Entropical Paradise

Here Comes The Son

2012-01-28T06:32:00.000-08:00

The fact that my son's first conscious use of underarm deodorant coincided with the advent of his first math final in high school shouldn't come as any sort of surprise. It is a milestone that will stand alongside his first ride on a two-wheeler and his first, well, just about anything. It is one of the joys of being an only child. When he decides that he wants to learn how to boil pasta, it is a moment with which we have to reckon. In many ways, each new day is a revelation, and his parents must discern which are photo-ready and which, like the above, are worth mentioning on Al Gore's Internet. That would also be the terror, if you happen to be the son in question.
And so it goes for this next generation. We, as parents, probably pay way too much attention to the day-to-day moment-to-moment goings-on of his life. This includes his relative ability to wake himself up in the morning. There was a time when I was greeted by his shining face more mornings than not, but since he has evolved into a full-on teenager I spend a lot more time dealing with the body under the covers who responds to my "Good morning" with a snort or a grunt. I have felt the tug of the sleep vortex for some time now, and he is definitely aware of it. We have tried numerous alternatives, turning on the light, shaking his bed, pleading. I even tried cooking bacon in the kitchen to lure him from his slumber. It currently takes our entire village to rouse him on any given school day. The fact that it's not getting easier has been discouraging for me. I want to believe that I am giving him the skills he needs for life, even if it is simply answering the bell to the clarion call of corporate drudgery. I understand that teenagers need more sleep than other humans, but because this one is mine I feel the need to buck the trend. Especially when he is taking his first math final that morning.

The Sound Of Youth

2012-01-27T06:33:00.000-08:00

It was a great cube of wood, that first stereo. To be fair, it wasn't really a stereo, since that would require it having two speakers by definition. This did not. But what it lacked in speakers it made up for in sheer girth. It was furniture and, like so many other things in the late 1960's, had been state of the art before transistors. It played records and that was my main concern. To do so, I had to lift the massive lid and prop it open as I reached deep into the recesses of the machine where the felt-covered turntable sat. I had options: I could play my 78, 45, or 33 1/3 RPM by moving the lever just to the right of the platter. I didn't play 78's, since they were all carefully stored away in my parent's record collection. But with he proper attachment to the spindle, I could play a stack of 45 singles. The one I remember best was "In The Ghetto" by Elvis. I am still haunted by the mournful sound of his voice coming from inside that big wooden box. "In the Gee-yet-toe."
And LP's? I could stack those up too. The long spindle gave me the opportunity to play three or four albums in sequence. If I played one record at a time, I could repeat it endlessly by leaving the arm that held the next record in place to the side. The tone arm would pick up, move back almost to its perch, and then drop magically down on the leading edge of vinyl to start the trip all over again. This is how I memorized the soundtrack to "Young Frankenstein" and "Bless The Beasts And The Children." It was because of this repeated exposure that I became distressed when I heard "Nadia's Theme" getting all kinds of airplay on the radio. That wasn't "Nadia's Theme," it was "Cotton's Dream" from "Bless The Beasts etc." Suddenly I was hearing this instrumental everywhere, but without a mention of its connection to the movie that I had taken as my touchstone five years earlier. Even worse when it became the theme to "The Young And The Restless." How could this be?
I was young and restless, but I wasn't ready to watch a soap opera. I wanted to listen to the music I associated with alienation and loneliness. That was the sound my big wooden box of music made. It wasn't long after that that I got my first real stereo, a JC Penny plastic contraption that could be snapped together for transport. I wouldn't take that old box anywhere. It was part of the firmament, and when I let it go, I felt it. It was the sound of my youth.

Late Night

2012-01-26T06:35:00.000-08:00

I have often found myself left of center. This trend has been true on the television schedule, and was never more apparent than the two years I spent watching "Fridays" on ABC. If you are unfamiliar with the two-year run of this "Saturday Night Live" knockoff, you have my permission to take the next several minutes to find episodes streaming on Al Gore's Internet. Having seen them all, I will wait here patiently while you amend your own viewing habits.
If you made it to this line, you have either taken my advice to soak up all that clever comedy that was "Fridays" back in the early 1980's, or you are happy to take my word for the witty chaos that took place on late night television a full twenty-four hours before the Not Ready For Prime Time Players hit the stage. Except the folks at ABC didn't get their show on the air until 1980. They were already a few years behind in their anarchy. They were in second place, so they tried harder. Sometimes too hard.
But it also included talents such as Michael Richards and Larry David of "Seinfeld" fame. Then there were favorites of mine: Rich Hall, Mark Blankfield, and Bruce Mahler. And I confess to having a crush on the anchor of their faux news segment, Melanie Chartoff. Then there was the fact that, since it was taped in Los Angeles, they had access to a wealth of musical talent that might not necessarily find its way across the country to the hallowed halls of 30 Rock. The 1982 appearance of Devo cemented my allegiance to this awkward offshoot of the late-night tree. Then the American Broadcasting Company decided that Ted Koppel's "Nightline" needed to be on five nights a week. "Nightline" has outlived Ted Koppel, who was nowhere near as cute as Melanie Chartoff, and continues to run.
Meanwhile, I continue to search out clips and snippets online, waiting for a "Fridays" renaissance or DVD release. And going to bed early on Friday.

Legacy

2012-01-25T06:44:00.000-08:00

For many years I worried that it might be necessary to put John Elway down, in the way that crippled or terminal animals are dispatched. I was concerned that he might keep playing football until a force within the game that he loved finally made it impossible to continue. Happily, John finally won two Super Bowls and he was able to shamble away in that prontated way he had. There was a happy ending. Not so much with Brett Favre. Brett needed to be carted away from the NFL on a stretcher, embarrassing his family and friends on the way out with his tawdry personal life that got heaped on top of his legacy. Going out a winner is so much better.
Not everyone gets to win their last game. Such is the sad case of Joe Paterno. There is a reason why the Penn State campus erupted in chaos when it was announced that he had been fired after forty-six years as head football coach there. While at Penn State, Paterno led the Nittany Lions to seven undefeated seasons and two NCAA championships, had only five losing seasons, and was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2007. He was even nominated for a Presidential Medal of Freedom, but that nomination was revoked, however, after the scandal broke.
The scandal. This one made Brett Favre's texting his privates seem like a schoolboy prank. It wasn't a lack of football knowledge that did Joe Pa in, it was naivete in the real world. A real world where children were abused in his teams auspices, on his watch. "I didn't know exactly how to handle it and I was afraid to do something that might jeopardize what the university procedure was," he said. "So I backed away and turned it over to some other people, people I thought would have a little more expertise than I did. It didn't work out that way."
History will tell of a great coach who stressed academics among his student athletes, who was respected and beloved by those who played for him and those who watched his teams play. It will end with his death, at the age of eighty-five, of lung cancer. What we might forget his the vortex he fell into once the scaffold of college football was taken away. What a pity that Joe Pa couldn't have gone out a winner.

Silence Is Golden - Let's All Get Rich Quick!

2012-01-24T06:06:00.000-08:00

Because I'm the kind of guy who wants to be an informed voter, I tend to rush right out and gather all the information I can before I cast my ballot. I am referring to the Academy Awards. I am happy to have a vacation from the presidential rhetoric that is being flung around by the chimpanzees in their erstwhile campaign. Instead I choose to focus on the arts, something to give me solace in this time of uncertainty. To that end, I went to see "The Artist," one of the most lovingly reviewed films in recent memory.
Words like "fresh" and "original" abound in all the press that this tale of old Hollywood. Many have praised it for its vision and imagination. It's in black and white. Didn't we get tired of Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese making black and white movies about thirty years ago? I have heard that there have been a number of movie-goers who have gone out tot he box office to ask for their money back when they discover they are watching a silent film. I noticed that the director, Michel Hazanavicius, chose to use a small-screen aspect ratio to heighten the nostalgia factor. I'm sure there were probably some patrons who wanted a refund on the portion of the screen that went unused.
All that technical stuff aside, I went to see what all the fuss was about. Spoiler alert! "A sweeping melodrama about a young actress, discovered by a major male studio star, who becomes enamored of her and helps her rise to the top. She does but his career begins to hit the skids as hers continues to rise." Actually, not much of a spoiler at all, since it is the synopsis of "A Star Is Born," which has been made in America no fewer than three times already, with another version, directed by Clint Eastwood, on the way in 2013. And that's what I sat and watched, in black and white, on part of the screen, for an hour and forty minutes.
For an hour, I waited for the twist on this tired show-biz fable. I enjoyed the period decor and costumes. I loved the dog. I enjoyed the performances. And I waited for the thing that made it different from the original. Barbara Streisand did hers as a rock star with Kris Kristofferson. I was watching the silent version. Some might wonder why Babs and Kris couldn't have done theirs the same way.
When it was over, I thought of all the movies that "The Artist" recalled. There are plenty of people who have never seen Frederic March or Judy Garland or even Barbara Streisand in a movie. There are plenty of people who have never seen "Singin' in the Rain." There are plenty of people who would ask for their money back if they found out the movie they were about to see was a silent film. That didn't keep Mel Brooks from making a silent movie about trying to make a silent movie back in 1976. Critical reaction to that one was less than stellar.
Maybe we all wish for a simpler time. A black and white time. A smaller aspect ratio time. But would it be too much to ask for a new story?

Fear And Loathing

2012-01-23T06:39:00.000-08:00

There are a lot of reasons to dislike Newt "Slimy Amphibian" Gingrich. I suppose it is to his credit that he doesn't seem to mind that people may choose to come down on this side of the equation, including some of those closest to him. Like his ex-wives, for example. Marianne Gingrich, the former speaker's second wife, also alleged that her ex-husband conducted his affair "in my bedroom in our apartment in Washington." She also said Gingrich moved to divorce her just months after she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. "He also was advised by the doctor when I was sitting there that I was not to be under stress," she said. "He knew." According to Ms. Gingrich, her relationship with him began while Newt "The Toad" Gingrich was still married, but in divorce proceedings, with his first wife, Jackie. At the time, Jackie Gingrich was being treated for cancer.
Okay. That's his personal life. What about domestic policy? He recently said he would like to go to the NAACP and talk about "why the African-American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps." Never mind that the largest percentage of Americans receiving food stamps are white. That interferes with the reality that the former House Speaker, who was eventually cleared of all eighty-four ethics charges back in 1998, would like us to accept. It might also be a way to occlude the fact that the three million dollars he made in 2010 gives him rights to the executive washroom and the one-percenter's club.
How about foreign policy? What should we do with our enemies? "We kill them." All right then. Points for brevity, anyway. Of course he also once suggested we should “Give the park police more ammo,” responding to a reporter who asked what to do about the homeless a few days after the police shot a homeless man in front of the White House.
But I think the most likely reason may have been that his heart was two sizes to small.

Muscle

2012-01-22T06:40:00.000-08:00

"So, you've got a lead foot?" This was the question the salesman asked my wife as we stood in the car lot. My son was already grinning that very special grin that he makes when he is around a vehicle with more than four cylinders. My wife was smiling too, only more demurely. "Well..." she started.
We had made a pilgrimage a few exits down the highway to find a Ford dealership in hopes of cashing in on the offer my family had picked up at the annual car show. Come in and test drive a Ford and they would give us a fifty dollar gift card. It certainly wouldn't cost us fifty dollars to make the trip to the dealer, so this seemed like a pretty good investment of our time. When we got out of our car, our plan was to talk up our interest in Ford's electric cars. That and maybe take a peek at the Mustang Boss 302 for my son. Antonio, the salesman who must have seen us coming, met us just a few steps onto the lot. "What can I help you folks with today?"
The easy answer, to me, was "Sign this piece of paper so we can get our gift card," but that wasn't in our plan. Neither was the orange beast that sat just in front of the doors to the showroom: an orange 2008 Dodge Challenger. We ran through our list of possible test drives, none of which were available at this location. "How about that one?" My wife pointed in the direction of my son's fixation.
Antonio didn't blink. He looked directly at my son and said, "I'll just need a driver's license. You did bring yours didn't you?" And for a moment, that fourteen year old went fishing in his pocket for any shred of evidence that would make him street legal. When he came up empty, I felt compelled to opt out. My wife was born in Detroit. If anyone was going to tear up the blacktop in her family's name, it should be her. She found her license quickly enough, and that's when Antonio asked about the relative weight of her foot.
He needn't have asked. I took a seat in the back of our quiet little Prius and sent the gear heads off on their adventure. I had brought along a magazine for just such an opportunity, and settled in as I watched the three of them pile in: in the driver's seat, Antonio squeezed into the back, and my son still grinning from shotgun.
They weren't gone long, but they did cover some ground. To hear my wife describe it, the car had a mind of its own. "It wanted to go fast," she insisted. That meant they all went fast. For twenty-some minutes on that January afternoon, all the cares and woes of carbon offsets and fossil fuels drifted away as she piloted that great big American car through traffic down the highway. She came back with the same grin as our son. And a signature that gave us a fifty dollar gift card. It's what she likes to call a "win-win situation." I wonder if they would take fifty dollars down on a 2008 Dodge Challenger.

