Soccer Moms, NASCAR Dads and Homophobes

No, that's not the title of the new Toby Keith album.

Lately, I find myself annoyed by the usual catch-phrases the media uses to classify people -- words like soccer moms, NASCAR dads and homophobes. I don't even think the intent is to classify people. It's to make the reader mentally picture what all these people must look like, and then condescend to these imaginary people -- you must somehow be better than they are because they're so easily identifiable, and you're not.

The problem with all these cute little descriptors that seep into the general culture is that they're never meant as compliments. Soccer mom? We're supposed to picture a middle-aged woman with an SUV, maybe was once attractive but is now average looking, generic short women's hair, wearing frumpy clothes and constantly squiring around her spoiled spawn from one programmed social event to another. She might be wearing a whistle around her neck. She's responsible enough to drive with a handless cellphone. She cuts you off in traffic. She's transferred her Type-A corporate mentality to how she's raising her kids. I think the main dig against the soccer mom is that she must be affluent enough not to have to work. Common perception in America is that soccer is the domain of the white, wealthy suburbs. I guess "lacrosse" doesn't pack the same punch, although it plays far more to the same crowd. Ergo, she's an asshole.

NASCAR dad? He has a pot belly and needs a shave. He may even have a poorly-kept handlebar mustache. He wears John Deere hats, bib overalls and Richard Petty wrap-around shades. He's a Republican, or claims to be a Libertarian (but is really a Republican who doesn't want to be known as such). He makes good money at some working-class job that he has stuck with for years and is now seeing some payback on. He has a can of Bud perpetually in hand and listens to only country music and classic rock. As the name implies, he's an aficionado of racing ... or baseball ... or football ... and spends all his spare time watching these sporting events on TV, when not monkeying with chainsaws and riding lawn mowers in the backyard. Aside from that, he'll watch DVDs like Joe Dirt, Tommy Boy and anything with Adam Sandler. Ergo, he's an asshole.

What both the NASCAR dad and soccer mom have in common is that they are defined by imaginary children. The assumption is they are married, happily or otherwise, and their main function in life, when not being a pinata for the media, is to raise children. They're not NASCAR sons and soccer daughters.

Do these people really exist? When I was growing up, my mom pretty much played the role of what a soccer mom does now -- she raced around in our station wagon, dropping us kids off at whatever we were into at the time, from little league games to band practices. She also kept the house clean, did laundry and prepared meals – try doing it some time for six people, four of them kids, and see how much fun that is.

So, my mom was basically a soccer mom. Although we never played soccer. Or had any money to spare. Or lived in anything but a working-class environment. And let's not forget the fact that my mother simply sees herself as a woman going through life, who was married and had kids. I may have called her Mom, but she didn't define herself that way. I note this now because I'm at an age where about half my friends have kids and half don't. For the ones who have kids, I never define them in terms of father or motherhood, mainly because we’ve known each other way before kids came into the picture.

And I don't think of the friends without kids as pathetic, lost souls who missed the point of life. I always think of that scene from It's a Wonderful Life where George is running through the empty, imaginary future created when the angel shows him what the world would be like if he had never existed. He runs into his wife, who is clearly a mousy librarian, childless and alone, whom we must pity because she never married (because she never met George to begin with).

That scene gives me real trouble. Doesn't the possibility exist that maybe her life would have been better had she never met him? Or forget better/worse -- just a different life, with its ups and downs, like any other life? The whole point of the movie was to show George that his life mattered. But it dismissed the context of everyone else's life -- their lives would be worse without him. And it's my contention that it would no slight against George if his wife had gone on to become, say, Betty Page, and had married a fabulously wealthy man, then lived happily ever after. It wouldn't diminish George's life one bit to know this. And let’s say she remains that librarian living on her own – it’s impossible for her to be happy this way? She can only be happy married to a sparkplug like George? What if she had kids, with one dying in ‘Nam and another jumping off a dorm roof at college after dropping acid?

But dismissing the context of everyone else's life is the key to the game. Because that's what coining cute little catch phrases like soccer mom and NASCAR dad do. It's a nod-and-wink to the reader that he's in on the joke. The writers attach meaningless short cuts to perceptions that are probably wrong to begin with, and made worse by assumptions based on harmless cultural touchstones. So some working-class guy looks like a slob, has a Bush bumpersticker on his pick-up truck and likes to watch racing on TV. Big fucking deal. If you think calling him “NASCAR dad” nails him, you need to step outside your little world and realize he doesn’t give a shit what you call him.

"Homophobe" is an entirely different issue, but similar in that it's another word I see constantly in the media, and it makes very little sense to me. Let me see if I understand this. Anyone who doesn't pledge complete approval of homosexuality is a homophobe. If that isn’t true, in all honesty, that’s the feeling I get when I see the word used for anything from a pack of guys beating what they perceive to be a gay man to death on the street late at night, to someone who makes an offhand joke.

In my mind, neither of those two scenarios is exclusively indicative of homophobia. The etymology of the word implies fear of homosexuality. This may be a rude wake-up call to everyone who bandies around the word as casual accusation on a daily basis, but not all people who take issue with homosexuality are afraid of homosexuals. Blind hatred isn’t necessarily fear. Fear and hatred are separate emotions – sometimes joined together, but not one in the same. And some people just aren’t down with homosexuality, most likely for religious reasons. They’re entitled to their beliefs, whether anyone else likes it or not.

And here’s a secret about heterosexuals and homosexuality. If I fully embraced it, then I’d be gay myself and practicing it. I don’t embrace it, much less fully. If some guy tried to kiss me, even in a non-romantic way, it wouldn’t go down well. I respect the rights of adults to practice any sexuality they please that doesn’t involve children or animals. I don’t support homosexuality, nor do I condemn it. It’s just there, and someone’s sexuality is not even an issue with me. I don’t judge anyone by their sexuality. If you are openly gay, that’s fine by me.

Now, does the above paragraph make me a homophobe? Judging by the standards I often see here in New York, I would be harangued as such and a “closet case” for not pledging total support for a sexuality that isn’t mine. And I can tell you there’s a huge difference between me and some guy laying a broken beer bottle upside another guy’s head outside a gay bar. Or any other horrible crime of that sort. It’s not something I need to “work on.” I’ve worked on it, and this is the end result. Gay people have nothing to fear from me, and I have nothing to fear from them.

The word “homophobe” has become so over-used that it’s lost its true meaning – like the word “fascist.” And even if you’re convinced someone is a homophobe, again, please note the difference between hatred and fear. I’d wager that a guy physically attacking a gay man on the street is not necessarily filled with fear. Generally speaking, humans do not attack when they’re afraid – they run away. The guy fears some deeply-hidden homosexual feelings in himself? That might be true; it might not. The guy might just be a psychopath. A pack of guys attacking a gay couple might just be looking for any lightning rod to set off their mob mentality. And they might all have a hidden picture buried deep in their minds of each of them sucking cock. Who knows?

There have been a few times in my life when I've found myself laughing to the point of tears over guys pulling gay riffs on each other -- whether it was gay guys camping it up with each other, or hyper-macho guys busting on each other. Neither mean any harm, but I'm assuming the hyper-macho guys would be designated as homophobes. They must be hiding something to be so callous! They must be gay and either not know it or are hiding from it! Homophobes!

(My advice would be to avoid calling someone a homophobe to his face. If he is, he may belt you, and if he isn't, he may belt you. I get the impression "homophobe" is a word rarely uttered towards anyone as an accusation. It's a lot safer to print it from afar or run the idea by like-minded individuals as a complaint against the alleged homophobe in absentia.)

I know I sound like an idiot breaking down this topic, but how many times do you read anyone trying to decipher these sort of words and what they really mean? On one hand, we’ve been trained to shudder in abject shame over accusations like homophobia, and the other encouraged to revel in catch phrases like soccer mom and NASCAR dad.

I think what’s really going on with a word like “homophobe” is an attempt by the left to coerce everyone into adopting their point of view regarding homosexuality. If you don’t communicate acceptance to them, then you are in some way homophobic -- you have "issues" -- whatever that means. In their minds, they’re forcing all of us to choose one side or the other, and I’d rather not do that with something containing so many gray areas as human sexuality and how each of us chooses to deal with it. I’d also rather not indulge the sick head games both the left and right are playing by forcing the issue on whatever pet cause they’re championing – which seems like a daily litany in America. I know it’s best not to get caught up in these insane word plays, but sometimes it does annoy me.

The Redneck Mystique #4

The other night, I pined for a bowling shirt I had given away to a girl back in my 20s. I've bowled maybe three times in my whole life, and I stopped pining for that girl a year or so after things fizzled out. The shirt was a beauty -- light tan, with a black outline on the back of a well-groomed, 50s-style bowler, in classic bowling pose, next to a huge ball striking pins in every direction. It had black sleeves, and on the left breast, rodeo-style, the name "Gus" was written.

