Holy cow, am I late with this one. I don’t know if I mentioned this here yet, but I’ve recently taken on a pretty good amount of writing work for decider.com, The Onion’s new Austin-specific website, and it’s definitely not helping me free up time for the blog. I’m still working on finding a way to balance the paid writing with the free stuff.

In lieu of further excuses, please enjoy, two weeks late or so, the sounds of November 2008.

“March Of The Iron Army”, Monkey: Journey to the West
This comes from the opera Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett put together, based on the Chinese tale of the Monkey King. Sounds fucking punk rock, right? I don’t claim to have much to say about opera, but I dig the driving, chanting sound of “March of the Iron Army”, and I’m trying to diversify this month.

“Love Lockdown”, Kanye West
I have no idea what Kanye’s up to right now. Which is awesome. I’m a fan of all three of his records, but I thought Graduation was running on fumes, to a certain extent- it was more focused than his first two albums, but less catchy and less fun. “Love Lockdown” isn’t exactly catchy or fun, but it’s sure as hell interesting, and for someone as huge as Kanye West to completely abandon everything that made him famous in favor of doing something new- I’m definitely paying attention. It reminds me a little bit about something Prince would do, or would have done a decade or more ago- even stripping the song of a drum track, except on the chorus, recalls the way Prince yanked the bass off of “When Doves Cry” back a hundred and fifty years ago. I have no idea if I’ll like the new Kanye record, but I’ll for damn certain be listening. You have to wonder what records he’s listening to these days.

“No Matter What”, T.I.
T.I., on the other hand, seems to have been listening to nothing but power ballads this year. The song’s nothing but straight braggadocio, talking about how he doesn’t give a fuck, no matter what anyone says he’s not going anywhere, etc… But it’s all done over this big John Bonham-style beat with a handful of different guitar solos bringing it all home. No matter what you may think of T.I., he’s definitely picked up on the fact that best feature of the eighties rock he’s aping here is the fact that it remains triumphant regardless of the circumstances. What the fuck? I’m on his team. He makes it sound so inspirational.

“Dancing Choose”, TV On The Radio
“Dancing Choose” is a weird song. I have no idea what it’s about, and I always felt like TV On The Radio was one of those bands I was supposed to like, even though they never connected with me. I’d be all, oh, yeah, they’re really innovative, but I never ever felt the need to listen to them on my own time before. But I like this one- it’s poppy and fun and kinda dance-y and a bunch of rock and roll. It kinda sounds a little bit like “We Didn’t Start The Fire” at one point, and the world needs more things that remind me of Billy Joel in it.

“Heavy Petting”, Dead Confederate
I get the feeling that Dead Confederate is going to be a disposable band for me. I’m gonna use ‘em up and throw ‘em out, and it’ll be a very trashy affair for everyone involved. Things like this aren’t meant to last, and a band that manages to hit the grungy, stoner-rock spot this effectively just as the weather is turning cold will probably forever be associated with the time I just moved back to Austin after a year in London, and I won’t ever want to listen to it by the time the weather either gets warm or a little colder. They’ll release a new album eighteen months from now and I’ll think about checking it out, but even if I download it, I won’t ever get around to adding it to iTunes, and they’ll sit with Decibully and the Soulsavers and the Icarus Line among all of the rock bands that sounded good one year, but scratched a nostalgic itch, rather than turned in something that made me want to stick around even after I used it all up. And I realize that tells you nothing about “Heavy Petting”, which is a great song- big-time rock and roll, and loud and sassy enough to be awesome. I’d love to see them play it live, but only if they come through town before the end of January.

“Oceans and Streams”, The Black Keys
You know all that stuff I said about Dead Confederate just a second ago? That’s how I was pretty sure I felt about the Black Keys back in March. I really loved their record for a little while, but it never quite stuck- I never picked out favorite songs, except maybe the closing track, and they were too much of a creaky blues-rock thing for me to believe in them as something to invest myself in. But I couldn’t quite get their record out of my head, and every time I revisited it, there were more songs that stuck out. “Oceans and Streams” sounds like it came off of the soundtrack to a movie that hasn’t been made yet, but it plays right before somebody gets into a fight, or starts fucking on a pool table, or something. It’s a little bit mournful, but totally committed to whatever course of action it’s set upon now.