Thought Police

2012-01-21T06:28:00.000-08:00

You may have noticed that there was no clever blackout or "site closed" sign on this page last Wednesday. This is due, in large part, to a lack of commitment on the part of the site's web designer: me. The idea was appealing enough, making a point about the possibility of Internet censorship via the upcoming SOPA bill that is winding its way through congress. The Stop Online Piracy Act, if it is passed, would prosecute Internet users for sharing what would ultimately become "privately owned" content.
I understand just how slippery a cyber-slope we are on here. If it's okay for me to share photos of my son online, why wouldn't it be okay to share the music from his yet-to-be-formed punk band? As long as they were original compositions, I suppose, but their ska-flavored cover of "Walk This Way" would be verboten. I acknowledge that we are dealing with one of the last frontiers for open exchange and I understand the need to regulate the content passing through the series of tubes that make up Al Gore's genius invention, but when Congress gets involved in regulation, things get a little scary.
If there was going to be a force protecting intellectual property on the Internet, I would prefer that they didn't appear like something out of "Brazil": Information Retrieval. Instead I would prefer a nice sunny office manned by somebody like Andy Taylor and Barney Fife. These good-hearted and well-intentioned crime fighters may look pleasant enough, but they are more than a match for the most hardened criminals. They're also not going to lock up the town drunk unless he asks for it, but they will shut down the still. And my money is on them to round up the idjits who hacked my e-mail account.
I don't know how many regulations this post has broken, but I hope that I live in a world that will maintain perspective and remember the difference between piracy and sharing links to sites with pictures of funny cats and dogs.

Brain Trust

2012-01-20T06:35:00.000-08:00

The online poll asked if I was surprised to find out that Rick Perry was dropping out of the race for Republican party's presidential slot. Was I surprised? Yes. Why I was surprised is a little different tune.
When Governor Rick first showed up on the scene, I was surprised by his strong showing. He was the hot commodity in the Grand Old Party. Where had we heard this tune before? Straight-shootin' straight talkin' Texan who was there to stir things up. The man who had executed two hundred and thirty-four death row inmates without losing a wink of sleep received quite the ovation from the crowd at the Ronald Reagan Library for doing just that. Of course, that was back in September. What has he done for us lately?
There was the meltdown onstage at yet another of the dozens of the Republican debates when he couldn't remember which agencies he planned to eliminate once he became president. He could remember two, but not three. Like that axis of evil over there, you know, with your Iraq and your Iranians and the (embarrassingly long pause here) you know (longer pause). At which point Ron Paul chimes in, "The homosexuals?"
And while we're on the subject of foreign policy, how about Rick's Middle East solution? Like sending American troops back to Iraq. Never mind that it was the Iraqis who asked us to leave in the first place, and that we did so honoring the executive order signed by that other former Texas governor back in 2008. This is a man who refused to think inside the box. Sorry Rick, but it looks like it's time to put those big ideas back inside the box, where he can use them for the job he still has.

Reality Football

2012-01-19T06:46:00.000-08:00

The high water mark of the football season has come and gone. The "national championship game" for college has been played, along with the wild card and divisional rounds of the NFL playoffs. We have gone from having four or five games each weekend to just two. Then it will be just one. And we'll go back to talking about what was and what will be. The present exists for just two teams now, and everything else is just that: talk.
As soon as the final gun sounded on the New Orleans Saints, the Denver Broncos, the Houston Texans and the Green Bay Packers, the discussions and speculations began. How could anything short of a Super Bowl title be considered a success? All four of these teams were winners of their respective divisions, and had obviously managed to win at least enough games to make it to the tournament. Success, it seems, is relative. The Packers lost only one game in the regular season. As a result, they got the week off to rest and prepare for their game. It didn't help. Now the world wants to know what happened. Was it lack of preparation? Too many distractions? What about the Broncos? What happened to God's favorite quarterback? Never mind the surprise and joy generated by the previous week's win, along with the rest of a series of improbable highlights. Losing that last game is what everyone talks about.
Here in Oakland, the son of Al Davis, young Mark has taken the reins of the the Raiders and started heading in his own direction. New General Manager. New coach. Maybe even a new city. Professional football is, after all, a business. Winning a Super Bowl is a great way to make more money. For about fifteen minutes during this past season there was some wild talk about the Raiders and the Forty-Niners meeting up at the end of the year to play for all the marbles. What a boon for the cash-strapped Bay Area. Half of that equation can still come to pass, but the east side of the bay will have to sit by and wait another year. All those surprises like Detroit and Buffalo are now part of a scrapbook to be put on a shelf, like the lineup of my Fantasy Team. The daily importance of these players, coaches and organizations will diminish as the winter drags on and the spring turns to summer. The Super Bowl, with all its attendant hoopla will come and go, leaving the football fans among us to search for other topics to discuss with friends and family. It's just a game, after all. A very expensive, high pressure, high expectation spectacle of a game. And somebody's going to lose that one too.

Out Of The Past

2012-01-18T06:47:00.000-08:00

A few days ago, as I was taking a run through my neighborhood, I rounded a corner and pulled up short. Since the whole exercise is about running for fifteen to thirty minutes without stopping, this worked against my ordinary regimen, but I had a good reason for stopping: parked at the curb was a gold Saturn station wagon. It was just like the one that we used to own. That is, before it was stolen, making that Father's Day one I won't soon forget.
My initial reaction was to look inside, to see if there was anything I recognized. Upon reflection it seems as though the cooler head would have taken a moment to check the license plate. If that had matched, then I would have set about following the correct procedures for such an event. Just what those steps were, I had no idea. I was focused on the back seat. Were there magazines stuffed in the pockets on the back of the driver's seat? Wait, didn't we have t-shirts from my son's middle school draped over the front seats? What about dog hair? What about the Obama bobblehead attached to the dashboard cover?
None of those things were there. The upholstery was of a similar hue, but a different texture. It occurred to me that anybody who would steal a car probably wouldn't turn their attention first to the upholstery. What would they do? Probably change the license plate. The one I still hadn't bothered to check. A wave of disappointment went through me. Usually I'm so good at finding things that get lost around my house. I find my wife's glasses at least a couple of times each week. My son's accoutrements can usually be found with a few methodical passes through the house, from front door to back. Things don't stay lost long in my world.
Except our car. In many ways, we have moved on. The insurance has paid us what they thought a gold Saturn wagon was worth, and a little bit more. They even paid off a little more on all the personal effects that went for that last ride. The one that took it away from us. Forever. This wasn't our car. It was somebody else's gold Saturn wagon. We have a Prius now. We are helping save the planet. We have smart keys. We have a stereo that plays CDs and our iPods. We haven't had to cover the any of the seats with t-shirts. There is a bit of dog hair in the back.
I turned the corner and continued my run.

It's All In The Numbers

2012-01-17T06:16:00.000-08:00

You know what today is, don't you? It's the seventeenth of January, 2012: 1/17/12. To be honest, the numerological significance of this date is lost on me, but it does seem like each new day comes as a fresh revelation as we approach Armageddon. All the signs point to it, starting with the world broadcast television premiere of "2012," starring John Cusack. It's almost like the very hip cousin of Fox TV, so hip that they can leave the "o" out of the middle of their name, is flaunting the eventual destruction of our earth for some basic cable ratings points. It seems like kind of poor planning, if Bolon Yokte K'uh happens to be a subscriber.
I'm not expecting the planet to disintegrate or collapse in on top of itself, necessitating the construction of giant space arks to take all the smart, photogenic people off to a distant planet. That didn't work too well for the folks on the Axiom, unless you count the cupcakes in a cup. But with all the unrest in this world, it's easy to feel the urge to flee. These are frantic times. It's bizarre to watch all the bloodletting within the Republican party even though they have to understand that even if they do manage to win the election they probably won't survive until Inauguration Day. Then there's always the looming specter of Tim Tebow dating Katy Perry. Who can doubt that the end is nigh?
Still, I think the most obvious sign of the coming apocalypse is this: Cable TV monolith Xfinity is proudly trumpeting its new customer service guarantee: They promise that they will be at your house to fix your connection on time, within a two hour window. Guaranteed. They'll give you twenty dollars off your next bill if they're not there. They're proud of this. They are advertising this as a good thing.
It's the end of the world.

Hacked Off

2012-01-16T06:49:00.000-08:00

It took me the better part of three hours, over the span of a couple of days, to straighten out the mess generated by a machine. The short version of this story is this: My e-mail account was hijacked by a spam machine that spewed vile and ugly messages into in-boxes that had, until then, remained free of such annoyance. They got through because they were disguised as me. The simple fix was to change my password and delete the forty-plus messages that were bounced back to me because someone else has a better spam filter than I do. Or the address was closed. The upside was that it gave me a chance to update my contact list. The downside was the responses I felt compelled to send in response to all those who were affected by this "victimless crime."
I got to explain to my mother how the link to a web site for adults only wasn't my idea, but one generated by some way-too-clever hacker with the need to get this information into as many computers across the globe as possible. Rather than do the straightforward thing and simply make up an address, this cyber-cretin found a way to unlock my account and send smut across Al Gore's Internet. You're not going to open e-mail from grigsnop@cretin.com, but if you got a note from your friend, or your son, imploring you to "look at this," you just might. Especially if that person just happened to be this supposedly tech-savvy guy who runs the computer class at his elementary school.
Embarrassed? Sure. Violated? A little. Mostly I'm sorry that anyone would have to take the time to promote themselves through any sort of borderline criminal activity. For now I will be doing the computer version of obsessive compulsive disorder and going through all of my transactions and communications while changing my password on an hourly basis. Ever vigilant and extremely put off by the whole mess.

Baby Teeth

2012-01-15T06:49:00.000-08:00

My son finally gave up his last two baby teeth. They didn't go without a fight, however. Now that he is rounding the bend toward his fifteenth year, and the potential of orthodontia looms, we all thought that it would be a good idea to make room for those great big incisors. Pulling those teeth was what he got in lieu of a Bar Mitzvah. Kind of a big cheat, culturally speaking.
It did make me think about all the babies that I have seen stop being babies. I have the creepy experience of having teenagers who I recently nursed through elementary school returning with little bundles of joy of their own. "He'll be coming here soon!" they enthuse. Too soon, too soon.
To diminish those feelings, I reflect instead on the baby that I knew best before my own son was born: my niece. Twenty-three years ago we welcomed her into the world and she quickly became the person that forced me to reckon with my own dwindling youth. I was somebody's uncle and I had responsibilities. At times the learning curve was steep: I let her tumble from the hearth at my mother's house onto her head. Years later I failed to make it to her high school graduation. Being a grown up has such incredible weight. I listened as my brother recalled a conversation with his daughter about World War Two and how her young mind was just beginning to accept such a terrible mess. I thought about what my life would be like when I had a child to share my world view with. It was my niece who e-mailed me first when Barack Obama won the election. She sent me a very tongue-in-cheek video on the night that Navy Seal Team Six caught up with Osama bin Laden. She is now imparting her world view to me. I remember when she was losing her baby teeth.
It won't be long before my teeth start falling out of my head, and my niece and my son are explaining things to me all over again. Happy Birthday, kiddo.

Turn The Page

2012-01-14T06:32:00.000-08:00

I'm still reading Entertainment Weekly. It is, on most days, how I spend my quiet time over a bowl of granola, catching up on all the "news" from Hollyweird. Odd, since I eschew our local newspaper in favor of a weekly, as the title suggests, account of what Time-Warner would like us to know about showbiz. I make a point of getting through each issue over the course of the week to be prepared for the next. I wouldn't want to fall behind.
This is especially true of the "Transitions" section. This is a leftover from back in the day when I used to read Time magazines "Milestones" blurb. Who is getting married? Who is retiring? Who is giving birth? Who has shuffled off this mortal coil? Who is getting sued by whom, and who is getting a really big paycheck? I was reading the sad account of the dissolution of Russell Brand and Katy Perry's fourteen month marriage. And everybody said it would last forever. As I pored over the three paragraphs, I became aware of just how big a deal Katy Perry and Russell Brand really are. Their names appear in bold type. This kind of shorthand helps the casual reader quickly assess the relative concern we should have for the affairs of the people mentioned in this column. If you get married to Steven Tyler, you should probably be a model or rehab specialist, but you should be able to get your name in big black letters. Right Erin Brady? Sometimes "normal people" get mixed up with celebrities, and they end up carrying the child of this or that superstar. If that ends up being their only claim to fame, then they won't get the bold treatment. They are cursed, or perhaps blessed, to live their lives in the relative obscurity of normal type.
In the meantime, I continue to savor my granola mornings over this little slice of Americana, and hope that whatever the future holds for Katy and Russell that they will be allowed to keep their font.

