This morning, this made me want to crash my head into the nearest firm surface.
This afternoon, this made my head all soppy and swollen with pride to share the name "American" with one WWII veteran from Maine:
Friday, August 06, 2010
Thursday, August 05, 2010
I'll Stand My Ground (And I) Won't Back Down
I've never attended law school, but I had to study and grasp how the U.S. Constitution works in high school, just like everyone else (I got out of U.S. history as an undergraduate. Oops). Of course, it's not like you hold a case and the Constitution up to a light bulb and then try to trace one upon the other. But to me, the ruling by Judge Walker makes complete sense. It was steeped, after all, in the most fundamental basis of scrutiny, rational basis review. Walker ruled that same-sex marriage cannot be legally distinguished from marriage between individuals of the opposite sex. See, it's a judgement call, and why should the government --or the government via the "will of the people," the "Props" of California, for instance -- be in the business of judging the fitness of citizens for marriage? If they were, shouldn't they not allow, I don't know, murderers to marry? Felons? Known abusers? People who are grumpy in the morning and should wake up alone?
“Moral disapproval alone is an improper basis on which to deny rights to gay men and women,” Judge Walker wrote.
Supporters and admirers of Walker's decision have been falling over themselves to say that he has created a pretty damn watertight legal case that will be difficult to dissolve as it wends its way to the Supreme Court.
Walker quoted the legal precedent that “fundamental rights may not be submitted to a vote.”
How can the right for two human beings to marry, no matter who they are or how many of the same kind of sexual organs are involved in the union, be anything but fundamental? What's being asked is access to what already exists:
"Plaintiffs do not seek recognition of a new right. To characterize plaintiffs’ objective as “the right to same-sex marriage” would suggest that plaintiffs seek something different from what opposite-sex couples across the state enjoy —— namely, marriage. Rather, plaintiffs ask California to recognize their relationships for what they are: marriages."
“Moral disapproval alone is an improper basis on which to deny rights to gay men and women,” Judge Walker wrote.
Supporters and admirers of Walker's decision have been falling over themselves to say that he has created a pretty damn watertight legal case that will be difficult to dissolve as it wends its way to the Supreme Court.
Walker quoted the legal precedent that “fundamental rights may not be submitted to a vote.”
How can the right for two human beings to marry, no matter who they are or how many of the same kind of sexual organs are involved in the union, be anything but fundamental? What's being asked is access to what already exists:
"Plaintiffs do not seek recognition of a new right. To characterize plaintiffs’ objective as “the right to same-sex marriage” would suggest that plaintiffs seek something different from what opposite-sex couples across the state enjoy —— namely, marriage. Rather, plaintiffs ask California to recognize their relationships for what they are: marriages."
Wednesday, July 07, 2010
No Dark Sarcasm
So, I've not been very successful at posting every day. But the folks at Nablopomo (post-modern Nablo? ...nah.) have helpfully supplied me and other procrastinators/office droolers with a daily writing prompt.
Yesterday (yes, I am still behind, but I have no farking clue what day it is anyway) the question asked to discuss a film you've never seen, and why.
I've never seen The Wall. Yes, that Wall.
Do I need to? A complete analysis exists, after all.
Why haven't I seen it? Here's a list:
1. I didn't really like or care about Pink Floyd until 2005, when I finally bought Dark Side of the Moon.
2. Then, I couldn't get enough of playing Dark Side of the Moon, so I didn't think at all about buying The Wall.
3. Or watching it.
4. I was a seventh grader when The Wall came out. My favorite movies that year were E.T. and Grease 2.
5. As a seventh grader, I saw the video on MTV. It made me anxious, but worse than the anxiety that took hold of me when mean old John Houseman hollered from the small stage in his classroom as my parents watched The Paper Chase.
6. In video, those mushy-faced schoolchildren pointlessly marching and sliding on a factory conveyer belt and falling into a vat of who-knows-what, the mean old schoolmaster with his mortarboard shouting about pudding, all played under the overall menace of "Another Brick in the Wall" ... no, thank you, I'll just return to re-enacting the "Cool Rider" scene from Grease 2.
7. I did sort of like the end of "Another Brick in the Wall," however, when the suddenly not-mushfaced schoolchildren tear down the Wall, trash the school and apparently hurl the schoolmaster into a fire. But the uprising was only the main schoolboy's daydream. Damn.
8. In seventh grade I daydreamed about becoming a fashion designer. My happiest memory from that entire school year was drawing my fashions free-hand during Social Studies, discovering that I could do it without the aid of Fashion Plates.
