Stuck Tune Syndrome

Ever since I saw the season finale of "Extras" a few weeks ago, I've developed a case of Stuck Tune Syndrome and can't get this damned Kate Bush song out of my head. And now, neither will you....bwahahahaha!

'Twas a very sad episode. Watching the character Maggie Jacobs (left) give up on her acting career, scrubbing bathrooms instead, trying to get a job at Car Phone Warehouse and, when told there weren't any jobs available, breaking down to proclaim, "I've wasted my life...I haven't done anything....I haven't been anywhere." And this song was in the background nearly the whole time.

Damn skippy I cried. And I know of a certain man who cried too, so don't judge.

Family History of the Hallinans

Since my most recent days have been spent confined to an office with an unsavory totalitarian IT department that must censor all things fun, I have developed a love for Wikipedia and whimsical, unwarranted research.

Above: Terrence

Today, as I informed my former journalism advisor Conn Hallinan, I have been stalking his family history.

Conn Hallinan is a very special mentor to me and several--perhaps nearly all of--his former students from UC Santa Cruz. He meets with me whenever I have a career crisis, and has been a guiding light for several of my peers who value him greatly. He gave profoundly inspiring lectures on the value of journalism that nearly brought me to tears in my college days, usually dispensed while dressed in a Hawaiian shirt, jeans and cowboy boots.

He very rarely gave me any positive comments on my articles for his classes, which I completely respected. He did for my college newspaper work--but rarely for class assignments. One positive critique was about a gonzo peice on the life of a student reporter, and one was a commentary on a Wall St Journal article that I wrote as Karl Marx. I hung those assignments on my wall for nearly a year.

Conn also happens to come from the most amazing family in San Francisco history, perhaps even the country.

While I don't have enough time today to list all of the baffling things this family has accomplished, I can quickly list some of my favorite tidbits about Conn's family:

Father: Vincent Hallinan

-Vincent was a San Francisco lawyer who once tried to sue the Roman Catholic Church for fraud, demanding that it prove the existence of heaven and hell.
-He received 140,000 votes as the Progressive Party candidate in the 1952 Presidential Elections. His wife ran his campaign as he sat in prison for contempt of court for defending a longshoreman union founder named Harry Bridges, who was facing charges of lying about being a communist.
-He referred to one prosecutor as the greatest incompetent "since Caligula made a consul of his horse," and he would settle in-court disputes with opposing lawyers outside the courthouse, claiming to have won 23 such fist fights.
-Later he was jailed for 18 months on tax evasion charges, where he became chairman of the inmates' council and fought for integration in the dining hall.
-He is in Ripley's Believe It Or Not! museum for playing on a rugby team at age 73.

Mother: Vivian Hallinan

-Vivian wrote an autobiography about the family, "My Wild Irish Rogues," in 1952. J.Edgar Hoover called it, "A flagrant employment of the Communist Party line, including references to racial discrimination and vicious attacks on the U.S. government."
-She once led an anti-Vietnam War demonstration of 5,000 women in DC,and headed the SF chapter of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.
-At one point she began investing her husband's earnings into real estate, which helped her husband become a multi-millionaire. She also rented and sold homes to African Americans at a time when the civil rights movement wasn't quite felt in San Francisco.
-She opposed U.S. foreign policy in Central America, met with Fidel Castro, and was tear gassed in 1986--at age 77--during a protest in Chile against human rights abuses.
-The horse mouth of J.Edgar once called her marriage to Vincent: "A case of one warped personality marrying another."

Brothers: Terrence and Patrick Hallinan

-Terrence called himself a "gentleman farmer" and served as San Francisco's district attorney for eight years.
-In 1965 the California Bar Association rejected him, claiming he did not have "good moral character"--this was based upon several prior arrests of civil disobedience. In college he was beaten or arrested 16 times during civil rights demonstrations in both Mississippi and the Bay Area.
-In 1967 he took the CA Bar to the state Supreme Court and was granted acceptance.
-His boxing name is "Kayo."
-He was the only district attorney in California to openly endorse Prop 215 (legalizing medical marijuana), and wrote several letters to attorney generals nationwide to change discriminatory language in domestic violence statutes that don't protect same sex marriages.
-Patrick was a prominent defense lawyer and accomplished archaeologist. He was involved in a very scandalous, high profile drug smuggling case which had the DEA after him. There is a very juicy PBS Frontline transcript on it.

Conn and Other Hallinan Brothers

-Conn has three other brothers, but I can't dig anything up on them.
-His boxing name is "Ringo."
-Conn is an amazing person on a personal and professional level. He currently serves as a board member for the Concerned Listeners of KPFA, is a contributing writer to Foreign Policy in Focus, is writing a novel about Roman history, and continues to serve as a great influence to many aspiring writers.

Bring me a donut, Ramses!

Quotes of those who did not know I was listening: Office Edition

The following are quotes by people in my office. If you were ever curious about the types of conversations journos have when we get together, overly-caffeinated and amped and getting giddy over trivial writing matters, well, it's some pretty profound shit:

"How does this sound: He went to it with a sprinter's kick."
--someone else: "Sprinters don't kick, they sprint."
"With a sprinter's sprint. No...that doesn't sound so good."

"Krispy Kreme's not a donut. It's a cake. With a hole."
--someone else, in a Charlton Heston voice, "Bring me a donut, Ramses!"

"You met Bill Clinton? Did he smell like fried chicken?"

"You just have to play like you go way back: Remember me? The Holiday Inn in Bairan? Don't worry, whatever happens in Dubai stays in Dubai."

"Do we have a loudspeaker?" (In booming, cupped voice) "I'm not wearing any underpants!"

(Same Charlton Heston impersonator, in Heston voice) "I like Annie Lennox and the Eurythmics."

It's true, yo is for real

According to a recent article in Duke University's American Speech, a new, gender-neutral pronoun has been discovered! Shout it from the rooftops! Yo is king! The English language has been rocked and you will never look at pronouns the same way again!

