into the wild

sean penn's into the wild is like a promise fulfilled. virtually every movie aspires to be a cohesive work of art, wherein the story, writing, cinematography, music and art come together to make up a final product of great quality and value. However, it is rare when a director actually achieves a final piece of art that stands as a whole, instead of as a sum of so many parts. it is rarer still when all parts contribute to the same affect, when the art conveys a sensibility on multiple levels and imbues the beholder with emotion and movement.

into the wild delivers on the promise of film. unlike so many movies of great style and little substance, or those that assemble a memorable soundtrack albeit detached from the film, or blockbuster hollywood films that cater primarily to the baser senses, neglecting to engage the mind, into the wild works well on virtually every level imaginable.

chris mccandless' life story proves timeless, perhaps growing more poignant in the time since he lived it. penn and emile hirsch discover a soft balance in coloring mccandless' days on earth. the man lived an amazing life because he believed so greatly, with such ardor, that life could be different, that the trappings of our utilitarian society did not represent an unchangeable sentence neither to be deviated from nor struggled against. this, in and of itself qualifies mccandless as extraordinary. that the film portrays large aspects of mccandless' life and imagines myriad details in such a way as to avoid being patronizing or sensational but rather artfully realistic, is a testament to the quality choices penn and his crew made.

the story follows mccandless from his college graduation to a solitary lifestyle in the wilderness of alaska, flashing back on occasion to a typical american family life rife with so many contradictions which surely contributed to mccandless' overall sense of dissatisfaction with the status-quo. what really comes through though is not that mccandless is an insecure kid who acted irrationally or was disillusioned because he held too many illusions to begin with. rather, mccandless is seen as one of the sane few, living boldly and without pretense. this is not a cowboy movie and when mccandless is caught freeloading a train ride, he is beaten up just like would happen in the real world. despite the fact the train car was empty and the door was wide open and in no way did the train line lose money because of his ride, (he did not have the money to pay for a ride in any case,) mccandless is physically punished for freeloading, which seems ludicrous.

penn is fair, too, in his treatment of his characters. in some stories mcandless' character would be seen as irrational and irresponsible while hal holbrook's elderly retiree would be seen as safe and respectable. here we see the two characters as equals. holbrook's character has something to learn from mccandless, something about getting up and doing while one is still able, something about getting out in the world and staying busy with the business of living. mccandles in turn begins learning his own personal ultimate life lesson, the one thing he overlooked or took for granted when he was growing up in georgia, the simple fact that man is a social animal and therefore, man thrives in company and dies when cut off from it.

into the wild could easily have been an imax film. the cinematography is that breathtaking. and it's not just the footage in the alaskan wilds. yes, the views mccandless woke to every morning were sumptuous to behold on screen and the lighting guy for this production crew comes off looking like a genius, but when mccandless kayaks into mexico, or emerges from a homeless shelter to a menacing night time los angeles, or when he is seen working in the fields of the midwest aboard heavy machinery, the camera work is amazing. it takes you to these places and does not even seem to try to make it look beautiful, it just is and as the viewer, you know it.

the soundtrack for into the wild is an extension of the overall artistic endeavor. watching and listening it becomes obvious that eddie vedder was privy to a screening of the film without music because in crafting the songs, he succinctly matched them to the movie, to the characters, to the settings, to the feel of it all, and it touches the viewer listener in the heart and brain, yeah, but mostly in the gut. these songs are basic. they're that sound you make out loud or in your mind when you achieve something; "unnh." they're as simple and sparse as the alaskan wilderness and as complex and substantive as the notions of personal freedom and utilitarianism the film addresses.

Ed’s voice is unconventional and so sometimes it may not fit certain sounds or genres but it is achingly beautiful here. The recording is of a high quality as well but when his voice cracks on the front end of some words, it is fitting. it gives the song and the lyrics a crackling, hollow sort of quality that fits with a certain theme of wide open disconnection.

emile hirsch is superb as mccandless. while some may complain his performance was understated, they would be missing the point. mccandless did what he did for himself. his story is worth the telling because of how atypical he was in the choices he made, in his actions. there are no indications in jon krakaur's book nor sean penn's film that mccandless was in any self-serving. the fact that he considers writing a book about his experience later in life merely reveals the introspective nature he obviously possessed and one would expect from a writer. at times hirsh stands aside and lets the settings tell the story. at other times, he is keenly keyed in to the emotion mccandless must have felt at failing to translate what he read in books into his real life experience in the wild.

they really do not make films like this in hollywood anymore. it is complex and it embraces contradiciton, revealing it as not only the norm, but worth embracing in order to ask the appropriate questions, in order to have a full life. into the wild is perhaps edifying before it is entertaining, and as art, it satisfies at the highest aesthetic level. sean penn achieves something through this film few american directors achieve these days; art.

texas comfort

george w bush is okay with being disliked. if there is one thing we can say with certainty about this president, it is that he does not lose sleep over people disagreeing with him or thinking ill of him.

a few years ago i saw gary trudeau interviewed on tv. trudeau went to yale with george w bush. he described the would be president as frat guy-ish, and it was clear trudeau at least did not think much of bush and possibly disliked him.

since he has taken office he has thumbed his nose at public opinion to such a degree he has reaped the worst approval ratings of any president ever, including previous criminal presidents. he hires his friends, bypassing a healthy level of nepotism choosing instead the paranoid practice of surrounding himself with yes-men, sycophants and like-minded idealogues. this practice indicates a blatant disregard for the good of our nation.

george w bush represents a blend of mediocre intelligence and egomania. it all makes sense, too. he grew up in an environment where he wanted for nothing, (though he obviously wanted for everything simultaneously.) at school, he probably got away with being a little rude, being a respecter of persons, not apologizing for his class and prestige consciousness. his father was a war hero and a major political player. he went to the best schools. his family had money and associated in elite circles. we know he had those years of drinking a lot of beer and doin' some coke. i guess it was easy to get or be lazy about study habits in his formative years, relying instead on bullying people and maintaining his lifestyle.

it has not mattered to bush when his behavior has been challenged or exposed. he just stands there and takes, or deflects, the heat. it is likely the majority of decisions in bush's administration have been made by dick cheney and karl rove. even when bush made the decision, it likely stemmed from the idealogy he learned from these two pariahs. while rove's role was to gain power, and cheney's role was to set the agenda for how to use the power, bush's role was first to use his pedigree to be electable and second, to stand there and take the heat.

when his cohorts decided it would be worth it to out the cia agent wife of the guy who dared challenge their propaganda campaign in order to send a message about how they viewed authority and how absolute they expected their power to be, bush's role was to answer questions, even if his answers were of the, "i will not comment on an ongoing investigation," ilk.