At that time, I was swimming in the shirt -- now, it would probably fit! But in one of those misguided "little head thinking for big head" moments, I made the shirt a present to her after she went nuts over it. But it got me to thinking about that odd appeal these kind of shirts have to younger white guys: the work-shirt mystique.

You can file this under one of those "you know you're a redneck if ..." situations, but generally speaking, you know you're a redneck if you're wearing a company's work shirt at a bar, and that's your real name on the left breast, and that's the company you work for emblazoned on the right. Most hipsters don't work in places requiring one to wear an official uniform. (Nevertheless, they'll create one for themselves, revolving around bed-head hair, clunky-framed glasses, ironic t-shirts and such.) And most guys reach a certain age, usually late 20s/early 30s, when they realize the unfortunate truth: that when people see you wearing one of these work-shirts with a name and company name on it, they assume that's who you are and where you work.

I could easily pass for an air-conditioner repairman. Or Fedex guy. Or beer-truck driver. Give me a bad mustache, and I could be an off-duty cop or fireman. I guess I should take this as a compliment -- it means I look a little older, a little more sober, more dependable. Because some stick-thin, mopey 22-year-old with a goofy hair cut wearing the same shirt would clearly be going for ironic intent.

But I'm trying to figure what ironic statement is being made. I used to wear work shirts like that, too, but stopped with the hazy recognition that people didn't know I was being ironic. Sort of like how I always get stopped in stores if I wear a white shirt and a tie, because people think I work there. (The people who stop me have zero people skills, but are desperate. They should note that the average retail floor employee will avoid eye contact with them, and certainly not smile at them, like I'll do. They should be looking for the disinterested slob with an attitude ... no, that's not an angry customer ... that's an angry employee who'd rather walk around pretending to work than actually work.)

In my mind, I thought it was cool to emulate that stodgy worker look. When I worked summers in my dad's factory, the coolest part of it was putting on this white, Devo-style jump suit every day. It gave me a sense of going to work that jeans and a t-shirts wouldn't. But as a guy in my early 20s, I guess I was riffing on the concept that there was no way a guy who looked like I did could be named "Gus" and work for a beer distributor or refrigeration company. It was a strange sort of vanity related to youth -- I saw myself as somehow better than a guy named "Gus" who worked for a beer distributor. And status -- I was going to college. You'd rarely see working-class guys not on that path wearing ironic work-shirts for kicks. (They'd be wearing those shirts for real soon enough.)

I've reached a point now where I look at young guys going this route with a mild disdain. I'm not sure why, because I did the exact same thing. Maybe it's because if I'm in a bar with an older guy unironically wearing a work shirt, and younger guy ironically wearing one, I've learned that the older guy is much more interesting. The younger guy will be engaging in Dr. Suess-style conversations where everything's a fucking joke, and his bitterness will be well-displayed and manufactured. Some guy with his real name printed on the left breast of his work shirt, rest assured, will have numerous axes to grind. Beyond "my dad is a dick." (Try "my dad is dead" on for size, young amigo, and find it a few sizes too large.) But his take on the world will often be: "I'm here to forget my problems, not make you think I'm a more interesting person because I have them." There's also the very real X-factor that a drunken conversation with a guy wearing a real company shirt might end up with either of you in a headlock for no apparent reason.

The work-shirt mystique is sort of half-assed salute to working-class people. I don't recall having open contempt for people who wear name-breasted work shirts for real. But I do recall a mild, stupid and very shallow arrogance towards them that I probably wouldn't have admitted to back then. If you were to create a fictional scenario where some guy in a real work-shirt angrily confronted the then twentysomething smart-ass I was in my fake work-shirt, I would have been kissing that guy's ass, in abject fear that, at the most, he'd beat the shit out of me, and at the least, he wouldn't respect me on some imaginary level where I had to answer to him because I was faking it.

You reach a point later in life where you really don't care what people think about you. And that's the point where you park the company van by the bar, go on in at 5:15, and knock a few back in your work-shirt before heading home and dealing with whatever goes on there. (I do the equivalent all the time in New York -- as noted a few posts earlier, simply because it's much cheaper to drink around here 4 to 8 pm.) It's also the point where you stop bullshitting yourself and just be whoever you are, with no pretensions or apologies. I don't wear jokey work-shirts with fake names because that's not who I am. I meet very few guys my age wearing shirts that don't have their own names on them. And if they do, be it sports stars or some mono-syllabic goof of a name on a fake work shirt, I tend to avoid them like the plague.

Graduation Speechless

Thus far in life, I'm lucky enough to have only sat through graduation speeches for my own classes ('82 and '86, respectively). In '82, that must have been Eugene Monahan, our high-school class president, spouting the usual malarkey about the future and our brave roles in it. I still feel bad about Eugene -- a good (and very smart) guy. Think he's a lawyer now in the Harrisburg area. I feel bad because when he was running for class president at our Penn State branch campus, I told him I was going to vote for him the day of the election, and didn't vote. He lost by one vote. I think he knew, but was cool about it. I would have kicked my own ass.

In '86 at Penn State, forget it. I was lucky to be standing upright. My friends and I -- Justin, Colin, that whole gang who hung out at Headquarters, their motley apartment conveniently located downtown -- basically spent the week after finals and before graduation burning down the house. The few times in my life that I've been high, most of them were that week. We were all stoned, drunk and partying for about five days straight. I would wake up late morning, immediately go for a five-mile run to clean out my system, have some lunch, take a nap, then meet up with the guys for a drinking/drugging session that lasted from about four in the afternoon until two in the morning. Same thing all week. It was more like some extended tribal ceremony, the drug/alcohol equivalent of hanging from pegs poked through the skin of our chests.

I puked every night. One night, I recall Colin carrying me like a sack over his shoulder because I couldn't function. Guys who passed out got peanut butter packed into their underwear, so when they woke up, they'd think they had shit their pants in their stupor. Adding to their confusion, some guys actually would shit their pants and have both feces and peanut butter in their underwear. I recall one guy blurting out, "Who put chocolate in my peanut butter?"

Strangers had sex in sinks and bath tubs. We started a bonfire in some guy's backyard, and even though he didn't know us, he was cool with it and pondered the flames along with us. Amidst this utter chaos, Colin's strict religious family showed up, horrified, as did his then-fiance's father, Vinny, who was totally nuts and threatened to beat up all of us just for shit and giggles. I remember Regis, Colin and I taking turns at the toilet bowl, each nudging the other's head out of the way so he could puke into it, just like those kittens in that long-lost cat-food commercial.

It was a wild week, capped off by a last supper, where we ate hoagies and watched Siskel & Ebert, no one wanting to admit this was the end. I recall saying goodbye to Colin, unexpectedly choking up, and realizing we were going to go on being friends in some form the rest of our days, which surely wasn't the case for a lot of us.

In other words, President Reagan could have been reading Naked Lunch through a vocoder at my graduation ceremony, and I wouldn't have noticed. Everyone I knew was still wasted or coming down hard from a vicious week-long bender. My brother J and neighbor Bubba came up to State College the night before, couldn't find me, and got drunk, feeding beers to a stray dog on some frat's lawn before passing out there. Angry couples fucked for the last time, friendships were shattered and reborn in the course of hours, many sweeping St. Elmo's Fire-style moments transpired, promises were broken, true and false farewells bade, we all got our diplomas and got the fuck out of there. Well, most of us did -- I spent that whole summer working part-time in the German Department, lazing in the sun and loafing before clearing out.

I've often wondered how I'd fare with a real graduation speech. The gall of this is that many celebrities chosen for these speeches, simply-stated, stepped in dogshit in terms of getting where they are. Sure, they've worked hard, but most of us never see purposely hidden things like nepotism, lucky breaks, Ivy League connections, behind-the-scenes manipulation, those little X factors that I've seen make all the difference between struggling and making it. But talent wise, it's a very thin line between some guy working a day-job and doing auditions when he can, and, say, Colin Farrell. Not to take anything away from these folks -- once they get where they're going, they most likely work their asses off to stay there.

But I'm thinking what sort of hard-won wisdom I'd impart to a bunch of shitheads in caps and gowns. And, let's face it, college kids are shitheads, as are their high-school counterparts. I was a shithead, too. I knew very little about life at the time, and that the really valuable lessons could only be learned through experience. And kids simply don't have that much experience -- it comes with passing time. Some kids are wise beyond their years, and I respect that, but nothing teaches you like getting your ass kicked through life.

