Scott Bush

While watch­ing the aud­tion por­tion of this season’s Amer­i­can Idol with my wife, see­ing all those aspir­ing singers so excited to receive the show’s “golden ticket,” I was struck by a thought: that’s the hap­pi­est they’ll ever be dur­ing their Amer­i­can Idol experience.

Why is that? It’s because of that moment. That moment is both a pin­na­cle of achieve­ment and the begin­ning of a new, unknown jour­ney. To be accepted by the judges and counted among the tiny per­cent­age of win­ners who make it to Hol­ly­wood is inde­scrib­able, to judge by the reac­tions of the suc­cess­ful con­tes­tants. They have won; they are sep­a­rate from the pack, dis­tin­guished now by their abil­i­ties. The hard work, count­less hours of intense prac­tice, and of course all the drama and infight­ing that makes these “real­ity” shows entertaining—all of this lies in the weeks (and if they’re lucky, months) ahead. For now, though, they exist in that moment of happiness.

That’s not to say their suc­cesses in on the show won’t eclipse the hap­pi­ness of win­ning the golden ticket. I’m sure if you asked any season’s win­ner or runner-up if they were hap­pier with their on-stage achieve­ments than they were pass­ing the audi­tion por­tion you’d hear “yes, of course!” But that achieve­ment comes with the knowl­edge of the hard work required to get there, tem­pered by the inevitable elim­i­na­tion of other con­tes­tants who’d become friends, and weighed down with other Idol tri­als that we as view­ers sim­ply can’t know. Greater and greater suc­cess comes with a cost—one cer­tainly worth paying—but a cost none the less.

In short, these Idol con­tes­tants are most happy in that moment.

The immi­nent birth of my first daugh­ter will be my moment, that moment in my life that is both pin­na­cle and mere begin­ning of hap­pi­ness. That hap­pi­ness is sure to have costs the I can’t even fathom, all of which will be well worth paying. (Though I’m sure cur­rent par­ents can tell me stories—and many have!) But our “golden ticket” moment will be her birth… but don’t expect me to jump up and down and scream; it’s not my style.

Best of all? No harsh cri­tiques from Simon Cowell.

Once when I was a teenager, a friend offered to let me read a man­u­script writ­ten by his dad’s friend. “Oooh, cool—a real man­u­script!” I thought. The word man­u­script was ripe with pos­si­bil­ity of pub­lish­ing and fame and to read one con­ferred upon the reader a priv­i­lege, a ticket to the insider’s club.  So I was excited when my friend handed me a three-ring binder stuffed with pages filled with double-spaced Courier text. “This is the real deal!” I thought, and dove in that night. Just one prob­lem: it sucked. Turned out there was a rea­son why the author was let­ting anyone—including the teenaged friends of his friend’s son—read the thing: it was doubt­ful any­one else ever would.

Jacket design for “Redemption”

About a year ago, a friend asked if I’d read and edit his brother’s man­u­script. I was hon­ored and intrigued, but mem­o­ries of my first man­u­script expe­ri­ence almost stopped me from agree­ing. I’m sure glad I did, because Darin Rice’s The Redemp­tion of Kurt Cobain restored the cool fac­tor in read­ing man­u­scripts. This is one story that should see the light of day (and not just due to its excel­lent first-round editing).

The story is an intrigu­ing one that defies cat­e­go­riza­tion. One way to frame it is by what it’s not: a biog­ra­phy of Kurt Cobain. The for­mer NIr­vana lead singer plays a cen­tral role in the story, yet is never actu­ally named, other than the title. Sounds weird, but it makes per­fect sense in the story’s con­text because it takes place after Cobain com­mits sui­cide. Now you’re intrigued, aren’t you? You should be. The plot weaves strands of pol­i­tics, phi­los­o­phy, sus­tain­abil­ity, par­ent­ing, a bit of humor, and of course rock and roll into a sur­pris­ingly read­able fab­ric. It’s clear that Rice knows a thing or six about music, which is evi­denced by thought­ful selec­tions of pop­u­lar song lyrics that begin each chap­ter. I found it enter­tain­ing to return to the open­ing lyri­cal pas­sage after read­ing the chap­ter to see how his choice fore­shad­owed what would occur in those pages.

Per­haps another way to intro­duce the story is to cite a bit from Rice’s own summary:

The Redemp­tion of Kurt Cobain is decid­edly polit­i­cal, unde­ni­ably rock and roll, and at its heart about the bond between fathers and daugh­ters. Set in Wash­ing­ton State and Wash­ing­ton DC in the months pre­ced­ing a mod­ern pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, Redemp­tion sets the stage to both ask and answer: “If Cobain had another chance at life, would he take it? Could this rock icon, armed with wis­dom from the after­world, find a way back to Earth to trans­form not only him­self but our nation?

Inspired by the epic plot and con­ver­gent char­ac­ters of The Stand and the oth­er­worldly con­tem­pla­tion of The Lovely Bones, Redemp­tion is unique and unex­pected.  A con­tem­po­rary mar­riage of physics, phi­los­o­phy, music and mat­ter, it embraces the notion of spir­its in search of another Earthly chance.  As human frail­ties are exposed and con­fronted within the back­drop of a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, Redemp­tion builds sus­pense and com­bines lit­er­ary and com­mer­cial ele­ments as it taps the pow­er­ful and often hid­den cit­i­zen activist and rock star in all of us.

Even the author’s own descrip­tion doesn’t fully cap­ture the essence of the story; that’s a tes­ta­ment to the unique­ness of the sub­ject mat­ter. The best way I can rec­om­mend it is this: read­ing it on the bus to and from work, I never fell asleep. That may not sound like high praise, but I fall asleep on the bus read­ing every­thing, so it means a lot that I couldn’t wait to find out what was going to hap­pen next.

Rice is decid­ing how best to pro­ceed with the work: shop­ping for an agent, dis­cussing the intri­ca­cies of get­ting approval for the use of each chapter’s lyri­cal pas­sage, oh and the small mat­ter of titling a novel after a famous rock star in our liti­gious soci­ety. I can safely say that the book stands on its own with­out those pas­sages or Cobain’s name in its title although both do bring an ele­ment of real­ism to the work. But the asso­ci­a­tion with Cobain is a double-edged sword. On one hand, his instantly-recognizable name could help bring atten­tion to the work. On the other hand, if you aren’t a fan of grunge music in gen­eral or Cobain specif­i­cally, you might not bother pick­ing it up off the shelf at all. And it bears repeat­ing here that while the story uses Cobain’s (after)life as a frame­work, it has so much more to offer than the name alone implies. And therein lies part of the prob­lem find­ing a pub­lisher for the book: it’s a genre-bender. Is it a ghost story? Sorta. A polit­i­cal thriller? Oh yes (one of the main char­ac­ters is a sen­a­tor run­ning for the Pres­i­dency), but not in the typ­i­cal way. Music biog­ra­phy? Mmmm yeah, if you read between the lines a bit. A self-help book on good par­ent­ing? Uh… not really but it’s got a lit­tle of that, too. You see the prob­lem, if an excel­lent story that defies label­ing is truly a “problem.”

If this intro­duc­tion has piqued your inter­est, you can check out a bit more at Rice’s Face­book page for the work. And I will post here again when it’s published.

Edit­ing this man­u­script has taught me one thing for sure, though. If Darin Rice wants me to read another of his man­u­scripts, the answer is “yes.” Well, unless it comes in a three-ring binder.

No, I’m not talk­ing about Beyonce’s “All the sin­gle ladies,” though one would cer­tainly for­give you for think­ing so. I’m talk­ing about the Fleet Foxes’ White Win­ter Hym­nal. You’ve prob­a­bly not heard it yet, as the FF are just gain­ing some pop­u­lar­ity. Take a lis­ten (and a watch) to the song, the sec­ond track from their self-titled album, Fleet Foxes:

(more…)

It was The Ruins alright… specif­i­cally, it ruined my din­ner, which I almost lost while watch­ing this one. Not scary, but gory and gross (remem­ber Kathy Bates bash­ing James Caan’s legs in Mis­ery? The Ruins has a scene that puts that to shame).

In the “pro” col­umn is an excel­lent con­cept: a Mayan tem­ple cov­ered in a dia­bol­i­cal man-eating vine. It’s sequestered by the locals, avoided by birds, and appar­ently only a cab ride away from a party resort. Another pro: actor Jonathan Tucker (Jeff in the movie) looks a hell of a lot like Chris­t­ian Bale. Made me think I was watch­ing Bat­man on vaca­tion in Mexico.

In the “con” col­umn is just about every­thing else. It’s end­ing suf­fers from the typ­i­cal “let’s keep the hor­ror going!” syn­drome (The Ring is the only movie that did that well). A few scenes feel like they’re shoe-horned in from the book, such as Stacy’s accu­sa­tion of infi­delity between Amy and Eric. If I read the book (which I won’t, but Matthew Bald­win did and pro­vides a review over at Defec­tiveYeti) I’m sure it would seem less forced. The first major “attack” of the vines in the tem­ple was unbe­liev­ably cheesey (think Muppet-show qual­ity), but later inter­ac­tions with it were much bet­ter and the under-the-skin stuff actu­ally looked good, too.

In ret­ro­spect I may be too hard on it. It grossed me out, couldn’t watch dur­ing a few scenes, and was tense while antic­i­pat­ing some­thing bad about to hap­pen. That pretty much sums up this sort of movie.

Oh, and kudos to my friend Tara. At the open­ing scene, she cor­rectly iden­ti­fied the only char­ac­ter to sur­vive until the end. Her guess? The only actress she rec­og­nized, Jena Mal­one (she was in one of my favorites, Don­nie Darko, and voiced a char­ac­ter in Miyazaki’s Howl’s Mov­ing Cas­tle). It’s a pretty safe bet in a hor­ror movie.

This post will likely win me the “least chronologically-relevant post” of 2008. But I found a set list I’d scrib­bled down on the back of a receipt dur­ing the Death Cab for Cutie con­cert at the Key Arena waaaaay back on 4 Decem­ber, 2006! A friend had two extra tick­ets so we went along at the last minute. With the release of their lat­est album, Nar­row Stairs, it made sense to finally post this.

I did my best to record the set list. Some songs I knew instantly, oth­ers I had to think about for a while before the tile came to me. Oth­ers, I could only jot down some of the mem­o­rable lyrics (show below in quotes). If you know the song names of any of them, let me know. They played:

1. 405 (from 2000’s We Have the Facts and We’re Vot­ing Yes)
2. Your Heart is an Empty Room (from 2005’s Plans)
3. The New Year (from 2003’s Transat­lanti­cism)
4. “I Love You Guinevere”
5. Crooked Teeth
6. Title and Reg­is­tra­tion (Transat­lanti­cism)
7. ?
8. Uncon­cious states — “Highway”
9. Com­pany Calls Epi­logue (We Have the Facts…)
10. What Sarah Said (Plans)
11. I Will Fol­low You Into the Dark (Plans)
12. Soul Meets Body (Plans)
13. The Face That Launched 1000 Shits (from 1998’s Some­thing About Air­planes)
14. We Looked Like Giants (Transat­lanti­cism)
15. “C’mon C’mon C’mon”
16. March­ing Bands of Man­hat­tan (Plans)
17. Things all change but basi­cally the stay the same — “cycle never ends, skin on steel”
18. Com­ing Home — A cover of a song by the Sonics

Also notable about this con­cert: it intro­duced me to Jenny Lewis and the Wat­son Twins, whose excel­lent Rab­bit Fur Coat I later bought (and still lis­ten to reg­u­larly). Imag­ine my happy sur­prise when I learned Jenny Lewis was the front­woman for a band called Rilo Kiley who had put out like four stu­dio albums that I could also enjoy.

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To com­mem­o­rate Thanksgiving—and to com­bat the cease­less com­mer­cial­ism of the “black Fri­day” shop­ping orgy—I would like to share with you the lyrics to a song called I Want More (part 1) by the group Faith­less. (I could fill pages about how great Faith­less’ music is, but I’ll con­trol myself and only say they won the “Best musi­cal group ever,” as deter­mined by me.)

Lis­ten­ing to this song (or sim­ply read­ing these lyrics) inspires me to real­ize that most of us yearn to pos­sess some­thing more, to own another phys­i­cal trin­ket or bauble. In real­ity, if you’re read­ing this entry on a com­puter then you’ve likely got every­thing you need to sur­vive. Even if you are short a bit on your bills, can’t afford to eat lunch out every day, or feel the pinch at the gas pump, you really do have far more to be grate­ful and give thanks for than not.

“I Want More Part 1″

Hey friend your mis­ery bewil­ders me
How come you’re never sat­is­fied or grat­i­fied
Four walls n’ a roof, elec­tric­ity,
Sta­ble mind, wife and child,
Hot and cold water to run any­time.
But still you whine.

What d’ya mean
I want more

I was told as a child,
I want more never gets
Learned to count my bless­ings
Long before I saw an aba­cus
So what ya fam­ily don’t speak
At least they’re alive
Show me a man with­out guilt
Or a soul that ain’t lied
You don’t know what ya got
Open your eyes, look around
Really, hear me you,
Ain’t got no rea­son to be down

What d’ya mean
I want more