My Secret Shame

2012-01-13T06:24:00.000-08:00

I've got this nasty little secret: I love to pay taxes. Sales tax. Property tax. Income tax. I don't mind. There are two reasons for this bizarre behavior: First, I have almost always ended up getting money back for the taxes I paid over the course of a year. I generally pay too much, so the government pays me back. Secondly, for the past fifteen years I have worked at a job that is paid for by taxes. When the government starts rattling that big empty can asking for more dollars for things like public education, I feel good about how they are looking out for me.
Until we have that meeting at our school site about the next year's budget. There may have been a time when teachers and principals waded through buckets of cash and tried to figure out what to do with all that money, but that hasn't been the experience I have had. I came in on a wave of change when there was still some tension about contract negotiations. Cost of living raises happened and my union was able to squeeze the district for additional bumps every so often.
Not any more. One of the ugly realities about education is this simple equation: If you do well, you get less money. A school in program improvement will get more funds than one that has brought up their scores and shown that they can achieve more with less. So that's what we get. The initial response is that if we continue to fail, we continue to get the maximum amount of money, but we also run the risk of being closed or consolidated. We do our best and we get less. Since I started at this school, we have lost our librarian, our teachers' aides, our music teacher. Our psychologist is here two days a week as is our school nurse. Our bilingual clerk has been cut to a part time position. We don't have an assistant principal. A lot of schools in our position have fund raisers to pay for the holes in their budgets. At our school we tend to take up collections for families who need help. We can't expect our community to give the school money they don't have. What do we do? We make do with what we have. And we continue to do our job: teaching kids.
I love to pay taxes.

Sports Authority

2012-01-12T06:23:00.000-08:00

I bought a new pair of running shoes last week. It was a new year and I had survived my annual ten kilometer trial, the one time in the year when I run alongside more than two other people. I had a suspicion that this transaction was overdue because I was suffering more than I was accustomed: my back, my knee, my overall comportment. The voices in my head argued for a day or two about whether or not a piece of equipment would make any real difference, or if I was simply wearing down. Arguments for: Continued workouts without any sort of professional consultation on a body approaching fifty with one knee already reconstructed. Arguments against: My father and I went for a run on his sixty-first birthday in the hills of Northern California. I must have at least eleven years left on these legs, right?
So I went to the Sporting Goods store where I began the ritual anew. I looked at the high end shoes. I looked at the Clearance Table. I looked at the fancy new "toe shoes," the ones that look like someone poured acrylic plastic over your bare feet. I thought about the two guys who I knew that swore by them. I thought about the injuries they had both incurred during their "break-in" period. I tried to imagine a world where all of these various combinations of foam and gel could possibly keep me from feeling tired when I came home from a three mile run around my neighborhood.
That's when Devon showed up. "What're you looking for?"
I didn't let the fact that I was standing in front of a thirty foot wide display of running shoes diminish my enthusiastic answer: "Running shoes." I decided to flavor it a little, just to see if I got a more complete response. "Something I can run in a few days a week, and not wear out in a couple months."
Devon walked down the wall, patting certain models, extolling their random virtues without going too far past the fine print on the display tags that I had already read. I thanked him for his time, and went back to my search. I tried on a few pair. They felt remarkably similar, but I made a show of checking where my toe ended up and how snug they were on my heel. When I had made my selection, I needed Devon's help to secure the left shoe which was being used as a display model. He smiled, "We usually use your size for display," and off he went to disconnect my new left shoe from the plastic plate to which it had been tethered. When he returned, he handed me the shoe and his card, "Can you give this to them when they ring you up?"
Of course I could. It was only then that it occurred to me that I have been running since before Devon was born, and while it was comforting to have his mild assistance in my shopping experience, I can't say that he made a vast impact on my choice. It was another pair of running shoes. Not the best. Not the worst. They fit, and when I tried them out the next morning it was like running on a cloud. A big, asphalt and concrete covered cloud.

Hand Me Downs

2012-01-11T06:42:00.000-08:00

As is his wont, my son was looking at passing cars and describing their capabilities to me and anyone who would listen. "That one's got ten times the horsepower of our car," he enthused.
"Really?" I said, "Why would you want that?"
"To go fast. Really fast."
That's a priority for my son. It has been for a while now. I considered my response for a moment, then: "Why would you want that?"
My son did me the favor of not rolling his eyes at me, but I knew that we were suffering a disjoint of sorts. I thought about all the things that I had to give him, but a love of speed was not one of them. An encyclopedic knowledge of pop culture? Probably not as useful to him as a working knowledge of cam shafts and fuel injection. The ability to run six miles without stopping doesn't add value to his life at this point. I learned that from my father. I didn't pick up his interest in racquetball.
Maybe it has something to do with survival. The fact that your dad was a crack shot had value outside of the anecdotal. He was providing food, or at the very least, keeping them pesky revenoors away from the still. The ability to format a floppy disc has lapsed into the useless information category. I'm not hunting or gathering. I'm moving bits of information from one machine to another. I can make obscure connections with the best of them, but plumbing generally evades me. I'm not passing along a trade or skills for a future generation.
Until the zombies come and the gas runs out. Then maybe that whole running for long distances thing will be of interest to him.

Wild Card

2012-01-10T06:39:00.000-08:00

When I read the date on the e-mail my younger brother sent me, it never occurred to me that there would be any sort of conflict. He was unable to come over to our house over the holidays, what with all the various and sundry commitments on both sides of the equation, it wasn't until the past Sunday that we were all able to get together. This past Sunday. Wild Card Sunday.
Those words didn't mean much to me when I was coordinating my weekend. Then the football part of my brain looked at it a couple hours later. Wild Card Weekend. Denver Broncos are playing on Sunday. The reason for this disjoint is obvious to those of you who have followed the recent events here in Entropical Paradise: My younger brother and football do not mix. How to reconcile these disparate events? I love my brother and look forward to each and every visit, but I was fairly certain that I could not simply play off the playoffs. I sent him another e-mail, explaining my foul limitations and told him that I understood if he wanted to find any other time to drop by to finish off our holiday connection.
Besides caring little or nothing about organized sports, my younger brother is a very good sport. He came anyway. We began the day by sampling/inhaling the snack mix that he brought with him as he, as has become his custom, read a short story to us as we munched. Then the game came on, and out of respect, I kept the volume low. While we carried on our pleasantries and began our gift exchange, the underdog Denver Broncos pulled into a lead in the first two quarters. My family, younger brother included, were pleased, but were not nearly as apprehensive as I was. I returned to the spot on my living room floor where I have, historically, paced while the Broncos played. Everyone else in the room, our dog included, continued to talk and play and interact as if there was something else going on in the room, but were polite not to notice outwardly my mounting tension.
At halftime, there was a flurry of Guitar Hero, this time enjoyed by my son and his uncle as I busied myself about the kitchen and living room, straightening as I went. When the second half started, the Pittsburgh Steelers made a rally and by the end of regulation, had tied the game. My family rallied to my aid, as good families will, and became Denver Broncos super-fans right alongside me. Even my younger brother. When Tim Tebow sailed his pass into the Rocky Mountain night and Demarius Thomas hauled it in and took it in for a touchdown to end the overtime period in just eleven seconds, I wasn't in the room. I heard my family cheer from the living room while I stomped about the kitchen, preparing myself mentally for yet another stress-filled period. I rushed back to the television and watched the replay. It was over. The Broncos had won, and we all celebrated. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Wonder Wild Card.
When I drove my brother home that night, we agreed that it was a very good thing that the Broncos had won, since the whole afternoon could have been obscured by a loss. It was a gift. I got to share my world with my brother, and we had a good time. That's the gift of family. Don't bet against them.

Nice Shot

2012-01-09T06:48:00.000-08:00

The atrium at the end of the upstairs hallway at our school was one of the architectural features that was added to make us more "modern." This was back around the turn of the century when we had been on the slate for "modernization" as a site for several years already. We didn't get flat screen displays for the teachers to reference or modular desks for the students that could incorporate various learning abilities. We got white boards instead of chalk boards. We got new tile and some nice wooden paneling. We got a fresh coat of paint. And we got that atrium.
It is the thing that keeps our two-story instructional building from appearing strictly institutional. It lets in the light. It looks modern, in a Frank Lloyd Wright kind of way. That's why the most recent flurry of vandalism was so troubling to me. Over the weekend, someone had taken a pellet gun and plinked a divot in each of the dozen-plus windows in our architectural feature. A few of them sprouted into actual cracks and were summarily replaced. The rest of them, however, were left. High impact glass like the ones in those windows is very expensive, and until they are actually letting in the breeze, they sit there as a reminder of someone's careful aim and callous disregard for education.
I felt a tiny bit of admiration for the vandal. The ones who drop by with spray paint have their work covered up almost immediately with the vague earth tones utilized across the district. The idjit who used our atrium for target practice can drop by just about any evening and examine his or her handiwork, since the pock-marked panes will remain until they crack all the way through. That may happen as soon as next weekend, when the school sits vacant long enough to have the job finished. I worry about the eventual replacement of these windows with plywood, or worse, covered by wire mesh to remind us of our predicament. We are public education without private security. If someone wants to come by and smash a few windows over the weekend, they'll probably get away with it. For now there is an odd refraction to the light that comes through the lightly damaged modernization.

Good Sport

2012-01-08T06:42:00.000-08:00

... "like Tebow, she keeps fighting and she just keeps winning votes." Those were the words that rang into the January air as Michelle Bachmann made her last ditch effort to save her campaign. Never mind the fact that Tim Tebow, quarterback of the Denver Broncos, has lost his last three games and comes into the playoffs on a wing and a prayer. Literally. It is convenient shorthand for Ms. Bachmann to connect herself to one of the most prominent Christians to show up on a football field in recent memory. She wants to be seen in the same divine light as the NFL's posterboy for abstinence.
I know. I just got finished making an analogy about football and the upcoming election. I should point out that what I was doing was satire. It was tongue in cheek. I don't think that comparing Barack Obama to Aaron Rodgers is a legitimate apples to apples kind of thing. I was making a joke.
Ms. Bachmann was not. Her ad says that the sports "establishment" wants Tebow to fail because he makes everyone feel guilty - he's gifted yet "doesn't drink, smoke, cuss or even kick his opponents when they're on the ground." It contends, "The establishment just loves to hate Michelle Bachmann and her no-compromise, no flip-flop stand on the issues." The establishment, or at least part of it, likes to hate Tim Tebow. That's part of the deal.
And now comes the reality: If Tim Tebow wins his game on his home field, he gets to continue playing, at least for another week. Michelle Bachmann, from Iowa, could not win her game on her home field. She couldn't come in second. Or third. She won't continue to play next week. She's going to clean out her locker and start planning for next year. Or maybe a call from some NFL team that needs a motivational speaker.

Similie

2012-01-07T06:43:00.000-08:00

As a bit of pre-reading warning, I will let my brother and those who are put off by sports discussion that what you are about to peruse is metaphor. It is the limitation of the author that keeps things in simplest terms, for him. So here we go:
The NFL playoffs are about to start. Some teams, such as the Green Bay Packers and the New England Patriots, effectively stomped through their season and made their way into the post season. If you win most of your games, you can kind of expect that your job will be easy until you wake up that one morning and the stakes of the game have been raised to "win or go home." In this regard, the analogy I choose to use is this: The Green Bay Packers are the incumbent. They won last year's Super Bowl, and while they may be seen as being weak on defense, they are the ones to beat this January.
On the other hand, there are a wide array of challengers to that throne, starting with the upstart Denver Broncos who managed not to lose too many games, as opposed to winning enough to push themselves into a higher seed. The same can be said of the Cincinnati Bengals, who kept a number of mediocre teams from making it into the tournament. We could refer to this as the caucuses and primaries. This winter stretches out in front of us like a flurry of contests that mean little or nothing except the winner ends up being crowned the champion of the world. Leader of the Free World. Aaron Rodgers. Barack Obama. Tim Tebow. Ron Paul. Plenty of characters. Lots of intrigue. Only one winner.
When it's all over, we'll sweep up the confetti and dry the tears. No matter how objectionable we might find the results, we'll get ready for the next one. Win or lose.

