xtcian

heart-shaped diary with a lock

2/28/05

After nearly three years of trying, we finally broke bread tonight with oft-commenter Oliver and his significant Sophie at Pepper's Pizza tonight, and we discussed, among other things, the role this blog has played in my life over the last insane years. I've come to realize that I'm pretty lucky when it comes to disclosure; I could give a fuck what anyone thinks of me via this online journal, and that includes future employers. My rationale is that if they don't want to hire me because of something on this site, it probably wasn't going to work out anyway.

There might come a day when I'll no longer be able to maintain a blog for media/legal reasons, like my friend Dan, who works for a huge entertainment mogul and is thus disallowed to share his opinions on the Web in any incarnation. But until then, I'll keep writing about poop and farts and Celexa and all the other things that will totally ruin my chances for a strong Senate run in 2008.

Funny how so many people still have no idea what a blog is. Even if you do, there are so many kinds of blogs that it beggars description. Very few people have the luxury I do of being honest, as there is no boss around to fire me, and I stopped being self-conscious of my goofy pictures at some point in 1987.

Those who can't show themselves yet need a place to vent are nicely represented by The Rude Pundit, as well as someone you know quite well and even someone else you might know.

Another kind of blog is best exemplified by our friend Peter, who doesn't approach each blog with the Here's Where I Put My Big Thoughts pretense that I do, but is fabulously entertaining all the same. For instance, I have trouble differentiating between my computer icons too, but I just never thought anyone else was as annoyed by it.

Blogs on specific topics are nice too, like our girl Quinn Cummings (yes, THAT Quinn) and Mac Rogers, who discuss parenting and playwrighting, respectively. If you want some serious histrionics on theater, look no further than my brother Sean's blog, who can rant the chrome off a trailer hitch (by the way, I also heartily recommend Michelle and Kent's blogs too, for vastly different styles).

Now, besides crowd-favorite-commenter Caren and her blog that mentions "woke up, put on clothes, went to work"™ every day, I think the best blog on the internet belongs to my 15-year-old nephew Lucas, who may have the most honest, pure journal ever.

I mean, this is someone whose entire post says "I hate the name 'Morgan'. I'm sorry anyone who is named that." And gets 17 comments! His group of friends on that blog is quick, supportive, and effusive. The blog's name is "Concerned (but Powerless)", which sums up the paradox of this particular brand of teen.

I do wonder if the prolific internetting of these kids is leading to their somewhat flat-affect of real-live interaction, and god knows what will happen to them if the power ever goes out, but fuck, I love reading that blog. It's like intercepting a cascade of passed notes in biology class.

I'd like to thank my publicist

2/27/05

I suppose our screening of the rough cut of The Pink House and the Oscar ceremony this weekend pretty much sums up the spectrum of film entertainment - an unfinished DV feature on one hand, and the completed product of 1.7 billion dollars on the other - but we had reason to be satisfied.

It had been a long time since I'd seen the movie all the way through, and occasionally I forgot I'd written it; I could just enjoy the goings-on as if I'd wandered into the screening. An excellent problem (brought up by long-time commenter Oliver, who was there) is that we were going for a Baz Luhrmann-like bizarre landscape without having finished the movie, which can make all of our weird choices and frantic colors seem like, um, "bad moviemaking" if you're not careful.

I trust we made the audience understood that "The Pink House" was merely a work in progress, and they returned the favor by laughing at a lot of scenes that I'd forgotten were funny. I have always said that I will pay a dollar for each good laugh in a movie; thus, if I've laughed seven times in North Carolina (ten times in New York City), I'll have gotten my money's worth. I'd say there were about 12 good ones on Friday night, so we might even be able to show the movie in London or Oslo one day.

Someone who is already showing his movies in Oslo and London is the awesome Jim Taylor, who, along with Alexander Payne, won the Oscar for "Sideways" last night. It couldn't have happened to a nicer pair of guys, although we're wondering how crazy it will now make their lives. Awesome to see somebody you actually know and respect holding the gold statuette.

And Chris Rock? I thought he comported himself decently, but I just don't know if he is the right bundle of energy for something as stuffy and 7-second-delayed as the Oscar show. His material about "if you can't get the star, wait" was nonsensical, and he probably deserved Sean Penn's scolding re: Jude Law. I think Law is far too decent an actor to be a punchline. And Rock's joke about Salma Hayek and Penelope Cruz's tits wouldn't have been funny in my middle school soccer locker room.

Still, he remained solid, and god knows the show desperately needs some piss and vinegar. There's something about American culture, after Nipplegate 2004™ and the desperate gnashing of teeth "about our children®!!!! " that is so pre-chewed and boring that it's making me want to surf Russian amputee porn just to get some taste back in my mouth.

Right.

*ahem* Time to surf!

rain nor sleet can stay this courier

2/24/05

Wow, that may have been the most miserable drive I've ever taken from New York to North Carolina. Except for that one time when I was totally in love with that girl Mauri and I had no idea if she liked me or not and there was a rumor that my suitemate had told her something unsavory about me. You remember that trip?

Anyway, the sleet was blinding and pounding us all 500 miles, and I think Chopin accidentally sat in his own poop in Delaware, making the whole experience a neverending feast for the eyes, ears and parasympathetic nervous system.

To answer all the queries both here and on email, yes, we are going to show the roughest of rough cuts of the Pink House movie tonight, Friday, at 7pm on the UNC Campus, Carroll 111. If you plan to attend, get ready for the disclaimer of your life, because this movie is as unfinished as Schubert's 8th Symphony.

