Archive for the ‘Random Thoughts’ Category
Tuesday, March 1st, 2011
It started with one of my Facebook posts.
“Hmmmm, the Bristol Palin ‘memoir’ is now official: ‘Not Afraid of Life.’ And for some reason, the second half of Socrates’ famous quote comes to mind: the unlived life is not worth examining.”
Then there was a comment or two declaring the book not worth reading. Those posts understood the asshattery of having a girl barely twenty tell us about her years of wisdom, not to mention that there are brilliant writers having trouble getting books published while this is passed off as literature.
Then this: “Agree or disagree with her politics, she has given more ‘hope’ for families that have kids with Down syndrome than anyone in the past few decades.”
It came from a high school chum. While we passed a pleasant word or two in the hallways, we were never friends, never drank beer or got busted, never trolled for chicks.
I remember he was a monster athlete and a decent human being (not as in half-assed good, but in that he seemed to have a decent soul and tried to treat people decently).
I value ideas and debate and thrashing out what I believe and why I believe it. So I question everything and want to be questioned. I want to defend my ideas, to make them logical and sound.
The next post was his: “Sorry, wrong Palin. You’re right she hasn’t even lived a life yet.”
I did not see that post when I responded. Had I, I wouldn’t have taken him to task for confusing Sarah with Bristol, but I still would have asked the other questions.
My response: “ First of all, Bristol’s child doesn’t have Down Syndrome…unless you believe Sarah didn’t actually bear that child and Bristol did. Secondly, hope for what? How does simply having a child with Down’s Syndrome give anyone hope? Thirdly, Trig is nothing more than a prop the Mama Grizzly waves around at rallies and speeches.”
Understand that I have no experience with Down’s Syndrome. I’ve never known anyone who had it and if I’ve known family members of those with DS, it’s never been made clear to me.
I posted again immediately: “And I wonder if maybe the kid on the show ‘My So Called Life,’ which was about a kid with Down’s Syndrome, maybe gave more hope in the last few decades than any third rate talking head…seeing as how he actually had Down’ Syndrome and proved you could be a productive member of society rather than spending your time quitting jobs before blathering on and on at 100 grand per speech.”
Another high school chum posted this: “I would say the actress who plays the character, Becky, on Glee has given more hope to children with Down Syndrome than ANYTHING Mrs. Palin has done to date. As a matter of fact, when she defended Rush after he used the word, retarded, she pretty much took that train backwards a couple of decades!”
The response: “Well I guess since I have an older child with Down Syndrome I would have a different perspective. I’ve met Chris Burke and he is awesome, but only so many kids with DS are going to grow up to be actors. Me and my wife have been on our local board for DS for quite some time and been to National events as well. Palin has given the common family a voice that hadn’t been there since the Shriver family. The Liberal elite and wealthy just don’t have kids with Down Syndrome very often, because they usually get aborted, so there is not much support among this class. I’ve heard first hand how she has spent hours meeting and talking with families with kids. I know the liberal media never showed this side of her, but you can use the word ‘prop’ if you like, but that just shows where your mind is. There is more to people than just politics, but some people can’t get past that. I’m sorry some can’t get past that, but I guess it takes a little more than watching the news.”
Wow. A jolt of electricity, anyone?
So let’s take a look at his accusation. With the exception of me calling her a third-rate talking head, there was no name calling. What we posted was fact. Palin has, in fact, quit jobs. Palin does pull down, in fact, about $100,000 per speech. Palin did, in fact, defend Rush Limbaugh when he called a huge swath of America retarded. Those are facts, not hate.
(I will admit the bit about Trig being a prop is not a provable fact….)
So how did he respond to facts? With the notion of a liberal elite that aborts most of their babies because they might be stricken with DS. And then the idea that I am a lesser human than he and SP because I used the word ‘prop.’ “…just shows where your mind is.” Honestly, I don’t even know what that means.
He follows with this: “(name), thanks for sharing, I didn’t know there was an actress on Glee with Down Syndrome, I guess I should try and watch a show. I also enjoy how people that don’t have kids with Down Syndrome know what drives our train. I know other groups that don’t like outsiders telling how to live their lives. I wonder why people that preach tolerance are some of the most intolerant!”
Again, I have no clue what he’s talking about. When he writes that people without children with DS don’t know what drives his train, I haven’t any idea what that means. Obviously I can’t know his life, I never said I did. I never told him how to live his life or gave him direction on a course of action for his family. I would never do that because I’m not on his train.
