OXFORD CONFIDENTIAL: Babysitting Drunk Heartbroken Blondes, "Bald-Lay the Sex Poet," & Demon-Killing Cheerleaders on an "Old School" TV

Image by Feuillu via Flickr

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- A quarter of a handle later, she says she's ready to talk about This Guy She Sorta Hooked Up With.

The sun's just beginning to sink down into the Indiana countryside to the west. After work, I'd put down four pints on an empty stomach, followed by a spinach salad. I don't need any hard liquor in my system, especially not 80-proof, kerosene-flavored booze from a plastic jug.

The vodka she's been drinking since Sunday night, in and of itself, would've turned most people's stomachs based on smell alone.

"So...okay... you 'sorta' hooked up with an asshole, chica... look, these things happen...don't beat yourself up like this..."

Silence. Homegirl stares up at the shitty, ancient tile work, head as if she's trying to stare down time itself as it crumbles the ceramic ashy grout to oblivion.

For the record, yes, Homegirl and I are sitting in her bathroom, in off-campus student flophouse, a rather run-down, tiny place. I'm sitting on the toilet, she's in the tub in her workout clothes.

(Welcome to the Local U. A girl'll blow off a week's worth of classes and showers on a bender but, hell, to not hit the Rec Center or skip the tanning bed? Please...)

It's not even eight at night, but she's three or four swigs away from beating the sunset to the blackout finish line.

All because, well, the only guy she's met since she's been at college who seemed to be one she could fall in love with, who seemed to tell her all the right things, who even seemed to understand her sometime insecurities and fears and social awkwardness...

... seemed to be, after the hook-up, just another douchebag who could seem just decent enough to play her like a game of Solitaire, just to get into her panties.

The silence continues.

We're waiting for her roommates to get home. Actually, they're the ones who called me to babysit while they went to class, to jobs. I'm not the best babysitter.

I'm looking for my out. I'm 31, it's a work night, and I'm not really in the mood to spend my whole evening with a drunk woman barely old enough to drink.

And I'm not sure if I'm just talking to fill the silence, rambling to stall until she realizes that I'm probably not the best person to talk to about why guys say what they say when they're trying to get in a girl's pants...

"You know, you're really suave for a library guy," she says. "You'reanokay...not bad looking... guy. You're, like, old, but you don't use women, an'...Hey I wanna go to the library!"

"Um, no."

"I want to go. Annnnn-da I wanna get some really sex...poet...poetry... Baudelaire... Or Bald-LAY...? I...uh..."

"Um, no."

Momentary silence again as she does the drunken internal debate thing, the mental catch-up all drunk people do.

Then the grin. Impish.

"WE SHOULD READ SEXY POETRY AND BECOME HIPPIES AND I'LL BE YOUR HOTYOUNG...Hot...Hot.. kid hippie girl..."

Fading, fading, fading fast. We need to get out and about. She needs to walk it off, move, do something other than mope and drink.

"Um, no. Hey, want me to make you some coffee?..."

* * * *

At this point, I decide to murder, in three breathlessly large gulps, the remainder of the 1.75 liter bottle of vodka, to keep her from drinking anymore while we wait.

In twenty minutes, it'll hit me. Ten minutes later, one of her roommates, one who's never met me, will open the bathroom door to find her youngest roommate & "You work at _____ Library, right?" Guy talking about oral sex, S&M, and College Republicans.

Approximately One-Point-Seven-Five hours after killing the 1.75 liter bottle of vodka, we're going for a long stroll around town, down to the basketball arena, down to the ROTC obstacle course.

I'll do 20 chin-ups on the bar, she'll do four half-ones, fake girly ones.

The feat will take about 15 minutes longer than sober.

A cop will roll by as we're walking back towards her place later on, he'll slow down, I'll wave. Being more drunk than I am, she'll swear at the passing cruiser as I remind her that, yeah, I work with those guys in those cruisers.

We end up back at my place. By mistake. Sorta. Her idea.

It will seem like hours have passed since I murdered that handle of cheap, charcoal-filtered booze.

* * * *

I'll make a pitcher of iced green tea. She'll suck down half a bag of baby carrots, stretch out on the floor, flip on my "old school," robust, tube-driven, round-screen television.

We'll watch reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer until about 10:30ish. By that time, she'll have sobered up enough to realize her new Blackberry's been going off with texts and calls and IMs for a few hours.

Roommates. Worried roommates. She'll run to my bathroom, I'll hear muffled voices and keystrokes through the partially closed door.

Right after wandering off, the other roommate I'd never met will have assumed I'm the fucking douchebag she hooked up with the previous weekend - short, cropped hair, hazel eyes, nice eyelashes and shoulders. Kinda chachball-looking, fratty, and "older" (i.e., 23 or 24 years-old, not 31). I

'll laugh as the description is being read to me from her phone.

"Oh God. They think you're T_____. Oh. Wait. Just _____ thinks you're T____. Oh God....They...Oh...My...Gosh...They think we're...oh..."

"Hahaha....Um, no."

Silence.

"Okay. I've gotta go. Awkward..."

I'll walk her to the door. We'll hug. She'll say thanks for talking, for listening, for hanging out.

I'll find out, wow, apparently, I'm good for something other than just being the Ex-Other Man in this town, that, hell, I'm not as big a douchebag as I think sometimes.

Within seconds of her leaving, I'll puke, barely having held the vodka-marinated spinach salad for as many hours as I will have done...

And I'll get electronic apologies for the next 24 hours. Apparently, well, for some reason, I'll be told that I'm even more intimidating in person for the thousandth time by a local undergrad.

Not one word about Baudelaire and his sexy poetry.

But, within that 24 hours, I'll make a note to include Baudelaire.

And the Hot Kid Fake Hippie sidekick offer.

Hmm? Maybe...?

Um, no.

- # # # -

OXFORD CONFIDENTIAL: On Writing, Drinking, and Writing about Drinking with a Writer who Drinks PBR from an Ancient Plastic Pitcher...

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) – There he was, this marvelous young writer, this future ringmaster of the American Literary circus, sitting on the other side of the table, chatting away with his siblings about everything but his writing.

No writer, you see, wants to discuss writing or literature after a reading. Most of the time, readings leave writers on edge, or leave the writer contemplative and waiting, patiently, for some armchair critic to skewer his or her art.

Public readings of your work, of your poetry and prose before a group of mostly faculty and friends, can sure take the fun out of writing. And we'd come to the bar afterwards not to offer up critiques, not to celebrate, but to unwind. Poetry and prose readings, well, take an emotional toll on a writer's friends and family, too.

His father squinted in the bar's orange glow, reading the dedication in his son's masterpiece. His mother glanced around the bar in near silence, radiating her satisfaction at having raised such an asshole of a child. His girlfriend sat across from me, and we did the smalltalk thing, and she rolled her eyes when I rambled on about something she clearly wasn't interested in discussing.

Nobody else at our table was drinking, save for Fatsuit McUmmings, his parents, and myself. And while his parents drank their beers with the class and dignity that comes from having put a son successfully through college, the pair of us writers drank in that great Oxford Fucking Ohio tradition --

Cold cheap beer, straight from ancient plastic pitchers.

* * * *

You see, in the Land o' the Buckeye, from the banks of the Ohio River to the dirty waters of Lake Erie, from James Thurber to Rita Dove to Sherwood Anderson, poetry and prose readings are best followed up with Pabst Blue Ribbon and the best onion rings in town.

Places that serve nice sipping wine after a reading, complete with plates of expensive cheese and crackers and hors d'oeuvre platters, are reserved for literary critics, pompous novelists, and the young twinks and college girls they pay to suck them off in between lectures and workshops. Writers, artists, and scholars should, at all costs, avoid such high-and-mighty events. Blowjobs mean nothing anyway, other than an excuse to keep on a-pounding away on writing and drinking.

Why waste a good bottle of wine recovering from a reading anyway? Who wastes good booze on artists? A good Merlot is best held for private moments with lovers, for a rainy evening alone with just a copy of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal or while dreaming about Chicanas, reading José Antonio Burciaga's essays aloud in the dark.