The 8th Symphony has some very beautiful parts, as does "The Pink House," but we need at least one giant fix of music, sound and picture before we can let it blossom in good faith. Yes, yes, we know. We finished shooting in 2003, but these things take an inordinate amount of time for a project this ambitious - and as longtime readers of the blog will know, we suffered at the hands of a pathological creature that set us back horribly. I will tell that story in class on Tuesday if it seems appropriate.

If you go, try and see it as it will be. Let my disclaimers wash over you like a warm balm.

In the meantime, how about some pictures of the glorious New Jersey Turnpike in the rectal-crack of winter?

massive truck explosion and fire

I can understand bullet holes in an Army jeep, but a white Chevy Suburban with a kiddie carseat? Yay Turnpike!

I accidentally took this picture while eating Sour Gummi Worms, but I think it captures the dreariness of the Turnpike in February. Christ, can spring fucking come already?!?

set the frigate's royals

2/23/05

Due to - um, *cough, cough* - a "scheduling mishap" on my part, Chopin the Dog and I got an excruciatingly late start on our road trip to Chapel Hill. This picture of us was taken on long exposure at 1am at the farm tonight, with naught but the Full Snow Moon to light our way (click image for bigger).

Fortunately, that full moon is bright as shit. When you're alone upstate, with nobody within fifteen miles, with the temperature hovering around 10 degrees, it's easy to take solace in the protection a full moon can give.

I will try to make it to Delaware tonight, as we are showing Tessa's film Five Wives tomorrow to an enrapt class at UNC, followed by a very rough cut of the Pink House movie this weekend.

Madness, you say? Starting a trip at 1am? Not when you have the ENTIRE "MASTER AND COMMANDER" SERIES ON YOUR IPOD. Mainsails and great guns, ho!

XX-XY

2/22/05

China tends to scare the shit out of me, at least in some future incarnation - they seem dormant enough now, but you get the sense that all they need is some whacked-out Messianic leader to throw the entire human race into a fantastic tailspin.

One such abject, stupid, cruel act of the Chinese is their preference for boy babies. Through ultrasounds and abortions, they have 129 boys for every 100 girls in that country, stemming from some ancient ideas about boys carrying the family name, being able to support the parents, and some other such shit. For second kids (and the poorer families), the rate is more like 147 males to every 100 females. Girls that do make it to their birthday can find themselves summarily drowned in the hopes of better luck next time.

Anybody with a long view of history knows how violent nature reacts to any manmade meddling in a perfectly good game of chance. Pack any country full of too many people and nature will invent a disease that will kill off exactly the right number. In this case, China is going to murder itself with testosterone.

What do you think will happen when all of these boys come of age with no chance of love, tenderness or redemption in their lives? In China itself, they will rove the country in lawless packs, living by their own rules, perpetuating a crime wave that will rival the Old American West (itself a victim of too few females in the population).

Outside the country, young Chinese men will roam other countries looking for a way to couple - and, I predict, will become the most unpopular archetypical suitor in the history of social demographics. The future will have a name for these Chinese men, something that will spawn a bestselling humor book in the year 2015 or so. I won't even venture a guess.

Why do I bring this up? Many of you know that Tessa and I decided not to know the gender of our baby until it was born. This, of course, was met with the usual warm smiles of "how quaint" and an appreciation for how Old Skool we were being. Mostly, I didn't want to know because I didn't want to give this unborn baby a gender, a name and a personality before it had a chance to offer its own.

So we got to the eighth month without figuring it out. And when we switched doctors to Brooklyn, we were given our "chart," which showed the results of the amnio, the ultrasounds and other cool stuff. I knew to leave the manila envelope closed, but the other night, my delightfully-overfunctioning wife pored through the details of our baby's chart. Not realizing, of course, that it might be fairly easy to "stumble" across the sex of our baby whilst doing so.

In her defense, we were so adamant about not knowing gender that it seemed like it wouldn't be in those pages anyway. She even read the results of the amnio three times before she realized she was looking straight at the gender of our baby. Apparently, she dropped the chart on the living room floor, realizing what she had just done.

Sheepishly, she came up to our bedroom, and told me the whole story. She asked me: did I want to know what we were going to have? I reckoned that it made our relationship bizarrely unequal not to, and so she told me.

The Chinese may be having billions and billions of boys, but let's just say that in our tiny little corner of the world, we are bucking the trend. Get ready for our little girl.

SPF negative-25

2/21/05

A few weeks ago, I looked at a calendar of our impending late winter and spring and realized that we had ONLY THREE DAYS FREE between then and the 18th birthday of our future child. Now, Tessa and I have never taken a real vacation. We did have a little honeymoon jaunt in 2003 up to Prince Edward Island, but our time was compressed as we had to get back to another wedding just a few days later.

I have oft heard of this place called "The Caribbean" and the islands known as "The Bahamas" therein. I never thought I'd actually go, because people with my lack of melanin don't enjoy macadamia-flavored full-body oil. But those three days on the calendar opened up its maw, three boxes all screaming "save yourself, you bastard!"

So I found an excessively cheap fare from Newark, and surprised Tessa with our First True Cheesy American Vacation to the Islands. New Yorkers and Bostonians: I can't recommend this jaunt more. It's 2 1/2 hours by plane non-stop, and in mid-February, you can go from this:

to this:

I didn't know oceans came in that shade of blue. On the hotel balcony, I just stared at it, not quite believing this was a color nature allowed. It seemed almost synthetic, but it was deliciously real. For her part, the usually-over-functioning Tessa slipped into the warmth of the Bahamas like a favorite T-shirt. Or at least a T-shirt that has the belly stretched out to eight months pregnant.

