An Unexpected Guest Blogger

For the 23 years I've been operating this blog, I've tried to stay wary of the many ways in which a blogger can be a jackass. I vowed to never propose to anyone on the blog, to never start more than 10 conversations in a day with "As I recently said on my blog," and to never break a social plan because I "had blogging to do."

Sometimes, though, my friends can't avoid the blog. One such pal recently sent me and another friend a great e-mail detailing a romantic trauma and his reaction to it. It was the smartest, funniest thing that had landed in my in box in some time, so I asked him if I could share it, because it just didn't seem fair that only (friend redacted) and I would read it. He said I could, so long as the names were removed. I've removed the names, as well as the name of a city, just to be doubly safe. Now, for your entertainment (and edification):

It's 25 degrees here in (southern American city redacted). Midnight. The wind is gusting exuberantly outside. I can actually see it flicking little pieces of peeled paint off my hundred-year-old house’s 40-year-old paint job. It was yellow. The one before that, evidently, was rust red. I wonder how old that paint is. Regardless, it gives the house a nice leady scent.

I write because I’ve studied about as much on pediatric vomiting and diarrhea as I can tonight, though that turns out to be surprisingly little. A little down lately, (woman's name redacted) and I broke it off last week. Everyone seemed to think that it was unthinkable to stay together at all after (personal event redacted). Not only do I not understand that, but I find it vaguely irritating. Relationships are a bit like money, everyone seems to think that everyone else is crazy in the way they handle it. I haven’t talked to her since.

I will say that it’s difficult living in a house entirely decorated by your ex. I’d take it all down, but she did such a snazzy job. I mean, let’s face it, I never would have thought to buy a giant wicker pot, fill it with enormous dried grass fronds, and stick it in the corner of my bedroom. The only plant matter I bring in is either on my shoes or in a grocery bag. There are about 20 decorative non-functional pillows in my bedroom, and about 40 candles throughout the whole house. It smells like Pier One in here. Maybe it’s time to buy a dog. I was thinking I’ll name him Colonel Chewbone, and refer to him as "The Colonel." Excellent.

Meanwhile my book about the hardboiled German navy U-boat doctor spy is still in the planning stages -- as is my workout routine.

Doctoring is fine, but sometimes I fantasize about that other life I almost led -- the one where I’m a Hamburg-based museum architect and gentleman thief who robs the world’s great museums and then buries the pieces in arctic ice to freak out future explorers. Spread collars, French cuffs, hot and cold running women, a place in the Italian Riviera, a cold but beautiful Interpol agent in constant pursuit. Would have been nice, but doctoring is good, too.

"Anticipated Impressions": Part Two of an International Travel Diary From a Guest Blogger

(The finale of Jim Rutman's reflections about a fairly recent trip to Kiev. Read Part One not too far below.)

Of course, visiting any part of the former Soviet Union, for any casual newspaper reader, causes the involuntary dredging up of the ossified journalistic tropes and observational tics that have been so ruthlessly assigned to the bewildered populace and city-and-landscape of the major cities. Even the most practiced appraisers of place tend to run up against the irresistible temptations of photographic and sociological clichés, as if their visa validations (no longer required in Ukraine for Americans, by the way) depended on it. And so even the sullen inside-outsider runs face-first into anticipated impressions: of the challenging, workaday meanness of the average worker or pedestrian; the parade-accommodatingly wide avenues and the atmospherically overstuffed underground passages that connect them; the misleading plaster pastels of older structures attempting to defray the cost of the heavy tolls collected by the institutional giganticism of Stalin’s planners; the rich, oozing, health-code-defying local foodstuffs and omnipresent vendors of street-legal alcohol; the sartorial injustices visited upon the good, sweatily sexy citizens of this vast region: blotchy denim and form-hugging rayon for the boys, revelatory, stiletto-accompanied non-outfits for the fearsomely frank girls; the preponderance of glossy European sedans cruising past unbearably despondent babushkas trying to compensate for invisible pensions at every corrupt public corner in unconscionable demonstrations of the divide between wealth and destitution, the swift and the still. They're all there, evocations of the charter characteristics of the big-boned Russian Soul, waiting to be noticed, debated and puzzled over.

And I was no better than dispensers of such judgmental shorthand, and likely worse, since I compulsively unloaded my biting observational barbs on my far more generous family members.

Kiev is a city devoted to panorama. City parks and their bench culture are pleasingly rampant. And as you negotiate the inclines and declines of this river-bisected metropolis (Kiev is Europe’s third largest city in terms of area, I read) you invariably run into vista. The overlooks on the older, more venerable West bank of the city police that entire fringe and give a determined walker countless markers to aim for and notice through the lush greenery that so prettily suffuses the more heavily trafficked and central precincts.