Lights Out

2012-01-06T06:41:00.000-08:00

I believe that the time has come for a moratorium on Holiday Decorations after the first week of the year. All those lights and snowflakes and Santas and menorahs need to go back into the box until next year. You know who you are. I understand that I am impressing my personal standards on the community at large. I put up my Christmas lights the day after Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and they all come down by the second day of the New Year.
Why? Because it's cruel to keep them up. One of the simple joys I have is making the turn onto my street in the week before Christmas and seeing my yard aglow. It reminds me of the coming of the holiday frolic that I climbed all those trees and strung all those cables to celebrate. The lights seem to burn a little brighter as the last week of December brings the year to a close. And then it's time to pull the plug.
I blame Elmo. Back when my son was in the demographic for that screechy red thing, we watched "Elmo Saves Christmas." If you haven't had the chance to take in all the Muppet-y joy that is this slice of PBS goodness, it centers around Elmo's misguided wish that every day could be Christmas. Aside from the obvious consequence of nearly running Santa Claus into a cardiac episode, it takes the special-ness of the season. Christmas in July is a great way to sell refrigerators, but all of that merry happiness gets a little tired after months and months of green and red, not to mention the toll it takes on tundra dwellers like snowmen and reindeer. I suppose you might expect as much from a puppet who only refers to himself in the third person.
As I rode to school this week, looking at the intermittent displays of cheer that continue to remind me of the twelve months I have to churn through until the twinkling lights and the manger scenes are meaningful once again, I came up with a solution. We could fine people for keeping their icicle lights hanging from their eaves year round. Nothing too Scrooge-like, just a pittance or two to remind us all of the time. At the end of the year these funds can be used to help feed the homeless, or toys for tots without them. Or we could just save it all up for one big, tasteful display for next year. Well at least you can unplug them until next November.

It's All About The Benjamins

2012-01-05T06:49:00.000-08:00

Now that our soldiers are home, what will we have them do? There are a number of wars that continue to rage on, including those against drugs and the conflict that rages on our southern border, depending on to whom you speak. Our armed services readiness has been tested steadily for the past decade, and now it's drawn down, just like that. What's a soldier to do with all that extra time? Find a job when unemployment continues to hover at nearly ten percent?
If you can find a job in private security, that could use your most recent skill set. Blackwater can sell you the gear you might need, and if you can track down the corporation formerly known as Blackwater, formerly Xe, and currently called Academi, you might find some work tracking down people who are not corporations. "Security" is still a growth industry, as evidenced by the Obama administration awarding Academi a two hundred and fifty million dollar contract to work for the U.S. State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency in Afghanistan.
Don't want to travel overseas? Well maybe you can do what Benjamin Colton Barnes did: Take your experience and apply it here in the good old U.S. of A. Benjamin went for a little hike in Mount Rainier National Park, heavily armed and suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. He allegedly shot and killed Margaret Anderson, a park ranger. He's angry and heavily armed. If you're betting that this will end well, think again. Another body was found in the park a day later. The Washington State Patrol, U.S. Forest Service and FBI, were on the mountain Sunday and Monday, but none of them could put Benjamin back together again.
Welcome home Benjamin.

Soft Boot

2012-01-04T06:54:00.000-08:00

I was up in a tree when the thought came to me: Reset Button. That's the magic of a new year. Another day passes, and the page on the calendar turns. Everything is new again. It's all possible again. A universe of do-overs are there for the taking. Never mind that most of the planet is already immersed in a fiscal calendar that resets sometime in May or July, it's a new set of months to tick off until we arrive at our eventual destination: Back where we started.
Part of the magic of all this experience is the more or less circular path our planet takes in the cosmos. We can look back to last year as the time when our globe last spun through this galactic neighborhood. The angle of the axis of the Earth was more or less pointing in that direction when I was last clambering around in the branches of our tacky plum tree, pulling down another year's worth of festive lighting. That's how I know it's time to renew, kind of like when you're supposed to put new batteries in your smoke detectors when you turn your clocks back because daylight savings time ends. When I clean up the front yard from all the twinkling fun, pulling yards and yards of extension cords back into their more traditional place inside the garage, I know I need to think about what lies ahead. Part of this rhythm is encouraged by having two weeks to anticipate it. The kids at our school have just been sent home with the expressed hope that all the learning they did before break comes back with them, and that report card they got just before they left is still a very concrete memory of the way things are.
But it's time for fresh starts. What seemed impossible last year will now take just a little more encouragement and patience. The disappointments and heartbreaks are now carefully put away in scrapbooks and memories that will only serve to aid the next attempt. We can do better. I can do better. It's a leap year, after all. We've got a bonus day to get it right.

Word's Worth

2012-01-03T06:50:00.000-08:00

I know it's early, but not too early to consider what not to say this year. According to Michigan's Lake Superior State University, the following phrases shall be stricken from the English language for 2012: "occupy," ''ginormous," ''man cave" and "the new normal." Not that these aren't descriptive and useful words, to be sure. The scholars at Superior State have asked us all to give them a rest. They're tired and in need of some airing out before being beat to death again. It would be easy to blame the messengers, especially when they have that "Superior" attitude, but I know what they're talking about. I don't want to hear about anybody's "baby bump" anymore. They would also like us to give up saying "thank you in advance," and talking about "blowback."
But there's one that I found most interesting and perhaps most poignant: Amazing. It is the opinion of the powers that be at LSSU that this word has become meaningless, since everything has become "amazing": races, wedding cakes, and Spider Man. Winning a race while decorating a seven layer marzipan creation while dodging bullets using your Spider-sense would be pretty impressive, but amazing? Maybe we can spend the next year working on something a little more descriptive to describe such a feat. For now, I will encourage you to stay away from our family's banished word, "epic." As in "That French Toast was epic, mom." Or maybe my son will spend 2012 writing a poem that will describe just exactly how amazing his mother's French Toast really is.

Some Awe

2012-01-02T06:25:00.000-08:00

My wife tried to engage me in her version of the end of year wrap-up. Her categories were "Awesomes" and "Bummers." First of all, you'll have to excuse my wife, who may have been born in Detroit, but has spent more than a quarter of a century absorbing the patois of her adopted California. Still, one might think that regardless of the headings, as a family and as a married couple we would have similar lists. But I found myself flummoxed from the start.
Awesome? Did I ever feel full of awe in 2011? That seemed like a pretty tall order. I could certainly remember feeling gleeful at times: Tim Tebow beats the Raiders. Navy Seal Team Six beats Osama bin Laden. My son matriculates from middle school. My wife shows up in time to rescue me and my bike from a broken derailleur cable and then sticks around for lunch. Were these moments awesome?
Well, as is my Eeyore nature, I found myself doing the accounting, wishing that Tebow had won both Raiders games and that I hadn't had the cable crisis in the first place. If I had a full glass, I would probably go find one twice as big so that I could say that it was half empty. Navy Seal Team Six? Why did it take them ten years to find a six foot six terrorist mastermind? On the other hand, it was embarrassing how quickly I could fill my Bummer list: Stolen car, public education funding, yet another pre-schooler shot on Oakland streets, and that was before I had even given it much thought.Maybe it would have been more efficient to put my picture at the top of the list, and leave it at that.
But that would be missing the point of the exercise. I need to start appreciating the joys that surround me, even if it puts a dent in my sarcastic veneer. The PE class that I ran where I counted all the calisthenics and stretches using funny voices was awesome. I finished the first draft of a romantic comedy, which may not be awesome yet, but the accomplishment was. And I survived another year in a public school in Oakland. Awesome.
See? I can do this thing if I just put my mind to it.

Resolution Number Nine

2012-01-01T06:32:00.000-08:00

I suppose the first resolution I feel compelled to make this year is to take Mayans more seriously. It could be that a Rick Perry/Michelle Bachmann ticket might just make the end of the world a little more likely: The "What Does This Button Do?" Scenario. To that point I resolve to vote this year, and not just for President. I resolve to vote for ballot initiatives, representatives local and national. I resolve to vote for dog catcher, if they let me.
I resolve to be more kind to Justin Bieber in 2012. I believe the grief he gets from my son will be adequate for one household. I resolve to take that mild abuse and heap it on someone who really deserves it. I further resolve to keep my eye open for anyone who may be in need of mild abuse.
This will be the year that I finish all those home improvement projects that I started. I resolve that this resolution will not cause me to burn my home to the ground.
I will use my time more wisely, in discrete twenty minute chunks, after which I resolve to sigh, mop my brow, and get back to the next twenty minutes. If I run out of time, I will borrow it from the future.
I resolve to get up every morning. I resolve to go to bed at night. In between I resolve to keep those events separate and distinct. I resolve to stay away from Fantasy Football for the next eight months. I make these resolutions in hopes of keeping at least a few of them. I never resolved to make it a challenge.

Rearview

2011-12-31T06:56:00.000-08:00

How will you remember 2011? Maybe it will be, as Time magazine suggested, the year of the activist. I tend to look at the empty half of the glass, so while I see all the things that have changed across the globe, I wonder where the change is for our neighborhood.
Osama bin Laden: not an issue anymore. Muammar Gaddafi: ditto. The vacuum their terminations have generated continue to swirl. The vortex of the Middle East began in Arab Spring, but continue on through the Winter of Discontent. The troops came home from Iraq, but stayed in Afghanistan. Plans for a family trip to the cradle of civilization are still on hold while things get sorted out. Perhaps in another thousand years or so.
That should give the radiation in Japan a chance to settle down enough to make it a little more tourist-friendly, though with all the earthquakes and extreme weather charging around the planet this year, I feel a little more comfortable hanging around the continental United States, where the scariest natural phenomenon continues to be Charlie Sheen. Can someone please explain how this guy got another job on another sitcom? If you said "The Lindsay Lohan Defense," then you can move your piece around the board six more spaces to land on the Compare and Contrast square to discuss Arnold Schwarzenegger and Anthony Wiener.
Roll the dice again and you might come full circle to the Occupy Movement. The winter weather has dampened the resolve of those who weren't moved by the tear gas or pepper spray. As part of that ninety-nine percent I'm stuck scratching my head while, in spite of all the signs and tents T-shirts by Jay-Z, corporations like General Motors and Master Card continue to make record profits. Maybe regime change in a world run by corporations is a little more difficult than we had imagined. To that end, maybe I should leave the last words to a great imagination that ended this year: "Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow." See you in 2012.

Timing Is Everything

2011-12-30T06:12:00.000-08:00

The first thing I thought about as I was preparing to write this entry was about how the media tends to - wait a minute - I am the media. Not the twenty-four hour worldwide leader in opinionated blowhards, but the once a day opinionated blowhard with access to a keyboard. That settled, it occurred to me how we, the media, tend to highlight moments of pain and strife with unnecessary calendar-related irony.
Whenever there is a house fire it is a dangerous and potentially deadly event. The fact that someone's house burns down just before Christmas makes the story more sad. Not because the fire burns any hotter in December or the damage done is any more severe during the winter months, but because of the proximity to the holidays. The same can be said for burglaries or theft of any kind. It's worse because of Christmas. Anyone who has their car stolen on December twenty-fourth is a victim of the highest echelon. I made a bad choice when I picked Father's Day to have my car stolen.
Hold on. I didn't pick the day. Nobody does. The guy in Texas who chooses to shoot up his family gathering in a Santa suit gets special attention because he did choose. We, I'm speaking of the audience this time, view this tragedy with greater sadness because it happened in proximity to the high point of love and understanding. There is no season that is immune from suffering, but we want to believe that. This time, I mean the media and the audience. There must be a time when the pain and grief of everyday accidents and acts of violence just doesn't happen.
Maybe next year.

