michaelsphere

dancing

2011-09-05T09:29:00.000-07:00

i was always a dancer. still, last night at the hollywood bowl, dancing in a time warp with a throng of 40-somethings bopping and contorting to the tunes of berlin, the fixx, the b-52s and human league, i couldn't help but recall my dancing past.

specifically, i remembered my friend, katie d's den, in claremont. her parents weekended in carlsbad and so, the party started midday on fridays and extended typically to monday mornings, when we would all shuffle home and ultimately to school where many of us would reconvene to work on a college newspaper. the weekends and nights at kathryn's were beer-drenched and clouded by a haze of ganja. conversations in the back yard around the pool were extensions of english literature classes and weeknight poetry readings in random coffee houses. my mexican friends always praised garcia lorca, neruda and borges while the colombians and those white kids from the inland empire just wanted to talk about sepultura or ozzy, or metallica.

kathryn was a chameleon. as gregarious as girls get she was our hostess and also the magnet that brought these disparate cliques together. in addition to the colombians and the white, long-haired inland empire rockers, and the baldwin park contingent who travelled like coyotes to anyplace that held even the slightest promise of barley pops, there were kathryn's claremont friends, the children of the liberal, academic elite, with their perfect skin and brilliant white teeth. (surprisingly, they were largely unpretentious and open.)

i remember the various friday routes to kathryn's. sometimes kathryn and jose and i would just end school with a quick drive in the car to inconspicuously smoke pot. once stoned we would part ways with a plan to meet up later at friar tuck's or the hi-brow for drinks.

friar tuck's was a bright bar with well lit pool tables and there was always a war between those who wanted to hear country and western tunes and those who wanted to hear classic rock. after a few pitchers my mexi-friends and i would wade out into the parking lot to smoke a quick bowl and make our way across route 66 to the hi-brow. if friar tuck's attracted a consistently nascar oriented crowd, the hi-brow drew strictly from the local cluster of liberal arts colleges.

the hi-brow was low lit to begin with and even darker after our arrival as we would often unscrew a few light bulbs or pull the plug on an occasional neon. it was about mood there. gone were the patriotic country songs from across the highway in favor of otis redding and marvin gaye and the pixies and ween. no pool tables, just 16 square feet of hardwood dance floor and a waist high juke box. if i made it to that dance floor it would have been at the very end and it would have represented my arrival at a certain altered state, a sublime buzz in which i could groove on the dance floor without caring if my friends were making fun. they were all too cool to dance. not the girls, just the guys. occasionally gabe would get out there but pep, (jose, or popstar,) and fidel and uncle manual and bear and juice and all my friends from aztlan would decline to dance on the grounds that it simply wasn't cool to do so. their glances as i swayed back and forth to one of those mid-tempo dave mathews songs of the time, surrounded by chicks, mostly adhered to the hips of would be dance-floor harlots but when their eyes met mine their gazes belied a sense of jealousy.

at last call after several distinct groups had met up we all looked at one another and wondered where we could go next and always there was kathryn offering her house. we would caravan the couple of blocks sometimes running into 7-11 to pick up some beer and once in that spacious back yard we drank and smoked more without hint of inhibition and we laughed and talked into the wee hours. occasionally some people hooked up and found places to unleash their new found ardor for one another. otherwise people dropped off by turns, finding a place to curl up or having a ride arrive until at the end two or three heroic figures would see signs of daylight haunting the atmosphere and agree to go sleep somewhere for a while.

'round 11 or noon of the next day those who remained would end up out back smoking cigarettes and discussing the previous evenings events. at some point kathryn would feed the stragglers who had nowhere else to go, (this was a nearly exclusively guy club, save katie d herself,) and we would strip down to underwear or perhaps a pair of her dad's shorts and hit the pool for the majority of the afternoon. in the evening we might barbecue and start calling people to come on over to kathryn's or meet us at some party or nearby bar, and weekend days would bend into nights and snap back into quiet afternoons that would end up right back there in kathryn's back yard, possibly in the jacuzzi, under the cover of night with nirvana or sepultura or maybe jeff buckley seeping through the windows and sliding glass doors of the den to our ears poolside. the conversations about raymond carver and the buk and juan rulfo would commence without missing a pulse only to be dropped for comparisons of bob dylan and leonard cohen or passionate pleas on the corruption and dishonesty in the american justice system around consensual crimes.

last night i remembered a time when kathryn's friends, jackie and shannon and others, came out back to implore me to come dancing, (in the den of course.) i was acting cool and weakly declining when one of them, (kathryn or jackie, i think,) told the guys i was hanging out with to, "stop discouraging michael. "he is a dancer-let him dance," they implored. that was enough for me. i got up and went into the house to get my groove on. as usual it was me and about five or six girls and i had no complaints.

dancing was always good to me. the moves never made any sense really-there was no discipline or learned steps involved. but feeling the beat always came naturally to me and the idea that i should get out on a dance floor, perhaps with strangers, often with hotties, in public places, and bop to the beat and shake my ass and flail about a bit as if immune to ridicule or criticism, well, that always felt like good health to me. i could sense the stress slip away from me with the inhibition. the bounce in my stomach felt like a connection to my ancestors in caves around fires, or to my species, so naturally attuned to music.

it felt that way last night, too. half of the crowd jumped up for the b-52s and grooved while the other half of the 40-somethings stayed seated, sipping their glasses of wine, enjoying the flashback evening with slightly more reserve. as for me, i had to get up. i had to just dance there in front of my seat. it felt good. it was good.

confrontation

2011-07-28T21:13:00.000-07:00

so i was out with some friends in a bar recently and we got to talking politics. actually, i don't like the word politics. it makes the subject sound like a game, like we're talking about our favorite teams or the ones we despise. in fact what we call politics is the actions of the powerful that affect us all.

so we got to talking about the debt ceiling and the struggle democrats and republicans are engaged in at the centers of power. my friend greg makes hundreds of thousands of dollars per year as a mortgage banker. i don't know the exact number but i think he literally makes between $350k and $500k. that's a lot of money. i don't begrudge greg his success. i have known him for nearly 30 years. he is a good person and he has a beautiful family. having said that, over the last bunch of years as his wealth has grown i have noticed his views have changed. it's not that he was liberal and became conservative, (or what have you.) it is more that he was apathetic and he became interested. he grew a viewpoint, if you will.

my friend sid, who represents the cross between greg and i in that sid is one of my closest friends and he and greg are also close, cracked a couple of jokes about how obama is a socialist who wants to spend all this money he doesn't have. it bothers me to hear stuff like this. in fact i actually think it is important to combat views like this when i am confronted with them. to me they are born of ignorance and they wreak ignorance.

so greg chimed in and compared raising the debt ceiling to opening a new credit card to make payments on five other credit cards. first, that is not an inaccurate comparison. that said, the united states of america is and has always has been the most reliable debt the planet has known, so it is different, too. our country has and does pay its bills and a big part of that is because of the nation's earning power. the united states is wealthier than bill gates, (so far, anyway. [i said gates, not jobs.]) ultimately greg's point made me cringe because to me it is simple ideology masking as a meaningful quip. and while we can all wish we weren't in the position of needing to open a new card to pay down five others, or raising the debt ceiling, we are because we have been financing two absolutely inane, immoral wars and we just participated in the greatest transfer of wealth, (upward,) in the history of humankind.

i said as much to greg and to all of my friends there, really, at a tavern in a sleepy hillside community. greg joked back that i was somehow just mad about not being wealthy. he laughed to indicate it was a joke and i have to say i was not offended by the remark. it's not true-why would i be offended? but then i saw a couple of my other friends laugh. i'm not sure if they thought about it and saw it as funny or if they just wanted to make greg feel comfortable since he was laughing. they did laugh a little bit though. just enough really, to bug the shit out of me.

so i leaned into the middle of our group and i told greg his position did not bother me because at least in his case it was self interest. i said he was merely defending his class and protecting his interests since the policies of the republican party, (and especially the policies of the tea baggers,) was to fend for the wealthy. i elaborated by way of saying what did piss me off was those who espoused those values against their own self interest, in other words those in the middle class who are angry at entitlement programs, (examples of the social pact for the common good that has been a part of this country's values since day one,) who think illegal immigration is the big bad wolf, who think one day they will be rich and when the realization that upward mobility is all but dead in our society they adjust their view to blame the various bugaboos of the day such as taxation, and illegal immigration. my other friends, (and i should say all of these particular friends are religious,) seemed offended but it was greg, (again,) who commented. he laughed my remark off again and said something about how it was democrats who were ignorant for thinking they could just spend willy nilly.

i was probably four feet from greg when i lunged with my right fist. i really threw the punch from too far away and so i passed the point of maximum force by maybe a foot before my fist landed slightly but squarely on the edge of greg's jaw. as he fell backwards with a look of shock on his face, i tried to get on top of him, over him actually. instinctively i wanted to bust him in the face a few good ones. sid and another peacemaker from high school, tom, (a todd marinovich's dad if ever there was one,) grabbed me at the shoulders and tried to get legs in front of me to keep from falling on top of greg like an ambush. i did not say a word. my jaw was clenched and i was focused, determined. they were yelling at me to relax and backup. sid gave me a brief monologue on how we were all good friends and we shouldn't let politics and different views bring us to violence. by us he meant me.

i let my weight fall to try to get that one good shot in, the one i craved like something more than chocolate or an energetic drunkenness or an illicit evening with a former lover, but those guys caught my weight and pulled me away from my mean-spirited, ignorant prey. greg landed on his ass and rolled backwards onto his back, and reached at his jaw as if his touch would somehow relieve pain. he whined about what the eff was wrong with me and he actually suggested he might sue me.

the thing was, (is, really,) greg's views have real consequences. irresponsible americans who can't study, don't care to turn a critical eye on themselves or their choices, do not actively work to be better humans or feel any sense of responsibility towards their fellow man, they are disproportionately to blame for the disparate power of corporations, the influence of cash in our government, our wars, our facilitation of high crimes, and the list goes on... these things affect people's lives. they create the kinds of real human hardships that result in unnecessary pressures, broken families, poor parenting, self loathing and so on. i guess i have just been too close to those things and i want to make change.

i have had experiences when i needed to be angry and focused and able to confront physically. i was at a party once where this guy had been drunk and passed out and was put into a bedroom. later, he woke and in another room he overheard me talking to his girlfriend. there was a slight flirtation in the conversation but nothing too overt and it certainly was not leading to anything. it was social gymnastics. from out of that bedroom he came like a demon, raising his voice only when he was within a step of me. he reached for me with his left hand and cocked his right arm. i put my arms up to block a forthcoming punch and scrambled to my feet and he got me right in the eye. immediately i felt a sting and sensed puffiness. a couple of guys grabbed the guy and pushed him away. my heart raced and my breath quickened. my mind scanned a catalog of reactions and vacillated between demonstrative rage and just letting the guys who were holding him work him outdoors. it went the way of the latter and the truth is, i wasn't that angry. my senses were heightened. i had some fear, some fight or flight and some survival instinct but mostly i just thought about what a fucking cro-magnon man this guy was and how angry he was. i considered going out after the guy. my eye was swelling and i knew i would have a shiner. i was offended-the guy's fist had invaded the space occupied by my face, but i wasn't particularly angry, or angry in the measure you might expect. i was pissed but what was i going to do? hunt the guy down? hatch a plot to murder him? run outside and attack him as if a little more violence would make some meaningful difference in this unfortunate event?

when i think about the people who allow the tea baggers to flourish because they don't know and can't analyze history, (thereby doomed to repeat it,) when i hear these same people promoting their ill advised, misguided world views, i get pissed because i know the real and far-reaching consequences of their laziness. i can't help but feeling violent. in a way i am a humanist terrorist. i have laughably little power and by the sheer force of culturization and happenstance, my friendships, (my enduring friendships,) color me an islamic fundamentalist amidst a sea of western influences. i am backed into a corner. there is nothing i can do to stem the tide of ignorance. and so i am mad, mad like a boxer and mad like a hatter.

i screwed that once casual friendship. greg and i have not spoken since i attacked him. my other friends think i owe him an apology. sid told me to call him if i want some help figuring out how to approach greg. (smug jerk.) it will be some time before he and i speak again as well. i don't need these friendships. i have enjoyed them from nostalgia recently but otherwise i have changed in ways that mark me as significantly different from this crowd. i want these friendships. i think they say something about me. they keep me connected to foreign ideas so i don't feel aloof and they allow me to take off my seriousness like a wool cloak. because of the ubiquitous volatility, i, (we. actually,) spend whatever time we have together, laughing and joking. in time that will wear on me but in the past so long as it was not too interminable a period, i have enjoyed getting together with my old friends.

now i have to reevaluate. am i unstable or am i the sane one? honestly, i think i am the sane one. while i never intended to administer some sort of universal flow or karma, i do feel like a vessel that was just there when a little straight right was one hundred percent appropriate.

independence day

2011-07-02T11:03:00.001-07:00

this is the summer of my discontent. all around me the flag is flying. red, white and blue adorns my favorite pub. a neighbor put a huge "old glory," in her main window. my city is decked to the hilt for the festive holiday bash complete with concert and fireworks on july 4th evening. and me? i feel like i can't even speak my mind. disparage america, (or god,) and watch how quickly countrymen turn on you.

why? is it from reciting the pledge of allegiance as children? is it just that our world is scary enough without having to question our nation and our leaders, past and present?

america, you lied to me. you said you were great but everyday you play small. you are the sum of your people: 4% evil, 25% good and 71% lazy. you talk about american exceptionalism as if american imperialism was a myth, as if hegemony was a false notion, as if to claim a moral high ground?

how in the world could you ever claim moral high ground dwelling in the gutter as you do. if your government was by the people and for the people what the hell is citizen's united?

when i was a child i was taught that america only engaged in war when it was on the side of righteousness. when i grew up and opened my eyes i learned that our leaders told us lies to gain a semblance of support for the war in vietnam. i learned that america lied and bombed laos and cambodia. i learned that vietnam, like iraq and afghanistan was fought to create wealth in the military industrial complex, (at the expense of taxpayers.)

in the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of
unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

we must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. we should take nothing for granted. only an
alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

- president dwight d. eisenhowser, farewell address, 1961

i learned that america supported despots such as pinochet or suharto for our own financial well being, (which of course really only means the financial well being of our wealthy, ruling class.) america was friends with and educated: noriega, hussein, bin laden's family members, bautista, and so on, but easily turned on them when their demise was secured.

what happened to you america? what happened to the america of jefferson, washington, lincoln and franklin roosevelt? (hell, what happened to the america of eisenhower?)

who killed fred hampton? it was you; america.

who jailed geronimo pratt? it was you; america.

who feared che guevara? it was you; america.

in my adolescence i considered america the greatest country on earth, and myself of the lucky few for being an american. i slept well at night knowing we had a public safety net. if i should become crippled or otherwise unable to support myself, welfare and disability would help me to survive. when i reached retirement, social security and medicaid would help me to survive. today there is a gathering roar to dismantle these programs within you, america. even as you cut taxes on the wealthiest, even as you protect loopholes for mega-corporations, even as the wealthy and the corporations prepare to move to china and beyond for the next great wave of production, sans occupational safety and health, sans environmental protections, sans a living wage, the growing faction within you plots to disassemble these programs by any means necessary. your mean spiritedness dismays me, america.