But in a place that briefly but prominently attracted the world’s political attention, it’s difficult not to feel keenly disappointed and confused. The courageous, frost-bitten, text-messaging youth who willed the Orange Revolution into existence are well hidden in summertime Kiev less than two years after their stint as marshals of the Democracy’s Progress parade. And if you happen to be Semitic in origin, and are unable to find the determined, rosy faces who led that progressive charge, you start to glean a worrisome nationalistic uniformity in the Ukrainian (and historically Semite-loathing) faces of the unhappy passerby. And you feel justifiably bad for failing to understand the scope of the problems that have led to such deflating and numerous backward steps as political stalemate cascades into conflict, strategically expedient re-alignment and fatal compromise. Unavoidable growing pains or more distressing evidence of Soul in conflict with itself? A battery of governmental skirmishes and reversals took place while we toured the city. But I couldn’t read the Ukrainian papers, and so repeatedly returned to my unimpeachable ignorance, an easy place to rest and take in the view.

"A Credentialed Tourist": Part One of an International Travel Diary From a Guest Blogger

Keeping a blog is partly a way to let people know what you're up to, so it helps if you're up to interesting things, which mostly I'm not. Mostly I'm watching DVDs, listening to music, and staving off the problems that attend constant low-level anxiety. I do know people who are up to interesting things, though, and that's why, a while back, I promised to have guests post something from time to time. It even happened once. Every four months isn't quite what I had in mind, but here we are again. This is the first of a two-part post (the other will follow before too long) by Jim Rutman, a friend of mine, an Eastern European raconteur and, despite his deep humility about it, a hell of a basketball player. This past summer, for the first time since leaving as a six-year-old, Jim traveled to his birthplace, Kiev, with his family:

The (re)discovering of family roots and the places that sit atop them has become a wholesomely middle class enterprise –- a moveable thanksgiving writ a little larger than the confines of the familiar hearth will allow; a commendable adventure on behalf of (or in defense of) the beleaguered family unit.

My own family unit (parents, sister, me) undertook such a trip to Kiev this past summer, bringing along couriered gifts and packed tightly ourselves with the anxiety and circumscribed wonder that naturally accompanies an unexpected return to a far off, carefully preserved Home.

The loving upkeep of nostalgic nuances is a rite linked closely to the Russian soul (with italics, caps or quotes generally accompanying that last, signal word).

Equal parts nationalistic inheritance, family obligation/burden and social tool, the appreciation and careful wielding of sentiment is a cultural must. When my parents bundled our modest hopes and possessions in the now familiar manner of many other Russian-Jewish refuseniks in the fall of ’79, they did so with the understanding that the Kiev they knew exclusively for the first forty years of their lives was to be legally renounced, reflected upon but never revisited. Even after restrictions on returning were lifted after the dissolution of the USSR in ’91, we had never seriously contemplated a visit. At first, we wanted to requite the Soviet system’s disdain for refugees like us with our own, secure in the belief that the decision to leave was profoundly right. But after independence, and the passage of sufficient time, the poetic separation of a distant, cordoned off existence felt dramatically appropriate and soothing against our always tentative new identities.

And yet there we were, standing shoulder to sentimentally illuminated shoulder with a pessimistic but hopeful throng of beery Ukrainian futbal fans shoved into Independence Square, nervously eyeing the under-sized JumboTron broadcasting a heavily pixelated image of the improbable World Cup quarterfinal meeting between Italy and Ukraine (making its first tournament appearance). As we emerged from the cozy basement of a local "traditional" fast-food chain and into the energized night, the opportunities to create new and vital sentiments were immediately and undeniably apparent. And so my father vigorously videotaped, and my sister photographed, and my mother patiently scanned the masses and we knew, beyond all question, that we were on vacation back where we’d started.

From the unprepossessing airport to the unremarkable but somewhat despairing route into Kiev, the urge to record living family history was great. We were back in a place we’d conclusively left nearly 27 years ago, in circumstances so different from the present that even a formidable passage of time failed to convincingly account for the changes. Being on high alert for Significance at all times is taxing. But my family was up for the challenge.

Of course there were qualitative differences in our dispositions and expectations as we were guided by a distant cousin to her perfectly western Volkswagen in the dusty, irregular and miniscule parking lot at Boryspil Intl. Airport. My parents were returning to a receded but profoundly familiar past, in a drastically altered present, ready to compare and contrast with the resiliently fond and forgiving attitude that had been nurtured in the suburbs of Northeast Ohio. Their initial adult identities had been forged in this vast, under-regarded capital, and they seemed prepared to reserve judgment during a re-encounter with streets and friends who had been relegated to photo albums.

