On "Palisades Park" by Counting Crows

Story songs don’t have to tell coherent stories - in fact, perhaps it’s better if they don’t. I can’t really be sure what all goes on in “Hold On” by Tom Waits, or “Changing of the Guards” by Bob Dylan, but maybe that’s why I keep playing them over and over. Maybe with every listen I get more clues to figuring out what exactly is going on, or maybe the story is vague enough that there are a lot of stories in there. Sometimes a mystery you haven’t solved is the most compelling; you don’t usually read a mystery novel again once you know how it ends.

Adam Duritz of Counting Crows can tell coherent stories when he wants to - take “Another Horsedreamer’s Blues,” where you get a pretty good idea of everything that’s going on - but is also a master at vague songs, like the 2008 gem “Cowboys” or the classic “Round Here.” You could write about a hundred short stories based on “Round Here” and get a different story every time, and all of them could be good.

I think Duritz picked this up from Springsteen. It was his rendition of “Thunder Road” in 2000 that led me to start looking deeper into Springsteen, and a couple of years later, when I heard “Fourth of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)” for the first time, I felt like I was hearing the primordial ooze out of which Counting Crows were formed. It’s got pianos, accordions, large bodies of water, a carnival, angels (in the live version) and the expert juxtaposition of Americana imagery and primal emotional concerns that populate so many of the best Counting Crows songs.

Elsewhere on that particular Springsteen album is the epic “New York City Serenade,” which is perhaps the most obvious template for the newest Counting Crows songs, “Palisades Park” (now streaming and available for free download) a multi part song that opens with a piano, pinball machine and trumpet instrumental, turns into a rousing rock song, then turns to an artsier, free-verse coda over its nine minute run-time. You could probably do a whole essay comparing it to “New York City Serenade,” which is built on a similar structure with some similar lyrical themes, but here’s the thing: “Palisades Park” rocks a bit harder. They may only get to the chorus twice in eight minutes, but there’s nothing in “NYC Serenade” that’s quite as rousing to me as when Duritz singing about carrying that spark from Palisades Park down into the cliffs and down into the dark.  

The song tells a story. After several listens I’m not sure sure exactly what that story IS, and the excellent video may or may not help, but it’s something to do with nostalgia, and hanging onto the sparks of things that inspired us once before. Maybe it’s about chasing your dreams (at least the good ones). Or fighting for a version of nostalgia that leaves out all the bad dreams and trying to get your old friends back. There are recurring characters (possibly a transgender theme). I don’t really know. But maybe it’s BECAUSE I don’t exactly know that I’m going to keep coming back to it. Or maybe it's just that the chorus works like gangbusters. It makes me want to carry that spark from Palisades Park and get further than I ever made it before.

I’ve been a Counting Crows fan since 1994. I had a strange, transcendental experience at the age of 14 riding my bike on a gray day with “Sullivan Street” stuck in my head (a friend talks about how "Darkness on the Edge of Town" made him suddenly see what sort of person he wanted to be, and that bike ride and "Sullivan Street" did it for me - suddenly everything was clear). Recovering the Satellites, their next album, was, for me, that record everyone gets at sixteen where every song seems to be about YOU (except for “Mercury,” which was about the girl I took two their concerts in 1997, still two of my favorite concerts ever, even though we spent the whole time fighting). Over the years they’ve taken some lumps, with most of the music world lumping them in with Dave Matthews-type prep rock instead of thinking of them as being more like “if Springsteen were backed by The Band.” Maybe it’s partly a result of only releasing one album of originals in the last twelve years. Either way, I’m glad they’re back, and I can’t wait for the rest of the album, Somewhere Under Wonderland, which is out in September (just a few days after my new book. Just sayin'). If the book is a flop in the stores and I end up in a bad place mentally, at least I'll have a good album to see me through it.

A Joyful Playlist

I tend to go on and on about the "Ragged Glory" playlist that lasted me the whole time I worked on SPARKS, from the first draft to the last copyedits. The songs all have a ragged, soaring, triumphant quality that I wanted in the book. I don't think playlists help much with rough drafts, but they're fun to make and help me a lot on revisions. You play a song with the right vibe and try to build the scene to work like that song is playing in the background.

Today I made a very important decision that I think will change my life: I typed "Slade" into the "Create a Station" field on Pandora. The station this created has me jumping off the wall as I bang my head and sing along to "Somebody to Love," "Cum On Feel the Noise," and "Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress." 

It makes me want to talk about my "joyful" playlist, which I switched to for a couple of scenes in the book during revisions. Songs that sound like the band and singer are so happy they can hardly contain themselves and want you to feel the same way. Here's what's on that:

"Oh Yoko!" by John Lennon. The harmonica solo at the end is pure distilled joy.

"Hold Me Now" by Polyphonic Spree. I'm not sure what they're on about in this song - I'm never sure what these guys are on about. But they sure sound uplifting. It's like an indie "Up With People."

