Oldham 8 Theatres, 1995-2013

I've discussed the Oldham 8 a few times previously in this blog, but I find that now is an appropriate time to revisit some of what I've already shared. The theater opened to the public 8 September 1995, too late for me to see Batman Forever there, but in time for my first ever new release James Bond movie, GoldenEye. I was a junior in high school, so I was at the perfect age to begin going to see movies without my family. I've always been in awe of cinema, a thrill instilled in me from my childhood - even just going to the second-run theater for a matinee showing with floors so covered in spilled Cokes that the bottoms of my sneakers began to stick with each step I took was exciting.

The lights dim, the jingle for the concession stand or the theater chain play, the trailers run...it's all such a tease. I think you have to be a child to get caught up in such pre-feature fare, where each time a clip ends you hope that the next thing to start playing will be the feature itself but...

No! Another trailer! Come on, just show the movie! Wait! What's this movie they're advertising? That kinda looks good. Okay, I might want to see that when it comes out. Oh, yes! I definitely want to see that! Now hurry up and play the movie I came to see! Yes! This is it! No, never mind. Another trailer! QUIT TOYING WITH MY EMOTIONS, PROJECTOR PERSON!

Then finally, the fade-to-black cat and mouse game reaches its crescendo and the feature begins. The studio logo and its music seems so majestic, even if it's just the work of a marketing department for a soulless conglomerate. New Line Cinema always had my personal favorite music, with its sweeping high-range strings. It elevated my emotions just to hear it, and truth be told I always found it jarring when the movie would open with a bad pop song immediately after the logo screen.

Now, you might think I'm discussing childhood reflections but I'm not. I felt this way when the Oldham 8 opened, too. I felt it at every one of the 129 times I saw a movie there, and I still feel it to this day whenever I go to see a movie play on the big screen. If the day comes that I don't go through this private roller coaster at a theater, I'll probably just quit seeing movies at all. I'll also probably be in some kind of serious medical condition so check on me.

The first time I ever went to the Oldham 8 was especially memorable because it was also my first ever official date. I had met a girl at a mutual friend's Halloween party and we both asked our mutual friend about the other. We hit it off over the phone. I can't even remember why now, but for some reason I had actually gone to my dad's the weekend of the date, which was 4 November 1995 - a Saturday. I was stoked to see GoldenEye, but it was two weeks off and frankly, I had no idea what other movies were even out because I paid no attention to such things normally. I still hadn't acclimated to the idea that we had a theater in our small town. I deferred to her - which seemed the gentlemanly thing anyway - and she selected Powder. I didn't know until she was dropped off at the theater that she hadn't actually dressed up at all for Halloween, and wore the goth look regularly.

My date and I were kinda like this, except she was the conspicuous one.

I tried to be all nonchalant about it, though you'd have to ask her how well I succeeded. I was floating on a cloud when we met outside the theater and she let me open the door for her. She was my date so it would have been rude for me to divert my attention, but the truth of the matter is that I was even more attracted to the lobby. It was a movie theater lobby, right there in LaGrange! I could come here regularly!

There were, in those days, two ticket sellers, a handful of concessionaires manning "Cafe D.W." (so named for LaGrange native and cinema pioneer D.W. Griffith). We had a ticket-taking usher, which I had never seen in any of the theaters in Louisville. Buttered popcorn filled our noses, the hustle and bustle of buzzing people filled our ears and excitement filled at least me, maybe her. We bought Cokes and maybe some popcorn. I was amazed that they served hot dogs and nachos which, like the usher, I don't think I had ever seen at a movie theater. A large screen played a loop of trailers for forthcoming features. I'm almost certain they played the trailer for GoldenEye, and that I had to tear myself away from it before I looked like a complete dweeb.

Photo from Oldham 8 Facebook page.

Powder, of course, was a colossal disappointment as a movie and the relationship barely lasted a month, but no matter. My love affair with the Oldham 8 had begun and with it, the dawn of the third significant stage of my maturation. Over the next seven years, I would go to the theater 104 times, including a second viewing of eleven movies. My friends and I would go even if we didn't have a movie picked out ahead of time. Sometimes I didn't even know what was playing, or the first thing about any of our choices. I didn't read the newspaper and we didn't have Internet access at home in those days. These days, audiences already know every plot spoiler about each movie before the director gets into the editing room but in those days you could still live in a bit of a bubble. I enjoyed being in that bubble. Movies should be allowed to use the element of surprise and I try to give them as much chance to use it as I can.

I'm sure a lot of Oldham Countians lamenting the closure of the theater have said things like, "What a shame" and "Tinseltown put them out of business". It's certainly true that Tinseltown, which opened after the Oldham 8 just 20 minutes away in the booming Springhurst area, was tough competition. Tinseltown had more auditoriums, bigger screens and, most significantly, it was located in a happenin' shopping and restaurant district. Parents could drop off their adolescents at Tinseltown and while away a couple of hours dining at O'Charley's, where unlike LaGrange, they could enjoy an alcoholic beverage. They could go shopping, or even see a movie themselves.

Those were advantages that the Oldham 8 never really had. We all hoped its establishment would lead to a brave new LaGrange with new businesses but none ever came to town. There was talk for quite a while of a bowling alley taking over the abandoned Walmart building adjacent to the Oldham 8, but being unable to sell beer to patrons discouraged anyone from ever establishing one.

Eventually, there came to be problems with disruptive youths. By 2003, most of my peers had been taken away from Oldham County by college and job opportunities elsewhere. Coming up behind us was a generation of kids just a bit too young to really appreciate the importance of having a theater. They loitered outside and all around the theater, in large part because it became the de facto weekend drop-off babysitter for a lot of them. Whether they were callous, resentful or just plain poorly mannered, they made a lot of older patrons increasingly uncomfortable. The theater was slow to respond to the issue, initially fearful of alienating the youth demographic known for supporting the movie industry at large.

Soon, though, it reached the point where LaGrange City Police had to be on hand for weekend evenings, and often throughout the summer. However offputting it may have been for some older patrons to have to walk through a crowd of unruly teens to get inside the theater, it was even more alarming to see a parked police car with its lights flashing. It gave the appearance that the theater was a constant crime scene. I don't know what the proper solution would have been to the issue, but it certainly wasn't the combination of spineless appeasement and police visibility that theater management and ownership chose.

The downturn of the economy of the 2000s hit the theater as it hit everyone else. Instead of two ticket sellers and a team of dedicated concessionaires, there were often just two employees who bounced from one counter to the next. Sometimes you'd have to wait for everyone else to finish buying their tickets before the ticket seller could become a concessionaire. The hot dogs were a thing of the past and the popcorn looked like it was the same popcorn from the past. The second concession stand stayed closed. There was no longer a ticket-taking usher, and the screen that used to play trailers in the lobby stayed black. At least one urinal was physically broken in the men's restroom and stayed that way for years, covered with a clear plastic bag and a lot of tape. It took on the appearance and smell of a poorly maintained truck stop.

