Eric saves the blog

I am presently in the midst of revising (FTYPAH: "studying") for exams, so blogging has fallen way down the priority list -- still above housecleaning but well below watching "I'd Do Anything" (a). So, I was all set to let the blog go into its usual other-things-are-happening languishing state, but now Eric has given me something to post.

Here are a few videos from a recent performance of the Secondhand Ska Kings at Minneapolis' Fine Line. It's a group of people in their 30s pretending they are still in college. But they are betrayed by the fact that they are in tune:


On this one you get to hear funky, funky Eric sing. An interesting thing to note is that Eric is always like this. Watch his mannerisms and this is pretty much how he acts all the time. No, really. Go to his house and you'll see him acting like this while he's watching TV, making food, etc. Actually, don't go to his house. His wife would not appreciate my sending a load of people over to visit.


Apparently, the fellas have taken on Markéta Irglová. What's with the chick on keyboards? Who is that? Do I know her?

One of my favourite things about Secondhand Ska Kings is that I know most of the members. Eric has been my best friend for 20 years; Matt (the guitarist who hides to the left of the screen) used to live next door to me in Ballard Hall (b); Bryce (the trumpet player) used to live across the hall from me and Matt; Scott (the other trombone player and singer on two of the songs) is the guy who always riles me up by suggesting that Welsh is really Klingon. I am hoping that I do, in fact, know the female keyboardist and that I have shagged her.


(a) Yes, I realise that every time I admit to watching these shows I fall a little further in the eyes of Chris and Jenny. By now they almost certainly regret ever having let me stay in their home.

(b) Note that this is an all-male residence hall. Trust me, it's even worse than it sounds.

Yeah, we are that lame.

The other day, Geraint listed his Facebook status as: "Geraint doesn't live in Chicago." Thus prompting this Wall conversation:

ME: "I don't live in Chicago, either. But I used to work there... in an old department store..."
GERAINT: "But you don't work there anymore?"
ME: "No, not since a woman came in and asked for a hammer."
GERAINT: "A hammer from the store?"
ME: "Indeed. A hammer she wanted. My tool she got."

For those of you playing along at home, uhm, this whole exchange isn't really worth explaining. But it strikes me as particularly funny. Perhaps because it's a conversation that played out over three days.

I wonder if there is anyone reading this who might have also worked at that same department store. I wonder if they still work there; or if not, why?

In response to Annie's question

Is that a general Kerouac question are you referring specifically to On The Road, since it is mentioned in the list of things I've read this year? This was actually my third time to read the book and I have to say that with age (that is, as I age) it loses something.

Kerouac is a good gateway for people who haven't really thought about using words to convey complex and convoluted emotions, rather than, say, cohesive thought. But there are authors before and since who are better at it than he was. If you strip away the events, you get storytelling that isn't actually that strong. Kerouac holds you with the action and pace rather than plot, narrative, craft, etc.

But, perhaps those criticisms are too easy to make 50 years after the fact. Classic literature rarely holds its initial impact for a long period of time because it gets copied to the point that the original seems cliché. This is especially true of any of the Beat authors. People tend to get locked up in the mythology of the author and project their envy/admiration on the work rather than evaluate it honestly.

We, the masses, have a bad habit of assuming that self-destructive behavior automatically means brilliant artistic output. Case in point, Lenny Bruce. Dude was not funny. Not even just a little bit. Don't argue with me on this because you will be wrong. But people hold him up as a genius because he destroyed himself. I have long felt that the only thing keeping Bill Cosby from being the greatest comic storyteller of all time is his failure to develop a heroin addiction. So, we look at Kerouac and think: "He smoked and drank himself to death; he must be a good author."

There are flashes of brilliance, but not on the level that the Great Kerouacian Hype Machine would have you believe.

A really interesting thing about On The Road is that it describes an America that is as foreign to the modern American as it would be to someone who's never even been to the country. Kerouac's pre-interstate, pre-fearing-the-world, pre-consumer-centric America cannot be found. Kerouac's America is so foreign that it is difficult for anyone of my generation (and I suspect anyone younger) to believe that such a place ever existed.

It's interesting also, to see how innocent/ignorant Kerouac was in a lot of things. His foray to Mexico is filled with failures of understanding, for example, the way he mentally ties mambo with Mexico (mambo being an American variant of Cuban music).

For all my modern criticisms, though, Kerouac has had massive impact on me. I still have a tendency to copy his style. I always claim to myself that Hemingway is my greatest influence, but my rambling manner betrays a far greater allegiance to Kerouac (and, it has to be said, Bill Bryson [and my grandfather]). I especially do this in the Welsh language, where there doesn't appear to have been any similar author. Literary rebels in Welsh write in unintelligible dialect, whereas Kerouac played with the words themselves (rather than the way the words are said/spelled) and used them to try to give form to the un-shapeable dimensions of what goes on inside our heads and hearts.

