zealotry

umar farouk abdulmutallab was lonely and depressed. he was an adolescent and a religious zealot. his posts to an islamic message board reveal a zealous child who is ill-equipped to reconcile the mixed messages of the world. on christmas he set out from amsterdam on a flight bound for detroit intent on killing hundreds of people and himself.

here is something we should all agree on. a child with fundamentalist beliefs is dangerous.

i was a fundamentalist child once upon a time. i feel lucky to have emerged from that time with my sanity.

i accepted jesus into my heart on february 23rd of 1976. i was 10. it was a sunday evening and i was visiting bethany baptist church in west covina to see an end times preacher who my aunt and uncle (guardians,) were excited to see. (dr howard estep's organization lives on.) i had attended calvary baptist church in la puente at that time but when my family moved to covina we switched to what i would call a more actively fundamentalist denomination of crazy which was the assemblies of god.

in the covina assembly of god church i was exposed to, (and embraced,) not only the literal interpretation of the bible, (contradictions be damned,) but also the practices of speaking in and interpretation of tongues and anointing with oil. yes, we believed the literal words of the bible. jesus really was the son of god. along with the holy spirit the three comprised the holy trinity, an entity separate but apart, wholly beyond human understanding, (yet expounded on often on sunday mornings,) and god. yes miracles happened. yes, jesus rose from the dead after being crucified. yes, gay was evil and worthy of damnation. yes, women were weaker vessels.

in addition to 1-3 visits to church weekly and the camps and outings and all that, i attended a christian high school my junior and senior years and i attended an assemblies of god college for a year, too. i was a young zealot. i led peers of mine to the lord even kneeling with a friend on his porch to lead him through the sinners prayer at the tender age of 11 or 12.

i had no need of literature that was not the bible or not somehow related to the bible. i needed little policing in those days. in my mid-20s my girlfriend worked for the wycliffe bible translators-we went to church weekly and practiced abstinence. (for both of the years we were together!?!) i suppose that relationship ended because she was attuned to the fact that i was questioning my faith, which of course is anathema to fundamentalism, and thus ended those years for me even if it was gradual.

the point is; i was in those days of such severe belief in something so utterly devoid of any proof or basis in reality, i was dangerous. i truly was dangerous. in those days, when i was a young republican, when ronald reagan's dishonesty was pointed out to me, i thought the end justified the means. that is dangerous.

i read an article today in which a columnist pointed out the absurdity of some people believing in god sans any proof or evidence while also denying global warming in the face of melting glaciers of evidence. isn't that poignant?

i can relate to abdulmutallab's zealotry too, because i was critical of those less zealous or less committed than myself. when i started drinking beer, (or wine coolers more likely,) i woke up on saturday or sunday mornings with major guilt. when on the following friday night my friends suggested we drink alcohol again, something inside of me raged. it was this hypocrisy that ultimately drove me from christianity. my best friend rationalized his drunkeness by conjuring the hebrew word for sin and saying that it was essentially an archery term meaning, 'missing the mark.' the idea was that i should not be so bothered, god hated the sin but no the sinner. for my part i went into the act, (in this case of drinking,) knowing full well what i was doing and even how i would feel the next morning. in short, i felt like i had no excuse and the rationale that god was cool with it because hey, i was merely missing the mark. no big deal. my arrow was still on the board-it just wasn't a bullseye. well, that did not work for me. in retrospect, it is kind of funny how hypercritical i was of myself considering how opposite i am to that now and how forgiving i am of humanity at large.

this is where my ascent from christianity began. at some point i realized how wrong-headed it was to decry my nature, or more precisely to feel guilty based simply on my nature. it was not wrong of me to want to seek an altered state of being through alcohol. that was as natural as growing up. i could go on and on about how and why i got out, (and i certainly have in my own journals,) but i won't bore you with all those details right now.

the thing is society needs to get together on this idea. we need to recognize that fundamentalists of all stripes are certainly crazy, if only temporarily. (in fact i question the veracity of any fundamentalist over 40. anyone over 40 has lived long enough to where they should have enough life experience to have recognized the foolishness of their youth and turned from it. my friends who adhere to their fundamentalism post 40 seem to me to be in denial, choosing a life ensconced in the comfort of a familiarity they have built up and nurtured for so many years. it may even be they are mentally ill in as much as they are incapable of turning from their belief system.)

"if in the last few years you haven't discarded a major opinion or acquired a new one, check your pulse. you may be dead."

-gelett burgess

Happy 3rd Birthday, Mark Dylan James!

this is mark's pre-school class singing happy birthday to him first in english then in mandarin. terra skipped over from her kindergarten class and joined in the singing and can be seen right behind mark.

happy birthday little guy. december 18th.

conyers vs. obama

i get it that a lot of people do not want to criticize barack obama. i think it is yet another byproduct of the bush administration. (bush was so bad, so abhorrent really, such an affront to common decency and the values of most americans and our founding fathers, that the ascendancy of obama brought hope in messianic proportions.) that said, the president's actions deserve serious scrutiny and john conyers has been delivering.

for those who may not be familiar with john conyers, he is one of the longest tenured members of the house of representatives. (22 terms. democrat, 4th district-michigan.) more importantly, he was in selma, alabama on freedom day. conyers was on nixon's enemies list. rosa parks served on his staff. he voted on the articles of impeachment against nixon. he appealed to the bush administration to answer to the accusations of the downing street memo. he authored 'what went wrong in ohio: the conyers report on the 2004 presidential election.' the list goes on and on and the point is, john conyers is a patriot, a friend of the common man and a national treasure, and if he is critical of the president, his accusations deserve real consideration.