"we don't torture," bush said knowing the answer was not an answer at all and would infuriate those who knew better or expected a real answer. bush just said it though. he's the decider and this is his big skill. he is the ultimate nose-thumbing president.

who would have the nerve to tell the american people, the most educated nation on the planet, that iraq had weapons of mass destruction? someone who figured as president he had the ultimate comeback to anyone who would challenge him. bush's neocon henchmen did play their role, they did all they could to spread the propaganda and frame iraq as the threat it just could not be. they muddied all the waters, creating links between saddam hussein and osama bin laden, iraq and al qaida, that did not exist, but it was bush who had to say it to the american people to truly begin the campaign that became our phony war on terror in iraq.

jack abramoff received $82 million from indian gaming interests as he peddled influence around the capitol. he also visited the white house a number of times. bush said he did not necessarily remember abramoff. while people do not like liars or being duped in the face of a mountain of evidence, to bush it does not matter. he does not mind if people do not like him.

bush had the nerve to nominate harriet miers for the supreme court, despite her lack of credentials for the position. he appointed a horse guy in michael brown to head fema. he stood up to tremendous pressure to keep donald rumsfeld and alberto gonzalez around as long as possible. he has been the commander in chief during an era of unprecedented torture on the part of americans. from abu ghraib to gitmo to sites of extraoridinary rendition, (the horrifying details of which have yet to come to light,) around the world, bush stands above it all seemingly comfortable with being the object of derision.

many debate how intelligent this president is or how devious and evil he really is. one thing we can know for sure is that he is not bothered by being disliked or questioned or derided. he deflects this stuff if only in his own mind by making up nicknames for the white house press corps and trying to bully the occasional reporter who tries to stand up to his bully pulpit tactics.

he has no shame, whatsoever.

smoking

i was fortunate to be a late bloomer, so to speak, as evidenced by the fact that i never took up smoking. i've been late at everything, all of my life. there have been plenty of times when this lethargy has been painful or unpleasant, but there are also plenty of examples of my deliberate nature being fortuitous, as is the case with smoking cigarettes.

when my friends were experimenting with marlboros and camels, (around the age of 14,) i was still knee deep in baseball cards. as i turned 18 and donned a trench coat and a handful of ska buttons, i tried to smoke the clove cigarettes my friends were fond of to almost no avail. i bought a few packs of the pungent djarum cigarettes and i literally enjoyed dangling one from my bottom lip like james dean or clint eastwood, but the smoke that curled upwards into my nostrils made me cough even when i tried not to breathe it.

cigarettes are destructive. cigarettes are addictive. the cigarette industry pedals destruction and has demonstrated a willingness to act immorally. i am glad i never got into that.

asterisk

(Dateline; Milwaukee) In one day, Barry Bonds' career homerun total declined by 112. In a stunning announcement, Major League Baseball announced today the removal of the assumed asterisk by Bonds' homerun total.

Commissioner Bud Selig's office released a statement which outlined a calculation by which Bonds' homerun total has been reduced to 643 and said Selig would be available for comment at a press conference in Milwaukee at 9am (CST) Monday morning.

"Every Bonds homerun was looked at both by actual film clips and statistics from the Elias sports bureau," said JQ Publick, spokesperson for Commissioner Selig's office.

"A formula was derived for calculating the impact of steroids on Mr. Bonds' homeruns which determined the strength enhacing drugs added, on average, about seven feet to his blasts," Publick added.

By subtracting 7' from each of Bonds' homeruns, Major League Baseball determined 112 of those bases clearing hits would not have cleared the outfield wall, (without the drug enhancement.) "It is common knowledge that Bonds cheated," said a source who refused to be identified from the Elias Sports bureau. "This adjustment seeks to recognize Bonds' true status as a homerun king, while demoting him from the undeserved perch of the homerun king."

Bonds could not be reached by telephone but the San Francisco Giants released a statement which indicated Bonds' response would be tendered in a federal courtroom. The Giants' statement also suggested the organization is considering a uniform modification for the remainder of the season in protest to this decision.

Peter Gammons, of ESPN News, said he understood the decision to adjust Bonds' official homerun total involved discussion about other hitter's totals as well as game outcomes but in the end, the league had decided that in order to market this record as the greatest in all of organized sports, it would have to be responsible for protecting the sanctity of the mark. Therefore, the league has adjusted Bonds's homerun totals without affecting any other statistics whatsoever.

"The asterisk will now be up to Bonds' supporters to insert," Gammons said by phone from his home in Boston. "Certainly if he hits number 644 tomorrow, Barry Bonds' fan club may consider it number 756 on his website, with an asterisk, whether in print or imagined. "However, baseball's records will show it as 644."

According to sources from the league office, every Bonds homerun going forward will count no matter how slightly it may clear the fence. The league stands by its substance abuse policies and believes no cheaters remain in the league who can still go undetected as Bonds did for several years.

As to whether the league would adjust the career totals of other accused steroids users, that same source said it would only interfere in such a way if this record, (or another of similar magnitude,) came into jeopardy.

As to whether Bonds or Sheffield or Giambi or any of the others looks like the more prolific homerun hitter on paper when their careers are over, the league source said controversy fuels debate which is one of the most fun and interesting activities of baseball fans. "There will always be someone around who says Bonds is the greatest homerun hitter ever," the source said. "The league however and the official statistics will not support that claim. "Further, it is thought that Bonds' supporters will usually be outnumbered, lose the argument and occasionally get humiliated for supporting a cheater."

first day of school

My heart feels like a sinking bag of sand, pulling downward in my liquid chest cavity. At the same time, there is a giggle inside of me I have been suppressing since this morning. It pushes in the opposite direction, upwards, sliding past self-involved organs and tapping at my esophagus, inching towards my pursed lips.

Terra started school today. Yeah. School. She’s 2.8-years-old and she is attending the Tzu Chi Great Love Pre-School where she will not be taught any sort of religious curriculum but she will receive two hours of Mandarin language instruction daily.

I got out of my truck in front of her school today and the sinking bag caught the giggle right in my throat and formed a lump the size of my neck. Suddenly I could not believe what was happening. Something deep inside of me was screaming at myself to turn back. Why was I doing this?

I definitely think I am a loon just for going to work every day instead of spending most of my time with my daughter. I rationalize it all. I am a capitalist, after all. I think I must work, more and more in fact, to provide for her as I should, as I owe her.

If it is true that the cave man spent 95% of his time at leisure, perhaps he had a great relationship with his daughter but wouldn’t he have been better served to go out and figure out how to farm?

Why would I do this to Terra? I thought about what this day represented to her. No more pajamas until 10am. No more Dragon Tails. No more walks downtown to the pet store with her Auntie Cherish. No more just being there, at home, with an Aunt as a sitter while Faith and I worked. No more.

This is the obligation of life setting in on my daughter. It will be my son’s turn next but for now, he is still hanging out with our zero-to-two baby sitter, trying to cut some teeth and learning how to crawl. Terra, on the other hand, will forever be an object in motion now. She will attend school five days per week. Later she will have after-school activities. Then college will encroach upon her and she will add labs and social events. Eventually she will join the work force. She will feel obligated, (to whatever degree,) to get up every day and go to work. She will have several jobs, some of which she will like a great deal, and some of which she will not like at all. She’ll have some bad bosses and some difficult mornings and some professional crises.

She will know fully what it is to be human. And yeah, that is a beautiful thing but it’s also a painful and ugly thing. It hurts like hell. People will die in her life. (I will die one day and she will weep.) Terra will be obliged to attend funerals. She will also visit hospitals where birth has just taken place. As much as she knows happiness and ecstasy, she will know sadness and despair. She will know them in equal proportion though hopefully not in equal portion.

And this is where it all begins. One day, you get up and go to school. The next thing you know, you’ve been going to school for as long as you can remember and it’s time to work, (though the difference will be barely perceptible.)

I feel like I could cry for all the pain that awaits my sweet little girl. She is so full of hope and energy, and she loves freely and exemplifies my world view. And the joy that awaits her too, is like a giant wave of goodness that will bathe her life in unique, interesting and thoughtful colors.

