danoshinsky.com

A brief comment in advance of this post: like the majority of the commentary on this blog, this post is meant as a representation of events observed. Somewhere, between observation and judgment, there’s truth. And yes, truth is not as universal a concept as we’d like it to be. Now: on with the post.

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My cousin Scott is about eight years old. He has short brown hair and all the energy of a Luna Bar. His favorite album is Green Day’s “American Idiot,” and when he sings along to the title track, he is his own seven-second tape delay. “And can you hear the sound of hysteria?” he’ll sing. “The subliminal mind bleep, America.” He does not fully understand that “bleep” is not an original Billie Joe Armstrong lyric.

Scott, so inspired by his favorite album, started taking guitar lessons about two years ago. His hands are not big enough to form many of the chord shapes, so he mostly just thumbs along to the bass lines. These days, he’s good enough to play versions of songs like “Iron Man” or “Seven Nation Army.”

I bring this up, because the only difference between Duke Maxwell and my cousin Scott is that on Monday, Scott will be attending class, because Scott is in the second grade. Duke, however, will be in Nashville. And then the week after, he’ll be in Denver. And then the week after that in Salt Lake City.

What I mean to say is that the only difference, really, between Duke Maxwell and my cousin Scott – once you get past the nylon-stringed guitar and the too-small-to-play-anything-in-the-key-of-G hands and the fact that they’re both eight years old – is that my cousin Scott isn’t the lead singer of a touring rockabilly family band.

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On Friday night, I was walking toward the Blue Fugue, a Columbia bar that actually takes pride in the fact that it’s such a dive. The place is about as well lit as the inside of a nuclear submarine. They’ve got antique violins and tubas and shotguns pinned to their walls. In the back of the bar, there’s a bookcase featuring titles by Henry Cabot Lodge. Next to the bookcase, someone’s outlined images of naked women in chalk. Mistletoe hangs from a chandelier nearby. No one’s bothered to take it down from last Christmas, or maybe the Christmas before that. I can’t tell which.

The Fugue, as locals know it, is kind of a townie bar for the yuppie set, if that makes any sense. Half the men in the crowd are wearing plaid. The rest are wearing bandanas, except for two guys in the back who are still wearing their gas station uniforms.

The Fugue is a Missourian’s bar, and they’re damn proud of it. At the Fugue, you’re drinking whiskey, Bud, or Stag; Miller Lite is considered an export.

But more than the torn cushions on the barstools or the refusal to accept any trend not involving vintage clothing, the Fugue is defined by one quality: it’s loud. Like, Spinal-Tap-turn-it-to-11-loud. Like, inside-the-whammy-bar-on-Kirk-Hammett’s-guitar-at-a-Metallica-concert loud.

The Fugue is one of those places that you’ll always hear before you see ^1.. On Friday night, walking up 9th Street, I heard it from about four blocks away. I wasn’t expecting to stop by; really, I wanted to go to Quinton’s, the bar next door that serves Boulevard Wheat in a glass that’s about the size of a household vase. But within earshot of the Fugue, my friend, Nate, made an observation that I seconded: whoever was playing at the Fugue was awesome. Their drummer kept the cymbals splashy. Their base lines were spot on.

So Nate and I went inside.

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The second thing you’ll notice about Mad Max and the Wild Ones is that they’re actually pretty good. That wasn’t a surprise; we could tell from 9th Street that whoever was playing the Fugue could do more than keep 4/4 time.

But if you ever see them in concert, you probably won’t even remember whether or not they were any good, and you certainly wouldn’t if you were at the Fugue on Friday night. That crowd was too hopped on Stag or PBR to care what was being played.

But I guarantee you that more than a handful of Fugue-goers woke up Saturday morning and asked themselves, “Was I drunk, or was that band last night headlined by an eight year old?”

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A few minutes before midnight, the four members of Mad Max and the Wild Ones are on stage at the Fugue, killing. The drummer, Cole Maxwell, has just finished an impressive two-minute drum solo, and the crowd is roaring.

Cole Maxwell is 13 years old.

Now he’s standing over a bass drum, keeping the beat while spinning the drumsticks in his hands and looking not unlike Iceman twirling his pen in “Top Gun.” Cole is wearing a red shirt and an unusual tie; he looks very much like KFC’s Colonel Sanders, only if the Colonel had been dressed by Meg White. He is wearing a black jacket with leopard print, the kind of print that stays in style only in Dirk Diggler films or Miami. His hair is slicked back in the style of Elvis Presley. The other three members of Mad Max and the Wild Ones are dressed in an identical manner.

