December, 2004
Blog Archives.

Left and Leaving

Scene: The home office of Bears Will Attack. Our editor sits at his desk in a fabric-covered box, phone numbers, pen-and-ink cartoons and a newspaper photo of Chelsea Clinton thumbtacked to the walls.

BWA: New Year's Eve is tomorrow. I should make some resolutions.

Clockwork Robot Parrot (imagined): I can think of dozens, if not hundreds of things you could resolve to do, or do differently.

BWA: I guess so. It seems pointless to make promises like that to myself. Besides, I think everything is pretty well under control.

Clockwork Robot Parrot (imagined): What about getting your van and driver's license paid up and legal for the first time in 8 years? What about running more than once a month so your heart doesn't give out when you're 40? What about getting some pants without mustard stains on them? WHat about paying that credit card bill from 1998? Your CD's aren't really organized very well anymore. You eat hamburgers too often. You don't really get enough sleep. You never call your grandmother. You need a new job.

BWA: Well, crap.

The imaginary robotic clockwork parrot is right, but we hate to admit it. We are terribly, woefully, bafflingly inept at the little things. We woudl prefer a romantic set of resolutions. Learn to play 'Go', the ancient Japanese strategy game. Bring more costumed supervillains to justice using our superior detective skills and boomerangs. Captain a three-masted ship through the the Persian Sea by the light of the moon. Things like that. This year, however, we intend to think smaller, though it galls us to admit it.

In our defense, the past year was a complicated one, involving great calamity and upheaval in the form of the shipwreck-style dissolution of not just one, but two long-lived and seemingly-lifelong romances; what proved to be an ill-considered move to New York City; some instances of burglary, and a host of lesser catastrophes and triumphs. As usual, we failed to reflect on any of these events in any sort of meaningful way, and will continue to make the same errors in the future. Luckily, we possess the ability to mistake futility and poor judgement calls for noble perseverance in the face of great opposition.

Since this web-log has now been in existence for over a year, we can use it as a personal history, and check to see what we were doing a year ago. Typically this sort of search reveals only that we were complaining about largely-insignificant things, making grand plans, reacting to change with varying degrees of sophistication and success, listening to indie-rock records, and being in love. This is more or less the situation today.

Last year we spent the day after New Year's driving home from New York to Washington, exhausted but reasonably content, listening to Uncle Tupelo on the car stereo. This year we will make the same drive, except the "home" part will have switched to a different part of the sentence. That may mean something profound about change, or mid-Atlantic coastal immigration patterns among college-educated suburban young people, but probably it's just one of those things.

Memory will rust and erode
into lists of all that you gave me:
some matches, a blanket, this pain in my chest,
the best parts of lonely,
duct-tape and soldered wires,
new words for old desires,
and every birthday card I threw away.

Bears Will Attack 12/30/04 | link

Bears Will Attack Christmas Special

We are working hard on our New Year's resolutions, a complicated list of career plans, life goals, romantic weekend getaways to Canada, real estate investment ideas, get-rich-quick schemes, kickboxing lessons, a night-job at a discount mattress warehouse and a series of cunning shortcuts through the city that will shave minutes off our morning commute.

No, that is a lie. We are just feeling lazy and uninspired this week, and we suspect most of our loyal readers are still on vacation, rolling heavily on the sofa and emitting turkey-flavored gases. Given this state of affairs, we take this oportunity to present the second annual Bears Will Attack Holiday Photo Album. We hope you enjoy it.

Bears Will Attack 12/29/04 | link

Shark Movies

Winter has descended upon New York City with an exact and terrible vengeance. We have remarked upon this before, but we were wrong. Earlier comments about intense, penetrating, punishing, brutal cold were mistakes, weak-hearted sniveling at the drop of a few degrees. But now we have learned the error of our ways, and we can only offer up prayers to the storm elementals that it will not get any worse. This seems unlikely, as it is only December, and the rough going of true winter very likely lies ahead.

Most of our unhappiness with the cold can be attributed to the 25-minute aimless trek around lower Manhattan that we took last night, for no better reason than bravado. When asked if we knew how to find a certain intersection, we said yes, though we knew in our heart it was a lie.

We have always had a horrible sense of direction, but we are also great believers, as regular readers of this web-log are aware, in the fundamental interconnectedness of all things. Random walking in what we hope might be the right direction often proves fruitful, if not accurate, but the coarse-throated old man of winter thwarts such optimistic methods of navigation, and leaves us with wet feet and ill tempers.

We did get to see "The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou", which we loved. We expected to love it, as it was a Wes Anderson movie, and we love Wes Andserson movies so much that we want to marry them. You know how you have an idea of yourself that is slightly more heroic, steadfast and admirable than you actually are in your day-to-day life? This self-image, in our case, is defined in large part by Mountain Goats songs, Hunter Thompson essays and Wes Anderson movies. We identify best with heroes who are optimistic, melancholy and brave in the face of self-inflicted calamity, and Wes Anderson movies make us feel that this is a right-thinking and noble way to be.

The movie also features Owen Wilson saying "I've never seen so many electric jellyfish in all my life!", which is an excellent line, delivered with the exact correct mixture of enthusiasm and delight.