the article, (which is linked in the header,) appeared on thehill.com two days ago and details obama's call to conyers to ask him to stop publicly demeaning him. based not only on the details of an article and a disagreement between political heavyweights but on the political facts and circumstances of late, obama is appearing more and more to be a politician. (perhaps a very good politician but a politician all the same.) conyers, for his part, seems principled.

it is worth mentioning that conyers played a key role in getting barack obama elected. for that obama expects loyalty. for that, conyers expects justice. he expects obama to be the president of "yes we can," and all the rhetoric of his campaign.

don't get me wrong. in 2012 i fully expect to vote for obama. but he is who he is and while i have had an idea for some time about who and what he is, it is time for all of those who fell in love with him in 2007 and 2008 to wake up, (and get back to work if they want "real change we can believe in.")

this is barack obama. he made a number of campaign promises on health care most notably that all of the debates and negotiations on reform would be televised so the american people could see the process. obama clearly broke that promise. (it was a good idea too. seeing it would have been educational and it would have created accountability.)

on health care, obama, like all of the democrats who have chosen to compromise, are simply wrong. (either that or they are in cahoots with the health insurance industry.) so many of these democrats are running around these days singing the praises of this new, public option-less plan because they see how many people, primarily between 55-65, will now have coverage and they think it is a boon. they are, however, missing the point. the idea behind single payer and the public option was to create a public, accountable entity to compete against the health insurance corporations of today. it is a simple fact that this new option would effectively kill health insurance as we know it today. instead of paying a ceo $700 million for five years of work, (as united healthcare did,) they would have to compete or die and competing would mean an epic paradigm shift.

including those who will be included by this new expansion of medicare is not a bad thing but it does nothing to address the real problem and obama as well as all those democrats should know that. i think they must think that by actually getting affordable coverage to more people than would have likely been affected by a public option they are doing the better good but that is just not the case. the better good would be to get a public option in place that could and would operate so efficiently the masses would clamor for inclusion. instead, by merely creating a larger welfare program they are playing into the hands of the same people who will call this plan a horrible mistake a few years hence. the calls to trim this new plan will be loud and shrill.

instead of showing government at its most efficient, this program will merely be a tax burden. the health care industry will have made millions upon millions of dollars in the time it takes us to figure this out and then, when we do figure it out, they will blame government for trying to interfere in the marketplace. they will paint the health care companies as efficient, and medicare with its couple of million new includees as a burdensome bureaucracy and yet another example of welfare incentivizing people to freeload on the backs of the hard-working americans. it’s the same old story.

this pbs frontline special on health care in five major democracies around the world, by showing how these other countries handle health care and some of their motives for arriving at their current systems, is the most damning thing i have witnessed as it concerns our system here in the united states. at one point in this program an official in taiwan talks about how as that emerging economy faced the decision of how to set up their health care they decided to study some of the best systems from around the world. the american reporter asks him if our system was one of the ones they studied to which he responded, no-we considered that the model of everything we did not want. (taiwan has great health care, by the way.)

so, obama and so many democrats are now selling us all short, allowing the healthcare conglomerates to go on gouging us for who knows how much longer because of a belief that getting health care to a number of people who do not currently have it somehow makes losing to the millions upon millions of dollars healthcare companies have thrown into this battle all worth it. american below the age of 55 are screwed. we will have things in this new system just as they are today. there will be no difference for this large class of people whatsoever.

this is barack obama. he seemed to believe at one point that the aclu lawsuit demanding the release of photos of guantanamo detainees was important but he changed his mind. (it bugs the hell out of me when government officials suggest that i cannot handle truth.)

this is barack obama, (accepting the nobel peace prize.) i was in favor of him receiving it even if i recognized that this too was a reaction to the departure of the previous administration from the world stage. did obama deserve the award? no. was it nice the nobel committee chose him to receive it? absolutely. the sad irony is that receipt came just about a week after he announced a military buildup in afghanistan. perhaps in an attempt to justify the united states' war effort in afghanistan, obama said:

the concept of a "just war" emerged, suggesting that war is justified only when
it meets certain preconditions: if it is waged as a last resort or in self
defense; if the force used is proportional; and if, whenever possible, civilians
are spared from violence.

by these standards our war in afghanistan is certainly not just. it is not a last resort nor is it self defense. our stated mission is to root out a terrorist organization that has been known to seek refuge in parts of afghanistan. in fact we are not at war with afghanistan. al qaeda, as some number of terrorist individuals, may or may not be in afghanistan but it is not as if there is a front line in this war from which we can see footage of the firefight on television. the mission is actually kind of a joke, as if every malcontent in the arab world can be rooted out. the question of proportion will be compared to 9/11 but in terms of firepower and training, (to say nothing of the idea of uniformed soldiers aligned and amassed against an enemy hiding out in homes at dinner tables amidst family or in caves in remote mountains.) i think our soldiers do their best to spare civilian casualties but i also know that it doesn't always work out that way. more than 1,000 civilian deaths occurred in afghanistan just in the first six months of 2009.

while obama's rhetoric was typically moving and succinct, the fact this war he inherited and has since escalated does not meet any of the criteria he mentioned above, seems lost on him.

so why would i expect to vote for him? i guess it is because i am a realist. i know that no democratic challenger is actually going to win the nomination over him and so, supporting one of those candidates merely serves to weaken obama's candidacy when he faces a republican challenger in the general election. am i opposed to even considering a republican candidate? mostly. i mean, the republican party is made up of a wealthy class who sees government as the enemy and the people as so many ne'er do wells like ayn rand's masses in 'atlas shrugged.' the policies this group brings to the party are harmful to the masses. there is also a large, fundamentalist religious element in that party. they believe jesus is about to return to rapture his adherents into the clouds and damn everyone else to hell. why would i trust someone like that to run my government? no, the republican party is a bad, ugly joke.

