People that know me can tell you that I’m not much of a pictures guy. I’ve been to dozens of interesting places, both inside this country and abroad, and every time, I have failed to bring a camera with me. I just don’t take photographs that often, which is one reason I like hanging out with people who do – I enjoy having the memorabilia, but rarely enjoy actually snapping the pictures. I’d rather be in the moment.

I really only have a few photographs, anyway. I don’t usually keep them around. I have one or two each of the important people in my life, and a couple of well-composed ones from my time at local newspapers, and that’s about it. But in thinking about this year in particular, there are two photographs I would like in my meager collection before we head into 2005. I’d like to remember this year for the good times, for the moments of inspiration, and these two would top the list.

First, I would like a picture of my Boston Red Sox clinching their first World Series title in 86 years.

This one seems possible, even probable at this point, but as all Boston fans know, it’s never too late to lose all hope. Let me say this – if this 2004 Red Sox team is setting us up for a fall, it will be the most spectacular and heartbreaking collapse in this franchise’s spectacular and heartbreaking history. And it would be just like them, too.

See, last year was supposed to be The Year. I grew up in a house with a committed, passionate Red Sox fan. My father has never seen the Sox win a World Series. He remembers 1967 against the Cardinals, and he remembers 1986 against the Mets, the way some people would remember being stabbed. Every time they show Bucky Dent’s home run, or Bill Buckner’s classic fumble, it physically hurts him. And last year, the Red Sox nearly killed him.

The 2003 team was amazing, honestly. We hit the American League Championship Series with a great record, and with great gusto. And we outplayed the hated New York Yankees – we won that series like Gore won the 2000 election. We were just better, but in game seven, a bad management decision kept a fading superstar pitcher on the mound long after he should have been pulled, and a surprise homer by Aaron Boone entered the Boston Hall of Shame, right next to Dent and Buckner. I remember my dad not even staying up to watch the final innings, so sure was he after the eighth that his team had thrown it away once again.

This year, right from the start, was not The Year. In my humble non-real-fan estimation, we just haven’t been playing as well this year as we did in ’03, no matter what the numbers say. But we got a couple more aces this time, in particular one unbelievable pitcher named Curt Schilling, and we won every game that mattered in the regular season. We clinched the wild card and strode into the ALCS to face (who else) the Evil Empire, the satanic New York Yankees.

And they killed us for three games. We were a bunch of undisciplined, fun-loving fools coming up against the baseball equivalent of the U.S. Marines – tight, organized, fully armed and nearly unstoppable. In fact, in game three, they bitch-slapped us worse than any team had ever bitch-slapped any other team in the post-season. We were done. The Empire had struck back. There was always next year.

But then…

I can’t even describe the excitement in and around Boston as the Sox started their so-called impossible comeback. I was lucky enough to be there for these games, and everywhere I went, I saw people wearing big red B logos and talking about long-held faith in this team. Three outs from elimination in game four, the Sox improbably tied it up with a stolen base from Dave Roberts, and then won it on a homer from David Ortiz. And then they won game five, too. I should mention that no team in baseball history had ever come back from a 3-0 deficit. Ever.

And then our man Schilling, after a painful-to-watch performance in game one, risked his health and his career to pitch game six with a separated tendon in his right ankle. His sock was soaked with blood, yet he pitched brilliantly, and we won again. And then game seven… well, it would be uncharitable of me to say that we dominated game seven, but it was exactly like 2003, except for the blown lead and the lost game. The 2004 Boston Red Sox did what no team in baseball had ever done before, and they did it to the goddamn Yankees. Life was good in Beantown.

Oddly enough, Boston fans were so used to losing to the Yankees that they didn’t quite know how to take this stunning victory. Bill Simmons of ESPN quipped that he was waiting for them to announce a game eight. The Daily Show’s Rob Corddry, who’s from Massachusetts, suggested jokingly that Derek Jeter could fly counter-clockwise around the earth, turn back time and still beat the Sox. “It’s the Yankees,” he said. “They’re always pulling shit like that.”

But wait, it gets better. Not only are the Red Sox in the World Series, but as of this writing, they’re three games ahead. They are one victory away from silencing that damn “1918” chant forever. Now, I know this is the Red Sox, and there are still a hundred different ways we could screw this up, and I do realize this is the same position the Yankees were in 11 days ago. But damn, what if they actually pull this off?