Paul's Epistles

2011-12-29T06:56:00.000-08:00

For a while, like a good portion of the rest of the country, I have watched as Ron Paul has quietly become the voice of reason in the Republican Party. "Quietly" because he has been able to hang on the edge of the race to his party's nomination without getting the kind of scrutiny that many of the other front-runners have achieved, and wilted under. Herman Cain couldn't take it. Sarah Palin, true to form, quit before she ever got started. Remember when Donald Trump was going to run as a Republican? Gary Johnson, part of the "who's that again" faction, announced that he would be dropping out of the Republican primaries to run as a Libertarian.
Odd, since that's where you might expect to find Ron Paul. His anti-war, isolationist views are raising interest that sound more at home on another platform, rather than under the bright lights of the Reagan Library with the rest of the assembled Avengers. He appeals to Tea Partiers and Occupiers. He's the anti-candidate. He's also all about cutting the fat off our nation's budget. To the bone: an immediate, one trillion dollar spending cut that would slash the federal budget by more than one-third and eliminate the departments of Education, Energy, Commerce, Interior, and Housing and Urban Development. If Rick Perry is looking in, that's six departments he would get rid of, doubling his cuts if he could only remember what they were.
Ron Paul is also preparing for Armageddon. That's pretty forward thinking, since the Mayans have predicted that the world will end shortly after Election Day 2012. Paul's version is less like a John Cusack movie and more Orwellian. "I'm afraid of violence coming," he told a crowd of more than six hundred in Bettendorf, Iowa. "When you see what the government is preparing for, and the arrests and military law, and the demonstrations in the streets, some people aren't going to be convinced so easily that you don't owe them a living." The Federal Reserve must go. He worries that the United States is about to surrender control of its own currency to the United Nations.
Then there's this: "Given the inefficiencies of what DC laughingly calls the criminal justice system, I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal."
"We are constantly told that it is evil to be afraid of black men, it is hardly irrational."
After the Los Angeles riots, "Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks."
Referring to Martin Luther King Jr. as "the world-class philanderer who beat up his paramours" and who "seduced underage girls and boys."
To Barbara Jordan, a civil rights activist and congresswoman as "Barbara Morondon," the "archetypical half-educated victimologist."
These quotes come from newsletters that bore his name and credentials in the eighties and nineties. Back in 1996 he took responsibility for their content, but now claims that they were all written by a ghost writer whose name he cannot recall.
Well, that's nice. At least he's starting to sound more like a real Republican again.

Sour Grapes

2011-12-28T06:19:00.000-08:00

I've been here before. Just a couple of years back, the Denver Broncos roared out of the gate and won six straight games. With a new coach, a new quarterback, and they were on the fast track to the playoffs. It all happened so fast. And then reality set in. The Broncos couldn't win a game. They couldn't finish what they had started. It came down to the last game of the year, and if they could just beat the lowly Kansas City Chiefs, they could squeak in.
It didn't happen. The next year, things went from bad to worse as the wunderkind coach only managed three victories before being fired halfway through the season. That set the stage for plenty of low expectations this year: new coach, but same old quarterback, a rebuilding year. That's certainly what it looked like after five games with only one win. Then they got a new quarterback. You may have heard something about that. He won six straight games. You may have heard something about that, too.
Then he lost a couple. The race to the post-season stalled. All that Mile High Magic seemed to have evaporated. That's when I started thinking about the times I have had my heart broken by the Denver Broncos. Back in 2005, the only time they have been in the playoffs since John Elway retired. Another great opportunity spoiled, this time by the Pittsburgh Steelers. And all those years when John Elway was the Denver Broncos, and he seemingly carried them into the post season on will alone, only to be diced up into bite-size pieces by one NFC Champion or another.
Until they finally won a Super Bowl. Then it became an expectation. They won another one the next year. And then there was a long time where they didn't. Now the Denver Broncos are once again poised on the brink of playing in the tournament to determine the championship of Professional American Football. What self-respecting fan wouldn't be rooting for these scrappy underdogs? It's a great story.
Yes, and it's one I've heard before.

It's Gotta Be The Shoes

2011-12-27T06:05:00.000-08:00

That's what Mars Blackman told us a quarter century ago. We listened then, or at least a great many of us did. That's why the shoes that Michael Jordan promoted and wore under the auspices of "air" became such hot sellers. Millions sold, millions made. Money, money, money. For sneakers. Tennis shoes. Pardon me, basketball shoes.
And the thing is, it wasn't the shoes that made Michael Jordan such a great athlete. It wasn't the extra long shorts. It wasn't the tongue hanging out of the side of his mouth when he ascended to those great heights. But that's not what your average consumer thought. They wanted a part of that amazing spectacle. They wanted to buy some Air.
Fast forward a few years to my first year as an elementary school teacher. Way back then, my school had a uniform: White shirt, blue or khaki pants. The idea was that our low-income parents could save a few dollars on school clothes, and we could even help out with a few extra shirts or pairs of pants when things got really tight. Who needs to worry about buying all those snazzy new threads when you're trying to put food on the table? Well, here's the deal: The kids at our school did. We tried for two years to get our "voluntary" uniform policy to stick, and watched as kids showed up in sweaters that cost easily as much as a week's worth of uniform shirts and pants. And the shoes.
I know how much Air Jordans cost. I know how fast kids' feet grow. I watched kids come in and shuffle about in fifty dollar sneakers, only to wear them out in a few weeks of scuffing them around the blacktop. And sure enough, a few days later, that kid would have some brand new kicks on his quickly expanding feet. Heaven forbid that your parents would send you to school in some off-brand sneaker. The social order of the school would mock you relentlessly if your shoes came from Payless. It had to be worth it to buy the shoes and avoid the ridicule.
It's been thirteen years since we had a uniform policy at our school, about as long as it's been since Michael Jordan retired from the Chicago Bulls. The first time. It's been eight years since he played for anybody, but this past weekend, there were fights and police called in to quell the excitement generated by yet another permutation of the shoes. Pepper spray, shots were fired, windows broken. I kept thinking: It's quite possible that some of the kids I taught way back then found their way out to the mall and participated in some of that action. It's gotta be the shoes.

Things Are Tough All Over

2011-12-26T06:19:00.000-08:00

It's been a tough year for middle America. Once again, everything that was already too expensive got a little more so. We avoided a double-dip recession, and The Second Great Depression was something that we talked about but never occurred. Unemployment rates continue to decline, but we are told that we can't tax the job creators because then we'll never find work. The logical alternative would seem to become a professional job creator.
One person who lives in that rarefied air is the CEO of Netflix, Reed Hastings. The guy who keeps all those envelope stuffers and button pushers employed just got some bad news: His company is giving him a pay cut next year. It may have to do with the way his company handled their price hike back in July. Or the way they decided to change their name to Qwikster for those who were content to do without all those envelopes, and choices. It was a pretty solid corporate train wreck that required a certain amount of damage control. Stock prices fell, members left in droves, but the company survived. That's why the powers that be at Netflix decided to keep Mister Hastings' salary the same, but to cut his stock compensation in half. He'll still pull in half a million dollars this year, but his stock options will be reduced from three million dollars to just one and a half million. Ouch.
That "ouch" assumes that you can feel it when someone skims one and a half million dollars off the top of the two million dollars you are making in a year. "Looks like that family trip on Virgin Galactic will have to wait until next summer, kids."
Happily, Congress just voted in the tax break extension, so he won't lose all that FICA money over the next couple of months while he struggles to make ends meet. Maybe he should consider cancelling his subscription to that DVD rental outfit - what's their name again?

The War On Christmas

2011-12-25T06:55:00.000-08:00

I thought all would be calm
all would be bright
but a war still rages on
right here at home
Happy Holidays, even though
there are dozens of them
is not sufficient
The day is Christmas
and that is that
We won't be lulled to sleep
by the C in Chanukah
Or the mysteries of Kwanza
We don't want our Christmas
mixed up with all that
That's what our fighting men and women
have been fighting for
Or something like it
The War on Christmas will not have
as many casualties
Just some bruised egos
and hurt feelings
Just like Boxing Day after
and Black Friday before
And a memory of the good Doctor
Doctor Seuss:
"He hadn't stopped Christmas from coming
it came just the same"
Happy Christmas
The War is Over

Hounds For The Holidays

2011-12-24T06:51:00.000-08:00

Chocolate will kill your dog. I have heard this warning since I was very young, and back in the day I used to react with the proper respect and fear. But here is what I can say about the dogs that I have owned: Really? I know that cats have multiple lives, which seems unfair to dogs who age at seven times the rate of humans, why can't the canines get a little extra help in this vein? Or perhaps they do, and the dogs I have been most familiar with are evidence of such a gift.
Our current dog, Maddie, has found her way into more chocolate messes than a warm handful of Hershey's kisses. Most of these have occurred as a lack of oversight on the part of her owners' part. Anything that sits at nose level for her, especially if we are foolish enough to leave the room, is hers for the taking. Wrapped or unwrapped, it really doesn't matter to her. When it comes to procuring illicit treats, she is a machine. One particular Christmas Eve the humans bundled up to go out for dinner. We gave Maddie a treat and told her to be good, we would only be gone a short while to look at the pretty lights. We failed to mention that she should stay away from the chocolate torte that was sitting on the kitchen table.
When we returned, the kitchen looked as though it had been ransacked, and it had. The culprit was easy enough to find. She was the one with the guilty look and her feet in a pile of the crumbs. That look and the crumbs were all that was left of the torte. Cleaning the kitchen became a secondary concern to the health of our dog. We looked into all possible cures and indication of poisoning, going so far as to call a pets hotline for advice. The fact that she was ambulatory and drinking water was a good sign, but we were told to watch her carefully over the next forty-eight hours. We did, and we've been watching her closely in the years that followed, always reminding her of the dangers of chocolate. She has nabbed the occasional wrapped candy or cookie, just to make sure that we remain ever vigilant.
Stepping into the way back machine, I recall the Christmas Eve when my parents whisked us off to dinner in order to make the house ready for the early arrival of Mister Claus. Upon our return, we discovered our little black dachshund Rupert had gorged himself on the one pound chocolate mouse that Santa had left, apparently, for him. He probably ate as much foil as he did chocolate, and we stood by as we watched him make his way to his water bowl, which he drained in a minute or two. His generally sleek form became distended, giving him the appearance of an anaconda that had swallowed a bowling ball. Over the next few days we watched and fretted as he waddled from place to place. By the day after Christmas, he was as right as rain, or the freshly fallen snow outside.
And so maybe chocolate is death for dogs, and a higher power interceded on Rupert and Maddie's behalf, a Christmas Miracle. Or perhaps it's really not that bad for them at all, it just means more chocolate for the rest of us on two legs.

Cinema Verite

2011-12-23T06:40:00.000-08:00

There I was, standing in the kitchen of a friend, talking to my son's preschool teacher. To be clear, she was my son's preschool teacher about a decade ago, but we are fortunate enough to stay in touch with his educational past and present. It was a holiday party, and while the food was being prepared and dispersed, conversation was being pursued. I was asked, for what seemed to be the fiftieth time in the past couple days what my plans were for the long winter break.
"Are you taking off? Going anywhere?"
"Well, I expect that we'll see a lot of movies," I replied. Feeling this was somehow an inadequate response, I began to pad it with a discussion of all the coming attractions that had caught my family's collective attention. There were family movies, romances, action films and family films. When I was done, I had listed more than a half dozen titles.
"Wow," came the reaction, "your family really loves movies."
At first I tried to shrug it off, imagining I was simply relating the plans and goals of most of middle America. Wasn't everyone expecting to take in a movie every other day over a two week period? Add in the couch time for perennial favorites like "It's A Wonderful Life" and "A Christmas Story," ans suddenly the vacation was a non-stop screening room. With all the hype and promotion going into Hollywood's best and brightest, it would seem silly to miss out on all that entertainment.
Then again, all those tickets and concessions aren't free, either. We can try to get into those bargain matinees, and sneak in a can of pop or some snacks to take the edge off, but even then we could expect to lay down thirty to forty dollars for each blockbuster we lined up to see. All that cash would make a pretty good down payment on a pony or an air hockey table. A more realistic expectation would be that we might see three of those six movies that we set out to experience. The rest we'll have to wait around to see on Netflix. Or HBO. You know, for "free."

The Dictator And The Playwright

2011-12-22T06:16:00.000-08:00

One door opens as another one closes. The last troops leave Iraq, and Kim Jong Il dies, prompting North Korea to start its traditional period of mourning with short range missile tests. The Axis of Evil is alive and well, in spite of the demise of "Little Elvis." Iran has our super-secret stealth drone and a group of clerics every bit as nutty as the cabal in North Korea. And, it should be noted, the situation in Iraq is about as clear as the mud in the murkiest oasis.
Meanwhile, across the globe, Vaclav Havel passed away as well. The leader of the Velvet Revolution, not the rock band but the leader of a movement that changed the world in just a few weeks without a bullet being fired. Way back in 1989, when the Cold War was being decided, this playwright and dissident eventually became president of the Czech Republic, mostly because his was the voice of the people. He brought his country to NATO and to the European Union. When the Berlin Wall fell, it started a wave of reform that changed the face of what was once the Soviet bloc.
Kim Jong Il once said, "“In other words, one is responsible for one's own destiny and one has also the capacity for hewing out one's own destiny.” Vaclav Havel wrote, "Anyone who takes himself too seriously always runs the risk of looking ridiculous; anyone who can consistently laugh at himself does not." Aloha to the both of you.

What Is Truth?

