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Kindergarten Cop & The Don

Arnold Schwarzenegger and Donald Trump are Bombastic Bushkin types. If you don’t get the reference don’t worry — you’ve likely got a stronger grasp of Tik Tok than I do. Point is, neither of these guys is nearing runner-up status for the National Salt Of The Earth Awards. They are flamboyant sorts who made their bones via capitalism before transitioning to celebrity. It isn’t a uniquely American phenomenon, but we do it with a certain panache. Where does one go once he has achieved tremendous wealth? I always believed the answer to be “home,” but I was wrong. Power is the only thing that surpasses wealth, and for your average Arnie or Don, politics is the next logical move. And so they made that move, with Arnold ascending to govern the largest state in the nation and fourth-largest world economy. Don, being the pesky alpha that he is, had to one-up Arnold and go for a slightly more elevated position.

These honorable, solemn men crossed paths when they hosted the reality TV show “The Apprentice.” Trump started the show and Arnold ushered it out, rather abruptly. This mish-mash of facts led to a nasty exchange on Twitter when Trump took office and the entire planet was dumping on him. Arnold joined the pile-on and Don noted that he (Arnold) had essentially killed the greatest television franchise in history. I’d put The Honeymooners in that slot, but let’s face it, Trump has a hyperbolic streak. This made it personal for Schwarzenegger.

Cut to the present. Trump, still the sitting president but with no pocket change and a ticking parking meter, has seen his Twitter account pulled. This was his last avenue to get the word out, crazy as that word might occasionally be. They were tagging his every utterance with an approved Jack Dorsey message that said “Please Disregard This Kook” but he still had a podium. Now that podium is gone and the most active piehole in the land has had the Denver Boot clamped on said pie and said hole. Arnold, however, still has an active Twitter account. This gave him an opening while reaffirming that he’d failed to reach the heights of his orange competitor.  This led to the spectacularly enjoyable and absurd moment that we saw yesterday.

Schwarzenegger, sensing his Apprentice adversary in Terminator crosshairs, posted a seven-minute video complete with a soundtrack so stirring it made the score for Total Recall play like the “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic.” He compared Trump to Hitler, a hackneyed claim that’s been overused. I believe Trump still has some heavy lifting to do to attain Hitler status and his good standing with Netanyahu makes reaching these Fuhrer heights problematic. But nobody asked me. Point is, Arnie made this comparison using the kind of personal flair that rocketed him to stardom despite a ridiculously thick Austrian accent and neck so wide that no man-made shirt collar could contain it. For seven minutes he spilled on about a memory “so painful” that he’s never mentioned it publicly. You see, before making it in the Land of Opportunity, and as a young boy post WW2, Arnold would watch his alcoholic father drown his sorrows in front of their flaming hearth, tears in eyes, regretting that he had not done enough to stop the Nazis. And, by extension, Arnold suggested that millions of Americans were in for some serious fireside weeping if they refused to repent.

Absurdity is relative, but we’ve set the new bar in America. That two guys like Trump and Schwarzenegger could blaze such a trail is crazy enough. They make Reagan’s “Bedtime For Bonzo” roots seem solid as Abe Lincoln munching cornbread in his Indiana log cabin. Propping up Joe Biden as a “return to normalcy” or national soul-saver is rich. He famously called Trump a clown, but I’d say Trump is more a PT Barnum character. Nobody’s got anything on Uncle Joe in the clown department. He’s never come equipped with an Obama or Clinton level intellect, even when all of his neurons were firing. He’s an empty suit propped in place by a powerful national party that knew, under no circumstance, could the phrase “second term” be uttered. We’re less than a week into Trump (finally) conceding and the most logical move the New Order could think to make is deleting his Twitter account, invoking the 25th Amendment, and starting impeachment proceedings with just seconds on the clock. Biden, for his part, went full-Schwarzenegger and likened Republicans who backed Trump to Nazis. Swell, that should calm the restless millions and help lower the national temperature by a few degrees. It’s not like we’re in the middle of a pandemic with bigger fish to fry.

I typically avoid such pontificating and end my pieces with a self-consciously pithy line or two .. but I’m all out at present. New year, New me. Look for those World View campaign signs to appear on lawns in short order — we’re just getting the color scheme worked out.

You Down With CCP?

Yeah .. you know me.”

