New Jersey, and then it was pretty much expected of you to love him). Bruce Springsteen, far from being middle-of-the-road, did indeed rock in those years. But it's the overexposure factor, the "not knowing what you've got because he's every damn where" syndrome that often accompanies popular music acts no matter the era they're in. Bruce isn't to blame, he just kinda dominated the rock scene during the era. He became emblematic in spite of his best efforts (see Reagan's misappropriation of "Born In the USA" as a campaign anthem in 1984).

Of course, behind the story of "Bruce Springsteen Rock God!," there's the more complex facts that tear away at any attempt to classify him as too big for his own good. I still remember the shock I felt when I heard him come in during the epic "Street Hassle" on the album by the same name of Lou Reed. This was from 1978, when Bruce was still riding high on Born To Run. Here was this guy, biggest rock star in the world, doing an uncredited part on a Lou Reed song (he of "Walk On the Wild Side" fame). It fit, his spoken-word part in the middle of this ode to junkie love gone wrong.

So as I said, that was my anthem for every post-Clemson game that season, even the losses (I didn't watch the bowl game, my inner fan instinct told me not to and I obeyed). Flash forward to this past season, where we acquainted ourselves quite nicely (our only losses were to the eventual national champs and the chumps on further down in the state). I had just purchased a used copy of the Rolling Stones' masterpiece Exile On Main Street and so had it in the car after working a bit downtown before the opener against Georgia. As I pulled out of my parking spot, "Happy" cued up on the CD player and I let it rip. This is one of those anomalies in the Rolling Stones catalogue, a song not sung by Mick. It's handled by Keith Richards (yes) and it's one of the best songs on the album (which is saying a lot, because the album itself is damn near perfect). Long story short: the album never left my car during football season after that win, and I even tried to make sure to have it in my CD player on game day. Yeah, we lost twice...but we only lost twice.

This season, I won't be working at the same place I have been for the past four years. Instead, I'll be at Clemson itself, as a grad student, and I don't know if I'll be attending any games but I feel like I have more of a choice to do so than I did in the past (and truth be told, the last time we beat the Lamecocks I was in the stands, so perhaps I'm the missing ingredient to our in-state slide). I don't have a song or CD picked out specifically for game days just yet, because it doesn't work like that; it just has to happen. Superstitious? Yes, but does it work? I'd like to think so.

The Verve, "Bittersweet Symphony"

Yes, I am psyched about grad school in the fall, but I'm also more than a little bummed to be leaving where I work now.

Because I got fired once for writing about where I worked (and being dumb enough to leave it online where it could be easily found by my bosses), I've bobbed and weaved around the subject here, specifically where I work. I will continue to do so because while I have three months or so left, I could easily have a couple of days left if I said something that could be taken offensively and, oh I don't know, lead to me being fired again. People who've been fired know the sort of post-traumatic stress disorder I'm talking about here...or maybe it's just me?

Anyway, no specifics, but I have been working at a place for almost four years now and it's been an experience. I've made some friends, lost some through them leaving or whatnot, and managed to find myself in pretty good company for the most part. The sad fact is, I'll probably lose touch with them as the years go on, because I can honestly say that's happened with other places I worked or went to school. It's just the way of the world; if your closest group of friends consisted only of people you knew when you went to school for the first day of first grade, you'd have a pretty limited range of people in your life. We grow as we get older (or maybe regress as our hairline recedes or that paunch we used to be able to burn off quick as a youngster has the annoying habit of staying around) and part of growing is knowing who to let go of and who to keep around. I guarantee of the people I work with that I want to still have in my life some way or another, they'll be the ones probably reading this after I've moved on to college (or at least the ones I hit up on Facebook with a friend request).

A lot can happen in four years, for sure, and not all of it has been good. But that's the way life goes, and for every instance of a word I'd like to get back or a gesture made in vain, I know that those events can shape me to be a better version of the person I was before I fell on hard times and one or two places gave me a hand and something to do. I'm leaving on my own terms, and for whatever that's worth to you, it means a hell of a lot to me.

