anger

my anger grew up with me. it was as if it was always there. it was a strand within my dna or perhaps a lone chromosome and as i grew and matured, so did my anger.

at five, i walked onto the grounds at the terminal island woman’s state penitentiary a tabula rasa and three hours later i walked away from my mother with my anger draped over my shoulders like a poncho. no, she could not go home with me. no, i would not be able to see her in any environment other than this institutionalized setting with the set visiting hours and the rules dictating my accompaniment by a legal guardian. no, i did not have a dad, at least not one who would be involved in my life in any way whatsoever.

my anger giggled when my grandfather, (my guardian,) mentioned my biological father in absentia whose ass, he said, i should shove my foot up if ever the day came when i met him face to angry face. oh that would shock the big jerk when i clobbered him with my size four.

my anger flared up when i was removed from kindergarten for being early. it subsided when i spent days in the kitchen on the floor playing with hot wheels as lupe prepared albondigas.

it blossomed anew when my mom married a 5-foot, 5-inch hate machine when i was seven or eight. the two were like sleeping tigers when they were high on heroin. they were semi-normal when they took their methadone. it was when the drugs were unavailable or had been used up that things got crazy and the times when i was the one who got smacked planted embers of anger and rage deep inside me.

my anger, like my sadness, is unique to me and i own it. it colors my world view like a touch of black mixed evenly in with my white and all of my other colors. my anger facilitates my hate and i do hate.

i hate injustice. i hate bullies. i hate corporations. i hate lies. i hate deception from government officials. i hate when parents act as if their kids owe them something and not the other way around, or as if their children are accoutrement to their shabby little lives. i hate racism and bigotry and all manner of caveman-like action and thought that would stop our progress and take mankind backwards. i hate fundamentalism. i hate war. i hate fear and all manner of marketing based on it. i hate ignorance. i do not hate the ignorant-how could i? but i do hate ignorance more than anything.

anger is an energy and yes, anger is a gift. it hurts to be angry but there is no point in dwelling on history that cannot be changed. i choose instead to make it a positive. i choose to nurture my anger and let it hone me and shape me and sharpen me.

my anger chooses the books i read. my anger loves movies by lars von trier and music by rage against the machine and propaghandi. my anger is iconoclast.

it was my anger that pushed me in my early 20s from a cradle of comfort i had constructed from evangelical christianity, a firm belief in reaganomics, (formed on the basis of absolutely nothing,) and a trust in the establishment and family values and all things american, to a state of agitation and anger fueled by disillusionment, poverty, dissatisfaction and a sense of having absorbed wholesale lies.

• the usa is a better country than all of the other countries on the planet.


• the slim number of people in the world who believed as i did on the subject of god and religion and the after life would be joining god and jesus and the saints in heaven for eternity where we would enjoy streets paved of gold and mansions while all others, the nameless and faceless masses, would burn forever in hell, gnashing their teeth and pulling their hair out in a lake of fire and brimstone because they refused to believe this sliver of a doctrine about an imaginary being and a load of revisionist history.


• man is essentially bad, hence why he needs forgiveness and why he should be consumed by guilt.


• race and ethnicity divide people while class differences need not be a concern.


• capitalism in and of itself is good.


• if our elected leaders claim to be christian, they should not be questioned for their actions.


• the war in vietnam was righteous.

lies... as the fallacious nature of my education became increasingly evident my anger grew and became my chaperon escorting me from fallacy to misconception to out-and-out lie. in response to my sub par education i read the communist manifesto. i chose non-american authors, devouring the works of camus, kundera, celine, and garcia-marquez, delighting in salih, achebe and gibran, snacking on the tomes of hamsun, lorca and xingjian. when i read americans i chose henry miller, richard rodriguez and h.l. mencken. i found myself attracted to ghandi and che guevara and oscar wilde and g.b. shaw and james joyce and w.b. yeats.