Easy come, easy go” is a decent idiom. So is “hard come, easy go,” even if it never caught on much. Any combination of coming and going, with applicative difficulty, works, actually. At the end of the day (or any other time, really) that’s all there is to life. The day comes and goes, the night, the morning, the minute, the second. Thus the need for religion — to give us all a sense of something permanent. Of course, religions come and go, too. As do gods and goddesses, newspapers, and software updates. This brief streak of profundity will pass as well, so please keep reading.

I had a Jewish girlfriend when I was younger and she described a philosophical exchange with a Muslim student at college. He wanted to know why, if “your people don’t believe in an afterlife” she didn’t go around “screwing people over left and right.” Troubled by the idea, she called home and asked her mother the same question. “You tell him,” Mom asserted, “that we just aren’t that kind of people.” This has since come to fill my definition of a “good answer.”

Nothing much is adding up these days. Some 25 years back, I had the idea of a burgeoning ‘Internet’ explained to me by a young, rotund, computer whiz on Ken Kesey’s farm. Best I could understand, it involved millions of individuals, all of whom would be equipped with increasingly small and portable computers, being linked to central data servers. Those servers would, in turn, be linked to one another, and voilà — to quote John Lennon — the world would live as one. But they didn’t figure for Mark David Chapman. They didn’t figure for the “individual” part being as powerful as the “connected” part.

A friend of mine, pre-election, was troubled by various conspiratorial ideas being voiced by a family member. He told me that his “bullshit detector” was going to be on its highest setting in the months to come. There are, of course, no conspiracies; just as there are no coincidences. This mass migration to Texas, therefore, can’t be conspiratorial. I know more people making this move at present than I do those who have contracted COVID or those espousing conspiracy theories. Like Texas weather, this fact is subject to rapid change. But it’s happening all around. Major companies like Oracle, HP, and Tesla are making this move, as is my niece, best friend, and (potentially) my brother. What gives?

Here’s what I know about Texas: It was where my Uncle Marvin came from, and he could detect bullshit rather well. He was an Air Force man who married my mom’s sister, June. Back then, Texans epitomized America to young, impressionable Scottish women growing up at the end of World War 2. June moved to America and started a family with Marvin, eventually settling in California. My mother followed a similar migrational path, working for the British Embassy in D.C. and flying for American Airlines. She came to California before her sister and went to work in San Francisco where she met my dad.

You’re all over the place,” to quote Meadow Soprano, speaking to a rapidly spiraling brother A.J. Yes, yes I am .. but I have yet to move to Texas. I’m back in California and have been for some time now. California is, somewhat obliquely, the center of everything at present. It’s the central, central data server; home to Steve Job’s garage, Zuckerberg’s Tahoe and San Francisco spreads, and Jack Dorsey’s Sea Cliff mansion. San Francisco is still that oddest of places: a certified shithole on several levels, yet possessing vistas that will knock your billionaire socks off if you want to hole-up and work remotely in a bayfront estate.

When my Uncle Marvin first visited San Francisco, the Free Love movement was at its height. (Free Love — there’s a concept.) He, June, and their growing family stayed with my parents at their home in Greenbrae, a newly-established, somewhat sleepy burg in Marin County, California. This was the last pre-Me juncture. My older brother and cousins had all arrived but I had not. Dad took my uncle for a tour of San Francisco, noticing that Marv got rather quiet as they drove through Haight Ashbury. This was peak psychedelics Haight; peak hippie-hippie-paint-your-tongue-blue and protest The Man while copulating in the streets Haight. When Marvin did finally speak up, he was concise and to the point. “Dick,” he told my dad, “these people are fucking insane.”

Aaaaaand … scene.

Faucian Flubs

Gaylord Perry he ain’t ..

I wish to retract my unmitigated praise for Tony Fauci, as asserted here some months back. It’s got little to do with whether he’s been an unfaltering source of invaluable information and guidance during our Season of Designated Distancing. The words “definitive claim” and “Coronavirus” rarely appear in the same legitimate sentence. Rather, it has to do with the first pitch that Fauci threw out at the Washington Nationals’ season-opener baseball game this past July.

