Old Life, New Bank

January 27, 2012 awkward pauses, life 2 comments

I guess we all have secret lives – those tiny little crevices in our past that we don’t bring up anymore.  Rumors of the old you that brings a shudder when it comes up in a conversation. For some, it’s an unflattering hairstyle, for others a phase when they wore those giant raver pants, and sometimes it may be a former career or obsession. I’m guilty of having evidence of a past life out there; in fact there are all sorts of bits of it out there on the internet. I bristle when I look back and see photos of me with bad hair or blog posts about shitty bands that I used to be into.  But also there are plenty of pictures of my ex-wife and I.

Before I get too deep into this post, let me just say that I am not trying to be cursing or rude or even disparaging about my ex, she is a nice person and I think we made a mistake. Each of us were not the people that the other person thought we were and it unfortunately caused a lot of pain to happen. We rarely see each other in the sort of social situations that one would see an ex in; like bars, restaurants or parties, but when we do it’s fairly cordial and always awkward.  That’s why doing any sort of banking is stressful for me.

I’ll admit it: I’m lazy. I guess my brain just can’t tolerate the minutia of the tedious things that adult life throws at us – case in point: banking.  I have an account at regional bank. Sure, it’s not a credit union, but I still feel okay about keeping my money in a (semi)-local institution. I’ve had the account for almost eight years now simply because I don’t want to be bothered with changing to a different house of money. I keep feeling like maybe I should, but I don’t. When I lived in Asheville this was especially awkward because if I needed to go to the bank, sitting at a desk inside was my ex-wife.

For a while it was awkward to the point where I didn’t want to even go into the bank while I knew she was there. I waited for the time when she always took her lunch break and I would try to go then. I ran in and ran out. I played dumb going through the drive-up window, saying things like oh drat, I forgot my deposit slip, like I was some silver-haired granny that I knew the tellers bent their ultra-strict rules for. It worked.

Then my relationship with my wife began, and with it came a move out of Asheville. What I gave up in being having my friends and family close by I made up for slightly in having the ability to not have to go to bank at a place where the employees chipped in and bought us five place settings for dishes at our wedding. There wouldn’t be any awkward moments if the new lady came into the bank with me. It was like I was just another customer at the bank.

Then they put my ex’s picture on the bank’s website.

 

(I’ll give you a hint as to which person it is: it’s not the one who just sat on an aardvark.)

Now, when I go to do anything concerning my bank, I’m greeted by my ex. This is not good.  It’s not that I find her hideous or anything like that; it’s just a reminder of an older life, a life that I’ve grown unaccustomed to.  I’m sure that it’s a little bit weird for her if she stumbles across a comment on Facebook by one of our two mutual friends. I bet she looks back at the time we shared with a million regrets, and while I hate that she feel that way, I completely understand.  But still, she’s not seeing my face every time she’s trying to figure out what’s for dinner.

I’m aware that I could do something to fix this uncomfortable situation by changing banks, but that is hardly embarrassing or self-deprecating enough to warrant an entry on The Bugg Blog, now is it?  Instead I thought of the bizarre power plays that customers at the bank pulled with my ex, and how she came home raving about insane customers and how the bank would be over backwards to please them. I remember shaking my head over dinner and thinking man, I’ll never be one of those dick heads. Now was finally my chance to pull a dick move like that.

I walked into the bank this afternoon, filling out a withdrawal slip.  As I came in through the double doors I felt mighty, I felt strong, and I was full of the righteous indignation that I imagine the guys raising the flag on Iwo Jima. I was going to make them change the header image on their website.  I held my head high and thought about what I was going to say, and then I conducted my business.

With forty dollars placed in my hand and a receipt from my teller, a blonde girl named Farrah with the sort of chubby redneck-cute that permeates the rural areas of this area, I was almost ready to go. The teller asked me if I needed anything else.

Actually Farrah I wanted to ask someone about the website, I said.

You’re interested in online banking, she asked.

Well, not really. I mean yes I do a lot of online banking, but I don’t know if I’d call it an interest. I’m interested in World War II, comic books, The Von Erich-Freebird Rivalry and a million other things, but I don’t know if I’d say that online banking is an interest, I said.

Did I mention that this is pretty much how the conversation went verbatim? Yes, I actually say these things.

Oh okay Mr. Bugg, she said and then asked me if I needed help with the website.

No, not at all. I was just wondering if you could change some things on the site, I said.

Well the website was just updated, so you’re going to find that a lot of the things on the site that you are looking for are in all new places, she said.

Oh no, I can find everything rather well, the new design is sleek and it makes everything feel cleaner – not that the site was dirty or anything. Could you imagine that, a dirty bank website, I said. I even laughed for a second. Farrah was nonplussed.

So you want us to change something with the website, but you like the website, she asked.

Exactly, I said while pointing at her.

I’m not following you, Mr. Bugg. What is it that you’d like for me to change, she asked. Her voice seemed a bit more tense.

