Ten Words No One Would Ever Use to Describe Milwaukee

Coming on the heels of the news that it's the fourth-poorest city in the United States, I suppose you could accuse me of kicking Milwaukee when it's down.

And you'd be right.

Still, it's hard to love a place you exhausted your savings moving to, have wasted two years on a pointless job search in and where none of your pictures ever turn out.

Keeping in mind that beauty (and ugliness) are in the eye of the beholder, here are ten words no one would ever use to describe Milwaukee:

Sparkling
Whimsical
Effervescent
Welcoming
Enchanting
Colorful
Beguiling
Luminous
Alluring
Destination

Goodbye, Sir Charlie

One of my favorite music blogs passed away.

This sincere-but-tardy eulogy comes upon the realization that Sir Charlie Palmer is gone and it ain’t coming back. So goodbye, Sir. May you rest in peace.

Sir Charlie Palmer was a tart blend of commentary and music of every stripe. The picture of Karl Marx, the icon which read 'I Don't Give a Shit What Your House Is Worth' and the suggestions to support socialism and vote Labour were proof-enough of that.

Blues, reggae, garage, new wave, 60’s beat, folk and even country and western all made appearances. Likewise critical seventies relics like the Sensational Alex Harvey Band’s Next and Brinsley Schwarz’s New Favourites of Brinsley Schwarz .

It was where you went to find Ballboy. Kris Kristofferson. Tim Hardin. The Pretty Things. Son House. And Eek-a-mouse. And as if this ruddy-cheeked UK blog needed another infusion of personality, Sir Charlie used the names of players from his favorite football club as file links. Perfect.

But now it's gone.

You could argue that our multi-national conglomerates will once again be able to pay their Armani-suited executives bonuses now that this portal to sin and theft is gone. But you’d be wrong.

Home taping didn’t kill music, and neither will downloading obscure, long-out-of-print music off the Internet. In fact, blogs like Sir Charlie Palmer were likely the only things keeping memories of these musicians alive, given the capriciousness of record company deletion policies.

Once again, the people visiting blogs like Sir Charlie Palmer weren’t tweens looking for a bypass around iTunes, Amazon or Rhapsody for their B.o.B. or Katy Perry downloads. They were hardcore music lovers like myself with boxes and boxes and boxes of vinyl, cassettes and CDs.

When prompted to name dependents on my yearly income tax form, I was often tempted to list record companies. It wasn’t far from the truth.

And as much as my limited finances allow, let it be known that I have purchased CDs formerly downloaded off the Internet. Because like so many of my blog-visiting brethren, I am a musiholic. Someone who lives, breathes, eats and drinks music.

And when I fall for an album, I want the cover art and the lyrics and the names of the musicians and the producer and where it was recorded. Something tangible and tactile. Something as vivid and three-dimensional as the music itself.

Not a computer file or CD-R lettered in magic marker.

So if you’re part of the industry, please respond and tell me who I’m stealing from when I download an album that has been out of print for twenty or forty years. I could likely buy a $45 Japanese import, but allow me to respectfully point out that it is because of corporate monoliths like yours that I don’t have the $45 to begin with.

I see it this way: after decades of soaking people for fifteen-dollar CDs that cost less to make than vinyl LPs, stealing music off the Internet could be something of a—ahem—market correction.

But beyond that, blogs like Sir Charlie Palmer made music available the accountants in charge of our entertainment conglomerates have no idea even exists. In other words, he was creating demand. Do you understand that, Mr. Bean Counter?

Goodbye, Sir Charlie. You will be missed.

Much Ado about Nothing

I will admit right off the bat that life could be much worse. I could have been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer this morning. I could be homeless, or filing for bankruptcy. I could be off to the hospital to visit my girlfriend after she was raped and beaten last night.

But I’m not.

Yet at the same time, it could also be a great deal better.