I asked my dad last night what he would do if the Red Sox won the Series, and he couldn’t answer. “I haven’t ever thought about it,” he said, not because he’s ambivalent, but because he never imagined it would really happen. Part of being a Red Sox fan, especially a lifelong one, is getting used to endless disappointment and keeping at bay the crushing certainty that your team will never win the big one in your lifetime. After tonight, that could be over and done with. If I haven’t just jinxed it, that is…

So yeah, I want a picture of the Sox with their World Series trophy. Preferably, if at all possible, I want one with Curt Schilling and the trophy, ‘cause he deserves the respect and love of Boston fans for as long as he lives, no matter the outcome of this series. This team, all together, has been incredible to watch, and inspiring in ways that people who aren’t from New England probably won’t get. Personally speaking, I needed this, and I needed it now, so thanks, guys. Knock ‘em dead.

The other picture is going to be a little trickier, but I still think we can do it. I can’t think of anything I’d like more sitting next to my World Series pic than a photo of John Kerry taking the oath as our next president.

We’re less than a week away from the election now, and the polls are still showing George W. Bush with a slight lead. I’m hoping the polls are bogus. I know they don’t accurately reflect the possible votes of students and those whose cell phones are their only phone lines. I also know that the only poll that matters will be taken next Tuesday. So here’s my last passionate plea for registered voters to come on out and vote for John Kerry.

Many see this election as a referendum on Bush’s performance as president over the last four years. It’s not just that, of course, but even so, Bush failed miserably on pretty much every count. He inherited a huge budget surplus and pissed it away, leaving behind an enormous deficit. He gave tax breaks to his rich buddies, the people who least need them. He squandered the good will of the world after September 11 by rushing us to war in Iraq under false pretenses, and he failed to plan any sort of exit strategy. American soldiers die every day in Iraq, needlessly, and he still refuses to acknowledge that things aren’t quite going as well as he said they would.

Bush believes that God wants him to be president, and that He talks to him every day. His entire demeanor as president is based on faith – Bush truly believed there were weapons in Iraq, and that he had to go and get them to make America safer. It’s a belief he’s never relinquished, even in the face of incontrovertible evidence to the contrary. He has faith, you see, and he believes that slavishly adhering to one’s theses, even when proven wrong, is the definition of consistent leadership. Iraq has been a disaster. Education at home has been a disaster. The environmental policy has been a disaster. Bush cannot see when things are going wrong, and does not have the strength of character to admit his mistakes and correct them.

This is where John Kerry comes in, because even though Bush failed every test placed before him, replacing him with someone just as bad would be… well, just as bad. Kerry believes in repairing the alliances with the rest of the world that Bush has sundered. He agrees that the war in Iraq should never have been undertaken with haste and poor planning – an admission that will no doubt placate those countries annoyed with Bush’s arrogance. Kerry also believes in going after terrorists, not countries with flimsy-at-best ties to other countries that may have vague, unconfirmed links to people who may, in their off hours, know some terrorists.

Whether or not Kerry can make his economic and health care plans work, at least he has plans in both of those areas that don’t involve making rich people richer. Best of all, if a plan isn’t working, like the woefully underfunded No Child Left Behind act, Kerry is wise enough to tell people that it isn’t working, and explain why.

And here is where the Kerry campaign has really failed in this election. The Bush people have, from day one, accused Kerry of flip-flopping. He changes his mind, they say. He votes one way, and then the other. I’m not sure why the Kerry people didn’t latch on to this as a feature of Kerry’s character – he does, in fact, change his mind. And that’s a good thing. Bush will cling to an idea and a policy long after that idea and that policy have been proven ineffective. Kerry’s mind remains open to new ideas, new policies.

For example, Kerry voted to empower the Bush administration to wage war in Iraq. After seeing how badly they bungled it, however, Kerry changed his mind – not about the war on terror, but about this administration’s ability to carry it out. Kerry saw the same intelligence that Bush saw regarding weapons in Iraq, and he believed it at the time. But now, after reports condemning that intelligence and after so many lost lives, he’s changed his mind – the evidence caused him to form a new opinion. Bush? Not so much. Bush has beliefs that he hangs on to through thick and thin, even against an overwhelming tide of contrary evidence. Kerry has ideas that he tries out, and if they don’t work, he tries something else.