it was my anger at the status quo that moved me. had i not been mad i may have chosen the works of robert frost. i may have come to enjoy blockbuster hollywood movies, short on insight into the nature of man but long on special effects. i may have been a celine dion fan. i may never have questioned anything. i may have been wealthier and happier, more financially savvy but less informed about the nature of things and how to truly be a dignified human being, and of a lighter spirit from day to day but less equipped to contribute positively to the struggle of man, which is to evolve and constantly improve on the conditions of man.

thanks to kieslowski, godard, bunuel, almodovar, and kar wai, with appreciation to bono, lennon, yorke, vedder, cohen and morrissey, yes it was the artists who reached me and helped me to turn anger into so much more than merely a positive.

some of my friends see me as angry and they cannot conceive of this facet of me as a good thing. it is distinctly me they think. maybe they applaud me for going with it instead of denying it or something like that. mostly however, they swing from being annoyed at my anger manifested as a need to verbally chastise the acts and words of george w. bush or criticize grass roots advertising as a means of enlisting the lowest hanging fruit into the corporate, status quo mentality, to feeling pity for me because of how off-putting i really can be, (even if it is to one who does not want to be confronted or challenged in their long-held beliefs.) i can't be bothered but i am human and i am bothered. this too, makes me angry and contributes to my world view and the constant rounding and polishing that is my experience.

i would no sooner return my anger or choose to have lived another, different life than i would renounce my self education and its many virtues, including the personal enlightenment that has allowed me to step forward confidently into the world of fatherhood.

i have planned for success as a father by understanding all that bothered me as a child. i have imagined my father as a 16-year-old boy having sex then being confronted with the pregnancy. i have imagined his parents response when he suggested that perhaps the girl got around a bit and maybe the child was not his, how they latched on to that idea and supported their boy again and encouraged him to challenge the notion that he was in fact my father and how he was buoyed by that support and ignored my mother at school and around town and said they were not together until she retreated into the heart of her rough home to have the child me. i have imagined my alcoholic grandfather berating my mother for being a floozy at 14. i have imagined how he took no responsibility whatsoever. meanwhile my grandmother loved her daughter and instructed her to pray to mother mary who also had a child despite little sexual experience.

being pushed and pulled and moving from family to family and town to town, from irish catholicism to a pentacostal fundamentalism, from being urged to read the bible and all things related but never being steered towards the classics or any form of dissent, from a mother who spent most of my childhood in prison and introduced physically abusive men into my life when she was on the outside, to an extreme response to such circumstances, my anger thrived on a variety of impetuses.

i savor my anger. it is my lover and i love it. i am profoundly thankful for my perspective. i have much to live for, much to learn still, but i am deeply contented by my journey thus far and confident that my life has meaning annd my children will be better for my anger, my unique but also common perspective.

the nba as wwf?

no. not because they create larger than life characters. because they seem similarly scripted. did you see the block of lebron's three-pointer by dwight howard that was called a foul? in the days to come we will learn that the nba has admitted it was a bad call. it is something that will be in the referee's evaluation...blah, blah, blah. and we're all supposed to forget that a referee saw a foul that never occurred.

it is my feeling that until fans revolt by boycotting all things nba, the farce that is nba officiating, the farce that is fuzzy rules like ilgauskas taking three steps in the key to the basket and not getting called for travelling or the phantom foul by howard, (his sixth of the game,) will go on making fools of that very fan base.


have you ever officiated a basketball game? it is not as hard as you think. you're in there watching the action, watching the ball, seeing the movements and then there it is. hand to arm contact or whatever it is. you see it and you blow the whistle. it's not that difficult.

nba hoops is farcical to a great degree. whatever exactly is going on with the rules and the officiating is debatable. what is not debatable is the fact that something is happening that is not above board.


maybe the wwf's scripting is more obvious and everyone is in on it. maybe in the nba only the league and the refs are in on it, and the networks tacitly endorse the program by glossing over the most obvious examples of mischief and coloring the rest as respectable.

the rules and how games are called in the nba needs to be overhauled.