For example, I could have two compatible part-time jobs. Or just one full-time job with a living wage. Or sleep not riddled with eye-opening anxiety. Is an apartment with appliances that don’t date from the Carter administration asking too much?

I am weary. Life has become a slog through wet cement. Round and round and round I go, expending energy and effort but never arriving at my destination. True, you could argue that I now have two part-time jobs, whereas last spring I had none.

But consider this. Part-time job number one mandates where I live. And despite its offering of one week’s employment per month, it forbids me to be otherwise employed, as I must (technically) be available virtually around the clock, each and every day of the month.

Forgive my impudence, but didn’t the Emancipation Proclamation eliminate slavery?

Part-time job number two recently informed me that after September, I will no longer be able to take a week off each month to perform part-time job number one.

This despite my making this condition clear when asked if I had any extenuating circumstances that might affect my availability in a job interview last August.

With their subsequent extension of a job offer, didn't they indicate that this was reasonable and acceptable? That they were okay with it? Or am I just a dumb fuck?

Alas, I ask for too much. What on Earth am I thinking, smoking, drinking or otherwise ingesting? That I could conceivably be self-supporting? That I could conceivably possess two crappy part-time jobs?

My presumptuousness is as alarming as it is outrageous.

On my good days, I think to myself “OK. This isn’t working. Change it.” But it soon becomes evident that I am between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

The apartment? Even within the geographic area allowed by part-time job number one, I’m stuck. Landlords in my adopted state are the definition of provincial.

“You haven’t lived here all your life? You haven’t been at your job fifteen years? Hmmm. What are you? Some kind of transient? A job-hopper? You’re not very stable. You’re a very poor risk. And I can’t rent to you.”

And the job(s)? Logic would decree that if I find my current employment unsuitable, I should seek employment elsewhere. But I’m already playing the lottery, thank you very much.

Which is another way of saying I may as well petition the Yankees to become their centerfielder as apply for a position in the field in which I’ve spent the majority of my work life.

Employers have made it crystal clear that as a prospective candidate, I rank somewhere between a death row felon and a drooling imbecile who smells of feces.

Which is why I find myself in two incompatible part-time jobs that can dictate so many facets of my existence. Only the desperate need apply.

Serfdom, anyone?

Celebrity and Teachable Moments

Too often, I give in to a nature both skeptical and cynical. So when I read that Paris Hilton, a wealthy young woman who doesn’t have to do anything for anyone, was arrested for cocaine possession in Las Vegas, I was suffused with relief.

Not because she had been arrested. Far from it. What restored my faith in humanity was the fact that the cocaine wasn’t hers—she was merely keeping it for a friend.

In a world both distant and uncaring, here is someone willing to risk social embarrassment, legal problems and even prison for a troubled friend.

And it’s not just her. Celebrities of every stripe regularly place themselves in harm’s way by stowing all manner of illegal substances, stolen property and firearms for their friends.

The same celebrities whose cellulite and marital woes we mock and snicker at show us time and time again the true meaning of selflessness. Of deep and unwavering friendship.

Look in the mirror and ask yourself: when was the last time I risked jail time for a friend?

The answer is you haven't. Shame on us.

Through My Eyes

As a young man working his way through school by alternately washing dishes in the student cafeteria, scraping paint for the local public works department, wiring outdoor signs as an apprentice electrician, heaving forty-pound boxes of fine china around for Marshall Fields and writing for the school newspaper, I had a vision.

A constant in my life that lent meaning to even the most menial labor.

I knew that if I diligently and relentlessly applied myself in my studies, I could conceivably one day become (drum roll, please) a supermarket cashier. Not a full-time cashier mind you, for that is a position both beyond and unworthy of my station. But a minimum wage, union-dues-paying, part-time cashier.

This was something that could happen.

Which isn't to say I have anything against supermarkets. Or cashiering. Or even unions—at least what’s left of them. But it’s not what I busted my ass getting a college degree for.

