A monopoly I can get behind...

Or "Monopoly," really, if you want to get technical about it.

The kind folks at Hasbro have deigned to include Nashville in their upcoming special edition of Monopoly titled "Here And Now." They're taking landmarks from 22 American cities and putting them together in this new version.You can vote for your favorites from all the cities on Hasbro's Monopoly site, and your three Music City choices are the Country Music Hall of Fame (too new), Music Row (too amorphous) and the Grand Ole Opry…

Yes, I voted for the Opry (and plan to do so again…you can vote once a day for the next little while…), but not so much for the institution of the Opry, but because they opted to show the Opry’s legendary former home, the Ryman Auditorium. (Check out the Ryman’s website for a history of that amazing building.)

Here’s the kicker: the city that pulls in the most votes gets their landmark slapped right square in the middle of what would be Boardwalk on the regular game.

Not that Nashville has a snowball’s chance in hell of landing in that slot, but if the folks at the city’s various media outlets (and I’m including CMT and GAC for a national perspective) got behind that aspect of the competition, we might have a fighting chance.

Ah, who’m I kidding…?

Rummaging through the archives...

In thinking about Buddy and Julie Miller again this weekend, I dug through my files and came across this story I wrote for The Rage (you know, when it was actually *called* that) in Feb. '04 after a terrific interview with Julie. I'm still of the habit of taping my interviews (I've been doing this 15 years, and haven't had anyone complain about being misquoted...this is why), and the transcription process for this one took a long time...simply because I had to fast-forward through a lot of laughter. I'm not overly sentimental about the stuff I write (I'm pretty much concerned with two things: Is my name spelled correctly in the byline? and Will the check clear?), but I remember this particular interview fondly and I wish Julie well...

Kittens and Curtains and Seasons of Sorrow

Meet Toe and Mama.

Julie Miller would be happy to introduce you, and does so on in a way on the website she and husband Buddy share, www.buddyandjulie.com. Toe and Mama are cats the Millers have been taking care of – "fostering," as Julie puts it – and they’re up for adoption to a good Nashville-area home. "Well, as far as Buddy’s concerned, they are," Julie says. "Me, I’m not so sure."

The site is pretty low-tech by web standards, and the pictures of cats dressed to impress doesn’t betray the Millers as anything more than pet lovers, really. Until you scroll down a bit to see Buddy at work…on stage with Dave Matthews and Phish’s Trey Anastasio.

Oh, by the way, the Millers are Nashville’s greatest musical couple. Thought you might like to know that.

The dichotomy that forms Buddy & Julie Miller, recording artists, also rolls over into Buddy and Julie Miller, married couple. Buddy, intense songwriter and guitarist, is also dry and funny and clever. Julie, whimsical and gregarious, is also a strident and learned believer in a loving Creator.

Together, as on 2001’s Buddy & Julie Miller album, or separately, on a slew of solo albums throughout the ’90s, the Millers’ musical partnership has survived and thrived, built mainly on the strength of their personal bond.

That’s not to say they haven’t had their trying times, both serious and not so much, especially over the past year. Last February, the Millers got to live out a long-held dream, playing their own music at the Ryman Auditorium, opening for long-time friend Patty Griffin.

But a technical snafu almost derailed the dream, as a downstage curtain caught fire and began smoldering, filling the auditorium with smoke. Julie, in what has to classify as one of the greatest quotes ever uttered from that stage, said, "That popping noise is making a burning smell."

"We didn’t know what was on fire. We just knew people were leaving, and we hadn’t really had that reaction before," Julie says, beginning the laughter that would continue while telling the untimely part of the show most people don’t know about. "At the beginning of the set, I looked down while I was singing and thought in the back of my mind, ‘I didn’t know my skirt was this long, lah dee dah dee dum…’ And then I’m singing another serious verse, and then I thought, ‘My skirt isn’t this long.’ And I realized I’d forgotten to pin my skirt, and my skirt’s falling off!"

