Dylan Bolin

I know that there’s recently been a lot of discussion about End of Life decisions.  Some believe a living will is a responsible, empowering thing to do, while others believe that making End of Life decisions will allow a government Death Squad to barge in and start harvesting organs.

I believe that, after I die, I will no longer care about such things, so I should probably say something while I do.

The Last Will and Testament of Dylan Bolin

I, Dylan Bolin, of sound mind and slightly doughier body than I’d like, do hereby bequeath all of my worldly possessions to be returned to their original owners.

If I should die, and my heart should stop beating, resuscitate ONLY if you perform a heart transplant and the doner was a serial killer, and as a result of having his heart in my body, I have the knowledge to solve Cold Cases, but I also exhibit a new-found urge to kill, which I attempt to stifle with the love of a woman.  I’m just saying, I think this could be a series.

As far as my earthly remains are concerned, I have three (3) requests, of which the executor of this will should choose:

    A.  Fill my pockets with candy and throw my body off a building of at least twenty (20) stories.  It will be spectacular, and some people will get candy.

    B.  I would like to be stuffed and mounted.  Perhaps the fingers on one hand could be angled such that they could support a beer can, while the other hand could serve as a pool cue holder.  I would like the look on my face to be friendly but, if possible, I’d like my eyes to appear to follow others in the room.

     C.  I would like to be made into a rug so I may always enjoy a happy hearth with a roaring fire.  And speaking of roaring, in this case, I’d like my face to look ferocious; like I was conquered by the owner of the room.

Sincerely,

Dylan

I know the best way to kill a dream is to share it with others. 

Recently, I expressed a desire to become a State Fair pitch man and was publicly mocked; shamed from greatness.  It was like that episode of Happy Days where Richie wanted to be a dancer and all the guys at Arthur’s laughed at him so he turned to Heroin but was cured when the Fonz slammed his face into the jukebox.  The episode was the television directorial debut of Robert Altman, but it never aired, so I’m not surprised you didn’t see it.  It’s an Easter Egg on the DVD.

My point is that I know a lot about Life.  For instance, Life doesn’t care about you.  That may sound bad, but it’s really not.  Sure, it doesn’t care whether you succeed or not before you die, but it also isn’t out to get you.  It’s perfectly neutral.  Like the way that baseball doesn’t care who wins or loses.  It’s baseball.  Baseball didn’t wake up this morning, eat a piece of toast and decide that, for instance, the Milwaukee Brewers should start choking.  No, baseball doesn’t care…and it doesn’t like toast.

Now, God is a different story.  God has a preference; God judges.  So if you’re trying to please God, you should choose your God wisely and consult one of His representatives for instructions. 

I’m talking about coaching Life. 

I’ve found that the first step on the road to a happy life is being born.  This is crucial.  After that, you’re kind of on your own until the End. 

So, I guess I really want to become a Death Coach.  Death is kind of our World Series, isn’t it?  The BIG Game!  What coach doesn’t prepare his team for the Big Game?

That will be my thing:  I’m a Life Coach, but I work from the other direction (Death), and I coach under the assumption that the opponent (Life) doesn’t care one way or the other.  Like coaching a boxer to beat a random person on the street who doesn’t know that they’re in a fight.

So, let me help you as you march towards Death!  Let me help you walk up to Life and sucker punch it!  Initially, I will work pro bono, so drop me a line with a Death question, and I’ll coach you with a response.

-Dylan, Certified Death Coach

First of all, let me say Thank You for your music.  Your clamoring ditties are truly a breath of fresh air on an otherwise desolate musical landscape.  And Thank You for having the courage to share your personal story.  First, you were forced to work as a waiter, then, you and your girlfriend couldn’t get a loan and had to live in her parents’ basement and, to top it all off, you were denied the right to own a cell phone.  I hope these heartfelt, lyrical works were as much catharsis for you as they are for me. 

In return for my appreciation, I’m writing this letter because I think you deserve to know the truth:  You have bad credit.  Furthermore, it would seem that creditreport.com cannot change that.  Check all you want, and encourage the listener to check, but the fact is that you simply must do something in addition.  You seem to be in a downward spiral, and you’re pinning all of the responsibility on creditreport.com.

As the name implies, creditreport.com merely reports your credit.  If you’d like to improve your situation, maybe you should visit creditimprove.com or something.  Maybe start by paying your bills on time.    

But what did you expect; you’re in a band.  And shouldn’t that be good enough?  Commit to your path, sir, and give yourself over to the craft.  Sleep ’til noon, drink all you can and have lots of anonymous sex with people of similar credit ratings.  “Know Thyself,” man.  Do you think Jimi Hendrix gave a damn about his credit report when he choked on his own vomit?

It may not seem like it, but I say these things out of love.

