Winter is coming and I hate winter. But I am coming around a little more to the idea of liking fall. For most of my life, I’ve been staunchly against fall, citing the fact that it is a sad harbinger of winter, and the end of summer, and the season where everything dies. But the past few years I’ve started to feel I’ve just been repeating what I’ve always said, instead of being honest about my changing views. Fall is kind of nice. I like wearing longer pants and hoodies. I like crunchy yellow leaves. So yeah, another example of allowing myself to evolve here. Granted not on any sort of major topic, but I wanted to make it public: sure, I like fall.
2.
Work is going terrific!!! I am back to working in Harrisburg and no longer doing my crazy commute. I work (approximately) 8am-4pm Monday-Friday. I’m having a blast! I’ll have a more detailed password-protected blog about it within the next week, but I wanted to give that quick update.
3.
My favorite painting of all time is John Sloan’s “Sixth Avenue and Thirtieth Street”. The reasons are many. First, Sloan is my favorite painter overall: his pioneering “ashcan” style–which denotes his muted color pallet, a brush technique that was representational but bordered on abstract, and choice of subject matter–speaks to me and to my view of the world. This painting in particular (which I’ve included below) hits me on a gut level. The titular streets are in the “tenderloin” district of New York City, which is another way of saying the poor or “slum” area. In this work, Sloan chooses to show us this area in broad daylight at a busy intersection. We are looking at a corner business that is perhaps of some disrepute–a brothel or perhaps a burlesque theater? There are some finely dressed folks around, but they are not the same kind you’d find down by Central Park. The focus of the scene is on a woman in distress; she is in nightclothes and carries a pail, is obviously upset. Most scholars of this painting suggest this woman is drunk and is emotional. The passersby–especially the two finely-clad young women nearby who could not be more different than the drunk woman–look on with judgement and perhaps even amusement, but no one in the scene seems to have empathy or concern for this woman.
There is a lot more that could be discussed about the painting. Sloan did not waste a centimeter of the canvas (a quick for instance–Sloan’s decision to place the drunk woman at the bottom of the canvas, rather than center her, leaving him space to paint lots of sky, whereas he could have provided more surrounding context of the city instead; an interesting topic of discussion, that one).
4.
I have made some mention on Facebook that I have begun running, and even signed up for my first 5k (this coming Saturday)! I’m super excited but also currently undergoing a substantial amount of worry as, just 3 days ago I did my longest outdoor run yet and have had some very minor signs of some stress fractures in my shins the past few nights. Now, these symptoms are very minor and it is 100% possible I am inventing them. Any way you slice it, I am running the 5K this Saturday and will keep training this week on elliptical machines to avoid high impact work, and should probably know after the 5k (because my body will tell me) if I have to take a break from running and maybe evaluate my running style, etc, moving forward. But I want to be a runner super bad so even if I have to take a significant break and make some adjustments, I’m on it. On a side note, the running has really been a key factor in helping me get close to my goal weight: before the weekend I was 144 (goal is 140)…the weekend saw a lot of eating so I’ll know where I’m at when the dust clears on Tuesday :)
5.
Police kill innocent black people with an alarming frequency. You don’t have to eat animals or their secretions in this day and age. America should be a country that welcomes immigrants. Respect women’s reproductive rights and the rights of their bodies. Resist any and all attempts to make our culture white, male-oriented–including the language you use. Climate change is real. There is no need to wear wool or leather in this day and age. Do whatever you want when The Star-Spangled Banner is playing, including eating food, walking to the bathroom, keeping your hat on (I mean really) or sitting or kneeling. Fund art programs, NPR, Meals on Wheels, and Planned Parenthood. Oh, and in Major League Baseball, the designated hitter rule continues to be an absolute scourge.
There are certainly plenty of words out there in the world right now about the current state of our country, and our president, and protesting, and on and on. I realize there’s not a whole lot of original thought I can add to the mix, especially since I am far from an expert on these matters. But I feel as though I should at least take a brief moment here to elucidate exactly where I stand. So here is my elucidation: free speech is an awesome thing. It is one of the truly great things about America. An open and fair exchange of ideas is crucial to maintaining an evolving culture free of dictatorship. However, many folks have pinned this down as the absolute unchangeable linchpin of America, and believe it to be boundless and without exception. And, to the letter of the law, they’re mostly right. The Westboro Baptist assholes have the right to their hate-mongering, and Free Speech lovers like to say things like, “I hate what they’re saying, but I’d fight to the death for their right to say it.”
See, the thing is, some ideas don’t need room to breathe. I grant you that these ideas must be limited to very few, otherwise “free speech” as we know it ends. But ideas that espouse the denial of basic human rights to other citizens DO NOT NEED PROTECTION. Your precious “free exchange of ideas” does not have to extend to Nazism, white nationalism, or other hate rhetoric which, once given any sort of official platform, becomes normalized. The word “Nazi” is getting thrown around a lot in the media today, but only with the pallor of the Holocaust implied. It’s time we said it out loud: we need to take every pain we can to prevent anything even CLOSE to the wholesale murder of citizens from happening again. And it starts with labeling groups, sanctioning hate, rounding people up. This sort of activity has begun in this country. And we can no longer sanction speech that furthers these ideas. I’m not suggesting we outlaw it—that would be tricky—but the citizen policing of this vile threat is perfectly fine by me. Well beyond “punching Nazis”—WHATEVER IT TAKES.
We have seen how these kinds of things end.
2.
On a similar but totally separate topic, allow me to wax whimsical for a little while on the topic of veganism. I’ve addressed it a little bit previously in the blog but on the whole, not nearly as much as I’d like. I’ll try to be really gentle about this.
See, I totally get why you non-vegans get really touchy about us vegans. Veganism–and animal activism–is really the only philosophy I can think of where, by virtue of subscribing to it, you thereby indict literally everyone else who isn’t following it. Non-vegans sense this (usually unspoken) friction just by someone announcing they are a vegan and become defensive despite a vegan not even directly addressing them on the topic. This is understandable; as I said, the non-vegan (henceforth referred to in this blog as carnists) senses that their very status as a meat eater means they are at odds with my worldview. This is not incorrect.
Like any group of people, vegans come with many nuanced views and philosophies. Many believe that we should be gentle, encouraging, non-confrontational, educational. Some believe we should work as hard as we can to disrupt the status quo and that by causing loud friction within the world, we do the most to help animals. Still others just want to be vegan–eat no animal products–and leave it at that. Obviously, I mostly adhere to the disruption school, but on the whole, I say if you’re a vegan, I’m not overthinking how YOU want to do it. But my belief that animals are our moral and ethical equals forces me to try to change their plight as quickly as possible.
If you’re a carnist, you have to understand that I don’t think you’re a bad person or an idiot. How could I? I ate meat until I was 38 years old! And I fully understand the ways in which our modern culture raises all of us to have blinders on when it comes to the misery the meat, dairy, and egg industry causes, but even more than that, the way our society ingrains in us the belief that we are superior to animals–so superior that we can actually create FACTORY FARMS of them. The mechanism that can make us all blind to this is powerful. It isn’t your fault that you don’t see it.
But see, it’s my job to try to wake you up. And this is where I fail. On social media, in “real life” interactions with friends and family, I still care more about your comfort and “keeping the peace” than the animal who suffers so terribly so that you don’t have to change. Many, many people think that since I’ve become a vegan, I’ve changed, become “smug” or “judgmental”–but the problem is, I’m not even doing nearly enough.
For fuck’s sake, they’re out there right now–in the damp cold, in tiny stalls, being force fed, they can’t even turn around, they’re covered in their shit, and they know–those poor, poor animals, they know.
And I’m not saying or doing enough to help them, just so I don’t rock the boat. What monsters we are!
3. Check out this masterpiece Philip Larkin poem:
“Church Going”
by Philip Larkin
Once I am sure there’s nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence,
Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new-
Cleaned or restored? Someone would know: I don’t.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
“Here endeth” much more loudly than I’d meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.
Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate, and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?
Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort or other will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,
A shape less recognizable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,
Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation – marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these – for whom was built
This special shell? For, though I’ve no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;
A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognised, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.
When I was a teenager, I’d often sit in my car in the driveway of our house out in the country and listen to The Beatles, usually Abbey Road. And usually at night. I’d smoke cigarettes and pop No Doz and analyze every sound in “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”. I thought maybe there was some deep stuff hidden in there, especially in regards to the abrupt ending. In the summer I rolled the windows down and flicked my ashes on the asphalt my father made me help him seal every summer, underneath the basketball hoop I was never any good at using. Sometimes I put in Sgt. Pepper and tried to suss out the meaning from “A Day in the Life”. I knew much younger than my friends what Albert Hall was, and where Lancashire was.
Of course, some teenagers in this world of ours have to worry every day about finding clean drinking water, or whether they’ll be shot by a bullet from an AK-47, or be stolen and raped by Boko Haram. All told, it’s probably pretty rare to be able to sit by yourself in the front of your Dodge Daytona, smoking Newport Lights and pondering why George didn’t sing more. Such is life, I suppose. Not that I’m brushing off the discrepancy; in fact I loathe it. But what can be done, I wonder?
Despite living in a very prosperous nation, and being born of the least harassed skin color and gender, many people like myself have still experienced extreme depths of sorrow and deprivation. I have experienced such a thing. Between the ages of twenty and twenty-five I developed acute alcoholism, which culminated in “hitting bottom” during a weeklong stay at a true fleabag hotel, in the most deplorable conditions I could have imagined. But listen to this: some of my most distinct memories of that week are watching “Rugrats” on the cable television and listening to a Barenaked Ladies CD on repeat on the boombox I had brought along. The lowest point in my life still involved what others might consider creature comforts. Naturally, this does not diminish the pain or seriousness of the event for me, but it’s worth pondering. What does “hitting bottom” look like to a Sudanese refugee? Perhaps I am simply mistaken about what “hitting bottom” means. Maybe, but probably not. Probably it’s complicated.
