IVP - Strangely Dim

Spam of the Year Recap

I opened my e-mail today to discover I had 140 new messages, 100 of which were posts to Strangely Dim, all of which were posts to "Spam of the Year," all of which were, not surprisingly, spam.

One of those 140 messages, however, was from new friend and sequential art guru George Macas, directing me to a clever web page that I hope you'll enjoy. In the meantime, I have lots of spam to purge.

Click here to see the Smile-Pop Soapbox.

INXS Through the Out Door

Well, I can't say that INXS's pick for lead singer was my last choice, but J. D. Fortune certainly wasn't my first or even second choice. Last night was the finale, and since Jordis was eliminated a few weeks ago, I was eager to see Marty take the reins. He sang "Don't Change"--the second INXS song I ever heard but perhaps first in my heart--and ruined me for any other INXS lead singer. Tremendous. Marty is from Chicago, which makes him a local hero, so I'm hoping his band will get picked up so I can get his song "Trees" out of my head and on to the radio.

Brooke Burke, with characteristically little emotion, invited viewers to sign up for the next season of Rock Star, but I'm racking my brain to figure out what big-name band needs a new lead singer. Maybe the Ramones? Maybe the Clash? Maybe, however, some band will take advantage of this opportunity to give their current front person the boot. Therefore, I invite you to nominate bands that need a new lead singer, whether they know it or not.

Blame God

You knew someone was going to say it, and worse yet, put it on the Internet. And that’s what happened; some preacher is preaching online that God sent Hurricane Katrina to purge New Orleans of sin.

Really though, posting something stupid online is a national pastime, isn’t it? I do it every week, and nobody makes a big deal of it. But a local radio station has been grinding its teeth about this particular statement, with DJs taking opportunity to make public mockery of people of faith.

Meanwhile, here are some of the similarly obnoxious theories about the source and intent of Hurricane Katrina, found on Google yet unchallenged on radio:

New Orleans mayor fears CIA to take him out

Did the Shadow Government decide to sacrifice an entire city, New Orleans, to cover up the coming news of Bush fraud and bribery and in order to further rig the price of oil?

As the White House unsuccessfully insists on seizing control of the Louisiana National Guard to institute full-blown martial law in New Orleans, it has brought in foreign troops moving on the Western and Eastern borders of the state.

Ivan and Katrina: These are both very Russian sounding names. . . . The former Soviet Union (fSU) developed and boasted of weather modification technology during the 1960’s and 70’s with deployment against the United States coming in 1976.

Blame Christians. Blame the CIA. Blame the Mexican military. Blame the evil Soviet weather machine. Blame God. No matter how you slice it, it’s still crackers.

What can you say to a person who floats such a cockamamie theory? On the flip side, what can you say to a person who exploits such absurdities in order to spout their own unedited ejaculations about the government or the culture or the Creator?

We’re faced with a dilemma of biblical proportions: Answer a fool according to his folly, or don’t answer a fool according to his folly? In his book Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton dealt with this sort of manic cockiness better than just about anybody, so I’ll quote him at length:

The lunatic’s theory explains a large number of things, but it does not explain them in a large way. I mean that if you or I were dealing with a mind that was growing morbid, we should be chiefly concerned not so much to give it arguments as to give it air, to convince it that there was something cleaner and cooler outside the suffocation of a single argument. . . .

Perhaps when the man in the street did not seem to see you it was only his cunning; perhaps when the policeman asked you your name it was only because he knew it already. But how much happier you would be if you only knew that these people cared nothing about you! How much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller in it; if you could really look at other men with common curiosity and pleasure; if you could see them walking as they are in their sunny selfishness and their virile indifference! . . .

Perhaps you know that you are the King of England; but why do you care? Make one magnificent effort and you will be a human being and look down on all the kings of the earth.

Or it might be the third case, of the madman who called himself Christ. If we said what we felt, we should say, “How much happier you would be, how much more of you there would be, if the hammer of a higher God could smash your small cosmos, scattering the stars like spangles, and leave you in the open, free like other men to look up as well as down!”

***

Now in English!
My book Comic Book Character has been picked up by a publisher in the Philippines. Everything about the book is identical to the American edition--right down to the flip animation--except that apparently the generic superheroes on the American cover won't play in Manila, so they've replaced them with all-new generic superheroes. I guess we could think of it as Justice League: Far East.

Anyway, if you happen to be in the Philippines, pick one up!

Old School Jazz

A friend of mine sent me two CDs this summer. He had stumbled across long-lost recordings of us from back in the day when we were in our high school's jazz ensemble and members of the best David Bowie cover band in the entire state of Iowa. I’m serious—they loved to hear us play “Young Americans” and “Panic in Detroit” from Des Moines to Ames. We were called Little Queenie, which is the name of an old light-rockabilly blues song, I believe written by Chuck Berry. He, along with Muddy Waters, Sam & Dave and countless others provided the source material for Little Queenie’s barnstorming career. But I digress.

Back in the day I fancied myself quite the musician, an idolater of my own mythology. I embraced the “band geek” identity thrust upon me by the more socially Darwinian students in my class. I was a saxophonist with a paying gig, so I could afford to be typecast. I made plans to study music in college and make my living as a musician.

That was a long time ago. Now I fancy myself a writer, so much so that I blog, endure rejection or neglect from any number of print or online publications, and anxiously track the day-to-day sales of my book while fantasizing about my still-forthcoming appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman . . .

Sorry, drifted off there. Anyway, as I listened to these disks I was struck by a few things, one of which being that I wasn't much of a saxophonist. Oh, I know that in comparison to my peers I was decent—I got a fair amount of affirmation from people who ought to know—but in comparison to my mythology, I was just awful. I played the same tricks over and over. I never ventured beyond simple scales and rote arpeggios. I fancied myself the Eddie Van Halen of saxophonists. Just awful.

