Going to Dubai

I'd love to change the world, but I don't know what to do...

Gina went into the Peace Corps. It was more than 20 years after it stopped being fashionable to go into the Peace Corps. But she went. Right after High School.

She was a dreamer, a hippie chick in the time of Reagan. She told people she was born at Woodstock, but that was a lie. Still, she loved the protest music of the late 60s and wouldn't listen to anything else. She wore sandals and clothing made of hemp. proudly telling everyone who'd listen that she would never wear a bra.

And while it was admirable for her to join the Peace Corps, her smug, self-congratulatory fervor was hard to take. (Plus, attacking everyone else in our class for going off to "college and the bourgeoisie" didn't win her any friends either.)

For several years, she sent one letter back per year. One letter about building water systems in Africa or working at children's health clinics in India. She sent the letter to one of her friends, with instructions to pass it around to everyone else she knew. In each letter, several pages were devoted to rants about how her so-called friends were horrible because we weren't doing more to save the world.


In 19th century Russian literature, it's common for one character to say that another character had "gone to America."

This didn't mean they'd actually gone to America. It was a polite way of saying "committed suicide," perhaps because the journey from Russia to America was so perilous back then that only the insane would attempt it (and only a few who attempted it would survive).

Looking at the gilded insanity in the past 10 years, I started using a phrase inspired by Russian literature. Whenever someone I knew fell prey to irrational greed and the desire for wild, expensive things that made no sense, I'd say they were "going to Dubai."

This didn't mean they literally went to Dubai (although many of them did), but referred to their new type of thinking -- the same type of thinking that believed building gigantic hotels that look like sailing ships, indoor ski slopes in the desert, and artificial palm-shaped islands that maximized beach-front property and can be seen from space were good ideas. (Link for Gmail subscribers.)


Gina dropped out of sight the same time most of her High School classmates finished college. As we went off to our first jobs (or to grad school, or even in some cases to the Peace Corps), we wondered what had happened to her.

But we all got caught up in our lives, so the mystery of Gina went from a frequent topic of conversation to an infrequent guessing game to "which one was she again?"

Until a few months ago.

This time, it wasn't one hastily-scrawled handwritten letter meant to be passed around. This time, it was a crisp, carefully thought-out email blasted out to several hundred of her old friends. With photos. And captions.

The letter alluded to making millions in investment banking and partying backstage during one of the American Idol tour stops. The lie about being born at Woodstock was nowhere to be found.

Judging from the photos, she traded the sandals and hemp clothes for designer shoes and businesswoman chic. And it's pretty clear that she now wears bras.

In one photo, she was smiling at the groundbreaking of a building on one of those artificial palm-shaped islands you can see from space. She was wearing a hardhat and holding a shovel. A shovel made of gold.

The email glossed over details, but one thing was clear: Gina, the hippie chick who believed that owning anything was a sin against nature, had come back from the Peace Corps, and gone off to Dubai.

Food Coma Thoughts

From Turkey Bowling to Bowling For Soup

Five years ago, I told everyone I talked to that Bowling For Soup was "your new favorite band." I meant it, but no one believed me.

"Think Fountains of Wayne with more punk, more booze, and more sloppy sophomoric jokes," I'd say. "But in a good way." Yeah, it didn't work for them either.

Anyway. Let's talk Thanksgiving.

I didn't overeat.

On a holiday entirely geared towards excess, I managed not to stuff myself.

Yet, everywhere everyone seems stuck in a food coma. Or shuffling zombie-like off to go shopping.

This might have been more attractive to me years ago. Which makes me feel older than I already felt after none of my friends adopted Bowling for Soup as their new favorite band.

Bowling for Soup - 1985

And there was a second Thanksgiving meal last night. But I also didn't overeat there.

Almost. But not quite.

Five years on, I still love Bowling for Soup (especially the earlier stuff). But they're no longer my new favorite band. And probably not yours either (and this attempt to bring them to your attention is half-assed, even for a holiday weekend).

Still, in the food-coma long weekend doldrums, that'll have to be okay.