Well if you go to the site, and look you’ll see a picture of my ex-wife on there, I said.

She smiled and laughed. You’re so silly, she said.

No I’m being serious, go to the site, I said.

She furiously loaded up a browser and went to the bank’s website. There sat the offensive header.

That’s what you have a problem with, she asked.

Yes, that picture right there. It’s my ex-wife, I said.

Farrah smiled. That’s not you’re ex-wife, she said.

It is.

They probably buy these pictures from some other website like they are called – what’s that word? Clip art. This is just clip art, she said.

No, her name is NAME REDACTED and she works at the NAME REDACTED branch, I said.

By this time, another teller walked over and looked over Farrah’s shoulder.

Oh my god that is her, she said laughing.  Teller number two turned around and told the drive-up window operator that the company used photographs of employees as the main image for the website.

You mean I could be a model, drive-up window lady said before busting out laughing.

Wait a minute – you ladies never use the bank’s website, I asked. It seemed weird that these were employees of the bank and this all seemed so new to them.

Oh no, I use NAME REDACTED. My husband and I have been with them for years, teller number two said.

Oh okay, well that’s weird. I said.

Well Mr. Bugg, is there anything else I can do for you this afternoon, Farrah asked. I could tell that she wanted to scoot me out the door so she could go back to doing whatever it is that bank tellers do when they aren’t helping customers.

No I’m serious, can you see about getting her face off of the website, I said.

Was it a bad break-up? Farrah asked.

No, it’s not that. It was a good break-up. I’m happier now, she seems happier also, from what I can tell. I am remarried and I love my wife more than anything and NAME REDACTED is dating a guy who I’m told is really great and looks a lot like Christopher Guest from The Princess Bride, I said.

Oh I love that movie: Assssssssssssssss Yoouuuuuu Wiiiiiish! Farrah said.

I remember that movie, teller number two said.

Well it is a good one, I said.

You are the brute squad, the chubby drive-up window operator yelled out.

Exactly, I said.

Well Mr. Bugg that was really funny. Thank you for coming in today, Farrah said.

No wait, I said. At this point I felt like Ralphie being shot down the slide in A Christmas Story, and this was my defiant moment where I stopped gravity and DEMANDED a Red Rider BB Gun from Santa.

If you don’t get somebody to change the image, I’m going to take my – I wasn’t sure how much I had in the bank. I looked down at my receipt and this is what it said:

I’m going to take my three twenty-three elsewhere, I said.

For a moment, there was silence. The parade of quoting The Princess Bride had ended. Farrah stared me down like she was Jack Palance in Shane.  Then she spoke.

Okay Mr. Bugg, she said. But it wasn’t a positive okay. She raised her shoulders and made her front teeth stick out. She said it in a deep voice. This was her calling me a retard.

I pictured asking for my three dollars and change right then and there from the teller and taking it to another bank, but then I thought about all of the paperwork that I’d have to fill out at both my current bank to close the account and at the new bank to open a new account. I thought about how much time that would take and then I thought about my dogs at home and the betrayed looks upon their faces when I leave and don’t take them with me. It all piled upon me and I decided to leave well enough alone.

Just kidding, I said and then laughed, playing off the whole encounter.  Farrah laughed too, thinking that this was another of my elaborate and unfunny jokes.

I paid the water bill and then stopped at the store on the way home, back to my current life. I thought about the picture on the site and how I got a little bent out of shape over a picture on the lading page of a website. I thought about it a lot, and then the wife came home.

How was your day, she asked.

It was good. Better now, I said.

My old life was behind me. I still see pictures of it, but I don’t look at them as much.

Craig Finn – Clear Heart, Full Eyes

January 25, 2012 music, reviews No comments

 

I love The Hold Steady. They un-ironically play some of the best, seventies-feeling rock n’ roll out there. Their music is full of joy and bombast and their lyrics, spread out over the course of the band’s five studio albums, make people who follow their lyrics feel like they are immersed in one big, epic Bukowski-by-the-way-of-Eggers novel. I tear into each album hoping to play air guitar while hearing tales of a girl named Hallelujah (but you can call her Holly) and guys named Gideon and Charlemagne, girls who can tell which horse finishes first and all those killer parties, and for the most part I’m rewarded handsomely.

The Hold Steady’s fifth album, Heaven is Whenever, was a strange record. It contains some of my favorite individual Hold Steady songs, but it’s also their weakest album. In a weird way, it was a sign that things needed to be shaken up.

Taking a cue from that, The Hold Steady’s lead singer Craig Finn has released Clear Heart, Full Eyes, his first solo album. The album feels warm and familiar – Finn’s voice is unmistakable, but everything else feels different. The bombast is missing and there appears to be all new characters fucking up the same old things in these songs.  It’s a bit alarming at first for longtime Hold Steady fans, but upon multiple listens it’s the record that Hold Steady fans need.  Why is that? Allow me to explain.

