Not all '90s Nashville country sucked
There's 1,352 guitar pickers in Nashville

Nashville regularly produces stars -- Randy Travis was one -- who are hailed as revivalists of traditional country music, and defenders against the country-pop pap that is the Music City's lifeblood. I love traditional country music (though I'm actually more okay with country-pop pap than you might expect), so I always take note when the latest savior comes along.

One of them was Brad Paisley, the West Virginia native who is the youngest cast member of the extremely tradition-bound "Grand Ole Opry." I like some of his music very much, especially the witty 1999 single "Me Neither."

But I can't say that I am awed by him, or that he has singlehandedly ushered in a new era of ubiquitous old-school honkytonk. His singing is fine, though on his records it sometimes has the slightly metallic quality that lets you know savvy Nashville sound engineers may be digitally correcting his pitch. His songwriting, too, is fine, but to these ears he relies too heavily, as seemingly most Nashville songwriters do now, on the shortcut that is slant rhyme.

Still, one thing Brad Paisley has is astonishing guitar chops, and I have long appreciated the fact that, in what is very definitely a retro choice, he includes instrumental cuts on his albums. Whatever else you can say about Nashville country, Nashville musicianship is as good as you'll find anywhere. So bravo to a mainstream artist who maintains the great old tradition of the country-music instrumental track -- like the one I am celebrating here, the thrilling "The Nervous Breakdown," from Paisley's 1999 debut Who Needs Pictures.

As you'll hear, Paisley can sling a Telecaster with the best of them. Look on these works, ye guitar geeks, and despair.

Brad Paisley - "The Nervous Breakdown"

The message

Confidential to the crowd of drunk young nitwits shouting "faggots" at each other on the 400 block of State Street at 10:20 last night:

Shut the fuck up.

Forward

To you University of Wisconsin Badger fans miffed that the cable company Charter Communications doesn't carry the Big Ten Network, and that therefore you won't be able to watch certain Badger football games on television at home, here's what you can do with that time on a Saturday instead:

1) Read a book.
2) Read a newspaper.
3) Read a magazine.
4) Read a web site.
5) Go for a walk.
6) Call an old friend.
7) Balance your checkbook.
8) Play with the dog.
9) Journal.
10) Volunteer.
11) Watch "How Do I Look?" reruns on television.
12) Watch anything on television.
13) Listen to the game on the radio, the theater of the mind.

Good word

"In a few years, the Badger cheerleaders will be pouring shots on the rocks in a bar, while the Citadel cheerleaders will be shooting at Iraqis in Anbar."

-- Christian Schneider @ Atomic Trousers

Fore

What was the first question everyone asked when I told them that last weekend I was going to the Professional Golf Association's BMW Championship, in the Chicago suburb of Lamont, Ill.?

"Do you play golf?"

Well, no. I did once spend a frustrating afternoon at a driving range, though. I also don't play football, baseball or basketball -- or indeed any sport with a ball -- but that hasn't kept me away from big-time football, baseball or basketball games.

But never mind. I understand the question, since I imagine a lot more people play golf regularly than those other sports. And on Sunday, spectators around us at Cog Hill Golf & Country Club talked about their golf games lavishly, mostly in bemoaning how poorly they play compared to Tiger Woods, Steve Stricker and the other pros moving down the fairways.

All of the chatter was very hushed, of course, and that was what I liked best about my first PGA tournament. Unlike other pro sports events, a golf match is all but silent. The quiet was very restful, and part of why the tournament was an enormous pleasure. The day was gorgeous and the golf course well-tended, and I could see myself happily spending a peaceful afternoon there regardless. Watching pro golfers work their magic was like a bonus.

The moviegoers

When you are relaxing and shopping for books on the South Side of Chicago, as Ereck and I were Saturday afternoon, and you suddenly realize that Andrei Tarkovsky's three hour and 41 minute epic Andrey Rublyov is playing that night at the Gene Siskel Film Center, in the Loop -- well, you go.

My mistake was in misreading the showtime. I thought it was 6:30. So we sprinted downtown, hampered by the fact that I drive a pickup truck and am therefore banished from Lake Shore Drive. We struggled to park amid festival traffic, and then in the interest of time ate a rushed, largely uninspired dinner at a Corner Bakery. It's a shame to dine at a chain in the great culinary capital that is Chicago. But we were out of options.

Then we hurried to the theater, where the snide young box office attendant (is there any other kind at an art house?) informed me that the film started at 7:30. He did so by wordlessly hooking his thumb in the general direction of the showtimes posted on the wall. We morosely killed an hour at the Borders down the block.

But never mind. The film was awesome, in an older sense of that word, and the filmgoing experience was wonderful. I dread going to films in Madison because the audiences are consistently nattering and awful, even at the estimable Cinematheque. The Film Center audience was reverent, respectful, silent.

Before the movie I noted with satisfaction that many of our fellow filmgoers had arrived alone, and were reading books before the lights went down. That's my kind of audience.

Queries

If a certain new upstairs neighbor of a certain blogger placed a really, really big pile of flattened cardboard boxes on the lawn in front of the apartment building...and if said pile was, predictably enough, not picked up by recycling workers because it was not (per the city's guidelines, which are clear, and reasonably well publicized) either in a recycling bin or tied into bundles...and if weeks passed and pentateuchal rains came and made a giant mess of the pile of cardboard, which also killed a sizable patch of grass...

Would the blogger be smarter to approach the neighbor, or the landlord about the still-rotting pile of cardboard? Bear in mind that the blogger might be growing weary of the years-long symposium he has been conducting -- for an ever-renewing crew of neighbors -- in the subtleties of Madison waste removal, which is actually not that subtle.

Or is the blogger better off simply quitting the rental racket, buying a house and moving to a neighborhood where people don't leave their trash on the lawn?