Viktor Bulla, Pioneers in Defense (gas-mask drill), Leningrad, 1937

Via Magic Transistor

Friday songs: "Johnny 99" by Bruce Springsteen

     I was never all that big on Nebraska as a kid. Despite being spoon-fed Springsteen with my Gerber, it was an album that rarely left the shelf. My dad was never a big fan [1]. and it just wasn't for me. The record, conveyed beautifully by the album cover, was so cold and stark. There were no harmonies, no anthems. No Big Man. Just a guy and his guitar. Mostly, I think I just found it depressing.

      Later, when I became old enough to search out music that didn't make me want to shout along to or dance around like a spaz, I rediscovered Nebraska and it had a much greater impact on me. Springsteen channeling Suicide, stripping the songs of their instrumentation and forcing you to pay attention to the lyrics, which were less wry and stripped of their swagger [2]. The characters lost their cute names but kept their hardscrabble lives. The tales became bleaker. The back-alley salvations turned to the chronicling of American promise dying on the vine. I think for years it was my go to album for porch wine [3].

      The song that stood out to me almost immediately, though, is "Johnny 99." for one thing, it's probably the closest thing to a rock song on the album. It has a shuffling beat that damn near borders on rockabilly [4] , and he starts it (after a weird little studio hiccup) with a falsetto Orbison yowl before launching into the lyrics:

Well they closed down the auto plant in Mahwah late last month

      Right out of a gate, this is a Springsteen song. Referencing New Jersey, cars, and the oxidation of America's blue collar middle class. 

Ralph went out lookin' for a job but he couldn't find none 

He came home too drunk from mixin' Tanqueray and wine

     There's something about this detail that just kills me. I can't even tell if it's good songwriting or just weirdness, not even counting that who in their right mind would mix those things?

He got a gun shot a night clerk now they call 'm Johnny 99

     I still don't get where the 99 part comes in. Is he called Johnny 99 because that's what the judge sentences him to later in the song, or is it vice versa? Both Springsteen's timeline and phrasing in this song are amazing and sort of an anomaly. I can't think of another one from this era where he works so hard to make the words fit. That line is also the entirety of the attention paid to the initial crime in this song. Such a weird pace.

     It's also worth noting that Springsteen refers to Ralph as "Jawnny" throughout the song while the judge is clearly pronounced "mean John Brown." I don't know if this is some sort of commentary or class indication, but I never felt like it was an accident. But maybe it's just the nascent stages of Bruce's weird dust bowl accent that began manifesting itself around this time.

Down in the part of town where when you hit a red light you don't stop

     Despite almost never doing it, I'm a big fan of karaoke. I love to sing and I have no problem listening to a  song 200 times until I can sing it without prompts [5]. But this song has probably given me more trouble than anything else of Springsteen's. The phrasing is so stilted and difficult to get out that it turns into something of a challenge. It's a great image, mind you, but the phrasing always kills me.

     This line is where my singing goes starts to go off the rails every time. There's a few other lines that just trip me up even more, but this is where it always begins.

Johnny's wavin' his gun around and threatenin' to blow his top
When an off-duty cop snuck up on him from behind
Out in front of the Club Tip-Top they slapped the cuffs on Johnny 99

     Again, it's the details here. It's about naming the streets, it's about which dive bar in the shitty part of town was Ralph arrested in front of.  Also, the Club Tip-Top is is both a plausible and sort of quaint name for a place people get shot in front of.

Well the city supplied a public defender but the judge was Mean John Brown
He came into the courtroom and stared poor Johnny down
Well the evidence is clear gonna let the sentence son fit the crime

     It's here that he picks up the curious practice of having one character address the other one in the middle of a sentence. Sometimes, this can be completely organic [6] within a conversation, but here the "son" is in such an unusual place that I'm baffled by the songwriting process. It's almost impossible to have it as "sentence is clear son sentence gonna", but "Well son the evidence is clear" works. As does dropping the "son" altogether. Springsteen must've felt pretty strongly about having it in there, but it seems like a lot of tortuous re-working just to add some folksy syntax to the song. 

Prison for 98 and a year and we'll call it even Johnny 99

     It's here that the harmonica solo that comes in. As the only instrument in this song aside from the guitar, it's quite prominent but like most of Bruce's harmonica playing, it's unusual. His harmonica style is makes prominent use of the sort of twangy note-bending [7]. , so much so that the rest of the notes mostly just feel like setup for them. In all. it sounds slightly off until every 8 notes or so when he drops in a note that ties the whole thing together like a rug. Also, how is 99 "even"? Compared to 98.4 I guess?

A fistfight broke out in the courtroom they had to drag Johnny's girl away
His mama stood up and shouted "judge don't take my boy this way"
"Well son you got a statement you'd like to make
Before the bailiff comes to forever take you away"

     The sense of chaos that Springsteen conveys here is amazing. It just needs someone fainting and maybe the clerk's family cheering. By now the title character is no longer an unstable murderer, but a "poor" guy whose live is on the line. The narrator at this point is at least sympathetic to Ralph if he already hadn't been the whole time.

"Now judge I got debts no honest man could pay

     A line from "Atlantic City" makes an appearance. It's a good line and I could see why he'd want to get the most out of it. But it's also such a conspicuously good line that there's no chance that even a casual listener would miss it.

The bank was holdin' my mortgage and they was takin' my house away
Now I ain't sayin' that makes me an innocent man
But it was more 'n all this that put that gun in my hand"

     ...and now we're at the meat of the song. I'd bet that Springsteen started with this concept and worked backwards to write the rest of it.

"Well your honor I do believe I'd be better off dead
And if you can take a man's life for the thoughts that's in his head
Then won't you sit back in that chair and think it over judge one more time

     This line right here has killed probably every single attempt I've ever made at singing this song. It is so weird and stilted and I can't even imagine speaking like that let alone singing [8].  "Think it over judge one more time" sort of makes sense when spoken, but singing it is just brutal.

And let 'em shave off my hair and put me on that execution line"

     and then such a downturn at the end. This is nothing unusual for this album, and at best Springsteen's songs have a "life is fine at least until I go to bed tonight" sort of ending. But this one is just straight up a plea for death. It's practically Eminemian. 

     The rest of the song is just an outro, as Bruce strums as forcefully as he can within the confines of the song and yelps over the chords. Those yelps are almost feral, like they had a bobcat wrestling a dog or something in the studio next to him while he's singing. They're ferocious and muted and close down the song in such a beautiful way you almost forget about the end of the story he just told.