Four years ago, I lost the job that I thought would be my career, or at least the day job till my career as a writer of some sort took off. I was in a bad way for sure. I remember the way I'd go around looking for work, desperate for anything. I even had a job lined up with a certain "Golden Arches" restaurant you may have heard of (I think they're Scottish) before a friend hooked me up with a better option at the breakfast bar of the hotel he worked at. Then, needing some extra income, I found my way to the job I have now, and will continue to have until August. I think they were surprised that someone with my degree was applying for the job they had open, but they let me work a week and I managed to get the job because I was there.

I'll leave it there as far as getting into my personal history with my workplace (like I said, no need to say anything that'll be taken the wrong way, even if I'm being sarcastic...because that doesn't come across online too well, I have learned), for now anyway. I anticipate grad school to be a challenge, for sure, and I worry that I might fuck it up (because in all honesty, I'm really good at that) but I'll do my best and keep my head up. I have done over a decade of work that doesn't involve what I consider myself good at (there wasn't much call for a guy who'd read Gravity's Rainbow in a grocery-store frozen food department, naturally), and it's time to admit that I'm ready to try this whole academia thing full-blast. But I'll miss the folks I knew (some of whom I hope to continue knowing, if the stars align) at the place that I've spent so much time these past four years. When you find a place that feels comfortable because of the people you work with, it's hard to leave even when you know it's for the best. Because the people I've worked with, to a man (or woman), have made my time there awesome. Even on the shitty days (see, that's the part that would get me fired, if I'd identified where I work) :-)

Otis Redding, "Try a Little Tenderness"

I'd love to say that I came across this song on the radio, or just on one of the many Otis Redding best-of CDs, but most likely I discovered this song the same way a lot of you did, if you're a child of the Eighties. That penultimate scene in Pretty In Pink, when Jon Cryer's Duckie is lip-synching to the last part while subsequently having a grand mal seizure in the record store where his lady love Molly Ringwald works? Yep, that was where I first heard this tune.

I've gone on a little bit about cultural appropriation in some of theses, but I'll say it again: white folks be stealing from the brothers. Actually, though, in this case Redding wasn't the original author of the song (it's from the early Thirties, and according to Wikipedia Bing Crosby took a turn at it, though it's safe to say his probably sounds nothing like Otis's). Hell, I heard it as an orchestral version at the beginning of Dr. Strangelove and wondered if I was hearing what I thought I was hearing. Otis Redding, of course, made the song his own.

Otis Redding is one of those guys who really, honestly, should have been around a lot longer. In the rock world, burning out before your time is up can be a good thing (as anyone who's had to endure a Sting solo record would attest...sorry, but it's just never gonna measure up to the Police), but some people really do depart way too soon, under incredibly tragic circumstances. I recently read Respect Yourself by Robert Gordon, a fantastic history of Stax Records, and Otis is a big presence in the early part of the book. I did not know, for instance, that when he auditioned for the record label he was the chauffeur for another singer who was auditioning that day, and on a whim he tried out his vocal chops. Think how differently music would have been had Otis not stepped up to the microphone that day.

His death in December 1967 (in a plane crash, along with most of the original members of the Bar-Keys) is reminiscent of Buddy Holly's crash almost a decade earlier. Both were stars on the rise, young and dynamic and ready to conquer the world. In rock-star terms, they were Icarus flying too close to the sun literally (or at least the crash of a comet that burned really bright for a short period of time). I was surprised when I learned that Otis was only twenty-six when he died; he always came across as older in his photos and on record. An old soul, perhaps.

