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"I've got your Senior Citizen discount right here..."

Joining Iggy Pop in the VIP lounge at the the "Old Guys who are cooler than you" club:

William Shatner, now in his seventies.

In this clip from The Tonight Show Shatner does a cover of Pulp's "Common People" with Ben Folds on keyboard and Joe Jackson (!) on backing vocals.



This version of the song is from Shatner's excellent album Has Been - produced by Folds with guest appearances by Henry Rollins (the hilarious "I Can't Get Behind That") and Aimee Mann (who does backup vocals on the honestly heartbreaking "That's Me Trying," which was written by Folds and High Fidelity author Nick Hornby).

The album is, no kidding, great. And not in a campy, "Wow, that video of Shatner doing 'Rocket Man' was GREAT" sort of way. It's just a great effing album.

See that cat...?

You've got to hope you're having this much fun when you're Iggy Pop's age.

This guy is 59. Fifty-effing-nine-years old. That's right - Iggy Pop is older than your father and he still rocks harder than you can ever hope you will.

Course he's in better shape now than most of us have ever been -- and after spending half his life doing smack and falling drunk down flights of stairs littered with used needles and dead hookers. You can't kill this guy.

Pop and the reformed Stooges have released a fine reunion record (The Weirdness) and are reportedly putting on a hell of a show -- some say better shows than they gave when they were stoned teenagers building a legend.

I can believe it.

Also: Pop served as inspiration for the best scene in the excellent Velvet Goldmine, in which the Iggy analog character (Curt Wild) amazes the Bowie analog character (Brian Slade) with a wild (and eventually naked) version of TV Eye.

If you missed Trainspotting and therefore didn't give Ewan McGregor his due, you've gotta see him transform into Iggy Pop...



If you haven't seen Velvet Goldmine, go rent it immediately. Even if it wasn't well written and beautifully shot with some great Glam and garage rock covers by modern bands (including members of Radiohead, Teenage Fanclub, Placebo, Shudder to Think, Sonic Youth, Mudhoney and the Stooges themselves) -- it's still got Christian Bale, Eddie Izzard, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and Ewan McGregor. You can watch a cast like that in anything.

Bowie reportedly did not like his depiction in the film and wouldn't license any of his songs for it. But he did like Placebo's badass version of T. Rex's "20th Century Boy" (featured in the film) so much he did a version of it with them at a British awards show:



This is so good it almost hurts.

Greensboro Public Library: Good comics, weird place

The Greensboro Public library scores some serious points for having a good, eclectic Graphic Novel section that's light (but not too light) on superheroes and long on adult graphic fiction.

But they lose at least half those points for putting them all on one bookshelf in the "Young Adult" section.

Particularly since I saw not one book in that shelf that I thought would appeal primarily to young adults.

Brian Michael Bendis' gritty, noir crime story Goldfish?

Will Eisner's masterful graphic retelling of Herman Melville's Moby Dick?

Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Chabon's revisionist, allegorical adventure The Escapist?

Frank Miller's twisted and incredibly violent The Dark Knight Returns?

Scott McCloud's academic medium study Reinventing Comics?

Chris Ware's often nihilistic Acme Novelty Library stories?

I was glad to find all of these - but the closest thing I found to anything that would appeal primarily to kids or "young adults" was The Essential Mighty Thor v.1-- and then I realized that, in all likelihood, kids today aren't particularly interested in black-and-white reprints of 1960s pseudo-psychedelic superhero stories based in Norse mythology.

Better that they have them in a weird place than not have them at all, though. And who knows? Maybe some young adults will pick up some of this stuff and get hooked. Better for them than Witchblade, certainly...

I'd better figure this out before my grouchy, shrewish wife comes home or my wacky neighbor drops in...

So I'm having a sort of sitcom problem.

My new neighbors keep their bedroom window open at night, with the blinds up, often with the lights on.

Tonight when I came home at around midnight the young woman next door was walking around the bedroom completely naked.

She didn't see me walking past the window and I ran inside before she saw me because, for some reason, I thought that if she did it would be my fault for walking by and not her fault for walking around naked in the middle of the night with the blinds up.