 
[1] My dad's primary interests in Springsteen involved jogging and/or dancing. It should not be a surprise that this album didn't appeal to him, nor did The Ghost of Tom Joad 13 years later, although by that point, I was coming around on it. Once, in high school, I was cutting class and I remember hearing Pierre Robert on WMMR announce that they'd be playing a rare early Springsteen set later in the day. I immediately decided to cut the rest of day and go home so that I could record it. I sat there glued to my old box (is that a term that will ever be even usable again?) waiting for them to play, and when they finally did, i was treated to a set from April 4, 1974 at the Main Point in Bryn Mawr, PA. I remember presenting this tape to him like I'd narrowly escaped a Mayan temple with it (of course omitting that I'd spent a day cutting school to get it). He was grateful, but never really listened to it much, despite it containing maybe the greatest versions of "Wild Billy's Circus Story", "Tokyo" and "Thundercrack" ever committed to tape. I've since found it 5 or 6 times over, but I'd love to have that original tape again. For all I know it might still be in a box in my mom's attic, slowly succumbing to the humidity of Maryland summers. Note: This story has nothing to do with anything. I think I might've already told it here years ago, too.↩

[2]The irony of course is that these sessions produced the most misunderstood lyrics in Springsteen's catalogue, and maybe rock music in general.↩

[3] Porch wine dates back to Pittsburgh, maybe? More or less a more intimate version of stoop drinking. Porch wine songs are usually accoustic and rarely swing. Neil Young and Will Oldham have some pretty great porch wine songs. Iron & Wine, however, is way too sleepy. It's a fine line.↩

[4] Despite my liking almost every adjacent musical genre, rockabilly still bores the shit out of me. I think I blame the dumb 90s revival for this. I realize the ↩

[5] Much of this probably stems from my only experience ever singing in front of a live band and I forgot like 2/3 of the words to the song. NEVER AGAIN, I cried!↩

[6] As it is later in the song when Ralph says "Now judge I got debts...↩

  [7] It's almost sort of punk rock, Bruce's harmonica style. He knows just enough to get by and he relies on that twang so much you'd think it'd get old after 2 songs. But between this song, "Thunder Road", and "The Promised Land" alone, he's gotten way more mileage out of that thing than you would've thought possible. ↩

[8] You can even hear Johnny Cash tripping over it in his cover of the song!↩

I wish we didn't live somewhere so new

Note: If you're interested in this movie at all, go read Vice’s feature on the movie, in which they interviewed much of the cast and filmmakers and describe a lot of the production. It’s a pretty in-depth look at the movie with commentary from cast and crew. If you want to know what my particular feelings on the movie are, keep reading.

A few weeks ago, I saw that Cinefamily was airing a 35mm print of Over the Edge and I was ecstatic for about eleven seconds before I remembered that my chances of being able to find a babysitter so that I can go see a midnight movie 45 minutes way were pretty much nil. It was kind of a bummer, but it also sparked me to go out and rent it. It’d felt like ages since I’d seen it last, and I thought it might be a fun thing to write about here.

So far, it hasn’t been. Not due to the film itself or anything, but more due to the countless reviews (both from when it opened and more recently) and features I’ve read about it in the last week. So many people have tied this movie to so many issues, and it has sort of blurred my perception of the film and what I’ve always loved about it. My first attempt at writing this up turned into a whole screed about city planning and the shift in parenting ideals over the past 30 years. It was as boring as it sounds. My second attempt turned into a whole thing about Kurt Cobain¹. My third attempt came after way too much research into juvenile crime trends. But since making the mistake of announcing my intentions here, I will continue to clatter away until I get something usable.

On its face, Over the Edge is a movie about teenagers in the newly constructed prefab town of New Granada. Tired of having little to do and being pushed out of sight by their parents, the kids revolt. The filmmakers based it on a growing trend in the mid-70s of juvenile crime spiraling out of control in planned communities, mostly on the West Coast². The text that opens the movie states as much:

In 1978 110,000 kids under 18 were arrested for crimes of vandalism in the United States.

This story is based on true incidents occurring during the 70s in a planned suburban community of condominiums and townhomes where city planners ignored the fact that a quarter of the population was 15 years old or younger.

This is slightly misleading, since while there was certainly a spike in juvenile crime in the mid-70s, it was on par with the rest of the country³. What is prompted concern was mostly the fact that these communities were suburban and largely white. Furthermore, while many of the city planners were shortsighted in failing to consider the youth populations of the towns they were creating, these kids at least had nominal parents⁴, right?

In spite of the dated clothing⁵ and soundtrack⁶, the film holds up incredibly well as one of the best snapshots of adolescence ever put to film. As a quasi-juvenile delinquent who was somewhat of a latchkey kid growing up about a decade later, a lot of this film resonates with me, as I’m sure it does with many who see it. I can’t think of another movie that identifies the struggles of being a teenager so succinctly⁷. Much of it is in the bravado you see these kids⁸ carry themselves with, especially when there are no parents around. It’s in the drunken swagger of the kid hosting a party while his parents are in Reno, aping I don’t know, the Festrunk Brothers? It’s in Matt Dillon’s character saying, for the second time in the movie, “a kid who rats is a dead kid” to a squealing drug dealer before throwing him into a pond (and not killing him)⁹. It’s the bullshit posturing that shows a kid standing defiantly on a cop car just minutes after you see him riding around on a bike that literally bears a flag with his name on it.

They also do a fantastic job of reminding the adult viewer just how dramatic and insane teenage love is. When the protagonist Carl sees the girl he likes making out with another guy and he stares daggers at her before leaving the party in an exaggerated huff. That feeling of being hopelessly in love and over-reading every little smile and gesture. It’s the same thing that shows up later when the two spend a clumsy night together and you know that they aren’t even considering that they won’t spend the rest of their lives together.

In the film’s climax, the kids finally get what they want (thanks largely to Carl’s plan): total freedom. Kids are quite literally running amok and wreaking all sorts of havoc. Carl looks around and quickly realizes that, as the scene rapidly spirals out of control, that he wanted something else. He decides to leave soon after.

I could write about this movie for days. I sort of already have. But there in this movie to inspect in detail, both literally and thematically. There are facial cues, and a physicality. There’s the dirtbike scene! I didn’t even get to the fact that the main character has a black eye through most of the movie! Or that all of the kids have New York accents!

In spite of my numerous lengthy footnotes, there’s so much more I could go into about the effects of suburban sprawl or parenting trends or whatever, but the fact is I don’t think I could go into that rabbit hole of research right now and still finish this thing before October.

Instead I will remind you that this is a simple teen movie, about kids that feel like a town’s afterthought. And their parents, who try everything but having an honest discussion with their kids. And about the America of almost 40 years ago. In spite of the film’s shortcomings, and there are many, I can link my own adolescence directly to several specific moments of this movie (excepting much of the third act, of course). It’s a story wrought with exaggeration and melodrama, but it is a movie that can show me a group of adolescents and forcibly remind me exactly what it was like to be that age. After all, what defines the teenage years more than exaggeration and melodrama?

Yeah, it’s just a teen movie, but it might be the best one ever made.

