Brushes with celebrity

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We’ve all had brushes with celebrities. Working at a large East Coast university has brought lots of them my way.  Some years ago I was in a bookstore in downtown Providence at lunchtime, and I was trying to look at something on a lower shelf, and a tall lanky balding older guy was trying to look at the same shelf, and we got in each other’s way. And we glared at each other.  And – oh Jesus – it was Peter Boyle.

 

 

Partner and I like strolling in Manhattan, and one day we had a twofer: an Edie Falco sighting in a pastry shop (everybody in the place was on his/her cell phone, reporting that Edie was only two tables away!), and a Brad Garrett sighting on Broadway (he was eighteen inches taller than everyone else, and he was fairly radiating don’t-even-think-about-approaching-me!).  Also Daniel Davis, Niles from “The Nanny,” who’d been in the production of “La Cage aux Folles” we’d just seen, smiling in the rain, signing autographs.  Also the guy who played the mayor on “Gilmore Girls,” in line for “Spamalot,” bitchy and gossipy.

 

 

A friend here in Rhode Island is acquainted with a major local politician; she babysits her dogs, for god’s sake.  They were in a burger joint together, and the girl behind the counter squinted at Major Politician oddly. “I’ve seen you on TV,” she said. “Or in the newspaper. Right?”

 

 

Major Politician smiled. “Probably you have,” she said. “I’m Major Politician.”

 

 

The girl thought for a moment, then shrugged. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know who that is.”

 

 

Ah well.

 

 

But sometimes there is a perfect celebrity moment:

 

 

One of my acquaintances is lucky enough to be acquainted with the immortal Candice Bergen.  They were in a local Starbucks, and the barista said: “You look just like Murphy Brown.”

 

 

And Candice Bergen said, without batting an eye: “You know, a lot of people tell me that.”

 

 

Perfect.

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Missing children, Nancy Grace, and Dan Abrams

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Partner and I get up at 7:00 am or a little after. We have slightly different routines. I go into the living room, read my email and drink my coffee; he stays in the bedroom, reads his email, watches “Good Morning America,” and drinks his coffee.

 

 

Naturally I can hear most of the dialogue.

 

 

At 7:30am, “Good Morning America” almost invariably features a story about a missing child.  The child is almost always white, by the way. They usually have the irrational Nancy Grace and the mostly-imperturbable Dan Abrams doing Point Counterpoint on the subject.

 

 

Naturally there’s no real information.  Nancy always assumes the worst, and declares it, and announces that anyone who disagrees with her is a fool and an ivory-tower intellectual and a goddamned liberal.

 

 

Dan Abrams usually points out, mildly, that all the facts aren’t in, and more work needs to be done on the case.

 

 

Nancy explodes, calls Dan an ivory-tower intellectual and a goddamned liberal, and wants to know why more isn’t being done to bring this case to its (obvious) conclusion.

 

 

Some thoughts:

 

 

-        I wonder how many missing children there are in the USA today. 

-        I wonder how many of them are non-white. 

-        I wonder why we so seldom hear about the non-white missing children on “Good Morning America,” and I wonder if it’s because they’re just not considered to be so angelically adorable.

-        I wonder that they pair the astonishingly illogical Nancy Grace with the perfectly reasonable Dan Abrams, and allow her to snarl at him idiotically, just for the sake of TV entertainment.

-        I wonder what percentage of these poor children are ever located.

 

 

And finally: I wonder that the TV doesn’t actually explode with the whole idiotic illogicality of the thing.

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The recirculation of things

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I wrote recently about the "100 Things Challenge." I got a lovely response from a new WordPress blogger who writes under the name LearnShareChange, about how difficult it is to get rid of things because of our sentimental attachments to them.

 

 

How horribly true!

 

 

I love things, all kinds of things.  I am sentimental about them.  I have odd little things from my childhood, things that (somehow!) I have saved for almost fifty years.  One is a prize from a bag of Fritos sometime in the early 1960s, a little plastic coin with a picture of Laika the Russian space dog. It was a Heroes of Space series, and I loved that little dog.

 

 

Over the years, I have accumulated so many more things.  Books, and collectibles, and clothes, and gadgets.  Bags of them, boxes of them.

 

 

But – and here’s the funny thing about it – when someone sees one of my things and says: “I really like that,” I almost invariably give it to them.  Without hesitation.

 

 

They are startled, but they almost always take it.

 

 

My dear friend Sylvia calls this “the recirculation of things.”  She’s a collector too: dolls, toys, all kinds of things.  But she’s the way I am.  She wants things to keep moving.  (Her husband passed away last year, and she spent a lot of time giving away things afterward; she's given me some lovely silver spoons, and a set of Bugs Bunny tumblers.)  She (like me) loves to own things, and see them, and have them for a while, but that’s usually enough: when someone else says that they like the thing, she gives it to them. 

 

 

Usually.

 

 

As do I.

 

 

I love toys.  I adore stuffed animals.  I even keep them in the office.  But when I see the child of a co-worker admiring one of the funny little bears up on the shelf, I usually let them know that, if there’s an animal they can’t live without, I will let them take it.

 

 

Naturally!

 

 

They are just things.  Just silly things.  I suppose there are a few things in the house I couldn’t stand to live without: my Laika coin, and my old teddy bear.  And I think my brother still has my moon-globe in his garage; I was given it for Xmas 1969, five months after the first moon landing, and I still think about it. (I should ask him about that.)  And a handful of other things, small things mostly, with family significance, mostly worthless. 

 

 

Those things I will never give away.

 

 

Everything else, you can have, I think. 