They stopped even printing tickets, resorting instead to lazily printing out a ticket-formatted receipt. It was just paper. I know most people don't keep their movie ticket stubs or even pay them any heed, but it was one of those little details that declared to those of us who do pay attention that the theater had abandoned its earlier idealism. It no longer saw itself as a vibrant hub of entertainment. Now it was a dismal daycare that just wanted you to get in and out as quickly as you could.

Photo from Oldham 8 Facebook page.

These were probably decisions made by someone in ownership whose business philosophy was to "stop throwing good money after bad". I can picture them insisting to keep offering the same popcorn until it's all gone before they would ever order a new bag, and declaring that being one urinal down in the restroom just meant a lower water bill so why bother replacing or repairing it? The cumulative effect of these "cost saving" measures may have made the ledger look better somehow, but at a dramatic cost to the theater itself. Ownership can blame teen ruffians all they want for chasing away families with younger kids and older patrons and they may be right about that, but they can't blame anyone else for all the business decisions they made.

In 2006, my wife and I moved back to LaGrange but we continued to see our movies at Tinseltown. Not only was Tinseltown properly maintained, but they offered $5 tickets all day long on Tuesdays, whereas the Oldham 8 charged $8.00, then $8.50 and eventually $9.00 a ticket. Even with the admittedly exorbitant price of gas, it was better for us to go to Tinseltown and pay $10 for two tickets than to stay in LaGrange and pay $16+. At Tinseltown, there were up-to-date digital projectors and speakers, a full concession stand and a restroom that didn't make me try to remember the last time I had my booster shots. That's to say nothing of being in a much more interesting and appealing area of Jefferson County as opposed to being in LaGrange.

Had the Oldham 8 been properly managed, we would happily have continued to have supported it. It would have been much more convenient, certainly. If they had just matched Tinseltown's $5 Tuesdays, or even come closer (say, $6), that would have made some difference. It would have been worth $2 to save on the gas if we were just looking to see a movie and not much else, but I just could not perceive the value of the Oldham 8 experience being what I paid for anymore.

Then came new hope. I was thrilled to learn late last year that Regal Cinemas had purchased the Great Escape chain. It seemed fitting, as Regal also owned United Artists, and D.W. Griffith was one of UA's founders. I looked forward to seeing them resurrect the Oldham 8. A spring date was set for the installation of state-of-the-art digital projectors, mandatory to ensure that the theater could continue to screen movies since studios have 86ed film prints. I haven't made it out to many movies since Regal took ownership, but of the few that I've seen in the last six months, two of them were at the Oldham 8. When I was too miserable to go see Iron Man 3 with my friends at Tinseltown a week ago, I decided I'd just see it by myself at the Oldham 8. I felt too miserable each night last week, though, and I just wasn't up to sitting through a movie with a 140 minute run time.

The Oldham 8 welcomed to the Regal Entertainment Group, 4 December 2012. From Oldham 8 Facebook page.

And then I learned on Friday, 10 May, that NOW CLOSED was all that was displayed on the marquee outside. I couldn't believe it. Closed? Surely that wasn't right. Maybe they meant they had to close temporarily to install those new digital projectors? No. If there was any effort made to inform the community that the promise of reviving the theater had devolved into simply snuffing it out, neither I or anyone I know ever heard a word about it. Somehow, I suppose that's befitting the decline of the once-grand little theater though as someone who remembers its glory days I find it troubling. It didn't have to be this way.

As it turned out, the bookend counterpart to Powder was (is?) Oz, the Great and Powerful, which I saw with my niece 30 March of this year. I was disappointed by both films, honestly, though I was excited by both visits. My first visit, of course, I was overcome by what was there; in my last, I had visions of what may come with proper ownership. I never considered that Regal would go all Lucy on me and yank away the football, but they did.

I don't know what lessons ought to be learned, or by whom. I just know that for a while, the Oldham 8 was my preferred house of worship and now I have no choice but to practice my faith elsewhere. It's sad to me that part of our community was allowed to poison the well for all of us, and sadder still that the well owners tended that well as indifferently as they did. Owners from the opening of the theater through the Regal board responsible for its closure may wish to challenge me on this. "Where was your support, Travis? You didn't set foot in the place from 22 August 2002 until 2 October 2006. That's four years where we could have used your patronage!"

Maybe they're right to feel that I let them down about that.

"And then, you went from 31 May 2009 until 4 July 2011 without a single visit, and then didn't come back until 30 December 2012!"

I surely did not visit during those stretches. To be honest, I'm not even entirely sure what kept me coming back as often as I did return from the end of 2006 through the end of May, 2009. Tinseltown remained my primary first-run theater, for all the aforementioned reasons. I watched through those two-plus years as nothing improved from one visit to the next, while there were never any breaks on ticket prices. If you were content being our "slumming it" theater, that's fine but you should have stopped charging "prestigious experience" theater prices. I don't pay Tinseltown money to the Village 8, and that's exactly what the Oldham 8 asked of me. (My apologies to the Village 8, which has actually been well maintained the last several times I've visited.)

I vividly recall the night that Titanic opened. The staff went all out for it, having artificially fogged the skylight window, hung fake cobweb streamers throughout the lobby and all dressed up as ghosts. I adored seeing that kind of effort put into making the place so personable and lively. Now, I contemplate an empty building where a theater used to be. I picture its skylight truly covered in grime, with real cobwebs taking over and the ghosts of our collective adolescence roaming the lobby. Perhaps, though, someone with deep pockets passionate not only about film but our community may see the potential for resurrecting the Oldham 8 and we'll reanimate the place, restoring her to her former glory.

Click here for the complete list of movies I saw at the Oldham 8.

UPDATE #1

After publishing this piece, it occurred to me that I could do better than "opened in 1995", so I spent some time at the Oldham County Public Library Main Branch.  It took some doing, but I dusted off my collegiate research skills  and scoured through the July-December 1995 Microfiche recording of the Oldham Era until I found it. The theater opened to the public 8 September 1995 with the following show schedule:

The things I do for you, Dear Reader... Microfiche! It was like I had actually traveled back to 1995. I will at some point happily update with the bookend of the theater's final week show schedule, but believe it or not that's actually proving nigh impossible to find. Apparently, neither the Oldham Era or The Courier-Journal still have the longstanding movie review/show clock section that served moviegoers in such good stead pre-Internet. Which actually would be fine with me, except they still list the TV schedule. If you're watching TV, you can find out what is, or will be, on. You don't need the paper for that. Conversely, knowing from the paper what movies are playing at what time and at which theater would be handy to anyone who didn't want to have to go to every theater in person to find out that information. Oh, what's that? The web makes having that information in a newspaper redundant? Sure it does, but that's as true of the TV listings, the sports scores, the forecast, the public arrest records, the obituaries...

UPDATE #2

Through the miracle of cloning, er, Google Cache, I am able to present to you, Dear Reader, a screen capture of the show schedule from the Oldham 8's final day of operation, 9 May 2013.