and those are my choices. that is the american two-party system. it is that bleak. my candidates: ralph nader, dennis kucinich, bernie sanders, hell, john conyers, these men are unelectable. they could not raise the amount of corporate money to actually compete in an american presidential election. it is a simple as that.

so be reasonable, fall out of love with barack obama as john conyers has. agitate against his bad decisions and laud his good ones but recognize that barack obama represents a great deal of good but that at the same time, he is compromised. he is beholden to the corporations who lined the pockets of his campaign. if you think that does not drive at least some of his decisions, you are foolish.

jb

in the nearly 12 years i worked with him jb always worked early hours, typically arriving well before the sun. he had a massive chest and large biceps and he was always in great shape. at 16 years my senior, jb was prolly 45 when i met him and 57 when i moved on from the work place we shared.

i admired john. he was a lady's man-chicks flocked to him. he had that strong, silent thing going for him. he was beloved at work. he was an institution of a man. he worked hard to fulfill his duties and do a good job.

i used to imagine john's life away from our office. he lived in inglewood, i think. i believe his dad lived with him or if that was not the case, he was nearby and john saw him often. john had kids who were adults, a daughter who made jb a grandfather and a son who was a basketball star.

john must have woke around 3am every day. i know he lifted weights every morning. maybe that was 3:30-4:30am. Then he got ready for work, drove across la to pasadena and began giving customer service at 6am. he got to leave the office around 2:45pm and probably raced back down the 110 past the coliseum and towards hollywood park to his home.

from time to time john would mention little details about dates he had. there was a woman at work, (not one of the lookers on john's dance card,) who got so angry with john at one point she made a big scene in the call center and held a grudge for a long time. i think she was unstable and harbored some false notions about her relationship with john. for his part i guess john was kind of a love-'em-and-leave-'em type of man.

he wrote poetry and had books upon books filled with love poems. strictly speaking, i did not love his poetry, what i read of it, but i loved the fact that he wrote poetry. john was a gentle giant. (only a fool would have messed with him though.)

ultimately, what impressed me the most about john, (and i think this must be true of most everyone who knows or knew john,) was his dignity.

john was a quiet and proud man. he always walked tall, made eye contact with others, offered a friendly handshake or even a hug to his friends and acquaintances, shared in their joy and travails, laughed easily, consoled those who suffered, personified warmth and maintained his post amidst the people.

john is very much alive today, lest you get the wrong idea. it's just that i haven't seen him in a long time. i used to see jb about 250 days every year. he was like family to me, (you know?) it is not hyperbole to say i loved this man. i remember seeing him away from the office once at a little party in rosemead one of our cute, little 20-something girls was having. i was so plussed to see john away from the office-he was the first person i walked up to.

here's the thing. you see someone, like john, five days per week, 250-odd days per year, and at some point you can't help but take the relationship for granted. i mean, you have a genuine affinity, a real friendship, but if it is of the ilk where it seems to exist only at work, (this is to say you do not communicate away from the office,) when you walk away from the job you seem to walk away from john. it's never intentional but it is similarly unavoidable. the names of people i adored but walked away from over the years because life happens, because nothing is static, because we are all bodies in motion after all, because our nature of complexity demands that we move and move and move and in the movement is absence. in the movement is all that lays ahead and all that is left behind. in the movement are connections, near-misses and the abyss. and the names of those people are legion.

the names of those people are tubs and victor and sid and matt and oscar and eric and sully and kenneth and rudy and kim and kathryn and rosa and alla and yeah, so many more.

i miss john, just like i miss the others, only more because john and i were together a long time. whatever was going on at work in those days there was always something comforting about having big john sitting back there in the corner of the call center. he was like the protector of the entire joint. and i am curious of who i work with today will be my enduring, everyday friends, (because we have enough common ground to propel us into a real and active friendship,) and who, by contrast will be like john to me, perfect in their distance and inability to draw the ire that visits those who are most familiar.

john is and always was a dignified man. what better thing can be said about a man? i carry him with me everywhere i go. i am proud to have known him and wish him well always.

pitchman

bono's brilliance, what makes him a timeless artist of our age on a par and quite possibly beyond john lennon and bob dylan, is in his manipulation of image, his mastery of not only finding what he is looking for but also in choosing the right path to reach those goals. u2 has always courted the masses, after all.

u2 has never shown any interest in narrowing their audience. rather, they have gone to great pains to be inclusive, to gain accessibility and to establish their myth, (if you will,) by sheer math. and not to belittle or discount the edge, adam or larry, but u2 is bono. u2 would have us believe u2 is bono and the edge, with a great rhythm section, but as an admirer and follower of u2 for the last 27 years it is clear bono wields the greatest influence on the acts of the band.

the fact that bono seemed to seek legacy through volume does not disqualify him from being a great artist. his poetry, his attention to detail, his imagination and forethought, his voice, his magnetism, his generosity and caring, his scholarship, his choices, they have all made u2.

if the beatles arrived and laid down the prototypes of all styles within rock and roll, (if helter skelter really was the first punk rock sound and if yellow submarine did define psychedelia and i want to hold your hand launched pop and rocky raccoon became quintessential folk ballad,) u2 proved nothing if not that they could not duplicate those prototypes whatsoever. their song craftsmanship on their first two albums is amateurish, even though it makes up for deficiencies in other ways and areas.

