Territory

Oh, the world today. Strife and discontent everywhere you look. What, I sometimes wonder, what is it deep down that causes this sort of thing? What is fundamental to all this savage aggression?

By way of a possible answer, I present the story of the Finch at Barrington Corner.

A little earlier in the year, as I walked to or from work, I passed a certain corner on Barrington Avenue here in West Los Angeles. And one day, with my iPod playing away, I felt a peculiar bumping sensation on my right arm, as if someone was trying to tap my arm. I looked over, saw nothing, and continued my walk. A moment later I felt it again; and noticed a driver in her car, staring in amazement; and then looked on the ground and saw my shadow with something small flitting around it. Whipping around, I saw the finch retreat to its perch atop a guy wire. "Now that was bizarre," I said to myself, and continued on home. The finch did not follow.

(By the way, I'm assuming it was a finch. I know next to nothing about birding, and my cursory examination of a field guide suggests that a finch is the closest thing, but I could easily be wrong.)

Several days later, it happened again, in exactly the same spot. When I turned, the finch retreated and stared; if I again turned away from the finch, it would attack again. Then a few weeks passed, and suddenly the finch was defending the opposite side of the street, head-butting me in the arm over and over again until I was out of its territory. One morning I saw a yard worker dancing on the sidewalk, trying to figure out what on earth kept poking him. "That," I thought, "is one relentless bird." Soon I got to the point where I could spot the finch, perched on that guywire, looking out for trouble; and sure enough, as soon as I passed, the flitting and the head-butting would begin, and would keep on until I rounded the corner.

Of course it's absurd; and of course the bird doesn't know it. It (probably a she defending a nest that I've never been able to spot) cannot know that I have no intention whatsoever of disturbing her nest; she only knows that something large has entered her territory, and that's enough. No matter that I'm much, much larger, that her entire body would fit in my hand, that I intend no harm: she will attack in the only manner available to her, until I leave. Period.

Time passes and I haven't seen the finch for a few weeks; I sorta miss that crazy bird, now. But it strikes me that there's something illustrative in the way that bird will defend her territory against all reason. Think of Jerusalem, for instance, as a nesting territory, and try to imagine: how will you convince these birds not to attack? What logic can possibly accomplish the task when set against an instinct that strong?

Yeah, I don't know either.

Celebrating the Awful Occasion

A Quote

We've been soliciting quotes for the film, and just got a whim-whammer from Bruce Joel Rubin, who wrote Ghost, My Life and the wonderful Jacob's Ladder. (I just watched My Life recently and liked it much more than I thought I would--it's always in danger of plunging into sentimentality but somehow manages to pull through. A tricky little dance, and Rubin handled it pretty well.)

Anyway, here's what he had to say about Zen Noir:

Zen Noir represents a new idea in film, a story that is itself the very essence of its teaching. This is a smart and entrancing film that leads from the realm of worldly mystery into something larger and even more mysterious. It is a fascinating journey into the mystery of mystery itself.

Yep. That instantly becomes our lead quote. A thousand thanks to Mr. Rubin.

(And by the way, the trailer is now up at Apple's trailers site. We're everywhere!


The Birthday

It's been a good birthday so far. The MySpace thing has been loads of fun, with messages and comments from all sorts of people wishing me happy returns, some of whom I haven't actually seen in years. It's dead easy for them to do a nice thing, and it makes me feel good; winners all around. This morning I took a nice bike ride, doing laps around West L.A.'s V.A. Center, then did some errands that led me to Santa Monica. Since I was already there I decided to jump in and catch a movie, and so finally watched Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth.

Now I don't particularly feel like waxing political today, so I'll save the whole environmental question for later (though I do recommend going to the movie's website and visiting this page, which allows you to measure how much carbon you yourself are contributing to the atmosphere). But I will say this: if Mr. Gore had been really smart, the slide lecture at the center of this movie would have been the bulk of his presidential campaign, and I swear that man would be President now.