The intro to the study:

Elaine M. Stotko and Margaret Troyer
Johns Hopkins University

This article presents data collected on the use of yo in schools in Baltimore as a new third-person singular pronoun, as in Yo handin' out papers `She (the teacher) is handing out papers' and Peep yo `Look at him'. In the spring of 2004, a number of middle and high school teachers enrolled in a graduate linguistics class for teachers noted that their students at certain city schools were using yo in place of he or she. The authors collected spontaneous occurrences of the pronoun and then designed several writing activities and sentence judgment tasks. The tasks were administered to more than 200 students in two unrelated schools in Baltimore. It was clear from the results that students in these two schools use yo as a gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun, primarily in subject position. Limited follow-up was conducted in the spring of 2007.

Kerri Russell in Waitress

On Female Humor and Film

First off, I just want to give a little GO FUCK YOURSELF shout-out to Christopher Hitchens and Judd Apatow.

I've been watching a ridiculous amount of pregnancy-centric films lately. From Juno to Waitress, to--and this is what's gotten me all riled up--Knocked Up. In this post I'd like to use the recent "unwanted pregnancy" genre of film as a litmus test to see if, as Christopher Hitchens claims, women just aren't funny.

Everyone in the world (except for a handful of well-read, moderate feminists with kick-ass senses of humor) has told me Knocked Up was a really funny, really smart commentary on female/male relationships.

But I found Knocked Up, much like Superbad and the 40 Year Old Virgin, to be incredibly amateurish, with their half-baked plot lines and scatological junior high sensibilities. Apatow's like writer/director Noah Baumbach's illegitimate, retarded half-brother, basically. And boy, I'm sure he praises the day that idiots like the Farrelly Brothers paved the way with their base level of potty humor, nicely packaged in the romcom category and ready to be vomited up to the masses.

But unlike fleeting moments in Farrelly flicks, Apatow's films are wholeheartedly remiss of any charm, or even actors who are capable of memorizing lines. And unlike Baumbach's work, they delve into the complicated world of hetero relationships without an ounce of understanding of the female psyche. Even Knocked Up star Katherine Heigl didn't like Apatow's portrayal of women and found it sexist.

So while the rest of the world sings Apatow's praises, does this make mean I lack a sense of humor? Am I at odds with the comedic zeitgeist?

Oh pray tell, Mr. Hitchens, what's wrong with me?

I mean, I must be lacking a sense of wit--who wouldn't find barfing, derogatory use of the word vagina, women leaking menstrual blood, women who are overly hormonal due to the LIFE-GIVING PROCESS, men calling each other gay, 30-something men who like to play video games and make fart jokes just HILARIOUS?!


And who wouldn't think a story about a gorgeous blond bombshell with a high profile career who pursues a 23 year-old jobless, porn-obsessed stoner who is fat, humorless, intellectually-devoid, hairy and painfully unattractive and doesn't wear contraception and could have given her AIDS isn't incredibly funny?

I'm sorry, but I became incredibly depressed after watching Knocked Up the other day. Film critic Joe Queenan, writing for the Guardian, explains why a film like this can make a girl like me so sad:

The new genre of romantic comedies are not really upbeat, coming-of-age motion pictures about young male schmucks who are saved by the love of a good woman, but heart-rendering tragedies about beautiful young women who are doomed to spend the rest of their lives with juvenile, not especially good-looking dorks...Denby [of the New York Times] and a host of critics may have found Knocked Up "raucously funny"; I think women need to start their own film industry: this one isn't working.

The other point that Knocked Up seems to make is that women, even the ones who work in television, exist for no other reason than to help men grow up, if necessary by having babies. As Denby notes, this is an idea that has been kicking around since the early Renaissance, when Dante Alighieri frantically sought salvation through the ministrations of his beloved Beatrice: men need women to inspire them to the loftiest creative and moral heights; otherwise they will fail miserably. But unlike Rogen, at least Dante had a job.

...Along the way, there are a lot of jokes about bodily functions, a lot of dialogue that is explicitly contemptuous of women, and a lot of profanity. This is a film for teenage boys who dream of growing up to be teenage men.

Fortunately, I was delighted and uplifted to watch two films recently (Juno and Waitress), which astutely and hilariously portray women in instances of unwanted pregnancy who, for one reason or another, decide to bypass the abortion option (I don't take particular issue, like many other women, with the fact that abortion was not completely considered by the main characters in these films. If it was, it would cut away from the humor and turn off many viewers. And I'm sure it's scary for a filmmaker to be labeled pro-life or pro-choice).

Not only are these female-centric films deeply funny to watch, but you don't feel guilty by the laughter. There's just too much heart involved. And both Juno and Waitress were written by women, an anomaly in Hollywood to be sure.

Unlike the crap that so many male misogynist filmmakers try to pass off as comedy, female humor comes from the heart; it's more complex, and does not need to degrade the world of bodily functions, female body parts, our mothers, or cliched film references.

Watch these two films and compare them to the trash Apatow's been slinging. That's all I ask. Also, watch this music video/preview from Juno, it's just so good.

The Propaganda Game

Hey kids, here's fun game you can try at home: which one of these videos is more convincing: Abercrombie and Fitch or the US National Guard? Which video makes you want to sign up the most?

This one (make sure mom and dad don't catch you watching this):



OR this one:



(Hint: there are only incorrect answers.)

Anatomy of a Shitty Karl Rove Op-Ed

So yesterday Karl Rove (yes yes y'all, you know may know him as "MC Rove", that slick-ass mofo that brought the house DOWN during the White House Correspondents' Dinner last year) wrote an Op-Ed on why Hillary Clinton took New Hampshire.

First off, let's consider the source. Who in their right mind would publish this sorry excuse for an Op-Ed piece, on the same day allowing Sens. McCain and Lieberman to spew propaganda on how "The Surge Worked"? If you guessed the Murdoch St Journal you are correct my friends!

Let's dissect it, shall we:

Rove's thought bubble: Der der, gotta begin article with something that shows I read books. Yeah yeah, but who do I read? What's the hardest thing I read in high school? Der, I got it! Shakespeare!
What Rove wrote:

What would Shakespeare's Jack Cade say after the New Hampshire Democratic primary? Maybe the demagogue in "Henry VI" would call for the pollsters to be killed first, not the lawyers.