9. I'm 99% certain that, eight years and hundreds of miles and dozens of prospective careers later, I had to be at Marquette University Theatre to work on or be in a show during the weekend The Wall played at the Varsity Theatre.
10. Thanks to theatre, I also missed the Peter Murphy concert at the Varsity Theatre, at which I understand ol' smiley Pete played for a full twenty minutes.
11. I'm pretty sure I was running the sound board for Our Town during that concert.
12. We got so adept at our cues during the OT run that we called them before stage manager Stephanie (the real stage manager, not the character Stage Manager) could call them.
13. "I think maybe the moon's getting nearer and nearer and there'll be a biiiiiiiiiiiig 'SPLOSION."
14. I know Our Town by heart. Ayup. Raght smaht fahm.
15. In Our Town, Thornton Wilder's thoughts on mortality and immortality are delivered essentially in the narration of the Stage Manager, who, near the end of the play, guides Emily into a talking graveyard.
16. In The Wall, Roger Water's thoughts on mortality and immortality are delivered essentially through the hallucinations of self-punishing character Pink, who, near the end of the film, is sentenced in a hallucinated trial by a giant talking butthole.
17. I realized today as I unwillingly thought about Lindsay Lohan's sentencing for violation of her probation, that I don't really like a lot of world the way it is right now.
18. But I'd better appreciate the here and now because someday there'll be a future in which I will long for here and now.
19. That came out kind of grim. Not unlike what I think The Wall is like.
20. Wait. Thornton Wilder said all of this much better in Our Town:
Emily: Do any human beings realize life while they live it? Every, every minute?
Stage Manager: No -- Saints and poets maybe -- they do some.
Yesterday (yes, I am still behind, but I have no farking clue what day it is anyway) the question asked to discuss a film you've never seen, and why.
I've never seen The Wall. Yes, that Wall.
Do I need to? A complete analysis exists, after all.
Why haven't I seen it? Here's a list:
1. I didn't really like or care about Pink Floyd until 2005, when I finally bought Dark Side of the Moon.
2. Then, I couldn't get enough of playing Dark Side of the Moon, so I didn't think at all about buying The Wall.
3. Or watching it.
4. I was a seventh grader when The Wall came out. My favorite movies that year were E.T. and Grease 2.
5. As a seventh grader, I saw the video on MTV. It made me anxious, but worse than the anxiety that took hold of me when mean old John Houseman hollered from the small stage in his classroom as my parents watched The Paper Chase.
6. In video, those mushy-faced schoolchildren pointlessly marching and sliding on a factory conveyer belt and falling into a vat of who-knows-what, the mean old schoolmaster with his mortarboard shouting about pudding, all played under the overall menace of "Another Brick in the Wall" ... no, thank you, I'll just return to re-enacting the "Cool Rider" scene from Grease 2.
7. I did sort of like the end of "Another Brick in the Wall," however, when the suddenly not-mushfaced schoolchildren tear down the Wall, trash the school and apparently hurl the schoolmaster into a fire. But the uprising was only the main schoolboy's daydream. Damn.
8. In seventh grade I daydreamed about becoming a fashion designer. My happiest memory from that entire school year was drawing my fashions free-hand during Social Studies, discovering that I could do it without the aid of Fashion Plates.
9. I'm 99% certain that, eight years and hundreds of miles and dozens of prospective careers later, I had to be at Marquette University Theatre to work on or be in a show during the weekend The Wall played at the Varsity Theatre.
10. Thanks to theatre, I also missed the Peter Murphy concert at the Varsity Theatre, at which I understand ol' smiley Pete played for a full twenty minutes.
11. I'm pretty sure I was running the sound board for Our Town during that concert.
12. We got so adept at our cues during the OT run that we called them before stage manager Stephanie (the real stage manager, not the character Stage Manager) could call them.
13. "I think maybe the moon's getting nearer and nearer and there'll be a biiiiiiiiiiiig 'SPLOSION."
14. I know Our Town by heart. Ayup. Raght smaht fahm.
15. In Our Town, Thornton Wilder's thoughts on mortality and immortality are delivered essentially in the narration of the Stage Manager, who, near the end of the play, guides Emily into a talking graveyard.
16. In The Wall, Roger Water's thoughts on mortality and immortality are delivered essentially through the hallucinations of self-punishing character Pink, who, near the end of the film, is sentenced in a hallucinated trial by a giant talking butthole.
17. I realized today as I unwillingly thought about Lindsay Lohan's sentencing for violation of her probation, that I don't really like a lot of world the way it is right now.
18. But I'd better appreciate the here and now because someday there'll be a future in which I will long for here and now.