• after this year's finals the league should announce the dismissal of david stern and a plan to redefine several of its key rules.
• specifically as it affects the charging and blocking calls, the defender must be set in his position but he is also entitled to space. when collisions occur fault should be assigned to the player who invades the space of the other player and/or is the initiator of any contact.
• the rules should be the rules without respect for person.

none of this will happen because nba fans prefer to go on like wwf fans, thinking it's all real or thinking they are somehow cool for enjoying the ruse. this emperor has been decked out in the latest fashions of self delusion.

kobe bryant - doin' work

kobe: doin' work, is probably the worst piece of work spike lee has ever been involved in. this is one of the great film makers of his generation. in addition to turning real life stories into great movies, spike lee is a documentary film maker extraordinairre. he turns documentaries into art. however, in this case lee's skills are for naught because the subject is simply not compelling.

kobe: doin' work, is technically sound. everything looks good. the lighting is right. it is a courtside seat for the lakers-spurs at staples center and the movie conveys that feeling to the viewer. music is interspersed throughout the production effectively. kobe and the other professional players are terrific basketball players capable of amazing athletic feats. still, kobe bryant is boring, unbelievable, and at once milquetoast in his predicatability and outrageous as he sets about managing his perception. the title could just as easily be 'kobe: doin' work trying to be perceived exactly as i want to be perceived.'

kobe bryant really is a wonderful basketball player. among the greatest of all time, bryant has a unique combination of skill and size. he is a scorer, to be sure, but it is his jump-shot that sets him apart. it is one of the best jump-shots of all time. bryant's ability to consistently make that shot under pressure, with the best defenders in the league as close to him as they can possibly be, is what is special about him.

it's not his drives to the basket. michael jordan was significantly better than bryant at that. jordan went with a certain power that made defenders reconsider getting in front of him as jordan would hold the ball away from the defender, throwing his body headlong towards the basket and into the air but leading with his shoulder and his left bicep. kobe can do that on occasion but mike did it with regularity. jordan's jump-shot was just as good as kobe's but kobe's longevity in the league will add to his legend some day whereas jordan's hiatus from basketball may cause his stats to pale by comparison.

it's not kobe's basketball i.q. bryant is solid in that area. he understands the game, moves well without the ball, defends effectively and by instinct. still, bird, abdul-jabbar, west, nash, and yes, jordan, also compare favorably to kobe in this area. kobe still makes a lot of thoughtless mistakes on the basketball court. as an example to begin game six of the western conference semifinals recently, kobe turned the ball over twice in the first three minutes of the game as the lakers went down 17-1. the elite players of their respective generations made mistakes but not like kobe. his mistakes belie his greatness.

kobe bryant has always wanted to be recognized for his prowess on the basketball court. this was never more clear than when shaquille o'neal departed los angeles. bryant was interested in being seen as the laker. he wanted the team to be identified as his team and this is a concept kobe has always struggled with. he never seemed to understand that leading by example would lead to the personal accolades he coveted. post shaq he whined like a child, demanded a trade at one point in time, threatened to test free agency. he has simply owned a blind spot of epic proportion.

in kobe: doin' work, all of bryant's words come across as designed to give a certain impression. kobe: doin' work is a work of kobe's marketing skills. some viewers may buy kobe's message, which would seem to be; "kobe bryant is an unreal basketball player because he is a hard-working, student of the game whose dedication is unsurpassed and who is also humble." (yes. seriously. kobe wants you to believe he is humble. you can hear it between the lines every time he deigns to compliment a tony parker or a d wade or a manu ginobili.)

in a way kobe is superior to michael jordan and all the rest. what he does on the court that is positively unstoppable is in how he explodes into the air like a rocket. he can be dribbling and running in any direction but he has the ability to pop, straight up into the air, at which point his shot is effortless because his legs have done all the work. the ball must feel like a feather to kobe.