  ^{[1] It would seem that Cobain frequently cited this movie as one of his favorites, and claimed to have identified with the Claude character in particular. None of this surprises me in the slightest, but I’ve never really liked Nirvana all that much and tend to loathe Cobain’s status as the John Lennon of my generation (whatever that means). While hyperbolic angst and self-loathing are certainly notions that I have held, it’s just a little too much for me most of the time. ↩}

^{[2] They based it specifically on an article from the San Francisco Examiner called “Mousepacks: Kids on a Crime Spree” that has seemingly been scrubbed completely from the internet. ↩}

^{[3] The scary thing here is that it wasn’t so much as a spike as it was the beginning of a plateau. On a national level, juvenile crime held pretty steadfast from the mid-70s to the early 90s. Within that window, property and drug crimes seem to taper off, however the scary trend of juvenile murder (and violent crime) begins to soar. I got much of this information browsing the Uniform Crime Report, as well as articles like} and this, this/ ↩

^{[4] Which is another contributing factor. The 70s featured that special form of post-hippie parenting, which relied on parents allowing kids unprecedented freedom while still expecting them to remain kids. In hindsight, this is a spectacularly flawed logic. ↩}

^{[5] Aside from Matt Dillon’s half-tees, the coonskin cap, and maybe Johnny's sunglasses, most of the clothing in this movie seems pretty tame. Even the girls are dressed sensibly. I can’t help but wonder if this was most of the cast were actual teenagers or if the studio requested it. In any case, it’s notable that the person who shows the most skin in this movie by far is Matt Dillon. ↩}

^{[6] The soundtrack for this movie is a straight up coup. It’s aged incredibly and while it seems out of place, the Hendrix song makes sense within the context of the movie. The only outlier here is the closing number, Valerie Carter’s “Ooh Child”. Reportedly, the producers wanted to use the Who’s “Baba O’Riley” with it’s “teenage wasteland” theme, but it was too expensive and/or depressing. In any case, in spite of the overexposure, in spite of the lyrical content, these songs still feel to me like the battle hymns of a forgotten struggle documented only in things like this movie, and Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and Freaks and Geeks. It’s music for the teenagers circa 1980 whose parents didn’t get it at all. It’s the music of the neglected or misunderstood. Of course, now most of these songs are entering grandparent country and all the kids listen to Skirlix. ↩}

^{[7] That isn’t to say there aren’t any. Fast Times in particular did a great job. But it’s far from the norm. ↩}

^{[8] and there is no mistaking the bulk of this cast for actors masquerading as teenagers. They were straight-up kids. This ads such a huge weight to the movie. The difference between watching a stubbly 26 year0old brag about taking speed in school and a scrawny 13 year-old doing the same is both palpable and terrifying. ↩}

^{[9]This spurs my favorite line in the whole movie, when the drug dealer exclaims that he can’t swim, Matt Dillon’s character tells him to “grow fins, turkey.” This, and his exchange with the police officer in the first five minutes of the movie NEVER fail to make me laugh. ↩}

Comics: A reflection (a review that got away from me very early on)

I just picked up a comic book hardcover that I've been putting off for awhile and that's been part of a very conscious effort.

For one thing, I really don't buy many superhero comics anymore. It's a genre that works in cycles, which is what I both love and loathe about them. These are, after all, characters that have endured in some cases 8 decades, and have of course been written and drawn by scores of people. Each one of these characters has been retold, rebuilt, retooled and rebooted over and over again. The character is constantly being shaped according to the story that the creators has in mind, and that's fantastic. It means that I can read one book where Batman is wacky (like the great Batman '66, based on  the 60s TV series) and another where is a complete lunatic (see, Miller, Frank with mixed results).
This has become more and more prevalent in recent years, as each new creative team is asked to provide an origin story or even as the publisher decides to start over completely (as both Marvel and DC have done in the past few years). Traditionally, re-telling origin stories was strictly for back matter reprints or the flashback that occurred in almost every issue to bring the reader up to speed. Publishers have even begun to eschew the traditional numbering sequences ¹in favor of the rebooting, or in some cases treating the run as a group of miniseries.
I'm fine with that. It means that I don't feel like I have to read everything. It also allows me to hop around and follow the creators I like more than the characters I like. It also means that I'll end up picking up books I never would have imagined picking up based on the creative team. Which is great because I'd rather have a variety of titles than feel obligated to buy every single issue of a book that I feel varies too much in quality to enjoy.

Crap where was I?

Oh right. Another reason why I've put this book off is because I have a kid now. And although I certainly don't plan on foisting comic books on her, I have taken to buying titles that a) I feel that she might actually enjoy and b) provide well-rounded positive female characters. It's not like I'm buying these books for her, but if struggling to decide between two books I like, I will pick the one she might like more. This is a LOT easier than it was even a decade ago. The era of the spandex-clad superheroine with an absurdly proportioned body is sliding to a close. The evolution of comics (superhero or otherwise) has expanded to include a host of incredibly well-written and powerful female characters and storytellers. I could get into a whole thing right now telling you more about them, and I hope to someday soon.


For now, though, I want to talk about superhero comics. It's not the best way to start this hopefully recurring feature (although neither is going on about issue numbering) since I hope to mostly talk about other stories (or at least ones that aren't published by the big 2 publishers). But there are a few reasons I chose this book to start this. For one thing, starting with a superhero comic can set the tone for what I want to accomplish here. I love comics, I have since I was 12 and I spent weeks at summer camp trying to learn about the difference between the green and grey Hulks, or who Forge was². But I also hate most of the baggage that comes with the culture of comics³. I have no desire to sit around arguing which Marvel character could beat up which DC character or whatever. I love stories. I love that comics (for better or worse) represent a contemporary mythology paralleled only perhaps by Star Wars⁴.

But there's also a duality within the genre of superhero comics that is difficult to reconcile. For each supremely talented storyteller or ingenious take on a popular character, there are three garbage books about female subjugation or dumb vengeance or violence as a plot device. As a result, anyone who enjoys comics has to be prepared to dispel the notion that yes, they read comic books and no, not all of them are written for 8th graders or just about tits and gore. Comics are an art form like any other. When done correctly, they can carry the pathos of literature, the gravity of fine art, and the passion of film. Or they can just show useless pandering to sociopaths.

Like any art form, there is a spectrum here in regard to quality.

and so I, as a reader of these books, owe it to myself to possess a bit of self-awareness as I read these books and talk about them. I'm hardly an expert, trust me. But I want to present my view of these works not only as someone who loves to read comic books, but also as someone who eschews the subculture that is built up around them, and superhero comics in particular.

