rags

Life with Thelma and Louise

2008-07-24T09:00:31Z

I won't be especially popular in my house by the dawn's early light, if either my daughter or my wife come across this -- not because I intend to write anything hurtful about either of them (they are 66% of my favorite people on the whole of the earth) -- but because they've heard all of this before and don't appreciate my playing to the cheap seats.

Sigrid, born and raised in (West) Germany, in Land Hesse, grew up, as many of her countrymen did, with a mass transit infrastructure the envy of most of the world. We are close in age, though she is younger--I mention this, because growing up in Central New Jersey is/was an entirely different experience than it was for her. When I met her thirty plus years ago she couldn't, and still doesn't, understand my fascination and devotion to the words and music of Bruce Springsteen, the patron saint of the Joyce Kilmer rest stop on the NJ Turnpike.

Her life was bounded and measured by trains, trams, trolleys, buses and subways. Hemi-powered drones screaming down the boulevard prompts a 'wie, bitte?' response, at best, and, I won't tell the story now but eventually, I cannot think of Bruce Springsteen performing in Germany without thinking about a show in the Frankfurt Festhalle, my wife, and the kooky dancer who experienced the power and glory of Thunder Road. But that's for another time.

Sigrid doesn't drive. She is the navigator and the keeper of the compass and maintains both a remarkable sense of direction, as well as composure and a sense of humor, both with me (I often tell people had I been Columbus, there would be 300 million people living on top of one another in the Azores; I'd have never found the Americas in a million years) and with Michelle, our daughter-who-goes-to-college, who inherited both my five speed Mitsubishi Mirage as well as, unfortunately, my sense of direction.

The Mirage gets spectacular gas mileage, an important point for me, whose credit cards pay for all the gas and not so much for Michelle, who does me a favor when she occasionally remembers to check the oil when she gets gasoline. Michelle is home from college for the summer and is her mother's wheelman, or wheel person I suppose, is more accurate. Think: Driving Miss Daisy, but Jessica Tandy has John Banner's approximation of a German accent. You're welcome.

I'll come home and the house will be empty. We have long since stopped leaving notes on the board on the refrigerator intended and designed for such notes, because both of my women have long realized the man in the house's ability to NEVER look at the board, much less read anything written on the board, is the stuff from which legends are made. As the shadows lengthen in the late afternoon, having checked all the calenders in the house for appointment notations (none of my appointments ever make the calendars, which, considering I buy them, seems unfair, but only to me), I eventually attempt to ring Sigrid's cell phone.

My daughter, a full-fledged member of the Digerati, has her cell phone always on and accessible, as does her older brother. Neither of them get that from their parents, most especially their mother. I don't call Michelle as she's driving except or unless Sigrid has her phone's ringer turned off, or the phone itself is off, or more usually, the phone is so buried in her purse that by the time she finds it, it's gone over to voicemail. She always thinks this is hysterical no matter how often it happens (and often is the frequency with which it happens), me not so much.

Eventually I get her on the phone--and the Mirage is so small I can hear Michelle in the background with commentary and footnotes as Sigrid offers a narrative and status report on where the Vagabond Voyagers are at that moment and the estimated time of return. So far, a presentation of passports hasn't been necessary in their travels and travails, but there's a weekend coming up and I fully expect eventually to hear one or the other tell me, "Well, we're not in the middle of nowhere, but we can see it from here." Just stay out of Arkansas, ladies; you know where I mean.

A Magee Omelet

2008-07-23T09:03:08Z

Sometimes, despite our best efforts and promising beginnings, gravity wins. I should bow to that inevitability and move on, and yet, sometimes, I can't.

Should it ever come up in conversation (not that it will, but it could (I suppose)), the number of times an egg falling through a hole in a grocery store plastic bag actually made by a six pack of soda cans that someone then placed a carton of eggs upon, will bounce on the parking lot of the grocery store is zero. You needn't ask how I know this-somethings can be taken on faith, as the Apostle Paul may have noted in a letter to Timothy, though I doubt Timothy was worried about those grocery store plastic bags. And the eggs in the parking lot (or technically, on the parking lot) were my doing.

Our children think we lie, but we don't (at least this time) when we tell them that years ago, groceries were packed by store employees in bags made of paper. Forests the size and scope of the Amazon Rain Forest were felled to produce the pulp to make those bags and Moms all across America during 'back to school' week in the fall fashioned them into protective covers for their kids' textbooks. It was, with my deepest regards to Al Gore, recycling at its finest.

I've been trying to think of something nice to say about the plastic sacks that are now the carrier of choice across grocery stores from sea to shining sea. Maybe you can, I'm having no luck at all. From the mass produced and sort-of-stuck-togetherness of them, almost impossible to separate at the register, through the notion of handles they purport to have that aren't, to their uncanny ability to hold incredible volumes and masses of items within until you are no more than three steps from your vehicle in the parking lot before letting go almost with an air of urgency, they are pure evil.

