Thank you, Lawrence.
Thank you, Lawrence. Thank you for being blue in a sea of red. Thank you for being gay-friendly. Thank you for being different than everything I grew up with in Kansas and wanted to escape. But thank you for still being part of Kansas, anyway, and teaching me to learn to live with those contradictions. Thanks for the nights with a novel and a notebook on the Java Dive porch way back when, drinking coffee and eavesdropping on the oddest conversations. Thanks for the night The Hardaways played "Abbey Road" at The Replay, one of my most treasured music memories. Thanks for Arthur Dodge and Danny Pound and the Midday Ramblers and The Kinetiks and The Anniversary and Josh Powers and Approach and Drakkar Sauna. Thanks for the Bottleneck, the Jackpot, the Replay and the Jazzhaus. Thanks for Guitar Dave and the saxophone guy at the corner of Seventh and Massachusetts. Thanks for all of the music that I'm not mentioning. Thanks for all the Halloween nights on Mass Street, my favorite coming when I saw a man with a mustache, John Deere hat and astronaut suit eye a couple of young women and ask, "Y'all been to space?" Thanks for Dave Loewenstein and Lora Jost and Paul Flinders and Aaron Marable and Jill Ensley and Deb Stavin and Leslie VonHolten and Art Togeau and Fields Gallery and the Spencer Museum of Art and The Percolator and the downtown sculpture exhibition and all the coffee shops, restaurants that made art -- good art! -- part of the living environment. Thanks for the Hall Center for the Humanities and the Dole Institute of Politics at KU, for getting to hear and meet Robert Caro, Sherman Alexie, Samantha Power, Colby Buzzell, James Carville, Chief Justice John Roberts (even if he gave a lousy speech), Salman Rushdie, Bill Clinton and more. Thanks for The Raven and The Dusty Bookshelf. Thanks for my first bite of Indian food. And my first bite of Thai food. Thanks for Burrito King, Henry T's, Johnny's, Rudy's and Zen Zero. Thanks for Free State beer and Wheatfields bread. Thanks for the bar menu at Pachamama's. Thanks for the year hanging out with the Japanese girls from KU, who introduced me to sushi. Thanks for Saturday morning breakfasts at Paradise Cafe, may she rest in peace. Thanks for midnight showings of "Pulp Fiction" at Liberty Hall. Thanks for Liberty Hall being the place where I saw "Trainspotting" and "Welcome to the Dollhouse" and "Being John Malkovich" and "Ghost Dog" and "Amelie" and "American Movie" and "Spellbound" and "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" and so much more. Thanks for being a place I could drink a beer while watching those movies. Thanks for the Liberty Hall summer and winter parties. Thanks for being a place where I could walk out of my office and find Ani DiFranco sitting on the front steps, where I could nearly knock over Jacob Dylan on the sidewalk, where an accidental glance by me could send Joe Jackson fleeing La Parilla into the frozen night. Oh heck: Thanks for the anarchists, who -- when they weren't doing silly things like throwing cakes -- seemed to try to make the community better. And thanks for the lifetime of jokes I'll hear whenever I mentioned I once covered the National Anarchist Convention. Thanks for East Lawrence. And Oread. And Old West Lawrence. Thanks for K.T. Walsh. Thanks for the river trail. Thanks for the farmers market. Thanks for Larryville.com, back when it was fun. Thanks for three Final Fours and the relatively nonviolent downtown celebrations that went with each of them. Thanks for being the place I met my wife. Thanks for La Prima Tazza, my home away from home and the community that replaced church for me once church no longer had a place in my life. Thanks for all the friends I made there, too numerous to mention. Thanks for opening the world -- yes, the world beyond Lawrence -- to me. Thanks for eight great years. Thanks for everything I've failed to mention. A community is more than the sum of its parts, but it doesn't hurt that Lawrence's parts are fabulous. Thanks, Lawrence. I may be leaving, but you'll always be home. Note: Though this Cup O' Joel is retired, [this one keeps on keepin' on][1]-ed. [1]: http://joelmathis.blogspot.com
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Adieu, adieu, to you and you and you
