xtcian

flutter by

10/30/08

Here's the thing: all the other butterfly costumes sucked and she said she wanted to be a butterfly. We've been to all the sites, we've been to eBay, etc, and all the outfits were chintzy and too small... so I took it upon myself. I bought sheer fabric, thick-gauge wire, hinges, headbands, sewing needles and tomorrow comes the coloring. I'm trying to make a bit of this:

...out of this:

This I know: my daughter not going to buy a crappy butterfly costume, she's going to wear the crappy monarch butterfly costume her Daddo made for her!

at the end of the drive, the lawmen arrive

10/29/08

Oh man, this is so much more fun than politics. I'm going to expand our buddy Schultz's question about music videos, and ask the rest of you to do the same. From each category, name your favorite video, and it can be as obscure, as recent, or as obvious as you'd like.

A) Video showing a band performing the song? (i.e. The Who "You Better You Bet")

In the very early days of MTV, there were very few videos to show all 24 hours, so they tended to repeat a lucky hundred or so. One set of videos is taken from a small Pat Benatar concert where she does "Fire and Ice" and a few others. The one I thought FRICKIN' ROCKED was "Promises in the Dark", which has the ass-kickingest guitar part by Neil Geraldo possible.

Though obviously overplayed, Van Halen's Jump has to make the list, as well as Springsteen's subtle yet wonderful I'm On Fire. Put XTC's "Senses Working Overtime" in there too.

B. Video showing a story? (i.e. "Safety Dance")

Perhaps the seduction of Adam Ant in "Goody Two Shoes" would do nicely here, but to me, the greatest, most heartbreakingly beautiful video of all time is Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer. At the end of the wild ride, when he lets go of basic song structure and has that amazing minor-key riff ("I kicked the habit, shed my skin"), Gabriel himself turns into the stars and melds into the background... I dunno, somehow it always gets me.

C. A mix of the two? (Cars- "You Might Think")

I'll go with Is There Something I Should Know? by Duran Duran – I know the purists will demand Hungry Like the Wolf with its Indiana Jones plotline and Sri Lanka shoots, but give me bizarre post-apocalysm with epaulets and parachute pants any day of the week.

And you?

[UPDATE: OBVIOUSLY SOME TECHNICAL PROBLEMS ON THE BLOG TODAY... we're workin' em out... KEEP TRYING!]

lying awake intent at tuning in on you

10/28/08

Okay, I know we're days away from a historic turning point for America, but I simply cannot resist posting another Linky-Poo™ Time Waster, and this one rocks: MTV has begun putting its entire video collection online. Normally, I'd be as likely to visit mtv.com as visit a 14-year-old's MySpace experiment, but there are some amazing memories on there.

Fuck "Sister Christian", if you want true Night Ranger, you need only experience Don't Tell Me You Love Me. You want the Thompson Twins? Ignore "Hold Me Now" and go straight for Love On Your Side. For those of us who spent hours in front of MTV when it began, there's songs like Genesis' Abacab that trigger olfactory-like memory sensations, and videos like Don't Stand So Close to Me that merely beget happiness.

Alas, some of my favorites aren't up yet: no Nik Kershaw doing "Wouldn't It Be Nice" or any XTC or frickin' "Centerfold" by the J Geils Band, for that matter. But it's a start, young sportspeople!

Put your favorites in the comment section, but let me leave you with two of my fave bands in history, and two videos separated by thousands of miles of culture, yet they both have daisies falling from the sky...

De la Soul's "Say No Go":

and The Smiths' "This Charming Man":

smell test

10/27/08

In our run-up to the election (and after) our next guest blogger is the most excellent Mark Rizzo. Mark used to live about fifteen feet from us, and could poke his head out almost into our house, thus leading Lucy to believe that all neighborhoods were basically Sesame Street.

Friends may also know Mark as the subject of the most rare of all surprise parties: yes, the Surprise Wedding. Billed as a baby shower for his girlfriend Christine, guests were shepherded onto the beach where Mark, Christine and The Right Reverend Yours Truly were waiting to perform the sacred rites of gettin' hitched.

Good thing, too, because six days later:

Needless to say, they and baby Jack are simply the best. And here's Mark in his own words...

***

Last week I received an email forward from my uncle Jim. He sent the message to over 50 people, the vast majority of whom live in the battleground state of Pennsylvania. His preface to the forwarded material began with "This kind of rhetoric makes me and my fellow veterans sick." My uncle served heroically in Vietnam and received a Purple Heart.

The offending rhetoric was a series of quotes from Barack Obama. The quotes touched upon his desire to replace the too-martial "Star Spangled Banner" with "I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing" and how he and his wife Michelle have attended several flag-burning ceremonies because "we as a Nation have placed upon the nations of Islam an unfair injustice." These quotes were attributed to a September 7, 2008 "Meet the Press" appearance by Obama.

Sounds like a joke, right?

Because it is. This rhetoric that so sickened my uncle and his fellow vets was actually from a column called "Semi-News - A Satirical Look at Recent News" that appeared on a website called The Arizona Conservative. It was meant to make fun of Obama. Though I earn my living writing comedy, I'll forgo the opportunity to render a professional judgment on the quality of the satire. But I will say that the figure being satirized more resembled a fantastical Liberal Straw Man than Barack Obama himself.

Now, I imagine most of the folks reading this, regardless of political affiliation, quickly concluded that the email was bunk just from the two sample quotes I pulled. Even if you weren't quite sure, a startlingly quick fact check reveals that Obama was not on Meet the Press that day (the guests were Joe Biden and Thomas Friedman). It also unequivocally attributes the quotes to the satirist. Not to be too much of a priss, but the text of the email forward itself was festooned with multiple large fonts in bright colors, the kind of Crayola aesthetic that always raises my suspicion that the ideas contained therein don't stand up to scrutiny in good ol' black and white. We all have a "smell test" -- that common sense reflex that helps us discern what is Shit and what is Shinola.

What happened to Jim's?