And, don't fret I contribute to the waste in the landfill by throwing them away (I can clearly see, a million years from now, cockroaches (survivors of the last nuclear war) sipping moisture drops trapped in the shards of foam cups while sleeping under the blanket of those plastic bags) because, here's the perverse part, I save the bags. When you go to IKEA, you can shop with a giant yellow bag, that you must never take from the store, but you can purchase a bag of about the same size, and of the same material (I think) that we used on the Mars probe, for your house. I took this bag to work and have filled it with grocery store plastic bags, because 'I never know when I'll need a bag.'

Except, after all this time and seventeen hundred bajillion excursions to the grocers, I have never found a use for the bags--but keep them, just in case. Since I buy stuff on impulse and at frantic-manic speed in the grocery, I'm always racing to bag the items (after wrestling a plastic bag into submission) before the self-checkout voice gets angry, meaning I rarely exercise any care in how stuff gets packed into the bags. I've dropped cans of soup onto loaves of white bread, resulting in sandwiches that resemble abstract art (especially since the cold cuts handle impact differently).

Am I pleading for a return of paper bags? Perhaps.
Or a repeal of the laws of gravity.

"Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings."

Somebody drop some homefries and bacon, okay?
John says he's staying for breakfast.

Subpoenaed in Texas, Sequestered in Memphis

2008-07-22T08:50:41Z

A fellow walked by me in a store and offered, 'life's a funny old dog, ain't it?' I'm not sure he was speaking to me, through me or for me, but I've had days where I am bone weary from doing absolutely nothing and am so fuzzy headed my brain has been reduced to cotton batting.

'Sure is,' I say because I have no idea where this is heading and then, he just keeps walking and is gone. And now I have this mental visual of a Great Dane, an Irish Setter or one of those Please-Don't-Eat-the-Daisies dogs (never a greyhound, or a whippet or a Jack Russell terrier) and it turns out he was filling up the six seconds it took him to walk from some point before where I was to just past me on his way to the door. Thanks for nothing, Old Roy, stuff you and the horse you ro--well, never mind about the horse.

My wife and I have two children who, when they were young (I used to say 'small' as if she and I were in the miniatures business or something) had pets, fish for the most part and the occasional turtle (great name for a band, imho). My wife wound up taking care of the pets because children, being adults in training, don't care about anyone other than themselves, especially a species that can't talk or attract attention until the moment it shuffles off its mortal scales and goes belly-up. We have had our share of burials at sea- did you know that the water in the toilet swirls in a counter clockwise direction in Australia? it does-and life went on, though some settling of contents may have occurred during shipment.

We're not pet people--not that I know what pet people are or what they look like. I have enough trouble taking of myself, and really don't, my wife does, and I don't want to burden her any further. Besides why should I invite competition? I could see having a horse, sort of at least once a year for my birthday (at my age, on a pony, my feet would still touch the ground) but then what? Perhaps an ocelot? I'm not sure what they are, but they sound cool, don't they? Maybe a marsupial--I just like the name--or a koala (what happened to the one who used to be the spokesbear for the airline?).

We have mascots for sports teams, from junior high through professional, all named for animals. We drive Mustangs and more and sometimes we compare our selves to animals (you can supply your own example). We didn’t go back to her place, We went to some place where she cat-sits. She said, “I know I look tired, but everything’s fried, here in Memphis.”

Beware of Darkness

2008-07-21T08:56:16Z

By design, I suspect, ambulance and fire engine (and police, too) sirens are uncomfortable for us to hear. Not because they're loud, though they are (of course), or sudden, which is part of their charm, but because of their strident urgency--their 'you need to make way now!' demand whenever you hear them.

There's never any place on any road wide enough to move the car when I hear a pulsating siren while driving-and if I'm walking, I stop until the vehicle has gone by (though I'm not sure why, exactly. John Lennon, in explaining the rhythm of "I Am the Walrus", helped me realize why that song always frightened me: the verses' meter mimicked the siren pulsations all public safety vehicles in Europe use.) The worst time for sirens, and most stuff (come to think of it) is at night. We have these amazing brains and these very cool thumbs but there were trade offs.

As we evolved, wandered from the Garden or were left here as detritus from an alien picnic on the planet (I'm trying to be inclusive in terms of the Origin of the Species), our ears can't hear what other passengers on this blue marble can, our noses can't detect the nuances that our pets can and our eyes, while in most instances able to appreciate color, don't have the acuity or other properties some other species have.

As a college kid, I got into one of those endless 'what if you lost' loops, usually precipitated by huge quantities of beverage or herb that might have been troubling to law enforcement members--and the issue always seemed to be how would you cope if you could no longer use, in my case, eyesight. Everyone who knew me then, or knows me now, realizes I am not afraid of the dark-I am paralyzed by my fear of it. Darkness is a magnifier and a mask simultaneously.

Want to see me jump? Call me on the phone after nine o'clock at night. Phone calls at night are never good news and the only reason I ever answer, in much the same way as I pull over for the speeding ambulance or fire engine (I'm usually the reason for the police car siren), is to silence them and to pause the horror movie projecting in my head. It makes no difference if my wife and two children are in the house, in my sight, in the well-lit living room. The fresh new hell that awaits is on the other end of the Bakelite fabrication and someone has released the hounds.