You chose a giant step, caught your eye
Guaranteed sweetness that you thought broken
And you were not fine

Bears Will Attack 12/28/04 | link

Too Far Inside a Car

We have returned from our working holiday, our minivan crusted with ice and our arms laden with new sweaters. When we have managed to dig ourself out from underneath all this wrapping paper, we will share some heartwarming Christmas photos. In the meantime, here are some cold, hard facts:

Bears Will Attack Holiday Checklist
Number of miles traveled: 1104
Number of cities/towns visited: 5
Number of sweaters/sweatshirts received: 6
Number of mason jars filled with bootleg Henry County moonshine received: 1
Number of pounds gained: 240
Number of pounds gained directly related to turkey consumption: 188
Number of times our uncle disparaged black people: 13
Number of times our uncle disparaged Hispanic people: 7
Number of times our uncle disparaged his shiftless, drug-addled white neighbors: 3
Number of grandmothers visited: 2
Number of pictures taken of downtown Roanoke: 6
Number of absent brothers: 1
Number of indistinguishable cousins' boyfriends: 3
Number of dogs: 2
Number of beds slept in: 3
Number of sofas slept on: 2

Our younger brother, who is something of an itinerant wanderer, did not make it back from South America for Christmas, which earned him a fussing from Granny Nellie on the telephone. It also earned us extra Christmas presents from our mom, since she had only one child to buy gifts for.

We also earned a mild fussing for not living closer to Martinsville, Virginia, although we had traveled many hundreds of miles to be there for Christmas. When we objected that two other grandchildren had moved even farther away (Lima, Peru and Sarasota, Florida, respectively), our cousin Mark said "But you moved north." The legacy of the War Between the States dies hard in field country.

Bears Will Attack 12/27/04 | link

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

This is the last update you will see here at Bears Will Attack for several days, angel-winged readers, as we will be traveling hither and yon over the snow-edged highways of Virginia. Tonight we leave Washington for Richmond, tomorrow we leave Richmond for Roanoke, Thursday we leave Roanoke for Martinsville, Saturday we leave Martinsville for Washington, and Sunday we drive back to New York, our eyelids heavy with exhaustion, our limbs leaden with Christmas-related fatigue.

But no matter. Cheer and goodwill will follow like starlings in our wake, and our face will be lit with holiday gladness. We can hear the Christmas songs ringing faintly in our ears as we type these words.

Unlike some grumpy web-journalists, we will not treat you to the obligatory rant on the topic of Christmas carols. We have nothing against them on the whole, and we are fond of many. Our favorites are the sad ones, of course, of which there are several.

Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas
This is, perhaps, the most maudlin of the sad Christmas songs, but also the most poignant. The narrator is clearly beset with troubles, but heroically, she refuses to acknowledge them, except in passing. "From now on our troubles will be out of sight" and "From now on our troubles will be miles away." Clearly she is hoping that things turn around. The saddest part is the last verse, when she amends the thought "Through the years we all will be together" with "if the fates allow". It is the courage of the broken-hearted that stirs us the most.

Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)
A host of rock bands have recorded versions of this song, including U2, the New Bomb Turks, Jon Bon Jovi, Joey Ramone, and, regrettably, Cher and Rosie O'Donnell. No one has yet captured the working-class, middle-American heartache of the song, but we have faith that someday someone will. Now the snow's comin' down. Baby, please come home.

I'll Be Home for Christmas
This one get us right where we live. The hero of this song makes bold and gallant promises to the ones he loves. He'll be home for Christmas, he pledges. You can count on him. He is a soldier, maybe, or a sailor in the merchant marine, or a young lad wrongly-accused of theft and arson and forced to take up a life of piracy and freebooting on the Spanish Main, but his bright ideals are undimmed by his ill-fortune, and he promises his best girl he'll be there on time. But then, sadly, he finishes the thought. "My darling, Christmas eve will find me right where the love light gleams. And I'll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams." He will not be safe and warm on Christmas Eve after all, just lighting a candle on the deck as the dark night closes down over the cold north Atlantic sea, dreaming of home.

Frosty the Snowman
This song is not one of our favorites, but it is sad when the lovable talking snowman dies because the sun melts his snow-body.

Fairytale of New York
All-time best sad Christmas song ever. Written and performed by the Pogues, and showcasing all the drunken, hopeless, black-nailed majesty of Shane MacGowan at his finest (worst), as he coughs out his half of a Christmas Eve love song to his long-suffering girl, whose rough-tongued but true-hearted verses are sung by the late Kirsty MacColl. As the duet progresses, he declares his ever-lasting love for her from the floor of the drunk tank in a New York City jailhouse, and she scolds and harangues him, glad that this Christmas will be their last.

But eventually her hardened facade breaks, and she sings "You took my dreams from me when I first found you", her voice filled with anger, disappointment and sorrow. He answers her as best as he can, through hopelessness and tears, as the NYPD choir sings 'Galway Bay' and the church bells ring the end of the year. "I kept them with me, babe. I put them with my own. Can't make it all alone, I've built my dreams around you."

There are truckloads of cheerier Christmas songs, fields of silver bells and wise men and reindeer. But it is the sad ones that remind us of the better things in life, and though we wish our loyal readers a Christmas filled with light, laughter and song, we respect the sadness for those that have gone on before us, those who are far away, and those we have misplaced. Light a candle for the lost hearts at sea.

The boys in the NYPD choir
Were singing 'Galway Bay'
And the bells were ringing out
For Christmas Day

Bears Will Attack 12/21/04 | link

A Working Holiday

We returned to the District of Columbia last night, moving swiftly just ahead of the driving snow. It is colder than a tomb here in the federal city, and we had forgotten the acute and miserable suffering that comes from waiting in such weather for the city bus to come along.