As I'm still typing this (and banging my head against the wall trying to figure out how to create a better footnote system than the multi-asterisk hell that I've been using), I realize that this post is already WAY too long and that nobody in their right mind is still reading. Also that I have very little time left before I want to get this thing published and move on to the next feature. So I'm going to stop typing in a minute and just throw this thing up there and maybe hope my dumb little footnotes have worked out in the end. If not, I'll be doing some editing over the weekend.
Sorry I didn't get to the actual comic I wanted to discuss. I can to that later, but it seems cruel to squeeze it in at the end of a lengthy post like this, especially when I'm not all that sure how much I have to say about the book in question. It is a gorgeous book, though, and hopefully I'll get to it in a few days. As always, my ambition outstrips my abilities. I'm working on it, though. In the meantime, I got some irons in the fire.

P.S. My dusting off of html skills should convince you how seriously I want to start this thing up again. Or at least convince you how much I hate using those asterisks. It's just like how I can't use italics in twitter and it drives me NUTSO.


<sup>1. the reasons for this are twofold. For one thing, people are far more likely to start reading at issue 1 than at issue 660 (about where Captain America is about now). This is compounded by new readers brought in by the insanely popular movies. Another reason for the renumbering is because number 1 issues ALWAYS sell more. This isn't just because of new readers, but also because of the idea that they tend to be worth more on a collector's market later on. I don't know if that's true or not because I don't really collect comics, but the collector's market is massive and still drives a lot of publisher decisions.↩

2. At the time, Forge was the dumbest X-Man. Now, I'm not even sure he'd break the top 20.↩

3. This is an issue with almost every interest of mine. For nearly every one of my interests, there's a bullshit subculture that I can't stand and go out of my way not to be associated with. This is probably why I don't get out much.↩

4. It is not lost on me that both Marvel and Star Wars are owned by Disney, increasing exponentially the notion that in 100 years we might have SEVERAL corporate-owned religions. Laugh now... but watch how serious this May 4th shit gets next year.↩</sup>

Luke v Hud

http://happilyhardarcade.tumblr.com/post/128824600516/andyswarhol-paul-newman-1968

I can't stop looking at this and thinking "holy shit this is almost 50 years ago".
I know we are less apathetic now. I know that most of us are more politically active than ever before.

But when you look at what has guided this discourse: ideological mimicry, misinformation, distrust, special interests... is that any better? Is it possible to have a politically active and well-informed population?

 It's like we've decided to be more politically active (thanks in large part to the internet), but only in the basest sense possible. As usual, technology has provided us with unparalleled convenience while eradicating nuance and the responsibility of participation.

 Now we just shout insults and non-facts at one another, a revival of 19th century politicking in the truest sense.

 Sometimes I miss apathy.

Hack sweat cough cry

It's not that I'm already blowing this off. Well, I kinda blew it off for the holiday weekend.

The fact is that I've been sick for about a week and it's also been disgustingly hot here. I literally woke up with a stuffed, mucousy head at 4:45 this morning and it was already 84°F. That's enough to get me out of doing pretty much anything, so there's that.

But I have been working on some stuff. There's a discussion of the 1979 movie Over the Edge that I started in 2006 and then completely forgot about. There's also some HOT TAKES that I'll be able to get to in a week or two.

I still have a Friday series planned, although my wife will no longer have band practice on those nights, which is good for me but bad for you, since that's when I'd get the time to write those. I'm in the process of figuring out a new schedule for that.

In the meantime, though, I have a post about THOR: God of Thunder that I should have completed by tomorrow afternoon. And then another quickie about Springsteen's "Johnny 99" that I'm shooting to have done by Monday at the latest (although that one is almost already completely finished, I just need to actually write it). So yeah, stuff's on its way. Whether it's any good or not is yet to be seen.

"Albatross at Midway Atoll Refuge (8080507529)" by Chris Jordan (via U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Headquarters) 

9 out of 10 seabirds have plastic in their intestines

because of the proliferation of floating trash by 2050, birds of almost every ocean-foraging species may be eating plastic.

     This is the sort of thing that -when I see this first thing in the morning- I pretty much spend the day knowing that we're all doomed.

Nag on the Lake: Japanese Woodblock GIFs

I love these:



Nag on the Lake: Japanese Woodblock GIFs:

Amazing GIFs made from Japanese woodblock prints by animator Segawa 37

WHAT THE HELL

this can't be a good thing, right?







from boingboing

Tales of the Bagnio, Vol. 1

     I have all these different ideas of what I want to write about, some recurring features, some long-winded diatribes about Queen songs and the current hilarious state of Philadelphia sports franchises. If I ever get the chance, I'd tell you about what I've been up to, but it isn't very interesting. None of my plans involve my experiences as a father or the how wise I am now because I have to encounter human feces on a regular basis. That's the Cotton promise™.

     But today, I want to tell you a story, an old one. Not like India old, but old enough for this country and this coast in particular. For the past year or so, I've been reading an eye-raising number of essays and accounts of prostitution in the American West. My library account remains scandalous. It started as research as something I've been working on for what feels like a decade (but actually only 7 years, thank you very much) and am no closer to finishing than when I started.

     This began with Herbert Asbury's incredible Barbary Coast, an amazing account of San Francisco's early days. You might recognize Asbury as the author of The Gangs of New York, and this is a very similar book. I love nonfiction pieces like this because they provide that rare account of what the lower classes (i.e. 80% of the population) did with their time. Obviously there are church records and censuses and all that stuff, but when you really want to know something about the culture of an era, look to that era's dirtbags. I could go on and on about this and probably will on another day, but I still have that story to get to.

     Anyway, this incredible book put me on a path of finding anything I could about prostitution of the era. The bagnios, the brothels, the pretty waiter girls and the madames. It's difficult to put to words how important this aspect of life was to the creation of American culture and the west in particular. You could argue (easily, as Cy Martin does in his book Whiskey and Wild Women) that these women, along with the barkeepers, were the only vestige of culture in the American west through its nascent years. There are so many incredible stories contained in these accounts, and I'm sure I'll discuss some of them in greater detail at another time, as I keep having to delete whole paragraphs as I get sidetracked talking about the importance of these "degenerate" institutions within the development of an American culture and psyche.

ANYWAY

     This is the story of Ada LaMont, the first madame in Denver. Well, the first white one, anyway, Records from that era are spotty at best, and unfortunately almost always with a European bent. But this we already know.

     Ada LaMont is said to have boarded a wagon train from Indiana in 1858 or 1859 with her husband, a young minister hoping to spread the Word in the morally abandoned West. She was all of 19 years old. Somewhere on the journey West, her clergyman husband disappeared at the same time as a woman of "questionable character" (a pretty broad term and usually just meant that she was unmarried and not a schoolteacher). The wagon train halted to search for the missing parties, but when they were not found the assumption was that Ada had been abandoned in favor of the other woman.

     Dismayed, LaMont had little choice but to complete her journey in heartbroken silence. When the wagon train reached Denver (the neighborhood of Auraria, to be specific), the once demure Ada stunned her fellow travelers by appearing before them and stating "As a God-fearing woman, you see me for the last time. As of tomorrow, I start the first brothel in this settlement. Any of you men in need of a little fun will always find the flaps of my tent open."