A friend from work called this the beginning of Terra's existentialist journey. I like the sound of that. Maybe I am dreaming of the realities of life encroaching on the life of my beloved daughter, or maybe I am the reality of life imagining this little man who sends his daughter to pre-school then feels melancholy about releasing her to herself.

thumbing his nose

by commuting the sentence of scooter libby, president bush thumbed his nose at the american people. in essence he said, "i don't give a shit about the values of the american people."

mr. tough-on-crime, the governor who presided over the executions of 111 men and 1 woman in his five years in austin, sent a clear message to the american people this time. in essence he said, "when a crime suits me, it should go unpunished."

it is important, too, to recognize the nature of this crime and where it fits in the spectrum of crimes. the average drug-related crime has one victim; the person who committed the crime. scooter libby's crime of obstructing justice in the investigation of the outing of a cia operative affects a nation, to say nothing of the iraqi and possibly iranian people who suffer bombings ordered by an administration who could have been checked had their misdeeds been uncovered.

the average drug offender receives a sentence of about 67 months and represents anywhere from 22% to 65% of state prison populations. scooter libby received a sentence of 30 months and the president said he thought that was too harsh and so, commuted his sentence guaranteeing libby of never serving a day behind bars?! what the fuck?! libby purposely obstructed justice in a huge case that speaks to the morality of our country and our elected leaders. further, he wrote ridiculously coded messages to his own pawn from the new york times, which virtually mocked the american people as well. (in certain seasons the trees all turn colors at the same time and below the surface, invisible to the american people, he should have said, their roots are interlocked.) jerk.

but you know, i am a hack writer. please, if you happen to read this, whoever you may be and for whatever reason you may have come here, go listen to what keith olbermann, a professional writer of sorts, wrote about all this. click on this link and listen to olbermann countdown the many crimes of this adminstration and expose the naked emperor.

http://video.msn.com/v/us/msnbc.htm?f=00&g=8dd25465-1b2b-49e5-81ff-003005828d82&p=Source_Countdown&t=c1149&rf=http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19588942/&fg=

beat down

confucius recommended considering life a struggle toward perfection.

It is true that we shall not be able to reach perfection, but in our struggle toward it we shall strengthen our characters and give stability to our ideas, so that, whilst ever advancing calmly in the same direction, we shall be rendered capable of applying the faculties with which we have been gifted to the best possible account.
-confucius

i wonder what confucius considered perfect even as i know the meaning of perfection is beside the point.

i am happy to walk away from confucius' message with this thought:

try to be the best you you can be. i'll try to be the best me i can be.

free at last

dr jack kevorkian is free today. yesterday he was released from prison and today he can come and go as he pleases.

in a world without phony, imaginary creatures like the various gods dolefully worshipped by humans, noble behavior includes anything that pushes forward the envelope of human evolution. those who build up rather than tear down, those who challenge convention rather than choose the path of least resistence, those are the noblest persons among us.

the right to die is quite simply right. dr kevorkian has pushed our society closer to recognizing this truth and one day it will certainly be legal. another day this man will come to be seen in the appropriate light. he willl be seen as a hero. his courage will be lauded by future generations.

he is already my hero today and i rest easier knowing he is no longer being tortured by my society by incarceration in essentially inhumane conditions.

father, the lesser

My dad(/uncle,) was fair in as much as he tough-loved us all consistently. My years venturing forth on my own was a strange time, to be sure. I had just joined the Air Force when his wife, (a mother figure to me,) passed away. I spent the next two years in japan while my dad, my sister/cousin, (his daughter,) and my brother adjusted to life at home without her. I still don’t know what happened. To this day I hear references to that time but it is all a confused blur to me.

I imagine my dad adjusted to sleeping in a bed alone after nearly 20 years of sleeping with this one woman. I guess my sister got used to the idea of not having her mother around, her best friend, her partner in crime, her kindred older self. I assume my brother, who was 15 at the time, was bewildered and came to see the world as harsh and unforgiving. I bet he was a little angry.

Two years later I returned home and found my dad had just met the woman who would become his second wife. All his attention turned to the subsequent courting. My brother had been involved in some brushes with the law while I was away and he was absorbed in the gang culture represented by his artists of choice: NWA. My sister seemed an alien in the house. She came and went randomly and when I was there, the house seemed overrun by men in contrast to the effeminate place it had once been, so tidy and laden with country décor. And this was not when the tough love began, but it may be when it flourished.

My sister and Carol, my dad’s new wife, clashed from Day 1. Soon my sister fled to her grandmother’s then later to the beaches of North San Diego County. She was always attracted to the beach culture and the expanse of the ocean somehow seemed appropriate for her. For the next 10 years she was like a corked bottle bobbing in the ocean, washed up on the sand and carried back out by the tide, here and there, untethered, alone, betwixt the blinding light of the sun above and the utter blackness of the sea below.

I was perhaps more independent than my siblings from the outset. After all, I had been eldest. It was to me to at least act as if I knew what I was doing. I feigned man of the world as obviously as the cowardly lion feigned tough guy. I was lost. Lost like a child on the side of the freeway. Lost like paralyzation. I was out in the world, at school, attending parties, playing ball and trying to speak to people, but just lost, really, like everyone else.

My dad gave me tough love. He stayed in touch, every so often. When things went bad for me, he and Carol allowed me to move back in. I borrowed perhaps $200 one time and never paid it back and it hung over my head, (whether of my doing or my dad's, I'm not really sure,) always. When he got mad at me for drinking and taking Tommy down to my school dorm room, he took my car and we did not speak for about 2-3 months.

I do not understand tough love. It is too logical and too selfish for my tastes, too indiscriminate and undiscerning.

Now I have a son and I imagine myself in my dad's shoes. I imagine Mark, like my brother Tommy, going to prison, and I feel queazy and dizzy. I imagine going to him and screaming out at the system. I imagine my eyes loosening in my skull and leaking wildly, my hands grabbing at chunks of my own chest, tanking clumps of flesh away, clumps of me, and falling to my knees and to my back. I imagine remembering, the boy as he is today, so tiny and frail and demanding and helpless, the boy as he would be in grade school, so hopeful and energetic, the boy as a teen filling in the parts of his person that laid dormant, the boy growing to fullness, in his 20s, studying and playing hard, living, loving and learning, considering, and I feel a sense of failure, the disconsolation of the void in my life's work. I imagine feeling horrified. I imagine all the blame I would place on myself and knowing I would deserve every bit of it. I imagine dying in increments every time I would think of my son imprisoned, every time I recalled any aspect of him.

To actually live with knowing your son committed a crime and went to prison deservedly, is to know failure. Still, this is not an indictment of my Father, who took my brother in to his home to raise him as his own son when the boy was six years old, out of altruism. Those six years were filled with plenty of living, too. Tommy lived with various foster families numbering in double digits. He was discovered by one foster father crying near to his fallen foster mother, who never recovered from stroke. He also had an addiction problem. (At birth.) He kicked heroin in an incubator.

So it is understandable that Tommy grew up and had some issues around living within the law. I mean, it is our nature, right? A certain percentage of us have some problems with the rules at some point in time, and, to say nothing of justice systems, at least more than half of us deserve it and there's always those who got away with it. Right? So as much as we have laws and we need laws and laws, in some respects, qualify societies, it is natural to break laws.

We strive to move forward. Right? We try to be moral and to do what is right and some times we fail and perhaps most times we succeed and when we fall down, we get back up and shake the dust and try, try again, and that is all quite natural, though we may detest the bad. Right?

So, while I won't say my Dad was perfect or that he had no ill effects on any of us kids, I will say I only mean to address what this outcome, this prison-bound son, would mean to me as a father both biologically and behaviorally.

This outcome would be proof of my failure. It would represent my own selfishness and how I did not take the time to nurture the boy and truly teach him how to live, how to make choices, what to consider, what to value.

I think I would go to him, take an apartment outside the prison grounds, build a meager life around visiting hours, apologize to him almost daily, tell him I love him, cry in front of hardened strangers, laugh at myself and maybe cry some more. I imagine the pain being like a cactus I carry in my lap, that I can't drop, that I must hunch over to carry around with me as it sticks and pricks me in the abdomen and forearms and chin and thighs and groin. I would be dead but walking. I would be asleep but writing this life out daily. I would be so sadsorry, sad-sadsorry.

