Spulge Nine

Gnostic Unemployment

2010-11-13T09:07:00.000-08:00

This five-year-old laptop is giving me fits. Earlier today I shut it down and sat here looking around my office, which doesn't look much better than when I photographed it in May for that last post. A mess. I've been too busy writing and trying to sell myself to tidy up.

On a shelf, I saw some old notebooks. I pulled one down, opened it up to some notes on gnosticism from a lecture I went to in the early '90s, and found this:

Moses supposes

his gnosis Jehovah's,

but Moses supposes theistical-ly.

For nobody's gnosis

is strictly Jehovah's,

as Moses supposes his gnosis to be.

Semi-clever, but "strictly" is a sonic wrong note--it needs something that sounds like "posies," as in "posies of roses"--like "mostly," maybe, but the sense isn't right. I struggled with it there in the margins, writing a list of possible words to rewrite the thing around:

knows

chose his

psychosis

hypnosis

shmos (shmoes?)

closeness

discloses

I'd have no recollection of having written any of this if I didn't have the notebook, which takes me back to the time and the place: 1994, a conference called Body & Soul.

Isn't it handy, the way my iPhone photos arbitrarily load upside-down or sideways? Nice. Flipping pages, I see that Deepak Chopra gave the keynote and told a story about his friend Bob, who got electrocuted on top of a house, fell 15 feet to the ground and landed on his chest, which defibrillated his heart. "He was dead when he fell off the house. The fall brought him back to life."

I didn't write down what this story was meant to illustrate, but I instantly connect to it. I got zapped off the top of a nice, homey career, hit the ground, woke up, and starting running.

What I've done since May:

1. Wrote two big fat humor book proposals--chapter outlines, sample chapters, market & promotion stuff, the works. Two publishers recently expressed interest, but my agent thought I had a deal at Random House in July, and that fell through. So we'll see.

UPDATE: Mr. Agent called to say that Sourcebooks will publish my Tea Party lampoon next fall. The advance is small, but the royalty structure looks good. I'm thinking pseudonym, supporting the book with a political satire blog.

2. Did a couple of consulting days with Infinium in June, working to map out the future for a big local bank. More fun than it sounds like it would be.

3. In August, I hooked up with a former Sprint VP and another business genius to develop a start-up idea. We entered a venture capital contest (mainly to give ourselves a deadline to develop a pitch, for which I wrote and directed a video, among other things), but did not win. We're now working on the business model, web content, and other stuff. These people are so smart. I've learned a ton.

4. Started Hebrew classes. Penny and I are trying to keep with Jonah, who's in Hebrew school now and will be studying for his bar mitzvah over the next four years. Man, it's a mindfuck to study a new language. Spanish in high school was like eating flan compared to learning Hebrew at my age. But I can feel my old language-learning muscles stretching and flexing. It's cool.

5. Adapted a novel by another of my agent's clients. The script is now in the hands of a director who just sent me another set of revisions to do. I'm 50% assured that funding is just around the corner and this won't be yet another spec script thrown down the rabbit hole. The other half of me suspects that it'll all fall apart, as happens far more often than not. The novel, by the way, is called Keeping Time, by Stacey McGlynn.

Turns out, when I don't have a day job, I can write a script in less than six weeks. It used to take me a year, starting and stopping through weekends and evenings.

6. Started a novel of my own, which is really the only thing I want to work on right now. It's going to be a very funny, very sad, very vicious corporate satire. I'm now into the third chapter and completely in love with the first two, one of which is nearly 50 pages long and delights me every time I read it over.

I have to keep reacquainting myself with it, because the search for gainful employment takes a lot of time and energy. I try to accomplish something every day toward that end, viz.:

7. I've been doing some freelance brainstorming and copywriting for a local brewery, which I've really enjoyed.

8: Interviewed at a big marketing/ad agency. Feedback has been encouraging so far.

9: Reconnected with a friend who owns a web design company, and I may have a "freelancer with benefits" deal there, which would really take the worry out of the Damoclesian health insurance sword that's hanging over the end of the year.

Between those last three things, I think financial survival is likely. And if the script can just get a green light, which my agent seems to think will happen early in 2011, or if somebody says yes to one of the books, I'll breathe easier.

In this old notebook, I find the following quote from Elizabeth Roberts, whoever that is:

"To be a human being is to be a swinging door. The inner life and outer life must connect."

I scribbled in the margins, "Also, if you get too busy rushing in and out without paying attention, you'll smack yourself in the face."

The wolf is still at the door. But I do think my inner and outer lives are connecting, especially across the pages of that novel. And I have reason to hope that everything I've done these past six months will make it harder to blow the house down.

Moses supposes

what blows or bulldozes

his house is neurosis or anx-i-e-ty...

Prognosis for Moses?

His prose comes up roses,

if Moses lets goeses and shows he be me.

Some of you have been very supportive during this scary stretch of time. And I love you for it. You gno who you are.

Career Is Dead, Long Live Career

2010-05-28T08:30:00.001-07:00

So, I lost my day job. From the inciting event to the wrap-up of the terms of my "retirement" (to which terms I acceded yesterday) took exactly three months. And what a quarter it was.

I got sick in the early throes, immune system no doubt depressed, a brief flirtation with death-by-sepsis that followed an inflammation of my--who knew?--carotid artery sheath. I take that to mean "heartsick."

And one month into it all, before there was any hint that it might end this way, I celebrated my 30-year anniversary on the job. I remember saying to the group of writers and artists gathered for the party that I didn't want my remarks to sound like a retirement speech, but that, then again, "you can be about to retire and just not know it yet." Nailed it!

30 years of fun and creativity and collaborating with some of the coolest people on earth and maybe caring just a bit too much, and it's over. So. What's next?

I don't know. I have another consulting job in June. I'm working on a book, a couple of scripts, and taking, as they say, some meetings with bona fide literary agents and publishers. So I hit the ground running. But now I'm skidding through 30 years of accumulated office detritus. A few of my darling co-workers stuck around after hours last week to help me box it all up. It filled a friend's pickup truck (seriously, getting the last box in was like playing Tetris®. Now with profanity!™). There was no time to sort while packing, and my home office was already pretty crowded. Now it looks like something out of Hoarders.

I had a manila folder for every one of those 30 years. Back before I started storing stuff on hard drives, I kept copies of everything. Thousands of jokes, little verses, names for products, sell-lines and slogans, new business ideas, memos, thank-you notes from editors, consumer letters, goofy poems to read aloud at people's birthdays or milestone anniversaries. The early stuff is either hand-written or typed on a Smith-Corona (and then on an original Mac, saved to flexi-disks I can no longer access), so unless it got accepted and applied somewhere, the writing only exists in these photocopies or on scribbled 3x5 cards. And I'm jettisoning almost all of it. I put eight grocery bags of paper out for the recycling truck yesterday.

It's weird, but the handwritten-ness of some things makes me unable to pitch them. I found two pages that I evidently submitted for a 1990 assignment to predict the next decade's big changes. If it were a Word document, I'd just pitch the hard copy. But it's the only existing version of this thing. You can see some of it here, with a couple of jokes from the brainstorm bowl AND a "modest proposal" I wrote when writers were asked how we could help the company save money back in the mid-90s.

Since Blogger loaded that photo sideways and you can't read it anyway, the cost-cutting proposal starts out, "Kill people." And it goes on from there in Swiftian mode. My predictions included environmental trends, "rampant religious fervor," musings about computer networks (I was still moonlighting at CompuServe in 1990), and "I would also like to mention desktop publishing." The 3x5s say, "You gotta laugh at your problems, cuz let's face it, that's what everyone else is doing" (a little Cope & Encouragement workin' for ya there) and, under the title, "NATURE & YOU: A Poem," this beautiful Message of Love:

If I had plants
instead of thighs,
you'd make them
photosynthesize.

Hadn't heard that rhyme before, and haven't heard it since. I should do a Wikipedia entry on it.

There's a long to-do list before I get to that. It's a big world out here and I want to do big things in it. Not sure if I'll have time for blogging along the way, so there may be even less to see here than usual.

But never doubt my love, O faithful few readers, commenters, lurkers, and drive-by glancers. Hold me close, ya tiny dancers. You know I dig you like clams.

Yr humble,
Jas P Howard

Available for parties, partnerships, and odd jobs befitting a guy besotted with words, words, words.

NaPoWriMo Winds Down

2010-04-30T15:57:00.000-07:00

I missed the first day of National Poetry Writing Month, but wrote a poem every day in April thereafter. Might write one for May Day, just to get to 30.

Odd stuff happened along the way. The first poem I wrote inspired my friend Deb Beroset to do a lovely painting that she posted on her Zesty Artista blog. Subsequent poems got me in trouble at work. And a few caught me by surprise, expressing things I didn't know I knew.

If you just keep writing, things happen. Here's what happened today, end of the month, beginning of who knows what:

*

April Ends In Rain

You don't know what could come down
on your head. Every day, we wander out
into the world, avoiding car wrecks
or not, unknowingly dodging bullets flying
elsewhere in the city, pile-ups and ricochets
behind us, fate rolling its red carpet back up
like a tongue that licked around our edges
and decided to eat something else.

There's a man who's been struck by lightning
several times and lived to tell about it,
some magnet in his body drawing down
the charge, boom, and the air crackles,
his hat's on fire, or he's holding a torch
that was a book. Maybe those words
were just asking to be set alight.

Maybe the rain this morning was just to say,
yesterday was a dream. You worked
in the sunshine, you made love, you talked
with friends and played with kids, you wrote
about a wind that blew through and now is
gone. The weeping cherry you planted
when your son was born has shed its last
blossoms for the year. Look how green
the world can be when you wake up
and it's today, and today only.

The sleepwalker has left you, shuffling
off in slippers, a light rubbing sound
like a samba under the echoes of
his song, the one he's been mumbling
since you first fell in love with dreaming
and writing and women and the music
of your own wild imagination. You still
remember the words, 35 years later:
Green, it's your green I love.
Green of the wind. Green branches.
The ship far out at sea.
The horse high on the mountain.
Shadows dark at her waist,
she's dreaming there on her terrace,
green of her cheek, green hair,
with eyes like chilly silver.
Green, it's your green I love.

Who knows what it means? You never did.
But you love it to your soul anyway.
Everything that has conspired to kill
what is most alive in you could not do it.
You are awake.

*

[The quoted section is from Lorca's "Sleepwalker's Ballad," translation by John Frederick Nims, whose book Western Wind cracked me open just enough to glimpse a poet inside.]

Dog Cat Rat (Man)

2010-03-30T20:42:00.000-07:00

While dining in a sidewalk cafe on Throckmorton Street in Ft. Worth yesterday, I saw these four creatures:

Yep. A rat sitting on a cat standing on a dog being led by a man. I said to my colleagues, "Hey, look, a dog and a cat and a rat." And they double-took. And one of them said to the guy at the next table, "Hey, did you see that rat on the cat on the dog..." and the guy said, "Oh, yeah, that dude's always walking around downtown. Crazy homeless dude."

Back at my hotel, I googled Ft. Worth+dog+cat+rat, and this vid came right up. The "homeless dude" doesn't seem crazy at all--he just prefers animals to people, sort of like Temple Grandin. And I'm actually more interested in the animal pyramid than I am in him--especially that cat, which didn't fall off when I saw the act live. The balance of a surfer, the restraint of an aikido master, and the bored expression of...a cat.

Now I'm home from Ft. Worth. There's nothing quite like this oddity here. But having seen their little promenade makes me want to pay closer attention to beautiful obsessive weirdness everywhere.

By the way, I also recently met Temple Grandin, which is a whole other story, involving a whole other hotel. And pig-stunning. Also: Throckmorton. Just wanted to say it again.

Books Ruin Everything

2010-03-01T13:41:00.000-08:00

February 2010 was the first month in which I failed to post anything since I started neglecting this blog back in aught-six. At first I neglected it in favor of freelance work. Then I neglected it in favor of Twitter. But lately, I've been neglecting Twitter, freelance, this blog, and life itself, in favor of books.

Books. Remember those? They're supposed to be part of what this blog is about, but when's the last time I wrote about a book here? Well, this is about a bunch of books. In the past six months (mostly in the past three), I've read the following:

Netherland by Joseph O'Neill ★★★★½
(I loved this novel so much, I started writing one, then began to suspect that my opening was plagiaristically close to that of a novel I'd read a few years ago, so I checked to see, and got hooked again by that all-too-influential opening, and thus ended up rereading in its massive entirety...
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen ★★★★
East Is East by T.C. Boyle ★★★
Mudbound by Hillary Jordan ★★½
Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem ★★
Nobody Move by Denis Johnson (★★★½) which made me reread...
Angels and Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson (a composite ★★★★)

But did I just read novels? Nay, I did not, viz.:

No One Belongs Here More Than You stories by Miranda July ★★★½
Haywire poems by George Bilgere ★★★★
Refusing Heaven poems by Jack Gilbert ★★★
Dearest Creature poems by Amy Gerstler ★★★★
Open House poems by Beth Ann Fennelly ★★★
Unmentionables poems by Beth Ann Fenelly ★★★½
All In The Timing fourteen plays by David Ives (funny little one-acts) ★★★★

I read a memoir:

House of Cards by my pal David Ellis Dickerson (must recuse myself on the rating, because I'm pseudonymously featured in the book and heavily biased in favor of the author)

I read a screenplay:

A Serious Man by Joel and Ethan Coen (I give the film ★★★★, but the weirdly flat script ★★--I don't know how they knew they could make a great movie from it.)

I read what I guess you'd call a how-to:

Story by Robert McKee ★★★ (the best thing of its kind, but that's damning with faint praise)

At work, I was researching The Beatles and ended up rereading In His Own Write, by John Lennon ★★★★. What a hoot.

I also read a fat, densely-packed old issue of McSweeney's, guest-edited by Chris Ware--mostly comics, but it took me longer than any of the other books. I'd rate it from no stars to ★★★★★, depending on where you are in it.

I think that's it.

Why list all these? Simply to say that I'd recommend every one of them, except maybe Chronic City, an oddly detached disappointment. And that I was reminded, these past few months, of how thoroughly books kick television's ass. TV had begun to swallow the evening hours with a habitual couchslump, après-boy-bedtime. I haven't cut it out of my life entirely, but I've begun shoving books between it and my face. They almost always win.

I'm back to reading like I used to read: compulsively. Now rereading Humboldt's Gift and loving it. So there'll be more blog lapses. I suggest Joseph O'Neill et al. as worthy blank spot filler-inners. If you've let books slip to the periphery of your busy life, bring 'em back to the center of the camp. It feels good.

Number Nine

2010-01-31T08:26:00.000-08:00

The yungest turns nine tday

Hw weird that my cmputer keybard refuses t prduce the numera nine

The etters " " and " " mysteriusy stpped wrking, t

And I can't type a perid, thugh cmmas and excamatins wrk fine!

Perhaps a series f iPhne birthday candids t cmpete the picture:

Kid surveys treats frm big bday grab-bag as kitty gives us the evi-eye

Presenting Pptarts, rdinariy a frbidden fruit

And ast but nt east, "the beef stick f wisdm" brandished as a weapn, the way wisdm shud be

Party this afternn incudes skating with friends, then dinner with grandparents

And maybe a trip t the Appe Stre is in rder, eh?

Happy Birthday Jnah! We ♥ yu even bigger than nine!

Princetonian For A Day

2009-12-20T08:57:00.000-08:00

An odd request to share MY TOWERING WISDOM came in a recent invitation to speak at Princeton University. The subject? Christmas and Christmas cards. The venue? An intro-level course called "Sociology from E-Street: Bruce Springsteen's America," created and taught by renowned sociologist Mitchell Duneier.

~ Sample architectural symbol of aforementioned towering wisdom ~

Why me? For that matter, why Bruce? Because Prof. Duneier is not the usual theory-obsessed academic. He has a deep interest in empathy, both as observed in society and as practiced by sociologists and ethnographers. So his idea of greeting cards as an empathetically-imagined vehicle for social connection met his interest in exploring cultural issues through the lens of Springsteen's famously socially-aware songs (the raucous cover of "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" is atypical, but fit this particular hour), resulting in a December 17th class about Christmas, Christmas cards, and associated social meanings.

It was cool. Prof. Duneier interviewed me and a fellow writer in a big lecture hall of about 200 students, with a little Q&A after. We then attended a small break-out section of the class for a conversation that ranged all over the topic. Such bright, sweet kids, so easy to talk to (I'm not sure what I expected... bluebloods with monocles and George Plimpton accents, maybe?), exploring a wide range of issues and sharing personal stories that illuminated them.

At the end of the first class, two kids got up on the stage of the big lecture hall and played the featured song on guitars and harmonica, and everybody sang and clapped along. It was the kind of day that gives a semi-cynical guy a little faith in the future.

Afterwards, a few students came up and asked about the job, internships, possibilities. It's the worst time to apply for work at Hallmark since the Great Depression, but you never know. I'm sure we'll hear from a few of these marvelous kids--either as job applicants or as movers and shakers in the world at large. There was a lot of soulful brainpower in and among those ivy-clad buildings.

~ Nassau Hall at Princeton, where I practice pedantry now and then ~

The school was founded in 1746. My photos of other magnificent buildings came out shitty, shot with an iPhone in low light. It's an amazing campus. If you ever get a chance to be a visiting PRINCETON EDUCATOR LIKE ME, don't miss it.

~ A pedant non-euphemistically "rubbing the tiger" at Nassau Hall ~

I thought I had a picture of Prof. Duneier and me mugging by a statue or something, but all I find is the one above. There's a squirrel in the ivy behind me, but you can't hear it scolding me for touching the big tigger on the steps, or for looking somewhat bloated from being wined and dined on the university budget the night before.

Beautiful place, beautiful people, beautiful day. A great way to close out the year. Happy 2010 from me, Princeton lecturer and holiday deadbeat who sent out only half the usual number of cards. Welcome, new austerity and laziness.

Beautiful Blast from the Piano-Pop Past

2009-11-25T08:52:00.000-08:00

I woke up singing this song, for some reason. Maybe it was the soundtrack to a dream I don't remember. What I do remember is how gobsmacked I was the first time I heard it. Senior year of high school, standing in a record store, and the little gallop and kiddie gunshot noises came over the sound system--and then those first notes, with their syncopated accents that made it hard to tell exactly where the beat was. What in the world...?

I fancied myself a teen piano idol in the Elton John mode, with a little Rick Wakeman thrown in, a little Keith Emerson, Tony Banks, a little delusion of grandeur. I went up to the counter, and looked at the LP jacket on the "Now Playing" stand. I'd never heard of Andy Pratt and here he was just playing the ass off the thing.

The story goes, he spent 500 hours in the studio on this song, playing everything except drums. He's every bit as good on bass as he is on keyboards. How does a guy who's capable of this not become a huge star? I remember digging the whole album. But this song is definitely the piece d'irresistible.

There are a couple of other YouTube versions, including one that intercuts a performance video of Andy in his 50s, looking like Art Garfunkel, but it's all obscured by special effects. This little montage of stills will do. And you can see Andy then and Andy now.

Or just close your eyes. It's the fall of 1973. Maybe you weren't there for it. But this song has just galloped into the world, beating "Bohemian Rhapsody" to the punch by two years, a one-of-a-kind musical vision announcing itself, blowing away one delighted listener after another. I was one of them. Still am.

I Sired A Werewolf

2009-10-31T14:07:00.000-07:00

All Hallows' Eve PSA: Hey, kids. This Halloween, don't forget to shove sugar into your face until you turn into a monster.
And if you get a mail-order werewolf costume and the shirt attached to it feels like a polyester nightmare, rip out the furry chestal area and then sew it into a nice, soft thrift store shirt that you got for 50 cents and tore up. Or have your mom do this while your dad kind of freaks over the mask, which is genuinely creepy and scares him every time you leap out to surprise him. Careful, he might poop his pants.

Better you should scare your fellow classmates, many of whom showed up in the Scream outfit that apparently was massed out at Target. Do not breathe of the Scream mask, which smells like a PVC meltdown amid cultural decline.

Try to uphold the old traditions, such as trick-or-treating with Isabelle, the girlfriend you've had since pre-school, who dreamily combines her first name with your last name, like something out of a beach bunny movie from the mid-20th century. She's half angel and half devil, and that can be a pretty good combination.

Be a good werewolf. Show up at your girlfriend's house with flowers.

And have a very happy Halloween.

Save This Family. Name This Cat.

2009-09-26T06:53:00.000-07:00

Presenting our Replacement Kitty:

She's a miniature of the late, great Tova. Same breed (Birman), same markings (blue eyes, gray points & professorial patches on her hind legs) same delightful disposition (lovey-dovey). If anything, she's even more affectionate than Tova was, lolling about on our laps and napping on Penny's shoulders during the day. We all fell in love immediately.

BUT. It's been two weeks, and we have yet to arrive at a name. Leave it to two writers and a verbally agile child to bollox up the naming process to the point where we all hate each other. We're sick to death of suggesting names and having the other two family members snarl, "No, I hate that, I hate you, and you're making me hate the cat. I hate all cats now. All animals. I hate Nature, the Universe, the fabled singularity. I hate God. But mostly, I hate you." You could probably set that to The Beatles' "I Want You," from the newly remastered Abbey Road," which I'd much rather be blogging about, to tell you the truth.

Penny came up with the best name: Kish. It means pillow in Yiddish, offering a cute diminutive, Kishela. Come here, little pillow. Wait, you're already behind my neck, like a good little Kish?

No wonder it's the perfect name. Jonah and I have been calling her Kish, Kishy, and Kishycat for days, but Penny has decided she hates it. She's around the cat more than any of us. She tried the name, and it just didn't work. Doesn't roll off the tongue or something. Here, let me strangle you so I can see that tongue, try to figure out the problem...

Update: To punish me for posting this, the darling spousette looked up Kish in the Urban Dictionary. It means, "A very swollen vagina." Seriously. I'm not Will Ferrelling you on this. A couple of other meanings, too--a latent homosexual, a warning that someone's coming, e.g., "Kish! Stash the weed! It's my mom!"

What other names are contending? The current top 10::

Ava
Edie
Cali (from Jonah's day 1 remark, "She smells like calamari.")
Pie
Simone
Mimi
Gia
Jess
Tess
Indiana Jones & The Temple of Doom

Of those, Pen likes Ava, I like Edie or Pie or Cali, and Jonah hates everything but Kish. I actually know a family who let their young son name a cat, and ended up with the last entry above. Everybody called the cat Indy, except for little Nicholas, who insisted on, "Come here, Indiana Jones & The Temple of Doom! Get down from there, Indiana Jones & The Temple of Doom! Mom, Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom just coughed up something black!"

We could do worse. Go on long enough with naming, and some wretched things start to sound reasonable. Penny, at wits' end, keeps saying things like, "How about Pebbles?" or "I know--Talullah!" and I keep giving her looks like, "No, Wilma" and "I hate you AND Demi Moore."

Our marriage is in tatters. Our son is ready to be adopted by other, better parents. Please. Save us. Name this cat.

Update: As of New Year's Day, the cat's name is Tavi. Best little kitty we ever had. And that's going some.

If I Might Interject At This Juncture

2009-08-24T10:24:00.000-07:00

Here's Jonah at breakfast on his first day of 3rd grade.

He's doing his Timid Pirate voice, which is like a bookish elf crossed with Woody Allen as Broadway Danny Rose. The basic Timid Pirate construction is: "If I, uh, might interject at this juncture...um...ARRR?" or "Could someone please, uh, tie that scurvy dog to the, um, yard arm?" Always with the index finger raised.

We're working on a long skit for the cub scout den, in which all the other boys are regular pirates and Jonah is the Timid Pirate. It goes like so: "12 pirates walk into a BARRRRRR (all the boys chime in with ARRRR). Bartender says, 'What's your pleasuRRRRRe?' And the pirates all say (three groups of boys yell in sequence, 'MARRRRRGARITA!' and 'MARRRRTINI!' and "GROG!"). But one pirate steps up and says, (Jonah, index finger aloft): "Could I perhaps, uh, order a Wild Berry Capri Sun?" And the pirates all go, "ARRRRR! Stupid timid pirate...." Bartender says, "It's Happy HouRRRRR. Would you like any appetizeRRRRs?" And the pirates all order, "CalamARRRRRRRi!" Except for the timid pirate: "Um, could I trouble you for a small house salad with lite ranch dressing on the side?" (Jonah came up with these lines himself--priceless, in his high little voice.) Eventually the other pirates beat him up with their wooden legs...

We're still working on an ending that kind of reverses the roles. Please submit ideas if you have them. (First pack meeting is tonight. My love-hate relationship with this stuff remains intact, but a good skit can transcend the venue.) Seriously. Help me finish this goddamn skit.

In the above photo from August 17 (weird, summer being over so early), he's the Timid Eater: "If I might make a small request...um, could I eat this pancake without being photographed?"

This, along with fart humor (both real and armpit-generated), faking like he's just taken a painful shot to the crotch (we probably hear "oooof...my groin!" at least a couple of times per day), and anything having to do with pineapples (beats me, but he's talking about going as one for Halloween--I think he just likes the randomness of it), currently constitute 90% of the kid's comedic stylings. The rest is on-the-fly wackiness.

He really is one of the most spontaneously funny kids I've ever known. I hope he can keep that alive through the next decade of public school. It's been weird to watch him grow more like other boys as he adjusts to social pressures, the need to be cool. Yep, already. He was always way ahead of everybody his age, verbally, but was a late-bloomer emotionally, a strange combination of oversensitive and under-aware, as if the membrane between him and the world was too thin in some places and too thick in others. He seems closer to the middle of the spectrum now, as other kids have narrowed the gap intellectually and he's learned to deal a little better with what life throws at him.

I can't imagine that he won't always be exceptionally bright and at least somewhat acerbic. This is the kid who, having been called a "know-it-all" by several of his classmates last year, said, "They don't even know what a know-it-all is." I hope he can develop social grace without losing his unique perspective.

If I might make a small, um, addendum to all this, uh...I love you, kiddo.

"A Better Way To Go"

2009-07-30T13:54:00.000-07:00

Had a birthday and got feted, free-lunched, fully loved upon the earth. But within a week or two, I was kind of blah, holding back a certain low-level despair, appalled to see political machinations drag down progressive ideas, kind of pissy, not sleeping too well, feeling creatively stymied and generally feckless and fatigued.

Then my old friend Peter Stein sent me a link to this guy, Peter Mulvey, who will kill you softly, telling your whole life with his words, as it were, and playing the absolute ass off his guitar. Dig it:

I'm robbing two Peters to pay back an appall. And whaddya know, I had a little breakthrough on a script idea I've been wrestling with. Found a better way.

If only it were always so easy.

The Book of Love (and Anniversaries)

2009-07-10T11:21:00.000-07:00

Here's a lovely vid my sister made for her wife, Pam, on their 5th anniversary (today). Why didn't I do this for my darling spousette on our 14th, mere weeks ago? Because I'm a deadbeat. Get off my back. Plus, I'd never heard this beautiful song until last week. Peter Gabriel's voice just slays me.

Happy 5th Anniversary! from Joy Howard on Vimeo.

The E.E. Cummings poem toward the end is what I read at the wedding, though the version I read from had a typo and I remember mildly wigging out when I got to it, trying to make sure I got the line right. Pam's brother read the Dr. Seuss story, "The Sneetches," which had a huge resonance for this only-recently-legalized event.

My sis posted the video along with a quote from Margaret Marshall, Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court that legalized same-sex marriage in the state: “Marriage...bestows enormous private and social advantages on those who choose to marry. Civil marriage is at once a deeply personal commitment to another human being and a highly public celebration of the ideals of mutuality, companionship, intimacy, fidelity, and family…Because it fulfills yearnings for security, safe haven, and connection that express our common humanity, civil marriage is an esteemed institution, and the decision whether and whom to marry is among life’s momentous acts of self-definition.”

Congrats, oh my sissers. I love you both.

To Kill An American

2009-06-19T08:36:00.000-07:00

I'd forgotten about this clever piece of work by my old Full Metal Jacket friend, Matthew Modine. It still seems relevant, as our country recovers from the international-stature-damaging Bush/Cheney years and presses on in military and economic conflicts around the world.

To Kill an American

May

2009-05-31T20:30:00.000-07:00

May blog, or may not.

The confluence of events this month--death in the family, freelance consulting gig, a new script underway, travel, various graduations of nephews and nieces, the boy's goddamn Cub Scouts, my darling's ailing back, and plenty of work at ye olde Happiness Factory--all this has kept me from doing anything on ye olde stale blog.

THIS BEING A DEPICTION OF MY BUSY BUSY MARTYRDOM

I did update my big music post, from which the mp3 player suddenly disappeared (provider went bankrupt) so you can't hear the referenced tunes anymore. At the end of that post, I promised a follow-up where I'd presumably take apart a melody to show...something. I still hope to do it for you few, you happy few, you hopeful, cheated few who read this thing. But I can't see it happening for awhile. Just too much to do.

So. This is a placeholder, a whine, an excuse, a gob of spit, a scrap of proof that the Spulge is not dead, merely busy to the Nines.

Sooner or later, I'll unchain myself from the wheel and put something worth reading up in here.

Meanwhile, happy summer.

NaPoWriMo Through Field Glasses

2009-04-30T17:29:00.000-07:00

My friend Stacey Donovan wrote a poem a day in April, and they weren't just little nothing poems. Big, juicy, full of feeling and imagination and lovely phrases, is what they were. Crafted, not sloppy. Fine prosody from one of the superfinest people I work with.

