Born to Be Brave

I am late to the Lady Gaga party. Or the Lady Gaga surreal, 24-hour, glitter-bombed extravaganza, as it were. When I began my 5k training last fall, I needed something upbeat and motivating to run to, meaning something entirely unlike anything on my mandolin-heavy iPod playlist. I created a Pandora station on my fancy phone, combining ‘80s pop with contemporary dance music: Go-Gos meets Gaga. Whenever I turned it on, the first song was almost inevitably Lady Gaga, and it was perfect to get me going. It was slick, fast, and surprisingly funny.

One of the things I appreciate about Lady Gaga, as a performer, is that she hasn’t waited around to ironically morph into a gay icon. She just went right out there and grabbed that baton out of Madonna’s gnarled hands. So although our running time together didn’t turn me into a huge fan, it was easy enough for me to recognize the singer when a recent radio flip brought me to “Born This Way.” Who else would be chanting, “Don’t be a drag, just be a queen?” Fondly remembering our glory days last October, I kept the radio tuned into the song, and I found myself grinning. The lyrics are a celebration of differences, a call to pride for anyone who feels judged or dismissed because of who they are. Honestly, it gave me goosebumps. Not so much because it was a great song – although it is pretty catchy – but because I could imagine millions of teenagers hearing those words and feeling like maybe it wasn’t always going to be so hard to be themselves. And that maybe, someday, it would even be awesome.

Because my all-Americana radio station recently betrayed me by going to conservative talk, I went ahead and programmed a Top 40 station into its place. About one out of every four times I go past it, Pink’s new single, “Raise Your Glass,” is playing (the other three times it’s poor edited Cee-Lo). Although it’s to a slightly different audience, the song is like “Born This Way” in its mission to bring the outsiders in. If “Born This Way” is directed to the glee club, “Raise Your Glass” speaks to the art room rogues. The point, however, is the same. Embrace what makes you different. Don’t let judgment break you. Take “freak” as a compliment.

What strikes me most about these songs is that they’re so popular. There have always been anthems for the lost or disenfranchised, but they tended to be so empathetic as to just make things worse (see: Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful,” entire oeuvre of R.E.M.). No one was dancing to them at prom. In my day, the kids on the edges found music on the edges – Violent Femmes on one side, Metallica on the other. What I find so fascinating and encouraging about this trend (because yes, there are even more, but I have to draw the line at getting philosophical about Katy Perry) is that it’s so mainstream. A kid in Willmar, Minnesota who has never in his life heard the word “transgendered” spoken out loud can hear it sung on American Top 40. And if that’s too broad to attract the true outcasts, my hope is that the message of the music is drilling itself into the kids in the middle. They’re silly songs, party songs, practically disco songs, but when so many teenagers (and younger) are still struggling to survive the pain and isolation they feel every day, what’s the harm in throwing them a party?

One Man's Trash

My college roommate recently validated my love for Antiques Roadshow, which would have been more reassuring if it hadn’t come with the sad realization that I spent college watching Antiques Roadshow. Nevertheless, I’m intrigued by the stories behind pottery, jewelry, artwork and toys, and the big-game bargain-hunter in me is drawn to the idea of someday finding a true treasure among seeming trash. I’m enthralled by watching an unsuspecting owner hear the details of a piece’s history. People who’ve already had their items appraised and know all about them aren’t of any interest to me. The drama is in watching the story take hold in someone, seeing them comprehend the significance of an object that’s been gathering dust in an attic for a lifetime or more.

And then, the kicker: the actual financial value. I have teared up right along with farmers from Iowa and librarians from Idaho as they realize that the dusty old junk they hauled out to a convention center is actually a ticket to college tuition or comfortable retirement. It’s like winning a lottery they never entered, and having the check presented by a Keno brother (drink!).