2011-12-21T06:18:00.000-08:00

I'm safe for another year. I did not put my foot in it as I have in the past. The secret of Santa Claus is still safe for the children whom I teach. Every year when we return from Thanksgiving break, I start getting nervous about what that inevitable question: "Mister Caven, is Santa real?" Of course, I have decades of popular culture on which to draw, from "Yes Virginia," to the Miracle on 34th Street. I've also been an uncle and a parent long enough to know how to skirt around the specifics of the issue in order to leave the myth intact.
But when you're dealing with three hundred kids a day, sometimes the burden of proof is just too much to bear. The easiest defense is to simply turn the question back on the kids themselves. "What do you think?" The responses vary wildly, starting with those who have long since put away such childish notions in favor of a rational and reasoned world view that doesn't include sleigh bells and a horde of toy-making elves. I believe a chief component in this lack of faith is connected to the disappearance of chimneys. If Santa is coming through a window or sneaking in the front door late at night, that's not magic, it's breaking and entering.
I am also wary of certain age groups. Third graders are much more wizened than their second grade counterparts, for example. That's why I was surprised when, last week, a pair of fourth graders began their debate, seemingly out of the blue: "No there isn't."
"Yes there is."
"Mister Caven, is there such a thing as Santa Claus?"
There it was out in the open. How was I going to enhance or deflate this discussion? I didn't have a chance to formulate my response before the next flurry.
"Like there's such a thing as reindeer, right?"
"There are so, aren't there Mister Caven?"
And now my path was clear, I walked over to the computer at which our young doubter was sitting and typed "picture of reindeer" in the search box, and pressed enter. There were more than twenty-million responses, and after flipping past a few artists' renderings, we found a photograph of a stately buck standing in the frozen tundra. The voice from behind me cried, "See? See? I toldja!"
There was nothing but a confused smirk as a reply. It was circumstantial evidence to be sure, but it planted that seed of doubt for another year. Thank you Al Gore.

The Lizard King

2011-12-20T06:44:00.000-08:00

"She turned me into a newt!" cried the angry villager played by John Cleese, who waits a moment before adding, "I got better."
Imagine what it would be like to wake up one morning and discovering that you were not simply an aquatic amphibian of the family Salamandridae, but a Republican Presidential candidate who suddenly found himself thrust into the limelight once again. That would be "Newt" with a capital "N." Which is the slimy one?
You won't find a lot of salamanders suggesting "The idea that a congressman would be tainted by accepting money from private industry or private sources is essentially a socialist argument." The one that walks on two legs did.
While most amphibians do not mate for life, one wonders if a toad would have said this about his first wife: "She isn't young enough or pretty enough to be the President's wife." Maybe that's why he left her. And his second. He is currently on his third wife, and there is no word from Newt on whether or not she passes his First Lady litmus test. With all his infidelities, it is interesting to note that he considers himself a staunch defender of the institution of marriage. Heterosexual marriage, anyway.
His lizard brain has some solutions, too: He suggested that poor children only be put to work in nonhazardous "three- or four-hour-a-day" jobs, such as "assistant janitors," librarians or "greeters in the school office." Adding, "Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works. They literally have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of 'I do this and you give me cash,' unless it's illegal."
Yes, I think the thing I like about the newts that live under rocks is that they are content to stay there and keep their mouths shut.

Sounds Of Silence

2011-12-19T06:13:00.000-08:00

"It's quiet tonight."
"Yeah, a little too quiet."
Insert sound of crickets chirping here.
Do they have crickets in Iraq? We can ask some of the American soldiers coming home this holiday season after nine years of planting seeds of democracy while avoiding improvised explosive devices. Sure, just up the road apiece there are plenty of service men and women ducking and dodging, but in the former Mesopotamia, the guns have gone silent.
Okay, maybe that's overstating it. It will probably be another few thousand years before lasting peace comes to the cradle of civilization, but for now we can savor the fact that after a decade of fighting and dying for regime change that occurred eight years ago when Saddam Hussein was captured. Then there was all that sorting out that was left to do. Wars don't just end when we capture the bad guy. There was still plenty of security that needed to be put in place and warring factions to be wrestled to the ground.
Now that's all taken care of. That's why we can come home from Iraq with a clear conscience. We certainly don't need to worry about any weapons of mass destruction. Any destruction that needs to be done there can be done a few at a time, thank you very much. Mission accomplished there. But can we put this one in the "W" column? Perhaps simply because we met our objectives and it happens to be the middle initial of the guy who got us into the mess in the first place. In the meantime, history will determine if all the sacrifices made by Americans on the front lines and on the home front. For now, we'll enjoy a pause in the action.

What Are You?

2011-12-18T06:46:00.000-08:00

"What are you?"
I looked down at the kindergartner. I gave him what has become my standard answer: "I'm a teacher."
"No," he huffed, "What are you?"
I puzzled a moment while this boy's impatience grew. "I don't know what you mean," I faltered.
"Are you a Mexican?"
"No," I replied, starting to grasp the path of his inquiry.
"What are you?" he repeated.
"I'm Scottish. Irish," I was fishing.
His brow furrowed. "Have you ever been there?"
"Been where?"
"To Irish?" His patience was wearing thin.
"Ireland? No."
"To Irish," he needed an answer to his question.
I tried to explain, "People who come from Ireland are called Irish. The place is Ireland. The people are Irish."
"I'm Tongan," and this I already knew. He was part of a wide array of brothers and sisters and cousins who attend our school. They show up at every multi-cultural event and show off their dancing skills. Mad skills, both literally and figuratively, as the boys stomp about barefoot emulating their warrior ancestors. They stand in stark contrast to many of the kids at our school for whom heritage means the neighborhood in which they live currently. This kid had been to Tonga. He understood that if you were from Tonga, you were a Tongan. If you were from Mexico, you were Mexican. If you were from Africa, you were African. Irish? What was that?
"I've never been to the home of my ancestors," I told him.
He looked at me with a touch of sadness. I should have told him I was from Kansas.

Flaucinaucinihilipilification

2011-12-17T06:22:00.000-08:00

I sat in the diner next to my younger brother, the one we lovingly refer to as "the artist" because he is. We had finished taking in his latest flurry of art at a local gallery, and now it was time for the after-show. We walked down the street and found a little cafe that my son found fascinating because of its seemingly meme-inspired name, "Double Rainbow." We sat down at the counter, my family and I, ordered some refreshing beverages and an ice cream cone for my son, and that's when the memories hit.
We were sitting on stools covered in sparkling red vinyl. It took me half of my glass of warm tea to acknowledge the ringing thought in my head: "Just like the ones at the cabin." When we were much younger, and spent our summers in our cabin in the woods, my parents acquired a great many antiques to accentuate the rustic feeling we experienced day to day without running water, electricity or a telephone. Aside from the wood stove that provided us with heat and cooked our meals, the artifacts that got the most use were the three bar stools my father brought home and bolted to a plank, then shoved them right up to the counter that helped defined the kitchen area from the living room from the dining area. Three stools for three boys. There was a great deal of debate about whose stool was whose, but that wasn't the most annoying feature.
The sound they made. It never occurred to me until I was sitting there in the diner, hundreds of miles and decades removed that we were fortunate that our mother didn't chop us up into little pieces like the caretaker of the Overlook Hotel. Not because they squeaked. That would have been allowed in small doses, but the thunder that could be created by sitting on one stool and giving the adjacent one a good spin. "Thrudududududududud." Then another "Thrudududududududud." And another. There was no TV. "Thrudududududududud." There was no telephone. "Thrudududududududud." There was nothing to do. We had already absently followed the advice of the Von Trapps and climbed every mountain and forded every stream. There was nothing to do but "Thrudududududududud." Until my mother snapped. To be completely fair, she was and is the most patient human on the planet. She put up with three of us boys with our various complaints and frustrations with each other and the rest of the planet. She made things all right. "Thrudududududududud." Then she had enough.
"Out!" she would holler, and we knew that we had hit the target. We would scramble to get our shoes on and head down to the meadow or up the hill to the swing. We would rush out the front door, a screen door with a spring attached to it. The last words we would hear: "And don't slam the -" Too late. "Thrudududududududud." Sorry, Mom.

How Money Works

2011-12-16T06:34:00.000-08:00

As we have established here numerous times, Soylent Green is people. That being known, we can now conjecture about corporations. Are they people? Mitt Romney believes that they are. It does help if there is a recognizable face for that corporation, like Steve Jobs at Apple or Dick "Dick" Cheney at Halliburton. Having someone alive in that position is even better, as evidenced by Mister Jobs' enduring contributions. We all miss "Dick" terribly, of course.
McDonald's is a clown, Marlboro is a burly cowboy and Heinz Ketchup is John Kerry. Why should we expect any more from these people than we do from ourselves? Possibly because corporations have many more faces and names than would fit on your average letterhead. These are called "investors." These "investors" are people too. They give money to corporations so that they can turn it into more money. That's how the stock market works. Or at least that's what I remember from the ABC Saturday morning show, "Capitalism Rock." People buy stock in a company that they believe will make more money, and when that company makes even more money, they share it with the people who were clever enough to buy stock in the first place. We call this "redistributing wealth."
The members of Congress are people, too. They can buy stock and benefit from the money that seems to be just oozing out of the sidewalks in lower Manhattan. One of the things that really helps when you're a person who wants to buy stock is knowing ahead of time what corporations are thinking. Let's say, for example, you knew that there was a readily available supply of protein available to the Soylent Corporation who was looking to expand their food wafer line. If you knew ahead of time that grinding up corpses of the poor and disenfranchised could be marketed as a a healthy algae-based food source, you might look into purchasing a few thousand shares. If you were Speaker of the House, and you were about to vote to kill the public option for health care, you might want to grab some of that insurance company stock. Or if you were involved in major legislation affecting the credit card companies, your husband might want to participate in a very large IPO deal from Visa. That's what John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi, respectively, did. They are very clever people. So are the people at Visa and the Health Insurance companies. I just can't recall their names right now.

Omniclaus

2011-12-15T06:41:00.000-08:00

You had better watch out. You better not cry. You had better not pout. I'm telling you why: Christmas is a time for abject paranoia. If you were looking to find a way out of that late-summer dust-up you had with your little brother that ended up breaking the mirror at the end of the hallway, now would be the time to do it. There are plenty of kids who are attempting to reconcile their behavior accounts just before the end of the calendar year in hopes that Santa Claus will check that list a third or even fourth time before loading up this year. But here's the rub: He knows who is naughty. He knows who is nice. So you had better be good, and not just for toys, for goodness' sake.
No pressure, right? Well if you're one of those last minute kind of people who wait until it's almost too late, the third week of December just may be too late. This is not strictly a kid issue, either. There are a lot of adults who are hoping that, in order to subsidize the generosity of Santa and his elves, a Christmas bonus may be in the offing. Choosing December to ratchet up productivity that had barely registered in the previous eleven months probably won't have the effect they had anticipated. After all, he knows when you are sleeping. He knows when you're awake. He knows when you forgot to turn in the quarterly report for your section.
If you happen to be, young or old, in one of these untenable situations, you can surrender to the reality. Or you can start planning for next year. Unless we can get Santa to start recognizing the fiscal year as the measure of the quality of your character, or the amount of coal in your stocking.

The Man

2011-12-14T06:54:00.000-08:00

So who would you guess referred to the Occupy Movement as a "dance party in a public space?" Newt Gingrich? Michelle Bachmann? One of the chirpy talking heads on Fox "News" mayhaps? That would make sense, wouldn't it? Not in this case. It was none of the usual suspects. It was the self-described liberal and openly gay mayor of Portland, Oregon. It seems as though all of that open-mindedness has been used up with the now months-old protest that has come to rest in so many American cities. Initially he was in full support of the groups actions and goals, but lately he has been encouraging protesters to aim their ire away from local governments and instead pursue a national grass-roots effort focused on changing national policies.
How could this be? In the city recognized as: "#1 in sustainability," by the greenguide.com, and #1 green city by Popular Science magazine, "Best city for bicycling," by Bicycle magazine. "America's most vegetarian friendly city,"by goveg.com and "#2 on list of America's most enlightened cities," UTNE Reader. The UTNE Reader, for goodness sakes. What could have gone so very wrong that a few tents, a few signs and a little civil disobedience is causing such a fuss in this liberal mecca?
"If it's too loud, you're too old," Ted Nugent once said. The Motor City Madman's politics will never be confused with those of Sam Adams, Mayor of Portland, but he may be able to relate. It is an interesting time in which we live where the openly gay liberal is the authority figure. I guess that's why we call it progressive.