I wouldn't encourage kids to be adventurous, unless they had the money to do so. "Adventurous" in my mind is synonymous with "fuck-up." Besides, anything that doesn't require sitting in a classroom is adventurous to a college kid at that point. If you need encouragement to be adventurous, then you are not adventurous. And that's fine. I've come to recognize most of us are meant to be responsible, stand-up individuals who get shit done -- simply the quiet nature of the world. Thinking about following that girlfriend you've been tempestuously fighting with for the past two years to Amarillo? Let the bitch go. Find someone new to fight with. Only reason you should go to Amarillo is to try to eat a 72 oz. steak in under an hour at The Big Texan steakhouse. Otherwise, let the bitch go, dude.

Ditto, taking risks. Take risks only when you can afford the repercussions of failing. Plenty of successful business people preach the gospel of taking risks, not fully understanding they've risked very little, compared to people who never had any financial hope in life. It wouldn't occur to me to risk anything financially when all I've seen is people in debt up to their necks, or struggling to get by and, if they're smart, saving as much money as possible. Most "mavericks" you meet in the business world are either maniacal or come from a background that financially allows them to fail and still hold on to a cushy way of life. You find someone who came out of nowhere to achieve massive success, if that guy's smart, he's salting away as much money as he can.

I've never met a Gatsby-esque character like this in nearly 20 years of NYC office life, despite the predictably self-aggrandizing bullshit rich men believe about themselves. I've met plenty of people who are having a hell of time just getting by, on every level of society. All that grandiose shit we piled on at the end of college? It hasn't mean a thing to me since then. I'm not going to stand in judgment of some guy pumping gas or taking my change for a newspaper every morning. Fuck it -- if he can make that work for him and still smile at me, I'm going to respect that as much or more than someone trying to get over on me with their exalted position in life.

Be less open-minded, less trusting of people, because they may fuck you up in the end. Then again, it makes sense to trust a few numb-nuts who end up raking you over the coals, simply to give you valuable negative experience in life. These sort of things happen periodically throughout all our lives, and aggravated assault charges being what they are, it's best to learn and move on. Paul McCartney sang, "When you were young, and your heart was an open book," but even he came to the conclusion that it made more sense to live and let die. This coming from a guy who wanted to hold your hand 10 years earlier. Now he's 64 and getting raked over the coals financially by a one-legged, soon-to-be ex-wife he purposely didn't have sign a pre-nup. Life gets funny like that.

The best advice, figuratively speaking, comes from the character of Lawrence, the mulleted construction worker in the movie Office Space, who advises Peter, whom he thinks is on his way to "federal/pound me in the ass" prison for his penny-shaving scheme: "Protect your cornhole, buddy."

The best advice, literally, is to never take anyone's advice. The best song of the 90s, Baz Luhrmann's mix of "Everbody's Free (to Wear Sunscreen)" , is chock-full of hard-won wisdom, funny as hell and makes more sense than any graduation speech you'll ever hear. Because you know what? None of us know what the fuck we're doing. The ones who think they do? They're attaching false values and a misleading, bloated sense of importance to relatively meaningless things in their lives. No one else cares, believe me, but these are things we tell ourselves to stave away the darkness that will one day fall over every one of us. Between quaint things like college graduations and our last days on earth, life will kick the shit out of all of us. Sometimes things will go our way; sometimes they won't. All you need to do is whatever it takes to stay sane and healthy. Reproduce if it helps, and treat your children like gold. Treat everyone with respect and lose those who don't return it. The rest is bullshit.

Geek Rock

When I don’t travel on a long holiday weekend, I tend to construct a humongous collection of songs for my MP3 player. This Memorial Day weekend was no exception. I got burned out on war movies by Saturday morning, and there was plenty of down time between my weekend routines. This was the first summer weekend I cleaned my landlord's back patio and sidewalk, which was rotten with leaves and other debris. I strongly recommend two hours of hard sweeping in 85-degree heat to get in touch with one’s inner janitor.

This new collection was somehow appropriate with the whole process: Geek Rock. Because grown men monkeying around with dozens of CDs to make an MP3 collection is geeky. It’s one of those intensely private functions guys do – sort of the aural equivalent of masturbation. But it makes me happy, and it’s much better than other private functions grown men can do in their spare time, like turning alcoholic or attacking loved ones.

The word “geek” is borrowed from the short-lived TV series, Freaks and Geeks, which was a great show nailing high-school years circa the late 1970s. Unlike The Wonder Years, there were no hammy voice-overs, overblown sentimentality or sage morality lessons. The freaks got stoned, the geeks got picked on, and this is pretty much how I remember things.

I don’t know how I classified myself at the time. Take a look at the picture. You can see my headphone hair. Slight acne. Freak’s standard issue flannel shirt. I got good grades. I was good at sports, but didn’t like the social hierarchy attached to the high-school version, and thus skipped out on that stuff. My friends were all guys in the same boat, a motley collection of eggheads, mild outcasts, the occasional jock and such. The one thing we had in common: we never got laid. I suspect a lot of people were in that boat in high school, but generally you get a bunch of vaguely nerdy guys spending all their time together, you may as well brand a large red “V” on their foreheads. I wouldn’t say “L” for “loser” – plenty of losers got laid in high school.

But when it came to music, I can safely say I was in the “geek” camp by worshipping both Queen and the Electric Light Orchestra. When I watch Queen videos from that time period now, the main thing I see, of course, is how flaming, out-of-the-closet gay Freddie Mercury was. Believe me, this was not clear to teenage rock fans at the time – or if it was, we were simply in denial or so impressed by how hard the band could rock that this counter-balanced those “what the fuck” feelings generated by hearing songs like “Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy” and “Seaside Rendezvous.”

ELO was music meant for masturbators. It was grandiose orchestral pop, often with the theme of yearning for things one couldn’t have (“Eldorado,” “Telephone Line,” “Can’t Get It Out of My Head”). Believe me, their music made perfect sense to sensitive teenage guys not getting laid (pardon the oxymoronic nature of this statement). The good thing about Queen and ELO was that both bands understood the appeal of pop music, yet had these orchestral or vaguely prog-rock leanings that made them seem cool on that bullshit level. Most of their songs were four or five minutes long and aimed at being pop hits, which they were. Jeff Lynne was a white guy with a huge afro who constantly wore sunglasses – he wasn’t cool, nor was the rest of the band. I distinctly recall the keyboard player, Richard Tandy, getting his ass kicked hard by Rod Stewart in a one-on-one soccer match on Battle of the Network Stars. These guys weren’t cool.

Nor was I, and I’m still not now! When I decided to throw this collection together, the game plan was to connect this music of the 70s with bands they influenced from the 90s, like Grandaddy, the Flaming Lips and East River Pipe – all of whom remind me of that Queen/ELO vibe. I’d say the difference is Queen and ELO had much more talented vocalists and producers (Roy Thomas Baker and Jeff Lynne himself), and both bands had unlimited amounts of studio time to pull their signature sounds together. The 90s bands started out as punk or DIY outfits, and thus didn’t have the same benefits, although the Flaming Lips have surely come a long way, studio-wise.

The thing is, once I got rolling with the 70s stuff, I realized this was a mammoth undertaking, and the 90s stuff was out. I had forgotten about Genesis, Peter Gabriel’s first two solo albums, Klaatu, the occasional Styx/Journey/REO Speedwagon songs, and the coup de grace: Supertramp. I loved those gentle hippies who knew how to write Top 40 smashes; any band with a clarinetist surely classifies as Geek Rock. Where is today's Supertramp, for christ's sake?

Long story short, I ended up with about 200 Geek Rock songs from the 70s, which I put on my player last night and started listening to this morning. What occurs to me now with a lot of 70s stuff that I listened to religiously at the time is that unless I pull it out of my collection now, I never hear this stuff again, as I'm constantly pushing forward with new music and new genres. Aside from a handful of songs that get picked up by movies or commercials, this stuff has disappeared from the cultural landscape – unless satellite stations like XM and Sirius have dedicated a special station to 70s Schlock.

It’s a blast to hear this music again, especially with that distance from the 70s to now, all the musical trends I’ve picked up since: country, blues, celtic, soul, big band, etc. The emotional connection isn’t what it was, but I can hear that a lot of this stuff was great pop music made by bands who really had their craft down and were much more talented than most bands of today. I suggest anyone laughing at an ELO record get into a studio and try to get anywhere near the sound Jeff Lynne got on a regular basis.

I'm still sitting on a fence over whether or not to include Neil Diamond. One of my gayest teenage memories is walking in rhythm through the local mall on a Saturday night to his his hit single, "Forever in Blue Jeans," which was playing over the mall's PA system. At the time, I thought I was cool, but good lord, if I could see film footage of this now, I think my head would blow off my neck. I know I was wearing earth shoes and had my feather hair cut in full bloom. I may have even been singing along: "Maybe tonight/You and I/All alone by the fie-yuh ..."