What I did do was ask a question.
One of the things I hate most in debates are people who hide behind broad brush arguments, as he does here. “I wonder why people that preach tolerance….” Using the generic and collective ‘people’ rather than calling me out. If you’re talking to me, then talk to me. I’m a big boy, I can take it.
Plus, come on, no one has ever heard me preach this dog whistle concept of ‘tolerance.’ In fact, I’m not particularly tolerant. I think idiots ought to be called out for their idiocy, just as I would expect to be called out for mine.
But he’s not done. There is one more post: “Well I’m pretty sure I said that politics aside she has offered ‘hope’ to families with kids with DS. The (sic) I said sorry, wrong Palin, and then you spouted off quite a bit of hate. So I guess that’s how it got started.”
Then he and the other poster had a short, pleasant discussion of the DS characters on Glee and the politics and name-calling were left behind.
But his last post points up most of why I wanted to write.
First and foremost, as I said at the beginning, I’m all for debate. I am not for name-calling in the stead of debate. I hate avoiding questions or answers by dropping a bunch of nasty names and making broad brush statements.
Ultimately, I asked a question which he refused to answer.
Instead, he filled the air with obfuscations, hitting the money-word ‘aborts,’ and twice using the oh-so-scary ‘liberal,’ once as part of a supposed elite and once as part of the media. What was truly odd about that name calling was that he lumped the wealthy in with the liberal elite. Those are two very different bits of class warfare and I’ve never heard them put together before so kudos for the mash-up!
But here’s the thing: he never answered the question. He referenced the question in his later post, declaring again that she’s given hope to families with kids with DS, but never explained what that hope was. Has she pushed for more research funding? Has she pushed for greater understanding of DS? Has she pushed for greater public acceptance of people with DS?
If so, then she’s done it damned quietly. All I ever see her talking about is how Obama has fucked up everything and how FLOTUS should quit forcing us to eat healthy.
I want him to answer the question. I want to know what she’s done. I want to be proven wrong. I want to know, since I have little to no understanding of this condition, that there is someone pushing America on it. I want to know that she’s doing what Michael J. Fox has done for Parkinson’s, which is push and push and push for more research and better funding, and what Betty Ford has done for addiction since 1982, which is bring it front of mind for the average American.
Has she done all that? Has she done any of that? Tell me she has. I’m begging to know she has.
Fundamentally, I guess I’m disappointed the debate went south so quickly; that I was accused of spewing hateful rhetoric even as he told the world that am part of a liberal elite that routinely aborts its babies.
Silly me, wanting actual debate in my debates, wanting actual facts in my debates.
As useless as it may seem, I will never stop hoping to one day discover exactly that.
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Tuesday, March 1st, 2011
Albert Einstein -
“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.”
Yeah…what he said.
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Friday, February 25th, 2011
Last summer, I published two books. They were small books, published at my own expense. It’s what the book industry quaintly calls ‘vanity publishing.’
One was a compendium of my cancer blog entries. The Cancer Chronicles. It gave the entire year, from diagnosis to the end of chemo treatments and the ensuing party…wherein friends brought me huge amounts of Jack Daniels’, Dr Pepper, and Oreos as way of saying, ‘We’re glad you’re not dead.’
I published that book because lots of people asked about it. Those entries, for whatever reason, struck a chord. Friends and family obviously, but also people struggling with cancer and what that might mean. I’d shopped the idea around to a number of small publishers and no one was interested. I shopped it to my former agent, too, and he was exquisitely unimpressed.
The second was a collection of my darkest crime stories, Remembrance and Regrets. Did I say dark? Very dark. Waaaay dark. Extremely dark. The first story is about child molestation and it doesn’t brighten up much from there. All of the stories except one had been published before, in magazines and anthologies, on the web. But taken together, I found no publishers interested.
Full disclosure: I didn’t work too hard finding publishers for that one. I knew it was too dark. Having been in the business for a long while, I generally know what is out of most publishers’ boundaries. It’s possible I could have found someone interested, but I wanted to try fiction as the second half of my self-publishing experiment, non-fiction being the first half.
So it was that I set out last summer to do a tour and shove those books down some people’s throats. Tried a new reading tactic, as well. Instead of doing bookstores, where I never sold more than a couple of books, got zero publicity from the store (either media or in-store), and, in fact, once didn’t even have books on hand at the store(!), I tried something different.
