By
Published: 2006
Category: Beyond Classification [3]
My, my, my. I sure struck a nerve yesterday when I featured the butt-ugly plastic shoes known as Crocs. [4]
Only two of you liked the shoes. One was my long-suffering mother, who was stunned and delighted to see her profligate son within miles of a bargain. The other was a flight attendant, who wrote that after she and her co-workers started wearing Crocs, United banned them --- so the flight attendants got notes from their doctors stating they needed to wear them due to foot problems.
The rest of you were chilly indeed:
"Crocs make my feet perspire just looking at them. Plastic shoes are a bad idea. But I guess they'll be a hit with the PETA set. No crocodiles died for these shoes. They are not 'to die for' by anyone's standards."
"They look like throwaway shoes. I think some things should last --- and shoes are definitely among those things."
One of you actually had a rant:
"I actually HATE these shoes for the way they look and what they stand for...complete disregard for class, decorum and style in the name of personal comfort. It's like ugly Americans wearing nylon sweats on the plane to Paris. I mean, come on!....This past weekend, I was visiting friends. One of the guests was a 75 year-old woman from Italy who spoke not one word of English. Sitting out on the back porch one morning, she was flipping through a magazine and came across a photo of Crocs. She pointed and started jabbering in Italian. All I got was "blah, blah, blah scarpa, blah, blah." But the look on her face made me realize we were in agreement. We both HATE these scarpa. We had a full conversation --- me in English, her in Italian --- about these damn shoes."
And then there was Chris, a reader who has my sanity in mind:
"Jesse --- where are you going? Will you next be plugging Mobil 1 for our cars, or Charmin over some other brand? The appeal of Head Butler to me has been a little more high brow. Write about crocs for AARP. There is something to the fine line that you walk between making us pay attention to a great and incisive new book (Coffinman) or good new music (Josh Ritter, sort of!) or maybe a great old band (Love) to speak of some recent columns, and being an outright shill for any product that Amazon sells. Crocs is sinking pretty low and pushing you more into the outright shill category. Come back, Jesse! Think about how you would have considered yourself in the late 60's and 70's. Don't be a total sell out..."
Here's my thought on the Crocs issue --- and its implications:
I don't take myself all that seriously --- you do learn a few things as you age --- but I do take you seriously. That is, I feel responsible to you. Because we have a pretty clean relationship, as these things go: I write about books/movies/music I think are Important and invite you to care about them too. And on the flip side, I value your reaction to those suggestions and I try to follow up on the suggestions you shoot my way.
That said, I feel I have another obligation --- which is to be completely goofy every once in a while. A little sincerity goes a long way; undifferentiated passion gets old fast. Who wants someone always shaking a fist in your face and shouting: Care about this! So, every once in a while, I'll serve up a Vote for Pedro [5] t-shirt or the JL421 Badonkadonk Land Cruiser/Tank [6]. Think of those recommendations as a palate cleaner, a spoon of sherbet between courses.
I welcome those moments, because they balance my other tendency --- to so fall deeply in love with musicians/writers/filmmakers that I don't just want you to know about them, I want you to love them as I do. Maybe this is just me, but I am finding it increasingly painful to live in a country where, amidst so much beauty and so much glory, there is so much hate. I've written about this obliquely before; I'll say it bluntly now: Between politics and media, we've got quite the death culture going here.
But I also believe that the world exists in a tentative, delicate, improbable balance --- that for every foul-mouthed bigot in a politician's suit or a commentator knowingly telling lies on radio or TV there is someone writing a love song or writing a holy book or celebrating beauty in a film. And when I spot one of those artists, there is no limit to my advocacy --- I will push that book or CD or film on you until you tell me, "Enough, already."
Josh Ritter [7] is the most recent example of that. I'm goony for this kid. For his talent, sure. But even more for his spirit, which is so sunny he could power a city. I sang his praises here a couple of times, and then I looked up his tour schedule and urged friends in distant cities to see him. And they did. Which is how I know that, in Paris, many went out after the concert to have a beer with Josh. How the audience danced in Brussels. And how, just last week in Portland, he suggested during one of his last songs that everyone get up and slow-dance: "He said it didn't matter who you danced with --- same sex is still okay, as there isn't a constitutional amendment prohibiting it...and then he told us that everyone was invited to come visit him at home --- just knock."
Josh Ritter, one of those friends said, is noteworthy because you don't often see "a human being giving up a huge chunk of himself for the audience." Exactly. And that's a fair description of what I try to praise here. And what I try to be here.
Which means that those of you who come here often are kind of stuck. On the one hand, you can count on me going too far in support of the artists who inspire me and who, I believe, will make your life...more. On the other....Crocs.
What can I say? I'm very grateful you put up with me. And, worried as a maiden aunt, write to me. But I'm not about to shill for Amazon, hawk Mobil 1 or Charmin. So don't worry. As long as we're in some kind of dialogue here, I'm fine. And so, I hope, are you.