Book 32: Microserfs by Douglas Coupland

When I was hired in 1996 to host an AOL website called Urban Legends I'd been online exactly twice in my life. Once in France on a very crude version of the internet and once a few years earlier at a Greenwich Village apartment party of a rich girl.

Neither of these internet experiences seemed to be of the mundane day-job variety.

I was about to be married. Maria (my then fiancee now ex-wife)had presented AOL Greenhouse (a division of AOL dedicated to discovering content designed specifically for AOL) with a Romance Novel website idea. Write stories as a community, critique existing books, market new books, etc. etc. The idea went pretty far up the AOL chain before it was eventually rejected. But they liked Maria's ideas and that is a good little poem.

Another idea was in the hopper, one that focused on urban legends. The sense was that this was a natural kind of transition, taking stories that spread organically and giving them virtual pathways. A different New Yorker had presented AOL with the idea of doing an Urban Legends website and they thought that Maria's presentational sense would mix well with the content.

She went to work in Greenwich Village, quite near the apartment I'd first seen a computer online. The original host (a fellow named Tim Disney and yes he is a Disney) had to drop out due to a television opportunity. They then thought a host wouldn't be necessary and that they could just make it APPEAR as if there was a host.

Here is where I come in.

They hired me to portray Legs Urbano, private eye/investigative journalist on the trail of urban legends (hence the name). We did a photo shoot at Chumley's where I dressed vaguely like Legs Urbano and that, I thought, was that.

But no. The date of their going live was still quite a ways away but it became clear that they would need an awful lot of content re-purposed for internet reading. Most of the famous legends had been compiled in several psuedo-scholarly volumes and to avoid copyright infringement they all had to be rewritten.

This was the first writing job I ever got.

They gave me the books. They gave me the titles, like "Alligators In The Sewers", "The Hook!", "El Chupacabre", "The Moon Landing Is A Lie", etc. etc. I then familiarized myself with the stories and wrote short peppy versions of them. They had all sorts of categories and wanted to have as many examples as possible in each one.

At this point I was auditioning several times a day for commercials, TV and theater through an agent and hustling my own amateur auditions all over town wherever I could get them (NYU, black box theaters, etc.) I was happy to have a part time job that was creative but I assumed I'd be moving on shortly.

Then they upped the ante, they being Maria and her boss, the creator of the site. Who I won't name. For reasons I may divulge later on in this post. But maybe not because I'm a classy joe.

Would I consider becoming a full time employee and writing and researching the weekly investigation into a particular legend? And build the online community?

Mind you a mere weeks earlier I'd NEVER BEEN ON THE INTERNET. Thus was the way of the Internet boom in New York City.

We worked extremely hard to get the site ready for launch date. I made bizarre phone call after bizarre phone call asking people questions they had no interest in answering.

"Hello Chairman of the New York Subterranean Sewage Plant Association...have you ever seen a white alligator in your time beneath the city?"

"Being a spider expert, have you ever seen a spider lay eggs in a coed's face?"

"Has a man with a hook as a hand ever been convicted of serial murders in the United States?"

As you can imagine, I had more than my share of angry hangups. Before I knew it Urban Legends went live and became a bit of an instant hit. This was back when AOL was still charging by the minute so our success was measured by how long people stayed and browsed.

A great aspect of Urban Legends was that readers were encouraged to submit stories that they heard. Before we knew it each category in the Library of Urban Legends was full to bursting.

Our little 4 person operation had caught the eye of the channel who housed us on AOL, The Hub. A joint venture between New Line Cinema and AOL, The Hub was AOL's stab at the MTV demographic. Our blood encrusted horror ridden tumor-in-a-KFC-sandwich-which-seemed-like-mayonnaise was a perfect fit for them. And we were getting a lot of traffic.

