Tales Told in the Mid-card

Posted on December 9, 2012 by | 2 Comments

The mid-card can make or break a wrestling promotion.  When done well, it resembles a vibrant, diverse coral reef; the young can be nourished and protected by it, the old can seek refuge within when the light shines too brightly at the top.  A healthy mid-card has a multitude of unique species; the undersized high-flyer, the oft-injured veteran, the promising rookie, and the charisma-less mat technician.  A good mid-card makes use of the imperfect pieces within it.

When a mid-card is booked poorly, it resembles a wasteland.  “Has-beens” roll along like tumbleweed, catching on the prickly spines of “Never-wills”.  If the mid-card is weak, no matter how flashy the main event is, the promotion is incapable of longevity.

I have noticed there are several story arcs that work well in the mid-card.  Good booking is reciprocal; it builds the prestige of the wrestlers involved while simultaneously establishing credibility for the mid-card itself.

The most common (and arguably most important) of these mid-card plot conventions is Up-and-comer gets his first taste of (singles) gold.  This plays out just like it sounds; a talented young wrestler that the promotion feels they could build into a main-eventer begins his championship resume with a solid mid-card title reign. The careers that have been launched this way are too numerous to count.  I am particularly fond of how this was done with “Macho Man” Randy Savage in ’87-’88 (Intercontinental Title), Rob Van Dam in ’98-’00 (ECW Television Title)*, and more recently Austin Aries in ’11-’12 (TNA X-Division Title).  The mid-card title is a perfect way expose an up-and-comer to the audience consistently, build his legitimacy, and test his ability to handle the spot light without putting him in the main event too early.

Another story arc well suited to the mid-card is Established Main-eventer takes time away from chasing the title to settle a grudge.  In this formula, a legit headliner that is not directly involved in the main-event title picture can move down to the mid-card temporarily to play out a “score to settle” storyline.  This is useful because A) It allows the headliner to stay on the audience’s radar even while he is not involved in the main event, so when he is reintroduced in the title scene it doesn’t seem random, B) it can allow a less established wrestler to get credibility from feuding with a big name star.  There is no better example of this than the ’96-’97 Bret Hart/Steve Austin feud.  At the time Hart was an established main-eventer who stepped away from the title picture to go to war against Steve Austin, who at that time was just an undecorated anti-hero with a cult following.  Needless to say, this feud catapulted Austin’s career into highest rung of the wrestling hierarchy.  I also have to mention that Ring of Honor has historically done an excellent job with this plot convention as well.  One of my personal favorites is the Bryan Danielson/Tyler Black feud from ’08-’09.

Finally, there is the Sentimental favorite or comic relief gets a moment of glory.  Sometimes, it’s difficult for promotions to know how to use their oddballs.  Let’s face it, redheaded fake luchadors (El Generico), Elvis Impersonators (Honky Tonk Man) and pimps (The Godfather) are not exactly your prototypical main-eventers.  Fans tend to love these characters, but bookers are often hesitant to put comedic wrestlers over their more “serious” talent at the top of the card.  So another way a promotion can push its less traditional talent is to let them carry the mid-card title.  Any of Santino Marella’s title reigns would qualify as an example of how to affectively run this story arc.

These are just a few of the possible narrative formulas that can be used to give a promotion’s mid-card a wealth of story telling.  The best promotions, like the best sports teams, are built from within.  Good mid-card management is essential to any wrestling company’s success.

 

*Rob Dam never won the ECW World Championship (except when WWE resurrected it several years after the promotion went under) but his Television Title reign, solidified his status as an ECW stalwart. 

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Posted in Plato in an Armbar

flippant

Posted on December 8, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Something about a city at midnight, concrete and full, lights speaking between the cracks
our feet do miss; here, January 1, 2012, hand raised for a cab, unaware and unprepared
for what is waiting:

How I could sit with her across from me, a bag behind her and full of something and my eye
is crawling over it–it’s a deterrent, a challenge, a mistake–as she tells me that she
still has feelings for her ex, as her hand touches my knee, her elbow on the false
marble countertop, her eyes are the only thing breathing;

stumbling into the door–did it crack?–and pulling her to me, giggling, but feeling
in control, her legs wrapping around me and pushing down on my cock–pressure, almost
pressure–and my left hand feels the dips and lines of the door and I am lost in here, stumbling into
the room, lost and cancerous, falling back on the bed, the mattress moves as we move;

and press repeat and tip up another drink and hail a cab and explore her body in the back
and mumble and hear her say “I bet you are very excited” and not realizing–never realizing–
the hate this will engender, the absolute fear of being so flippant with my skin, the fully
suffocating next day, the way light seems to pick the rooms it will grace;

and June came like the highway through these memories–free and winding; perceptive and freeing;
constant and divergent–the highway to ride through, she letting her guard down once, leaning
back on the bed, rushed and tangled, grasping my head like a painting of midnight, how empty
we must have seemed, how empty and reaching;

watching the tree above, three AM, July moon trying to force its wings to fit between the
branches and leaves, falling and flying, rushing across my cheek and then her cheek, the
miserable line between night and hope, constructed first when our fingers locked pulling with it
grass and soil, coming together like a blade in that moonlight, tearing and lampooning our
own needs until finally, there was silence;

becoming more comfortable with my own need for intimacy on selfish terms, December and
deceptively warm, walking these same streets, finding and avoiding these same cracks, wondering
at the marvel of it all, both taut and miserly, the boy next door navigating
post moral america, learning nothing about this loss except that it is loss and has no
other meaning or surface.

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Posted in Dr. Richard Country

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The Mythological Conquest of Canaan

Posted on December 2, 2012 by | 1 Comment

Joshua 8: 24-25

24When Israel had finished killing all the men of Ai in the fields and in the desert where they had chased them, and when every one of them had been put to the sword, all the Israelites returned to Ai and killed those who were in it. 25Twelve thousand men and women fell that day—all the people of Ai.

