If the mixture of articles selected for inclusion in this weekend's USA Today meaningfully reflects a diverse population's collective interests, then ours is a nation of strange priorities. The current issue runs an unusually hefty 54 pages, thanks to a special section highlighting Super Bowl XLVI. The 14-page supplement, longer than any one of the self-billed Nation's Newspaper's customary News, Money, Sports, and Life sections, includes detailed analyses of the upcoming game, in-depth profiles of players, and even a cutaway diagram of host venue Lucas Oil Stadium. As hyped as the Super Bowl is, it's an understandable - and I imagine rather profitable - editorial concession.

But the spotlight on Super Bowl Sunday is not contained within its designated section. A quarter of the Sports section provides further insights, including Madonna's tantalizing comments on the nature of her highly anticipated halftime performance. A lead article on the relationship of New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady dominates the front of the News section and continues over the whole of page two. The Money Section boasts a cover story about Super Bowl advertising, accompanied by a look at related smart-phone promotions and some insights on the rising popularity of chicken wings as a game day staple. Even the Life section is not exempt, lest a lightweight patron of the arts somehow miss the news that there is a very important football game this Sunday. There in the Travel subsection is a list of Larry Bird's favorite haunts in Indianapolis, which, by the way, just happens to be hosting the Super Bowl this weekend.

Overkill? I should think so. Yet USA Today does manage to cover a few other newsworthy items in its weekend edition. Political squabbling, non-Super Bowl sports, market data and entertainment news comprise the bulk of stories not emanating from Indianapolis. There is, however, some notable information on the third page of the News section. An article by Cincinnati Enquirer reporter Mark Curnutte (USA Today parent Gannet Company, Inc. owns the Enquirer, along with The Indianapolis Star, The Detroit Free Press, and over half a dozen other leading newspapers) details the plight of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, which is in such a precarious financial situation that it may be forced to close. The celebrated Cincinnati museum, not yet ten years old, is limping along on little more than a third of its inaugural budget and roughly a quarter of its initial full-time employees.

Apparently the museum has not been embraced by the locals. Of the 1.135 million guests who visited the Freedom Center through 2010, merely a third came from the surrounding metro area. There is an organized movement that seeks to block any tax dollars from funding the facility. And some suggest that a museum dedicated to the experience of enslaved African Americans does not hold a universally relevant appeal. State Senator Bill Seitz, reportedly an advocate of broadening the museum's focus to include the freedom fighters of World War II, is quoted as saying, "If [the Freedom Center] widens its appeal to draw a broader audience, then some African Americans aren't happy. And it's a victim in the larger white community, which can see it as a black museum and not go."

Yes, you read that correctly.

I can only hope that anyone who has willfully ignored the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center will have the opportunity of personally experiencing it. I strongly doubt that any thoughtful person, no matter their ethnicity, can take in the exhibits of this "black museum" and not find it deeply moving and chillingly relevant. The same line of reasoning espoused by Seitz's "larger white community" would suggest that the National Holocaust Museum is primarily a destination for those of Jewish ancestry rather than a sobering history lesson for all of humanity. Of course that's not the case. Neither is it true that the Freedom Center is exclusive. Like the Holocaust Museum, the Freedom Center is vitally important regardless of its mass appeal. It offers a thorough and unflinching look at a shameful contradiction of our national principles, an institutionalized injustice that continues to undermine our society more than a century after the federal abolition of slavery. No, it's not a pleasant way to pass an afternoon. But it's a worthwhile destination.

I have seen these lessons hit home in the eyes of students whom I have accompanied to the Freedom Center. In a darkened theater made to look as though it rests on the banks of the Ohio River, they see a film that dramatizes one slave couple's attempted escape. Afterwards the students step out onto the balcony of the museum and look across the real Ohio River for themselves, imagining what it must have been like to perceive the waterway as the border between slavery and freedom. An actress portraying a slave invites students to sit down and listen. She tells them about her experiences and stays in character as the children ask questions. In another area of the museum, a reconstructed slave pen provides concrete evidence of the cold trade of chattel slavery. It is disturbing, indeed, to stand within the structure and gaze up at the iron rings on the rafters, knowing that human beings were chained within these very walls. If you didn't get it when you read about it in your Social Studies textbook, you can't help but gain an understanding here.

Yet somehow there exists the unfortunate perception that the Underground Railroad Freedom Center is "a black museum." A round of applause to USA Today for bringing the museum's survival struggle to the attention of the nation. On the other hand, a chorus of raspberries for cashing in their political correctness chips by emblazoning the article with a Black History Month logo. For the sake of John Brown's a-moulderin' body, when will our society accept slavery and its abolition as everyone's history?

Often the sad truth is buried between the lines. In this weekend's USA Today, it can be found somewhere within the paragraphs about a cash-strapped museum printed on page A3, among stories detailing the largesse of super PAC contributors, the wisdom of investing in Facebook's impending IPO, and the effect of the NBA lockout on the subsequent quality of basketball. Oh, and there's something about the Super Bowl, too.

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Creativity is an enticingly rewarding yet elusive pursuit. It seems to spring into existence like a strange and wondrous flowering plant, popping up in our gardens now and then regardless of whether or not we attempt to cultivate it. Those of us who appreciate the blooming presence of creative inspiration do all that we can to nurture it, to keep it alive and thriving for as long as possible. Despite our efforts, creativity withers, dies, and springs anew according to its own natural laws, an unfathomable set of principles that we sense yet cannot know. How is it that one can be all fired up to create something one day yet utterly unmotivated and bereft of ideas the next? The answer is as difficult to grasp as the creative muse itself.

While I cannot pin down the cause of creativity, I can vouch for its beneficial effect on my psyche:  creating something (almost anything) simply makes me feel better. Conversely, enduring a period of creative stagnation makes me feel worse. As this correlation has gradually become apparent to me over the years, I have concluded that there is a physiological basis for it, hence the tagline for my blog: Stories. Commentary. Endorphins. Endorphins are naturally occurring substances that are released by the brain. They are known to deaden sensations of pain and are thought to produce feelings of well-being. Some people think endorphins foster creativity, but I suspect it also works in the opposite direction. I know that I need to be in a good frame of mind in order to write well, yet I also know that I always feel better after I write well than I did before I started. So, Stories. Commentary. Endorphins. The stories and commentary are for you, and the endorphins are for me.

If my hunch is right, and my creative productivity is responsible for a physiological response that enhances my well-being, then it is in my best interest to be meaningfully creative as frequently as possible. That is partly why this blog exists, as a means to keep myself regularly productive. More than once I have found my self-imposed Friday deadline to be a very welcome distraction during an otherwise stressful week. Though my profession of elementary education affords many opportunities to be creative and expressive, much of a teacher's work is a series of routines and repetitive tasks. Mulling over creative options regarding my writing is an effective counterbalance to the monotony of grading papers and assembling report cards.