No, after a reading, after any performance, one should hit up a saloon and drink until the madness of literature is gone. Trust me. I'm a librarian. And librarians know (or should know) these things.

* * * *

Whitman never did this, here in Oxford Fucking Ohio. He died a century too early, without ever having -- GASP! -- heard of that academically-neutered beast we now call Comparative Literature. Ginsberg never sat in this tavern, never stared into the rafters filled with hockey sticks and old jerseys. Allen never howled in the men's room, never gargled semen in the dark corners of the alley outside.

...Well, dude, it's not hard to imagine either man drinking away a Wednesday night with us. And, well, they probably would've been awestruck by Fatsuit McUmmings' reading, too, would've been honored to drink cheap beer, to swap stories...

William Carlos Williams would've been content, to set his Modernist doctor's bag at the end of the peeling hardwood bar for a bourbon. Carl Sandburg would've felt at home singing folk songs, performing Good Morning America into the wee hours of the morning. The floorboards reek of Bukowski and Céline, Albert Camus prowls the shadows. I can smell Steinbeck in the hair of the women from the trailer parks and the flophouses, smell Mark Twain on the college girls and alumni...

When in bars, all men are writers and all writers end up drunk off realistic daydreams of the everyday world...

* * * *

I was, obviously, still lost in that madness of language, still trapped inside the insanity of wordsmithing, storytelling, and other everyday nonsense.

Thank you, cold cheap beer. Seven dollars and fifty cents for one whole pitcher of some bland ambrosia called Bud Light.

“Okay now,” the shift manager hollers at me from behind the bar, “You're drinking that pitcher way too fast. Don't make me cut you off...”

"Wha...? Uh...why, hon?"

"Because you look seriously drunk."

She wouldn't have cut me off, of course. Though the sight of me, the Cuervo-guzzling librarian, drinking beer is about as rare as seeing the face of the Virgin Mary in a lump of dogshit.

* * * *

“Why the fuck do you drink so much in that place?” many folks have asked me here in Oxford.

“It's so... weird in there, the people are weird, they let in scary people...”

Well, maybe it has to do with the fact that some of those guys cooking in the kitchen sometimes graduate, sometimes write grand novellas and poetry and short stories, those guys who represent the best the ol' Local U has to offer, men who understand that art is made through the toils of the everyday and not through the whimsical nostalgia of the Academy.

Or maybe it's guys working at the door, spinning yarns about hot women and police raids, maybe it's the hot female bartenders who, well, tell stories about trips to China or about catfights in redneck saloons or who, well, occasionally play grab-ass with certain librarians of ill repute.

Hell, I could write a novel myself about last Saturday night alone, about being felt up by a gay man, about being told that, wow, I'm apparently pretty well-proportioned in certain places, about whispering into one sister's ear, half-joking, that I'd love to take her home and break her in half and whispering into the other sister's ear some drunken nonsense about taking her home, too...

Yes, I behaved very badly last Saturday. But it'd make a great story someday. Maybe I'll write about it...

Daydreams whilst drinking cold, cheap beer, straight from the goddamn pitcher. How sweet it is, sometimes, to be free to dream, to write, to think.

Shit, dude, you do get a lot of decent essays outta this fucking place, don't you?

* * * *

I stared down into my almost empty pitcher. Lost. My mind, lost.

I'd been hitting the Bud Light just a little too quick. For all the liquor I can drink, beer is my kryptonite.

“Hey! You're usually not this quiet!” Fatsuit McUmmings' girlfriend says. “So what did you think of ____'s reading?”

I really didn't know how to answer the question. My mind, lost...

I'd been thinking again, daydreaming within the madness. Singing the body electric within my own mind, absorbing both my song and my surroundings like a sponge.

And I was praying that, yes, by having helped Fatsuit McUmmings edit his work before its final presentation, by showing up to bear witness to his artistry, I'd helped keep the world from having to see another greatest mind of our generation destroyed by madness...

* * * *

“So how do you think your image around town as a 'playa'... not 'player' but 'playa' ... librarian,” a colleague recently asked, “...reflects upon your colleagues and this institution...?”

Well, somebody's gotta do it.

What do I think? Hey, don't hate the playa, hate the game. Blame Archibald MacLeish, too, for setting such a miserable example as to the risks librarians are supposed to take, the games they're supposed to play with writers, artists, researchers, and other madmen of knowledge.

He's the former Librarian of Congress, the one who cleaned up that bureaucratic clusterfuck back in the 1940s, the one who won all of those Pulitzer Prizes as a poet, the guy who hung out with the likes of Hemingway and FDR yet never went to Library School, the one who, well, tried to make modern librarianship a part of the modern literary establishment...

MacLeish wasn't much of a drinker. And, well, I do have an ALA-accredited master's degree, which makes me, technically, a librarian. MacLeish never bothered to waste thousands of bucks on the parchment...

MacLeish never lived in Oxford Fucking Ohio or worked with its hard-drinking patrons, either. He's also been dead since the 1980s...

And I don't see too many other librarians – we, the supposed gatekeepers of literature, of the various records of humanity and society – out at 11 o'clock on a Wednesday night, drinking with the folks who will one day produce our next great wave of great books.

All library usage is, at the end of the day, a local phenomenon. How better to understand the natives than to simply embrace them as friends, compatriots, even, at times, lovers? Why hide behind something as silly as a degree and a job title, when it's just as easy to wade into the jungle, to ravage the tender brains and bodies and souls of those asking to be played or who beg for the sweet, satisfying release of knowledge, accomplishment?

* * * *

The party broke up with a whimper and a few hugs. Fatsuit McUmmings and I were the only two left, so we moved our discussion to the bar. The shift manager had just punched out for the night, was just beginning to nurse her first drink.

She joined us, stirred her cocktail, and, as usual, giggled for no reason whatsoever.

I wonder if she was thinking about how much of a fucktard some librarians can be sometimes, especially when drunk on beer? Or if she was thinking about Fatsuit McUmmings, how unliterary he can be when he's got a few pitchers in him, about how, well, he never seems to forget that writing's his real job and that working his way through college as a cook is just, well, a research grant with a bit of beer money thrown in for good measure...

She does this often, just gets these sparkles in her eyes and laughs at the strangest things. Her full-time job, besides working at a bar to pay for school, is as a visual artist.

Pfft. Artists. And their sparkling giggles, their whiskey-cokes, their smiles and their art.

Madness. Sheer madness, built upon the insane foundations of knowledge...

* * * *

“So what'd you think? Holy shit, dude, you wouldn't believe how nervous I fucking was...”

“You did great, man! Now, it's smooth sailing until graduation. And I loved how the e.e. cummings - influenced poem turned out...”

“Fuck! I'm just glad it's over. Man, I'm so ready to graduate it's not even funny.”

And then, after the booze kicked in, after our egos had been greased down to an honest purr, then could we discuss writing and literature. And, yes, it was intermixed with crude comments about women's breasts, with references to the overrated genius of guys like Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot, critiqued some of the mixed-media, post-modernist absurdism that's blanketed the literary landscape for the last few years...

Mostly, however, we talked tits.

Tits are wondrous things. There isn't a straight man in the world who doesn't marvel at both their purpose and their aesthetics.

Yes, motherfucker, yes! We can, yes, still write about tits in this grand Information Age! We can sculpt them from paper and clay, from stone and atop a laptop keyboard! We can drink and be merry and puke in the alleys, be failures and martyrs and cocksuckers. We can do lines off our cable modems, carve sonnets and sestinas and novels into the backs of the spiders of our World Wide Web...

What good is information technology, after all, if we forget that knowledge itself is the key to our own madness, to building our beautiful creations of song and word, that all else is gimmickry and whiz-bang farts into the bedsheets of humanity?

"Hah. Uh, yeah. The librarian's fucking wasted!"

Goddamn writers, librarians, and their swinging cocks full of jism, knowledge, Carl Sandburg's “The Fog,” and jokes about fucking your mother in the ass. Just keep the pitcher's flowing, and neither will have anything to bitch about...