I always wanted to start a band called "Up To Here With People."

"Good Lovin" by the Grateful Dead. Once I was at a show where they played this, and a rainbow appeared in the sky. I told a dead head about it and he said "Yeah, that happens a lot at Dead shows. There's a lot of psychic energy." I'm pretty skeptical about stuff like that, but there's no possible scientific explanation to explain how all those VW micro-busses in the parceling lot are still running.

"We Are Golden" by Mika. Fun! 

"Don't Stop Believin' (Glee version). I never felt like the show lived up to the promise of the pilot. I like it when their music really sounds more or less like something a really good glee club would do (plus guitar and drums). They usually just sound like karaoke versions. But I sure loved that pilot! Did they ever get around to the gag I assumed they were going for where "new directions" sounds like "nude erections?" The "Halo/Walking On Sunshine" mashup is on there, too.

"My Favorite Things" by The Mountain Goats. One of their dozens of "unreleased" numbers. A minute long song about hearing John Coltrane on the radio while dancing with someone you're probably about to sleep with. "you put your arm around me and it felt real fine /and your ankle brushed up against mine /  and resonating in my bones / the precise, crisp, drumming of Mr. Elvin Jones / god damn it! / i love john coltrane!" I swear he actually sings the exclamation point. John Darnielle tends to sing in italics. He does not sing his songs so much as he declares them.

"Oh, Mary Don't You Weep" by Bruce Springsteen an the Seeger Sessions band. The Seeger Sessions band sounded like what old folk music should have always sounded like, but it's a sound that couldn't exist in a world without mixing boards. An 18 piece folk band with a banjo, a tuba, an accordion, and a ragged band of gypsies vibe. I really hope he brings this band back - or makes up for the loss of Clarence by sort of merging the E Street band with some of these guys (which is pretty much what he's already started).

"Janglin" by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. These guys (like Polyphonic Spree) sort of seem like a cult. But what a swell cult! One line I just can't get past here is "We want to heal ya / we don't mean to kill ya." Well, good. I wouldn't want to listen to a band that meant to kill me (and wasn't a Norwegian black metal band). 

"Kick Drum Heart" by The Avett Brothers. A bouncy song on an album that is generally not bouncy.

"In The Aeroplane Over the Sea" by Neutral Milk Hotel seems like it fits into every playlist ever. All building up to the line "can't believe / how strange it is to be anything at all" which is sort of what Sparks is all about. I would have written that right in, but Flux is pretty hardcore about not quoting any lyrics. This made writing the scenes where they listen to "God Only Knows" and "This Year" and "It's All right Ma, I'm Only Bleeding" an interesting challenge. This is not a song Debbie would like, though. It took forever for this band to click with me, and Debbie is not into artsy, avant grade-type stuff. Maybe one day she will be. Not yet.

"Such Great Heights" by The Postal Service. This makes me think of my wife.

"Love the One You're With" by Stephen Stills. When I was about 14 I went to see a Shakespeare in the Park thing where they did Midsummer Night's Dream with hippies in place of fairies, and between acts a band played this. One of those songs (like "You may Be Right" by Billy Joel) where, if you pay too much attention, you'll start thinking the singer is acting like a complete douchebag, but they make it fun anyway. 

"What Is Life" by George Harrison. My favorite of his solo songs. "Waiting ON You All" would have worked in any Sparks playlist, too. 

"My Roller Coaster" by Kimya Dawson. One of her happier songs. All the people in this book need to listen to more Kimya Dawson records. We all do, probably. The importance of "Nothing Came Out' by her band, The Moldy Peaches, to SPARKS can not be over-stated. Sounds like a funny song if you've never been "there," but I think it's really their most doggedly serious song.

"Queen of the World" by Ida Maria. I love Ida Maria. This is one of her happier songs, where the depression underneath is more effectively buried. She features very prominently on the playlist for another upcoming book tentatively titled Mad to Live, and "We're All Going to Hell" is on the Satanic YA book playlists (of course).

"Valerie Plame" by the Decemberists. "Engine Driver" turns up in most of my other playlists, but this one delights me more. Something about opening a song with "Valerie Plame / if that really IS your name" makes me smile. 

"What Light" by Wilco. THe "Sing, Sing a Song" of my generation. 

"The Happy Wanderer" by The Polkaholics. These guys are the greatest band in Chicago. They are a guitar-drum-bass combo that sounds like early Green Day, only they play polka. All polka is happy. It is happy music for happy people. "The Beer Barrel Polka" teaches us that something can start in Scranton and go to Number 1. The lead singer, Dandy Don Hedekker, is the name sake of the appliance store in the book I Put a Spell on You.

"Constructive Summer" by The Hold Steady. The Ragged Glory playlist was heavy on these guys. 

