Shadow of a Doubt

In Memoriam: Etta James 1938-2012

2012-01-20T12:15:00.000-08:00

Singer. "At Last" "(Wallflower) Roll With Me, Henry" "Tell Mama" "All I Could Do Was Cry" "I'd Rather Go Blind"

"[Chess Records founder] Leonard Chess was the most aware of anyone. He went up and down the halls of Chess announcing, 'Etta's crossed over! Etta's crossed over!' I still didn't know exactly what that meant, except that maybe more white people were listening to me. The Chess brothers kept saying how I was their first soul singer, that I was taking their label out of the old Delta blues, out of rock and into the modern era. Soul was the new direction...But in my mind, I was singing old style, not new."

Yards Gained

2012-01-04T17:40:00.000-08:00

I decided to pay my first visit of the new year to my favorite watering hole, the Looking-Glass Cafe. As I walked in I saw my two avid sports fan friends, Ralph and Hank, at the bar pouring over a Rand McNally map of the United States.

"Hey, Ralph. Hey, Hank," I greeted them. "I'm surprised you guys aren't watching one of the bowl games."

Hank looked up from the map and said, "Oh, we've already watched the Rose Bowl, Gator Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Orange Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, Liberty Bowl, Alamo Bowl, Outback Bowl, Maaco Bowl, Capital One Bowl, TicketCity Bowl, Little Caesars Pizza Bowl, Chick-fil-A Bowl, Meineke Car Care Bowl, Beef 'O' Brady's Bowl, and the Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl!"

"The Pterodactyl Petroleum Bowl is coming up next," Ralph added. "Now, Kirk, if you'll excuse us, me and Hank have an important matter to sort out before the game starts."

"Oh, sorry," I said. "I'll leave you guys be." I turned to the bartender, Sherman, and ordered a beer.

Ralph and Hank turned their attention back to the map. "Now, let's see, how far away is Wilson University from where we're sitting?" Ralph asked.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Hank pull a tape measure out of his pocket, and stretch it out along the map.

"One thousand four hundred and thirty two miles," Hank replied.

"OK," said Ralph. "Now, how about the University of Rawlings?"

Hank moved the tape measure in another direction, and studied it for a second.

"One thousand four hundred and thirty two miles."

"Oh, no!" Ralph exclaimed. "They're both the same distance! Now, what do we do?!"

"I've got an idea," Hank replied. "Hey, Sherm, you don't happen to have a magnifying glass, do you?"

"I keep one just for emergencies like this." Sherman reached behind the bar, pulled up a magnifying glass, and handed it to Hank, who used it to examine the map with even greater scrutiny.

"Ha!" Hank shouted. "Look at this, Ralph. Rawlings is one thousand four hundred thirty two miles and sixty-three yards from where we are sitting, whereas Wilson is only one thousand four hundred thirty two miles and forty-nine yards!"

"So, Wilson is the closer of the two."

"That's right."

With that, Ralph and Hank jumped off their stools, and rushed out, leaving the unfolded map, tape measure and magnifying glass on the bar.

"Where are those two off to in such a hurry?" I asked Sherman.

"I imagine they're getting ready for the game. They better hurry. It's almost time."

A couple minutes later, Ralph and Hank burst back into the Looking-Glass Cafe. They were both wearing Wilson University sweatshirts, Wilson University sweatpants, Wilson University caps, and carrying Wilson University pennants. They both hopped right back on to their bar stools. Sherman picked up the remote, and clicked on the game.

"Go, Wilson, go!" Ralph shouted.

"Boo, Rawlings! Yea, Wilson!" Hank screamed.

Nothing like rooting for the home team.

Quips and Quotations (Yuletide Edition)

2011-12-21T15:13:00.000-08:00

The Supreme Court has ruled that they cannot have a nativity scene in Washington, D.C. This wasn't for any religious reasons. They couldn't find three wise men and a virgin.

--Jay Leno

Aren't we forgetting the true meaning of Christmas?
You know...the birth of Santa.

--Bart Simpson

I once bought my kids a set of batteries for Christmas with a note on it saying, toys not included.

--Bernard Manning

Once again we find ourselves enmeshed in the Holiday Season, that very special time of year when we join with our loved ones in sharing centuries-old traditions such as trying to find a parking space at the mall. We traditionally do this in my family by driving around the parking lot until we see a shopper emerge from the mall, then we follow her, in very much the same spirit as the Three Wise Men, who 2,000 years ago followed a star, week after week, until it led them to a parking space.

--Dave Barry

Christmas is a time when everybody wants his past forgotten and his present remembered.

--Phyllis Diller

Christmas at my house is always at least six or seven times more pleasant than anywhere else. We start drinking early. And while everyone else is seeing only one Santa Claus, we'll be seeing six or seven.

--W.C. Fields

Three men died on Christmas Eve and were met by Saint Peter at the pearly gates. "In honor of this holy season," Saint Peter said, "You must each possess something that symbolizes Christmas to get into heaven." The first man fumbled through his pockets and pulled out a lighter. He flicked it on. "It represents a candle," he said. "You may pass through the pearly gates," Saint Peter said. The second man reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of keys. He shook them and said, "They're bells." Saint Peter said, "You may pass through the pearly gates." The third man started searching desperately through his pockets and finally pulled out a pair of nylons. St. Peter looked at the man with a raised eyebrow and asked, "And just what do those symbolize?" The man replied, "They're Carol's."

--Anonymous (who may have had a little too much egg nog when he told that one.)

Let me see if I've got this Santa business straight. You say he wears a beard, has no discernible source of income and flies to cities all over the world under cover of darkness? You sure this guy isn't laundering illegal drug money?

--Tom Armstrong

Top Ten Signs Your Mall Santa Is Overworked:

10.Instead of, "What do you want for Christmas?" Asks, "Where the hell am I?"
9.Calls every kid he meets "Ricky"
8.Constantly breaks down sobbing like John Boehner
7.Excuses himself to bathe in the fountain
6.Will only hear what you want if you go through a pat down or full body scan
5.Barricades himself under the escalator brandishing a sharpened candy cane
4.Angrily tells everyone, "You're getting a Waterpik"
3.Many times a day, mall security has to taser him
2.Asks every kid, "You're not Jewish, are you?"
1.Instead of milk and cookies, asks for Xanax

--David Letterman

And he, he himself, the Grinch, carved the roast beast.

--Dr. Seuss

(Merry Christmas, folks--KJ)

Old Standard

2011-12-13T14:25:00.000-08:00

(Originally posted on 12/10/2008--KJ)

The one disease where you don't look forward to the cure.

--Citizen Kane

I dread getting old.

Not that it's imminent, but I do have a birthday coming up, so it'll be just a little bit closer this year than it was this same time last year. Which was just a little bit closer that year than that same time the year before.

Nice, leisurely pace, huh? Then how come it feels more like justalittlebitcloserthisyearthanitwasthissametimelastyear whichwasjustalittlebitcloserthatyearthanthatsametimetheyearbefore?

And that's just during the waking hours.

Why should I look forward to the aging process? Liver spots change your complexion. There's wet spaghetti where your neck used to be. Your fingers and toes petrify. Your flesh turns to corduroy. A speed bump sprouts from your back. And, if your male, your pelvis apparently disappears so that you have to pull your waist band all the way up to your nipples.

When you're old your voice hushes up. Maybe that's where the phrase "dirty old man" comes from. If you're going to talk like an obscene phone caller anyway...

You walk, talk, think, eat, breathe, and do absolutely nothing, at a much slower pace. You become more susceptible to gravitational force. Why else do so many elderly people walk with their heads bent over like they're at Catholic Mass?

When you're old your eyesight deteriorates so that your squint is just one more line on your face. Your hearing deteriorates so that you tip sideways, like a buoy, trying to understand what people are saying. And, finally, your mind deteriorates so that you no longer have to squint or tip your head sideways, as you can now see and hear people who aren't even there!

Getting old is a bummer. Huh? What's that? Nobody says "bummer" anymore? That's another problem with the aging process--your vocabulary deteriorates.

Thinking about all this the other night left me in a very bad way. So I did what I often do when consumed with despair. I reached for the remote and started channel surfing.

I came upon Entertainment Tonight. This show has been on the air for a very long time now. In fact, I think the year it premiered, the term "bummer" was at the height of it's popularity. Anyway, watching ET I flashed back to a segment that aired, oh, God, some twenty-five years earlier.

Estelle Winwood was an acclaimed British stage actress who, in her later years, played character roles in Hollywood movies. In 1983, she turned 100. About this same time, comedian George Burns, then 87, came out with a book titled How to Live to be 100 or More. Some publicist got the clever idea that Miss Winwood should appear at a book signing with Burns.

She agreed to do it, but may not have been vetted properly. As they both sat there before the assembled media (including Entertainment Tonight), a reporter held the book, about the positive aspects of aging, up to Miss Winwood. She took one look at the title and said, "Oh, dear, don't remind me!"

A moment later, she turned to George Burns, whom she had apparently never met nor, in spite his being very well-known in 1983, heard of before, and asked, "Are you some sort of doctor?"

Never one to take offense easily, Burns answered, "No, I'm an entertainer. I sing a little, dance a little, tell a few jokes."

"Oh," exclaimed Estelle Winwood. "Why, how marvelous!"

If I could just hang around with the likes of those two, I think I'd look forward to aging.

In Memoriam: Harry (Henry) Morgan 1915-2011

2011-12-07T14:49:00.000-08:00

Actor. The Ox-Bow Incident (watch how the focus is on Morgan during Henry Fonda's monologue). Dragonwyke. All My Sons. The Big Clock. Race Street. Scandal Sheet. High Noon. The Glen Miller Story. Inherit the Wind. What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? Dragnet (1967-1970 TV series). Support Your Local Sheriff. Support Your Local Gunfighter. Viva Max. The Apple Dumpling Gang (believe it or not, it was a box office hit, so I felt I had to include it.) MASH (TV series). Dragnet (1987 movie).

"He [Colonel Potter on MASH] was firm. He was a good officer and he had a good sense of humor. I think it's the best part I ever had."

(That may have been the best part Morgan ever had, but it wasn't the funniest character he ever played on MASH. A year before he became a regular member of the cast, when the man he eventually replaced, McLean Stevenson, was still on the show, Morgan played Major General Bartford Hamilton Steele. But first, a number --KJ)

Jingle Bawls

2011-12-06T14:30:00.001-08:00

Religious Persecution 64 AD

Nero: I command the hungry lions be sent into the arena!

Christian: AAAAAUUUUUGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!

Religious Persecution 2011

Retail sales clerk: Happy holidays!

Christian : AAAAAUUUUUGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!

Quips and Quotations (Moving Pictures Edition)

2011-11-28T16:19:00.000-08:00

When we were growing up and saw a Ray Harryhausen movie, we were interested in how it was done. But thank God we got to go through the magic of seeing it before we knew how it was done. You were able to get this beautiful, pure, visceral response to something without knowing too much about it.

--Tim Burton

It's funny how the colors of the real world only seem really real when you watch them on a screen.

--Anthony Burgess

I don't think you go to a play to forget, or to a movie to be distracted. I think life generally is a distraction and that going to a movie is a way to get back, not go away.

--Tom Noonan

That [The Wizard of Oz] was my one big Hollywood hit, but, in a way, it hurt my picture career. After that, I was typecast as a lion, and there just weren't many parts for lions.

--Bert Lahr

Several tons of dynamite are set off in this picture--none of it under the right people.

--James Agee (Sorry, don't know the exact picture he's talking about, but there are no shortage of examples, including some made long after Mr. Agee passed on--KJ)

Archival Revival: Futures Market

2011-11-14T13:47:00.000-08:00

(originally posted on 4/19/2009)

I once went to a psychic fair. I don't really believe in that stuff, but, like Fox Mulder on The X-Files, I want to believe. In anything. God, Zeus, Ouija boards, fortune cookies, eight balls, etc. If you don't believe in anything, then you're just stuck with, and stuck in, a cold, meaningless Universe, constantly seeking succor in soulless materialism. Quite frankly, I'm sick and tired of soulless materialism. At least I am when I get my credit card statement. With that in mind, I set out on my spiritual journey. Holiday Inn. The Cypress Room. 12-8. $10 entrance fee.

I entered the Cypress Room, and sat down with the first available soothsayer. I had expected an exotic looking woman dressed like a gypsy, but this was just a 40sh lady in a blouse and slacks who looked like she could have been a cub scout den mother.

"What can I do for you?" she asked cheerfully.

"I want you to tell my fortune," I replied.

"Palm reading or astrology? I do both."

"Which is more accurate?"

"That all depends which one you believe in more."

"I'm not sure I believe in either."

"Oh, you don't believe? But you should always believe, because if you don't--"

"Give me those two choices again"

"Palm reading or astrology."

"You said palm reading first. I'll go with palms"

"That's an odd way to decide, but OK. It'll cost you $20.

"Um...Is astrology cheaper?"

"Nope. They're both $20"

I pulled $20 out of my wallet, and handed it to her. She took the money, and then my right palm, and studied it carefully.

"Ah, you have one line going across, and then a smaller one running parallel, and then one long slant. See?"

I looked at my palm. Sure enough, I had one line going across, a smaller one running parallel, and one long slant.

"So, what does that mean?" I asked.

"I won't know until I examine your left palm."

So I held out my left palm.

"Ah," she said. "You have two kind of parallel slants that fade away."

I looked at my palm. Sure enough, two kind of parallel slants that faded away.

"And?" I asked.

"Hold on," she replied. From under the table, she pulled up a soft cover book about half the size of the metropolitan yellow pages. It was titled Bilgewater's Complete Guide to Palm Reading .

"You're consulting a book?" I asked.

"Well, you said you're not sure whether you believe or not. I thought a book might seem more credible."

She lay the book out in front of me so I could read along. She flipped to a chapter or section titled RIGHT PALM, and from there to a subsection titled PARALLEL LINES and from there to a sub-subsection titled LONG SLANT, eventually coming to a drawing that sort of looked like my right palm, except there seemed to be more space between the parallel lines. Anyway, she went to a left palm box on the right hand side. She guided her index finger down until she came to sub-sub-subsection titled FADE AWAY. She turned to the next page, and found a sub-sub-sub subsection titled PARALLEL LINES. Underneath all that was a prediction:

You are due for a surprise.

"What kind of surprise?" I asked.

"Oh, the book won't say. If you knew what it was, it wouldn't be a surprise, would it?"

"Well, when will this surprise happen?"

"The book won't tell you that either. If you knew the exact day and time of the surprise, you'd be expecting it, and there'd be no surprise."

"Can I see that book a second?"

She slid the book toward me.

I looked at the copyright. "This book came out four years ago. How do I know the surprise didn't happen in the last four years?"

She slid the book back toward her, and flipped through a few pages. "OK, it's right here in the introduction. 'Prophecies are not retroactive. Recipient must be fully informed'"

"I don't feel like I'm fully informed."

"Let me see what they mean by 'fully informed'. I'll look in the index."

"I'm surprised you're so dependent on a book. It kind of takes the mysticism out of it."

"Ah! Did you hear what you just said?! You're surprised! The prophecy came true!"

"What are you telling me? That the prediction is the prediction?!"

"As long as you heard the prediction before the prediction came true. There's nothing retroactive going on here!"

At that point I was ready to walk away in anger, except...the prediction had come true. I was surprised. But wait--when she first plunked that book on the table I was a bit surprised, and that was before the prediction. Of course, after the prediction, I was even more surprised that my surprise was the surprise.

"Do degrees of surprise count?" I asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Never mind. You said you do astrology?"

"That will be another $20."

Another $20! I had already spent $10 to get into the fair in the first place, and then $20 on the palm reading. This spiritual journey was costing me more than soulless materialism! Still, when better to take the leap of faith then when you're in the hole? I gave her another $20.

"First off," she said. "When's your birthday?"

"December 15."

"So you're a Sagittarius. What year were you born?"

"1961"

"What time?"

"I don't know the exact time. It was in the morning."

"Predawn or post dawn?"

"Um, predawn, because I remember my father once telling me he was about to go to bed, when he suddenly had to rush my mother to the hospital."

The fortune teller nodded, reached under the table, and produced a book titled Bilgewater's Complete Guide to Astrology. Again, she laid the book out in front of me to see. She flipped the pages to a section or chapter titled, not surprisingly, SAGITTARIUS , then to a subsection titled DECEMBER, 15, then to a sub-subsection titled 1961, and to a sub-sub-subsection titled MORNING, and finally, a sub-sub-sub-subsection titled PRE-DAWN . Underneath all that was a prediction:

You shall experience sorrow.

"What kind of sorrow?" I asked.

"Oh, the book won't tell you."

"Now, why not? There's no surprise involved!"

"Maybe not. But if you know what the sorrow is, you'll steel yourself against it, and it won't be as sorrowful."

"OK, this is enough psychic phenomenon for me. I'm sorry I even came."

"Ah! Did you hear yourself? You said you were sorry!"

"So?"

"The word sorry is derived from sorrow. Or sorrow is derived from sorry. One of the two. Sorry-sorrow, sorry-sorrow, sorry-sorrow!"

I guess she had me there. I had come in contact with the supernatural. If only the supernatural hadn't ended as soon as it had begun.

"I don't suppose you read tea leaves?" I asked.

"Oh, I left that book at home."

Quips and Quotations (Baby Boomer Nostalgia Edition)

2011-10-27T16:15:00.000-07:00

What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and they carrying signs
Mostly say, hooray for our side
It's time we stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

--Buffalo Springfield

Picket lines and picket signs
Don't punish me with brutality
Talk to me, so you can see
Oh, what's going on, what's going on
Yeah, what's going on, oh, what's going on

--Marvin Gaye

We shall overcome,
We shall overcome,
We shall overcome, some day.
Oh, deep in my heart,
I do believe
We shall overcome, some day.

--Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, many others.

(Guess I'm just an old fogey living in the past. I'll have something more contemporary next time. Promise--KJ)

Computation

2011-10-07T10:38:00.000-07:00

With the recent passing of Steve Jobs, I felt I should say a few words about him and his legacy. After all, this blog does try its best to keep up with current events, and his demise made the front page in newpapers all over the world. In what newspapers his products haven't driven out of business. But what to say? I'm rather ignorant on the subject. You see, I don't own an iMac, iPod, Mac Pro, iPhone, MacBook Air, or iPad. I'm not even sure what some of those things are.

It's not that I wouldn't mind owning all that (according to some obits I've read) civilization-revolutionizing stuff. It's just that...

iMac............................................................................$1199
iPod.............................................................................$299
Mac Pro......................................................................$2499
iPhone.........................................................................$199
MacBook Air................................................................$999
iPad..............................................................................$499

...I'm on a budget.

My wallet could use some revolutionizing.

Quips and Quotations (Homespun Edition)

2011-10-04T13:10:00.000-07:00

Politics has got so expensive that it takes a lot of money even to get beat with.

You can't say civilization don't advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way.

We are the first nation to starve to death in a storehouse that's overfilled with everything we want.

When you get into trouble 5,000 miles from home, you’ve got to have been looking for it.

We all can't be heroes, for someone has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.

An onion can make people cry, but there has never been a vegetable invented to make them laugh.

Ten men in our country could buy the whole world and ten million can't buy enough to eat.

When the Judgment Day comes civilization will have an alibi, "I never took a human life, I only sold the fellow the gun to take it with."

The more you read and observe about this Politics thing, you got to admit that each party is worse than the other. The one that's out always looks the best.

The fellow that can only see a week ahead is always the popular fellow, for he is looking with the crowd. But the one that can see years ahead, he has a telescope but he can't make anybody believe that he has it.

I bet you if I had met him and had a chat with him [Leon Trotsky], I would have found him a very interesting and human fellow, for I never yet met a man that I dident [sic] like. When you meet people, no matter what opinion you might have formed about them beforehand, why, after you meet them and see their angle and their personality, why, you can see a lot of good in all of them.

--Will Rogers

Following Update (Berlitz Edition)

2011-09-21T13:46:00.000-07:00

OK, let me see if I can get through this without causing an international incident.

I'd like to welcome caterina serra, who may also go by the names "Stella" and "Star". More about that in a moment.

Regular readers of this blog know that I usually welcome new followers, as I did in the above paragraph, and add their web site to my "List of Blogs" as long as I don't find find it objectionable, which to date hasn't happened. This time around, something happened that almost did keep me from adding a blog. Nothing objectionable, just perplexing.

Ms. Serra is Italian. Or at least she lives in Italy, and her various blogs are written in Italian, a language I unfortunately do not speak. I did take about two weeks of Spanish, a language I'm told is closely related to Italian, in the 9th grade. Unfortunately, I couldn't seem to master the whole thinking-in-one-language-while-talking-in-another bit, and the teacher suggested I drop the course (speak a language from early childhood, as was the case with me and English, and it's easy to forget it's a learned behavior. It seems instinctive, like breathing, doesn't it?) None of this is Ms. Serra's fault, but the problem remained, how do I read her blog? Blogger doesn't seem to provide any way to translate a blog written in another language. They've got more important things to do, like redesigning the sign-in page.

Here's what I ended up doing. I went outside of Blogger, and googled Caterina Serra, and the title of one of her blogs. Just as I had hoped, the blog came up, with this written right next to it:

Translate this page

I translated.

Here's something interesting I came across. When I originally looked at the Italian version of her blog, I noticed the name "Stella". From repeated viewings of A Streetcar Named Desire, I've always assumed the name Stella was, um, American. And so I wondered, why would an Italian have such an American name? Once I read it in English, I saw my mistake. Her name was Star! Apparently, Stella is "star" translated into Italian, and probably Spanish and every other Romance language out there. Did you know that? Did Stanley Kowalski know that? Actually, it makes sense now that I think about it. You've heard the phrase "interstellar travel", haven't you? Well, stellar-star. Get it?

OK, I've lingered on the name game long enough. Warp-speed ahead.

Once I had the English version of her blogs, I decided to add one of them to my blogroll. As I usually do, I copied the "http://...", went back to Blogger, clicked on "Design", pasted it in, clicked "ADD", and was immediately informed that it wouldn't post! I tried it a second time, and still no go! I didn't want this poor woman in Italy thinking I was snubbing her. How's that for being an Ugly American? Finally, I went back to the Italian version of the blog, copied that web address, and, viola, it worked. Unfortunately, if you go to the blogroll and click it on now, you'll see the Italian, and not the English, version. For that reason, I chose a blog--she has four--that focuses mostly on photos of nature, with very little text. If you're curious about the other three blogs, just go the the Follower section, and click on the little picture. If you're curious but can't speak Italian, do what I did, and google the title of the blog and "caterina serra", and then the translation. The other three blogs look interesting. One seems to be photos of the Italian countryside, one is about UFOs, and the the third is about archaeological mysteries (that's the one I originally tried to add to my sidebar.)

One other monkey wrench has been thrown into the search engine. Ever since I added her blog onto my sidebar, I'm not allowed to read the English version as long as I'm still logged into Blogger. If I try, this is what I see:

Internet Explorer has modified this page to help prevent cross-site scripting.

Cross-site scripting? I don't want to cross-site script, just cross-site read. Oh, well.

Say, look how much I've written! Usually these Following Updates are only a sentence or two. I got a full-blown essay out of this one. Good ol' American know-how! Either that, or good ol' American groping in the dark for the light switch.

Again, welcome Caterina. Stella, too.

In Memoriam: Tom Wilson 1931-2011

2011-09-19T13:49:00.000-07:00

Cartoonist. Ziggy.

"Is Ziggy me? I'm afraid so. Everybody is, to some degree."

"He's such a small person in such a big world."

(A short drive from where I live, if you lift up your head, you'll see this --KJ)

Dispatch

2011-09-16T12:56:00.001-07:00

I was looking at one of those online news aggregate sites when I came across the following...

NEWS YOU MIGHT LIKE:

Woman Dies From Gas Fumes

Now, I ask you, why in the world might I like THAT? I have no quarrel with the woman. I never even met her!

Quips and Quotations (Spiritual Enlightenment Edition)

2011-09-02T07:00:00.000-07:00

So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn't know what to do. At last I had an idea; and I says, I'll go and write the letter - and then see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a feather right straight off, and my troubles all gone. So I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote:

Miss Watson, your runaway nigger Jim is down here two mile below Pikesville, and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send. Huck Finn.

I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn't do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking - thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I'd see him standing my watch on top of his'n, 'stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and suchlike times; and would always call me honey, and pet me, and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had smallpox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he's got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper.

It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:

"All right, then, I'll go to hell" - and tore it up.

--Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain

In Memoriam: Jerry Leiber 1933-2011

2011-08-22T15:14:00.000-07:00

Songwriter. "Hound Dog" "Jailhouse Rock" "Yakety Yak" "Charlie Brown" "Stand By Me" "Love Potion No 9" "Spanish Harlem" "I'm a Woman" "Is That All There Is?"

"Jerry was an idea machine...For every situation, Jerry had 20 ideas. As would-be songwriters, our interest was in black music and black music only. We wanted to write songs for black voices. When Jerry sang, he sounded black, so that gave us an advantage . . . His verbal vocabulary was all over the place – black, Jewish, theatrical, comical. He would paint pictures with words."

--Mike Stoller, Leiber's longtime collaborator. Stoller mostly concentrated on the music, Leiber mostly the lyrics.

"I felt black...I was as far as I was concerned. And I wanted to be black for lots of reasons. They were better musicians, they were better athletes, they were not uptight about sex, and they knew how to enjoy life better than most people."

--Jerry Leiber With the exception of Elvis Presley, Peggy Lee, and a few others, Leiber and Stoller wrote mostly for black artists.

The sad sack was a sittin' on a block of stone
way over in the corner weepin' all alone.
The warden said, "Hey, buddy, don't you be no square.
If you can't find a partner use a wooden chair."
Let's rock Everybody, let's rock.
Everybody in the whole cell block
was dancin' to the Jailhouse Rock.

--Performed by Elvis Presley

I didn't know if it was day or night
I started kissin' everything in sight
But when I kissed a cop down on Thirty-Fourth and Vine
He broke my little bottle of Love Potion Number Nine

--Performed by the Clovers.

When the night has come
And the land is dark
And the moon is the only light we'll see
No I won't be afraid, no I won't be afraid
Just as long as you stand, stand by me

--Performed by Ben E. King

I know what you must be saying to yourselves.
If that's the way she feels about it why doesn't she just end it all?
Oh, no. Not me. I'm in no hurry for that final disappointment.
For I know just as well as I'm standing here talking to you,
when that final moment comes and I'm breathing my last breath, I'll be saying to myself,
Is that all there is, is that all there is
If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
Let's break out the booze and have a ball
If that's all there is

--Performed by Peggy Lee.

Archival Revival: Star Search

2011-08-15T13:41:00.000-07:00

(originally posted on 4/04/2009)

Lately, I've been thinking quite a bit about Lindsay Lohan and Rich Little.

First, Lindsay Lohan. A couple of weeks ago I stumbled across an article about her on The Huffington Post that was actually a link to some gossip site. It seems Ms. Lohan had just had a lover's quarrel with her girlfriend, one Samantha Ronson, and was seen standing outside a nightclub screaming "The bitch left without me!"

OK, that's about as salacious as this post is going to get. Remember, Rich Little's coming up. He's anything but salacious.

To be honest, that Huffington article was just salacious enough that I had to read it twice. I swear I had no idea until right then that Ronson was Lohan's girlfriend. In fact, I had never even heard of Ronson. But here's the real scary part:

I wasn't entirely sure I knew who Lindsay Lohan was!

I mean, I had heard the name before. A couple of years (or perhaps months) back, when Britney Spears and Paris Hilton were getting in all sorts of trouble, Lohan was often lumped in with them, usually as an afterthought. It was often something along the lines of: "Britney and Paris were driving drunk and naked through the streets of LA, swearing at the top of their lungs and making fun of chess nerds. Oh, by the way, Lohan was seen the same night upchucking into an open manhole!"

Like I said, she was an afterthought.

Not anymore. I read the Huffington article/link twice, and there was no mention of either Britney Spears or Paris Hilton, thus forcing me to finally confront a question I had long avoided--who is Lindsay Lohan?

I asked an acquaintance, who promptly answered my question with a question:

"YOU DON'T KNOW WHO LINDSAY LOHAN IS?!"

I answered her question to my question with yet another question:

"Well, why should I?"

Finally, she gave a straight answer.

"BECAUSE SHE'S FAMOUS, THAT'S WHY!"

"Well, if she's famous, how come I'm not exactly sure who she is?"

"Have you tried to find out who she is?"

"Other than this conversation...no."

