Columbia, how I've missed you.

Not that I want to necessarily return right now, but I found it very reassuring to drive around Columbia yesterday and see that not much has changed.

Chuck Bronson and I discussed Cola at length today:

Chuck: i think i'm going to change my facebook picture to something cool like a close up of my face but i'm either looking away or it's only halfway in the picture

5:48 PM but i'd probably have to work somewhere like papa jazz to do that

me: HA

i stopped in there yesterday

Chuck: the other day, i ate at gourmet shop, picked up a free times, stopped by papa jazz, then went to hunter-gatherer

5:49 PM me: rofl.

Chuck: then went to a house party w/ tons of diverse ass motherfuckers

me: a DIY punk show?

Chuck: then made our way down to group, where we continued to mingle w/ folks of all different backgrounds

made me feel good.

5:50 PM me: that was right before you assembled the group of protesters on the state house grounds, right?

you know, the arts and diversity action council?

Chuck: that was definitely the next day

columbia makes me sick w/ all the close minded rednecks

5:51 PM me: did you make sure to drink your wheatgrass and cook vegan soy omelettes to give you the boost you need for your world-changing day?

Chuck: so ignorant

i need all that stuff to help the big ideas flow through my brain

5:52 PM me: gotta keep those synapses firing

so you can have a smart and witty take that counters all those misinformed pop-cultural ideas of society

5:53 PM Chuck: the other day i was having some seriously big ideas. but the tightness of my jeans cut off my circulation and i fainted and forgot all of them

me: man

you must've been riding your fixed gear bike all over town

5:54 PM because as a secular progressive, i'm sure you found high school athletics too competitive and exclusive

that and you were busy with the theater club

i'm sure your thighs are sore from all that sweet fixie action

5:55 PM Chuck: i think i'm gonna list under my favorite activities on facebook: "talking about music that know one knows about in front of them w/ other SPs, and feeling awesome about myself b/c they have no idea what bands i'm talking about"

5:56 PM me: i'm going to amend my facebook profile to "going to the whig and talking about how much i like spotlighting deer while drinking bourbon and listening to sean hannity"

5:57 PM Chuck: i don't think you'd last long in the whig w/ that less-than-intellectual convo subject

5:58 PM me: well, i neglected to include the rebel flag i fly from the back of my hummer

Chuck: surely to get you removed from the whig for life

Crunchfrat SUPREME

In light of our recent discussion on "crunchfratting," Chuck Bronson and I have formed a consultancy, DIESE COMMUNICATIONS, LLC.

Our first client, Taco Bell, asked us how to tap into the vaunted "collegiate Greek" market.

We suggested they serve ice-cold bronson and pump WSP over the store's speakers.

WANTED

WANTED:



Jordan and I want to find him and make him our friend. I want to produce an online video blog with him.

He might hate pumpkins, which is anti-American, but you know we'd be golden.

View our Craigslist ad here.

Esquire

I started reading men's magazines in college. I continued to pick them up at airports and browse them in book stores until I finally bit and took GQ on a pretty cheap subscription.

With the current state of my wardrobe breaching "conservative," I'm not necessarily interested in the newer designers and fashion-related pieces. I do, however, appreciate the inherent emphasis on what's considered "classic style," which, I feel, is looking like a respectable man should.

But the real draws of these rags are the even-handed, informative and anecdotal bits for men hoping to act the part. I think Esquire generally does the best job on bringing the most choice pieces of meat to the table. GQ typically has better features.

So, I was delighted to stumble across this gem on Esquire.com today. I am admittedly partisan, but I think the analysis is pretty spot-on. Certainly a good take on Inglis.

Excerpted: ###

Editor's note: the name of the incumbent candidate is italicized, while the candidate we're endorsing is in bold.