I watched from afar, remembering how I used to write poems relentlessly, always something in the works. Not so much lately. I did teach a writing workshop to some 2nd-graders this month, but even that was mostly watching others create. So I was feeling like a spectator. And egregiously envying those with time and energy to apply such devotion to the art.

And now the month is done. So on this, the last night of NaPoWriMo, I present a little snideswipe from the sideline. My shame is great.

*

Spectators On Parade

The parade for National Poetry Writing Month
seemed long and aimless, wandering toward
the end of a street with no identifying sign,
most of the marchers distracted by themselves,
trying to remember dreams, scribbling notes,
slouching toward dressing the part of a poet,
some glancing at their fellows, resenting
the notebook scribblers or the ones texting
God knows who—can we not just experience
this event? The oneness, the solidarity,
the living poetry? Must everything be grist?
And then there came a complicated turn

around the intersection of form and subject,
a ramp, an elevated expressway, a blind alley
that seemed to stand for something else.
By now, the new proxyism had people trading
places, rank and file observing the spectators’
meanderings—"Say I am you!" someone shouted—
and a child on a tall man’s shoulders piped up,
“This is the most boringest parade I ever saw.”
A hush, a lull, a caesura. The procession
stopped. And then a dozen poets pounced,
quoting the phrase, embellishing it, throwing
rhymes at it, interviewing the child, learning
by going more or less nowhere where to go.

*

Forgive me, Erato (and Stacey--you're your own magnificent parade). That's all I could manage this year.

Music, Melody, Oneness, Vibrating Mind of God

2009-03-29T07:07:00.000-07:00

An insane idea I had: to develop a Unified Field Theory of Music. Insane, because I don’t know what a “unified field theory” is, really, and I was a music major for only two years. I’m a hack pianist. My credentials suck. But I compensate with enthusiasm. I love the idea of describing how music works, where its essential power comes from, irrespective of era, genre, or my ignorance. ♫

Researching, I found record producer Daniel Levitan’s revelatory This Is Your Brain On Music: The Science of a Human Obsession. Expanding on Stephen Mithen’s “Singing Neanderthals” theory, Levitan says music represents a critical step in human evolution. This is probably the least interesting idea in the book, every page of which has some fascinating insight into the physics of music or the way our brains perceive sound.

Oliver Sacks’s amazing book, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain says that Darwin called music an evolutionary aberration with no adaptive purpose (I think he was listening to Air Supply at the time). The preface cites E.O. Wilson, whose theory of biophilia (our innate feeling for other living things) causes Sacks to wonder if music might be a form of it, since music often feels alive. He adds, “There is now an enormous and rapidly growing body of work on the neural underpinnings of musical perception...”

Great. Way bigger brains than mine have stolen my thunder for their rhythm section. I’m both unqualified AND irrelevant.

But maybe I’ll naively stumble into some observation that a colder-eyed observer might miss, if I ditch science to come up with some good guesses, vague notions, and intuitions about how music do what she do. ♪

UPDATE: Come to find out, none of the music samples in this post show up anymore, because SeeqPod, the company that made the ingenious little widget I stuck in here several times, apparently went belly-up a couple of weeks after I posted this. I take full responsibility. And if I get time, I'll replace the widgets with Blip links or something. WAY less convenient, but it'll look nicer than those big gaps in the text. Sorry...

Before We Ditch Science
What’s the unified field theory in physics? Apparently, when quantum theory came along, its implications for atomic and subatomic physics contradicted Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Quantum physics can make sense of electromagnetism and the two (strong and weak) nuclear forces, but gravitation bolloxes everything up. Einstein spent the last half of his life trying to unify the four forces, coining the phrase “unified field theory” for what he was after.

Physicists say that the grand explanation for the interaction of those four forces will describe a oneness, a singular essence that manifests itself in all matter and phenomena. This holy grail is thought to be in the realm of string theory. Michio Kaku, a theoretical physicist, says what he and his fellow nerds are seeking is “an equation an inch long that would allow us to read the mind of God.” This great little vid concludes with Kaku describing what he thinks the mind of God is.

Some specialists in M-theory (the M stands for “mother of all theories” or “mystery” or possibly “magic”) describe Kaku's "hyperspace” in 26 dimensions. But all seem to agree that matter is fundamentally “vibrating strings” a hundred billion billion times smaller than the nucleus of an atom. I love that it’s either 10 or 26 dimensions. Sounds like they’re really closing in on it. ♫

Wasn’t This Supposed To Be About Music?
The physics ruminations on harmony make me think that musicians should be working on string theory. Sound is all vibration, so maybe these subatomic vibrating strings are at the bottom of it somewhere, like zillions of tiny cigarbox banjos.

Let’s apply the four forces metaphorically. Maybe there are musical parallels for them: rhythm, melody, harmony…and what would the fourth be? dynamics? timbre? In a song, the lyric? There might more than four. In any case, it may be easier to describe how these things interact in music than it could ever be in physics.

But is there a problem to solve? What questions would a unified field theory answer? Could it define why some music is great and other music sucks, so that it’s not just a subjective matter of taste? Could it explain how music can give you goosebumps or make you cry? Is our question here something as simple as, “What makes music beautiful?” ♪

Vive Les Contrarieties
The biggest truth I know about beauty: it’s the oneness of opposites. This isn’t original with me. The ancient Greeks considered every art a reconciliation of opposites. Shakespeare was the Great Synthesizer (pre-Moog) of antitheses (“To be or not to be” is one example among thousands). Bach believed that the contrapuntal balancing of opposites in a perfect Fugue connected the human soul to God. Coleridge’s framework for literary criticism was his “principle of polarity,” Marcel Duchamp wrote an essay about the reconciliation of opposites in visual art, and the poet Eli Siegel developed a whole aesthetic theory of human life based on it.

A few opposites we find unified in great music:

Simplicity/Complexity
Logic/Emotion
Inevitability/Surprise

There are others. Those three are pretty obvious, though. Anyone who’s ever marveled at the “simplicity” of a song like The Beatles’ “Blackbird” and then tried to play it on the guitar knows how true that first one is. Even if you don’t fully understand the math that all music is based on (patterns of rhythm and pitch intervals can all be described numerically), you may sense the logic in a piece of music—but what makes it move you is something else, something emotional that seems to be communicated directly from the composer or musician to you. And I can’t think of anything more satisfying in music (or any art, really) than the fulfillment of an inevitable pattern in a surprising way. Think about the piano coda at the end of the original “Layla.” It seems to come out of left field (left ventricle?), and yet somehow is completely prepared for. Perfect.

All those pairs of opposites imply a meeting of the familiar and the strange. I don’t remember where I first heard the idea that the difference between something genuinely beautiful and something merely “pretty” is that beauty has an element of strangeness in it. That’s always seemed true to me. Those Asian-sounding semitones in the bridge of “Julia” by The Beatles, especially the way John Lennon sings them, are unlike anything else in popular music, a strangeness woven through a familiar, lilting guitar pattern.
Update: Dammit. The Beatles MP3 police apparently put the kibosh on "Julia." But the rest of the tracks in this post should play.

SeeqPod - Playable Search
And is there anything more oddly affecting than the almost affectless bleat of Miles Davis’s muted trumpet over the lush chords Bill Evans lays down on “So What” or “Mediterranean Sketches”?

Melodies
Maybe the best way to open an inquiry of opposites, and thus, beauty, is with melody. We all know melodies, we hum and whistle them, they stick in our heads, and they burn lyrics in our memories. They’re most of what we mean by “I know that song.” A memorable melody makes a claim on your brain that you can never renounce.

Because of the way we experience music, Oliver Sacks says that remembering a melody isn’t really remembering at all, but reliving the music in the present. He quotes the philosopher Victor Zuckerkandl: “Hearing a melody is hearing, having heard, and being about to hear, all at once. Every melody declares to us that the past can be there without being remembered, the future without being foreknown.”

Even that explanation is paradoxical, holding opposites together. To me what it means is, when you sing “I heard the news today, oh boy” to yourself, the whole song is there with you. Your ears may actually hear only the melody and the words, but by singing the song, the rest of the music comes alive in your mind and body. You’re experiencing the feel of the song.

To get to the meaning of that, we need actual melodies to point to, hear in our heads, and explore the workings of. So I’ll end this first post with my starter list: unique, memorable, carved-in-rock melodies from nearly every Western genre (classical, sacred, folk, jazz, show tunes, country, pop/rock), trying to find in each category at least one “pure” melody (unforgettable even without words), at least one transcendent marriage of music and words; and one that plays against its orchestration or chord changes in a remarkable way.

Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring
“Ode To Joy”
The Willow aria from The Ballad of Baby Doe

Ave Maria (Schubert)
Lo, How A Rose E’er Blooming
Were You There?

Greensleeves
Shenandoah
Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright
Scarborough Fair

Lush Life
Autumn Leaves
Ornithology
The Wedding

Somewhere Over The Rainbow
My Favorite Things
Sunrise, Sunset
Send In The Clowns

I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry
San Antonio Rose
Crazy
Help Me Make It Through The Night

I Will
Good Vibrations
The Spiraling Shape
Veronica

Thanks to SeeqPod, one of the coolest music sites on earth, you can listen to some of these and then hum them to yourself the rest of the day.

SeeqPod - Playable Search

Better yet, look up tunes you think should be on the list, then check them out to make sure the melody's as distinctive as you thought. You may be surprised.

I thought I’d be most sure of the pop/rock melodies I wanted to use for this, but the genre in which I’m least versed (country) seems like the best, most exemplary group of all. As a little bonus coda, here's a pop melody I didn't know was great until I heard a country singer spin it into gold:

SeeqPod - Playable Search

Next, I'll take one of these tunes and pull it apart to show how it works. It may be like dissecting a frog, but I hope to learn something new. Meanwhile, I’d love to get some suggestions for other great melodies, especially from rock and pop songs. What’s stuck in your head? Is there a song whose melody simply delights you? Why do think it’s so memorable? Any ideas you have, really. I’ll share my Nobel Prize winnings with you. ♪♫

Bravo, Couple 3 Films!

2009-02-10T10:10:00.001-08:00

Here are my nephews—my brother's son Sam and Debra Winger's son Noah, flanking the divine Ms. Winger herself—after the lads' triumph at the Oxford Film Festival, where they won the Jury Prize for Best Documentary. That's Noah clutching the coveted Hoka statuette.
Noah, Sam, and a third partner (hence, Couple 3 Films) spent much of last year working on Crude Independence, their unique look at the oil boom in North Dakota. I saw a version of it before the final sound mix, and it's splendid. Apparently, the festival circuit thinks so, too. Last week, Crude Independence made it onto the prestigious SXSW schedule, a fifth festival acceptance.

I love these guys like mad, and am so freakin' impressed by their talent and tenacity. I almost said "proud" instead of "impressed," but pride seems to imply something more self-reflective than the sheer admiration and respect and "wow, is this cool or what?" that I actually feel about their work and its much-deserved success. I'm avuncular, though. Don't punk the unc.

Keep up with Couple 3 via the link in my sidebar, labeled "My filmmakin' nephews." Are they ever.

Jay Smooth Says It Like We Is

2009-01-20T10:52:00.000-08:00

Still stewing on my massive music post, but feeling the need to celebrate inauguration day, I present "Why I'm Happy, Why I'm Not Satisfied," from the Ill Doctrine blog. Exuberant, yet realistic; inclusive, yet focused; didactic, yet superfine. Pretty much sums up the moment.

PS: Holy shit! Barack Obama is our president!

Nouvelle Année Heureuse

2008-12-31T09:41:00.000-08:00

I've been working on a huge, impossible music essay and had hoped to post it by year's end, but it has become the play in endless rehearsal from Synecdoche, New York. So I'm Philip Seymour Hoffman, or the character who plays his character in the play within the play or something. The whole thing has folded in on itself, is my point.

In lieu of my musical superstring theory or whatever it's turning into, I offer you four minutes of sheer delight to end or begin your year:

Once upon a time... from Capucha on Vimeo.

Perhaps the hippo is "allergic to magic," but let's not be. If ever a moment of magical childhood could remind us of our hopes for the future, despite the mess we're in at present, this is surely one. In French. With subtitles.

Thanks (and love) to Emily & Ned.

Welcome, 2009.

Top Ten Missing Singers on Rolling Stone List

2008-11-17T17:30:00.000-08:00

Not that they didn't get some of them right. Yes, Aretha. Yes, Ray Charles. Yes, Dylan, Springsteen, Janis, Marvin, John, Paul, Bono, and Elvis (although, I’m sorry, Elvis is nowhere near the 3rd-greatest singer of all time). Rolling Stone magazine's “100 Greatest Singers” is a good rough draft of a list. But some editor should have gone to all the panelists who listed certain singers and said, "You must be high." And then pointed out who got left off the list.

How did some of these lesser lights end up on it? Seriously, Karen Carpenter? She might make Lawrence Welk’s top 100. George Jones? Sure, if you’re drunk and not quite finished throwing up. Lou Reed? Great songwriter, a visionary, really, but the man is nearly tone-deaf. Gregg Allman? Don Henley? Stevie fucking Nicks? Come on. Stevie Wonder, yes (and in the top ten, as he should be). But Stevie Nicks, with her one-octave range and all the expressiveness of a cocaine-dusted formica countertop?No. She shouldn’t even make a list of the top thousand singers.

More to the point, what system of judging compiles a list like this and fails to include the following musicians, one breath from any of whom could blow Stevie Nicks’s gauzy little scarves in a whirlwind around her neck and strangle her? Which I’d buy tickets to see.

1. Sting. Ignoring the most instantly identifiable, surest-pitched male voice in pop music for the past 30 years is ridiculous, and reveals how petty jealousy and faddishness affect the judging. When you consider that the judges include such musical luminaries as Courtney Love, Simon Le Bon, and Alice Cooper, it’s easier to understand. But it’s still ridiculous.

2. Diana Ross. There's a connection between these first two. People have complicated, self-involved ideas about divas, projecting their own self-loathing onto them. People like Sting and the egomaniacal Diana Ross have a lot of enemies. But I keep coming back to my original sense of injustice. Diana Ross, or Stevie Nicks? Uh-huh.

3. D’Angelo. Has there been a record since Voodoo (2000) that was any better sung, from top to bottom, back to front? I’m not sure there was one before, either. D'Angelo is a musical genius, worth a half-dozen of the singers on the top 100 list.

4. Peter Gabriel. The best art-rock singer ever. That's damning with faint praise, but you can't put David Bowie on the list and ignore this guy, with his astonishing range and risk-taking. Nobody does that flippy falsetto flourish at the end of a phrase like Peter Gabriel. As Laurie Anderson once said, “I really like the way he yodels.”

5. Shawn Colvin. I don’t know, this just seems like a terrible oversight. Is it that she’s too pretty? Then focus on her man hands, as she wrings amazing licks from her guitar to accompany that bell of a voice. Feel the shiver? She’s manhandling you.

6. Deb Talan. The Weepies are relatively new, but their songs have been used in commercials and they’ve been showing up on TV shows and movie soundtracks. Maybe they're somehow overexposed and unknown at the same time. But this is a list of singers, and no one sings with more clarity or honesty than Deb Talan. And nobody sings harmony like she does, either. Her range, fluidity, and emotional intensity make Stevie Nicks sound like Stevie Nicks by comparison.

7. James Mercer. I think The Shins have been around long enough for everyone to know what an amazing singer this guy is, especially considering that their songs feature some of the most complex melodies since The Beatles. Maybe it’s just that no one knows what the hell he’s singing about. But if that’s the case, how come Thom Yorke made the list? Again, I go back. James Mercer, or . . . Don Henley? OK then.

8. Eva Cassidy. Unlike Karen Carpenter, who'd be playing Six Flags if she were still alive, Eva Cassidy doesn't get sentimental votes for dying young. She deserves to be on the list because her voice kills you.

9. Patty Griffin. If she’d never sung anything but “Mad Mission” and “Poor Man’s House,” she’d still be in my top 100.

10. Louis Armstrong. If you’re going to consider people like George Jones, then musicians with even bigger influence on rock and pop singers should be fair game. In addition to a couple of crossover hits, Satchmo makes the list because he basically invented a whole genre of music, and his voice is one of the great sources of joy and delight in the world.

I could make a whole new list out of pitch-perfect, distinctive singers like Joan Baez, Alison Krauss, K.D. Lang, and Bobby McFerrin (maybe a little too perfect?) and rootsy ones like Keb Mo, Taj Mahal, Cassandra Wilson, Robert Belfour, John Prine, and Ray LaMontagne. The truth is, I like Mark Knopfler more than most singers I could name, despite the fact that he mumbles his way through every song in pretty much the same way. And one night at a coffeehouse open mike, I heard a chubby teenage girl sing a song about her screwed-up life that was one of the most thrilling musical moments of mine. What it is we want from a singer? Emotional truth, right? Joy, heartbreak, frustration, rage, resignation, tranquility, wonder. A sense of true humanity. Transcendence.

I'm tempted to blow the whole Anglo/American thing apart and start with great singers from around the world: Sheila Chandra, Youssou N'Dour, Egberto Gismonti, Maire Brennan, Joseph Shabalala, the late, great Miriam Makeba, the late, greater Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and Nicolas Reyes of the Gipsy Kings, who might just be my favorite singer of all time.

But for English-language, find-it-at-the-record-store, popular music, this top ten list should replace the obvious mistakes on the Rolling Stone 100.

I have spoken. Dispatch this post to the offending judges at once. And please add your own entries to the list.

Top (Spulge) Nine Namesfor Malia & Sasha Obama's New Puppy

2008-11-07T15:12:00.000-08:00

President-elect Obama (I keep saying it, can’t quite believe it yet) gave a beautiful speech on election night, outlining challenges we'll have to meet and giving us a big Yes We Can coda. The only firm promise I recall from the speech, though, was to his daughters, whom he addressed directly, saying he loved them and that they had “earned the puppy that will be coming with us to the White House.”

Update: Malia apparently has a dog allergy. So the Obamas are looking for a non-shedder, like a labradoodle.

Fascinating, the way presidential pooches become public relations tools. It’s like we all have psychic ownership, a vested interest in the pet’s development and well-being. And the dog is unavoidably symbolic.When Bush’s terrier, Barney, bit that Reuters reporter this week, it not only resonated with Bush's relationship to the press but suggested an irritable, undisciplined administration, or perhaps simply a beleaguered one. Vicious? Rabid? The last eight years will have to be put down.

Even if we can’t clearly say what it’s a symbol of, the presence and personality of a pet offer an alternative image of a leader.
Perhaps the most famous: FDR and Fala. Then there was Nixon’s mawkish Checkers speech, which apparently worked with a sentimental sector of the American public. Oh, and Gerald Ford had a big dog that lounged around the Oval Office. Can't remember the name. I think he called it some non-dog thing like Patriot or something. And Clinton had Buddy. Didn't Buddy write a book during the first term? And didn't he hate the Clintons' cat?
I wonder what the Obamas will name their pet? You can submit ideas on Obama’s new transition site, along with your vision for America. (Nice site, really. Check it out.) Or just post 'em in a comment here. A few starter doggy names…

9. Fala
Pros: Rooseveltian, cementing the parallels between Obama's situation and FDR's. Traditional yet exotic-sounding. Gender-neutral. Can be extended into a Christmas carol refrain.
Cons: Derivative. And slightly elitist-sounding, like you’ve just taken a cigarette holder out of your mouth to say it.

8. Not-Barney
Pros: It’s anti-Bush. Suggests that reporters might not get their hands bitten.
Cons: Kind of stupid. Faintly echoes “Smith-Barney,” which could be a downer, reminding us of the financial crisis.

7. Madelyn
Pros: Pays homage to Obama’s maternal grandmother. Easily shortened to “Maddy.”
Cons: Only works for a female puppy. And the name might not make a sharp enough sound to effectively command obedience. Might turn into Mad Dog.

6. Aunt Fidget Wonkham-Strong
Pros: Literary, from a charming, old Roald Dahl story, “How Tom Beat Captain Najork and His Hired Sportsmen.” Whimsical. Easily shortened to “Fidget” or “Wonky.”
Cons: A little fussy. Again, limited to the bitches. And right-wingers would pounce on “Fidget” or “Wonky.”

5. Captain Najork
Pros: Literary (see previous entry). Military. And an abbreviation from either side (“Cap’n!” or “Jork!”) gives a nice, sharp sound to elicit a dog’s response.
Cons: Strictly male. Also, what is wrong with me?

4. Marty
Pros: Cute. Can be male or female, although it does lean to the former. For a male dog, it's a great name, suggesting MLK without getting aggressively masculine or radical about it. You don’t want Malcolm or Eldridge or even Bill. Marty might also suggest Martin Sheen, the best president we never had.
Cons: No good for a big dog. You’re pretty much stuck with a terrier or a teacup or a weiner here.

3. King
Pros: Classic. A bigger, nobler, more obvious reference to MLK, but also a real, live, good ol’ dog name.
Cons: Only good for a big male dog. And the more you think about it, the less good it seems. This is not the time for a King. If you want to reclaim democracy, name your dog “Thomas Jefferson” or "Lincoln" or “Studs Terkel” or “Joe the Poodle.” Scratch that last one.

2. Hope
Pros: It’s got audacity.
Cons: If the dog dies in office, what a PR nightmare.

And the number 1 name for the Obama puppy is…yours. Post ideas here, and if you come up with a really good one, tell it to the man.

Chain Reaction

2008-10-25T07:19:00.000-07:00

I stole this idea from John Moltz, one of my favorite Twitteristas. On his blog, he posted this photo of Obama's maternal grandparents and an excerpt from a piece by Ta-Nehisi Coates in The Atlantic, which I'll reprise below:

Ta-Nehisi Coates says:

...I was looking at this picture of Obama’s grandparents and thinking how much he looks like his grandfather. And suddenly, for whatever reason, I was struck by the fact that they had made the decision to love their daughter, no matter what, and love their grandson, no matter what. I’d bet money that they never even thought of themselves as courageous, that they didn’t give much thought to the broader struggles in the the world at the time. They were just doing what right, honorable people do.

We often give a pass to racists by noting that they were “of their times.” Fair enough, and I know Hawaii was a different beast, but still, today, let us speak of people who were ahead of their times, who were outside of their times. … Here’s to doing the right thing.

John Moltz titled his reprinting of this, Here's To Doing The Right Thing. I gave mine the title I did because I had an idea that if it got reprinted enough...I don't know. That it would sink in. That it would seep through the unconscious prejudices that so many of us have and overflow into We Shall Overcome or something. That we'd remember some part of ourselves that's connected to everyone else. And we'd love that part more than whatever it is in us that insists we're separate or better or somehow more human than others.

Steal this post and reprint it. Share it. Keep adding to it. We may not be ahead of our times, but we can at least make good on the promise of those who were. Yes, we can.

R.I.P., Paul Newman

2008-09-27T07:27:00.000-07:00

A year or so ago, I posted here about writing fan letters, and I made a list of people whose work or lives have inspired me enough that I feel an obligation to express my admiration and gratitude to them. I don't remember how close to the top of my list he was, but I actually wrote Paul Newman a fan letter last month, and finally put it in the mail a couple of weeks ago. Somebody had shown me a recent picture of him looking frail and I thought, better get this done before it's too late.

Paul Newman died yesterday. I have no idea whether or not he got my letter. In my narcissistic writer mind, I imagine he did, and the letter killed him. With kindness. If he did read it, I hope he felt, wow, I really have touched people's lives in some way he'd never quite felt it before. The letter mostly emphasized how his life has enriched mine, from movie moments I'll never forget, to witnessing his political activism, to the inspiration of the Hole In The Wall Gang camps for kids, to the good food, good works, and good packaging copy generated by Newman's Own. And I told him that he made me feel better about getting older, which is no mean feat.

I sent the letter to the Newman's Own address, and included a piece I'd written for an "encouragement project" at Hallmark. As fan letters go, it was pretty damn good, I must say. I really hope somebody got it to him.

And I hope anyone who reads this will take the time to tell someone who has inspired you what that inspiration means. These people aren't always going to be around.

I never told David Foster Wallace how his work blew my mind, and then it was suddenly too late. You can't anticipate an early exit like that, and I'm not saying a fan letter can prevent it. But it's worth doing. It feels satisfying to have gotten this one out before Paul Newman died, even if he never saw it. At least I didn't leave it on the table.

I hereby hoist a Fig Newman in honor of a great actor, humanitarian, and all-around cool cat. Man, them's good eatin'.

So this week, I'm picking a writer. What do I really want to say to...Philip Roth? Robert Bly? Billy Collins? Or Annie Proulx? It had better be good.

Mann About Internet

2008-09-25T21:29:00.000-07:00

I've mentioned Merlin Mann here before. I first bumped into him on Twitter, where everyone seems to follow his feed. He's written some of the funniest stuff imaginable in 140 characters or fewer, ever. He also maintains a creative productivity blog (43 Folders) that claims a vast readership, a much-laughed-at weekly podcast (You Look Nice Today: A Journal of Emotional Hygiene) with two other humorists, a video interview series (The Merlin Show) also on iTunes--AND a hilarious site called 5ives, which is simply lists of five things--some literary, some techie, and some just pop-topical, viz.:

Five ways Angelina Jolie can quickly acquire more children
1. gestate auxiliary sets of twins in climate-controlled Fendi bags
2. make Brad build a big-ass gingerbread house
3. explore viability of controversial “dorsal carriage” (a/k/a “butt fetus”)
4. surreptitiously cruise Gymboree with mallet and a sack
5. lay excess eggs in what’s left of Sean Young

A goofball. But a serious one. His basic premise about doing business on the web is, if people would just try harder to express a passionate point of view about what they're interested in, other people would get interested in it, too. 25,000+ Twitter followers and millions of hits annually on 43 Folders pretty well confirm that idea.

Merlin's personal blog is called Kung Fu Grippe. He posts a lot of video, promotes other sites and stuff he finds, reveals a little of his family life (married, doting on an infant daughter), and ruminates. He recently took a Twitter break, saying people could find him blogging instead. The last time I did, I found an amazing post, entitled "Better" -- a call to a higher quality of content creation. It's partly a renunciation of Twitter, suggesting that he'd become addicted to it and too distracted by it to create work he could be proud of. I miss the laughs, but I really respect the POV, which he's amplified over at 43 Folders as well. A big following of amused daily readers isn't enough. You have to feel that your creative life is truly creative and truly alive.

Update: Merlin's back on Twitter, but only tweeting one or two times a day. Still funny, still inimitable, and still getting archived in more people's Favorites than just about anybody.

There's a cluster of Merlin Mann links in my sidebar. It's hard to keep up with him, but trying has its rewards.

Mystery

2008-08-06T18:53:00.000-07:00

And speaking of matrimony, if this were my darling wife instead of a less lovely stranger, this minute of video would be even more beautiful, even more mysterious, even more of a sideways inky liquid dream.

irregular flow from 4khz on Vimeo.

Why isn't there more of this kind of thing? Wouldn't thirty of these be better than, I don't know, Two and a Half Men and Eighteen Ads?

It makes me wonder why my video camera is sitting on a shelf in the dining room. Why am I not making something beautiful with it right now? Why am I typing?

Where did this come from? An artist named 4khz, audio track by someone named Colleen, who calls it "Summer Water." Who are these people? Who am I? A guy who writes, but who seems to be reducing himself to a guy who types.

James Wright from his hammock: "I have wasted my life."

See what beauty does? It fucks you up.

Hitting the Heights

2008-07-09T14:18:00.000-07:00

Look at ‘em. Emily and Ned, in the canyon of rocks and marriage. I just don’t think brides come any more beautiful or grooms more groovy, or for that matter, weddings more wow. Or alliterative.

But first. We had a big party at the home of Ned's parents (Steve & Judi) the night before.
That's my darling, my momling, and one of my niecelings.
Many toasts were offered, including sublime humor and heartwarming sentiment from the Grinnell College crowd and an incoherent, point-A-to-point-12 ramble from yours truly. Wish I’d thought that one out a little…

We stayed at a nice b&b (Los Altos, in Grand Junction) on a mesa with views of the western half of Colorado in every direction. Weather in the 90s, desert-dry, enormous blue skies. The b&b room was great, the food OK, the company lively. My sis and the rest of the Boston ladies were there, as were my big bro, sis-in-law, and son Babe. And my folks scurried about, busy as could be, delighting in a rare confluence of family. It had been several years since this many of us had gathered in one spot.

Wedding day, I had to shlep beer and wine to the reception hall, which task required the help of Steve and his Chevy Suburban. So I come over and happen to catch Emily just back from getting her bridal hair done, standing among vases of flowers for the reception, going over a list of last-minute to-do’s. One look at her and my whole head exploded in tears. Steve said, “Well, this is going to take a while,” and left the two of us crying and hugging there. I was a mess.
Ah, Emily. I was struck throughout the weekend by her amazing calm, a steady grace and in-the-moment-ness unlike any bride I've ever seen. She is a wonder.

The ceremony was at the Colorado National Monument, elevation 7200 feet, give or take. What with my crying jags and shlepping, we were running late to get up there, yet the bro/sis caravan arrived before almost anyone else. Longest day of the year. All the time in the world.