I have an avid interest in the American Revolution. I don’t think I could be called a “buff” of this period; despite having read extensively about it and visited many of the main sites associated with it, I simply cannot remember many of the essential details. I forget things, which I think automatically discredits me from being a buff. But I find the Revolution fascinating without end. I quite often find myself breathlessly declaring, What tremendous courage these men had!! How could they have committed to this? Would I have had this within me, to risk all for this freedom?
The Civil War and the World Wars were, no doubt and to varying degrees, important wars that fought for (again, to varying degrees) important freedoms. But we have fought for nothing approaching the towering consequence of history since our Revolution–and certainly not in the modern era. No doubt the men and women that go to fight for us now are brave, hardy folks, whom I respect–but they fight for nothing important, and certainly not freedom. They have courage–but to what end? To whose end?
In high school, I worried about fitting in. Cliche, sure, but there it is. I wasn’t angst-ridding over it; I began high school somewhat timid and scared–perhaps somewhat worried about what troubles my short height might find for me–but I quickly developed a confidence I’d retain through most of my life, and have gone through most of the rest of my life forgetting I am short. But still, I was concerned about fitting in, would I be popular? Would there be girls? Would I be made fun of? Gosh, can you imagine–with all the pressing weight of human history behind us, and such shocking decisions ahead of us, we spend our most visceral years worrying about nonsense? I spent hours trying to roll my pants legs properly. I never got good at it.
See, listen here: what’s happening now isn’t normal. This is not just a “my party lost” situation where I’m bitter at the incoming president. I think we all feel it. There has been a shifting. There has been a change. The Rubicon has been crossed. Now, there’s no way to know, quite yet, what path the future will take. It’s still possible that everything could be fine. But with each passing day, that looks less and less likely. It is painfully easy to see a future where very few American boys sit in their sports cars in their parents’ driveways dissecting Beatles tunes. It is becoming much easier to imagine other, darker futures.
I just now, at the age of 38, got myself a family. I had given up on that notion for awhile, but now I have one. I have lately begun imagining what we will do if the proverbial shit hits the proverbial fan. There is nothing more important than them. How will we stay safe? At what point in the news cycle do we decide we need a plan? I don’t want to be an alarmist, but I also don’t want to be the last one to have a bunker to go to.
I have spent many years marveling at the courage of John and Samuel Adams, George Washington, Thaddeus Kosciusko, John Trumbull, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson. They saw what they had to do. They risked their very lives to steer all of human history. I have wondered what I would do in their position, never imagining a similar moment could happen in my lifetime. I am by no means suggesting that moment is here. But I can imagine it now. Can you?
Everything in life can seem so sudden, even though almost all of it is gradual. Events can shock you even when you saw them coming. Maybe you didn’t know you saw them coming, but you saw them coming.
Luckily there is love. What matters but love? Towering, epic love. Basically nothing else. To snuggle. To profess eternity, depth of caring. It’s not an original thought, but, well, there it is. Love.
It’s dark on the east coast as I write this. I haven’t done the time zone math but it’s probably dark over all the continental states. People describe darkness as a “closing in” all the time, but really it’s the opposite. Light closes us in, as it is an actual presence of a thing, whereas darkness happens when the light leaves. Darkness opens us up. Darkness is an absence. It is a lifting of the lid.
It’s not just that Trump won the election; I could handle that. It’s that this country isn’t what I thought it was. It’s that I have to mourn for the uplifting future I had imagined. I don’t care that “we lost”. I find myself suddenly terrified of the land I live in.
It’s dark outside my door. My neighbor across the street, Manny, appears to have gone to bed. His lights are all off, but now he has Christmas lights on his porch, which I adore. He has a terrific little dog, Fulton, who sometimes sniffs our Benji. I imagine Fulton is asleep now, too, somewhere at the foot of Manny’s bed, or maybe in there with him. The streetlights here are shockingly bright; as I step out into the crisp autumn evening, I can see them dotting the side of the landscape for five, maybe six blocks, until the natural curve of Harrisburg’s grid takes them out of view. It’s quiet, dark and quiet and still. The houses seem stuck between holidays, some porches still sporting mushy pumpkins, others feeling tentative strands of colorful lights. Somewhere in the distance, a car alarm goes off, but just briefly. I stand here in my pajamas and I imagine the people in their houses. Most of them asleep, now, but not all. Some watching television–although increasingly they are somehow watching it after it aired. Some of them perhaps showering, or cooking a late dinner, or arguing, or having sex. But most of them sleeping, breathing rhythmically in some sort of shut-down stasis that scientists are hesitant to admit they still don’t really understand. I stand here and I imagine them. I really do. I’m not just writing that I imagine them–I really do it. What a thing to do, when you really do it! All those lives behind those doors, drifting like worried sparks, like baffled little flames, breathing in unison, with all their own concerns and private intensities. What a massive undertaking, life. Such a long, worrisome climb. And you can do it anywhere. Some folks are born as baffled sparks in a tribe in a jungle. Others in a London flat. Some people had to do it in the 1600s. Still others will give it a go in 2190. To many, my worries about the land I live in would seem a trifle, the luxury of a man who has everything he needs. They’d probably be right, but still. I step out all the way onto the sidewalk in front of my house, suddenly wishing all of my neighbors would come outside all at once so we could talk about it. Mostly we don’t talk to our neighbors, but now, in the still autumn evening, I wish I could. I wish I could look them in the eyes, I wish I could pat them on the back. I would tell them, perhaps, one of my secrets. Suddenly as I am standing there, in my pajamas in the autumn evening, a low, distant sound makes itself known. It starts as a quiet rumble. I can’t tell where it’s coming from but it grows louder and louder, the rumble becoming a growl; it sounds like a train, but it’s not a train, I have no goddamned idea what it is but it’s getting louder and louder and I don’t think there’s any escaping it.
“Mom, wherever there’s a cop beating a guy Wherever a hungry newborn baby cries Where there’s a fight against the blood and hatred in the air Look for me, Mom, I’ll be there
Wherever somebody’s fighting for a place to stand Or a decent job or a helping hand Wherever somebody’s struggling to be free Look in their eyes, Ma, and you’ll see me”
–“The Ghost of Tom Joad”, Bruce Springsteen
It happened. And there’s certainly no going back now. Our country has changed. It had probably changed before the election results, but now, of course, there’s no denying it.
We are a divided people, no doubt. But we have always been. We’ve even been more divided than this (folks who tell you this is the worst it’s ever been are the same folks who tell you to do your research, even though they’ve never read an actual book). We are divided, but we’ll be OK.
But what Donald Trump himself might do to this country is unthinkable. It’s not his policies or ideologies that are so terrifying. We could survive even the most radical of a conservative. It’s him. What he says, does, how he acts. His disregard for the basic foundations of our nation. From that, there might be no coming back.
It is fully possible the election of Donald Trump signals the end of the American experiment. He could very well set into motion forces that topple our nation. This game is too big to survive his bluster.
I have a family now, which I love and cherish more than anything in the cosmos. If I was still a single man, I would be speaking right now very earnestly about leaving the country. I know that seems cliché and silly by now, but I really would. Or, failing that idea, I might find or start some sort of anti-Trump militia–find some radical way to try to hold onto what we’ve built here.
But I must take great pains to remain an integral, present part of my family unit. Their future is the thing I must be most concerned with. But make no mistake: if it becomes necessary, if we are being pushed towards annihilation, you will find me in the streets. You will find me marching toward those that would rend us asunder. You will find me arm in arm with my brothers and sisters, and we will be holding more than signs in our hands. You will find me in the revolution, because that’s how I will protect my family.
Sound the alarm bells. The ship, it is sinking. Our shoes are on fire and our water is a virus. Good god, sound the alarm–run. It’s the same old damned thing, the same tired emergency. It’s the same old lie.
Run the white cloth up the flag pole. Watch it hang there, limp. Shut your windows and turn on the AC. I’m exhausted from defending my lifestyle, and I’m exhausted from checking my phone. Turn up the static. Lean back into something. Grill some putrid items. Excoriate your neighbor.
A new batch of people have come along now. They’re old enough now. They see evidence of lies, control. Someone has spotted a two party system. THEY’RE ALL LIARS, they shout. They sense something not genuine. They sense they are not in control of this world. They see they are inside a machine, and they cannot even see who controls the machine, or even the walls or the floor. It’s a machine, they say, vote for Jill Stein!
As though someone polling at 5% of the national population isn’t part of the damned machine. Hey listen. If you’re in a machine, you’re in it. You think the machine lets you out?
The machine was here long before you and promises to outlive you.
Sound the alarm bells, by golly! The construct is about to swallow another generation whole. Like zygotes. Like plankton. Like dust.
Of course you can fight things inside the machine and change things. But until you understand the actual nature of your plight, you’ll attack the wrong parts, the wrong cogs and pulleys.
You have taken the blindfold off without realizing there was a second blindfold overtop the first one.
Recognize the machine. Feel its rhythm. Do not doubt its omnipresence. You speak hushed of the politicians who control you while you sit in a strip mall restaurant. How did the strip mall get there? Why is it there, instead of elsewhere? How many red lights did you wait at to drive there? Have you registered the car you drove with the government? The gas you put in the car–where did it come from, and who decided how much it cost?
Welcome to the fucking construct. Jill Stein will take your order now.
Be a shiny countertop. Be a chemtrail. Be a smiling dog.