Nevermind that the baseball season traditionally begins in April, not July. 2020 has been a year of abandoned normalcy and we’ve all (mostly) accepted this. This was all the more reason for projecting a strong image. If, in this era of 240-character tweets (up from 120!) you’re still clinging to the antiquated notion that “image isn’t everything” then I can’t help you. Clearly, huge and consequential decisions are now made on the basis of a snapped cellphone photo or poorly considered sentence typed out on the same device. This isn’t new, of course. When Kennedy took the 1960 election from Nixon (purportedly with a little help from his old man and Richard Daley in Chicago) some traced the win back to Tricky Dick’s poor appearance in their televised debate. Nixon lacked Kennedy’s boyish good looks, full hair, and TV-ready manner. He perspired noticeably and had five-o’clock shadow. And while many claimed he beat Kennedy on a substantive level, it didn’t matter. Kennedy looked better, ergo Kennedy won the debate. You can question whether such things should be relevant, but it’s another matter to question whether they are.

It takes a substantial helping of narcissism to run for president. The particular strain of narcissism is largely irrelevant and down to public taste. Trump’s brand is considered obnoxious by many, entertaining by others, but always front and center. Obama, by contrast, may seem a humble, folksy character, but the man just put out his second autobiography before the age of 60 and it’s 800 pages long. The audio version goes on for 29 hours in Barry’s dry-cool, you-were-so-lucky-to-have-me timbre. Point is, self-love is part of the deal; it’s as essential as teeth-whitener on a news anchor or foam on a rabid dog.

But self-love does not an adequate first-pitch make, which brings me back to Tony Fauci. At first glance, he, too, seems a humble man. He’s barely five feet tall, bespectacled in scholarly frames, and speaks in measured, calm sentences. There was much for me to admire at first. He’s Italian-American, born in the most solid of birthplaces, Brooklyn, New York. His parents were pharmacy owners and the young Fauci made prescription deliveries for the family business. When this pandemic hit, calm authority was in short supply, but that short supply was nicely packaged in Anthony Fauci. And, from where I was standing, it didn’t hurt that he was a huge baseball fan.

Cut to five months later at the Washington Nationals’ season opener. The scene was Fauci-ready with nary a soul in the stands and the diminutive public leader strode to the mound with the confidence and authority of one who can clear a major league baseball stadium via public decree. He was wearing the appropriate gear .. a Nationals’ jersey and matching mask. And then he let loose with what had to be one of the worst first-pitches in the history of ceremonial baseball. It wasn’t that he ‘bounced it’ or failed to reach home plate. It wasn’t that he threw from the front of the pitcher’s mound or well wide of the catcher. It was that, well, one would have to rehearse such an effort in the same way one presumably does a ‘normal’ first pitch to make it go so awry. Despite his being aligned in somewhat traditional fashion, the ball was ‘thrown’, to use a kind term, in the general direction of the home dugout. It was akin to having someone attempt to play a ceremonial first-flute at the symphony season opener, and then shove the instrument up his nose. Except it lacked grace and purpose.

I can hear the protests of “what a ridiculous concern” or “this man has bigger things on his mind.” And they are acknowledged as appropriate and reasonable. But in this anomalous age, that which doesn’t matter frequently matters most. This isn’t novel, but it’s accelerated. Life is neither fair nor reasonable. Masks, no masks, two weeks to flatten the curve, 95% vaccinated efficacy? Hey, I don’t need it belt-high and over the plate, but somewhere in the ballpark would be nice.

The Way We Were

It was some effect, that Streisand Effect. I was under the mistaken impression that it meant whatever annoys Barbra Streisand most is bumped to the top of Google searches. Technically, I was wrong. But interestingly, the searches turn out the same either way. I’m calling this the Monaco Effect, which up to this point had something to do with Formula One race cars.

What an age we’re living in. I’ve been cranking out these blog posts for a long while now and chalk my scribbling longevity up mostly to misplaced narcissism. But I’ve also been careful to keep my themes consistent with the rhetorical question (and titular qualifier) “Who Asked Me?” Truly, nobody gives a shit what anybody else thinks unless it’s that you’re unusually intelligent, attractive, or funny. So I’ve written a lot about sports, people, and music. Where I do brush up against the political, I tend to couch my opinions in concessions to what I imagine to be the opposition view. Or I simply lean into humor, or what passes as such for me. The public figures I’ve admired have tended to be publicly apolitical. I don’t think it’s terribly difficult to tell where someone is coming from, but I may be wrong. There have been rare moments in my life where I’ve confided a true take to someone who has known me for a long while and have been amazed by the reaction.