"WELL, YOU HAVE TO MAKE THE EFFORT!"

You have to make the effort.

So I googled Lindsay Lohan and here's what I found out. She's a model, actress, and pop singer. In the last ten years, she rose to stardom in such Disney remakes as The Parent Trap and Freaky Friday.

How could I not know that? The answer lies with Rich Little.

About a year ago I caught Little on David Letterman. He was the very last guest. Not even that if you define "guest" as one who sits down and talks to Dave. Little just did his stand-up routine, as if he was some unknown getting his big chance on a nationally televised program. It was really kind of a comedown for Little, who was quite famous in his day. Famous mostly for imitating other people quite famous in their day. And my day. By that I mean I recognized every person he imitated. Had I gone into a coma in 1980 and emerged sometime after 2005, I still would have recognized every person he imitated. He did Jimmy Stewart, Richard M. Nixon, Carol Channing, Truman Capote, George Burns, Jack Benny, Paul Lynde, Archie Bunker, Ronald Reagan, Walter Cronkite, and...Howard Cosell. Howard Cosell? Man, I hadn't thought about Howard Cosell in years! He also was quite famous in his day, but unlike old movie or music stars, there was little chance of an old sportscaster being rediscovered by a whole new generation. Unless that whole new generation happened to catch Rich Little on David Letterman.

Whatever the generation of Dave's studio audience that night, Rich Little's routine did get a lot of laughs. As soon as it was over, a surprisingly pleased Letterman (he does have a reputation as a cynic, you know) walked over, shook Little's hand, and asked, "So, what you been doing with yourself?"

I was less concerned with what Rich Little had been doing with himself lately, and more curious as to why he didn't imitate anyone who had become well known after 1980. According to Wikipedia, Little's about 71. So, maybe he's just an old coot stuck in the past. But why that past? And, at any rate, he was 42 at the beginning of the 1980s, and 52 by decade's end, and not even eligible for Social Security by the millennium's end, so I didn't think senility was the answer. And remember, the studio audience, most of whom looked younger than 71, got all of the jokes.

I picked up the remote and started channel surfing.

Cowabunga! I had my answer!

You couldn't channel surf before 1980. Well, you could, but it would have been a pretty small wave. Just the three networks, public broadcasting, and UHF. Then, in the 1980s, came cable, and, in the 1990s, the Internet.

Now, I want you to remember what my acquaintance said: You have to make the effort. Not before 1980. In that three network era, finding out who was famous required no effort at all. You had the luxury of total passivity. The burden lay entirely with the famous person. That's why he or she had to hire publicists, press agents, personal managers, media spokesmen and the like. The non-famous just had to sit back in front of the tube and absorb it all, even if they didn't particularly want to.

Here's an example. I have never seen a single episode of Kojak. Yet, by 1976, when I was 14, I somehow knew that it starred a bald-headed actor named Telly Savalas who sucked lollipops and asked, "Who loves ya, baby?" Now, I didn't seek that information out. But, by some peculiar cathode ray osmosis, I just knew.

And it wasn't just TV stars. The small screen was also informed by the big screen. Or vice-versa. That's how I knew, at a very tender age, that some guy with cotton in his mouth named Marlon Brando played a bad guy named Godfather who wanted to make people offers they couldn't refuse. It's not from sneaking into an R-rated movie at the age of 11 that I knew all that. The film's trailers were on TV, and, more important, everyone from Fred Travelina to Frank Gorshin to, well, Rich Little, imitated the guy (It was a few years later that I found out about the other Marlon Brando, the young guy in a motorcycle jacket or torn T-shirt who coulda' been a contender while screaming for Stella.)

You even knew, again without particularly wanting or needing to, about public figures outside of entertainment. The President, obviously. But how about Henry Kissinger? Why is it exactly that he is, or was, a more famous Secretary of State than either Dean Rusk, who served under LBJ, or Cyrus Vance, who served under Jimmy Carter? Well, I suppose you could say, "Henry Kissinger was the architect of the policy of rapprochement with China blah, blah, blah...", but I think his real claim to fame was his weird accent, mimicked by everyone from Robin Williams to John Belushi to, well, Rich Little.

But that's now all in the past. With hundreds of networks and web sites and whatever it is people Twitter on, the burden has shifted from the Lindsay Lohans of the world to us, the non-famous. We no longer have the luxury of being passive. We have to make the effort.

Hmm. Maybe I should hire a publicist.

Quips and Quotations (AA+ Edition)

2011-08-09T10:26:00.000-07:00

By the way, the ratings agency is Standard & Poor's. Who's going to listen to a company whose name translates to Average & Below Average?

--Jon Stewart

Did I Ask Your Opinion?

2011-08-06T12:51:00.000-07:00

According to my site meter, somebody from howtogetridofstomachfat has checked out this blog.

I like to think of them as love handles.

Archival Revival: Torched Song

2011-08-03T15:24:00.000-07:00

(Originally posted on 5/19/2009)

I recently paid a visit to my rock star friend, Spit Blitzkrieg. His butler answered the door, and told me Spit would be right down. As I waited, I could hear laughter and shouting and screams of ecstasy emanating from somewhere in his 96-room mansion. I wondered if maybe I wasn't interrupting something, then I realised there was always laughter and shouting and screams of ecstasy emanating from his mansion, summer cottage, hotel room, limo, tour bus, even his tent on that one camping trip to Yellowstone Park. So that made me feel more at ease. At least it did until I saw Spit stagger down a long flight of stairs. I was shocked at his appearance. He looked tired, worn, pale, undernourished, and disheveled. That's not what shocked me. In fact, all that was usually to the good. Especially when immediately preceded by laughter and shouting and screams of ecstasy. No, what shocked me was his expression. He looked sad, heartbroken even.

"Uh, hey, Spit," I said. "Long time no see."

"Hey, Kirk." He replied, glumly.

"Anything wrong?"

"I'm sad, heartbroken even."

"What happened?"

"My girl dumped me"

"Which one?"

"You know. The love of my life."

"Oh," I replied, trying to remember who exactly that was again.

Spit then let out a long sigh.

"Spit," I said, hoping to make him feel better. "Maybe you could channel your heartbreak into your art."

"Oh, I have. In fact, I've written a song. Want to hear it?"

"Sure."

Spit plugged in his Fender Stratocaster, and proceeded to perform his lyrical lament about a love lost.

She was everything to me
She was all that I could see
She was in my every thought
In my every dream
We were such a duo
We were such a team

But when another came along
She decided I'm all wrong
And she cast me right aside
Like a shell left from the tide

Now I sit in front of my TV
Thinking, woe, woe is me
And guzzle down the booze
As I watch the evening news

Brian William's warning
About the spread of nukes
This country's got 'em
That country's got 'em
And so soon will the Third World kooks

And it was then I had my epiphany
This could be Earth's final symphony
So I'm...

Prayin' for a nuclear war
One with lots of blood and gore
Hopin' for the end of the world
To take my mind off of you, girl

I know it'll mean the deaths
Of a billion innocent souls
But what do I give a damn
When my aching heart is filled with holes?

And with that, Spit Blitzkrieg wiped a tear from his eye, put down his Fender Stratocaster, excused himself, and disappeared to somewhere inside his 96-room mansion, where there still could be heard laughter and shouting and screams of ecstasy.

Garment District

2011-07-26T12:30:00.000-07:00

Saw something interesting on my site meter the other day. For those of you who don't know, a site meter gives the blogger some inkling on the nature of their audience. Don't worry; it gives neither names nor addresses. If the blogger's lucky, though, they'll learn the country and city of the person checking their site out. The meter seems to work best if it's a direct connection between one person's computer and the blogger's. If the blog is accessed through a third party, the trail is often lost. Even so, the site meter may still state who that third party is, and that's always good to know. It can also raise more questions.

According to my site meter, someone accessed my blog from this site:

http://risingtaste.com/

Rising taste? I wondered, was that the same as good taste? Was it a way of achieving good taste? Was that site perhaps telling people that if they want good taste, then they should read Shadow of a Doubt? Was my blog now right up there with classical music, William Shakespeare, Chippendale furniture, and white Christmas tree lights? At long last, the aesthetes had discovered me!

When I clicked on the actual site, I saw the focus was a bit more narrow than all that:

Risingtaste - where taste meets fashion

It was an online clothing store. Well, that leaves Shakespeare out.

Still, it was flattering to think that the fashion mavens had discovered me. Strange, too. There are no photos of me on this blog, but, trust me, such a photo would never be confused with the cover of GQ. But perhaps tastes were changing. Was disheveled "in"? Come next spring, will frayed T-shirts with stubborn mustard stains (I rubbed Tide on it; nothing works), faded jeans with the back pockets coming off, socks that fail to adequately cover the big toe, and scuffed up shoes tied in quadruple knots because the damn laces keep coming undone, be all the rage on the Paris runways?

I examined the web site more closely. In small letters, right underneath the heading, it read:

Wholesale clothing from China

They must have found out I live near Wal-Mart.

In Memoriam: Borders 1971-2011

2011-07-20T10:11:00.000-07:00

Bookstore chain

“Following the best efforts of all parties, we are saddened by this development...We were all working hard towards a different outcome, but the headwinds we have been facing for quite some time, including the rapidly changing book industry, eReader revolution, and turbulent economy, have brought us to where we are now...For decades, Borders stores have been destinations within our communities, places where people have sought knowledge, entertainment, and enlightenment and connected with others who share their passion. Everyone at Borders has helped millions of people discover new books, music, and movies, and we all take pride in the role Borders has played in our customers’ lives...I extend a heartfelt thanks to all of our dedicated employees and our loyal customers.”

--Mike Edwards, Borders Group President

"Well, at least I got to use the gift card while I still had the chance."

--Kirk Jusko, loyal customer who lived not far from a Borders.

Archival Revival: Rock, Paper, Caesar

2011-07-14T15:53:00.000-07:00

(originally posted on 6/21/2008)

The following conversation took place a couple of years ago at work:

"What's this paper doing on the floor? Now it's covered with footprints!"

"That's because everybody's been stepping on it."

"Well, I can see everybody's been stepping on it. Why is everybody stepping on it?"

"To get to the tape machine."

"Why don't they just move the paper?"

"Where? You see how crowded it is."

"You can move it to, uh, hmmm...I have to use the tape machine, so I guess I'll just step on the paper myself. When in Rome, do as the Romans do."

"Why don't you piss against a rock?"

"What?"

"Why don't you piss against a rock?"

"Why should I piss against a rock?"

"You just said, 'When in Rome, do as the Romans do'. Well, in Ancient Rome, didn't they piss against rocks?"

"What makes you think they pissed against rocks in Ancient Rome?"

"'Cause they didn't have toilets."

"Why wouldn't they have toilets? They had aqueducts."

"What's an aqueduct?"

"An aqueduct is--well, it's kind of like a pipe. A big, long, pipe. A canal-sized pipe. Or, it is a canal. Part pipe and part canal. A combination of the two. And it brings water, fresh water, over long distances. For instance, I think it's an aqueduct that brings fresh water from Lake Erie all the way to Akron."

"Really? That's pretty impressive."

"It is."

"Just think, piss from Ancient Rome is going all the way from Lake Erie to Akron."

Quips and Quotations (Lucifer's Lexicon Edition)

2011-07-07T15:21:00.000-07:00

absurdity n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.

adherent n.: A follower who has not yet obtained all that he expects to get.

admiration n. Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.

circus n.: A place where horses, ponies and elephants are permitted to see men, women and children acting the fool.

fashion n.: A despot whom the wise ridicule and obey.

mad adj.: Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence.

ocean n.: A body of water occupying two-thirds of a world made for man - who has no gills.

patience n.: A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.

selfish adj.: Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others.

sweater n.: garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.

--Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

Archival Revival: Slapdashboard

2011-06-30T16:28:00.000-07:00

(This post originally appeared on 12/04/2008--KJ)

As the US auto industry teeters of the edge of oblivion, there's been no little debate over the mechanical quality of the American car, or lack thereof. I'm not sure of that quality myself. I've only driven used cars, usually junkers. Or are all used cars junkers? Are all junkers used? If there are junkers that are new, no wonder the industry's teetering.

One area of possible improvement, aside from the mechanical condition of the vehicle itself, are those devices meant to inform, and then warn, us of that aforementioned mechanical condition. I'm speaking of all those little lights on the dashboard that come on when you start the car, and that are only supposed to come on again if there's an emergency. Unless they're broke, in which case that's the emergency.

First up is the OIL light. Back when I first owned a car, and was relatively inexperienced about their strange ways, I assumed the OIL light came on when the car was about to run out of...oil. And so, I'd put in more oil. The red light would go off for a little bit, then go right back on. So I'd put in even more oil. The light was off for another little bit, than on again, and yet again I'd put in more oil...This went on until my car emitted so much black smoke it looked like a crematorium on wheels. I finally took it to the mechanic, and was told the OIL light doesn't come on when the car's actually running out of oil, but when there was something wrong with the engine (like it having too much oil. God knows what the original problem was.)

Now, I had an acquaintance who was similarly ignorant. In her case, the OIL light didn't go on, and she assumed the car didn't need oil. She kept on assuming her car didn't need oil, even after she heard a slight rattle. Maybe the doors weren't shut tight enough. Eventually, the rattle turned into a RATTLE. In fact, the car rattled even when it would no longer move. Then the SOMETHING WRONG WITH THE ENGINE light came on. The car was towed to the shop. The mechanic explained the problem. The car had run out of oil. But why, she asked, hadn't the oil light come on? Well, he explained, that's the whole purpose of the SOMETHING WRONG WITH THE ENGINE light.

If any members of Congress are reading this, next time those auto executives are seated before you, how about getting them to produce a car where the OIL light comes on when it's actually low on oil, and the SOMETHING WRONG WITH THE ENGINE light comes on when there's actually something wrong with the engine?!

Another problem with these lights are their timing. For instance, the BRAKE FAILING light usually comes on about 3.7 seconds before you're about to hit the back of an eighteen-wheeler. The NEEDS WATER light comes on about 8.4 seconds before you're about to pass out from smoke inhalation. And, of course, the BATTERY light comes on when the car's having trouble starting. Unless the car doesn't start at all. Because the battery's dead. So nothing works. Including the light that tells you the battery's dead.

One thing you don't have warning lights for, at least not in any of the junkers I've ever driven, are, well, lights. The ones outside the car, I mean. They do now chime to you when you've forgot to turn them off. But how about when they burn out? OK, you don't really need to be warned about headlights. You can see when they're not working. But what about the lights in back? The brake light? The tail light? When one of those burn out, there's no warning light whatsoever.

Unless it's the light on top of the police car in the rear view mirror.

In Memoriam: Peter Falk 1927-2011

2011-06-24T12:57:00.000-07:00

Actor. Murder Inc. A Pocketful of Miracles. It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Robin and the 7 Hoods. The Great Race. Husbands. A Woman Under the Influence. Murder by Death. The In-Laws (1978). The Princess Bride. Wings of Desire. And, of course, Columbo.

"The joy of all this is watching Columbo dissemble the fiendishly clever cover stories of the loathsome rats who consider themselves his better."

--Variety columnist Howard Prouty

"Before we ever had a script or anything, I was attracted to the idea of playing a character that housed within himself two opposing traits...On the one hand (he was) a regular Joe, Joe Six-Pack, the neighbor like everybody else. But, at the same time, the greatest homicide detective in the world. Now that's a great combination, and you can do a lot with that combination."

--Peter Falk.

In Memoriam: Clarence Clemons 1942-2011

2011-06-19T11:42:00.000-07:00

Musician. Sometimes actor. Longtime saxophonist for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.

"Creating is like religion...I've had people say to me, 'That sax solo saved my life.' So I did my job."

--Clarence Clemons

“When you look at just the cover of ‘Born to Run,’ you see a charming photo, a good album cover, but when you open it up and see Clarence and me together, the album begins to work its magic...Who are these guys? Where did they come from? What is the joke they are sharing?”

--Bruce Springsteen

(In addition to Springsteen, Clemons also worked with Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, Ronnie Spector, Janis Ian, Michael Stanley Band, Joan Armatrading, Gary "US" Bonds, Ian Hunter, Ringo Starr, Jackson Brown [vocal duet], Aretha Franklin, Twisted Sister [!], The Four Tops, Todd Rundgren, Joe Cocker, Roy Orbison, Luther Vandross, and, most recently, Lady Gaga
[!!] How's THAT for versatility?--KJ)

Quips and Quotations (Grover's Corners Edition)

2011-06-14T17:38:00.000-07:00

It’s like what one of those Middle West poets said: You’ve got to love life to have life, and you've got to have life to love life…It's what they call a vicious circle.

They're waitin'. They're waitin' for something that they feel is comin'. Something important, and great. Aren't they waitin' for the eternal part in them to come out clear?

Does anyone ever realize life while they live it...every, every minute? No. Saints and poets maybe...they do some.

Yes, now you know. Now you know! That's what it was to be alive. To move about in a cloud of ignorance; to go up and down trampling on the feelings of those...of those about you. To spend and waste time as though you had a million years. To be always at the mercy of one self-centered passion, or another. Now you know — that's the happy existence you wanted to go back to. Ignorance and blindness

There are the stars – doing their old, old crisscross journeys in the sky. Scholars haven’t settled the matter yet, but they seem to think there are no living beings up there. Just chalk…or fire. Only this one is straining away, straining away all the time to make something of itself. The strain’s so bad that every sixteen hours everybody lies down and gets a rest.

--Thornton Wilder, Our Town

In Memoriam: Leonard Stern 1923--2011

2011-06-09T12:56:00.000-07:00

Writer. TV producer. The Honeymooners. Get Smart. Co-creator (with Roger Price) of Mad Libs.

"(exclamation!)_____________! he said(adverb) ________ as he jumped into his convertible (noun) ______ and drove off with his (adjective) ___________ wife."

Didn't Give A Damn

2011-06-07T14:13:00.000-07:00

When I was a junior in high school I took an elective called "The Novel". Among the novels we read were For Whom the Bells Toll, All Quiet on the Western Front, Siddhartha, Catcher in the Rye and Gone With the Wind. Of all those novels, the one the teacher seemed the most embarrassed, the most apologetic, about teaching was Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. Why? The rural-like Cleveland suburb where I went to high school was a tad conservative, so you might think she'd have qualms about teaching Catcher in the Rye, with its cuss words, or Siddhartha, with its emphases on non-Christian religions, or For Whom the Bells Toll, with its communist guerrillas. No, the teacher wasn't worried about community values so much as academic ones. Gone with the Wind was no classic, she warned us, and had an "old-fashioned narrative." At the time, I didn't know what she was talking about. Both Siddhartha and All Quiet on the Western Front were written before Wind, so why weren't they old-fashioned? Many years and how-to-write-fiction books later, I finally realized that the teacher meant that Wind lacked such modernist literary techniques as stream-of-consciousness:

ashley put his arms around me to comfort me oh no the busybodies see us spread gossip we're having an affair I come home rhett is drunk and all pissed off picks me up walks up stairs into bedroom maybe rapes me no because i'm not resisting maybe this will smooth things over between us no it doesn't he takes the kids somewhere i don't see him for months he's back asks me why i'm pale i tell him i'm pregnant he tells me to cheer up maybe i'll have a miscarriage i'm pissed off he said that i start hitting him oh no i lost my balance i'm tumbling down the stairs i have a miscarriage after all i hope rhett is satisfied i recuperate little bonnie blue tries to jump horse over fence breaks her neck oh how tragic melanie wilkes dies me and ashley can finally marry oh he loved melanie after all guess that means i really love rhett too bad he's leaving me i ask him what will become of me he says i don't give a damn oh what will i do now i can't think about it now i'll go back to tara mammy pack my bags tomorrow is another day

Whatever its literary merit, I was more eager to read Gone With the Wind than any other book on the list. I know, I was a teenager, a neurotic teenager at that, and should have been more eager to read Catcher in the Rye, about a neurotic teenager, but I had never heard of book before taking the class (good thing I didn't drop out of school before reaching the 11th grade, as I had often fantasized; I would have gone through life believing cuss words hadn't been invented until the late 1960s.) I was anxious to read Wind because a few years earlier the movie version, starring Vivian Leigh, Clark Gable, Leslie Howard, and (still alive as of this writing) Olivia de Havilland, had premiered on TV with much fanfare, and, for a change, something lived up to the fanfare. I enjoyed the film. It wasn't just me with my peculiar tastes (though, God knows, I had enough back then), my classmates liked it as well. If it seems odd that teenagers in the 1970s should like a movie from the 1930s, remember that, while there was certainly such a thing as teen culture back then, it didn't extend to television too much. There was no such thing as MTV to cater to our every liking, so, other than something like Don Kirshner's Rock Concert, we watched the same shows our parents watched, and generally liked them. I suspect the movie's popularity is one reason my school added Wind to the list. The thinking may have been, as long as they're reading something. I also enjoyed the book the movie was based on. In fact, I found Margaret Mitchell's tome such a rich reading experience that it made the movie seem a bit superficial by comparison (though I would still recommend it.) Of all the books we had to read in that class, only Wind and Catcher in the Rye has stayed with me over the years. Unfortunately, when I cast an objective eye on Gone with the Wind, I have to conclude the teacher was right: it is old-fashioned, though for reasons having nothing to do with prose style or narrative structure. Too bad, as so much of the book is new-fashioned.

A brief summary, assuming a 423,575-word book can be summarized briefly. At the outset of the Civil War, 16-year old Scarlett O'Hara lives with her family and her slave Mammy on the cotton plantation Tara, not far from Atlanta. A flirtatious "southern belle", Scarlett is popular with the boys, but has her heart set on Ashley Wilkes. At a barbecue at Twelve Oaks, Ashley's father's plantation, Scarlett learns he going to marry his cousin, Melanie Hamilton. Upset at the news, Scarlett lashes out at Ashely. Another guest at the barbecue, Rhett Butler, a man with a roguish reputation, overhears this not-quite-lovers quarrel, and later tells Scarlett he admires her spirit. Too upset to take a compliment, and probably too socialized in ways of bellehood to even recognize it as a compliment, she spurns Rhett. Meanwhile, she decides to get back at Ashley, who has admitted he does have feelings for her, by marrying Melanie's brother Charles. This union produces a son, Wade. Charles is shipped off to war, and soon dies from the measles. Now a widow and single mother, Scarlett moves to Atlanta, where she lives with Melanie (now her sister-in-law) and her aunt. She keeps busy with hospital work, and renews her acquaintance with Rhett, who's getting rich by running supplies through the naval blockade the North has on the South. A friendship gradually develops between Scarlett and Rhett (something that's not always clear in the movie). Ashley returns home on leave, and asks Scarlett to watch over Melanie, who's now pregnant. Ashley returns to the war, which has turned decidedly bad for the South. General Sherman siege of Atlanta comes to a head, and the fleeing Confederates set the city on fire. Melanie has the bad timing to give birth that very night. Rhett helps Scarlett, Melanie, her newborn son, and a slave, Prissy, escape from Atlanta. Later, Rhett abandons them on the road to Tara, and joins the Confederate army. Scarlett returns home to find her mother dead, her father crazy, her sisters ill, the field slaves all gone, and the plantation burned. The war ends, and the victorious Yankees levy a particularly harsh tax on Tara. To keep from losing Tara, Scarlett first attempts to ask Rhett for the money, only to find he's now in jail. She then runs into Frank Kennedy, who's always been sweet on her sister Suellen. Frank tells her he's now a prosperous grocer. Hearing that, Scarlet seduces Frank into marrying her and paying off the taxes on Tara. Afterwards, she finds out he may not have ready cash on hand as a lot of people owe him money. Scarlett takes over the store herself, and then, with a loan from a friend, buys a sawmill, and proves herself a good businesswoman. She also finds time to give birth to a daughter, Ellie. Scarlett is soon back on the job. While riding home from the mill one night, she's accosted by a couple of thieves. A former Tara slave comes to her rescue. Afterwards, her husband Frank, Ashley, and several others of a vigilante bent, attack the shantytown the thieves hailed from. Frank is killed in the ensuing melee. A widow and single mother once again, Scarlet agrees to marry the now extremely wealthy Rhett Butler, who builds a fantastic mansion for them to live. Neither spouse particularly trusts the other, hardly a good foundation for a successful marriage. Still, the union produces a daughter, Bonnie Blue. By now, Ashley is running the mill for Scarlett. Still carrying a torch for him, she visits him in the office, and they reminisce about the good times before the war. The memories move Scarlett to tears, and Ashley takes her in his arms to comfort her. His sister walks in at that point and gets the wrong idea. Scandal ensues, though Melanie refuses to believe it. Rhett does believe it, and drunkenly confronts Scarlett. They argue and, arguably, have sex. The next morning Rhett takes Bonnie Blue and leaves town for a couple months. The child misses her mother, so Rhett returns. When she finds out he wants to leave again without his daughter, Scarlett informs Rhett she's pregnant. Rhett jokes that maybe she'll have a miscarriage. Angry, Scarlett lunges at Rhett, but loses her balance and falls down a flight of stairs. She does have a miscarriage, as well as breaking a couple of ribs. Scarlett goes to Tara to recover. Later, she returns to Atlanta, and an uneasy truce with Rhett. Meanwhile Rhett buys Bonnie Blue a Shetland pony. He should have got her a hamster instead. Bonnie tries to jump the horse over a hedge, and is killed. Both Scarlett and Rhett are heartbroken, though Scarlett, in the long run, handles it better. Melanie soon dies. Scarlett realizes that Melanie, not she, was the love of Ashley's life. She also realizes that Rhett, not Ashley, is the love of her life. But too late. Rhett leaves her. Finis.

Whew!

OK, so what did I find so new-fashioned about this novel? Even today, a southern belle might strike at least some young women as a rather pleasant thing to be. Margaret Mitchell, the daughter of a suffragette, knew better. Amid all the fan fluttering and flirting with dashing, young beaus and sipping iced sweet tea daintily on a hot Georgian day, bellehood was just another way for a patriarchal Southern hierarchy to keep its women in their place. In fact, the novel occasionally reads like a feminist tract. As changing times reveals just how unprepared women with such an upbringing were to a sudden reversal of fortune, Scarlett rebels against the role plantation society (which, through the course of the novel, seems to survive the plantations themselves) stubbornly insists she play:

"I'm tired of everlastingly being unnatural and never doing anything I want to do. I'm tired of acting like I don't eat more than a bird, and walking when I want to run and saying I feel faint after a waltz, when I could dance for two days and never get tired. I'm tired of saying, 'How wonderful you are!' to fool men who haven't got one-half the sense I've got, and I'm tired of pretending I don't know anything, so men can tell me things and feel important while they're doing it."

--Gone with the Wind, chapter five

Scarlett's first husband dies, and then, as now, she's expected to wear black. Then, as not now, she's expected to wear black for the rest of her life. She's also forbidden to smile, or show any indication that she's nothing less than miserable. Suppressing the indication does indeed make her nothing less than miserable. Who knows? Maybe that was the whole idea behind the rule. Scarlett finally ends her period of mourning by accepting a dance at a wartime charity ball, scandalizing all of Atlanta as a result. The scandalizing doesn't stop there.

Scarlett is pregnant three times in the novel, something that she's not expected to acknowledge, to the point of staying indoors with the windows drawn at the first hint that she no longer has the thinnest waist in three counties. Nevertheless, by the time she's expecting her second child, she's a successful businesswoman, and has to go out in public, thus shattering any belief that same public might have had in the stork. Of course, that Scarlett is a successful businesswoman, that Scarlett's any type of businesswoman, is most scandalous of all. Businesswomen were exceedingly rare back then. The only other successful businesswoman in the whole novel is Belle Watling, and she keeps a red lantern out in front of her establishment.

Yet, for all of her scandalizing, Scarlett's not even the most modern thinker in the novel. That would be Rhett Butler. While hardly a sensitive male (especially not after a few drinks), it is he who dances with the widowed Scarlet at the charity ball. "Until you lose your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was or what freedom really is," he tells her. At another point in the story, Rhett acknowledges Scarlett's pregnancy: "You are a child if you thought I didn't know, for all your smothering yourself under that hot lap robe." And it's Rhett who lends her the money to buy the sawmill. All throughout the novel, Rhett encourages Scarlett to defy convention, and applauds her when she succeeds: "Now you are beginning to think for yourself instead of letting others think for you. That’s the beginning of wisdom."

