Time passes, and it does what it does, and slowly I have managed to crawl back to something that feels like normal. In no order whatsoever:
Casino Roulette
My first trip to Vegas produced the not-at-all surprising revelation that one casino is just like every other casino. Went wandering around one in the morning the first night there, thinking it would be cooler at night (ha!), left the nice air-conditioned MGM Grand to wander the Strip, got as far as the Luxor and needed to get back into air conditioning again. Where I found that the casino there looked almost exactly the same as the one at the MGM Grand. Then I took the walkways back again, making interior crossings from building to building as long as possible, thus leading me through whatever that weird “medieval castle” place is, and discovering again that their casino seemed awfully familiar. Well of course it is—the science of separating you (willingly!) from your money is just that, a science, and a science that is about as refined and well-practiced as any you’ll ever find. Casinos all look alike because that look makes you give them money, and lots of it.
I never gambled, by the way, but I watched friends gamble. And even with a well-practiced (online) blackjack system, nothing online prepares you for the subtle shift that happens when your dealer gets swapped out in the middle of a good run of cards, or when the pit boss leans in to see how things are going. Suddenly, money starts going away, very fast.
One more thing: the purpose of chips is to make your money abstract. If you were gambling with real hundreds or thousands or higher, you would definitely feel it more than when your money has been abstracted to colorful little chips. And once your money has been abstracted, it goes away faster. A science, thoroughly perfected.
Cleaning House
The process of going through someone’s house, cleaning up their life, is difficult for all sorts of reasons. (And a toolshed in Florida in August adds a whole new layer of difficulty.) My grandfather was one of the most unsentimental people I’ve ever known—he would sell off pretty much anything, without a qualm; but he still managed to accumulate mountains of stuff. And so, of course, as I helped with the awful process of working through it all, the following inevitable logic chain went through my head:
1) Man, he had a lot of crap
2) Man, people in general have a lot of crap
3) Man, I’ve got a lot of crap
Leaving me thoroughly resolved to do some house-cleaning of my own when I got home. But of course, once I actually did get home...
Bleah
The second the plane touched down, that’s when all my resolution vanished. I’d been solid and strong for days; now I was something else. Mostly petulant and lazy. God did I get lazy. Watched endless hours of the Olympics, not because I actually enjoyed watching table tennis but because it was on. Took days to crawl my way back to my normal routine. So if I owe someone an email or a phone call, my apologies, and I should get to it soon.
Mr. Smith, Meet Mr. Obama
I had one of those birthday-things, and celebrated the awful occasion by going to a screening of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, one of my favorite movies. It was sponsored by Generation Obama as a fundraiser for the campaign, and afterward there was a panel discussion that included Aaron Sorkin, one of favorite screenwriters and of course the creator of The West Wing.
(And because my mom has mad skillz as a gift-giver, the very day I went to this function, she sent me a birthday box containing a DVD of Charlie Wilson’s War, which was written by Aaron Sorkin. She bought it a month ago, long before I knew this event was going to be held; she also had no idea that that particular movie was written by Mr. Sorkin, she just thought I’d like it. Yep.)
The panelists were under some constraint to keep their remarks focused more on Obama than on the movie we’d just watched, which was mildly disappointing. The question I didn’t get to ask was this: Mr. Smith is clearly a fantasy, because in it, Jefferson Smith is clearly defeated, and only obtains victory because one of the bad guys suffers an attack of conscience and confesses. And as we all know, in the real world, that simply never happens. So, while the movie’s portrait of naiveté versus idealism (Jeff Smith suffers because he is naïve; he wins because he holds firm to his idealism) is definitely relevant to this campaign, ultimately the movie probably offers a hopeful vision that won’t much resemble what happens in the real world.
Although after Michelle Obama’s marvelous speech last night, I don’t know, I’m suddenly feeling delightfully naïve all over again...
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
For Gil
A photo of my grandfather and my mother, taken a couple years ago. Posted tonight because my grandfather died today, and because eventually we are all transformed to memory. And because I am now fresh out of grandparents.
Saturday, August 02, 2008
Yay Triple-A
If you're going to run out of gas, you might as well really complete the experience: run out of gas in the middle of Death Valley.
Okay, fine, technically we weren't in Death Valley, just a part of the Mojave Desert. But the story's better with something like "Death Valley" in it, so let's just run with it, shall we?
Just made my first visit to Las Vegas for a Lightwheel company retreat, during which we spent a full day planning strategy, saw two shows (one of them brilliant), and further enriched the casino at the MGM Grand. I'm sure I'll tell more stories about this in the next few days. But on the way back, we had our opportunities to get gas. In Vegas itself, and a couple times along the road. But of course we had the thought that everyone has: "Ah, no problem, we can get to the next rest stop easy."
But as the miles rolled on, there was a conspicuous absence of gas stations. And the needle kept dipping lower. We tried to pull off at places that looked like they might just have hidden gas stations, like the Ron Paul Truck Stop (no, really), but they didn't. And about 8 miles northeast of Yermo, California, the car started to chug and shudder. Then the engine went quiet and we coasted to a stop on the shoulder of the I-15.
The Mojave Desert. Just past 1:00 in the afternoon. Hot high clear sun, driving away our former air conditioning in about a minute flat. Outside temperature somewhere above 100. And in the car, Buffie, whose body is not terribly good at regulating heat.
But one thing we did have: cellphones. And AAA cards. Buffie had one, I had one. And before we'd even coasted to a full stop, I already had my new iPhone out and was withdrawing my AAA card to look up the number. The whole thing worked exactly like it's supposed to: they picked up promptly, asked the right questions, and dispatched the call to a towing service in Barstow almost immediately. Barely two minutes after I hung up, someone from Barstow was calling back to point out to me that I'd said we were east of Yermo but the I-15 does not travel east-west but north-south, and which way had we really been driving?
We had a 45-minute wait, and it's nice to point out that there were other options: a call box only a few feet back, and after we'd been there for half an hour we received a visit from a California State trooper, who wanted to be sure we were being taken care of. So really, all we had to do was sit and wait. As Buffie slowly turned redder and redder.
But hey, the guy from AAA got there exactly when they'd said he would, he poured in ten bucks' gas (about a thimble-full), I paid him $20 because I didn't have anything smaller and by gum, saving our lives was worth the tip, and then we were on our merry way again. Half an hour later we were in Yermo, freshly gassed-up and enjoying a nice lunch at Peggy Sue's 50's Diner.
I only became a AAA member a few months ago, after a friend of mine got a flat tire just a couple weeks after he'd allowed his own AAA membership to lapse. And now, this soon, it has paid for itself a dozen times over. Let's hear it for the happy ending.
Okay, fine, technically we weren't in Death Valley, just a part of the Mojave Desert. But the story's better with something like "Death Valley" in it, so let's just run with it, shall we?
Just made my first visit to Las Vegas for a Lightwheel company retreat, during which we spent a full day planning strategy, saw two shows (one of them brilliant), and further enriched the casino at the MGM Grand. I'm sure I'll tell more stories about this in the next few days. But on the way back, we had our opportunities to get gas. In Vegas itself, and a couple times along the road. But of course we had the thought that everyone has: "Ah, no problem, we can get to the next rest stop easy."
But as the miles rolled on, there was a conspicuous absence of gas stations. And the needle kept dipping lower. We tried to pull off at places that looked like they might just have hidden gas stations, like the Ron Paul Truck Stop (no, really), but they didn't. And about 8 miles northeast of Yermo, California, the car started to chug and shudder. Then the engine went quiet and we coasted to a stop on the shoulder of the I-15.
The Mojave Desert. Just past 1:00 in the afternoon. Hot high clear sun, driving away our former air conditioning in about a minute flat. Outside temperature somewhere above 100. And in the car, Buffie, whose body is not terribly good at regulating heat.
But one thing we did have: cellphones. And AAA cards. Buffie had one, I had one. And before we'd even coasted to a full stop, I already had my new iPhone out and was withdrawing my AAA card to look up the number. The whole thing worked exactly like it's supposed to: they picked up promptly, asked the right questions, and dispatched the call to a towing service in Barstow almost immediately. Barely two minutes after I hung up, someone from Barstow was calling back to point out to me that I'd said we were east of Yermo but the I-15 does not travel east-west but north-south, and which way had we really been driving?
We had a 45-minute wait, and it's nice to point out that there were other options: a call box only a few feet back, and after we'd been there for half an hour we received a visit from a California State trooper, who wanted to be sure we were being taken care of. So really, all we had to do was sit and wait. As Buffie slowly turned redder and redder.
But hey, the guy from AAA got there exactly when they'd said he would, he poured in ten bucks' gas (about a thimble-full), I paid him $20 because I didn't have anything smaller and by gum, saving our lives was worth the tip, and then we were on our merry way again. Half an hour later we were in Yermo, freshly gassed-up and enjoying a nice lunch at Peggy Sue's 50's Diner.
I only became a AAA member a few months ago, after a friend of mine got a flat tire just a couple weeks after he'd allowed his own AAA membership to lapse. And now, this soon, it has paid for itself a dozen times over. Let's hear it for the happy ending.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Shakety Shake
Yep, that was a big earthquake. A whopping 5.4 on the old Richter scale, although that's still not the biggest one I've ever been through. (That, according to Mom, would be an Alaska quake of 5.6 when I was but a wee baby boy, and I don't remember it at all.)
I was in a Lightwheel meeting with Marc and Buffie, and I'm sure we all went through the same set of thoughts at the same time: is that just a vibration of the building, or is that--?; whoa, yeah, that's a--!; um, this is a lot stronger than the ones before...; should I be getting under a doorway?; no, nothing's falling off any shelves, I should be okay; man, this thing's going on for forever....
It only lasted for about thirty seconds, actually, though of course it felt as though it took a whole lot longer than that. And there seemed to be a lot going on during that time--a little bit of rolling from side to side, a little bit of bumping up and down, plus of course a whole lot of just general vibration. As the above-linked USGS page states in its summary, none of this is a surprise: this particular quake had characteristics of both kinds of major faults: a strike-slip fault that would produce a sudden jump, and a "reverse fault" that moves from here to there.
And yet as strong as this one felt (Buffie reached out, startled, and grabbed both our arms), nothing fell off any shelves, I saw no damage at all when I got home, and news reports tell me there were no injuries and no real damage to speak of, citywide. Which is both reassuring and worrying at the same time.
Reassuring because the local construction standards seem to have held up very well indeed during what was, from my limited experience, a hell of an event. But worrying because the official agencies have all dubbed this a "moderate" quake, and I can't help thinking--if that was moderate, jeez, do I even want to know what a strong quake is like?
Astonishingly, within five minutes of the earthquake we could find information about it on the USGS's website (which I have bookmarked because, you know, I live here). The local news had gone all-earthquake instantly, but since there really wasn't anything to report yet, it was just more of the usual saturation-news blather. So we three either called or e-mailed our families to let them know not to worry, then got back to work.
Still. Damn, that was something...
I was in a Lightwheel meeting with Marc and Buffie, and I'm sure we all went through the same set of thoughts at the same time: is that just a vibration of the building, or is that--?; whoa, yeah, that's a--!; um, this is a lot stronger than the ones before...; should I be getting under a doorway?; no, nothing's falling off any shelves, I should be okay; man, this thing's going on for forever....
It only lasted for about thirty seconds, actually, though of course it felt as though it took a whole lot longer than that. And there seemed to be a lot going on during that time--a little bit of rolling from side to side, a little bit of bumping up and down, plus of course a whole lot of just general vibration. As the above-linked USGS page states in its summary, none of this is a surprise: this particular quake had characteristics of both kinds of major faults: a strike-slip fault that would produce a sudden jump, and a "reverse fault" that moves from here to there.
And yet as strong as this one felt (Buffie reached out, startled, and grabbed both our arms), nothing fell off any shelves, I saw no damage at all when I got home, and news reports tell me there were no injuries and no real damage to speak of, citywide. Which is both reassuring and worrying at the same time.
Reassuring because the local construction standards seem to have held up very well indeed during what was, from my limited experience, a hell of an event. But worrying because the official agencies have all dubbed this a "moderate" quake, and I can't help thinking--if that was moderate, jeez, do I even want to know what a strong quake is like?
Astonishingly, within five minutes of the earthquake we could find information about it on the USGS's website (which I have bookmarked because, you know, I live here). The local news had gone all-earthquake instantly, but since there really wasn't anything to report yet, it was just more of the usual saturation-news blather. So we three either called or e-mailed our families to let them know not to worry, then got back to work.
Still. Damn, that was something...
Monday, July 21, 2008
The Wanting of Toys: The Inevitable Sequel
Okay, I’ll admit it: the iPhone is kind of great. (Come on, you knew this one was coming.)
Bear in mind, I never owned a Blackberry, so this whole notion of being able to check email on my phone is new to me, and I’m enjoying it like crazy--particularly since I’ve been away from home a lot recently, and it’s nice to know things I wouldn’t ordinarily know unless I was at home--how well Zen Noir is selling today, for instance. And when our composer, the estimable Steve Chesne, sends an email with a question, I can respond right away.
Plus, you know. It’s a toy, and toys are good. Didja know you can download this free application that’ll make your iPhone sound like a lightsaber? That’s awesome! And the “More Cowbell” application is so silly it’s sublime.
The question is, was it worth standing in line for three hours? (Particularly after my little diatribe several days ago.) Well, see, here’s the thing: those lines are deceptive. No, really. I happened to be in Century City last week, so I wandered by the Apple Store. There were fewer than ten people waiting outside and I didn’t have to be anywhere so I figured, What the hell? Got in line, the line soon edged forward a little, so it wasn’t moving fast but it was moving. Enough time had passed since the chaotic launch of the phone, surely the wait wouldn’t be so bad these several days later.
Of course, there were about thirty people already inside the store. (The window advertising pretty well obscured what was going on inside.) Then something happened, with the servers or whatever, and suddenly the line wasn’t moving at all, for an astonishingly long time. (The Apple employees blamed AT&T, and AT&T put out a press release that essentially said it was all Apple’s fault.) Now, by this point I’d already been there for a while and was invested in the time. It felt like an even worse crime to discard the hour I’d already spent waiting, so I waited yet longer. At least there were some entertaining folks in the line around me, and by the time we were done we’d all gotten to know each other reasonably well. And of course we were all questioning our sanity by then, but hey, at least we all got iPhones.
And as I say, it’s a pretty incredible little object. The secret key is also joining MobileMe, Apple’s online service. I don’t need their me.com email address and haven’t given it to anyone, but MobileMe is what allows my email to find me on the phone without actually syncing the phone with the computer. It does the same with my contacts and calendar items as well, so that I can add something to my calendar on the iPhone and it’ll automatically add itself to my desktop computer’s calendar as well, and vice versa. As things get busier, this alone will become invaluable. Plus there’s the GPS-in-a-phone thing, which will help when I get lost and am not in the car where I’ve already got GPS. I get lost easily, see. My sense of direction is permanently discombobulated now that I live on the west coast and the ocean is on the wrong side.
