Booked Solid

As I was reading Bill Simmons's The Book Of Basketball, I realized that writing about it would coincide, seasonally, with my previous post. My review of Lew Paper's Perfect came the day after the 2009 Major League Baseball season ended. Today, I'm looking at a book about professional basketball when the 2009-10 NBA season is less than a month old. This will surely be the last sports book that I'll read this year, and having back-to-back looks at my two favorite sports was entirely coincidental. However, with one season gone and one season underway, I couldn't help but notice this chronological symbolism.

I've spent quite a few months waiting for the publication of The Book Of Basketball, but in spite of my excitement, I realized that I wouldn't immediately call myself a "fan" of Bill Simmons. I read his Page 2 columns on ESPN.com whenever I see them linked, but they've never been an essential part of my online readings. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I've never read a bad article by him (given my admitted sporadic patronage, I'm sure he has a few duds). My eagerness to read the book stemmed not so much from the author, but rather the subject. As I've mentioned a few times, passionate NBA fans are sometimes hard to find, since the prevailing assumption is that NCAA basketball is superior, and that the professional ranks are easier to criticize. The example I usually fall back on is writer Chuck Klosterman, a writer I deeply respect for his intelligence, humor, and love of NBA basketball. Now, I'm happy to include Bill Simmons in this category as one of my two favorite basketball writers, based on the strength of his latest book. Two weeks after publication, The Book Of Basketball already ranks as one of the best works on the sport, and the research that went into it is commendable on its own.

The title is perfect in all of its simplicity. This isn't a strict history of basketball, nor is it merely a collection of anecdotes and memories. While these are featured prominently, for all intents, this is a book of basketball in every sense, and from every angle. Simmons discusses the evolution of the professional game, analyzing everything from single games, players, drafts, and happenings. He also deftly shows how aspects of the game cannot be immediately compared throughout the eras. This refers mainly to statistics, and how averages from the 1950s and 1960s cannot be adequately compared to the stats of today's game.

"[Celtics guard Bob] Cousy got screwed historically by his first four years (the pre-shot-clock era, when nobody scored more than 75-85 points a game) and the last five years (when they started counting assists differently). Cousy averaged 8.9 assists for a '59 Celtics team that averaged 116.4 points per game; John Stockton averaged 12.4 assists for a '94 Jazz team that averaged 101.9 points per game. How am I supposed to make sense of that? How do we know Cousy wasn't averaging 15-16 assists per game if we applied the current criteria (Simmons 492-493)?"

Refreshingly, Simmons does not shy away from the racial areas of the game. He gives stunning accounts of the racism in basketball, injustices experienced by such legends as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Oscar Robertson. "When Oscar's Crispus Attucks High School became the first all-black champion in state history in 1955, Indianapolis rerouted its annual championship parade toward the ghetto, with the implication being, We don't trust the blacks to behave themselves, so let's keep this self-contained. Oscar never got over it. Nor did he get over Indiana University's coach, Branch McCracken, for recruting him by saying, 'I hope you're not the kind of kid who wants money to go to school' (559-560)."
According to Simmons, the rise of pro basketball correlates with the rise in black players, athletes who were able to add speed and creativity to the game even while facing prejudice on and off the court. These realizations and stories are not new; however, basketball history and racism are not as well known as baseball. Baseball players weren't the only ones who dealt with (and overcame) such injustices.

The bulk of the book is devoted to Simmons's excellent idea of the Pyramid, a combination hypothetical revision of the Basketball Hall Of Fame/detailed history and rankings of the best players of all-time. This is not the obvious list that might appear in lesser hands; Simmons has done staggering amounts of research, reading dozens of books and watching hours of seemingly forgotten game films. Even the players ranked in his Pyramid aren't exempt from harsh criticism. All of it is constructive, however. Take his look at former Indiana Pacers guard Reggie Miller, a player recognized as one of the best in the modern game:

"At no point was Reggie considered one of the NBA's top ten players for a single season. Nine of his contemporaries at shooting guard made All-NBA (first or second): Jordan, Drexler, Dumars, Latrell Sprewell, Mitch Richmond, Kobe [Bryant], T-Mac [Tracy McGrady], [Allen] Iverson, and Ray Allen. Reggie only made third-team All-NBA three times ('95, '96, and '98). That's it. And his reputation as a "great" Playoffs player has been slightly overblown. The Pacers were bounced from the first round in his first four trips to the Playoffs (344-345)."

