A Plea to Our Leaders (w/ Far Too Many Adjectives)

Last night, Emily Hilliard (of musical, NELP, and silly accents fame) introduced the oft-overlooked issue of the growing trend toward de-legalizing smoking in bars, which I at first laughed off until someone asserted in all fucking seriousness that Michigan is one of the last states left that permits smoking in bars. Although a couple hours later I couldn't help fearing that the secondhand smoke at the Elbow Room would cause my pupils to simply drop out, my dismay was alleviated when a single line of smoke drifted across the faces of Chris Bathgate's band (including Emily) as they entered the gentle refrain of "Buffalo Girl" (I think it was "Buffalo Girl," and if it wasn't I still think it's the perfect song to insert into this recollection) and then ascended above them like a tornado of vanishing Zen as the drummer pounded his kit, returning the song to its furious instrumental hook. (Note: In case you didn't know, PEDAL STEEL GUITAR IS THE SHIT.) And I was thinking of what cigarettes were doing for Chris's music. And I was thinking, as I am thinking more of the time than I probably should be, about how some film director would have praised the gods for some barfly's incidentally magnificent exhalation, about how blessed a shot it would have made in a concert movie. (Tangentially related true story: Drew Barrymore and Ellen Page were filming a movie outside the Elbow Room in Ypsilanti last night. Whaaaaa?)

So please, Michigan government, recognize these two disparate facts: First, your people need good health care and affordable, something-near-guaranteed health insurance (for the sake of their human dignity). Second, your people need to smoke in bars (for the sake of Art).

Signed,

JMan

Thrills, Bills, and Quills

Four days of school and a week of living in the Krankenhaus down. Probably a quarter of my friends are currently abroad and overwhelmed (perhaps the election of Obama will bring them home, too)--what they don't know or have already forgotten is that the resurgence (I know what you're thinking: resurgence--really? and I'm here to tell you: really, really) of Michigan's school year never fails to knock a townie's socks off.

I have decided that my experience of U of M is akin to how I feel about Times Square: I certainly don't belong here; the monolithic secret is that nobody does. (If the medium is the message, then this is what the Big House was built to prove, and celebrate.) Thus the variety-over-coherence approach that helps place my "Dynamic Planet" professor Dr. Lyn Walter--intermittently passionate geologist, proud alcoholic, grade-A misanthrope (though she really believes in you if you're under 30), and especially virulent anti-academic--atop Faculty Hill, where her seniority and readymade persona must cause more conventionally earnest up-and-comers to cower beneath her like the ads for impressive off-Broadway productions that get eaten up by the creepy glow of a million Sarah Jessica Parkers. None of which is meant to imply that Lyn Wlater is a bad or unworthy teacher or, conversely, that Sarah Jessica Parker and that one show she was on--you know, that phenomenon Chuck Klosterman accurately summed up as "four moderately attractive women talking like gay guys"--deserve the attention they continue to receive. (You're it, Sex and the City aficionados, no talkbacks.) My concern is with the reality of any overstimulating environment, which everyone intuitively understands: A multitude of interesting options exist--many are clearly good and many more are clearly bad--any ou cannot decide between them because humans are not meant for decision-making at this speed and intensity level, so you assume that the biggest and brightest offering is the most relevant one in terms of keeping you in touch with the rabble (of which hopefully you know yourself to be a part), and that reasoning has a history of being right. Thus, you base your silly little selection--probably more than you realize--on your sense of where you are located within or in opposition to that dreaded generalization "the culture at large."

I am not using this extended analogy to assert that cultural relevance equals aesthetic or educational value. I'd like to think I'm explaining one facet of capitalism in an unnecessarily convoluted way. (Incidentally, I just realized I am also stealing this entire argument from George Saunders's essay "The Braindead Megaphone" in his book of the same name, so, credit where credit's due, George.) And I could bemoan capitalism and my university's obvious ideological kinship with it, but Marx can do so a lot better (and knows it). So I will choose instead to say that, even after two years in college and 20 in the Deuce, I rarely have all my bearings when I'm on this campus and have the potential to sink into loneliness and ennui just a few blocks away from it, yet lock me in Angell Hall between the hours of 9 A.M. and 6 P.M. and I'm liable to believe the thrill is ever-present.

Yours, and only yours, and barely on schedule,
JMan

You like me, you really really like me!

That's not true. In the words of my several fans, I am an intensely maligned ASS. 

Although this vituperation probably has more to do with the bitter aftertaste my defense of Amanda Bynes left in so many mouths than it has to do with the genuine desire for new posts, I have decided to acknowledge reader feedback and, in honor of Emma Claire Foley's birthday, begin posting again. Furthermore, I will take this opportunity to pledge that I will--by hook, crook, or nook--update this thing at least once a week during the coming school year. True, it's sort of stupid to make productivity pledges just as the school year starts up, but, hey, the school year is for new beginnings (right?--don't tell me if I'm wrong), and I really do love the sound of my own fingers pressing computer keys. 

