Now that that’s out of the way, I want you to boycott Xiu Xiu. Even if you like his music and his lyrics, you should boycott Xiu Xiu. Here’s why:

This is the cover art of Xiu Xiu’s A Promise.

In an interview with a popular indie music website, Jamie Stewart said that he took the picture himself on a trip to Asia. The man in the picture is a prostitute. Stewart solicited him for sex. When they got to his hotel room, Stewart took the pictures, tossed the man a couple bucks, and sent him on his (not so) merry way. But look closer. The man’s body, according to Stewart, shows evidence of years of physical abuse and violence. Stewart claims, “[The cover] is about what that person has been through and what his life is like.”

No, it isn’t. Stewart is being provocative just to be provocative, and he does so at the expense of a man forced to live an unimaginably terrible life. If the cover really was about “what that person has been through,” Stewart could have included the back story in the press junket and asked his listeners to donate money to some charity whose aim is to help abused prostitutes in Southeast Asia.

Did any of the proceeds from the record go to this guy?

Did Jamie Stewart sympathize with this guy because he was forced by circumstance into being a prostitute? Clearly not, if Stewart was soliciting prostitutes in a poverty-ravaged country. So then, in the best-case scenario, the album cover is basically making this statement: “It sucks that my prostitute regularly gets the shit kicked out of him.”

Would you pay your best friend to go to a foreign country and take a snapshot of a discarded human before discarding that human again? Then why would you give Jamie Stewart money to do the same?

Further, the cover art’s mindless provocation also underpins much of the musical and lyrical content on Xiu Xiu’s albums.

One reviewer wrote that Xiu Xiu “set[s] out to disturb their audience in pursuit of higher artistic goals.” But what are those higher artistic goals? Does Stewart obliterate the boundaries of pop music by whisper-singing half-assed melodies about sexual deviance against beds of alternating pretty pop and noisy shards? If so, a thousand bands have done that since the Velvet Underground (and I guarantee that it was much more disturbing in the ’60s to have Lou Reed tell you to “kiss the boot of shiny, shiny leather” than to hear Jamie Stewart’s affectation-laden whine ask you to “come on [his] lips.”)

Come to think of it, Stewarts lyrics themselves sound like something culled from episodes of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. For example, “I can’t wait to tell you your grandpa made your mom play stripper while your uncle watched.” Disturbing? Sure. Pursuit of some lofty artistic goal? I think not. If Ice-T is on the case, it’s not pushing the boundaries of pop music.

Xiu Xiu fans claim that Stewart’s music is “experimental.” Is it experimental to distill the influences of twenty years’ worth of indie rock into a single band? When I think of music that is successfully experimental, I think of bands that explode genre boundaries, or probe new lyrical territory in meaningful ways. Xiu Xiu does neither of those things. Their music is indie rock. It doesn’t do anything new.

Consider a quote from the venerable Marquis de Sade. To all those who think that Xiu Xiu’s cavalier lyrics open up some forbidden realm of existence heretofore never put into writing, keep in mind that the following was written more than 200 years ago: “Vernuil makes someone shit, he eats the shit, and then he demands that someone eat his. The one who eats his shit vomits; he devours her puke.”

It turns out that the great dysfunctional history of humanity has given us more of the disturbing, macabre, and sexually deviant than we could ever hope to digest in a lifetime. So, you don’t have to punish your ears by listening to a singing voice that sounds like a sex offender is trying to give you a wet willy. Also, you don’t have to listen to music that sounds like the out-takes from a teenage Joy Division cover band that smokes too much weed.

Just listen to Joy Division while reading the Marquis de Sade if you really need to feel uncomfortable.

In addition to my work at The Bygone Bureau, I attempted to pick up some extra cash (by which I mean “any”) as a freelance Halloween costume designer but to no avail. At first, I thought that my ideas were too forward thinking for conservative Halloween stores. In retrospect, however, I think my ideas were just bad. Here are a few that were rejected.

Juggalo

If there’s one group of people that are dressed for Halloween 365 days a year, it’s the Juggalos. Taking my inspiration from them, I decided to design the “L’il Juggalo” costume. Included in this costume kit are: one (1) pair of plastic Doc Martens shoes; one (1) pair of extremely baggy, black pants with a patch of the Juggalo Hatchet Man logo; one (1) extremely baggy Juggalo football jersey with the number “69″ on the back beneath the name “Psychopathic Records”; two (2) temporary rub-on tattoos featuring the Juggalo Hatchet Man logo; and the crowning jewel of the costume, one (1) real hatchet.

While the “L’il Juggalo” costume idea was superficially brilliant, it had a number of problems. First of all, if there’s one group of people that do not take kindly to light-hearted irony at their expense, it’s the Juggalos. Focus group research indicated that if this costume were sold, the amount of Juggalo-on-small-child violence would increase fivefold nationwide. Furthermore, most companies I tried to sell the costume to said that it was inappropriate to put the number “69″ on the back of a children’s costume. And finally, the real hatchet was a sticking point as well. So, there will be no mass marketing of the “L’il Juggalo” costume this year.

R. Kelly

I thought I had struck gold when I came up with this magnificent costume idea. The R. Kelly costume kit comes complete with a cornrow wig, and a gaudy red suit. Of course, many hip-hop artists wear cornrows and gaudy suits, so what makes this costume so distinctively “Robert Kelly” is the below-the-belt accoutrements. Included in each costume is a specially designed CamelBak water bottle, that comes filled with yellow Gatorade. The owner of the costume simply feeds the pressurized CamelBak tube through his or her pants, and with a simple push of a button, can expel fake urine at a desired target, just like the real R. Kelly!

Unfortunately, the costume vendors did not share my enthusiasm for this idea. The general consensus was that the costume was too tasteless for sale anywhere in America.

White Trash

I actually tried out a prototype of this costume one Halloween, when I was in 5th grade. The “White Trash” costume kit comes replete with one (1) pair of stained, worn sweatpants; one (1) white garbage bag; and one (1) sack of trash. The only assembly required for this gem of a costume is to put on the sweatpants, place the trash bag over one’s head (being very careful to use included breathing holes), and fill it with included trash. In this way, the owner of this delightful costume gets to be white trash for a day!

Sadly, this idea never got off the ground; it was a bit over many people’s heads. The most frequent comment the costume got was: “Why are you wearing a trash bag?” Also, the health hazards of giving plastic bags to children were deemed an unsuitable risk for the product to be marketed.

While none of these costumes made it to market this year, I will be more than glad to manufacture any of them on demand for anyone. Please send $50 per costume to JeffCorp Corporations, Incorporated Corporate Headquarters located in Tacoma, Washington, and allow four to six weeks for delivery of the best Halloween ever!

I just read Torture the Artist by Joey Goebel. In lieu of lengthy psychological profiles of major characters, he lists each character’s favorite band, movie, and TV show. In the book, the technique is part of a broader critique of our obsession with, and reliance on, pop culture. But that doesn’t make the information any less revealing.

Courtesy of the American Memory Project

In some ways, Goebel’s method of characterization is hyper-efficient; We can judge characters in a split second based on their pop culture preferences. Goebel also uses the technique to show which characters we should empathize with and which we should see as purveyors of mainstream dreck.

The technique works well in the book and made me wonder if it could be applied to everyday life. I asked the three questions to some of my best friends, and saw if their responses were congruent with how I would characterize them.

Unfortunately, life is never as cut and dry as art. The first response I got from one of my closest friends was:

1. Gattica
2. Battlestar Galactica
3. Depeche Mode

As he listed these, he said, “Oh God, I’m a fucking dweeb.” And if I hadn’t known him, I’d have thought the same. So much for my first trial.

I moved on to another friend, who responded:

1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
2. Fraggle Rock
3. Sigur Ros

Again, if I were to see just this information, I would think to myself, “This person might by psychotic.” Far from it! This person is actually a wonderful, entirely sane human.

Similarly surprising results came out of everyone I asked. Most of the responses were not particularly congruent with how I would characterize my friends. I concluded that a person’s pop culture preferences are not accurate mirrors of his or her personality. For example, my list would lead one to believe that I am a sad bastard. But if I had listed the Unicorns as my favorite band, I’d appear whimsical and prone to flights of fancy.

My little experiment unsettled me in two ways. First, it made me realize what a judgmental bastard I am. Second, I was struck by how prophetic Goebel’s book was. Though it was written before the explosion of Facebook, it prefigures one of the main utilities of online social networks: the ability to judge peers based on their pop culture preferences. Who among us is not guilty of a scoff emitted while reading another’s Facebook profile?

Certainly judging people for cultural preferences is as old as art itself; but perhaps the primacy that pop culture has gained over our lives, thanks to the internet, has made our generation worse. Maybe instead of the Millennials, our generation should be called the Elitists.

I was online researching some scenes from the movie to use as evidence towards my thesis of Stephane as super-creepy stalker when I stumbled upon a website called ScreenIt. The site is for parents who want to monitor the content of films their children watch. For every movie that comes out, the site catalogs (quite extensively) a list of all the moments that could possibly be considered offensive.

Courtesy of the American Memory Project

On the surface, this is a good idea; parents should have some manner of deciding whether a film is appropriate for their children. Of course, such a system already exists: the MPAA stamps pictures with ratings from G to NC-17. But parents frequently complain that too much variance exists within the same MPAA rating – a PG-13 movie can still be fairly offensive. So, I suppose, this is where the fine folks at ScreenIt come in.

At the top of each movie listing the site displays a handy grid listing types of objectionable content and their frequency in the movie. For example, ScreenIt tells us that The Science of Sleep contains an “extreme” amount of sex and/or nudity (not true). This matrix is more than sufficient for any parents who wish to shield their child from a certain type of content.

However, the site continues with a play-by-play of each instance of objectionable material, spoiling the entire plot. Plus, many of the details given by ScreenIt are decidedly inoffensive. Under the “blood and gore” category for The Science of Sleep, the site lists the following incident: “Guy farts.” Unless that was a truly exceptional instance of flatulence, we can rest assured that it was neither bloody nor gory. Do we really have to shield our children from farts?

The site abounds with such examples, most bafflingly for children’s movies. For the movie WALL-E (the pinnacle of human achievement, by the way), the site lists this as bad behavior children might want to imitate: “Waalllleee (said in a drawn out way.)” So what if there is a sarcastic line in the movie? Sarcasm is a fundamental mode of communication in our culture, and children are capable of contextualizing sarcasm in their own minds.

But besides irritating me with its prudishness, the site also irks me because it is a shining exemplar of a weird, singularly American, head-in-the-sand sense of social correctness that pervades mainstream culture. It is often said that entertainment is a mirror of culture. If this is the case, then our media is a frosted mirror that allows the vague shapes of reality through, but not the banal blemishes of quotidian life. This frosted mirror of culture could be caused by wishful thinking or by a tremulous respect for political correctness.

Courtesy of the American Memory Project

To see how skewed the depiction of quotidian life is in the media, we can examine the treatment of sex on television and in movies. We have fashioned an idol out of political correctness, and the idol dictates that, out of respect for young viewers, we not show graphic sexuality on television or movies watched by children. Unfortunately, biology dictates that we are a sex-obsessed race! So that we may satiate our lust to see lust on television and in movies, we create a twisted sexuality almost entirely unreflective of the real world.

Sex is treated (especially on TV, but also in many movies) as a consequence-free romp. To discuss the negative emotional and physical effects of sex with any sort of seriousness would violate our sense of taste. Can you imagine what would happen if there were an episode of Seinfeld in which Jerry realizes he’s contracted a potpourri of STD’s because he’s been having one night stands every week for ten years? So, we put our heads in the sand. We deliver to our children some bizarre ideas about sex and relationships because it is easier than violating our sense of political correctness.

Perhaps the astronomical rates of teen STD infection and pregnancy are so high can be partially attributed to the fact that such a poor facsimile of true human sexuality is given to children via the media.

Though I won’t go into it any further, the same holds true for violence in the media.

My point is that by pandering to our concept of political correctness, we have created an unrealistic and damaging depiction of life. If every instance of movie violence was like the curb-stomp in American History X, and every treatment of teen sex was like Juno, how would our culture change? If we socialized our children into the world of WALL-E (Earth destroyed by vapid rampant consumerism) instead of Kung Fu Panda (a panda bear does kung fu), would they turn out any better than us?

And that is why ScreenIt bothers me; it advances a stupid, dangerous, head-in-the-sand attitude towards the reflection of life in mainstream media. Here’s where the danger lies: trying to shield their children from the harsh realities of life, adults socialize their kids into a television and movie world free of the unfortunate banal truths of existence. The kids, upon maturity, learn (often the hard way) that there is a discrepancy between the media world and the real world. And so the cycle continues, catalyzed by more sites like ScreenIt that make offerings to our golden cow idol of political correctness.

Whenever I drive from Colorado to California, I am struck by the vastness of the wasteland that stretches between the two locales. Perhaps wasteland is too strong of a word, but considering that I come from a place in which every single sunset looks like this, it makes sense when I say that Wyoming is a terrible place from which nothing good can ever come.

On the first day of my trip, I drove from Denver to Rock Springs, Wyoming. To get there, I had to cross southern Wyoming–a giant, empty desert bereft of everything but scrub brush and the occasional giant oil refinery. One of the first towns I passed through in Wyoming was Sinclair, which owes its name to the oil company. A sign at the outskirts of town bragged that it was home to the West’s most advanced oil refinery. All I saw were smokestacks and refineries belching flame into the sky like some demonic lighthouse.

From Wyoming, it was on to Reno, Nevada. In between was one of the highlights of my drive, a 60-mile stretch of Interstate 80 without a single turn that runs flat across the surface of the Salt Lake Desert. These salt flats are where all the world’s speed records have been set. Mostly, I was curious as to whether or not the salt flats were actually salty. I got out of the car, licked the earth, and can now verify that the salt flats are both delicious and beautiful.

Finally, the centerpiece of the trip: Reno, Nevada, home to a Journey cover band, a Chicago cover band, and a Foreigner cover band, as well as a magician with a tiger, whose name was, I believe, Hürneberger Von Schümpenheimer. All this got me thinking about possible slogans for Reno to rival Vegas’s “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” campaign. Reno’s current slogan is “The biggest little city in the world.”

• If you’re in Reno, you’re probably at rock bottom already, and it doesn’t really matter if what happens in Reno stays in Reno.
• Reno: the biggest little mistake you’ll ever make.
• Reno: Dean Martin once had a bowel movement here.

After Reno came the promised land of California, weighty beneath its own legend, muse for countless pop songs, devourer of the Joads and of Brian Wilson. A beautiful siren.

However, as with any great artist, Mr. Kelly’s works are often cast aside by scholars due to his impenetrable, post-post-post-modernist lyrics and deconstructionist themes. My aim today is to prepare the public for the art of Mr. Kelly, as one prepares for a scalding bath by setting a timorous foot in the water.

It looks something like that; courtesy of New York Magazine

Mr. Kelly has come under fire recently for the explicitly erotic nature of his music (that, and peeing on a 14-year-old). Indeed, were he an avatar of Eros, I would not be surprised; he has certainly captured, in great detail, all the facets of the human sexual experience. Perhaps the controversy surrounding Mr. Kelly’s art is due to a misunderstanding of his artistic devices.

Take, for example, the song “Sex Planet.” Let’s examine how Mr. Kelly uses double entendres to heighten the erotic nature of the track. Ostensibly a song about a romantic trip to outer space, the song can also be seen as a prolonged metaphor for sex! For example:

Don’t trip, I gotta giant rocket / Glidin’ through, just hittin’ yo pocket.

In the above lyric, Mr. Kelly refers literally to the rocket that he and his mate use to travel into outer space. However, the line also slyly references Mr. Kelly’s penis. Upon close examination, many of his songs unfold to reveal rich layers of innuendo and wordplay. Here is another salient example of R.’s genius in “Sex Planet”:

Girl, this is gonna be painless / now we gonna take a trip to planet Uranus.

Here, Mr. Kelly demonstrates his mastery of the homonym; he’s a punner of utmost skill. (And, if I may be so frank, far surpassing the skill of his antecedents; in comparison, the wordplay of Nabakov makes one vomit on a turtle.) The above line is again a double entendre. On the surface, the song is about making a sexy journey to the seventh planet of our solar system, but at the same time is a reference to the most taboo form of sexual congress–the elusive anal congress.

So much for “Sex Planet.” Let us now move on to another of Kelly’s magnum opuses, “Sex in the Kitchen.” After a few tactful verses elucidating the sensual nature of his partner’s cooking, Kelly interjects:

Girl I’m gonna / toss your salad.

Like a multifoliate rose, Kelly’s innuendo unfolds to expose three layers of artistic beauty. First, the abruptness of the interjection represents the often sudden kindling of human sexual desire. In addition to its musical expressiveness, the phrase is again a double entendre. Upon a cursory glance, the lyric is simply a case of Mr. Kelly offering to help his partner cook a meal. But peel back one more layer of the magnificent Rose of Art and there lies hidden the gem of the song: the lyric actually references that most intimate act of analingus. Kelly’s metonymic prowess nearly conceals a highly expressive innuendo!

Examples such as these could go on for days; Kelly is irrefutably a master of coy literary devices in which to couch the charged sexuality of his songs. However, like a good diamond, there are many facets to Mr. Kelly’s flawless genius.

By bringing the seemingly mundane aspects of human sexuality into an artistic and delicate light, R. Kelly advances the art of R&B. Take, for example, the song “Trapped in the Closet (Chapters 1-800),” in which Kelly sings at length about an awkward incident during sexual intercourse. In the song, R. Kelly’s partner is nearing the apogee of her sexual experience; however, Mr. Kelly enjoys the experience less, as he has a cramp in his leg. While he at first selflessly tries to stay the course, he finally can take no more and says:

Bitch, get off my leg!

Clearly, Kelly contextualizes the mundane and places it within an exciting setting, thereby encouraging listeners to find interest in all aspects of life, like getting a cramp that ruins sex.

Let us conclude by turning once again to “Sex Planet” and examining one of Mr. Kelly’s most obscure innuendos. We find Kelly still a conquistador of outer space romance in the last verse of the song, and he exclaims:

Girl, I’m gonna give you / meteor showers.

What could this mean? Could it be a veiled reference to his trial, in which he was accused of urinating on a minor during an act of sexual congress? Or is it simply a reference to the sensual journey in which R. Kelly ventured past the asteroid belt, encountering space rocks? Perhaps we will never know. And that, right there, that beautiful, obscure, opaque unknowability of Kelly’s art is why he is the greatest artist to have ever lived in the history of the human race.

Last week, the Denver independent weekly Westword printed an article about local juggalo culture that was a bit more open-minded than mine. The article separated the idiotic music of the band (I’ll never stop deriding the music of ICP) from the subculture that has congealed around the band. Perhaps most salient among the article’s claims was that juggalo culture provides a caring, supportive network for kids who “are having a fucked-up time.” This claim was supported by various angry emails that I got after The Bygone Bureau published my last juggalo article, all of which said that I focused on juggalo violence at the expense of the beneficial aspects of juggalo culture.

Before I reconsider my stance on juggalo culture, I would like to look at mainstream suburban culture. Jordan’s recent article and books such as Bowling Alone touch on the lack of community and large support networks that pervades suburbia. Sprawling, auto-centric suburbs limit interaction in communities. In fact, the six-foot fence that surrounds most yards demonstrates that privacy and isolation, not community, are sacrosanct in suburbia. For the “fucked-up kids” that become juggalos, suburban desolation is even more severe. Perhaps that is why the all-enveloping community of the juggalos has occurred with such force (at least in vast, sprawling Denver).

The Westword article highlighted many of the beneficial aspects of juggalo culture. A store called Primos gives out Faygo (a dearly-loved juggalo soda brand) to juggalos who get good grades. The Primos store is the nexus of the Denver juggalo universe, and its owners profess a desire to help steer juggalos away from the violent mistakes that they made as youngsters.

Of course, such a tightly-knit community can easily be as suffocating and limiting as it can be nurturing. For example, recalling a recent brawl between juggalos and Crips, one witness said, “One [juggalo] won’t do much for you, but forty of them, they get the mob mentality. There’s like four Crips and forty [juggalos] just beating the fuck out of these guys.” However, the dangers of mob mentality are innate to humanity and are not unique to the juggalos. I’ve seen similar fights break out at hockey games between Red Wings and Avalanche fans.

The Westword article is also peppered with the more familiar anecdotes about juggalos slinging drugs, robbing stores, and wreaking havoc. The author glosses over these accounts, obliquely arguing that those juggalos in lower socio-economic circles have no other choice than to turn to crime. That is an issue of social stratification and mobility to me and doesn’t sway my opinion of the juggalos one way or another.

For me, the question ends up being whether the beneficial aspects of juggalo culture outweigh the negative facets. That doesn’t have an easy answer. If you ask a juggalo sympathizer, he or she will claim that they are a big family amid a cultural wasteland that has ignored them, and that their hostility to mainstream culture is a response to the unbridled disdain shown to them by everyone else. If you ask a juggalo detractor, he or she will say that juggalos choose to remain mired in a stifling subculture of drugs and violence and senselessly lash out at non-juggalos.

Do juggalos have a greater statistical incidence of violence and mischief than other cohesive cultural communities? My experience would say yes, but all my evidence is purely anecdotal. Fraternities are rife with date rape, and I know hipsters that sling drugs. I spend far less time decrying these injustices than I do complaining about juggalos. Perhaps the juggalos are so vocally derided because they are an extremely outspoken countercultural group as opposed to subcultures like fraternities and hipster circles. Or maybe they are decried because they are actually just a gang of thugs, adhered together and made stronger by the idiotic music of a couple fat white guys from Detroit.

Lately, though, I’ve been leaning more towards the former. I’ve had positive experiences with friendly juggalos. Denver has at least 20,000 juggalos (they filled Red Rocks Amphitheatre and the 700-person Gothic venue just last week). If every juggalo were as much of a terror as they are popularly portrayed, the city would be in ruins.

Maybe the juggalo tree has just as many bad apples as any other tree, only the bad juggalo apples are especially noticeable. Or maybe there really are more bad apples in the juggalo circle than in other groups. Regardless, they aren’t all a scourge of terrors, and I regret making such unfair claims in my last article.

I sure don’t love juggalos (I caught one breaking into my house a few weeks ago), but after reconsidering, I can’t write off the whole lot of them anymore.

He called me and offered me a reasonable pay, so I took him up on his offer. A local real estate mogul of sorts, Mr. Carlsbad is a busy man. He told me that he “is up to [his] knees in good deals by 8 a.m.” and that I should show up then.

It was snowing the morning I was supposed to begin work. My employer, Mr. Carlsbad, called to tell me that snow would not deter me from beginning my work. I arrived promptly at 8 a.m., where Mr. Carlsbad discussed with me the terms of my employment, which are as follows.

1. “Work like a Mexican that I would be paying $8.00 an hour to. Those Mexicans, they work like the dickens all day. Then they go home and get drunk. But they still show up on time the next day and work just as hard. Then they use that money to go get drunk again. Those Mexicans.”
2. “I got a lot of real brain surgeons working for me. They dig a hole, then the next day forget that they started to dig a hole. Don’t do that.”

While Mr. Carlsbad introduced me to the intricacies of my work, we made small talk about his son (our only mutual acquaintance) and college. I told him that I was getting my degree in religious studies. He then proceeded to give me a brief outline of his theory on religious studies: “’Bout a million years or so ago, some Neanderthal was at a lake and saw his own reflection, and it scared the crap out of him, so he invented God. There. Let’s move some woodchips.” I told him that his assessment was more or less correct and that he should have majored in religious studies.

I should insert here that while I have worked my share of demeaning service jobs, I have never worked any job that could be considered physically demanding. In fact, my level of physical fitness is appalling for a male who should be at his apogee. I weigh 120 pounds, my resting heart rate is 93, and haven’t gotten regular exercise since I quit inline hockey in the 10th grade.

My job for the day was to use a pitchfork to shovel woodchips out of a six-foot tall pile, into a wheelbarrow, and then spread the woodchips about the lawn. Mr. Carlsbad gave me two pieces of advice about my job, which are as follows:

1. “That pile there is pretty moldy. You’ll want to be upwind of it when you start shoveling it.”
2. “Really though, there is a lot of mold in that pile. The tree died in the yard across the street a while back, and I paid a guy $100 to chip it up for me. Paid him too much, too, because it took him about two seconds.”

Mr. Carlsbad wasn’t joking about the mold content of the woodchip pile. Luckily for me, the steady, soaking rain/snow mix and 40-degree temperatures kept the spores from dispersing too widely when I went at the pile with my pitchfork.

At first, the work was entirely enjoyable. Mr. Carlsbad had been kind enough to give me a poncho, so I wasn’t cold. I worked at a steady clip, singing to myself and admiring the progress I was making.

My euphoria was short-lived, however. About one hour into working, it started to pour and for some reason, I got one line from a Bright Eyes song stuck in my head, repeating itself incessantly. I felt like Conor Oberst was mocking me, watching me pick up forkfuls of moldy woodchips and strew them about a rich man’s lawn.

As the day dragged on, I noticed pains appearing all over my body, namely in places with muscles used for lifting. Since most of the “lifting” group of muscles have atrophied, I had to use muscles not normally associated with lifting. These physical pains only added to my general malaise.

I decided to call it a day at 1 p.m., after about five hours of work. This was mostly because I had reached a part of the pile that was especially moldy, and was a bit scared that it would come to life and talk to me.

Mr. Carlsbad told me to send him a bill for my labor, which I did. He will be getting a bill from JeffCorp Corporations, Incorporated shortly. He also told me that work would begin on Saturday at “the butt-crack of dawn,” which we determined to be 7 a.m.

So come Saturday, you will see me again, pitchfork in hand, SARS mask on face, tears in eyes, shoveling and hearing about the indomitable work ethic of Mexicans.

Sadly, I discovered today that there are vultures hovering about, waiting to devour struggling, naive musicians like so much carrion. The following is a cautionary tale.

I checked my MySpace music account (for all you readers who are in the mood for some melancholy folk music) and discovered a message from a man named Ryan. He claimed to represent a booking agent from Big Time Entertainment. He told me he was organizing a show on May 29th, and that my minor-key, nylon-stringed ballads would suit the show. I said I would be interested in playing the gig. My stomach began to do somersaults; I felt as if there was a butterfly ballet troupe doing a rendition of “Rite of Spring” in my intestines. Little ol’ me, playing at a big club in downtown Denver!

However, I quickly realized that the entire situation smelled worse than seafood in Colorado. I checked online to see what other acts were playing that night, and discovered that it was Help the Hood night. Featured on the bill were several hip-hop artists. I’m a big proponent of musical diversity, but I can’t imagine me (skinny white kid with acoustic guitar) on a hip-hop stage. The one hip-hop song in my repertoire–a bossa nova-style cover of R. Kelly’s “Trapped in the Closet”–is more of a humorous novelty than anything.

I realized that I had been scammed when I received a reply from Big Time Entertainment. The following is an imaginary conversation I had with the email, in which I slowly come to terms with the fact that I’ve been had. It turns out that Big Time Entertainment is a company that rents out venues in Washington, Oregon, California, and Colorado to take advantage of local struggling musicians by having them participate in vaguely-shrouded “pay-to-play” nights. All quotes are directly from the email, except for a couple paraphrases.

Jeff: Hello there, email. So far you seem fairly innocuous. But what’s this I see about me being required to recruit an audience of at least 30 people?

Big Time: We need each act to bring in at LEAST the number of people specified below for each Venue [sic]…Acts that fail to bring their share of the crowd have not done their part to make the show a success. This is unfair to the artists who have worked hard to deliver a turnout to the show. Big Time believes that artists should not just play for everyone else’s fans without contributing at all to the turnout. Taking this into account, can you guarantee your band will bring AT LEAST 30 people to come see you play–regardless of the night of the week or other acts on the bill?

Well, I’m not so sure about that. You see, my fan base is limited to those who are obligated to listen to me out of familial and/or friendship ties. But let’s continue for curiosity’s sake. Do I get paid?

Your payment will be proportional to your draw for the night.

Elaborate.

