My devoted fans send me e-mail …

Hey, el Idiota:

You’re loyal readers want to know, mi amigo, where’s this fiction you keep promising? Some of us are beginning to think you are full of la mierda. You talk big, but don’t deliver.

And how come, when you act like you’re such a big blogger, you barely blog all week? ¿Arriba qué es? No wonder Instapundit doesn’t link to you.

Thank you for your concern, Ricardo. You are, um, so kind.

Would it sound too lame if I plead “I have a life”? Like, I didn’t blog much this weekend because my wife said I’d be sleeping on the couch for the next week if I didn’t get the spare room painted. And let me tell you what a chore that was … at 9:30 last night, we decided the walls needed a second coat, so I buzzed down to Home Depot. Problem was, the only guy working the paint department at that time was a burned out hippie who was busy playing nursemaide to a husband and wife squabbling over trim colors. He gave my request for a gallon of flat “Rising Sun” scant attention, and I was too much of an el Idiota to notice, so I came home and applied a coat of semi-gloss “Sunburst,” which is just a shade darker. While Home Depot was kind enough to front me more paint and primer, I had to redo the entire room, including prime over the semi-gloss.

So, rather than blog this weekend, or write my suspect fiction (you can decide the meaning of that ambiguous phrase), I painted. Unfortunately, I wasn’t painting still lifes of mobile homes; rather, I was transforming the guest room into something civilized.

As for the rest of the week, and the rest of my life for that matter. Let me tell you about some of the irons I have in the fire.

Leaving aside the fact that it was Christmas week and I spent four days in San Diego with our families (meaning mine and my wife, not yours), I have a number of responsibilities and interests. For example, I have a full-time job that is, in fact, really a full-time job. Then I’m trying to get in better shape and lose weight (and not doing too badly at it), so I go to the gym pretty regularly. That takes up time, and believe me I would rather blog than spend 20 or 30 minutes on a treadmill. And to keep abreast of my work, I’m trying to brush up on XML, read a couple of general interest programming books and … AND … learn JAVA. Of course, I want to continue spending some time with Bukowski now and then, but he’s been feeling neglected of late. And I do like to take some time to actually read other people’s blogs regularly (check out all of the great blogs on my blog roll, including Glenn Reynolds‘). Not to mention, I’ve got Pierce’s Blook to read.

Besides all that, there are several Web sites that I am responsible for, so I have to pay attention to those.

And when there is time, I still try to squeeze in a few hundred words on one of my short stories. I’m not making this up. I do do fiction when I can. And intend to continue to pursue those goals.

And, of course, there is always the wife. Can’t forget her, though apparently, Ricardo, you would like me to. Love needs more maintainance than a Web site, you know. I am careful about that.

And I would still like to sneak in time to study Spanish, but it never seems to work out.

And see that picture of me in the upper left? I’m holding a guitar. I dare you to ask me when the last time was that I actually touched my guitar. Go ahead. I double dog dare ya.

A few thoughts on Steve Outing’s end of the year column …

He predicts for 2003:

Even though pop-ups are intrusive enough that they work better than the old standard Web ad banners, I think they’ll slowly die out due to consumer backlash.

Consumers hate television commercials, too, but we still have them.

My speculation is that advertisers will still find pop-ups appealing and will continue to buy them so long as click-through rates and branding studies show them to be effective. In fact, I would think that as more and more consumers install and use pop-up blocking software, pop-ups will become even more attractive to advertisers — because there will reach a point where the vast majority of consumers who actually see the ads will be those who have the least resistance to them. These are the consumers most likely to respond.

The real challenge for online publishers will be in devising a way to price these ads. Many pop-up blockers register an ad impression because the ad opens briefly, so the publisher cannot give a true accounting of impressions. So, if there ever was an ad format best designed for price-per-click fees, poppers are it.

Personally, I hate poppers, but just because we consumers hate them doesn’t mean that advertisers won’t continue to love them — they just need to deliver enough ROI, and I don’t think that is too big of a hurdle.

On the classified front, Outing is most pessimistic:

Most newspapers won’t move quickly enough and will see further loss of recruitment market share to Monster.com, et al within their local markets.