Never have such revelations been more volatile. I was at a small party a long while back in New York, speaking to two young dudes who were recent Julliard graduates. I mentioned that I preferred the Kinks to the Beatles and their response was beyond insulting, bordering on challenging, or even threatening. A friend of mine was at a costume party in San Francisco some years back, dressed as Joe DiMaggio. A young guy came up to him and said “I know this is a costume party, but I’m a Red Sox fan, and just seeing you wear that Yankees cap makes me want to punch you in the face.” Both these incidents involve male stupidity, but there is very much a female and inter-sexual equivalent. And there is a precise political parallel.

The thing is, it feels good to win. It feels good to have our opinions or identity validated and to see those who mock that identity crushed. Even when we stay quiet or ‘fake it’ in a practiced, stealth manner, we’re not immune to this very human truth. It’s inescapable and seemingly unavoidable. And while it’s legitimate to point out that this self-validating, victorious feeling often dissipates quickly, it would be disingenuous to claim that it’s inconsequential or doesn’t return.

I can’t recall a time that was riper for conspiracy theories. Tin-foil hat sales are through the roof. To argue that it’s some kind of mass hysteria is to discount the reality of diametrically opposed versions of the “truth” being asserted daily. This is the Grand Paradox of the information age. Where we may have assumed that more people having access to more information at greater speed emboldens a democracy, there’s a key addendum: More people are being fed disinformation, more channels are being suppressed, and all of it is happening exponentially faster and on an unimaginably larger scale. Still, the Streisand Effect is real and people will get at what you try to obscure or hide.

Billy Joe Shaver died last night. How’s that for a non-sequitur. The thing is, he was one of the greatest songwriters of all time, yet many don’t know his work. I’d urge anyone unfamiliar to listen to “Ragged Old Truck,” or “I’m Just An Old Chunk Of Coal,” or “You Just Can’t Beat Jesus Christ.” These are works of art. This is all I’m certain of anymore. And those guys at the party can go fuck themselves — Ray Davies rules.

November Rain

American elections and Thanksgivings share much in common. Technically, one is biennial and the other annual, but the intolerable aspects of each often lead to participants skipping a year. A single Thanksgiving may pass without disruption, but if you divide them into four and eight-year spans, the likelihood of an explosive shit show increases exponentially. A good Thanksgiving follows a set pattern: polite hellos and greetings at the front door followed by “take your coat off,” cocktails sipped in initial moderation, and the bird served late afternoon. By dessert, things get notably looser, booze and tryptophan take hold, and opinions slip through the cracks of sobriety. The kids retreat to the family room to get high and make fun of the old folks. A bad Thanksgiving ends in total disintegration; profanity screamed, plates broken, accusations of lives ruined, etc. After enough eight-year spans come and go, kids assume the pathetic adult role (save that even more troubling uncle who persists in drawing cartoons somewhere in a corner), and the simulation continues. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Our Thanksgivings often pitted my father against my Uncle Ned. Ned was a dead-ringer for the ‘Anderson’ next-door-neighbor character on Beavis and Butthead. He was the “conservative” uncle, childless and married to my grandmother’s sister, Aunt Adele. He called her “Mrs. Hib” — short for Hibbert. My dad was a fairly conservative sort, too, but we all need extremes to cement our starring role in the Hero’s Journey. Next to Ned, Dad was Jane Fonda atop a North Vietnamese tank, smoking a doobie and telling the pigs back home to kiss his ass. The Thanksgivings I remember most were in the 1970s when the old man wore his sideburns long and favored high-heeled Florsheim dress boots. By evening’s end, the conversation inevitably turned to subjects like the draft, presidents past and present, and, from my dad’s increasingly emboldened perspective, Ned’s asshole views. Dad was drafted during the Korean War but never saw action, serving instead in the Signal Corp in Panama. He reckoned the best thing about the army was “it teaches you to take shit from assholes,” something he figured was inevitable in a life long enough lived. Ned had a deferment during World War II, performing what was considered an “essential” job as an executive at the American Can Company. Ned’s childless status and military deferment gave Dad what he considered moral high ground and license to pass judgment on his elder uncle and his hawkish views.  What did this never-drafted man know about the military and how could he share a father’s empathy for his sons?