 

 

Fifty years from now, it won’t matter to me a bit.

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Cory Booker

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Hey, Cory Booker. It was very neat of you to pull that woman out of that burning building. And I loved the way in which you addressed Chris Christie on gay marriage. (I’m always thrilled when I see Democrat politicians doing worthwhile things.)

 

 

What the hell were you thinking about on May 20 on “Meet The Press”?

 

 

You sniped at the President’s anti-big business stance, saying that it “nauseated” you.

 

 

But you were, and are, a designated surrogate for the President when you speak.

 

 

Did you remember that on May 20 on “Meet the Press”? Did you realize that you were on television?

 

 

You spent most or all of last week apologizing for what you said, and (contrariwise) defending what you said. You said you were entitled to a mistake, and that it was no big deal

 

 

Meanwhile, the Republicans are gloating and using your words to advance their own position.

 

 

Hmph.

 

 

We had such high hopes for you.

 

 

And now you turn out to be a nudnik after all.

 

 

Ah well.

 

 

(It’s a shame. You were nice-looking, and smart. Until you opened your stupid yap.)

 

 

We’ll find someone else to take your place.

 

 

Bye now.

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For Sunday: a morose Danish take on Donald Duck (not for kids! NFSW!)

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Maybe you’ve read some of the Stieg Larsson books about that tattooed girl who kills bad people. Maybe you’ve seen “The Killing,” with its quiet Danish take on murder.

 

 

So: do you picture Scandinavians as morose neo-Nazi drug-dealing murderers?

 

 

Okay.  Then this video is for you.

 

 

This video is by a Danish comedy group.  It’s Donald Duck and his nephews, and Daisy, and Goofy, and Uncle Scrooge, as you’ve never seen them.  Just so you know: it’s definitely not for kids, and NSFW.

 

 

Enjoy.

 

 

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Getting rid of a hundred things

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There is something running around the Internet right now called the “100 Thing Challenge.”  It is being promoted by a fellow named Dave Bruno, who blogs about simple living.  It is much better, he writes, to simplify our lives by getting rid of things we don’t really need, and to refuse to get more things we don’t need.

 

 

I am in favor of this idea, very much.

 

 

I am also a huge packrat. 

 

 

I have mounted my own informal version of the 100 Thing Challenge several times over the past twenty years.  It’s always successful, more or less, but then I discover after a few months / years that the heaps of things reappear.

 

 

Dave Bruno recommends a three-pronged approach:

 

 

·       REDUCE the number of things you own.  Trash them, give them away, sell them.

·       REFUSE to buy more things you don’t need.  (This one’s tricky. I see a garlic press or a travel steamer and think, “I need that!”  It’s a misuse of the word “need,” I know.  And yet: I didn’t need that wok I bought at Ikea, but it was five bucks, and now I use it regularly.  Unlike the talking meat thermometer I bought at Brookstone, or the cheapo e-reader I bought at Bed Bath & Beyond that didn’t really work very well, or the cheapo MP3 player I bought online that doesn’t work very well . . . )

·       REJIGGER your priorities so that you don’t keep falling back into the same trap.

 

 

There’s a frequent refrain here: don’t be sentimental.  Don’t keep something just because someone gave it to you, or because it reminds you of a dead relative.  Your memories are more precious than those things.

 

 

But I have an issue with this.  Sometimes I keep things specifically because they remind me of people, or places, or pleasant times in my life.  I have the memory, sure, but without something to summon the memory, it’s lost in the whirl.  Then I notice my copy of the King Arthur Cookbook on the shelf, and I remember that I bought it in Padanaram, Massachusetts, in April 2000, on a day trip with Partner, and I remember the weather was cool, and we had a nice lunch in a local restaurant, and I had grilled green beans, and they were very good.  That memory would be lost in the shuffle without something to help me recall it.  

 

 

But I do like the idea of getting rid of things.  

 

 

So let’s get started, shall we?

 

1.     A VHS copy of “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” I don’t need it. I know the whole Charlie Brown Christmas special by heart, including the pauses and the tones of voice and all of the music. (On the other hand, I was given this video by a dear friend, who passed away a few years ago.)  Gulp. Okay. Out it goes to the Salvation Army.

2.     A DVD copy of “Revenge of the Zombies.” I bought it in a dollar store for a laugh, and never watched it.  That’s an easy one. (On the other hand: it takes up almost no space, and it might be good for a laugh on a rainy afternoon one of these days.) This is a slightly easier decision: it goes on the Salvation Army pile.  If I regret my decision, I can probably buy another copy of it at the same dollar store.

3.     A used copy of Janice Dickinson’s autobiography.  I tried reading it a few years ago and found that I just didn’t care about the life of Janice Dickinson.  I have a little problem getting rid of unfinished books, however, so it’s still on the shelf.  Easier decision than the first two.  Salvation Army!

4.     A new copy (unread) of “Gertrude Bell: Queen of the Desert, Shaper of Nations.”  Interesting topic. If I read it, I might learn something about the recent history of the Middle East.  On the other hand, I will probably never read it.  Let’s mark this one “undecided,” shall we?

5.     A whole stack of DVD opera recordings, with librettos.  I bought these over the years, thinking that an intelligent person’s music library really needed copies of “Les Dialogues des Carmelites,” and “Boris Godunov,” and “Lakme.”  I was wrong.  These were not cheap, however. I’ve tried to sell them on eBay, and – surprisingly – there’s not much of a market for used opera recordings, no matter how good they are.  They will sit on the shelf until I find buyers.  (Readers: let me know.  I have a bunch of these.  If you’re an operaphile, drop me a line, and I will give you the whole inventory.  Maybe we can strike a deal.)