Ergo, the first film to play at the Oldham 8 was To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, 8 September 1995 at 1:00 and the last scheduled to start was The Croods on 9 May 2013 at 7:30. The last audience to let out was *probably* 42, with its 128 minute runtime, although it's possible that Pain and Gain and/or Oblivion outran it depending on whether either of those first week releases had more previews. Eight minutes sounds like a long time, but it's really just two trailers these days. 42 was in its fourth week of release, whereas Oblivion (third) and Pain and Gain (second) were newer. It's not out of the realm of reason that 42 wasn't as stacked with trailers. I can only definitively say that The Croods was the last show to begin playing.

A Lot About Listenin' (And a Little 'Bout Love)

I only watched four movies in all of April, in part because I turned my attention recently to revisiting my music library. It actually started with movies; I became concerned when I had a glitch with the DVD Profiler program that I use to catalog my DVDs and Blu-ray Discs so I decided to create a Google Docs spreadsheet to track what I own and the basic stats (edition, release date, purchase date, price paid, last viewed, etc.). That evolved into an entire spreadsheet with different sheets for different media, so I began to make my way through my CD library for the first time in admittedly quite a while.

I used to be all about music. Back in my pre-Crohn's days, I went to my fair share of concerts. All you have to do is take a look at my setlist.fm profile to see the dramatic difference that Crohn's made. (Hint: I was formally diagnosed in 2005.) In those healthier days, money was a lot better and I splurged on quite a lot of music. I was probably directly responsible for offsetting 4% of the market shrinkage attributed to online piracy at the turn of the century. If I decided I liked a song, I'd buy the whole album. If I decided I liked the artist, I'd track down his/her/their entire discography. I bought soundtracks, tribute albums, Christmas albums and any singles that contained a non-album version of a song (i.e., acoustic versions, club mixes, etc.).

eBay was a whole 'nother world, where I discovered promo CDs distributed only to radio stations that contained content not made available commercially. I collected radio station singles of songs from some of my favorite artists and albums, and radio specials when I could afford them. I once won a bidding war for a CD single that contained the live performances of "Friends in Low Places" and "The Thunder Rolls" from Garth Brooks's landmark TV special, This Is Garth Brooks! It cost me about $36, I think, including shipping. Just two songs, but they were the live versions that to this day have never been released commercially on CD (the versions that appear on 1998's Double Live are different performances). It was the late 90s. I was healthy and so was the economy. Why not bid $30-something on a promo CD single?

Over the last decade, though, I've found myself falling out from my musical taste. Part of it, I attribute to the impact of Crohn's on my concert-going. Music stopped being accessible to me, at least in the personal way that I had once enjoyed. I've shared some of my favorite concert-going anecdotes in this blog before, but the relevant thing is that being there in person when an artist/duo/band performs is the only real way to judge the artistry. There, you get to witness for yourself not just the technical competency away from the studio trickery but the actual charisma and passion that a given performer has for his or her craft. Clay Walker was a radio darling for a few years in the 90s, but I've held him up for years as one of the most consistently engaging and entertaining stage performers I've ever seen. That guy loves playing for an audience and it shows.

Another reason for my dwindling connection with my music library is that I've had a parting of the ways with my primary genre, country. Throughout the Bush administration, country radio became increasingly jingoistic and full of banal anthems, increasingly defiant and decreasingly thoughtful. As a liberal, I used to connect with country music as a sort of "center" point; it was common ground where I felt comfortable engaging the right. It became increasingly clear, though, that I wasn't welcome there anymore so I left. It wasn't even the infamous Dixie Chicks backlash of 2003 that chased me off, though that was certainly the obvious beginning of the end.

After the country soured on then-President George W. Bush shortly into his second term, country music went through its own identity change. If no one was into bombastic, love-it-or-leave-it songs of nationalism, what would listeners accept? Enter: Taylor Swift, whose eponymous debut album came along at just the right time in 2006. She was young, she was fresh, she was the flagship artist for startup label Big Machine Records and enjoyed their full marketing support. I actually like Taylor Swift as an artist. I like that she writes her own stuff, from her own experiences.

Overnight, not only was she a smash but she had changed the entire direction of the genre. Country radio followed her - and, as it always has done, it did so largely by trying to clone her with diminishing returns. I haven't particularly cared for any of her clones or the current landscape of mainstream country music in general. They're not addressing me anymore. That's okay, of course, because at the time that it did it had stopped addressing listeners older than me. That's just the way it goes. I've aged out of it, I guess.

The upshot is that the music that once resonated with me now belongs in the past, to someone I haven't been in quite some time. By and large, I've found that specific albums or even the whole works of an entire artist have stopped being "mine" and I mean that both figuratively and literally: I've taken and traded in several CDs to Half Price Books. I've deleted the ripped files from my digital library, too, believe it or not. If I don't care enough to keep it on CD, I clearly don't care enough to clutter up my hard drive with it, either.

It's kind of strange to whittle away at my music library like this and to find so much of it means so little to me. In a way, I suppose it mirrors how I've felt the last several months as I've gone through personal things around here; wedding photos, that kind of thing. I can't say that I'm resentful of these reminders of my recent past. In truth, I'm mostly just indifferent to them. They may as well be CDs and photos that belonged to someone else for all the meaning they hold to me now.

For the time being, I continue to make my way through my library and prune it. At some point, though, I'm going to want to address the question: If "my" music isn't the stuff I already/still own...what is?

Scripture, Sex and a Dance Hall in Texas

I tend to be quiet about my faith, but as a wordsmith I know better than to try to improve when someone else has already put something perfectly so I refer you to the Gospel according to St. Matthew, chapter 7, verse 1:

Judge not, that ye be not judged.

It's a tenet of my world view and always has been. Even if you're the staunches atheist, it's difficult to attack that line. Don't be so anti-faith that you won't even agree with Scripture that makes sense and is fair. Even a broken clock is right twice a day (another tenet of my world view), so I'm counting on you, Dear Reader, to set aside any But-I-Can't-Participate-In-A-Conversation-When-It-Originates-With-Religion objections.

Naturally, it's something that I haven't always lived up to but I've worked on it quite a lot over the years. Having Internet access has benefited me tremendously in that regard, as I now regularly interact with people literally across the world from myself and from one another. I share values with all of them, but which values and to what extent varies wildly. I've got a vegan friend on this side, and a dude who knows all the best barbecue joints in the country on the other. Friends of mine are all across the socio-political spectrum, from staunch conservatives who genuinely feel anxious about things like marriage equality to the very activists working to see that it is established throughout the land. I contribute to a movie website's blog and one of the friends I interact with the most doesn't even watch movies! I learn things from all of them; sometimes about them, sometimes about others by extension and sometimes about myself.