For the last three or four records, The Hold Steady have felt like a band dying to mature. Finn is singing more instead of just ranting, there are vocal harmonies and the songs feel well-written instead of the big swaths of classic rock impressionism that the band specialized in at the beginning.  But in growing up The Hold Steady seem to be losing that intimate, hey bro let me tell you a story quality of their songs. On Clear Heart, Full Eyes Finn is back in his role as the guy at the corner of the bar, doling out anecdotes and parables for the losers. It’s a beautiful thing to hear.

Are there missteps on Clear Heart, Full Eyes? Yes. Sometimes the simple instrumentation doesn’t fit the tales that Finn weaves – “Terrified Eyes”, with it’s big vocal refrain at the end, begs for a Hold Steady-style rave-up. Instead, we are left with a garage-y country feeling shuffle. It could be so much more, but here in the intimate setting of a solo album it just sort of hangs there, buried as track six on the album.

Clear Heart, Full Eyes is a good album. It’s solid and nothing is offensive. Maybe as a fan and booster of The Hold Steady I’m not giving its fair shake because I need to guitars and energy, but Finn’s voice is so singular and identifiable that it’s hard to hear it in a more intimate setting like this one. I’m still listening to it, though.  Craig Finn has written a damn fine collection of songs, but in a weird way I think that it’d be better if I didn’t know who he was before hearing it.

Ownership

January 25, 2012 awkward pauses, life No comments

 

My latest adventure started off the way that most adventures do: with the death of my freelance writing career. I continue to be at a loss trying to figure out why something that I’m (supposedly) so good at brings me no money. I asked myself if I could do better, and tried to. I asked editors and got barely any response, because that’s what editors do. I asked a writer friend whose work has appeared in tons of magazines and he told me a pretty harsh truth; that music writers like myself line up like airplanes at O’Haire in a snowstorm, and editors pick the ones they like and leave the others freezing in the cold. It was a harsh and scary.  Right about then another friend told me to embrace my blog for a little while. Use it to write about bands, but also stretch it out and show my versatility as a writer – show people that I could write news, show them that I could write about other things besides rock and roll.

It was with that in mind that I decided on a cold day almost two weeks ago that I would review a local restaurant.  The wife was out of town and I was craving Mexican food, so I decided to find a Mexican restaurant in town that I’d never been to and write about the experience. I settled upon Maria’s Mexican Pueblo in Waynesville, NC.

From the outside, Maria’s looks like every “diner-style” Mexican restaurant that I’ve ever been to. Everyone knows the rather banal places that I’m referring to: they all have the same menu, the same numbered combination plates, the Speedy Gonzalez lunch special, and the chips and salsa sitting at your table to fill you up pre-dinner. That’s what I expected from the beer-and-calendar adorned walls of Maria’s. But this wasn’t a typical fajita-slinging joint: this place is a bit of a dining experience.

An older lady greeted me at the door and told me to sit anywhere that I like. I chose a small table a bit away from the other diners in the restaurant. The music was low and there was a noticeable stillness about the place that made me afraid to cough or speak or move.  The older lady approached me and took my order. I chose the special and she told me that it’d be a few minutes.

I watched as she did a little dance: she took my order and the orders of the only other table in the restaurant, made sure our drinks were filled and then headed to the kitchen. There she bustled around and prepared all of our meals single-handedly. It wasn’t as though things were laid out for her cafeteria-style either. She seemed to be cooking and readying our entrees one-by-one.  It was within fifteen minutes that she brought my meal out to me: a steak burrito loaded with jack cheese, smoked black beans, pico de gallo and rice wrapped in a spinach tortilla. The steak was tender and juicy with just enough spices added to it. Everything was superb.  When my waitress/cook arrived back at my table to check on me, I told her that I felt bad that I was ordering so much stuff and she was the only person there to help everyone.

It’s okay, I do it this way during the day. I’m one of those people who can’t stop moving around, she said. She laughed and went to greet another couple who were walking in and then refill the iced tea glasses that sat at a table nearby.  I continued eating my burrito. The thing was large, but every bite was delicious. I wanted to savor every bit and really pretend that I was a food writer, but I was far too hungry and this was far too good. Then something happened that changed everything.

Taking a small break from the burrito, I dipped a chip into some of the salsa. I can’t believe that I haven’t mentioned the salsa. When my server placed a bowl of the stuff down onto my table I wasn’t that enthused. It seemed watery with a few chunks of tomato placed in it. Then upon dipping a chip in, I was welcomed to a fragrant and spicy world where my taste buds were Pilipino citizens and this salsa was General McArthur returning to save the day. It was so good. Sometimes the heat burned my tongue, and other times the sweetness of the tomato balanced it all out. It was a magical salsa experience. I ate the chip and thought about how I’d describe the salsa, because words failed me. I was writing tiny little ideas and adjectives down on a piece of paper I’d produced from my wallet, and yet nothing in my head was really letting me convey to experience of this salsa. I decided, and this is the part that I regret, to sniff the salsa to see if I could get an idea of the ingredients of the stuff.