Emily and Ned had decided to do the ceremony under the small ampitheater roof that’s up there, rather than right out on the monument cliff-edge.
Good call, for the shade. A blazingly hot day. Somehow, a hundred or so people managed to fit in under there, though only about 75 folding chairs did.
#1 son played conch shell and didgeridoo for the processional, so the rocks themselves were humming the whole ceremony into us from under our feet and all around the cliffs. He made that didge himself, by the way. Harvested the agave stalk, hollowed it and honed it--and man, can he play it.
#2 son was billed as “Ring Guy” and kept the rings in a little bag in his vest pocket. I encouraged him to say something like “Circles mean forever,” but come the moment, he just stepped up, handed off the rings, and sat back down, solemn as a sawed-off pope.

My parents ran the show, using the sun and summer solstice for a kind of metaphorical gravitational pull. We dads did our readings. Steve wanted 1st Corinthians, so I had to come up with something to balance that out. I decided on a personal story about Ned & Emily and tied it to a quote from Rumi. Pretty much everyone had teared up by the end of it, so I think I was like a warm-up act for the vows, which had the assembly gushing like hydrants.

For a final touch, the moms did blessings at the center of a big group grope, with each person touching at least one other person, so everybody was connected to the couple. Definitely an electric buzz, with a lot of people still sniffling and wiping their eyes.

Bouquet by my darling Penny Lorraine. The florist was a little prickly, but they did a great job keeping the hydrangeas and sweetpeas from giving up the ghost in that desert climate, and they put the thing together almost exactly as Penny had designed it.
Reception was mostly outdoors in the cool shade. The paintings there were a project of the party the night before--everyone contributed a color, a symbol, a vignette, or at least a blotch to the diptych. Dancing, cake, and a champagne toast inside the hall. Glorious.
#1 son gave a magnificent bride-specific toast, and Ned’s sister rejoined with one for the groom. A contingent of friends showed up in sailor hats, pursuant to several previous night toasts about how Ned used to surprise people by showing up in a sailor suit at odd moments. Somehow, Oliver wound up wearing one of the sailor hats--as unlikely a get-up as I can imagine for him.

The food was lovely (no pix yet). The caterer had used several of Emily’s and Ned’s favorite recipes, including Penny’s justly famed black bean/mango salsa. I’d do a 2-to-1 white-to-red ratio on the wine instead of a 3-to-1, but all the white sure looked good in the big tubs, along with six fat magnums (magna?) of champagne on ice.
The wedding quilt, a pet project of Emily’s mom (she got a a lot of people, including us, to contribute sections), features scraps from Emily’s and Ned’s old childhood clothes.
Oh, the friends. The reception (and the following night’s campfire) culminated in all the guitars coming out, voices raised, a gigantic singalong, mostly old stuff that all us baby boomers know and that twenty-somethings apparently still dig. (Wedding singalong tip: Bill Withers’s “Lean On Me” is hard to beat.) That's Em with Vivek, who with another friend kept the dinner and singalong going from start to finish ("we move people; that's what we do"). I led “When I’m 64” on the piano, with a didge solo by Oliver, laughing our way through at the half-assedness of it. At Jonah’s request, Ned did his famous ukulele number, “Princess Papuli got plenty papaya/She likes to give it away…” And Emily melted everybody down with a tribute to the happy couple’s next destination, “California Stars,” a Wilco/Billy Bragg tune. Everybody was still belting ‘em out when we left to get Jonah and his cousins to bed. Man, I love those Grinellians. Such smart, big-hearted, funny, soulful people. All that tuition was more than worth it, baby.
They rode off through a crowd of cheering, sparkler-waving loved ones.

Now it’s westward ho to northern Cal for the kidses. But oh, what a wedding we didses.

From the Colorado National Monument, you can see the beginning of a whole new world.

A Stiff Belt of Daddydom

2008-06-14T12:03:00.001-07:00

A week before my daughter's wedding, 20 things I should be doing besides this. But I just read the best blog post ever, by a guy I don't even know, who does what he calls "one of those Daddy blogs." Well, it is and it isn't. It's called "The Wind In Your Vagina," taken from something his four-year-old said, and I won't spoil the anecdote for you. It's on his home page, the link to which is now in my sidebar, right below The Bloggess (an insane Mommy blog).

The post I mentioned is entitled "Rubber," and I won't spoil that for you either. Superb. It made me wish I'd given this mishmash blodge-podge of meandering riff-raff some kind of focus. This guy has a definite niche, a distinctive voice and point of view, and a respectable, admiring audience. I found him on Twitter, where he posts under his blogonym, Black Hockey Jesus.

Wunderkind #3 is playing with a friend, darling spousette running errands. I'm trying to figure out what's left on my non-existent checklist. Got luggage rack, installed it (exacting to the fraction of an inch), all set to move son #1 out to Boulder en route to wedding. Wrote piece to read at wedding--is it everything it should be? No. Words fail. It's a whole new level of bittersweetness for me. Still waiting for return calls from florist and caterer. Script rewrite going OK, if you don't count having to send pages via fax. Blogging unnecessarily about all this? Check.

Word Problem
Today I calculated beer & wine for the wedding party, guest list now closer to 100 than 150. My formula is arbitrary, but sensible: Figure half beer drinkers, half wine drinkers (no liquor--too complicated). It's hot in the high desert on the longest day of the year, so figure a 3-to-1 ratio of white to red on the wine. Half lite, half something good on the beer. So, how much to order? The overriding imperative is, You Can't Run Out. Figure two drinks per person per hour. We have the hall for four hours. That's 800 drinks. So 400 beers, 100 bottles of wine @4 glasses per. WTF? 400 beers and 100 bottles of wine for 100 people sounds like backstage with the Stones. Can I get some blow with that? So cut it by 25%. 300 beers and 75 bottles of wine, 50 white, 25 red. Wait, that's a 2-to-1. Plus, case lots, so multiples of 12...72 bottles? 54 white, 18 red. A better ratio, but...

Is this insane? Yes. But if you cut by half, it doesn't sound like enough. So, 300 beers = 12 and 1/2 cases. Say 13. Say five cases of lite, five cases of good ale, and maybe three cases of generic lager. 54 bottles of white wine = 18 chard, 12 sauv blanc, 12 pinot g, 6 blended, and 6 viogner. For the 18 reds, I think I'll ditch the cabernet. Who drinks cab on a hot day in the desert? But you kind of have to offer merlot, don't you? Maybe 6 merlot, 6 shiraz, 6 pinot? Maybe drop one and double the pinot--it's lighter & still in fashion. Maybe there's too much variety here.

Shit! What about champagne? Aw, jeez. Maybe scrap the blends, reduce the chardonnay, add a case of bubbly? How many little toast pours can you get out of a case? I knew I forgot something....

And I still gotta buy a belt to match my shoes.

I never wear belts. They seem like quaint holdovers from a more decorous era of loose-fitting trousers and corporal punishment. But you don't go beltless to your daughter's wedding.

I've been to most of the decent clothiers in Kansas City, and only came close to buying a belt at one store. They all look ugly and clunky to me. Can you even dye a belt to match this brown? No? Jolly old town.

Exit the Draggin'

2008-05-30T08:24:00.000-07:00

Sick twice in the past six weeks, the same gross cold on either side of a hay fever month. This second bout of hacking, wheezing, and post-nasal gradoo sneaked in while I was distracted by itchy, watery eyes and non-stop nose-blowing. Man, it's a drag.

So. What am I doing to cause this, besides working too much and not exercising? Cuz that's nothing new. I contemplated my outlook of late. Despite springtime and many family joys and Twitter and what I think is a fairly sanguine predisposition, it's been pretty lousy. I've been down on myself, on work, on the world at large, life in general. And I realized, I've come to view Positive Thinking kinds of programming as vacuous happy talk. Why? I don't know. I used to be much more of a "create your own reality" kind of thinker. Where'd that go? I don't think I can blame the Bush administration for this.

So I do a search on positive thinking, just to get reacquanted. And I find the Positivity Blog. Sound horrible? Maybe. But lo and behold, the most recent post is about a major hero of my teen years, Bruce Lee. Turns out, on top of his legendary martial arts skills, Bruce also kicked ass as a positive thinker and productivity guru. (Go ahead, be like me and say, "Yeah, look how efficient he was at dying young.") But lo! The blogger quotes several key principles of Bruce Lee's personal and professional philosophy, and then expands on them. The second principle in particular caught my eye:

“If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.”

Adding more thoughts and thinking things over for the 111th time may create a sense of security. It’s also a good way to procrastinate and to avoid taking that leap you know you should take. And the more you think, the harder it gets to act. Perhaps because you want to keep that comforting sense of security and avoid the risk of wrecking that feeling.

Thinking has its place. It can help you plan a somewhat realistic route to your goal and help you avoid future pitfalls. Overthinking is however just a habit that will help you waste a lot of time.

I've been doing exactly this. I've been putting off several things that have to get done for the June wedding trip, and continually thinking, "I need to call so & so, and then I need to do blah-blah, but before I can do that, I've gotta find out X, Y, & Z--oh, and I need a luggage rack for the car..." and ALWAYS, to conclude this litany, the refrain: "I don't have time to do all this shit."

I just found a 3x5 to-do list in the pocket of a pair of jeans I haven't worn in at least two weeks. There's only one thing on that list that I can cross off. I've done one thing I need to do, out of about twelve.

Maybe I'm sick because all I do is think. The sheer tonnage of stuff I've put off doing has crushed my immune system.

This changes today. I'm finding out X, Y, Z, calling so & so, doing blah-blah, and ordering the goddamn luggage rack. I have time to do it. I just don't have time to keep thinking about it and telling myself I don't have time to do it.

And I thought the only lesson Bruce had to teach me was the one about the finger pointing at the moon. "Concentrate on the finger, and you miss all that heavenly glory."

The Weepies, Indeed

2008-04-29T11:41:00.000-07:00

They don't call themselves The Weepies for nothin'. This song killed me. Literally. I'm lying in my office with an X for a right eye and evaporating tears for a left. With my soft underbelly exposed, I got stabbed to deeper death by several silvery feminine needles.

While I was dead, I had visions of the feminine principle, the flower that splits the rock, the water that wears away the rock, the wind that shears the rock, the rising and falling of tides, wind on the water, Mother Nature, breath of life....

When I caught my breath and came back to life, I vowed to stop being so goddamn obdurate and unbalanced and hardheaded, to take yoga again, to play the piano more, to love everybody more, to be more joyful and alive. Then I hit replay, and the openness of the song and the simplicity of the video killed me all over again.

Dedicated to my late great Nana, my big-hearted mom, my faithful sis, my lovely miracle of a wife, and my soon-to-be-married darling daughter. To all you Howard women who've tried to make me a better man. Someday, I swear, there'll be fruit on that tree.

VII: Not To Sum Up

2008-04-26T07:50:00.000-07:00

Left town before I could complete the seven-part cycle. Marooned in a small Kansas burg for three days with alleged hotel room wireless that taunted me, daunted me, then ditched me altogether. Before I left I'd been considering a few Rumi quotes to wrap all this up in a nice Sufi turban. But I happened to look up at my wall, where the following poem has been pinned since last year, when I hit 51. And it occurs to me that maybe the best credo is one that doesn't strain for a big summation, but that speaks clearly about How Life Feels Right Now, viz:

On Being Fifty-Something
after Po Chü-i

From thirty to forty, you are distracted
by the five lusts, which I don’t need to go into.
From seventy to eighty, you’re prone
to a hundred diseases or more.

Who can remember their names,
or the ones of friends who’ve gone
and died on you? But, from fifty to sixty,
you’re free of all that.

Grief doesn’t know where you live yet,
only gravity, the body starting to sag
under the weight of memories that,
like extra pounds around the middle,

you can’t seem to lose. At the theater, you doze,
your eyelids curtains that refuse to stay raised.
Suddenly, you’re the director of a play
about to begin. Time: no time like the present.

Place: a room you think you recognize.
On the desk, a typewriter squats like a toad,
waiting for a tasty word to devour.
The wall’s the wrong color, too cheerful,

but its painted muslin quivers:
from backstage someone tries the door,
which refuses to give. How young you were
when such bright shabbiness was yours,

how like a desert full of dream.

-Debora Greger

I don't quite buy all this--grief has my info in its dark little rolodex, and I've never fallen asleep at the theater. But the feeling of it seems right. I just had a vivid image of the old desk my dad made me when I got an apartment off-campus, my second year of college. The house on Normal Street, the well-lit room with two windows, the desk with detachable legs, my big ol' Royal manual typewriter, on which I wrote the first real poems of my life.

I wrote one about the old ladies who sat on the porch swing across the street. They were always out there, not swinging, just hanging, in floral dresses kind of like the peeling wallpaper in my room. If youth and old age were on either side of the street, maybe fifty-something was driving up and down it. The old ladies had been dropped off into their dotage, and sooner or later a car would pull up outside my house, waiting to pick me up. I'd be busy, but I'd hear it honking out there.

I climb in. We drive. Every time I look at the driver's face, it changes. Sometimes I'm driving. Occasionally, I have an idea where we're going. Even when I don't, we're going.

Looking over all seven, I think, OK. This I more or less believe.

PS: Scott, consider yourself tagged. You're it.

What William Stafford Says Is Credo 6

2008-04-22T06:31:00.000-07:00

William Stafford came to Hallmark some years ago, one of the high points of my career. I used to have dozens of his poems photocopied to wallpaper over the crummy paneling in the tiny upstairs study of the first house I owned.

He was a Quaker, a conscientious objector in World War II, and got up every morning at 4:00 to write poems. Thousands of poems, many of them as good as this, one of my all-time favorite poems for 30 years now:

Ask Me

Some time when the river is ice, ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.

Credo 5: Trust, Faith, Simplicity, Somethin'

2008-04-21T06:09:00.000-07:00

I had occasion to think about faith, rehashing the story of Passover this weekend. I'm generally faith-resistant, and wonder sometimes what it really means to "believe" anything. I'd have had a hard time with Moses, I think. After the long exchanges about faith and skepticism my sis and I had re the Rev. Wright dust-up, I decided to try on a little faith to see how it feels. Faith in what? I don't know. That all will be well, I guess. It feels preposterous, is how it feels. But if I hadn't been at least trying to fake it, I wonder if I'd have been as receptive to this poem by Thomas R. Smith. I'd never heard of him. But I can hear this:

Trust

It's like so many other things in life
to which you must say no or yes.
So you take your car to the mechanic.
Sometimes the best thing to do is trust.

The package left with the disreputable-looking
clerk, the check gulped by the night deposit,
the envelope passed by dozens of strangers—
all show up at their intended destinations.

The theft that could have happened doesn't.
Wind finally gets where it was going
through the snowy trees, and the river, even
when frozen, arrives at the right place.

And sometimes you sense how faithfully your life
is delivered, even though you can't read the address.

Up against that, of course, we have the mechanic who does a crap job on your car and inflates the bill, the disreputable-looking clerk who's earned every bit of that bad rep and will make it worse by the time he's done with you, the bank error and ensuing bounced check, the mail that gets lost, the theft that might not have happened but did, with an assault thrown in as a bonus, the wind that not only gets where it was going, but wreaks havoc on the coast, leaving many dead and dispossessed, and the river that no longer arrives because of the Three Gorges Dam, or because global warming has reduced it to a trickle, or because Las Vegas diverted all the water. And all the many ways your life can feel like a square package in a round P.O. box.

Maybe trust is just the small, tenuous act that suggests a larger, more abiding faith. I don't know what I trust either, except maybe the possibility of expressing something about these ideas that's more compelling than the ideas themselves.

That bit about the river being frozen and still arriving is a nod to one of my favorite poems of all time. I was saving it for last, but now I think it'll have to be next.

Credo, III & IV

2008-04-18T06:28:00.000-07:00

Sorry, Jen, missed yesterday. So, a two-parter today. First, a haiku, then a poem about that haiku. What about these two poems is All About Me? Well, the first suggests the union of opposites (my core aesthetic principle) and how an awareness of that union extends consciousness beyond immediate experience, out into the world, into the life of other things, forward and backward in time.

But talking about haiku is like smelling a flower with Vix inhalers jammed in your nose. Let's just have it (and remember, it's a translation, so it doesn't follow the syllabic rules for haiku in English):

on the one-ton temple bell
a moon moth, folded into sleep
sits still

That's by our 18th-century pal, Buson. It's probably one of the most well-known haiku among American readers because of Billy Collins, our most widely-read contemporary poet. Collins is funny and makes accessible poems out of everyday subjects, imbuing them with a calm philosophical depth under slangy, sometimes showily metaphorical surfaces. He's a Buddhist. I love this next poem for the connections it makes between literature and life, and for the way it shows how immediate experience can transform your ideas or beliefs. It also shows how things get stuck in your head. Right now, I've got "Hideaway" by The Weepies stuck in mine. Maybe I can dislodge it by typing up this poem. And uploading a photo...

Japan

Today I pass the time reading
a favorite haiku,
saying the few words over and over.

It feels like eating
the same small, perfect grape
again and again.

I walk through the house reciting it
and leave its letters falling
through the air of every room.

I stand by the big silence of the piano and say it.
I say it in front of a painting of the sea.
I tap out its rhythm on an empty shelf.

I listen to myself saying it,
then I say it without listening,
then I hear it without saying it.

And when the dog looks up at me,
I kneel down on the floor
and whisper it into each of his long white ears.

It's the one about the one-ton
temple bell
with the moth sleeping on its surface,

and every time I say it, I feel the excruciating
pressure of the moth
on the surface of the iron bell.

When I say it at the window,
the bell is the world
and I am the moth resting there.

When I say it into the mirror,
I am the heavy bell
and the moth is life with its papery wings.

And later, when I say it to you in the dark,
you are the bell,
and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you,

and the moth has flown
from its line
and moves like a hinge in the air above our bed.

The first time I read that, I thought, ah, Billy Collins isn't just an entertainer. I'd long suspected that, but now I knew it in my resonating bones.

Credo, Part Deux

2008-04-16T13:43:00.000-07:00

Remember in Oliver Stone's ridiculous biopic of Jim Morrison, when Val Kilmer says, "Gimme some death!"--how you totally identified with him, if only in the hope that you wouldn't have to see the rest of the film? No? You didn't beg for some death? Well, Stephen Dunn is going to give it to you anyway, in this, the second in our series of Poems Reflecting On Some Facet Or Other Of My Life Philosophy. This is about the importance of having an acute sense of mortality.

Choosing To Think Of It

Today, ten thousand people will die
and their small replacements will bring joy
and this will make sense to someone
removed from any sense of loss.
I, too, will die a little and carry on,
doing some paperwork, driving myself
home, the sky is simply overcast,
nothing is any less than it was
yesterday or the day before. In short,
there's no reason or every reason
why I'm choosing to think of this now.
The short-lived holiness
true lovers know, making them unaccountable
except to spirit and themselves—suddenly
I want to be that insufferable and selfish,
that sharpened and tuned.
I'm going to think of what it means
to be an animal crossing a highway,
to be a human without a useful prayer
setting off on one of those journeys
we humans take. I don't expect anything
to change. I just want to be filled up
a little more with what exists,
tipped toward the laughter which understands
I'm nothing and all there is.
By evening the promised storm
will arrive. A few in small boats
will be taken by surprise.
There will be survivors, and even they will die.

-Stephen Dunn

PS: Don't blame me for the cheerless existential yearning here. Jen Kostecki made me do it.

A Credo in Seven Parts

2008-04-15T11:26:00.000-07:00

My friend Jen Kostecki tagged me, saying I now have to post seven things. Any seven things, but I must post them and then (I guess) tag someone else.

I decided on short philosophical poems, Dear Readers. Taken as a whole, they shall express my Life Credo. I have no idea yet what the other six poems will be, but the great Ron Padgett will set it off:

Ladies and Gentlemen In Outer Space

Here is my philosophy:
Everything changes (the word "everything"
has just changed as the
word "change" has: it now
means "no change") so
quickly that it literally surpasses my belief,
charges right past it
like some of the giant
ideas in this area.
I had no beginning and I shall have
no end: the beam of light
stretches out before and behind
and I cook the vegetables
for a few minutes only,
the fewer the better. Butter
and serve. Here is my
philosophy: butter and serve.

Internally Erupting Description

2008-04-14T09:04:00.000-07:00

Today, my friend Amazon sent me an e-mail, saying that because I've ordered or reviewed books by Jean Baudrillard (who?), I might like a book by Chris Turner (who?) called "Heartfelt: Internal Eruption" (huh?).

OK. So I click the link, where I am given a pop quiz:

"Do you believe in love? Have you ever had your heart broken? Have you ever struggled with letting go? Have you ever needed a second chance? Have you ever yearned to be together, yet were forced by the circumstances of life to be apart? Has your heart ever felt hopeless and out of breath? Have you ever just wanted more? Has your heart ever played music to the memories? Have you ever lost confidence somewhere along the way? Have you ever hurt the one you love? Have you ever wrestled with relationship commitment? Have you ever given your all in hopes of happiness . only to be left undervalued, saddened, and alone?"

Yes, this is all under the Book Description. And if you pass (fail?) the test, then:

"Let the voice of Heartfelt: Internal Eruption whisper into the ears of your soul. Let the authenticity of Heartfelt: Internal Eruption assist you in always facing the reality of the situation. Let the sincerity of Heartfelt: Internal Eruption move you into a state of confidence necessary to mature and eventually become better. Finally . believe in the miracles of God . life . restoration ... healing . Love . and you."

As John Hodgman (I'm now following him on Twitter) says, That Is All. (Whew.)

Once You Go Twitter, You Never Go Bitter

2008-04-09T19:23:00.000-07:00

Good thing I don't have more than three deadlines this week, because I finally got around to checking out Twitter. Ye Gods. It's the social networking thang o' my dreams.

Do you loathe the chaotic sprawl of MySpace and Facebook? Does e-mailing everybody seems cumbersome? Has your own blog grown stale (I can't even scrape crumbs off this thing by now)? Why, yes, you do, it does, and yecch. And yet you feel the need to keep your hand out there flailing in cyberspace, just to make sure a few people know you're still on the planet, and vice-versa. Well, have I got a tweet deal for you.

It's simple (once you orient yourself). Quick (140 character max per update, or tweet). Austere, yet whimsical. Insert other wine-tasting terms here. And Twitter is peopled by smartypantses galore.

I'm not even snorting it, man, I'm mainlining. Finding hilarious and newsy stuff to follow, getting a profile photo (which I've never bothered to do here), pulling long people-to-people threads. Sent out a big email, mostly to workmates, but also a few friends I just haven't been able to keep up with, saying, here's how we can keep up. About a dozen or so signed on, though some have struggled with that initial sense of being out there alone, tied to the mast while sirens sing in the distance.

Or yodel. Man there's some funny out there. Two guys in particular have amused me no end. Joshua Allen spurns the quotidian "I'm just having coffee" tweet and creates goofy little scenes and character voices...

"Dawn. City Park. Five empty Manischewitz bottles. A loincloth made out of a yarmulke and dental floss. Today, I am a man. L'chaim, officers."

And Merlin Mann (host of "You Look Nice Today" on iTunes) documented the Olympic torch protests in the Bay Area this afternoon, viz:

"Hippies we spoke with say they want to fashion the torch into a 'sweet-ass lama bong,' for, quote, 'freedom and shit.' Back to you, Tom."

All this stuff fills your home page and heart with delight, once you find it and Follow.

Coolest of all (damn, I blew this as a segue from the previous post): my first follower/followee was Barack Obama. And you thought he was a mere leader.

The Antidote

2008-03-23T12:55:00.000-07:00

If stupidity, racism, and careless bloviation are the disease, here's the cure. Obama's amazing speech on race, religion, and, really, the meaning of America:

By now, everyone's probably either seen it or read it. But if you just let it run while you're working on your computin' machine, it's like a salve that soothes while you sleep. Or you can read the transcript.

That's what I call presidential. If this guy doesn't deserve to lead the country, I'm not sure I want to live here.

Stupid Rhetoric Comes In Every Color

2008-03-15T08:59:00.000-07:00

So now the forces of white-wing intolerance are decrying the Afrocentric intolerance of Jeremiah Wright, the pastor at Barack Obama’s church. And the old guy (one of those crazy-charismatic preachers in the call-and-response improv tradition of the black church) has gotten the boot from Obama’s campaign.

It’s about time. It was almost a year ago that I read in the NYT about Obama’s connection to Wright. Why has it taken so long for this to blow up? From what I can gather, the messages that have created the uproar are these:

1. America is a terrorist, racist state.
2. Islamic terrorism against the U.S. is thereby justified (“chickens coming home to roost”) even if it’s wrong.
3. White American oppression of blacks and other minorities is the root of all evil.
4. Hillary is just another rich, white person and can’t understand the African-American experience any better than McCain can.
5. “Not God BLESS America--God DAMN America.”

That last one, of course, is the one that has right-wingers foaming at the mouth.

Obama was on all the cable news shows last night, doing damage control, and I also saw Wright himself on Sham Hannity & All-Bland Colmes. Here’s what I took away from those interviews:

1. Wright is a scholar (he deftly, articulately dismantled criticisms of liberation theology) and a pretty sharp guy, considering how stupid the stuff is that he’s been saying to wind people up over the last five years or so.
2. Obama repudiates these particular messages but not Wright himself. He says that would be like kicking an uncle out of your family because you disagree with him.
3. Obama says Wright is the guy who “brought me to Jesus, brought me to church,” and that he married the Obamas and baptized their daughters. He also says Wright was about to retire when Obama first caught wind of some of these statements. Apparently, this is why Obama hasn't left the congregation.
4. Obama claims that he’s never been present in the church when this kind of message has been delivered by Wright or anyone else, and that if he had, he’d have expressed his disagreement then and there. He says it’s a social justice ministry, and that all he’s heard coming from the pulpit is talk about “Jesus, faith, and helping the poor.”
5. This won’t end here.

If Obama gets the nomination, I bet there'll be 527 groups all over this issue, and at least one of them will land a Swift Boat punch. I really think this crap could be the undoing of the most amazing political moment since 1968. If not, if he survives this, it’s yet another stunning accomplishment by the calmest, fastest-learning man in politics.

Part of me thinks: See how stupid religion is? Look what happens when people stop doubting and get too sure of their own sense of what’s righteous and what’s not. And part of me thinks, isn't religion great, that it can so infatuate people with the noise of their own passionate truths, they don't even pay attention to how stupid they sound? And part of me thinks it could be worse. The preacher could’ve been Fred Phelps.

In his first book, Obama eloquently describes the moment when Wright won him over, with the “Audacity of Hope” sermon (which gave Obama the title for his second book), making a connection between the struggle of the poor with Biblical stories of faith, perseverance, and salvation. As profound and defining as that moment may have been for Obama, the truth is, I wish he’d remained a skeptic.

Wow, Vampire Weekend

2008-02-27T12:17:00.000-08:00

My friend Stacey sent me a link to the catchiest, most kinetic music video in recent memory. Two-and-a-half minutes of irrepressible joy.

It reminds me of the early Police, back when they were making really great, thumpy, zippity music and having fun in front of a video camera. "De-Doo-Doo-Doo, De-Da-Da-Da," anyone?

What kills me is the idea that there are dozens of little bands out there, doing bang-up numbers like this, and there's just not enough time to listen or watch or even think about it.

Food of love (and finger-puppet fish), play on.

So Cool, It's Frozen

2008-02-13T12:27:00.000-08:00

Why is this so utterly freakin' cool?

I have theories:
1. Because of the scale of the mischief.
2. Because it's disruptive, but essentially harmless.
3. Because of the way it forces a shift in awareness--the wonder and curiosity it elicits.
4. Because of the tension between opposites: stasis amid movement, pointlessness amid purpose, precision amid chaos, art amid commerce, a moment of timelessness in a place that's all about schedules, the unexpected monkey wrench thrown into the quotidian works.
5. Because it has a beginning, a middle, and an end—Aristotelian beauty—and each has a different effect.

Maybe the point about pointlessness is the real thing here. Can something be beautiful just because it's pointless?

William Carlos Williams has a poem that answers: Yes. Here's the first half of "The Crowd At The Ball Game":

The crowd at the ball game
is moved uniformly

by a spirit of uselessness
which delights them—

all the exciting detail
of the chase

and the escape, the error
the flash of genius—

all to no end save beauty
the eternal—

So in detail they, the crowd,
are beautiful

(Nice poem, up to there, and then he kind of loses it, if you ask me.) The ball game is the freeze and the crowd is everybody in Grand Central who's not in on the joke—and the beauty of the crowd = the details of their response. Don't you just love the looks of bewilderment on their faces, the guy poking that frozen girl in the arm, the driver honking and radioing for help, and that great remark at the end by the guy who thought maybe he was the only one seeing it happen? Fabulous.

Up with pointless acts of mind-fuckery! Up with Improv Everywhere!

Bush Comes To Hallmark

2008-02-01T15:21:00.000-08:00

Streets blocked, parking lots closed, sniffer dogs sniffin', a motorcade a quarter-mile long (including armored SWAT vehicles, an ambulance, and sinister SUVs with weird black cylinders on the roof), and curtains of tarps hung from outdoor walkways to prevent a long-distance sighting through a rifle scope. Not to give you whiplash after my last post about Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy, but thus arrives George Bush the younger, trailing clouds of much ado about not much.