I was told earlier by one of my dearest friends earlier about an unpleasant experience she and her boyfriend had with her boyfriend's coworker and his girlfriend. My friend holds her Christian values in the highest and she's one of the most pious people I know. She's also one of the most accepting of others, which I wish to note because too often piety is equated with self-righteousness. My friend's faith is strong, but she takes from it lessons of humility and peace. We've not spoken about it, but I would imagine that some of her favorite Scripture would be in the Book of James.

Anyway, back to the incident. The coworker and his girlfriend apparently made a point to not only boast about their recent sexual escapades, but to then make derogatory remarks about my friend's chastity. We're accustomed to slut-shaming being an issue and it's one that I actively fight whenever and wherever I encounter it. Here, rather than turn to the Holy Bible, I defer to the prophet* Waylon Jennings:

Yet here my friend was, encountering the situation in reverse. She was made a target by others who did not respect her values. My friend is conspicuous about her faith, in that she prays before every meal regardless of where she is or who she's with, and that kind of thing but she's not evangelical. For whatever reason, though, this coworker of her boyfriend's and his girlfriend fixated on her and took some very unkind shots at her both directly and indirectly through her boyfriend.

As I said, I know people across a wide spectrum, from this chaste young woman to some people in an open relationship and even a few swingers. There are plenty of people who will or will not perform specific sex acts for or with their partners because it's outside their personal comfort zone - yes, even swingers have limits, believe it or not. That's fair, and it's right to respect those limits. I don't see why those limits being established by someone's faith should invite criticism. As a feminist, I think about these things often. Sometimes, we get so caught up fighting the slut-shaming that I think we forget that there's still a battle to be fought on behalf of women who aren't sexually active by choice.

There was a great anecdote that Steve Earle once recounted about a Willie Nelson concert in the 70s down in Texas. There were some cowboys wanting to dance and some hippies sitting on the dance floor, just listening. Naturally, this led to some hostility that caused Willie to stop performing.

"There's room for some to dance and some to sit," Willie ruled. His words were simple, but wise - and practical. The dancers danced and the sitters sat, and the show continued. We should do more to accommodate others on the dance floor. We should make comfortable those who wish to be on our side of the dance floor, and respect the others' right to either sit or dance. There's room enough for us to do both.

Now, having said all that...anyone want a dance partner?

*I don't use the term "prophet" here on my own. Waylon himself once shared a story where someone sent him a tape of a preacher delivering a sermon about the complexity of modern life and the role of faith in helping his congregation to navigate those issues. "You know what the prophet Waylon Jennings said," the preacher remarked, and then cited the song "Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love)". Waylon had a laugh about the idea of him being called a prophet by anyone, and suspected that that preacher had a good talking-to by some of the church members after he gave that sermon. That story always makes me smile.

Anxiety Invasion

Today was the first Saturday in May, which meant the Kentucky Derby and Free Comic Book Day. Because of the date, it also happened to be Star Wars Day ("May the Fourth be with you"). I was supposed to have met some friends for an 11:35 showing of Iron Man 3 where my admission was covered by movie cash I got from Disney Movie Rewards earlier in the year, and then other friends were hosting their annual Derby party. I even entertained notions of trying to get to The Great Escape when they opened at 10 this morning in time to snag some of those Free Comic Book Day books (I want Atomic Robo and The Tick).

Naturally, I never got anywhere near The Great Escape or the theater. I had a rough night last night, more from anxiety than from Crohn's though my guts were plenty angry, too. Around 4 AM, I realized that the best I could manage would be to make an appearance at the Derby party so I sent a very-late-night text bailing on the movie. At least my movie cash is valid through the end of November so even I don't get around to seeing it until it hits the Village 8 (our second-run theater), my admission is still covered. Still, I feel disappointed and frustrated yet again at my inability to do such basic things as going to see a movie with my friends with any reliability.

The Derby party, then, was going to salvage my day. These same friends had invited me to go with them to Oaks yesterday, but I knew better than to even attempt that nightmare. At their house, though, there'd be far less than the second-highest attendance on record (113,820). Plus, two bathrooms. Always a plus!

What happened? I was overwhelmed. Every room was chock full of people. I knew them all (or at least, most of them). I should have been perfectly comfortable. These are my closest friends, after all. We're such a closely knit group that years ago we just started talking about ourselves as extended family. I couldn't take it, though. Too much family. I took two Klonopin within the first ten minutes I was there. I barely lasted two hours before I was just too overwhelmed and had to come home. I crawled straight into bed and slept for three hours.

Somewhere out there are people who don't have to think about things like their guts or their anxiety level when they make plans. I used to be one of them. I wish I still was. I've been fighting a severe depressive episode for an entire month now, and this was not the day I needed.

Still, I'm reminded of that anecdote I once shared about John Wayne, who was dying of cancer while filming his last movie. The weather ruined their outdoor shoot one day and he overheard some members of the cast and crew complaining about what an ugly day it was. Never one to hold his tongue, The Duke remarked

Any day you get up is a beautiful day.

On that basis - and that basis alone - today was a beautiful day. I just wish there were more positives to it.

George Strait Discography, Ranked

April was a rough month for me. I only watched four movies and didn't watch a single Reds game in its entirety. I have, however, spent the last two weeks going through George Strait's entire discography, from 1981's Strait Country through 2011's Here for a Good Time. I even sat through the redundancy of the assorted hits compilations and all three Christmas albums. As I played each song, I gave it a star rating in iTunes and then calculated the mean star rating of the album itself. You can see the entire list here on Google Docs.

So what was the highest rated album? Surprisingly enough, it was 1986's Merry Christmas Strait to You with a 4.7 rating. Each of his three Christmas albums has a distinct musical aesthetic, and by far the most entertaining remains the first one with its western swing arrangements. The Christmas album is always a tricky entry in a discography, because it's ultimately either a covers album or an even riskier original work. Between the song choices and the production, Strait nailed it the first time out.

I remember buying the CD. It was my first ever Black Friday, in 1997. My friends and I ran all over Louisville, not even really knowing what we were doing or after. Just bouncing from one place to the next, really. We stopped at one point at Biggs Hypermarket and that's where I bought this CD as well as Garth Brooks's The Hits.

The highest ranked of Strait's standard studio albums wound up being 1998's One Step at a Time with a 4.6 rating. I had known his music since the 80s, but I didn't become an active fan until 1997 when a friend introduced me to that year's Carrying Your Love with Me album - which for the longest time I thought was my favorite Strait album. In fact, any time I was ever asked to name my favorite albums of all time, that was one of the first five I'd cite.

One Step at a Time was the first album Strait released new once I became a fan. That might seem the obvious reason why it would be my favorite, but I'm not convinced of that. In truth, I was initially disappointed by it. As happens so often, my real problem with it was that it wasn't Carrying Your Love with Me. One Step isn't as lively or as breezy as its immediate predecessor. The lead single, "I Just Want to Dance with You", was an instant favorite but the rest of the album took a little time to win me over. Two of my favorite songs Strait has ever recorded, "Neon Row" (which was "I Just Want to Dance with You"'s B-side) and "Maria", are both on this album.