One is the mark of an ideologue, the other the sign of an intelligent and thoughtful man. I know which one I would want in the Oval Office.

So yes, a picture of John Kerry, his hand on the Bible, solemnly swearing to defend this country would be a perfect memento to cap off this year. But even if Bush wins, one thing I hope I don’t see this year is the same level of low voter turnout. I am right now wrestling with the state of Maryland over an absentee ballot, which they don’t want to give me because I’ve relocated. I’m going through this hassle because it’s important. This election will either validate the last four years or erase them in the eyes of the world, and whichever result you want, it’s vital that your voice be heard on November 2.

Next week, music, I promise.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

October 2004

I’m writing this on the last night of my life.

This is the fourth last night of my life in as many years. I seem to put one to bed once every 12 months, at least, these days. This time it wasn’t entirely my choice, but as I look around my empty ex-apartment, I’m filled with a familiar sense of adventure and dread. I don’t live here anymore. It’s an oft-repeated refrain in my perpetually nomadic existence, one I hope I don’t have to trot out again for a good long time.

As lives go, this one was spectacularly unsuccessful. I worked two lousy jobs, one physically demanding and one mentally deadening. I met almost no one. I entered into one of my most amusing and sad failures, romantically speaking – I had to look outside the country for that one, as if domestic heartbreak weren’t good enough. “None of that American heartbreak for me, I’ll take the imported kind.” Maryland has left me alone, broke and unemployed again, and although I’m getting used to it, the feeling is never uplifting.

So I’m sitting here in my one remaining chair, examining what will be my spare little living space for about 24 more hours, and I’m listening to Elliott Smith’s final album, From a Basement on the Hill. Although “listening” is not quite the right term – I’m wallowing in it, allowing it to surround me and drown me. “Let’s Get Lost” is just now finishing up, the sweet and melancholy tones of Smith’s delicate acoustic guitar are just now fading.

And I’m trying to connect my various lives, and finding that the only things that do it are old friends, and great music.

November 1997

I’m sitting in a movie theater in Portland, Maine. I’m with Sara Yates – who was Sara Hebert then, before she married her perfect match, Bill Yates – and Martha Cameron, the professor who for all intents and purposes dragged me kicking and screaming through the last two years of college. I’m just entering my second year at Face Magazine, and I’m still enjoying it. Sara, Martha and I made movie treks as often as possible, and I’m on one of them now. We’re watching a little film written by two guys from my home state of Massachusetts. It’s called Good Will Hunting.

And all of a sudden, this beautiful song starts playing. As engaged as I have been thus far with the witty banter, the dead-on Boston accents and the tale of a misfit genius in love and therapy, this song marks the first moment in the film that causes me to emotionally open up. It’s beautiful, a web of tones surrounding a fragile little melody that sounds impossibly sad, yet strangely hopeful. I vow to find out who this singer is.

I later discover, after the three of us have rehashed most of the film’s dialogue over pizza, that the song is called “Angeles,” and is one of six pieces on the soundtrack album by a guy I’d never heard. His name is Elliott Smith.

October 2004

I imagine that I am not alone in this. I imagine that many fans of sensitive, superbly crafted music sat spellbound in their respective theaters as “Angeles” played, and later felt the same tingles at “Miss Misery.” I admit to missing the boat on this one – Smith had three solo records and a career with the band Heatmiser before Good Will Hunting put him on the map. I’m just grateful that I got to hear his work at all.

“A Fond Farewell” has just started, its gorgeous clean guitar lines leading into a classic Smith harmonized verse. Every song so far is deep and wide, and this one is no exception – “This is not my life, it’s just a fond farewell to a friend,” he sings, delicately as always. And I nearly tear up. It’s just so good to hear this voice again.

October 2003

I’ve just finished writing the most emotionally draining column I have ever watched flow out of me.

Elliott Smith’s lifeless body was found earlier this week. Police have ruled it a suicide, though there are still some doubts about that. I can barely move, not just because one of the best songwriters to have been born in the last 40 years is gone, taking all his future music with him. No, I’m strangely immobile because I’ve been so incredibly angry for the last two days, and it’s all just exploded out onto the page, and I have nothing left. I’m spent.