Though there is comfort in routine, it can also be deadening. An absence of novelty and challenge can smother the smallest spark of creativity before it has a chance to start an inspirational fire. But it doesn't take The Great American Novel to get the endorphins firing. Sometimes even a utilitarian chore can do the trick if it requires some meaningful input from one's gray matter. For example, the other night I needed to write an appeal for a denied health insurance claim, not exactly the sort of composition that stokes my imagination. I would have preferred not to do it. In fact, I put it off for at least an hour by fiddling around online and shuffling through relevant papers. When I finally got started, however, that part of my brain that is keen on language and syntax kicked into gear.

I opened with a paragraph stating the purpose of my letter and quoting from the insurance company's denial. Then I embarked upon a brief medical history that identified the providers and their rationale for treatment. Lastly, I made the case for my appeal by noting that the denial appeared to be a contradiction of the insurance company's quoted policy, adding that the provider agreed and would be forwarding pertinent documents. When I was done, I read through what I had written several times and felt that familiar feeling of satisfaction, the neural reward that comes from having realized a creative conception.

Funny, isn't it? You might think that there is little creativity involved in tossing off a perfunctory business letter, and I suppose that might be the case if I were employed in a capacity that required me to write such missives on a regular basis. Once it becomes routine, it's no longer interesting. But in this situation, my brain had to do the same sort of juggling that I demand of it when I'm writing for pure enjoyment. I had to focus on an objective and determine the most economical route to achieve it. I had to mentally reconstruct a series of events and present the chronology in a compelling manner. I needed to be precise in my language and persuasive in my argument. If something wasn't working, I had to have the good sense to cut it out. That's just the sort of mental engagement that makes time evaporate for me, and it seems to be an integral part of the creative process, no matter the scale or nature of the endeavor.

The same satisfaction can be generated by an endless variety of activities. There are the obvious creative projects, such as writing a book, choreographing a dance, composing a photograph or painting a portrait. Then there are those behaviors of subtler creativity, actions that may not seem inherently imaginative because of their utilitarian practicality. Putting together a good meal, planting a garden, and even rearranging furniture or organizing a closet can bring about a similar sense of fulfillment. I have, for example, experienced much the same pleasure I derive from writing by simply devising the optimal arrangement of objects within a desk drawer.

Perhaps that intoxicating release of endorphins comes down to this: an engaging goal, the freedom to reach it any way you choose, and the fulfillment of that goal. Note that engagement is a must. I am quite sure that I do not experience any advantageous change of brain chemistry when I mow the lawn, for example. Maybe I did the time I decided to start in the center and work outward in concentric circles, but the novelty of that wore off pretty quickly. Some tasks are uninteresting no matter how you choose to handle them.

"I finished the letter to the insurance company," I announced to my wife at the dinner table.

"Oh, good," she replied.

"In fact, I hate to admit this, but...I might have even enjoyed it."

She smiled the way one does at nerds, a mixture of admiration and revulsion. "Well, I'm glad you liked it, because I hate doing that kind of thing."

I nodded empathetically. Our conversation ebbed as we focused on our food. And then I felt a rising truth welling within me.

"Alright," I confessed, "I did enjoy it. No, I really did. Would you like to hear my favorite sentence?"

One has to be careful with those endorphin rushes. As with any stimulant, it's easy to get carried away.

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The news came while I was at work, courtesy of a text message from my wife. It was not unexpected. We had been discussing the issue for months, but it took a surprising amount of courage to see our decision through to its implementation. Staring at my phone, I sighed with the knowledge that what was done was done, and life would never be quite the same. "It's official," read the message. "Our land line is no more!"

Maintaining a phone line into our home was costing us $420 a year, an expense that was hard to justify now that everyone in our family of four carries a dedicated cell phone. There were few advantages to keeping things as they were. We did liked the peace of mind that came with communication redundancy, the smug assurance that should sun spots interfere with satellites and cell towers, we still had a sure-fire means of making and receiving calls. Also, it was easier to have someone just pick up an extension rather than engineering a three-way cell phone call. And it's nice to hear the phone ringing throughout the house and be able to answer it quickly without being tethered to a device. But $420 for such luxuries? We realized that never would we have taken on the expense as a new expenditure, and it became clear that we were keeping a land line mostly because we had always had one. Not much of a rationale for spending money that could be better used elsewhere.

So why was our beneficial decision accompanied by subtle shades of melancholy?

I suspect the answer begins in our early childhood. As we prepared to enter kindergarten, our parents anticipated our emerging independence and sought to make us as secure as we had always been while under their watch. They tried to equip us to deal with unexpected crises, such as finding oneself lost among strangers. To that end, we were drilled again and again to clearly state our name, address and phone number. We repeated the vital information until we knew it reflexively, and over the years we were called upon ever more frequently to write what we had memorized onto various documents. For my wife and me, our efforts were a sound investment that continued to pay off well into our adult lives. Our parents never moved into another house, never changed their familiar phone numbers. And in my case, that phone number that I memorized when I was 5 years old still connects me to the parents who taught it to me.

A couple months shy of our second anniversary, Julie and I purchased the house in which we live today. Maybe it was because we had both grown up without ever having known the experience of moving, but I sensed an inevitable permanence in our residence, a new build with no prior inhabitants. No one had lived here before, and I automatically assumed that we would be the sole owners until we reached such an age that the house no longer suited our needs. We were in it for the long haul, if circumstance allowed it. When it came time to arrange our phone service, it seemed like we were about to be given another legendary sequence of seven numbers, a pattern that would be burned into our minds and those of our future children just as surely as we could still recall the phone numbers of our respective homesteads.

I never expected to have any say in determining the septet of digits that would connect callers to our new home, but it turned out that I was allowed to play a small role. The phone company representative informed me that we had moved into an area that was serviced by three different numerical prefixes, and I could choose whichever one I wanted, if indeed it made any difference to me at all. She rattled off my choices, and one of them stood out: 777. I liked the idea of having a prefix composed of the same repeated digit. It would be easy for everyone to memorize: for us, our family, our friends, and one day - our children. The representative gave me the rest of the number: 4765. I went about repeating our new phone number for a few minutes. 777-4765. 777-4765. 777-4765. Like the house itself, there seemed an inevitability about it. It had an appealing rhythm and sounded almost like I had always known it. 777-4765, the number we would always have.

A few years later, we were a family of four. As our daughters grew older and began to assert their independence, we followed the example of our parents and taught the girls to recite our phone number. Meanwhile, our right hands developed a muscle memory for the seven digits that we wrote down again and again on various forms, applications, and correspondence. "Has anything changed?" we were often asked when visiting our doctors, dentists and veterinarians, and the answer was always, "No." We still lived in the same house. You could still reach us at the same number.

Somehow, in some illogical and overly sentimental fashion, it seems as though we have betrayed a comforting fragment of our illusory permanence. The world has changed in a way that we never anticipated. When we were growing up, there was one number that everyone who knew us could use to reach any desired member of the family. Sure, you might have to talk to someone else first and ask for the person with whom you wished to converse, but one number worked for all of us. Never did we dream that the yards of telephone cabling that traversed the frames of our homes would ever be any less essential than the plumbing pipes or electrical wires. The very idea of everyone carrying a personal, portable phone was as remote as Dick Tracy's two-way wristwatch.