Happy Thanksgiving Punks, Slackers & Ne'er-do-wells

Did someone say Turkey Bowling?

A lot of people talk about Turkey Bowling.

But few people actually do anything about it.


So happy Thanksgiving punks, slackers & ne'er-do-wells!

TNT -- We Know Marketing

Mix Tape for the MP3 Era (On TV)

Mix tapes are so 1980s and mix CDs just aren't as cool.

But if you could make an MP3 mix that looked like a cassette tape, that would be cool, right?

Two years ago, the Mixa came out -- $40 bucks for a USB flash drive that looked like a cassette tape. (Plus, it can hold as much music as 50 or 60 mix tapes and won't sound crappy if you leave it in your car for a few months -- yeah, Stop Making Sense, I'm talking about you.)

Flash forward to today: I get a cardboard package designed to look like an oversized cassette box, marked with the TNT logo and the reminder that they know drama. I love the packaging (and love the fact that I somehow landed on this particular swag list) and love the fact that the show is being marketed by its music. How cool is that?

Inside is a 2GB flash drive that looks like this (that shiny thing above it is a quarter to give you an idea of its size). This is a very cool (and heavy) device that contains about half of the first episode of Men of a Certain Age, a new hour-long drama with Ray Romano, Scott Bakula, and Andre Braugher. The drive also has three songs on it (one by CCR, one by Whitesnake, and one by Styx).

Now, I'm not sure I know anyone who loves CCR, Whitesnake, and Styx, but perhaps such creatures exist. And maybe there's a market for a show about three college friends in their 40s who complain about marriage, careers, and failing eyesight (in which music is part of the background but not as important as I might want it to be). And maybe Ray Romano's image is so squeaky clean that it is necessary to see him back up to run over a wounded possum twice. And maybe there's a reason why they didn't put the entire show on the drive (even though there's 1.85GB free out of 2GB). And maybe since TNT sent me this cool swag, I'll mention that the show premieres on December 7th.

So... (you might be wondering) how's the show itself? And does TNT really know drama as well as they know marketing?

Um... did I mention how cool the USB drive is?

Fooling with the Logarithms, Going Berserk

It crackles, it clicks, it pops, it starts...

We could hardly have been more different.

I was nerdy and obsessed with music, looking for escape and lost in my imagination. She was tough and sexy and careless.

I don't know how it started or why. She called me one night and told me she was getting high and blowing the smoke out her window. (To this day, I'm not sure why she told me that.)

I told her I was listening to the radio and reading Dostoyevsky. (I told her that because it was true.)

The outlines are blurred now, but some details are clearer than ever. During the first snowfall of the year, in front of the candy store whose owner would soon be arrested for selling drugs, she told me she wanted to run her own hair and nail salon and change her name to Jewelie. I wanted to keep from laughing when she mentioned that.


Before the internet, before MTV, before MP3s, people used to listen to the radio.

And briefly, in the late 70s, a band called The Sports sneaked onto the radio in the U.S. They sounded like a smoother version of Joe Jackson or Graham Parker. I didn't know at the time they were from Australia -- they sounded like dozens of other bands being packaged as "new wave."

But they'd figured out a sure-fire way to get radio play. They wrote a song about radio. It was one of the oldest gimmicks in music (but also one of the more effective ones). Then they took the gimmick up a notch and recorded dozens of customized versions of their radio-centric song, replacing the second "the radio" from the chorus with call letters of radio stations in the top media markets. The stations who were name-checked couldn't wait to play the song (and sometimes edited the call-letter shout-out to use in station-identification spots.

Ironically, I'd heard the "normal" version of this song on the cool radio station near where I lived. Months later, the more top-40 oriented station (which wasn't nearly as cool) started playing the "special" version of the song and I wondered if the band knew how uncool that other station was. (Probably not -- they were in Australia.)


My relationship with "Jewelie" didn't last long. We had little in common and she was always picking fights with me.

