Acting Out

Every time I read another article, or even a headline, about the financial crisis, I feel my gorge rising majestically from my gut, like the Hindenberg from its mooring mast. It has become so predictable that I am forbidden from talking about it at home, unless a conversation about it has already been started by my wife or 15-month old son. And, frankly, I suspect that the kid may be employed by the financial sector, because this endless malfeascence is just not on his radar. He is much more concerned with "Ball" and the opening and closing of all doors, neither of which is remotely controversial. So I try to keep up on the unfolding scandal while also trying to find stuff in the world to be encouraged by, since a dad of sagging spirit is not what I aspire to be.

We need to be clear here-- if you think I'm one of those harpies who all they do is stomp around the house calling for the perps to be hoisted from the yardarm-- well you're right. Hence the ban. But with each revelation-- that people who owned their home out right were foreclosed upon, that hairdressers reviewed mortgage documents, that one guy's "due diligence" was apparently practiced at a 5000 signature a day clip-- it's hard to keep quiet. Until I looked at it all from a new angle. With each revelation of not just bizarre or criminal but criminally bizarre behavior, I am reminded of those wealthy kleptomaniacs or indigent bindlestiffs who shoplift a diamond bracelet or a cold Olde English 800 in order to be caught. They are unhappy, and ignored and tired of doing it all for themselves. I think our major banks are sad that we haven't been paying enough attention to them. They feel like we don't love them anymore, so they act out. They think "Hey, what does a soulless multinational corporation have to do to get an indictment for criminal conspiracy these days?".

Let me say this: as a parent, I am familiar with this behavior. My son is fifteen months and 24 pounds of never sit still, of exploration and crawling and joyous shout-outs and crying and hitting his enormous head (like father like son) on things and savoring individual words like fine chocolate drops. (The latest is "Attica!", which started out as a funny reference the wife made when he was throwing a tantrum on the changing table, was horribly run into the ground by yours truly, and now has been picked up by the bairn himself, becoming yet another thing that I will need to explain embarassedly in the future. Remember, babies enjoy affection and attention, but they LOVE irony and satire. I am the world's worst dad.).

Anyway, in addition to the aforementioned "Ball." and doors, he has a fascination with electrical cords. He will crawl over to them, tug on them, twist them, chew them-- not all the time, but often enough that it's a thing we watch out for. And he knows it-- he's a smart little anarchist. So nowadays, if he feels he's being neglected by parents who are busy posting pictures of him to Facebook, or writing blog posts that nobody reads ,instead of playing "Ball.", he will crawl (yes he's 15 months and not walking-- he's a boy! With an enormous head! Need I say more?) over to some handy cords, look over at us, and start tugging. And we come over, as though he is on fire, and scoop him up, and hug him and mutter things like "No cords, Elvis" and take him away. Maybe even give up the blog post and play "Ball." Which is probably what he wanted all along, but does not have the language to tell us, "Attica!" notwithstanding.

So now I know what the banks and the bankers are up to. They just want our attention. They want us to play. They don't really like toxic bundles of poorly-vetted mortgages anymore than little Elvis really likes electrical cords. They just don't know how else to get our attention. "We're stealing people's houses! Hairdressers are our securitization due diligence! Won't somebody please stop us, pick us up, hug us, and play "Ball."?" (What an end to that last sentence-- five punctuation marks in a span of nine characters. Because I roll gangsta like that.) Of course, there IS an easier way. The banks, unlike Lil' Elvis, have language. In fact, they have multibillion dollar advertising budgets. So, why can't we just see their ads, on TV, on bus benches, wherever, "Come home to B of A. We need a hug." After seeing all of these rosy ads about what they can do for us, without once mentioning that what they were doing for us was mostly screwing us out of billions of dollars and the roof over our heads, I would welcome the change. But remind us of the stakes as well, big banks. "If you don't hug us, we'll wreck the economy. Again. For like the fifth time in the past hundred and thirty years." And remember, fellow Americans, "Hug" is just banker-speak for "regulate the hell out of, and prosecute where necessary". If you live with a willful, smart, never stop moving child for long enough, you learn to speak their language.

On Not Writing Well

So, here am again, after another absence of many months. Apparently I am the absentee father of this blog, AWOL much of the time, showing up every once in a blue moon with a toy (piece) that the child (blog) has long since outgrown. "What's the matter," says I, "I'm here now, ain't I? Better late than never, right? Don't I get credit for the effort?" To which the proper answers (oh, if only this blog could talk. Oh wait it can, if I do. Never mind.) are, "So?" "No." and "Hell No!"

The reasons for my absence are many, but they all boil down to a single one: "Ummmm... (scuffles on the ground with one foot and chews lip awkwardly)". Yes I am a real father now, and therefore this blog and my live satire and comedy are kind of like my mistress's kids-- ya love 'em, but you don't take 'em to Little League games-- or, more germane to my situation, to the doctor to see if there's an ear infection. Again.

Don't get me wrong, it's not all ear infections. The child is adorable. He is smart, confident, happy, makes friends easily, has a sense of humor, loves to play, and is supremely comfortable in his own skin. He takes his own time doing everything ( "When will he crawl?" has been replaced by "Will he never stop crawling?"), makes friends easily and charms strangers. If we were in college at the same time I'm sure I'd hate him, or at least talk smack behind his back. But I can't. I'm still gobsmacked by his presence, this new little man, chin jutting, head held high, pointing and going "Ahh-Gah!" to God knows what. And because he is my son, I get to take some credit, rightly or wrongly, for the ebullient miracle that he is. So I tell myself, no way can my mistress' kids compare with this. There just does not seem to be the time, and since for me writing and performing are almost monastic activities, done before just enough eyeballs to prove I am not a fictional character (more than twenty years in, and I've worked my way up to the point where I can proudly say I've become a narrative space-saving composite of several different people.) It has been easy to push this stuff to the back burner. And that's why this blog has been gathering iDust (hey, I'm a Mac guy) for so long.

Which of course is just more convenient rationalizing. I mean, I haven't spent every waking moment tossing him in the air, blowing raspberries into his stomach, playing peek-a-boo (well, there HAS been a lot of peek-a-boo), feeding him super porridge, reading from the classics ("Goodnight Moon" in my hands is what "My Favorite Things" was to John Coltrane). I have gotten so good at not-writing-- anytime, anywhere, in almost any conditions-- that maybe I fear the writing won't be able to compete with the boy, my wife, with working, traveling some, getting out every once in a while. Nothing interesting enough to write about-- or (heywaitjustaminute!) maybe SO interesting that not writing is the only option. If you've been watching this blog waiting for something to happen, how would you know the difference?

But you haven't been waiting. You're probably doing what I have been doing-- reading some other blog. And I have discovered while doing that a lot of posts just like this one. These memoirs of not-writing are like a negative image of addiction stories. We not-writers apologize to people we may have harmed by living healthy, balanced lives. We strive to make amends for not letting our text addiction take over, and promise to remedy that as soon as possible. You have been seeing way too much of me on the streets and bars and pediatrician's offices, but all that's about to change. I am back where I belong, alone in a room or at some coffee house taking up valuable table space, nursing a latte for hours, staring a hole thru the blank grey rectangle on the screen, as the industrious computer thoughtfully saves and resaves the empty space at five minute intervals, my fingers stock still, waiting to pounce on any halfway amusing clause like a cheetah on a baby antelope, my mind desperate for a concept yet blank as a Zen master's. Ah yes, it's good to be back.

Both Sides Now

So recently , the sad case of the Swedish Rapper and the Jazz Pianist lurched to its inevitable conclusion. I don't have time to rehash all the details, but the basic facts are these: slightly tipsy Jazz Pianist is crossing the street in Hollywood, Swedish Rapper drives pimped-out rental Hummer thru the crosswalk, angered Pianist swats hood of said Hummer, Swedish Rapper goes berserk, beats Jazz Pianist for time enough to attract the attention of an off duty cop, who attempts to stop the beating. It does not stop, Rapper kills Pianist with a kick to the head, and drives the Hummer over used-to-be-Pianist, while the cop is clinging to the windshield wiper slamming his badge on the window, as a sign that John Law takes a dim view of the proceedings. Th rapper was convicted, and sentencing is pending. Case closed. But that's not why we're here
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Now, you would think that there's not a lot of room for " he said, he said" here. There were witnesses, including law enforcement, one of those involved is dead on the pavement and one is sitting in a Hummer texting his lawyer. So it's pretty cut and dried where the blame should go, right? Ah, but you didn't read the comment thread to the article describing the outcome of the case. And apparently, there are people willing to step up and defend a person's right to blow through an occupied crosswalk unmolested by jazz musicians who have the legal right-of-way. I'll be paraphrasing here, but you'll get the drift. "While I don't condone the outcome," said one -- and big of them to say that, that they're against murder and all, "if [the rapper] had rented that car, and [the pianist] had scratched the paint with his hands, [the rapper] could have been looking at a charge from the rental company. Pedestrians should be more careful.". Because the pedestrian is clearly the one with the power here, not the rageaholic driving 8000 pounds of shiny stupidity. There were actually quite a few brave sentiments like this, and the sad thing was, I was ultimately not surprised. The BpR strikes again.