your capitalism has run amok, america. your people, lazy and listless,repose beneath the false notions of the past, believing your leaders are not bought and sold, teaching your children to discount so many murdered citizens of other countries or worse, to disregard the unknown and unimagined living in those places, questioning nothing. questioning nothing. america, you are a people who question nothing.

i am sad this independence day at the pomp and circumstance about me. i saw a flag unfurl atop a building this morning down on main street and i recalled the feelings of pride and patriotism i once knew. i remembered how good it felt to learn about fdr's new deal in school, or to read about our involvement in world war II and how we ended hitler's reign of terror. i remember a teacher explaining to me the writers of the constitution knew there were some bad laws in place when it was written and so they made it malleable. and so it changed to abolish slavery and allow women to vote and so on.

how do we celebrate america when america, the idea, is so ill it is nearly dead? how do we celebrate america when 'bring us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses,' has turned to 'get your immigrant-looking ass out of my country?' how do we celebrate america when common sense medical reform is demonized in the face of overwhelming statistics illustrating how truly horrible our for profit system is? how do we celebrate an america that tortures? how do we celebrate america?

how is angelo mozilo not in jail? how do corporations get away with murder in america? why does america care so much about eliot spitzer and anthony weiner but hold no one accountable for credit default swaps or the abolition of the glass steagall act? how did america become the land of manufacturing consent?

i am not feeling it. i am not feeling like celebrating my country because i love my country and the ideals it once represented. i love my friends and family and countrymen too, but i don't want to celebrate with them especially if they think nothing is wrong. decry, decry, the 4th of july...

lebron james

2011-06-14T23:38:00.000-07:00

i can't really understand how anyone doesn't get the antipathy directed at lebron james. how could one not see his quote after the heat's unexpected failure as at worst deplorable and at least in poor taste. i wouldn't rank him down there with milosevic or qadaffi. he's just an entertainer. but in his realm he is a villain for a reason. the root cause of his vilification is his poor judgment.

to be fair i recognize that i probably would have had every bit as poor of judgment as lebron had i been given so much at such a young and tender age. (see born rich for a poignant illustration of this phenomenon.) lebron was a celebrity in the 8th grade. consequently he never even felt the need to consider how to woo the public. he did not think he needed to do that. after all, when you have millions of dollars, are in the physical prime of your life and widely accepted as an athletic marvel, and have no idea what you don't know, what else is there? no one tells lebron know. he even has a posse around him as a constant reminder of how truly wonderful and omnipotent he is.

"he is," is a perfect phrase for describing lebron. he is an amazing talent, markedly more naturally gifted than those he is currently failing by comparison to, (i.e. michael jordan, magic johnson, et. al.) he is the embodiment of youth, even relative to his basketball career. he is a major celebrity with all the accoutrement of that fabled status. he is beloved and reviled, which is exactly the opposite of the worst humans are capable of feeling for one another, not feeling at all. to this point in his career lebron james has been the jehovah of the hardwood in as much as he has been expected to exceed everything heretofore known in the basketball world. however, something odd happened along the way.

in the year he should have won a championship, in the inaugural year of the new paradigm for winning, the age of not just two "superstars," per team, but three, an idea he can easily be credited with inventing, (for lack of a better word,) lebron james failed. this should be nothing new in the world of sports. failure is germane to sport. failure is the other 29 teams. failure is the best hitter 62% of the time. failure is the boston bruins or vancouver canucks tomorrow night. failure is michael jordan with the wizards. failure is the chicago cubs. lebron was not supposed to fail. he might have won a championship a couple of years ago with cleveland but this year, with dwayne wade and chris bosh, (and a complement of solid talent betting fractions of their salaries on lebron to take them to the glorified landscape of champions,) he was supposed to win it, all the more once the heat had traversed the rigors of the eastern conference to meet the third seeded dallas mavericks in the nba finals, (with home court advantage no less.)

why did lebron fail? the reasons are myriad. first and foremost, in a word, his game. lebron's game is made for the regular season. when that horse of a man barrels down court towards the basket on a tuesday night in philly or toronto, who wants to get their body in front of him and take the contact in hopes of getting the charge call or at least thwarting the two-point effort in favor of a possible miss or two at the foul line? no one. some will. occasionally. most won't unless they see a clear advantage or they are for some reason desperate. the playoffs and certainly the finals are different.

lebron is so physically gifted to date in his nba career he has not been challenged. he is an above average shooter and he is simply a monster when attacking the basket especially on the break or in transition. relative to his size his ball-handling skills and agility are freakish. so where is lebron deficient? he not only has no idea how to beat those teams in the playoffs who are utterly committed to stopping him, he has no idea he needs to have an idea or that such an idea even exists. he is fucking clueless.

other than kareem abdul jabar's sky hook, there is and has only been one weapon ever for overcoming that level of commitment the mavericks recently displayed. the mid-range, pull-up jumper. that shot in the hands of a master in unstoppable. when you think about jordan in his early career with doug collins scoring 63 on the celtics, the basketball prowess he displayed was more than remarkable. however, it failed. jordan, like lebron and so many others, was in love with his own athleticism. at about that point in his career jordan recognized he needed to get others involved to succeed, and he needed to score easier. he couldn't make a move on two defenders, slash to the basket and creatively score a basket every time down the floor. even kobe figured this out at some point. a gifted basketball player, by the very nature of the game, has a huge advantage on the pull-up jumper and from mid-range it is the easiest pickin's there is in the nba game. in fact dirk nowitzki's range of mid-range shots are just variations on the theme. karl malone was a great player because his mid-range shot was deadly, moreso as his career progressed. the same can be said of charles barkley. in his best year, when jordan's bulls defeated his suns in the finals, his ability to score from mid-range complemented his other, power game oriented skills, to such a point he nearly led his team to a championship against all odds. scoring without expending maximum energy is the hallmark of the greats. reggie miller was great because he succeeded at the long ball like it was a mid range jumper.kevin durant is great because of his shot. all the rest, all the stuff lebron has in spades is substantial and effective, but that uncanny shot, that ability to score using less energy, is the difference maker. lebron simply hasn't had to develop it and hasn't had any idea he has a need to develop it. in fact he likely acted from instinct and the sub conscience in choosing to partner with dwayne wade. wade is his perfect complement in as much as he possesses what lebron lacks to the hilt but does not have the body to endure his own style of play night after night over 82 games per regular season plus playoffs year in and year out.

as complementary as lebron and wade are and were to one another, in the finals their team did not have the game plan to beat dallas. their aggressive rotation became an achilles heel against a patient team willing to keep passing until they beat the rotation and take only open shots, (as much as possible.) had the heat been able to shift styles back and forth between what they did and living with a basic man defense, they could have kept the mavs off balance and likely lowered their shooting percentage. it's hard to blame the heat coaching staff however-who could have imagined them losing?

so back to why lebron's comments were so inane. they were angry. as a privileged millionaire, the point of his comment was to mock the average schmuck who pays his hard earned money to lebron's brand and the nba's brand. essentially he said eff you to all of the "haters," who do not live to his standard of living, (you know, the standard where you live in a castle, have everything you want, [except a championship, the true badge of greatness,] including a posse of employees at your bidding,) who had to wake up the next day and go to the office or the yard or the truck or wherever they earned their meager, sub par living. it is not offensive that lebron lives the lifestyle he lives. it is offensive that he is so offended by the regular guy's sensibilities. lebron feels entitled to his lifestyle. his greatness is, in his estimation and therefore, he sees himself as a gift to humankind and the basketball world. (he doesn't feel lucky or fortunate at all.) he thinks he earned all that he has. in fact he deserves a great deal of credit and a portion of his success can be attributed to luck, (in short.)

lebron reminds me of mary baker eddy who believed she could live forever if she purged negative thoughts from her consciousness and psyche. as her end approached she attributed her demise to the negativity of others being projected on her. in some ways eddy was a loon. in other ways, she was a revelation. she did live a remarkably healthy life after all.

this may sound like some sort of psychobabble but humankind is connected. you can see it in riot mentality just as you can see it in cases of extreme isolation. lebron's decision showed an utter disregard for the human sensibility that is loyalty. it would have been one thing to disdain cleveland in favor of miami. that would have been digestible to the masses even though it represented a change that was essentially an nba paradigm shift. the decision however, rubbed his sense entitlement in the faces of those who valued loyalty, or who believed in working class values, values in which it would be anathema to take the easy way out (of cleveland,) instead of persevering. so the masses turned on lebron, (excepting those in miami largely, who heralded his arrival as the beginning of a season of plenty.)

in the end it was a perfect storm. lebron's inability to score easy, (essentially his inability to take two hard dribbles in a direction, stop on a dime and hurl himself into the air while steadying himself for a mid range jumper, which is essentially in itself the inability to study and/or recognize, which again is a byproduct of having so much come so easily,) manifesting at the biggest moment in a system completely unprepared for the unfathomable failure that came about and was exploited by the little basketball engine that could, (aka rick carlisle's team oriented game, that is the dallas mavericks.)

i have rooted against lebron and the heat all season but lebron's comments did not bother me. i had to get up the next day and go work at a job i don't love. i did not feel bitter or jealous that lebron got to wake up in the opulence he has grown accustomed to. i do not begrudge the man his materials. i do find it disappointing he has not become a better lebron yet and he has not used hardship to improve. (once upon a time i could not stand mike tyson but then i came to favor him. to me tyson seemed to improve himself and he gained an air of humility i found refreshing and honest.) i am open to lebron becoming a better man and a better basketball player. his cause could be helped by having more of the masses on his side, too. he could woo the general public by gaining a measure of humility and becoming somehow genuine, (as opposed to writing checks to boys and girls clubs or some corporate charity.) if i were advising lebron i would start by having him apologize for being obtuse. (first, of course, i would try to get him to genuinely see how his behavior has been wrong-headed.) next i would tell him to focus on basketball and work particularly on his mid-range jumper. by improving that one aspect of his game i see no reason, (assuming dwayne wade's health,) why the heat should not win the championship next season. planning for that outcome i would advise lebron to be ready to accept that championship gracefully, by reacting honestly to it when it comes and by heaping praise on teammates and coaches and accepting laurels by pointing to his hard work and determination. over the top praise should be scoffed at. after all one team wins a championship every year. it really is not that big of a deal.

on selflessness

2011-06-06T20:45:00.000-07:00

selflessness moves me in such a way i feel like a human heart muscle bleeding out all over everything i conceive. i read a news story today about a group of 200 senior citizens in japan who call themselves 'the skilled veterans corps.' they have volunteered to go into the fukushima nuclear power plant to work on repairs to the reactor that was damaged severely by tsunami and represents certain illness and death for those who approach it.

the selflessness of this act impresses me. it simultaneously makes me want to jump for joy and sob like a little baby. i felt connected when i read this story, connected to humanity.

these japanese seniors are aware of, concerned with and invested in, the bigger picture. they want to replace younger employees and work in a place few are willing to work due to the precipitous likelihood of harm. they have cited a couple reasons why they should do this work: slower cell division makes a slower cancer, and the time is right for the nuclear generation to take real responsibility for their decisions. they also make clear that none of the members of the skilled veterans corps has a death wish.

what's more is this group of 250 recognize their place in the scope of our species. they’re pragmatic. they care. this quality more than any other touches me.

thinking of them...imagining them as as retired bankers and auto workers, doctors and garbage collectors, conjuring their thought processes, seeing them reflecting on these 60-80 years they have had thus far, fat with all the joys and pain of being human, childhood and adolescence, familiarity with the amazing capabilities of their physical beings but also tasting the bitter reality of the body's frailty...

knowing they will have focused on the specifics of grown children, grandchildren embarking on their great adventure, and some even contemplating the planned obsolescence that is great grandparenthood...

knowing how their hearts must swell at the idea of being able to make such a sacrifice for their kind. i think of them so bravely signing up for the group then having a quiet moment of solitude later at home, alone. i know they are resolute and i know they are afraid though i think their fear is more like a sadness in knowing their fear of death has diminished with age which must feel like surrender. i know they also feel a peace, a humble gratitude and a full knowledge they have not ceased to rage against the dying of the light, rather they have chosen to help the species rage all the more vibrantly and effectively.

the skilled veterans corps embodies all that it should mean to be elderly. they are wise and generous. their selflessness is legendary. we do not see this much in our lives-it is what attracts me to men like bobby sands and che guevara, ghandi and martin luther king jr. these men of various causes displayed the similar trait of recognizing the greater good and being willing to act even at their own peril. that touches me perhaps because i live in a society that seems to pooh pooh that behavior valuing instead the culture of gordon gecko and celebrity investors and respect for winning even if you cheated.

the reward for selfless behavior is clear and undeniable. it ranges from being able to sleep at night to the inner sunshine of bestowing a gift on the brotherhood of man to immortality, (such as immortality is.) still, in my society perhaps a majority of people with a choice of a material windfall and more time on earth versus the opportunity to commit an ultimate act of love and goodness would choose the former and smirk, "suckah..." all the way to the bank.

i read the story in a sandwich shop on my iphone at lunch today and i barely composed myself. i sat alone in a room of populated lunch tables eating my sandwich and reading and suddenly i felt like choking. my face flushed and i felt tears well up in my eyes. real tears-tears such as i typically know only at funerals or the like. i grabbed a hold of myself fiercely and pushed the emotion from my consciousness. i soldiered on through the story but at the end when the group's leader announces his expectation the power company will accept the offer from the elderly group to work on site, because, "they need us," i felt it again. it was a sudden jerking of my emotions right to the brink of overflowing.

i checked them again and wondered to myself why such a strong reaction to a news story. this was when i thought of che guevara and how his life story affected me in such a similar fashion, (so much so his visage adorns my calf.) i am slightly chagrined by the idea of having a man's face tattooed on my body, men being so fallible and prone to err. but guevara, like king and ghandi and sands, for me is selflessness incarnate. selflessness, when i see it, the selflessness of those who would advance the envelope of human understanding and evolution, those who actively work to hammer away at the veil of our time, who are discontented by the plodding advance of our age, it moves me in every way. it restores my conviction that goodness is winning, understanding is conquering ignorance, life is meaningful.

and to mr. yasuteru yamada of the skilled veteran's corps i say, "yes sir. you are right. we do need you."

sometimes

2011-03-20T20:30:00.000-07:00

sometimes i feel like tom cruise in minority report. remember how he would watch the film footage of his son over and over and replay the day he went missing and all its events again and again in his mind? remember how agonizing it was for him and even for you as the viewer, how you felt for him?

sometimes i see pictures of my kids and i feel like that. i feel like tom cruise, viewing the pictures as if separated from mark and terra, (as i am by work and obligation and school and a day’s activities, and any physical distance.) i long for them and i fear for them.

i don’t fear some horrific thing happening to them. (i merely rely on odds and karma to hope that stuff away, along with some vigilance.) i fear the world and all its cruelties, all its rude awakenings, all its unkind moments, its puppy love and encounters with policemen, its realizations about the system and money and how things work.