Rove's thought bubble: okay that's brilliant! I'm so hot right now, burnin up. Okay, next, insightful commentary on the election process. I don't need stats for this one, just a general status quo media theory generally undisputed by the masses. Der, polls! I'll write something about polls!

The dirty secret is it is hard to accurately poll a primary. The unpredictability of who will turn out and what the mix of voters will be makes polling a primary election like reading chicken entrails -- ugly, smelly and not very enlightening. Our media culture endows polls -- especially exit polls -- with scientific precision they simply don't have.

Rove's thought bubble: Wow! Lookit me! Not only a former Presidential adviser, but a media critic to boot! Ok ok, now for an incredibly generalized statement, using very cleverly-worded similes, to obscure the fact that I have no idea what the hell I'm talking about.

Sen. Hillary Clinton won working-class neighborhoods and less-affluent rural areas. Sen. Barack Obama won the college towns and the gentrified neighborhoods of more affluent communities. Put another way, Mrs. Clinton won the beer drinkers, Mr. Obama the white wine crowd. And there are more beer drinkers than wine swillers in the Democratic Party.

Rove's thought bubble: Damn I'm good. Now for commentary to make both Clinton and Obama look bad--but I gotta make Obama look worse, like the limousine liberal he is; he needs all the bad press I can dish out at this point--the future of PNAC is riding on it.

...in the ABC debate on Saturday, when WMUR TV's Scott Spradling asked why voters were "hesitating on the likeability issue, where they seem to like Barack Obama more." Mrs. Clinton's self-deprecating response -- "Well, that hurts my feelings" -- was followed by a playful "But I'll try to go on." You couldn't help but smile. It reminded Democrats what they occasionally like about her. Then Mr. Obama followed with a needless and dismissive, "You're likable enough, Hillary." Her remarks helped wash away the memory of her angry replies to attacks at the debate's start. His trash talking was an unattractive carryover from his days playing pickup basketball at Harvard, and capped a mediocre night.

Rove's thought bubble: Yesss. That was more than on point, that was beyond the point and making points within points around points. I know, I'll add a little historical knowledge to my commentary. What does vitamin-starved mean? I don't know, but boy does it sound clever.

When it comes to making the case against Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama comes across as a vitamin-starved Adlai Stevenson. His rhetoric, while eloquent and moving at times, has been too often light as air.

Thought bubble: Okay, now to up the ante. What else can I say to make the Dem hopefuls sound like children? And how can I demean Hillary because she's a woman at the same time? I know...

The Democratic candidates left New Hampshire not liking each other. Mrs. Clinton, in particular, lets her feelings show. In her victory speech, as she listed her competitors, she put Mr. Obama at the tail end, behind Dennis Kucinich. Ouch! Mrs. Clinton is likely to win the Democratic beauty contest in Michigan on Jan. 15. But with no delegates at stake, it will have little impact.

The rest of the "Op-Ed" is used to express his knowledge of the electoral process. Way to go Rove, you know that it takes more delegates than states to make a win! You get an A+ in Political Science!

I Want To Help You Save Documents, Baby

You'll never think about Clippy the same way again, or "Old-Timey Barbers", or Jewish mothers if you listen to Gil's crank calls. But maybe that's not such a good thing, so maybe you should refrain from listening to this Upright Citizen's Brigade comedian call a phone sex operator and make her pretend she is that cartoon paper clip from Microsoft Word.



Thanks John W.

Beck's Debra

My friend Tessa recently discovered this song--one of my all-time favorites--called Debra. I remember friends describing this song to me long ago, which they had seen him perform live before it was ever recorded. Apparently Beck got down on his knees and said, "You make a grown man wanna cry" and launched into it. This is Tessa's description:

This is one of those songs that's like so good, and you're a little shocked that you've NEVER heard it before, because both the song, and yourself have been on the earth together since 1999 so it's insane that it's taken you 9 YEARS to finally listen to it and realize that you love it. And it also makes you feel a little uncool, like WHY hadn't you heard this album, or been at a party where this came on, until last night in your friend's living room? I love you, little blond man who likes to wear fringe.

Favorite lines:

I'll pick you up late at night after work
I said lady, Step inside my Hyundai
I'm gonna take up to Glendale
Yeah
I'm gonna take you for a real good meal
'Cause when our eyes did meet
Girl, you know I was packing' heat
Ain't no use in wasting no time
Getting to know each other
You never do

When Beck sang to us in Santa Cruz a few years back, he said, ever-so-sincerely, "Y'all are great, you make wanna...oh yeah...you make me wanna touch dolphins." And I definitely believed him.

Feeling Check: Today...Sick and All Grown Up

Feeling check: so today I feel really old and sick. A few nights ago I had a "coming of age," I suppose you could say. It was my volunteer night, a time when I get to visit a halfway home for homeless families and entertain the kids. Not like a clown or anything creepy; my time is usually spent doing Russian dances to Manu Chao, playing the ukelele, and getting them to sing Chinese nursery rhymes while playing finger symbols. There's usually one kid that takes a particular interest in me. They're usually very clever little shits, realizing that I just don't have it in me to discipline them and tell them to stop running around like mental patients and screaming at the top of their lungs. I'm perfectly content goofing off alongside them and acting completely oblivious to general rules.

So the other night there was Jonathan. He had the most amazing little smile, even with little white teeth eclipsed by remnants of chocolate. And he made every effort to impress me with his car collection--all five hot wheels that he stored in his pockets. During reading time, he requested that I be the one to read to him. So we sat at a little tykes dining room table with a book on sharks. I tried to make the multisyllabic species' names sound like easy words, but his interest was fading fast. He took the book from me and, at age four, "read" it to me instead.

"There are big sharks, mean sharks, ugly sharks that swim around," he said.

As he continued reading, a precocious toddler named Jessica stumbled near, wielding a fake doctor's bag. She slapped a fake cast on my wrist, put a stethoscope on my knee, and, leaning in real close, stuck an ear scope in my ear while coughing on me very loud and generously. I also recall her stealing one of Jonathan's hot wheels, only to put it in her mouth and hand it back to me as a gift.