(how great -and utterly American- is that?)

     Anyway, Ada (or Addie, as she renamed herself), was true to her word. She worked as a well-liked madame in Auraria for most of the remainder of her life. She began on "Indian Row" on Ferry Street, now known as 11th street and currently appears to be the center of the UC Denver campus. Later, she relocated to a two-story brick building on Arapahoe Street. Aside from the notoriety of her scandalous profession, Addie was also famous for her reasonably priced liquor, sympathetic ear and workers who never stole from their clients (all rare for that time).

     Over time, she fell in with a rough crowd, which is to say her clientele and competition, notably a gambler named Charley Harrison. Harrison was a charming man of the South, the proprietor of the Criterion Saloon, and allegedly an undercover agent of the Confederacy. He was also a raging psychopath known to commit murders all over Denver. After being acquitted of one, he aspired to kill twelve white men, so that he could "have a jury of his peers in hell." Apparently, he did not consider the dozen non-white men he'd already murdered his peers, although some say he counted the murder of three women equal to that of one white man.  Charming guy. Addie LaMont, it seems, was instrumental in getting bribing the right people to get Harrison off the hook for at least one killing, although he was later chased out of town. Justice eventually caught up with him, though, as a party of Osage caught up with him and sent him to the hell he was looking for.

ISN'T HISTORY COLORFUL!??

     But this story is not yet done. Because years later after decades of infamy as a a bordello operator, an old friend from back East came to see her and brought with him a startling artifact. It seemed that while camping in Kansas, he had stumbled across several corpses, and in the arms of one, found a bible that bore Ada's inscription to her minister husband. There was a bullet hole in his skull. The missing woman that he had been suspected of running off with all those years ago was also found among the dead. It had been supposed that they had been killed by natives, but I've never been able to find confirmation to that effect.

     Devastated, Addie turned to drink. After squandering her considerable fortune in an alcoholic stupor, her business had declined and she moved to nearby Georgetown (then in the throes of a massive silver find), where she herself worked as a prostitute before dying penniless on the streets of a wealthy boom town.


     Is that not a story or what!? I know it doesn't have the happiest of endings, but there is rarely such a thing if you follow the plot long enough down the line.

So that's what I got for this beautiful day. I'm going to go for a walk in a little bit and if I get the chance, I'm going to try to start a new regular feature thing later this evening. In the meantime, I hope you all have a fantastic Friday.

Below is an old news story about Charley Harrison because it's sadly a lot easier to find information about him than Ada LaMont.

All True--All Fact--Stories of the Real West, 15(3). 1968.

appalling.

(Source: Urbanpeek.com)

Do Better

Dan Hipp is the best-                                    

Post called on account of terrorism

A long and furious tirade about how stupid our guns laws are will do nothing right now, and I'm afraid that's the only thing I can type at the moment. If you're reading this you probably know my opinion, just as I know that if we disagree, I'm unlikely to change yours.
but this is fucked.

I need to get the hell away from the internet for a day or two.

Five gun control groups worth your time and donations

sugar, this one is it

yeah, I'm gonna try taking a stab at this again.

There's a few reasons for this: for one, I am trying to do more of the writing I promised myself a decade ago I would get serious about and I need to focus on getting those muscles (figurative and literal) back into shape. I swear I've written that here in the not-too-distant past.

Another reason is that I was recently catching up with an old friend who mentioned how he missed seeing stuff here (yes, I'm vain enough for that to work) and I realized how much I enjoyed writing a lot of it. I spent some time recently going back through the archives and I forgot just how much writing I did here. A lot of it is riddled with typos and most of it is difficult to read on account of its didacticism. We all have the internet. I'm not going to assume you've never heard of most of the stuff I'm writing about, but I can already tell you that it'll happen, just because I'm trying to inform most of the time and  the only thing worse than smarmy enlightenment is pretense. Bear with me, and call me out on my bullshit.

There will be some differences. I'm going to try to be much better about sourcing pictures responsibly and not just image searching. This tends to take more time, but I'll feel better about it when I sleep.
Also, I have way more to do than I used to, so don't expect me to post as often as I once did. And expect more of the posts to be about things I can do from my living room, because I don't get out much.

I'm also gonna try to change the name and url. Actually, I will change the name and url once I think of some stuff.

I doubt many of the posts will be all that personal, because I've done enough of that, but surely some stuff will seep through and other stuff I will vent accordingly. But I am a person who looks for jobs sometimes, and that will (hopefully) be at the back of my mind most of the time.

anyways, welcome back me. I've already got a post or two banked and I can think of at least one more that's half-written in my head. So hopefully we'll hit the ground running.

Like things smothered by their own Green, mindless, unkillable ghosts.

Galen Parks Smith

there's an interesting article about kudzu on the Smithsonian website today. 

In short (although it's definitely worth the read), it posits that the overwhelming belief that kudzu is a sprawling terror threatening to smother the American South is largely a farce. It claims that while the vine certainly does spread as vines are known to do, it has never been at a dangerous enough rate to be a concern.

It also tracks how much of this belief got started, proving once again that the internet only sped the rate at which misinformation spreads so much.

It's funny, because I've definitely heard all of the tropes mentioned about the vine before except maybe the idea of closing the windows at night because the vines will creep in*, one echoed in James Dickey's poem from which I've lifted the title above. But weirdly enough, I've seen more kudzu in Maryland than I did in the entire time I lived in Georgia (or even travelling throughout the rest of the south). Of course, I remember seeing it a lot more when I was a kid on road trips throughout the south as a kid. Although, now that most of my traveling is done on major highways (and usually on the West Coast), it's not like I get to see the real South as much as I'd like to.

This supports a lot of the article's claims, and I thought it was funny that when I tried to use Google Maps to locate one particularly nasty stretch of the stuff in Kent County, MD, it turned out to be off the street view map (making me feel a truly authentic Old Line stater in the process).

Anyway, one line from the article that I walked away with states that:

 A writer for Deep South Magazine recently gushed that kudzu is “the ultimate icon for the South...an amazing metaphor for just about every issue you can imagine within Southern Studies.”

Which is a pretty great point, in some ways. identifying the South through kudzu is an identifier not unlike describing southern California through the highways. It's helpful description and provides some regional flair, but it's also an indication of lazy writing or, worse, Google tourism, of which I am as guilty as anyone. 

But it's also a pretty apt metaphor for pretty much anything. I could use it to tie into the encroachment of the 2016 Presidential election, or the pervasiveness of beatboxing in general American culture. My point is... crap I don't have a point. My point is that metaphors are usually either crap writing or way too subtextual to have any real effect.

Actually, I think my point is that kudzu might be an invasive plant**, it looks pretty beautiful when draped over a sprawling landscape... especially when it's covering up some manmade relic carelessly left behind.


