Vox e-populi

Every now and then a blogger faces this question: should I quit writing this damn thing?

My only suggestion to you is this: No. Keep blogging. If you felt the need to start a blog, then it exists for a reason.

Maybe you're writing about your favorite sports team; maybe you like to take pictures of your naked self; maybe you use it for therapy and spew all the nightmares out onto the http-verse.

Maybe you write about politics, or your cat, or your ex-boyfriends. The point is, you're writing, and you're contributing to an important thing: the creation of an oral history of every person on this planet.

I like to think that one day everyone on the planet will have their own personal website, much like every person you know has their own email address. Just tonight I was added on to Shadowboxer's Flickr account, and if the profiles are true, there were people on their from Russia and Massachusetts and Iran.

To me, that is just the most beautiful and encouraging thing in the world. All of these people in all of these places sharing pictures and stories of themselves, and all in the name of slicing through time and distance and trying to make a connection with someone else.

Bicyclemark speaks often of this same theme, and I agree with him: the more blogs out there means more communication between people who normally wouldn't talk to each other, and that means more understanding about who we all are, and that also means less fear and anger towards strange and foreign places.

So if you are thinking about deleting your blog, if you think you have nothing to say, I ask you to reconsider, and I ask you to keep blogging. You are telling your story, and you are a part of something wonderful and transforming.

History is written by the winners, and the winners erase and suppress the losers' version of events. And usually history is written by governments and is supported by government-sponsored education.

But now history is being written by the common man and woman, and all of our little stories, from our vacations and bitchings about work to our daily heartbreaks and joys as the earth turns around the sun year after year, are being recorded and sent out into the world for all to share.

So it doesn't matter if you're a teacher living in Alaska, a Christian from West Virginia, a New York globalization expert, a DePaul or U of I freshman, a or a guy who loves comic strips, you are telling your story.

Keep it up. Little by little, you're helping to change the world for the better.

Part Three: I'm a Free Born Man of the USA

Shane MacGowan, Spider Stacey, Jem Finer, Terry Woods, Philip Chevron, James Fearnley, Andrew Ranken, and Darryl Hunt took the stage for a series of concerts at Times Square's Nokia Theatre over St. Patrick's Day weekend, 2006.

They are The Pogues, and they are a group of mostly Londoners who played Irish punk/pop/traditional music in the 80s and early 90s.

They are my favorite band of all time.

I first saw them on Saturday Night Live on Paddy's Day in 1989 (or maybe it was 1990) and they sang "White City" and "The Body of an American", and to this day those are the two songs that I still call my favorites.

Shane had bad teeth and mumbled his lyrics through sunglasses and a scraggly beard, but it was pure magic that flowed through his gravelly voice.

Oh the torn up ticket stubs

From a hundred thousand mugs

Now washed away with dead dreams in the rain

And the car-parks going up

And they're pulling down the pubs

And it's just another bloody rainy day

Shane was kicked out of the band around 1992, and the Pogues tried to soldier on, briefly employing Joe Strummer, and released a couple of decent albums featuring Spider on lead vocals, while Shane gathered together The Popes and spent the late 90s touring and supporting a couple of great solo albums while barely able to support himself on stage.

In 2001 the original members reunited, and before too long began performing here and there over the next few years. No new material, but their touring schedule increased and they proved that the reunion shows weren't just about grabbing a quick buck.

After sticking to mainly Dublin and London, the New York shows were announced and I was lucky enough to grab a couple of tickets for the Saturday night show. And the rest is history.

In the eerie green of the Nokia Theatre The Pogues played all the hits, from "Streams of Whiskey" to "Fiesta," and although the set list wasn't much different than what they were playing in 91, the fact that they were all there on stage together, with Spider banging his head on the beer tray and Darryl wearing a coat from the Red Roses for Me cover, and Shane looking fat but alive, and James Fearnley fucking owning the accordion, what more could you ask for?

It made me think of all those night spent in Jimmy's Pub in Peoria, listening to a local Irish band playing their favorite Pogues tunes as we banged on the table and drank our Guinness and found a wonderful, and brief, camraderie.

It made me think of that night hanging out in Mike's room back in high school, as he passed along his copy of Peace and Love to me, admitting that he just couldn't get into it.

The Pogues reuniting on stage again, singing all of their wonderful songs, was about a group of men who were broken apart by all those things that break friends apart, but found a way to gather together again, found a way to heal the wounds, and discovered what it was that made them great.

And as Shane began singing "Fairytale of New York", not with Kirsty MacColl, who sadly died in a boating accident some years ago, but with Jem's daughter, the night ended as beautifully as it began, and hope was rekindled once again:

I could have been someone

Well so could anyone

You took my dreams from me

When I first found you

I kept them with me babe

I put them with my own

Can't make it all alone

I've built my dreams around you.