Soon we were called back into the circle for more singing. The rug's outer edge is decorated with the alphabet, and the kids are usually told to choose a letter to sit on. Jonathan grabbed my hand and pulled me to the circle. There was a splatter design to fill the gap between the beginning and end of the alphabet. I tried to sit on a letter, but Jonathan barked, "Grown ups sit there!" He pointed to the splatter.

This is the first time I've been labeled a "grown up" and I really feel uncomfortable about it. Also, I'm really very sick for some reason.

Drunken History

U.S. History's just better when told by some drunk dude trying not to vomit, confusing Alexander Hamilton with George Hamilton. Also, I'd like to remember one of our Founding Fathers as a sweet little nerd like Michael Cera, rather than this prissy dude to the left.

John Oliver's Bugle

There's been a deep, dark void in my heart for the Daily Show for a while now. The pit of sorrow is beyond words my friends. Fortunately, I've recently discovered John Oliver's podcast, The Bugle, an "audionewspaper" put out by the Times. In his most recent edition,Oliver comments on the Iowa caucus:

What better representative sample for one of the most multicultural nations on Earth than Iowa. The mood of the nation, set by less than 300,000 white, Protestant farmers?

It's a really personal form of politics...door to door campaigning...How badly do you want to be President? Will you sit through some 73 year-old man's diatribe against Mexicans and how the moon landing was faked, whilst pretending to like his wife's homemade corn muffins? Do you really want this job?

Many have fallen at this stage. Roosevelt once proclaimed a woman's homemade peach cobbler was like eating a decayed pigeon, before telling the lady where she could stick her vote. That took a lot of coming back from.

This edition, complete with hot pics, makes me feel like the Queen of Sheeba on a quad bike:



***UPDATE: As of Monday, Daily Show AND Colbert WERE back on the air, without writers, but still very very good! Yessssss.

And the Obituary of the Year Award Goes To

Ahem...drum roll please..

Count Gottfried von Bismark! Congratulations, Mekonhead!



(from The Telegraph, April 2007):

Count Gottfried von Bismarck, who was found dead on Monday aged 44, was a louche German aristocrat with a multi-faceted history as a pleasure-seeking heroin addict, hell-raising alcoholic, flamboyant waster and a reckless and extravagant host of homosexual orgies.

The great-great-grandson of Prince Otto, Germany's Iron Chancellor and architect of the modern German state, the young von Bismarck showed early promise as a brilliant scholar, but led an exotic life of gilded aimlessness that attracted the attention of the gossip columns from the moment he arrived in Oxford in 1983 and hosted a dinner at which the severed heads of two pigs were placed at either end of the table.

When not clad in the lederhosen of his homeland, he cultivated an air of sophisticated complexity by appearing in women's clothes, set off by lipstick and fishnet stockings. This aura of dangerous "glamour" charmed a large circle of friends and acquaintances drawn from the jeunesse dorée of the age; many of them knew him at Oxford, where he made friends such as Darius Guppy and Viscount Althorp and became an enthusiastic, rubber-clad member of the Piers Gaveston Society and the drink-fuelled Bullingdon and Loders clubs.

Von Bismarck's university career ended in catastrophe in June 1986, when his friend Olivia Channon was found dead on his bed, the victim of a drink and drugs overdose. Von Bismarck admitted that his role in the affair had brought disgrace on the family name; five years later he told friends that there were still people who would not speak to his parents on account of it, and who told his mother that she had "a rotten son".

In the reunified Germany, von Bismarck managed several telecoms businesses and, armed with a doctoral thesis on the East German telephone system, oversaw the sale of companies formerly owned by Communist East Germany to the private sector.

By the late 1990s von Bismarck was working for Telemonde, Kevin Maxwell's troubled telecoms firm based in America, with responsibility for developing the business in Germany; the company collapsed in 2002 with debts of £105 million. Von Bismarck eventually returned to London, where he became chairman of the investment company AIM Partners, dabbled in film production and promoted holidays to Uzbekistan.

Never concealing his homosexuality, von Bismarck continued to appear in public in various eccentric items of attire, including tall hats atop his bald Mekon-like head. At parties he would appear in exotic designer frock coats with matching trousers and emblazoned with enormous logos. Flitting from table to table at fashionable London nightclubs, he was said to be as comfortable among wealthy Eurotrash as he was on formal occasions calling for black tie.

Although described personally as quiet and impeccably mannered, von Bismarck continued to live high on the hog, hosting riotous all-night parties for his (chiefly gay) friends at his £5 million flat off Sloane Square. It was at one such event, in August last year, that von Bismarck encountered tragedy for a second time when one of his male guests fell 60 ft to his death from the roof garden. While von Bismarck was not arrested, he was questioned as a witness and there were those who wondered - not, perhaps, without cause - whether he might be the victim of a family curse.

Gottfried Alexander Leopold Graf von Bismarck-Schonhausen was born on September 19 1962 in Brussels, the second son of Ferdinand, the 4th Prince Bismarck, whose own father had served in the German embassy in pre-war London until a feud with the ambassador, von Ribbentrop, ended his career.

As a talented young scholar, Gottfried had studied at what he described as "an aristocratic Borstal" in Switzerland and worked at the New York stock exchange before going up to Christ Church, Oxford.

Von Bismarck never fully recovered from the death in June 1986 of Olivia Channon, the striking 22-year-old daughter of Paul Channon (later Lord Kelvedon), then one of Margaret Thatcher's cabinet ministers.

To celebrate the end of their finals, von Bismarck and Olivia Channon had taken part in a drinking bout involving excessive amounts of champagne, Black Velvet and sherry before she overdosed on heroin. At the inquest her cousin, Sebastian Guinness, described how he and other revellers had repaired to von Bismarck's bottle-strewn rooms, where Olivia was found dead the following morning.

Von Bismarck himself was charged with possessing cocaine and amphetamine sulphate and was later treated at a £770-a-week addiction clinic in Surrey. Following Olivia Channon's funeral, at which he was said to have "wept like a child", von Bismarck was ordered home to the family castle near Hamburg by his father.