19. That came out kind of grim. Not unlike what I think The Wall is like.
20. Wait. Thornton Wilder said all of this much better in Our Town:
Emily: Do any human beings realize life while they live it? Every, every minute?
Stage Manager: No -- Saints and poets maybe -- they do some.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
How The Music Can Free Her, Whenever It Starts
Recently, I've been waking up with a different classic rock song of dubious quality in my head every morning. Today was “Everybody Wants Some!!" by Van Halen. Am I supposed to portend something portentous from this? Or is this rote repeat, this involuntary shuffle just the over-workings of an over-worked brain that absorbs overmuch culture throughout its waking hours? Do I hear the songs sometime earlier in the day, while doing something else, as I indulge in my daily addiction to obscure classic rock and pop and/or oldies internet radio stations?
I mean, I do listen for upwards of six, seven hours weekdays. My latest discovery/love is the self-deprecating ("It's radio sausage. It's great, but you don't want to know what went into the making of it!") Great Big Radio. This station moves from authentic and obscure oldiesness like Blues Magoos and Searchers to cheeseball crap you haven't heard in fifteen or more years like Marc Cohn and, I swear to God, Icehouse. GBR is not your run-of-the-mill classic-cock-rock-rock factory cranking out "Layla" and "Sultans of Swing" twice daily, each. Whoever programs this thing is totally putting in the hours, dude. And is sort of a crazy genius. But I digress.
So, as light dawns lately, lyrics and riffs that I've possibly heard in the preceding eighteen hours somehow nestle inside my cranial folds and grooves, only to spring out, as if activated by my alarm, in the early morning, and sing like a drunk showboat at karaoke night. Then the tunes spin mindlessly in my mind until I force something else into my auditory canals -- NPR, iPod, birdsong, something.
Maybe the content of my mysterious daybreak brain radio sets the tone for the day. Yesterday it played “Don’t Mean Nothin’” by Richard Marx. Just the refrain. No, the end of the refrain: “It don’t mean nothin’/No victim, no crime/It don’t mean nothin’/Til you sign it on the dotted line (DON’T! MEAN! NOTHIN’!/ DON’T! MEAN! NOTHIN’!).”
At the behest of the lion-maned crooner (of the Chicago North Shore, btw), I did try to cultivate some peace and quiet in mind, some p’s and q’s of that variety, to chill and not take anything lobbed my way too seriously. I mean, I think I have been having control issues lately. I am trying to control EVERYthing: situations, people, time, matter, water, animal, vegetable, mineral. I have been so serious -- and (probably as a result) so stymied. Massive storms rumbling overhead have thwarted my efforts, particularly yesterday. What do you do when that pedicure you are determined to get in a salon because, the night before in the kitchen, you made a mockery/mess of your own paint job, is foiled by tornado sirens blaring and shoes that are so wet you cannot even walk in them? You stay put in the subway tunnel and try a different, thicker shade when you get home, and calmly polish those piggies in the bathroom, not all hunched up over a chair, giving yourself a case of waistband gas. Going a day with bare toes is okay, not ministering to every inch of my sartorial self is okay, for cry-yi-yi, as they say in Wisconsin.
DON’T! MEAN! NOTHIN’! DON’T! MEAN! NOTHIN’!
Right?
As with deep-sleep dreams, I really can't remember any of the other songs implanted in my head, but I know that they are of the same variety. Let’s see…there was…well. How about I just pretend that I had “Do You Believe In Magic” turning on the cranial turntable, because that’s what just popped into my mind. That would be a good way to start the day? Open to magic. Open to possibilities. “It’s Maaa-GIC!”
Or what if it was that Tarzan song? You know, the one that goes “Oh-oh ohwa ohwa ohwa oh-oh-oh!” “Tarzan Boy.” I just Wikipedia-ed it. Made by Italians: no wonder. And I looked up the lyrics, too.
Jungle life
I'm far away from nowhere
On my own like Tarzan Boy
Hide and seek
I play along while rushing cross the forest
Monkey business on a sunny afternoon
Jungle life
I'm living in the open
Native beat that carries on
Burning bright (William Blake reference? Nice!)
A fire the blows the signal to the sky
I sit and wonder does the message get to you?
And you know what? If my internal FM dial lands on this song, and it's rotating in my noodle tomorrow at 7 am (and this is likely, because it is a sincerely lousy song), well, message-wise maybe that's not a bad thing.
I mean, I do listen for upwards of six, seven hours weekdays. My latest discovery/love is the self-deprecating ("It's radio sausage. It's great, but you don't want to know what went into the making of it!") Great Big Radio. This station moves from authentic and obscure oldiesness like Blues Magoos and Searchers to cheeseball crap you haven't heard in fifteen or more years like Marc Cohn and, I swear to God, Icehouse. GBR is not your run-of-the-mill classic-cock-rock-rock factory cranking out "Layla" and "Sultans of Swing" twice daily, each. Whoever programs this thing is totally putting in the hours, dude. And is sort of a crazy genius. But I digress.