My sister had nine years to make and store impressions of our birthplace, so she arrived on a sunny June day with a far more refined perspective than a mere six years permitted me. I was a credentialed tourist, hoping to sniff out a few landmark particulars from what I accurately expected would be a sea of newness.

Tom Reynolds Interview: Part Three

The concluding part, in which the author of I Hate Myself and Want to Die patiently answers a few more long-winded questions.

I didn’t want every question to be about depressing songs, because you certainly seem like a more general music fan, and I often geek out about music on the blog. So while I have you here, if you’d be so kind as to allow me to broaden the discussion, by first faking back in the direction of the book. Your essay about “Total Eclipse of the Heart” is hysterical, and all true, but I have to admit that I like that song. Probably because I heard it countless times when I was 12, and I have some strong theories about imprinting. Anyway, I’m smart (or self-conscious) enough to consider it a “guilty pleasure.” What are some songs -- depressing or not -- that you love, but might not cop to loving if a meddling blogger didn’t force you to do it?

Good lord, "Total Eclipse"? Can’t you hear the beating wings of death around Bonnie Tyler with every replay of that song? The banshee wailing outside the front door of the morgue, crypt, mausoleum, Disney ride, wherever the hell she recorded that thing?

To be honest, there were a slew of readers who took me to task for that song. One UK radio host even grilled me live on the air for choosing it. What’s really scary is that I hadn’t heard that song in two decades, but since my book came out I’ve heard it SEVEN TIMES! Coincidence? I don’t think so.

Guilty pleasures, eh? I’ll list guilty pleasure acts first. I’ll admit it, I like the Goo Goo Dolls. They write great hooks and can rock out when they want to (though I’m very over the theme song they did for that awful Nic Cage-Meg Ryan movie, City of Angels). I dig AC/DC, too, who’ve released the exact same album 14 times. Their rhythm section is fantastic, their vocalist shreds, and Angus Young is the greatest hard rock guitarist of all time. He’s never played a bad solo.

For guilty pleasure songs, I like "Footstompin’ Music" by Grand Funk Railroad, another critically-hated band, "Sookie Sookie" by Steppenwolf, most Three Dog Night singles, "Venus" by Bananarama, "Levon" by Elton John, "How Will I Know" by Whitney Houston (‘course, she was young and hot when she recorded it), "More More More" by Andrea True Connection (fantastic piano part in one of the world’s dumbest songs), "SOS" by ABBA, "Keep Yourself Alive" by Queen, "Outta Space" by Billy Preston (greatest demonstration of the clavinet ever), "You Gotta Move" by Gino Vanelli...

I’ll drop dead if I continue.

What’s the first album you can remember buying? What’s your favorite album that was released before you were 22, and your favorite album released since?

My first I ever got was a requested Christmas gift: "Four Wheel Drive" by Bachman-Turner Overdrive. I loved the guitar solo on "Roll On Down the Highway," so I had to have it. First I ever bought was "Ain’t Life Grand" by Black Oak Arkansas, a poor man’s Lynyrd Skynyrd with three lead guitarists. It was fairly awful except for a cool cover version of the Beatles’ "Taxman."

Most of my favorite albums were released before I was 13. I was always into music that was eons before my time. Favorite pre-22 albums include Pink Floyd’s "Dark Side of the Moon" and "Wish You Were Here," The Who’s "Live At Leeds," Beatles’ "White Album," Traffic’s "John Barleycorn,” Raspberries "Greatest Hits," and Frank Zappa’s "One Size Fits All." (There are others, believe me.) (Ed. Note: I do.)

One I totally missed until last year (!) was Big Star’s "#1 Hit Record," their debut, released in 1973. Absolutely fantastic, literally every song on it is great and a few are brilliant, like "Ballad of El Goodo." The album was recorded over 30 years ago, yet it sounds like it was released in 2000. It’s that far ahead of its time (which is probably why it flopped).

Post-22, the list declines severely. I’d say the Police’s "Synchronicity, a few X albums, Dire Straits’ "Brothers in Arms," and Nirvana’s "Nevermind.” I mean we’re talking the 80s and 90s here, when everything went corporate and all that awful Ratt/Poison/ Warrant/Motley Crue/Slaughter shit was big. Thank God Nirvana killed it, but then the rest of Seattle took itself too seriously and just added to the sludge.

One post-22 obscure gem is the DBs’ "Sound of Music.” Great songwriting, clanging guitar work, and the drummer was the only white man in the past two decades who could play a hair behind the beat. Fantastic.

Sprinkled throughout the book are some seriously technical musical terms. (I’ve always felt a bit bone-headed for being such a big music fan and having not an ounce of technical knowledge.) Given that you’re also holding a guitar in your author photo, I assume you’re still a practicing musician yourself. I’m going to also assume, because it would keep this question from dying on the vine, that you have written songs of your own. True? And if so, have you ever written anything that would qualify as depressing or sad on some level? Generally, what type of music do you play, or have you played over the years?