When I was a kid, I played little league baseball for two years. I had waited too long to get started though. Whereas most kids in my town started very young, I waited until I was ten or eleven. Mostly I waited so long because I had never really wanted to play little league baseball. I was scared of the ball, and I was scared of organized sports. I wasn’t pressured to play. I just wanted to participate in a thing that made the other kids look cool. They looked like major league ball players to me. So I did it even though I didn’t want to.
Be a lazy Sunday. Be Madison, Wisconsin. Be a suspicious cough.
Since I waited so long to start playing baseball, I was behind kids my age, when it came to skill level. So the people who ran the little league put me on the teams with the younger boys. My plan to do something I didn’t want to do to be cooler had backfired. My friends and classmates were playing on teams I never saw, and I was playing with boy 2 or 3 years younger than me. And they were still better than me. I was a very bad baseball player. My coach–whose son was on the team–was frequently disappointed in me. He thought since I was older, I’d be his star, when in fact I was the worst player on the team. It was mortifying. The little league had a rule that every single player had to get an at-bat every single game. One game I did not get an at-bat. I wasn’t very sad, since batting was just another opportunity for me to be embarrassed. But my parents were quite mad. Because they are good parents. After the game they told me to go wait by the concession stand while they spoke to the coach. I waited. About five minutes later they came into view, laughing. They were laughing. What happened?, I asked. They informed me they confronted the coach about me not having an at-bat and he had freaked out, screaming at them, somehow finding a reason to rake them over the coals for having the audacity to question him. They said he had become red in the face with anger. The next game, he had me bat leadoff, despite being the worst hitter on the team. My humiliation was complete.
Be a light early-morning mist. Be a fully-trimmed Christmas tree. Be a cardinal direction. Be a traffic-free commute. Be the paint that dries. Be a clear radio station. Be a marching band in the distance. Be Jimmy Stewart. Be a sun-dappled cave entrance. Be a bright blue. Be your grandmother’s afghan. Be Connect Four. Be the olive-skinned belly dancer. Be a stunning cul-de-sac. Be an early dismissal. Be a crescendo. Be the young girl that stops to help you, when she doesn’t have to, when you’ve dropped all your groceries and the sun is starting kiss the horizon, and she is beautiful, and the air reminds you of perfect childhood, and you don’t have to work the next day. You, too, are part of the machine.
It has now been over a year and a half since we moved to Harrisburg. Like every time I’ve made a large move, it’s been interesting how at first there is a large amount of culture shock, and then just a few weeks or months later, it’s almost like you’ve always lived there. It’s hard to imagine there was a time that I lived in Philadelphia, or Erie, or Carlisle. It’s hard to imagine there was a time when I actually could not imagine moving back to Central Pennsylvania. Did I ever actually move away from here? But also, the first time I lived here, I couldn’t have imagined living in Harrisburg, but now it seems the natural center of this area. Harrisburg gets a bad rap from many people, for those are people who are afraid of it, or have never spent much time in it. Granted, it is a city with its troubles, both financial and otherwise. There are plenty of areas that are downtrodden, poor, and wanting of many of the services that the surrounding areas take for granted. But there is a lot to love here, and plenty of neighborhoods that you can feel safe in, and with nice modern housing. There’s more than enough to do, more than enough beautiful views, and a vibrant arts scene. In fact, there are more things that we have not been able to do than those we have been able to do. And it seems clear to me that the city is still on the move. I know there have been lots of stories over the decades about the revitalization of Harrisburg, but this time it does seem legitimate. The independent music scene, hipster coffee shops, art galleries opening all over the place. Even a vegan coffee shop close to the state capitol building! There’s a lot to love here, and although there are certainly times when I’m riding my bike down a side street here that I miss being right in the middle of traffic on Broad Street in Philadelphia, there’s also something to be said for walking out of my job every night, looking to my right, and seeing the beautiful Capitol Dome less than a mile away, or walking my dog six blocks and being along the Susquehanna River Trail, almost always as the sun sets.
The fact is, the system IS rigged against Trump, in the sense that the media (hold up; did I say the MEDIA?? You hate the media, don’t you? [I’m probably not talking to YOU here, but to about 30 people on my Facebook who bitch more about the media than the atrocities they report on} But what is it you are talking about, when you say “the media”? It’s an institution with hundreds of thousands of outlets, platforms, and systems, and it’s actually one of the best things about our country–one of the things that really DOES keep us free. But see, you gotta do some work, too. You have to sift through some things, figure out what sources you trust, the nuances of how to best receive information from the media, and where and when you receive it. You have to READ things. Hey, quick–who’s your favorite columnist? Don’t have one? How do you HATE the media when you’ve never really consumed it to begin with? Stop being lazy. The American freedom of press truly does set us apart–and I’m not one for “American Exceptionalism”. But yeah–most of the media operates by making a profit, so be careful, and above all READ things. And it does make a difference if it’s printed on paper; it’s harder to trick your eye into only reading the “interesting” stuff or items you already agree with. Just read the news. Hating and callously dismissing “the media” is just active laziness. And memes are not the media. FYI) are not obligated to report on an aspiring despot who would end the American experiment like it was no big deal. The “media”–contrary to what many seem to think–are not obligated to be neutral observers of facts only at all times. They are to report facts, yes–but also interpret them (again, this is where understanding media nuance will serve you well: there ARE places you can go for just fact, and places you can go for opinion, and places you can go for analysis. If you go to one place expecting it to be something it isn’t, you might think it’s corrupt, when in fact you’re just a novice). So yes, the media are biased against Trump because they are reporting on a man who would destroy our nation–and harm the world. And it is not their DUTY to remain neutral. The media IS biased–but not against Trump; they’re biased against evil.
I wasn’t ready for Thom Yorke’s solo album, The Eraser, when it came out in 2006. I was baffled by it, listened to it twice, and put it away–not knowing if it was bad or I was daft. I put it in on a whim today and it turns out I am ready for it.
Two nights ago, I got to meet Jon Krakauer, an author who is currently among America’s top 3 or 4 nonfiction authors. I’ve admittedly only read two of Jon’s books–“Into the Wild” being his most famous book and a work that has touched my life very deeply. In it, Krakauer tells the story of Christopher McCandless, who left a very comfprtable and promising life, wandered the country with little to no money and no contact with anyone for over a year, eventually hiking into the Alaskan wilderness where he would eventually die. Chris’s story is complex and multi-layered–it can’t be reduced to one single element. When I was at very low points in my life–still drinking and in deep depressions–Chris’s decision to disappear and walk into the wild until he died appealed to me. Later, sober and happy, other elements of Chris’s philosophy and his journey resonated with me. Here is an excerpt from a letter he wrote to a man he met on his sojourn across the country. The man–who had been deeply affected by a month or so he spent with Chris–received the postcard after Chris died:
“So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.” –Christopher McCandless
While it was McCandless whose story has so impacted me, Krakauer’s decision to tell it, and the respect he gave the story, resonated. In the many years since “Into the Wild” was published, Chris’s story has become of major import to a growing legion of people who find something inspiring about him, and Krakauer does not shy away from his role as a steward of the story. It was an intense honor to meet him.
The sun goes up, the sun goes down. The wind begins to whistle through branches now bare with late months. The sky grays, the wind grays, everywhere color mutes, curls into itself. Even the insects look at you with worry.
Ultimately, finally, the nomination of Donald Trump for the presidency makes sense. I welcome it. Bring it on.
Trump’s ascendancy makes real and concrete the culture battle we’ve all been engaged heavily in for about ten years–with everybody either on one side or the other (those of you still arguing for some sort of middle ground are as obsolete as a laser printer). We’ve crossed the Rubicon–there’s no going back, at the moment, to more moderate times. However bad it may be for our country, we are now all going to be forced to choose LIBERAL or CONSERVATIVE. That’s how it’s going to be, so you might as well choose and commit highly.
It was very nice and comforting, for a few years there, to think there was a way to meet in the middle. A way to politely ignore it when your friends said things you fundamentally disagreed with. A way to still lose yourself in the films of an actor you heard was on “the other side”. It was nice to think the world was soft enough that we could still love each other despite our differences.
But it isn’t. Not now. Maybe some day, it will be again. We can hope it will be. But at this moment in history, the world isn’t soft-it’s hard, with edges that cut. The issues we face now are issues of good versus evil, of which fundamental worldview will govern us and set the course for all of our futures. It’s too important for softness, or politely ignoring those who disagree with you.
It’s tempting to hope against hope that somehow Trump will still not get the nomination, but that’s wrongheaded. If some milquetoast stand-in like Cruz or Rubio got the nomination, that would just forestall the inevitable, giving us four or eight more years of almost deciding who we (as America) are. We need Trump to get nominated so we can either win or lose this battle for the soul of our nation–so that our future course can finally be decided, for better or worse.
Bring him on. It is very rarely in the whole of human history a great nation is presented with such binary, epic choices.
My love and I just took quick day trip to Washington, D.C. to visit the National Museum of American history. She, like me, is interested in most anything, although I must admit I funneled our decision toward that particular museum because I find our nation’s history particularly interesting.
There were people everywhere. In this day and age of technology and immediacy, I must say I was surprised by the size of the crowd; and they were people who did seem to genuinely want to be there and were quite interested in the whole affair.
We started out on the third floor in the exhibit highlighting our nation’s many and varied armed conflicts. We were tickled by some of the astonishing items on display from the Revolution and Civil Wars (Washington’s uniform! The furniture from the surrender at Appomatox! Lots and lots of rifles!). We took our time perusing the extensive collection. There were even plenty of items from such footnotes as the War of 1812, the French and Indian War, and our conflict with Mexico (including Teddy Roosevelt’s San Juan Hill uniform). Then a World War I display–tanks, bombs, more guns, and more of the same in World War II, including some amazing photographs of “nukes”. By the time we got to the Chinook helicopter that flew missions in Vietnam, we looked at each other, seemingly reading the other’s thoughts. “Do you want to move on?” I asked. She replied, “I’m just tired of war.”
