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