A-Rod and the Search for his Soul

Soul is one of those ugly catch-all terms that I don't really pay much credence to, but for this particular function, I think we're gonna stick with that word. Souls......(bad quiver). I think the concept is tacky and grossly finite. If it comes pre-installed I'm not sure how it's unique or how I can imprint it without soiling it, but somehow it dictates my humanity. And it's good....right? Unless I sell it, or besmirch it, or I'm an ice cold m-f'er, and then I don't have one? So it's dead or stays at the devil's house or.... I dunno, that's half-smart stoner fodder, so I'll get off it, but I'm using it as a placeholder for our essence. That intangible mixture of purpose and talent and identity that in so many ways seems to represent the "soul".

There is an episode of the Simpson's where Bart sells his soul. (A Simpson's reference on a snarky blog in the midst of some bullshit sports as metaphysics entry...how many more reasons will I give you to stop reading? Just f*cking try me!) Besides having the line "I'm familiar with the works of Pablo Neruda," this episode tells the story of Bart's severance from his soul. He sells his soul to Milhouse for five dollars and is soon removed from his inherent Bart-ness. He can't laugh at Homer's failures, he can't hug Marge right, he can't even open the automatic door at the Kwik-E-Mart (what?) but after a tremendous effort on his behalf and a B plot about Moe opening a family restaurant, Bart breaks down and begs for his soul back. Lisa has already recovered the item in question, and as Bart devours the piece of paper that bares the right to his being, Lisa muses that "Some philosophers believe that no one is born with a soul, you have to earn one through suffering." And in 2009, from the outset of the steroid allegations until the end of the World Series, Alexander Emmanuel Rodriguez earned his soul.

There is one undeniable truth about A-Rod. The guy can play some serious baseball. His regular season statistics read like some epic poem about a baseball man-god. But he is also the player that holds the one and two spot on the sport's largest contract list. And he's also the guy in this picture...

Yes, he is wiping his face with a $100 dollar bill, and yes, that beauty was taken in '08, or what actual people called the meaty black heart of the recession. But the nasty truth that always followed A-Rod around was that he couldn't get it done. From the 2004 ALCS to 2007 (and the Yanks didn't make the playoffs in '08) his post season batting averages are: .258, .133, .071, and .267. To put that in stark perspective, Rodriguez had come to bat with 38 runners on base over a span of 61 postseason at-bats, and stranded every one of them going 0-for-29. Oof. All losses, all bad performances, and above all else, affirmations of his inability to perform in the clutch. You can't place a loss in a team sport on one man, but .071? Try that at your job. Turn in that performance four consecutive years at audit time or whatever such soul-crushery goes on at your office. Oh...there is not an HR person passive aggressive enough. But none of that mattered. A-Rod was rich and handsome and a fixture on the most well branded team in baseball. But it is at those times when the universe, in all of its supreme benevolence, jabs you in the windpipe.

The story about A-Rod's steroid use broke in early February 2009. Football had just ended, so people we're likely to remember that baseball existed, and there was proof. Proof that contradicted an earlier interview with Katie Couric where our man vehemently denied any steroids use. The dog pile was epic. The golden boy was finally hate-able for all the right reasons. This over-paid shrinking violet is also a liar and a cheater! It was like schadenfreude Christmas. I remember pulling up SI.com at the office and loosing one of those extra pricky "HA!"s. The actual word "Ha" at the top of my register. (In the spirit of full disclosure I think baseball is lame so I was pretty emotionally removed from the whole affair. I once had a co-worker who wept when Manny got traded from the Red Sox, and all I could think was "I wonder if Troy Aikman is looking at his Superbowl rings right now?") But that is permeating A-Rodness, hate to love/love to hate, and when justification tumbled down the pike, it was less a surprise and more like a prophecy fulfilled.

The media echo chamber fired up and his entire legacy (a deeply flawed one) was castigated. Barack Obama called the news "depressing", and this was February '09 so that guy was still like 80% hope at the time. The stocks were readied and A-Rod ate his crow. You don't even need to watch the video. It's the fallen celeb rhetoric template, just plug in the pertinent names and dates. Was he sincere? I dunno. He seems a little too insistent on being sorry for my tastes, but he certainly knew the jig was up. A few voice quivers, some vague ownership of the accusations, and all told, A-Rod turned in the best kind of public confession. A forgettable one. But this wasn't the part of this story that captured my imagination. This is the sort of by rote exercise in humiliation that has grown tiresome. (Remember a time when you had to straight Fatty Arbuckle a broad in order to get elevated to celeb scandal? Oh Internet....you ruin everything.) A few weeks later, A-Rod removed himself from The World Baseball Classic because a cyst was found in his right hip. As the cyst was drained, a torn labrum was found in the same hip.

