Ouch. That's Hot.

This book has been on my shelf for about 10 years.  Since the late nineties, it’s been skulking there in the corner.  Bright-oranged and baby-blued, unmissable in girth and shelf-sagging heft.  (Can’t find it?  Look for the low spot on Shelf “W”.)  This year marked my third attempt at getting through, though I must confess that my motives had not been pure.

My first swing at INFJ was driven by thoughts of Ought.  As a recent graduate in the fantastic field of English Literature, I knew that it was my duty to continue my education.  (Call me old-fashioned, but I still buy into the idea that the goal of a Liberal Arts Education is to learn how to educate one’s self, ’til death or senility do we part.)  I had heard tale of this this new scribbler, this inscrutable hotshot Dave Wallace, and felt I ought to size him up as only I, college graduate, could.  So I read The Girl With Curious Hair and started in on INFJ.  Didn’t get far.  At all.  I had cash-in-hand waitering jobs to attend to.  (English Major career opportunities and all that.)

A few years later, the urge hit me again.  This time, I needed to get a few new intellectual bragging rights to wave around.  Rock ‘n Roll was good kicks, but my new venue for social performance was lousy with grad students.  I figured that tackling the Gen X version of Ulysses would do the trick the next time someone asked, “Read anything good lately?”  Unfortunately, the answer “I’ve read INFJ” is just as satisfying at a cocktail party as “I’m reading INFJ.”  And since nobody else had finished it either, there weren’t many questions relating to the captivating climax and the delicious denouement.  There was no need to complete the quest, as long as it loitered on the back of the john with a bookmark stuck firmly in place.

But this year he came up a lot.  New people that I’d met in new circles found him worth reading, indeed, worth finishing.  He seemed to have something to say.  So I licked a finger and held it to the wind, catching more and more interviews, essays, addresses, and other bandanna-brained dives into the icky depths of modern  life.  In death, his once-shelved specter loomed large.  I started to love the guy, the man, DFW.

Motivational rudder righted, compass reset, and course corrected, I set sail once again.

I know it’s been way too long since I’ve hit the right balance of inspired and untired to do a little writing, but the last issue of Spin has convinced me it’s nigh time to pop the cork on another bottle of blog.

So it’s back to my roots; back to the guys that most recently lit my muse.  Columbus, OH may not be an Athens or an Austin or a Seattle, but this college town has got more than its share of real deal rock ‘n roll, as evidenced by the August ’09 issue of Spin which declared that it’s pages contained “100 of the Greatest Bands You’ve (Probably) Never Heard.”

The headline was right on the money.  Yes, 96% of these guys I’ve never heard.  But the other 4% were some of the greatest.

I know because 4 of the top 100  hailed from what  was once known as Cowtown, the now magnificent megalopolis of Columbus.  That’s 4% of Spin’s Top 100 Worldwide.  That’s saying something for a snatch of real estate which sure as hail ain’t New York or LA or Chicago or even Hotlanta.

Granted, all of these guys peaked before I earned the right to plug in my Fender Twin, but it’s this scene that gave me the dream to keep it going on and on and on.  (Not Stopping Believing, as it were.)

So, for the record, they are:

Gaunt

Great Plains

Royal Crescent Mob

Scrawl

I’m a little bummed that I can’t find a decent picture online of any of these guys rocking out in obviously Central Ohio sort of way.  Sure, there’s a million pictures of bands bashing away at Bernie’s, but they all post-date the digital revolution (iPhones n’at.)  I’m sure that somebody out there has got a stash and a scanner.  Get to work!  Because of this, I’m using the above picture of some guy wearing a Gaunt t-shirt.  It’s the best that I can do.

Just to round out the Buckeye Beat, I must also mention that the hard workin’ Michael Stanley Band made Spin’s list of “Essential Heartland Rock” at slot number six with his EMI-released and spot-on titled, “Heartland”.  Trust me, he was a big deal if you grew up on bunny-ear-only Cleveland TV.  Kind of a local King Of All Media.  The kind of guy who only had to play one show at year, at the biggest shed in town, and it always sold out.

Still not convinced?  To let the proving begin, here he is with a song I know you know, the glorious romp “He Can’t Love You.”  Enjoy:

Recently, The Economist ran this article about a new law to rid the land of Nebuchadnezzar from the the dangers of secondhand puffing by introducing legislation to nix lighting up within the four walls of all public institutions.

How’d it work for them?  Here’s a sampling of the hyperbolic reaction greeting the new measure:

“My cousin was recently murdered by terrorists, my neighbour was tortured by the police, my electricity is cut for most of the day, the same is true in most hospitals in the city. And they are worried about smoking?”

“Bring back Saddam. We were free to smoke anywhere then.”

“Prisons are public buildings, right? So will they now prevent guards from stubbing out cigarettes on the arms, legs and backs of inmates?”

Wowzers.  That all being said, the key fact behind the bill is that smoking is responsible for 55 Babylonian deaths a day, as opposed to 10 for insurgent-related shootings and bombings.   A 10-death-daily toll is still way too high for my little green-lawned and shrubberied suburban mind to comprehend, but it’s still a lot safer to face the jihad than to make a habit of sparking up a Camel.   Of course, that just doesn’t feel right, now does it?

This gap between feeling and thinking illustrates a greater principle:  People are pretty bad at setting priorities.

Ever since reading the book Innumeracy, I’ve been fascinated by the odds underlying life as we know it.  In his book, author John Allen Paulos makes the case that the average person can’t apply basic math to everyday decisions.  This results in much idiocy and hullabaloo.

Freakonomics mined much of the same turf when it famously pointed out that swimming pools are much more lethal than pistols, yet we joyfully take the kids swimming and fear them finding a gun.  And we can listen to Dave Ramsey run the figures all day and then go out and still slowly swipe ourselves into debt and depression.

I’m as guilty as anybody when it comes to ignoring the numbers.  Not in my head, mind you, but somewhere in that emotional part of the back of the brain where opinions are formed and next steps are felt-through rather than thought-out.  But I’m not alone.  There’s a growing field of study known as Behavioral Economics that’s been endeavoring to figure it all out.  A guy named Barack Obama channeled it to great success last year with a little campaign called “Hope & Change”, so it might be on to something.

Another resource I’d highly recommend is the BBC documentary The Century Of The Self which describes the revolution on Madison Avenue a few generations back, when Freud’s Id was tapped to sell us what we want instead of what we need.

Spock we are not.  That’s not a bad thing, but a little self-awareness might do us some good while we attempt to “live long and prosper.”