1 Samuel 15: 2-3

2This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. 3Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroya everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’”

 

These two passages of the Bible nearly made me an atheist.  Back when I was a Christian Fundamentalist, I just ignored them.  When I was an Christian Apologist I tried to explain their literal accuracy while still believing in God’s goodness.  Eventually I arrived at the position that they can neither be ignored nor rationally defended as literally true if I still wanted to sleep at night.  Thus, I teetered on the precipice of atheism, as I could not marry the Gospel of Jesus Christ with the murder of women and children.

While my faith was on life-support, I happen to pose this moral quandary to a friend of mine (who happens to be a highly heretical pastor).  He led me to some research related to this very subject, which, in affect, salvaged my theism (or salvaged my salvation if I were of the Evangelical persuasion).

If you are opposed to approaching the Bible as a book built on the beautiful threads of myth and metaphor, you may want to close your eyes for this part.  Then again, if you are reading a blog called Heretic’s Creed perhaps you already knew I might wander in this direction.

It turns out there is very little archaeological evidence for a literal conquest of Canaan.*

Per the Biblical account, the Israelites were held captive in Egypt for a substantial period of time, before being led by Moses, on a mass exodus from the clutches of Pharaoh.  They wandered in the wilderness for many years, but were eventually led by a dynamic military leader named Joshua, to countless conquests over the various city-states of Canaan (Modern day Israel/Palestine/Lebanon).  The conquests continued under the administration of several “judges” who established the foundations of what would become the Kingdom of Israel/Judah.

Now, without a doubt, the Kingdom of Israel/Judah was a very real part of history.  There are numerous extra-biblical sources and archaeological findings to support this.  However, how they came to be is a matter of debate.

The trouble with taking the Biblical account of the conquest of Canaan literally starts with the lack o extra-Biblical literary or historical sources.  There is almost no mention of “Israel” or “Israelites” until they are well established in Canaan.  True, the Merneptah Stele (an Egyptian stone tablet mentioning the Israelites by name) indicates they were large enough to be known by King Merneptah, but that particular piece is dated around 1200BC, well into the “Judges” period.  If the Israelites as a people had truly existed in captivity in Egypt (not to mention their supposed dealings with Egypt during the Patriarchal period, particularly the story of Joseph toward the end of Genesis), there would undoubtedly be mention prior to 1200BC.

Additionally, there is the problem of the excavations of the Canaanite city-states supposedly violently conquered by the Israelites.  The archaeological record does not bear the typical demarkations of a razed city.  Battles of the size described in Joshua and Judges would leave broken weapons, skeletal remains with grievous injuries , burned buildings, etc., which would demonstrate to archaeologists that mass warfare took place.  These type of findings have validated the conquests of Alexander, Cyrus, and many others.  The evidence found at the Canaanite sites however, would suggest that those cities had a gradual decline, into irrelevance, poverty and ambiguity.  This is a very different tale than the one told by the Bible.

If we know that the Israelites were a very real people, who established a Kingdom in Canaan but there is little evidence for their military dominance early on, and virtually no mention of them until 1200 BC, then how did they rise to prominence?  Where did they come from?

Many scholars ascribed to the hypothesis that the Israelites didn’t conquer the Canaanites.  They were the Canaanites.  Let me explain:  There is evidence to support the fact that large groups of people left the Canaanite city states around the time that Israel was having its various “conquests”.  It appears likely that groups of disenfranchised Canaanites, for reasons as yet unknown, left in droves and created their own communities.  These fledgling groups of ex-Canaanites are the people that became the Israelites.  The holy land was taken not by a bloody conquest by one group over another, but instead by a cultural cleaving, which left the infrastructure of the Canaanites crippled.

So the next logical question is this:  If God didn’t really tell the Israelites to kill all the Canaanites, why would they say that He did?  And, assuming the scholars are correct, doesn’t that mean the Bible is “wrong” and therefore no longer “infallible” (somer prefer to term “inerrant” instead)?

In response to the first question; no one really knows exactly why the story was written the way it was.  But an examination of the culture and writing style of that time period can help bring better understanding to the subject.

In the 12th century BC there were no fact check websites.  There weren’t sections in bookstores labeled “Fiction” and “Non-Fiction”.  There were only oral traditions, and later, scribes to write down what was said.  All “writing” of that day was myth.  People were not concerned with what was factual, they were concerned with what was meaningful.  The Israelites wanted to have a powerful, memorable, inspiring history that captured the pride they felt at separating themselves from their Canaanite, polytheistic roots.  So they spoke as they felt.  They didn’t care if people 3000 years later read their work and believed it to be literally true.  It captured their spirit, which is what any good mythos does.

The second question is a tough one.  If you are a person that feels the Bible has to be literally inerrant to be valuable, then this is probably very upsetting news to you.  Without question, parts of the Bible are literally true and supported strongly by archaeological findings.  However, there are large portions that appear to be mythological in scope due to their lack of archaeological evidence or their scientific impossibility.  But I am strongly of the opinion that something does not have to be factual to be true.

Is The Great Gatsby factual?  Did Gatsby, Nick and Daisy actually exist?  No, obviously.  But is their story any less “true”?  I would say it is one of the truest pieces of literature ever written because it’s themes and insights, about American ideals, about the 1920s, about humans, their dreams, feelings and behaviors, are all, without a doubt, true.  I think of many parts of the Bible in the same way.  It’s thematic reflections on human beings and their deity are inerrant, and that is infinitely more important than it’s factual reliability.

But supposing the conquest of Canaan really is a myth, one could reasonably ask what we are supposed to learn from a story about a god who tells his followers to kill infants and mothers.  I think this particular part of the Bible says much more about the people who wrote it than the deity they worshipped.  The theology of humanity is not static.  Even within the Bible itself, the authors (or compilers) demonstrate a marked progression from an angry, ethnocentric, jealous god to a loving, patient, creator.  The gradual change is not in God’s behavior, but instead in how we perceive his behavior.  In another 1000 years we may understand the Bible in a completely new way that allows us greater insight into the nature of the mysterious, beautiful, enigmatic Yahweh.