He was here to make a speech on the state of the economy to a select group of Hallmark employees. At this point, I think "make a speech on the state the economy" means "convince people that there's gold in them thar turds." I was not invited, but I saw a lot of the security detail at work outside my window.

While he was here, the president apparently made a card at Kaleidoscope, our creativity workshop for kids, asking a group of reporters, "Who deserves a valentine?" I guess love is just not gonna be unconditional with this guy.

At the Hallmark visitors center, he had a brief run-in with Maxine, our beloved curmatron, viz.:

I'm trying to imagine what words of wisdom she might have about the experience...

"When life give you lemons, blame Florida."

Dr. King

2008-01-21T08:50:00.000-08:00

In June of 1968, my parents took us four kids on a trip to Washington, D.C. My dad had some work to do at the National Archives. We stayed with the family of Jim Everett, a CIA agent recently returned from Europe. There was a lot of political talk around the table that I didn't understand. Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assassinated two months earlier, and the primary season was pushing toward the conventions. My parents were Eugene McCarthy supporters. The Everetts (and all us kids) were in love with Bobby Kennedy.

I was a month from turning 12. My brain was almost entirely devoted to girls and sports. I found the two Everett girls (who were maybe five to seven years older--one was home from college, I think) fascinating, especially the younger one, dark and curvy, who spent some time one evening explaining (alas, not demonstrating) what it meant to get to second base, third base, etc. I was enthralled. The whole etc. was really beginning to capture my imagination.

So political ideas were peripheral to me. But I remember being amazed when we saw Resurrection City, the vast tent city that sprawled over the National Mall. Dr. King had helped to organize the Poor People's Campaign, and in the wake of his assassination, a huge march had been organized and had ended in D.C. And now here were poor people and activists from all over the country, living in tents. It was my first real exposure to the civil rights movement. Up until then, it was just stuff that happened on TV.

Our hosts' experience abroad had their whole family interested in political issues, or maybe they'd always been. My mom and the Everett women talked a little feminism here and there. I remember the eldest daughter playing folk songs with her dad one night--a little Pete Seeger, some S&G, Peter, Paul & Mary. My appreciation of this was on the "wow, cool guitars" level. I was still playing my Sears Silvertone and the all-but-untuneable $20 Marco Polo electric I'd found at a garage sale the previous summer. I knew about six chords, and was impressed by the Everett's virtuosity.

We were there about a week. We'd drop Dad at the Archives building and go off to the Smithsonian, the National Gallery, all that. And in the evenings, everyone was closely watching the primaries--instead of baseball. What were they, crazy?

I woke up one morning to the sound of women crying. I came upstairs and the daughters were red-eyed and the moms blowing their noses, watching TV.

Bobby was dead. My mom was really wailing. I was young and stupid enough to think, "But you didn't even want him to win. What are you so upset about?" The whole mood of the trip changed. You'd see people crying on street corners. There were vigils all over, and of course a huge one at Resurrection City.

I saw Jackie Kennedy and her kids on TV, but the images conflate with JFK's funeral somehow. The one thing that stuck was Ted Kennedy's eulogy, the sound of his voice quoting, "some men see things as they are and say 'why?' I see things that never were and say 'why not?'" The sorrow in it! The guy looked like he'd rather have had it happen to him.

I remember thinking, if my brother got shot, I don't think I'd be that upset. But to lose Bobby. To me, Bobby was the future. Young (it never occurred to me that he was actually older than my parents), smart, energetic, handsome--dashing, even. He was like a shiny trophy that the country might win if we were cool enough.

We weren't, of course. We'd already killed JFK and then Dr. King--the ultimate "I see things that never were and say 'why not?'" guy, probably the closest thing to an actual Christ figure ever to appear in U.S. politics. We were in an unjust war that was going disastrously, there were race riots all over the country, and King's legacy was on the lawn in D.C., holding thousands of candles for yet another light that had gone out. At least that's how it looked to me.

I date my interest in politics to that trip. My dad, every day, was going into the National Archives, where (as he'd shown us one morning) he passed a very real-looking copy of the Declaration of Independence in a glass case right up front. Walking around the stunningly designed city, all that classical white-marble architecture, riding that amazing subway system and having my mom point out our own Senator Symington getting off a train (I was just old enough/young enough to chase him down the platform yelling "Senator Symington!" and ask to shake his hand). And I'll never forget standing in the Lincoln Memorial, reading the Gettysburg Address and feeling those magnificent sentences send chills down my spine. I think all of that--the importance placed on the events there, the idea that politics mattered, that protest was woven into it, that it was a life-and-death struggle, really--that was the formative moment for my political awareness.

And that, my friends, is why I think it's a profound moment in American history when two of the leading presidential candidates are a woman and an African-American. To me, it's a fulfillment of the promise Lincoln spoke of and the hope that JFK and Bobby seemed to embody, and of course, the dream Dr. King asked us all to share. All four got shot. But somehow the promise and the hope and the dream didn't entirely disappear--despite relentless efforts to dismantle them. Without Dr. King, there'd be no Barack Obama in serious contention for the White House. Whatever your political views, the mere fact and magnitude of his candidacy is to be celebrated. Martin Luther King, Jr., you continue to rock.

Plus, we get a day off of work because of you, so we can sit around and write stuff.

New Year's Resolution Broken on January 12th

2008-01-14T11:33:00.000-08:00

50 push-ups a day. The perfect resolution. Specific, not too demanding (there's a thousand-a-day-club online for obsessive compulsives), and I can do them at home or at the gym I never go to--hence the need for an exercise resolution--or at the office. Wherever there’s a horizontal surface, which means anywhere but mid-air.

Here's a guy who can do them in mid-air. I changed this post and threw in the video just so you could see what I'm aspiring to. Toward the end, you'll see the coolest push-up ever.

My point is, it wasn't all the time I spent levitating on Saturday that kept me from getting to the push-ups. What happened was, I woke up the next day, walked out to get the Sunday NYT, saw my buff gay neighbor getting something out of his car, and realized that I hadn’t done my 50. I actually like doing them. I just forgot.

My buff gay neighbor is older than I am. And although he's no Scott Wills (cuz who is?), he's proud enough of his arms to wear shirts with the sleeves torn off even when it's below freezing. I bet he watches himself in the mirror as he tears the sleeves off. Five shirts = ten reps. The guy is ripped, man.

So I’m back to doing push-ups again, but now having missed a day is bugging me. The whole thing seems pointless, somehow, even though the point was never merely to fulfill the resolution, but to get some exercise for the love of God you lazy bastard why can’t you get off your ass. I’ve failed, and I feel bad about it.

I need to sit for a long period of time and reflect on this. Maybe drink a little, eat something. Grab the laptop, get some writing done. Turn on the tube to distract myself from the shame. It’s going to take some time to get over it. The rest of the year, probably.

This thing Bono told me one time

2007-12-17T05:58:00.000-08:00

Last week, rumors blew through that both founders of Product (RED) were in K.C. to see all the cards and stuff we created for Hallmark (RED) and celebrate the launch. Well, it wasn't the first time for such rumors, so some people didn't bother to go out to the big pep rally on Friday afternoon at the far end of Hallmark world. I almost didn't, with a deadline to meet on my last day at work for the year. But (RED) was my favorite project of 2007, and I figured, well, at least Bobby Shriver will be there. He's come in before.

It was standing-room only, probably 250 people crammed into the room. And there was Bobby Shriver with the (RED) business people and his own rock-star charisma. And we saw a video montage of the print ad campaign, billboard in Times Square, news coverage and all the media buzz with Oprah, etc., and a slice of the promotional video with my "believe in a thousand impossible things" card. And Bobby et al. spoke about how impressive our creative approach to (RED) has been, and how much it means to have these products distributed in more than 3000 Hallmark stores.

And then freakin' BONO walked in. Singing.

I'm dreaming of a RED Christmas
With every Christmas card I write...
May your days be merry and bright (or something else instead)
And may all your Christmases be RED

And we all went mildly apeshit. Then Bono (cuz we hang out) talked for about 15 minutes, mostly about the effect of the money we're directing into the Global Fund, how it really works on the ground. A couple of stories he told were the kind of thing that put a lump in your throat. He talked about a conversation he'd had with a Holocaust survivor who'd assured him that it wasn't overstepping to compare the AIDS epidemic in Africa with the Holocaust. This survivor had talked about his recurring nightmare of being loaded onto a train as a child, and how the image that kept coming back was not of the camp he'd been sent to, but of the train-loading moment, the bystanders' stares, the looks on the faces of people who felt they couldn't help, watching as the Jews were herded into the boxcars. Bono finished this story by saying that the work we were doing in service of Africans trying to survive was the equivalent of lying down on the tracks to keep the trains from moving. He called Hallmark a "heroic company" for doing it.

Well, you don't get that kind of inspiration every day. And although a lot of people made Hallmark (RED) possible, I insist, again, that it never would have happened without the unflagging effort of fellow writer Sarah Mueller, who started this push to support the Global Fund before (RED) even existed. (Plus, how can I have a post about Bono and not mention his most ardent fan?)

So. I'll post that promotional video again, only this time, I'm pulling it off of YouTube, so it gets the hits there.

It's what my pal Bono would want.

Wind Inside A Letterbox

2007-11-28T11:55:00.000-08:00

Hadn’t been out of the house in weeks due to various people’s various stupid illnesses and commitments and my own stupid work schedule, and when we finally got a night out, my darling spousette wanted to see Denzel and Russell’s tete-a-tete in American Gangster, and though I was willing, other movies were higher on my list, so when we excaped later than espected and missed the 4:00 show but could still make a 4:25 of ACROSS THE BLOODY MAGNIFICENT STRAWBERRY FREAKIN’ UNIVERSE, I was willinger still. I’ve been worried that my current movie project might be late to catch a wave of resurgent interest in‘60s culture, what with new anthologies and retrospectives of the lit and music of the time appearing right and left, not to mention documentaries and retrospectives and books of San Francisco poster art and articles on Frye boots and ads with psychedelic leanings and Gus Van Sant optioning The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and the release of this Julie Taymor monster, which I feared might encroach on Drop City territory and I had to know just how much....
Well, the closest thing in it to anything I’ve written is the Merry Pranksters sequence on the bus, with Bono as the acid evangelist. If the photo weren’t so wee, you could see him there, mid-“I Am The Walrus” (a splendid cover, although let’s face it, nobody can out-Lennon John). Happily, this sequence stomps on Gus Van Sant’s material far harder than on the toes of Drop City, in which the bus exodus has been montaged and redacted and deleted and reduxed and Dylanized and wrung through various drafts, and currently is only an oblique moment in a character flash. Our bus does figure, and there’s no way for it not to be prominent when it does, because, y’know, bus. But I felt relieved by this take on it and pretty much everything else, including a group sprawl in the tall grass...

...that seemed obviously influenced by the photo on the Drop City book jacket, viz.:
Um, the influence is more obvious in the movie, where you can actually see the images. ANYWAY. Across the Universe is a work of visual, conceptual, and (obviously) musical genius. Julie Taymor is God. She creates worlds. The screenwriters (Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais) figured out such brilliant ways to use the lyrics of the songs, you laugh and get goosebumps at the same time. Know how it’s always a lesser experience (and often an unbearable one) to hear someone other than the Beatles do a Beatles song? Not here. The voices and arrangements are splendid and so well-conceived as action, dialogue, and mise-en-scene that the songs don’t just “advance the story”—they ARE the story. And the astounding production design, camerawork, and editing push the music-narrative along so you scarcely notice that more than two hours have passed by the time Bono does “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” over the end credits.

I heard somebody whine that it was “a two-hour music video.” Yeah... 30-odd beautiful songs set to mind-blowing imagery, evoking a fascinating historical moment in an archetypal yet personal way. What’s to complain about?

I'm not saying it's perfect. There's a lame misuse of “Revolution” that falls dramatically flat. You don't really get out of yourself and into the movie much, because it's more like theater. And it's not without cliche or sentimental romanticizing of the era. But this is mere carping.

Favorite moments are hard to choose, but I’d put the lilting, surprisingly touching version of “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” (complete with football-scrimmage choreography) right up there, along with a spectacularly imagined “Happiness is a Warm Gun.” And Eddie Izzard’s fabulous “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite” is a supersonic sandwich made of Bread & Puppet Theater, Saul Steinberg, Henri Matisse, the Moscow Circus, and the dream you had last night.

Climb in a seat with your head in the clouds and you’re gone.

Red

2007-10-22T13:31:00.000-07:00

A card I wrote for Hallmark (RED) is briefly visible in this nice little video promoting the new line of cards and gifts. The cover of the card says "Believe in a thousand impossible things you've never believed before." So come on, get to it. That's a lot of stuff to believe.

The first time I played it, everything went smoothly. The last couple of times, it's been a bit herky-jerky. The Hallmark site was down briefly today, so maybe there are technical problems. If so, come back tomorrow. It's a nice little ad, and I think you'll only see it on the Internet.

We conclude this message by praising my friend and fellow writer Sarah Mueller, whose refusal to give up on it is the main reason Hallmark (RED) exists. Or (Hallmark) RED. Or Hallmark (Product) Red. Weird, I'm not actually sure what to call it. Anyway, it's good and Sarah is a jewel in the crown. Truly an inspiration for any of us Sisyphusian do-gooders who have ever had the boulder roll back on top of us or ended up with brick-wall marks on our foreheads. Bravo, Sarah!

20 Minutes To Blow Your Mind

2007-10-03T08:36:00.000-07:00

About ten years ago, a guy named Wade Davis came to speak at a Hallmark leadership conference I attended. He was introduced as National Geographic's "explorer-in-residence." Nothing in that introduction, or in my entire life, for that matter, prepared me for what followed.

The speech he's giving here at a TED conference in Monterey is essentially the same speech he gave then, updated with some new photos from recent travels (and the news of the Canadian government's restitution program for the Inuit). I think this speech is as important as anything that's ever been uttered in a public forum. You can hear the urgency of the message vibrating through the guy. Even when he gets into hard-core science talk (his background is in ethnobotany, the study of plants and their use in indigenous cultures), it's riveting. If you have 20 minutes, just sit back, ignore the sponsoring commercial that frames the thing, and let the magnificence unfold.

After his speech at the Hallmark conference, a small group of us went out for beer and barbecue with him, and he regaled us with yet more amazing tales.

Can storytelling and the awareness it creates change the world? Once upon a time, I believed it. This guy makes a believer out of me all over again.

And the award for best engagement announcement video goes to...

2007-09-25T07:22:00.000-07:00

Ned and Emily (and Ned's sister Joan) made this video for Ned's parents, who were out of the country at engagement time. We open with Joan and Ned talking about the wedding site, where Joan and her husband Lou got married a couple of years ago. I think Lou's running the camera.

No, wait. Emily and Joan never appear in the frame together. So I bet it's Emily doing the two-shot of Ned and Joan. Then Joan takes the camera and puts it on Emily and Ned.

Apparently the sound was no good up there on the windy cliff; hence, the subtitles. But when Emily delivers her great goofy line, I hear her voice anyway.

The whole thing makes me ridiculously happy.

My daughling darter's getting married

2007-09-14T11:27:00.000-07:00

Here's my firstborn, Emily, with her fiance, Ned.

The photo's from their trip to India last summer. Emily's lovelier than that, but I still dig the photo. It suggests standing before the vista of the future and turning back for a moment to commemorate togetherness and include others. A metaphor for a wedding...

which will take place next summer in western Colorado on the edge of a cliff. Can't wait. Pen and I are thrilled. We'd hoped Ned might be The One ever since we first met him.

Imagine, if you will, that your kid grew up into one of the finest human beings on earth, and then fell in love with another utterly splendid person, and then they decided to get married. And you thought about it and realized that you couldn't wish for anyone or anything better to happen to your beloved child. Imagine how your heart might vault out of your chest and go skipping around the room. That's how this feels.

Just knowing such a great couple--even if one of them weren't my daughter--would be a good, positive thing. But Emily IS my daughter. And knowing her past, the pain of divorce that was a big part of her childhood, and some of the struggles and fears she's worked through as an adult, this happy news feels hugely redemptive. It's indescribable, really. Because of Emily and Ned, I have this enormous, irrational hope for the whole wide world.

Love wins after all.

I'd Rather Be At Burning Man

2007-08-29T11:01:00.000-07:00

Monday was day one at Burning Man 2007 in Black Rock, Nevada. My son Oliver’s out there for his third year, this time with a group of San Francisco hippie-hop musicians. Maybe next year I’ll pack up Jonah and some survival supplies . . . we’ll have to determine what we’re contributing to the scene, though. It’s not a spectator sport.

If you don’t know about Burning Man, it’s hard to sum up in a single sentence. Call it a temporary community of tens of thousands (40,000+ this year) stranding themselves in the desert for a week to interact on the basis of artistic and ritual self-expression rather than economic and ritual self-interest. Art created for the festival focuses on a particular theme every year. And every year, at the end of the week, an enormous sculpture of a human figure goes up in flames.

This just in: In the wee hours of Tuesday morning, somebody apparently set premature fire to the Man. A guy was arrested, and a big crew set about the two-day task of rebuilding the effigy and its support structure.

Further update: A young man apparently committed suicide on the last day of the festival. Stories vary, and given the circumstances, I'm not even sure how they determined that it wasn't an accident, but the guy (20-25 years old, thin build, light brown hair--yikes--I know it's not Ollie, but if it were, that's probably how they'd describe him) was found hanging from the poles supporting the top of a two-story tent.

Life and death on the playa. It's not the first casualty ever at Burning Man--given what goes on there, it's surprising how seldom anything goes seriously wrong. Still, it gives one pause. But pause, too, has always been part of the deal.

Over the past few years, a post-burn ceremony has developed in which about a quarter of the population sits and meditates as the theme temple is destroyed. Oliver says this is the most moving event of all. I don't have any photos of that, but the idea of 10,000 people kneeling and crying in the desert is fairly clear and awfully compelling to my pagan mind.

It’s just a big, wild party for some.

For others, it's a place to perform.

Put your genius on display.

And your bod. (I'd post more bods, but you can go to the Burning Man site and ogle for yourself.)

Push for change, advance the social contract.

Simply connect.

For many, it’s a religious retreat, a profound spiritual experience, charging the batteries of hope in a world that generally feels hopeless. A chance to turn the fear trap into the hope flower.

The lengths to which people go in order to create this countercultural aesthetic are extraordinary. The stuff they haul there, the stuff they build, the stuff they wear, how much energy and time they give to it.

You can’t just drive a car around this vast yet teeming desert space. If you’re driving, you're in an art car registered with the Burning Man DMV.

Otherwise, you’re on a bicycle...

or on foot.

If you were making this stuff up for a movie, how would you pitch it? It's The Wicker Man meets Dr. Seuss. No, it's the Old Testament translated by William Gibson. No, it's Julie Taymor's Tibetan Book of the Dead, a musical starring Timothy Leary and one of those egg-pod things from Aliens, except when it opens, it spits flames.
One thing it isn't...
is carbon-neutral.
Not yet, anyway.

They've recently developed a carbon offsets program. This year’s theme, The Green Man, is the first environmental theme I’m aware of in the 20-or-so-year history of Burming Man. Many themes have touched on ecological concerns indirectly, though, and there’s certainly a contingent of green thinkers on the playa every year. Someone apparently has figured out how to run engines on fuel made from port-a-potty sludge, and then to trap the exhaust from that engine and use it to grow blue-green algae. Nice loop if you can get it.

Participants commit to leave behind no trace of the week’s worth of creation and destruction, not even a cigarette butt--which is more than you can say about hippie circuses like the Rainbow Gathering. But it was never just a hippie circus, never just one countercultural flavor. It’s got a big gearhead constituency, a lot of pyromania, and enough mechanical ingenuity to make Buckminster Fuller sit up from his grave and take notice.
A ship of magnificent fools.

Can't wait to hear from Oliver. He’ll have some tales to tell.

Day 1, Grade 1

2007-08-22T14:09:00.000-07:00

What ever happened to summer? Jonah started school on August 16th. Something has gone terribly wrong.

On the other hand, the kid looked swell, sporting his Lego backpack with Darth Vader and Chewbacca zipper pulls. Penny took the picture in the front yard. The maple tree that died this summer is back there behind him, the day before it got taken down. What a beautiful tree it was, a big ball of gold every fall, with a spherical crown oversized for its slim trunk. It had personality. And now its absence feels ever-present. I was surprised at how emotional we all got about it, the day it went down.

Two arborists tell me that the pecan tree in the back needs to come down, too, that it's rotting from inside. It's probably 60 feet tall. Bids have ranged from $1000 to $1900. I want to go back in time.

back to when August was summer,
back to when fall was aflame
with a mapley syrupy cloud of gold light
where no two leaves were the same

i want to retreat to the cave of the past
where the wall-shadows look pretty good
they may not be perfect, but that is deliberate
the way i'd go live in the wood

i want to go forward, but just in reverse
so a tree comes to be from a log
and the days are for dogs and summertime frogs
and my verse doesn't bog down my blog

Just as I wrapped up that stanza, there was a huge clap of thunder and it began to rain. The doggerel days of summer be magic.

Vacations we have squandered

2007-08-02T11:05:00.000-07:00

The creature from the lagoon is Jonah, who vacations like a champ. He really knows how to have a good time. The lake is in upstate New York, in the middle of nowhere. There's a movie star on the dock back there, but Jonah can upstage even the bigs. We were there on a day when thunderstorms came and went, as did snakes in the water. In memory, the day has a slow feel, even with a six-year-old in the mix. We also had a Jack Russell terrier who went crazy for the snakes. Later, he threw up a frog.

In the main, however, it was an unrestful vacation. I planned the trip around three locations with three different groups of family and friends, driving from Boston to Maine, down to New York near the Pennsylvania line, and back up to Boston. My darling does not suffer road trips gladly. Plus, the middle stretch was work-related, so my brother and I disappeared into a basement for days, with breaks to eat and deal with various crises. The last such was the losing of the rental car key.

I advise against losing rental car keys while in the country, especially these new keys with microchip remotes that occasion the reprogramming of the car's ignition system as well as getting a new key made. The brave new world is unkind to bucolic key losers.

But the bucolic world is kind to young readers. Here's Jonah in the hammock on the farm, midway through "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban." The kid reads like a vacationing champ and doesn't care that he's four books behind the times.

And here's Jonah with his best friend, Gabriel, who just moved to Maine. The beach was at Reid State Park, south of Portland. We also went to Popham State Park in the same area--beautiful spots, where the tide goes out thousands of feet and leaves you with a beach you can walk to nearby islands on. We built sand castles, which are heavily metaphorical.

In Boston, we saw a Shakespeare in the Park production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream." It was marvelous and inventive, and somewhere near the beginning of Act III, Jonah said, "I don't like this play." But later, he remembered some funny bit of action that Bottom performed during the play-within-a-play.

We also saw a beautiful film about Jane Goodall, and Jonah now sleeps with a chimp (stuffed). At the Science Museum, he also got to put a baggie on his hand and squeeze the heart and lungs of a sheep (dead).

Boston is Joytown to me, my sis having lived there for some time. She and her partner, Pam, have been married a couple of years now and have three lovely daughters. Joy and Pam are exceptional hosts, the most human of Boston baked beings.

Re: their being married... at the penguin exhibit in the New England Aquarium, I asked about same-sex pairs. The guy wading around in the big penguin enclosure said he'd heard of same-sex pairs nesting and tending eggs, but that these particular penguins seemed to confine their same-sex pairings to grooming, preening, and crapping on rocks together--in other words, he hadn't observed any actual homosexual mating--"even though this is Massachusetts." That got a good laugh from the crowd. Massachusetts is hip.

Here's Jonah, with Joy's daughter Grace, and a couple of dixie-cup frozen pop thingies at the end of a long day. Grace is ten, taller than Penny, and a sports nut, just as my sister was in her youth. I think this was the last night before flying back home on Tuesday.

Anyway, upon my return, I note the absence of beaches in Kansas City. And I note that midsummer is gone, that school starts in exactly two weeks, that a vacation is but a play-within-a-play. Our castles are crumbling. Lord, what fools we mortals be.

Fan Letter Campaign

2007-07-13T08:41:00.000-07:00

The few fan letters I’ve received as a writer have meant a lot to me. I’ve always enjoyed writing letters myself. And I admire so many people for their creativity, originality, and integrity. Why have I been so reticent to send them fan letters?

Why didn’t I send Beverly Sills anything like what was in that last post? And did I ever tell Ruth Gordon what Harold & Maude did to me at age 16? No. Did I write to Marlon Brando? Peter Sellers? Frank Zappa Janis Joplin Jimi Hendrix John Lennon Dizzy Gillespie? John Ford Robert Altman Francois Truffaut? Nestor Almendros? Gordon Parks? Eugene G. Smith? Saul Steinberg? Spalding Gray? No. And now they’re gone.

I didn’t even write to Stanley Kubrick, who actually let me infiltrate a scene in “Full Metal Jacket.” I never wrote to Samuel Barber to thank him for the sublime “Adagio for Strings,” which I’ve probably listened to more often than any other single piece of music—unless it might be the entire “Kind of Blue” album, for which I never thanked Miles Davis.

I did write to William Stafford, and got a lovely letter back. See? A good fan letter gets results.

So. I think it’s time for a campaign of correspondo. Many of the people I’d write to already get scads of fan mail, so if my letters are to cut through the pile and mean something instead of simply pre-empting my own imagined regret, they need to be good. I think it’s about offering specific context and being entertaining about it.

First, I’ll write the ones who are getting on in years--if I’m going to do it, I should do it now. My starter list:

Bob Dylan: I’ll be seeing him in concert on Monday, so maybe that’ll inspire the letter.

Paul Simon

Paul Newman

Clint Eastwood: Mostly for Unforgiven

Robert Duvall: I’ll tell about channeling him when I wrote my favorite speech in Big Bad Love—which Michael Parks kind of screwed up, so I wish Duvall had been available.

Sidney Poitier: Without whom there’d be no Morgan Freeman.

Morgan Freeman: He really is God.

Bernardo Bertolucci: Stealing Beauty, for one. The Sheltering Sky for another.

Woody Allen: Almost impossible to imagine my teens and twenties without him.

Jean-Luc Godard

Sir Ridley Scott

Sir (Lord?) Richard Attenborough: He put my daughter into a scene in “Shadowlands.” It got cut. Hmmm, maybe this isn't a fan letter...

William Goldman

Tom Wolfe

Norman Mailer

Robert Bly: Not just for the poems, but for Iron John. The guy changed my life. I met him once and was too tongue-tied by hero worship to say anything coherent.

Mark Strand: His poem “The Tunnel” made me want to be a poet.

Charles Simic: He’ll be 70 next year. Still writes like a wunderkind.

Ned Rorem: In college, the choir I sang in did his amazing settings of Shakespeare, Dryden, Blake, and Edmund Waller. I get goosebumps just thinking about it.

Elliott Carter: Ditto, except it was Dickinson, Spenser, and Stephen Vincent Benet.

Oscar Peterson: 1977, that double album with Joe Pass. Unbelievable.

Bill Cosby: My dad used to plug a reel-to-reel into the cigarette lighter of our car and we’d laugh at Why Is There Air? and Wonderfulness all the way across the country.

James Hillman: Thanks for the greatest insights into the human psyche since Jung.

Marie Louise von Franz: Ditto. I wonder if she's dead already. Update: My God, she died in 1998, the year after I went to the Jung Institute in Switzerland.

George McGovern: My first political hero, my first political rally. I think my fan letter will mention that I felt up my girlfriend while we were standing there in the crowd at Union Station, listening to soft-spoken George denounce the Vietnam war and Nixon’s corruption. Where is today’s McGovern? I want to feel that again (the hope, not the girlfriend...well, mostly the hope...).

A rather male list. My second wave of letters will go out to slightly younger cultural heroes:

Joni Mitchell: Wait, she should be on the first list. Her lungs aren’t likely to last another decade.
Stephen Stills: Ditto his liver and heart. Maybe I’ll send him my blog write-up of “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” to display my keen sense of the obvious.
Sir Paul McCartney
Springsteen! (Thanks, Molly...)
Patti Smith
Laurie Anderson
Tom Waits: Thanks for writing two great songs for Big Bad Love. I’ll have to restrain myself to stay on message.
Nicolas Reyes: What do you say to the world’s most soulful singer?
Paco de Lucia: What do you say to the world’s greatest guitar player?
Mark Knopfler: Ditto?
Sting: What do you say that you didn’t already try and fail to say when you actually met the guy?
Peter Gabriel: We have a mutual friend, if he’s still friends with Rosanna A. He appeared in her music documentary, but he didn’t look happy about it. Might not be able to play that card.
Christopher Alexander: One of my top ten books is “A Pattern Language.”
Robert Redford
Katherine Ross
Warren Beatty: I won’t go on and on about his artistic integrity.
Julie Christie
Robert Downey, Jr.: Younger than me, but seems to have a good chance of not getting old.
Roberto Begnini
Robert Parker: Thanks for making a wino out of me.
Terrence Malick: He need never have made a movie besides “Days of Heaven” to be my fave writer/director of all time.
Jonathan Demme
Ang Lee
Scorcese
Spielberg
Pacino
Ian McEwan: Thanks for three of my favorite novels
Mark Leyner: Thanks for "Smelling Esther Williams"
David Mitchell: Just to ask him how in the world he wrote “Cloud Atlas”
Campbell McGrath: Ditto, “Road Atlas.” I think he’s only in his forties. It can wait.
David Sedaris: Have I ever laughed harder? I don’t think so.
Camille Paglia: I did write her once, when she had that advice column in Spy magazine. It got published, but that's so impersonal. Even though it was about sex.
Annie Liebowitz
Al Gore
Bill Bradley
Steve Jobs

I'm sure the list will grow. A lot. I'll try to post a few photos to make all this text less tedious. Meanwhile, who do you truly admire? If you came home and found a letter in your mailbox from somebody you'd written a fan letter to, who's the person you'd most like it to be?