And perhaps in this age of electronic isolation, there is something sad about our family losing something that we once shared, even if it is nothing more than a silly number.

So long, 777-4765. If it were up to me, you'd be officially retired from service, your legendary digits embroidered on a banner that would hang from the basement rafters. Then one day, we'd ask our visiting grandchildren to power down their onboard communication devices and observe with us a moment of silence in your memory. "Once upon a time," we'd croak, "every family had just one phone number..."

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Ready to "Do It Again"? Beach Boys Wilson, Marks, Johnston, Jardine and Love

Christmas has apparently come early for music lovers in the form of last week's announcement that all of the surviving Beach Boys intend to reunite for a 50-city world tour next summer in recognition of the legendary band's 50th anniversary. That would be founding members Brian Wilson, Mike Love, and Al Jardine, along with Wilson's longtime road replacement Brian Johnston and early Beach Boy David Marks (the one who thought he stood a better chance at success by forming his own band, David and the Marksmen, surely one of the most tragic career missteps in the annals of popular music). The quartet are to be supported by Wilson's backing band, according to Love, who acknowledged that his cousin Brian has vacillated on his commitment to the tour. "He has his moods," said Love, "no doubt about it." All of which means that we can only buy our tickets and keep our fingers crossed.

There was a time when the prospect of a Beach Boys reunion would not have excited me at all. I grew up dismissing them with a dose of contempt, an arrogance born of ignorance along with the fact that I became musically conscious around the same time that the band was hitting its nadir. All that I could discern was a long list of vacuous hits about cars, surfing, and girls. To me, the Beach Boys were the vanilla ice cream in the Baskin-Robbins of pop music. They were a K-tel collection. What a shame that the people who made such a substantial contribution to American music should have seemed frivolous and inconsequential to a young person a mere decade after their prime. But there was a bearded Mike Love prancing about onstage in a stocking cap and bathrobe, and I could not conclude otherwise.

I started to change my tune as a young adult, most notably in the summer of 1989, after I saw the Beach Boys live on a tandem tour with Chicago. There was a bit of historical significance to the event, as the two bands had toured together in 1975, and once again the groups were performing an encore set of songs together. I attended the show for Chicago, who performed first, and I expected to be a bit bored when the Beach Boys took the stage. I was smugly unimpressed as they opened with California Girls, complete with bikini-clad beauties bouncing across the stage as though the music and lyrics by themselves might be too obtuse for the audience to grasp. But then there was Sloop John B and Wouldn't It Be Nice, and it wasn't long before I abandoned my cynical eyes and simply enjoyed the music.

Midway through their set came a number that, incredibly, I had never heard. God Only Knows struck me as a remarkable and captivating song. It was beautiful and, to my uneducated ear, so unlike the Beach Boys. There was a profundity to the lyrics, and the melody and arrangement unfolded in ways I never could have predicted. I was totally won over. For the rest of the show, I listened with a more charitable discernment, and I thoroughly enjoyed what I heard. By the end of the evening, I knew I had some homework to do.

What a joy it was to discover Pet Sounds, as much a rite of classic rock passage as familiarizing oneself with Sgt. Pepper and The Dark Side of the Moon. There was God Only Knows again, and so much more - the pensive daydream of Let's Go Away For Awhile, the mesmerizing intimacy of Don't Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder), the cry of the lonely outsider on I Guess I Just Wasn't Made For These Times, and the devastating heartbreak of Caroline, No. How could this fantastic album have escaped me for so many years? As I dug deeper into the Beach Boys' catalog, I began to realize the depth and breadth of what I had missed.

There are dimensions of Brian Wilson's genius that rarely get airplay, hauntingly beautiful tunes like Wonderful, 'Til I Die, Wind Chimes, Let The Wind Blow, Surf's Up and The Warmth Of The Sun. Bizarre creations like Fall Breaks And Back To Winter, She's Goin' Bald, and Vegetables showcase an unrestrained creativity. And then there are what I like to think of as genuine drug casualty songs, including Johnny Carson and Solar System, childishly literal pieces devoid of any poetic metaphor. None of the above resembles the fun-in-the-sun attitude of the Beach Boys' greatest hits, and all of it is fascinating.

Just as compelling is the biographical history of the Beach Boys, especially Brian Wilson's struggles to overcome drug addiction, obesity, stage fright, and mental illness. The band's timeline is fraught with alliances, betrayals, legal squabbles, failures and comebacks. The supporting cast includes strange characters like Wilson's notorious therapist Eugene Landy, who restored his client's health while practically dictating his behavior, and Murry Wilson, the domineering family patriarch and band manager who later sought wealth by submitting an unintentionally humorous, unsolicited jingle to Kentucky Fried Chicken. The tragic losses of Dennis and Carl Wilson punctuate the story with further sadness as well as a large helping of improbability: who would have predicted that Brian would be the last surviving Wilson brother? As I learned, the Beach Boys were not the dull, pin-striped choirboys I had perceived in my youth. Like their music, their lives have been much more complex.

So it turned out the Beach Boys weren't bland after all. I was pleased to see them again in 1993 as headliners following a minor league baseball game. Once again, it was a great show. Afterward my wife and I stopped for a moment outside a fence surrounding the stadium when we noticed people boarding the tour bus. A haggard Carl Wilson acknowledged his fans with the quickest of waves before disappearing into the bus, an image that returned to me when it was announced that he had succumbed to cancer in 1998. In 2000, I had the great fortune to see a concert by Brian Wilson, whose performance was riveting. Backed by an incredibly talented band, the genius behind the Beach Boys delivered a great set, though his fragility was occasionally evident. At one point, he stopped and restarted a song because something was not to his liking. During the encore, he strapped on a green bass, stood stock-still at center stage with the gravest of expressions, and introduced Barbara Ann with an unconvincing, monotone utterance of "Let's rock."

Will the great Brian Wilson truly reunite with his old bandmates for a 50th-anniversary tour? If he does, will the contentious Beach Boys be able to keep their collective dysfunction at bay for the duration? A few generations of fans who have never had the opportunity to see the yin and yang of Wilson and Love on the same stage hope that it all comes to pass as promised. As one of America's musical giants once asked, wouldn't it be nice?

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When was the last time you could honestly describe a 600-page nonfiction book as a thoroughly absorbing page-turner? Such length is usually the province of academic works requiring an investment of patience and concentration from the reader. Craig Marks and Rob Tannenbaum's I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution (Dutton, 2011) makes no such demands, at least not if you are of the generation that witnessed the rise and fall of Music Television. You  will recognize the names of the artists, videos, and VJs, and you may find yourself as riveted to this sizable oral history as you once were captivated by untold hours of MTV.

Like its subject - the first decade of MTV - Marks and Tannenbaum's weighty tome unfolds as a series of easily digestible segments. The authors eschew editorializing in favor of letting people speak for themselves. Each of its 53 chapters begins with a brief introduction followed by artfully intercut interview transcriptions. The effect echoes the pace of vintage MTV, when the fledgling network actually aired music videos and the mesmerizing imagery turned over with the regularity of a kaleidoscope.