on war they showed growth in melody while continuing to struggle with form. sunday bloody sunday may not have been a rebel song but the confusion came from the war march feel of it. what was strange was that they seemed to be straining to master the billboard hit and when they missed that mark, their courage and sincerity came off as endearing. finally, with new year's day they were able to produce a driving hook but then came the unforgettable fire, an album called "ethereal," by the critics of the day in spite of its single, pride (in the name of love,) eschewing accessibility in favor of an earnest message to the masses.

how did u2's appeal expand so consistently in their early years? it wasn't craft. yes, edge's guitar work improved and the band was often strong. bono's voice was phenomenal even while his poetry and songwriting were still coming up to speed. but in an age of duran duran and culture club, at a time when the clash seemed to shun the mainstream along with talking heads and others, while the big bands of the day, the arena rockers, were killing themselves with formula, and john lennon was toying with media, u2 clicked on demographic segments with lyrics such as on october's tomorrow:

who's coming back? he's coming back. i believe. jesus is
coming!

this positive message along with bono's voice turned many on to the band. when he sang in latin on gloria it was like he was making church cool and for those who spent an ample amount of time in church in those days, u2 made a perfect standard bearer. reading the early biographies and considering the band's own fundamentalism and participation in the shalom group bible study, helped many to identify with them then just as the same concept works for a whole new generation of listeners in the new century.

if u2 was a professional athlete, credentials for the hall of fame would already be set. the volume of sales year over year over the last 30 years is phenomenal. when the joshua tree was the biggest record in the world back in 1987 it would have been unlikely to predict the band would be able to sustain a place of relevance and major league sales for every succeeding album. still, rattle and hum sold in 1989 even if it was panned by critics.

achtung baby is arguably the band's best effort. on that record u2 can be seen in their prime, still young and rock and roll, citizens of the world navigating the realm of rock stars in new and interesting ways, connecting their art to that of david wojnarowicz on the one video, (depicting the aids crisis as similar to the fate of buffalo driven off cliffs by hunters, doomed, hopeless and plunging to death,) writing songs from the perspective of judas after having read a similar book of poetry, recording in places like berlin at a time when the wall was crumbling in an effort to be inspired by the time and feel the energy of a great movement. achtung baby was simply a bad-ass album.

next they seemed put off or perhaps frightened by their success. it was as if they felt like they needed to find inventive ways to be inaccessible while maintaining a new found hipness. in interviews in the early '90s u2 can be heard referencing the industrial bands like nitzer ebb and skinny puppy, and their sound on 1994's zooropa was similarly influenced. bono's poetry was sharp and arresting in contrast to the sound that was at times pretty, such as on 'stay,' but mostly off putting. even 'lemon,' a song with some of the best lyrics bono ever put to paper, seems like a tug of war. beneath bono's campy falsetto, edge chants a chorus:

a man makes a picture, a moving picture, through the light projected he can
see himself up close.

the lyrics are interesting but in some ways at odds with the music.

midnight is where the day begins

and there it is. beneath the experimentation and the disco and un-cool, there is a u2 lyric as proverb. midnight is where the day begins, is a metaphor. when things are at their darkest or bleakest, things can only get brighter. (this is a theme bono revisited in his writing several times over the years, perhaps most poignantly on 'all that you can't leave behind's,' stuck in a moment.)

next came 'pop.' in spite of the name and the modern techniques used in the studio, (looping, pedal effects, etc.) the lyrics proved bono's continuing progression. please is in fact a plea by bono to both sides involved in "the troubles," in northern ireland, to please get up off their knees and resolve their differences. leaving aside the album's opener, discotheque, (and perhaps miami,) 'pop,' is a heavy record.

as the new century arrived u2 finally decided to return to the mainstream with 'all that you can't leave behind.' dedicated u2 fans liked 'pop,' so for them the idea of a mainstream record was not necessarily welcome. however, the substance was there as usual. u2 had not only mastered the pop hook, they figured out how to pair it with insightful, meaningful lyrics and a brand of positivity uncommon to rock and roll. beautiful day is as anthemic as any of their early songs, (sunday bloody sunday, new years day,) but instead of being a tragedy or a struggle peculiar to one country, beautiful day is so universally accessible it ends up sounding like the national anthem for the planet.

u2 did not seem all that rock and roll on 'all that you can't leave behind.' they were nice, older rock stars, but the music kicked ass. it was listenable, catchy, at times driving and at other times artsy, ultimately it defied any critic who might pigeonhole u2 as irrelevant by virtue of their age or craftsmanship. nearly 10 years after it stands as the height of their careers even if 'achtung baby,' is preferred.

'how to dismantle an atomic bomb,' came next and while sales dipped, the dip was made slight by u2's affiliation with the apple corporation. u2's brand was advertised alongside apple's in a million-dollar media blitz in yet another example of the band's trailblazing nature. in years gone by such an affiliation would have been seen as some sort of sellout but u2 appeared by the ads to be endorsing apple and yet, they appeared in the ads for free. in other words, their compensation was in advertising, which was slick.

the affiliation for its part was typical u2. they chose apple carefully, for their ethos perhaps more than for their product. this affiliation was not unlike u2's affiliation with amnesty international in the '80s. both partnerships padded their fan base. from the advertising perspective, vertigo's "uno, dos, tres, catorce!", became the most memorable line from an ad campaign in the new millennium.

and now that 'no line on the horizon,' has disappointing sales numbers, it is obvious u2's arc is in decline. it's nothing to be ashamed of. the rolling stones's arc too, declined. what is actually more interesting is how long the band was able to stave off decreased sales, how long they were able to be relevant.