Hey, don't hate the playa. Hate the game, baby, THE GAME!

- # # # -

THE NOOSE NEVER CAME BEFORE THE LYNCH MOB: Confronting Historic Symbols of Hatred and Injustice Shouldn't Start with Censorship

"Free speech is not to be regulated like diseased cattle and impure butter."

- William O. "Wild Bill" Douglas,
U.S. Supreme Court Justice & American Badass,
Record-holder for Most Impeachment Attempts

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- I remember sitting in Dr. M's office, back in 2001, arguing over a grade I'd received on a quiz in his dreaded media law class. More appropriately, I remember sitting in Dr. M's office, losing an argument over a grade.

At one of toughest universities in North America, M. was, by far, the hardest instructor in the College of Liberal Arts. And the old bastard had friggin' failed me - I supposedly earned that whopping 30 percent, having aced the multiple-choice section.

He'd given me zero points on short essay questions that, I felt, were passionate defenses of the evils of government suppression of free expression. But his blood-red comments were sharper than razorblades, slashed right through my reasoning with simple NO!s in the margins of my blue book, the words SEE ME scribbled on the last page like an epitaph.

In his office that day, I argued and raged and vented; Dr. M. simply nodded and listened. When I finished my diatribe about democracy and hate speech and what should and shouldn't be protected under the First Amendment, the old prof leaned forward and put a bony Minnesota finger in my face.

He'd given me zero points on my short essays, he explained, because I rode the fence in my arguments against censorship, picked out which parts of cases like Brandenburg v. Ohio, R.A.V. v. The City of St. Paul, and Yates v. United States that I personally agreed with and disregarded what I found objectionable. He accused me of censoring the course materials to fit my worldview.

To understand the fluidity of things like the First Amendment and its freedoms, I'd have to learn to stand up and walk on that fence. If I wanted to pass his class, too, I'd have to be willing to see beyond what I wanted to see, to give up on the herd mentality that allows most folks to simply draw from two pastures when an answer is needed for comfort.

To embrace the wholeness of the Rule of Law, the organic, fluid body of jurisprudence that encompasses certain unalienable human rights, one must learn to walk atop barbed wire to bear witness to a holistic justice, free of personal bias or politics of the moment, with those beliefs serving as not a legal compass but as insight into the motives behind things like censorship.

M. took the crumpled Blue Book from my fist, tacked an extra 15 percentage points onto that grade. Even if I'd made the mistake of riding a fence that should've been beneath my feet, the just teacher heard out his lost student's reasoning before he passed final judgment.

A whopping 45 percent. The hardest failing grade I ever truly earned.

From that point on, I've tried to avoid riding the fence. Sitting on a post and waiting for mob-rule opinion to determine freedom's boundaries, I've learned, only opens the gates toward dictatorship and oppression.

To walk the fence in a democratic society, one where the free flow of ideas and art and writing is cherished, is to stand above the mob rules of political and popular correctness, to be willing to scream Freedom! without ever looking down into the fields for support.

Cowards and madmen can keep the fence posts warm, have their legs tugged at by those seeking an ally in their moral and political arguments.

I can't blame them. Walking the straight and narrow is always hardest to do when one has only a love for intellectual freedom to preserve one's sense of balance.

* * * *

A strange midnight email swept across the Local U.'s fiber-optic freeways, a hastily-written, chilling dispatch to virtually all of Oxford Fucking Ohio. With diplomacy as subtle as a hatchet to the face, the email let the Online World know about the supposed hate speech that had defiled the hallowed grounds of the Public Ivy:

"...I strongly condemn this display and deplore that in this campus community any person would believe this display is in any way acceptable. We must redouble our efforts as a community to educate every student here on the historic patterns of racism in this society..."

A group of students had - gasp! - hung nooses from the branches of a tree! And students and the public watched helplessly as the cads dangled historic symbols of hatred and injustice before their innocent eyes. The fiends even dared to plead ignorance to this fact, and - Thank Goodness! - the local police confronted them and removed the vile, hideous hangman's tools before the poor, defenseless children and something called the African-American community saw it!

"Oh Thank God! That kind of shit needs to be- "

I caught myself, mid-sentence, as I read from the comfy confines of my bed Wednesday morning. I almost choked to death on my bowl of Biblically-inspired organic cereal, the taste of guilt like blood on my tongue.

"- needs to be censored by a state-funded, public university?

"Waitagoddamnminute... even the Ku Klux Klan has the right to express itself... religious groups, campus activists, the staff union, even the pro-anorexia advocates... "

I lost my appetite. I felt sick to my stomach.

"'...Redouble our efforts to educate the students?' What the fuck does that mean?"

And when did a display has to be "acceptable" to a campus community to be considered acceptable under the First Amendment? Regardless of intent, or public perception, was this, possibly protected speech? Could a marketplace of ideas sell off civil liberties like dime store junk?

Happy Halloween, folks.

One American university decided to go trick-or-treating this year, all dressed up as a Police State. And it went about toilet-papering mailboxes at midnight, wiping everyone's ass with the Bill of Rights in the name of a justice not seen in Ohio since Kent State.

* * * *

And those no-good, evil proponents of hate who'd dared to hang a noose in the era of Jena Six hype, where we're taught scream racism! at the sight of a rope?

Art students. Aspiring artists who sought nothing more than the satisfactory completion of a course requirement. The group was preparing a faculty-approved public exhibit as part of a class assignment.

The students tried to explain themselves and did remove their work the moment they realized that the project offended their peers - or, at least, the mob that confronted them.

They had a cool idea, to turn a reviled symbol into art, something beautiful and thoughtful.

But, by the time that information was made publicly available, their own university had already portrayed them as ignorant savages bent on creating racial unrest in a press release. The same mob bastardization of justice that, historically, has led to actual lynchings in this country sentenced them before the facts were presented.

Yes, there was indeed a hate crime committed in Oxford this week. The teachers took a few nooses and executed the creative rights of their students, without so much as a show trial, sentenced to censorship before any formal investigation or disciplinary hearing.

* * * *

The theme of the installation, I've learned, concerned the imagery of life and death - the final product was to include a tire swing, symbolic of the innocence of carefree youth, and the slipknots were to represent their ancient purpose - death.

The theme, along with the choice of media, is eerily reminiscent of an early installation by one of this country's hottest young artists, Los Angeles-based Kori Newkirk. But at the Local U., well, maybe a critically-acclaimed black artist wouldn't have to ask for permission before recreating his startling Swings in the Family Tree as part of his homework.

Maybe, in a climate of fear, in a land where black rap artists are called before Congress for offending the mythological, unified African-American Community, where John Denver and Twisted Sister once saved rock and roll from Tipper Gore, civil liberties are to be limited based on the color of one's skin, or by sexual orientation, or even age?

Maybe a straight woman can't create a sculpture that includes a police baton in tribute to the Stonewall Rebellion? Maybe a cowboy can't write poems based on Lakota and Apache war songs? Or maybe a German architect can't design a Holocaust museum?

Maybe we should ban nonblack hip-hop artists, or white blues musicians?

And maybe playing Billie Holiday in my office offends this campus community with strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees? Good God! I didn't fill out the paperwork first, ask for formal permission! And- gasp! - an Afro-Irish woman is singing noose lyrics written by a Jewish Communist schoolteacher! Somebody haul me down for sensitivity training!

Let us, then, ban other historic symbols of death and the artist themes they inspire. And the symbols of youthful innocence, too, for that matter.

Crosses? Have to go. Some people don't find reminders of Christ's execution acceptable in this campus community. Besides, someone might think, for instance, that a white man propping up a crucifix intends to set it ablaze - can't have that, can we?

Or how about trains? We've had two students die tragically this year along the tracks...

Or shall we ban the NROTC from marching with rifles because the majority of faculty find the Iraq situation reprehensible?

Oh hell...

Who needs free expression anyway?

We have diversity committees to tell us what to believe, curriculum committees to tell us what to teach, and government officials to tell us what is acceptable to all and deplorable to none - if we disagree, well, they'll just redouble their efforts to educate us...