In those days, well before the advent of content on demand, I and millions of other teenagers would sit transfixed before the television for hours, strung along song by song in the hope that a favorite video was just around the corner. The J. Geils Band's riotous Centerfold. David Bowie's disturbingly surreal Ashes to Ashes. The Rolling Stones' perpetually amusing Start Me Up. All those exotic, imported videos from Classic Nouveaux, Spandau Ballet, Split Enz, The Specials, Men at Work, and Madness. Bits of lunacy from niche artists like Wall of Voodoo, Oingo Boingo, Grace Jones, and The Vapors (Turning Japanese, anyone?). I was so entertained by most of the playlist that I would sit through as many clunkers as it took to get to the good stuff.

At the height of my infatuation, I started to catalog my viewing on discarded, blank spreadsheets (complete with dot-matrix-printer-compatible, perforated, sprocket-hole margins) that Dad had brought home from work as scrap paper. I listed the artist and song, noted whether the video was performance or conceptual, and evaluated its merit on a scale of 0 to 100. How I wish I had those papers now. All I know for sure is that anything off of DEVO's New Traditionalists earned a 100, whereas the visually dull clips that tried my patience (Marshall Crenshaw's Someday, Someway; Gerry Rafferty's Baker Street) were scornfully branded with a big, fat donut.

Then somewhere during my college years, I came home for the weekend and wondered what had become of my beloved MTV. Where were original VJs J.J. Jackson, Nina Blackwood, Alan Hunter, Mark Goodman and Martha Quinn? What happened to all the quirkiness that once made the network great? Why were they pandering to kids? Had I just grown up, or had MTV taken a step backward? A little bit of both, I'm sure. Little did I know at the time that the future would hold a far worse transformation, the present reality-TV incarnation that must have teens scratching their heads and wondering what in God's name the M stands for in MTV.

I Want My MTV covers every facet of the channel's devolution from hungry innovator to bloated media giant. Its founders were pioneers who found themselves settling a lawless territory where rock 'n' roll excess and debauchery were simply taken for granted as part of the job. From drug-fueled, marathon video shoots to more mindless promiscuity than a season of Melrose Place, nearly everyone in the industry was sowing their wild oats. That much might have been guessed, but I Want My MTV offers surprising tidbits as well. For example, who would have guessed that among the Original Five, J.J. Jackson was the biggest party animal? He always came across as a polite and laid-back guy to me, like a cool big brother. And nowhere else have I ever heard that sister station VH-1 was designed to fail as a "fighting brand", copying every move of Ted Turner's rival upstart Cable Music Channel in order to dilute the competition. (Don't remember CMC? That's how well the strategy worked).

The book is most entertaining when it chronicles disaster, and as various professional failures and personal implosions litter the legacy of MTV, there is plenty to amuse. Best of all is an entire chapter entitled, "A Whopping, Steaming Turd," devoted to what is generally regarded within the industry as the worst music video ever made, a jaw-dropper that single-handedly destroyed the recording and performing career of its artist, Billy Squier. As you may recall, "The Stroke" was silly enough as it was. Yet your average teenage white boy could endorse it without embarrassment, and it is not the focus of this chapter. That distinction goes to "Rock Me Tonite"? What? Never heard of it? Neither had I, even though it received the full MTV World Premiere treatment in 1984. "Rock Me Tonite" was so horrendous that the video and Squier, himself, went off the radar shortly afterward.

It must be seen to be believed. Now, thanks to the unrivaled and merciless resuscitive powers of YouTube, you can see it for yourself. I'm warning you now that Squier prances about like the spastic offspring of Ed Grimley and Richard Simmons. What's worse, you'll never be able to see Billy Squier again and not think of this lowlight. Even "The Stroke" becomes leagues dumber when viewed as a chaser to "Rock Me Tonite." Career-destroying, indeed.

"It's on YouTube," by the way, is a familiar refrain in the oral histories of I Want My MTV, whether in reference to notorious videos or incidents like Bobby Brown allegedly dropping a vial of cocaine while dancing onstage at the 1989 Video Music Awards. It's a telling comment, for if video did, indeed, kill the radio star, on-demand video streaming put the nails in the coffin of music television. There's no longer any need to watch hours of TV in the hopes of catching anything.

There was a time, though, when it all seemed worth it, and it is aptly chronicled in I Want My MTV.

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POSTSCRIPT: The book ends with a section called "Cast of Characters", micro-bios intended to help the reader distinguish among the hundreds of personalities whose words and stories are told. I'll - ahem - end this post with my favorite:

SIR MIX-A-LOT is a Seattle-based rapper best known for his 1992 number one hit "Baby Got Back." He likes big butts.

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December has barely begun, yet it already feels as though we have been subjected to Christmas music for an entire holiday season. Familiar tunes have permeated retail environments for weeks now, and commercial television has been hijacked by the relentless yuletide promotions of jewelers and department stores. The frenzied songfest will only intensify as the Last Shopping Day approaches.

For those with an insatiable appetite for perennial holiday favorites, it's a golden time. Personally, I find a few Christmas songs in the week leading up to December 25 to be sufficient, but I've usually had more than my fill by then. When it comes to Christmas music, I prefer be selective, which means embracing the recordings I appreciate while avoiding the ones I hate. The latter effort, however, can be quite difficult.

Of the traditional carols and hymns, the one song that I truly loathe is The Little Drummer Boy. What don't I like about it? Everything. Its worst offense is what may be the dullest refrain ever penned: pa rum pum pum pum. This is a fatal flaw, as the annoying phrase is repeated incessantly. All that remains is a monotonous melody with a lyrical narrative that drives me up the wall. All my life, even when I was a child myself, I've wanted to grab that kid by the shoulders and shake some sense into him. "Listen, drummer boy," I'd snarl menacingly, "the newborn king doesn't give two figs whether or not you have a gift for him, and he sure as heck isn't going to be pleased by some ankle-biter beating away on a snare drum!" I don't care if it's meant to be taken metaphorically. It's a stupid analogy.

The only possible saving grace for The Little Drummer Boy is that some variations include the line, "The ox and ass kept time." Regrettably, that synonym for donkey, the sole bit of double-entendre joy in an otherwise boring exercise, is now customarily omitted in favor of lamb. I wish the song would go away, but like its obnoxious refrain, The Little Drummer Boy is played unceasingly this time of year.

If that were all that I found intolerable about Christmas music, I might still be able to handle the typical hour of holiday radio programming. Unfortunately, there seems not to exist such a block of broadcasting that is free of the gadawful Mannheim Steamroller staple Deck the Halls. Oh, how I hate it. And this is coming from someone who actually likes electronic music. I mean, criminy, I enjoy everything from Keith Emerson and DEVO to Isao Tomita and Wendy Carlos, so I'm no elitist snob. But the pulsating bass line, wailing lead synthesizer, and look-at-me, cutesy-pie, faux-jazzy fiddling around with the melody makes me want to stick forks in my eyes. Or better yet, my ears. I've had farts that were more creative. And yet, try walking from the far end of a big box retailer to the cash registers without hearing it.