Jim's an intelligent guy. Really. He trained as an engineer and is currently the Vice-President of Operations for a regional commercial carpentry firm. Though his life experiences have led him to be slightly more hawkish than the rest of our family, he has voted for a Democrat in every presidential election dating back to the '60s, straight through the Reagan Revolution and right up to the Bush Restoration.

So I was absolutely flabbergasted that he would fall for this. And even more dismayed that he would circulate it so widely. He's a guy with a lot of friends who respect him greatly. How in the name of G-d could he have lost his smell test?

The email forward sent a little shockwave through our family -- not because it offended any political orthodoxy, but rather that it offended our notions of what is fair and frankly led us to be concerned about Jim. The first volleys came quickly -- first, a terse reply from one of us containing the fact check info and a reminder that spreading abject falsehoods made him a "political tool." Jim quickly responded in an unusually defensive manner -- he had done a fact check of his own and "one article to the contrary" did not refute the fact that Obama is "phony" who would "sell us out in a heartbeat." Jim asserted his right to send any email he chose because he and others had bled and died for that right.

Whoa. A dispute over facts was quickly becoming very emotional. No "fact check" could change satire into journalism. Jim was in the wrong. But our family did not give up on the truth, nor did we give up on Jim. We could have written him off as a tool, a dupe or a closet racist. Instead we kept talking.

Three more emails were sent, each more compassionate than the last, pleading the case of fairness and truth, reiterating the gross factual inaccuracies and stating that our veterans did not fight for our right to shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater, but to preserve our right to peacefully agree to disagree. The overriding sentiment was, "A vote for McCain is not inherently offensive, but a vote for McCain based on horseshit is."

It took awhile but Jim came around. He sent us an apology for spreading the falsehoods and then went on to explain his real reason for voting McCain. It was centered on a single piece of legislation that Obama supports and McCain opposes. Jim feels that its passage would cripple the company that employs him and thereby threaten his economic survival. It was an admirable act of humility to back off the phony allegations about Obama. And it was the one of the most thoughtful and reasoned appeals to vote McCain that I have read to date.

I'll admit, it's a very narrow one, but at least it doesn't appeal to prejudice. In the end, no one in our family converted anyone. As far as I can tell, we're all still voting the same way we were before this little kerfuffle. But I do believe that we all have more respect for one another. And we're a stronger family for it.

That's our story, but there were 50 other people on Jim's forward of the bogus email. I still don't know if he heeded our call to send out a correction to these folks -- that would be another, even more admirable act of humility. This phony forward has been circulating for a year and I can't imagine how many folks have closed their minds and hardened their hearts with its help. It is jarring to me that there is such a level of ignorance and, yes, prejudice in this country that would allow such obvious absurdities to be mistaken for the truth.

Gullibility of this tragic scope leads me to wonder if it is not the result (or at least the byproduct) of a systematic manipulation of the feeblest American minds. When sharpies of any political stripe knowingly represent daylight to be nighttime or masquerade "up" as "down," they are softening up our already-tender brains for knockout punches like "Barack Obama is a socialist Muslim who casually burns the American flag."

My outrage is fresh and perhaps it obscures Schlegel's old "axiom of the average," which is a fancy way of saying, "'twas ever thus." Or in David Byrne's formulation, "same as it ever was." Big deal. Propaganda's been around for a long time and surely we can make a grim parlor game of finding countless antecedents of this latest demagoguery. But I do wonder -- if it was ever thus, was it always so very fucking thus? Are we losing our smell test?

It's my fear that our smell test is mutating in a dangerous direction. For most of us, the smell test is no longer, "Does this stink of bullshit?" but rather "Do I find this interesting? Does this 'information' support my prejudices?" If it jibes with our opinion, our preferred "narrative," we run with it. And run fast.

My uncle Jim was feeling frightened about what an Obama presidency would mean to his family's economic well-being, so he was eager to believe that Obama is "anti-America." Though my prejudices lead me to believe that the Republican Party as presently constituted is a more steady supplier of this fertilizer, I'm beginning to think that all of us are guilty in some way. The Netroots Left's conspiracy theories surrounding the origins of Trig Palin were embarrassing. But, good G-d, they were entertaining! And they supported the frustrated Left's prejudice that the Right is always up to some shady business.

Perhaps it comes down to speed -- so much information comes to us so quickly that we feel forced to make snap judgments about it just to keep up. Absent deliberation, we simply decide based on our prejudices. When our pulses quicken it would behoove us all, whatever our particular rooting interest, to take a beat and consider, deliberate, fact-check, discuss and then decide. In the process we might even learn that we're all playing for the same team.

aeromotional tour

10/26/08

Before we move on to more fascinating territory, have any of you messed around with Zillow.com? Maybe there are better ones out there, but if you go to the home page and type in your address, you'll get entire pages of your home's worth, what other homes are for sale (and how much) in your area, and these cool "bird's-eye view" shots of the neighborhood.

I just did every American house I ever lived in, which is a lot: San Jose, Cedar Rapids (2), Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Chapel Hill (7), Manhattan (2), Brooklyn (2), Columbia County, Venice, Hollywood, Monrovia, New Orleans and Carrboro. Somehow, seeing all these places under the clinical light of real estate made it an interesting journey. Find out anything cool about your house?

got traumatized in this playground

lost virginity here

I got married on this hill!

18-foot hedges and a motion sensor

10/23/08

Great discussion in the comments section yesterday, and I really do have to continue this line of reasoning further.

Put simply, I'm constantly amazed at how the conservative mindset seems incapable of understanding just how uneven the playing field is. For instance, my buddy craighill said that people who want the good life need to earn it by choosing a high-paying vocation. But let's look at what that usually entails:

- having some sort of childhood role model that encourages success

- surviving whatever neighborhood you grow up in

- doing well enough at a good high school in a good neighborhood to be taken seriously at a good college

- getting into that good college, and have enough money to pay for room, board and tuition (or pray for a scholarship that gives you enough to get by)

- graduating, which is easier said than done in many cases, given family obligations and money

- coping with the possibility of enormous debt after school

- having enough contacts to get an interview somewhere, and be taken seriously

- living, arbitrarily, in a part of the country that still has the kind of economy you can flourish in (or moving)

- managing to work through the lean years long enough without any health issues, let alone the problems of a family you're probably starting.