[Paraphrase] Well, you agree to pre-sell tickets to your fans before the show. They are priced at almost twice the going rate for any other weeknight show at this venue, so you’ll have to be a good salesman. Basically, how it works is if you sell 25 tickets, you get $25. And we get $150.

Shouldn’t I get a larger percentage if I do all the legwork to sell the tickets?

[Paraphrase] Well, I suppose you don’t have to sell tickets. Feel free to mooch off other bands’ fans. And just keep in mind that “Consistently, our lowest drawing acts are the ones that choose to not sell tickets and instead just ’hope’ that their fans pay at the door night of show.  Obviously, we are not able to work with these acts anymore, and the clubs we work with also choose to avoid re-booking those acts.”

So, if I personally sell tickets to people, and then I give you $150 of the $175 that I made to you, aren’t I paying to play?

This is NOT “pay to play”; you would not have to pre-purchase the tickets. We would just give them to you to sell.

But if I have to hand over nearly 100% of the money that I made from the tickets that you “gave” me, aren’t you selling me the tickets?

[Paraphrase] Alright, the jig is up. We’re a company that specializes in taking advantage of the peonage (like yourself) of local music scenes. We scour MySpace to find pages of small artists who we know won’t have any representation and then trick them into doing all the ticket-selling for us before handing all the profits.

Big Time Entertainment is one of the more deplorable scams I have come across recently. I say that not only because my pride was hurt, but also because it takes a special kind of greed to take advantage of struggling musicians and closing other avenues of success to them. Hopefully, some poor sap trying to start to make money playing music will google Big Time Entertainment, see this article (or one of the many others), and refrain from handing hard-earned money over to these swindlers.

But if love cannot be had with my favorite indie rock singers, where can I turn?

Why, the annals of literature, of course! I decided to examine (following Kevin’s example of debased misogyny) some of literature’s most notable women and examine the pros and cons of dating them.

Catherine Barkley

from A Farewell to Arms

From a purely chauvinistic standpoint, Hemingway created the ideal mate in Catherine Barkley. She actually states in the novel (no joke): “I’m having a child and that makes me contented not to do anything.”

Pros
• She would be a domestic goddess. No fewer than five times in the novel does she ask Henry if she is a good wife or if he still loves her. This lack of self-sufficiency is ideal for the man seeking a wife who will cater to his every whim.
• She is a nurse, so in addition to her womanly household duties of cleaning, sandwich making, and child rearing, she could take care of most non-emergency medical situations in the house. Health care costs would decrease significantly, allowing for more money to be spent on necessities such as Corona and Maxim magazine.

Cons
• The downside of her utter lack of self-worth is that she is über-clingy. God help you if you just want to sit down with the bros, have a few beers, watch American Gladiators, and give each other tippers.

Cathy Ames

from East of Eden

Cathy Ames is appealing because she is one of the most depraved, evil characters in all of literature. She appears beaten on a doorstep and marries one of the main characters, only to shoot him, leave him, and start a whorehouse.

Pros
• She is attractive in that, “Wow, you’re so evil,” kind of way. Each day with her would be an adventure, filled with such questions as, “Will she shoot me today, or not?”.
• As the Madame of a whorehouse, one has to assume that she is a demon in the sack. Any ill will incurred during the day could be defused in the bedroom, provided she doesn’t shoot you afterwards.

Cons
• See above; she is utterly heartless, and would likely crush anyone who came near her emotionally, and physically, with bullets and brutal swirlies.

Maria Singer

from Fight Club

Maria is the most likable and empathy-inducing character in Fight Club. She is a stabilizing force, drawing the narrator away from Project Mayhem, and sticking with him to the bitter end.

Pros
• She is long-suffering, and will patiently wait for any mental instability you have to pass.
Much like Cathy Ames, she’s a demon in the sack.
• She is possibly a nihilist, which means that any disagreements you have with her can be easily argued away.

Cons
• She has quite a bit of damage. The amount of time spent watching Dr. Phil might not be worth your trouble.

Having examined these three literary women solely in terms of their datability, I have to sadly admit that not even in the annals of literature can a good mate be found. But at least none of these characters are as insane as Conor Oberst.