That’s when I sneezed, loudly.

Usually a sneeze just sort of happens. I’ve probably sneezed a million times in my life, and it’s no big deal. Dry sneezes are just sort of loud and wet sneezes are just sort of loud with a wetness that one needs a napkin or Kleenex or sleeve for. This was a dry sneeze that made my whole body contract and release. It was violent and loud and caused the entire restaurant to notice me breaking its eerie quiet. A Mexican ballad played quietly on the stereo, indifferent to my interruption.  That’s when I felt it: wetness in the back of my pants.

My stomach had rumbled before I went into the restaurant. I didn’t think anything of it because at thirty-four years-old I feel like I know my body rather well. My body, to me is rather banal. I know what upsets it and what soothes it. So a slight tremor in my stomach before I eat a nice lunch wasn’t a big deal. Or so I thought.

Now I was panicking. I had a weird sinking feeling that somewhere immediately after the sneeze – in that split second between the Ah and the Choo – I’d pooped myself.  I got up from the table and walked in that weird clenched-ass walk that one does when they’ve soiled themselves towards the men’s room.  I walked into the bathroom and set about trying to figure out what happened.

Without getting into the details, it was a disaster on par with a pontoon boat sinking instead of the Titanic that it felt like. I immediately locked the little bathroom door and set about cleaning myself up as best I could.  There was one thing for certain – I needed to get rid of my underpants and get out of the restaurant as soon as I could.

The wastebasket that was beside the sink wasn’t a big industrial-sized depository that would be capable of holding and concealing my underpants. Instead it was a smaller wastebasket, not unlike the one that I have in my bathroom at home. There was no way that I could place something in that without having anyone else notice. I didn’t want that dear lady who cooked my food and brought me a nice glass of water when I needed it to have to deal with this.  I was panicking and didn’t know what to do. So I had to tap into my inner MacGyver and fabricate either a wastebasket or crude diaper to get out of this restaurant in.  I had no wood or tape, but the restaurant was stocked with an ample supply of toilet paper. I created a large pad of tissue that when placed between my ass and my underwear would get me out of the place. With this in place, I walked out of the bathroom and back into the restaurant.

I’d like to think that I looked normal emerging from the one-person bathroom but I’m sure that I looked insane. My head glistened with sweat and I still walked with my ass clenched, but now I had a big two-ply ass-pad sticking out. In the mirror across from me I looked like Arsenio Hall – square shoulders and a big ass.  Instead of giving it up for the Dog Pound like Mr. Hall did, I sat awkwardly on the seat – one cheek resting in the chair and the other dangling precariously in the ether between the seat and the ground. It was there that I waited for my check.

My waitress lady was busy, and those minutes felt like decades. I know that some form of that expression gets used a lot, but seriously, try sitting in an increasingly busy restaurant with a dirty load in your pants, wearing a crudely-made Charmin maxi-pad and then have to be patient and tell me how time passes. I’d rather sit in the DMV next to three families than endure what I had to while waiting to pay my bill.

Finally she brought me the check. I waddled up to the register and she asked how everything was. It was good, I said and it was. The meal was wonderful. I’d recommend going to Maria’s Mexican Pueblo again to anyone – it wasn’t the meal that caused this, it was my body acting out-of-the-ordinary and me not listening to it that was to blame.  I paid my bill and just before heading to my car an idea hit me.

I went back into the bathroom and took the bag out of the wastebasket. Underneath it in true restaurant tradition, was a spare trashcan liner. Every restaurant I worked at did this in case of needing a quick change during peak business, I suppose. Now I took advantage of it. I took the empty bag out, placed my TP Diaper in the toilet and then took my soiled underwear and placed them in the trash bag. With a flush and a tucking of the trash bag in my jacket sleeve all of the evidence was destroyed.

I walked out of the place, thanking the nice lady as I passed her again and got into my car. Along the way home I stopped at a small park where I saw a trash can and threw my underpants away. It was finally over.

I started not to type this out. I started to pretend that this sad and embarrassing chapter in the life of Jason Bugg never happened, but I figured that someone would get a good laugh out of it. But I also knew that eventually someone like my sister would bring this up and I’d have to explain it to everyone. So there it was; the story about how my body doesn’t listen to me and how I ruined a nice dinner for myself. Feel free to laugh about it now, I’ll understand.  But now instead of being mortified that something like this happened to me, I own it. I control my embarrassment. I think.

Tim Thomas, Moron.

January 24, 2012 politics, sports 3 comments

See the picture above? It’s the standard picture that happens when someone in America wins one of the four major sports trophies. It’s one of those things that I guess comes with the job of being President. Sure, you get to order the death of terrorists, but you also have to stand close to Boston Bruins head coach Claude Julien and his creepy, egg-shaped body. It’s a tradeoff that may or may not be entirely fair, but still – Obama was elected to make the hard choices.