what is puzzling is this reputation kobe has for hitting big, last second shots. as a laker fan i root for him to hit these shots and while he has hit some, i remember a deluge of missed shots as time expired. yes, it started in utah in his rookie season... he hits big shots. he does-no question. last week he hit a big shot with ron artest all over him from about 35 feet away from the rim. it was a momentum changer, but not a game winner. i was in attendance at staples center one night a couple of years ago when he caught fire late in the third quarter against the clippers. he was unconscious. cuttino mobley wanted to crawl in a hole as kobe fired threes while falling out of bounds and every other manner of shot, and everything found the bottom. it was unbelievable but it was not game-winning.

remember those big shots when the lakers were three-peating their way through the beginning of the century? remember ron harper's shot from the baseline? remember "bob's," shot? hell, robert horry had like three big, game-winning, season-saving, playoff-delivering shots. brian shaw had a big one. d-fish had .4 to extend a losing season. kobe? well, he has had some game winners to be sure, (one against the suns comes to mind two nights before i got married,) but over the last five years he has taken pretty much every last second shot the lakers have had. this reputation kobe has is more legend than truth. still, he does not crumble at game's end. just last night he dished to d-fish for a couple of big buckets. he draws a big crowd after all, when he has the ball at the end of games.

the point of the film is to study the man who is kobe bryant. spike lee is documenting the work ethic of the superstar basketball player. the viewer should be impressed with kobe's work ethic, his attention to detail as he explains how things develop on the basketball court and strategy, and how giving he is as a subject, opening his life to lee's camera and an adoring public. the problem is, there is almost nothing about his life.

the documentarian recorded a day in the life but since basketball is just basketball and not a mystery, since the pros are merely a slice above the d league and the euro leagues, which are just above the middle eastern and australian leagues and the college game, since so many americans have played some organized basketball, the mystery we might sense and thereby be amazed at the simple feats of kobe bryant's basketball wizardry are essentially debunked.

had kobe bryant waxed philosophical or expounded on his thoughts on barack obama, (a la james blake at the australian open,) had he weighed in on the issues of the day or even talked about what he learned from his banishment post rape allegations, had he been the first to mention that he really has not hit a bunch of huge, game winning shots, (thereby showing real humility instead of the faux version he foists upon the public regularly,) had he, instead of praising dwayne wade's crossover dribble move to the basket, admitted that wade would beat him nine times out of ten in a one on one game, had he explained how it was he came to make a "rap," record, had he said something, anything at all that was remotely interesting instead of the snide, self-promoting drivel he oozes unceasingly throughout the piece, (spike lee held up his end of the bargain after all,) this could have been a good documentary.

torture: a tried and true technique

"one of the reasons these techniques have survived for 500 years is because they work."
-senator lindsey graham



guess what else has worked for more than 500 years, senator. murder. that technique has been solving problems since the days of ehud.

what a moron. how embarrassing for the people of south carolina to be represented by this guy.

betrayal has worked well for thousands of years as well. gaius julius caesar and marcus junius brutus are testament to the efficacy of that one. perhaps senator graham would have us return to the days of the spanish inquisition. for those in power the techniques for torture and murder worked wonders in those days.

that this guy can say this in public and not lose his job, and not be laughed out of the senate immediately, exemplifies the old adage: "if you don't stand for something you may fall for anything."

you and whose army

Come on, come on You think you drive me crazy Come on, come on You and whose army? You and your cronies Come on, come on Holy roman empire Come on if you think Come on if you think You can take us all on You can take us all on You and whose army? You and your cronies You forget so easily You ought to know You ought to know Oh so sad Oh so sad Oh so sad You ought to know You ought to know I'm so sad I'm so sad I'm so sad..

