What?!

This is just so crazy great I can't keep it to myself. Where's the rest of it?

The Old Days.

J got an email from the Austin Film Society yesterday about a benefit screening of a documentary made by an Austin filmmaker. The filmmaker had been hurt in a car accident on the way to the world premiere at SXSW this year, and the AFS put together this benefit to help him with his medical expenses. It was at the Alamo Drafthouse downtown, so we walked to the 7 o'clock screening.

We love the Alamo. Everybody loves the Alamo. They program everything from first release Hollywood films to obscure local documentaries. They host all kinds of film events, they serve food and beer. They don't let people talk during the movie. It's the best movie theater ever.

Before the film started, when they were showing promos for all the Alamo events, like a night when comedians make fun of Planet of the Apes while its playing, or various sing-along nights, like "Sing Along with Eighties Rock Ballads," etc., we realized we were in the wrong movie! Instead of the benefit, we had stumbled into the "Morrissey Weep-along." We had no idea whether we were in the wrong theater, or it was the wrong night, or what, and we had already ordered food, so -- after a few moments of "Is this going to be fun or awful?" -- we decided to stay. And it was great.

I'd forgotten how incredibly cool The Smiths were, and how much we all loved them. I think the consensus among my friends back then was that, after The Smiths broke up, Morrissey's records weren't as good or interesting or something. His narcissism got to be a little overbearing. But what I'd forgotten is that his music was all about narcissism, and how bracing and beautiful so many of his songs are. The Weep-along was heavy on back catalog Smiths. Remember the video for How Soon is Now? It's mesmerizing and totally holds up as a work of art.



Looking at the work now all these years later, the gay iconography is so painfully obvious, it's hard to imagine a time when all that stuff was buried in code, when Morrissey and Michael Stipe, the two biggest sissies ever to front rock bands, could fly under the radar just by telling interviewers that they were "asexual." Times have changed.

When I met B, my boyfriend through most of my twenties, in 1984, he was the drummer in a band called Crash. B and his friends were the original generation of alt rock gay boys. B was more into old Joy Division and Fairport Convention than the poppier stuff, but they all loved The Smiths, and they all wore straight leg jeans and white t-shirts and mod haircuts.

The songwriter and lead singer in Crash was Mark Dumais. They played around the East Village for a couple years, and Mark created a record label called Justine Records. In 1985, he put out 3 7-inch 45s. One was by Crash, one was by a band called Nothing but Happiness, and one was by The Woods, which consisted of B and I and two women, Mark's friends, a lesbian couple who had just moved to New York from Baltimore. One of them was Linda Smith, who went on to make a name for herself on the cassette home recording scene that flourished for a while in the late 80s and early nineties.

The Woods never really worked because the four of us all had different ideas of what we wanted the band to sound like, but we had a few sublime moments. Our Justine single, "Miracles Tonight" (a Linda Smith song), with the second song I ever wrote, "Love Me Again This Summer" on the B-side, was one of them.

Mark moved to London in search of fame and pop fortune. He died of AIDS a few years later. The guy playing tambourine in this video, a very sweet man who also played saxophone in the band, died of AIDS, too, a few years later. B and I separated in 1989, and I didn't keep in touch with most of our friends from that time who were really B's friends more than mine.

Summer Comes Marching In.

I broke down and turned on the a.c. today. I was going to try to last through Monday when I leave for New York, but after walking all over town with a stack of books, and walking back home with the heaviest ones because nobody wanted to buy them, I turned on the a.c. I guess everybody knows the textbook business is a big scam, so I'll spare you the rant.

I took my last final yesterday! My grades will be posted in a few days, but I'm pretty sure I got all A's except for that one B.

Monday evening I'm flying to New York to help put together a concert performance of Lizzie Borden (a showcase for venue people, producers, and stars we're hoping will want to get involved with the production). I'll be there for about 3 weeks, and then I hope to go to Indiana for a bit. My mother just had major surgery and she'll be recovering, so I want to visit and help out however I can.

("Summer comes marching in with his heavy boots on." from Florida, my favorite Patty Griffin song -- it breaks my heart every time I listen to it, which is a lot)

Thanks for Sharing.

I'm debating with myself whether I should respond to, ignore, or delete comments like the one from "anonymous" to this post. I appreciate the criticism. I like it when my blog becomes something more than just me sending my thoughts into a vacuum, but, besides the fact that anonymous comments are kind of creepy and underhanded in general, I'm not sure how comments like this, which seem to come from a resentment about something other than my blog post, shed any light on the subject. On the other hand, maybe I'm just feeling insulted or guilty and that's why I think this person is full of shit.

I wish my shy commenter would at least sign his or her name to his or her words of wisdom.