This fairly innocuous event happened yesterday and it probably wouldn’t have made the news anywhere besides in the Northeast or on hockey blogs across the internet if Boston goalie Tim Thomas hadn’t decided to skip the event to protest the government being too large, or something like that according to his Facebook page.

Because we live in the age of the internet and the twenty-four hour news cycle, where gossip and dumb shit like this becomes news, word spread and now hockey is actually being talked about in America for some other reason than fighting or injuries. Unfortunately it’s for another rather dumb reason.

I’m not writing this to attack Thomas’ politics; he has every right to believe in whatever he chooses. He’s never kept his political beliefs secret, either. The guy uses a lot of the Tea Party imagery on his goalie mask, and he’s gone on record as saying that he’d like to have dinner with Glenn Beck. He’s a Tea Party guy, which makes it weird that he’s in a union. But I guess that’s fine. For me, politicizing what is essentially a photo opportunity that plenty of other people have done is just dumb.

There are a lot of predictable reactions from morons on the internet as well as idiots like Greg Wyshynski saying that what Thomas did was admirable or even his actions of skipping an afternoon press conference as somehow standing up for free speech. It wasn’t. It was somebody drawing another needless line in the sand and creating a culture war where there wasn’t one.

I can see it now: Thomas is going to be a pariah for some and a hero to others for deciding to stay at his hotel in D.C. yesterday. If he’s lucky he might even see some of the Tebow effect rub off on him and some Red State Cash will find its way into his pocket. But it’s all for an idiotic reason. If Thomas was the patriot that he claims to be, he would have been at the White House meeting the President. You salute the rank and not the man, after all.

Unbalanced Equations

January 21, 2012 Asheville, news No comments

Last week, I posted a story about Asheville’s incoming Chief of Police William Anderson’s past jobs, which includes charges of racism, a domineering management style and at least one instance of Anderson himself being negligent. At first, the only thing reported by both print media outlets were articles that read mostly like reprints of the city’s  own press release announcing the new hire. But in the last few days, the Asheville Citizen-Times has looked in to the allegations originally brought forth on this blog.  At first, I was okay with that. At least someone in the press is doing their job. But something is still not right with this entire matter.

Back in school when doing algebra homework, we were always told to make sure our equations balance – the problems on one side of the equal sign needed to match with the stuff on the other side in order for the problem to be correct. There’s something about the incoming Chief’s statements regarding his past to the local media and the statements that he’s made in the past not lining up that is making me a little uneasy.

In the Citizen-Times article, Anderson is quoted as saying this regarding the racism allegations. “There were no allegations of racism,” he said. “I don’t even recall any allegations of reverse discrimination or anything like that.”

But in an article from the Orlando Sentinel dated May 3, 2002 Anderson is quoted denying the allegations of racism leveled against him by two dispatchers:

            “I based my decision on the recommendations of the interview committee,” the chief said. “Race had no bearing on this whatsoever.”

In the complaint, [Deland dispatcher Wendy] Hargis also contends that the hiring committee was abruptly changed a week before interviews for the two open positions began. She claims that two Police Department employees were replaced by a city employee and a Police Department volunteer, neither of whom was qualified to interview candidates.

[Fellow dispatcher Mylan] Sessions said that change was a key reason many of their qualifications were overlooked.

Anderson said that simply isn’t true.

“This is a community-service officer position that mans our front desk,” Anderson explained, “with no specific requirements other than a high-school diploma. The goal was to get community input in the hiring process, and that is what took place.”

I’m sort of confused as to how Anderson says he doesn’t recall the allegations now, but in 2002 he gave an interview to the local press about the issue. It doesn’t add up.

At the present time, I’m trying to contact members of the Deland Police Department that served under Anderson in an attempt to find out for myself if these allegations are true or just the words of bitter ex-employees. I’ll have more information as it becomes available.

The Problem with Bruce Springsteen

January 20, 2012 music No comments

 

Most people who read this blog or know me in real life can attest to the fact that I love Bruce Springsteen in a way that probably isn’t healthy.  I listen to his music just about every day and can recite tons of information, trivia, lyrics and other factoids at the drop of a hat. So when I found out that his new single “We Take Care of Our Own” was officially released today, I squealed like a child on Christmas morning and eagerly got to listening. Here’s what I heard:

 

On one hand, I get it. It’s not that offensive of a song. I don’t cringe when I hear Bruce like I do when I hear Brian Wilson or Paul McCartney (yes, I equate Springsteen with both of those guys). The song sounds like Perfectly Acceptable Springsteen™ – something lifted from Darkness on the Edge of Town or maybe even the less celebratory parts of The River.  But something about the song feels like it’s not finished. It feels like this is the start of a good mid-side one Springsteen tune, but not the lead single off of an album.