Plus, the toys. Eight gigs of music that now come with a phone, web browsing at will, the whole deal. I make no secret of being a bit of a gadget freak (yes, the Engadget site is bookmarked), and this one is I think up there with the TiVo in terms of general terrificness. Does the iPhone fit anywhere on the chart of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? Of course not. But still. Toys!
Bear in mind, I never owned a Blackberry, so this whole notion of being able to check email on my phone is new to me, and I’m enjoying it like crazy--particularly since I’ve been away from home a lot recently, and it’s nice to know things I wouldn’t ordinarily know unless I was at home--how well Zen Noir is selling today, for instance. And when our composer, the estimable Steve Chesne, sends an email with a question, I can respond right away.
Plus, you know. It’s a toy, and toys are good. Didja know you can download this free application that’ll make your iPhone sound like a lightsaber? That’s awesome! And the “More Cowbell” application is so silly it’s sublime.
The question is, was it worth standing in line for three hours? (Particularly after my little diatribe several days ago.) Well, see, here’s the thing: those lines are deceptive. No, really. I happened to be in Century City last week, so I wandered by the Apple Store. There were fewer than ten people waiting outside and I didn’t have to be anywhere so I figured, What the hell? Got in line, the line soon edged forward a little, so it wasn’t moving fast but it was moving. Enough time had passed since the chaotic launch of the phone, surely the wait wouldn’t be so bad these several days later.
Of course, there were about thirty people already inside the store. (The window advertising pretty well obscured what was going on inside.) Then something happened, with the servers or whatever, and suddenly the line wasn’t moving at all, for an astonishingly long time. (The Apple employees blamed AT&T, and AT&T put out a press release that essentially said it was all Apple’s fault.) Now, by this point I’d already been there for a while and was invested in the time. It felt like an even worse crime to discard the hour I’d already spent waiting, so I waited yet longer. At least there were some entertaining folks in the line around me, and by the time we were done we’d all gotten to know each other reasonably well. And of course we were all questioning our sanity by then, but hey, at least we all got iPhones.
And as I say, it’s a pretty incredible little object. The secret key is also joining MobileMe, Apple’s online service. I don’t need their me.com email address and haven’t given it to anyone, but MobileMe is what allows my email to find me on the phone without actually syncing the phone with the computer. It does the same with my contacts and calendar items as well, so that I can add something to my calendar on the iPhone and it’ll automatically add itself to my desktop computer’s calendar as well, and vice versa. As things get busier, this alone will become invaluable. Plus there’s the GPS-in-a-phone thing, which will help when I get lost and am not in the car where I’ve already got GPS. I get lost easily, see. My sense of direction is permanently discombobulated now that I live on the west coast and the ocean is on the wrong side.
Plus, the toys. Eight gigs of music that now come with a phone, web browsing at will, the whole deal. I make no secret of being a bit of a gadget freak (yes, the Engadget site is bookmarked), and this one is I think up there with the TiVo in terms of general terrificness. Does the iPhone fit anywhere on the chart of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? Of course not. But still. Toys!
Sunday, July 13, 2008
The Wanting of Toys
So the brand-new whoa-golly iPhone 3G was set free into the world on Friday, and the world accordingly said Gimme! And because hype works, people said Gimme! in mind-boggling numbers.
I was completely able to resist the iPhone mass madness the first time around (only one short year ago), but this time it's got more of the stuff I'd want, plus my needs have changed and it would be a nice thing to have. So on Friday, since I happened to be nearby, I figured what the hell and wandered over to the Apple Store in Century City.
And was surprised to find that it really wasn't so bad. I'd heard all the stories about activation problems and "bricked" phones and delays delays delays, and figured that would mean that hundreds of people would still be lined up outside. Turns out there were only about fifteen people waiting, in a line that barely reached to the entrance of the store next door. "Well then," thought I, "maybe I'll just go ahead and get one." I got in line. Five minutes passed. A couple other people got in line behind me. One woman said she'd come by a few hours before and there'd been people herded in an improvised holding area at the opposite corner of the mall, so she was amazed that the line was now so short.
We were just beginning to speculate on why that might be when the security guard approached. "Are you on the list?" he asked. "What list?" we asked.
Yep, the cowpen was still active. Six hundred-plus people on the list (representing the whole day--they had moved through about five hundred of them already). So I got out of what was not in fact a proper line outside the store and, knowing that I would not be buying an iPhone today, decided to walk over to see the line. And was rewarded with a string of hot, weary people who looked pretty thoroughly bored and miserable, and you just had to wonder: why on earth?
I mean sure, it's fun to be the first on your block with a whatever, but when thousands of people line up across the city, you have to admit you're just not gonna be first. So, then, what's so awful about being second? Or 10,000th? Shouldn't the thing itself, the iPhone, be more important than the over-hyped aura surrounding it?
The activation troubles reveal the truth.
Apple made a colossal mistake: they tried to do three major things at once. Four, actually. They tried to launch the iPhone, they tried to launch a new 2.0 software update that would work on the original iPhones as well, and they tried to roll out a major upgrade of their online service .mac, which is now called MobileMe. They also made a catastrophic decision to try and force people to activate their new phones in the store rather than at home as they did last year. What this meant was a massive load on their servers that affected every single one of these initiatives, drastically. The MobileMe rollout was supposed to take six hours; it took well over 24, and the service still isn't working terribly well. Trying to active the phones in-store when the activation servers had gone phfft! meant that it took forever to process each customer, until finally they just started sending people home and telling them to active the phones at home, whenever they could. And people trying to download the new 2.0 software ended up leaving their phones useless, only able to make emergency calls, for several hours on a Friday afternoon.
People howled online, because that's what people do online. The freedom to howl, oh joy. "I've got a business to run and now I don't have a phone!" several of them shrieked. But really, you've got to wonder: if their business is so important, why did they download the new software at the first possible moment, early in the morning on a weekday? If you've got business to do, hang out for a day, do your stuff, maybe check online to see how the software is working out, then download it Saturday, or Sunday morning, sometime that isn't nearly so critical.
"I've got a business to run" is, of course, the excuse they use. The real truth is simple: "I want my toy and I want it now!" The infantilism of America reached yet another crybaby threshhold on Friday, and probably some hapless project manager at Apple will get fired for it.
Me? Nope, no iPhone yet. The lines were certain to be long again this weekend, all those frustrated Friday people, and why bother? I just don't need the thing that badly, I can wait a few days. I'll be back in Century City later this week, and I'll probably run by the store, and if there's not a line I'll probably stop in. Get a phone, set it up, and get on with my life.
I say all this not because I'm so wonderful, so immune to the hype (yeah, sure, I'd like a toy, too), but because--because I feel the desire, I do, I remember going into a store and running to the aisle with the toys and that kid is still inside saying "Gimme!" But sometimes, I mean come on, if we're going to be adults let's be adults, shall we?
I was completely able to resist the iPhone mass madness the first time around (only one short year ago), but this time it's got more of the stuff I'd want, plus my needs have changed and it would be a nice thing to have. So on Friday, since I happened to be nearby, I figured what the hell and wandered over to the Apple Store in Century City.
And was surprised to find that it really wasn't so bad. I'd heard all the stories about activation problems and "bricked" phones and delays delays delays, and figured that would mean that hundreds of people would still be lined up outside. Turns out there were only about fifteen people waiting, in a line that barely reached to the entrance of the store next door. "Well then," thought I, "maybe I'll just go ahead and get one." I got in line. Five minutes passed. A couple other people got in line behind me. One woman said she'd come by a few hours before and there'd been people herded in an improvised holding area at the opposite corner of the mall, so she was amazed that the line was now so short.
We were just beginning to speculate on why that might be when the security guard approached. "Are you on the list?" he asked. "What list?" we asked.
Yep, the cowpen was still active. Six hundred-plus people on the list (representing the whole day--they had moved through about five hundred of them already). So I got out of what was not in fact a proper line outside the store and, knowing that I would not be buying an iPhone today, decided to walk over to see the line. And was rewarded with a string of hot, weary people who looked pretty thoroughly bored and miserable, and you just had to wonder: why on earth?
I mean sure, it's fun to be the first on your block with a whatever, but when thousands of people line up across the city, you have to admit you're just not gonna be first. So, then, what's so awful about being second? Or 10,000th? Shouldn't the thing itself, the iPhone, be more important than the over-hyped aura surrounding it?
The activation troubles reveal the truth.
Apple made a colossal mistake: they tried to do three major things at once. Four, actually. They tried to launch the iPhone, they tried to launch a new 2.0 software update that would work on the original iPhones as well, and they tried to roll out a major upgrade of their online service .mac, which is now called MobileMe. They also made a catastrophic decision to try and force people to activate their new phones in the store rather than at home as they did last year. What this meant was a massive load on their servers that affected every single one of these initiatives, drastically. The MobileMe rollout was supposed to take six hours; it took well over 24, and the service still isn't working terribly well. Trying to active the phones in-store when the activation servers had gone phfft! meant that it took forever to process each customer, until finally they just started sending people home and telling them to active the phones at home, whenever they could. And people trying to download the new 2.0 software ended up leaving their phones useless, only able to make emergency calls, for several hours on a Friday afternoon.
People howled online, because that's what people do online. The freedom to howl, oh joy. "I've got a business to run and now I don't have a phone!" several of them shrieked. But really, you've got to wonder: if their business is so important, why did they download the new software at the first possible moment, early in the morning on a weekday? If you've got business to do, hang out for a day, do your stuff, maybe check online to see how the software is working out, then download it Saturday, or Sunday morning, sometime that isn't nearly so critical.
"I've got a business to run" is, of course, the excuse they use. The real truth is simple: "I want my toy and I want it now!" The infantilism of America reached yet another crybaby threshhold on Friday, and probably some hapless project manager at Apple will get fired for it.
Me? Nope, no iPhone yet. The lines were certain to be long again this weekend, all those frustrated Friday people, and why bother? I just don't need the thing that badly, I can wait a few days. I'll be back in Century City later this week, and I'll probably run by the store, and if there's not a line I'll probably stop in. Get a phone, set it up, and get on with my life.
I say all this not because I'm so wonderful, so immune to the hype (yeah, sure, I'd like a toy, too), but because--because I feel the desire, I do, I remember going into a store and running to the aisle with the toys and that kid is still inside saying "Gimme!" But sometimes, I mean come on, if we're going to be adults let's be adults, shall we?
Sunday, June 22, 2008
George Carlin
And then right after finishing the last entry, I went to my homepage and saw that George Carlin just died. Crap.
Carlin was the first comedian I ever loved. Back in the Laugh-In days, he did a routine called The Hippie Dippy Weatherman, featuring such gems as
He had an absurdist's sensibility, but he was just as sharp about politics and culture, as we all know. (His routine about the differences between football and baseball is simply spectacular--brilliantly written and funny as hell.) And as a wordsmith, he used language better than any comedian since Twain. (No surprise that just Tuesday it was announced that Carlin would be given this year's Twain Award.)
Heart attack, just this afternoon, just down the road in Santa Monica. I say again: crap.
Carlin was the first comedian I ever loved. Back in the Laugh-In days, he did a routine called The Hippie Dippy Weatherman, featuring such gems as
...and the forecast for tonight is dark, with scattered light toward morning...
He had an absurdist's sensibility, but he was just as sharp about politics and culture, as we all know. (His routine about the differences between football and baseball is simply spectacular--brilliantly written and funny as hell.) And as a wordsmith, he used language better than any comedian since Twain. (No surprise that just Tuesday it was announced that Carlin would be given this year's Twain Award.)
Heart attack, just this afternoon, just down the road in Santa Monica. I say again: crap.
MyLastGoodTwitterFaceFlickrReadsBook
As a person of a certain age, the whole "social networking" thing, i.e. using the isolation of a computer to connect with other equally isolated people, seemed just a bit off. Over the years, though, various attempts have been made, some more successful than others, and I've slowly found myself drawn into these little devils. In no particular order, here are some of the places where I can be found:
MySpace - Probably the paradigm of the social networking space, and I can be found here in a few places--both as myself, and as someone named "Incorporation for Artists," plus of course "Zen Noir" can be found here as well. Not to mention Sergei from "Outta Sync," a character I played in a movie. (Distressingly, Sergei has more friends than I do!) The thing that bugs me about MySpace, though, is how busy it is. Sure it's nice that you can skin the appearance of your profile page, but those skins can get so involved--not to mention all the YouTube videos and music tracks that autoload and all the rest of it--that the page takes forever to load. My own sister's page has so much stuff on it that it (a) loads verrrry slowly, and (b) scrolls even morrrrre slowly, so that I almost never go there anymore because it's just too annoying.
Facebook - I resisted Facebook for ages because I'd already been on MySpace for about two years and couldn't for the life of me see any reason to be on two sites that accomplish nearly identical things. But a couple months ago I relented, and was rewarded with a fantastic immediate dividend: a great friend of mine from high school, Shannon Chamberlain (nee Walker), happened to search for my name just a few days after I signed onto Facebook. We reconnected after way too long, and as it happened I was about to go for a visit to Miami, so we were able to get together almost immediately. And, of course, it was one of those things where the years fell away and we almost instantly dropped into the same old delightful groove. This immediately made me into a huge Facebook fan. Since then I've found a bunch of people from college as well, and it just seems to work better for finding and connecting with people. Plus, the profile pages aren't skinnable, so the pages load much faster (my sister's page pops right up). On the other hand, those thousands of mini-apps can get seriously overwhelming--I'm constantly being sent "flairs" (little virtual buttons with pithy little aphorisms), or internet hugs or karma, or being invited to become someone's virtual feudal vassal, or being invited to take a quiz to find out which Shakespeare play I am. I drew the line at a vampire game where a friend of mine virtually bit me. Sorry, vamps are right out. Me no likee vampires. They scary.
Twitter - Okay, this one I just don't get. It's like microblogging, where there's a fixed limit to how many characters you can type at any given time. I think it should be obvious to anyone who reads any of my blog entries--I am just not that sort of writer. I like to luxuriate in language, to set the words rolling and see where they go. (Marc Rosenbush, on the other hand, is a minimalist--this is why he and I are good collaborators when we write together, because our approaches to writing are perfectly complementary--and he gets the Twitter paradigm immediately.) But more importantly, almost no one I know Twitters at all, so there's next to nothing to draw me there on any sort of consistent basis. I've written a grand total of three entries since joining, always without any enthusiasm. The sort of self-involved navel-gazing that Twitter seems to promote just doesn't fit my personality--the only person on earth I can think of who might care to know what I've been doing twenty times a day is my mom. But she isn't on Twitter either, so why?