Just added today to this list  is "Stuck On F**in' You" by Lady Gaga. Sounds like a Beggar's Banquet outtake. She should do more songs like this. I found myself wishing that whole last record was a big more organic (but in that Jim Steinman and Meatloaf way, if that makes any sense). 

Some other music writings I've done: 

On Green Day

The Gospel of the Mountain Goats

The Hold Steady and the Gaslight Anthem: Two Gangs Fighting In the Same Springsteen Song

On 90s Alternative as Oldies

The Mountain Goats live review 12/6-7/11

Forgive me if I ramble. I do that sometimes when I write concert reviews. I always liked those book-long concert reviews like Ratso Sloman's "On the Road with Bob Dylan" and they kind of infected my brain, the same way my sinuses have lately been infected, causing my ears to clog up so much I can barely hear.  As such, having heard that the Mountain Goats would be playing an un-amplified show a mile or so from my apartment I resolved to arrive early enough to sit someplace where I could hear. For the uninitiated, the Mountain Goats are a band consisting of John Darnielle and whoever else is in the band at the time. Sometimes it's just him. They've put out a ton of albums since their first tape 20 years ago.

I'm sort of new to the Mountain Goats fold. I first heard them years ago, but even then the sheer volume of their output intimidated me a bit (where would I start?), and I'm always a bit afraid of bands that have a large indie following. I like a lot of those bands, but I always feel like the indie scene is a bunch of big kids who won't let me play basketball with them. I think this is the result of growing up in suburban Iowa and Snellville, Georgia and being really, really into Star Wars in 1992 (when it was NOT a popular thing to be into).  When you grow up like that, everyone else seems cooler than you.

But a year or so back I noticed that about 2/3rds of the songs I'd had to look up after hearing them on the radio at the coffee shop were Mountain Goats songs - "This Year" and "Lovecraft in Brooklyn" sealed it for me, and I ran out and picked up "Sunset Tree," which had "This Year," and All Hail West Texas, which had "The Best Ever Death Metal Band In Denton," which I already knew that I loved -  I felt like it was about my friends and me; we had bands with names like Scapegoat (which still exists and records, along with 50 other bands of the same name) and Supernatural Anarchy. Our music was recorded on boom boxes. All Hail West Texas was also recorded on a boom box, but somehow it made the tape hiss noise WORK in a way that I never dreamed possible. And then there are the lyrics.  I write young adult novels for a living; I can tell you right now that many of these songs about characters trying to do the right thing even though they think of themselves as evil, Huck Finn-style, tell more in 8 lines than most YA books do in 200 pages.

Nowadays, when people ask about my own solo albums, I just direct them to The Mountain Goats and say "this is what I was trying to do."

Notes on Pop Culture: The Gospel of The Mountain Goats

I'm late to the party on The Mountain Goats. I first heard them in the car on a road trip to a Tom Waits show in Detroit in 2006, and in the years since I've lost count of how many times I've sat in the cafe, listening to the radio, and said "who's this? this sounds good" and found out it was The Mountain Goats. But when I look up a band and see they have over a dozen records already, I get a bit overwhelmed. I don't know where to start. I put off buying a Springsteen album for years because of this.

I finally bought a couple of Mountain Goats records late last year, and I've listened to little else since. John Darnielle (who, for all practical purposes, IS The Mountain Goats) is a fantastic songwriter. He's done enough "on the verge of breaking up while riding in a car" and "ecstatic love while riding in a car" songs that I almost think he has too many, but, like Tom Waits ballads about rural weirdos and Bob Dylan 12-bar blues songs, it's hard to imagine we could ever have enough.

But what interests me most, and gets my fist pumping, is his obsession with salvation through making mistakes and wrecking his life.

Atari Haikus

In my day, video games took some IMAGINATION, yessir. You had to use your imagination to convince yourself that the thing you were moving around the screen was an airplane, not, say, a naked woman (or the other way around if you were playing "Porky's"). But imagination worked. In my mind, those Atari games had massive backstories. Even the simplest games became epic. Of course, I played Nintendo every chance I got, but we had Atari at my house through the mid 90s - and I got another one in the late 90s, when Star Wars collecting got too expensive. The days of finding Star Wars figures at garage sales and flea markets were over, but Atari games could be found mixed in with the eight track tapes at most thrift stores.

2600
wood grain machine of glory
matched the rec room walls

We could play some games
with our phones, back in those days.
Like "Choke Your Brother"

Space Indvaders screen
would get fuzzy every time
my mom would vacuum

Was E.T. THAT bad?
I played it for hours and hours
exploring, hopeless

Sixty-four big levels
to pass in Demon Attack
new guys every time

Difficulty switch
black and white or color switch
gone with the joystick

That one sound effect
for new games in new movies?
atari donkey kong

Get the ball up top
on super break out, sounds like
Baba o'Reilly

Sword Quest Really sucked.
there, I said it. Again now:
sword quest really sucked.