It’s an interesting time in our country, for sure. Things seem to be getting a lot more “liberal”, which is good. I recently told a friend I could sum up my political and social philosophy just by saying “I want to make sure everyone is alright”; apparently, this is a liberal ideology, and so be it. I’m not afraid to put a label on it. It is what it is. Whatever that is.
At times when our nation goes through divisive growing pains like this, there is always a very vocal group that just wants everyone to get along. “Why can’t we all just believe what we want and leave each other be???” they bemoan. And it’s a lovely notion, even though it’s complete horseshit. I don’t want anyone thrown in jail for thinking gays can’t get married or for pushing for the continuance of institutional racism, but I don’t want to just let them be. What kind of complacent, docile, horrific world do these people want? They’d rather the boat didn’t rock than actually stand for something. Rock the fucking boat, you motherfuckers, rock the fucking boat. I’d rather live in filth than in a land of complacent hatred.
And why is it that the people who most frequently tell you to read your history books are the ones who clearly have never read anything at all? Doo-Doo, Dee-Dee.
We live next door to an artist. She doesn’t know we know she’s an artist, but we know. A little sleuthing and a little circumstance led us to the knowledge. She has a garage full of huge canvasses that look surprisingly like Mark Rothkos (I thought they were Rothko paintings at first). Immense color fields, oranges, deep blues, with smaller squares of blacks and browns in the middles. And a large, unfinished sculpture in wrought iron of what looks like a male ballerina, mid-adage. I want to talk to her about it. I want to name-drop Mark Rothko. I want to tell her I love John Sloan and Auguste Rodin. But I’m not going to. But maybe she’ll catch me wearing my Rousseau hat.
You try so hard at things in life that mostly will never matter. Will anyone care, after I am gone, how close I got to my ideal weight? How close of a shave I managed to get, how many points I racked up on my grocery store loyalty card, whether I had all the Arcade Fire albums on vinyl? (I do). Holy moly. It seems so cliché and trite but I just try to be better everyday than I was the previous day. Nicer and more caring and less selfish. And it is so hard and it never gets easier.
But still. I don’t want to gain my weight back, and I do LOVE my Arcade Fire vinyls. Life, it sure is complicated.
I sure do like blue skies, clear wide-open blue skies and the wind on my face. Getting tan. Getting tan is like taking the outside world into yourself and then shooting it back out. And all those vitamins and good vibes. Also I like movies. I like watching movies in air conditioned rooms while sweat dries on my skin. I like rice with salt on it, and dogs who smile.
I’ve been watching a lot of cable news lately, but I don’t necessarily think it’s good for me. I’ve just become addicted to it, as I’ve been known to become addicted to just about anything from time to time. I suppose it must just be cable news’ turn. I mean, there is plenty that I like about it. It really does inform you, and depending on what you’re watching, you usually learn about stuff you might not otherwise be following, like that shit in Iraq. CNN is the way to go. Typically they’re gonna tell you about the stuff that’s important, not just the tabloid stuff. But regardless, most of it is rot. You’re better off reading newspapers. Please read newspapers. They need you, and it’s still the best thing going.
I’ve recently come across two different poems about turtles that really floored me. It makes sense that turtles would make such rich poetic subjects: ugly, slow, and capable of withdrawing entirely into themselves. They’re just begging for the poetic treatment. The first is “Turtle” by Kay Ryan. Watch her read it here, and the text of the poem is here. The other is “To a Box Turtle” by John Updike. Watch me read it to you! Right here:
To a Box Turtle
by John Updike
Size of a small skull, and like a skull segmented,
of pentagons healed and varnished to form a dome,
you almost went unnoticed in the meadow,
among its tall grasses and serrated strawberry leaves
your mottle of amber and umber effective camouflage.
You were making your way through grave distances,
your forefeet just barely extended and as dainty as dried
coelacanth fins, as miniature sea-fans, your black nails
decadent like a Chinese empress’s, and your head
a triangular snake-head, eyes ringed with dull gold.
I pick you up. Your imperious head withdraws.
Your bottom plate, hinged once, presents a No
with its courteous waxed surface, a marquetry
of inlaid squares, fine-grained and tinted
tobacco-brown and the yellow of a pipe smoker’s teeth.
What are you thinking, thus sealed inside yourself?
My hand must have a Smell, a killer’s warmth.
It holds you upside down, aloft, undignified,
your leathery person amazed in the floating dark.
How much pure fear can your wrinkled brain contain?
I put you down. Your tentative, stalk-bending walk
resumes. The manifold jewel of you melts into grass.
Power mowers have been cruel to your race, and creatures
less ornate and unlikely have long gone extinct;
but nature’s tumults pool to form a giant peace.
You may have noticed, on various and sundry platforms of social media, that I am losing weight (again!). There will, of course, be a larger blog entry devoted to the subject once I hit a certain milestone, but I wanted to stop officially ignoring it on the blog. So yes, I am once again losing weight. If you’re a long-time reader, you may recall we’ve been down this road once before. I’ll stop short of saying I’m a chronic “weight bouncer”—I’ve only done the up and down once, now going on twice—and I do think I’m going to be able to maintain it this time, seeing as how I actually do enjoy the “lifestyle” one must switch to in order to stop gaining the weight back. I don’t want to go into too much detail, as the first of the “milestone” blogs on the topic should be coming soon. But if you’ve noticed that I’m a little more energetic, happy as an idiot, and generally manic lately—this is the main cause.
I don’t like, any more than you do, the way that things in our culture seem to have gotten so divisive. Everything appears to be very “black and white” or “us vs. them”…either you agree with me, or I hate you. All issues divided into two sides—usually liberal and conservative—so that most critical thought is now not required; you just have to know what team you’re on. I don’t like it any more than you do.
But there seems to be, to most people, a thought that this is a terrible deviation from some Golden Era of American discourse. That, not long ago now, everyone just kind of got along and accepted divergent opinions and engaged in a spirited and lively debate of the issues, before saying, ah, forget it! and heading out back for a barbeque. This fever dream is made possible by the fact that nobody actually knows anything about our own history, and is cursed with the widely-held human belief that all things have just recently been much better than they are now.
Things have, of course, never been like that. We’ve always been a country at one-another’s throats. That’s because the issues that we disagree about are pretty fucking important and are not trifles. If the biggest debate in America was chocolate vs. vanilla, I’d say some of us might be overreacting, but we debate about matters of deepest morality, life and death, and core philosophy. If you’re not passionate about these things, get out of the ring.
The division seems more pronounced now that we’re on the internet all the time. The biggest factor that plays into that is that we routinely interact with many people who we would previously not have been interacting with. Before the internet, we just naturally and gradually gravitated to people of like-mind. Now, we, in small ways, interact with dozens of people “on the other side” daily, which can cause little internet skirmishes which then, in turn, feel larger and more intense than real-world interactions, because we can’t gauge how the other is talking, as well as these skirmishes taking place in front of our 300 or so “friends” and remaining to view long after the words have been said.
The ease with which these divisive interactions can occur has given rise to something even worse than the “cultural division” itself: the everything is hunky-dorey crowd. This “crowd” includes just about everybody. We’re all so tired of having these online skirmishes with people with opposing views, almost nobody engages the argument anymore. Nobody wants to appear “divisive”. Everyone wants to make sure they are “accepting of other people’s views”.
The bottom line I’m trying to get to is this: I keep an open mind about things like calamari, the official naming of snow storms, and the future of the designated hitter in professional baseball. But I’m an adult now, and I’ve thought a lot about my core beliefs, and I don’t have an open mind about abortion, gay rights, gun control, or even—yes, even the existence of a higher power. I know what I think about these things. Not only that, but having an open mind about these things would make me a man of feeble constitution.
If you know me (and I think you do) you know that, obviously, I am a man with a ton of opinions. Well, one of those opinions is that these things that pop up on social media as “photo challenges” are some of the stupidest things I’ve ever seen. If you’re not familiar with them: they propose to be “30 day photo challenges” that list a thing you’re supposed to take a picture of once a day for thirty days. First off, if you need a “challenge” to take interesting pictures of the world around you, you’re not interesting. Period. Secondly, the items in these challenges are never even remotely challenging or creative. It’s like, “Day 1: Selfie. Day 2: Food. Day 3: Car”. Really? You spent time creating this, anonymous internet user? How dreadful.
So, I thought I’d make an interesting one! Some things here are interpretable, whch, again, makes it interesting. For instance, “Birth” wouldn’t necessarily be looking for a picture of something being born. You decide what it means. If anyone actually wants to give this a spin, let me know, I’ll put it into a dedicated blog entry so it’s easier to reference.
Actually Interesting Photo Challenge
Day 1: An animal that you want to take home
Day 2: Gum
Day 3: Something Upside-Down
Day 4: Paint
Day 5: How you’d like to be perceived
Day 6: How you feel inside
Day 7: Something you hate
Day 8: Birth
Day 9: A chair
Day 10: The passage of time
Day 11: Something you love but can’t have
Day 12: Space, area, void
Day 13: Underneath
Day 14: Scar
Day 15: Home
Day 16: Your bathtub.
Day 17: Work
Day 18: The ground
Day 19: The sky
Day 20: Between the ground and the sky
Day 21: What you believe
Day 22: Utensils
Day 23: Lights
Day 24: Transportation
Day 25: Idealized
Day 26: Action!