These events laid end to end lack a certain potency, but it belies the human at the center of the maelstrom. Underneath the millions and playboy exterior, I would wager that there is a human being that got a sour pinch in his stomach when he pressed on the alien mass in his hip. A person with his mistakes gnawing at his periphery and a heart like a millstone. An actual human who had actual fear that he might be severed from his purpose. This is all impossible to prove, but there is no question that real life howled around Alexander Rodriguez. He was injured. He had to watch the baseball world go on without him, as easily as it would if he didn't exist. He had to watch his team struggle. He had to exit the game under a cloud of soot. The effects of this on his person-dom are impossible to gauge, but it was a curious thing on May 8th, 2009 when A-Rod returned to baseball. On the first pitch of his first at-bat, A-Rod hit a three run home run. This is the sort of hollow victory that means very little, but it set the tone for the acts of this familiar hero's tale to follow. The crushing .378 post-season batting average is part of the story, and the 18 RBIs and 6 home runs over the playoffs are impressive, but it was when these hits came. There were bottom of the 11th game-tying home runs and 2 RBI singles with two outs. That's ice cold. That's clutch. That's a man who has earned his soul.

And of course, the Yankees won the 2009 World Series...but who knows? Maybe Girardi is that good of a coach (he really did turn those pansies into some grinders). Maybe Reggie Jackson finally got through to the guy. Or perhaps this person was finally wrung through some adversity. A man who had to sit inside an MRI machine and meditate on a life without the pinstripes and the adoration and the weight of a bat in his hands. A legacy left unsatisfied. Again, it's impossible to prove, but SI.com reporter Jon Heyman had these reflections from the game when A-Rod broke his infamous post-season slump:

"But this time, Rodriguez does appear looser. He hasn't been the center of attention all season, and he has seemed noticeably happier to those around him. Rodriguez deflects questions that are about him...he has been somewhat scarcer in a clubhouse full of hiding spots, and when he comes out to talk, he talks about the team now."

On first peal, it appears to be the filler of any sports-hero-make-good journalism, but in my staunch naivete, I'd like to believe it's the sign of a more complete man forged in the white-hot furnace of life. A deeper value of purpose, a grasp on the special thing they posses, a new fulfillment removed from wealth or vanity. The hard fought reward of suffering just enough to become human.

SXSW 2010 Roundup: Can your Indie out Indie mine?

I've started to wear my age like an almost teenager suffocating in his little boy body. I ache and fidget and gnash my teeth, but I fear bigger. I can't posture from behind dark sunglasses anymore. The indifference in my sneer has been stripped of its irony. My inky coif won't swoop to the side like it did in the first summer of TV on the Radio (gross...who listens to them anymore?). But if the generational Joneses soundly dismissed me, I'd shit my skinny denim and cry myself to sleep on my Dark Crystal t-shirt come pillow case (I have a friend. She is sooooo quirky and totes crafty). So every year I portion off a week of my schedule to be among the counted heads. We judge, we demean, we don't like each other, we stand in line, we see if you have a plus one to the Fader, we grouse for free booze, we be seen, we "What is a hipster's favorite color? Ugh...you mean you don know already?", and we yell out to the world "SXSW! Oh my God! I'm in my twenties! I'm having SO MUCH FUN!"

My SXSW 2010 awards:

The Best Find/Heartthrob Award - MNDR

It takes a pretty special talent to clean up two of my (pointless, imaginary) awards, but this Debbie Harry/Klaus Dinger lovechild crushed both of these categories. Flaxen ringlets, Aphrodite hips, a pinned together Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo t-shirt; all part of the allure, but when she climbed onto a tiny midday stage all alone and began to wield her mixer and keyboard, all physical beauty sublimated. The idea is that an artist is there at the moment of a songs inception, and the thrill of the even the fattest beat-drop wains over time, but MNDR was simply too much heat incarnate for that noise. Her body would quake as she wrenched notes from her throat. The music would rise and quiver, she'd twiddle knobs, tuck another layer into the fuzz, and as the beat would writhe to it's climax, she'd cock back on one foot, check her hip forward, and assert the break with the whole of her presence. This was heart-heavy sigh territory enough, but as theses moments peeled back and bodies were tossed on the rhythms, a sly smile would creep from behind her microphone. That's rock'n'roll.