The BpR, for those unfamiliar with abbreviations unique to me that I only just made up, is the Bipartisan Reflex. It's a nearly omnipresent trick these days, wherever there is a disagreement. And you can do it at home too, in these easy steps! 1) Remember, in any confrontation, it is axiomatic that both sides are dangerous, fringe extremes. Therefore, 2) the truth must lie somewhere between them, and probably exactly halfway. In the case we're talking about, the Jazz Pianist was clearly insane, or maybe just drunk. He had the temerity, the gall, the hubris, to expect to be able to cross a street at a crosswalk. Yet despite his obvious insanity, he still had a chance to escape his fate-- if he'd been a little more chill about nearly being run over, he'd still be alive today. The tragedy here, thus, is these two crazies coming into contact with each other, but that's life in the big city (no lie, several commenters basically took this position.).

Which is arguably true, but misses the central truth of this case and many others like it. What is the wrong thing that happened here? The traffic violation, yes, but mostly the beating and the murdering. It is NO WAY the Jazz Pianist's fault what happened. There, I said it and I'm glad.

I would also venture that this reflex is not, unlike breathing or finding the costumes of figure skaters idiotic, a natural thing. It's something we've been taught by rote, repeated over and over again, and if we want to meet the distinguished faculty inculcating us, it's important to follow the money, as it were. The people who benefit from the promulgation of the Bipartisan Reflex are those actual extremists in the game. For instance, if the jury had bought Mr Swedish Rapper's claims that he 1) he was just defending himself 2) he feared for his safety because there might have been a second attacker (perhaps behind the grassy knoll? Just askin'.), and therefore 3) he had to choose the most direct escape route in his 8000 lb. Tiny Penis Protect-o-Pak, which turned out to be over the body of the Jazz Pianist, he would be looking at a lot less time. And so it goes, from the streets of Upper Losangeleswood to the corridors of power in national capitols.

If you take nothing else away from this tale of urban street rage and comment threads gone wrong, take this: Just because there are two sides to every story, it does not mean they are equally valid. The next time you hear anyone describing someone else, who seems to hold fairly standard, even boring, middle of the road ideas-- akin to "I want to cross the street at a crosswalk" in their outrageousness-- as some disgusting, crazy, alien "other" whose heresies will bring all of us down if we don't eradicate him soon with any and all weapons at our disposal-- put your head down, and cross to the other side of the street. But look both ways first, you never know who's behind the wheel these days.

How to Fix the Whole Wide World, part One

So, North Korea is back in the news, testing missiles, darkly threatening the world with annihilation, sending suspicious freighters hither and yon-- and quite uncharacteristically, freeing two imprisoned American journalists into the custody of ex-President Bill Clinton, acting as a Very Special Envoy. The Big Dog, as he can, made Special Envoying look effortless, securing the journalists' release in an American record few hour's time. Various right-wing sites have wondered darkly about what concessions Clinton gave to the DPRK. The reality is more prosaic: the 6' 2" Clinton, after making nice with a letter to Kim Jong Il, hoisted the 2 journalists to his shoulders and played keep-away with them over the soldiers (average height 5'4") all the way back to the plane. Pausing on the steps, he called out a cheerful "No backsies!", thus frustrating Kim Jong Il's order to recapture before it could even be given. Of course, the mainstream media has suppressed this, but my readers (and you know who you are) can handle the truth. Whatever the particulars, the journalists are now home, or maybe they are still stuck in Burbank Airport, from whence they did their obligatory but certainly heartfelt tearful press conference. While not that crazy about Burbank Airport-- technically the Bob Hope Airport, and thus only the second best airport named after a millionaire right-wing Hollywood icon here in Southern Alta Californgeles-- I can say with near certainty that the food there is better than in North Korea, where the national dish is false hope, lightly grilled. What i would have liked to have seen is the two of them, after their flight with Clinton, taken to-- wait for it!-- North Koreatown for their press conference, but apparently there are no great ironists at the State Department.

And now, Clinton's shrewd use of "No backsies!" thwarting their revenge, the North Korean government is quietly plotting-- well, something, of that one can be sure. They are determined to-- well, mostly continue being just what they are. Unlike Americans, who want to be all they can be, for instance. Can these two cultures ever find an accomodation? I think so, and I have an idea whose time has come.

Some years ago, I read some account of another journalist who had actually gotten permission (Getting permission? Now there's a concept…) to hang in Pyongyang and see the glories of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (first question-- are the People Democratic, or is the Peoples Republic Democratic? Discuss. Their missiles may not work terribly well, but the North Koreans can dangle a modifier with the best of them.). He described an urban moonscape-- being the only guest in a 40 story luxury hotel where the elevators didn't work, wide boulevards devoid of cars or pedestrians, all electric power shutting off at about 9pm. Most haunting was a crew building an automotive and railroad bridge spanning the river-- using only hand tools, because of the scarcity of electric power.

It was this last that got the international peacemaker in me out of his slumber. Building a bridge with hand tools may be a way of life in North Korea-- but it's a basic cable show here in the United States. If we have "Orange County Choppers", why not "Pyongyang Bridge Builders", the story of a crusty, emaciated ace with a rivet bucket, his wayward sons, and the crazy edicts that come down from the Ministry of Bridges or whatever they call it. Right there, you've promoted international understanding and world harmony, etc etc. And then, the part of the plan that I'm most proud of, we can send our "Monster Garage" guys abroad-- "You guys have to design and build a mass transit system in Ouagadougou, using only this donated ski lift and surplus Soviet-era mini-subs-- GO!" to rebuild the Second and Third World one project at a time. A sort of "Pimp My Democratic People's Republic", if you will, and I'm sure you will.

Some of these places are primitive, you say (and by "you" I mean a fictional strawman I can knock down)? We have people with more money than sense who have become experts in the same "primitive technology"-- any primitive technology you could name! We have mead brewers, artisanal pickle makers, constructors of Stirling engines of any size! Why should our Marines have to rebuild what they just knocked down, when we could recruit a volunteer corps of bisexual hipster steampunks who would be only too happy to work with actual Edwardian-era power stations. To arms, bisexual hipster steampunks, you are America's new foreign ambassadors! And let Orange County Choppers open a satellite office in Kabul! Let freedom ring from a thousand robot street sweepers, a Zeppelin bus system, escape pods from sinking island republics, all courtesy of the good old US of A! We can stop being the largest weapons exporter and be the world's largest exporter of retro-cool gearhead geekism. A big step up, if you ask me.

Papa's got a Brand New Bag

(Author's note: just to be perfectly clear, I am not a dad YET. In another month or so. It's a little like waiting for Godot, but at least we know where the baby is.)

Papa's got a brand New Bag, indeed. And in that bag, shiny inside the packaging, is Papa himself. My wife is giving birth to our baby, and I am going to have to give birth to a father, who is me and yet who is hopefully better, brighter and shinier and stronger. There are a million types of fathers here in the naked city, and no telling yet which one you are. I'm not cut out to be the one who goes out for cigarettes and never returns, because I don't smoke, but that's all I know. And I don't get to know, until it's all over, which means I never get to know, because we are starting a family, and it's never over. Until it is. I admit that watching a line of distant cousins flicker to extinction in a nursing home in Seattle played a role in my decision to become a father. And that decision will end up maybe reverberating down through my own family. Maybe I will make such a hash of fatherhood that vows of celibacy will be taken. Maybe everything my child does as a parent will be with me as a negative example fresh in his head. But adjustment is possible My wife can tell me that I'm coming on a little strong, or that toddlers really don't get sarcasm-- unless, of course, she's gone out for cigarettes. And even if she does, there are many ways of winning at parenthood. Sometimes it's being the best listener in the world and not saying anything. And maybe I fail that test, some of the time. But I can redeem myself later, when all that matters are the four most important words I will ever say: "Look out! Runaway bus!" . There are peaks and valleys of parenthood, is what I'm saying, and everyone goes in without a map.