The only songs I ever wrote were when I played piano and performed with sketch comedy troupes. I recall one I composed as the opening number when we were an all-male cast. The chorus went:

We’re boys, we’re men, we’re blades, we’re chaps,
we’re strapling lads and swains,
we’re virile manly macho hunks (point at each other) except for him.

Otherwise, I play piano jazz, which means I take a series of related chord progressions (secondary dominants, tritone substitutions, etc.) and grope around on them in a formless manner until the paint dries. Give me enough meth and I can fake an entire Keith Jarrett concert.

On guitar, it’s fingerstyle a la Leo Kottke, or weird open tunings with a lot of hammering. I also own a Strat and can do a credible solo version of Hendrix’s "Little Wing," because it doesn’t involve feedback, distortion, or setting anything on fire.

Your bio says you were a DJ in East Texas at one point. May I ask where and when? I lived in Dallas for 12 years, and I recently came across a funny quote from Hunter S. Thompson about that city: “Terrible place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.” How was your experience in that state? It’s a great state for music in many ways, I found, but in certain pockets of course...

I lived in Texas during the late 80s, right out of college. I did radio in Jasper, a small town most noted for being the site where a black man was dragged to death in 1999. I was fired exactly the way George Jetson and Fred Flintstone got canned by their bosses: "Reynolds! Yoouuuuuuu’rrrrreeee FIRED!!" It was great.

I then produced training films in Beaumont, a refinery city near the Gulf, creating such masterpieces as "Safety Rules and Hazardous Chemicals in the AC Polyethylene Unit." The New York Times called it "...a laconic jargon-heavy production about making plastic, or something..."

I finally moved to Houston right when it was going through its worst recession in history. I suffered there a year doing more freelance production, including for a film that got a congressman nominated for president on the Libertarian ticket (seriously). I was paid $700 for it. Cheap-ass Libertarians.

Texas, in short, was an.....experience.

I posted a while back about the best concerts I’ve ever seen, and a few readers chimed in with their own lists. Would you mind listing some of your favorites, with whatever embellishment you’d like (memorable moments, complete set lists, photos you took of groupies flashing the band)?

First concert was Rush. I saw them in a high school gymnasium for $4. On my way there, a drunk Polish guy in a bowling shirt changed lanes and totaled our ‘67 Corvair. A cop gave me and my friend a ride to the concert because he was doing security there, unaware my friend had a bag of pot on him the whole time.

Also saw Jethro Tull, Jean Luc Ponty, Neil Young (solo), Crosby, Stills and Nash, The Who (we snuck in), The Other Ones (Grateful Dead w/o Jerry), Buddy Guy, Little Feat, Alanis Morissette, and most recently Richard Thompson, who was incredible. Did 1,000 years of music, starting with Chaucerian ballads and ending with Britney Spears.

One great show is French guitarist Pierre Bensusan. I’ve seen him twice and both times he was incandescent.

Do you keep up with contemporary music and, if so, have you heard anything lately that you’d recommend?

Coincidentally, I’ve been asked to work on a documentary about reggaeton, the Spanish-language hip-hop/rap music out of Puerto Rico. They have about fifty hours of footage and I have to put it together into a cohesive finished product that’s ninety minutes. Most of the interviews are in Spanish, a language I know as well as I do calculus and topiary.

I find reggaeton much more interesting than standard Snoop/Eminem/50 Cent rap, because it’s rhythmically complex and has machine-gun delivery. The big star is Daddy Yankee because of his hit "Gasolina," his weakest tune. He has better songs than that.

Lastly, I’ve posted some of my favorite passages from the book this week, but I wanted to commend you on a particular moment, which is when you write this about “Seasons in the Sun”: “I can still remember when I was young and radio stations played this song every hour on the hour; it was the traffic report of pop singles.” Great line. So, there’s not really a question there. Thanks for taking the time, and I hope you’re getting plenty of aural serotonin these days. You deserve it after all you’ve been through.

Tom Reynolds Interview: Part Two

In which the author of I Hate Myself and Want to Die explains why The Smiths didn't make the cut, why Harry Chapin is sicker than Slayer, and why I'm (mostly) forgiven for my affection for Counting Crows. (The third and final part will be posted later tonight or tomorrow.)

You write: “Selecting the most depressing Cure song is like choosing your favorite locust in a locust swarm: You pretty much have your pick, but does it really make any difference?” You went with “Prayers for Rain” as your locust, but what were some of the other final candidates from The Cure?