But anyway. After the movie was out, it was still early afternoon and I realized that I was only a couple short blocks from the Pacific Ocean. Just like that the sea started calling me, and I answered. The weather was perfect, as if the L.A. Chamber of Commerce had ordered it up special; consequently, there were thousands of people on the beach, and wandering the Santa Monica Pier. The ocean was one kind of blue, the sky another; and any birthday with an ocean in it is a good one, far as I'm concerned.

Yippee!

Headline in the New York Times: "Federal Judge Orders End to Warrantless Wiretapping"

This whole checks and balances thing--it may be slow, but by gum it works. Now we just have to survive the appeals process, and at last some small measure of sanity will begin to return to government.

It's ridiculous just how happy this makes me...

Charity

I have this friend in her early 60s (we'll call her Friend) who recently lamented the financial difficulties of her life. Her granddaughter had recently visited, so of course money was spent and gladly so; and when Friend's birthday came, after a year of scrimping she went and bought herself a little something because dammit, she deserved it. But since she lives the definition of a paycheck-to-paycheck life, these extra expenses simply had to go on a credit card.

Bear in mind: she lives in the fortunate position of being unburdened by credit card debt, which is better than most of us. (In the fourth quarter of 2005, 13.86% of Americans' disposable personal income went toward debt payments. You could almost look at it as a kind of Debt Tax.) So when Friend puts something on a credit card, at least it doesn't join the expenses of all the other times she had to do that. Again, compared to most of the rest of us, that's not bad. (I live for the day when I can pay off my credit cards.)

But. Since Friend's day-to-day finances are stretched so thin, the only way she can pay off this new credit card debt is by doing a balance transfer with a 12-month no-interest-payment deal, then divide her total by 12 and take that amount out of what she would ordinarily put into savings. The effective result: her credit card will be paid off in good time, but she won't be able to save any money for a year. When you're in your 60s, saving money is unbelievably important, but what else can she do?

I have written before about the challenges of what I called being "not-yet-rich." (And thankfully, with the movie coming out, things are starting to look up for me. But that's an avenue that isn't open to most people.) The paycheck-to-paycheck life is terribly difficult--I can tell you from experience that the psychic burden of knowing you can't even go to a movie with friends unless someone else pays just gets bigger and bigger. It's one thing to live with this reality at my age, with my prospects; it's quite another at Friend's age, without those prospects. When your budget is as finely tuned, as carefully crafted, as it can possibly be, but life still keeps throwing you curve balls.

But here's the one wrinkle in all of this: Friend happens to be a deeply religious person, and every month she tithes a significant portion of her income to church-related organizations. It's an extremely worthy thing to do, and I'm not writing in order to denigrate in any way those people who, say, sponsor impoverished children in Africa. After all, compared to their situation, Friend is living the high life. But I do wonder whether there ought to be a little leeway in these churches, so that people whose circumstances are in fact as tight as Friend's could maybe be let off the hook a little.

(I must also, however, note that one of the organizations to which she tithes is the odious Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network, which is, sad to say, just a revolting waste of good money.)

In that same blog entry from January I wrote about how unsettling it was that I couldn't donate to an environmental organization; but given the state of my finances, it was a sacrifice I had to make and did. At least there wasn't some minister doling out guilt by the bucket for my stinginess of spirit.

It's one thing to be Warren Buffett. His act of unheard-of generosity is, as far as I'm concerned, the single greatest thing anyone has done for the world all year, if not all decade. His gift, combined with the activities of The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, will do enormous good in all sorts of places that need good to be done. But you know what? If Mr. Buffett does indeed give away 85% of his $44 billion fortune, that still leaves him with $6.6 billion. For someone who lives as responsibly, as unostenatiously, as he does, that kind of money will last a nice long time. I think most of us would be very happy indeed with $6.6 billion, no?

But if you're a wage slave like Friend, can't it be enough to just live your life? Not extravagantly but comfortably; particularly in the later years, after a lifetime of devotion and charity. Does Pat Robertson's network really have to keep leaning so hard on people like Friend? People at or nearing retirement age who really need to start taking care of themselves now. Can't it be enough to let the Warren Buffetts of the world take over for a while? Charity is a good and important thing; but what on earth is the point if (a) your charity is in part coerced by your faith, and (b) if it comes at the expense of your own well-being?