“The Beaten Side Of Town”, Barry Adamson
Last winter, at the London International Jazz Festival, we went to see Barry Adamson, even though I couldn’t remember who he was, because his set was billed as featuring guest star Nick Cave. Nick Cave did come out, albeit just for a single song- but the way he tore through “Enough” by Jacques Brel was totally worth the £30 we paid, and that was back when the pound was worth more than two dollars, instead of a buck-forty like it is right now. He was the original bassist for the Bad Seeds, but his current material sounds nothing like that. It’s jazzy work inspired by film scores, and it sounds like nothing so much as a lost Morphine record. His band’s probably better than Morphine ever was, at least in terms of musicianship, but there’s not quite the same amount of soul to it. It doesn’t matter- “The Beaten Side Of Town” may be pastiche, but it’s fucking great pastiche. It’s got finger-snaps and reminds you of when jazz was genuinely cool shit, rather than a thing that old Eastern European dudes were the standard-bearers of.

“Corrido Por Buddy”, Jolie Holland
Talk about a voice that totally clobbers me every time I hear it. Jolie Holland sings with a ton of soul, even if it kinda sounds like she’s, I dunno, chewing a banana when she starts belting it out. There’s a real passion to her music, and one thing that I love about “Corrido Por Buddy” is that it sounds like something you’d hear on a Lucinda Williams record, maybe, or another progressive female country singer, but it’s in this voice that’s so unconventional and sincere that it really elevates itself beyond its genre. I think it’s about a boy or something, but it doesn’t make much difference- when she sings, “I wish I’d been a better friend”, it’s about all of the people you didn’t pay enough attention to, not some fucked-up kid she met in Texas one night. That’s a trick that only a person with a voice like hers- and there aren’t many of them- can pull off.

(due to some technical difficulties at the moment, this week’s edition of my football column for troubl.org, Down and Distance, didn’t make it onto the site. Since it’s got a definite sell-by date stamped on it, I’m running it here today. Next week’s edition should run on troubl, as scheduled.)

It should be obvious at this point that Peyton Manning is a washed-up Loser who will spend most of the next five or six years floundering with the Colts, before a late-career rally thrusts him back to the playoffs for one last run in Indianapolis. He’ll find himself ending his career in a St. Louis Rams jersey, and after a final disappointing year in the NFL, he’ll work as a b-list commentator for Fox Sports. He’ll live in a pained state of lingering jealousy toward Tom Brady, who may never play professional football again, for getting out in time to be a legend, while Peyton is voted into the Hall of Fame out of some misguided sense of pity. That is the most abundantly clear lesson of the 2008 NFL season, and there isn’t a fan or commentator in America who doubts its veracity.

It probably also means that he’ll strike up a pen-pal relationship with John McCain, who has to see more than a little of himself in the Colts QB right now. Their paths are eerily similar, and as a person who writes about the parallels between football and politics, my greatest regret at the moment is that my man Vince Young wasn’t playing for Tennessee on Monday. The parallel would be the sort of thing that sets a liberal white writer’s heart a-twitter- as both former Golden Boy heroes fall to unexpectedly dominant upstart opponents, there’d be a very unique beauty in the leaders of the opposition both being black men in roles (Presidential candidate, starting quarterback) that are traditionally occupied by white dudes. Maybe it’s for the best that it’s not the way it shook out- Manning may be a Loser like John McCain, but Barack Obama is on a winning streak that clearly trumps even what they’ve got going on in Nashville.

[though it seems heaven-sent...] One of the more interesting facets of the serious championship run Barack Obama has been on for the past month or so is that, if election day delivers the results that everyone expects (my old bookie, Paddy Power, has already paid out on his victory), he’s changed the face of what Americans think a leader should look and act like. I don’t just mean racially- I mean he’s a cool-tempered, nuanced Democrat.

The Republican brand, dented though it may be, still runs on an authoritarian, it’s-okay-daddy’s-here track. John McCain, in between his wildly erratic attacks on Obama that seem to come seemingly at random, is using that “I’ll stare down Putin, I’ll take those fuckers on Wall Street to task” approach as his only real selling point. For a long time, it’s seemed that’s the sort of leader- in any role, on any scale- that Americans like to see.

It’s possible, then, that until Barack Obama, what people really wanted their leaders to look like was Peyton Manning, or George W Bush, or Tom Brady, or Rudy Giuliani. There’s certainly anecdotal evidence for it- If you look at the campaign contributions of NFL players, after all, you’ll find that head coaches and quarterbacks favor Republicans almost exclusively… (Dennis Green is pretty much the only exception to that rule, but who wants his support?) It doesn’t prove anything, of course, but if Peyton Manning and John Elway and Dan Marino and Mike Ditka and Tony Dungee all identify with Republicans as to what a leader should look like, then there’s probably some connection there.