*this sounds both terrifying and also so, so hot in the summer. Also, sleeping with the windows closed anywhere that Kudzu would actually grow sounds like it would be a horrible way to deprive oneself of the beautiful summer night sounds that I still play recordings of in order to fall asleep at night. But then, the thought of green vines reaching in through the windows and enveloping me in my sleep has a certain Invasion of the Body Snatchers vibe that might convince me to sleep in relative silence.

**"invasive species"  is rarely a positive descriptor, and this is no exception (Kudzu is the invasive species poster child, much like it would be toads and rabbits in Australia), but bamboo is far more invasive than kudzu and idiots still plant that all the time.

Hot Dog Social Hour, Vol. 7

1. "Hot Water" - King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard
2. "Vacuum Cleaner" - Tintern Abbey
3. "Belisama (2e partie)" - Belisima
4. "I Got What It Takes" - Brooks & Jerry
5. "Lonely Son" - Vernon Wray
6. "Turn On" - Don & The Goodtimers
7. "Je Travaille Autant Qu'un Garçon" - Dani
8. "You Fell Apart" - Ex Hex
9. "Utirumavunga" - Sikumiut
10. "Indiana Wants Me" - R. Dean Taylor
11. "Nothing Is the Same" - Grand Funk Railroad
12. "Saturday Night Blues" - Natural Child
13. "Ska All Over The World" - Jimmy Cliff
14. "Fall Away" - Sugluk
15. "Thunk" - Diamond Rugs
16. "If It's Over" - Bare Wires
17. "My Hero, Zero" - The Lemonheads
18. "Keep It Up" - Stephanie Schwartz and Nightfall

This will probably be my  last mix as DJ Rodney Stuckey for a few reasons. One, the guy is a starter on a playoffs team right now so it's a little less fun to use his name. Two, I like being able to name these mixes and put different artwork on each of them. Lastly, I was forced to use the longform mixes as a way to make them downloadable to you. I don't really have that problem anymore and while I still like putting these songs together as one long track, I understand that not everyone is going to enjoy every song the way I do. My tastes are varied, as I'd imagine are yours. And sometimes you just wanna listen to a goddamn Diamond Rugs song without having for scan through an hour of other stuff. I get it.

So yeah.

As always, I had all this ready to go about 7 weeks ago and I actually had the entire mix ready to go (completely chaptered by clips from a companion record to Disney's The Black Hole, which remains a weirdly compelling sci-fi movie 35 years later or whatever. If you've never seen it, check it out! I'm pretty sure I wrote about it on this site in another life.

whole
sum of parts

Hot Dog Social Hour Vol. 7 by Dj Rodney Stuckey on Mixcloud

Hot Dog Social Hour, Vol. 6

Hot Dog Social Hour, Vol. 6

Hot Dog Social Hour, Vol. 6 by Dj Rodney Stuckey on Mixcloud

Side A
"Bar Scene" - Frayker's Revenge
"Satin Dollars" - Liquor Store
"Heaven is Tonight" - Dirty Fences
"Any More than I Do" - The Attack
"Sweet Virginia" - Ronnie Lane's Slim Chance
"Red Eyes" - The War on Drugs
"Nautilus" - DJ QBert
"Turn on Your Love Light" - Bill Black's Combo
"Somebody Touch Me" - The Light
"Danny Boy" - Conway Twitty
"Hala Laya" - The Devil's Anvil
"I Want a Break Thru" - The Hykkers
"Short Song" - The Event

Side B
"Ms. Fat Booty (Amerigo Gazaway remix)" - Mos Def
"Lonely for You Baby" - Sam Dees
"Remember I Told You" - The Techniques
"Calypsoul" - Clarence Curvan & His Mod Sounds
"Looking For Something Better" - The Ro-D-Ys
"Born to Be a Loser" - Jimmy Donley
"Inside out" - Spoon
"Carry, Go Bring Come" - Millie Small
"It's All Over Now" The Valentinos

Side A
Side B

A lengthy, rambling farewell to the Best Show on WFMU

-->

Note: This is my half-assed eulogy for The Best Show. It won’t be pretty and it probably won’t make much sense if you’re unfamiliar with the show, or even if you are. I’m not writing to tell you what the Best Show is. I’m not even sure I could. But if you’d like to know more, check out Jake Fogelnest’s 2011 profile of it here. If you want to read a more cohesive and moving eulogy of the Best Show, I’d check here and here and here and from just about every other great Best Show fan out there. And probably Patton Oswalt’s site in the next few days. There's also a great little interview with Tom here. For now, though, I just need to get my thoughts out regarding one of my favorite things ever.

The Best Show on WFMU is grinding to a halt in less than a week.

    The above sentence was written over an hour ago and it’s still sitting directly above my flashing cursor. It’s not like I have nothing else to say about it. If anything, I have too much to say. I could fill pages and pages about so many different aspects of the program, but instead I’m just sitting here and thinking of all the joy that the show has brought me.

    Like a lot of other people, I’m not entirely sure about what I’m going to do after the show ends. I mean, I know what I’m going to do: go to work, love my wife, raise a child, cook meals of varying quality… i.e. live my life. But the show’s departure leaves me with one less ritual in my home, perhaps my favorite, one that has come to mean a great deal to me. The Best Show is consistently the highlight of my week, a weekly call home to Mars.

    One of the reasons it’s so hard to really describe being a fan of the Best Show (Friend of Tom) is because it’s not like being a fan of anything else. The easiest comparison to make would be to that of being a fan of a television show, but that’s also probably the worst comparison. Watching a TV show is so passive and controlled, a polished product that is complete long before anyone sees it*. Even shows live SNL or Larry King (I refuse to name that other clown) seem to have been pre-planned almost to a fault.

    The Best Show, while clearly the product of two minds, has a huge margin of spontaneity that arises both from the creators themselves and also the callers. The show isn’t a finished product until Tuesday has become Wednesday, and sometimes just a stray thought or call can derail huge chunks of the show, usually for the better.

    I first encountered the Best Show about seven or eight years ago, but I have to admit that it didn’t really take for almost a year. I would listen to ten minute segments or cherry-pick episodes (usually ones with semifamous guests on them) from the archives and listen, but I’d skip around a bunch and listen mostly to the interview.

    The first time it totally clicked for me was during a Wurster call that would later be dubbed “Darren from Work Shakes His Moneymaker to the Greasy Funk.” I haven’t missed a show since. Suddenly, I wasn’t listening for the comedians that I liked to be on. If anything, I started viewing them as a speed bump that would interrupt the pace of the show.

    I think that every fan of the show has a similar experience, that sudden click where the show goes from a passing interest to something you suddenly want to know everything about. The archive is combed. Youtube clips are scoured, articles read, and for the first time you realize that everyone’s already been talking about how great this show is and how did you not know about this for so long?

