The Advice King Anthology , livre ebook

THE ADVICE KING ANTHOLOGY
THE ADVICE KING ANTHOLOGY
CHRIS CROFTON
VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY PRESS
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE
Copyright 2022 by Chris Crofton.
Foreword copyright by Tracy Moore.
Published 2022 by Vanderbilt University Press.
All rights reserved.
First printing 2022
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Crofton, Chris, 1969– author.
Title: The Advice King anthology / Chris Crofton.
Description: Nashville, Tennessee : Vanderbilt University Press, 2022. | Summary: “A curated collection of the best Advice King columns, with a new introduction by the Advice King and a foreword by Tracy Moore”—
Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021054505 (print) | LCCN 2021054506 (ebook) | ISBN 9780826504630 (paperback) | ISBN 9780826504647 (epub) | ISBN 9780826504654 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: American wit and humor. | Advice columns—Humor. | Conduct of life—Humor. | United States—Civilization—21st century—Humor.
Classification: LCC PN6165 .C76 2022 (print) | LCC PN6165 (ebook) | DDC 818/.602—dc23/eng/20220125
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021054505
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021054506
Cover image and all art by Nicholas Gazin.
Dedicated to the memory of Jim Ridley
CONTENTS
Foreword by Tracy Moore
The Coronation of the Advice King
Chapter One. Nashville
Chapter Two. Music
Chapter Three. Serious Shit
Chapter Four. A Little about Me
Chapter Five. Politics
Chapter Six. Life & Love
Chapter Seven. TV & Movies
Chapter Eight. Holidaze
Chapter Nine. Odds & End(s)
Acknowledgments
FOREWORD
Tracy Moore
I will happily take credit for pitching the idea for the advice column to Chris Crofton and helping him put out feelers with the Nashville Scene . As someone who recruited many writers for the pages of that paper, I knew he had the potential to be one: trenchantly funny, astute, and ranty to a fault are usually the trifecta. That’s what we were debating over lunch in Venice that day in 2014, plus our feelings about Nashville—a place I’d since left, and a place he’d left to do comedy on the coast, but would always return to. For every razz I had about Nashville’s pitfalls during that lunch, he had an uproarious defense with shrewd tangents that always meandered with noble purpose. Also, musicians such as Henry Rollins and Andrew W. K. were killing it for other papers with wise advice columns of their own. Also, he was broke.
That said, I cannot take the slightest bit of credit for the bitingly funny, philosophical soul-searching infused in his answers to these deceptively simple questions. Why have Nashvillians been priced out of East Nashville? “You were invaded by sociopaths.” Should you attend Woodstock 50? “Greta Van Fleet is a group of Civil War reenactors—if the Civil War was Led Zeppelin.” What does one do when one marries into cats? “Were your wife’s parents divorced?” That is to say, don’t read this book for practical advice; there’s scant, if any, contained in these pages. What you will find is a blueprint for how to think, not just about Nashville, but about your very existence.
I also can’t take any credit for the overwhelming success the column has become, but after reading it for years from afar, I can explain why it strikes such a nerve. Nashville has always had a bit of an identity crisis, and too many competing interests to settle on one. It doesn’t always take too kindly to critiques about that. But sometimes it takes a self-deprecating Yankee blueblood from fancy-ass Connecticut to get the job done. To show a town not just where it’s losing its way, but how to find its way back to what made it great to begin with—not with judgment, but compassion, and especially, with incisive, big-hearted wit from someone with deep affection for the city who is always willing to cop to his own struggles.
Nashville didn’t need to be told what it already knew: that its beautiful neighborhoods have been pilfered by greedy flippers and developers, that its food scene (some of it fantastic, to be sure) has been swarmed by failed restaurateurs from bigger cities pushing the almighty fusion, that its thriving underground music scene has been invaded by just a few too many cheesy rock bands. It needed to be reminded of what it could be and to take a smidge of responsibility for the ways in which it may have ( ahem ) unwittingly played a part in such transformations in its eagerness to be the Third Coast, so as to not let it happen again.
To that end, The Advice King could not have arrived at a more prescient time in what is arguably its most bonkers period of upheaval in recent memory. That it came from an outsider who loves this city as much as its natives should be a reminder to Nashvillians that not all change is bad. Sometimes, it brings tall and skinnies, bachelorettes, and Kid Rock. But sometimes, it brings the best kind of interloper.