Flickr - Then there are the sites that focus on social networking built around one particular activity. Flickr, for instance, is about photographs. From time to time I take pictures off the computer and put them on Flickr. Sometimes I put them there in order to post them here, but it's also nice to invite family members so that they can check out pictures as well. Nothing spectacular, but I understand what it does and why, and it's simple to use.
Goodreads - This one is all about books, so naturally it's a little closer to my heart. The site is labor-intensive--you have to enter each book you own one by one, and in my case that's a boatload of books. I've only entered a little over a hundred, which make up just three shelves of one bookcase--and I've got eight bookcases. (Not to mention the books that are literally piled across the top shelves of my kitchen cabinets.) But the idea is that you enter your books, record when you read them and maybe write little reviews, your friends do the same, and that way you can all share stuff you liked or disliked. (For example, when my friend Melissa Klein was about to read Thomas Cahill's "Gifts of the Jews," I was able to tell her why that had been my least favorite of the Cahill books, then once she too had read it she told me why she agreed with my assessment.) For a book lover, the appeal is obvious--for someone who isn't, this one may seem like a waste of time. Fair enough.
Last.fm - Like Goodreads, except for music. The great thing is that this site isn't labor-intensive at all: I downloaded a little application that simply watches the songs I play and records them on the site. So I get stats about which artists I play most often, plus there's a handy internet radio station component--if I'm traveling and don't have my iPod, I can log onto Last.fm and play a station that already knows the kinds of music I like. (It's actually quite good about picking songs I legitimately enjoy.) Very cool.
Okay, that's it, I'm tired now and am going to go do something else. Like sleep, maybe. For which there are no social networking sites at all, and let's all be grateful for that.
MySpace - Probably the paradigm of the social networking space, and I can be found here in a few places--both as myself, and as someone named "Incorporation for Artists," plus of course "Zen Noir" can be found here as well. Not to mention Sergei from "Outta Sync," a character I played in a movie. (Distressingly, Sergei has more friends than I do!) The thing that bugs me about MySpace, though, is how busy it is. Sure it's nice that you can skin the appearance of your profile page, but those skins can get so involved--not to mention all the YouTube videos and music tracks that autoload and all the rest of it--that the page takes forever to load. My own sister's page has so much stuff on it that it (a) loads verrrry slowly, and (b) scrolls even morrrrre slowly, so that I almost never go there anymore because it's just too annoying.
Facebook - I resisted Facebook for ages because I'd already been on MySpace for about two years and couldn't for the life of me see any reason to be on two sites that accomplish nearly identical things. But a couple months ago I relented, and was rewarded with a fantastic immediate dividend: a great friend of mine from high school, Shannon Chamberlain (nee Walker), happened to search for my name just a few days after I signed onto Facebook. We reconnected after way too long, and as it happened I was about to go for a visit to Miami, so we were able to get together almost immediately. And, of course, it was one of those things where the years fell away and we almost instantly dropped into the same old delightful groove. This immediately made me into a huge Facebook fan. Since then I've found a bunch of people from college as well, and it just seems to work better for finding and connecting with people. Plus, the profile pages aren't skinnable, so the pages load much faster (my sister's page pops right up). On the other hand, those thousands of mini-apps can get seriously overwhelming--I'm constantly being sent "flairs" (little virtual buttons with pithy little aphorisms), or internet hugs or karma, or being invited to become someone's virtual feudal vassal, or being invited to take a quiz to find out which Shakespeare play I am. I drew the line at a vampire game where a friend of mine virtually bit me. Sorry, vamps are right out. Me no likee vampires. They scary.
Twitter - Okay, this one I just don't get. It's like microblogging, where there's a fixed limit to how many characters you can type at any given time. I think it should be obvious to anyone who reads any of my blog entries--I am just not that sort of writer. I like to luxuriate in language, to set the words rolling and see where they go. (Marc Rosenbush, on the other hand, is a minimalist--this is why he and I are good collaborators when we write together, because our approaches to writing are perfectly complementary--and he gets the Twitter paradigm immediately.) But more importantly, almost no one I know Twitters at all, so there's next to nothing to draw me there on any sort of consistent basis. I've written a grand total of three entries since joining, always without any enthusiasm. The sort of self-involved navel-gazing that Twitter seems to promote just doesn't fit my personality--the only person on earth I can think of who might care to know what I've been doing twenty times a day is my mom. But she isn't on Twitter either, so why?
Flickr - Then there are the sites that focus on social networking built around one particular activity. Flickr, for instance, is about photographs. From time to time I take pictures off the computer and put them on Flickr. Sometimes I put them there in order to post them here, but it's also nice to invite family members so that they can check out pictures as well. Nothing spectacular, but I understand what it does and why, and it's simple to use.
Goodreads - This one is all about books, so naturally it's a little closer to my heart. The site is labor-intensive--you have to enter each book you own one by one, and in my case that's a boatload of books. I've only entered a little over a hundred, which make up just three shelves of one bookcase--and I've got eight bookcases. (Not to mention the books that are literally piled across the top shelves of my kitchen cabinets.) But the idea is that you enter your books, record when you read them and maybe write little reviews, your friends do the same, and that way you can all share stuff you liked or disliked. (For example, when my friend Melissa Klein was about to read Thomas Cahill's "Gifts of the Jews," I was able to tell her why that had been my least favorite of the Cahill books, then once she too had read it she told me why she agreed with my assessment.) For a book lover, the appeal is obvious--for someone who isn't, this one may seem like a waste of time. Fair enough.
Last.fm - Like Goodreads, except for music. The great thing is that this site isn't labor-intensive at all: I downloaded a little application that simply watches the songs I play and records them on the site. So I get stats about which artists I play most often, plus there's a handy internet radio station component--if I'm traveling and don't have my iPod, I can log onto Last.fm and play a station that already knows the kinds of music I like. (It's actually quite good about picking songs I legitimately enjoy.) Very cool.
Okay, that's it, I'm tired now and am going to go do something else. Like sleep, maybe. For which there are no social networking sites at all, and let's all be grateful for that.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Crosby Stills & Ecklie
I've been focusing on the fundamentals of the bass guitar. Bought a book of music theory specifically for the bass, and I'm trying to learn intervals and scales and whatnot. You know, the dull, boring part.
But one bit of advice that I found somewhere recommends that no matter how bad you are when you first pick up an instrument, one of the best things you can do is to start playing with other people. Those other people are almost certainly going to be better than you are, and your natural inclination not to look like an idiot means that you'll learn a lot faster than you would on your own.
My friend and compatriot Marc Rosenbush is of course the person who sorta kinda led to this whole guitar-playing thing in the first place, and as a director, he ain't never been afraid of criticizing someone's work. (As someone whose work is known for its rhythmic sense, he is particularly stringent about trying to get my own rhythms up to snuff.) I play with him fairly regularly, on specific material. But Marc also plays regularly with Marc Vann, and when those two got together the other night, after a couple hours I hauled my bass over and joined them.
(And of course Marc Vann has been in lots of movies and TV shows, but is best known for playing the hard-ass boss Conrad Ecklie on CSI--hence the working name of our band. Although I've also suggested, and am rather fond of, Government Work. As in "Close enough for...")
Marc and Marc had been rocking out on Jethro Tull stuff before I arrived, and were both reciting John Lennon's shout "I've got blisters on me fingers!" But I was able to join in on two Pink Floyd numbers, "Comfortably Numb" and (of all things) "Echoes," complete with spacey whalesong improvisations. And to close out the night, the real CSNY's "Find the Cost of Freedom," as we worried less about instrumentation and worked very hard on vocal harmonies.
And if you're enjoying the thought of Conrad Ecklie pickin' and singin', then you had almost as much fun as I did.
But one bit of advice that I found somewhere recommends that no matter how bad you are when you first pick up an instrument, one of the best things you can do is to start playing with other people. Those other people are almost certainly going to be better than you are, and your natural inclination not to look like an idiot means that you'll learn a lot faster than you would on your own.
My friend and compatriot Marc Rosenbush is of course the person who sorta kinda led to this whole guitar-playing thing in the first place, and as a director, he ain't never been afraid of criticizing someone's work. (As someone whose work is known for its rhythmic sense, he is particularly stringent about trying to get my own rhythms up to snuff.) I play with him fairly regularly, on specific material. But Marc also plays regularly with Marc Vann, and when those two got together the other night, after a couple hours I hauled my bass over and joined them.
(And of course Marc Vann has been in lots of movies and TV shows, but is best known for playing the hard-ass boss Conrad Ecklie on CSI--hence the working name of our band. Although I've also suggested, and am rather fond of, Government Work. As in "Close enough for...")
Marc and Marc had been rocking out on Jethro Tull stuff before I arrived, and were both reciting John Lennon's shout "I've got blisters on me fingers!" But I was able to join in on two Pink Floyd numbers, "Comfortably Numb" and (of all things) "Echoes," complete with spacey whalesong improvisations. And to close out the night, the real CSNY's "Find the Cost of Freedom," as we worried less about instrumentation and worked very hard on vocal harmonies.
And if you're enjoying the thought of Conrad Ecklie pickin' and singin', then you had almost as much fun as I did.
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Metronome
I should've bought a metronome the same day I bought my first guitar.
Time is, of course, one of those annoying absolutes. In the music world, the tempo of a song is inescapable and always present. And when I first got the acoustic guitar, I pretty much ignored the whole question of tempo--I just wanted to learn where the notes were, how to make chords, etc. I'd worry about tempo later.
This despite the fact that I knew, from my singing days, that I do not have a natural sense of rhythm. My internal clock works great at getting me up at the right time in the morning, but it does not instinctively know how to count one-two-three one-two-three. Not accurately, anyway.
The good news: it's definitely learnable. There was an HBO program a few weeks ago where Dave Stewart interviewed Ringo Starr, and Ringo mentioned that when he first started drumming he really couldn't keep time at all. Say what you will about Ringo's drumming--he was always known as a rock-solid timekeeper. So this stuff can be learned. I just need to, you know, actually learn it.
As mentioned before, when I bought the bass I also bought a metronome. A couple weeks ago I finally reopened one of the learn-guitar books I bought months ago, before the bass, and decided to start again from page one--this time with the metronome. Turns out, it made a huge difference. When the ticker keeps ticking, you don't have the luxury of waiting till your fingers find the right note to play--you just have to soldier forward, and if it's wrong you either press on then try again later, or you stop and go back to the beginning.
Because a song is what it is, and the notes must be right, and the time signature must be observed. That's all there is to it. I would've been far better off if I'd observed this reality from the beginning.
And by the way, I'm picking things up on the bass far faster than on the guitar. I've already got one song pretty well down ("Comfortably Numb") and am learning another ("Come Together")--whereas on the guitar, I still don't have any songs all the way down, still struggling to put together "Here Comes the Sun." And as friend Buffie (the real musician of our little group) put it a couple weeks ago, after Marc and I successfully played "Comfortably Numb" start to finish, "Looks like you've found your first instrument." Yay. But still more, more, more to learn.
I'll tell you this, though--there was some sturm und drang this weekend, of the serious sort--and I suddenly discovered that having guitars around helped enormously. It was wonderful to just pick up the acoustic and noodle for a while, to take my mind off things. In this way, one falls in love with the instrument that little bit more.
Just one last question. Would a metrosexual gnome be called a metrognome? I'm just askin'.
(And anyone who thinks I wrote this whole entry just so I could tell that one joke, gold star for you!)
Time is, of course, one of those annoying absolutes. In the music world, the tempo of a song is inescapable and always present. And when I first got the acoustic guitar, I pretty much ignored the whole question of tempo--I just wanted to learn where the notes were, how to make chords, etc. I'd worry about tempo later.
This despite the fact that I knew, from my singing days, that I do not have a natural sense of rhythm. My internal clock works great at getting me up at the right time in the morning, but it does not instinctively know how to count one-two-three one-two-three. Not accurately, anyway.
The good news: it's definitely learnable. There was an HBO program a few weeks ago where Dave Stewart interviewed Ringo Starr, and Ringo mentioned that when he first started drumming he really couldn't keep time at all. Say what you will about Ringo's drumming--he was always known as a rock-solid timekeeper. So this stuff can be learned. I just need to, you know, actually learn it.
As mentioned before, when I bought the bass I also bought a metronome. A couple weeks ago I finally reopened one of the learn-guitar books I bought months ago, before the bass, and decided to start again from page one--this time with the metronome. Turns out, it made a huge difference. When the ticker keeps ticking, you don't have the luxury of waiting till your fingers find the right note to play--you just have to soldier forward, and if it's wrong you either press on then try again later, or you stop and go back to the beginning.
Because a song is what it is, and the notes must be right, and the time signature must be observed. That's all there is to it. I would've been far better off if I'd observed this reality from the beginning.
And by the way, I'm picking things up on the bass far faster than on the guitar. I've already got one song pretty well down ("Comfortably Numb") and am learning another ("Come Together")--whereas on the guitar, I still don't have any songs all the way down, still struggling to put together "Here Comes the Sun." And as friend Buffie (the real musician of our little group) put it a couple weeks ago, after Marc and I successfully played "Comfortably Numb" start to finish, "Looks like you've found your first instrument." Yay. But still more, more, more to learn.
I'll tell you this, though--there was some sturm und drang this weekend, of the serious sort--and I suddenly discovered that having guitars around helped enormously. It was wonderful to just pick up the acoustic and noodle for a while, to take my mind off things. In this way, one falls in love with the instrument that little bit more.
Just one last question. Would a metrosexual gnome be called a metrognome? I'm just askin'.
(And anyone who thinks I wrote this whole entry just so I could tell that one joke, gold star for you!)
Friday, May 30, 2008
Link Closure
Busy bizzy buzzy bee. Just a couple quick things to note, mostly written by other people, oh joy! And thus closing some links I've been meaning to close:
On the subject of Senator Obama and the Rev. Wright, I have nothing to say about Part 2 of that saga that Bill Moyers didn't say much, much better. Just a taste:
But the entirety of what he said is worth reading, and can be found here, right at the top.
One of the things that's bugged me recently about the rise in gas prices is that the oil companies have stopped even bothering to explain what's going on. Into the breach steps Andrew Leonard at Salon. He writes a regular column called "How the World Works" that I would say is required reading if only I read it regularly. It's dense, and complex, and it helps if you have an economics degree, which I most certainly don't. But the man certainly seems to know what he's talking about, and he has written an excellent explication of why we're paying so damn much at the pump. You can find it here.
A person should always investigate the facts before complaining about how we're being gouged by the oil companies. Read Mr. Leonard's article, get a sense of the astonishing complexity of these prices--then go back to complaining about the gas companies because, you know, that's just fun.
