In the "I Knew Him When" department, I should report a sighting that took place during Men in Black II. The MIB customs agent who asks Lara Flynn Boyle whether she has any fruits or vegetables to declare is played by none other than Peter Spruyt, Chapel Hill High School class of 1980. Peter is one of the quirkiest and funniest people I know, and I'm delighted to see him getting some big-screen action at last. He's appeared in a number of commercials over the past few years, for Burger King's Chicken Whopper, for Target, for E-Trade (he was the guy who sold all his movie studio stock when the studio was promoting George Takei in "Blowed Up!") and perhaps most notably for Miller Lite in the ad where the biker goes into the Nerd Bar. (Peter played the head nerd.)

Peter doesn't exactly have a chance to show his creativity in the film, but trust me, he's brilliant, and he never stops finding new outlets for his sense of humor. I first knew him when the two of played Rainbow Soccer--and years later we coached a team together--but we became friends at CHHS, where we shared a math class and I got the chance to watch his mind at work. He xeroxed little Lacoste alligators for people who weren't preppies to affix to their shirts, brought a turtle to class one day (with alligator in place), and even got extra credit from Mr. Tomberg for devising a plan to save toilet bowl cleaner by having the janitors place a sponge at one focus of the bowl's ellipse to absorb the extra chemicals. He went to Northwestern for college, but I wonder if the people in Evanston had any idea what they were really getting. When he came back to Chapel Hill in the late 80s he was still using his sense of whimsy on both a daily basis (he bolted a copper kettle onto his car as a hood ornament) and on special occasions (at his wedding, his tuxedo's studs were actually wingnuts).

He had been almost as much fun in the plays we worked on together back in school, including Fiddler on the Roof, Auntie Mame, and the notorious musical-of-the-Plague Year Oh, Rats! But his finest hour, unquestionably, came in the spring of 1980 with the first (and only) appearance of Lawrence Elk and the Mellow-Dees.

The Mellow-Dees got their start when for some reason the two of us were playing the piano backstage during rehearsal. Peter and I are both essentially self-taught by-ear players (though unlike me, he has also learned to play at least one piece with his nose) and often tried to show each other new keyboard tricks we'd picked up. That day, inspired by I know not what bizarre and mischievous Muse, I started a Muzak version of the first verse of the Knack's "My Sharona." When I reached the "my Sharona" lyric, Peter suddenly added a high-end flourish that collapsed the two of us into hysterical laughter for a good forty-five seconds. When we got our breaths back, we worked up the entire song, altered the lyrics, and started recruiting classmates to perform with us in the spring talent show, known as the Junior Follies.

It was a big production. Our friend Alan Barry agreed to serve as the strangely-accented bandleader, while Peter lined up Allen Ashcraft to sing lead as the mellifluous "Barry Tone." They fronted an ensemble that consisted of a four-girl backup choir, drums, bass, violin, cello, trumpet, and possibly another instrument or two I've forgotten, plus Peter and me on one piano. The featured instrument was the accordion, played by Dan Goulson in full geriatric makeup; during his spotlight solo, a nurse rolled him forward in a wheelchair in which he noisily expired several bars before the last verse. Peter worked insanely hard on even the most minute details--arranging the string parts, painting the kick-drum head with a "Mellow-Dees" logo, and covering the lapels of Allen's jacket with glitter. He even went so far as to buy plastic roses in vases for the backup singers to hold. He then attached small hoops to the bottoms of their stems and filled the vases with dishwashing liquid, so that during Allen's part the singers could fill the air with bubbles. I, meanwhile, basked in the glory that Peter had attracted, a full partner in the conception but a fully-awed member of the audience when it came to the execution. It was sublime.

The movie's not as good. But how could it be?
9:28 PM

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Another holiday, another journal entry.

The Fourth of July is another strange holiday for me, mainly because of my job. When you teach, the whole summer is usually a holiday--an unpaid one, I hasten to add--so there's somewhat less significance to the Fourth in terms of its effect on your daily life. I, however, am teaching summer school, so I don't even have the day off. We're rearranging the schedule a bit so that the school community can see the local fireworks tonight, but otherwise it's the usual class schedule.

