In all of my bluster defending the great art of film music I feel the need to take a moment to concede to the critics that, yes, there are many scores and composers out there, as well as elements inherent to certain kinds of scores, that warrant your snobby wrath towards the genre.

As I noted in a previous essay, it’s difficult for me to go on raving about how “film music is so great because —“, when in reality film music is a wildly varied “genre” that spans decades and covers the broadest spectrum of talent and intention. Perhaps if I extrapolate on what I consider the poorer representations of the art form, it will bring my love of the art into clearer focus.

Classical pastiche.

This is one of the most common attacks levied against film music; that films are often scored by second-rate composers whose only gift is the ability to throw in a little Wagner here, a little Holst here, a little Prokofiev there—and then have the gall to call this reheated pot of classical gumbo an original recipe. The history of film music lends weight to this argument; the earliest films were, in fact, accompanied by frankenstenian scores comprised of the parts of familiar classical works. (To this day we still associate cinematic sunrises with Grieg’s “Morning” and scenes de amour with Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo and Juliet.”)

Even since composers started writing “original music” for films, there have been countless scores with shameless lifts of classical pieces—of motifs, exact orchestration, and whole passages of music. There is a distinction between pastiche and homage, by the way, though the lines are drawn in different places depending on who’s doing the drawing.

Many composers are guilty of this crime. Since his Prokofiev-flavored The Land Before Time score and his Prokofiev-flavored Glory score, James Horner has been a regular offender, pillaging the great works of the past like a sensitive Viking with a wilted British accent. Horner is good enough at what he does, and often takes his stolen classical booty in interesting enough directions that he still often retains the interest of many listeners—myself included—who are aware of his crime. But I willingly concede that his constant breaking-and-entering of the concert hall warrants the accusing finger of the snobby film music critic.

Defensive side note: When a composer uses fragments or phrases of a classical work to deliberately root an audience in a familiar context, as John Williams did in the original Star Wars, I consider this homage rather than pastiche. Williams intentionally hearkened back to Holst and Stravinsky to plant this futuristic space opera in the deep roots of past civilization. The majority of the score is pure John Williams.

It’s one thing to stand on the shoulders of giants in order to achieve a creative purpose. It’s another thing to pretend like they are your shoulders.

Stay tuned for Part II.

For a while there, the phrase “in these tough economic times” became a kind of joke around my house. This combination of words—which were at first timely, then tired, then downright lazy—have been bandied about verbatim, by professional journalists and laypeople alike, since the dawn of the “Great Recession” a few years ago.

Clichés are among the deadliest writing sins, yet they are such easy sins to commit. They have become so engrained in our lexicon that it’s all too natural to drop a cliché phrase or metaphor like it was any other vocabulary word.

One of my goals as a writer is to shirk clichés with all intentionality. I force myself—in my best moments—to pore over every phrase, every analogy, every catchy combination of words, and make sure that I have said what I want to say in an original or creative way (unless I am purposely employing a familiar saying, or attempting to be hip and ironic).

I think I owe it to my readers and my clients to avoid slipping into Cliché Land. It’s fairly standard practice, even for “professionals,” to dip into our store-bought bag of phrases and sprinkle a few into our writing. But clichés, especially of the unchecked and rampant variety, are really just another form of plagiarism. And while I don’t think writers necessarily deserve legal prosecution for prancing about in secondhand metaphors, I do think it’s a lazy, inferior practice.

It’s like television shows that employ stock music libraries for their score. Sometimes doing so is expedient, when time and budget leave little flexibility, but the result is always homogeneity, unoriginality. Whenever an artist trots out a much-used cell of their art—be it through ignorance, laziness, or just outright hackiness—it compromises the integrity of their creation, and reduces it to the familiar.

I really have to be on guard against all the color-by-number phrases out there; I must consciously sidestep them when they throw themselves at me. Like anything else, it takes intention and circumspection to take the road less traveled as a writer, especially in these tough economic times.

The same year in which my lovely wife rolled off the proverbial lot, Jimmy was unveiled to a world eagerly awaiting the latest and greatest four-door sedan from the automotive samurai warriors at Honda.

It was 1987. Reagan was in the Oval Office, Michael Jackson was riding the crest of the radio waves, and Horizons was one of the hottest attractions at EPCOT Center in Orlando. It may have been a little old lady in Florida who bought Jimmy when he was a brand new Accord, but she showed some hip, youthful taste when her fancies alighted on the slick blue devil with pop-up headlights and classy, rectangular curves.

Equipped with a cassette player, carbureted engine, and power windows, Jimmy had the ultimate cool car status; it’s no wonder the little old lady cruised around town in Jimmy for twenty incredible years, racking up a staggering 70,000 miles.

I purchased Jim—in this pristine condition—from an acquaintance whose Manute Bol-ian legs simply were not built for the Accord’s sleek, compact real estate. With a taste for cars heavy on the Japanese and light on the price, I was instantly endeared to the little guy. In the same way that Herbie gave VW bugs lovable, anthropomorphic characteristics, this car has an animated personality all his own with his sleepy, retractable eyes and winning grin.

I christened the boxy blue wonder “Jimmy Chitwood,” after the star basketball player in Hickory from the powerhouse film Hoosiers (released on home video in 1987). It seemed to epitomize the decade from whence Jimmy came, and to capture the reserved, rogue spirit of the car—quiet and unassuming, but always delivering in the game when it matters most.

Now in his twilight years (23 is like 112 in car years), Jimmy has had a slew of intestinal issues and brake problems, and all of the costly surgeries and transplants that necessarily correspond. He’s showing several sobering signs of old age: bad eyesight, squeaky knees, slow starts, floppy skin, loud grumbling, and shoddy plumbing.