it’s funny, too, my little creatures could hardly be more selfish. it seems seeking one’s own is definitely a natural state and so i am helping them to learn the value of considering others. they fight amongst themselves and it is always the one against the other and of course, my six-year-old is more cunning than my four-year-old although he has some tricks of his own. it is interesting though because generally speaking they both are highly attuned to possessions and materials. they want stuff and they want to declare ownership of that stuff even if it’s not theirs but is merely in their possession in a given moment.

it is a complex dynamic this need to want or want to need and i think the buddha and jesus and perhaps even allah would agree with me on this one, (though i am not well versed on the tenets of the koran,) it is worth trying to overcome it. you see, when one is able to set that stuff aside, the petty wanting of a child, it seems to me they are free to become great and by great I mean, wholly kind, beautifully productive, givers and creators.

i look at those pictures of my children. i see mark grimacing over his mother’s shoulder dismayed at the sight of a camera staring at him and i can see what he wants more than any other thing. he wants to be loved. and, he wants to love. he wants to be considered and he wants harmony with his surroundings. he has zero malice in him. zero, in spite of the times when he may hit at school or refuse to share. those are the meanderings of a child trying to find his place, trying to know his boundaries and learn where his wants and needs should end and where the wants and needs of others, perhaps, should begin.

it is as true with terra too. i have a picture of her from the same day, when we visited the snow. she did not want to be bothered to pose for the picture but graciously she turned to me and made the best smile she could which ended up being super cute actually. it was different. it was accommodating, a sly tilt of the head accompanied by pursed lips turned up slightly at the corner and terra’s wide, curious eyes. she could not be more graceful if her name was audrey hepburn.

and that picture too, hurts. it is a reminder of all i have, all that could be lost if tragedy struck or i screwed up. it is a healthy reminder of everything i need to live up to on a daily basis. if it makes me cry it is from joy and pressure and a will to be as perfect a dad as i can possibly be, (knowing i have fallen far short of perfection so many times.)

terra, too, is angelic by nature. while she does seek her own it is because she is a child and lacks experience. i have no doubt when she grows into the woman she will become she will be a wonderful citizen of the world. unlike mark she is not prone to say “i love you.” she says it but with her actions. she is fluent in chinese and so I know the gobs of money I am spending on her private schooling is not for naught. she works hard at her homework. when she is scolded she takes it personally and feels genuinely bad for her shortcoming.

we were on a trip recently and found ourselves sharing a bed and at 5am mark popped awake like an early bird ready for a worm. he went to the bathroom and when he returned i asked him to snuggle up with me and try to rest a bit longer. as he put his head in the crook of my arm and looked indiscriminately up at the ceiling he had this comment for me; “daddy, when you are mad at me it feels like you don’t love me.” (is that heartbreaking or what?)

i know that question was a product of my imperfection. i know there have been times when my patience was in short supply and mark was being, well, four, and i expressed anger and frustration and in my eyes he saw utter disregard, (which in this gray world and that split second was 100% accurate.) i told him i always love him and that i was angry but i am just trying to help him be the best mark he can be. he seemed to accept that.

the thing is i am different than john anderton, (tom cruise's character.) i have not lost my children. i have them and i want to cherish them everyday. but i can relate to that feeling cruise's character represents. it's not something i dwell on but when they are not around and i look at a picture, i long to have them near me, which just feels more natural than whatever i am doing, more right. the pictures are bittersweet. they are memories. i love them even though they injure me ever so slightly.

9-year-old christina taylor green-rip

2011-01-09T00:11:00.000-08:00

tragedy is a word that fails to inform the death of christina taylor green today in tucson, arizona. this is one of those events that prompts anger, fear and pessimism.

this event is a sign and says something about america. in america we refuse to scold ourselves.

the fucking creep who went on a shooting rampage today in arizona killing christina taylor green, (among others,) blasting congresswoman gabrielle giffords in the cranium at point blank range-19 shot, six dead. fuck.

who was this killer? what group did he belong to that found gabrielle giffords so threatening or hideous as to shoot her in cold blood and indiscriminately spray bullets in a crowded area even killing a 9-year-old innocent? was it the gun people?

was it a group of small-dicked men who saw giffords as a threat to their right to bear arms? man i hate these fucks more today than ever. can you imagine how truly small they are, frightened to shivers over the idea their god-given, american, right to bear arms might somehow be in jeopardy. this is how dumb that group is; while some gun control efforts have been pushed and certainly there are people like myself who would not mind if there were no guns, there is hardly a discernible voice against guns being heard in the media or the public realm and yet, this group is easily riled and afraid. what a bunch of whiny, little, bitches.

was it the tea party?

in america we don't get together and call dumb; dumb. we never conclude. we value two or more opinions and we tend to act as if one opinion is as good as the next.

so if the murderer was a tea partier, it is high time we recognize that group for what it is. did you ever notice that the people who drank the kool-aid never admit or even know they drank the kool-aid? but they did and if we can't identify that out loud we're lost.

(you can click on the header to read the story as early facts came out...)

it has been 10 days since i wrote this angry opening to a blog post. since then funerals were held, speeches have been uttered and healing has begun, (most notably for representative giffords.) and politics went on as usual. the left, (certainly the progressive left,) sounded as i did initially. i did not think jared loughner was told to murder directly by sarah palin or glenn beck. i did not think palin or beck or any of the other right wing commentators were responsible for this shooting rampage. that said there are certainly lunatics of every political stripe. the point for those who decried palin's "targeting," of giffords and others on her website was to take the opportunity to state the obvious. it is ugly and irresponsible to use imagery such as cross hairs and verbiage such as, "don't retreat, reload."

and this is when we call a spade a spade. when national news happens we talk about it. what did the right want you to hear? don't politicize this tragedy. how convenient was that message? it wasn't keith olbermann or rachel maddow or bill press out there telling ardent gun lovers to fear so many bogeymen who would outlaw their guns or that the way to protect their second amendment rights would be to, "take aim," at progressive and liberal candidates.

nope. fuck that. on behalf of christina taylor green i say now is just the time to point out that palin and others have been irresponsible, (at least,) by using the rhetoric that would incite. there will always be unstable people and there will always be public figures of influence. it is up to us as individuals and collectively to recognize what is simply wrong.

wiki leaks

2010-11-29T21:22:00.000-08:00

Secrecy is the cornerstone of all tyranny. Not force, but
secrecy...censorship. When any government, or any church, for that matter,
undertakes to say to its subjects, "This you may not read, this you must not
see, this you are forbidden to know," the end result is tyranny and oppression,
no matter how holy the motives. Mightily little force is needed to control a man
who has been hoodwinked; Contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free
man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not
anything. You cannot conquer a free man; The most you can do is kill him.--
Robert A. Heinlein, Revolt in 2100

i am having trouble believing the cacophony of voices i am hearing complaining about the latest revelations from wikileaks. from hillary clinton, (who let's face it is just doing barack obama's bidding,) to a hack of a cornell law professor; william a. jacobson, myriad commenter's have been decrying wikileaks for making public so much secret or classified information.

this is a fundamental issue because as heinlein so aptly pointed out, secrecy is part and parcel to tyranny. in america too often we are told we cannot know certain information. if you have seen 'loose change,' you have an idea about the conspiracy theories around the 9/11 attacks on new york city, the pentagon and united airlines. what we can absolutely know about those theories is that they serve as a reminder there is too much secrecy in our government.

did america stage thee events of 9/11? i doubt it. is there a good reason america could not see the video footage from the shell station across the street from the pentagon? i doubt that, too.

are there things in the wikileaks documents that could damage our national security? perhaps. does that possibility outweigh whatever good could come from the wikileaks documents? no. given the level of secrecy currently practiced in our government, (to say nothing of the tacit permission granted by our press,) and in order to avoid the fate heinlein implies wikileaks is absolutely necessary.

so don't let anyone tell you wikileaks is somehow bad or harming america. that is crap. at this point wikileaks is covering for the poor journalism in this country. wikileaks is real news getting out in spite of the public's watchdog being paid to sleep in.

because we still can't know parts of the warren report, because the united states army tried to give us a completely fabricated version of pat tillman's death, because of the downing street memo, because of judith miller and scooter libby, because of 16 words in a presidential address, and so on and so on and so on, wikileaks is important and needs to be defended.

mark, olivia...and pam

2010-11-13T07:50:00.000-08:00

did i tell you the one about mark and olivia and pam? (it's kind of classic.)

one day mark let me know that he wanted to change his name. i objected of course.

"why would you want to change your name, buddy," i said? "your mother and i picked that name out. "it's your grandfather's name, too, you know."

he just insisted that he wanted to change his name. so i asked what he wanted to change his name to and to my horror he replied, "pam."

pam? what the hell is pam?! since when do gender crises begin at three?

a few days later my wife tells me mark wants to change his name to pam. she was as puzzled as me. jokes followed about my son being gay and i'll tell you, i really considered it. i thought about all it would mean. i imagined his life, (and my life in relation.) my grandchildren disappeared before my eyes.

in a way i suppose it was a healthy consideration for me. i know i am going to love my son for the rest of my life no matter what. and while i do not consider myself homophobic i do recognize that some aspects of that lifestyle can be difficult, more difficult than perhaps a straight lifestyle, (as it were.) so there is a part of me that sincerely hopes mark is not gay.

several days later mark again insisted he wanted to change his name to pam.

"damn," i thought. (this thing is not going away.)

so on friday i had some pizza and salad brought in for my team at work for lunch and as we sat around a big table in the warehouse chatting it up i told my story. i was sharing about how i was a little bit worried but mostly just thought it was funny that my son had been asking to change his name to pam.

"pam," i highlighted? not just a girl name but an out-of-fashion, girl name.

just then a girl sitting across the table who i had just hired and who was spending her first day with us chimed in. "does he watch olivia?" she said.

i answered in the affirmative and the new girl went on to tell us how her little guy also watches olivia and on a recent episode a new girl had joined olivia's class named olivia. at first the new girl was known as olivia 2 but it was all too confusing for olivia and so, she decided she wanted to change her name to, (you guessed it,) pam. (in the back of my mind i actually recalled the episode ever so slightly.)

everyone at the table began giggling including me. and in a way i was also relieved. yes, mark had gotten this idea from olivia, (and latched onto it.) 20 minutes later i emailed my wife to let her know where mark had gotten that "pam," thing, so she could also be relieved.

gender crisis averted, (for now.)

where men win glory

2010-10-13T21:08:00.000-07:00

i just read 'where men win glory,' jon krakauer's biography of pat tillman, and i came away impressed at what an honest man tillman was and what an incredible journalist krakauer is.

for his part krakauer kicks ass. is this guy the single best journalist in the world today? his construction of time lines, his knack for making valid connections and drawing relevant, insightful conclusions is par excellence. in an age of faux news journalism, in a time when what sells passes for news, when the institutions of journalism suffer from a dearth of credibility, krakauer treats his subjects objectively, thoroughly and with true journalistic integrity. his work reminds me of garcia-marquez's 'news of a kidnapping.'

tillman the man came through in krakauer's biography as a study in contradictions, a beautiful, artful, determined, motivated man of action.

i love this gray world i live in. i love the fact that the stories we used to tell have given way to complexity: truthful, black and white, white and black, sun dried, gemstone complexity. gray is the new hero. gray is who we are and what we do. (gray is the way we are feeling.) pat tillman was gloriously gray and deserves the adoration of a hero as few other in our day and age.

when tillman was a high school football stud in northern california he went out for pizza one evening after a big game and became in involved in an altercation between his circle of friends and another group from across town. tillman arrived late to the violent action but interpreted what he saw as an injury to a friend and so he set out to the right that wrong by pummeling someone who had zero involvement in the fisticuffs tillman had missed. he brutalized that person and administered severe injury.

as a reader i did not care for pat tillman at that point in his story. he was a prototypical, cro-magnon jock. however, tillman's parents, to their real credit, parented pat in such a way as they took him to the hospital to and made him apologize to the boy he injured and his family. they made him face his consequences in the criminal justice system and they loved him through the entire ordeal. this event seems to have colored tillman's life to a large degree.

there are other moments in 'where men win glory,' wherein the dark pat tillman can be seen, such as when he is vacationing in france and he gets drunk and tells some locals about we saved their asses in world war II then goes back to his hotel room and pukes all over the place.

krakauer also shows the determined pat tillman who was drawn to severe challenges and seemed to need to push himself to achieve in those situations. on vacation in sedona he dared leap from treetop to treetop, risking life on limb, for no other reason than to challenge himself and sharpen himself. on the gridiron tillman overcame and achieved. in spite of his diminutive size he lead his high school football team to glory. in turn he lead his college football team to over achievement and ultimately he became an arizona cardinal and lead the team to elusive success and established a reputation as one of the best players at his position in the national football league.

the rest of the story you know up to the tragic end. pat tillman was so affected by the 9/11 tragedy he decided to halt his nfl career from a sense of altruism to enlist, (despite his undergraduate degree from arizona state university which would have allowed him to enter the army as an officer.) he wanted to fight the enemy who wreaked such damage on the united states in real combat.

in this way tillman was simply naive. to think he could enlist and somehow end up across the field from the real enemy, the real perpetrators of those planes flying into those skyscrapers, defending all our honor in violent confrontation, was an idealistic notion that showed itself as such to tillman gradually throughout the course of his tenure in the us army, according to his journal entries.

in fact after having served in iraq and actually been near to the jessica lynch rescue farce, tillman returned stateside and through a friend made contact with noam chomsky for the purpose of arranging a meeting tillman wanted to occur only after his enlistment expired.