These examples are just a fraction of the topics covered. The Book Of Basketball is the type of book that needs to be read in its entirety for one to fully appreciate its scope and research. Also, Simmons's style might not be for everyone--he's serious when he needs to be, but the statistics and analyses are kept humorous and light, and are marked with hundreds of footnotes that often deal with funny stories or far-reaching pop culture references. This is not to say that this isn't a serious work. As opposed to other sports books, however, Simmons thankfully keeps a lot of cliche and melodrama under wraps. He's a naturally funny writer and is able to mesh this comedy with basketball issues that are never trivialized, unless he does so intentionally. Perhaps I spoke too soon when I claimed that this work is already one of the best basketball books ever written. However, in time, I feel that the research and opinions will still hold up.

Work Cited:
Simmons, Bill. The Book Of Basketball. Copyright 2009 by Bill Simmons.

Not Quite Perfect

So far in 2009, the book world has seen a stunning wealth of baseball books, spanning an excellent, diverse array of subjects that appear fitting for involved, book-length studies--Thurmon Munson, Satchel Paige, and a joint interview between Bob Gibson and Reggie Jackson. However, the one baseball book that I've read so far this year would, at first glance, seem like a tired subject: a New York Yankees championship team. After the Yankees won their 27th World Series last night, I'm sure that most people (myself included) have had their fill of superlatives and outlandish hyperbole, and aren't interested in books or reviews about the team, no matter what era is being discussed. With baseball season now over, the focus will and should shift completely to football and basketball. However, Lew Paper's Perfect: Don Larsen's Miraculous World Series Game and the Men Who Made It Happen proved irresistable for me. The subject (Don Larsen's perfect game in the 1956 World Series) is well known to baseball fans, but lends itself to wanting more analysis and facts. On top of that, Chuck Klosterman gave the book a strong review in Esquire magazine.

Despite my interest, I nearly stopped reading this book after only half a page. The prologue is entitled "The Moment Of Truth," and begins with this opening:

"The tall right-hander peers down at the catcher from his perch on the pitcher's mound under the fading afternoon sun in the cavernous environs of Yankee Stadium (Paper 1)."

The tired title, coupled with the even more tired description of Yankee Stadium as "cavernous" made me worry that the rest of the book would be filled with obvious metaphors and overwrought attempts to convey the "magic of baseball's Golden Age." Even as someone in my mid-20s who never saw baseball in the 1950s, there are enough books and documentaries that depict baseball at its acme in the mid twentieth century. I kept going, and was happy to find that the book provides extremely detailed biographies of the players on both teams (the Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers). For baseball fans, some of these are well-known (Mickey Mantle's alcoholism, the stunning racism expressed towards Jackie Robinson), but Paper does a great job of giving the lesser known players the same amount of coverage as the legends. For example, before picking this book up, I had never heard of Dodgers outfielder Carl Furillo, and Paper's profiles work extremely well, educating the reader on the backgrounds of the players. The chapter on Furillo depicts him as an above-average baseball player, even if he's not as well known as some of the other men from that era:

"Furillo knew all about the trickery of the right-field wall [of Ebbets Field], and he meant to master it. 'He was a workman,' teammate Carl Erskine later said of Furillo. 'I studied every angle of that fucking wall,' Furillo later explained. He would have teammates hit him flies so that he could see how the ball responded to different situations. In time, he knew every quirk. When a sportswriter later asked him how he learned to play the wall so well, he had a simple response: 'I worked. That's fucking how.'(83)."

Paper also does a commendable job as a journalist, showing an unbiased look at both the positives and negatives of the individuals. Furillo made an off-hand, negative comment about Jackie Robinson, and, regardless of his views on race, found himself linked to the racism of the era.

"...Furillo later said that he had no interest in signing the petition that Dixie Walker circulated among the team to say that they did not want to play with Robinson. Having grown up in a small community where Italians were a distinct minority, Furillo knew that ethnic and racial discrimination was not confined to blacks (81)."

Despite these compelling insights, the actual game that's supposed to be the subject seems to be lost at times. Don Larsen gets the same amount of coverage as the others when he should be the primary focus. A lifelong average pitcher dealing with a failing marriage and alcoholism pitches the only perfect game in postseason history? This should be receiving the most attention, despite the excellent backstories of the players on both teams. Paper profiles Larsen in the beginning of the book, and occasionally returns to him. What brings the book down the most is the style that Paper employs at the end of each chapter, detailing every at-bat of the game.

"Jim Gilliam is more concerned with getting on base than retaliating against a knockdown pitch as he steps into the batter's box in the top of the seventh inning of the fifth game of the 1956 World Series. But Don Larsen is not making it easy for him. The Dodger second baseman takes a called strike, watches another pitch go by for a ball, and then fouls off a pitch (224-225)."