Smith’s death has affected me more than I was expecting. It taps into my own tendency for self-destruction, my own desire for something to hope for, to look forward to. If such a wonderful spirit with such a prodigious talent and such a clear line to whatever force inspires great art can find nothing to live for, what hope do I have? So I’m angry, because it beats being defeated.

I briefly consider putting my just-completed emotional outpouring aside and writing a proper memorial, but decide, for better or worse, to share the moment and how it has affected me. I just hope that it comes across that I will miss him and his songs long after my anger has faded.

October 2004

And I guess it’s fully faded, because “King’s Crossing” just ended, and I miss Smith more than ever. The song is a swirling force of atmosphere, perhaps the best-sounding thing here despite its simplicity. Smith has somehow, on his final record, found a way to bridge the gap between his lo-fi indie recordings and his later major label outings. Basement is a self-produced effort, mostly completed at the time of Smith’s death, and though some say the man himself would have wanted it rawer and more ragged, to these ears it strikes just the right balance.

“King’s Crossing” wafts in on harmonized voices, crests on sweet pianos and finally crashes in with electric guitars and organs. It seems to be about expectations and label politics, but when he sings the line “I took my insides out,” it’s more than a little eerie. Basement is so far full of references to farewells and drugs, but it’s never crushingly sad, lyrically speaking. Thus far, it’s another really good Elliott Smith album, full of songs that are naturally simpler due to the self-production. Who knows if it would have even resembled the album he would have finished if he had lived, but it fits nicely between Either/Or and XO in his canon.

December 1998

I’ve just finished typing out the Top 10 List for the year, and I’ve named Elliott Smith’s incredible major-label debut, XO, as the best of ’98. It’s a feast for the ears, a treasure for melody addicts, a perfect collection of tricky and beautiful songs.

I’m in my third year at Face Magazine, and life is good. I’ve taken on many of the editorial responsibilities, gained the trust of the mag’s hard-bitten owner Bennie Green, and put together what I believe is a great first year of a column I’ve devised called Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. I’m known about town, I’ve made some great friends, and I feel at home. XO fits my mood perfectly – while some of it is downbeat, like my whole personality, the very sound of the album is bright and alive, full of possibility. I imagine aloud, over apple cider that night, that I will probably award Smith the top spot several more times in the coming years. His talent is that impressive, and my career as a music journalist is that assured.

Perhaps in a telltale sign, Bennie disagrees with me about XO. “It’s depressing, and the guy can’t sing,” he says.

October 2004

I’m in a record store in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. I’m here for the sole purpose of picking up Elliott Smith’s final album. Almost one year to the day after his death, which police have not yet definitively ruled a suicide, his family and friends have assembled his last recordings into a 15-song document of his final years. Smith had been working on Basement for nearly two years at the time of his death, and he intended the finished result to swing back and forth from full-band pop to spare acoustics and back again. The released record certainly does that, according to advance reviews, and any other intentions Smith may have had for it we can only guess.

I know exactly what I want when I walk in, but I start pretending to browse when I overhear the register jockey’s phone conversation. He’s breaking up with his girlfriend, and she seems to be letting him have it. He starts asking why, and choking back tears, and I feel odd just standing there staring at the Death Cab for Cutie CDs and listening in, but I’m also fascinated. His conversation seems to carry all the dashed expectations and self-questioning that I’ve gone through in the past few months, and it’s comforting to know other people can feel the same pain.

I know it gets better, and I want to tell him so, but I don’t know this guy, and have no idea what I would say. I’m also buying an album by a guy who believed, at the end, that it just doesn’t get better, and I know I will be looking to it for gems of hope amidst the turmoil, because if Smith could find them, then anyone can.

November 2000

I’m leaving my life for the first time. I’ve already quit Face in the wake of a frustrating year, butting heads with the new owner repeatedly and watching helplessly as the independent music rag I loved was turned into something I just couldn’t feel anymore. So I left.

And now I’m about to leave my second job, which had rapidly become my first after my exit from the magazine. I can’t say enough good things about Bull Moose Music, both as a store and as a haven for intelligent and creative people. To this day, I haven’t met a concentration of people with those two qualities like I met there. At the moment, I’m sitting in a dorm room with two of them, Kate Schier and Mike Moore (I know what you’re thinking – different Mike Moore), and we’re talking about Elliott Smith.