My dad tough loves my brother from afar. He has visited him in a prison in another state 1,000 miles away. Once? My dad was quiet that day, reserved. He was sad and slightly emotional, while also leading with his toughness, his sense of oh well, his sense of let's keep plodding forward because this life happens to you and we're all subject to the filthy fingers of fate, stifling emotions until the last second when the facade opened a crack, as if a jack were wedged in a stone-walled damn but with so much macho pressure it can be held ajar for mere seconds, 5 or 10. No more. Then there is time for clean-up, for recuperation, for adjustment, for composure. My brother and I learned that behavior and we practice it to this day. If there is emotion to be showed, it is because the situation calls for it and it is limited. We do not act out in public or wail in any sense of the word.

My Dad spoke to Tommy occasionally when he was incarcerated. He asked about the weather, general questions about the conditions in the joint, discussed Tommy's favorite teams and how the sports world was unfolding, (so new and different from any other year.) (Please allow me that fine bit of criticism.)

I won't let Mark go to jail. I mean, I just won't raise him in such a way as he ever gets that far away from me and the values I will share with him liberally. This will not happen. It just won't. This is not a mantra repeated in order to increase odds. This is the certainty that parents are and should be responsible.

To those who were natural and full-time fathers, from the infamous fathers of killers who make their appearance on a television newsmagazine or are merely written about but who claim to be the victims of chance, to the more average who were merely absent a lot, or self-absorbed, or bad examples, I indict you. To be known for who you are, is what I want for you. Instead of being allowed to hide behind what is unknown, or behind the notion that you were respectable in tough-loving, instead of being allowed to not understand what it was like to walk in another man's shoes while retaining the personal dignity of society's upright citizen, I would you were known as the lesser.

father, the lesser.

For not taking the time to learn enough to provide your own son with whatever it took to avoid substantial jail time,

father, the lesser.
For not making yourself better, by equipping yourself with the knowledge that would have freed you, and your son, literally,

father, the lesser.
For not reading,

father, the lesser.
For not conveying the importance of intimacy, in word and deed,

father, the lesser.
For lying,

father, the lesser.

For lying by directing him to be straightforward and honest in every action but again and again showing dishonesty with Mother by hiding relationships with other women. For lying by professing to be a superman but then giving into vices regularly. For lying by preaching the ten commandments but then lobbying for unfair laws and seeking loopholes to capitalize on in order to avoid one's fair share towards the common good. For lying by claiming to be of family values but really only displaying selfish values that self serve at every turn. For acting as if it is good and normal to vote for a politician based on his abortion stand, instead of how he is going to affect the masses in serving them,

father, the lesser.
For not being well enough informed about public life and how it affects a person, the son and society, for claiming instead a lack of time but having plenty of time to take in sports or drink with buddies or go to some hollow church to practice a display of self-righteousness worthy of puke, or worse still, laying around watching television,

father, the lesser.
For not actually wanting the best for your son, for nurturing dark feelings of jealousy in comparison to your son,

father, the lesser.
For not intiating conversations on important topics,

father, the lesser.

For playing the victim, for pretending circumstances put you anywhere, ever, instead of owning the fact that you are exactly where you intended to be, (intention being based on your every action,)

father, the lesser.

For not involving a community, for pompously asserting that you knew best when you were guessing and hoping, for enthroning yourself the king of your castle and demanding affection, taxes, utter confidence and loyalty,

father, the lesser.

For thinking that just being there put you in the top 20% of fathers in and of itself when the top 20% is not even close to good enough,

father, the lesser.

For giving gifts and compliments, and for showing up, just to make yourself feel better,

father, the lesser.

For getting to the point where you actually believe you did a fine job as a Father,

father, the lesser.

For accepting gifts on Father's Day,

father, the lesser

For believing in imaginary creatures,

father, the lesser.

activistijo

that's my boy.

I am John Amaechi

My dad asked me what I thought of tim hardaway today and I could not help but go into a near tirade. It went like this:

Tim Hardaway is the epitome of a dumb jock. I am really put off by his comments. What a jerk. I am not into it. I don’t go the gay way. But for him, a black man, to say what he said, I think he should be forced to live as a poor black man for a season so he can see what discrimination feels like again, because obviously since he made his cash he has lost touch with it. Doc rivers had a far more reasonable opinion about john Amaechi, a player I recently wondered about and whom I thought played a great brand of basketball and had a great attitude, work ethic, and he was smart, too, not a caveman like hardaway. It is what it is, right? the guy was gay. He wasn’t infecting anyone with aids or anything. He was not a lazy player, or a selfish player. I mean, seriously, I would rather hang out with a gay guy who reads literature and can hold a reasonably smart conversation than a straight dumbass jock who can’t discuss anything outside of his realm. If, like john maeche, he can play ball too, well damn, I’d be friends with that person any day.

So John Amaechi has become like Spartacus. He makes a heterosexual man, (formerly of a measure of homophobia,) like myself, want to stand up and defend the gay man. It is ironic too. When Amaechi came into the league, (or, “the association,” as my friend and favorite sports encyclopedia adam janeiro calls it,) I remember the human interest stories the network aired at halftime about his relationship with his mother and the good people of merry, old England. I remember him talking about his charitable endeavors and how he was lead to engage in those endeavors because of events from his childhood. I liked him then, both for defying stereotypes and for defying the hoops culture that is so prominent today, the culture of thump your chest and put up those horns and expose a nipple and wag a finger and say “not in my house,” and all that noise so embodied by the lesser talents.

Amaechi threw elbows only when they flew naturally because of his body contortions as he chased a rebound. He was always polite with the press, never once choked his coach, showed grace in being thankful for his opportunity to play pro ball, complimented his teammates and respected his foes, gave back to the community, both that of his club team, (Orlando,) and the community he truly called home across the pond, and all stops along the way. Further, I was impressed with how nonplussed by basketball culture and his own celebrity John Amaechi was.

John Amaechi was and is a stand up guy.

The extent of my knowledge of homosexuality begins and ends with the fact that I am not homosexual. I am lucky for that fact asI know it is a cross to carry. At the same time, I feel remiss for mentioning my heterosexuality. At this time, more than any other, I want to stand up and say, “I am John Amaechi.” And I can, because I am. I have been discriminated against or downtrodden. I have had dumbass people cast aspersions about me. In fact, you have too. You have had people say things about you that were untrue or that were meant to harm you and for no good reason. And in that way and for that reason, you too, are, or should be, Spartacus, er, John Amaechi.

Amaechi has written a book. (http://www.booksamillion.com/ncom/books?id=3682318018691&isbn=1933060190) By publishing this book and speaking to the New York Times about his sexuality and tolerance, (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/12/sports/basketball/13gay.html?ref=basketball) Amaechi, like Spartacus is standing up to an opposing army. He is surely getting support also from the enlightened and empathetic but sports is the realm of the caveman, (no offense to those geico spokesmen.) The athlete has been the singularly focused doer of daring deeds who has received a veritable pass from the public at large for small-minded acts of ignorance.

The ease with which Rafael Palmeiro lied to the public should be admonished. However, I can’t say I ever saw Tim Hardaway, nor any unimplicated MLB players save Chad Curtis, (somewhat,) come out against the obvious lie or the obvious liar. Amaechi should be lauded for his honesty.

Some have suggested Amaechi is merely trying to sell a book, which is a gross mischaracterization. Darryl Strawberry sold lousy books. Phil Jackson sold a boring one just a few years ago. Amaechi received a book deal because he had something interesting to share, namely, what it is like to be the antithesis of a jock inside of the professional sports culture. I have not yet read the book, and certainly his homosexuality would be among the most glaring examples of how he defied the expectations of the jock strap set but it should make for compelling reading to gain his perspective on how he felt on plane trips when the rest of the team huddled up to play dice or dominoes a la the firemen of Fahrenheit 451 while he might have sat up front reading a Ray Bradbury book.