A year and-a-half into my job search, is this really all I have to show for it? Two part-time jobs which will barely slow my descent into financial oblivion?

I like to think that somewhere down the line, my do-what-you-gotta-do grit would impress an employer. But in our over-evolved society, being a supermarket cashier is viewed as an unfortunate detour from the pristine career trajectories employers now prefer in their candidates.

Yeah, I’m bitter. Wouldn’t you be?

I live in a world where radio talk show hosts must relinquish their jobs for saying the n-word. Where funding for the most profound breakthrough in the history of medicine is put on hold over a notion that it is injurious to embryos. And in which judges wring their hands out of slavish concern that felons aren’t made too uncomfortable by their surroundings.

Yet I belong to a group of people publicly and repeatedly demonized by the representation entrusted to look out for it.

I belong to a group of people employers resolutely refuse to hire. One Republicans maintain is a drain on America’s economy, and for whom all public funding must be stopped lest we drag the country further into the death spiral of deficit spending.

This as they fight tooth and nail to preserve tax breaks for the wealthiest one-percent of the population.

Somehow, treating the unemployed as if they're carriers of the plague is OK.

It is difficult—if not impossible—to avoid seeing the world through your own eyes. And this is the world through mine.

You're Supposed to Die! Not Me!

I have to confess that I find people—and train wrecks—fascinating. Sometimes I can even tell them apart.

Take, for instance, the folk who gathered in the Mojave Desert recently to watch an off-road race.

I’ve always been of the opinion that people watch them for the same reasons Romans flocked to the Coliseum: to see blood spilled. Bones snap. Corpses splayed in unusual positions. That sort of thing.

So while our friends in the desert were ostensibly there to watch a race, what they really wanted was mechanical mayhem. Twisted metal. A shot of adrenaline to liven-up the weekend.

And to maximize the danger quotient, they packed themselves as closely as possible to the course. You can almost imagine them as the highly-modified vehicles hurtled by. “Ooh, did you feel that?”

But a funny thing happened. They got their crash. They got their mangled metal and violent sound effects. But eight of them also got killed.

And instead of questioning the unimaginable stupidity of standing within inches of vehicles moving at 60 miles per hour along a surface that could best be described as uneven, they turned on the driver (who had miraculously survived) and attempted to stone him.

Exactly what kind of consumerism is this? Give me what I want—but if you do I’ll kill you? Maybe they were offended that it was they—and not the driver—who died. Perhaps their sense of entitlement was challenged. And we all know what a bear that can be, don’t we?

No one will ever confuse these folk (along with their spiritual kin at monster truck shows and professional wrestling matches) with the leading lights of civilization. But the hypocrisy exhibited by these ghouls is staggering.

Even more staggering is the fact the driver (Brent Sloppy) later apologized on his Facebook page to those who tried to kill him. Is this what the threat of unconsidered, instant mass opinion hath wrought?

But all is not lost. It’s not just a grim peek into a curdled future. The next time you wonder who could conceivably cast a vote for Sarah Palin as president, you know.

A Mosque in Manhattan

For a country founded on religious tolerance, New Yorkers seem in critically-short supply as they protest the construction of a mosque in Manhattan, supposedly on the site of 9-11.

First off, the proposed construction is only “on the site" of 9-11 to a real estate agent; the actual location is more than two blocks away. This is hardly the nyah-nyah-style provocation New Yorkers and conservatives are framing it as.

Islam had as much to do with 9-11 as Christianity does the opposition to gay marriage.

Religion is a prop. Something to cloak yourself (or your issue) in. Middle-eastern terrorists co-opt Islam the way conservatives do patriotism, God, fiscal responsibility and national security.

We’ve seen this movie before. Now would be a good time to remember it.

Furthermore, if allowing construction of a mosque in Manhattan is the ultimate in ‘disrespect’ to the victims of 9-11, where does the continued freedom of Osama bin Laden rank?

Just wondering.