To be honest, I included the grim goth groups like the Cure, Nine Inch Nails, etc., because I figured I was expected to. Those were hard because I find their music to be less depressing since the gloominess is intentional. With The Cure, I didn’t find them quite as gloomy as The Smiths, if only because Robert Smith isn’t as sexually tortured as Morrissey is. Song-wise, “The Drowning Man” and “All Cats Are Grey” were two candidates, but I’m very proud that I chose “Prayers for Rain,” because even die-hard Cure fans missed that one. A few were even pissed off about it.

The Smiths aren't included in the book, for reasons that I remember reading about, and that you may or may not go into here, as you see fit. When I told a friend they were a last-minute omission, he said, “Yes, the original subtitle was ‘The 127 Most Depressing Songs You’ve Ever Heard.’ ” I’m a pretty big Smiths fan, and I’m wondering what two or three songs of theirs you find most depressing, and why.

That The Smiths aren’t included in the book has been the bane of my publishing existence. I’m still getting slammed by critics, bloggers, and depressing music aficionados because of it. The truth is, I’d planned to include one of several of their songs but my original UK publisher, Sanctuary Books, was a division of Sanctuary Group, which was also Morrissey’s record company at the time. They sent my analysis of “Miserable Lie” to his management as a “courtesy,” since he was on their roster. Suffice to say, they weren’t happy and demanded it be removed. And that’s why no Smiths songs made the book.

As far as depressing Smiths songs go, they’re just like The Cure: you pretty much have your pick. Besides “Miserable Lie,” there was “I Know It’s Over,” “Girlfriend in a Coma,” “Suffer Little Children,” etc. Actually, most of their albums are doom-fests, though Johnny Marr was a great guitar player, very innovative.

You’re very caustic and funny about every band in the book, but there seem to be a few cases where you really twist the knife in the song, but make an effort to protect the artist’s overall catalog from your wrath. I’m thinking of your pieces on Springsteen (“The River”), Billy Joel (“Captain Jack”), Ben Folds (“Brick”), and even Whitney Houston to a degree (“I Will Always Love You”). Am I right about those in particular? And which five singers or groups mentioned in the book do you most unironically enjoy when you’re not eviscerating them for readers?

I didn’t want readers to get the impression I didn’t like these artists, even though I’ve never been the biggest Boss fan (sorry, Asbury Park). Pundits have impaled Billy Joel far more viciously than I ever could have and Whitney I just plain feel sorry for (she needs to dump that Bobby idiot muy pronto if she ever wants a career again).

As far as artists listed in the book, I’ve always been a huge Pink Floyd fan, including the nutty early stuff with Syd Barrett (RIP Madcap). It’s just The Wall is.....too much. That’s when Roger Waters started going too nutso.

Others include Joy Division, The Carpenters (seriously), Jimmy Webb, The Doors (“Peace Frog” kicks ass), Emerson, Lake, and Palmer. The Verve Pipe has done a few good songs, Bobby Darin is kitschy fun, and Billie Holiday’s a legend.

You chose “Round Here” by Counting Crows as one of the 52. I particularly like this observation about the song’s main character, Maria, since I’ve often found this lyric perplexing myself: “So, yeah, Maria’s a little odd. She’s not very bright, either, since Duritz sings how she left Nashville and came all the way to the West Coast to find a guy ‘who looks like Elvis’ (correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t Memphis right down the highway from Nashville?)” The question here is a brief one (feel free to expound, though). Trying to leave aside the fact that you don’t know me at all, on a scale of 1 to 10 -- 1 being no change and 10 being the equivalent of finding Nazi memorabilia in my attic -- how much of your respect do I lose by admitting that I’m a fairly unrepentant Counting Crows fan?

None whatsoever. I have their first album from whence “Round Here” comes and it’s a great debut. But that song got played to death and I got more dispirited each time I heard it, especially when Maria “is thinking of jumping....” And I believe we both have scary memories of seeing Counting Crows perform this song years ago on Saturday Night Live and Duritz looked like his meds had just worn off. He went through a very self-indulgent eccentric phase which became increasingly more annoying and every reviewer at their concerts made note of it. Their most recent stuff I find very uninspired and phoned-in, especially that Whatever in Love song they did for the Shrek movie. Awful.

You divide the book up into categories, the last of which is Perfect Storms, which you describe this way: “Perfect storms occur when songwriters, attempting to create an emotionally affecting song, swing for the catharsis fence but end up fouling into the grandstand, wiping out 1,000 nuns and orphans. There’s an inherent cluelessness to perfect storms, with the perpetrator completely unaware of the catastrophe that’s been unleashed. They’re the audio equivalent of a Donner Party guide loudly insisting he knows the way through the pass.” Given the cluelessness you describe, do you think it’s at all possible to sit down and purposefully -- even malevolently -- create a Perfect Storm? I often have this argument with friends, about whether or not we could consciously write a successful dumb-but-bestselling novel that adheres to certain genre requirements. I usually argue we couldn’t, or we’d do it and be stinking rich (otherwise, we’re choosing not to become stinking rich, which makes us even more incredibly stupid than we are for having the debate in the first place).