Beverly Sills, Higher Than Ever.

2007-07-03T14:56:00.000-07:00

Beverly Sills died last night. She was 78, and besides Tony and Carmela, the only soprano who ever really moved me. I’m vowing today to stop letting chances go by to tell people I admire how much their work has meant to me.

I had nearly 30 years to tell Beverly Sills how she blew my mind one night, back when I was a 21-year-old college dropout whose favorite singer was Tom Waits and who mostly listened to Miles Davis, Oscar Peterson, Chick Corea, and The Beatles. And I never sent her that letter. I wonder what it would have said? Before I played the aria for a group of Hallmark word people at our annual coffeehouse last year, with a backdrop of a huge outer space photo--stars, galaxies, nebulae--this is part of what I read:

This song you’re going to hear is a silver arrow that hit me, pierced me, left me slain, in the rain of my own tears, in my bachelor pad, in a towel, just out of the shower, which was just a bathtub where I dumped water from a plastic bucket over my head — and now this music pouring down on me like light. Was it an arrow, or was it light? Or was I just so young and vulnerable, an open groove for the needle to slip into, record turning, world turning, needle of diamond, stars of dust wheeling above me, who will love me, 21, in a towel on the third floor of a big red house, dumbstruck, starstruck, gooseflesh rising, eyes blurring, everything I had ever lost returned to me, everything I would ever love already leaving, all that was impossible made suddenly real by this unreal voice.

How does a human voice become a willow tree and the bird in it by day, the stars in it by night? Both dark and light, particle and ray, longing and longed-for, everything and void. How can a voice waver on either side of a note but hold the note so true? And isn’t light that same vibration, too? How does music do this to you? What place inside does the bird find to light, the star to flutter and flicker its way to us? I don’t have a clue.

I confess that for years I used this piece of music as a litmus test of soul. If I played it and it didn’t move you, you were dead inside. It was alright if at first you laughed or fidgeted, because almost all of us come armored against the full-throated blast of old-time art-as-religion that is opera. But if by the end the music had not broken through your defenses, broken you down, opened you up at least a little, you were less than human.

I was young and stupid. I didn’t yet know that there are no litmus tests, no absolutes, no one true faith or song or voice or love. Coleman Barks had yet to translate Rumi, so I hadn’t heard of the hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground. I adored Tom Waits, but had yet to hear his anecdote about the first time someone played him the aria “Nessun Dorma” from Puccini’s Turandot. He said, “It was like giving a cigar to a five-year-old. I turned blue and I cried.” I hadn't heard much of anything, really. I certainly hadn't heard anything like this, a song debuted ten days before the day that I was born. It had been there, my whole life, and I had not known. I wept like a willow in my bachelor pad, the first place I called my own.

So that scene is set.

The scene for the aria is this: Leadville, Colorado. 1880. Elizabeth “Baby” Doe, “the miner’s sweetheart,” first woman ever to work in a U.S. silver mine, has her eye on silver magnate Horace Tabor. Both married to other people. Can't end well. Doesn’t matter. It’s destiny, and when she picks her moment, sits at a piano and sings where she knows he will overhear her, the song does to him pretty much what it did to me. If he’d been wearing a towel, it would have dropped right there. Or maybe she’d have torn it off him after his beautiful baritone reply. Anyway, it’s love at first song for Horace Tabor. And so it was for me.

Ladies and gentlemen, the “Willow” aria from The Ballad of Baby Doe, by Douglas Moore and John Latouche, sung by the stratospheric Beverly Sills...

Then there was a little coda I'd written to wrap up with, but after I played the music, there was no point in reading it.

If I knew how to load the iTune on here so you could just listen, I would. That old footage isn't great. But who can deny the power of that big D (I think it's a D) she hits shortly after the video does that skippy little flutter? It still takes the top of my head off. I could tell that a few Hallmark people were knocked out, too, when I forced them to listen to it. But it's opera, man. Hardly anybody wants to kneel at that altar.

Why did I never send her a thank-you note for cracking me open enough to let a little light in? I still don't care for most operatic voices (can't stand Wagnerian opera, which seems preposterously self-important and repetitive to me), but every so often, I’ll hear something that gets through, thanks to Douglas Moore, John Latouche, and this amazing woman who put the color in coloratura.

She had a deaf daughter, an autistic son, and she finally saw her husband through the last stages of Alzheimer's last year. Through it all, she radiated joy, served her art, and took humanity higher, literally.

I just listened to the final aria, sung right before Baby Doe dies. Beverly Sills holds a note at the end that seems impossible. It’s still going. It will never stop.

Getting a little misty here. I'm just glad I got through that without calling her "Bubbles."

Next post: a list of people who are going to get gushy, big-ass fan letters from yours truly...

A Mighty Fine Mike Was He

2007-06-22T13:56:00.000-07:00

The day after Penny and I celebrated our 12th anniversary, I learned that Mike Rokoff had died. He was only 68, and (everyone who knew him would agree) one of the swellest, happiest, most human of beings. I've been obsessively bummed out about it ever since.

Mike was one of those solid, soulful, heart-of-gold guys who should live forever. Absolutely authentic, goofy, and good down to his bootsoles. He never tried to be anyone but who he was. He loved everyone for who they were. That last sentence sounds over-the-top, but I've never known anyone who could empathize even with pain-in-the-ass people the way Mike could.

I sat next to him for the better part of a decade. Much the better part. He shepherded me through a new job, when I became his creative partner in Hallmark's foray into pre-Internet electronic media in the mid-1980s. A couple of years later, he saw me through a divorce, inviting me to move into the spare bedroom at the house he and his wife Donna had opened up to so many over the years. And I did. It was during that month, as I hunted for apartments and tried to keep my sanity, that I began to learn the secrets of Mike's legendary happiness:

Take a bath every morning.

Draw cartoons on a little over-the-tub desk as you take a bath every morning.

Laugh loudly at the cartoons you draw.

Make fun of the morning news, adding word balloons to newspaper photos of national figureheads.

Always be checking out new music and lending recordings you've made.

Smoke a pipe, and look good doing it.

Be a Cubs fan--always good for laughs.

Travel all over the place, and have goofy misadventures to tell people about later.

In addition to loving your wife, admire her. Express your admiration all the time.

Never miss a chance to make a ridiculous pun.

Celebrate the stupid stuff that happens to you (Mike's post-hernia-operation party became an annual event).

Revel in the personality quirks of your kids and your friends.

Try any food at least once.

Listen more than you talk.

Love animals.

Retire before you have to.

Move to the woods to live deliberately.

Build your dreamhouse. Live in it with your darling. Invite everybody over.

Laugh, laugh, laugh.

And when you do yet another good thing for yet another person, and the person wants to pay you back, just say, "Pass it on."

Man, I'm gonna miss that guy. The last time I talked to him, early this year, he was feeling good, having survived a heart attack the year before, and having gotten Donna through a cancer scare. They were back to their lives, starting to plan trips and get-togethers. He sounded great.

The first time I called Donna after the memorial service, I got the answering machine. Mike's voice was still on it. I just about fell over. He had such a deep, rumbly, warm smile of a voice. It instantly reminded me of sharing an antique church pew with Mike in the office living room at staff meetings. When he spoke, his voice would vibrate through the wood of the bench and I could feel it in my bones.

Mike resonated. Best vibes of any friend I ever had. He made the life of everyone who knew him better. I still can't believe he's gone.

Ciao, Sopranos

2007-06-15T09:01:00.001-07:00

Look. Anybody who has problems with the ending of the final episode of The Sopranos either Just Didn't Get It or is working too hard to interpret it (and wouldn't have liked any other ending either). I heard some nitwit on NPR psychologizing David Chase, how the success of the show caused its creator to resent the audience, so the ending was just a big fuck-you. No.

The ending is perfect. Here's why:

1. Ambiguity. Gotta have it. To wrap things up clearly and neatly would be a betrayal of the entire series. Our last image is Tony looking up from his onion rings as the door to this little Jersey diner opens. Did Meadow just walk in? Is the front door the only door opening? Or has that suspicious-looking guy re-emerged from the bathroom like Michael Corleone in a Members Only jacket? Who are those other guys who came in before? Who, or what, is Tony looking at?

2. Family. It's about the mundane details and tensions of family togetherness. This has always been the heart of the show. Not the Mafia, not the idea of a gangster in therapy, but Tony and Carmela and their kids.

3. Dread. It's about how all those quotidian details play against a backdrop of peril. Who can honestly say, however annoyed or momentarily confused you may have been by the sudden blackout, that your heart wasn't pounding at the end of that sequence? It was masterfully written, acted, shot, and cut. That mounting sense of dread, where every moment, every move, seems to portend something--how often does television pull that off? Roughly never.

4. The Blackout. What's the beef about this, really? That the suspense wasn't resolved? This isn't the last episode of 24--for that matter, it's not The Godfather III. It's the last episode of a show that took no prisoners, that never pretended to some moral apologia for its conflicted characters. It was ruthlessly existential. Remember when Bobby and Tony had that conversation about getting whacked, how you probably don't even hear or feel anything? (I wonder how many references to numbness there are in the show? There's a thesis in there somewhere.) The blackout is an argument for Tony's final comeuppance. BUT. If it's just Meadow finally arriving for dinner, and the guy in the bathroom is just some guy, it's just as good an argument that this family's life, the dread surrounding it, Tony and Carmela and all their unresolved issues, the kids' journeys...don't stop. Life goes on.

5. Don't Stop. As a comment on a previous Sopranos post reminded us, this show had the greatest music, the smartest use of music, of any TV show ever. Some of it is Tony's music--the classic rock and '80s pop music that he and Carm grew up on. Here, Tony flips through the tableside juke's selections, passing up Sinatra for Journey, "Don't Stop Believing," a smarmy little romantic tale set to overproduced guitar & synth. The lyrics are deftly interwoven with the scene so that the "small-town girl" line coincides with Carm's arrival, and the "city boy / born and raised in south Detroit" line gets overlaid with dialogue and doesn't distract. The song builds. The scene builds. Little references seem to apply variously to the Members Only guy, Meadow trying to parallel park and run across the street into the diner, etc. But mainly it's the feel. The way they use songs on this show, even when the lyrics offer a pointed message, the feel is really the thing.

6. Respect. It's the opposite of a fuck-you to the audience. It's the kind of ending that makes people leap up out of their seats. I looked over at Penny, and she was all Home Alone: hands to her face, mouth open. We both said, "Oh My God." What a thrill. Did the blackout really confuse people into thinking their cable went out? The music cue seemed to make it obvious: We stop on the line "don't stop." And then we don't stop, because we get to make up the rest for ourselves. In my version, the guy comes out of the bathroom and he's nobody. Meadow sits down. The family has dinner. They have a conversation, probably at least one argument. And then they go back to all the rest of their problems. And because Tony is who he is, the anxieties don't stop.

I hear they shot two other endings. I wonder if that means they shot them with different songs, like a Sinatra version? Maybe Tony gets hit in one, or maybe it's a mess that leaves a leatherette booth full of Sopranos shot full of holes? Or maybe the feds show up, just as the family's ordering...

A feast of possibilities. Greatest show on earth. And it's over. Boo-hoo, and bravo.

(Oh, can you imagine how bad this show will be, cut up and dubbed to rebroadcast on Bravo? Yeesh...)

We return now to our regular programming. Despite my interest being somewhat piqued by John From Cincinnati (great writing, superb casting--is that surfer kid splendid as an emotionally-cramped 13-year-old, or what?), I think I'll be getting more writing done on Sunday evenings. And that's a good thing.

An Odd Dozen

2007-06-04T09:43:00.001-07:00

Today, my dahlink and I mark 12 years of wedded bliss. What I really like about this photo is that it shows what a knockout Penny is. It’s a good picture, if you ignore the other half of it. Why do photos of me so often suggest a guy who pulls a groin muscle when he smiles? The seam of my t-shirt under that weird collar-up number I’m wearing makes it look like my arm has been artificially attached to my shoulder. Which it has. I’m actually one of those jointed paper dolls -- two-dimensional, put together with brads.

What a weird, winding, wonderful, alliterative twelve years we’ve had. How about a thumbnail history, year by year? Shortly after learning that I was remarrying, my ex decided to marry a guy she’d known for only a few weeks, which meant that...

Year 1: My older kids (16 and 13 at the time) moved to Idaho. This was the first big hurdle Penny and I had to clear. She wasn’t ready to be a full-time mom, and I was practically hysterical trying to keep my kids from moving 1600 miles away to live with a guy who, by the time the move was underway, I would meet once and get the creeps from. It was a mess. By the end of the school year, that all fell apart, the ex moved back here completely broke, and the kids moved in with us. Also that year, Penny took a big trip to Israel and came back a vegetarian. And we bought a new bed.

Year 2: Adjusting to life with kids in our little house on the prairie. Oliver lived in the basement, Emily in the refurbished attic, and Penny and I spent a lot of time in psychoanalysis. Don’t get me wrong: I loved having the kids with us full-time instead of just weekends. But, as Penny will attest, she simply didn’t know what she was getting into. It was a year of shattering all the illusions she’d had about marriage. And if I still had any, I guess mine were shattered, too.

Year 3: Emily off to college, and Oliver moving back in with his mom, which was a big blow for me. I’d really wanted him to stay with us. I didn’t have time to stay depressed, though, because just as Emily went back for her sophomore year...

Year 4: Penny went through the windshield of her car. This whole year was about recovery from a serious head injury, starting with five days in the hospital and Penny not even knowing who people were, to staying at home with her and walking her around the house until she could get her balance, to aphasia-addled conversations that began with questions like, “Is there a bathroom in this bathroom?” She spent months in a program at the Rehabilitation Institute, relearning how to do all kinds of things. We have pictures of her holding dozens of get-well cards from friends at Hallmark. No idea what I’d have done without all the support.

Year 5: What a weird one. Against steep odds, my brother and I make a deal on “Big Bad Love,” which I’ve been working on for several years. Against even greater odds (and just as my parents move back to town), Penny gets pregnant. Oliver graduates but decides to take a break for a year. He and I go off to Mississippi to make the movie. So I essentially abandon Penny for two months that include a brief birth-defect scare. Turns out to be nothing, but still. She still makes fun of me for ditching her. Then more scares, and total bed rest for the last month of 2000...

Year 6: and the first month of 2001, which culminates in Jonah. A two-hour labor and voom! He arrives, just barely, thanks to the life-saving work of Dr. Brenda Smith. Big Bad Love debuts at Cannes and gets picked up by IFC. Jonah gets picked up by me every night and walked around the house until he falls asleep. Penny picks up a contract with Hallmark, having quit her job to write from home. Oh, and Oliver’s off to college, the towers come down, and we’re at war.

Year 7: Still not much sleep, and as a bonus, still no sex, due to various post-baby complications, but that’s none of your business, and Penny will kill me if she reads this. Jonah already shows signs of weird genius, but doesn’t walk until almost 17 months. Oliver quits school two weeks into his sophomore year. Emily with a B.A., living in Chicago. Penny loses her grandma. Our cat dies. We get through it all. I make Penny an anniversary present that’s more elaborate than anything I’ve done before or since.

Year 8: I confess, it’s all a blur. At some point in here, I had to learn how to write a TV movie. This was “Dawn Anna,” for the Lifetime channel. Among other salient events in this story, our heroine has a brain condition that means she’ll have to learn to walk again. Like I’d know anything about that. Meanwhile, Penny is doing amazing things with Jonah, bringing him out of a social and emotional shell that seemed perilously like what we’d read about Asberger’s. Man, the kid is bright -- and now, socially engaged, picking up emotional cues, the works. I really do give Penny the credit for this.

Year 9: “Dawn Anna” is the #1 cable program (exluding pro wrestling) for its week. Wow, an actual audience... and then it gets one Emmy nomination. Other than that, it’s more blur, but if Jonah is three, this is the year he asks me, “When will all these days end?” Meaning, when will life be over? Good question, three-year-old. Welcome to adulthood.

Year 10: When will all these Bush-era days end? My brother and I get a couple of movie projects simmering, both of which comment on the current mess. Penny and I get swallowed whole by various home renovations and the relentless routines of work and kid. We look up, it’s been ten years, we have no idea where it went.

Year 11: I turn 50. Jonah off to kindergarten. Penny working on book concepts with illustrator friends. I convince the filmmaking faction of the family to option T.C. Boyle’s “Drop City,” and proceed to spend every spare moment trying to put this monster into the cage of a screenplay. By fall, we have a sprawlingly hefty but truly thrilling draft. Bob Berney, having moved from IFC to Picture House, loves it and is shopping it around. We’ll see...

Year 12: Jonah trajecting toward first grade. Emily still teaching in Chicago. Oliver now studying music in Fairfax, CA. Freed from her Hallmark contract, Penny's now writing for about a dozen other companies and concerns. I’m still head over heels for her. We buy a new bed. It’s about time.

An Earful of M & N's, and coupla O's

2007-05-24T07:19:00.000-07:00

I hit this great alphabetical run of songs starting a ways into the M’s of my iTunes library:

Measuring Cups (Andrew Bird) My daughter turned me on to this guy. Sings, plays violin, guitar, and whistles as if his last name were literal. This tune doesn’t feature his whistling, alas, but if you go to his web site, there’s video. It’s a tweet. Plus, he’s a great lyricist.

Message In A Bottle (Police) What a great idea for a song. If you haven’t heard it in a while, the propulsive speed of it may surprise you. And if you’ve never seen Sting do it live, he usually does a slow, solo version, and the chorus turns the crowd into one gigantic choir.

Missed The Boat (Modest Mouse) One of the catchiest songs I've heard in years. You get the big chiming rhythm guitar and the wiggly, fluid lead, one of which is Johnny Marr, formerly of The Smiths—I had no idea he’d joined the band. I’ve always admired the songwriting, but not the singing, of Isaac Brock. He sounds pretty good on this. And the guy can write. A great anthem for corporate drones, or for a fecklessly failing government.

Mistaken For Strangers (The National) Do you know this band? The big sound and song structures remind me of Coldplay and, every once in awhile, Simple Minds. But the singer’s like the love child of Mark Knopfler and that guy from Crash Test Dummies. He’s a mumbler and doesn’t have much range, but the lyrics are full of odd details. This is from a CD called “Boxer.” The drummer is mighty.

Money (Pink Floyd) How did this song become a radio hit at six-and-a-half minutes and with a word that had to be bleeped? By kicking ass, that’s how.

Morning Glory (Chrissie Hynde, a cover of a Tim Buckley song) From the anthology “Bleecker Street: Greenwich Village In The ‘60s,” full of contemporary artists interpreting folkies of the era. This is a weird one. It seems allegorical, and the particulars of the story aren’t really clear, but the feeling comes through. What’s the feeling? I guess I’d call it loneliness.

Muskrat Love (America) Well, a glitch along the way. I listened to it anyway, and thought, I guess it’s whimsical, but what the hell? Acquired during a Sound Card project. And, just now, thrown in the trash.

Mustang Sally (Wilson Pickett) I should do a list of my favorite singers. I’m pretty sure Wilson Pickett would make the top ten.

My Back Pages (Marshall Crenshaw covering Bob Dylan) Not my fave Dylan song, but I love this arrangement of it. Jonah, at age four, asked me how somebody could be “so much older then” but be “younger than that now”? So I had to explain how the more you know, the less you know. My dad didn't have to explain that to me until I was 14. Kids these days.

My Favorite Mistake (Sheryl Crow) What a great piece of writing. “When you go, all I know is, it’s the perfect ending / To the bad day I was just beginning.” If art is clear thinking about mixed emotions, Sheryl is a bona fide artist. She may be too strident about toilet paper, but her songs are no shit.

My Sharona (The Knack) OK, I admit, I like it. It makes me think back to when Winona Ryder was sublime, dancing in a convenience store, a rare moment of exuberance in a movie that took its title literally and avoided reality for fear of its bite.

Myxomatosis - Judge, Jury, & Executioner (Radiohead) We conclude the M’s with this blast of polyrhythmic synthy-cism. I never know what Tom Yorke’s singing about, but I never doubt that he does.

Nettie Moore (Bob Dylan) This is probably my fave from “Modern Times.” It thumps right along, and Bob keeps going and going. Some of his phrasings are just superhuman.

No Count Blues (Sarah Vaughan) Sissy’s amazing scat vs. a muted trumpet. You can smell the cigarette smoke.

No Regrets (Tom Rush) One of the great, lesser-known singer-songwriters of the ‘60s and ‘70s, with one of the great, lesser-known, end-of-the-affair songs ever. I could have done without the big production, but the song can’t be denied.

Oh You (Greg Brown) “With your heart-shaped rocks and your rocky heart / With your worn-out shoes and your eagerness to start / With your mother’s burden and your father’s stare / With your pretty dresses and your ragged underwear / Oh you...” Nobody piles up lists in a song like Greg Brown. This is on “Milk of the Moon,” recent enough that he probably wrote it for Iris Dement.

Ol’ Man River (Screamin’ Jay Hawkins) Well, he was no Paul Robeson. If hearing sad songs comically trashed is your thing, this one’s for you. Screamin’ Jay autographed my draft card at the premiere of Jim Jarmusch’s “Mystery Train.” Then my wallet got stolen. Man, I coulda sold that draft card on eBay for at least a buck-fifty.

Old Man (Neil Young) An absolutely unique artist in American music, and quite a guy. Who else was laying a banjo into a pop song back in, what, 1972? Or for that matter, singing about an old man? I remember listening to the Harvest album over and over while making leather belts to sell at head shops. Then we'd switch to Harry Chapin or It's A Beautiful Day. Then we'd run out of pot.

Open (Bruce Cockburn) Speaking of Old Man, shortly after my 50th birthday, I saw Bruce Cockburn live in upstate New York, and he opened with this. Glorious.

Our House (Crosby, Stills & Nash) One of the great cohabitation songs, written by Graham Nash for Joni Mitchell, so they say. I love the internal rhymes and the la-la-la.

Our House (Madness) Less a song than a music video, but I’d forgotten how catchy it is. Jonah loves to riff on it in a British accent. "Owah House...in the middle of my tush, Owah House...with some flowahs on a bush, Owah House...with the cats in the yahd..." He gets the two songs confused. The kid has no sense of rock history.

Over The Rainbow (Judy Garland) End with a broken heart.

The floor is now open for great iTunes mix lists. Don’t cheat!

Tony Gets His Button

2007-05-17T06:47:00.000-07:00

I feel compelled to say three things about The Sopranos:

1. It really is a Greco-Roman myth. The characters embody attributes of human consciousness that are universal, undeniable, horrifying, touching, and self-revealing, which is why they stick with you and make you wonder about them, as if they existed not just in your imagination but in life. They feel more real than many people you actually meet. I never dreamed I’d say that about a TV show.

2. It still has the capacity to shock, after seven seasons of brutality and venality. Anyone who watched the last episode knows what I mean. The big event, only seven minutes in, makes you catch your breath, even though it feels inevitable. In this sense, it’s more real than the news. The Virginia Tech murders were horrible, and I’m not trying to diminish their importance or impact. But my gut response to that carnage was somewhere between knee-jerk revulsion and “ain’t that America,” followed by muted empathy (and then, as media vultures made a mockery of it all, disgust and ennui). We look at the absurd images of the killer and can only wonder why so little was done, how the same society that denied him decent mental health care could so blithely supply him with guns and armor-piercing bullets. It happened out there, and we’re still safe here. But we see in Tony Soprano the primal, practical, dead-eyed sociopath we all could be, if the circumstances of his life had been handed down to us. What a shock, as he knocks out the window of a wrecked car, decides not to call 911, and finishes off a piece of grim business. And it is business. But it’s also personal. It’s revenge. It’s defiance of fate. It’s mythic, a god eating his children. And it’s hands-on. The violence isn’t shied away from, but it isn’t glorified, either. At rock-bottom, the show is deeply moral. It never flinches.

3. The freedom of its storytelling is astounding. Nobody (not even David Chase) could have predicted, back when the show was in its infancy, that its final season would find Tony in the Nevada desert, high on peyote and having a laughing, crying epiphany as he stares into the sun. “I get it!” he cries. I don’t, exactly (is he still lit up by his roulette experience?—“same principle as the solar system”—or has he just grokked the whole Christopher situation in some druggie way?), but I feel the evanescence of his exultation. Drugs have done pretty well by Tony, but he’s still “Comfortably Numb,” as the brilliant music cues have suggested. And we know no epiphany of his will lead to model citizenry or a happy ending. Even as the show takes a breath, with all that slow, expansive quiet stretching off under the desert sky, we can feel the story closing in, ratcheting down, closing off all heroic possibilities.

Plus, Sarah Shahi. Oh, my word. Chalk another one up for the dark, diminutive deities of drama. If this doesn’t launch her out of TV into movie stardom, I don’t know what will. When she brought out the peyote buttons, I could see some of what was coming: Tony would puke, and then have the eyes of his eyes briefly opened. But man, how beautifully the actors played it. Watching her watch the roulette wheel brought the whole stoner phase of my life back like the smell of an old girlfriend’s hair. If you’ve ever done psychotropics, you know how true to life that whole sequence was. And if you haven’t, I bet you still know, which is all the more amazing.

When they first drift into the casino and Tony stares at that slot-machine image of the devil, I had a thought. It’s way too cheap an idea for this show, but not for me, Alice In Wonderlandkind that I am:

What if Tony actually did die last season, and this whole season is him in Hell? So Hell is just being comfortably numb, killing your friends, cheating on your wife, going to funerals, hanging out in casinos, and still having to deal with the mundane details of your job—dumping asbestos in a pristine marshland, for instance, and haggling over a rival boss’s percentage. Hell is just life, except you don’t get out.

OK, they won’t pull that on us. What’s the end? I told Bighead Needleman that the father-son arc must be fulfilled, so A.J. either dies, does something that causes Tony’s death, or somehow gets drawn into the life, becoming the new Christopher. If A.J. kills Tony and ends up blind, we’ll know which myth we’re in. Otherwise, we should probably retreat to Goldfinch’s and look up Zeus and Hera. Somewhere in the stories about them is the story of Tony and Carmela. This one can't possibly end well. Predictions?

Thank heavens for smart, creative, thought-provoking entertainment. Without Jon Stewart and Tony Soprano, how would I have survived these ghastly first few years of the new millennium? Lame as it sounds, and essentially lucky as I know myself to be, sometimes I think they’re all that’s kept me sane.

Ciao, Christophuh.

Mendacity of Show, Litany of Woe

2007-05-04T12:24:00.000-07:00

Four years ago this week, an unelected president strode across an aircraft carrier in an unearned Navy flight suit for an expensive photo op beneath a banner proclaiming “Mission Accomplished.” I’m trying to think if I’ve ever witnessed a more insulting, absurd image of a U.S. president. Hoover with his fat-cat cronies during the Depression? Pretty bad. Nixon’s V-for-victory exit from office? Cartoonish enough to laugh at, and good riddance. Carter's interview in Playboy magazine? Foolish, but he seemed human. Bush the first’s Japanese vomit? At least it was vomit of necessity, not choice. Reagan fumbling his way through a remark about trees causing air pollution? OK, he was already losing it. Clinton’s “I did not have sex...” posturing? Doesn’t even come (so to speak) close.

The fake flyboy strut. It’s like an x-ray of Bush’s psyche. Who do we see? A privileged juvenile delinquent acting out in a mendacious show-off stunt to prove himself half the man Daddy was. It’s as undeveloped an idea of leadership, masculinity, and adulthood as I’ve ever seen.

And the media served it to us like ice cream. And a lot of people slurped it right up. If you ever want a clear picture of just how bad American journalism has gotten in the 21st century, look back at the response to the Mission Accomplished moment. It’s horrifying. The right-wing media practically creamed its Sans-a-belt slacks. And few in the mainstream press held Bush to account.

Since that clueless display (remember, we paid for the aircraft carrier to turn around so the shoreline wouldn't show?), think of what has taken place:

Iraqi Army disbanded, left to its own devices (mostly IEDs) to create the insurgency

Weapons storage facilities left unguarded, emptied by insurgents

Unsecured borders allowing thousands of jihadists, mercenaries, and fun-loving terrorists into Iraq

Oh, and the denial that the White House had anything to do with that Mission Accomplished banner...
and then the retraction of the denial when expense reports showed that Karl Rove’s office paid for it

U.S. soldiers in combat without proper equipment, armor, etc.--and now with less training than ever

Rumsfeld’s “you go to war with the army you have”

No WMD’s after all--ooops, my bad!