THE CORONATION OF THE ADVICE KING
One day in the fall of 2014, at lunch in Venice, California, my friend Tracy Moore suggested that I write an advice column. Tracy was the former music editor for the Nashville Scene . She was living in Venice, writing for Jezebel . I had just moved to Los Angeles from Nashville. I was not a writer, as far as I knew. I was a musician and a stand-up comedian. Soooo . . . a waiter.
Tracy said I wrote songs and comedy routines, so why not an advice column? Henry Rollins and Andrew W. K. wrote advice columns. As a joke, I said, “What should I call it, ‘The Advice King’?”
Tracy texted the idea to Scene editor Jim Ridley, right then, at the table.
“Hell yes,” Jim replied.
I became The Advice King in about twenty minutes, over lunch in Venice Beach. I was forty-five years old, recently sober, and—as it turns out—I had a lot to say.
CHAPTER 1
NASHVILLE
Priced Out of East Nashville
PUBLISHED DECEMBER 2, 2014. One of the first few Advice King columns, and one of the all-time most popular.
Dear Advice King ,
I’ve lived in East Nashville for about a decade now. I’ve always really liked it over here. I’m an artist (meaning, I work on films and music and writing as much as I can, but I also wait tables), and it’s always been pretty easy to find a place with cheap rent. But my landlord is selling my current place, and I have to be out by the end of the year. Everywhere I’ve looked is way out of my price range. What should I do? Should I move up to Madison, or over to the West Side, or out of Nashville altogether?
Broke as a Joke on the East Side
Dear Broke,
When I moved to Nashville from New York City in 2001, all the fancy people I knew up there said, “Why would you go THERE? What is it? Like, a general store and cows?? HAHAHAHAHA.” Little did they know it was a nice place to live. That kind of insecure asshole won’t go anywhere that looks different than what they’ve seen in a style magazine. Nashville was safe from those people, because: A) it’s in the South, which people in New York and L.A. think is “sketch” and “random”; B) it didn’t have “any good restaurants.” Insecure people need the city they live in to have “good restaurants,” because what if someone fancy came to visit and they couldn’t prove that where they live is fancy too! Now that condos have been built and there’s a Whole Foods and Husk, * the condo-zombies think Nashville is a magical oasis in the South, the rest of which they still think is “sketch” and “random.” “I swear, Larry, you wouldn’t even know you were in the South. These developers have done a great job. AND there’s no income tax!”
The problem is that the insecure people have all the money in this country. Since the ethics have been completely removed from business culture, only super-insecure people are willing to do the immoral shit it takes to make a lot of money. Nice people won’t work for Exxon or Dow or Goldman Sachs or a health care system that makes the executives rich at the expense of the sick, so nice people don’t have any money. You basically have to be a sociopath to do any of the evil high-paying jobs left, and if you aren’t a sociopath, you are a barista. Baristas can’t pay the same prices for housing as sociopaths, so the best thing the baristas can do is try to keep the sociopaths at bay. But Nashville BEGGED THEM TO COME . Nashville had low self-esteem and wasn’t going to rest until it had an ultra-lounge with a bowling alley, too. Well you got it. And so much more! You were invaded by the sociopaths. And as usual, they only care about one thing: appearances. Tear everything down and make it shiny and new, just like in the magazine, just like Brooklyn, just like everywhere.
I remember when some people in Nashville started selling shirts saying “Nashville is the New L.A.” in 2006 or something. Waving a red flag in front of a granite-countertop bull, they were.
Nashville will never be Nashville again. Not the Nashville I was lucky enough to live in. The one where most people wore a T-shirt and jeans and were pretty goddamn friendly. The one where people didn’t run around in silly hats calling themselves “foodies.” The one where people could afford to live, except for the people who couldn’t . Poor people are always having to uproot as the rich people move in and raise rents. The difference is that now middle-class white people are being priced out. There is no color in America anymore that won’t be affected by the giant chasm between the rich and poor. While everybody was porch-drinkin’, the 1 percent has been successfully looting this country, and now no town is safe from the sociopath makeover. The best you can do is to hope that these assholes never get interested in YOUR town. But Nashville wanted to be part of the “in” crowd, and never considered what would happen to the rent. Fancy restaurants and boutique hotels are like raw meat to a rich bear. Rich bears can pay un-fucking-limited rent. And once the rich bears found out that the State of Tennessee had no income tax, Nashville was toast. Avocado toast.