Day 27: Water
Day 28: Unattainable
Day 29: Before you were born
Day 30: Celebrate
Life, and all that stuff, is sometimes too interesting to bear. What I mean is, it can be very cyclical, or circular, or appear to be laden with damned meaning. See, I’m a man who doesn’t believe in much. I mean, I believe in science, and form and order amidst the chaos, but not in any Fate or creator or grand design. Just rules and laws that govern the movements and the heat of things, basically. So when life seems to have plans, folks like me sit up and take notice. Not because it’s changing the way I think—I have thrown away my open mind—but because coincidence or happenstance on any large sort of scale is just so unlikely.
Take, for instance, a story from my life. When I first got sober, I was 25 years old. This was a little over eleven years ago. I went to live with my mother and her husband in a small town in New Jersey. This was the first time I’d lived anywhere outside of Central Pennsylvania. This small town in New Jersey was relatively close to Philadelphia…maybe an hour, I think? At any rate, it was certainly the closest I’d ever lived to a big city.
Eleven years may not seem like that long ago, but I was inhabiting a very different world back then, and I was also a very different version of me. I drove a 1983 Ford Escort, named Earl Grey. This car was a bona fide piece of shit, and it broke down with an alarming regularity (chronic fuel pump issues). I had no cell phone. No GPS. When I wanted to go somewhere I’d never been, I printed out MapQuest directions and read them as I drove. If I needed to call someone, I found a payphone and retrieved my list of phone numbers, hand-written on a sheet of paper inside my wallet. It was interesting. It wasn’t as bad as it sounds. I drank a lot of Red Bull and wrote poetry almost every waking moment and listened to Pearl Jam like it was my job.
I had a very close friend who I’d been through the addiction wringer with. She had a similar problem as I did, and we’d gone to the same rehab, and really just been to Hell and back together. She had landed in a Recovery House in Harrisburg, PA. After the tumult of the end of our addictions, we now felt very far apart. Recovery Houses don’t allow you much leeway with visitors and phone calls. Remember, this is also before everyone was texting and Facebooking (it’s even before MySpace). I missed her very much.
She did manage to e-mail on occasion, and, ill-advisedly, we planned for her to sneak out one night. We would meet in Philadelphia. We were going to walk South Street.
I drove old rickety Earl Grey the hour to South Street, paging through my MapQuest directions. I drove right past South Street at one point and just decided to park as soon as I could. I found a spot and hopped out of my car. As I walked away, I realized I might later have no idea where I had parked. I got back into the car and grabbed my journal, the sacred notebook where I wrote all my poetry. I looked around for a landmark and wrote it down, and put the journal in my backpack.
I met up with her and it was glorious. I treasured being in her company, if only for a night. I don’t remember what we did on South Street. I don’t remember what we did at all. But it stands as one of the more significant nights of my life, on my long road to becoming the current version of me.
A week or so ago, I decided to go back through some of my old journals and see if I had missed anything of value, any pieces of writing I could turn into something good. I never did get around to it, but I threw the two oldest ones into my backpack, planning to look at them the next time I came to rest in some park. I promptly forgot about it.
This evening, I was riding my bike through what is now one of my favorite sections of Old City (technically, the neighborhood known as Society Hill). I love this section for it’s old houses, churches with expansive, historic graveyards, and shade-dappled side alleys. I came to one of the more significant landmarks to me, the house that Thaddeus Kosciuszko lived in when he lived in Philadelphia. Kosciuszko is my favorite revolutionary. I feel deeply connected to him across the vast gulf of time. The version of me from eleven years ago wasn’t yet even interested in history. He would have had zero interest in this Polish freedom fighter’s house. But I certainly do now.
I recalled, tonight, how the last time I was in the house, the park ranger had told me the woman who owned it and rented it to Kosciuszko was buried in the cemetery across the street. I have spent some time in that cemetery before (American painter Charles Wilson Peale is buried there, and so is George Dallas, who was Vice President under James K. Polk), but I thought I’d wander through again and look for her grave.
It didn’t take me long in there before I had to face the fact that I couldn’t remember her name, and my iPhone’s power was getting too low to make Googling a wise choice, so I decided to leave and ride my bike elsewhere. But as I stepped onto the sidewalk, the shade of sense memory hit me. I’d been here many times these past six months, but perhaps never at this time of evening, in this kind of mid-summer air. Suddenly I wondered it I’d been here before, long before.
I sat my backpack on the ground an hurriedly opened it, finding the oldest journal. I looked at many pages before I found it, scrawled in my own unmistakable hand:
4th St., across from St. Peters Church
I craned my neck at the cemetery gate above me, and sure enough: St. Peters.
Sure, maybe no big deal. So what, this is where I parked that night? If I moved to the city, it stands to reason I would pass by the place I parked that night, eleven years ago.
But the way that it came to me out of the blue, the way I had that journal on me, which was extraordinarily unlikely, the way I’d never noticed before that this was the place. It has been long ago enough now that it’s starting to feel like deep past; I felt my younger self there. I felt her younger self there. I saw me getting out of my Escort, completely oblivious to Thad Kosciuszko’s house a half block away, not caring, not caring, not caring. And life is crammed full of these bizarre cycles, these glances-back, these cosmic happenstances. Like combination locks clicking into place. But then the lock, it just keeps on spinning.
I sure do like blue skies, clear wide-open blue skies and the wind on my face. Getting tan. Getting tan is like taking the outside world into yourself and then shooting it back out. And all those vitamins and good vibes. Also I like movies. I like watching movies in air conditioned rooms while sweat dries on my skin. I like rice with salt on it, and dogs who smile.
Have you ever filled a big cup up about halfway with a carbonated beverage, and when you go to take a drink of it, you can’t really breathe? What’s the scientific process going on here? Is the inside of the cup all filled with carbon dioxide?
Since I buy a lot of music on vinyl that I already own in another format, I keep ending up with a lot of “download cards”–these little guys that come in the vinyl records that also let you download a free version of the album–basically a way to try to convince you to spend money on music in any form at all. Anyway, for awhile I tried to match up these cards with friends I thought might enjoy the specific music the most, but it’s gotten difficult. If you legitimately think you might enjoy discovering new music that is the kind of music I like, let me know, the first person to say so just automatically gets all my download cards from here on out.
It seems about every six months, some bigot from the middle of nowhere says something atrocious, gets fired from his high profile job, and all the other bigots start freaking out about the First Amendment. Now, I know I’m not the first to point this out, so I’ll be brief: the First Amendment protects your speech (and not even all of it!) from the government. Not from companies. And the thing is, the people who want the jobs of these rich hate-mongers saved are the same exact people who are always the first to try to get a waitress fired for next to no reason. Yeah, let’s keep the job of the rich bigot who definitely doesn’t care about you—because the Constitution!—but let’s fire our actual brethren who are down in the trenches with us because your steak was burnt. I can only imagine what you’d want if that waitress said something you didn’t like!
I’m currently obsessed with the Kay Ryan poem, “The Niagara River”. Watch the video below to see me tell you why:
The Niagara River
As though
the river were
a floor, we position
our table and chairs
upon it, eat, and
have conversation.
As it moves along,
we notice–as
calmly as though
dining room paintings
were being replaced–
the changing scenes
along the shore. We
do know, we do
know this is the
Niagara River, but
it is hard to remember
what that means.
It’s kind of difficult to rate your senses, isn’t it? I was just sitting here thinking, gee, smell has to be the best sense! But then I thought, oh there is no way smell can compete with touch! But then I remembered sight. And on and on. Senses rule!
I’m getting tired of cutting my hair. Does this really just have to keep happening? I mean it’s every couple weeks, for, like, life. I mean, I get it, body. You’re good at growing hair on my head and, increasingly, everywhere else. We’re all very impressed. But consider your point proven.
Rage Against the Machine are surely one of the smartest, most socially-aware bands that has ever existed. Their songbook is brimming with examples of subject matter and lyrics that would make Woody Guthrie proud, coupled with a gnarled, modern, harsh rock sound that turns the gentle acoustic strumming of the original folk artists on its head. It is angry music for angry words.
Zack de la Rocha, the vocalist and lyricist, has very high amibitions for every song he writes, which often results in brilliance, but just as often gets too academic or wordsy for his own good. In my opinion, “Ashes in the Fall”, from the band’s final album The Battle of Los Angeles, is the absolute height of de la Rocha’s power as a lyricist, and a rowsing endorsement of the band’s musical prowess.
The beginning of the song is a rambling, free-associative rant about the viscious cycles that perpetuate our “haves” and “have-nots” society. de la Rocha doesn’t explain more than he has to. He creates images, tells half-stories, trusting careful listeners to go back over these things and picture them, contemplate them, figure them out. This is not “easy” music. The song opens “A mass of hands press/ on the market window/ Ghosts of progress/ dressed in slow death”…the owners of these hands are “glaring through the promise/ upon the food that rots slowly in the aisle”. What exactly is he talking about? What does this supermarket have to do with anything? Careful repeat listens reveal simple meanings.
In something that passes for a chorus, de la Rocha seems to evoke a kinship with the folk or protest songwriters of old, “This is the new sound/ just like the old sound./ Just like the noose wound/ over new ground.” Interesting because, of course, the actual sound is very different but the tenor seems the same. And the “noose wound/ over new ground”? We might be a different country now than we were then, says de la Rocha, but they’re still lynching us.
But the real marvel comes at the end (please, I implore you, if you haven’t heard this song before, listen until the end), when de la Rocha lays the point of the song out for us, and the point is this:if you keep us poor and out of work, you can put us in jail and control us, which of course comes down to the folks in power using fear to control us. Here is how de la Rocha lays that argument out:
Ain’t it funny how the factory doors close round the time that the school doors close? Round the time that the doors of the jail cells open up to greet you like the reaper? Ain’t its funny how the factory doors close round the time that the school doors close? Round the time that a hundred thousand jail cells open up to greet you like the reaper?