Make any one of the above statements mandatory, and you've just eliminated millions of people in your state alone. You've effectively bounced the entire neighborhoods of El Monte, East St. Louis, Atlantic Ave. in Brooklyn, South Boston, and about 8,000 others.

Guys – and I'm including myself here – we have NO FUCKING IDEA the amount of incumbent largesse we were born into. Our way has been paved for us in so many hidden instances that it staggers the imagination. Old boy networks, legacies at prep school and college, inheriting a nice neighborhood from our parents, friends that encouraged our academic achievements, fantastic doctors, healthy and plentiful food as babies... hell, just being WHITE opened doors we didn't even know were ever closed.

I get it, you work hard. And other people, like Emma mentioned, abuse the system. But where is the empathy? When you've got nothing, no prospects, and don't even KNOW to ASK how to START getting a $250K job, wouldn't you game the fuckin' system too? And do these despondent poor people truly cloud your vision of the entire lower middle class?

Let me repeat the stats: The top one percent of Americans own 34.7% of the total wealth. The top TEN percent own 69.8% of the wealth. By conservatives' own logic, that must mean 90% of Americans are lazy and don't deserve to be wealthy. Do any of you honestly think that's true?

And rich people, let's be honest. Obama's tax plan constitutes a difference of puny percentage points in your overall portfolio. We could probably find that much cash lost in the back seat cushions of your Lexus. I know it physically pains you, and it's abject torture to part with what you believe to be rightfully yours, but you know what? I have this funny feeling that you're going to be just fine.

thank you sir may I have another

10/22/08

I'll save the last ZAP recap for tomorrow, because I just saw a piece of video that blew my fuckin' mind. You don't need to watch more than a few seconds, but if you're a sadist with a lust for misery, be my guest:

To wit: John McCain accused Barack Obama of wanting "to spread the wealth around". And the crowd reacted by giving Obama a chorus of boos. What the motherscratching jesusballs is going on with these people? I mean, do I even need to go on with this particular blog entry?

You know that America has entered a truly remarkable period when the mere mention of fairness – and transitively, kindness - is vilified by an actual Presidential candidate and backed up by thousands of supporters. That's a country with an entire swath of human beings whose rudder has fallen off and sunk into a dark sea. It's gone beyond "brazening out the most horrible statements" and into Cap'n Fuckpants Theatre of the Absurd.

Forget John McCain and his sleazy, career-killing cynicism and ghoulish death-mask of transparent bullshit. I'm more interested in the crowds at these rallies, these poor fucks who barely make enough money to fill the gas tank of their shitty car, just so they can pack themselves into a high school gym to cheer on such a pathetic ticket. They work all day, have no hope of sending their kids to college, one paycheck or hospital bill away from destitution... and they're booing the concept of spreading America's wealth around?

The top one percent of Americans own 34.7% of the total wealth. The top TEN percent own 69.8% of the wealth. In any other era, that would call for the storming of the Bastille, of beheading our leaders and putting the skulls on pikes lining the river. But somehow, these working-class proletariats are actively reviling a concept that would benefit them directly.

These guys will fight to the death in order to keep themselves penniless and miserable. Is there anyone more stupid on this planet? Lucy's pre-K class has more sense, and some of those kids poop on the swingset.

Can somebody explain this to me?

and when I fell on the floor I drank more

10/21/08

Stop me, stop me, oh stop me if you've heard this one before, but a few months after 9/11, I was a blithering wreck. We were still living in downtown Manhattan, and having lost That Internet Job, I would purposely sleep past noon because I thought the next terrorist attack would surely happen before lunch, and if I could make it to 12pm, I knew I'd be safe.

I surfed the Web relentlessly in an insatiable, diseased quest to find out as much information as I could about the variously sickening ways terrorists could harm me and my family, and I stopped eating for about two weeks. By February, I had to go to the free clinic at NYU, where I was booked by a somnambulist intern who cared only that I not kill myself on his watch. I wrote emails to my family begging them to move out of Manhattan, then found a place for Tessa and me in Park Slope, only because it was at least two miles from any potential nuclear fireball.

I mention these things because I had my apocalyptic demons, and wrestled them to a truce. I did it with a very effective SSRI (Celexa), a fair amount of therapy, an amazing wife who could not be daunted, and the curious tincture of time. I needed all four of these things to remove myself from the brink, but I did it. And I like to think that the entire experience has completely inured me to the death and doomsaying currently enveloping America's financial meltdown.

This was put into stark relief by today's Zap Your PRAM recap, a talk by Rob Paterson on Saturday that was guaranteed to scare the living yakshit out of anyone within earshot. His talk broke down exactly what led to this mess, and the insanity of the "derivative market" – I mean, it's impossible to discuss this stuff without thinking the American way of making money isn't much better than a Nigerian email scam.

At this point in our discussion, you must listen to two separate episodes of "This American Life". I've had them forwarded to me at least ten times now, and they explain the whole thing better than anyone else: The Giant Pool of Money and Another Frightening Show About the Economy. Don't worry, I'll wait.

I led a scotch tasting Friday night – god knows we needed it (photo by N. Burka)

So Rob, who knows his business, got very scary near the end of his discussion. It verged on nightmarish scenarios of growing your own dinner, finding old people who know how to cure meat for the winter, and questions like "How many days of food does Prince Edward Island have at any one moment?" (Answer: two.) It's a world where cars don't work, electricity is scarce and you better have five cords of firewood in order to make it to April.

Now, I'm not saying this can't happen. What I am saying is that contemplating this kind of future is a miserable mind game I can't afford. Rob (who is thoughtful and frightfully intelligent) is not guilty of this, but I have known many people who have a certain glee about this kind of apocalyptic porn, a certain wide-eyed fascination with the whole fuckin' world crashing down around us, a drown-em-all mentality that has its roots in the flood parables of Noah and the destruction of Sodom.