His removal from Oxford was so abrupt that he was not given time to settle his bills; Prince Ferdinand sent a servant who did the rounds of von Bismarck's favoured watering-holes, restaurants and his tailor bearing a chequebook.

The tabloids quoted words of repentance from von Bismarck himself - "My days of living it up are all over. This past week has just been too much" - but although he was reported to be leaving to finish his studies at a German university and eventually to enter German politics, in the event he was treated again for alcoholism at a German clinic.

He returned briefly to Oxford, where local magistrates fined him £80 for drug possession; he wiped away tears as his lawyer offered mitigation, pointing out that since the Channon affair von Bismarck had received a bad press in Germany.

Doubting whether he would be able to find work in his own country, von Bismarck was said to be planning to study at a university in Los Angeles while continuing to receive treatment for his drink problem. Olivia Channon's death, his barrister said, would prove to be a shadow over von Bismarck's head "probably for the rest of his life". So it proved.

He never married.

--This is bar none the most colorful obituary I've ever read, bless you Telegraph and your fabulously upper crust, ponce-ass readership. And thanks, Shawne, for passing this one along.

The mighty peanut, found here in its natural habitat.












Near Death Experiences

It's funny what they say about 'em. Your life "flashes before your eyes", or you reach some "deeper meaning" or "enlightenment" about the world around you. Your perspective shifts somehow, perhaps like the Earth turning on its axis--but in a sudden kind of way.

I just got the most beautiful email from a dear friend in Los Angeles. It was a group email, wishing everyone a Happy New Year. I didn't think it would be anything other than a standard well-wishing or greeting...until I got around to reading it. My friend had nearly lost her life, having lost control of her vehicle on the freeway and, flying across two lanes of traffic, wound up hitting the center divider.

She said she didn't have a moment of flashes or anything that comprehensive. All she could think about in that moment was how badly she didn't want to die. And how sad it would be not to see any of her loved ones again. In the end, she wanted her email to let everyone know that she had realized how foolish it was to take life, and the people in it, for granted. She had been depressed for the last few months, and her near-death experience had taught her not to waste time like that again.

Her email reminded me of another very special email I had received from my friend Irina, sent to me about eight years ago. I've purposefully saved it and reread it a few times. Irina M, then a philosophy major in Berkeley, was also an extraordinary painter and we acted in plays together in high school. In her email, she described--at great length--how quietly frantic she became on a flight, for no apparent reason, about the prospect of a crash. She explained how a collection of obsessive, instinctual feelings of doom manifested into an inner stillness and sublime sense of one's place in the universe. And it all started with a peanut:

I felt stillness, and I wondered if I was being prepared for death somehow. Everyone dies, I thought, and if there is any justice in this world then there must be more to it than this.

And in that moment I noticed a little peanut on the cushion on my left. Perhaps I had noticed it before, perhaps I had even thought something of it.

All I know is that the peanut, a broken bit of fat and protein of some imperfect whole, became the center of my little universe. There was something pathetically profound about its quiet asymmetry; lying there, not quite in the center, not quite facing forward. Its stillness provoked me to thought. How calm it seemed! Like it knew the answer before i could have formulated the question and it was fine--just fine. The answer must not have been too severe. And I knew that I could not move the peanut, because I would disturb a balance in life that might only be in my own mind. But even given that, the peanut was the key to the stasis I was in, if I moved it or touched it, something would happen to break the thin film holding me in and I would dissolve.

Of that I was sure. And for one brief moment I was audience to a great mysetery revealed--through an airline peanut!

Epilogue: The plane landed and I gave the peanut to the flight attendant along with my discarded bag of raisins and a small plastic cup with half melted ice cubes.

Here's to not taking anything for granted in life, especially peanuts.

Why I Love David Lynch with An Undying Passion

Poets' Corner

Old umbrella carcass
Awash in the gutter and left
Cold wetness can't rid yourself yet
Saved will to spend
and memories appear
ripe for the taking, without hesitating
all on a rainy day

Downed power lines
Communication ties
Broken and torn in the wind and the storm
All bets are off for the time
And yet hope
for a comfort or warmth like a youth
who was lost in the scuffle of thought

And it's dark
and the rain doesn't soothe like it should
Like a hand you would shake if it wasn't so fake
like a treacherous friend or a foe
But you laugh in the end
and forget and forget
All on a rainy day

Show Me Your Caucus

Congrats to the contenders. Especially to you Barack Obama (Sigh. Cue cartoon hearts pumping inside an imaginary thought bubble coming from my head).

I think Obama's articulate n shit, but I do worry. I worry about him stepping to Huckabee. I hear that man's one dimpled, mean ass mamajama.

The Associated Press reported that the Republican front runner, upon hearing of his new win, jet over to a New Hampshire subway station, where he was caught rapping over the beat to N.W.A.'s "F**k tha Police" on a Casio keyboard:


"F**k tha Caucus
Comin’ straight from Des Moines town
Cracka got it good cause my votes ain't goin down
And I got dimples and so caucus think
They have the authority to kill a minority
F**k tha Romney, cause I am the one
To put punk mother f**ker Guiliani on the run

If I ain't the next Prez throw me in jail
We could go toe to toe in the middle of a cell
Fuckin with me cause I'm the Huckster
With a little bit of gold and a wife like a dumpster

You'd rather see me in the pen
Than me and Lorenzo rolling in the Benzo
Beat the caucus outta shape
And when I'm finished, bring the yellow tape."

Yikes. Huckabee is for real y'all.

Random Updates

1. Day three of food poisoning: all systems go--I can manage to maneuver a bicycle sans projectile vomiting.

2. I am secretly protesting the false martyrdom of Benazir Bhutto. She ain't no saint--take it from her niece, who said so in the LA Times back in November.

3. If you thought Weezer was bad back in the day, don't buy the Rivers Cuomo home recordings, even if Pitchfork says it's good. I can imagine myself pulling a Christian Bale in "American Psycho"-style slashing to the tune of "Chess," just read the lyrics to know what I'm talking about.