Last night at the Emerson Street House, we slept on the living room sofa, and Edward left the Christmas-tree lights on. We considered getting up to turn them off, but they made such a lovely glow that we left them on, and went to sleep dreaming of crowded stores and little orphan girls selling matches in snowy streets.

We enjoy Christmas, especially the narrow corridor where secular traditions, free from naked commercialism, lie. Christmas lights, along with grandmothers, ugly sweaters, presents wrapped in the Sunday funnies and drifting snow fall into this category. Christmas lights are like moonlight, in that they do not illuminate; they are decorative in the purest sense. The light from the sun, or desk-lamps, or headlights, is utilitarian. We need it to see by, and so, even if we appreciate it for its beauty and warmth, it is ultimately a necessary thing. Christmas light serves no purpose other than to gild. The boys really fixed up the Emerson Street House this year. It's right out of a Norman Rockwell painting.

Well, we have a busy week ahead of us, caroling readers, and no time for idling. We will be in Richmond, Roanoke, Martinsville, and back in Washington before we return to New York. It's the Bears Will Attack Holiday Tour of Virginia. We may issue t-shirts, or some other collectible. It would be nice to spend Christmas in one place for a change, but there is a certain nobility in motion, going from house to house bearing wrapped gifts in shopping bags and waving hello to a new set of faces each day, a John-Candy-movie-like sense of modern-ness. Divorce and geography may have turned our Christmases into working holidays, but that will not deter us from enjoying them.

You erased so many mistakes
By sitting up and smiling

Bears Will Attack 12/20/04 | link

A Great Confusion of Birds

But the birds of the wasteland will have their place there; it will be a heritage for the bittern and the raven, and it will be measured out with line and weight as a wasteland.
-- Isaiah 34:11

Bears Will Attack 12/17/04 | link

Desert Island Records

"I own this store called Championship Vinyl. It's located in a neighbourhood that attracts the bare minimum of window-shoppers. I get by because of the people who make a special effort to shop here. Mostly young men who spend their time looking for deleted Smiths singles and original (not rereleased, underlined!) Frank Zappa albums. Fetish properties are not unlike porn. I'd feel guilty taking their money, if I wasn't, well, kinda one of them.''

Today is an excellent day, here at Bears Will Attack. Though it is impossibly, bafflingly cold on the streets of New York City, we are wearing long underwear. And though our Christmas bonus was small enough for us to narrow our eyes and feel slighted and unappreciated, we did receive it a month earlier than we expected, enabling us to purchase lavish Christmas presents and feel magnanimous. And, best of all, though the soundcard on our crappy work computer died, we got up early and went to the Target store and obtained a CD discman, which is currently plugged into the speakers on our desk, enabling us to listen to Ted Leo's excellent 'Shake the Sheets'.

Since rock music has brought the gift of itself today, we thought we could give back, by sharing our top 50 all-time favorite records. We had intended to share our top 100 all-time favorite records, but the task became too daunting. It might have been possible if we had been seated in front of our record collection, but as it is, memory will have to serve.

There were several parameters we placed on ourself when making this important list. All of the records present are full-length studio releases. No EP's, no "Best Of" albums, no B-sides collections, no live records. Which is not to discount such things. The "We Look Like Animals" EP by the Promise Ring is, song-for-song, their strongest release, and, lacking the extensive back catalog of such rock artists as Prince and Tom Petty, we are forced to rely on their greatest hits collections when making mixtapes. Also, one of our favorite R.E.M. songs of all time (Ages of You) appears on the B-sides collection 'Dead Letter Office'. The same can be said of Superchunk's most rocking song ever (Her Royal Fisticuffs), which appears on both an EP and a B-sides collection, but not on a proper album.

More importantly than these narrow-ish, record-store-clerk rules was the self-imposed honesty that we forced ourself to observe. Many of these records are no longer cool, or perhaps, were never cool in the first place (see also: Counting Crows, Toad the Wet Sprocket), but we cannot deny the powerful impact they once had on us. Also, we often came to bands or songwriters through their less-critically-acclaimed albums. It is still cool to name-drop the Replacements, but 'All Shook Down' is not the one to mention. But it can't be helped.

Our only fear is that, in our attempts to be fair-handed to the past, we may have overlooked the present. For the last year, we have been listening incessantly to records by Minus the Bear, The Killers, the Decemberists and Maritime, but we are uncertain if these will stand the test of time, so we erred on the side of caution and left them off, replaced with albums we may no longer even own.

We are also somewhat embarassed by the lack of women who appear on this list. With the exception of Sarah McLachlan, Superchunk, That Dog, the Indigo Girls, Magnetic Fields, Mates of State, Pixies, Jawbox, Velocity Girl and Versus, most of these bands are all dudes. (Some might sniff at even that list, pointing out that some of those bands are mostly boys, featuring a lone girl on bass. But we have always disliked that sort of thinking, as it suggests that bass-playing is somehow less artistically-worthy than singing or playing the guitar.) We can only plead truthfulness in our defense, and the fact that fewer women appear in rock bands. This, we realize, is a product of our patriarchal society denying electric guitars and encouragement to young girls, but it is not something we can change. We intend to do our part when we have a daughter, but for now, it will have to stand.