I just can't go there anymore. I have a daughter, I have a family, and I'm simply not willing to contemplate keeping a shotgun under my bed in case roving Mad Max bandits try to raid our beet preserves. This is not to say we're not prepared for a national emergency: we've got months of food supplies, gallons of fresh water, emergency cash, a "go bag" and an escape plan. But those were borne of other emergencies – post-9/11 preparedness and, of course, earthquakes.

Rob did end on a very interesting note. He said that money had taken the place of relationships, and it's positively true. Grandmothers and family members used to share the burden of raising children, and now we throw money at nannies and babysitters. Men and women used to cut grass and tend gardens, and now we throw money at lawn services that mow grass we don't play in anymore.

In this new world, we would have to re-establish relationships with our neighbors, barter for the things we need, and mix our lives together. We'd have to know the guy who knows the lady who knows the guy. It would be a new "localism", and the absence of money would bring about the rebirth of friendship. I was left to wonder: is there a way to do that without a reducing our economy to the Bronze Age?

In closing, I don't think Rob thought this economic collapse would last forever, and we might come back even stronger in 5-7 years. I posited that an energy invention – a true replacement for oil – could come from the USA, and give us a true American Renaissance. He added that the Renaissance followed the Dark Ages, but, well, "keep your powder dry until 2011":

ere the cock crows thrice

10/20/08

This conference has a name that used to be a little silly, and is now something of an industrial relic... but it's still the best gathering of technologically and culturally-savvy folks you'll encounter in North America. Zap Your PRAM is an "unconference", where fifty or so folks gather at the far end of the earth to talk about fascinating and unrelated things. For a quick glance, see Stephen DesRoches' excellent pics and Deane Barker's inspiring recap, but for me, I mostly remember huge, crackling fireplaces, the roar of the immense Gulf of St. Lawrence, and basking in the warm radiation of other people's expertise.

For the rest of this week, I'm going to spend each day concentrating on a different thing I learned, and to start, I'd like to tackle Nick Burka and his talk on Aby Warburg and his Mnemosyne Atlas. That's a lot of names and links, but the basic idea is this: Warburg was an art historian who rejected studying art in a chronological fashion. He dreamed of a more emotional, more fantastical method.

So he began a massive collection and organized everything by his own "elective affinities" – meaning one painting should go with another because of a certain energy, or a similarity in that way those two works of art makes a person feel. Highly subjective, sure (and impossible to search), but the collection started looking like this:

And our friend Nicholas Burka shrewdly noticed that was very similar to a typical page of results from Google Images:

Now, if I'm getting this right, Warburg thought all great works of art have certain "tensions" that are similar, and we're born pre-conditioned to like (or to be drawn towards) these movements inside images. Makes sense, if you dig Chomsky's ideas of inherent language or Jung's collective unconscious.

Nick took this infamous picture, for example:

kept small b/c it's so reprehensible

Why did this picture become emblematic of Abu Ghraib, and not the others? In my mind, it was obvious: a crucifixion pose, with the hands supplicant on the cross like so many paintings we've seen since childhood. The pointed hood was absolutely reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan, who burned crosses at their gatherings, making the whole metaphor painfully obvious.

But Nick had a teacher who, influenced by Warburg, said the Abu Ghraib image actually invoked paintings of the Ecco Homo, the moment when Christ is brought before Pontius Pilate:

Do I agree? I dunno, the crucifixion angle seems much more obvious to me, but we are dealing with pretty ineffable qualities. One thing I do know – ever since Nicholas' talk, I've been looking at pictures in a different way. On the flight home from P.E.I., I was reading a Time Magazine article about the European leaders meeting in order to solve the financial crisis. The accompanying picture was this:

The caption read: Still searching: Europe looks for a way out of the banking crisis. Obviously, the Belgian or Austrian guy dropped his pen, making the photo sort of an unintentional pun, but I was thinking. What did the picture remind me of? A row of heads, all askew in different directions... and I was led to this:

Another example - Korto may not have won "Project Runway", but I thought her collection at Bryant Park was awesome. In particular, there was this green dress with an odd asymmetrical neckline. I don't usually go for the asymmetry thing, but this one totally worked:

...and after thinking about it, I knew why. The neckline isn't actually asymmetrical at all: it incorporates an idea treasured by the Greeks, mimicked in nature, and known as the Golden or Fibonacci Spiral:

I know, math majors, the Fibonacci Spiral has a little wobble where the Golden Spiral doesn't, but it looks the same to us flaky artists. And Korto used it by doubling one side of the neckline, then subtly turning it into fourths. Not that she knew that's what she was doing, but as Warburg might say, don't we have an "elective affinity" for such things?

my newfoundland abhors my labrador

10/19/08

geese over Prince Edward Island, 10/15/08

You know what's oddly hard? Jetlag from the Atlantic Time Zone (otherwise known as GMT-4) to Pacific Time Zone. Four hours is weird; I don't know how you visitors from Chile do it. More when we wake!

wouldn't be half so interesting if we know all about everything

10/16/08

Okay, everybody – I'm on the north shore of Prince Edward Island on a very weak internet connection. And since we'll have to be a little more prudent this year, you must answer this CODE WORD question with a little more seriousness this season: what are you going to be for Halloween? And if you're not dressing up, WHY THE HELL NOT?

people who haven't red hair don't know what trouble is

10/14/08

We're off to one of my favorite places in the world: The Island That's Also a Smile, the Place What Got Ice Cream on Anne of Green Gables' Nose, or as I call it, "The Place So Much Better than New Brunswick"... Prince Edward Island, CANADA!

Tessa and I actually spent our honeymoon in two places: Monhegan Island, Maine and then up the coast to PEI, where we had such a good time that we came back for the incipient Zap Your PRAM conference that October. Five years later, the same fine folks are having the conference once more, and despite being three thousand miles farther away, we had to go.

I dunno, I think it's important for two reasons: one, you can't reduce everyone in your circle of friendship to the virtual. A cabal that exists entirely on email or Facebook is a cabal that will disintegrate without proper buttressing, and we totally dig our PEIers.