The Emperor Has No Clothes Award - Broken Bells

That band sucks. It's lifeless and unimaginative and rests purely on the laurels of other more interesting projects. Thumbs down.

The Over-Hyped Band that Over-Delivered Award - Local Natives

This is a band whose quality I'm still actively debating. There is something about them seems half-smart and over-sold (these guy's girlfriends probably have to read reams of awful...just terrible poetry), but that was a f*cking rock show. In my typically antagonistic manner, I told my friend that there set would be the album from top to bottom, verbatim, and when the show began with track one from the new record, I made sure to point it out, my smug satisfaction intact. By the end of the show I was sweat soaked and hoarse from singing at the top of my lungs. In a sub-award-award, the keyboard/percussion player at center stage might be the hardest working dude at SXSW. He kept perfect arrhythmia on his floor tom and never missed a lick. He even played guitar on one number. The harmonies were studio tight, there was some improvised and extended numbers, and a Talking Heads cover! You and your soft/loud soft/loud win this round Local Natives, but I've got my eye on you.

The Over-Hyped Band that Under-Delivered Award - jj

This is exactly how this set went down: "Oh shit...is that jj on stage?" and then "Oh shit...is her set over?" Total invisibility. It makes sense that she tours with The xx so much. They must love to get together backstage and debate what they hate more; music or fans. And yes, I'm deducting the requisite points for her not being cute.

The Hometown Heroes Award - Ume

Ume is the best Austin-based band I heard. It's weird, I don't know if their recordings that I rushed to hear really do them justice, but that electric live show gave my post-punk, Swervedriver loving, inner twelve year old funny feelings. Like funny in the pants feelings. Now, my cock-rock tutelage might show it's ugliness in commentary like this, but chicks don't rock. (Seriously, name me one lady-shredder that's famous. Yeah, I've heard of that Russian classical guitar player too, and that shit don't count) But Lauren Larson can handle her axe. The hooks were tight, there was no second guitar to hide behind, and she can root around in an anti-solo like an animal. So slight in her red dress, so massive hovering over her pedal board. Okay Larson, get Kim Gordon and the drummer from Black Moth Super Rainbow and prove my sexist ass wrong. (Oh...and of course I'm not talking about you Electrelane. You're English. That's totally different)

The One More Song! Award - Memory Tapes

This might be the closest I get to seeing New Order. Please come back soon, my terrible dancing won't be happy with anyone else.

The "If had a switch on the back of my neck that put me in that prefect spot on an acid trip" Award - Washed Out

Doing acid is like swimming in the Pacific. The entry is a shock to the system, the waves rough you up a bit, but when the perfect breaker rolls you over and sends your limbs akimbo back to the shore, the ocean cradles you in a chorus of foam, salt, and water that whispers something about the size of all creation...and Washed Out's set was like ( ) this close. Wide open drones that would make Madlib jealous anchored by punchy beats. A hard groove that's easy in its way. A wall of druggy molasses that your feet fight through because to not dance would be to not listen. He loved the crowd, the crowd loved back. Oh to be young and beautiful. (um...don't do drugs?)

The Show these Kids How it's Done Award - Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings

Yeah, so it's a soul outfit built entirely on convention. It's familiar and an homage to a bygone sound, but Ms. Jones has those boys in. the. pocket. I like my soul a little grittier (congas are too sweet...and no Hammond player?) but that is a complete outfit of professional musicians that know their paces. No prerecorded loops. No 808's. No laptops. Living music from live beings. The songs would shift on improvisational cues counted off by their band leader. The bass player and the drummer had to watch each other. This is honest music. It's stripped of pretense, it's made to dance to, it's the plain language of love and loss and the party that lives between our hips. Sharon Jones is irrepressible, her joyful nature and gratitude coursing through every smoky flourish. It takes thousands of years to make a ray of sunshine, it took 54 years to make Sharon Jones; and I can't think of one noticeable difference between the two.

Well SXSW, I anticipated your arrival, I resented you while you were here, I was glad to see you go, and I begrudgingly acknowledge that I'll cave to hopes of peer approval and see you again next year. Hooray?

For sure. Hooray.