Bears Will Attack's Official Top 50 Desert Island Records

Archers of Loaf (Vee Vee)
Van Morrison (Moondance)
Superchunk (Come Pick Me Up)
Bruce Springsteen (Born to Run)
Promise Ring (Nothing Feels Good)
American Music Club (San Francisco)
The Long Winters (When I Pretend to Fall)
Lemonheads (It's A Shame About Ray)
Bob Mould (Workbook)
Ben Folds Five (Ben Folds Five)
Braid (Frame and Canvas)
Paul Simon (Graceland)
Replacements (All Shook Down)
Magnetic Fields (69 Love Songs Vol. 1)
Bad Religion (Generator)
Camper Van Beethoven (Key Lime Pie)
Guided By Voices (Bee Thousand)
R.E.M. (Out of Time)
That Dog (Retreat from the Sun)
Dinosaur Jr. (Where You Been)
Mountain Goats (We Shall All Be Healed)
Wilco (Summer Teeth)
Elvis Costello (Spike)
Crooked Fingers (Crooked Fingers)
Superchunk (Here's Where the Strings Come In)
Indigo Girls (Rites of Passage)
Knapsack (This Conversation is Ending Starting Right Now)
Mates of State (Team Boo)
Dismemberment Plan (Emergency and I)
Sarah McLachlan (Surfacing)
Toad the Wet Sprocket (Dulcinea)
Pixies (Doolittle)
Versus (Two Cents Plus Tax)
Bruce Springsteen (Born in the USA)
Uncle Tupelo (Anodyne)
Death Cab for Cutie (Transatlanticism)
Ben Folds (Rockin the Suburbs)
Peter Gabriel (So)
Modest Mouse (The Moon and Antarctica)
R.E.M. (Document)
Jealous Sound (Kill Them With Kindness)
Ryan Adams (Heartbreaker)
Counting Crows (August and Everything After)
Violent Femmes (Why Do Birds Sing?)
The Cure (Disintegration)
Velocity Girl (Simpatico)
Billy Bragg (Worker's Playtime)
Sugar (Copper Blue)
Jawbox (For Your Own Special Sweetheart)
Tom Waits (The Early Years, Vol. 2)
They Might Be Giants (Flood)

List-making is a curiously-satisfying exercise. We cannot expect anyone to care, but we feel as if something has been accomplished, documented, made permanent. We recommend making your own.

Bears Will Attack 12/16/04 | link

Memorandums, Dreadful Memorandums

We received some uplifting emails yesterday from a friend of ours who works in an office. These are actual emails sent to the entire company by the receptionist.

NOTE: In order to protect the identity of the brave and well-meaning employee involved, her name has been changed to "Wanda Mae" and the name of the company has been changed to "Company".

------ Forwarded Message ------
From: Receptionist
To: All Staff

Good morning, everyone

There is a Savior. His name is Jesus Christ. You don't have to be afraid. He loved us all enough to die on the cross for our sins. I'll resign from my position, if this offends anyone. I stand firmly behind Jesus.

Sincerely,
Wanda Mae

Wanda Mae's courage began to flag shortly after sending this bold mission statement, however, as she considered the implications of her offer.

------ Forwarded Message ------
From: Receptionist
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 10:47:04 -0500
To: Boss, All Staff
Subject: previous e-mail message

Dear sir:

I do not wish to resign. I simply felt that it was neccessary to share the good news.

Sincerely,
Wanda Mae

She clearly feels a bit persecuted, which strikes us as odd, given the primacy of her faith in our society, particularly at this time of year. But perspective is everything. One man's overwhelming religious monolith is another man's embattled band of crusaders.

At least this particular excerpt of office communication clearly emanates from an actual human being. One hint is the phrase "I stand firmly behind Jesus", which is a bizarre and slightly inappropriate thing to write to your co-workers, and thus restores our faith in the beauty of the bizarre and slightly inappropriate when it comes to interpersonal relationships. Since we moved to New York, we have been privileged to witness firsthand the degrading and numbing falderol that passes for communication in the corporate environment, and believe us when we tell you that we would give our entire stack of useless three-ring binders from the HR department for one instance of normal human behavior.

For instance, today we forwarded some work-related material to another member of the editorial department, who, it turns out, was not supposed to be at work today. This colleague asked us to please forward such material to a different co-worker "going forward". Which means "in the future" or "later today." Why she felt compelled to resort to such machine-like crypto-speak is beyond us.

The worst part of it is that we just know there are all sorts of books and presentations explaining things like "the value of clarity in corporate communications", and they favor such monstrously weird and stuffy phrases like "on a going-forward basis". Using simple, direct English based on the assumption that the person to whom you are speaking is another human being much like yourself is considered unprofessional. We may live to be one thousand years of age, and we will never understand it.

Bears Will Attack 12/15/04 | link

The Six-Fingered Man Returns

Yes, we have left you alone for many days, easily-distracted readers. In our absence we see that you have knocked over the houseplants, eaten all the food we left in the bowl, and drunk all the water. It's a good thing we left the toilet bowl lid up, just in case.

We were away in Watergate City, once again. Sometimes we can't recall why we bothered to move to New York at all. This time we took the Debutantes with us (a rock band that features the Cutest Redhead of All Time), so they could play at the Galaxy Hut, which is a cute little bar in Arlington. We also performed at this musical event, playing bass for the wold-famous Olivia Mancini, who assembled a small group of musicians to play half-a-dozen of her excellent songs. The material was excellent, though it suffered somewhat from being played by a bunch of people who learned, arranged and practiced it over the course of eight hours of so. There's nothing like cruising along smoothly through a series of 8th-note major-fourths, only to discover that the rest of the band has moved on to the bridge. Also, playing bass for an entire weekend after a two-year break makes your fingers feel like tiny hammer victims.

