xtcian

aux barricades!

7/29/04

I know the last thing all of you need from me right now is another graceless blog on politics, but I have to vent this particular frustration:

Two nights ago, after John Edwards' speech, CNN's audio AND video wasn't working for the left-leaning pundit, thus they spent close to twenty minutes with Ralph Fucking Reed, the once and future king of the Christian Coalition. He drop-kicked every jackbooted talking point into the face of Wolf Blitzer until FINALLY Jeff Greenfield made him play honest defense.

Seriously, having Ralph Reed as the only Democratic speech critic? That'd be like Che Guevara doing the post-mortem on Dick Cheney's luncheon address at the Carlyle Group. I couldn't believe it.

And THEN, tonight, someone in the CNN booth thought it'd be awfully clever to include the walkie-talkie transmission from the guy producing the Fleet Center DNC party, who said "fuck" and "goddamn" en route to getting the balloons to drop. This came right after Kerry aced – or at least performed swimmingly – in a speech design to electrify the electorate.

I've already complained about CNN in the past – probably because I hold them to a higher standard – but this made them look like the A-V department at a junior high talent show.

By most accounts – including mine and the easy-to-deflate members of my immediate family – this was kind of a kickass convention. I've never watched this much of ANY political convention, although I remembered they gave Ronald Reagan a 20-minute standing ovation in 1980. That was enough for me.

I wasn't even cool enough for the A/V club in 8th grade

But a great convention begets bigger hopes, and only lately has the spectre of beating Bush seemed remotely possible. All things being equal, Kerry would win an election tomorrow (see this site for some great swing-state analysis) and this four-year night-terror would be over.

This could be different, if:
1. They suddenly found huge stockpiles of WMD in Iraq
2. They blow Bin Laden's head off ON VIDEO
3. Another awful terrorist attack
4. They steal the election again

Now, any way you shake it, I don't know how you can have a Bush win without creating an incredibly angry populace at best, and outright civil war at worst. Sure, we sat on our hands in 2000 when the Supreme Court handed the election to Bush (Tessa and I demonstrated in Times Square, sure, but we got cold) – but there will be no such acquiescence this time around.

If they found WMDs or Bin Laden, the dull-witted electorate might be duped long enough to vote Bush back in, but those with any kind of horse sense will immediately smell a big fucking rat. Another terrorist attack could swing either way (though I believe it would benefit Bush), but that would also make for a really fucked-up election.

In short, is there any real way for Bush to be re-elected without a minor/major revolt, cries of fraud, and a violent outburst of Americans who no longer believe we have an actual democracy? Or do you think people will just lie back after a couple of weeks, look lazily at the sky, and like Queen Victoria said, "think of England"?

bloomin' onion

7/28/04

I find it quite wonderful that all the stürm und drang of the Democratic convention, all the pundits rhapsodizing on Teresa Heinz Kerry's accent, the speculation of Obama's ascendancy to the White House, the micro-polls being conducted by the digiterati... it all comes down to a couple thousand undecided voters in Ohio and Florida.

Really, the fate of the free world hangs in the whims of a few vacillating Circuit City employees who hang out at the Bennigan's near Toledo, a few women with bad hair shopping at the T.J Maxx in Sarasota. I wonder what kind of pressure they feel as one of the few undecided voters in a swing state – do they relish their undecidedness as an emblem of courage, or do they just see-saw from side to side as their friends try to drag them in opposing ideological directions?

Like it or not, this is that rare time when very smart, connected people from cultured places like New York and Washington D.C. have to actually understand the thought processes of your average mediocre American. There are a ton of us who keep blogs, and there are incessant poll-watchers, and wonkish political junkies, but I dare say they have ZERO amount of commiseration with these very ordinary Americans.

I like to think that I understand them, having grown up in rural and boring suburban environments, having cut my teeth in some of the most depressing malls in America, and having birthday parties at Shakey's Pizza in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. But a quick trip to Jasper, Georgia proved to me how removed from this world I'd become. Salem took me to a honky-tonk, and I felt like I was on Neptune.

It must be awesome to see these political think-tank operatives try to guess the next move of the undecided Ohio voter, a guy who who just changed the oil in his bitchin' Camaro en route to Happy Hour at TGIF. The only thing us Democrats have going for us – besides being on the side of goodness and light – is that the Republican leadership has as little insight into the Average American as we do.

immune to your consultation

7/27/04

Everyone has a few guardian angels that helped them out when they were young and insane, and I had two sets: the parents of Marcie and the parents of Hampy. Both Hamp and Marcie were among my closest confidantes at high school, especially while I weathered the horrors of puberty, and the dark rumblings of my own family, which was beginning to break apart.

Hamp's parents were especially kind to me – I stayed in their house countless times, ate hundreds of meals, sleeping in the room with the big double bass, playing with their dog Dusty, and basically doing everything I could to get out of my own home. By the time I got my first (borrowed) car – a brown 1981 Chevy Citation with an interior coated with 2mm of root beer – I was over at their house as often as they'd let me.

Hampy's mom gave me little cards for my birthday, got me a present for graduation, and even put a tiny ceramic sign over the guest bedroom that said "Ian's Room." As we all went to college, however, my visits back to Norfolk, VA became very infrequent – I began to equate the place with the dissolution of my parents' marriage and my own utterly embarrassing lack of self-awareness.