 

*The research I am referencing comes predominately from writings and interviews I have seen with scholars on the subject.  Among others, much of this information comes from John Dominic Crossan (New Testament scholar/author), L. Michael White, Ph.d (University of Texas), Shaye J.D. Cohen, Ph.D (Harvard) and Michael Coogan, Ph.D (Harvard).  For an excellent and highly accessible synopsis of some of the research on this subject watch NOVA’s The Bible’s Buried Secrets. 

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Posted in Heretic's Creed

Sounds like I Hate This Show, but I Love It.

Posted on November 28, 2012 by | Leave a comment

In the movie Barfly, Henry Chinaski (the barfly of the title) is asked “Why don’t you quit drinking? Anyone can be a drunk.” Henry replies, “Anybody can be a non-drunk. It takes a special talent to be a drunk. It takes endurance. Endurance is more important than truth.”

 

I am reminded of this scene every time I find myself watching 2 Broke Girls, a sitcom on Monday nights on CBS. You see, I am a Sitcom Drunk. Each season brings its new crop of shows, many of which won’t last but a handful of episodes, and by now I need only flip through the season TV Guide preview to know what will most likely be what come season’s start. With way more shows going on than back in the regular cable and pre-cable days, one can’t throw in with just any new-hatched unfledged sitcom comrades. So why this seemingly steamy pile of a show?

 

Like his alcoholic brother, the Sitcom Drunk can’t always say why he sticks with a certain show week after week, he just watches. Maybe it was the Whitney Cummings show at Zanies I had recently been to.  Maybe it was because Kat Dennings had recently been in the tabloids or some such. Maybe it was as simple as that ol’ sitcom television evergreen, the buddy-com. Like Felix and Oscar, like Laverne and Shirley, like Larry and Balki, Max and Caroline (the Girls) are just a couple of pals trying to make it in this crazy world. And when you combine the Opposites trope of Perfect Strangers with the Plucky-Gals-Making-It of Laverne & Shirley, then this Drunk is getting three sheets to the wind on shenanigans and hijinx.

 

So now think of the aforementioned series. Now think of them where one girl is a tall thin blonde whose father was a Madoff-type criminal and is now broke, and the other is the shorter wise-cracking buxom brunette who takes her in. They work together in a Williamsburg, Brooklyn diner because of course they do. Oh, and Caroline wears 5-inch Louboutin heels and Max rocks knee-high boots that look like they were just made for waiting tables in a diner. Throw in a Mel Sharples manqué named Oleg who pops out periodically through the kitchen pass window to talk (in an absurd Eastern European accent) about his penis and what he’d like to do with it, Garrett Morris doing a Garrett Morris impression, a diner owner who makes Ching Chong Ding Dong from The Colbert Report seem tame, and then Bob’s your uncle (Actually Jesse’s your uncle. Or Leo. Or Fester.). This is the show, every episode, every week. Until it wasn’t.

 

This is what has led me to this Chauncey Gardiner-like state of perpetual watching; all this talk of Sitcom Drunks and TV tropes is heading toward the realization of all that viewing labor, the fruits of Endurance. It is the episode where Something Different Happened. This is the episode that embodies the dragon the watcher keeps chasing series after series, waiting for that moment where the event occurs and the immediate resulting shock of TV junkie joy lasts even into the show’s descent back into its reconfigured sameness. But it isn’t the writing or the acting that’s different; it’s how the show itself is presented. In the case of 2 Broke Girls, it has to do with the laugh track. Now the pro/con argument re:laugh tracks is best left for another time, but the kind of show that can bring the chronically habitual viewer the satisfaction he craves requires it. What makes this moment the red-crested warbler of TV is its rarity. During the run of any sitcom this type of episode can only happen once, and you better have it on when it does (This is an important fact. DVR, DVD, VOD – this will not get you where you want to be. The anticipation and its release after waiting all week for the live airing is the third heat that allows one to wring as much pleasure as possible from an intrinsically dull form. Watching it all in one go is a rushing stream that washes the gold away before you can notice it’s there.).

 

At this point one may ask (with good reason) “So what is it? What happened that was so fucking great? WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?! GET TO THE DAMN POINT!” All right, endurance does have  its limits.

 

The 30th episode of the series was titled “And the Candy Manwich,” which in itself is a hint at the carpetbombing of innuendo to come (Haha, I said ‘come’). A quick bit of the comedy-porn stylings on offer in this episode goes like this:

Caroline: [after throwing up at Andy’s candy store] I finally meet an adorable, sweet guy. A guy so sweet, the word “sweet” is next to his name on actual real estate, and I completely destroy any chance I have with him.

Max: You didn’t destroy anything. And it’s good to let him know right off the bat that you have a gag reflex.

(cue laugh track that is sweetened more than a bowl of Fruity Pebbles in a bowl of condensed milk with Care Bear sprinkles)

 

So this is how this show has gone every week for 30 weeks, Caroline sets it up and Max takes a giant dildo and knocks it down. Fine. As I’ve said, the difference in this episode is not the Mad-Libs inspired dialogue or the traditional sitcom-style acting – that never changes. What happens here is courtesy of sound engineers and that other favorite TV trope, the Breakout Side Character. Jennifer Coolidge plays Sophie, the girls’ upstairs neighbor with big hair and a bigger personality. She (naturally) hooks up semi-regularly with Oleg, which gives us no end of bon mots such as how crotchless panties are a great low-carb snack or what implements Sophie likes to put up Oleg’s butt. Sophie often shows up at the diner, claiming “her booth” whether it is empty or not. And this is where it happens. In the preceding 29 episodes, Sophie’s entrance is just that, an entrance. She comes in, throws down some catty shit on Max and Caroline, laughs uproariously at herself and leaves. No extra laughs, everything status-quo. But this night, when Sophie walks in the diner….TREMENDOUS APPLAUSE! Catcalls, laughs, whoops and hollers greet her as she walks in. And from that point on, every scrap of laugh track is sweetened and brightened beyond the rainbow in a box of Lucky Charms. It’s at once jarring and satisfying, thrilling almost. One starts to anticipate the punchlines (which is absurdly easy to do) even more than usual, waiting for that laughter-turned-up-to-11 track to kick in. Whether an audience was even there nearly gets lost and becomes merely the  paper-thin crust this heap of recorded laughter sits upon. Wonderfully, this continues through to the end of the episode, ushering in the next phase of this show.