'where men win glory,' is, of course, a tragedy. pat tillman was shot down by ssgt trevor alders at relatively close range. the army and the bush administration tried desperately to lie to the american public, (again,) and tell us tillman died fighting heroically against a real enemy to be reckoned with, for the purpose of increasing support for an ugly, hate-filled, warmongering agenda. in the age of information however, lies like this are beyond difficult to sustain.

krakauer ruminates on the idea and consequences of friendly fire. he studies the complexities and contradictions of tillman's life. he puts the reader in the mind of tillman's wife and family as news trickles back home of his death. the sorrow is paralyzing.

on the other hand the light of coming to know some of pat tillman is edifying and enlightening on myriad levels.

don't criticize it

2010-09-27T19:59:00.000-07:00

this election season californians are considering the idea of legalizing it. proposition 19 is currently showing 42%-49% support statewide in polling and represents the state's best chance of jump-starting the economy. those entities opposed to legalizing it in november can't seem to come up with any good reasons for maintaining the status quo. instead they are resorting to the old standby of suggesting this particular law is poorly written and contains any number of bugaboos all californians should fear.

i'll leave it to the pros. click on the header to read jon walker's refutation of all the prop 19 opposing views.

mad men

2010-07-31T10:33:00.000-07:00

amc's 'mad men,' (which began its fourth season on july 25th,) is a fascinating look back at who we were. "mad men," is set in the early '60s and revolves around a group of people who are employed in or connected to the advertising industry on madison avenue in new york city. the show sheds copious light on the age, who we were and how we lived, and the nature, (and history,) of advertising. it is an amazing thing to behold.

the main character is don draper, (played by jon hamm,) a man to whom advertising is simply an extension of human nature. if a man is only as sick as his secrets, draper is unwell. he is a study in contrasts and perhaps the single most complex character ever seen on television. on one hand his secrets are of the largest variety. through every plot line draper's hidden past lays in wait as a potential catastrophe. by turns these secrets have threatened his marriage, his career and his credibility. they have been used against him by his closest associates and have haunted him in his loneliest moments.

at the same time don draper is an everyman who acts on a set of principles that have been slowly revealed and defined over the course of mad men's run thus far. when a foolish playboy shows up at the ad agency intent on spending his inheritance on promoting the sports business of jai alai, as if the american public will lap it up and multiply the young man's fortune, draper sees a moral dilemma and refuses to take the rube's money. (in true to form fashion the agency finds a way to overrule draper and capitalize on the job.)

on the other hand when draper's brother finds him in new york city, wanting only to be near his family and to have a relationship with him, draper throws money at him and orders him to get out of, and stay out of, his life, which ultimately sends his brother to an early demise. this moral black mark, however, can just as easily be seen as a virtue. draper's dilemma revolves around a choice he made, a choice from which there was no return. so when his brother appears draper's secrets, facts wholly hidden from his wife and three children, (and just about everyone else who knows him,) threaten the fragile structure of a life he has built against all odds and with careful precision. he has a trophy wife, children, a fantastic career, a suburban mini-mansion and the matching cadillac, and a certain freedom of movement common to career men in the '50s and early '60s.

in some ways draper is that typical poor, farm kid who grew up certain only of the fact he would not live this destitute life his "family," has given him forever. moreover for draper the need to climb is a moral imperative. he regards his father, (visited by don draper flashback,) with disdain for his life choices and his lowly station.

draper's morality guides his action but it is a subjective morality. he is unfazed by any moral implications of his extramarital affairs. it is as if he believes his behavior is his business and that so long as he provides for his family at a high level, compartmentalizes his life so that his wife is protected from the knowledge that would hurt, and otherwise chooses right action he is moral. (who is to say don draper is wrong on this?) for him it is as if his choices are in harmony with his persona or his personal zeitgeist. they seem to work for him. so when he apologizes to an underling or helps another subordinate who once tried to blackmail him or makes a kind gesture to a secretary, (all actions which contrast with so many of the others characters in the offices of sterling cooper,) draper is the hero of mad men. he is true to himself and consistent within his own boundaries.

mad men marks the end of the age when fictional characters had to be drawn in bold shades of good and bad. remember how pure and white and virtuous the characters of yesteryear were? could fred macmurray of, 'my three sons,' ever have acted badly much less made a mistake? could mike brady have had an affair unbeknownst to carol? would phylicia rashad, (as clair huxtable,) ever have sat down in a motel room with a couple of hitchhikers to smoke some dope? (don draper did.)

mad men is setting a new television standard. as we the viewers come to demand higher quality programming, soon we will no longer accept cardboard cutout characters the likes of cosbys or bradys or even the simpsons. by contrast mad men gives us complexity and nuance. whereas 'happy days,' and 'the six million dollar man,' or 'beverly hills 90210,' gave us black and white characters, mad men offers gray ones. the lives of these characters prompt us to think about our own lives and decisions and judgments.

more, as a historical drama, mad men is set in the early '60s and makes clever use of the real historical events of those days. just as we remember where we were when the twin towers fell, people who were alive on november 22 of 1963 recall exactly where they were when the president was shot. in mad men we see people agonizing over personal crises, getting at the work of day, and engaging in furtive encounters in hotel rooms, (as kennedy was felled in dallas.) similarly the drama that was the civil rights movement is seen coloring the lives of these everyday characters. this historical context adds a layer to mad men so that when marilyn monroe is found dead and every feminine eye at sterling cooper is wet with tears of profound sadness, we are informed about a certain innocence or ignorance of the day. afterall, mass media was a baby.

the business of sterling cooper is manipulating people, persuading them to buy things some of which have great value, others of which have no value. the advertising industry was in its infancy in the late '50s and early '60s but the basic mission is unchanged; represent clients by targeting demographic groups to persuade to buy something.

in those days marketing and advertising were new concepts just beginning to penetrate the american psyche. in mad men we can see businesses refusing to advertise or refusing to advertise in a certain way, (e.g. bible belt purveyors of bikinis who consider the two piece wholesome and refuse any hint of sexuality in their ad campaign,) and we know with certainty they are businesses who will fail. similarly we see tycoons, (based on real, historical figures,) embracing the new and we implicitly understand why they succeeded.

today the american society is under an intense pressure from advertising. it is in many ways a blight on our lifestyles. it is at once ubiquitous, malignant and benign. advertising is so powerful it dictates large swaths of our lives. not only do we elect public officials who most successfully advertise to us but it could be said our form of government itself is heavily influenced by how advertising makes us feel about certain issues thereby changing our attitudes. perhaps one day soon marijuana will be a legal substance. in that scenario advertising will have played a major role. likewise americans do not value liberty and some of the basic tenets of the constitution as we once did and advertising has played a role in that too, convincing us that fearing criminals and terrorists, (for example,) is more important than protecting our own rights to privacy.

'mad men,' serves as a study in how advertising came to be, what it represents and how it affects us. some of us advocate, (or merely pine away,) for responsible legislation regulating carbon emissions, but we think nothing of a truck polluting the atmosphere, (as trucks do,) for the sole purpose of pulling a facade up and down beach boulevard with an advertising message on it.

upon reviewing the commercial above we can see clearly how ridiculous the claim lucky strike cigarettes made was and yet, that commercial was successful. people bought it, which is to say they bought the cigarettes. our ads today are more complex but they work in just the same way, (only with greater precision i would assert.) in any 'mad men,' episode one can find insights such as might be gleaned from the lucky strike commercial some 50 years after it was made. what will be effective advertising for an airline? in 'mad men,' it is a little girl asking her father what he brought her home from distant lands. how advertising was sold in those days is also interesting in as much as it depicts the early days of schmoozing, taking the clients out and getting them drunk and showing them a good time in order to win the desired outcome. moreover it is important to think about these things if we are to immunize ourselves against advertising or what ails us.

televison shows which illuminate and educate are special. in this way 'mad men,' is the second best television show i have ever seen. it is both thoughtful and thought-provoking. the writers, (mathew weiner chief among them,) achieve on such a high level the little screen has become art. as viewers we can watch 'mad men,' and be entertained while simultaneously observing human behavior in a way that actually provokes insight. as a side note, january jones and christina hendricks make yet another reason to watch 'mad men;' eye candy. (if hendricks does not singlehandedly destroy the waifish supermodel, she may be invincible. hendricks has won me over.)

welcome to dodger stadium!

2010-07-24T17:25:00.000-07:00

i took the family to dodger stadium on thursday night.

yes, we got the matt kemp action figures and the manny ramirez figures too. my kids played with the kemp dolls throughout the game since i liberated two of them from their boxes. at the end of the evening matt kemp and mark raced back to the car with the loser having to ride home in the bed of the truck. luckily mark edged kemp at the last second and touched the truck first. at that very moment kemp hit a solo homer in the bottom of the 6th. yes, we left early. our tix sucked and the kids got antsy, (read: faith got antsy,) and so we took off but heard the roar of the crowd. i jumped in the car and flipped on the radio to discover it was matt's big night all the way around, (save for the lonely ride home in the trunk.)

to be completely honest, the game was a mixed bag. i kept thinking about how much i would like to tell frank mccourt about my experience with horrible seats, terribly designed seating, a bad usher, no straws, a ridiculously long line to get the free action figures, (it did move fast however,) confusing tickets, (again, just poorly designed seating,) more bad seating as the dust of my cracked peanuts kept flying into the hair of the people in front of me because of a breeze that passed through a wire, mesh fence underneath and behind my seat that should have been a solid fence...and then there was the really bad part. parking at dodger stadium used to be a breeze. (didn't frank mccourt formerly own parking lots? you would think he'd be better at this.) one knew there were two loops going opposite directions. one had choices. i came in at stadium way off the 110 and was funneled right into a lot to the right. i had to walk all the way up 3-4 flights of stairs, (with a 3-year-old in my arms,) to will call at right field reserved only to enter and walk all the way around to my seats in left field reserved.

because i was watching a game on the weekend and saw a commercial for $17 reserved seats for matt kemp action figure night and thought, "gee, bad seats but cheap. "my kids are little. "it'll be fun." (what a moron.) i felt penalized for not sticking to my usual standard of just not really going to baseball games in person unless i have some kind of a line on decent seats, typically on the field level, occasionally loge or club. the $17 ticket price became $22.75 per by the time the ticketmaster surcharges were paid. (it is both collusion and a monopoly-i am pretty sure. i am not a lawyer but i feel certain.) what sounded like $68 on the commercial bounced right up to $91. okay, big deal i can handle giving away an extra $23. fuck it. but to then have to deal with a parking situation that used to be par excellence but now is strictly a convenience for the organization? (i believe it must result in getting people off the property more quickly than in the past. that is the only rationale I can come up with. geezus chrimus i miss the o'malleys.)

from our seats in left field, (the first seats in the top row of the reserved section, my wife and myself along with my 3 & 5-year-old kids,) we could see my car on the opposite side of the ravine. "look kids, it's the bug truck! See it?!" "yep."

with lapfuls of hot dogs, cokes, licorice, action figures, and peanuts on our persons, we were booted from those really bad seats. a lady approached from my right and said to me, "you're in my seats."

"wtf," i thought?! "you mean these effed up seats, the single worst location i have ever sat in at any event ever are not even the right seats?!??"

how could that be possible. it was reserved. it was section 17. it was row jj. why there was an 'm,' in front of the seat number '10,' i had no idea but i thought i was in the right place. well, i guessed we were probably slightly further down the left field line in the same last or top, row, but a section over so like a reasonable person i took my family down a few rows and plopped down in the first available seats i found. they were better than that crowded, inaccessible back row.

for the next two innings we enjoyed the game, playing with our matt kemps, eating peanuts, posting pix to facebook, you know, all that night at the game kind of stuff. then came the couple who were supposed to be in the seats we were in. i asked them if we were in their seats before they could tell me and they confirmed my suspicion. i asked faith if we should move down a row and she asked them if they wanted to sit in the seats in front of us to which they agreed. cool. we would spend another inning right there as takahashi and kuroda battled like two samurai on a diamond-shaped war ground.

next came a mysterious kid with a ticket. he approached the couple in front of us, ticket in hand, (matt kemp in his other hand,) and said, "you're in my seat. "i'm only one." he was only one?! he was 11. how is he only one? despite 3 or 4 empty seats further in next to the couple they turned and looked at me. i looked at faith who could not have been more inconvenienced said, (matter of factly,) "we have to move."

i grabbed my 3-year-old and his sprite, put a matt kemp in my pocket and urged faith and terra to get out of the row we were in. they did and down we went. at the exit faith turned as if to
leave the stadium. i grabbed terra and pulled her back in my direction and went down to better seats, to a huge section of 30 or 40 seats that had been empty all night. i went down four rows, turned and went out into the middle of that mass of unoccupied seats where i sat myself and my kids down. faith joined us but notified me if it happened again we would be leaving. we were still in the 4th inning.

at that point the cotton candy guy arrived and i shelled out $3 for about 10-cents worth of sugar and pink food coloring. james loney got thrown out attempting to steal 2nd base and i booed heartily after which terra and mark booed too. with bases loaded in the top of the 5th and two outs kuroda faced his counterpart and I yelled out, "strike out the bumb!" (i think they heard me down in the loge section.) mark mimicked me and repeated the phrase. now this was why i came to the park. i told terra matt kemp's licorice was in fact a freeze ray and just one of many
superpowers kemp had in addition to hitting baseballs out of the park and throwing runners out from miles away.

all went well for a couple of innings. the dodgers held their slight advantage and the family maintained our grip on our latest seats of choice. unfortunately, a bad odor soon became noticeable. no, it wasn't dodger stadium sewage. it was mark. my three-year-old had gas, which of course means only one thing, he would soon need to go number two. i had to do something and fast. briefly i imagined the dodger stadium restroom. i imagined getting mark into a stall and having to wipe down all manner of disgusting human byproduct. i turned to faith and informed her mark had passed gas no less than 10 times in about the last 90 seconds and suggested we leave, which we did.

we made our way from left field to right field, exited the stadium, walked down three or four flights of stairs, traversed the parking lot from the right field bleachers nearly to the exit, at which point mark won his race against the matt kemp action figure. as soon as we got home mark went directly to the restroom to do his business. mission accomplished. i turned on the game and saw kuo get the last three outs of the dodger victory. (goodbye six game losing streak.) i am just not going to bother with those bad seats in the future.

the smiths

2010-07-18T08:50:00.000-07:00

you know who was better than that band you really like? the smiths.

make no mistake. your band is good, way up there, but they're not better than smiths.

to this day the smiths feels like a favorite t-shirt. their music is familiar and comfortable and i wonder about the sensibilities which drew me to the smiths so many years ago.

"it was the lyrics," is what comes to mind first. but i know the rhythm section fit the rest of the band like a glove, imbuing the music with a light, sometimes jaunty, sometimes comedic touch. then i think it was johnny marr's style, his running, bouncing, moody guitars and his dark, forward leaning into technology. but then i think it could just be the divine voice and whimsy of steven patrick morrissey.

kitchen confidential

2010-06-23T19:13:00.000-07:00

i know i am late to the party on this, but the man is interesting and therefore deserved an examination. kitchen confidential is as much pop culture epic as it is epicurian journal. it reads such that the reader feels like he is directing the course of the narrative. one finds oneself thinking, "i wonder what-" only to have the thought answered before it was fully formed. intuitive writing like that is as rare a form as can be found. it is void of pretense and full of sounds and focus and communion. anthony bourdain has found his voice and is here exercising it like a booming artist.

read the passage below wherein bourdain defines what it is to want to drink, what it is to a sentient man to want to engage with his peers in an atmosphere of lowered inhibitions, and how thoroughly satisfying it can be to speak openly on all the taboo subjects, religion and politics and sexuality and whatever. whatever gets people uptight and private. it is in these conversations that a man comes to truly define himself after all. he can use bentley's or jewels only as a mask. but as a man thinks a man is. it is the forming of opinions and real values that say the most about a man and that matter in the scope of humanity or existence. anthony bourdain is a badass-i am here to say.

this paragraph describes a time in bourdain's life after he had sort of cleaned his act up. he is married and not addicted to heroin and working his ass off as chef at a prominent new york city restaurant. he spent this chapter writing about the work and the people. he describes his assistant chefs and those who could do in a world of pace and vigor in rich tones, speaking of their ethnicity and work ethic and describing the action in and around the kitchen such that you can sense the sweat on their brows and envision the wrinkled expressions on the faces of those who strain. sous chefs accomplish feats of daring-do. some waiters get it-others don't. at this particular point he has described a 16 or 17 hour day in the restaurant business in all its gory, fantastic detail and finally leaves the restaurant and walks off into the night.