If I could narrow this collection down to an 80-minute CD, the cover would be me sitting on my bed, wearing a pair of Radio Shack Nova 40 headphones, and gazing out the window on a rainy day. There's a slight irony now in a grown man listening to the same music on a crowded subway train, hoping to will away at least the sound of his immediate environment, wishing he could be alone as that kid on the bed was.

Excuse Me, Ladies and Gentlemen ...

Just had one of those annoying NYC subway train experiences: a supposedly homeless guy with a very bad sales pitch. Anyone who’s lived here any appreciable length of time (I’ve been here since November of 1987) knows the drill – although you had to live here in the late 80s, the golden days of crack – to truly grasp the full experience.

This was a young, twentyish Latino, stocky and in good shape, who appeared very clean, didn’t stink, and if he was nuts or stoned, didn’t project that image. When he got on the train, I simply thought, “That guy looks a little weird, a little too wired.” Any time someone with a fucked-up agenda steps on a subway train, if you have the right eyes, you can see them. They’re either too nervous or too aggressive, and 99% of the time, they’re guys, and guys who immediately stand in a weird place no one would choose to stand on the train, like someone getting ready to make a speech.

Here’s his sales pitch, not verbatim, but close enough, all delivered while this guy paced menacingly up and down a length of the subway car. For the veterans, you know the first five words:

“Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Luis, and I just got out of prison. I’m hungry. I don’t want your money. I want your food because I’m hungry. I can’t work right now. I’m in a program that won’t let me work. This is embarrassing. I got a four-year college degree before going into prison. I’m a licensed painter and carpenter. I can work, and want to, but they won’t let me in this program. So I have to get on this train and beg for food. If you could give me food or money, I’d appreciate it. God forbid if anything happens to you or your family. If you are ever made victims. I would hate to see that happen. You’re all just one paycheck away from being in my shoes. Look, I got my painter’s and carpenter’s union certificates right here. I want to work, but they won’t let me. So I got to be here. Sorry to disturb your commute. I would hate to see any harm come to you or your family, believe me. I choose to do this instead of harming people, which I can do ...”

Please understand that while he was yelling this spiel – about five times – he was glaring at everyone who would make eye contact with him. I positioned my legs in a defensive position where I sat – left leg a little forward, right foot set to pivot, body turned slightly to my right so if I had to stand up and belt this guy, I’d be ready.

You could feel every body on the subway train tense up, the main reasons being the vague threats the guy was making – just got out of prison, god forbid if something happened to you – and the way he was carrying himself, like he was getting ready to haul off and clock anyone who didn’t give him money. He was taking way too long, too, working the car for a good five minutes, going through his sales pitch repeatedly.

New York City subway commuters take enough shit in the course of using the system without having to take this sort of shit. I rarely give these pricks a dime, mainly because they’re liars for the most part, and if they’re not, they should be institutionalized. Call it cold, but when you’ve sat through one of these scenarios, literally, over a thousand times, you know the drill, and the drill sucks. If it’s your gig to help the guy temporarily by feeding his habit (and it’s always a habit of some sort), one human being showing a hip sort of compassion, that’s fine. But it’s my gig not to prolong his bullshit trip – the sooner the guy hits bottom and gets real help, the better. Bottom line, anyone giving him a dollar to get drunk or high isn’t going to make his life better.

The guy’s line of bullshit was off. What kind of program for guys who just got out of prison: a. doesn’t allow them to seek gainful employment, and b. even if that was true, wouldn’t then compensate them with living/eating arrangements? If he’s in some sort of rehab or halfway house, he’s being taken care of, and he’s being encouraged to find gainful employment – fuck, if he has a four-year-college degree and union experience, he should be able to finding something, even with a felony crime on his record.

As for being “one paycheck away from being in my shoes” – buddy, guess again. I’m about 50 paychecks from being in your fucked-up shoes, and I’m far from wealthy, just good at saving money and making it last, and not fucking my life up with drugs. It’s always a bad deal to insult people you want to get money from. Not just insult them, but offer the vague threat of physical violence. You could cut the tension with a knife in the subway car. It’s pretty rare that you get a homeless guy this bad, but it does happen every now and then.

Besides which, I’m not even sure he was homeless. If he was in some sort of post-prison program as he stated, he was not homeless. He was well-fed – the guy was clearly in very good shape and not going hungry. He didn’t stink, and his clothes were clean, which is very unusual for a person on the train asking for money.

All in all, a bad trip. Everyone heaved a sigh of relief when he got off three very long subway stops later.

Still, it brought back memories of the late 80s in New York, a time in which I’d step over at least half a dozen slumbering homeless people either in subway stations or on the sidewalk. Literally step over because there’d be five or six of them sacked out in a row. One of my most vivid memories that first fall in New York is taking the 1 Train to work from the Bronx, pulling into 168th Street station in Manhattan, glancing out as the subway door opened, and long, unbroken line of sleeping homeless people in the back of station, probably about 50 people. The smell was unbelievable.

Most morning train rides to work at that time, whether it was the 1 or the 4 in the Bronx, no matter what subway car you got on, there’d be at least a handful of sleeping homeless people, some of them laid out over four seats, often causing fights when some pissed-off commuter on a jam-packed train would simply push them away, usually barking something profound like “get off the fucking train, you piece of shit.” The way I saw it, these people had enough problems without me making them feel even worse. But it was a daily, in-your-face experience, basically until Giuliani took over, and these people slowly disappeared. (Guess again if you’re thinking I disapproved – these people belong in shelters and institutions, not heavily-used public transportation hubs and vehicles. And if the shelters are fucked up, that’s a separate issue that needs to be addressed.)

The 1 Train on the weekend, going to the Bronx? Fuck. It was what I call the Homeless Follies of 1989. Literally a nonstop line of homeless people coming through the train, looking for money. Some deranged. Some sincere. Some just sticking out their hand. There was that crazy-looking black guy with multi-colored dreads and wraparound shades who’d blurt on a broken saxophone and demand money to make him stop. (He did very well.) On a trip from say, 14th Street to 225th Street, it was not unusual on a Friday night to see 20 homeless people walk through my subway car making their pitch.

Recently, a friend visited, and while I was hustling to get her to the subway train, I noticed she was pausing at the corner. What’s wrong, I asked. “Didn’t you see those homeless guys in the middle of the block? Picking food out of the garbage? Isn’t that horrible?”

In all honesty, I hadn’t noticed them, probably because I’m conditioned, after seeing such scenarios, again, thousands of times, that they don’t even register now. Are we all supposed to stop and ponder inhumanity every time we see this? I tried that the first few hundred times … it didn’t get me or the homeless people anywhere. Should I give them money? Again, you would think doing this, the person receiving the money would hustle off to the nearest deli and get food. That never happened when I tried. I’ve seen homeless people turn food away, because they want money for drugs, and food is a secondary concern. Is the whole gist to provide good karma for yourself and the world by simply giving another human in need whatever he needs to get by? If it is, again, by the 1,586th time, you’ve had it. And that’s when you turn up your collar and keep moving.

My answer to her: “Yeah, I saw them. But we need to get you on this subway train to get you to your show on time, and that’s more a priority right now than pondering the darkness of life.”

It’s one of those New York things, dealing in whatever way you choose to deal with the homeless. There’s a guy I constantly see on the N Train, this large black guy who obviously has some sort of drug or alcohol problem, but manages to function like a normal human being. I say this with certainty, because I’ve been seeing him for the past three years or so regularly, usually on the rush-hour trains in the evening. His story is that he’s a basketball coach who needs money for his kids’ team. That’s it, same story every time, whether or not basketball is in season – no sobbing, no weirdness. He’s smiling, and he always says, “If you can’t give me any money, please, just give me a smile.” And he walks through the train, generally pocketing a good bit of change, but otherwise pointing at people smiling and saying, “There it is! Thank you.”

And that’s about as good as it gets with homeless people on the train.

Dixie Chicks, Protest Music, Blah, Blah, Blah

I’m not quite sure who’s managing the Dixie Chicks these days, or if they’ve slipped into some strange vacuum where they’ve taken total control of their image, which is generally a bad idea for any recording artist. But the hype leading up to the release of their new album on Tuesday has a very strange ring to it that doesn’t bode well for them.

A few quotes pulled from recent articles:

Natalie Maines, in an article from the Sunday New York Times (5/21/06), addressing country radio: “Do you really think we're going to make an album for you and trust the future of our career to people who turned on us in a day?”

Martie Maguire, in Time magazine article (5/29/06 issue): “"I'd rather have a smaller following of really cool people who get it, who will grow with us as we grow and are fans for life, than people that have us in their five-disc changer with Reba McEntire and Toby Keith. We don't want those kinds of fans. They limit what you can do."