Back to the Eternal Return

So Back to the Future makes a two fold supposition about time travel; every moment leaves a physical imprint on time's infinite wake, and all events are predestined. This 1985 crown jewel of summer blockbusters past is obviously a lot more fun (Libyan terrorists!) in that it's about non-science and the ensuing chaos so much more than the why or how, but for a movie that took $350 million worldwide, it is 116 minutes of time/space discourse that would make Vonnegut crave a Pall Mall.

It's simple enough I guess. Doc Brown invents (?) the Flux Capacitor, installs it in a DeLorean (which was already an ironic 80's reference), steals plutonium from some terrorists (probably easier to get than a DeLorean), and then gets a high school kid to videotape the launch, held discreetly in a mall parking lot. Seamless. When this goes invariably wrong, Marty McFly is whisked away to the past. Record scratch. I love you Hollywood...and I'm perfectly okay with all of this, but...where is there to visit? What exactly is this physical plain to go to that can prop up a human being? This notion of a tangible past to visit in some way indicates that all moments, significance notwithstanding, repeat themselves ceaselessly, verbatim, across time and space.

Every passive yawn, every that person you banged that one time, every day you wish could last forever, stitched inexorably into time's fabric. Mr. Baines' car colliding into George McFly over and over again for all time. In some ways this is a tremendous relief. Take the loss of love from your life; if there was ever an utterance of love from that person, that love is forever because, in theory, that moment is always occurring. That same luxury is also the obvious downside. The hurtful moments of life aside, the inanity and the insufferable ennui and the moments wasted would never cease to be. The clock at 4:55 PM ad infinitum. I want part of myself to indulge in those joyous seconds forever, but not more than I would burden the worst of myself to eternal struggle. But what of the altered past? The moment when George is moved from the front of Mr Baines' car by Marty, interrupting the eternal procession, is the crux of the issue.

This is not a movie about changing the future. This is a movie about making sure that the future (or the present as it were....gears in gears here, bro) stays the same. The only real change is George McFly and Biff Tannen's relationship, otherwise Marty was fighting to keep time's predestined path in place. Saying time is predestined might be a bit strongish, but it's portrayed as an extremely accurate scenario builder. I'm gonna go Back to the Future II for a second. Based on the theoretical model here, to go forward in time implies that events are fixed in time. The future must be happening in order to create a physical manifestation that can be visited. So when Doc Brown rushes in at the end of BttF with news of future peril involving Marty and Jennifer's kids, time, as a scenario builder, has already taken immediate criteria and created a self-perpetuating future. There is no circumstance that will change the outcome of this future, except awareness of said future. Eerie.

Let's get a little weird here. Time travel creates the ability to change outcomes. Whether it is manipulation of the past to alter current events, or knowledge of the future to redirect current events, the manipulator is an intrinsic part of that moment. It is impossible to say that once an individual has handled the past or the future, that they were not a part of that moment for all of that moments life. If time is infinite, and all that will ever happen is forever occurring on her expanse, these moments could not have existed at different moments, much less without each other. Marty's visit to 1955 has always happened.

Thus, the Chuck Berry Dictum; or the theory that all time travel is impossible, because if all moments always occur, the time travel in question was and always is a part of that moment. In a key scene at the end of Back to the Future, Marty McFly plays Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode" at the school dance. This video is terrible, and destined to go down any second, but if you go the 1:42 mark, something miraculous happens. Marvin Berry calls his cousin Chuck to share this wild rock and roll sound. If the implication here is that Chuck Berry learned how to rock by listening to Marty, who had grown up in a world where the legend Chuck Berry taught him how to rock, that snake eats its own tail. The moments can't exist without each other. Marty might not have been aware of this until it came up in his life's chronology, but his awareness notwithstanding, the moment had happened, just not in his life yet.

Personally...(sigh)...I hope that none of this is true. I mean, I want to kill baby Hitler (or whatever...)as much as the next guy, but not to the point that I would trade in my humanity. Our actions and ourselves dissolve into the void for a reason, the immovable past is the stuff of human experience. Forgiveness and evolution and affirmation grow from these closed books. Furthermore, the undecided future is the only line of control we have in our lives. If we're on a trajectory to a fixed point, what's all the damn fuss? We make plans and approximate outcomes, but the things larger than us are too savvy to let those designs proceed uninterrupted. That is excruciating humanness, otherwise, we'd live in a phony edifice of our un-made mistakes. As many times as I've watched inferior versions of Back to the Future re-cut for cable, I'm hard pressed to believe the best life is tagged with the disclaimer:

"The following has been modified from its original version. It has been formatted to fit this screen, to run in the time allotted, and edited for content."