Beyond that, the Kerouac mythology has driven me quite a bit as well. Dr. Handy can probably expound on how she and I, under the influence of On The Road, pushed out into the world as best as could be expected of suburban Midwestern kids under the drinking age. And for each of us that served as the foundation for what we've become, what we're becoming. Although, it's quite possible that films like "Smokey and the Bandit" had just as much sway on my desire to travel.

In terms of Kerouac, though, I tend to think that Dharma Bums is a much better book. It probably had greater influence on me than did On The Road.

So, to sum up: Jack Kerouac is good, but so are Bill Cosby, quaint anglophile travel writers and 70s car films. Obviously, I'm not the best person to be talking to about any of this.

And get off my lawn, you damn kids

Here's a random thing that really annoys the hell out of me: When an artist releases a track or record, and music writers use the word "drop" where "release" belongs.

e.g.: "Jason Mraz has decided to drop this year's summer anthem early."

That's an actual sentence I read today. That "drop" is used in context with Jason Mraz makes it particularly lame. Mraz doesn't really strike me as an artist that drops tracks. That's more of a hip-hop thing. But even then it sounds stupid.

I am waiting for music writers to start using other inappropriate verbs: "Van Morrison expectorated his latest album, 'Keep It Simple,' on March 11."

Morning, evening

I woke up yesterday in Dublin. That sounds like a song lyric, but it is, in fact, a simple declarative statement about my life. And not all that exciting a statement, considering I had gone to bed in Dublin the night before.

It would be a much more interesting story if I had woken up in Dublin after a night of heavy drinking in another country. But I already have a story like that, and a man's liver can only stand so many such experiences. In this case I was simply visiting Donal and Isobel in the comfy green of north Dublin. It was in their apartment that I woke up. Again, this story would be so much better if I hadn't been invited to their apartment, or if I had woken up between them dressed in a leather nurse's uniform and covered head-to-toe in 5W-40 motor oil. Sadly, that didn't happen either.

Visiting Ireland has such an iconic status in the American imagination that I feel ashamed to come back from a weekend in Dublin with a simple tale of grown-ups in a large metropolitan area doing boring grown-up-like things such as: going to dinner, taking a bit of a walk, looking at things in a museum, and checking train times.

If it makes you feel better, we did tend to stay up late drinking beer and talking. But even in that case, the content of our conversations wasn't all that exciting. It was agreed that clocks have grown quite clever over the past several years, the public transportation infrastructures of both Ireland and the United States are woefully inadequate, young people's tendency to finish texts with numerous "x" kisses causes confusion (Do my female classmates really mean that? Are the kisses like Tesco Clubcard points? Can I cash them in for real kisses, or a holiday in Mallorca?), and Something Should Be Done about China but we're not entirely sure what.

It doesn't make the best story, but I had a good time.

I went to bed last night in Cardiff. The story of that adventure I'll save for another post.

Happy Birthday Alicia Cordes!

This is my old friend Alicia Cordes. Her favourite hobby is stealing babies. I'm not entirely comfortable with this behaviour, I'll admit; but, really, who am I to judge? I can no more disown her than I can my white grandmother.

When I refer to Alicia as an "old friend," I mean that I have known her for a long time -- not that she is actually old. We knew each other in high school, which, for our friends in the Home Nations, is something different than what you call high school. High school in the United States generally encompasses those terrible wonderful years from age 14 to 18. Terrible in a wonderful way; wonderful in a terrible way. Like the strange ecstasy that comes from diarrhoea.

Alicia's locker was next to mine for those four years. Shoulder to shoulder for four years, on average seeing each other 30 minutes a day, five days a week. Roughly, that works out to 300 hours spent in close contact over the course of our high school experience -- 12.5 days. Easily longer than any number of romantic relationships I've had.

Anyway, today -- March 20 -- is her birthday. Alicia is 32 years young.

I am able to recall Alicia's birthday, despite my shockingly poor memory, because she and I were born on exactly the same day.

Cardiff is for lovers

There is more to the story of English Major.

I finished my overpriced tea and walked over to the library for a bit of tedious Welsh-language post-modernism. It is a genre that annoys me in the Welsh medium. I think that is because it didn't arrive until the late 80s, which is about when most people elsewhere were starting to think that postmodernism was dead. Welsh-language culture has a bad habit of jumping on the band wagon only after the wagon has actually stopped and been abandoned. Grunge is scheduled to take the Welsh music scene by storm next year.