"Help us!" they seem to say, in their wrinkly little voice. "Or, at least stop smooshing down those steel-wound strings with us. We are not made of stone."

But what are you gonna do? Not rock? We think not.

We know that we promised exciting blog-fare this week, anxious tales of rain-drenched romance and corporate raiding, but the sound-card is dead on our crappy work computer, which means that we cannot listen to indie-rock CDs, which is the grist that fuels our creative mill. We hate this situation for many reasons, not least of which is that now we have nothing to listen to but the faint sounds of office drudgery coming through the halls to our secret fort on the 9th floor. Someone's getting coffee. Someone's asking Steve to take a look at their printer. Someone's upset about the satellite feed times getting screwed up. It saps the soul's silver strength.

I want to call requests through the heating-vents
and hear them answer with a whispered "no"

Bears Will Attack 12/14/04 | link

Laundry Day

We are home from work once again. This time it's just a comp day, as the anniversary of our birth generated only one day off. We feel this policy is somewhat miserly. Why not the whole week?

At any rate, we do not intend to spend the entire day eating cereal and watching daytime television. We have already spent the morning doing that, and 'ER' re-runs have given way to 'Judging Amy'. Although we did watch an episode of Seinfeld that we recorded with the DVR.

Elaine: We reversed positions so there was no funny business.
Jerry: Reversed positions?
Elaine: Yeah, you know, head to toe.
Jerry: So what? Your genitals are still lined up.

We did not choose to have a DVR, as we are a "late adopter" of gadgetry at best, but it has grown on us. We were forced to defend it to nonbelievers last night, which was difficult, as a girl from New Orleans had purchased us a Jager shot. The point we made was that, at some point, everyone, no matter how fancy and highbrow, wants to just sit on their fanny and watch some television.

But, why should we settle for watching whatever crap happens to be on at 11:20 at night? What if it's 'Hardball With Chris Matthews'? What if it's 'Judging Amy'? With the DVR, however, we can just set it to record stuff we like, and watch 'Law & Order' at any time. Without the commercials. It rules.

Well, we have nothing more to say on this monumentally dull topic. We have yet another busy weekend of travel and rock and roll awaiting us. Expect a breathless and terrifying tale on Monday. Or, if you prefer, expect nothing. That way it will startle you.

Bears Will Attack 12/10/04 | link

All That We Let In

For my house shall be a house of prayer for all people.
-- Isaiah 56:7

Today is a sad day, a shroud day, a day when our heart is darkened, and we are far from any sense of divinity or grace. Today our email is down.

It is not so much that we are incapable of knowing joy or contentment without being able to check our email every five minutes. Often we will go days without checking it. But those are usually vacation days, when we have deliberately distanced ourself from being in constant, trivial communication, or holidays, when we are watching game shows with our grandmother, secure in the knowledge that, even if there WAS any internet access at hand, no one would be sending us email anyway.

But to be at work and suffer such a fate is chilling and terrible. How will we know if our friends are doing anything interesting this evening? What if there is important and fascinating gossip to be shared about boyfriends, wives, roommates, hateful co-workers, crucial developments in network television dramas, drunken incidents, cats or mothers? What if there is a list of lawyer jokes or an incoherent petition about endangered species that must be forwarded? What if we are expected to actually spend the day doing the work for which our employer pays us? You can see our dilemma.

Fortunately, we were saved from despair by serendipity, lesbians and folk music, as is so often the case.

Every day, as you would know, if you sat near us at work, which no one does, we listen to NPR on the computer until such time as we cannot take the sound of soothing and well-informed voices anymore, and then we listen to rock and roll music. This morning, Diane Rehm's guests were Emily Saliers (of Indigo Girls fame) and her dad, who is a professor of theology, disussing the relationships between secular and spiritual music.

Which is interesting enough, we suppose. But what moved us was the portion of the show when Ms. Saliers discussed the difficulty people face when their family or their church doesn't want them because of the people they fall in love with, or go home at the end of the night with, or whatever it is. Throughout, her dad was supportive and calm, and then he sang an Indigo Girls song with her, doing all the harmony vocals in a scratchy-but-still-on-key professor voice. It made us angry for a moment, about the stupidity and hurtfulness of people, and then it made us sad for the same reason. Coming on the heels of the terrible loss of our email, it was almost more than we could bear.

But throughout the program, they played clips of Indigo Girls songs, which made us feel melancholy in a pleasantly dramatic way, since we were in our early college years when we listened to the Indigo Girls ALL THE TIME, because we loved them SO MUCH. And then we felt better.

It would be nice to say that we felt better because we realized that pain makes one stronger and more capable of understanding the universal nature of hurt. Or that we felt a ray of hope that most hearts are not so bitterly divided as it always seems on the surface. But we suspect that we are not so evolved a thinker, and we only felt better because the sound of Emily Saliers playing an acoustic guitar and singing about love and soldiers and doomed romance is the sound of a comforting, sepia-toned past with all the unpleasant edges worn away. It probably doesn't make any difference.

Dust in our eyes our own boots kicked up
Heartsick we nursed along the way we picked up
You may not see it when it's sticking to your skin
But we're better off for all that we let in

Bears Will Attack 12/09/04 | link

Cupcakes (Memories of the Space Age)

We *think* we discussed our thirtieth birthday yesterday, but we cannot be sure. Our memory has grown thin and translucent, and the light shines through it like gauze. We remember writing things down, in some sort of blog format. We remember a woman laughing, showing us picture books. We remember great spaceships, half-covered in sand, and the harsh light of day beating down on sand dunes and abandoned hotels. Some of this may have been another person's dreams, but there is no way to tell, at this late stage.