"You Haven't Left Me Yet" was originally the fourth single from the album but that was abandoned after I guess either it stalled or they were just ready to release the next album, 1999's Always Never the Same. "You Haven't Left Me Yet" became the B-side to Always's lead single, "Meanwhile". I've always wished that song had been given more time to chart, because it's a personal favorite but fifteen years later it's just one of hundreds of album cuts that's been overshadowed by the 59 #1 singles.

I think the album that surprised me the most was actually 1994's Lead On. It was released during that stretch of time after I was made to listen to country music but before I chose to start, so I missed it entirely. When I started to catch up on Strait's music in 1997, though, I instantly fell in love with that album. "Adalida" should have been a #1 single. "I Met a Friend of Yours Today" is another of those choice album cuts that really stands out to me. It's a confrontational song, but Strait's inflections aren't purely angry. There's a mix of "gotcha" and sadness, too. Strait has long been a master interpreter of songs, and this is as fine a showcase of that as any. Still, for all my love of the album, Lead On only placed with a 3.9 rating, tying it with 1990's Livin' It Up for 24th on the overall list (#13th if Christmas and hits collections are excluded).

The lowest rated turned out to be Strait's most recent album, 2011's Here for a Good Time. I love the title track, and I liked his take on "A Showman's Life" (though not as much as Gary Allan and Willie Nelson's duet version). "Lone Star Blues" is a lot of fun, and the album-closing "I'll Always Remember You" is one of the most personal songs in Strait's discography but there are just too many songs that didn't work for me. There are two songs about alcoholism ("Drinkin' Man" and "Poison"), which isn't an intrinsic problem but they're sequenced as tracks #2 and #4, they're both very slow and overlong. "Blue Marlin Blues" is fun, but it also feels like a throwaway song. I've only played the album twice (and the first time, I streamed it from Spotify, where I was instantly disappointed) so it may grow on me.

As far as the hits compilations go, the highest rated turned out to be Icon 2: The Best of George Strait (Deluxe Edition) from 2011 with a 4.64 rating. It was #2 overall, right behind Merry Christmas Strait to You. The Icon series, though, is just a label-wide series of compilations from Universal Music Group and not an "official" Strait album. There's also a single-disc Icon collection, which ranked #3 overall.

About a decade ago, UMG had another label-wide line of compilations, 20th Century Masters. There were two lines: The Millennium Collection and The Christmas Collection. Strait himself compiled the songs that represented him in both lines. I was surprised that The Millennium Collection placed third of the hits compilations (and fifth overall). In fact, all three of the highest rated hits collections on my list wound up being the three unofficial releases!

20th Century Masters - The Millennium Collection and The Christmas Collection, which is really just a retread of Merry Christmas Wherever You Are.

The Christmas Collection is also a bit of a curiosity. It's essentially 1999's Merry Christmas Wherever You Are album resequenced, with two tracks from Merry Christmas Strait to You added at the beginning. I wish there'd been more of a balance between the two albums, because Wherever is actually my second-lowest ranked Strait album. There are some nice individual recordings, but as an album it just doesn't grab me. There are two things that would have helped. One, I'll never understand why he recorded "All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth" without singing it with a lisp. Seriously, what was the point of that?

Two, there was an eleventh song from those sessions, "Christmas Cookies", which originally appeared on the Target-exclusive A Country Christmas 1999 release and has shown up subsequently on a few various artists Christmas discs. It's one of my favorite Strait recordings and I really wish it had been part of Merry Christmas Wherever You Are.

Not surprising to me, the highest ranked of the official hits albums was 2000's Latest Greatest Straitest Hits, which surveyed the material from Lead On through One Step at a Time. It's sort of a fifth disc to 1995's Strait Out of the Box, but unlike the box set it's not sequenced chronologically. I've never understood why Latest Greatest Straitest Hits omitted "I Just Want to Dance with You". My only guess has ever been that since it had a CD single release that worked against it for some reason but that never made any sense to me. Its absence is conspicuous - and irritating.

I was also disappointed by 2004's 50 Number Ones. It crams 51 songs onto two discs, and to squeeze them all into that set they did some harsh editing. On some songs it isn't so bad, but I'll never forgive them for butchering the end of "Does Fort Worth Ever Cross Your Mind". Also, the discs don't breathe, going from the end of one song directly into the beginning of the next. It's just too frenetic, especially for nearly 160 minutes. I was aware of these deficiencies when I first bought that set nine years ago, but I'd largely forgotten about how aggravating they are.

I think it also irks me because I'm convinced that if not for that hasty, abridged release we would have likely gotten a second box set at some point. I've long toyed with wondering just what a Strait Out of the Box II would include and 50 Number Ones stole the thunder from that very idea. Though maybe there was never any thought or interest in putting together a second box, of course. The companion release, 22 More Hits, was put together more thoughtfully but curiously enough it's not arranged chronologically as is 50 Number Ones. It's also kind of odd that they reversed the photo of Strait for the cover. Who actually thought a reverse photo was a smart album art choice?

Strait's next album, Love Is Everything, comes out in a couple weeks on 14 May. I'm kind of interested to see where it ranks now that I've got this list. In the interim, I would point you to the playlist I recently made  of Strait's career, Phase One: 1981-1992. There'll be probably two more playlists in that series, most likely 1992-2001 and 2003-2013 (he didn't release anything in 2002), but those will probably wait until after Love Is Everything.

C2E2 2013: Night of the Complaining Blogger, or Meeting Patricia Tallman

Introduction: At the generous invitation of my friends, I was given a chance to attend the Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo (C2E2) this year. I wrote some pieces for Flickchart last year, and they gave me a press pass again this year. Unfortunately, my health was far less cooperative this year and I missed almost all of what I was supposed to have covered. Here's an anecdote from my "personal file", though, that almost makes up for waking up Saturday morning puking my guts up.

In Flickchart's Reel Rumbles #24, I pitted the original Night of the Living Dead against its remake. I don’t expect you to remember but on Halloween night in 2011, I tweeted a link to that piece to actress Patricia Tallman, who starred as Barbara in the remake. That sparked a brief back-and-forth dialog between us. The short version is that she wasn’t very happy.

Jump forward to April 27, 2013. I’m in Chicago at C2E2, missing most of what I was there to cover because of health issues when I learn that Patricia Tallman is an unannounced guest of the show! She spoke at a panel that I missed, but she was present at J. Michael Straczynski’s booth. Straczynski has just launched Studio JMS, of which Tallman is the CEO. Studio JMS will produce comic books, as well as web series, TV shows and the feature film The Flickering Light, set to begin filming this fall. The launch title is Ten Grand, written by Straczynski and in comic book shops tomorrow.

All I had to do was get through the line before she left the booth and I could finally confront her face to face.

So, what was it that she actually said to me in 2011?

@travissmcclain @flickchart oh, btw. fuck you Travis. My Barbara totally rocks. No contest. Unless you r pussy and can't take it in color.
— Patricia Tallman (@patriciatallman) November 1, 2011

Patricia Tallman, surprised by either her audacity online or mine for confronting her. I'm not sure.