the band's extracurricular activities may not be for the purpose of promoting album sales or even keeping the band relevant in what has to be considered mid-life for men and more like the ancient years for a rock band, but they have played a role. bono was time magazine's man of the year in 2005, (along with bill and melinda gates.) his involvement with the one organization, data, and other organizations engaged in charitable work over the years has steeled his reputation as the earnest rock star who puts his time and effort where his mouth is and gains unprecedented results.

to discount u2 or bono is foolish. his place, like theirs, in the pantheon of rock's elite is guaranteed. as an individual of great accomplishment, bono's personal legacy is similarly secure.

morford on agassi

mark morford, (a columnist at the san francisco chronicle,) wrote about andre agassi's interview with katie couric this week. here's a snippet.



morford is a terrific writer whom i have read for several years purely for enjoyment. his perspective is always refreshing. his primary feeling after watching this interview, (specifically regarding agassi's admission of using crystal methamphetamine for about a year during the darkest period in his career,) is to wonder why agassi doesn't just laugh it off and remark on the strangely wonderful journey that is life.

it's not disingenuous on morford's part, either. his column tends to present fresh perspectives. however, agassi remains a businessman. he takes katie couric's questions with utter seriousness because there are millions of people in our society who would view agassi's revelation as base, dark, criminal, poor of judgment and a horrible example for a role model. agassi needs to be somber in this discussion with couric so as not to insult her viewers.

is morford right in suggesting that it's unfortunate but not necessarily the height of shamefulness? yes, it would be best to see it for what it truly is, a bad decision that may have resulted in some temporary artificial joy but probably represented, as drugs so often do, a dark time of sadness. sometimes it seems like those who want these public figures to splay themselves before the masses as objects to be pitied, ridiculed and derided push for that not from a sense of wanting children to learn from them and avoid similar paths of bad choices but from wanting to promote temperance by vilifying drugs so dramatically as to frighten the impressionable with nightmarish outcomes and the possibility of being ostracized.

in spite of that, agassi, and any public figure, would be best served to respond as agassi does, humbly and seriously, recognizing that couric and those she represents are good and decent people who may fear parts of the spectrum of human experience or may be driven by religious convictions that teach them to hate the sin, (at which many may also hate the sinner if only subconsciously,) or who may simply believe that people will be better if they can avoid such experiences by hook or by crook.

for my part i enjoyed the fact that agassi wrote the kind of book he wrote. he talked about how he made a conscious decision to tell the truth in his autobiography in order to write a compelling book and also to get the most from the experience himself. this, of course, exemplifies a behavior i have always admired, (and commented on before,) in agassi.

nashville

it's a robert altman film so you know its going to be frenetic. you know it's gonna be all artsy, that you will be able to tell the actors have been given a certain license to ad lib, to imagine their characters and portray them as they honestly think they would exist, with an outline for a script and probably a few drunken cast dinners to work out major plot lines.

but what is fascinating is to see it for the first time in 2009 after having been a child in the '70s and having been raised by working class people who wouldn't know anything of robert altman. people of only the best hearts, who delved into fundamentalism for a prolonged period of time, people who sold beer and cleaned houses, followed sport, refrained from strong drink, and perceived themselves as wholesome and family-oriented.

not people who went to college or read books, (books not of a biblical nature, that is.) not people who were affected by art much. good people who did not necessarily love travel but who did go to israel all the same. (who needs paris, london or tokyo?)

you watch robert altman's work and you forget ideas like 'who influenced who,' and instead appreciate the idea of a through line in time demonstrated by a class of people who are drawn to art and who live in such a way they rely on art to guide their lives, sensing a depth in their selves. they are the bohemians, the readers, the philosophers, the social, sentient, vibrant pushers of thought through the core of the masses. they are love, collective and incarnate. suddenly altman's peers are picasso and van gogh, beethoven and bach, lennon and bono, godard and von trier.

instead of one vision of, (in this case,) nashville, you get dozens of visions, portrayed by thoughtful actors. altman's genius is in his utter void of ego. he is the contributor, as socialist, communist or democratic as you can imagine. ned beatty brings his vision to his nashville agent and husband of the star country singer. shelly duvall gets to be the ditzy, california, flower child she imagines. lily tomlin probably created her character from whole cloths of lives she encountered one time or another, (the gospel singer slash bored, repressed wife.) tomlin is a revelation in playing tension still.

still, altman wrote what script there must have been. he put the characters in the situations he believed would bring out statements and ideas representative of his world view, (if nothing else.) in this way you can see altman acts as any artist in wanting to affect you. the art is layered but the ultimate object is the complexity of man.

nashville is about nashville. forget the '70s. it's about people as they are in real life, in this case they live in nashville and love country music. (and almost all of them sing.) the country music scene, for its part, can be seen as a sort of simple, stunted lifestyle, but then you see the complexity of individuals kind of break through. you see characters who spend huge segments of life avoiding their own depth, choosing the shallowest waters only to be confronted suddenly by the unavoidable fact that human capacity for conflict and joy and pain is nearly boundless or at least unimaginable.

there are articles about nashville that critique the film in the context of social relevance. they suggest meanings altogether plausible and worth considering. my comments are intended to be abstract. you can see that history is a treasure trove of thinkers as artists and artists as thinkers. in our age i can move from era to era in search of the altman's all to my own edification. in film alone there are several generations of artists and films to explore.

some would argue this era, altman and his contemporaries, is by virtue of nashville somehow the best of any age or better than a given age. that is not likely true. rather nashville is likely the most important or best film of that time depending on how you prefer to think of it. what makes it more is perceiving it from the perspective of one who stands in awe of his own access to the brilliance of my species. i am the common man and yet i benefit from this great art perhaps more than him who is capable of appreciating it more, or appreciating more of it.

