Greil Marcus is always an interesting read, never more so than when he is waxing on about his favorite topic, Bob Dylan. I just finished his latest book, Like a Rolling Stone, and found it to be an enlightened look at one of the best, most-important songs of the rock era. Still, Marcus gets a bit wound up at times, and it leads to some highly amusing tangents. He has built a career on finding what must surely be unintended depth in the most banal circumstances. It’s OK when he’s writing about Dylan, because one expects that there is at least the possibility the singer actually intended some of what Marcus reads into his lyrics and performances. As Marcus winds up Rolling Stone, however, he seems to go off the deep end in search of grand statements where there are none. He somehow finds a way to equate the Pet Shop Boys’ cover of the Village People’s “Go West” with “Like a Rolling Stone,” saying the former “take(s) place in the country ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ opens up — that follow(s) the trail left by the way of life the song calls for, that it demands, the cutting of all ties, the refusal of all comforts, even your own name.”

One imagines Marcus behind a lecturn, delivering this graniloquent oratory. This isn’t just a gay pop duo having fun with a light disco tune recorded by a forerunner in the gay/disco pop genre, but a rallying cry for the wronged and oppressed: “‘GO WEST,’ sang the chorus,” he writes. “‘This is our destiny,’ Tennant sang, the enormous idea small but undeniable in his mouth. Flags unfurled; the wind blew them straight. The sound was like the sun, the disco beat stirring, the drum machine a twentieth-century Yankee Doodle.” Later, the chorus singing behind Tennant is not just a backing track to add texture to the song, but a choir that “stood for all the voices of the dead” in a grand statement about the AIDS crisis. Perhaps. Or maybe it’s just a pop song that does carry a bit of sentiment about the treatment of gays and the losses incurred due to AIDS. Academics for years have been derided for their distorted view from the ivory tower, turning what could be lively topics into moribund drags thanks to their over-analytical approach. Induct Professor Marcus into the academy, then, because he has surely sucked the life out of a trivial pop song by looking for something that probably was never never there.

Still, for those who know what they’re getting into, for those who are familiar with Marcus’ overheated prose (has anyone ever posited the theory that Marcus is the original hypertextualist, his works reading like the transcript of a furious web surfing session where a few casually clicked links can take one far across the cyber-landscape toward an unintended and only loosely related destination? If not, let me be the first) he does open up some intriguing lines of thought that will expand — if not explode — the way you think about Bob Dylan and his work. If nothing else, this will make you pull out not just Highway 61 Revisited and Bootleg Series IV: Live 1966, but all of your bootlegs that feature performances of “Like a Rolling Stone.” In fact, the most interesting part of the book may well be the track-by-track analysis of the recording session that serves as the epilogue. Reading it, I was amazed that the song came off at all; and having read this book, I was glad it did.

Last night brought one of the strangest shows in recent memory courtesy of Mark Olson and the Creekdippers in Iowa City. After establishing that Victoria Williams would not be lending her Edith to Mark’s Archie, we headed down to catch the show. There were only about 20 people in the club when the show began. As the opening act left the stage, the five strangest looking people from the crowd climbed onto the stage to assemble as the Creekdippers. I’ve seen Olson enough to know that this would be no Jayhawks revue; he’s doing his own thing now and good for him, right? Well, this made his past shows positively normal by comparison.

He opened with a song that made reference to “G.W.,” Houston and Texas. I quickly realized he was singing about George Bush. Then came other political songs, with lyrics such as “I want to punch George Bush…” and “your parents killed my parents” (with petrochemicals, if memory serves). As he moved from bass to guitar to dulcimer to keyboard, Olson led this rag-tag group through several pointed songs about the Bush presidency. They were funny in a slightly uncomfortable way. It lacked punch, however, because his side lost. Heard last fall, maybe these would seem powerful, like Steve Earle’s “The Revolution Starts… Now.” But like Earle’s disc, Olson’s music just seemed stale. I’d be as likely to cue up Earle’s disc now as a Yankee fan would be to pop in a tape of last fall’s ALCS against the Red Sox — why relive the miserable defeat?

Still, as my friend Jim said, Olson has “that voice,” and last night there certainly were flashes of what made his music so special. The performance, however, was akin to hearing a friend’s band practice in the garage — you’d tell them they sounded pretty good while knowing they’d never make it anywhere.

It seemed strange that Olson would do so much of this new material without talking about it. Did he have a new disc? In fact, he does. And, when it came out, these songs were much more timely. Though there’s no mention of it on the Creekdippers website, his latest disc is Political Manifest, which includes songs like “Portrait of a Sick America” and “The End of the Highway, Rumsfeld.” It’s a strange little project, taking the time to record a record that is almost instantly out of date. Stranger yet is selling it through an obscure website that all but guarantees that you’ll still have a dusty box of them shoved in the back of your closet long after Jenna Bush leaves office.

Getting something into (onto?) McSweeney’s seems to be quite the badge of honor, and so I’d be remiss if I didn’t share my own modest successes there. The one “real” piece I’ve had posted on the site was a bit of humor about how AC/DC really does business. A second piece was my contribution to their ever-growing log of lists, this one of suggested band names found on the Associated Press wire.

The more savvy among you may have seen either or both of these in the pages of Chunkletmagazine #17. I’m sure that’s the reason these weren’t included in last year’s paperback best-of from the McSweeney’s “humor category.”