I'd seen a few people parasailing at the Outer Banks, and it seemed a little Excessive and Foolish, but this time I decided to drop my smug snobbery and hoist my preggers wife into the atmosphere. Why is it that I dislike flying in airplanes so much, but will gladly tether my person to a few straps and a canvas balloon 200 feet over a rocky ocean?

The relationship between Tessa and me has always thrived on intellect, fast dialogue and being unafraid to think about anything too much. But high above the teal sea, I was able to relax into a perfect dream state with my gorgeous mate, suspended in air over a huge body of water, with the baby inside her suspended in water over an ocean of air.

purple mountains majesty

2/20/05

Today's blog is canceled to honor three presidents for President's Day:

George Washington, who actually did live up to the hype

James K. Polk, our Carolina alum who fulfilled every campaign promise and made California possible

and James Buchanan, who was GAY GAY GAY!!!

Ain't Got Time To Die

This is Sean. My blogs are usually just plain out rants, shit-talking fast food menus, making fun of movies, and generally being an ass for kicks. I hope it's okay if I drift from that just for tonight.

Although a large part of my social life, and Ian's for that matter, are the people who went to the University of North Carolina with us, the fact is that I didn't get there until I was well into my twenties. Before going there, I was a public high school drop out that was taking advantage of the incredible Junior College system in California. I was living in South El Monte, which, for those of you unfamiliar with Los Angeles geography, was just north and east of "South Central".

I was the only guy in my neighborhood who had no involvement whatsoever with the drug trade, so I was adopted by my neighbors like an exotic pet. I was this goofy white kid that spent hours singing show tunes in his house and had friends over who like to play Dungeons and Dragons well past adolescence. I had a run down two story townhouse that I payed $450 a month for. The laundry machines cost a quarter, and they were outside under a lean-to.

Most of my friends were other public school flunkies, and some of us had decided that, instead of going to Ju-Co, we would join the military. I was heavily recruited. I think the military must have known I was failing out of school, because they thought I was a prime candidate for some toughening up. In my case, this didn't happen, but I did have some friends who went that route. This was 1989-1990.

When Iraq One broke out, the guys I knew were really excited to go but I was terrified. It turned out that no-one I knew ended up fighting in Iraq One, but there was still this impending sense that they wanted to go, they wanted to kick Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. I was ambivalent, but my extended family, (aunts and uncles, not the lefties that post on this blog) were thrilled, convinced that Hussein was our generation's Hitler.

The military gave my friends a sense of purpose that they were lacking. These men were not animals, not violent men. These guys weren't the types of people who wanted to shoot other people. These were strong smart men with a lack of direction and a poetic dedication to their country. I teased them, as I'm sure anyone who knows me can imagine, for their belief in "America", for their dedication to Bush I, for their willingness to run a 10k wearing 150 pounds of equipment just to prove they could.

This morning, I was watching the morning shows, and they did a story on a young man who was shot in the stomach trying to save a fellow soldier. He was willing to give up his life for his fellow man, for his friend, and it is a miracle that he has lived. He's been in the hospital longer than any other soldier in this war. The administration found out about his heroics, and he was featured on all the morning shows this morning.

I mean, I know how that works, you don't get on the morning shows unless you have a publicist, and you don't have a publicist unless you have a story, and someone's getting that story out. And this kid saved a life by giving up his own, no matter how you slice it, he is a hero.

I was undecided about this war, and I did a lot of research during the build-up. I believed that Hussein had the ability to traffic in arms, and I knew he was capable of killing his own people in large numbers. I listened carefully to the case made before the war and was frustrated with my knee-jerk liberal friends who dismissed the information as lies. How could people like Colin Powell *lie* to the Congress? These weren't crazies saying this stuff, this was Colin Powell, these were rational smart people who said the war was necessary.

I was lied to, and I believed it because I couldn't believe that so much lying was possible. The level of dishonesty was astonishing. When people like John Kerry voted for the war, and then against it, they were voting first on a lie and then on the truth. My knee-jerk liberal friends are still jerks, but this war has no justification, and they were right.

So, when I say I support the soldiers but do not support the war, it means something different than you might think. It's the junior college dudes, the ROTC scholarship guys, the blue collar underacheivers who are fighting this war, and those are my friends. We're all in our thirties now, none of them is in the military, but the completely random luck of my birth year doesn't remove me from the friends I would have had. Those friends who conflated their sense of honor with their ache for a life rich with poetry, and found meaning in being a soldier equal to the meaning I found being an artist, who are fighting and dying for the lies this administration told.

This morning, the father of that wounded soldier started to cry on TV and said, "I wish he had gone to college." And that's the worst thing. For many of us, the military is a chance at being a person with dignity, with a paycheck, with a life. And there is a war going on, a war between, on one side, zealotry and fear and, one the other, true democracy and freedom. But those zealots are in Darfur, in Africa, in Iran and Saudi Arabia, in North Korea. Our soldiers should be dying for this cause, but not in Iraq. And fathers, who should be proud, are wishing their sons were sitting this one out.

A soldier has to march into the face of an enemy, he has to put his life down for his country, that's part of the deal. The military is not a works program, it isn't there to provide jobs or welfare for young poor men and women, they are there to serve the country, the country is not there to serve them. The fact that it is an option for building character is one of the benefits to the soldier, the life you are willing to lay down is the benefit for the country.