the imaginarium of dr parnassus

will this movie ever come out? maybe terry gilliam is awaiting some sort of strange organic buzz, which will propel this movie to box office glory.

capitalism: a love story

capitalism does not need to be defended or denigrated. it is an economic system from which our economic system borrows many ideas or qualities. we also have elements of socialism in our economy.

however, the unsavory parts of capitalism have become the hallmarks of modern corporatism and michael moore touches on just a few, key aspects of what is wrong with our economic choices as a society in order to educate the masses and point out some basic truths. he does it with the same sense of humor we have seen in all of the moore films.

capitalism: a love story, makes some main points...

relaxed economic regulations allowed the advent of credit default swaps, which made a few wealthy at the expense of the masses. when toxic loan assets began to show their real colors, some major players went down but goldman sachs was the government's preferred player and recipient of its largess.

the movie also makes a few subtler points such as when america's hero, sully sullenberger, (he of landing a jet airliner in the hudson river,) testifies to congress on how much his pension and pay have been cut in recent years. the point is the united states is like a school yard bully who has been rendered obsolete by apathy. there is nothing the world needs us for anymore. we do not manufacture anything. we merely have the ability to destroy on an unprecedented scale and so we are feared, perhaps. we are tolerated. our sole export of late has been the rubic's cube style financial instruments, (credit default swaps,) that robbed the american people's retirement accounts. beyond that the world would like to de-value our dollar and watch us whither up and shrink away.

ultimately, like many moore films, capitalism is a modern mish-mash montage of images and stories that contribute to the overall idea. that idea is legion, too. that idea is: capitalism is not a good word and socialism is not a bad word, the invisible hand of the market belongs to alan greenspan, franklin roosevelt had a great deal more work to accomplish when he met his untimely end, and our leaders are not elected...they are bought.

ttj & pj

i decided to take terra to see pearl jam because i just thought it would be so cool to see them with her. so, on wednesday, october 7th, 2009, at the gibson amphitheatre, four days short of turning five-years-old, terra tresina james went to see pearl jam with her father.

my earliest memories are from when i was four-and-a-half-years-old and they are the same earliest memories i had when i was eight-years-old, which makes them seem somehow more significantly significant. it seems there are moments i recall vividly from my life and they are those moments of unadulterated joy or some kind of trauma. my single earliest memory is from when i was discovered and sent home from kindergarten for being four. my grandpa had thought i could pass for five and get a jump on my education, (or else it was the cheapest babysitting option.)

i thought taking terra to pearl jam would be one of those memorable moments and the thought of terra at 12-years-old telling me her earliest memory was of the night we went to pearl jam is at once compelling and sublime. and this is how the idea of taking terra to see eddie vedder, mike mccready, jeff ament, stone gossard and matt cameron, came about.

since the day i bought the tickets faith and i have been telling terra about the show. we told her the story of how she had one day deliriously asked to hear "heady betty," while being put into her carseat for a long drive and how we knew she was about to fall asleep. she had been fighting it. but she implored us to hear heady betty and we looked it each other completely at a loss-who was this heady betty? terra whined as i put in some cd that was not the sought after mr. betty. and within a half-mile of where we started, terra knocked out. the next day faith and i were back in the truck and i decided to throw on the soundtrack of 'into the wild,' by eddie vedder. faith looked at me and said, "heady betty is eddie vedder."

"heady betty is eddie vedder," i thought?"

"heady betty is eddie vedder," i yelped out loud. oh damn, this cracked me up.

anyway, terra loved 'big hard sun,' the most. usually when she wanted to hear it she would say "big hard sun." but just the day before she had said "heady betty," instead, and so eddie vedder became heady betty in our house.

add to these reasons the fact that i adore pearl jam, that of all artists perhaps eddie vedder, because he is from southern california and seems to speak in a language i understand, and you see i have a few good reasons for taking terra to see pearl jam.

on the way i over in the truck i told terra everything that would be happening in our evening. i explained the drive, the parking, the walk through universal city walk, how many people would be there, how loud it would be, ben harper and pearl jam. i wanted her to be devoid of fear and she was. she had pink ear plugs for the evening.

we say "wide-eyed," because we have seen little, five-year-old girls walking universal city walk amidst 40-foot neon signs and video billboards showing live ac/dc footage, or something similar.

terra could not have been more cute. she was so brave.

during the show eddie vedder made a few comments of a political nature, which is one of those things i appreciate about him. he talked about a documentary film he had seen that morning called 'the cove.' he said it was about the hunting of dolphins and that he had been anxious to get to the show that evening because he had watched people at their worst and by way of complimenting the band's fan base he said, here he would feel among the best of humans, (or, something to that effect, anyway.)

as terra and i found our door to the theater, we saw a dad and a daughter near terra's age sitting on a cushioned bench in the lobby. they looked at us and we looked at them oddly, as if peeking through a portal at our doppelgangers from a couple years hence. (the dad looked a couple years older than me and the girl was probably seven.) i nodded and feigned an imperceptible smile. terra and the girl locked gazes, which showed signs of kinship and curiosity, and we scooted past and into the theater to watch a few songs by ben harper and relentless seven.

later, after a break to pick up some water and licorice, we passed the same dad and daughter again and this time terra waved and the other little girl waved right back and smiled wide. (later terra told her mom the girl was a little bit bigger than her.)

as we sat chomping on licorice i told terra how loud and exciting things were about to become and i reminded her of the few pearl jam songs she actually knows a bit. david was at the show and visited us between acts. i think terra was even more comfortable having seen david's familiar face.