The laughter comes in waves now. "This is just great, we get our big gig with Patty at the Ryman, and my skirt is falling off. So I try to stand with my feet apart like a big rock ‘n’ roll guitar player so my skirt doesn’t fall off," she says. "And I’m sure people are thinking, ‘Who does she think she is? Julie Miller, rock ‘n’ roll star…yeah!’ So I don’t remember anything but my skirt falling off and the place catching on fire."

While that night is easy to look back on and laugh, the tragedy that struck Julie and her family the following September is still hard for her to talk about.

For much of last year, Julie had been working on her next album, the follow-up to 1999’s Broken Things. Early in September, she found herself struggling to finish a song she was calling Underneath The Sky. "I had a notebook full of rewrites, and it’s not like it was just bad poetry or something, it just wasn’t getting done. I was searching for something, trying to find the ‘it’ to say what I was supposed to say," she notes. "I was in a conversation with Buddy, and I told him that all I could think about was life and death. I asked Buddy, ‘If I die, will you take care of my brother?’ And that’s when I really started to cry."

Julie’s brother, Jeff Griffin, had been injured in a motorcycle accident at age 15, and had spent the next 23 years struggling to create a life for himself. On Sept. 11, 2003, a day before Jeff’s 38th birthday, it was a beautiful day in the country outside Waco, Texas, and Jeff decided to mow the lawn between the houses he and his mother lived in.

Back in Nashville, Julie had been talking to a neighbor, asking about a house she was interested in having her brother come and live in. When she went back inside, the phone rang. "It was Buddy and he said, ‘Julie…’ and that was it. He was silent, and it scared me. Then he said, ‘Julie, Jeff’s been struck by lightning.’ That’s when you go into shock and nothing’s real. I asked, ‘How is he?’ and he said, ‘It doesn’t look good.’" The bolt struck Jeff while on a riding mower, in almost exactly the same spot where his accident occurred more than two decades ago.

While such a tragedy can’t be anything but life-changing, Julie takes clear-headed comfort in knowing her brother is where he was meant to be. "In the last year, he found this cowboy church out there in the country, and it changed him so much. God just got him ready for heaven," she says. "It was like God was saying, ‘A lot of my children have to suffer so much on their way here, but Jeff, you’ve already done your suffering. We’re just gonna relocate your birthday party up here.’"

So Julie spent the balance of 2003 with family in Texas, not thinking too much about finishing the record. But with the new year a month and a half old, Julie Miller knows she needs to get back in the saddle, and she and Buddy’s upcoming show at Mercy Lounge should help her do just that.

"I just want to give people and God as much realness as He can get out of me, kicking and screaming all the way. He invented everything that’s good and funny and beautiful and I just want to…" She pauses. "I just want to…I just want to ROCK!"

The roiling laughter kicks in again. "The deepest, most profound think I can do is be a goofy little child running in circles, basically." And you know Julie Miller is going to be all right.
-- Lucas Hendrickson

Earth Day observations...

Other cities would kill...OK, maybe not kill, but willingly deplete their budgets to have the kind of talent that graced the stage. The parts that I saw/heard: DeSol revved up the crowd, Buddy Miller brought them back to earth via his observations of the heavenly, and Sam Bush just flippin' rocked the house. As a music fan, I'm extremely lucky to live here.

(On a side note, anybody not moved by Buddy's United Universal House of Prayer album needs to have their heart checked. On a day devoted to raising the world's consciousness about protecting the planet, and in front of a crowd probably not expecting songs circling about the idea of faith, Buddy's humble, sincere nature wrapped up in world-class talent, made him the highlight of the day. It's just a pleasure to watch him work. And if you're so inclined, say a quick prayer for Buddy's wife Julie, an incredible artist/spirit in her own right, who's been up against some health/family issues of late.)

Cynics from both sides would point to the large number of SUV's parked around Centennial Park for Earth Day and make some sort of snide remark. As a centrist trying to abide by the idea of "live and let live," I'll say this...if you're driving an SUV, please just do your part and be responsible about how you drive.