But dying for your country, or laying your life down and surviving by a miracle, in a capricious struggle built on a foundation of lies devalues the soldiers. They shouldn't ask the questions, they shouldn't speak out, if they did they would be bad soldiers, they have to have blind dedication to their superiors and they have to be willing to give the ultimate sacrifice willingly and free of second guesses. But we can ask the questions. We can demand that the conversation not end with this election in Iraq. And we have to hold this administration accountable for sending our friends needlessly into harm's way.

books fall open

I've been looking all over the internet for a poster that used to hang in my junior high library. It was a picture of Sting, from The Police, holding a book and looking as utterly delicious as he was before he got all tantricly retarded. Back when he could sing higher than I could, when the shifting shadows on his face in the "Every Breath You Take" video were enough to send my 11-year-old heart into a tailspin. Sting was dreamy, a musician and an intellectual, and I remember looking up his lyrics in the dictionary and still having no idea what they meant ("they subjugate the meek, but it's the rhetoric of failure").

Michelle here, by the way.

Anyway, I can't find the poster. But I've been thinking about it all day. Even back when I was a ridiculous pre-teen wanna-be socialite, more concerned with my fluorescent socks matching my top than I was about any world affairs, I still spent plenty of time in the library. I hold a deep affection for libraries still, and sometimes I wish I were an academic just so I had good reason to sit on a high-backed chair for hours, surrounded by my "research", glasses perched on my head, fellow academics on all sides, accompanied by hushed voices and the smell of old books. Alas, instead, I'm a carny.

I've been thinking about that poster, and about my love of books, and how tied my love of books is to my love of music and all the arts. I find the same solace in practice rooms and on stage as I do in the library. I love reading a good book almost as much as I love kicking ass singing a Cole Porter song. I'm a good reader, and a good singer, and I don't know how much of that is in my DNA and how much was cultivated, but I'm awfully glad I had the chance to explore both books and music when I was growing up.

I now make my living solely through the arts. I'm the director of an arts non-profit, and I'm singing and writing with some degree of regularity for extra cash on the side. And like so many things in my life, I'm astounded every day by how little I know about art, and I'm doubly astounded by how pathetic support for the arts is in this country. I'm going to use my little home as an example. My community has three theatre companies- only three. One is an Equity company, another is dedicated to Shakespeare, and the third is a community theatre. All three of them are folding this year. Not due to lack of talent, lack of drive, or lack of resources in this valley, but quite simply because none of them can afford to rent space to perform. The local venues have all jacked up their prices in order to attempt to get in the black, and there is no community center, no subsidized performing space for the companies to use.

Why should you care? Because this is happening all over the country. And the thing is, these companies also have educational outreach programs to bring arts education into the schools, where arts got the axe many years ago. Without these companies, there are fewer arts instructors, which means kids don't get exposure to the arts. I'm not going to get preachy, I'm just going to lay out some proven stats: when children are exposed to arts education, they learn teamwork, they develop a sense of individuality, they gain confidence, and- guess what- they do much better in their core disciplines. So when a kid puts a paintbrush to paper, or sings a song, somehow, that translates into better arithmetic scores, better understanding of Language Arts, better SAT scores and a fuller and more prosperous life!

Okay, so maybe I don't know about that last part. But here in northern California, one of the wealthiest spots in the known world, school closings are on the news literally every other week. Schools are closing because they don't have enough money to stay open. When they try to save themselves, first they cut art, then the cut the library- the LIBRARY- and then they move on to cutting bus services, and on from there.

Umm, what good is a school with no library? Why is California in such a terrible way? And what the hell would I have done with my life if, as a kid, I had no books and no music? Every artist I know remembers the first time they were on stage, or the first time they put pen or brush to paper and were satisfied with the result. It's when we were kids. And we do this because we are simply unable to do anything else. I have to wonder how many kids, who are meant to be artists, are going to grow up and live their whole lives with the sinking feeling that they never found their calling because no one ever put a paint brush in their hand, or gave them a song to sing or play.

I’ve been thinking. . .

The Mom here. . .

My #4 son Sean, Ian’s younger brother, has worked with me for some years now, collaborating on music projects. He’s the best vocal director I ever worked with (as well as the best actor I know), and he can make almost anyone sing better than they know how. We don’t always agree on everything that happens in the process of creating a project, but one thing we definitely agree on: Our least favorite thing to hear from someone who has hired us “It doesn’t have to be THAT good.”

Often it’s said because making it less than THAT good will save a little money, but even worse, it is sometimes when we are doing recordings or songs or performances for kids. Kids, some people figure, really don’t know the difference, and, well, it just doesn’t have to be THAT good.

Arrrrggghhh. How will kids ever know what is good or challenging or exciting or inspiring or thought provoking if they are constantly fed a diet of artistic fast food? I mean, a Big Mac will make you not hungry any more, but is it a) good for you or b) as tasty as a really well cooked, carefully crafted meal? It’s been my personal credo that any piece of work you create should have the same high standard as any other, and the best you can do given your particular set of gifts. Whether I’m writing a string quartet or a 12-bar song for second graders, I can’t do it unless the point is to make it as fine a piece of work as I can.

Here’s the thing: It really does make a difference whether it’s THAT good or not, even when the only one knowing the difference is you yourself, about your own work. And I have to believe that those who are watching or listening know the difference, too, if they are paying attention at all.

