These guys who played the music are about Novaseeker’s age, give or take a couple years. I was a young teenager at the time, and they were my heroes. That generation of post-boomer men – born in the late 60s – must have felt and expressed the most angst of any generation since that of Hemingway and Fitzgerald. They may not have been all that intellectually articulate as youths, but they sure gave us a dose of their raw emotion. We Seattle children swam in it like fish, buying Sub-Pop LPs on vinyl and picking our favorite bands and musicians. I liked Soundgarden — Chris Cornell was my working-class hero. When we wanted to feel the dirty, rough chords we went with Mudhoney. Nirvana was a bit of a joke at first, being from the redneck logging town of Aberdeen, but they earned their respect in due course and Cobain came to define the cultural phenomenon. This was fitting, perhaps.

Today, I brushed up against a remnant of this in my kids’ preschool parent/teacher meeting. One of the central figures in the culture ended up sitting right next to me. I actually had no idea who he was when I first saw him — I thought he was your typical 40-something Seattle herb. He was dressed and coiffed like a contractor, but didn’t have the requisite physique. He was a somewhat small man with faded jeans, longish hair, a t-shirt and Vans. I hardly gave him a second look. However, when it came time to introduce ourselves, I definitely knew the name. It almost sounded like a joke at first, but there he was: a polite, mild-mannered dad at a parent meeting representing his little girl, who is my daughter’s age. I’m not going to identify the guy, because I wouldn’t want that myself, and it would be pretty low of me to do so, but he’s one of about a dozen major figures in the Seattle music scene from the 80s/90s and everyone reading would recognize his band.

He seemed to be a pretty normal, decent guy with a whole lot of money, and without a trace of the angst that animated grunge music. I think it’s for the best to see a guy who was once part of a scene that glorified waste, death and dissipation to be fostering life, but it’s doubtless been a long road. In fact, it’s been a long road for too many of us, and there are those left behind that we should remember in the coming autumn days of death’s remembrance. What it says to me is that, despite the absence of catastrophic war, disaster or pestilence, we still have reaped a grim harvest over the last couple of decades. To see men in their 40s reborn is an encouraging sign, because in their 20s these guys were masters of futility and doom.

Sometimes I think it is up to us somewhat younger men to interpret what happened in those dark years, but we need the input from those who were at their forefront, even if they didn’t fully understand or articulate what was going on at the time. Essentially, we need to distill their experiences into something powerful and meaningful not only on a spiritual and emotional basis, but on the intellectual plane as well. I know that Justin will have some of his own ideas about the dark message of grunge from that era, but I have come up with a fairly radical hypothesis concerning the spiritual phenomenon that he ought to find pretty interesting, and I’d like to explore it in collaboration with others who are interested in the spiritual bases of these trends.

For now, it would be interesting to see what these artists’ contemporaries have to say about this point in history. Sitting next to this unassuming, youngish former rock star who had a little daughter brought some questions to the fore — especially concerning the survivors of the era he defined. That generation of men that raged against a system stacked against them remains a mystery, but it is a mystery that can be unlocked and understood to a degree with stories and reflection. Just as I looked up to these guys as heroes as an adolescent, I still look to the spirit of that generation, which was thrown on the guns of “progress” and cut down in droves. Young men and their sons have many questions, and we need your experience to answer them. It was a distinct time, and it can’t be understood without your voice.

While I intend to concatenate these responses in a future post, I found a two-year-old article written for Salon.com that gives us a clue as to what has been going on in the late 2000s, and sheds some light on the cultural changes that may have helped bring awareness to the fore.

The article, “Women are the new men on TV,” reviews a number of TV shows scheduled to debut in 2007. Although many of these shows never got anywhere, the theme and tone of the shows is very revealing, depicting an America where men have lost their way, and their very manhood. I would urge readers to read the entire article, as it is a well-written piece and surprisingly candid coming from a female entertainment writer (Rebecca Traister), but I will include a few of the better quotes below for readers without the time to slog through three pages.