I'm also not a fanatic about the grill. Sure, it's nice to have something cooked over charcoal every so often, but some of the people I see with grills and spatulas treat the whole project so grimly and reverently that they might as well be planning to retake Jerusalem from the Saracens. Besides, I'm from the South. Around here, the weather on the Fourth is usually so oppressive that going outside to cook seems less like a treat and more like a punishment.

And I'll confess it: from a purely aesthetic point of view, there is much about the Fourth that I find dull or hokey or annoying. I've never felt our flag is all that attractive from a design standpoint, and turning it into bunting or t-shirts or barbecue aprons doesn't really help matters. I also don't much care for the musical qualities of "The Star-Spangled Banner," particularly now that singing it has become a pretext for anyone with a microphone to perform vocal stunts approaching the complexity of the timeline in Memento. Even if I'd liked it to begin with, Whitney Houston's version has soured me on it for good, and hearing Mariah Carey's version at the most recent Super Bowl was like being buried in sixteen tons of Lemonheads. For my money, "America the Beautiful," "This Land Is Your Land," or even "Columbia the Gem of the Ocean" would have made a better anthem, and best of all would have been one that the people could actually sing.

So what's left to celebrate on the Fourth?

Oh, that's easy.

Fireworks. I'm not a psycho Let's-put-M-80s-in-the-toilet kind of guy, but there's a pure thrill in watching the night sky explode into fire and thunder. Even the duds that just produce a kernel of bright light and a cannonshot DOOM! are a treat. And nothing says summer like running around the yard with a sparkler in your hand.

Sousa. Marches make up a weird little subset of music, somewhere in the same not-quite-popular/not-quite-classical area as ragtime and Stephen Foster songs, but for my money, a Sousa march displays a level of rhythmic and melodic sophistication worthy of praise. Even given the constraints of the two-four march rhythm, "The Stars and Stripes Forever" or "The Liberty Bell" offers a twisted little journey across the parade grounds.

Liberty. Sure, the people who signed the Declaration of Independence were in many cases slaveowners, and most would have been shocked at the idea of women's suffrage, but the ball they started rolling in 1776 eventually rolled for Blacks and women, too. I complain about a lot of American things--our leaders, our culture's fixation on the tawdry and the foolish, our citizenry's ignorance about our history and Constitution--but one thing I never do is forget that I'm free to complain. The Declaration of Independence helped assure that Americans would never again have to speak when they wished to be silent, or remain silent about the things they loved or loathed. I do not love this land because everything in it is perfect, nor because the government forces me to love it. I love this land because it gives me the freedom not to love it.

So I say Happy Fourth, everybody! Grouse if you love America!
11:42 AM

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Feelin' listy

Top 5 Songs That Don't Mention the Title Anywhere in the Lyrics
*The Who: "Baba O'Riley"
*Neil Young: "After the Gold Rush"
*Talking Heads: "Life During Wartime"
*Ben Folds Five: "Song for the Dumped"
*Bob Dylan: pretty much everything after Highway 61 Revisited...

Top Five Fast-Food Joints If You Have to Eat Fast Food
*Taco Bell
*Arby's
*Wendy's
*Subway
*Bojangle's

Top Five Time-Travel Novels
*David Gerrold: The Man Who Folded Himself
*Connie Willis: Doomsday Book
*Connie Willis: To Say Nothing of the Dog
*Julian May: The Saga of Pliocene Exile (four books)
*Orson Scott Card: Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus

Top Five Moments in Chuck Jones Cartoons
*The Grinch gets a wonderful awful idea in "How the Grinch Stole Christmas"
*Daffy's quarterstaff fight in 'Robin Hood Daffy"
*"Wile E. Coyote... Super Genius"
*"Kill the Wabbit, Kill the Wabbit!"
*All six minutes of "Duck Amuck"

Top Five Musicians Named Jones
*bandleader/genius Spike
*glam rocker David (a k a Bowie)
*arranger/composer Quincy
*country singer George
*bassist/keyboardist John Paul
1:08 PM

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