 

“Really?” you may ask. “That’s it? More laugh track? You prattle on and on and that’s the payoff?” Well, yes. But consider it – every time Kramer busts into Jerry’s apartment, when Fonzie strolls into Arnold’s, when Erkel comes into the Winslow house – there is a demarcation episode where, for the first time, the audience cheers wildly when that character appears. This usually coincides with a solidification of the show’s ratings, which is the point. After this episode, the show is on its way to syndication heaven and riches for its creators (no more Zanies, eh Whitney?)

 

The joy that this brings may have been a little bit overstated. Well, not overstated, but not precisely stated. It wasn’t as though when this happened I started fist-pumping around the room like Kirk Gibson and cheering myself. It’s more of an inner feeling where there was a click (like Brick in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof) where it is as if a capsule had been broken open and the satisfaction of television viewing at its zenith courses through the veins and renders one completely pop-culturally sated.

 

The best way to describe this condition of sitcom drunkenness is in terms of a certain YouTube video. In this video a young man beats Super Mario Bros. on the original NES with his feet. Not only beat the game, but doing it for time (he finishes the game in just over 9 minutes) as well. He has played this same game, where the characters and worlds and warp levels are the same every time, so often that he has had to continually look for new ways to continue to enjoy it. He even casually drinks a soda as he does this, perhaps trying subconsciously to add an extra level of complexity to his task. That is the source of the Sitcom Drunks madness, the idea that he has watched so many episodes of so many sitcoms that each cameo is cross-indexed instantly A Brilliant Mind style, ticking off other shows the actor may have been in, or looking to see if the interiors have changed at all from season to season, and of course waiting for that rare bird which is the shift in laugh track (all of this is predicated on the multi-cam, laugh track having sitcom, which is the real bread and butter of the Sitcom Drunk).

 

Yep, watching 2 Broke Girls is the Playing-Super-Mario-With-Your-Feet of watching TV shows. And I dig it. So I won’t be available on Monday at 8, so don’t call.

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Posted in Marcum my Words

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pygmalion part 1

Posted on November 26, 2012 by | Leave a comment

“‘Don’t be a little bitch with your chit chat just show me where your dick’s at.’

Wait a minute… you don’t know where my dick’s at?  I don’t mind anyone assuming that one.  ‘I often find myself debating the meaning of “good” as if destined to protect some discernibly correct answer from bastard philosophies with my own secondhand ideas… as if I have some insight reliant on something other than the words we already share.  Language is intrinsic to society, but the more words become our daily bread, the greater the monopoly they have on our expression.  The more words contain our thoughts, the less society is intrinsic to them. Experiences are more significant than the words with which I think my thoughts, and yet I cannot apply them as succinctly without them.  Words are supposed to be our tools, not the other way around.  Our ideas are held captive by the trappings of the end user’s perspective concerning the assumed intent, word choice, and subjective individual context, so, in a way, you already know what I’m going to say, which I realize as I say it anyway…’ so fuck yeah… I appreciate a fucking dick check, but I need some fuckin’ chit chat, too.

‘I am whatever you say I am.  If I wasn’t, then why would I say I am?’” Click

I live in St. Louis, and I’m driving home to Champaign-Urbana, radio blaring….  I like it loud—louder than my thoughts anyhow.  I used to hate the radio when I believed in evil.  I’ve been doin’ this thing where I listen to whatever top 40 hit, find a line of any discernible thoughtfulness, crass is good—funny at least… then record myself reading the line (in this case, penned by Ke$ha) followed by some Mark Richard Altman rants… manufacturing my memory as I perform, even for myself.  I feel like Krang worrying his body vessel might be schizophrenic.

 

INT. GASTROPUB – NIGHT

“China Girl is a great fuckin’ song, but Iggy’s kicks the shit outta Bowie’s.”
“What?!  How can you say that that’s fucked!”
“Bowie’s great, fuck off… but listen to Iggy grrroowll… makes Bowie sound like Tom Cruise!”

 

Hindsight’s 20/20… but it’s true.  I realize a certain subtle arrested development in my relative world—I can see it now anyhow.  It’s not that absurd, the contrarian reaction to social norms—flipside of the same coin.  Watching people… unassuming acquaintances unfamiliar with either version of China Girl clamber to have an opinion (seconds away from ossified fact) sure to spark a domino effect of unadulterated subsets of future human interaction.  It’s all inferred, but one side inevitably ingratiates more so than the other, rendering the debate symbolic of something larger than a mere preference.  Maybe it’s the duck-fat pomme frites on one plate or the chips and salsa on the other… are you intrigued?  Offended?  Does something feel condescending?  They’re just fuckin’ fries, man….  I once wore a battle axe earring with a fake ruby in the handle, chain-linked to an ear cuff.  Okay, I didn’t, but I should’ve and I could’ve.  Whatever it may be, amidst those indecisive moments of incrementally heightened social anxiety, environmental cues feed a subjective yet decisive “cool” that drives us in a momentary and anecdotal fashion day to day and to varying degrees, but ultimately building a broader arc of a lifetime—which begs the question to me, is “cool” actually arbitrary regardless of its conditional birth?  It’s Sodom vs. Gomorrah, and… wait, did they fight?