This morning, as I stumbled through my ablutions in preparing for work, the siren sounded for a long time, at first faint then growing louder as it came nearer, then softer again as it approached, I assume, Backus Hospital which is a short walk from my house. Despite the early hour, I could clearly see in my mind's eye emergency personnel struggling to keep alive someone, somewhere, who had been swallowed by the darkness each of us has within that so often and so swiftly spills without.

The River Flows like a Silent Tear

2008-07-20T13:42:22Z

I remain seated these days because I have trouble finding and maintaining my balance-worst part is, I'm not alone. We went from a society with a Bill of Rights to a Summary of Entitlements, and we don't seem to care what happens to anyone else in order to get what we want.

Every night we watch 'the news about the war' as if there were some form of monolithic struggle (like in the good old days, maybe?) but instead all the nuance has been drained from the screen, from the printed dispatches and from the ideology that should, and could, govern our conduct in the world. I read where every year fewer members of Congress, as one example, have ever served in any branch of the armed forces, active or reserve. I'm really not sure how important that actually is but I remember a bitter Air Force joke we used to call the General's Rule: nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it.

A couple of weeks ago, there were stories about this being the thirty-fifth anniversary of the All-Volunteer Force. I spent eight years in the Air Force for many reasons, to include that they paid me ('glow from within' didn't permit me to buy cheap smokes in the commissary, I had to have money). And, sounds petty I know, but because they paid me, I wasn't a volunteer-I was a professional (unless you served with me, and thanks for keeping quiet about all of that).

Maybe I'm an old soul in an even older body. I, like many of my generation went to Woodstock (if not literally than figuratively), and unlike a former Chief Executive, did inhale and did turn on, tune in and drop out and then I started wearing long pants--I think Apostle Paul speaks of it in a letter (from camp ?), "I put aside the things of childhood." Many of the rest of us in the commune stayed with Uncle Max, I guess, on the farm. Sure feels that way.

And we've now raised a second generation of skin-covered obliviots who think because we have Earth Shoes, eat Tofu and wear "Free Tibet" tee-shirts, our piece of the world is safe and saved (what do those monks really think of Richard Gere? I'd love to know). We protest injustice and infamous injury to a person or a people by growing faint in the presence of those who inflict the damage. We still trade with them, mind you-and we even let them host the Olympics, but in our heart of hearts, at night before we close our eyes, we disapprove of them. That'll show 'em.

We have scripted a movie of life where those currently in the military service are some sort of abstraction--we're grateful for their service but we don't want to think about it too much and most of us don't actually know anyone with a son or daughter in the armed forces. Despite our technology and voluminous information networks, we have no idea how the world REALLY works and, more ominously not only do not know what we do not know but are increasingly dismissive of those who know differently than we do. Where's their loyalty and sense of team?

In a hundred years we'll have evolved into a society that we, today, will not recognize, with footnotes to laws now being laws themselves and something akin to a multi-national corporation marketing our next President. Men go crazy in congregations. They only get better one by one.
Who among us will be first?

Laying Traps for Troubadours ...

2008-07-19T09:58:01Z

Monday night in an informational session slated for a half hour before the actual City Council meeting at 7 PM (and after the session on the Pension Board at 6 PM), the Norwich City Council will converse with its Chief of Police, Louis Fusaro, on a variety of topics (I suspect) but mostly on a survey conducted in March of 2007and how the Norwich Police Department has implemented the study's recommendations. For those with fancy watches, this session will start at 6:30. Between you and me, I'm not sure why this conversation isn't part of the actual City Council meeting, but my evil twin, Skippy, is willing to wager the explanation would be a doozie.

Monday's are not always the most exciting night out in Norwich if you choose to attend a Council meeting (I prefer Twofer Tuesday specials at the launderette around the corner from the Wauregan Hotel because I have a lot of unmatched socks to wash) but it can be a pretty good lesson in civics. As a matter of fact, it's not unusual during the academic year to encounter high school students from across the area (though never from Norwich Free Academy, come to think of it) who, as part of a class they're taking in Government or History are in attendance at a variety of public meetings. They always approach someone in the front of the room before the meeting starts to get a signature (otherwise they receive NO credit from their teacher) certifying their attendance.

Getting the signature early means they can bug out (and why not?). We who live here seem often to pay little attention and don't require signatures (though I always bring a pen, just in case). I usually sit through the first hour or so and then head home, where I can watch the rest of the Council meeting on my cable system while shaking my head or sipping my soda (I tried to do both simultaneously. Not pretty and it made a mess on the carpet). In recent months, our Council meetings have been long affairs, I'd like to think because there are so many facets of an issue and impacts of a decision.