A meeting was set up. The head of The Hub came down from Midtown to talk us into signing up with the parent club. My boss was freaked out because by this point she had no input into the content itself. She'd had the idea but had no affinity for actual work. She was like the stoner at the after party who can't stop coming up with new names for the band which had just played a sold-out show. Like, bitch, we got a name already.

She was petrified that I would blow the meeting. She'd been angry with me ever since the site went live, something she attributed to me "not answering the phones quick enough" but which I knew stemmed from a deep jealousy at the response my take on Urban Legends was getting.

She told me not to mention my acting career to the Pres. So of course that was the first thing I said. I said that I had a concurrent goal which involved auditioning as much as possible and that with the move I wouldn't be letting go of that. I would complete my work but on my own time. He seemed a bit put out but more or less accepted what I said.

She however was apoplectic. In the week between that meeting and our move she seemed like a bug pinned to a wall. She'd no longer be directly involved in Urban Legends. Which when you think about it is a pretty big slap in the face. This little limbo in which she was still my boss but wouldn't be shortly seemed to send her over the deep end. She also would now have to be part of a team and she was incapable of anything but looking in the mirror and attempting to be pithy and clever.

I remember her sipping her coffee like a rabid ferret, eyes all bulging and brain all misfiring, knowing how useless she was and being unable to do anything constructive about it. So she decided to attack me.

Literally on the day that all the hard work and creativity I'd poured into the project resulted in what should have felt like a slam dunk. But she was too wrapped up in her own reflection to be able to handle the intrusion of another image of ownership or triumph.

I lost my temper and told her I quit and that I wasn't going to make the 50 block transition to the larger team at The Hub. I sarcastically wished her good luck finding someone who could do what I did. My sister (now a contributing member as well) quietly typing and pretending to do work. Actually, I think Maria was not in the office that day, which gave Unnamed Bitch the license to attack.

A minute went by as I gathered my things. Then I realized how wrong all of this was. Sure I wanted to be an actor first, but this was a portal into a strange new world of creativity and I was in on the ground floor. My creativity had been exploited and I liked it. I told her that I wasn't quitting, that I was going to continue the work that I was doing and that once we got up to The Hub we would barely have to deal with each other.

She twitched and stammered a consent of sorts, one-hundred percent incapable of true dialogue. It was as if she walked around with a 360 degree helmet on which had no visor to look out of, the interior of which was all mirror so whichever way she turned all she had to see was herself.

The next year and a half were a deadline, each week getting weirder and weirder. Legend after legend fell apart at the slightest scrutiny. Nothing could be proven. Buried in the Library Category were rumors that seemed to come from DC about the President having clandestine meetings with an intern in the White House library. Turns out there is no artistic connection between rumor and legend.

Oh. Yeah. And Microserfs is about people who work at Microsoft but go off on their own to start a small company. We all felt that something new was coming.

Maybe our helmets were mirrors too.

And They Say You Can't Go Home Again (Or That'll Learn Ya Reunites)

There is a room in an old sea-weathered beach shack. It is a very large room, perhaps the size of a small barn. This shack could have been a house on the water. But it is a bar. A beach bar. To my mind, THE beach bar.

The Ocean Mist.

This is a review of a rock show that took place in that room. A room which, because of some equipment and a raised stage on the wall furthest from the waves, becomes a club. But first and foremost it is a room. Rooms are personal places. They hold memories.

My memory of That'll Learn Ya haunted me for 20 years. Now I have a new memory that is laced over the old, a memory that somehow ties all the others into a great big Thanksgiving bow.

I would tell you to read my post from January of 2008 about my decades long obsession with a That'll Learn Ya song called 'Robert DeNiro Movies' but since it is a story I love to tell I will briefly recap it here.

Long story short.

I had a beat up That'll Learn Ya cassette with a copy of 'Robert DeNiro Movies' on it. I think it got stolen out of my car one night when I was apartment hunting in Providence in 1993. I didn't know what tapes were in the tape briefcase that got nicked.