Last I heard, one in ten humans is gay. Forget any traces of misogyny or aloofness or foul body odor or anything else, Tim Hardaway is content with spurning 10% of all humans right up front. And for us, those who use celebrities to cast passive judgments partially in order to exercise our moral barometers, we have to take a stand. (It’s different, and yet the same, but the last time I saw everyone stand down when they should have been speaking up and making a judgment, our great nation ended up invading a poor and nearly defenseless country on the far side of the globe.)

The point is, Tim Hardaway deserves public derision. If his current employer can terminate his employment, great, but more important is that he hear about it. His comments wreak of someone who has gay tendencies and feels threatened by them. Makes me wonder if when he looked at Mullin but passed to Richmond on the break, he wasn’t looking at Mullin because he wore his shorts tight. I wonder if when he crossed over on Darrell Armstrong, he got by him so fast because he was trying to get a look at his backside. On some level, isn’t that what homophobia is all about? Isn’t this about Timmy’s own recognition that he could just as easily kiss a man as a woman and the thought frightens him so much, because so much of his self esteem is built upon the machismo he has clung to since childhood, that he feels the need to overcompensate by making jokes and public comments to the effect of, ‘I’m so straight I can’t even keep my mouth closed publicly about how much I destest faggots.” Isn’t that it? Isn’t it pathetic? Isn’t it transparent?

As far as I’m concerned, whenever I think of Tim Hardaway or any other homophobe, I am John Amaechi. What a fine example of a man he is. I am John Amaechi.

al davis

I usually defend al davis and even still, I admit to being very fond of the guy. As a raider fan, many seasons and many Sundays, over the years, I have been pleased. But lane kiffin exposes al’s greatest weakness. Al is mortal, concerned with immortality and a little bit selfish.

Lane kiffin seems like a nice guy and he seems like someone who will succeed at some point in his career, (and despite the excellent pedigree with pete carroll’s knee included,) he is in over his head. Perhaps football coaches are one dimensional and so, life experience is overrated when compared to the will to win, the single-mindedness and focus peculiar to some of the greats, but at 31, kiffin is just too wet behind the ears to succeed in a job as demanding as the one he just accepted.

For davis, the hiring exposes the fact he is looking for some magical potion cure-all to bring the silver and black back to prominence. Especially considering his age, I don’t think he has the patience to make the right choices that will realistically take a last place team, with more head cases than a taxidermist, from worst to first. That’s a 3-6 year project. Anything quicker than that is gravy but davis can be seen through this choice to be just guessing, throwing the dart at the wall of balloons while smiling over at the wife and kids only to miss a balloon by three feet.

I guess he remembered his last success in choosing a coach, the time he had to give up all his locker room and playbook control to the brash youngster who he had to admit, oozed confidence and success. He is so far removed form his hire of jon gruden he can be felt in the cosmos hoping and praying people do not make the connection to this move as being the closing of that loop that was davis hiring him but being frustrated with his charisma and the volume of good publicity it garnered, (seemingly effortlessly,) to davis privately feuding with him but being shut up by the scoreboard weekly, (by gruden and gannon,) to davis’ own inflated confidence allowing him to trade gooden away to tampa bay for two Hershey bars and a 50-cent piece, to gruden making him pay ever so dearly with an epic beating in the biggest game in the universe, to davis avoiding the subject and riding the raiders success, despite the superbowl loss, to the ability to claim he was not bothered nor did he think the glazer’s got the better of him in that trade, to letting some time go by and firing Callahan and hiring turner then firing curly joe and hiring shem to firing art shell to this.

The 31-year-old savior of the franchise who al saw in a dream and followed a star south down interstate 5 to find in troy is going to create a robust offense by using the word “attacking,” a lot and emulating jon gruden?! Lane kiffin is going to magically turn aaron brooks into daryle lamonica, randy moss into a model teammate and hard worker, lamont Jordan into a true starting running back in the nfl, all while patrolling the Oakland sidelines?! (maybe with monkeys flying out of his ass?)

As a raider fan, I wish kiffin luck. It would be refreshing to be wrong about this. But all that stuff everyone’s been saying about al davis’ ego these many years, is sadly true. Davis is hoping to catch lightning in a bottle without considering the odds. He is looking for the quick fix. He wants to be admired as a football genius. Maybe that’s not so bad considering his age, but that doesn’t make his choice any better.

self disclosure

I met a friend at a party this past weekend who I had never met in person before. (I know, that fact alone is a modern communications marvel, though I guess it is a more and more common phenomenon.)

It was exciting to meet this person because I have always enjoyed his input in the online forum we both participate in, but at the same time I was slightly sheepish. My friend seemed excited to meet me in person and he was flattering in his remarks about my way in our group.

He told my wife and others in our circle of chat at the party that I was open and seemed willing to talk about anything. He lauded me for this, at one point suggesting perhaps it could represent catharsis for me or maybe something else, but extolling the virtue of it benefiting our online forum. This is what I have an odd feeling about.

It’s worth mentioning too, my wife readily agreed with my friend’s assessment. She emphasized my friend's point by laughing and agreeing with the observation with some gusto, as if it was a relief to hear someone else say it. I believe she meant her remarks in a mostly positive way, though in her case, I know she has had misgivings at times about how free I am with myself.

what is it that compels me, or anyone for that matter, to be open? i have always thought others odd for not being open, for being so private about their affairs.

as our discussion continued at the party, my wife mentioned something about secrets and i uttered mine mantra; "a man is only as sick as his secrets."

i believe in this maxim. to me, when people clam up about their strengths or their flaws, i am at a loss.

"Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us: We ask ourselves ‘who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of god. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do..." (-marianne williamson, or nelson mandela. i'm really not sure.)

this is a wise thought. still, i am more concerned with the converse side of the equation.

when we hide our flaws, it is as if we pretend they do not exist. it is an extension of the old keeping up with the jones' mentality. it is as if we believe in appearances. (shame on us.) if i feel like everyone i encounter in a given day is more perfect than me, that they have it all together and they look and smell nice and they have social grace and they're smart and funny and charming and athletic and self-deprecating and free of all the standard maladies of the day, (no e.d., no dandruff or gingivitis, no trouble sleeping, not fat, no vitamin deficient nails, no blemishes, no sleep in the eye or boogers in the nose, no hallitosis, no jock itch or athlete's foot or tennis elbow.) the more i notice this or believe this, the more i recognize this as my own insecurity, the more i am certain that everyone has maladies and it is just a part of being a human creature.

my friend is really a bright guy. he is in real estate and i guess he is quite successful at it. i do not own a house. this little tidbit of a fact is as self-disclosing as i get because i cannot think of anything i am more embarrassed by. the financial security train has been rolling for a lot of years by my age but i have refused to get on it all this time.

in my 20s i considered moving to a third world country. i saw americans as an embarrassing lot who would rather buy a house and live as a slave to it than venture out into the far reaches of the world.

in my 30s i considered myself engaged in the quest for my mate. i survived living check to check and thinking things like financial security would have to wait until i found the person who would settle down with me and have a family. i considered financial security the sacrifice i would endure, (eating out and drinking late being the spoils of such a sacrifice,) for the time being until the family life brought me to a more conventional form of sacrifice.

always i have thought of money and finance as a bother. i realize how important it is but i know the love of it is the root of all evil and i consider it an agent of strife. if i lived in a world wherein i could trade the fruit of my labors for that which others produced, a world completely free of currency, i would be at ease.

by contrast, currency clouds man's efforts. just think about the various pay rates among you and your peers. are they comensurate with what the various people produce?