The conversation with the Chief of Police at the informational session, (it's not on the actual agenda of the Council meeting because the session is a meeting before the meeting even though it's with the Council. My brain hurts.) will be in open session (as opposed to executive, which is reserved for specific and specified purposes having to do with contractual negotiations, possible property acquisitions and/or personnel evaluations) and I'm confident a frank discussion will be had, because (my opinion) we have some issues (= a rash of unpleasant headlines) in need of address and redress and the police department should be both transparent and invisible to me, the law-abiding resident. We are fortunate to have so many good men and women in all of public safety (and the public sector, for that matter). Too many, in fact, to allow negative exceptions, even when they end up on the front page of a local newspaper, to overshadow the everyday excellence of the vast majority. Quite frankly, those officers, and we, deserve far more than thirty minutes, members of the City Council, but I'll take the informational session as a good-faith down payment for a start.

When I was a kid, my mom told me if I got lost to find a policeman and he would help me get home (and then my parents moved. Kidding!). And that's what I told my children (who are now adults themselves, and have GPS). We grew up with a mental movie that teachers and police officers and firefighters were brave, smart and true--role models--and we may have lost sight they, too, are people like we are, only more scrutinized and less forgiven.

We, not just in Norwich, deserve the finest people from our communities in public service, from our elected and appointed officials to and through the sanitation, education, engineering, city hall services, utilities and any other office we can think of. We pay for professionals who have a right to work for a living wage in an ethical environment and for honest people. It's not only okay to be concerned when there are instances of malfeasance or poor judgment or undesirable behavior-it should be a residency requirement.

All of us need to roll up our sleeves, prop up the hood and repair the engine of governance that we've created for ourselves. We need to stop searching for the guilty and fix the problem. Specifically, we need to read the Chief of Police's update on his responses to that March 2007 survey and, when we attend the City Council information session Monday night at 6:30, be prepared to ask questions relevant to fixing problems and listen for answers-even ones we don't like. Perhaps, most especially, ones we don't like. I don't know about you-I like to learn, but sometimes I don't like being taught.

NASA, TANG and .....

2008-07-18T08:52:14Z

Driving home yesterday, I saw what in another time might have been imagined to have been one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and/or another signal that End Times are nigh. Parked near the entrance to the closed-for-the day Toyota dealership, but still idling because I guess it just wasn't consuming enough fossil fuel, was a black Cadillac-one of the large Death Star size cars, not the hip pocket rockets or the trendy Euro-styled sleds.

This was an old school Caddy, the 'as a matter of fact, I do have a deed to the road in the glove compartment, so shut up, peasant' sized car, as black as Christie Brinkley's heart, or Peter Cook's reputation (sorry. I found all of that so amazingly embarrassing and stupidly self-aggrandizing last week. I now know what to get their kids as birthday presents, gift certificates for therapists). The unapologetic flagship of the Cadillac Ranch.

The couple who had been in it were walking around a Prius not peering into the windows, yet, and about as far away as we are from one another in line at ATM's. Not sure they could see the brag sheet on the backseat window on the driver's side, where the paper tells you about all the options, and how much they break out as, plus destination charges and what the EPA thinks the mileage should be. And we both know, these folks have never seen mileage numbers like those in any car they've ever driven.

Nor have they ever needed to. They looked about my age, though since they're driving a Caddy, obviously more successful, but that means we all probably went through the first Gas Crisis together back in 1973 (when gas at the pump in May of 73 was 39 cents a gallon and skyrocketed to 55 cents by the following June) and look at us now. Some of us didn't blink as we went from weekend use of petroleum products, at parties and such, to a little more during the work week, 'y'know, to take the edge off, dude' until we awakened a few short months ago to diesel topping five bucks a gallon, with high test about twenty cents behind and regular on the far side of four bucks a pop. Talk about the Man with the Golden Pump?

Suddenly those Hummers didn't look like such smart ideas, did they? And those pick-up trucks that are so large they come with their own zip codes are rusting on dealer's lots because if you can afford the gas it takes to get one of them to the market for the weekly groceries, you can't afford the groceries. Are you as impressed with your level of physical fitness as I am with mine (despite our years)? When my wife and I married thirty years ago, I couldn't even begin to get my arms around a hundred dollars' worth of groceries. Now, I can pick up a hundred bucks' worth of food without even using two hands. Must be putting steroids and fluoride in the water. Has anyone seen Rafael Palmeiro lately-now that the Viagra gig is over, has a he got a Culligan water service contract?

I figure it was their first visit to their next life-they may not know it yet, that's all. A follow-up visit, probably while the dealership is still closed because we have our pride as human beings, will find them looking at different colors of the car, and perhaps (shading their eyes) looking into the windows to see for themselves that the car has seats and headrests and, yes, a steering wheel. Perhaps on a third or fourth visit, the one just before they actually go and find a salesman (though I've never needed to seek out a salesman on a car lot. I feel a sugar cube at picnic near an army ant preserve.), one of them, probably him, will perhaps poke the car with a stick, looking for some Reason to Believe.

Meanwhile, we tell one another forty is the new thirty. By the time we get to fifty-six being the new forty, I'll be seventy, I suspect. And we didn't cut back or go cold turkey when gas went to three bucks a gallon, so maybe four is the new two, huh? And what do they want for bananas these days, because the monkey on your back looks like it hasn't eaten in a week.