Links are closed. I go back to other things. Hi do ho, hi dee hi.
On the subject of Senator Obama and the Rev. Wright, I have nothing to say about Part 2 of that saga that Bill Moyers didn't say much, much better. Just a taste:
We are often exposed to the corroding acid of the politics of personal destruction, but I've never seen anything like this--this wrenching break between pastor and parishioner before our very eyes. Both men no doubt will carry the grief to their graves. All the rest of us should hang our heads in shame for letting it come to this in America, where the gluttony of the non-stop media grinder consumes us all and prevents an honest conversation on race. It is the price we are paying for failing to heed the great historian Jacob Burckhardt, who said "beware the terrible simplifiers."
But the entirety of what he said is worth reading, and can be found here, right at the top.
One of the things that's bugged me recently about the rise in gas prices is that the oil companies have stopped even bothering to explain what's going on. Into the breach steps Andrew Leonard at Salon. He writes a regular column called "How the World Works" that I would say is required reading if only I read it regularly. It's dense, and complex, and it helps if you have an economics degree, which I most certainly don't. But the man certainly seems to know what he's talking about, and he has written an excellent explication of why we're paying so damn much at the pump. You can find it here.
A person should always investigate the facts before complaining about how we're being gouged by the oil companies. Read Mr. Leonard's article, get a sense of the astonishing complexity of these prices--then go back to complaining about the gas companies because, you know, that's just fun.
Links are closed. I go back to other things. Hi do ho, hi dee hi.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Louts
Went to see Joe Jackson last night, playing at the lovely Orpheum Theatre in downtown L.A. Great show. I'm a longtime Joe Jackson fan, and although I saw him once before, it was during his Night Music tour in late '94, and the show was, let's say, idiosyncratic. Last night's show was more straightforward, even with a stripped-down three-piece band (no electric guitar!), and with one roiling exception, I had a great time.
The louts behind me. Or let's go ahead and call them The Louts. Because of course they are entirely representative of their kind, so let's go ahead and generalize.
You know exactly who I'm talking about. Those two assaholics, two rows behind, for whom enjoying a concert means shouting out their stupidity to the world, top volume, from first moment to last. Because of course it's important that we all be made to realize just how stupid they really are.
No, my best guess is the obvious one: that these guys are convinced that they're The Greatest Joe Jackson Fans Of All Time, and that they must proclaim their superiority at every moment so that all we Lesser Fans (who barely deserve even that paltry title) will be made to feel our wretched inferiority. One of The Louts, during the show, did in fact shout out "YEAH, JOE! WAKE THESE PEOPLE UP!" Which made absolutely no sense, because the crowd was in fact on the rowdy side all the way through.
After all, this was a Joe Jackson show, and Joe came out of post-punk Britain along with Elvis Costello when they were both competing for the title Angriest Young Man. Listen to the crowd in Joe's 1980 live recordings and you can hear particularly well that he's used to a lively crowd. Even so, last night he had to say "Okay, calm down" at one point. So it's not like the rest of us were asleep. In fact, it may be true that the fact that it was a loud crowd just meant that The Louts had to be that much louder. After all, how were they to establish their superiority as Joe Jackson True Fans if they weren't, you know, louder than everyone else? That is how you establish your superiority, right? By being louder than the other guy? I mean, everybody understands that, right?
For a while, I tried to give The Louts the benefit of the doubt. I said to myself, "Maybe it's like they're in church and, you know, testifying." So I ignored it for a while, but it just kept going on. (Then at one point, when Joe began a slow, quiet song, they had the temerity to start shushing the rest of us.) Eventually, though, it started to reach absurd heights. They started whistling to songs. Loudly. And singing along, sometimes deliberately badly. And of course loudly. (Sometimes they actually sang reasonably well, which is why I can say they were deliberately singing badly. And loudly.)
As my friend Buffie said after the show, "Sometimes I just wish I had my own personal taser."
I wonder: are these guys just idiots, or is there yet another level of idiotic vanity at play? After all, this was the last stop on Joe Jackson's U.S. tour, so I suppose there was a fair chance the show was being recorded. Were these guys trying to get on the album? Is that why they consistently picked the quietest moments of the show to bellow the loudest? Are they those idiots who jump behind newscasters and cavort maniacally?
Listen, Louts of the world. There's a difference between enjoying a show, between whistling and cheering, and being an obnoxious lout. It's not a subtle difference, either, it's a big stinkin' difference that most adults understand perfectly well. But then, that's the operative word, isn't it? Last night's Louts, who were not young, are nonetheless children, whining for attention like any three year old. And as anyone should understand, you just don't bring three year olds to an indoor rock concert.
The louts behind me. Or let's go ahead and call them The Louts. Because of course they are entirely representative of their kind, so let's go ahead and generalize.
You know exactly who I'm talking about. Those two assaholics, two rows behind, for whom enjoying a concert means shouting out their stupidity to the world, top volume, from first moment to last. Because of course it's important that we all be made to realize just how stupid they really are.
No, my best guess is the obvious one: that these guys are convinced that they're The Greatest Joe Jackson Fans Of All Time, and that they must proclaim their superiority at every moment so that all we Lesser Fans (who barely deserve even that paltry title) will be made to feel our wretched inferiority. One of The Louts, during the show, did in fact shout out "YEAH, JOE! WAKE THESE PEOPLE UP!" Which made absolutely no sense, because the crowd was in fact on the rowdy side all the way through.
After all, this was a Joe Jackson show, and Joe came out of post-punk Britain along with Elvis Costello when they were both competing for the title Angriest Young Man. Listen to the crowd in Joe's 1980 live recordings and you can hear particularly well that he's used to a lively crowd. Even so, last night he had to say "Okay, calm down" at one point. So it's not like the rest of us were asleep. In fact, it may be true that the fact that it was a loud crowd just meant that The Louts had to be that much louder. After all, how were they to establish their superiority as Joe Jackson True Fans if they weren't, you know, louder than everyone else? That is how you establish your superiority, right? By being louder than the other guy? I mean, everybody understands that, right?
For a while, I tried to give The Louts the benefit of the doubt. I said to myself, "Maybe it's like they're in church and, you know, testifying." So I ignored it for a while, but it just kept going on. (Then at one point, when Joe began a slow, quiet song, they had the temerity to start shushing the rest of us.) Eventually, though, it started to reach absurd heights. They started whistling to songs. Loudly. And singing along, sometimes deliberately badly. And of course loudly. (Sometimes they actually sang reasonably well, which is why I can say they were deliberately singing badly. And loudly.)
As my friend Buffie said after the show, "Sometimes I just wish I had my own personal taser."
I wonder: are these guys just idiots, or is there yet another level of idiotic vanity at play? After all, this was the last stop on Joe Jackson's U.S. tour, so I suppose there was a fair chance the show was being recorded. Were these guys trying to get on the album? Is that why they consistently picked the quietest moments of the show to bellow the loudest? Are they those idiots who jump behind newscasters and cavort maniacally?
Listen, Louts of the world. There's a difference between enjoying a show, between whistling and cheering, and being an obnoxious lout. It's not a subtle difference, either, it's a big stinkin' difference that most adults understand perfectly well. But then, that's the operative word, isn't it? Last night's Louts, who were not young, are nonetheless children, whining for attention like any three year old. And as anyone should understand, you just don't bring three year olds to an indoor rock concert.
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
Let It Be on YouTube
O happy me. For years now, I've been patiently (no, impatiently, very impatiently) waiting for the Apple/EMI people to release Let It Be on DVD. This of course was the movie that The Beatles made, reluctantly and grumpily and almost disastrously, to document the recording of what would become the album of the same name. Not a one of them was happy with any part of the process, leading Paul to eventually release what he considers to be a superior recording (i.e., one with all of Phil Spector's production gimmicks stripped away) a couple years ago. (In the process, by also stripping away the little interstitial stuff, the bits of conversation and whatnot, Let It Be... Naked ended up feeling lifeless compared to the original.) During the course of production, George Harrison quit the group altogether for a few days, bringing the whole enterprise very nearly to a halt--and potentially denying the world both the Let It Be and Abbey Road albums.
The first time I saw the movie of Let It Be, I was probably five years old. Mom and some friends took me along to see it at a drive-through, and all I can really remember is lying on the hood of the car, enjoying some Road Runner cartoons that came before the movie and then being really bored by the movie itself. I saw it again in early 1981, when it was rereleased following John Lennon's murder, at which point I was still so shell-shocked that I just couldn't absorb any of it.
Since then, it's been hidden away. Paul McCartney hates it, Neil Aspinall hated it, and basically the movie simply disappeared after '81. There were a few expensive, poor-quality VHS tapes floating around, and that was it. I've been wanting to see it, really see it, for all these years. And the other day, it finally occurred to me to check on YouTube.
Sure enough, there it is. (The movie is broken down into nine parts; the link brings you to Part 1, then just follow with Parts 2, etc. via the links to the right.)
I won't say much about it--if you're interested, you're interested and will go check it out. If you're not interested, then you don't much care what I have to say about it. Really, as a movie it's lousy--dismal sound quality, you can almost never hear what anyone is saying because they're miked so badly, nothing ever develops, there's no through-line at all, it's just a mess. But--
But it's really the only footage of The Beatles in the recording studio, and so it is precious. Plus, after about fifty minutes of meandering, not terribly musical nonsense, The Beatles got up onto that rooftop, and suddenly it's all magical. Suddenly the jaw drops, and I find myself desperately wishing that I had been in the right part of London that particular day. (Plus, you know, not a toddler.)
So if you're a Beatles fanatic like I am (and if you are, you know you are), it's probably worth noting that these YouTube clips must be in gross violation of copyright, so I would suggest you hie yourself thither with all due despatch. And no matter how dreary it is, just remember that eventually they're going to emerge onto a rooftop and bring joy one last time.
The first time I saw the movie of Let It Be, I was probably five years old. Mom and some friends took me along to see it at a drive-through, and all I can really remember is lying on the hood of the car, enjoying some Road Runner cartoons that came before the movie and then being really bored by the movie itself. I saw it again in early 1981, when it was rereleased following John Lennon's murder, at which point I was still so shell-shocked that I just couldn't absorb any of it.
Since then, it's been hidden away. Paul McCartney hates it, Neil Aspinall hated it, and basically the movie simply disappeared after '81. There were a few expensive, poor-quality VHS tapes floating around, and that was it. I've been wanting to see it, really see it, for all these years. And the other day, it finally occurred to me to check on YouTube.
Sure enough, there it is. (The movie is broken down into nine parts; the link brings you to Part 1, then just follow with Parts 2, etc. via the links to the right.)
I won't say much about it--if you're interested, you're interested and will go check it out. If you're not interested, then you don't much care what I have to say about it. Really, as a movie it's lousy--dismal sound quality, you can almost never hear what anyone is saying because they're miked so badly, nothing ever develops, there's no through-line at all, it's just a mess. But--
But it's really the only footage of The Beatles in the recording studio, and so it is precious. Plus, after about fifty minutes of meandering, not terribly musical nonsense, The Beatles got up onto that rooftop, and suddenly it's all magical. Suddenly the jaw drops, and I find myself desperately wishing that I had been in the right part of London that particular day. (Plus, you know, not a toddler.)
So if you're a Beatles fanatic like I am (and if you are, you know you are), it's probably worth noting that these YouTube clips must be in gross violation of copyright, so I would suggest you hie yourself thither with all due despatch. And no matter how dreary it is, just remember that eventually they're going to emerge onto a rooftop and bring joy one last time.
Saturday, May 03, 2008
Two Lodgings
Been doing a fair number of road trips lately. On a couple of occasions, in service of Internet Marketing for Filmmakers, Marc Rosenbush and I traveled to San Diego for a seminar (refining yet further our own internet marketing skills, as taught by the phenomenon that is Frank Kern), then a week later we went to a film festival in the charming desert town of Fallbrook, California, where Marc had been invited to give a presentation. We stayed in two very different kinds of places. The first of them was what I call...
Skank Central
The Hard Rock Hotel, San Diego. Very sleek, very high-tech. Right in the Gaslamp District, which is like a little ongoing Spring Break in the heart of town. And of course being part of the whole Hard Rock franchise, the hotel has a rock star vibe, although not a single actual rock star was sighted the whole time. (Unlike, say, the W hotel I once visited, where everyone in the lobby carefully scopes out everyone who walks in the front door because s/he could very well be Somebody.) The location was terrific, and we ended up having a series of fantastic meals. In the glossy room I had, a theme of guitar picks was emulated in every conceivable place, including being stitched on the pillows. But what would have been really cool--if they'd had a place where you could plug a guitar into the room's speakers, now that would have been awesome. No such luck.
And it must be admitted that the folks loitering outside the hotel mostly consisted of, well, skanks and hos.
Very young women, wearing not much at all, and never mind that it got cool at night. Slightly older young men, wearing more but intent only on the very young women and trying oh-so hard to be Ultra Cool. The hotel has a couple of clubs that cater to these folks, and I'm sure they make a pretty penny. People will, after all, spend just about anything to be seen as hip. Part of the In Crowd, which of course mostly consists of other people just like them, just as anxious to be part of the crowd that considers itself to be the In Crowd even though they're aren't actually.
If I sound hostile, I don't think it's just a function of age. I was never a club-hopper, I just don't have it in me--and the thing that has always offended me is that oppressive sense of entitlement. That whole "I'm beautiful, therefore the world belongs to me" thing that is shared by both men and women. They are lilies of the field, they neither toil nor spin, and yet they're unshakably convinced that the rest of us should fall down and worship their plumped-up beauty.
I've known plenty of very gifted, industrious people who are also quite beautiful. But they weren't about their beauty, they weren't Beautiful, they were just--well, you know. Handsome folk doing what they do in the world and not making such a great fuss about it. But those folk don't typically hang out at Skank Central.
On the other hand, I must admit that I got a kick out of the hotel's collection of rock memorabilia. Including a scrap of paper on which Mal Evans wrote out (and George corrected) the lyrics to "While My Guitar Gently Weeps." But in one display case, there was an outfit that Janis Joplin wore on her 1969-1970 tour.
Interlude: The Janis Story
Ages ago, Mom went to a lot of concerts, and sometimes she brought me along. That's why I can proudly boast that I saw both Jimi and Janis, not too long before they died in 1970. Janis was doing an outdoor concert on the campus of the University of Miami, and I was four years old at the time. People sat there, marveling, and of course the weed was being smoked with copious abandon. Smoke wafted. Janis sang. Janis did that unquantifiable thing that still makes her one of the greatest rock and roll/blues singers of all time (something about overtones, as I understand it).