Even the way the Time article begins is combative: “Natalie Maines is one of those people born middle finger first.”

Every article I’ve read, and that’s about five or six in the past two weeks, follows the same party line. They’re “not ready to make nice” – just like the title of the lead-off single from the upcoming album. The accompanying video is all pancake make-up, wind machines and frowns. The album is stocked with meaningful topical songs about women’s issues, the occasional back-handed political swipe and hopefully some basic good country pop of the kind that made them huge stars.

Either this media approach is a stroke of genius that I’m not quite appreciating, or the band and the people handling them really need their heads examined. But with quotes along the lines of “a smaller following of really cool people,” all I can think is BULLSHIT. I’m sure everyone at Sony is banking on this album being a huge hit, despite this, “Let’s downsize our fan base even before the album comes out” line of logic employed by various band members.

Maguire should be grateful for every country fan out there who has any of their CDs in a five-disc changer with Toby Keith or Reba McEntire. Frankly, wouldn’t a fan doing that these days signify someone who got over Natalie Maines’ anti-Bush statement on a London stage on the eve of the Iraq invasion? Someone who is reasonably open-minded and simply likes their music, whatever their politics?

Frankly, it seems like the girls are going out of their way to pre-judge such fans, who may want to give them a chance again, but are basically being portrayed as gun-toting hayseeds by the band in every interview. In other words, you can’t disagree with them if you’re a sane, well-adjusted American. You’re either with them or against them … which is a condition they seem to want for themselves as opposed to the more realistic proposition that people are willing to forgive/forget/whatever and just move on. Does it occur to the band that maybe these folks might have been “ready to make nice” – but upon reading shit like this and hearing the implicit message of the lead-off single, are no doubt thinking, “You know what? Fuck them.”

If the band thinks there’s going to be some ready-made audience of left-leaning folk who are going to sweep right in and replace those millions of country fans who bought all their albums, they might want to think again. If the new Neil Young album (Living with the War, in which each song has a strong political message, along the lines of the subtle ditty “Let’s Impeach the President”) is any indication, this won’t happen. The Young album didn’t break the Top 10 in its first week and has thus far sold no more or less than his last few albums, which is to say his usual fan base ran out and bought it … not this ghost audience of people who buy albums simply because they hate the president. I suspect this "ghost audience" is middle-aged people blowing wind on the internet, who might account for sales of a few thousand at tops, not this unremitting wave of righteous zealots for the American Way.

Bruce Springsteen’s new album of Pete Seeger-themed tunes fared a little better, but dropped out of the Top 10 after two weeks. Part of this is due to the fact that many Springsteen fans don’t want to hear cover versions of folk tunes, no matter how much the Boss has tarted them up to appeal to his traditional rock audience. And The Boss is slipping uncomfortably into some weird boho Tom Waits image, complete with soul patch, funny hats and leather jackets, which look asinine on a 50+ year-old guy from Freehold. (Had he done an album of Bob Seger covers, no joke, I would have bought it!)

With the Chicks, it should be interesting to see how well they fare, not to mention their upcoming tour, which is booked into large arenas as opposed to mid-sized theaters. What I’m trying to say is there’s a mixed message being sent here between the record label and the band. The label is following the usual M.O. – a press blitz, high hopes for blockbuster sales and a tour booked into the largest venues possible for what has traditionally been one of their biggest recording acts. Meanwhile, the band itself is burning down every bridge possible in interviews, with an audience they’ve already assumed has abandoned them, probably based on country radio’s predictably luke-warm reception to the first single. I can imagine the sour, private reaction of label heads to Maguire's statement on "a smaller following of cool people": try running a massive corporation on that.

Will I buy the album? Probably not, mainly because each review stresses how they’ve abandoned their “country roots” for a sound more akin to The Eagles. Fuck the fucking Eagles, man! The only Eagles I want to hear these days are The Eagles of Death Metal, who rock.

So, they’re making a retro 70s country-rock record? It just doesn’t sound like a good idea, although I get the gist what they’ve done is probably make a more traditional adult-oriented pop record with country shadings. The charity single they put out for a Katrina benefit (“I Hope”) was fantastic, like some long-lost Bonnie Raitt song that sounded just right. I’ll have to sample the rest before passing judgment, but the “Not Ready to Make Nice” single is pretty bland stuff, like Shania Twain in a bad mood. It might be good to bring Shania up, because she’s essentially been making pop/rock records with country leanings, which sounds like what the Chicks are now shooting for, save they have a lot of issues they have to enlighten us on. I'd say country folk don't mind being preached to, but not outside of church, and not by people who don't like them.

I’m curious as hell to see how this album does. But if it does tank, or simply under-perform as compared to their previous albums, it will be a matter of weeks before you’ll start reading articles about unforgiving, close-minded country fans who can’t pull their heads out of the sand. The reality may be the band dumped on these fans before they even had a chance to decide for themselves, and the ensuing anti-country fan articles will be the sort of the thing the media enjoys dishing. In effect, nobody wins.

Before and After: 70s Hair Redux

Just got my hair cut on Saturday, at a nice barbershop I spied along Steinway Street just north of my gym on 30^th Avenue in Astoria. Three guys, obviously an old Greek father and his two sons, charged me $11.00.

Which is great, as I’ve been going to a similar father/son barbershop set-up on 23^rd Street and 8^th Avenue in Manhattan, which I got turned onto by attending boxing classes on Saturdays with Kid Avila, at the gayest gym I’ve ever been in (on the same corner). One of my friends once tried to use the sauna there, and walked in on two guys jerking each other off. They glared at him as if he was making a faux pas, and he just walked out, making sure to tell the gym manager later. One of those ominous “Closed by Order of the New York City Health Department” signs was taped over the closed sauna door for the next few weeks, which happens periodically at every gym I’ve ever been in here. Life in New York City. That class dissolved a few years ago, due to the fact that all the guys in that part of town evacuate to Fire Island on summer weekends, thus leaving the gym empty, but I tend to go there once every 8-10 weeks when I get my hair cut. (And have never had an episode remotely like my friend had!)

But $11.00 is better than $16.00, which is what those guys have been charging. The old father cut my hair, he was a nice man, and I may keep going there as he did a good job. Before that barbershop on 23^rd Street, I had been going to a guy running a shop in the subway on 57^th and 8^th, mainly for the novelty of it, but his prices were good. I stopped going when some asshole kid dropped his hat on the floor while getting into the barber chair. The barber glared at me and barked, “Pick it up,” pointing at the hat. “Buddy, that’s not my hat, and I don’t work here.” His eyes grow wide. “I don’t care! Pick it up!” Well, that was all the incentive I needed to pick my ass up and walk the hell out of there for good. All these old barbers in New York seem volatile, which is fine, but never, and I mean never, give a repeat customer shit like that. I don’t know what he was thinking.

At this point in my life, I’m glad to have hair. Believe me, some guys aren’t that lucky, and I guess when that happens, you just adjust your life to that new state and work with it. My hair doesn’t get long – it gets wide, much like Dad’s did. Dad had wiry hair that would have grown into dreadlocks if he hadn’t kept it closely cropped. Me, I just get shaggy – wiry enough that the hair stands up on its own, but not so much that I veer into jewfro territory.

Since my hair never grows long, I’ve always made it a point to get sheered like a sheep when I go to the barber. Here’s a photo comparison of what my hair would like any time in the 70s before I had it cut. Unkempt, pointing at weird angles. Just plain old bad 70s hair. If I wore headphones, which I did all the time, the hair would conform to the shape of them, so I would look like I was wearing hair headphones. It was a pretty bad look, but I was far from alone, as most kids had these shaggy, combed-straight-down hair cuts, most of them much longer, usually supported by awful-looking peach-fuzz mustaches and sideburns. It got worse!

And here’s the after picture. It occurs to me now that people probably thought I was talking to Jesus in the form of a burning bush or family dog, and had symbolically chopped all my hair off to spiritually cleanse myself. This is how DeNiro had his hair in Taxi Driver before he got the mohawk. It was a pretty heavy departure – I usually only got my hair cut three times a year (I do it around six now and tend to keep my hair short all the time).

I would take a lot of crap at school. But not as much as I’d give to my friend Tony, who would follow the same hair pattern, only receiving a Prince Valiant/Moe Howard-style bowl cut every few months. I used to drive him to the point of kicking my ass by running Three Stooges riffs on him all day – like making that Curly “woob-woob-woob” sound, or singing “The Alphabet Song” (Bah-Ay-Bay, Bay-Ee-Bee, Bay-Aye-Bippie-Bye, Bippie-Bye-Bo-Boo), or doing that freaky snapping fingers/hand waving thing Curly would to Moe before getting poked in the eyes.