Having no map, I must look for landmarks around me, to see if anybody has left me a message, scrawled on a rock, or in some freshly guzzled, still damp fifth of Jack Daniel's. There are none to be had, for at this stage, it seems, everyone has gone out for cigarettes. But I am starting fatherhood at the age that my pop, this kid's Old Grand-Dad, was when I graduated from college. I'm not sure that repeated cries for the kid to get a decent job are appropriate here, but I guess it can't hurt to get an early start, since I'll be retiring almost exactly when my son graduates from college, an all too literal example of the generational compact of Social Security. I am late to this party, as I am late to almost everything, or so it seems everywhere I look. Except for around my neighborhood, where wiry, greying dads push strollers with the stolidity of yoked oxen, or jog behind them, racehorses gone to stud, pushing their own Triple Crown dreams onto their kids while guiding their Quinny's around the Rose Bowl. If they can do it, so can I. Why this grey-by boom? Does maturity come so much later now? is it that maturity has always come now, and our previous generations of younger parents were even more terrified and clueless than we are? Or does the specter of the flame extinguishing itself finally give the necessary push?All I know is that in my own mind, at some point "not now" became "why not now?" and then each month without the child became its own anxiety: "WHY not now?". And then finally, relief on that score, and a whole new set of anxieties. And so on, from now until the end of etc. etc., see paragraph 2.

I used to think that making a baby was a kind of zero point for becoming a father,a useful lower bound ; for instance the courtroom question "Did you father that child?". But for me the first decision was to make a home for the baby in my life, to see if I had reached the point where I had to do this. Of course, these discussions weren't just for me, by me-- I would have been royally pooched if they were. Fatherhood begins as an idea, and it has to be translated into reality again and again and again and again. And in that translation, you go from being a father to becoming Dad.

See, fathers make only one thing: babies. There's always a father involved somewhere, whether smiling as you remove your clothes, ladies; or grimacing dutifully over a test tube and a copy of "Perfect 10". But everything that a man can do after that requires a Dad. Being a father is formal and abstract. You can die never knowing your father; but you'll never do that with Dad. Dad is informal as hell. Dad is concrete, not abstract. One thing would have made me a father. But being a Dad means to keep making things. As a dad to be, I have sat in on ultrasounds, massaged my poor wife's neck and lower back as some hedge against the discomfort of her steady inflation, helped put together a baby registry, done the dishes, cooked most of the meals, felt guilty about missing the breastfeeding class even though I'm not about to do it myself, and done the dishes again. And again. I have built walls, painted trim, picked up cribs and mattresses, found an antireflux pillow and have grown just a little bit with each task. I am ready to be a dad, dammit. I'm only missing the one thing that will tell the world I am.

But these are just names, people say, and by people I mean fictional strawmen who exist only to make me look good. But names are important. For me, mother and father are titles. But mom and dad are people, real people I know and love and probably put through hell at one time or another. You can father a child by mistake, but being a dad takes concentration and preparation and years of improvisation. A child can be a father, but being a dad means being an adult-- there I said it. The A-word, that most misunderstood, oft-euphemised, and belittled state, and the most necessary for the survival of the culture. The only phrase that's straightforward about it (“adult books” “movies” or “beverages” don't count) is “responsible adult”, which is made to sound as exciting as hi- fiber cereal. But it's thrilling, in its way. Being a responsible adult is the feeling you get when you first ride your bike without training wheels.

There are ceremonies and laws and rules of thumb to tell you when you have become a man, but rather tellingly, none that tell you when you've become an actual adult. For me that time definitively came a couple weeks ago, when me and my ripening honey sat kissing, legs wrapped round each other, on top of the brand new linoleum floor I had just laid down, in what is now "the baby's room". With each smooch I held her as tightly as her abdomen would allow, and I could feel my heart pounding and my blood rising , and I thought so loudly I wondered if the neighborhood could hear it : "Yeah, damn it, Daddy's home. He's right here. In our house, which is mommy's house and daddy's house. And this is the room that we decided was yours, and I made for you, because we love you, and I love you. I haven't met you yet but I love you and I wanted you to have this cute little room with its mommy-selected striped floor in Whispering Blue and Sahara, with the bright blue crib for you and the glider I got for mommy, 'cause all mommies need a glider, says so on all the forums and anyway it's great because it doesn't scratch up the cute striped floor-- that's your job, with the toys you'll have and that we'll help you play with. We'll have to see about the puppy, no promises there. All this is for you, and I do it because I have to and because I want to, because fathering is easy but being a dad is hard work and you have to be a goddamn adult to appreciate it, because one of the pleasures of adulthood as a friend of mine has truly written is getting as much pleasure from giving a gift as getting a gift. I gave you life, little boy to be, and now I must give you a life, and you must give me nothing but yourself-- well a secure retirement would be nice, but we'll have to see about that, no demands there-- so for now you just be you and I will give you everything I know how and we'll see how it all works out. Much love till we meet, Dad."


(a version of this piece was performed on June 13th in Los Angeles, as Part of the Lit UP! series. video may be posted shortly.)

Some Lazy SOB with a Shovel

So. for the last little bit, since the project I was working on went away for rehab, I've been doing some unskilled labor around the house. It's unskilled because I'm doing it, aided and abetted by my Dad, who comes up and makes sure I don't kill myself with tools or effort. He has a lot more practice than me and a generally good sense of humor, which is what is needed when I pick up a hand tool. It's not all sweetness and light, as we have different ways about us. Dad is of the type who believes that working means actually doing something, anything, and if he has a hammer in his hand it is usually moving. Me, I prefer to analyze all my options before committing to any one of them, and thus I can usually be found staring at a project, my eyes burning a hole in the atmosphere, as I appear to be attempting to pound the nail with the power of my mind alone. Eventually my hammer swings, blows are landed, something happens. While waiting for that, Dad repairs to his coffee thermos, in which I have often wondered if there isn't something stronger, to salve the frustration at having to watch me work, or think about working. But we have been doing this for a while, and we have learned to complement each other-- my job is generally to say "Whoa there, Tiger", his is to say "Well, let's at least do something." So we have been installing some sweat equity, and nothing is more truly named-- a linoleum floor synthesized from coffee. cursing, perspiration and ham sandwiches; and currently a wall, taking place behind our garage, where we enact most of the travails of the ancient Egyptians, slowly moving block after block, with considerably less grand results-- two and a half feet so far. Well, they had slaves (They didn't? Damn it. Damn it to hell.). We have each other, and a "helpful brochure".

It has been an education, no thanks to the brochure. Everyone should do it at least once. This doesn't explain why I keep doing it, but the fact that I'm cheap and just a bit of a control freak probably will do for that. The thing is, despite the undervaluation of manual labor, its continual marginalization and defamation, there remain two facts about it: 1) it's necessary, and 2) it's hard. It's not just physically demanding, it requires skills that you and I don't have. There is nothing more humbling to the college bound youth than working along side someone who can really use a hoe. I've seen it, and I'll never forget it. That simple tool, bane of casual gardeners and reluctant lawn owners, can be wielded like a sushi chef's knife or sculptor's chisel. My painfully slow "improvements" just makes that memory burn brighter-- the merciless sun beating down on our six-person weeding crew, till finally this kid, an aspiring chiropractor no less, said "We'll never finish this like this. You guys take this half of the field, and I'll take this half." And he finished before us. It was a sight to behold.

And it is physically demanding as well. This wall has taken a lot out of me, and if sweat were equity, then I'd live in the Taj by now. But I had a realization that I really needed as I stood there, drooping off the top of my shovel like a wet gym sock, trying to find another breath somewhere. I had a picture of myself in my mind's eye at that moment, that I had seen a hundred times. Mostly, I'd seen it driving past highway construction sites or street work. We all have seen it-- some lazy SOB with a shovel, just leaning stock-still on the thing, taking what surely must be a long, lazy break. And I have taken this as proof of the decline of America's work ethic, or misplaced staffing priorities, or whatever. Well, now I have some idea of what might have been going on before I drove by and saw what I saw. SOB's with shovels, I owe you an apology. Take your rest, you've almost certainly earned it.

Live Satire Alert!

If you've never seen the really huge trainwreck that is the Nosmo King live experience, come catch me, Nosmo King, tomorrow (Tuesday, March 24th) night at the YDFPFT show. It's at The Room, 1323 Santa Monica Blvd., Santa Monica CA 90404, and it starts 9pm-ish. The entrance is around the back of the building, and the show is in the third room in. I was booked a long time ago for this-- let's hope they remember I'm on. If not, free guerrilla-style Nosmo King Show in the parking lot, or the Volvo dealership next door-- your choice! There will be other fully credentialled comedians on the bill, but let's face it, we know who the draw is here.

Lightening Up: Past Weekend Bicycling Blogging

(Author's note: My efforts to write the definitive post on the financial crisis and its criminality on a grand scale have frustrated me for so long that I just sat back and typed, and typed this. So there. It's a different side of Nosmo King, and obviously even I am uncomfortable with it somehow. Hey, I'm whimsical sometimes, so sue me. Or at least claw back my bonuses.)