I'm thinking about going home but I know I'll just lie there, grinding my teeth and smoking. I tell the cabbie to take me to the corner of 50th and Broadway, where I walk downstairs to the subway arcade and the Siberia Bar, a grungy little underground rumpus room where the drinks are served in plastic cups and the jukebox suits my taste. There are a few cookies from the Hilton at the bar, as well as a couple of saggy, bruised-looking strippers from a club up the street. Tracy, the owner of the joint, is there, which means I won't be paying for drinks tonight. It's 1:00A.M., and I have to be in at 7:30 mañana, but the Cramps are playing on the jukebox, Tracy immediately fiddles with the machine so there's twenty free credits-and that first beer tastes mighty good. The Hilton cookies are arguing about mise-en-place. One of them is bitching about another cook nicking salt off his station, and the other cook doesn't see why that's such a big deal-so I'm gonna be involved in this conversation. The Cramps tune is followed by the Velvets singing "Pale Blue Eyes," and Tracy suggests a shot of Georgian vodka he's got stashed in the freezer...

and what's next? next is a ride away from the utilitarian grind of the every day, away from all the pretending that you give a shit about certain things and instead expressing your true, sincere feelings of love and adoration for some art form or another, a friend, a new idea you heard about or something profoundly trivial. to call this time escape from responsibility is to deny the cure for responsibility. i don't trust people who don't drink or engage in some form of inhibition combating vice. they hide things and put on airs. they're covering up self-perceived inadequacies. they are not generous and they do not share their selves on a level of those who trust on such a level they are comfortable getting out of sorts.

this is bourdain's charm. he portrays a class of people often shunned or in some way denigrated by society in a shameful case of a naked emperor. in fact these are the salt of the earth. these are god's children if ever there could be a god of love. these are the open, tradesmen of the trade winds sharing in and out like great, big, interrogative marks, poets by action, seekers by day and night, friends to be sure. he portrays by representation, and the voice of a kind, engaged sage comes through.

kitchen confidential is the evidence of an individual from the drinking, cooking, working, connecting, enjoying, struggling, winning and losing, succeeding and failing, beautiful-loser class, capturing some of the magic of his life to share.

bloody sunday

2010-06-20T19:06:00.001-07:00

bloody sunday in ireland was more than 38 years ago and yet justice was finally served. (i love justice. i savor it. i require it.)

when i read this story today, (after reading this blog post,) i was excited to see some real justice. the key facts of what happened on bloody sunday in derry, (northern ireland,) are outlined in the saville report, which took all of these 38 years to arrive at the conclusion that the actions of members of the british army were unjustified and unjustifiable.

nowadays we can look backwards and enjoy consensus on myriad points of justice, which were contested by masses of people in their time. i think of the warren commission report and the fact that some parts are sealed until 2017, (and can then remain sealed by executive order,) and the injustice confounds me.

all justice is important but slow justice is impotent.

writing this blog post is like trying to run with my shoelaces tied. this ilk of blog post, the class of entries having to do with political issues and ideas, makes for hardly readable, nearly incomprehensible essays and i really do not know why. i have had trouble organizing my thoughts on these things. it seems i start with one idea i think worthy of exploration then it seems the ideas themselves, those connected to the main, feel like they must be connected in a certain way and before i know it i have connected so many tangents, (or large ideas,) the piece itself sounds like altruistic proverbs at best, or folksy, uneducated ramblings at worst.

the point i want to make here is that it is good to look back and recognize truth. it is important to seek justice everywhere at every level. it is even good to hold people accountable, the perpetrators of crimes as well as the systems that support them. this video was posted at firedoglake and shows the faces of some of these irish citizens, who peacefully protested imperialist policies of their british occupiers, (some suffering a martyr's death,) and helps illuminate the plight of masses of humanity.

california politics

2010-06-08T21:07:00.000-07:00

it has always been odd the way california has elected such a mix of politicians, to say nothing of the inconsistent propositions and ballot measures. it has been suggested the mix was a product of the liberal north and the conservative south but too many outcomes have defied that logic. some have suggested it was the wind that produced such strange results, as in, whichever way the wind may be blowing in a given season. but from governors like the browns to reagan or wilson, (where arnold schwarzenegger is the median politically speaking,) to candidates as varied as barbara boxer and duke cunningham, california has always been a political riddle.

well guess what. i think i have solved it. i think it has something to do with voter turnout. i had every intention of turning out today but i failed to make it happen. early returns are suggesting a couple of these loony propositions may pass and i think it is a product of a seasonally uninformed electorate. in the big elections we do pretty good, (and by pretty good i mean only relatively speaking.) we choose some very good legislators and public officials and then we sometimes choose the least of however many evils. even schwarezenegger was socially liberal and thereby a study in contrasts, (even if he did come into office because the electorate was hoodwinked in the gray davis affair.) then on days like today we show up in modest numbers and anything can happen. if some special interest is energized enough they can sweep an initiative into law that really has no business even being considered by an informed electorate. (for its part money works hard and well to dumb down the electorate.)

i don't think ronald reagan or pete wilson could ever be elected in california again. we are the most complex, informed and sophisticated electorate in the united states and as such we are on an arc. we trail blazed the reagan and nixon politicians, the tea baggers of their day in as much as they were the near-far right, they demonized taxes and the governments they ran, and championed ideals of self determination as if we could all win in capitalism. and we're moving beyond that now. carly fiorina and meg whitman are going to spend record amounts of money to win barbara boxer's seat, (boxer is likely the best politician currently holding office in california,) and to win the governorship, (over retread jerry brown, who seems to bounce back and forth between being an excellent politician and fighter for justice and just another career politician,) and it will be especially interesting to see if they can win even with their gobs of cash. if they are defeated in the general election it will show california trailblazing again and showing that this most sophisticated of electorates in the country can be the first to overcome the influence of cash in elections.

i suppose we should also focus on getting the vote in between cycles so these crazy ballot measures don't slip into law.

your nightmare about parenting in 90 seconds

2010-06-03T23:43:00.000-07:00

you never know when one of those moments in life will happen to occur, one of those moments you will remember until the day you die.

one moment you're finishing dinner and two beers in a mexican restaurant, your stunning wife sitting across from you, your adorable little girl and your super cool little guy adjacent, the mariachi band you just tipped five bucks singing quizas next to your table, it is one of those perfect moments when all the work and self-discipline is worth it because your life is rife with joy and beauty, but the next second, your three-year-old screams out loud as if to signal something other than an outburst of bad behavior or anything you are familiar with.

there is no terror like your three-year-old son choking on a peppermint candy in a restaurant.

your wife cries out to you, "he's choking."

you don't know if it is necessarily true. the kid is yelping and he is clearly in pain but you're just not sure. still, you immediately tell her to hand you the boy. you take him by his ribs and you get his face up close to yours and you establish eye contact and you demand of him, "mark, are you okay?"

he cries back to you, "no."

you step out of the commotion, past the mariachi singer and the sublime trumpeter with the ridiculous hairpiece, by a waitress and onto the sidewalk where people take their dinner outside as if dining on a boulevard in paris. you see the people sipping coffees outside next door at the hip, independent coffee shop and you see all the street fair patrons travelling to and fro at the entrance across the street.

you move past a planter to the street's edge and you flip your son onto your left forearm, holding his chest in your hand. your memory of your training in advanced first aid and as an emergency medical technician comes to you like an old friend. it's been 20 years since you even thought about what to do when a child is choking but it feels good to have a friend show up in a crisis and you rap your son firmly between the backbones hoping to jar something loose from in his throat. your wife had added as you walked out that he had a candy in his mouth.

your son screams though not as loud as you have heard before when something less tragic, (like your daughter would not give him the leapster,) has happened. you are worried. a man walks up and offers to call 9-1-1. you tell him maybe, you're not sure. you pull mark up and you ask him again if he is okay or if the thing is still stuck.

he sobs a little and in a high-pitched squeal says, "stuck."

your heart breaks right then and there but at the same time, you're not panicked. you flip him over again and rap him two, three, four times on the back. the boy is tilted towards the ground at about a 38-degree angle. you think of that dinner and the two cups of horchata moving towards his esophagus by sheer force of gravity. nothing happens. your son is crying but not crying, because he is choking. he is crying and he is choking.

you slap him on the back another time or two and you are beginning to panic and you look at the kind stranger who looks at you like he is freaked out and needs something to happen. you flip the boy back up but he is just all furrowed brow and worry and tears falling fatefully down his cheeks. he looks like he wants to quit and you decide that no, nobody is quitting and you are not going to need the 9-1-1 call because that candy that is stuck in your son's throat is coming out and you turn him over again and you lean down and rap him firmly between the shoulder blades and you get your face down next to his ear and you tell him to cough. you say it two or three times, "cough mark. i need you to cough. cough, mark," you yell.

the heel of your right hand bounces onto his back and he coughs and immediately throws up and the stranger is on the front side of him and he is bent down real low near the upchuck and he points with a certain elation and says, "there it is!" "it's out!"

you hold mark in that position so he can throw-up some more if he needs to and you gape at the mostly white peppermint candy with the thin ridges around the edge. it may be slightly larger than a dime but it is as menacing as anything. he turns and tries to pull himself up so you lift him and hug him and the stranger advises you to still take him to the hospital. you say you think he is okay and the stranger, (who is not only not a stranger at this point but as kindred as anyone you have ever met in his kindness and his tender humanity, and his willingness to be involved,) he asks if the candy in the puke is the only one and you tell him it is. your boy had only had one peppermint candy, (you're pretty sure.)

you ask your little guy if he is okay and he responds in the affirmative, his face wet and his eyes swollen. you want to let his mother, (and sister,) know he is okay, so you thank the stranger a couple of times, noticing his cleft upper lip but thinking of the comfort he brought you and how he could not be more beautiful and he tells you it happened once to his four-year-old daughter. you nod and wave and go back into the restaurant squeezing your son extra tight, thankful beyond words for the gift of a tragedy averted.

they are sitting at the table, your wife and your daughter, acting normal as the mariachi band disperses, and you think about how long the ordeal had lasted. it was probably a minute-and-a-half but you remember every detail and think it seems like it had been 5-10 minutes, easy. you tell them he is okay and you explain the story briefly, telling your wife he had finally thrown-up as you tenderized his back, and the candy had dislodged at that moment but you thought he was fine. you sit with him on your lap and you comfort him and rub his back endlessly and kiss his forehead and ask if he is okay and he burrows his head into your armpit and wraps his arms around your middle and you ask your wife if the bill has been paid and she says the waiter took her card but has not returned it yet.

you wait. you are in a bit of shock yourself. you hold your boy. you rock a little marvelling at all the people completely unaware of your drama endured. and the waiter shows up and your wife asks how much to tip and you tell her, remembering the uneven delivery of food, the forgotten tortillas to accompany her fajitas, the unsavory taste of her shrimp...you think, (off night.)

you go outside and sit on a bench, your son still safe in your arms, which are tensed with muscle memory. when your wife comes out peering around you point her towards the obstruction laying in the vomit, which she walks over towards shielding it from your daughter's view who is interested but knows not where to look.

she returns and kisses your son and looks at hims and tells you he has broken blood vessels under both eyes, which when you see them they spark a reconsideration of the panic you skirted throughout the interminable minute-and-a-half.

as you walk home amidst the friday, summer evening revelers, mostly teenagers escaped from their parents who plod through the street fair certain they are having a fabulous time, everything slowly and gently returns to normal. you take a deep breath and dare momentarily to think of another outcome than this one. you shudder. it makes you angry and you want to cry just thinking of such bad things.

at the end you know life is this way. it surprises and shocks you occasionally. you are optimistic in thinking life is not absurd but rather you put your best foot forward every day. you see all the positive ground amassed throughout history, and you trust in personal dignity and good karma and you embrace your vulnerability, your position of limited power, and you hope and convince yourself it is enough and you know that it is enough.

true love waits

2010-05-12T21:16:00.000-07:00

true love waits

i'll drown my beliefs, to have you be in peace

i'll dress like your niece, to wash your swollen feet

just don't leave, don't leave

i'm not living, i'm just killing time

your tiny hands, your crazy kitten smile

just don't leave, don't leave

and true love waits, in haunted attics

and true love lives, on lollipops and crisps

just don't leave, don't leave

the first time i heard true love waits it was a warbly, bootleg recording. radiohead would bust the song out occasionally, tease audiences with this sickly sweet crooner of a tune, then just as quickly act as if it never happened and they had no idea what song people were talking about. (eventually they acknowledged the song's existence by releasing a live version on the 'i might be wrong,' ep.)

if you clicked on it above and listened however, you will know what i am talking about when i say 'true love waits,' is beautiful. when i heard it, all warbly and thom yorkey, falsetto spooning my ears with that chorus, "true love waits...don't leave...just don't leave..."

yeah, it's desperate but perfect.for me it arrived post any fantastical notions about fairy tale true love and all that but it served to remind me and revive the memory of those feelings and so on a nostalgic level it appealed to me anew. i can listen to it any time. it conjures children so deeply in love they could hurl themselves in front of a speeding train if denied. i miss that feeling in a way, though i would never return to it. still, i visited it every so often by listening to this song.

however today i learned of something called a true love waits pledge. the pledge is used by christian youth to affirm their faith and commitment to remaining chaste until marriage and it goes like this:

believing that true love waits, i make a commitment to god, myself, my family,
my friends, my future mate and my future children to a lifetime of purity
including sexual abstinence from this day until the day i enter a biblical
marriage relationship.

and as you may have guessed, i saw radiohead's 'true love waits,' a completely new light. now it seems to me the real meaning on commentary are not as the surface may suggest, that true love, real love, the meaningful pure love, waits, that it somehow knows itself and guards itself and waits out circumstances. no. rather it seems the idea that true love waits is commentary on the immaturity and perhaps even ignorance of chastity vows. obviously choosing not to have sex, at any age, is not immature, but choosing not to have sex because of mythology, be it belief in imaginary creatures or afterworld punishment or that a future relationship will somehow be soiled or sullied, is silly.

it was this article that got me to thinking about all of this and it is a truly interesting read.

brothers in a mine

2010-04-07T21:11:00.000-07:00

i feel like holding my breath over and over and over until some miners are rescued, (preferably four,) from deep in the earth in west virginia. it could be my little act of fraternity. i hope they're alive. i hope they're doing everything they can to conserve breathable air. i hope there is more than one and they are together and they are taking heart in the spirit of humanity, in knowing that a tremendously calculated rescue effort is underway and in feeling the energy of millions of their species hoping and pulling in their minds for an outcome of life.

there is something about people trapped, such as in a mine. their lives probably ended a couple of days ago, or maybe a couple of hours ago, or maybe they're alive, huddled in a safety chamber, hoping. the terror of being trapped in a small space without much air, (to say nothing of the other necessities for human life,) along with the inability to know anything whatsoever is compelling. so many humans who typically struggle to agree on anything, are like-minded on this one. they're hoping against odds for life to prevail.