Recruitment advertising has traditionally been a newspaper’s strongest suit and most important revenue source. This is changing, and no matter what newspapers do, newspapers will never again dominate this market as they once did. This is the biggest change the “new economy” has wrought. I don’t believe the situation is hopeless, however. While newspapers will need to scramble to better meet the needs of their clients (and they need to start looking on HR departments as clients, and not customers), newspapers remain the business best positioned to help local employers.

My prediction: Look for newspapers to start providing personalized job matching services — not, per se, a searchable résumé bank; rather, recruitment teams will start pre-screening résumés for employers and giving them the best possible matches, at a premium price. The newspaper will become the head hunter, even on lower-end jobs.

Outing is also bullish on Wi-Fi, or the wireless Internet. I remain bearish. First, where is the revenue? I can’t see recommending that my employer spend a lot of time and effort in PDAs, cell phones, and tablets until I can see a revenue model that works. While it was important for newspapers to jump into the online world in 1994/95, when revenue models were hard to imagine, I don’t think newspapers need to remain cutting edge about every new technology that comes down the pike. Getting online was a no brainer because it opened up a world of possibilities and it was clear pretty early that the Net would become important. Also, falling behind then was dangerous, but falling behind on PDAs doesn’t seem nearly as fatal. Wireless, as popular as it seems today, remains a boutique service, and the consumers of such services are even less likely to pay for wireless content than Internet consumers. And with the smaller screens, where do you put ads?

Yes, there is a market for breaking news (national and international), sports scores and stock reports on wireless, but there are also plenty of news channels providing those services already. I’m not sure there is a screaming need to get local news (which is what the vast majority of online news professionals are concerned about) on PDAs.

My big prediction for 2003 and beyond is to look for online newspapers to bank less on banner ads — including poppers and rich media ads — and more on leveraging print/online synergies, such as the Top Jobs application, print ads online, coupons and the like. Newspapers are also going to continue to move in a direction that leverages their standing in their local communities to better meet the needs of advertisers and consumers. Applications like online auctions that provide local advertisers with unique and inexpensive means to market directly to consumers will continue to grow and morph into new ideas.

I would say more, but I don’t want to give away the shop.

In the summer of 1984, I had just returned to San Diego from Santa Maria, Calif., and I was writing poetry like mad.

I desperately wanted to be published, and the leading poetry magazine in town at the time was “We Accept Donations,” published by Forrest Curo and Ann Halter Jones.

I showed Forrest some of my poetry, and he was unimpressed (politely so). I was a modernist and he was definitely a post-modernist, and even though I had not yet studied the differences in college yet, I could see we each took very different approaches to poetry.

I preferred my style, but I was willing to experiment.

So, I read a few issues of “We Accept Donations” and got a feel for the kind of poetry Forrest preferred, and then I dashed off “We all need dreams.” The poem, literally, took me less than 15 minutes to write and I never revised a word. It was purely an exercise in imitation and, frankly, it’s never been one of my favorite poems.

But Forrest loved it. He accept it for publication, along with a couple of poems he previously rejected, and he accepted a couple more poems from me in the next issue (which, if it wasn’t the last issue of the little magazine, WAD folded soon after that). And publication resulted in an invitation for me to “headline” a poetry reading at a small La Mesa bookstore, which marked the pinnacle of my poetry career.

BTW: I do accept donations, if you feel so inclined … tip jar to the right.

In high school, I had a t-shirt that read … “The Only Band That Matters.”

At the time, I really believed it.

That band was The Clash.

Joe Strummer is dead.

My punk heroes keep dying on me. It’s quite sad.

What the hell is Xanga and why the heck am I getting so many referrers from that site the last few days?

If I had been home, I would have kissed the postman today … twice.

Arriving from good friend, kick-ass journalist and fine musician Kevin Featherly was a CD titled “Gettysburg.” It is the result of what happens when you turn loose a talented man with a home recording studio and CD duplication tools and a good printer. As expected, Kev’s songs are soulful and deep.

And what happens when you give a talented man a keyboard connected to the Internet? You get the Bus Blog, and arriving with Kev’s bundle of joy was Tony Pierce’s “Blook,” a collection of his best writing from the first year of the Bus Blog. I ordered my copy. Have you? You should. I’m only a few pages into it so far and already overstimulated on good writing.

