Shakes, Shivers, and Dithers

Book Trailers and Publishing

2011-08-04T10:09:00.002-04:00

The world of publishing these days is in the midst of a sea change. The brick and mortar sellers are disappearing, and some of the best writing is coming from small and independent publishers. The big houses are spending less on promotion, and authors find themselves now the main promoters of their work. Social media has become a way for them to network, promote new books and short stories. They find themselves responsible for booking their own readings and signings at local book stores.

Book trailers have become a recent addition to the literary world. They are video promotions used as a launch element. They are basically put together by the author or a techie type family member or friend. The ones who have some money to work with, hire a professional to produce it. They come as a grab bag of pseudo big budget movie trailers, to mundane talking head author interviews.

Most authors will tell you that they detest the idea of having to do this. After pouring your soul into the creation of a work, the idea that you now have to become a snake oil salesman is horrifying. We, as authors, would like to think that our work will find its audience, and that the work speaks for itself. The sad fact is that no one will buy your book, if they don’t know about it.

The home for these trailers, is YouTube.

Many people view them as truly strange cultural artifacts. I’ll let you judge.

I have two examples from author friends who have the same publisher as me.

String Bridge by Jessica Bell

Jessica Bell grew up in Melbourne, Australia, to two gothic rock musicians who had successful independent careers during the '80s and early '90s. She spent much of her childhood traveling to and from Australia to Europe, experiencing two entirely different worlds, yet feeling equally at home in both environments. She currently lives in Athens, Greece and works as a freelance writer/editor for Hellenic American Union, Cengage Learning, Pearson Education, Education First and Signature Manuscripts. Jessica Bell has published a book of poetry called Twisted Velvet Chains. Jessica sings on the video.

My Beginning by Melissa Kline

Melissa Kline penned her first novel at the age of thirteen and has been writing consistently for fifteen years. She has completed ten young adult novels and several short stories. Her preferred genre is young adult, but she writes non-fiction and children's books as well. Her calling is to connect with others and give hope through writing. She is particularly interested in supporting women and young adults.

Now here is my low budget, low tech video trailer of one of my books, written under the pen name, Tonto Fielding.

Rules of the One Finger Wave (Not That Kind)

2011-07-13T11:13:00.001-04:00

As the title indicates, this is not about the rules of flipping the bird. Entire books could be written about that topic. No-- this is about a rural phenomena. It consists of having at least one hand at the top of your steering wheel and when someone comes toward you in the opposite direction, you casually lift one finger as a wave. This is when the other person will also lift their finger, or not.

Coming from a typical suburban neighborhood, near a major mid-western city, I was not inculcated to the exact rules. This practice does not exist in any form in this environment. But also having spent all my summers on an island off the upper peninsula of Michigan, I was somewhat accustomed to the practice. When I started driving, it was time for me to put theory into practice. The problem was that the rules were vague and had to be learned through trial and error.

To date, I am still uncertain about the rules.

Now, if it is someone you definitely know is coming at you, this is good time to give the wave. If they don’t respond, either they are preoccupied or they just don’t like you. At one point I thought that I would just do it to everybody, as if I were actually a local. The percentage of response was low. Drat!

Sometimes when someone you do not know does give the wave back, that person is either not sure of the rules themselves, or is simply polite. I would love to hear what they are saying to each other (if there are two people in the car), or maybe not. It might not be flattering. You have to remember that even if you have lived in a place for a time, unless you were born there, you will always be an outsider.

But I will not admit defeat. I love giving the wave. It makes me feel good, especially if I get a response. This is probably because, as a city person, deep down there is a need to connect to others. We all want that rural sense of belonging to a community.

To Unlock Our Hearts Once More

2011-07-12T10:46:00.004-04:00

A philosopher of the kitchen table once said of Babbage’s calculating machine, “What a satire, by the way, is that machine on the mere mathematician! A Frankenstein monster, a thing without brains and without heart, too stupid to make a blunder; which turns out results like a corn-sheller, and never grows any wiser or better, though it grind a thousand bushels of them!”

But of what do we attribute to human genius, and our constitutional compact to glorify ourselves? And of our assigning an expedient neutrality to the other inhabitants of our terrestrial globe?

One might point to language as the difference.

Yet the verbs, nouns and adjectives, which we might refer to as our wit and character, are only signifiers of a peculiar intervenience in our innermost history, subject to the same natural laws as the tulip bulb that breaks forth from the ground and becomes a crescendo of wondrous colors.

If we become deaf to the difference between the rational and irrational utterances issued from ourselves, and blind to the genius of the tulip (its look, sound, smell, taste and feel), it will also be impossible for us to tell the difference between man and our Frankenstein monster.

Let us not forget the origins of the noun: which is related to the Latin verb gigno, genui, genitus, "to bring into being, create, produce."

Writing As Two People

2011-07-11T10:45:00.003-04:00

I have two novels that were published in 2010. The first, The Prophet of Sorrow, is an historical/literary novel that centers on the assassination of Leon Trotsky in Mexico. The story is told by the assassin, Ramón Mercader, with journal entries from other characters. The other novel is a comic romp, The Hillbilly Vampire Chronicles, written under the pen name Tonto Fielding. Tonto also has a comedy blog: http://hillbillyvampire.blogspot.com/.

I have to wear two hats.

With the Prophet, I get to explore the use of language. I purposely wrote in a style that would let me explore the inner word-nerd in me--

David Alfaro Siqueiros: Journal

They say that, typically, people who are easily angered come from families that are splintered, turbulent, and not particularly skilled at emotional communication. I would say that the impetus for my mordancy came from the Marist fathers. Like so many other Marxist and atheists in Mexico, I had an early Catholic education. Like the fathers, I believe that when I am morally right, any blocking or changing of my obligations is viewed as an unbearable indignity, which should not have to be suffered.

I do not look to God for salvation, but to Cuauhtémoc, the last Aztec king. He symbolizes the glory of Mexico and all things noble and good. In contrast, Cortés symbolizes black-hearted evil and the epitome of Western imperialist domination.

Creativity, which has been a deliberate part of my spiritual search, may be expressed not only in aesthetics but in creative action; in a way that rallies people to confront social injustice. My soul is passionately committed to creating a better world.

Just as in the world, not all factors in a work of art are equivalent. Structure, composition, and arrangement result from the subordination of certain integrants to others. It creates a flow, and the illusion of movement that is beyond the limits of psychological time. Through this flow, the artist creates a correlation between the construction and the subordination. Art represents the interaction of this struggle: the unfolding of the temporal, pure motion. Without this enslavement, or the calculated distortion of antecedents, there can be no art.

Art itself is a cognitive function that does not need emotive involvement. Emotion was not made to facilitate art, but art was made to facilitate the expression of it: the undercurrents of arousal and fury.

In the Hillbilly Vampire Chronicles, the tables are turned and I have free reign to use dialogue to define the characters--

The renovation kept Amos busy for a time, while Esther continued to smoke her meth. Pacing the length of the trailer, she would peek out through the sheets they had hung as curtains. Certain that the midget clowns were peering at her from the woods, the paranoia inundated her.

She grabbed the .22 automatic and unloaded a clip at the perceived lurking shadows. Amos hearing the burst came running out of the bedroom and relieved her of the weapon.

“Jesus Christ, you’re going to kill one of those kids.”

“It’s the midgets. Don’t you see them in that tree line? There planning to invade the trailer, I tell you.’

“Midgets? Are you crazy? Oh man, are you ever fucked up,” Amos said.

“Quiet! They can read our thoughts,” she said while picking at her skin.

She took another swig from the ever-present can of Mountain Dew she used to allay a perpetual case of dry-mouth.

The hillbilly father came banging on the door.

“Oh shit, it’s them,” she screamed. “Give me that gun back.”

“Just a second,” Amos called out.

He answered the door and had to deal with the irate neighbor. He explained that it was an accident and settled the situation by offering the gun to him to borrow for some hunting.

“We need to talk, Esther.”

“Sure but they can hear us. We need to find a safe place. Come with me. Now get down here and stick your head in the oven. We can talk in here.”

“I ain’t sticking my head in no oven.”

As Shakespeare said, “Now, by two-headed Janus. Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time.”

With me, it’s inside my noggin.

Book Review--The Dog of the South by Charles Portis

2011-07-06T10:05:00.001-04:00

The Dog of the South by Charles Portis

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Celebrate the fact that Charles Portis’ novels are no longer out of print and hidden in used book stores. If I could remember whose summer reading list I got this title from, I would go kiss her or him on the lips. The Dog of the South defines the identity of my generation’s time, the way Wallace Stegner did for my father’s. This novel abides by the rules of popular fiction, but also captures the breadth, majesty and complexity of our people. Portis does so with a cast of flamboyant characters who are transplanted to Mexico and Belize, and become victims of unbelievable circumstances. We have a garrulous con artist, political lunatics, missionaries, cranks, and disgraced dreamers. The great American novel is supposed to have the ability to define our society and culture through high art. The Dog of the South is that novel, masquerading as popular fiction. Time alone will bring this opinion into our national consciousness.

View all my reviews

When Clouds Are Not As They Seem

2011-06-30T15:30:00.000-04:00

Having fallen into the empty
swimming pool, I stare at the wandering

sun. I bite the dog and sting the
spider called Tarantula. I laugh

at the magistrate, his madness now
perfectly apprehensible, because we both

mouth the very first language. Clouds,
come into view, appearing at first to be

Stratus, but are not, only the ethos of
Cirrus in dissimilarity, in caricature.

Metamorphic

2011-06-29T14:42:00.001-04:00

Three screws left, important,
critical. This assemblage now
minus its animus, one the brain,
the others perhaps not, like
the appendix. It may seem as
it should, but ill, one link away
from total ruin, one piece flying
off, blinding, debilitating the
child who wants to evolve into
a new race, mutable, now fleecing
bolts, gears, organs, more screws,
standing naked before the creator.

Pick Up

2011-06-24T10:44:00.000-04:00

First, the guy next to me
is called. Must be a friend.

Pick me, pick me. Surely
I’m much better than the

new guy. Who is he anyway?
Nobody knows if he’s

any good. Pick me, pick me.
Back on my street, I’m always

the captain, always the
quarterback. Hell, I even call

the plays. Pick me, pick me.
What? Not that guy. Friend again.

Has to be. Are they blind? I’m
Still here, now getting really

confused. I score touchdowns.
Remember that bomb to Dave?

And everybody said, “Nice throw.
Good arm.” Remember? Pick me,

pick me. Now I get it. It’s a joke,
They’re just kidding, right?

Not funny. Pick me, pick me. A girl?
Oh, I think I’ll just go die now.

Menagerie

2011-06-21T10:14:00.001-04:00

Some said
that
there were
two
distinct species,
but they
mistook solidarity
for the hyaline,
glassy twin,
a dead ringer for
Picasso’s death
mask, hanging on
the wall
of the
gallery, filled
with marionettes
drinking
wine and eating
living images,
effigies.

The Battle of Hammond Lake

2011-06-16T11:56:00.001-04:00

Carp is a muddy fish.
So are catfish.
My cousin and I were too,
when we would run and
jump off the bluff
into the muck,
to see how deep we could
get stuck, pulling each other
out like horses in
a war, which are needed to pull
other stuff, that is, unless
they’re so cemented, there’s
nothing left to do but put a
bullet into them. Whether in
advance or retreat
expediency is essential.

Daredevils

2011-06-09T10:06:00.000-04:00

Seneca
said that the only
pleasure of the world,
is a quiet soul.
But by confession, he
never jumped
from an airplane,
shot cold water
into a hot vein, or
smashed through doors,
looking for lovers
and splintered dreams.
But Plato knew better:
mischiefs
proceed from
silhouettes--
pinions tattooed,
fear and sorrow
at full extension.

The Inherent Conflict between Freedom and Equality

2011-06-08T10:03:00.001-04:00

It is generally not too much of a strain to perceive that American’s tend to assign greater emphasis to “freedom’ than to “equality.” There has always been a conflict between these two concepts throughout our history. One might say that the tension between them has provided an important dynamic element in our political culture: that the question of priority to one or the other has always been a matter of controversy. Our response to this dilemma has always been to assign meaning to equality, so that it accords with it’s subordination to liberty.

Our culture does not seem to be interested in offering any resolution to the ambiguity.

Lets us look at liberty. It is an individual responsibility, not a license. We tend to think of rights, rather than duties. Along with this comes a suspicion of established authority and a deep aversion to visible restraints from any social organization. We value choice in matters of religion, consumption, and employment, even though rarely is active choice ever actually exercised.

We tend to view equality as a historical phenomenon: a rejection of hereditary privilege and of a closed class system. Today, we find its expression in the recurring themes of anti-intellectualism and anti-elitism. What it does not account for, is that it has never assumed biological equality or equalization through material benefits of society. Equality in terms of wealth does not jive with twenty first century American culture.

We find ourselves creating a definition of equality once more, so that it will give priority to freedom. Twenty first century America assumes that wealth is a benign and abundant reward that nature provides for those who merit it. It is a “just reward.” All the while we justify ourselves by chanting the mantra—“equality of opportunity.”

The Blind and Naked Illuminati

2011-06-06T11:04:00.002-04:00

Well, it was inevitable, I guess. The Facebook social network it is just that—a social network. And, as is the case with all networks, the commentators and propagators of etiquette will surely arise. In the wee hours of mice and phantasm, I came upon a person who was calling all the people who hit “like” on one of his “status updates” crude. The update was about the death of another poet. At first I had to rub my eyes… surely this educated man could not be that stupid, to believe that people were hitting “like” because they were happy the poet was dead? Perhaps this person does not understand that most people try to hit “Like” often, to let people know they are not posting to themselves, but to others. It is a way to acknowledge that they took the time to stop and read your status update. But to come out and call them crude is plain ignorance.

The Silence Is Killing Me

2011-06-04T09:40:00.000-04:00

I need to hear the screaming voice of
the stereo salesman, who keeps putting
fritos into his mouth, spewing
microscopic shards like flak, apologizing
that he missed his break, that he has
the best numbers in town, look at the
size of those woofers, dude, more shards,
needing to take cover, but I need the
noise, the bass that goes right through me,
over the hook, the one he is sure to get
the sale with, dude, I’m practically giving
them to you, listen to that mid-range,
digging to the bottom of the bag, wetting
his finger and shoving it into the corner
of the bag for that last morsel of corn,
because he gets so hungry being the best
salesman in the city, in the state, in the
whole world, noise, noise, noise, which
I need, because the silence is killing me.

Satellite

2011-06-03T09:02:00.000-04:00

The Google view was
illusory,
circumfluent voyeur,
able to make a close study
of the arena,
in all its phases,
go deep into the subconscious,
follow the chipmunk
into his hollow tie,
spying on me
as I pace the boundary;
this singular plot;
my length of planetarium,
witnessing
from such a ghostly ark—
my countenance,
my groves
and contour lines,
azimuth,
fixed upon this transplant
surrounded by the
contingency of
marigolds and songbirds.

Why Bother Submitting Poetry To Lit Journals?

2011-06-01T09:37:00.001-04:00

As a writer of three published books, I have to ask: why submit poetry to lit journals? The Midwest Book Review, Small Press Bookwatch: June 2009, said of my book Circus by Moonlight, it is “a perfect browse for the poetry enthusiast,” and “...establishes Williams as an impressive talent and skilled wordsmith, deserving of as wide and appreciative an audience as possible." But the lit journals seem to have no interest in any of my poetry. When cashing the royalty checks for my two novels, I now have to consider why I would even want to showcase my writing in a forum that concentrates on work that would otherwise not be able to find an audience in mainstream, commercial publishing (we are talking over 600 print and online journals). The rejection letters are short and succinct—No Thanks. As writers know, lit journal editors need never explain their publishing decisions, so I can only speculate as to the degree of arbitrariness that subserves their deliberations. My understanding is that most books of poetry, that originate from the increasing pool of MFA writers and their professor’s, will sell around twenty copies. This is considered a good run. Well, my poetry book is already way past that number in sales. I guess I’ll stick with commercial fiction from now on, and post my poetry online for the world to see and judge for themselves (there are no gate keepers on the web).

What Is This Thing Called Poetry?

2011-05-23T11:39:00.002-04:00

[I originally wrote this as a guest blog article for Jessica Bell's The Alliterative Allomorph.]

Mozart claimed that his letters came from God. Seamus Heaney said that his poetry came from a metaphorical dig, to uncover the hiding places of his power. For each, the result could be referred to as the source of creative inspiration.

So what is it and where does it come from? There are concepts of poetry that developed in separate ancient civilizations, which had no contact with each other. Yet their ideas and notions about poetry had similarities.

From the beginning in Western culture, there has been a dual attitude toward this source. The poem is made not only by the poet, but it is given to him by a deity or spirit. From this tradition, we still equate inspiration with divine gifts or with some sort of spiritual enlightenment. We think of the very best poets, as those who submit to influences stronger than they are, because what they perceive to see seems inconceivable to them (things that as humans we can only have an inaccurate and vague notion of).

In the New World, the Mayan culture believed that poetry enraptured man, and intensified his emotions and perceptive powers. It enabled him to perceive what he (as a human) ordinarily could not. Once enraptured, the poet would speak the only truth on earth.

I do not subscribe to the influence of an enlightened spirit or Muse, or God. I see poetry as a way to plumb the depths of my imagination, through what I have experienced (especially childhood), and what I have read (here I’m talking about development of the intellect). For me, a poem is something that says more in a few words than a novel can in five hundred pages, with wit and word-play. It has an extraordinary mixing of music and thought. The job of the poet is to choose the right words, not only for sound (the music of poignant language) and connotation (landscape), but even for the countenance of them.

The poem corresponds to a centrifuge of sound, alliteration and rhythm. The reader will be walking into a world for the very first time; a world of terseness and parsimony. True poetry is derived from the poet’s peculiar type of knowledge, which is the fruit of his authentic inner experience, the result of intuition (perhaps this is the part many mistake for spiritualism). So the poem becomes a profound expression, through symbol and metaphor, of what the poet has intuitively and mysteriously discovered.

Sylvia Plath wrote in her journal, when discussing the creation of some new poetry, “I feel my mind, my imagination, nudging, sprouting, prying & peering.”

I could not have said it better.

Another person said, “What makes a good poem? A good poet.”

The Fedora

2011-05-22T11:16:00.007-04:00

I have been a connoisseur of hats ever since I was a small boy. I even preferred them to toys (the exception being toy guns). But as an adult, I abhor real guns. Not so in the case of hats.

Me with some of my favorite hats.

Luckily for me, the Fedora is on the comeback, as well it should. Can you imagine Humphrey Bogart wearing a baseball cap?

I use my Fedora (The Sydney, by AKUBRA) as part of the persona created for the image of Tonto Fielding, the pen name I use for my comedy writing. Tonto is the author of The Hillbilly Vampire Chronicles, and the comedy blog—Hillbilly Vampire.

As Dr Who would say—Fedora’s are cool. Although there are those out there that would consider them to be a passing fad, I say that all those cool guys in the noir films are getting their just due, now that a few celebrities are letting us know by example, that you too can wear cool hats, and leave the ball caps in the closet.

Johnny Depp

Justin Timberlake

Is There a Word for Fear of High School Reunions?

2011-05-21T18:21:00.004-04:00

News of my thirty-fifth high school reunion came only weeks ago, which is not very much time to prepare. As it turned out, my wife had a commitment to a scrapbooking workshop on that day. I wasn’t sure what I should do. In the end I have pulled a Ralph Perk. He was the mayor of Cleveland, who turned down an invitation to the White House during the Nixon administration, because it fell on his bowling night.
The event is tonight and here I am in Athens (the school is in Gates Mills, Ohio). I would be lying if I said I wasn’t relieved.

Everyone knows how these milestones can create and foster exorbitant amounts of fear. We tend to revisit adolescent anxieties in our mind. Unfortunately for me, I am one of those peculiar people who can remember practically every day of their life. I can even recognize a person who I knew when I was six, after they have aged forty five years, instantly. I have vivid memories from when I was six months old, of my father and brother throwing snowballs at our window, as my mother holds me in her arms. My mother once took me to a friend’s apartment before my first birthday. I described the apartment to this friend almost thirty years later, and her jaw dropped to the floor. My description was accurate to the pattern of the oriental carpet.

So what does this have to do with high school? The problem for me is that the embarrassing and awkward moments have won the battle for prominence. The consequence is that high school has morphed into a nightmare. I have to force the good memories forward to balance the equation. Our school was small, but still large enough to have some cliques. I could be found straddled between the freaks and the geeks (if any of you remember the television show by that name). It took a long time to realize that life was so much more interesting as a geek. Hail the GEEKS! So now, to talk myself into actually attending my fortieth—I will have to remind myself, that by the time it arrives, most everybody will have been bitch-slapped enough by life, that any sense of entitlement will have been replaced by gratitude and humility, leveling the playing field.

Of course, at the same time, I know that I am not unique. There are others probably going through the same emotions.

Power Point

2011-03-04T08:51:00.000-05:00

The presentation was a
weighty exploration, which

no doubt consisted of a
beginning, middle, and

one very sad, sad end,
imputations compacted

temporally in the
thesis, an arc of

sensation, which led
from case to captive,

charged with desire,
prospect, and ruin,

revealing the most
sympathetic story ever told.

15 Books in 15 Minutes

2010-11-22T09:09:00.003-05:00

This is my list of "books you can come up with in fifteen minutes" that had an impact on you. Several friends have passed along their list, so here is my contribution.

1. Gospel, by Wilton Barnhardt
2. Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry
3. Son of the Morning Star, by Evan S. Connel
4. The Marx Family Saga, by Juan Goytisolo
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
6. The Savage Detectives, by Robeto Bolaño
7. The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco
8. The Big Rock Candy Mountain, by Wallace Stegner
9. Death and the Penguin, by Andrey Kurkov
10. The Twelve Chairs, by Ilf & Petrov
11. Tourist Season, by Carl Hiaason
12. Planet of the Apes, by Pierre Boulle
13. The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkein
14. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, by Tom Wolfe
15. A Confederate General From Big Sur, by Richard Brautigan

I am the Itinerate Poet

2010-11-16T16:23:00.001-05:00

I am the Itinerate Poet.

Or at least, that’s what Seamus Heaney called me when we met.

I crashed the reception after the reading, entering through the kitchen. Why not? I said to myself. After all it was a three hour drive to get there.

He was right, you know.

I have always written poetry. And I have always worked jobs that kept me on the move and just below the poverty line. A dependent, you could say—friends and family always helping out with the bills and what not.

But always there was the poetry.

I don’t have any academic connections. Nobody asks me to read for them. I am anonymous.

He held a glass of whisky, and all I could think of was how I can’t drink anymore. Not—recognize me—I exist. No, there was only the whiskey and the poetry.

I am the Itinerate Poet.