pearl jam came out rocking then pulled it back a bit for a few less aggressive songs. their ninth song of the evening was evenflow, (truly a hard rocker.) of all songs, this was the one that drove terra to sleep. i held her in my arms the entire show, switching her from side to side many times, and during evenflow her head slowly fell forward into my cheek.

the first time it happened she looked up at me and said, "is it time to go home?"

the second time she fell harder and i had to pull her up higher on my hip and she looked at me with heavy eyes and said, "can we go home now?"

it kind of broke my heart that i did not immediately say yes. she was, after all, so tired. instead i told her we would go soon but asked her to hang in there for just a couple more songs. she said okay then she wrapped her arms around my neck and put her head on my shoulder and checked out. i stood for a couple of songs then i sat and just held terra and enjoyed the music.

during this time they played a favorite song of mine; wishlist. it is a sweet and tender song of longing.

Wishlist
Artist: Pearl Jam
Composer: Vedder
I wish I was a neutron bomb, for once I could go off I wish I was a sacrifice, but somehow still lived on I wish I was a sentimental ornament you hung on The Christmas tree, I wish I was the star that went on top I wish I was the evidence, I wish I was the grounds For 50 million hands upraised and open toward the sky
I wish I was a sailor with someone who waited for me I wish I was as fortunate, as fortunate as me I wish I was a messenger and all the news was good I wish I was the full moon shining off your Camaro's hood
I wish I was an alien at home behind the sun I wish I was the souvenir you kept your house key on I wish I was the pedal brake that you depended on I wish I was the verb 'to trust' and never let you down
I wish I was a radio song, the one that you turned up I wish...I wish...

terra fell asleep during the ninth song and we walked out of the theater during the 18th song, (spin the black circle.) the setlist from the evening revealed they walked off stage after the very next song, (porch,) then returned for two encores.

i sent david a text message right when i got home and just said i hoped ben harper did not come back out and join the band onstage for 'indifference.' i have seen this occur on a dvd i have of pearl jam at madison square garden and it is an especially nice rendition of a deep and heartfelt song. david did not comment. the next day he told me he did not have the heart to tell me that was exactly how they ended their show.

i carried terra out of the theater, back through the long walkway to the front gate, down the city walk where i had to move her off my my injured shoulder and on to the other shoulder at which point she woke briefly and looked around at desolation in neon then quickly went back to snoozing, into the parking structure to the far side where i had parked. i laid her in her car seat and buckled her in, ecstatic at how completely fulfilling life can be in moments.

i worked so hard for this evening. as opposed to relaxing to the max at entertainment such as this by having beers and tweaking my state of mind a little bit, i watched over my daughter. i had the best upper body workout i have had in years as i held terra for literally hours in my arms. carrying her the quarter mile or so from seats to truck was a trial but when i buckled her into her place there at the end, i felt like a champ. i was infused and invigorated by the energy of pearl jam's rock and roll and because of terra i felt connected and humble. the work only colored the reward more glorious.

chomsky

chomsky is perhaps the top intellectual, the greatest philosopher and the best human being in the last 30-40 years to walk the planet. seriously. the praise this man deserves is truly at that level.

unless a man has been utterly disciplined in his life, never indulging in the unimportant sideshows of life, the hobbies and curiosities and entertainments of so many among the masses, he is incapable of reasoning on the level of chomsky. it is nothing to be ashamed of. still, chomsky's voice, as leveller of the masses, is unmistakable and true. he is the linguist of our age, a linguist in a time when language exploded.

i am not ashamed of having heroes. this is typical, solemn human behavior. chomsky is the only voice in the michaelsphere to have never, ever lied or told a half-truth. i have never found flaw with his reasoning, (not a surprise but an impressive fact all the same.)

chomsky's voice is as close as i get to trusting implicitly. it is my value to trust little-i am into verifying. it is with this idea in mind that i direct you, (to click on the header above that says, "chomsky,") to chomsky's comments on the financial crisis.

chomsky is so dense in his meaning when he writes, it can be difficult to follow him. still, if you read this article you can see how wrong-headed the prevailing thought is on our current financial crisis as well as several other related issues. check it out.

bars

it is interesting and inevitable how my little brother and i recall things differently sometimes. he remembers his burning curiosity about the life of a mother we spent precious little time with growing up.

i felt what he remembers, but different. i too have been obsessed with prison my entire life and have even thought my crimes of irresponsibility in my 20's were spurred primarily by a subconscious desire to know a little piece of my mother's life. three-and-a-half days later, getting out of la county in the middle of the night, i was finally clear that i could not go back. i felt the crazy creep eerily close to me in there. there were moments when i was screaming on the inside at the thought of being locked up, of having my freedom arrested, of my own gentle soul being treated as if i was a danger to society. it shaped me. that experience carved a deep groove in my psyche, colored over my values like whitewash, and formed, (in some part,) this person who needs to read and know and feel the alternative, the counter-culture, all things contrary.

i had been to jail a few times. i got a dui when i was 22-years-old and spent the night in san bernardino's county jail. that was an adventure but i was drunk and young and it was over in 8-10 hours. i was arrested a couple of other times for not paying tickets, typically car registration tickets, and failing to appear on the tickets. i was poor, trying to go to school to improve my situation and offended at all the money society demanded of me in taxes such as car registration. so i acted foolishly and rebelled in such a way i was essentially demanding more pain for myself.

that last time i got picked up by a cop who said he pulled me over because he saw a girl in my car who seemed to be climbing over a seat. from the substation i went to la county in the evening time and spent the next three days there. i had a couple of moments in there, low moments, when i was melting like anti-matter and raging like a warlord.