And then (after saying a few times “This is no oasis!”, which is a sweet one-off line in itself) he hits us with this hum-dinger: quietly, he repeats a few times “Just like ashes in the fall.” This is certainly one of the great metaphors in rock lyric history. Like the rest of the song, it is not easy. It requires some processing. What would it mean if you saw ashes drifting past you in the fall, or if you had some hot ashes in your backyard next to a pile of leaves? How does this image system inform the meaning of Rage’s song?
I used to get disappointed that, musically, Rage trails off after their big build-up during the “reaper” lyrics and gets quiet for the “Ashes” lyrics. But they don’t just want to give us a music release. But they’re not just making music for our pleasure; they want us to hear and ponder this metaphor.
Here is the song, with the lyrics embedded in the video.
1. Philadelphia is the fifth most populous city in the United States. It’s kind of a big deal.
2. The city of Philadelphia is its own county—the only instance of a city-county in Pennsylvania.
3. The Greek translation of “Philadelphia” is literally “brotherly love”.
4. It is one of the twelve “four sport cities”.
5. As of December 31st, 2009, there were 829,873 registered Democrats living in the city, and 134,216 Republicans.
How I’m Doing!
I am really having a grand old time. Living around people I know again, as well as working at a job whose main training tool is basically telling you to be really really nice to people, has started to make me come back around to caring about my fellow human again. I love my new job. I have really, really fallen in love with my mother’s cats, and I dare say they’ve started falling for me, too. Living with my mother is not only easy and tolerable, but downright great (and I don’t care how that sounds coming from a 34 year old; you can stuff your societal norms where the sun, it does not care to shine. I am talking about your bunghole). I have way too many fun and interesting things to do, all the time. This new setup is redefining what I am interested in, and how I spend my time and money; where I’ll end up on that spectrum remains to be seen. I will say that without a doubt, there will not be a year-end “Top Ten Movies” list of 2012. I just cannot seem to muster the interest for movies right now (although there most definitely will still be a music list). I finally got back to Central PA to visit friends and Dad. It was a transcendant time. Dad and I’s developing interests in local history are making for lovely, lively, emotional visits. I only got to see a few friends on that visit but plenty more will be coming soon. Paul is coming here to see the Phillies vs. Marlins with me next Wednesday, so that should rule. I’m drinking a lot, a lot, a lot of coffee, and not just at work. I got a new, finally very nice record player. I’m kind of obsessed with it. I’ve decided I like owls now and my sister keeps finding rad owl statues/ figures for me. I cautioned her not to overdo it but with finds like these, I’m not sure overdoing it is possible.
$25: cost of purchasing Plan B., the morning-after pill, from a vending machine at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania; it’s the only known such machine in the U.S.
OK, I thought it was cool when we made Saturday Night Live, but TIME magazine! And last year, Carlisle High School was in TIME! (remember, for having sheep mow their grass?)
I can’t sleep. This happens often because of my ever-changing work shifts. Usually, I have tricks to jolt myself into sleeping when I need to. But sometimes they don’t work.
Everyone seems to have a strong opinion about this Osama Bin Laden thing. Everyone wanted him dead when he was alive, and now that he’s dead, a lot of people seem to have suddenly come across the notion that killing people is bad. It’s odd. I really don’t know what to make of it; mostly because I’ve been avoiding doing much thinking on the topic. Some things just seem too confusing at the outset for me to approach them more closely. I will say that I am certainly not sad he’s dead. But also, certainly, killing people always sucks. It seems to me that, for the most part, nothing major has really happened except an interesting news cycle. The military/ industrial complex chugs on and Glenn Beck is still a vampire. Really.
It’s more difficult in the spring and summer, because the birds start chirping around 5am, and sometimes, that is exactly when I want to fall asleep. I’ve no idea why birds chirping should keep one awake; after all, train whistles and thunderstorms put me to sleep. Is this an ingrained but learned reaction, from years of hearing birds in the morning? Or is it something even further inside us, a pattern stitched onto our DNA, a swatch of our instinctual fabric? Who the fuck knows.
PBS sure has a great lineup of shows coming up on Wednesday night. First there’s an episode of “Secrets of the Dead” that’s all about that wicked crazy army of statues that were created for some Chinese emperor dude like a bajillion years ago. I learn about that army of statues about once every five years. Then I forget all about it and am all too happy to learn about it again later. Then after that there’s an episode of “NOVA” all about Machu Picchu. Most of it focuses on whether or not I spelled it correctly without utilizing Google, which is right beside me and which I could have easily used, but did not. But the rest—about how they built it and such—seems pretty interesting, as well. Then after that, there’s another interesting thing, but I forgot what it was.
It will forever be a mystery to me whether or not thinking about sex as I lay in bed keeps me awake or helps me to sleep. I have tried this technique every single night of my life since I was 14, with what could only be called a mixed bag of results.
Every time I’m in a checkout line recently, I am taunted by TIME’s special edition on the Civil War. It’s one of these mega-big, laminated and bound almost-book things that TIME puts out like 4 times a year and you don’t get them if you’re a subscriber. Basically they are books. And I mean this Civil War edition just looks badass. It’s got all these pictures from the era (Civil War photographs are mind boggling) and what appear to be some killer articles. But it’s freaking 13 bucks. Now don’t get me wrong. Thirteen bucks, the bank does not break. But it’s right there in the impulse aisle, right beside copies of “Us Weekly”, chapstick, and 5 Hour Energy. I can never seem to talk myself into adding thirteen dollars to my total bill when I am already at the register. What an odd price point, $13. I’d probably buy it for ten. Fucking psychology.
Thank you for allowing me to type myself to sleep. I shall now go lay down and see if the birds will let me sleep. If I can stop thinking about sex long enough. Or should I think about it more? I can never figure that one out.
Someone pointed out to me a few days ago the very true fact that I have an incredible family. This is a fact I am quite well aware of, but perhaps not often appreciative enough for. Now, this is not going to be some lovey-dovey blog about how important family is, how well I feel my parents raised me (which, for the record, I think is very, very well)…I am more talking about the fact that all three members of my nuclear family are just plain cool. They are freakin’ rad people, and I just don’t think a whole lot of people are blessed with such a situation. I could take a lengthy road trip with any of them and have a freakin’ awesome time. Here are a few words about why each of them are so incredible (in the alphabetical order of their familial title):
Dad:
My freakin’ Dad is totally hilarious. Genuinely. Not in that, “Oh hey man, you’ve got a funny Dad” kinda way, but in that “Holy shit, that dude was freaking funny!” kinda way. He’s got a humor that is smart, but also cheesy, but he knows it’s cheesy so it’s always in a wink and smile sort of way. Dad also contemplates life in ways that often challenge me to re-evaluate my own worldview. He has an open dialogue about memory, death, religion, the past, the future. This dilaogue is an invaluable asset to a son; couple such serious topics with a rockin’ sense of humor and you have one helluva cool man! And Dad stays very up-to-date on the state of the world, current affairs, politics, etc. And he’s totally liberal! (yes, liberal is cool. Sorry to my one conservative reader, if you”re still out there…but it makes you just a tiny bit less cool) Way to be cool Daddio!
Mom:
My freakin’ Mom is totally amazing. Here is a woman who was simply born with the ability to figure things out. Literally anything can happen and within hours she will know which paperwork you need, or which office to go to, or whatever whatever. She has an innate sense of how. And this woman can be damn funny! (you’ll see a theme here; from my blog you may not think of me as funny, but I come from a hilarious family and in person I am quite a cut-up. It comes from these parents!). Mom often has me rolling on the floor with just a few choice words. She’s also an avid reader, which I think is super-cool. Also: very liberal. See Dad’s section for my thoughts on the coolness of liberalism. Momma: way to be cool!
Sister:
My freakin’ sister is totally cool. Like the rest of my family, she is completely hilarious. I suppose it’s no mystery that her humor is most like my own (with a strong bent toward actual nonsense). She is extremely self-reflective (badass trait), likes super cool music and movies (our tastes don’t perfectly match but they intersect in interesting places), she likes to write, attend concerts, “Dexter”…ok listen, obviously, we’re a lot alike, but different enough to make us clear individuals (for instance, she likes “The Amazing Race”….gross). Oh, and she’s an amazing mother, who is using the rockin’ childhood we were given to raise her children even more freakin’ cool than we are! Plus, she’s liberal! Way to be cool, Sis!
My family is so freakin’ cool! I challenge you to come up with a cooler family than the Dellaiellamstsfields!
Due to the severe limitations of “top ten lists”, as well as the sheer amount of crap I love each year, I’ve decided to institute this general list of 50 things I plain-old loved in 2010. Most will be things that did not appear on my music or movies list, as well as things created, released, or performed in 2010, but I’m not going to limit myself with actual ground rules. Here are, quite simply, in no particular order, 50 things I loved in 2010:
50. The New York Times
Hear hear for a newspaper that still dares to have sections devoted to important things like science, business, and art. I’ve found it difficult to spend less than two hours on a copy—even on a day like Tuesday.
49. Red Bull Cola
It will probably be a short-lived experiment, but the delicious and almost-natural cola from Red Bull was a tasty shot of adrenaline (even if it was overpriced).
48. Dwayne Johnson and Samuel L. Jackson in “The Other Guys”.
The movie itself may have been lacking, but these two good sports’ 5 minutes of screen time made the enterprise worth the price of admission.
47. “Dancing with the Stars”
For awhile, I hated myself for this guilty pleasure, until I realized it was actually genuinely compelling television. Cynical hipster naysayers need to actually watch a season (I should know–I am a cynical hipster naysayer)
46. The segment on NPR’s “Whad’Ya Know? with Michael Feldman” where they listed fake WikiLeaks
Far and away the most I’ve ever laughed at the radio.