tyson - the documentary

my interest was immediately piqued when i heard there was a mike tyson documentary coming out. as a confessed movie snob who thinks 98% of the people i know have poor taste in movies, (with their transformers and x-men and vin diesel and scary movies,) i was sold the second i found out tyson would be playing at laemmle’s playhouse in pasadena.

the movie is fantastic. its subject is one of the most enigmatic figures in recent pop culture history as well as one of the most prolific artisans of the sweet science ever. mike tyson has been a firebrand for some 20+ years, instantly and clearly dividing people into two camps, those who loathe him and those who are empathetic to his plight. the odd thing about the man however, is the fact that his perspective on some of his most notorious exploits has not been prominently available if accessible at all. that is what tyson the movie delivers; the man’s perspective on everything from his childhood right up to his current circumstances as a 40-year-old father and pariah.

the only voice you hear in tyson is that of mike tyson. he is answering unheard, (but understood,) questions and his answers effectually make him the narrator of the film. ultimately his perspective reveals an interestingly introspective individual who owns up to a multitude of flaws without ever making excuses, but for whom excuses, or at least cause and effect reasons, abound.

as expected tyson explains early on that he had a tough childhood. his mother was promiscuous and on drugs and tyson had very little guidance or support. he tells a story of getting beat up as young kid by older neighborhood kids and he suggests this incident colored many of his behaviors later in life. knowing and seeing tyson as a case study it is obvious he had this sort of childhood.

in this way tyson the film serves as insightful social commentary. there is a large segment of our society who seem to exist in a vacuum of empathy. they cannot imagine themselves walking in another’s shoes for a minute much less a mile and so, they judge. in mike tyson the judgment they levy just gets easier and easier because the vast majority of his actions have been outside the realm of their imagination.

no, they cannot imagine having a mother who let them wander the streets at night when they were 10. they can’t imagine not having a father or having a mother on drugs or in jail. they cannot imagine being a social outcast who reacts by getting tattoos from spite. they can’t imagine going from squalor to a level of wealth almost unfathomable without any coaching or guidance whatsoever on how to handle such things, much less being convicted of a crime they did not commit and being sent to jail for three years over it.

similarly many people are incapable of reconciling good and bad or black and white. so, they dismiss mike tyson as simply a bad person. when tyson chomped on holyfield’s ear they could see the savage but they could not identify with the guy who became enraged over his opponent’s unseemly strategy. (holyfield is one of the top five head-butters of all time and while this does not justify tyson’s cannibalistic behavior, it should be easy to understand why he lost his cool.) still, seeing the gray area or the dual nature of man as good and bad is outside of a boundary many are either unable, or prefer not, to negotiate.

for his part, mike tyson comes across as honest in his self-assessment. he is child-like in many ways. when he discusses cus d’amato and becomes emotional his inner child is on display in such a way it is easy to see that his emotional development was stunted and that cus did good by tyson in as much as he rescued him from a life of crime which would surely have ended behind bars but through no fault left him unequipped in so many other areas. cus developed tyson as a boxer but left him defenseless as a man-child.

when d’amato passed away, tyson the savage was brutalized by convention and good taste. his money was like honey for a swarm of bees who devoured him and his cash. it is plain to see tyson was and possibly is a child emotionally. mentally he was and is likely in the same range. physically he was and is way beyond the masses, and that comes out in the movie, too. he was a significant physical specimen to begin with but then he trained so that his body was a finely tuned machine.

his focus for fighting was at one time similarly refined. under d’amato tyson studied not only the greats but really the history of boxing and he defined the boxer he would become by his preferences which were likely d’amato’s preferences first. tyson said he preferred the smaller weight classes because of the speed and the skill employed to win. as he came to prominence his game plan consisted of being the quickest fighter especially on the inside, one who could employ styles of some of his favorite fighters as a situation demanded always to the detriment of his opponent.