During the ensuing 15 years I have searched for that cassette. I tore my parents house from top to bottom, finding old Graham Parker tapes, old Neutral Nation 45's, Channel Three albums, Carl Yastrzemski posters and boxes of letters from every girl I ever loved.

But no tape.

Technology evolved to the point where I could start a blog. I raved (mostly to myself and a few friends) about music shows I'd seen, albums I loved, books I'd slogged through.

One morning I decided to write about 'Robert DeNiro Movies'. At the least I thought maybe someone out there would have a copy of the cassette and they could copy it. I wish I could say that my post turned out to be the impetus for what eventually occurred but if it was it is only in that string theory/quantum physics/the secret kind of way.

Some time after that post, Facebook started. And one day I saw an old high school friend on there...Kurt Friel. Kurt now lived in Boston and was part of a kick-ass rock band himself, slinging bass lines for Minky Starshine, a band determined to reclaim power pop's good name that has been sullied by countless charlatans. We friended each other and that was that. Or so I thought.

Then one day in my news feed I see a name. Al Valatka. Mind you, I had GOOGLED AL VALATKA to try and get in touch with anyone from That'll Learn Ya a year earlier. Nothing had come up. And now here he was popping up on my computer. I instantly friended him (a verb I love and use unabashedly).

The reunion I attended Saturday, November 28, 2009 was already in the works. Kurt had wrangled these cats into a night out on the town. He convinced them to strap the axes back on and reclaim their catalog. They agreed. Kurt, when you read this, I am asking you to write up your side of this story and send it to me so I can post it here...when you got the idea, how, etc. etc.

They met in basements as if it were 1988. As if 20 years hadn't passed at all. As if they'd never broken up.

I must digress for a moment...this post is going to be all over the map because the show crystallized this time line that holds so much of my life. I believe I was at the very last That'll Learn Ya show...Club Baby Head or it might have already changed to The Rocket (or vice versa, can't remember which was first...).

That'll Learn Ya was opening for someone and I remember being psyched because I hadn't seen them in quite some time. I went to the show early just to catch TTLY. About 15 minutes into the set Terry Fallon picked up his backpack which was next to the mic stand and jumped off stage, exiting the club through the audience. The rest of the guys soldiered through the rest of the set and waved good bye.

I hate to bring up what must have been a painful memory for all involved but I simply can't ignore that I held onto their music in my head from that moment until they triumphantly took the Ocean Mist room by storm on Saturday night.

Nostalgia doesn't make good rock and roll. So while there were waves and waves of it rolling through the crowd and between Al, Ted, Dave, Rick and Terry on stage, not a shred of it entered the music. They were as vital as they'd been when I'd seen them at the height of their popularity, whipping an outdoor crowd on URI's quad into a veritable frenzy.

Minky Starshine opened the night with a finely honed hook ridden harmony laden set of sing along rock and roll. Much of the crowd knew Kurt's place in arranging the possibility of the evening itself so there was immediately a sense of urgency and connection in the air. Minky took that and ran with it, priming the pump with their own unique brand of sturdy flash.

Two Guys and Another Guy followed, another throwback to my college years and their bratty snotnose thrash pop was like a cup of coffee the morning after an all-night study session that devolved into a keg party. I'd seen them play in a windmill and was so college drunk I only remember the blades of the windmill and the spiral staircase I stumbled down. And I might have invented the spiral staircase.

The moment had come. That'll Learn Ya ambled up onto the riser to face a room filled with joy at the present moment mixing with a wistful view back to earlier shows, the collective echo of another lifetime.

They did not rest on their laurels.

From the very first note the power that they'd had way back when was back with a vengeance. My three favorites ('Robert DeNiro Movies', 'Pulling Up The Night', and 'When I Go Down') were delivered with an undiluted ferocity that never slid over into sloppiness or generality. I don't want to sound like I didn't expect greatness from the show but I was rather blown away at how cohesive and NOW the music sounded. There was absolutely NO sense of cobwebs or age to the sounds pouring down.