I got friends to host readings. It was a complete gas. My friends invited friends they knew were interested in books or authors, cancer, crime, whatever, and it was intimate and fun and extremely worth while financially. Sold more books in that one tour, with only four stops, than I’ve sold in every single bookstore appearance COMBINED.
So my plan this year was to do that again. I wanted to publish a collection of the best CopStories on this blog, and hit the road. Had at least half a route mapped out and five friends already wanting to host a shindig, with more showing interest.
It would have been great fun.
It ain’t happening.
Let me tell you why.
At my Sheriff’s Office, we work twelve hour shifts. They’re long and they’re hard. It’s tough being on duty for twelve straight hours, especially on busy days. Granted, this is a small county and busy days, for us, are very different than busy days for the Chicago cops. But twelve hour days are tough.
Given that we work such a schedule, our days off are glorious. Over the course of a year, we only work six months. Sounds like we’re swindling the taxpayer, but remember, we work twelve hour days and every other weekend, it’s three days in a row. Thirty-six weekend hours of fights, drunks, domestics, illegal hunters, underage drinking parties, etc., etc.
But the great thing about how our schedule is laid out, taking fourteen days off actually only cost us four or five days of vacation time.
That was what I used last summer for the tour and what I was planning on using this summer for the tour.
But our schedule has just changed and now we’re working eight hour shifts. On a day-by-day basis, that rocks my world. Each day will be better because it’s shorter and I won’t be so exhausted at the end, I won’t be so cranky and tired and ready to climb into bed and hide.
The drawback is…obviously…how the schedule is laid out. Six days on, two off for four or five weeks, then a three day weekend.
Thus taking fourteen days off will cost me, generally, twelve vacation days.
I simply can’t afford to take two weeks to do a summer tour for a new book. And doing anything less than two weeks (preferably three) doesn’t make it worth my while gas and time wise because I can’t get schedule enough readings.
So where we had it slightly better than the average worker, we now have it slightly worse.
Not a big deal, really. I mean come on, my primary job is at the Sheriff’s Office. Writing is secondary and I’ve already done more writing and publishing than most people ever have a chance to do. So I’m far, far ahead of the game.
At the same time, it makes me a little sad. I’d made some great new friends on the road last year and was looking forward to seeing them again. The librarians in Oklahoma, the Stanton chick with the great laugh, my high-school chums who bought a lot more books while drunk after the reading than sober during the reading (hmmm…might have to remember that as a sales technique).
The CopStories book could still be published, obviously, but being unable to promote it means it would have a tougher go in terms of sales. It would come and go and that’s a sad, sad fate for a book. Maybe next year I can build up enough vacation time to get it done.
But not this year.
So for those of you who’ve been asking about such a collection, my apologies. You’ll have to wait just a weeeee bit longer. But take heart, there is another CopStory coming soon. Involves a big red bus.
And blood.
And making my huevos hurt!
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Wednesday, December 15th, 2010
Dave Catney is dead.
I just learned of it today.
He died in 1994.
from www.davecatney.org
Dave Catney was a jazz pianist based in Houston. The first album I knew of his was First Flight, released on the tiny Justice Records, a hip independent Texas jazz label, in 1990. I’d gotten the thing for free for the jazz radio show I hosted and produced at the time (which was what allowed me to get killed on the basketball court by Wynton Marsalis and buy tons of porno mags for The Yellowjackets’ bassist Jimmy Haslip…ah…good times)
It absolutely blew me away. To be honest, I hadn’t expected much from it. I’d lived for a while in Houston and while there was (and still is) good jazz in Texas, Houston isn’t top of mind when it comes to jazz. What I didn’t know at the time was that Houston was busting seams with great new jazz.
And Dave was part of that.
I played that album quite a bit on the radio and fell more deeply in love with it every time I laid down a track. Piano, bass, and drums and don’t kid yourself, there was nothing simplistic in the simplicity of that group. Everything you needed to know about the history and heart of jazz was on that record.
A while after discovering him, I had the chance to bring him to Lubbock for a concert at Texas Tech University. Every year, the student association hosted various events. Concerts, speakers, lectures, art exhibits. A number of times I helped them land some jazz acts, including Spyro Gyra, The Yellowjackets, and lots of Texas jazzers of whom you’ve never heard.