In my opinion, it’s impossible to intentionally write a Perfect Storm depressing song because, like “camp,” the main quality to one is Unawareness. If you set out to purposely write the most depressing song ever, you’ll just end up with a jokey one.

If I may be so bold, I refuse to see any play, musical, one-act, revue, whatever that bills itself as being “camp,” because I know it’s going to suck. If two East Village playwrights collaborate on a musical called “Bikini Zombie Massacre A Go Go,” and cheerfully declare it a “camp” production, I will Molotov it with flaming bottles of Rex-all brand vodka.

Like depressing songs, camp has to be unintentional and I will duel anybody who disagrees. It has to be so bad that it's good, and the reason it's bad is BECAUSE the author honestly feels he or she created something great. Plan 9 from Outer Space is a classic camp movie because Ed Wood thought it was a masterpiece. Rocky Horror Picture Show, while entertaining, is not camp. It’s just a silly musical.

This is why most goth, death metal, emo, et al., bores the shit out of me. Its listeners bring a whole lot of their own baggage to it, which is why it’s easy to write a so-called "dark" goth song. No, it takes a truly sick mind to write an appalling tune like "The Shortest Story," Harry Chapin’s earnest ode to a malnourished African baby, than some tedious swill by Slayer.

Tom Reynolds Interview: Part One

In which the author of I Hate Myself and Want to Die explains why he doesn't have time for Portishead fans, why Smashing Pumpkins should be dragged in front of the Hague, and why following The Who is always a risky proposition.

First things first. For a solid month or two after you finished writing the book, did you detox by listening to "Good Vibrations" on a continuous loop? Be honest.

By the time I handed in the final song chapter, I'd also finished up working on a reality dating show. My gloom had been exacerbated by the daily viewing of video footage featuring people much younger and more attractive than me getting free drinks while making out in bars. So I "detoxed" by listening to a lot of solo guitar music by musicians like Michael Hedges, who basically torture Martin guitars by beating the crap out of them while still creating incredible music.

How did you come to the book idea, and what method did you use to weed through and select the songs? Many of the choices are pretty obscure and you seem to dislike them intensely (and hilariously), so I’m assuming you either depended on suggestions from others or you have the world’s strangest/most self-hating record collection.

I literally received a phone call from a publishing company in England that asked if I was willing to spend a year listening to depressing songs and find the most suicide-inducing ones. In hindsight, I think it was a prank phone call that I unfortunately fell for.

The first thing was making sure a song was depressing rather than sad. Depressing songs don't make me cry, they just make me lie on my bed and count the dots on the ceiling. There's a certain apathy-and-ennui effect they should have on the listener. Sad songs put a lump in your throat; depressing songs make you feel like the lump itself.

As there are way more than 52 depressing songs in the world, I knew I needed help. People sent me lists upon lists of song titles, and having worked in radio, I also revisited a lot of hit tunes that flailed me for years while I tried to figure out why they were popular. Most of the songs in the book were hits at one time, which is important because one aspect of a depressing song for me is the chance you're going to keep hearing it. That's why I don't have time for alt-music snobs who bitch about why I didn't include some obscure track off Portishead's second album. I can pull up 20,000 songs just like it that are dark and pessimistic, yet nobody's ever heard them. Plus, those songs are intentionally depressing, which means they're only going to bore me to death.

The ones that suck my serotonin dry are usually trying to be profound and moving. I find Springsteen's working-class ballads much more depressing than Nick Cave.

Was there a uniform procedure for each song, in terms of how many times you would listen to it, how you would test its depressing factors, etc.?

Many I turned off after 30 seconds because I knew they weren't potential candidates. If it was a song I'd never heard before, then I had to listen for the "clueless" factor, wherein the singer doesn't seem to be aware of how depressing the song is.

There were a few I already knew I was going to include even before I started writing, like "Seasons in the Sun," "Honey," the teenage car crash songs, and Smashing Pumpkins’ cover of "Landslide," which is still a crime against mankind. Often-times, an artist succumbs to a try-and-top-this mentality and goes bananas overselling a depressing song they're remaking. Celine Dion took one of the most depressing songs ever, Eric Carmen's "All By Myself," and made it even more depressing with her incessant caterwauling and one of the most violent key changes in recorded music history. I call them Brain Concussion Modulations.