 

“I don’t know what I’m doing… It’s okay, it’s endearing hopefully.  Fffffllerby flerby… derby flurby fucky….  Ok.  I don’t know what I’m doing.  Pygmalion Music Festival 2012… what the fuck is interesting about another fucking wanna be music review?  Dinosaur, Jr., Grizzly Bear, Willis Earl Beal… Cloud Nothings… Willis?  Sure… Best Coast…. I dig the California-hugging bear … the map.  I was once congratulated for correctly identifying the Western Hemisphere on a globe… in high school…. That’s fucked up.  Ohh, St. Louis, St. Louis.  Does anything French come to mind when I say St. Louis?  How ‘bout Illinois?  What if you buy a shirt from a second-hand shop, are you supposed to feel bad for cutting off the sleeves?”  Click

 

——– $ * $ * $ * $ * $ * $ * $ ——–

 

My reasons for driving home:

1)     visit my grandma in the hospital; she’s 97 and just broke her hip
2)     attend the Pygmalion Music Festival and write critical piece
3)     another day in pursuit of familial connection

 

Driving home on I-55, the Pink Elephant always gets me—hypnotically coaxing me westward, “Slow down,” its big pink form floating ominously above the horizon for 5 turgid seconds.  “At least long enough to remember what hemisphere you’re in,” I think I said aloud.  I daydream constantly of Route 66.  Why not turn around?  Torn from its reprieving tank of decisiveness, my conflicted lobster brain boils in conflicted anxiety, nerves dance, flash frying… I’ll drink to that!  Sauvignon Blanc, please, sir… Huh-hughng! New Zealand lemongrass!… sheeps and shit!  My mind racing towards Tulsa behind me, I exit east on I-72, shit-bound instead, my freewill barking like a damn dog cursing oil pumps.

 

Where is the line between selfishness and self-respect??

 

The mixing pot is starting to burn, and I want to shoot it….  2 minutes and 50 seconds or 2 minutes and 42 seconds or 3 minutes or— good doesn’t mean shit when you can decide what to like… we don’t know any better.  But you can’t comment on coexistence while uncompromisingly disregarding it.  The trappings exist in dissent no less.  Americana makes a lot more sense now that Wilco has thrown some kraut in the stew.  These are savage lands according to the Yankees.  Where neither British nor Spanish fully evicted the Cajun orphans, the US overshadows with a Lewis and Clark history no less significant.  There’s a great pride in stillness here… a pride dripping with shamefulness impervious but agreeable to logic.  It’s not showy, especially when it wants to be.  With Mother Road romance in tow, I’ve got some braunschweiger to eat.

 

“Okay… The Pygmalion Festival is not named after George Bernard Shaw’s play but the third album of the British shoegazers, Slowdive.  It’s a boutique festival in a town too self-effacing to call much of anything boutique and plenty enough aware to stage a slew of worldly rockers.  It’s a 3-day festival staged throughout Champaign-Urbana in mid-sized venues, coffee shops, art galleries, and outside in the streets and parking lots of antiquated city blocks.  It’s appropriately affordable, too, for a small-ish Big Ten college town with as much popped-collar dicking as idiosyncratic Midwesternism to frame a pseudo-slacker intellectual culture.  Big shit actually happens here… more than you might expect.”  Click

 

All of a beginning I can muster while driving, I’m wondering what to watch on History once I arrive home… something to inspire a proactive state in my weekend sanctuary… some niche subcultural something slapped together with provocative irreverence and food or whatever… a soundtrack by some band from somewhere like Tashkent called Nietzsche’s Dick that SPIN calls “…if Sepultura met Sigur Ros on the Silk Road for pastoral jams and yak” … food… I don’t know who Slowdive is or was, but I find it comforting.  Rock and roll is the unknown pleasure of everything we’ve yet to understand or at the very least, the accompaniment to figuring it out… depending how deeply you find yourself enmeshed.  I’ll be going to see one of my favorite bands tomorrow.  HUM.  In an instant, they once proved to me that the world might not be so big.  They’re on instead of Sleigh Bells… dude broke his hand or somethin’.

 

1/4

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Posted in iggy aufderheide

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Son

Posted on November 25, 2012 by | Leave a comment

“Rolling Stone” is probably the most iconic term in the history of Rock and Roll.  Of course, we have the magazine, but before that we have perhaps the greatest sneer in rock history, Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone; and before that, the band, The Rolling Stones; but first, it was a Muddy Waters song.  Each occurrence of this term comes from the Waters song.

Running at just 3:05, Rollin’ Stone (and yes, it is significant that the “g” is replaced by an apostrophe; the tight, compressed taughtness of the chords seem to explain this nicely) is a dangerous song.  Recorded in February 1950 in Chicago–before either of my parents were born–it sounds plenty fresh today.  I realize that is a term fraught with cliche, but how else can you explain a song that, like Sandburg, comes “on little cat feet”; but instead of “looking over harbor and city”, it is coming in your daughter’s window as she is working to push the sheets aside for her new bedmate.  Imagine, with me, my grandparents or your grandparents or parents of this era hearing this song and wondering if they had locked each of their doors and windows tight.  Racism, once a thinly veiled secret, could be–and would have been, were this not race music–stoked by Waters’ guitar, his strong voice, the way he seems haunched over the microphone, shirt half buttoned, singing out of the side of his mouth as if the other part of the truth was hidden by his big cheeks.  America didn’t want to know what that other truth was until it came in the more palatable form of Elvis Presley; when Presley’s records were played on Memphis radio, the DJ made sure to inform the audience that this boy was white, and a nice white boy at that.  However, I don’t know if Elvis could ever have the power of Muddy Waters or my personal favorite Delta bluesman, Son House.