And now for something Emma hopefully appreciates: May this video of the #1 song in America on August 25, 1988 help you make sense of the world into which you were born.

And now for something I definitely appreciate, because it proves that film critics are just like you and me. With a difference.

'Til my next self-imposed deadline,

Jman

Amanda Bynes

I know I haven't posted in a long time, but I've had a lot of half-coherent, somewhat furious quandaries racing through my brain (in the manner of that La's song, which is not about heroin), such as: Why don't people think Amanda Bynes is hot?

C'mon, just because she never showed up to fulfill your 12-year-old fantasies doesn't mean you can deny her the stardom she so richly, mysteriously deserves.

That's all for now. I know, you need time to process this.

Here I Go Again

A mid-morning good word for Marshall Crenshaw, whose first two albums, Marshall Crenshaw (1982) and Field Day (1983), I feel comfortable saying every pop fan should own. (For the record, pun totally intended, those are the only two of his albums I've been able to track down, although the two-disc best-of available on CD, which I'm still tracking down the budget for, looks fantastic.) I'm putting aside my educational impulses here and recommending them merely at my heart's behest, that is to say, because I believe they will bring you joy. Cards on the table: Marshall and I share an unalterable fixation on 50's rock and roll. Doesn't everyone? (No.) (Sad face.) Cards up his sleeve: The man is shrewder and more self-aware than you would believe, at least about his choice topics, which are 50's topics--girls and rockin', and what else is there really? I advise you to listen for the dismissive left hook he throws in the bridge of Marshall Crenshaw's downhearted opener "There She Goes Again" (purposely inflammatory statement: Marshall's "There She Goes Again" is superior to The Velvet Underground song of the same name) and how it's cleverly reinforced by the restorative closer "Brand New Lover." Other notable songs include "Cynical Girl," an effervescent gem I could deconstruct for lifetimes without ever figuring out the extent to which it's a joke, and "Try" (off of Field Day), so weary and determined, so terribly poignant you hope it's a joke. (It isn't.) Marshall makes, in other words, ideal music to start off a day soon to be devoted to Marilynne Robinson, Hannah Arendt, and The Sopranos.

Consequentially yours,

JCrew

The Big 1.0

Hey, y'all:

Woke up this morning, too early, like 8 A.M., says to myself: "Well, g'day, time to get down on yourself for not writing enough of your own accord. Did you even go to NELP, Jared? Had you learned nothing else, which you learned a great deal else but anyway, you should've learned the value of writing all the time. Journal, journal, journal, you lazy motherfucker." Then I realized I'd woken up at 8 A.M. for a much better reason than to give my ego its daily lashing: I had a dog to take out, and, as I sat here contemplating my lethargy, said dog might very well be letting his 12-year-old bowels loose all over my employer's house. Then I flagellated my ego further for being (1) an absentminded motherfucker and (2) a masochist, took out the dog, and came home to start this blog, which has existed as a (ridiculous) URL for some time but will now feature sporadically regular (or regularly sporadic) posts (!) (?) from yours truly, who has decided to start posting on here for a variety of reasons, such as the following: 

(1) He needs to write more.

(2) He cannot tear himself away from the computer entirely, in fact hardly at all, and therefore he might as well do something creative with the time he spends on it.

(3) His friends all have blogs, and he is a sheep.

That's pretty much the scoop behind this thing, friends and strangers. I have little to add about what to expect from this thing other than to paraphrase Oscar Wilde's assertion that the only civilized form of autobiography is a record of one's thoughts rather than of one's actions. Granted, Oscar and I diverge on many many (many) other points, but I think all who've known us would have to agree we are both civilized men before we are anything else (such as alive or dead), and therefore I shall take that maxim to heart and strive to reference the events of my life only insomuch as they serve to inform my (often willfully invalid) opinions on topics like the ethics and poetics of addiction, the appeal of old age and my simultaneous adulation of the song "My Generation," and The Boss, whose identity those of you who think all us collegians come from the same cultural vantage point should probably learn if you expect to be on my wavelength. (Another option would be for my 20-year-old readers to age between 15 and 30 years.)

Before I go, I really must credit Emma Claire Foley, whose increasingly surreal masterwork of personal online journalism was the primary inspiration behind this slightly different venture, as well as the fine, faintly civilized minds who record the events of my daily life here. Finally, let it be known for your edification that the heading at the top of this site does indeed come from The Big Lebowski; I am not The Walrus; the dog in the picture is plastic, has a flashlight in its mouth, and is named Piledriver; and, yes, this will likely be the longest post I write for at least two years.

Temporarily,

Jman