Watson, come here!

2008-07-17T08:52:12Z

For 'unspecified reasons' the telephone in my place of work went goofy the other day. It rang, and you could hear (way in the background) someone speaking or, technically, trying to shout over what sounded like a forest fire in the phone. In my earpiece it was like the Rice Krispies guys Meet Shock and Awe in a cage match of some sort and I have to assume that's how it sounded on the other side as well.

When the machinery becomes part of the scenery, and then absents itself, weirdness ensues (at least for me) when you're not Mr. Wizard. I'm more of the Ward type, not even a Wally and when 'suddenly' happens, it gives me the willies (considering my first name, maybe that should, too). When a light bulb burns out at your house, do you try the light switch a few more times, y'know, just to make sure? Me, too. I can control (or think I do) that part of the process, so I'm playing it for all it's worth. It's like when the car doesn't start, the first thing I do is check the oil. Yeah, I know-there's no connection, but I know how to check the oil. I have no idea how to get a car that doesn't start, to start. I, perhaps like you, am a One-Trick Pony (PS: our hairlines look like they went to different high schools together, by the way) and I'm going to break out the playbook when I think an emergency has arrived and do the drill.

From one day to the next, the phone became uncooperative. I even brought in another phone from home, because I figured after ten plus years, the one on the desk had spit the bit (that ties back into the reference to pony, doesn't it? Afraid so). But it wasn't the phone and it wasn't the cord I'd strung from the phone jack (nickname for phone john? I have no idea) on the other side of the room to where my desk is--and I took the 'old phone' to another phone outlet and plugged it in and it worked fine. So........

The people at my work have a process to get this kind of stuff fixed-which impresses me because until my phone stopped working it never crossed my mind that it could, or would. The first thing the repair form asks for is your phone number which sounds a little counter-intuitive to me and also vaguely like a put-on. Luckily, I was able to borrow a cup of clear dial tone from the long-suffering neighbor in the adjoining office and use her phone number. She is really good with people in charge of things. Within three hours, two people were in my office working like crazy to fix the phone.

In the meantime, of course, the phone would ring and I'd shout over the static and noise that the phone was not working (when they make Grasp of the Obvious an Olympic Event, you'll find me at the medals podium). I'd tell the presumed caller to ring me on my cell phone, whose number, as it turns out, I couldn't always fully remember and when I did, it was incorrect. If you called, I'm sorry and if you didn't, aren't you lucky?

The actual problem with the phone had NOTHING to do with me, the repair people explained (I was so relieved to learn this; it was the most important part of the explanation, quite frankly) and the causes made my head feel stuffy. Almost every wonder I own in this Brave New World is beyond my understanding when it works, and more so, when it stops working. The pumps don't work cos the vandals took the handles but while I got the rag handy, didja want me to check your oil or wash the windshield?

I Don't Want a Pickle....

2008-07-16T08:57:05Z

There's been some murmuring in recent days in letters to the editor of a local newspaper and news stories from Hartford that are buried on the inside pages of the regional sections of the newspapers that CT Governor M. Jodi Rell (I didn't realize my Governor had a Scarlet Letter in her name until coming back from visiting my brother, Adam, in New Jersey and crossing back into Connecticut and seeing it on the 'Welcome to' road sign; it's even on the website, Gadzooks!) is considering an effort to reinstate mandatory helmet laws for motorcycle riders (and passengers, I assume, as well).

Well, hold on a minit, Baba Looey! Connecticut may have one of the more imbalanced bonds to revenue ratios of these fifty sporadically United States (and the highest in all of New England); we may have more families below the poverty level in our state capital, Hartford, than some other states have for the entire state and we most certainly do have a public education system that has 'performance gaps' when comparing the achievement of white and non-white school-age children--but that's no reason to get excited. If you want hear howls of outrage, just whisper about helmets for motorcyclists. Folks start acting under the influence of Haggard.

Please-don't get me wrong; I'm more a Jerry Jeff guy myself and besides, I lack any skill to be able to drive a motorcycle. They scare the bejabbers out of me (both the small, sedate ones and the big, burly 'hogs', are they still called that?) whether they're in a parking lot or zipping down the street. I know people who ride motorcycles and of one motorcyclist, Evert, who's on the ride of his life and I check his blog every day because it's really cool--and I'd note, in every shot Evert posts, the folks on motorcycles are all wearing helmets. I don't think Arlo made the trip-but he did make the arrangements for the snacks.

The purple prose and hyperventilation has started on this 'civil liberties issue' and the battle lines are or have been drawn. 'Half a league, half a league-half a league onward!' (I've never understood if Al T meant the American or the National, or which division). It's good, I suppose, to be passionate (I've never been misidentified as a casual kind of person on anything) but I hope we can employ more reason than rhetoric as this conversation continues, and I suspect it will for some length of time.