    Another common experience for fans to share is tragedy. Not anything specific, but just those down times in our lives where shit just doesn’t work the way we’d hoped and nobody knows what to do next. It seems weird that a radio show (or a podcast) would be the logical remedy to that, but in times of despair, routine is often what gets us by. Sometimes you just need a break from feeling sorry for yourself. Sometimes listening to someone talk about how terrible Frank Zappa is can help to put the world into perspective.  Sometimes you know how fucked you are but you still need a laugh. I know this not only from firsthand experience, but also from the sheer number of people that has called in to thank Tom for what he’s done**. These calls are rarely explicit, but you can spot them from a mile away. You can hear a cracked voice and an earnestness that sounds almost out of place. Anyone that has ever been in a spot like that knows just how grateful you are to the person who helped you out, even if they’re completely unaware of doing so. You can tell these call mean something to Tom, but also that he is made uncomfortable by them. How do you respond to something like that on the spot, over the radio? Still, it obviously means something.

   It’s worth noting that the support system works both ways, as well. A few years ago, Tom’s friend Dogmo died and he started a few stories about what he loved about his dog so much. He clearly felt awkward putting this stuff on the radio, if it’s too personal or sad or whatever. But it was also weighting heavy on his mind and he had to talk about it. What followed were dozens of calls of support, and any apprehension Tom might’ve had about mourning a pet on his radio show vanished. In its place was an outpouring of grief and empathy so widespread and moving that it puts tears in my eyes to remember it.  We’ve been there too. We know how silly and painful it feels all at once and you do too.

    I can’t even get into the shows after 9/11 or Sandy without having to go back and listen through the shows. Sometimes you can hear people put down whatever bullshit and just come together to grieve or work on helping or just to get out of their own thoughts. These past few years, the Best Show has been my place to do that as well. The show is a public house, in the classical sense and not spelled all dumb with a k.

    To me, the show has several vital components. A better writer than me would be able to tie these all into a wonderful commentary about life and loss. Unfortunately, I am no longer a better writer than me, so I’m just gonna have to list them.

WFMU

    The Best Show was probably a tough sell before it started and then evolved for 13 years. It has experienced growing pains, audience chances, personnel changes, etc… you probably couldn’t have paid a commercial radio station enough to put it on their airwaves. So of course it was a listener-sponsored radio station that put it on. Even if you’re not a fan of the show (and if you aren’t why are you still reading?), that station has such a diverse programming schedule that there is virtually something for everyone. Please go check it out when you get a chance. If you are a fan of the show, please don’t forget how much WFMU relies on donations. As soon as I heard that the show was ending, my thoughts turned to the station and how much money The Best Show brings in. This station is invaluable and should be supported forever.

AP Mike

    Associate Producer Mike is sort of the wild card of the show. He’s super contrarian and probably takes as much shit as anyone (often from squirrel puppets). He’s probably more known for the can of Coors he opens at the beginning of every show than he should be. He never fails to provide some perspective that might not have considered, and his voice is a perfect sounding board for Tom’s. I think one of my favorite surprises of the Best Show is how much I’ve enjoyed its fill-in show Depravity’s Rainbow with Mike and Therese. I can only hope that he’ll continue to appear on WFMU.

The Callers

    I had a whole thing written up about how I believe callers almost always fall into at least one of four categories (crazies, assholes, self-promoters, and FOTS), but it’s longwinded and unnecessary. What I will say is that the callers of the show (even especially the bad ones) are a vital part of it. Earlier I said that the easiest analogy to being a fan of the show is of being a fan of a television show. It certainly isn’t the best, though. Because being a fan of the Best Show is like being a fan of… I dunno, the Christmas tree lighting ceremony at Hershey Park. You definitely have something in common with everyone there, but probably not as much as you would think. Aside from the show, the most unifying theme of FOTS is a fascination with the absurdity of Western pop culture. In this regard, it’s no surprise that GG Allin is the patron saint(?) of the show, or that KISS is a frequent topic of discussion. Tom will still occasionally reference that TV show Cavemen, or Hider in the House. Once, I heard him mention Vice Squad, which remains one of the most troubled and baffling films I’ve ever seen. I’ve meant to call in about that since he said it 3 years ago.

The callers of the Best Show are a disparate group, and that’s part of what makes the show work so well. They’re not just a sounding board for Tom, they make up a community of people that talk among themselves, that theorize, and all of whom want to make the show better. They don’t always succeed, but their efforts are usually in earnest.

    The regular callers, meanwhile, are frequently as entertaining as anything else on the show. There are too many names to list here, and too many names to insult by listing just a few.  In an earlier draft of this paragraph, I had named a list of like 25 callers that was still growing, and I’d feel terrible if I left anyone out. But they know who they are. There are voices that I love to hear on the other end of that line, and they’re the ones that I’ll probably miss the most after next week.

Jon Wurster

    I find Jon Wurster to be completely enigmatic. I’d be a huge fan of his for his Twitter account alone. He also happens to be a member of more than one of my favorite bands ever and has played with pretty much everyone. He’s also a Philly guy, which I tend to keep close track of for some reason. But more than any of that, he is the voice of Newbridge. In fact, I first started listening to the show because his most popular character, Philly Boy Roy, kept getting mentioned on Philly-area message boards. Like many people from the area, I was also appalled by the character until I realized what he was doing. Of course, it only took me about twenty minutes to realize that I know lots of Roys and that they’re from everywhere. The accent smarted at first, though. Still, it’s a testament to Wurster and the show that I can talk to people all over the country about Wawas, or that there are people who make pilgrimages to them. I don’t blame them. I’ve missed Wawa every day since moving to the west coast.

    For me, it’s impossible to see Jon Wurster playing drums on TV or something and not think about some of the characters he’s come up with. The mosaic of degenerates and weirdos that he and Tom have constructed over the past 13 years is nothing short of genius. I feel like he must have had a spasmodic imagination as a kid that, instead of being suppressed by medication, was fed Miracle Gro or something. Yes, Newbridge is a festering place that is inhabited by connivers, scam artists, copyright infringers, and more than one belt whipping league, but it’s also one of the greatest places on earth. It’s a horrendous place with inexplicable pride in itself. It’s a Mayberry that enacted Marshall Law after a tire fire, and then never really got over it. I know that sounds like hell on earth, and I’m sure if would be, but I cannot help but absolutely love the idea of it.

    I think the things that tend to crack me up the most about his calls are the waves of idiosyncrasies that have his characters have shared:  frequently mishearing words or phrases, repeatedly offering to “wiki” things, giving out absurdly long URLs (usually featuring at least 5+ tildens) over the air, or stopping a line of conversation with “Wait. Whuuuuuuut?” Many of the characters tend to use “pants” as an adjective. Since I started listening, he’s probably called AP Mike at least 200 different names (“Call Screener Pierre” being my favorite). These little quirks aren’t even the punchline to Wurster calls, just little bits of weirdness to add to the surreality of Newbridge.