As we cannot, in good conscience, dispense any sort of wisdom today, given our growing dementia, we will present a series of photo-graphs, taken by our friend Troy Farmer. These photos represent the three stages of eating cupcakes.

ANTICIPATION

JUBILATION

DIGNITY

Take careful notes. There will be a quiz.

Bears Will Attack 12/08/04 | link

Back to Dear Antarctica

We apologize for the recent lapse in service, although we were gratified to receive a number of pleading and/or threatening emails regarding this website. We had Monday off from work, in honor of our birthday, and our server was down most of the day today. We used to blame these sorts of technical difficulties on the nefarious sabotage of powerful corporate and political interests bent on the ruin of Bears Will Attack, but recent events in the country have forced us to concede that our voice, while still a clarion-call for truth and rightness, may not represent as much of a threat to the marketing departments of major companies and small-minded conservative think-tanks as we had previously believed. So it goes. With age comes perspective.

Yesterday was our 30th birthday, and we celebrated it a style calculated to conceal this fact from any casual observer:

8:34 am: Wake up at undisclosed location (we are a gentleman) and drive van home. Spend some time searching for parking space, but eventually give up and park in two-hour space.

9:55 am: Eat 'French Toast' Pop-Tarts and watch old episode of ER on television.

10:47 am: Remember about van. Stop watching second episode of ER on television and move van to BEST PARKING SPOT EVER, which appears as if by MAGIC.

11:02 am: Watch most of 'Patriot Games' on television while checking email and reading the Sunday New York Times, which takes awhile. Feel deep satisifaction that Harrison Ford movie is on.

12:20 pm: Consider running overdue errands (documents for aforementioned van badly out of date, cat needs vet appointment, laundry needs doing, etc), but observe cold, gray horribleness of day from window. Eat frosting directly from can with kitchen knife instead, on theory that this is also overdue.

2:47 pm: Eat bowl of Honeycomb cereal. Watch parts of 'Master and Commander', starring Russel Crowe and one of the hobbits.

3:10 pm: Decide that today is good time to get some work done on various creative projects. Read through Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks instead. Why does no one ever make a gnome fighter as a character? Is it even feasible? Jot down some notes and send email to Joe Janda regarding this issue.

4:20 pm: Make plans to leave house. Change plans.

4:54 pm: Shower and put on actual pants.

5:27 pm: Order fancy white pizza from fancy pizza place two blocks away. Wait for Cutest Redhead in World to come over any minute.

5:50 pm: Cutest Redhead in World is often late.

6:18 pm: Cutest Redhead in World arrives, is forgiven for lateness by bringing gifts and cupcakes. Eat fancy pizza while watching 'America's Next Top Model'. Admit that we of enjoy 'America's Next Top Model', in a horrible sort of way.

8:29 pm: Take cab to bar, as rain is crapping down. Greet friends at bar, receive quasi-humorous novelty gifts, drink vodka cranberries on theory that you are allowed to order lame-o girly drinks that you secretly love on your birthday. Are given several shots of mysterious, fruity drink by our friend the Hip Bartendress. Eat several cupcakes.

11:36 pm: Return home to sleep, slightly tipsy and over-full of cupcakes. Feel confident that total victory over remorseless tide of maturity and age assured.

As you can see, we have met the enemy, and they are ours. We sent 30 right back from where it came from, beaten and staggering. Perhaps it thought that it would find us taking stock and reflecting, in the manner of an adult growing wiser and more responsible, but, oh, it thought wrong.

Light failing over the pole,
as every longitude leads up to your frost-bitten feet.
Oh, you're very sweet, thank you for the flowers
and the book by Derrida,
but I must be getting back to dear Antarctica

Bears Will Attack 12/07/04 | link

The Distant and Terrifying Cry of the Christmas Pelican

We have come to the end of another long and trying week, here at Bears Will Attack. Though we have suffered no particular indignities at the hands of philistines and the faithless this week, we have also made no strides forward in terms of furthering science, black magic or mathematics, which troubles us. We did, however, eat a salad for lunch every single day. We intend to complete this grueling marathon today, although, we must admit, we are hankering mightily for tacos.

Another spectre from the past has returned to vex us as well, as reported by alert reader Andy Darley:

I am currently getting my regular dose of Bears Will Attack in Firefox instead of Internet Explorer. The text size on each post is smaller than in the next newest until finally it disappears into a grey smudge at the bottom of the page. Except for the song lyrics, which are a constant size throughout. Is this deliberate, or is it the work of Karl Rove?

You are right to suspect the poisonous hand of Karl Rove when ill doings are afoot, Mr. Darley, but in this instance we can report that the problem is once again an unresolved small tag in our web-code. The advantage of writing our own code is that once in a while computer programmers give us a respectful nod of the head, as if to say "I do not care for bloggers as a rule, but anyone who types those little greater-than/less-than signs with arcane words in between them is all right in my book." The disadvantage, of course, is that our readers regularly complain that our website is unreadable, in addition to being redundant, maudlin and useless.

We have done our best to fix this problem, but users of non-standard browsers like Firefox and Mozilla may want to consider switching over to Microsoft Explorer. Or, you know, keep doing what you're doing. You may as well send Osama bin Laden $50 in the mail, while you're at it.

Note: Send letters, packages and angry mail to...