In the interest of full disclosure, I'll say that I posess two vehicles that would make the average global warming extremist faint dead away: a 1995 Ford Thunderbird with a V8, and a 1999 Chevy Surburban my parents generously "sold" me last year. However, as a large land mammal, I can't fit in your average economy car, and as a freelancer, I can't afford a hybrid, though the technology is getting better.

But the idea of conservation needs to be more than the progressive mindset of preserving the globe at the expense of common sense or the conservative though process of preserving one's wallet size (personal and/or corporate) as valuable over all else.

In other words, conservation in my eyes means being a good steward of all your resources, natural and financial.

In this age of $3/gallon gas (and probably climbing much higher than that in the near future) as well as higher electricty costs (thanks ever so, NES), I keep reminding myself of those things that can stretch all those resources at the same time:

• Don't drive with the air conditioning on.
• Don't jam on the accelerator.
• Drive the speed limit.
• Turn off the lights when you leave the room.
• Turn off the air conditioner when you leave the house.

It's amazing how much the little things add up, not to mention help out. And it's amazing how far the little reminders can aid the cause...both natural and financial.

On shrills, bills, shills and poison pills...

I've enjoyed the back-and-forth I've been having with Dr. Duvall over the past couple days. And having given myself some time to percolate over the points he made in light of my thoughts of the Hobbs situation (that and I needed to do some, you know, actual work), here goes…

1. “Only way to advance a given position.” Perhaps, but how many reasoned, moderate opinions do we actually get to have advanced this way? Few, perhaps none. They get lost in the screaming.
   
2. “Poison pills hidden in the submitted bill.” Absolutely, no question, not only with that bill, but most likely with every other bill submitted over the past decade-and-a-half. Personally, at this point, I don’t know (nor do I care) whether a line-item veto is a conservative or a progressive value: as a citizen concerned, I want it now.
3. I accept your “priestly caste” analogy (or is it metaphor? Here I am, an alleged writer, and I always get those confused…), but when did we as an electorate give up the idea that smart is good? That capable is good? That taking into account all shades of the spectrum is good? And that abject manipulation of “the system,” whether at the street level or within the halls of power, is bad?

Yes, we’re in an age of specialization in all facets of society. Our mass media availability allows us to occupy our own media universe, more and more constructed specifically for us, and easily filtered to prevent any sort of material that doesn’t exactly hue to what we think we believe from coming through.

And because news media outlets are now so preoccupied with making sure they can hold enough of an audience to ensure their short-term survival, and aren’t able to use their experience and judgment and abilities to do the work needed to showcase the smart, capable people on all sides, the screaming wins, because it’s “good TV” because it brings in viewers or “good blogging” because it garners reaction posts.

I was talking with a friend of mine about this whole fiasco (and there’s really no other way to describe it, regardless of which side of the argument you’re on) and we came to the agreement that most blog comment rolls should be capped at 20, because much past that you’ve veered so far off course through name-calling and “he said, she said” that you can’t even see the original point even with a compass, a map and a great pair of binoculars.

That said, if you think I'm going to wade into Darren's thoughts on the recently announced Pulitzers right now, you're nuts. Let's just say we'll have to live in Agreetodisagreeville on that one.

Blogging 'essential' to good career?

I have no reason to believe the Boston Globe has been tracking the Hobbs situation from afar, but today they posted a story (registration might be required) about how employers are increasingly garnering info on potential employees by searching Google and reading personal blogs.

That's all fine and dandy, but if it's used as a shortcut to the actual vetting process needed in business today (much like it's more and more a shortcut in the academic world), then it's just lazy and stupid.

Most people *aren't* overly careful about what they write on their blogs, thinking that, for the most part, only their friends and close acquaintances will be the ones checking it out. Hence, snap judgments about what kind of employee they'll be made strictly by looking at what they blog, be it pictures of cuddly bunnies or rants for/against the government, are incomplete and generally worthless.

(BTW, for anybody out there wanting to hire me and is currently reading this, hello. Welcome. But please, take everything you see here with a grain of salt. This isn't my work product...send me an email and I'll provide you with enough of that to choke a horse. And I don't really want to pummel Red Wings fans...at least not today.)

The greatest run-on sentence in our history...