Paper is obviously trying to create what feels like a radio play-by-play, and this ends up being incredibly distracting. Personally, I've never been a fan of present-tense writing, and this is made worse by Paper injecting the perceived emotions of the particular players in the various parts of the game. While these emotional assumptions are understandable, it feels like Paper is trying to create fictionalized scenes in a book that is otherwise a strong history text. Overall, Perfect is amazingly well-researched, but is weighed down by these little problems. Had Paper focused more on Don Larsen and strictly adhered to his journalistic tendencies, this pivotal game account would have been so much better.

Work Cited:
Paper, Lew. Perfect: Don Larsen's Miraculous World Series Game and the Men Who Made It Happen. Copyright 2009 by Lew Paper.

2006 In Music: Recap

After a week off, Aught Music will resume tomorrow with the best tracks of 2007. This has been an amazing project to contribute to, and I'm sure that 2007-2009 will fly by as we approach the end of this year. Here are my contributions from 2006. Just like with my previous updates, click on the links below for free listens/downloads.

1.) "(Do You Wanna) Come Walk With Me?" by Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan (from the album Ballad Of the Broken Seas)

With quite a few of my selections for this project, I've written about how some female singers can sound strong and fragile at the same time. Mark Lanegan does that perfectly on this track. He and Campbell sound amazing together on this disc, but I almost wish that this particular song was a solo for him.

I'm not saying I love you, I won't say I'll be true,
There's a crimson bird flying when I go down on you
I'm so weary and lonesome and it's cold in the night,
When the path to your doorway is a pathway of light.

There are very few songs that can be evocations of both masculinity, insecurity, and sensitivity. Lanegan sounds tough, but there's much more being painfully pushed down below the surface. Jeremy wrote about The National expressing masculinity in the twenty-first century on the track "All the Wine." While these are two vastly different songs, I think that "Come Walk With Me" is another chapter in intelligent musical looks at what it means to be a man, fraught with complexities and a myriad of emotions.

2.) "Sons & Daughters" and "O! Valencia" by The Decemberists (from the album The Crane Wife)

"Sons & Daughters":

With this track, three simple adjectives sum it up quite well: moving, simple, and beautiful. Given the winding story arcs and characters featured on the rest of the album, it's amazing that it ends on such a small treasure.

When we arrive, sons & daughters
We'll make our homes on the water
We'll build our walls with aluminum
We'll fill our mouths with cinnamon.

Personally, I'll always hold this song very close. When The Crane Wife was released, my eldest brother was serving his second tour in the Iraq War. For varying reasons, I was much more scared and despondent during that second year, as if the reality of it all had truly hit me. Many a night, I was moved to tears by the closing lines:

Here all the bombs fade away,
Here all the bombs fade away.

He returned home safely, and that Christmas, I put "Sons & Daughters" as the final song on a mix CD that I made for him. I've never explained this significance to anyone until now.

"O! Valencia":

Yes, this story line has been done a million and one times, spanning every medium, and most well known from "Romeo and Juliet" and "West Side Story." So on, so forth, etc. Two lovers find themselves carrying on a secret tryst under the noses of their warring families. However, as familiar as this is, it's hard to listen to it and not root for the lovers to live happily every after, even if it's an obvious lost cause.

All I heard was the shout
Of your brother calling me out
And you ran like a fool to my side.

Both in this song and the official music video, the Decemberists do their usual job of taking a subject steeped in history and nostalgia and giving it a modern spin. It's not nearly as inventive as what they're capable of, but it's a great listen.
(Note: This post was part of a roundtable with Rich Thomas, who writes about his take on "O! Valencia.")

3.) "Star Witness" and "Maybe Sparrow" by Neko Case (from the album The Fox Confessor Brings the Flood)

"Star Witness":

This has one of my votes for the best song of the decade, not just for 2006. As stunning as her voice is, Case earns major credit for her songwriting talent. This is a loose "homage" to the rough Chicago neighborhood of Humboldt Park, and it's staggering how she can take such haunting moments and turn a complex poem into a beautiful song.

Hey pretty baby, get high with me
We can go to my sister's if we say we'll watch the baby,
The look on your face yanks my neck on the chain.

The first time I heard this, I played that last line at least ten times in a row, rewinding my CD a few seconds back. Forgive my hyperbole, but it's a punch in the stomach everytime I hear it. Songs, poems, and books are full of metaphors, but that one is literally perfect, both in the delivery and the context of the track.

"Maybe Sparrow":

I'll be honest: I still don't really know what this song means, or even if it's supposed to mean anything. The album is laced with mythogical animal imagery, so this is appropriate. I love how Case's voice rises, along with the music, to create a stunning chorus:

Oh, my sparrow, it's too late
Your body limp beneath my feet.