-Dylan

P.S.  Based on the success of your commercial, I look forward to your UPN sit-com that is no doubt in the works as we speak.

Last night, while I was walking to a smokey, underground bar where a few friends and I planned to gradually poison ourselves, I passed a storefront gym.  Through the large windows, I could see several workers-out gradually making themselves healthier. 

I paused to watch them for several minutes which, despite my applause and words of encouragement which I’m sure they couldn’t hear, seemed to make them a little self-conscious.  That’s when I wondered:  For whom are the large windows intended?  Were they intended for passers-by to look in, or were they intended for the patrons of the facility to look out?  Was it sanctioned voyeurism, or inspiration for the exercisers?  I’m sure that both sides felt like they were participating in some sort of prison visitation.

To be fair, I do the same thing at the windows of restaurants.  I’ll pause, press my hands against the plate glass window and hungrily eye their entrees.  When I’m on the other side, I like to hold my meal up to the glass so pedestrians can vicariously enjoy the food.  What are windows if not implicit access to the other side? 

At any rate, I apologize if I made anyone uncomfortable.

-Dylan

I’ve always been a big fan of Nature.

I see the Earth not as a 1987 Mercury Topaz dragging us around the sun until we die, but as a living, breathing thing.  A wise, sentient being that would actually speak to us if we listened.  I’ve always felt this way.

As a child, I subscribed to Ranger Rick magazine, the official kid’s magazine of the National Wildlife Federation.  While other kids clipped pages out of Teen Beat, my centerfolds were penguins.  I felt like Nature and I had a “thing.” 

Until today.  Today, my blind faith was tested.  Today, I got hit in the head by a wasp. 

He didn’t sting me; he flew into me.  The welt is from the impact.

I was just walking my dog, and I saw this wasp flying at me.  I remember thinking:  “Should I duck?”  Then I thought:  “The wasp is the one that knows how to fly; surely he instinctively knows how to…(Thwap!)…OWWW!…What the…?”

Nature, c’mon!  Why hast thou forsaken me?  And a wasp, no less.  I already hate wasps.  They serve no purpose but to fly and sting.  They’re already the thugs of the insect world, and now they’re Kamikazes?   If it were a bunny, well, then I would applaud you.  You create a prototype flying rabbit, and I’m with you.  Plus, being hit in the head by a flying bunny would have felt absolutely whimsical.  But wasps?  They already suck in so many ways; do they have to be clumsy, too?

Nature, if you’re reading this, I think our trust has been violated.  I need some time. 

And I pinned you up on my wall.

-Dylan

Every once in a while during this journey through life, you pass a sign post so poignant that you pause to recognize it as such.  One of those moments occurred this morning while I was taking my wife to work.

My wife made a comment, looked at me and said:  “Don’t you make that face.”

“What face?”

“That face that you make when you’re trying not to make a face?”

(Pause.)

“WHAT?!”

“That blank face you make when you try not to make a face.”

Please re-read her last statement.  Go ahead, I’ll wait.  I promise not to write anymore until you finish.

Okay.  Now, unless I’m very much mistaken (and I’ll know when my wife reads this) I would swear that I just got busted for NOT making a face.  My natural face, parked in neutral, was construed as a deliberate effort on my part to conceal the face I actually wanted to make.

Don’t get me wrong, we were joking around, but nevertheless, this seems like a fairly important paradigm shift, doesn’t it?

Married men, am I alone here?

-Dylan

I’ve been watching the various town hall meetings closely.  I haven’t been listening to them however, because every time a person in a suit talks, I yell at the television until my neck and cheeks are red like I learned in Debate Club. 

Anyway, from what I read on the Closed Captioning, you’re forming something called a “Death Panel.”  Aside from being a great name for a new Metal band, I understand that this “panel” will make life and death decisions and mete out insurance coverage accordingly.  I also heard that babies below a certain birth weight will be used for skeet, and that the brittle bones of the elderly will be ground up to make blown-in, attic insulation in conjunction with your new Energy Conservation Plan.

This letter is a request to be a member of the “Death Panel.” 

I’m very intuitive.  For instance, during horror movies, I always know who is going to die next.  Surely that’s a skill that would benefit the panel. 

Also, when I’m driving, I’m very good at picking out who should die.

At seafood restaurants, it’s eerie how accurate I am at choosing which lobster will be the next to go…and at market price.

Until now, I’ve been unable to apply these God-given gifts, but a place on your ”Death Panel” would change all that.  I’ll even provide my own black, hooded cloak. 

Thank you for your consideration.

-Dylan

Art by Natalia Zukerman

Willy Porter is on a journey; as are we all.  Despite the archetypal scripts we write for ourselves, Life rarely seems to listen to our pitches.  And while this drives most of us crazy, Willy embraces it; at least for the purpose of his craft.  Once in a while, during our personal treks, we hear a resonant chord and a soft-spoken voice from the ghost in the machine.  It could be a moment of clarity or transcendence, or, then again, it could be a Willy Porter tune.   