 

 

I’m exhausted, and I’ve only gotten up to #5 on the list.

 

 

I can see why they call this a “challenge.”

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Ancient aliens

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Partner and I like to watch those programs on Discovery and TLC and Syfy about Ancient Aliens.  You know: the aliens who built (or helped build) the Pyramids, and Machu Picchu. They designed the Nazca Lines. They fitted together the stones of Tihuanaco.  They brought Prescelly bluestone hundreds of miles, overland, to build Stonehenge. Our ancestors painted pictures of them, and told stories of them.

 

 

I am very happy to believe in alien life.  In fact, I think it’s silly not to believe in alien life.  The universe is utterly bloody vast, and it would be ridiculous to think that we were the only walking talking things in it.  I have two problems with the Ancient Aliens theory, however:

 

 

-        Where did they all go? They were (evidently) all over the place in our ancestors’ days; now they’ve keeping a very low profile.  How come?  Are they afraid of us?

-        Why in the hell would they come here? What do we have to offer? Water? There’s water everywhere in space; if they wanted water, they could probably mine comets.  Metal ore? Hydrocarbons? Nah. I’m with Douglas Adams on this one: the best thing you can say about Earth is that we’re “mostly harmless.”

 

 

I also have a problem with the UFOlogists who keep giving us humanoid aliens, and horse aliens, and elephant aliens, and kitty-cat aliens.  Alien life, if/when we find it, will probably be far more peculiar than we can imagine now. I’ll wager that it doesn’t even use DNA.  Scientists (human scientists) have already come up with a number of other molecules that can self-replicate. (Admittedly they’re amino-acid based, but it’s a step in the right direction.) The aliens, when we finally meet them, will be blobs, or sighing clouds of methane with rubbery coverings, or bundles of sticks, or potted plants.

 

And they will have absolutely no interest in building Stonehenge.

 

(But it’s fun to think about.)

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Genetic origins

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Partner and I are doing one of those DNA analysis things.  Some of them give you health information, and possible relationships with other test subjects; this one is a bargain-basement test (basically the same test the FBI uses to identify murder suspects) which checks and identifies thirteen genes.  It will then compare our genome (or, rather, those thirteen bits of it) to an international database, and tell us our (possible) countries of genetic origin.

 

 

Nothing for sure, of course; it’s too generic for that.  But the results will be interesting.  Origins are mysterious; maybe even a rough idea would be nice.

 

 

The modern USA was founded by lots of Europeans who basically swamped the original population, wiped them out with war and disease, and replaced them.  Australia followed the same pattern.

 

 

But in much of the rest of the world, this was not the case.

 

 

Africa was conquered by Europeans, but never swamped.  India, ditto.   Siberia, ditto.  South America – well, parts of it, anyway. 

 

 

And then there’s Europe.

 

 

Back in 1903, a man’s skeleton was found in Cheddar Gorge in southwest England.  It was dated to approximately 7000 BCE.  Cheddar Man’s mitochondrial DNA was sequenced in the 1990s, and then – just for laughs – it was compared to the mitochondrial DNA of people living in the neighborhood.

 

 

There were found to be two exact matches, and one almost-exact match.

 

 

Nine thousand years later, Cheddar Man still had some relatives in the neighborhood.

 

 

The Maghreb (which includes all of North Africa west of Egypt) is considered to be part of the “Arab world.” Oh, really?  It was, and is, the Berber world.  It absorbed its invaders: the Arabs, the Romans, the Visigoths, the French, the Italians, the Spanish. 

 

 

And best of all:

 

 

Apollonia, about to leave for her most recent European trip, was excitedly talking about visiting her family up on the Alpine heights of northern Italy, and the history of her family’s village, and its pre-Roman roots.  Excitedly she Googled a reconstructed picture of Oetzi the Iceman, the 5300-year-old mummy found near the Austrian-Italian border, not far from her family’s hometown.  “Look at him!” she crowed.  “It’s my uncle Ettore!  It’s my nonno!”

 

 

And, strangely enough (though I didn’t say this to Apollonia), Oetzi looks a little bit like my grandma.

 

 

Origins are mysterious. 

 

 

But let’s wait for the DNA results before we say more.

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Coming attractions: "Magic Mike"

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If you have not yet seen the cover of the May 25 issue of “Entertainment Weekly,” get out of your chair right now and scamper off to your local newsstand and buy a copy.

 

 

It’s a big heavenly picture of Channing Tatum, dreamboat that he is, unbuttoning his shirt and looking right at you, reader, with the devil’s eyes and a funny little I'm-gonna-get-you smile. (I give you a little sample of it above. To paraphrase Garth in “Wayne’s World": when I look at it, I feel funny, like when I climb the rope in gym class.)

 

 

But wait! There’s more! The cover folds out into a full tableau of the four leads of Channing’s new movie, “Magic Mike,” which is all about male strippers: Channing himself, the immense Joe Manganiello, a very nice-looking newcomer named Matt Bomer, and a still-good-looking (if vacant) Matthew McConaughey.

 

 

That cover is a little piece of heaven on earth.

 

 

And may Heaven bless my friend Tab, who gave me his copy of the magazine and graciously said I could keep it. As I said to him yesterday morning: “Today you have made an old man very happy.”