Even my heroes can disappoint me during these endless days of Christmas pop. Paul McCartney, whom I revere as the greatest songwriting musician of our time, also contributed a holiday ditty that I despise nearly as much as Little Drummer Boy and Mannheim Steamroller's Deck the Halls. You know the one I'm talking about. Wonderful Christmastime. It was recorded during a period in which the future Sir Paul seemed unable to separate the wheat from the chaff, right around the time he made the wildly uneven Back to the Egg, which might as well have been called Diamonds and Turds. How could an album that included the brilliant Arrow Through Me, Getting Closer, Again And Again And Again, and Baby's Request also feature the abysmal Spin It On, After The Ball/Million Miles, and Old Siam, Sir? Only his producer knows for sure.

And only McCartney knows what was going through his head when he made one of the cheesiest Christmas songs ever. It would have been bad enough had he been satisfied with the the clunky verse and sappy chorus. But the falsetto representation of children singing ding dong is simply unforgivable. You have to ask yourself, did the old Beatle really like this awful song, or was he trying to see if he was infallible on the charts? In any case, he's had the last laugh, as Sir Paul reportedly earns annual royalties of half a million dollars from Wonderful Christmastime alone. (So if you should ever find yourself knocking back a few eggnog at the pub with Macca, don't feel bad about letting him pick up the check.)

One might conclude from my tirade that I'm some cynical Grinch who abhors all Christmas music. Not so. In fact, my album collection includes a pair of Christmas efforts that I regard as two of the finest albums ever recorded, holiday-themed or otherwise. The first is A Charlie Brown Christmas, Vince Guaraldi's terrific 1965 soundtrack to the classic Peanuts special. What an inspired idea to complement a comic strip's satirical take on the commercialization of Christmas with the improvisations of a jazz trio. To this day, the rollicking Linus And Lucy is the musical essence of Peanuts. But nostalgia aside, the album stands on its own as a simultaneously joyful and contemplative interpretation of the holidays.

Then there is the truly wonderful Home For Christmas from Amy Grant. Released in 1992, it was Grant's second Christmas album. Her first was recorded nearly a decade earlier, and though it is a pleasant enough collection, it is somewhat dated by its heavy reliance on keyboards, a fashionable sound at the time. Home For Christmas is lavishly produced and achieves a timeless feel, the sort of album that just as likely could have been made today as half a century ago. The orchestral arrangements are worthy accompaniments to Grant's beautiful voice, which had matured since her earlier Christmas effort. What's more, Grant delivers the definitive version of David Foster and Linda Thompson's great Grown-Up Christmas List, which is to Wonderful Christmastime what up is to down.

Amy Grant is the exception to a general rule that Christmas albums are stopgaps when an artist isn't sure what to do next, and multiple Christmas albums from the same artist are a sign of creative and economic desperation. Witness the yuletide struggles of the band Chicago. In 1998, frustrated by their label's shelving of Chicago 22 (Stone of Sissyphus) and on the heels of an album of big band covers and two more greatest hits compilations, they released Chicago XXV: The Christmas Album, an uneven collection of standards and originals. It was followed by a live album and yet another hits compilation. In 2003, they shamelessly rereleased their previous Christmas effort with the addition of six new songs and dubbed the endeavor What's It Gonna Be, Santa? The next year, former bandmate Peter Cetera, in an attempt to find success with his own ridiculously titled holiday disc, put out You Just Gotta Love Christmas. And just this past October, after even more greatest hits packages, Chicago fired back with Chicago XXXIII: O Christmas Three (yes, Three, though really it should be O Christmas Two-And-A-Half). The utter chutzpah of this move prompted Cetera's brother Kenny to suggest that the band missed a great opportunity; they should have invited their old friend to rejoin the group and called their product For Pete's Sake, It's Another Christmas Album!

As for O Christmas Three, I cannot responsibly judge what I have not heard. But I feel it's only right for me to issue a warning. The first track - and I swear on Rudolph's red nose that this is true - features Dolly Parton on Wonderful Christmastime.

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There is a celebrity educator renowned among teachers for his bestselling books and the extraordinary commitment he has made to fostering the success of disadvantaged students. His achievements and advice are laudable, as is his practice of funding his school with the honorariums he earns as a popular speaker. Anyone would be thrilled to have him looking after the learning of their child. And yet, despite my admiration for all that he has done for children and teachers alike, there is one quirky aspect of his personality that makes me cringe. He is known for spontaneously mounting desks and tables and proceeding to dance.

Now, I have nothing against people dancing. For all I care, the whole of my community can shimmy about as a choreographed flash mob the next time I'm out and about town. I will smile charitably and perhaps even enjoy the display. Just don't ask me to boogie along. Primal as the urge to dance supposedly is, I have never felt the compulsion to bust a move. Just the opposite, in fact. Never am I happier to remain seated than when a group of revelers is dancing. My reluctance to dance is little different than, say, your dismissal of foods you do not like. It's just not for me. I simply do not enjoy it.

But the dancing celebrity educator sees it differently. Not only does he literally put himself on a pedestal and shake his groove thing, he expects everyone else to follow his lead. Whether he is addressing his student body or a convention hall full of teachers, he expects every last soul to clap along.

As with dancing, I do not begrudge anyone their right to clap along, whether in response to a prompt or simply out of sheer joy. Occasionally I will even clap along myself, if that is what I truly feel like doing, though such instances are rare. But I loathe a relentless exhortation to clap along, especially when delivered with furrowed brow and the implication that anyone who chooses not to participate is a sociopathic blight on the community. Must we obey every command to bang our hands together?

Of course, mandatory audience participation does not stop at mere hand clapping, and this is where human nature amazes me. There seems to never be a shortage of people who are willing to indulge the whimsy of a suit at a lectern, no matter how ridiculous or humiliating the manipulation may be. They will parrot whatever phrases they are told to repeat. They will obediently hold onto their abdomens while forcing out belly laughs. They'll strap on the red, rubber noses concealed beneath their seats. And always, always, they will clap along like a thundering herd of sheep.

Should you ever wish to instill in me a leaden psychological weight of purest dread, you need only inform me that I am about to be subjected to a motivational speaker who is known for an ability to "get audiences moving." You can increase my despair and possibly even drive me to consider self-destruction by telling me that I will be seeing a Joyologist or a Certified Laughter Leader. Too often, programs that are sold as inspirational morale boosters are merely arrogant exercises in performance art. Regardless of content, if the speaker can successfully provoke a majority of the audience to experience cathartic waves of tears and laughter, the show is considered successful. The cheapest way to achieve these emotional plateaus is to exhort the audience to become physically active and train them to respond to behavioral prompts. Unfortunately, it's a strategy that works. A good portion of any audience apparently does not mind being treated like children, at least not enough to simply sit out the stupid stuff (or could it be that none of it seems stupid to them?).

My brother Brian once suggested that the best professional development in the world would make its point by exploiting this herd mentality to its extreme. The speaker would guide the unsuspecting audience through an increasingly stupid and demeaning series of teambuilding exercises, boldly ratcheting up the ridiculousness until finally someone is brave enough to publicly dismiss the whole affair as time-wasting nonsense. The speaker would then identify that brave dissenter as the most valuable person in the organization, chastise the lemmings, and leave.