My schedule and pitiful lack of a DVR has meant missing Antiques Roadshow for the last few years, but just when I was beginning to suffer a critical lack of televised junk, I happened upon American Pickers. The show airs, fittingly, on the History Channel, and follows two self-described junkers as they pick through the barns and basements of any “collector” they can find. Collector is their own generous term; most people would consider these sellers to be borderline hoarders, but Mike and Frank are respectful of the urge that drives people to haunt auctions and estate sales. It’s that respect that keeps the crassness out of their endeavors, and lets the viewer be proud when they strike a great deal instead of being icked out that they got the best of an oblivious seller.

No, all the crassness and ick is over on A&E, home of Storage Wars. On first glance, this show had the buried treasure appeal: professional buyers (consignment shop owners, mostly) bid on storage lockers after only five minutes to view the contents from the outside, and then try to get the most money for what’s inside. In reality, though, it lacks the scrappiness of Pickers and the historical distance of Roadshow. These guys are just showing up at a storage unit that someone stopped paying for and paying the lowest price they can for that person’s stuff. You can’t help but wonder what circumstances caused the owners to abandon these lockers, and it sort of makes you resent the bidders for swooping in. In case you didn’t already resent them just for being unlikable jackholes (except Barry, he’s alright). There’s no joy in seeing them dig through boxes to find a baseball card collection worth five grand. Those aren’t their baseball cards! It’s like watching people shoot bankrupt fish in a square barrel. It’s just not sporting.

My mom brought me to antique shops when I was so young the owners must have begun twitching the minute my bowl-cut appeared in the doorway. They needn’t have worried, though. Even as a pre-schooler, I was suited to antiquing. I was careful and quiet and kept my sticky little hands to myself. (Just kidding, Mom. We were never sticky, especially in public.) So maybe the urge to look at people’s old stuff is part of my own family history, a genetic heirloom passed down from one hopeful chest to the next.

I wonder how much I can get for it.

Freaks and Gleeks

I’ve never seen Glee. There, I said it. I have been completely oblivious of this television phenomenon, much like I was for Lost and 24 and pretty much any other hugely popular episodic series to debut since my first child was born. But in my own way, I still feel connected to the show. Any depiction of mostly-smart, artsy kids on the fringes of popularity strikes a chord (oh, hush) with me. I don’t need to watch Glee. I lived it.

Okay, no, I wasn’t in my high school’s elite singing ensemble. But most of my friends were. And those who weren’t were in the nationally-competitive choir, or orchestra, or band, or a combination of the above. I can count the number of athletes I hung out with on one hand, and most of those were runners or swimmers (the nerds of jocks). My friends were National Merit finalists and National Honor Society officers. I lettered in Thespian Club, y’all.


Graduation All-Night Party, June 1994
Me, 4 Chamber Singers, and our
Co-Valedictorian/Theatre Award Winner
(Edited to crop out jean shorts)


We were good kids. Really ridiculously good kids. We didn’t drink, smoke, or do drugs. One of the very few couples I knew who were having sex had met with their pastor beforehand to discuss it. The cops were called on a party at my house and found about a dozen teenagers drinking Coke and playing Trivial Pursuit. “Sorry we were playing the Abba so loud, officers. It won’t happen again. My parents are asleep upstairs.”

I went to a high school where over 90% of graduates went to college, and my friends were expected to attend the very best of them. We weren’t better or smarter or wiser than any other teenagers, but we saw the benefits of following the plans made for us. Our parents and teachers had spent a decade grooming us for greatness, or at least happiness, comfort, and security, and we weren’t going to blow it. Part of the reason we were involved in so many activities was for the benefit of our transcripts, and we were very conscious of how everything we participated in stacked up. A ticket for a DUI, or even a curfew violation, had no place on our permanent records.

We also weren’t too badly hemmed in by a fear of stasis. We were all going places, literally. I can’t think of anyone within my immediate peer group who went to college closer than thirty miles from home, and the vast majority left the state entirely.

So we did our time as rule-followers and curve-blowers and extracurricular extremists. We knuckled down, studied hard, and steered a straight line toward our goal.