So, as light dawns lately, lyrics and riffs that I've possibly heard in the preceding eighteen hours somehow nestle inside my cranial folds and grooves, only to spring out, as if activated by my alarm, in the early morning, and sing like a drunk showboat at karaoke night. Then the tunes spin mindlessly in my mind until I force something else into my auditory canals -- NPR, iPod, birdsong, something.
Maybe the content of my mysterious daybreak brain radio sets the tone for the day. Yesterday it played “Don’t Mean Nothin’” by Richard Marx. Just the refrain. No, the end of the refrain: “It don’t mean nothin’/No victim, no crime/It don’t mean nothin’/Til you sign it on the dotted line (DON’T! MEAN! NOTHIN’!/ DON’T! MEAN! NOTHIN’!).”
At the behest of the lion-maned crooner (of the Chicago North Shore, btw), I did try to cultivate some peace and quiet in mind, some p’s and q’s of that variety, to chill and not take anything lobbed my way too seriously. I mean, I think I have been having control issues lately. I am trying to control EVERYthing: situations, people, time, matter, water, animal, vegetable, mineral. I have been so serious -- and (probably as a result) so stymied. Massive storms rumbling overhead have thwarted my efforts, particularly yesterday. What do you do when that pedicure you are determined to get in a salon because, the night before in the kitchen, you made a mockery/mess of your own paint job, is foiled by tornado sirens blaring and shoes that are so wet you cannot even walk in them? You stay put in the subway tunnel and try a different, thicker shade when you get home, and calmly polish those piggies in the bathroom, not all hunched up over a chair, giving yourself a case of waistband gas. Going a day with bare toes is okay, not ministering to every inch of my sartorial self is okay, for cry-yi-yi, as they say in Wisconsin.
DON’T! MEAN! NOTHIN’! DON’T! MEAN! NOTHIN’!
Right?
As with deep-sleep dreams, I really can't remember any of the other songs implanted in my head, but I know that they are of the same variety. Let’s see…there was…well. How about I just pretend that I had “Do You Believe In Magic” turning on the cranial turntable, because that’s what just popped into my mind. That would be a good way to start the day? Open to magic. Open to possibilities. “It’s Maaa-GIC!”
Or what if it was that Tarzan song? You know, the one that goes “Oh-oh ohwa ohwa ohwa oh-oh-oh!” “Tarzan Boy.” I just Wikipedia-ed it. Made by Italians: no wonder. And I looked up the lyrics, too.
Jungle life
I'm far away from nowhere
On my own like Tarzan Boy
Hide and seek
I play along while rushing cross the forest
Monkey business on a sunny afternoon
Jungle life
I'm living in the open
Native beat that carries on
Burning bright (William Blake reference? Nice!)
A fire the blows the signal to the sky
I sit and wonder does the message get to you?
And you know what? If my internal FM dial lands on this song, and it's rotating in my noodle tomorrow at 7 am (and this is likely, because it is a sincerely lousy song), well, message-wise maybe that's not a bad thing.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Paranoia, The Destroyer
I am despairing because I think the Internet is making me unable to write anything substantial any more.In fact, I am fighting the urge to just turn this musing into a 30-word status update on ****ing Facebook.
I read, read, read all day long. Til the cows are snoozing in the barn while the horse is out of it. I read everything everyone else is out there writing. I feed, feed, feed my brain, on this one kind of grass -- but nothing seems to come out the other end. At least not as systematically and effortlessly stuff comes out of horses and cows.
Can't I
think, express, argue, amend, ameliorate, postulate, theorize, translate, propose, propel, excoriate, deny, flatter, exhort, proselytize, prophesize, pontificate, elaborate, discuss, dismiss, disseminate, delineate, respond, reiterate, retort, gab, communicate, create
in more than 30 words anymore?
Instead, today I read perpetuate the one, endless surf, reading this, a story very much about little preparation and much distraction ahead of time and a lot of blame and dissection of the matter afterward.
It worries me.
And so, I continue to prepare, prepare, prepare to... ?
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Paper Tiger
"The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward."
--Amelia Earhart
--Amelia Earhart
Sunday, May 16, 2010
I've Got Believers Believing Me
The story behind my current Internet radio addiction, KCDX.
I like the thought of a lone radio tower transmitting an uninterrupted stream of comforting classic-rock gems from the middle of a desert. No commercials. No hype. No attitude. No humans. Just Rock & Roll.