I wish I'd stayed in better contact with Hamp's family, because I never got to tell his mother how wonderful she'd been to me, and how much I adored their sanctuary. She passed away this week, and my heart goes out to their wonderful family.

She was so full of grace, from the old Southern school of gentle charm. And so I take this opportunity now, in the quiet hush of the digital ether, to tell her thank you, and to tell Hamp that he was raised by a truly fantastic lady.

picayune gazette bee plain dealer

7/26/04

My buddy Salem asked an interesting question about Kerry and the recent poll showing that only 30% of Americans "felt like they knew who John Kerry was." He was flabbergasted that anyone with a modicum of clue would have at least a small understanding of who he is (Vietnam vet, war hero, Senator, etc.) but to me, it's a little more depressing.

First off, the poll itself is its own leading question. If you ask if you "know" somebody, it forces you to contemplate all things you don't know about them. Further, in this case, the race for the presidency has been mostly about Bush, since he's such a wildly incompetent dumbass. We "know" who he is, that's for goddamn sure.

But such a question, put forth by the media, is simply the evidence of hunger for stories and manufactured spectacle. Like I've already moaned before, the genesis of a 24-hour news cycle would have been considered TOTALLY FREAKIN' INSANE in the 70s when I was a kid. Not enough happened! Not enough happens now, so they have to create it.

This unquenched thirst for "news" has made everyone egregiously sloppy; I'm surprised it took so long for the Jayson Blairs and Stephen Glasses of the world to be outed. How about a few examples of Terrible Journalism just in the last week?

Okay - this article from USAToday has the headline "Some Hybrids Not As Reliable As Gas Models." It says that "The discrepancies can be dramatic... Toyota and Honda hybrids reported twice as many engine problems as owners of gas-engine Toyotas and Hondas... reliability doubts could make Americans reluctant to buy vehicles that could cut fuel bills and U.S. dependence on imported oil. Reliability problems also can make vehicles worth less as used cars."

Which should scare all of you away from buying a hybrid car – after all, it's going to strand you in the desert, right? Unfuckingbelievable. What the article doesn't make plain is that these are the 2001 model hybrids, a car made five years ago when the technology was brand new.

That's like grabbing an Atari and playing "Yars' Revenge" and then complaining about the graphics. Needless to say, the hybrid technology has exploded in the last five years, making the 2004 Prius the Motor Trend Fucking CAR OF THE YEAR™. But that story isn't as interesting.

Let's move on...

Look at this review of "Sight Unseen," the play I discussed yesterday:

The affair [between the two leads] ended badly when the self-centered Jonathan dumped [Patricia] in his quest for fame and fortune... Nick [the husband] is surly in his reception of Jonathan, whom he suspects of wanting to renew his affair with Patricia, a suspicion happily shared by Patricia who invites Jonathan to stay overnight... It turns out that Jonathan's real purpose in seeking out Patricia after 15 years of separation is to obtain one of his early paintings... he tries to sneak it out of the house before dawn, but she catches him in his thievery.

Okay, if you saw the play, and paid attention to the plot, you'd know that EVERY SINGLE STATEMENT ABOVE is FALSE. Laurie, George, Jon, Catherine, everybody who saw "Sight Unseen" will agree that this reviewer either didn't see the play or has a kindergarten grasp of storytelling.

More? How about the SHEER ARBITRARINESS of reporting? Take a look at these sets of absurdly paradoxical headlines from Google News:

All I know is this: one of the things that helped cure me of my mainstream media-fueled anxiety was to read the news on Sunday. Ever notice that nothing ever happens on Sunday, even though in most of the world, it's already Monday? That's because nobody's on the internet or watching CNN or Fox News. When I realized that they made everything up as they went along, I felt a lot better.

You know, in a sad sort of way.

I do, however, love these headlines – standing up to terrorists IS a total downer

joys of opinionlessness

7/25/04

Despite all my commitment issues regarding live theater, we saw a lot of it this weekend, and I'm proud to say it was fabulous (partly due to a hew habit of bringing a backpack for lumbar support). Our very own Laurie Williams Gilmore made her debut on Broadway and was fabulous as the German art critic in Sight Unseen.

When she came out for her bow, Tessa wept because she couldn't have been prouder even if she was Laurie's mother. When you see someone so deserving and so talented getting whoo-hoos and a-hollerin' from the audience on 47th Street, it does a soul good and proffers the illusion that we might be living in a meritocracy after all.

One of the coolest things about being on Broadway is the backstage room with your name on the door, and if you're in the union (referred to as "Equity") then you get an Equity Cot! If I were Equity, I would never leave the cot, I would just stay there all night between shows and stew in my Equity juices.

Also seen this weekend: The Bourne Supremacy, with a car chase so good that Scotty and I cheered when it was over – and The Elephant Vanishes at the New York State Theater in Lincoln Center. "Elephant" was directed by Simon McBurney, who invented "Mnemonic," which remains my favorite artistic experience of the last five years.

"Elephant" is no "Mnemonic," but an amazing feat of showmanship regardless. I'd go on, but Virginia Heffernan and I were talking after the performance about the incredible relief it is NOT to have an opinion on everything. I did it for three years at CitySearch, and Virginia does it now for the Times. Sometimes it's great to come away with visceral tingles and not have to explain a goddamn thing.