Traister starts off on a positive note, pointing to the empowering roles women are portrayed in:

Sept. 12, 2007 | Here’s the good news: When you turn on your television this fall, you’ll be watching more women kick more ass than you can possibly imagine — physically, economically and sexually. Hard-bodied and smart, rich and aggressive, confident and independent, the chicks who populate the prime-time lineup are being cast in roles that once belonged almost exclusively to men. These broads are cops and lawyers and masters of the business universe. Hollywood doyennes like Kyra Sedgwick, Mary-Louise Parker and Holly Hunter have already found midlife career solace (and good writing) on cable. This year, Julianna Margulies will star as a nasty Nancy Grace knockoff, Angie Harmon as a police lieutenant, Lucy Liu as a publishing executive, and Patricia Heaton as a news anchor; there’s a new “Bionic Woman” and a whole show about the world’s leading incubator of the future, “The Terminator’s” Sarah Connor. The flinty Cagneys, Laceys, Murphys and Buffys of yore aren’t the exceptions in the new TV season; they rule.

Note the adjectives used to describe the women in the shows: aggressive, confident, hard-bodied, independent. These are not traits that men generally find attractive in women, but perhaps women themselves enjoy being portrayed as such.

Next, the roles men are cast in are markedly different from those of women:

So what happened to the men? Nothing good, that’s for sure. Here, for instance, is what happens when Lucy Liu’s character, Mia, on ABC’s “Cashmere Mafia,” wins a work contest, and big promotion, over her boyfriend and colleague Richard: He breaks up with her, tail between his legs. “I thought I’d win and buy us a place and take care of you,” he explains. “And now that it’s reversed I just can’t see us … I’m 40 next month. I want someone to come home to. I’m going to want kids, and we’re just going in opposite directions.”

[...]

It can’t all be coincidence that this season is coming at the end of a summer in which the biggest movie hits have featured dopey, ill-groomed, irresponsible boys who score beautiful high-achieving women and then have no idea what to do once they land them. That’s right, we’re in Apatowland, baby, where the idea of a male romantic lead now begins with a water bong and ends with a fart joke. This isn’t an isolated trend; it seems to be a broad cultural response that speaks to enough people to keep it floating.

[...]

Among the degradations about to be heaped on television’s men? There are guys whose wives cheat on them, whose girlfriends get promoted over them, whose mates make more money than they do; guys who get left out of baby-making, who date women with penises and at least one who gets anally raped by a monkey.

Men are shown to be needy, awkward and juvenile. They are kicked around by women and sexually assaulted by monkeys — in fact some were actually portrayed as monkeys themselves in the short-lived “Cavemen” show (based on the Geico commercials). Now, the idea of a horny monkey may be a bit funny, but would any TV show ever portray bestiality as an acceptable punchline where a woman was concerned?

The depressing litany continues:

The idea behind “Carpoolers,” voiced several times during its pilot, is that daily trips to and from work are the only escape for these four miserable men, who have nothing in common except a barely disguised antipathy for the women in their lives. Aubrey’s wife has him by the balls: He waits on her, cooks and cares for the kids while she watches television and takes his money. Laird (Jerry O’Connell), the carpool’s founder, has been dumped by his wife, who cheated and left him with nothing but an ass-print on the sliding glass door.

[...]

The fury and confusion about shifting gender roles as expressed on “Carpoolers” is scary in its nakedness. At one point, Laird suggests to Gracen that he talk to his wife about how she’s spending his money. “My money? Ha ha, no,” says Gracen. “All the money I make is our money; it always has been. The money she’s making now is her money.” Aubrey chimes in, “Well at least you have your money. My wife gets my checks; I don’t even know how much I make!” To which Laird says, “My wife and I have it all worked out out. She gets everything. Her lawyer saw to that.”