Then I realized that I can see this window from all but one of the rooms in my house.

So I have to avoid those windows, draw all the blinds and close the curtains in order to avoid being a peeping tom.

And now, because I know there's this (not unattractive) young woman walking around completely naked just over there I can't enjoy being in the rooms in my house where I can't see it. All I can do is worry about it. She probably has no idea she's in this situation. Her window faces nothing but my place, and I'm hardly ever here. Also, this apartment was empty for a long time before I took it.

I know what some of you are thinking: So...what's the problem, exactly?

Here's the thing:

Of course I'm enough of a pervert to be mildly excited about it. But I also feel guilty about being mildly excited about it.

I'd like to take a moment to thank Catholicism for this particular psychological dilemma.

So here I am, pacing around the house trying to pretend there's not a naked young woman prancing about next door with her window open. A few minutes ago I went outside to loudly take out the garbage and knock things over in the hopes that she would hear the noise, realize she was exposing herself and close the blinds. No such luck.

Is there any polite way to tell her, maybe in the morning when it will seem less creepy, that I can clearly see EVERYTHING if she doesn't close her blinds or curtains?

Or is that sort of thing going to seem creepy no matter when I tell her?

Yeah. This is a lose-lose situation.

They're just pulling names out of a hat over there, aren't they?

Commencement speakers at a number of area colleges have been announced.

Looks like UNCG's getting the short end of the stick this year.

Maya Angelous, David Brooks...and...you know...that guy.

CJR: Best journalists often crazy drunks. Also: the sky is blue and water is wet

N&R editor John Robinson points to a CJR article that suggests most of history's best journalists have been drunks, drug addicts and head-cases.

From the article:

Published in the winter 2007 volume of Journalism History, "Depression, Drink and Dissipation" finds that almost half of the best people to ever push a noun against a verb in newsprint were debilitated by depression, serious anxiety, or bipolar disorder; over a third were titanic drunks, pill-poppers, or opium-addicts; nearly a third were serial philanderers, and a sizable bunch were misogynists, man-eaters, or violent bullies.















(Above: Jimmy Breslin - reformed drunk, journalism legend, personal hero.)

Also:

Underwood is vague about the exact nature of that relationship. But the sheer breadth of his evidence supports what pop culture portrays and many of us know: journalists are a hard-living lot. Some of the country's best-known drinking quotes come from the likes of Ben Franklin ("Wine is constant proof that God loves us"), H.L. Mencken ("I've made it a rule to never drink by daylight and never refuse a drink after dark"), and Ambrose Bierce, who rebuffed the pious abstainer as "a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure." Many journalists publicize their sad, soused careers in memoirs and thinly veiled fictions. Ernest Hemingway, arguably the most afflicted war correspondent there ever was, wrote himself into his novel The Sun Also Rises as the shell-shocked lush, Jake Barnes. More recently, Pete Hamill's memoir, A Drinking Life, recalls that when an editor asked columnist Murray Kempton, "How much more?" the Pulitzer Prize winner "lifted his almost-completed bottle of Dewar's and said, 'Oh, about an inch.'"














(Above: H.L. Mencken - Journalist, social critic, slayer of livers.)


On why we're crazy:

Psychologists have shown that neurotics can make good journalists when they project their inner doubts and dissatisfactions onto the world. This is the energy behind investigative reporting and the source of journalism's vaunted distrust of power, the argument goes.






















(Above: Ernest Hemingway - reporter, columnist, literary lion and tragic, drunken headcase.)

"See my tailor, he's named Simon -- I know it's going to fit."

You know what's really, really sad?

I'm genuinely excited that a Brooks Brothers has opened at the Shops at Friendly Center.

So much so that, the other night, before the opening day, I stood outside of it watching them put up the trimming when I came out of Harris Teeter. I felt like New Yorkers watching them put up the tree in Rockefeller Center.

Only, you know, pathetic.

news flash

Hillary Duff to People Magazine: "I feel pressure to be thin."

