Editor's note: Oh, I know, no one's fooled. It's actually June, and I'm just getting around to a May blog posting--and a lame one at that. Please do suck it up.
* * *
When the going gets tough, the tough start writing . . . haiku.
Yes, I have been abnormally quiet of late. Chalk it up to my usual strained relationship with endless Pittsburgh cloud cover (a very rainy spring so far) and my affair-gone-all-lemon-sour with the pothole obstacle course that is the Pennsylvania Turnpike this time of year. It pretty much all comes down to these things.
Plus one more--let's not forget the fact that I detest most politicians and news commentators and feel that, four months after the inauguration, we're back at a very hostile, churlish, square one in America, with non-stop sniping and inertia-a-no-go.
No, the bloom isn't off my Obama American Beauty rose. I love him (sometimes), I love him not (sometimes). But mostly I'm quite happy with him and his administration. It's just that everything else in the rosebush (or should I say, "roseBush"?) of American politics smells like horseshit.
So to salute those who have in the past and continue in the present to oppress us and to vent a little venom lest I poison myself from the backwash, a couple of weeks ago I started to write haiku, the 5-syllable/7-syllable/5-syllable form of Japanese verse, usually dedicated to nature, but in the case of the following public figures, it all comes down to our baser, animal instincts. And the aforementioned horseshit.
I've done this periodically, put my snarkiness to meter, usually writing my formulaic Asian doggerel about ridiculous professional issues, stuff to keep my colleagues chuckling. There is, in fact, a long tradition (long as in a decade's worth) of haiku-penning in my chosen profession; just go to Google and type in "library" and "haiku," and you will be amazed at how much there is and overwhelmed at how dorky most of it reads. Only librarians could get their groove back over haiku about cats and cataloging.
My friend Kangaroo was the most recent inspiration for my haiku-itribe: She challenged several of her former colleagues to write haiku about people we had worked with and still, years later, disliked. A fun idea, an especially good way to while away work hours on Facebook, but I could get only so far with this. Not that there aren't simply squillions of former colleagues I could trash through minimalist poetry, of course. There's just not much of an audience for it, outside of our immediate circle, and vainglorious pimp that I am, I want an audience for my audacity.
So, instead, I concentrated on coming up with horror movie titles to describe former colleagues. I Know Who You Screwed Over Last Summer, for instance, all the while secretly thinking up Scream or Saw scenarios.
But politics, especially American politics, seems like the perfect venue for haiku-ranting. Short, not so sweet, but definitely to the point.
You tell me if I've been successful.
Sarah Palin--
Sarah, Plain and Tall-- Romantic! Sarah Palin?-- Small and bombastic
Todd Palin (inspired by a friend of mine who considers Todd a *gag* "husbear")--
Todd Palin sexy? Hmmm--but wasn't Eva Braun considered cute, too?
Rick Perry (aka "Governor Goodhair," the Governor of Texas, who a colleague of a colleague recently decried as a "liberal" because he had spent too much state funds on, I dunno, mousse or mass transit or something. It's that same argument I've heard before--"George Bush is a secret Democrat" because a) he burned through money like he was clearing brush and b) the right wing has to discredit him in the worst way possible, "so let's call him a liberal!")--
A hypocrite? Yup! But liberal? Rick Perry? Only in Texas!
Antonin Scalia (inspired by his recent interview on 60 Minutes, where he excelled at being an obtuse, self-serving douchebag of the first order)--
"Activist judges"-- No more! Time to say goodbye, "Justice" Scalia
Rush Limbaugh--
Like Wanda Sykes said, "I wish his kidneys would fail" Rush Limbaugh--piss off!
George "Dubya" Bush--
Dubya celebrates Memorial Day like so-- Memorizing stuff
Glenn Beck (based on my belief that Glenn Beck was the Eric Cartman of his time. I'm sure he was picked on endlessly at school. And I'm equally sure he deserved every minute of it)--
Teachers worried so Glenn Beck, friendless 6th grader Ev'ryone loathed him
Dick Cheney (last and definitely least, the man who will not shut up)--
Council has spoken: "Face-shooting is illegal-- Dick Cheney must die!"
As my friend the Gladman put it, after listening to Portishead:
I don't understand most of your musical postings, but the part of your blog clip that I played sent me running for the Xanax. Tipper Gore was right about warning labels on music, she just didn't go far enough.
Hmmm, well, not everyone's musical tastes are the same or even in sync most of the time, and I shall remain mostly silent on the detriment to my well-being of hearing "lite jazz" played in heavy rotation at a holiday brunch the Gladman threw several years ago, an event I endured on a morning when I had had . . . well, let's just say, too much fun and too little sleep the night before, celebrating the Birth of Our Lord in a less than holy (but more than spiritual) way.
The excellent hosting duties and superlative cuisine made up for Aural Assault by a DeadlyKenny G, but, alas, I'm still scarred in many ways.
Nonetheless, when I posted on my Facebook profile that perhaps listening to Portishead on the walk to work on a gloomy Monday morning might have been a bad idea, one work friend responded to the post, "I'm surprised you made it at all!" And this from a soul who wouldn't be caught facing the Dark Side without wearing a fitted cap, Doc Martens, and rolled-up dungarees, with his wallet held in place by a very long chain. Plus he grew up in McKees Rocksand is a philosophy major. Not to be trifled with!
So as penance--and because the second morning of snow quickly dissipated and, instead, the sun shone most of today, thank you very much--I'm now on a mission to raise the human spirit through song, 3 minutes and 30 seconds at a time.
Please give these a try and let me know if you still need the Xanax.
Basia Balat, "In the Night" (and, no, it's not *that* Basia):
Ayo, "Help is Coming" (I used to hear this on RFI Musique all the time, and now it's been released stateside):
Amadou et Mariam, "Dimanche a Bamako" (yes, as heard on NPR, just another example of my liking stuff that other white people like):
And the aforementioned "Happy Up Here" by Röyksopp, which, really, if that doesn't get your spirit moving, then it's too late, you're already dead:
This is what I woke up to this morning, an inch or so of snow on the ground, still more coming down from the sky, and a temp of 30 F--just two days after a glorious, sunny Sunday, when the high reached 70 F.
Further proof that hell has frozen over? That stinkin' Carolina won the NCAA.
"Single" sounds like such a frivolous term for a song so dour. While certainly a fine example of musical creativity, I generally would not recommended anything called "Machine Gun" (except by the Commodores, which is probably more my style than I care to admit) for easy listening on a dreary, damp Monday morning. I did feature Portishead in my list of twenty songs to kill yourself by ("All Mine"--icy despair, retro style--and you can dance to it!). So I should have known better, but Third even outmiseries the misery of an April Monday with snow in the forecast and a bitter chill in my disposition.
Gone are Sunday's sunny 70s; hello, 50s, 40s, and 30s, and the desire to throw myself under a passing Port Authority bus. Remind me now why I decided to limit my caffeine intake to one cup of coffee a day? And reduce my consumption of chocolate to practically nil? Health concerns? Well, the wheels of the bus go 'round and 'round and seem to have a road-gripping retort to that theory, now don't they?
So, Monday a.m. and Portishead shall never meet again. Instead, for quick relief and a desire not to tie up traffic on Penn Avenue, I turned to a little "Melody a.m.," or at least a Melody a.m. revival in the form of Röyksopp's new single, "Happy Up Here."