I was, literally, entranced. (Put on "Ball and Chain" and I'm still entranced.) Mom turned away to say something to a friend of hers, and when she looked back, I was gone. I will cheerfully claim to be one of the first crowd-surfers, because what Mom saw was little four-year-old me, being passed from hand to hand, closer and closer to the stage. I was chanting to myself: "The lady. Got to get to the lady."
Now I don't think Janis was all that great with kids, and I don't she was too crazy about the idea of this kid being put on the stage with her. Alas, it didn't come to that. Mom shouted out "Send him back!" and they did, the hands turned me around and sent me back to her. Still chanting to myself. The lady. Never did get to the lady. Damn it all.
So when I saw that outfit, I read the placard, which said that Janis wore it on her 1969-1970 tour. Meaning that it's quite likely she was wearing it during that very show--perhaps was wearing it even as I moved closer and closer, murmuring to myself. I stood there staring at it for quite a long time, still wishing just as much as ever that I could have somehow gotten to the lady.
So okay, the Hard Rock ain't so bad after all. Still, I have to say that I preferred to be...
Out in the Desert
Not that I like deserts. As an ocean people, deserts are too much the other thing. But we stayed at a B&B in Fallbrook called The Santa Margarita Inn, and it was a lovely place. Nestled on a plateau deep in the canyons, with hiking and riding trails winding all around. A view beyond description of that area that has been shaped and reshaped by geologic activity for millions of years. The house is huge, with gigantic windows in all the appropriate places. And when we drove up, we saw it immediately: right there on the front gate, a big ol' cast-iron image of a guitar.
As it happens, I'd brought my guitar with me, for no particular reason. We were greeted by one of the owners, Arlene, a longtime musician with a whole collection of guitars, and when she saw me with mine, I think everyone pretty much knew straightaway that we were going to have a good time.
The B&B has only been operating for a short time, and Arlene isn't yet jaded about the whole experience, so she's still plenty proud of this house she's been building for the past twenty years, and she took great pleasure in showing it off to all of her guests. (There were some filmmakers from the festival, plus a terrific couple on their anniversary.) Arlene showed us her music room, a playground of sorts, stuffed with guitars, including a Marwin Star from the 1930s that is probably worth a bundle. Alas, we were only there for one night--we attended the opening night reception, Marc gave his presentation in the morning, and then we had to leave that afternoon. So there was never time to really wander the property, nor was there time for much of a jam session. (Although at one point Arlene did play a song she'd written that apparently Willie Nelson is taking a look at. The lyrics needed work, but musically it was pretty damn good.)
The place has only one drawback: Elvis.
Elvis is a Rottweiler. A huge Rottweiler. When I sat on the sofa, Elvis and I were eye-to-eye. And when owner Frank was around, Elvis is a softie, sprawled across an astonishing amount of floor space, docile as a kitten. But after the reception, Marc and I drove back in the black desert night, and Elvis was guarding the otherwise-empty house. Barking at that strange car he didn't yet recognize, driven by people he couldn't quite remember; and because the whole B&B thing is new, Elvis isn't yet accustomed to strangers walking into his house. So he put up a spirited defense, and believe me, it takes some fortitude to walk up a narrow exterior staircase that is guarded by a barking, snarling, utterly gigantic Rottweiler.
Marc, several feet in front of me, says he did his aikido misdirection thing. "Look at my hand, way over here," as he steadily and slowly walked, without stopping, to the front door. Elvis let him pass, then turned to look and bark and snarl at me. Me, I had no Jedi mind tricks, so all I could really do was say "Oh, now Elvis, come on. I'm too big a meal for you. Look at Marc over there. Much more bite-sized, don't you think?"
We made it into the house, closed the door, and started breathing again. Not too long afterward Arlene and Frank returned, Elvis trotted in, and he was docile and sweet all over again. He's not the sort who actually attacks, but he sure puts up a hell of a good show; and if we'd been, say, a couple of elderly folks just staying at the B&B, I can well imagine that Elvis might be something of a deal-breaker.
And yet--Elvis aside, I vastly preferred Santa Margarita to the Hard Rock. Give me homespun and warm, even when it comes with a snarling Rottweiler, over Skank Central any day.
Skank Central
The Hard Rock Hotel, San Diego. Very sleek, very high-tech. Right in the Gaslamp District, which is like a little ongoing Spring Break in the heart of town. And of course being part of the whole Hard Rock franchise, the hotel has a rock star vibe, although not a single actual rock star was sighted the whole time. (Unlike, say, the W hotel I once visited, where everyone in the lobby carefully scopes out everyone who walks in the front door because s/he could very well be Somebody.) The location was terrific, and we ended up having a series of fantastic meals. In the glossy room I had, a theme of guitar picks was emulated in every conceivable place, including being stitched on the pillows. But what would have been really cool--if they'd had a place where you could plug a guitar into the room's speakers, now that would have been awesome. No such luck.
And it must be admitted that the folks loitering outside the hotel mostly consisted of, well, skanks and hos.
Very young women, wearing not much at all, and never mind that it got cool at night. Slightly older young men, wearing more but intent only on the very young women and trying oh-so hard to be Ultra Cool. The hotel has a couple of clubs that cater to these folks, and I'm sure they make a pretty penny. People will, after all, spend just about anything to be seen as hip. Part of the In Crowd, which of course mostly consists of other people just like them, just as anxious to be part of the crowd that considers itself to be the In Crowd even though they're aren't actually.
If I sound hostile, I don't think it's just a function of age. I was never a club-hopper, I just don't have it in me--and the thing that has always offended me is that oppressive sense of entitlement. That whole "I'm beautiful, therefore the world belongs to me" thing that is shared by both men and women. They are lilies of the field, they neither toil nor spin, and yet they're unshakably convinced that the rest of us should fall down and worship their plumped-up beauty.
I've known plenty of very gifted, industrious people who are also quite beautiful. But they weren't about their beauty, they weren't Beautiful, they were just--well, you know. Handsome folk doing what they do in the world and not making such a great fuss about it. But those folk don't typically hang out at Skank Central.
On the other hand, I must admit that I got a kick out of the hotel's collection of rock memorabilia. Including a scrap of paper on which Mal Evans wrote out (and George corrected) the lyrics to "While My Guitar Gently Weeps." But in one display case, there was an outfit that Janis Joplin wore on her 1969-1970 tour.
Interlude: The Janis Story
Ages ago, Mom went to a lot of concerts, and sometimes she brought me along. That's why I can proudly boast that I saw both Jimi and Janis, not too long before they died in 1970. Janis was doing an outdoor concert on the campus of the University of Miami, and I was four years old at the time. People sat there, marveling, and of course the weed was being smoked with copious abandon. Smoke wafted. Janis sang. Janis did that unquantifiable thing that still makes her one of the greatest rock and roll/blues singers of all time (something about overtones, as I understand it).
I was, literally, entranced. (Put on "Ball and Chain" and I'm still entranced.) Mom turned away to say something to a friend of hers, and when she looked back, I was gone. I will cheerfully claim to be one of the first crowd-surfers, because what Mom saw was little four-year-old me, being passed from hand to hand, closer and closer to the stage. I was chanting to myself: "The lady. Got to get to the lady."
Now I don't think Janis was all that great with kids, and I don't she was too crazy about the idea of this kid being put on the stage with her. Alas, it didn't come to that. Mom shouted out "Send him back!" and they did, the hands turned me around and sent me back to her. Still chanting to myself. The lady. Never did get to the lady. Damn it all.
So when I saw that outfit, I read the placard, which said that Janis wore it on her 1969-1970 tour. Meaning that it's quite likely she was wearing it during that very show--perhaps was wearing it even as I moved closer and closer, murmuring to myself. I stood there staring at it for quite a long time, still wishing just as much as ever that I could have somehow gotten to the lady.
So okay, the Hard Rock ain't so bad after all. Still, I have to say that I preferred to be...
Out in the Desert
Not that I like deserts. As an ocean people, deserts are too much the other thing. But we stayed at a B&B in Fallbrook called The Santa Margarita Inn, and it was a lovely place. Nestled on a plateau deep in the canyons, with hiking and riding trails winding all around. A view beyond description of that area that has been shaped and reshaped by geologic activity for millions of years. The house is huge, with gigantic windows in all the appropriate places. And when we drove up, we saw it immediately: right there on the front gate, a big ol' cast-iron image of a guitar.
As it happens, I'd brought my guitar with me, for no particular reason. We were greeted by one of the owners, Arlene, a longtime musician with a whole collection of guitars, and when she saw me with mine, I think everyone pretty much knew straightaway that we were going to have a good time.
The B&B has only been operating for a short time, and Arlene isn't yet jaded about the whole experience, so she's still plenty proud of this house she's been building for the past twenty years, and she took great pleasure in showing it off to all of her guests. (There were some filmmakers from the festival, plus a terrific couple on their anniversary.) Arlene showed us her music room, a playground of sorts, stuffed with guitars, including a Marwin Star from the 1930s that is probably worth a bundle. Alas, we were only there for one night--we attended the opening night reception, Marc gave his presentation in the morning, and then we had to leave that afternoon. So there was never time to really wander the property, nor was there time for much of a jam session. (Although at one point Arlene did play a song she'd written that apparently Willie Nelson is taking a look at. The lyrics needed work, but musically it was pretty damn good.)
The place has only one drawback: Elvis.
Elvis is a Rottweiler. A huge Rottweiler. When I sat on the sofa, Elvis and I were eye-to-eye. And when owner Frank was around, Elvis is a softie, sprawled across an astonishing amount of floor space, docile as a kitten. But after the reception, Marc and I drove back in the black desert night, and Elvis was guarding the otherwise-empty house. Barking at that strange car he didn't yet recognize, driven by people he couldn't quite remember; and because the whole B&B thing is new, Elvis isn't yet accustomed to strangers walking into his house. So he put up a spirited defense, and believe me, it takes some fortitude to walk up a narrow exterior staircase that is guarded by a barking, snarling, utterly gigantic Rottweiler.
Marc, several feet in front of me, says he did his aikido misdirection thing. "Look at my hand, way over here," as he steadily and slowly walked, without stopping, to the front door. Elvis let him pass, then turned to look and bark and snarl at me. Me, I had no Jedi mind tricks, so all I could really do was say "Oh, now Elvis, come on. I'm too big a meal for you. Look at Marc over there. Much more bite-sized, don't you think?"
We made it into the house, closed the door, and started breathing again. Not too long afterward Arlene and Frank returned, Elvis trotted in, and he was docile and sweet all over again. He's not the sort who actually attacks, but he sure puts up a hell of a good show; and if we'd been, say, a couple of elderly folks just staying at the B&B, I can well imagine that Elvis might be something of a deal-breaker.
And yet--Elvis aside, I vastly preferred Santa Margarita to the Hard Rock. Give me homespun and warm, even when it comes with a snarling Rottweiler, over Skank Central any day.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
The Guitar Goes Plural
I was definitely not going to buy a new guitar. Even though for the past couple days I’ve been roaming the internet, looking at prices and models of electric basses, it wasn’t because I was planning to buy one. When my birthday comes around in a few months, then, sure, a nice cheap starter bass would be a wonderful present for myself. But not now. Nope, definitely not now.
Oh why do we persist in lying to ourselves so?
I had just been to the post office, mailing off the last of the tax forms. (One drawback to being self-employed: paying estimated taxes every quarter. Blah.) After months of work, the whole tax thing was finally completely done. And as it happens, the nearest post office branch is quite close to the venerable West L.A. Music.
“Well,” said I to my lying self, feeling good about the end of the whole tax thing, “when I do get a bass, I’ll definitely need a metronome with which to practice. It is a rhythm instrument, after all. Maybe I should just go get a metronome now, so that I’ll have it when the time comes.” While trying to decide this I was walking home, in the opposite direction from the music store, so that I ended up making a long tortured loop to get back to the store. Where I was definitely going to only buy a metronome. And maybe a pickup for the acoustic guitar, but that was it, for sure.
And the guy behind the counter--who happened to be their bass guitar expert--had to enter some stuff in his computer, during which I just kinda looked around, around, drums, keyboards, guitars, basses, and . . . “Hey, I’m not gonna buy today, but do you think I could maybe try out a couple of your basses?” Just so I could get a feel for a model I might like. You know. When the time comes.
Now, I’ve never played so much as a single note on a bass. But it is, really, the instrument I’ve always been drawn to. When I listen to music, it’s the bass line that my ear always follows, the bass line I always find myself humming. It’s probably true that I only bought the acoustic in order to learn the rudiments of stringed instruments before getting a bass. And being such a rank beginner, I wasn’t even considering a fretless bass because, really, you need to be an expert to play one of those. But the guy at the store, he asked what kind of bass work I was likely to want to play, and, thinking of the ne plus ultra bass work in “Come Together,” I said that I probably wanted something with a really fluid sound.
He immediately picked up a fretless bass. But it turns out that Squier (the cheap division of Fender) makes a fretless bass where, and this is just brilliant, the fret lines are painted on the neck. All the sound of a fretless bass, but there are still guides for beginners like me to follow. Dead simple—and as soon as I hit a couple notes and ran my fingers up and down the neck, well hell, I was completely hooked.
But still, I said “This is great, I’m definitely gonna want one of these in a couple months.” The clever guy, he said maybe he could drop the price a little, and went off to check. At exactly this moment, my phone happened to ring with some very good news about a meeting Marc Rosenbush had just had that went really quite remarkably well. Suddenly I was feeling, oh that most horrible of things, optimistic.
Twenty minutes later, I walked out with a bass. And an amp too, of course. And a strap. Plus that bloody metronome.
The acoustic is a complex instrument--six strings, and lots of chord-playing in infinite variations. A bass has only four strings, and you can get away with a lot by just playing one string at a time. It just sorta works for me, it makes an immediate kind of sense, in a way that the guitar still doesn’t. After only one day of practice--mostly spent endlessly repeating the various notes along the E string, trying to drill them into my brain, and keeping time with the metronome--I still don’t know much at all. But I’m having a hell of a time.
(And now I have to go down to San Diego for the weekend, and leave the bass behind. Which suddenly seems like a very great sacrifice indeed.)
Not buying a bass. Yeah, right. Tell me another one.
Oh why do we persist in lying to ourselves so?
I had just been to the post office, mailing off the last of the tax forms. (One drawback to being self-employed: paying estimated taxes every quarter. Blah.) After months of work, the whole tax thing was finally completely done. And as it happens, the nearest post office branch is quite close to the venerable West L.A. Music.
“Well,” said I to my lying self, feeling good about the end of the whole tax thing, “when I do get a bass, I’ll definitely need a metronome with which to practice. It is a rhythm instrument, after all. Maybe I should just go get a metronome now, so that I’ll have it when the time comes.” While trying to decide this I was walking home, in the opposite direction from the music store, so that I ended up making a long tortured loop to get back to the store. Where I was definitely going to only buy a metronome. And maybe a pickup for the acoustic guitar, but that was it, for sure.