By the time I earned
a patch on Decatholon
they stopped making them

I found jungle hunt
at a garage sale on Fifth
already had it

try up up down down
left right left right B A start .
It'll never work!

Beauty, the Beast, and the French Revolution

A few months back, when my stepson was in town, we had some friends over to watch the new Blu-Ray of Beauty and the Beast. Claudia Gray and I fell into a discussion: the movie takes place in France in the late 18th or early 19th century - right around the time of the French Revolution, when the peasants rose up, overthrew the nobility, and had their heads trimmed from their necks. Has all of this already happened when the movie takes place, or is Belle just setting herself up on a date with the guillotine by moving into the castle?

There are other questions that come about from the movie, of course. Like, why is anyone surprised to hear about the castle? Didn't they know it was there? Hadn't it once been the #1 employer in the area? Didn't they wonder what happened to the mean prince? All of these questions are answered if we assume that the revolution came between the time that the mysterious old woman turned the prince into a beast and the events of the movie. In fact, this attack on the prince could have been the first major attack of the revolution. It probably pre-dated the storming of the Bastille in 1789. By the time Belle and her father go to the castle, six or seven years have passed, and France is being controlled by the Directory (as it will be for a couple more years before the rise of Napoleon).

M

The biggest clue for me that this is a post-revolution movie comes when the townspeople get their torches and prepare to storm the castle. Look at the way they get organized here - I get the distinct impression that this ain't their first rodeo. They've stormed a castle or two in their day. Maybe they've even sat knitting at the foot of a guillotine.

Perhaps when they stormed the castle before, the Beast was hiding out in the West Wing. The townspeople had arrived expecting a big fight with the mean prince and his armies, but found the place deserted ("nobody here but us furniture!") So they figured that some other angry mob had gotten there first, patted themselves on the back, considered it a job well done, and went home. Being a Beast didn't just save that prince's heart - it saved his neck, too!

BOBCAT NATION: LIFE AMONG THE DYLAN FANS (now on kindle!)

What makes Bob Dylan fans so obsessive?Author Adam Selzer (The Smart Aleck's Guide to American History) mixes rock criticism and sociology in a hilarious travelogue as he treks through America, meeting prominent Dylan fans and trying figure out what it is about Bob Dylan that keeps his fans coming back to concert after concert - narrowly avoiding certain death (and his creditors) several times along the way. Originally written in 2004, the newly revised edition also features several of Adam's more recent Dylan writings (for a total of over 85,000 words) and features an active table of contents. Perfect for new Dylan fans who want to know what they're getting into, and full of new ways to think about and enjoy Dylan's work for even the most dedicated, long-time fans.

KINDLE EDITION: 

Just $2.99!

Don't have a kindle device? Get the free Kindle App for Mac, PC or your smartphone!

News All Sizes, Notes on Writing.

We should have a cover (and, hence, a trailer) for EXTRAORDINARY: THE TRUE STORY OF MY FAIRY GODPARENT, WHO ALMOST KILLED ME, AND CERTAINLY NEVER MADE ME A PRINCESS soon! That book will be out next Summer/Fall.

I've also just turned in a revised version of another YA book, which just MIGHT end up using the title I planned for it: DEBBIE DOES DETENTION. This is just one of a handful of titles under consideration, though. The book is a John Hughes-esque (or maybe Kevin Smith-esque) story about a neurotic, Full House-obsessed girl who tries to get over a crush on her best friend by embarking on a "holy quest" with a couple of misfits who have invented their own religion.

Now, the question that will inevitably asked: Will the pop culture references make it become outdated quickly? Do kids still know about Full House? In answer to the latter question, teenagers of today grew up in world where that show was on five times a day. It's now a part of the Teen Nick lineup. Fans of the show will recognize plenty of references in the book, but all people who haven't seen it need to know is that it's an old family-friendly sitcom with a lot of hugging (which the main character explains right away).

The former question is the biggie - debates about whether there ought to be pop culture in YA books are endless. Many are the blog reviews of I Kissed a Zombie that went to great pains to say that the book will not "stand the test of time" because of the pop culture references (I'm not sure which ones they mean - most of them are to Leonard Cohen and Cole Porter, which I can't imagine will be more dated in twenty years than they are already).

I've covered this before, but it bears repeating: there are arguments against using pop culture in books, but "the test of time" is not one of them. Pop culture references in books can make it look like you're bending over backwards to look hip and contemporary (which readers see right through), and if you have your main character be, say, a big Beyonce fan, many readers who hate Beyonce will judge the character (and the book) harshly (it would be nice to say that most people are better readers than that, but believe me, it's an issue).

However, when I read a book from fifteen or twenty years ago, the pop culture references are usually the LEAST dated thing about the book. ALL books from back then are "dated" - the characters don't have cell phones, they lick stamps, flip channels, watch videos on MTV, have no access to Youtube (so if they miss something on TV, man, it's GONE), read encyclopedias, think a college degree will get them a good job, buy film, get chicken pox, and have trouble tracking down a copy of an old book.