Part Two: Positively 4th Street

We walked, and we walked, and we walked. From 36th Street over to 5th Avenue down to 14th Street then down 7th, through Greenwich Village and Tribeca and finally the financial district and the great hole in the city.

I let Brems do the deciding for most of Saturday, so we hit all the haunts of his heroes: de Niro, Dylan, etc. He was content to walk everything, but after a while I felt Old, man. I've had a bum foot for the past two-three years, and so by mid-afternoon I was limping pretty bad.

After walking around the WTC site, we grabbed the subway back up to mid-town, so Brems could visit the Late Show studio and buy some Atomic Popping Corn from the Hello Deli. Sadly, the deli was closed due to the fact that a guy had been thrown through the plate-glass exterior of Mr. Jee's establishment. While we did not get the opportunity to be a patron of the Hello Deli, we did get to see this:

There are lots of pictures and a bit of video over at my Buzznet page. I recommend going there for a more detailed description of the walk through Lower Manhattan.

Part Three will be up soon, but my sister and her family have just arrived and I want to go be Uncle Brian for a while.

Part One: New York's a Go-Go

Friday morning came slightly earlier than usual as I arose, showered, and finished packing for the weekend trip to New York City. Just before I was to leave I noticed there was a voicemail on my phone. My 9:30 AM flight had been cancelled due to snow at O'Hare, but I was booked on a 1:55 flight to Newark instead.

Bad news, but at least I got to sleep in some. Called Brems (a buddy of mine who was willing to take the trip east with me) and told him to turn around. Worried a bit that this was an ominous sign, that this trip was cursed.

Okay, not really, but it creates a bit of dramatic tension, don't you think?

In fact, everything about the trip was smooth as hell. No traffic on the tri-state, no line at the airport, and we even got a little Paddy's Day parade in Concourse B. Plane wasn't even full. The friendliest U of I freshman ever named Eugene (Jewish, no; Asian, yes) sat next to me and chatted me up for a while, but then busied himself with this month's In Style issue.

Landed in Jersey with no real idea of what to do next, but my expert traveling skills told me to find a shuttle or bus or something into the city. There was a strange moment where I picked up a phone, dialed two numbers and a gruff voice appeared, asking me where I wanted to go, and that a man would arrive shortly and call out my name.

I felt like I was getting ready to be a coke mule or something.

Found a cheaper ride into the city and ditched the Shuttle Mafia. Due to the change in arrival time we found ourselves trying to get into the city during a Friday rush hour, and we slowly inched our way towards the Lincoln Tunnel as the sun went down.

Now, this is probably a statement made quite cliche, through its repetition in countless songs, stories, and films, but entering New York for the first time is a pretty fucking amazing experience, and with the exception of being a 19th century immigrant coming through Ellis Island, there probably isn't a more memorable way to arrive in New York than by getting dumped off at the Port Authority Bus Terminal right in goddamn Times Square on a Friday night.

We slung our packs onto our backs and stepped out onto 42nd Street and wandered our way down to our hotel in the west thirties, dumped our stuff and headed right back to the neon commercial hemorrhage that is Times Square.

Don't get me wrong, I thought it was great. Maybe it was better when it was populated by pimps and whores and drug dealers, but at that moment it was crazy and cool and touristy and corporate and I didn't mind it at all.

The evening was spent eating Italian food (and NOT Tad's Steaks) and walking through the largest goddamn Virgin Megastore in the world and catching a late show of V for Vendetta before calling it a night.

Coming Up Next: I walk half of the length of Manhattan Island and Shane MacGowan remembers every word to "The Old Main Drag."

I'm back. Plenty of good stories to come. New York is a great place. The Pogues rule above all else in this world.

Tomorrow I get to satisfy some of my ever-present wanderlust by jumping on a plane and heading off to New York City to see the original lineup of The Pogues perform on Times Square.

While I'm there I'll be hopefully meeting up with The PhoenixNYC for a chat about music and travel and blogging.

Not sure if any of the other NYC bloggers I know have been reading this these days, but if you're looking to join our blogger meet-up, feel free to email me at bfauth at gmail dot com, and we can discuss the details.

I'll do my best to update while I'm there, but I make no promises. Lots to do in the Big Apple and I may not have time to blog. But I'll take plenty of pictures and video and I promise to write a couple of good posts about the trip.

Until next time, I leave you with this image of the Chicago River getting its traditional Paddy's Day dye job.

Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone.

Cheers!

Got up very early to have a 7 AM phone interview with a British recruiting agency for teachers. It went very well, and I easily passed onto the next stage.

That's one of the things I'm good at, you see. Talking about myself and how great I am.

I was informed, though, that primary schools rarely apply for the work permit that I would need to work overseas, and that I would have more luck finding a job in the secondary sector (what we would call middle/junior and high school.) Because of my lengthy drama background, my interviewer seemed to think I would have the most luck securing a position as a drama teacher.

