[Question for bloggers:  Am I alone in this, or do you all have dozens of half-finished posts lying about the crannies of your administrative screens?  Might as well wrap this one up.  If only I could remember anything about it... seemed like a good read at the time.]

If you’ve been listening to This American Life (or watching it on the tube, something I’ve never done) and thought to yourself, “Golly, I wish this would come in paperback so I could hang with Ira whilst in el bano…” here’s your chance.

The New Kings runs with the same formula as all things TAL — Ira drops in for an introduction and then turns it over to his troop of sly scriveners who toe-dip into unknown waters to bring light and life to the long-forgotten, overlooked on-goings that are going-on somewhere between sea and shining sea.

Although I’ve always been impressed with the range and depth of the guests that pop in on Ira’s weekly chats, I noticed something while reading this collection that I wouldn’t have snatched had I been catching the broadcast in the interstitial way that radio reaches the mind:  Ira has specialized in Long-Tail Journalism.

Although we lie to ourselves about it every day, very few of us can hope to be famous.  The world just isn’t big enough for us all to be the best (unless by “being the best” you just mean “being the best you”.  Which is fine and all, and if you’d like to borrow some Joel Osteen to help you out with that come on over, I’ve got a few tracts to lend.)  But for every winner, there’s usually more than a few losers.  As Ricky Bobby likes to say, “If you ain’t first, yer last!”  And no matter how hard you try, odds are that first just isn’t in the stars.  Now at some point we must recognize this and move on or else we risk a bitter and miserable old age impotently pissing into our bedpans while chewing off the ears of any nurse or other whipper-snapper who seems prepared to pretend to politely listen.

[But back to the Long Tail of Journalism.]

In other words, for every Best out there that’s worthy of the big-budget James Cameron treatment, replete with a heartfelt crooning love theme by Celine (Dion), there’s dozens of also-rans. And the also-rans have probably also-run a pretty interesting life.  Not the sort of thing that makes it into the history books, or even into the Sunday supplements (love me my Parade!), but the also-rans have a story to tell, and the wit and charm to be the life of your party, at least for the hour or less that it takes to listen to the weekend broadcast from PRI and Chicago Public Radio.

[Anyway - do I need to define this Long Tail thing?  You say yes, I say go:   1 2 3]

So here we go with The New Kings:  With a few exceptions — yes, Saddam, I’m talking about you — it’s a list of almosts, of near-misses, of what was yet to be but what never was.   We’ve got a kid that was almost a financial wiz.  An environmental disaster that wasn’t quite as toxic as we’d hoped  A well-connected Chicagoan who never made a dent on national affairs.  A gifted artist who just missed out on the boom of Pollack and do Kooning.  A guy who almost got in trouble with a bunch of rowdy hooligans.  A right-wing DJ riding a wave of conservative culture ’cause it’s his only skill to pay the bills.  A hostess with the luck to hang with the famous while the club was still hopping.  And finally a guy who almost won big at poker.

All good stories, all better than what you might have to listen to around the family table this Christmas or Kwanzaa, and all very well written.  And that’s the thing:  The stories are out there, everywhere!  The trick is to find the right hook to catch ‘em before they slink off into the spectral mists of memory lost.  You’re all a few degrees from greatness — you just need a little help getting out there to sing your life!

After college let out for the last time — and before life lapped up the last few allowable drops of adolescent indulgence — I spent a summer wasting.  Living on Mac ‘n Cheese swashed down with MGDs.  Walking my sand-scratched crack back from a dive called Shagg’s.  Trying to beat the moon to bed and dodge the sun while quoting Donne.  Ah yes, it was time well spent.

The summer was needed.  There was a girl to purge from my mind, some pale pasty parts to drop from my body.  But most of all there was an “I can do it!” ego that needed to fail miserably night after lonesome night as friends returned to more responsible endeavors and the long sweat of an endless summer turned chilly and sad.

There’s a novel in that summer.  Life began one way and turned out another.  There was conflict, there was resolution, there was dénouement as the players drifted on to next things.  Nothing of the sort happened during A Year In Provence.  To be fair, Peter’s publication claims to be filed under “Travel,” and as a bit of long-form journalism it amuses nicely.  However, I’ve seen more contemplation in magazines, more emotion in the newspaper, more reflection on facebook and blogs than I found here.

Inspire me Peter!  Life seemed lovely: Libidinous lunches drenched with young rosé, days spent weaving through vineyards and truffled woods, recovery meted out by the pool and the omnipresent pastis.  Why couldn’t you fall in love with it all?  Why couldn’t you get sick of it all?  Why couldn’t you treat your caring neighbors as more than cartoons with outrageous accents?  Why?

Perhaps he’s fried his heart on too many lovers, frozen his soul from fear of an un-assured salvation.  Perhaps he’s a sort of idiot-savant:  Gifted ear, sharp wit, unassailable palette, but complete confusion when confronted by emotion.   Perhaps we’ll never know.  I won’t be sticking around for Toujours Provence, though I’m tempted to visit.  I have nothing against “Travel” you know.

__________

Someday I’ll write a slim volume about what I found during my lost summer.  It’s a place I revisit with each listen to Belle & Sebastian’s “A Summer Wasting” — a two minute tune that moves more than Peter Mayle’s two hundred pages:

I spent the summer wasting
The time was passed so easily
But if the summers wasted
How come that I could feel so free
I spent the summer wasting
The sky was blue beyond compare
A photograph of myself
Is all I have to show for

Seven weeks of reading papers
Seven weeks of river walkways
Seven weeks of feeling guilty
Seven weeks of staying up all night

Here’s a little tidbit from this month’s Wired:

“By 2020, native English speakers will make up only 15 percent of the estimated 2 billion people who will be using or learning the language. Already most conversations in English are between nonnative speakers who use it as a lingua franca.”

Ah, this warms my heart. I never was much for foreign language. Never really had the patience to put my mind to something so, uh, foreign. My grades the second semester of college looked something like this:

American Lit Survey: A
Literary Criticism: A
19th Century British Novel: B
Introduction to Physics: A
Spanish 3.0: F

As an excuse, I always copped to some sort of imbecilism whenever the topic came up. My father pronounced my failure to achieve in the southern tongue an “anomaly” and left it at that. Unfortunately, I was mostly just lazy. I was well aware of the difference between a gerund an infinitive. I had a fondness for the culture, cuisine, and charisma of my chicano friends. I just didn’t try.

Now, thanks to trends beyond my control, I may not have to. Funny how such an awkward little language is taking over. Lucky me.