Catney had always been my favorite. He and I, his bassist and drummer (who I think, for that show, was Ed Soph but some twenty year old details escape me) went to what was, at the time, a Lubbock joint for lunch. It was called, appropriately enough, Jazz, and while now it’s a chain with locations even in Omaha, at the time it was a tiny joint that played live jazz twice a week.
We must have been there for three hours. Eating Cajun food and discussing the very essence of music and literature, art and art commerce.
Not once during the entire afternoon did Catney ever make me feel like a kid siting at the adult table. He was gracious and wonderful and exuberant and modest.
The show that night was quite successful and went on for something like two and a half hours.
I had no idea that, at the time, he was already fighting AIDS and had been for roughly a year.
This was still early in the battle against AIDS. There were medicines, but all of them were toxic and none seem to be doing anything but delaying the inevitable and – from where I stood, it seemed – making the inevitable more painful.
But even with the diagnosis, even with the painful medications and the uncertainty, Dave kept gigging. And he traveled all the way to Lubbock from Houston to play jazz.
Huh? Jazz? In Lubbock? At a university?
I can’t imagine what he thought the gig was going to be. I can’t imagine he thought the rednecks would appreciate his music.
But they did. It was a standing ovation, if I recall correctly, and the audience asked and asked and asked for more songs.
Fairly soon after that, I left Lubbock and went to Denver. Dave faded to the background, though I never forgot how much I loved the First Flight album.
Somewhere between Lubbock, a small house in Denver, a larger house in Denver, then a house in Princeton, Illinois, I managed to lose my copy of First Flight.
Today I decided to replace it. I started trolling the ‘Net, assuming there would be – by now – a twenty year catalog of Catney’s music. I was anxious to see what he’d done and how he’d grown in the intervening years.
And that’s when I discovered he’d died.
August 11, 1994, when I was still working at D.J.’s Music Box, selling sheet music and talking to people about Dave Catney and his tunes.
After I learned of his death, I spent the day wondering how I could have lost touch with the artist. Not personal touch, I’d only met him the single time, but how I could claim to be a fan of a guy I’d paid no attention to for nearly two decades.
Seems selfish somehow to have never gone back to that well and tasted the water again. I could say I was busy with life, or that I was discovering too many other artists and genres, all of which I explore fervently, or some other reason.
And maybe those are all true. Or maybe I was just selfish.
But I prefer to think that I had Dave’s music. It was in my head and in my heart, and even though I never got around to replacing my CDs, I never lost the music because every time I thought of it, it made me smile and lightened my step a little.
And isn’t that what music is supposed to do? Beyond everything else it can do, shouldn’t touching the listener be one of the most fundamental things?
By that definition, I was never too far from Dave’s music.
I just wish there were more of it and that he’d been given the chance to see what he could do with that piano. Man, I’m telling you, it would have been a helluva ride.
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Friday, September 10th, 2010
From the ‘What the fuck?’ world, we have this:
‘Sheyla Hershey had the world’s biggest breasts, measuring 38M, until doctors were forced to remove her four implants… in order to save her life. After her most recent implant surgery in June in Brazil, Sheyla developed staph and strep infections, making her seriously ill. She told Houston’s Fox News, “Even though I know I love to have huge breasts…I don’t know why, I’m just addicted to it, I’m going to try to live without it.’ (Huffingtonpost.com)
Okay, well, first of all, ‘breasts’ is plural so she’s not addicted to ‘it,’ but to ‘them.’
And can she spell the world ‘therapy?’ A bit of an addictive personality, I’d say. Or is she addicted, not to the breasts themselves, but to the attention she receives from having the breasts?
And who’s she trying to convince? “Even though I know I love to have….” She knows she loves having them. She doesn’t think she loves having, she knows it, and she wants us to know she knows it.
Puts me uncomfortably in mind of the Octomom.
Whatever.
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Monday, September 6th, 2010
“The most chilling aspect of Dave Eggers’s heartbreaking book, Zeitoun, is that the federal government’s fastest and most efficient response to Hurricane Katrina was the creation of a Guantánamo-like prison facility (in days!) in which 1,200 American citizens were summarily detained and denied any of their constitutional rights for months, a suspension of habeas corpus that reads like something out of a Kafka novel.”
Fareed Zakaria, What America Has Lost,
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/09/04/zakaria-why-america-overreacted-to-9-11.html
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Tuesday, August 24th, 2010
…because if it hadn’t been for the rain….