So why, if Scarlett and Rhett were so likeminded, did their marriage go south (if you'll pardon the pun)? Well, neither one was ever sure the other one loved them. Rhett only tells Scarlett when he's drunk and about to commit what a century later might be considered spousal rape. Scarlett only tells Rhett when he's ready to leave her. It doesn't help matters any that Ashley tells Scarlett at several points in the book that he loves her. It should occur to the reader long before it occurs to Scarlett that he's talking about familial, rather than romantic, love (after all, they are in-laws.) Why can't Scarlett figure that out? I suspect Ashley represents a little bit of the past, as restrictive as it was, that Scarlett wants to hold on to. When she finally lets it go, she doesn't even mind. By that time, of course, Rhett has had enough. I imagine most people regard Gone with the Wind as having an unhappy ending, but Scarlett's situation is far from hopeless. At the novel's conclusion, she's only 28, and can now go forth in life with a better understanding of herself and the world around her.

OK, that's the new-fashioned part of the novel. What's old-fashioned? Margaret Mitchell's seemed to have blinders on when it came to blacks, or, as Scarlett O'Hara affectionately refers to them, "darkies". As restrictive as the Old South must have been for white women, their rights were downright unalienable compared to the 3/4th of a people that were picking their cotton. Scarlett muses: "Negroes were provoking sometimes and stupid and lazy, but there was loyalty in them that money couldn't buy, a feeling of oneness with their white folks..." No, you couldn't buy their loyalty, just their bodies. The idea that the Civil War is being fought over slavery is scoffed at by Rhett Butler. Upon Emancipation, the former slaves act "as creatures of small intelligence might naturally be expected to do. Like monkeys or small children turned loose among treasured objects whose value is beyond their comprehension, they ran wild--either from perverse pleasure in destruction or simply because of their ignorance." More ignorant than smothering oneself in a hot lap robe to hide a pregnancy? Why was Mitchell so attuned to the problems of women but not blacks in such a backward society? Well, she was a woman. Females were relatively more emancipated by 1937, when Gone with the Wind was published (of course, there was more emancipation to come.) In doing research for the novel, Mitchell must have taken a good, hard look at the etiquette of 1861, and decided it wasn't her glass of mint julep. Unfortunately, the daughter of a suffragette also, in the 1920s, lived down the street from the national headquarters of the Ku Klux Klan. Speaking of the Klan, that was the vigilante group that Ashley Wilkes and Scarlett's doomed second husband both belonged to. You can argue that Mitchell was the product of her times, but other Southern writers such as William Faulkner, Harper Lee, and Mark Twain were able to look at black-white relations with a critical eye. Speaking of Twain, who died when Margaret Mitchell was ten and actually lived through the Civil War, he comes periodically under fire for the number of times the word "nigger" appears in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. 216 times in Finn, compared to 104 times in Gone with the Wind, a much longer book. Mitchell is selective about her wording, often using "darkie" to describe good blacks like Mammy, and the n-word to describe bad blacks like the one that tries to rob Scarlett. Twain, having grown up in a slave state, and whose father occasionally owned slaves, uses the n-word no matter if the black in question is good, bad, or in-between. But don't condemn Twain for his accurate use of the era's vernacular. After all, his book is about a boy's moral growth as he helps a slave escape to freedom. Scarlett grows, too, but her racial attitudes stay the same. Some will argue that Gone with the Wind isn't even about slavery. It's about the Civil War. So what was it fought over, hoop skirts?

I suppose Mitchell isn't unique in identifying with her own group. When California passed Proposition 8 banning gay marriages, it was said to have been overwhelmingly supported by black voters. Every minority for himself. Meanwhile, political strategists for years have been trying to form a coalition among poor whites and poor blacks, to no avail. Too many poor whites blame poor blacks for all their troubles, as if welfare caused the collapse of manufacturing in this country (incidentally, there are more whites than blacks on welfare.) There's been a rift in recent years among blacks and Jews, but the still-extant Klan refuses to take sides. Women complain about being kept out of private clubs that cater to wealthy businessmen. We demand equal-opportunity elitism!

So who's to blame? The whites? Some of them are women. The males? Some of them are poor. The rich? Some of them are gay. The evangelicals? Some of them are black. The reactionaries? Some of them are Jewish. The Gentiles? Some of them are secular humanists.

I sound like a conservative decrying identity politics. No, I'm a liberal asking for a more expansive view of identity. I want everybody to identify with homo sapien.

There's a subplot in Gone with the Wind that I left out. Will Benteen is a one-legged Confederate soldier retuning from war who wanders onto Tara. He's made a foreman, and eventually marries Suellen, Scarlett's sister. Such a thing would have been unthinkable before the war. You see, Will is a cracker, a poor white. But post-war, Scarlett happily, and the rest of the local aristocracy begrudgingly, give their blessings to the union. The Yankee carpetbaggers are at the top of the socialeconomic pyramid now, and southerners of all stripes have to stick together. Really, any group at any time can find themselves at the top of such a pyramid. But it's always temporary. Met any Yankee carpetbaggers lately?

As out economy burns down faster than Atlanta, we all soon may find ourselves at the bottom. Climbing back up might be easier if we all recognize our common humanity. Do so, and tomorrow might be a better day.

Quips and Quotations

2011-05-26T16:06:00.001-07:00

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it without a sense of ironic futility.

--Errol Morris

Reproductive Services

2011-05-20T13:00:00.000-07:00

Photoshop is so cool, isn't it? You can get rid of the rust on your car, the peeling paint on your house, and the crabgrass on your lawn. You can also make your wife's breasts bigger, eliminate your husband's beer belly, give your bony teenage son some pecs and biceps, and remove your daughter's overbite. As for yourself, you can have a nose job, an eye lift, lips enhancement, hair extensions, and a Florida tan, all with the click of a mouse. Why, even God never had it so good.

Just make sure you don't walk outside or look in the mirror. For that matter, don't even look away from the computer screen. All your hopes, dreams, and aspirations are right there, in digital form, if nowhere else.

The popularity of Photoshop makes me wonder if we'll ever believe a photograph again. And if we can't believe a photograph, where exactly does that leave us? It leaves us right where we were for most of recorded history. Photography, after all, is only about 185 years old. There are New England bed-and-breakfasts older than that. Before the invention of photography, if one wanted a reproduction of reality, one had to draw, paint, or sculpt it. And if one wanted a reproduction of reality but was too lazy to draw, paint, or sculpt it themselves, one had to to watch somebody else do it, and give them the benefit of a doubt that they did so with a minimum of exaggeration.

The earliest known reproductions of reality are prehistoric cave paintings. These were usually pictures of bison and horses and anything that could be found outside of the cave. No prehistoric artist ever seemed to draw or paint anything that could be found inside the cave. Such as other people. No, only animals. My theory is some cavemen were brave enough to wander outside, while others less brave stayed inside and consisted on a diet of worms and spiders while gradually going blind from the lack of sunlight. So the caveman that did go outside and live to tell about it was essentially bringing back news from the outside world when he drew on those walls, the leading story apparently being that there were a lot of bison and horses out there. Big bison. Enough to scare the other cave man from ever venturing outside. Horses are pretty fierce-looking on those walls, too. As is the case with Photoshop, there was really nothing stopping the cave man artist from turning a Shetland pony into a fire-breathing dragon with a mane. If the other cave man questioned it, let him go out and look himself. He was going blind, anyway.

Now lets jump ahead a couple of centuries or eons or millenniums or however long it took for people to exchange their fur skins for togas. By the time the Ancient Greeks and their aesthetic wannabes, the Romans came along, sculpture had been perfected. And no one in all the passing centuries or eons or millenniums or however long it's taken for people to trade in their togas for polyester, has really improved on that perfection. Or maybe the Greeks and Romans themselves did. If we just go by the artwork that was left behind, apparently nobody in Ancient Greece or Rome had love handles, pot bellies, or cellulite. Must have been that Mediterranean diet. Another thing about the ancients, they certainly weren't prudes, producing naked figures of such anatomical exactitude that I had to put my hands over the computer screen lest a vigilant librarian accuse me of pandering.

Rome eventually fell, and the Dark Ages commenced. It didn't last forever and once the Renaissance arrived, so, too, did a new way of depicting reality: perspective. Before perspective, nothing was drawn from a particular point of view. The sizes of people and things tended to be somewhat haphazard. Everybody and everything in the background was often the exact size as everybody and everything in the foreground. This wasn't necessarily inaccurate. Objects aren't really smaller when they're farther away. But that's how they look to an observer. It was the Renaissance artists who drove this point home.

Perspective was the last word in pictorial accuracy for hundreds of years. Then, in the early 19th century, came the camera. When it comes to accurate portrayals of reality, a photograph trumped anything a Renaissance artist could paint. Only one minor detail about photography wasn't realistic, but it was a long time until anybody cared about that. I'll get to it later.

The introduction of photography threw artists for a loop. For years, forever, it had been their job to reproduce reality, something that took a fair amount of time. Now, these jokers come along with their strange little boxes on pedestals, and telling people to watch the birdie or say cheese or whatever cliches they used way back when, followed by a flash of light, and less than a week later (pre-Polaroid), there's the picture. For a while, painters and sculptors and their ilk went on their way acting like the camera had never been invented. The older, more established painters and sculptors, anyway. The young radicals among them, however, began to ask this question: if a painting can never be as realistic as a photograph, then why be realistic?

Thus, modern art was born.

First up were the impressionists. Oddly enough, the impressionists insisted they were being realistic. A photograph captures only a single moment, they insisted, while the human eye captures many, many moments coming at you all at once, especially if you're in a big city. All I know is that if I take off my glasses and look at some water lilies, things can get very impressionistic.

Impressionism shocked some, and delighted others. Those that were delighted won out, and by the end of 19th century, it was an established art form. As often happens when a art form has been established, there are those who will rise up against it. Oh, these weren't traditionalists rising up against it. This new set of troublemakers had no intention of returning to the style of the Old Masters. No, they felt Impressionism was a bit too passive. "Oh, well, that's just the impression it left on me." No, these new radicals wanted an emotional investment in their art. Thus, Expressionism was born. A lot of what's called Expressionism resembles Impressionism, as well as other forms such as Cubism, which I'll get to in a second. Expressionism really seems to be more about the artist's mood than his style. And that mood just couldn't be one of complacency. To be sure, getting all emotional everytime you wanted to paint a picture could take a toll on one's mental health. Perhaps what was called for was a little introspection.

Another exciting, if sometimes puzzling, movement that both influenced and competed with Expressionism was Cubism, so called, I imagine, because there wasn't much in these paintings in the way of circles. Though one of the movement's leading lights did get around to using curves later on.

I hope nobody's basing their college thesis on what I'm writing here, because I skimming through these various movements, such as Primitivism, Fauvism, Dadaism, Futurism, and Surrealism, pretty quickly. If I were a rich man, I'd take the time to try to find out just what the difference is between some of them. Let's just say the artists of the early 20th century seemed to be in a race to see how far they could escape from reality. Sculpture was similarly affected. Still, no matter how wild things got, these artworks were representations (or misrepresentations) of things that existed in the real world. Then along comes Abstract Expressionism. This kind of art existed nowhere in the real world, other than on the canvas itself. Still, this new breed of artist seemed to take their work seriously enough.

Abstract Expressionism was the be-all and end-all of abstract art. Afterwards, there was a return to the real world. At least a real supermarket.

Now, what about photography, the invention of which I believe inspired all this craziness (I mean that as a term of affection; I've thoroughly enjoyed perusing all this art, and I DO think it's art.) Earlier I said a photo was more realistic then a painting, with the exception of one minor detail. That one minor detail was monochrome, i.e. black-and-white. Look around you. The world is in color. Researching this piece, I was surprised to find out that the first color photograph was taken as early as 1861! It was awfully expensive though, and black-and-white ruled for over a century. The price came down after World War II, people began buying cameras that took color pictures, pictures that accurately reflected the real world, and black-and-white gradually fell out of favor. Or did it? Black-and-white photography is now and has been for quite some time in the same place as painting was in the 1820s, outdone by a technology capable of greater accuracy. However, if black-and-white film is not longer accurate, what is it? For the arty among us, black-and-white is not a depiction of reality, but an impression of it. It's surrealistic. It's abstract. It's dreamlike imagery. After all, we do dream in black-and-white, or so they say. Like Cubism, reality is seen through a different lens, if you'll pardon the pun. Black-and-white photography is now modern art (I'd even say it's post-modern art, except I'm not sure of the difference, and suspect they came up with the term only because the original modernists are now all dead and buried.)

Now, how about color photography? As I said at the beginning of this piece, Photoshop has rendered even that untrustworthy. Sure, you can have a lot of fun with it. However, I'd like to make a case for taking pictures of things as they are. "As they are" doesn't have to stop with the human eye. You can take pictures near or far, below or above, moving or still, in shadows or in light.

You know, something just occurred to me. Maybe reality is abstract.

That would explain a lot, actually.

Quips and Quotations

2011-05-13T13:39:00.000-07:00

What is dirty? And what is clean? Now, if I had to make a choice, man, I would rather my kid watch a stag movie than a clean movie like King of Kings. Why? Because King of Kings is full of killing and I don't want my kid to kill Christ when he comes back.

--Lenny Bruce

In Memoriam: Arthur Laurents 1917-2011

2011-05-08T13:40:00.000-07:00

Playwright. Screenwriter. Librettist. Home of the Brave. Rope. The Snake Pit(uncredited). Anastasia. West Side Story. Gypsy. The Way We Were. The Turning Point.

"I love to write and I had something to say."

Action: What the hell's a matter with you?
Snowboy: I got caught sneakin' outa the movies.
A-rab: Sneakin' out? Whaddya do that for?
Snowboy: I sneaked in.

--West Side Story

Rose: [uber-stage mother--KJ] Just wanted to be noticed.
Louise aka Gypsy Rose Lee: [Rose's daughter] Like I wanted you to notice me.

--Gypsy

Mission Accomplished

2011-05-02T13:17:00.000-07:00

I'm not very good at geography. I admit it.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Just heard Osama Bin Laden was killed.

Just like politicians from both major parties promised.

No American soldier has died in vain, after all.

No civilian has died in vain, after all.

No money has been wasted, after all.

But back to geography.

Which I'm not very good at.

I have before me a map of Iraq.

I see Baghdad, Basra, Fallujah, Mosul, Kirkuk, Sadr City, Mosul, Ramadi, Samarra, Tikrit, and even Babylon.

But nowhere in Iraq, do I see a city named Pakistan.

Looks like some politicians aren't very good at geography, either.

Following Update

2011-04-26T17:15:00.000-07:00

I'd like to welcome JF to Shadow of a Doubt.

There's no K after that JF, but that's all right. Last thing I need right now is some ghost with a Boston accent asking not what my country can do for me but what I can do for my country.

Wilderless

2011-04-23T13:08:00.000-07:00

I'm no tree hugger. Nature's fine, but I like man-made things, too. I remember the time I visited my brother when he was still living in Chicago. We went out one night to see the Second City comedy troupe. From atop a six-story parking garage not far from the theater, I could see the whole of the Chicago skyline. Well, maybe "whole" is an exaggeration. The six-story parking garage itself was downtown, and thus not part of the skyline within my field of vision. That's all right. There was quite enough in that field already. One skyscraper after another, their windows aglow in the crisp March night. Spectacular! So taken was I with the dark, towering, twinkling beauty of it all, I felt like putting on my top hat and tails and singing "I'll Take Manhattan." Except I don't own a top hat and tails, and I was in Chicago, not Manhattan.

But I wonder, would I have been equally in awe had I been a couple centuries old and seen it first in 1780, the way the Pottawatomie tribe viewed it, as a forest on the shores of a great lake? I may very well have been pissed that now, in the 21st century, there were buildings instead of trees. I certainly wouldn't have wanted to sing "I'll Take Manhattan". At a couple of centuries old, I might have considered it one of those new songs I have a difficult time getting into.

I said I like both nature and man-made things. When they're both in their proper places. Like it was when I was a kid. The man-made things were ranch houses and bungalows and playgrounds and sidewalks and supermarkets and laundromats (which, at a tender age, I really looked forward to going to with my mom. I found it cool watching the clothes spin) and amusement parks and Red Barn restaurants. Nature was the Cleveland Metroparks, which I now realise is basically man-made, but man-made with God-made trees and such. Nature could also be drives in the country, which I seem to remember my parents taking us kids on quite a bit when I was, say, 5, 6, or 7. Where we were going exactly, I have no recollection, but I enjoyed watching the rural parts of Northeast Ohio zip by the car window. Most, though some might say least, of all, nature was the odd fields or woods that pop up in the suburbs. You know, those undeveloped pieces of land that you assume will just stay undeveloped because, when you're a kid, you don't really expect any change in the future short of the dramatic change you might see on The Jetsons or Star Trek. Nature and man-made. City and country. Civilization and wilderness. All in their proper places. Until the birthdays add up, and you notice that there's more civilization, more city, more man-made things than ever before.

It's been a year since the BP explosion in the Gulf of Mexico. A lot of people were upset about the subsequent despoliation of the environment. Was I? Well, intellectually I found it regrettable. But it didn't really, as they say, hit a little too close to home. But something else that happened in this still-new century did.

In the summer following the 8th grade, I got a job delivering newspapers at a condo development. The condominiums were fairly new. Some hadn't even been moved into yet. But since this was a part of town I hadn't been to before, they might as well have been there for a hundred years. Everything in its' proper place. Next to the condos were some woods. Occasionally, when I was done with my route, I would duck into the woods, and do some exploring. Not much exploring. These woods were pretty small. The only way you could get lost in them would be to wander in a circle smaller than a Kmart parking lot. If you looked up, you could see telephone wires overhead. It was close enough to the road that you could hear the traffic whizzing by. Yet it was considerably more rural than the development where I had just delivered papers. I imagine the people in the condominiums liked having the woods right next door. It made them feel, as Marie Osmond once sang, a little bit country.

About ten years ago, I drove by my old paper route, and that little bit country was gone. I'd driven past it before, but guess I hadn't paid attention, or given much thought, to the uprooting of trees, and bulldozing of ground that was taking place. Hey, I was trying to keep my eyes on the road! In place of those woods were brand new 21st century condominiums that blend in seamlessly with the ones from the 1970s right next door (condo architecture apparently not having changed much in 35 years.) Now, it's one thing to turn the Gulf of Mexico into the La Brea Tar Pits, but this was a major assault on my memories!

I've always assumed that overdevelopment goes hand in hand with overpopulation. You've got to put those 6.91 billion people on the planet somewhere. But that's not even an issue in Northeast Ohio. We've been losing people for as long as I can remember. We've also been knocking down trees and paving over fields and putting up structures in their place for as long as I can remember. What's the point of building new houses and shopping centers while the population remains stagnant? Well, it may remain stagnant, but it doesn't stay still. For the past 60 years, the same number of people have moved from some parts of Northeast Ohio to another. Along the way, cement, concrete, asphalt, bricks, mortar, lumber, steel beams, and aluminum siding have been shuffled around like deck chairs on the--well, I won't stoop to using the cliche, but the actress Kate Winslet comes to mind.

Sometimes, what's developed ends up needing even more developing. I currently live in the Cleveland suburb of Strongsville. I needed to know recently how much it would cost to send a bunch of documents through the mail. The Strongsville post office is on Pearl Road, a major thoroughfare, not far from the Median County line. Strongsville has undergone tremendous growth during the last few decades. So has Medina County. As a result, some people who live in Medina County go to jobs in Strongsville and vice versa. Traffic jams have resulted in certain times of the day, and so it's been decided to widen Pearl to make it easier to go to and fro. When I paid my visit to the post office, there were more orange barrels than there are skyscraper's in Chicago and Manhattan put together. The actual road had been dug up and a temporary zigzag of pavement built right next to it. Some workers waved flags at confused drivers trying not to fall sideways into the the canyon where the right and left lanes used to be, while others shoveled and jackhammered and generally contributed to a fog of dust. Traffic was backed up worse than ever.

Thus, in order to make it easier to go from Medina County into Strongsville, and vice versa, it will be, for a time, more difficult to go from Medina County into Strongsville. And vice versa.

Such is progress.

Blog Vérité: P Removal

2011-04-18T16:58:00.001-07:00

The economic recovery still has a way to go. I saw this on a bulletin board not too long ago:

HOUSEMAID FOR HIRE.

WASHING

SWEEPING

DUSTING

SCRUBBING

VACUUMING

MOPING

Moping? I'm pretty good at that already. I certainly don't need to pay someone to do it.

Quips and Quotations (National Poetry Month Edition)

2011-04-16T13:27:00.000-07:00

A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a bomb.

--W. H. Auden

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotion know what it means to want to escape from these.

--T. S. Eliot

A word is dead when it is said, some say.
I say it just begins to live that day.

--Emily Dickinson

...who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish...

--Allen Ginsberg, Howl

To have great poets, there must be great audiences.

--Walt Whitman

If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved, the inquisition might have let him alone.

--Thomas Hardy

Not everyone who drinks is a poet. Some of us drink because we're not poets.

--from the movie Arthur (1981) screenplay by Steve Gordon.

Following Update

2011-04-13T16:16:00.000-07:00

I'd like to welcome Lankyburma to Shadow of a Doubt.

No fast food in Myanmar?

In Memoriam: Sidney Lumet 1924-2011

2011-04-10T11:50:00.001-07:00

Film director. 12 Angry Men. The Fugitive Kind. The Pawnbroker. Fail-Safe. Serpico. Murder on the Orient Express. Dog Day Afternoon. Network. The Prince of the City. The Verdict.

"While the goal of all movies is to entertain, the kind of film in which I believe in goes one step further. It compels the spectator to examine one facet or another of his own conscience. It stimulates thought and sets the mental juices flowing."

Starburst

2011-04-06T17:03:00.000-07:00

I often write about pop culture on this blog, but it's usually pop culture past. Present day pop culture is too fragmented. I have a harder time getting a handle on it. Thus, I have avoided the whole Charlie Sheen saga. Until now. Everybody talking about it has made me want to talk about it. No, I'm not following the herd. I'm just fascinated that in this thousand channel world, there's somebody we can all still talk about. It restores my faith in conformity. What the hell am I talking about? I chafe against conformity, especially when I find myself giving into it, as I'm apparently doing now. Well, at least it gives me a topic everybody will recognize.

In order to prepare for this piece, I decided to watch Sheen's hit sitcom, Two and a Half Men. It's been on the air eight years, and just now I'm getting around to watching it. For most of my life, waiting that long to watch a hit sitcom would have been unthinkable. I grew up on sitcoms. Along with comic strips and Jerry Lewis movies, situation comedy was a refuge from a wholly unsatisfactory childhood and adolescence. Early on there were such after school UHF classics as Gilligan's Island, Green Acres , The Beverly Hillbillies, The Addams Family, The Munsters, I Dream of Jeannie, and everybody's WWII favorite, Hogan's Heroes . OK, so "classics" is a relative term. I also liked The Dick Van Dyke Show. I wasn't totally lacking in sophistication at age 9. Later on, and later in the day, and night, as my bedtime was pushed ahead, I watched everything from All in the Family to Happy Days to The Mary Tyler Moore Show to Taxi. In my adulthood, there were Cheers and Seinfeld. I have a couple of sitcom writers (Ken Levine and Mark Rothman) in the sidebar to the left. If you liked either MASH or The Odd Couple, you should check them out.

So smitten was I with the form as a weird little kid, I can remember creating imaginary sitcoms while others my age dreamed of becoming cowboys or astronauts. For instance, when I was in, I believe, the second grade, we had to learn about Alaska. I remember the teacher showing us a picture of some warplanes parked at an U.S. military base, and explaining to us that this was to protect Alaska from Russia, just across the Bering Strait (my second-grade teacher prefigured Sarah Palin.) This got my wheels turning. In my imaginary sitcom, the comical dad took his comical family on vacation to Alaska, and while there, the Rooskies attacked! For reasons that made sense to me when I was 7 or 8, the invaders segregated all the children in Alaska from their parents. Even the Eskimos. My comical father comically snuck into the children detention center to visit his kids, and, while there, comically tripped over a wire that comically set off an alarm alerting the Pentagon that Alaska had been invaded. This also made sense to me at the time. Anyway, the commies skedaddled back to their side of the Bering Strait, and my comical father was awarded a medal by the President. I figured Richard M. Nixon could play himself, much the same way Bob Crane had once played himself on The Lucy Show.

Hey, what am I telling you all this for? I might still be able to sell this idea to Hollywood. Just replace Nixon with Obama.

So, if I'm that much in love with sitcoms, why did it take me so long to watch Two and a Half Men? Love wanes over time. It's not that sitcoms have declined in quality. I imagine some are good, some are bad, and many are in-between, just as always. I think I've just been overexposed to the format. Eat too many strawberries, you can develop an allergy.

Nevertheless, for the good of this essay, I watched Two and a Half Men. I found it funny. I also found the show right after it funny. Mike and Molly is a sitcom about two overweight people who meet at a Weight Watchers-like meeting and fall in love. In this particular episode, Mike befriends an overweight girl with a pretty face, thus making Molly jealous. Actually, Molly has a pretty face, too. It just that Molly is sort of ordinary pretty, whereas the other girl is glamorously pretty. Think Betty and Veronica. Or Mary Ann and Ginger. So that's the set-up. The ordinarily pretty overweight girl is jealous because her overweight boyfriend is spending too much time with a glamorously pretty overweight girl. I found this setup not only funny but also a perceptive look at the relativity of physical attraction.

Hey, why am I talking about Mike and Molly? This is supposed to be about Three and a Half Men and Charley Sheen.

I did find Charley Sheen funny. I also found Martin Mull funny. He was playing this doped-out pharmacist (apparently drug humor is back in vogue; everything is cyclical.) I've always found Martin Mull funny, going back to when he played Garth and his twin brother Barth on Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. Even when he played straight man (so to speak) to Roseanne Barr on her sitcom, I found him the funnier of the two. Mull was also a stand up comedian at one time. Maybe I should say sit-down, as an easy chair was a part of his routine. I occasionally caught him doing his act on talk shows during the 1970s. Hilarious. It's a shame he's not a bigger star than he is.

Wait, I'm supposed to be talking about Charlie Sheen, aren't I? Let's just skip Two and a Half Men. It's too distracting, and concentrate on the man himself.

According to what I've been able to find out about him on-line, Charlie Sheen has dated hookers, stuck a knife against his wife's throat, bottomed out on drugs and alcohol, recovered from drugs and alcohol (though not through AA, whom he regards as sissies), considers himself a rock star, wants his show to be enjoyed but not processed by men who go to bed with ugly wives and have ugly kids, has a problem with trolls and turds, feels he's a winner and everybody who complains about him is a loser (if you say something nice about him, does your golf game improve?), thinks Thomas Jefferson is a wimp, has poetry at his fingertips, and flies an F-18--no, excuse me, is an F-18 that drops ordnance, even as it's lonely up there with the goddesses.

I've taken some of the above out of context. Trust me, it's even weirder in context.

Oh, yes, the thing that got him fired from his sitcom. Sheen criticized his producer, Chuck Lorre, for changing his original Hebrew-sounding name to something more gentile. Why did Lorre do that? Can't say. Maybe it has something to do with Sheen calling himself a Vatican assassin. That would make anybody with a Hebrew-sounding name a little nervous.

Sheen has taken his show on the road. Just last night he was in Cleveland. With tickets $60 a pop, I couldn't afford to go, but I read in this morning's paper that the show was a hit. Oh, I guess there was a heckler or two. Seems Sheen was talking about a childhood stuttering problem, when somebody in the audience yelled out "You, suck!" Sheen immediately switched the subject to crack and hookers. I have no idea what the heckler's wife and kids looked like.

I must say, I regret not scraping enough money together to see the show. I, too, could have yelled something out to him. No, I wouldn't have heckled him. I just want to ask him a question. A question no audience member, no journalist, no radio host, has the guts to ask him. Charlie Sheen, if you're reading this now, I demand you answer this question!

What's Martin Mull really like?

Following Update

2011-03-31T15:44:00.000-07:00

I've got a new follower! I'd like to welcome CramCake to Shadow of a Doubt.

Could Betty Crocker be next?

Quips and Quotations

2011-03-27T12:31:00.000-07:00

There may be a great fire in our soul, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke.

--Vincent van Gogh

In Memoriam: Elizabeth Taylor 1932-2011

2011-03-23T15:41:00.000-07:00

Actress. National Velvet. Father of the Bride. A Place in the Sun. Giant. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Butterfield 8. Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolf? The Taming of the Shrew, and some movie that took place in Ancient Egypt.

“Success is a great deodorant. It takes away all your past smells.”

