Days late, dollars short

The thing I'm about to talk about probably doesn't warrant a blog, or at least not a full blog. The thing I'm about to write, actually--under normal circumstances--would fit just fine on that right side of my blog there. That's the place, you may recall from the period when I actually wrote here with any frequency, where I said I was going to put little, unimportant minutia that didn't warrant my full and discerning writerly gaze. [You can tell I've been without oxygen too long when the adjective I choose to describe minutia is little]

This thing I'm about to write would fit nicely in there, because it's really a small thing--and a hopelessly outdated thing--but it's a thing that, due to my writing absence, has come, in the last three minutes, to occupy me completely. I'm filled to overflowing with it.

It's a realization, trite and small, which impresses upon me, like all of my realizations, that things I think to do are always done better and earlier than I do them or, in most cases, earlier than I even have them. Sure there was that one idea about Michael Chabon's narratives--the reason, incidently, I haven't blogged in weeks--which was, all told, remarkably original on my part, only containing perhaps a handful of blatantly stolen ideas. But that turned out to be a thing that stinks of shit and my grandmother Josephine's thesaurus and which I find utterly unreadable. But such things as readablility are not my place to comment on, and I've shipped it off to the proper authorities to scrutinize and libel what may, if the fates are kind, come to be known as an ambitious first draft of the essay that blacklisted me from graduate work.

But now, rid of the ballast of my crumbling ego, I've surfaced and am sailing high in the water, soaking up once more the delicious hemisphere of media and popular culture that I've forced myself, for the better part of a month, to have no contact with at all. This whole glorious world beckons me and, like a submariner on leave, away briefly from the pressures of spent fuel rods and detatched, heterosexual sodomy, I'm loathe to ignore anything.

So here it is, ready?

You may recall that, prior to the unannounced absence, I'd been up in my ivory tower, expounding on things I know nothing about, thinking I'll be the first person in history to break into the world of music journalism without knowing anything about music. Neat trick if I could pull it off, and I may still, I suppose. But now the point is moot. It's been done, and better than I ever have by a guy who's trajectory I'd like to closely model my own on. It was done, roughly, on April 12th, 2004.

These albums were rough-edged, with nothing like the production values common at the time. What might now sound familiar in early R.E.M. was utterly baffling in 1983. You couldn’t understand one damned word Michael Stipe was singing, and there were no clear hooks or guitar solos or bridges or anything. There was no candy. Billy Joel knew candy. The Beach Boys knew candy. But these new people didn’t have any candy. Or they had candy, but it was a much more subtle brand of candy–barley pops, maybe.

Or black licorice. I have no idea and should have stated this upfront: I have no clue what I’m talking about. I don’t know what a bridge is, and I don’t know how to play a guitar, or how to tell when someone’s playing the bass really well . . .

Shine on.

This article is filled with exactly the pointless and retarded observations that all pop reviews have, and done by a guy who admits he doesn't know anything about music. So not only did this Dave Eggers guy do something I'm trying to do, and on a larger stage, he sexied it up by admitting his ignorance. And therein lies the brilliance. Of course, it's snarky, self-congratulatory arrogant brilliance--also somthing I've tried with little success.

[the band] Kings of Leon are motorboats on crowded lakes and waterskiing in cutoffs and hiding Milwaukee’s Best in the forest, in the snow, in January, because your parents caught on that you were keeping cases in the fridge in the garage. Kings of Leon are knowing a guy in juvie and having a cousin who’s been in jail twice. And that cousin, by the way, the one with the burns all over his right forearm–nothing interesting, just an accident with coffee–that cousin, Terry, would love Kings of Leon if he gave them a chance.

Strangely enough, the other day I was bored in Barnes and Noble and I happened to thumb, briefly, a book of his short stories, wondering if I'd like his stuff. From the article, given his knowingly irreverent and autodidactic style, and the sheer number of clauses that bloom from what should be simple sentences, I'd say yes. Because he essentially bit my style before I created it.

This Dave Eggers guy wrote a novel and a memoir and has a publishing house, a magazine on books and a quarterly journal, also ostensibly about books. He's pretty cool, or seems that way. If I saw him I'd tell him how much I love him. And also that I hate him.

I'll now resume regular updates, semi-regularly.