The Last Temptation of Tom Warner

In Sunday's New York Times, there was an article on some maverick advertising maven that quoted Apple's famous 1997 "Think Different" ad campaign - you know, the one with pix of Einstein, Picasso, Bob Dylan (there's even a recent campaign that puts The Thong and Kissing Lesbians alongside these greats!):

Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes - the ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules and they have no respect for the status quo. You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them, disbelieve them. About the only thing that you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things.

Think Diffident
This quote, a credo for Free Thinkers, explains perfectly why I have never succeeded in the business world. In fact, it's probably the anti-Mission Statement for my current municipal job where Status Quo is the Golden Calf that all prostrate themselves before, where blind obeisance to The Chain of Command is the altar on which all free thought and innovation is sacrificed. Think Diffident is the cattle call of these lemmings.

We Can Be Heroes
I admire people who live up to this Apple Credo of Intellectual Emancipation. I never had the courage of my convictions to be like these people. If I had, I would have ditched my day jobs and pursued writing, filmmaking, or broadcasting full time. Instead, I compromised, like my friend Lumpy. We took secure 9-5 jobs in fields that didn't excite us, getting our kicks doing what we wanted - making music, producing videos - as spare-time hobbies.

But I have known some intrepid souls who went for the gold, pursuing their interests at great risk to their financial stability and livelihood. Like Skizz Cyzyk (pictured left), who never compromised himself in the pursuit of making music and films, never taking a job that would intefere with his twin passions. And Martha Colburn, a latter-day saint of indie filmmaking willing to live like a squatter while pursuing her muse. And Scott Huffines (pictured right), founder of the original Atomic Books, who ditched a secure, well-paying gig with the State because he was bored out of his mind with the daily drudgery of it all and wanted to immerse himself in the the world of zines, alternative books and the fledgling World Wide Web. (These days Scott is inspired by performance artist Cornmo, who he calls the new Tyler Durden (of Fight Club fame). See Cornmo rant about "quiting your crappy job and following your dreams and sticking it to the man," then break into "We Are The Champions" by Queen: Cornmo Rant.)

Follow That Dream!

Anyway, last night I had a dream that seemed directly linked to the Apple Credo. In it, I had the chance to leave my secure, grounded world and take a chance to be a gypsy, a wanderer. The people in the dream were a bunch of hippies and bohemians I knew back in college - the last period in one's life when you're totally free, away from parental control and the discipline of headmasters, free to find out who you are and what you want to study and do with your life, free to goof off before you have to go to work (or put off work by going to Grad School!) - in the 70s, when Hippies still roamed the Earth in their pre-Phish form.

I remember my friend Jazz was in it, and some of his hippie girlfriends (how fondly I remember going skinny dipping with them when we broke into my high school swimming pool!). They were hanging out with my in my house, where I was chained to my possessions. Everyone loved all my books, and magazines, and kitsch items. We watched movies, listened to music, etc.

Freedom's Just Another Name for Nothing Left to Lose (Or Leave Behind!)
But every time they were ready to hit the road and live like gypsies with no possessions, I balked. I couldn't figure what to take with me. There was always something I was afraid to leave behind. And clothes. How could I commit, like them, to only wearing one set of clothes and living in it, forever. I couldn't do it. I had to pick out several pants, shirts, vests, jackets - summer and winter wardrobes -I was carrying a Creature Comforts Chimera on my back and I couldn't shake it! Even the lure of sex, the two hippie girls, wasn't enough. A fastidious believer in personal grooming, I was afraid that I'd have to lug along my toiletry kit and blow-dryer for the Pachouli-scented hippie girls to find me attractive.

No wonder I never get drunk and avoid drugs. I'm a control freak who can't let go and take a risk. This was the last temptation of Tom Warner to free myself from conformity and the Rat Race and follow the Pied Piper of Footloose and Fancy Free Abandon. And I couldn't do it.

And I didn't have sex with the two hippies chicks either. This constitutes a bad dream. All tease, no appease.

...the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

Nostalgia For An Age Yet To Come

J.K. Huysman once wrote that when the period in which one is "condemned to live" is dull and stupid (kinda like, um, now! - an age in which Reality TV rules the airwaves, Bush gets elected not once but twice, and oil addicts-in-denial are allowed to drive Hummers while lamenting our dependence on the Middle East and the high price of gasoline), "the artist is haunted, perhaps unknown to him, by a nostalgic yearning for another age."