Traister is starting to see the implications of these shows, and she doesn’t like them:

“Carpoolers” does more to impugn the American male than any high-earning spouse could ever do. But if this sitcom is any measure — and god willing it is not — the American female is fucked. There is no mode of femininity that satisfies these guys: The wife who is too successful makes her husband feel unmanly; the wife who doesn’t work makes her husband bake; the wife who leaves is a bitch who takes the furniture.

Welcome to the male world, Ms. Traister; these TV shows, bad as they are, contain more than a kernel of truth.

Below, one of the biggest sources of female discomfort is clearly revealed:

It’s understandable and honest to express some befuddlement with shifting expectations. But these are characters whose discomfort makes them unattractive, or silly-looking. They are whipped, flummoxed and helpless without the power to make the calls — in the bedroom or the boardroom. They can’t just be normal nice guys who are no longer entirely in control, who do childcare or play a subordinate role at work but who do so in a way that is still sexy, still powerful, instead of in a way that is marked as submissive, beaten down or pansy-assed. Nope, they must be buffoons, caricatures, dopes or just angry, neutered bastards.

That’s it: the men are unattractive after they have been subordinated. Traister wants them “to just be normal nice guys who are no longer entirely in control.” Doesn’t she realize that putting men in the role she and millions of other women wanted us to fulfill required a serious social and legal beatdown as well as a massive seizure of power? Like the woman who cuckolds her husband, she wants men to be reasonable and accepting rather than “angry, neutered bastards.”

Summing it up:

Little wonder that many of these programs include plotlines in which women and men turn in on their own gender to fulfill their social, professional and sexual needs. Many of us who rather enjoy the upturn in women’s professional, political, sexual and social fortunes might think that it could only help our relationships with the men we love and respect, and with whom we come ever closer to being considered equal. But if television is any measure, and this summer it appears to be measuring something palpable in our collective consciousness, then it seems that as our field gets closer to level, men and women are simply not playing well together.

Traister sees that it isn’t working, but she doesn’t get it. Women have a huge blind spot when it comes to what they have helped do to men. Women, together with a small elite of men at the apex of society, have collectively engaged in a war on the average American man, and even after doing so they can’t understand why men are acting like defeatists, bereft of pride and able to show defiance only in the most abject, naked displays of their emasculated state.

Lukobe sent me an AP article, the title of which, “APME survey: Newspaper cuts clip younger workers,” is somewhat misleading. In fact, if you read the text it is pretty clear who is getting the axe:

Most of the survey respondents said cultivating an ethnically diverse staff remains a high priority, even as their newsrooms shrink.

Strike one.

The more recent survey by the Associated Press Managing Editors didn’t seek to quantify the percentage of minorities currently working at newspapers. But diversity isn’t just about ethnicity, said Tom Kearney, managing editor of the Stowe Reporter, a weekly newspaper in Vermont.

“Because Vermont is soooooo white, diversity doesn’t involve race as much as it does gender and background,” Kearney wrote in his survey response.

Strike two…

“We did not have enough diversity to begin with,” wrote Lyle Muller, managing editor of The Gazette in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. “Cutting positions put us more at risk. Meanwhile, our community is becoming more diverse so we are getting farther behind in our efforts to reflect it.”

Steerike three! You’re out white boy!

Before anyone gets too hot and bothered about this blatant discrimination, I should point out that newspaper management is stupid. The vast majority of readers are white (Asians, for all intents and purposes, mesh with the white demographic). Blacks see newspapers as “white” publications and have never been a core demographic in their market, and many, many Hispanics don’t even read English, whether or not they are able.

Furthermore, women have already reached saturation in traditional media. I can’t see how adding even more women could do anything to increase readership. In fact, my money is on the opposite effect.

Although this trend of firing young white men at newspapers may be frustrating to readers, I actually welcome it, because it will simply hasten the newspapers’ demise. The sooner the old media goes down to its watery grave the better. Unless the papers can import Hindus and Chinese as replacements, they won’t even be able to make a decent transition to digital media, and from what I’ve heard, insourced workers tend to have some serious problems with the English language — not a good thing for communications companies.