Before the naysayers begin to chime in, yes I am aware that The Boss is in his sixties now and his output will (expectantly) diminish in quality, but for a song like this to be released by Springsteen, a guy who used to pour over and obsess over how each take of a song would fit into both his legacy and the pantheon of rock n’ roll, just doesn’t seem right.

I wonder sometimes if because people aren’t buying albums anymore these old artists have to flood the market with new product to keep the cash flowing in at the same rate that it used to, because that is the only reason that Springsteen would release music as substandard as he has over the last decade.

For all of his faults, I really enjoy The Rising. I feel like it’s the album that he had to make in 2002. America was in a weird place and it was up to Springsteen, who along with Billy Joel is an official ambassador to the New York/New Jersey area, to try to sum up all of the grief, worry and emotions that middle-class America was feeling after 9/11. There was no room for subtlety, and those broad swaths of music that he slung around on that album were what people needed to hear. He even got the old band back together to do it.

But I didn’t think then – and still don’t think now – that doing the big rock and roll rave ups was where Springsteen was creatively. I think he had decided sometime in the nineties that the rock n’ roll revivalist in him was long gone, and he was more likely record quieter, more singer/songwriter-oriented albums like he did on  1995’s The Ghost of Tom Joad.  In my head, if 9/11 never happened, Springsteen would have morphed into something else – something closer to that album and his work on Tunnel of Love. Instead, he heard the populist call and went in another direction.

His output since The Rising has been spotty at best. I enjoyed 2005’s Devils and Dust, but there was a half-finished quality about parts of that album that I notice even more so with 2007’s Magic and 2009’s Working on a Dream. These albums are just sub-par entries into the Springsteen canon.

In my head, I like to imagine that Springsteen wasn’t rushed into making those three albums so close together. In this little fantasy he’s allowed to wait and instead releases an amazing record in around 2008 with this tracklist:

 

  1. Radio Nowhere (from Magic)
  2. Devils and Dust (from Devils and Dust)
  3. Long Time Coming (from Devils and Dust)
  4. All I’m Thinking About (from Devils and Dust)
  5. Livin’ in the Future (from Magic)
  6. My Lucky Day (from Working on a Dream)
  7. Girls in Their Summer Clothes (from Magic)
  8. Working on a Dream (from Working on a Dream)
  9. Your Own Worst Enemy (from Working on a Dream)
  10. Tomorrow Never Knows (from Magic)
  11. The Hitter (from Devils and Dust)
  12. Long Walk Home (from Magic)

 

Sure it’s a pretty acoustic-based album, but I think that’s where Bruce was heading. That’s his strength. The rockers on the albums feel like paint-by-numbers impressions of his older tracks, while the quieter stuff sounds like something that Bruce is comfortable with. This imaginary album would probably be better than The Rising and his best since Tunnel of Love.

I don’t claim to know better than Bruce, and I hate shitting on anybody’s art. But I guess people falling on their knees and praising sub-standard Springsteen because of the name attached to the art and the liberal buzzwords and themes highlighted in the song is just a little bit too much for me to take. Also, when rock writers have to clarify that the meaning of the song is ironic, maybe it’s best that the author go back and work a bit harder on fleshing things out.

I’m going to hold out my full opinion on Springsteen’s latest, Wrecking Ball, until the album is released in March. But the fact that this song is the lead single – the song used to say to everyone “Hey! He’s back!” is a bit scary.

It’s my dream to meet and speak with Bruce Springsteen. If I were ever able to do that, I’d probably never want to write or chase down rock stars again. I’m a pretty small ant on the jungle floor of rock journalism, so I doubt that it’ll ever happen. But some small part of me worries that this way-too-long diatribe against the last ten years of his career would ruin whatever miniscule chance that I have of this happening. But whatever, John Landau isn’t paying me to write this blog.  Here’s to hoping that track two on Wrecking Ball is better.

Drew Reisinger, Coward

January 18, 2012 Asheville, politics 11 comments

 

Just in time for the South Carolina Primary the Asheville-based “We Do” Campaign, an effort started by the Campaign for Southern Equality has been stopping at Register of Deeds offices all over the Palmetto State, drawing attention to the fact that committed, same-sex couples are not granted the same rights that heterosexual couples (such as my wife and I) are able to receive.  So far the effort has received a lot of local coverage and even some coverage in the UK.

Same-sex marriage is something that I support. I have no personal dog in the fight – I don’t really know a lot of gay people on anything more than a purely superficial level. I just believe that marriage as the government sees it is nothing more than a tax shelter and a binding contract, and that the powers-that-be have no right saying who can enter into that contract.

But the reason why I’m writing this isn’t because of my support of gay marriage or anything like that. In fact, it’s a months-old issue that I started to write about way back in October when the We Do Campaign began: the cowardice of Buncombe County Register of Deeds Drew Reisinger, and the absolute assholery of the Buncombe County Democratic intelligentsia that support him.