He observes his world like a boy drifting down a river in a raft, and many regard his songs as snapshots of what he sees.  I prefer to think of them as sketches.  (While a snapshot could be mere recorded observation, a sketch always involves the artist’s active hand.)  Some are simple and minimalist attempts to capture a moment, while others are abstractions inspired by a kind of Universal Honesty.    

His latest release, How to Rob a Bank, is true to form; and truth is something Willy has been searching for his whole career.  Where many song writers use the word “love,” Willy has invariably replaced it with “truth.”  It is, after all, the essence of love.  Would you rather be in love, or would you rather be in true love?

The theme recurs regularly throughout his entire discography, but each song is a different sketch, produced during a different phase of his growth.  My favorite album, what I believe is his consummate collection of sketches, is still Falling Forward.  What can I say; it resonated deeply and continues to. 

One example of his latest musical foray into the visual is the song Too Big to Sell, his homage to the painters who dared to see what no one else could.  And while many of their works are posthumously coveted, by accident or design, others could not be.

Willy is not blindly Pollyannaish, however.  The richness of Willy’s world, like that of Willy himself, is fluid.  It does not consist solely of blue skies and boundless freedom; there are briars and mud as well.  In renewal there is entropy, and in entropy there is death and sorrow.  Thankfully, Willy casts his unflinching third eye onto these scenes as well.  (If you can listen to One More September off of Available Light and not feel a lump in your throat, you likely aren’t human.)

Psychic Vampire off of his latest release is a dysfunctional tale of codependence and our blind addiction to anyone who offers to fill the desperate, empty places within us.  And it’s got an amazing hook. 

Every Willy Porter fan has experienced Willy’s soulful side, but Willy also possesses an impish sense of humor.  In How to Rob a Bank’s title track, he transforms that twinkle in his eye into a snappy ditty about unfettered greed with the sincerity and easy satire of a new-millennium Woody Guthrie.

Willy Porter is not about re-invention, but rather evolution; both spiritually and artistically, and whether we choose to acknowledge it or not, we too are on a similar journey, and often we don’t know where or why.  One day, we just woke up walking.  We know that inertia will eventually carry us to our final destination, and the curtain will ring down.  Along the way, we encounter shiny shards of fractured truth that we attempt to reassemble into our purpose. 

Willy Porter’s How to Rob a Bank is one more piece of the puzzle.

-Dylan

P.S.  Much more at willyporter.com.

Do you remember when Congress dressed down the auto execs for flying to D.C. on their private jets?  Boy, they sure let them have it, didn’t they?

Funny story…

The House of Representatives just voted themselves 3 new Gulfstream jets which will ensure that, when they travel, they won’t have to rub elbows with their unwashed constituents.  No word yet on whether your elected officials will be charged for extra luggage. 

Hopefully, a price tag of just under $200 million of your tax dollars is okay with you.  Tell you what, let me talk to my manager.  Maybe we can throw in the under-body rust-proofing for free.

If you’d like to congratulate them, just click on their link to go to their website.

Wisconsin Congressional Map

District 1:  Paul D. Ryan (R)

District 2:  Tammy Baldwin (D)

District 3:  Ron J. Kind (D)

District 4:  Gwen Moore (D)

District 5:  James F. Sensenbrenner (R)

District 6:  Thomas E. Petri (R)

District 7:  David R. Obey (D)

District 8:  Steve Kagen (D)

-Dylan

I can be a word nerd sometimes.  I think it stems from when I was a chubby, lonely kid.  I didn’t have many human friends so I spent most of my time reading books…and spinning in circles until I was dizzy; it was a really cheap high.

Besides, we live in a world now where reading has become a waste of time and, on the job, the source of lost productivity.

Nevertheless, every once in a while it’s still fun to talk about the etymology (which is either the study of bugs or words) of some of our popular words and phrases.  Today, it’s ”blockbuster.”

These days, the term “blockbuster” is used to describe nearly anything big, but it’s origins are fairly specific.  As you might expect, it was first used to describe a popular film.  But why?

Back in the day, theaters weren’t 24-screen google-plexes like we have today.  And they weren’t built in the middle of corn fields and always 40 minutes away no matter where you lived, dined or drank.  They occupied neighborhoods; they were Downtown.

As the throngs of movie-goers stood in line at the box office, often the line would wrap around the block.  And that’s where we got the word.

Today, you will invariably hear someone refer to a “blockbuster deal” or a “blockbuster contract.”  Well, unless people are waiting to see it, in a line that extends around the building, it’s really just a “lucrative deal” or an “outrageous contract.”  If we don’t care to see it, there will be no busted blocks.

-Dylan