The flip side to this is that players in other positions usually favor the Democratic Party. And it’s not as simple as a black/white thing, where mostly-white quarterbacks and head coaches favor Republicans, while not-white players in other roles favor Democrats- while Emmitt Smith may give 100% of his political donations to Democrats, so does Brian Urlacher.

All of which is to say that the current implosion occuring on-field for Peyton Manning parallels that of the McCain campaign in ways that are more interesting than just “they’re both white and traditionally successful, and now they both suck!” Maybe the day of that kind of leader is passing on. We’ll see if Dungee tries to recruit Joe the Plumber to replace Tony Ugoh as starting left tackle.

[and elsewhere...] Whatever the face of American leadership ends up looking like- and any New England Patriots fan who was conscious last season can tell you about the dangers of checking off the final win before it’s all settled- it’s definitely moving in weird directions. A grizzled drunk is leading the NFL’s only undefeated team; a droopy-eyed kid with the worst beard in America has miraculously turned the Chicago Bears offense into one of the league’s best; even Daunte Caulpepper is about to emerge from retirement to quarterback the Lions. Meanwhile, previous stalwarts of the league’s leadership like Manning, Brady, Romo and Favre are either sitting on the sidelines or floundering on the field. It’s starting to seem likely that maybe leaders who don’t fit the square-jawed mold of the last couple decades are being given their chance. With that in mind, the consistent lead in the polls Obama’s been carrying since late September starts to seem less and less like an anomoly. And we’ll find out for sure just how this all plays out in a week.

As happens sometimes when left without plans on a weekend, I have found myself arguing with goofballs in right-wing Internet communities about the meaning of Joe the Plumber. I’m not proud of it, but these things happen.

Now, I kinda like the guy. I think he’s a moron, for the most part, and that nobody should come anywhere close to taking anything that comes out of his mouth seriously, but I still admire his pluck. I don’t think he really did anything wrong by approaching Obama with a fabricated story, because I don’t believe he expected anyone would ever investigate it, and the point- that Obama’s tax plan would raise the taxes of a rich-ass plumber- is valid. I’ve got no problem with what he did in his initial approach to Obama, and you have to admire the sheer balls of a guy who, upon finding himself suddenly and unexpectedly famous for pretty much nothing, does everything in his power to stretch it out. Campaign appearances, talking to every reporter who shows up, the book deal, recording contract, potential run for Congress… It makes it seem like maybe Joe doesn’t really like plumbing, but whatever- good for him, I hope it all works out. I hope the record is everyone’s prom theme this year, that his book is so powerful and moving that it makes Hemingway look like a suicidal drunk with a pathological fear of latent homosexuality, that his whole neighborhood rallies behind his Congressional campaign, etc. He clearly wants it badly enough.

So the argument around the guy is this bizarre sense of victimization from righties regarding the dude’s sudden fame. Now, I’ll agree that it’s fucked for state employees to abuse their positions to snoop into his private records. But that’s not what they’re really mad about. What they’re mad about is the mainstream media! What a bunch of shills, attacking a regular, innocent dude for daring to question their favorite candidate!

It’s a load of bullshit, of course. The guy is very famous, and he’s doing everything in his power to stay famous as long as possible. And now the media’s paying attention to him. Well, that’s what they do to famous people.

They weren’t interested in him when he was just a dude arguing with Obama on a YouTube clip. They were interested because his name was mentioned a twelve times a minute for an hour and a half in a nationally televised debate. At that point, he was famous, and that’s the point at which the media got interested.

And the initial stories on the guy were hardly attacks. They were semi-fawning David Brooks-ian pieces about the normal, regularness of Joe the Plumber, just an undecided voter from Ohio worried about taxes screwing him over when he wanted to buy a business…

Because the guy was famous for one thing: Being a plumber who was about to buy a business worth $250,000 whose taxes were about to go up because of Obama’s tax plan.

That was what he approached Obama with in the initial segment, and that was why John McCain brought him up in that debate. The fact that he wasn’t on the verge of buying the business and he wasn’t going to have his taxes raised were the most relevant part to his story, because they refuted everything that he had initially claimed to be. And when Joe the Plumber himself started holding court for reporters on his front lawn, campaigning alongside McCain, hiring publicists, seeking record contracts and book deals, and talking about potential congressional runs, that suddenly became relevant. At that point, he invited in the scrutiny, and talking about the places where the truth differs from the story he told is hardly an attack.