My copy of the “Blook” is number 70. I guess that makes me about half as important as Glenn Reynolds . I’m cool with that. I’ve been reading Pierce for a lot less time. Unless, of course — novel concept — Pierce numbered them according to the order in which orders were received, if you follow what I’m saying. I wonder what numbers Layne and Welch got?  Who the hell cares — all the cool people already have the book anyway, I’m sure. And that’s what matters (hey, don’t get mad at me for gloating — I’m so rarely among the cool — it’s a heady feeling).

OK, where’s a gawker.com for Los Angeles/Hollywood?

UPDATE: Denton responds with: What about LAExaminer.com? My answer: I love LAX, but it’s not quite the same.

BTW: I should have mentioned … first heard of the gawker through >Instapundit.com

Often beneath the wave, wide from this ledge
The dice of drowned men’s bones he saw bequeath
An embassy. Their numbers as he watched,
Beat on the dusty shore and were obscured.

And wrecks passed without sound of bells,
The calyx of death’s bounty giving back
A scattered chapter, livid hieroglyph,
The portent wound in corridors of shells.

Then in the circuit calm of one vast coil,
Its lashings charmed and malice reconciled,
Frosted eyes there were that lifted altars;
And silent answers crept across the stars.

Compass, quadrant and sextant contrive
No farther tides . . . High in the azure steeps
Monody shall not wake the mariner.
This fabulous shadow only the sea keeps.

– Hart Crane

I first read Hart Crane in a poetry anthology. It was this poem, in fact, that led me to seek out more of his work. At the time, I was fully enthralled with T.S. Eliot, who still ranks among the giants in my personal pantheon of writers, but Crane has long been the standard by which I judge my own poetry (and I fall pathetically short of that standard, I know).

Crane may be one of the most difficult modern poets to comprehend. Each line is so packed with meaning that a lifetime of study rarely reveals the true depth of any Crane poem.

Take just the first four lines of “At Melville’s Tomb” for example — we have thrown together the idea of random chance in life (the dice), fortune telling (again, the dice), death that is both caused by chance and leads to chance, and a diplomatic connection between the living and the dead (the embassy). And even with that brief inventory of meanings, we still do not arrive at an articulate connection between the words and their impact on the reader.

Crane called this the “logic of metaphor:”

. . . [A]s a poet, I may very possibly be more interested in the so-called illogical impingements of the connotations of words on the consciousness (and their combinations and interplay in metaphor on this basis) than I am interested in the preservation of their logically rigid significations at the cost of limiting my subject matter and the perceptions involved in the poem.

“At Melville’s Tomb” is one of the best illustrations of Crane’s point. While the poem is backed with unexpected flights of word play, the language is in no way trivialized and the overall scope of the poem remains cohesive and coherent. Crane takes unusual words, combines them in unusual ways and beats out odd rhythms on his way to hitting you in the gut with a powerful image. In this case, it is an image of death and fate seen through the closed eyes of Herman Melville.

Take a line like “Frosted eyes there were that lifted altars …” The phrase does not necessarily communicate a straightforward thought, but it is a powerful image once you piece together the look of a drowning man’s eyes, staring heavenward as he descends to the depths of a pitiless and icy sea, lifting prayers for his very soul as death becomes inevitable. A lesser poet would have been more direct, and therefore less powerful.

Crane is by no means an easy poet to comprehend, but none of the truly great poets ever are. Life is never easy, so how can a poet truly hope to reflect reality in simple phrases and trite observations? Language is, after all, a poor tool for describing life, so the poet must squeeze every ounce of meaning from the pitifully few words he has to choose from and illuminate our being as best he can. Crane did better than most.

The Complete Poems of Hart Crane.

I agree with Aaron Haspel. Rules are rules. And even if you change the rules now — and you shouldn’t — Rose knew the rules at the time he broke them. Keep the loser out of the Hall.

It’s probably no coincidence that I’ve posted a song lyric by Dave Alvin and a poem Charles Bukowski in the same night.

Consider this from Acoustic Guitar:

As a working-class son of semirural Downey, California, he did not consider his old neighborhood to be a heartland of song. “Songwriters came from some other place,” he says. Alvin took inspiration from local writers such as Gerald Locklin and bar fly emeritus Charles Bukowski, who held readings in a Long Beach saloon. “When I read him the first few times it was like, ‘Oh my God! Alvarado and Western Ave.? You can write poetry about that?’”