Our genius, as a species, for self-destruction (and the destruction of everything around us) is, imho, just as significant as these opposable thumbs, in staking our claim at the top of the food chain. Let's make sure between and among all the shouting we can hear one another because "Ain't nobody talkin' because everybody knows. We pulled your cycle up back the garage and polished up the chrome. Our gypsy biker coming home."

Empty Lives

2008-07-15T08:56:34Z

Graham Parker, decades ago, ranted "don't get me to fill up your empty lives" as the star-making machinery enclosed him in a Cocoon of Cool where real life was notional and, for all intents and purposes, fictional.

Ray Davies of The Kinks wished for "(A) fantasy world of celluloid villains and heroes." And, stealing another page from RD, who among us doesn't remember a Golden Child from our youth, some perfect specimen of the species, whose life was so wonderful it hurt our eyes to just look at them? And should we encounter them today and they seem to now have something other than that Happy Ending they thought was a birthright, tell me you don't smile just a little (schadenfreude ist auch ein freude).

So what should we make of the more recent examples of 'I called shotgun in Cowling's White Bronco' media feeding frenzy that is so much a part of our lives? With all this media and in such abundance, let's face it, the dumbing down, the bread and circuses, the 'Look at me, I'm Sandra Dee' aspect of our news structures, the day must be coming when reasonable human beings might well ask, WTFO? Or, perhaps more elegantly phrased, how did we end up in this hand basket, why is it so warm and where, exactly, are we going?

Not only do we rely on too many dubious sources of information and distraction, we rely on them in order to live our lives through their reports. How many more Christie Brinkley's, Alex Rodriquez's, Lara Logan's do we have to have before we can finally look away? What happened to last month's Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan or Jamie Lynn. If they're not on the cover of AADDd (Adult Attention Deficit Disorder Digest) does that mean they no longer exist?

Show of hands: do any of us shoe shop with any of the people in the above paragraph? That's what I thought. But more of us know about Lara Logan's escapades than can name the Speaker of the House of Representatives. We are more conversant with the heartbreak that is Christie's lot in life than understanding of the impact of the Prime Rate on our credit ratings (see? All this time you were blaming Countrywide for the sub-prime meltdown and it may have been Diana Bianchi) and baseball fans can now discuss whether A-Rod has more doubles with runners in scoring position than he has nooners with Madonna.

Is this stuff news? Is any of it news, and for whom? I love baseball and am a Yankees fan, and I shift uneasily as the Rodriguez family disintegrates off the field as when Roger Clemens showed up in a Spring training haircut to testify on the Hill. My need to NOT know is greater than TMZ, CNN, E!, Fox or the Daily News' need to tell me. I watched Lara Logan's reports for CBS News from Afghanistan and Iraq-I'm not sure why I'm supposed to care with whom she was knocking (combat) boots when not being shot at. As for Christie B, the Unhappy Uptown Girl, I have a hard time feeling sorry for her especially as she does such a good job of feeling sorry for herself. But, again, why is any of this leading a TV newscast or showing up on the front pages, above the fold, of daily newspapers? Joan of Arc may have drunk her bathwater; Jonas Salk could have left the toilet seat up and the Virgin Mary might have never child-proofed the stable--and none of that is any of my business.

And yet, here it comes. Who's to bless and who's to blame? We are--that's the short answer, which is good, because surveys say we don't have the span of attention required to have a discussion, much less develop a strategy, for better separating the wheat from the chaff. No wonder our world is so screwed up-look at how we gather the information to attempt to make decisions. And if you're hoping all the tumult and head noise will get better with time, let me talk to you about buying a bridge in Brooklyn.

Three question exam, but you have to get all three right. Ready? Probably not.
Who is the President of Zimbabwe?
Who originally called shotgun in AC's SUV?
Why did so many know the second one but not the first?

Thank the Lord for the Night time.....

2008-07-14T08:59:58Z

...just don't get deep into the gratitude, okay? Because either by the dawn's early light or the electric candles we all have, it gets (and stays) pretty stark. I have a getting up and going to work routine that is so old (this is where you say 'how old is it?' We'll need to rehearse, Starbuck, before doing that again) my routine has a routine. Small ruffle (this is the only blog that has a drummer, remember?).

Yours may be different but in one key way, it's the same: even though our eyes are open and we purport to be awake, we're on auto-pilot and going through the motions. If you've moved your razor, or toothbrush or other prep hardware or software, you realize, with a start, when your hands don't pick it up and you step into the now and have to actually wake up. This morning, my evil twin, Skippy, took over and it's a miracle you didn't see the news crew at my house from your house. Seriously.

I have a driver's license, a Triple A and AARP membership cards, all with my birth date (which is why I love my library card, not just because Otis Library still has that newly-renovated library smell, but also because the card doesn't list my age) but in my mind's eye, I think behaviorists call it resident self-image, I don't believe the license or the mirror. I'm a rock and roll kid with an attitude to match.