Katie and I are big fans, even though Figure 8, released in August, only finds its way to number six on my Top 10 List for the year. Mike has never heard a Smith album. And I’m amazed at how many superlatives Katie and I can come up with – we praise his voice, his playing, his arrangements, his neverending well of stunning melodies, and even his unkempt hair at one point. I’m left with a sense of awe – how this one guy’s music can connect people, can inspire the same adoration.

And afterwards, when I’m all packed up, I find myself strangely contented. I’m ready for the journey, ready to meet more like-minded people. I’m ready to go, ready for the next life.

October 2004

The album has started to come unglued.

In its second half, the seams start showing, and I can really hear the places where this unfinished record may have needed finishing. The delivery on “The Last Hour” is a little weak, the repeating synth line on “Twilight” is likely a place holder, and “Shooting Star” devolves into noise a bit too early into its six-minute running time. “Memory Lane” and “Little One” sound like demos, in a way that the other acoustic tracks did not.

It’s a sad reminder of what I’m actually listening to – remnants of an uncompleted life, cobbled together by loved ones to the best of their abilities. This is not an Elliott Smith album, in the way that his last three have been. It’s quite simply not finished. Like its author, it’s been cut down early, full of unrealized potential. In a way, the second half is sadder than the first, because these songs will never fully exist. They’re full of crumbling possibility, of the sad pall of death.

October 2003

It’s been two days since my Elliott Smith column hit the internet, and I’m staring at an inbox full of messages. I’ve been scared to read them, but this afternoon I make myself sit down and start to open a few. And I’m stunned – they’re almost all beautiful, literate, terrific letters from people who understood and responded to my emotional rant with gentle kindness. I met people just looking for catharsis, and for reasons to hope. I expected anger returned in kind, and I got the wonderful side of human nature.

And I need it now. My life is as bad as it has ever been – I work 12 hours a day at a terrible job, one that was quite literally all I could find. I am the poster child for dashed expectations. As embarrassed as I was by my downturns at my high school reunion last year, it’s only gotten exponentially worse. I can’t put it any more succinctly than this – I need a new life. This one has run its course.

But the mail keeps coming, and beautiful, warm-hearted people keep writing me, even though I don’t feel I deserve it. And I can’t possibly thank them enough.

October 2004

And some of them still write me, all the time, and I still haven’t found a way to thank them enough. I need a rebirth, now more than ever, and hopefully this move will give me one. Hope is really what it’s all about.

I’ve started From a Basement on the Hill over, and it sounds like a rebirth. The second half concludes gracefully with Smith’s old single, “A Distorted Reality is Now a Necessity to be Free,” which feels like a coda, a bonus track after a devolving set of demos in the last third. But “Coast to Coast,” the surging opener, is a complete song, a wonderful slice of Smith’s ample skills. “Pretty (Ugly Before)” is a joy, and “A Fond Farewell” remains the record’s high point.

And, of course, “A Fond Farewell” is a fitting soundtrack for the last night of my life. “This is not my life,” Smith sings, and as I take a few longing looks around this place I’ve grudgingly called home for months, I feel the same way. This is not my life. It’s all about believing that there’s something better. And about picking yourself up and going to find it.

The second half of Basement has just started again, the lovely tones of “Twilight” floating out of my speakers. I’m vaguely considering shutting it off before the unfinished tracks start playing, to save myself from feeling lost and wasted again, but I think I’ll let it run. It’s a shame that Smith’s last album is so incomplete, that it falls apart so dramatically, but the point here will be to listen for potential, not lament its half-constructed nature. These songs could be great, like everything else in Smith’s catalog. The framework is there.

And if, by the time it ends, I still haven’t shaken my sadness, then I can always press play again, and bask in the rebirth. I can always start over.

Yeah. I can always start over.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

All my furniture is gone.

I sold it all. I have not a bed to sleep on nor a couch to sit on. I have no tables, I have no chairs. I have a floor, a bedspread and a pillow. That’s all. My back hurts.

Final preparations for the Great Move of 2004 (as opposed to the Great Moves from 2000, 2001 and 2002) are proceeding apace. I have broken my lease, rented a truck, and once again boxed up my collected life. I have come to the conclusion, as I do every time I move, that I have way too much stuff. At present: 22 long boxes of comic books, seven smaller boxes of graphic novels, six big boxes of CDs, eight boxes of cassettes, and two boxes of DVDs and other sundry amusements. It’s a lot.