Last night we watched a rerun of The West Wing, one of the terrific Sorkin-era episodes. The layers of drama were balanced and focused, and the dialog crackled with intelligence, wit, and even (considering the chemicals in Sorkin’s body at the time) wisdom. Watching the shows post-Sorkin, I find them acceptable, especially in comparison to most of the dreck on TV, but going back to a Sorkin episode makes me realize that I want the current show to be THAT good. Sorkin is a genius, and the merely talented who have taken his place just don’t get there. Anyway, I’ve been thinking. . .

What makes a great creative artist? What makes that artist’s work leap up past the “bar” that has been set for most of us. I think that beyond the talent, which is a given, it’s caring whether the result is THAT good, no matter what the venue, audience, purpose, or set of tribulations.

The incomparable Judi Dench never utters a line that isn’t so much better than everything around her that I wonder people even want to play a scene with her. She can play James Bond’s boss, a really silly part, and convince you that she is utterly authentic. She can create a comic, tragic, or regal figure with perfect ease, and make the witnessing of it a joy and a revelation. She won an Oscar in a part that gave her almost zero screen time, for heaven’s sake. Awesome.

Or Beethoven. When I pack for the desert Island, the one piece of essential music I would take is the second movement of his seventh symphony (written when the poor devil was deaf as a post). With the simplest of means as a backdrop… a heartbeat rhythm of “long – short short” beats that permeate the piece, he builds a simple melodic/harmonic riff into a rhapsodic, and finally passionate outburst that nearly took my skin off the first time I heard it. And it never grows old. It is not merely inspired, but so carefully, masterfully crafted and shaped and built that it amazes and humbles me every time I hear it. Sublime

Sean writes about Arthur Miller in his blog more capably than I possibly could, so I won’t labor it here. Except to say: if ever a play existed on multiple levels, working perfectly whether you were aware of the other implications or not, consider “The Crucible.” Beyond good, beyond well-crafted, enduring beyond the particular allegory Miller intended. Pure brilliance

And Shakespeare, whose work is still with us after all these centuries. Probably because even with the mysteries surrounding the author and the “authentic” versions of the plays, there is enough stuff that survives to make his work timeless and evergreen. The words, the words… beyond music. And just THAT much more eloquent than mere drama needs to be. Orlando complains to Ganymede that he is dying for the love of Rosalind. Wise Ganymede's reply is not, “You’ll get over it” or “You’ll live” but “Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them….but not for love.” Delicious.

Then there’s Michelangelo. His “old Pieta” in the small museum behind the Duomo in Florence, is not his best known sculpture. But working with a flawed block of marble, that required his re-thinking the group of figures when he was part way finished with it, he created a work of such aching melancholy and devotion that to see it is to understand grief, old age, all-encompassing love, grace, and even agony, again on many levels. Worth looking for next time you are in Florence...

Now, Robert Frost was no Michelangelo or Shakespeare or Beethoven, but his stuff is THAT good. Again, on so many levels. Frost’s poetry is evocative and sylish, but the workmanship is admirable. “Stopping by Woods” is in a folded-into-itself form that is easy to miss, because the imagery is so strong. Enjoying the wintry, bleak images, admiring the word-play, and then finding the “AABA BBCB CCDC DD ad ad” form in that poem taught me more about form, shape, color, and symmetry/asymmetry in composition than years of graduate music theory.

Sorry to wax so pedantic, in a venue where my offspring are so constantly amusing, but well, I’ve been thinkin’….

I’m perfectly aware that I will never match Beethoven or any of those other luminous artists. I will be content to know that even though my music and words and images may never leap that genius bar, I will never stop doing my best to make anything I create THAT good.

V-Day or ...

This is Kent.

I'm not really the sentimental type, or if I am I generally don't share it with random strangers, but, Valentine's Day is a day reserved for sentiment. That and sorting out Hallmark's bottom line for the quarter.

I was thinking today about my marriage to Melissa, which will have endured for 24 years at the end of May. That's a really long time in marriage years -- most people don't make it that long. It's a duration of marriage beyond a lot of people's conception. I certainly have friends my age who have been divorced more than once during that period. Of course, I have friends who died of heart attacks, cancer, AIDs, too. Shit happens.

So I guess it's something to be proud of, on some level. I don't really feel like the quality of my work on the project has been extraordinary, but I've sure done a lot of it. I continue to love and admire Melissa above all other women, and we've mostly made our peace with each other's idiosyncracies. But in a lot of ways, the way you get to 24 years in a marriage comes down to a negative -- you don't break up, even when you feel like it.

Of course my romantic history can be summarized thusly -- meeting Melissa when I was 17, having a few random collisions with other women that never amounted to much, starting to go out with her when I was 19, and getting married 5 years later. I can honestly say that I have absolutely no experience with breaking up with anyone. So if it seemed like the only course of action, I'd have to google the subject for pointers on how it's done.

We've had our crises, and arguments, and blowups, and the going is rough from time to time, but it's never gotten to the point of googling yet. Melissa has been very patient with me, and when she's bugging me, I figure it's my problem, because when it comes to doing the right thing with and to other people, she's the brains in this operation.

In the recent movie "In Good Company" the young guy asks the older guy how he's stayed married so long, and he says "pick the right person to be in the foxhole with, and when you're out of the foxhole, keep your dick in your pants." That sounds about right.

None of the above sounds very romantic, but I think most romanticism is hooey. Sure your brain makes some kickass chemicals when you first get together with someone, but it wears off. I think a lot of people go from relationship to relationship because they miss the buzz. It's really a whole nother thing when you just, like, keep doing it for the long haul. You're a family, with all that implies. No paradise, but something good and true, and as constant as anything in this world can be.