So enough of the depression and alienation! There's plenty of time for that in the future--tomorrow will probably be worse anyway! Let's dance and sing and play Space Invaders. I'm sure Torbjørn and Svein would want it that way.
First, let me say, right off, that while this rant/posting is about Trader Joe's, the chi-chi supermarket chain, coming soon to a high-income neighborhood near you, I do not have a problem with Trader Joe's, in and of itself.
In fact, generally, I like it, at least in concept. You get high-end food at, admittedly, high-end prices. (Four cloth bags of groceries for $91.58--such a bargain!) The staff is often quite friendly and helpful, with no exceptions being all that exceptional--excepting maybe the one check-out clerk who insists on wishing me a "blessed day" through gritted teeth after every transaction. I keep feeling like she's doing field research for her church. "Befriend the goofy homosexualand report back to us on what he purchased, so we can boycott those companies. Praise the lord!"
And what is not to like about chocolate-covered sunflower seeds, Marcona almonds with rosemary, and the TJ-brand mac 'n' cheese? Good, waist-wasting eats.
Compared to the local mega-chain Giant Eagle (nostalgic for the dark days of bread lines, grim decor, and surly service of the Soviet Union? They live on at Giant Eagle), Trader Joe's and Whole Foods are making-glorious-people's-revolution for Pittsburgh foodies.
I still wish we had a Wegman's for comparison and contrast. I can see how that would be a tough sell in town, with both TJ's, Whole Foods, and the Gucci Eagle Central Market covering the Oakland-Shadyside-Squirrel Hill-East Liberty 'hood. But surely Mount Lebanon, Fox Chapel, Wexford, or Oakmont could support a Wegman's. Heck, Erie has a Wegman's--and several Tim Horton's, too. Yet Pittsburgh has got bupkus to show for New York-based megamarts and Canadian doughnuts.
Second, I'm not saying I want to move to Erie anytime soon. In addition to Tim Horton's and Wegman's, Erie also had 129 inches of snow in January alone this past winter.I'm sure it's lovely in a certain light during a certain time of year, but if I were living in Erie, I'd be thinking of something other than 20 songs to kill yourself by. I'd be thinking of 20 ways to do it.
I do have my quibbles with Trader Joe's. The Pittsburgh store seems a bit undersized compared to some other TJ's I've been to (as does the Whole Foods, and as did the late, lamented Filene's, may it rest in peace). And there are times when you just can't get what you want. You go one night and they are completely out of parsley, flat-leaf for curly. You go another, and there's been a run on toilet paper or pineapple. You go yet another, and that Applegate Farms free-range Amish sandwich meat and cheese I like is nowhere to be found. Nor is the bread. Or the fat-free milk.
So, from time to time, the Trader Joe's experiene can be a bit frustrating merchandise-wise. But, really, the crux of my bittertude toward TJ's is not TJ's itself. It is with those who frequent Trader Joe's.
Excepting yours truly of course.
Really, I'm talking about a certain type of denizen of Trader Joe's. The Trader Schmoes. The Trader Slows. The Trader Foes/Fauxs.
Oh, c'mon, don't play all goody-goody. You know exactly what I'm talking about. There are the Trader Schmoes--the posh, East End of Pittsburgh types, with one foot in Shadyside and one foot on the gas pedal of their Lexus SUVs as they plow you under in the parking lot. They swear Trader Joe's is the absolute only place they shop for groceries anymore. They can't deal with the hoi polloi at Giant Eagle in North St. Clairvale East Versaillesport West Millquense any longer! Trader Joe's is all that's standing between them and starvation--and they are of course already beyond fashionably thin, so they can ill miss the calories.
This type worries me. Deeply. I mean, god forbid we should have a Day After or a Day After Tomorrow scenario play out in this country. These poor slobs won't know how to forage for groceries at Shopper's Food Warehouse, let alone be able to gather enough nuts and berries to survive on in a nuclear wilderness.
Then there are the Trader Slows--and like the poor, red lipstick, and spiteful Republicans, the Trader Slows will always be with us. Moving at a snail's pace through the aisles of TJ's, slowly picking up each item of produce, examining it with microscopic movements, and slowly returning it to the bin . . . only to pick up yet another item of produce, indistinguishable from the last, ever so slowly . . . .
These are the ones who leave their carts higgledy-piggledy in the aisles and common areas. The ones who have to chat extensively about their food purchases with everyone in line, everyone walking through the door, and everyone in the parking lot. These are the ones who see shopping at Trader Joe's as An Experience that no one has ever felt quite like they have.
The Trader Slows are to be avoided at all costs. Especially when you are in a hurry and/or have low blood sugar, which is really not the way to experience Trader Joe's. So maybe the Slows are on to something and get the TJ experience much more than I do. That or they need their own special-needs-themed store, with their own very special check-out aisle.
One variant of the Trader Slows type is the aging hippie type--Trader Cornrows, perhaps?--with wiry gray, overly long hair, and wearing nothing but organically dyed hemp fibers picked up from their last grant-funded research/shopping trip to [insert Third World country name here]. Where do these people work? Other than in academe, I mean? Goodness, it is obvious they stopped watching TV and reading magazines sometime before 1978. Instead, all their spare income goes to Trader Joe's, Moveon.org, and to periodic tune-ups of their "classic" Subaru wagon, the one in the lot that is more bumpersticker than paint job at this point.
And then there is my favorite (at least to make fun of) type--the Trader Fauxs, who are indeed my foes and the source of all my woes. You know them. They live among us. And they breed like rabbits. Fine, pampered, angora rabbits, but rabbits all the same.
They come to TJ's with an entourage, generally consisting of children, either worn en papoose, like pendants or designer gear, or, if the child is beyond the larval stage, then the child is encouraged to freely express his creativity and independence, primarily by dodging among shopping carts and around the legs of other shoppers with their own entourages, mostly of the adult variety, who insist on doing all their shopping at Trader Joe's (see Trader Schmoes above).
There is so much to loathe about the Trader Fauxs, so very very much. Nonetheless, they make me giggle to myself for one very simple reason: Is it me or have the Trader Fauxs made the mistake of naming all their offspring after humble, pre-20th-century professions? There are Porters, Tanners, Carters, Taylors (Tailors), Hunters, and Coopers to name but a few. Can Farrier, Gatherer, or Lumberjack be far behind? Is it an attempt to sound chic? Or is it an effort to make their kids more downwardly mobile, jealous of any potential success they might have, despite the incessant efforts to give them all the advantages they never yadda yadda yadda?
I chuckle further when I start to wonder if the White Trash--er, the Anglo-Saxon working poor with TV sets and Us Weekly subscriptions--will eventually toss aside all those soap opera names (Krystal with a K, Alexis, Marissa, Schuyler, Nash, et al.) in favor of naming their children after upwardly mobile professions. Little Surgeon Marshburn. Sweet Attorney Tyndall. Darling Civil Engineer Stroud. Adorable Hedge Fund Manager Jarman.
Well, OK, maybe not Hedge Fund Manager Jarman. The working poor may be poor but they are smarter than that.
And probably way smarter to stay out of Trader Joe's when they are in a hurry and have a bad case of low-blood sugar.
The scene: Lunch at a bistro (no, really) in Morgantown, West Virginia, 3 April 2009. The topic: The NCAA Final Four.
"I can't stand Carolina!"the Virginian said. "I hope they lose!"