Almost five years ago now, I started this blog with one of the [all-time worst entries in the history of Cup O' Joel,][1] a misguided attempt to bring a sassy look at the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission.My editor at the time, Mike Shields, took one look at it and rolled his eyes."Drivel," he sneered. Looking back on it, he was right. I almost gave it up right then and there, but something motivated me to keep trying.In any case, it soon became clear to me that nobody was coming to the then-revamped version of Lawrence.com for snarky entries about obscure personages at City Hall. They were there for fun. So without asking permission of the people who had asked me to blog, I changed the mission. I would write about how much I loved to live in Lawrence.That's kind of been the core of it the whole time. Yes, there have been tangents into pop culture effluvia and media criticism - but the heart of Cup O' Joel has been about how much Lawrence means to me. I've grown from a kind of late adolescence (in my late twenties) to something resembling real adulthood here, and figured out along the way how to be the kind of man I want to be.My favorite part of blogging has been you. I am not an oracle; I never have believed that blogging was a way for me to deliver my wisdom, unquestioned, to the world. It's been a conversation the whole time, and that conversation has made this blog a sustainable endeavor; I've occasionally been accused of being a "comments whore" and, well, it's true. Leslie, Dotdot, OtherJoel, Misty, pissykitty, Jill and the rest of you regular commenters have made this gig one of my favorite things I've ever done. And the interaction with other Kansas bloggers - emaw, Josh Rosenau, John B., J_D and Paul Decelles, particularly - has made for a wonderful give-and-take beyond the cyber-walls of Lawrence.com.Oh yeah: My now-wife read this blog while she was deciding whether or not to move to Lawrence, and she tells me it helped her decide to move here. We met by coincidence after she had been at KU a couple of years, but Cup O' Joel is at least partly responsible for the best thing that ever happened to me.I've been privileged by my interactions with all of you. For that, I thank Rob Curley - now a VP at the Washington Post, who first asked me to blog - and Phil Cauthon, L.com's honcho this entire time.Now, though, it's time to move on.I am leaving The World Company, which owns Lawrence.com - and, with it, Cup O' Joel. That means that Rob Gillaspie remains the lone surviving blogger from the original stable; dammit, I'd wanted to outlast him. I should've known better.Don't worry: I am going on to good things. I'll be moderating and blogging for a new national political Web site that launches in early 2008. I'll put out more information when I know the company is ready for it to be out there.The fun thing is we'll get to stay in Lawrence. I'll be telecommuting, so the amount of hours I rack up at La Prima Tazza and The Bourgeois Pig will probably skyrocket.So I'll see you around. Thanks again. [1]: http://www.lawrence.com/blogs/mathis/2003/feb/26/can_we/
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Hillary Clinton, Gennifer Flowers and AP’s cheap shot
[(AP) Gennifer Flowers Mulls Vote for Clinton:][1](LAS VEGAS) - The one-time other woman in Hillary Rodham Clinton's life says she's considering casting her vote for the former first lady. "I can't help but want to support my own gender, and she's as experienced as any of the others - except maybe Joe Biden," Gennifer Flowers said in a recent telephone interview from her home in Las Vegas.In the 1992 presidential race, the former television reporter claimed to have had a 12-year affair with then-candidate and Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton. Clinton initially denied the allegation, but later, during his deposition in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case, acknowledged a single sexual encounter with Flowers.The article goes on for 468 words, but you get the idea. And I've got to say: This particular story deserves every bit of ridicule that gets heaped upon it. AP deserves scorn for writing it; Time magazine (where I found it online) deserves scorn for running it.I hold no brief for the Clintons. But this sheds no light on the presidential race at all. It is beneath tawdry. [1]: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1692100,00.html?xid=rss-politics
Alone
I love this song. I "heart" -- heh -- this video.My favorite part: The howl of desire. Amazing.
The Natural History Museum
BullSmitty, a Cup O' Joel reader - and who isn't? - sends along the following:"Joel, regarding your call for all things favorite in Lawrence I have one for you. The link after this message is to the KUNatHistoryMuseum YouTube homepage and the video titled "KU Natural History Museum: Highlights" is the one you are looking for. Yes I work there but I applied for the job there because it was/is my favorite place in Lawrence."It's time for me to make some new videos myself. If you've got a video about your favorite thing in Lawrence, let me know.