Otis's death forever changed Stax, they managed to redefine themselves with Isaac Hayes stepping out from behind the producer's booth to become a recording star. The label thrived and then came crashing down (no doubt a fall fueled by resentment about the perception of it being black-owned in the mostly white Memphis business community). Stax fell itself, less than a decade after Otis Redding's last hurrah, but it's back. And the story of the label in its first incarnation is an amazing one, worth seeking out if you're a fan. It might have actually helped Otis more than hurt to have one of his signature covers (the other being his frantic take on the Stones' "Satisfaction") be associated with a skinny white dude in a John Hughes film, even if in the end Duckie does not get the girl (grand romantic gestures sometimes work, sometimes fail, but this one at least was memorable). In a lot of ways, the slow build of the song connects it to other slow-building songs, especially "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin. Now, to me, the idea of "Stairway" being a classic rock song is ridiculous, and based solely on the release of the last few minutes of the song. The slow build makes the song torture for me, and I don't think it's a good song anyway. But "Try a Little Tenderness" works because of the slow build, it eases you into the eventual unleashing of Redding's soulful power. It's a fucking classic, I guess I'm saying.

I read an essay by Jonathan Lethem in which he described how Redding was studying the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album in his last months, trying to achieve something like that with his version of rock music (labeled "soul" because you can't just have music without genres, apparently). His posthumous hit "Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay" is suggestive of the direction he was going to go, had he lived. It's a loss that is assuaged somewhat by what we do have.

Nirvana, "The Man Who Sold the World"

To paraphrase Chuck D, Kurt Cobain didn't mean shit to me. Now that's not to be taken as "I didn't like him as a person and I'm glad he's been dead for twenty years," but at the time of his death I was less than grieved at his demise. Perhaps I was just heartless at fourteen.

Truth of the matter is, when Nirvana broke big I was young and not as passionate about music as I would later be, thanks to the Beatles. And while I liked the occasional Nirvana tune, I didn't get into them like a lot of my peers. Indeed, it took me ten years to get around to buying a copy of Nevermind, and that one didn't exactly take up a permanent home in my CD collection (in fact it has long since been sold). I did get around to reading books about the band (Michael Azerrad's great Nirvana bio Come As You Are, Christopher Cross's bio of Cobain), but the fact is that I just don't care that much about Nirvana.

In much the same way that I feel about the Godfather movies, I acknowledge the importance of Nirvana to the pop-music landscape without necessarily being a fan of theirs, even on a casual basis. I like the Foo Fighters all right, and some of Nirvana's songs are pretty good. But I never drank the Kool-Aid that the band were "our generation's Beatles" (whosever generation that was, it probably wasn't mine). I am sad that Cobain felt like he had to end his life. But do I think we missed out on more of that kickin' Nirvana sound? Meh, probably not.

Like I said, it's been twenty years since he died, and somewhat predictably I'm being told by the various entertainment conglomerates that I should mark the occasion by purchasing magazines or books about the main man of Nirvana (much in the same way that the Beatles' fifty-year anniversary of appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show saw a surplus of books and magazines marking the occasion). I don't behoove anyone making money off this anniversary, I just feel less than willing to part with my money in order to fuel it.

In his first book, Rob Sheffield talked about how, the weekend Kurt's body was found, he and his friends talked about how they weren't surprised Cobain had ended his life, and how they even had fun at his expense. It's probably a coping mechanism to deal with sad things by using humor, I've done it myself for sure. Kurt Cobain was a fellow human being who, as it turned out, wasn't that psyched about being famous, and his pain was real. But asking us to mourn him anew twenty years on, so you can sell some cheap book or magazine or t-shirt with the man's face plastered on it and nothing new about why his music might have mattered to some people? I'm good, thanks.

Nirvana will never be one of my favorite bands, or even one of my "they're alright" bands. I'll take a pass on remarking on what Cobain's passing means to me because (as it turns out) it doesn't mean that much to me personally. Oh sure, we could talk about the absence of a similarly large presence in alternative rock since his death (that's a legitimate topic of conversation), but truth be told, his music didn't mean that much to me at the time or even now. He entertained me, I'm sure, but did he mean anything to me? Signs point to "no."

Grad School-Bound, Baby!

On Monday, I left work early to go get some work done on my car, and after that I figured "what the hell, let's go by the library in Walhalla." I should emphasize that I left work with about an hour left to go, and it was past closing time when my car was ready after being fixed (just in case you're asking yourself "why didn't the lazy bastard go back to work?").