So I see this as a wonderful opportunity. Young men have to quit seeing themselves as having a place in the system, and instead seek to beat it. The newspapers are reeling, and this is the perfect time to stand up and go toe-to-toe with them. When it really comes down to it, all they have is an audience, and that audience is dwindling. Time to take it away from them.

The setting is an ad agency – hardly an original idea these days – and other than the smoking, drinking and style, it appeared to be pretty much what one might expect in a modern office: chock full of women with a few “big men” running the show. As a drama centered on Don Draper, an alpha male stud around whom revolves a society of women, the show had something of a soap opera feel to it. Rather than a human being, Draper came off as a big, hunky prop. Only the women acted like real people — they were the primary actors in the show.

Male porn is primarily a visual exercise. It is really kind of a monotonous, predictable thing. Men perform a physical act, and women are generally the passive partners. In soaps and other dramas aimed at women, the main act is social and the sex – although an important component – is secondary. The lead man is a prop, passed from woman to woman like some phallic ark of the covenant that gives its bearer dominance.

Men have often been accused of objectifying women, but popular culture objectifies men to at least the same degree, just in a different way. The cheap thrill that women get out of dramas that portray men as shallow facsimiles of human beings whose only relevant appetite is for glamorous, socially dominant women (the self-fantasy evoked in female viewers) is every bit as sordid as the release men achieve from formulaic, ritualized porn flicks.

According to Matlack, he took the Good Men Project, an anthology of essays about what it means to be an American man today, to 50 publishers, and was turned down by all of them before he and his business partner, James Houghton, finally decided to go ahead with the project themselves. This despite the fact that Matlack is a successful entrepreneur who has started over 30 media companies, including the Television Food Network, a weekly magazine that has 15 million subscribers. The publishers told him “guys don’t read” and that they were counting on celebrity books, i.e. standard female fare, to see them through the economic contraction. Matlack recounts seeing a positive review of an anthology written by women solely during menstruation that appeared in the New York Times Review of Books while he was struggling to find a publisher for his Good Men anthology.

Despite the wholesale rejection by the publishing industry, he went ahead with the project anyway, and soon found a great deal of interest from men around the country. Matlack states that he is motivated by a double mission: addressing the issues that concern men and demonstrating the new paradigm in book production and promotion. As someone with a great deal of interest in both subjects, I support him fully in his efforts.

Now, wholly disillusioned with the publishing industry, Matlack writes:

We realized that getting a book deal with a publisher who would take 85% of the royalties made no sense to our Foundation. Like a heavyweight fighter who finally woke up to realize Don King is a crook, we bet on ourselves and wondered what had taken us so long.

Perhaps as men wake up and begin to shrug off the weight of a system that has grown increasingly burdensome, we will see more and more examples of new business models, new art and new thought emerging from the cultural wasteland of contemporary media and popular culture.

Matlack’s revelation and other similar stories can give us some hope.

All too often we are absorbed by the miserable work of survival, and we see and think of nothing but the task at hand, whatever it may be. It is easy to forget that there are still some vestiges of the primeval Eden, and they can serve as solace in this thankless struggle we all must engage in.

Sometimes, we can even forget that there is a sunrise every morning, and a springtime every year. The cycles of life, the tides, the wind and the stars are there for all men, mighty or meek, rich or poor.

It is far too easy to ignore this in the contrived world we have built for ourselves, so it is necessary, from time to time, to remind ourselves of our true place in the midst of this ancient creation that sustains us. So when it seems that all our work is for nothing, or that our happier days are long gone, it is helpful to stop, look, and remember that those great things that define our world remain, and the same sun that first shone on our infant eyes will rise again.

So I introduce another man, an Irish hero from the 19th century known as Charles Parnell. Parnell was a young, charismatic politician and a good-looking, charming man. Son of a Protestant landowner of English ancestry and his American wife, he nevertheless took up the Irish Nationalist cause, forging an Irish bloc that dominated British Parliament and brought Home Rule for Ireland ever closer to reality.

