C says, “Compile a 15-song soundtrack for your life so far.”

What would a movie of your life be like?

That’s the first question that I landed on when I started tackling this post.  Trying to imagine what kind of soundtrack requires a knowledge of the movie; is it a sweeping, strings-lush instrumental score, 80s covers by nu-metal bands, pop songs reinterpreted by the film’s cast or a selection of self-consciously indie songs designed to sell records to college students.

What is, for instance, the story in my life?  I don’t know, and it troubles me that I don’t know. My perspective, maybe, is skewed: I’m too close for analysis. Is it the story about a decent guy who got damaged by a bad relationship and then found love again? An artist or academic who gave up on the things he used to be passionate about to nuzzle up to corporate stability? A sad, introspective film about an aging, out-of-shape fanboy who realizes that his Wolverine action figures won’t keep him warm at night? What is the throughline of my life?   I started thinking about it chronologically, but that’s a fool’s errand. I mean, a movie about my life wouldn’t encompass all 31 years, and besides that leaves me with only one song per two point whatever years.

And I haven’t even thought about the music at this point.

When I say that I find Rob Gordon a sympathetic character, this is the sort of behavior and thinking that I’m referring to.

I tried to establish a theme. I worked on this for awhile. Was that theme something about living the face of emotional adversity or about, I don’t know, using only Beta Band songs? There are plenty of soundtracks that have been effective using gimmicks like that, but they tend to be exceptions to the rule.

What rule? That soundtracks are collections of songs completely devoid of a binding cartilage. The Anchorman soundtrack, with its connecting intros by Ron Burgundy, is not subject to this rule, by the way.

So I set out to put together a list of 15 songs that could play in the background during montages, be featured in set pieces or at least one embarrassing karaoke scene, and of course have an upbeat indie song for the titles and an awkward song choice that has nothing to do with the rest of the already kind of fractured song list to play over the end credits as a marketing hook to bring in band completists, the sort of people who’d buy the New Moon soundtrack even though “Meet Me On The Equinox” isn’t a very good Death Cab for Cutie song.

Anyway, after some introspection and some polling among my friends, I’ve resigned myself to the fact that my life story is an awkward indie dramedy.  One of my friends posited that I might be played by Michael Cera, which made me cry a little bit, but is hilarious in its dissonance (I hope).

So…

1. The Mountain Goats – Alibi (which will play over the scribbly-looking, poorly animated opening credits)

2. Kenny Ellis – Swingin’ Dreidel

3. Frank Black and the Catholics – Nadine

4. Nostalgia 77 – Seven Nation Army

5. Stellastarr* – Prom Zombie

6. Elvis Costello and the Impostors – Uncomplicated

7. David Bowie – Ziggy Stardust (this would be the awkward karaoke song)

8. REM – Redhead Walking

9. Stan Bush – The Touch (this is the song that everyone will assume is the awkward karaoke song if they haven’t seen the movie)

10. Ben Folds – Give Judy My Notice

11. Manic Street Preachers – Your Love Alone Is Not Enough

12. Bear Vs Shark – Rich Old People Say Fuck Yeah Hey Hey

13. Lenlow – Kanye Mahna (Cake vs. Kanye West)

14. M. Ward – One Hundred Million Years

15. Fall Out Boy – Alpha Dog

Bill says, “Recommend bands we should listen to and give us reasons why we should.”

I think by dint of listening to a lot of music, a mistaken notion that I am smart about music exists among a lot of my friends. I don’t pretend to be; I just like what I like and I don’t try to proselytize too loudly about it most of the time because I know that some of the stuff that I dig – like The Mountain Goats (who are a bit too lo-fi, especially in their earlier material) or 16 Horsepower (who are a bit too Old-West and Jesus sometimes despite their punk-rock origins) – is not the same type of stuff my friends and associates also dig.

At any rate, here is some stuff that I like that I think other people will also like.

Bandits Of The Acoustic Revolution: They are an all-acoustic ska punk band with a classical string section. They are as good as that description suggests.

Blue Scholars: I like the new Jay-Z as much as anybody else (and, well, everybody seems to like it, so yeah) but Blue Scholars, the Seattle hip hop duo is probably one of my favorite acts in the genre. I would put them on par with Black Star and its individual members. Not as fun as my other favorite Northwest hip hop group, The Saturday Knights, but incredibly tight.