The library and the humanities building are within a stone's throw of each other, separated by a small green area with trees and shrubs and a wee hill that seems to be the exclusive domain of cute girls when the weather is nice. In the library, I found a study area near a window and was able to look down and see that English Major was still out there with his Chinese yo-yo: swinging it around his leg, popping it into the air, dropping it and having to chase after it into packs of passing students.

Eventually he grew tired of really only being able to do two tricks, packed the yo-yo into his bag (if you guessed olive green over-the-shoulder bag, you guessed correctly!) and started to head off. But a group of girls called down to him from the first floor (FTYPAH: "second floor") and clearly asked him to perform for them. Man of my own heart, he set down his bag and started at it again, this time trying to pop the yo-yo up as high as the girls' window.

Appropriate to my earning-a-Welsh-degree nature, I felt a twinge of jealousy toward English Major. I wished I had some kind of talent that would cause girls to lean out a window and call to me. Damn it, why did I never learn how to Chinese yo-yo, or play harmonica, or do anything impressive? The closest thing I have to a talent is my ability to (poorly) imitate James Hetfield.

Pop into the air, around the leg, around the leg, pop, pop, around the other leg. The girls clapped and then closed the window, turning their attention to the class inside.

They had stopped English Major directly in front of a bench, the occupant of which was a red-haired girl who had been poring over a book that looked overly large and boring even from 50 feet away. She smiled at him and laughed at some little joke and he decided to keep at it with his Chinese yo-yo.

I went back to my reading. Occasionally I would look out the window and see that English Major and the red-haired girl were still there. She tilted her head and smiled at him.

If you look out for it, you see this sort of thing a lot on a university campus. All the stages of love play out in front of you in looks and glances and smiles and hands held and hugs and kisses. A university campus is filled with that, and so many of its occupants bumbling madly foolishly through it. Love is so desperately fragile, and yet so often we run at it with lumbering intensity, as if we are riding a piano down a flight of stairs: Love me! Crash! Thud!

Here, though was the gentle stupid beginning wrapped in the golden late-winter sun. It was like watching a film.

English Major and the red-haired girl talked for about 50 minutes. She laughed. She played with her hair. She held up her boring book and said with body language, at least, that she would much rather be talking to him. He kept at his Chinese yo-yo. The greatest challenge of talking to a girl is knowing what to do with your hands.

Eventually it was time to move on. He put the yo-yo back in his bag, gave that silly floppy-hand wave that is more an excited and nervous "thank you" than "goodbye," then turned and walked away at high speed, trying not to look back. Looking back would be uncool. He walked in the wrong direction -- opposite of where he had been headed before talking to the red-haired girl.

She put her book in her bag, got up, looked back in the direction English Major had gone, and then started walking toward the library. As she passed under my little library window vantage point I could see her face clearly. She was grinning.

I can only sing short phrases

Primrose Hill is not in Greenwich.

For those of you who playing along at home, Primrose Hill is, shockingly, in Primrose Hill -- in Regent's Park, specifically, a fair walk north of the river and on London's western end. Greenwich is east of London's East End, hugging the southern bank of the Thames.

I have no idea how I screwed up these locations so badly. But it was to Greenwich that I dragged Jen Rodvold in my pursuit to stand where Iolo "Reality Spoils A Good Tale" Morgannwg stood in 1792 and held the first Gorsedd. Fortunately, the adventure turned out to be worthwhile.

Jen is a friend of mine from high school. It seems the older I get, the more friends I have from high school. Thank you, Facebook. Thank you, maddening nature of aging. As we get older and spin further and further away, we find that we really appreciate the people who were there 15 years ago.

Anyway, 14 years and 4,032 miles from the Mall of America Hooters where I had seen her last, Jen is now living with a bloke named Dave in a closet in London's east end and earning an MBA. This past weekend I travelled out for a visit.

There is something about me and London. In past visits to the Big Smoke, the people I've stayed with have found themselves distracted from my witty banter and enjoyable company by a particularly vicious stomach bug. The first time I stayed with friends in London Jenny was hit; Chris was the victim the next time I was in town. This time, Dave was on the receiving end. He was up early and often on Saturday morning and not particularly in the mood to go tracking down the origins of historical events that mean nothing to him. So Jen and I set out on our own.

We eventually found ourselves standing on the hill that houses the Royal Observatory, looking out across London and beyond to northern hills on one of those stunningly clear late afternoons that always seem to settle the soul. Dusk started in and turned the whole thing into a sort of moving painting. Silver/blue sky sharpened the shining lines of the Docklands buildings and then to the west lit up with yellow/pink/orange/red sunset that burned to an intense all-sky red as Jen and I walked through the park a bit more.