SENATE

Lindsey Graham (R)

Bob Conley (D)

A former Navy JAG lawyer, Graham swears that he opposes torture. But what can explain his amendment that purports to ban the practice--and then pointedly refuses to define it, while allowing evidence obtained by it into military courts? Graham once carried the moral position on this issue; his capitulation is deeply disappointing. But no one can dispute his intellectual heft or his hard work for his state.
Esquire endorses: Graham

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Congressional District 1

Henry Brown (R)

Linda Ketner (D)

Speaking of hypocrisy, Brown's never met a spending bill he liked--unless it benefited his district; in that case, let the money flow.
Esquire endorses: Ketner

District 2

Joe Wilson (R)

Rob Miller (D)

Ill-mannered, impolitic, immovable. If these traits were in the service of principle, Wilson would be worth the trouble. They're not. And he has spent the last six years justifying his support of the Iraq war on the basis that Congress has no business insisting on oversight. His opponent, an Iraq veteran, argues otherwise.
Esquire endorses: Miller

District 3

Gresham Barrett (R)

Jane Dyer (D)

The Barrett record: No to revitalizing crumbling public housing. Yes to sexual discrimination. No to grants to minority colleges. Yes to gutting endangered-species protection.
Esquire endorses: Dyer

District 4

Bob Inglis (R)

Paul Corden (D)

We named Inglis one of our Nine Pillars of Congress in 2006. We would again. His staunch antispending principles endure; his turn against the neocons on the war and his humble acknowledgment of his errors in denying global warming add reason and flexibility to his list of virtues.
Esquire endorses: Inglis

District 5

Albert Spencer (R)

John Spratt (D)

Well-respected all around, Spratt is one of the quiet masters of his craft--not politics per se, but what politicians do: spend tax dollars. His grasp of budgetary rules and patterns is second to none.
Esquire endorses: Spratt

District 6

Nancy Harrelson (R)

James Clyburn (D)

Long a central figure in South Carolina politics, Clyburn is now majority whip. He has excelled in his primary duty: to bring the diverse and easily divided Democratic body into alignment on major issues.
Esquire endorses: Clyburn

Crunchyfratting

For whatever reason, during my much-ballyhooed hippie years in Greenville and Boone, I neglected to get into Widespread Panic.

Given, I wasn't huge on jam bands in general and I was pretty sated with Phish, the Dead and the Allmans. STS9 seemed pretty interesting at times, too. I suppose my initial reaction to WSP was to blame them as the progenitors of uninspiring jam acts such as O.A.R.

I did like "Porch Song," though and taking a look back, I must say that WSP is one crazy game of Pop-Tarts. In a good way, of course.

And given their status as good-timin' SEC football fans from Athens, I've decided to adopt them as my brethren and give Panic another go. I'll probably need a few CD's and a means of scuffing up the bill of my "Cocks" hat. I'm pretty tired of "cool" bands, anyway.

And now, Chuck Bronson has tipped me off to Fox's playing of the following song as the fadeout to World Series commercial breaks:




Chuck Bronson:
dude, have you watched any of the world series
Drew: not much
don't know why
Chuck Bronson: FOX has a constant soundtrack of widespread panic during the fade out to commercial
Drew: no shit!
Chuck Bronson: it's very strange
Drew: like phish on the weather channel
they do a lounge YEM
Chuck Bronson: yeah i've heard that
but this is the damn world series, millions of ppl watching
and they're crunching out
Drew: they don't even know it
crunching sohard
fratting it out
"dude, you're crunchy fratting and you don't even know it"
Chuck Bronson: "yeah b/c i'm too fucked up on ice cold bronson to know how crunchfrat i am right now"

Back in Slacks.

“Coach Howard told me one time, ‘As long as I was winning, chewing tobacco was the cutest thing there ever was, even spitting. But if I lost, that tobacco was an embarrassment, and you can’t coach chewing it.’” - Former Clemson head football coach Danny Ford

John Fox, take note.

Since we're back on the chewing tobacco thread, let's name a few skippers who are "up to snuff," shall we?

Football and Fall in the South.

The past few weeks have found me doing some freelancing for the Greer Citizen, covering prep football. Until the Byrnes game a few weeks ago, I hadn't attended a high school game since my senior year in 2001.