What I’ve been reading
Finished two books over the weekend:["Too Far From Home: A Story of Life and Death in Space" by Chris Jones:][1] This book expands Jones' award-winning Esquire article about the three men who were stranded on the International Space Station when Columbia wrecked in 2003. There's a lot of good reporting and lovely writing here, but it never seems to get around to being about what it's supposedly about; every time you think Jones is about to take you somewhere with that story, you end up on some tangent about the history of the Soviet space program. The book is strongest at the end, when it's a straightforward narrative about the station crew's hair-raising return to Earth aboard a Soyuz capsule. Other than that, it seems Jones would have served the material better by leaving it alone as a magazine piece.["Hey Nostradamus!" by Douglas Coupland:][2] This is the story of a Columbine-like school shooting and how the tragedy ripples through lives decades later, told through the eyes of four people: A shooting victim, her husband Jason, his years-later girlfriend and his religiously uptight father. I've not read Coupland before, but my impression of him here is that he's a slightly less shallow version of Nick Hornby - another fine writer who seems to tackle deep topics, but whose work frequently makes me feel like there's less there than meets the eye. In this case, Coupland handles "The Lovely Bones" aspects of the story well enough to avoid the cheese factor of that novel, but then throws the reader for a loop when telling the story of how Jason's nephews were conceived ... a twist that took me out of the story with a "What the f--- just happened?" scream. It didn't work. And the father's redemption at the end, while moving, is cheap because of the two-dimensional stereotype he was before. A good read for a Sunday afternoon, but with real problems that can't be ignored.And since it's holiday shopping season, I'll offer up the best books I've read in 2007:["The Blind Side" by Michael Lewis:][3] There are two stories here. The less interesting one is about how the left tackle position became one of the most important spots on the football field. (Yawn.) The more interesting - both thrilling and troubling at the same time - tells of a well-to-do white Memphis family that takes an impovershed, nearly mute black kid into their home, into a private school and ultimately into college. Why? Well, it probably didn't hurt that the kid - Michael Oher - had the right size and athletic skills to someday be an NFL tackle. (He's expected to turn pro, actually, this winter.) So while you're glad that Oher was lifted out of his situation, it's hard not to be troubled by the issues of race and class the Lewis very subtly raises in the telling of this story.["Fiasco" by Thomas Ricks:][4] Ricks, the Washington Post's military correspondent, dissects how the seeming 2003 victory in Iraq became a slog - pinning blame not just on politicians, but also on senior military leaders who failed to plan properly for, and react to, the insurgency that popped up after Saddam Hussein's fall. Very few heroes in this book: One, Gen. David Petraeus, is now the guy running the war.["The Braindead Megaphone" by George Saunders:][5]Saunders won one of those "genius" grants a few years back, and it's easy to see why: I don't think there's a finer short-story writer living in America these days - his earlier collection, "Pastoralia," is one of those life-changing books. If you've read it, though, you might be under the impression that Saunders' work is fueled by cynicism of the hardest kind. "The Braindead Megaphone" is a collection of essays and reported nonfiction pieces - some of them appeared in Harper's and GQ - that reveal Saunders at his most empathetic: Going straight to people with whom he disagrees, or suspects of hucksterism, and trying to really understand them. A real pleasure.Huh. Looks like a nonfiction year for me, doesn't it? [1]: http://www.amazon.com/Too-Far-Home-Story-Death/dp/0385514654 [2]: http://www.amazon.com/Hey-Nostradamus-Novel-Douglas-Coupland/dp/1582344159/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196688460&sr=1-1 [3]: http://www.amazon.com/Blind-Side-Evolution-Game/dp/0393330478/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196689672&sr=1-1 [4]: http://www.amazon.com/Fiasco-American-Military-Adventure-Iraq/dp/0143038915/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196689385&sr=1-1 [5]: http://www.powells.com/biblio/61-9781594482564-0
Apologize, ‘Apologize’