Demonic Energy

2010-11-05T11:45:00.000-04:00

Fire trucks and cherry pickers are on the scene
Obstructing any inquisition
Sparks and flotsam conspiratorial

The bolt shot through me--halfway
Into my dialogue
Into the baser part of the brain

Left in darkness, left in a strobe
Not in rhythm with my pulse
Only irregular

Book Review: Voltaire's Calligrapher by Pablo De Santis

2010-10-27T09:22:00.002-04:00

Voltaire's Calligrapher by Pablo de Santis

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“Voltaire’s Calligrapher,” is an owlish historical novel, as well as part thriller. It is also a philosophical novel, full of adventure. Dalessius is a twenty year old calligrapher and archivist, who goes to work for the famous Voltaire. Mechanical writing is already on the scene, but the talent of the calligrapher is still needed in a world where invisible and poisonous varieties of ink still have place among enjoyable cat and mouse games, filled with conspiracies, individual manuscripts, libraries, and booksellers. He is raised by an uncle, who makes his living transporting corpses. But once in the services of Voltaire, Dalessius is set out as a spy to look into the case of the suspiciously condemned Jean Calas, but ends up in a web of far greater intrigue between the Dominicans and the Jesuits. At a deeper level, you could say, he finds himself in the middle of the intrinsic struggle between the mephitic remnants of the Dark Ages and its collateral ingredients. The stage is filled with life-like automatons, graveyards, executioners with their ingenious devices, huge homes where it easy to get lost, back alleys, bordellos, henchmen, and poisonous fish. How can you go wrong? The best part—it’s not too long. It is short, amusing, and very, very smart.

View all my reviews

New Award

2010-10-26T12:16:00.002-04:00

The Prophet of Sorrow by Mark Van Aken Williams
Lucky Press, LLC, has been named a finalist in the The National "Best Books 2010" Book Awards.”--Fiction & Literature, Historical Fiction.

Book Review: Speak, Nabokov by Michael Marr

2010-10-13T15:09:00.002-04:00

Speak, Nabokov by Michael Maar

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In Speak, Nabokov, Michael Maar gives us literary criticism that digs into the fiction of Vladimir Nabokov like a cabalist seeking out the hidden truths. Because we are led to believe that Nabokov is so intelligent, absolutely everything in his fiction is detail and put there on purpose. Nothing is left to chance. And Maar, combining biography with the fiction, also combines different people in Nabokov’s life with the persons that inhabit the fiction. But what of the author is in here? To me, much of it is speculation, much like a detective’s case--a hint here, a clue there. With footnotes galore, we are painted a picture of the philosophical nature of Nabokov’s work being Gnosticism, by aegis of Schopenhauer. I am not a scholar; so much of the jargon was lost foreign to me, both in the text and footnotes. I also have no pretentions of being a metaphorical Holmes. In fact, I tend to get uncomfortable when these guys steer towards literary “outing.” Surly Nabokov must have been homosexual, because of clues left in his fiction. But if this is the way you prefer your analysis, here is a wonderfully slim volume for you. As Maar puts it, “Nabokov is fully present everywhere in his work; even the tiniest sliver contains the whole. And that is why each of these slivers scintillates with a dazzling spectrum of colors—a magic that is hard to convey in analysis.”

View all my reviews

Book Review: The Death of the Adversary by Hans Keilson

2010-10-07T15:08:00.002-04:00

This novel is set in Nazi-occupied Europe, although it is never mentioned. There is no guessing here. The adversary is the Führer (referred to as “my enemy”) and the word Nazi is never used. All of this creates an atmosphere where the protagonist fails to come to grips with the reality of the ascendance of National Socialism and the relationship between subject matter and context. Written as memoir, we see how a person who is just as caught up in the culture of his homeland as those who seek to make him an enemy, can only see himself with detachment as a way to protectively shield himself from certain truths, not only about himself but about the horror in the making. This dichotomy is never clearer than when the protagonist (unknown to be a Jew) is sitting with the friends (Nazi thugs) of a girl he has a crush on and them talking about an assignment to desecrate a Jewish cemetery. This is as haunting a scene as you will ever come across in fiction. The prose is astonishing: part philosophy, part psychology, and part poetry—combined to point out the failure of coming to grips with reality. Because of the anonymous nature of the people and places, I was able to transpose this story to a new time, here in America, where the hatred toward Muslims could have the same effect on a young Muslim man who also grew up an American. Certainly a masterpiece!

Book Review: Ours--A Russian Family Album, by Sergei Dovlatov

2010-09-28T15:40:00.001-04:00

Mark Twain once said, “The quality of humor is the commonest thing in the world. I mean the perceptive quality of humor. In this sense every man in the world is a humorist. The creative quality of humor - the ability to throw a humorous cast over a set of circumstances that before had seemed colorless is, of course, a different thing.” The Russian émigré, Sergei Dovlatov, traces four generations of his family’s life with the circumspect of the truly creative humorist. Through the likes of Uncle Aron, Cousin Boris, Grandpa Isaak, and a terrier named Glasha, we discover the amusing, comical, incongruous, and absurdity that goes hand in glove with the very course of Soviet history. The chaos of the past is remembered and intermingled with a sense of recovery. Even though each life is unique, all lives are familiar to us. So with Cousin Boris, the boy who started with such promise, and was always held up as an example to Sergei (yet somehow kept ending up in prison), we get this—“ I finally understood the ruling trait in my cousin’s character: he was a natural-born existentialist. He could act only in extreme situations: build a career only in prison, fight for life only on the edge of the abyss.” And with Glasha, the terrier—“She was surrounded by esoteric poets, Suprematist painters, composers of atonal music, and sculptors of non-representational constructions. All of them were indefatigable critics of the regime, especially when in their cups. With friends like that, she could hardly have turned out politically loyal. Actually, she herself behaved no better. To be specific, she barked at policemen and generally hated all uniforms, whether on soldiers, sailors, or ticket collectors. Along with this, her displeasure was aroused by red banners and billboards bearing revolutionary slogans, and to top it off, she liked to relieve herself behind a certain building, at the base of a four-meter-tall portrait of Brezhnev.”

The Education Problem in America

2010-09-28T12:14:00.001-04:00

When considering the appalling state of education in America, we need to approach the problem and the challenge in an imaginative and innovative way. The old strategy no longer works. So please stop thinking about better unions and throwing huge sums of money at antiquated systems. As odd as this concept may seem to many people, entrenched in their particular paradigms, breakthrough ideas are the answer. Then, and more importantly, we need to take action on these ideas.

First we need to identify what our challenges are (poverty, teacher training, etc.), and then to recognize our goals. This can start with our dissatisfaction—then move to our desires.

I know most of you hate this part, simply because we are used to thinking that “studying something” usually means just putting something off. But it is crucial to access and review all the data we have. You can not innovate without having an objective beginning point.

Once we begin to understand what the problems are, we can then understand the challenges inherent in them. This will help us to focus on what the REAL problems are. We want to come up with the right answers to the right problems.

We must be vigilant about deferring judgment about new ideas. This is where being stuck in old paradigms keeps us from proper exploration. To often these ideas are labeled as wild, outrageous, and out-of-the-box. Making creative connections, taking risks, and trying new associations will lead to potentially innovative scenarios.

Finally, we must generate a barometer needed to analyze and critique these ideas for change, in order to find out which of these are the best ideas.

This country was based and developed on the premise and fruition of great ideas and the action taken to realize them.

Lets do what we’re good at.

Book Review: Mona And Other Tales, by Reinaldo Arenas

2010-09-23T09:53:00.003-04:00

Mona and Other Tales by Reinaldo Arenas

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is a work of stories and other pieces of short fiction, much of which appeared to be experimental, or so it seemed to me because it resembled a bad nightmare. I’m not fond of reading ten or twenty pages and when I’m done I just shake my head and say, “What the F***?” In all fairness though, I did find one story, “Mona,” to be very engaging and thoroughly kept my disposition to incredulity aux abois. I know that Arenas is supposed to be one of the Latin American greats (and they made a movie about his life), but I guess I’ll leave the experts to their precincts, and go search out my copy Ring Lardner short stories.

View all my reviews

Book Review: The Engagement, by Georges Simenon

2010-09-20T16:05:00.001-04:00

The Engagement by Georges Simenon

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is one Simenon’s more compelling psychological novels (1933). In it we follow Mr. Hire, a solitary man with a dubious past, who is framed for a murder he did not commit. Mr. Hire’s bleak existence is seen only through the author’s juxtaposition of character, which slowly emerges, against the settings in which he navigates his daily routine (his commute, his business, and his various other habits). He is illusive and remains isolated as this trap conspires around him, and a constantly heightened tension creates an oppressive environment. Part psychology, part thriller, and definitely part eerie. This one is a must read for Simenon neophytes or any one into books with plenty of atmosphere, character, intensity, humor, and an understanding of the afflictive mob.

View all my reviews

To Cry for the Moon

2010-09-19T10:58:00.003-04:00

from Circus by Moonlight

so jesus said to be like doves
and you squated to drop an egg
legs unstable, not sure from which
orifice it would leap out

developing perseverance, i saw
this on your two minds attempting
to evoke the inexpressible
symbols (harps, crowns, and gold)

Book Review: Understanding Cosmology, by the Editors of Scientific American

2010-09-17T15:16:00.001-04:00

Understanding Cosmology by Scientific American

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I got bumped from the Russian Soyuz. They overbooked, I guess. Anyway, $40 million was a little steep, I think. So before I make that mistake again, and book a flight with Boeing-Space Adventures, I thought I’d check out what all the hubbub was about. Actually, I was interested in the idea of whether today’s Cosmologists were nothing more than modern day alchemists. Also, it would be interesting to see if there was any theology threads weaved through this tapestry of science. “Understanding Cosmology,” in the most pedestrian language scientists are capable of (many times completely incomprehensible) attempts to bring the reader closer to the truth of how the universe formed, evolved and developed, and what it means to us. During the parts that I could understand, I found out that the Big Bang Theory is old news. There is so much more that they know now, like what happened before the Big Bang. WHAT? Yeah--before. What you come away with is that there are whole new worlds of thought, which are now unimagined, and will eventually become commonplace theories in the future. Oh, and by the way, it turns out that the Cosmologists are in fact closet alchemists—the big question for them being: is if there could be a theory of everything so simple and so elegant that its basic concepts could be understood by a child.

View all my reviews

Book Review: The Princess, the King, and the Anarchist. By Robert Pagani.

2010-09-12T15:45:00.002-04:00

This is the first novel by Swiss play write Robert Pagani, and is as shallow as two of its two title characters who I will nickname, the “painfully full bladder” and the “erection.” The book takes place on May 31, 1906, the wedding day of King Alfonso XIII of Spain to British Princess Maria Eugenia of Battenberg. It was short-listed for the Prix du Premier Roman in France. Why? You got me. But this is coming from a race of people who think Jerry Lewis is a genius. During a time when people were beginning to question the idea that royal blood transcends mortality, instead of an insightful exploration of corporeal beings being subject to injury and death, we get something that never comes close to shaking the body politic. The Princess is concerned with how badly she needs to urinate, in the middle of all the carnage (a bomb is thrown at the wedding procession). “Pipi, always pipi,” and “Pipi--It was beginning to be painful.” The King on the other hand, suffers from Priapism, and simply can’t wait to pop the royal cherry. The end is too ludicrous to even bother covering, but I’ll give you a hint. There was no stain on the sheet.

How the Koran Burning Story Became As Big As It Did

2010-09-12T12:00:00.003-04:00

How can the story of one unknown preacher in Florida, with a congregation of around fifty, get world wide news coverage about what was supposed to be a gimmick to attract more congregants?

In the age of the twenty four hour news cycle and the insatiable appetite for more and more opinion dominated coverage masked as fact, stories with significant political symbols can go viral.

A symbol is something used by human beings to index meanings that are not inherent, nor discernable from, the object itself. It can be defined as a thing the value or meaning of which is in no instance derived from or determined by properties intrinsic in its physical form. John Locke termed it as having “their signification,” from “the arbitrary imposition of men.”

In this case, the Koran is the political symbol for different individuals’ meaning to the same object. And because socially significant symbols arise and are sustained through a system of social interaction, they become regarded as elements of a culture.

When this happens, within the current media environment, individuals ignore personally irrelevant messages and pay attention to the kinds of things they need and agree with. The reasons may be behavioral, emotional, or intellectual. They tend to use the media to gain a sense of security and social adequacy. They feel gratification when the media reinforce what they believe they already know. When people only focus on what is personally useful and gratifying to them, they will then naturally ignore other pieces of information, regardless of its political and social significance (especially if the information disturbs their peace of mind, and conflicts with their political and social tastes, feelings and attitudes).

The next factor that comes into play is that the media as gatekeepers to information, tell people in fairly uniform fashion which individual issues and activities are most significant and deserved to ranked high on everybody’s agenda. Most of us easily accept and adopt the media’s agenda of importance. When the media make events seem important, politicians quickly run to the nearest camera to comment about them and to take action.

When these symbols become political, they quickly become characterized by a variety of myths, assumptions, and prescriptions regarding nature, man, and society. However, symbols should stand apart from the meanings they index at the cultural level, just as they should at the individual level. When the media gets involved, along with the subsequent politicizing, the cultural meaning of these symbols comes from the interpretations popularly accorded it. In our case, the Koran, becomes divorced from the cultural meaning with which it was once associated. It now has taken on a life of its own.

Television and the internet have created a new, impressionable public, who are highly susceptible to these symbolic cues. Today the sheer volume of new information has created a more involved public. The symbols that come into the twenty four hour news cycle serve to distinguish groups as well as unify them. It is therefore easy to see how they can also play a role in the dynamics of creating social conflict.

And this is why they are potent and this is why they can go viral.

2010-09-09T15:19:00.001-04:00

Tinkers by Paul Harding

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Warning!!! This book has no vampires, wizards in training, or is on any best sellers list. This means, you’ve probably never heard of it. But it is a good book from a small press (Belleview Literary Press). This is like many other books from small presses, where good writers are desperately trying to connect their work with readers. This one happened to get word-of-mouth momentum and found its audience. Then something strange happened—it won the Pulitzer Prize. I found it to be an enjoyable read, and I confess I was rooting for the home team (my books are published by a small press). I especially enjoyed the descriptive fiction about growing up and living in rural Maine. I did though have problems with the parts that sounded like a graduate writing school assignment (impossible to understand). These passages are in a language only spoken in English Departments. Many writers unfortunately suffer from what I call the Gabriel Garcia Marquez wannabe syndrome (if its mystical sounding enough, it has to be good) It just makes me feel dumb. I never went to that school.

View all my reviews

2010-09-07T11:42:00.000-04:00

Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory by Ben MacIntyre

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Interesting tale of espionage, deception, and intrigue during WWII. The tale was told in the 1956 film "The Man Who Never Was," staring Clifton Webb. But now documents have been unsealed and we know who the corpse was, Glyndwr Michael, a Welsh suicide victim. Author makes mistake of including photos of the decaying corpse. Just because you have all the information, doesn't mean it has to be included. This image haunted me during the remainder of the book. Too creapy!

View all my reviews

The Jokers by Albert Cossery

2010-08-30T14:47:00.001-04:00

The Jokers by Albert Cossery

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Perhaps if I had read Cossery’s The Jokers when I was in my early twenties instead of in my early fifties, life would have been much easier to digest. The character Heykal states that are two very simple things to understand. The rest is of no importance. The first being, that the world we live in is governed by the most revolting bunch of crooks to ever defile the soil of this planet. The second being, is that you must never take them seriously, for that is exactly what they want. Follow the pursuits of this group of “Comedy Terrorists” in their attempt to deal with the world’s madness, as if it were their salvation.

View all my reviews

The Suit of Night

2010-08-18T15:28:00.000-04:00

because this darkening is
so malignant of itself
and so contrary to be undone
the memorials are to be sanctified
by prejudice, pick-me-ups
and such wherewithal

the kidneys are to be
diversified and made right
with paraphernalia which
recreate and undergird
the marrow and fabric
of indispensable content

Cleveland Behaves Badly

2010-07-30T09:34:00.001-04:00

When you grow up in Cleveland, Ohio, you learn how to be embarrassed for the city at an early age. You realize that your city will often be the brunt of jokes by comedians and others around the nation. And much of this is deserved. Remember when the Cuyahoga River caught on fire.

You also learn how to wear this on your sleeve with a self-deprecating sense of humor. Ghoulardi taught us this lesson.

Unfortunately, Clevelanders just gave themselves another black eye. A fan wearing a Lebron James Miami Heat jersey attended an Indians game. Immediately words went back and forth between him and the crowd. After about five minutes of this, some of Cleveland’s finest (CPD) escorted the man wearing the jersey out of the park. In other words—he was ejected.

Now wait a minute! This guy had all the right in the world to wear that shirt. The reaction displayed by the crowd was unbelievably immature. In fact it was EMBARRASING.

As far as I’m concerned, the way the people of Cleveland are reacting to the Lebron James move, is the same as if he were a “run away” slave. If I was offered a better job, in say Tulsa, I would probably take it without worrying about having any obligation to the city of Athens.

In fact, I just ordered my Heat jersey.

Iroquois Lacrosse as Metaphor

2010-07-15T11:24:00.000-04:00

The Iroquois Nation which helped develop (or better yet—invent) the game of lacrosse, has a team attempting to partake in the sport’s world championship in England. There is a problem though. They want to travel as the Iroquois Confederacy, using their own passports (meaning that they are a sovereign nation). But England has refused them visas, saying that they are in fact not sovereign.

Actually the problem is with the United States government. They have made it clear that they will only let players back into the country if they have valid US passports. The British government simply won’t give the players visas if they cannot guarantee they’ll be allowed to go home.

Of course the US government has been playing fast and loose with sovereignty issues and Native Americans for some time. Historically, Native American Tribes have been dealt with through treaties, negotiated with Congress or through administrative decisions within the executive branch. In the recent past, 1978 to be precise, the Bureau of Indian Affairs established a regulatory process for recognizing tribes. This is something a country does if they are dealing with another sovereign nation.

But then something strange happened. I think you can guess what that may be. It starts with a C and ends with an O. Wait a minute… you mean the Injuns now have the resources to file law suits against the US governments to protect their interests. We’ll show them.

The U.S. has consequently recognized only about 8 percent of the total number of tribes. The consequence of this is that if a Native American tribe is not currently federally recognized—then the tribe and those enrolled in the tribe are not entitled to certain privileges, such as sovereign status and immunity.

It hasn’t been easy for tribes to gain any sovereign status in the past. There are some examples, such as in Turner v. United States and Creek Nation of Indians, 248 U.S. 354, 357-358 (1919), when the court noted that “the Creek Nation [whose political structure had been terminated by Congress in 1906] was recognized by the United States as a distinct political community, with which it made treaties and which within its own territory administered its internal affairs.”

I can only imagine the hill to climb now.

In 2010, when sovereignty is an internationally recognized concept, indigenous Native Americans still do not retain any of their pre-colonial traditional indigenous rights. And let’s not forget that a basic tenet of sovereignty is the power of a people to govern themselves.

Case law has already established that tribes reserve the rights they had never given away. American Indian tribal autonomy and powers originate with their history—where they managed their own affairs.

So now we are adrift in murky waters. The U.S. Constitution recognizes Indian tribes as distinct governments, and they authorize themselves to regulate commerce with “foreign nations, among the several states, and with the Indian tribes.”

Yet the picture today, is one where the U.S. government describes Indian tribes as “domestic dependent nations.” It maintains that the federal-tribal relationship “resembles that of a ward to his guardian.”

So do tribes remain sovereign nations and possess self-government?

Do tribes have any nation-to-nation relationship with the U.S. federal government?

Does Congress have plenary power over Indian affairs?

Is state governance permitted within reservations?

The President of Uruguay

2010-06-26T11:06:00.001-04:00

As I watch the World Cup tournament 2010, my prediction of a good showing by the South American countries is proving to be correct. Uruguay is beating South Korea at half time presently. During the first half, though, my concentration wavered as my memory brought me back to 5th grade when I met the President of Uruguay.

My family, during spring break, visited colonial Williamsburg, VA. We stayed in the top half of one of the restored homes in the colonial section, which was near the main Inn. The whole vacation was an incredible adventure for a young boy with an overactive imagination.

It was brought to our attention that the people below us were from another country. Apparently at that time, Washington would put foreign dignitaries up in Williamsburg and fly them into DC via the Marine helicopter. Rumor had it that it was someone important.

Now, when I was young, I could never be accused of being shy, especially if I spied a beautiful woman in her twenties sun bathing on a beach. Even though I was only in my pre-adolescent years, I would ingratiate myself into her life with all the charm of Don Juan.

So, because of my incurable curiosity and having no fear at all, I walked down the stairs and knocked on the door of the apartment. A very dignified man answered and asked what I wanted. I then explained that my family was sharing the house (pointing to the stairs) and that I heard that someone important was inside that apartment.

“I want to meet him,” I said with the arrogance of a royal.

The man hesitated. I looked him in the eye. A grin then appeared on his face and finally he said, “Please. Come in.”

He explained that he was an attendant to the President of Uruguay.

“Do you know where that is?” he asked.

“Of course,” was my answer. I lied.

He showed me the President’s coat, which was on one of those sewing type mannequins. It was covered with military medals. It was one of the most impressive sights these eyes had ever seen. I was speechless.

Finally the man himself came out from the back and the attendant explained to him who I was. He was gracious and dignified. I was meeting a great man. This I understood. Yet he was also very humble. He spoke with me for a short while and then off I went running up the stairs to tell all to my brother and sister.

When we were in the restaurant the next morning, we saw the Marine helicopter land out back of the Inn, through the bay window. I waved at the machine as it eventually flew off, only hoping that the President of Uruguay might have been waving back at me.

Advice for Ulysses

2010-05-28T08:53:00.003-04:00

(from Circus by Moonlight)

to calm passion
or lull the mindset
we will initiate another
kind of chaos
which will snub and slight
the understanding man

the novice will sit
in his seat
as presiding officer
of idiocracy

prefer me
before my peers
and i will tell you how
to make yourself
stinking rich
as if by
laughable happenstance

act the upstart and
speak as a bigot
but,
like all artless actors
look inflated
and temporize
the name of insolance
and pride

Obstacles to the Heart

2010-05-10T18:21:00.000-04:00

nothing is so pernicious
as the charismatic contagion

an embalming fluid, this blackdamp
of cold light and scattered countenance

the unconscious reflex
of our shameful spewing

be there any frigid agony
in it, or torpid bashfulness

while the hypothermia in the entrails
will make the melancholy atomic

frostbitten wildwood
of trust and confidence

deadweight of thorns making an
all-out effort to bloodstain the margins

a signet from long past
yet so painfully contemporary

May I see your papers, please?

2010-04-29T15:43:00.001-04:00

When I was a kid and we would play “Army,” often the kids playing the German’s would say something like, “May I see your papers please?” And you would answer, “This is America. It’s a free country. I don’t need to show you anything.” Then we would all laugh. World War II was big theme in these games, because of all the movies about it made in the sixties (the time I was in elementary school).

Consequently we, as a cooperative society believed (and still do) that people in the United States have the right to travel and associate without being monitored or stopped by their government, unless actually suspected or convicted of a crime (and unless that suspicion is reasonable). This is an understanding that stands on the back of decades and centuries of court decisions about the rights of innocent Americans. And when this is taken away, it feels as if we don’t live in a free country. In fact it eerily resembles life in a totalitarian state, where you need the permission of the government to think, to write, to speak, to move from place to place.