So on a recent Saturday my wife was away, doing something mysterious and female, to which I was not invited because I am not female, nor mysterious (it's okay, it's fine-- I have long since come to terms with my chronic masculinity). So I take the high road-- literally, and go out on a bike ride. I just make it into the guttering light of a thick mist Angelenic evening, the kind that in the valleys turns into such blanket as might disgorge Sherlock Holmes. But it is too early for that, but I still wear my sparkly jacket and turn my lights to announce me, at least, if not mesmerize the motoroids with my dazzle. I am on my three-speed, a contraption that I built up myself from a mountain crank and a road frame, one that must be ridden hard or not at all, and was in fact not being ridden at all, because it needed fixing, because I made it, and it broke. Broke like Citigroup, broke like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and Indy Mac and all the other Macs and Maes and owners of those buildings with signs in the sky . The difference being that those august institutions were supposedly built by experts, while, as I hope I've made clear, me (occasional) writer, not expert bike so much builder very. But this evening, while my spouse is having a girls' night out, my oneliest bike creation is fixed, and I am pedaling it to beat hell or at least traffic, up and down ,some big hills till I don't notice the slight grade that runs for a mile or more on the home stretch. I am breathing deep and rhythmic and I am deeply happy, the kind that you wonder if you should tell anybody about because inside you it feels like really big news, sensational, almost pornographic. And I wonder why I find that on a bike, moreso than other places, and why that feeling is important or desirable in modern Upper Losangeleswood. So, herewith, the answer to these and other pressing questions.
I labor in the picture business by day, making other people's movies more like themselves. And to do this, you live here, in America's second largest city, a place that people say nobody comes from even though one in thirty US citizens is either me or a fellow county dweller. This mega-city (literally one million cities, which I believe is an accurate description of Upper Losangeleswood) is built upon the promise of rapid motion-- jumbles of expressways replacing the largest electric rail system that ever was in the world-- and that promise is broken. The freeways are jammed eight hours a day, their feeder streets stopped cold, we weary drivers forced to try ever more obscure side streets and byways to keep our cars moving at all, because cars are like sharks-- once they stop they start to stink in a very short time. And our tempers fray, our minds frazzle as we move more of our lives into the cars, eating breakfast, applying makeup, frantically calling friends if we have them, therapists if we don't (yes, I know many people have both-- we need all the help we can get in this town). Into this school I swim, sans armor, on a delicate device powered by whim. I am a minnow among sharks taking my life in my own hands. I am vulnerable and I know it. And I am happy.
Happy because, while the promise of motion for cars in ULAwood is a cruel, sad joke, if you're on a bike it is alive and well. All the streets, even the tiny byways, are spacious, so much more than those in Pdxville, one state to the north, for instance. In a car here, I feel like my progress is suffocated by all of these other cars, all so manifestly on some frivolous errand , making my unbelievably important, life or death journey nearly impossible. But on a bicycle, I am always going as fast as I want. I have my sense of control back, and thus I feel free. Thus the happiness sensational, almost pornographic.
I think the cars sense this, which is why they hate us. But most of them don't hate us enough to want to kill us, or at least not so much as to raise their insurance. People have asked me if I'm scared to ride in traffic. No, I say, traffic means witnesses. Besides, it's illegal to ride on the sidewalk here, and at the speeds I go, downright unneighborly. So into the mix I go, happily.
Because the other reason I love to cycle is that it gives me a chance to do only one thing. I step out of my mobile breakfast nook/ phonebooth/ panic room and just ride. I have no Ipod, no radio, and I'm working really hard at not answering my cell phone. I have the freedom to do only one thing-- keep myself alive. It's better than any video game, the graphics are un-freaking believable, and the multiplayer engine is ssssweet. I'm still searching for the reset button, and knowing that there are no extra lives makes it-- well it makes it something, lemmetellya. You can't program something like this, nor would you want to. It's life at the speed of life.
I'm trying to get better about not doing this for exercise. The best thing I can do for myself is to bicycle, and the best thing I could do for the planet is to bicycle. If you're a typical resident of this city of the mind called Upper Losangeleswood, one of the only things that matter to the environment is reducing the amount that you drive. I've got a ready-made solution here on two wheels, but I do have commitment issues. I just need to commit fully to the notion of my bike as transportation, not just therapy. I need to stop making excuses for not doing it. Which, I realize –META ALERT! WRITING ABOUT WRITING COMING UP! LOOK AWAY IF YOU MUST!-- applies equally well to this blog. I need to stop making excuses for not doing it. I need to realize that the only thing that matters is increasing the amount of time I spend on it. I need to start using it to get where I need to go. So, some cycling blogging will probably become a semiregular feature her, in this small world of irregular features. I encourage you all to get out there on your bike, and go somewhere you were going to go anyway, or go someplace new. Everybody already has a screenplay; most people have a blog, but not everybody has a bike. Oh, and get a road bike, for crying out loud. You live on a road, you probably don't live on a mountain. To those of you on mountain roads, or mountain bikes, my sincerest apology.

On Undersized Red, White and Blue Balls

As the election approaches and the days get shorter, I have found myself thinking about an old, peculiar, vanished American institution, one whose effects are, in my opinion, still reverberating today. With all the talk about fraud, about disenfranchisement, about winning and maps and red white and blue Americas, I can't help but think about the (old) ABA, the American Basketball Association. Back when men were men and wore short shorts and huge hair, the ABA were the small market anarchists of basketball, from whence we got the 3-point shot, a lot of great players, and your world champion (at some point this decade, right? I'm not what one could call a sports nut.) San Antonio Spurs. Back when the ABA was around, the NBA studiously ignored it where it could and ridiculed it where it couldn't, calling its games too high-scoring, too free-wheeling, its players too flashy. The statistics for the ABA games were startling when I saw them; a hailstorm of undersize red white and blue balls at the basket, and may the team with the hottest hand win. To which I , at this remove, say heck yeah.
I've noticed that in this election cycle, there's one side trying to shoot out the lights, one side trying to set a record with teamwork, and everybody playing their hearts out for the full game. And then there's the other side. Far from working to run up their own totals, they seek instead to hold down the other side's scoring. Instead of running on their own merits, they try to implant falsehoods about their opponents. They are obsessed with defending the status quo, because they can't run and they can't score, and instead will be working the refs, trying to cast doubt on the legitimacy of any victory their opponents might get.
The Obama campaign, though vastly better funded, reminds me of ABA basketball. It's an offensive clinic-- more volunteers, more donors, more field offices, more detailed policy descriptions. Everybody with their eyes on the goal and the scoreboard, playing their game for all that it's worth. McCain's campaign is playing defense to the point of denial-- they can't even accept that their opponent is who he is, so they run against a Bizarro-world simulacrum with the same name, who is everything the real Obama is not-- Muslim, Terrorist, Communist, Socialist ,Anti-Christ. I mean, I will, if Obama is elected, hold his feet to the fire about any number of things, but I will not pretend he's anything other than an intelligent, centrist, non-plutocratic Democrat who can give an amazing speech. Which, at this point in American history, feels like a triumph.
I play Scrabble every once in a while. I'm what's known as a good living-room player. I don't play any defense, really. I try to light it up as much as I can with the letters I'm given. Those people who clog up the board with c's and v's, take triple word scores with two letter words on the off chance that I may be able to do something with them-- I have no patience with them. Why do you play a word game, if you're scared of big words? I don't and won't win every time, but sometimes an awesome game does break out-- like three seven-letter words stacked one on top of the other, or that-- OK, time to stop Scrabble-geeking out. You get my drift.
Which brings me to the point I always reach with some on the Right. If you hate voters, why run in elections (this is a rhetorical question-- I think I know the answer, although I hope I'm wrong.)? If you believe government is the problem, how can you govern ? Why do you play word games if you're scared of words? What do you believe in? The only answer I keep getting, is power. The power to send young people to die, to reward your backers and punish your critics, to tell people that they are different and undeserving of rights. It's the right to pick winners, and decide who matters. But you have to respect the process. Believe what you want, but don't lie about what you believe, or about what it means. Me, I think everybody matters. I just want to see the scoreboard light up with the really big numbers. I want more people to have a say in who makes our decisions. I want flashy, run and gun, ABA-style politics, everybody on the floor playing hard. But maybe that's because right now, when you get down to it, there's only one candidate running who can shoot the J.