* * * *

How I would've loved the chance to see probably one of the most thought - provoking art displays in this community's history. How I'd have loved the chance to watch undergraduates debate its meaning, to hear some faculty call it an affront to decency and to hear others call it genius.

How exciting it could've been. We could've used the opportunity to invite back one of the big alumnae, Rita Dove. Maybe the poet would've trashed the students' work. She may have found it inspiring, too, the innocent bravery of a few kids who turned a weapon into a statement about life. Or maybe ol' P.J. could've wrote about it, been lured back to teach a course on controversial literature?

Those opportunities are gone now. The display removed and the artists humiliated, the electronic strong-arm tactic will more than likely chill unpopular expression in this town to the artistic equivalent of absolute zero.

Why string up the artists for their deplorable rope sculpture? In the name of tolerance and diversity, it's just as easy to break spirits as it is to break necks.

After all, a noose has never been as terrifying as the lynch mobs behind them.

* * * *

Thursday afternoon, I witnessed one of the most miraculous signs that, yes, even a noose in a tree can bring about just the sort of dialogue a campus community needs.

And not the kind the writers of the official Local U. emails urged with iron fist, either.

With every fence built upon censorship, there are always wild ones in the midst of the herd, looking for new ways to cut through the wires that were put up to protect them. And college students, through some glorious academic instinct, naturally despise attempts to double up their education - especially when that education comes at a price, well, that the tuition checks don't cover.

A black woman and a white woman were standing outside of my library as I stepped out for a quick cigarette. Both students, as per the norm on a soon-to-be Smoke Free Campus, had been waiting for a fellow smoker to exit.

"Girl, please. Somebody needs to raise the roof on this."

"I dunno. I mean, I think it was wrong and all, but-"

One undergraduate was defending policy, was riding on that fence, playing the politically-correct game that often feeds herds in pastures green with mob-rule grasses.

And the other?

Please.

Do you think an educated black woman needs an email in the middle of the night to tell her the difference between hate speech and an art project? When was the last time a hate group walked up to a tree, in broad daylight, and hung up a tire swing in protest?

Or wouldn't get annoyed with the fact that in nearly every class, some well-intentioned Caucasian had asked her about how she was doing, as if those art students she walked past Tuesday had actually tried to lynch her? Or wouldn't get annoyed by the fact everybody started screaming about a tree in Jena, Louisiana, before anybody asked the group why they were hanging nooses here?

"So because I'm black, I need a white man to tell me about how offended I am? I can't think for myself?"

You see, in Oxford Fucking Ohio, there are very real hate crimes that happen every day during the school year, ones that don't get histrionic emails sent off late into the night.

Ask the young Chinese-American student who's asked to tutor somebody in math, because, well, All Asians are good at that. Ask the gay undergrad who's been terrified to go on a date with another gay undergrad, because some drunk idiot may start yelling Fuck you, faggot! from a car window. And ask the black students, yes, which offense is greater - artists hanging a noose as part of an exhibit, or the stares young black men get in this town for wearing urban clothing in certain nightclubs?

The Local U. wanted dialogue on the meaning of discrimination.

Well, now, they've got one.

* * * *

I told both women about Dr. M, about the love for the First Amendment he instilled in me when I was an undergrad, about his call to give up riding other people's fences and to walk the path of the straight and narrow back towards the Rule of Law.

I heard Dr. M.'s voice in the back of my own sometimes self-righteous, fence-straddling mind, drowning out the voices on the sides of the fence:

"Let the Law prevail. Put your faith in the ability of the People, and freedom will win, Jason."

Both women agreed that that old bastard Media Law prof sounded like one hell of an educator.

And yes, he was.

* * * *

Loving free speech is harder than it looks.

Learning to walk the fence involves learning how to get a look at the big picture, what's really at stake, learning to weigh divine individual rights against the bloodlust of a lynch mob. It's only after looking at the whole spread that one can understand the value of a ranch, free of pastures and fences, bound only by the expanse of the law.

Censorship, sometimes, is indeed justified - some fences are needed to protect things like national security, trade secrets, confidential information, and rights to privacy. Mostly, however, censors pull miles of wire blindly, carve up the fields of nurturing thought for the sake of the few who'd rather just hide in Freedom's barn anyway.

Sure, maybe I'm just insensitive, just ig'nant of historic symbols of hate and injustice and of the need to redouble our efforts to tell students how to express themselves like good little automatons, in need of sensitivity training because I just love what that deplorable, courageous art.

But if a group of art students can't include nooses in an art installation, then librarians sure as hell shouldn't have the right to write about it.

So go ahead a lynch me, too.

Climb up here, up on this fence, and try it.

* * * *

“The most important aspect of freedom of speech is freedom to learn. All education is a continuous dialogue - questions and answers that pursue every problem on the horizon. That is the essence of academic freedom.”

- Wild Bill Douglas

- # # # -

* For the aspiring writers, poets, essayists, painters, sculptors, and screenwriters; for the future political leaders, captains of industry, musicians, doctors, and other innovators at the Local U. And for David Banner, fellow Baton Rouge ex-pat and lover of the First Amendment, for telling the self-appointed leaders of "The African-American Community" to shut the fuck up about censoring art in the name of "decency," for challenging those Happy White Liberals on Capitol Hill who think Democratic suppression is better than Republican suppression, and for, yeah, doing more for Katrina victims than Public Ivy universities.

CROSSING STATE LINES TO NOWHERE: Of Wonders of the World and Realities of Beauty, Chivas Regal and Beer in a Can

WEST COLLEGE CORNER, Ind. (ZP) -- The bartender shouted last call! just as we stepped out the back door, out into a steel cool October and into the divide that separates two U.S. states.

A town of a thousand residents, split like firewood by a line drawn on a map. College Corner, Ohio, lay less than 75 feet from the doorway of the tavern- disturbingly still, as menacing as a drowned kitten. But in West College Corner, Indiana, on the Hoosier side of town, there's still a packed bar, still life and country laughter and singing.

The Last Viking digs through his pockets for a tin full of mints. He's trying to quit smoking. The temptation offered by an evening's worth of secondhand smoke satisfies nothing, the mints mere placebo to keep the mouth from asking for a cigarette, for one just one more drag off of the ol' coffin nail.

He crunches mints and his eyes water. I puff away of my thirtieth cigarette, a pack and a half in just under 22 hours, trying to remember to turn my head on exhale. We're both three sheets to the wind, firewater eyes filled with bloated pupils, diluted blood forced from our faces faster by the cold.

Mr. Chops, the designated chauffeur, disappeared, lost to tables full of women and slow sips of Indiana-legal cans of Budweiser. Mr. Chops tends to be everyone's friend, even sober - especially if those everyones happen to be fellow musicians, own their own breasts, or can carry on an intelligent conversation.

Calling Chops a sociable guy would be an understatement. Trust me. It's like staring at a naked supermodel for hours and then saying, well, she's kinda cute in the face...

The Viking tells me that he has to let his dogs out, that he wants some company walking the two blocks back to his house. And he tells me, too, that this is his world, his life outside of the quaint brick-and-bullshit facade of Oxford Fucking Ohio.

He sounds almost embarrassed to admit that, yes, the town that feeds us both has become nothing more than a running academic joke, that our paychecks revolve around perpetuating the myth of 1950s ivy-covered youth, and that, yes, he feels more at home crossing the state line, home to a blue-collar nowhere.

As we stumble along crumbling sidewalks and orphaned railroad tracks, I can't help but be envious of a man who finds something meaningful in a place as real as West College Corner, Indiana.

Fuck the myth of Christopher Columbus and Spaniard conquistadors - history remembers their legends, their gilded discoveries of the New World, just as local alumni recall the glory of Oxford. Leif Ericson, and descended spirits, yearn to discover the very real world, to silently find meaning in America's lost nowheres.

Ain't no shame in being a real man in a real world. Hasn't been any shame in it, in North America, since the first settlers crossed over from Asia, since the first Scandinavian explorers came and lost the continent to Spanish, Portuguese, and English conquerors.

The Last Viking popped open a bottle of beer as his dogs ran free into the steel cool October. My jealousy boiled over and I lit another cigarette, my only weapon against a man so free.