Matthew McCauley (1750-1832)

7/22/04

One thing about having a wife you've known for seventeen years is that you can bring up people from 1991 – someone neither of you had thought about in decades – and you'll each have our own independent memories of them. In the very beginning of the decade, Tessa and I happened to live on the same street in Chapel Hill (McCauley St., for those of you playing the home game) and we both noticed the same woman walking her dog every day.

Thing was, this woman didn't have one of her arms. And the next year, she didn't have her other arm either. She seemed to be losing limbs at a rapid rate, quickly enough that my housemate Clay thought we should take action (although I'm not sure what his plan was).

What was truly bizarre is that she kept walking her dog even as she lost her arms, so that by 1993 or so, she had the leash tied around her waist. Bud and I used to watch her go by and fall silent, as if out of respect.

So Tessa and I were talking about this woman tonight, and she says, "well, how did she get the leash on the dog, and then tie it around her waist?" I wished she hadn't said that, because a half-hour later, I was still obsessed with the conundrum. This woman was totally self-sufficient and seemed to have no help at home. So how the hell did she do it?

All the woman had to work with was half of her right arm. Tessa bet me dinner that I couldn't put Chopin's leash on him, and then get the leash around my waist. We dragged the sleeping dog into the living room and performed the following:

1. I'm sure the lady had the leash on a peg for easy access, and thus could use her elbow to thread the leash through the small loop at the end (where you'd normally hold it). This is important for later.

2. I told Chopes to sit, which he did, because he truly thought he was getting a late-night walk out of this. Oh, how he was mistaken.

3. I grabbed his collar with one foot, then grabbed the metal "snap" part of the leash with the other.

4. After five minutes of struggle, I managed to snap the leash onto his collar. He despised this part, but maybe the woman's dog had more patience.

5. With the leash still looped through its own handle, step inside it (while it's on the floor).

6. Use your feet to push the leash loop up around your waist, and secure it with the part of your arm you have left.

7. Walk dog around neighborhood, and inspire blogs to be written circa 2015.

So Tessa owes me dinner – so I've got that going for me, which is nice.

Or maybe that woman had her husband do it.

Act XVII, Scene XXIX, Line 47

7/21/04

There's something about my personality I'm not very proud of, and though I've battled it for years, I have to admit that I dread going to the theater. If you've read my brother's blog lately, or Mac Rogers' various treaties on the subject – or especially this article that raised a lot of hell in certain email lists I'm on - it'd be on your mind too. Frankly, I'm worried that live theater in New York will soon be going the way of the nickelodeon (the device, not the network) and I will have myself partially to blame.

My problems with live theater are thus:
a) the seats hurt my fucking back. During "The Rose Tattoo" in Boston, I was actually going into spasm.
b) I fear commitment. I have never walked out of a movie in my life, probably because I always knew I had the option.
c) Most plays I see are boring.

Now, I am a self-confessed fancy-pants Artiste who purports to string words together for a living. I live 20 minutes by train to both Broadway and the West Village, where I can see every play mankind has developed. I have moaned vociferously about the state of art in this city. I should be the PERFECT theatergoer, and yet, it always feels like a trip to the dentist.

This is not to say that each play is LIKE a trip to the dentist. There are huge exceptions to my theaterphobia, such as anything Lindsay does ("Trust"), the various Gideon productions ("Lucretia Jones"), the 1992 musical "The Secret Garden," Simon McBurney's unspeakably beautiful "Mnemonic" and of course, the eternal mark of quality, Mrs. Laurie Williams Gilmore (who made her Broadway debut LAST NIGHT! WHOOO-HOOO!).

And yes, there are other exceptions, so don't write to me all pissed off and be like "you said you dug my show."

Broadway and 45th Street

However... the fact remains that I am preternaturally disinclined towards the theater, and I'm coming to grips with it. I think I could take the back spasms if Theater promised to be more interesting (which would also get rid of my commitment issues), but I think I'm largely a creation of my generation, a group of people that have been unwittingly trained since 1981 to reject entertainment that thrives on long bouts of dialogue and few scene changes.

And yet, as my generation (and younger) start to write plays that cater to this attention span and the demand for spectacle, you run into the Fringe Festival, excellently eviscerated by Sean last week.

So I'd like to make a list to playwrights and people programming the upcoming seasons. Reject it if you wish, but I promise I'm not being snarky. I have but a few demands:

1) If your play is a comedy, make it actually funny.
2) If your play is a drama, make the plot interesting.
3) If your play is experimental, PROMISE me it won't be boring. PROMISE!
4) Keep doing your Christmas show, I realize it makes all the money.
5) Please work on the ending. I know you already did, but do it again.
6) Do not have God as one of the characters.
7) Don't get naked, as I will forget about the play and only look at nipples.
8) Please make your characters behave consistently, even the ones that have an arc.
9) Don't have a character become addicted to something; that shit bores me to tears.
10) YOU try sitting in your chairs for 2+ hours, and if you don't need Advil, ON WITH THE SHOW!

senses working overtime

7/20/04

Tonight we watched the unthinkably twee "mockumentary" called The Buried Secret of M. Night Shyamalan, which was made bearable only by the presence of Ilana Levine, who offers an oasis of quality in any misbegotten production. The show did ask an interesting question at one point, however: "Which are you more inclined to believe in, ghosts - or aliens among us?"