Don't Panic

So it seems that this time the bad men in caves were bad men in apartment flats. What they had in mind was completely awful, and I won't comment on it here because I can't imagine anyone arguing the point that the plot was completely awful.

But the investigation that led to the arrests is interesting and worthy of discussion; so is the response of the air-travel industry to the revelation of the plot. First, the investigation.

I have written before (here and here, among other entries) about what I believe to be gross violations of civil liberties that have been committed in the name of the never-ending War on Terror. But at least from what we know now, none of the tactics that are so offensive--warrant-free wiretaps, torture of prisoners, detention without trial or representation, etc.--had anything to do with the investigation that revealed this latest plot. The Time article mentions that U.S. signals intelligence (the fancy name for wiretapping) was involved in the investigation but doesn't specify whether the communications being intercepted were international or domestic; and in any event, it seems beyond belief that a warrant for wiretapping of these communications would have been denied by a FISA court. (Since the investigation was underway for months, it's also difficult to argue that the "slowness" of the FISA courts would have been an issue--while the last stage of the investigation apparently happened very fast indeed, the initial stages when wiretapping would have been set up seem to have allowed plenty of time to follow the legalities.) There is also no indication whatsoever that detained prisoners from any of our worldwide conflicts provided information relating to this plot; rather, the key tip seems to have come from a member of the British Muslim community, and then good old-fashioned police/intelligence work put one of our people, under deep cover, into their operation.

In other words, the old stand-bys, the legal means of investigation that have worked for years, seem to have come through again. If anything, this latest plot argues that the things we've been lax on--like improving inter-agency communications so that the CIA and FBI aren't working at odds, or improving international cooperation between the western intelligence services--are exactly what produced results this time. And the whole argument about fighting terrorists in Iraq so we don't have to fight them here is severely weakened as we see the continued rise of "homegrown" terrorists like those involved in both the London subway bombing and this latest plot. These were terrorists who don't have to come here because they're already here, they were born here--moreover, their perception of our hatred of Islam, as represented by the conflict in Iraq, was almost certainly part of what inflamed them in the first place.

And now, after revelation of the plot, we are predictably freaking out again. But as this interesting Salon article, written by a commercial pilot named Patrick Smith, points out, this information about liquid explosives isn't new at all. Security experts have known about it for at least twelve years, and it's safe to assume that the reason they didn't make an issue out of it was because they realized how disruptive it would be to travelers. As we saw yesterday. But Smith goes on to make the larger point: "What we need to get through our terror-addled heads is this: It has been, and it will always be, relatively easy to smuggle a potentially deadly weapon onto an aircraft." The man's a pilot; I have to take his word on this.

There is no such thing as perfect security, either in an airplane or on a bus or in a public square. We can only do what we can, as well as we can, but with the knowledge that every once in a while, something is going to slip through. "Acceptable risk" is a bit cold, but it describes the situation we all live in. And it has nothing to do with terrorism, at heart--sometimes planes suffer simple mechanical failures, too, and fall out of the sky. Sometimes a switching mistake happens and one train crashes into another. Sometimes there's something on the road that makes your tire blow out, and next thing you know you're upside down in a creek. Life is risk. Most of the time we know this, but when you add in the looming specter of terrorism, we go all goofy and pretend that if only we sacrifice this, this, this and this, and then this and this as well, we will finally achieve Perfect Safety.

Can't happen. Won't ever happen. And it may seem trivial that you shouldn't ever wear a belt to the airport anymore because it sets off the metal detectors and then you have to get wanded; but we've already accepted a whole series of little compromises, and now we're about to be asked to accept a whole new series of little compromises, and then a couple more years will pass and there'll be some new plot and yet another series of little compromises. Pretty soon we're all putting thousands of miles on our cars because no one wants the hassle of flying anymore, and one of the great conveniences of the last century will be effectively wiped out. All in pursuit of the unattainable goal of Perfect Safety.