But no. Across the land, in lecture halls, auditoriums, convention centers and school gymnasiums, grown men and women are turning to their neighbors and parroting catch phrases, locking arms and holding hands, learning to appreciate cooperation by getting tied up in human knots, stepping outside of their comfort zones to understand their peers through situational role playing, humoring every offbeat command, and always, always clapping along.

Mine is a timeless complaint, and others have voiced the same displeasure, but perhaps no one has illustrated our collective docility more eloquently than Monty Python in Life of Brian:

BRIAN: Look, you’ve got it all wrong. You don’t need to follow me. You don’t need to follow anybody. You’ve got to think for yourselves. You’re all individuals.

CROWD: Yes, we’re all individuals.

BRIAN: You’re all different.

CROWD: Yes, we are all different.

BRIAN: Well, that’s it. You’ve all got to work it out for yourselves.

CROWD: Yes, yes! We’ve got to work it out for ourselves.

BRIAN: Exactly.

CROWD: Tell us more.

Back to our dancing celebrity educator. He was the keynote speaker at a professional development conference attended by hundreds of employees of my school district. I was sitting near the exit at one of the many round tables that filled the main floor. Sure enough, the time came when our speaker's dynamism could not be confined to the stage, and a whoop of audience appreciation greeted his gyrations upon a table in the center of the room. When he told us to clap along, the great majority of the attendees went with the suggestion.

However, in this age of No Child Left Behind and its legal mandate that 100% or our nation's children will be proficient in all academic areas, it can be bothersome to a celebrity educator to get anything less than the full participation of his audience. His radar detected that there were pockets of flagging enthusiasm along the periphery of the room, which he sought to remedy by dancing and scowling among the shyer sections of the crowd. Remarkably, this gambit worked, and soon perhaps 99% of the audience was obligingly clapping along.

I, however, was among the stoic 1% that refused to compromise its dignity. I will not clap, I will not clap, I told myself, no matter what he does, I will not clap. Soon our speaker was a mere table away from me, and I could see his eyes scanning the audience for malcontents. Amid the deafening clapping that filled the hall, I heard his amplified voice take on an accusatory tone.

"Sir," he called out, "why aren't you clapping?"

The adrenaline of steely resolve was surging through my system. I longed to stand up before hundreds of my peers and confront the unstoppable juggernaut of enforced audience participation. I wanted to point out that, as much as clapping along and dancing along might be a wonderful enhancement to the learning experience for most people, there are some for whom it is demeaning. Go ahead and tell your audiences and your students to clap along, but respect the dignity of those who prefer not to. It doesn't mean that they are not engaged. They just don't want to clap along.

But he wasn't talking to me. His ire was directed at an expressionless gentleman who was leaning against the exit doors with his arms folded. The celebrity educator kept after the non-participant for a bit, but the guy refused to play along, remaining still as a mannequin. At last our speaker chose to ignore his nemesis and danced his way back toward the stage. The rest of the crowd clapped along.

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Penn State students making their point by destroying property.

You can fire the university president, and you can fire the head football coach. You can fully cooperate with authorities and enact whatever painful, pragmatic measures are necessary to restore respectability to a tarnished institution. But what, Penn State officials must be asking themselves, can be done to reeducate the misguided students who rioted after the announcement of Joe Paterno's termination? While the allegations against former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky apparently reveal a systemic failure to properly notify police and child welfare agencies of reported abuses, the destructive behavior of students on Wednesday night is indicative of another ingrained dysfunction.

Many of the young adults quoted in a New York Times account of the incident were disturbingly cavalier and defiant about the violent student reaction to news that their beloved coach had been suddenly and unceremoniously axed. "It's not fair," claimed one of them. "The board is an embarrassment and a disservice to the student population." Note the adolescent egocentrism in that remark. The young man is upset because firing Paterno for failing to fulfill a moral obligation to actively prevent further instances of child abuse impinges on his needs as a student. It's like a bratty kid kicking the fireman because his Halloween candy melted.

Another student observed, "Make no mistake, the board started this riot by firing our coach. They tarnished a legend." Here we see the transference of culpability that is all too common among teenagers and  immature adults. The board started this riot. Really? You mean it wasn't the girls who danced on top of a parked SUV in heels, or the guys who tore down light poles, or even the throng that tipped over a news van? This line of reasoning suggests that by firing Paterno, Penn State officials effectively issued a riot mandate. They tarnished a legend. Really? Might Jerry Sandusky have tarnished the legend? Perhaps former graduate assistant and current assistant coach Mike McQuery and former university president Graham Spanier eroded a little of the luster? Might the janitor who observed one of Sandusky's alleged rapes and that janitor's supervisor have contributed to the decay by their silence? And is it possible that even Joe Pa himself might bear some of the responsibility for the dulling of his own legend?

What practical choice did Penn State have? The reputation of their university is at risk. The ugly stereotype of an amoral institution that worships the lucrative potential of a successful collegiate football program is coiling around campus like a poisonous snake of notoriety. To honor Paterno's suggestion that he simply retire at the end of the season (at age 84, not much of a concession) would be to imply that a football legacy does indeed take precedence over honorable behavior. It would send a message that Penn State is okay with their representatives eschewing ethics in the name of following the letter of the law and nothing more. That might pass muster among some of our more ruthless business corporations. A public institution of learning, however, cannot survive as a Machiavellian defender of the bottom line. No matter how much firing Paterno hurts Penn State, not firing him would be even more damaging.

This reality seems to be beyond the ken of the rioting students. Perhaps that is not so surprising, as college life can be a strange dichotomy of exposure to a world of ideas while remaining practically isolated from the concerns of the world. You're treated, for the most part, like an independent adult, yet your mind may still resemble that of an adolescent. You might awaken to the existence of real social injustice and consequently see a maturation in your thinking, or you may be content to drift through classes and sniff out the next party. Your conception of what is and is not fair might still be defined by whether or not you get what you want.

Furthermore, young Penn State students (and even some of their parents) have never known Happy Valley without Paterno. If football is indeed sacred at PSU, then its scriptures according to the student body might as well commence with, "In the beginning, there was Joe Pa." It is understandable that the firing of Paterno might be perceived by some of them as a sacrilege. I can see how they might take it personally. What I cannot fathom, though, is how any of them can twist the situation into an entitlement to riot.

The Times quotes a 24-year-old aerospace engineering student as rationalizing, "Of course we're going to riot. What do they expect when they tell us at 10 o'clock that they fired our football coach?" We might hope that anyone six years into adulthood would have a broader perspective. Has he any knowledge of the history of civil disobedience? Does he have any idea of his own privilege in relation to those who struggle for the same freedoms? Did he watch any footage of courageous Arab dissidents liberating their countries from the oppression of dictators? Might it ever occur to him that vandalizing private property is a wildly disproportionate response to a university board of trustees firing its football coach?

Probably not. Looking at a photograph of the targeted news van in mid-topple, I see not the grim, determined countenances of righteous indignation but rather the thrill of revelry. The participants in this destruction do not strike me as conscientious students who have concerns beyond their own comfort. Rather than having been handed a mandate to riot, they appear to have found a convenient excuse to play. Caught up in the frenzy, they could make themselves believe that overturning the news van was a brave political statement about the culpability of irresponsible media. And when police ordered them to stop and advanced upon them, these deluded students could actually envision themselves as the oppressed.