    My favorite Wurster appearances have been in-studio. He was a sound guy working on the station’s mixing board who just happened to get caught up in the show, and Matthew Tompkins from the Shout! Network, promoting a new show. But the most jaw-dropping example of Wurster’s in-studio performances has to be the Mayubernatorial debate show, where he played what felt like all of his characters fighting with one another (and Tom, of course). That show was radio history and should be remembered for decades as the crowning achievement of the medium. Take that, Herbert Morrison!

Tom Scharpling

    Forget Newbridge for a second. Forget the music that he’s exposed us to. Forget that Tom just riffing on stuff in the studio is funnier than most standup albums (and that he does it every week). These are all qualities that deserve their own essays and I’m sure they’re out there. It’s testament to how talented and funny the guy is that I’m not even going into those aspects of the show, which have brought me countless hours of laughter and joy. But there’s something else.

    The first thing to note about Tom Scharpling on the Best Show is that he is the most genuine human being to appear on mass media in the past generation. If you turn on the TV or radio or whatever***, you hear a script. You hear synergy and corporate tie-ins. You hear people suppressing their humanity in order to present a generic and likeable face. Everything, for the most part, is so deliberate that your brain tunes it out. The only time we ever really take notice is when something unplanned happens, like an errant curse word or a lunatic is interviewed on a news channel. The rest, though, is like focus-grouped white noise.

Except for Tom. As The Best Show has progressed, we have heard Tom’s on-air personality has become more and more sincere and realistic. Instead of suppressing the components of personality that make him an individual, he airs them out for exploration.

    A lot of the criticism that I’ve seen online or the Best Show is that Tom is always cranky or complaining about something, which has its merits I guess. But to me, that’s what’s so great about the show. Complaining is human nature, and if you don’t have a little voice in your head that complains about everything in your head, I neither trust nor believe you. Personally, I harbor ridiculous grudges or explode with rage sometimes at the dumbest stuff ever. Why is this person acting like such a clod and why isn’t anyone saying anything? How does this person have a book deal? Why can’t I stop watching this garbage TV show? Imagine if you had to deal with some of the mutants that call into the show, and think about how long you’d last before exclaiming “what am I supposed to say to that?”

    Tom gives voice to the same frustrations and anxieties that most of us share, but rarely say. He’s the little guy too, just as appalled by internet commenters and what Subway calls bread as I am. And more importantly, he’ll be the first one to admit how dumb it is to be so worked up over something so insignificant. Instead of storing anger, he vents it briefly before pointing out how absurd the reality of it is. 95% of anger in this world is completely fucking ridiculous, and that’s something that everyone needs to hear at some point. I’ve disagreed with Tom on plenty of things over the years, but it’s never mattered, since the big stuff is what counts. Try to be a decent human being, and who gives a shit whether or not we like the same movies.

And it’s not like it’s all negative, either. Anyone who’s listened to Tom rave about good music or Clifford or SCTV knows just how giddy he can get about something he loves. When Fucked Up’s David Comes to Life came out, I didn’t really pay attention because it was a band that I’d never really gotten before. I think he played a track from that album every week for a month before telling the listeners just how incredible the rest of the record is. I ended up buying the album not because I felt like I was supposed to, but because I wanted to hear anything that could inspire such a reaction from anyone, let alone Tom.

    And I think that’s what a lot of the cult of Best Show fandom is. People identify with him mostly because he’s sharing his thoughts in earnest and he’s trying to stand for something. It’s just people relating to someone who isn’t gonna bullshit them. We gravitate to the show because hearing someone be truthful about their frustrations and insecurities is so refreshing and human. We tune in because for three hours a week, a normal person gets complete control over his surroundings, talking about what and with whomever he wants to. He has no problem hanging up on someone who wants to discuss something he doesn’t care about, which probably a personal fantasy for all of us. He does things exactly how we all like to think we would, although way better and much, much funnier.

    It is empowering to listen to. The good guys win on Tuesday nights, that’s just how it feels. And that’s a very hard feeling to walk away from.

    This is gonna be a weird story, but bear with me. Years ago, I read a reprint of an article about John Belushi in a Rolling Stone collection. I don’t remember much of the article other than the writer describing being terribly depressed and upon seeing this, Belushi told him “don’t take shit from anyone”. The writer (Charles M. Young) eulogized Belushi with that same phrase later in the article. These words had a profound effect on me in spite of the somewhat juvenile sentiment (I was 14, give me a break), and I’ve repeated them plenty over the years. Of course, the rub of it is that we all take shit from plenty of people in our lives. Try getting a bank loan or getting pulled over without taking a certain amount of shit.

    Years ago, I bought some show merch from stereolaffs.com and it never showed up in the mail. I sent Tom a sheepish email explaining this and apologizing for the confusion. His response was terse, apologizing in kind and saying he’d re-ship before adding:  “don't ever apologize for writing about getting something you paid for, no matter who it is you're writing to! That's your money!” It was totally true and I was embarrassed immediately. Sometimes we grow so accustomed to deferring to people that we expect it, which should never be the case.

    I think one of the big things I’ve learned from the Best Show is that there’s a difference between not taking any shit and not rolling over.  That you and I have every right and dignity afforded to us as the assholes who don’t know how to act like civilized human beings. What’s more, we outnumber them. I’ve learned that sometime the world puts so much attention on terrible behavior that we lose track of the fact that the overwhelming majority of us are considerate, decent people. Keeping that in mind makes life a lot easier sometimes.

    I’m gonna miss Tuesday nights because we’ll never have something like this again. I’ll miss Tom’s astonishment of how a show like Sons of Anarchy can exist, and Spike’s bad celebrity nicknames. I’ll miss Ploptron 5000, Roy Jr, and all of the other morbidly obese, drug-addicted denizens of Newbridge. I’ll miss deconstructing “Chestnut Mare”. I'll miss the theme song(s).

    I know that it has to end, and I know that we’ll all get to experience some amazing new things. I can’t complain about a show ending that has existed so consistently for so long. Nobody from the show owes me anything, and I thank everyone for making my world a better place. I’m just happy to have been a part of it, even if I didn’t participate. Scharpling and Wurster will continue to work together, and I know that I’ll love whatever they do. But I don’t think any of their future work will allow their personalities to shine through as much. There can’t be as much interaction with such a giant cast of weirdos, outcasts, and FOTS. There will never be another Best Show, and if you missed it, I’m sorry. If you caught it, I’m glad we all got to share it together. I’ll see you in the archives.

*As I wrote that, I realized that the closest TV analogy to The Best Show is probably the Chris Gethard Show, which also features a cast of lunatics and people who are fascinated with them, just in a different ratio.

**This was made even more in the most recent show, when several calls came in to that effect.

*** I’m discounting podcasts, which one could easily argue he is the godfather of (Suck on that that, Adam Curry). The show is a precursor to podcasts, but it’s worth noting that podcasting also helped the show develop an even more massive audience.