In a free country, we have always been under the assumption that people going about their lawful business cannot be compelled to identify themselves, especially when they are engaged in activities protected under the Constitution. This is called—anonymity. In Talley v. California (1960), the Supreme Court stated that “It is plain that anonymity has sometimes been assumed for the most constructive purposes.”

Remember your history please…The Federalist Papers, which explained the justification for the American Revolution, were written anonymously, and were published with pseudonyms.

Now in Arizona, a new law has been passed where the law entails that any person who “looks illegal” could be asked to provide proof of citizenship at any time. Skin color, accent or dress can trigger a police officer to stop someone. In fact, a truck driver with a commercial driver’s license was just pulled over while driving “through” Arizona because he had brown skin. When he showed the proper identification, it was not sufficient enough for the police officer, who then asked to be shown a birth certificate. I ask you—who carries their birth certificate around with them?

So, for those of you, who happen to have the misfortune to live or pass through that totalitarian state of Arizona, I say—defend your rights.

If you are pulled over by the police, don’t talk to them about your immigration status or anything else. Terminate any police encounter as soon as possible, and never consent to any search, and assert your right to remain silent and to consult a lawyer. This is because the police officer is required; if (1) they are in lawful contact with you and (2) they have “reasonable suspicion,” to “attempt…to determine” your immigration status. This obligation is on the police officer, not on you. There seems to be nothing in the law that purports to create any obligation on you to assist in that “attempt…to determine” your status, to answer any questions, to carry or produce or display ID, or to consent to a search for evidence of identity or immigration status.

Of course, most people don’t know this…and that’s just the way they want it.

Boycott Arizona!!!

Assignment: Earth

2010-03-31T10:19:00.001-04:00

The Large Hadron Collider is now smashing atoms (or more properly: colliding subatomic particles). All of this is happening in the Swiss-French countryside. Just imagine it—something out of an impressionist painting with a monster lurking just beneath the surface. And when I say lurking—I mean smoldering.

Protons are stimulated to more than 99 percent of the speed of light, with energy levels of 3.5 trillion electron volts apiece around a 17-mile magnetic corridor. So what does this mean? Well, they crash together to form little (and I mean little) microscopic fireballs which might reveal the forces and particles that might have appeared during the first trillionth of a second of the Big Bang.

But up till now, there has been a hitch: it has kept breaking down. The reason for this is why I’m so fascinated with this subject, being such a sci-fi nut. And here it goes—some scientists believe that the forces that the collider will create will be so abhorrent to nature, that it is being sabotaged by its own future. They call it—Higgs boson hypothesis, which states that the collision or Big Bang would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make it happen.

Wow! And this coming from scientists (most notably Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto, Japan)--not just any run of the mill Star Trek geek like me. Oh Yeah—and for all you Nielson fans, also Holger Bech Nielson, of the Neils Bohr Institute in Copenhagen.

This influence from the future, they say, was also responsible for the cancellation of the completion of a super collider in the United States in 1993.

Scientists are so funny—some have said that the theory is crazy. Yet maybe, crazy enough that it might have a chance at being correct. This means that the fundamental laws of physics must be reversible. And I do believe that most scientists believe that they are. Now if you’ve seen Star Trek (Original Series) repeats as much as I have, you have no doubt concluded that it is in fact a Starfleet ship that has returned to sabotage the collider.

But the Large Hadron Collider just successfully made their first little explosions and nothing happened. They are in search of dark matter, which you are fully aware, is some tricky stuff. In fact it is too tricky for Neanderthals such as us. So I think that there is some Spock-like dude (from the future) who has infiltrated the site, and is keeping us from blowing up the universe.

Hey—this theory is just as valid as the one from the smarty-pants with big degrees.

And don’t forget what Albert Einstein once wrote to a friend: “For those who believe in physics, this separation between past, present and future is only an illusion.”

My Life of Crime

2010-03-13T14:41:00.002-05:00

I am thy father’s spirit.
Doomed for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confined to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul; freeze thy young blood;
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combined locks to part,
And each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine. (Shakespeare)

If the whole of the court and the whole of society is corrupt, and if there is a flaw running through the linear chain of humanity, then my contribution to it can only be termed a failure.

A well known fact is that, although corruption is birthed from somewhere in the middle of our double helix of DNA (probably stuck between scatology and cynicism strands), it is a concept usually introduced to us by our older brothers.

Biological or not, I fall into the later category. And boy was my brother a master.

This story about my fall starts with a brief word about the shoes I tried to follow. My brother Clyde and his good friend Rob took to shoplifting school supplies from a local bookstore.

Act casual.

A pencil (here).

A beautiful ink fountain pen (there).

Compasses. Rulers.

Next—almost every damn thing in the store.

The inventory must have shown that something was wrong. Somebody had to be opening a supply store nearby and didn’t want to purchase their stock.

Deep in Clyde’s closet, was a box with the booty. A treasure box hidden well from a mother’s prying eyes. He and his friend would take out the box and gloat over its contents. I was only given permission to look on rare occasions.

Of course, my privy eyes would bulge. This was incredibly neat stuff. The seed was planted. Their talk of thievery was so casual, it must be an activity worth exploring; must be relatively easy. Just look at their cache.

Yes, there is profit in transgression! There is perfect logic in it. One must imitate an older brother’s enterprise—his art.

So off I went, in pursuit of splendor. Off to start my life of crime. I was thy brother’s spirit, riding towards the store on my new bicycle.

The plan was perfect. I had a leather pouch with straps, hanging from the back of the seat. It was the ideal place to stash the goods. Such praise from Fagan.

I entered the store with the eyes of Artful Dodger, trained with amazing awareness. Yes, that would be nice. The clerk is not looking. The clerk is looking. This location is obstructed from view. Act like a browser. Casual demeanor disarms suspicion. If you act nervous horns will sound, Doberman Pinchers will come bounding down the aisle and make lunch meat out of you. Do they send boys to prison?

A problem arises. I just can’t do it. I am too nervous. The anxiety within me is so intense that the booming of my heartbeat is reverberating from the walls. Books will start vibrating and fall from the shelves.

I can’t chicken out though. The humiliation would be even more painful than my cowardice. It is no longer a matter of how much to take, but more like what would be the easiest to conceal and how fast I can get out of there.

I can snatch and run. No—too risky. The minutes seem like hours.

Doesn’t this boy have a home? He must be lost. He must be waiting for his mother.

Finally, my eyes spy the object of my corruption; the singular article confining me to fast in fires. It is a Bic ball-point pen. It’s net worth: nineteen cents. Nineteen cents for a soul. It spoke to me.

Casual as an earthquake, I lifted it from the shelf. I inspected it. Yes, must be quite a fine pen. Try it out. Balances nicely! Walk down the aisle a bit. Nobody looking! In the pants. Better be safe and put it inside the underwear. Now just walk slowly towards the door. It is getting nearer. Keep your eyes straight. There was no tunnel when I came in here. Why was the damn door shrinking? Out the door! Walk slowly. Run! Yes—run like hell to the bike.

Once I got there, I burrowed into my pants for the pen. I put it into the leather pouch and rode home as fast as I could. The anxiety only got worse. I waited for the sound of police sirens in the distance. Upon entering our garage, I quickly closed the door, put my back to the cold brick wall and waited. Still no siren! I peered around through the window. The coast was clear. I did it!

But wait! Where was the pen? I frantically searched the pouch, but it was nowhere to be found. I searched again, but it was not there. I couldn’t believe it. This was all for nothing. Then my brother came up the driveway.

“What ya doing in there?”

“Nothing,” I returned.

To this date, the sight of a Bic ball-point pen causes each of my particular hairs to stand on end, like the quills upon the fretful porpentine.

My Top 10 CD's of 2009

2009-12-22T15:53:00.002-05:00

Yes--I am a fan of music lists at the end of the year. I love to hear what David Dye has to say at the end of the year, as well as looking for what the NPR listeners pick on the "All Things Considered" list. But I have never ventured into the realm of making a list myself. This year I am changing that.

So here it goes--

1. Band of Skulls: Baby Darling Doll Face Honey

2. Meshell Ndegeocello: Devil's Halo

3. Devandra Banhart: What Will We Be

4. Rain Machine: Rain Machine

5. Other Lives: Other Lives

6. Heartless Bastards: The Mountain

7. White Denim: Fits

8. BLK JKS: After Robots

9. The Low Anthem: Oh My God Charlie Darwin

10. Dirty Projectors: Bitte Orca

The First American in Afghanistan

2009-11-02T10:51:00.002-05:00

In 1838, an American by the name of Josiah Harlan led an expedition against Murad Beg (prince of Kunduz and tribal war lord) in Afghanistan. His army included 1,400 cavalry, 1,100 infantry, 2,000 horses, and 400 camels. This rag-tag army crossed the Hindu Kush and followed the path of Alexander. Before unleashing his force on the region he unfurled the Stars and Stripes from the highest pass (Khazar) and had his troops fire a twenty-six gun salute.

Now, let’s back track a little. Who in the heck was this guy?

He was a soldier of fortune from Pennsylvania (and yes—had a Quaker upbringing), who sailed east in 1823 in search of adventure and ended up in India (with the Bengal Artillery) as an assistant surgeon. He had no medical training. He fought in Burma.

When the fighting ended, Harlan resigned and moved into northern India, where he hooked up with Shah Sujah (deposed Afghan monarch in exile). Once he had joined the royal circle, he disguised himself as a dervish and undertook a spying mission to Kabul. When he made his report (that the forces were too strong and well entrenched to attack) the Shah rewarded him with the titles of “King’s Nearest Friend” and “Companion of the Imperial Stirrup.”

Sounds cool to me! Especially the second one.

He then moved on to the court of Ranjit Sing as a mercenary and bagman. Eventually he pops up in Kabul a year later as aide-de-camp to the Sikh monarch’s archrival, Dost Mohammad Khan.

Loyalty going to the highest bidder, you could say in this field.

His new boss had a rapacity for gold, and possessed a cruelty that doubted every motive but self interest. Oh yeah, and he was a drunk.

One wonders how Harlan’s Quaker upbringing reconciled with the perpetual and shameless bacchanals of drink, prostitutes, singers and actors.

Perhaps it was his sober reticence that impressed his boss, because he made him second in command of an expedition against Murad Beg.

After punishing Murad Beg, the army returned to Kabul in 1839. It was then that Harlan learned that the Government of India was sending an army to restore Shah Sujah to the Afghan throne. Dost Mohammed named Harlan as commander-in-chief of his army. But when his people heard of the size of the army advancing, they deserted their leader en masse.

This is when Harlan returned to Philadelphia (1841). He wrote a memoir, where he refers to himself as General.

He tried to promote the use of camels by the US Army. And during the Civil War, he raised a regiment known as Harlan’s Light Cavalry. After the war he got Congress to raise $10,000 for a Central Asian Expedition. It never happened, and Harlan ended his days in San Francisco, where he practiced medicine until his death in 1871.

Raising our Glass

2009-10-15T10:10:00.000-04:00

branding irons are to be used
in the suture of our commutable contusions

only yesterday I exhaled your dingy smoke
and it irradiated like frankincense

we made a toast with Helena’s bowl
to the true nepenthes in Homer

and retired our sorrow and debt
to the aliment of all heart-eating vice

but ended up mutually misaffecting each other
with songs and slurs until you broke my skull open

which it turned out, no reparation would suffice
unless the injury remained rational

Solomon himself would have offered me his cup
because, the onlookers thought i was a ghost

although you and i knew different--that atheism
like ours could be maintained by heathens alone

Tase First, Ask Questions Later

2009-09-23T10:45:00.003-04:00

Dear Mister/Ms Police Officer,

If I get pulled over for speeding in the future and I seem a little nervous, please understand—I’m not hiding anything—I’m only worried that you might stun me for no reason other than that you are lazy and incompetent.

This is because you have complete authority. And you don’t have to do any work, anymore. Open my mouth (you know you don’t have to take any lip from me) and –ZAP!

How does that power feel?

Yours Truly, John Q. Public

The Taser is shaped like a gun and is battery operated. It fires two fishhook like barbs into a person’s skin, discharging between 50k and 1000k volts of electricity, disrupting a person’s muscle control. The darts have a range of up to 21 feet. The tool can also be pressed directly against a person’s body to use in stun mode. About 6,000 agencies use the device.

That’s the technical scoop.

But here’s the real deal—the pain caused by the electricity is excruciating and freezes you on the spot. And it keeps you frozen, until someone hits the “off” switch.

And the troubling part of this story is that it is now the preferred method of resolving any issues between police and the community. No one is immune from the TASER. This includes people who don’t pose any serious threat, such as unruly school children, pregnant women, a 6 year old mentally disturbed boy in Miami, a handcuffed 9 year old girl in Arizona, along with the elderly (including a legally blind 71 year old woman in Portland).

And get this—69 people have died nationwide after being shocked by Tasers. Many of which were due to the “rush to tase and ask questions later,” according to Sheley Secrest of the NAACP Seattle chapter.

Those tased who were fortunate enough not to have been killed by the devise, includes a deaf man who couldn’t hear deputies ordering him to stop, and a teenager who ran after not paying a $1.25 bus fare.

In my day--kids were taken home to their parents and made to account for themselves.

Now we all know the reason Tasers were introduced to law enforcement. They could potentially end violent standoffs and subdue suicidal people. But, as they have become as ubiquitous as the handcuff, they are being routinely used in far less threatening situations.

Amnesty International has released a report saying that police nationwide are abusing the stun gun. They advocate that officers stop using the device until independent tests prove they’re safe (The company that builds them insists they are). Some studies have indicated that not enough scientific data is available to determine whether Tasers are safe for use in all circumstances.

Several chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union have urged police to use Tasers only in the most serious situations. This is because there are no rules and standards that apply to their use. There are only suggestions. And some police departments are starting to clamp down on abuses by their officers. The Las Vegas Police Department recently had to ban the use of Tasers on handcuffed people and “discouraged” multiple shockings.

According to Amnesty International, Taser use has been followed by death in 277 cases. They are concerned that the weapons are being used on unarmed people, where there is no imminent threat to the officer or other people in the situation.

Only recently, I was channel surfing the old television, and came across the beginning of a new police reality series, featuring female officers in Broward county, Florida. One of the officers said something about how much she enjoyed stunning people with her trusty Taser, as an introduction to her character. It was sadistic and perverse. She thought that it was funny.

Tell that to the 15 year old boy in Michigan, who shortly after a Taser was used on him Tuesday, died. And of course, I wonder how funny those three officers in Laredo, Texas, think it is after the death of man they shocked with a Taser gun. They are on administrative leave, pending an investigation. My money is on a slap on the wrist and they’ll be back to abusing their authority very soon.

What I find particularly troubling about all this, is that there are no standards with something that can cause such harm. Our police are using the threat of excruciating pain to its citizens instead of civil discourse.

And this, in a democracy that touts its freedoms.

Scotland Yard Wants Your Stuff!

2009-09-01T10:18:00.001-04:00

Recently, British police began combing an upscale London neighborhood. It was not to catch criminals though. It was to commit crimes themselves. They were in search of things to steal. They were checking for unlocked cars for items and taking them.

The rationale: to teach the owners a lesson to keep their doors locked, and their windows closed.

They were to “remove the property for safekeeping,” and a note would be left to explain what happened.

I guess that this type of thing could be referred to as the weird cousin of “focused deterrence.” Normally, the principle of this form of crime fighting is to force criminal activity to another jurisdiction. Criminologists refer to this as “displacement.” In Madison Wisconsin, campus police understand this fundament, and have been successful in deterring crime with their “bait bike” program. A GPS device is attached to such bikes. Since the program started, 18 people have taken the bait, ending in 16 arrests in two months. The police, in this situation, attempt to make the criminal evaluate the risk of apprehension; contemplate the seriousness of the expected punishment, along with their immediate need for criminal gain.

This has led to evidence of sizeable crime reduction on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. Unfortunately, it did not shift crime to surrounding areas. But, it did put a dent in crime without putting a strain on police-community relations. I can only imagine the strain on police-community relations in London when the folks discovered that their valuables had actually been nicked by the police.

Perhaps the police in London have come to the conclusion that studies usually indicate that traditional crime deterrence programs, like that being employed in Madison, do not cause criminals to move to other areas. They resist movement to other sites, because of the natural tendency to stay with what is familiar. Movement would cause demand that they encounter new and less familiar conditions. Criminals simply change their methods in order to continue their activities without getting caught. So, instead the coppers focus their attention on the prospective victims by making them victims.

Yet, from where I come from, the state is responsible for maintaining order and preserving the common good through a system of laws—not the audacity to commit crimes in order to educate the populace about possible future crimes. The police in London need to achieve their objectives through policies that convince criminals (not victims) to desist from criminal activities, delay their actions, or simply avoid a particular target.

To do this, they must develop strategies which focus on future behaviors of criminals, and preventing them from engaging in such crimes by impacting rational decision making processes.

To put it another way—if criminals choose to continue their disruptive and threatening behavior, they deserve to be punished. The citizen, though, does not deserve to be punished (by having their property seized by the police) because of the activities of a few deviants.

As crime rates increase, police resources always are stretched and the certainty of apprehension decreases. Come on folks—let’s use our money more efficiently!

Dear Metropolitan Dwellers,

2009-07-24T10:40:00.003-04:00

The folk down here in the hills of southern Ohio, understand that y’all are upset about not getting the lion’s share of the federal transportation stimulus money. We hear that y’all are complaining that you have the nation’s worst traffic jams and some of the oldest roads and bridges, so the money should be going to y’all. Some are saying that y’all contribute three-quarters of the nation’s economic activity and that money should be returned by filling all those little pot holes we’ve heard about. I’m not sure what they are, but I do know of one farmer down here who lost his horse and buggy in a sink hole. He just shook it off and said it must have been the Lord’s work.

Well, I just want y’all to know that things have gotten down to the stems and seeds here too.

I have a cousin up in Cleveland, who started complaining that $115 million of $200 million earmarked for something called an Innerbelt-bridge was sent down here for the Nelsonville Bypass. I’m not sure what an inner-belt is up there, but down here it usually means the life savings someone carries around in a hidden pouch, because they haven’t trusted banks since the great depression. Word is out that that bridge might save some commuters about a half an hour in the morning, while the bypass will improve transportation to Appalachia.

It’s no secret that those up in Columbus would rather have Rt. 33 bottle necked to keep “all those” hillbillies from coming up from West Virginia. But being cut off from the rest of the state by inadequate ingress and egress will only keep us isolated from the rest of the state. Damn shame too. This is prettiest part—hands down. At the same time, I’m not sure we would care to see very many of those Columbus yuppies (going through their middle age crisis) riding into town on their Harley’s (no helmet and thousand dollar, designer shades) on weekends.

OK, I admit that fewer people live here. But does that mean we shouldn’t be getting some of “the monies” also.

Folk who live in rural areas don’t have all the services that y’all have in the big cities, so many times we have to make that long drive for certain things. Now, the bypass will make the drive to Columbus only a short one hour drive, instead of the one and a half hour drive that it is now. Folk in cities know that a one hour drive is like crossing town. But to us, that extra half hour makes the drive seem more like that dreaded long drive to aunt Gerdy’s for Thanksgiving dinner.

It seems like those up north have developed a sense of entitlement that Buckeye football fans have exhibited for years. If they lose one game, the season is over. Down here in Appalachia, if the Bobcats win one game, we’re happy.

So now the score is Nelsonville Bypass-1, Innerbelt-Bridge-0.

Yes--There are Homeless and They're in Your Neighborhood!

2009-07-07T11:27:00.001-04:00

As usual, right wing conservatives and fundamentalist Christians are dropping the ball on homelessness in America. Either they are blind to it or just prefer to ignore it by denial or by rewriting the story.

Officials who actually live in the real world and work with the homeless, are experiencing a SURGE in homelessness this summer and are expecting an all time high in the numbers of families in shelters. The higher numbers in unemployment will no doubt add to the increase.

Many shelters are now overcrowded and have been turning away numerous people at night, and Salvation Army shelters have had to put mats on the floors to accommodate the amount of those in need. In New York, the number of families applying for shelter has increased by 28%.

So where are the conservative Christians? Isn’t charity supposed to be the hallmark of this religion?

Well, I’ll tell you—

They are inviting their congregations to wear or carry their guns into their sanctuaries, in order to celebrate their rights as Americans. At least, that’s what happened recently at an Assembly of God church in Kentucky.

Let’s hear it for LIBERTY!

Wait a minute—aren’t Christians supposed to be PACIFISTS?

Oh, I’m sorry--I guess that was just Jesus.

So, it follows that gun laws are a more important issue than poverty, and the need for community activism, volunteerism, and service.

Just recently, the right wing used the opportunity to bash President Obama, and his alleged liberalism, when Michelle was photographed working the food line at a homelessness center. They failed to mention that this center actually feeds about 300 people a day. And get this--the shelter is only a couple of blocks away from the White House.

Now let’s talk about rewriting truth and issues to jive with your own agenda. When John Edwards brought up the issue of homeless vets, Bill Oreilly said that there were no homeless vets (period). Michael Savage, when asked by a caller on his radio show about “the problem with the homelessness in the country,” responded by saying, “Why not put them in work camps.”

Excuse me? Do you mean work camps, like in concentration camps? Or prison camps?

When did homelessness become a crime? I guess when it started to infringe on the Norman Rockwell image of conservative, white, gun toting Christian America’s picket fence sentimentality. Not in my neighborhood—you grubby, smelly cretins.

Listen—

When you deny social problems and say that they don’t exist, you are denying knowledge itself. And to abandon knowledge is to abandon LIBERTY.

IDIOTS!

Recording Academy Dumps Polka

2009-06-08T11:18:00.002-04:00

The Recording Academy (Grammy Awards) has just decided that they are going to eliminate the award for best Polka album.

What?

Or better yet: Who stole the kishke?

They claim that they want to ensure that its awards show will remain “pertinent within the current musical landscape.” They also claim that the category is attracting too few entries. Perhaps they simply can’t deal with the fact that the Polka King, Jimmy Sturr, keeps winning the award. Now if this were actually the legitimate claim, then certainly the categories of Pop, Country, Rap, Latin, and Gospel have nothing to fear. But if we are talking about what is pertinent to the current musical landscape, we will also have to eliminate the other categories that don’t “sell.” This then would put pretty much the rest of the lot into the same dilemma as Polka: Rock, Reggae, R&B, Jazz, Historical, Folk, Dance, Comedy, Classical, Children’s, and Blues.

Blues gets only two awards. Compare this to the relevance it has in relation to the history of American music. At the same time, World Music gets three. Children’s also gets three. Jazz, which holds a place in the American music lexicon that is obviously pertinent, gets eleven Grammy’s. Yet no one buys the CDs. Classical gets fourteen, and they sell fewer CD’s than Jazz.

Did you know that Gospel gets more awards than any other category, with 22? Wow! I can’t even remember the last time I ran out to buy the newest Gospel album. Oh Yeah, it was NEVER.