My eyesight isn't what it once was--of whom is that not true, I suppose, so I have to work a little harder now in order to see the handsome and talented daredevil and all-around great guy that I am when I stare into the mirror (and modest; I always forget that I'm modest). Speaking of modesty, my routine after awakening involves removing my night shirt to wash my hair (I eventually head to work in gym clothes and shower at work after a half hour on the tread mill or the cardio bike or the mechanical bull (just checking to see if you were still reading)), so I was shocked, so shocked I almost swallowed the dental rinse I swish around in my mouth while lathering my face and using a metal blade to shave it, when I peered into the mirror and there was this old guy, covered in skin that was not only the color of grade school lunch room mashed potatoes, but the look as well. Eeeeew!

This guy in the mirror didn't have any brown hair, like it says on my license-not a follicle. It was all grey where there was hair at all and lots of scalp where there used to be hair. I almost swallowed the dental rinse (and in my previous lives, I'd have mixed it with something and swallowed it without a second thought) when I flashed on what was different this morning. Why my now had arrived so abruptly.

Sleepy-head Skippy had put my eyeglasses back on after washing my hair--so there's this face, practically smothered in lather with two glass frames perched atop the white aerosol mountains. That I shave without my glasses helps explain the rate at which I go through styptic pencils--I thought someone was robbing the medicine cabinet and using them to write very long letters home to Mom. Talk about a prisoner of the routine, eh?
I suppose that explains the lip gloss on your left earlobe, right?

Where do they keep their beepers?

2008-07-13T13:17:28Z

Went for a walk yesterday to clear my head (I know, 'in his case, what are we talking about here? Ten to fifteen steps at most? Hardly worthwhile putting shoes on.' You're right, not to mention the trousers as well) and in the course of the aimless wander (I never get lost, even when I don't know where I am, because so many folks tell me where to go; but I'm never dressed coolly enough for the suggestion), I looked down on the sidewalk and there was a HUGE swarm of ants.

I was never one of these kids who used to set them on fire with a magnifying glass (if you thought my math skills were marginal, you should see the rest of the Mr. Science Guy repertoire) mainly because I didn't have a magnifying glass and I think it would have bothered me. And, just to prove I am nearly a Renaissance Man, I don't eat them dipped in chocolate, either. (and hope they would return the courtesy if circumstances warranted.)

I have a dim memory (at my age, most memories are, I suppose) of Art Baker on the original "You Asked for It!" TV show with a story on an ant war. The show was, with all respect to Real World, generally thought of as the original 'unscripted' real-life show, the genuine article and Real Deal. I don't remember how old I was when the episode aired or who wrote in and asked for it, but I was still in short pants (which isn't especially helpful as I'm often still in short pants to this day--mostly at the request of the neighbors and as a condition of release by the court) and more than amazed at how the TV guys built this very elaborate ant farm with a glass wall so we at home could see everything that went on below ground.

It must've taken weeks to construct and to let the ants wander around in this biosphere, terrarium or whatever it was called, getting acclimated to their new home and then came the day the TV folks put down a drinking straw (I think it was) that stretched from this stand-alone ant colony to another colony they had built and stocked with ants, really big ants (I now know the camera adds ten pounds-back then, all we had was black and white so I don't know how much was added at the time) and the cameras waited until an ant from one colony wandered through his drinking straw and found a Whiter Shade of Pale, more or less.

It was total war as I remember it--and it was fascinating to watch. Bear in mind, I was born less than a decade AFTER the end of World War II and the Korean War was still a hot war in my infancy, but it was the Ant War that most impressed me, even to this day. The carnage and the chaos over the decades and through the mists of the years are as vivid now as they were then. The realization that they, the ants, so much resemble us, the bipeds with the big brains, only came in the latter years.

Back at the sidewalk, practically beneath my feet, I watched them roil and writhe as if they were a single living thing and not tens of thousands of tiny creatures, all of whom (I assume) were oblivious to my existence and interest. I confess to shooting a glance upwards every once in awhile just to reassure myself no one was staring down on me. Although, come to think of it, the sun did seem to feel a lot warmer than weather conditions should have permitted. And I still don't know what to make of those giant chocolate chips I saw around the corner.

If six was a nine.....

2008-07-12T13:04:14Z

Try as we may, try as we might, despite Lennon's eloquence to the contrary, we can change so much of our world and even more of ourselves and yet, it's the past we cannot change and that, even though it's the past, always seems to shape who we are and whom we will be.

I used to explain to people who fell in love with rosy-red scenarios that required so many variables that if you removed all the moving parts from their premises, there'd be no parts, that if my mother had married a Kennedy, I'd be living in the White House, but she didn't. So I'm not--and that was why I never sent my mom a Mother's Day card, because she had ruined my life.

Many people felt they saw my point (this was in the days before I wore a hat)-and were saddened I didn't send Mom a Mother's Day card. No amount of protestation to the contrary could get them to understand that that wasn't the point of my story at all-and it wasn't even true. Of course, that I would lie about not sending my mother a card for mother's day was even more distressing if not heinous and eventually I shared Clevinger's fate about being punished, or not, for marching in the Sunday parades under the direction of LT Scheisskopf.