The whole experience is oddly familiar and comforting: the smell of damp red clay and turf, the clunk of shoes on metal stadium stairs, rusty pipes and urinal troughs.

I don't mind it one bit, getting paid to sit in a press box and take in my surroundings.

As colder weather moves in, there's a good bit to see. High school kids dress more alike every day, very mall-centric, but there are still a ton of stereotypes and idiosyncrasies that live on.

J.L. Mann kids still dress like they're going sport fishing. Eastside kids wear Mountain Hard Wear and have shaggy hair. Blue Ridge kids still wear cut-off camo shirts. And Clinton kids still drive big trucks. Their grandparents color-coordinate outfits.

A few shots in between Moleskine sessions:

Steve Earle is Diese.

(Adapted from THE DIESE BLOG. Sharing is caring.)

###

In the movie "High Fidelity," Jack Black's character asks of John Cusack's, "Is it unfair to criticize a formerly great artist for his latter day sins? Is it better to burn out or fade away?"

Steve Earle is a country songwriter once lauded as the "next Bruce Springsteen." His mid-80's albums Guitar Town and Copperhead Road have since become country/rock touchstones, but Earle's recent works have found his prolific output reduced to a pile of rocks.

While the admittedly partisan The Revolution Starts Now provided a vitriolic kick, his latest, Washington Square Serenade was a pussy affair of love songs about his adopted home of New York.

Moving to Manhattan is diese if you do business or work in media. And only if you do big things. Moving to Manhattan in general is not diese, especially if you're a country musician.

We saw Steve Earle about this time last year in San Francisco at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. In addition to the varying quality of his recent work, Earle is a notorious liberal windbag. Half in the bag on Two Buck Chuck, we admonished Earle to "Shut up and play Copperhead Road!" The crunchies didn't like that very much.

Despite these facts, we at Diese Blog must take these cases on an individual basis. We will call them as we see them.

As such, Steve Earle is diese, primarily on the basis of how ungodly awesome his biography, Hardcore Troubadour is.

This book should be on the Official Diese Reading List. It reads like this: Steve shoots smack, fires guns, rides horses, goes through gallons of booze and crashes cars into buildings. Sometimes all within a single page. In terms of pure unadulterated debauchery, Hardcore Troubadour ranks right up there with the Zeppelin bio, Hammer of the Gods.

But in the end, it all comes back to the songs.

The following clip finds Earle performing "Copperhead Road" on Letterman at arguably his most diese, right before his 3-year "vacation in the ghetto." Dude was so shit-cocked on cocaine and heroin, he probably doesn't even remember it. And he totally burns Dave on just what the hell a mandolin is.

Diese.

More Takes on Adams

As I've probably mentioned, I've been fine-combing the Whiskeytown back catalogue a bit lately. And over on THE DIESE BLOG, we declared that Ryan Adams is cool but not diese. We stand by this. Respectively, Hank Williams, Jr. is diese but not cool.

I've met the guy and while I can attest that his antics are indicative of colossal colostomy-baggery, he has said some really funny shit while wasted.

Apparently, while touring to support John Fogerty, he was expected to honor his selection by playing solid country sets.

Instead, his band played a full punk set that ended with Adams declaring, "Yeah, Fogerty was born on the bayou....of Southern California."

I think everybody's got a little bit of diese in them.

Friendz on the Intertubez

If nothing else, I've been blessed with an array of wildly divergent and infinitely quotable friends. And some of them have blogs, too.

Recently, my colleague Lauren, a reporter for Upscale Magazine, an African-American business, entertainment and lifestyle magazine, started a blog. Her duties have found her privy to a host of interesting parties and experiences in ATL. She chronicles these dispatches from the "front lines of urban America" on her blog, Renaissance Report. Lauren totally hangs with stars.

Cheston Rogers is one wily and irascible Southerner from Columbia. His new blog, Kicked in the Teeth, ratchets up Fox News-style jingo to a whole new level of irreverence.

These two would either get along really well or not at all.