Screening Dates

Here are the first few confirmed dates when Zen Noir will be opening:

September 15, San Francisco - Lumiere Theater
September 22, Los Angeles - Westside Pavilion
October 13 - Austin, Texas
October 27 - St. Louis and Seattle
November 10 - Minneapolis

Obviously there's more to come--I don't even know yet which specific theaters the movie will be playing in for most of those cities, and other cities are most definitely in the works. The good people at Magic Lamp are busy busy, and I'll know more soon. (This list on the website should be consistently updated with the newest info on where and when.)

The Heart That is Hard

I've written often enough about the illegal immigration issue (here, here and here, particularly), so I would have been interested anyway when I saw that Morgan Spurlock's 30 Days program was focusing its second-season opener on the question. But I happen to like the show a lot, so I would've watched anyway. Spurlock is all about life in the real world: he isn't an ideologue, he's someone who asks a question and then tries to find a real, practical answer, usually by going out and living the question and its consequences. In his breakthrough documentary Super Size Me, he subjected his own body to a month of nothing but McDonald's food to see what would happen (it wasn't good); and when he started 30 Days on the fx Channel, he and his girlfriend moved into a crappy apartment for thirty days and lived on nothing but the minimum wage jobs they could get. Again, it was unpleasant for them but revelatory for the audience. Subsequent episodes usually found other participants because Spurlock would probably die if he pulled this stunt too often; but it turned out to be inspired, because putting someone of one viewpoint into the life of someone with another viewpoint may just be the best way, in our media culture, to produce a real Socratic dialogue.

Even so, I found myself deeply moved by this particular episode. The premise was simple: a member of the Minutemen named Frank George moved in with a family of undocumented Mexicans in East L.A. Frank, in an example of particularly good casting, turned out to be a Cuban-born legal immigrant who came to the U.S. with his parents after Fidel happened. (No one ever comments on the fact that his parents apparently had contacts with a U.S. corporation that helped them get documentation--just the sort of wealthy contacts that most Mexican and Central American workers simply don't have. If they did, they wouldn't need to cross the border illegally in the first place. It is the absence of other choices that makes them illegal, as this program would go on to demonstrate convincingly.) What this meant was that, on the one hand, Frank spoke fluent Spanish and was able to communicate easily with the family that took him in; on the other hand, it made him a little self-righteous sometimes about how the path he took to legal status was the one everyone should take. Again: I'm sure most people would, if that option was realistically available to them.

I thought both sides of the issue were well-represented: Frank seemed a true representative of his ideology, although his arguments were a bit limited, usually turning on the idea that this is a nation of laws and, by definition, illegal immigrants are here illegally, therefore they should be deported. The "Gonzalez" family were warm, welcoming, hard-working people making slow steps toward achieving what everyone refers to as the American Dream: opportunity and hard work equals advancement. Their daughter Armida, a 3.8 honors student at her school, was the standout child, widely liked by her teachers and with a wealth of possibilities opening up to her. At the beginning of Frank's time with the family, Armida was hoping to be accepted to Princeton. (How she can be accepted into any college when she's here illegally was never addressed; presumably there's something I don't know about how one's citizenship status interacts with admissions policies.) The Gonzalezes simply insisted that all they wanted was a better life and more opportunities for their children; and the father, Rigoberto, was perfectly up-front about hoping, after a hypothetical amnesty, to one day be able to open his own business, when he would without compunction hire more undocumented workers like himself. (Whether he would then be exploiting his own people is also a question that was never addressed.)

Frank, despite personally liking the Gonzalezes, wasn't about to bend on his principles; then someone came up with the brilliant idea of sending him to Mexico to meet the family the Gonzalezes left behind. This is when the show became really powerful. He saw the hovel the family had once lived in, a roofless pile of cinder blocks without any electricity or plumbing, where water was provided by running a hose from a brackish, almost-certainly infested well dozens of yards away. The conditions were horrifying, and suddenly that 500 square-foot apartment they live in now in East L.A. seemed palatial. Frank met the grandparents who some of the kids have never met, and as a basically decent guy he took some video and showed it to them when he got back to the States.