as it is 25 are dead. 25 men who were surely the salt of the earth, surely hard-working, colorful brothers and fathers and husbands and exes and coaches and pupils and friends and enemies and bosses and subordinates and strangers and neighbors, have deceased. they will not dig dirty coal from the ground ever again for the massey energy company.

it seems massey ceo don blankenship has not been a big proponent of safety in the face of slimmer profits. he has thrown a lot of money at lawmakers and been closely tied to a corrupt administration, which suggests he may be one of those millionaires who loves money so much he exemplifies the root of all evil. i hope this disaster, (an utterly ineffectual word if ever there were one,) changes him on a deep and personal level.

massey is a national flagship of union breaking, unfortunately, which is likely a factor in declining safety. (please rent the movie; matewan, for an understanding of the roots of the struggle between miners and corporations.)

i am somber tonight. i feel brothers. i feel them far away mourning and working to find and raise our other brothers. good luck-be strong.

i am sure it is dark as a grave tonight in the upper big branch mine. this song, spring hill mining disaster, written by ewan maccoll and peggy seeger but sung here by bono, (about the springhill mining disaster in nova scotia in 1958,) is poignant in both its lyrics and mood.

stability

2010-03-12T21:29:00.000-08:00

i like the idea of overcoming odds and i am surprised by some of my outcomes.

once upon a time it was all the victory i needed to merely avoid heroin, keep from becoming a junkie. nowadays i find myself trying harder than ever to have a successful marriage, create a successful career. according to statistical data i recall hearing when i was a kid, i was supposed to do heroin. i think there is also demographic evidence suggesting i would have a high likelihood for divorce if married or maybe even that i would be a failure in such an endeavor or end up incarcerated.

one of the things i do not blog about is my relationship with my wife. that is not for public consumption, (not that anyone would particularly be interested.) what i will say is marriage is difficult with two small children, two years apart. it's a lot of work and includes the pressure of responsibility. it is a stark contrast, for most people, from life before children. having said that it is nice that rewards are all the sweeter in proportion to levels of difficulty.

i am focused on doing well by my children and so far, so good. there are things that could be better, but overall i feel like things have gone well and they will likely only get better.

my goal with them is to help keep as many options open to them as they wind toward adulthood, as possible. you see my theory is that as we grow up and age, possibilities fall away from us like shimmering mirages. perhaps a more precise way of putting that would be, as discipline fades, so do outcomes.

for example, let's say president of the united states and nuclear biophysicist are on the top tier of career outcomes. it may be accurate to say some outcomes such as these, can disappear from a child's realistic horizon as early as age five or six. i mean, if terra was eating poorly, taking in the sugary kid's cereals, if she did not get a good night's sleep, if we weren't reading to her regularly, (to say nothing of actual traumas some kids endure,) perhaps her ability to discipline herself, to develop an attention span, or to make complex connections could have already dropped to a level that makes this tier of career outcomes unattainable.

so when i ensure her diet, sleep pattern and reading mentoring, are kept in a range i deem acceptable, (important,) i am just trying to keep those possibilities, those outcomes, open and available to her. any choice will be hers. if she doesn't even go to college but chooses instead to marry and have children and stay home and raise her brood, i will love her just as much. but i have to help her have choices some day. the more, the better. that's my job.

she can choose not to be academic once she is an adult. until then, it would be very difficult for her. she can choose to live like a hermit avoiding human contact some day, but that would be impossible for her as a child because her mother and i are trying hard to help her have a healthy childhood, (filled with human interaction.) as an adult she will be free to choose not to maintain her physical fitness, but as a child, no chance. she will be strongly encouraged to engage in physical activities for the purpose of increasing her strength and agility, similarly so she can have more possibilities available to her when she becomes interested in making choices, in this case about activities she may want to pursue on a higher level.

faith was talking about class sizes, worrying that terra could metaphorically fall through the cracks. i responded saying it would be impossible for her with two present and engaged parents like us, in spite of any imperfections.

(i am having a little thing for a sentence with a comma and a little, extra, independent thought attached, lately. sorry.)

anyway, i never valued stability much in my life. what i needed in that way i took and expected. as a husband and a father i find myself embracing stability, thinking about it along with my health and insurance and investments, (and health insurance.) these changes in life of late were not so much unimaginable to me in my former life, (my single, carefree life,) as they were simply unimportant to me. i needed my family and i was pretty much forced to maintain those relationships, (this is to say i went to them and it was especially rare for them to come to me,) which i did and did not mind.

stability is king now. stability is the byproduct of loving my family and wanting the best for them and me. stability is the through-line in my values. stability is me walking home from the bar. stability is analyzing my childhood, (blogging about it even or writing in my journal,) and learning from it instead of self-destructing in alcohol and

irresponsibility. stability is my new nature.

why business?

2010-03-03T22:13:00.000-08:00

i have been thinking a lot lately about what i like about business, (and how i ended up here.) the thing is, i actually have an aversion to business.

business is strategy. business is calculating as many metrics as you can possibly discover and define in order to leverage the forces they represent to your favor.

when i was kid i loved to play chess and stratego, so there is something about business that i enjoy. as i have worked in businesses and business environments, my aim has been to rise in the business world as high as i possibly can so that i can reach a position of influence and show a different way of conducting business. you see, i believe there is a different way. i believe there is a better way.

as it is, (in the world but particularly in our country,) business is fairly ruthless. capitalism is, in it's truest form and unchecked, an economic system that values profits above anything else. profits are more important and more of a consideration than state, than morality, than human harmony or any notion of brotherhood, than future generations, than mother earth, than family, than church or god. this is not to say there are not those who conduct business in a fashion that runs against the grain of capitalism's truest definition. (However, visionaries like ray anderson are few and far between.)

so how did i end up doing business? i love art.

in particular, i love film. film has power. it is extra sensory and it appeals to me on multiple levels. it makes me feel. it opens my mind. it brings a million other lives into my focus. in this way it is more important than electricity, (for those who may be dependent on it.) the end of central station put me in touch with more emotions and insights relevant to my life and to my education than high school. film, like the great novels, has taught me my path.

i love music. in particular rock music, classic rock, alternative rock, progressive rock, ambient, house, techno, pop, glam, (sometimes,) blues, jazz, bossanova, metal, punk, emo, groove, rap, folk, classical, opera, all that stuff. music moves me. it has the power to calm me or excite me. it adds.

additionally, i love just about every art form i have contacted. i have at one time or another envisioned myself as virtually every type of artist. that said, i have never appreciated the discipline of any art form, (well perhaps writing however, that's been a dirge of an affair thanks to maslow's hierarchy of needs,) at least not enough to dedicate myself to it.

my motivation and passion in this world is rooted in justice and humanism. i consider myself informed by the arts but i have endured in my relationship with business since stumbling into it at low level jobs for a couple of corporations, (and now a small business owner,) because of a belief that one must know the dragon before it can be slain. my greatest satisfaction would come from the realization one day that i have a made a difference in business, in how it is conducted, perhaps in some who conduct it inside and outside of my realm, inside and outside of my time. (points short of such lofty goals would also bring me great satisfaction.)

as an aside, an even greater aspiration would be to figure out how to win consensus on a large scale. i guess this is leadership. iconic leadership. the men who have accomplished this in the past are the men of history. to get people together around the idea that the influence of the masses could transform our world, our realities, in an incredibly short time, this idea powers my life.

if i conducted business in such a way as to hold humans at the center of my idea of success, if providing not only fair employment but the kind of employment that offers dignity and a level of prosperity that is commensurate with the talents, effort and dignity of the worker, represented my ideal outcome and my greatest satisfaction, i want a world where these ideals are prized.

if i ran a company that marketed itself in such a way... actually, if i nurtured the consumer who was willing to pay more for a thing because the company aspires to a set of agreeable values and embarks on a relationship with its clientele based on trust and marked by transparency, i could change the world. if my company heralded itself as the company with the slightly higher price but which maintains an average employee salary 20%, (hell, 12%,) above industry average, which does the very best it can by the environment and which practices a level of disclosure unprecedented in modern times. that company would immediately dry up and go bankrupt in today's business climate. however, if people agreed to pay extra to patronize that company, and if that company created a groundswell of support, made the ideas famous in a way the business model began to apply pressure to all businessmen to change their ways to compete or die, well, it's possible, (especially in our modern age of mass communication.)

i believe a company marketing itself in such a way it pleads for customers based on it's innate goodness and symbiosis with man, if it gained that trust by publishing itself in every way, well, an environment can be created in which companies compete with each other by outperforming each other in goodness. can you imagine that?! maybe not and isn't that a sad testament? we are capable of so much and yet, we are easily confused, (en mass.)

so quietly and discontentedly, i plod on in business. i don't know if perhaps i am a tragicomic figure. in many ways my path has been that of least resistance. my lack of discipline has limited my achievements and yet i have educated myself. my former insecurity about my self-education has recently been replaced by a peace associated with my understanding and my understanding of my station in life, (as it were.) outside of slightly long hours my quality of life is good, though it could be better. more importantly i want for a better quality of life for all people.

i want to work at a company where the employees work harder than those at most companies because they appreciate and are a part of the ethos of the company. that is to say they know they are paid more and appreciated more, they know that their jobs are less specialized and thereby of a higher quality than the former model. they know they are respected and treated fairly and so their output dwarfs that of the masses of men who would toil for companies of the practices of the past. they know that the people at the top of the company make more than those at the bottom but they know the gap is equitable.

i am going to continue to do business. in spite of the fact that i have found precious few kindred spirits in business, in spite of the fact that i tend to look soft as a manager, i am going to keep doing what i do, which is to live my own example and keep pressing on in the direction that represents my path.

chomsky trumps zirin and hitchens

2010-02-14T13:13:00.000-08:00

if you have read my blog before you may know that i participate in a yahoo group called the sporthinkery. it is moderated by my good friend, bill gould. sportswriter dave zirin has been involved with the sporthinkery for some time even if his participation consists primarily of posting his 'edge of sports,' articles, (or his articles that appear in the nation.) (Click on the header to read dave's most recent article on christoper hitchens' broad attack on the winter olympics and all things sport in newsweek.) often times what i read on the sporthinkery compels me to write in to the group in response and occasionally my response seems worthy of a blog post...

it seems zirin may have had a thing for hitchens at one time and feels betrayed nowadays. personally, i can't stand hitchens and i think zirin has it right when he accuses him of "amputating with rhetoric." in spite of the fact that i enjoyed 'god is not great,' i found it to be far short of scholarly in terms of debunking the mythology of belief. rather, it was a fun romp through the foibles of so many belief systems.

what is more interesting about zirin's piece, however, is how he defends sport. it is as if billie jean king and muhammed ali and jackie robinson would not have existed as activist heroes were it not for sport. (personally, i think they would have but probably with different names. after all, martin luther king jr. was a preacher and not a celebrity or sports star. nor for that matter were most of the other prominent players in the civil rights movement or any other righteous movements for justice or peace or fair treatment.) it is nice that some sports stars stand up to be counted from time to time. i rooted for drew brees and the saints recently just because he had a moment like this. i love jim brown and john ameche and mahmoud abdul raouf and all of the others who speak up from time to time. (perhaps more importantly i can't stand the vacuous sports stars like tiger woods who reap huge rewards in terms of upward mobility, something that is less likely for an individual in the united states than just about any other first world country, and seem to instantly forget their roots, their working fathers and mothers, their neighbors, the working class.)

still, i could not help but wonder if zirin has ever seen or read noam chomsky's 'manufacturing consent,' wherein the sage of m.i.t. speaks of sport as that which occupies our minds and renders us impotent by means of activity as numbing and distracting agent as opposed to allowing us to demand the equality we deserve, (justice,) as a proletariat waging a class war. (of course as dennis kucinich recently pointed out, in this country we have already lost class warfare.

i don't feel guilty about my affinity and preoccupation with sports but i do recognize that my time could be better spent. in fact i have seen as much beauty in sport as can possibly exist. i have been as thrilled as is possible by miraculous outcomes. the human drama has transfixed me and i can never again engage at a level i once did. while i love sports that are new to me as if i were still a child, while i love hockey and even have a new favorite player in la kings defenseman drew doughty as if i was 12 again, (about the same age as doughty,) while i can be amazed ad-nauseum by the maneuvers of the greats on the soccer pitch, these twists and tricks that are so foreign to me, and such, my interest in the nba and mlb wanes a bit every year as it seems it should with any aging man. if my team is good i get closer, more interested, more aware. when they suck, (see the dodgers from the early 90s through two to three years ago,) i am bored and hold only a passing interest. i have friends too, who would belittle me, as if it is not my interest in sport that is falling away but rather my manhood and i am sad for them their immaturity and inability to grow and change.

as i get older i am increasingly interested in legacy, in leaving something good behind me. many of my friends would consider that sensibility absurd. i consider it ennobling. who knows what i can possibly leave behind me but i want to try and so as i negotiate my days i feel a simple happiness when i recognize my waning interest in sport and an increase in time i am able to spend trying to find ways to fight the powers that be. zirin and hitchens should just defer to chomsky on this issue. in this clip he talks specifically about sports, (as well as supermarket tabloids and astrology as that which is meant to dull the brain.) the message is clear, sports dull the brain. "sports," chomsky asserts, "is a way of building up irrational attitudes of submission to authority."

iced mountains

2010-02-03T21:28:00.000-08:00

dear coors,

please leave the device that is cold blue mountains off of your beer. it's insulting.

look, i know that you are merely creating an impression of value. i know that the raw ingredients in one of your beers costs pennies. even the mass produced glass bottles are only a few cents more. the dollar per you extract from me is something of a gouge but i am at peace with it. your massive profit margin is merely annoying.

all of your marketing efforts, like the blue mountains in case i am certifiably brain dead and cannot otherwise know if my beer is in fact, technically, or certainly, cold, add value, (you believe,) above and beyond the basic cost of the ingredients. the feature that is these cold activated images is your justification for charging a certain amount more for your beer.

i'd prefer you just charged me the amount and left the asinine white or blue mountains off the label. they just make me think you think i'm like, "duhhhh, yeah. these mountains are so cool, plus they could actually be handy in an ice chest when a warm six-pack has been added."

i don't want my wine-drinking friends to think i am a dumbass because i drink beer.

fear

2010-01-27T23:07:00.000-08:00

no fear.

don't fear the reaper.

fear not.

fear and loathing.

fear the lord thy god.

fear. fear. fear.

fear [feer]

noun

a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; the feeling or condition of being afraid.
a specific instance of or propensity for such a feeling: an abnormal fear of heights.
concern or anxiety; solicitude: a fear for someone's safety.
reverential awe; esp. toward god.
that which causes a feeling of being afraid; that of which a person is afraid: cancer is a common fear.
-verb (used with object)
to regard with fear; be afraid of.
to have reverential awe of.
-verb (used without object)
to have fear; be afraid.

i can imagine no condition i disdain more than the state of fear. teaching my children to fear fear and fight fear and avoid fear and challenge fear is one of my primary responsibilities as a parent.

it is the single worst thing i have ever felt. moreover, it is easily the most stultifying feeling one can harbor. i've heard some parents consciously or subconsciously hope their children do not surpass them in certain ways, (i guess the ways that are most important to them?) perhaps they do not want to be outdone by their children from a severe insecurity. that very idea is abominable.