Atop a hill we had pretty much to ourselves, Jen stopped to call Dave and I stood and looked out and felt for the second time in a month this strong strange feeling that I struggle to put a name to. Connection? A root? The last time I felt it was when the child bride and one of the Claires and I sang out into the Irish night on New Year's Day. It is a feeling of no longer yearning to be elsewhere. It is a feeling, slight and surreal, of being at home.

It punched at my heart and I thought of that scene in "The Gathering Storm" when Churchill looks out across the English countryside and becomes resolved in never giving up. The place, the land is a natural physical representation of his soul. Its spirit reaches up through his feet and connects him to every soul that ever worked or fought or loved in that place. I imagine that for him, the connection he felt ribboned across England, the posh places in particular.

What I feel isn't as strong. It is a single strand, and one that wraps a larger area. It is a feeling that doesn't make a damned bit of sense. Ireland and Wales and London -- these places can't collectively be called "home" unless you are a Victorian imperialist. It is a connection that is absolutely ridiculous. For me especially.

But there it was, kicking at me and making me think that I am finally taking tiny steps toward feeling that this place, whatever "this place" means, can be my home. That is a terrifying possibility in a way. I am here on visa. Pieces of paper can take it all away from me.

The sky had turned infinite dark cobalt, fast becoming night, and Jen and I walked down toward the shops and pubs and restaurants of Greenwich. We crossed under the laser light that marks the Prime Meridian. A tiny green line that tears out over the park and across the night. A tiny invisible strand that connects all of us and how we live our lives.

I turned to Jen, attempted to say something profound and failed completely. Much as I've done here.

Doin' it Celtic cool

Remember those old Mountain Dew country cool ads? These were the ads that came before the days when Mountain Dew was target-marketed to morons. In the 80s, Mountain Dew ads were almost indistinguishable from ads for Busch beer. They generally involved a group of buddies gettin' together and throwin' themselves into lakes and rivers while hooting and slammin' back a few cans of the Dew. For our friends in the Home Nations, this is the sort of thing we do in America. Every day.

It's from these commercials that I got the idea of Mountain Dew Moments. Well, it's from these commercials that Jim Moore got the idea of Mountain Dew Moments.

Moore is an old friend of my dad's. When I was 11 years old, I was allowed on a rafting/camping trip down the Guadalupe River with my dad, Moore, Phil Archer and several other quick-witted beer-drinking Texas journalists. One of them a cameraman named Austin (which is the coolest name ever [a]), who had a certain fondness for flinging himself into perilous situations. When one of the rafts overturned and got stuck in the churning of a section of falls, Austin tied a rope around his waist, the other bit to a tree, and went in after the raft. How's that for macho? He risked his life to save an unmanned raft!

One day, when the group was stopped for lunch, Austin climbed up a tree and positioned himself to jump in the river.

"Is it deep enough for you to jump from there?" Archer asked.

"Hope so," Austin said, and he flung himself into the water.

It was deep enough. Over his head, And instantly I was scrambling up the tree to mimic the act. Moore spotted this and, recognizing that an 11-year-old shouldn't jump into a fast-moving river without supervision, shouted to Austin: "Stay in there for a second. The Cope spawn wants to re-enact your Mountain Dew Moment."

A Mountain Dew Moment is one that is particularly memorable. Not necessarily life-changing or at all important, it will probably still end up on the end-of-life video montage.

Mountain Dew Moments don't necessarily have to be action-based. For me, they are often surreal swells of emotion. The time the child bride and I went to a mariachi festival, and a massive 30-piece band performed a mariachi version of Frank Sinatra's "My Way" and something about the performance ignited the crowd to a standing ovation and I looked behind me and saw 20,000 people on the Coors Amphitheatre lawn seemingly stretching up into the Chula Vista night sky, all of them going completely mad and the applause was so loud that all I could do was howl -- that was a Mountain Dew Moment.

I tell you all of this to try to underline the strangely magical, stars-perfectly-aligned moment that occurred at 2 a.m. on New Year's Day in a pub in Skerries, Ireland.

The child bride and I were visiting our friend, Claire. Through her we found ourselves in a gathering of the old Skerries crew. Everyone knew each other, had grown up with one another. For those of you playing along at home, it was a bit like being at someone else's high school reunion, but a high school reunion where the people actually know each other. At my high school reunion, people kept shouting my name at me and I had no idea who they were.

On New Year's Eve we bundled into the upper floor of the Joe Mays pub, where some idiot had thought it a good idea to set up a karaoke machine. As you can almost certainly guess, it was a shambles. The last thing one wants as they close the book on a year is a squad of screeching drunkards belting out "Like a Virgin" and "Sweet Caroline." Phrases like "the wheels have come off" and "it's gone horribly pear-shaped" were created for evenings like this. By midnight there was no karaoke, just background music to the amplified screeching of intoxicated women. It was like some ridiculous neo-Dadaist performance art.