when the movie walks the viewer through the cavalcade of beat-downs tyson administered, it is easy to recall the splendor that was his raw speed and power. this sequence begins with his first title bout with trevor berbick then goes back to his first pro fights and goes forward again to berbick and beyond. up to his ill-fated loss to “buster” douglas, tyson was a man among boys. no one challenged him in any meaningful way.

d’amato actually over-prepared his prodigy. tyson combined everything a boxer wants to bring to his matches: strength, dexterity, skill, style, raw power, endurance, class, focus, determination, will, cunning, execution and desire, and up to the point when his training regimen fell apart in tokyo and he was partying like a, well, like a heavyweight champ, he just destroyed his opponents.

in one fascinating moment of the film, tyson talks about his eye contact with his opponent upon entering the ring and how much it meant to him. in one particular fight, he explains, he got into the ring and established eye contact with his opponent, (bruce seldon, perhaps,) who then looked away at which point tyson already knew he would win. when they came to the center of the ring to touch gloves and hear the rules, tyson the narrator remarks on the tough look his opponent offers but declares it null and void because of the misstep earlier when his gaze fell away if only briefly.

the film cuts from the interviewee tyson to the fight where tyson steps forward at the opening bell and dismantles his opponent quickly and his story about how his opponent lost the fight when he glanced away from his gaze a few minutes before the fight is at once entirely believable.

one moment which exemplifies the sum total of the film’s appeal involves tyson’s commentary on one of the worst periods of his life. when tyson went to jail in indiana for a rape that seemed questionable at least, most americans came across hours of coverage of this event and thereby formed opinions. most of the people i knew figured tyson raped desiree washington and was getting his just dessert by incarceration. (i went the other way.)

in the movie we get to hear tyson’s word on the subject. we see tyson meeting washington as the two playfully flirt with one another after which we hear tyson in the present refer to washington as “that wretched swine of a woman.” it is at once honest, insightful and entertaining.

james toback has made an understated but solid film in tyson. celebrity serves the public in as much as it allows us the freedom of making judgments without consequences. tyson presents the man as an open book, counter-balancing all that we already know from so many other perspectives. the man comes across as warm, flawed, accessible and humble and the film feels like mike tyson’s respite from public scorn.

may day

yesterday a friend of mine, a brother-in-arms, really, lucio, (aka, the spifler,) reminded me it was may day. i had actually thought about it in the morning and wondered what may day was again. i knew it was something but i had forgotten. a quick google reminded me that it is among my favorite holidays, (and that we have forgotten about the haymarket affair but could be closer to the next similar event than that one some 123 years ago.)

may day is also known as international worker's day and while this post is a day late, i wanted to tip my hat to all you who are workers.

• if you work in a contact center toiling away in the holy name of customer service, cheers to you member of the proletariat, i salute you.
  
• if you if you are engaged daily in the work of building things, houses and stuff, plumbing and doing electrical work and roofing and all that, be proud. you are among the noble masses who work.


• if you are a teacher, stimulating the minds of our children to learn and grow, if you work in a school caring for the little ones among us, if you coach, counsel or nurture the succeeding generations, your daily tasks are important to the nth degree. thank you.


• if you ship and receive, if you climb wires or dodge traffic to take photographs of the landscape, if you operate heavy machinery, if you collect garbage or truck goods around this country, if you work in a factory, if you dig or excavate or jack-hammer or pour concrete, your honest day's work is a marvel and your commitment is to be admired.


• if you sell things, if you push paper and pencil all day, if you balance books or loan books, if you deal cards, if you do retail, if you tend bar, if you keep things secure, if you are hospitable, if you engineer, if you are a caregiver, you work and you should be proud.

there is nothing more noble than accepting the terms of life and getting up every day and meeting it head on and providing for yourself and your family and doing what you need to do. my hat is always off to you.

this may day, this may, this year, this lifetime, my wish is that you too will feel a sense of brotherhood and camaraderie with your fellow workers of the world. we're all in this together.