in one moment i sat in my bed alone in the middle of the day with the noise of warehoused prisoners wiling away their day all around me and i reflected. i felt sad at my plight, contemplated my guilt and considered if the punishment was reasonable . there i was incarcerated. riding to the jail on the bus i made conversation and gave opinions to people who were engaged in bartering shoes for marijuana. the guy who gave up his shoes for the ganja knew he would be staying a while and considered the ganj far more valuable than the shoes. the guy giving up the pot in favor of sneakers had been arrested without his shoes on, (strange he had pot on him though that got past the cops,) and wanted some footwear. the guy who obtained the pot then made a deal with someone else to share a smoke with him once inside if he could get it in. at that point several people in the vicinity feigned normal as this guy, handcuffed to his bench mate on the bus, worked a tiny baggie of herb into his rectum.

my thoughts? besides wanting to smoke a bowl of that poopy pot to take me away from this hellish place, i thought of how in a matter of moments i had taken one giant, de-evolutionary bound, backwards in time. living squarely in the age of the big-brained man, (i had often thought in those days that this was the world of the big-brained man, which is to say success was there for smart people to take,) i had transported backwards by at least a few centuries to a time when the big man ruled. success was there for the big, or brawny or burly or strong, man to take. there among prisoners, among many tough and hardened men, i was so profoundly saddened by this development. (i will avoid a lengthy divergence here but i watched the maysles brothers documentary, grey gardens, last night, about big and little edie bouvier beale, and it would be easy to contrast and compare my jail experience and feelings about the crude and base nature of man with the ease with which this refined and wealthy mother daughter combo digressed.)

anyways, i was saddened like no emotion i ever knew. this was not a particularly selfish sadness. it was much more than that. it was the sadness of understanding my species in a way i might have been better off not knowing. it was the sadness of having childish notions about my society drop away like cookie crumbs, like simple ideas and un-scrutinized beliefs, disappearing and leaving only the corrosive, exposed pain of knowledge behind. it was men going backwards, going base, forming hierarchies with meanness and ruthlessness and all things criminal as the valued personal traits which created and asserted power on the inside. on the inside... on the inside... fuck. that was a dark moment that day and i remember it to this day, which is so much brighter and colored by my children and my wife and some acquired wisdom. i was twirling a long thread of my won hair in my fingers that day, just sitting there, having the blackest thoughts and i remember those moments passing as i sat there in such a way i can feel that feeling, a little fraction of it anyway, on demand to this day.

in the other moment i called home and my buddy, his wife and my girlfriend were all gathered awaiting my call and i found myself on the phone unable to talk and darla recognized what was happening, the reason for my silence. she must have felt the stone in my throat that kept me silent l'est i burst out crying like a newborn baby so discomfited by this unfamiliar world i had arrived in. by the time my girlfriend at the time got on the phone i had turned toward a wall so no one could see my face and tears, silent tears, poured down my face. i made no noise. i could not speak. mireille spoke to me and assured me everything would be okay soon and she had spoken to my boss at work and all the rest. i was worried about that everyday stuff too, and i was worried about my own safety. no one gave me a hard time in jail or challenged me in any

physical way but i saw others challenged. i saw one fight that involved a guy laying on the ground getting kicked in the head and some amount of blood hitting the concrete. but i minded my business and made conversation in the tiny 'white' sections of the various rooms i was housed in. on that phone though, not talking, trying to remain unseen, i couldn't have felt worse and perhaps never have.

my brother, for his part, has experienced so much more than me, spending a large chunk of his life behind bars. the last time we visited my mother in prison i was 17 and he was 12. we flew to goodyear, arizona, and spent a couple of days in the visiting room of a women's federal prison. perhaps at that age he was more curious. perhaps. obviously we were both affected by all we saw and endured.

nowadays i am fond of telling friends i am attracted to justice. when i see justice, real justice, my heart leaps. so much about the criminal justice system is a joke, is so not about real justice, i can't help but be cynical about the establishment and our systems.

as for my brother, our paths are like rolling, curving lines, often parallel, sometimes criss-crossing. we are in ways products of the criminal justice system. we are both fiercely of the people.

creation

it should be noted that it is natural for people to be afraid of change, to fear the death of long-held beliefs or traditions, to shun uncertainty. with this in mind one can pity those who represent the masses of americans who may keep most of us from seeing this new film from jon amiel, which recently opened the toronto film festival to rave reviews and is about the life, times and relationship of charles darwin. (you know the guy whose name can be seen on the backs of cars inside of a fish in mockery of the christian symbol.)

so the story is that christians are locked in a battle against wisdom and learning and are thereby anti-knowledge.

they represent such a vocal presence with media outlets it seems creation may not be distributed in the united states. an important film, (the art form of our age,) creation is reported to be about darwin's life, work, pain, times and love relationship. i understand the movie is engaging and entertaining and yet, we may not even have the opportunity to see it because it assails the sensibilities of the modern day followers of christ.

isn't that sad? isn't that pathetic? no longer can america be considered the leading country on the planet, the agora of the knowledgeable and enlightened. the number of things, items, areas, we once led the world in is dwindling daily.

it is one thing to practice a religion because one finds peace in it or because it gives focus to one's highest ideals. it is another thing entirely to pretend ancient folklore is literal fact and spend one's life studying it as if it is so to the detriment of one's (healthy,) world view and pragmatism.
perhaps this movie will find its way to us. i expect i will be able to see it one day or another by laemmle's or netflix. i hope you find a way to see it too.