Parnell was known not only for his ability to lead men, but the magnetic effect he had on women as well. Virginia Woolf, although only a girl when he died, eulogized him in her novel “The Years,” writing that his death was like “something fading in the sky.” Parnell’s commanding presence in parliament combined with his gentlemanly demeanor in public made him all but irresistible to women. However, despite his political acumen and will, he must have been something of a romantic. Indeed, an idealistic rather than practical character would have been required for someone of his background in those times to take up the Irish national cause. Perhaps this only added to his attraction.

Eventually, it was Parnell’s romantic nature that got the better of him when he met a woman named Katherine O’Shea, better known today as “Kitty O’Shea.” Kitty was an English woman married to Captain William O’Shea, a Catholic Nationalist from Galway. Having connections with the liberal political establishment in London, she began to act as an intermediary between Parnell and Prime Minister Gladstone in the early 1880s. In time, Parnell fell in love with Kitty, which led to a hidden life with her in a suburb of London where he fathered three children by her.

One might think that a man such as Charles Parnell would have had plenty of opportunities to find eligible single women, but he was beguiled by Mrs. O’Shea, and his romantic nature led him to continue with what, in Victorian Britain, he must have known would eventually be the ruin of his career. Yet he soldiered on, advancing the cause of Home Rule, which appeared for a time to be within reach… and then the scandal broke.

Kitty’s husband, after waiting for several years – allegedly to secure an inheritance – finally filed for divorce, naming Parnell as co-respondent. Following the divorce, Parnell acknowledged his paternity of the children and married Mrs. O’Shea. Although the affair had been common knowledge in political circles, the public had no idea, and at first was inclined to disbelief. Finally the truth became impossible to ignore, and his political opponents had a new weapon with which to attack him and his cause. As his charismatic presence was reduced to a running joke, unionists and radical Catholic nationalists alike took out their knives and went for blood. As the gravity of his folly became apparent to all, Parnell’s former lieutenants turned on him, as James Joyce wrote in “The Shade of Parnell”:

“In his final desperate appeal to his countrymen, he begged them not to throw him as a sop to the English wolves howling around them. It redounds to their honour that they did not fail this appeal. They did not throw him to the English wolves; they tore him to pieces themselves.”

He did not survive the scandal by more than a couple years, dying in the arms of his wife and former mistress of a heart attack in 1891. He was 45 years old.

The effects of Parnell’s fall from grace had a profound influence on subsequent British politics, and have reverberated through Irish society for over a century. No one can say for certain whether he could have achieved a unified Ireland, but the split of his Irish Party, largely a result of the Kitty O’Shea affair, greatly weakened any chance for such an outcome.

One might blame the failures of the Irish independence movement in the late 19th century on the poor judgment of a man who was willing to risk all for an adulterous woman, but perhaps a less passionate character never could have achieved what Parnell did in the first place. There are lessons in these stories, but given their endless repetition over the years from the beginnings of history, it would be a silly fantasy to think that we will ever see an end to grand failures born of human weakness; nor should we ever expect an end to the likes of Kitty O’Shea, who will, from time to time, be the ruin of men as long as we walk the earth.

As for the story, I have no idea who wrote it, but it is nice, short piece that gives one an image upon which to reflect. And despite the fact that I cannot fully accept the author’s position, he certainly gives me some questions to ponder.

Enjoy:

The Fable of Lao Wang

The pleasures of spring in Seattle are short, but they make up for brevity with intensity. After many long months of cold, wet darkness with only the somber shades of the evergreens and the sodden, but green grass to remind us of life, a few intervals of sunshine and clear evenings appear between the misty gray days and damp, starless nights.

Last night I took a walk through the neighborhood, and although it was a bit chilly I could still make out the scents of the blooming flowers and fresh grass. It reminded me of the days of my adolescence, when I moved through this environment like a fish through water, taking for granted the beauty of nature, of which I was a part. In those days it was as though I lived in a state of symbiosis with the ebb and flow of life that washed over the silent rocks and still streets like a tide.