The Mountain Goats: Probably my favorite band that nearly nobody else I know has heard of. I saw TMG on the last night of their most recent tour (post here). The poetry of John Darnielle’s lyrics juxtaposed with the stripped-down accompaniments is something I could listen to over and over again, and sometimes do. This live version of “Dilaudid” gives me chills.

Lordi: And now for something completely different. Unapologetic, over-the-top metal performed by people dressed as monsters, Lordi should not be as listenable as they are. They are incredibly popular in their native Scandinavia and they are like Gwar except much better at actually rocking as opposed to being generally terrible. And they have songs with titles like “Hard Rock Hallelujah” and “Devil Is A Loser.” The video for “Hallelujah” which I have linked to just now, features zombie cheerleaders.

Caroline wants to know, “Do you know any poems by heart?  Are there ones you were forced to memorize/ones you decided to pick up on your own?  If you do have these floating around in your head, what do you use them for?

If the memorization thing doesn’t apply, tell me about a poem you wish you could recite (or read, or whatever), in public, and who you’d like for your audience. ”

Like someone once quipped, “I know half the words to all the songs.”

There was a point when I knew several poems by heart; as a child of the 80s, memorization was king during my formative years in public school.  Kipling’s “If” was one that I still remember large swaths of.

On a less compulsory level, I know at least the most quotable bits from poets that I like – the Romantics, both British and American (Keats 4 lyf, yo), The Beats, and a few like Crane and Eliot and cummings.

So, really, the answer to your question is no, Caroline. But I do bust out “John Donne, Anne Donne, Undone” whenever the opportunity arises.

As to reading stuff in public, I’m going to go with ‘none’.   I can get incredibly shy in front of strangers, which probably makes you question why in hell I would write on the Internet without anonymity.  I don’t have an answer for that.

Perry demands: “Describe various acquaintances as comic book characters without explicitly saying who each is supposed to be, leaving it as an exercise for the reader to determine the secret identity of each.”

This is fun for nobody. An interesting mental exercise, to be sure, but one that is preloaded with divisiveness.

First of all, there’s the ‘why wasn’t I included?’ thing.  And then the ‘I disagree with what you said about me!’ thing.

This is written proof that sometimes things that Perry (and I) think are good ideas are actually bad ideas.

Once, right after college, we were organizing a Halloween party and, spurred on by Perry, I floated the notion of doing some horror-themed role-playing. The twist, as it were, was that we’d be playing ourselves. The twist on that twist was that our characters were going to be made by the person to your left or some randomly determined person. The specifics are, at my advanced age, fuzzy. Anyway, this led to progressively more heated questions from the players,  like, “Why did you give me Icy Demeanor as a character flaw?”  Friendships may have ended during the character creation process and, suffice it to say, we never did actually play as we’d initially planned.

More content of the user-generated variety ensues!

Bill says: “Write a post about me!” So here goes that….

William Gatevackes is a garrulous drunk and an irascible curmudgeon of a gambler. He is a cheat and a liar and by that barometer of character he is the finest man I have ever known.

I met William Gatevackes in Tay Ninh. He was losing a fistfight with a Cao Dai holy man. A fistfight where the fists were full of knives. He was bleeding into his eye from a bad cut. Apparently, Bill told me later over stale American beer, calling a Caodaiist a Buddhist is a good way to get shanked.

Once William Gatevackes wrestled a lion. We were on safari and our rifle shells had gotten wet during a freak hippo attack that we barely escaped with our lives. We were drying ourselves by the campfire, Bill cooking a fresh zebra steak and myself playing selections from Cosi Fan Tutti on the harmonica when the lion rampaged in out of nowhere, as if created ex nihilo by an angry God.

Okay, I can’t keep this up. I was going to do this ‘strenuous man’ faux-Hemingway thing about Bill, but I can’t top wrestling a lion and losing a knife fight to a monk.

I’ve known Bill for about 8 years, ever since he (and friend Rich, as well) was a co-worker of mine at a former job. I knew this about Bill right away: that he was a giant nerd and a Steelers fan, and that led to hours and hours of nitpicky conversations about the Avengers. It was a glorious bromance, and then Bill’s wife sent him to Bel-Air to live with his high-powered lawyer uncle because he was targeted by a violent gang Bill moved to New York with his wife. Rich could barely cope. We’d mill around Bill’s empty cubicle and say “Man, isn’t Triathlon seriously underrated?” and “If you misguidedly believe that the Celestial Madonna arc is better than either the Kree-Skrull War or the Serpent Crown storyline, then I have no choice but to shun you,” and we’d pretend that Bill was there to get flustered at our statements. When the Steelers – both mine and Bill’s favorite team – disappointed me (which was often), I would call Bill to rant uncontrollably at him while he ranted uncontrollably at me.  And sometimes, in the still of the night, he’d call me, weeping, and tell me that he completes me, sniffling and then hanging up when I tell him he has the Jerry Maguire quote backwards.