it is like our health care system. the doctors who go to school to learn how to do the complex work that is caring for people, should make the most money for their efforts but by involving themselves in the process, businessmen, (and business itself by extrapolation,) have asserted that their efforts towards managing the flow of money in human care are equally if not more crucial to the process. (of course, this is a ridiculous notion but how we arrived where we are today, where this notion is not only credible but implemented, is truly a long and winding road.)

money is a form of trickery. in a large scale economy it is difficult to know how else a society could proceed, especially after all that has transpired, but moving backwards toward smaller, more liveable communities is an idea i see in a positive light always.

it's here and it's now and i have not made any headway on owning a home. i do not have that investment and my tax guy reminds me of this fact every year. and when i say this, i am chagrined, but it is important to me to be so.

many times i wish i could have all of my flaws published on my t-shirt. i think it would save me much effort. i think i could make certain assumptions about the people i interact with based on how they treat me. in a way, i dare people to treat me like a stereotype.

i am annoyed by conservative republican types who try to take the moral high ground in a discussion of politics and i refuse to give them one moment's rest on that plain. when i had long hair i took some pleasure in defying those who would pigeon-hole me in any way whatsoever.

self-disclosing is who i am. it is what i do. i had nothing to do with my mother or who my mother was when i came into this world. i was just born. i did not ask it of my father nor did i ask anything of him, a man i never met. i did not ask my mother to do heroin nor did i try to stop her from doing it. so early on when people indicated i should feel shame for these mere facts of my existence, i took exception because it made no sense to me. when i learned the meaning of the word bastard i thought it was a joke. that someone should feel shame for the circumstances surrounding their entry into the world? well that was as ridiculous as someone taking pride in their background a la some asshole fraternity pledge who claims some birthright to greatness because daddy was a top dog way back when and now he owns some corporation or another. the mentality that goes along with that is repulsive to me. every man should make his own way in this world and even the father who longs to give the fruits of his labor to his progeny, is mistaken to a degree.

self disclosing had something to do with why i left christianity. (this is a bit of self disclosing i have tried especially hard to keep from disclosing recently but i make an exception here.) the hypocrisy of sinning and feeling guilt then asking forgiveness and truly repenting only to repeat the cycle wore on me, moreso than it wore on my friends, or so it seemed.

at some point in trying to work out my own salvation i came to conclude that i was feeling guilty for, and indeed being punished for, acts that were as natural to me as eating and sleeping. this was the disconnect for me. i can't see feeling guilty or feeling inadequate on the basis of being normal. those who seem or claim to be above the things i call normal offend me, (and i am not one who is easily offended.)

i self disclose in order to lead by example. i do not mean to self disclose so much as to make anyone around me feel uncomfortable and while it may be cathartic at times, it is not my self treatment in action. rather, the practice embodies my world view, my feeling that we are all equally human and prone to suffer as humans.

that said, self disclosure becomes a means to get through so much of what ails us, that which we try to hide or tend to feel less than because of. self disclosure becomes an admission of an already known truth.

anarchism in spirit

i just saw a wal-mart commercial wherein a couple shops for a television and asks the salesman point blank why the price is so much higher than the same tv at Wal-Mart. The advertisement ends with the couple realizing they are too smart to ever consider buying their television anywhere but Wal-Mart because no other tv seller can beat or match Wal-Mart's price.
anarchy. question everything. everything you know is wrong.
any regular joe who watches this commercial and knows the truth, (wal-mart truly will have the best price,) rests comfortably in the knowledge he or she knows best, recognizes truth when it is seen, can add two plus two.

still, if one is to adjust one's thinking and become an anarchist in spirit, can the question of wal-mart be so simple?

walmart recently introduced a sick day policy wherein an ill employee must call a corporate number to get a sick day referral number which they must pass on to their store in call #2. apparently the corporate office can review attendance data at any store in the country and pronounce the day fit for an employee to be so ill they may use a sick day to abstain from working for the day. or they may pronounce the day unfit and tell the employee to come to work regardless of their infirmity.

can walmart do that? what if an employee happens to be the type who understates things? what if that employee calls the corporate sick line and professes to be, "a bit feverish," suffering from, "something of a headache?" then he gets in his car, despite that feeling worsening as he checked his neck tie and splashed cool water on his face, and rolls out into traffic where he faints and crashes and dies? what then? what if his work ethic was so profoundly strong and american that he had been ignoring the tell-tale signs of circulatory issues? what if the first thing the doctor had written on his chart at the hospital had been "m.i.?"

(sir, you can't be ill today. your store already has the maximum allowable persons off today. plus, you work for walmart so you do not have the insight nor intestinal fortitude to stand up for your right to dictate your every day life even to the point of deciding which days will be your sick days. thank you for not dictating so much of your life as to even own your own business, such as a television store, where you could have dictated your entire investment in the business to include which days you would mind the store, instead of selling tv's for a corporation that thinks of you and treats you as a warm body. thank you for being happy with 48k per year to prepare reports of data covering your area of the business for the people above you, for treating everyone with dignity day in and out, for caring about this menial job that takes way more from you than the substantial amount you give it, including a disproportionate amount of profit considering the time investment of all parties, and for the investment you made in walmart considering the life we afford you is neither financially, spiritually, intellectually nor emotionally rewarding. thank you for being walmart's bitch. please report to work.)

how big is that lawsuit? what's more profane than that is the question of whether walmart even flinches at a settlement of that magnitude. the risk may seem conservative in the face of the increased efficiencies and profits walmart can realize if the employee remains sedate.
walmart is able to offer goods at better prices than its competitors by using its size and purchasing power to leverage the sellers of the goods they buy to rock bottom prices. the number of small businessmen walmart can bankrupt in any community is substantial and so, a measure of wealth is stripped from these would be shopowners. they are reduced to employees of the corporation which pays less money than owning a business that compares to any department within walmart, such as tv's. this happens to would be tv store owners all over america and one family in arkansas grows a more massive wealth than had already been obtained.
every day. more. more. more.
how does one fight against what walmart brings? one does not shop at walmart. one gets stronger about working to convince people they know not to shop at walmart. not all peer pressure is bad. one fights walmart and all mega corporations everywhere, all the time, because one understands these corporations are inherently bad, an illness for a society or a community.

walmart is good for it's owners and stockholders only. walmart is not good for it's stakeholders.

the problem with the couple in the commercial is they do not realize, (nor want to admit,) the insidious nature of the corporation, of walmart, which is content to bind them into a lower quality lifestyle in the name of improving thelifestyles of the few who gain the disproportionate wealth. indeed it is easier to only consider the first option, about how it is less expensive to run and clothe a family by shopping there, even if at the same time they limit themselves and relinquish a measure of control over their own lives.
it's not like you can know everything, but it is noble to push upwards.
they need anarchy of spirit. they need to learn to question even the most basic and seemingly inocuous aspects of their lives and environments, if they want more control which amounts to more balance and happiness and health.