Son House’s voice is all the biography you will need.  Steeped, like Presley, in the tradition of gospel, it also has plenty of sex and sweet talk in it, something that will put you on edge the moment his falsetto usurps the rhythm of songs such as “Louise McGee”.  An equal to his voice, his slide travels down the neck of the guitar like the same Muddy menace on little cat feet, so unbelievably tight and with tension–a tension you would always think is predictable, but it isn’t; and that is the Blues to me: deep, pain filled tension that releases at just the right time, in either the voice or the catch and tremble of the guitar.  And this is even more spooky when it is an accoustic guitar.  Johnny Lang or Kenny Wayne Sheppard seem banal because they are; they don’t have this mystery nor this danger; comparatively, they feel like your aunt singing a hymn monotone on Christmas eve, all glazed over eyes with half spiritual fear in her brow.

Son House’s version of “Preachin’ Blues”–which I consider almost superior to Robert Johnson’s amped up “Preachin’ Blues (Up Jumped the Devil)”–is a somewhat slow dirge that travels all over House’s pallette.  He growls words like “church” and “pulpit”; they begin life at the back of his throat and are caught there for a split second, adding to the tension, before fighting out past his teeth and the words end spit into the microphone, leading his baritone to make harmony with the tense treble of his slide guitar.

I am certainly not a blues historian, nor am I well versed in a lot of the musical form, but I can tell you that very few things I’ve ever heard have ever felt or sounded this true.  I listen to them again and again, and as I stand, I feel their power pulling me up on my toes, my eyes squinting and my teeth grinding, the front of my mind exploding, its own big bang, pretending I can understand the horrifying injustice that could create such true music, letting the music prioritize my problems and set them into one long line to be swept into the dust bin of my memory; it’s tight and it’s elastic and it’s history that truly cannot conform.

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John Cena Over Medium

Posted on November 24, 2012 by | 19 Comments

In 1986 Hulk Hogan was the defacto ruler of the wrestling industry.  He was every promoter’s dream; a massive physical specimen with magnetic charisma, great mic skills and a marketable gimmick.  His appeal was broad.  Men liked him because he was patriotic and tough. Women liked him because he was charming.  Most of all, children liked him because he was heroic, brave and rarely lost.  His bombastic persona worked, because he fulfilled the fans ideas of what a good guy “should” be.  When he would burst forth from the curtain, “Real American” blasting over the PA system, the crowd would come unhinged. Though there was probably a small fraction of the audience that disliked “The Hulkster”, his support was so strong it was filibuster-proof. This was no fad.  Hulkamania lasted for over a decade.

Now leap forward with me 26 years.  It’s 2012.  There is a new baby face sitting atop the main event card.  He’s not the champion at the moment, but he has carried the belt nearly a dozen times in the last 7 years.  He is also a hulking beast of a man, with an easy smile, a quick wit and lots of merchandise.  Like Hogan, he is patriotic, handsome and brave.  He sports slogans of positivity, like “never give up” and “rise above hate”.  When he sprints down the entrance ramp, his music blasting loud, the crowd goes nuts…kind of.

Unlike Hogan, John Cena’s crowd reactions are violently polarized.  Chants of “Let’s go Cena” are met with equally enthusiastic chants of “Cena sucks”.  If it were 1986, this type of crowd response would be unthinkable.  How could the top face in the company fail to garner even a simple majority of support?  What took place in the intervening years, that the very definition of goodness (as defined by the wrestling world) is received with partial and sometimes overwhelming hostility?

The Attitude Era, that’s what.

1985-1995 was the Golden Era of pro wrestling, and it’s narrative was decisively Modernist.  The wrestling universe was populated with clearly defined types of stars; good and evil.  The story arcs were clear cut, the resolution was moralistic, and the crowd knew exactly what their role was.  They cheered for the baby faces, booed the heels, and it was as simple as that.

In many ways, it mirrored the postwar American culture of the 1940s and 50s.  Americans perceived Western culture to be the embodiment of sacrosanct goodness.  Other religions, philosophies or forms of government, particularly communism was thought of as completely, and utterly evil without any bit of merit.  Capitalism was right, beef was healthy, and Jesus was Lord.

The period of wrestling from 1996-2006, conversely, was deeply Postmodern in it’s philosophical approach.  The Attitude Era, as it came to be known, was as grey as the Golden Era was black-and-white.  Every tradition and value from the Modernist period was turned upside down and dumped into a blender.  What came out was a nebulous hodgepodge of characters and story lines, where good and bad blurred into the fickle whims of the audience.  In many ways, the character archetypes were shattered; face and heel were both, at times, prone to cheating, cussing and powerbombing women, while also having moments of great resolve, loyalty, and honor.

This period in wrestling closely resembles the cultural awakenings of the 1960s and 70s in America.  Those postwar values, so sacred to the generation before, were dissected, altered and sometimes outright discarded.  The revolution of thought created a diverse and ambiguous culture.  From the ashes of Modernism arose a new declaration of values, impressionistic in it’s presentation.

Which brings me back to John Cena.  Whatever this period of wrestling ends up being defined as, he will be remembered as it’s figurehead.  WWE appears to be attempting to return to the Modernist leanings of the Golden Era.  While trying to reconnect with a younger viewer demographic, WWE is creating characters using a more rigid formula of baby face and heel.  The narrative is more simplistic and stark in it’s moral implications.  But are the WWE’s efforts at returning to it’s Modernist roots working?  In some ways, yes.  WWE has become a TV PG program and is still able to maintain it’s fiscal credibility (though this year has been less than inspiring from a ratings perspective).  But if the face of your company is the barometer of success, a return to Modernism is impossible because John Cena will never be more than half over.

The reason is, once a culture has experienced Postmodernism, it can never truly return to its former perspective.  Modernism is predicated on accepted naivete and embraced conformity.  Once you have opened the collective conscious to critical evaluation of established values and diverse opinion, there is simply no going back.  The current period is a strange hybrid of both philosophical ideas, and in order for Cena (or anyone) to have sustained, overwhelming support as a baby face, he would have to hold to a set of principles the audience found inspiring, while also having the depth of character to be constantly reinventing himself.  This is an incredible task for anyone, which is why Cena is in the position of being the polarizing standard-bearer of a transitional epoch of wrestling culture.  He will be remembered as the greatest “good guy” from a generation that, unlike the Golden Era, didn’t worship them, but, unlike the Attitude Era, didn’t hate them either.  He will be remembered, as the man who was perpetually half over.  But maybe in this generation, that’s all you can hope for.