Old and Young Leo were our barbers back then. From what I understand, Young Leo is still doing it, although Young Leo is now in his late 60s and working only a few days a week. Both of them were classic barbers who would give crying little boys lollipops and have copies of the Policeman’s Gazette, The American Legion magazine and comic books as reading material.

It never mattered what you told either of them – they’d always give the same high-and-tight crew cut. I had one infamous cut in my teens where Old Leo actually shaved spots into the side of my head, inadvertently giving me a very cool punk cut. I couldn’t believe it. While all my friends were laughing and calling me Johnny Rotten, I was a bit mortified that he had gone beyond the normal military cut and must have accidentally pressed the electric clipper all the way through to the skin. Kids would often playfully taunt someone about “getting their ears moved” or “getting run over by a lawn mower.” But usually one of Leo’s cuts would have kids asking me when I was shipping out to Paris Island.

Still, no matter how box-headed I looked afterwards, I was grateful that I wouldn’t have to go back again for months. Besides, after a week or two, the hair would grow back enough that it wasn’t such an ordeal. I have the same values now, not going so far as a crew cut, but always getting a noticeably short cut. I don’t quite understand how guys don’t do this, how some go to a hairdresser and barely receive any sort of hair cut. I like a little more variety as opposed to looking the same all the time, although I pull up well short of hair dying, as I learned well enough early on that constantly fucking with one’s hair color could lead to thinning hair or baldness.

A shaved head? Hell, no. Most white guys look like total idiots with shaved heads – it must be something about the facial features that just don’t mesh. My brother J tried this once, and people kept asking him if the brain surgery was successful – it really did look as if he had been operated on. If he stuck a light bulb in his mouth, he could have worked a pretty funny Uncle Fester riff. Besides, it's a pretty rare guy who doesn't shave his head to cover some form of male pattern baldness. (If my hair ever falls out on top, I'll go with the closely-cropped on the sides look. And never, repeat NEVER, give into the short pony-tail-in-the-back-where-my-hair-is-still-long look favored by bikers and lawyers. This looks has "asshole of the universe" written all over it, the absolute worst hairstyle anyone can have.)

Ditto facial hair. Tried growing a beard once, and my face felt like it had a permanent rash after two weeks, just couldn’t take the constant itching. Some guys do look better with beards, just don’t think I’d be one of them. And it’s a rare guy who looks good with just a mustache. Most guys with mustaches look like off-duty cops or simply like half-assed weirdoes. As for soul patches, goatees and sideburns without mustaches, I suspect guys sporting these looks simply couldn’t afford or don’t want tattoos and think these “unconventional” facial hair styles are going to intimidate people. Guess again. Only way some guy is going to intimidate me is by shaving his head AND having mutton chop side burns. That look says “leave me alone” – and I would leave you very much alone, and in fact, may leave the immediate environment around you, never to return.

I don’t really fret too much about my hair. So long as I have it, and can get it righteously cut every few months, I feel all right. Even if that wasn’t the case, I suspect I’d just pick up the ball and run with it, whatever the look. Plenty of bald guys do all right with what they got, figuring out a look that suits them. Ditto gray-haired guys, which we’ll all be one day. As for now, I feel much lighter and liberated every time I climb out of that barber chair with a ton of hair on the floor for one of the sons to sweep up. No tears or lollipops necessary. Nothing like a good hair cut to feel some sort of minor rebirth.

The Astoria Chicken

Well, some strange shit happens every now and then in the city. The strangest to me will always be those things containing vestiges of small-town life transplanted to the city, as in my earlier story about the family of the raccoons in the Bronx. Frankly, the stereotypically strange stuff – random violence, bad manners, etc. – gets to be like ugly, peeling wallpaper after awhile, and not something I dwell on.

On Thursday night, I came home from work feeling pretty beat. The previous night, I helped out with a museum party that ran until 9:00 pm, and I’d been feeling lackluster ever since. I opened the gate on my landlord’s property, only to see a handful of kids, probably between the ages of eight to 12, congregated along the ledge of the wall running along the sidewalk. The house is right next to a small playground, so it’s not unusual during baseball season to see kids there looking for balls hit into her yard. Certainly not a daily or weekly experience, but every now and then.

Naturally, I don’t like seeing anyone on her property. She’s had problems in the past with shithead kids from the neighboring public school getting on to her property, simply for the sake of being devious. (There’s now a very imposing, shaved-headed teacher stationed on that side of the school to prevent this at the bustling arrival and departure times.) Last July, during the few weeks of summer school, I kept seeing this morose, improbably gigantic white kid sitting on her steps before school started. He apologized the first time he saw me coming out for work in the morning. The kid looked so hang dog, so demoralized to be there, that I just said, don’t worry about it. Mistake. By the last week of summer school, there was a small gaggle of douche bags hanging out on her steps, which I promise will not happen again this summer.

So, I see these kids, who immediately freeze when they see me coming, and call out, “You guys looking for a ball?”

“Nah, man,” one of the kids says, “yo, you got a chicken in your backyard, mister.”

“Get out.”

“Look! There it is!”

Sure enough, there was a god-damned chicken crouching in this strange branch-laden crawl space between my landlord’s back patio and the adjacent wall running along the sidewalk (she uses this to dump branches and any other sort of mulch-material from trees). The kids were freaking out as if the chicken were poisonous and trying to bite them. I figured it must be an escaped chicken from the poultry processing plant located about half a mile down the adjacent avenue, well past the Steinway Piano factory and supermarket. (That same plant, which closes down periodically due to sanitary issues, also does cows, and one of them famously broke loose a few years back and wandered the streets of Astoria before being lassooed by an off-duty cop.) How the chicken got this far away, I have no idea. But here it was, trying in vain to hide from these weird kids.

After a few minutes, it became obvious that the kids didn’t know what to do and were looking to me for guidance. I may be from the country, but I don’t know shit about chickens, save that they taste good. I do know that unless you’re dealing with a rooster, you can more than likely just pick the thing up and put it in some type of cage. One of the kids suggested I call 311 and get in touch with Animal Control Services. Which I did … only to have them inform me that it was too late to send out a team, and apparently for him to take down my information, so I should safely entrap the chicken and call back the next morning, at which time a team would be sent out to take the chicken and do god knows what.

At this point, also, my landlord hangs her head out the door by her back kitchen, and yells out, “Ah-Billy, just ah-kill that crazy chicken and get those kids out of here.” She ducked back in, which was unusual – she usually takes a perverse pleasure in being a mean old lady to neighborhood kids. Most times, she’s right on, as so many of the kids around here are total pricks, but these kids were actually pretty cool – two white kids, two Latinos, all of them friendly. They got my name, I got theirs, and one of them started crying over the thought that I might kill the chicken.

“Please don’t kill the chicken, Billy, I want it to live!”

Even without the water works, I wanted the chicken to live, too. Why the fuck not? It’s such a rare occurrence for me to have a positive experience with city kids, and I was so glad to see these kids had heart, that I set about saving that god-damned chicken.

Which took all of five minutes. I simply put on some work gloves, ran up into that little area of tree branches, grabbed it and put it into a large blue trash container. The kids were amazed at this, as if I had just stormed the beach at Normandy. I guess for the past half hour, they had been chasing the chicken around and running away any time it got within five feet of them. I brought the chicken in the container back into the yard. The best course seemed to be leave it in there, but put the landlord’s wire laundry/grocery cart over the top of it so it wouldn’t jump out. Also, the closing touch, put the blue trashcan lid over the top of the wire cart – we were due for some hard rain Thursday night and all-day Friday. I didn’t want the damn thing to drown, and the cart being over the container's top would allow enough air to get in.

As I did this, these kids were simply amazed that this was happening. It’s pretty rare for me to have these adult/authority moments with kids – and I kind of like them. Because it’s at times like this I can see kids for what they are – essentially blank slates that need some sort of positive guidance. And it seemed to me that saving the life of a stray chicken was an adventure these guys would most likely remember for a few years and feel good about.

I told them I’d call Animal Control the next morning and get the chicken picked up by them, hopefully on Friday. If not, we’d get the chicken when I got home from work on Friday, say our farewells, and walk it down to the poultry processing plant. None of us were equipped to take care of a chicken, plain and simple. To set it loose would most likely result in the thing being run over by a car or killed by some jackass for no good reason. So, I told the kids to go on their way, and I’d take care of it. They all waved goodbye, and I felt touched that I actually dealt with some relatively normal kids. (If they were completely normal, they wouldn’t have been on my landlord’s property without permission – but kids will be kids.)

The landlord freaked out when I got back into the house.

“Ah-Billy, I know those crazy kids put that chicken there on purpose!”

“No. Those kids were scared to death of that chicken. Maybe the chased it onto your property, but I know for fact they didn’t put it there on purpose. All of them ran away when that chicken got within five feet of any of them.”