I have a message for them. It appears that there are some young men who once innocently found out in the most tragic way what it is like to be truly and violently oppressed by someone in a position of power, and it happened right on your campus. And because no one stepped up to stop it before it happened again and again, you must valiantly endure your own personal tragedy of a tarnished football legend.

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For the uninitiated: Zeppo, Groucho, Chico and Harpo

One hectic spring somewhere in my thirties, I realized that I was coming perilously close to taking myself and everyday life too seriously. Dwelling on chronic annoyances and my inability to remedy them was simply compounding my problems. I was at risk of developing a permanently sour expression. Then I stumbled upon a most unexpected antidote to gloomy self-absorption. While browsing at the library, I found a DVD box set of the first five Marx Brothers movies.

The Marx Brothers were a cultural phenomenon that I had somehow ignored. I knew who Groucho Marx was, of course, and I was aware of Harpo's pantomime shtick, but beyond a rudimentary knowledge of titles and famous routines, I knew almost nothing of their celebrated movies. What was it that made them so appealing to their fans? The box set was an opportunity to eradicate my gnawing ignorance. Anal retentive that I am, I resolved to watch all of the movies in the order by which they were released. It was a course of action that, in hindsight, I would prescribe to anyone who feels weighed down by their burdens.

Like all medication, however, it helps to be disciplined in your consumption. Don't be put off by the strange flavor of the first dose. Modern movie audiences have little inherent patience for the quirky conventions of early cinema, and the Marx Brothers began their film careers at the dawn of talkies. The Cocoanuts (1929) can be challenging viewing for anyone accustomed to today's technical standards and narrative structures. The language of cinema was still in its infancy. When Paramount Studios decided to adapt the Marx Brothers' Broadway hit as a motion picture, their creative team made an almost literal translation of the work from stage to screen. Consequently, The Cocoanuts comes across as half entertainment and half historical document. The sets look like stage sets. The choreography is stage choreography. Dance numbers that may have worked charmingly well in the theater merely interrupt the narrative. It is almost as if someone set up a few cameras around the Marx Brothers and company and simply let them do precisely what they had done on the Great White Way.

Despite its weaknesses, The Cocoanuts introduces the essential elements of an act that had been honed to perfection over years of vaudeville performances. Groucho, the verbally violent puncturer of pomposity. Chico, the deadpan deliverer of nonsensical speeches with the inexplicable persona of a stereotypical Italian immigrant. Harpo, perhaps cinema's purest channeler of uninhibited juvenile mischief. And Zeppo, the...well, somebody had to be the straight man. Toss in straight woman Margaret Dumont, some whimsical piano playing from Chico and a harp solo from Harpo, and you have the basic formula that would follow the Marxes through most of their film career.

Incredibly, while the Marx Brothers were filming The Cocoanuts by day, they were starring in their second Broadway success at night. Naturally, it was adapted as their next movie. Animal Crackers (1930) is a tighter production in all regards, deftly sustaining a narrative of romance and intrigue amid the mayhem of its stars. Monkey Business (1931) sets the madness aboard a cruise ship, while Horse Feathers (1932) puts the Brothers on a college campus.

The Marx Brothers reached their artistic zenith with their next two efforts, though the pair of films are wildly dissimilar in many respects. Duck Soup (1933) ostensibly satirizes the politics of war, though its narrative of failed diplomacy is mostly another vehicle for Marxian lunacy. It includes the justifiably famous mirror sequence, a spectacular pantomime punchline to the farcical setup of Harpo and Chico running about impersonating Groucho. The last of their pictures for Paramount, it was also the swan song for plot lines that were subservient to anarchic comedy and surreal laughs, as well as being the final film for Zeppo.

When the Marx Brothers returned to the silver screen in 1935, it was under the tutelage of MGM's wunderkind Irving Thalberg, who envisioned their humor enriched with higher production values, a credible narrative, and a parallel romantic storyline. The winning result, A Night at the Opera, was their most accessible film to date, featuring Allan Jones as - dare I say it? - a better Zeppo than Zeppo. Groucho and Chico perform their great "party of the first part" contract routine, Harpo has a hysterical turn impersonating a famous airman who is asked to give a speech, and Kitty Carlisle shines as Jones' love interest. Thalberg even managed to seamlessly incorporate the obligatory piano and harp solos. Oh, and there's great music, too. And Margaret Dumont.

Jones worked with the Marx Brothers again in A Day at the Races (1937), but the magic was starting to wane. Subsequent efforts paled in comparison to their first films, yet they contain gems to reward patient viewing. At the Circus (1939), to take one example, is very uneven, yet there is a wonderfully comic scene in a circus midget's miniature dressing room, and Groucho sings Lydia, the Tattooed Lady, one of the funniest (and bawdiest) G-rated songs ever written. If you've watched every Marx Brothers film from The Cocoanuts through A Night at the Opera, they've already won you over, and even their lesser efforts offer some satisfying time with old friends.

But what of the medicinal value of concentrated Marx Brothers viewing? It's hard to pinpoint exactly what it does, just as we may be at a loss to explain precisely what aspirin is doing in our systems, but I know that it works. Prolonged exposure to the Marx Brothers simply made me feel better, not just while watching their films but throughout the rest of the day. The fantasy world they created, in which incompetent authority is ridiculed without consequence, has timeless appeal. There is something very satisfying about seeing Groucho heartlessly eviscerate his oppressors. Chico's dryly delivered conundrums offer respite from the social expectation that one must behave sensibly. The madness of Harpo is a total liberation from the constraints of reality. All of these things are true in themselves, but it is their combination with a host of intangible and unidentifiable factors that is the magic elixir.

Feeling blue? Start your cinematic antidepressant therapy with The Cocoanuts, and see if things haven't lightened up a bit by the time you spend A Night at the Opera. If it works for you, too, then by all means, repeat as often as necessary.

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Education Director Jason Hanley interviews Carl Palmer at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

"There's lots of things you play when you've got an instrument - whether it be a guitar or piano, or whatever - that you kind of play for yourself; you don't really think of playing it in concert because it's not that type of piece of music," explained Carl Palmer at Cleveland's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum last Saturday afternoon. "Usually drum solos need to be exciting, very direct. In a festival environment, you know, in a concert environment, you can't be too arty about it, you've got to get to the point. And I like to entertain people as well, and I like to make sure if there's any drummers in the room, they know I can play."

Explosive laughter resounded throughout the intimate Foster Theater at that last remark. Fewer than 200 lucky fans had just enjoyed the U.S. premiere of The Solo, a 35-minute art film featuring the legendary drummer doing what he does best. If his accomplished career with Emerson, Lake and Palmer and Asia were not sufficient evidence of his extraordinary talent, The Solo showcases Carl Palmer's abilities as never before.

"This is considered an art film, because of basically what it is: you hardly see my face, and it's all stuff that you'd never see me play at any other time."