Now I'd never encourage anyone to stay in an abusive or dishonest relationship. But if you're just unhappy, or discontented, in a relationship with someone who is an good person, you owe it to yourself to maybe stick it out and try and get past those feelings. After a while, like, say 20 years, it starts to get easier. And then you've done something that most people find hard. Like running a marathon, only with no shin splints.

So maybe I'm a little proud of us.

Oh, yeah, a great Valentine's Day!

Steve, here, wondering how Ian could have the outright gall to ask his single older brother to blog for him while he whisks his smiling blonde bride off on a Valentine's fling to sunshine and soothing surf. What was he thinking?! Yeah, Ian, I'll be thinking of you and Tessa Monday night when I'm sitting alone in my room lit only by the pale glow of computer monitors.

Ah, well, I'll do my best. Here are a few things that caught my interest lately.

First, I want to say that I think Bob Parsons is an extremely cool dude. His company is a great place to get your domain name, putting to shame the vast wasteland of discount domain registrars. But to tweak the nose of FCC on their own turf, abetted by the Fox network, and then to get censored by the National Football League? He's my hero!

Hey, Bob, I know what it's like to be squashed by the NFL: In their zeal to suck the last possible sou from their events, the NFL has banned me from flying anywhere near Oakland on game days, using a trumped-up terror charge as justification. Bob, thanks for spending millions to make a point. How cool that you made Fox waste a Super Bowl ad minute on a Simpsons promo!

Also in the vein of officials run amok, following up on Sean's illegal photos of the New York subway system, I see that even our San Francisco Muni cops are drinking the faux-security coolaid, hassling a freelance photographer for shooting the city's transit system. Friends, put your illegal photos on your blog, especially when some tin-pot security guard tells you not to.

Finally, a bit more subtle story: Philly wants to give all its citizens wireless broadband, but the phone companies are against it, because it'd cut into their cozy monopoly. Fortunately, Philadelphia has a cool, no-nonense CIO who won't tolerate the phone companies' disinformation campaign for a minute.

Look, it's simple: The network soon will blanket us like the electric grid and running water. But the network doesn't require big monopoly utilities. Get informed, resist the entrenched powers, and you'll get your wireless-everywhere, too-cheap-to-meter inkernet that much sooner!

meta-morpheus

2/10/05

The Miracle of the Internet, Part XVIII

First off, go here and start typing names at top left. That's two hours of your life gone, right there. This is one of those things that you find as a prospective parent and think "shit, they didn't have ANYTHING like this in 1887!"

Secondly, go here and upload a picture of yourself. This, too, is something they didn't have in 1887, but you can make it look like they did - it's the best facial transformer I've ever seen.

You can make yourself a different race, like Tessa as an East Asian:

Or you can do bizarre things like "feminize" yourself, like I did here:

But the best part is making yourself the portrait of a famous painter. Here's both Tessa and me as seen by Modigliani:

Here's Tessa as seen by Alphonse Mucha:

And I quite like this one of me by a Virtual El Greco™:

Oh internet. How I love you so!

an ineffectual river in Egypt

2/9/05

I like cheese. I sure do like cheese. Cheese is almost always the best thing about any meal.

I probably like cheddar cheese the best. Monterey Jack is good too, and there's always Dill Havarti. I think Parmesan Cheese sometimes smells like barf.

They shouldn't be allowed to call American Cheese a cheese. It's more like a petroleum by-product. They should call it a cheese-like substance.

I like goat cheese too. And Camembert. And the occasional Stinky Bishop. I don't like Swiss cheese, but a slice of Gruyere on top of French Onion Soup sure is nice. Yep, I guess you could say I like cheese a whole lot.

FUCK.

It's only a "rivalry" if both teams occasionally win. What part of "taking it up the ass for eight years" constitutes a rivalry? I'm going to take a brick of Red Leicester and a half-wheel of Colby, and sit in the corner until I fucking feel better.

we feast tonight

2/8/05

Say you don't like sports. Lots of people don't. In any given contest, they don't really care who wins one way or another, I know some of these people, and some of them even went to UNC. They look upon these sporting events as curiosities because they don't need it like the rest of us do. They has evolved past the point where a sport can fulfill the instinctual desire for tribalism and a lust for hunting; we, however, have not.

If you think about it, basketball is hardly different from hunting. There is a goal, there is a pack of five young men dressed in the same garb trying to get at it, they must make decisions based on .7 seconds into the immediate future, and the swish of a basket is exactly as satisfying as the first bite of steak. Or does that not appeal?

Say you don't like sports. Say you got stuck at a Carolina-Duke game in 1974, when neither team was battling for first place in the conference. Say there was 17 seconds left, and UNC was down eight points, and you wanted to head for the exit, 'cuz this one was over.

Let's say this happened: North Carolina's Bobby Jones sinks two foul shots to cut the lead to six. Then John Kuester steals the inbounds ball and scores a layup to make it four. Jones steals another inbounds and the lead is two. The next play, North Carolina fouls Duke, who misses the free throw.

UNC is now on the opposite side of the court from their basket. Somehow, the ball ends up in the hands of Walter Davis – nicknamed "Sweet D" by Carolina fans – who dribbles it up to about half-court, and heaves a 35-foot shot. Let's say it banked in, because that's exactly what happened.

Folks who were at the game (at least 20,000 claim to have been there, even though Carmichael seats about 5,000) describe the pandemonium that erupted as one of the loudest burst of human voices in sports history. UNC went on to win the game in overtime, making an immediate legend out of Walter Davis, and cementing coach Dean Smith's voodoo. From then on, a Carolina game under Smith was never over until it was truly over.