[From NYT: 'Radio's Newest Strategy: Play a Hit, Again and Again':][1]For the millions of Americans who listened to Top 40 radio last week, it was almost impossible to miss "Apologize," the string-tinged elegy performed by the modern rock band OneRepublic and remixed by the eclectic producer Timbaland.WIOQ-FM, a pop station in Philadelphia, played the song 123 times last week, letting as little as 50 minutes tick by between repeat spins. And this month, "Apologize" broke the record for the most plays of a song on the nation's Top 40 stations in a single week since computerized tracking began in 1990. The song played more than 10,240 times in a week, reaching an estimated audience of more than 70 million listeners, according to Nielsen Broadcast Data Systems, an airplay monitoring service, and the chart-keepers at Radio & Records, a music trade magazine.What's to say here, except I'm really, really glad I don't listen to Top 40 radio. Even allowing for Timbaland's gifts -- hey he got me to listen to Justin Timberlake, but this song is fairly pedestrian -- those numbers above are insane.I guess I'm not really the target demographic for Top 40 anymore, but when I turn on a radio, I guess I'm hoping to be surprised occasionally. Not all the time; songs gain charm from wearing a groove in your brain on repetition. But if you're playing the same song every 50 minutes, where's the room for surprise? [1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/01/arts/music/01one.html?ex=1354251600&en=6254a17fef47853c&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
Obama, Islam and the Washington Post
Today's media controversy is brought to you by the Washington Post, which today published this: ["Foes Use Obama's Muslim Ties to Fuel Rumors About Him."][1]Key paragraph:Despite his denials, rumors and e-mails circulating on the Internet continue to allege that Obama (D-Ill.) is a Muslim, a "Muslim plant" in a conspiracy against America, and that, if elected president, he would take the oath of office using a Koran, rather than a Bible, as did Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the only Muslim in Congress, when he was sworn in earlier this year._And there's this:"If I were a Muslim, I would let you know, " he said in Dubuque, Iowa, recently, according to CNN.com. "But I'm a member of Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street on the South Side of Chicago. We've got the best choir in town, and if you want to come and worship with us, you are more than welcome."_Seems pretty straightforward to me: There's stories swirling around the candidate, and the Post decides to set the record straight, along with an examination of how those stories might affect the candidate's campaign.And that's made the candidate's supporters angry.Here's [Talking Points Memo's][2] headline: "Washington Post Recycles False Obama Muslim Rumors On Front Page."Huh?The TPM posting unpacks its criticism a bit, but the crux of the matter is this: It (and, from what I can tell, a number of other critics) doesn't think the story should've been done at all, since it highlights the very rumors that it's trying to swat down.So how's a news organization to win?The Muslim rumors have been dogging the Obama campaign for months now. The campaign has been responding to them. As you can tell, Obama has even addressed the matter in interviews.So how do you report that widespread rumors are false - serving the cause of truth - without recycling those very rumors?Somebody help me. [1]: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/28/AR2007112802757.html [2]: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/horsesmouth/2007/11/washington_post_9.php
Come on feel the moment of respectful silence
[Kevin DuBrow, lead singer of Quiet Riot, is dead:][1]The riot is quieted...[Slate on Quiet Riot's ... legacy:][2] "Quiet Riot distilled the pop-metal formula, toning down the darkness and nihilism of progenitors like Black Sabbath while preserving the decibel levels, adding poodle hair, spandex, gratuitous guitar histrionics, lots of salaciousness, and, above all, melody. Other, better bands-Mtley Crüe, Def Leppard, Bon Jovi-would ride the tide to superstardom, but Quiet Riot got there first." [1]: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/music/la-et-quiet28nov28,0,3256507.story?coll=la-home-entertainment [2]: http://www.slate.com/id/2178720/nav/tap3/
Howard Kurtz is my friend
An update on my [Facebook experience:][1]Today, I made Howard Kurtz my friend. I've never met him in my life, nor am I likely to. What's more, the extent of our lifetime communication is likely to be this: I made a friend request. Five minutes later, he accepted.He became one of 43 friends to me. I became one of 1,010 friends to him. I suspect I will get lost in the shuffle.So why did I make him my friend? Well, he's the media reporter for the Washington Post. He has a show dissecting media trends on CNN. I pay attention to his work ... so I wanted to be his friend. Pathetic, really.And I'm kind of worried, because - as my miniscule 43 friends demonstrates -- I've not been using Facebook to rack up the number of random strangers I can make contact with. I've "ignored" friend requests from people I've never met, or who I've met but barely know. Some people I know and don't like that much, but I've accepted their friend requests because to do otherwise would seem rude somehow.Making Howard Kurtz my friend, though, possibly changes everything. I've lowered the barrier to "friend"ship, to people ... who aren't in any conceivable way my friends.Do I have to let everybody in now? And if so, is Facebook still useful to me?A little help? [1]: http://www.lawrence.com/blogs/mathis/2007/oct/16/facebook/
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