Fortunately, none of our Thanksgivings ended in complete melt-down, and for this, I credit Uncle Ned’s steady demeanor and tempered approach. I’m not sure I would have fared as well, faced with my father’s increasingly animated taunts. “Oh bullshit, Ned, BULLSHIT. You were a draft-dodger. DRAFT-DODGER!!” The universe leans curiously toward equilibrium, though, and the old man soon had to endure my pre-adolescent, pitch-perfect imitation of him coming from the next room. “Oh fuck you, Wiseass,” he’d say before the de-escalating relief of laughter kicked in and Mom served the pumpkin pie and coffee.

It kind of feels like an eighth-year Thanksgiving these days, as we roll toward November, quarantined, masked, and a bit nuts. De-escalating laughter is in short supply, despite having more than enough to make fun of. I’m placing the blame on smaller families and the lack of alternate uncles. You see, my grandmother came from a large Catholic family with twelve kids (it would have been fourteen, had the twins not died at birth.) She had multiple sisters, my Aunt Alice among them. Alice was the elder and she was married to Uncle Mick. I never met Mick but he assumed legendary status in my mind via Dad’s stories about him. Mick was fond of the grape, didn’t care much for work, but had a caustic wit and razor-sharp mind. He could recite voluminous lines of poetry by memory and was a voracious reader. Aunt Alice was the bread-winner and had a job at Podesta Baldocchi, the famed San Francisco florist. One year, Uncle Ned decided to pull some strings and get Mick a job at American Can — a favor for which Mick never forgave him. I’m not sure how long Mick lasted at the can company, but my dad said his most remarkable career accomplishment was finding what proved to be an undiscoverable hiding place for his bottle of hooch. The circumstances of Mick’s death, some years later, were re-told admiringly in the family. The corner grocer was the last to see him after he’d purchased his daily bottle of vino. He’d died in the middle of his afternoon nap, the bottle half-finished, and a book of poetry resting comfortably on his stomach.

I’m not sure where the Ned-Mick story fits in with the approaching November election, but it makes for substantially more pleasant reading.

Toasted Corn Pops

Sometimes, I think it’s a shame when I get feelin’ better when I’m feelin’ no pain” – Gordon Lightfoot

California has three seasons. They are, to quote Bugs Bunny’s great adversary Elmer Fudd: Duck, Wabbit and Fire. We are currently in the latter, which means it’s time for our own more regal Fudd-proxy to shine. Now is when Governor Gavin Newsom dons his best Golden Bear khaki suit and, like some kind of reverse-phoenix, returns to the ashes. It’s a striking look for the tall, gel-haired, toothsome politician, and he knows it. Where former Gov and gap-toothed action star Arnold Schwarzenegger shone behind an oak desk with a stogie in hand, the current head of state prefers the subtle hue of an obscured sun and plenty of  Blade Runner gravitas. Newsom is also fond of the fire-seasonal, period-laden Preachy Tweet, like “Climate. Change. Is. Real.” It gives those cavemen Yorba Linda deniers reason for pause. Just out of the tweeting frame, beyond his well-coiffed bean, one can find failed, charred PG&E transmission lines that pre-date Gavin’s Redwood High days (my alma mater — home of the Giants!) by some forty years. Further still is acre after acre of crowded, toasted timber, and, in the ominous distance, motionless windmills upon golden hills. Finally, one finds Newsom’s denizens: powerless, hot, breathing smoked air, sitting in the dark.

As with pronoun preference and grievance qualification, there is no one answer to why the forests burn every year. California is a non-binary state and skies brown for a multitude of reasons. Climate change is the canopy and big top of blame, but underneath is a multi-ringed circus of triggers. Failed electrical infrastructure and unchecked timber (despite what the Sierra Club preaches) have provided plenty of spark and kindling. And PG&E, our electrical utility, is to corporate arson what Ted Bundy was to serial killing. Historically, the state has burned. But it didn’t always have forty million inhabitants. Native Americans practiced controlled fires and tended to keep their own tented McMansions on the reservation. That was a long time ago, though, and complexity abounds where the white man multiplies.