My three sisters were there with me, along with my best friend and two childhood friends. Between them they have witnessed my life since birth. That kind of context can be quite powerful, especially thrown on top of the turbulent two years my family has had and the O'Malley reunion that had happened earlier that day. This band used to play in the Memorial Union during coffee hour. I'd then stroll a hundred yards and pop in to see my Dad in the library where he worked for 42 years.

These are the kinds of thoughts that were running through my mind as these five guys gave everything they had. I'm sure the same can be said for the rest of the crowd. The mere fact of the performance could have been enough but That'll Learn Ya seemed bent on cutting through that sepia-toned barrier, diving back into the material and infusing it with the passion of TODAY. They kept knocking the past out of my head and reminding me that I was seeing a great rock and roll band.

So while many rooms flashed in front of my eyes as That'll Learn Ya roared and snorted, rooms like my father's office, rooms like the Green Room at Will Theater, rooms like my basement where my band played the night of my birthday when my parents took everyone else to Canada and I refused to go because The Replacements were playing The Living Room and I had to see my heroes...

While those rooms flashed, That'll Learn Ya gave the present room the same power. They created a new memory, one that wasn't tethered to the past, one that lived all on its own.

There was the ocean. There was the mist. There was That'll Learn Ya at long last.

Book 33: Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond

This damn book sat on my shelf like an albatross for close to 10 years.

I first tried to read it when I still lived in New York City. I next tried to read it when I still lived in New York City.

Then I tried to read it on our family vacation to Cape Cod. Then I tried to read it the next summer on our family vacation to Lake Sunapee.

Then I tried to read it in Los Angeles. Then I tried to read it in Los Angeles again. Then I tried again to read it in Los Angeles...again.

Each time I would get to the same point in the book, roughly 15,000 years ago when modern society started to evolve. Perhaps I was not advanced enough to care about my past, perhaps I couldn't relate to the main character (i.e. Earth), perhaps I was too busy using my own blood and fecal matter to paint on the walls of my apartment. Whatever the underlying causes, I was categorically unable to finish this book.

And now a small digression in which I prove that public transportation is good for something other than saving the environment.

Due to financial considerations, Melody and I share a car. There is an easy bus line that takes me to work from where I live. I reluctantly dug up the schedule, charged my iPod and set out to be one of the few who regularly uses THE BUS in Los Angeles.

This is why I was able to finally keep turning the pages of 'Guns, Germs and Steel' until I reached the final one.

One morning I was heading out with my $1.25 in my hand. I'd finished 'The Dark Tower' series for the 4th time and was feeling a bit sheepish about my literary choices. Frankly I wanted to seem smarter to the rest of the idiots on the bus - y'know, the people who yell intimate conversations to their girlfriends, who try to eat soup while standing, who pick their nose right in front of you, who yell at the bus driver for the traffic or because they got on the wrong bus and it isn't stopping where they imagine it should.

There lay 'Guns, Germs and Steel'. The White Elephant in the corner. I grit my teeth. I bared my gums. I picked it up and started again.

For roughly the 37th time.

This time I was determined that it would be different. I reached the onset of modern man within a week and pressed bravely on. I marveled at the travel of seeds from the Fertile Crescent to the Far East! I lorded my intellectual pursuit over my fellow morons on the bus.

And then a funny thing happened.

I got really into it.

And then I had to admit that I was a moron like everyone else. I didn't eat soup on the bus, but I drank coffee and almost spilled it on people. I had conversations on my cell phone that were too loud and too private. I don't think I picked my nose but I wouldn't want to swear on a stack of Bibles to that effect.

But I'd swear on 'Guns, Germs and Steel' which turned out to be one of the best books I almost never read.

Book 34: The Dark Tower by Stephen King

This is for Tim Taylor who will be outraged by the inclusion of anything written by this 'ferocious hack' on a Best Books list.