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death

Posted on November 23, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Now I am trying not to die in all ways–
least of all the body, although that too will die as the evening of my life winds down
into something like a crumbling epistle;
but to let my ambition die, as well as lethargy–for lethargy left to its devices spawns
ambition out of pure desperation to remain relevant and sane.
Of course, this is all a circle, a chasing of ones own tail, an evolutionary callas that roughens
with hunger and rot.

I browse amidst books to feel less lonely; I finger the page and feel the almost roughness
of the more expensive books, roughed and leveled for the serious reader, which I feel
I am not.  Where are my notes in the margins, why does my hand and head not slowly cut through
the dust of stabbing sunlight in my office–because I read to end, not to endure.

Death it seems is nothing more than silence, an immense orgasmic release into nothing,
feeling the emptiness of head and heart just before expiring and being washed over by
the salt water of nothing, trailing up to your lips as you take your last breath, leaving a crust of
texture on the softest part of us to be kissed away by the relief of no expectation.
I am tired of its edicts and of its being the source of my actions–I must tackle it and hold it
and treat it as I want to treat fear: with indifference and a dimpled chuckle.

Mistaken or not, I endure and I proceed forward.  I wait for a bit more clarity, even sometimes seeking
it out and taking long and lonely journeys in the sprinkling rain of my own nostalgia, paying the
price of admission, heading through the turnstiles, taking a deep breath of the great showmanship
of arrogance and uncertainty; after, I push my hands down deep in my pockets and navigate
against the lint and walk along the shining river of my hopes and aspirations and take
with me this idea of death as a ruby to be tossed skipping across the moonlight soul water that empties into a future I cannot predict.

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Intelligence Reporting is a Puzzle, Not a Snapshot

Posted on November 18, 2012 by | 2 Comments

Over the last several days and weeks leading up to the election, the news feed on my Facebook page had been a Santa’s Scroll of political spew, a seemingly unending roll of pictures, quotes, graphs, and jokes – from Obama the Witch Doctor to Romnazis – very little of it illuminating, nearly all of it sportive ruminating. Normally this sort of horse-race bloodlust is just my game, and I’ve linked and posted and commented and liked my fair share, but the stories and pictures from the East Coast following Hurricane Sandy made it all seem unimportant. For a little while at least, looking through the admittedly tiny lens of Facebook, it appeared that people were taking off their R and D team jerseys and instead worrying about friends and family and loved ones. Campaigns stopped their campaigning, pollsters stopped their polling, and in the face of extreme circumstance we found our better selves.

 

Too bad it didn’t last.

 

Nope, the right-wing pundit class wasted no time after the election getting back to spilling printed pus and blogged bile across the media landscape. They’re back to the issue that they thought would win the day before, and for some reason they still think will bring down the president. Libya.

 

On the Sunday before the election, Sen. John McCain called the ongoing situation “the worst cover-up I’ve ever seen” and suggested the president wasn’t qualified to be commander-in-chief. During the second presidential debate, an exchange over what event the phrase “acts of terror” referred to in a speech launched a torrent of fact-checking, fuck-that-checking and to-hell-with-you-checking. The problem is that McCain knew this was untrue, and Romney didn’t care what’s true. McCain knows – as does Sen. Lindsey Graham (another recent critic) – that intelligence reports change as the intelligence coming in describes an evolving situation. The Republicans are demanding something they know cannot be produced in the manner they claim to want. This continued charade of indignance is nothing more than the carrying through of the first commandment of Rovianity, “Thou shalt attack thy enemy’s strength.” The GOP has spied an issue that they are feverishly trying to politicize to help their man, all the while denouncing the injection of politics into the issue. They know because during the lead-up to the war in Iraq, they were defending the intelligence community in the same way that Pres. Obama is now. They know intelligence gathering and analysis is a tricky business through their experience on the Armed Services committee at the very least. I know intelligence reporting is a tricky business because it used to be my business.

 

My last two years in the Air Force as a cryptologic linguist were spent attached to the 22nd Intelligence Squadron at Ft. Meade, Maryland. I was assigned to a duty section within the National Security Agency and spent those years collecting signals intelligence and writing reports based on that intelligence. When I first started working within NSA, what struck me most was the sheer volume of raw material that we would collect. The unofficial motto in the intel field was “In God we trust, all others we monitor.” This is apt, and the amount of information, while certainly a valuable thing, required time and manpower to go through and look for specific events or people or anything of value to US interests. We would have certain targets and things that we were specifically looking for, but also had to be ready to collect new information. My target wasn’t “sexy,” which was a term used to describe the kind of stuff you see talked about in movies and such, but it still followed the same general pattern. A report is written based on present information, and as new information comes in from whatever source, that report may need to be revisited and reassessed. This reassessment and reissuing of reports based on changing conditions was the norm, not the exception. While there is cooperation and communication between reporting offices, the intelligence community is fairly closed, meaning you don’t always know what happens to the reports that you send out. Everything is based on the two concepts that give some access to classified information: the security clearance and a “need to know.” Nearly everyone had the same clearance, but the “need to know” part kept everything in its small place, I often had no idea what someone working on a different target a few cubicles over was doing.