fear comes naturally in this world. as possibly the only species on the planet with self awareness, the only creatures who know we are dying, who understand the consequences of living, who must face down the fear of our own demise either sooner or later, we have a unique relationship with fear.

i am a-scurred, too. i am afraid of things so seriously that i will not even utter what they are for fear of giving them an upper hand. (i suppose it's that old mock the devil and he will flee thing.) fear is my worst me. any prejudices i ever had were born of fear. any childish beliefs came from a basic fear, a basic fear i was born with. when i was a child i was afraid of the darkness. i feared nightly. i was afraid of getting lost in downtown la after that happened to me once. i feared brutal stepdads. i was afraid of failure, (still am.) i was afraid of success. (yeah, still am that, too.) and so on...

if i want to be my best me, i recognize that the absence of fear is a basic starting point for me. i think it is for everyone, too. whatever scares should be debunked and demystified. if foolish consistencies are the hobgoblin of little minds, the most foolish consistency of all is the act of allowing fear to persist.

do you fear terrorism? are you afraid of bullies or ghosts? does the concept of a hell bother you? does cancer scare you? heart attack? impotence? old age? lost youth? traffic collisions? government conspiracies? random violence? getting caught? your dad? guns? your boyfriend's wife? the number 13? what is it? whatever it is i hope you vanquish it.

i think as we age our fears create our illnesses. whatever we fear that is able to gain some dominion over us leads to those ways in which we become twisted. maybe it leads to physical debilitation but what seems obvious is that fear leads to mental and emotional instabilities, which can in turn lead to real psychoses.

i think it is always important to be on one's guard from fears. for me to live a healthy life i think i must try hard to render my fears powerless, recognize them for what they are, deconstruct them, then proceed in the knowledge learned unafraid.

and so it is with my kids. i want them to be fearless. i want them to be respectful, but fearless. as it is i do not allow terra to be afraid. she suggested she was afraid of the dark at one time. she said she was afraid of monsters. she said she was scared of the noises outside at night. every time i heard something like that from her i scoffed. i explained it was natural to worry about those things, (and terra is certainly one who worries about new concepts,) but that ultimately we could know certain things about what scares us. when she feared the dark at bedtime i asked her if every morning she woke and everything was fine and she confirmed the truth in that statement. when she expressed her fear of earthquakes one night recently after seeing some images from haiti at school, as she cried over something that is actually worthy of some real concern, (concern, not fear,) i spoke to her of odds. she did not understand odds. so i appealed to her sense of trusting mommy and daddy to do everything humanly possible to keep her safe, which pacified her. since then the subject has come up a couple of times if briefly, which tells me she still has some fear about earthquakes but i feel like we're working on it. we are a team, her mother, mark, me and her. we are always at work on dispelling our collective fears. i am hopeful one day as i lay on my death bed she will be there, she will be brave and thereby show me she is prepared to endure without me, and she will console me and i will die in peace knowing full well that we are and have been dignified creatures.

i'll tell you one thing i am afraid of. i am afraid of terra and mark someday harboring many and sundry fears. as one who admits the influence of conditioning, i in no way think my children are immune from the maladies of the evening local news. rather i believe it is my daily duty, my life's work, my most noble charge to help them combat fears of all types. in this way, if i am successful in my small role in mark's and terra's sphere of influence, my babies can live healthy lives, daring greatly, perhaps failing from time to time but achieving too and accomplishing balance in their lives.

fdr said it. right? "there is nothing to fear but fear itself." respect-yes. but fear? no. it is a sad state, a bad way to spend one's life, every bit as unfortunate as poverty or physical debilitation.

what to read

2010-01-16T19:13:00.000-08:00

i will be the first to admit i can't read everything but then, it is awfully positive that there is so much good stuff out there to read, (though it looks like a coffee cup on the sea compared to all the bad published word out there.)

the header above links to a glenn greenwald story from salon.com. i used to read salon regularly but for whatever reason i had not been reading it recently. i happened to check in today however, and was rewarded with this thoughtful piece by greenwald.

it is interesting how that works, too. years ago i read salon and talkingpointsmemo.com religiously. lately i have been reading firedoglake and alternet mostly. huffpo gets me intermittently. i read mark morford regularly. i read a few blogs. i used to read mediamatters regularly but probably haven't been there in six months. great site, but who has the time? i get my sports from yahoo, espn or edgeofsports.

anyways, i wanted to share the article and the sense of pleasant surprise i got from visiting a site that had been out of my rotation a little bit.

should obama be a one-term president?

2010-01-10T19:41:00.000-08:00

it is certainly worth considering forcing timothy geithner to step down as treasury secretary but it would also be reasonable right now to call for the resignation of barack obama.

democrats, (and probably republicans too, for that matter,) tend to think in terms of eight year blocks once they get a president elected. that has been a sound strategy too, considering the effectiveness of incumbent candidates. however it is time for change.

the democratic party, (and by that i do mean democrats,) could unseat barack obama after one term and elect another democrat president, perhaps even a more progressive, less corporatist candidate than barack obama. perhaps dennis kucinich could win, as the populist real deal. (or how old is ralph nader these days?)

please click on the header and read the bloomberg news story. the secretary of treasury of the united states, then in the capacity of head of the new york federal reserve, advised aig to hide information from the american public in order to get away with paying full price on credit default swaps, which in turn cost american taxpayers $62.1 billion. indeed, it was a back door bailout brokered by the new york federal reserve, geithner's organization. $62.1 billion taxpayer dollars?

i'll be honest, i am not sure i am advocating for unseating obama at this point, but i certainly respect the idea. not only did he appoint geithner to this vastly important cabinet position of tremendous power, but he had the best tools of investigation, to understand geithner's experience and ethos, money could buy. moreover, it is important for obama to be responsible for his decisions as president, and geithner's crime is egregious to such a degree, canning the guy who rewarded him and took advice from him, which suggests incompetence or worse, would be a revolutionary act of forsaking partisan politics in favor of simply exercising the collective power of the masses to act righteously as it concerns a matter of the utmost importance.

the federal reserve bank issues american currency and houses gold owned by some americans but also some saudis and kuwaitis and everyone else, but it is not a part of our government and it is ultimately beholden to its owners. as head of the new york federal reserve timothy geithner wielded a great amount of power, essentially on behalf of the investment bankers who own the new york fed.

$62.1 billion. i have to say that number over and over because it is hard to imagine that amount of money. it's huge. in response to the bloomberg news story, the white house has commented to say the advice the ny fed gave aig to not report the credit default swaps happened at a level lower than geithner and he was unaware of this advice and therefore not responsible. (where have we heard that before?) geithner's bank told aig to lie so that aig could use the money it received from taxpayers to pay off gamblers. that is unforgivable and geithner's bank facilitated the heist and his head should certainly roll. $62.1 billion. the fact obama prefers to dismiss this as if the "geithner was unaware," defense is legitimate is abhorrent and oddly in contrast to obama's m.o. otherwise. typically he accepts responsibility for everything and talks about how the buck stops with him.

former new york governor eliot spitzer has been doing his best to call for the release of aig's emails, of which there are plenty. since the american people own aig, we certainly have a right to see those emails, which will likely reveal more info about who swindled the american people and how. we should all stay aware of this story and push for release of those emails.

as for obama, his behavior is distressing. we voted him in because we believed he would be different in so much as he would not play typical politics by advocating cover ups and kowtowing to the corporations. lately his behavior has been disappointing. if i believed democrats could be of one mind in refusing to nominate him for a second term and if i had faith we would take the high road is defending the decision and nominate someone like dennis kucinich to replace him from a position of strength, i could easily go along with that plan.

zealotry

2009-12-29T19:22:00.000-08:00

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!

2009-12-18T06:00:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-10T18:53:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-02T21:47:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-28T22:15:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-12T18:56:00.000-08:00

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

2009-10-30T21:37:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-27T19:39:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-24T21:39:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-12T23:18:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-10T09:38:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-03T14:47:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-18T19:55:00.000-07:00

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.

frank schaeffer on rachel maddow

2009-09-17T19:51:00.001-07:00

particularly about the 1:25 mark of this video clip, frank schaeffer, (author of "crazy for god,") makes a great deal of sense by simply calling a spade a spade, (or in this case, a village idiot a village idiot.) schaeffer is painting with a broad brush and generalizing, (or stereotyping,) on fundamentalist christians but the issue that is this fringe group hijacking american politics is beyond out of control.

in our time of political correctness, schaeffer is like a voice crying in the wilderness in telling us to move past these people since they are crazy. i can't agree with him more in a generalized way. after all, who votes for candidates based on one issue and one issue only, abortion? fundamentalist christians. it is their deal breaker and at the same time it is an issue that has been around for a long time and has swung countless elections, in spite of the fact that virtually no significant action has occurred around it in more than a generation.

which group hates the sin but loves the sinner but favors capital punishment? which group supports candidates who make war? which group opposes health care reform which would allow the least among us a basic modicum of care? which group is so frightened by gay people they constantly seek to marginalize members of that group at every turn? so, i have blogged about these things before but suffice it to say, the influence this fringe group has successfully exerted on our society and our political process is just bugging the hell out of me, (no pun intended.)

schaeffer is succinct. when he calls fundamentalist christians a fifth column of insanity, i cannot disagree with him. normally i wouldn't say it but i've just been hoppin' mad about the fact that christians, of all groups, have not come out in favor of helping the needy through health care reform.

(there it is. i said it.)

paltrow produces radiohead

2009-09-03T21:43:00.000-07:00

at about the 7:36 moment of this video you can hear gwyneth paltrow's introduction of radiohead at the grammies. at the end of her intro, "utterly brilliant."

paltrow's intro:

the extraordinary band about to play for us begins the next song with these
beautiful words: "how come i end up where i started? how come i end up where i
went wrong?" yet in truth, they have never went wrong. together they've become
one of the most influential, adventurous and thoroughly artistic musical groups
of all-time. performing '15 step,' from 'in rainbows,' nominated tonight as
album of the year, and accompanied by the usc trojan marching band, the utterly
brilliant, radiohead.

this gwyneth paltrow impresses me. in addition to her refined speech, she finds just the right balance in introducing the artists of our day. how does one do that without sounding worshipful or snobbish or self-centered or something? well, paltrow figured it out. she lays the praise on thick but she keeps it brief. she allows herself to be seen as a sycophantic schoolgirl for radiohead for a moment when she dubs them one of the most thoroughly artistic musical groups of all-time. she sums with "utterly brilliant," which radiohead simply is, and only adds to her own legend, (through affiliation,) as a classy and accomplished artist in her own right.

the weenie and those bolz

2009-08-26T22:08:00.000-07:00

mark was in the bath tonight and he was flicking his penis with his forefinger and so i reminded him of something we have been working on, which is not to play with his weenie. his response was to ask me a straightforward question: "this, weenie?"

"yes mark. that weenie," i grunted back as if rehearsing for the stage production of clan of the cave bear.

"what deez," he countered grasping one testicle in each hand as if they were wads of cash?

"uhhhhh," (damn, i thought.) (he's two and he is asking me about his reproductive equipment? wtfa?!) (already.) "those are your bolz," i stammered. i figured if i masked "balls," somehow, i would be giving him a straight answer but playing on his horrible pronunciation skills. (i'm serious. sometimes he sounds like he's one.)

"bahdz?" he asked.

"no. bolz," i answered intoning the sounds as clearly as i could, "buh-ohhhh-llllllllll-zzzzzzz."

"bolz!" mark shot back with a big smile.

he went on to repeat both words over and over for at least three minutes. maybe five.

"the weenie and those bolz," he joyfully exclaimed while flicking the little genitalia around like a gnarled boxer working the speed bag. "those bolz and the weenie."

indeed little man-weenie and bolz. laugh it up because tomorrow those are going to be the new words you are not allowed to say for a season.

the lion has left

2009-08-25T22:40:00.000-07:00

i just heard that "senator ted kennedy lost his battle with cancer," four times on msnbc. i take exception to this person on the television news program depicting his last act in life as defeat. can't we be past that?

everybody dies. everyone. so how can death be considered "losing," if it is as natural as birth? it should be verboten to refer to the end of life as a lost battle whether the perceived battle is with cancer or addiction or heart failure or any illness.

life is not a battle. it is a series of struggles with varying degrees of success.

ted kennedy was a human life lesson. he had great ambition that reached as high as the presidency. he had a frail quality in how human he was, which is to say how public and how tragic a figure he was.

he was known to be a drinker, which is probably something that had diminished recently and should also be outside of any consideration of the measure of the man. he lived the role of the public servant for nearly 50 years and without discussion of how healthy a thing that is for a democracy, the tone of his work is admirable. he senator'd quite well.

he probably got drunk, may have been getting a blow job for all we know, then he drove his car off a little bridge with a woman in the car. ted kennedy got out of the car and made it to safety. his friend, mary jo kopechne, did not get free of the car and she died. ted kennedy did not report the accident until nine hours later. he was already in congress and a drunken driving incident resulting in a death was certainly political death for him and he likely realized that. he probably panicked. there were probably a bunch of phone calls from influential family members and friends to those who could help. ted kennedy probably slept it off.

it is horrible and as kennedy's life bears witness to, it is not unforgiveable. it was a mistake. these things happen. they are random. they hurt. they hurt people. she deserved to have him report the crash immediately. she deserved to have him swim down and try to rescue her. (maybe he did try.)

i wonder if maybe he pulled on her and she was dead weight, knocked unconscious maybe by the impact. i wonder if he got his door opened and sensed growing concern over his held breath. i wonder if he kicked into the free water, completely submerged, or if he worked the door open as the car was half-submerged, and felt the car slipping away and pushing into the depth, and climbed around the swinging door and went for air, went for the shore. i wonder if he arrived at the shore and upon realizing he would survive, went back into the water if only half-heartedly, wanting so badly to see his friend paddle to the surface, a nightmare averted. i wonder if he plodded home swaying back and forth along the road in a haze of intoxication and shock or if he screamed and cried out into the frosty night. i wonder if he sat on the shore waiting for her to come out from behind him, from behind a bush or something, whimpering and holding on to hope like a knave at a magic show wanting so much for the magic to be real. i wonder if he called a friend, a wealthy or powerful friend who woul help and who would give advice such as, "nine hours is about as long as you can wait. "go get some sleep. "you got six hours until you get up, take a shower and make the phone call. "your story is you were in shock, you were delirious, and you took a sedative to calm you and you fell asleep, after which you awoke and called." i wonder if he executed a plan the way we would expect it to occur today, (kind of like how dick cheney reacted and controlled the situation when he fired buckshot into his friend while hunting, probably drunk.) i wonder if momentarily or longer, he thought he might get away with telling a story that he was not in the car with kopechne.

i admire wealthy people so much who take on the values of the other class. this is the kennedys. they fought for moral causes and used their wealth to gain influence and to pursue change in the name of virtue. i do not mean to beatify ted kennedy-i merely think it should be agreed that this man made choices which tended to help the lowly, which is in and of itself virtuous.

he should not be vilified for chappaquiddick nor for being a man who drank alcoholic beverages. he should be remembered primarily for what he did, his legislation and his inspiring speeches, his kindness and his example.

this is the legacy of the man.

edward moore "ted" kennedy was a noble man and certainly a noble american.

in defense of bjork

2009-08-21T22:25:00.000-07:00

wifey watches some of the pop culture tv and i noticed that references to bjork's infamous swan dress are always ridiculed on the e channel or vh1 or such shows. of course. the dress was intellectual and it was easy to construe as being anti-fashion so no wonder the industry vilifies it.

the swan dressed mocked the idea of designer dresses. because there is this paparazzi media for awards shows and people who love them, there is a little industry around shaping public fashion opinion. their authority is self-made and unenforceable, as bjork proved.

instead of a famous designer, bjork's friend made the dress. just think if every person at the academy awards wore something made by a friend, (ideally by someone who knows how to make clothing.) who would the paparazzi cover? would they create public interest stories, (like they do for the olympics,) to accompany the artists as the make their ways into the kodak theatre?

the point is sometimes the famous designers make dresses that are appealing but as taste is subject, it's a crap shoot. moreover, the idea of consensus in matters of fashion is representative of a sheep mentality. so who wants or needs that?

i liked the swan dress. it did not take fashion seriously and it was fun . bjork is cute so of course, she looked cute in the unconventional dress.

man bites dog

2009-08-17T21:29:00.000-07:00

i flipped the channel to the ifc this evening and came across 'man bites dog,' a belgian film from the early '90s. i remember the night i watched this movie, my apartment teeming with friends and acquaintances all somehow on the make, attending the 2nd or 3rd in a series of weeknight get-togethers called "movie night." in fact, i think 'man bites dog,' killed movie night.

before i go further i should mention the mere sight of the trailer i embedded could make you physically ill. 'man bites dog,' is a dark comedy to say the least. it is done in documentary style as a film crew follows a serial killer around various french locales as he goes about his business, some of which is violently killing any number of unsuspecting victims, and rants constantly on his world view, replete as it is with nuggets of wisdom and advice as only a psychopath can deliver.