The gig was supposed to be July 7 and constant readers will remember I whined like a baby when the thing got rained out. The rain that night was horrible and cold. I was wet and miserable, my back hurt, and the idiots around me (who couldn’t figure out that when the instruments are still covered, the band is not about to magically appear and play…dumbasses….) had gotten on my nerves.
Here is a pic from that nightmarish evening…just as a little reminder.
It was a horrible night. But the rescheduled show was last night.
And it couldn’t have been any more different. The weather was beautiful, the crowd was fantastic, the venue was perfect (and let’s remember, were it not for Chicago Mayor Daley unethically, if not actually illegally, tearing apart Meigs Field a few years ago during the dead of the night when no one was watching, then this venue wouldn’t actually even exist!).
Now, I’ve seen Rush about 40-gabillion times, and they’re always a great band live. But the point of this gig was the album ‘Moving Pictures.’ It was the first Rush album I bought and the first serious record to which I tried to learn the drum parts. It is as near and dear to my heart as damn near anything.
But I did not see the ‘Moving Pictures’ Tour so I missed out on some of the songs. ‘Tom Sawyer,’ ‘Red Barchetta,’ ‘YYZ,’ and ‘Limelight’ I’ve heard in concert before. But never the second half, ‘The Camera Eye,’ ‘Witch Hunt,’ nor ‘Vital Signs.’
This was not only those songs but in order. It was the centerpiece of the show. As long as I hear that, it didn’t really matter was else they played. That’s how much of a nerd I am.
Well, let me just tell you something, those boys really know how to play.
In all the times I’ve heard them, I have never heard them this crisp. Last night, they were as tight as any band I ever heard. Normally, I like a loose sound. Music should be loose and allowed to breathe, but prog rock can’t be. It’s intricate and complex and it has to be tight.
Their standard comedic videos opened Act I and II, and closed the show (the last video always being designed to keep the audience in their chairs while the band slips away, that way they don’t get caught in the traffic, sneaky bastards!). They were funny, and wildly racially offensive, delving into Irish and Jewish stereotypes.
The set list from Act I, for those of you nerdy enough to care was: The Spirit of Radio, Time Stand Still, Presto, Stick It Out, Workin’ Them Angels, Leave That Thing Alone, Faithless, BU2B, Freewill, Marathon, and Subdivisions.
Act II was: Tom Sawyer, Red Barchetta, YYZ, Limelight, The Camera Eye, Witch Hunt, Vital Signs, Caravan, Drum Solo, Closer to the Heart (with a great acoustic intro by Alex), 2112 Overture/Temples of Syrinx, and Far Cry.
The encore was: La Villa Strangiato, and Working Man.
Most of those songs I’ve heard live but there were surprises such as Faithless, Presto, Marathon, and Far Cry. BU2B and Caravan are new and rocked my little johnnies like mad.
The big spiritual surprise of the night was 2112 Overture and Temples of Syrinx. I’ve never heard any of the 2112 Suite before and so that was very cool.
And let’s not forget. Working Man, a Zepplin-esque stomper was actually done – at least the first half of it – as an upbeat Calypso/reggae thing. Very odd, but oddly cool.
The lighting tech was brilliant, as it always is. The sound was crystal clear if a tiny bit bass heavy sometimes. The sight lines were great and the constant billow of smoke (meant to fill the upper strata of the venue so the lights would look more cool) wasn’t a problem at all.
The only problem I had with tech was the pyro. There were only three instances of pyro and they all seemed completely random. I know there were connections to the songs and that’s great, but the execution sometimes puzzled me. I realize you’re not going to get Kiss-sized pyro at a Rush show, but I think it would have been just fine to leave them out all together.
During intermission, some local radio yahoo came out and announced that, because they band was so thankful everyone came back after the rain-out, everyone in the audience was getting a free tour cap. It’s their standard merchandise cap, but it had been printed with ‘Chicago Rain Date, 2010′ on the back.
No where else on tour. Can’t buy ‘em (except now there are problem some on eBay). It was, I thought, a very cool gesture by a very cool band that – ticket price not withstanding – generally treats its audiences and fans well.
It was an incredible show that meant much more to me than just another concert by a favorite group. ‘Moving Pictures’ was absolutely foundational to my drumming. It was the first time I realized that even rock drummers could stretch. They didn’t have to play just back beats.