Most classic works of literature - Dickens, Shakespeare, Twain, you name it - are loaded with pop culture references. They're dated now: our concept of what's funny changes over time (for a good 100 years it was widely agreed that The Pickwick Papers was the funniest book in the world - when I read it now I find it funny, but get a "well, you had to be there" vibe). And sometimes their references to popular songs and political scandals of the day require footnotes. But these are no more dated now than the references to the kind of clothes the characters wore or the kinds of carriages they used. And yet, they've all stood the test of time, because the stories and characters continue to entertain and to resonate.

If the main character of a book is a teenager, it's ridiculous to imagine that pop culture is not a part of their life (whether they love it or hate it). All books end up being period pieces eventually - to attempt to keep this from happening would inevitably result in a very bland book. There are readers who don't want to read a book that seems as though it must have taken place two years ago, not right that very week, but those same readers aren't going to want to read a book that came out two years ago in the first place.

So, there's always a danger that I'm going to get dinged by some bloggers for the Full House references, and the day will probably come when readers are less familiar with that show than they are now. But I don't think it'll matter. The book isn't ABOUT Full House, it's about Debbie trying to figure out who she is and who she can be when the life and future she's imagined for herself have fallen apart. People will still be dealing with that sort of thing long after any book where the characters' cars need gas have become period pieces.

Here's me with Dave Coulier in 2002:

On Scooby Doo: Mystery Inc.

The times have changed.

Long about 1993 or 94, I decided I wanted a Scooby Doo t-shirt. For the last several years, Scooby and the gang had kept a low profile. After the debacle that was The Thirteen Ghosts of Scooby Doo (a great idea for a series that didn't work out so well), the gang had last been seen in the self-deprecating Pup Named Scooby Doo, which I never quite warmed to. Since then, there'd been a couple of bad movies, with no sign of Daphne, Fred or Velma.  The gang had lost its way. The Mystery Machine was gone.

But I still wanted a shirt.

(behind the jump: a long analysis of the phenomenon that is Scooby Doo and latest series, which I love)

Notes on Pop Culture: Halloween in Iowa

Here's the prompt-copy of a commentary I wrote for a paranormal radio show last year:

Growing up, I had no idea whatsoever that joke-telling while trick-or-treating was a local custom. When I moved to Atlanta and kids just came up to the door and said "Trick or Treat" without telling a joke, I thought "what are these kids? Savages?"

Read the full post under the cut:

Notes on Pop Culture: Archaeology

My top dresser drawer has been my junk drawer for as long as I can remember, and some of the junk has been in there for a long, long time. Every time I open it, I wonder if I'll discover the cure for some disease (or possibly some bacteria that'll give me cholera).  Anyway, here's some results from a recent dig:



A handful of ID cards - my 8th grade school ID, a metallica fan club card from 97, and an MST3K Info Club card from about '95.



M.U.S.C.L.E. men! They've been in that yellow thingy for YEARS - the first use I remember using the yellow thingie for was to carry around Garbage Pail Kids 1985, but I've had it since before that. I'd say the muscle men found their way into the yellow thing in the late '80s, though they've been in the drawer itself since 86 or so. Also included: some arrowheads my neighbor gave me (in the early '90s), a Steve Avery rookie card (89 topps), and a magnet that probably dates the the early 80s.

MORE BEHIND THE CUT!

Banned Books Week: Grandpa Geoff and Me

Banned Books Week has come again, and I'm proud to be listed by the ALA as one of the most challenged authors of the year (despite my attempts to make all of my books to date "ages 10+" instead of "ages 14+").

Of course, I don't wish to flatter myself: it's not as though my books are really THAT daring or dangerous. Getting challenged is really just luck of the draw - very rarely do people who challenge books really take the time to READ them first. They just skim for the swear words, if that. And "smart ass" was helpfully visible in bold text right on the back cover of How to Get Suspended and Influence People, which is probably how I came to make the list, even though that book isn't nearly as well known, or as edgy, as most other titles on the list of most-challenged books.

Now, the word "ass" is not a new one. It wasn't even a new one when George Washington used it while crossing the Delaware (a quote Newt Gingrich left out of his Twitter re-enactment of the Battle of Trenton). It's been in the world as a synonym for "buttocks" about as long as the English language as we know it (or at least since it evolved from the British "arse.")

But you can rarely tell that to the people who want to control what books are in the library. If you get down to the root of it all,  the motive for most of the people challenging books is that the books violate their sense of The Way Things Ought to Be. They have a fantasy world in their heads where no one swears, no one has per-marital sex, no one is gay, and everyone is either a devout Christian or the town atheist. And they've convinced themselves that not only was this the way God and the Founding Fathers intended the world to be*, but that it really WAS exactly that way until just recently - possibly as late as February of '64, when the Beatles played on Ed Sullivan.  This fallacy isn't just limited to conservatives, either - a friend of mine was teaching a college-level course on gothic fiction and showed The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Most of the comments from students who weren't familiar with it were along the lines of "when was this made? It's too out there to be that old."

