SERODISCORDANCY:

I spot Chad a few minutes later, a dark-eyed waif on the sidewalk. It's been three weeks he's been gone, and he's lost so much weight. Everything about him looks burnt-out, the way refugees on TV look with farms smoking behind them: translucent skin, an uncertain balance something like shellshock. I notice he's wearing a necklace, one he wasn't wearing last time. A ring and a small cross.

I tell the driver, "That's him."

The bus slows, but the doors don't open.

"Five hundred dollar fine!" the driver shouts.

"What?"

"Five hundred dollar fine for entering or exiting the vehicle at..." (here I have no idea what he says) "...designated stopping point."

"So he can get on at the stop?"

"Five hundred dollar fine!"

Chad studies me through the plexiglass of the bus's doors. Perplexed, panicky from lack of sleep, obviously trying not to show it. I do my best to motion him down the road, try to mouth, "wait there." The yellow and black paint of the stop is at just such an angle I can't point at it through the doors. I keep pointing as the bus keeps moving. It stops 20 feet away; the doors hiss open.

"Can he get on here?"

"Designated stopping point!"

Chad reaches the stop a few seconds after the bus. I can't think of anything to say but, "Hey."

We collapse into seats next to each other, he with a bag over each shoulder. His lips taste like seawater; his mouth is dry. I later learn that he took a shot, his last shot, in the bathroom at Dulles. This is quite valuable, actually, seeing what he looks like still high, on the tail-end of high -- it's a look I've yet to see on him again.

"I parked at the wrong gate," I explain. "We have to go back around."

He seems euphoric to just be able to rest.

more

While engaged in a dispute as to the existence of a God, Henry Shanks stabbed Adam Weimer to the heart and escaped arrest. TX1883
--Tweets of Old offers further evidence that Texas is partly Russia

Dev comes to the doorway, one knuckle making a screwing motion in his eye socket, saying, Are y'all crying again? Then, Why does everybody from Texas cry and smoke?
--Mary Karr, Lit

I SWEAR I'M NOT ALWAYS GROSS AND BITTER. Sometimes I also listen to music?

The Mountain Goats, All Hail West Texas. It's kind of amazing how catchy he already is. I get these songs stuck in my head all the time now. Everybody needs to know "The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton" because we've all known those guys (...I hope?) and also I'll say that the one time I really did fly in to DFW they really did pretty much tell me, "Come on in; we haven't slept for weeks. Drink some of this; it'll put color in your cheeks." In general I think patient fans of the Weakerthans would like these guys, but then, if you like the Weakerthans you probably know that already so maybe I should run this recommendation the other way around.

Tallahassee. You know, finding out that John Darnielle is happily married was just like finding out that Philip Roth was a Gentile woman. (...Except for the part where the first thing happened.) "No Children" is one of the best and harshest songs about marriage ever written, and we've had a long time to enter that sweepstakes. There are other good songs on this album, which explores the divorce of a fictional couple, but seriously do you need more than one bullet through the heart?

The Sunset Tree: Apparently the only album which is definitely autobiographical, and it's just as bruised as you might expect. Ranges from the anthemic ("This Year") through the ambiguous ("Up the Wolves") to the randomly- (and perhaps unnecessarily; I like this song less than most people, I think) Dostoevskyan ("Love Love Love").

Next batch of albums in next post, as I am running out of Friday.

LOSING IN FRONT OF YOUR HOME CROWD: I have watched neither Friday Night Lights nor Glee, but I have not been able to get this column comparing the two out of my head. FNL comes across as both better and more countercultural, which does not surprise me. (I do think it's bizarre that the author reads "everyone moves away from Dillon because it's a dead-end small town" as a rejection of solipsism--I'm pretty sure she means that since the characters we like get switched out for new characters, the audience's focus remains on the town as a whole, a community, but she makes this process sound a lot less tragic than the "meager chance of improvement earned at the price of leaving your hometown" storyline really is. Why shouldn't people "loom[] around Dillon forever"--why is staying home presented so negatively, given the author's other premises? Anyway that's just a bobble in an otherwise terrific piece.)

Link via Wesley Hill.

TEXAS: THE LONE STAR OF DR. MOREAU.