I needed to shake off the mental sludge building after yesterday's walk through the politics of personal attack, so I did what I normally do in those situations...I went to Tower Records.

Of course I saw a lot of mass media items I wanted to acquire, but thanks to my "overdeveloped sense of entitlement" (tm pending) from living in Nashville for a decade and a half, made the mental notes to call the relevant publicity folks to see if I could get review copies. One of the few perks of the freelance life.

But then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw it. The perfect flashback to my pre-misspent youth...the complete DVD edition of Schoolhouse Rock. And it was on sale.

*Swipe!*

Haven't had time yet to go through all 46 (yeah, 46!) shorts, but for some reason, I was compelled to jump right to the one concerning the preamble to the Constitution. If you're like me, you sang that song quietly to yourself during an 8th grade history exam. But if you're also like me, you often wonder why we get so riled up jockeying for position defending fractions of the first two amendments to the document when more emphasis needs to be put on the promises set forth in these 52 words...

"We the People of the United States,
in Order to form a more perfect Union,
establish Justice,
insure domestic Tranquility,
provide for the common defense,
promote the general Welfare,
and secure the Blessings of Liberty
to ourselves and our Posterity,
do ordain and establish this Constitution
for the United States of America."

If our leaders and lawmakers on all levels of government regularly reminded themselves of those lofty ideals, even in the midst of the arcane insanity that directing this country in a modern age requires, how much better off could we all be?

When somebody takes an oath to "preserve and defend the Constitution of the United States," I hope this is what they're thinking about, not about how they can simultaneously expand that document and contract certain freedoms at the same time.

This whole thing "blows"...

I've been contemplating the Bill Hobbs story/situation (and here's John Spragens piece in the Scene that started this whole mess) for the better part of the morning for the following reasons:

1. I've known Bill Hobbs off and on (mostly off) for the better part of 20 years. We were briefly at ACU at the same time, and we've worked with/for each other on a few occasions in the '90s, he for me on some CitySearch profiles, me for he on a couple of magazine stories.

2. I consider Bill a friend, even though we clearly have differing political standpoints.

3. I'm employed (on an adjunct instructor basis) by Belmont University.

My personal bottom line is this: I'm saddened for Bill because I truly believe, deep down, he's a good guy. And from conversations I've had with others truly in the know, he was not fired, nor was he pressured to do so.

But in his role as an identified media/public relations operative for the university, he represented Belmont at all times. At ALL times. Especially in the "blogosphere" (a term I really hate), where he had become a public figure.

Many times, working journalists are asked by their employers not to take public roles with organizations, primarily as a way to avoid potential conflicts of interest for both the journalist and the organization. It's tough to bring the hammer down on, say, a charitable outfit accused of misappropriating funds when your star columnist sits on the board.

While this scenario doesn't *exactly* apply to Bill's situation, a variation on it does. Bill has made a name for himself as a proponent of blogging, and in that expertise had carved out a place for himself professionally working for Belmont, within the confines of billhobbs.com and increasingly within the workings of an active political campaign.

Thereby the conflict of interest.

I'm a writer. I've carved out my (albeit small) professional space in the publications and companies I work for (including Belmont Univeristy) via my writing. If I was found to be writing treatments for, say, hardcore snuff films, especially while on company time, chances are I'd be let go.

Please note that I'm not equating "hastily scribbled stick figure cartoon" with "treatment for hardcore snuff film." I'm equating "published item that could cause current employer public image damage, especially in light of current cultural situations" with same.

Where I'm really saddened in this situation is the now-commonplace radical division (ie. the finger-pointing and name-calling) this has enflamed. Especially in people who want to be engaged in public discourse. It doesn't surprise me, it just makes me sad.

Where I disagree with your assessment, Darren, is your point number four. In our current political/media/moral/business/ethical climate, you needn't put either the words "left" or "right" in your statement.

Both sides are equally fanatical in their hatred of the other side, oftentimes for the same reasons, and it's that zeal and that desire to outshout the other that marginalizes the conversation, fractures our collective spirit, leaves the underrepresented masses in the middle out of the discussion and allows the extreme fringes on both ends of the spectrum to control the debate.