"I can't stand them either--and I'm *from* North Carolina!" I said.
"'If God isn't a Tarheel, then why is the sky Carolina Blue.' Goodness, I hope I never hear that again!" she said.
"Or those stupid blue heels painted on every surface, whenever they win. And, god, don't get me started on all the hugging that happens after a win, with everyone acting as if it were a validation of their fabulous lifestyle!"
"I can't believe that Pitt lost. I was hoping to see them beat Carolina," she noted. "Now I just hope Villanova brings 'em down," she added.
"Anybody but Carolina!" I said.
"I'd just as soon see the Red Chinese beat Carolina!" she exclaimed.
"Heck, I'd just as soon see the Taliban beat Carolina!" I snapped.
Truth be told, what's even worse, I'd even take a team made up of Osama bin Laden, Ted Bundy, Pol Pot, Simon LeGree, *and* P. W. Botha to beat Carolina. Maybe throw in Mussolini, Lisa Rinna, and Jessica Simpson as substitutions.
However, I would probably draw the line at a team made up of Rush Limbaugh, Eric Cantor, Dick Cheney, Adolf Hitler, and Lindsay Lohan, with Karl Rove, Dane Cook, and whoever is responsible for the Pittsburgh-area highway system as subs. Even they would deserve to lose to the unsavory likes of UNC.
* * *
My hatred for Carolina is intense. It is visceral. It is innate. I cannot fully explain or fathom its depths--at least not without foaming at the mouth and wanting to kick puppies.
Yet, for the love of Mayberry, those Carolina mo'fo's are in the freakin' NCAA Final Four again--led by a guy named Tyler Hansbrough. No, shit. Tyler Hansbrough. That sounds like the name of a guy who has an unnaturally close relationship with his mother. (I am reminded of a guy from high school whose mother still referred to him as "Chrissy," while barely acknowledging that she had two other children, just as capable and competent as The Anointed One with the sissy petname.) Tyler Hansbrough sounds like the name of Barbie's new rebound boyfriend, whom she no doubt took up with after finding Ken in bed with Big Jim. (That Barbie. She'll never learn to avoid the closet cases.) That sounds like the name of a guy . . . who would play basketball at Carolina (even if he is from Missouri--which is almost as bad).
Admittedly, maybe I would feel differently if I had actually gone to school at Carolina, for either undergrad or graduate, instead of to two of the lesser, indifferently funded, lights of the University of North Carolina System. I didn't really consider going to Carolina as an undergrad--a weird combination of NOCD ("not our class, dear," meaning I wasn't of their class, y'all) and the Gobi Desert of guidance counseling that was the working-class kid's experience in North Carolina public education, circa 1979. If you were one of the first families in town--even if your Dad was postmaster general or a furniture salesman, such was the how-low-can-you-go limbo bar of achievement in our little community--you were encouraged. If your grades were on par with the rest and your Dad was enlisted military (i.e., not a townie), well, to the back of the line with you, peasant.
Not that I'm still bitter, 30 years later, or anything . . . but it is still the case that, in the latter part of my 40s, I get judged by others (all North Carolinians, naturally) on whether I went to "Chapel College" and what it says about me that I didn't.
I did apply and was accepted for grad school at Chapel Hill, but chose not to go when I got a better scholarship offer at another North Carolina school, received no real response regarding funding (or even campus jobs) from Carolina, and realized I had very little desire to incur major debt in my early 30s. Maybe it would have helped me in my career path to have gone to a "name" school--or maybe not. I felt more nurtured where I ended up going and haven't done too badly for myself, all things considered. Perhaps it took me longer to get where I was trying to go--but that's assuming that I ever really know where I'm trying to go, more than a couple of years out from the destination.
But my loathing for all that is Carolina runs deeper and is more long-standing than any slight/sleight Southern discomfort over what might have been. I think it's that Carolina and the whole "Chapel Hill attitude" just grates against my sense of what life--and especially North Carolina life--is supposed to be about.
How I remember North Carolina as a child is as a community of small farmers and millworkers, good-hearted folk with simple aspirations, trying to live their lives well and let others do the same. Going along to get along, perhaps, a little boringly pleasant, maybe, but essentially salt o' the earth types.
Just hold the salt. And the pepper.
This is more like the Mayberry Snappy Lunch blue-plate special view of the world. Everything is in black-and-white (well, mostly white). Barney Fife is on the menu, and there are extra helpings of Thelma Lou, if you ask nicely. Andy and the Darlings provide the floorshow. But they are plum out of Helen Crump. And good god, please no sides or entrees of Emmit, Howard, or Goober.
Yes, it is possible to have seen too many episodes of the Andy Griffith Show.My bucolic, harmonious, tender-hearted memory, all sleepy small-town and "lord, it's just like livin' in a poem," doesn't jibe with the cold-water reality of racial discrimination and social inequality, the big sticks of god-fearing religion and law-and-order until death do us part, or the festering divide between malingering, manipulating aristocracy and crazy cracker populism.
If truth be told, North Carolina lifeis less Frank Capra-meets-Norman Rockwell, and more Franz Kafka-meets-Norman Rockwell. I'm a little bit country, I'm a little bit turning into a cockroach before your very eyes.
Or perhaps it's not Kafka after all; perhaps it's strictly David Lynch-ian in nature--Blue Velvet intertwined with Twin Peaks strangled by Wild at Heart. In this alternate-universe Mayberry, Helen's a hooker. Thelma Lou is an axe-murderess. Andy cross-dresses. Instead of cooking up kerosene pickles in the kitchen, Aunt Bea runs the town meth lab, and Opie's her number one customer. Barney's a deaf mute midget who only speaks in Otis's dreams. And being that Otis is now sober and sane, nobody believes a word he says.
Well, OK, it's not quite like that either--'cause that would make it at least interesting. Besides, that would make it Louisiana.
Instead, North Carolina feels worse in a particularly stingy, mewling, bitter pill way: It is classist, it is mean-spirited, it is jealous, it is condescending, it is judgmental, it is passive-aggressive, it is clannish, it is suspicious, and it is holier-than-thou. It is essentially English in culture, except with better home-cooking and nicer weather.
I feel torn, to say the least--a queasy mix of pride over my culture (the food, the music, the landscape, the literature), yet full of anger over what many of us have had to live through to hold on to it, to make it our own. Despite the guns-and-religion, we're-all-in-lockstep-toward-the-promised-land reputation, Southern culture has its share of queers (sexual or otherwise), working-class types, non-joiners, rebels, independents, loners, crackpots, revolutionaries, and individuals.
And only some of them resorted to firearms. I would imagine quite a few just picked up a pen and shot off their opinions in letters to the editor or in articles and books, both published and unpublished. Still others packed it in, picked up a suitcase, and moved on and moved out. Yet try to get a little respect for that.
* * *
During Friday's visit to Morgantown, a mountain town in an Appalachian state, for a moment I felt a resurgence of pride--of the culture, the accomplishments, the bounty of life created on a shoestring budget. But this was pride for my Dad's Kentucky Appalachian heritage, not for my native North Carolina one.
The story of the creation of West Virginia is that it seceded from Virginia during the Civil War, not feeling well served by mainline Virginia interests and not content to be separated from the rest of the United States due to the handiwork of a few chivalrous, racist hot-heads too much into dressing up to play at being soldiers. Perhaps, too, West Virginians hated that peculiar institution of slavery and the feel of upper-class Virginia elitism chafing against its rough-and-tumble, working-class hide.