“We should kill that chicken!”

“No. I’ll call Animal Control in the morning. They’ll take care of it.”

I couldn’t vouch for that. Most city services are for shit, and everybody knows it. But what choice did I have? It was call these pricks in the morning and hope they came, or take the damn bird to the last roundup at the plant. My landlord probably had visions of doing up the bird with a hatchet like in the old country, but that wasn’t going to happen.

At about 10:00 that night, I went out with a bowl of water and another bowl of pretzels I had crushed into a near-powder. The bird looked fine when I came out, seemed to be sleeping, but was calm, after clearly being scared to death when they kids were chasing it around.

I got up this morning and went out around 7:45 to check on the bird. Still fine – and it had eaten all the pretzels! So I went back in, refilled the water, crushed up some more pretzels, put them back, and left the bird to its own devices. School was just loading in, but I didn’t see any of the kids around. Besides which, even if I had, the bald-headed teacher would have busted their asses for coming over to our side of the street.

I got to work, called up 311, got put through to Animal Control, was put on hold for 15 minutes and finally got through to a guy who had the IQ of a bowling ball.

The first thing he says after I explain my situation: “Look if you want me to help you, you’ll have to tell me your name and address.”

“Gladly.”

“You know, you have to tell me your name and address.”

“Great. My name is …”

“What’s your name. I’ll need your address, too. You’ll have to tell me these things.”

“Buddy, I’ll tell you everything you need to know. What do you need to know?”

"Your name and address. Why won't you tell me these things?"

It was like a scene from Waiting for Godot. I had a hell of a time explaining that I don’t know my landlord’s phone number or last name – according to her bills, she has about five different last names. The guy was on the verge of blowing me off, but I made it crystal clear to him that this was no joke, sorry, we’re dealing with mysterious Greeks here who only take cash, but I can assure you, this address is right, my landlord will be there all day, she’ll know you guys are coming to get the chicken, she’ll be glad to help you get it off her property, please call this cellphone number I'm calling you on if there is any trouble at all. It finally registered, and he said he’d send a team out later that day. It took about 20 minutes to disseminate about 45 seconds of information. My hopes weren’t too high that they’d be picking up the chicken.

I got home around 6:30 tonight. Walked back to the patio … and the chicken was gone. The bowls were gone, the landlord’s wire cart was back in her storage shed, and everything was in place. When I got back in the house, the landlord was in a joyous mood – she was elated that the chicken was gone. Her only question: “Ah-Billy, how much will this cost me?”

“Not a dime. It’s a city service.”

“That’s ah-good. Here, have some white chocolate rabbits.”

She gave me about six white-chocolate rabbits she had been saving up for her one set of grandkids, but I imagine she’s still fighting with that particular daughter. (I know her other set of grandkids showed up for Easter, which is good.) She’s always siphoning off food to me that’s meant for these kids, so when she's rumbling with either of her daughters and they don’t show up, I get the goods. And this is fine by me!

About half an hour later, the kids rolled by. Again, they made the vital error of not getting my landlord’s permission before going onto her property. This time, she burst out her door, going full throttle, shrieking: “You ah-kids, get off my land! Get off! You no live here! Go away! Lousy bums!”

(I’m still not sure how this didn’t happen the night before, as those kids were on her property a good half hour before I showed up, and she was in her house.)

As the kids were slinking away, I got up the stairs in time to yell out, “Hey, kids, the chicken’s gone. Animal Services picked it up today at noon.”

That’s about all I could get out before she shooed them away. But the kid who had been crying said “thanks, Billy,” one of them clapped and the others smiled.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they spray-paint “suck my dick” or something like that on her outer sidewalk wall tonight – kids tend not to take kindly to getting kicked off property. Who knows, I’m hoping those kids are smart enough to see that something good and worthwhile happened here, no matter what happens to that chicken. And I have no idea what would happen to a stray chicken taken in like that by the city.

But it helped me out in terms of seeing that there are some good, if flawed, kids living in this weird neighborhood, and I was glad to actually have a real interaction with them. I could talk to them like normal human beings, not lay any fatherly/adult bullshit trips on them, and simply communicate the shared idea that saving a chicken, for no other reason than it was a good deed, mattered.

The Redneck Mystique, #3

Yesterday afternoon, one of the cable channels showed the movie Deliverance, with very little editing done on the infamous Ned Beatty rape scene. While the movie is an excellent statement on how the most lawless places on earth, especially in our modern world, will be in the deep country, it will always be remembered for this still-horrifying scene. And that weird, deeply-inbred looking kid with the banjo.

Gay rednecks with shotguns: your worst nightmare. Especially if they have you caught defenseless in the woods, with the choice of either getting shot at point-blank range or “squealing like a pig.” Kudos go to the character actor Bill McKinney, who was shockingly believable as the morose, gay redneck who got very strange with Beatty’s character and eventually took a well-deserved, fatal arrow through the back from the bow of Burt Reynolds’ hyper-macho character.

The image of the anti-social, possibly homicidal, redneck is one that is used quite often and effectively in movies and books. In reality? In terms of “homicidal” rednecks, I’ve honestly met two or three in my time – guys who eventually committed crimes along the lines of murder – and the less said about that, the better.

And I have met a few deeply anti-social, unfriendly rednecks – usually associated with local bars. I can still recall back when all of us were drinking in our 20s, any time we headed into a bar we weren’t familiar with, it was always an awkward moment deciding who would be the first through the door … as if a shotgun blast awaited that unlucky individual. Usually, it was one of those E.F. Hutton moments: whatever song was playing on the jukebox would scratch to a stop, everyone would stop talking and look at us. Then the record would start again, and everyone would go back to his business. I can't recall taking shit in any of those bars for not being a local -- that initial uneasiness just seems to be a hallmark of local bars in the country.

I can still recall one of my college professors back at the Penn State branch campus, Charlie, taking me along to a local bar near the campus he wasn’t familiar with. He walks in the door, surveys the scene, which really wasn’t all that bad in terms of redneck quotient, and loudly announces, “Well, looks like Ray isn’t here, let’s go.” I’m willing to bet banjo music was playing in his head, visions of him getting anally probed on the pinball machine by guys in CAT hats, and he didn’t want to offend the patrons by just turning around walking straight out without a logical explanation.

But every now and then, I would (and still do) come across rednecks who put out that uncomfortable Ted Kaczynski vibe. When I’m back home, I take a long morning run along the back roads around my hometown – which used to be farms and wood lands, but over the past 20 years have filled up with McMansions. Still, there are patches of lower-income housing which have been there for decades and will always be there.

And running by one of those houses, I came across one of those rednecks. Usually in small towns, especially along a back road, if I walk by someone, I say or nod hello – just a given, what people do. As I was running by one of those houses – broken kid’s Big Wheels and wagons in the front yard, beat-up cars along the side of the house – there was a guy staring at me – very lean, bearded, angry-looking, shirtless and greasy-looking. I called out hello, and he just stared back, turning to stare as I passed.

What was that all about, I wondered. Did he think I was one of the new McMansion owners, and he had an attitude about them? Whatever it was, it wouldn’t have been untoward of me to say, “What the fuck is your problem?” and get into it with him. Then again, one of life’s golden rules: avoid meaningless confrontation. And some angry redneck in my rear-view mirror, much like his urban equivalents, is a sweet sight.

Please understand that my home area, Schuylkill County in Pennsylvania, is hardly deep-woods Appalachia. Frankly, it’s starting to feel more like a far-flung suburb of Scranton, Reading and Harrisburg, as the place has built up in ways I don’t like over the past few decades. Most people you’ll meet back there are nowhere near that far gone, are well connected to the world, and aside from hallmarks like hunting, fishing, country music and NASCAR, probably lead lives that aren’t much different from anyone else’s in the country.

Still, every now and then, you come across some strange bastard throwing out the Deliverance vibe. From what I’ve seen, it’s a familial thing – some families just pass from one generation to another in deep redneck mode. Often farmers, or I hate to say it, just plain stupid people, who don’t “marry up” in terms of intelligence and keep putting out insular, vaguely-angry rednecks. And for every one of those kind of people, you’ll find dozens of basically friendly, approachable folks who display all the trappings of the culture, but are simply good people trying to get by like anyone else.

This is hard to explain to city folk, who often don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground when confronted by anyone who looks like a redneck. The immediate reaction is like Charlie’s: fear masked by an uneasy desire not to offend. In Deliverance, Ned Beatty’s character is this feeling personified. He first tries to be friendly to the rednecks. Then realizes they aren’t friendly. When the McKinney character untowardly touches his face, he’s visibly frightened. And it all goes downhill from there.