To, me the question was sort of like asking if the tooth fairy or Santa Claus seemed more realistic (my answer: tooth fairy), but Tessa and I spent the better part of an hour formulating an answer.

I had to say that my head would answer "aliens," because it wouldn't require a complete paradigm shift in the afterlife. My heart, however, would answer "ghosts," because of long-held mysticisms and all those stories everyone else has about plates and jewelry being rearranged while you sleep.

Here's the thing about aliens. You'd have to be a pigheaded, grotesquely-exceptionalist moron not to believe there are other self-aware, sentient races of creatures out in space. Where it gets hard is believing they've come here, and have elaborately avoided detection. First, they'd have to have a reason to stay undetected (which seems counterintuitive given the distance they'd traveled) and the means to do so. Not impossible, mind you, but stunningly unlikely.

But ghosts are another matter. If we're talking about the cliché of a ghost; i.e., a translucent, corporeal form of a person who has died, then science has a lot of 'splaining to do. More believable is an "energy force" that takes no actual shape and may not be seen, but even then, you're dealing with issues of the soul, which always verge uncomfortably into religion and geeky books about the occult.

My side question is this: why are people scared of ghosts? Honestly, what's the worst thing they could do to you? Sure, scare you, but what is the actual threat? Unless we're talking about a poltergeist handling kitchen knives, the worst thing a ghost could do is reveal that the afterlife is a dreadful fuckin' bore.

Which leads to my next question. Almost all reports of death – by those who have experienced it and were revived – is one of calm, warm, acceptance. It has to be a little like the Infinite Perspective Vortex in the "Hitchhiker" books, except that it breeds serenity rather than madness. My psych mentor at UNC, Dr. Lucas, saw about 800 people out of this world (he was a counselor for those with AIDS and cancer) and said that the precise moment of death was always quite beautiful.

So it's hard for me to accept that anyone dead has an opinion. They have just been awarded the perspective of the universe, and they're going to come back to fuck with a house? They're going to "right some wrongs" and follow around their old girlfriends? That just seems like bullshit. The dead would be the last people to care about the vicissitudes of this petty world, and should at least have the understanding that "righting a wrong" could even produce more wrongs. I just don't buy that the dead care.

But we do have to accept that we only have five senses, and the only reason you say you're "looking at a computer screen right now" is because we've all decided to agree. What if we met a race of people with only four senses and we had to describe what "smell" was like? I don't mean describing the smells, I mean describing the sense itself.

Perhaps that is what psychics, mediums and those "close to the veil" of the other worlds feel like. I'm willing to believe them more than aliens. Which is to say, not very goddamn much. So if I still had to answer the question, I think the edge goes to ghosts.

open-faced sandwedge

7/19/04

If there's one thing my parents sucked at, it was making sports a priority for their kids. The only thing I ever really learned in my youth was soccer, and that was because I was at school in London when I was 10, and if you didn't play football with the other kids, they'd take it as a betrayal.

I got very good at it and began to love it – then came back to the U.S. in 1980, and nobody was playing. The great Soccer Explosion must have happened in the late 80s, leading to "soccer moms" and now, those vaguely testosterone-addled blondes that walk around college campuses wearing white socks in their Adidas flip-flops. I look at this race of young soccer women and feel like my mom does when she sees the "diaper changing station" in the men's room: what a great new world we live in!

Either way, picture me wearing smelly shin guards, showing up for the summer soccer team that forfeited half the games because we didn't have a backfield. By the time the New York Cosmos and the NASL folded in 1984, I was back to ham radio and furious bouts of masturbation.

Thus, because I was never prodded to be athletic, I missed out on those formative years – from about 11 to 18 – when you can become really good at something. I started my basketball obsession in earnest at age 19, which is a little like starting French at 40; sure, you can speak it, but you're always going to have bad accent.

I took tennis lessons as a kid, but again, only played regularly against Bud and Chip at Carolina, where I'd get so angry at my warped game that I'd destroy racquets by the bagful. In short, I'm a latecomer to everything, and it pisses me off.

Now, in my mid-to-late 30s, I have to come to grips with the following: I probably only have about 15 decent years of basketball left, and it feels like I just started. I'm not sure if they'll let 50-year-olds play in the games we run on Thursdays (god, it feels awful just to write that sentence). Maybe we can have an Old Fart League or something, but I doubt if I'll be able to take it to the rack in 2018 like I can now.

And so, I have done something I previously thought unthinkable: I have begun playing golf. Just so Bud doesn't get the wrong idea, I don't wear plaid pants. And I suck, I really, really suck. But I got a cheap set of good clubs on eBay, bought some shoes with plastic spikes, and Scotty is teaching me how to swing.

with Scotty before my first try at 18 holes

Why? Because golf is something you can pick up – and be good at – even when you start learning late, and you can play until they throw your sack of bones into the coffin. Tessa's dad Blakey played golf until he was frickin' eighty-eight.

So I consider it an insurance. Something to play with Scott and Jamie, something to get violently angry about clear into the 21st century, until they toss me in the white van and lock the doors.

acrophilia

7/18/04

Just saw the documentary Outfoxed - I guess we could have attended any of the 3000+ screenings in America, but instead I just bought the damn thing so that me and mine could enjoy a little left-wing propaganda without having to talk to strangers. You know how us liberals hate strangers.