Reruns

2011-12-13T06:32:00.000-08:00

Virginia Tech has a very good football team. They offer seventy different undergraduate majors and minors. The campus is on a plateau that overlooks both the Blue Ridge and Allegheny mountains. In 2010, the Wall Street Journal report ranked Virginia Tech among the top 25 schools for "best-qualified" graduates. It was also the site of a mass murder.
Back in April of 2007, thirty-two people were killed and another twenty-five wounded when senior English major, Seung-Hui Cho, went on a killing spree. Murderous rampage. Massacre. He shot a bunch of people, and they died. It was horrible, and as an institution, they mourned. As a nation, we mourned with them and felt the page turn on another mass murder.
In the aftermath of the 2007 shooting, Virginia Tech examined the security of their campus and instituted more restrictions and controls, including sending alerts to students when something potentially heinous is about to go down. Like this past week when Ross Truett shot and killed campus police officer Deirek Crouse. The sirens went off, the texts went out, the alarm was sounded. The second body they found was the shooter, who turned the gun on himself.
The good news is that the system worked. Faculty and students got the message and avoided being additional numbers. This time the count stopped at just two, not counting shattered nerves. And so the echo went through Virginia Tech one more time, just like it will every time there is a shot fired in anger. Like the pipe bomb they found near Columbine High this past spring. The first question everyone asks: Are they related? In both cases, it turned out to be odd coincidence. Then again, maybe in a larger sense, they are all related. The fact that we can report "another mass shooting" makes every one of these tragedies part of one great big quilt of homicide. But this quilt won't keep us warm at night.

Cannon Fodder

2011-12-12T06:30:00.000-08:00

Adam and Jamie always make a point, if a tad sarcastically, to implore their viewers not to try anything they see on their show at home. Ever. These two gentlemen, along with their trusted minions Tory, Kari, and Grant have been uncovering the truth behind the myths that prevail across our modern world. They seek the truth while others simply accept the reality that is handed to them via Al Gore's Internet. And they tend to blow things up.
This makes great television, since just about every episode concludes with an explosion that makes viewers shudder, and the hosts giggle with teen aged glee. You see, I remember this mentality. If one firecracker merely pops the canopy off a model plane, how many will it take to split the fuselage wide open? If a squirt of lighter fluid gets the flame going, how about a steady stream? Remember kids, I tried all of this at home. Not when my parents were at home, of course, but that's the point: The Mythbusters want to be both the teenagers and the parents in this equation.
When they launched a cannonball through a suburban Bay Area neighborhood last week, it was an accident that had been waiting to happen for nearly ten years. Taunting sharks, dropping things from airplanes, and always looking for the bigger boom has never led to a catastrophe before. These are trained professionals, as we are assured with each airing. Now, because of the misfire where property was damaged and happily no casualties were incurred, there will be no more cannon fire on the Alameda County bomb range. Insurance will pay for the damages, and Adam and Jamie have assured us all that the footage and the experiment will be scrapped.
Until it shows up on Youtube where the rest of the teenagers are showing off how they can blow up a can of Silly String.

Transit Authority

2011-12-11T06:29:00.000-08:00

The thing that sometimes escapes me about my bicycle commute is how deliberate it is. Sure, I can coast for a few feet, down a hill, but when that next hill comes it's back to pedaling. Each stroke is left and right, up and down. There is no radio to distract me, just the sounds of the morning and a neighborhood waking up.
This was the filter through which I watched the plume of smoke on the horizon. At first, I didn't even recognize it as anything but high clouds. The sun was coming up and I figured it was a chunk of weather that had skipped us, on its way to the Sierras. As I continued east, I noticed a distinct vertical-ness to the cloud. It was a column of thick, gray smoke. A block or two later, I could smell it.
That's when I started musing on the possible source: car fire, apartment building, somebody's house? It was the time of year when space heaters or holiday lights could be blamed for starting a blaze. I remembered another morning when I caught what was the end of a BART train derailment from a distance. It made a tall plume of potentially noxious fumes. I wondered if I was clever to be out in the streets, breathing in all that morning's poison.
In the distance I head sirens, no doubt heading toward the very same conflagration. I wondered how close I would be when I reached my final destination. Would it be my school on fire? But as I rode still further, I moved past the smoke and to the right. It was probably close to the hills. It made me wish, however briefly, for that regularly updated traffic report.
Of course I didn't need it. Nothing in front of me was on fire. I could deal with what was behind me on the way home.

Visionary

2011-12-10T06:33:00.000-08:00

Back in 1975, my parents took me to see the "Tommy," the film, not the stage version. The fact that it was playing at the cinema across the street from the university should have given us all the hint about the content. Part of this dynamic was fueled by having an older brother who wanted to go see it, and since the rating suggested Parental Guidance, they probably figured it was safe. Safe from the post-traumatic stress of witnessing the murder of Tommy's father by the man who would become his stepfather. Safe from the summary abuse Tommy experiences from Cousin Kevin and Uncle Ernie. Safe from the twitching smile of the Gypsy, the Acid Queen. Safe from the image of Ann Margaret rolling about in a sea of baked beans.
Baked beans.
Ken Russell died on November 28, and that memory did not die with him. Nor did all the images from "Altered States," or "The Devils" or "Salome's Last Dance." Mister Russell could be the first director whose work I began to notice by style and content. The lurid and sweaty visions of art and artists stuck with me from the time I was in the theatre across the street from the university to the time I was a student studying film there. I learned about Ken's beginnings as a director of TV commercials and watched as his vision progressed. I had discovered an auteur. All of that mind-blowing celluloid sprang from the mind of one man, and it opened the door for me to find Terry Gilliam, Martin Scorcese, and David Cronenberg. Though I had always loved going to the movies, "Tommy" was the beginning of my film study.
And those baked beans.
Aloha, Ken Russell.

Dance Of The Hours

2011-12-09T06:30:00.000-08:00

There is a scene in the John Hughes film "Sixteen Candles" that is currently resonating with me: As the suburban high school kids are pulling up to the gymnasium for the big dance, a station wagon comes screeching to a halt right in front of the doors, and a middle-aged man and woman jump out and drag a teen-aged boy from the back seat. As they pull him toward the door, he keeps pleading, "Please Mom and Dad! I don't want to go! I want to stay home with you!" The parents shove the kid inside as the fire doors lock behind them. Mission accomplished.
I cannot say that my son is having that same reaction to the high school dance. On the contrary. He is willing to make the best out of his dateless existence and go with some friends. In some ways, he is every bit the grown-up boy we had planned on having, perhaps even more evolved than either of his parents in his freshman year. But on some level, he seems determined to cling to us in other ways.
My wife and I woke up in September of this year with the sound of a clock ticking on the four years our son has left in high school. A few years back he had been announcing his intention to attend the University of California at Berkeley so he could "sleep at home." Lately, that list has expanded to include MIT and the University of Texas in Austin. These institutions have only anecdotally been connected to his higher education, with the expressed intent of being some kind of engineer. Now the only thing that stands in the way of his dreams is his report card.
Somehow his meteoric rise to academic superiority has stalled, and he is struggling to find his way through the first year of high school. We gave him all these words to have conversations about subjects that would lead him to bigger and better things. We taught him to type so that eventually he could type his own essays and college applications. We taught him to walk so that he could walk out the door.
I wonder if that ticking clock isn't keeping him awake as well.

Unconventional Wisdom

2011-12-08T06:37:00.000-08:00

Everything I know about football is wrong. I've been saying that a lot this season. I started out feeling so very clever, having a great many Fantasy Football seasons under my belt, having won the championship of my school teacher league just last year. This makes me a football insider, at least to those within my immediate circle. At least to those in my immediate circle who care about professional sports. This would be the cue for my younger brother to stop reading this post.
What have I done with all this experience? I have applied it systematically to the process of projecting and predicting the outcomes of the performance of athletes in the National Football League. This was not the year to apply science to this endeavor. So much about what we thought we knew about how this stuff works turns out to be run through a Cuisinart of chance and luck. When the fates handed me Michael Vick at the beginning of the season, I figured I could ignore the guy's shady past and focus on his abilities on the field. After all, the folks in Philadelphia had gone out over the off-season and purchased the best supporting cast he could ask for. Michael Vick should have been lighting up scoreboards from start to finish.
The comfort I can take is that I got burned right along with the rest of the point-fiends out there and sent him packing even before cracked ribs sent him to the actual bench. Contrastingly, I smiled kindly as my son grabbed Tim Tebow with his first pick in our family league's draft. I knew that the football wisdom was with Denver's game-managing veteran quarterback, Kyle Orton, who proceeded to win just one game in five tries. That's when all this Tebow stuff began. Again: I know nothing about football.
Meanwhile, my wife has compiled a completely respectable record for her own team, based on her interest in the personal stories of the players on her team. The inspiring story of Jimmy Graham, tight end for New Orleans, for example. And Marshawn Lynch? He went to the same high school as my son, once upon a time. For the record, she's very happy that Madonna is going to be playing the halftime show this year at the Super Bowl.
My wife. She knows everything.

Plane Crazy

2011-12-07T06:00:00.000-08:00

This past weekend, Iran's armed forces shot down an unmanned U.S. spy plane that violated Iranian airspace along the country's eastern border. I know what you're thinking: "Oh great, now the Iranians have our model plane technology." Well, that depends on how much blew up on impact. President "Members Only" Ahmadinejad unveiled Iran's first domestically built unmanned bomber aircraft in August 2010, calling it an "ambassador of death" to Iran's enemies. My suspicion is that the powers that be will probably want to detain the wreckage of the U.S. drone for as long as they can, holding the bits and pieces hostage until someone comes forward to pay their absurd demands for "bail."
All of this got me to thinking about just exactly what was at stake here. The U.S. had a spy plane shot down by a country that claims that they are not making nuclear weapons. Had the drone been blown up by a nuclear weapon, that would have been a pretty clear sign to our intelligence gatherers that they were on the right track. Since that didn't happen, we can only assume that there is something over there in Iran into which they would rather we weren't sticking our infidel noses. Fair enough, we're pretty tight with our secrets too. That's why I'm looking into just what the over-under is on our going to war with Iran. If there's going to be a shootin' war in the Middle East in the coming year, I want to get in on some of that defense contractor action. Papa needs a new unmanned reconnaissance aircraft.

To Bury Caesar

2011-12-06T06:18:00.000-08:00

Okay, be honest: Would you really have wanted the leader of the free world to have running a pizzeria on his resume? "I'd like peace in the Middle East, a more understandable tax code, and can I get Crazy Bread with that?" Herman Cain didn't just run a pizzeria. He was Chief Executive Officer of Godfather's Pizza, the fifth largest pizza chain in the United States. While he has worked in and around politics for more than twenty years, he has never held public office. But it's really been the private offices that have been the issue for Mister Cain of late.
Like so many prominent leaders from John Edwards to Ashton Kutcher, Herman Cain had a problem with fidelity. The list goes on and on, including John F. Kennedy and Franklin Roosevelt. Even Eisenhower had his indiscretions. These were powerful men, leaders. They have been elevated to that pinnacle of achievement wherein their likenesses appear on our coins, with the exception of Edwards and Kutcher. What I'm suggesting is that a lot of men who achieve lofty status seem to forget the lessons they learned about propriety in lieu of money, fame or power. Are you listening Newt?
And so we close the book on Herman Cain, the once and future second African American President of the United States. "Before you get discouraged, today I want to describe Plan B. . . . I am not going away. I will continue to be a voice for the people." That voice can be found on the Internet, the invention of another man who "drifted away" from his spousal commitment, Al Gore. The web site where multimillionaire and restaurant industry lobbyist Herman Cain will be holding forth can be found at TheCainSolutions.com. Order now and get a free two-liter bottle of your favorite soda.

It's In The Can

2011-12-05T06:42:00.000-08:00

I make no bones about it: Ours is a Coke household, and while there may be an occasional Fresca or off-brand root beer that sneaks into the house from time to time, we are happy to support the secret formula from Atlanta exclusively. There have been times when, as a friend or party guest has shown up on our doorstep with a two-liter bottle of Pepsi, we have welcomed the other cola in as a matter of decorum, but it is never a conscious choice. There are, by contrast, a number of friends and family who hear that I am on my way to their house and consequently they rush out to grab a six pack of Coca-Cola just for me.
"You don't drink Diet Coke?" In a word, "No." In many more words, I don't choose to drink Coke because it will make me healthier, happier or change my life in any noticeable way. It may be a reaction to that Pepsi slogan that insisted that they were the choice of a new generation. I am not that generation. I rode through that whole "New Coke" nonsense with a certain measure of forgiveness, but was relieved when the regular, unleaded version reappeared.
That's why I had mixed feelings about the new white can. In spite of being the world's most recognizable brand, the Coca-Cola company takes little risks every holiday season with the paint on the side of their cans. Santa, or polar bears or snowflakes, they feel compelled to remind us all as we stock up for the high-carbonated-holiday season that we are buying something special. This is Coke with something wintry on the side. It tastes fresher. Colder. Coke-ier. But apparently this time they powers that be went too far. People were confused by the white can, because it looked a little too much like Diet Coke. Or didn't look enough like The Real Thing. Or it was just different and therefore scary. Again, we all remember New Coke. And Coke Zero. And all those other excuses for soda that is not Coke that we love. It's supposed to be a red can, with a white logo in that distinctive script. Otherwise it could be anything. Maybe something healthy, and that would be too terrifying for words. So imagine some gagging sound effects here.