But then came that blessed moment, the Mountain Dew Moment when we all clicked into one another amid the opening strains of the Pogues' "Fairytale of New York." Some groaned, some cheered. But then we all sang. Every single person in the pub was there in that moment. All of us singing so loud, so full that we couldn't even hear our own insufferable voices. For 4 minutes and 35 seconds we just didn't care. We reached a state of Zen. We were one.

It was so perfect, so exquisite, that the karaoke machine was shut off immediately afterward. There were no protests -- even through the gallons of Guinness and Miller (b), we collectively knew we had reached our peak. There was no possible greater moment. We could do no more. It was absurd. It was beautiful.

And that's how 2008 began for me. We spilled out into the cool Irish night singing whatever came to our heads, staggering arm-in-arm, ready for this life. Whatever the hell it's got for us.

-------------------------------
(a)Reportedly, my parents originally planned to name me Austin, after the city of my birth, but my grandfather -- who everyone knows as Breezy -- thought it sounded stupid. In my early 20s, I seriously considered legally changing my name to James Austin Cope, but there are already plenty of reasons for my friends to make fun of me. I didn't need to add changing my name to that list.

(b)I don't know who was buying my drinks -- it wasn't me -- but somewhere along the line it was decided that because I am American I should be drinking American beer. As I say, since I wasn't buying (big up the Skerries crew) I had no recourse to complaint.

Happy New Year

As mentioned below, the child bride and I will be in Ireland for the next few days. I won't be back at the blog until at least 4 January. Somehow I think you'll carry on.

This is probably stupid on my part, but I am really looking forward to 2008, perhaps more so than I can remember for any previous year. In general, I refuse to make New Year's resolutions or pretend that a new year is any different than a new month, new week, new day, new hour.

"In Christ all things are new," a pastor once told me.

Shawn can probably tell you what scripture that comes from (I'm guessing New Testament, because of the stuff about Jesus). But even if you remove the "In Christ" bit it's a generally true statement that I try to remind myself of when I get frustrated. All things are new all the time.

But there is something about this coming year that inspires a stupid optimism. I feel as if I have spent a long time laying the groundwork and this year I will finally start to build something for myself. That is stupid, stupid optimism, I know -- inspired by two too many glasses of port -- but it's how I feel.

Maybe you feel the same way.

Maybe you don't. If you are a more sober/realistic person, New Year's is simply an opportunity to pay too much for drinks at the bar you always go to, or watch crap pop groups on television and remind yourself of why you don't listen to pop music.

Whatever it is for you, I hope that it is good.

In the spirit of pointless merrymaking, I will link to this YouTube video, containing what remains my favourite song of all time. Blwyddyn newydd dda.

Christmas Without Robots

If you haven't had enough Christmas spirit, my latest column is out.

My Post-Quarter-Life Crisis

My latest column is out. And contains a sentiment that I will save for when I'm famous and asked to speak at high school graduations: Older people are not superior, they've simply had more time to formulate arguments that they are.

Too cool for Yule

This picture both amuses and pains me. It is me, Sara, and Sara's best friend Michelle back in 1995.
Damn it we were cool.
So, so cool.
Really cool.
Maybe if I keep saying it to myself that will make it true.
Great googly moogly, we were cool.

Did I mention how cool we were?

But if we weren't wet, we wouldn't need to dry out in pubs

OK, lovers of stereotypes, what do we know about Britain?
- People here have funny accents.
- Everyone has bad teeth.
- They all drink warm beer.
- It rains a lot.

Well, the first two aren't all that true, unless by "Britain" what you really mean is "Barry." Interestingly, those two stereotypes could also be used to describe the American South.

The third one is only partially true, and less likely to be true in areas where the first two are true. Go round to Ricky Hatton's local and odds are they're all drinking cold pints of Carling.

But the thing about the rain -- that's true. Granted, there are long stretches of lovely weather, but it does rain with a certain frequency not seen in, say, San Diego, California. Yet, bafflingly, the person-to-rain-jacket ratio there appears to be about the same as here.

For reasons totally unclear to me, hardly anyone in this country owns wet-weather gear. Or, if they do, they refuse to wear it. Britons sometimes possess a certain stroppy teenager element to their behaviour -- I am convinced that there are so many atheists in this country not because they've all sat down and tried to reason out their standing in the universe, but simply because church isn't cool. Church. Cringe. Church is mingin'. (a)

In Minnesota, it's not rare to see some idiot teenager standing around in 10-below weather wearing little more than a hooded sweatshirt ("hoodie jumper," for our friends in the Home Nations), but these people either freeze to death or gain a bit of sense by they time they reach their early 20s.

Similarly, it's not shocking to see the Bishop of Llandaff students trudging around in the rain looking as if they've just been pulled from the Taff (b). But the adults are wandering about doing pretty much the same thing.