The biggest flaw with the movie is myself: I was chagrined at how awful Fox News is, yet I wasn't shocked and had a hard time caring. The stuff with Jeremy Glick (who was abused by Fox News even though his own father perished in the World Trade Center) was pretty great, and there were some other theories that sent chills down the spine, but I guess I'm past thinking that there's any sense to getting your news from any of the usual suspects anymore. Thank god the satellite radio gets the BBC; I'd rather have someone with bad teeth tell it to me straight, thanks.

So my thoughts turned more celestial, which brings me to the three pictures I'd like to share with you today. Click any of them for a bigger version.

This is a fortnight ago, at a gas station in Harlem. I had to make sure to wear an orange bandana, you know, you can never be too sure with those gangs running around. Especially with the full moon out. People commit crimes!

While surfing the TerraServer for aerial pictures of everywhere I've ever lived, I came across this 2002 shot of my fraternity at UNC where we shot several scenes of "The Pink House." I looked closer, and saw my car (red arrow) - an egregiously shitty white Mustang convertible that finally died right there in that parking lot - is now enshrined forever via satellite.

The skies were so clear two nights ago that you could actually take pictures of the Milky Way with the digital camera. I thought this view of the Big Dipper on the horizon was even cooler. The green light in the foreground is the farm about a mile away, and the orange light is Albany in the distance.

outed!

7/15/04

There's a fascinating test on the Slate website today that calculates your "red" or "blue" status in America. You won't understand the rest of this blog unless you go there and take the test yourself.

Go ahead. We'll wait.

Anyone reading this blog for more than a week knows that I am perhaps the most irrational "blue state" liberal in America – I have been more than forthcoming about how much I despise George Bush and the litter of morons that voted for him. So it came as a pretty big surprise that the test landed me squarely in the "red."

First off, I think this test penalizes you for knowing too much. Having spent the first part of my life in Iowa, I know what the Quad Cities are. Having spent the second part of my life in North Carolina, I know what Dale Earnhardt's NASCAR number was. And having smooched on Jiffer, I know where Door County is. All three of those gave me tons of points in the "red" category, but the fact is, mostly I just keep my ear to the ground.

I'd be interested to know how Chip does on the test, because he knows everything. When we played College Bowl (basically a trumped-up geekfest at college, a la Jeopardy) he used to ring in before the question was asked and say "Zachary Taylor" and be right. But neither Chip nor I have any more affinity for Bush because we know that many people express their displeasure with Jeff Gordon by having a decal of Calvin pissing on the number "24".

I confess I didn't know what "The Ivy" was either, so I suppose I've never eaten there – but I did know that Indiana State is not in the Big 12 because I'm a college hoops fan.

Shit, am I a closet Republican? I knew not to wear white pantyhose, does that count for ANYTHING?

ides of July

7/14/04

I'd like to mention that it is my new sister-in-law's birthday today. Jordana, like everyone my brothers and I marry, was told by my Mom that if she and [insert son's name here] were to break up, she'd keep her and let the son drift. I imagine she's only partly kidding.

It is a hard thing to join my family. We are big people, built for surviving on the dusty Mormon prairie, but in these times it only serves to make us kinda fat. Because of draconian rules instituted in our childhood, we have all kinds of defense mechanisms, a propensity to stay up until 4am, and for me, a real problem with sugar cereals.

None of us brothers means any harm, but we all forget to do shit all the time. I have to be told to do the dishes, not because I don't want to (actually I find it rather soothing) but because it doesn't sink into my brain. Sean occasionally smells funny because he forgets to shower. Kent can walk through a room and leave unhooked phones, broken vases and spilled Coke in his wake.

All we can hope for is that we're charming enough to warrant a pass from those willing to put up with us. We're all quite funny, which is good, because if we weren't, none of these women would have ANYTHING to do with us.

And so this is Jordana's day, the day we say Thank You for Existing, and also Thank You for Dealing With Sean. The interesting thing about in-laws is that they are family that are thrust upon you long after you've established the prisoner mentality that bonds your brothers and sisters together. Jordana not only picked right up with the conversation, but often leads it. I'm thankful that she's in our lives this much, that my sister now has two brand spankin' new sisters and that Jordana made it to 28 despite her penchant for Ayn Rand.

Happy birthday!

another shot of wild turkey

7/13/04

As I was driving a car packed with stinky trash bound for the town dump, I turned up a country highway and BLAM! From out of nowhere, this giant bird swoops out of a cornfield, hits the grille of the car, and explodes in a million feathers. Through the rear view mirror of the car, I can see the body of the bird hit the pavement and bounce once, that ugly bounce that tells you something is really dead.

As with all roadkill, I felt utterly horrified. I've only killed three other animals in all my years of driving: a possum in '94, a rabbit in '93 and, worst of all, a Schnauzer on a freeway in a pounding rainstorm in '83, during my first month of driving. All of them left me feeling positively sick with guilt.

But this time there was a car right behind me, and I couldn't stop to see if I could help the bird. Instead, I went to the dump and spent half an hour unloading all of the recycled liquor bottles my ne'er-do-well friends leave at the farm.

Cars came and went, and I knew I had to get back on the street and face what I'd done. The road was empty now, and sure enough, there was a brown lump ahead right where my left tire had been. When I got closer, however, it wasn't what I expected.