Last night, as I rocked to the Blasters at the House of Blues, I thought about Bukowski and Los Angeles and this quote. On a song like “Help You Dream,” even though neither Los Angeles nor Buk is mentioned, but knowing of the big influence Bukowski had on Alvin, I could sense the aura pervade the lyric. I can’t imagine the scene of the song taking place anywhere but a bar in L.A. And “Hollywood Bed” must have been written after Alvin read a few hundred Bukowski poems about screwing women in Los Angeles.

So both Alvin and Bukowski have been on my mind much of the day. And they aren’t bad people to have on your mind.

The go on writing
pumping out poems –
young boys and college professors
wives who drink wine all afternoon
while their husbands work,
they go on writing
the same names in the same magazines
everybody writing a little worse each year,
getting out a poetry collection
and pumping out more poems
it’s like a contest
it is a contest
but the prize is invisible.

they won’t write short stories or articles
or novels
they just go on
pumping out poems
each sounding more and more like the others
and some of the young boys weary and quit
but the professors never quit
and the wives who drink wine in the afternoon
never ever ever quit
and the new young boys arrive with new magazines
and there is some correspondence with lady or mer.
and some fucking
and everything is exaggerated and dull.

when the poems come back
they retype them
and send them off to the next magazine on the list
and they give readings
all the readings they can
for free most of the time
hoping that somebody will finally know
finally applaud them
finally congratulate and recognize their
talent
they are all so sure of their genius
there is so little self-doubt,
and most of them live in North Beach or New York City,
and their faces are like their poems:
alike,
and they know each other and
gather and hate and admire and choose and discard
and keep pumping out more poems
more poems
more poems
the contest of the dullards:
tap tap tap, tap tap, tap tap tap, tap tap …


Love is a Dog from Hell

Ah, sweet justice. (via Aaron Haspel).

Marty Schottenheimer, head coach of the San Diego Charges, has a reputation for playing hard, tough, old fashioned, fight-in-the-trenches football. He scorns the West Coast Offense, likes to run the ball and win low-scoring games. With 158-104-1 career record coming into the 2002 season, you have to be impressed with Martyball.

That is, if there is anything such thing as Martyball.

In yesterday’s game, for example, with the Chargers trailing 13-7, and LaDainian Tomlinson apparently starting to wear down the Raider’s defense, the Chargers faced a 4th and 1 situation. The Chargers were deep enough into their own territory to make going for it a good but gutsy choice, especially with the pathetic efforts of their field goal unit of late.

Now, when you have a runner like Tomlinson on your team, and not much else offensively, you want to get the ball into his hands. Tomlinson now holds the Chargers’ single-season rushing record with more than 1,300 yards. He’s also scored 13 touchdowns and is the first Charger runner in history to have back-to-back double-digit TD seasons. In other words, the man can move the ball.

So, fourth and 1. You want to put the ball in LT’s hands, right?

Well, Schottenheimer did that. Unfortunately, instead of living up to his tried and true reputation he had LT run a sweep. Tomlinson was stuffed for a loss and the Raiders took over on down, starting a drive that would put them up 20-7.

That one play changed the complexion of the game and was probably the single most central factor in the Chargers’ disappointing loss. Trailing by two TDs with time running out in the third quarter, the ground game was some what marginalized and Drew Breese has not yet matured into the kind of QB who can marshall an effective air attack for an entire drive. The 4th and 1 play was the key to the game.

To me, Martyball means that even though it’s the obvious call, even though the Raiders would be looking for it — you send LT up the middle. Just like Randy Johnson facing Barry Bonds — you challenge the hitter. You throw fast balls. You say, if you’re going to beat me, you’re going to beat me with my best pitch (actually, the Big Unit’s best pitch is probably a slider, but indulge the metaphor, please). The proper play call yesterday would have been something that sent LT into the gut of the Raiders’ defense.

LT has proven to be an effective inside runner. He can squeeze out yards where none seem possible when he has just a minimum amount of blocking. On the other hand, put LT in the open flat with four Raiders charging at him without a blocker in sight, and he’s going to have no where to run.