 

This is an important point in regard to the current controversy. Senators, Congressmen, and the wingnut on the street is clamoring for more information, more facts, more more more. Much of what is being used to discover for certain what happened when is deeply sensitive, involving overlapping missions and targets, and to just hand it over in public or broadcast it would be unthinkable in terms of the damage it could do to ongoing missions that, in some cases, could have been years in the making. It also could impede efforts to gather new information that could help fill out the picture of what happened in Benghazi on 9/11/2012. That’s the real point here, is that when attempting to fill out the full story, the full truth of what happened when for absolute certain, you’re talking about what was happening inside, outside, among the groups, the entire narrative from all viewpoints and all sides. The picture is a puzzle, not a snapshot, no matter how much people shout and demand a Polaroid-type report that comes out as it happens in true focus. It will take until long after the election to learn all of the, as Donald Rumsfeld would say, “unknown unknowns” regarding this incident. The Right knows this as well, but would rather have you believe that either the President himself or someone speaking for him is blatantly lying to us. Why do they insist on it being a lie? Because of the reporting they have received so far, but that reporting is still in flux and also one must understand that what the press and the public is being told has been through several sets of eyes and hands.

 

Intel reports are interesting to read, because often they are trying to say things while retaining some amount of wiggle room at the same time. Everyone knows that the situation is fluid, and no one wants to be pinned down later (Cheney’s aluminum tubes anyone?) so you end up with reports full of qualifiers such as “apparently,” “it seems that,” “conditions imply,” that sort of thing. Whatever the CIA (or NSA) reports to the President has been filtered before it gets to him through several other people – he rarely sees the raw reports, the raw intel, nor should he have to sift through it all. So what the President says to the press or to us is his version of someone else’s version of some raw intelligence that came out a few days after the event when someone else picked up, heard, intercepted, read, saw the event in question. I for one would always, regardless of party, bet against the President of the United States blatantly lying.

 

The problem with the public accounting of what happens in regards to intelligence reports is when spokespeople go out and talk about them – the vagueness in the original report is often dropped, so something akin to “conditions imply that it may possibly have been something that could be seen as a protest leading to the attack” becomes “a protest led to the attack.” This is unfortunate, but they on one hand are trying to get out as much as possible as succinctly as possible, and they also understand that if pressed they can go back and put the qualifiers back in and c their a. This is more about media manipulation and message driving than lying for some mal intent, but in a 24-hour news cycle that is on its way to 12 this is how things go amongst the tweets, blogs, sites, papers, and channels that are all trying to have the goods first.

 

The knee-jerk reactions and pundit prognosticators will always be a thorn in the side of methodical, measured, and prudent intelligence gathering. There will be those who want to know NOW and will make up what they are not given. But we must always remember the past, for it’s there we often see the present in its starkest relief, and the lead-up to and launch of the war in Iraq should tell us all we need to know in terms of being very careful that we have the right information before we set events in motion that could ripple their effects for years to come. The Bush administration was right in that we don’t want to find a smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud. But as long as the greatest intelligence gathering apparatus in the world is allowed to do its important business in a way that puts our interests and our security ahead of our impatience, hopefully we will never have to.

 

 

 

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Posted in Marcum my Words

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“Everything Happens for a Reason” Lacks Reason

Posted on November 18, 2012 by | 3 Comments

“Everything happens for a reason” is a common saying I find particularly irritating.  I admit, my annoyance with this particular axiom is, in part, due to it’s rampant popularity and general overuse.  Putting aside my personal bias against philosophical cliches, this point-of-view is still troubling.  The problem is, this fatalistic maxim deflects responsibility away from the individual, and into some nebulous abyss of “destiny”.

I understand this phrase is a knee-jerk response to personal difficulties.  It is not intended to be employed as a dogmatic life credo, nor is it a consummate theological concept, subject to deconstructionist dismantling.  One could even say it is a harmless aphorism people use for their own comfort.  But I would venture to say this cute little adage is both theologically inaccurate and ethically corrosive.

The concept seems perfectly at home nestled into the theological framework of Calvinism.  If you ascribe to such Calvinist doctrines as predestination, or irresistible grace, perhaps you can accept this saying without being inconsistent in your logic.  My problem is, I believe these ideas are out of line with a profoundly gracious deity.  If God is simply a giant micromanager in the sky, or some tragedian playwright using us as his thespians, then perhaps it is reasonable to say “everything happens for a reason” but for our sake, I hope that’s not the true nature of God.

The most pressing problem with this viewpoint is obvious.  Would a loving God facilitate the murder of a child?  The loss of limbs to meningitis?  Torture in a POW camp?  If God is perfect, and more-over perfectly good, which most major religions espouse, how could He make something atrocious happen?  If you follow this concept to its logical conclusion, it would mean A) individuals who perpetuate terrible ethical infractions can’t be held responsible for their actions, and B) it’s “planned” for victims of such infractions to endure terrible pain and sorrow.  While you could make a plausible argument the suffering party is predetermined to be positively shaped by this event (which is another debate altogether) I can see no reasonable way a loving, supremely benevolent being could write into his plan for one of His children to commit a mortifying act.  This would make Him, at the very least, an accomplice to the evil act and therefore would render his “perfect goodness” null and void.

The typical response to this theological paradox is God allows bad things to happen but does not make them happen.  If this is the case then we at least have some modicum of free will, because God is not guiding our actions toward one another, but simply allowing them to take place.  Therefore, when a person commits a terrible act they are doing so by their own volition, and consequently are responsible for their actions.  If you accept this premise, it inevitably debunks the idea that everything happens for a reason.

This brings me to another aspect I find troubling about this saying.  It excuses people from laboring to improve their world.  If everything, including violence, pain, illness, and misery is part of a grand plan, what is the motivation for a human being to intervene?  The sociological implications are harrowing.  Fatalism naturally decreases altruism, and altruism is the central message of Christianity.

Ultimately, my biggest criticism of the belief that everything happens for a reason, is it passes off our responsibility to be the living Body of Christ.  It allows us to shift our duties back onto God, which is nothing short of a tragedy.  I believe we have been empowered to be living vessels of radical compassion.  We are called to use every ounce of our talent, creativity, and free-will to improve and enrich the lives of those around us.  This is our greatest burden, and our greatest joy.

I don’t think everything happens for a reason. We are the masters of our own destiny, and consciousness is our most precious rift.  We are responsible for the suffering and misery in this world, but more importantly, we are responsible for it’s healing.

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Posted in Heretic's Creed