Kentucky was and often still is considered a Southern state, but it, too, refused to secede from the Union, despite having a decidedly mixed approach to the planter class and slavery. I wonder if that split personality, that feeling of being part of a culture, yet feeling removed, even alienated from it, is ultimately what I'm about. 'Cause that's what I feel these days, simultaneously very Southern in Pennsylvania and very un-Southern in the South and among my fellow Southerners.
Still, Andy Griffith went to UNC and Mitch McConnell is from Kentucky--and even snippy, whingeing England has good music and quirky-quaint towns. There is just good and bad in everything, I guess, and I would imagine it's best to make peace with it as well as you can.
But hey! In the meantime, tonight I'd still like to see Carolina go down in flames! Big, huge, conflagratory flames! The Great Chapel Hill Fire of 2009! Bring a spit--we're gonna have a barbecue, y'all!
So, Villanova, if you're listening, please barbecue some Carolina (pork) butt for me this evening. And if you can't, then (egad, how far I've fallen!), please let Connecticut or Michigan State do the roasting.
Well, who would have ever imagined that Pope "Fertilized Eggs" Benedict XVI would come out in support of bare-backing?
Still, I just don't know about taking advice on sexual health and family planning from a man who probably has never kissed a girl (or perhaps not even a guy)--or from one who attended a summer camp organized by one of the world's best-known "pro-eugenics" organizations.
Happy Saint Patrick's Day everyone! Please celebrate appropriately!
(Photo taken outside the Lusty Lady "Liveshow" Theater, Seattle, Washington, March 2009. No, I did *not* go in. I went shopping at Nordstrom's instead.)
It's still winter outside in Pennsylvania--but in my heart it's . . . still winter.
And it has been winter in fact since November, maybe even October, when we had our first snow of the season before Halloween this year.
November was rough, December was no peach, but January was brutal, with snow everywhere, bitter temps, and potholed roads and snarly moods to navigate. Because I love irony and melancholy, to celebrate, I went to Breckenridge, Colorado, in February just to get away from all the snow and cold for even more snow and cold (and skiing and snowshoeing)--just at 11,000 feet above sea level with moose and the Rockies as a backdrop.
Upon my return to Pittsburgh, February proved itself to be slightly menopausal, up and down and all over the weather map, with warm days, rainy days, sunny days, snowy days, cold days, daze, daze, daze, 28 days of daze.
Who can say what March will bring?
To help us not get through it (because, sometimes, this time of year, I just have to ask why, why, why I do this to myself, live in the bottom of dark well with a soppy, gray blanket covered over me), I present my latest, YouTube-facilitated, video montage of winter melodies, "Twenty Songs to Kill Yourself By."
It's 11:13 pm on Sunday, February 22, 2009, and at present, while I clean house and figure out what I'm going to wear to work tomorrow and regret not having called my brother and feel a little peckish but am trying to avoid eating late, I have the Academy Awards on as a soundtrack to my evening full of dust mites, ennui, and regret. They are just getting to the montage of who croaked it this past year.
God, why do we torment ourselves with this every year? The mind-numbing pacing, the ponderous staging, the obscure references in acceptance speeches, and, kill me now please, the Jonas Brothers ('cause lord knows they're all about the H-town glamour), three boys who seem intent on dressing like wait staff at Farrell's Old-Tyme Ice Cream Parlour, circa 1896-meets-1976.
Vests. Freaking checked vests.
Then, even after the Jonas Brothers, when you think it couldn't possibly get even more why-don't-I-force-knitting-needles-into-my-temples-just-for-laffs?, they trot out the f**king "comedy stylings" of Ben Stiller and Natalie Portman, ferchrissakes. I mean, Ben Stiller wasn't even a funny zygote. Delivery didn't even improve his delivery--ba-da-bing!Ben, the best you got is a lame imitation of Joaquin Phoenix on the David Letterman Show? Dude, I've seen better comedy come out in the form of milk through a junior high kid's nose.
The only good moment I saw tonight was when James Franco's character from Pineapple Express put his arm around Seth Rogan while watching his character in Milk kiss Sean Penn. I do love me some James Franco. Say what you will, but I don't think we'll be seeing *him* swapping spit with Reese Witherspoon anytime soon, in some ill-advised effort to affirm his heterosexuality. Nor do I think he'll go the traditional route, a la Kevin Spacey, and bring his mother or a heretofore unknown girlfriend to the ceremony next year.
Essentially, this is an industry event, not the great public spectacle of tradition and glamour everyone seems to think it is. Oh, you may put on display the mannequin that is Nicole Kidman or let Hugh Jackman and Beyonce strut their stuff (what, Rihanna and Chris Brown weren't available? Sorry, I haven't been paying attention to the headlines lately . . .), or pay endless tribute to Heath Ledger, Star and Accidental Overdoser (what is it? Australia Night? The movie tanked faster than British ships in Darwin harbor during a raid by kamikaze pilots), but for its actual import to the rest of the world, the Academy Awards might as well be a celebration of the Best Independent Insurance Salesperson in America, or the HealthSouth Top Earner in Pharmaceutical Kickbacks, or the Wells Fargo Spirit Winner for Banker Most Likely to Choke on His/Her Caviar While Enjoying the Fruits of a TARP Bailout.
There was a couple of weeks post-9/11 when there were all these wonderful predictions that celebrity would fade, that people would want something more meaningful and serious in their lives after what was one of the most horrible, sea-changing moments in modern history. And then Julia Roberts, George Clooney, and Friends did a g-dd--ned telethon for 9/11 victims and survivors, and, well, we just never took our eyes off the Silver Screen, large or small edition, after that.
I just do not get the appeal of this culture and especially this awards show. At this moment, I'm only sorry that more Hollywood types didn't bite the golddust this last year--but, then, that would only make the montage to Hollywood's fallen heroes even longer.
Stay safe throughout the year, James Franco. But Ben Stiller, feel free to submit your photo early for next year's Montage of Death.
My experiences--sometimes indifferent, occasionally negative--with "alternative grocery stores" are one of several recurring themes here in Blogtucky, a theme that we'll turn to again as I present you, dear reader, with another close encounter of the texturized vegetable protein kind.
It went down like so:
I stopped in to the local alterna-mart to buy some of that Greek-styled yogurt I like to help soothe a savage stomach, all aflame and aflutter due to some antibiotics I'm currently taking . . . which involves a completely different set of events, which we may or may not get to at some point. Just not right now. While in the store, I also realized I needed some cash for a road trip occurring the next day.
Already it was 7:30 pm; I'd been at work since very early (for me, meaning before 10 am) and was quite tired from all the prep I'd done for the next day's travels and meetings. I just couldn't imagine making one more trip to the bank before heading home. So, instead, I thought, hey, I'll just use the alterna-mart's check-out for a quick cash transaction while paying for my groceries.
Or as I put it to the clerk at the counter, I would like to "kill two birds with one stone"--buying groceries and getting cash at the same time, model of efficiency that I am, with a devil-may-care attitude toward ATM withdrawal fees to boot.
"Killing two birds with one stone. Hmmm, that's an odd expression," said the clerk, one in a long-line of attractive, earnest alterna-boys and -girls who call the co-op their day job.