My envy could, at least, help keep the mint makers rolling in the dough.

* * * *

The women, the Last Viking promised, wouldn't be much to look at, wouldn't be the sort of barroom eye candy Mr. Chops and I were used to back in Oxford. At least, he promised, we could catch the end of the Boston-Cleveland league championship free of chest-beating, bandwagon Indians fans.

Neither Chops or I were surprised when the Last Viking, in his deviousness, had forgotten to mention that the infamous Viking Tavern housed as many real women as real men on a Saturday night, women who smelled of workweeks and overtime, who spoke with twangs and who danced slow dances with farmer boyfriends and mechanic husbands and weathered strangers.

Jesus H. Christ! I thought, watching these women put in requests to the deejay. Beauty! Pure fucking Venus beauty, free of the bourgeois, the airs of Entitlement!

America the Beautiful, tangible tits and cowgirl ass! Dance Brad Paisley and Kenny Chesney and sing Karaoke into the Indiana night so loud the rich city girls burst into shallow, plastic pieces!

The eye candy be damned. Even Mr. Chops, the Red Sox fan, seemed too distracted to catch the final out of what proved to be a pivotal game in his team's march towards the World Series.

Watching real women dance can make men forget about almost anything, even an American League pennant.

* * * *

The Last Viking didn't need the company to walk his hellhounds. He didn't ask me to walk back to his house for my health, either.

Every human being, every second of every day, exists as nothing more than a motive with a pulse. Motives are the blood of consciousness and impulse, the fuel that feeds the fires of thought. Some motives are mysterious and potentially sinister, like the motives behind the tips of shoelaces, those plastic aglets that nobody seems to question. And some motives are innocent and fruitful.

Some motives, too, are esoteric, supernatural and inspired by God. And men can be motivated to play hands of fate just as surely as men can be motivated towards creation or destruction.

The Viking popped more mints as we walked towards an old shed behind his house, a bright-blue building scarred by sections of missing siding. A lone spotlight illuminated the east side of the garage, a simple incandescent bulb standing watch over a wall and an improvised workbench, cans of red paint and paintbrushes.

The Last Viking didn't say what motivated him to invite me deeper into nowhere. He didn't have to say a word, actually, because, like a mother knows love for a child, some monuments to hope speak more with silence.

The side of the barn contained one of the most beautiful testaments to humanity's enduring spirit, to the power of life and death, I've ever seen. And it's in the middle of a blue-collar nowhere, in West College Corner, Indiana.

* * * *

I've walked the Mall in Washington, touched the names of the Vietnam War casualties on the Wall and stood on the spot where a great man once set my country free, at last, in the shadow of Abraham Lincoln. I've heard lectures by Nobel Peace Prize laureates, listened to speeches delivered by some of the world's leading humanitarians and defenders of those who cannot defend themselves.

And beneath a watching heaven, in the heart of Middle America, across a simple state line and down paved arteries through cornfields and soybean patches, the working class of nowhere in particular created a masterpiece so divinely inspired that the great religious texts of the world seem like coloring books.

You see, there's a woman, a wife and mother next door, fighting cancer, who's endured several rounds of chemotherapy. She spends most of her time in this one lonely room, strength coming and going like a bullet train as she fights a battle that she may lose.

There was a time, not long ago, that the woman stared out of the room's one window and saw nothing but an old blue barn. And then the woman's family decided to paint We Love You, ____, in big billboard letters, on the side of that barn. Friends soon started painting their names and wishes beneath the banner, in bright red. And then strangers started stopping by, too, adding their names.

There are now so many names, so many people stopping by, that there's a can of paint and brushes always ready and waiting, night and day. The owner of the barn not only sanctioned the vandalism but embraced it. And people began cooking for the family, taking different nights a week.

The Last Viking had a real man's tears running down his face as he told the tale - he and his roommate were flipping the bill for the eternal light that allowed the woman to see the wall, any time she wanted to, even in the middle of the darkest night. He cooks on Mondays, when he can.

Not even the most damned demons of hell could laugh at such a monument.

In the cool steel night, beneath a star-filled sky, another man was motivated, by unknown forces, to pick up a paintbrush, pry open a can filled with stiff acrylic, and to add his name to the great organic work:

Jason
Green Bay, VA

The Last Viking wasn't the only one with tears in his eyes.

* * * *

The Last Viking put his dogs away, popped another handful of mints. I lit another cigarette as he talked about the sheer wonder of being able to look up at night, at any time on a clear night, and to see stars - he pointed out Orion, that great bowman in the sky, his belt marking not some silly border between Ohio and Indiana but an ethereal state line between Mankind and Eternity.

We were both still drunk, still lost in conversation and thoughts of the wonders of the world one finds in blue-collar nowheres as we headed back to the bar, back to find the elusive Mr. Chops. As we crossed the railroad tracks, one of those real women and one of those real men walked together, towards an old pick-up. Both said hello, as if the world was perfect.

The world, of course, is far from perfect. But sometimes, crossing state lines to nowhere, mere yards from an Ohio somewhere, can make even imperfection a thing of beauty.

- # # # -

OXFORD CONFIDENTIAL: I Never Learned to Play Lead as a Kid, But I Sure Figured Out How to Destroy Guitars

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- As a guitarist, I readily admit that I suck serious ass.

Always have. Always will.

I've sucked serious ass, proudly, since my first band, since the Unus Marx (short for Unusual Marxist - I was 15) days, since I figured out that I really have no need for that bottom E string, gave up on trying to play glam rock, and learned to love the good ol' Power Chord.

* * * *

I was 14 when I tore apart my old starter electric, one of those suckers with a cheap, flat tremolo bar and an amplified speaker built right into the body. My parents paid a whopping $50 for a guitar with one working pickup and rust on the tuning pins.

First, I pitched the goddamn whammy bar, gutted that three-inch speaker and replaced it with the severed head of a teddy bear.

Yes, a teddy bear head was my first guitar accessory. It seemed logical at the time, almost abstract art.

And then came the ritualistic mutilation, the tagging. I stripped off the shiny black finish with a belt sander, painted the thing primer gray. With a blank canvas, I used industrial spray paint and black lacquer to add texture.

A skull and crossbones carved here and there, with a dull chisel. BLACK FLAG and SOCIAL DISTORTION and NIRVANA and MELVINS written on with Sharpies, a huge anarchy symbol carved into the neck with a pocket knife.

That guitar even survived this one night in high school when my friends and I, in our infinite need to prove our machismo, decided to hang the damned thing from a tree, use it for target practice.

I played my first gig ever, in front of an audience of three girls and a Dead Head stoner, with that Chinese-made Silvertone, the .22 rounds still buried in the plywood body. The sound was horrible and self-loathing and implosive, a barbaric YAWP! for the waning years of my teens.

I realized, a while back, that I was never asked to join bands because some group of guys need a rhythm guitarist or bassist anyway. I was asked, usually, because, well, I used to be a big dude and I liked to drink, do all sorts of nasty drugs, and fight.

But how I loved that damned, piece o' shit guitar. Bullet holes and all.

* * * *

Some guitarists are all about the finesse, about the rhythm and meter and form. Even the best solos are, to some degree, nothing more than formulaic and repetitive exercises in scale. I've never bothered to learn a lead or solo part in my life - that's for musicians.

Me? I maul at the fretboard like a retarded orangutan, with just about as much charisma and skill as one would find in your average drive-by shooting. Strictly a chord strummer, a rhythm hunter in the darkness, tone-deaf and uncoordinated.

That original electric is long gone, the teddy bear head and neck and body and pickups carried to Heaven, as smoke from a burn barrel. And the drugs are gone, the unchecked juvenile rage subsided.

Despite my ass-sucking levels of musicianship, I still enjoy playing every once and a while.

* * * *

As the rain came down a few nights ago, as it poured off the roof and the box fans rattled in the window sills, I picked up my old acoustic, this shitty Korean 3/4 size I've owned for more than a decade.