I'm no artist, and I'm no schoolboy, but I know what I like...and lately I can relate. In the past several months I have repeatedly kept turning inward and backyard in my readings, viewing, and listening. Why, just this week I picked up two copies of the great British music mag MOJO, the ones devoted to The Who and The Kinks, both including 15-track CDs of contempo artists covering their respective Townshend and Davies-penned songs (the latter highlighted by Steve Wynn's psychedelic cover of Kinks rarity "This Strange Effect" and The Fountains of Wayne's power-poppy "Better Things.")

The week before, I picked up the Rolling Stones singles compilation box set, The London Years, because - though I am certainly on record as detesting Mick Swagger and the latter-day musical self-indulgence of these runner-ups (to the Beatles, of course, among other great British Invasion groups like the Who and Kinks, the latter of whom also enjoyed some longevity comparable to the Stones - 1961-1996 isn't too shabby a reign for the Kinks, eh?) - I grew up on those Stones R&B singles in the 60s and really dig some of those neglected nuggets on their B-sides like "Sad Day," "Off the Hook," and especially "The Singer Not the Song," which observes, nostalgically:

The same old places and the same old songs
We've been going there for far too long

Or not long enough...Yes, there's a certain security in the familiar, like Linus's blanket, for we aging Baby Boomers. My God, they've even brought Tab back (some say it never went away!), in the form of Tab Energy (3 times the caffeine plus a skinnier can designed to look more like a cannister of Red Bull, I guess).

And Hollywood movies? It's long been established that the Boomers have tried to remake every TV show of their youth, all to absolutely horrible affect, from Bewitched to Leave It To Beaver to Richie Rich to Little Rascals to Fat Albert, and so on and so on.

TV commercials, especially those for cars, seem to thrive on recovered musical memories of Boomer's formative years in the 60s and 70s. "Picture Book" by the Kinks drives that HP camera ad, anoter HP ad digs up late 70s New Wavers The Speedies performing "Let Me Take Your Foto," and so on. And how many damn ads use Iggy's "Lust For Life"?

This week, when I went to sell some CDs at CD Depot in Towson, I almost instantly invested in buying back my youth in the form of purchasingthe back catalogues of bands no longer in existence. I bought an Undertones singles compilation that I only had on vinyl, an Undertones DVD documentary produced by the late, great by John Peel, some Blondie records, a New York Punk compilation with tunes by lesser known scene makers like Mink Deville and The Mumps, and the great Wayne/Jayne County circa The Backstreet Boys.

The last couple of books I've read have been looks back too, a couple of Dylan bios, a Kinks book, two Rolling Stones bios, a Beatles book, and so on. I'm even thinking of going to see a Beatles tribute band play at Bobby B's in Essex!

When will it end? Will my last words be like Charles Kane's, as he mouths "Rosebud..."? Only for me it'll no doubt be Lenny Kaye's "Nuggets..." or "Rubber Soul."

Related Links:
Nostalgia Central

True Love = ))<>((

With that dreaded commercial holiday Valentine's Day fast approaching, I tried to think of some sentiments about the day that didn't make me gag. And all I could come up with, when musing about L-U-V, was a line from Miranda July's film You and Me and Everyone We Know. In this film about the search for meaningful relationships in a disconnected world, 7-year-old Robby (played by 7-year-old Brandon Ratcliff) is exploring Internet chatrooms and, in over his head with a flirtatious adult chatter, is asked what would like to do with her. Not knowing about sex, he thinks up something truly outlandish.

"You poop into my butt hole and I poop into your butt hole ... back and forth ... forever." - Robby

Robby signs off with the symbol of his sentiment: ))<>((

What a concept! Back and forth forever. What a way of saying "I love you"! Ah, from the mouth of babes come words of wisdom! Amazingly, the film's official Web site sells t-shirts with this infamous sentiment and symbol. My girlfriend likes to repeat this line as a testament to our undying commitment to each other (*blush*). I think that qualifies Miranda July's film as a romantic comedy.

All I know is, I find ))<>(( to be a far more passionate paen to the otherwise entirely arbitrary, shallow, unimaginative, and commerce-driven concept of Romance we celebrate with the holiday called "Valentine's Day".

Though I will, hypocritically, still go out and buy my significant other the requisite maudlin card, sweet saturated fats, and, possibly, even risque lingerie. Because, at heart, I am basically a coward.

))<>(( Related Links:
Buy the Shirt!
Back and Forth Forever (Great blog review of You and Me and Everyone We Know)

Say No To VD!: Anti-Valentine's Day Links
Be My Anti-Valentine
Alternative Sweet Hearts
Anti-Valentine's Day Central
12 Steps for Anti-Daters
Love Sucks Month