(Quite a few in her case, and some long after her star had faded. Ever since I found out Taylor was sick--again--I've debated whether I would honor her were this to be her final illness. Her off-screen antics have always turned me off, though I do give her high marks for her AIDS work. Well, this did turn out to be her final illness, and, as you can see, I did end up honoring her. Couldn't help it. I've liked her in too many movies. National Velvet wasn't one of them, but I included it because it was her first big success. In fact, I've never liked her as a child actor. I found her so coy that she made Shirley Temple look like Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver. Father of the Bride is worth seeing for a funny performance by Spencer Tracy as Taylor's dad. As far as I'm concerned, Taylor's career begins with A Place in the Sun, where she holds her own admirably opposite Montgomery Clift. She's good in all the movies I list after that, and many I've left out, but her best performance, in my humble opinion, was as the volatile, boozy, slovenly, possibly loony Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. If you only see one Elizabeth Taylor movie in your lifetime, make it that one. That Burton fellow is pretty good in it, too. And the one that took place in Ancient Egypt? She's even good in that, though I've never been able to stay awake for the whole thing--KJ)

A Word in Edgewise

2011-03-19T04:03:00.000-07:00

"Me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me."

"You, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you."

"Me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me."

"You, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you."

"Me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me."

"You, you, you, you, you--me--you, you, you, you, you."

"Why are you trying to change the subject?"

Quips and Quotations

2011-03-12T11:57:00.000-08:00

God put me on this earth to accomplish a certain number of things. Right now I am so far behind that I will never die.

--Bill Watterson, of Calvin and Hobbes fame.

Musical Chairs

2011-03-05T11:24:00.000-08:00

Those of you who read my essay "American Blandstand" a while back might have gotten the impression that I'm more of a hardass about music than I actually am. In that piece I sort of adopted a snobby attitude as a way of explaining Dick Clark's place in the scheme of things. But my own tastes in music are evolving all the time. If you look at the the music section on my Blogger profile page, you'll see that I have artists as diverse as Janis Joplin and Bing Crosby. More so than literature or even movies, I'm constantly changing, and expanding, my mind on the subject of song.

This started early. I entered high school liking Barry Manilow, and exited a fan of Bruce Springsteen. Lo, these many decades later, how do I feel about those two? Well, I still like Bruce, though I'm nowhere near as fervent a fan I once was. And Barry? Unfortunately for Mr. Manilow, he's currently filed under "What The Hell Was I Thinking?" Maybe in another ten years I'll feel differently.

One act I was snarky about was the Captain and Tennile. In fact, I think Toni Tennile's voice was exceptionally suited for blues and rock and roll. Too bad she never sang any.

I decided to return to the subject of music after listening to an oldies station the other day. First, they played "Money" by Pink Floyd. This is a song that delighted me to no end whenever I heard it played growing up in the '70s, not so much for if its' trenchant critique of capitalism as because back then it was the only time you could hear an approximation of the word "bullshit" on the radio. About an hour after hearing "Money", the same station played "Stayin' Alive" by the Bee Gees.

"Money" and "Stayin' Alive"? Pink Floyd and the Bee Gees? On the same radio station?

You'd had to have been a teenager in the 1970s to appreciate just how truly bizarre that is. Back then, you never heard those two bands played on the same station. The Bee Gees were disco. Pink Floyd was progressive. The Bee Gees were Top-40. Pink Floyd was AOR. The Bee Gees were sequined skin-tight suits, and platform shoes. Pink Floyd was T-shirts, and blue jeans. The Bee Gees lyrics were short and repetitive. Pink Floyd's lyrics were long, philosophical, and symbolic, with the occasional swear word thrown in. The Bee Gees made you want to get up and dance. Pink Floyd made you want to sit down and have a toke.

Pink Floyd emerged from London's underground scene in the late 1960s playing a type of music that many associated with psychedelia, a drug-inspired genre that had emerged from San Fransisco's underground scene (a lot of burrowing going on.) Syd Barrett was the lead guitarist and chief songwriter in those years, and his whimsical lyrics were filled with fairy tail and outer space imagery. Floyd charted a few times, and then Barrett, reportedly driven mad by either LSD or the stress success brings, dropped (or was kicked) out of the band. Within a few years, Barrett had dropped out of sight altogether. So far out of sight, he was routinely referred to in the music press as the "late Syd Barrett" decades before he finally did die! Meanwhile, the psychedelic rock of Pink Floyd and others had gone progressive.

Progressive was an attempt to move rock closer to jazz, or, better yet, classical. Rather than the usual riffs and licks and hooks and lyric-chorus-lyric of traditional pop songs, progressive rock, sometimes called art rock, had intricate melodies, intricate instrumentation, and intricate (and sometimes inscrutable) lyrics. The average song was much longer, and often linked with other songs on "concept" albums to form an epic theme or story. So unsuited for Top-40 was progressive rock, a whole new radio format was created: AOR, short for Album Oriented Rock, which dominated FM for a time. Popular progressive bands included Yes, King Crimson, Jethro Tull, Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, and Genesis (back in the Peter Gabriel days.) But the biggest prog rock band of then all was Pink Floyd, and the biggest prog rock album of all time was Dark Side of the Moon (which contained the aforementioned "Money"), on the Billboard chart from 1973 until 1988.

The band had several more popular albums throughout the '70s, but the one that really sticks in my memory is The Wall . A concept album about alienation that featured backing vocals by, among others, Bruce Johnston (author of Barry Manilow's "I Write the Songs") and Toni Tennille (Hmm...I guess she did sing rock, after all.) One song "Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)", which actually did make the Top 40, exploded upon my high school senior class's collective consciousness in the spring of 1980. The song's most identifiable trait was a chorus of British schoolchildren singing, "We don't need no education, we don't need no thought control." The children in my American high school were so captivated by this song, they forgot all about the hostage crises in Iran. Kids wrote the lyrics on blackboards. The song was played over the PA system. One day I walked into study hall and saw the following scrawled on a desk:

IF YOU DON'T LIKE THE WALL

THEN YOU LIKE DISCO

Ah, yes, disco. This brings us to the other group I heard on that oldies station, the Bee Gees. The three Gibb brothers from Australia didn't start out disco. Originally a Beatleslike pop/rock band, they first achieved international success in 1967 with "To Love Somebody", a song covered hundreds of times since. A string of hits followed, but by the mid-1970s they had begun to run out of steam. They decided to give disco a shot. Bullseye! They hit #1 with "Jive Talkin'". Another hit, this time at number #7, was "Nights on Broadway", which featured Barry Gibb singing falsetto for the first time. A year later they hit #1 again with "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing". But their biggest success was yet to come.

Disco had evolved from late '60s funk and soul. It was marked by simple lyrics, soaring vocals, and a 4/4 beat, sometimes called "four-on-the-floor". Synthesizers were also prominent. Nothing philosophical, or inscrutable, about it. It merely asked you to dance. The genre was gradually growing in popularity when Saturday Night Fever, starring John Travolta and featuring the music of the Bee Gees, premiered in late 1977. I can't think of any other movie during my lifetime that had as much of an impact on the overall culture as that one. Sure, Star Wars, which appeared earlier in the year, got a bigger box office, but that movie's impact outside of theaters seemed limited to toy stores. Thanks to Fever , and the Bee Gees three #1 hits, disco was everywhere! Radio, obviously. It helped revive Top 40, which had been flagging of late. It was also all over TV. There were disco specials, disco dance contests, even disco cartoons. It breathed new life, in the form of better ratings at least, into Dick Clark's American Bandstand, which had faced cancellation. In addition to the music itself, a whole kind of style of clothing, mostly influenced by Fever, became popular. And, finally, actual discos, as in discotheques, the buildings where a DJ played a record and patrons danced, became more popular than ever. It looked like the craze would would never end.

Yet, in the flicker of a strobe light, end it did. Why? Some blamed homophobia. The music had originally become popular in gay clubs. Once this became known, it didn't sit at all well with adolescent males, who put a premium on masculinity (never mind that many of these same masculine males had no problem rocking to a band named Queen.) However, with the notable exception of the Village People, most of the performers seemed to be straight. A good deal of them also seemed to be, well, in fact, were, black. Thus, some have blamed racism. However, disco followed the same pattern of almost every other musical form of the last 150 years: invented by blacks, taken over by whites. Thus you had the Swedish, and very Swedish-looking, ABBA. I've already mentioned the Bee Gees. Oh, wait. Barry, Robin, and Maurice had a brother, who performed solo. Only an albino could get much whiter than Andy Gibb.

Racism and homophobia may very well have taken its' toll on disco, but I suspect what really spoiled it for people, especially teenagers, who in that pre-digital era comprised the biggest segment of the record-buying public, was how quickly the music was adopted and co-opted by the some of the most hackneyed and/or over-the-hill figures in the land. Rick Dees ripped off Disney with "Disco Duck". Former pop idol-turned Polish goodwill ambassador Bobby Vinton came out with the "Disco Polka". 70-year old Ethel Merman put out an album of discoized show tunes. Plugging it on a talk show, she exclaimed, "You gotta keep up with the times!" A lot of people were trying to keep up with the times--with the intent of turning back the clock. I remember reading a silver-haired TV critic's review of a new disco show in which he gushed that the dancing was similar to the Big Band era of his youth. The Generation Gap was turned on its' head. The elders wanted you to like this new music. Alice Cooper might have summed up the feelings of many teens when during a concert he said, "Right now your parents are at home doing this!", followed by a John Travolta-like pose.

By the early 1980s, disco had become a term of derision, which it remains to this very day. Yet it may have been no more than a semantic fall from grace. Researching this essay, I've discovered that such recent styles as techno, trance, and house can be traced back to disco (don't ask me to tell you the difference between any of those styles. I'm now over-the-hill myself.)

So, now that I've given you some insight on Pink Floyd and the Bee Gees, and the styles of music they represent, how do I feel about them both being played on the same radio station? Well, as I'm basically liberal, I believe in inclusiveness. I welcome all forms of diversity. It's from you. It's from me. It's a worldwide symphony!

Except...

It's all right to like both Pink Floyd and the Bee Gees, Janis Joplin and Bing Crosby, Bruce Springsteen and, maybe in another ten years, Barry Manilow, once all those artists, whether still active or not, have basically been assigned their place in musical history. But can you like everything in the heat of the moment? Can you like everything and at the same time create whole new musical genres in the heat of the moment? No matter how mainstream or commercialized the two musical styles I've described eventually became, they both had their roots in the "underground". Undergrounds attract rebels. You don't rebel against that you like. Progressive rock grew out of the psychedelia of the counterculture. During that era, young people, at least the most outspoken of young people, rebelled against their elders for liking everything from the Vietnam War to ballroom dancing. Disco was first popular among blacks and gays, two groups who were counterculture before counterculture was cool, each retreating into their respective undergrounds for reasons of practicality and survival, rebelling against those who did not like them. I've left out punk rock so far, but that genre came about partially because, in a London Underground much changed from the one that existed ten years earlier, a young rebel named John Lydon, aka Johnny Rotten, loathed Pink Floyd as much as Pink Floyd fans loathed disco. People associate creativity with thinking outside the box, but the reason one wants to escape that box in the first place is because they don't like what's inside.

Then again, sometimes it's not so much the artists as their fans who do the rebelling. According to the many Elvis Presley biographies I've read (my mother was an avid fan, and passed the books along to me), he liked Dean Martin and singers of that ilk just as much he liked the blues coming out of Beale Street in the early 1950s. Yet his teenage fans, unaware of this and chafing under a sterile culture, saw Presley's music as a radical break with the past, and it became just that. Although Pink Floyd fans may have loathed disco, the members of Floyd themselves didn't necessarily share that sentiment. My ears were apparently too musically illiterate to recognize it at the time, but while researching this essay, I was surprised to discover that the radio version of "Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)" is a disco mix! Had my classmates, ears apparently as musically illiterate as my own, gotten wind of that, not only would they have burned every copy of The Wall they could find, but also Dark Side of the Moon, Meddle, Wish You Were Here, and Animals as well. But my classmates instead saw the song as a bulwark against disco, and we now have a hybrid for the ages.

You never know what you'll like above ground.

In Memoriam: Joanne Siegel 1918-2011

2011-02-20T12:17:00.000-08:00

Model forLois Lane, later married co-creator Jerry Siegel.

"Situation Wanted — Female ARTIST MODEL: No experience."

--Cleveland Plain Dealer classified ad, 1935.

"Joe [Shuster, the other co-creator] was taking art lessons and felt that he needed someone to pose as the Lois Lane character for the Superman story. So I posed...I remember the day I met Jerry in Joe's living room. Jerry was the model for Superman. He was standing there in a Superman-like pose. He said their character was going to fly through the air, and he leaped off the couch to demonstrate."

--Joanne Siegel, in a 1996 Plain Dealer interview.

"One of the things [Shuster and Siegel] were particularly interested in is how would a woman look like if she was being carried in the arms of someone flying through the air. So they set up a chair that had arms on it, and my mom draped herself across one arm and her legs across the other arm, and Joe drew her in that position."

--Laura Siegel Larson, Joanne and Jerry's daughter, in a Los Angeles Times interview.

Quips and Quotations (St. Valentine's Day Edition)

2011-02-14T00:00:00.000-08:00

Oh, darling, the ice caps are melting, but what does it matter, as long as we have each other?

--Kurt Vonnegut, on the possible consequences of including a romantic subplot in one of his novels

Men are from Earth. Women are from Earth. Deal with it.

--George Carlin

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.

--Dorothy Parker

It does not matter what you do in the bedroom as long as you do not do it in the street and frighten the horses.

--Mrs. Patrick Campbell, who spent a good deal of her life in the 19th century

To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer. To suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy then is to suffer. But suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be unhappy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness. I hope you're getting this down.

--Woody Allen

Still waiting for Sally Field.

--Marty Volare

Power Points

2011-02-02T16:57:00.000-08:00

Today I'd like to talk about an old movie, the unrest in Egypt, and the rock band The Who. Some disparate elements there, so you should find something to interest you.

The old movie is Bad Day at Black Rock (1954), and if you haven't seen it and would like to, you might want to stop reading now. I mean, I'll try my damnedest not to give away the ending, but mistakes do happen.

Taking place in the waning days of World War II, Spencer Tracy stars as a one-armed man who arrives in the small western town of Black Rock to look up a Japanese-American farmer. He's met with immediate hostility as soon as he gets off the train. Black Rock's town boss is played by tough-guy actor Robert Ryan, who sends his two goons (tough-guy actors Lee Marvin and Ernest Borgnine) to harass Tracy. To no avail. Tracy's mere presence in the town is destabilizing. Some people, such as the local doctor, played by Walter Brennan, think Tracy is just the man to uncover the secret the town has been hiding for the past four years. For Tracy soon comes to suspect the Japanese-American has been murdered, and Ryan is the prime suspect.

One of the things that makes this movie so interesting to me is that the murder in no mere isolated act of immorality. It has actual consequences for Black Rock as a whole. In order for the secret to be kept, the citizens are harassed into silence, and out-of-towners are immediately bullied in to leaving. The local economy suffers as a result. A melancholy sets in. Black Rock is dying, just so the town boss can get way with murder.

We find out that Tracy lost his arm while fighting in Italy. He almost lost a lot more than that. It turns out that the Japanese-American farmer's son died saving Tracy's life. The son was awarded a posthumous medal that Tracy wanted to give to the father, impossible now.

Tracy eventually gets some of the town members to open up. Ryan murdered the farmer both out of spite--he discovered water on some supposedly worthless land that the town boss had sold him--and anger over Pearl Harbor. The townspeople also agree to spirit Tracy out of town, as his life is now in danger. Unfortunately, his ride, played by Anne Francis, is still in cahoots with Ryan, and drives Tracy right into a trap. She gets killed herself, as Ryan doesn't want any witnesses, no matter how helpful they may have been. In an exciting climax, Tracy, with his one good arm, throws a Molotov cocktail at Ryan, setting him aflame.

Tracy returns to Black Rock to find out its' citizens have risen up and thrown Ryan's two goons into the slammer. The people have reclaimed their town.

Oops--Gave away the ending. Sorry about that, Chief.

Now on to Egypt. Technically, the country is a republic, meaning sovereignty lies with the people. However, the country has also been under a state of emergency for almost 30 years, meaning sovereignty actually lies with a dictator, one Hosni Mubarak. He doesn't refer to himself as a dictator. No, Mubarak calls himself "president". That sounds like a elected position, and for years he did run for election and reelection, all of which he won handily, as his was the only name on the ballot. Eventually, he did run against actual opponents in fixed elections. He won those, too. One of his opponents was thrown behind bars right after the election. Whatever his title, Dictator or President, Mubarak is clearly the boss.

Mubarak rationale for the three-decade old state of emergency is that his predecessor, Anwar Sadat, was assassinated, right in front of him. Well, it's certainly understandable that Mubarak doesn't want the same fate to befall him. There's a simple way to avoid being the victim of a presidential assassin. DON'T BE PRESIDENT. But that would be downwardly-mobile, and Mubarak is too ambitious for that. So, instead, he resorted to the usual methods: suspension of civil liberties, and jailing people (an estimated 17,000) without a trial. With all the secret policing going on, you sometimes need to grease a few palms. Mubarak's estimated worth is $70 billion. That's a lot of grease.

The political system in Egypt is typical of a lot regimes over the years, be they ostensibly on the Right or Left: they exist solely to keep one man in power, and to let that man enjoy the fruits of that power. As the country the man rules is basically beside the point, it suffers, it stagnates. A melancholy sets in. But sometimes anger sets in as well.

Last June, a young Egyptian named Khalid Said was dragged out of a cafe by police for not having "papers" and beaten to death. The government claimed he choked to death on dope he swallowed as he was being gently clubbed. A lot of desperate Egyptians have been brooding about this murder ever since. But what to do? Tunisia provided the answer. Another North African country with a similar political system, its people rose up this past December and January after an impoverished and frustrated young man set himself on fire in front of a government building, and forced the Tunisian dictator or president or boss or whatever the hell he is to flee. The impoverished and frustrated Egyptians have now followed suit. As of this writing, Mubarak is still clinging to power, and the protests continue.

You may have assumed by now that I'm rooting for the protesters. Well, you're right, I am. But only up to a point.

I do worry about what happens after Mubarak leaves. The Czech government fell in 1989 after an uprising. After a rocky start, it's a functioning democracy. However, when the Iranian government fell after the 1979 uprising, a Shah was replaced with an Ayatollah. Not much of an improvement.

Toward the end of Bad Day at Black Rock, Walter Brennan suggests the town can come back. Spencer Tracy replies, "Some towns do and some towns don't. It depends on the people."

But I promised you The Who, didn't I?

I'll tip my hat to the new revolution
Take a bow for the new constitution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again

It's easy to give away the ending to a movie. A revolution? Not so easy.

Following Update (Again!)

2011-01-30T11:59:00.000-08:00

I'd like to welcome Sy to Shadow of a Doubt. Her blog is titled The Curious Quest Questioning Questions of the Inquisitive. Directly underneath the heading, it reads: say that 5 times fast.

Frankly, I think I'd have a difficult time saying it once fast.

Following Update

2011-01-22T13:45:00.000-08:00

Haven't done this in a while.

I'd like to welcome angryparsnip to Shadow of a Doubt. I'm sure reading this blog will make you a very happycarrot.

Well, not if I keep making stupid jokes like that.

I'd also like to give a nod to Kass. I believe angry found her way here through her blog.

American Blandstand

2011-01-08T14:18:00.000-08:00

Some people wake up on New Year's Day morning with a hangover. I woke up with a idea for my blog. That's what happens when you watch Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest cold sober. Next year, I'll have a screwdriver or two before watching.

As I recall, clean-cut, telegenic Ryan Seaquest opened the show somewhere in crowded Times Square in New York City. He described the East Coast guests for the evening, and paid tribute to Dick Clark. Next up was co-host Fergie in Burbank, California. She described the West Coast guests for the evening, and paid tribute to Dick Clark. After that back to Times Square with yet another co-host, Jenny McCarthy. She flirted with all 1000 guys on the Square, and paid tribute to Dick Clark. All these tributes to Dick Clark might have you thinking he was dead. But no, he was alive but not necessarily well in a studio not far from Times Square. For so long seemingly immune to the aging process, the 81-year old Clark had a stroke in 2004, and his slurred sentences are sometimes hard to understand. He said something to the effect that he was excited to be there, and the camera was back on the telegenic Seacrest introducing the Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync, who performed a combined medley of their hits. All this took nearly a half an hour, ending in time for Dick Clark to say the countdown as the ball fell down on Times Square. Clark was much easier to understand counting backwards, though the speech impediment, along with a kind of frozen smile on his face, was hard to ignore. When Clark got to "one" followed by "Happy New Year!" the TV screen cut to crowd on the square hugging and cheering and throwing confetti around. Briefly, back in the studio with Clark, no longer smiling and staring at something beyond the camera's range. Suddenly, the crown again, still hugging and cheering and throwing confetti. No less suddenly, back to the studio and Clark and his wife kissing, something I don't recall him ever doing on camera before his stroke. Back outside with clean-cut Ryan Seacrest, who was actually complaining about being hot. A commercial break, I believe, and back in the studio with Clark, again saying something to the effect that he was excited to be there. Ryan Seacrest walks into the picture, and Clark comically chews him out for his "hot" comments. The camera then closed in on a grim-faced Seacrest, who paid Clark yet another tribute.

Seeing Dick Clark in that state made me a bit uneasy, a bit uncomfortable. Yet it was compelling TV. It wasn't until the focus was off of Clark entirely that I could finally go in the kitchen and make myself a cheeseburger (exciting way to ring in the new year, huh?)

Later on in the show, and in contrast to clean-cut, telegenic Ryan Seacrest and the more calculatedly gritty though still telegenic Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync, the Lady Gagaesque Ke$ha made a major bid for controversy, riding in on Santa's back wearing torn fishnet stockings, urging the crowd to make "2011 our bitch", and making a New Year's Resolution not to be a "douche bag." Yet, when I read online reviews of the night a couple days later, the debate wasn't over Ke$ha's antics, but, as has been the case the last few years, the appropriateness of allowing Dick Clark on the air in such an impaired condition. Some argued it was in bad taste, while others found it inspiring (one of those who found it inspiring threw a few brickbats at clean-cut, telegenic Ryan Seacrest for largely usurping Clark's role.) As for myself, I find it interesting that Clark should be the subject of even a mild controversy. After all, Dick Clark has been sidestepping controversy since he first came on the scene in the 1950s.

It's interesting to compare Dick Clark to another figure who came on the scene in 1950s: Alan Freed. Eight years older than Clark, Freed began playing records by black musicians on a Cleveland radio station in 1951. Contrary to popular belief, he didn't invent the phrase 'rock and roll'--it was already an old black slang euphemism for sex--but was the first to apply it to music. The records took off with white teenagers in the area, and Freed soon moved to New York, where the music proved even more popular. Freed became a national figure when he appeared in five low-budget but high-grossing movies. He also hosted a popular but short-lived TV show called The Big Beat . Why should a popular show be short-lived? Black musician Frankie Lymon was shown dancing with a white girl, not considered proper decorum in the mid-50s. Alan Freed was a true broadcast rebel who was once accused of inciting a riot when he told a teenage crowd at a Boston stage show that "the police don't want you to have fun."

A short time after Freed's The Big Beat went off the air, Dick Clark went on the air with American Bandstand . He wasn't the first host. Bob Horn, a Philadelphia disc jockey had created the show, first on radio, then television. Horn was fired after a DUI (the station he worked for was doing an expose on the subject), and Dick Clark took over hosting duties. The fledgling ABC network, looking for something, anything, to compete with CBS and NBC, picked up the then-local show. Clark had some advantages over Alan Freed when it came to television. Famously, he always looked about 10 years younger than his actual age, whereas Freed in his mid-thirties looked to be in his mid-forties. Clark, then, seemed to have more in common with his show's teenage dancers and audience. In fact, by most accounts, Freed genuinely loved rock and roll, whereas Clark, whenever asked about his feelings toward the music that eventually made him wealthy, was usually noncommittal. What Clark understood that Freed didn't, was that the controversy surrounding rock and roll was only good for business in the short run. So like a vet who wants to keep a dog from roaming too far, he cut off the hound's testicles. Anything challenging or threatening about the music was downplayed. Rock's rough edges were buffed and rebuffed. The closest Clark came to race mixing on his show was Pat Boone lip syncing a deloused cover of Little Richard's "Tutti-Frutti." Well, I'm being a little unfair. If a black artist made the charts, Clark was obliged to play him. Same thing goes for more raucous white acts like Jerry Lee Lewis. But he didn't encourage it. Clean-cut and telegenic himself (you knew I was going somewhere with that, didn't you?), Clark promoted similarly clean-cut and telegenic artists as Frankie Avalon and Fabian. As Clark himself put it: "The thinking behind it was that if we looked presentable, 'normal,' the way 'they think we ought to look, 'they'll' leave us alone." Problem was that songs such as Avalon's "Venus" tended to sound the way "they" thought it ought to sound. Really, if you went into a coma in 1954, when Eddie Fisher and Patti Page ruled the charts, and woke up in 1959, and the first thing you saw was Bandstand, you would have thought the more things change, the more they stay the same.

The end of the '50s saw the payola scandal. Payola in its' rawest form meant that a record company payed a disc jockey to play certain artists. A more refined version had the disc jockey owning an interest in the record, record company or even the performing artist themselves. True to form, Alan Freed seemed to be guilty of the former, and Dick Clark the latter. Actually, both men were guilty of nothing. Payola was perfectly legal at the time. But all the publicity surrounding a congressional investigation into the matter certainly made it seem like it was against the law. Freed complained about the hypocrisy of it all. Payola had been around as long as records had been played on the radio, about a quarter of a century at that point. Why, suddenly, was it a problem? Because some people just didn't like the music being played? Freed refused to cooperate with the investigation. Payola was soon outlawed. Freed was found guilty, fined, and kicked off the radio. He died a broken man in 1965. Meanwhile, when it came Dick Clark's turn to appear before Congress, he nodded politely, and agreed to divest himself of his considerable holdings in the music industry. There were other places to put his money, such as TV.

Starting with American Bandstand, which he now owned. Bandstand would stay on the air until 1989 with the same basic formula, clean-cut young men and women dancing to the most innocuous music. Again, I'm being a bit unfair. If an edgy act like The Doors, hard rock act like Arrowsmith, psychedelic act like Jefferson Airplane, new wave act like Devo, hip hop act like Run-DMC, outré act like David Bowie, or cerebral act like REM cracked the Top-40, or, preferably, the Top 10, Clark would have them perform on the show and play their records. In fact, he would have them perform AS he played their records. But like a Willie Wonka of the airwaves (only more conservatively dressed) ear candy was really Clark's specialty. The Bay City Rollers (Clark: "More has been written about you four individuals than anybody since the Beatles".) The DeFranco Family (appeared on Bandstand 9 times.) Barry Manilow (his song "Bandstand Boogie" opened and closed the show for 10 years.) I myself have a vivid memory from about 1975 of young, bell-bottomed men and women, the Bandstand dancers, getting down to the Captain and Tenille's "Love Will Keep Us Together." By this time the show was relegated to Saturdays at 1:pm. Cartoons had just ended.

In 1973, Dick Clark created the American Music Awards , who winners were determined by a poll of music buyers. As if record sales didn't tell you who was popular already. Despite this lack of suspense, the show was a hit, and airs annually to this day. As with anything based on mass popularity, the moderate common denominator prevails.

Though his company produces the American Music Awards , Dick Clark doesn't appear on the show himself. American Bandstand went off the air twenty some years ago. Other TV ventures that kept him in the public eye, such as $25,000 Pyramid and Bloopers and Practical Jokes, are also long gone. So Dick Clark is probably best known these days for Rockin' New Year's Eve, which premiered in 1972. At the time, bandleader Guy Lombardo was the man whose name was synonymous with December 31st. At least if you were watching TV that night. His highly rated New Year's Eve special televised from some fancy-smancy New York hotel was an annual tradition for 30 years. You have to remember that in 1972, nobody over 40 had grown up with rock and roll. They were just fine ringing in the New Year, and perhaps getting bombed, to Lombardo's renditions of Tin Pan Alley favorites. So Dick Clark's show was really niche programming, targeting teens and twenty somethings who couldn't really get that excited about watching ballroom dancing at the Waldorf-Astoria (even other big band leaders found Lombardo corny.) I've tried to make the point throughout this essay that Dick Clark didn't have all that an adventurous attitude toward pop music or even entertainment in general. But he didn't need one on that first night in 1972. When the hippest competition on TV is Lombardo's Royal Canadians performing "The Band Played On", by contrast, Helen Reddy belting out "I Am Woman" was edgy, even revolutionary. Guy Lombardo died in 1977, and Dick Clark soon became synonymous with December 31st.