This hasn’t been the only time I’ve been frustrated with Chargers play calling this year. Too many times I see the Chargers passing when they should be running. In their embarrassing loss to the New York Jets, the Chargers opened with three straight pass plays and the Jets scored first when they took over on downs. Against the Dolphins, the Chargers faced another fourth and 1, but rather than give it to LT, they tried a rather hopeless quarterback sneak.

This has been a great season for the Chargers, and Schottenheimer deserves a lot of credit for their 8-5 record, but with better play calling that record could easily be 10 and 3 or 11 and 2. On the other hand, it’s a young team with a lot of talent that just needs a season or two to mature. Even if San Diego doesn’t make the playoffs this year, it’s hard not to be optimistic. The Chargers are in a position to consolidate their successes and dominate the AFC West for several seasons to come, especailly with a man like LT in the backfield.

Have I spawned another blog child? It looks possible.

I met Jeff Bishop when I was a reporter at the Daily Californian in El Cajon. He was the Libertarian candidate for the 77th Assembly District. His opponents were Steve Baldwin (GOP) and Tom Connolly, the Democrat who won that race. Tom probably benefitted a good deal from Jeff being in the race, since without a Lib candidate, Baldwin probably would have won the Republican-leaning district. I wound up going to work for Tom and Jeff wound up becoming a Republican. He’s also a lawyer and a very smart man. He’s taken me to task more than once in the comments section of this blog.

As far as I know, though he’s never told me this explicitly, I introduced him to the concept of blogging. So, I’m hoping and guessing, that his introduction to blogs through my blog has inspired his own blog.

White rockers in the 1950s did a good job many times of reinventing black R&B songs. Elvis took songs like “Baby, Let’s Make Love” and “Good Rockin’ Tonight” to new levels of intensity.

“Baby, Let’s Make Love,” for example, became “Baby, Let’s Play House,” which as a matter of poetry, offers more titillation and deeper levels of meaning than a more straight forward “Let’s Make Love” message. Elvis also added the great chorus of “Baby, you may have a pink Cadillac, but don’t you be nobody’s fool.”

On the CD “Jump Blues Classics” from Chess, there are a number of original versions of songs later revamped by white rockers, and it’s interesting to compare and contrast the interpretations.

For example, I much prefer the Rock and Roll Trio’s version of “Train Kept A’rollin’” to the Tiny Bradshaw version. The Burnette brothers, with their unheard of guitar distortion and wild abandonment just do a better job of capturing the mood of the song. It’s better even than the hit version by Aerosmith. Also, the Collins Kids deliver more whomp to “Hoy, Hoy” than either Roy Milton or Little Johnny Jones. But Wyonnie Harris’s “Good Rockin’ Tonight” and Big Mama Thornton’s “Hound Dog” both have a groove that Elvis neither tried to imitate or mimic. That’s to his credit really, but the fact is, there is a soulfulness to those songs that he didn’t capture.

But the pivotal song of white borrowing from black music and changing around songs is “Shake, Rattle and Roll.”

At a time when mainstream white America feared black music as much as it was fascinated by it, Bill Haley displayed both his awe and his trepedation of black music when he covered the Big Joe Turner classic.

Compare, for example, this lyric from the original:

Get out of that bed
and wash your hands [twice]

Get into the kitchen
Make some noise with the pots and pans

Well you wear low dresses
The sun comes shin’ through [twice]

I can’t believe my eyes.
That all this belongs to you.

Get out in that kitchen
And rattle those pots and pans [twice]

Roll my breakfast
‘Cause I’m a hungry man

You were those dresses
Your hair done up so nice [twice]

You look so warm,
But your heart is cold as ice.

And one verse from the Turner version is missing entirely from the Haley cover:

I said over the hill,
And way down underneath [twice]

You make me roll my eyes,
And then you make me grit my teeth.

Why the alternations? As Charlie Gillett explains in his classic history of rock, “The Sound of the City,” Haley feared the original lyrics were too risque for a white audience.

But as if to demonstrate how little Haley, and probably most of white America, didn’t understand black culture and the black musicians love for sexual metaphor, Haley didn’t change these lyrics:

I’m like a one eyed cat
peeping in a sea food store

If you can’t see the clear sexual innuendo in that couplet, I think I’m too polite to tell you what it is.