The Grammy Awards is supposed to honor the rich diversification in American music. So have they the right to decide whose heritage is more important than some one else’s. I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. My heritage is Welsh and Dutch, but believe you me, I can oompah with the best of them. And after all, isn’t the role of the Grammy Awards to let these diverse musical styles fuse with each other in the full spectrum of American music. Is not polka just as much a part of our lexicon as say, Best Hawaiian Music Album, or Best Native American Music Album, or even that coveted Best Surround Sound Album?

If we are going to reward music, we are going to have to consider all that it conveys to all people. And if this is the case, then we have to consider what the classical composer Schoenberg wrote in his autobiography—“For the wonderful thing about music is that one can say everything in it, so that he who knows understands everything; and yet one hasn’t given away one’s own secrets, the things one doesn’t say even to oneself.”

On the other hand, if relevance and pertinence is everything, then we must listen to the words of Stravinsky—“I consider that music is, by its very nature, powerless to express anything at all, whether a feeling, an attitude of mind, a psychological mood, a phenomenon of nature…If, as is nearly always the case, music appears to express something, this is only an illusion and not a reality.”

Fortunately there are still people who believe otherwise. The Julliard School estimates that there are between 20,000 and 40,000 Americans who consider themselves composers of classical music. If it weren’t for them, the music that I listen to would surely die. Let’s hope this doesn’t happen to polka.

Teenage Violence Against the Homeless

2009-06-04T11:48:00.004-04:00

On May 11, three teenage boys (ages 18, 17 and 17) assaulted a homeless man in Reynoldsburg, Ohio. When they were done with him, the victim was a bloody mess. Just one year ago, a man was shot in Columbus, when he tried to stop two teenagers from throwing rocks and bottles at a homeless man.

This is not an uncommon occurrence. For years, advocates and homeless shelter workers have given reports of men, women, and even children being harassed, beaten, set on fire, and even decapitated.

What is happening to our youth?

In Los Angeles, a homeless man was recently doused with gasoline and set ablaze. And here’s the troubling part: the assaulters had targeted him in mind. The suspects remain at large.

And if this wasn’t bad enough, you can go to You-Tube and watch, what are called, Bumfights. Yes--teenagers go into areas where the homeless live, pay them to fight each other, and record it for entertainment. The National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty attributes a 65% increase in violence against the homeless due to these videos. The numbers are probably even higher, since many attacks are never reported.

The National Coalition for the Homeless have statistics from 1999 through 2007, which report 774 acts of violence against the homeless who actually receive shelter (this does not include those who live on the street), resulting in 217 murders. Of these murders, only 85 qualified as hate crimes.

Excuse me?

The U.S. Congress, in 1968, defined hate crimes as crimes in which the defendant intentionally selects a victim because of their race, color or national origin (Title 18 Section 245). It mandates that the government must prove both that the crime occurred because of a victim’s membership in a designated group and because the victim was engaged in certain specified federally-protected activities, such as serving on a jury, voting, or attending public school.

There have been several laws enacted subsequently to provide additional coverage. The Hate Crimes Statistics Act of 1990 authorizes the Justice Department to collect data from law enforcement agencies about crimes that “manifest evidence of prejudice based upon race, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity.” It, though, says nothing about economic or housing status. The poorest of the poor, again remain the “silent ones” in a culture that rewards wealth.

Is homelessness a disability? Certainly many are on the streets due to a disability, such as mental illness.

The Hate Crimes Sentencing Enhancement Act, of 1994, defines hate crimes as “a crime in which the defendant intentionally selects a victim, because of the actual perceived race, color, national origin, ethnicity, gender, disability, or sexual orientation of any person.” The problem is that this law only applies to attacks and vandalism that occur in national parks and on federal property.

We now need to ask ourselves—how and why are we responsible for the behavior of our youth?

Why are we, as communities, increasingly taking punitive actions against homeless people? And, does this send a message that these people are less than human and that attacking them is acceptable?

Let us not forget: Violence is learned behavior! Not only do children (remember-teenagers are children) learn behaviors from their family and peers, but also learn it from what they observe in their neighborhoods and in the community at large. These behaviors are then reinforced by what they see on television, on the Internet, and in video games.

The perpetrators of these crimes are angry adolescents. You simply do not commit murder unless you are angry and resentful. These are children who have, no doubt, lived with rage for years. They feel cut off socially and emotionally.

To deal with this dilemma, we have to start by seeing our society as an organism, in order for it to properly function. It must become an organic whole of internally-connected members who share a single, unconscious process.

So, where do we start?

Here are some ideas—

• The inclusion of housing status in the pending state and federal hate crimes legislation.
• Start with our communities. Begin with awareness about the causes and solutions to homelessness in our schools, and how to deal effectively and humanely with people experiencing homelessness in their communities.
• Have speakers visit both public and private schools for the purpose of information and education (made up of homeless and formerly homeless people).
• A public statement needs to come from the U.S. Department of Justice acknowledging that hate crimes and/or violence against people experiencing homelessness is a serious national trend.
• Guidelines for local police on how to investigate crimes against and work with people experiencing homelessness.
• “Housing Status” needs to be included in information to the checklist of data maintained as part of the National Incident Based Reporting System maintained by the FBI.
• Most important of all—our federal, state, and local governments should create and provide adequate affordable housing and services to bring an end to homelessness in our communities.

Fire The Bums!

2009-05-20T10:30:00.003-04:00

It’s time to fire the bums. That’s right! The Cleveland Indians need a complete overhaul. Fire the manager, the general-manager, and the owner, as my father would say.

I feel that I have the right to say this. After all, the present owner’s fortune actually started at my family’s house. They made their fortune with cable television. So why does the house I grew up in claim to be the starting point. Well, we were the very first house to be wired for cable television, back in the sixties. I always knew that we were one of the first homes to have cable television in our neighborhood (Shaker Heights, Ohio), but it wasn’t until almost thirty years later that I found out we were the first.

Our cable went out, and a crew came to fix the problem.

They came upon a dilemma. The cable was not strung across the backyard, and drilled through a wall, into the home. No! They found that the cable had been tunneled under the garage, under the driveway, and came into the home through the basement. It was then thread up throughout the home inside the interior of two foot thick brick walls. The cable itself was of a type that the crew had never seen before. It was as if a car mechanic had someone drive a 1914 Model T into his shop, and said, “Can you fix this?”

Word got out fast, and before we knew it, there were at least thirty cable trucks parked all the way down our street. It was amazing. They all came to see the infamous house. They were crawling over the place like ants. “Come look at this!”—“Check this out!”—was the banter throughout the house.

The company was called Telerama, when we first got cable. Basically all it did was to add the two UHF stations to the dial of thirteen numbers. The best part was that we also got a CBC station from London Ontario. I loved it, because I grew up watching Hockey Night in Canada. The best part was that in Canada, they didn’t censor movies. Back in the sixties, by the time a newer movie made it to television, one third of it would be left on the editor’s floor. On late night, I sometimes even got to see flesh. Years later they added WOR TV, from New York, where I got the Ranger’s games. Also, I was raised watching the WOR TV 4 o’clock movie (I owe them a debt).

My father got it, because when the Cleveland Browns played a home game, Telerama would pick up a station from Erie, Pennsylvania or Sandusky, Ohio, that would be outside of the banned area. Remember, the NFL has always had strict rules about showing home games, unless it is a sell-out. All the kids in the neighborhood would come to our house to watch the games.

The folks that started this operation eventually moved on to New York City and renamed it Viacom Cablevision. The family went on to make a gazillion dollars. So what do gazillionaires do with all their money? They buy sports teams. Now the Cleveland Indians have another, in a long line, of inept owners (with the exception of Dick Jacobs). It is only an ego massaging exercise for them. It’s too bad they don’t run the team the way they did their cable company.

But, the fact is, they don’t need to run this team. Let’s find a new owner and fire the bums!

By the way, the crew decided to string new wiring, the way they do it with all the other houses in America. And guess what? It turned out that the old system worked better!

Oh That Crazy Dick!

2009-05-11T11:10:00.004-04:00

Former vice president Dick Cheney announced yesterday the formation of a new wing of the Republican Party. In this new move, he has sided with Rush Limbaugh, in a coalition which they intend to name, “the Brown Shirts.”

In their first meeting, several hecklers were promptly ejected by force. Security was happy to say that a few of the agitators had departed with gashed heads. Only seventy people were in attendance at this first meeting, but Rush said that, “We expect our numbers to grow. We are expecting around 130 at our second meeting.”

Cheney, when asked about the role of this new wing said, “The Republican Party needs to evolve from an extremist-centrist party to one with unquestioned leaders. The Brown Shirts are being formed, because the centrists are no longer needed for the original purpose of the party. Our role will be the rightful acquisition of political power.”

When asked the same question, Rush Limbaugh said, “I’m on board, because I’ve always been into pseudo-military titles, which we intend to bestow on our members. As for me, I’m hoping for The Grandest Most Privatistic Hypertrophied Proponent of the Unconscionable, or if I can’t get that, then Your Highness will do.”

“The old ways of doing things are over,” Cheney added. “A political party, in today’s world, needs to inflict more subtle terror and obedience than was needed during the prior eight years. Our new motto will be: Terror must be broken by terror.”

Asked about how this could effect the nation as a whole, the former vice-president said, “To start with, our nation needs to become a nation of snoops, with the sole purpose of keeping an eye on others in their ‘areas’ and report to us if something is amiss. Don’t forget that the terrorists are still probably already amongst us.”

When pressed on this issue, Cheney added that, “Actually what we really need is leadership that would eventually become a dictatorship. The country requires one person and one party to be in control of the nation and our climate of fear. The Brown Shirt wing of the Republican Party is the only one that can rouse America’s youth to a passionate militant love for their Fatherland, I mean their homeland. Rush has been advocating for years, that our education system needs to be re-organized on the lines of narrow nationalism and intolerance. I think he has something there.”

Rush went on to expound on this theme, when he said, “In our America, men and women will look well dressed and have pride of appearance and a regard for cleanliness, which will fill the world with admiration.”

When a heckler appeared and shouted, “but beneath a spotless suit of clothes and a white collar there is nothing but abject poverty crying out for retribution,” Dick Cheney pulled out a gun and shot him in the face.

The Problem with Maritime Law and Piracy

2009-04-14T11:34:00.002-04:00

Presumably, you dear reader, have also been following the news about pirates on the high seas, off the coast of Somalia (especially when a US captain was taken hostage). I recently did a piece about pirate reenactors. These are people who romanticize the Caribbean buccaneer. What we have been witnessing is modern piracy—except it is actually the same thing: violent seizure on the high seas of a private ship or the illegal detainment of persons or property aboard said ship for the purpose of private gain [this is the definition as set by Article 15 of the 1958 Geneva Convention and Article 101 of the 1882 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea].

In this modern era, piracy represents worldwide losses of 13 to $16 billion per year, in commercials lanes that are used by over 50,000 ships a year.

Traditionally, pirates have been dealt with by a simple solution—catch the bad guys and hang them. The rationale being that piracy was regarded as an offense against Law of Nations and the state whose flag flies on the ship. That state had the right to seize the pirate ship, bring it to port, try the crew, and punish them.

All this was before lawyers took over the world.

So now we have a dilemma. These people, who think that they are smarter than us, say that that approach seems simple, BUT in reality there are problems with this solution.

This is what they say:

1. It limits piracy to crimes committed against private property or citizens.
2. The act must occur in international waters.
3. Greed must be the motivating factor behind the crime.

To them, what the law fails to address are acts of piracy committed: by governments, within territorial waters, for political purposes. They say the maritime laws and the UN Convention of 1982 clearly do not consider the emergence of failed states like Somalia. They do not address what happens if a pirate attack takes place within a country’s territorial waters or in its neighbor’s waters.

The international law addresses what happens on the high seas. So the Convention, which was signed by 150 countries, enables war ships to patrol the shipping lanes under legal protection. But they only have the right to seize and prosecute on the “high seas.” The Somali pirates often do their dirty deeds within the twelve nautical mile limit.

The international law on piracy assume that individual states take responsibility for policing and patrolling their own waters and to prosecute those caught in the act of piracy.

Here’s the problem with these laws and assumptions--

1. Not all states have the sources and capacity to ensure maritime security within their waters.
2. Somalia (and no doubt others) after eighteen years, still has no functioning government.
3. Modern international law does not apply to incidents occurring in waters where there is in fact no law. We will call these areas—the Twilight Zone.

In June 2008, the Security Council adopted Resolution 1816, which seeks to address the threat posed by Somali piracy. In effect the Council has authorized States acting in cooperation with the TFG (Somali Transitional Federal Government) to enter the territorial waters of Somalia to undertake enforcement actions against piracy and armed robbery.

What were they thinking? Oh yeah—like lawyers!

If the Somali courts are not willing and able to conduct prosecutions, the responsibility can only fall on the international community, whose ships are patrolling off the coast of Somalia.

The US and Great Britain seem to be the only ones willing to take steps to address these issues, by signing agreements with Kenya allowing for the transfer of pirates there for prosecution.

So far, the response of the international community has been pretty much invisible, and at the best haphazard.

This is why I believe the US made the right move when they recently took out three pirates by sniper fire. It is time we go back to the old fashion way of dealing with pirates—catch the bad guys and hang them (or at least actually take matters in to your own hands).

Bad Music on the Radio

2009-03-16T10:54:00.001-04:00

I live in a one-radio-station-town (a university owned NPR/FM station). Of course there are other stations on the air available, but they are made up of Top 10 crap and several getting-saved-by-Jesus stations. So my options are obviously limited.

Now on the bright side, the NPR station here in Athens plays really good music. It’s not classical music, but I can’t have everything. This I can get on the web and through my stereo via high speed cable. WOUB plays eclectic hip stuff.

BUT—there are times when even the best of the best revert to the cliché. This usually happens during a holiday. I think you know what I’m talking about. You know—when you have to put up with all of those incredibly lame rock and roll Christmas songs like; Thank God It's Christmas – Queen; Rock and Roll Christmas - George Thorogood & the Destroyers; and that classic All I Want for Christmas Is You – Foghat.

I need to clarify something here first. It takes me forever to fall asleep at night, so my only solace during this frustrating period (sometimes two to three hours) is to listen to music while my wife enjoys her slumber, next to me. Which begs the question: What happens when they play the cliché music? Well, I just have to lie there and take it (remember it’s a one-station-town).

Last night was one of those times. It was a St. Patrick’s Day weekend and the DJ of one of the “good” shows decided to play Irish music for the whole show. It was some of the most irritating music ever played in all of Christendom. Diddle dee dee, diddle dee dee, diddle dee dee, didle dee dee, for three F-ing hours. And then it ended with a fiddle being sawed in half by only two notes for over fifteen minutes, I thought that the record must have developed a skip and the DJ was off in the bathroom taking care of a problem caused by too much corned beef. It even woke my wife up. I was ready to pull my hair out.

So Mister Grumpy—why the sad tale?

I just don’t understand why we are goaded into these clichés. Why do we have to play Irish music on St. Patrick’s Day? This—everybody is Irish on St. Patrick’s Day--is as old and tired as TV antennas. Please, join the millennium, folks.

Hopefully by Christmas, I’ll have a CD player on my nightstand. This blog is written by a poor poet, so buying something that extravagant is not as easy as some of you might think.

What we put up with for our art!

Are You Über?

2009-02-26T10:39:00.000-05:00

Have you noticed that just about everything has become “über this” or “über that?” All you have to do is watch any segment on your favorite morning show, and surely the “so called” experts will use “über” in their descriptions of any object, trend, or fashion.

So what in the heck does it mean and how did it arrive at such a ubiquitous place in the America lexicon?

Let’s get the formalities over with first. It’s über, not uber. They are not the same thing. If you want to write it in English without the two dots, you would write “ueber.” It is from the German language and refers to something super or supreme. The literal meaning in German is “above.”

Many of us, including me, were introduced to the word when it was used as a synonym for “super” on a Saturday Night Live sketch in 1979, called What If?. They pondered the notion what if the comic book hero Superman had landed in Nazi Germany when he first came from the planet Krypton. Would he have taken on the name Überman?

Shortly after this, in the early 1980s, the California punk band, the Dead Kennedy’s, used the term in the anti-California government song “California Uber Alles,” which was a take off of the German motto of “Deustchland Uber Alles,” which means “Germany above all.” The term was then picked up by the natives of California (surfer dudes and punks), and then was adopted by the teenagers, which led to the eventual use by the majority.

It went from—“That band is uber hip”, to-- “that is an uber blog!”

I wonder if many people realize that one of their favorite terms has Nazi roots. The term “über” crossed over into English from the work of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, when in 1883 he coined the term “übermensch” to describe the higher state to which he felt man might aspire to. And then during Adolf Hitler’s rise to power, he bastardized Nietzsche’s term, using it as part of his description of an Aryan master race. Most importantly, it is this association we have with the image of the Superman hero that the term has taken on much of its English sense implying irresistibility or invincibility.

So the Nazi German anthem, re-used by punk bands, helped the term become popular in America.

When words like this come into such widespread use, I can only wonder if those speaking them have any clue as to what the hell they’re saying.

Now here’s another one for you to contemplate: fashionista.

Got any other suggestions for words to eliminate from our lexicon?

Tale of Two Cities

2009-02-04T16:58:00.001-05:00

Once again, I am faced with the prospect of the “Tale of Two Cities.” One is for the filthy rich and the other for the rest of us. They seem to be fortressing themselves in their gated communities as the masses gather their pitch forks and torches at the walls.

As the rest of us (as tax payers) have doled out nearly a trillion dollars in emergency bailout funds, Wall Street big wigs have awarded themselves with a reported $18.4 billion in year-end bonuses.

Are they just thumbing their noses at us?

Did you know that the average CEO makes 344 times as much as the average worker?

The now former CEO of Merrill Lynch, John Thain, spent $1.2 million on redecorating his office when his company was going down the toilet. Then he had the gall to ask for $10 million for his year-end bonus.

At the same time, here in my state of Ohio, the governor has announced his new budget. In it, the Ohio Department of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities is taking a crippling hit. They will have to cut operating spending at about 87 percent of the last budget.

Why do the people who need our help the most always become the first to suffer in times like these? The ones who depend on us the most (those in need of home services, children at risk of developmental disabilities, and early intervention services) are left out to dry, while the rich keep getting richer.

Sharpen those pitch forks. I’m just getting started.

When I married my lovely wife, I inherited a step son who is disabled and has to live in a nursing home. He is incapable of even living in a group home. We are not rich and have to depend on many of these services. The rich, with children in these circumstances, always have the option of private institutions. We don’t. Our son who has been helped by the wonderful people working at the MRDD facilities in the county where he resides are facing cuts in staffing. They are also faced with reducing the number of clients that they can help.

Let us not forget the possibility of closings of many services to this dependent population. It would remove the critical safety net for families who have run out of options in their homes and communities.

The money involved here, which pales in comparison to that we have handed over to the centa-millionares, is microscopic. The damage that will be done to children is infinitely disproportionate to the amount of money involved.

Get forward to seeing our juvenile-detention facilities becoming overloaded with mentally ill offenders who will not have access to doctors and medications.
This has been a very short rant, but my blood pressure is about give me a brain hemorrhage. I better stop now, before I need one of the many services that poor people like us depend on.

Business As Usual in Detroit

2009-01-11T12:32:00.001-05:00

Well, The Big Three in Detroit have gotten their bailout. Not as much as they came looking for with their hands out, but still the package is in the multi-billions. Let us not forget that the CEOs showed up in Gulfstreams. So for the mean time, they are living on borrowed money. GM and Chrysler have received $4bn each in emergency loans, and Ford has secured a $9bn credit line.

It is just not the economy that has brought them to their knees. The foreign car makers are living in the same environment. But the Big Three have functioned with an antiquated business plan that does not accommodate with the times and customer needs. In fact, to my shock and horror, during my precious football playoffs I have been inundated with commercials for trucks. This does not represent a new business model, revolutionary thinking, or restructuring.

It is business as usual.

Here’s a trend for you to contemplate: US consumers purchased 13.2 million new cars and trucks in 2008, down 18% from the year before. So why not continue following something that isn’t working? This seems to be the logic involved by saturating the airwaves with commercials for trucks, and more trucks. This is the business model that has brought their sales down nearly 24%, which incidentally are double the declines by Asian automakers. Their sales only declined by 12%.

The strategy indicates that Detroit’s policy is to bank on the loans as support for the second-half recovery, and pray that the economy improves or that there is an improvement of financial market conditions.

During only a couple of playoff games, a person will have had to view hundreds of commercials for the new Ford F-150. They are betting the farm on this truck (Who are these idiots?). They say the F-150 played a significant role in its fourth quarter market share gains. They even have the audacity to remind us that the F-150 line of pickups has been America’s best-selling trucks for 32 years in a row. So why not sell more of what got them into this mess?

In a Dodge truck ad they even brag that it gets 21 mpg on the highway. So much for meeting customer demands for better fuel economy.

Why am I so adamant that Detroit change the way they do business, instead of shoveling us the same old shit, year after year? Because, if the bankruptcy threatened automakers don’t pull through, as many as three million US jobs could disappear (according to the Independent Center for Automotive Research).

As for General Motors, their business plan is not changing either. They rely on lending to make their money. In fact their policy is to loosen their lending policy, after learning that the federal government would inject $6bn into Gm’s financing arm. Remember loose lending is what got the economy, in general, into such a pickle.

Even Chrysler Financial has applied to become an independent lending corporation. This would enable them to acquire more money to make car loans.

As I just mentioned, loose lending is what got our economy into this mess. So why not have GMAC lower the FICO score threshold for financing from 700 to 620? Guess what? This is just what they have done.

Tell me again what school, these economic wizards’s went to? My guess would be one from the Ivy League. Maybe we should start relying on State University educated people to make these decisions. These are the people who had to work their way through college, and have a sense of reality.

Oh, and if we are to implement looser lending, why not let the dealers in on the deal? Wait a minute—they have just jumped on the bandwagon. They are starting to finance used cars, because they can make money on interest points they don’t get from all-cash sales.

Basement of Birth

2008-12-25T10:52:00.000-05:00

A birth can come from
Body, mind, or fortune.

The deformities can be
Unlearned or circumstantial.

Seldom, said Plutarch, do
Honesty and beauty abide in each other.

Hannibal had only one eye, but the
Retina of the soul perceives the best—

Anyway. And Socrates was as
Hairy as an Ape.

Tell Detroit--No More!

2008-11-13T12:02:00.005-05:00

Reality is setting in. I voted for Obama, yet his first foray into presidential politics found him asking President Bush to help bailout the automotive industry in Detroit. Well Mr. President-elect, you are now 0 for 1.

What happened to CHANGE?

This is the same type of thinking that has wielded the scepter in this country since the industrial revolution began: no matter how strong the evidence of market failure, we refuse to believe in anything but our own permanence. So once again the automotive industry has approached the federal government with its hand out, instead of changing their products or business model (They have rather chosen to spend fortunes on lobbyists). And let us not forget that in September of 2008, Congress already gave the industry a loan totaling $25 billion. But with $50 billion more, they can turn things around.