The question is this: would Carolina have been able to pull off a game like 1974 against any other opponent? Could there be something else at work here, an edge given to players on both sides, an emotional charge that allows for the mathematical impossibility of actually giving 110 percent?

Could it be the silent rush of adrenaline that rescue-workers experience in times of trauma, the fight-or-flight hormones that kick in when one's livelihood is at stake, the perfect marriage of athletic alacrity and psychological intensity, forged together in an alchemy that produces the purest of all sport contests?

Say you don't like sports. You wouldn't be interested in any of this. In a way, I feel a little sad for you, because this much hunger, this much longing for brotherhood, this much hatred of your rival tribe reminds lesser-evolved folks like us that we are still quite alive.

as long as me, jerry and touche are here

2/7/05

My old friend Tanya said she wanted something akin to the old article I wrote about why I hate Dook University so much, but I dare say that it's hard for me to expound without resorting to expletives and a brow that has been furrowed since about 1997. I'm glad the internet exists, however, so that something I dashed off in 1990 can remain available to those incoming freshmen who were 4 years old (?!?!??!?!?) when it first ran.

I found myself at a dinner party on Saturday night with ten people, three of which had gone to Duke. One of their wives turned to me and said, "I've only heard the Duke perspective. Can you tell me why Carolina hates them so much?" As Lee and Suzanne will attest, it was a little like asking a ravenous mountain lion first dibs on a freshly-caught deer.

There's all sort of ways to go about such an endeavor, but I'd had three single-malt scotches by then, so I decided to go for the jugular. In the summer of 1988 or so, our center Scott Williams found out that his father had killed his mother and then turned the gun on himself. At the next UNC-Duke game in Durham, the "Cameron Crazies" shouted out "Orphan! Orphan!" That's really all you need to know.

Some people asked me to make a T-shirt for the Dook portion of the Roy Williams 2005 Carolina Revenge Tour, so I kept it really simple:

Click here if you'd like to get one in time for the home game. All proceeds go to the Wilson Library at UNC, where Tessa's great-great-grandfather took his tests. Rock on, mighty Heels!

i like my oatmeal lumpy

2/6/05

I hope you conservatives who were bored snotless at the Super Bowl and its commercials realize that you've just seen the future of American culture. Yes, thanks to your exhortations surrounding Nipplegate 2004™, we had a NFL Championship that began with a bunch of military hoo-hah that, to me, has no fucking place in professional sports, and then continued on to be the most mind-numbing parade of unfunny ads in the history of modern television.

Shit, even the game could barely keep us awake. Except for a never-shoulda-happened pass in the 4th quarter that briefly rekindled the hopes of Philly fans, it almost felt like the Patriots sleep-walked to the Lombardi trophy.

The nadir, for me, was the kiss-ass Budweiser commercial that featured a bunch of actors who were pretending to be military people coming home from Iraq, while the entire airport erupted in bathetic applause. I'm sorry, but since when does an entire platoon take a commercial flight home? And the dour "Thank You" at the end - I mean, I guess that shit shouldn't make me insane, but it does.

This whole Super Bowl experience was shrink-wrapped, scrubbed free of any life, sterilized beyond recognition, lockstep, Stepford, 1950s-era robotic automaton numbness at its most lobotomized. The only cool thing to be seen was a monkey photocopying his own butt, and a nice rendition of "Live and Let Die" by Paul McCartney.

I want my nipples back. I want to see someone moon the crowd without the exhortations of "MY GOD, WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN?!?!?!?!?!?" I want to see 1975-era Wimbledon streakers and people accidentally saying "fuck" during the post-game interview. I want to turn to the Super Bowl to see testosterone-laden mongrels beating the ever-living shit out of each other, and if I want to go to sleep, I'll take a fucking Benadryl, thank you very much.

anonymous call, a poison pen

2/3/05

I never forward emails - well, I forward all the ones that make fun of Duke University - but Tessa's best friend Jason just wrote a missive that I felt I needed to put on here. Jason happens to be a gay man who married his long-time partner Tim during that brief stretch of civility known as February 2004. In December, they adopted a baby they named Noah, and since then, the two of them have been juggling their jobs and the hair-losing craziness of raising an infant.

A few days ago, Jason sent out this email, and I wanted to share bits of it with you. Because of the fucked-up way the world works, a letter like this has intrinsic value coming from my blog, because, well, I'm not gay, I'm in a monogamous marriage with my wife, and I have absolutely nothing to gain from the defeat of any anti-gay legislation, other than the feeling this country may have a few good people left in it.

Here's his email:

I have spent a lot of time trying to express the situation we find ourselves in. Since Noah was born, this subject has become incredibly urgent for me.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and consider. It's a very serious matter for me and my family. Please think about it. And feel free to forward this letter.

ideas as opiates

2/2/05

I don't talk about it much here, but I am utterly helpless when coveting cool technology, and the new iPod Shuffle ("give chance a chance" - now THAT'S good copy) was no exception. The sub-$100 price barrier was so physiologically undeniable that I plonked down my money the second I read about it. I bought that motherfucker the way hungry kids grab Zagnut bars at the Walmart impulse-item rack, and I'm now making sweet, sweet love to it.

This is one of those items, like the iPod itself, that would have BLOWN OUR MINDS IN HIGH SCHOOL. If someone had walked into Norfolk Academy in 1985 with a music player the size of a stick of gum that played 240 songs, our eyeballs would have exploded. Shit, I don't even like 240 songs!