And I plan on getting more, too. Here’s a brief list of CDs coming out in the next few months that I am going to move heaven and earth to make sure I own: Elliott Smith’s final album, From a Basement on the Hill; Jason Falkner’s new EP Bliss Descending; Enuff Znuff’s perhaps-final album ?; A Perfect Circle’s two projects, Emotive and Amotion; the double King’s X live album; Neal Morse’s new One; Rufus Wainwright’s long-awaited Want Two; and U2’s horrendously titled How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. All I can say is, thank God for credit cards…

* * * * *

Of course, no amount of financial distress was going to keep me from seeing Marillion on their first U.S. tour in eight years. My friend Jody and I went to the Washington, DC show, at the deceptively superb 9:30 Club, and feasted on three hours of auditory bliss. Steve Hogarth is an electrifying performer – he came out in an ill-fitting suit and tie for the claustrophobic “The Invisible Man,” slowly breaking out of this persona as the song built in emotional intensity. He has terrific stage presence.

Musically, the band has rarely sounded better to these ears. It was the first time I’ve seen them live, and the experience added new dimensions to the multitude of concert recordings I have. They played the one-disc iteration of Marbles all the way through as the first set, and it was splendid, even without “Ocean Cloud.” Watching the band play “Neverland” live is a life-changing experience. It’s pretty amazing.

Erik Nielsen, one of the vertebrae of Racket Records, booted himself from my Christmas list by taping down a bogus second set list full of older songs and numbers the band has never played. (“Built-In Bastard Radar,” for example.) When covering the fake set list with the real one, Erik waved off our joking complaints by saying, “You shouldn’t have been looking anyway!” Even with all that, the second set was extraordinary – “Living With the Big Lie” was a great opener, “Quartz” bobbed and weaved nicely, “Three Minute Boy” precipitated a scratchy singalong of the impossible high notes, and “Estonia” was beautiful. Three encores later, the band left the stage with a glorious “Easter.”

Among the funny bits sprinkled throughout was Hogarth’s rendition of one of his favorite Cat Stevens songs. The band happened to be on the same transatlantic plane that Yusuf Islam took to make his failed attempt at entering the United States, and they were diverted along with everyone else. Hogarth took the opportunity to poke a little fun: “Morning has broken, just like the first morning, I’m in a jail cell in Bangor, Maine…”

* * * * *

It seems that the up-and-down that is R.E.M.’s career is heading down again.

This has been a recurring pattern with the group since their debut. Not counting their first EP, Chronic Town, the just-released Around the Sun is R.E.M.’s 13th album, and of those, only four can be considered truly great. Murmur, their first outing, is still an amazing piece of work despite (or perhaps because of) its thin sound and frenetic energy. Fans had to wait three years and three albums before they delivered another one as consistent: 1986’s Lifes Rich Pageant, still their most complete rock record.

After that, the experimental phase kicked in, and the albums became hit-or-miss. That is, until 1992’s terrific Automatic for the People, a haunting acoustic record that may well be their best work of all. They followed that up with the atrocious Monster, and then weathered the loss of drummer Bill Berry. The trio of Mike Mills, Peter Buck and Michael Stipe carried on, though, with the dreary synth-mopes of Up in 1999.

Here is where I slip into heresy, however, because I still think 2001’s Reveal is a great album. It’s huge and lush and full of soaring Brian Wilson-esque melodies, yet tinged with sadness. As great as it was, though, I just knew that its follow-up would slip backwards into some as-yet-unidentified deficiency. It’s just the way this band works – they need to slog through the mud to find the gold. You’ll notice that none of the four great records I mentioned sound anything like the others, and that’s on purpose. R.E.M. is a restless band, and they are more than willing to put out three fair-to-middling records in order to dig for a new classic sound for the fourth.

The digging has begun again on Around the Sun. I had heard good things – that this was a natural sequel to both Reveal and Automatic for the People, that the melodies were sweet and memorable, that this was another great record. And I’m sorry, but I’m not hearing it. I can definitely hear what they were aiming for – this album is almost entirely based in acoustic guitars and layers of synths, like the strummier bits from Reckoning as produced by Moby. It’s as if the band is trying to go backwards and forwards at once, and the conflicting impulses cancel each other out.