This is why almost no one who isn't a character in The Music Man wastes any energy complaining about The Canterbury Tales these days: it's so old that people who aren't really paying attention can't imagine that it's a threat.

When you read through a list of banned books and the reasons WHY they were banned, you can make a checklist of things that offend people. Not quite all of them can be said of Canterbury Tales; I've seen one list saying that Crime and Punishment was banned for being "written by a Russian," which Geoffery Chaucer was not (though he was, according to ancestry.com, one of my couple hundred thousand 18th Great Grandfathers). Just about everything else is in there, though.

Grandpa Geoff (as I always called him) wrote The Canterbury Tales about six hundred years ago, and it's a standard text in both high schools and colleges. I believe I had to read it (or selections from it) in seven different classes over the course of my education. Most teachers, however, don't really understand the point of the book; it's not exactly great literature, it's just a really, really funny bunch of stories. One of my high school textbooks described The Knight's Tale as a very formal tale of courtly romance. Actually, it's sort of a satire of those: the guy in it seems to respond to every situation by launching into a big, melodramatic speech. Someone's about to kill you? Quick! Make a speech! The knight probably thought he was telling a formal story, but I don't think Chaucer did.

In fact, if you get a teacher who knows how to really "make it come alive," (ie, understands the jokes, and will explain them, instead of just having you write down the definition of "yeoman" and "reeve"), The Canterbury Tales is an absolute riot.

For instance, one of my college professors was an old southern lady - I'm not sure HOW old, exactly, but she was in grad school during the second World War, so she had to be into her 80s. She spoke in that dignified form of the southern accent that you seldom hear today, and was able to stretch "turd" into a three syllable word (tur-id-uh). I found this out when she read this selection from the end of "The Pardoner's Tale" in which a speaker castigates a a holy relic salesman that he doesn't think is on the level:

Thou woldest make me kisse thyn olde breech  
And swere it were a relik of a saint, 
Though it were with thy fundament depeint 
But, by the crois which that Sainte Elaine foond, 
I wolde I hadde thy coilons in myn hond, 
In stede of relikes or of saintuarye.
Lat cutte hem of: I wol thee helpe hem carye. 
They shal be shrined in an hogges tord."

Or, in modern English: "you would make me kiss your old pants, and say they were the relic of a saint, even though they were stained by your butt. Why, by the Cross that St. Helen found, I wish I had your balls in my hand instead of a holy relic! I'd cut them off and enshrine them in a hog's turd."  Read that in a Gone with the Wind accent, and imagine it coming from a little old lady.

Now, as hilarious as that is, this passage pushes a LOT of buttons.  There are two explicit references to parts of the body normally covered (at least nowadays) by underpants, two references to feces, and one threat of sexual violence (since it's a guy grabbing another guy's coilons, one could probably even accuse the passage of homosexual themes). It could also be seen as belittling to Christians, who are frequently portrayed as bumbling, corrupt hypocrits throughout the book.

That passage alone makes it a lot worse than most books that were challenged last year. And elsewhere in The Canterbury Tales, we have a guy who tricks someone into kissing a guy's hairy anus, a professional wife who staunchly argues that our private parts are not just for peeing and reproduction, but for fun (she even uses the "c" word, which Chaucer spelled "quainte.") And there are the poop jokes, too - lots and lots of those, occasionally even making use of the word "shit" (or, in the prologue, an archaic form: "shitten").

It's only natural that there would be poop jokes, really. The framing device for the stories is of a bunch of pilgrims making a long journey from town to town on the way to a tomb they want to visit. There were no rest stops on trails from town to town in those days - you just had to duck off from the group and do your business. And the pilgrims (who probably had serious cases of monkey butt) could usually tell when they were close to a town by the smell of excrement in the air.  Poop was something these guys dealt with daily, and jokes about it were probably plentiful on those trips.

In other words, kids, this book has it all. It has poo, encouragement to have lots of sex, bad language (from an era before most people seem to think such words existed), and a whole host of other things. Clergymen, monks, and other members of the religious community are portrayed as sex-mad shysters who are sometimes threatened with having their nuts cut off. Violence? Plenty of that. I can't think of any drug use offhand, but there's plenty of drinking. Grandpa Geoff didn't shy away from much!

And this book's not just sitting on the shelves, it's probably being TAUGHT far more than any book on the ALA's list this year! So why don't more people try to ban The Canterbury Tales? It's not just because they don't know Middle English - practically every version on the market is translated into more contemporary language.

The simple reason Grandpa Geoff gets away with it is that it's old - so old that most of the sort of people who go around banning books assume that there can't be anything wrong with it. Oh, they may get up in arms about having Shakespeare plays performed now and then (almost always due to violence, not sex), but to go after an old book for obscenity, blasphemy, and perversion would require them to admit that their Ned Flanders fantasy world never really existed.