Turns out Wolfowitz was wrong about oil money paying for reconstruction, too

Fallujah becomes a template for how NOT to take a city

The rise of Muktada al-Sadr and other fundamentalist elements

U.S.-soldiers-rape-Iraqi-civilians case

Alberto Gonzales murky torture-condoning memo
Abu Ghraib
Rumsfeld "forgot to bring" chain-of-command chart to Abu Ghraib hearings
Scapegoating of grunts for the scandal

Scott McFuckingClellan

Richard Perle and other administration war profiteers resign due to conflict of interest

No-bid contract scandal
Billions in reconstruction money go missing
Huge cost overruns by Halliburton, KBR, and other contractors found to be misappropriating funds
Pentagon hiring private soldiers of fortune who earn vastly more than U.S. military salaries

Denial of CIA black sites in Europe and Asia...
and retraction of denial!

Dick Cheney, ever the brilliant analyst: “The insurgency is in its last throes”

Dissenting voices in administration (Richard Clarke, Colin Powell, etc.) silenced or marginalized
Dissenting military commanders (e.g., Zinni, Shinseki) fired or sidelined
George Tenet and J. Paul Bremer bought off with Medal of Freedom

Fake stories planted in the press to make Jessica Lynch a hero
Fake stories planted to make Pat Tillman a Christian martyr and Bush loyalist
Fake journalists planted in press briefings

Fake Maliki government by 2007 has failed to secure a single province

Govt report finds DOD's Douglas Feith developed bogus intelligence to link Iraq and al Qaeda

Condi Rice, having ignored pre-9/ll intelligence about Osama, fails upward into Sec. of State job

Continued denials from Cheney et al. that it’s a civil war...
and finally a recognition that it’s a civil war

Iraq Study Group convened
Iraq Study Group recommendations ignored
The surge
McCain and others walk Baghdad in body armor with huge security detail and proclaim the streets safe
Iraqi parliament bombed

Taliban resurgent in under-resourced war in Afghanistan

New study shows seven out of eight “finished” reconstruction projects either relapsing into unusable state or still awaiting equipment, construction, etc.

Saudi Arabia and other Mideast allies begin to defy U.S., with Prince Bandar about as reliable as Chalabi was in lead-up to war

Military allies (what few we had) peeling off and pulling out

Pushing toward 3500 American dead
Tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians killed

J. Walter Reed scandal
Tours of duty extended
Repeat tours increased
Veteran disability benefits slashed

Prisoners held for years without charge or legal recourse

Osama still at large

And Bush talking shit about Iran

I consulted no published lists to arrive at this godawful pile of national shame. It’s not ordered or comprehensive, just what I could pull off the top of my head as a reader of the news. I’m sure there are many other events that should be listed here. Feel free to contribute.

Fine, throw in the election (see note on the fake Maliki government) or Saddam (whose botched execution compounded our international PR problem). Why put lipstick on a warthog?

When I go down that list, I feel fury boiling up. I’m just so disgusted by these short-sighted, greedy ideologues who looked at the post-9/ll world and decided it was a ticket to empire, while lacking the imagination, skill, and integrity to manage even the first fraction of the effort. Killing, maiming, spending us into oblivion, all the while ignoring the needs of our own citizens. Think of all we might have done here if if not for the time, money, and energy spent there. And for what?

My friend Kristin says, don’t hate them, because then you’re at their level. You have to love Bush and Cheney and Rove, she says. You have to hope for their evolution as human beings.

I know she's right. But all I seem capable of is loathing and despair. I hate what’s been done to my country, by my country, in the name of my country. It’s going to take years and years to undo it. And they’re not through yet.

All’s Well: A List of Great Movie Endings

2007-04-27T05:41:00.000-07:00

I came up with what I think is a superb final image for a script I’m working on, but Herr Direktor thinks otherwise. So I’m thinking about endings. Why are some endings so perfect. and others not so much? Here’s my endings theory: Good endings feel like an Inevitable Surprise. Bad endings are either too inevitable (you saw it coming, so it’s a letdown), too surprising (you feel tricked)—or perhaps I should say, surprising in the wrong way—or else they just try too hard and you can feel the strings being yanked on, and you resent it. Inevitable Surprise. Surely someone has said this before. But I’m claiming it as my pet theory. And I need a pet theory, now that we’ve given up on guinea pigs.

Inevitability implies that the ending is prepared for. Because movies run the storytelling gamut, a “happy ending” is only occasionally inevitable. Among my favorite movie endings, only a handful are what anyone might describe as happy. As I thought of endings to add to my list, each seemed to fall into one of four categories:

1. Uplifting
2. Chilling
3. Bittersweet/Ambivalent/Poetic/Melancholy/Mysterious
4. Perfect Bummers

So. Let’s get the UPLIFTERS out of the way:

1. Cinema Paradiso: Just one of the greatest endings ever. If the middle section of the film weren’t weakened by a lame actor playing Our Hero, this would be one of my top ten movies of all time.

2. A Room With A View: Love triumphs over Edwardian repression. Yay!

3. The Game: Michael Douglas is only good at playing arrogant pricks, but this role at least gives him some interesting psychological texture. It’s great to watch him get broken down to his real humanity. As iffy as the ending is in terms of what seems realistically possible, it’s completely satisfying, inspiring, even funny. It's Finchery.

4. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: This would have been in the Bittersweet/etc. category if Charlie Kaufman’s original ending had survived. He says that when Joel and Clementine decide to give it another go, the original ending makes it clear that they’ve done this (erasing their memories of each other and then trying again) not just once before, but over and over. I have to say, I like it better that they’re not stuck in an endless loop. A little more hope.

5. High Fidelity: It’s a real feel-gooder, after all that narcissistic dithering and getting dumped and failing to grow up. It should be a cardinal rule of filmmaking: If an upbeat ending is called for, just get Jack Black to sing Marvin Gaye.

Honorable-mention Uplifters:

The 40-Year-Old-Virgin: Let the sunshine in!
Napoleon Dynamite: Both endings qualify.
Flirting With Disaster: One of my fave movies from start to finish.

Next category: great CHILLERS:

1. Seven: Yikes, what’s in the box, we know what’s in the box, aaaaaaaah, jeez....

2. Easy Rider: This could as easily be in the Perfect Bummer category. But it seems to resonate with all the disappointment of post-‘60s America, taking on a big chill. (Hmmm, does The Big Chill have a good ending? I can’t remember.)

3. The Godfather: Ooooh, look at Pacino through that doorway, becoming The Godfather. Look at Diane Keaton absorb the fact that her life is FUCKED. Look at them shut the door in her face... Oooooh.

4. Apocalypse Now: The horror.

5. Dr. Strangelove: Weird, how a movie this funny, and a song so light and sunny, can feel like a megatonny of grim, chilly-willy ice-cubes down your back.

Honorable-mention Chillers:

Sunset Boulevard: Maybe “creepy” is a better word for this one.
Silence of the Lambs: It’d be chillier if we didn’t actually want Lecter to kill the guy. It’s more Chiltoning than chilling. But still.

Next category: Bittersweet/Poetic/Ambivalent/Melancholy/Mysterious

1. Days of Heaven: My favorite film of all time. Mind-blowingly beautiful, utterly sad.

2. A Map of the Human Heart: Transcendent, yet melancholy. Yet glorious.

3. 2001: A Space Odyssey: What the hell does it all mean? I don’t even care.

4. Children of Men: Too heavily symbolic, maybe? Nah. God, I love this movie. I just got the DVD and watched it again. Splendid extra features about the production.

5. Witness: Nothing like star-crossed lovers for the bittersweet. As Our Hero is leaving, he passes his romantic rival coming the other way and his brake lights go on, just for a moment. Perfect.

6. Local Hero: This used to be on my Top Ten list for movies, period. I wonder if it still is? Anyway, a great ending, with that lovely twinge of yearning.

7. Oh, yeah. Casablanca.

I feel like there should be a dozen more in this category. A few Honorable Mentions:

Big Bad Love: Actually ineligible for ranking due to conflict of interest. But I like it.

Raising Arizona: One of the best last lines in movies.

The Graduate: A very influential movie. If it had never been made, how would the next one have ended?

Say Anything: Ding!

Next category: PERFECT BUMMERS

1. Citizen Kane: The whole movie is a perfect bummer, really. The ending just gives it a wistful twist. I mean, a twistful wist.

2. Thelma & Louise: By the time they actually go over the edge, it’s no longer a complete surprise. But it’s just enough of one to balance out the inevitability.

3. Memento: I’m trying to think of another ending that forced me to watch the movie again. I know there’s another obvious one, but this is a prime example of the effect, because the ending of the movie is actually the beginning of the story. You only understand what you’ve seen when the ending/beginning clicks in.

4. Raiders of the Lost Ark: Coming out of the theater, I was still elated by the movie as a whole, so the bummer-ish ending wasn’t a letdown. It still seems like a great, if disenchanting, surprise. Yet inevitable.

5. The Wizard of Oz: I’m sure some people find it heartwarming or uplifting, but I think “The next time I go searching for my heart’s desire, I won’t go any further than my own backyard” is one of the saddest lines ever delivered by a teenager. Especially in Kansas.

OK, and here are a couple of great endings that probably deserve their own category. Maybe we should just call it EASY TO SPOIL. These are endings that may be inevitable, but mainly, they’re surprising. One answers a question we really needed to have answered, and the other comes out of nowhere to hit us upside the head:

The Usual Suspects: I watched this again on cable recently and got bored. But the ending was still great. It’s the editing that does it, really.

The Sixth Sense: Oh, this is the other ending that made me go back to see the movie a second time. But after the second time, I need never watch it again.

What else should go on this list? Since my categories derived from films I love, I wonder if I’m missing a whole category. I’m sure I’ve missed some movies. Make me slap my forehead in inevitable surprise.

To the left, to the left

2007-04-17T13:42:00.000-07:00

Why do the arts lean leftward, politically? Back when I was more of an ideologue, I just figured: the arts are good, so naturally, artists tend to be on the side of good, and that's the left side, of course. You get older, things get less black & white, and you begin to wonder. Why do most writers, musicians, visual artists, filmmakers, dancers, performers in general, tend to be progressives rather than conservatives? The place of art, at least in modern culture, has often been at odds with repressive powers that be (hence the image of Trotsky's pals Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, godparents of this post). Why do contemporary American artists who express opinions about politics and current events almost unanimously deplore the current administration's policies?

First, what's left and what's right? I'm saying that the extreme left end of the political spectrum is anarchy; the extreme right is a police state. More toward the center, liberalism favors equality and social freedom; conservatism favors hierarchy and social order (and the free reign of capital). Is the most balanced view simply moderate, down the middle? I don't think so, because power and wealth tend to reinforce each other, concentrating in institutional elites, so the right’s laissez-faire attitude toward power and capital is only balanced out by moving farther leftward, constraining the abuse of that power. If you have a big fat bossy kid on a seesaw, it’ll take several kids on the other side to get him off the ground. Or you could lengthen that side of the lever away from the fulcrum in the middle and place one underfed lefty on the seat.

Do the assumptions behind my first two paragraphs really hold up?

1) I think so. The arts do lean left. A cursory survey suggests that it’s overwhelmingly disproportionate, and going deeper just amplifies that, exceptions proving the rule. For every Ezra Pound defending Mussolini, a hundred poets from Whitman to Neruda to Szymborska spend their lives writing in the other direction. For every John Milius reactionary fantasy there are scads of films celebrating liberal values or satirizing the fecklessness of the powerful. For every Ron Silver strutting and fretting on behalf of the Iraq war, five hundred other actors run lines of leftist dialogue against it. And among musicians, well, the left claims pretty much everybody but Toby Keith and his ilk. Rock & roll is about rebellion, so you don’t get much right-wing apologia in popular music, other than country & western.

2) Maybe. I first started thinking about this when my freshman-year political science prof put communism on the left end of a spectrum and fascism on the right. It doesn't make sense. Communism is an economic construct, and in real life, it’s turned out to be state-run capitalism. If the spectrum is a truly political one, I think it goes from absolute freedom, which doesn’t really exist, to absolute order, which ditto (though not for lack of trying). It makes more sense to have governments like Stalin’s, Mao’s, Hitler’s, and Pinochet's on the same end of the spectrum. So the brief flirtations American artists have had with communism have always been more about reacting to fascist right-wing tendencies in the U.S. than embracing the Party line. Artists who got blacklisted in the ‘50s ended up nearly as disenchanted with communism as they were with McCarthyism.

Maybe there’s a reverse angle on this, looking at why people on the left tend to support and defend artistic freedom (and government-funded grants for artists, art programs, museums, etc.), while people on the right tend to try to rein in artistic freedom and place limits on expression and the public forums for it, dismantling the NEA while they’re at it. The left certainly has embraced minorities in a way that the right has not, and artists themselves are a minority. Minorities are disproportionately represented in the arts, especially music.... My mind is starting to fritz out. I can’t keep these ideas framed to look at them straight on.

Maybe I’m suggesting that artists are more interested in self-expression than in submitting to authority, a naturally progressive mindset. Is the need to submit to authority conversely stronger in conservatives? I haven’t really addressed what draws someone to the right. In America, often as not, it seems to be either a single issue (say, abortion) or a cluster of such issues coded as “family values,” tied to a conservative Christian belief system (hence, James Dobson up there, damning me to hell). The most vocal advocates for this POV are almost always vocal critics of artistic expression, busily banning books, decrying obscenity in film and song lyrics, etc. When left-leaning politicians reach for conservative votes, it’s usually in this parent-friendly way, demanding warning labels and ratings and cultural crash pants. Conservatives support all these limits, especially where sex is concerned.

That may be it right there. Artists are sex maniacs (or at least like to depict it and talk about it out in the open)--and the left is more sex-friendly, less repressed? Could this alone be the key to the whole question? Freud might say so. But I think Jung would demur. Jung (who was NOT, as Tom Cruise asserts, some big Nazi) would probably say that creativity is linked to the Shadow, and then go back to screwing his patient. And I say, but Herr Doktor, what does it mean if I dream of Susan Sontag launching fireworks from her crotch into the skies over Paris? Which I did. Last night.

Maybe it’s this simple: Artists are aesthetes, and there’s more beauty in progressive politics. Is there? How can I defend that? Start with what makes something beautiful: balance and strangeness. The balance comes from paradox, irony, making opposites one. The strangeness, which keeps something beautiful from being merely pretty, is the unique stamp of the artist’s personality. Does the left have better balance, more uniqueness? Maybe it better balances individual rights with the needs of the collective. And maybe it’s more tolerant of the kind of eccentricity and diversity that make uniqueness possible.

My brain is a swarm of hornets. I leave it to you to explain it all to me.

Another Great Married Couple

2007-04-11T11:47:00.000-07:00

I refer, of course, to that rare union of quality and television.

Remember a few seasons back, when Carmela had a talk with Tony, trying to get him to set up a trust or a will, something to put her mind at ease, vis-a-vis "if something happens to you"? When Tony resisted, Carm got tough, reminding him that “everything comes to an end.” Alas, it’s true.

We’re now in the final act of, arguably, the greatest TV series ever. I’d argue it’s better than any Mafia movie, besides the first two Godfather films--and I’m including "Good Fellas." Fine, argue. But as to my initial arguable claim, what arguments are there, really?

Has there ever been a better-written series? (Some say “The West Wing,” forgetting that almost everyone in that White House talks exactly like everyone else. Some say "The Simpsons," and they may have a point. And some writers say “Deadwood,” but can’t say why, other than to quote wonderful lines of iambic pentameter, which don’t explain the show’s occasional dullness). The writing on The Sopranos, raw, refined, comic, tragic, simple, complex, specific, sweeping, daring, restrained, timeless and utterly of its time, is as good as it gets. (I should add, I love "Deadwood," and if they'd cast Calamity Jane better, she'd be one of the greatest characters anywhere, anytime, but the actress isn't up to the role). Speaking of which...

Has there ever been a better-acted series? (Some say “Homicide: Life On The Streets,” but where’s the range? Some say “Upstairs, Downstairs,” and I say, make up your mind. And some say “Prime Suspect,” which I haven’t watched enough to say anything about, except that even at 60, Helen Mirren is hot.) If TV and film are about singular moments and over-all arc, where has a wider range of actors been given so many great moments to play and played them so well? Where have we seen such character-driven story arcs in TV, such a complex, unflinching portrayal of flawed humanity? Have any two actors ever created a more convincing married couple? (Some say “Mad About You” . . . oh, never mind.)

Has any actor more truly lived in front of the camera as a character than James Gandolfini as Tony? The other day, my brother said, “It’s the single greatest sustained creation of a character in the history of television—and that includes Lucy.” I think he means Lucille Ball’s character, not the one in the “Peanuts” specials. Tony looms. Think about someone else playing the role. My sense of the match is, no matter who it was—Brando, DeNiro, Pacino, or freakin’ Orson Welles—it would have been a lesser show. Who else could bring the mix of rage, self-loathing, wit, sexual threat, contempt, wonder, helplessness, bitterness, regret, self-delusion, inertia . . . about a dozen notes at once? Who could play any better the tenderness, sheepish deceit, and brutality of a Mafia dad swerving from a college trip with his daughter to hunt down an informer and choke him to death? What actor has ever been better suited to a role? Gandolfini looms.

I have to say, Edie Falco gives him a run for his money. Carmela has more going on than Tony does, really—a rich interior life coming through that veneer of brittle materialism in every move Edie makes, every expression on her face, every inflection of her voice. It's an absolutely unique character, and you never doubt her for a minute. Even the occasional weak moments from the kid actors end up playing fine in the family scenes, because the structure is Tony and Carmela. He’s the lot and the basement, and she’s pretty much the rest of the house.

Which is not to say that everyone else is mere set decoration. There have always been amazing supporting roles on The Sopranos. Off the top of my head: Livia, Uncle Junior, Christopher, Adriana, Big Pussy, Hesh, Tony’s cousin Tony, Richie, Janice, Ralph, Rosalie, Artie and Charmaine, Gloria, Bobby, Johnny Sack, Phil, Vito. And of course, Dr. Melfi. Even Silvio and Paulie, who seem less than human sometimes, have had great moments.

What great moments will season seven reveal? How does it end? I’ve heard there are bulletin boards devoted to this kind of speculation, but I refuse to check them out. If anyone’s going to spoil it for me, I will. Or, to quote my darling spousette, “If there’s anything I can’t stand, it’s myself.”

Already, it’s a new level of unapologetic venality in the first episode. Astounding dialogue in the lake house scenes, the way Tony plunders psyches with little digs, insults, suggestions, marching orders. And the writers, unfettered by the usual TV writer cramps, open the season with a backward leap of imagination, bringing back a scene from a couple of seasons ago and putting a new twist on it.

A.J. will figure big, if the writers complete the arc of the show and one of its central ideas. What the son does with what he’s given by his parents is an unavoidable theme. It seems entirely possible that A.J. could get whacked. He could also inherit the family business, a la Michael Corleone, especially with Christopher getting sidelined.

Somebody in Tony’s family is getting whacked, that much is sure. Christopher would be a prime choice, maybe served up by Tony himself, the way things are going. A nastier surprise could be Meadow, vulnerable and easy to track down in California. Is that too G3?

The weapons charge has been set up to be Tony’s downfall, assuming he’s not killed in the all-out war that’s brewing with Phil and the New York family. Killed, I don't think. But behind bars? I can see it.

What of Carmela? If the writers fulfill the promise of her character, she has to get closer to her moral center, doesn’t she? We may revisit that soul-searching, and there could be consequences from that. Could she be the one who gets whacked? Oooh, the ultimate whackee. That would cut way deeper than anyone else’s death, even Tony’s.

Jeez, imagine Tony behind bars, mourning Carmela, still trying to run the show from inside, dealing with his kids. A sad ruin of a bruin of a man, who brought it all on himself, simply by Not Doing The Inner Work His Shrink Told Him To Do.

What else could happen? Personally, I’d like to see a little more of Italy, including that walking phallus-with-a-ponytail, Furio, and the female Don played by (ahhhh) Sofia Milos. Or another of Tony’s fantasies, perhaps starring Maria Grazia Cucinotta...but I digress. I don’t see us getting out of town after this first episode. Things are contracting, not expanding. There’s no breathing room for Italy.

And obviously, there’s no happy ending possible in a show like this. One of its great moral lessons (I’m not saying it’s a unique or original lesson, but the way it’s delivered is all that and more) is that what goes around, comes around. I can feel it coming around. And I’ll be sorry to see it go.

My Parents Can Beat Up Your Parents. Spiritually, I Mean.

2007-03-28T14:38:00.000-07:00

Meet Barb and Dick Howard, me mum and dad. A sweller pair of parents I never coulda had. They’re retired (Dad was a church historian for 30-odd years; Mom was a writer/editor of church publications; both were ordained ministers), and heading toward their 80s with vim and verve, still doing the odd guest minister gig, the occasional wedding, baby blessing, funeral. Scads of their friends seem to be checking out, so my folks have been writing and delivering a lot of eulogies lately.

A wacky offshoot of the wacky LDS (Mormon) tradition, their church is now called the Community of Christ. When I was growing up, it was called the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. But everyone knew it as Nancy.

By the time I was rebellious enough to reject it (age 15), the church had liberalized tremendously, in part because a few influential members like my parents were less interested in Bible-beating than in actual theology and social justice. When I was little, though, it was a very conservative sect, a lot of scriptural literalism, a lot of fear, a lot of “thus saith the Lord” prophetic mumbo-jumbo. I had some Sunday school teachers who were like Saturday Night Live parodies. Many weeks of my youth were devoted to trekking around the country from church camp to church camp, because my dad, despite being way less insane than many of his fellow preacher mans, was a hot ticket. He had charisma and he was funny. And my mom had a welcoming, chatty, Southern charm that ingratiated our family to church communities around the world.

By now, Dick and Barb gracefully accept the fact that none of their kids stuck with the RLDS church (only one actually goes to church at all) and simply dig us for the heathen weirdos we are. They really are splendid human beings. I didn’t always think so. Nay, I was an early subscriber to Philip Larkin’s basic thesis in “This Be The Verse,” viz.:

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had,
And add some extra, just for you.

Actually, I still believe that. But a little fucking-up and fault-filling make for interesting kids. Like a lot of creative people, I’ve leaned heavily on my flawed personality, mining its absurdities and paradoxes for the gold that is always lurking in the Shadow. Imperfections = good texture. Whatever complaints I may have had over the years about my upbringing, I don’t think there’s anyone who knows our family who’d deny that my folks raised four interesting, creative people. I’m lucky to be one of them.

One advantage we had, I think, is books. Visitors to our house were always stunned by the sheer tonnage of books. Not many split-level homes in suburban Independence, Missouri, can claim a library. Ours was basically built around one. I don’t ever remember being bored as a kid (except in church). When there was no baseball, football, basketball, swimming, ice hockey, or kick-the-can to be played, I could always find a book. Neither the Bible (I side with Joseph Campbell, who called it “overrated”) nor The Book of Mormon (“chloroform in print,” according to Mark Twain) ever really had a chance with us kids, because there were so many more compelling books around, and the inevitable reading of them was a central fact of life. Come to think of it, one of the books was “The Facts of Life and Love,” where I first learned about copping a feel.

The day I discovered the Kama Sutra in an unlocked file drawer in my folks' study was a mindblower. I looked around their study (they had two long desks made from doors on top of file cabinets, and long shelves of yet more books) and realized there was more going on in there, and elsewhere, than I'd ever imagined. Yikes.

I remember tripping my brains out in high school, coming home late, going into the library, and turning the lights on low. (The library had the only dimmer in the house, unless you count the wildly unreliable rheostat of drug use.) Wow, the library. The books glowed around me like magic embers. I ran my hands over rows of them, briefly believing I could absorb their contents without opening them. Ah, the collected Shakespeare — a beautiful, shelf-wide set of small blue volumes, tiny print — and there was Hamlet. I flipped to its most famous soliloquy. (If you ever happen to be on acid in the middle of the night, I don’t necessarily recommend this, but it worked for me.) I began memorizing it on the spot, and having forgotten most of it the next day, resumed my existential brain calisthenics. Want to hear “To be or not to be” in its entirety? I can still recite it. Thanks, Ma & Pa.

That library is also where I discovered C.S. Lewis, Kierkegaard, Santayana, James Baldwin, Sylvia Plath, Germaine Greer, and (thanks again) Carl Jung.

My parents are, among their peers, famously well-read, curious, informed. All four of us kids caught their bug for reading, for ideas and vivid language and storytelling, the power of words and imagination to convey and transform experience. Having traded on it to pay the rent for nearly three decades now, I’m particularly grateful to them for that. And I’m sure having these shared frames of reference gave us something to hang onto during my adolescence and turbulent twenties.

My shift in attitude toward my parents has as much to do with their own transformation as it does with my becoming an adult and parent myself. These are two people who examined some of their most deeply-held assumptions and decided that some of them were not good enough, not true enough, and certainly not Christ-like enough. They evolved. And they brought a lot of their church friends with them, through the power of their ideas and their generosity of spirit.

A few didn’t come along, of course. The RLDS church splintered into a number of smaller groups some years back, with the homophobes, the women-shouldn’t-be-priests crowd, and various other fundy factions shearing off to form their own little clans, deflating the mythic grandeur and beauty of Christianity one small-minded pinprick at a time.

I don’t meet many committed Christians who make a first impression of openness and curiosity, and my folks would be the first to admit that, well into their thirties, they had more answers than questions, too. But they just keep opening up. Like the two decent bottles of wine I’ve managed to cellar for more than a week, they’re improving, adding layers, deepening, little by little, over time.

Unlike wine, they show no signs of peaking. This summer, they’ll be the featured sages at a couples retreat arranged by my daughter. She and her boyfriend, along with two other couples, plan to spend a weekend with Dick and Barb, talking about how to keep a relationship alive and growing for a lifetime. Could you ask, in old age, for any greater confirmation of your journey through the vicissitudes of life and marriage, than that kind of love and respect from your grandkids?

Well, maybe to have earned it from your kids, as well. I’ve seen a lot more of my folks than my kids have over the years, up close and personal, and my own view is clouded by that history. But the weather’s been clearing up, these past two decades. I look at them and I see the sun. I be the son, and proud of it. They still drive me nuts sometimes, but mostly I marvel at my good fortune.

So here’s to you, Mom and Dad. (I know, you hardly ever drink. I’ll knock back a couple extra to compensate.) If you ever need a little validation, a little proof that your kids’ appreciation of you has grown since the family struggles of yore, here's some. Just look at the difference between how I blogged about you and how I blogged about Ted Haggard, Alberto Gonzales, or Rhonda Byrne. They suck. But you guys! You are superfine. I love ya.

The Law of Attraction

2007-03-15T14:01:00.000-07:00

Before I make fun of something, I usually try to understand it. Not today! I refuse to read The Secret or watch the DVD of it or look up the Oprah shows devoted to it. So I’m doomed to a life of failure and thwarted dreams. At least I have a blog from which to issue half-assed judgments. What does Rhonda Byrne have? A few million bucks, a tan, and accusations that she stole The Secret from a psychic who lives in an RV and channels the spirit of some guy who knows everything.

From press coverage (skimmed and snorted at), it all looks silly. The book/DVD is obviously a millennial version of The Power of Positive Thinking, which I made the mistake of reading years ago. I’m not saying that positive thinking is a bunch of crap, per se. Better a loving, caring, receptive, hopeful attitude than a fearful, sniping, rigid, bitter one. Being responsibly generous makes more sense than sewing money into your pockets. Thinking good thoughts about your health probably beats keeping a hearse on stand-by. But to quote someone other than Norman Vincent Peale, shit happens, man.

One of the shits that happens is that sooner or later, books full of fatuous bromides top the nonfiction bestseller list. If you can distill some long-proven principle like The Golden Rule into a simplistic philosophy with a big, obvious hook, you too can make a millionaire ass of yourself by going public with it. Take a couple hundred pages to say “what goes around comes around” and give it a catchy title. Promise material wealth, and you’re gold, baby. Law of Attraction, shmaw of shmattractshmion. (Hmmm... it won’t be easily mocked....)

I remember when pre-eminent New Age philosopher Ken Wilber wrote about his wife’s death from cancer. They’d both been proponents of the idea that “we create our own reality,” until reality itself created a deadly tumor right in her brain. It was unexplainable within their old paradigm, and in order to be compassionate through her dying days, they had to give it up and admit that, well, maybe it wasn’t some wayward sliver of carcinogenic negativity that infected her POV. Maybe illness isn’t all about burning off karma from past lives, either. Maybe any number of wifty little theories about co-creation and personal responsibility are or aren’t true. But let’s see how well we can live our lovingkindness and Be Here Now. This shit is cancer, and it happens even to the most spiritually evolved.

The boulevard of broken dreams is littered with people who thought for positive-sure they were creating an entirely different reality. A study should be done to determine if adherents to The Law of Attraction achieve financial success, marital contentment, etc. at higher rates than the average nattering nabob. The criteria would have to be objectively measurable, cuz one thing’s for sure: Positive thinkers will lie their asses off.

For me, The Law of Attraction is this: Petite, dark, curvy women exert a power that I am just about helpless to resist. This has been so from the time my testes dropped and I cannot explain it. By “petite,” I mostly mean short. But there’s also a certain delicacy -- little bird-bone hands and a way of moving that suggests a small amount of wine swirling in a bell-shaped glass. Dark eyes so big they make the face look small. And ideally, a thick mane of dark Sephardic kink.