Secondly (yes I know that's not a word), there is something to be said for taking a seemingly-strange trip to an island far flung on the other side of the continent, to talk about esoteric subjects you may not entirely understand, about a future that hasn't happened yet. The last time this conference got together in 2003, the discussion touched on how we'll store information, where blogs were headed, the ethereal quality of data, what the virtual world means to normal people, and the history of what's to come – and if I recall correctly, we got a lot of stuff right.

But my reasons to go are a little more goo-goo-ga-ga than that. To me, if you're someone who relies on creativity for a living – and that goes for more of you than you might think – you have to put yourself in the way of bizarre ideas. You have to be blindsided, slightly, by subject matter you'd never find or seek on your own volition. It may not always work, but just dipping your head into the cold, bracing water of other peoples' obsessions can occasionally give you something you didn't even know you needed.

Off to Montreal tonight!

if they don't win it's a shame

10/13/08

Let's use today for some positive reinforcement, shall we? The following people on the home team should be commended for their recent behavior:

My sister Michelle - Not that she'd ever tell you this, but Michelle basically erased clean and rewrote the rules of reviving the Arts in an entire California valley. After taking on a system that never quite worked and turning Napa into a powerhouse arts community, I can't imagine her not being hired to do the same thing in some other town/city in dire need. Click on the picture (courtesy of the Napa Valley Register) below for the newspaper article:

My brother Steve - A few miles south of Michelle, Steve is in the other valley – the "Silicon" one – and is constantly in the news saving historic Moffett Field Airport and the old Hangar One, which needs to be re-skinned by the Navy. If left to their own devices, the Navy would leave the un-husked frame of the hangar out like a giant set of desiccated dinosaur bones, and let's just say that won't happen on my brother's watch. Click on Steve's airplane below for the newspaper article (cached by Google, since the Palo Alto Daily News website is a disaster):

My old roommate Greg Humphreys - Lordy knows I've sung the praises of Greggy Homefries for years on this blog, but he has finally gone solo from both bands, and released a gorgeous, pastoral album of his guitar home-cookin'. Greg has now become one of the old bluesmen he once revered, and lets it shine on "Trunk Songs". Click here to download the album from iTunes, and click on the picture below (of Greg with Lucy on his 41st birthday) for the excellent News & Observer story:

Our old friends Bliss and Nell - Bliss Broyard's book One Drop: My Father's Hidden Life--A Story of Race and Family Secrets just came out on paperback, and Nell Casey's collection An Uncertain Inheritance: Writers on Caring for Family will do so on December 2nd. Both are intensely wonderful works of non-fiction; the first is Bliss' story of her father, the famed New York critic who had a deathbed secret... and the latter is Nell's collection of essays written by people on the brink of mortality and those who take care of them.

Click on the top pic of Tessa and Nell (with brood) to get "Inheritance" and the bottom pic of Tessa with Lulu and Bliss' lovely daughter Esme for "One Drop".

Our most excellent neighbor David Petrarca - We don't see much of Uncle David these days, despite his living twenty feet above us, and here's why: he's the new Executive Producer of "Eli Stone", which is premiering tonight (Wednesday) at 10pm. Check your local listings, but let me tell you this: I've seen some dailies of the musical numbers, and they are stunners.

And in the comments, please nominate others who deserve recognition, both large and small!

norman conquest

10/12/08

In our ongoing series of differing voices over the next few weeks, here's my brother Kent!

***

I am older than most of the people who read this blog. For the record, 51 years old.

This (obviously) has not conferred much in the way of wisdom upon me. But it does mean that I was around for a lot of history that most of you learned about second hand.

The first Presidential election I voted in was 1976. Before that, I followed the elections with growing interest as they came along. I remember the 1964 election, when I was 7 years old, mostly because there was an impromptu plebiscite on the playground in Bloomington Indiana: those for Johnson pushed one way on a Merry-Go-Round, those for Goldwater pushed the other. Johnson won, and the rest is history.

In 1968, I went door to door with a friend of mine in our neighborhood with pamphlets for Eugene McCarthy. I don't remember who set that up, or if I did it more than once, but it is the point where I became something more than a passive participant in Politics.

1968 was one of those weird years -- some kids in my Elementary School were sent home for wearing Peace Sign buttons, and I was yelled at in the bakery near my school by the counter lady for carrying a copy of "The Autobiography Of Malcolm X." The police were beating up kids, the crazies were assassinating Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, and an unrepentant racist, George Wallace, took away enough Democratic votes to give Nixon the Presidency.

Which is preface to saying this: This year may be even weirder. On the one hand, an African-American man has a good chance of becoming President. On the other we have the Republican Party in the midst of a full-scale implosion.

The McCain campaign's strategy at this point has devolved into a full on racist smear campaign, based entirely on distortions and far-fetched guilt by association. McCain and Palin have been inciting the ugliest, most ignorant faction of their party to the edge of violence. In a town hall meeting, McCain has to defend Barack Obama as a decent family man that people should not be afraid of. Here's a guy who has spent the last week on mean, groundless character assassination as his only strategy. Then, he has to contradict that strategy in order to maintain the merest shred of self-respect. And then his faithful supporters boo him for it.

The icing on the cake, though, is his running mate being found in a report commissioned by the overwhelmingly Republican Alaskan Legislature to have abused the power of her office. The campaign is forced to issue a rebuttal to this report that is a transparently, brazenly mendacious. I'm having to go to the Thesaurus for this little essay, just so I don't keep using the word 'lies' over and over.

A few weeks ago, when McCain had a narrow lead in the national polls, the talking heads on television had a consensus that the McCain campaign was succeeding in framing the election as a referendum on Obama, to Obama's detriment. Now the script is flipped -- this campaign is about two things: the stunning, unprecedented collapse of the world economy and its effects in the US, and how the McCain campaign has devolved into something sickening and ugly.

Mark my words -- you're living through the one that will be the benchmark of insane election seasons for the rest of your life. In some ways this is 1968 all over again; a polarized electorate, a troubled economy and an unpopular war. I don't even want to say the other thing I'm afraid 2008 and 1968 might have in common -- I just hope that it doesn't come to pass.