You write that you listened to twelve different versions of "Send in the Clowns" as part of your research. Was that the low point of the endeavor? If not, at what point did you most feel like you might not be able to go on (with the project, life, or both)?

Alas, "Send in the Clowns" has been covered by 150 different artists and I somehow listened to most of them, including Grace Jones’ disco version. Still, there were many low points, like listening to seven different versions of "Honey" just to gird myself for finally dealing with Bobby Goldsboro's original. I also recall searching almost two days for Vikki Carr's abysmal "It Must Be Him" because no music site seemed to have it (when you listen to it, you realize why). And I did become a sobbing wreck while watching the video for Johnny Cash’s cover of "Hurt."

But I think it was the amount of sheer research I did that made me question what I was doing with my life. When you spend an entire afternoon cross-checking facts about Phil Collins and Barry Manilow while right down the street is a neighbor who sold a screenplay for six figures, you wonder about your place in the cosmos.

Given that you seem to detest most of these choices (for good reason), I’m curious – what would you say is your favorite of the 52, the song you could listen to outside the confines of this task without purposefully swerving into a telephone pole? Based on your essays, my guess would be either "Last Kiss" by the Cavaliers or "The Freshmen" by the Verve Pipe. Am I close?

You’re dead-on. I really liked those two songs, whatever snarky comments I made about them. Also, the Carpenters’ "Goodbye to Love" has really grown on me, even the incompetent fuzz guitar solo that’s stuck in it. I now think Joy Division’s "Love Will Tear Us Apart" is near-brilliant and I wish I could rewrite my analysis of it. Loretta Lynn’s "Women’s Prison" is a cool gloomy song, and "Captain Jack" by Billy Joel has good music to it.

One that I’ve developed a perverse fondness for is Bloodrock's "D.O.A.," which freaked me out when I first heard it on the radio as a little kid. It’s still one of the worst songs ever written, but I can’t help liking it (or not hating it). Plus, I can't get over how REM used to cover it in their early concerts for pure irony’s sake.

You make a good distinction between depressing songs and sad songs, when you write: "In short, sad songs offer the listener empathetic comfort, reflection, and wisdom. Depressing songs just make you want to stick a Glock-9 in your mouth." And you follow that later with a specific example: "For anyone wishing to understand the difference between a depressing song and a sad song, there’s no better example than 'Hurt.' (Trent) Reznor’s version is depressing; (Johnny) Cash's remake is sad." Could there be a follow-up book about the best 50 sad songs, and what are some of your favorites? (This assumes you like a number of sad songs, if they stay on the right side of the divide you describe. Correct me if I’m wrong, though, and you’re just always listening to Bobby McFerrin or something.)

If Reznor had never written "Hurt," I doubt I would've included any Nine Inch Nails songs. Like "March of the Pigs" is supposed to depress me?

Since I'm at my best as a writer when I'm being an asshole, I doubt I'd ever write a Best Of book. But I'm a huge fan of sad songs and have spent many hours wallowing in them (when you live in Hollywood, you tend to do a lot of that). My favorite sad songs would include:

1. Night Comes In - Richard Thompson
2. Sugar Mountain - Neil Young
3. Wish You Were Here - Pink Floyd
4. Belong - REM (mostly instrumental but still haunting)
5. Take it to the Limit - Eagles (who I normally dislike but Randy Meisner sang it)
6. Name - Goo Goo Dolls (you heard me. They're a guilty pleasure of mine)
7. Luka - Suzanne Vega
8. Moonlight Mile - Rolling Stones

This is just a sampler. There are tons more.....

(Ed. Note: I love "Belong," as you might have guessed. "Take it to the Limit" is one of maybe two Eagles songs that I can stomach, and actually enjoy. And I really like that Goo Goo Dolls song. I knew I wanted Tom to visit for a reason.)

You tell a very funny story in the book about getting up in front of a friend’s church congregation when you were in college and playing guitar while the friend sang Harry Chapin’s "The Shortest Story" – a song that, based on your description, seems to be about hungry international infants being devoured by vultures on Christmas morning. The congregants were rightfully horrified. Which leads me to ask, have you ever attended a concert when a band particularly tested an audience’s patience for depression?

For depression, not really, especially since I never attended Lilith Fair (the mere thought of sitting in a sea of lit candles while Sarah McLachlan sings "In the Arms of the Angel" is enough to make me feed myself to wolverines). But testing an audience’s patience, absolutely.

I can still remember when a jazz fusion band called Sweetbottom featuring Phil Collins’ guitarist, Daryl Stuermer, came to my college in Wisconsin to perform. They had to follow The Who, or more precisely, a Who movie.