It has been raining for most of the past week in Yr Hen Ddinas, in that way that always reminds me of nautical films. I live three miles from the coast, but the weather makes me feel as if I am at sea. The wind whistles and thumps and roars against the house, and sheets of spitting rain splatter against the windows. So, I wrap up in my Marmot rain jacket before venturing outside, which means I don't have to spend the whole day feeling as if I commuted via one of those amusement park splash rides.

At the train platform this morning I was one of only two people who had thought to dress for the weather. Everyone else was out there in their office attire, getting soaked. There were a handful of women who at least were attempting to defend themselves with umbrellas, but for the most part everyone stood around looking miserable. What the hell is wrong with these people? Buy a rain jacket, you fools!

(a) That teen-speak is blatantly copied from Catrin Dafydd's Random Deaths and Custard.

(b) Check me out; rocking the blog with the ultra-local references.

The old hotness

Lately I feel as if I am going through some sort of pre-midlife midlife crisis. I am boring, my bitches. I have left Coolsville.

OK, I was never a resident of Coolsville. They let me visit once, but only carrying a pass, and I had to be out by sunset like the Welsh in Chester (a). But I did used to be less boring.

I was reminded of this fact when my cousin, Shawn Jr., recently commented on a post, reminding me of the reason why he wouldn't let me drive my Papa's golf cart. Because when I drove "all thought and rationalization flew out the window" (b).

I'm sure a number of the people who read this blog could tell you similar stories involving me behind the wheel of a car. Or of my strange love for throwing myself from things -- speeding boats, rooftops, etc. You know those stories you always read around prom time about high schoolers getting drunk and doing shockingly stupid things and dying? Every time I see one of those stories, I think: "Yep. I've done that."

But I wasn't drunk. And I carried on doing that stuff well into my 20s (c).

So, I wasn't cool, I was unhinged. But at least I wasn't boring.

What the hell happened to me that I am no longer waking up in France, but instead fretting about missing episodes of "Strictly Come Dancing" or "Strictly Come Dancing: It Takes Two"? Gah. I wish there were two of me, so I could punch myself in the face. And then myself could punch me in the face -- I deserve to be punched twice for being so boring.

The thing that frustrates me is that I am almost certainly a better person now that I am boring. I am generally agreed to have been an insufferable ass up until... say, five or six years ago. I have had friends go out of their way to tell me how much more they like me now than in the good ol' days when I was insisting on waterskiing during lightning storms or drunkenly running full speed at oncoming trains.

But why can't there be a happy medium?

If anyone needs me, I'll be drinking beer and watching repeats of "Q.I."

(a) In response to the same Welsh rebellion that saw Cardiff's St. John the Baptist church ransacked Henry IV issued a decree that in the city of Chester "all manner of Welsh persons or Welsh sympathies should be expelled from the City; that no Welshman should enter the City before sunrise or tarry in it after sunset, under pain of decapitation." Reportedly, this law has never been repealed.

(b) That would make the best title of an autobiography ever: All Thought and Rationalization Flew Out the Window. It's too bad I don't live up to the title.

(c) At which point, yes, I was often drunk.

Random memory of a really surreal thing that didn't seem all that surreal at the time

Here's an actual thing that happened in my life: Some 15 years and six months ago, Eric and I were in the Dominican Republic, wearing wool marching band uniforms, and several hundred people were shouting, "guapo," at Eric's brother. That's the sort of thing you wouldn't think I'd forget, but I had until just now.

Cheesecake 97

I think I've mentioned before that one of the more amusing elements of British university-campus fashion is their strange love of random Americana on T-shirts and sweatshirts ("hooded jumpers," for international viewers). For example, I often see faux-worn-out clothing promoting Minnesota kayaking clubs or non-existent Wisconsin colleges.

Thus far my favourite of these had been the shirt that simply said: "CENTERFIELDER." But today I saw one even better: a girl wearing a sweatshirt that said:

CHEESECAKE
97

I want to believe that it was an ironic shirt, that someone somewhere spotted this ridiculous trend and decided to take it to its ridiculous extreme. But it's so hard to tell sometimes.

Is America ready for the Secondhand Ska Kings?

The other day I saw Suggs advertising fish fingers ("fish sticks" for those of you playing along at home) on television, which elicited a howling response from myself and a sort of roll of the eyes from the child bride. She did this because she knew that no matter what she did, I was going to insist on telling her who Suggs was.

My head is a Rwandan minefield of useless pop culture references -- it is almost impossible to hold a two-minute conversation with me without my working in a joke about some person or band you've never heard of. I don't really have a good reason for doing this. When you think about it, it's a stupid way to hold a conversation. What's the point of a wacky reference to Phyllis Diller (a) if it is no more relevant to the listener than a reference to Valerie Bell (b)? But I can't help myself.