4. The average Dutchman is now taller than the average American due to U.S. pollution. Also, cats have more sex because of global warming.

5. I just invented a new breakfast dish entitled "Grecian Surprise." Not because it contains Grecian Formula, but because it involves spanakopita.

6. The price of oil's reached over $100 per barrel today. Celebrate by watching "Who Killed the Electric Car?" and get real pissed.

7. Still trying to piece together just what happened during my Caribbean vacation. I'm not quite sure.

Musical Madness

Yesterday me and Sarah V spent nearly five hours in the theater watching musicals. First there was "Sweeney Todd," which Sarah had already seen, and then "Walk Hard," which I had already seen. Both are most definately multi-view worthy. Some people didn't like the "Walk Hard: Dewey Cox Story," but I'd say it's a classic for the songs alone. Or see it just to watch Jack Black, Paul Rudd and Jason Schwartzman do bastardized impressions of the Beatles.

The best song in "Dewey Cox" was the Bob Dylan-inspired, "Royal Jelly", which can be found in it's entirety on the soundtrack, along with another knock-off called "Farmer Glickstein". John C. Reilly, who plays Dewey Cox, does an incredible Dewey-as-Dylan impersonation. Here are my transcribed lyrics:

Mailboxes drip like lamposts in the twisted birth canal of the coliseum
Rimjob fairy teapots mask the temper tantrum
Oh say can you see ‘em?
Stuffed cabbages the darlin of the laundromat
And the sorority mascot sat with the lumberjack
Present past and stinging half synthetic fabrications of his tie
The mouse with the overbite
Explained how the rabbits were ensnared
In the skinny scanny self-slashed apothecary diplomat
Inside the three-eyed monkey within inches of his toaster oven life

It's really bothering me that I can't identify which Dylan song they're parodying, I think parts of it sound like "It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Bleeding." Does anyone know?

This airport accommodates both the holy man and the holy roller (Notice place of worship to the left).









THE SAN JUAN PUERTO RICO AIRPORT IS SHIT

This and other fascinating factoids will amaze and astound you when I get over my jet lag and blog about Xmas vaca. Until then:

Solidarity

Oh You're So Super, Jens

Last month I caught an amazing show by this fine Swedish fellow Jens Lekman and recently found a music video I had to share. I had seen him on my birthday in London the year prior, and, having nearly landed an interview with him for a music magazine, mentioned casually via email that I would be attending his show on my birthday. His first song was "Happy Birthday, Dear Friend Lisa." I'd like to think it was for me though. My favorite lines from this song go a little something like (ahem):

Oh drinking cheap wine, to Bossanova.
You're a supernova in the sky.
And the Jehovas, in their pullovers.
Are no Casanovas, like you and I.

Alas, I never met him. But I felt very blessed to see his San Francisco show, which was probably the best show I've seen all year. It was a non-stop square dance sing-along fest for the audience (well at least the people I was with). And Jens seemed to be in great spirits, much better than when he was in London (it was a small venue in London, and the management was very rude at trying to usher him out. So he angrily charged the audience and sang "Tram Number Seven To Heaven" in the lobby. It was brilliant). The most memorable song for me was a cover of Paul Simon's "Call Me Al". He announced that he loved the song but refused to sing the chorus. It was a very slow, folksy rendition.

I think I love him because his music is so extraordinarily heartfelt, yet his lyrics so obscure that you can't tell if he's going for humor or not. As he wrote in his blog Smalltalk, "I am comically retarded, when I tell you what hurts inside of me you will laugh, and when I tell you a funny story you will cry". But his pop sensibilities are razor-sharp, and his soundscapes lush in an eclectic, experimental 60s kind of way that maintains its modernity. The Morrissey-inspired lounge-y vocals only add to the humor aspects.

Here's a video he made a few months back, doing a cover of Arthur Russell's "A Little Lost." The Kalimba work is top notch.

Czeslaw Milosz

Of Truth, Trauma, and Remembrance

I've been a little under the weather, so to speak, this week. Without going into needless detail, I've lost a great deal of faith in the decency and honesty of others, and it's worn me down a great deal. All I can do to understand what is happening is to get a grasp on the larger picture; I've been thinking about how cycles of lies and manipulation, in general, manifest themselves and how bystanders allow it to happen. I thought a lot about Holocaust denial, the secret history of California internment camps, and human rights violations being committed daily by this government at detainee camps. I came across a remarkable book by Doctor Judith Herman called Trauma and Recovery: The aftermath of violence--from domestic abuse to political terror. It really shed some light on the psychology of perpetrators and bystanders as they relate to the enabling of lies and manipulation:

To study psychological trauma is to come face to face both with human vulnerability in the natural world and with the capacity for evil in human natures...When the events are natural disasters or "acts of God," those who bear witness sympathize readily with the victim. But when the traumatic events are of human design, those who bear witness are caught in the conflict between victim and perpetrator...It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim, on the other contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action, engagement, and remembering.

The author then goes on to cite psychiatrist Leo Eitinger, who studied Nazi concentration camp survivors. He says, "War and victims are something the community wants to forget."

The next passage identifies the ways that perpetrators silence victims:

In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. Secrecy and silence are the perpetrator's first line of defense. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure that no one listens. To this end, he marshals an impressive array of arguments, from the most blatant denial to the most sophisticated and elegant rationalization.

The perpetrator's arguments prove irresistible when the bystander faces them in isolation. Without a supportive social environment, the bystander usually succumbs to to the temptation to look the other way...

Soldiers in every war, even those who have been regarded as heroes, complain bitterly that no one wants to know the real truth about war. When the victim is already devalued (a woman, a child), she may find that the most traumatic events of her life take place outside the realm of socially validated reality. Her experience becomes unspeakable.

I'm copying someone else's words right now because my own personal experiences with being lied to seem, at times, unspeakable.

But as for the world at large--in a few months, years, or even decades, will we choose to forget all the Iraqis whose lives our government batted around like bloodthirsty cats with half-dead mice corpses? Will we forget that we tortured innocent, honest men and allowed mercenaries to terrorize legions of civilians for sport? I feel like what Frank Rich said in a recent NYT article is true, that we are "a people in clinical depression." But do we all need to be mindless bystanders to lies, atrocity and evil?