I can't say that I fully disagree with him either. But that doesn't stop me from loving his books.

'The Dark Tower' is a sprawling 7 book fantasy that straddles two worlds and seems to be cobbled together from memories of black and white westerns and reading 'Lord of the Rings' by flashlight under a blanket.

To give you an idea how much I love this series, I've read it 4 times. All 7 books. Do the math. 7X4=28.

He has better books. 'The Stand' and 'It' come to mind. But this one seems to mean more to him than any other. That intensity comes across and makes it his most personal work even as it is the most fanciful.

There is a kind of apologia inherent in singling King out for praise, as if he weren't worthy, as if the simplicity of his prose and our collective reaction to it were somehow a black mark on modern society. Or so the literati would say. And I count myself among them, cultivating my snobbish categories, looking down my nose at the Grishams, Browns, Binchys and Crichtons of the world.

But I loves me some Stephen King.

Oh he's put out some stinkers. You can almost smell the booze and cocaine while reading 'The Tommyknockers'. 'Pet Sematary' is almost unreadable. Even his best books have a kind of thinness to them. He opens with a few finely wrought sentences but soon he is swamped by the onrush of story and can barely get his pen out of the way fast enough to just let that shit happen.

So. Is Stephen King a great writer? Absolutely not.

Do I love his books? Some, not all.

This one is 7 novels, roughly 5,000 pages. I've read it 4 times. 20,000 pages. Sometimes you can't explain love. You just feel it.

Book 35: All Over But The Shouting by Jim Walsh

If I were to measure this list solely by sentimental markers this book would be at the top. Number one. Here's why.

This book is an oral history of my favorite band The Replacements. Those who know me know that 'favorite band' is an understatement of colossal proportions. The Replacements are in my DNA.

So the book has that going for it. Jim Walsh, a musician, rock journalist and longtime friend of the band, interviewed anyone and everyone who had been part of the scene The Replacements came out of. Paul Westerberg declined to be interviewed which is only just seeing as his words and voice dominate the discussion as it is. And this band doesn't have 18 gold records and meticulous rock historians cataloging their every move. This book is crucial because all of this happened before it was easy to chronicle every fucking second of every fucking day.

But the real reason that this book means so much to me has nothing to do with The Replacements or music or the book itself.

It has to do with my son Cashel and how much he means to me and who he is. (In a related sidenote, I have only ever asked for one autograph in my life...I had Paul Westerberg autograph Cashel's school photo when I saw him play in Anaheim...he softly said, "He looks like Johnny', his son...a very sweet moment).

The book was published in November of 2007. Cashel was 10. I'd talked about the book, knew it was coming out, couldn't wait to get it. Cashel and Melody conspired to get it for me for Christmas.

Now, Cash was in elementary school at the time and blossoming. He'd finally settled in at Roosevelt Elementary and was shaking off the effects of three big moves (NY to Maine/Maine to TX/TX to CA) in two years. I would walk from my job to his school every day and walk him home. We would have time to kill until his mom came home from work.

Here is where Barnes and Noble comes into the picture. We would mosey over to the 3rd Street Promenade and browse the stacks. Cashel would find the latest book he was interested in, I would do the same and we would sit in our little corner and read. It was here that he convinced me that he could go down to the lower level by himself to get another book. It was here that we talked about how to handle adversity in school, handle his emotions, something I was in the process of doing myself.

One day in November we walked in as usual. Before we went up the escalator to the kid section, I stopped to browse in the Music Section.

Cash saw the book before I did and draped himself in front of it nonchalantly, hiding his Christmas present from me.

Now, I'd known the book was out but I'd deliberately not looked at it because Melody had forbidden me to do so, seeing as it was going to be my Christmas present.

So the history of the band that I'd desperately fallen in love with in high school was now contained in a hardcover book hidden behind my ten year old son Cashel as he tried to convince me to go upstairs.