Well, joke's on them!

Anyway, Happy Banned Book Week! Julie Halpern and I will be discussing our experiences having our books banned at the Book Cellar, in the 4700 block of North Lincoln here in Chicago, on Wednesday, 9/29, at 7pm (facebook event page).

 Also, I just did an interview about all of this stuff with The Hate Mongering Tart. Enjoy!


* - note from The Smart Aleck Staff: one point we really hoped to make with The Smart Aleck's Guide to American History is that any time you hear someone tell you how The Founding Fathers would want things to be today, they're blowing smoke out their ass. The Founding Fathers were a very diverse group (for a bunch of rich white guys), and knowing how their opinions would have evolved over a couple centuries is simply impossible. On any given issue, we here at the Smart Aleck's Guide generally assume that about half of the founders would be for it, and about half would be against it. There was no golden era when everyone agreed about what the role of government should be, how government should interact with religion, or how the constitution should be interpreted. They were arguing about these things before the ink was dry.

Notes on Pop Culture: My Own "Glee" Experience

At the cafe this morning, they're playing a radio station that I think should be called the Uncle Music Station:  Doobie Brothers, REO Speedwagon, Foreigner, Supertramp, etc (it was Green Day who turned me on to calling this "Uncle Music" - it's the music out to which your uncle rocks). When I first came in, they were playing "Dust in the Wind," by Kansas. Man, that song takes me back - my eighth grade swing choir (ie Glee Club) spent most of the first semester working on that tune. I can still sing the cello solo. It was probably the most depressing semester of my life.

If you know the song, you will probably realize that it doesn't exactly swing. In fact, there are gregorian chants that swing a good deal more than "Dust in the Wind." Rather than swinging around, as swing choirs normally do, we just stood there and sang it, living up all to all the stereotypes about how much soul kids in the suburbs have.


In addition to not swinging, there's also nothing gleeful about "Dust in the Wing." The premise of the song is that life is short and more or less pointless - all we are is dust in the wind, drops of water in an endless sea, all of whose doings crumble to the ground and slip away, so one should not hang on... pretty grim business. There were plenty of popular songs about BEING depressed (such things really took off in the early 90s), but this was a song about why you SHOULD be depressed if you aren't.
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Notes on Pop Culture: Toy Collecting in the Early 90s

Some time ago I talked on the phone with Seth, one of my oldest friends (he's the guy who tells you take up "old timey dentistry" on The Smart Aleck's Guide's How to Make History Come Alive video), and we reminisced about what toy collecting was like in 1992 or 93.

Back then, I was into collecting Star Wars stuff. This did NOT make you cool in the early 1990s. Seth was also into Star Wars, but his main collections were '80s-era GI Joes and Transformers (this did not make you cool then, either). 


Besides just making us look like nerds down at the middle school, Star Wars and Transformers fandom barely even got you any geek cred in those days. We knew Star Wars would one day make a comeback when the new movie finally came out (waiting for the fourth Star Wars movie had been a part of my life since pre-school) , but the great Transformer revival, in particular, was something we never could have predicted. 


Collecting was a very different scene in those days - actually, it wasn't a scene at all. It was just the two of us, really. None of the comic book shops in town had large sections of Star Wars memorabilia - or any section at all, for that matter. At most, they might have an old lunch box for sale - and selling vintage GI Joe and Transformers was unheard of. There wasn't a store in town that sold such things. There certainly wasn't an ebay, either - the internet existed, but the only guy I knew who USED it was this one guy at the comic book shop who used to say "Yeah, AOL says there are millions of people online, but when you go on, there's like, two other people, tops." 


But this was age of bargains. 


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Notes on Pop Culture: Cereals Gone By

I am a breakfast cereal fiend. If no one stops me, I'm known to eat a full box in one sitting. I can debate the merits of name-brand vs. off-brand Crunch Berries at great length. Cereal is one of fairly few foods that I can't recreate in my kitchen - when a type of cereal is gone, it's gone forever. Some of the cereals made to promote a certain movie only last a few months, and there are many that I haven't eaten in 20 years. But I remember them clearly. A few cereals of yesteryear:

E.T. - this was a chocolate peanute butter cereal with a taste similar to the modern Reese's cereal, but a texture closer to that of Alpha-Bits. You got more of a full flavor in your mouth, the same way a mouthful of Fruity Pebbles is more substantial than a mouthful of Trix.

Fruity Yummy Mummy - a very short-lived cousin to Count Chocula and the other monster cereals. Like Fruit Brute before it, the fact that this guy just couldn't make up his mind about what flavor he wanted to be kept it from finding much of an identity, and he didn't last long. The fruit + marshmallows was done much better, for my money, by the late, lamented Ghost Busters cereal. I do remember a kid trick-or-treating at my house in a Yummy Mummy costume the year these things were out - the joke he told (as one must do to get candy in Des Moines, where we don't give out something for nothing, like commies) was copies right off the back of the box. I don't remember the question, but the answer was "Fruity Yummy Mummy."