Osama bin Laden
A secret Batcave-style hideout, strewn with automatic weapons and bedecked with anti-Western slogans, the continued existence of which is made possible by American ineptitude and bungling
Dunhaung, Pakistan

Also in the Bears Will Attack mailbag, alert reader Sarah Lyon shared her fears and anxieties regarding the impedning Christmas season:

I am starting to get the holiday panic that comes with this time of year.

I feel pressured to give to charities and buy sweat socks for underprivileged families...I know this is the time for giving, but it is also the time when I feel the most hard-pressed for time, money, and goodwill toward mankind. Also, Christmas is my friend's birthday and both my parents and brother/sister-in-law have wedding anniversaries the two days following. Perhaps I will just draw them all a card with smiley faces.

We can sympathize with these worries. However, we have it on good authority that the holiday season is when charity organization least need the helping hand, because everyone else is doing the same thing. It is in the careless months of June and July that the need is greatest for volunteers, helping hands, and envelopes of cash. We cannot claim any moral high ground here, as we tend to ignore our charitable duties for most of the year as well, but we will make a deal with our readers.

The second Saturday in July will be Bears Will Attack Volunteer Day, during which all of us will lend a hand in our communities, tutoring disadvantaged youth, picking up litter in the park, visiting shut-ins, washing the feet of the homeless, reading storybooks to children afflicted with leprosy, and so on. If one of you will remind us of this solemn pledge as the date grows nearer, we will spend weeks exhorting our readers to do the right thing, and so you can rest easier this holiday season, knowing that your committment to a better world is being held in escrow.

As for presents, try not to go nuts. Get something for your dad, your mom, your little brother, your significant other, your in-laws (should you possess them), and your grandmother. As for friends, co-workers and assorted sycophants and hangers-on, they don't need a present. They have plenty to deal with on their own. Your good cheer during the holidays will be gift enough. Trust us.

Downtown's gone! Downtown's gone!
Now my only ties to that old scene
are the same mean people in pre-owned jeans.
I used to love them all, but they burned me up.

Bears Will Attack 12/03/04 | link

A Tale of Treachery and Revenge

We have been blogging like a fiend all week, here at Bears Will Attack, and our fingers are exhausted. To give ourself a needed rest, today we present a series of still pictures from the 1995 independent film "Arctic Fight". For those who did not see this film during its original theatrical release, which includes the entire population of the world except ourself and our college housemates who wrote, directed and starred in the movie, and the various girlfriends who were subseqently forced to watch it, this scene is a gripping, tightly-acted roller-coaster of oppression, treachery and triumph:

We will return tomorrow with something less stupid and incomprehensible. If you are lucky. Do not push us.

Bears Will Attack 12/02/04 | link

The Snapple Questionnaire

We are fond of Snapple-brand beverages, here at Bears Will Attack. Not so fond that we would take the time to fill out a lengthy questionnaire on the subject or anything. Unless, of course, such a chore was necessary to be in a Snapple commercial.

1. Please state your full name and where you are from.
Brian Minter, from Brooklyn, NY.

2. How old are you?
Twenty-nine years old.

3. What made you want to contact Snapple?
I never used to drink Snapple. When I lived in Virginia and Washington DC, there were only a few flavors in convenience stores and so on. Mostly I drank raspberry iced tea and Gatorade. I try not to drink soda, except every once in while. But when I moved to New York, they had so many different kinds of Snapple. It was very exciting. Now I drink it all the time. Maybe I drink too much.

4. What is your favorite Snapple flavor and why?
My current favorite is Cranberry-Raspberry. It is tasty and refreshing, without being too tart.

5. What other flavors do you like, and why?
I like Kiwi Tea, because it is smoother than the regular tea, and kind of sour in a good way. I like Grapeade, Raspberry Iced Tea, and Pink Lemonade. I also like Lime Green Tea, but only once in a while, because it's kind of sweet.

6. Why is Snapple better than other similar beverages?
Snapple tea is usually less sugary-tasting than other bottled teas. And the Snapple juices are good, even though they probably aren't as good for you as real juice.

7. What do you do for a living? Tell us about your job. How long have you been doing that? Do you like it? If so, why?
I am an editor at a news wire service. I like it pretty good. I meant to just do it for a year or so, back when I stopped being a reporter because it was exhausting and made me poor, but I'm still doing it five years later. It's not very exciting work, but I like politics and I like working in the media.

8. What is your boss like?
My boss is very absent-minded. He'll get on the phone and discuss something with you, and then trail off halfway through and start mumbling about something completely unrelated that you have nothing to do with. I like him.

9. Who are your co-workers? Do you have any really funny friends or co-workers? Do they drink Snapple, and if so, which flavors?
Most of my co-workers are in Washington, even though I work in New York. I work with a bunch of people in the office here, but I don't know too many of them that well. Heather has a little office right next to me. She's super-nice, and has great hair, but I don't know if she drinks Snapple or not. I'll ask her.

10. Are you married? In a relationship? Does your partner drink Snapple?
I am not married, although I am dating the cutest redhead in the world. She mostly drinks Diet Pepsi, but if we're thirsty and I'm getting a Snapple, she'll get one too. I think she likes Kiwi-Strawberry, but I'm not positive.

11. Do you have kids, and do they drink Snapple?
No, I don't have any kids. But when I do, they'll probably drink Snapple, since I usually have some in the fridge. Unless they are teenagers, and they are rebelling against me to establish their own sense of identity.