I'd like to believe that there is power in truth, and that people want to tell it. I'd rather think of the words of Czeslaw Milosz, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1980, who said: "In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot."

I call on a preemptive remembrance of the truth. Starting now.

Masha Masha Masha

Last weekend I finally caught "Mortified", a touring show of comedians and normal folk that read extraordinarily humiliating personal diaries from their teen years before a massive audience. I heard it was funny, but...wow. I forgot how extreme and dramatic the life of a teenager can be. Crushes are epic; the urge to harm others, and/or kill them, is ever-present, and your emotions run so deep it drives you to extremes--like writing morbid poetry or fan letters to Megadeath.

The stand-out that night was by far a sweet, demure little thing named Masha Tivyan. She read from her Camp Widjiwagon diaries with a sluggish, soft-spoken Lisa Simpson-esque drawl. She prefaced by explaining how they took away her bag of candy at the start of camp, which turned her into a "hungry, bitter, foul-mouthed sailor". She had the whole bar howling. Listen to it here.

I got so excited when I discovered her official website, complete with athletic sports photos from her youth. Here's a video from an appearance she made on the Craig Kilborn show, not entirely hilarious, but there's something about her underwhelming demeanor that makes you just love her:

Bobby's Excellent Lasik Adventure

My friend Bobby L. just got laser eye surgery on Friday, and he currently looks like a demon.

Amity: So how was your weekend?

Bobby: Not good. Not good. I had Lasik.

Amity: That's great though, you've been wanting to for a while, is everything okay?

Bobby: No, no not really. It was the most painful, uncomfortable thing I've ever experienced.

Amity: Like how painful? Like having your balls tightened by a really small rubber band? Like being waterboarded?

Bobby: No, no, but I think I would have rather been waterboarded. They tell you "Okay, now we're just gonna do a suction when I say 'suction'". And then they put on this vacuum thing that pops your eyeballs out a bit.

Amity: Woah. So worse than waterboarding.

Bobby: Yeah. They zapped one eye and said, "Okay, we're done with the first one. Are you ready for the other eye now?" And I said, "No. No I think I'm good." It hurt a lot. And then they said, "Are you sure?" And I said, "No, no I'm not." And then they did the same thing to the second one.

Amity: Wow, it would just be better to give terrorists Lasik. "Give me my top secret al Qaida information or we'll do the other eye!"

Bobby: Yeah, basically. So I went to the doctor before the Lasik, and my doctor wanted to know what my expectations were. And I said that I feel like I'm slowly going blind, and I just don't want to be blind. He said, "Wow, those expectations are pretty low...well, we'll see if we can not make you blind, and perfect your vision." My eyes are all red and filled with blood now, I look like a demon.

Amity: Wow. So how have people responded to you? Do people look at you funny?

Bobby: No, I haven't gone out yet, in public. And I'm kind of scared to go to work tomorrow. It could work for me I guess.

(Bobby works with juvenile delinquents).

Bobby: I could look at them and say,"You do your community work!" and just open my eyes real big. Kids would probably go home and be all like, "I'm not sure mom, but I think my probation officer might be Satan, or one of his angels. His eyes are pretty red.

Amity: Are you going to take pictures of yourself?

Bobby: Yeah, that would be good...for a scrapbook. I'll be going over it with my kids one day, "This is the time daddy was really into Satan."

Amity: Hahahaha. Do you feel okay though?

Bobby: I feel like I have sand in my eye, and I can't get the sand out. I feel like I don't know if I'm really seeing things clearly, I have this weird feeling where I'm not sure if anything I'm seeing is real or not.

Amity: Woah, like an acid trip?

Bobby: It's like an acid trip you just don't get out of. It's been trying. I'm just hoping this blood stuff clears up...so, what's new with you?

R.I.P. Ike

So Ike Turner died yesterday at the age of 76. I don't have much to say about him, but what I can say is that I really enjoyed reading Louis Theroux's (of TV Nation) interview with him in his 2005 book of interviews, "The Call of the Weird: Travels in American Subcultures". His account of the cinematically beleaguered musician shed so much light into this complex and troubled man's inner workings. Not to say that the interview makes you want to like him, but I felt like I understood his personality a great deal after reading it.

Theroux explains how he was trying to interview Turner for a documentary, but even a delicate, casual mention of his past with Tina Turner would send the man into a shitfit. But Theroux warily prods on, effectively learning how to manage his interactions with Turner.

Here are some of my favorite excerpts:

I learned how to be around him, how to maintain eye contact, and be encouraging and supportive...In truth, I began feeling a little like Tina, which may be the fate of everyone who spends time with Ike...A great part of Ike's control of people comes from his excessive sensitivity: that the vulnerability I'd noticed on the first day was also the source of his power, because those around him can feel his sensitivity and they feel protective. I felt it too and wondered if I was falling under his spell.

I could film him but ask no questions; I could travel with him but not film; and then one day in New York word came that he'd had enough...he was a walking spider's web of nerves.

Back in London, a few weeks later, I got a plaintive stammering call of apology. "I don't want you to never feel I mistreated you," he said. "I want you to please forgive me, man. If you can find it in your heart. I wouldn't abuse our relationship for anything in the world. I value it too much. I just had too much pressure, you know? And I just couldn't take no mo'."

The chapter goes on discussing Ike's past "orgying" in the 70s, as well as his claim that he lost his virginity at age six. Ike displays some truly unsavory character traits to be sure, but all in all, you begin to understand the man and despise him just a little less.

R.I.P. buddy.

A Softer World

I couldn't tell if I liked these tragicomic photo strips exploring the quiet moments in life with the uncomfortable, at times deranged, narrative. But they're hauntingly strange. I like that. (Note: these are a little small--click on them to view at normal size. Go here to see more.)

I'm Dreaming of A Bearable Christmas

I hate Christmas. I've worked in retail so no one can deny me this right. When I think of Christmas, all I can imagine are cars with big bows on them waiting for some white suburbanite to discover in his garage, diamond necklaces being put on wealthy women in front of elaborate fireplaces, and overly attractive office executives having the time of their lives to the point of near-orgy at the annual company gathering.