 

 

This movie has been a long time incubating, and there has been much buzz about it. Channing Tatum, who also came up with the idea for the movie, was himself a male exotic dancer, and is refreshingly unapologetic about it (go see his intro dance / monologue from his appearance on SNL a few months ago). There is something really very likeable about him. (Translation: I would cheerfully have his baby, or as many babies as he wants to have.) There was a joke on a recent episode of “30 Rock” about “Channing Tatum’s meteoric rise to fame,” and I get it: where did this guy come from? And why did we not know about him sooner? (I loved watching him goofing around in “21 Jump Street”; he’s like a big kid, and I think it comes naturally to him, and it’s very much part of his charm.)

 

 

 

I don’t mean to slight the other members of the cast of “Magic Mike.”  Manganiello is really wonderful, and he really covers a lot of terrain, and he looks like he would be fun to play cribbage with, if you understand me. Bomer is a nice discovery for me, as I had no idea he existed up until now. McConaughey is – well, he’s not my cup of tea. He fairly radiates dull and shallow; he’s nicely built, but he has a dessicated air, like a piece of salt codfish. But, with a bag over his head, he might serve to while away a dull afternoon.

 

 

If I sound shallow myself, well, surprise, I am shallow. Remember the Gelman-Waxner Rule: the enjoyment you take away from a movie is in direct proportion to the attractiveness of its leading actors / actresses.

 

 

“Magic Mike” premieres June 29.

 

 

Do you think it’s too soon for me to get in line for tickets?

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Tunis and Dream-Tunis

 

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I lived in Tunis for two years. It was (and, I’m sure, still is) a beautiful city.  I lived in a house not far from the shoe market and the gold market and the perfume market, down the street from the coppersmiths' district, within shouting distance of the az-Zeytouna Mosque. My walk to work took me through the busiest part of the tourist / merchant area, past the rug merchants and the spice merchants and the olive-wood merchants, past the British Council library, out through the Bab Bhar, down Avenue Habib Bourguiba, past the French-built Cathedral of Saint Vincent de Paul, past the statue of the fourteenth-century Tunisian historian Ibn Khaldoun holding his book against his chest.

 

 

It was a sunlit city, warm, funny, full of unique and wonderful neighborhoods.

 

 

I dream of it all the time.  Dream-Tunis is not quite the same as the real Tunis in which I lived.  Dream-Tunis is full of dramatic landscapes and vistas.  In Dream-Tunis I’ll walk down a boulevard and see the entire city from a height, or realize that there’s a whole stretch of seacoast I never visited.  Or a mosque, or a whole stretch of old buildings.

 

 

I think it’s because the real Tunis was (to me, in the mid-1980s) just as dreamlike.  I remember, one Saturday, deciding to walk north (an unfamiliar direction) through the medina, to see what I’d find.  I found residential areas, and more markets, and roofed streets, and unroofed streets.  I found a housewares market, like an open-air Walmart.  I found another shoe market.  I found quiet neighborhoods full of palm trees growing between the houses. 

 

 

I didn’t want to go home.  I wanted to keep going forever. 

 

 

I think that’s why I still dream about it.  Tunis was a labyrinth, but all of its secrets and revelations were beautiful.  I always wonder: what would have happened if I’d turned left instead of right?  What doorway would I have found?  Another spice market?  Another thousand-year-old mosque?  Another Turkish palace?

 

 

My friend Nejib (who now directs a large technology operation in the city) keeps inviting me back to see “the new Tunisia.” 

 

 

Maybe I will someday. 

 

 

I hope it’s still as intricate and beautiful as I remember.

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Teaching children to belittle gay people

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John Jackson, the president of Bishop Hendricken High School in Warwick, Rhode Island (which describes itself on its website as a “Catholic, all male, college preparatory high school”) wrote a letter to the editors of the Providence Journal the other day.

The letter contains no real surprises. Jackson (in line with his church) condemns gay marriage, and says that President Obama is assisting in the continuing moral decay of our great country by countenancing gay marriage. He calls gay activity “disordered and immoral.” He resorts to the old “hate the sin, not the sinner” ploy: same-sex love is okay, but gay sexual activity is not, since it doesn’t lead to procreation.  He ends the letter with this grave pronouncement: “As the song goes, ‘God is watching us,’ and I can assure you he is not happy.”

 

 

(How does he know this? I wonder. How do these bejeezly idiots always know for sure what God is thinking?)

 

 

Anyway:

 

 

Well, this Church flunky is getting his face rubbed in it. Parents and alumni of Hendricken are slamming him in print and on Facebook. The point made most often is that his letter comes pretty close to hate speech, and that he is helping to create a negative atmosphere for gay students at Hendricken. (Assuming, of course, there are some. Gosh! Do you think that’s possible?)

 

 

Jackson, on Saturday, apologized for the tone of his letter. Not for his message, mind you, but for his tone.

 

 

The Church still doesn’t understand a thing. They don’t realize that “Catholic priest” has become a virtual synonym for “pedophile” in the public mind, and that Catholic prelates, as portrayed in movies and TV these days, are shown in the same way that Nazi officers were portrayed back in my childhood: stupid, pompous, mindlessly bureaucratic, and cruel.

 

 

Jackson thought (I assume) that he was helping reaffirm morality and good behavior. He did nothing of the sort. He showed himself to be a bigot. And I tell you, if there are any incidents of anti-gay bullying on the Hendricken campus this year, we will hear about them, and little Mister Jackson will be roasted properly. (He will probably be protected by his Catholic-prelate bosses, up to a point. But he’s a layman, so they’ll probably toss him out on his ear if it goes too far.)

 

 

(This is a link, by the way, to the song he referred to above, with the lyric “God is watching us.” It’s a beautiful lyrical song, sung by Bette Midler, about how local and sectarian differences break down when viewed from far away, and that God looks down from Heaven and loves us all. Funny how Jackson got a different message from it.)