[click on header for link to yahoo walmart attendance policy news story.]

lists

i love lists-always have. top three, top 10, five worst, whatever. lists are great conversation starters and good fun in most any context. i even like the "my favorite," list, which isn't even a list at all, but rather a thinly veiled act of self disclosure, but still f-u-n, fun.

while it has always bothered me when my friends don the garb of a corporation, (e.g. the gap t-shirt or even the izod polo shirt.) i prefer rock band t-shirts because i think they speak for me and what they say aligns better with my personal beliefs or outlook. sure, some people may misinterpret my t-shirts to mean any number of things: "i like to party till i puke," or "i condone wrecking hotel rooms," or even, "peter pan syndrome is my way of life," but i can't be concerned with that. rock band t-shirts tend not to be interpreted as: "i misreport my earnings on purpose," or, "i reject kyoto," or "pensioners can look out for themselves." all this said, here are my top 10 rock and roll bands of all-time:

radiohead
pearl jam
u2
the beatles (or john lennon, he was a band unto himself)
bob dylan
the smiths
jeff buckley
rage against the machine
talking heads
nirvana

(another great thing about lists, and my friends can attest to this, is they can change by the minute.) plenty of good artists were left off that list, and i am resisting the urge to name any of them right here.

the five best movies ever made differs dramatically from my five favorite movies ever. the five best ever made:

apocalypse now
star wars
the wizard of oz
scarface
traffic (or traffik)

my five faves:

central station
dances with wolves
syriana
dancer in the dark
american beauty
(i like justice.) also, breaking the waves could easily have been on either list.

novels have changed me and so, novelists are like giant thumbs to me. they mold and shape their readers, whether intentionally or not. my top 10 novelists ever:

milan kundera
slaman rushdie
francois-marie arouet (voltaire)
gabriel garcia-marquez
louis ferdinand celine
herman hesse
kurt vonnegut
jd salinger
henry miller
robert a heinlein

i have only visited a handful of the great cities and i will proclaim my allegiance to my own; la. but of the rest, i like these three in this order:

san francisco
tokyo
buenos aires

the cities i most want to visit would fall in this order:

dublin
beijing
paris

cities i want my unborn son to visit:

cairo
sao paolo
london

men of letters who write (or wrote,) from the heart:

richard rodriguez
gao xingjian
che guevara
alistair cooke
karl marx

i recently discussed my favorite sources of news in the new information age, (be it a person, a blog, a paper, or any other media.) i would rank them as follows based on unwillingness to parrot the status quo or kowtow to general electric and the ability to cut through the layers of confusion so prevalent in this age:

www.talkingpointsmemo.com
noam chomsky
www.alternet.org
keith olberrman
salon magazine (www.salon.com)

okay, enough lists i suppose. (it is getting a bit ridiculous.) it is fun to lighten it up a bit, (though i'm not sure i did that.)

i do not approve this message

have you noticed how more and more political advertisements end with the candidate declaiming, "i'm richard cranium and i approve this message?" what is that?!

it's you asshole!?! it's your message! you're the freaking candidate-it was your campaign money that paid for the television time, of course you approve the message!

(maybe they could point out some other obvious stuff?
i'm wearing 3 pounds of make-up.
you only see my face in this ad because i'm an obese behemoth who snacks on small farm animals.
i'm focusing on my adversary's negative points because i have no positive points of my own.
i invented the term "washington insider."
i lie for cash.
self-loathing is a lifestyle.
or best of all, "i'm trying to trick you.")

it seems to me this phenomenon started with president bush. he is the first one i remember with that tag on the end of his commercials, "i'm george w bush and i approve this message." at the time, it seemed to be happening for a couple of reasons. first, it was in line with his bumper stickers, which had only a large 'w' on them. i read that the 'w' was a means for republican voters to show their support for the candidate and the party without creating the kind of conversation that might bring out the various inconsistencies in bush's policies, etc. it was akin to a secret handshake. (it was a bit like whispering to your like-minded neighbor, "i don't care about the common man either. let's get ours." wink-wink.)

and, bush ran a negative campaign against john kerry. so the commercial would put forth a pack of lies, (e.g. 'john kerry stole his purple hearts and was actually a killer of babies in vietnam,') then put up a small picture of the president in the corner of the screen and his voice over, "i'm george w bush and i approve this message."

now i am seeing this marketing strategy all over the place. i guess it is now a market-tested strategy for candidates who cannot trumpet their own deeds. Here is an example courtesy of bob corker's website.

http://www.bobcorkerforsenate.com/video.tb1.aspx?video=commercial19

this particular ad is layered in innuendo. harold ford jr is not from tennessee, he's from washington d.c. ford has only worked in politics. while he may be handsome, ford does not bring substance to the table. he was born with a silver spoon.

all those messages are slyly delivered in bob corker's commercial but we the voters have only ourselves to blame because the commercials are market tested. it's been proven we respond to them. now, it may not be you personally, (just as it may not be me personally,) but somewhere along the line we all have to take responsibility for each other. if our relatives in the midwest are voting differently because they don't know any better, we need to straighten them out.

there seems to be this idea that people should not talk about politics, (among other topics,) at family get-togethers or with strangers and this idea is born of insecurity. generally all parties in such discussions have about the same values, but by allowing this idea, that it is okay to be offended, (thereby muting the more informed,) the values are trumped in favor of niceties.

i say let the new value be that we have little tolerance for those who are easily offended. we should push back on these people, so the conversation can move forward, so candidates like tennessee's bob corker can be made to talk about his record, his accomplishments and his shortcomings.

when a candidate can be heard to "approve this message," we the voters should automatically dismiss them as a viable candidate. they are not appealing to our reason. they are trying to circumvent it. they are not representing themselves honestly, they are pandering to the lowest common denominator.

eastwood's flags

most people go to the movies to be entertained. some go to the movies to learn. others go to take in high art. i went to see flags of our fathers today and got all three from clint eastwood.

as far as high art goes, making movies is the art form of our age. art is communication and film has taken virtually every other art form to the next level by communicating to two of our five senses, (when it works,) in complementary concert. (when seats vibrate and subtle odors fill the theater, the evolution of film will have continued.)

movies, (especially those made in hollywood,) are collaborations but the main artist is still the director. the directors are our mozart and bach, our picasso and renoir, our rodin, or even our bukowski. while we still appreciate the art forms of yore that linger but do not touch us on so many levels, movies are omnipotent in our day.

directors include von trier, almodovar, innaritu, spielberg, aronofsky, scorcese, coppola, (coppola,) salles, altman, godard and many others, including clint eastwood.

eastwood is a man's director. he gets out of the way and let's the story go wherever it needs to go. flags of our fathers could easily have been pearl harbor, or saving private ryan if it had wanted to be,but the real story was so much more important and eastwood told it without bias.

he could have made his film into an anti-war diatribe. (god knows it would be appropriate, all things considered.) he could have painted it in black and white, as the story of these soldiers who were actually photographed planting our flag atop the volcanic tip of iwo jima were rendered in real time, as props to shed favorable light on a war that required financing. instead he layered it in revolving shades of gray.

eastwood has made a habit of finding good books and turning them into powerful movies. the story of flags of our fathers was told by a son of a navy corpsman who helped tilt that flag into positon. he wrote the book and eastwood made the movie leaving the researching son in as an integral part of the story.

the son knows the father was one of the group of men who raised that flag and toured the country in support of war bonds as real american heroes but because as the old saying goes, 'war is hell,' the father had no interest in talking much about what he saw as he scaled that volcanic mountain and fought on iwo jima. it is left to the son to research and imagine and discover. the son plays the role of tending to the process of writing history.

eastwood shows an even hand in the movie as he neither vilifies nor glorifies any particular side or ideal. he let's the events speak for themselves and for the thoughtful viewer, there is much to consider and/or weigh in on. in this way the film is educational.

flags of our fathers flies in the face of convention in so much it is not an act of the victors writing history as they would see it. instead it is simply an honest portrayal of life in those times, of war and of men.

perhaps above all eastwood's movie is entertainment. despite the fact it tells a true story, it is good old-fashioned storytelling. the narrative switches perspectives and times often, but is cohesive. the music and cinematography and editing work together for the overall effect. eastwood did not do it on his own, but as the director, the lion's share of the credit for this fine film goes to him.

this morning i read an article that expressed a measure of frustration about the lack of black americans present on screen in the movie. the events portrayed took place 60+ years ago and before civil rights legislation so african-americans want to be sure the people of the united states know they were there fighting on our behalf despite their limited citizenship and in spite of the mountain of war movies made over the years which did nothing to aid their cause but rather propagated the myth intact and in many cases, set the cause of african-americans backwards.

