Springsteen Challenge Day 2: Favorite Lyric

This is like choosing which finger to cut off.  There are so many fantastic lyrics.  The easiest way is to give a countdown from five to one, identifying the four that it’s not, but why they are in the top five.  To me, Bruce’s lyrics are poetic.  They are expressive in a way that gives meaning to many, while being written from the perspective of one.  Bruce is our modern American poet laureate, the common man’s voice; he’s blessed with the uncanny ability to tap in to the zeitgeist, transcending the rapidly changing American landscape, understanding the unique individuality we possess within our communal society.  He is politically liberal; so am I, but his struggles, his fitful anger against his own unhappiness with himself, and his look at the American landscape as he sees it.  So, while I don’t intend to make this a soapbox for my own brand of progressive politics, much of my connection to Bruce is that we see the world similarly, so there may be some political under/overtones.

Springsteen Challenge Day 1: Favorite Bruce Song

It was inevitable that I’d undertake the 30 day Springsteen challenge, and quite apropos – yesterday was the 30^th anniversary of the release of Nebraska, one of my favorite Bruce Springsteen albums – one that is dark, and brooding, and overlooked by casual fans.

The 30 day Bruce Challenge can be found, by the way, at http://fuckyeahtheboss.tumblr.com/post/908819375/30-day-bruce-springsteen-challenge

The 30 day Bruce Springsteen Challenge consists of 30 days of writing about your favorites with regard to Bruce Springsteen – song, album, moment, live performance, lyric.  All of them.  They’re in there.  I won’t completely rip off that website – click the link to see what each writing prompt is.  I’ll preview the following day’s post at the end of each post.  I’ll be writing these a few days in advance, so that, in case something happens, I don’t miss a day.

Report the news, don’t become the News…room.

My wife said something to me today before she left for work: “Oooh, Newsroom is on tonight!” and “Stop leaving dishes in the sink, we have a dishwasher for a reason!”  My wife works in the newsmedia.  I’ve stopped trying to explain exactly what it is she does, because she wears several hats there, and unfortunately, none of them are fedoras with a card saying “Press” sticking out of the band of fabric on it. When it came to light that Aaron Sorkin was creating a show for HBO called “The Newsroom” that was billed as a fast paced, fictional, insider look at a news program, we were both intrigued, though I couldn’t help but wonder, will the show shoot itself in the foot by being in the “real” world?

Less Change, Even Less Hope

A few weeks ago, when I learned of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, I made a fairly bold statement.  Of course, I did it via Twitter, so it was lost in a sea of dick and fart jokes, as well as updates like “making dinner and watching American Horror Story!” Suffice to say, it’s not like it hit the twitterscape…verse…osphere with the resounding hydrogen bomb-level explosion I’d hoped.

Hoarding Nostalgia

I am someone who doesn’t really like to throw things away.  Case in point: I have this old, beaten up messenger bag that has been with me since 2005.  I started using it regularly in 2006, and it basically became the thing I carried with me everywhere I went. I stuffed things into it, forced its buckles to snap shut - tore at it, dragged it through the rain, threw it, dropped it, scraped it against all manner of things.  Surprisingly, though I imagined myself carrying this messenger bag, which I began to call my “murse” throughout the streets of lower manhattan (and I did - my senior year at NYU), I mostly toted it with me in Northern NY - to and from work at this crappy little water park called the Enchanted Forest/Water Safari. No one even bothered to make fun of me, because they knew I didn’t care.  When I moved on to Columbus to attend The Ohio State University, the bag came with me.  I carried it with me everywhere.  It became rather threadbare.  It came with me still to Stony Brook, NY, to my first professional job.  It’s with me now in Montclair, NJ.