People Magazine to Hillary Duff: "Oh, it's working then? No need to thank us."

Every woman everywhere to Hillary Duff: "Welcome to the effing club. We have hats now."

The Sound of Feedback: Age of Consent edition

Oh, man.

I just had a half-hour conversation with a guy who read the piece on the pastor and the 17-year-old boy.

And was livid because he doesn't think the pastor has done anything wrong.

"How can you write that this man is being arrested and charged when 16 is the legal age of consent in North Carolina?" he asks me in a voice somewhere between The Simpsons' Comic Shop Guy and Family Guy's creepy old molester guy.

"Um...I'm sorry..." I stammer, half asleep as it's not quite 9 a.m. "What is this in reference to...?"

"This pastor...how has he broken any laws?"

"Um...I believe he's been charged with..."

"I know what he's been charged with, but they can't find him guilty because the boy is 17-years-old."

"Um...well, sir, I don't have the statutes in front of me and I don't know them off the top of my head, but..."

"They're just going to charge him with this even though they know they're going to have to drop the charges, but you people will have dragged him through the media by then, so..."

And so, before my alarm clock had gone off, I found myself in the strange position of having to explain why I would help to write a news story about the Kernersville Police and SBI busting a pastor who was trying to work a kid who came to him in a spiritual crisis into a sexual bondage home movie. Because the guy had done nothing wrong.

"Well, sir...you could probably clear up your questions by calling the Forsyth County magistrate's office. They have the warrants and they issue..."

"No, the magistrate isn't going to know anything. They don't know anything about the law."

"Well...sir...they are technically an actual court. They issue warrants. They make determinations..."

"No, no. They just do what the police want and then you drag people through television and the newspaper, even if they haven't done anything wrong."

"Sir, as I said, I'm not a lawyer and I don't have the statute..." (searching for my glasses or contact lenses, nearly falling out of bed)

"Well I'm on Ageofconsent.com right now, and it says here..."

"You're on what...?"

"Ageofconsent.com. It's a website that gives you all the laws on the age of consent in different states and countries."

"Do you...have this bookmarked?

"What?"

"Nevermind. I'm sorry. I..."

"It says right here that 16 is the age of consent..."

"For men and women."

"Yes."

"This was two men. What does it say about that...?

"Um...it says....oh, it says it's illegal."

"Well, then it's right about that at least. But if I wanted a rock-solid answer on the age-of-consent thing I wouldn't go to the Internet. I would definitely talk to a police officer or the magistrate of the county in question."

"Well, I'm not going to consider that rock solid because they're biased."

"Toward...the law?"

"Toward busting people and letting you drag them through the mud..."

"Okay, sir. Listen...I'm getting another call..."

UPDATE:

For those who were wondering, and now that I have my eyes open and some caffeine in the blood, here's the short answer:

The primary charges against the pastor are sexual exploitation of a minor, felony dissemination of obscene material and promoting prostitution of a minor.

These charges stem from documents, e-mails and recorded phone conversations that lead Kernersville police and the SBI to conclude that he attempted to "induce a minor to engage in sexual activity, sexual bondage, anal sex, oral sex for the purpose of producing material containing a visual representation depicting this activity, the defendant knowing the content of the performance."

Or, for the layman, he was trying to make an S&M porn video with a 17-year-old boy.

Also, he's accused of "sending a picture of uncovered male genitals to the minor by use of cell phone picture texting."

Not so fast, Mr. Sweet Dreams...

This week's reporting was the kind that sort of slowly kills your faith in humanity.

Two young men - one the son of a famous coach, now at N.C. State - stand accused of shooting another young man in his dorm room at UNCG. Police say it was a drug robbery, and tied the accused to a home invasion earlier in the month. Searching one young man's home and his girlfriend's car they find drugs, stolen property, ski masks and guns (including a semi-automatic assault rifle).