Last Chance at Gladiator Stadium

So, I'm the go-to political guy for a lot of my friends. My little circle of fools, clowns, and jesters will frequently pipe me onstage with something akin to “I always look forward to this guy's analysis,” which as we all know, means comedy gold. People love them some analysis. So then what was I doing, on the last day of voter registration, scurrying from Nosmo King World Headquarters with only one thing on my mind? Why me, who can tell the curious tale of Richard Nixon's downfall as a bedtime story off the top of his head? Me, not even legally registered to vote in the polling place nearest his own World Headquarters? Well, yeah.
I blame the Republican Party, for giving us satirists the pure uncut China White. There's so much material to work with that we ignore all else, like children on a perfect snow day, sledding our way for hour after hour on perfect fluffy hills of bullshit, innuendo, and bigotry. Much of this is carried in on a front from Alaska, of course, but ultimate responsibility rests with an unstable mass of hot air that has blown out of the Arizona desert for some years, and has caused damage wherever it's been felt (several aircraft destroyed, untold financial losses, not to mention many promises broken beyond repair.). Combine these two stormfronts (what, you were actually expecting a link there? For shame…) and it's sledding today, sledding tomorrow, sledding forever. So little things get neglected. And I must leave my abode in the Vertical Quarter to do what no-one can do for me.
At the gates of Gladiator Stadium, a few tents are set up, staffed by comically mismatched County employees-- teams of two, the largest paired with the smallest more reliably than in any vintage cartoon. They cheerfully help all of us who put this off for weeks, months, years-- a truck driver from Harbor City, a glassblower from the City of Mercantilism, mothers with kid in strollers or in tow, a Deputy conducting us into stacked parking with his-- flashlight. His giant cop flashlight. What's up with those ? (Rhetorical question. I know what's up with those.) I went with a magazine and a flashlight, expecting the worst-- long lines, a climate of barely contained hostility, a vast throng of dimbulbs with urgent philosophical questions. I was wrong. I was in and out in forty-two seconds, though it should be noted I had, at least, filled out my form in advance.
If doing everything at the last minute was always this easy, I could recommend it unequivocally to all and sundry. But It isn't. So keep your voter registration current, keep it next to your bed, or under your pillow. You'll want to be able to use it at a moment's notice, when malefactors like McCain and Palin stage their home invasion.It's the only language they understand. It's the only thing we have that can control certain kinds of weather.

Preview of Coming Attractions

For those of you wondering where my further thoughts on the bailout went, I'll be aiting some of them tonight onstage at the YDFPFT Show tonight at 10:00 pm. It's at The Room in Santa Monica, 1323 Santa Monica Boulevard (at 14th St, downstairs and to the the back. Rick Overton , Jim Coughlin, Lizzy Cooperman and other funny folk will be there too, Google "YDFPFT" for the full 411. For those who can't make it, there'll be a new post this week, I promise, covering the same ground.

My Solution to the Financial crisis

Ha! I don't have one. Made you look! But if I did, it would look something like these two fine articles that EVERYBODY should read:

this one

and this one

Read them and weep, or cheer, or write your Congressman, or all of the above. Do it before they give these so-called "Masters of the Universe" a blank check from your account (oh wait, they already have.). Have a pleasant weekend everybody. I'll be sharpening my pitchfork and making enquiries as to the current wholesale price of tar and feathers.

Everybody's talkin' bout the new kid in town…

(Editor's note: This piece is slightly reworked from a reading I did at an Episcopal church here in the Minor Outlying Islands. No actual vice-presidential candidates were harmed in the making of this post. Nor is any but the most general and trifling offense intended to the great state of Alaska. Sorry you popped up in my line of fire, dude. I'll make it up to you someday, I promise. Yes, I know I'm going to freeze in the dark, thanks for sharing.)

Oh Republicans, you cruelest and most capricious of parties, you have done it again. You have waylaid my plans, rerouted my intentions, tossed aside my desires like so much chaff. I had intended for tonight's feature topic, “New Kid in Town”, to serve as an introduction to the personal side of Nosmo King, a selection from any number of tender tales I could tell about being a fish out of water, a stranger in a strange land, even a turd drifting lazily in a punchbowl. But then you, Republicans, have to go, and mere days before the show, nominate Sarah Palin for vice president. And suddenly, everyone is in a tizzy. Nothing else is news, we must find out what Sarah Palin is all about, starting completely from scratch. And I did-- it's Pay-lin, near as I can tell. Anyway, now that she's here, the Democrats are wondering, how do we attack her, a likeable neophyte with children, without seeming too mean, too chauvinistic, too much like a primary no one could be really proud of? The answer is simple, Obama campaign: you don't. You can't. But luckily, I can. I am angry, obscure in all meaningful senses of the word, no one would let me anywhere near a microphone next to an official campaign banner, as I have all the savoir-faire of Kim Jong-Il and the folksy down home charm of Rudolph Giuliani. So when the Republicans make our political landscape into Chernobyl, you can send me into the hotspots without a suit. Let's go there, shall we?

So Sarah Palin is a woman, whom nobody knows anything about, and who returns the favor, appearing to know nothing about anything else. What is her judgment like? Well, let's look at her 5 children: Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper, and Trig. That is 5 lovely, precious, and distinct individuals to spring from her loins, yet between them there is only 1 proper name-- shared with Britain's 6th largest city. Now, it was a long time ago, but I remember my own childhood as tough enough without people confusing you with that thing that soured you on math forever , a tree, or Britain's 6th largest city. It could have been worse, I suppose; we could be faced with Palin offspring named Macadam, Liverpool, Paper Barked Maple, Trombonist, and non-Euclidean Tensor Analysis. But that wouldn't happen, because then she would have actually had to read a book, rather than just inquire on how to ban them.
Which brings me to my first joke: What's the difference between Sarah Palin's eldest son, and her record as a politician? You can run on a Track, but you can't run on her record as a politician. Thank you, I'm here all week. Try the veal, it comes with extra suffering.

Anyway, so Sarah Palin, the result of a massive vetting and selection process resembled nothing so much as letting a rat loose on a bingo card and reading the name underneath the first turd (yes, I have used the t-word twice in the same piece. Sue me.), turns out to be quite the joker herself. Here is the first joke she told in her speech at the Republican Convention. She asked, in that triumphant just a little too loud tone that makes people actually appreciate the studied phony cool of real comedians “You know what the difference is between a hockey mom and a Pitbull?”. And of course, now we all know the answer. “A pitbull doesn't lie repeatedly to the media and the voting public.” Putting the state jet up on eBay isn't the same thing as selling it. Keeping 78 million of the money for the "bridge to nowhere" is not the same as refusing it. And on and on and on.

But Sarah Palin is a maverick, just like John McCain. She's not afraid to shake things up, to take a fresh look at things and try to see them in a new light. Take rape and incest. Most people have this quaint, old fashioned belief that these things are always wrong, all the time. Not courageous maverick hockey-mom Sarah Palin. Wake up people, this is the 21st century, and the first woman to be nominated for the vice-presidency by the party of Lincoln has a different vision. She is against abortion even in cases of rape or incest. Well of course -- She's governor of Alaska. How else do they keep the birthrate up, up there? You're cooped up for 8 months out of the year with your family and your liquor cabinet, howling storms and polar bears stalking the streets outside-- things happen, is all I'm saying, and some of those things have buck teeth, a Hapsburg lip, and goiter. And they deserve an earmark like everybody else in Alaska. And where some small town mayors looked at rape and saw tragedy, Sarah Palin , ever the optimist type, saw a revenue stream. I guess she thought, When life gives you rape, and you have to make rape-aid, make sure you charge by the glass. By the way, the author of the Federal Law making rape kits mandatory, which John McCain voted against? Joe Biden. So, folks, this time it's personal....

I would like to point out that Sarah Palin's stupidity, cupidity, and disingenuousness are not problems as far as her party is concerned. They're assets. A long time ago, back when I thought stuff like this was accidental, I had a picture of Dan Quayle, wandering around his house after George W Bush's installation (as he is no smarter than a major appliance, just a whole lot meaner, this is the correct verb) drunk and teetering, saying over and over again, “They said I was too stupid to be President, but apparently I wasn't stupid enough.”. It is no accident, because these people hate government. By their lights, it should be dismantled completely, but until that finally happens, it may as well be staffed by secretive parochialists who view it as a vehicle to settle scores and reward high school buddies. Tammany Hall is back, this time from the opposite side of the aisle. Because government itself is tainted, policies don't matter. It's what you do before you hit gov't that counts. So Palin's qualification for high office is that she didn't have an abortion, just as McCain's is that he was a POW. Once. A long time ago.

Sarah Palin is the ultimate weapon-- an antifeminist woman whose goal is the same as every other Republican minority-- to make sure that the opportunities she got vanish from the earth, as surely as polar bears caught in the global warming that she denies is a problem, or the wolves she offered a $150 bounty per foreleg on. And when other people's daughters come home pregnant, why, if those people just worked real hard and became governor of a small state themselves, those kids wouldn't do too badly, what with a per diem for sleeping in their own house and all. Just pull yourself up by your bootstraps, but make sure to leave one foot free to kick the guy below in the face.