Neil Peart proved to me, at age 13, I could play anything I wanted as long as it fit the song and kept that beat driving forward. Peart led me to Simon Phillips and Alan White and Bill Bruford and Billy Cobham and all those drummers who guided me through high school through their own music.
But he also showed me that drummers aren’t just drummers, they can be – and should be – percussionists. Well-rounded, able to add anything to the mix sonically. Listen to ‘Closer to the Heart.’ Hear those bells? Hear the chimes? Orchestral instruments played by a drummer.
And listen to the time signatures. 4/4, 3/4, 5/4, 5/8, 6/8, 7/8. Sometimes within the same damn song!
It was an incredible evening and one – as cheesy as it sounds – I won’t soon forget. Was it too expensive? Yes. Was it too far away? Yes. Was it a nightmare getting into and out of Chicago? Yes.
But was it worth it? Abso – fucking – lutely.
And that’s all I have to say about it. However, I have quite a few more crappy and semi-crappy pictures from my cell phone. So enjoy as well as you can.
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Monday, August 23rd, 2010
The ten highest paid authors in the world.
(hint, together, they made $270 million in twelve months…or $2.25 million PER MONTH…each….)
10) J.K Rowling, $10 million
9) Nicholas Sparks, $14 million
8) John Grisham, $15 million
7) Janet Evanovich, $16 million
6) Dean Koontz, $18 million
5) Ken Follett, $20 million
4) Danielle Steele, $32 million
3) Stephen King, $34 million
2) Stephanie Meyer, $40 million
1) James Patterson, $70 million
Patterson’s latest contract, which he signed last fall, has him delivering 17 books by the end of 2012. And for that unbelievable feat – because gosh, how can someone who writes longhand write 17 novels in two years? – he’ll be paid $100 million.
And here’s what he had to say to The Guardian (UK) a couple years ago: “I’m certainly not a world-class stylist. But the storytelling is pretty cool….”
The storytelling is pretty cool.
That is a top-shelf wordsmith right there, baby, top-shelf.
How, you might wonder, does he write so many books?
He doesn’t. Sorry to burst the bubble of any fans who read both him and me (and I suspect there are damn few of those, but you never know….) Mr. Patterson pens nearly none of the words in his books.
Don’t believe?
He laid it out for The Guardian. He told them he works with “…collaborators in a back-and-forth process whereby he supplies detailed plot outlines, then edits drafts written by others.”
In other words, “Here’s my idea, you write it, I’ll change a word or two, put my name on it, and cash the check.”
And so all of the collaborators get to be, fleetingly, James Patterson.
This shit makes me crazy. I have never read an interview with him or article about him or summary of a speech he’s given in which he talks about craft (and please correct me if I’m wrong…cuz I’d surely love to hear his philosophy of literature). Not a word about craft or style, just about – and I kid you not on this – market penetration and display advantage.
And you want a lesson in no press is bad press? That everything is usable somehow? There was a review in the Chicago Sun-Times that included this: “James Patterson has mastered the art (if you can call it that) of writing mindless, page-turning bestsellers that sell millions of copies, then disappear as quickly as last night’s fast-food meal.”
Here is the quote as it (still) appears in his promotional material: “Patterson has mastered the art of writing page-turning bestsellers – Chicago Sun-Times.”
This man is ruining publishing. Not literature because there will always be actual writers, people who give a shit about the written word and don’t spend every waking moment figuring out how to commodify literature and then wring every possible cent out of it, but publishing. He’s leading publishers down a path whereby they expect every writer to be James Patterson.
Luckily, most of us aren’t that fucking idiotic.
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Saturday, July 31st, 2010
Tulsa, OK to Princeton, IL: 620 miles
Music for this leg: again, Brad and I wouldn’t shut up long enough to listen to music.
What I read before bed that night: nothing. I was too exhausted from driving.
Up early Monday morning and off we went. I was so full of sunshine and good cheer. I could hear the birds singing and the frogs a’froggin’. The sun was up and so was I and it was going to be a great day.
Twenty minutes after I got in the car, I was thinking about the Seventh Circle of Hell. And that circle, we all remember from English Lit, is about violence.
Thinking about violence cause I wanted to blow my brains out.
By Monday morning, I was the road. I was permanently transfixed by the passing yellow lines, by the passing mile markers. And I sure as hell felt like the car had driven over me about a hundred times.