Christmas is a time for dreams to die, and emotional honesty to meet its ugly fate in the name of "season's greetings". Case in point: Christmas songs. All the good ones are depressing as hell. Why? Because they're emotionally honest. The winter is cold, the end of the year is depressing, the expectations for the New Year are too exhausting; sometimes your loved ones are away when it seems like the whole world is snuggling up to a collective blanket of love comprised of family, friends and lovers.

You know what the best holidays songs are about? They're not about decorating a chopped up tree or roasting chestnuts or sleighriding to grandmother's house, that's for goddamn sure. They're about getting AIDS and being doped up on smack.

To wit: the best Christmas song ever, according to myself and backed by a BBC online readers' poll, is The Pogues' "Fairy Tale of New York", which lyrics include:

You're a bum
You're a punk
You're an old slut on junk
Lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed
You scumbag, you maggot
You cheap lousy faggot
Happy Christmas your arse
I pray God its our last

The video is absolutely gorgeous, and I believe that's Matt Dillon in the beginning. This would be the Pogues' only real hit, and guest vocalist Kristy MacColl's only known work before she died, ironically, on Christmas vacation in Mexico:



The following is my own top 10 list of Christmas and winter-related, holiday-ish tunes to have a listen to over a few bottles of whiskey and some ludes. Enjoy!

OH LITTLE TOWN OF BETHLEHEM


The British graffiti artist Bansky has been spreading his own holiday cheer, adding more of his ironic stencil works to the West Bank barrier, which he's used as a canvas since 2005.



Sure he's no Michelangelo, but I can't help but think of a quote from "The Third Man", a 1949 film adaptation of a Graham Greene short story about an American dime novelist led to war-torn Vienna under dubious circumstances:

Harry Lime (as played by Orson Welles):

In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

GREAT MOMENTS OF INTELLECTUAL BITCH SLAPPING

American broadcast news can be a non-stop 24hr stream of useless information-turned-white noise. We all know this. Brimming with talking head shoutfests, sloganeering politicians, soft-core porn masquerading as "human interest" topics (to catch a predator? please, I have HBO if I want to watch something pervy late night), your standard police blotter story filled with "why-is-this-making-national-news
-oh-yeah-the-woman-kidnapped-was-white-and-wealthier-than-God" news updates, the public shooting or natural disaster du jour, etc etc.

Are we at war? Is hunger in this nation at an all time high? Are we on the brink of a devastating recession? Is global warming serious?

I don't know, I'm just seeing what's on the end of what Burroughs called that "long newspaper spoon” and I'm disgusted. The garbage being spewed from corporate news channels has reached such a base level of uselessness that it's beyond joking about. Although, Stephen Colbert had a real zinger in "I Am America" when he said that good journalists know the five W's: "Who, What, When, Where, and Wolf Blitzer is for hospital patients and old people."

But sometimes, people, sometimes a serious news reporter breaks through the toxic ether and yanks at a listener's ears so hard they have to hold tight and listen to that glassy shield of infotainment shatter. Glazed eyes become clearer if only for a second when mainstream thinking, as perpetuated by pretty corporate mouthpieces, is challenged.

The other day I listened to one of the most influential corporate news anchormen actually held accountable for the hate mongering he's propagated over the years regarding illegal immigration. Not to say that Lou Dobbs will emerge a changed man from his recent appearance on Democracy Now!, but still, to make a media dinosaur like Dobbs stutter and stammer and become uber-defensive is a beautiful thing. Or to hear Naomi Klein hand Alan Greenspan's ass to him on a plate is pretty sweet. Or to see Jon Stewart question the social responsibility of a debate show like Crossfire--as a guest of said program, only to have said program canceled just months later--is a glorious thing indeed.

Here are some of my favorite Dobbs retorts:

--when Juan Gonzalez questions Dobbs on correspondent Glenn Spencer's use of the term "military incursion" when referring to the migration of illegal aliens (Spencer who, by the way, is a noted little helper of the Minute Men and has started his own non-governmental task force to assist the US Border Patrol), Dobbs says:

"My God, don't you have a sense of humor?"

--When Gonzalez compares today's xenophobia to the attitudes towards early Irish settlers, as well as to Chinese immigrants and the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, Dobbs blabs:

"You are ethnocentro to the point of absurdity!"

Dobbs throws out counterpunches like an amateur Rush Limbaugh disciple or a lackadaisical Bill O'Reily. You can tell when Amy Goodman's really got his nuts in a bind when she recounts factual errors in his reporting (like when his correspondent claimed that illegal immigrants could be attributed to the 7,000 cases of leprosy in the last three years, when in all reality a correlation cannot be proven and, really, there have been 7,000 cases of leprosy in the past THIRTY years). When Goodman asks him why he would let inaccuracies go uncorrected, he responds with more questions, like, "Well do you know what year that was?" as if that has anything to do with anything.

It's a real shame that Dobbs is so hellbent on his anti-immigrant agenda, because he has some truly admirable things to say. Like when Goodman asked him what the most important issues to Americans are today. Dobbs says:

The most important issue in this country today is representation of the American people in Washington, D.C., which is being denied right now by corporate America, special interest, group and identity politics that are submerging the will of the majority in this country. The fundamental tenet of any democracy is representation of the will of the majority, and that is being denied through elitists in both business and government and politics. And we have to fundamentally examine where we are and where we want to be going over the course of this next century. And that is not happening, not in the presidential campaigns of both parties. It’s not happening in Washington, D.C., even though we have a government in which the Democratic Party is leading the Congress, and the Republican Party, the White House.

Needless to say, I think this interview was refreshing to listen to, and I hope that Dobbs fires his fact-checkers, if he has them, and finds some new ones.

Listen to it here.

Also, the Naomi Klein vs. Alan Greenspan on Democracy Now! was also very heated and refreshing to hear, it can be found here.

Or, watch part five of an 80s Donahue show where Ayn Rand looses her cool when an audience member very politely states that she had outgrown Rand's philosophy: