Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

I'm trying to write longer, languorous lines, you know, as I have not been writing like I should. These lines might form a rib, a bit, an attempt at honest expression, or an artistic endeavor to keep me from my dotage. To shake off the brain fog, post-Covid before I fix my shaky, sore carpal tunnel hands and get back to work. I wake up numb in brain, fingertips straining and hurting, finding it hard to talk, momentary, mental lapses, and an inability to move, work, or think. The cabin helps as the bright sun shakes off the long upper Midwest winter, which felt like it lasted eight months this year. The mosquitoes materialize from seemingly nothing to work like tiny Draculas on all available creatures. A bald eagle screeches in its deceptively tiny bird voice, and the chipmunks chase each other with much commentary. A toad hops through the gray dirt of the campfire pit in search of a cool escape from the torturous sun's red rays. I defog as I watch every other creature move thro...

The first time I read Lester Bangs' Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung , I hunkered down for the long haul on the floor of the bathroom at my old house and read and read and read. Bangs' manic prose and uncompromising taste enthralled me, sucking me deeper into rock critic fandom. It was definitely the late '90s, and I was in the early, heady stages of compulsive record collecting. I had already worked my way through a large chunk of the Greil Marcus catalog, but I was mostly known for my love of Flipside , MRR , and later Punk Planet , the bigger punk rock fanzines, which I would read front to back in study hall, poring over obscure record reviews and tantalizing columns, not forgetting the letter page. As I read over his many obsessions that night and into the early hours of dawn, while I should have been preparing for some exam or other, I felt like a kindred soul. Though I never entirely agreed with Bangs, or always understood just where he was coming from, I un...