Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

"They call it youthful idealism / And even I would have to agree with them / Some of us grow up, and it's still there"-Operation Ivy, "Junkie's Running Dry." When I think of coming of age in the late 1990s and early 2000s, I often find myself attempting to recapture those moments of silence or solitude that still existed in an era before social media and 24 hour news cycles took over. While we had cellphones, they were not the pocket computers of today, social media did not exist as it does now, and people could still use the excuse that they were not at home to answer the phone. No one expected us to be on call at all hours of the day, nor did they battle over political talking points in the stratified way they do now. Instead, we could "turn on, tune in, and drop out" like the previous generation, albeit with different drugs and drama, in ways that are often not available to younger generations. I was a master at "dropping out" in those...

Some of my fondest memories from high school include tuning into 120 Minutes every Sunday night on MTV. I discovered many bands, and in the process, developed my musical identity. I still have about fifty tapes of videos and interviews from the show, mostly from the 1990s. Watching them now is like a time capsule of how my musical taste changed. I wore those tapes out by watching my favorite episodes and videos over and over. One of my favorite episodes featured Matt Pinfield interviewing Rancid, mostly because the videos they picked and bands they recommended were so varied, including oi tastemakers like the Business, shoutouts to the Swingin' Utters, and discussions of Operation Ivy and reggae as rebel music. My taped copy of this show is unwatchable because it goes back and forth between speeds, so I am glad Eyesore Video Channel posted it on YouTube. Another favorite episode was when Henry Rollins and Jerry Lee Lewis co-hosted the show. This odd juxtaposition was even st...

Over the past few years, I feel like I have begun to slowly unravel. I feel like I lost part of myself that I might not be able to reclaim. I am far more tired than I feel I have the right to be. But I also have never learned how not to be hard on myself. A colleague told me recently that "you are always so hard on yourself. You have to learn your self worth." Nothing could be truer, but it is hard to rediscover my value because of my own negative thoughts and self-deprecation. All the stress from my PhD studies is finally catching up with me. When I was working on my dissertation, I never had that much time to worry because I was so busy trying to get it done. Now I feel even busier. I teach five classes and have five tutoring sessions on top of it. I am working on an article that does not seem to be gelling quite like I want it to, and I hope that I can eventually catch up on sleep. My stress management seems to be failing me. I get home after a busy day at work and pre...

I often feel the pull of the written word, encouraging me to read and write fiction far more than I have time for. Yet I have so many stressors in my life, pulling me in all directions, halting my efforts and sapping my strength. It is all I can do to put a few words down on paper for a book chapter I am working on or scribble a few notes for my movie list. I write this from the standpoint of finishing my doctoral dissertation in the spring, teaching the equivalent of six courses, and trying my best to seek tenure. During these rough spells, I have been trying to read fiction and slowly writing a little. Someday I hope to get back to my manuscript and at least finish one novel or a few short stories or pull a few more of my grey hairs out. I take comfort in the fact that many are late bloomers to this fiction game. However, I have been writing fiction for more than two decades and have never taken it all that seriously. It is a given, but there is something to be said for sitting dow...

Where do the years, weeks, and days go? I imagine they are stored in underground caverns loaded with greying filing cabinets. Or are they, like my writing, forgotten in folders and files. I often think of the nonfiction essays, the short stories, the uncracked and lonely novels I have started. Is it 1996? Is it 2004? The drafts remain unfinished. I put them off for work at the restaurant. I put them off for graduate school, theses, and dissertations. I put them off to teach course after course, telling myself that I will finish this year. I know it won't happen until I'm old and grey. Will it happen before I'm buried under an oak tree, green grass spreading over my unharried corpse.

I find myself thinking about the Barracudas's song "Grammar of A Misery" today as I work on lesson plans, abstracts, and the assorted flotsam and jetsam of academic life. The song is lyrically simple, yet holds complex emotional resonance for me. Jeremy Gluck sings in the chorus " Run From yourself for twenty years / Cry yourself a thousand tears / Call for help but no one's listening / At your grammar of misery." The sadness of going through the motions is evident as is the emotional pain of feeling alone in the void. The song makes evident how hard it can be to express our true feelings as we sink into a solipsistic state. Yet the song's propulsive drumming and ringing guitar chords coupled with the sheer energy of the Barracudas attack are hopeful. And check out that guitar solo and playful vocal effects that recall Generation X at their bounciest. However, The Barracudas are generally more complex than Billy Idol's first band. They tend to writ...

What is classic rock anyway? Sometimes genre specification make me wonder, especially when I listen to music from numerous genres as I work. However, I often believe the genre, rock music, is not so much a genre as a catchall category for most types of guitar-based music made after 1965. Just like alternative rock, such subgenre categories as hard rock, have become close to meaningless. Those who have suffered through my endless diatribes about certain periods of music know that I reserve specific definitions for other genres: rock 'n' roll to me is a very specific type of music drawing from Sun Records luminaries like Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis. Indeed, bands who play rock 'n' roll today follow this template. Yet it is more about rocking out on bass, guitar, and drums than exploring guitar solos. Rock 'n' roll is also an attitude like punk that gets the job done fast and dirty with little indulgence. In the last couple days my musical ex...