Fun In Flint! - Way To Go, Mark Ingram!

Tonight, I watched Mark Ingram, a Sophomore at the University of Alabama, win the Heisman Trophy. While damn near every year various NCAA athletes get declared Heisman material all season long only to disappear from the running by season's end, Ingram's name has been bandied about as a contender for the fabled award all year long. He more or less clinched it last week in a decisive win for the Crimson Tide over Florida where Ingram personally scored three touchdowns and ran for 113 yards.

Now, despite having played football for six years as a teenager (well, "played") I don't follow sports much in general and football barely at all. But if you haven't guessed it by the title, I've been following along Ingram's season this year as he's a Flint native. In fact, the young man went to my same high school for the first few years of his prep career (the school in the nearby "white flight" suburb town of Grand Blanc) before transferring to Flint's Southwestern High where I took swimming lessons as a kid. And I don't mention all this because I think it means there's any real connection between the two of us. However, during his acceptance speech (which got pretty emotional), Ingram repeatedly thanked the people of Flint for supporting him and reminding him that they were proud whether he won or not. And that's a good thing to hear from your home town and about your home town when most of the time the national media only talks about the local murder rate.

It's really weird. This season, the Grand Blanc High football team (and all GB high school sports) officially switched leagues in order to play bigger, closer schools in the massive Detroit suburban ring of communities. In effect, Grand Blanc leaving the "Big Nine" conference killed that league of schools drawn from suburban Flint while the Metro League which Southwestern is a part of has been slowly degrading for years. As I've been watching Ingram this year, I keep worrying that we'll be seeing fewer and fewer young people from the community break out into the NFL or other professional sports (Flint schools, as you can imagine, aren't in the best of shape these days). It sucks that while there are plenty of people still working to ignite a revival in parts of Flint proper, many from the surrounding community continue to cite the town as a lost cause. But you know what? Fuck thinking about that anymore for today.

Mark Ingram had a great season this year, has a great career ahead of him and did a lot to make Flint proud this week. That's a pretty great thing, no matter what the times. Congrats, sir.

Fun In Flint! - Two Music Videos

[Editor's Note: For anyone who hasn't figured it out yet, Kiel is more proud of being born and raised in Flint, Michigan than most people are about their kids graduating from college. In order to feed his obsession, The Cook Kids Table proudly presents "Fun In Flint!" – a new semi-regular feature that let's him share the glory of America's most downtrodden auto town with you.]

One of the things about my hometown that's stuck with me more than random nostalgia for the empty husks of houses long-ago abandoned by homeowners fleeing for the suburbs is the music scene that's embraced the most desolate parts of Flint as its stage. The cornerstone of all Flint music remains the Flint Local 432 – an all-ages punk rock club that's been floating between abandoned bowling alleys, department stores, loading docks and various community centers for the better part of two decades. I could write a feature dozens of pages long on the history of the Local (and did for my college journalism final!) but for now, I'll just say that it played a huge role in my teenage years (when I was fronting a pop band named for Seth's legendary comic Palooka-Ville) and to this day, the folks I know from performing on the club's stage are some of the baddest motherfuckers I know.

To wit...

The Swellers - New Music - More Music Videos

The above is "Fire Away" – the new video for Flint punkers The Swellers. Like a real video. Like, I got the embedding code from MTV.com. I've known band songwriters and anchors Jono and Nick Diener for a few years after playing gigs with them when they were still a local high school band. Since then, they've progressively worked their way up through many name punk labels and played a shit load of tours across the U.S. and in Japan. Earlier this year, the guys got signed to Fueled By Ramen Records, which I thought was really cool even before someone explained to my obviously old ass that FBR wasn't just the neat little label that the Impossibles were on anymore, but was a major label who carried bands like Fallout Boy. That blew my mind in a few ways.

The Swellers' FBR debut "Ups And Downsizing" (buy it here!) is as perfect a snapshot of classic Flint pop punk as I can imagine. It's fast, catchy as hell, completely unpretentious and says a lot about how we all feel about Flint when you listen carefully. Plus, my bud Mark Michalik who produced some records for my third rate college indie band did a fantastic fucking job bringing out the boys' sound in stereo. If you want to try out a few more songs, the guys did an acoustic set on video for Spin Magazine last month and are currently touring with Less Than Jake after an opening stint with Paramour from this summer.

And now I'm just bragging, but holy shit...my friends are on MTV and junk. Insanity.

Hostage by Morseville Bridge from jack schmier on Vimeo.

For a decidedly more indie piece of the Flint music scene, I thought I'd share the above video for "Hostage" by Morseville Bridge. I'm not super good friends with these guys, though I've hung out with the lead singer Ryan a few times, but the real reason this thing was so rad for me to watch was because my bud Jack Schmier directed the video, which features some great footage of life "On The Brick" in Flint's oddly resurgent downtown area. Jack currently lives in Detroit, with my boy Teddy For REal who fronts the band Kommie Kilpatrick – a totally fucking insane punk out fit who just had a hilarious write up in today's Real Detroit Weekly.

So...I guess that's it for now. Enjoy a snapshot of my hometown, and check back later to see more of what's Fun in Flint!