When that old Silvertone died, the Korean acoustic became the eldest son, left the farm with me, transversed the United States. Given what the acoustic's been through, I'd have to say that Koreans make some pretty durable cheap guitars.

It's been spit on by two fiancees, puked on and threatened by numerous women, borrowed by skinhead drug dealers and black strippers and roommates and recovering addicts, fondled by poets and former prostitutes and soldiers and migrant laborers, dropped in the Pacific from a fishing trawler.

I like durable guitars. They live forever and, well, tell better stories than I do.

* * * *

I sat on a stool in my apartment, that folding two-foot ladder I call a stool, and I played classic punk songs, rebellious American folk songs, outlaw country - unplugged and barely in tune.

The Misfits' Bullet. Social D.'s Bad Luck and Story of My Life. John Anderson's Seminole Wind. Hank Williams' Angel of Death and Lefty Frizzell's Long Black Veil. Even Tom Waits' Jockey Full of Bourbon.

Not exactly covers. More like abstract, interpretive art. The kind of art one makes in spite of their humanity, when they're all alone and can get away with it.

Spontaneous and humorous and askew and downright perverse. Like taking a shit and seeing the face of the Virgin Mary in a turd.

And I played like I always have, like a retarded orangutan, with just about as much charisma and skill as one would find in your average drive-by shooting. I tried to sing, in that old gravelly baritone, the one I used to use when, well, I thought I could actually sing like a rock star.

And the neighbors above me stomped on the floor. And someone yelled from outside in the rain.

And I just wished I still had that old bullet-ridden carcass of a guitar, just to plug it in, to just bang away with blunt force, just to piss off the neighbors.

- # # # -

ON THE FILMS OF THE LATE WARREN OATES *:"I Got the Motive Which is Money And the Movie Which is Cheap."

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- Of all the luck!

There, right beside the 20 Items Or Less checkout line, buried in the back of a deep discount $4.88 display, sat a lonely copy of one of the finest American films ever made.

I figured it had to be some sort of mistake.

Back in the home entertainment department of this particular Big Box Store, they were selling all sorts of freshly minted garbage for upwards of 20 bucks.

Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger, two legends of cinema in their most influential film together, one of the most electrifying movies of the Civil Rights era...

... Reduced to the bargain bin.

In The Heat of the Night, winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture, 1967. Five Oscars total that year, three Golden Globes, and scores of other, lesser known awards.

All for a whopping four dollars and change.

They no longer call you MISTER Tibbs, Mr. Poitier.

They call you an impulse buy.

* * * *

So what?

If Jessica Alba's tits (which is used as an example not to knock the actress's knockers - they are indeed some very fine breasts) sell better than your powerful, ancient performance, well, you belong in that cardboard display, next to the overstock copies of Dodgeball, Mr. Poitier.

Hell, the movie business has never been about actual actors or awards or screen-writing. No business subsists as art. And the studios? They control the ebb and flow of cinematic art, its mass production, distribution, and subsequent sale.

But so what?

Big box stores are experts at moving mass-produced, distributed things, even if it means sticking cinematic masterpieces next to the bags of potato chips, in the hope that some schmuck with a debit card will come along, recognize the DVD, and gobble it up like any other product.

Who wants to watch some old movie anyway? A 40 year-old movie?

Even at $4.88, it'll still make somebody a profit, even if it's marked down further, to ten percent of cost.

And some of that will go to the owner of the original master print, some of that will go to the distributor, and a good chunk of that will go to the Big Box Store. And then there's the manufacturing costs, the scant money paid to those Southeast Asian factory workers who actually create the disc, the plastic cover, and the cardboard inserts...

But that's Hollywood for ya. Glitzy and oh so glamorous. After all, nothing screams Show Business quite like a cardboard box full of marked down, forgotten DVDs.

* * * *

And the score goes to me, the debit card wielding schmuck of the day.

I just couldn't leave a classic piece of American cinema to rot in that cardboard display, especially for $4.88.

Some folks are suckers for fashion. Some for trends. And some, like me, are suckers for good films.

And some folks are just suckers.

- # # #-

* NOTE - Warren Oates (1928-1982) remains one of the most widely-recognized American character actors of all time, with roles in such films as In The Heat of the Night, The Wild Bunch, and, yes, even as the mean ol' Sarge in the Bill Murray vehicle, Stripes.

He guest-starred on just about every classic American television show from that period, from Gunsmoke to Rawhide to Bonanza, from The Twilight Zone to The Fugitive. I have yet to meet a single person born before 1980 who doesn't recognize the guy's face from some Western, horror flick, or TV show.

And for the record, Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia, one of Oates's few leading roles, is a thousand times more badass than anything most Film Studies profs will ever show in class.

WHEN AS DUST, WE ALL JOIN THE GREAT WORK: Hey, Uncle Rich! Got the Trowels Clean! Can I Butter Some Stone Now?

HE WAS AN ARTIST.
HE CONQUERED STONE WITH HIS FLESH.
BLOOD OF CONCRETE, ROCKS IN HIS BONES,
HEART OF GOLD

Those words would've been perfect for my uncle's tombstone, if he'd wanted one. Not some silly factory-ready epitaph, not some stupid bullshit greeting card farewell, and certainly no Bible verses.

Listening to my parents' voicemail Wednesday morning, that was all I could think about as I sat on the loading dock at work, staring at a rusting brown Dumpster, wishing I could cry.

He was an artist, and I can visit him anytime.

My uncle had, after fighting cancer for several years, departed this world, mere days after the last of his children graduated from high school. And he fought until the end, fought for every breath, just as he'd fought every other thing that'd tried to break him.

He left my aunt with explicit instructions - no funeral, memorial service, or other frivolous things. His ashes are to be delivered unto the Columbia River, his soul left to bond with the salmon and the grizzly bear.

Rich was an artist, and now he'll be turned to dust.

And for an artist built like a grizzly, there is perhaps no better ending. He died in his sleep, entering his own eternal hibernation, to one day awake in another, freer world, where his growl scares no one but the wind, where he can be happy with that. He deserves one hell of a monument, but he'd rather just be returned to the earth, to the Wild West wilderness that spawned him.

And even though my aunt says she's not ready to part with him just yet, she'll one day take him down to the river, my five grown cousins in tow, and grant his last wish.

Still, I thought I'd better write him an epitaph. Words are, well, cheap, but they can occasionally mean something.

* * * *

Rich was an artist, and I don't care what the world says.

When I was a child, I used to watch him conquer quarried stone and build magnificent things, structures that would shame the architects of the Great Pyramids.

At the time of his death, he'd last been employed as a mechanic. He'd worked numerous other jobs, worked on a ranch, as a short-order cook, a carpenter.

But in my memories, Rich was, and will always be, a stonemason, the master of hammer and chisel and trowel, one with the ancients who built Stonehenge and the Roman Aqueduct, a modern incarnation of the everyday artist who built Europe's great cathedrals and the Great Wall of China.

Watching him work his trowels, watching those tools butter up bricks and granite and other stones, was like watching de Vinci sketch or Titian select models.

He'd stare at a pallet full of flat stones for an hour, pick through them like a child digging through a box of chocolates, lay them out on the ground in seemingly random patterns. And then he'd pull his masonry hammer from his belt, chip off a few corners here and there, birthing order from his chaotic mess.

Rich would then prep his surfaces, apply his wire backing, and mix his mortar precisely. As he worked his way up from the bottom, his chaotic piles of rocks would grow into chimneys and foundations and facades, retaining walls and fireplaces. As he finished, as he would work his knives over the joints, adding a groove here or there, leaving his own subtle signature in the mortar.

* * * *

He worked best with a large chew of tobacco in his cheek, with plenty of soda pop handy and country or classic rock music playing in the background.

Occasionally, he'd even try to sing - with a mouth full of Skoal, brown spit dripping down his beard as he bellowed out of tune. On most job sites, other construction workers would beg him not to dance, too, as the laughter generated could potentially lead to an accident.

As funny as it was, it was a thing of beauty. But then again, Rich was a beautiful man.

* * * *

Rich was a master, a man of dust and stone, in place of flesh and bone.