Frankly, the way city folk deal with rednecks isn’t that much different from the way I see many white folks in the city deal with black and hispanic thugs. Which is to say kiss as much ass as possible in hopes that these angry, potentially-violent thugs will leave them alone. If I had a dime for every instance where I’ve seen white people turn into lambs when confronted like this … and the thugs instinctively grasp that they’ve been given the upper hand and lay their “scare whitey” routine on even thicker. Often in situations where the white (usually) guy could pulverize the little turd he’s dealing with … if he wasn’t such a wimp.

The best tack to take is always to confront people like this head-on. Kissing a moron’s ass never leads anywhere good: never. If somebody’s looking to take a chunk out of you, make them take a chunk out of you – because chances are, they’re not up for it and only looking to satisfy some primordial urge to dominate what they perceive to be a lesser being. I don’t care if you’re talking black thugs on a subway or white rednecks in a country bar: it’s the same difference. If you show fear, like a dog, they will act on it. And most situations like this are easily avoided by simply walking away from the offending party.

That connection between black and white is a good one to make, because I think the underlying fear is of being confronted by someone, whatever his color, who is in some way rejecting the values of our society. Oh, my, doesn’t this person know wearing cowboy boots with shorts and sporting a swastika tattoo on his adam’s apple is in very bad form. That seems to be the vibe. And I think what that person is really trying to tell you is, “I’m a tasteless asshole who doesn’t know how to act.” He may not admit to that. In his mind, it will be, “I’m a rebel.” There are very few true rebels in our society. Surly rednecks are identifiable enough that they fall more into acceptable subculture than truly rebellious. Our country is crawling with mewling bozos who think they are true rebels, but are in reality acceptable subcultures who are contained well within our societal constraints. Next time there’s a biker rally anywhere near you, pop on by and notice all the t-shirt and leather goods vendors, hotels, bars and such making a fortune off these (often well-paid) people.

Still, after seeing Deliverance, I decided that if I ever went camping again, I’d bring along an Uzi, just in case. Because sometimes you do come across those weird backwoods folk who aren’t playing head games. Honestly, I can count on one hand the times I’ve come up against a redneck and felt any sense of impending danger. Ditto thugs in the city – most are just imbecile kids and adults who have a problem with the world, and I make it a point not to make myself some symbolic lightning rod to them and their idiotic anger. I’ve never come across any gay rednecks with shotguns looking to make me squeal like a pig. Has this ever happened to anyone? Hats off to James Dickey for creating such a compelling, nightmarish character. Because a gay redneck with a shotgun manages the near-impossible in our society: he scares everyone.

Point Pleasant

Any time I hear the song “Can We Still Be Friends” by Todd Rundgren, I have two reactions. The first is a mild sort of revulsion. Not at the song itself, which is a pretty good pop song, but at the song’s message. I’m far more in the “We Can’t Be Friends” camp after a relationship tanks.

The second reaction, more a memory, is to recall summers visiting my Uncle B. in Point Pleasant, New Jersey: our annual trip to the Jersey shore. The reason this song sparks the memory is because the summer Todd Rundgren put out his Hermit of Mink Hollow album, my brother M. was playing the eight track of it to death in his car. Thus, everywhere we drove the summer of 1978, that album, and that song in particular, was playing. And the song sounds like a faded summer memory. I also get the same Point Pleasant vibe from “Down by the Seaside” by Led Zeppelin –M. was dogging Physical Graffiti, too, on his car’s eight track, and that song naturally stuck.

Coming down from the Coal Region of Pennsylvania, the Jersey shore was like another world – one that made us feel inferior. My brother J. and I had deep baseball and lawn-mowing tans. Meaning we spent so much time playing baseball and mowing lawns (for what was then a nice teenage profit) that you could see the distinct tan lines on our mid-biceps where our t-shirts ended – turkey-meat white above the line and bronze below it. Ditto our legs in terms of wearing shorts. We looked like dicks, at least compared to the completely-bronzed, always-blonde surfer dudes who were all over the beach. It seemed like all the kids were extras out of some Beach Boys video. And I envied those kids that all they seemed to do all summer long was surf, while we played ball and mowed lawns in the mountains.

I still get excited every time I lay eyes on the ocean, after not seeing it for months or years at a time. You’d be surprised how little you see it in New York City, unless you work on the southern tip of Manhattan or the far edge of Brooklyn. I walk over the 59^th Street Bridge most Sundays and see the East River flowing into the sea, but it’s not the same. There’s just something about approaching a sandy beach head, walking up the wooden planks, then finally coming over the brim to see the ocean spread out infinitely in front of you, the waves rolling into shore, the sound of their crashing, the wind.

Seeing this every summer in my teenage years, it always felt like the first time. The only comparable vision I can recall is walking into Yankee Stadium for the first time in 1988, seeing the green of the field peeking out from the entrance rise, walking up it and seeing the entire stadium, complete with the gap in the right-center wall where the subway periodically crashes by.

At Point Pleasant, we’d immediately find a spot to put our towels then get into the water ASAP. Body surfing was the thing – not hard to do, and exciting when you got the knack. Many times, we got tumbled, swallowing that shitty-tasting salt water, getting bruised, losing our trunks and standing up dazed with our dicks hanging out. It was fun as hell and never got old. The surfers were usually down at the other end of the beach, and as noted, they had an attitude to boot. This was their turf, and they knew we were tourists. I don’t recall ever taking any shit from these kids, but they kept to themselves and vice-versa.

Dad always stayed back home in Pennsylvania. He never seemed comfortable anywhere past the county line, and I can only recall him coming down to Point Pleasant once. (I think this was because Dad had done so much traveling with the armed forces, including a decade after the close of World War II, that he was burned out on traveling anywhere by the time he was honorably discharged in the mid-1950s.) Mom would take us, although we didn’t feel really cool until M. was old enough to drive, and we could tool around playing Prog Rock on the eight track with our Cousin J., who was a rare friendly surfer. (For the record, he was heavily into KISS, Yes and Jethro Tull at the time, which seemed kind of silly then, but now seems cool as everyone and his brother was dogging Springsteen to death. I once asked J. how he felt about Springsteen, and he flat-out called him a dick.)

Mom burned easy, so she covered herself a lot, sat under an umbrella, and was content just to watch us having fun. I can see now that this is a parent’s right, and she must have been in heaven watching us cut loose like that. What really grated on me, then and now, is that while Mom was watching us, there was always a gaggle of middle-aged women disapprovingly watching Mom. They were the color of lobsters, and it occurs to me now that these were snobby New York City-area housewives who had beach houses in Point Pleasant, and thus got bronzed every summer. Doing nothing lying in the sun. While my Mom busted her ass taking care of four kids and was grateful to have a few days off. Even then, I knew enough that these women were looking down on Mom, Mom clearly sensed it, too, and I despised them. For some reason, it always seemed like the same four or five women, and may very well have been as we were using my Uncle B.’s pass to the private beach he worked during the summer.

For all my memories of beach insecurity, we always had a blast down there. Hitting the beach in the morning, coming back to Uncle B.’s place for lunch, heading out again for the afternoon, then coming back and using his cool outdoor shower to get clean for dinner – the smell of the sea in the air all the while. It seemed like our finger and toe nails grew exponentially while were down there, and we invariably got sunburned some time during the trip. There was constantly sand in our sneakers. You have to realize how cool this felt to a bunch of redneck kids who lived a good hundred miles from the ocean.

I haven’t been down there in years, although I know a few people who live in near-by towns: J. in Asbury Park and D. in Belmar, both just north of Point Pleasant. J. had a party last year to celebrate he and his wife E. getting a great new apartment in Asbury Park. That town is a story unto itself with its history of race riots and ruin. But throughout the 90’s, the north side of town became a haven for gay couples, many of whom set about refurbishing grand old seaside homes that had fallen into disrepair. That part of town now is gorgeous, like the quaint seaside town it no doubt once was, and it’s clear that the place is on the cusp of a serious come-back, after years of misfires and shoddy urban planning. And this is good, because everyone has the same reaction walking up and down the still gritty and under-developed boardwalk, and that’s: what the fuck happened here? Walking around that town now is like being in a John Sayles movie, where a large part of the town is still run-down, but turn the corner and there are signs everywhere of a big change about to occur.

J. walked a few of us down to the beach during his party, which was only about a 10 minutes away, and I got that feeling all over again, even though it was a cloudy day. That night, we could feel the sea breezes as we sat out on J’s patio listening to old country and cajun music. The sea is like home back in Pennsylvania in some ways to me now. I don’t spend enough time there, but when I do, I appreciate it and hold on to the good far more than the bad. Maybe it’s bullshit, but sometimes you need to bullshit yourself, especially living in a place like New York. Nothing wrong with open spaces, clean air and less assholes.