And the guy behind the counter--who happened to be their bass guitar expert--had to enter some stuff in his computer, during which I just kinda looked around, around, drums, keyboards, guitars, basses, and . . . “Hey, I’m not gonna buy today, but do you think I could maybe try out a couple of your basses?” Just so I could get a feel for a model I might like. You know. When the time comes.
Now, I’ve never played so much as a single note on a bass. But it is, really, the instrument I’ve always been drawn to. When I listen to music, it’s the bass line that my ear always follows, the bass line I always find myself humming. It’s probably true that I only bought the acoustic in order to learn the rudiments of stringed instruments before getting a bass. And being such a rank beginner, I wasn’t even considering a fretless bass because, really, you need to be an expert to play one of those. But the guy at the store, he asked what kind of bass work I was likely to want to play, and, thinking of the ne plus ultra bass work in “Come Together,” I said that I probably wanted something with a really fluid sound.
He immediately picked up a fretless bass. But it turns out that Squier (the cheap division of Fender) makes a fretless bass where, and this is just brilliant, the fret lines are painted on the neck. All the sound of a fretless bass, but there are still guides for beginners like me to follow. Dead simple—and as soon as I hit a couple notes and ran my fingers up and down the neck, well hell, I was completely hooked.
But still, I said “This is great, I’m definitely gonna want one of these in a couple months.” The clever guy, he said maybe he could drop the price a little, and went off to check. At exactly this moment, my phone happened to ring with some very good news about a meeting Marc Rosenbush had just had that went really quite remarkably well. Suddenly I was feeling, oh that most horrible of things, optimistic.
Twenty minutes later, I walked out with a bass. And an amp too, of course. And a strap. Plus that bloody metronome.
The acoustic is a complex instrument--six strings, and lots of chord-playing in infinite variations. A bass has only four strings, and you can get away with a lot by just playing one string at a time. It just sorta works for me, it makes an immediate kind of sense, in a way that the guitar still doesn’t. After only one day of practice--mostly spent endlessly repeating the various notes along the E string, trying to drill them into my brain, and keeping time with the metronome--I still don’t know much at all. But I’m having a hell of a time.
(And now I have to go down to San Diego for the weekend, and leave the bass behind. Which suddenly seems like a very great sacrifice indeed.)
Not buying a bass. Yeah, right. Tell me another one.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
In Which I Do My Bit for the Alumni Association
Went to an alumni event for Emerson College the other night, one that targeted people from the years when I attended. (1820 to 1743.) So it was fun to see some folks I had sorta-kinda known back in the day, and extra-fun to see someone I really truly did know (and acted with). Emerson, though a Boston school, has a good alumni group out here, in fact the motion picture industry sometimes refers to an “Emerson mafia” of grads spread throughout the biz, networking through events just like this one. And hey, who wouldn’t want to work his way into a mafia that doesn’t involve actually, you know, killing people? Executives from a couple of the major studios, fellow graduates, were in the room, and happy to talk to other alumni. That’s a good room to be in.
I was of course reminded of my halcyon schooldays, there in the heart of Boston’s Back Bay, right across from the Public Gardens and the Common. I went to the school sight-unseen--a friend of a friend had recommended it, and the more I heard, the more I knew that this kind of school was exactly what I wanted. Emerson has always been a hands-on place, which makes it, unfortunately, a rare commodity in the higher-ed world. I auditioned, for example, at Boston University, and was told that I couldn’t possibly expect to get into a mainstage show until my junior year. At Emerson, I was cast in a mainstage show, doing Shakespeare, before orientation week was done. Which meant that I spent all four years working like crazy, in every space they had, doing classics and new pieces, and discovering, among other things, Samuel Beckett, who became one of my theatre gods. (A thousand thanks to Ron Jenkins, who handed me a copy of “Krapp’s Last Tape” and said “Here, you should do this.”)
For the last many years, Emerson has run something called The L.A. Center out here, in rented space in Toluca Lake. This is of course ground zero for the Emerson mafia, but last week they announced that they’ve bought property in Hollywood (near the Sunset Gower Studios) in order to build a permanent facility with much greater capacity. Which means the Emerson mafia should only grow, and it gives my company a great resource for new interns. We alumni have been encouraged to submit our ideas for how the new space should be constituted, and I think I’m going to do exactly that--something about the idea of finding ways to mix students from the various disciplines has a lot of appeal to me.
See, back when I was a student, the theatre department was in a building on Brimmer Street (just around the corner from the Bull and Finch, the outside of which was seen every week on Cheers). The film people were part of the mass communications department, which was in a different building, and there really wasn’t much mingling. (And none of us ever saw the communications disorders people.) I had a couple friends who managed to bridge the various departments, but I was so theatre-centric that I rarely left what we called “Brimmer World.” And as I wandered around the room at that alumni event, I saw people who graduated my year who I had really never known. Since I’m a big believer that artists should have interests that are as broad as possible, the fact that I essentially sequestered myself for four years means that I probably missed out on a lot of interesting possibilities. (I only acted in one student film that whole time, f’r instance.)
So I think I will make that suggestion. And I’m thinking that maybe I should volunteer to talk to prospective students from time to time--after all, it was a dinner held by a South Florida alum when I was just a prospect that made me realize, finally, that this was the school I wanted. That’s a favor I would really enjoy returning. And given that the school is still just as hands-on as it ever was, I can still recommend it just as heartily as ever. So if you're interested in a communications field and you believe that the best way to learn something is to get your hands dirty, here you go, here's the place for you.
There you go. Does this mean I don't have to contribute cash now when they call?
I was of course reminded of my halcyon schooldays, there in the heart of Boston’s Back Bay, right across from the Public Gardens and the Common. I went to the school sight-unseen--a friend of a friend had recommended it, and the more I heard, the more I knew that this kind of school was exactly what I wanted. Emerson has always been a hands-on place, which makes it, unfortunately, a rare commodity in the higher-ed world. I auditioned, for example, at Boston University, and was told that I couldn’t possibly expect to get into a mainstage show until my junior year. At Emerson, I was cast in a mainstage show, doing Shakespeare, before orientation week was done. Which meant that I spent all four years working like crazy, in every space they had, doing classics and new pieces, and discovering, among other things, Samuel Beckett, who became one of my theatre gods. (A thousand thanks to Ron Jenkins, who handed me a copy of “Krapp’s Last Tape” and said “Here, you should do this.”)
For the last many years, Emerson has run something called The L.A. Center out here, in rented space in Toluca Lake. This is of course ground zero for the Emerson mafia, but last week they announced that they’ve bought property in Hollywood (near the Sunset Gower Studios) in order to build a permanent facility with much greater capacity. Which means the Emerson mafia should only grow, and it gives my company a great resource for new interns. We alumni have been encouraged to submit our ideas for how the new space should be constituted, and I think I’m going to do exactly that--something about the idea of finding ways to mix students from the various disciplines has a lot of appeal to me.
See, back when I was a student, the theatre department was in a building on Brimmer Street (just around the corner from the Bull and Finch, the outside of which was seen every week on Cheers). The film people were part of the mass communications department, which was in a different building, and there really wasn’t much mingling. (And none of us ever saw the communications disorders people.) I had a couple friends who managed to bridge the various departments, but I was so theatre-centric that I rarely left what we called “Brimmer World.” And as I wandered around the room at that alumni event, I saw people who graduated my year who I had really never known. Since I’m a big believer that artists should have interests that are as broad as possible, the fact that I essentially sequestered myself for four years means that I probably missed out on a lot of interesting possibilities. (I only acted in one student film that whole time, f’r instance.)
So I think I will make that suggestion. And I’m thinking that maybe I should volunteer to talk to prospective students from time to time--after all, it was a dinner held by a South Florida alum when I was just a prospect that made me realize, finally, that this was the school I wanted. That’s a favor I would really enjoy returning. And given that the school is still just as hands-on as it ever was, I can still recommend it just as heartily as ever. So if you're interested in a communications field and you believe that the best way to learn something is to get your hands dirty, here you go, here's the place for you.
There you go. Does this mean I don't have to contribute cash now when they call?
Friday, April 04, 2008
Hey Mikey! and Other Myths
Stories Persist
So I was talking to my brother last night, and somehow we got onto the subject of Pop Rocks. These, of course, are the fizzy candies that make little sizzling sounds on your tongue. They were introduced to the public when I was 10 years old, and I was a little surprised that Adam even knew what they were, because that meant they were still around--seeing as he's 18-plus years younger than I. I was even more surprised that he knew the Mikey story.
As reported here on Snopes, the Mikey story is completely false. The kid from the LIFE cereal commercials ("He likes it! Hey Mikey!") most emphatically did not die from eating a combination of Pop Rocks and soda pop, indeed he is still really most sincerely alive, and I knew the story had been debunked when I was a kid, lo those many, many (many!) years ago. Which is why it was amazing to find that the story still circulates, that my 20-years-younger brother was just as familiar with it as I had been.
Even Older
I shouldn't have been surprised. In the theatre, there are people who still get nervous if you whistle inside a theatre space. Sometimes they don't know why, but they've been told they should and so, actors in particular being big bundles of hypochondria and paranoia, they start to thrum and hum. The reason for it all is simple: back in the day (way back in the day), the people who worked the riggings in a theatre--the ones raising and lowering backdrops and set pieces--were former sailors, and they communicated with each other using, yes, whistles. So that if one were to casually whistle a jaunty tune inside a theatre, he or she was somewhat likely to have a sandbag dropped on his or her no-longer-whistling head.
We haven't had sailors in the flies for eons. We still avoid the whistling thing.
Something in a Name
It can get even stranger. I've told the Macbeth story before, but there's a variation on it: I have now met not one but two unrelated people whose last name just happens to be, really truly, Macbeth. So of course I had to ask the question: when inside a theatre, how do they introduce themselves? And yes, they are indeed reduced to having to say something like "Hi, I'm Mary the Scottish play."
I'm sure there are popular myths that are even older. (Black cat crossing your path, perhaps? I'll bet that one's got centuries on it.) But really, when I think about it, sure these things are nonsense--but they add some whimsy to life. They may be aggravating to the Mikeys of the world, and anyone who shares a name with the Scottish play, but there's never enough whimsy in life. And so, knowing I am in error, here's to poor dead Mikey, may he fizz in peace.
So I was talking to my brother last night, and somehow we got onto the subject of Pop Rocks. These, of course, are the fizzy candies that make little sizzling sounds on your tongue. They were introduced to the public when I was 10 years old, and I was a little surprised that Adam even knew what they were, because that meant they were still around--seeing as he's 18-plus years younger than I. I was even more surprised that he knew the Mikey story.
As reported here on Snopes, the Mikey story is completely false. The kid from the LIFE cereal commercials ("He likes it! Hey Mikey!") most emphatically did not die from eating a combination of Pop Rocks and soda pop, indeed he is still really most sincerely alive, and I knew the story had been debunked when I was a kid, lo those many, many (many!) years ago. Which is why it was amazing to find that the story still circulates, that my 20-years-younger brother was just as familiar with it as I had been.
Even Older
I shouldn't have been surprised. In the theatre, there are people who still get nervous if you whistle inside a theatre space. Sometimes they don't know why, but they've been told they should and so, actors in particular being big bundles of hypochondria and paranoia, they start to thrum and hum. The reason for it all is simple: back in the day (way back in the day), the people who worked the riggings in a theatre--the ones raising and lowering backdrops and set pieces--were former sailors, and they communicated with each other using, yes, whistles. So that if one were to casually whistle a jaunty tune inside a theatre, he or she was somewhat likely to have a sandbag dropped on his or her no-longer-whistling head.
We haven't had sailors in the flies for eons. We still avoid the whistling thing.
Something in a Name
It can get even stranger. I've told the Macbeth story before, but there's a variation on it: I have now met not one but two unrelated people whose last name just happens to be, really truly, Macbeth. So of course I had to ask the question: when inside a theatre, how do they introduce themselves? And yes, they are indeed reduced to having to say something like "Hi, I'm Mary the Scottish play."
I'm sure there are popular myths that are even older. (Black cat crossing your path, perhaps? I'll bet that one's got centuries on it.) But really, when I think about it, sure these things are nonsense--but they add some whimsy to life. They may be aggravating to the Mikeys of the world, and anyone who shares a name with the Scottish play, but there's never enough whimsy in life. And so, knowing I am in error, here's to poor dead Mikey, may he fizz in peace.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
A Tale of Two Transcripts (Part 2)
The Jabbering Class
The Privileged Few, they will have their say. Years ago, they ensconced one of their own, Roger Ailes, as the head of Fox News. As everyone knows, Fox News has ever since been the Pravda of the conservative right, their “fair and balanced” being no more fair and balanced than Pravda ever actually represented “truth.”
In the wake of Sen. Obama’s speech, Sean Hannity seized the occasion. He responded to Obama’s challenging speech on race by not at all dealing with race. It also ended on an astonishing note of self-adulation, but I’ll get to that later.
Hannity invited Frank Luntz to dissect the Obama speech. Luntz is a very smart man who bills himself as a pollster, even though the kinds of polls he runs are the ones designed to make people answer questions the way the pollster wants them to. (He himself has said so.) What Luntz really is, is a semantician. He’s a manipulator of language, highly in demand in the Republican party for his ability to make language bend the people to its will. But calling himself a pollster (even though he has been frequently sanctioned by polling organizations) allows him to pretend he is impartial and above the fray. In other words, calling himself a pollster is itself a semantician’s manipulation of language.
The First Absurd Salvo
Luntz’s very first critique of the Obama speech was in itself pretty astonishing:
Sounds like an interesting left-field critique, but it’s simply an attempt to diminish Obama’s vaunted oratorical skill. (Which scares the bejeebers out of his political opponents.) When one is speaking on a subject as charged as race, where time and again we have seen people make tiny off-the-cuff misstatements that have been seized upon and wrung dry (as Obama himself did with his “typical white woman” remark a couple days later), the last thing on earth you want to do is stand in front of the nation and wing it. (Wouldn’t they have just loved it if he had. Because then, then they’d have had something they could’ve worked with. Some bone they could have gnawed for months.)
Also, it seemed plain to me that Obama deliberately kept his delivery flat in order to stay away from anything that sounded, in a word, preachery. It was necessary for him to draw as a sharp a contrast as he could between his calm, measured oratory and the flights of passion that seized Rev. Wright. We know from Obama’s other speeches that he can wind up a crowd real good, but this wasn’t the time. Luntz deliberately ignores all this in order to make the false claim that Obama’s speech was (a) insincere and (b) dull.
(Of course, insincere and dull is exactly what we get every time our current president reads from the teleprompter, but let’s stick to the subject.)