We are everyone we've ever known, through blood or birth or chance and by extension, so is everyone else. I struggle and fail everyday to understand why knuckleheads (and that's what I call them because I'm the soul of generosity) with whom I'm supposedly working are, in reality, working at cross-purposes to me and everything I'm trying to do. It's true with with you as well, we just pretend we don't know it.

There comes a point every day or in every interaction where you pause, perhaps on the landing between the second and third floor, and say to Bob or John or Nina or Mary, "I don't think we'll ever get this piano up to the third floor!" To which they respond with surprise and irritation, "Up to the third floor, I thought we were trying to get it down to the second floor!"

And the here we are:
"And the doors swing back and forward, from the past into the present
And the bedside crucifixion turns from wood to phosphorescent.
And they're moving problem families from the South up to the North,
Mother's crying over some soft soap opera divorce,
And you say you didn't do it, but you know you did of course,
And they'll soon be pulling down the little palaces."

Love Me, Love my Dog

2008-07-11T09:03:58Z

It happens earlier and earlier in every Presidential campaign and it's started already this year even though technically the two major parties have only presumptive and not actual candidates for the office of the President of the United States.

For months there have been Internet whispers about the American flag pin not in the buttonhole of one of the candidate's suit jackets because that's really important. Meanwhile, across the aisle, the murmurings about a 'love child' (child born not from your wife, but by a third party, and when I as a kid, called a term that Mom would wash out you mouth if she ever heard you use) have been resurrected from the 2000 campaign.

Accusations of flip-flopping on issues as wide ranging as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) or the new GI Bill, both of which occupied the headlines and briefly (as all news seems to) our national attention three weeks ago, have become part of our daily conversations as if constancy and inflexibility are now virtues. In November of 2006, as an electorate, we felt very differently about staying the course and maintaining our speed and direction as we dis elected one party from control of the legislative branch and re-installed the other.

Turns out, meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Joe meet Rob, Rob meet Sean, Sean meet Joe. And around goes the gossip. One hundred and fifty years ago, Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln engaged in seven debates across the state of Illinois for the privilege of being elected by the Illinois State Legislature to serve as one of the Senators from that state.

What would that election have looked like, I wonder, if we had youtube or facebook or myspace.
Considering the personal tragedies within his own family that he struggled to keep personal, how would Lincoln have been able to counter all the viral videos that could have been launched?

More ominously, how awful, truly awful would the tone and tenor of this year's national elections be if we did not have the examples from the past of those who exercised both comity and communication in the furtherance of the public good? There's a video on "I'm voting Republican" and its mirror reflection on "I'm voting Democrat" that are funny in the sense that the last laugh at the end of the world will be considered humorous and keeps us from admitting we're not really interested in issues and answers anymore.

What's the matter Lassie, is Miss Liberty in trouble?

Revolution for Fun

2008-07-10T09:01:56Z

I had 'Blinded by Science' from Foreigner stuck in my head this morning on one of those tape loops we all have that are part of the soundtrack of our lives. "I'm worried about the world that we live in," sang Lou Gramm in 1979--three decades ago, is that a typo?-nope. Back then our concerns about ice had something to do with mixed drinks. Funny how hindsight has made those days seem so Golden when you can remember the malaise of the American Spirit of which President Jimmy Carter spoke?

You're humoring me now, and I know it. Most of us don't even remember President Carter, much less his speech, but history has a way of repeating itself (not that we ever seem to learn from it). The more things change the more they remain the same: record high energy prices, severe energy shortages, and a recession. That was then and now. You might seem them as twin eras (or errors) except one is missing a "Mission Accomplished" banner, but to compensate, we had fifty-two US citizens held hostage in the American Embassy in Tehran, Iran for 444 days. Those were days.

We tend to see things as two minutes before dawn, because it's always darkest before dawn but somewhere we've forgotten what Francis Scott Key told us can happen by the dawn's early light. I don't know about you, but I'm grateful there was NO Chumbawamba back then since the Star Spangled Banner is hard enough to sing as it is. Thank goodness we can skip the dancing.

So instead of using this midsummer night's (and day's) dream to begin to sort through all the platforms and positions of those who are seeking our votes this November, with an eye on evaluating our own feelings on what are the 'important issues of our time', we veg out 'because it's summer vacation (what are we in third grade? Again?) and leave it to the Talking Heads of TV to set our agenda for us. How many sports cliches can you stand? How many do you think we're going to hear? It's a horse race, a spirited contest, for the whole shooting match, for all the marbles...AND THE LIST GOES ON FOREVER. Except.

It's a lot more fundamental and important--too important to leave to smarmy people who not only have a hair stylist, but a hair styling consultant to explain to us like we really were in third grade, when, point in fact, two hundred and thirty-two years ago, this week, WE explained it to ourselves and to the world (DOH! stupid history!) "...Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed — whenever any...Government becomes destructive... it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government..."

What a pity NONE of that fits into a fifteen second sound byte on Hannity and Colmes, or Keith Olbermann or Anderson Cooper. What were the Founders thinking? That one revolution wouldn't be enough?