The first time I saw my petite, dark, curvy, curly darling was a moth-to-flame moment. That she was sensitive, hilarious, Thoreau-quoting and a great writer/kisser/cusser ultimately torched me. The first apprehension is somatic and kinetic, though, and this kind of physicality embodies a particular feminine archetype. Nell Carter’s a fatty, and I don’t care. When I saw how light on her feet she was, it was all over. Closer to the center of the camp, the "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf"-era Elizabeth Taylor. Natalie Wood, sort of. Helena Bonham Carter? Don’t even start. My fireplug ninth-grade Spanish teacher. My tenth-grade typing teacher, although she lacked pudge. Penelope Cruz is at the skinniness and height limit for the archetype, but in “Abre Los Ojos” (the original “Vanilla Sky”), she’s it. Ming-Na should be chubbier and less wholesome, but still. Even Jennifer Lopez, whose mystique is long gone, but who undeniably Got Back, Baby.... And if Salma Hayek walks into my office right now and orders me to buy The Secret, I’ll ask her to accompany me to Waldenbooks. Not the one across the street, but in Mexico.

I have some kind of radar for the soma-type. We were at B’nai Jehudah temple last night for the pre-K play (Jonah’s an alumnus of this storied theater program, and all the alumni return every year to take the stage at the end of the play and talk about which productions they were in – playing Cinderella 25 years ago or, in Jonah’s case, King Achaverosh in last year’s Purim classic, “My Fair Esther”). Anyway, it’s priceless to watch costumed toddlers chew the scenery and cry and sing off-key and forget their lines. But my point is, there was in attendance a woman who looked a bit like my darling, only slightly taller (5’2’ or so, about Hayek-height) and a bit Jewier in some way. Ah, the dark curly hair, the olive skin, the voluptuous hint of wanton aging here and there — I kept stealing glances, which was crass, I know, but I’m sorry, there’s no point in pretending that I’m oblivious to this particular kind of beauty. It IS my oblivion. It gets me in the gut the same way Caesar’s gut got it on this very day long ago. You can Ides, but you can’t run. The Law of Attraction dictates that I will make a fool of myself looking at certain women, and I will get busted for it, except in those cases where my darling herself points them out, which she’s been known to do, God love her.

For anyone who thinks the dainty, petite qualifier suggests a control issue, I refer you to my second-string obsession, which is the large-scale version of this same feminine type. Lisa Nicole Carson, Sofia Milos, Maria Grazia Cucinotta (the bombshell from "Il Postino"), Anna Magnani even after she grew a moustache, yea verily even Queen Latifah before she scaled herself down -- the kind of woman who could beat the slop out of me with one hand tied behind her back. Tied with her hair, perhaps. And she's standing on one foot, so she has to hop. Okay, maybe I’m a little controlling. At least I know what I like.

So. That’s my Secret. Now you show me yours.

Top Ten Songs, Honorable Mentions, Exhaustion

2007-03-07T14:00:00.000-08:00

That Zen master who says that having favorites of anything prevents you from being alive to everything, maybe he's onto something. I feel dead. Still, some songs make you feel more alive than others do, and thinking about why brings up all kinds of socio-psycho-aesthetic questions. The songs may not answer them, but they give hints.

10. In Your Eyes (1986), Peter Gabriel. This song is welded to the iconic image of John Cusack in trenchcoat with boombox, but I don't have any trouble separating it from Say Anything (though I like the movie a lot, and hey how come this photo takes up so much space?), having swooned the first time I heard it, right before I took a trip to England in 1986. So I associate it more with Full Metal Jacket, on the set of which this album got a lot of play. Matthew Modine was a big fan, except compared to me. I'd been a huge, obsessive fan since Peter Gabriel's Genesis days, and then after that first solo album, my fandom turned more or less to idolatry. When I visited Bath, I knew he lived nearby. But I didn't stalk him, whatever the constabulary reports may say. I was listening to this album night and day, though, and this was the cut that I thought might trump "Solsbury Hill," the 7/4-time Robert Fripp wonder from the first album, and "San Jacinto," my fave from the Jungian-flavored "mask" or Security album. I remember driving through the English countryside at sunset, listening to this on a cassette tape, and marveling (still, after a zillion times) at the arrival of that first chorus, "In your eyes / I see the doorway to a thousand churches / The resolution of all the fruitless searches." That's what a decent British education'll give ya. By the time Youssou n'Dour takes over the singing at the end, I'm a goner. No wonder Rosanna Arquette slept with him. I probably would, too. Peter Gabriel, I mean. OK, I might sleep with Youssou n'Dour, too, if he'd sing me a lullabye.

9. Inca Roads (1973), Frank Zappa. My college years come back to me now like a wayward whiff of spilled beer and bongwater. The One Size Fits All album was an ear-opener for me, as a music student slowly realizing I'd be better off studying literature. I listened to George Duke's vocal and keyboard wizardry and Ruth Underwood's torrential xylophone on this record and despaired of ever attaining any real musical accomplishment. There are blistering Zappa guitar solos on several tracks, too, and the verbal ingenuity of "Evelyn, A Modified Dog." This is the opener, and it's so zippy and fun, you can't wait for the rest of the album.

8. This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody) (1983), David Byrne. This is from Speaking In Tongues, the Talking Heads album with the Rauschenberg cover. I confess, I actually prefer Shawn Colvin's live acoustic version (from Cover Girl, 1994), because her guitar-playing is so freakin' good, and she's a better singer than David Byrne, which is like saying Shakira can out-dance Fat Joe. Shawn Colvin makes it slow and open, so it can really work on you. The Talking Heads original is quick and tight. I think David Byrne was suspicious of his own effusive sincerity on this, so he hurried it into a party tune. When you have a line as good as "You've got a face with a view," you should really give it some room. She does. But he wrote it, and I love it either way.

7. A Case Of You (1971 & 2000), Joni Mitchell. One of my college roommates and I had a huge crush on Joni. We wore out the grooves on Blue while staring dreamily at the naked photo of her on another album cover. In the three decades between the two recordings of this song, chain-smoking wrecked Joni's voice in an awful, beautiful, terrible, ravishing way. (She says she started smoking at age 9.) The original is pure, just Joni and a dulcimer, James Taylor on guitar and Russ Kunkel on hushed drums -- an archetypal '70s folk-rock trio. The Both Sides Now version from 2000 is dark and husky, orchestrated by Joni, and the strings make you want to cry before the woodwinds arrive to reinvent the original intro. And then her voice destroys you. A spectacular reimagining of the song, and by now, every note has really been lived. It's one of the richest odes to heartbreak ever created. "So bitter and so sweet." If only my roommate and I had gotten the chance to make her happy.

6. Take It With Me (1999), Tom Waits. Tom divides his work into "Bawlers, Brawlers, and Bastards." This is a Bawler, a heartfelt valentine to his wee Irish bride Kathleen Brennan, although she helped write it. On the album (The Mule Variations, my fave Tom record to this day), it follows a raucous barbecue holler called "Filipino Box Spring Hog" (definitely a Brawler). When the blurry little piano intro of "Take It With Me" starts, it's like a shock to the system after that wild thing. In as profundo a basso as Tom has ever sung, the words offer intimacy, history, hope, faith, the works. It's not a perfect song -- you can hear the creak and thump of the piano pedals (Tom prefers "the pulp and rinds and seeds left in") and the lyric drifts a bit in the middle -- but so much the better. A lot of my favorite art insists that romantic love is the royal road to spiritual truth, and in this song, Tom Waits reaches (strains, even) for something absolute and transcendent: "There's got to be more than flesh and bone / All that you've loved is all you own." Slays me every time.

5. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For (1987), U2. This song helped me survive the five years between the end of my first marriage and the actual divorce. There were stretches in there when I played nothing but The Joshua Tree and Springsteen's Tunnel of Love album. That Cowboy Junkies debut crept in there, too. But this was my backbone. Has an album ever opened with such mind blowing tracks back-to-back? As much as I love this song, I never jump past "Where The Streets Have No Name" to get to it, because then you lose that chiming guitar outro that this seems to grow out of. I'd always found Bono a little off-putting before this album, because my image of him was based on some concert footage that seemed pretentious. The Joshua Tree made a believer out of me. This song was the spiritual anthem of my thirties.

4. Visions of Johanna (1966), Bob Dylan. I'm talking about the live version from Biograph, not the Blonde on Blonde. In a previous post entitled "Bob, Bob, and Bob," I described the organic unity of guitar, harmonica, and voice on this enigma wrapped in a shadow stuffed in a Symbolist knish. It's one of the most sublime mysteries of folk music. What the hell is he singing about? Thank God he's never explained it. The song simply Is, like a mountain -- in this case, one made of images and characters and associations that triangulate your ass into a sling and fire you like a stone at the foreheads of Philistines, laying waste to every other songwriting giant via killer rhymes, elaborate stanzaic structure, and the most expansive musical ambition since, I dunno, Leonard Bernstein's. I vote this song most likely to win over a Dylan skeptic, because that's what happened to me. A virtuoso piece without being show-offy, it's funny as well as deadly serious. "The ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face." When you can write like that, you don't have to explain a goddamn thing.

3. A Day In The Life (1967), The Beatles. I called "All You Need Is Love" a John Lennon song, because it was something he cooked up with George Martin. Here's a true Lennon/McCartney, but as with most of my favorite Beatles stuff, it originates with John. One common thread between these three songs at the top is an absolute mastery that gives way to wide-open, child-like, creative innocence -- almost as if the creators had no idea how songs were written, so they just followed every worthwhile impulse that came along. When my dad brought Sgt. Pepper's home from a business trip in the summer of '67, my brother and I put it on and listened, spellbound, from start to finish, looking at that amazing cover and rummaging through the little cutouts and album extras. I'll never forget, having listened to all but the last song, hearing John's echoey opening words: "I heard the news today, oh boy...". I was only eleven, but even then I knew something vast and completely unique was unfolding for me. The Beatles had opened a door to another world.

2. Suite: Judy Blue Eyes (1969), Crosby, Stills & Nash. If I had been a couple of years older, I'd have heard this at CS&N's first performance together. As it was, I was 13 and couldn't run off to join the Woodstock Nation with all the freaks from the head shop where I had my first job. Then again, if I'd gone, who'd haveswept the floor by the bulk organic grain bins? Who'd have handed out the burlap bags to people who wanted to ride the giant slide out back? Who'd have sat around staring uncomprehendingly at the hookahs and Kama Sutra oils, waiting for everybody to come back and tell me all about Woodstock? My Day In The Life point about creative innocence goes double for this song. It's like Stephen Stills grew wings. Has the illusion of unbounded spontaneity ever been more convincing in a pop song? Intricately constructed as it is, you feel it's being written as you listen. It's that free. Want to throw in some Spanish? Bueno. Want to meander through a guitar interlude with David Crosby? Why not? And if marrow must be thrilled, then by God, just build up to a crescendo and hit the most glorious series of vocal triads in history on the phrase "thrill me to the marrow." The song is about the demise of Stills's relationship to Judy Collins, but it's effervescent. I challenge any songwriter to Beat This Song. Or just try to come close. Write something this adventurous, playful, fiercely joyful, regretful, multi-layered, wild, free -- something this singularly, fabulously alive. I dare ya.

1. Little Wing (1967), Jimi Hendrix. I'm surprised to find this at the top. My favorite song? Yep, it feels true. Nothing like it anywhere in music. There are other good versions of it, though. Sting takes it for quite a ride on Nothing Like The Sun. His voice soars in a way that Jimi's never could, on a song that's all about soaring. Nobody can play guitar like Jimi, but My Best Friend Dominic Miller gives him a run. Still, my first taste was Jimi's, about a year after it came out, when I was getting my first taste of girls. The idea of this fantasy woman kind of freaked me out. "Take anything you want from me"? Uh...I'm 12 and I don't know what that might actually mean, but I'm willing to learn.... Turns out, he wrote it about his dead mother. But still. I love the carefree way he piles up the words up over a guitar phrase that he knows is going to extend over a couple of bars, so it's "Butterflies and zebras..." but there's still room for more, so he adds "and moonbeams...and fairy tales...are all she ever thinks about...riding with the wind..." OK, he was high as Halley's comet -- but free within the cosmos of his musical imagination. The "circus mind" was his, and his mother is the eternal feminine, inside, pushing this song out, newborn and screaming like feedback. It's a pure product of America, going crazy (to steal from William Carlos Williams) and a pure expression of the Muse. What would Jimi be doing today, if the Muse had vanquished the demons? Three years later, he was dead at 27. Which reminds me: Where are the 24-year-old artists now working at this level of originality and virtuosity? Who are the Mozarts of pop?

BONUS TRACKS: Here are others that vied for the top 25 but were ultimately pushed off the list. HONORABLE MENTION (in no particular order)...

1. I'm Gonna Be (1990), The Proclaimers. Well, you gotta have your double shot of Scotch. Here's the finest pair of hard-drinkin' twins ever to bellow a love boast from the British isles. What a great little thumper of a song.

2. Hallelujah (1984), Leonard Cohen. Like many people, I'd really rather listen to Jeff Buckley's cover than the original. In fact, why is there no Jeff Buckley on my list? Or Tim Buckley, for that matter? Or Tiny Tim? Something has gone terribly wrong. And how do you pick a favorite Leonard Cohen song? I could put "Anthem" or "If It Be Your Will" or "Famous Blue Raincoat" or Willie Nelson's cover of "Bird On A Wire" here and be equally sure (not) that I'd made the right choice.

3. Save It For Later (1982), The English Beat. I can't listen to this without thinking of my little brother Kip, who turned me onto the album (Special Beat Service) and my friend John Dill, who revels in the occasional Tourette's burst of '80s Britpop. This whole record is habit-forming, and Save It Fellater (alternate spelling on the lyric sheet) puts the dic in addictive. It's the quintessential English Beat number, with an infectious guitar, thumping rhythm section, and horns that pop out of a trap door somewhere between the Mos Eisley cantina and a ska sockhop. It's as queer as a three-dollar bill, and twice as rare.

4. The Mayor of Simpleton (1991), XTC. Another fine Dillio, an anti-intellectual apologia from one of the smartest songwriters ever, Andy Partridge. Basically a list of all the stuff the song's narrator doesn't know, it features one of the cleverest run-on couplets in pop music: "And I don't know how many pounds make up a ton / Of all the Nobel Prizes that I've never won." Smiles guaranteed.

5. I Can't Make You Love Me (1991), Bonnie Raitt. A crushing blow of romantic resignation, actually written by Mike Reid and Allen Shamblin. But it's all Bonnie. And Bruce Hornsby, whose massive chords are like a battering ram to the heart. If you've recently been dumped, this song could literally kill you.

6. One Mo' Gin (2000), D'Angelo. Voodoo would be on my list of top 25 albums. I think of this song as the best of the bunch, but it could as easily be "Devil's Pie" or "Send It On."

7. I Want You (She's So Heavy) (1969), The Beatles. Forever imbued with the memory of deflowering a splendid girlfriend in Denver back in 1976. This is the simplest, most relentless piece of altered blues erotica ever wrought by the hand of man.

8. If These Old Walls Could Talk (1987), Jimmy Webb. A note of apology and gratitude, strictly for long-time lovers. No teenager could ever fully understand it. For years, I myself didn't understand that it was not a John Prine song. Shawn Colvin also does a great cover of this. Jimmy Webb is a tower of talent.

9. Beautiful Boy (1980), John Lennon. If you're a John Lennon fan and also a parent, you probably have a soft spot in the exact shape of this song.

10. Sultans of Swing (1979), Dire Straits. Remember what this was like, after that wretched stretch of the '70s when progressive rock grew ridiculous and disco almost made us commit suicide and A&R cokeheads ruined everything at major labels? And then this, like a pint beer glass full of wonder thrown at your head? Mark Knopfler will forever be enshrined in the afterlife as the guy who saved pop music in 1979. Nobody else plays guitar like he does, and we knew it the first time we heard it, on this ripping tune. I mean, it's no "Three Times A Lady," but it's pretty good. (Actually, I kinda like the Commodores, but I don't like to admit it...)

11. Little Red Corvette (1982), Prince. Is "I guess I shoulda known by the way you parked your car sideways that it wouldn't last" the greatest opening of a song ever? Maybe. And of course, once you've seen him perform, you can never get the image of Prince out of the music. Bob Dylan was once asked what he thought of Prince, and he said, "I think he's a wonderboy." What Bob says, that is what I say.

12. Open (2003), Bruce Cockburn. I almost listed "Lovers In A Dangerous Time" in my top 25, so why this instead on the H.M. list? Because I saw Bruce live last fall and he opened with "Open" and it cracked me wide open. But it's too new for me to trust it to the top 25. It's from You've Never Seen Everything, which is not the best of his 30 albums, but this song is a knockout. Did you know that Bruce's old band opened for Jimi Hendrix and Cream in the '60s? See, it all comes back to Jimi.

13. Good Vibrations (1966), Beach Boys. I never much cared for the Beach Boys back in the day. They seemed so clearly a second-class act compared to the Beatles, I sort of felt sorry for them. But this is one of those rare songs that you just can't wear out. Has it ever been sampled by a hip-hop artist? Somebody should take that wild Theramin siren at the end and build a song around it.

14. Lose Yourself (2002), Eminem. The most thrilling, inspiring, grab-you-by-the-throat, Oscar-winningest rap song of all time. "Cleaning Out My Closet" may be better-written, but the power of this song is undeniable. He says he wrote it during a quick break on the set of 8 Mile, a brilliantly edited (my pal Jay Rabinowitz at the Avid) movie about rappers rapping 'n shit. Only three songs from the 21st century made Rolling Stone's list of 500 greatest songs, and this was the highest-ranked of them. (Yay, Wikipedia.) It's kind of pathetic, isn't it, to have only a couple of hip-hop/R&B songs anywhere on my list -- and one is by a white guy? Let's amend that...

15. Love Rain (2007), Jill Scott & Mos Def. This is from that album of collaborations the divine Ms. Scott did with a bunch of guys. Mos Def has never seemed like a great musician to me, but he's actually one of my favorite actors, and there's nobody except maybe Tom Waits with a cooler stage persona. Plus, if I may quote Burt Reynolds from "Boogie Nights"... what a great name! Anyway, this is an amazing collage of sound and words, and The Chick Can Sing.

16. What I Be (2003), Michael Franti. His band is Spearhead. This song is splendid. My son Oliver treated me to it. "If I were the rains, I'd wash away the whole world's pains and / Bring the gift of cool, like ice cream trucks on sunny days..." It'll make you glad to be alive.

17. Out of Range (1994), Ani DiFranco. I tire quickly of Ani's gasping delivery, but gee whiz what a musician, what a personality, and what a writer. That thing I said about the opening lines of "Little Red Corvette"? Maybe I mean it about this song instead: "Just the thought of our bed makes me crumble like the plaster where you punched the wall beside my head...." Ani's a feisty little righteous babe. My daughter Emily turned me on to her. Speaking of which....

18. I Do (2006), Emily Howard. My daughter wrote it and traveled to India to sing it at the wedding of two college friends. "It's the secret we're all in on / On the brink of the beyond." The first time she played it for me, I was a puddle by the end.

So, it's really a top 40. Or 43. But that's the list. Despite my dissatisfaction with its mainstreamness, mostly-maleness, and Anglocentricity, it feels pretty much like my aesthetic on parade -- as of this week, anyway. Comments? Quibbles? Derision? Addenda?

Bottom 15 of Top 25 Songs

2007-03-02T14:17:00.000-08:00

Before I compile my Top 25, I should address the question, Why Bother? Cuz it’s self-revealing, which is kind of the point of bloggery. As we learned in "High Fidelity," you are what you like. So any list like this is a bit autobiographical.

Leonard Cohen’s “Anthem” (not on this list, but great) says “There is a crack in everything / That’s how the light gets in.” I think music both cracks you open and then shines the light. That’s why it means so much in adolescence. The cracks are the cocoon of childhood opening up, identity morphing. Music moves you, and then shows you where you went and who you'd were by the time you got there.

The first song that ever did this to me was “The Sound of Silence” (also not on this list). From “Hello, darkness, my old friend” to the cryptic line about a sign that said “the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls”), it just blew my little mind. I turned ten the year it was a hit, and I was trying to teach myself to play guitar on my Sears Silvertone. I couldn’t really play the song, but I remember trying to figure it out, singing the phrases, and feeling that I’d discovered a huge secret.

Anyway, this is all popular music from my lifetime -- no Nessun Dorma, no Ella in Berlin, no Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. I am the Casey Kasem of my castle, counting down to #1:

25. American Pie (1971), Don McLean. It’s easy to forget the impact this song had when it came out. There’d been nothing remotely like it since "Subterranean Homesick Blues," and I didn’t even make that association. Everybody else did, though. Don McLean was the next Bob Dylan. No, he wasn’t, but even if you think this song is ridiculous, you can’t deny its ambition and the combination of verbal and musical ingenuity it took to go after it. So many mysterious references! If you have a spare weekend, make your way through the Wikipedia entry.Few songs provoke that kind of curiosity and speculation. And let’s face it, Harry Chapin’s “Taxi” would never have gotten radio play if this song hadn’t proven that a single didn’t have to be three minutes short. American Pie is 8+ minutes of amazing songwriting. Don’t miss it. Don’t diss it. Just dig it.

24. Brown Eyed Girl (1967), Van Morrison. This was the song my wife and her dad danced to at our wedding. Had to get the band to cut out the “behind the stadium with you” verse, but it was perfect. Everybody sang along to the “La la la la la” part. It’s just a glorious tune. I was completely into The Beatles when it was a hit, so it didn’t mean much to me until later. But I always liked it. It seems like the perfect song of its kind.

23. Brand-New ’64 Dodge (1996), Greg Brown. See previous blog entry.

22. Purple Rain (1984), Prince. In which the little fellow is revealed as the most enormous talent of the ‘80s. I’m not saying that Paul Simon and Sting and Springsteen weren’t writing better songs or that Michael Jackson wasn’t still doing remarkable stuff. But nobody else at that time (and maybe before or since) combined so many talents into one unique persona. To confirm this, look over a list of music from the mid-eighties, and then rent the movie again. “Purple Rain” is unto itself as a song and album -- and as a movie, well, the lame bits are even lamer now, but the performance of this song is one of the great movie moments of the 20th century.

21. Diamonds On The Soles of Her Shoes (1986), Paul Simon. An irresistible groove from an album that completely shook up pop music, waking it from the Reagan-era delusion that America was the only place where anything of value existed. Remember how new this sounded, with that propulsive guitar (Ray Phiri) and fluid fretless bass (what’s-his-name Khumalo) and of course, the voices of Ladysmith Black Mambazo? This is the kind of song that lifts spirits in the way that hymns should and hardly ever do. If listening to it doesn’t make you happy for at least four minutes, see a psychiatrist.

20. All This Time (1991), Sting. This came along as my interest in authentic spirituality swerved into a new obsession with masculine psychology and father issues of various kinds... OK, I was in the middle of a divorce. I just remember thinking, no pop song has ever dealt with death in such an interesting way. It pays respects to his dying/dead father (as the rest of the album does), looks askance at religion, throws in a little local history, and wraps a kind of philosophical resignation with a ribbon of buoyant tunefulness. When the Soul Cages tour came to K.C., he opened with this at a breathtaking clip, about half-again as fast as on the recording. He was all muscled-up in a black t-shirt and he just blew the roof off the place. Wait, it was Starlight Theater, so no roof. But he kicked ass. That was the first time I ever saw Dominic Miller play guitar. Who knew we'd be bosom buddies years later? See photo in October 2006 archives.

19. Birdhouse In Your Soul (1990), They Might Be Giants. I wonder if Sting was listening to this before he wrote “All This Time”? Both have the same kind of bounce. But this is more circular, less narrative. Who writes better melodies than They Might Be Giants? They’re almost a throwback to Tin Pan Alley, and if they were more interested in commercial success, they’d be zillionaires, because their hooks are better than any mainstream band’s. They’re just too weird. Most of their songs outweird this one considerably, although the VIDEO makes up for it. It’s surely the only song ever written from the point of view of a nightlight.

18. Mad Mission (1996), Patty Griffin. This concludes our upbeat, buoyant program, at least for the moment. In the middle of Patty’s grimly brooding first album, Living With Ghosts (mixed straight off her demo tape, goes the story) comes this splendid little jewel of a song about how love is worth the risk. Like the rest of the album, it’s just her and a guitar. I love her hardheaded optimism, and I even stole an idea for a card I wrote from the opening stanza, where Casablanca is playing on a bar television and all the patrons get caught up in the poignant drama. A little masterpiece.

17. If I Should Fall Behind (1992), Bruce Springsteen. Out of all the great love songs I could have had a burly trio of gospel-inflected soul singers perform at my wedding, this was the one I chose. It’s one of the greatest statements about commitment ever set to music. Springsteen’s approach is almost country-sounding, and I love it. But you should hear the a capella version arranged by my guys (see Shane Evans link in sidebar for a taste of how good the singing must be, and indeed was). You’d cry, like everybody at the wedding did. And then you’d go off to get married or renew your vows or maybe eat some cake. The song’s on the Lucky Town album.

16. Wildflowers (1994), Tom Petty. (I know, that's not Tom Petty there on the left. It's the late, great Michael Kamen, who in addition to many notable film scores, wrote the beautiful orchestral arrangements for this album.) The title song was written for my daughter. Well, that’s how it felt to me when I first heard it. I think Tom actually wrote it for his own daughter. And I wrote a little essay about my daughter after this song got under my skin. I always resisted Tom Petty because he looked so white-trash and his band seemed lackluster. But the guy can write. I think I only own three rock & roll t-shirts. One is from the Wildflowers tour, even though I didn’t go to the concert (my son did and gave me the shirt). The others are from one of U2’s tours, and then a John Lennon shirt I never wear because it’s, y’know, sacred.

15. Tangled Up In Blue (1976), Bob Dylan. How can anyone not have this on their top 25 list? It’s a short story with a soundtrack, and surely one of the best-structured refrain lyrics ever written. I have a long live version on my iTunes, and it’s kind of a mess, shifting back and forth between first and second person. But it’s still great. You kind of can’t ruin a song this good.

14. Old Soul Song: New World Order (2005), Bright Eyes. This is maybe my favorite song of the 21st century, despite Conor Oberst’s quavery voice getting on my nerves. I do like it when he goes apeshit at the end. The song describes walking 40 blocks to a New York political protest, taking pictures as cops try to contain the crowd, and then coming back to develop the film in a darkroom. A simple, guileless idea, just about perfectly organized into a three-minute story. The end of the song takes the top of your head off, with one of the most amazing similes ever written by a Nebraskan -- that's Ted Kooser country, so you know it’s a good simile -- delivered in a hysterical shriek. Anyway, Conor Oberst reminds me a little of Kurt Cobain, except I think he’s a drinker instead of a shooter. He’ll probably die young, but man, he can write him some songs. The album is I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning.

13. America (1968), Simon & Garfunkel. So Paul Simon makes the list twice. This whole album would make my list of top 25 recordings. I could probably endure a desert island if I had nothing but Paul Simon songs to listen to, and this one's a national anthem like no other. I love the mix of loss and hope and playfulness and utter desolation in it. The words are so perfectly fitted to the tune, you don't even notice that there's no rhyming. The guitar part, according to friends of mine who have tried, is surprisingly hard to play. The guy is a master.

12. Me & Bobby McGee (1971, since the version I love is not the original Kris Kristofferson, and certainly not the Roger Miller, but...), Janis Joplin. From the Pearl album. The older I get, the more I realize how hard it is to achieve the kind of simplicity that makes this song great — and the more I appreciate how rare a gift like Janis Joplin’s is. Nobody ever sang like her, and nobody ever will. Freedom’s just another word for never having to hear Joss Stone try.

11. All You Need Is Love (1967), The Beatles. How do you choose your favorite John Lennon’s songs? He remains the greatest rock star of all time, in my book. Here you get shifty changing time signatures, George Martin’s wacky orchestration, lyrical playfulness like nobody else’s, and an unimpeachable philosophical credo from a guy who, through the sheer magnitude of his personality and the titanic achievement of his artistry, earned the right to tell it like it is to everybody. Somehow, it all goes down like candy. It’s nothing short of a cultural miracle.

Next, the Top 10. I'm going to work on this awhile, though, and load some pix 'n links 'n stuff. Meanwhile, based on this list, are there any predictions about what might be at the top?

Greg Brown Is Good

2007-02-17T07:08:00.000-08:00

Maybe it's not a great recommendation to say that the first song you ever heard from a particular artist remains your favorite. Greg Brown has written scads of great songs, so it's not a one-trick pony thing. It's just that back in 1997, the poet and translator Geoff Brock (see link in sidebar) asked if I was a Greg Brown fan, and I had to admit I'd never heard of him. And Geoff seemed shocked, like I'd been living under a rock. Which I had -- rock AND ROLL, you snooty elitist folkie academic bastard! [insert heavy metal hand gesture here]

So Geoff says, "Oh, you gotta hear this," and puts on "Brand New '64 Dodge." It's slow, with the guitar intro walking down into a root cellar, where Greg's voice lives. I mean, that first booming growl and I was hooked.

Money comes out of Dad's billfold
Hankies come out of Mom's purse
The engine hardly makes a sound
Even when you put it in reverse...

The song is every suburban boy's childhood in Camelot, just before the end of Kennedy-era America ("It's November of '63 / And the brand new Dodge is a '64"). If you're a baby boomer like me, that time resonates so hugely at the end of the song, your coming-of-age years start flickering and floating through you like a Zapruder film of the inside of your own psyche. It's just a staggering piece of songwriting.

