"I'm a mystery solver"

The reason my favorite class is my favorite class is for all the ways it reminds me of high school. Small community, imagined or not. Clear and unique groups, imagined or not. The archetypes, the symbols. The guys, the girl, the so-so's and pleasantries. These are the familiar anchors I cling to like guns and religion. Repetition, development, the idea of possibility. Not the realization of such possibility, but the simple entertainment of the idea of it. I think two questions that inevitably must cross a young student's mind are 1) How must I matter? and 2) Who must I matter to? The results may shock you. I can't wait to want to want. They say stories fail to move an audience when the audience doesn't buy the stakes. I often doubt the stakes of life, I doubt the reality of conflict and everything just seems...effortless. I don't feel the difference between losing and winning sometimes, and I attribute that to a lack of or lack of perception of legitimate stakes. School always just feels like sandbox, it's good to go home sometimes, and sometimes I don't want to be anywhere but inside somebody's car.

Garry W. Tallent

10/27/1949
Happy 59th, Garry! Garry holds a special place in that he is the only (rather, the first) E Street Band member I've met. He was kind, courteous, and smiling after dropping off his daughter (who sang back-up for Working On The Highway the night before) off with his wife in the E Street lounge. I called him Mr. Tallent for I am, evidently, nine years old. His role in the picture is, as Danny's was, a shadow player, working beyond the spotlight's reach to thrust upon the listener and more perfect soundscape. Thanks Garry.

Who doubts what he's sure of

I want to want, I'm a fatalistic death pursuit to that that is absolute. Shades and grays are the stuff poetry's made of, this life needs a stark contrast of black and white, blacker than black, whiter than white. When there's no wiggle room for qualifiers; maybe, possibly, kinda, sorta. I want YES, NO, GOOD, BAD. I think about a wonderful life when certain ideas and activities are bereft of any semblance of nuance, where it's simple. Of course, this breeds a line of thinking that has us sucking down chicken soup through IVs as pod people. Of course nuance is good, of course we need things to be complicated. But sometimes, some nights, some relationships, some people, some nights, I want to take a gun to nuance and off it execution style and dance on its grave. I want to live in the world where I can do something and not worry about the consequence, with a whole-hearted knowledge that it's what right, it's what's good, it's what's pure. Not often enough, not nearly enough do these fragments of life occur. I'll rejoice upon the day when the spirit that wakes up in the morning and the one that goes to sleep at night are one in the same.

The first time

For some ego-maniacal reason, it would appear that I got a thing for people of my own...color. When I pass them on campus sidewalks I give them the power sign, it doesn't usually work out. Maybe it's just a component of a terribly unhealthy, psycho-sexual hero projection ("Brunettes are fine, and blonds are fun...) or maybe I'm just projecting what I think are the best things about myself onto others in a stunning display of masturbatory arrogance or maybe I really do have that narrow a view of the landscape. I will be graduating from UT in Fall '09 or Spring '10, most likely Fall '09. This makes me feel numb and small, but also large and alive. Paradox is my middle name, and it's also NOT my middle name. I forgot what being nervous felt like (it feels good. It's when I'm most comfortable not being in control). Steve Carell and Amy Ryan WORK. Jim and Pam....no. Stop. You're not real.

"And everything else is crap

I don't care who you are, that is a beautiful man (and a beautiful hat)
Much has happened since last we spoke. There were so many fearing that the Harley Davidson Gig, a move that was viewed by many as unpure to the Springsteen character, aligning oneself with a corporation so explicitly, would be the last hurrah for The E Street Band. But you young and mighty tramps (ha, the only folks genuinely worried were old and quite weak in the legs), no don't you fret, we know the future, and we know what's gonna happen just YET because, it's true, Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band are playing the NFL's Superbowl Half-Time Show, brought to you by Bridgestone Tires! All is well on E Street™ No one believes more fervently in the power of what this man can do with his band and with his crowd when given the stage, but this is going to be the one to beat: Send your prayers to Nils. He's worn his hips down to literally nothing for us, playing for us, flipping, jumping, and exerting fingers and feet and everything in-between for us, and he's got to fix those hips now. But don't worry, he'll be back as early as February 1st. In news that would come with my grandmother's seal of disapproval, Bruce is also putting on a free show in Philly for Obama. I need to investigate exactly how I feel about this further. I think it mostly has to do with how I like to think of God and, of course, Jesus Christ. There was this book I read part of called "How Would Jesus Vote" and shortly before I set the pages on fire after pooping on them, I thought that I wouldn't want to associate God with a political party. I feel like God is too big to fit inside something as narrow as a box on a ballot. And, similarly to this, I like to think that about Bruce. The American character he speaks of in his music, vivid, complicated, and resilient, seems simply too large for the Democratic party. It seems too large for the Republican party. Nonetheless...