(sort of like that video of ten or fifteen years ago where the woman in Houston repeatedly ran over her husband in the hotel parking lot? yeah…here’s a tip…don’t commit murder on video tape! Takes all the fun out of investigating it)
It was a great trip, don’t get me wrong, but my ass was permanently shaped to that bucket seat. I’ll take the shaping because it was such a good weekend, with great friends, lots of sales, but enough was enough.
There was nothing interesting on the Tulsa to Princeton leg. It was nothing but miles and miles and then more miles.
Well, except for the donkey.
Not a real donkey, mind you. A picture of a donkey.
A crime donkey.
Brad and I stopped for lunch at a Jack in the Box in the middle of nowhere. That wasn’t so interesting because Jack in the Box isn’t so interesting. In fact, this one was naaaassssty. Way nastier than the West Wind in Midland.
But it had this picture of Larry the Crime Donkey.
At the time, I had absolutely no context. It was a picture on the wall.
Ah, but through the miracle of the Intertubes (for that reference, see Senator Ted Stevens, once from Alaska, now mostly a joke) I now see Larry the Crime Donkey was an actual ad.
Wow. Good one.
Not being much of a Jack in the Box fan, I guess I missed the whole “Let’s parody McGruff the Crime Dog ‘cause that’ll sell hamburgers” bit. Too bad for me.
After lunch, Brad and drove. Mile after mile after mile…until we finally reached Illinois. It was sort of a celebration because we were now at least within shouting distance of Princeton. So in celebration, Brad snapped a quick pic of the Arch.
And no, I didn’t stop because that would have kept us on the road longer. I told that boy, “Shoot it while we drive, bitch, I ain’t stopping for nothing. I’m a mad man with nothing to lose.”
Or words to that effect.
I love the abandoned parking garage as a foreground visual. Not sure why.
…and then more and more and more driving and finally…ultimately, we were in Princeton.
So this nightmarish drive, during which I had such a ball and so many laughs, was how many miles total?
Two-thousand, five hundred…and four.
What? I can’t even get my head around a number that big. No wonder my back and my ass were broken.
But it had been a great trip. Set aside all the books I sold, and that I discovered a type of reading and signing that I like much better than bookstores, and I have just the friends. It was incredible to rediscover them all. To walk where I’d once walked and see if my feet still fit in those footprints.
Mostly they did.
I was sad to see the state of my town, but excited to see the state of my people who still lived in that town. They were vibrant and alive and exciting. They were exactly who they’d been lo those many years ago.
So I want to offer a giant thanks, as I wrap this up, to Chris and Lori, to Grandmother Smith, to Sassy and my mother Alison, to Bryan and Rachel and Cary and Nicole, and to the gang in Midland. I’ve written about them so much you’re probably sick of them, but they are me and every once in a while, I think I should remember that.
Brad, Amy, Debbie, and the Federale Harvey Bangwaller. You guys are why my trip was so great.
I’ve not read much Thomas Wolfe, but his 1940 novel, You Can’t Go Home Again, is quoted (and misquoted and misapplied by miscreants) all the time. Let’s look at the actual realization George Webber has at the end of the book, shall we?
“You can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood … back home to a young man’s dreams of glory and of fame … back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time — back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.”
George Webber looks back in bitter disappointment and I understand that. There are slices of the past which leave me bitter, too. But as I get older, I’m learning to leave those things by the side of the road (under the heels of a Texas DPS Trooper no doubt) and get the fuck on with life. I’ve had a heart attack. I’ve had cancer. I’ve got a bad back. Life is too frappin’ short to worry about something I might have done to someone 35 years ago. Apologize for it in your heart, promise to treat people better from here on out, and move on, bitch.
And while this trip left me melancholoy at the changes in Midland’s face, it left me revitalized at the stableness of those in Midland I love. Yes, time has stomped on down the road, but memories of my people, and our collective expectation of what each of us can and should accomplish, filled the well of my soul.
Maybe Wolfe is right. Maybe you can’t go home again, but you sure as shit can go whizzing past at 79 miles an hour and get an eyeful!
I took Brad to the airport in Chicago and then I was back at work. Rested. Recharged. Ready to face humanity.
And then?
My first speeder of the week.
“Ma’am, is there any reason you were driving 91 miles an hour in a 55 mile an hour zone?”
“I had a leg cramp.”
It was all I could do to not laugh myself into a coma.
I was home. And I was off and running!