We weren’t sure he would survive the thousand-mile trek to Pittsburgh in August, but he did. Somehow he keeps on keeping on, though the years and the trends are against him. Cheap to buy, he is costly to maintain and yet priceless in the hearts of his newlywed owners. He may be aging about as well as VHS tape, but he is still as dependable as ol’ Jimmy Chitwood. And when Jimmy tells you to throw him the ball in the final seconds before the buzzer blares, you’d be a fool not to trust him.

Something terrible has happened to me over the past three years since I met my wife—terribly enlightening, and yet terrible for my checking account and humility. That is the introduction and slow, exclusive acceptance of good food.

No longer do I consider going to Chili’s a fancy dining out experience. No longer can I look at high fructose corn syrup, chemicals, or anything remotely “processed” with blithe passivity. If it’s not local, or fresh, or organic, or authentic, it’s now highly suspect (if not outright anathema). I continue to give Alison a hard time for being overly picky and snobby, but the hard truth is I, too, have become one of “those people.”

I’ve recently craved good, authentic Mexican food. Pittsburgh is populated with fantastic food establishments from every tribe and flavor, and we’ve enjoyed delicious Indian, Thai, Polish, Japanese, and French cuisine, amongst others. I had hoped that the same standard of quality and immigrant authenticity would extend to the culinary offerings of our brethren south of the border—but the situation now looks hopelessly grim.

We were spoiled in Tampa with two incredible, addicting, inexpensive, “brown people” Mexican restaurants. (Our good friends Scott and Monica, the latter a Latino, gave me this phrase; you can blame her if you’re offended.) It’s honestly one of the few things I miss from the swamplands. Homemade tortillas, exquisite salsa bars (with an ­equatorially spicy peanut-based salsa), cabbage, and carne asada out of this world; it was not only the real deal, it was seriously delicious.

Pittsburgh has “Mexican” restaurants. But what I see now, through the eyes of a snob who took the proverbial white pill and went down the rabbit hole, these establishments—with their Mexico-mural-themed chairs and menus with glossaries defining such exotic terms as “taco” and “salsa”—are poor, pathetic ambassadors for the señors and señoritas of the world. I see their watery ketchup salsa for what it is; I know what real Mexican steak tastes like. I have partaken of that ambrosian libation: horchata. I have learned to discern the vast gulf of difference between “Tex Mex” (or Baja Mex, or just plain Taco Bell Mex), and the glorious platters of meh-hee-kihn goodness that put ol’ El Mexico on the culinary map.

So now I wander the streets of Pittsburgh in vain, desperately looking for brown people food in a very white people city. Oh, it’s a melting pot of Asians, Poles, Jews, Germans, Greeks, and other sundry cultures who concoct fantastic delicacies for my ever broadening palette. But when all that will sate my quixotic hunger is an enormous taco salad shell, liberally heaped with all the authentic bounty of the south, I am left feeling adrift and dissatisfied. And no sombrero-wearing man on the men’s room door is going to change that.

Before traversing the trail of tears that leads to my workplace today, I donned a (new) Old Navy sweater over my dress shirt. I did this not only to push my ensemble over the edge into “smart” territory, but because the low-50s weather warranted the extra layer.

As a proud native of Colorado, I have always posited that, when it comes to climate, cold is better than hot. I recently moved to Pittsburgh for, in large part, this very reason. Let me extrapolate.

You can only shed so many articles of clothing. When the weather is hot, especially scorching-humid-98-degrees-central-Florida kind of hot, you can go out in shorts and a t-shirt to limit insulation, but anything less and you’re flirting with public indecency. You can traipse around your house in the porous fabric of a birthday suit, but that severely limits your social opportunities. And no matter how little clothing you wear, you’d still better pray that your air conditioner is operational, because real heat is real hot even when you’re buck naked.

In cold climates, you’re still somewhat reliant on man-made gadgetry (in this case heaters), but here you have the option of piling on as many layers as you fancy. Sweaters, jackets, scarves, hats, gloves, woolen socks, thermal long-johns…the sky (and the liberality of your fashion sense) is the limit. You can’t get any less layered than naked in the hot, but you can walk around like the Michelin Man in the cold. And let us not forget about blankets, comforters, afghans, snuggies, and all the other means of bundling both in sleep and awake. In the heat you go with a thin sheet or no sheet, but there you’ve hit the end of the line.

We look better in the cold.

I’m sure a scientific study has been done on this phenomenon, but I’m too lazy to investigate. In the heat, people wear as little as possible; this results in an aesthetic spectrum that ranges from the boring (shorts, t-shirts, tank-tops), to the disgusting (various forms of underwear that parade as public wear), to the downright horrifying (shirtless men mowing their lawns, revealing a to-scale map of the heavily wooded Chest Hair Forest atop Beer Belly Mountain, with no apparent timberline).

Cold weather not only puts a rosy glow on your cheeks, but it catalyzes creativity and an infinite host of clothing and accessory options. Handsome sweaters, dapper coats, regal ascots, timeless mittens. Corduroy, velvet, cotton, wool, and flannel (my personal favorite) all serve dual purposes when the air is chilled. Cold necessitates long sleeves and layers, and the wide variety of color combinations that result.

Beyond those two (highly persuasive) appeals to logic, though, I simply prefer being outdoors when there’s a nip in the air and my breath spills visible steam into the atmosphere. Cold is romantic. Cold is invigorating. Cold invites warm coffee and hot chili. Cold is football practice in the autumn with an early setting sun. Cold is the herald of Christmas, and the charm of snow in winter. Cold, at least for me, is nostalgia.

I know many people who deliberately fled Colorado to embrace a tropical climate. I know people who gripe about the coming cold and celebrate the summer heat. May you all enjoy living in those perennially sunny (sweltering) places. As for me and my house, however, we will love the cold.