The very idea of a half-hour film about drum soloing is enough to send all but the most fervent percussion aficionados streaming for the exits. Yet The Solo bears little resemblance to the self-indulgence of lengthy arena rock drum exhibitions, which too often are employed mainly as a means of giving the rest of the band a breather. No, this project is far more subtle, and the results are riveting. Over the course of five vignettes, The Solo not only proves that Palmer "can play," it also exposes the drum kit as an infinite canvas for the creative artist.

The opening sequence of the film features Palmer seated before a snare drum under a single spotlight. With the lone drum angled toward the camera, viewers can catch every nuance of his technique, including a nifty trick of playing eighth notes with an unheld stick by balancing it on the rim and striking it with the other stick.

A second solo is presented as an overhead shot, the snare at the center of the frame and the toms arcing along the bottom. Palmer's arms extend from the top of the screen, manipulating brushes, and his feet are visible on the bass and hi-hat pedals.

Next is a cymbal solo that is shot from low angles on either side of the drum set, permitting the audience to observe how Palmer achieves unique sounds by playing both the tops and the undersides of his cymbals. He coaxes rhythms out of the hardware and draws the blunt end of a stick along the ridges of a cymbal, creating a sound akin to scratching vinyl. At one point, his hands move so quickly across the kit that they nearly dissolve into a blur, a phenomenon that prompted a woman sitting near me to whisper, "He's a hummingbird!"

The fourth segment returns to an overhead shot, this time for a solo played with hand cymbals and mallets accompanied by double bass and hi-hat pedalwork. Palmer uses a depressed elbow to dynamically change the pitch of his toms, then he abandons the mallets to play a mounted hand drum. Eschewing sticks altogether, he concludes the solo by striking the toms and mounted cymbals with hand cymbals.

All the while, director Andrew Cross keeps the focus solely on artistry. The background is black, the functional lighting is consistent, and neither microphone nor stand nor cable can be seen. Nothing more than a drummer and his hardware.

Rounding out the film is an 11-minute, full kit solo shot at three-quarter angles that builds to the sort of thunderous conclusion for which Palmer is better known. A close-up profile shot of the bass pedal highlights its quivering mallet head as the reverberation of the last notes echoes and dies. A long shot shows Palmer silent and motionless behind his drums, at last taking a few labored breaths. Then, employing his playful sense of humor, he reaches forward and executes a single tap on a crash cymbal for the finale.

"When that [film] was playing," Education Director Jason Hanley pointed out to Palmer afterward, "and you and I were sitting up in the back there, I think the audience was holding their breath. I was actually getting concerned for them." Indeed, apart from scattered gasps of wonderment and outbursts of applause, only the sounds of The Solo were heard during its premiere in the Foster Theater.

Although the general public still associates Carl Palmer with ELP and Asia, the man himself seems to view his career as an evolving continuum, one that extends to a present that acknowledges yet transcends his past. To that end, he preceded his entrance with a brief documentary that gave nearly as much coverage to his early years with The Crazy World of Arthur Brown and Atomic Rooster as it did to his famous tenure with successful supergroups. It also rather pointedly celebrated the tenth anniversary of his current endeavor, the Carl Palmer Band. That's two years longer than the first incarnation of ELP, for those of you keeping score at home.

Speaking of his formative professional experiences, Palmer emphasized his lucky circumstances. After he  agreed to tour the United States with Arthur Brown, the band struck gold. "Here I am, I'm on the plane, I'm eighteen, never been to America before, and I'm in a band that's got a number one album and single. Am I a happy boy? Is the Pope religious?"

Later, as Brown proved to be an unreliable frontman, Palmer sought success by cofounding the prog trio Atomic Rooster, which recorded an album under the management of Robert Stigwood. It was around this time that Keith Emerson and Greg Lake began to pressure Palmer to join their new endeavor. When he finally relented and left Atomic Rooster, fate dealt a cruel hand, at least temporarily. "Just as I was meeting Greg and Keith, I recorded a track called Tomorrow Night, and this was a good track. And I thought, 'This has got something, this one. This does something.' Anyway, Greg and Keith are knocking at the door, 'Will you, will you, will you?' and I'm saying 'Give me time, give me time, give me time.' I'd already bought a Mercedes Sprinter-type van, you know, the whole thing, and I was in debt, as the whole band were. Anyway, they kept on, Greg and Keith. I said, 'Okay, yeah, I'll try this,' and I met Ahmet Ertegun. So I moved over, and two months down the line, I am still in rehearsals with Greg and Keith. The track Tomorrow Night is number one in England. And I'm going, 'Jesus Christ. What the hell have I done here?' I'm sitting there with Greg and Keith, looking at the two of them and thinking, 'I've made a horrible mistake. This is absolutely dreadful.'

Of course, as horrible mistakes go, it turned out to be a fairly lucrative misstep. ELP would go on to achieve enormous commercial success, reaching an artistic peak with the release of Brain Salad Surgery in 1973. Yet the rocky interpersonal dynamics of the band became nearly as legendary as their music. Often, Palmer found himself in the role of peacekeeper. Although he did not speak ill of his former bandmates, his remarks did carry that flavor with which an exasperated parent speaks of wayward teenage progeny. Relating the time when the late Cozy Powell asked him what to watch out for when working with Emerson and Lake, Palmer recalled replying, "How much time do you have?"  Later, after revealing that he has been working on an autobiography for the last seven years, he joked that the story behind last summer's final ELP performance at the High Voltage Festival could take up a few chapters by itself.

Joking, as it happens, seems to come as naturally to Palmer as drumming. He is a great raconteur, as charming in conversation as he is thunderous on the double bass pedals. Though he has no plans of slowing down his drumming career, he might easily find a second vocation on the lecture circuit. His sense of humor was evident in his response to an inevitable question from the audience regarding the afternoon's greatest irony: here was Carl Palmer at, and yet not in, if you will, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

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"I'll tell you how I view this institute. Why shouldn't everyone be in it? Everyone should be in it that's donated to music. That's what this is all about, really. I mean, when I see people like Marc Bolan, that's the one that gets me. Great songwriter, died really young. He didn't hit the twenty-five years or whatever he had to be going to get in, I don't know what you have to do to get in. I think people like that are omitted as well. For me, it's a little strange. The fact that Emerson, Lake and Palmer is not in, yeah, I would love to be. You know, I've got a lot of awards, to be honest with you, not being blase, but I have, and you can imagine - I've been going since I was fifteen. So, every award is equally as important, and to have an award from here, for us as individuals or collectively - obviously it would be collectively - would be fantastic. It is a strange phenomenon that it's being missed. I don't kind of lay awake thinking about it. I don't know what to think about it really. I just think it's kind of very, very odd, and I think that maybe, maybe it's something that will be rectified in the future. I don't know how much will actually be done about it. I think the fact that Ahmet Ertegun is a big part of this and we were on Atlantic Records, is an incredible situation to have taken place. I mean, at the end of the day, I think it's just a matter of time, but if you could do it quick, time's running out for me, please."

As the laughter subsided, he added, "I'm big friends with Run-DMC, and they're in, so I'm fine with that."

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