I always chuckle when I hear the Haley version of “Shake, Rattle and Roll.” The misinterpretation of the song is something worthy of Pat Boone. I know Haley wanted to be remembered as a legend of rock and roll, but there is a reason Elvis Presley eclipsed him both in popularity and critical acclaim. When Elvis changed songs, he did so with a spirit that was true to an African-American culture he appreciated deep in his bones. Haley, like so many others in the white record industry of the time, just wanted to make music he hoped would be palpable to white teen-agers. For one man, the results were classic and lasting. For the other, just mere transitory fame.

Ken Layne’s post on Charles Shaw wine sent me to Google to see what I could find out about this suddenly vogue merlot. What I found was a blog that is perfect for all of us drunks — The Daily Intoxication.

The author seems to be a San Diegan no less, with information on some of my favorite dive bars, such as Pac Shores (opened Dec. 7, 1941), the Spring Valley Inn (Country Dick Montana’s old digs), the Arizona Cafe, Pal Joey’s and Wong’s Dragon Inn. But he doesn’t have the Shamrock in Spring Valley, Pete’s Place in La Mesa, Tommy’s in La Mesa, the Lakeside Hotel (I think it’s closed now, but is such a legendary dive, it deserves a mention), the Chico Club in La Mesa and Manny’s in Spring Valley. There was also the Texas Teahouse in OB, but I think it’s defunct as well. Great dives all.

Of course, in San Diego one of my favorite places to drink was the American Legion Hall in La Mesa, where no drink cost more than a buck fifty, but you’ve got to be a member (meaning a veteran) to get in.

Speaking of dives, last night we found the best dive bar in Ventura. I can’t believe I never knew about this place before. It’s called the Sans Souci and is reportedly the oldest, continuously open dive bar in Ventura. It’s a classic with all wood paneling, all leather stools and a horse-shoe shaped bar. It’s also one of the friendliest crowds I’ve ever found in a dive. A great juke box and, later, live music. We hung out there and skipped the opening acts of the Blasters concert across the street at the Ventura Theater.

Layne, as an ex-San Diegan, should appreciate this post. And, hey, Ken, there’s a couple of downtown bars I’m trying to remember — do you remember the names? One you played one night with the Road Hogs and it seems like that same night we hit two other dives within walking distance of that place, including one that had this great, I mean GREAT, 1880s era bar (Billie thinks it’s “Beasley’s”??).

All these great old dive bars in San Diego brings back memories. Billie and I’s first date was at the Chico Club. We had a few liquid lunch’s at the Lakeside Hotel and I got shit-faced drunk at Manny’s the day the Evening Tribune went out of business. And I saw many a great Buddy Blue show at Pete’s Place (most recently only about two months ago). Billie and I were in the Texas Teahouse the night Gorbachev fell from power.

Layne, you need to make a road trip to Ventura so I can introduce you to Sans Souci.

This is primarily for those of who who have been reading this blog since it was Global News Watch — Do you think my blog is better now, when it deals with a variety of subjects and very little politics, or was it better when I wrote about all kinds of war and world issues?

Frankly, I’m hoping you’ll say you like it better now.  Not that I want to prejudice you, but if you liked it better before, let me know.  I’ll try to do more politics and war issues, then.  But I kind of feel like there are so many bloggers out there doing that kind of stuff so well, I should just write about what strikes my fancy and hope people enjoy it.

Personally, it’s more entertaining for me to write and think about a wide variety of topics, but maybe that’s too self-indulgent. But then, isn’t a blog supposed to be self-indulgent?

Of course, I know there are a good number of people (but that I mean some where between 100 and 300) who visit the site regularly, so I must be doing something right.

I don’t ask this question entirely out of insecurity. Even though blogging is largely an act of self-interest, there is little point in doing it if at least some people don’t enjoy what you do.

Last point for the long-time readers:  If you have a blog, let your readers know about how this blog has transformed and what it’s like these days.  I fear some people might have written me off because I didn’t do a very good political as well as many other bloggers, and I also want to get the word out to other bloggers who are more like me — covering a variety of topics, that this is no longer a strictly a political blog. 

For newer readers — do you like the fact that I cover a variety of topics, or do you come here hoping I’ll write about a specific topic?

What sorts of things do you think I do best?

At the risk of revealing what a pathetically small readership I have, I’m encouraging comments in the comments section. Please leave comments.