However, I was surprised while listening to these disks just how good the bands were. This little high school jazz band, this little white-bread blues cover band—we were really good. The music was filled with energy, the collected individuals played in near-perfect harmony and rhythm, the band members had fun, the spirit was infectious.

I walked away from these disks with a more humble sense of self and a more intelligent appreciation of the talent I’d observed in my friend, my brother and my long-forgotten bandmates. But I didn’t go to the closet and pull out my dusty old alto sax; I started writing about it. I guess I have completed the metamorphosis from band geek to writing geek.

But the whole experience gives me pause, frankly. I know I'm a decent writer—I get opportunities to write from people who know bad writing—but twenty years from now what will I think of this very sentence? What regrets will I have for the words I've put together and put before the public? Even more distressing, though, is the fact that twenty years ago I was convinced that twenty years later I'd be playing saxophone all over the world. I gave up that mythology long ago, but what's to come of the mythology I'm making today?

The core of a young person's mythology is that they'll live forever, and for as long as that forever endures they'll love what they love and be who they are. The young make their moments into eternity, and they generally have fun doing it. We get older and we discover that we are now what we once weren't, that we no longer love what we once couldn't live without, that time has lured us away from our pastimes. It's dangerously easy to lose sight of the joy of eternity.

When those suspicions weigh too heavily on me, it's time to listen to some old school jazz—to remember how long a beatcan be, and just how much you can fit into it.

Happy Birthday to SD

I just realized that this week begins my third year of posting to Strangely Dim. There is, apparently, no end to my capacity to ramble on about nothing terribly important.

INXS in Excess

This summer INXS is doing what it's always done pretty well: overexpose themselves. Three nights a week we're called upon to watch Rock Star: INXS, as admittedly talented singers perform an odd range of songs on the slim chance that INXS--and America with them--will give them a steady gig. Every week one or sometimes two people are eliminated from the competition for the lead singer spot, and between performances we're shown the rigors of band-leading--from choosing whether you should wear a boa and which one goes with your stilettos, to how you can protect your voice well into your thirties. Meanwhile we observe what's come to be considered normal on reality television: interpersonal conflict, trauma and corresponding drama, and back-stabbing hypocrisy.

We're narrated through this rock-n-roll ropes course by Dave Navarro, himself the master of overexposure both literal and figurative, and Brooke Burke, who never quite adds enough edge to the "edgy" lines she's fed by the teleprompter.

I've never watched American Idol, and I swore I wouldn't watch Rock Star, but I found it almost impossible not to. The only time Rock Star was taken off the air earlier this summer was to make room for CSI something-or-other and advertisements for Rock Star. So I've been watching it, and I admit that there's a steady stream of good musical performances that span the years and genres of rock music, right up to the present. For every Beatles or David Bowie song, for example, there's a Hoobastank or Franz Ferdinand song not far behind. And occasionally you'll even hear a song by INXS.

I should say that I've always liked INXS. I liked INXS while my brother and sister were busy liking Duran Duran. I have Shabooh Shoobah on vinyl and Kick on tape, I went all the way to Nebraska to see them in concert, and I even bought the album MaxQ for kicks. (The reason you haven't heard of this side-project from their lead singer is because I bought the only copy.) But since the death of Michael Hutchence the band has been quiet, and their songs have gone by the wayside.

Now with Rock Star I'm able to imagine INXS with another bandleader--a woman, perhaps, or an African American, or a southern rock junkie. Or at least I'm invited to try and imagine it. INXS was a band of a distinct era, and for all its coherence as a band (they dress completely alike throughout the interior photos of Welcome to Wherever You Are, and inside Shabooh Shoobah we see the band lying naked together under a teeny tiny sheet), Hutchence was the quintessential lead singer. Distinctive voice, distinctive swagger--he was even talked about to play icon Jim Morrison in the film The Doors. So whoever wins this thing had better be something distinctive.

Consider, for example, other bands who have had to replace their lead singer. Natalie Merchant was replaced by 10,000 Maniacs with someone who sounded eerily like Natalie Merchant. Queen finally recoiled from the death of Freddie Mercury by tapping a lesser light from the same era: Paul Rodgers, formerly of Bad Company and Free. And neither group has reached their previous heights of fame. By contrast, drummer Dave Grohl mourned the death of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain and then moved on, fronting the profoundly successful Foo Fighters himself.

INXS has hype going for them, but I wonder if they've thought this through. For one thing, they're subjecting their new lead singer to weeks of very public humiliation, not the least of which is having to perform his or her heart out while they sit in the back row with legs crossed and sunglasses on, complaining about being too "pitchy." By the end of this game, everyone will have an opinion about who should be INXS's lead singer, but only one-sixteenth of them will be happy about who will front the band.

Or consider this: INXS, a family band to be sure (three of them are brothers), will have as its figurehead the neophyte they've been systematically deconstructing for a whole summer. Are they ready to be led by their new lead singer? Are they ready to perform songs written by him or her? Ready to travel in the musical direction their new lead singer takes them? They're a family band, but they're sticking their most prominent member at the kiddy table, and that kind of disparity is no way to build trust or community.

I'm hopeful for INXS. Michael Hutchence was in no way the only great talent in the band, and if they have more music in them, more power to them. But for the sake of INXS, their new lead singer, and the scores of rock bands eager to follow them into reality TV land (I'll give odds on Rock Star: Genesis but not on Rock Star: Nirvana), I hope they'll turn the cameras off for a while and spend some quality time with their newest family member.