But Wait, There's More
Mr. Luntz then dares the following, referring to Obama’s comment that Rev. Wright “contains within him the contradictions, the good and the bad of the community that he has served”:
In response to that, one need only say: Jerry Falwell. Pat Robertson. Both of whom claimed, as Rev. Wright did, that America deserved 9/11 for its sins, except that for Falwell and Robertson those sins were liberalism and homosexuality, while for Wright the sin was slavery and racism. Pick your poison.
Luntz and Hannity then engaged in a very poorly-defined critique of this line from Obama: “I can no more disown [Rev. Wright] than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can disown my white grandmother....” Seizing, inevitably, on the word “disown,” they said, essentially, that it was bad without ever actually saying why. Frequent cohost Kristin Powers, a Democratic Party operative, tried to weigh in, without much effect.
Is it? Why? After all the clamor for Obama to do exactly that, to disown his pastor, now when he refuses to do so suddenly the word “disown” is really a meaningless rationalization? It’s the semantic version of sour grapes, basically. But of course Luntz doesn’t really explain what he’s trying to say effectively, except for a very vague complaint that Obama equates his grandmother with his pastor. Which was, of course, entirely the point: as Ms. Powers correctly tried to note, Obama was stating that his pastor is imperfect and complex just as his grandmother was, but that he wasn’t about to abandon someone so important in his life just because of some disagreements. (My own great-grandmother, born in Virginia in 1898, once referred to some black children as “pickaninnies.” Should I disown or disavow her?)
This whole thing with Rev. Wright has been a massive attempt to create guilt by association. It is thus disingenuous (at best) to complain when Obama associates his imperfect grandmother with his imperfect pastor.
And by the way, Gary Kamiya has an excellent response to Rev. Wright’s comments in today’s Salon, asserting that “Wright isn’t the problem. Stupid patriotism is the problem.” With which I entirely agree.
Saying Much, Doing Nothing
Luntz then raises a question that seems to deal with the issue, but doesn’t. It has the effect of making him sound high-minded without his having to actually, you know, be high-minded.
You’ve gotta love it. Let’s have an open and frank discussion about race, he seems to say, and then he pivots to the economy. And as to that point, Obama delivered another major address the very next day, on the subject of the Iraq war, then dealt with the economy the day after that. So you can’t say that Obama is getting distracted from other issues, since the very next day he turned to other issues. The thing is--nobody paid any attention to these speeches. Race is a red-meat issue, and that’s all anyone wanted to report on. Obama asked whether we were going to allow ourselves to continue to be distracted, and the media then proceeded to try very hard to distract us.
Then, of course, there was the section of the speech where Obama said that the people trying to distract us, The Privileged Few, include “talkshow hosts and political commentators.” No surprise, Luntz found that personally offensive.
Again: Robertson and Falwell. If you’re going to make the guilt-by-association argument, you have to be open to the possibility that your side is just as tainted, if not more so.
Sean Hannity Ventures an Opinion
Mr. Hannity went on to say:
Note how artfully that was phrased (Luntz must have helped on this before the show)--while at the same time appearing to be fair by noting that he has no idea whether Obama actually feels that way, Hannity nonetheless found a way to state forcefully and affirmatively, in solid declarative language, “that would mean a racist and an anti-Semite would be president of the United States.”
Do you feel scared yet? Well why not?! What are you, stupid? A racist and an anti-Semite would be president! You should be terrified of that! Vote Republican!
It went on like that for a while, mixing the “we don’t really know whether he feels that way” language with more fear-mongering, until finally they got weirdly self-congratulatory.
The Grand Finale
Hannity claimed that he was the one who got the Rev. Wright scoop in the first place. Which may be true, I don’t know and I don’t particularly care who scooped whom. But he used this claim to further assert that McCain and Clinton should “stay away from this [issue] and let those of us that have led from the beginning continue to talk about it.”
Yes, it’s true: Sean Hannity, a leading voice for racial dialogue. Bet you didn’t see that one coming, did you?
And... commercial break!
I have nothing further to say.
The Privileged Few, they will have their say. Years ago, they ensconced one of their own, Roger Ailes, as the head of Fox News. As everyone knows, Fox News has ever since been the Pravda of the conservative right, their “fair and balanced” being no more fair and balanced than Pravda ever actually represented “truth.”
In the wake of Sen. Obama’s speech, Sean Hannity seized the occasion. He responded to Obama’s challenging speech on race by not at all dealing with race. It also ended on an astonishing note of self-adulation, but I’ll get to that later.
Hannity invited Frank Luntz to dissect the Obama speech. Luntz is a very smart man who bills himself as a pollster, even though the kinds of polls he runs are the ones designed to make people answer questions the way the pollster wants them to. (He himself has said so.) What Luntz really is, is a semantician. He’s a manipulator of language, highly in demand in the Republican party for his ability to make language bend the people to its will. But calling himself a pollster (even though he has been frequently sanctioned by polling organizations) allows him to pretend he is impartial and above the fray. In other words, calling himself a pollster is itself a semantician’s manipulation of language.
The First Absurd Salvo
Luntz’s very first critique of the Obama speech was in itself pretty astonishing:
Well, the first thing is that he read it on the telemprompter and, frankly, he didn’t read it that well. When you are in a situation where you’re being challenged, when your credibility is under attack.... Don’t ever read a teleprompter. Look at them straight in the eye.
Sounds like an interesting left-field critique, but it’s simply an attempt to diminish Obama’s vaunted oratorical skill. (Which scares the bejeebers out of his political opponents.) When one is speaking on a subject as charged as race, where time and again we have seen people make tiny off-the-cuff misstatements that have been seized upon and wrung dry (as Obama himself did with his “typical white woman” remark a couple days later), the last thing on earth you want to do is stand in front of the nation and wing it. (Wouldn’t they have just loved it if he had. Because then, then they’d have had something they could’ve worked with. Some bone they could have gnawed for months.)
Also, it seemed plain to me that Obama deliberately kept his delivery flat in order to stay away from anything that sounded, in a word, preachery. It was necessary for him to draw as a sharp a contrast as he could between his calm, measured oratory and the flights of passion that seized Rev. Wright. We know from Obama’s other speeches that he can wind up a crowd real good, but this wasn’t the time. Luntz deliberately ignores all this in order to make the false claim that Obama’s speech was (a) insincere and (b) dull.
(Of course, insincere and dull is exactly what we get every time our current president reads from the teleprompter, but let’s stick to the subject.)
But Wait, There's More
Mr. Luntz then dares the following, referring to Obama’s comment that Rev. Wright “contains within him the contradictions, the good and the bad of the community that he has served”:
This is not your hairdresser. This is not the guy who does your nails. This is your pastor. This is your rabbi; this is your priest. This is a spiritual leader of a community.
In response to that, one need only say: Jerry Falwell. Pat Robertson. Both of whom claimed, as Rev. Wright did, that America deserved 9/11 for its sins, except that for Falwell and Robertson those sins were liberalism and homosexuality, while for Wright the sin was slavery and racism. Pick your poison.
Luntz and Hannity then engaged in a very poorly-defined critique of this line from Obama: “I can no more disown [Rev. Wright] than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can disown my white grandmother....” Seizing, inevitably, on the word “disown,” they said, essentially, that it was bad without ever actually saying why. Frequent cohost Kristin Powers, a Democratic Party operative, tried to weigh in, without much effect.
LUNTZ: ... Barack Obama is an outstanding communicator.... But I now follow the words that he chooses. And if you watch his speech overall, it is Kennedy-esque. But the moment that you start to look at the language—and I’ve got the text here. That word “disown”...
HANNITY: Yes.
LUNTZ: ... he’s going to pay a price for that in that he brings in his own family and tries to do that.
HANNITY: Because he stays friends when he says he doesn’t disown. He’s still friends with the guy.
POWERS: But wasn’t he talking about the...
LUNTZ: More than just friends.
POWERS: Wasn’t he talking about the complexities of people? That’s the way I heard that.
LUNTZ: You are correct. And he’s trying to explain it. But the problem is when you get to words like “disown,” it’s a rationalization. It’s a defense rather than an explanation.
Is it? Why? After all the clamor for Obama to do exactly that, to disown his pastor, now when he refuses to do so suddenly the word “disown” is really a meaningless rationalization? It’s the semantic version of sour grapes, basically. But of course Luntz doesn’t really explain what he’s trying to say effectively, except for a very vague complaint that Obama equates his grandmother with his pastor. Which was, of course, entirely the point: as Ms. Powers correctly tried to note, Obama was stating that his pastor is imperfect and complex just as his grandmother was, but that he wasn’t about to abandon someone so important in his life just because of some disagreements. (My own great-grandmother, born in Virginia in 1898, once referred to some black children as “pickaninnies.” Should I disown or disavow her?)
This whole thing with Rev. Wright has been a massive attempt to create guilt by association. It is thus disingenuous (at best) to complain when Obama associates his imperfect grandmother with his imperfect pastor.
And by the way, Gary Kamiya has an excellent response to Rev. Wright’s comments in today’s Salon, asserting that “Wright isn’t the problem. Stupid patriotism is the problem.” With which I entirely agree.
Saying Much, Doing Nothing
Luntz then raises a question that seems to deal with the issue, but doesn’t. It has the effect of making him sound high-minded without his having to actually, you know, be high-minded.
Can we have a discussion in this country about race where we don’t have an approach that tries to level accusations? And can we have a discussion that doesn’t say that whites are racist and African-Americans are not? [Obama neither said nor implied any such thing. Plainly.] Are we going to have this kind of open conversation?
And one other point.... There are issues of economy. Our economy is melting down... and yet, Barack Obama is now responding to his pastor....
You’ve gotta love it. Let’s have an open and frank discussion about race, he seems to say, and then he pivots to the economy. And as to that point, Obama delivered another major address the very next day, on the subject of the Iraq war, then dealt with the economy the day after that. So you can’t say that Obama is getting distracted from other issues, since the very next day he turned to other issues. The thing is--nobody paid any attention to these speeches. Race is a red-meat issue, and that’s all anyone wanted to report on. Obama asked whether we were going to allow ourselves to continue to be distracted, and the media then proceeded to try very hard to distract us.
Then, of course, there was the section of the speech where Obama said that the people trying to distract us, The Privileged Few, include “talkshow hosts and political commentators.” No surprise, Luntz found that personally offensive.
Now, look, let’s talk about class warfare, which is what the Democrats have always tried to do against the Republicans. [Because it’s what the Republicans have been actually doing for lo these many years—the upper class successfully dominating every other class. The Democrats take the trouble to point this out, and get accused of attempting to wage class warfare.] ... This is not about Republicans talking about affirmative action or welfare or Democrats or whatever. This is about a religious figure, a very important person in Senator Obama’s life, who has a point of view that is frightening.
Again: Robertson and Falwell. If you’re going to make the guilt-by-association argument, you have to be open to the possibility that your side is just as tainted, if not more so.
Sean Hannity Ventures an Opinion
Mr. Hannity went on to say:
What if Barack Obama, for the entire year that the MoveOn media out there has ignored any scrutiny of him, and they’ve gone along with the bumper sticker of change and the slogans. What if he really deep down in his heart thinks like Pastor Wright? ... I think that would be dangerous. That would mean we would have—if he agreed with Wright, and I don’t know that he does, but if he did, that would mean a racist and an anti-Semite would be president of the United States.
Note how artfully that was phrased (Luntz must have helped on this before the show)--while at the same time appearing to be fair by noting that he has no idea whether Obama actually feels that way, Hannity nonetheless found a way to state forcefully and affirmatively, in solid declarative language, “that would mean a racist and an anti-Semite would be president of the United States.”
Do you feel scared yet? Well why not?! What are you, stupid? A racist and an anti-Semite would be president! You should be terrified of that! Vote Republican!
It went on like that for a while, mixing the “we don’t really know whether he feels that way” language with more fear-mongering, until finally they got weirdly self-congratulatory.
The Grand Finale
Hannity claimed that he was the one who got the Rev. Wright scoop in the first place. Which may be true, I don’t know and I don’t particularly care who scooped whom. But he used this claim to further assert that McCain and Clinton should “stay away from this [issue] and let those of us that have led from the beginning continue to talk about it.”
Yes, it’s true: Sean Hannity, a leading voice for racial dialogue. Bet you didn’t see that one coming, did you?
LUNTZ: And you’ve got the evidence. You’ve got the tape that proves it. Congratulations, Sean.
HANNITY: Thanks. We’ll talk more in the future.
And... commercial break!
I have nothing further to say.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
A Tale of Two Transcripts (Part 1)
In Philadelphia
Across the street from Independence Hall on Tuesday morning, there was a moment when, as observers as disparate as David Gergen and Jon Stewart noted, a major American politician spoke to us as if we were adults.
There are two transcripts related to that moment in our American life that I want to deal with. The first is of Senator Obama’s speech, delivered at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia; then I’ll talk about a certain response to it that exemplifies from where the fight is going to come.
The transcript of Obama’s speech is here; there is YouTube video of it here.
Unclean Hands
Let me first start by saying that Senator Obama does not have clean hands on this issue. His campaign has been just as guilty of “playing the race card” as Senator Clinton’s--if not more so. To pick just one example, there was the moment when Senator Clinton said in a speech, “Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It took a president to get it done.” To me, that never read as a denigration of Dr. King’s role in the civil rights movement, it was simply a realistic reading of the often-necessary interplay between visionaries and institutions, and it was also just what she said it was: a recognition of the role that governments can play when they are run well. (Not to say that the Johnson administration was always well run, but let’s not get distracted by that argument.) I’ve said for years now, when small-government activists get all up in my face about how government should keep out of everything except defense and trade, that the Civil Rights Act is a prime example of something that a powerful central government can do beyond the initial scope of its powers--the southern states clearly didn’t want to enact any such legislation, but were forced to by the combined strength of the northern and western states, to everyone’s long-term benefit. Dr. King could not have done it alone, and that’s exactly the point Sen. Clinton was trying to make.
But the Obama campaign took it as an attempt to downplay Dr. King’s importance, which I for one never thought it was, and it bothered me--a lot--that the Obama campaign was willing to go there.
So when I heard that Sen. Obama was going to deliver a “major address” on the subject of race, I did not approach it with the same sort of “Obamatry” that characterizes some of his more ardent supporters--an unquestioning adoration that is in itself a little worrisome. No, I simply wanted to hear what he had to say, hoping against hope that he might just say something valuable.
The Race Problem
Scapegoating of The Other is a problem that has been long with us--for exactly as long as The Many have been exploited by The Powerful Few. Limiting our discussion to the American experience, Howard Zinn has pointed out how white landowners in the southern colonies pitted their black slaves against the local native tribes in order to keep both in line. None of this is new; our current “immigration debate” was sparked by absolutely nothing--except for a desire by those in power to invent an argument by which they could keep themselves in power. There was no actual event that set it in motion, the number of people illegally crossing the border is pretty much the same as it has been for quite a while now, but some bright spark realized that by exploiting fear of The Other, s/he could make plenty of good political hay. And so we continue to fuss and fret over the issue, all the while dancing to the tune of The Powerful Few.