I always get very reflective whenever I hear this track. It's so short, yet packs some dizzying arrangements and atmospheres. As I type this, I realize that this description could fit quite a few of Case's songs. It's very difficult to explain, but this track is the one I would use to explain to anyone why Case is my favorite female vocalist. I guess that's the beauty of great music: it moves me in definite ways that, as a writer, I'm at a loss to express.
(Note: This post is part of another roundtable with Rich Thomas, who writes about the album as a whole.)

4.) "It Wasn't Me" by Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins (from the album Rabbit Fur Coat)

It's amazing how confident and sultry Jenny Lewis can sound, even when a given track is intended to sound lonely and depressing. Her voice barely rises above a forced whisper, and it creates a moody, echoing atmosphere, a sort of modern spin on the torch songs of the classic female vocalists of the early to mid 20th century. As depressed as she sounds, there's a hint of defiance in the lyrics, which are open to varying interpretations.

It wasn't me, I wasn't there
I was stone drunk, it isn't clear
And it doesn't count because I don't care.

The point of view can be interpreted as an intentional distance from any negative situation. Insert the situation of your choosing, and the song will more than likely fit perfectly.

The Man Of the Hour

"This is an essential element of the business of being a man: to flood everyone around you in a great radiant arc of bullshit, one whose source and object of greatest intensity is yourself. To behave as if you have everything firmly under control even when you have just sailed your boat over the falls. 'To keep your head,' wrote Rudyard Kipling in his classic poem 'If,' which articulated the code of high-Victorian masculinity in whose fragmentary shadow American men still come of age, 'when all about you are losing theirs'; but in reality, the trick of being a man is to give the appearance of keeping your head when, deep inside, the truest part of you is crying out, Oh, shit! (Chabon 129)"

The above passage does wonders for me. The cultural and genetic aspects of masculinity have long been of interest to me, both in studies and in the writing of my own fiction. Re-read it, and you very well may see some glaze of the cliche of "being a man," as well as the undercurrent of many a tired stand-up comic's jokes. However, on the sheer strength of his writing style, Michael Chabon renders a part of masculinity utterly unique, even though it's been shared by every man at times. With crisp writing, honesty, and a well-placed citation, he's elevated what could very well have been blatantly obvious in lesser hands.

I recently finished reading his latest essay collection, Manhood For Amateurs. During the course of the reading, it struck me that, despite his staggering publication resume, I've never read any of Mr. Chabon's non-fiction. I've read two of his novels and one of his story collections, and despite having some catching up to do with his complete bibliography, I've long counted him as one of my favorites. Happily, this collection reaffirmed this, and elevated him (in my personal views) among the champions of fiction and non-fiction, being able to create stunning paragraphs, "real" or otherwise. In addition, the collection has masculinity as its central theme, even if not every essay deals with it explicitly.

In recent years, it seems as if the book world has been staggered with the weight of both memoirs, "books for men," or a combination of the two. While both of these genres, like any, have the potential for thought-provoking results, a lot of the efforts have been lacking. The memoir genre seems (as of late) to be heavy on a sort of "this is how messed up my life is" theme. Of course, there's no such thing as a spotless life or one with no regrets or mistakes, but a lot of memoirs seem to serve as "fly on the wall porn," not unlike describing the Saw films as "torture porn." Books that are aimed at men have a tendency to offer horrible stereotypes, fratboy-esque debauchery, and an underlying misogyny (Tucker Max comes to mind). Yes, these criticisms may seem a bit uptight, but Chabon's writings prove that personal essays can discuss masculinity, sexuality, and drug use in an intelligent manner, retaining all aspects of quote/unquote manliness and not making the writer come out looking like a pig.

Chabon tackles the usual topics--marriage, youth, and fatherhood--but gives them all a colorful spin, even if the only light that's shed upon the topics are for his own growth and personality. It's a nod to his strengths as a writer that he can make the most mundane occurrences feel vibrant. It also helps that, even when taking on a philosophical hypothesis, he can be hysterically funny without distracting from the subject at hand. For example, in the essay "The Memory Hole," he writes about the act of a parent throwing away a young child's artwork:

"Do I care? Does it pain me to have lost forever this irrefutable evidence of my having been, if neither a prodigy nor an embryonic Matisse, a child? If my mother had held on to more of my childhood artwork, would I be happier now? Would the narrative that I have constructed of the nature and course of my childhood be more complete? I guess ultimately, I have no way of answering these questions. It's like wondering whether sex would be more pleasurable if I had not been worked over by that old Jew with a knife at the age of eight days. How much more pleasurable, really, do I need it to be (38)?"