45. The new Ansel Adams photographs
Whether or not they are actually Ansel Adams’ is still in dispute—but they’re terrific photographs anyway
The documentary that reveals (gasp!) how Prop 8 was engineered by the institution of the Mormon church. Enraging, and engaging.
42. VEVO on YouTube
Sure, this music channel on YouTube is 100% a corporate whore, but my year has been exponentially enhanced by concert footage of my favorite bands not shot by a drunk frat boy with a first generation iPhone.
41. James Franco’s “Palo Alto”
Franco’s collection of short stories is good—real good.
40. James Franco on “General Hospital”
Yeah, it’s on before I leave for work, so sue me if I watch it every now and then! Franco’s performance as–ahem–Franco was an over-the-top piece of performance art so nuanced (with nods to the real-world oddity of James Franco being on a soap opera) that I often found myself stunned something so lovely and sophisticated was happening on American daytime television.
39. James Franco in “127 Hours”
Portraying a not-so-likeable man within a bare-bones script who also has to cut off his own arm, Franco manages to make us like him, and makes us want to be better people, too.
38. James Franco’s art opening in New York
James Franco opened a gallery exhibit of his art in New York this year, and although not all of it is great, some of it is incredible, and it’s all very valid. To imagine a Hollywood star opening an art show he says–out loud–is about the “sexual confusion of adolescence” makes me think we may be living in a culture with, well…culture. See some of the art here.
37. James Franco in “Howl”
So, the movie kinda stinks, but Franco hits an underappreciated home run as the poet Allen Ginsburg, an unlikeable, grizzly gay man with so many conflicting character traits, it’s an amazing juggling act Franco had to do–and a bona fide joy to see. Also, John Hamm is in the movie, too!
36. Salvation Army Stores
Thanks to this discovery, the visual palette that is me (it seems absurd to call what I have a “fashion sense”) is evolving for the first time in a decade. (read: more sweaters)
35. Joel Stein’s column in TIME magazine
The most self-absorbed man in the newsmagazine business continues to get funnier, even as his subjects get more serious. Every week, I’m sure he’ll be arrested.
34. The Mac Wrap at McDonalds
I seem to be the only human alive not disgusted by this, either literally, morally, or some other, more etheral way. But I’m not disgusted. I’m delighted.
33. “Gimme Shelter” performed at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony by U2, Mick Jagger, and Fergie.
Rock and roll heaven. An absolute orgasm. And I don’t even like U2!
32. The repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
Because even republicans want to get into Heaven.
31. Jonathan Franzen’s “Freedom”
Franzen is this generation’s Hemingway. And “Freedom” is his “A Farewell to Arms”. Read it. Just do it.
30. The March to Restore Sanity
I wasn’t there, and I didn’t see a lot of it, but I love it anyway.
29. The “LOST” finale
It’s much debated, but I was never an “I need answers to X, Y, and Z, and I need them freaking spelled out for me” kinda guy. I didn’t have LOST theories. I work more by “feel”. And the finale certainly felt right. I still cry, every time.
28. The “twist” ending of “Remember Me”
Everybody hates it. I love it. What’s new?
27. The Chilean miners
Seriously? This story was too good to be true. If they made this movie and it was fictional, you’d be all like “No way this would happen like this.” Just an unbelievable story. The rare event of real news being real entertaining–and then uplifting.
26. John Updike’s “Endpoint”
Sadly, this posthumous collection is the last poetry that will ever be released by Mr. Updike. Luckily, it’s amazing (but, also, terribly terribly sad.)
25. “The Good Wife” on CBS
I’ve just discovered it, so I have to get caught up, but it is tickling me.
24. Seeing Art Speigelman give a talk at Dickinson University
Seeing the legendary literary graphic novelist give a highly entertaining and informative talk was one of the live event highlights of my year, and nobody had a guitar.
23. My super-secret crush, The View‘s Sherri Shepard.
I will do unspeakble things to this woman. In the good way.
22. Mila Kunis and–yes–James Franco in “Date Night”
See #48 and substitute these actor’s names.
21. The comeback of The Atlantic
One of the oldest and most respected magazines in the world revamps itself and somehow does not end up sucking. In fact, it’s now better than ever, and just announced a profit for the first time in a decade. And thankfully, it is somehow still completely pompous.
20. Michael Vick
I sure know when to get back into Philadelphia sports, don’t I??? I simply love this real-life tale of redemption; if I didn’t believe in second chances, my own life would probably look a little bit different.
The Netflix-like service provides you with rotating art prints (and a neato frame). Sure, they don’t do much but hang there, but it’s a great way to explore what you like and don’t like about art. It’s interesting to find how your relationship with a piece of art changes as it hangs in your home; much different than seeing it for 5 minutes in a gallery.
17. Dogs
Still the best thing going.
16. “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon”
Fallon has really hit a stride that is pure magic. Sure, he’s not breaking new ground like his competition Craig Ferguson (who’s got a bit of briliiance working, as well), but Fallon’s show works miracles within a formula. Delicious.
15. The Fusco Brothers
The smartest, funniest comic strip in (or probably NOT in) your local newspaper just keeps getting funnier. And smarter. And harder to find.
14. BuyBack$
A store that is just cheap, used DVDs, CDs, and Blu-Rays? Yeah. I’m kinda all over that.
13. The re-release of new-age symhony In C.
Composer Terry Riley’s experimental, semi-electronic classical piece In C was re-released on CD this year, and it is just as addictive as when I first owned it back in high school. Shades of just about all my current favorite artists can be heard in this breakthrough work.
12. Cherry Crush
Because it’s fucking delicious.
11. “What Up With That?” sketches on Saturday Night Live
This is by far the most enjoyable recurring sketch on SNL I’ve seen in years. It has a concrete element of the absurd, and a perfect setting for uproarious celebrity cameos. And Keenan Thompson is a genius, I don’t care what you say! Click here for a selection of this year’s What Up With That’s on Hulu.
10. Roles For Women
There’s still not nearly enough meaty roles for women in movies—Hollywood, indie, or otherwise—but this year saw a few choicer roles than before, thanks to dandy’s like “The Kids Are All Right”, “Please Give”, and “Secretariat”.
9. Dan Simmons’ “The Terror”
One of the most interesting, and also more difficult, novels I’ve ever read. Simmons’ explorers-trapped-in-icelocked-ships-being-terrorized-by-unseen-monsters-yet-also-slightly-based-on-historical-fact-of-Franklin’s-lost-expedition has got to be the world’s first historical fiction gothic horror novel. And it scared the shit out of me.
8. Cleveland
It really does rock.
7. slate.com
The one-time almost-sad story of an great website gone bad is now a must-read internet newsmagazine. I have it set as my homepage.
6. Blu-Ray discs in Reboxes
Hey thanks.
5. The first fight scene in “The Book of Eli”, where Denzel cuts that dude’s hand off.
OK, so the rest of the movie is kinda hum-drum, but that knife scene by the underpass with above-mentioned amputation is pure badass movie magic.
4. Free concerts in the square in downtown Buffalo
I got a free front-row Ed Kowalczyk show, courtesy of the city of Buffalo, in a very attractive, quaint little square with a big statue of some dude (Mr. Buffalo?) in the center. Can’t wait to see next year’s schedule!
3. Katie Couric doing CBS’s Evening News
I just plain trust her. A throwback to old-school news.
2. The poster for The National’s album “High Violet”.
Good art and good music, all affordable? Sign me up. Check out the poster here.
1. “The Expendables”
The movie was pretty bad, but I’d watch these guys pop popcorn.
Australia, Africa, America,
wherever it’s found is found an oppressed
ancient people who knew
long before white men found and named it
that there under their feet
under rock, under mountain, deeper
than deepest watersprings, under
the vast deserts familiar
inch by inch to their children
lay a great power.
And they knew the folly
of wresting, wrestling, ravaging from the earth
that which is kept
so guarded.
Now, now, now at this instant,
men are gouging lumps of that power, that presence,
out of the tortured planet the ancients
say is our mother.
Breaking the doors
of her sanctum, tearing the secret
out of her flesh.
But left to lie, its metaphysical weight
might in a million years have proved
benign, its true force being to be
a clue to righteousness–
showing forth
the human power not to kill, to choose
not to kill: to transcend
the dull force of our weight and will;
that known profound presence, untouched,
the sign
providing witness,
occasion,
ritual
for the continuing act of nonviolence, of passionate
reverence, active love.
I like Obama, and I think I always will, no matter what he ends up doing in office.
Why? Because, quite frankly, I’m not sure I’ll ever know what he does in office. There’s a legitimate source nowadays that’ll reinforce whatever you already want to believe (with evidence!), so what’s the use in trying to look?
Want proof that Nixon knew about the Cambodian bombing? We got that. Want proof that Nixon didn’t know about it? We got that, too.
Want proof that there are, in fact, death panels in Obama’s health care plan? We got that. Want proof that there aren’t? We got that, too.
Want proof that Clinton increased the national debt? Decreased it? Preferred french fries? Pizza? Asian ladies and purple pumps? We got that!
Obama gives a stirring, convincing State of the Union address that really, I should think, would rally a nation and cut across artificial dividing lines. Everything seems to finally click into place. Then, moments later, a governor from the other party gives a convincing speech that everything I was just convinced of was a lie. And they’ve both got proof.
I grew up thinking that a good citizen thoroughly researches all the issues, then researches where candidates stand on issues, and then votes according to the findings of their research—and judges the performance of the politicians on said research. Only, how much does the research matter when nothing and everything seems true and untrue all at the same time? And when I could find the answer I’m looking for if I looked in the right place, or the opposite of what I’m looking for, if I looked somewhere else? And when every side has their sources all footnoted and bookmarked?