"Dude! Suggs!" I shouted, when I first saw the 2 Tone icon on screen.

After a bit of giggling to myself in such a way as to convey that I was thoroughly amused, but not so thoroughly that I would refuse to field questions about the source of my amusement, I decided that perhaps my wife hadn't heard me, despite her sitting three feet from me.

"I can't believe Suggs is shilling fish fingers," I said, being sure to annunciate.

The child bride knows that I pride myself on retaining useless crap information and I live to share it with other people. After a long pause and an exasperated sigh, she asked: "Who's Suggs?"

"Cultural icon," I said, happily, knowingly. "I suppose you could blame him for Gwen Stefani."

And that's pretty much ska in a nutshell, isn't it? Suggs and Madness took the Jamaican sound, Anglicised it, made it poppy and sold a load of records in the UK. The 2 Tone sound carried over to the United States a few years later and fuelled the early 90s ska revival that gave us No Doubt.

Now Suggs is selling fish fingers and Stefani is No. 4 on my List Of Women I'd Like To Keep In A Shed For Personal Use. Funny how life works.

But the point of this post is that sound: ska. These days it is all too often the sound of concrete basements and cheap beer; the sound of Welsh-language activists who are too untalented to master or develop their own folk music. But occasionally it will show up in an Amy Winehouse or Lily Allen cover and I'll grow all wistful.

Whereas interest in ska had ebbed elsewhere by the late 90s, it was the sound de rigeur of Midwestern college bands. It was easy to play and easy to dance to. The quirky/catchy Midwestern brand of 2 Tone was the soundtrack to my Moorhead years. And whereas I suggest that most modern purveyors of ska are crap, the ska I was listening to in those days was great. It was great because everything is great when it's in the past and because most of my friends were in ska bands. And as we all know, people who are in bands are cool; if you have friends who are in bands, you, too, are cool. So, I was great. Everything was great in Moorhead and I never wanted to leave.

Not really. But the music was good. Long-time friends of the blog will remember my tome to 3 Minute Hero, one of the bands of the time.

Anyway, a few years ago, guys from 3 Minute Hero and Suspect Bill and The Smoking Jackets decided to relive the good old days, when they could jump around on stage all night and not wake up the next morning with aching backs. They formed Secondhand Ska Kings and started playing gigs mostly to their ever-suffering girlfriends and wives.

Things have moved on a bit and these days they occasionally play to crowds of people with whom they have more than one degree of separation. Sometimes these people even give them money to play. As evidence of this big-time success, the band has released an album, Ale to the Kings (iTunes), and I think you should buy it. Here's why:

1) The music is actually good. What they've done for this album is something that's a bit different from what a lot of ska bands do -- they've practiced. You can spot this in the lack of chipped notes.
2) Four of the guys in this band have bought me beer. If you buy this album, they will probably buy me beer again.
3) The guitarist, Matt, once nursed me back to health when I got the flu. If you buy this album, you will be supporting the idea of my being alive. If you are one of my ex-girlfriends, you should buy the album anyway.
4) Trombonist Eric has been my best friend for almost 20 years, is a frequent commenter on my blog, and is the guy that everyone loved in the documentary about me. If you buy this album, you get to hear him implore a woman to "take that, take that skirt off."
5) The cover art is cool.

For the low-low price of $9.99 (less than the cost of a pint in many London pubs), you get 44 minutes of the good-time sound that was in part popularised by a man who now sells fish fingers.

Perhaps one day a strangely impossible-not-to-look-at beautiful girl will be inspired by the Secondhand Ska Kings and will produce music that is at once brilliant and insufferable. It's not that far off an idea. Matt's first band, Ten Cent Fun, is mentioned in the liner notes of one of No Doubt's first albums.

(a) Female stand-up comic whose career peaked in the late 1960s and early 1970s
(b) Girl I had a crush on in kindergarten.

It was better than Cats

It would appear that a major part of the writing process for me is spending several months telling people that I am going to write something, but not actually writing said thing.

Before I wrote The Way Forward (formerly known as Drinking Stories but still unpublished by any name), I spent about five months claiming that I was going to write it. In the case of my second book, that shit-talking interval has been reduced to four months and I am now in the process of very slowly crafting yet another story that no one will read.

I acknowledge the futility of such an act, but I still post myself in front of the computer every day, because that's my mental picture of what a writer should do. Much of the way I approach writing is wrapped in what I think I should do. That's a clear sign of a poseur, I know, but since that is indeed what I am I don't really know any other way to be. It's one of those logic puzzles: how does a poseur pretend to not be a poseur without looking like a poseur posing as a non-poseur?