Not if they don’t CHANGE!

This is a market economy. The auto-industry will perish, whether they get a bailout or not, if they do not change their business model.

A solid business model is the bedrock of every successful investment. If we are to invest in an industry, we need to learn how to describe and evaluate a company’s business model, in order to distinguish the great companies from the losers. This is just simple business sense. We need to look at how the company makes money. It is equally clear; we need to understand that as industries change, companies can’t always stick to the same business model. Joan Magretta, former head of the Harvard Business Review, has said that when business models don’t work, it’s because they don’t make sense and the numbers just don’t add up to profits.

When you consider G.M.’s model, it becomes clear that they don’t make money selling cars and trucks. In fact their business is based on (more than 60%) earnings from finance payments. This is a business model that has failed the test. In 2003, Ford, Chrysler and G.M. (in order to compete against foreign markets) offered customers such deep discounts and interest-free financing that they sold vehicles for less than it cost to make them. This is as a model that squeezed all the profits out of their operations.

So now we have an industry adverse to change in an environment that is in the middle of a housing slump and credit crisis. There is a drop in demand and a change in the vehicles consumers are buying. Detroit has been making large trucks and sport utility vehicles, while the foreign markets (with working business plans) are making more fuel-efficient vehicles.

Detroit and our policy makers prefer continuity to discontinuity, evolution to revolution. What has become clear is that in discontinuous times, efforts to evolve at one’s own pace will spell doom. External thoughts and actions need to keep up with the pace of external change. Economics tells us that if you are not able to cope with external pressures that demand a revolutionary approach to structure- you need a new business model.

The automotive industry has convinced the federal government that our economy revolves around it. But what I want to know is—why? Target, AT&T, GE, IBM, McDonalds Citigroup, Kroger, Sears, and Wal-Mart, all employ larger number of workers than any of the Big Three auto makers. Since 1997, thirty one steel companies have gone bankrupt, putting at risk over 62,000 jobs. The economy didn’t tank then.

The precondition of successful transformation is to close the gap between the automotive industry management’s (and our own) perception of present reality and the truth. They don’t need a bailout. What they need is—

1. Look out for major shifts in the conditions governing the marketplace, and transform their business model to fit.

2. Let the customers and their needs determine the model.

3. Be prepared to cannibalize the present, in order to preserve the future.

So Mr. President-elect, please don’t just throw more money at the problem. Think—CHANGE. Fix the problem!

Stopped Traffic--What Would Charlie Do?

2008-11-10T17:03:00.004-05:00

We all have our own particular annoyances when driving. Mine is what I refer to as the “Imaginary Slow Down Zone,” affectionately referred to as ISDZ’s. This happens on highways, when the traffic comes to a crawl. You slowly approach the area where everyone starts to speed up, and you look around for an accident or any other reason which could have caused the slow down, but there is nothing there. Cars just resume speed. This phenomenon happens quite frequently in Columbus, Ohio, so I was sure that this had to be an isolated thing.

Columbus has the worst drivers on the planet. Particularly so, if you can see a #3 decal displayed anywhere on the vehicle. This type of driver suffers from the disease called, “the NASCAR” syndrome. They weave in and out of lanes at high speed, as if headed for the checkered flag. Severe accidents are so common in Columbus that they have a section on the nightly local news broadcast, which is titled, “Car Crash Dejour.” Points are given based on death count (this is not quite true, but just wait for sweeps week).

Now I admit that there have been many times when I used to commute to work on I-270, when the slow down ended and I had to pass six or more mangled cars and at least two or more emergency helicopters parked on the medium revving up for take-off, so I don’t want to take this too lightly.

I used to think that we were so gun-shy in Columbus that the ISDZ’s were some sort of post-traumatic-stress thing. But my wife and I found ourselves in one, on I-77 in West Virginia recently. Not only did the traffic come to a crawl, but it actually came to a complete stop. I really thought that there had to have been a terrible accident ahead when the eighteen wheelers turned their lights off. Surely they knew the scoop and were getting ready for a considerable wait. It was dark (really, really dark). After I finally came to a sense of acceptance, the traffic started up. So I waited to see what in the world had caused this. As we approached the spot where all the cars started to gain speed there was nothing. I mean NOTHING!

So I decided that there has to an explanation for his irritating phenomenon. The next step was to ask: what would Charlie Epps do? For those of you who are not familiar with Charlie, he is the fictional character on the TV Show “Numbers.” He is a math genius who can figure the mathematical roots of any conceivable problem.

So here’s what I found out to my dilemma--

There actually is a mathematical model that shows that traffic jams, like ISDZ’s, are mostly caused by a single driver who brakes too much when faced with any number of unexpected events. The driver behind him will also slow down and then the next, until the road is totally blocked several miles back. The traffic jam moves backwards, creating a “backward traveling wave,” miles upstream from the initial braking, several minutes after it was triggered. So, in other words, when someone taps their brakes, the traffic may come to a stand-still several miles behind them. Now it is pointed out that it is the heavy braking, usually caused by a driver reacting to some idiot with the “NASCAR” syndrome who has cut them off, that can affect traffic flow for many miles.

Thanks to the work of Dr. Gabor Orosz of the Dynamical Systems & Control research institute of the School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics at the University of Exeter, UK, I can now impress my colleagues, friends, and family with the answer to this mystery, the next time one of them complains about all the unexplained traffic slow downs on the highway.

Scaring Children To Jesus

2008-10-30T11:47:00.001-04:00

The American evangelical Christians have crossed the line. Their new tactic in saving souls is to scare the shit out of their children. Halloween time is upon us and churches across our fair nation are taking advantage of the opportunity by holding large-scale attractions called “Hell Escape,” costing up to $40,000 to produce and enlisting between two and three hundred church members. They are designed to emphasize the importance of a religious life, with Satan’s voice booming from the shadows, taunting children about their eternal damnation.

With regular haunted houses, which we love so much, there is a sense of suspended reality, because we all know that it is make believe. The difference here is that the parents are telling their young and impressionable children that the scenes they will be seeing in these productions are real and will happen to them if they don’t accept Christ for their salvation. The scenes are therefore more startling to the children, because it actually could happen to them.

Jerry Farwell’s Liberty University in Virginia has been running these things since the early 70’s, offering vignettes that include a gay wedding, date rape, satanic drug orgies, and ultimately, hell. Lately, the churches that have adopted this tactic are also focusing on newer issues such as teen abortion, drunken driving, on-line predators and spousal abuse. This often comes complete with an exceptionally realistic bloody surgical table and tiny replica of a fetus. (Remember—this is for the kids) According to Pastor Rick Lewis, from the Shelby Church of God in Ohio, “There’s a lot of rooms that are kind of violent.” His rational for the realistic violence is, “We’ve seen it touch a lot of people’s lives.” I guess so, when you see eight year olds coming out looking as if the blood has drained from their bodies.

My first thought, about all of this, was to remember an old skit from SCTV (that great comedy series from Canada) where a father (Joe Flaherty) scares his kid literally to death when telling him a ghost story.

Here we have parents telling their kids (instructed that these things actually happen) about school shootings and the funeral of a gay AIDS patient overtaken by demons. How irresponsible can you get? Don’t kids already have enough anxiety about school shootings? As for AIDS patients being tormented by demons, all I have to say is, “F**k You! How dare you! Try telling that to all the families who have lost loved ones to this disease.”

Now here’s the kicker—these religious leaders believe that THE END JUSTIFY THE MEANS. Pastor Greg Griffith of the Willard Church of God in northern Ohio said, “The church doing the outreach must come to terms with that and have a clearer understanding that the message and methods justify the end result—a person who has made a decision to change a lifestyle.”

One definition of child abuse explicitly includes any, “Harm or threatened harm to a child's health or welfare that occurs through nonaccidental physical or mental injury, or maltreatment, by a parent, a legal guardian, or any other person responsible for the child's health or welfare, or by a teacher or pastor.” This also includes, “Any form of cruelty to a child, which includes not only physical cruelty but mental cruelty.” Scaring the shit out of your kid, to me, falls into this category.

According to Kyla Ward, “It's not as though producing scary stories for children is a new idea. Fairy tales were not designed for children. The collections made in the 1670s by Charles Perrault, and the 1830s by Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm were for adults, reflecting in each case an upsurge of interest in the national folklore. When fairy tales began to be considered childish, they were carefully reworked into what was considered suitable for children, by adults.” There is no doubt that in our culture, children are routinely scared by the most responsible of guardians in order to inculcate them to the principles of it's bad to steal, or lie, etc. But it is done responsibly and not to shake them to the core. We don’t tell our children that they will be damned for the things all children do, as part of being inculcated into the society.

The idea that deliberately scaring children is in some way immoral seems to run deep in the consciousness of the main culture in America. We’re not talking about the kind of “horror,” where there is distinct line between reality and fantasy. It is a real horror. I just hope that the rest of us will find this intolerable and hideous.

Pirate-Mania

2008-10-26T13:08:00.003-04:00

I have just been informed that there is a new phenomenon overtaking America: the Pirate re-enactors. Due to the Disney pirate movies with Mr. Depp, those in need of grease paint and pantaloons now have an outlet. Arrggh, is the mantra--so avast yee maties and start sharpening your cutlass. Now you want to board ship before the Jimmie Buffet-Barmy-Army beats you. There’s nothing worse than joining a new fad after it has become homogenized by the “followers” of fashion; after they think it is safe and coalitional (grandparents and children in tow).

Sorry Jimmy—the music was great and the shows were cool, before the all the squares started drinking the Kool-Aid!

The investiture today is disposed toward the Keith Richards/Johnny Depp transliteration of history. But I’m sure that before long, the costumery will be available at concession stands: tee shirts, beards, hats, and cutlasses. Get the Kool-Aid ready.

So what’s wrong with having a little fun? Well, nothing really. I just wish that people wouldn’t wait till it has become sanctioned. I remember trying to get my father to listen to Jimmy Buffett for years, but it wasn’t until my cousins and his sister-in-law (well beyond middle age) jumped on the “parrot head” band wagon that he started to listen to the music. He fell in love with it. I guess my sentiment was too aboriginal for him. It had to become rudiment ally tenable.

Which leads me to…

I spent a lot of time in my youth in the West Indies. If any pirate movie has any relevance to me, it would be “A High Wind in Jamaica.” This movie captured what a pirate’s life would be like better than any other pirate film could. Every time I see it, it activates my memories of sailing from island to island on a three mast wooden ship (all true), with dolphin riding the bow wake and flying fish scampering over the water as if racing us onward. My childhood retrospection includes sugar mills, mongoose, and chewing raw cane for the liquid extract. When on the island of St. Lucia, my friend Craig and I would swim across Marigot Bay to climb on the large fiberglass snail shell (left behind by the people who filmed the movie Dr. Doolittle there).

On the island of Barbados, we took a day trip to the south side of the island to visit Sam Lord’s castle. He was a real pirate who would hang lanterns in the coconut trees around his estate, to lure passing ships far out at sea, thinking that it was the port city of Bridgetown and would sail towards the reef. The ships would wreck on the reef. Sam Lord and his men would then board the ships and steal the riches. I remember the house well. It had a large turtle pond that I was convinced had something to do with a hidden treasure. I would walk off paces from the well toward the pond, sure that I could figure out the hidden location of pirate booty. Remember, I was just a kid. A kid in the Caribbean, though.

Back, to recommending music. I still have a record that I bought when I was kid. It is called “Caribbean Treasure Chest,” by the Merrymen--featuring Emile Straker, Robin Hunte, Stephen Fields, and Chris Gibbs. One of their songs is called, “The Legend of Sam Lord.”

He used to hang de lanterns
On de coconut trees
And lure the ships upon de reef
And when de sailors thought
They’d sighted land,
Alas they ran aground
Alas they ran aground!

I have no idea if this record can be found anywhere. My copy is from when I bought it in the 60s. Emile’s voice is one of the best I have ever heard, especially on “Cu-Cu-Ru-Cu-Cu Paloma.” The record is one of the few that I used to pull out of the stack, in the past, when three-sheets-to-the-wind and lying on the floor (Semi-comatose) listening to music. The steel drum songs remind me of the same one’s I was introduced to on Barbados--when I first saw those old Pan-Am barrels played on for my first time.

If you can find it, tape it (or whatever it is they do these days) and bring it with you poolside on your next Caribbean vacation. The Jimmy thing is passé. Show off your new retro-calypso-chic music, that is the real-Caribbean deal.

Lastly, I hate to put Jimmy down. It’s the “Parrot Heads” I can’t stand! I still love “Barometer Soup.”

Spreading the Wealth

2008-10-21T10:47:00.002-04:00

There are only a few days left till the Presidential election. But until it’s over, I have a bone to pick with John McCain. He has been saying in his attacks against Barrack Obama that he (Obama) wants to “spread the wealth”—as if this is a bad thing.

Wait a minute! I thought that was what America was all about. Everybody gets the opportunity to better themselves.

It seems that John McCain has become the poster boy for John Edwards’ TWO AMERICAS. The conservative policies of the Bush administration, which McCain has voted for 90% of the time, have left an exceptionally high poverty rate, particularly among children. These policies have obviously made things worse than when Bush came into office. Changes in marginal income tax rates in the US combined with cuts in programs targeted on the most needy have reduced the tax burden of the very wealthy while leaving the poor worse off.

In Bush’s America the top 1% of American households is doing especially well. They have taken home more than one-quarter of all household income. They receive more than 63 times the average after-tax income of the poorest fifth. This means that the richest 3 million Americans earned more than the least well-off 100 million. Leaving markets alone to address people’s needs has only driven incomes further apart.

It has taken a banking collapse to bring the discussion back to our heritage of imposing limits on the inequality resulting from unequal market incomes. After all, that was what the welfare state was all about. From the late 19th century up to 8 years ago, the US adopted spending and taxing programs to mitigate capitalism’s worst effects. It was a system that helped provide poor parents jobs and income and support services they needed to keep them and their children out of poverty.

What we have ended up with though is a rise in unemployment and stagnation in family incomes. At the same time, the top 1% of households are getting one third of the benefits of Bush’s pro-investment tax cuts. These are the same policies that John McCain has proposed recently, saying that these tax cuts would increase public spending. But what we have seen for the past eight years is actually less spending, not more, yet still skewing the payout to the very wealthy. And let’s not forget, that the current fiscal nightmare in which any future effort to reduce the burgeoning deficit will only lead to demands to increase taxes on the working and middle classes.

While millions of working Americans are struggling to find adequate food, health care and housing for their families, the pay for wealthier Americans has risen dramatically—all fueled by growth in salaries, exorbitant bonuses, stock options and other compensation. This is while wages for millions of lower-wage workers has dwindled. Many find themselves unable to earn a living wage, and many have resorted to food banks and community centers for help.

We have just been educated to the excesses of the rich, while watching the nation’s CEO’s trying to explain their compensation to the people (In Congress and to the media). In the US the richest 0.5% of the population spends around $125 billion a year. This is equal to the total household expenditure in Italy. Steve Forbes has said that the rich have never had it so good. “These are the richest years in human history.”

Remember the term—Rich as Rockefeller? Well, John D. Rockefeller’s fortune of around $900 million, which many analysts thought would never be topped in real terms, wouldn't (in today’s money) even get you near the Forbes Top 10.

So, to John McCain, spreading this wealth around is a horrifying prospect. I guess the fact that he owns seven homes might indicate where his heart really lies.

Killing Whales for National Security

2008-10-09T12:35:00.002-04:00

On Thursday, some of the judges of the US Supreme Court indicated that they favored slapping down a lower court ruling that would curb the use of powerful sonar in US Navy training exercises off the southern California coast. They stated that even if the sonar harmed the sea mammals, national security would take priority.

This has touched off a controversy over presidential power and the military’s obligation to follow environmental laws which require federal agencies to consider and mitigate the environmental impacts of their activities. All the while, the Navy plans to conduct a series of 14 submarine hunting exercises using its active sonar.

The World Conservation Congress has said that the underwater cacophony caused by military ships has become so intense that it is killing whales. The sonar used by the Navy is so powerful that, “a whale can be killed outright by the shock,” said Carl Gustav Landin, head of marine programs for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Eighty-five decibels can cause permanent damage to the human ear. The sonar used by the Navy can exceed 230 decibels in volume, and can be deadly within a one or two kilometer radius.

The problem is only getting worse, since the acidification of oceans caused by rising sea temperatures reduces sound absorption in the water by up to 40 percent. This means that noise will only travel much farther.

The Natural Resources Defense Council and five other environmental groups filed suit, saying that the Navy had failed to properly assess the potential impact to marine mammals, which was in violation of federal environmental laws. A California judge, U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper, agreed with the claim. She issued a preliminary injunction, which ordered the Navy to restrict the power and location of its sonar testing. The Bush administration then moved to exempt the Navy from any environmental laws by stating that the sonar training exercises were essential to national security.

The Navy has repeatedly downplayed the impact of active sonar on marine mammals even after they found concerns when they completed their own environmental assessment. According to Robert Kendall, the attorney representing the National Resources Defense Council, that assessment predicted the sonar exercises would disturb or injure an estimated 170,000 marine mammals, including permanent injury to more than 500 rare beaked whales.

Unfortunately for the Navy’s and the President’s vanity, whales and dolphins have much larger frontal lobes than they do. Whales are highly social beings and have a highly complex form of communication with each other. This can only be described as language. They even address each other by name. They are intelligent beings.

My grandfather had a record, back in the sixties, which was a recording of whale “sounds” (as they called it back then). He loved to listen to it. He was one of our country’s leading men of science (as head of Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio), and he was certain that it was a language, long before science caught up.
As far as I’m concerned--killing a living, intelligent mammal is the same as killing a human being.

The claim that the exercise is necessary for national security is based on the obvious contribution to readiness and strategic access. But it also provides political and diplomatic returns. Exercises demonstrate US resolve and capability to project military power anywhere in the world in support of US national interests and in support of US allies.

Does this mean that we need to have “death causing” military exercises in our own waters and on our own soil?

Just recently, the mayor of Toledo, Ohio told a battalion of armed Marines to get out of his city. He ordered about 200 Marines who traveled from Grand Rapids, Michigan to halt their military exercises and leave his city. The armed Marines—members of Company A, 1st Battalion, 24th Marines, had showed up to participate in an urban warfare training exercise, one of several planned across the nation by the Pentagon.

Whales can’t shoot back. But I’m sure if the Marines showed up in one the hollers, here in southern Ohio, they might get some real training. We’re armed in these hills.

Yankees Say Goodbye; Remembering our Old Ballparks

2008-09-23T10:24:00.003-04:00

The New York Yankees have played their last game at the old stadium and are now moving on in history. Well, so long old ballpark. I have been reading essays about childhood memories, and viewing television essays, all weekend long that would make you think that New York is the only city with a rich baseball history. Sure, New York baseball history is rich. But guess what? Baseball history exists elsewhere, and we also have stories passed down to us from fathers, grandfathers, and uncles, concerning that “great old park.”

In my family, that ballpark is “League Park” in Cleveland, Ohio. Its rich history had come and gone before I was even born. Many who grow up in New York will be hearing stories about Yankee Stadium for the rest of their lives, and will never have their own memories of it. It will move into the realm of myth. Unfortunately for them, the old stadium is going to be torn down. In Cleveland, you can still go to the location of League Park and see an empty lot. You can imagine the ballpark. It can still be created in your mind at the corner of 66th Street and Lexington Avenue. The original ticket office still remains and was converted into a recreation hall. There is a historical maker in an open lot, which is the only way you would know that such history took place at this spot.

Cleveland had a team in the National League. They built a park in 1891 for them. The grandstand was made of wood and was placed behind home plate. In 1910 it was dismantled and rebuilt of steel and concrete. We like to think of old ballparks in America as being unique. League Park was all that and more. It was basically a rectangular shape. This was because the owners of the property in right field would not sell. So the right field fence ended up being a very short 290 ft. with a 40 foot wall.

A double deck grandstand extended from the right field fence to home plate, and went around to the left field post. There was a small section in left-center field made of wooden bleachers. The baseball diamond is in the same spot that it was when the Indians played on it.

My uncle William Van Aken, used to tell me stories about how he would skip school and take the train from Shaker Heights down to the park to watch games. Back then all the games were played during the day. There was never a game played at night in League Park. My dad’s stories were all about the “knot hole” gang in Columbus, Ohio. His team was the Redbirds (minor league team for the St’ Louis Cardinals).

Here are just a few of the things that happened there:

Cy Young pitched the first game, on May 1, 1891.

It was a National league park until 1900.

Balls hitting the 20-foot-high screen above the 40-foot-high-right field wall were still in play.

When seats were added in center field for the 1920 World Series, the distance shrank from 460 ft. to 420 ft.

Bill Wambsganss made the only unassisted triple play in World Series history on Oct. 10, 1920, in game five against the Brooklyn Robins. In the same game, Elmer Smith hit the first grand-slam and Jim Bagby became the first pitcher to hit a home run in World Series history.

Joe DiMaggio set a record by hitting safely in his 56th consecutive game, in 1941.

It was where baseball legend Babe Ruth hit his 500th home run on August 11, 1929.

Nude Opera

2008-09-18T11:28:00.002-04:00

The Metropolitan Opera is going to stage Strauss’s “Salome,” featuring one of the HOT BABES of opera, Karita Mattila. The “Dance of the Seven Veils” is the highlight of the production. During the dance, Salome slowly removes each of her sheer veils, ending the dance in the nude. So you have to have a singer that has a nice figure (no big voice in a big body).

To some with a sense of propriety, this might be a little challenging—because first, Salome is supposed to be a teenage girl; and secondly, they are mixing scripture with sex.

Nudity is not new to opera. Years ago, the New York City opera introduced American audiences to nudity in Arnold Schoenberg’s “Moses und Aron.” They were threatened with the withdrawal of funding, if they presented a work that might be considered obscene under the Supreme Court’s definition of obscenity, included in its 1973 ruling in Miller vs. California. A key to this decision was whether a work “appeals to the prurient interest.” They went ahead with the production anyway.

Trust me—Karita Mattila performing a veiled strip tease definitely appeals to my prurient interests. Remember, she is HOT and stripping.

The argument that the world of theater has used forever, concerning nudity in plays, can be summed up by Heather Haney, when asked about being in a nude Shakespeare production—“The nudity in this play is not at all sexual or titillating. It’s about being completely human.”

WHAT in the world does that mean?

Theater has blazed the trail that opera seems to be following. When certain plays have been performed so many times, the director feels the need to put his stamp on it or do something different to fill the seats. The Washington Shakespeare Company’s director of “Macbeth,” said about nudity in their production, that he was inspired to create a radically different visual presentation after reading the same histories of Scotland that Shakespeare could have read before writing “Macbeth.” They described “a really tribal, almost animal like clan and society.” I guess that means—really nude society.

I have no doubt that the use of explicit nude scenes have been used to compensate for shallow writing. But the classics do not have shallow writing. The great playwright will use verbal means and brilliantly crafted words that are precise, to produce the emotions he or she wants in each scene (including sexiness and vulnerability). They convey their presence through the ear and not the eye. Physical nudity interferes with this. The same is true with music.