The question then became: would this experience change Frank's mind? Strictly from watching the show, yes he did, but not entirely: he decided not to go to the border anymore but still supports the stricter version of immigration legislation that was passed by the House. Since the show aired I have seen some reports that Frank felt his "change of heart" was taken out of context, and maybe that's so. But that doesn't diminish the effectiveness of the experience on a random viewer like myself.

Before this gets too long, just a couple points. If, as Frank kept insisting, the problem with illegals is that they're illegal, then what happens if, say, the Senate version of immigration policy is made into law? That would allow a "path to citizenship," and in one of the show's more interesting moments he declared that he was firmly opposed to this version of legislation. But if it did pass, and became law, then would he as a law-abiding citizen support and enforce it? Unfortunately, the participants in this discussion veered away from that question, so I can only guess that Frank would declare it a "bad law" and agitate against it. Trouble is, that in itself pokes a giant hole in his "nation of laws" argument--apparently, we are only to be a nation of laws that Frank likes. And with that, much of the strength of his arguments collapses.

Laws, after all, are not monolithic: we are not meant to serve the law, the law is meant to serve us. If you feel a law is good, great; if you feel a law is bad, then argue against it. Fight against it if you must. (If, for example, a law was ever passed that abridged the freedom of speech, you can bet I would fight against it vigorously.) The question of whether one should simply slavishly follow any law was dealt with pretty effectively at Nuremburg. So, then, Frank does not dislike illegal immigration because it's illegal, he dislikes it because he dislikes it. That's fine, I have no problem with his not liking something; but he needs to be honest with himself and realize that the core of his argument is hollow and he needs a better argument.

Then there's the practical question, which cannot and should not be disassociated from emotional issues. Should we let our raw sentimentality dissuade us from a carefully-considered ethical position? Not usually, no. But after seeing the awful conditions this one family faced when they lived in Mexico, how could anyone with any kind of a soul possibly want to send them back? And given that there are something like eleven million undocumented workers in America, if you sent them all back en masse, where do you think they would live? Probably in conditions that would make that wretched hovel look like a palace.

I absolutely agree that something must be done in Mexico to improve the lives of its citizens. But I say that instead of getting all worked up about the poor workers driven to the desperate point of becoming criminals just to improve their lives a little, I say let's turn our energies to the betterment of Mexico as a whole. That would solve the problem in a way that's good for absolutely everybody, and I just can't imagine why this isn't what everyone is talking about.

POSTSCRIPT: I went on the internet looking for other responses to this powerful program, wanting to read a few reviews from people who had been as moved as I was. Instead, I found this. Oh my heavens. It didn't seem possible that anyone could watch that program and not be moved, and yet here they are, in their numbers. One commenter wrote "[M]y question is why did they not use a red blooded white American person from the Minutemen? Not to be a racist but, Frank did mention he was from Cuba." Yep, that's not racist at all. Oy.

In a web posting, Frank declares that his real change of heart comes in the shape of deciding to start lobbying politicians directly to close down the border, rather than patrolling the border himself. "This change in me was caused by living in a former USA city [East L.A.] that is now a Mexican city to the point that as I wandered the streets I asked the illegals if this city reminded them of a Mexican city and they said yes, Guadalajara Mexico." This, apparently, was a great shock to him.

But parts of Chicago once looked a lot like Krakow. Parts of New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and other major cities still look a lot like parts of China and/or Korea. And Boston, as I can tell you from personal experience, looks a hell of a lot like Dublin. So what? That's kinda what they mean by "melting pot." The Polish part of Chicago has been mostly assimilated; the assimilation of the Irish and Italians was completed long ago. That's how this works. The fact that part of a U.S. city has changed recently so that it resembles a Mexican city is really not a big deal. I live in L.A., and trust me, it ain't no "former USA city," and the overwhelming majority of it doesn't look like Guadalajara.

Four Old Guys Singin' Real Nice

When I finally started listening to music around the age of 12 or so, the Beatles came first, as I have written before. When at last my musical tastes began to broaden (ever so slightly), there were three acts that quickly took up second position: The Doors, Simon & Garfunkel, and Crosby Stills & Nash (and Young). On Sunday night, I got to go to a show and see all four members of CSN&Y, in a concert overwhelmingly devoted to protest songs. All the better, I say.