In addition to his writing prowess, Chabon is also a gifted vocal interpreter of his own essays. Two nights ago, I had the good fortune to see him read two of the essays at Chicago's Harold Washington Library. His timing, enunciation, and inflections provided not only humor to the funny parts of "The Cut" (about his son's circumcision) and "Like, Cosmic" (a wonderful narrative of space travel, the passage of time, and ultimately, masculinity) but somber reflection on the central themes of these works. His reading highlighted quite a few parts that I had missed in my intial reading, as well as highlighting his gift of craft. His prose is almost musical, and even if a given passage is embellished with grand metaphors, not a word feels out of place or overused. Despite being behind on quite a few of the notable books that have been published this year, I can say, with full conviction, that Manhood For Amateurs is one of the best books of 2009.

Work Cited:
Chabon, Michael. Manhood For Amateurs. Copyright 2009 by Michael Chabon.

The Various Souls of Literature

For the past two weeks, I've been devoting a substantial amount of time to the Milan Kundera essays that make up his 2005 book The Curtain. However, I should add that I finished reading it a few days into those two weeks. As I make halting, delayed progress on reading David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, I've also been looking for shorter books to accompany that project. To be more specific, even though I need to be fully devoted to Wallace's masterpiece, in the interest of this blog and my personal studies, it's hard to give my all to just one book over the course of many weeks. This has led to a contradiction of sorts. Instead of setting a definite schedule for Infinite Jest, immersing myself in the complex novel, I've immersed myself in a slim book of theory about the novel as a whole. This is not a bad thing. The problem is that Kundera's musings on literature rely heavily on outside sources and novels, making it difficult to find passages to cite for a general overview. This leads to multiple readings of the same passages, time that could be put towards Mr. Wallace's book and my goal to finish it by the end of October (not very likely).

In college, I read some selected passages from another Kundera essay collection, The Art Of the Novel. No, one should never judge a book by the cover, but with these non-fiction works by Kundera, this is almost impossible, and I end up judging the books in the best of ways. An essay collection by an international master, accompanied by visually striking cover paintings? Aesthetically, it's hard for me to resist. Much like Italo Calvino, Kundera's works are marked by an intelligent optimism about the benefits, joys, and the ultimate future of the novel. This is evident even as he defends an author like Gustave Flaubert, who in his time was criticized for a lack of "goodness" in his works.

"But, memories aside, is it really so inappropriate for the most prestigious French critic [Sainte-Beuve] of his time to exhort a young writer to 'uplift' and 'console' his readers by 'a picture of goodness,' readers who deserve, as do we all, a little sympathy and encouragement?...Flaubert replies that he never sought to write either criticism or satire. He does not write his novels to communicate his judgements to readers. He is after something entirely different: 'I have always done my utmost to get into the soul of things' (Kundera 59-60)."

Even though he's discussing a nineteenth century writer, I was struck by how Kundera's analysis could be applied (both ways) to two other books that I've written about here. Given that "the soul of things" means showing the bad without judgement, a modern example could be Roberto Bolano's 2666. That work depicts, in a few hundred grisly detailed pages, the murders and rapes of women in Mexico. As gruesome as they are, there's an unspoken, undeniable "soul" of the people who are either involved or implicated in those crimes. Bolano felt no need to balance these with obvious "opposites," i.e. goodness for the sake of counteracting the badness. Flaubert's critic would likely have been a fan of Jose Saramago. In Blindness, there's a definite feeling of Saramago giving the good and the bad an equal billing, with goodness poised to win in the end. This is not at all a criticism of Saramago's novel, but merely an example of the critic's argument.

Towards the end of The Curtain, Kundera examines a part of reading a novel, one that should be obvious at first, but rather shapes a fascinating realization.

"The novel, on the other hand, is a very poorly fortified castle. If I take an hour to read twenty pages, a novel of four hundred pages will take me twenty hours, thus about a week. Rarely do we have a whole week free. It is more likely that, between sessions of reading, intervals of several days will occur, during which forgetting will immediately set up its worksite. But it is not only in the intervals that forgetting does its work; it participates in the reading continuously, with never a moment's lapse; turning the page, I already forget what I just read; I retain only a kind of summary indispensable for understanding what is to follow, but all the details, the small observations, the admirable phrasings are already gone. Erased. Someday, years later, I will start to talk about this novel to a friend, and we will find that our memories have retained only a few shreds of the text and have reconstructed very different books for each of us (149-150)."