Dance, on the other hand, is a different story. The instrument of dance is the human body, including all of its beauty and expressivity. Nudity, when not used to eroticize a mediocre piece, is quite valid.

And then there is the “just plain” silly. In Germany, there was a recent production of Verdi’s “A Masked Ball,” where thirty-five nude, pension-age, people come on stage wearing nothing but Mickey Mouse masks. There were also lots of naked young women and a woman in a red swimsuit sporting a Hitler moustache. Get this—“The naked stand for people without means, the victims of capitalism, the underclass, who don’t have anything any more.”

You know, you didn’t have to tell me that. I could have figured that out by myself—OR NOT.

If opera ventures down this same path, it will also have to grapple with the same questions of relevance, gimmickry, and inflated shamelessness that have plagued the theater. When some audience members were asked to comment on the “Macbeth” production, it tuned out that many quickly got used to the nudity, while others merely blocked it out of their minds--which to a certain extent deadened its intended impact.

Sarah Palin Screen Test or How Linda Lamont Went to Washington

2008-09-15T11:19:00.006-04:00

I have been off-line for awhile, finishing a novel. Since my absence, the internet has become filled with different angles on the Republican V.P. pick.

So here’s my take on the Sarah Palin story:

The majority of blog angles have related to the “Disney” bad script scenario. I like this because it is so American and so true.

Being a film buff, my film theory quickly focused on two in particular: 42nd Street and Mr. Deeds Goes to Washington. Let’s see if we can’t combine them.

In 42nd Street, we have two onscreen stars, Don Lockwood and Linda Lamont, who are romantically linked. In the background is Cosmo Brown, who used to work with Lockwood before he became a big silent movie success. The movie The Jazz Singer is a huge hit and ushers in the new era of the “talkies.” Silent film actors at first mock the new genre, but eventually find themselves taking speech and singing lesson. Don has no problem. Linda on the other hand has one of most irritating voices imaginable (Do you see where I’m going here? I don’t, but Palin’s voice reminds me of Lamont’s).

Enter Kathy Seldon, the chorus girl, who is hired to overdub Lamont’s voice (Don’t forget that lip-syncing is still alive and well). Not soon after this, Lockwood falls head-over-heals for Seldon. Lamont does her best to break it up. [There has to be some fodder here for the script we’re working on, don’t you think?]

In the movie the humor is cruel, with much of it at the expense of the voice and character of Palin (I mean Lamont). Her character was a stereotyped portrayal of many of those who failed to transcend to the world of sound. Many had thick foreign accents and were forgotten by the moguls who had made millions off of them previously (I can’t remember any of them becoming Governors of a major economy). In essence, Linda Lamont is portrayed as an IDIOT-VILLIAN.

Segway: Mr. Deeds Goes to Washington. It starred James Stewart and Jean Arthur. Now, some of you movie buffs might actually be aware of the fact that Jean Arthur started her career in the Silent era. She also had a quirky, funny voice, not suited for the “talkies.” When the “talkies” came in, she had an affair with David O. Selznick (hmm, now there’s an idea for you—slept her way to the glass ceiling). He got her slightly better parts, until her break came—playing many roles as a more than competent career woman that could be romantically vulnerable but had just not met her match yet (so to speak).

In the movie Stewart’s character represents the images we saw on the giant screen in St. Paul, this summer—American freedom, democracy and morality over repression and evil, while being what the republican pundits would term: naïve, idealist, patriotic, mature in wisdom, fights political corruption within the governments political machine, and guards American values as a moral hero (Wow, that was a mouthful).

So now we have the funny voiced Idiot-Villain, the Uber-Patriot, and a convoluted script with all kinds of potential for mayhem, madness, and of course--a couple of kooky neighbors thrown in for good measure.

So please help me out here: Can you put this all together and fill in the blanks? I know we’ll make it huge in Hollywood and we can split the royalties (that is, if you have a green-card).

The Dialogue

2008-08-18T10:04:00.000-04:00

try not to burden
me with things
that i have never felt
under the influence
of weightlessness

tell me again about
feather-weighted bones
that will carry me
beyond the lamp which
lights the lifting

speak carefully when
addressing the environment
of uncertainty
for solar flares will
assault the principle

i tend to enjoy the
part where pine boughs
fall upon the headstone
far below the floating
moon where wildly i spin

"Last Comic Standing": Paul Foot was actually the Funniest

2008-08-08T11:26:00.004-04:00

The television program Last Comic Standing finished up last night by declaring Iliza Shlesinger the winner for 2008. As the other comics tried to get her booted off the show, their strategy failed because Iliza was given the opportunity to show off her act, while the others were spouting off their mouths back at the house, as if they were Muhhamid Ali. The audience was getting to know her comedy, while the others were only talking about theirs. Kudos Eliza, but—you were not the funniest. That honor goes to His Comedic Majesty Mister Paul Foot Life President, the Guild of Paul Foot Connoisseurs.

“Eccentric comic Paul Foot is what many people outside of this country believe a stereotypical English person to be: a slightly posh, cravat-wearing, tea-drinking screwball,” according to his web site. What I consider him to be is funny.

He helps us to embrace the inner-nerd in all of us. I’m sure that all of you have had people like Paul enrich your life somewhere in the past, help you glimpse into the absurdities of life and let a little bit of irreverence into your solicitude. I can remember all the way back to high school when a group highly intelligent kids, two grades below me, started a group called “The Swamp”, named after the tent on the show MASH. I was directing the Spring Play for my Senior Project (Neil Simon’s Plaza Suite), when they initiated me into their inner circle. After the final performance, I got in my car to head to the cast party, when a few miles down the road two of them popped up from my back seat, pointed a water pistol at my head and declared, “Takes us to the Swiss border!”

Do us a favor Paul, if this blog ever reaches you—don’t stay on the other side of the pond for too long. You have a whole country of over 300 million people who get your humor. You wouldn’t have made it as far as you did in Last Comic Standing if we weren’t just as irreverent as you, deep down inside. Take a look at the fall line-up of new TV shows for this fall in the US. Almost all of them are based on British shows.

Hey, here’s one for you Your Comedic Majesty: A renowned philosopher was held in high regard by his driver, who listened in awe at every speech while his boss would easily answer questions about morality and ethics.
Then one day the driver approached the philosopher and asked if he was willing to switch roles for the evening's lecture. The philosopher agreed and, for a while, the driver handled himself remarkably well. When it came time for questions from the guests, a woman in the back asked, "Is the epistemological view of the universe still valid in an existentialist world?"
"That is an extremely simple question," he responded. "So simple, in fact, that even my driver could answer that, which is exactly what he will do."

Soccer Hooliganism Invades America

2008-07-24T11:27:00.005-04:00

Soccer hooliganism, often referred to as “the British disease” has finally come to America. It was brought by the supporters of the English team, West Ham United. Recently they played an exhibition game with the Columbus Crew in Columbus Ohio. West Ham fans wandered; as they would put it, the entire length of the stadium, and entered the section inhabited by the Crew’s most ardent supporters and started a fight. There was little security in the area, because soccer games in America are a family friendly experience: safe, fun, and cheap.

Whenever I tell someone that I’m a soccer fan, they usually say something like, “Isn’t that the game that causes all those riots?” It’s a good question, because the game of “football” (soccer) has been associated with violence since its beginnings in 13th century England. The term hooliganism originated in the early 60s. It has been linked with the televising of games and with the reclaiming of the game by the working class.

In the medieval times, football matches could involve hundreds of players and would be used as an excuse to settle old feuds, personal arguments, and land disputes, in what were essentially pitched battles (not so unlike those crazy Mayan Games where the losers had their heads cut off).

Now it is even organized. Rival hooligans will pick pre-arranged locations away from stadiums, in order to avoid police, to have their fight. Cleveland Browns and Pittsburg Steelers fans seem like attendees at the Ice Follies, compared to these guys. British fans hit the headlines the most, because of their tendency to spread their violence onto the international stage. Hooligans in the rest of the world, usually fight their battles at home, expressing local, regional, and sub-national rivalries. Most incidents occur at club-level matches, while supporters of the national team abroad are better behaved. The English are the obvious exception to this rule.

In the 70s, the hooliganism started to spread to other European countries, when a similar “proletarianisation” of the game evolved. The Marxist sociologists, figurationalists, social scientists, and empirically oriented researchers all have theories now, about the how and why.

What they have concluded is anybody's guess. But I can tell you, that it is clear that one form or another of disorderly behavior has occurred in every country in which soccer is played. So far it has been avoided in America. What we don’t need is for our youth to have British idiots teaching us how not to behave. I just hope that it is not a near-universal and seemingly inevitable accompaniment to the game.

Football violence often results from excessive alcohol consumption. Unfortunately, little research has focused specifically on the role of alcohol in football hooliganism. I’ll bet you 10 to 1 odds that the West Ham fans who wandered into the Crew side of the stadium were not drinking tea. Some investigators, however, have recently claimed that drinking can aggravate violence.

Do you think?

Ask any Cleveland Browns fan, who grew up going to that ‘Old” stadium on the lake. There were sections of the stadium that you just knew not to wander into. You knew that after the beer started flowing, there were going to be fights breaking out frequently. But the NFL has done an incredible job of stifling any of this kind of behavior in the recent past.

The British authorities are just now starting to reduce football hooliganism. It has largely been a reactive measure—increasing sophisticated policing, surveillance, and monitoring techniques, segregation of fans, and putting restrictions on alcohol. A friend of my wife and I, who lives in London and grew up a West Ham supporter, e-mailed us after we sent him a copy of an article about the Columbus incident. He said that, “Violence at matches was a big problem in the 70s and 80s and it still flares up when the teams travel abroad, and the idiots are away from the eagle eye of the local plod (that’s us in the Met). Its not tolerated here, a massive police presence including mounted officers used as cavalry, dogs, helicopters etc. sees to that.”

Now I keep mentioning the Cleveland Browns, because they are my “West Ham.” I grew up in Cleveland and have been a life long supporter. When you go to a game these days, the presence of security is so prevalent, that you can’t even light up a cigarette without security coming down on you before you take your second toke. The team actually hired the former head of The United States Secret Service, Lewis C. Merletti, as the person to keep tabs on every movement within the massive structure with a seating capacity of 73,200. There are so many security cameras, that nothing goes unnoticed. As Ross Benjamin said, “It became apparent very early that we needed more cameras to give us eyes where we couldn’t necessarily put people. It also helped us to clearly identify our primary security objectives: protect our fans, players and employees; reduce liability; help deter criminal activity; and apprehend and prosecute offenders.”

My wife and I attend MLS soccer games also and we enjoy the “family” type of environment. Please, keep West Ham as far away as possible. Bring Fulham Football Club back (they are the team the Crew plays often in exhibitions). They are a great team and have great fans, not only in London, but here in Ohio as well.

I Can't Drive 55!

2008-07-17T10:41:00.003-04:00

Oil prices have soared to a startling$145 per barrel, and the national gas price average is hovering above $4 per gallon. And as many consider all of the possible strategies which could ease this burden on American drivers, the 55-mph speed limit is starting to be hashed over. For those of you who remember, it was imposed in the mid-1970s and remained in effect for 20 years. In 1974, in response to an oil shortage caused by the Arab oil embargo, Congress set the speed limit at this fixed number and saved Americans 167,000 barrels of petroleum a day.

The Energy Department correctly predicted that at lower speeds, cars would operate at optimum efficiency. It turned out that fuel efficiency decreases rapidly at speeds higher than 60 mph. Each additional 5 mph above 60 costs drivers another 30 cents per gallon. Even hybrid vehicles (only now becoming the rage) also lose efficiency at higher speeds. A hybrid that averages around 38 miles per gallon can reach 50 mpg at 55 mph. When that increases to 65 mph, the efficiency drops to a mpg in the low 30’s.

Since 55 was abolished, states have been free to set their own speed limits. This has been logical. The highest are found in the inland West and the lowest are found in the Northeast. Some are in a class by themselves, and rightly so. In stretches of West Texas, where your nearest drugstore is only a short 200 miles away, 80 mph is the limit. When there is only cactus and jack rabbits within a 500 mile radius, does 125 mph seem like a crime?

The idea of another 55 mph speed limit is as bad an idea as bringing back the bell-bottom pants!

Studies have shown that the reduced speed limit lessoned the nation’s highway fuel consumption by only 2 per cent. The answer to our problem is not limiting the speed on our highways; it is by addressing our consumption in ways that really matter. First of all, let’s face it, Americans don’t reduce their speed because of imposed limits (a Michigan state traffic study supports this). “Reducing a speed limit doesn’t reduce how fast people drive,” said State Police spokeswoman Shanon Akans.

It turns out that speed variations are more dangerous than high speeds. Agencies, country wide, are working together to actually raise speed limits from 65 to 70 on freeways in order to improve safer, uniform traffic.

The real need is to address our oil demand. The amount of oil consumed during rush hour traffic in any major city seems to be more of a concern than what is happening on our nation’s highways. While oil consumption in other industrialized countries has either leveled off or declined, in the United States, oil demand has soared 38 per cent since the original oil shock of 1973.

The Bush administration’s focus has been to increase the supply of oil, which also happens to be the priority of the energy industry, instead of finding ways to cut back on energy demand. Barrack Obama’s spokesman said that he would leave setting speed limits to the states and would focus instead on renewable energy and improved efficiency. Getting the automobile industry to increase the average mileage per gallon requirement would be a good start. Increased diligence towards finding renewable energy, carpooling, and limiting trips is a far more promising strategy.

Go on & write me up for 125
Post my face, wanted dead or alive
Take my license n’ all that jive
I can’t drive 55!—Sammy Hagar

And as someone said, “Otherwise it seems like another ploy to get money by writing tickets.”

Movie Monsters: The New Kid on the Block

2008-07-16T11:20:00.006-04:00

Since the very early days of movie making, movie buffs have been spellbound by the transformations of the actors through makeup, into monsters and fantastic characters. The makeup artist was not only an artist, but also scientist experimenting with materials. Actors like Lon Chaney did his own work, using things such as wax, fish skin, and grease paint to lay emphasis upon certain facial features for different roles.

At first, producers were unsure if audiences would attend “horror films.” But after the success of a stage version of Dracula, they were convinced at Universal Studios to proceed with the play Frankenstein: An Adventure in the Macabre in 1930, by Peggy Webling, which had premiered three years earlier in London. They cast an obscure English actor, William Henry Pratt (Boris Karloff) to play the monster. His success in this movie made him a star. The film became an instant classic and started the new genre of the horror film.

The man who transformed Karloff was the makeup artist Jack P. Pierce. He was the head of Universal’s makeup department and devoted three months to researching anatomy and surgery for the project. He concluded that a surgeon who was going to transplant a brain would cut the top of the skull straight across, wedge it open, put in the new brain, and then sew it shut. Ergo, the flat, squared off head. Pierce was involved with almost every film the studio produced in this genre.

Before the ability to enhance our monsters through computerized digital manipulation, the makeup artist was the creator of our favorite movie monsters such as: Erik, The Phantom of the Opera; Zenobia, The Gypsy Witch; The Adominable Dr. Phibes; The Creature from the Black Lagoon; Count Dracula; The Mole People; The Mummy; The Fly; The Wolf Man; and Count Orlock.

Finally, there is a new kid on the block. He can use all of the new technology, but his creations pay homage to the great makeup artists of the past. In fact, he spent almost ten years as a makeup supervisor before starting his career as a director. I’m referring to Guillermo del Toro, who learned about makeup and effects from the legendary Dick Smith (The Exorcist). Del Toro was born in Mexico in 1964 and was raised by his Catholic grandmother, which is probably why the use of religious relics and artifacts seem to always make it into his films. His favorite movie monsters are Frankenstein's monster and The Creature from the Black Lagoon.

He weaves magical things and magical occurrences into the life of his films, with the brush strokes of a surrealist painter. As he put it, “It feels like I have to have a melting watch. It feels like I have to have a melting face next to it. It feels like an eye should be floating in the sky.”

Does this sound like anyone familiar to you?

Where I grew up the Salvador Dali museum, before it moved to Florida, was in nearby Beachwood Ohio. I became a huge fan of the surrealist, as did many of my friends. I even now own a Dali etching.

Guillermo del Toro uses clockwork designs and motifs, archangels, insects or insect imagery, and likes to use amber as a dominant color in his films. He has also said, "So I riff on things and I riff like a stream of consciousness. The head of the faun has the horns and so does the reproductive organs of a woman, and the tree and the dagger and there are so many echoes in the movie (Pan’s Labyrinth) of this shape, so what I do is I work on my notebook.”

He is in a position to follow his heart these days, something that few directors are able to accomplish presently. He turned down a chance to direct Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2008) to work on Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008).

Jack Pierce studied human anatomy in an effort to make the non-human characters more lifelike. Guillermo del Toro disarms us with his curiosity, through the “supranatural” dimension (instinctive or collective), to place his characters and images into the creature concept.

The New Veil of Accusation

2008-07-09T10:39:00.003-04:00

You can now rate and review good and bad neighbors (emphasis on the bad) before you move into a neighborhood. The argument is that this can help you make a smart real estate decision. The information is contributed by the people in these neighborhoods. Rotten Neighbors is the real estate search engine. And here’s the catch—most of the postings are anonymous. It gets several thousand “hits” per day.

Let us talk about creating an atmosphere that fosters a sense of guilt by innuendo and how this creates a corrosive presence. It is through the internet that we can find this gangway to intellectual and social cowardice. Even though the internet provides freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of the press in one connection, it also is now available for trafficking in innuendo and argument by implication.

Normally, neighborhoods have been rated for Noise, Safety, Appearance, Services, and Traffic. Now you can peruse for types of neighbors: the careless dog owner, the talker, the racket maker, and the scariest of all—the helper (beware of little old ladies bearing cookies). Using Google Maps, Rotten Neighbors shows homes of the accused (Red Monopoly-style houses for rotten and Green for good). Thanks to the internet, you can dig up all the dirt with only a few clicks. Remember—running a background check isn’t very difficult these days.

Unfortunately we have already seen, as social networking sites and internet blogs continue to increase in popularity and use, the opportunities for defamation have also increased. Defamation, by definition, is spoken or written words (and now Monopoly houses) that falsely and negatively reflect on a living person’s reputation.

Fortunately, we are also seeing blogs and social networks coming under the scrutiny of new legal rulings, where defamatory statements are presenting several potential sources of liability and recovery for the person whose character was defamed. The problems with bringing action, though, largely lie in proving that the defendant actually made the posting. If that connection can be made, a stronger case can be made. This usually requires the expertise and cost of an attorney who is experienced in cyber law and internet cases, to help with evidentiary sources.

So why is this a corrosive issue? It impacts our culture. Our heritage of liberty rests on moral equality, reciprocity, toleration, and as John Locke said, applying the same law to “the favorite at court, and the country man at plough.”

I have an idea--

Let’s go into a potential neighborhood and offer up some “witch cakes.” This comes from a part of our rich history, when in 1692 Mary Sibly (Salem Massachusetts) instructed John Indian (a slave) to make a witch cake, using traditional English white magic to discover the identity of the witch who was afflicting the girls of Salem. The witch cake was made of rye and urine from the afflicted girls and fed to a dog. When the dog ate the cake, the witch would be hurt because invisible particles she had sent to afflict the girls remained in their urine, and her cries of pain when the dog ate the cake would identify her as a witch. This superstition was based on the Cartesian Doctrine of Effluvia. If you hear any screaming from any of the households, don’t purchase any adjoining property.

But if this seems to hold the proxy of false accusation, perhaps we could take a little council from the good book: Everyone is to be secure against slander and false accusation. “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.” Exodus 20:16. “Do not go about spreading slander among your people. Do not do anything that endangers your neighbors’ life.” Leviticus 19:16, Deuteronomy 19:15-21.

Coffee,Tea, Or Me?

2008-06-28T10:19:00.004-04:00

I hate to say this, but if I can get there by car, that’s how I’ll do it. The airline industry is seeing prices that are about to explode and service that is going down to nothing at all. Air travel used to be a luxury and a fun experience. It was a bank and shoal of time when passengers were well dressed (this meant no pajama bottoms) and on their best behavior. Today barely a day goes by without an incident of air rage, in the terminal or on-board causing flights to be diverted. Our options are now: cattle car or royalty.

My introduction to air travel came in the 1960s. It was a period that started with the turbo-propeller aircraft, saw the introduction of the transatlantic jets, and ended with the new generation of jumbo airliners, led by the Boeing 747. There was the promise of major advances in every aspect of air travel, including capacity, range, comfort, operating efficiency, safety, and costs. Boeing, Douglas, Convair, and Lockheed are the darlings of my remembrance of things past. By the time I had taken my first flight, nearly two-thirds of the American population had never flown.

My brother was particularly enamored with flying and started a life-long hobby of collecting OAGs (Official Airline Guides) as a boy. In fact, he would plan and schedule all flights for family vacations, even though he was not ten-years-old yet. We would make the observation deck at any airport a mandatory obligation. A meal at an airport restaurant was a coat-and-tie affair.

Do you remember any of this? Observation decks were actually how most families would observe planes—from the ground.

In the sixties, air travelers were still mostly wealthy people and business people on expense accounts, who flew repeatedly. Most Americans could not afford to fly, to see their loved ones in other cities, or to visit exciting vacation spots. I was fortunate in that my family got to go on vacations. It was an economic stretch for my father, but he felt that it was worth the debt. He was right; I remember every minute of those experiences.

The family would go up to Toronto, from Cleveland, to board an Air Canada Vickers Vanguard (Turbo Prop) en route to Antigua, with a refueling in Bermuda. It was a long flight, but I have many fond memories of those incredibly gorgeous Air Canada stewardesses. Yes, I may have been a tot, but I still knew a good thing when I saw it.

Here’s a life-long kudos to Air Canada. You had the best stewardesses ever!

Since those days, air travel has rapidly expanded to cope with the increasing flood of travelers. Many of the airports have become miniature cities, containing shops, restaurants, and even places of worship. There is a whole industry of hotels enveloping these mega-ports. At the modern airport, Americans spend around 3.7 billion hours stuck in traffic, burning gasoline whose price has soared by 60 percent. Security lines snake endlessly, runways are choked, and delays are common. Experts predict that, with the population climbing well past 300 million, the demand for travel will only grow.

Back in the 60s stewardesses had to be single, attractive, and thin. Today, as anyone can tell you, flight attendants tend not to be any of these things. Does anybody remember a book called Coffee, Tea or Me? The Uninhibited Memoirs of Two Airline Stewardesses. It was considered racy at the time. My brother got hold of a copy and we would surreptitiously share it. Of course my imagination put the faces of the lovely Air Canada Girls into the characters of this classic piece of literature. I wonder if I re-read this as an adult—would it lose its prestige? I guess some things are better left alone.

Profile This, You...

2008-06-26T11:40:00.005-04:00

This just in—The City of New York has announced a plan to test every adult living in the Bronx, for H.I.V. This is the poorest of all the boroughs in the city. Let’s face it, Americans hold negative stereotypes about poor people, and the general population often distance themselves from poor individuals

Why?