Smurfberry Crunch - Not unlike Chrunch Berries, but with a higher berry-to-corn ratio. The Smurfs also had better chewable vitamins than the Flintstones - they had a skittle-like consistency. I remember carrying around tiny Tupperware containers of this in my parents' "old old" house that we moved out of when I was about 3. I used to eat them in the bathroom. Class is no concern of 3 year olds.

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Notes on Pop Culture: Why Lady Gaga is Like James Joyce, kinda.

"If anyone calls Lady Gaga a pop star, I'll (expletive deleted) kill them. She's a rock star!" - the guy from Semi Precious Weapons, onstage at Lollapalooza.

"I don't mean to speak arrogantly about my musical strategy as a pop artist in the Warholian sense, but today you have to almost trick people into listening to something intelligent." - Lady Gaga on why so many of her songs were about clubbing and getting drunk.

With the above quote in Rolling Stone, Lady Gaga stole my heart. As a guy who tried to write the most intelligent of all possible zombie romance novels (a genre that doesn't naturally lend itself to intelligence, honestly), I see where she's coming from.

As a music fan, I'm a bit of a mercenary. Dance music has no real use for me, because I can't dance worth a damn. Oh, I'll listen to OLD dance music - swing, tango and ragtime are fun to listen to, and they always make you feel classy (though that's exactly the opposite of what they were designed to do), but all of this modern club music that where the songs are crammed full of pop hooks and beats instead of being written, well…what use is it to me?

Notes On Pop Culture: Metallica - What Happened?

  Note: In addition to Sketches of Chicago,  I'm write a bunch of new music essays and combining them with my old ones for a series of  Notes on Pop Culture to satisfy my appetite for deconstruction. This is the first of the new essays, in which I try to explain what happened to Metallica from about 1995-2005:

  METALLICA: What Happened?

 I am fairly sure that when Metallica wrote "Wherever I May Roam," they did not imagine it as a song about riding a ten speed bicycle down bike paths behind the LIttle League field on the way to a comic book shop. The song is about (or, anyway, from the point of view of) a drifter who roams from town to town - and a dead one, at that, though the listener doesn't find this out until the end of the song. But it was the song that played in my head like a movie theme as I rode my bike between the comic book shop, K-Mart, K's Merchandise, the tanning salon that was also a used book shop, and the one gas station in town that sold both Slim Jims and Jolt Cola. And it made me feel like those bike rides were epic journeys in which I rode with dust in my throat, adapting to the unknown, reigning off the beaten path.

On Green Day: An Essay

Ever since the Grammys, when Green Day performed "21 Guns" with the cast of the new rock opera version of "American Idiot," I've seen a lot of people snidely pointing out that Green Day can't be punk anymore if they're going to be on Broadway. I'm amused by this. I thought we went through the whole "Green Day Isn't Really Punk" backlash in 1994.

At the beginning of that year, my only exposure to punk had been back in 1986, when, on a family trip to Minneapolis, we went downtown to an area where, I was told, there would be punks. I had no idea what that meant, being barely 6, but when I saw a guy with a leather jacket and spiked green hair, I knew right away. "There's one!" I shouted. My parents freaked out while the guy smirked; they thought he might be offended and beat us up or make us take drugs. In reality, I probably made his day.

The Hold Steady and Gaslight Anthem: Two Gangs Fighting in the Same Springsteen Song

I sometimes say that every new band I like these days sounds like Springsteen. In no two bands is this more true that The Hold Steady and Gaslight Anthem - except that they don't sound LIKE Bruce, exactly. They just sound like something he'd sing about.

These two bands sound like opposing sides in a gang war in the middle of a Springsteen song. The Hold Steady represent the beatniks - they hang around writing poetry and getting drunk on the moon (in addition to the booze they guzzle in basements). The Gaslight Anthem represent the greasers - they work as mechanics, sing doo-woop on street corners, and, well, guzzle booze in basements. In many ways, the two gangs are the same bunch of guys, but, at least superficially, they have different goals and values. Like the Sharks and the Jets. Their songs are fueled by slightly, but significantly, different romantic ideals.

Meeting Hulk Hogan

So my publicist called me a while ago and said they'd like me to come talk about ghosts on the Mancow show. Mancow is a bit of a shock jock, so I was a bit leery of the whole endeavor, but I can use all the publicity I can get, even though being a "ghost hunter" makes you an easy target for ridicule. Well, no one ever got anywhere if he was afraid of looking like a fool now and then.

THEN they asked if I'd like to come in on a day when the other guest would be Hulk Hogan. When someone asks you if you would like to meet Hulk Hogan, you say "yes."