When he’s not doing any of that stuff, Bill is going back to school full-time and writing for a crapton of sites: BrokenFrontier, PopMatters, Film Buff Online and whitehouse.gov.  He also penned an article for Comic Foundry, the short-lived yet super-awesome comics magazine.  He has a blog that he never updates because he (rightly) spends that time being a father to his rad daughter Vanessa, who is named after the wife of Marvel Comics supervillain The Kingpin.

It’s User-Generated Content Week – a week where I do nothing but post about the stuff YOU asked for.

Today’s topic comes from C: “Critique all your Gerard-given nicknames”

Once, my girlfriend convinced her friend Gerard that my name was Fernando. He believed this for twenty minutes, believed it, I am told, with an almost white-hot intensity. This is further proof that the glue that binds C and I together is our shared love of exploiting the gullible. Convincing her friends that my name is not actually my name is a subset of that, which has led to me being referred to as “Steiner” in the comments here at least once.

Since then, Gerard has continued to call me by a string of improbable names. Because there are moments where my life plays like a bad comedy, I am never sure if Gerard doesn’t know my name or whether he’s simply playing along. The cynic in me believes it is the latter, but the dreamer in me longs for the former.

As requested, here is a critique of each of my Gerard-given nicknames to date.

Fernando: This is my favorite, because there is an Abba song named “Fernando” and I believe it is one of the better Abba songs. There was, indeed, something in the air that night.

Alonso: I like Alonso because it is usually a last name, and last names as first names are typically rad, even moreso if there is a hyphen. Alonso loses points for not being hyphenated, sadly, but gains them for being the name of Don Quixote’s father: Cervantes like whoa.

Alfonso: Corruption of Alonso, various kings of Portugal. Scores points for making me think, via the Portuguese king association (Portuguese King Association is an awesome band name) of Portugal. The Man, which is a band that I think is okay:

Reginald: While Reginald is certainly classy, I have to dock it a bit for not following the Latin-influenced theme that Gerard had been establishing up til this point. Still, lots of notable Reginalds – the president of Nintendo of America, Saints player Reggie Bush, Elton John and, of course, Reginald VelJohnson, which is oddly prescient as a name choice because I do plan on naming my firstborn, regardless of gender, VelJohnson.

Jeff: Gerard has never, to my knowledge, called me this.

Iacopo: Gerard hasn’t actually called me this yet, as far as I’m aware, but I’m kind of lobbying for it here because I think it’s a pretty cool name. Like, if you’re this brash young swordsman looking for revenge but not skilled enough to best the whatever-fingered man that killed your father/wife/lover/son, you might get sent to see “crazy old Iacopo up in the Jundland Mountains,” and he would be, of course, awesome.

EDIT! Rodriguez: How could I forget Rodriguez?  Rodriguez makes me feel like I’m the loose cannon in a buddy cop film, like a gruff captain might shot “Rodriguez!” right before demanding my badge and chastising me for blowing up twenty cars, two houses and an orbital satellite to collar a drug dealer.

Which of these ridiculous names for me is your favorite, active and engaged commenters?

TOMORROW: UGC Week rolls on! What topic will I tackle next!?

One of the things that make blogs blogs, according to many social media ‘thought leaders’, is the comments section – the arena of interplay between the author and the reader. Well, through the magic of comments, I’m giving the reader a chance to steer while I put on a tie or send a really important text or try to find that one CD that’s in the back seat somewhere.

That’s right, it’s time for another USER-GENERATED CONTENT WEEK! UGC Week 1 happened in Fall 2008, and I blogged about subjects like having a beard, mexican food, the presidential debates and why the CW drama One Tree Hill is a metaphor for the modern political landscape.

Those were okay topics, but now it’s 2010, and you need to step up your game, readers. In the comments section, leave me some things that you’d like to see me write a post on. Next week, I’ll write a post about every single thing you guys and gals come up with.

So, let’s have at it.