 

 

Finally: let’s remember (as Stephen Colbert reminded us recently) that the Jesus portrayed in the New Testament said not word one about homosexuality.

 

 

The Jesus of the New Testament did, however, say the following:

 

Mark 10:14 Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of God.15 Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein. 16 And he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them.

Mt 18:6 But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea. 

Mt 18:10 Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven. 

Mt 18:14 Even so it is not the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish.

Mr 9:42 And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea. 

Lu 17:2 It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones. 

 

 

Now let us think about the Church’s record on pedophilia, and the way in which they continue to protect pedophile priests, and the way they treated young girls in Ireland. Let’s add to the list the fact that John Jackson, President of Bishop Hendricken High School, is telling his students - children! - that gay people are “disordered and immoral,” thus encouraging a hostile environment for gay students at his school.

 

 

He is teaching children to hate other children.

 

 

Better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck.

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For Sunday: the B-52s advise us to "Roam" (if we want to)

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Here’s a blast from the Jurassic past: I remember sitting on the floor in my friend Joanne’s apartment in 1978 or so, listening to the first B-52s album.

 

 

I have never lost touch with them since.

 

 

Here’s some good advice they gave us about twenty years ago: “Roam if you want to; roam around the world.”

 

 

Why not?

 

 

Enjoy.

 

 

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The Library of America

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The Library of America has been around for a couple of decades now.  They print little blue-covered books with black paper covers, and they use onion-skin paper. 

 

 

They are assembling the definitive collection of the Essential American Writers.

 

 

They started with the obvious: Melville, Hawthorne, Twain, the letters and speeches and writings of the Founding Fathers.

 

 

Then they started to think about what made someone an “American writer.”

 

 

I own their edition of George Washington, and two volumes of Abraham Lincoln, and Thomas Jefferson, and Wallace Stevens (everything he wrote fits in one book!), and Flannery O’Connor (ditto!), and Philip K. Dick, and one of their Thoreau volumes, and probably a couple of others I’m forgetting. We have a huge literary history in this country, and LOA is memorializing and perpetuating it in this series.  Their books ain’t cheap, but they’re nice editions, and they're worth owning.

 

 

They are not perfect.  In the Lincoln volumes, I would love to know what Lincoln was responding to when he wrote his letters. Even a summary of the other person’s letter would be good. But, no, they just give you Lincoln.  (I have a collection of Groucho Marx’s letters – no, not from the Library of America, but they should think about reissuing it – and you get everything: not just the letters he wrote, but the letters he received.  Most of the time they are just as clever as his, and you get the context too.  So huh, Library of America.  Get a clue.)

 

 

LOA has covered the nineteenth century pretty completely now, I think.  They are doing the same with twentieth-century lit too (as you can probably tell, with Philip K. Dick included above). 

 

 

They are doing a pretty damned good job of preserving our country’s literature.

 

 

They do a neat little thing online: A Story A Week.  They send an email once a week, with a link to their website, and you can go read a story from one of their publications.  It is invariably something I’ve never read before.  Recently I read a bit of Mark Twain, and a short personal reminiscence by Dreiser, and a very odd thing by Edith Wharton, and a couple of things by people I’d never heard of.

 

 

It’s nice to be reminded that we have such a rich literary heritage.

 

 

And it only took us three hundred years to get there!

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Steve Jobs was a jerk, and other lessons in business administration

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Partner’s work friend Rose recently turned me on to a very interesting blog about work.

 

 

(Yes, I know, this is a dull topic. But if you work in an office environment for a living, keep reading.  You may benefit from this.)

 

 

The blogger’s name is Bob Sutton.  He writes about work: office life, office dynamics, good bosses, bad bosses, communications issues.  He writes about them with great immediacy, and he uses vividly concrete examples that any office worker can understand.

 

 

One recent entry concerns the whole Steve-Jobs-Was-God phenomenon, and how it has muddied the waters re effective management and general good business behavior.

 

 

Jobs, by all accounts, was a genius.  He ramrodded Apple, once a small company, into a big company, a huge company, one of the most innovative companies in the world.  His products are everywhere.  They are light and simple and elegant. 

 

 

Also, Steve Jobs was an asshole.  Reportedly, during his final illness, he went through dozens of nurses before finding a few he liked.  He was a screamer.  He was no fun to be around.

 

 

Here’s a question: if you want to be a visionary business magnate like Steve Jobs, how do you do it?

 

 

Answer: by acting like him.  And if that means acting badly, well, go for it.

 

 

Sutton describes a conference at which he mentioned Steve Jobs, and a huge argument broke out among the attendees: was it necessary to act like a jerk to be successful? Steve Jobs did it, and it worked.  Maybe being a jerk is the secret to success!

 

 

Sutton theorizes that people are projecting their own preferences onto Jobs and his legacy.  If they’re jerks, they feel validated when they discover that Jobs was a jerk.  If they’re not jerks, they’re worried that they might be more successful if they were less pleasant.  And so forth.

 

 

And this is the world of “management theory.”

 

 

Here’s the thing: in my world view, jerk bosses get poked with pitchforks in the world to come.  Life is short, and we are all mild sweet tender creatures, and we need to be kind to each other. 

 

 

If there’s a heaven, I doubt that Steve Jobs is being rewarded there right now for his business success. 

 

 

So: try not to be a jerk. Please.