Well, that would be just about perfect, right? Get to live overseas, and teach drama?

Except the odds of me getting a drama job are about nil, if you ask me. Hell, it's hard as hell to get one around here, let alone across the Atlantic. As I look through the open positions, I see lots of primary positions and very few drama positions.

Told you it would be difficult.

I keep thinking about this Teddy Roosevelt quote that my superintendent likes to throw out every now and then. I'm not one for "inspirational" quotes, but I like this one:

"Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing."

I like that. "Work worth doing."

I'm serious when I say that that's what a huge part of my troubles has been. Seeing my students for only an hour a week isn't Work Worth Doing.

So the goal is to make work worth doing again, and to have a life that matters.

Oh God, did I just paraphrase Reese Witherspoon's Oscar speech?

So there's What I Want, and there's The Reality of the Situation.

What I Want is to live, work, and study in either the UK or Ireland for a period of time. I want to do some serious learning of English/Irish history, throw some Vikings in there for good measure, add a dash of Beowulf, Norse Mythology, the Finnish Kalevala, a drop of contemporary this and that, bake it for 2-3 years and call it some sort of interdisciplinary soup that I can use to teach somewhere, someday.

The Reality of the Situation is that to do these types of things requires a bit of cash that I don't have right now. I just bought a house and don't have any savings right now and you need some serious dough if you want to do what I want to do.

So even though I want to do this, starting this fall, the reality is it probably won't happen. This year, at least. Unless a lot of things suddenly fall into place all within a short amount of time. So....who know's what's going to happen.

There's a great feeling that comes with knowing what you want to do with your life, long-term-wise, but then there's the crushing reality of it all, that it always comes down to dollars. Fucking money.

So I don't know what's going to happen next. Six months from now I may find myself in Bristol or Galway or Dublin or London or Leeds or I may find myself in the same spot I am right now. Or I may be here, but doing something else.

It's a lot to think about, and it's pretty exhausting, but that's the state I am in right now.

Recently I realized that I haven't seen a single one of the films that has been nominated for Best Picture. Furthermore, I haven't seen any of the ones that are represented in the Acting, Directing, or Writing categories, either. Somehow I stopped going to movies this year.

In other news, we had an important meeting at work on Friday, and it was then that I conclusively realized that this job is going nowhere. Even though promises were made in the last referendum, there will be no expansion of my program, so that means I'll still be bouncing from school to school every other day, still only work with my students one hour of one day per week, and the final blow: they eliminated the coordinator position that I had hoped to apply for in a year.

It's all about dollars, and right now they don't have any to spend on the gifted program. We're an "extra" that gets little or no attention in the era of No Child Left Behind.

In a way, it's a good thing that this has happened, because it clears a pathway for me towards doing Something Else. It makes it abundantly clear that my frustrations and disappointments about my current position weren't just a manifestation of my overall sour mood.

I know I've been coy about what I'm planning, but it's for a good reason: I don't want to prematurely announce something that may end up not happening. This type of decision requires a lot of thought, a lot of planning, and a lot of patience.

So we'll see. We'll see.

A teacher in my building just became a grandmother, and apparently the parents are huge West Wing fans, because they named it Ainsley Ziegler Jones.*

In other Aaron Sorkin news, if you haven't heard about Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, you will soon. It's a new show he's creating, and it's looking pretty dang good. Matthew Perry, Bradley Whitford, and Amanda Peet head up the cast. It's one of two upcoming shows about the behind-the-scenes life of a late-night network comedy show. Let's hope this is the better of the two, because Sorkin has proved time and again that he does the behind-the-scenes of a Big Thing better than anyone.

(Along with The West Wing, he created Sports Night, i.e. The Greatest Show Ever.)

Sorkin's shows usually feature fast-paced, witty dialogue and brilliant character actors. If there is a TV God out there, he will make sure that Joshua Malina finds his way to this Sorkin project as well.

*Last name changed for anonymity's sake, and for the fact that the girl is going to grow up being named after a Richard Schiff character.

My blog looks like ass now, I know, but I'm in the process of trying out a new host and somehow along the way the main page on the old blog got all f'ed up.

Does anyone have a suggestion on how to raise several thousand dollars in a short amount of time? I'm perfectly happy to whore myself out, by the way.

It's Ash Wednesday today, the beginning of Lent.

I will once again attempt to give up being whiny and self-centered. Since all I can seem to focus on is Me! Me! Me! these days, I completely forgot about an important event: Prince Fan's birthday.

So let me publicly apologize to one of my favorite people, a person who always knows how to make me laugh. Happy Birthday, Sarah, and please know that I am very sorry to have missed your birthday. I am too often the tyranny of evil men, but I'm trying, Ringo. I'm trying real hard to be a shepherd.

Anyone giving anything up for Lent today?