I’m not going to research my politicians anymore. I’m not going to judge how they do. I’m going to vote based on party affiliation and personality, and I’ll judge how well they do by how likable they stay.
If you know me, you know I enjoy magazines more than your average bear. I find them to be a great way to compliment my different interests. There’s just some level of involvement in things you simply cannot get off the internet, TV, etc. I subscribe to more magazines than I can possibly read every month, the idea being that when I want to read something, it’s there, but I don’t pressure myself to read every magazine I get (yes, I recycle them). 2009 was a great year for magazines. It seems the more and more that the death knell gets sounded for the future of the publishing world, the better and better the publications that remain are getting! And so here they are, my favorite magazines of 2009:
5. Mother Jones
I’d been hearing about Mother Jones for a few years until I finally decided to pick up an issue off the newsstands this year, and I loved it so much, I subscribed. Listen: MoJo is a liberal magazine, and it makes absolutely no secret about it. I think that’s why I like it so much: it’s one of the only magazines I’ve ever read where I wasn’t left, to some degree, guessing about it’s politics (even hard-line ‘zines like Commentary or American Perspective sometimes leave me scratching my head). But, more than just being a magazine I agree with, MoJo is a lot of fun: it’s not JUST about politics, but the wide range of subjects it explores are filtered through the liberal viewpoint, which means I can be guaranteed none of its articles are written by bigoted homophobes. Did I mention the magazine is fun? Recommended for everyone who used to like The Utne Reader before it became a strictly environmental mag.
4. The Wilson Quarterly
Over the last few years, I have had a very on-again, off-again, love/hate relationship with The Wilson Quarterly. It is written, basically, for intellectual snobs who are interested in interesting things. Sometimes this is very, very…well, interesting. Other times it is…well, annoying. Certainly there is a bit of the snob in me, but even among snobs, there are different kinds of snobs, and we don’t like each other! Also, WQ is “non-partisan”, which means sometimes I cheer for it, and sometimes it offends me. This constant yo-yo had it on my shortlist of “non-renewals” at the beginning of the year, but its smart, concise coverage of the economic collpase, Obama’s election, and our insanely evolving media culture this year truly did help to inform the way I’m seeing the world I live in, and for that, I think I’ll keep The Wilson Quarterly around for a few more years.
3. Poetry
There continues to be no better method for following current American poetry than the gold standard, Poetry. This year saw so much editorial involvement by Billy Collins, I started to think he was on the payroll (which isn’t a bad thing). Also, at the beginning of 2009, they started using even heavier paper stock, which smells really good.
2. Psychology Today
It’s not what you think. I discovered this little gem early this year via Maghound (a Netflix-like service that lets you subscribe to numerous magazines–and change which ones you get at any time–in a Netflix-like model. Check it out at http://www.maghound.com). Psychology Today is not for psychologists. As a matter of fact, they probably hate it. It’s a magazine about pop psychology for everyday people (for instance, why are you jealous? What happens when you sleep? Why do you vote the way you do?). Sure, it can get a bit hokey, and sometimes it reads like either Cosmo or Men’s Health, but regardless, it is ALWAYS a fun read. It’s like a bon bon of a magazine.
1. Discover
That’s right. The science magazine. Science is my secret interest, and I tried every major science magazine a few years back before I settled on Discover, and my love affair with the mag has just gotten hotter and hotter every year since. Discover is written for people who are not scientists, but who are not idiots. If Discover has an article on String Theory, for instance, you’d better already know what String Theory is, to a degree. But unlike Scientific American, you don’t have to actually be a physicist to understand it (and unlike Science Illustrated, you do have to be older than five). This year saw a ton of great stuff at Discover: terrific CERN coverage, in depth Darwin and Evolution stuff all year, and I can finally–finally–understand what the Higgs Boson is. Trust me, that’s no small feat.
I couldn’t believe how refreshing it was when, last week at the Carlisle Independent Theater, a movie started playing and it was a smart, witty, foul-mouthed, politically charged comedy for grown-ups.
Don’t get me wrong. I have enjoyed the reign of the Apatow comedy as much as everybody else (“Superbad”, “Knocked Up”, etc etc), but I didn’t realize how much I’d been missing real adult comedy until I heard a British man tell another British man he was “the baby from ‘Eraserhead'” moments after a hilarious, semantically-charged language joke that could have been written by an Oxford prof. Which is not to suggest the movie is only made for an exclusive club: the fun comes so fast and furious, and is so varied in tone, it’ll be funny to just about anybody. Anybody, that is, over the age of 20.
Please, don’t be turned off by its label as a “British comedy”. Monty Python, this aint, and besides, half of the actors are American. The plot–what little of it there is–involves a group of mid-level British politicians who desperately want to be “in the loop”–that is, they want to transcend their “mid level” status–encountering a group of American politicians who are equally “mid level”, all while both countries are on the verge of a war with a country that is never quite specified. Most of the action takes place in board rooms, offices, meeting rooms, and various governmental halls and junkets. Not much really happens–which must be part of the point–but what we do get is just under two hours of some of the most razor-sharp dialogue I’ve seen in years. And I’m certain I missed some of the best jokes; sometimes things were going so fast, I didn’t know which end was up.
One of my favorite nuances of “In the Loop” is how director Armando Ianucci, along with all five credited screenwriters (!), treat both the English and the American characters with equal disdain. This isn’t a movie made by British people about how stupid Americans are. Rather, it’s a movie about how selfish and ridiculous politicians are, regardless of their nationality. “In the Loop” also doesn’t think politicians are evil, it just thinks they are bumbling, self-important idiots (or geniuses who are squandering thier potential). This was an important choice, I think. It’s hard to laugh at evil people, but easy to laugh at idiots.
One of the best surprises of “In the Loop” is James Gandolfini. Sure, we all know Gandolfini can act, and we’ve all probably assumed we haven’t seen his full range of acting ability. But in “In the Loop”, his General George Miller–a high-ranking military official with political ambitions who resembles a bumbling Norman Schwarzkopf–is a true highlight. He’s the only character who manages to speak slowly, and because he takes his time, we take notice of him. We start to think that maybe, amongst the din of idiot characters, perhaps we’ve found at least one man of value, one character who actually cares about the people, the country, and the ideals he’s trying so hard to represent. But it’s not long until we see through his ruse–he’s just another buffoon, and the lesson is learned: jackasses come in many different varieties.
Though it’s unlikely “In the Loop” will get much recognition of any kind come awards season, I’d like to put in my vote for an Oscar nod for James Gandolfini. His nuanced, hilarious, yet at times touching and heartfelt, turn in this “British” comedy deserves more attention than the handful of people who’ve been lucky enough to see this in a theater. Hopefully they hurry up with a DVD release so more people can enjoy this lovely little gem. And when it catches on as a cult hit, and your weird friends are walking around saying “Difficult, difficult, lemon difficult”, remember you heard it here first!
1. I’m watching “The Early Show”. I always do when I am in a position to watch a morning newsmagazine show. Why, you ask, would I watch the perenially third place, oft-forgotten CBS morning dud? because I feel bad for it, that’s why. Timely side-note: I was watching “The Early Show” during 9/11.
2. True or false: the phrase is “first come, first serve” not “first come, first served”. Your tenses need to match. If you say “served”, you would have needed to say “came”. Your comments on this issue are desired.
3. I was in a book store the other day and saw a “Search Engines for Dummies” book. Really????
4. I try to not engage in Republican bashing. I try to be first a thinking person, second a liberal, third a democrat. I do not like to engage in the acrimonious nature of our current partisan politics, because it’s getting really bad. But these Republicans are getting out of hand. The GOP talking heads on TV and the radio are ten times more mean, unreasonable and vindictive than the Democratic talking heads, to the point that they are actually whipping up hate. And now last night a Congressman calls President Obama a liar during his address to Congress? Shameful. Shameful. Shameful.
5. I watched the “Woodstock” documentary last night for the first time in my life. I like most of the artists who played at Woodstock and have always wanted to see the doc. So…why does it suck so much, and why don’t more people know it sucks? Why does director and cameraman Michael Wadleigh spend so much time on uncomfortable, unnecessary, practically silly close-ups? Why did Wadleigh and editor Martin Scorcese elect to present most of the musical segments out of the order they happened in? (remember, a documentary purports to represent reality) Why does Wadliegh ask people so many questions, instead of just showing us the natural drama as it unfolds–thereby taking an active role in shaping events himself? Why are there no scenes of any songs from Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Grateful Dead, The Band, or Blood, Sweat and Tears, while we see multiple performances from The Who, Joan Baez, Country Joe and the Fish, and Richie Havens? And I know these really famous artists have great songs that not everyone knows, and I’m all for being exposed to them, but when I’m watching “Woodstock”, I don’t want to see a deep track–I want to see Janis Joplin’s rendition of “Piece of My Heart”, Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit”, The Who’s “My Generation” (some of their more famous songs weren’t written yet at this point), Crosby, Stills, and Nash’s “Almost Cut My Hair”, and Arlo Guthrie’s rendition of “Amazing Grace”, not all these songs I never heard before. Why did I have to watch Jimi Hendrix literally noodle on his guitar for ten minutes when that time could have been spent showing us “Foxy Lady” (though we do get to see smokin’ versions of “Voodoo Chile” and “Purple Haze”), and why does Wadliegh shy away from panning the audience during Hendrix, so we could see that most of the crowd had left by then? That’s called manipulating reality, and I was fully insulted.
6. The wound on my foot from my biopsy ripped open last night. I guess we took the stitches out too early. it’s not bad enough to need stitches again, but it sure is ugly.
7. I am seriously worried that vaccine phobia (caused by people refusing to believe that vaccines DO NOT cause autism, even though they’ve proved they DON’T) is going to start causing a very serious problem.
Notes From the Fire 