I spent portions of two summers working with him on job sites, sweating away in the Virginia heat for a whopping wage of $3.75 an hour, watching him build his marvelous creations and, most importantly, learning to build my own.

I hauled cinder blocks through tick-infested fields, dragged wet concrete up flights of scaffolding. I cleaned out at least a thousand buckets, chipped off at least a ton of dry cement from bucket trowels and tuck trowels and wheelbarrows and mixers.

Day after day, I'd cough up concrete dust for the first fifteen minutes of lunch breaks, learned to love cans of cold pork and beans and tins of mustard-covered sardines. I'd eat in silence and then stare at my poor blistered hands and bloody forearms for another fifteen minutes.

I'd hurt some days so bad that I'd want to cry. And as we'd drive home at the end of the day, he'd poke fun at my occasional whining, buy me a Coke (and sometimes a bottle of beer, if I worked hard), and debate the finer points of everything.

But I never once considered quitting. When one gets an opportunity to watch an artist, to be taught by one, only idiots and other worthless bastards walk away, crying about hardship.

True artistry is not taught in classrooms, nor explained by neutered MFAs in sterile lectures. And true art is hard, dirty work, rugged and mean and covered with scars. The carpenter is no different than the sculptor, the person who rivets the steel girders of bridges and high-rises the equal of muralists and photographers.

The rest is just bullshit history, the kind written by pompous architects, theorists, and other worthless critics. Art is not for them. It remains in the eye of the beholder, and it takes many forms. There is art, somewhere, in everything crafted by Man.

Rich was an artist, and he taught me to trust the dust.

* * * *

My Uncle Rich will soon be turned to dust, cremated down to the same gray dust that once covered his jeans and his shirts. And his ashes will one day clump atop of the water of the Columbia, floating along the surface for a time, then sinking to the riverbed.

And somewhere at the bottom of that mighty Pacific Northwest river, his human remains will mix with sediment, will bind with it, and will fill the crevices in between the worn river rocks. And there, finally, the creator will become part of the Great Creation, grout to hold stones in place, to slow down their eventual erosion, mortar against the forces of nature.

It is a perfect final work for a master mason.

* * * *

I have yet to cry. I don't think I can, actually.

I last spoke to my uncle two years ago, when he called my parents' house one Christmas, to wish his big sister's family a happy holidays.

We spoke for maybe five minutes, about nothing in particular. He did, however, brag about the beauty of the Oregon countryside, brag on his five sons, and brag on his life.

He was content.

And from what I've heard, he spent the rest of his days trying to keep it that way.

* * * *

Rich was an artist, and I can show you the marvelous stonework he created with his own hands.

Oh yeah, that two-story stone fireplace up at the Wintergreen Resort? He built that sucker. One of the homeowner's neighbors once called it the most beautiful fireplace she'd ever seen. And I think that may be the best compliment anyone ever gave him. As I rode home with him that night, the three hours back to the farm, he kept referring to himself as The Artiste...

That foundation on that farmhouse out in Burkeville? Hell, he and I spent four days digging those footers, and that lady's goose attacked us every morning. The damn thing even shit on the bucket trowels anytime we left 'em sitting around too long.

Oh, and that blockwork out in Buckingham? Took forever. Every day we'd get on-site, work for five minutes, and then it'd rain. Rich would just get pissed, kick something, swear at the sky. But it went up eventually.

And, yeah, he never once trusted me with a float. Said I put too much pressure on the concrete, left indentations. Never once saw 'em, but he swore up and down they were there...

And we can go to Oregon, too, and I'll show you his last masterpiece...

- # # # -

THE ZENFORMATION PLAYLIST 6/13/07: No Catchy Titles This Month, Just Random Tunes and Notes...

BABY PLEASE DON'T GO [VIDEO]
Lightnin' Hopkins, available on various compilations, most music services

What men like Mozart were to Austria, performers like Hopkins are to the United States. The guy turns a single acoustic guitar into a veritable symphony of sound and hand movement.

While the guitar has been around for centuries, it was not the Old World that mastered it but the New. A large, mostly barren continent was tamed by its legendary musicians, many of whom younger generations tend to forget about, despite being able to download music in mere nanoseconds.

Performers like Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Bob Wills, Hank Williams, The Carter Family, Ralph Stanley, Waylon Jennings, Fats Domino, Marty Robbins, Dizzy Gillespie, Leadbelly, Robert Johnson, Ellis Marsalis, Billie Holiday, Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton...

It's all blues in the end, baby. All blues. And you either get it, or you don't. God have mercy on those who don't.


LOUIE LOUIE
Black Flag, 7" Single, (Posh Boy, 1981)

This is one of the last studio recordings featuring early BF vocalist Dez Cadena, the precursor to that other guy, that angry bodybuilder dude with the tats...

You know, what's his name? The guy who does the spoken word albums? The dude from the Independent Film Channel who kinda dresses like me?

Mr. Rollins, please don't kill me. Your neck veins scare me.

Seriously, dude. I worshiped The Boxed Life in high school. Changed my life and helped make me the nonconformist, impractical bastard that I am today. And you alone may share my grief, the dreaded fountains - for - armpits curse, that is the bane of the tee-shirt wearin' thinker's existence.


A COUNTRY BOY CAN SURVIVE [VIDEO]
Hank Williams, Jr.,
That's How They Do It Down in Dixie- The Essential Collection (Curb, 2006)

When I got home from work this afternoon, I just had to play this song, a protest of sorts.

While running some work-related errands after lunch the other day, I heard a group of kids making fun of this older guy, a gentleman who wore his decades as a farmer on his face, for, well, just being an old guy who speaks slow and country.

I've had conversations with the guy before, a cool cat with lots of stories about his time in the Army, growing up in rural Kentucky, and his giving up on a college scholarship to be a farmer. When he was younger, the man was a fighter. He fought for his country, fought the banks, and fought the goddamn State of Indiana to keep funding for the public school his kids and grandkids attended.

He deserves his own song on the Playlist. And a lot more respect.


THE HUNGER
Jesse "The Devil" Hughes, avail. via Artist MySpace Page

Yup. This track, from that former Republican speechwriter and Eagles of Death Metal vocalist, is completely amazing, a New Wave-ish cover of a great Distillers song, probably one of the best Brody Dalle and Co. every recorded.

I first discovered this unreleased gem through a blog lurker, actually. Who knew there were so many Distillers fans out there?


MAMA SAID KNOCK YOU OUT [VIDEO]
LL Cool J, Mama Said Knock You Out (Def Jam, 1990)

You know, I'm just now starting to get well enough to resume my morning chin-up routine. Five sets of eight reps each.

NPR? I don't do that shit. Frankly, Morning Edition puts me to sleep - almost as pointless as commercial radio. I'd still listen occasionally, if Bob Edwards hadn't been booted to make the suits happy. His voice, at least, had rhythm and inflection, much like Mr. Cool J.

And who the hell wants to shadow box in a lonely apartment at five in the morning, listening to a newscast? Seriously.

And while I'm ranting... I miss Around The Way Girls. Maybe I'm just getting old, but Around The Country Club Girls just don't cut it.

Around The Way Girls are generally more independent, make ratty flannel boxers look sexy, and can just keep it real 24-7. Around The Country Club Girls are high maintenance, shallow, and just about as interesting and intelligent as a dead ferret.


BUMP BUMP
Raekwon and Prince Po, The Vatican Mixtape, Vol. 1 (2006/2007)

Wow. There are still emcees in the Rap Game who know how to turn a simple loop and a catchy flow into dance floor perfection.


BLANK GENERATION
Richard Hell and the Voidoids, Blank Generation (Sire, 1977)

There's something ominous about this song turning 30 years old this year. It's hard to believe that the Sex Pistols' only true studio album turns the big 3-0 this year, too.


UNITED FORCES
Raza De Odio, La Nueva Alarma (Scarlet, 2004)

I'm not afraid to admit that I still dig Heavy Metal. And there are only two places on earth that still seem to appreciate the musical genre - Europe and, of course, Central America.