The Register of Deeds in Buncombe County is a pretty powerful dude. His office issues marriage licenses, birth and death certificates, and handles a lot of things to do with real estate. In short, Reisinger is one of the more powerful people west of Charlotte.  But prior to his job as Register of Deeds, Drew was also the head of the local Democratic Party. He helped run the progressive machine that put people in a lot of local government positions in the county.  So to call the guy influential and mover or shaker is a pretty apt description.

Now the We Do Campaign has started up, and their first target was Reisinger. I am of the opinion that Drew could and should do something about same-sex couples not being able to get a marriage license – whether it is him technically breaking the law or him doing something more benign, like joining Guilford County Register of Deeds Jeff Thigpen in his lawsuit against the State of North Carolina challenging the state’s requirement that marrying couples in North Carolina obtain a state-issued license. I’ve asked Drew about his stance on it in emails. A friend – and former mayoral candidate Shad Marsh has asked Reisinger about it on his Facebook page, and we’ve received no answer.

It’s not only that we’ve gotten the cold shoulder from Drew, who says that he is an ally of LBGT causes. It’s also to venom and rancor that we’ve been greeted with by Asheville City Councilman Gordon Smith. Smith has criticized both my comments and Marsh’s words as the words of “a couple of straight guys who aren’t out there doing the work”, as if him merely standing in the background with his sleeves rolled up (like a good politician) for the photo opportunity is him actually doing something.

As my friend Shad pointed out. Civil Rights aren’t won by making weepy Youtube videos and having photo ops, they are won in a courtroom. Either Reisinger cares enough to take some sort of stand or he doesn’t. This is an election year. Reisinger can do the right thing and side with the lawsuit or just issue the licenses, or he can take the safe rout, talking about how much money he’s save the locals. Guess which one he’s taking?

If a Republican was the person in charge of the Register of Deeds office, people like Gordon would be leading a charge for the local office to take a stand, calling them cowards and idiots. But instead, someone from his team is in the office, so Gordon pretends that everything is okay.

Congratulations homosexual couples seeking equal rights; you are officially on the same footing with the local Democratic Party as the people who are mad because Merry Christmas isn’t said at Target are to the Republican Party. Enjoy being a pawn.

Thanks, Murph.

January 17, 2012 baseball, Dogs 6 comments

Long ago, before cable television and the internet made seeing every baseball game a realistic thing, Major League Baseball heroes were hard to come by. As a kid growing up in Western North Carolina, loving baseball meant that you had to be an Atlanta Braves fan, and in the early-to-mid-eighties that wasn’t a very easy thing for an elementary school student to be able to do.

The Braves of my youth weren’t the perennial playoff team that they were in the nineties, and they weren’t the team that was rebuilding as they were during a lot of the early part of the millennium. Instead they were a team that only went to the playoffs once in my formative years. But what they did have was Dale Murphy.

Dale Murphy was a two-time MVP and has the reputation of being one of the good guys in sports. In a lot of ways, Murphy was the sort of person and player that Tim Tebow likes to portray himself as being: spiritual, decent and kind. The main difference being that Murphy was actually good at his job. Tebow is known for being a sub-standard quarterback, while Murphy, in addition to those back-to-back MVP awards was also a seven-time All-Star.

As a kid, I worshipped Murphy. I wanted to play center field like he did, hit home runs as far as he could and play for the Braves. I still remember when he was traded to the Phillies, and really having a hard time deciding if I could like the Atlanta Braves any more. The guy was a super hero to me.

Flash forward about twenty years later. It’s a Saturday night, and I decide to go to the ballpark to see the local minor-league team, the Asheville Tourists, with my buddy Miguel. We went with our wives and bought box seats. We ate hot dogs and drank sodas, cheering for the home team and marveling at how green the grass always is. Just off past the third base line a line had formed. We didn’t know what it was and kept watching the game. Then we heard it over the public address system – Dale Murphy was there and signing autographs.

At first we played it cool. We talked about how awesome he was. We kept staring over at the area. Finally, either my wife or Miguel’s wife yelled at us for not going to get an autograph.  We walked over and got in line, talking about what a super-hero Murphy was when we were children. We waited and waited in line, each step closer standing on tiptoes to see a glimpse of him. I don’t know what I expected; maybe him there in his old blue Braves uniform. Instead we got a normal-looking man wearing a polo shirt who possessed abnormally huge forearms – it was Dale Murphy!

I remember telling him that he was my hero. He shook my hand and said thank you, and I told him that he deserved to get in the Hall of Fame. I don’t care if his bat speed decreased and his average dropped just about every year after his second MVP season, he deserves to be in there.  He signed a ball for both Miguel and I, and we walked back to our seats smiling and looking at his signature.  The baseball returned home with me and found a home on my shelf of super-cool toys. Murphy’s signature looked at home next to Batman and Superman action figures, and so it stayed there.

