Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

As spring turns to summer, I often feel old as I remember all of the summers I have spent lazily reading comics and fiction or watching television when I know that I should be writing. Of course, I also spend time outside, usually bicycling, walking, or swimming. These days, however, I generally feel too warm as the humidity and temperature creep up to a shocking eighty degrees. There were many summers where I spent time fishing or running down the sidewalks of my old neighborhood, tripping over the roots of tired trees that lined the walk. One year a friend and I shamefully rode our bikes into sapling poplar trees, leaving black, oozing marks on their trunks. Last time I checked there was only one of those trees left, still battle scarred and defiant. The tree is thirty feet tall now, but its trunk is gnarled and shrunken from our youthful transgressions. Another time I rode my bicycle into a nearby water-filled ditch to avoid bees that were chasing me. They still stung me, and it...

When I was younger, I used to love snow. I would go skiing regularly, barely feeling the cold. I would push myself over hills competing in an imaginary race. If my dad was with me, I would try to beat him even though he could ski much faster. I spent hours training on the kiddie hills trying to master the wishbone technique for climbing difficult hills. I soon realized that the faster I could go, the easier it would be to climb the next hill.  The snowy pine trees and flitting chickadees were a welcoming sight five miles down the ski trail after a difficult run. Although I get envious when I see an older skate skier zoom by and leave me in the lurch. My younger body cannot compete with these octogenarians who ski daily, their arms and legs purely muscled. I still feel like a skinny kid, although I am much bigger, older, and out of shape. I would ski more if there was more snow. Each year we get less and less, the trails are practically bare here. Muddy ruts -- they resemble d...

I find myself sleepwalking through life these days. I spend much of my day writing and listening to music, reading and catching up on movies, drifting through life in a sedentary fashion. Once in awhile I go hiking in a national park or bicycling down the slow moving streets of DeKalb. Most of the time I remain motionless, dreaming dreams and working on my writing. I recently made it out to see The Reigning Sound at the Double Door in Chicago. The band was tight and the acoustics were near perfect. It felt good drifting amongst others. I saw old friends and ate suspect tacos, but most of all I was able to shed some of the doldrums and anxiety of recent days. As I try to kick start my life in other directions, I realized how vital live music still is in my life. It is one of the driving forces that makes each day better than the last. It is as important at thirty-three as it was at sixteen. We are creatures that can drift into habits that are so often bad for us. We forget about ...