Facing this sort of bracing Surrealpolitik, I become a very bad person. When I saw baby Trig Palin, coked up on baby 'ludes during his mom's speech, being passed around from Palin child to McCain adult, as though he were a mere charm whose wonderful pro-life mojo would rub off on them, I found myself hoping that the child would, on his arrival into John McCain's rictus, pee on the still presumptive Republican nominee. Because I knew that all McCain could do was stand there and take it, a clenched half-smile for the cameras, as the warm spot spread on his 5000 dollar suit, and him thinking, “Oh well, I've got another one at home. But which home? Dammit, why can't I remember anything? Well at least we can take the private jet when we hunt for my other suit. Hey, whose baby is this anyway?”

What Happened

I was heading to bed with my lovely fiancee the other night here at Nosmo King World Headquarters, when she asked me how things got to be the way they are. We had been talking about the upcoming Presidential election, and how she had to search to find articles that actually said anything at all about John McCain (even on his own website, it's all about the “scary” African-American man), and how Everything was Bad for Obama (His being smeared, his reacting to the smears, Hillary rallying her supporters for him or not, etc. etc.). Since I'm approximately one billion years older than her, and since I'm very sure of myself and like to shoot off my trap, it was her lucky night. Or something. Anyway, as we turned out the lights I gave her something scarier than any ghost story, the least -soothing lulllaby in creation-- my understanding of how we got to this point in our political culture and media, where the Democrats end up playing “Heads I Win, Tails you Lose” because it truly is the only game in town.
Where I start the game is where I first became aware of it: Vietnam. That was the first and only war where we were all truly “in country”. I would watch the footage as they aired it on the evening news-- the dirt and mud and blood of the footage, the danger and chaos palpable; and them some DoD flack giving casualty totals in the thousands suffered by the other side while our soldiers smoked contemptuously behind him, not believing a word of it. It was the first time that everyone got to see our Government lying to our faces (before the Pentagon realized how malleable the press was, how easily they would roll over for Access-- like I said, a long time ago.). And it had a catastrophic effect on everybody, in one way or another. Confronted by this, people had to react. Some people took the opportunity to bring radicalism above ground, and began to doubt everything (well, a lot of things-- another thing I remember from personal experience was the unreconstructed sexism of most leftist hippy males.) Others doubled down, and believed that the Government must have a good reason for lying to us, and trusted that what we were not being told outweighed what we were seeing. Into this environment came the second incarnation of Richard Nixon, a thin presidential margin breaking his way for once.
It needs to be brought up that Nixon, despite being well-known, was something of an outsider in Washington circles-- famously and beautifully described as a man whose friends hated him. His administration was full of all kinds of California guys and Miami guys whose loyalties were to Nixon and not the party. Further, Nixon was suspect economically to the preponderance of Republicans-- wage freezes, OK, but price freezes? A flirtation with a guaranteed national income, ferchrissakes? So Nixon was not necessarily the kind of guy who could expect the love of everyone in Washington, and not even from his allies. Probably one reason that a skeptical press (skeptical from the Vietnam eyes/ ears disconnect) was given the OK to go after him by their corporate owners (by more than one corporation as it turned out.). Talk about winning friends and influencing people. As we all know, Nixon went down. But he resigned ahead of being tried, impeached, and thrown from office. Congress had given him the preview of what was to come, and Nixon – with a golden parachute of a pardon probably guaranteed by Gerald Ford-- jumped first. But the press-- abetted by official public Washington -- got all the credit. The press had brought down a president! The Fourth Estate had triumphed over the first! And there was much rejoicing. But-- (speculation to follow)
For about 28 seconds or so. Then the corporate press began getting memos from their old money pals, on expensive raised monogram stationary, probably saying something like “OK, but just this once. Best, Old Money”. Because Nixon was the last of the Republican Socialists. His ratfucking of his enemies, his shredding of the Constitution; his venomous but sub rosa racism-- all fine with the powers that be; it was his refusal to hate the poor unto death that made him expendable. Reagan and Ford-- Corporate Shill, Superficially Bumbling Apparatchik --duked it out in 1976, the Coke vs New Coke war for the top spot of the Republican party; but neither of talked of price freezes and national incomes-- Ford's economic plan began and ended with the WIN button, and Reagan had been in the pocket of General Electric for so long he had developed lint-breathing gills.
Appearances had to be kept up, though. And here is where a few tropes that we all recognize seem to have been born. The first grew naturally out of the Fairness Doctrine: equal time, and equal treatment. So the newly skeptical and empowered press was unleashed on Jimmy Carter-- despite his not having any teams of burglars, not having shredded the Constitution (much), not having any record of depredations against the commonweal to speak of (well, does membership in Trilateral Commission count?) . His only commonality with Nixon was that he was an outsider, with all these funny-talking Georgians in his wake; he had done nothing to merit the critical coverage and scrutiny Nixon got and deserved. But equal time and equal treatment must be preserved. So came the second trope: Carter's sins must a priori be just as bad as Nixon's. I remember a gushing firehose of negativity going at Carter pretty much all the time, and the tone of the coverage just assumed you should hate him this much-- he was a PRESIDENT, fer cryin out loud, and they do horrible things. Like explore the firebombing of think tanks that are critical of you (Nixon). Or ask people to turn out the lights (Carter). Anyone can see the equivalence here, right? Well, if you don't, you should.
With Reagan's triumph in 1980 (aided by some timely meddling with the Iranian hostage-holders; just like Nixon's people did in 1968, and Bush II attempted with the color coded terrorism alerts in 2004-- but no one could call that a pattern, surely.), the perception was that yet another outsider had come to Washington. But in fact, Reagan was a sticky chocolate bar to the tastebuds of corporate America. So it was deemed that Reagan should not suffer the fate of his two elected predecessors ( Where does Ford fit in here, you ask? Ford, of course, doesn't coun t. He was expected to pardon and falll on his sword, and he did.). Now the solons might say to me that Reagan got plenty of critical coverage. And he did, I remember that much of the 80's, as much as I try to forget the hair, movies, clothes etc etc. But the difference was that for Reagan, there was no AMPLIFICATION. The stories were allowed to be published, and then generally not commented upon, except for lengthy, end-of-investigation reports that only die-hards would ever read. If one goes back to those reports, the scope of the Reagan administration's criminality is of Nixonian dimensions. But, at least he let us keep the lights on.
In a final irony, in 1987, the Fairness Doctrine, which gave us equal time on television and inspired the destruction of Carter's presidency, was repealed. This did not improve things for the Democrats, as Reagan's followers stepped up to the microphone and began spewing contrafactual hatred, untempered by any need to present an opposing viewpoint, accompanied by all kinds of amplification-- the same talking points from one pinheaded goon to another, endlessly parroted by pig-ignorant Jaspers eager to hear themselves on 20 seconds of radio air. Clinton's impeachment grew straight out of this-- pure entrapment, ask a question nobody has any business asking, and prosecute the inevitable lie. Somehow, it's always bad news for the Democrats, but that's mostly because there's no perspective ever given about the long strange trip we've been on. And Democrats continue to hope that a very slightly left Jesus will lead them to an electoral bonanza, and they will not have to get a their hands dirty with a common rhetoric, consistent talking points, and (God forbid) party discipline. And the media will continue to tell us that Republicans and Democrats are the same, so they must treated the same. Except when they're not, and then one must still say that they are, and always have been. The traditions of American politics and journalism demand it.

The Alluded-to FISA Post; or, More Fun about Acronyms

So the Democrats in Congress got together with the Republicans in Congress and the Administration (do we have to call them "the Administration", really, when they can't administer their way out of a paper bag? How about-- oh pick your own suitably excremental adjective. I'm busy and sleepy and cranky.) to "reform" (and by reform we mean "gut like a carp") the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (now you know what FISA stands for, at least. Don't let anyone tell you I'm good for nothing.). I am properly outraged by this, and will be donating to the ACLU,possibly the Strange Bedfellows campaign (though those Ron Paul people are a bug, not a feature), and whoever else might make these gutless dolts uncomfortable (Meaning the "Administration", Congressional Democrats, and other gutless dolts to be named later). Yet, despite my high dudgeon, and promising a piece on this, so sure was I of its rantworthiness, I am sleepy and cranky. I am sad and dispirited. Not because I expected much different, not because I now know why it happened (can't find the link, but in some of the reviews of Jane Mayer's latest book-- basically, enough Democrats were briefed on what Bush was "administering", that when the potential for war crimes prosecutions was broached, said Dems came down with acute cover-yer-ass-itis; and a certain sympathy for those poor innocent babes at the helm of our telecommunication playground.), but because it is just so sad that there is no leadership offered in the fine art of saying "enough".