Oh, but wait. Where are you standing in the universe at this very moment, I thought. But of course. I'm at the alternative grocery store! In such an environment, I'm sure this act, the random (if figurative) stoning of birds for cash, is liable to offend, consternate, and/or provoke pensive musings--or, ferchrissakes, poetry--about the violence of language among the quinoa-and-kefir set. Using such language, in fact, probably ranks up there with the time I cluelessly wore my leather jacket into the store, receiving a reception so chilly among the organi-gentsia that it would have been pleasanter to stroll from my home to the store in a thong and tank top in the middle of a snowstorm.
Never mind the fact that the store does sell a limited amount of dead meat. Eat all you want--just don't wear any.
So, I thought, what should I have said? "I'm sorry, did I say 'killing two birds with one stone'? I meant adultresses! Ululululululululululululu . . . ," ending the conversation with a little shout-out to my peeps in Mesopotamia.
No? Offensive to the entire Middle East you say? May your favorite date palm develop a fungus at the height of ka'ak baking season.
Maybe instead I should have said, "I'm sorry, did I say 'killing two birds with one stone'? I meant tofurkeys!"
Hmmm, tofurkey. A meat so not-meat killing it certainly couldn't offend anyone. Except maybe a fructarian. And even they've got their consciences to live with. Slaughtering innocent apples and oranges, indeed.
But maybe it's the killing that's getting everyone into a Class-A bummer, prompting the flow of free verse to throb in the brain. Maybe there's a better way to put it, one that doesn't refer to the act of destruction. To rephrase things, though, I would need to know how one actually brings about the death . . . uh, demise . . . uh, denouement of a tofurkey.
Do you brine it, baste it, then burn it? Simmer it, soak it, and try to savor it? Goose it, gas it, and finally (and more likely) gross out over it?
Saying "I'm hoping to coordinate the preparation of two tofurkeys through the use of one energy-efficient heating source" (an Amish space heater, maybe?) hardly has the same metaphorical impact as the original. Then again, the "new and improved" tofurkeycide-is-painless approach offers a no more and no less clear testament to expediency and efficiency as does an old colloquial chestnut involving the simultaneous maiming of two examples of bird life.
"Good day, Mr. Winni, this here's the secretary for Elizabeth Windsor, better know to you lot 'cross the pond as HRH Queen Elizabef Numba 2 of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Sometimes Northern Ireland. Please 'old the line for ol' Bess, Guvnor."
"Hello? Mister Winni? Is this the correct party?"
"Uh, yeah, yes, I think so."
"Oh marvelous! We are so pleased to make your acquaintanceship, Mister Winni. We are enchanted to have this opportunity to chat with you."
"Um, is this for real?"
"Oh dear. I would have thought the secretary would have explained everything already. Oh, well, one just can't get good work out of the working classes these days since Mrs. Thatcher and Mr. Blair turned the class system all topsy-turvy. I can assure you, Mr. Winni, that this call is indeed 'for real,' as you Americans so quaintly put it."
"Listen, your royal highness, or whoever you are, how did you get this number?"
"Well, you see, Mr. Winni, that is precisely why we called you today. Are you familiar with a Mr. D_____ of L____, East Sussex, England?"
"Yeah, uh, yes, he's a friend of mine. I've known him for something like 15 years."
"That's right, we have that right here in our file on you, your companions, and your travels, so generously provided to us by your . . . erm, let me see . . . ah yes, here it is! Your Department of Homeland Security. Quite a helpful lot that is. Very eager to provide all sorts of information on our former loyal subjects!"
"Homeland Security?"
"Yes, it's all right here in black-and-white, or rather bits and bobs, oh pardon me, we mean bits and bytes, we can never quite keep up with you Americans and your very clever aberrations toward our language. Well, we are glad to see all the information is correct, that you are indeed familiar with Mr. D_____. That might shed a little more light on the minor international telecommunications crisis that you plunged Great Britain and America in over night."
"I did what?"
"Oh, it's nothing really, nothing at all, except that it did bring down our nation's entire electrical and telecommunications grid for a short time, at least until we were able to pay a huge ransom to Russia to turn everything back on again. You see, it appears that sometime between the hours of 1800 Monday and 0700 Tuesday, Eastern Standard Time (that would be 2300 and 1200 GMT, we believe), you sent a series of text messages to Mr. Dougan, in quite rapid succession."
"I did? I don't think I sent those. I think you got the wrong guy, lady."
"Yes, we are afraid you did, Mr. Winni. The odd thing is that all of the messages were completely void of content. In other words, they were, if you're pardon the rather colloquial expression, blank."
"Hmmm, well, I think I'd remember sending that many text messages, if I indeed in fact did send them."
"Oh, well, Mr. Winni, documentation and video footage do not lie."
"Video? You have video of me . . . doing what exactly?"
"Why shopping at IKEA, naturally! It seems to be what you do best these days."
"Well, yeah, I was shopping at IKEA, but I wasn't shopping the whole night. And, besides, if I was shopping, how could I be texting at the same time."
"Too true, Mr. Winni, too true. Nonetheless, the footage clearly shows you rather cavalierly tossing your Blackberry into your--I believe you across the pond call it a manbag--then rather ungraciously slinging said manbag over your shoulder and sashaying rather gaily (no offense intended, of course--our grandchildren may use epithets, but we do not) into the IKEA entrance."
"Yeah, I did all that, but I still don't see--"
"Did you perchance have your mobile telephonic device in the on and active position, Mr. Winni?"
"Sure, yes, I often leave it--"
"Well, at the risk of sounding like the detective in a bad adaptation of an Agatha Christie novel (and, dear me, aren't they all bad?), we shall say, 'Aha!'"
"Aha? Aha what?"
"'Aha' as in 'Eureka, I have found it,' Mr. Winni. I believe that explains how you were able to text while shopping while having no knowledge of such texting."
"How does that explain anything?"
"Well, Mr. Winni, you seemed rather excited to promenade around IKEA, bending and stooping to investigate that rather amusingly named, moderately priced furniture you prefer. Really, after all what is a 'Poang' exactly? And please do explain to us what this creature named 'Billy' is and why should anyone want to 'shelve' him? We must remember to ask Sir Elton, Sir George Michael, and Sir Ian McKellan when they are next over. According to Prince Phillip, if anyone knows anything about shelving billies, it would be the three of them--"
"Well, I did move around a lot. I was pressed for time."
"We have no doubt, Mr. Winni, but we don't know if we would quite describe your manner as being indicative of someone who is pressed for time. Perhaps puzzled by the difference between birch and beech veneers, perhaps consternated over the excessive use of Allen wrenches, perhaps using shopping at IKEA as a subterfuge for admiring the male members of happy couples--"
"You just leave my admiring of male members out of this, queenie."
"We shan't give it another thought, Mr. Winni. But we would like to suggest, if we may, that one should remember to take care not to exercise one's manbag too agitatedly in the process of admiring attractively priced Scandinavian furniture. As with the owners of such conveyances, these manbags are excitable animals, prone to fits, humors, and conniptions. And, as a result of such ill-advised physical culture, one is likely to discover the following morning that one has sent twenty (20) blank text messages to one's friend in England, quite by accident."
"Duly noted," I said.
"While one is sure that Verizon Wireless and British Telecom(B.T.) will appreciate one's extra commerce, one will be left holding the (man)bag, as it were, when one's phone bill arrives at the end of this month."
"You're really pleased with yourself over that joke, aren't you?"
"We are amused, Mr. Winni, we are amused, indeed."
"Well, good, 'cause you sure went a long way to get to it."
"Be that as it may, we do hope one is willing and able to use this genial advice. If one requires further education, please do text us, remembering that international rates may well apply. Good-bye, Mr. Winni!"
When I first read this article, I have to admit I winced a bit. (Editor's note--winced, not minced.) My gay pride gets in the way of the joke every now and again, especially when someone who isn't gay is labeled gay as a way to discredit him or her or when "gay" is used as a substitute for "stupid" or "dumb." Not the case here, but . . . hey, wait a minute . . . .
Anyway, I got over it, much in the way I did when one of my female employees in Texas kept using the phrase, "That is so gay!" in front of me to drive home the point that she thought something was especially ridiculous, like her job, her school work, her husband, her mother, etc. I just thought to myself, "You are such a stupid skank!" and felt all the better for it.
Instead of getting my rather fabulous feathers in a ruffle, I focused on the things in the article that made me and several others I shared it with on Facebook laugh out loud--such as the reference to Dubya's overcompensating for his feelings of inadequacies "by carefully cultivat[ing] his image as a masculine, simple-minded, heterosexual male."Tee hee.
At least we're being honest about it now.Still, my favorite part has to be the characterization of former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer as a flaming gaddabout, sort of the Gelman of Official Washington.
"Believe me, sister, he overcompensated with a capital 'compensated,'" Fleischer said. "But when the cameras stopped rolling and the podium was put away, he was just fabulous. We had a fabulous, fabulous time."
I've always had my suspicions about Our Miss Fleischer (oddly cute but oh-so-evil), and I'm glad to finally have them confirmed in an official news source like The Onion.
But, please, to my hetero friends out there, Karl Rove is all yours. Haven't we gay people suffered enough with George W. as our poster boy for what happens when middle-aged Texas men lose their way late at night somewhere near the intersection of Montrose and Westheimer?
I can see it now: One night, the future president's Cadillac breaks down outside a club called Encounterz or maybe Dimensionz. A little drunk and disorderly, he is annoyed by the sound of the disco beat from within and heads toward the door to put a stop to it. But it is a siren's call. The crowd, recognizing a closet case when they see one, eggs him on, pushing him toward the dancefloor. In a haze of cigarettes and amyl nitrite, he feels compelled to move. He breaks into a fevered sweat, caught up in a dissociative whirl of mirror ball and tribal chanting. Suddenly he finds himself shirtless, with a tambourine in his hand, banging it wildly, and dancing dervishly. And in a few years time, the whole world suffers from the shame of his transgression.
Oh dear. I think I've just plagiarized Sandra Bernhard from Without You, I'm Nothing. * * *
We want you as a new recruit: President Bush entertains the crowd, appearing with his old band, The Village People, during Houston Gay Pride 2004.
While enjoying a crisp winter's day today, strolling through the seasonal scenery of Old Economy Village with my friend, the Pittsburgh Music Lover, I by chance made a significant discovery. That discovery is that the gayest, most homosexually inclined sentence in the English language--at least in my little corner of the mother tongue--begins like so:
This was how the Music Lover began a train of thought somewhere between the Blacksmith's Shop and the Mechanics' Building--a veritable nineteenth-century encantation of the Village People, if you will--on our tour of this historical landmark, a religious commune, full of industry and piety and a commitment to abstinence--except when, according to the tour guide, sect members "chose to marry and start a family,"
Ahem. In that order, more or less, I'm sure.
Once I stopped snickering over the sentence, I decided that for me, the second gayest sentence in English begins with the phrase,
I realize to a layperson's ear these probably sound like innocuous enough, albeit obscure, statements. What could they possibly mean? Why would they be considered particularly gay, let alone the gayest, sentences in the English language? And who cares anyway?
But look at it this way--at least by your lack of comprehension and interest, you're guaranteed one truth in this world: You're probably not gay, nor do you hang around with anyone who is a known Friend of Dorothy or Homeboy for Oscar(Wilde). Take comfort where and when you can, my peeps. Why, it's like an evangelical's (or Bishop Robert Duncan, the anti-gay head--chortle--of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh (Southern Cone))Christmas wish come true! No. More. Homosexuals. Ever!
Now if only you could explain away your husband's obsession with holiday garland, your wife's ability to cut a rug just like Ellen DeGeneres, your teen-aged daughter's need to put Katy Perry's "I Kissed a Girl" in heavy rotation on her iPod, and little junior's repeated requests for a full run of Bratz dolls from Santa, you might just be able to dispense with donning all that gay apparel for another year.(Check your designer labels first, though.)
[Editor's note: This is what you get by celebrating a sea change in society with one too many lemon martinis.]
I am bored. Bored, bored, bored. Now with the elections over, I don't know what to do with myself. Other than my job. And where's the fun in that?
One thing that is keeping me busy and motivated is responding to genuinely stupid statements in the media about the meaning of an Obama presidency. If I could just get paid for that, well, I'd finally join the 2 measly percent in the nation that qualify for "redistribution of wealth" (i.e, taxation, or, rather, a return to the level of taxation of the pre-Bush II years) under an Obama administration. Wow! Just imagine! I, who will probably never earn that level of income in my lifetime--I'm not an aspirational plumber after all--could join the monied class and have the full attention and support of the next Republican administration!
Anyway, there have been so many examples of raging stupidity in the media, from pundit and populace alike, I am at risk of getting a repetitive motion injury, snapping my neck quickly toward the TV to see Joe Scarborough make another asinine statement. From Wednesday's MSNBC broadcast, in response to a weathercaster talking about the fine weather we're enjoying this November in certain parts of the nation: "Under an Obama presidency, you'll never be able to use a phrase like 'Indian summer' again, because things will be so PC."
Just how much does this buttwipe get paid to be so ignorant on national TV? I mean, I know he was in Congress and all that, so he's used to saying the dumbest things imaginable in as loud a voice as possible, but still, Joe, maybe it's time to rethink your career path.
Or the choking fit that is induced when I hear statements from the media that the election of Barack Obama to the presidency means "the end of racism in the United States."
Dude, give me a freakin' break. Tell me, did you go to college for a degree in journalism? Other than where Sarah Palin got her degree in journalism, I mean? Or did you just whip up the diploma in Word and print it out in color at your local FedEx Kinko's? 'Cause that is one seriously stoo-pid statement.
And if the neck-twist and choking don't get me, the carpal tunnel will from pouncing on my keyboard to respond to the latest invective from some crazy (I'm assuming), middle-aged (I'm assuming), white guy (I'm assuming), with a DSL or cable modem (I'm assuming), has posted to some blog or comment forum. (Just not this crazy, middle-aged white guy, OK?)
For example . . . this little missive was posted today on CNN's Politics website:
To all the Dems:
[H]ere is what separates Republican's [sic] (at least me) from you guys. Yes, I wanted McCain to win, but he didn't, and so, my President is Obama and I will support and pray for him. This is exactly what Elizabeth on [The] View is doing. We lost - we get over it and we move on for what is good for the country.
Instead, you left wingers are berating her for changing her opinion. She didn't change her opinion - she's moving on. Something you can never do. You'll never get over the 2000 loss and you'll always be angry hateful people.