By December 31st 2010, everybody under the age of 70 had grown up with some variation of rock and roll. The culture these past 50 years has let its' hair down, somewhat. Dick Clark, or whoever now calls the shots in his name, has adjusted to that cultural change, somewhat. Boy bands perform with five o'clock shadows and make like they're from the 'hood. The trashy, bawdy Ke$ha probably engenders more giggles than gasps as she might have in decades past. Audiences are now willing to live vicariously through their entertainers walks on the wild side, while reserving the right to cluck in disapproval if such off-stage and off-camera walks lands the same entertainers on the cover of The National Enquirer. Sing, you sinners, as long as nobody gets hurt, or challenged. Dick Clark would approve.

But would the old pre-stroke Dick Clark approve of putting the new post-stroke Dick Clark on the air? For amidst all the fun, fantasy, and frivolity, Clark is now the show's unlikely reality check. He now makes us uneasy, uncomfortable. Yet, as occasionally happens with unease and discomfort, we can't turn away. We're compelled to watch.

Whether he realizes it or not, Dick Clark is finally edgy.

Quips and Quotations

2011-01-08T14:10:00.000-08:00

The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them.

--Mark Twain

(I think Twain is using the words "radical" and "conservative" in the broadest possible dictionary sense--KJ)

Quips and Quotations

2010-12-29T17:06:00.000-08:00

The mind is like an iceberg, it floats with one-seventh of its bulk above water.

--Sigmund Freud

Archival Revival: Hollywood Holiday

2010-12-22T16:16:00.000-08:00

(First posted on 12/17/2009)

After about five months of doing Shadow of a Doubt, I started a second, more specialized blog about old movies called Ancient Celluloid. Unfortunately, I soon found two blogs a bit tough to handle, especially as my access to the Internet was limited to the computers at the library. After writing about just two movies (both of which I put in a lot of hard work), I decided to put Celluloid on hold until the day I'm online right in my own living room. Nevertheless, I do get the itch to write about old movies from time to time, so I've decided to give myself a Christmas present, and review some ancient yuletide celluloid right here in Shadow.

Now, Christmas movies come in two types. There are those where the holiday is front and center, like the various versions of A Christmas Carol, and there are those where the holiday is more of a backdrop, such as The Apartment. It should be no surprise that so many movies have Christmas scenes, even when the holiday's not integral to the plot. Film is a visual medium, and Christmas is nothing if not visual. You've got colored lights, and Nativity displays, and pine trees with ornaments, and overweight guys in red suits, and mistletoe in hallways, and hall decked with boughs of holly, and snow. Plenty of snow. A word about that last item. In most Christmas movies and Christmas TV specials there's usually a scene with a lot snow falling gently to the ground, presumably on Christmas Eve. Looks lovely, doesn't it? Well, for those of you who live in climates warmer than that of Greater Cleveland, what you're actually looking at is a SNOW STORM. Not a blizzard, in which high winds swirl the flakes around, but no matter. If that much snow actually fell on Christmas Eve as is normally portrayed in movies, no matter how gently the flakes hit the ground, there would be no visiting Grandma's the next day because you wouldn't make it out of the driveway.

Now, I've said these are old movies. I define the term "old movie" the way I've always defined it, as something made before the earliest time that I can remember, about 1967-68. Any movie made after 1968 is a contemporary film as far as I'm concerned. Of course, there may be some 19-, 20-, 21-year-olds reading this who may disagree with me. They may consider A Christmas Story (1983), National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989), The Santa Clause (1994), and Jingle All The Way (1996), old movies. That is their prerogative. They can describe them as old movies on their own blogs.

Let us begin...

Alcoholism, divorce, mental illness, materialism, psychobabble, politics, and courtroom theatrics. Yes, it's that old yuletide favorite, Miracle on 34th Street (1947). All about an old gentleman named Kris Kringle who believes he's Santa Claus (Kris Kringle is actually a synonym for Santa in some countries, though that's never made clear in the movie). It stars Maureen O'Hara, John Payne, and 10-year old Natalie Wood. About that last name. I'm usually not a big fan of old Hollywood child stars. Shirley Temple has been known to make me to run out of the room screaming. But I make an exception for Natalie. As a serious little girl who believes only in hard reality, she has the perfect deadpan expression while uttering such lines as, "Some people are giants, but they're abnormal." But the real star is Edmund Gwenn as Kris, even if he's cruelly denied top billing. It's a nuanced, ultimately realistic performance Gwenn gives, something I that think is often overlooked in a film often described as a "fantasy". Watch him in the psych ward scene, where he struggles with his own disillusionment. Santa Claus has never been more human.

I said there's been various movie versions of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol . By far, the best of these is Scrooge (1951) (some prints do go by the name of Dickens' book, so let's just confuse the hell out of everybody. Bah, humbug.) Looking like a cross between Boris Karloff and Chris Elliot, Alastair Sim plays a slightly stooped, wholly neurotic Ebenezer. As he makes that long night's journey into day, just about every emotion registers on Sim's wonderfully bug-eyed face. This movie also has a great Gothic atmosphere about it. In fact, things get so spooky at times, you might mistake it for A Halloween Carol.

Babes in Toyland (1934) aka March of the Wooden Soldiers (some more holiday confusion for you.) Loosely based on Victor Herbert's operetta, and with a few of his songs, it takes place in Toyland where fairy tale and nursery rhymes characters make up the citizenry. Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy play Stannie Dumm and Ollie Dee. Their sister is Little Bo Peep and their mother is the Old Woman Who Lives in a Shoe. The biggest employer in town is a workshop that supplies toys for Santa Claus (hence the Xmas angle.) Stan and Ollie make a 100 wooden soldiers 6 feet tall instead of 600 soldiers one foot tall, as was ordered. Santa laughs the whole thing off, but Stan and Ollie lose their jobs anyway. This is bad news for the Old Woman as the mortgage is due on her shoe. Evil banker Silas Barnaby (I wonder if he took TARP money) agree not to foreclose if he can have Bo Peep's hand in marriage. She reluctantly agrees, but Silas is tricked into marrying Stan instead (don't worry. It's never consummated.) Later on, Silas frames Bo Peep's boyfriend Tom, Tom, The Piper's Son for the murder of one of the Three Little Pigs. To complicate matters, Toyland is invaded by Boogeymen. Remember, though, it's just a fairy tale, and it all ends happily ever after. What I find interesting about this film is that Stan and Ollie, funny as ever, once again play innocents in a dark world, even if that dark world is in the guise of a childhood fantasy.

White Christmas (1954). Irving Berlin's popular song was first introduced in Holiday Inn (1942), sung by that film's star, Bing Crosby. I don't include it here since it takes place all year round and has songs covering all the holidays, whereas this remake is more Xmas-centric. Again starring Der Bingle, he and Danny Kaye play WWII buddies/Broadway producers who want to help their commanding officer with his struggling inn. That's about all of the plot I can really remember. No matter. Crosby, Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, and a dubbed Vera-Ellen sing a lot of great Irving Berlin tunes. And, of course, Bing superbly groans the title song.

Remember The Night (1940). Preston Sturges' last screenplay for another director, this comedy-drama goes where most Christmas movies fear to tread, namely January. Barbara Stanwyck is scheduled to go on trial for shoplifting. Assistant DA Fred MacMurray is afraid a jury besotted with the spirit of Christmas might acquit. So he has the trial postponed until after the holidays, when juries tend to be more Scrooge-like. Turns out MacMurray is besotted with the Christmas spirit himself. Not wanting to see Stanwyck spend the holidays behind bars, he offers to drop her off at her mother's house on his way home for Christmas. Stanwyck mother turns her away, however, so MacMurray ends up taking her to his own mother's house. The movie turns into a straight ahead romantic comedy at that point, as the DA and the defendant both fall in love. Once the holidays are past, the film gets dramatic again, with a bittersweet ending. Like I said, January. A couple of years later, MacMurray and Stanwyck would appear together in another movie. Something to do with insurance.

Christmas in Connecticut (1945). Barbara Stanwyck again, though in much lighter fare. She plays a popular magazine writer who writes both recipes, and articles about the joys of being a wife and mother and how to make the perfect home, none of which turns out to be true. She's single without a child, lives in a small apartment, and gets all her recipes from a friend who owns a restaurant. As a kind of WWII publicity stunt, her publisher (who's unaware of all the mendacity) arranges for a survivor of a torpedoed Naval ship to have Christmas dinner at her nonexistent home in the country. Naturally, she has to fake home, husband, child, and homemaking skills. To make matters worse, she and the sailor fall in love at first sight. In an era when every other film seemed to be a romantic comedy, this one oh-so-slightly misses the mark. There's a lot of funny stuff as the deceptions pile up, and Stanwyck is always worth watching (if you only know her from TV's The Big Valley then you don't know much.) The problem is with her love interest, played by Dennis Morgan. He's kind of a bland character, and, as complications ensue, seems like a bit of an afterthought. In fact, Stanwyck's most memorable scenes are with Sydney Greenstreet, who plays the publisher. Maybe they should have gotten together. It could have been a nice May-December romance.

The Shop Around the Corner (1940). Directed by Ernst Lubitsch, who excelled at romantic comedy, I can't say enough good things about this film. In 1930s Budapest, James Stewart, "aw, shucks" persona intact, and a very funny Margaret Sullavan are pen-pals who fall in love via the Hungarian Post Office. Unbeknownst to either one, they also work in the title location, where they both hate each other. Obviously, that won't stand. It's a romantic comedy, remember? It's also, in its' own way, a very good workplace comedy, with all kinds of recognizable types, such as the devious suck-up, the obsequious employee always worried about crossing the boss, and the brash, ambitious youth at the bottom of the ladder. Then there's Frank Morgan (The Wizard of Oz, remember?) as the basically decent but insecure boss who, thanks to the aforementioned suck-up, comes to loathe his best employee, Stewart. Two great Christmas Eve scenes toward the end. A lonely Morgan treats a newly hired errand boy to a grand feast, and Stewart and Sullavan finally correspond directly.

The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942). A subdued Bette Davis gets top billing in this, but she's really just a secondary character. Monty Woolley is the title character, main character, and, for just this one film, star. Woolley hilariously plays sharp-tongued journalist and radio personality Sheridan Whiteside, a character based on Alexander Woollcott, famous in his day but now less well-known than the play and movie he inspired. But what he inspired! Whiteside slips and injures himself while attending a dinner at a small town industrialist's house, and stays right through Christmas. To fully appreciate the Kaufman and Hart dialogue, it helps if you have some knowledge of 1930s pop culture (which, fortunately, I do) but, even without it, Woolley's crack comic timing remains timeless. On top of all that you get a Christmas morning visit from Jimmy Durante, playing a character supposedly based on Harpo Marx, though, frankly, he reminds me more of, well, Jimmy Durante. Not a bad substitute. And this may be the only Christmas-themed movie with a character based on Lizzie Bordon.

The Bishop's Wife (1947). Angel Cary Grant comes to Earth to teach Bishop David Niven the true meaning of Christmas, which is to neglect neither the poor, nor his drop dead gorgeous wife, appropriately played by Loretta Young. The film concentrates more on the latter, as the angel spends so much time with the wife that a romance threatens to develop. It must be hard enough competing with Cary Grant, but a supernatural Cary Grant? The expression on Niven's face throughout aptly registers his dilemma. Monty Woolley, light-years removed from Sheridan Whiteside, is in good form as a washed up professor who's also helped by the angel.

The Apartment (1960). Billy Wilder's masterpiece, and one of the finest films ever. Jack Lemmon gives his best performance as an office drone who moves up the corporate ladder by lending the keys to his apartment to various superiors who want to use the place to cheat on their wives. Going by just that sentence, Lemmon seems kind of creepy, huh? Really, he's not. He's actually a desperately lonely guy, and a bit of a pushover, who yearns for a different kind of life. Someone who IS a creep is Fred MacMurray as Lemmon's boss. Having strung along an emotionally fragile Shirley MacLaine (another great performance), he leaves her alone in Lemmon's apartment on Christmas Eve, where she attempts suicide. Lemmon comes home in time to prevent a tragedy, with the help of Jack Kruschen as the perplexed doctor who lives next door. The scenes between Lemmon and MacLaine, which go from comedy to drama and back again at the turn of a dime, are among the best captured on film. You're not going to want to leave this apartment.

Now, we come to the most praised, the most revered, the most lauded, the most glorified, the most exalted, and the most beloved Christmas movie of all time, It's a Wonderful Life (1946).

I think it's a bit overrated.

I'll give you a couple of seconds to get off the floor.

Allow me to explain.

It's certainly not the actors. Jimmy Stewart. Donna Reed. Thomas Mitchell. Henry Travers. Lionel Barrymore. I'll give Frank Capra this, he knew how to cast 'em. The problem I have is the story, and the moral of that story.

All kinds of troubles befall George Bailey on Christmas Eve. Standing on a bridge looking down at the river below, it looks like he might kill himself. An angel named Clarence shows up, and keeps George from suicide by jumping in the river himself. Afterwards, Clarence grants George's wish that he had never been born. At that point, we might expect George to disintegrate right before our eyes. Instead, everything else changes. Nice people become rotten, happy people become sad, sane people go crazy, small town Bedford Falls becomes big city Pottersville, a navy transport sinks to the bottom, and Donna Reed wears glasses. Horrified by all this, George asks to be reborn. He also gets that wish granted, and heads back home to find his living room crammed with people willing to help him out of his jam. Moral of the story: One man can make a difference.

Now, here's my problem: George Bailey seems to be the ONLY man that can make a difference. Nobody else in that town (with the possible exception of Mr. Potter) seems to have any thing in the way of free will. They have no control of their lives or even their own personalities. As Kansas would say, all they are are dust in the wind. Determinism. Victims of much larger forces beyond their comprehension, in this particular case a wish granted by an angel. And about that angel, suppose he had unborn anybody else (other than Mr. Potter) who lived in that town? That one bartender, maybe. The one played by Sheldon Leonard. What might Bedford Falls look like had that one bartender never been born? I don't know. I guess it depends on how well his replacement makes a Tom Collins.

Had Jimmy Stewart never been born, and someone else had played George Bailey, I don't think the movie would be nearly as watchable as it is now, so maybe he's the one that made the difference.

In Memoriam: Elizabeth Edwards 1949-2010

2010-12-16T16:30:00.000-08:00

Regular readers will note that every now and then I do an "In Memoriam", honoring a public figure that has recently passed away. I give the name, the years of birth and death, occupation, a list of notable works (books, movies, TV shows, etc.) and a quote of some sort. I try to find a suitable quote that comes directly from the deceased themselves, but if that proves impossible, I'll use a quote by a third party about the deceased instead. Sometimes, if one quote just doesn't sum up that person's essence, I'll use two or more. On rare occasions, I'll explain just what it was about the deceased that interested me. If the public figure's not quite public enough, I'll provide a link.

Ever wonder how I go about choosing whom to memorialize? Well, first off, I'm not the Pope and it's not a canonization. The process isn't entirely selfless, either. Yes, I want to honor the person who's just passed on, but it's also a way of displaying my idiosyncratic tastes and interests. What's the use of having a blog if you can't do that? I basically honor people who have impressed me or intrigued me or have piqued my interest in some positive way. Usually, it's related to the person's chosen profession. In fact, it's always related to their chosen profession. I try not to take their personal life into account. For instance, actor David Carradine either committed suicide or achieved orgasm in the most dangerous way imaginable. Doesn't matter. I liked him in Kung Fu and a few other things, thus I honored him. I'd probably make an exception in the case of murder, so as much as I liked Robert Blake in Baretta...

The person's usually not at the height of their fame when I honor them, especially if they've died of old age. I've memorialized old movie and TV stars that Paris Hilton has never heard of, and Larry King has probably forgotten. Speaking of movies and TV, most people associate each with the actors that appear in them. However, I feel what goes on behind the camera is often as important as what happens in front. To that end, I've honored director Arthur Penn (Bonnie and Clyde) and writer Larry Gelbart (TV's MASH.)

I'm a lifelong fan of comic art of all kinds, so I've honored cartoonists such as David Levine and Leo Cullum, hardly household names.

Sometimes I don't even know why a person piques my interest, such as when I honored toupee-wearing, five-minutes-a-week PBS astronomer Jack Horkheimer. Even for me, that's idiosyncratic!

I've ignored some big names. Tony Curtis comes to mind. Just never enough for me to honor him. It's not that he was a bad actor. In fact, he could be a very good one. It's just that his costars (Sidney Poitier, Burt Lancaster, Cary Grant, Jack Lemmon, Marilyn Monroe, Natalie Wood, Henry Fonda, and ex-wife Janet Leigh) always seemed to pique my interest a lot more.

For some time now, I've been waiting for someone to ask me why I didn't honor a particular, recently deceased person. I would then explain my reasons in the comment section. I thought it might be Tony Curtis, but nobody ever asked about him. Poor Tony. Instead, in the comment section of an "In Memoriam" honoring Don Meredith, fellow blogger and frequent visitor Dreamfarm Girl wanted to know why I was ignoring Elizabeth Edwards, who died around the same time.

Because Edwards has been so much in the news these past few years, I didn't feel I could just explain her absence away in a mere comment section, so I wrote the post that you're reading right now. It's not that I thought Don Meredith was a more important or significant figure than Elizabeth Edwards. He certainly wasn't the more famous of the two when he died. Dreamfarm mentioned that Edwards was "classy". Well, Meredith was certainly classy when compared to Monday Night Football booth mate Howard Cosell, but that's probably not the same thing. Since Meredith's been out of the public eye for such a long time, most of the obituaries focused on his football career, which, quite frankly, I don't believe was his primary claim to fame, at least not in the 1970s when I first became aware of him.

I honored Don Meredith simply because he cracked me up. Not just on MNF , but even on something as ridiculous as those Lipton Iced Tea commercials he used to do. Nothing profound about my admiration for Don Meredith. I read his obituary and said to myself, "Oh, I have to mention this on my blog!" When I read Elizabeth Edwards' obituary, while saddened a bit, I didn't feel the same need. I couldn't remember her ever having piqued my interest.

Ah, but time doesn't stand still. Dreamfarm Girl, bless her, made me rethink Elizabeth Edwards. It turns out she had piqued my interest. Before I tell you how, let me mention some things that may have fogged my memory.

Her cancer. Much has been written about her "courage". I guess she was courageous. At least, she seemed calm when discussing her illness in front of a camera. But who's to say she didn't fall to pieces when the camera was turned off, or in the privacy of her own home? Frankly, I'm resistant to this whole notion that when a person is diagnosed with a serious disease, their first priority is to keep a stiff upper lip for the edification of the healthy. Cancer (and its' treatment) can be scary. Why begrudge someone who has it being scared? If a person has a hangnail and they're scared, fine, begrudge them. Not cancer.

It's because Elizabeth Edwards was a public person. If a nobody with a serious illness adopts a woe-is-me attitude, the relatively few people who do know the person would understand, at least up to a point. But, for some reason, a much, much higher bar is set for public figures, even if poor health isn't the reason they became public figures in the first place.

The other thing that fogged my memory is that Elizabeth's husband cheated on her. Had she been a nobody, it would have been between her, her husband, and the other woman. Elizabeth, in fact, learned about the betrayal two months before We, the People did. But once we did know, she had to 'fess up about her feelings, first on a blog (on which she stood by her husband), then on Oprah (on which she wavered a bit), and finally in her best-selling book Resilience (in which she admitted throwing up upon finding about her husband's affair). You may argue that no one forced her to tell us about all of this, and that she made some money off it to boot (some of which I imagine went toward paying doctors' bills), but I suspect had the story not broke, she would have kept her feelings to herself. That's not to say there wouldn't have been a divorce, but that all we would have known is that it was because of "irreconcilable differences."

Unlike the cancer, the affair at least had some bearing on why she became a public figure in the first place. Elizabeth Edwards was a public figure because her husband John was a public figure. When we didn't know about John, we didn't know about Elizabeth. I no longer believe John Edwards would have made a good president. I now wish he had stayed a nobody. But where does that leave Elizabeth?

Let's go back to an earlier tragedy. In 1996, John and Elizabeth's 16-year old son Wade was killed in a one-car accident. By most accounts, John took stock of his life following his son's death, and decided to go into public service, which meant running for office. As for Elizabeth, according to Resilience she grieved for a couple of years, and then decided to have two more children. She underwent fertility treatments, and had a daughter at 48 and a son at 50. This was a risky thing for her, or any woman, to do that late in life. Not just during the pregnancy, as there can be unforeseen consequences to one's health later on. If you want to admire Elizabeth Edwards for her courage, start here.

A more predictable consequence of giving birth is that Elizabeth gained weight that she couldn't easily shed. Of course, this can be a problem even for women in their 20s, but the likelihood increases with age. Once Elizabeth began appearing in public with her trim husband in 2004, the contrast between the two did not go entirely unnoticed by the national media. Elizabeth's initial foray into the public realm couldn't have been easy.

Or maybe it was. Here's where my memory kicks in. A week or so after John Kerry picked John Edwards as his VP, I saw Elizabeth, just Elizabeth, on C-SPAN hosting some kind of town hall-type campaign event. She seemed totally at ease with herself as she answered questions from a not always adoring audience. She came across as smart, knowledgeable, witty, and personable. What she was saying was basically mainstream liberalism, circa 2004. But she put everything in her own words, something that politicians aren't always capable of doing. She seemed to care and believe in what she was saying. In a just world, Elizabeth Edwards perhaps could have and perhaps would have run for president herself.

So, yes, before we all knew about the cancer and the infidelity, Elizabeth Edwards did indeed pique my interest, impress and intrigue me.

You can quote me on that.

Unpredictable

2010-12-07T16:20:00.000-08:00

(I've decided to take a little break from this blog. In my absence, my good friend Marty Volare has agreed to recount for you one of his many romantic misadventures. See if you can read it without choking up. In fact, choke up enough, and Marty might just respond to your comments--KJ)

My name is Martin Dangerfield Volare, and the story I'm about to tell is one of love found and love lost, of love born and love died, of love opened and love closed, of love created and love destroyed, of love bloomed and love withered, of love premiered and love canceled, of love invented and love made obsolete, and of love brand-new right out of the box and love left out on the curb to be taken away with the rest of the trash. It is an old story, as old as the sun and the moon and the sea and the ground and the redwoods and the bones of dinosaurs, but also a story of continual renewal, as new as a baby's laugh, a puppy's bark, a kitten's meow, a chick's chirp, and a lamb's baa. For this tale I tell is not meant to depress but inspire, that though love may burn to a crisp like a marshmallow left too long over a fire at a Labor Day picnic on that last sweet, sultry night of summer, its' smoke will nonetheless rise gently above the Metropark and the trees and the birds and up, up toward the clouds and the heavens and the stars and the galaxies and the extraterrestrials beyond.

Her name was Sonya, and she worked as a barmaid at the Looking-Glass Cafe, where I sometimes go to escape and evade and avoid and elude the desperation and desolation of my lonely existence. Ah, how shall I describe Sonya? She was as lovely as the dawn, as beautiful as the dusk, and as sweet as a mango. And she had a nice smile. I was smitten.

Alas, difficulties loomed! For starters, she slept with this one guy. However, she told me he meant nothing to her and would probably break up with him soon as she got the air conditioning, driver's side power window, and CD player fixed on her Buick Enclave and so wouldn't have to borrow his Mustang all the time. That filled me with hope. She then revealed that she had a two-year old daughter. I asked if the guy she slept with was the father. She said she didn't think so. I was naturally relieved to hear that. Still, if me and Sonya were to get married, it would mean I would have to raise the daughter as my own. Would I be up to the challenges of parenthood? I needed to know the answer.

I found the answer, or thought I had found the answer, or hoped with the hope that gives all sentient beings sustenance that I had found the answer when I saw this flier shoved between one of my windshield wipers while leaving the laundromat. It read as follows:

MADAME IMELDA

Forecaster of Fate, Prophetess of the Paranormal, Seer of the Supernatural, Assessor of the Astral Plane

will predict your future for

$10

Hurry! Limited time offer.

I know it now seems a bit desperate of me to go to a fortune teller to help solve a romantic dilemma, but at the time desperate blood pumped into and out of my desperate heart. I made up my mind to the see the seer.

Her simple clapboard house was located next to a payday lender in a part of town noted for its potholes, pawn shops, foreclosed property, and abandoned cars. I actually found it rather heartening that Madame Imelda should live in such a neighborhood. I like my psychics on the humble side. However, I may have overestimated her humility, for when I walked into her simple clapboard home I was greeted by a giant middle-aged lady dressed in gypsy garb and speaking in a foreign accent, mostly Hungarian, but with what sounded like a little Spanish and Scandinavian thrown in. I took her for a worldly woman.

"I am Madame Imelda" she intoned. "Mistress of Mysticism, Empress of Enchantment, and Diva of Divination! I know past, present, and future! I have access to those worlds beyond normal sight, sound, smell, touch, and thought! I speak with the spirits, hobnob with the hobgoblins, and play host to the ghosts! Now, what can I do for you?"

Awed, I lowered my head, pulled the flier out of my pocket, and handed it to her. She nodded, and led from the foyer into a room full of lit candles, burning incense, and lave lamps. Hanging on one wall was a black velvet painting of a wizard seated on a unicorn, his magic wand doubling as a riding crop. In the middle of the room was a small table with a crystal ball. I sat on one side, Madame Imelda on the other. She held out her hand, and I gave her the ten dollars. She turned away and beckoned,

"Daughter, Daughter, bring me my purse!"

From another room emerged a girl of about nine or ten wearing a Miley Cyrus T-shirt and carrying an oversized purse. Madame Imelda deposited my ten dollars into the purse and the tyke left. Madame Imelda then got down to the business of forecasting the future.

"You shall experience great happiness and great sadness!" she intoned as she peered into the crystal ball. "You shall climb great peaks and descend into deep valleys. You shall laugh and you shall cry. You shall know joy and you shall know heartbreak. That is your destiny. Now leave and tell all your friends about me. I'm here seven days a week, half a day on holidays. I accept credit cards."

Needless to say, I was a bit disappointed at this rather vague prediction. I began to wonder if Madame Imelda was on the level.

"Couldn't you be more specific?" I asked. "I wanted to know about my soon-to-be-girlfriend-soon-to-be-fiancee-soon-to-be-wife."

"Oh, it's specificity you seek? That will be $350. Daughter, daughter, bring me my purse!"

"$350?!"

"Prophecy is not some low-hanging fruit that can be plucked from a tree. You have to go to the farmer's market and pay a little extra for it."

My anger rising, I blurted out, "A farmers market wouldn't try to cheat me like you are!"

The big woman stood up and yelled, "You dare impugn the integrity of Madame Imelda, Chief Executive of the Extrasensory?! Take leave of my prescient presence at once, you worm!"

Faced with such a torrent of sincerity, I had no choice but to apologize, yet so great was my shame, I couldn't even open my mouth. I turned and reluctantly headed toward the door.

"Wait!"

I turned away from the door!

"Madame Imelda is nothing if not fair. Knowing the past, present, and future does that to a person. Ask me a question about this lady friend of yours, and if I get it right, you pay for a full reading."

That sounded reasonable, but what could I ask? Sonya's last name? No, it had to be something I already knew the answer to, just in case Madame Imelda answered falsely. It was Sonya's baby daughter that brought me here in the first place. I could ask something along those lines. The daughter's name, maybe? No, I didn't know that either. Wait, I could just ask the psychic if she even knew Sonya had a baby daughter.

"Tell me, Madame Imelda, who is the most important female in my future girlfriend/fiancee/wife's life?"

Madame Imelda sat down and peered into the crystal ball. In less than a second, she intoned, "Her mother is the most important person in her life!"

"Wrong. Not her mother."

"Not her mother? I'd like to think I'm the most important female in my daughter's life!"

"I said it's not her mother!" I could feel my anger almost returning.

"Her sister?"

"No."

"Grandmother?"

"No."

"Best friend?"

My anger had now most assuredly returned. "Her daughter! Her baby daughter is the most important female in her life!"

"Oh, her baby daughter! You didn't tell me she had a baby daughter."

"You were already supposed to know that!"

Madame Imelda looked back into the crystal ball. "Ah, I see my mistake now. I was looking at the ball's northern hemisphere, when I really should have been looking at its' south. There's the baby, in plain sight. Daughter, daughter, bring me my purse!"

I left in disgust.