This notion of forgetting was evident as I re-read various passages of this book in preparation for this post. Some of Kundera's ideas were familiar as I read them a second or a third time, but a few of them felt new or different, even though I knew that I had encountered them at least once before. I like to consider myself a studious reader, but even Kundera himself admits to the forgetfulness that plagues all readers. Sometimes, if I find myself glazing over a page, I snap myself out of the trance and go back a few pages; more often than not, I realize that I've missed essential passages, or I've read them in a vastly different context. This makes Flaubert's notion of "the soul of things" much more accurate. When it comes to books, with the exception of some brilliant lines or self-highlighted passages, we retain only a rough outline of the plot and the meaning. Soul encompasses all of the small and finite details, even if as readers, they've been unintentionally lost or overlooked; they're still there.

I hope to get much more out of this theory in the near future, as I get into some of Kundera's actual novels as opposed to books on novels. This also refreshes my resolve to finish Infinite Jest, especially with the onset of forgetfulness; I need to keep reading it, despite time constraints, in order to retain its details, and ultimately, its soul.

Work Cited:
Kundera, Milan. The Curtain: An Essay In Seven Parts. Copyright 2005 by Milan Kundera. Translation copyright 2006 by Linda Asher.

2005 In Music: Recap

More updates from the Aught Music side project. The song updates for 2006 are being posted almost daily, with excellent writings on old favorites and overlooked gems. Here is another compilation of the songs and write-ups I submitted, this time for 2005. If you'd like to contribute, contact Jeremy via the link above. Just like last time, click the links below for a (free) listen.

1.) "Girl" by Beck (From the album Guero)

Even if Beck didn't reference "my summer girl," this would still be a great summer song. The production by the Dust Brothers is pitch-perfect, and Beck seems to be blending three very distinct genres—soul, electronica, and an atmosphere of 1960s beach songs—into one terrific track. It's also wonderfully evocative of late teens/early twenties love in any city on a sweltering summer day. However, just one thing might cause some confusion:

Walking crooked down the beach She spits on the sand...

In all honesty, he doesn't paint the picture of the most attractive girl in the world. However, this only adds some gritty realism to the song. Imperfect though she might be, she definitely doesn't give a fuck what anybody else thinks, and given the person and the situation, that can be pretty attractive.

2.) "John Wayne Gacy, Jr." and "Chicago" by Sufjan Stevens (From the album Illinoise)

"John Wayne Gacy, Jr.":

No matter what year, I cannot think of any other song as beautiful and literally haunting. This brings tears to my eyes every time I hear it. Stevens crafts a look at a serial killer with none of the obvious expectations. He hints at Gacy's childhood, the accident that may have been one of the factors in his later killing spree, some of the personality traits that people admired in him, and his deadly legacy. The part that gets me the most is the look at his victims:

Even more, they were boys
With their cars, summer jobs
Oh my god.

I'm getting chills listening to this right now. There's no overt sympathy and no overt judgement. It's a painting of a distinct personality, one who killed twenty-seven people. Stevens' "fifty states project" is only two albums deep, but there's a wealth of history and meticulous detail. He takes the bad with the good in Illinois history, as evident with this track.

"Chicago":

This has an initial vote for one of my favorite songs of all time. This is a city anthem that doesn't mention any specifics of the area, and even mentions another state, New York. It's a reflection on youth, road trips, friendship, and coming to terms with past mishaps. These mishaps and mistakes are not mentioned specifically, but one can only imagine that they're the tyical blunders associated with being young. However, this the ultimate anthem to the city of Chicago, even though the emotions can be reflective of any major city. The vocal chorus towards the end of the song is achingly beautiful. Stevens is the ultimate musician, combining beautiful melodies and evocative lyrics, and this is one of the highlights of the decade. There is no hyberbole here; just listen.

3.) "The Sound of German Hip-Hop" by Clem Snide (From the album The End of Love)

I bought The End Of Love on a complete whim after hearing a co-worker talk enthusiastically about the merits of Clem Snide. After just one listen, I was in complete agreement, at least regarding this album. I love Eef Barzelay's voice, and the lyrics are almost begging for any kind of interpretation. They go all over the place, a sort of poetic stream of consciousness. There's really not much to add. It works perfectly, and it's just a beautiful song.

4.) "You're the Reason I'm Leaving" by Franz Ferdinand (From the album You Could Have It So Much Better)

Wow. The more I give hard listens to Franz Ferdinand, the more I realize how deceptive their music can be at times. At the start, this is a terrific, rocking kiss-off. The person from whose point of view the song is sung is letting someone go, but with no remorse or reasons. This is a definite power play, but the chinks in the armor show as the song progresses. It's almost unnerving (not to mention unstable) that someone is gleefully singing about the prospect of commiting suicide if the relationship keeps going another four years. But at the end, everything is flipped around:

I'm the reason you're leaving (Leaving alone)
If we're leaving we don't stop livin', you know

So what's going on here? Was our narrator putting up a facade when in fact he/she was the one being dumped? Did the love interest realize how horribly he/she was going to be let down and decided to do it first? Is this the entire situation being played out in someone's head as a sort of hypothetical situation? I'm almost going into Chuck Klosterman-esque analysis. You be the judge.

5.) "Anytime" and "Off the Record" by My Morning Jacket (From the album Z)

"Anytime":

The opening strains of this song always excite me, no matter how many times I hear it, because I know what's coming. I cannot understand why Jim James isn't considered one of the best singers in music today. Is there any voice that could work better on this track? My favorite part is actually one that can be easily missed. Listen to the opening line—"Is this climbing up to the moon?" With both the studio recording and the live versions (the audio file is actually taken from the 2006 live disc Okonokos), James' voice always tends to crack and drag out the word 'to' for just a split second longer than normal, and for some reason, I always focus on that. His voice isn't perfect, it lilts a little, but he's obviously pouring himself into every word. That one little crack always makes me smile.

"Off the Record":

This song is phenomenal, because the focus is on the music and the emotion. As with "Anytime," James' voice isn't perfect, and at times, the lyrics are downright unintelligible. However, he doesn't dominate at all; the entire band is both in harmony yet distinct, from the bass to the drumming. I've also picked the live version for the audio file because it's a longer version than the studio one, and it combines the best of both worlds: it's definitely their song, but in the middle, it turns into what feels like a jam session or an improv experiment. However, this only adds to the beauty.

6.) "At the Bottom Of Everything" by Bright Eyes (From the album I'm Wide Awake It's Morning)

Conor Oberst is one of those artists whom, even though I love his music, I can totally appreciate and understand someone NOT liking him. The opening track off of I'm Wide Awake It's Morning represents Oberst at his best (or worst, if you share the opposing sentiment). First and foremost, he's a poet, and the lyrics following the spoken word introduction are beautiful and scary.

While my mother waters plants
My father loads his gun
Says "Death will give us back to God
Just like the setting sun"

The beauty of this song is that his lyrics cover such a vast scope of ideas and metaphor, everything from family to the "American Dream," yet everything fits comfortably under the same musical umbrella. As inventive as he is, nothing seems too far-fetched, and the music is so captivating that by the end, the idea of plunging into a metaphorical cavern feels entirely plausible.

7.) "I Turn My Camera On" by Spoon (From the album Gimme Fiction)

I turn my camera on
I cut my fingers on the way

Can any band claim to sound any sexier in a non-love song situation? Methinks not. The beat of the song makes for unavoidable strutting when listened to while walking, and while "I Turn My Camera On" was almost overplayed, it never loses its freshness.

This particular track comes off of an album that, from top to bottom, doesn't have a bad song available. However, it wins thanks to a special memory. A few years back, I was living with my best friend, and one evening after a rough day, he came into the apartment, wordless, and visibly tired and pissed off. He sat on the living room floor and began to re-string his guitar. On a whim, I put Gimme Fiction on, and by the time "I Turn My Camera On" played, he was bouncing his head to the music in much better spirits. Such is the power of a phenomenal track.

8.) "Tymps (The Sick In the Head Song)" by Fiona Apple (From the album Exraordinary Machine)

Given the complexities and intelligence in Fiona Apple's lyrics, I'm sure that a thousand different people have interpreted this song in many different ways. I like my own spin on the song. In interviews, Apple has explained her fierce independence in relationships as well as her creativity. I don't have an exact quote available, but she commented on even maintaining two seperate houses if she ever got married. Here's a sample lyric:

So why did I kiss him so hard
late last Friday night
Keep on letting him change all my plans
I'm either sick in the head
I need to be bled dry to quit
Or I just really used to love him
I sure hope that's it.

For some reason, I find it comforting that anyone, especially someone as honest and authentic as Apple, can completely relapse on his/her independence based on a strong attraction for the wrong person. We've all pined for someone whom we knew wasn't right deep down, and we all have (or would have) kissed said person with just as much fervor. It doesn't matter how intelligent we are...lust wins sometimes.

Defining the Impossible

At one point in the performance of Eugene Ionesco's The New Tenant, one of the movers (Erica Barnes) begins an exaggerated, funny, and defiant vocalization of Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer." She's tired, sweaty, and overworked, having spent all of her time assembling a myriad of objects into a formerly vacant apartment. The apartment is now overrun with furniture, knick-knacks, boxes, and an accumulation of a lifetime's worth of objects. The movers (Barnes and Amanda Lucas) are dedicated, yet clearly unnerved by the demands and focus of the tenant (Stephanie Brown). The musical interlude provides some much-needed laughter to counteract with the tension, but for me, it provided a clear definition of the undefinable: namely, the emotions and actions that sum up the Theater Of the Absurd, of which Ionesco (1909-1994) was a major contributor. The song is naturally jaunty and light, but the mover inflects it with stress and confusion, even though she's singing it to fend off the exhaustion. As vague as human nature as a subject can be, it's rife with contradictions, and this performance highlights the absurd both literally and metaphorically.