The important thing, in an election season, is that the Governor’s photo-ops keep coming. Between wildfires and wildfire-viruses, Gavin has plenty. To be fair I don’t know much about the man, besides his having an affair with his best-friend campaign manager’s wife and playing on the same Little League team as my childhood buddy’s kid brother. His ex-wife is currently dating Trump Jr, which lends sufficient insight into the world of political power. He’s family friends with the Gettys, which puts him on another stratum of Marin County elite. And he’s well-attuned to the first rule of politics: people always listen to those with more money, teeth, and hair. Add height to that trio and you’ve got gubernatorial, and potentially presidential material. Conversely, you’ve also got the potential for a colossal fall from grace, which tends to happen when you mix righteousness with abysmal air quality. It’s all about timing and message and Newsom has pushed his chips forward on shiny green deals and apocalyptic admonishment. Obviously, he has his sights set on loftier perches.

But enough of that. Everybody’s choking on the political these days. “Don’t leave home without a mask” has become “don’t leave home.” These scribblings are proof of just how fucked-up one’s brain becomes without the outlet of daily, moderate exercise. Small wonder those San Quentin inmates get so jacked in such short order. Thank God for the Joe Biden Corn Pop story.

Corn Pop, for the few who still don’t know, was a bad dude. He ran a gang at the same Delaware pool where Biden lifeguarded in his golden youth. Back then, you weren’t allowed in the pool sans bathing cap if you favored the Pomade, but the Pop wasn’t one for rules. This riveting hodgepodge of circumstances set up the great Joe Biden – Corn Pop Parking Lot Showdown of nineteen-sixty-something. Replete with rusty rain barrel straight-blades and bicycle chains, it’s a glorious, glorious tale, impervious to succinct retelling, even with the benefit of a laptop computer and time to think. So you can imagine where Biden went with it. For those who have yet to Google “Joe Biden Corn Pop story”, I urge doing so. There’s so little left to rise for on a smoky morning, but this one might just keep you going until skies clear. The highlight of the story (blink and you’ll miss it) is when Biden disses the Pop by referring to him as “Esther Williams.” Williams, a competitive swimmer and actress, starred in such delicately-titled motion pictures as “Million Dollar Mermaid” and “Dangerous When Wet” (don’t have to be Fellini to figure out that last one.) It just wasn’t in the cards for an urban-dwelling, swimming-capless gang leader to allow such comments to go unchecked. They aren’t allowing Biden to go unchecked these days, either, which I think is a shame (see Gordon Lightfoot.) Were I running things, I’d advise leaning harder into the crazy. It hasn’t hurt his opponent any and let’s face it — Crazy Biden is Fun Biden. Hell, the whole state’s on fire anyway.

Drop-D Blogging

How then, is it possible, to be abjectly miserable in a moment, yet still look back on that moment fondly and with longing some time later? Does time distort or lend perspective? And if time is an illusion, could neither be true? It’s all in line with my new commitment to commas and question marks. I’m tuned into some fairly smart people lately, many of whom are questioning reality to some degree. Turns out 98.6 is just the average. Truth is up for grabs. Institutions and those in charge of their upkeep are demonstrably untruthful. There is no losing argument so ubiquitous as “my guy is right.” It’s the guy in question that’s relevant. We’ve become comfortable with this reality in politicians, but when it extends to doctors, scientists, sports heroes, and brothers, the horizon can go askew. Cut to Julie Kavner telling Woody Allen “listen, kid, I think you’ve snapped your cap.” Time for a few weeks in Bermuda, indeed. If it were only safe to begin the boarding process.

Colin Hay, the Scottish musician who once fronted the annoying band ‘Men At Work’ yet turned out to be a bit of a genius, has this great songI Just Don’t Think I’ll Ever Get Over You.” He plays it in an open, droning, drop-D guitar tuning, and it doesn’t have the kind of snappy, ca-chunk style rock n roll lyrics that I typically glom onto. But the airy, poignant, somewhat ambiguous way it carries on feels perfect for these times. Open tuning is a kind of drug for guitar players, a way of instantly changing musical perspective. Hay’s wife describes it well as “vague chords.” Keith Richards, who favors open-G, is perhaps the most famous practitioner, so it can ca-chunk just as effectively.  Anyway, it’s a beautiful tune. The “you” he can’t get over, like the tuning, feels open for interpretation: a woman, a dog, a place .. booze, chocolate, heroin. The song isn’t specific, though he does mention drinking “good coffee” every morning, and that grounds it (insert smiley emoticon.) There is no time marker so specific as when coffee bumps up to vice of choice. Perspective supplants vitality and jagged bits on the long road behind soften.

Blah blah blah, Ginger. As airy-fairy, hippie-dippy as the preceding may read, it’s actually less trippy than what I’ve really been pondering. I should emphasize ‘pondering’ as it’s more muse than prophet. And it’s the cereal of sci-fi, larping sorts, which has never been my breakfast of choice. Still, this idea of the ‘simulation,’ as it were, feels more plausible. “There, I said it” to quote the late, great Nancy Paweski. And, I’m using “as it were” even after ingesting strong coffee, so it’s all over. Still, has there ever been a time when ideas like free will and individual existence felt more tenuous? Or, put another way, is there a limit to how much absurdity can be ramped up? Look for both questions on the November ballot. As Governor William J Lepetomane says to Hedley Lamarr “haven’t you taken a giant leap away from your good senses?” But then they could never make that movie today. Maybe keep the open tuning, but switch over to G and some Keith Richards.

Real-Life Nephew Of My Uncle Marvin

A shout-out to the inimitable Scott (Coleman) Miller on this Fourth of July weekend for his response after hearing about protestors in London’s Parliament Square attempting to tear down a statue of Winston Churchill: “Wait until they hear about the other guy.” Miller’s dad, Artie, still going strong at 94, had some experience with the “other guy,” having parachuted behind enemy lines to liberate the concentration camps. Artie doesn’t talk much about it. Still, it’s interesting to think what the Schwarze Leben Zählen movement might look like today, had Artie not faked his age to serve his country. Miller’s long-time pal Tom Myers occasionally theorizes that “every subsequent male generation are bigger pussies than their fathers.” It’s a hard one to argue, though a bit daunting when I consider some of the pussies I grew up with. Personally, I couldn’t give a shit about statues, save the one of Robert Burns in Central Park. That’s the only statue-hill I’m dying on.

Independence Day, in all its hotdog-eating glory, is the last great American reminder to the world that we still plan to go down swinging. Most of that swinging has been between one another of late, though it’s still inspiring to see that our internal scuffles can have rippling global effects. It’s like the photo I saw after September 11th, with a crowd of Afghan youths burning an American flag, several of them wearing Spiderman t-shirts. We may be crap purveyors, but that crap has legs. This has been the traditional cycle: endeavor, fight, conquer, get fat, produce crap. These days it’s more likely a “crap app” but the concept still applies. July 4th is also a uniquely American holiday in its ill timing. That fireworks are featured prominently and at the peak of California’s dry-brush season seems appropriately counter-intuitive. As do starred and striped shorts and heaping mouths-full of potato salad.

I lived for a long while on Brooklyn’s Henry Street in Cobble Hill, not far from George Washington’s old stomping grounds. Just a few blocks down was the birthplace of Winston Churchills’ mother, Jennie Spencer-Churchill. It was an unremarkable brownstone with a plaque outside commemorating its significance. Churchill’s strong American ties and his particular fondness for New York made him OK in my book. He famously said “You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, after they have tried everything else.” It’s a clever quip and reminder of the lost art of the backhanded compliment. For this alone, I’d leave his statue up. But like the sign says, “Who Asked Me?” And wait until they hear about the other guy ..

Motion Pictures II

It was Prospect Park, Brooklyn, way back in the winter of ’03-’04. I lived in a tiny apartment in a converted mansion that was once the home of Thomas Adams, a chewing gum pioneer. Like most broken men trying to find themselves, I didn’t realize that I was already there. Alone, facing the future in a strange place, but right where I needed to be. Snow mounted outside but the steam heat worked and the sun would pour in the parapet window pure and strong. The black coffee was strong, too, and I’d sit and type away, occasionally hitting on a few good thoughts. Then I’d wrap myself up to the nines and go run around that park in the freezing air, pushing forty but in the best shape of my life, cheap earphones plugged into my tiny MP3 player loaded with a few choice tunes. The one that stuck out was Neil Young’s “Motion Pictures” from the album “On The Beach.” Not exactly the kind of fire-up music one typically associates with running in sub-zero temperatures but it fit perfectly. “All those headlines / they just bore me now / I’m deep inside myself, but I’ll get out somehow ..” And I suppose I did, eventually, and have been trying to get back inside ever since.

The small MP-3 player was a precursor to the iPhone that would soon follow. MySpace was about to be supplanted by Facebook and Google had yet to take over the world. I had a small platform on a website for New York “newcomers” and soon anybody who owned a phone would have a platform. Youtube was a year away; Twitter, Periscope and Tik-Tok were all on the distant horizon.

And so here we are and there’s no going back. No putting the proverbial genie back in the smartphone. If ever there was a good time to shut it all off and go for a run it’s now, but there is no shutting it off. This was always the cautionary tale that came with Artificial Intelligence — it can’t be unplugged or disabled. And it has run in perfect conjunction with the dumbing down of society. Mike Judge’s “Idiocracy” from 2006 seems wildly prophetic and a particular George Carlin quote keeps coming up and back: “Think of how stupid the average person is and realize half of them are stupider than that.” Idiocy is elevated and celebrated. Those pointing out the idiots are bigger idiots, still. It’s all reminiscent of the finale for that last, great bit of western art, “The Sopranos.” Agent Harris, hearing that Tony Soprano’s principal rival Phil Leotardo has been killed, exalts “Damn! We’re gonna win this thing!”  Of course, by then it’s all over and an abrupt cut to black is just around the corner.

So how close are we to that abrupt cut ourselves? I’d say it all hinges on our last chance to unplug and whether it’s already passed. Every source of news and information is infiltrated by complete bullshit at present. We’re looking into the other’s eyes to get a true sense of where we stand, faces covered with masks, and standing six feet apart. All advice seems bad, all leaders un-trustable. We’re all Agent Harris, hoping our personal dark horse might win the race.

The Neil Young song was and still is perfect. It made me think of my dad back then and how it might be a good anthem at his funeral. Motion Pictures. People still use the word — “film” — without a trace of irony. They “filmed” that guy in Minneapolis being killed; “filmed” some guy caught up in a riot, getting his head split open. Even its replacement, videotape, is obsolete now. Thus the double-irony of those thinking they’re using that one correctly. Everything is, appropriately enough, ones and zeros. Pick a number, pick a side.

Dad died a few years back and I didn’t play the tune at his funeral. But it went off well, none the less. Neil wrote the song for Carrie Snodgress, a young love. I suppose there’s always hope.

Burnt Offerings

America is burning. It isn’t the first time and won’t be the last. This particular burn comes at an unfortunately opportune time given what preceded it. As a people, we’re drawn to the flame. It’s what our predecessors gathered around to tell stories and what we keep in the window when a loved one goes missing. And, on occasion, we like to let it run its course as a kind of reset, which was the path we were on anyway with this virus.

As to the cause of this specific burn, I’m unqualified to comment. There was a spectacularly stupid and egregious act committed .. but hey, this is America. They would have fit “egregiously stupid” in the national anthem had “rockets red glare” not taken up so much space. As a white guy, I’m being instructed to shut up and listen, which seems appropriate. Somebody might have added something about keeping an extinguisher at the ready, but that’s OK. Had I identified someone who looked much like me as the victim at the center of this and other similarly offensive acts, I wouldn’t be happy either. Ironically, many of those asserting that white people need to shut up and listen are white people themselves. Some of these same white people are feeding and even instigating the current burn. And while I’m quite certain that the “racist” brand fits me as well as anybody, most of my objections these days are centered around other white people. So, you know, fuck ’em.

If the above seems unapologetically cynical, it is. Human beings policing other human beings is an inherently flawed yet seemingly necessary concept. I have mixed feelings about cops myself and, were I black, I suspect that mix would be all the more tumultuous. There’s nothing I value more than being left alone and on that front and many others, I’m lucky to have been born white. There is a multitude of ugly shit in this world; violence, betrayal, crime, the breaking down of cells as we age. Richard Pryor had a bit on why he stopped using the most volatile of all American racial epithets in his act. He said something like “being human is hard enough without ‘nig**r’” I thought that was a decent sentiment.

We’ll get past this, but it will come back around again. I wish this wasn’t so, but it is. All systems fail and ours is a relatively young one. I’m far more comfortable in defending it against other systems or in singing our flawed praises. Hopefully, there will still be time to get back to that.