Driving home, I was at first despondent, but it didn't last long. Perhaps there was a lesson to be learned here. I had wanted easy assurance from a fortune teller that I wasn't making a mistake, but there are no shortcuts in romance. Love is a matter of faith. This thought put me in a good mood. The Madame Imeldas of the world weren't going to keep me from my soul mate. By the time I arrived at the Looking-Glass Cafe, I was so filled with joyful ardor I skipped right in the place. A couple guys at a pool table laughed at me, but what did I care? I was a paramour in paradise!

"Hiya, Marty," said Sonya from behind the bar. "You look like you're in a good mood."

"I am. I just exposed a fortune teller as a fake."

"Oh, yeah? What'd ya do that for?"

"I asked her a question about you, and she didn't know the answer."

"Oh, yeah? What'd ya ask?"

Smiling, I said, "Who is the most important female in your life?"

"Oh, that'd be my best friend Amy. She let me sleep on her couch this one time when I--"

Panicked, I said, "No, not your best friend Amy!"

"Well, I sometimes spend time with my kid sister."

"No, not your kid sister!"

"My grandmother? I like her. I hope you don't think it's my mother. Me and her just don't see eye to eye."

"It's you're daughter!," I blurted. "You're baby daughter should be the most important female in your life!"

"Oh, yeah. That's right. My daughter."

To make a long lament short, things never did work out between me and Sonya. She left the Looking-Glass Cafe not long after. I hear she's now at some bikers bar near Sandusky. The guy she sleeps with works grill.

And, in case you're wondering, I eventually did pay Madame Imelda her $350. It was only fair.

In Memoriam: Don Meredith 1938-2010

2010-12-07T15:39:00.001-08:00

Dallas Cowboys quarterback. Sportscaster. Monday Night Football.

"Turn out the lights, the party's over..."

In Memoriam: Leslie Nielsen 1926-2010

2010-11-30T16:36:00.001-08:00

Actor. Forbidden Planet. The Poseidon Adventure. Airplane. The Naked Gun.

"Surely you can't be serious."
"I am serious, and don't call me Shirley."

--Airplane. Screenplay by Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker. #79 on the American Film Institute's list of Top 100 movie quotes.

"I'm a professional actor. If I was a plumber, I wouldn't just do my plumbing in Beverly Hills bathrooms; I'd like to install air conditioning units and a few other things."

--Leslie Nielsen

Quips and Quotations

2010-11-21T13:22:00.000-08:00

You're always a little disappointing in person because you can't be the edited essence of yourself.

--Mel Brooks

Strange Change

2010-11-09T16:34:00.001-08:00

"I love you, Obama!"

Remember that?

When Barack Obama was running for president in 2008, someone always yelled that out to him in the middle of a speech. And he'd usually yell back,

"I love you, too!"

The night Obama reached 2118, the number of delegates needed to clinch the Democratic nomination, he even elaborated a bit:

"I love you, too. Oh, I really do!"

Obama was praised back then for his oratorical style. For his charisma. He could motivate people, especially young people. He could inspire them, like no politician had since JFK, whose daughter endorsed him.

Two years later, Obama's often referred to as "professorial", as "cold", as "arrogant", as someone who doesn't relate well with people. And that old nickname from his law school days is back: No Drama Obama.

There was plenty of drama in 2008. My God, people use to faint at his rallies. He was Elvis. Now he's John Tesh. Some feared in 2008 that a candidate with so much charisma might become a dictator. Given the shellacking (Obama's own words) his party just took in the mid-term elections, he's about as effective a dictator as a 94-year old substitute teacher trying to break up a reform school knife fight.

This isn't the change I wanted to believe in.

Maybe Obama is like Jimmy Carter by way of cartoonist Garry Trudeau. In a series of 1970s Doonesbury strips, Carter appoints Duane Delacourt as Secretary of Symbolism, who advises the President to wear a cardigan, walk instead of take a limo on inauguration day, and answer questions on a call-in radio show. A few years later, a disillusioned Delacourt leaves the administration and joins up with Jerry Brown (yes, my younger readers, Brown was also in the news way back when.) As Delacourt explains to reporter Rick Redfern, Carter has lost interest in symbolism and seems intent on addressing the issues. Substitute symbolism with charisma and you have Obama. Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for him addressing the issues, but not at the expense of his own personal magnetism. Would it kill him to multi-task? C'mon, the man carries a Blackberry!

Obama is said to admire Lincoln, but he should move up some 70 years to FDR. I thinking of the Fireside Chats. I learned about those chats in school, but until recently never actually heard one. I grew up thinking they were just meant to comfort or soothe people during the Great Depression. I figured FDR said something like, "Don't you worry about the big, bad depression, Uncle Frank will take good care of it. Now just pull that newspaper up over you on that park bench and have a good night sleep." However, a couple of years ago I actually got a chance to hear one of those chats. Roosevelt didn't just comfort, he didn't just soothe, he explained, he educated.

In 1933, banks were failing right and left. This scared a good portion of the population, and they responded by withdrawing their money. This in turn caused banks to not only fail left and right but also up and down and in and out. To deal with the crises, Roosevelt declared a Bank Holiday, closing the savings institutions for a couple of days. He then want on the radio to explain to those who hadn't already had their radios repossessed why he did this. It's a lengthy speech, or chat. I just want to focus on one paragraph:

First of all let me state the simple fact that when you deposit money in a bank the bank does not put the money into a safe deposit vault. It invests your money in many different forms of credit-bonds, commercial paper, mortgages and many other kinds of loans. In other words, the bank puts your money to work to keep the wheels of industry and of agriculture turning around. A comparatively small part of the money you put into the bank is kept in currency -- an amount which in normal times is wholly sufficient to cover the cash needs of the average citizen. In other words the total amount of all the currency in the country is only a small fraction of the total deposits in all of the banks.

Roosevelt then goes on to explain that if everybody withdraws their money at once, which is exactly what was happening, even the healthiest banks would go under. The people listening accepted the new President's reasoning. They cut him some much needed slack, legislation was passed shoring up the system, and the banks soon reopened. FDR's stock soared.

Back to Obama. No, I'm not suggesting he declare a bank holiday. TARP, I guess, solved that problem. I'm thinking of the stimulus. Many economists warned him that the first one just wasn't big enough, and now they're saying we need another. Whether the new Republican majority in the House will let him have another is doubtful. But he still has the old Democratic majority for next couple of weeks. Can't they pass something?

Here's Obama's problem. The stimulus is based on the theories of the late John Maynard Keynes. He believed the government could lift an economy out of a depression or recession by injecting cash, often referred to as priming the pump, usually in the form of public projects. Where does the government get this money, since tax receipts are low during a downturn? By running a deficit. Unfortunately, for advocates of such an approach, spending money you don't have to solve a problem is counter-intuitive to most people, definitely not something you want to try at home.

This is why Obama needs to give a Fireside, or, if you want to update it a little, a Space Heater Chat. Explain the theory. Tell the folks that if you spend money to build a bridge, it's not just bridge builders themselves that profit, that with money in their pockets, they'll go out and buy things in stores, and the people who work in the stores will have more money, as will the people who work in the factories and warehouses that supplies the stores with goods. The economy will rebound, tax receipts will go up, and the deficit will take care of itself.

Would such a chat work? Couldn't hurt. And we have TV now. Obama could shine those pearly whites as he comforted, soothed, explained, and educated.

Maybe the President's confidence has just been shaken a bit. Perhaps he just needs some positive reinforcement.

Here's what I want all of you Obama supporters to do, even those who may be having second thoughts. At the count of the three, I want you all to join together, and, as loud as you can, give him a giant word of encouragement.

One...two..three:

WE LOVE YOU, OBAMA!!!

Let's hope it's not unrequited.

Quips and Quotations

2010-11-02T17:18:00.000-07:00

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said: "Is it good, friend?"
"It is bitter-bitter," he answered;
"But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart."

--Stephen Crane

Dot Common

2010-10-26T16:07:00.000-07:00

Ever see a street mime perform?

Ever watch a parade?

Ever peruse a bulletin board?

Even listen to a friend bitch about the President or Congress?

Ever read a blog?

According to a Pew Research Center study, a tipping point occurred last year: more people in the U.S. got their news online for free than paid for it by buying newspapers and magazines. Who can blame them? Even an old print junkie like me has quit subscribing to the New York Times, because if it doesn't see fit to charge for its content, I'd feel like a fool paying for it. This is not a business model that makes sense.

--Walter Isaacson

The Internet is turning economics inside out. For example, everybody on the Internet now wants stuff for free, and there are so many free services available.

--Uri Geller (I wonder if he now bends spoons for free.)

Ever draw a picture?

Ever play a musical instrument?

Ever compose a poem?

Ever sign a petition?

Ever write a blog?

The Cult of the Amateur: How blogs, MySpace, YouTube, and the rest of today's user-generated media are destroying our economy, our culture, and our values. By Andrew Keen

--Book title

My problem is that it fundamentally undermines the authority of mainstream media. We think two things going on simultaneously, the rise of the user-generated content, which is unreliable enough and corrupt, and a crisis in professional journalism, professional recorded music, newspapers, radio stations, television and publishing. And that is the core of our culture. Once we undermine the authority and expertise and professionalism of mainstream media, all we have is opinion chaos, a cacophony of amateurs.

--Andrew Keen, in an interview on National Public Radio

In recent years, there's been two charges leveled against the Internet and the blogosphere. One, that it's free, and two, that it's dominated by amateurs.

Let's take the first one first (duh). Is the Internet really free? According to Time Warner Cable of NE Ohio, it's "only" $34.95 a months for a full year. Cox Cable is $32.99 a month. Comcast is "as low as" 19.99 for 6 months, but you have to be an existing customer. AT&T offers $19.95 for a full year. Why is Time Warner and Cox so much more than the other two? I think maybe they have monopolies in certain areas. Of course, you don't need cable or even a telephone if you want access to the Internet. Just go to Starbucks. But they do expect you to at least by a latte. Buy one everyday for a month, and you've spent at least twice as much as if you had gone with Time Warner! Finally, there's the, ahem, library. Even that's your taxpayers dollars at work.

Anyway, getting things for free is not completely unheard of in our capitalistic system. I mentioned some goods and services you don't have to pay for at the very beginning of this essay. However, I left out two of the most significant. You don't have to pay for non-satellite radio (well, you have to buy the actual radio, but you know what I mean), and, if you're willing to settle for just six or seven channels, TV is free as well. Of course, nowadays most of us do pay for TV, and, if you want something "on demand", you pay even more. There was a movement afoot about a year ago to get people to pay even more for specific sites on the Internet, usually those originating in print, but it never went anywhere. More about paying for content at the end of this piece.

The second charge leveled against the Internet, and, more specifically, the blogosphere, is that it's dominated by amateurs. Really? You don't say! Let me peruse the "List of Blogs" at the left to see if this is true. Be right back...

...OK, not counting The Huffington Post, which is more of an online newspaper, only five of the 24 blogs are by professionals, meaning at one time or another these folks have drawn a paycheck for their writing (though not for their blogs, which are free.) I can't say for sure that the other 19 blogs are written by amateurs, since most are using assumed names. There's maybe four I'm not quite sure about. Of the fourteen blogs I'm pretty confident are by amateurs, what will you find? Photography, poetry, essays, autobiography, theology, visual art, travelogues, comic archives, philosophy, and even an occasional short story.

Now, I want you to reexamine the two quotes by Andrew Keen. They're easy to find.

Before the advent of the Internet, amateur photography, amateur poetry, amateur essays, amateur autobiography ("Dear Diary..."), amateur theology ("Now I lay me down to sleep..."), amateur art, amateur travelogues ("Want to see some slides from our trip to Bermuda?") amateur archives ("I'll trade you my 1964 Daredevil with the Wally Wood story for that 1966 Spiderman with the Johnny Romita cover."), amateur philosophy ("Ever wonder if you're the only being that exists and everything else is in your imagination?" "Sorry to interrupt, bub, but you want another?"), and amateur fiction, weren't considered corrupt, chaotic, or a fundamental threat to our values. Instead, they were called hobbies.

Politics isn't usually thought of as a hobby, but people sometimes approach it that way, as Billy Joel once noted ("and the waitress is practicing politics"). It's why campaigns depends so much on volunteers. And some people just like to talk about politics. I'll grant you there's a lot of harsh opinions about politics on the Internet. But you can also find similarly harsh opinions about politics in a bar, (actually, you can find harsh opinions on just about anything in a bar.) Maybe if we'd stop comparing the Internet to older media such as TV or newspapers and instead to Earth as a whole, we might have a better understanding of it. It's not called the World Wide Web for nothing.

On my profile page, I call myself a writer, but it's not my profession. Would I like it to be my profession? Sure. Would I like to make a lot of money writing? You bet. Would I like to achieve such heights of success and renown through writing that I'm asked to replace Simon Cowell as a judge on American Idol? Damn right I would! But if none of that comes to pass, if writing can't be my profession, I still want it as a hobby, even at the risk of undermining the authority of the mainstream media.

Speaking of that mainstream media, just what is it that makes the likes of Andrew Keene so hostile to the lowly amateur? Wouldn't simple indifference be enough? It was before the Internet. Maybe it's just frustrating to climb up the media ladder, only to have it seemingly kicked out from under you by a temp with a laptop.

There's now a consensus that the mainstream media's big mistake was putting its' wares on the Internet at no extra charge. Doing so blurred the distinction between the professional and the amateur. Does Howard Stern broadcast on ham radio? Does Jonathan Franzen leave 100,000 words on the bathroom wall? Does Plácido Domingo join in when you sing in the shower? No to all of these. Yet on the Internet, the Aristocracy--print newspapers and magazines--live on the same block as the Great Unwashed, aka amateur bloggers.

I first wanted to write about this over a year ago, but couldn't quite get my mind around it (a recent post by fellow blogger Elisabeth made me want to revisit the subject.) At that time it looked like newspapers and magazines might go extinct. Since then, however, an unlikely savior has emerged: Steve Jobs. I understand that those who own and control the mainstream media are excited by that new iPad of his. As consumers aren't accustomed to getting things for free on such devices, media titans can now charge for subscriptions to such formally printed material as The New York Times , or Better Homes and Gardens.

So it looks like the professionals might get to keep their cherished hierarchy after all, while leaving the rest of the Internet to the amateurs, the proletariat, the teeming masses.

Works for me.

In Memoriam: Leo Cullum 1942-2010

2010-10-26T15:32:00.000-07:00

Cartoonist. The New Yorker.

"When I'm not cartooning, I'm wrestling, and then showering, with my demons."

Quips and Quotations

2010-10-18T16:32:00.000-07:00

A lion's work hours are only when he's hungry; once he's satisfied, the predator and prey live peacefully together.

--Chuck Jones.

Corruption Eruption

2010-10-07T16:15:00.000-07:00

The following post is a review of a drama currently playing in Cuyahoga County, where this blogger lives. But I'd like those of you who don't live in Cleveland's home county to read it anyway. Combine politics with some of the more unsavory aspects of human nature, and this production could someday open at a theater near you.

For the past three years, the people entrusted to run Cuyahoga County have been the target of a wide-ranging corruption investigation. There doesn't seem to be one, overarching political scandal. It's just seemingly every elected official in the area getting away with whatever shit they think they can get away with. According to indictments, search warrants, and other FBI reading material, various public figures, some of them with numbers instead of names, have accepted free improvements to their homes, trips to Vegas, massage therapy in Vegas, wide-screen TVs, meals, booze, campaign contributions stuffed in envelopes, and other assorted non-birthday and non-Christmas gifts, in exchange for lower taxes, contracts steered to particular businesses, and county employment (the last seems particularly weird to me. Bribing an employer to give you a job? C'mon, they're supposed to pay YOU!) Elected officials were also occasionally bribe givers rather than bribe takers, enticing people not to run against them in exchange for nonelective government positions. Beats kissing babies.

One of those indicted, known for the longest time as "Public Official Number Two", turned out to be the County Auditor, a familiar face to Cuyahogans as it's plastered on all the county's gas pumps. That's what the auditor does, he regulates gas pumps. He also appraises houses. I'm not exactly sure the connection between gas pumps and houses other than that if you own a home in the suburbs you need a lot of petroleum to get around. Anyway, one of the many charges against the Auditor is that he lowered property appraisals for certain homeowners in exchange for free goods and services. Why did they want the price of their homes devalued? So they could pay less taxes on it (if these homeowners really wanted their property values decreased, all they had to do was hire a couple of hookers to walk up and down the street.)

Public Official Number One turned out be the County Commissioner, a man who resembles Boss Tweed, physically and, according to the indictment, non-physically as well. Except Boss Tweed never went to Las Vegas. Re-read the second paragraph. What happens in Vegas doesn't always stay in Vegas. But that's the least of the commissioner's problems. He allegedly had sex with a job seeker, and received free kitchen appliances, a new roof on his house, limo rides, and free appliances from those wanting to do business with Cuyahoga County. Amazingly, he's allowed to keep his job as long as he's out free on bail. He's just not allowed to talk to any county employees or make any decisions involving taxpayers' money. He might as well buy himself a pair of crutches and start quacking.

Once the County Commissioner was indicted, many felt the investigation had gone as far as it could go. But according to the Cleveland Scene , an alternative weekly, the County Prosecutor, whose office wasn't involved in a single arrest (it's all been an FBI production), may now be in the G-men's cross hairs. Not literally, of course. Unless he resists.

The above paragraph was written about 24 hours before the one you're reading right now (you didn't think I write this stuff in one sitting, did you?). In that interim, the aforementioned Prosecuter appeared on the front page of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Something about getting a friend a job at the county morgue. Story broke in time for Halloween.

Nice county I live in, huh?

Yet it's hard to say what effect all this has on the average Cuyahogan. I suspect a decision by the CEO of Ford or GM to close an auto plant or two would have a greater impact on the lives, and livelihoods, of people living in the county. And if such a decision was made, it wouldn't be local political chicanery but because there's some poor, desperate people in some Third World country willing to do the same work for the price of a Big Mac.

But if these politicians weren't doing any real harm, nor were they doing any real good, and good is what they're pretty much expected, and paid, to do. If they really believe personal gain is their main job function, they should at least tell us so when they're campaigning:

"As your next County Potentate, I promise I'll have a new patio addition built on to my house. I need that much more than my opponent needs that waterproofed basement!"

A couple months ago an election was held to restructure county government. It passed, and we'll soon have a county executive and council rather than three commissioners. I voted for the change, basically to send a message, but I wonder, why would an executive be any less likely than a commissioner to accept an enveloped stuffed with money? Will he have a smaller mailbox?

Every November the stuffed-shirt editorialists lay out a major guilt trip over voter apathy ("people died at Omaha Beach so you could help pick the next domestic relations court judge!") OK. Fine. We all should do our civic duty. But in exchange, the politicians shouldn't regard the average voter as nothing more than a coat check clerk at an orgy.

In Memoriam: Stephen J. Cannell 1941-2010

2010-10-05T15:34:00.000-07:00

TV writer-producer. The Rockford Files, and some 40 other shows that I didn't like quite as much as that one.

"Jim Rockford was the Jack Benny of private eyes."

In Memoriam: Arthur Penn 1922-2010

2010-09-30T15:45:00.000-07:00

Director. The Miracle Worker. Bonnie and Clyde. Alice's Restaurant. Little Big Man.

"They're young...They're in love...And they kill people."

--Ad for Bonnie and Clyde.

"A cheap piece of bald-faced slapstick comedy that treats the hideous depredations of that sleazy, moronic pair as though they were as full of fun and frolic as the jazz-age cutups in Thoroughly Modern Millie."

--New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther

"How do you make a good movie in this country without getting jumped on?...The accusation that the beauty of movie stars makes the anti-social acts of their characters dangerously attractive is the kind of contrived argument we get from people who are bothered by something and clutching at straws. Bonnie and Clyde brings into the almost frighteningly public world of movies things people have been feeling and saying and writing about."

--New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael.

"I was attacked for the violence in the film, but I wanted to show shootings as they really are--bloody and horrible--so the Vietnam casualty lists wouldn't just be meaningless numbers."

--Arthur Penn

Quips and Quotations

2010-09-25T12:54:00.000-07:00

We are always acting on what has just finished happening. It happened at least 1/30th of a second ago. We think we’re in the present, but we aren’t. The present we know is only a movie of the past.

Tom Wolfe, in turn quoting Ken Kesey in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

It's the Pictures That Got Small

2010-09-12T11:51:00.001-07:00

I got something in the mail the other day from a cable company offering "movies on demand". Budgetary considerations convinced me to turn this offer down, but it got me thinking about how often movies, theatrical movies, are used as a come-on, an enticement, to watch something outside of a theater, in our own living rooms, on TV.

When I was growing up in the 1970s, whenever one of the three networks showed a theatrical movie, it was often promoted as being "the first time on TV!" Not just blockbusters like Jaws or The Exorcist, but even something like The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean. I actually watched Bean for that very reason. It was OK, but I found out later that when it was first shown in theaters, rather than living rooms, the movie came and went pretty much unnoticed. Still, I did get to see it for the first time on TV!

Not long after I graduated high school came cable. Then, as now, it was divided between basic and the more pricey premium channels like HBO and Cinemax. Though these premiums also offered sporting events and even original programming, the big come-on was theatrical movies. These premiered much earlier then they would have on network TV, sometimes mere days after they had closed in theaters. Also unlike the networks, these movies were shown (wink, wink) uncut.

A few years after cable came the VCR, and video stores suddenly sprung up everywhere. Some of the product sold in these stores were written, directed, and produced solely for the VCR, such as Jane Fonda's exercise and Tim Conway's Dorf videos, but those were a distinct minority. It what was written, directed and produced solely--well, maybe not solely but initially--for the big screen that brought in customers. During the heyday of the VCR, Saturday night at the movies meant you first stopped off at Blockbusters.

The VCR had a good decade and a half run, but with a new century came a new means of communication: the DVD player. The means were new but what was being communicated was actually quite familiar: theatrical movies. OK, you can also get TV shows on DVD. But I don't see season 3 of Xena: Warrior Princess in any of those red rent-a-DVD boxes that you now see everywhere.

No matter what the technological advance in home entertainment, movies remain the main selling point. So, for me, that poses the question: what exactly is a movie, anyway?

Is a movie a "motion picture"? Well, if you're going to take that term literally, everything on TV, whether it's a movie or not, is still a picture in motion. A commercial is a motion picture. So is Dancing With the Stars . Even a video game can be considered a motion picture (maybe too much motion; the last time I tried to play one I broke out in a sweat while watching my race car go off a cliff.)

Is a movie "film"? To be specific, celluloid? Last year's big hit, Avatar , was shot on digital tape. Yet people persist in calling it a movie (when they're not calling it a film!)

I've used the term "theatrical movie" throughout this piece. So is a movie something you see in a theater? Well, at first, yeah, but not for long. I want you to do something. Write down all the movies you've seen in your life. Then divide them up between the ones you saw in a theater and the ones on you saw on a TV set. If you actually do this, my bet is that TV will win in a landslide. TV--network, cable, VCR, whatever--is how most people see most movies most of the time. Some of the biggest box office hits of the last 40 years--Star Wars, ET: The Extra-Terrestrial, Titanic--nevertheless got their biggest audiences when it came time to debut, in whatever form, on TV. And the box office take sometimes doesn't even matter. The Big Lebowski tanked in theaters in 1998, yet it's gone on to become phenomenally successful on video and DVD.

Is a movie a visual story told in two hours or more? Well, then that should include made-for-TV movies. Sure, why not? Except I never see any of those in the red boxes either. And if they're really movies, shouldn't they be recognized by the Academy Awards? I don't just mean they should get a statue. You know how on Oscar night they always show a montage of famous movie scenes, such as King King on the Empire State Building or Cary Grant running from a crop duster? Why not show scenes from famous made-for-TV movies, like Billy Dee Williams as Gale Sayers standing over the bedside of a dying Brian Piccolo played by James Caan, or, um, er, hmm....

So why is the nearly 40-year old Brian's Song the only made-for-TV movie I seem to remember?

One traditional difference between movies and television (at least since 1968, when the Hays Code was scrapped and the current ratings system debuted) is that movies have more explicit sex, explicit violence, and explicit language. Thus the appeal of "uncut" movies. What did you think "uncut" meant, no commercials? But if a premium cable channel can show all that explicit stuff in a movie, then they should be allowed to do so with original programming as well, and in fact have with such shows as The Sopranos and Oz. But theatrical movies are still the main attraction. And what about the explicitless G-rated movie? Two of the biggest grossing movies this year have been Toy Story 3 and Shrek Forever After. They'll gross even more once they're repackaged as DVDs.

I think I've found the answer to my question. What is a movie? A movie is a conceit. Movies have been conceits since roughly 1950. Movies are special only because we expect them to be special. But why do we expect them to be so?

Two reasons, both having to do with theaters. I said earlier that most of us watch movies on TV. But we know somebody watches them in the theater. So, when we're standing at the red DVD box in the supermarket foyer, trying to decide whether to rent The Invention of Lying for the night, on some subconscious level we're saying to ourselves, "If someone was willing plunk down $7.50 to watch this at the multiplex, least I could do is spend $2.00 to watch it in my basement. With what's left over I'll buy a hamburger." So much depends on the relatively small portion of the population willing to go to a movie theater on a regular basis. If they ever decide to either stay home or go bowling instead, the entire home entertainment industry will collapse.

For the second reason, we have to go back to the first half of the twentieth century, when moving pictures were much less ubiquitous than they are today. You HAD to see them in a theater. Think about that. If you weren't in a theater, pictures simply didn't move. Eerie, huh? Because of that rarity, movies exerted a powerful hold on people back then. I've read interviews with that old cynic Woody Allen where he positively waxes poetic about his movie going experiences as boy in the 1940s. A mystique grew up around movies. And that mystique was passed down to, and completely accepted by, later generations who probably couldn't tell you how that mystique came to be in the first place.

So, is this mystique/conceit such a bad thing? Not as long as Hollywood lives up to its' end of the conceit and provides movies that are better than, or, at the very least, different enough from, fare specifically intended for the TV screen (or the computer screen, cell phone screen, etc.)

Now, I wonder if there's any other means of communication out there that's technically outdated, but because it has its' own mystique, will nonetheless survive, even thrive, in the future.

Hmm. Can't think of any right off hand.

But if I ever do, maybe I'll write a book about it.

Quips and Quotations

2010-09-07T16:48:00.000-07:00

I noticed in the news that the Afghanistan minister of tourism was assassinated. What possible threat could the minister of tourism have posed to anybody? What power could he have wielded? How much influence could he have had? It's not like somebody's likely to say, "Oh, honey, where should we go on vacation this year, Paris or Kabul?"

--Bob Newhart

Idle Thoughts

2010-08-28T12:51:00.001-07:00

So I'm sitting behind this red Ford Focus waiting for the light to turn green. When it does, I'll make a left (my turn signal's already on), then a right, then another left, and arrive at work on time. I should arrive at work on time. I left the same time I do every morning. I usually get there about ten minutes early, five of which I spend in my car with my head leaned back contemplating the dome light. Actually, I'm really contemplating other things, like existence and the human condition and politics and religion and whether I should have bought that Greg Kihn album way back in 1984 (the last was just a stray thought that unaccountably popped up between the human condition and politics.) The dome light just happens to be in my field of vision while I'm doing all that contemplating. But before I can even begin contemplating, the light has to turn green.

As I wait, I contemplate the red Ford Focus in front of me. There a toy firetruck right in the back window. A woman is driving the car. There's a little boy in the seat next to her. He's waving his arms about. I notice little kids do that a lot in cars. Are they pretending the traffic is some kind of sporting event, and they're in the stands doing the wave?

OK, the light just turned green. Time to get going. Wait, the turn signal on the Ford Focus just went on. She's making a left too? She should have signaled me that while the light was still red. I would have, um, well, I wouldn't have been taken by surprise, I can tell you that!

Here's the layout, folks. The light is at an intersection. Before her turn signal came on, I assumed she would just go straight, and I would make my left. This particular intersection doesn't have one of the those extra arrow lights, you know, the ones that let you make the turn while the car coming from the opposite direction has to wait. Instead, you have to rely on your own judgement as to whether you can make the turn or not. Except, I can't rely on my own judgement until she relies on her own judgement. Quite frankly, I don't think she has much confidence in her own judgement. She can't seem to decide whether to make the turn or to just wait until that big, white delivery truck passes by. From where I sit, she has plenty of time. She eventually--and I stress the word "eventually"--agrees with me, and makes the turn. Unfortunately, I no longer have plenty of time. If I make that turn now, I'll become personally embedded in that big, white delivery truck's front grille. The light turns red just as the truck passes me.