Anyway, I checked my email and there in my inbox was something from Clemson's graduate-school folks in the English department. Figuring it was a fifty-fifty shot (either I got in or I didn't), I opened the email and began to read. When I got to the first line, about how "pleased" they were to offer me an assistantship for the fall 2014 semester, I guess I could quit looking through my fingers at the email.

Yes, your hero got in, and I was offered an assistantship as well (meaning I get to teach classes or some other such things as the English department so desires of me, with a stipend and with tuition waived for the time being). You could say I was pretty darn happy with that.

All of this occurred on St. Patty's Day, so naturally it is now the best St. Patty's day ever (and I wore green to avoid getting pinched, though at this point I'm thirty-four-years-old and I'm guessing the likelihood of me running into people who still pinch others for not wearing green is pretty slim. Still, better safe than sorry).

I'm pretty stoked as well as terrified about the whole thing, truth be told. It's high on the list of "best things that ever happened to me so far." It's still sinking in, and I'm wondering now if I have what it takes for grad school. Specifically, if I can master the "too lazy to shave" stubble-beard of many a grad student I've known in the past, the carefully cultivated look of appearing not to care how I'm groomed. I kid, but it's really something pretty awesome (grad school, not facial hair).

I just hope the good people at Clemson know what they're getting themselves into by letting me back into their school.

Roger Miller, "King Of the Road"

A couple of weeks ago, Jake went missing from our home, and we feared the worst. He turned up a couple of days later, literally (I turned on the light overlooking his designated sleeping area on my porch just on instinct that Friday morning and there he was, like nothing had ever happened). But of course the thought that came to mind was that Jake had gone off to the woods or somewhere remote to die.

Jake, just for clarification, is our dog, or really my grandpa's dog. He's been with our family (first with my uncle, then with my grandparents) for at least twenty years. I'm not sure what that amounts to in dog years, but my guess is (from the reactions of people to whom I discussed his absence from our abode) it must be pretty ancient. Jake is back at home now, but it's safe to say that his time on this planet might not run much longer.

I am great with other peoples' pets (as well as their children) for the simple fact that I'm not the primary caregiver, By and large, I can get by with a stroke to comfort here (for the pets...don't get the wrong idea, people) or a well-placed gesture to elicit laughter or a smile from the children. Anything more than that (feeding the pets or changing the diapers of the children, just to pull two examples) is asking a bit much of me. I don't do well with poop, even when it's my own.

Thing is, I feel sometimes like I'm a little detached from ordinary life, from the lives of my peers on Facebook (the ones my age or younger who already have a decade or more of experience at parenting or pet-loving). I didn't have a girlfriend in high school, not even a "pity fuck" that could've resulted in an unwanted pregnancy and thus a life of drudgery to support said child by working a bunch of dead-end jobs. Oh, I've worked the dead-end jobs, it was just my lazy ass I had to support. Compared to some of my high-school chums (not any of the ones I'm friends with on Facebook), I got off easy.

But one byproduct of this luck has been some loneliness at times, reaching out for the wrong girl when I thought I couldn't do any better. The flip side is the insecurity that sees me pass up the chance I might have with not the "right" girl, but with the "right girl right now" maybe, because I have such a stellar record behind me to suggest that when it comes to this whole love thing, I'm a bit of a fuck-up. I think this is reflected in some of the relationships I have not just with romantic interests but with simple good-old-fashioned friends. There's a distance there that I sometimes put up, to keep from getting too involved. To keep from getting hurt, perhaps.

But hurt, as I'm quite aware of now, passes. It's been a little less than a year since I got hurt bad, and I guess it would behoove me to risk getting hurt again, if only to avoid a fate worse than the one I thought I avoided by not getting it on in high school: the fate where it's just you in a room, with no one around to share the room or your life with.

Jake is back, probably not for long (like I said, he's the Methuselah of dogs), but I'll try to pay more attention to him and enjoy his company until that day he really does go off to die. Maybe between work and home and work and home, I can find time for something more again. I'm a man of means by no means, as the song goes, but I get by. Maybe it's time to stop just getting by.