The organizers first showed "The Kids Are Alright," the famous Who documentary, then had Sweetbottom perform afterwards. After two hours of guitar smashing and "Won't Get Fooled Again," the last thing anybody wanted to hear was an anal-retentive fusion band playing music geek jazz-rock. The poor guys noodled the entire audience out of the auditorium.

Cross-Country Diary From a Guest

I’m always looking for ways to keep the blog fresh. (Not that it’s getting stale or anything; um, er...) So here, for the first time, is a post by someone else. This is from my friend Clare, who works for The Menil Collection, a terrific museum in Houston. Recently, the museum needed a courier to accompany some sculptures and drawings by Calder from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. For Clare, this meant flying to California, meeting up with the drivers, and traveling non-stop –- sleeping on the truck, and living under the condition that at least one person had to be inside the truck with the art at all times. In general, Clare writes incredibly funny, dry, smart e-mails, so I asked if I could share this particular account with the crowd. Enjoy.

We drove from San Francisco to Minneapolis and, including loading and unloading the truck, the trip was 51 hours. It was a little longer than it should have been because we broke down in the Sierras (on Donner Pass, actually) soon after starting out and lost quite a few hours fixing the truck. Then we headed toward Reno, where I got to spend quite a bit of time in a truck stop, which was one of the more depressing places I've ever been. It included, naturally, a casino. At least there were slot machines and poker machines and one guy dealing blackjack. And smoking indoors in public places is apparently still legal in Nevada. So there are all these massively overweight and gray-faced people, men and women, smoking and drinking 42 oz cokes and eating truck stop food and gambling. It was kind of gross.

I did get a magnet, though, that says "Reno." That was our first stop and I decided I'd get a magnet in every state, thinking that would be fun, but I was foiled –- the only other state that had magnets in the truck stop was Wyoming.

The truckers were a man and wife team, both quite bitter in their own way. When the husband (I can't even remember their names anymore, god...) had gone to get parts for the truck and the wife and I were on the side of the road, she turned to me and said, "I take it you’re not married." I confirmed that I never had been, and she said, "Don't." Awkward. They had two small dogs. Pomeranians. Yes, in the truck with them. At one point I was in the bunk and I woke up and sat up and one of the dogs crawled out from under my pillow.

The coolest sight was when I woke up outside Salt Lake at 5 in the morning and the sun was rising over the mountains and reflecting off of the lake. I fell asleep again before I saw anything of the city, though. I had some sort of motion-induced narcolepsy. Iowa and Minneapolis are both very pretty, really green and lots of old farm houses and such. Nebraska and the part of Wyoming we went through were pretty boring, but I've seen the mountains in Wyoming before and they're quite stunning. California, of course, is gorgeous.

Minneapolis was really nice, but by the end of the ride I felt pretty awful. I was so stiff from sitting still and/or sleeping that I could hardly walk and my stomach had gotten all messed up eating weird, junky truck-stop food. So, I won't be signing up for any more two-day trips. But I got to see the Walker, and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts -- which was our drop-off point -- has a really great collection as well. And Prince is from there, so I'm willing to believe that Minneapolis has some super funky hip side, but it was not evident -– mostly Borders and Target and Banana Republic where I was.

Chuck Norris Threatened to Roundhouse Kick Me if I Didn't Post About Him One More Time

The Chuck Norris posting seemed to be popular with the kids, so like a craven Hollywood executive, I had to figure out a way to extend the franchise. I tried to get Burger King to design a series of souvenir cups, but I don't know anyone at Burger King. So instead, for the second (and final, I'm sure) Norris post, I asked my very funny friends to come up with their own entries. Despite having jobs, wives, children, and nasty, nasty opium habits, they complied. Being an editor, I've taken the liberty of selecting my favorites. Thanks to Brad, Matt, Jason, Nick and Jon (and myself) for these:

Chuck Norris invented fire by staring into a forest until the trees huddled together, shivering from terror. On a related note, Chuck Norris himself is not flammable.

Chuck Norris once won the Tour de France on a Big Wheel. He completed the entire event in 45 minutes.

Einstein theorized that nothing can go faster than the speed of light, which is constant. However, scientists have recently learned that light can travel even faster ... when it's running from Chuck Norris.

Chuck Norris' favorite food is HoHos. .. Wait, not "HoHos." I meant "hobos."

Jesus Christ died for everyone’s sins except Chuck Norris. God granted Chuck clemency out of fear.

Chuck Norris never learned to read. He didn't have to; letters rearrange themselves to be understood by him.

You never see the dark side of the moon because it's too frightened of Chuck Norris to show its face.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and Chuck Norris--
Chuck Norris split himself in two
and took both.
And that has made all the difference.

The original opening line of "Anna Karenina": "All happy families are alike, in having never had occasion to meet Chuck Norris. Each unhappy family met Chuck Norris in its own way."