Just as that seems to have sorted out and everyone waiting for court dates another story breaks -- this one of a Baptist pastor sexually abusing teen boys. The boy who finally informed on him? A 17-year-old who came to him for spiritual guidance after the cancer death of a teenage friend. The pastor, in recovered letters and telephone calls, tried to talk the boy into filming a video with him in which he would tie the boy naked and spread-eagle to a bed, paint his nails and make up his face in "Goth make-up," perform sex acts on him and torture his nipples. It's not yet clear how many victims there are in this man's case, but he's been a pastor for 17 years.

Have spent much of the weekend catching up on sleep I missed throughout the week. Have had some strange dreams.

Last night I dreamed I was a rock star -- which was thrilling at first. Then I realized, as I stepped out on stage with my band, that my fan base was made up entirely of teenage girls who wanted me to sign their training-bra clad bosoms. I was the rock equivalent of a New Kid on the Block.

Then, just before I woke this morning, I dreamed my family and I hatched a perfect scheme to rob three large banks simultaneously. It worked and we were rich beyond our wildest dreams. But then, with huge stacks of cash littering my living room floor, I began to get paranoid that the police would somehow know this money by its serial number. We'd have to launder it somehow. But how? As my family all talked about how they'd spend it -- going to law school, traveling the world, buying all sorts of large, ridiculous things, I sat there thinking we were doomed and I was the only one who knew it.

Am still trying to shake the horror of those nightmares that began as dreams. The prescription? Apartment cleaning and a movie later -- if I can find anything I want to see.

Waiting for Sidney

A more complete post on reporting the Sidney R. Lowe II story later (I promise). It's an interesting story -- I was the first reporter at the magistrate's office, waiting for the son of N.C. State's basketball coach and local lawyer Locke Clifford. By the time they arrived there was one crew from Channel 12 in tow. Shortly after we broke the story online there were more, until everyone in town was cramped into a doorway in the hall of the office, waiting for hours, sweating through their clothes and watching as more than a dozen bondsmen worked to keep Lowe II from spending the night in jail.

For now -- this is a slightly edited version (extraneous stuff omitted) of the night note I sent my editors at after 2 a.m. this morning, when I was alone in the office putting up new stuff online and cursing my inability to get the pictures to load (I'm told it was because of the hour, and what the stories online do at that hour):

I’ve just come back from the magistrate’s office, where Locke Clifford drove Coach Lowe and his son off in his Prius, causing all of the news people who had been gathered in the cramped, smelly basement hall of the magistrate’s office for a perp walk to curse under their breaths and ask themselves (for maybe the tenth time that night) why they hadn’t taken their parents’ advice and become business majors.

Anyhow – there’s not much new to report. The $450,000 bond was posted by what I'm told were 13 bail bondsmen. Clifford, annoyed that more and more press had arrived all evening, particularly after we broke the story online, became more and more quiet.

Lowe and son came into the small lobby of the magistrate’s office, where cameras were forbidden but I, with my mere notebook, was allowed to watch and listen as the baker’s dozen bondsmen asked Lowe II questions, took pictures of him with their old-school Polaroids and flashy new digital cameras and had him sign paperwork.

Coach Lowe seemed strong, determined but sad – with the sort of disappointment you’d expect in the face of a father whose son had been picked up for shoplifting or, you know, allegedly robbed six people with a semi-automatic assault rifle, had his small time drug business busted and gotten mixed up in an attempted murder all in one thirty-day period.

Lowe II, for his part, looked exhausted, red eyed and shame-filled, slouching in his black Lacoste polo shirt and oversized blue jeans, looking mechanically, unblinking into the camera of one magistrate and then another as their flashes popped around him. His father flinched a bit each time their small cameras went off – anticipating, perhaps, the larger cameras waiting for them just around the corner, hunched in the doorway to capture this strange and horrible family moment for the next day’s paper, the morning newscast. His son seemed as though he didn’t see them at all.

In the end Clifford came out into the hallway and gave the following statement to the bank of cameras and microphones as I stood just behind him, trying to stay out of the shot and occasionally taking an inadvertent elbow to my stomach as he emoted:

“This is a young man who has never caused his parents five minutes of trouble in the last 21 years. His family is behind him 110%. Coach Lowe talks about the basketball team being his family, but this is his real family.”