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Friday, July 30th, 2010
First leg: Midland, TX to Canyon, TX: 222 miles
Second leg: Canyon, TX to Tulsa, OK 381 miles
Music for first leg: none, Brad and I wouldn’t shut up long enough to listen to music.
Music for second leg: a bit of Sonia Dada.
What I read before bed that night: nothing. I was too exhausted from driving.
Sunday Brad and I were outta there.
Did a bit of last minute driving around Midland to see a few places, then snatched him and hit the road.
But not before stopping to drop a postcard in a mailbox. Problem was that, after I’d dropped it, Brad commented that the complex looked kind of old.
And abandoned.
I looked and couldn’t breathe.
This one last thing, this one last image of Midland, is of boarded over doors, broken windows, chipped paint, overgrown weeds.
“They might not even pick this mail up,” Brad said.
Turns out they did, but it look a helluva long time for that postcard to get where it was going.
So we left and I realized it was over.
The weekend had gone well. I hadn’t embarrassed myself, had mended a few fences, and had laughed quite a bit. That’s a good few days. Add in the book sales and all was well in my world.
I realized, too, that in an odd way, now that all the emotional bullshit and high school baggage has been jettisoned, I’m looking forward to the next one. Thirty years ain’t that far off….
So we headed north for Canyon, Texas, home of West Texas State University. At least, that’s what they used to call it, before the entire university went on the auction block and Texas A & M snatched it up for a regional campus.
(why in hell Texas Tech, mere miles down the road from WTSU, didn’t grab the university for their empire is beyond me…yet another example of Tech screwing up a nearly free lunch)
Every summer, the three band directors most influential in my life teach at a band camp. Brad and I had each gone to that camp year after year after year. It was foundational in our lives.
So we decided to stop and see those three men: Randy Storie, Bruce Collins, and Don LeFevre.
Don LeFevre, Trey, Bruce Collins, Randy Storie, Brad
It was incredible. Bruce and Don didn’t know we were coming until just a few minutes before and I think all of us got entirely more emotional than we were comfortable with. I hadn’t seen Bruce or Don since high school graduation and it was the most amazing thing.
All three men were exactly the same with the same sense of humor and love for their students and their music. We ended up grabbing dinner and sat for a couple of hours telling all the old stories and laughing and carrying on.
Randy Storie was my high school director and he and I battled it out constantly. He threw me out of band about every ten minutes and the next day I’d come wandering back as though nothing had happened.
But Bruce Collins was the man who got me where I needed to be. Brad and I were always together in music and he always did just a bit better than me. More natural talent and a better innate ability to understand music.
And when I’d get frustrated at my inability to beat him in a chair tryout, I’d want to quit.
Bruce never let me. Basically taught me that as long as I did as well as I can, then I have nothing to worry about, corny as that sounds. But he also taught me to keep hammering away and eventually, I’ll get where I want to be.
That lesson has served me in good stead in my writing. Keep writing, keep submitting, keep on keeping on and you’ll get somewhere.
But also in Canyon, we discovered that an old private teacher from Midland had managed to scratch and claw his way into a management position.
WTF? This guy was a moron way back when. In fact, I was never totally sure about him. When I’d finish a lesson, he’d slap me on the ass as we walked down the hallway. Never really knew if he was going to shove his tongue down my throat or not.
His was not a name I’d ever expected to hear again.
With that ringing in my ears like a two-by-four to the head, I drove outta Canyon and settled in for a few hours driving.
After a couple of hours, we stopped in a tiny hamlet called Alanreed, Texas
I noticed, in this odd little gas station/market/hotel, they had some miniature bottles of Jack Daniels and Jim Beam. Being contrary, I asked if they had Jameson’s.
“We got Jack and Jim.”
“No, Jameson’s huh?”
“Jack and Jim.”
“Too bad. I’d love some Jameson’s.”
She looked at me like I was completely stupid. “Jack and Jim. And tequila.”
As though the sudden addition of tequila made everything okay.
So we left. And drove and drove. We talked all night, listened to a tiny bit of music, but mostly just talked. The years between us, though we’ve kept in touch, melted away. We jabbered and jabbered and then found ourselves in Tulsa for the night.
Nothing funny happened on the road. Nothing dramatic or scary or anything else. It was just two best friends putting miles behind them and making sure every connection was plugged in tight.
That’s what most of the weekend had been, in fact. Making sure every friend out there who’d moved away or moved on or whatever was still connected.
To my delight, they all were.
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