Benoît Poelvoorde is a juggernaut as benoit, the pianist, philosopher, serial killer whose life rages throughout this mockumentary. the heart of the movie however, is in the perspective and perception of the viewer. i think anyone who watches 'man bites dog,' experiences a moment when they imagine themselves in the scene as a member of the camera crew, intent on filming this man and telling an untold if semi-known story, but crossed by the responsibility of acting against an illness disguised as cult of personality. eventually the film goes off the rails and ventures well beyond the ridiculous as the young filmmakers are either killed or become killers and rapists themselves.

on the other hand, it is just another slasher/cult film, only infinitely more clever than those which seasonally grace the screens of american multiplexes. when poelvoorde and director remy belveaux made 'man bites dog,' on a nearly non-existent budget as student filmmakers, they may have peaked, which is not meant to be a derogatory remark.

in the end 'man bites dog,' is a remarkably inventive movie that demands to be watched, which is an accomplishment in itself.

altruism

2009-08-16T16:13:00.000-07:00

al·tru·ism

noun
unselfish concern for the welfare of others; selflessness

Ethics the doctrine that the general welfare of society is the proper goal of an individual's actions

a visitor to my blog recently referred to it as altruistic, (or perhaps he said he saw moments or flashes of altruism-my memory belies my age.) the question is; does my blog exhibit an unselfish concern for the welfare of others; selflessness? does it promote a doctrine which considers the general welfare of society as the proper goal of an individual's actions?

i do have something of a belief system. it does not involve any magical creatures or even ancient texts, per se. it is simply a belief in humanity as exhibited through a tendency to act in ways which push forward and positively impact the evolution of mankind. in my thought, individuals who act in such manner are saints or are saintly in those moments when they achieve such action. some of the eastern philosophies regard right action as noble and i can certainly go along with that.

in a way i think the comment is more about my writing than about the content. i have a unique style of writing, one that is not particularly palatable to most people. i write simply. i try to put forth ideas that are basic. i want to distill things down to love and innocence and building blocks and earth, which is to mean, if all that is sacred comes from truth and truth is discerned by children, then i want my ideas to be discernible to children. i have no interest in pleasing the intellectual. i am only interested in him challenging me.

it was meant to be a compliment, this altruism remark, and i received it as such. still i know that some are bound to view my writing style, (if not in some cases my subject matter,) as somehow sophomoric and off-putting. (i don't like everyone's writing style.)

regardless of any commentary on my writing, i do like the idea of altruism. i want to be altruistic. i want my blog to promote the general welfare of society. i do think society at large, or the human race, is far more important than me. i reject out of hand absurdist and other views that consider life meaningless. and yes, i do think people's decision and everyday choices should be based in a broad way on the welfare of others, which is to mean, the welfare of our kind.

don't you?

the olbermann of history

2009-08-05T22:43:00.000-07:00

the health care industry is spending $1.4 million per day on defeating health care reform, olbermann tells us in his inimitable style. it is the moment of crystalline message and if this fact does not in and of itself convince you of the need to get big business out of our health care you may not be one of the literally millions of people who have come to prefer olbermann's left-leaning imitation of rush limbaugh, (the difference being olbermann merely stands up for what is right and moral, whereas limbaugh, a man whose career was started by huge seed money from right wing think tanks and donors, who funded it through two years of loss, after which it turned in to the giant edifice of profitable propaganda it has become even if showing cracks today, plays down to virtually all lowest common denominators and bears comparison to smut,) to limbaugh himself.

when olbermann earnestly summons ire and bluster to condemn this industry that spends so freely, he says americans in any region overwhelmingly support health care reform and, "the essential, great levelling agent of a government funded alternative to the unchecked duopoly of profiteering, private insurance corporations." by this rhetoric olbermann has come to be the single most prominent mouthpiece of an entire movement.

no, this cheese and crackers and birkenstock and vino class of americans are devoid of a leader. to their credit, it may be a thoughtful choice on their part not to seek or become leaders who would blur the purity of their message. in any case, the americans of future history who elected obama, who let things get completely out of hand but then retaliated on an out of touch party decimating it in 2006 to near irrelevance, the americans who called for the closure of gitmo, the withdrawal from iraq, the investigations into so many crimes and misdemeanors, the americans who became energized by the bush administration and poured their protestations into the campaigns of obama and hillary clinton, who stemmed a tide of apathy, self regard and corruption, will be regarded by history as significant and course changing.

no martin luther king stood at the head of this movement. the time was not marked by colorful protests that hooked the media and counterbalanced another war, a previous story of (republican,) corruption. in fact, in as much as this movement began in the idleness of the time when bush came to power and half the nation voted for him twice, in as much as it matured by enduring 12 years of conservative, republican rule in congress, it can be defined by its shortcomings in large part and all that was involved in moving it. still, in the end credit can be assigned.

yes, there were the markos's and the arianna's, the naomi klein's and the michael moore's, the ron reagans, thom hartman's and noam chomskys, the krugmans and the marshalls, and so many other voices which guided and propelled this movement but one voice can be heard above all, that of keith olbermann.

olbermann is not the leader of the movement, rather he is just a reporter but as such he is the most listened to, most discussed, most referenced word from this movement. he is in certain ways the conscience of it.

he is difficult to ignore, too. he brought his show to msnbc, (an obscure network to begin with,) in march of 2003, and by maximizing a powerful format that allowed him to touch on five large stories nightly but then also provide an angle on as many more stories as warranted in the hour-long format, he arced from poor to respectable ratings and a four-year contract extension in 2007.

unlike the raging, screaming disseminaters of republican values such as o'reilly or hannity, olbermann's path was been carved for him by these wolves who would argue against things like health care reform. it works like this; beck, limbaugh, scarbrough and the others fly in the face of overwhelming support for this reform by picking out little areas they think they can make headway in order to sway americans away from supporting what they clearly want. in spite of how much we spend on health care per person in this country and how poorly that ranks compared to many countries that do not even have private systems, they use fear to pull away a segment of would be supporters by suggesting that health care will be rationed or that senior citizens will euthanized. on the face these arguments are bogus and baseless but they work. individuals and small groups are affected and the overwhelming support begins to erode.

big picture arguments that illustrate a broken system get lost for some who see only these terrible possibilities presented by what are essentially the tools of the corporatocracy and the republican think tanks. the unknown of change becomes less palatable than the devil known. while the republicans are good at strategy and have been exceedingly effective at cuckolding working class americans, their positions are so bad it can only work for so long.

enter olbermann. when olbermann arrived, (albeit for a second stint,) it could be said republicans were at their apex. bush was the war president who enjoyed broad support in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. there were voices in the din which could be heard even then declaiming the move to war in a land unrelated to the terrorist attacks or any number of backwards policies but with congress under republican control, everything looked rosy on the conservative front. things were anything but rosy however.

republicans were spending taxpayer's money at unprecedented rates, (and refusing to account for it.) they manufactured a war against a woefully inadequate enemy. they politicized the presidency. they tortured. they retaliated against political enemies. they covered up.

for their part, many americans recognized these things happening but lacked the power to do much about them. it can be a long time to wait two years just to try to vote someone out of office, (just ask the democrats of connecticut who tried to cut lieberman only to have him run as an independent and beat an outstanding candidate in ned lamont.)

as another example, i live in the district of david dreier, the elder statesman of house republicans. he presides over a gerrymandered district carved out of the foothills of the san gabriel mountains. never an odder shaped district did one see but in foothills can be found the houses of the wealthy and so, despite neighboring districts represented by the likes of the sanchez sisters and adam schieff, dreier has a leg-lock on his constituents. honestly, i don't even bother to call his office. health care reform? why waste my breath? dreier was so lock-step with bush he probably had one of those nicknames bush handed out so freely. (bandar bush comes to mind.)

in any case, keith olbermann came to prominence by widely expressing the outrage of these otherwise impotent feeling americans who were embarrassed by all america had become.

nightly even those who tune in regularly likely just think olbermann is a newscaster or a pundit, a guy doing a good job and a voice in his time, but they probably are not seeing the historical significance. in fact, olbermann is the thomas nast of his day and the bush administration to include the hangers-on who are boehner and gramm and others, is boss tweed. olbermann is in no way the leader of a movement but he is a chronicler and an agitator on some level and ultimately he will be seen in a favorable light, certainly far more favorable than him who he flatters by imitation nightly.

freud

2009-07-31T21:26:00.000-07:00

my son stopped out back the other day, squatted, and poohed in his "big boy pants." right there, in our carport. in broad daylight. i guess he really had to go.

it is kind of heavy. don't you think? potty training. potty training.

i am really parenting now. sometimes i flash forward and imagine mark and me, in the future. he has come to me for money again and i am lecturing him on responsibility, (or something,) and he turns to me and he blurts out something he heard recently in a psychology class to the effect of, "i am this way for a reason dad. perhaps you should not have been so permissive in potty-training me."

mark is doing fine-i think. he ramped up quickly when we focused on urination and he has a good grip on that.

it is hard to know what is right in any number of moments. faith and i sometimes have differences of opinions but usually we bat them back and forth a bit and who feels strongest gets the final lean. and we act and we hope and we work and we cope.

because i don't think of myself as having been hard on my parents i am hoping to have the benefit of karma in such a way mark is not hard on me, (and he turns out all right.) terra, for her part, potty-trained quickly and seems unscathed by the experience.

still, i remember that psych 101 class. i remember freud's conclusions and i understand he has not been proven wrong about anything. the idea that parenting styles play a large role in determining who and how people turn out as adults makes all the sense in the world to me.

what do parents do? what did my parents do? what did your parents do?

do they think about these things as i am? do they tailor their parenting like a man creating a double-breasted jacket by hand or do they live and react daily all the while allowing factors such as moods and time constraints and measures of energy to play on their influence?

that is how i lose control of my master plan. sometimes i am tired and lazy from working and all the rest and instead of engaging with my kids i turn on the noggin channel. their little brains slip softly and smoothly into a lower gear, whirring along with the learning shows noggin presents but still enduring a decrease in synapses all the same. alas, i can read or work or watch a movie or facebook, (yeah, i used facebook as a verb-so what?)

do i feel guilty? at times. a little bit. unlike most guilt this one has a point. it checks me and helps me create more energy and focus for raising my children.

mark runs up to the act of pooping, (if taro gomi can use the word then so can i.) like a dragster heating up its wheels by gunning the engine so they spin ahead of the start line and ahead of the race, mark needs about three trips to the potty to actually execute a pooh. he knows he needs to go but then when he gets there he seems to become a little frightened and he changes his mind. i try to coerce him to stay but on that first trip (so far,) always to no avail. he cries and we put his big boy pants back on him and go about whatever may have been happening until some short time later he has to go again.

i told faith i think mark is experiencing a form of postpartum depression in that moment when he actually defecates. it is as if this thing his body has created demands exit and there is something in mark, in all of us, that is tied to our creation. it's not the major part of us. it's an overwhelmed fraction and hence, everyone poops. (right?) and so we all must have passed through this moment in life when we come to grips that this, our basest and most common art, these daily little creations, must be disposed of and discarded summarily. a two-year-old can only assimilate or consider so many facts or aspects of an issue, so perhaps they feel a base sadness in release but after so many times begin to realize they feel relieved too afterwards and soon, letting go becomes normal and they, (we,) never return to our initial misgiving.

faith and i are doing our best. we love terra and mark so much and we are trying to give love and guidance and support and nurturing as best we can. and i am trying to be responsible in thinking about these things. i don't want to just sort of guess and hope for the best.

here comes the bride

2009-07-28T20:53:00.000-07:00

sara and tommy got married this past weekend and did it in high style.

atop the roof of a hipster hotel in a sleepy beach town overlooking the pacific ocean sara and tommy exchanged vows of love and trust and devotion then hosted a party that baked in the sun above 5-star ensconced tourists, re-adjourned on a campground seaside as some guests hit the surf and others barbecued while still others played the guitar and drank more beers, then moved again slowly and serpentinely back across pch to the shanty, a dive bar for closers of which, this wedding had seven counting the bride and groom.

cue kc and the sunshine band 'cause, "that's the way, unh-huh, unh-huh, i like it!!"

sanders vs. bernanke

2009-07-22T20:11:00.000-07:00

ben bernanke is and has been in an especially important position. to have arrived at the prestigious position of chairman of the federal reserve, while initial privilege may have played a role, he had to have displayed an array of great skills in his arena which would include public relations. here, being questioned under oath by vermont senator bernie sanders, bernanke remains remarkably cool considering the facts of the case.

bernanke may have a sense of entitlement regarding not only the united states tax monies given to his agency to distribute to failing banks but also to the secrecy that has surrounded the transactions. however, he almost does not show it at all as he coolly answers questions as if his answers are respectable, honest and fair to the american taxpayers.

there is the one moment when sanders asks bernanke the names of the banks who received the tax monies of american citizens. bernanke has a moment where you can see his frustration. it is just a moment and it goes by fast but it is there, (for just a second.) otherwise this top banker plays his role and acts as if there are perfectly good reasons why the fed need not be accountable, (which of course is absurd.)