I've read it three times since then. Cashel is two years older and in middle school. Rumors of a Replacements reunion have been swirling louder than ever. I hope it is delayed until Cash is old enough to go. I'll hide the tickets from him and pretend we are going to some boring dinner party.

I'll never forget him in front of that bookshelf, as if he could possibly conceal what he'd already given me, as if the gift was the book, as if he needed to give me anything at all.

Book 36: Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor

I picture Flannery O'Connor suspended over a wheat field, the night sky screaming away behind her, stars trying to get through the black, get away, be unseen by that all-knowing eye. Her hair is on fire but her thoughts are so cold it can't hurt.

'Wise Blood' doesn't begin, it continues. The sum experience of reading it is akin to waking up inside the dream of a vagrant ecstatic in the midst of a psychotic break.

I once dreamed that I was riding my bicycle along the wharf of Newport, Rhode Island on a gorgeous summer day. I saw bikinis under sarongs, paper cups filled with intoxicant refreshment, glistening tans and gorgeous bodies lounging away under sun that bestowed everything beneath it with a distinct glamour, myself included.

Then I heard a slight buzzing. Without slowing the bike, I turned to place the noise. Perhaps fifty feet behind me flew a white insect, following lazily, outlined against the ancient hull of a tall schooner anchored in the harbor. Some instinct told me I was in danger.

I began to pedal faster hoping to lose the bug. But instead the buzzing grew louder, so loud that I became unnerved and crashed to the cobblestones. The bug landed on my shoulder. It looked like a grasshopper and a cockroach but it was completely white. It sunk a pincer into my neck and instantly I knew I was dead.

I noticed that my knee was bleeding but the paralysis from the bite was so instant that I couldn't feel the cut. I died within seconds.

To those who think that you die if you die in your dreams I share that story. And I say read 'Wise Blood' because it is a dream of death that will not kill you either.

But there is the field. There she hangs, head on fire, stars scrambling to escape, eternity personified.

Book 37: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

To measure the greatness of this book, one must resort to a kind of magic, a faux-science akin to phrenology, handwriting analysis or divination. These processes have all been used to catch criminals but that doesn't make them real. Some criminologists claim that DNA is the first ACTUAL criminal science tool.

If literature and American culture followed that same path, the DNA of 'The Great Gatsby' would be splattered all over every little damn crevice of the crime scene that stands for our communal memory. It is in the close to 27 poems I wrote that have a green light blinking off in the distance, it is in the way we respond to Robert Redford as a movie star which is linked by the evidence to Sundance and the independent film movement, it implicates Mia Farrow and by extension Frank Sinatra and Woody Allen, and it is clear as a bell in roughly every other coming of age novel you've ever read. In short, it TOWERS over the collected output of this nation.

I first read 'The Great Gatsby' in high school and it is a testament to my teacher Mr. Crothers that I can honestly say that I knew how vast the reach of those words really was. Mr. Crothers had insisted that we read the Bible before we tackled any modern literature because he claimed (and rightly so, I believe) that it is the source material for much of the finely tuned layers of meaning inherent in any good piece of modern literature. Of course, the same could be said of The Koran or Talmud or any other religious text that infuses modern culture with opportunity for allusion and cross--referencing.

Bottom line? 'The Great Gatsby' terrified me. It reminds me of the first time I heard 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' and was shocked to realize that I was going to grow up and it was not going to be easy. 'Gatsby' is similar. It starts out like the promise of an immaculate suit and then sends waiter after waiter scurrying by with precarious glasses of red wine poised to stain.

I think of it when I see boats. I think of it when I hear of people in power who have life shattering moments. I think of it when I think of the Rhode Island mansion where they filmed it and where I would later have my Senior Prom. I think of the Bible. And I think of evidence, evidence that cannot be covered up, evidence that will continue to expose the book for what it is...

The apotheosis of American expression, perfectly mirroring the time it was created in and reflecting anew with each passing moment the bitter core of our collective splendid heart.