Oh, and if you want another parallel: McCain keeps saying "I know how to find Bin Laden. I know how to fix the economy" without being willing to actually say how he will do these things. In another parallel with 1968, Nixon said he had a plan for ending the Vietnam War, one that he wouldn't talk about. Later in his memoirs, Nixon denied ever having such a plan. Which leads me, as a student of history, to suspect that when McCain claims to know how to do something, but won't say how, he's just making shit up.

***

above: Kent and Lucy Kent, Xmas 2005; below: August 2008

witch burns, film at 11

10/9/08

At this point, John McCain, Sarah Palin and the cretinous Republican anal pustules that enable their endless vitriol need to fucking stop. Right now. Ever since Palin's effluvious post-convention "bounce" evaporated, their behavior has been cowardly, unhinged, and deeply un-American. Someone has to sit them down and tell them to FUCK OFF for the good of the country.

I'm all for a good political catfight if the exchange of ideas – however heated it might be – ends up helping the country make an informed decision. But the McPain campaign is indulging in the kind of hate-filled, not-even-bothering-to-be-subtle rhetoric that might turn their wingnut base into an orgy of ecstatic rage, but makes the rest of the country want to take a shower. A high tide raises all ships, but conversely, a campaign like McCain's drags all of us into the festering pit of despair.

Barack Obama has, for most intents and purposes, won this election. Only two things can stop it now: the unthinkable, and mass voter registration purges across the country. In past contests, candidates facing an seemingly-inevitable loss have gone down gracefully – think Bob Dole in 1996, Mondale in 1984. Not McCain and Palin, however. They are the retreating Huns who lose the battle, but want to make sure they leave blankets infected with smallpox strewn across the countryside.

from your friends in West Plains, MO

Their ugliness is everywhere, from Cindy McCain's shrill bullshit to Sarah Palin's constant assertion that Obama is no better than a terrorist. And their rallies have become breeding grounds for the worst kind of knuckle-dragging fuckwads this side of a Klan rally. There are lots of videos out there, but this one really encapsulates their ugly, bigoted, snarl delivered behind fucked-up teeth. These are the motherfuckers who cut you off on the freeway, and then give you the finger as they speed home to beat their kids.

Am I a classist? I suppose so, I don't really care. This brand of American is wholly reprehensible - they're not just embarrassing for conservatives, they're embarrassing for all of us. Being poor, misinformed or desperate does NOT excuse ANY OF US from the tenets of basic human decency. Just as rich people are not allowed to buy their way out of morality, poor people don't get an exemption for their hate.

But all of this ugliness belies a vastly more sinister undercurrent; McCain and Palin are working their devoted followers into an unrepentantly dangerous lather. By freely using the word "terrorist" (by themselves and from audience members), tolerating shouts of "kill him!" at their rallies, and delivering utterly racist soundbites about Obama "diminishing the prestige of the United States presidency", they are inspiring the worst people in America to the kind of fury that begets lone gunmen and ragtag basement militias.

If you think I'm overreacting, try asking some of the older blog readers here, the ones that remember things I don't, about the summer of 1968, or November 1963. We've got a black man about to be President, and his rivals, knowing full well they are about to lose, are purposely riling up their thugs for revenge, whether it's this month or at some point in the next few years. Even if you think the threat is remote, the behavior of the Republican ticket is close to irresponsibly criminal.

I was talking to someone who had a great idea: if Barack Obama is elected, Sarah Palin should be forced to be on his secret service detail for all public events. That way she can truly know what it is to be the wolf and not the chopper pilot, and doggone it, it might not be so fucking funny anymore.

purple farts of freedom

10/8/08

Man, I frickin' KNEW it was a matter of time before this happened. Crochety old-school longtime blog readers may remember the time I got detained and held overnight in jail at the Homeland Security checkpoint in Houlton, Maine. Don't remember it? Go here and read it, it's pretty goddamn good.

Anyway, since you're not going to read it, in 2003 I got stopped when trying to re-enter the United States because, well, I don't know. My hair is silly, and let's face it: when I go on a road trip, I don't keep an immaculate car. They ransacked my stuff, found a vial of baby powder that I use for my hoop shoes, and we were off to the races. Suffice to say I was there for another 16 hours and had to write an essay to a group of these numbskulls in order to prove I wasn't a terrorist.

Fast forward to now, where the exact same Homeland Security dudes at the exact same checkpoint in Houlton, Maine detained a woman in her Prius because she had this sketch in her notebook:

She's a professor at Fordham University, and was removed from her vehicle because the Homeland Security personnel thought she was "an industrial spy and copyright infringer." However, as you might have guessed from even a casual glance at the sketch, it was an artistic rendering of a crochet art project. CROCHET!

The goons only found the picture because the professor's passport had foreign country stamps on it, which apparently merited a full car search. You know, because people who don't stay put in America are dangerous.

A few weeks ago I wrote about the merits of "playing the game" in this country, whether that game was "your job" or "the Starbucks line" or "the airport X-ray machine". I'm here to tell you that the game is meaningless to these Homeland Security cops; they are your arbitrary plaything, and short of abject supplication, there's nothing you can do to help yourself out. "I am both judge and jury to you right now," one of the buzzcut-pated sargeants told me, and they all seemed delighted in their exclusionary club of We Can Do Anything We Want.

I can understand why they stopped me – you know, I'm a guy, I had pharmaceuticals for kidney stones, and until I was about 32, cops just fucking pissed me off. But I saw then how dimwitted they were becoming with their exclusionary power, and it was only a matter of time before they stopped someone for having dangerously suspect crochet.

troll's is now h-e-double hockey sticks

10/7/08

In the run-up to the election, I'm going to have a few guest writers come on here and help stir up critical thinking, vituperative rants and hopefully some really bad puns. And in doing so, there will be some folks on here with whom I've had tremendous differences of opinion, but it's still great (to me, anyway) to see them writing without the constraints of the comments section.

If you have a particular topic in mind, please gimme a holler, wontchya?