The arts, however, were something we did purely for the fun of it. Most of us took an extra class – ominously held during “zero hour” at 6:45 in the morning - so we’d have room in our schedules for these non-required courses. Even as a third-string member of our lousiest choir, some of my best high school memories involve rehearsing and performing. It was freeing and expressive in a way that so few things are, especially in adolescence.

Part of Glee’s buzz is about how it celebrates differences in a way teenagers so desperately need, but the model for that celebration has been around much longer. I have a lot of gay friends who credit their school arts programs for keeping them alive to see adulthood, but they weren’t the only ones to benefit from that culture. The Arts wing at my school was a haven for the misfits and the misunderstood. I can think of some examples of those kids who were awkward or egotistical, but I can’t think of any who were mean or bullying. I’d wager that singing Gershwin for an hour a day will take all the bully right out of you. (This might be something the prison system should look into.)

Based on how much fun I had during that time, I can see the appeal of living vicariously through kids doing the same. I’m not convinced that Glee is great art, but if it increases support of arts in high school, that’s great enough for me.

Record Breaking

I just bought my first MP3 album. It wasn’t for me, of course. I bought it as a gift for a newly-13-year-old. Within seconds of me hitting the Buy button, he could yank the full contents of They Might Be Giants’ 1990 geeky masterwork Flood into the heart of his new-to-him iPod Touch. He’s probably doing it right now. (That sound you hear is the space-time continuum collapsing in on itself.)

I have an iTunes account and a spacious iPod myself, but I consider them the Readers Digest version of my own CD collection. I still believe in actual factual physical albums and would have trouble trusting a record that existed only as a link. I believe in cover art and liner notes. I believe in listening to a new record from front to back, over and over, until you can anticipate the next song by hearing the closing notes of the last one.

I can probably blame that bias on my upbringing. I was raised on vinyl, of course. Thanks to an active membership with Columbia House through the ‘80s (whether they wanted it or not), my folks kept up with the popular music of the day and I was brought up with those songs in my everyday life. The turntable was kept up high, and my sister and I were discouraged from messing with it, which meant we very rarely skipped a song. I liked some tracks better than others, but I knew them all. It was our family’s soundtrack.

We did also have tapes in the house. Not cassettes, mind you, but actual reel-to-reel spools. Sort of the iPods of their day, really, since you could put six hours’ worth of recordings on each reel. It would never have occurred to my parents to stand over the turntable to make a giant mix tape, though, so each delicate disc contained half a dozen albums converted from vinyl in their entirety. The fast-forward and rewind lever was clunky and unreliable, even if you could remember which way the tape was playing, so it was usually best to just let it play on through. As a result, I don’t really have any idea where each Beatles album ends and the next begins, and hearing the J. Geils Band always makes me feel like listening to Eddie Rabbit.

I’ve tried to maintain that sense of musical community with my kids, but I’m afraid my efforts are no match for my technological foes. The music they hear most often is broadcast from the iPod dock in the kitchen, a randomized mix of thousands of songs from hundreds of albums. When I was my daughter’s age, I could recognize dozens of artists by face and voice, but I doubt she could list five artists from my collection (including those who’ve stayed at our house). Music is just something that’s there in the background, compressed into crappy little digital packets that make everything sound like it’s coming from another room no matter where it originates.

The best hope I have of giving my children a musical education is in the car, where I still plunk CDs into the stereo during our morning commute. They hear the same songs often enough to recognize them and sing along, although they still make impatient requests to skip ahead to what they like best. Hearing “Play track seven!” squealed from the backseat is bittersweet. I’m glad when they find something they like and connect with, but I wonder if they’ll ever be patient enough to listen to twelve new songs in a row, and then listen to them again. I’d have missed out on some of my favorite music if I hadn’t been willing to give it a first, second, and sometimes third chance. We’ve come to an era when most people hunt out and buy the music they already like, instead of taking a risk on something they’ve never heard before. All we disc-based dinosaurs can do is try to pass along our own musical memories, one uber-geeky album at a time.