Most upper class individuals have never experienced severe and enduring financial hardship, and therefore are unsympathetic to the plight of the ill-provided. Attitudes of disregard and avoidance of the poor are often implicitly and explicitly conveyed to their children, because the poor are often portrayed as ignorant, lazy, dishonest, and disinterested in self-improvement. It is therefore likely that children in the United States come to think about and understand individuals from low socioeconomic backgrounds negatively.

Let us not ignore the subrogation of the term urban poverty for race. Most health statistics in the U.S. are stratified by race. Data on morbidity and morality are routinely collected by race, and are routinely used as a control variable in medical research factors. They believe that race is a good indicator of the risks of death and disease. One can only conclude that race is being used for a proxy. When you use race as a proxy, in any circumstance, you engage in what has come to be called “racial profiling.”

So, New York, get busy profiling all those poor blacks and Hispanics for H.I.V. and AIDS. God forbid that their plague should spread over into other boroughs. You claim that 40 percent of the population there already has the disease. I guess that means that the rest have it too, but it just hasn’t been confirmed yet.

Why stop there? I say, that we should do a little more profiling!

First, we’ll start in Holmby Hills, a neighborhood just west of the Los Angeles Country Club in the so-called Platinum triangle. It has some of the most gargantuan houses in the U.S.. Diseases are starting to spread from here to the rest of the world. The World Health Organization used to focus on malnutrition and infectious diseases in developing nations, but now non-communicable diseases are becoming so prevalent the emphasis is changing. Well, it looks like diabetes and heart disease, long thought to be the presumptive right of the affluent, have in a significant shift been identified as the emerging big killers in developing countries. Recent estimates predict that the numbers of people with diabetes will more than double to 300 million worldwide in the next 25 years. We need to keep this killer quarantined, my friends.

I’m not making this up. Here is the math I’m using for the profiling—

One Variable is used for a proxy for another Y when X is used in the place of Y to make a particular decision about an individual. Let Y be a variable that is material to an interest I but that cannot be directly measured and X a variable that can be directly measured but is not material to I but correlates with Y. In that case, X is a proxy for Y if X is used instead of Y in making a decision about the individual in order to further I.

Second, we’ll go to North Greenwich-Round Hill and The Indian Hill Club-Woodley Road area in Southern Winnetka. Here we find older and traditional dwellings with mature landscaping on carefully screened acreage. The diseases of semi-irrational phobias need to be profiled here. These phobias have been quietly hiding in these communities. Noise phobia seems to be the most common. It is an excessive fear of a sound that results in the person attempting to avoid or escape from the sound. The most consistent signs seen with noise phobias are panting and trembling. Other behaviors that frequently occur include drooling, whining, house soiling, hiding, and seeking constant contact with the Nicaraguan housekeeper.

It may be too late, but here are a couple of signs that you might be infected:

*You occasionally wake up in rooms you didn’t know you had.
*It is more than two football fields from your front door to the street.

Oh and let’s not forget:

*You have an entertainment center in your bathroom.

Either Intrinsic or From God

2008-06-25T10:16:00.008-04:00

The crimes you are about to hear have all been specially committed for this blog. Here to tell you a story with the aid of smoke-glass ear-trumpet and reconditioned head is yours truly:

I remember when it all started. At the time I was asleep in my electrified elephant hammock, when through the pigeonhole flew a carrier pigeon. There was something strapped to its leg - it was a postman.

He began to play the pontiff and started to get to the bottom of the Myth of Sisyphus. “Life is veritably absurd, sir. So it is even more absurd to counteract it; instead we should engage in fetching breath and reconcile the fact that we live in a world without purpose.” This advice was none too soon, for I had been contemplating the efforts of humanity to find meaning in the universe. In fact I was beginning to become certain that no such meaning exists, at least in relation to humanity.

In other words, meaning is humanly impossible, even though there may be some inherent meaning in the universe. It is just not within our reach. This was made clear when my postman enlightened me to the confrontation between man’s desire for significance, meaning, and clarity, and the word-bound, cryospheric universe. This is when I had my “Ah Ha” moment. There are specific experiences that evoke the notion of absurdity. When we encounter them, we are taking a leap of faith, so to speak, to acceptance. And when we do, we are acting with the “virtue of the absurd,” as Johannes de Silentio said.

This faith has no expectations. It is flexible and set into motion by our notions. So this got me thinking about where my notion of the absurd came from. My first tutors were Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Recent absurdist trends in television comedy are now referred as being "Pythonesque." Through them I discovered the ludicrous arising out of the improbable or distressing; usually where the defect or weakness was of man’s own seeking. With the Python's comedy, the more the incredible the effrontery, the greater the joke.

How can I apply this today? Well all I have to do is to pay attention to what is happening in the world. By the time Paul Bremer, the American pro consul in Baghdad left his post, $8.8bn had disappeared. Americans overseeing cash handouts in Iraq could not adequately account for the money, according to an audit by a government watchdog. One official said, on the condition of anonymity, “The worse-case scenario is that someone took it home.”

Do you think?

Here’s another one—The Denver Police had kept files on 3,200 people and 208 organizations who could pose possible security risks. It was discovered by The American Civil Liberties Union that the American Friends Service Committee was one of these groups under surveillance. Guess what? They are a Quaker pacifist organization. I imagine that their subversive prayer and potluck meetings deserved recognition.

Keeping in comic character is consistency in absurdity. Doesn’t it sound a little bit like our current administration? They have a determined and laudable attachment to the incongruous and singular.

At least in comedy the devotion to nonsense, and enthusiasm about trifles, is highly affective as a moral lesson. And this, as we know, is one of the striking weaknesses and greatest amusements of our nature.

It is through my devotion to absurdity that I have been able to understand our President’s morphemics. A common element of surreal humor is the non-sequitur, in which one statement is followed by another with no logical progression. Yes, I guess I do know what you’re saying Gov.
But, does your administration have problems communicating with one another, and is their language oftentimes ludicrous? And, following the cyclical pattern, is your administration going to end in the same state it began in, with nothing really changed? Well, we're WAITING.

As Samuel Beckett said, " What doI know about man's destiny? I could tell you more about radishes."

(The beginning of this essay was borrowed from The Whistling Spy Enigma—The Goon Show, broadcast 9-28-54.)

Make Me Laugh, Please.

2008-06-24T11:56:00.004-04:00

The death of George Carlin, the astringent stand-up comic, recently has caused me to reminisce about something that was dear to my heart and a great influence to my sense of the world: the comedy album. I came of age in the late 60s and early 70s, a time when comedy was evolving from the buttoned-down decorum to the counterculture hero. This is when George’s comedy took flight. His irreverent and tempestuous social commentary examined the absurdities of everyday life that I was trying to come to grips with.

Follow for yourself the metamorphosis from Take-Offs and Put-Ons to FM & AM, followed by Class Clown, Occupation: Foole, and An Evening With Wally Lambo. Politicians, advertisements, religion, the media and conventional thinking were all fair game in his routines.

The first comedy album to cross my path was from my father’s collection. It represented the button-down comedy generation. The First Family was a collection of satiric sketches about the Kennedy family, where Vaughn Meader stole the show as the President. I would roll on the floor, in stitches, as the first family perfused our living room. Apparently, this was the fastest-selling record in history. This was followed by My Son the Nut by Allan Sherman. I would sing “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah” to and with my friends. The subjects and the punchlines were always funny. They were soft-hued and delightful.

My father has a friend who owns and runs a classical music radio station in Cleveland—WCLV FM. Bob, the friend, had a show where he played bits from all sorts of comedy albums. My dad and I would listen to the show together. The comedy that I loved the most, on his show, was from An Evening With Nichols and May—Mike Nichols and Elaine May. They were hip, extended pieces filled with clever lines, pathos and biting satire.

I lived a short distance from Shaker Square in Cleveland, Ohio. There used to be a small record store there that I would frequent. I would walk from my home and enter the store full of anticipation for what would be waiting in the comedy bin. I would work for my parents or for neighbors, just to raise enough money to buy new records, especially anything new from Bill Cosby. He was my favorite. In fact the only surviving artifact from this era is a scratched copy of To Russell My Brother Whom I Slept With. I love to pull it out every now and then. His visual pictures come to life every time I listen to it. When my wife and I married, I used to jokingly say while in bed, “This is my side of the bed” in one of the characters voices, and she would respond by saying, “What are you talking about?” Comedy references can be so personal and arcane.

Here are some other albums that need to be mentioned as all-time greatest comedy albums:

*The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart—Bob Newhart. It is highly stylized, often with Bob using a phone as a prop but letting us hear only one side of the conversation (Abe Lincoln vs. Madison Ave.).

*The Devil Made Me Buy This Dress—Flip Wilson. With his alter-ego, Geraldine, Flip helped open the door to African-American performers. It won the Grammy for best comedy album of 1970.

*The Wonderful World of Jonathan Winters—Jonathan Winters. This album is not about jokes, but about the characters he creates. It demonstrates how creative comedy can be. Talk about voices in someone’s head. Watch out!

*Derek and Clive Live—Peter Cooke and Dudley Moore. Just two blokes drunk off their asses and having a good time.

*Child of the 50’s—Robert Kline. This is smart, funny, and original. Robert was one of my favorite comedians appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show. He lacked the political edge of some of his contemporaries, but he did show that the baby-boomers had arrived (younger and hipper).

*Standup Comic—Woody Allen. If you have never heard Woody’s standup act, you have to get a copy of this. It is a classic in comedy writing.

Do any of you have any favorite comedy albums that you would like to share? Leave a comment if you do.

Circus by Moonlight

2008-06-23T13:23:00.000-04:00

flanked by a quiet of night
they watch
the parade, migrating
circus figures,
passing in unfamiliar
outlines of pygmy
rotundity
and ballooning-bubble-elasticity.

limp sleepers, hanging
by moon’s hooking crescent,
space babies with
no planet, dangling
to the organ grinder’s
hypnotic spell,
while cotton candy—
cocoon, envelopes them, in sticky.

A Bicycle Built For Two (Me And You)

2008-06-22T12:51:00.003-04:00

I guess it is now perfectly clear that our president wants us to perpetuate our addiction to oil. He wants more offshore drilling (that’s right Florida, you heard me).

What we need to get through our heads, Mister President, is that we now need to follow the lead of the rest of the world. It is time for us to follow, since we no longer know how to lead. Gas is hitting the high prices that other countries already experience. The 4 to 5 dollar gallon is here to stay.

Think of China: while the bicycle is still used as an essential form of transportation, the country has recently seen a rapid decrease in bike ownership as their population becomes wealthier and turns to cars.

Think of the enlightened countries: a number of European and South American cities have set the standard for bicycle use and promotion, via pro-bike transportation and land use policies. They have provided heavy funding for bicycle infrastructure and public education. While biking remains popular for recreation in the US, it is underused for transportation. It now accounts for only 0.9 percent of all trips, with cycling to work at only 0.4 percent. The more progressive leaders today are working to bring cycling back to prominence in the urban transport landscape. It is a clean and efficient alternative to the automobile and a practical way to reduce congestion and pollution. Remember—more than half the world’s population now lives in cities.

There is tremendous potential for governments and urban planners to increase bicycle use. It promotes people’s physical fitness while helping to create cleaner, more livable communities, as well as addressing climate change. In Amsterdam, cycling accounts for 55 percent of trips to jobs that are less than 4.7 miles from home. The Dutch government has pledged to spend $160 million from 2006 to 2010 on bicycle paths, parking, and safety. Bogotá, Columbia, has more than 300 kilometers of bikeways, the most for any city in the developing world. In Australia, the state of Victoria has amended planning laws to require all new large buildings to provide bike parking and other facilities such as showers and lockers.

The best example is in Paris, with the low-cost Vélib rental scheme. They offer 20,600 bikes that can be rented by credit card at 1,451 stations throughout the city. The program logged 6 million rides in its first three months.

Funding for bicycle usage in the US has been for recreation use only, with $900 million a year in federal funding for the promotion of biking and walking. At least this can be seen as an encouraging sign, despite the unimpressive statistics. Perhaps if we follow the lead, this funding for recreation could be targeted towards integrating bicycles in transportation planning, educating the public about cycling’s benefits, and discouraging driving with restrictions and taxes on car ownership and parking.

With gas prices rising, we need a call for a broad coalition of citizen and environmental groups to call for safer, pedestrian-and cyclist-friendly roads designed for everyone, not just cars. Six states and more than 50 cities, counties, and metro regions have now enacted some form of this legislation. Let’s keep the momentum going. Forget about the quick fix of offshore drilling. Let’s think about our children’s future.

The world produced an estimated 130 million bicycles in 2007—more than twice the 52 million cars produced. Bike production is gaining steam.

It’s time to flip through my new Trek catalogue now. I’m thinking—the Soho S (single speed).

Cultivation of the Mind (Old School)

2008-06-21T08:06:00.000-04:00

The new version of Get Smart is now out in a movie theater near you. You will probably come across articles and reviews in the newspapers comparing Steve Carell to Don Adams, in the role of CONTROL spy Maxwell Smart (Agent 86). I suppose I will go see the movie, simply as an oblation to one of my heroes—Don Adams.

Why Don Adams? My education came from so much more than school.

My entire life I have been hearing people besmirch television. Guess what? I like television—have and always will. There is great stuff there, if only you look hard enough. Unfortunately my search for the good stuff lately has crossed the Atlantic Ocean. Since the writer’s strike, my wife and I have been acquiring BBC shows on DVD (MI-5 and The Thin Blue Line are our favorites).

Similar to my spiritual enlightenment, my education has come from a plenitude of sources. Don Adams was the voice of the wise-cracking penguin Tennessee Tuxedo, a television cartoon character between 1963 and 1966. Along with his dim-witted pal Chumley, they constantly schemed against zookeeper Stanley Livingston and his assistant Flunky, in an attempt to improve the quality of zoo-life.

Here’s where the education part comes in—their projects required the assistance of their educated friend, Phineas J. Whoopee and his three dimensional blackboard. The voice of Phineas was provided by Larry Storch (I got an autographed photograph of Larry when he was a cast member of the show F-Troop). The blackboard helped demonstrate basic scientific principles through the use of instructional film clips. In fact, the show was introduced on CBS-TV in response to a speech by FCC Chairman Newton R. Minnow, which addressed television as a “vast wasteland.” The purpose of the show was to educate as well as entertain young viewers.

The sad part was that, even with the help of Whoopee, the pair failed to get their plans to work. I guess there were life-lessons to be gained—

1. I've learned that heroes are people who do what has to be done when it needs to be done, regardless of the consequences, or if they don’t always succeed.
2. Surrounding yourself with positive relationships is half the battle.
3. Most success boils down to perseverance, determination, tenacity.

Adams went on from Tennessee Tuxedo and gained worldwide fame and three Emmy Awards for his role as Maxwell Smart.

I just want you to know, Don: I remember Tennessee and can attribute part of my education to him. Oh, and I understand that you spent your leisure time, later in life, either at the racetrack or in card games at the Playboy Mansion. I hope there’s a lesson there also.

Carrying Spears

2008-06-20T10:02:00.000-04:00

the tiny
scurrying
bug

had a bit
part
indeed

on such a
dramatic
leaf

halfway to
epic
extent

Let's Talk Business

2008-06-19T10:30:00.004-04:00

When you think of social websites, I have no doubt that what comes to mind is something like; some Ashley or Courtney prattling on about that cute boy in biology class; or Dude and Dude comparing Phish concert tapes. But take note—Facebook and MySpace have new competition within the cosmic constant of cybernation. A social network for business professionals, called LinkedIn, has just arrived for the career-minded, white collar camarilla. According to Dan Nye, the chief executive of LinkedIn, “We want to create a broad and critical business tool that is used by tens of millions of business professionals every day to make them better at what they do.” In other words—build a network.

Business networking is the process of establishing a beneficial relationship with other business people and potential clients and/or customers. The purpose is to increase business revenue. With this new site, people will be able to create and maintain online résumés and establish links with colleagues and acquaintances, then be able to expand their network through contacts. This career driven caucus doesn’t have time to waste with developing real relationships. It is too slow and too grueling: tennis, dinners, golf, charity balls, etc.

If you are not included in this sodality, you may have discerned how boring they may appear. Anton Chekhov said, “People who lead a lonely existence always have something on their minds that they are eager to talk about.” Now there is no genetic trait that says a person is doomed to be boring. Perhaps their terms of reference make them that way. To me, business types tend to talk about themselves too much. If you are not in their club, you don’t exist. Have you ever been talked down to, because you work in the service industry?

The fact is—some of the smartest and most interesting people I have ever met were not rich business folk, but had normal working class jobs.

Now, let’s consider all the lying that is going to take place on this site. A survey entitled Manners and Behavior released by the website engage.com found that 30% of men and 19% of women believe telling white lies online is acceptable. And don’t forget that almost everyone involved in online dating is lying, just to get laid. Think what people will say to get ahead in the business world. I remember a cartoon, from my youth, where a retired British military officer told the most fantastic tales of heroism and bravery. In fact, so utterly fantastic as to be laughable. I can see it now, “Warren Buffet and I waved as our Gulfstreams passed at 50 thousand feet.”

There will also be a whole can of worms opened when business rivals start slandering each other, because now Internet providers as well as individual users can be liable for intentionally distributing defamatory information online. LinkedIn may find themselves busy policing their site to remove postings from chatrooms and message groups, whenever someone complains about a libelous statement made by a third party.

The 1st District Court of Appeals, in Barrett v. Rosenthal, AO96451, disagreed with the decision of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Zeron v. America Online Inc., 129 F.3rd 327. In that case, a federal three-judge panel dismissed a plaintiffs complaint that AOL did nothing to stop an unidentified third party who maliciously posted messages on an AOL bulletin advertising offensive T-shirts and listing the plaintiff’s home phone number.

Ouch! Lying in cyberspace just got riskier.

One more thing to look out for: the résumé. In 2004, the federal Government Accountability Office released a report that found that at least 28 senior-level federal workers had claimed degrees from diploma mills and other unaccredited schools. It doesn’t take much imagination, to wonder what hyperbolical embellishments will appear in this new network.

The Humpty-Dumpty Complex

2008-06-18T12:23:00.006-04:00

It’s time to usher in the eggheads.

This is what Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has announced with a proactive plan to recruit social scientists, and a brain trust of economists and scholars, to help combat our security threats. The Pentagon has regularly financed Research and Development for science and engineering. Now it’s the social sciences and humanities (those two concepts that make all engineering students cringe) turn.

Cooperation between universities and the Pentagon has a long history of contention, because of the instinctive unease among scholars cooperating with the government. This conceivably, could be due to the nature of protecting independence and quality.

According to Mr. Gates, “The key principle of all components,” of this undertaking, “will be complete openness and rigid adherence to academic freedom and integrity. We are interested in furthering our knowledge of these issues and in soliciting diverse points of view, regardless of whether those views are critical of the department’s efforts.” Let’s hope this is true. What we don’t need, is another think tank.

A think tank is an organization, institute or corporation that engages in advocacy in areas such as social science. They mostly tend to concentrate on the affairs of political strategy, economy, technology and industrial or business policies. Don’t forget- also military issues. Unfortunately they have become little more than public relations fronts. They are experts at spinning webs of self-serving scholarship which serve the needs of the advocacy goals of their sponsors.

I like the idea of our leaders surrounding themselves with smart people, as long as they are impartial and listened to. Of course if you surround yourself with people saying what you want to hear, then it serves a nefarious function. The term kitchen cabinet, the popular name for a group of intimate, unofficial advisors, originated during the term of President Andrew Jackson. There can be good and bad kitchen cabinets, depending on your political views. Ronald Reagan had a kitchen cabinet of allies and friends from California who advised him during his terms. Clark Clifford was considered a member of the kitchen cabinet for John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, before becoming Secretary of Defense. Robert Kennedy was considered part of his brother’s kitchen cabinet while also being a member of the Cabinet as Attorney General.

Now even a better idea is what is referred to as a brain trust. This is a group of experts who serve, usually unofficially, as advisors and policy planners, or a group of experts gathered to discuss issues informally in public. Franklin Roosevelt had such a group of advisors. They presented Roosevelt with analysis of national social and economic problems and helped him devise public-policy solutions.

Barak Obama seems to be taking a cue from Roosevelt’s play book. He is already starting to surround himself with smart people. This includes a Swahili-speaking Air Force general, a 30-year-old speechwriter who helped draft the final report from the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, and President Clinton’s first national security advisor. Whether they will turn out to be a kitchen cabinet or a brain trust is only speculation at this time. I’m hoping for the later.

So now, let’s get back to Secretary Gates’ plan. Here are a few things that these scholars might be able to help with-

1. Specific expert advisory groups, committees and roundtables.
2. Critiquing and providing intellectual rigor to department responses to various discussion papers, position papers and reviews.
3. Advice on research and policy issues currently affecting the department.
4. Assistance and advice on the rigor of planned research and evaluation.
5. Assistance with the scope and design of research projects planned to assess the impact of various programs and policies within the department’s reform agenda.
6. Provision of advice on the use of current data base holdings for secondary analysis and conduct of analysis using existing data where appropriate.

Remember, Humpty-Dumpty was the biggest egghead of them all, and we know what happened to him. So best of luck, Mr. Secretary.

It Isn't Over Till The Skinny Chick Sings!

2008-06-17T14:15:00.002-04:00

There is something funny happening in Opera these days; the slimming down of sopranos. The 47-year old American, Deborah Voigt, was recently fired by the Royal Opera House for being too fat. Now, I want to make this clear, Deborah is known for her Wagnerian roles. You know- the ones famous for the coining of the term it isn’t over till the fat lady sings. Apparently, the singers’ appearance has become more important than the voice.

Ms. Voigt has just started her comeback, after losing 120 pounds as a result of gastric-bypass surgery. There was a time when the casting for an operatic production was done on the merits of the quality of the voice and not the singer’s physique and beauty.

In March of 2005, Jennifer Wilson burst onto the international scene by understudying for Jane Eaglen as Brünnhilde in Wagner’s five hour Götterdämmerung, just a day after singing the same character in a rehearsal of Die Walküre. This was an athletic feat, not only for the voice, but also for the physical stamina involved. She has, what could be described as a big-voice. Also you could say, she had the “goods.” Unfortunately, American vocal training favors lighter, flexible voices with a wide range. But opera has traditionally relied for it’s survival on the powerful, concert-hall filling voices.

Segway into: the microphone.

The coordination of lungs and diaphragm, and the proper use of breath, which are the fundamental prerequisites for sustaining powerful voices in huge auditoriums, are no longer required. As Deborah Voigt said, “I’m hoping that we don’t go so far as to put microphones on soubrette sopranos and have them singing Isolde.”

Now we have to take into account that bigger voices take longer to mature. By the time they do, many of those that possess them are 35 years or older. In other words, they are no longer the “Hot Babes” of opera; the ones that sell CD’s like Cecilia Bartoli. Speight Jenkins of the Seattle Opera said, “Voice teachers in general do not encourage the unique, original voice.” Instead, they encourage “the voice that can hit all the notes and do what is supposed to be done,” regardless if they have any flair or artistry.