The person who proffered the idea was the legendary "Dean From Bub's and Troll's", who will be the first guest writer to put himself out there, and will take any and all questions you have for him about the conservative side of the aisle. And so here we go:

****
Dear beloved xtcian'ers:

As many of you know, I am one of the conservative lurkers on this blog. But, my allegiance to Ian pre-dates ideology and stems more from my days in the Pit, Polk Place, the Dean Dome, Kenan Stadium, He's Not Here, etc. Hell, believe it or not, I dated a girl in 1992 who told me that her older sister was dating that guy Ian Williams from Wednesday's Child. If true, I hope Ian's relationship with the older sister ended better than mine with the younger sister. [Ian – if you're curious, send me an email.].

Recently, Ian has been on a roll with "Hate Republicans Week." After one of the particularly hateful days of comments, I sent him an email regarding how he and I are polar opposites politically, but I am sure he and I could enjoy a Chicken, Egg & Cheese together at Time-Out without fisticuffs. [In my vision, we're sharing a meal there circa 1990 – Billy's glory years]. I am willing to hazard a guess that everyone that reads or comments on xtcian.com is above-average intelligence. If so, why is the dialogue so hateful?

There are things that spew from the mouths of many commenters that would never be said to the other readers' faces. Did our parents truly fail us? Are we not able to discuss public policy issues without name-calling and hate? My mother taught me that the only people that use profanity and name-calling are the ones that are not smart enough to properly express themselves. Granted, when you see me play tennis, you'll notice that I did not entirely buy her notion.

I digress. I insisted to Ian in my email that it is possible to have a civil discussion. I also insisted that it is possible for one side of the aisle to state their position in a rational manner such that the opposing folks, if intellectually honest, will admit that they understand my position, but courteously disagree with it. Both candidates are campaigning that they want to change Washington and work towards consensus, but the ONLY topic that can be happily discussed among us xtcian'ers is that dook sucks. You can always count on a good ol'-fashioned "dook sucks" to restore order to the Force.

After a few emails back and forth, Ian invited me to dive head first into the arena of ideas, to pick a spicy topic, to explain my conservative position, and to invite everyone to put their cup of vitriol down for the day so we can lower our collective blood pressure. So, if I am putting myself out there for hate-mongering, I figured I should start at the top . . . ABORTION. I do not pretend to believe that my position on abortion represents the formal plank of the GOP. I only hope to shed some light on a possible conservative alternative.

I do not know when life begins. Hell, I am not even sure when life stops. I do not know when a fetus is viable. There are days when I am not viable, but my wife swears it happens to every guy. These are issues that I do not think that mere mortals can ever reach consensus. As such, am I pro-life? Maybe. Am I pro-choice? Maybe. I am a liger – half tiger and half lion – hear me roar.

My opposition to Roe v. Wade largely stems from the principles of federalism and judicial activism. Unfortunately, "judicial activism" has become a code word for any Judge that does not agree with you. Judicial activism is actually a term meant to describe an appellate Court that makes law, instead of assessing law. An appellate Court's job is to decide whether the government acted constitutionally and their opinions can typically be summarized in 1 word. Their job is NOT to say yes or no, and then re-write the law to fit their standards. That is the job of the (typically) legislative branch. And it is certainly not the judicial branch's job to unilaterally create an entirely new paradigm.

At my esteemed Wake Forest School of Law ('95), I learned that there are many egregious examples of judicial activism from both ends of the political spectrum. One startling example was the famous Miranda case. All of us have watched enough TV to know the Miranda warnings by heart: "You have the right to remain silent . . ." In the Miranda case, the Court was asked whether the incredibly extensive interrogation conducted by the cops was too intrusive and whether the evidence gained by said interrogation should be struck.

The underlying facts of the case were not disputed and the Court's issue was largely a yes or no issue. The case was fact-specific. Nonetheless, the Court took it upon itself to huddle in some darkened room and draft a set of word-by-word warnings that every law enforcement officer in the entire country must start using when apprehending any defendant. Although it is likely a good idea for such Miranda warnings to exist, the way the warnings came about was an example of a Court overstepping the case that was actually before it.

Back to abortion. I would like Roe to be overturned on similar principles. Without getting into a contentious recitation of the underlying facts, the main legal issue before the Court was whether Texas' laws regarding abortion were unfair to Jane Roe. The Court took it upon itself to create an entirely new paradigm that involved viability, late-term, short-term, blahblahblah. If a person is vehemently pro-choice, Roe may be a beloved outcome, but it was not a good day intellectually for the Court.

I know that these two examples may not be the best examples because the outcomes were not inherently distasteful. But, imagine the following: the next time an affirmative action goes to the Supreme Court, the Court not only strikes the race-based portion of all college applications, but states that any minority admitted into any university with less than the university's average SAT must enroll in remedial English and Math. Such a decision would be ludicrous. So, do not get bogged down in whether Miranda and Roe were agreeable. Blatant judicial activism is dangerous to both sides of the political spectrum.

Back to abortion. If Roe were overturned, abortion does not become instantaneously illegal. The issue would then descend to each individual state for the respective state to decide. There are certainly states that would place more restrictions on abortion than some other states, but I doubt there are any states that would absolutely ban all abortions or any states that would permit it without any restrictions whatsoever. Viva la difference!

Yes, I know that some folks might find it unseemly to have different laws in different states throughout the country. Such a system is called . . . federalism! There are innumerable issues that have been resolved via federalism: voting eligibility, illegal immigrants' access to public universities, driving licenses, Workers' Comp, and on and on. These are all important issues and, for the most part, federalism works. Is it a perfect system? Nope. Is the current system broken? Yep.

The current landscape is never going to improve via absolutists. The spirit of compromise and intellectual honesty must prevail for the sake of the country. With that in mind, I hope the bomb-throwers from both sides will bite their forked tongues, take a breath, and read my position again before dispensing the usual knee-jerk dose of vitriol. If you have any nice questions regarding my position that you'd like me to address, post them as a comment and I'll try to reply. Because, in the words of John Lennon, all that I am sayin' is to give [it] a chance.

sooth, you say

10/6/08

Horizon Air at the Santa Rosa Airport shut down its ticket booth and electronic boarding pass machine ten minutes early today, then left the terminal to board the airplane, and then took off... leaving me and two other passengers completely stranded. I wrote a note to the airline telling them TO FUCK OFF AND I WOULD TELL EVERYONE I KNEW ABOUT WHAT A SHITHOLE LEMONADE STAND OF AN AIRPORT THEY WERE RUNNING.