The songs here are largely lazy folkers, appealing one by one but bland when stitched together. Opener “Leaving New York” is one of the most successful, melodically speaking, which doesn’t bode well for the rest of the record. Most of these songs – especially the middle eight, from “Make It All Okay” through “The Worst Joke Ever” – blur together in a haze. Even the Beatlesque bounce of “Wanderlust” barely breaks through the gauze.

So the songs themselves are less than inspired, but with the right production this could have been at least engaging. Instead of highlighting the hushed tone of the songs, though, the band and Pat McCarthy have smoothed everything out and compressed it, and the result is a record that just lies there, passive and motionless. Automatic was a slow record, too, but the spare arrangements lent it an intimacy that R.E.M. has not matched since.

This is not a complete dud, you understand – R.E.M. doesn’t quite make those. There are flashes of brilliance here, especially (and surprisingly) Q-Tip’s cameo at the tail end of “The Outsiders” and the aforementioned “Leaving New York.” In fact, the album’s best song is its last – the title track builds and moves like nothing else here, crashing into its somber finale on waves of tympani rolls. If only they had written another 10 like it.

Since C-minus albums are part of their process, it seems petty to complain about the quality of Around the Sun. All this loping, overproduced meander really means is that R.E.M. has started on another quest, and in a few years (and perhaps one or two more less-than-terrific records) we should have the fifth great album of their career, and it will all be worth it. Kudos to the band for not giving up when Berry left, and for continuing to turn over every rock they can find. It’s just a shame that we have to get through albums like Around the Sun on the way to something wonderful.

* * * * *

Final debate tonight, on domestic issues, which basically means that Bush should just not show up and spare himself the embarrassment. I am so happy that President John Kerry has shown up to both debates so far, as opposed to his long-winded, humorless twin, who did most of the talking throughout his campaign. But maybe Cheney will feed Bush better answers this time.

Tinfoil hat conspiracies aside, seriously, watch for yourself, and decide for yourself. And vote. Please vote.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I’m a little distracted this week. I got fired on Monday.

It’s the first time I’ve ever been fired from anything, for any reason, and being who I am, I’m trying hard not to internalize it. The actual incident that led to my dismissal is somewhat trivial, and served as a convenient scapegoat, I’m sure. The simple truth is that I did not bring my A-game to this job, and I know it. I gave it probably 75 percent of the attention and concentration it required, and it showed in my performance – silly mistakes, simple misunderstandings, etc.

The fact is that this job was never going to work for me. It was both a) very boring and b) very precise, two things that do not go together well with my personality. If I’m not interested in what I’m doing, then my mind wanders, and my organizational skills falter, and I start getting numbers and dates and addresses wrong. And then they have no choice but to let me go.

It’s depressing, though – four months ago I had this whole life plan. I had a snazzy new apartment, I was going to share my life with a beautiful Brazilian girl named Carol (who undoubtedly is reading this – hi, sweetie!), and I was going to keep this well-paying job for as long as I needed to. Now Carol is in Brazil and is staying there, the job is gone, and I am packing my things once again and starting a new life.

So it’s off to greener pastures, I hope. I am headed to Chicago, the site of my greatest successes so far, to reconnect with old contacts and hopefully get something artistically and financially rewarding off the ground. I’m selling everything that isn’t a comic book or a CD, and ditching this failed attempt at a life. In a way, this is a positive thing – it’s shown me the kind of job I cannot do, and it’s given me the impetus to get the hell out of here, since the two years I spent in Baltimore rank as perhaps the worst of my life. I need to go back to school, I need to do something that makes use of my skills (instead of something that forces me to submerge them), I need a clean slate.

So I’m gone.

Thanks to everyone who has been there for me this week – your help has been invaluable, and I can’t even tell you what you mean to me. Thank you so much.

* * * * *

So of course, I needed to buy something this week that would cheer me up. Repeated listenings of SMiLE have helped, of course, since it’s the most playfully happy thing I’ve heard in years, but I’m all about the new. So of the 10 or so new discs that came out this week, I decided that I had money enough to buy only one, and it would have to be one that could lift me from despair and make me laugh.

So I chose William Shatner.

