Whine and Cheese- I can't believe this thing is still around...

I'm taking part in Blogging Against Charity Day, hosted by Kara and Miss Crip Chick. Enjoy!

I remember watching the AMD telethon as a kid. I thought it was cool that kids with disabilities (who I totally identified with) got to hang out with celebrities for hours on end all in the name of a "good cause." The telethon looked like one big party- spoiled only by the pious whining of the host, who posed for pledge spots with children positioned like fashion accessories at his side.

The unease I felt towards Jerry Lewis was similar to the heeby-jeebies I experienced at Christmas in the presence of Mall Santa.

Mall Santa was inauthentic, tatty, an impostor whose job it was to affect paternalistic concern, the careless voyeur to my fledgling consumerism. Mall Santa had freakishly youthful skin and eyes. he said "like" and "cool" a lot. He could have been my older brother pulling a prank.

"So you want a Snacktime Kid? Dude, I heard those things bite kids' fingers off! Better not let it near your hamster, if you know what I mean!"

Mall Santa had surprisingly muscular legs, a high school jock in a fat suit and beard. I was mortified knowing that if I could feel leg muscles through the cheap velour suit, then surely he could feel my bony little butt. I felt dirty, like I'd signed up to make kiddie porn without knowing it.

When I was three, my mom was interviewed for a local fundraiser for the March of Dimes. I watched the show from home with my grandmother, talking to my mom through the television's speaker. For years I thought laugh tracks were the guffaws of people watching the same shows I was in their own homes. I'd laugh extra loud trying to hear my own voice in the chorus of chuckles.

My mom sat on a carpeted stage next to a large mounted television monitor. On the screen was a picture of a young mother pushing a child on a swing in a wooded playground. I don't remember what was said about me during the interview as a second generation disabled person. My mom was wearing a wool plaid skirt, the kind that always makes me think of librarians, and I remember the host asking her about the crutch that lay at her feet, about having polio as a kid and the effects it had on having kids.

My disabilities were too rare and too numerous to warrant a telethon. Nor did my disabilities elicit the classic "aww" factor favored by TV execs. Too many extraneous troubling things going on with my body at any given time to be easily "read" by viewers. Looking back I have to face the fact that I was a punk right out of the gate: too brassy, too bold, too weird to be typecast.

Church of Neko Case

Neko Case is in touch with the dangers of taming a wild nation such as our United States. She knows that the West is still Wild and the Dirty South continues to labor to clean up its act.

Case belongs to that unique breed of singer/songwriters whose music has the strength and vitality to shore up these difficult truths by building on mythologies of regional American folklore and old time religion. Her latest album Fox Confessor Brings the Flood enlists Gospel metaphors and phrasings on a gorgeous secular album with scores of musical influences, which, combined reflect America's cultural and social dissonance.

Like love or greed, Case knows that hope is a drive. As a vocalist she channels the fatalism of a bygone era with an ardor that's both touching and a little scary. Lyrics like those found on Hold On, Hold On and Maybe Sparrow speculate on the hazards of such belief systems. Lion's Jaws toys with its romantic implications.

Fox Confessor's joyful flourishes and sudden fervor create the same sense of displacement I felt recently walking through the Upper West Side, suddenly engulfed in a chorus of church bells belting out "How Great Thou Art" in its enirity, right on to Broadway: an astonishing sonic interlude for a busy New York street.

It's a rare gem of a rock album that successfully surveys the emotional expanse of gospel, blues and folk, particularly one that invites the under-appreciated element of joy on to the aural landscape (emo boys take note). Case bounds past tepid melancholy on her hunt for the most human of traits- desire.

I'm all for being moved by the spirit, even if I'm not ready to convert. Case delivers her homebrew of fractured mysticism with a melodic fervor that easily inspires an Amen.