Through it all, at least since the Civil Rights Act (1964), race has been much spoken of, but almost never with any seriousness. Opportunities for minorities slowly grew over time, and as we (by “we” I mean white people such as me, which in its broader sense means those of us who happen to have been born into the “right” club) saw those opportunities expand, we allowed ourselves to believe, without ever really questioning whether it was actually true or not, that the problem was resolved or, at least, resolving.
But all that meant was that we grew fat and self-satisfied, ignoring whatever subterranean currents still remained, hiding away in our desperate little souls. When a Michael Richards came along, a comedian taking outrageousness past the point of comedy, we jumped on that poor man with a word that has become every bit as bad as “pedophile,” calling him “racist” without ever questioning whether maybe we all had some Michael Richards in us.
Actually, that’s probably exactly why we jumped on him so hard--how dare he say what we know we’re not supposed to say! That breaks the code, it brings something into the open that we’d prefer remain buried. And as a result, Michael Richards’s career is destroyed--and we once again manage to avoid having the real discussion about race that we desperately need to have.
But then on Tuesday, Barack Obama stepped up to the podium.
The Speech
Running about forty minutes long and delivered, deliberately, without preacher-like fervor, the speech was clearly a bit of damage control in the wake of comments by Sen. Obama’s longtime, pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. But there are lots of ways to approach damage control, and Sen. Obama took the high road, using Rev. Wright’s inflammatory preaching (“God damn America!”) to search for the pain beneath it--and then to reach even higher and seek for the pain that underlies the myriad forms of racism in every American’s soul. He worked just as hard to find the resentments felt by underprivileged whites as he did in elucidating the long history of subjugation and oppression felt by blacks in America.
Perhaps Obama is uniquely qualified to make such a speech, coming from a racially-mixed background that makes him both black and white, with relatives, as he noted, spread across three continents. (Lord knows George Bush could never have given a speech such as this--setting aside the question of whether he’s even capable of it, he simply wouldn’t be credible.)
The whole purpose of the speech was to take the broader view. Rev. Wright said some reprehensible things, but Obama also told of the man he’s known for more than twenty years...
Which of course reminds me of that greatest of American poets, Walt Whitman, who gloried in the rich complexities of life, and who of course said “Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes).” Whitman understood this over a century ago; Obama understands it now. But The Powerful Few need us to wallow in false certainty; they peddle a Manichaean, black-and-white (literally) worldview in which a “wrong” word automatically equates to a wrong person, in which no one is allowed to be complex but must be perfectly simple--or else immediately and categorically denied. Often these Powerful Few are professed Christians, but they have of course entirely forgotten--willfully forgotten--Christ’s warning: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”
Or, as Obama put it himself:
(Within minutes of this you heard conservative pundits proclaiming how offended they were that Obama had “stooped” to the political in this passage. The Powerful Few will do what they must to protect their privileges--but that’s for the next installment of this little essay.)
Obama’s best passage is also his most insightful:
It is here that his endlessly-repeated leitmotif of change shifts its shape, metamorphosing from a political slogan to something like a real ideology--a vision of an America that is never static, that, as Obama said in his speech, “...may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected.” America represents an ongoing evolution in the idea of human rights, a constant expansion from the limited sense that Thomas Jefferson had in mind when he wrote “all men are created equal,” an expansion that continues today with all its attendant strains--Jefferson surely never imagined that transgendered individuals would one day seek their equal rights, but once that door of equality was opened, it was inevitable that one day everyone, absolutely everyone, would insist on passing through. The process is never easy, but it becomes impossible if we look at the nation as something static and constant and cold, something that does not evolve or change.
Obama himself is the change he seeks; and if there’s any justice at all in the world, the challenge he posed on Tuesday--implicitly asking us, by treating us as adults, whether or not we will in fact act like adults--will end with him in the White House. Where my most fervent hope is that he will continue to lead through challenge for the next many years, exactly as he did this week.
Now that, that would be the kind of president I’ve been waiting my whole life for.
Next time... the Powerful Few jabber back.
Across the street from Independence Hall on Tuesday morning, there was a moment when, as observers as disparate as David Gergen and Jon Stewart noted, a major American politician spoke to us as if we were adults.
There are two transcripts related to that moment in our American life that I want to deal with. The first is of Senator Obama’s speech, delivered at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia; then I’ll talk about a certain response to it that exemplifies from where the fight is going to come.
The transcript of Obama’s speech is here; there is YouTube video of it here.
Unclean Hands
Let me first start by saying that Senator Obama does not have clean hands on this issue. His campaign has been just as guilty of “playing the race card” as Senator Clinton’s--if not more so. To pick just one example, there was the moment when Senator Clinton said in a speech, “Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It took a president to get it done.” To me, that never read as a denigration of Dr. King’s role in the civil rights movement, it was simply a realistic reading of the often-necessary interplay between visionaries and institutions, and it was also just what she said it was: a recognition of the role that governments can play when they are run well. (Not to say that the Johnson administration was always well run, but let’s not get distracted by that argument.) I’ve said for years now, when small-government activists get all up in my face about how government should keep out of everything except defense and trade, that the Civil Rights Act is a prime example of something that a powerful central government can do beyond the initial scope of its powers--the southern states clearly didn’t want to enact any such legislation, but were forced to by the combined strength of the northern and western states, to everyone’s long-term benefit. Dr. King could not have done it alone, and that’s exactly the point Sen. Clinton was trying to make.
But the Obama campaign took it as an attempt to downplay Dr. King’s importance, which I for one never thought it was, and it bothered me--a lot--that the Obama campaign was willing to go there.
So when I heard that Sen. Obama was going to deliver a “major address” on the subject of race, I did not approach it with the same sort of “Obamatry” that characterizes some of his more ardent supporters--an unquestioning adoration that is in itself a little worrisome. No, I simply wanted to hear what he had to say, hoping against hope that he might just say something valuable.
The Race Problem
Scapegoating of The Other is a problem that has been long with us--for exactly as long as The Many have been exploited by The Powerful Few. Limiting our discussion to the American experience, Howard Zinn has pointed out how white landowners in the southern colonies pitted their black slaves against the local native tribes in order to keep both in line. None of this is new; our current “immigration debate” was sparked by absolutely nothing--except for a desire by those in power to invent an argument by which they could keep themselves in power. There was no actual event that set it in motion, the number of people illegally crossing the border is pretty much the same as it has been for quite a while now, but some bright spark realized that by exploiting fear of The Other, s/he could make plenty of good political hay. And so we continue to fuss and fret over the issue, all the while dancing to the tune of The Powerful Few.
Through it all, at least since the Civil Rights Act (1964), race has been much spoken of, but almost never with any seriousness. Opportunities for minorities slowly grew over time, and as we (by “we” I mean white people such as me, which in its broader sense means those of us who happen to have been born into the “right” club) saw those opportunities expand, we allowed ourselves to believe, without ever really questioning whether it was actually true or not, that the problem was resolved or, at least, resolving.
But all that meant was that we grew fat and self-satisfied, ignoring whatever subterranean currents still remained, hiding away in our desperate little souls. When a Michael Richards came along, a comedian taking outrageousness past the point of comedy, we jumped on that poor man with a word that has become every bit as bad as “pedophile,” calling him “racist” without ever questioning whether maybe we all had some Michael Richards in us.
Actually, that’s probably exactly why we jumped on him so hard--how dare he say what we know we’re not supposed to say! That breaks the code, it brings something into the open that we’d prefer remain buried. And as a result, Michael Richards’s career is destroyed--and we once again manage to avoid having the real discussion about race that we desperately need to have.
But then on Tuesday, Barack Obama stepped up to the podium.
The Speech
Running about forty minutes long and delivered, deliberately, without preacher-like fervor, the speech was clearly a bit of damage control in the wake of comments by Sen. Obama’s longtime, pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. But there are lots of ways to approach damage control, and Sen. Obama took the high road, using Rev. Wright’s inflammatory preaching (“God damn America!”) to search for the pain beneath it--and then to reach even higher and seek for the pain that underlies the myriad forms of racism in every American’s soul. He worked just as hard to find the resentments felt by underprivileged whites as he did in elucidating the long history of subjugation and oppression felt by blacks in America.
Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience--as far as they're concerned, no one handed them anything. They built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pensions dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and they feel their dreams slipping away. And in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense.
Perhaps Obama is uniquely qualified to make such a speech, coming from a racially-mixed background that makes him both black and white, with relatives, as he noted, spread across three continents. (Lord knows George Bush could never have given a speech such as this--setting aside the question of whether he’s even capable of it, he simply wouldn’t be credible.)
The whole purpose of the speech was to take the broader view. Rev. Wright said some reprehensible things, but Obama also told of the man he’s known for more than twenty years...
As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children.... He contains within him the contradictions--the good and the bad--of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.
Which of course reminds me of that greatest of American poets, Walt Whitman, who gloried in the rich complexities of life, and who of course said “Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes).” Whitman understood this over a century ago; Obama understands it now. But The Powerful Few need us to wallow in false certainty; they peddle a Manichaean, black-and-white (literally) worldview in which a “wrong” word automatically equates to a wrong person, in which no one is allowed to be complex but must be perfectly simple--or else immediately and categorically denied. Often these Powerful Few are professed Christians, but they have of course entirely forgotten--willfully forgotten--Christ’s warning: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”
Or, as Obama put it himself:
Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.
Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze--a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many.
(Within minutes of this you heard conservative pundits proclaiming how offended they were that Obama had “stooped” to the political in this passage. The Powerful Few will do what they must to protect their privileges--but that’s for the next installment of this little essay.)
Obama’s best passage is also his most insightful:
The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress had been made; as if this country--a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black, Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old--is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know — what we have seen--is that America can change. That is the true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope--the audacity to hope--for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.
It is here that his endlessly-repeated leitmotif of change shifts its shape, metamorphosing from a political slogan to something like a real ideology--a vision of an America that is never static, that, as Obama said in his speech, “...may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected.” America represents an ongoing evolution in the idea of human rights, a constant expansion from the limited sense that Thomas Jefferson had in mind when he wrote “all men are created equal,” an expansion that continues today with all its attendant strains--Jefferson surely never imagined that transgendered individuals would one day seek their equal rights, but once that door of equality was opened, it was inevitable that one day everyone, absolutely everyone, would insist on passing through. The process is never easy, but it becomes impossible if we look at the nation as something static and constant and cold, something that does not evolve or change.
Obama himself is the change he seeks; and if there’s any justice at all in the world, the challenge he posed on Tuesday--implicitly asking us, by treating us as adults, whether or not we will in fact act like adults--will end with him in the White House. Where my most fervent hope is that he will continue to lead through challenge for the next many years, exactly as he did this week.
Now that, that would be the kind of president I’ve been waiting my whole life for.
Next time... the Powerful Few jabber back.
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Oh, Shut Up
A recent story in USA Today reported on an Associated Press/Ipsos poll that found, not so surprisingly, that Americans don't read much. The most widely quoted statistic was that one person in four read no books at all last year. This was widely noted when the story came out, and much lamented. But that's not what I want to talk about.
No, there was a companion story that I found more interesting, though not in a good way. In it, former Congresswoman Pat Schroeder, who is now president of the American Association of Publishers, was asked about a statistic from the study that seems to show liberals read more than conservatives. What she said was, basically, idiotic:
Now see, it seems to me that if books are imperiled, the president of an association that seeks to promote books probably shouldn't go around insulting any potential readers. Because that is of course the only thing she accomplished: she insulted the intelligence of anyone who has ever thought of himself or herself as a conservative. (The late William F. Buckley, to pick only one example, was in no way a man who limited himself to sloganeering.)
Her quote is on its face utter nonsense, and it's no surprise that it drew an immediate, equally idiotic, response from the other side of the ideological divide.
Nice use of big words in a quote insulting people who use big words, but that's where the fun stops.
What it all demonstrates is that the culture wars rage on because too many people just can't let go. Ms. Schroeder can't stop being a Democratic Congresswoman, even though she hasn't actually been one for eleven years. She is still attached to her old "glory" days, and in the process is doing a major disservice to the very institution she's supposed to be promoting in the here and now. Conservative Mary Matalin said it correctly in the same article: "As head of a book publishing association, she probably shouldn't malign any readers."
No, Ms. Schroeder damn well shouldn't. The fact that people aren't reading is serious stuff, and she damn well ought to know better than to make things worse by pretending to be what she isn't anymore. Let's please drop the partisan bullshit and focus on what really matters, shall we?
No, there was a companion story that I found more interesting, though not in a good way. In it, former Congresswoman Pat Schroeder, who is now president of the American Association of Publishers, was asked about a statistic from the study that seems to show liberals read more than conservatives. What she said was, basically, idiotic:
"The Karl Roves of the world have built a generation that just wants a couple slogans: 'No, don't raise my taxes, no new taxes.'... It's pretty hard to write a book saying, 'No new taxes, no new taxes, no new taxes' on every page."... She said liberals tend to be policy wonks who "can't say anything in less than paragraphs. We really want the whole picture, want to peel the onion."
Now see, it seems to me that if books are imperiled, the president of an association that seeks to promote books probably shouldn't go around insulting any potential readers. Because that is of course the only thing she accomplished: she insulted the intelligence of anyone who has ever thought of himself or herself as a conservative. (The late William F. Buckley, to pick only one example, was in no way a man who limited himself to sloganeering.)
Her quote is on its face utter nonsense, and it's no surprise that it drew an immediate, equally idiotic, response from the other side of the ideological divide.
White House spokesman Tony Fratto said Schroeder was "confusing volume with quality" with her remarks. "Obfuscation usually requires a lot more words than if you simply focus on fundamental principles, so I'm not at all surprised by the loquaciousness of liberals," he said.
Nice use of big words in a quote insulting people who use big words, but that's where the fun stops.
What it all demonstrates is that the culture wars rage on because too many people just can't let go. Ms. Schroeder can't stop being a Democratic Congresswoman, even though she hasn't actually been one for eleven years. She is still attached to her old "glory" days, and in the process is doing a major disservice to the very institution she's supposed to be promoting in the here and now. Conservative Mary Matalin said it correctly in the same article: "As head of a book publishing association, she probably shouldn't malign any readers."
No, Ms. Schroeder damn well shouldn't. The fact that people aren't reading is serious stuff, and she damn well ought to know better than to make things worse by pretending to be what she isn't anymore. Let's please drop the partisan bullshit and focus on what really matters, shall we?
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