The thing is, the truck was originally far enough away so that both the woman in the red Focus and myself could have made the light. If only she hadn't hesitated. To have that much turning time during rush hour is pretty rare. Perhaps it happens once a century. And she monopolized it! Also, she could have turned on her turn signal while the light was still red.

Now, I won't arrive at work in enough time to contemplate the dome light. Nor will I have enough time to make a mad dash to the rest room (all this idling at the red light has had a negative psychological effect on my bladder.) I'll just be able to punch in, that's all. If I run. I'll have to start the day out of breath. Out of breath with my legs crossed. That hardly makes me an effective worker.

Of course, the woman in the red Focus gets to arrive at work on time. If she's even going to work. Wait, she had a kid with her. Was she driving him to school? No, it's the last week of June (present tense notwithstanding), there is no school. SO WHY THE HELL IS SHE DRIVING HER KID AROUND DURING MORNING RUSH HOUR?! JUST FOR PLEASURE? Come on, Junior. Let's examine all the wonderful sights at this time of the morning. Oh, look, one driver is giving another driver the finger! And that driver was just stopped by the police! And there, a fender bender! Oh, we're about to go over a flattened raccoon! How exciting!

I can't believe this. I really can't. I'M GOING TO BE LATE FOR WORK! AND I'M GOING TO BE PHYSICALLY AND EMOTIONALLY EXHAUSTED WHEN I GET THERE! AND I'M GOING TO DIE FROM URINE POISONING FROM HOLDING IT IN SO LONG! ALL BECAUSE THIS STUPID WOMAN AND HER SPASTIC KID DIDN'T TURN IN TIME! ALL BECAUSE SHE WAS DEATHLY AFRAID OF SOME PUNY, WHITE DELIVERY TRUCK THAT YOU NEEDED A PAIR OF BINOCULARS TO EVEN SEE! ALL BECAUSE--

The light just turned green. I make my turn.

My heart beating, I turn left, right, and--

I'm right behind the red Ford Focus again, waiting for the light to turn green.

I do something I should have done earlier had I thought of it. I reach for my cell phone and check the time. Hmmm. Once this light changes, I'll make another left, and arrive at work in enough time to both contemplate my dome light and relieve myself.

I didn't lose a single hour, minute, or second. I lost nothing.

Well, I did lose some patience.

And where patience goes, brain cells usually follow.

In Memoriam: Jack Horkheimer 1938-2010

2010-08-21T12:51:00.001-07:00

Astronomer. Host of the weekly five-minute PBS series Jack Horkheimer: Star Gazer (originally Star Hustler)

“When you have a small object traveling at an incredibly high velocity, slamming into the earth's atmosphere, the friction makes the speeding object heat up so much that it can internally fracture and turn into what we call a fireball.”

(If you've never seen Horkheimer's show, you have absolutely no idea with how much enthusiasm he would have said the above quote. I know some of you who read this blog like to view the cosmos as evidence of a higher power. I'll never go that far, but for this pudgy guy wearing a sweater and bad toupee to last 30 years on TV in this otherwise slick entertainment universe of ours--well, thank God for PBS--KJ)

Blog Vérité: Missing a Beat

2010-08-14T12:50:00.000-07:00

My lack of medical expertise can be so embarrassing at times.

Some twenty years ago when I was working in a fast-food joint, I was sitting in the break room with an attractive young woman--she was about 19 or 20--who by all appearances seemed to be in perfect health.

She had just inserted a straw into her soft-drink and was about to take a sip, when she suddenly said, "Oops, almost forgot to take my pills."

From out of her purse she produced a little bottle of prescription pills, shook two of the minuscule tablets onto her palm, popped them into her mouth, and then proceeded with her previously postponed sip.

Afterwards, she smiled at me and said, "Good thing I remembered."

Since she had initiated the topic, I didn't feel it was too nosy to ask, "What are the pills for?"

"I was born with half a heart."

"Half a heart?!"

"Uh, huh."

"So you have only two ventricles?"

"I don't know what you mean"

"A heart has four ventricles."

Had I access to both a computer and the Internet in that break room of two decades ago, or just a much better memory of my high school biology class, I could have told her that the heart actually has four chambers. But only two (right and left) are called ventricles. These pump blood out of the heart. The other two chambers (right and left) are called the atria, which is plural for atrium. The atriums, I mean atria, holds the blood coming into the heart for a moment, before releasing it into the right and left ventricles at just the right moment.

Instead, I told her the heart has four ventricles.

"I have half of whatever I'm supposed to have," she replied.

"Two ventricles," I said, confidentially.

A silence hung over the break room.

I broke the silence. "Must be hard to have only half a heart."

"Not as long as I take my pills."

"What happens if you don't take them?"

She laughed, hit me in the arm, and said, "I'll have a heart attack, silly!"

Of course. How embarrassing.

But imagine how much more embarrassing had she found out I was wrong about the ventricles.

In Memoriam: Patricia Neal 1926-2010

2010-08-09T16:25:00.000-07:00

Actress. The Day the Earth Stood Still ("Klaatu barada nikto!") , A Face in the Crowd, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Hud, The Homecoming: A Christmas Story.

"A tall slim girl with a throaty voice."

--Chicago Tribune, 1949

"I just act my best. That's all I do, wherever I am."

"I think I was born stubborn, that's all"

--Patricia Neal

(In 1965, Neal survived three strokes in a single night--KJ)

Quips and Quotations

2010-08-07T12:46:00.000-07:00

Did you ever stop to think, and forget to start again?

--A. A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

Exciting Employment Opportunities for Pied Pipers

2010-07-27T15:32:00.000-07:00

About a week ago I was watching a local public affairs show, one of those panel discussions, the topic of which was the burgeoning deer population, a recurring problem here in Northeast Ohio for the past 15 years or so. It seems Bambi and his buddies are once again popping up in the suburbs, and causing auto accidents by not properly following traffic signs or looking both ways when they cross the street. Some on the panel felt it might be necessary to cull the herd (if you're not sure what the word "cull" means, well, there's another word that sounds almost like it.) The host of this discussion was reminded of a previous public affairs show dedicated to this same topic (I told you it was a recurring problem), in which one of the guests referred to deer as "rats".

Rats? Deer are rats? How so? The host went on to explain that the guest had had problems with deer wandering in his yard and eating his shrubbery, and vegetables from his garden. That doesn't exactly sound like something a rat would do, but I got the overall point. Deer are now pests, vermin, and like rats are feeding off of, and taking full advantage of, human labor, human achievement, human civilization. Like vermin everywhere, deer want to enter human society without first having the common decency to domesticate themselves.

The deer comment made me realize that either rats have a big tent philosophy, or humans have a big tent philosophy on rats behalf. Whichever it is, here are some other candidates for rathood:

Crows. I'm sure farmers throughout history have regarded these creatures as even more of a nuisance than actual rats. Rats don't concern themselves with the corn harvest. There are no such things as scarerats. The odd thing about crows is they're not always confined to rural settings. I once saw a flock of crows in the parking lot of a 7/11, divvying up what looked like a Three Musketeers wrapper. If a cornfield's not nearby, then make do with the high fructose corn syrup they put in candy bars, and everything else, these days.

Pigeons . Another feathered flying rat. Well, hold on, some people take great pleasure in feeding pigeons. You never see anyone feeding rats. But pigeons can be a nuisance nonetheless. Especially for those charged with keeping our nations' monuments nice and spiffy. A hoard of rats can run up and down and in and around a Civil War hero's statue and not leave nearly as much mess as one incontinent pigeon flying overhead.

Canadian geese. This species of rat may be unique to Ohio, and, of course, Canada. They were also a fixture in my apartment complex for a couple of months. Signs went up everywhere warning us tenants not to feed them. To my knowledge, no one ever did. Why would we when whatever they ate soon became green spots on the sidewalk and parking lot that you had to tiptoe around? But the geese are no more. The apartment complex hired somebody to "get rid" of them. I'm not sure who, but I swear I saw some old guy on the grounds with cotton in his mouth mumbling about offers you can't refuse right before the geese "disappeared".

Squirrels. I know some of you will balk at this one. What's wrong with squirrels? All they do is collect acorns, and acorns come from God, not man. True enough, but that storm gutter where the squirrel stores his acorns for the winter came from the Home Depot three blocks away.

Raccoons. I'll admit a raccoon can look pretty cute when he lifts his head up to look at you. Of course, when he looks up and out of that garbage can you were planning to carry to the curb, you have to then wonder if corrugated steel transmits rabies.

Bats. Ever see a bat with its' wings folded in? Looks a little like a gerbil or hamster or some other cute, furry little animal you might see in a pet store. But then, FLAPAPAPAP, suddenly it's ten times bigger, circling the upper reaches of your living room, and taking the occasional dive toward your head.

Skunks. These just may be the most terrifying rats of them all. A whiff from one of these beasts through an open window has been known to send more than one suburban home owner scurrying down the basement stairs and under the pool table, where, shaking like a battery operated sex toy, he or she yells out, "Do whatever you want to the family dog, just please leave me alone!

Why, oh, why, must humankind be plagued with all these different varieties of rats?! Why can't all the crows, pigeons, Canadian geese, squirrels, raccoons, bats, skunks, and now deer just leave us be?!

Actually, they once did. Before the Industrial Revolution, the Renaissance, Christ, the glory that was Rome, the miracle that was Greece, the pyramids of Egypt, none of those animals knew or cared about humans. Then one day prehistoric man climbed down from the trees, promptly chopped down those trees they had just climbed down from, and built a little community of thatched huts. All the animals, including the rats, began running away. But one rat caught a whiff of something. He turned to his friend and said, "Hey, Charlie, is that mastodon stew I smell? Let's check it out!"

As the world's population increases (it's expected to hit 7 billion next year), and everything from adobe dwellings to aluminum-sided ranch houses to high-rise apartments are built on every available spot, expect aardvarks, antelopes, peacocks, quail, pandas, orangutans, kangaroos, penguins, rams, toucans, salamanders, hippopotamuses, koala bears, and duck-billed platypuses to join the long line of animals awaiting honorary membership in the second most dominant species on the planet.

At this point, you may be wondering, does the first most dominant species--we humans--have anything to worry about from the second? Might they try to topple us from our perch?

Relax. No rat, genuine or honorary, has an I.Q. high enough to come up with something like global warming.

Quips and Quotations

2010-07-22T16:29:00.000-07:00

A tragic situation exists precisely when virtue does not triumph but when it is still felt that man is nobler than the forces which destroy him.

--George Orwell

Fan Clubbed

2010-07-13T17:07:00.001-07:00

The stuff that dreams are made of.

--The Maltese Falcon (movie)

What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?

--Langston Hughes

I once worked with a guy whom everyone assumed was a big sports fan. This is because he knew a lot about sports. Every sport. Every player. He also bet on these sports quite a bit, and everyone assumed his love of betting grew out of his love of sports. But once, over a couple of beers, he confided in me that the reason he bet on sports so much was so he could maintain an interest in sports. He found it impossible to do so otherwise. And, in the blue-collar milieu in which he lived and worked, maintaining an interest in sports was important.

I myself am a bit too angst-ridden to vote on anything other than a sure thing, so, to maintain an interest in sports, I basically root for teams with the name "Cleveland" in front of them. And even then they have to be doing very, very well. So, for instance, I was a big football fan at the beginning (Browns: Brian Sipe/Kardiac Kids era) and the end (Browns: Bernie Kosar era) of the 1980s. In the mid-1990s, I was a baseball fan (Indians: Two World Series appearances.) In recent years, I've developed an appreciation for basketball (Cavaliers: I'll get to the era that just ended in a second.) I guess you could say I'm a fair-weather fan, but it's not like I root for other teams during the dry spells. I still want the home team to win, even as I'm watching something other than sports. Rooting for a Cleveland team is like rooting for Greater Cleveland, where I happen to live. And rooting for Greater Cleveland is like rooting for...myself.

A word about Cleveland. When outsiders hear that name, they immediately think smokestacks and snowstorms. I won't lie. Cleveland has both of those (though the stacks have cut back on their smoking of late.) But there are other Clevelands. If culture's your thing, there's a world-class orchestra and some fine museums. If rock and roll's your thing, there's a hall of fame. If nature's your thing, there's both the Metroparks and the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. If water's your thing, there's Lake Erie. Yes, I know it was horribly polluted at one time, but it's been cleaned up quite a bit. I dare say its' beaches are now cleaner than those along the Gulf of Mexico.

Had "The Decision" gone the other way, I could have said: if basketball's your thing, there's LeBron James.

Not long after LeBron James made his "decision", I was watching a local call-in sports show. Most of the callers were expressing their anger with LeBron. Some were even on the verge of tears. Nevertheless, there was a scattering of support for King James. Here are some approximations of what was being said in his favor:

Why do you keep calling LeBron a hometown hero? He grew up in Akron, not Cleveland.

There's too much emphasis on sports in our society.

All this anger at Lebron is irrational. Burning his jersey in the middle of the street! C'mon, it's only a game!

I think all of us in Northeastern Ohio should thank LeBron for the seven wonderful and exciting years he gave us.

I'd like to address each of these.

Why do you keep calling LeBron a hometown hero? He grew up in Akron, not Cleveland. Cleveland is in Cuyahoga County. Akron is in Summit County. The two counties border each other. They're north-south neighbors. If you're ever in Northeast Ohio, pick up a copy of the Akron Beacon Journal and turn to its' sports section. You'll notice that Cleveland teams get lots of coverage. The Cavs current home is in downtown Cleveland, but for 20 years they played in Richfield, also in Summit County. From 1974 to 1994, it was a shorter drive from Akron to a Cavs game than from Cleveland proper. Of course, LeBron was only 10 when the Cavs moved back to Cleveland proper. Perhaps he got car sick on his first trip to the new arena, and has held a grudge ever since.

There's too much emphasis on sports in our society. Well, there's certainly a lot of emphasis on sports in Cleveland, and I sometimes chafe at that. But I heard this said on a sports show. That's a little like going to a zoo and complaining that there's too many animals. I suspect from the tone of the caller's voice, it wasn't the emphasis on sports that bothered her so much as the newly born distaste for LeBron James, which leads me to...

All this anger at Lebron is irrational. Burning his jersey in the middle of the street! C'mon, it's only a game! Well, if it's irrational to be angry at Lebron for leaving, was it rational for Cleveland fans to be so euphoric when he arrived in the first place? If it's somehow wrong to burn his jersey in the streets, what was so particularly right about plunking down hard earned money to buy the jersey and proudly wearing it down that very street during, say, the playoffs? Has the game become "only" only since Lebron left?

Spectator sports, on the professional level, involves a bit of fantasy, at least on the part of the spectators, the fans, themselves. After all, what's the first syllable of fantasy? You watch a bunch of strangers play a game, and decide, or have others with a more monetary concern in the game decide for you, that your well-being, your self-worth, depends on 50% of those strangers winning that game. Whatever you hate about your life, you'll somehow hate it a little less once you see those strangers get their rings or trophies, and the coach or manager of those strangers get dunked on the head with a bucket of Gatorade.

When fans turn ugly, when they throw bottles on the field, or burn the jersey of a once beloved player, it's easy to lecture them, to scold them, about it being only a game. Sorry, but by that time it's much too late. The fans have lived with the fantasy for so long, it's now cold, hard reality. They were expected to be happy when the going was good. Well, the opposite of happiness is not equanimity.

When the signs and pennants and team logos start going up all over town, when the stores start selling, and running out of, the jerseys and bobble-heads, and when the photo of the star player ends up plastered on one entire side of a skyscraper, perhaps that's the time to gently remind people it's only a game. Of course, to do so you risk looking like the turd in the fruit punch bowl.

Fantasies don't always make sense, but they can make cents. And dollars. Hundreds of millions of dollars in LeBron's case. So, if it's any consolation to anybody upset about that jersey burned in the street, hey, it's already paid for. LeBron won't lose a dime off it.

I think all of us in Northeastern Ohio should thank LeBron for the seven wonderful and exciting years he gave us. If LeBron thinks THAT is going to happen, he's got another fantasy coming.

In Memoriam: Harvey Pekar 1939-2010

2010-07-12T15:30:00.000-07:00

Writer of the autobiographical comic book American Splendor

"I try and write the way things happen. I don't try and fulfill people`s wishes."

Quips and Quotations (Fourth of July Edition)

2010-07-03T13:52:00.000-07:00

"Myths and legends die hard in America. We love them for the extra dimension they provide, the illusion of near-infinite possibility to erase the narrow confines of most men's reality. Weird heroes and mould-breaking champions exist as living proof to those who need it that the tyranny of 'the rat race' is not yet final."
—Hunter S. Thompson, The Great Shark Hunt

The Smartest Religious Movie Ever Made

2010-06-21T15:53:00.000-07:00

Recently, I wrote a post about faith which seemed to stir up a lot of strong feelings. So strong were these feelings, in fact, that I decided it best to stay away from the subject from now on. But then I saw my name mentioned on someone else's blog dealing with faith, and thought, "Well, if people are still interested in my views on the subject..." So I've decided to take another stab at it. I've even eschewed the usual wordplay in the post's title. I'm telling you flat out it's about the smartest religious movie ever made.

And what movie might that be? The Ten Commandments? No, as entertaining as that film is, it's not the smartest. Nor is it that other mainstay from Easters past, Ben-Hur.

And it's not King of Kings, Sign of the Cross, Song of Bernadette, Going My Way, Bells of St. Mary, The Keys of the Kingdom, Joan of Arc, Samson and Delilah, David and Bathsheba, Quo Vadis, The Robe, Demetrius and the Gladiators, Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima, Salome, Solomon and Sheba, The Silver Chalice, The Big Fisherman, Barabbas, Sodom and Gomorrah, The Nun Story, The Singing Nun, Lillies of the Field, The Agony and the Ecstasy, The Greatest Story Ever Told, The Bible...In The Beginning, The Sound of Music, Godspell, Jesus Christ Superstar, King David, or The Last Temptation of Christ.

It's not even Bruce Almighty

No, the smartest religious movie ever made is...

Raiders of the Lost Ark.

What's that, you say? Raiders of the Lost Ark? That's not a religious movie! It's action-adventure!

Well, there is action, as well as adventure. And there's also religion. At least there's something from the Bible. Where do you think the Ark comes from? Actually, there are two Arks in the Bible. The more famous Ark is the big boat with all the animals that Noah captained. The other Ark, the Ark of the Covenant, is less well known. At least it was less well known before director Steven Spielberg, producer George Lucas, and screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan got their hands on it. Here's King James' earlier take:

10 "And they shall make an ark of acacia wood; two and a half cubits shall be its length, a cubit and a half its width, and a cubit and a half its height. 11 And you shall overlay it with pure gold, inside and out you shall overlay it, and shall make on it a molding of gold all around. 12 You shall cast four rings of gold for it, and put them in its four corners; two rings shall be on one side, and two rings on the other side. 13 And you shall make poles of acacia wood, and overlay them with gold. 14 You shall put the poles into the rings on the sides of the ark, that the ark may be carried by them. 15 The poles shall be in the rings of the ark; they shall not be taken from it. 16 And you shall put into the ark the Testimony which I will give you.

--Exodus 25:10-16

The above is God's instructions to Moses on how to build the Ark. Where Moses was supposed to get all that gold, I have no idea. Anyway, the Ark was a kind of chest with supernatural powers that contained bits and pieces of the original Ten Commandments. The Israelites carried it around the wilderness for some 40-odd years, until they reached the Promised Land. After that, it pops up throughout the Old Testament, often to lethal effect, zapping Philistines or even dim-witted Israelites who come too near the thing. Keep that in mind as I discuss the movie.

Now, I said Raiders was smart. But it's not immediately smart. Like any Hollywood product designed to separate an adolescent from his 1981 currency, there's a lot of watchable silliness. The movie begins in a South American jungle in 1936, where we find a big guy with a big hat, ratty clothes, and a whip going into a cave to snatch an ancient idol, evading all sorts of pre-Industrial Age booby traps to do so. He gets out of the cave alive, only to be confronted by an apparent archrival backed by a bunch of spear carrying natives. Our hero is forced to hand over the idol, and then somehow manages to outrun, outjump, and and outswing hundreds of spears thrown in his direction. None of this has anything to do with the Ark of the Covenant, which is in a whole different hemisphere. It's all meant to establish character, and, boy, what a character: Indiana Jones, an professor of archeology (his real first name is Henry, but you won't find that out for another couple of sequels) who apparently doesn't believe in hiring hundreds of diggers to excavate a site, but rather just do the job himself.

Back in his classroom at the university, having exchanged his ratty clothes and whip for a tweedy suit and blackboard chalk, he's approached by a couple of government agents. Adolf Hitler is looking for the Ark of the Lost Covenant, hoping its' powers of God will give him an edge in the upcoming World War II. Now, the agents refer to Hitler as a "nut" and that he's "crazy" for actually thinking he can get away with this. But as nutty and crazy as Hitler may be, they decide to hire Professor Jones to stop him, just to be on the safe side. Do intelligence agents always outsource their work to college archeology professors? They must be understaffed.

Anyway, Indiana Jones goes to Cairo, meets an old flame who decides to help him find the Ark. The Nazis, along with the archrival from the film's opening scene, try to stop him. But Indy does indeed find the Ark, only to quickly lose it to the Nazis. My memory's a bit faulty on this, but the Ark seems to pass back and forth between the Jones and the Nazis until they all end up on some island together. Indy has a chance to destroy the Ark with a rocket launcher (good thing to have when a whip won't do), but, dedicated archaeologist that he is, can't bear to destroy something of such obvious historical significance.

Now we come to the part that always intrigues me. The Nazis have won. They've prevailed. They've got the Ark. Before presenting it to the Fuhrer himself, they decide to take a peek inside.

They shouldn't have. Benign ghostlike figures at first emerge, but they quickly turn malignant. Fire and lightening shoot out out of the Ark, fricasseeing the Nazis standing closest to it. The ones standing a little farther away don't last much longer, as they soon melt or combust or both. Only Indy and his girlfriend survive, having shielded their eyes.

So by winning the Nazis have lost. The power of God gives them no actual military advantage. How you gonna use a weapon if you can't even open the damn thing? Not that the U.S. government is much better. They must have shelled out a lot taxpayers' money, in transportation costs if nothing else, to have Indiana Jones go halfway around the world to stop the Nazis from finding something that turned out to be irrelevant. He could have saved himself the trouble and just stayed in the classroom, though it's always nice to see old lovers reunite.

Indy gets the Ark (did he close it back up with his eyes shut?) to Washington D.C., where it is stored in a giant government warehouse.

"Fools. Bureaucratic fools! They don't know what they've got there," Indy says at the end.

I imagine sometimes after Pearl Harbor, some of those bureaucratic fools will open up the Ark to see just what kind of military advantage it gives them. When they do, well, time to mop up the warehouse floor. So the WWII in the movie's fictional world is fought much like the WWII in our real one, without any discernible help from God.

Of course, in our real world, people are always fighting and thinking God gives them some sort of advantage. Look at the Middle East. The Israelis and the Arabs have been fighting over the Holy Land for how long now? And why is it even called the Holy Land? If the Lord created the entire Earth, shouldn't the whole enchilada be considered holy, rather than just one tiny morsel? Then there's the people who attacked us on 9/11, thinking they were doing God's work. The average devout terrorist doesn't even have to open up an ark if they wish to immolate themselves. They'll do it with a strapped-on bomb, with the expectation that they'll be greeted in Heaven by 72 virgins (what do they have against more experienced women?) And what about female suicide bombers? Are they greeted by 72 eunuchs?

Just as in Raiders, the U.S. Government in not immune to the sway of God's strategic value. According to Bob Woodward's book Plan of Attack , in the run-up to the Iraq war, George W. Bush referred to himself as a "messenger of God" who was doing the "Lord's work". In the Pentagon, the war was often referred to as a "crusade".

Meanwhile, the Catholic-Protestant conflict in Northern Ireland seems to be finally winding down. It only took four centuries.

To be fair, if you examine some of these religious wars more closely, you'd see that they're as much about politics, territorial conquest, ethnicity, and natural resources (oil comes to mind) as they are about the divine. But nothing rallies the troops like saying it's God's work.

From the Crusades on, can you really say all the blood shed in God's name has made the world a more spiritual place?

Some arks should just stay lost.

Quips and Quotations

2010-06-18T13:25:00.000-07:00

Cold are the hands of time that creep along relentlessly, destroying slowly, but without pity, that which yesterday was young. Alone, our memories resist this disintegration and grow more lovely with the passing years.

That's hard to say with false teeth!

--The Palm Beach Story, screenplay by Preston Sturges.

Archival Revival: Crude and Unusual Punishment

2010-06-14T16:04:00.000-07:00

(Now that oil is once again in the news, I've decided to rerun something I wrote back in the summer of 2008. Back then it was nothing as dramatic as a spill, just skyrocketing prices, which may have had some people even more outraged. The first couple of paragraphs may seem a bit puzzling if you don't recall that some people were blaming energy traders and speculators for the sudden spike in prices. Nothing was ever proven, and prices eventually came back down. About halfway through my essay I move from high prices to talking about our country's dependence on oil in general, how we got that way, and how difficult it's going to be for us to be any other way. I believe that part of the essay is still relevant--KJ)

If you're too young to remember the Energy Crises of the 1970s, or are old enough but have blocked that traumatic event from your mind, here's a brief recap. OPEC, long lines at the pump, thermostats turned down, sweaters over sweaters, diesel cars, siphoned gas, siphoned gas poisoning, moral equivalent of war. Things were bad. Then things got worse, and worse, and WORSE , and WORSE , until...it was the 1980s, and the Energy Crises had gone the way of pet rocks and Leo Sayer.

The new fad was the oil glut. People now drove more, mowed more, flew more, snowmobiled more, motor boated more, and even accidentally spilled more at the pump. It was cheap; why be careful? Cars beget minivans, minivans beget SUVs, SUVs beget Hummers. Things got better, and better, and BETTER, and BETTER, until...well, until now.

As soon as he took office, President George W. Bush appointed an energy task force, with Dick Cheney in charge. This energy task force's task was to force energy to be more, um, plentiful? Cheap? Energizing? Among the groups this task force met with was, well, we don't know. Dick Cheney won't tell us. He's claiming Executive Privilege. Isn't having your own chauffeur, and your own bodyguards, and your very own hiding place in case of another terrorist attack privilege enough? No, he also wants the privilege of dancing up and down Pennsylvania Avenue singing, "I know a secret and you don't. Ha, ha, ha," Word did get out that the task force included several Enron executives. It was later revealed that Enron was doing all it could to make energy less plentiful. At least in California. Off the record, but on a recording (like Nixon, they taped themselves), Enron executives joked about engineering blackouts that left little old ladies in the dark. A year later, when their company collapsed, they themselves were left in the dark. A dark jail cell.

I bring this up because there's been speculation that speculators are behind the spectacular rise in gas prices. This didn't make sense to me at first. Why speculate about oil? What do you think that black, gooey substance is, syrup of ipecac? Then I did a little research. See, there's something called a "futures market" What kind of futures are they marketing? Star Trek? The Jetsons? Nope. Those were fiction. This is real. A future is what a commodity, such as oil, will cost in the future, assuming you buy it in the, uh, present. Mathematically, this is expressed as F={S-PV (Div) (1+r)(T-t) (let's see THAT on the Jetsons!) Apparently, what you do--"you" being either a humongous financial institution that buys and sells a commodity, such as oil, or a humongous financial institution that buys and sells pieces of paper that represents a commodity, such as oil--is agree to buy the future sometimes in the future, and hope that the future in the future is more expensive than the future was in the past, and then resell that future in the present, which was the future in the past, and that's how you make your profit (come to think of it, maybe this is like an episode of Star Trek. Remember the one with Joan Collins?) Now, all this buying and selling the future use to be regulated. You could buy only so much of the future. You only could buy the future with the money you had in the present. You couldn't pretend you had less future than you did. These regulations were repealed because--well, I've searched the Internet for some other explanation than "political favor", but to no avail. Enron first took advantage of this new freedom. Boldly going where no humongous financial institution had gone before, they bought a lot of the future (electricity) with money they didn't have in the present, and then pretended they had less of the future, now the present, than they did. In short, they shut down a few power plants, causing the aforementioned blackouts. Are oil speculators the new Enrons, leaving old ladies, if not in the dark, than in the red? (No, it's not like Star Trek, after all. Captain Kirk let Joan Collins get hit by a truck so as to keep Hitler from winning World War Two, and he didn't even make any money off it!)

