Don’t Stop Believin’

What is it about Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’”?

What is it about that song that has our generation in such a craze? Maybe you’ve heard: “Don’t Stop Believin’” (hereafter referred to as DSB) is the number-one selling song of all time(!) on iTunes. All time. Number one.

It’s friggin’ Journey, for Steve Perry’s sake!

I keep hearing that its inclusion in “The Soprano’s” finale, or how the 2005 World-Series-winning White Sox made it their song, that that’s why it’s so freaking popular now. But I just can’t believe it. I think it started years before then, because I’ve seen how our generation has latched onto it like nobody’s business.

It makes sense. Released in 1981, right at the buttcrack of Gen X and Gen Y (and my own birth year), DSB lives in the foggy troughs of our childhood memories. Most Journey songs do. “Anyway You Want It” has always been my personal favorite, because I remember listening to it on our local rock station, Q106, growing up. “Stone In Love” is pretty damn good, too, and makes a great summer song.

DSB, though, is in a class all by itself. I have been struck stone sober as a bar full of twenty-somethings set down their drinks, raise their fists, and struggle to reach the highest notes of “some-where in the NIIIGGGHHHTTTT!”

Andrea’s wedding featured a white person’s dance floor, complete with air guitars and arena rock. And what song was, arguably, the most popular – besides “Bohemian Rhapsody” (probably Gen X’s own DSB, at its height, thanks to “Wayne’s World”)? You guessed it. Every friggin’ person on that dance floor knew the words. It’s amazing.

And now I’ve learned that our generation, the iPod generation, has taken to this song so much that they’ve blessed Apple with ungodly amounts of money via iTunes downloads. It’s not Britney, or 50 Cent, or that cracker Jack Johnson. It’s not even other arena rockers like Boston or Foreigner or…hell…even REO Speedwagon. No, it’s Steve Perry and his dysfunctional bunch of Frisco hippies.

Don’t get me wrong: I like the song. I’ve probably karaoke’ed it a couple of times in some drunken stupor. Don and I have covered many Journey songs, in fact, and slaughter each one of them. As with Def Leppard and Bon Jovi, bars gravitate toward these kinds of songs – and only a few people screw up the lyrics. It’s frightening to think that an entire generation of misfits that drink from the well of YouTube and quench their thirst on Facebook would have the brain capacity to remember songs from just before they were born. What sense does that make?

I understand the longing for something from the past to hold on to. Each decade brings back tricks from previous eras (grunge and Sabbath, Interpol and Joy Division, pop punk with whoever that one band is that sucks). Then what, in this grim time on Earth, can we learn from Journey?

Maybe that’s just it. There’s nothing to be learned. Maybe it’s all in the mindless fun. That boy from “South Detroit” (they would call it “Downriver”)? He’s us. And to a generation who has never been without want, we never stop believing. We don’t know any other way.

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It’s Morning Again In America

It was about 4 p.m. yesterday that I stopped caring about being a participant in the election and wanted to be merely a spectator. With the highest voter turnout ever and hundreds of volunteers spread across Jackson county, helping to turn the “birthplace of the Republican Party” blue for the first time since LBJ, my modest phone-banking efforts Tuesday afternoon were strained. My ear was rubbed raw, my voice was scratchy, and I had been up since 5:30 a.m.

Besides, I had a hot pot of Election Night chili waiting for me at home. And friends, you can’t argue with that.

But what an incredible ride. I think the New York Times put it best:

The election of Mr. Obama amounted to a national catharsis — a repudiation of a historically unpopular Republican president and his economic and foreign policies, and an embrace of Mr. Obama’s call for a change in the direction and the tone of the country.

It was a catharsis of sorts for me, as well, after the incredibly upsetting weekend I had. That Mark Schauer commercial I was in? The Jackson Citizen Patriot’s Chris Gautz suspected something from the beginning. How did all those unemployed people get into that factory, he wondered.

Then, on Friday, The Adrian Telegram broke the news. Little ol’ me and my one-hit-per-day personal blog injects some extra controversy into the campaign. Suddenly I’m an “actor,” and the entire premise of Schauer’s ad is thrown into question. This weekend, the Battle Creek Enquirer picked up the story, and Chris Gautz from the CitPat writes an “I told you so” column.

And it was all kicked off by a press release from the Walberg campaign. Someone had found my blog post, and they were telling all.

First, a confession: the whole deal was totally my fault. I should have kept my big mouth shut. Despite Walberg pulling his own shenanigans and generally being a big creep, it was naive of me to think that no one would stumble on my personal blog.

This all went down Thursday, so the rest of the weekend I kept my head down, made phone calls for the Schauer campaign, and tried to make up for whatever damage I had caused. Tuesday night I even skipped the big Democratic party at the Michigan Theatre; I just wanted it all to be over.

Luckily, Schauer won the election after the returns from the local cities – Jackson, Battle Creek, and Adrian – came in reliably for the Dems. My original thoughts behind volunteering for Schauer (Obama will win Michigan, but the 7th Congressional race would be much tighter) turned out to be spot-on, because we didn’t know Schauer won until Wednesday morning. So my little controversy amounted to little more than a blip on the local political radar, though it was enough for folks to pick on me at the Democratic office.