We Can All Relax Now.

The pressure is off. I got my first B -- in Texas Political History. The grade for the course comes solely from scores on 3 exams. The first two exams had 35 questions each and the third one had 30. The total of the three scores is curved so that the top 25 scores in the class get an A, the next 20 get a B, the next 20, a C, etc. I got a 75, and the cutoff for an A was 77. You wouldn't believe these exams. I've never seen anybody pack a multiple-choice exam so full of obscure trivia.

I kind of enjoyed the course because the subject is interesting to me, but the exams -- and I studied hard for them -- required more memorization than I can manage, I guess. My consolation for the low grade is that I learned a lot.

Grumble.

The real dramatic difference between college back when I was college age and college now is that everyone is connected by email and web. U.T. has a web service called Blackboard where professors post course materials and grades, etc., there are discussion forums, they can email us with announcements, and we can email them, or our T.A.'s. And students can email everyone in the class.

So, especially around test time, there's a flurry of mass emails from students, most of them asking for the notes from a particular day when they missed class. I had 8 of them in my inbox this morning, with excuses ranging from, "I missed that day because I had my chemotherapy treatment in Houston," to "I have no excuse. I just really hated going to the boring class. Thanks!"

The ones that really get on my nerves are the emails asking for information that's in the syllabus or that could easily be gotten by contacting the professor or T.A., like "What dates does the exam tomorrow cover?" Would you send an email to 200 people for something you could get by sending an email to one? Kids today!

There's so much talk about academic dishonesty now. Every course syllabus has a required section explaining exactly what cheating is, because I guess teenagers don't know by the time they get to college that it's wrong to copy answers from someone's test or to turn in someone else's work as your own. But all this pleading for other people's class notes doesn't strike me as exactly ethical. In fact, it doesn't seem any more unethical to lift your research paper from Wikipedia than to send an email to your whole class asking to copy someone's notes in exchange for baking them cupcakes. Does it?

Work.

This is the closest I've ever come to a flame war on my blog. How exciting. People have strong feelings about work. Typically, I go back and forth on it. I've been having this conversation in my head in one form or another since I was a teenager and it's only gotten more divergent as I've gotten older and, maybe, clearer about the issues at stake.

The notion of a civil society where everyone follows the rules and contributes has a strong pull for me. We're better when we work together, and sometimes we have to do unpleasant things for the good of society. I have my utopian fantasies. The trouble always seems to be that these things don't ever really work unless there's a strong authoritarian element. Some people just want to do what they want to do.

It's always been major drama to get me to do anything I don't want to do -- ask my mom and dad about mowing the lawn or cleaning the garage when I was in high school -- and the times when I've had a regular job (like most of my twenties and thirties when I worked two jobs -- all day for a paycheck and all night for art) are times when, looking back, I see that I was unhappy more than not. But that's not your problem, is it? What's more important, my happiness or making the world go 'round?

An old friend visited recently. When I met him years ago he reminded me of my father. He grew up in the same area as my dad, their temperaments and accents are the same. As I got to know him better, the resemblance grew stronger. Like my dad, my friend is a lovable curmudgeon. He is a dear man, naturally generous and good, the kind of person you feel fortunate to have as a friend. But on the other hand, he always seems unhappy, he's judgmental, pessimistic, irritable, put upon, complains about everything. It's that dark, sad side of him that reminds me most of my father.

During this recent visit, I realized the other thing he and my dad have in common. They both worked all their lives at jobs they hated. For decades they spent most of their days at soul-crushing, humiliating jobs working for big companies that didn't appreciate them and which left them little time or energy for anything that brought them joy, like hobbies or friends or sitting on the porch with a beer watching the grass grow.

When my father retired a few years ago, his temperament changed overnight. He's still a curmudgeon, but he's lighter, funnier, he has more energy. He seems happy now in a way that I never remember him being. It's a change in outlook that feels familiar to me. When I quit my day job in 2001 I suddenly felt very different too, and it started a whole cascade of changes in my life and attitude that I wouldn't trade for all the financial security in the world. I wish my friend were closer to retirement age.

(I feel a need to defend myself a bit from the commenter who suggested I suck it up and get a job. First, my issue with that craigslist ad was with the falseness of it. The gall of asking people to pretend to be ecstatic about a demeaning minimum-wage job. Generally, the people applying for that kind of job are people who don't have a lot of choices. It's like saying, "I'm going to slap you really hard across the face, and I want you to smile when I do it." I think it's a symptom of a sickness in our society that is caused by corporate culture worming its way into every aspect of our lives.

And regarding me: I do work hard. I'll admit that I guard my leisure time fiercely, but I work hard. I just don't usually get paid for it.)