But lord, are we in for a whole host of whining over the next four years about just how unfair everything is to the poor conservatives! It’s kind of hilarious- these are people who pictured themselves as victimized outsiders, politically speaking, even when they controlled the Presidency and both houses of Congress. Part of the right-wing character is the idea of oneself as a rebel fighting the evil authority out to infringe on everything that makes us great- previously, they had to resort to hating college professors and Keith Olberman. Pretty soon, though, they’ll actually be the out-of-favor minority. Cover your ears- it’s gonna get shrill.

(I was going to open this with a joke about Mario, rather than Joe the Plumber, but I did a quick Google search to see if it were played out and had just gone under my radar- I don’t think that’s the case, but this piece on Associated Content, of all places, is a pretty great Onion rip-off that milks that territory fully.)

Just in case you missed it, awesome blog (and host of an occasional entry from me) mightygodking.com is back online after a case of the BoingBoings overloaded his previous server.

Okay, so Joe the Plumber is still famous, making joint appearances with Sarah Palin and stuff like that. Which is weird and cool, in a sort-of professional wrestling way, where one guy yanks a fan out of the crowd and trains him for a match against his rival. But it sure does make one of the far-right narratives about the guy ineffective: That he’s just an ordinary fella who came under undeserved scrutiny by the lapdog media after he dared question big, bad Obama, and he never sought any of this out.

You know what else makes that a hard thing to sell? When the dude hires a publicist.

In the comments to the last post, StuporMundi asks about the reason this blog’s had some tumbleweeds blowing through it the past month or so:

Is your absence from the blogosphere the price we pay just because you felt it necessary to get a job?

The answer is yeah, kinda, which I know is a crappy reason- most people have jobs, even people with fairly active blogs, and I’m sure I’ll learn how to do both. But at the moment, my whole rhythm has been thrown off. My previous working style involved waking up and reading the Guardian- in print, because I am anachronistic- and then scanning about a dozen or so blogs, and seeing what it got me thinking about, so that by mid-afternoon I had a handful of things to write about and could update at least once a day. Since leaving England and taking on a job with office hours, that whole system’s been thrown out of whack, and I haven’t yet figured out what to replace it with. From this point on, I’m going to make sure this blog’s updated at least thrice-weekly with readable content. Additionally, there’s still down and distance, my weekly football/etc column at troubl.org, and within about two weeks, some regular writing coming for a very cool, very legitimate organization that I’m really excited to be associated with. So stay tuned here, and I’ll make it worth your while. I appreciate the patience and continued attention while things are busy, but there’ll be a schedule here again presently.

To be fair, a lot of people who are freaking out about how much money the McCain campaign pays Sarah Palin’s makeup artist clearly have no idea how expensive it is to hire someone who knows how to cover up lobotomy scars.

Week six of my football column, Down and Distance, is up at Troubl.org, and it goes something like this:

I spent Saturday at the Three Points Ranch, just outside of Marble Falls, TX, for a wedding ceremony. Evan, a college friend of my wife’s, was getting married to his boyfriend, Addison. They’re both Manhattanites, upwardly-mobile members of a social class I rarely spend time with. The ceremony was conducted in Texas, as that’s where both of their families hail from, but the actual wedding papers, by law, were to be filed in Massachusetts–except the day before the wedding, Connecticut ruled that gay folks could get married in their state, saving them a trip further north.

It made for some interesting table-talk at the reception, let me tell you. My wife and I sat with six well-dressed, well-coifed men, all couples, as well as an elderly uncle, a widower who wore his cowboy hat, boots, and belt buckle emblazoned with the words right to bear arms without a trace of irony.

So, where are you from? I asked the dude sitting next to me.

Memphis, he said. Originally, Memphis. I live in New York now.

Ooh, Tennessee? a young fella across the table said. Have you been to Dollywood?

The rest of the table looked at him with stark interest, and he nodded profusely. Only four times! He laughed.

Oh, god, I want to go so bad, the man seated next to my wife said, his voice thick with an Australian accent. I just love her.

I kicked my wife under the table, delighted to have a stereotype as innocuous as a group of gay men’s devotion to Dolly Parton validated, when the old cowboy spoke. That woman is a national treasure, he said with a thick West Texas drawl, something like Couch Taylor on Friday Night Lights mixed with a hint of Sam Elliott.

I turned to the guy who started this, the one from Tennessee, aware that the novelty of this conversation would quickly wear off. Enough about Dolly Parton, I implored, what do you think of the Titans this year?

(read the rest here)

When the column first went live this morning, that picture up there was attached to it, but it was quickly replaced with one a bit more tasteful- unless you’re a Cowboys fan. This week’s column is about gay marriage, the Tennessee Titans, and how awful week six was for everybody (except for my wife’s friend, who got married).