After that I moved on with my life, which is documented pretty well on this blog. A few months ago, I was given the opportunity to go to Atlanta to see Wilco, and who should be there? Dale Murphy, and he was sitting close by me. I said hello again and enjoyed the concert. When I came home I found out that he was on twitter. With nothing else to do I decided to follow him.  Murphy seemed like an awesome guy. He talked about movies that he liked and even spoke of different bands that he loved. The weird part is that the bands Murphy likes are ten times hipper than the bands that I like.

Then about two weeks ago, tragedy happened: the Dale Murphy baseball that had been sitting on my shelf had somehow fallen off in the night. I found it the next morning, laying on the floor being chewed upon by my dog Samson.  I was heartbroken. I wasn’t mad at the dog, Labrador Retrievers playing with balls is something that is embedded into their DNA, but this was my baseball with Dale Murphy’s signature. It was special and pretty damn awesome. Now it just looked like this:

 

I posted something on twitter about it, venting my frustration. A few days later, I received a private message on my twitter page. Murphy had seen my post and asked his assistant to contact me.  Dale’s assistant, a guy by the name of Michael, told me that Dale owed me some autographed material. I didn’t know what to say. I sent him my address and then today two items arrived in the mail.

 

The first was an autographed baseball card.

The second was an autographed photo made out to me.

Upon opening it I was, and still am, a bit overwhelmed. It was a simple gesture that I was really taken aback by. I guess we live in world now where athletes are pampered primadonnas who act like petulant children and Murphy was just being nice to a complete strange because he felt it was the nice thing to do – not even the right thing, just the nice thing. It’s pretty staggering and awesome if you ask me.

 

I may never meet Dale Murphy again, and if I do, I doubt that he’d remember doing this. But I will. The seven year-old in me right now is jumping up and down and smiling ear to ear.  I don’t know if there’s a lesson to be learned out of this, and I’m afraid that by making light of it some scumbag memorabilia collectors will try some sort of tactic like this to bother Mr. Murphy. I hope that they don’t. I just look at it as someone going out of their way to make someone else happy.  Dale Murphy may never get to Cooperstown, but he’s still the best baseball player ever to seven year-old me, and one hell of a guy to thirty four year-old me.

Sitel Refuses to Unionize

January 16, 2012 Asheville, political No comments

Everybody knows that Call Centers are some of the worst low-impact jobs out there, and now there’s another reason why.

 

According to reports on the web, the female employees at Asheville call center Sitel are trying to unionize, citing horrible working conditions – namely, the two hundred-plus female employees having to share one bathroom and thus being punished for returning late from breaks. These punishments are cumulative, and cause employees to get poor performance reviews, which effect their pay raise and chances for advancement within the company.

 

Sitel is a pretty aggressively anti-union, and their actions against the employees who are attempting to organize has caused charges to be filed with the National Labor Relations Board.

 

 

Speaking as someone who worked early last year at another local call center, I can say from experience that these jobs are absolutely mind-numbing and awful jobs. I’ve never felt like more of a cog in a wheel than I did working at one of these places. I sat in a cubicle for eight-plus hours a day, facing forward and reciting the same script over and over again. My direct supervisor only knew of me from the number on my computer, and only spoke to me when there was an issue with productivity. I wouldn’t be so bold as to call it sweatshop-like work, but most of the stereotypes of a sweatshop apply, even tacitly, to a call center.

 

This story is obviously developing and I’ll devote more time on it as it progresses.

Glen Campbell – Live in Japan

January 16, 2012 music No comments

I’m going to go into this with a bit of a bias, because I absolutely adore Glen Campbell. The guy has a great voice, plays one hell of a guitar and for a brief period in the mid-to-late sixties, released albums that were singularly his.  Those albums, Galveston, Gentle on My Mind, By the Time I Get to Phoenix and Witchita Lineman weren’t just country albums; they featured tracks made popular by Donovan, Roy Orbison, Simon and Garfunkel, and Otis Redding and held together by a string of great songs written by Jimmy Webb. To pigeonhole Campbell as just a country singer is to do a disservice to his phenomenal talent.

His talent was so large that in the late sixties, he was afforded a lead role in the John Wayne version of True Grit and given his own variety show, The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour. These things turned Campbell into a megastar.

Released in 1974, Live in Japan shows Campbell in full-blown ENTERTAINER mode; there are big, showstopping vocal showcases, medleys of hits and even a cover of Olivia Newton-John’s “I Honestly Love You”. It’s a different sort of persona than the troubadour doing the sun-kissed A.M. Gold that I love, but his voice is still there.  People remember Campbell’s virtuoso guitar playing, but few give him credit for his amazing voice, which is the centerpiece of this album.

Live in Japan may not be a great introduction to the greatness of Glen Campbell – I’d recommend 2000’s 20 Greatest Hits as a great introduction – but this live album is a great document of the period when Campbell was simply famous for those amazing early years and not the Tanya-Tucker-dating, Rhinestone Cowboy that he’d become by the end of the decade.

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