It wasn't a normal bird – it was an adolescent wild turkey, and it was standing straight up in the middle of the road, looking straight at me. I pulled over, got out of the car, and slowly walked up to the bird. He was missing a bunch of feathers and his neck looked scraped up, but other than that, he was perfectly fine – except that he was FUCKING PISSED OFF AT ME.

I crouched down about three feet from the turkey and said, "I did this to you. It was me. I am really, really sorry."

He cocked his head so that one eye looked directly into mine. And I swear to god it was like he said "I forgive you." Then he casually walked to the other side of the road and disappeared back into the cornfield.

This turkey had sat in the middle of the road for a half an hour, not caring that cars were going right by him, WAITING FOR ME TO MAKE AN APOLOGY. You have to admit that takes serious balls, my friends.

if these walls could shut up

7/12/04

Sure, that may look like graphamaniacal gibberish to the uninitiated, but it is actually the deed to our farm, drawn up in 1845 for George T. Burton. Full disclosure: Tessa and I took a little trip to the Clerk's office for Columbia County, and just kept on looking up deeds for our place.

It goes like this: your house deed will tell you where the previous deed is – usually in another book, on a certain page. Keep doing this, and you go back in time. First you'll see nice computer print-outs, then neat typewritten forms, then old shitty Smith-Corona typewriters, until you get to the good stuff, written with a fountain pen dipped in dye.

The town library had a "find your historic house" night, so we took our deeds there, and discovered the history of our land going back to 1770. I wanted to know two things: "who built our house in the 1830s?" and "can I see a picture?" I was unsuccessful, but tantalized.

The nice thing is that everybody who inhabits our farm house stays in it forever (we are only the sixth owner since our country was founded) and usually dies peacefully inside it. This happened to ol' George Burton, ol' J. Palmer and even Virginia Nelson, a woman whose bearded irises still bloom in our garden six years after her death at 86.

I wondered what George T. Burton, who died in his sleep in 1877, would have thought of us watching the second season of "The Shield" in his bedroom. He probably thought the scene with that Mexican druglord getting his face fried on the stove was a bit over the top. Also, he probably wanted to know how CCH Pounder, a black woman, could be a police officer. Oh, and he'd like to know the name of the magic box that produced such wonderful images.

miscarriage of justice

7/11/04

First, I'd like to state for the record that Tessa and I are not actively trying to have kids, even though most readers of this blog think I've been coyly hinting at it. She gets mad if I go farther than that into our personal lives, so I'll just state that the avoidance of sushi and the intake of folic acid is something all women of childbearing years have to consider, unless they want to die childless, alone, and drinking Ol' Grandad in a dishwasher crate.

Which leads me to Today's Rant: A person very, very dear to us just went through a miscarriage, which, as anyone can attest, is painful and miserable. I know it first hand, since my mom had six miscarriages between Steve and me. You'd think she might have gotten the hint after the third or fourth miscarriage that something was gumming up the works, but hey, it was the Summer of Love and there was a lot going on.

My dime-store latent Mormonism (or my desire for a happy ending) tells me that I was just standing in line, waiting for the right body so I could come on out. I would have preferred one without gout, but you can't have everything.

Anyway, our dear friend, whom I'll call Louisa, had to go back to the doctor yesterday to have a post-op check-in and get a clean bill of health. And what a bill you get: apparently, having a miscarriage is not only awful, but awful expensive.

So expensive that Louise asked if her original $350 hospital deposit - required at this well-respected OB-GYN on Park Avenue - was going to help offset the cost. "No," was the snotty reply, "that money was for the pregnancy."
"Let me get this straight," she asked, "I have this HUGE bill AND you're keeping my original deposit?"
"Yes."
"So not only do I get a miscarriage, and a huge bill, but I'm further punished by giving up my deposit?"
"Yes. That deposit was for this particular pregnancy, and since you didn't go through with it, you don't get your money back."
"What? I didn't CHOOSE to have a miscarriage!"
"It doesn't matter."
"Can I use my deposit for the NEXT baby?"
"No."

And so I must ask, my fellow Americans: in what fucking world is this acceptable?

fear and exceptionalism

7/8/04

This morning before she checked the internet, I said to Tessa, "Okay, so there's been lots of positive press surrounding Kerry's pick of Edwards. So what do you think the Bush administration pulls today?"
"Um, Coach K back to the Lakers?"
"No - but that's a good one."
"I dunno," she said, "maybe a horrible new Al-Qaeda threat?"

And by God, she was right. I know it's been oft-said, but the Bush administration is so nakedly cynical, so irretrievably mean, so transparently OBVIOUS, that today's news should be taken to mean "We, Your Government, Think You Are a Nation of Utter Morons."

So we go with another round of vague threats of terrible shit on the horizon, and yet no specifics, not even a shred of new information. Oh sure, they'll file the Democrats into a meeting with the CIA and disclose something that might happen - I mean, they had to do SOMETHING other than trot out Tom Ridge - but this is both ridiculous and shameful.

You know why? Because my stomach still hurts when I see Bin Laden on the front page of CNN. I still have to ward off waves of apocalyptic nuclear fear every time this kind of crap filters onto the airwaves. So Al-Qaeda remains intent on pulling off a large-scale attack against America? No fucking DUH, you assholes - I was there. I saw the second tower come down in front of my eyes, half a mile away, and I helped ash-covered mothers find their children. My wife and sister spent the next two days helping out at Ground Zero.