I have a meeting today, as well as another oral surgery appointment, so I had to rent a car and drive the almost-nine hours to Los Angeles. So you don't get a real blog from me aujourd'hui, but you get to throw your hat into this particular ring:

Predict, as of today (one month out), the winner of the presidential election and the electoral votes that winner will have. Use your most accurate gut instinct, not what you want to have happen. Winner gets a small glass snifter of some of my oldest single malt.

tartan boxers, "who farted?" t-shirt

10/3/08

So, like, seriously - what are you wearing? I mean, like, right this second?

doggone you betchya

10/2/08

Let's stick with the obvious today: what did you think of the VP debates? I'll throw in my predictable brand of self-righteous wailing: Palin has no right to be on stage with Joe Biden debating questions about the future of our country. Period, end of story. That we're forced to endure her vapid, senseless bullshit is testament that we live in unprecedented times. Frankly, I don't know how you conservatives can stand carrying water for her – at least us progressives know when to throw our own people under the frickin' bus.

Anyway, in terms of bizarre-world debate merit, S. Palin actually screwed up: by not going out there and shitting the bed, she actually raised her own bar enough to slide under it. In other words, once the audience (including the millions watching) understood she was not going to actually explode, they relaxed enough to take the debate on its own merits rather than a freakshow – and that was a contest she was never going to win.

Frankly, short of Biden urinating on himself or using the "n" word, I'm not sure how Palin could have won this debate. She just doesn't have the skill set, despite CIA-like crunch-time training for the event. Greg Paulus could study defense, run 10 miles a day, bulk up and do pectoral deck-flys for three years, but he's not stopping Danny from going to the rack.

lux perpetua luceat eis

10/1/08

My Auntie Donna's funeral was on Saturday, which brought about an influx of family members as huge as our official reunions on odd years, so seeing everybody was an unexpected, bittersweet treat. While I share no politics or faith with my cousins, I love all eighty-four of them, and of course, Lucy loves seeing her cousin Barnaby no matter the circumstance.

Let me state for the record that I just don't get open-casket funerals. In less rigorous times, they were used as positive identification of the body (and to prevent the "not dead yet" from being buried alive) but in this era, I'm not sure what it serves. It offered no closure for me, having said goodbye to Donna in a quiet moment by myself a few days before.

The Mormons, with their belief system incorporating the pre-and-post-existences, don't view death the same way others do, and there was a distinctly casual atmosphere at the "family viewing" – kids hung on the casket, and the rehearsals for the music were held only a few feet away from the body she left behind.

Despite the macabre nature of the event, the funeral itself was lifted into the transcendental by a performance of my mom's song "Every Sparrow", sung by all the kids in the family under 11. I'd prepared Lucy for the event by playing the song three or four times on the iPod while we were still in California, and when she got up in front of the congregation in Utah, there she was, her particular voice sailing through the others.

Ironically, the great-aunt that I loved can die, but the thing that really makes me cry is seeing my little Lucybeans sing in front of people for the first time.

She had dealt with death before in a small way: her fish Ankle (of Hank and Ankle) had died, and I thought the best way to approach it wasn't to lie. She gets her emotional cues from us, and if I acted like this was the natural wheel of life, then hopefully she would. Indeed, she had no problem with Ankle dying.

Auntie Donna was another matter. Certainly the open casket was. I was trying – subtly – to keep her away from the coffin, but with the gaggle of kids, it was impossible. She went up and tapped my Auntie Donna's belly in a way that seemed preternatural, as though she was recreating a moment from an ancestor living three million years ago, a young Australopithecus touching a dead relative, wondering why it no longer moved.

She asked Tessa why Auntie Donna didn't open her eyes, even though she knew the answer – the repetition of the question, and the repetition of the answer seemed more like old-fashioned theory verification than any kind of sadness. She just wants to know what's going on.

Then, the night after the funeral, I was telling her bedtime stories, and singing her current fave: Beatles songs. She has grown especially fond of "Eleanor Rigby":

DADDO (singing): Eleanor Rigby, died in the church and was buried along with her name-

LUCY (cutting off song): Why did Eleanor Rigby die in the church?

DADDO: Um, I guess because she worked there.

LUCY: She was buried? Like Auntie Donna was buried? What's "buried"?

DADDO: Yikes. Well, when you die they put your body someplace special.

LUCY: Why did Auntie Donna die?

DADDO: Because she got very, very old and got sick, and she died.

LUCY: Why did she get very old and sick?

DADDO: Well, sweetie, she lived for a very long time. Almost ninety years. And all things live for a while, but then they get tired. And when they get really tired, they can get sick.

LUCY: And then they die?

DADDO: Yes. You know how a tree gets really big? Then it grows super tall, so high you can't even see the top? After a tree stands there for a long time, it can get tired. It doesn't want to stand up anymore, so it falls down and dies.

LUCY: Like the whispering pines?

DADDO: Wait, is that from a song?

LUCY: It's from a song from Mommy.

DADDO: Well, yes, the whispering pines get tired of whispering. And they die. And then they become other things, like firewood or paper. And then they're gone. But you know what happens then?

LUCY: What?

DADDO: A little tiny seed grows in the same place. It becomes a seedling, then a sapling, then all of a sudden a brand new tree grows up big and strong in the place left by the old tree.

LUCY: I'm going to grow very big and then I'm going to die.

DADDO: Yes, but not for a long, long time. We are all planning to stay here for a long, long time. (pause) And it's all going to be okay. (pause) Are you feeling okay with that? (long pause) Sweetie?

LUCY: Can I have a peanut butter cookie?

DADDO: What?!? HELL NO! We're in bed! You already brushed your teeth!

LUCY: Can you sing one more song?

DADDO: Um, yes. Which one?

LUCY: Eleanor Rigby.

DADDO: How about "Blackbird"?

LUCY (smiles, turns over): Yes.