Blank Line Collective kicks off their fall season with a major challenge, performing the Chicago premiere of Ionesco's The New Tenant. Milan Kundera once wrote of Ionesco (along with Samuel Beckett): "How many dramatists of the past century have had such power, influence? One? Two?" An appraisal of this magnitude offers two observations. One, how is it possible that this piece has gone unperformed for so long, in one of the country's most prolific theater cities? Two, such a gem is vital for the creative side of a small company. This particular play demands a lot from its actors, not just in historical stature, but in the performances, which are written with the intentional possibility to be over-acted to the point of absurdity, and not in a good way.

The play opens with a building caretaker (Jen Sava-Ryan) meeting the new tenant, who has arrived earlier than expected. The tenant is dressed in black, uptight with a sense of decorum, and oblivious to the hilarious, gossipy ramblings of the seemingly lonely caretaker. As the tenant takes notes on the state of the new apartment, the caretaker gives a virtually non-stop monologue on the inhabitants, both past and present. There's a loud police officer who lives upstairs, and the previous tenants were prone to domestic violence. The caretaker knows everything, but claims to not pry into anyone's private lives, even though she blatantly gives off the vibe of someone who listens through walls with a drinking glass pressed against the door. For anyone unfamiliar with the Theater of the Absurd, this is a wise opening; one would expect that The New Tenant would be a standard, two-act play that's heavy on dialogue. However, once the movers show up, absurdity and surrealism take over, along with the aforementioned contradictions.

The movers know exactly what to do, but are given constant directions and orders by the tenant. She allows them to place some objects wherever they want, but for the most part has a strict order that she wants to follow. The bulk of the play revolves around the dizzying amount of objects that fill up the apartment. There are boxes, a mattress, paintings, a large camping tent, chairs, and lamps. In the middle of this move, the movers are given a quick break, monitored by a cooking timer. This, along with the final scene, are the only real moments of calm that permeate the entire piece. It allows the movers to rest, but it's also a rest for the audience, a small chance to process the speed of which everything has accumulated. The tenant and the movers have a very strict relationship based on the job at hand, but one cannot help but wonder if there's more below the surface. The movers shoot each other the occasional exasperated looks, as if they've known the tenant's eccentricities all along, bracing each other for what could happen next. The final scene is somber and unexpected, yet seems to make perfect sense in context. Most importantly, it just adds more intended questions to the poetry of the movements, and the absurdity of life's actions. As Barnes said after the show, "when you think about it, moving is absurd." This might seem almost too easy of an explanation, but given the play and the movement from which it came, this definition works.

The performances are almost reserved in spite of the kinetic pacing. Barnes and Lucas play the movers with an air of comedy, complete with almost slapstick movements and exaggerated determination. This is not a knock against them, since the characters are given no time to react in between their given tasks. Their eyes and facial expressions are giveaways, since they see something either wrong or amiss below the surface of the tenant's expectations. Stephanie Brown's performance is the center of the play, an almost uncomfortable calm in between the accumulation of materials. She plays the tenant with an almost minimalist tint, her cold eyes taking constant mental notes, her perfect posture never wavering, and a wealth of emotion portrayed with a stare or a purse of her lips. Jen Sava-Ryan's portrayal of the caretaker is intriguing, the kind of role that seems to be a constant in many of the productions I've seen. She's needy and scattered, and works as an excellent foil to the tenant. They act as opposites, but from the first moment, they have each other figured out to a tee, even though their private opinions of each other are probably not savory.

Without giving anything away, there is a slight element of audience participation in this performance, which made me slightly skeptical at first. There's only so much breaking of the fourth wall that can be done without it becoming a distraction from the performance, but this interaction is kept to a minimum and works well. Overall, this is an excellent production, but I felt it would have benefited from a slightly slower pace. Yes, there's an energy that needs to be maintained, not to mention the wealth of materials that need to fill the apartment in little time. The fleeting moments of serenity highlight the metaphysical nature and questions of the play's theme, and one or two more "breaks" would have helped to let the audience catch up, mentally. However, the questions that people will have after the performance are the best kinds, and they will likely center around that most impossible, vague query:

"What does it all mean?"

Blank Line Collective's performance of The New Tenant runs every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday of October. 8:00pm, 1803 W. Byron, Unit #104, Chicago, IL. Click here for more information, or call 773.325.2119.