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Interdict in Wisconsin, AD 2012

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First of all, a disclaimer. I converted to Catholicism in 1975, while I was attending a Catholic college. Like most modern American Catholics, I have run hot and cold on the Church over the (many) years since then. About six or seven years ago, I decided to give the faith one more try: I attended a downtown Mass almost every day at lunchtime, and even joined my local parish.  I found that it was more than enough, and that I couldn’t do it. There was just too much dissonance: so many good people trying to believe so many ridiculous things. I couldn’t bear to look at it anymore, and I left.

 

 

Anyway:

 

 

There was an article in the Wall Street Journal recently about a parish in Wisconsin which is going through a miniature civil war. Some years ago, a couple of ultra-conservative priests were sent in to bring the local parishioners (considered to be a little too free-thinking) to heel. Four hundred of the parish’s nine hundred parishioners signed a petition to get rid of the new priests. The new priests were backed by the local bishop, who is now (gently) threatening the parishioners with interdict.

 

 

What’s interdict? you ask. Ah yes. I last remember reading about it in a book of English history: Pope Innocent III put all of England under interdict, back around the year 1200. In brief, it’s religious quarantine. Within the interdicted area, you cannot get married (as a Catholic), buried (as a Catholic), baptized (as a Catholic), et cetera.

 

 

Are you as amused by this as I am?

 

 

I am not an English peasant circa 1200. I am not frightened of a bishop throwing imaginary thunderbolts.

 

 

And here’s the thing of it: this was the Wall Street Journal reporting on this story. On one hand, the WSJ is a very conservative rag; it’s all about money, and tends to side (in a genteel way) with the whole Fox/right-wing coalition (no surprise, since the WSJ is owned by Murdoch, who also owns Fox).  So the article is careful not to portray the priests and the Church hierarchy as anything but poor misunderstood bosses and owners.

 

 

However: the local parish is losing money. Church attendance is down one-third. Donations are way down. The parish is being forced to close its school.

 

 

And income is, after all, the bottom line.

 

 

So the hierarchy is trying to threaten the parishioners back into the church.

 

 

I say, without any intent at irony: dear Jesus.

 

 

I was discussing this with one of my student workers the other day. She was born Catholic, but has (like me) grown away from the Church, largely because of its various social attitudes – toward women, toward contraception, toward a couple of other issues. She was incredulous. “So the Church is basically saying that they’re going to fire their parishioners,” she said.  “I know what I’d do. Just what I’d do if it were a job. I’d quit before they fired me.”

 

 

Which is exactly what many of the parishioners are doing, evidently.

 

 

Let’s finish with some of Stevie Smith’s poetry:

 

 

The religion of Christianity

Is mixed of sweetness and cruelty

Reject this Sweetness, for she wears

A smoky dress out of hell fires.

 

Who makes a god? Who shows him thus?

It is the Christian religion does.

Oh, oh, have none of it,

Blow it away, have done with it.

 

This God the Christians show,

Out with him, out with him, let him go.

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Movie review: "The Avengers"

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On Sunday, Partner and I finally joined the ten trillion people who have already seen the new “Avengers” movie. (We didn’t go on opening weekend because 1) we don’t like being trampled, and 2) we don’t like excited children screaming along with the movie.)

We both liked the movie a lot.  Well, naturally I liked it: it contains a very large number of my imaginary Hollywood boyfriends. We get Robert Downey Jr. doing his wise-guy genius Tony Stark (although he lost a few points in my book for mooning over the gooey Gwyneth Paltrow); we get the mountainous Chris Hemsworth as Thor, everybody’s favorite thunder god; we get Chris Evans, with his huge shoulders and chest and arms and his hurt/childlike eyes, as Captain America; we get the rumpled cuddly Mark Ruffalo as Dr. Bruce Banner, who occasionally transforms into a very large green CGI creature called the Hulk; and we get Jeremy Renner, all muscled up and deadly-looking, as Hawkeye.

This is not to slight the rest of the cast, who are just as good, if not quite as attractive as the above. Scarlett Johansson is the gymastically adept Black Widow, clever and funny and just as deadly as Jeremy Renner; Samuel L. Jackson is the determined Nick Fury; Clark Gregg is the shy-yet-forthright Agent Coulson, who’s been with us through all or most of the Marvel movies which have brought us to this point; Tom Hiddleston is the aristocratically evil Loki, Thor’s (adopted) brother and the cause of all our sorrows; Stellan Skarsgard (whom I loved in “Pirates of the Caribbean” and in “Mamma Mia”) is a scientist and old pal of Thor. Stan Lee (he’s 90 years old this year!) makes his traditional cameo, of course, and what would a Marvel movie be without that? (And even Natalie Portman, Thor’s girlfriend in one of the previous movies, makes an appearance via photograph.)

The movie has a bouncy plot full of government agents and alien invaders and renegade demigods. Never for a moment did I feel confused about the plotline: even when the fighting is going faster than the eye can follow, you can still pretty much tell what’s going on. It defies belief every few minutes : can you really hit the ground like that and not get hurt?  If a jet figher splits in half, would the pilot really have enough time to eject? If you’re flying a huge invisible gunboat/battlecruiser, don’t you think knocking out one of the engines would make you crash? But none of these matter. It’s fun. Just go with it.

Much of the credit, I think, goes to Joss Whedon (of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Firefly” and “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog”). In this movie, he’s created a world where impossible people live and impossible things happen, but it all seems very calm and tranquil. Most of Manhattan gets blown up in the movie, but – you know what? – it looks like that most days anyway, especially after a good parade, or after they have one of those big street fairs on the Avenue of the Americas.