I like the thought of a lone radio tower transmitting an uninterrupted stream of comforting classic-rock gems from the middle of a desert. No commercials. No hype. No attitude. No humans. Just Rock & Roll.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
This Is Thirteen
After watching the surprisingly gut-stirring documentary Anvil! The Story of Anvil the other night, I've had creativity on my mind. Specifically, what one expects from a creative life. How do you live it? How do you bridle your creative impulses? How do you explode your sense of security? How do you bind the stable proton that's a workaday/watch-TV life with the free-wheeling neutron that's going, wheeeee, I'm gonna make stuff, I'm gonna be a star!Lips (nee Steve Kudlow) is a sunny-tempered Toronto native and, some would say, heavy metal trailblazer as lead singer of Anvil. In the film, we watch Lips and his childhood friend and bandmate, stoic drummer Robb Reiner, struggle with this nucleus of creative self. At the same time they chase the heavy metal carrot, touring and recording their thirteenth album, This Is Thirteen, they are beaten by the stick of life. Lips and Robb have families, mortgages, jobs -- and an unshakeable commitment to make art, to rock and f**king roll til they can't no more.
And that begs the question, then, what is success? Anvil was on a fast-track to fame but poor management and subpar recordings (they released over a dozen albums since the early 1980s) stretched to a trail of business ineptitude, scrabbling promotion, and dreary day jobs. Nevertheless, Lips and co. -- Lips especially-- kept the fire of their imaginations stoked, even though they play genre of rock that's seen its heyday go, even in the face of a comically-inept tour of Spinal Tap proportions that's documented in the movie. Despite being considered too old to realize their rock and roll fantasy.
Anvil's dream is no fantasy, and no ironic experiment or gimmicky fourth act that was spat from a reality tv producer's cynical gullet. It's the real deal -- the same thing I thought when I came across this week's Internet-to-talk-show-couch sensation.
Twelve year-old (this is almost thirteen) Greyson Michael Chance expertly and dashingly raises the roof playing and singing a (yep) Lady Gaga song at a sixth-grade talent festival. First, somebody award a Bronze Star for bravery to this kid for performing a potentially swishy and punch-inducing number in front of a middle school assembly.
Moreover, Greyson -- by decades on the other side of success late-night crises of faith and unforgettable carousals in hotel rooms from Anvil -- has got it in his soul.
I'll let Lips explain what "it" is:
"I love to entertain – it’s in my soul. You’re in the same room as the people who love you. The foundation of this business comes down to the fans – the people that love you. Without those people you really are nowhere.
Reality is that we are not getting any younger. Time doesn’t move backwards – it moves forward. You run out of time. You’ve got to do it now.
Everything changes to something else.
Most important things – relationships. Where you have been. Experiences you have had.
Music lasts forever.
That’s the art.
That’s what's important."
...So sayeth the dude who used to play his flying-V with a female pleasure apparatus. Which isn't any more silly and savvy and profound than pounding out a stripped-down and de-popped pop ballad on a Steinway, oblivious to the breathless astonishment of tween girls.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Toys, Toys, Toys In The Attic
Today in 1970s Advertisements:
I totally had that See 'N Say. And maybe the baby doll stroller.
Now is when I should probably say a little something about birthdays, right, it being a month out from my own day that is my day.
A guaranteed happy birthday used to mean getting exactly what you asked for -- the See 'N Say, the baby doll stroller and the new baby doll. And maybe there were a few surprises (the shopping cart, too!?) thrown in.
A guaranteed happy birthday now? Hmmm. It means waking up feeling alright. Soft sunshine. Smiles from people you care about, and giving them back. Looking at the shimmering rush-hour traffic snaking up and down the city, but feeling languid inside, knowing you belong where you are, or that you are getting (inching, speeding, coasting, whatever) to where you belong.
Getting exactly what you asked for.
I totally had that See 'N Say. And maybe the baby doll stroller.Now is when I should probably say a little something about birthdays, right, it being a month out from my own day that is my day.
A guaranteed happy birthday used to mean getting exactly what you asked for -- the See 'N Say, the baby doll stroller and the new baby doll. And maybe there were a few surprises (the shopping cart, too!?) thrown in.
A guaranteed happy birthday now? Hmmm. It means waking up feeling alright. Soft sunshine. Smiles from people you care about, and giving them back. Looking at the shimmering rush-hour traffic snaking up and down the city, but feeling languid inside, knowing you belong where you are, or that you are getting (inching, speeding, coasting, whatever) to where you belong.
Getting exactly what you asked for.
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