Well, I’m finding I can’t just toss of fiction the way I do blog posts.  The writing is much slower, and then I want to take my time with revisions.

The first story I promised a while back is sitting on a shelf at the moment. I’ve decided to make some significant changes, so that will take some time.

But I don’t want to return to that project until I finish story number two.  That story is coming along slowly. I’m making progress, but in fits and starts.

If you would like to be notified of the release of these short stories — I’ll publish them first through this site — you can sign up for my e-mail announcement list.  Please do.

There are three distinctive strains of country music these days — a sort of back to basics school, an Americana/folky tradition, and everything else (meaning all the crap, with precious few exceptions, you hear on the radio or see on CMT).

Personally, I go for classic country — that brand of music that keeps the songs simple and the sound authentic. I like steel guitars, aching vocals, chicken-clucking Telecasters and songs about booze, trains and cheating. It doesn’t get much better than Hank Williams or George Jones (or Merle Haggard, or Johnny Cash, or Buck Owens or Dwight Yoakam or Lefty Frizzell).

So it should be no surprise that I have developed a fondness for Rex Hobart and the Misery Boys. Hobart writes songs about broken hearts and shattered dreams as good as any you’ve ever heard.

“Are you really that miserable?” I asked him the other day.

“I would be if I wasn’t writing the songs,” Hobart said from his new home in Buffalo. “I have this uncanny ability to obsess. I guess it’s just part of being a songwriter or an artist — you can just take a bit of information or an overheard line from a conversation and just run with it. I’m really an optimist, but I do like to think about love and what it does to people when it goes wrong.”

His new CD (the third Hobart’s recorded for Bloodshot), is full of tales about love gone wrong, and not a number in the lot will inspire any boot scootin’. From the opening “You’ve Got Some Changing to Do,” to “Gotta Get Back to Forgetting You,” “Another Bad Habit of Mine” and “I Should Be Gone by Now,” Hobart’s “Your Favorite Fool” is overflowing with the kind of tears that used to flow as freely as the beer in every honky tonk across America.

But Hobart isn’t some throwback hack jumping on the retro wagon train. His songs fairly drip with sincerity, which is what he wants to hear. In a world where retro means reducing previous eras to a comic-book pastiche of styles and sounds, Hobart is just trying to create country music as he hears it.

“I hope that we’re not retro,” Hobart said. “I think what we’re doing is a take on a Bakersfield sound, or maybe somewhere between Bakersfield and Nashville in 1965, but coming from guys who used to play in a punk band in Kansas City.

“The thing about retro that scares me,” he added, “it’s just regurgitation. It’s a facade. It’s thinking that — it’s like, looking for authenticity backwards. I don’t sit down and try to sound like a certain record. If we’re going to be considered retro by anybody, I hope that they don’t think we’re just trying to be the Buckaroos or the Strangers.”

Hobart and his band, the aptly titled Misery Boys, got together in Kansas City in 1997, after Hobart had spent several years ruling his hometown’s hardcore punk scene in Giant Chair. But after a while, Hobart felt he had taken punk and Giant’s Chair as far as he could go with it. His songwriting started to seem stale, and then one day on a whim, while on tour with his band, at a truck stop in Maryland, he bought a George Jones cassette.

It wasn’t like Hobart had never heard Jones before. Honky tonk and classic country is what his parents played around the house when he was growing up. He just didn’t appreciate it then.

“You get back in the van after rocking out for a night and you think you don’t want to hear any more guitars like that, and so I listened to that tape,” Hobart said. “I think that’s when it clicked. I realized the music was so simple and nothing got in the way, and by that time I had had a heart break or two, and I would hear a song and I’d think, ‘Oh, that’s what that song means.’”

By the time Bloodshot released “The Spectacular Sadness,” Hobart had transformed his songwriting into the kind of bare honesty that makes neon lights glow and a longneck a man’s best friend.

Hobart and his band are getting ready for a tour of the Southeast, but Pollstar only lists two upcoming shows at the moment - both in Chicago at the end of the mouth.

“I just hope that people will come out and see live music,” Hobart said. “Especially if people are going to burn CDs. If you’re going to get free music, at least go out and see live shows. That’s my big gripe for the day. That, and don’t start any wars if you can avoid it.”

The Blasters are in town tonight. I’ll be there. Here’s the article I did for the Star.