Republicans blew it by allowing Bush to become like a Democrat and spend us into heck, but that is going be corrected in 2012. I wish Obama the best and pray he'll get good advisors [sic] and for this country. I will not wallow in anger or frustration or blame anyone - it is over. It is time to move on. It is time to get our country rolling again and at this point it doesn't matter who is at the helm. So stop with your anger and join the club. Country First.
Oh, goodness, where to begin when confronted with so much seething, oozing dumbassedness? How could I not respond to this? The poster is just crying out to be sent to a Socialist Reeducation Camp, which I'm sure will be the first order of business under a new Obama administration, being that he'll have nothing else to occupy his time, other than political correctness and uniform thought. By the way, that's a joke, right wingers.The Socialist Reeducation Camps don't open until the *second* Obama term.
And, so, here's how I responded:
Dear [Poster],
You're not angry? Or wallowing in frustration? You're moving on? Really? Jeez, you're already focusing on 2012, and President-Elect Obama hasn't even been sworn in yet. You're blaming Democrats for the Bush administration's problems and mistakes (he wasn't a real Republican, but a "secret Democrat"). That doesn't sound like calm acceptance to me.
I'm admittedly a liberal, although I wouldn't classify myself necessarily as a "left winger" or even a Democrat. I make decent money but certainly not the $250k per year that only 2 percent of the U.S. population makes, or even the $100k+ per year that maybe 20 percent makes. Still, I don't begrudge those who do--I just want my voice to be heard, my views to be as respected, and my needs to be considered as theirs have been over the last few decades.
I am very happy that Obama was elected but not because I think it redresses being "wronged" in the 2000 election. Frankly, I could care less about that at this point. I was no supporter of George Bush (l lived in Texas through both his governorships and didn't really think much of him as a leader or a visionary; a failed property tax initiative does not a leader make). While I may never have liked having him as president, I thought he handled the immediate aftermath of 9/11 quite well. I probably could have tolerated him as president throughout his terms, the will of the people and all that, except for a series of unfortunate events that occurred on his watch--namely, the war in Iraq, the 2004 election, and Hurricane Katrina.
Why those events in particular? Because his administration used soldiers and citizens as pawns in some egotistical, arrogant geopolitical maneuvering (my father was a Marine for 30 years; I'm sensitive to this); his campaign eliminated serious public discourse on the issues and problems that plague us with name-calling and fear-mongering among the electorate; his administration--and many, many people, along with the Louisiana state government (a Democratic administration at the time, not a Republican one)--allowed millions to be spent on "homeland security," yet couldn't manage to come up with an effective evacuation plan for a known death trap like New Orleans in a hurricane (or even Houston, for that matter).
So, as a liberal, I'm not bitter about the 2000 election; I'm angry about 8 years of failed public policy, of thinking that government is not for, by, and of the people, but instead for, by, and of monied interests and narrowly focused cultural groups. Heck, I'll take it a step further back--I'm anguished over years of this from both the Democratic and Republican sides. It's a sadness and a frustration that transcends time and party.
Despite my liberal leaning ways, I suspect that I'm not that far off the mark from a lot of Americans. I'm sick to death of the binary approach to life and politics in this country, the tit-for-tatting of Republican this and Democrat that. What I want to see--and why I voted for Obama--is our nation move beyond blaming each side for past grievances. Instead, I want to see someone address those grievances and get us all to get along well enough to work together to return our nation to doing our best work and being our better selves, both at home and abroad.
I do not care whether a Republican or a Democrat does this. I do not care whether it is a he or a she, a liberal or a conservative, a "tax and spend"-er or fiscally conservative, right wing or left, straight or gay, black or white or both or neither. I just want someone who will help us turn our attention back to what matters--looking out for each other and for our world.
There is no other reason to have government than to do these things for everyone we can. It doesn't mean doing the exact opposite of the last few years and creating some sort of dependency culture. (May I suggest you read The Audacity of Hope? Even Barack Obama doesn't support this.) It does mean moving things back to the center so that we encourage initiative, help us all find the tools we need to succeed, open up opportunity, and make things better for as many as possible, not just half or a quarter or 2 percent of the electorate.
Now *that* is what I call moving on . . . that’s what I call putting country first. I hope you'll join me in doing so, whether you like having Obama as president or a Democratic Congress or not.
OK, so maybe I'm not as genuine as I pretend to be. I have absolutely despised the last 28 years of mostly Republican leadership in the executive and legislative branches of American government. I think it's been nothing more than the promotion of ignorance, mean-spiritedness, selfishness, and stinginess, over any authentic attempt to address national and global problems. I do think taking some tax revenues and putting them toward social services and public initiatives is the way to go--whether the initiatives involve education, the economy, housing, transportation, poverty, the environment, healthcare, what have you.
You can call that socialism if you like, although I'm not sure I even know what that means anymore. However, I like to think of it as good, responsive government.
I do mean sincerely that I do not care who offers good, responsive government, Republican or Democrat, Green or Libertarian. If John McCain had offered that kind of campaign rhetoric, rather than the kind that focused on Obama's "difference" or "mystery" or "secret agenda" or "un-Americanness," who knows? Maybe I would have considered voting for him. I don't think the Democrats have a monopoly on good government; in fact, I have plenty of evidence to suggest otherwise. I do think, however, that their presidential candidate was the only one who seriously talked about issues, plans, and a vision for the people of this country and the world at large. I also think that traditionally, between the two major parties in the U.S., the Democrats are the ones who tend to address issues of bettering society and people's lots--albeit often ineffectively. I don't consider trickle-down economics an honest attempt at social welfare and progress. Shocking, I know.
Oh, and Elizabeth Hasselbeck? I think she's just trying to save her job at this point. But I didn't go there because I didn't think it was particularly germane to my argument.
How I wish someone would pay me to tell stupid people to shut the hell up. I'd promise to start with Joe Scarborough, first, move on to Elizabeth Hasselbeck, and save Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck until I was really warmed up.
How, too, I wish I were as patient, kind, and generous of spirit as I pretend to be.
Yeah, the two wishes do kind of cancel each other out. So what's your point? You want a piece of me?! I'll take you and your little blog posting to the floor, punk!
I just don't have the words. But I think I do have the song.
And that song is "The News" by Carbon Silicon (featuring Mick Jones of the Clash and Big Audio Dynamite), sums up my feelings better than anything right now, certainly better than my own writing does.
However, the more I hear from the actual news, the pundits, the media outlets, the usual suspects, how much I gather that no one has the words right now. Or at least no one has the comprehension.
For you see, the United States did more than elect a new president; it did more than select a Democrat over a Republican. It even did more than select an African-American president, although that in and of itself is HUGE and a thing whose import I do not want to diminish. I mean, my home state of North Carolina, a former member of the Confederacy and the site of so many civil rights abuses and battles over the years, once home to both the KKK and the Black Panthers, voted 50 percent for Obama and 49 percent for McCain. That in and of itself represents a radical change.
No, what happened at about 11 pm on Tuesday, November 4th, 2008, was seismic, cataclysmic. It transcends the everyday struggles of politics and race, generations and genders. It feels revolutionary, cosmic, as if we just witnessed the world change in the blink of an eye and nothing will ever be the same again.
People started calling those in power to account And people started saying, "I want my voice to count"
An overstatement? I don't think so. It just hasn't sunk in yet, what just transpired, but the same ol' same ol' can't happen again. And if it does, if anyone tries it, I think it will be recognized for what it is--inauthentic, false, a lie.