When the Bush spying plans-- like the Bush torture plans (no links here-- do you really need them at this point? The question is not whether spying and torture took place, but whether they're a good thing for the nation or not-- Mithras help us all.)--
were revealed to these leading Democrats, somebody should have squealed (I would pick Jay Rockefeller-- he's old, led a rich full life, he's got more money than Zeus so he could get great lawyers.). Somebody in the Congressional leadership should have said "we don't do this." Let the chips fall where they may, act like a coequal branch of Government, put on the brakes. Do something, anything. Don't just go "Oh, that's very interesting. Are you sure it's necessary? Oh, then, carry on." Don't let it get to where you have to shred the 4th Amendment to protect your own worthless pustule-flecked cowardly rump. This seems obvious to me, but apparently it's hard for some people to grasp. And just look at the expressions on the faces of Bush and Cheney in the photos as this farce was signed into law-- they literally can't believe they're getting away with it. Again. Those expressions tell me that things didn't have to turn out this way.

But turn out this way they did. A court challenge looms, and I am guardedly hopeful, since the "Administration" has lost every FISA related case under the old law, and hopeless, since most have been turned over on appeal. If you're interested in the differences between the old and new FISA laws, click here. I'm tired and cranky and though busy, feel a need for a good long cry in the shower, ala Elisabeth Shue in "Leaving Las Vegas". And, courtesy Congress and the President, for the same reasons.

Are you Experienced?

I meant to write this one a week or so ago, when the whole Gen. Wesley Clark kerfuffle exploded. As a liberal, a progressive, as someone who hates America's freedoms (just clipped back a little more by the recent Democratic collapse on FISA, about which more later-- doesn't that just whet your appetite, the promise of more writing about an acronym?), as a proud dirty f---ing hippie, you would think that I'd have Clark's back on this. But I do not. Because, after careful consideration and a coupla thirty-seven bottles of Rumpleminze, I realize what this country needs is the foreign affairs experience of John McCain. After eight years of mush-mouthed incompetence by an alcoholic AWOL fighter pilot with daddy issues that make Oedipus look like-- well, pick some healthy father-son relationship from myth or literature, I can't do everything for you! And call your mom, she'd get a kick out of it—anyway, like someone with less-big Daddy issues, America clamors for change. Surely John Sidney McCain III, fourth or fifth generation military, can at least free us from these crippling daddy issues. John McCain and his surrogates tell us that his experience matters. So I'm looking forward to seeing him put it into practice.

I expect McCain to, within a hundred days of being inaugurated, be shot down and tortured by North Korea, Iran, and Russia. I believe that this tour of shoot down and torture diplomacy will increase America's stature in the world, and win for us concessions on oil prices, a further infusion of cash from China, and a twin luge gold at the next Winter Olympics. Sure it will be tough on a seventysomething man, but presidentin', as we know, is hard work. Oh wait, that's not what he's going to do? Sorry, my bad. So he is going to spend 4 hours each in downtown Pyongyang, Tehran and Moscow in a flak vest, surrounded by US armed forces, and pronounce them peaceful, wonderful places to be? No? He'll go to bat for accused financial criminals in North Korea, Iran, Russia? Marry another billionaire liquor heiress while still married to the last one? No again? Okay, now I'm stumped.

I should make absolutely clear that I'm not belittling the horrific suffering McCain underwent at the hands of people he was bombing, nor diminishing his service in a war conducted under false pretenses. But did that experience make him hate war, and stop him from condoning torture? No, and only for a while. (In a true you-can't-make-this-stuff-up moment, McCain's North Vietnamese torturer supports his Presidential bid.). This experience doesn't seem to come from his Washington career, or legislation that he's passed or championed. So where and what is it, and how does it matter? Because the only Presidential experience that matters is getting more votes than the other guy (Some restrictions apply. Presidency not valid if Supreme Court justices with clear conflicts of interest and/or rigid ideologies are allowed to rule on question. Please study history for more sorry, sordid details.). So for my money, the experience question is still up for grabs. For other people's money --a near perfect rating from big business; flip-flopping on immigration, torture, and tax cuts for the rich --you'll have to ask John McCain what his experience means. Just don't be surprised if he says something bad.

Long Playing

If you think I'm the kind of guy who only enjoys translations of what Joe Cocker is laboriously squeezing out of his head while high, think again. My brow has its high side too. I remember when I was a tot, the Beatles' breakup caused me no upset, because Beethoven was my musical main man. I based this, of course, on solidly musical concerns, not (for instance) on the repeated Beethoven references in “Peanuts”, of which I was a slavish devotee; or the idea that nothing really popular could be good (although, then, what was I doing reading “Peanuts”? It must have been for the angst.); or on the fact that liking Beethoven was and remains the quick and easy route to musical snobbery. All of these things, I'm sure, brewed up in my contrarian child's soul, but the fact of the matter is I did (and do) like Beethoven. And my parents had, through luck or design, managed to acquire some first-rate performances and recordings, which I proceeded to grind into dust on their inferior playback equipment. If you asked me to name a favorite musical experience, this one would be near the top, even after all these years: me and my dad making a big bowl of popcorn, turning down the lights, and listening to Rudolf Serkin wail his European way through the Moonlight, Pathetique, and Appassionata sonatas of old Ludwig van, on a much-abused Columbia 6-eye; the radio dial of the stereo our only illumination. Truly lost in the sound, beauty and popcorn alone sustaining us, a forty-five minute step away from the world.
I was thinking about this the other day when I pulled an ancient yet well preserved copy of Walter Gieseking playing the Moonlight and Pathetique, from a cardboard box at the Goodwill. Ninety-nine cents later, it was mine, along with a few others at the same price, thick cardboard and stout vinyl, all mono. I had bested iTunes yet again.
And the sound-- I put it on while cooking dinner, and suffice it to say we had a late dinner. I kept rushing back into the living room, saying out loud “This sounds really good”. Gieseking was hitting on all ten fingers, and the recording just sang-- old enough to probably be done direct to disc, no editing or not much; a true performance, not a tape collage. I don't begrudge people their iPods stuffed with ten thousand songs-- we are busy people, hanging on by a thread, grabbing art sustenance anywhere we have the time-- but when has anyone been struck on their iPod not just by the beauty of the music, but the beauty of the sound? There is something to be said for not taking your music with you, for (at least once in a while) going to your music. The water at the oasis will always be sweeter than the water in your canteen. I had to finish grilling the fish and making a salad, but I kept coming back in at every stage, hungrily absorbing the contents of the disc. And every time I did so, I got a faint buttery taste of popcorn in my mouth.

REVIEW: "Sex and the City": Give me Celibacy or give me Death…

…either of which would be preferable to watching this movie. Seriously. I'm not kidding. If this is sex then I'm a monk. If that's the city, then I'm letting my hick flag fly. I don't want what they've got. Do you need more? Cause I got more, baby…
Now would be the point where I might be expected to say “Sex and the City” tells the story of-- but there is no story per se. More accurate would be to say that “Sex and the City” is a series of product placements and manufactured conflicts that drags its thoroughly unpleasant protagonistas through a series of expensive would-be hells, only to deposit them at more or less the same place they were at the beginning. It's a fun house ride without the fun; and shots of many expensive houses do not make up for that lack.
Let's be clear-- and I say this as a non-New Yorker (thought I do have a subscription-- that counts for something, doesn't it?)-- this is a movie that equates closet space with love. In fact, human beings and expensive accessories are pretty much interchangeable in the movie's cosmology, the chief difference being that the accessories are accorded more respect. Sarah Jessica Parker's Carrie, our plucky heroine (and by plucky I do mean eyebrows), for instance, refers to her would be husband (Chris Noth, doing his best Leonid Brezhnev imitation.) repeatedly as “Big” (not even time for the honorific Mister that she has saddled him with, let alone his actual given name); but be assured that the various emanations of Louis Vuitton, Vivienne Westwood, and Manolo Blahnik are always fully and respectfully identified. The movie encourages us to salivate along with its characters over these high end goods, each one photographed more carefully than any of the leads (that Chris Noth dyes his eyebrows is information I wish to G_d they'd managed to keep from me.). Yet, when an actual fetishist does show up-- a perfectly correct Asian gentleman in a suit and pink pumps-- he is treated as though he is a radioactive freak. Apparently, having a true organic connection to this stuff is too much for these people-- it is to be appreciated for its socioeconomic connotations alone. God forbid it give you a boner; it's that whiff of integrity that they can't stand.
Even more annoying, if that's possible, is the movie's use of serious themes of love, parenthood, relationships , work, being of a certain age; and the difficulties of juggling all of them to find happiness and balance. As someone who is awash in these things right now, I feel protective and particular about this struggle and the depiction of it. Watching this movie feebly gumming them engendered the same feelings I'd get from watching someone hand a toddler a Ming vase, the Rosetta stone, a Guttenberg Bible, a hammer and a box of color Sharpies, and tell them to go play. The emotional jolts that occur fitfully within the film have nothing to do with the movie itself, its point of view or gestalt; and everything to do with the raw subject and a certain modicum of skill on the performer's parts (stage training helps. So does utter shamelessness.). An artless movie made about a compelling subject can be Important while not being good. But if you go to “Sex and the City” expecting an Important Film, about The Way We Live Today, then you're even more pathetic than I am, wanly hoping for a competently made diversion.
Speaking of competently made, it isn't. Everything is stretched past the breaking point; at two hours and twenty-five minutes, it feels longer and more pointless than Andy Warhol's “Empire State Building”. Fashion montages that should be disposed of in seconds spread before us like buffets full of slowly spoiling food. The editing is ad hoc, pointless, and offensive, in addition to there not being enough of it. Do we really need insert shots of untrimmed, unwaxed crotch hair to show bed death in a relationship? But we get one, and the other characters' reaction to it is akin to finding a rat in the soup. So then, later, when we see the miraculous revival of these characters' sex lives, shouldn't we then get an insert of the carefully shaven landing strip or something, since clearly that's what was holding them back? Well we didn't, and thank God, but I certainly was led to expect it.
The same harsh rules apply when Kim Cattrall shows up at a party bearing a microscopically protruding stomach that Brad Pitt would be happy to call his own, and her friends say how miserable she must be to let herself go like that (I let myself go like that every day, it's a little thing I call “lunch”.). I could go on and on, but I'm not the creative team behind the “Sex and the City” movie. In summary, this movie hates most women, despises love and forgiveness, confuses leaden wit and poo jokes for comedy, and contains precious little sex and not even much City (some nice shots of the New York Public Library to the contrary). Of course, it has gotten a few decent pull quotes from many reviewers, and is a huge hit. So what do I know? Well, I may not be a Communist (though I have been accused), but this movie made me long for a nice low-key production of “Red Detachment of Women” (it's a Communist Chinese opera, not a slasher flick. Geez Louise, stop it, or I'll turn this car around.). I'm not holding my breath for one, though.