I'm remembering all the road trips I took with those TDK zip-bags full of cassettes, and Velcro folders crammed with CDs - and then you had to bring your Walkman and/or have a reliable tape deck AND fight with your friends as to which R.E.M. album you were going to sit through in the car. The iPod shuffle is something I'm still able to see with eyes from the early 1980s, which is why I'm so grateful to have made it into my mid-thirties.

Usually having two music players like the iPod and the Shuffle would seem redundant, but now that I own both, I feel myself creating an organic sense of aural hierarchy. Basically, with this much technology at your fingertips, your own brain becomes a radio station, and it beams out to whatever device best fills the need.

The iPod itself might become the classical music repository, as the song files are too large and un-navigable on a Shuffle. I'll also use the iPod to try out new albums and see which songs make the cut. Those that are deemed worthy of "heavy rotation" will get slipped onto the Shuffle, where they will spend the next few months bouncing around my hindbrain during workouts and dreadful trips on the subway. In essence, it's exactly the way Top 40 radio used to work, only I don't have to be held hostage to the moronic tastes of the American vox populi (or Casey Kasem).

Without a screen, the Shuffle becomes your aural Id. In determining which songs go on the little guy, I've held to the "nothing that's good for you" rule, meaning it has to be stuff that will put a glide in your stride and a dip in your hip and make you come on to the mothership. Nothing I think I ought to be listening to. As such, my Shuffle playlist will remain a closely guarded secret to those questioning my manhood.

I can also see the bulkier iPod becoming the main conduit for all my reading. As it is, I haven't actually "read" a book in a year, preferring instead audible.com - those who think that makes me a lightweight can suck it. Since I started downloading books, I've become better-read than I've been in the decade since school let out. Besides, doesn't all storytelling spring from the oral tradition? Long before papyrus and quills, bards were called around the campfire to sing songs of Roland to a rapt tribe. I'm kicking it old skool. Crucial!

*ahem* - I meant "Croosh!"

what is was, was blogging

2/1/05

When you work in the businesses I frequent - TV, movies, journalism, arc welding - you get awful sick of Ivy League schools being bandied about as a mark of quality. Look, I'm sure Harvard is just fine as a school, and I have plenty of friends from Princeton and Yale that seem to know their way around "Madame Bovary" without the Cliff Notes.

But I'll tell you right now that I am a TOTAL RACIST when it comes to schools, which means, succinctly, that I have an overwhelming preference for human beings that happened to go to the University of North Carolina. Go ahead and insert your "eye rolling," your "teeth gnashing" and even your "plaintive sighs" here right now, but I've been out of college for 15 years and I still have yet to meet a collective group of people with the kind of personality, raw intelligence, humor, preternatural skills and trustworthiness that was indigenous to our population.

Sure, there are individuals from other schools who merit our undying love and attention - UVA and NYU seem to have sprouted a bunch - but my heavens, the people we went to school with at UNC were (and continue to be) abject delights.

I'll show you how much of an asshole I am; I'm even a racist about which YEARS the UNC alums must come from. I'll put the graduating classes of 1986 through 1993 up there with any Algonquin Round Table, Les Six, or any movement of the last century. Include any decade of any Ivy League you want, too. Nothing comes close.

I'd give you a laundry list of people in movies, television, banking, chemistry, Olympic sports, the NBA - but it's late and I'll let you do the research for yourself.

me, Tessa and Lee Lee

Why do I bring this up? Well, we just had a visit from our very own Lee Anne Coggins, and we got to talking about the hundreds of people we had in common from the early years at Granville to her current stint at the Indy, and I left the conversation staggered, and feeling like I had to get back to work to live up to any promises.

When Tessa and I work in media, the second I hear someone is from Carolina, my heart melts. Sean and Jordana have basically stopped hiring anybody in their shows that didn't go to UNC - and when they do, that person generally ends up betraying them. I used to admonish them, to tell them to hire people outside our sphere to get butts in seats, but now I see they were right all along. Fuck the rest of the world, especially if you want to get something done.

When I worked on 13th-GEN with Neil and Bill, they prognosticated that our generation (born '61-'81) would be full of great artists, awesome novels and lead a revolution in film; we would be excellent raconteurs stemming from our wild childhoods and inbred cynicism.

Oh, how we have fucking failed them. Our generation was sidetracked by the early-90s depression, the money of the dot-com boom, and now the soul-sucking lockstep of the post-9/11 world. Since we have done nothing miraculous, or created any masterpieces, our generation has to find brilliance somewhere, and the only currency anyone's got is their affiliation with the Ivy League.

I'm here to say FUCK THAT. I went to a public university in the middle of the Piedmont of North Carolina, with a roommate that spilled his collection of spittle on my dorm rug. We had a drama department that barely knew we were alive, but we still managed to give the world Billy Crudup, Peyton Reed, Bill Martin and Laurel Holloman. We had a coach that played by all the rules, graduated 97% of his players, and still gave the world Michael Jordan, James Worthy, Antawn Jamison, Rasheed Wallace and Vince Carter. Guess what Sally Krawcheck, David Rees and James K. Polk have in common?

O, rising seniors, filling out your forms and cramming for the SATs! Don't be fooled by the siren song of the Ivy League! I know a place sautéed in vinegar, where you will fall in love, and secretly rule the world. Maybe you can aspire to be as fabulous as the great classes of 1986 through 1993. Come to the Southern Part of Heaven!

and FUCK DOOK!