Again, I just don't have the words. But, oh, I have the feelings.
When I'm at a loss for words, I let TV do the talking for me:
All I can say is that I was so happy to wake up this morning and not find Bobby Ewing in my shower.
At the same time, it is rather nice to pull myself out of a bad dream and discover the political equivalent of a naked Patrick Duffy in my bedroom, giving me a wet hug.
I guess now there's no need for me to finish my piece, "Why I'm voting for Barack Obama; why I'm not voting for John McCain," a post that I've been working on, at least in my head, since mid-summer.
Wow. I am almost speechless. I certainly better understand the phrase "shock and awe" now. Barack Obama is projected to be the next president of the United States. Did any of us ever think we would live to see this night?
I don't say that for just the obvious reason, the one cited in heavy rotation on MSNBC at the moment, that Barack Obama, an African-American man, a biracial man, a child of at least one immigrant parent, a child of, in effect, a single mother, a man with the middle name Hussein, a man whose last name isn't English, Irish, Scottish, or ol' New York Knickerbocker(Roosevelt, Van Buren . . .), "that one," if you will, has, despite all odds and all prejudices, become president of the United States.
That in and of itself is a huge story. It's as if finally after 8 years, or maybe even 50 years, or maybe even 150 years, America has stepped into the present as well as into its own future. Welcome to the 21st century and beyond, folks. After so many delays, after so many mistakes and missteps, we are finally here, and it feels so very good.
But there's at least one more story out there that's worth telling before I head off to bed. And that is that today, the U.S. electorate, at least a good portion of it, chose intellect and reason over fear and demagoguery, something it hasn't done for a long time. No amount of bandying about terms like "terrorist," "socialist," "secret Muslim," "elitist," "real American," "Marxist," or "dictator" seemed to knock us off course from turning out the old and backward-looking and embracing the new and forward-thinking.
There's a line from the Pedro Almodóvar movie, Carne Trémula (Live Flesh), that is rather apt for this moment in time. "And that was the day the people of Spain decided they wouldn't be afraid anymore." Or something like that.
The story around Live Flesh takes place in different time periods, but one of the themes is the changes wrought in Spanish society from the repressive Franco era, to the immediate post-Franco era (kind of like our '60s excesses but with even more chemical substances, apparently), to a more moderate, contemporary time, when people make decisions based on what's best for them and those around them, rather than what they feel forced to do or are too scared not to do. I think you could show the scenes from Grant Park in Chicago tonight, or just about anywhere in America for that matter, read that line over the scene, and it would fit.
Is this that day, the day we no longer choose to be afraid? Good god, I hope so. I can't tell you how many years I've had that line in my head. I can't tell you how many times I repeated it to myself, my silent mantra, this election season.
The other thing on my mind tonight--and there are, admittedly, a zillion things running through my brain at the moment, making me wonder whether I'll be able to sleep at all tonight--the one that rises to the surface and stays afloat, is a statement made just a little while ago by political reporter David Gregory on MSNBC. (By the way, is there an island where mad scientists make boyish-looking, prematurely graying news reporters for the American networks? And do they take special orders?) He said something to the effect that he's 38 years old, that fellow commentator Rachel Maddow is even younger, and that the both of them didn't quite get the fuss over the U.S. electing its first African-American president. Or, rather, they could see it was a big deal, but they didn't feel it in the same way that perhaps their over-45-year-old colleagues did. As David Gregory put it, "We just see Obama as a qualified candidate, a man running for president."
I think that's wonderful, and I'm glad to see that has come about, even if I fall into the old guard, over-45 camp, and I will spend a few hours resenting the young whipper-snappers just a few years younger than me who are living a very different life than mine. Nonetheless, while that statement makes me feel my age, I can live with that feeling, as long as it it means those younger than me get a chance at a better world. Wow again. I must be feeling pretty hopeful and upbeat tonight if I'm well-wishing the under-40 crowd.
However, Mr. Gregory's observation makes me want to underscore one additional point, and that is this: That this under-40 worldview, that Barack Obama is just another man, a very qualified and successful one, but nonetheless, one of flesh and blood and bone like the rest of us, is a direct result of government intervention in our lives, of government working in tandem with people to make things better for all.
Government didn't always step aside and let "the market" deal with racism and inequality, at least before 1980 or so. Government didn't always shrug its shoulders and turn its attention to working out a better deal on home mortgages or let the insurance industry have a free reign in screwing people over. Government didn't always say, "Hey, it's OK to be selfish! I've got mine, and you'll have to get yours somehow by pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps, and if you don't have your own bootstraps, well whose fault is that? We're all created equal, after all." Government didn't always say, "I can't deal with the economic and social problems of this country because a very squeaky, intractable, and vituperative political wheel doesn't want me to because they feel it goes against their belief system."
Well, OK, government did say those things some of the time; it did do some of those things a lot of the time. In recent history, over the years, and long ago. But it hasn't always been like this. Sometimes government actually stepped in and attempted to address the issues and redress the wrongs. It fought a war, it emancipated the slaves, it gave 40 acres and a mule, it passed civil rights legislation, it challenged segregation, it forced busing, it sent in troops, it funded public welfare programs, it supported affirmative action, and it stepped up and defended those who could not defend themselves.
It did some things good and some things bad, and we have a legacy, both good and bad, to show for it. But the point is it eventually (if not consistently or even always effectively) took action for the people. It saw the bigger picture, it understood its role, and it effected some pretty powerful changes that only now, 30, 40, 50 years later, are fully playing themselves out.
So for all of you who fear the return of "big government," a couple of pointers for survival in this new era. First, read Barack Obama's book, The Audacity of Hope, in which he talks about this very thing, making government work for the people (it's very purpose in the first place!) but not giving a totally free reign to the market or, in the reverse, creating a dependency class, hooked on entitlement programs and handouts. There's a third way in most things, a "both/and," as opposed to a rigid "either/or." We've had years of either/or, and you see how brilliantly that's turned out. Now's the time to try something new. Given some time, I think you might find that you enjoy life in the both/and zone.
Second, Barack Obama is not a secret Muslim. He's not a dictator. He's not going to suddenly drop the mask to reveal some hideous visage under his human form. The Kool-Aid isn't suddenly going to wear off, and we'll all be left dealing with a horrible hangover. Many of those who supported him didn't drink any in the first place! Instead, we saw an intelligent, motivated leader who could help us--all of us!--find our way back to being our better selves.
So stop being stupid--this isn't some bad plot twist in V, for god's sake. This is America. If you truly love it the way you say you do, you'll give us all a little credit for knowing our own minds, and you'll give this new administration, this new era, a fighting chance.
And third, stop being afraid. Of government. Of people who are different. Of life. Government can do wonders for us when properly carried out. Different people bring different perspectives to the table, often very good ones. And dammit, just get out and live life the way it should be lived--fully, unselfishly, joyously, and fearlessly.
As the ol' saying goes, the only thing we really have to fear is fear itself. And marvel at this: A populist, effective, activist political leader, who led the nation through a time of economic turmoil and social upheaval, who saw government as an agent of positive, inclusive change--of all people--was the one to say it. (Yes, yes, I know he was a Democrat, but that's not really the point.)
Maybe just maybe history is on the verge of repeating itself. In a good way. For a change.