12. Do you have any hobbies? Belong to any groups or organizations? Is there a place or an activity that you frequent? Does anyone there drink Snapple?
I guess I have lots of hobbies, although when I hear the word "hobbies" I think of stamp-collecting, or ham radio. I usually play music in a couple bands. Mostly I play piano and organ, although I'm not that good at either of those instruments. I used to play bass and guitar, but I sold my guitar to my friend Bob, and vandals broke into my van and stole my bass amp. I have a blog, which is kind of a hobby, although I hate to admit to being a "blogger". I also like playing complicated board games, visiting my friends and reading long books about scientists.

13. Tell us your average day (on work days and non-work days.)
On work days, I get up around 8:30, take the train to work (where I always arrive exactly 15 minutes late), work all day (with numerous short breaks to email my friends), and then usually go out with Jaime (see cute redhead explanation above), or hang out with my friends, most of whom live in Brooklyn. On weekends I do the same, except for the work part. Once in while I work on my children's novel, which I will never finish.

14. Tell us something interesting about yourself that most people may not know.
When I take long car rides by myself, I deliver campaign-style political speeches out loud, especially if I'm tired and I'm trying to stay awake.

15. Who is your best friend? Tell us how you met and how long you've been friends. Do any of your friends drink Snapple? Who are they, and what do they drink?
I don't really have a "best" friend. I've been friends with Troy since we started high school, and he lives around the corner from me with his wife Katie, who is also my friend. They are fancy, and I don't think they drink much Snapple, but I'm not sure. I have a lot of close friends. Cheryl was my best friend, sort of, but we dated, and it ended with a big horrible mess, and I'd rather not get into it in a Snapple questionnaire. I think she likes Snapple, but again, I'm not sure. Jimmy, Edward, Sarah and Meredith are some of my best friends, but I don't see them as much as I'd like, because they live in Washington. I think most of them probably drink Snapple once in while, but like I said, they don't have that many flavors there, for some reason. Another of my best friends, Chris, lives in Indiana. He is a Marxist, and there's lots of things he doesn't do, but I think I remember him drinking Snapple iced tea when we used to live together.

16. Tell us about the city you live in. Is this where you grew up?
I live in Brooklyn, in a neighborhood called Park Slope. It's a nice place to live. There's lots of restaurants and hardware stores and people walking their dogs. I grew up in Roanoke, which is a little city in southwest Virginia. It's a completely different place from Brooklyn, but I like them both for different reasons.

17. Name one person from your past and one person from the present that have influenced your life and how.
I guess my parents probably influenced me the most, but that's pretty obvious. I learned a lot from my grandfather, Jack O'Brien, when I was younger. He's pretty old, but he's really sharp, and he always knew a lot about politics and science and the world, and listening to him when I was little made me want to know about those things too, so I could talk to him about it. As for the present, I met Jaime right after I moved to New York, and I was feeling kind of sad about moving here, so meeting her was the best thing that happened to me, because it helped me suck it up and stay in New York, which is a pretty big place when you're all by yourself.

18. Where do you mostly drink Snapple, and at what times?
I drink one every day at lunch, mostly. Sometimes I'll get another one on the way home from the subway station after work.

19. Where do you buy your Snapple? How much do you buy?
During the day I buy Snapple from the little newsstand in my office building, which is run by an Indian couple that always smile and say hello. At night I buy Snapple from the corner store, which is run by this old Korean guy who makes jokes that I never understand. He made a bunch of jokes about the label on Kiwi-Tea Snapple being upside down. I tried to explain about Australia being called "Down Under", but I don't think he got it.

20. Do you have a favorite restaurant? Do they serve Snapple?
My favorite restaurant in Brooklyn is a Mexican place called Pacifico. They mostly serve sangria. Maybe if Snapple made sangria they would serve it.

21. If you could send someone a Snapple, who would it be and why?
I would send my friend Chris a crazy flavor of Snapple, because we used to live on an old farm out in the middle of nowhere, and we would drive to the nearest convenience store, which was miles away, and complain because they never had anything we wanted.

22. If you didn't work where you worked now what would be your ideal job?
I would like to be a newspaper reporter again, except I wish it paid a little better. Not that I'm all that focused on money, but I hate being broke all the time. Being an international yacht captain might be a cool job, too.

23. What would you do if you won the lottery?
I would buy my mom a nice house, then buy my dad a nice house, then pay off all my little brother's debts, then pay off my student loans, then buy all my friends one cool thing they wanted, then throw a huge crazy party with skydivers and go-go dancers and fireworks, then buy an old house at the beach and give the rest away to struggling nonprofit groups that help rural and inner-city kids pay for health insurance.

24. What would be your ideal vacation?
I'd like to visit China someday, but I don't know if it would be a "vacation" kind of trip. For sheer relaxation, I'd like to go somewhere like Iceland or Berlin and stay in really fancy hotels. I'd want to bring someone with me though, because I don't really like exploring on my own. If I didn't have any money, I'd just take a week off and stay at my dad's, because he lives at the beach.

25. What flavor would you like to see Snapple come out with?
That's a tough one. I think they do a pretty impressive job as it is. I guess I'd like to see "cranberry" combined with something else, since I like Cranberry-Raspberry so much. Maybe they could make Cranberry Iced Tea.

It was exhausting, answering all of these. Also, the questions have a weird, prying tone to them, like an overeager friend who thinks about Snapple too much. Also, when it came to all the questions about my friends and co-workers drinking Snapple, I just guessed. Who knows whether their friends drink Snapple or not? Still, it would be fun to be in a commercial.

Bears Will Attack 12/01/04 | link