Part of the reason to start blogging is to create a way to mention new stuff that I have written beyond my day job, but because of a lack of that lately, here are a few things rescued from the dustbin of history. Anyone remember Ironminds.com? A good little site that was among the many that rose and fell in about a years time as the bubble inflated and then burst. I had a few things published there, my first forays into online freelance work.

The things I wrote included an analysis of the use of music on “The Sopranos,” a first-person account of my short stint as a bar DJ, and my proudest moment, a piece about the soundtrack for Wim Wenders’ “Until the End of the World,” a disc for which Wenders asked the artists to predict musically what the year 1999 would be like (and for which, with the benefit of hindsight, I critique the results).

A few other pieces exist out there, but these are the cream of the crop. Check ‘em out now, because who knows how long the kind folks behind the site will keep this stuff alive.

Patti Abbott has a flash challenge up at her web site to write a story that includes the line, “I really don’t mind the scars.” Here’s my submission.

Countdown

10…

We were so close that her heart and my heart were touching, as if fused together. She looked up at me, her eyes clouded with confusion.

“What do you mean?” she said.

“I have a confession,” I said. “I’m afraid it’s going to tear us apart, but I can’t keep on like this.”

“Oh, God. I should have known,” she said. “Too good to be true. What, you’re married?”

“No. Remember when you said it was the worst thing and the best thing to ever happen to you? Well, please keep both possibilities in mind.”

9…

It was the first time we had made love with the lights on. It wasn’t teen-aged apprehension or the shame of flabby thirty-somethings gone to seed. There were simply things she didn’t want me to see. I knew they were there. They didn’t affect me. At least not the way she thought. She was worried about the surface, how she looked. But I was in love, and appearances didn’t matter. She was beautiful, and the flaws did nothing to take away from that. She was baring herself to me. I felt like it was time to reciprocate.

8…

“I really don’t mind the scars.”

She stood looking at herself in a full-length mirror affixed to the back of the bedroom door. She turned this way and that, twisting to find the right angle to take in another part of her body. In bra and panties, the scars were clearly visible. They snaked up her forearms, made red splotches on her lower legs and angry welts along her neckline.

“You don’t mind them, do you?” she asked,

“No,” I said. “Now come to bed, and this time let’s leave the light on.”

7…

“I don’t know how I would have gotten through this without you,” she said.

She sat next to me on the couch in my apartment, her legs up under her, her head on my chest. I didn’t respond, simply ran my fingers through her hair. It had grown out into a bob that made her seem younger.

“I kind of feel like I’m falling for you,” she said.

“That’s not a surprise,” I said, taking her by the shoulders and pulling her upright. “I’ve been taking care of you.”

“No,” she said. “It’s something more.”

6…

Mr. Jennings paced back and forth across the back room. I caught a glimpse of collegiate flesh through the door to the front of the tanning salon.

“Is this going to be a problem for us?” he said.

“No, sir. It’s under control. It’s strictly professional.”

“It had better be,” he said, stopping directly in front of me. “There’s no room for guilt in this business, David.”

I nodded. “It was my mistake. I’m just trying to make it right.”

“Just don’t make it any worse.”

5…

“You’re doing what?”

Chris had just gotten back from picking up payments. We were sitting in the back of the salon.

“It’s only until she gets on her feet. I’m responsible, so I thought I’d help her out.”

“Well, she is hot. Saw her picture in the paper,” he said. “What did the fire to do her?”

“She has scars, but the doctor said they’ll fade with time.”

“Guess she won’t be coming in here any time soon,” Chris said with a laugh. “These piece-of-shit beds would finish the job.”

4…

“Did you get that from me?”

We were on my couch, watching TV. She had pulled aside the collar of my button-down to reveal a small, red scar in the shape of a heart.

“I guess. It’s just like yours,” I said, pointing to her neck. “Your necklace must have heated up in the fire and branded both of us when I carried you out.”

“I still don’t know how to thank you.”

“There’s no need,” I said. “Right place, right time. I was lucky.”

“No,” she said. “I’m the lucky one.”

3…

I wheeled her to the hospital door and then helped her up and led her to my car.

“You’re sure you want to do this? I’ll be getting in your way.”

“Nonsense. I have plenty of room.”

“OK,” she said. “I guess I should expect no less. You didn’t miss a day the whole time.”

“Figured you could use the company. Now I figure you can use the help.”

“My guardian angel,” she said, rising onto her tiptoes to give me a kiss on the cheek.

“Something like that.”

2…

I rushed in, pulling my jacket over my head to repel the flames already licking along the walls. The screams were coming from a bedroom in the back. I kicked in the door and found her trying to open a window that had been painted shut. I grabbed a blanket and picked her up in my arms. Holding her tight against me, I rushed back through the blaze and toward the sanctuary of the front yard.

1…

I packed the explosives next to the natural gas line that fed the furnace. It needed to burn so hot that no one could determine a cause. Mr. Jennings’ had made that clear. I wasn’t sure if it was an insurance thing or something more. He assured me the house would be vacant.

I stepped out to my car parked halfway down the block, and whispered a countdown under my breath. I fingered the trigger, heard a muted blast, and then everything was aflame.

Then I heard the scream.