So, I sit there in front of my laptop trying to look like a writer. If you were to set up a web camera in my study, perhaps I would indeed look like one. At almost any time of day you would see me sitting at the computer and you might think, "Gosh, there's a fellow who's dedicated to his craft," but on closer inspection you would see that I am more often than not checking Facebook.

"Do I have any new friends yet? No. How about now? Nope. OK, how about now?"

Yes, you can get e-mail alerts for such things, but what if there's a glitch? It's better to keep checking. Because, you know, the number of people I have listed on my Facebook is a direct indicator of my character. Your number of Facebook friends is directly related to how much Jesus loves you. Presently Jesus loves Al Franken a whole lot more than me, which is kind of unfair since Franken is Jewish. But Jews stick together, I guess.

Yesterday, though, I was actually writing my actual book and feeling quite pleased with myself, when I heard a little "tink-tink" noise just behind me. I turned around and saw a small orange and black cat just sitting there on the floor, staring at me.

"Hello, cat," I said. "What are you doing here?"

In typical cat fashion, it refused to answer. But I was able to guess that it had come in from the back garden. In these summer days I like to keep the door open to let the air in.

"I don't think Rachel would want you in the house," I told the cat, pointing to the stairs.

The cat acknowledged this and headed downstairs with me, where -- in true 1940s housewife style -- I put some cream in a bowl and set it outside in the garden. I'm sure proper cat owners will tell me that cats do not actually like cream, or that it is, in fact, bad for them. But this cat humoured me by licking it up and allowing me to pet it for a while.

"You're one of those damn cat diplomats," I realised.

Delegates from the cat community will occasionally try to persuade me to change my anti-cat stance. This tabby was very clearly trying to strike right to my core by showing up in my study.

Over the years, I have noticed that almost every author I like, and several that I at least respect, are cat people. Ernest Hemingway, Kurt Vonnegut, Jack Kerouac, James Joyce, Dylan Thomas, Kate Roberts -- all of them had cats and their appreciation of the fiendish creatures was often worked into their art. In Islands in the Stream, Hemingway spends a good five pages yammering on about his cat.

Since I am more a person who wishes to be seen as a writer than an actual writer, I have long worried that I would need to adopt a cat to fit the caricature of who I am trying to be. I have also long lamented that I am doing very little, if anything, toward developing lung cancer or cirrhosis of the liver.

Indeed, if that cat shows up again with a pack of Camels and a bottle of Bombay Sapphire, I will see right through its feline trickery.

But that's the thing, see. I haven't seen that cat since. After no more than two minutes of hanging out with me, the cat scampered off. That's the thing about cats -- they leave you. Which is at the heart of why I don't like them.

The purpose of having a pet, in my mind, is to have something around that will make you feel less lonely but doesn't have the ability to commandeer the TV remote. The purpose of a pet is right there in the name; it should sit there and be warm and pay attention to me and allow me to pet it. To that extent, I have never understood the point of keeping fish or birds. Pets should be mammals -- dogs, cats, bison, etc.

But a cat is a heart-breaker. It shows up and gives you a token amount of attention and then disappears to rub its fur all over your black shirts and make your house smell of its wee. Cats are bastards, dealing a kind of emotional crack to the weakest souls.

Here I am, wannabe writer, feeling a bit lonely in this faraway country where I still haven't mastered the language, and this cat shows up and makes me feel better. And then it pisses off, never to be seen again, making me feel even worse. Fucker. Little four-legged heart-wrenching demon.

Man, I hate cats.

*How many people get that headline?

I got love for you if you were born in the 80s

And suddenly Hilary Duff is my favourite manufactured pop songstress ever.

I know there are one or two gay guys who read my blog, so I won't have to tell them, but it's possible that some of you will not have heard of Hilary Duff, erstwhile star of the Disney-manufactured "Lizzie McGuire."

Like previous Disney spawn, our gal Hilary has broken free of her clean-cut image, developed an eating disorder and is now churning out simple pop songs designed to make it sound like she's not churning out simple pop songs.

None of that matters to me, though, thanks to her latest track, "Danger." Well, I assume it's her latest -- how the hell would I know? It is, at least, the most recent (and only) Hilary Duff track that I've heard.

I've gone to the trouble to upload the track*. Take a quick listen to it and see if you can guess what appeals to me about the song:



Yes. It's that first line: "Were you born in '74?"

As an individual born in 1976 -- and especially an individual born in 1976 who attends university with a load of people born in 1988 -- I wholeheartedly approve of Ms. Duff's decision to sing a song about someone 13 years her elder.

Hilary Duff, you naughty, naughty, lovely young thing you!

*But I will remove it as soon as possible if anyone representing Duff or her record label asks.