That's just one theory on the current spike in gas prices. There are others. Ones that don't involve the future. Such as, oil executives, in the present, are screwing us over, in the present, in order to make a big pile of money, in the present.

You may get the impression from reading all of the above that I don't believe there's an actual shortage of oil. You'd be wrong. I genuinely believe that overpopulation, combined with mass consumerism, combined with globalization, combined with our corporate masters' need for this quarter's profit to be bigger than last quarter's profit which were bigger than the quarter before, will eventually cause us to run out of everything from oil to food to water to the very ground beneath us, and we'll all have to walk, hungry and thirsty, on the Earth's molten core.

But what I just don't get is this twenty year lull between energy crises. It's like some one's on their death bed, surrounded by his loved ones, with a priest delivering the Last Rites. The guy doesn't die, however. The very next day, he plays a couple rounds of golf, takes in a game of tennis, goes jogging, shoots a couple of hoops, does some laps around the pool, plays horseshoes, and, at night, goes bowling. The day after that he's back on his death bed, his loved ones are all looking at their watches, and the priest is reminding everyone he gets paid by the hour.

Then there's that other problem--global warming. It made all the headlines last year, but lately it's been pushed toward the back of the paper somewhere between Goren Bridge and the crossword puzzle. It'll come back. In fact, during that twenty year lull (and this is why I think the shortage can't be entirely fake), we had the two hottest decades in history. Until this decade, that is. We shouldn't be surprised that energy shortages and environmental destruction should coincide with each other. They're both caused by the same thing: using too much fuel. To paraphrase Frank Sinatra, the two problems go together like a horse and carriage (which may soon become our principle means of transportation.)

While we're pointing fingers at oil speculators and oil executives, how about We, The People? Are we to blame? Well, Pogo's dictum still holds: "We have met the enemy and he is us!" First, though, we have to be introduced.

You may have heard it said that Americans are addicted to oil. Well, let's compare it to other addictions. Most addicts don't start out as addicts. You don't smoke, then you have that first cigarette. You don't drink, then you have that first beer. You don't do drugs, then you have that first toke, snort, or fix. Where petroleum's concerned, you have to go back almost 100 years, to the horse-and-buggy era. At first, that was all people knew. It was all they ever knew. Then came the automobile. In the beginning it was intimidating. As intimidating as the personal computer was to a later generation (at least this particular blogger.) Then they got behind the wheel. Goodbye, horse. Goodbye, carriage. It was their first smoke, first drink, first toke, first snort, first fix.

Those people are all most likely gone by now, but they left behind their addiction, the car culture we all grew up in. We, The People are not just addicts, we're crack babies.

Actually, I may be jumping ahead a bit. If you watch old movies from the '30s and '40s, yes, there are cars, but they also take trains and buses. And they walk. Even in the big city. Especially in the big city. At all hours of the night, in the poorest neighborhoods, without the slightest fear of getting mugged (even in the gangster films it's safe, as long as you stay the hell away from Edgar G. Robinson.) Then came the suburbs, and that's where we get to the crux of the problem.

No trains came to the suburbs. Buses came maybe twice a day, not twice a minute like in the big city. You could walk in the suburbs, but where? One development led to another, identical development. You'd find yourself walking in circles, or in cul-de-sacs. You needed a car. It's a lot easier driving in circles than walking.

I grew up in the suburbs, but my parents didn't. They grew up in the big city. So did the parents of the kids next door. And the kids across the street. And all the kids on the block. And all the kids at school. I never met a single kid whose parents grew up in the suburbs. How could they? There was no suburbs for them to grow up in. We kids were first generation suburbanites.

Lo, these many years later, it's quite different. Not only have the average suburban kid's parents also grown up in the suburbs, but in some cases, so have their grandparents . Not always the same suburbs, of course. First, there were just suburbs, which we now call inner ring suburbs. Followed, naturally, by outer ring suburbs. Now, there's exurbs. What's next? Inner and outer ring exurbs, I suppose. After that, who knows? Extraexurbs? Meanwhile, the abandoned big city is turning into Greenfield Village, but without the tour guides.

Suburbs, superhighways, shopping centers, and parking lots. It's all we know. It's all we've ever known. Not only are We, The People crack babies, but crack babies abandoned on the doorstep of the Columbia drug cartel. And who abandoned us? Just our politicians, business leaders, advertisers, developers, editorial writers, even our educators, when they all sold us on the Good Life. Of course, we bought it. What do you want, a Bad Death?

Please don't think from reading all this that I'm anti-car or anti-driving. Nope. I absolutely, positively love to drive. Or I did until I got into one wreck too many. Still, it beats walking 20 miles to work in the morning. And it's a way of getting out of the house on a Saturday night. What I absolutely, positively don't like, however, is being sold a bill of goods.

But that's all in the past. We've got the future (but not the kind you buy and sell) to think about. We need to free ourselves from foreign oil. Maybe oil, period. We need green technologies (see Kermit? That color's in now.) We need to develop alternative (punk? grunge? new wave?) sources of fuel. We need renewables, such as wind or solar (I hope the sun's renewable. I'd hate to see two moons in a permanently dark sky.) We need an Apollo-like program for energy independence ("One small spin around the block for man, one giant cross-country trip to the Grand Canyon for mankind!")

Do all that, or even begin to do all that, and we'll see which drops faster: the price of gas, or an oil executive's shit.

Quips and Quotations

2010-06-10T16:35:00.000-07:00

I might repeat to myself slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound -- if I can remember any of the damn things.

--Dorothy Parker

Attention, Pupils

2010-06-05T13:13:00.000-07:00

It's 2:00 in the afternoon when I enter the Burger King. I'm sure it was pretty chaotic here about an hour ago, but it's quiet now. Not too many people, just a few retirees milling about, and a mother and her two-year old. I planned it this way. Well, I'm not personally responsible for the retirees milling about. And I don't know the mother nor her two-year old. What I planned is the thing I have the most control over, my own movements. Especially at 2:00 in the afternoon. I could have come in at 12 or 1, but the place would have been busier, much more louder, much more crowded. It's the lack of that crowd that I most desire at 2:00 in the afternoon. If I'm going to control my own movements, I'm going to need as much empty space as possible. Enough space to sit where I want. This is very important to me. I like to eat in solitude. If a bit of special sauce drips from the Double Whopper and lands just below the lip, I want to be able to swoop it up with my tongue without having to fret over prying eyes. In addition, I like to be alone with my thoughts. Such thoughts as, what's the best way to eat this big sloppy Double Whopper without special sauce dripping all over my face?

There's an empty table right in that corner. Perfect. I'll just sit there. I'll have a nice view of the corner wall. Everyone else in the place will have a nice view of the back of my head.

But there's a problem as I approach the table. A crumb. A crumb almost perfectly centered on the table top. Were this ten minutes after lunch hour, I could understand. But an hour has passed! Someone really should have wiped it off by now. I myself could easily flick that crumb off with my fingers. But that's hardly my responsibility. This place pays people good money to remove crumbs. Hold on, this is a fast-food restaurant. Well, they pay money. Whether it's good or not is really not for me to say. I will say they pay me, the customer, absolutely nothing to remove that crumb. I could go back to the counter and bitch about that crumb, but whoever's on duty is busy with one of the retirees, who's probably expecting one of those senior citizen coffee refills.

I'll just sit one table away from the corner. In other words, the table before the table in the corner. No crumb there. And it's still a remote enough spot. Remember, the Burger King is fairly empty. What's the chance of someone actually sitting at that crumb-ridden corner table, thus spoiling my solitude? In fact, my being at the table before the table in the corner, should actually discourage anybody from sitting there. I know if I saw someone sitting at that table, I'd be discouraged.

So, here I am, serenely sitting at the table before the table in the corner, serenely thinking my thoughts, and attempting to serenely eat my big, sloppy Double Whopper without dripping special sauce all over myself. Life is good.

Just then, I see a middle-aged man, older than me but younger than a retiree, walking with a tray full of food right toward that corner table.

All these empty seats, and he's sitting there? Well, if he does sit there, it will probably be with his back toward me. Surely, he'd rather look at the corner wall. Probably why he chose that seat to begin with.

But he doesn't sit there. He sits on the side, so that his face is directly facing mine!

Now, what am I supposed to do? Oh, God, we just made eye contact. Well, it's his own fault. He chose to sit there.

Eye contact doesn't seem to bother this guy too much. But what am I supposed to do? I can't be alone with my thoughts when I got two eyeballs keeping me company!

So I turn my head toward the window. That's a good way to be alone with your thoughts. Hmm, lets see what's out there. Out there in the parking lot. Some woman getting out of her car, and--DAMMIT! We just made eye contact.

I'll crane my head in the opposite direction. Toward the nice empty dining room. Empty except for that retiree, the one I just made eye contact with. Why the hell does he have to sit there for?

Maybe if I just crane my head a couple of degrees, I'll--I'll make eye contact with the mother of the two-year old. No problem, I'll dip my head, and--OK, if there one person I really don't want to make eye contact with it's a two-year. Two-year olds live for eye contact. Two-year olds thrill on eye contact. And why is this two-year old now talking to his mother? And looking at me? And now looking at his mother. And why is the mother again making eye contact with me? Because of what her two-year old told her? It's his fault we made eye contact, not mine!

If I just move my head--another retiree! The place is still almost empty, but the few people there seem to be sitting in strategically placed eye contact positions. To make matters worse, a Burger King employee is mopping the floor. Wherever I move my gaze, he seems to follow. His eyeballs seem to follow. I look outside. Some guy getting out of his car, and, yep, eye contact.

An optometrist doesn't make as much eye contact as I am today. At least an optometrist gets paid good money to make eye contact. Better money, I'm sure, than that kid mopping the floor.

With no other alternative left, I shift my eyes downward. I see the special sauce from my sloppy Double Whopper has dripped onto the tray, the table, even my lap.

Something to think about.

In Memoriam: Dennis Hopper 1936-2010

2010-06-01T16:59:00.000-07:00

Actor and director. Rebel Without a Cause. Giant. Gunfight at the OK Corral. Cool Hand Luke. Easy Rider. True Grit. Apocalypse Now. Blue Velvet. Hoosiers. River's Edge. True Romance. Speed.

"I'm not usually in one of those movies that leaves you feeling good when you leave the theater."

(Well, I'm sure some of those movies made people feel good--KJ)

Bark, The Herald Angels Sing

2010-05-26T15:40:00.000-07:00

I wouldn't mind believing in God.

I say this because people troubled by my lack of faith seem to think I'm just being stubborn. I could really believe in God if I wanted to, they seem to think. They seem to believe. Like I have a button on me that says FAITH. All I need to do is press it, and, VIOLA, I'm religious.

The closest thing I have to a button is this unsightly mole on my back. If I ever get some extra cash, I think I'll have it removed.

It would be much easier to believe in God if there was, like, a God. If you want to believe something exists, if kind of helps to have it, like, exist.

I'm not saying there is no God. I'm just saying if he, or it, were right here right now, in front of me, where I could see and hear him, it would go a long way toward making me believe in him, or it.

Some think God is going to punish me for my agnosticism (See? I didn't say atheism. I'm not that far gone.) I've never understand this whole idea of God punishing someone for not believing in him, or it. If someone didn't believe I could talk, I wouldn't punish them for it. I would just talk. That person would would be converted faster than you could say "road to Damascus". Actually, faster than you could say "Damascus" all by itself. Or "road". Or "to". I suppose once that person was convinced I could talk, they'd ask for my forgiveness for ever doubting me. My reply to that? No forgiveness necessary. I've always been on the quiet side, so it's understandable someone might make that mistake.

There are those who will say that if I just prayed, or took a leap of faith, or opened up my heart and looked inside, I would know God exists. But why go through so much trouble? I mean, there are a lot of things I know exist because they have the virtue of existing. The keyboard on which I type I know exists, as well as this chair that I'm sitting on, and the library I'm sitting and typing in. And for all you grammarians out there, I also know that proposition that ended the preceding sentence exists. I just couldn't figure out any other way of ending it.

Of course, all those things I just mentioned are man-made, including the proposition. Especially the proposition. But God is more intangible than that,
you say. You have to look beyond material things. OK, fine. Let's move away from material things to nature. Beyond taking a stroll through the Cleveland Metroparks, I've never been one much for communing with nature. But nature at least exists. The Cleveland Metroparks exists. The plants exist. The trees exist. The scrunched up condom in the middle of the bike path exists (scratch the last one. We're back to material things.)

Some of you will say, "Can't you see God in nature?" I don't want to see God in nature. I want to see God like I see nature. I mentioned trees. Why can't God exist like a tree exists?

I don't have to pray to know a tree exists. It's there.

I don't have to take a leap of faith to know a tree exists. It's there.

I don't have to open up my heart and look inside to know a tree exists. It's there.

I don't have to eat wafers, light candles, light incense, pass the plate, clap my hands, bathe in the Ganges River, bow to Mecca, dance around a totem pole, or shave my head and wave a tambourine at the airport to know a tree exists.

It's there.

I can touch it, climb it, stand under it, pull twigs off of it, hang a tire and swing from it, chop it down, or take too much cough medicine and drive my car into it. Empirical proof of the tree's existence.

So, God, if you do exist and want to prove it to me; in fact, even if you don't
want me to prove it to me (I mean, I don't think the keyboard, chair, library, or scrunched up condom cares one way or another in their repective existences) make yourself obvious to me.

As obvious as a tree.

I'm waiting.

Hmmm.

OK, how about a sapling?

Following Update

2010-05-24T16:40:00.000-07:00

I'm pleased to welcome Kass, who's left a few comments here in the past. I know a lot of you already read her blog, but, in the off-chance you haven't, it's called The K Is No Longer Silent.

I once tried to silent the Ks in my own name, but decided I didn't really like being called Ir.

(Word of warning, Kass. The above is what occasionally passes for humor on this blog.)

Quips and Quotations

2010-05-24T15:15:00.001-07:00

The time not to become a father is eighteen years before a war.

— E.B. White

Archival Revival: 2nd Anniversary Edition

2010-05-20T14:02:00.000-07:00

On May 22, 2008, Shadow of a Doubt made its' debut in cyberspace. Here is that very first post:

Beware of Luddite

Please bear with me. I'm new to blogging. In fact, I'm new to the web/Internet/cyberspace/information highway/21st century. And on top of all that, I'm a little rusty on the typewriter. I do this under duress. The era I grew up in--the 1970s--seemed pretty advanced to me. Now it's like the Old West, and I feel like Festus from Gunsmoke learning how to drive a car for the first time. I was going to start a new paragraph at this very sentence, but, as the title of this blog will attest I'm a Luddite. Not that it matters as the library computer I'm using just informed me that I only have a measly five minutes left. So until next time--oh, shit, what the hell did I do--oh, well, never mind--the computer just gave me a ten minute reprieve. Frankly, I'm surprised this machine hasn't had a nervous breakdown with me using it. Speaking of Gunsmoke--well, Gunsmoke is going to have to wait, as the computer just told me to get the hell off.

I didn't realize that once my time was up on the computer, all I had to do was sign up for the next available one. I was kind of new to libraries as well. Or at least hadn't been in one in awhile. I also didn't realize that I could leave my writing in draft form. I thought I had to publish it then and there, which is why what you just read is so abbreviated. The next day, I returned to the library to finish my thought:

The Once and Future Past

Welcome to my second blog. Or maybe my third. Me and the computer are a bit at odds about that. Then again, I'm a Luddite, so me and the computer are a bit at odds about EVERYTHING! In my previous blog, before I was so rudely interrupted by the library mandated time limit, I was going to pontificate about Gunsmoke. Actually about one particular episode I saw on TV Land not too long ago. Here's what happened. A group, or in Old West parlance, a gang, of desperadoes came upon a solitary farmhouse. First they robbed the farmer and his wife, and then shot and left them for dead! As they were leaving the crime scene, they happened upon Marshall Matt Dillion (no relation to the Brat Packer) and his deputy Festus. Matt and Festus gave chase, but as the farm couple were bleeding to death, first things first, and the bad guys got away. Later that night, that very night, and I should mention that this episode BEGINS that very night, the outlaws were spending it in some old abandoned cabin. "Why are we spending the night in this old abandoned cabin?" cried one "We have to high-tail it out of this state!" "We can't, you fool!" yelled the leader "Matt Dillion saw us. By now they'll have every road in the state blocked off!" Now here's what concerns me. This is the Old West, 18whatever. How in tarnation (Old Westspeak) could they have all the roads blocked off in a single night? It's not like Matt Dillon had a two-way radio strapped to his horse! Speaking of horses, it takes a little time to get back to Dodge City. And remember, they had two people bleeding to death. In a squad car it would've been quicker, sure. But, horses? Eventually, Matt and Festus would've found a telegraph office, but that still should have given the bad guys a good head start. So, how to explain all this? Simple. Whoever wrote that episode grew up in the 20th century. He was used to instant communication, or what passed for it in the 1960s. He couldn't imagine any other way of thinking. This is what science and technology does (even to writers of TV fiction). A way of life people take for granted seems, at best, quaint to the people who come after. At worst, that way of life seems TOTALLY NUTS. Great Grandad didn't have electricity? No lights, no motor cars, not a single luxury? Like Robinson Crusoe, as primitive as can be? Eventually, people come after the people who came after, and the tables are turned. "No, junior, we didn't have Blackberries when I was young. NO, I WASN'T DEPRIVED! I didn't even know what I was missing!..." In conclusion, I suppose the people that come after us, or the people who come after the people who come after us, or the people who come after the people who come after the people who came after--well, you get the general idea--those people might some day produce a Gunsmoke-like show that takes place in, say, 2008, and some future desperado will say, "Matt Dillion's been online by now. He'll have every road in the galaxy blocked off!"

Welcome to my second blog? I was later informed that the whole thing is called a blog, and the components therein referred to as "posts".

Festus, saddle up my horse!

In Memoriam: Frank Frazzeta 1928-2010

2010-05-17T15:12:00.000-07:00

Cartoonist and illustrator. Vampirella. Conan

"What I do is create images, period."

They the People

2010-05-12T13:18:00.001-07:00

I think I'll turn on one of those public affair shows...

"Hello. My name Is Edward R. Trudeau, and today I'm interviewing the noted conservative pundit Basil Hapsburg. Thank you for joining us today, Basil."

"My pleasure, Edward."

"Well, Basil, what do you think of the Health Care Plan that just passed Congress."

"Oh, if only the Founding Fathers knew how their Constitution is being trampled on! Thomas Jefferson is turning over so much in his grave it's making Monticello rock on its' foundations!"

"Let's move on to the bill that would create a Consumer Protection Agency."

"Oh, the Founding Fathers would be simply horrified! From beyond the grave, I can hear James Madison weeping in Dolly's arms!"

"Er, lets move on to environmental legislation..."

"Oh, my, now you have really enraged the Founding Fathers! Why, I bet George Washington is clenching his wooden teeth so hard in frustration right now he'll soon have a mouthful of toothpicks!"

"Well, Basil, since you keep bringing up the Founding Fathers, isn't it true some of them were slaveholders?"

"Edward, I'm ashamed of you! You are being totally unfair! You can't judge people living in the 17th century by the standards of the 21st. The Founding Fathers were products of their times. They were limited by the mores of their times. They lived over 200 years ago, in a vastly different era. No comparison to the era we live in now. Absolutely none. Cut them some slack, why don't you?!"

"I-I guess you're right."

"Of course I am!"

"I'm sorry I ever brought it up."

"I forgive you."

"Well, let's move on to something else. So, tell me, Basil, what do you think about Obama's latest Supreme Court pick?"

"Oh, she mustn't be allowed to serve! It could so upset Thomas Jefferson he might go limp on Sally Hemings!"

In Memoriam: Lena Horne 1917-2010

2010-05-10T10:57:00.000-07:00

Singer. "Stormy Weather." "Can't Help Lovin' That Man." Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music (Tony and Grammy Award-winning Broadway show)

"I no longer have to be a 'credit,' I don't have to be a 'symbol' to anybody. I don't have to be a 'first' to anybody. I don't have to be an imitation of a white woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I'd become. I'm me, and I'm like nobody else."

(Lena made the above comment in 1997, when she was 80--KJ)

Spore-adic

2010-05-04T15:32:00.000-07:00

We all know we should wash our hands after we're done in the bathroom. Especially public bathrooms. We simply don't know who else has been using that public bathroom. We don't know where that user's been or what that user's got. It's not as safe as the bathrooms in our homes. Oh, don't get me wrong. As a courtesy to others, we should wash our hands there, too. But the stakes aren't as high, from the standpoint of our own personal safety and piece of mind. Our bathrooms have been used only by ourselves. Well, I suppose there's an outside chance a home bathroom could have been used by a burglar. If you ever wake up one morning and find your TV missing, make sure to really wash your hands. After all, you don't know where that burglar's been or what that burglar's got.

Still, burglar or not, you're more likely to come across germs other than your own in a public bathroom. Washing your hands limits such encounters but doesn't completely eliminate them. After you've done washing, you have to turn the faucet off. Maybe the person who used the faucet before you didn't wash their hands. Of course, if that person didn't wash his hands, he would have bypassed the sink completely. So the risk factor is actually pretty low. Still, it's kind of comforting that more and more public bathrooms have faucets that turn on and off by themselves. You never know how many maniacs are out there using public bathrooms, and then turning on the faucet just for the hell of it with no attention of actually washing their hands.

If the bathroom has a door, there's the tricky question of exiting it. Maybe that person who didn't wash his hands put those very same unwashed hands on the door handle. To be perfectly safe, you may want to head butt your way out. Just hope the person who head-butted before you didn't have dandruff.

Once you've successfully exited, you may tell yourself, "I walked into a public bathroom and lived to tell about it." Don't feel too secure just yet. Think of all the things you touch outside a bathroom. That button on the elevator, that hand railing along the steps, that magazine we skim through but have no intention of buying. They have all been touched by people who didn't wash their hands.

More and more fast food restaurants expect you to get your own soft drink. That wouldn't be much of a problem if you weren't also expected to get your own plastic lid. It's almost impossible to grab just one lid. Two usually stick together. So what do you do with the extra lid? Put it back? Since I know my hands are clean, it wouldn't be the least bit unsanitary for me to do so. But that person standing next to me with a disapproving look on his or her face doesn't know that. They may be convinced I'm starting the next typhoid epidemic by putting that plastic lid back. Also, I could be setting a bad example. A bad example to someone who didn't wash their hands. Suppose instead of disapproval, that person standing next to me has a look of malevolent glee. "Ah ha" the thinking goes. "If he puts the extra plastic lid back than so, too, will I. Ahahahaha!" So I guess I'll just throw away that extra plastic lid, a plastic lid that may still be around 10,000 years from now. Such environmental degradation could have been avoided had the person behind the counter at Burger King simply gotten that drink for me.

Are unwashed hands the only threat we face? How about our shoes? Think of all the places we walk, including public bathrooms, and on God knows what. I don't know how well germs incubate at the bottom of a shoe, but if you happen see someone karate-kicking open a bathroom door, watch out.

And what about rear ends? Yes, I know they're shrouded with layers of clothing, and that should protect us and those around us. But (no pun intended) have you ever been in a place with public seating, a theater or a bus or a doctor's waiting room, and you can just tell someone's recently been sitting in the same place you're sitting because the seat is warm? Just what is the source of this warmth? Did the person leave behind vapors? Stranger still, sometimes the person leaves actual sweat behind. At least, I hope it's sweat.

Face it, folks. Germs, microbes, spores, pathogens, bacterium, droplets, airborne particles, and microscopic, peripatetic organisms surround us wherever we go, whatever we touch, and wherever, whatever, and whoever, we breathe. The only safe way to go through life is to call NASA and see if they have any surplus spacesuits.

Wait a second. The astronauts went to the bathroom in those things, didn't they?

In Memoriam: Lynn Redgrave 1943--2010

2010-05-03T14:09:00.000-07:00

Actress. Georgy Girl.

Hey there, Georgy girl
Swingin' down the street so fancy-free
Nobody you meet could ever see the loneliness there - inside you
Hey there, Georgy girl
Why do all the boys just pass you by?
Could it be you just don't try or is it the clothes you wear?

You're always window shopping but never stopping to buy
So shed those dowdy feathers and fly - a little bit

Hey there, Georgy girl
There's another Georgy deep inside
Bring out all the love you hide and, oh, what a change there'd be
The world would see a new Georgy girl

Hey there, Georgy girl
Dreamin'; of the someone you could be
Life is a reality, you can't always run away
Don't be so scared of changing and rearranging yourself
It's time for jumping down from the shelf - a little bit

--"Georgy Girl" Performed by The Seekers. Words by Jim Dale and Music by Tom Springfield

(Like the above song? Then see the movie of the same name. Even if you don't like the above song, see the movie anyway. Lynn's just wonderful in it--KJ)

Quips and Quotations

2010-04-30T10:36:00.000-07:00

I loathe the expression "What makes him tick." It is the American mind, looking for simple and singular solution, that uses the foolish expression. A person not only ticks, he also chimes and strikes the hour, falls and breaks and has to be put together again, and sometimes stops like an electric clock in a thunderstorm.

--James Thurber

Archival Revival: Shadow of a Redoubt

2010-04-26T16:34:00.000-07:00

(This post originally appeared on 9/9/09--KJ)

This blog has been pretty political of late. The past two weeks, anyway. For about a month and a half prior to that, however, it was pretty apolitical. Oh, I had a few "Recommended Reading" links to political web sites, but mostly it was dirty jokes, rock and roll, coincidences, and the voices you hear waiting for the light to turn green. Go back farther than that, though, and things start getting political all over again. You may be wondering if I plan it that way. Nope. This blog is whatever's on my mind at any given time. Sometimes I'm musing about kings, other times, cabbages.

It might be better if this blog was apolitical all of the time. Why alienate half the potential audience? I'm sorry but I just can't do it. What you're reading is my take on the human condition, and I can't ignore the presidents, chancellors, prime ministers, premiers, monarchs, potentates, dictators, mullahs, and county sheriffs that preside over said condition. It would be like writing about Las Vegas without the gambling, Cleveland without the ethnic groups, Jerusalem without the religions, Rome without the naked statues, Brooklyn without the "dese" and "dose", California without the wildfires, and Indochina without the Nike factories.

So I'm writing about politics. But what's my ultimate goal? To change hearts and minds? That's what people assume you're trying to do when you get political. Really, when you give any kind of an opinion, no matter how innocuous. Tell somebody that you think Mary Ann was hotter than Ginger, a "fact" that can't be proven one way or the other, and you're nevertheless likely to face resistance. "Mary Ann?! If she's so hot how come she's not the movie star?! Answer me that, huh? Huh?!" (Ah, but she once was. Ever see the one where the coconut falls on Mary Ann's head and she thinks she's Ginger? Sex-x-xy!)

I'll admit it would be nice to change somebody's mind. If by reading one of my posts Sarah Palin could be transformed into a moose-petting, Mother Jones-reading, public option supporting, hippie chick progressive, I might consider even moving to Wasilla. But I really don't think my powers of persuasion are all that powerful.

It's not that I think minds and hearts can never be changed. If you have some sort of multi-billion dollar media blitz, either like that which led to the war in Iraq, or which convinced millions of Americans to watch the season premier of Jon and Kate plus 8 , when just a week earlier they hadn't even heard of Jon or Kate or the 8, then, yeah, people can be swayed. I just don't think I can sway those people. At least not completely. Best I can hope for is to plant a doubt in their minds. A shadow of a doubt.

OK, so if I'm not going to change any body's mind, what other possible reason do I have to give my two cents? Easy. To keep my own mind from being changed.

This blog is where I resist the multi-billion dollar media blitz, the trillion dollar PR push, the quadrillion dollar ad campaign (unless they want to use the AdSense box to the left, in which case I get a cut.)

This blog is my chance to show my resolve, to speak my mind, to be true to myself, and to be firm in my beliefs.

It's also where I can be stubborn, unyielding, obstinate, hardheaded, bullheaded, pigheaded, and just plain mulish. What's that you say? Those are negative personality traits? Why, of course they are! That's why I don't want anybody else with those same traits telling me what to think!

This blog is where I stand up to the status quo, the party line, the conventional wisdom, the received wisdom, the accepted wisdom, the societal norm, the social strictures, the cultural mores, and the p's and q's (which I don't mind at all.) On this blog I refuse to toe any line except the one I myself draw in the sand.

This blog is my outpost, my stronghold, my fortress.

I just hope it's not my Alamo.