(Apollonia and I were talking about the movie last week. She wanted to see it, mostly because of Jeremy Renner, who is one of her spiritual boyfriends too, evidently. Then she found out that Gwyneth Paltrow is in it, and this soured her a bit. But her big question was: “How much do I need to know before I see this one? I didn’t see ‘Thor,’ or ‘Iron Man,’ or ‘Captain America.’ Will I be completely confused?”

(I didn’t know the answer last week, but I do now. You don’t need to know a damned thing. This movie is self-propelled. All you need to know is that there all of these crazy-ass superheroes, and they’re all over the place, and they don’t get along so well, but in a pinch they do pretty well.)

I’d tell you to go see it, but judging by the box-office receipts, you already have.

So go see it again.

I just might see it again myself.

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Bristol Palin, defender of the traditional family

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I do not write about the Palins much, but this was far too delicious to pass up.

 

 

Bristol Palin – the little Alaskan hillbilly girl who did so well/poorly on “Dancing With The Stars,” and who had a baby out of wedlock by someone named Levi Johnston, but who now (for some reason) thinks that she’s the ideal spokesperson for teen chastity / traditional values – put this forth on her blog the other day (I give you the whole thing, straight from Patheos.com, and I feel strangely filthy for even having visited the site and given Bristol one more blog hit):

 

 

Is anyone really surprised by the fact that President Obama came out of the closet for gay marriage? What was most surprising is when he explained how his position (supposedly) “evolved,” by talking to his wife and daughters:

 

“It’s interesting, some of this is also generational,” the president continued. “You know when I go to college campuses, sometimes I talk to college Republicans who think that I have terrible policies on the economy, on foreign policy, but are very clear that when it comes to same-sex equality or, you know, sexual orientation, that they believe in equality. They are much more comfortable with it. You know, Malia and Sasha, they have friends whose parents are same-sex couples. There have been times where Michelle and I have been sitting around the dinner table and we’re talking about their friends and their parents and Malia and Sasha, it wouldn’t dawn on them that somehow their friends’ parents would be treated differently. It doesn’t make sense to them and, frankly, that’s the kind of thing that prompts a change in perspective.”

Let’s pause for just one second.  When Christian women run for high office, people inevitably bring up the question of submission.  Once, Michele Bachmann, for example, was asked during a debate, “As president, would you be submissive to your husband?”

 

People automatically assume that a Christian female President isn’t capable of making decisions without her spouse’s stamp of approval.  (I should add female Republicancandidates –liberal women don’t get the same kind of questions.)

 

So are all those reporters who feared excessive family intervention in the White House all up in arms over the President’s announcement yesterday?  Um.  Not quite.

 

Liberals  everywhere are applauding him for his bravery and his wisdom.

 

So let me get this straight – it’s a problem if my mom listened too much to my dad, but it’s a heroic act if the President made a massive change in a policy position that could affect the entire nation after consulting with his teenage daughters?

 

While it’s great to listen to your kids’ ideas, there’s also a time when dads simply need to be dads.  In this case, it would’ve been helpful for him to explain to Malia and Sasha that while her friends parents are no doubt lovely people, that’s not a reason to change thousands of years of thinking about marriage.  Or that – as great as her friends may be – we know that in general kids do better growing up in a mother/father home.  Ideally, fathers help shape their kids’ worldview.

In this situation, it was the other way around.  I guess we can be glad that Malia and Sasha aren’t younger, or perhaps today’s press conference might have been about appointing Dora the Explorer as Attorney General because of her success in stopping Swiper the Fox.

 

Sometimes dads should lead their family in the right ways of thinking.  In this case, it would’ve been nice if the President would’ve been an actual leader and helped shape their thoughts instead of merely reflecting what many teenagers think after one too many episodes of Glee.

 

Let’s see if we can pick some main points out of this morass:

• -        President Obama changed his mind on gay marriage just because he didn’t feel like rationalizing traditional marriage to Sasha and Malia.
• -        In other words: President Obama is a big pussy who lets his kids push him around.
• -        Watching “Glee” makes you gay, or at least gay-friendly.
• -        Babies are best brought up in a traditional mommy-daddy household.
• -        Michelle Bachman would make a terrific president.
• -        Tradition is always the best guide for determining social norms.
• -    Bristol is very up-to-date on Dora the Explorer.  I like to think I keep up with children's programming, and I never even heard of Swiper the Fox.

 

Take a moment to absorb the delicious irony of all of the above.

 

 

Now let us turn to some very funny celebrity retorts to Bristol’s blog:

 

 

JWoww: "Bristol should keep her uneducated ignorant mouth shut... If Ur living in the past u wouldn't have a kid w/out marriage #hypocrite. It's 2012!” And later: “My best friend will get married one day and not just have civil union with his man. Stop hating people."

 

 

Sherri Shepherd: "Sarah Palin educated Bristol... and not blaming Bristol, but I'm blaming Bristol being young & not exercising good judgment."

 

 

Samantha Ronson: "'We know that in general kids do better growing up in a mother/father home.' really bristol palin? how's your kid doing?"

 

 

Lo Bosworth: "Bristol Palin - you so silly, girl."

 

 

Perez Hilton: "‏I think I need to give Bristol Palin a good massage. Girlfriend needs to RELAX!!!"

 

 

Amber Riley, cast member of “Glee”: "We support you @BarackObama and commend you for taking a stand. #equalityforall #loveislove #gleesupportsObama"

 

 

To which fellow cast member Lea Michele responded: "Amen."

 

 

To which I add my own little “Amen.”

 

 

(Bristol, babe: your mother is giving you bad career advice. You're way out of your depth here. Go home.)