I didn’t have the tweets handy when chatting with her, but here’s the entire conversation.

@travissmcclain @flickchart THIPPPPPPPPPPpppppppp!!!!!!
— Patricia Tallman (@patriciatallman) November 1, 2011

@travissmcclain @flickchart hummmph.
— Patricia Tallman (@patriciatallman) November 1, 2011

@travissmcclain @flickchart you should have said that. Now it's too late. and I'm very cranky. Prick.
— Patricia Tallman (@patriciatallman) November 1, 2011

Of course, as I surmised the night that we tweeted, Patricia Tallman is a delightful woman and we shared a laugh at the absurdity of the whole thing. You can see we've made up.

Travis & Pat, all made up.

Make no mistake, though, the moral of this story isn’t that some criticism on the Internet is all in fun or that Patricia Tallman is actually a very lovely woman.

The moral of the story is that Crohn's or no Crohn's, if you malign what I write, I will find you and confront you - even if it takes years.

Photography by Ronnie Ashley.

Who's Gonna Fill His Shoes?

I know I'm late on this, but I've been in Chicago where I was reminded hourly about how my health has conspired against me (more on that in a future post). Somehow, it actually seems appropriate that I should be taken by surprise away from home, in physical misery, by the news that George Jones had passed away.

In a pawn shop in Chicago, on a sunny summer day...

I had the opportunity last December to go see The Possum perform in concert for my birthday, but I elected instead to get together with as many of my friends as I could. It was the right choice, of course; I have no regrets about that. I do, however, lament that my stupid guts conspired to stop me going to Carrollton, where he made what turned out to be his final meet and greet for Herb Kinman Chevrolet after decades of annual appearances.

He said, "Son, you just don't understand. It's not the car I want

It's the brunette in your 'Vette that turns me on!"

Jones's commercial heyday had already come and gone by the time I began to pay attention to country music. I grew up with it, of course, and he was one of my dad's favorite singers but I was a kid without much of an ear for old school honky tonk warbling. Of course, it was inevitable that I would later come to appreciate his vocal talent and to understand just why none of the scandalous shenanigans that dogged him throughout his career ever seemed to undermine the respect that he earned as a performer.

There's nothing better once you've had the best.

The first time that Jones stopped me in my tracks was through the brilliant music video for his 1987 single, "Who's Gonna Fill Their Shoes?" It was a love letter to the genre and its history. Country music celebrates its forebears with more reverence, I think, than most other genres (though I suspect jazz gives it a run for its money in that department). Even as a child, that kind of thing resonated with me. I guess I was a born historian.

My family owned and operated a consignment shop for twenty years (until my unreliability due to Crohn's became an influencing factor in closing our doors). In addition to our consignors, we also had countless regular and semi-regular shoppers. I enjoyed chatting with one woman in particular, whose father was a longtime Jones fan. When I worked in the front of the shop, I picked the music and it was often country. I'd go through phases of any given artist, so she often caught me playing some Possum when she came in to shop. We'd chat and I remember her often talking about how her dad loved not just Jones, but the steel guitar on all his songs.

I haven't seen her or her two daughters (both probably adults by now) since we closed the shop, but I found myself thinking of them tonight. I hope they're all doing well. The girls were always polite and patient while their mom and I commiserated about country music or other odd topics. I have no doubt they've both become fine young women.

The jukebox is playing a honky tonk song

"One more," I keep saying, "and then I'll go home."

Of course, the world was, is and probably always will be full of Jones admirers. My wife's uncle had a budding career as a country singer in the 1970s. He even cut an eponymous album. The influence of Jones on him at that point is pretty evident even before you put on the record itself; the album cover itself could have been one of Jones's. That wasn't a put-on for the album, by the way. I met the guy. He really did just look a lot like The Possum naturally. His name was also George, though of course that wasn't even a coincidence - it was a statistical likelihood for men of their vintage. He did get to meet his musical hero, I think when they both performed at Jamboree once.

I'd hear you on the radio

I sure did like your sound

Say, it's good to know there's still

A few ol' country boys around

In 2009, I read Jones's autobiography, I Lived to Tell It All. I could have sworn I had reviewed it either here on this blog or on Goodreads, but I can't find such a review. I will say, four years later what stands out most to me is how clearly he emphasized how overwhelmed he was by being a celebrity. He was a nervous wreck about that part of being a musician, even after decades of receiving the kind of external validation that would put most others at risk of arrogance. For Jones, though, it worked differently. It made him insecure and uncomfortable. I'm just a nobody, of course, so I don't pretend to have any experience with the scale of his experiences. Still, I certainly identified with that tendency to freak out over what be welcomed by most people.

Maybe I ran when I should have walked

I held it inside when I should have talked

But I always get it right with you

George Jones was to music what Daniel Day-Lewis is to acting. Most artists sing the lyrics the way that most actors read their lines, but when you hear a Jones song it's something different. It's palpable that he tapped into the emotional center of whatever the song is. Whether it's the silliness of "High Tech Redneck" or the devastation of "He Stopped Loving Her Today", hearing him is why songs are often characterized as three minute stories.

It would certainly be tempting (and obvious) to quote from the iconic "He Stopped Loving Her Today" at the end of this stream-of-consciousness reflection on George Jones but somehow it doesn't feel right to me. I leave you instead with the following:

It just don't get any better than this

That's about as good as good ever gets

If there's anything better, it's something I missed

It just don't get any better than this

Uh-huh.

Artifacts from My Life: Infancy

Recently, I've been going through a lot of boxes and bins that have been dormant for quite some time. I've unearthed a handful of artifacts from my early life. So if you've ever been curious about that phase in my life, Dear Reader, here's a virtual tour of the first room in the museum dedicated to me that doesn't actually exist.

Methodist Evangelical Hospital, where I was born.

My birth stats.

My first outfit.

These are some of my first books. Yes, one of them actually is Let's Talk About Whining. If I'd known that was one of my first books, I might have chosen that for this blog's title. Me, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is one of those books where you can get a kid's name inserted into the story so that he or she becomes a character. What's particularly notable for me is that it features the address of the apartment where my parents lived when I was first born. I was only there for a few months before we moved to Oldham County. Speaking of Oldham County and whining...

Being born in December, I was only a year old and change throughout most of 1980. The decision was apparently made to enter me in the Oldham County Fair's baby show pageant. To this day, my mom is upset that she was told by a friend of hers who witnessed one of the judges change his or her vote from me to another kid whose family had connections. Such is life in a small town. Who knows? Winning that might have set me on an entirely different life trajectory. Whatever. I hope you don't even still have your ribbon, Kid Who Stole My Prize and Ruined My Life. Jerk.

Those are some of the things from my infancy. I leave you with the following image, dated March, 1979. Note, if you will: the metal chains, the exposed electrical outlet, the fact that my swing is directly in front of the register and the Winnie the Pooh doll that was almost certainly hazardous to any child young enough to still explore the world with its mouth. Yet here I am, a survivor of the death trap laid for me by my own parents.