It took me a year of therapy and two years of Celexa to be able to function normally again, and every time the Republican bastards blurt out their dire predictions, it takes me hours to wipe the taste out of my mouth, to rid myself of that godawful smell of burning metal. The Bush administration does it for political gain and to cover their asses, but they don't give a shit that it actually hurts many of us.

grundle taint perineum baunch

The problem is obvious: the American public will learn the wrong things from the next big terrorist attack. They will re-elect Bush in a landslide, even though it is people like him that have worked the Muslim world into a furious froth. Al Qaeda wants to kill Americans regardless of their party affiliation, I'll grant you that, but you can't tell me there won't be some hell to pay - for either me or the next generation - for what we've done to the Arab world.

And while he's scaring the shit out of Americans, Bush has the unfathomable temerity to cut funding for local teams whose sole job it is to protect American cities. Not only that, but he has let New York City dangle, while frickin' Wyoming got more terrorist-prevention dollars per capita. I have been to Wyoming many times, my friends, and there is NOTHING worth bombing in Cheyenne (except the crappy Holiday Inn that smells like pee).

Do any of you in the "red states" wonder why the three places that have been the victims - or almost the victims - of a terror attack vote overwhelmingly Democratic? California, New York and D.C. know the fear. I am on the B and Q train every day, and go over the Manhattan Bridge with alarming frequency. My friends (and sister-in-law) work right in the middle of Times Square and Wall Street. When they say a terrorist attack is coming, we feel it on the bridges and in the tunnels, we sense it in the crowds and in the skyscrapers.

My friends in the Red States, you have to come to grips with this; you just don't understand what it's like. Terrorism is an idea to you. And don't give me that shit about "you think New York is the center of the world," because it fucking is. There is no place better to get more bang for your buck; we're all here, crowded together and stacked on top of each other. Those of you in Charleston, Mobile, Amarillo, Nashville and Des Moines can put away your duct tape.

No, the places most affected by terror vote Democratic because they know where the blowback is coming. They want to elect leaders who take the rest of the world into consideration. They want a president and vice-president who have something more than a ham-fisted policy about Us and Them. They want nuance and intelligence. Because they believe their lives ultimately depend on it.

So do me a favor, Red States: when the government gives us another sky-is-falling news flash, please don't listen. And if there is another terrorist attack, please don't vote.

you had to hide away for so long

7/7/04

UPI just ran a story on how fully 1/3rd of all software on everybody's computer is pirated. That figure seemed a little high to me until I thought about my own past, and the lack of compunction I had towards stealing everything for the Mac I could get my hands on.

Even now, Photoshop costs $630, which is another way to say "absolutely fuckin' insane." There is not one struggling post-grad in Chapel Hill or Madison or the Lower East Side who could possibly afford to shell out that much money, even if the program is a) fantastic (which it is) or b) necessary for their career.

They're going to steal it, or "borrow" it, or download it from Limewire or Kazaa, or go to that place on the 6th Avenue sidewalk where Lars gets all his cool software. The allure is just too great, and it's relatively easy. My friend Brian is notorious for getting his hands on every piece of software written for OS X, along with the codes to break the registration.

I used a pirated copy of Word from the age of 20 to 33. My copy of early Photoshop is still on some random computers in North Carolina. My current iPod looks something like this:

50% CDs I owned and ripped to the iPod
25% songs downloaded from Napster in 2001 that I already owned at some point in my history
10% bought from the iTunes store fair and square
5% downloaded illegally, and were also tunes I'd never owned, and thus I feel somewhat guilty

Scotty and I believe that you should buy a song ONCE in your life, and thus you own the Intellectual Rights for That Song's Happiness in Perpetuity. You would only pay for the physical upgrades. For example:

- in 1977, I buy the 45 rpm single of "Free to Be, You and Me"
- in 1984, I buy the CD of the song, but only pay for the plastic and pressing
- in 2004, I download the song from iTunes, but only pay the pennies of overhead that it took to store that 3.5MB of memory.

I saw this because I have now bought ELO's "Mr Blue Sky" about 8 times since 1977. And those guys have enough of my money.

carolingian empire

7/6/04

There are plenty of better places to discuss Kerry's choice of John Edwards as the vice-presidential running mate, but I just have to give some ups to a fellow North Carolinian who – god willing – will be one heart arrhythmia away from being the leader of this fine country.

Sure, he seems young, but the man is actually 50 years old – Clinton was 47 when he won in 1992, and running mate Al Gore was 44. Conservatives trying to play up his "lack of gravitas" will be poorly served by history, and indeed, the electorate.

Because, I think, Edwards embodies two things that are hard to pull off at the same time: he's obviously smart, and he's obviously likable. Clinton was the master at this, often dumbing himself down in order to get his message across, and Edwards - with his "gosh golly smile" - possesses one thing Kerry doesn't: the ability to make ornery blue-hairs on South Carolina's porches melt in his mouth.

Not to be overly sentimental, but I like the fact that Edwards can't promise any states for Kerry. It's a global move, simply to add energy and likeability to the ticket. Kerry/Gephardt would have been fine as a coffin making establishment, Kerry/Graham would have been a cynical grab for Florida – but Kerry/Edwards looks great on the shiny new jet, and makes Bush/Cheney look even more moronic, dark and cynical than they already are.