But here's what I predict will happen: This will run hot for a few more days (if not hours), and it will die down as all of these kinds of "First Amendment martyrdom" situations do, most likely in time for the intense, world-changing discussion of who's baby will arrive first, TomKat's or BrAngelina's?

We're easily distracted that way, much like I've been easily distracted by this ultimately "non-story". And isn't *that* the real cause for sadness?

'Tis a silly place...

The Preds' good luck charm...

The folks at Taco Bell probably wouldn't be too keen on this idea, but if my calculations are correct, every time Dances with Monkeys attends a Nashville Predators game with daughter Little Running Mouth (sans moi, of course), the Preds score at least five goals, thereby setting in motion the "free taco" giveaway.

Hence, methinks the Preds should just go ahead and give the two of them tickets to every home playoff game...and shoot, maybe even the road ones as well. Five goals a game will win quite a few tilts.

NFL to local TV: get off our yard!

It's not often you can get all 32 NFL team owners to agree on anything, but this time they're united, all right. On a bad idea.

In Mike Organ's sports media column this week in The Tennessean, under the subhead "Ban The Ban," he writes about the recent 32-0 vote by the owners to ban local television cameras from the sidelines of NFL games.

Wow. Bad move. Bad, bad move.

Yes, having been on NFL sidelines before, they can get mighty crowded, what with different photogs and videogs having different priorities on what they want/need to shoot.

(Actually, the biggest problem on the sidelines are the nimrods holding the parabolic mikes for both radio and TV use...yes, they look cool, but they people running them aren't usually the brightest bulbs in the chandelier, hence the nickname "bubble boys"...)

But the local guys are always running on a different schedule than the national folks, and shouldn't have to wait for some league-scrubbed and -approved highlights package to fly through the air before they do their reportage.

The league-produced highlight reel may not catch the drama wanted by the local folks (both broadcasters and audience), and certainly won't do anything to show either team involved in the game in a bad light.

This is just a stupid, short-sighted move on the owners part. Even being as big an NFL fan as I am, I wish the local sports guys would have the guts to not show the highlights at all...simply show the score and get some locker room reaction. Then cut to a graphic showing fans how they can contact their local team as well as the NFL office itself to express their displeasure.

Probably not going to happen, but one can dream...

The past catches up with you...

Yikes. I've been found out.

You nailed it on the head, Darren. Blogging for me is the textbook definition of "busman's holiday." I like to get paid for what I write (capitalism...yay!), and the thought of trying to build any sort of plausible audience through my own word of mouth is, to me, laughable.

Anyhoo, thanks for the mention...I think. Seemingly unlike most ACU-X bloggers (including my friend and Belmont colleague Mr. Hobbs), my blog thoughts probably lean a little more to the left than some would imagine and others would be comfortable with. So be it.

I'll try to be the Colmes (albeit, hopefully, packing a touch more on the cojones side) to whomever's Hannity...but all in the name of informed debate and civilized discourse. You won't drag me into a name-calling contest, you miserable, vomitous mass.

Regardless, it's been fun checking in on other late '80s era Wildcats through your blog(s), not to mention having the crap scared out of me via the Bird Flu posts, so let's keep the various dialogs (dialogi? multilogs?) going, shall we?

The "blame the media" mindset continues...

Nathan Thurm, anyone?

The White House gets caught in another "parsing the truth" situation (my finely honed media experience would re-title it "a lie") and increasingly worthless WH mouthpiece Scott McClellan expects an apology from the media...

From Think Progress:
McClellan: Media Should “Publicly Apologize” For Reporting On Mobile Weapons Lab Story

All you really need to know about Wrestlemania 22...

No, it wasn't about Rey Mysterio winning a belt bigger than him...it wasn't about seeing Mick Foley speared through a flaming table...it wasn't about *not* seeing Shelton Benjamin pull off several "holy $#!+" moments for the second year in a row (thanks, Kevin Dunn)...it was about seeing a man realize that maybe marrying the boss' daughter wasn't such a good idea after all...