at lunch i told my wife about the article and that i couldn't recall seeing any black soldiers in the movie. she corrected me and said she did see some black soldiers in the background two or three times.

ultimately, i find the complainers annoying. i understand they are struggling forward and mean no harm but as a friend of the artist, i cannot see holding eastwood accountable for the omission. i don't think he is a bigot. i guess because his movies seem to have more social conscious than most, he may be held to a higher standard?

u.s. insecurity

why should the united states' taxpayers fund propaganda against the castro regime? we allow dissenting voices here, within our borders, but we deem spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to vilify the government (and economic system,) of a tiny, neighboring, island nation worthwhile?

please click on the header, (title of this post,) and read the news story about "journalists," who have been paid by our government to write stories slanted against castro and the cuban government.

the most important aspect to consider about this story is the effect of these articles and op-ed pieces. as americans, we tend to discount propaganda. individually we think ourselves above it. we think we are too smart or too canny to be swayed by untruth of any variety.

an apt parallel for this is how we tend to think money does not affect elections, despite how often the candidate who spends more wins and the fact that only candidates with access to large amounts of cash, (usually supplied by corporations which dole it out to would be friendly lawmakers,) can even be considered.

the truth is, we are influenced. most people do not have the time to sift through the mass of information they may process in a given time frame or cross check facts. furthermore, this is not the fault of the individual. instead, we rely on ethics. in this case, journalistic ethics. schools teach them. news outlets should teach and enforce them. individual journalists should hold them as sacred.

by and large, most journalists likely do adhere to them as best they can and consider these ethics hugely important in executing their job, (their role in our free society as watchdog.) those who do not, should be frowned upon by the public and certainly fired by their employers.

in the known cases cited in the referenced article, those journalists were fired or cut off by their superficial employers.

the next question to consider is why our government considers these payouts a worthwhile expenditure for american taxpayers. the obvious, (and again superficial,) reasons are because of cuba's proximity to our border and because of the stark contrast of their values.

the cuban government is socialist. castro led a successful revolution against a corrupt, (though friendly to the interests of the united states,) dictatorship some 47 years ago. in the time since, the people of cuba have seen great accomplishments in the face of even greater odds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_embargo_against_Cuba
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outposts_of_tyranny
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Cuba
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_of_Cuba

these four links to wikipedia articles outline the treatment cuba has been subjected to by the u.s. the first one details the origins of trade embargos that were put into place shortly after castro assumed power and continue to date. the second cites language from u.s. secretary of state condoleeza rice depicting cuba as an outpost of tyrrany. the third outlines cuba's accomplishments in education and the fourth does the same for their efforts in the field of modern medicine.

ultimately, cuba represents a nation and a people who have chosen a different tack than our own as americans. (that tack being socialism.) as a socialist nation, and despite the odds they face in the form of embargos opposed by every nation in the united nations except for four, (the u.s., the marshall islands, palau and israel,) cuba has succeeded. (it should be noted the reasons the other three nations oppose cuba are strictly a means to cotton to the u.s. and the marshall islands in particular, has recently been a hotbed of human rights violations linked to the corruption scandal of jack abramoff and several republican lawmakers.)

as a capitalist nation, the u.s. has an obscene amount of poverty and infant mortality. we have created an industry of imprisoning our citizens and rank as the leader in the western world, incarcerating at a rate three to eight times higher than that of western europe or canada. currently nearly 1.4 million americans are incarcerated. the move to privatize and thereby create the prison industry is a poignant example of class division wrought by capitalism. (in our society we glorify the winners of capitalism but we hide away the losers, in prisons, homeless shelters, mental institutions and the like.)

despite the fact much of the wealth of the united states has been built on the backs of populations who were taken advantage of, (i.e. the slave trade, native americans, migrant farm workers, etc.) pointing out the worst parts of our system is not meant to be a diatribe against capitalism. rather, it is important to realize there is more than one viable way to build a fruitful society.

cuba has chosen a way different from our own. it should not be seen as a threat to us. the embargos we have in place against that country should be halted immediately. we should see the people of cuba like we see the family down the street who has a different skin color than our own or who adheres to a different religion. and we should not finance propaganda meant to color them as evil or a blight just because they have chosen a different path.

andre again

It's over. andre agassi's professional tennis career bowed, blew a kiss, and eased behind the curtain of time as so many others have before.

his departure was a bittersweet moment. it was bitter to see it end, to know center court would never again behold that particular set of skills that is or was, andre agassi. it was sweet though, to see his emotion at the end of the defeat, and to hear such a classy and poignant speech.

the end of the match was rather sudden. throughout most of the fourth set, it looked like agassi would force a fifth one against 25-year-old benjamin becker. it was becker who hobbled a bit and tanked when agassi served. but then with andre serving at 4-4, becker broke agassi's serve with ease, firing returns into corners where andre was not. next game becker served out the match and the men were shaking hands at the net.

then the most interesting stuff started happening. andre took his seat courtside and the crowd of new yorkers stayed standing and continued cheering. they clapped in unison, as if being cued, and hollered a bit for about 10 minutes. all the while andre fought back emotion, rubbing his face like a child and dabbing his eyes.

did andre cry because of adulation lost? did he cry because his ego would miss the affections of so many courtside tennis fans?

andre is a man in the way whitman and emerson were men. he is graceful and open. his retirement is a gift to all who witness it because it is of our nature.

like andre's career, we end. and this is why andre cried, even if it was on an instinctual level, even if it was subconscious. our mortality may be at the root of all of our laughter and tears but today's event crystallizes that idea.

humans are for seasons. our lives are marked by them, beginnings, middles and endings. the famous phrase says, "this too shall pass," and it describes everything. from the ignorance of our youth to the glory of our prime to the pain of twilight, they all pass and they can all be dissected into smaller parts but why we shed a tear in the privacy of our own living room while watching andre shed tears in front of a world of people is because we relate.

the career is over and time marches on. this is the melancholy of life, the negative within the positive, the proof of balance. we should not cry that it comes to an end, rather we should be aware of the temporal nature of it all and strive to make the most of it.

andre taught us this lesson with his actions today, which is of course the best way to teach. he spent his career straining to be the best tennis player in the world, not because, (and like so many,) he needed the glory and recognition, but because he always knew it would come to an end. instead of competing to pass the time or even to earn a living, andre competed to be the best, knowing the reward was in the work.

andre agassi was not the best tennis player ever. only for moments was he even the best in the world. and this may be the greatest aspect of his legacy. it was when he lost that andre showed us all the way. when the bigger and stronger pete sampras would break him in tiebreaker after tiebreaker of grand slam finals, andre flashed class and grace as he spoke well of pete and accepted 2nd place with aplomb. when federer soundly beat him at last year's us open, or when nadal beat him in montreal in the run-up, agassi smiled for the gift of being able to play tennis at this level and for a handsome living, spoke well of his opponents and accepted his place and moved on. today he shook becker's hand and wished him well and lived up to his own example of dignity.

andre gave a speech to the crowd and to all who watched on tv around the world before heading into retirement. he spent almost all of it thanking the crowd for their support. and that is as it should be. too many times we think public figures make us but they don't, we make them. (contrast and compare andre agassi to barry bonds for a vivid example.)

andre is beloved above sampras, above federer and above others from across the landscape of sport despite his record of having achieved a career grand slam but otherwise paling next to the achievements of others. this is grace. his grace, and ours.

like today's match, andre's career ended with a winning feeling.

"The scoreboard shows that I lost today," he said. "But what the scoreboard doesn't show is what I feel."