Sometimes you just have to acknowledge change, in our selves and the world around us. Change can sneak up on you or it can be flung in your face. For instance, there was that time I worked for a university that was pushing their in-house medical services, so I ended up on their HMO assigned to their doctor. I did not have much experience selecting a doctor, but I knew what my doctor was supposed to be- some old guy with a gruff, but endearing personality who truly cared about my health by bringing a wealth of knowledge and experience to the table. The university medical services assigned me a female doctor about my age who had a friendly demeanor and tended to step out of the room to look things up. I learned that this was not a big deal, but it took a bit to adjust to my new world.

Like the rest of the world, I knew Wil Wheaton from Stand By Me and Star Trek: The Next Generation. Somewhere along the way, I heard that he had written a book.

As I started out indicating, the world has changed since 1990. With the coming of the Internet, a lot of people started websites and blogging caught on. I know you knew this, but remember how bizarre and imposing all that content was before decent search engines (or even still).

Here’s the thing that we don’t talk about enough- blogs are a new medium, primed for artistic expression, but we have yet to identify the characteristics that differentiate quality from not so good. For that matter, is blogging more like the Life of Samuel Johnson or more like music videos? In their essence, are they memoir as art or art as promotion?

Wheaton might argue that he did not start out as a writer fifteen years ago when he began blogging, but the medium demanded something else. Along with others, he has figured out how to create a body of text that rivals any modern memoir.

More than that, I think Wheaton has been a guide through the mire of modern technology for any artist looking to deliver their creations in this crazy connected world of ours. (All due accolades to Felicia Day for probably even more impressive path-finding.)

I know what you’re thinking (probably not, but let’s pretend I do)- Wheaton had a leg up with a ready-made fan base from his Star Trek years. If anything, that could have disinclined him from pursuing further public artistic endeavors. Anyone who has attended a pop culture convention knows what I mean- people are nice, but there is a point where knowing your audience too well has to make you question your choices. (Then again, Michelangelo hung in there with the Medici, so what do I know?) I think anyone who keeps making art and discovering new ways to create and experimenting with technology is leading us to the world that we want.

You’ve Got to Check This Out is a blog series about music, words, and all sorts of artistic matters. It started with an explanation. 237 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out are released regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry are posted irregularly. Notifications are posted on Facebook which you can receive by friending or following Craig.

Book written by Bill Bryson

I never imagined I would read so much written by someone born in Des Moines. What can I say? Life takes us to unexpected places.

If you have set foot in a bookstore in the past twenty years, then you have probably run into one of Bryson’s books: A Walk in the Woods or The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir or A Short History of Nearly Everything or one of the many, many others. Just a glance through the titles and covers foretells a light read ready made for a beer and a hammock. Come on now- The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain is hardly even playing fair anymore!

We have a long history of not taking humor seriously (and just about as long a history talking about that fact, too). We promise to change and agree to appreciate the funny among us, but then we go ahead and act like anybody could make a well-timed fart joke. All right, that might be a fairly low bar, but still, humorists do not receive the accolades that they deserve.

The thing with humor is that it can be used for more than body effluvia- it can make the indigestible comprehensible. I daresay it is a rarity among humanity who would willingly seek out a 500 page book on the history of science without a school assignment somewhere in the offing. No book so thick could qualify for past time enjoyment. Yet, the hours spent with A Short History of Nearly Everything will fly by. And you’ll have something to discuss at the next social gathering other than celebrities, sports, and the impending downfall of the U.S. based on the election results.

Bryson has long been a master of the travelogue, writing about Australia, Europe, and North America extensively. His approach to science in A Short History of Nearly Everything is similar, as he travels around talking to experts in various fields and then translating his learning into understand-ability for the lay reader. Fundamentally, the travel writer may be our prototypical non-fiction author. After all, travel combined with literacy almost required that a person capture whatever knowledge they had obtained of the outside world.

In the same sense, travel writing is possibly the ideal starting point for any writer. Essentially, it requires the discipline of noting sights and experiences. In that regard, it is not so far afield from journalism, the other field where Bryson achieved success. The intersection of the two may explain his prodigious output.

Circling back though, humor tends to breed more humor. Those who prove facile tend to keep at it. The rarity is finding a way to illuminate the world with that gift.

You’ve Got to Check This Out is a blog series about music, words, and all sorts of artistic matters. It started with an explanation. 238 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out are released regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry are posted irregularly. Notifications are posted on Facebook which you can receive by friending or following Craig.

Performed and written by Paul Simon

You probably remember Columbia Record Club, especially if you are of a certain age (what a horrible thought that we are of a certain age…). You may not have ever joined, but those advertising inserts caught your eyes.

“My name is Craig and I joined the Columbia Record Club.”
“Hi, Craig!”
“So, the deal was that you would get 13 records for a dollar and then you would buy seven more records at full prices. Oh, and you had to pay for shipping and handling.”

Really, there is a lot of garbage in that list of choices for picking your first 13. What if you couldn’t find 13 records that you wanted? How many Andy Williams records did you want to own?

I was obsessive, compulsive, and cheap, so I waited for the perfect selection in the Columbia Record Club ads until that special day arrived. Even so, I needed some filler. So, I made an educated guess. I don’t recall what else I picked, but I know the Hearts and Bones album by Paul Simon was meant to round out the list. I liked his other stuff and maybe I would like this album even if it was not that popular- at least I wasn’t hearing a lot of it on the radio. That may have been during one of those periodic Ozzy phases that the world seems to go through, so go figure that I wasn’t hearing a lot of Paul Simon.

Like I indicated, I had not expected a lot from Hearts and Bones, but I was an idiot. This was Paul Simon, perhaps our finest living songwriter.

We’ll talk later about what Simon & Garfunkel meant to my teen years (there are 239 of these left), but I love the way this album spoke to me when I was older and wiser. We have already established my collegiate affinity for music that had a limited audience. The truth is that other people mostly liked the Grass Roots and Jonathan Richman and the Raspberries and such once they heard them. They were not a hard sell. With Hearts and Bones, I pretty much found myself sitting alone in the room listening. I was the boor in the room trying to explain why it was so great. If you’re not a graduate student in philosophy, that’s not a good look.

As it turns out, plenty of people loved the album. I just didn’t happen to know any of those people at the time. So, where do we go with art for which we are an audience of one?

My Dad did quite a bit of acting over the years. One night, our town was hit by a blizzard and they were scheduled to do a show. My Dad made it to the theater as did enough of the cast to perform the show. A handful of audience members appeared at the appointed time for the sold-out performance. The cast asked them all to move down to the front and the audience obliged. The show went on, which is the eternal motto, though it is really a motto aimed only at the artists. Why did the audience show up? TV and radio still worked at home. More than that, I suspect the audience never really forgot that special performance.

Rene and Georgette Magritte with Their Dog After the War and The Late Great Johnny Ace still take me back to that place beside the stereo in that early apartment. Just me and Mr. Simon, a few memories and a little art.

You’ve Got to Check This Out is a blog series about music, words, and all sorts of artistic matters. It started with an explanation. 239 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out are released regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry are posted irregularly. Notifications are posted on Facebook which you can receive by friending or following Craig.