The bass player leans into the microphone – an unusual, old-style radio mike, but with the catch that this mike is glowing a neon blue – and yells something. What, I’m not sure, and therein lies the problem with the Fugue: the acoustics make it impossible to hear anything being said or sung. The crowd, confused at what’s happening, just roars back their approval.

It’s at this point that the band’s eight-year-old lead singer starts in with Johnny Cash’s “I’ve Been Everywhere.”

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“I’ve Been Everywhere” is not so much a song as a warm-up exercise for auctioneers; in roughly three minutes, Johnny Cash croons out the names to 91 different locations.

Watching eight-year-old Duke Maxwell – pictured at right – sing it through, my only question is if the band’s lead singer can find a quarter of these places on a map.

And yet, Duke powers through the song, only taking a breather for an extended guitar solo, in which the band’s bass guitarist lays down his upright bass on the stage, and the guitarist hops on top of it to hammer out a few bars. Meanwhile, Duke slides out of the way.

A nylon-stringed red guitar – the inscription “Wild West Sweethearts” painted onto its body – hangs over his left shoulder.

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The show ends a few minutes after midnight, but not before Cole Maxwell – standing on a two-foot-high box – plays the upright bass, and certainly not before the band’s closing number: “Radar Love” by Golden Earring. It’s played rockabilly style. Somehow.

Then the band packs up their things. I wander over to the guitarist. His name is Wyatt, and he’s the eldest Maxwell child. He tells me that they’re just a family rockabilly band from a town just south of Salt Lake City.

I’m suddenly frozen in an odd moment of clarity. In four years of living in mid-Missouri, I’d told myself that I’d seen every weird thing there was to see in this state.

But until that moment, I hadn’t considered the idea that Utah might be weirder.

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While Mad Max and the Wild Ones are packing up their instruments, the lead singer of the Fugue’s headlining band is on stage. He has a full beard, and he’s drinking beer directly out of a pitcher.

Conversely, Mad Max’s lead singer is two years away from learning that he can grow a beard, about five from shaving for the first time, and 13 years from that first beer.

The bass player – who turns out to be the father of the rest of the band – is outside. He’s taken off his leopard-print jacket and tie, and now he’s down to an undershirt and about three pounds of hair gel, and looking surprisingly like Michael Madsen. He’s loading up the band’s trailer. On one side, it has the band’s name, and beneath it, the words “Rockabilly Revue.” On the back, it simply reads: “Terrorizing a City Near You.”

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There is a tattoo of a woman on the father’s right bicep. Behind her, greenish-reddish-blackish flames shoot up his arm. Below her, five cards are flipped, face-side open. There are no dollar bills tattooed on his arm, but I can’t help but think that he’s been playing with house money all along.

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Later that night, I sit awake and think of freshman year. I was at a U2 concert in St. Louis; I’d snuck into much better seats than I deserved. A friend and I found seats near the stage, about a dozen rows up. Behind us, we noticed two gentlemen struggling to reserve seats for friends. We asked them why they were working so hard to keep their seats reserved.

“Oh,” they said, “these seats are for Hanson.”

“Excuse me?” my friend asked.

“Hanson,” one of the gentlemen said. “You know, ‘MMMBop’? Hanson? ‘MMMBop’?”

“Yes,” my friend said. “We know Hanson.” We had, after all, been in elementary school when a family band from Oklahoma hit #1 on the pop charts. We hadn’t forgotten the pre-N’Sync sensation that was “MMMBop.”

But what struck me that night was — once they showed up in their seats — how relatively normal the Hanson guys seemed. Almost a decade after topping the charts, they were just hanging out in St. Louis, listening to four Irish guys who’d been playing music since they were teenagers. The Hanson brothers were famous once; among my generation, they’ll be infamous for much longer. But that didn’t seem to bother them that much, at least on that night in St. Louis.

I do not believe that Mad Max and the Wild Ones are like Hanson or The Jackson Five or the Von Trapps, or any other family band. They do not sound like them; more notably, I do not believe that they are as talented as any of them. But that does not mean that they will end up any better or any worse than any of the bands I’ve just mentioned.