So now we have singers with attractive bodies, and light, agile voices. Quick fame, like we have with American Idol, is the way to go. OK, so you just had dinner and you have to sit through an opera. So who wouldn’t rather watch a “hot babe” perform a virtuosic aria from Mozart’s Abduction From the Seraglio, instead of that “huge chick” belting out five hours worth of schnapps and sausage music.

This shift towards “popera”, with the use of microphones and pretty girls is starting to blend the genres of Broadway and Opera. Will we be seeing Sarah Brightman singing “Dich, teure Halle” from Wagner’s Tannhäuser, on 42nd street next season?

So Deborah Voigt is back now, in her slimmed down version. But will the voice be the same? ''I think that the face of opera is changing,'' Voigt said. ''To assume that one can weigh 300-plus pounds and still be viable on today's opera stage is naive.” But as they say, it isn’t over till the skinny chick sings.

Beam Me Up Jesus!

2008-06-16T11:08:00.004-04:00

I received an e-mail yesterday from a friend with a link to a web page. At first, I thought it was a joke, but at closer inspection, I realized it was real. How many times have you thought that when you have seen it all, another surprise is just around the corner to upset your perceived harmony among irrational impulses?

Well, here it is: Post Rapture Pets.

Those who are taken up in the rapture (this is when Jesus beams you up) will be safe in the arms of God; but what about the pets we love and care for?

The web page tells you that, by buying their book, you too can make sure that little Fluffy won’t be plagued by the demonic savages of the post-rapture. This apparently is another, in a long line of Rapture books, and we know how many millions of people and millions of dollars have been made by Tim LeHaye and Jerry Jenkins.

In the fundamentalist Christian eschatology, the Rapture is the moment in which they believe that Jesus will descend from Heaven, accompanied by his posse, whose bodies (rotting corpses I presume) are reunited with their spirits in a resurrection. Just imagine bodies popping out of the ground. Does that remind you of anything? How about- Night of the Living Dead. Immediately after this all “true” Christians (meaning fundamentalist Protestants, not Catholics, etc.) alive on the earth are simultaneously transported to meet the Lord.

The Left Behind books are popular apocalyptic thrillers in which Jesus returns to slaughter everyone who is not a born-again Christian. The New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof said, “If Saudi Arabians wrote an Islamic version of this series, we would furiously demand that sensible Muslims repudiate such hatemongering.” Even the conservative theologian Barbara R. Rossing, an associate professor of New Testament studies at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago, and who received her doctorate from the Harvard Divinity School, said “Today’s Christian fixation on Armageddon and war is a sickness even while it may be thrilling and entertaining.”

What this fear mongering really does, is to control people through fear- plain and simple. And don’t forget, that societies (this includes religious societies) living in fear are no longer functioning to their full potential. Fear is crippling to productivity, confidence and mental serenity. So the “Flock” is best managed through fear. There will always be some cause for fear created by those in power to keep followers in line.

This is why, rather than confidently laying out a positive program of beliefs (like traditional denominations do); fundamentalism is more concerned with raising alarm over putative dangers lying in wait.

Now my family has a rich spiritual history that includes The Catholic Church, Protestantism, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Buddhism and Atheism. Perhaps my spiritual view of the world has amalgamated positions from all of these and more, which is why my wife and I are about to start attending the Universalist-Unitarian Church here in Athens. My spiritual enlightenment can also come from a variety of other sources. In fact, I relish what Yoda of Star Wars says about this issue, “Fear is the path to the dark side: fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.”

Oh, and by the way, if you buy anything from links on the Post Rapture Pets page, Enoch will get a small percentage of the price. I just hope that a portion of these proceeds are going into a Trust for Fluffy.

Renaissance Fair?

2008-06-15T10:35:00.006-04:00

Well it’s that time of year again, to slip on your favorite woolen clothing, with undergarments made of linen, and head off to the nearest Renaissance Fair. Yes, I’m talking about those ubiquitous flea markets plumed in cap and bells. And for those who are greatly experienced in costumery (from all those science fiction conventions), break out the hose and jacket with pleating or skirting, or the tunic with a surcoat. Women don’t forget your flowing gowns and elaborate headwear, ranging from headdresses shaped like hearts or butterflies to tall steeple caps.

For those of you unversed in fair punctilio, I suggest that you scour your closet and attic for the following:

1. Natural leather shoes, boots, and sandals.
2. Blowsy shirts in natural colors.
3. Natural leather vests.
4. Blowsy dresses in natural colors.
5. Snug fitting pants without pockets if possible

In other words, break out the old hippie stuff!

Now, when you show up, here’s what you’ll encounter: a replica of a formed small community, supposedly around a central lord or master. Not unlike the real thing, which were isolated, with occasional visits from peddlers, pilgrims on their way to the Crusades, or soldiers from other fiefdoms (who would practice their jousting skills with each other). There was no electricity, no water from faucets, no television, and no cars.

This is the Renaissance Fair experience- partly a craft fair, partly historical reenactment, and partly performance art.

But wait!

I want to know which idiot came up with the name, because if you know anything about history, everything I have just been describing can be referred to as: The Middle Ages. And as we all know (at least those who care about history), the Renaissance Period comes after the Middle Ages.

The Middle Ages are commonly dated from the fall of the Western Roman Empire (5th century) to the beginning of the Renaissance. This new modern period , lasted from around 1400 to 1500 A.D. It was a time that saw the birth of Humanism, a search for knowledge rather than accepting what already exists, and a faith in the republican ideal. In the arts it produced the likes of Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael Sanzio, and Michelangelo Buonarotti (not “Theater in the Mud”) (Face it; it’s your favorite part of the fair).

I don’t believe that thinkers like Galileo (mathematics and astronomy), Nicolaus Copernicus (astronomy), Tycho Brahe (astronomy), Johannes Kepler (mathematics and astronomy) and Isaac Newton (astronomy, physics, and mathematics), walked around peddling turkey drumsticks or replica swords.

But I do believe that their contribution to science was the foundation for modern science and technology, which eventually brought out the possibility of space travel and all of the ancillary science fiction, including the sci-fi conventions where you can really express yourself via costume. By the way, some of the alien creations that I have seen at these conventions could put a Hollywood makeup/wardrobe artist to shame.

The Musicology of Rage

2008-06-14T19:25:00.000-04:00

The orgy of fury,
Compels us to
Pule the dying days,
Make our moans to a
Crepuscular address,
With neutral contempt.

Take no pity of us,
Or aggravate our
Hemorrhaging elixir.
But give us festering language,
That is frugal and
Will embalm our orthodoxy.

Recommended Poets

2008-06-13T11:31:00.002-04:00

As someone once said, “I really want a poem to spout roses and spit bullets.” I agree. It’s no wonder that one of my favorite songs from a while ago was Send Lawyers, Guns and Money by Warren Zevon.

Now I'm hiding in Honduras
I'm a desperate man
Send lawyers, guns and money
The shit has hit the fan

So what constitutes a good poem? For me, it is something that says more in a few words than a novel can in five hundred pages, with wit and word-play. It has an extraordinary mixing of music and image, word and thought. The job of the poet is to choose the right words, not only for sound (the music of poignant language) and connotation (landscape), but even for the countenance of them.

The poem corresponds to a centrifuge of sound, alliteration and rhythm. The reader will be walking into a world for the very first time; a world of terseness and parsimony.

Poetry IS about words!

Another person also said, “What makes a good poem? A good poet.”

So I have two great poets for you to discover this summer: Zbigniew Herbert and Miroslav Holub. They are two of my favorite poets.

Zbigniew Herbert is an avant-garde poet from Poland, who experiments with precise, restrained rhythms. His poetry is continually exposed to the impersonal, external pressures of politics and history. He started writing poetry during the Nazi occupation of Poland, and during the years of Stalinism his poems were continually banned. A. Alvarez says “Irony", such as Herbert’s, “is a two-edged weapon, which turns on the poet as readily as on the world outside. It is based on a sense of his own ineffectual fragility when faced with the steam-roller of political force." His politics is of sanity and survival; something that is completely relevant for this new century.

Also a survivor of WWII, Miroslav Holub was conscripted as a railway worker under the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia. He went on to become one of his country’s most important scientists, as a research immunologist at The Institute for Clinical and Experimental Medicine. He argued that, “The emotional, aesthetic and existential value is the same (that scientific method and poetry-making are basically similar)…When looking into the microscope and seeing the expected and when looking at the nascent organism of the poem.” He felt an affinity for the aesthetic of his fellow doctor-poet William Carlos Williams, who is also one of my favorite American poets (along with Wallace Stevens).

So here’s Holub spitting a few bullets at you-

Here too are dreaming landscapes,
Lunar, derelict.
Here too are the masses,
Tillers of the soil.
And cells, fighters
Who lay down their lives
For a song.

Here too are cemeteries,
Fame and snow.
And I hear murmuring,
The revolt of immense estates.

Does anybody have any poets that they would like recommend to me?

Summer Reading

2008-06-12T10:35:00.003-04:00

Have you considered your summer reading roster yet? I have just been exploring how other people pick their list and the parameters of their decisions. Most suggestions include:

1. Books you own, but have not read.
2. Read a classic that you should have read in High School, but never did.
3. Include a History book.
4. Read a Biography.
5. Don’t forget a book of Poetry.
6. Don’t think for yourself and read what your favorite magazines choose.

What I found interesting is that none of the suggestions I found, suggest picking an author to focus on or even discover.

If this produces an “ah-yes” moment for you, I have an author for you.

The most refreshing work that I have come across recently is from Roberto Bolaño, the Chilean poet and author of twelve novels. He has received some of the Hispanic world’s highest literary awards. Born in Chile, he lived much of his life as a nomad, living in Mexico, El Salvador, France and Spain. He was at the front, as a founder, of an Avant-garde group of poets and writers in Mexico who called their work infarealism. Living in Spain, he died in 2003, at the age of fifty, of liver failure while waiting for a transplant. Years of hard-living finally paid their toll.

To make it simple, I would suggest starting with Los detectives salvajes (The Savage Detectives- now in English translation), winner of the 1999 Romulo Gallegos Prize (Venezuelan). The novel centers on the poetic movement of visceral realism, which can be seen as an echo of Bolaño’s own infarealism. It is a road-book that is anything but linear.

Locations, characters and plot-threads expand to reflect a sense of displacement. Not unlike Bolaño’s own life, the characters travel in search of roots. This may cause some work on your part, because of the non-linear story. But remember, “Easy” is for magazines and such. Good literature should challenge you. Look for the tones, for it is there where you find more than just a story. Find yourself enmeshed in figuring out how Bolaño artfully weaves together his patchwork of poets.

As he points out, “All poets, even the most avant-garde, need a father. But these poets were meant to be orphans.” It is no wonder that the establishment figure of Octavio Paz is so brutally assailed. Let the person, inside of you, who loves to rebuff authority get some catharsis this summer.

Even if you have become the establishment- take a little time to explore the inner orphan in you.

Got Soup?

2008-06-11T09:35:00.003-04:00

For those who are taking part in the new gastronomic rage and, perhaps dare I say- fad, overtaking this country, their deputation has just taken a disturbing turn. The butter and cream sauces of Julia Child, James Beard’s Chicken Risotto Topped With Caramelized Apricots, or Craig Claiborne’s Acini di Pepe, are now as passé as Brontosaurus burgers (Sorry Fred).

Stepping up to the plate are dishes like boiled sheep’s lung. Brains, tongue, feet, stomach, intestines, and other internal organs are now all fair game. Remember when you were a kid and your mother took you to the grocery store with her. When you passed the butcher’s stall, all the above were there specifically to gross you out. Maybe she said something to you like, “that’s for the poor people.”

Most Americans consider themselves to be “foodies” now. The proliferation of cooking shows, trendy restaurants, along with a host other influences has manifested a nation of daring gastronomes. Only a few years ago, the biggest threat to our sensibilities, was to watch people consume the hottest Hot Sauce they could without bursting into flames or stripping the lining out of their intestinal tracts.

But Americans love to out do each other. This is a basic creed. And the new arena is what I call “the gross out factor.” I know that it has long been fashionable to gross us out with foreign food in the movies and TV. Remember the monkey brains in Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom, or Napoleon Solo and the goat’s eyeball (this one dates me). Well guess what, Anthony Bourdain will down a raw seal’s eyeball for you, if only you tune in to his show.

There used to be a rule: if it moves don’t eat it. The haute couture of the day is: if it is still moving, this will be a moment of culinary transcendence. The slugs, bugs, and creepy-crawlies of Survivor, has become the satisfier of deeper appetites; the food odyssey.

"Testicles appear on menus under various euphemisms, which prevent the diner from confronting too directly the contents of the plate," writes Alan Davidson in the Oxford Companion to Food. I’m not sure how to deal with this one, but for the brave of heart, there is no doubt a restaurant for you. Just don’t ask me to come. Which brings me to a phobia of mine? I tend to avoid those new fashionable places that offer cuisine from other countries. They are opening up all over mid-Ohio; Russian, Turkish, Thai, North African, West African, etc.

If I have to go, you had better bring a good translator with you. And don’t forget, there is always a good burger somewhere on the route home (make mine Brontosaurus, please).

The Question of Americanism

2008-06-10T12:01:00.001-04:00

In his paper, “The Quest for the National Character”, David M. Potter raises some interesting questions concerning our national character. To paraphrase; I would say that unlike most countries in the world today, the United States is not ethnically rooted in the land where we live. We, for the most part, are recent arrivals, which may effectuate our compulsive preoccupation with the question of our Americanism.

He doesn’t believe that anyone would argue the fact that when one’s ethnic, religious, linguistic, or political heritage is amalgamated, nationality can not exist without the form of a common commitment to shared values, an approbation for certain qualities of character, and a common set of transient traits and attitudes.

Here are two images for you to ponder: (A) Americans can primarily be seen as individualists and idealists, and (B) They are conformists and materialists.

The individualist theory starts the moment when a person made that decision to migrate. It is a story as old as the country itself, no matter what the country of origin. It is a story that is happening today. Someone in Mexico, or Morocco, or any other number of countries, is making that decision today. Our myth of ourselves tells us that it is related to the resourcefulness of the early pioneers, constantly confronted with circumstances in which he could rely on no one but himself. I guess we can thank Frederick Jackson Turner for this. Thomas Jefferson’s argument was for equalitarianism.

Here is a question for you: Are equalitarianism and individualism inseparably linked, or even a sanctioned ambiguity in the American creed? Alexis de Tocqueville didn’t think so.

According to him, “When the inhabitant of a democratic country compares himself individually with all those about him, he feels with pride that he is the equal of any one of them; but when he comes to survey the totality of his fellows, and to place himself in contrast with so huge a body, he is instantly overwhelmed by the sense of his own insignificance and weakness.”

As for the other side of the coin, in 1823 William Faux proclaimed, “Two selfish gods, pleasure and pain, enslave the Americans.” The American pursuit of happiness took a detour very early in our history. It was Washington Irving who coined the phrase, “the almighty dollar, that great object of universal devotion throughout the land.” Yet we have grown to become one of the riches nations in the world. So, is this a bad thing?

So where am I going with this? I guess I’m contemplating whether some kind of identifiable American character exists.

I tend to consider the intangibles. One, for sure, is that I can pick out another American at any airport in the world. I’m not sure if it is how we carry ourselves, look, or act, but rest assured, I’ll pick you out of a line-up. And don’t think any of you Canadians think you can get past me. I can smell your European pretentiousness, a mile away. I understand that this is not an original idea, but it is 100 per cent fool proof.

"The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic and a killer," claimed D.H. Lawrence. Is this what we see in each other? For those of you, who read history, remember they used to carry guns in the House of Representatives, and fire them off when they were upset about something. ... Andrew Jackson walked around with two bullets in him for most of his life. Theodore Roosevelt once told a reporter that the grizzly bear should be the symbol of America, not the eagle.

Barack Obama argues in his new book The Audacity of Hope, "We are becoming more, not less, alike.” So, are we just looking into a mirror?

Or do we just have an uncanny ability to recognize the ambiguity of individualism and acquisitiveness in each other’s eyes?

Euro 2008

2008-06-09T17:50:00.003-04:00

Did you know that the United States is the only country in the world that doesn’t consider soccer to be the top sport? In fact we have even changed its name: its real name is “Football”. Interestingly, the rest of the world views our version of football, in the same way we view Australian Rules football—quaint but silly.

We American soccer fans often feel like we are culturally isolated from the rest of our citizens. But there we are; often you can see us strolling down a grocery store aisle, in one of our funny looking replica jersey’s. I have an assortment from around the world, but will most likely be seen sporting Arsenal (England), Fulham (England), or Argentina (National Team).

There is at this moment, one of the biggest and most important sporting tournaments in the world happening in Europe. It could be considered second only to the World Cup in popularity. I’m talking about the Euro 2008. Ask your neighbor and he’ll probably say, “The what?” The US National Team, don’t get to go because, well, they aren’t European. But we do get to choose teams to root for.

As Americans, we soccer fans tend to pick the team representing “the old country”, in order to take pride in our ancestral heritage. This is easy for this tournament, considering that most our immigration came from European countries. So in my case, I have one team to route for. My first choice would be for Wales (father’s side), but since they didn’t qualify, I can’t. Now my team will be Holland.

My mother’s family is a Dutch family from Shaker Heights Ohio. There used to be a Dutch community in part of the area where Shaker would later be incorporated as a city, where my grandfather grew up on farm. At one time, I used to own a home on land where this farm once stood. One of my cousins has the letter that our great-grandfather had to sign, renouncing the King of Holland, in order to become a US citizen.

I was also raised in Shaker Heights and this community did not gather around the television every four years for the World Cup. We were never indoctrinated into tribal allegiances by soccer-crazed families and neighbors. But somewhere along the line, I got bitten by the soccer bug. The sport is simple, yet beautiful. And I can’t get enough. With soccer on cable TV, I can watch up to six games a week, from all over the world.

So this month, while our entire nation doesn’t walk off the job or wake up at two in the morning to watch games, the way they will in the rest of the world, I will be all alone in front of my TV cheering for the Dutch.

GREAT NEWS!!!

Holland just thumped Italy 3-0. Hurrah for the men in orange.

Through My Lonely Window

2008-06-08T11:02:00.004-04:00

Last month, the Holy Family Soup Kitchen and Pantry in the Franklinton area of Columbus Ohio, was robbed of two large refrigeration compressors and copper piping. Two months’ worth of food was spoiled, and the Kitchen had to shut its doors.

It will open again soon, due to many donations from people in the Columbus area. Perhaps this is because it has garnered much publicity in the local media.

Before this event, most people of Columbus had no idea that this kitchen even existed. But let me tell you, that it has diligently been feeding people (they went from feeding fifty people a week to up to a thousand in one day) for a long time. It is located in an area, where most suburbanites would have nightmares about finding themselves stranded with a flat tire. It is called home to many of the street people that most of us turn an eye to.

The Pantry also gives food to 0ne hundred families.

It is a Catholic charity. I am not Catholic, but a couple of years ago I found myself devoting one day of my week to volunteering there. It’s funny how these things happen. My friend, who is Jewish, was a volunteer there, and she asked me if I would be interested coming with her to help one day. After that Monday, the rest of my Mondays were penciled into my calendar.

Don’t you just love America- Here we are, my Jewish friend (who was married to a Congregational minister) and me, a WASP, working in a Catholic Church basement.

Now my job, ended up as the dishwasher. In the summer months, it could get to around 140 degrees back in the kitchen. In fact, often times I could lose five pounds of weight in just one morning shift. And it was hard work; fast and furious (one thousand trays sprayed down and put through a sanitizer). Weirdly enough, I found it to have a Zen type of quality to it. I could un-clutter my mind.

Now, my view to the dining hall, was through a little window, and I guess the view of me from the hall, was of a non-descript man passionately throwing his arms about, twisting and turning.

This brings me to why I’m bringing this all up-

Something happened one day that I’m still wrestling with. At first, I took it as a complement. As time has passed, it has taken on deeper meaning. One of the diners, when putting his tray through the window (he looked like someone straight out of central casting for the homeless), looked straight at me and said, “You know, you’re going to Heaven”, turned around and walked away.

This is something that is certainly beyond my capacity as a flawed human being to understand, but I have locked it away for those times when I have needed it; to put me back on track and put my life into perspective.

It is little things like this, that happen to us in our life, which helps us to acquire security, true happiness, forgiveness, freedom from guilt, an adequate purpose for living, and insight for living. And most importantly of all, when I get too self absorbed, it can provide me with the power for change. As far as my spiritual life is concerned: doing seems so much more practical than praying. If this message through the window was an answer, well who can argue.

Hillary Clinton's Concession Speech.

2008-06-07T18:35:00.003-04:00

What Does Hillary Really Want?

Tuesday night, it was: We’ll See (Oh, you’re such a tease).

Then the New York congressional delegation stood up to the balcony and cried: Let our people go!

So Saturday, it was; don’t cry for me Argentina. Mrs. Clinton produced her “concession” speech. We waited in anticipation of how she would portray defeat. Would a concession convey an impression of victory?

Here is what we have come to expect from concession speeches- They are intended as a professional courtesy, with a deferential acknowledgement of the loss and a pat on the back to the winner. They take the opportunity to thank their supporters and staff. They can even construct it in a way to leave open the door for a future run, usually by indicating that they are committed to the cause (what ever that may be).

Did I just hear the score from Evita, playing in the background?

Adlai Stevenson in 1952 said it the best, “The people have rendered their verdict, and I gladly accept it.” He went on to put things into perspective, “Someone asked me, as I came in, down on the street, how I felt, and I was reminded of a story that a fellow townsman of ours used to tell- Abraham Lincoln. They asked him how he felt once after an unsuccessful election. He said he felt like a little boy who had stubbed his toe in the dark. He said that he was too old to cry, but it hurt too much to laugh.”

The truth is- Americans don’t pay attention to concession speeches. The only people interested in this one, I’m sure, were the Hillary supporters and cable news junkies. I guess this includes me (Junkie that is). They need some kind of closure.

But Wait!

Was there closure? Or were the Clintons just getting in the last word, again. The campaign is only being suspended, not ended.

My first inclination, realizing that the Clintons are lawyers, is to consider that they are finding a loophole to payoff the enormous campaign debt, thought to be around $20.88 million. I have no doubt that this was discussed at “THE” meeting on Friday, in some kind of deal. Maybe the fact that she only suspended her campaign might indicate that she might not have gotten the relief from the Obama camp that she was hoping for. If it is suspended, perhaps contributions can still be collected, to pay this debt.

The United States Campaign Finance Glossary defines Debt Retirement as, “The practice of raising additional funds after the election is over in order to pay off the candidate’s campaign debt.”

Assumption of debt as a political bargain goes all the way back to the beginning of this country, when Alexander Hamilton promised the national capital to the south in exchange for federal government assumption of state debts.

And of course, the lawyers can tell you; that all these debts, at least to the vendors (business expenses) can be deducted as business losses if not repaid.

Don’t think that the Clintons won’t think and act like lawyers? Remember the “it depends on what your definition of is, is?”