The show was down in Irvine, and we went there because you could get better seats for less money than at the Hollywood Bowl concert Monday night. A bit of a drive, sure, but with nice people and a bunch of CDs, so what? It's a nice venue: yet another of those great Southern California spots where an amphitheatre is built out of a hillside, with trees and grass and very good acoustics. And the weather was fabulous: the awful heat of the last several weeks finally broke a few days ago, and it was so nice to be outside for a while without melting.

What with traffic on the 405, we arrived late--and were just walking to our seats when CSN&Y took the stage, which made for pretty great timing. It took us a little while to get situated and comfortable, and it took the band a little while to get really warmed up, so we were ready for them at about the same time they were ready for us.

The rap against Crosby Stills & Nash, with our without Neil Young, has always been that their live shows can be a bit spotty. It's no great surprise: they are defined by the quality of those gorgeous harmonies, those incredibly well-matched voices, but those harmonies are tough to pull off outside a studio. And indeed, on the second song of the evening, "Carry On," the harmonies weren't working and I was rapidly getting worried. But then they moved into "Wooden Ships," and suddenly it all started to gel.

The problem, we decided, is that Stephen Stills really doesn't have much of a voice anymore. At full volume he can do tough rock numbers pretty well (in fact on one solo turn he sounded almost like Ray Charles), but more delicate numbers seem to be beyond him now. The man is in his early 60s, and it's a shame but these things happen. (He also looks as if the flesh is slowly sliding off his face and onto his neck--who would've thought that David Crosby would be the one looking hale and healthy out of that group?) With one of those four voices struggling, the real close-harmony stuff gets problematic ("Helplessly Hoping," in the second half of the show, didn't come off very well at all); but for songs where Stills could sing out strongly, the four voices mixed very well. And given that there were so many protest songs being played, there actually weren't too many times when delicacy was required of Mr. Stills.

The tour is clearly taking its cue from Neil Young, whose recent album, Living With War, dominates the first half of their show (eight out of ten tracks were played). And since that record, released less than three months ago, is already notorious for its anger toward the current political climate and features a track titled "Let's Impeach the President," small wonder that this CSN&Y tour would lean heavily on tracks like "Ohio," "Almost Cut My Hair," "Immigration Man," "Find the Cost (of Freedom)" and "Rockin' in the Free World." They even played Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth," which was a special treat. (And on which Mr. Stills sounded just fine, thank you.)

The second half of the show made room for more delicate numbers, plus some solo turns or smaller groupings of the four: Crosby and Graham Nash backing up Neil Young for "Only Love Can Break Your Heart," Young and Stills doing another great Buffalo Springfield number, "Treetop Flyer," Nash's "Our House," and maybe the single best performance of the evening, Crosby and Nash doing a delicate, perfect rendering of "Guinivere." (Indeed, Crosby sounded fantastic through the whole night, and a long night it was--35 songs were played, and through all of it, when not playing a guitar Crosby would stand there, his hands in his pockets as if it were all the easiest thing in the world, singing so incredibly well that after his first solo turn I leaned over to Buffie and said "I'm so glad he's not dead!")

Of course, the other candidate for best performance of the evening was "Rockin' in the Free World," which got played about as hard as it could possibly be played, and for a while it seemed the song would never end, that it would just build and build until we all fell over and died, but eventually every single string on Neil Young's guitar got busted and they simply had to stop.

All in all, it was one of the best concerts I've seen. There was a particularly nice segue when everyone left the stage and the legendary recording of Hendrix's Woodstock performance of the Star Spangled Banner was played, which then moved straight into "Let's Impeach the President." Several audience members stood for the Star Spangled Banner, their hands over their hearts as Jimi wailed; then some of the same audience members (it was Orange County, after all) left once "Let's Impeach" got rolling, with its wicked "Flip! Flop!" bridge while video of the President contradicting himself was played on the screens.

Hell of a show. And for my friend Buffie, a musician herself who recently celebrated a birthday, it made for a hell of a nice suprise.