There it is, take it

It is discouraging, if you are a member of the Nation of the Undiscovered, to find ANYTHING AT ALL resembling your work under somebody else's name. The name of this blog, for instance, a slogan of mine since 2003 or so, was very nearly independently stumbled upon by Tom Tomorrow on his (vastly more read) blog earlier this month. I like Tom Tomorrow very much. It would have pained me no end to wish that he meet his end at the hands and teeth of a pack of rabid, chainsaw wielding raccoons (don't let the washing thing fool you-- they fight dirty because they are dirty)-- but wish it I would, because , dammit, Faster than the Sped of satire is MINE, and you can have it when you can pry it from my cold dead career. Wait a minute, no, you can't have it, not then, not ever.
One of the things that keeps me pumping out all of this black gold, this Texas tea, is not swimming pools and movie stars, but a kind of wanna-be starlet's belief that success is just around the corner. Someday, I will walk into some lousy coffee house, and the performers will be all abuzz. What's happening, I will ask. Flo Ziegfeld is in the audience, they'll say, looking for a star for his new revue, here to find the leggiest comic mind with the pearliest smile, and I will open my notebook confidently, and drape myself in its sexy-makingest little number, and blow Flo away with my wit and crack timing and something that may even be called wisdom, and ride off to fame and fortune in his Pierce-Arrow touring car while my contemporaries rend their garments in that mixture of joy and despair so particular to the aspirants of show bidness.
Notice first, how this fantasy unfolds in some out of the way Mustache Pete, and not in any well-known venue (no triumph at the Palladium for me, that's too easy. Any man-Jack can get discovered at the Palladium). Note second how I go with Florenz Ziegfeld instead of, say, Simon Cowell, which by itself probably explains why I am not headlining the Palladium. Which by the way is closed for two years worth of renovations. But i'm getting ahead of myself again.
What I'm saying is, it is difficult to keep up an empire when these latecomers keep planting their flags in territory I've already claimed for myself. Their fame indemnifies them against any charge of plagiarism, and while I could mount a defense, complete with documentation, I would come over like Lenny Bruce reading his court transcripts, without ever coming over (as far as the general public is concerned) like Lenny Bruce not reading his court transcripts. The thought of being the Elisha Gray of the satiric American community has very little attraction.
But wait, why settle for being like unto the man who almost patented the telephone? Dammit, maybe I'm the Leonardo daVinci of this here age. Maybe hundreds of years from now, people will be decoding the impenetrable scrawl in MY notebooks, realizing that here was a meditation on race done with paint swatches that was YEARS ahead of The Daily Show's, and that somehow I, Nosmo King, had drawn skeletal diagrams of jokes uniting quantum hydrodynamics, Britney Spears (some things will never go out of style) and the male glans (ditto) IN WAYS THAT WERE STUPEFYINGLY AHEAD OF THEIR TIME EXCLAMATION POINT TIMES THREE. I mean, if you're going to dream of failure, then dream big. And if you're going to fail, fail big. It's probably time to start mailing stuff out to agents and publishers, instead of in self-addressed stamped envelopes. What happens to me is probably not so much plagiarism as eminent domain. Even if I get a stack of rejection letters as long as my sad-sackiest face, my notebooks could still be like those of daVinci. Who, it should be pointed out, never finished most of his projects either. The comparison holds, or will once I've finished this portrait of my friend Mona. Lady, I don't know what that ***t-eating grin means, but I like it.

SERIOUS non-writing

So, I spent part of the day breaking the sidewalk in front of our house into chunks, armed with my trusty sledgehammer “Bess” (named after Harry Truman's wife, for reasons I cannot divulge, or remember) and a gardening tool called a Mutt. Then I ate a delicious sandwich for lunch, took care of a couple of personal items, paid my cell phone bill, read the entire blogosphere, checked out a couple of things my girlfriend sent me in emails, almost took a shower, but instead ended up doing the dishes in the nude-- an idea I so DID NOT get from Cosmo, OK, so just stop even thinking that. And now, finally, I find myself writing this, the all-important second blog post, the one that has to keep you people engaged to the same level if not higher as the previous efflorescence of my creative genius did, and asking myself the question, what will I do in order to not write. The answer, I believe , is anything and everything.
The list above is a pretty good guide to how serious I am about not writing. In fact, there are very few things I work harder at. But still, some literary output manages to dribble its way out. You'll just have to trust me that soon that will be gone for good, and that this place will stand like an abandoned gas station in the desert, a stylish ruin from a more hopeful time. Vintage candy racks will line the dusty counter, a premise sitting there just waiting to be used, as though the “writer” had just stepped away for a cup of coffee and a swallow of laudanum, and had been waylaid in his return, perhaps by angry coyotes (hmm, coyote wrestling, must remember to try that one the next time inspiration is striking.) Yet somehow, I keep crawling back to the word processor, (parenthetically again, is there any worse term for a writing program than “word processor”? Last I looked, which was just milliseconds ago, I'm the one doing all the word processing here. All the program does is meekly ask permission to complete an odd word here and there incorrectly, and then save the file to somewhere it can't be found. Which makes the program just like a subpar temp, but not quite as cheap.) like Charlie Brown to the football, drunkenly braying for my lady Literature to take me back, that things will be different now, I'm ready to dance with her and only her, no more coyote wrestling, nude kitchen chores, whatever. And she takes me back, the foolish good-hearted woman, because she's a concept, not a person, and the only heart I've been breaking is my own.
Because I have more words than Webster, more words than Oxford Unabridged, a great near -Joycean harvest of syllables, piled on the syllabus, careening its way to market, a steaming slab of fatback Funk and Wagnalls just waiting to be got on the goodfoot, if you know what I'm talking about, and I have no idea what I'm talking about, but I am talking and that's the point. I have always loved words and language-- too much even when I was a kid. I couldn't do baby talk, I waited till I could make my own sentences . I am meant to string words together, and send them up like multicolored box kites dancing in the firmament of ideas. When I found words I felt like Paganini with his Amati, Mondrian with his grid, Rodney Dangerfield with his self-deprecation. I was in my element. So where the hell have I been, and why haven't you heard of me, and I'm from Missouri and you're gonna have to show me.
I know, I know, I get this a lot. Mostly from myself. And I have no answer, still, for why I became the most serious non-writer I know. Perfectionism, depression, erectile dysfunction, seasonal affective disorder, the dog ate it-- you name it. Maybe I just can't resist a sidewalk that needs to be smashed. There is more to life than writing-- in fact, the more life one lives, the more one has to work with, in theory. All I have to go on is theory. And I have wrestled, and pulled, and dragged, and spat, and indeed hacked my way through some very difficult lies in and near the stream of consciousness, to get to this point. Which is a start. And, thankfully, nobody cares where one starts, it's all about where one ends up. Afterwards, if anything comes of this, they can scour my notebooks, dinner napkins, and credit card envelopes for the swamp that gave rise to this howling banshee. And for the first time in along time, I will shut up. Because there is no answer to the question “Where did this come from?”. There is writing and there is not writing. One can do a lot of the latter and still find time for the former.