Interviews

Gorman Bechard

Clayton Trutor

Gorman Bechard is an accomplished novelist and filmmaker straight outta New Haven, Connecticut. His most recent project is a documentary about The Replacements, a band whose mythology is as extensive as their catalog. Color Me Obsessed chronicles the band's career through the words of their friends and their fans, tracing the band from origins in Minneapolis in the late 70s through their 1991 demise.
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Politics

Use More Paper

Clayton Trutor

You will be listening to Willie Nelson's rendition of "Always on My Mind" over a grubby old pair of headphones on your office computer. An email will pop up from a friend of yours on the other side of the continent. After you click onto the link your friend sent you to a measured, yet still clever editorial in the New York Times, you will scroll down to the bottom of the email, all while thinking wistfully of all the little things Willie should have said or done. Beneath the emailer's signature will be a suggestion that you "please consider the environment before printing this message," as if you are likely to print out this link to Frank Rich's column.

You will respond to this person in the form of an actual letter written on actual lined paper, folded twice and placed in a hand addressed envelope and delivered by the hard-working, though often maligned men and women of the United States Postal Service. You will press down hard on the page with the stubby number two pencil with an elementary school grip you found on the bus the other day.

Dear Environmentally Conscious Friend of Mine,.....
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Fiction

The Key to Paradise, Wisconsin

Paul Lewellan

After each concert, Titus Welsh savored a pint of Blue Bunny French Vanilla ice cream in his Winnebago Vectra Grand Tour while the Slaughter House Four, his backup band, trolled local bars for anyone under thirty with breasts. Even before he hit the cover of People, Titus didn't need to cast for women. Women leapt into his boat.

Titus heard a knock on the RV door. "What's the problem, Feron?"

Feron Bullock opened the door and inserted his head. "A pretty lady says she needs to see you," the security guard shouted over the screaming teenagers at the door. "Older chick. Claims to be the mayor."

Titus perked up. "A tiny thing? Five-two, brown hair, big chest, short leather skirt, killer green eyes?"

"Didn't notice the eyes."

Titus scanned the Winnebago. Clean dishes were stacked in the sink. The blue plaid curtains his mother made were slightly parted. The lamp table beside the small red love seat was tidy. "I'm always ready for company."
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Images

Round Top, Texas

Christopher Woods

Christopher Woods is a writer, photographer and teacher. He lives in Houston and in Chappell Hill, Texas. His work has appeared recently in Litchfield Review, Glasgow Review, and Narrative Magazine. He shares an online gallery with his wife Linda at Moonbird Hill Arts: www.moonbirdhill.exposuremanager.com/
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Culture

The Decade in VH1

Mike Gormly

"We spent so much time judging what other people created that we've created very, very little of our own."

- Chuck Palahniuk, Choke, 2001

I remember walking past a news stand in 1999 and seeing an article about how the coming decade didn't lend itself to a convenient contraction like the 70s, 80s or 90s. The article made several suggestions, including the Aughts and the Naughties, and I was left wondering what name would eventually be chosen. Ten years later, we're still trying to decide what to call this decade. As we bid goodbye to the 2000s, it seems wholly appropriate that this amorphous decade of ours remains nameless.

A lot of the blame for this can probably heaped upon the wide-scale move away from collective entertainment toward individually programmed leisure preferences. In the decade of iPods, Tivo and Netflix, music, movies, and television ceased no longer offered us a unified social identity. We had to turn elsewhere for our common cultural experiences. In effect, the MTV Generation gave way to the VH1 Generation.

Like the rest of you, I watched far more VH1 than MTV this decade. I have no idea what MTV was airing in the last decade aside from The Osbournes and "not music videos." Similarly, VH1 moved away from showing actual music in the 2000s, even going so far as to drop its "Music First" slogan in 2003. Late 90s music-themed hit shows like Pop-Up Video and Behind the Music provided the first glimpse of a post-music video future for VH1. By the middle of the 2000s, programs like The 50 Sexiest Video Moments, The 100 Greatest One-Hit Wonders, "Celebreality" shows that applied The Bachelor's date show format to has-been stars like Bret Michaels and Flavor Flav, and, most importantly, the I Love The... shows dominated the network.
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Culture

The Decade in Super Bowl Halftime Shows

Barry Trutor

The decade to come in Super Bowl Halftime Shows will be ushered in with the same winning formula that has delivered us from the wardrobe malfunction 00s. On February 7, 2010, the half whole Who and Don Kirshner's son Ricky will again provide us sports fans with a breather in the middle of our most cherished national holiday. Following the infamous 2004 wardrobe malfunction, the heads of the thirty-two families decided that Super Bowl Halftime Shows featuring harmless old rockers and produced by seasoned industry insiders was the going-forward business case.
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