The Razas, based in Italy, are known for their blend of that old-school crunch, with just enough flamenco-influenced leads to make things interesting. And this song, originally by New York thrash pioneers S.O.D., proves that the world can be united through the art of headbanging.


DICKS HATE THE POLICE [MP3]
The Dicks, 1980-1986 (Comp., Alternative Tentacles, 1997)

When I was still big into actually living like a Punker (Christ, even the memories stink of cheap beer and ratty jeans worn for weeks straight), this song was one of my favorites by one of the Greatest Punk Bands in the history of the Great State of Texas. The AT compilation covers their best stuff.

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SO IT GOES: The Deeper One Digs into the Local Higher Education Underground, The More Dirt One Exposes to the Sky

We're terrible animals. I think that the Earth's immune system is trying to get rid of us, as well it should.

- KURT VONNEGUT (1922-2007),
From his appearance on The Daily Show, 2005

This should come as a shock no one, especially people who frequent this site, but Oxford Fucking Ohio has more than just a few problems when it comes to Local U. student behavior.

People throughout the region, those familiar with this area, know the reputation, or have heard tales from others about some of the downright nucking futs insanity this community experiences from, oh, late August through May each year.

I'm always fascinated when random strangers feel the need to walk up to me in a bar or at work, just to let me know how bad I apparently make Local U. students look, or how I should be ashamed to post what I do about my experiences in Oxford. It's happened twice in the past week.

Sure, the Local U.'s a Public Ivy, with several nationally recognized academic programs. It even produced a U.S. president - albeit one that only History teachers and Jeopardy! junkies seem to be able to remember.

And sure, the student body supposedly represents the best and brightest in the region. Local U. students often pride themselves in their work ethic. The rural environs surrounding the campus, its virtual isolation from the hustle and bustle of 21st century life, offers wonderful opportunities for dedicated students to concentrate on their studies with minimal disruption.

But in terms of behavior outside of the classroom? Off-campus?

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Just imagine taking some of the wealthiest 18-22 year-olds in the Midwest, the majority of whom seem to come from extremely sheltered backgrounds, and then setting them loose on a college town that offers very few extracurricular activities beyond binge drinking and substance abuse.

Now subtract several key factors that normally help regulate student behavior in most college towns. Outside of the town's full-time, non-student population, socioeconomic diversity is virtually nonexistent. The once healthy campus/community relationship has cooled to the point of almost outright animosity, thanks in part to a growing disparity between "Townie" living standards (where nearly one in five children and nearly one in 10 seniors live at or below the poverty line) and that of the students.

The once vibrant local music scene has only recently begun to show signs of resurrection, after almost a decades' worth of third-rate frat rock, shitty cover bands, and preppy gated- community- friendly folk performers. Major acts stop by maybe a handful of times year, the Local U.'s attempt to expose students to spoken word, hip-hop, musical theatre, and other performing arts. Many of the normal "College Radio," avant-garde types, the kinds of acts that filled the bars and clubs here throughout the 70s and 80s, no longer play this town because of its reputation as a potential career-killer.

And more and more faculty and staff are choosing to endure commutes from larger metropolitan areas. After-hours class meetings at local pubs and coffee shops, cookouts at faculty residences, and even the occasional impromptu late-night chat over grades, what many Higher Ed analysts call informal learning opportunities, have virtually ceased to exist in some academic disciplines.

Issues? Yeah, Oxford has issues with a capital I. A bloated cost of living, a shrinking middle-class population base, and the lack of sustainable cultural outlets are just the tip of the iceberg.

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We're not talking Animal House. We're talking Lord of the Flies here. Imagine 15,000 college kids roaming the streets, with only a handful of professional, mature adults to serve as role models.

The fact that I'm considered by some folks locally, because of this blog, to be a community leader scares the living shit out of me. Being the Dangerous Librarian? No problem. But to be considered one of the Old Farts because I have a friggin' blog and I'm old enough to legally drink? Now that's frightening.

The Local U. student culture seems to be moving closer to the day when its poor Piggys get brained with a rock, a frightening future where the idea of College Life becomes more akin to a Hitler Youth rally than the typical American undergrad experience, where conformity becomes the only fashion accessory legally allowed.

Imagine a college town where nights are ruled by a Gen Y version of Jack and the Choirboys, one where Oxford residents over the age of 30 generally lock themselves in their own homes after ten on the weekends, surrendering their community to the popped-collar J. Crew U. hordes bound for evenings filled with unreported sexual assaults and vomited wastes of perfectly good beer.

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Last week, a colleague made an interesting comment about this ol' blog. He jokingly expressed concern that I may one day have an Imus Moment. We had a good laugh over it, actually.

Anyone who works here long enough, who lives here long enough, knows that there's no need to wait for me to put something completely insane online for public consumption.

Why bother? The local web is already filled with Local U. versions of The Imus Moment.

I found an ex's blog a few months ago, while randomly Googling names out of boredom. On her blog, she discusses things such as her current drug-consumption habits, break-ups and fights that involve real names, and other things. I hit up MySpace and found that there are numerous students who feel the need to share tips on how to sneak into bars, which sororities are the sluttiest, and who document various criminal activities.

I've even been experimenting with FaceBook. You wouldn't believe how many folks post completely inappropriate images in public profiles, for the world to access. I found out that a woman who hit on me a few months back, a woman who claimed to be a 23-year-old grad student, was actually a 19-year-old with a great fake I.D.

Stephan!e? One of my fellow OxBloggers? Free Rad!cal Rightings is by far the best student Blogger site out there. She deals with socially conscious activism, her quest to graduate, and her inability to remember to do her taxes.

See, she's responsible with her online content. But there are others... dear lord, the others...

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And then, of course, there's the electronic Pandora's Box, that pesky YouTube/Google Video monster.

Ever wondered what life in Oxford actually looks like? Or what kinds of things go on here that I only skim over in posts, the kinds of worship found only in the Cathedral of the Local Higher Education Underground?

Take a look at what I found, what anybody can find, when looking for information on the local college scene:


THE UN-RECRUITMENT VIDEO:

TheU.Com, a company that specializes in producing videos that explore campus life, managed to capture just about negative stereotype associated with the Local U.

I should mention that this video has spawned several dorm room drinking games, including "Spot the Minority" and "Count the Pastel Polos."


GREEN BEER DAY AND STUPIDITY:

I probably get more negative feedback for calling Green Beer Day America's Dumbest College Tradition than I do from almost any other post.

My favorite IM this year? "Fukin faggot liberal. go eat you fukin tofu hippy . ill be fukin hotties at lotties on GBD."

I feel sorry for whatever hotties that guy was supposedly fukin. Wonder if he's one of the guys fighting at the end of this clip?


NANCY PELOSI & THE FIGHTIN' POLITICOS:

What happens when a Left-leaning student and a Right-leaning student have a disagreement while in Uptown Oxford after dark?

The answer has now been captured on film.

I have yet, however, to witness two students actually sustain an intellectual debate over just a few drinks in Uptown Oxford.

And who the hell yells Fuck Nancy Pelosi as a rallying cry, anyway?

* * * *

Welcome to Oxford Fucking Ohio, population 21,000, 15,000 of which are Local U. undergrads, bored shitless and prone to some of the strangest behaviors known to Man.

It's not their fault, really. Idle hands are indeed the tools of the Devil.

Actually, I think Beelzebub lives down the street. He's egging on a group of guys in an attempt to turn a friendly game of Edward Forty-Hands into the first-ever game of Double SoCo Hands. And I've heard Mephistopheles just applied for a liquor license, as he's planning on opening a college bar called Roofies Pub - it'd be a big hit with certain groups of guys.

Satan? He just started his first-ever Religious Right- influenced, emo/punk record label in some dorm room, signing bands with names like Jesus Built my Fauxhawk, The Falwell Five, and Sad Puppies Get the Girl to, like, Make Out with You.

And I'm pretty sure the Antichrist spends his days hanging out at the ZenFo Library, teaching courses on the Art of Facebook Stalking.

Dear God.

I'm actually starting to sound like a responsible, rational community leader.

I think I need a drink. And a cigarette. Maybe cyanide.

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