"From Here, It Looks Like an Achievement"

I took some things to Half Price Books last night. Just a handful of odd items I've had in storage for years that clearly didn't mean much to me and weren't going for any noteworthy amounts on eBay to justify going through all that hassle. Anyway, while I waited for the friendly and personable sales associate to tally up my offer, I rummaged through their comic books. I'm always on the lookout for cheap ways to fill in gaps in my library. In the Batman section was a single copy of Batman #404.

This issue is one of the most important Batman comics really of all-time. It was the first of the four-part "Year One" story in which Frank Miller updated Batman's origin story and established the foundation for the modern continuity. Even throughout DC Comics's various continuity tinkering, "Year One" has remained firmly entrenched as The Definitive Origin of Batman. I can't recall ever actually seeing a copy of this issue in person until last night.

Did I mention it was only a dollar?

Sold listing prices on eBay vary pretty wildly; some have sneaked through at a mere 99¢ to $103.95 for a copy that had been graded at 9.8 by the Comic Grading Authority. This seems to me a consequence of the shift in comic reading culture toward "trade-waiting" (i.e., passing on individual issues to wait instead for the collected edition). Regardless of that, even if you don't care about comic books at all, it should be pretty evident why this was an exciting find to make. I plucked it out of the box and carried it around with me. I browsed through some more things, received my payout and then came to a realization.

I already own the Batman: Year One collected edition trade paperback. I can already read the story contained in Batman #404. I didn't need to own the individual issue, even priced at just one dollar. I put it back into the box. Let someone else find it, I decided. Someone who will really flip their lid over it. Someone for whom that will be a truly exciting discovery and purchase. That Bat-fan out there just now starting to build her library, who thought she'd have to settle for the collected edition (like I did); let her be the one to spend her dollar and have the thrill of actually owning that important issue.

As I am wont to do, I later reflected on the situation in a more philosophical sense. I feel like I'm in a box of back issues myself, wondering: Will anyone ever be excited to find me?

"From the Jaws of Death" by Stuart Logsdon

"From the Jaws of Death" is the title of the first brief issue of a comic book conceived by my Uncle Stuart in his teens. He completed ten pages, or at least nine of them (page eight is in black and white and it's unclear whether that was an artistic, stylish decision or if he just put off coloring it). He illustrated on both sides of each sheet of paper (which can be seen in most of the scans, unfortunately). Everything was done by hand, form layouts to lettering. It was only ever seen by his closest friends and those of us in the family -- until now. It is my pleasure and honor to present this first issue to the world, nearly forty years after it was written and illustrated.

You can also view each page individually here.

At some point, Stuart made the decision to retitle the story. Because the project was done entirely by hand, there was no Photoshop to simply change the title for him, and because he illustrated both sides of each sheet, this required him to remake both pages one and two.

The last day of school in those days was pretty informal. Many of my uncle's classmates elected to blow off school and instead go to Taylorsville Lake. Without telling even my mom, my uncle uncharacteristically made the choice to go with his classmates. He drowned there that day. That context makes this story - and particularly its revised title - eerie as could be. Like I said, he had to remake the other side of this page, too, which he never finished:

Perhaps one day I'll continue the fantastic story of Roger Harris. I've thought for years about wanting to try to add to this story, but it's awfully intimidating to muster the kind of hubris required to add on to something like this. All the same, I'm happy that at the very least, "On Borrow'd Time" can now be seen by the entire world.

My Uncle Stuart

"Batgirl" #19 by Gail Simone (Jun 2013)

Batgirl #19
"A Blade from the Shadows"

Gail Simone - Writer
Daniel Sampere - Penciller
Jonathan Glapion and Marc Deering - Inks
Blond - Colors
Dave Sharpe - Letters
Eddy Barrows, Eber Ferreira and Marcelo Maiolo - Cover
Editor - Katie Kubert
Group Editor - Mike Marts
Batman created by Bob Kane

Date of Publication: 10 April 2013
$2.99/32 pages

I haven't reviewed Batgirl here for a while now. To be honest, I just didn't care for "The Death of the Family" storyline or how it was told, although I feel that Batgirl #14 was easily the strongest issue that I read of both that story and this book. Then, after that crossover event finished, Ray Fawkes took over the book for a few issues. I don't want to disparage the guy, but truthfully I'd have bailed on Batgirl had he become the permanent ongoing writer. It could have worked out once he found his footing, and I tried to be fair to him but it just wasn't the book I've enjoyed reading all along. The last issue, #18, showed us Barbara's reaction to the death of Damian Wayne. The cover is one of my favorites in the series to date, showing us a bereaved Barbara sobbing but Fawkes scarcely acknowledged the event itself in either his story or his characterization of Barbara. She expends all of three panels reaction - one to call Nightwing, who then blows her off because he's busy. It was business-as-usual and the story failed to live up to the cover - or even the "Requiem" story at all.

There was far more heart in this cover than in any of the inside pages written by Ray Fawkes.

I don't blame Fawkes for that, though. Once again, I feel that a glaring storytelling issue with these comics is the result of a lack of long-range editorial direction at DC Comics. Whether it's "The Night of the Owls" intruding into Tony Daniel's arc in Detective Comics or that "Zero Month" causing a two-month gap between the second part and conclusion of Simone's arc in Batgirl, DC seems obsessed with marketing synergy but not storytelling synergy.

Issue #19 is Gail Simone's awaited return to the book, though, and I couldn't have been happier. She wasn't there to show us the human being that Babs is handle the news of Damian's death, but she's on hand here for the final(?) showdown between our heroine and her psychopathic brother, James, Jr. This feels like the issue that Simone was trying to build toward months ago, before Scott Snyder's "Death of the Family" ran roughshod over the Bat-titles and before the boneheaded editorial decision to remove her from the book. I have to assume Brian Cunningham was the one responsible for that fracas, because he's gone from the book as of this issue and Katie Kubert has been promoted from Assistant Editor to Editor. That seems like a very strong step in the right direction.

When the estranged Barbara Gordon (senior? Is that a thing?) resurfaced at the very end of issue #4, I wasn't sure what direction that relationship might take. Watching mother and daughter try to reconnect - and enduring shared trauma in recent issues - has worked out very well, though. I feel good about the two of them and what it means for the book to see them continue to develop their relationship.

Then there's Alysia, Babs's roommate. She reveals in this issue that she's a transgender woman, which is really no surprise to me after following the Twitter friendship between Simone and Natalie Reed. They had made mention of exchanging emails, Reed answering Simone's questions, and that portended a trans character in the works. My only question was whether it was for Batgirl or another project of Simone's. I've liked Alysia since we first met her. I'm not a member of the trans community, but I remember how excited I was when I went to see The Men Who Stare at Goats and George Clooney said he had Crohn's disease. There's something about even a minimal acknowledgment in entertainment that people like you exist outside pharmaceutical commercials and support groups that's empowering and on that level, I get it. I'm excited for the trans readers who will find some solidarity in Alysia.