Each shift in the breeze brought a new scent — some were sweet, some full and others flat and sharp like the surface of the lake. The memories and emotions they brought back were tinged with regret, but also with elements of comfort. If, even now, in the sorrow of these middle years of life, I find myself at times swimming through the elements that sustain us all, then maybe when I am old I can continue to enjoy a conscious appreciation of their existence. Perhaps by then I will be little more than one of those silent rocks on the shore, washed by the waves and dried by the wind, but still all will be moving and growing around me, and that will be enough.

For writers, typography is one of the most important elements of presentation. Pictures are not necessary, but if used properly (i.e. not in a distracting manner) can enhance an article. A blog is obviously not a book, and should not attempt to mimic one, but blogs do have quite a bit in common with newspapers, and following a paper’s guidelines in both writing and some aspects of presentation is not a bad idea. However, a major difference between print and online content is resolution. The resolution of a computer screen cannot produce anywhere near the quality of printed text, so the text has to be a little larger on a screen, and if it is small, it must contrast well with the background. Line spacing should also be somewhat taller and justification less severe or absent onscreen. A good designer takes these things and many others into account in designing a blog, and templates produced by top-notch designers can be found for free or for a reasonable price, which makes it easy to find a good blog template if one is using popular blogging software such as WordPress. Personally, I like Chris Pearson’s designs, because he focuses on typography and clarity, both of which are invaluable for enhancing written content. This blog runs “cutline” — one of Pearson’s earlier themes.

Even before setting out to find a good blog template, a writer should look for a suitable host on which to host the blog. I have found that one-click installs are extremely helpful, as is a good user interface. Often, the cheapest hosting services come with slow, garbled interfaces and charge extra for services such as one-click installs. Fortunately, a good host will not be significantly more expensive, and the extra few dollars a month are well worth the investment. In the long run it may even be cheaper, too, as you get all the features up front and are never surprised by extra fees for vital services.

Those without any programming knowledge may not relish the idea of dealing with blogging software, but it has become very easy to install and run blogs without having to know any code at all. Customization does require a knowledge of markup languages, but it isn’t necessary, and one should be able to find a designer to do it without spending too much money. There is no doubt that some knowledge of code is helpful, but blog interfaces have been designed to work like the word processors that almost everyone is familiar with, so running a blog has become little different from operating a PC.

There is quite a bit of argument over which blogging software to use, but the most popular by far is WordPress. Although popularity does not always indicate quality, it does guarantee a large support community that provides endless “plugins” (programs that perform certain functions) and “themes” (templates) from which to choose. Most plugins and themes are free and can be installed without any need to learn code. Plugins can enable forms, “caching” (increases speed), search engine optimization (SEO — helps search engines correctly find and display your blog in searches), photo albums and much more. Themes are customized templates that conform to WordPress standards and code, and there are literally thousands to choose from. In selecting a theme, one should make sure that it is up to date and suitable to your purposes. Looking for themes can be kind of fun, and you can switch them around to see how each one looks on your blog. A good analogy would be shopping for a suit.

Online self-promotion has become an indispensible tool for writers. If a large proportion of potential customers or employers first encounter your work online, it’s important to put your best foot forward, and a self-hosted blog does a much better job of helping your content stand out from the crowd than free hosting services. Because of the greater choice of plugins and enhanced SEO targeting, the added flexibility of a self-hosted blog is a boon to online sales as well. Those who produce quality content – particularly those who plan to sell it – and are still using a free blogging service, should think seriously about setting up a blog on a quality host. Control over and ownership of one’s content, customized email, and a clean domain name are all immensely helpful for writers who are serious about earning money from their content and creating a unique identity online.

Because so many quality writers out there lack their own self-hosted blogs – even though writers need them more than typical bloggers – I am thinking about providing a service that helps them get started in this endeavor. Although books will not die, online publishing is becoming an essential part of breaking into a larger market, and it is a shame to see talented writers foundering on the rocks of mediocrity due to shabby blogging platforms.