She drove an ancient beige Buick covered with rust spots and filled with fast-food wrappers. The tires were bald and the brakes squealed and she always drove too fast. The radio in the car was broken and she'd never bothered to get it fixed. The rust and tires and brakes I could understand, but not fixing the radio was a complete mystery to me.

A few weeks after that first snowfall, a heatwave settled into New England, turning the white ground cover slushy and gray until it disappeared altogether. It got cold again, but didn't snow for a while. And sometime in those cold days of waiting for more snow, "Jewelie" called me because she was mad that I didn't have any friends in prison. She yelled at me and dumped me over the phone, then complained that I had the radio on in the background. The station was playing the Sports at the very moment when she asked me "who listens to the radio anyway?"

Me. And everyone I knew.

But not her.

Our other problems would have been difficult to solve... but that one was impossible.

Spam-A-Little, Spam-A-Lot

Finally, this little corner of the Internets has arrived.

For a while, I've been wondering why I bother to moderate comments. Most of you are extremely polite, funny, informative, and well-behaved. And up until yesterday, I'd never had any reason to reject a comment.

But I got my first spam comment yesterday (complete vague praise for the blog and a link to a UK semi-porn site).

Finally, Clicks and Pops has arrived!


And, although I'm still in denial about how quickly this year has gone by, I'm already starting to see "best of" lists and online "year in review" posts. It's way too early for that... on the other hand, here's a Clicks and Pops-eye view of 2009:

ago album alex almost although amazing around away band beatles best better bought bruce called car cat college comments completely cool cover dance days different enough favorite finally friend gmail going gone guitar guy hear heard hit huge idea including joe john knew labels later lennon life links listen live looked lot love maybe music name night past people played pm pop post punk radio read really record remember rock school seemed single someone something song sound springsteen started station store story street subscribers summer things think thought told top universe version video vinyl wanted week work world wrote years

created at TagCrowd.com

(Oddly enough, the phrase "financial shit storm" or its Icelandic twin "kreppa" appear nowhere in this cloud, despite how often it showed up this year!)

Surrender, But Don't Give Yourself Away

Got my Kiss records out.

On paper, I should have loved Cheap Trick. They had catchy songs, solid harmonies, enough power chords to keep things interesting, an offbeat sense of humor, and they had to go to Japan to become stars. Plus they worshipped the Beatles.

But in reality, I never quite cared for them. They always seemed to be one tattoo away from heavy metal (and I wasn't a huge fan of heavy metal). And thousands of screaming fans in Japan weren't going to change that.

Then there was the bizarre way they looked: Bun E. Carlos seemed more like your Dad's accountant than a drummer, Rick Nielson seemed like he was constantly pissed that his picture wasn't in the dictionary under "irony," Robin Zander seemed like couldn't wait for the 80s to invent hair metal, and Tom Petersson always seemed confused that he hadn't wound up in a band like Wings. (Link for Gmail subscribers.)


On paper, Sheila and I should have been a couple. We were in several classes together and we always had fun hanging out. But we had no chemistry. (Plus, we had almost no common ground musically and therefore had little chance in my eyes.) Still, I was young and didn't really know much about these things.

In Junior High and High School, these negotiations mostly involved third-parties. So one day, a mutual friend took me aside and asked me how I felt about Sheila. And I had to think. I liked her, but I didn't like-her like her. But maybe I could grow to like-her like her. I don't remember what I told the third-party negotiator, but it was wishy-washy. I don't remember if it was because I really didn't know or because I just didn't want to hurt Sheila's feelings. Or maybe the idea of a girl having a crush on me was such an ego boost that I didn't mind trying to force my own feelings into a box they didn't fit into.

And then the next morning, Sheila asked me if I'd been listening to the radio the night before. I hadn't. I'd been trying to finish my homework and listening to late-night talk radio from Canada. She said she'd dedicated a song to me -- this song (embedding disabled, so you'll have to click here).

She wanted me to want her. And I wanted that too. But what works on paper doesn't always work in real life -- whether or not you walk in on your parents (or whether or not they're listening to your Kiss records -- ironically or otherwise).

And while I was young and didn't really know much, at least I knew that.