I'm almost afraid to have even a glimmer of hope in November, because if we lose this thing, it will be so crushing as to engender a hopeless mistrust of America's populace and probably a good 10-month depressive bender that Celexa, bless its heart, would be hard-pressed to quell.

So, for now, I'm still full of resentment and bereft of hope for this election. I promise you it's better this way.

sniveling

7/5/04

God, the world has no end of horrors when you hate Dook University like I do. To sum up: the Los Angeles Lakers (a team I've despised since the mid-80s) recently lost their Zen master Phil Jackson, and desperately needed a coach. Because Kobe Bryant constantly reads Duke's website (commonly known as espn.com), he decided that Koach K was going to come in and save their program.

Since the Lakers are in Los Angeles, and thus have no sense of restraint or decency, they sweetened the deal by offering him 8 MILLION DOLLARS OVER FIVE YEARS and then gave him 5% OF THE TEAM and PROMISED TO CALL HIM "PRESIDENT."

Koach K then rattled as many pots and pans as he could, to make sure every human in the sports world knew he'd been offered, then let it simmer over the Fourth of July weekend, making all sportswriters and basketball fans spin themselves into a furious froth while they debated "will he or won't he?"

Of course he was NEVER going to take the job. He's got as much money as he wants, and unless you're UNC's Larry Brown, it's basically impossible to succeed at both college and pro ball. His court-slapping "five fingers make a fist" nonsense would have been laughed out of Shaq-less Tinseltown after the first losing season.

No, what this was really about was EGO and WINNING AT ALL COSTS. By "taking the high road" and staying with the college game, he set Dook up to look like some utopian fantasy that couldn't be besmirched by LA's Faustian offer. After this fiasco, he can also introduce himself to each recruit as "the guy who said 'no' to the Lakers," and use it as a recruiting ploy to hoodwink unsuspecting high school ballers to drink the Kool-Aid they're serving over there in Durham.

It's the ego part that is most reprehensible. Why else take a long vacation weekend to weigh your options? He knew that cnnsi.com and espn and every other sports media outlet would be spending all day gushing over him, laying down their coats so he could walk over puddles, and massaging his metaphorical grundle while they administered sloppy fellatio.

You know how to switch jobs in the real world? Let me tell you. You make a phone call and say, "Hey. Here's the deal. We'd like you to come work for us. Here's the money. Take a few days. Oh, and can you just keep this between us?"

I know this because Carolina was similarly burned during the Dean-Gut-Roy-Matt fiasco of 2001, when all of our dirty laundry was hung out to dry in front of everybody. You know who learned from this lesson? Our beloved coach Roy Williams.

Because they offered him the Laker job as well. He politely said no thanks, and DIDN'T PUBLICIZE IT.

That's class. That's how real people, adults, do things. That's the difference between us and those neurasthenic weenies in Durham. Bullocks to Koach K and his tribe of asswits. I'm glad he's staying. I'm going to enjoy kicking his ass for the next ten seasons.

a brick in the small of the back

7/1/04

When I was in grade school, I used to get so mad at my surroundings that I would lapse into what my family called the "poisoned squirrel dance," where I would turn into a Cuisinart of bursted blood vessels and wail at the depths of my lungs. At school, the vicious taunting and the constant threat of physical harm turned me into a seething guttersnipe, possessing a mouth so foul that I was ending up in the principal's office for word choice alone.

Here's the thing about being young in the 1970s, before anyone gave a shit about child psychology: when you were bullied, BOTH of you got into trouble. The bully would be punished for bullying, and YOU would be punished for reacting. Pretty soon, you'd develop an "inmate psychology," and though the bully still beat the shit out of you on the way home from school, you and he were actually becoming quite similar.

I thought school was supposed to be miserable, which is why I didn't do very well. I never got good grades, so I continued that habit clear into the University of North Carolina (actually, I aced 11th grade, which is the only year college admissions people care about). When I was young, I believed that I absolutely HAD to be a bad person, because there was no other explanation for the way I was treated.

My parents did the best they could, but they were handed limited resources. There were no real anti-depressants, and the guidance counselors were sweet, but useless. Thank god that the '70s provided at least a modicum of self-awareness; I don't think I could have survived grade school in 1956.

I mention all this because I saw my psychopharmacologist today, who asked a lot of questions about my experiences at school, and I have to admit: I feel a lot of retroactive relief at understanding that I had an untreated disease when I was a kid. Things fall into place when I can look at it through that prism.

Sure, people abuse that notion all the time. They tell themselves they had A.D.D. or they were dyslexic, or bipolar, or something that makes them feel special in absentia. Worse yet are the folks who glom onto their chosen disease as if it was the only buoy keeping them afloat in a sea of unanswered questions.

But just hearing the words: "you had an untreated disease" – I dunno, it makes me understand why I was so riddled with anxiety, why long summer afternoons filled me with dread, why Sept. 11 destroyed me so personally, why I engage in magical thinking and obsessive-compulsive behavior even now. It won't take me back in time to kick my art teacher Mr. Hyder in the nuts for embarrassing me in front of everybody when I messed up the engraving ink, but it's the next best thing.