I love a lot of Greg Brown songs (he's put out nearly 20 albums), but nothing since has come close to that first listening experience.

His daughter, Pieta Brown, is a rising star on the folk scene now. She sounds like a female Bob Dylan. My daughter saw the two of them perform and said Greg was so drunk nobody could understand a word he said or sang, and then Pieta came out and blew everybody away.

Greg is married to Iris Dement (I'm still not a fan of HER voice, despite its Grand Ol' Opry verve -- but I wanna be a fan, because Ted Kooser is). Greg and Iris live here in Kansas City. He still sings like a thunderstorm over a cornfield somewhere in Iowa. And "Brand New '64 Dodge" is still on my list of favorite songs. At least in the top 20 or 25.

Hmmm... top 25 songs... next post, maybe....

Ted Haggard, Back On Top

2007-02-09T06:53:00.000-08:00

So, three weeks of "intensive counseling" and Ted Haggard is as straight as Mike Jones's beeline from hotel room to bank. Freud works in mysterious ways.

You gotta wonder what kind of therapy Ted received. Could he possibly have ventured outside the fundy paradigm for some bona fide psychoanalysis? Did he ever get anywhere near the unconscious? Oh, who am I kidding...

But how might various therapeutic schools approach Ted's particular issues?

Freudian: So the only image you recall from the dream is of you and your friend Mike bowling by the Washington Monument?

Jungian: It's your mandala, Ted. You can draw it however you want. I'm just saying you've got pens and crayons here -- why not zip up your pants?

Gestalt: Of course, you're upset. That's a lot of meth to misplace. What? The ball-muzzle makes it hard to understand you...

Reichian: Breathe, Ted. Breathe. Now, talk to the empty chair. Yell at the chair. Give the chair all your anger... Ted, stop humping the chair.

Cognitive/Behaviorist: Uh, Mr. Haggard, we know you have the money. Why won't you pay your bill?

Pastoral counseling: Praise the Lord, you're cured! Just try to avoid any scripture with a rod or staff in it. And the Song of Solomon, of course. You know how you get.

Apparently, the church has suggested that Ted's healing will proceed more smoothly if he moves out of town. Ted and his wife say they may both get masters degrees in psychology. I just saw the documentary "Friends of God," in which Ted claims that the sex lives of evangelists are better than other people's, evangelical wives more satisfied, etc. Perhaps the Haggards will offer couples counseling to help others have what they have.

I looked back at my previous Ted post and found that Dan left a comment. Sorry I missed that before. Point taken on Ted's financial exploitation of his flock. I probably have less sympathy for people who fall for this kind of crap than I should. I tend to think that when a guy professes Christian piety, yet seems both hateful and insane, people should be able to see through him. But it doesn't necessarily follow that they get what they deserve for being less than perceptive.

The Cutest Coprophage Ever

2007-01-30T18:45:00.000-08:00

And it's Pez at the wire. Pez by a quivering nose. Pez triumphant.

I tell ya, she's just the most darlingest most cutest little turd-eater you ever saw. Pez is the Platonic ideal of all guinea pigs, what with her patchwork coat and her veiny pink ears and her charming timidity and her perfect name and her scrabbling about in a manic panic every time you reach into her cage to get her out so she can sit in Jonah's lap and calm down and make the most delightfulest contented chirring noises ever uttered by earthly rodentia.

Her toilet habits suck, though.

I have now been given to understand the whole yum-yum, this-my-shit, hollaback girl narcissism of eating one's own poo, if one is a guinea pig. See, guinea pigs are more highly evolved than we are, so they don't just crap from one orifice. Nay, rather, they also excrete delicious, nutritious pellets "from a small sack near the anus," according to a guinea pig website that doesn't know how to spell "sac." It's a sac, right? And its special turds have apparently been processed by the animal's gut to make available certain nutrients that couldn't get got the first time through.

So it's not coprophagia in the strict sense. I don't think she gets off on it. But she doesn't seem to be ashamed of it, either. I can't really read her, emotionally, except for a general state of terrified cluelessness, with bouts of contented chirring, and food pellet/hay/fruit/poo noshing. Lord knows she has an abundance of poo to choose from. I think she pinches one off every twelve seconds or so.

Sing, Muse, of pigs from Guinea,
Who chirr, but never whinny,
Although they eat some hay.

They also eat eat crapola
As if it were granola,
Which seems a little gay.

Our pers'nal guinea pigger
Is Pez, as dear as Tigger
And cute as Tina Fey.

She comes here to delight us
And probably won't bite us,
But if we're mean, she may.

To Pez! Thou art so wack!
Thy lunch is in a sac(k)!
We love you guinea-way.

Lo and behold, at 2:30 a.m. on January 31st, Jonah Wilder Howard turns six years old. Which means his sister Emily Joy will be 28 in exactly one week. How in the world did this happen?

Beck 'n call

2007-01-29T13:39:00.000-08:00

OK, if my arch blogrival Bighead Needleman can post a cartoon, so can I.
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Or maybe I can't. The HTML I copied for the image had six errors in it, which I (stunningly) was able to edit and finally get the image to load. BUT. Look at that goddamn thing! What a mess.

OK, I cede this round to Bighead. And I feel about the new Beck much as I did about the new Dylan after listening to it once. I need more time with it. This is also how I feel about deciding whether or not a picture of Salma Hayek is any good.

We have a new guinea pig in our house, a sixth birthday present that has occasioned much naming debate. What do you call a white female rodent with black patches who is terrified of her owners and their cat?

Well, if you learn that guinea pigs often eat their own turds and this amuses you tremendously because it means that "the guinea pig's tushy is like a Pez dispenser" (you're six, remember), then you might well call your guinea pig "Pez," last night's #1 name.

On the other paw, if you can't come up with many good girl names for your guinea pig, you might call her "Mrs. Bob."

Or, you might inexplicably settle on the name "Marbles," which, when I left for work this morning, was in serious contention.

When I get home in a couple of hours, I'll find out which of the three nominees has won the nominal award.

Torture, Yes. Habeas Corpus, No.

2007-01-24T07:43:00.000-08:00

Caught an amazing clip of U.S. Atty. General Alberto Gonzales telling the Senate Judiciary Committee that the constitution doesn't guarantee the right of habeas corpus. Senators sat there gawking and sputtering as he explained that the wording merely guarantees that it can't be suspended (except under certain conditions) -- NOT that it's been granted in the first place.

That's pretty airtight logic there. If you don't give 'em the right to begin with, then you can't take it away and you haven't violated Article One by keeping people in prison forever. What else could we apply this to?

1st Amendment: It's not that you have the right to freedom of speech or to worship as you wish, it's that Congress shall pass no law prohibiting you from doing so. Pretty big loophole for the executive branch there...

2nd Amendment: It's not that you have the right to bear arms, it's that your non-existent right to bear arms can't be infringed upon.

Roe v. Wade: It's not that a woman has the right to an abortion, it's that no state can pass a law to take away that right... which doesn't exist....

Hmm, you have to be selective on this stuff. And speaking of Alberto's selectivity...

I just read that, over the past month or so, he's fired at least seven federal prosecutors working on various investigations of the Bush administration and GOP lawmakers. One of the prosecutors, Carole Lam, was the one who nailed Duke Cunningham on corruption. Still involved in several ongoing investigations, she's apparently become too troublesome. In her place, Gonzales has put a nice Republican lawyer -- who apparently will not require Senate confirmation, because that part of the process got stripped out in the most recent version of the Patriot Act.

Wow, gulag-style justice and a government purge.... Yippee, we're the new Soviet Union!

I also see that "Children of Men" only received three Oscar nominations -- screenplay, cinematography, and editing. No Cuaron, no Caine, no Clive, but Will Smith is up for best actor? How much injustice can we endure?

Magnificent Dystopia

2007-01-08T14:08:00.000-08:00

My message today: GO SEE "CHILDREN OF MEN." I saw it twice over the weekend, cuz I couldn't believe my eyes the first time and had to make sure it was as great as I thought it was. First time, the darling spousette nearly left the theater because the despair and dread and sheer human agony in this movie just about did her in, but I came out thinking: I haven't been grabbed like that by a movie in years. Took my dad the second time, and thought: I haven't been grabbed like that by a movie in years, and I saw the same movie two days ago. Even better on a second viewing.

I'm not sure you can find a more perfectly realized dystopian world on film, and there have been some great ones (A Clockwork Orange, 1984, Brazil, the first hour of Minority Report, 28 Days Later -- isn't that the title of that great horror movie a couple of years ago, the one about the rage virus? -- to name but a few). I swear, this beats 'em all. I was sucked into it from the first scene, and never doubted it to the very end.

There's been a lot written about the uninterrupted eight-minute shot, and how Alfonso Cuaron rehearsed cast and crew for twelve days to get what may very well be the most complicated combat sequence every recorded in one go. I was all set to be amazed by this fabled shot, but was so caught up in the movie the first time that I completely forgot to look for it. The second time, I could barely believe what they pulled off in that eight minutes. It's as masterful a piece of directing, design, effects, and camerawork as I've ever seen. Gotta get my hands on a script, so I can see how much of the finished film is in the screenplay.

There's also the slowest yet most suspenseful chase scene ever, involving a car that has to be jump-started. And Clive Owen is superb. And Michael Caine is sublime. And Julianne Moore (spoiler! read no further if you haven't seen it!) does one of the best jobs of dying on film since my brother in Full Metal Jacket.

There's a topic for comments: Great film deaths. Who died and made you remember it?

I seem to recall Kevin Spacey's eyes going really dead in L.A. Confidential. I wonder if that was all him or if they did something in post-production to enhance the effect?

Probably my favorite film death of all time is the old Inuit guy in A Map of the Human Heart, alone on an ice floe, imagining a reunion with the woman who's been his soulmate since they were kids. Can't remember the actor's name. Jason Lee? Is that right? Anyway, it's not so much his performance as the cumulative effect of the story. Kills me every time.

My friend Jen

2007-01-02T14:32:00.000-08:00

Jen Kostecki, brilliant artist and gal-about-globe, recently started a blog. I just added the link in my sidebar. Cuz I know how to add links. Cuz I'm a blogger, man. I blog.

So what if my shirt is stained and too big.

New year, new blogger software

2007-01-02T11:04:00.000-08:00

So I upgraded to the new Blogger. I'm now using what Blogger describes as the Edward James Olmos version of its software, whereas before, I was using the Lorne Green version. I think it's a Battlestar Galactica analogy, which means I don't get it.

We'll see if this version can keep from ditching my sidebar links and hanging up when I try to post a message and not recognizing my password and generally being an enormous pain in the ass. For free. Like I should have a single complaint.

Happy new year to my vast readership
There's many a slip twixt the blog and the lip
Whatever that means -- th'aint no reason but rhyme
And my rhymes be dope and they show'p on time

The love child of Jay-Z and Richard Wilbur'd
Have nothin on me, nor would W.S. Gilbert
Not every rapper throw a phrase like "nor would"
Or stuffs a shirt of the size Al Gore would

Bighead just told me my shirt's too big
Cuz I'm a wee little man, not a three little pig
But I huff and puff and I rhyme like Nelly
Got a future as bright as a pork-type belly

Like Kool Moe D, I go to work like a boxer
Trained to maim and brain and outfox yer
However that goes -- my point is, damn
Wham, bam, happy new year, ma'am

I got over that flu bug and now, egad
I be puttin' the go back into gonad
Put the sin in Sinbad, the agh in Baghdad
My craze be prosy and my verse be mad
My pants be big and my boxers plaid
All the ho's in my videos be scantily clad
The Spulge is back and the Spulge is bad

OK, great, I just spilled salsa on my stupid, apparently oversized shirt. Fine. But I'm bloggin'.

Lo, I Am Sore

2006-12-21T11:57:00.000-08:00

There's nothing worse than a sore blogger, and my ribs hurt. Caught some wretched upper-respiratory-sinus bug that's had me coughing up my lungs, spleen, and other festively-tinted organs of the season for five days now. The glottal, Germanic sound on the front end of Chanukkah has never come in so handy as with this freakin' cough. I just yell Cchchchchappy CHchannunkahhhhhahhhhh into the toilet, sink, whatever, and voila, out comes a dreidel.

First couple days, y'know, you're just stuporous and vaguely annoyed, guzzling tea and C and aspirin as the Ork armies of bacteria build up. It's only when the fever kicks in that you think, oh, this may require drugs, and by the time the searing headache presses against the backs of your eyeballs like pre-natal alien twins, you can barely form a coherent enough thought to say, I'd better call my pal the ENT...

except he's not in. And now it's nighttime and you're convulsing on the couch under a blanket with your temperature dialed to 103.3 FM and these shivers and sweats and you're just gonna tough it out until morning and go to the ER, except come next morning, you can't get out of couch (not that you can sleep, you've had maybe two hours, but you can't move), so you have to wait until afternoon and oh for godsake shut the hell up. SHUT THE HELL UP!

Yeah, hearing voices, too. One voice in particular, which is me as an old man retching and kvetching, "I maintain, I maintain strongly, it's not an ordinary cold." Check the recordings of old folks on Simon & Garfunkle's "Bookends" for a precise re-enactment.

None of this, of course, is sufficient reason for my long dry spulge here -- have I even posted in December? Can't remember when that thing about actors went up, and I'm not going back to look. Just typing this so far has been exhausting. But so worth it, when I consider my faithful readers, a couple (and that's, like, 33%) of whom have asked, "Hey, what up with your lame-ass blog?"

And I say unto them, fear not. For I bring thee writhings of great bok choy, hocked up out of carry-out Bo Ling's, my first food in days, not counting my darling spousette's chicken soup, broth only, thank Yaweh for the woman, she is a saint.

I should retitle this blog "Broth Only." And I should move to a brothel. The spousette is a saint not only for her fine Judaic medicine-woman cookery, but for the strip-tease she did to assuage the fears of a neurotic, fevered brain that the virus had laid waste to my manhood. I know, it's ridiculous, but I'd never gone four days with no sign of life in this admittedly overactive region of my pathetic male corpus.

Lo, I have lived to tell you how sweet it is when a diseased mouth-breather, slumped on the couch, moaning that he'll never get it up again, looks up through rheumy eyes to behold his lovely bride provocatively setting forth to prove him wrong. A SAINT, I tell you! A really hot saint who can shake it like a paint mixer.

And not a moment too soon, cuz having figured on doing all my shopping this week, the only gift I have for her at this point is the same kind Justin Timberlake is giving this year. If you haven't laughed yourself senseless at this adolescent SNL clip and very catchy tune (thanks, Bighead Needleman!), I can't recommend it highly enough. It's been pulled off YouTube, but you can find it here:

SNL xmas spirit

And so, by the third horse pill, our hero began to feel halfway human and crawled up the steps to blog. A dick and a blog.

Step one:
You cut a hole in the blog
Step two:
You put your junk in that blog
Step three:
Go 'head, link from the blog
That's the way we do it

My point is, Happy Goddamn Holidays!

Spulge Divulges Names of Greatest Living Actors

2006-12-06T14:50:00.000-08:00

If you put 100 people in a room, and they’d all been watching movies since, say, the 1970s (this is to eliminate the whippersnapper effect), and you asked them to name the ten greatest living American film actors working today, these names would probably be on all but a few of the resulting lists:

Robert De Niro
Meryl Streep
Al Pacino
Robert Duvall
Paul Newman

That they’re all white and almost all men obviously reflects opportunity as much as talent. But talent they got. They make the list by sheer numbers of amazing film moments amassed over years and years, movie after movie. I say “moments” rather than “performances,” because I think we remember a few brilliant, authentic moments and call the whole thing a great performance, as long as there’s an arc to it and there aren’t fake moments to undercut the brilliant ones.

From Robert Duvall’s first movie role in “To Kill A Mockingbird” (and all he had was a moment), through the big leads like “The Great Santini” and “Tender Mercies,” right on up to the old-codger supporting roles he’s getting today, he seems never to have committed an inauthentic moment to film. As with De Niro and Newman, it never looks like acting. He just seems to be living in front of a camera.

Pacino does seem like he’s acting sometimes, but it’s usually when he’s enjoying himself so much that the scenery tastes good to you, too. And Meryl Streep, well, it’s just a privilege to live in a time when you can watch such a superb actor try so many different things. Anybody who pulls off “Sophie’s Choice” and “Silkwood” and “Out of Africa” and “Ironweed” but also “Postcards from the Edge” and “The River Wild” and “Adaptation” and that Lemony Snicket movie, for the love of God... That’s better range than any of the guys have. Pacino has the widest range of the male actors on the list.

So who else? And by what criteria? I didn’t put Jack Nicholson on there, because as much as I’ve enjoyed watching him over the years, he’s like a jazz musician who has a few arpeggios that he leans on in every solo. Likewise, Gene Hackman. And I didn’t include James Gandolfini or Edie Falco, because their titanic, greatest-TV-acting-of-all-time performances are, after all, on TV.

For a long time, I’ve felt that the greatest living actor might be Morgan Freeman. The range issue is still there, but you never doubt him for a second and he confers some kind of deep, dignified humanity on everything he touches, even in otherwise lame movies. He’s a black, male version of Vanessa Redgrave, who I don’t get to include because she’s not American. But damn. I might add Wes Studi, who’s never going to play the lead in a comedy, but should have gotten an Oscar, a lifetime achievement award, and a MacArthur grant for “Geronimo,” if you ask me.

But then, if we were just going to base it on one huge, stunning performance, the whole list would be different. Billy Bob Thornton would probably make it, and so would Terrence Howard, and so would Heath Ledger. Wait, Heath’s not American. He should get honorary citizenship for “Brokeback Mountain.” But if I let him in, I have to let Christian Bale in. We don’t want a coalition of the top billing.

For overall greatness established over at least a couple of decades, I’d have to fill out the ten with Morgan Freeman, Sean Penn, Sissy Spacek, Ed Harris, maybe Denzel. Or maybe Viggo. Or maybe John Cusack. Phillip Seymour Hoffman? Or the most abundantly gifted of them all, maybe, Robert Downey, Jr.

If range were the main criterion, my top ten would be:

1. Meryl Streep
2. Robert Downey, Jr.
3. Dustin Hoffman
4. Kevin Kline
5. Jamie Foxx
6. Sean Penn
7. John Cusack
8. Parker Posey
9. Christopher Guest
10. Sissy Spacek

Except for Parker Posey and maybe Jamie Foxx, I think they’re all at least 40. It takes time to establish range. I wonder if Clooney should be on there. Not a long track record, but from “Out of Sight” to “Good Night and Good Luck” to “O, Brother, Where Art Thou?” Still, he’s always kinda Clooney.

And of course, I left out my relatives. Employees of the Lotto and their families don’t get to play.

Who else did I miss?

Bob, Bob, and Bob

2006-12-04T12:35:00.000-08:00

My arch-blogrival Bighead Needleman came into my office this morning throwing yogurt and dissing Bob Dylan. If I were Bob Dylan, I'd write a song about it, rather than a blog entry. It'd be something like this:

Well, Bighead she come down the corridor
She got the medicine made from a toxic spore
And I say, my lacto-intolerance can't tolerate no more
I aint no health food saint or craft-services movie star--
But she just look at me and said, you ain't? what you mean you ain't, of course you are

The thing is, I think if I could just put together the perfect mix of Dylan songs, she'd see the light. I told her I might just do it. But of course I won't. But if I did -- is that too O.J. Simpson? -- I'd start with the young Bob.

Off the first couple of albums, I'd take these two songs:

1. Tomorrow Is A Long Time
2. Don't Think Twice, It's Alright

Simple, see, so you get the taste and the lactobacillus without having to stir the fruit up from the bottom just yet. We'll avoid stuff she's already heard and found overrated ("Like A Rolling Stone"). But I'd pull something off Highway 61 Revisited to complicate things a little:

3. Tombstone Blues

And then I'd goose the complication with something narrative from The Times They Are A-Changin':

4. The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll

Then back to simple, with Nashville Skyline:

5. Lay Lady Lay

As we enter the middle Bob phase, it gets trickier.

We must keep her interest, yet show some range. She's a humorist, so we can remind her that Bob is, too. But we also need the tunefulness, see. From Blonde on Blonde:

6. Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat
7. Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands

And I'd include

8. Visions of Johanna

but it'd be the live version off of Biograph, not the Blonde on Blonde version. Similarly, I MIGHT throw in

9. Percy's Song

also from Biograph. It's not the greatest lyric ever, but along with that live Visions of Johanna, it'll lay to rest any doubt she may have about his musicianship. It's like the guitar, harmonica, voice, and words are all one organic thing on those two. Hands down, his best harmonica playing ever. Damning with faint praise, I know.

Then we have to do a couple from Blood On The Tracks:

10. Tangled Up In Blue
11. Buckets of Rain

Then we'd jump right past the identity crisis and lame posturing of the 1980s -- not that there weren't some good tunes here and there, but jeez. What might get to Bighead from the later Bob?

I think we go all the way to the mid-'90s, Time Out Of Mind. What is that, about '96, '97?

12. Not Dark Yet
13. Make You Feel My Love

And then we round it out with the sublime Love and Theft:

14. Mississippi
15. Po' Boy
16. Summer Days

Then she'll see that Bob is really the love-child of Rimbaud, Steven Wright, and Jimmy Durante. Now that's a three-way I'd buy tickets to see. I'd add a couple of songs from the new album, too, but I haven't listened to it enough yet to decide which ones.

Suggestions? Edits? Jeers?

Two positives = a negative?

2006-11-29T13:33:00.000-08:00

Tom Waits was on The Daily Show last night. He's usually a great interview, but he didn't really get a chance to say much. I was thinking, "Jon Stewart seems a little sycophantic -- is he uncharacteristically nervous or something...?" and next thing I knew, Jon Stewart admitted to being nervous about the interview because he's such a fan.

So that was a bit lame, but there was still hope because Tom was actually going to play the show off the air. Is this the first time a musician has actually played music on the show? I'm thinking maybe so. Which would have been great except that he chose what I think is one of his lesser songs ("The Day After Tomorrow"), and it ran long, so it got cut off about two-thirds of the way through. All in all, not a great night for either The Daily Show or Our Hero.

My interview questions for Tom Waits:

1. Why "The Day After Tomorrow"?
2. Why the constant porkpie? Not that I'm against the porkpie. Just wondering about your concept of the porkpie.
3. Is that ice on the street out there?

OK, that's ice on the street out there. I'm going home.

Tom Waits for No Altman

2006-11-22T06:51:00.000-08:00

Robert Altman dies;

Tom Waits releases an enormous new album.

One door closes; another one (a garage door with a holiday wreath made of a smoke ring, car parts, and shrunken heads) opens. I haven't checked on the time of Altman's death, but I think these two events took place within mere hours of each other.

Tom Waits and Robert Altman intersected on Short Cuts, an uneven riff on the stories of Raymond Carver. Tom and Lily Tomlin were splendid as a couple of co-dependents you just knew were stuck together "till the wheels come off," (a line from the movie reprised in the glorious "Picture In A Frame" on Tom's Mule Variations). If there's an afterlife, it'd be nice if Robert Altman and Raymond Carver were hanging out about now. Maybe listening to the new Tom Waits album.

It's a 3-CD set called "Orphans." I must add: the two songs Tom wrote for Big Bad Love are on the second CD. This blows my mind, just as it blew my mind when Norah Jones covered one of them on her second album. Here's what really gets me: The songs allude to images and themes in the movie. And some of those images are in our script, but not in the Larry Brown book it's based on. So if the movie had been written differently, the songs would be different? Or if the movie had never been made, Tom's new album wouldn't have these songs on it? And Norah Jones would've put something else on her album, too? It's so strange. This little movie, which did so little box office, made these marks on other things. What must it be like to create something that has a huge cultural ripple effect? My mind would be in a continual state of blown-ness.

Robert Christgau mentions the Big Bad Love connection in his review of "Orphans" in this week's Rolling Stone.

Excerpts from Tom Wait's notes about the new album (which comes with a 92-page booklet):

"If a record really works at all, it should be made like a homemade doll with tinsel for hair and seashells for ears stuffed with candy and money. Or like a good woman’s purse with a Swiss army knife and a snake bite kit."

"On Orphans there is a mambo about a convict who breaks out of jail with a fishbone, a gospel train song about Charlie Whitman and John Wilkes Boothe, a delta blues about a disturbing neighbor, a spoken word piece about a woman who was struck by lightning, an 18th century Scottish madrigal about murderous sibling rivalry, an American backwoods a cappella about a hanging. Even a song by Jack Kerouac and a spiritual with my own personal petition to the Lord with prayer…There’s even a show tune about an old altar boy and a rockabilly song about a young man who’s begging to be lied to."

"I think you will find more singing and dancing here than usual. But I hope fans of more growling, more warbling, more barking, more screeching won’t be disappointed either."

Like Robert Altman, Tom Waits is a true American original -- visionary, uncompromising, wacky, inconsistent, ragged around the edges. He's an urban shaman and a suburban dad and often records songs in his car. A lot of his music will outlive him, but we should dig him while he's still around.

You Must Revise Your Life

2006-11-20T10:53:00.000-08:00

I was looking through a big book about Buster Keaton this weekend, and had to come to grips with the fact that, although he's responsible for some of the most amazing, hilarious moments ever committed to film, there's not one film of his (including "Steamboat Bill, Jr." which, last time I rented it, I fast-forwarded to the climactic sequence at the end) that really belongs on my desert island top-five.

But I'm putting in his picture to compensate. I just hate to think of Buster Keaton being excluded from any list having to do with comedy. But it's time to buck up and be a man and push "O, Brother, Where Art Thou?" up on my list.

I guess. I think I'll make it easier and do a top 25...

Meanwhile, following a comment on the Room w/ a View post, I want to mention "Babel":

I haven't seen a movie that describes more devastatingly the situation we 21st-century human beings find ourselves in. It's beautifully written, movingly acted, stunningly shot, and directed and cut with a respect for the audience that is all too rare. But I came away thinking there was something missing, some little thing here or there that would have made it a truly, historically great film instead of simply an amazing one.

At first I thought, it's a lack of levity. The mounting dread and grimness of it is not just hard work to sit through, it's unrealistic. Life isn't as relentlessly heavy as that, is it? But there are a couple of light moments. And you do forget for long stretches that you're watching a movie. It's realistic enough to draw you in.

I don't know what it is, exactly. Maybe it's that there's one story in the middle that touches the two others, but those two don't really meet, except through the middle story -- like a triptych, where the larger middle panel is hinged to two panels on either side.

If the movie's a tower, it's missing a wall. But maybe that's intentional. The tower it's named for was never quite finished.

Or maybe we're the wall.

Desert Island Five

2006-11-17T13:33:00.000-08:00

Well, after that all-too-ponderous post (and generous comments from y'all, including my first from an unknown-er (thanks Reel Fanatic -- more on Babel/Inarritu/Arriaga, next post...), I pick up where last Sunday's New York Times left off. A top-five list. The magazine section was devoted to comedy, and they published a lot of top-five lists as answers to the question "Which comedies would you want on a desert island?"

Among those surveyed: Will Ferrell, Christopher Guest (nice articles on both of them, too), Ricky Gervais, Catherine O'Hara, Bernie Mac, a bunch of other performers, writers, and directors. The most frequently listed movie was "This Is Spinal Tap." I was surprised to see some brilliant comic minds with "Dumb & Dumber" and "Team America: World Police" on their top fives.

Surely some of that's due to physical comedy getting the big laughs. This subject is taken up in the magazine's lead-off article by A.O. Scott. He's never been one my fave film reviewers (even less so after his lukewarm, miss-the-point-entirely review of Big Bad Love), but it's a pretty good piece on why "Borat" works and why something like the VW microbus gag in "Little Miss Sunshine" keeps getting funnier as the movie goes.

I'm tempted to do a top ten. Top fives are too hard. And the desert island factor means each movie must reward repeated viewings. So uneven movies tend to fall out. I still laugh as hard at the funny stuff in Woody Allen's "Love and Death" as I do at anything, but it has moments I find so lame, it's embarrassing. I have to eliminate things like "Harold and Maude," which I probably saw a dozen times as an adolescent, in favor of what I'd be willing to see again and again now, as an incredibly sophisticated adult with laser-like, irony-clad perception...

I really would rather watch "Jackass Number Two" than "Room With A View" on a given day. But top five?

My first attempt will be chronological:

1. Steamboat Bill, Jr. (Buster Keaton)
2. Sleeper (Woody Allen)
3. Fast Times At Ridgemont High (Cameron Crowe, Amy Heckerling)
4. Flirting With Disaster (David O. Russell)
5. High Fidelity (John Cusack, Stephen Frears)

That looks pretty close. I can't believe the Coen bros. aren't on there somewhere, but... "Raising Arizona"? "The Big Lebowski"? "O, Brother...?" and what would I take out? Maybe "Fast Times..." Or maybe I'd have to admit that stretches of "Steamboat Bill, Jr." are dull and not worth the great rewards of its high points. Maybe I'd have to include "Groundhog Day," a nearly perfect movie, especially for a desert island situation.

My friend Matt used to review films for a newspaper and says there are at least two John Cusack movies that are better and funnier than "High Fidelity." Them's fightin' words.

Man, this is hard to do. Each movie I love that I have to leave out is like a kick in the groin of my personal aesthetic. It hurts, man!

Go ahead. I dare ya.