Shatner’s whole career deserves its own descriptive noun – Shatnerosity, perhaps, or Shatnericiousness. There’s almost no accounting for his longevity as a cultural icon, save for the all-encompassing significance of Star Trek. Shatner was only James T. Kirk for three years on television, but he spun that off into seven Trek films, books, convention experiences, other TV shows (TJ Hooker, the new Boston Legal), and a series of terrific commercials for Priceline.com, all without a modicum of what anyone might justly call real talent. He’s always himself, in exactly the same ways. The truth is, though, that some projects need an element of Shatnerosity, and the only one who can provide that is William Shatner.

Then there’s his singing career. It was short-lived – one album in 1968, called The Transformed Man. But what an album it is – poetry recitals, ‘60s psychedelica, and fall-down-funny versions of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” and “Mr. Tambourine Man,” delivered in Shatner’s often-imitated, hammy, rhythmic speech. It was ridiculous specifically because it was so deadpan serious – Shatner never betrayed the sense that he was in on the joke, although he undoubtedly was.

Thirty-six years later, Shatner’s back with an album called Has Been, produced and arranged by Ben Folds. The pair met when Folds enlisted Shatner for his Fear of Pop album in 1998, and immediately clicked. The resulting album is as surprising as anything in Shatner’s whole bizarre career, largely thanks to his working relationship with Folds. What’s, indeed, shocking about Has Been is not that Folds gets Shatner, but that he shows us that there was something there to get after all.

It would have been easy to make the kind of album most people are probably expecting from Has Been. Just get Shatner to speak-sing some famous pop songs and make fun of himself, and it’s a million seller. While the album starts off in that vein, with Shatner wickedly intoning Pulp’s “Common People” to great effect, the rest of it will disappoint anyone looking for more of the same. Not that it’s any less funny, but Has Been refuses to be dumb-funny, aiming rather for a peculiar sort of is-he-serious autobiographical beat poetry that is never less than engrossing.

The best part of this album is that Shatner is treated here with complete artistic respect. The record plays to his particular strengths – his Shatnericiousness – as if he were Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen, and it explains without having to just what it is about Shatner that people adore. He goes out on an emotional limb more than once here, especially on “What Have You Done,” a monologue about his late wife, and he eschews jokes and easy humor.

But in its own way, something as heartfelt as “It Hasn’t Happened Yet,” a lament for wasted potential, is just as funny as a farce like “You’ll Have Time,” with its Tom Waits-style backdrop. Shatner understands his own joke – it’s practically impossible to take him seriously, even when he’s absolutely serious, and he and Folds play to that throughout Has Been. The title track, for example, is a hokey Western melodrama in which Shatner earnestly defends his cultural status, but the hilarious setups and backing vocals keep it from pomposity. It’s a fine line, but Folds and Shatner walk it for the length of this album without falling off.

The parade of guest stars helps – the album is fashioned like a jazz-rock version of a hip hop record, with sung choruses by guest vocalists like Joe Jackson and Fleming McWilliams. The one real over-the-top funny moment here is “I Can’t Get Behind That,” a mock-furious rant that features Henry Rollins. Shatner matches him shout for shout, and the verse where he rails against singers who “can’t sing, and get paid for talking” is a hoot. (“Okay, maybe I can get behind that.”) Elsewhere, Nick Hornby (High Fidelity) provides very Shatner-esque lyrics for “That’s Me Trying,” about a father clumsily reaching out to his estranged daughter, and it (and Folds’ lovely sung chorus) fits right in.

In fact, the only moment that sounds out of place is the final track, “Real,” written and sung by Brad Paisley. It sounds very much like an outsider’s view of what it means to be plain old non-heroic William Shatner. Despite a classic second verse – “So next time there’s an asteroid or a natural disaster, I’m flattered that you thought of me, but I’m not the one to call” – this is the one song Shatner doesn’t seem to own. It seems to be missing a certain… well, Shatnerousness.

Has Been is a strange record, a perfectly made document of a singular voice, and one that works specifically because that voice doesn’t seem to deserve this record, and its owner knows it. No one else could have made this album, though, and kudos to Ben Folds for recognizing that anyone could have done a collection of parodies. Has Been is simultaneously more serious and funnier than a simpler project would have been, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you find yourself moved by it, too, in an odd sort of way.

Hell, it’s simply Shatnerific.

Next week, probably R.E.M.

See you in line Tuesday morning.