So I sit awake Friday night and wonder: Do these kids go to school? Do they want to be here? And if they don’t, would they even be able to tell their father so?

To me, what these kids are doing – dressing up like either Elvis or Jack White or Jack White impersonating Elvis – and playing regular tour dates on the road a few thousand miles from home seems like borderline child abuse. These kids are talented, sure, and I’d agree that talent is worth nurturing. But I want to know at what cost ^2..

So I go to bed without answers. I wake up the next day and ask myself the same questions. Same questions; no answers.

I wonder if I will ever have answers. I wonder when I will ever have answers.

I wonder whether Cole or Duke Maxwell think this is normal.

I wonder whether they will ever forgive their father.

I wonder whether one day, thanks to a rockabilly band, Cole and Duke Maxwell will really go anywhere worth going.

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1. In this way, the Blue Fugue is actually a lot like my mother. >back to article

2. To which I offer two cases of parents pushing kids at a young age: Tiger Woods (who turned out okay) and Todd Marinovich (who bombed out of the NFL and then hit rock bottom as a drug abuser). Certainly, the Wild Ones aren’t on the Marinovich scale; his father stretched him in his crib as an infant, and at four, had trained him to the point where Todd could run four miles at an eight-minute-mile pace. The point worth noting here: whether you’re talking about nurturing the best sixth grader in the country — be it a basketball player, like Allonzo Trier, or a drummer, like Cole — I do not believe that chilren are capable of handling such pressure. But I’m not a psychologist; I’m just a kid who was 12-years-old not all that long ago. >back to article

UPDATES: The band wrote in after the post with their comments. Sadly, when I moved this blog from Blogger to WordPress, the comments disappeared. The long and short of it is: I was wrong. They were angry, and justified in their anger. I apologized for the post. In 2012, I went back and reflected upon this initial piece.

H/T to Mad Max’s MySpace page for all photos.

Yesterday, Google reported on its blog that it occasionally brings in goats to trim its campus’s lawn. The story was one of the most-Twittered articles of the day. Some questioned the veracity of the report (a late April Fool’s Joke, perhaps?). With Google stock nearing $400 a share, many wondered why Google couldn’t afford to fire up the weed whackers. Surprisingly few asked why goats were getting all the good grass-eating jobs.

I bring this up because, apparently, I am the only man in America who is not shocked to hear that goats are an effective substitute for lawn mowers.

The government has been contracting work out to goats — or, rather, goat-owning businesses — since at least 2003, says a Lexis Nexis search. And I should know: a search for previous stories about goats-that-mow-lawns-for-cheap turns up an article I wrote nearly six years ago.

The article — which was written for The Washington Post‘s Federal Page — never actually ran in print. (The Baltimore Sun had published a similar, shorter story from the AP wire about goats a few months earlier, and The Post opted against running my piece. Yet it’s worth noting: I was only 16 when I wrote the goat story. I was so blown away by the fact that The Post thought that something I’d written was clever enough for publication that I didn’t even care that the piece went unpublished.) But with the help of Lexis Nexis, I’ve managed to resurrect the story.

I’ve run it in full below. It’s just something to — oh, God, am I really going here? — chew on for the rest of the day.

GOT PESKY WEEDS? TRY USING GOATS

BYLINE: By Dan Oshinsky States News Service

LENGTH: 292 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON

When Oakland’s Naval Medical Center needed to clear 109-acres of its property of pesky shrubs and high grass in order to prevent brush fires, officials didn’t think of using lawn mowers or weed whackers.

They brought in the goats.

About 600 capra hirci – including Alpine, Spanish and Lamncha breeds from Goats R Us in nearby Martinez, Calif. – will munch their way through the grounds starting next week, with the government footing the $38,000 dinner bill.

“The vegetation has to be controlled because it’s a fire hazard,” a contract specialist from the U.S. Navy’s Southwest Engineering Field Division said. “The goats are very effective, and the terrain is very hilly.”

The Navy has had contracts for fire control with companies whose employees are human, the contract specialist said, but the landscape warranted using a different method to rid the area of potential hazards.

Goats R Us owner Terri Oyarzun, who runs the business with her husband Egon, said that her goats should be able to easily deal with the enormity of the medical center’s property because the goats are used to grazing in all types of terrain.

“We do projects that are hundreds and hundreds of acres,” she said. “We work in park systems that are thousands of acres.”

Oyarzun estimates that a flock of 300 goats can easily clear out an acre of land – even areas covered by heavy brush – in a day.

Goats R Us was tapped for the project because of the medical center’s intricate landscape, Oyarzun said.

“It would be very expensive to put machinery there,” she said. “It’s not very desirable for human crews.” The property is currently shut down, awaiting a decision on how to turn it over to the private sector through the Oakland Base Reuse Authority.

If you’re wondering, yes, Goats R Us is still around. And H/T to Klearchos Kapoutsis for the photo of goats on the Greek coast.

I think I’d miss a number of things about the actual, tangible, printed edition of the newspaper if it ever disappeared. I’d miss the struggle to fold the paper on a crowded subway car. I’d miss working through a crossword puzzle, eraser always in hand. I might even miss that daily test of the sidewalk on a wintry morning, as I gauge whether or not I can make the run from my door to the newspaper without needing shoes.

But beyond that, I’d certainly miss newspaper slogans. The New York Times‘ “All the news that’s fit to print” wouldn’t make much sense in anything other than ink; besides, NYTimes.com has unlimited storage space. (And “All the news that’s fit to click” just doesn’t have the same ring.)

I’d forgotten about other slogans, though, until I clicked over to the website of The Nantucket Independent, a newspaper I worked at five years ago (!). And right at the top of their site, I saw their new slogan. I’ve spot-shadowed it here, but go ahead and click on the image to get the full thing.

“The newspaper that gives a damn about Nantucket,” it reads. Simple, direct, and compelling. If that’s not a good enough reason to keep subscribing to a paper like The Indy, I’m not sure what is.

There are a number of Latin phrases that I’m particularly fond of. Among them: “Ex nihilo nihil fit.”

Which means, “Everything has its origins in something.” ^1. Except, apparently, this.

If you’ve come here from Twitter expecting to find news of swine flu in Doloma, Missouri, well, sorry. There’s no swine flu in Doloma. If you type it into Google, you’ll find that here’s no such town as Doloma. ^2. And you really need to stop clicking on every link related to swine flu. Calm down, and go wash your hands. We’ll be fine. I promise.^3.

I’ll leave you with a final thought: “Ut totus amicitia.”

Which, if Caesar was a Bugs Bunny fan, would’ve meant something like, “That’s all folks.”

^1.) It also means “work is required to succeed,” though I can’t say I support such a viewpoint. >back to article

^2.) For the record: “ex dolo malo” is Latin for “from fraud.” >back to article

^3.) This promise based on no scientific research or proof on my part. >back to article

With the 15th pick in the NFL Draft, the Oakland Raiders selected a fairly anonymous player: Michael Mitchell, a safety from Ohio.

Perhaps anonymous is the wrong word. Here’s ESPN.com’s draft profile of Mitchell:

Official size and weight, says ESPN.com: 0’0”, 0 lbs.

I wonder what size shoulder pads he wears.

Mizzou junior outfielder Greg Folgia had an impressive game against Texas Tech, including a home run in the 2nd inning that extended his hitting streak to eight games. But after one late inning strike out, Folgia took out his frustration on his bat by actually screaming into it.

The bat was not available for comment after the game.

However: I did have my camera with me at Taylor Stadium today. Check out a few additional photos from today’s 9-5 Mizzou victory over at my Flickr page.

Girls hated it. Well, maybe “hate” is the wrong word. They didn’t understand it, really. The strange thing is, every time I’d explain my situation to a girl, no matter where she’d grown up or how popped her collar was, she always had the same look. I got used to it, eventually. It was a look somewhere between incredulity and confusion, the kind of look you’d get if you asked a class of third graders to dissect Dostoevsky. Girls just did not understand this complication of mine. In all their years, I was often the only one they’d ever met in such a situation.

I use the word “situation,” because that’s what it was to them. It was something I’d learned to deal with, I’d tell them jokingly. But truthfully? Life really was better without it.

They didn’t see it that way. They’d cast me that look — always that look — and try to find the right way to phrase their next question. Sometimes, they’d scan me over, searching for more overt signs of my madness. And when none were to be found, they’d part their lips just so, and a few words — always the same words — would slip out:

“If you don’t have text messaging on your phone, then….”

A pause, their minds turned into a personal T9 — the cell phone predictive text feature — trying to sort out the words and cues buzzing in their brains.

“Then…. how do you live?”

The question was never asked with a smile or a laugh; they were always serious. They’d hush, waiting for my answer. Sometimes, they’d even put down their phones, thumbs akimbo, desperately seeking justification.

But how to explain such a life choice? Voluntarily, some two years ago, I called up my cell phone provider and asked them to block all incoming text messages. No longer would I fear that brief whir, my phone spinning on the countertop, a ringtone jingle fading as quickly as it had arrived. No longer did I worry about flipping open my phone to find “R”s or “U”s masquerading as full words, punctuation lost in the rush to 160 characters. No longer would I awake from a mid-afternoon’s nap to see one simple letter — “K” — and wonder why I’d been stirred by a non-vocal affirmative.

Girls did not understand this. I would explain that, no, it wasn’t that hard to survive without texting. It wasn’t like I was depriving myself of human contact. I was still reachable via any of my three email addresses, plus instant messenger or Facebook.

Or — and this typically drew the most confused look of all — I could always be called on my cell phone. I only had about 500 minutes per month, I’d say, plus free nights and weekends. So I was always happy to actually talk via phone.

Sometimes I’d get a nod back, or at least a smile that showed that they didn’t think I was completely crazy. Oftentimes, I couldn’t even get that. I began to realize that I had a personal public relations disaster on my hands.

Last year, I caved and bought a text messaging plan: 200 texts for $5 a month. I’d finally accepted that there were two situations in which I liked texting: 1.) At sporting events, when the volume of cell phones in a single stadium sometimes makes calling impossible, and 2.) For brief, GPS-type purposes during those crowded or just-too-freaking-loud-to-hear occasions.

Initally, I didn’t even tell friends that I’d unblocked text messaging. I let them know slowly, my phone’s message inbox pinging infrequently at first. That was last fall. Some friends kept calling, which I liked; others decided that the sound of my voice — or the threat of entire minutes of small talk — wasn’t worth the bother. They started texting frequently. Lately, it’s only gotten worse.

College students don’t use texting like I do: as a last resort. As a demographic, we use it to make dinner plans or — increasingly — to pass along a random line from whatever Andy Samberg’s latest “SNL Digital Short” was. The two word message — like a stray status update directed, for whatever reason, only to me — is as popular as ever. “Just showered,” SMSed one friend last week. “You would,” said another. “What up” my phone reads, over and over again, the question mark lost in our digital drain.

Last month, I noticed that 200 texts had become an imminently reachable monthly milestone. That became even more evident when I went to AT&T’s website and discovered these words:

“AT&T bills for all messages whether sent or received, read or unread, solicited or unsolicited.”

All of those unwanted texts — every “k,” and especially every “i’m on a boat” or “when bruce willis died at the end of sixth sense'” — had pushed me far past my limit of 200. And each of those overflow texts started costing me, sometimes just a dime, or sometimes more. I didn’t ask my parents to send me a video message of the JumboTron shuffle game at that sporting event. But they did, and it cost me a quarter each time.

The obvious solution for me is to bump up to the next level of text messaging plans. On AT&T, that means going unlimited — and I’m just not prepared to make such a change in lifestyle.

The thing is, I still prefer actually speaking to people. Like yesterday, when a random-but-pertinent thought popped into my head, I gave my friend a ring. I heard him sigh over the phone. “You’re wasting my minutes,” he said. I found that strange. This friend pays for about 1,000 minutes per month and gets free nights/weekends. In the four years I’ve known him, I do not believe he has ever reached that 1,000 minute plateau — and I’m adding up all of the time he’s spent on the phone during those four years combined.

Meanwhile, I’m looking at my latest phone data right now. I have 366 anytime minutes remaining this month (I started 15 days ago with 500). I have 4,852 night and weekend minutes, and 1,748 rollover minutes. Hypothetically, I have enough minutes to talk for nearly five full days without incurring any extra charges. Logically, I expect to use approximately two percent of those remaining minutes.

I should note, though: when prompted, AT&T didn’t send me that update about my minutes via email or the postal service.

No, quite naturally, they sent it to me in a text.

(H/T on the photo above to user kiwanja, via Flickr.)