Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

The side streets are slick and worn as I walk daily to the college working on frustrations as old as time in holey shoes and slighted ambition My twisted ankle, my mucked up transmission tiny travesties leading to submission of mind, of thought, of body rot in flooded back alleys and musty university towns I walk past solemn green and dirty brick a facade thrown across the earth darkened windows hide secrets in the midst of wind-bent trees The fragile ecosystem of roadwork and wax shelters my way through the days past Sycamores and White Oaks unlit houses and the cries of feral cats

Booker T. Jones' organ playing is a thing of beauty -- serene, yet expressive, propelling a late night vibe or a Sunday morning, post-church feeling. Transcendental, his playing is unmatched and recognizable, especially on the opening bars of "Behave Yourself," a fine equal and b-side to the group's ubiquitous 1962 single, "Green Onions," on which the organist lays down nimble melodies.The rest of the group never slouches either. Lewie Sternberg's bass lines are measured and supremely funky, just bubbling under the surface throughout the piece and superbly melding with Al Jackson's simple kit work. Steve Cropper takes the lead from Jones' organ to lay down a nice southern soul guitar line once in awhile, but Jones is the master of the game here, varying his playing but vamping as the tight rhythm section backs him up. Alternating patterns of sweetness explode as the group holds down the tight vibe, Cropper's repeating guitar figures taki...

Each summer I rack up an amazing list of wasted opportunities, unproductive mishmashes of scattered writing, files full of mindless ramblings all in search of effectual copy. I write a lot and read even more in order to continually perfect my game, but fall under the weight of the work, ineffectually stumbling back months later and wondering where to begin. As writers many of us fall into this pattern, putting work down never to return to it or never able to quite pick up where we left off. Summer is the time for me to supposedly catch up, but life always gets in the way. Even my blog posts trickle recently as dissertation chapters take all of my time. Fiction and essay writing are relegated to brief meanderings as I focus all of my attention on one never-ending project. While I just finished my dissertation introduction, so now I plan on writing more, updating old posts and returning to music, film, comics, and the essayistic scene of the crime instead of dropping in every once in...