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Mitt Romney, high-school bully

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First, allow me to give you the following charming news story, in its (mostly) entirety, from the Washington Post:

 

Mitt Romney returned from a three-week spring break in 1965 to resume his studies as a high school senior at the prestigious Cranbrook School. Back on the handsome campus, studded with Tudor brick buildings and manicured fields, he spotted something he thought did not belong at a school where the boys wore ties and carried briefcases. John Lauber, a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney, was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality. Now he was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye, and Romney wasn’t having it.

“He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann’s recollection. Mitt, the teenage son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, kept complaining about Lauber’s look, Friedemann recalled.

A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.

 

The incident was recalled similarly by five students, who gave their accounts independently of one another. Four of them — Friedemann, now a dentist; Phillip Maxwell, a lawyer; Thomas Buford, a retired prosecutor; and David Seed, a retired principal — spoke on the record. Another former student who witnessed the incident asked not to be identified. The men have differing political affiliations, although they mostly lean Democratic. Buford volunteered for Barack Obama’s campaign in 2008. Seed, a registered independent, has served as a Republican county chairman in Michigan. All of them said that politics in no way colored their recollections.

 

“It happened very quickly, and to this day it troubles me,” said Buford, the school’s wrestling champion, who said he joined Romney in restraining Lauber. Buford subsequently apologized to Lauber, who was “terrified,” he said. “What a senseless, stupid, idiotic thing to do.”

 

“It was a hack job,” recalled Maxwell, a childhood friend of Romney who was in the dorm room when the incident occurred. “It was vicious.”

 

“He was just easy pickin’s,” said Friedemann, then the student prefect, or student authority leader of Stevens Hall, expressing remorse about his failure to stop it.

 

The incident transpired in a flash, and Friedemann said Romney then led his cheering schoolmates back to his bay-windowed room in Stevens Hall.

 

Friedemann, guilt ridden, made a point of not talking about it with his friend and waited to see what form of discipline would befall Romney at the famously strict institution. Nothing happened.

 

Romney is now the presumed Republican presidential nominee. His campaign spokeswoman, Andrea Saul, said in a statement that “anyone who knows Mitt Romney knows that he doesn’t have a mean-spirited bone in his body. The stories of fifty years ago seem exaggerated and off base and Governor Romney has no memory of participating in these incidents.”

 

Some essay questions:

·       Do you believe Mitt Romney when he says he doesn’t remember this incident?

·       Do you think it matters?

·       If he does remember it, and is lying about it, do you think it matters even more ?

·       Do you remember your high-school years?

·       In particular, do you remember what you did in your senior year?

·       Again: do you believe Mitt Romney when he says he doesn’t remember this?

·       Are you as repulsed as I am when his spokesperson says “these stories seem exaggerated,” when they’re corroborated by five different people, some of whom have apologized to the victim?

·       For whom are you voting in November?

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For Sunday: Steppenwolf perform "Magic Carpet Ride"

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Another ancient video. I’ll forgive you if you don’t listen to the whole thing; it’s only about the first minute and a half that are good. Then it gets psychedelic and wild and incomprehensible.

 

 

Enjoy.

 

 

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Chaotic television

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I was watching one of the twelve thousand episodes of “Law & Order” the other day.  It was very restful.  I knew exactly what time it was – twenty-four minutes after the hour – when Lenny Briscoe and his partner (I forget which one) came charging into the conference room to arrest the arrogant lawyer / perp.  It’s always twenty-four minutes after the hour when that happens.  How about the motion to suppress? Around thirty-nine minutes after the hour.   Anguished meeting between the cops and the DA, concerning the tainted evidence?  Maybe forty-four minutes after the hour.

 

 

We human beings do like our routine.

 

 

But sometimes we like a little chaotic activity too.

 

 

“Twin Peaks,” created by David Lynch back in the early 1990s, was sublimely chaotic.  We had no idea what was going on, and it was wonderful.  Was it supernatural?  A crime ring?  Someone’s dream? A Gothic melodrama?  A mixture of all four?  (Unfortunately, by the second season, it was quite apparent that the writers themselves had no idea what was going on.  It became tedious.)

 

 

Around that same time David Lynch also created “On The Air,” about a TV network in 1957 airing a live variety show.  Things go impossibly chaotically wrong, but (perversely) the show is a huge hit.  (“On The Air” lasted three episodes in the USA.  I bought a Japanese video with all seven filmed episodes on it, and I die laughing whenever I watch it.)

 

 

There is also an Irish TV program called “Father Ted.”  It began as a sharply satirical show about three good-for-nothing Catholic priests – a handsome middle-aged layabout con man, a young simpleton, and an elderly terror – who are banished to Craggy Island, off the west coast of Ireland, where they can do little harm.  Over the three years of the series, the show evolved into complete lunacy.  Bishops get kicked in the arse.  Mrs. Doyle’s mole keeps moving from one side of her face to the other.  Brilliantly chaotic!

 

 

And, just a few years ago, a youngster named Thu Tran created a bizarre little show called “Food Party” on IFC.  It was puppets and dark humor and food all tossed together.  You may be able to find it still; she made two seasons of it, and it was one of the funniest / richest things on TV, and it was completely chaotic.

 

 

Chaos is refreshing: it's a jolt of electricity straight to the cerebral cortex.  It shocks you into thinking.  To quote Donald Barthelme: chaos is nourishing.

 

 

 

It's also exhausting.  I can only take a little at a time. 

 

 

 

Which is why formula TV shows like “Law and Order” have their place in the lineup too.

 

 

Now excuse me, Gertrude.  I have to put some soup into my envelope.

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