From the beginning, Alysia has struck me as the kind of woman who would insist on vinyl over digital, though, and I even tweeted Simone about that. I continue to hold out hope that one day we'll see her record collection and hear her expound on her love for vinyl. That would make me happy. It'd be too contrived to ask Simone to write a Crohnie into Batgirl, but how perfect would it be for us to be represented in her forthcoming, super-secret book The Movement? The jokes write themselves!

Batgirl #19 is the most suspenseful, enthralling issue of the book to date next only to issue #14. It felt right to hear Simone's voice telling the stories again. There's quite a lot of action from start to finish, but what Simone brings to the book that was absent from Fawkes's admittedly brief run is heart. This issue isn't about the action of a psychopath terrorizing his family. This issue is about how those events affect the people who endure them. Simone writes human beings, not rising and falling action, and that's why she's the perfect writer for Batgirl. I'm relieved that she's back on it.

That said, I don't buy that James, Jr. was ultimately just a jealous younger brother. His wiring was way more off than something as simple as that, and I have to think being used as a hostage as an infant - and then again as a child - really screwed him up. Also: What the hell is going on in Gotham City that a guy whose son is a serial killer gets to remain police commissioner? David Petraeus had to resign from the CIA over an affair with his biographer, but somehow no one has a problem with the police commissioner having a murderous son? I don't buy it.

Now, I just want Babs to go see a doctor. Anyone will suffice, even if just to spend an evening in the Batcave with Alfred tending to her. I wouldn't have thought about such things when I was healthy, but living in chronic pain has made me scoff at how Babs keeps getting up and going on about her business when by all right she should be lying in bed puking her guts up and relying on Alysia to bring her meds on a set schedule.

Mental Health and Political Office

Much has already been made of a leaked recording of Senator Mitch McConnell and his aides discussing how they would attack Ashley Judd as a political rival. In the recording, plans are outlined to focus on Judd's history of depression and suicidal ideation. McConnell has cried foul that the recordings could only have been obtained via an illegal wiretap; questions of whether McConnell's staff worked on this potential campaign issue on the clock has raised ethics questions of their own. For the moment, I'm not terribly interested in either of those concerns. (I will say, I believe McConnell is Machiavellian enough to have set up the "wiretap recording" himself.)

As with so many things political, the issue is rarely the politician who says or does something outrageous, but rather the people they represent who support that outrageous thing. In this case, I can't even bring myself to revise my level of contempt for McConnell to include his planned disparagement of someone with depression because I know that the real enemy here is our cultural ignorance about mental health. Voters are people, and people at large don't understand mental health issues at all. It's surprisingly easy to ruin a political career by asking voters whether they trust a candidate to be "stable" if they know he or she has any kind of mental health disorder.

During that brief phase in which Ashley Judd was considering challenging McConnell for his Senate seat, I wrote an open letter to her with some questions and unsolicited advice. I never addressed the ways in which her publicly documented battles with depression might be a political liability, though I should have anticipated that.

I myself have flirted with political aspirations over the years, knowing the whole while that my mental health would be a liability to me. I would even be a liability to a partner or spouse seeking office, though I think the culture on that is changing enough that it could be portrayed as a "sympathetic positive" for a woman candidate who "cares for" a male partner with mental health issues. (Voters do like to obsess over how domestic a female officeholder is.) You may recall, Dear Reader, that I campaigned in a mock-election in high school. An attempt was made then to detract from my viability by associating me with Marshall Applewhite, leader of the Heaven's Gate cult. It was ineffective because my schoolmates knew my sense of humor, but this was before I ever sought help for my depression. At that time, all anyone knew about me was that I was moody.

I share my experiences in this blog for the same reason that Ashley Judd has shared hers in the press and in her memoir, All That Is Bitter and Sweet: to help break through our cultural ignorance; to humanize mental health patients and to educate the general public. I believe that mental health patients and their advocates speaking out is the only way that we can ever change our cultural stigmas. I'm just a nobody, but when someone of her stature speaks it does get people talking and thinking. She knew that and she believed in it, which is why she came forward about her issues. As a candidate, I would have encouraged her to have stayed that course.

Politically, the best play open to her would have been to have said, "Yes, I had these problems and the whole world knows about them. Voters can find out all about them in my past interviews or my book, where I discuss them in depth. How comfortable they are with this is for them to decide, but I believe that voters want to be represented by someone they know will be compassionate and understanding. Mental health is a very serious issue and one that has been poorly addressed to date - in large part due to the stymying efforts of Senator McConnell, who has repeatedly opposed expanding programs to help mental health patients."

If McConnell wants to paint a mental health patient candidate as potentially erratic and self-destructive, who might what? Refuse to vote on reasonable bills just to make a point of some kind? Prosecute a political agenda that willfully throws the entire country in harm's way? Refuse to listen to or care about a whole swath of constituents because, you know, screw 'em? If so, then it's not Ashley Judd or a mental health patient that McConnell should oppose. It's himself, for doing all those things on a daily basis. Ashley Judd endured an abusive childhood and needed help processing that. What's Mitch McConnell's excuse for obsessively opposing President Obama on a daily basis at the expense of the entire country? Egocentricity? Psychopathy? Self-destructive stupidity? Voters deserve answers, Senator.

I don't know that Ashley Judd will ever see this blog post, but in case she does, I want to say this: I understand. I understand why it angers you to know that this could have been an issue to hurt your chances of offering the people of Kentucky a better representation in the United States Senate than they've had with Senator McConnell. I understand why it frustrates you that people are still so ignorant in 2013 about these things that he even thought it would be an effective strategy. I understand why it hurts to feel like this shows just how alone people like us really are in a world that doesn't understand us.

I'm just a nobody, like I said, but you're not. When you speak, the whole world listens. You don't have to hold a political office to help change the world, and I would strongly encourage you to remember that. Look at Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, who have done more for the world out of office through their respective foundations than they could in the White House. You're free of any obligations to lobbyists or donors. You can continue to help educate the public about mental health, and to tear down the wall of ignorance that presently makes having a mental health issue like depression a political liability.

To anyone out there with a mental health issue who has thought about political office, I would say to you what I've thought myself over the years: Don't give up hope that the voters may actually be understanding. Depression and anxiety are distracting. We can't pretend otherwise. But we also aren't enslaved by them. We can act on behalf of others. In fact, in my personal experience I found that being helpful to others was the best treatment for my depression. If anything, I'd be a better officeholder because of depression, though I understand why the average voter wouldn't understand or believe that.

Our discussions about mental health are changing across this country, in large part because more Americans are coming forward and saying to their families and their doctors that they need help with something. It's becoming increasingly commonplace for people to at least know someone close to them who suffers from a mental health disorder. We're still "The Other", as evidenced by McConnell's confidence that attacking Judd's mental health would work, but it is changing for the better.