Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

When I was in high school, my friends and I used to play pool in my basement. We listened to music and imagined ourselves out of that tiny town, although I do not think any of us had the audacity to picture ourselves as pool sharks, hustling townies for their paychecks. More or less, we imagined ourselves fully grown and living a life that did not include lockers and gym class. The Stray Cats' Built For Speed was one of my favorite albums at the time. I played it countless times during our pool sessions. I vividly remember Brian Setzer's cool vocals rising above the sound of breaks, miscues, and arguments over the kitchen and the granny stick. When I hear the hits, "Rock This Town" and "Stray Cat Strut" on classic rock radio, I always picture that damp basement and group of guys; most of us still hang out from time to time, but I think I'm the only one that regularly spins the Stray Cats. However, my favorite tracks from that album, which were on...

I'm listening to Chris Bell and feeling really underwhelmed by graduate school today. So I figured now was as good of a time as any to flex my fiction writing muscles and post another installment of my sojourn into fiction writing -- " "The Jukebox Played An Old Sad Song." I feel that some of this story might seem a tad cliched, or intentionally pulpy, but I am going with it. Writing is an unrewarding task sometimes, but most of the time I can't imagine doing anything else.  One of these times I will put up revisions. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- He grabbed a pool cue from a corner rack. The bar was somewhat of a dive with dirty concrete floors and cracked brown wall panels covered by decades old beer signs. The only new embellishments included new lights over the pool tables and large screen led televisions with 24 hour sports blaring. The pool cue he grabbed was one of the old ones; it had so...