Tom Caruana vs. The Sacred Cows

If you ask Lonnie Donegan, a man cited by the Beatles as a major influence, he'll tell you that "The Beatles' first records were old-fashioned, archaic rock 'n' roll, and I was resentful at the way they stopped my cash flow." If you ask the lawyers at Capitol/EMI, they'll probably just send you a cease-and-desist letter. If you ask Raekwon The Chef, he'll twitter that shit. But as the short and heralded life of "Wu-Tang Clan vs The Beatles: Enter the Magical Mystery Chambers" reminds; The Beatles cannon will not be exploited by anyone, except the highest bidder.

Tom Caruana has a crafted a thing that shatters the mixtape moniker. This is an album that's about the Beatles. The Wu-Tang Clan is the star, but it's about the Beatles. It's the story of an event that was unprecedented; the hysteria and the controversy told through brilliant audio clips grafted into re-covered, nudged, and twisted Beatles tracks while The Wu hovers above like a Greek Chorus. The Clan's ferocious rhymes refract inside the arching narrative and illuminate the gritty subtext of women, money, struggle, resentment, and dispossession. A new sensitivity is coaxed from the verses without losing an inch of that Shaolin swagger. In the remix of "Back in the Game" (that I swear could rival the album version...and you know I love you, RZA) when Method Man croons about being "Young dumb and thuggin', give a f--k about nothin'," the vivid picture is that of frustrated youth growing up on the poor side of a poor town, insert John or Meth respectively. "City High" spins The Beatle Boycott. Incensed media sound bites punctuate a cut up Bobby Bryant cover of "Happiness is a Warm Gun" featuring Inspectah Deck's rhymes about the walk through fire complete with a refrain to "Trust in no one but us..." These moments permeate the album (and by "permeate" I mean I might have a tendency to over analyze and draw allusions that probably aren't there, but....) in that sly attention to detail, the depth and sophistication of Caruana's effort mesmerizes.

Though none of that matters. The powers that prevail forced Magical Mystery Chambers back into the ether. I understand they have a legal right, but it's the legality of the creation itself that puzzles me. Part of Tom's brilliance is that the album is a tribute to The Beatles influence layer on layer. Many of the songs (19 out of 27!) sample other people covering Beatles songs. Tracks by everyone from Ernest Ranglin to The London Jazz Four to Dionne Warwick have been tacked together in this elegant Beatles Frankenstein, but did all of these artists have legal rights? If so, where do these artist's recordings fall in the kingdom of The Beatles protected property? In the remix of "Smith Bros", the track that might be the centerpiece of the weirdness that cloaks this whole affairs, Caruana samples a song by Arthur Wilkinson who combined Tchaikovsky and The Beatles in "The Beatlecracker Suite" (the first mash-up ever, check my indie cred). Where does something that is part public domain and part licensed song fall in the legal sampling maze? Does Wilkinson or his estate have the right to take down Magical Mystery Chambers because a sample was used of his song that is a combination of two unoriginal songs? ...and did I mention that Caruana made no effort to sell this album?

The legality isn't as much the issue, I understand that there is an insufferable bottom line in all of us, but it's the underlying notion that Band/Artist/Writer "X" (in this case The Beatles) is a holy relic. The Beatles are undoubtedly a phenomena. They rode the over-exposed-star-making youth culture to the heights and then delivered repeatedly with intellectual, artful, and chart ready singles. Their influence lives in popular music on a molecular level. But at that point, doesn't a bands influence transcend their ownership of it? Does no part of their success belong to the generations of fans? This effort offered up by Caruana is a thoughtful and sincere hymn to the Fab Four, so much more so than the countless schlock covers harnessed to commercials and aggressively mediocre movie trailers. Perhaps the Beatles have decided to measure the protection of their legacy in monetary terms only, and that is their right, but even the most lifeless cover of "All You Need is Love" (and the price tag that goes with it) could never diminish the Beatles place. In turn, this free download, a genuine celebration of The Beatles music, couldn't either, yet one is beamed into our homes without compunction, and the other is hung from the scaffold by red tape.

The Beatles are incorruptible, but they aren't untouchable. Because lest we forget, the Golden Calf was hewn down eventually.