I spent yesterday morning at the St. John’s polling location, not far from downtown, then I came back to the Dem office to eat lunch and make calls for the rest of the afternoon. It was amazing to see such a hub of activity: Obama voters by the dozens streaming in and out (and an incredible amount of African Americans helping), phone lines buzzing, and the mood of the place steadily rising as we all felt the Change coming. A lady came up from Oklahoma to help out with the election, and one of the guys she called was so excited about the day’s events he asked her out on the spot, right there over the phone.

With the local elections now out of my hands, I went to grandma’s for a bit, and then came home to concentrate on watching CNN’s iPhone-like touchscreen numbers and listening to MSNBC’s commentary for the rest of the night, watching state after incredible state fall for Obama. I heard Tom Delay, that know-nothing fool, predict that it would be Nancy Pelosi, not Barack Obama, that takes control of the country. After Ohio went blue, my grandma called crying.

The Michigan ballot proposals, one for legalizing marijuana for medical use and one supporting stem cell research, passed in a state that, only four years ago, voted to add a one-man, one-woman marriage clause to our constitution. Incredible.

On several levels, this will be my first active, participatory election. It’s the first I’ve given my heart to a politician that had a slim chance of winning. It’s the first my name saw shame in the local newspapers. It’s also the first that I can say, with all honesty, has made me question whether this whole political thing is right for me.

The amount of energy it takes to run something like a Congressional race is staggering. It’s like having sex for for a full year with someone you can’t stand the site of, and – at the climax – you have a 50/50 chance of either getting off or having a stroke mid-coitus.

But like sex, most of the fun comes in the participation. In college, I liked campaigning far more than I ever liked governing. The thought that a few of my efforts helped stem the tide of idiocy is comforting; even my slip-up couldn’t stop Schauer from winning.

As Andrea said, I wonder what’s next. My God, can we really look forward to at least two years of campaign-free news cycles? Will the economic turmoil cast us over the cliff? Will reason and decency and hope be enough to undo the damage done to our wonderful country?

I like to think so. This morning my thoughts reached out to Ronald Reagan, my childhood president, when he said, “It’s morning again in America.” Barack Obama is our generation’s president just like John F. Kennedy was my grandma’s president, and just like FDR was my great grandpa’s president. It remains to be seen what kind of impact he’ll actually have in the White House, but who can doubt things will be different from here on out.

Hope springs eternal.

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Americans Are Masochistic In Maine

You start throwing around phrases like “economic downturn” and “…not since the Depression,” and it makes one question the sanity of cutting out of town on another cross-country trip – where even the Hamptons are facing declining real estate values.

Gas. Wheat and milk. The price of everything, except houses, is going up, and here I sit on the edge of discovery, ready to journey into the heart of Old America and look into our revolutionary past. What shaped us as a country? Where did the Founding Fathers come from? Is fresh-off-the-boat crab meat really that tasty?

The answers to these questions, and more, I hope to find when I set out on May 16 to the original colonies. I’ll land on my own version of Plymouth Rock, I’ll walk down the streets of Philadelphia, bread in hand, and I’ll swim in the same pond that taught Thoreau to abandon his fellow citizens and embrace the wilderness as the last respite of a sanity-seeking intelligence. If he could spend time in prison to protest his country’s war-mongering, then surely I can sit on the banks of the Delaware and find out if Washington’s late-night crossing was worth the trouble.

Jefferson taught that a government should keep its powers within the confines of the Constitution, except while he was president, and so I don’t feel so bad taking my government money and putting it into my gas tank to run wild all over New England. If Route 66 was a quest to discover the world and my place in it, this trip is a journey to the roots of our country. What makes us tick? Where do we come from? Why can you talk about the weather with anyone, anywhere, anytime and not sound like a raving lunatic?

I’ve decided that I renting a car for this trip would be a waste. The states are so small, and the driving so non-perilous, that my little Suzuki should do just fine. It would have croaked on the side of some Colorado mountainside, but I believe the rolling hills of Vermont will not be such a chore.

I’ve also decided that, since the states are so close together, the back roads and state highways will be more than adequate to see everything I want to see in a reasonable amount of time.

The trip begins where our Declaration of Independance did: in Philadelphia, a logical starting point to a trek so historical. I’ll lay eyes on the Liberty Bell, and Mr. Franklin’s printing shop, and the building where demigods, as Jefferson called them, met and decided to try out a nation-sized experiment. From there it’s down to Maryland, up to Delaware and New Jersey, and straight through for a night (or two) in Boston and on to Maine, where I’ll stream through Route 1 and 3 on back to New Hampshire. Vermont is a resting stop before tackling Saratoga and upstate New York, with a finish through wherever I think the Adams Family (presidential, not kooky) would want to see last.

These trips are the travel equivalent to a Greatest Hits album: not a full picture, but a quick browse-through of the catalog. I may not get to a Red Socks game, but I’ll be sure to grab a picture of Fenway if I’m in the neighborhood.

The vacation time is set, the money is in the bank – what I need now are a few B&B ideas and a map of rest stops for those nights I feel like braving the New England spring nights in my spacious backseat. Nothing beats an economic downturn like a trip out of town and a few adventures along the way. Clinton and Obama can fight for the few remaining states until they’re blue-er in the face; I’ll be finding out about the prize they so greedily seek.

All that’s left is the getting there.

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