Does It Hurt To Ask?

2011-12-04T06:28:00.000-08:00

I had forgotten how long it was possible for a teenage boy to obsess on the vagaries of dating. Specifically, I have stood in wonder as I have borne witness to the struggle my son is waging against the forces of the high school social order in hopes of securing a date for the upcoming Winter Dance. He has fired endless salvos of text messages, as well as direct frontal assaults after class and at lunch. Still, she won't budge. He stands on the precipice of her ambivalence: "I'm not sure," she replies.
My wife and I have suggested that he could see if a bunch of his friends all wanted to go together, you know, as friends. But I have memory of the ancient history that is my own campaign to avoid going stag to a dance myself. If you showed up alone, or with your best pal, you had surrendered. You might as well have taken out a full page ad in the school newspaper trumpeting, "I don't have a date for the Winter Dance, and I don't expect to have one for the Spring Dance either." My old man experience tells me that this is far from a death sentence, and at the very least it would free one from the intense pressure of trying to get that special someone to acquiesce to the demands of going to a gymnasium and standing around for a few hours in the most uncomfortable way imaginable. And if you pay an additional twenty bucks, you can get a souvenir photo of this most memorable evening that you can cherish forever.
After going oh-for-five in my sophomore year, I managed to swing a date to the Homecoming dance with a cheerleader. As a point of clarification, she had only recently made the leap from being a flag girl in band to the upper strata of our caste system. I knew her when she was "just a flag girl." After the exquisite torment that was that evening, I spent the rest of the year chasing after that same girl, never fully comprehending that "I'll think about it," may have been the most polite way she could have responded to my tenacity.
In my senior year, I had it figured out, and after a mutually awkward Homecoming dance that year that turned out to be a mildly entertaining pas de deux between two people who probably wanted to be there with someone else, but I had a nice time. I missed the Christmas Dance that year, but by January I had secured the Holy Grail: A Girlfriend. I had a date for the rest of the social events of the year, and since she was a junior, I was assured a victory lap the following year, if I weren't too busy at college.
Well, as it turns out, I took a year off after I got out of high school and that meant I was available for every dance that year, as I struggled to maintain the relationship that would allow me to go to every dance that year. Was it worth it? Of course it was. I was living the dream, after all. The dream that burns deep inside my son's heart. I have tried to share some of my worldly experience with him, giving him suggestions of strategy and alternatives to the tireless texting and begging. His reply? "I'll think about it."

Target

2011-12-03T06:27:00.000-08:00

First, the good news: Police in Oakland have not been dispatched over the past week to deal with protests, march or riots connected to the Occupy Movement. This is good news because those resources will be needed to deal with the bad news: Police searched for multiple suspects Tuesday after a gunbattle in a parking lot where a rap music video was being filmed left seven people wounded, including a one-year-old boy who was shot in the head.
I live in Oakland, so the phrases "multiple suspects" and "gun battle" don't make me flinch anymore. The one that stuck with me was "one-year-old boy." Up until recently, the definition of "innocent bystander" was the three-year-old boy who was killed in a drive-by shooting last August. Now we have a new standard.
Blame the parents who took their child to a rap video set? Blame rap music? Blame the tiny brain that sent the message to the trigger finger?
I wonder how a gangster consoles himself with the knowledge that he managed to kill a small child, a baby. Does that mind have abstract notions like "collateral damage" in it? Firing indiscriminately into a crowd does not constitute accidental shooting. The gun wasn't wandering through the parking lot by itself when it tripped on a pothole and went off. The idea of a "stray bullet" conjured up the image of a wandering pack of shells that roamed that particular neighborhood, and one of them just happened to find itself lodged in the head of a one-year-old. That's one more kid who'll never go to school, never get to fall in love, never get to be cool, as the poet said.
One-year-old.

Chain Of Command

2011-12-02T06:35:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine was soliciting my opinion on the current dust-up with Pakistan with the following phrase: "You work for the government, what do you think about it?" First of all, I very much appreciate the elevated level at which my thoughts are seen through that filter. As an public school teacher, I am in fact a member of that not-so-particular group of employees who are part of the great big machine that makes those kind of decisions: foreign policy, federal bailouts, school lunches. I am just a little further down that food chain, however, than Hilary Clinton.
To put my decision making capacity in perspective, the kind of choices I generally get are along the following lines: Do you think you can get the four square balls out of the store room? Yes, I think I can. Not much of a choice, actually. I live in a much more rhetorical world, like when we were trying to figure out where the rug for one of our first grade classes went. I was in on this process from the very beginning. Once the rug was located, another question came up: Who will put it back into the room? That would be me. Then came the trickier issue of trying to figure out how the floor of the first grade room became flooded and caused the rug to be soaked and consequently removed. It was a little like the story of the Little Red Hen. "Not I," said the classroom teacher when asked if she knew about the water being left running. "Not I," said the after school program staff. "Not I," said the night custodian. And so we were left with a mystery that was more in line with the abilities of CSI than elementary school employees.
At the end of the day, there was a clean rug on which the first graders could sit, and the water had been cleaned up so that there was only a clean floor to remind us of what had happened. And that's pretty much how I feel about Pakistan.

Bye Bye, News Guy

2011-12-01T06:36:00.000-08:00

"I'm gonna write a little letter, Gonna mail it to my local DJ." That's what I thought last week when I woke up to the sound of the morning show. I wasn't a jumpin' little record I wanted my jockey to play. It was a letter of regret, a little note of reminisce. The news guy, Peter Finch, had taken his leave of the station. His was the second departure in the past couple of years that caused me to consider the noise my radio makes when I am awakened by it before the sun comes up. I grew accustomed to the way the new guy ran the show, but having Peter there was a settling influence for me. Now I feel the need to turn the dial and see what else is on.
This isn't because what I heard in his absence was so rude or objectionable, I had a link to the past with Peter. His eighteen years at KFOG roughly coincided with my entry into the Bay Area. He was the voice that came through the radio one morning when I was adjusting to the Pacific Time Zone: "Hey, haven't I heard that guy somewhere before?" It turns out that this was the same fellow who used to read the news and special features on the radio station I listened to back in Boulder, Colorado. Some of the sting of the unfamiliar was taken away by that connection. It was there, at the University of Colorado, that I had the good fortune to play on a Trivia Bowl team with him. It would make a better story to say that we won that year because of his innate knowledge of pop music, but he was a good all around player who helped us make it to the middle rounds, where he was able to answer the question, "Who was the first actor to posthumously win the best actor Oscar?"
That would be Peter Finch. who has gone on to pursue interests in the light of day. I miss the sound of his voice.

On My Mark

2011-11-30T06:01:00.000-08:00

It happened again. Just like last year. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, since I asked for it, after all, but the ten kilometers that stretched out in front of me seemed particularly daunting on this cold November morning. How many years have I been doing this to myself? How many more years will I allow it to continue? These were the questions in my head at the starting line. My more sane and supportive family members moved to the left where the seemingly more relaxed five kilometer course looked like a walk in the park which, as it turns out, it is.
I thought about wandering over across that line. I could spend the morning as I do on so very many weekends, exercising with my family. My son pushing up ahead, and then waiting for us to catch up. Dragging my wife, now so much a part of the Zumba crowd, to run just a little bit more. We could all finish together, and I would feel so much fresher, having bypassed that whole second half of the race. The aches and pains would be minimized and the rest of the day could include physical activity outside of lurching into the bathroom to swallow another couple ibuprofen. It would be so easy.
But that's not what I signed up for. I signed up for the big one. The one with two hills and six miles that feel a whole lot like six miles after you've run them. It is the mild goal that I set myself at the beginning of each year. I won't finish first, but at least let me not collapse in the attempt. The rest of the year I train. Today I'm here to push myself. I'm here once again, to prove to myself that I can, in fact, run for an hour or so and then pick up a bunch of bottles of water and a bag full of energy bars before heading back home to savor my accomplishment. And those ibuprofen. See you next year on the starting line.

Our Long National Nightmare Is At An End

2011-11-29T06:50:00.000-08:00

Did anyone else notice that the National Basketball Association has come to an agreement with its players? I just happened to be reading the scroll at the bottom of the screen while Michigan was battling Ohio State. In college football. The Detroit Pistons may have been ready to go, but all eyes were on Ann Arbor that day. A few days before that, most of your Detroit sports fans were glued to the action on Ford Field. It wasn't long before that that they were rooting on the Tigers in their race to the American League pennant. Basketball? are we ready for some basketball?
Maybe not. Not after one hundred and forty-nine days of squabbling over a few million dollars here and there. The details are essentially unimportant, since those who would watch the Pistons or any other NBA franchise will have their chance starting on Christmas Day. Their season will be an abbreviated sixty-six games, down from your standard eighty-two. That's a decrease of about twenty-percent, so I'm sure that both owners and players are expecting to make twenty percent less this year. Especially since the custodians, concession workers, and assorted support personnel will have to do without those sixteen games' revenue. You can be sure that part of the settlement reached between the big deals will include some sort of trickle down for those who are not millionaires. Or not.
In the meantime, I'm checking out the NHL schedule.

Hunting And Gathering

2011-11-28T06:29:00.000-08:00

If I were a good American, I would be busy clicking and clacking away on my Internet connection, doing everything I possibly can to end this long national crisis called "recession." I would be tapping into those credit lines and doing my best to relieve the strains on our country's economy by purchasing some nice candlesticks from Overstock.com for the friends and family that are still in desperate need of home decor.
When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping. That's what President Pinhead told us it was our patriotic duty to do in the wake of the 9/11 attack. If we stop spending money, it could be perceived as a weakness. While you're at it, why not buy a house? Rack up all the debt you can muster for the good ol' US of A. Now, with the wolves at the door, we are being asked to wipe our mouths after Thanksgiving dinner and head out to the mall. Don't wait for the deals to come to you. You should come to the deals. Bring your pepper spray. You never know when you might need to fight for what you really need.
Those who are sitting in front of their screens, pads, or phones today might want to gather together just a little closer to enhance that feeling of desperation. Feel free to poke one another in the eye, or jab someone in the kidney. Those candlesticks aren't free, after all.

Where We Will Spend Most Of The Rest Of Our Lives

2011-11-27T06:50:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the new century. I hope you've been enjoying yourself for the past decade or so. I've been busy trying to wrap my head around the way things are versus the way they should be. All of those science fiction books and comics and movies and what do we have to show for it? I can watch reruns of "Malcolm In The Middle" with the push of a button. Hallelujah.
Okay, maybe that's a little harsh. We're living in a world with electric cars, but just in case they have a gas tank too. And this is the future. The hydrogen fuel cells are still somewhere on the loading dock, waiting to be shipped, right? I can't even allow myself to start the flying car discussion, since they will need to be powered by banana peels. And the genetic engineering remains limited primarily to tomatoes and Republican Presidential candidates. I want the future, and I want it now!
Or maybe I'm glad we haven't found our way to a world where Morlocks lord over us weak and mild Eloi. We haven't been been loaded onto space arks and shipped off into space in hopes of finding a more habitable planet. Those snack crackers were probably made from plankton, not people, and though I know that Steve Jobs was keeping track of all the Olivia Newton John songs I downloaded, I am pretty sure that he is no longer aware of that stop sign I rode through on my bike last week.
Pretty sure.

i Recall

2011-11-26T06:13:00.000-08:00

The first thing I did a week ago, when I first received the e-mail, was to check out the potential for scams. This wasn't an offer to move large sums of money through my bank account to save a Nigerian prince or cancer-ridden Englishman. This was an offer to replace my potentially defective iPod. According to the notice, in certain instances, the battery on my first generation Nano has overheated, causing injury. There was no description of the injury, but I can only assume it lives somewhere in the realm of mild annoyance to nasty blister. I don't know if I would ever have considered such a thing if I hadn't been notified by Apple, if it really was true.
Well, it turns out to be true, or at least as true as electronic media will allow me to uncover. I suppose I could have gone further and hiked on down to my local Apple retailer, taken a number, and waited for a Genius to tell me what I had already read online, but my curiosity was satisfied. I clicked the link to have the box sent to me so that I could make the exchange. And that's when the doubts really kicked in.
They were suggesting that it could take up to six weeks to make the exchange. A month and a half without my second favorite electronic device, coming in just behind my Tivo remote control? I wasn't sure that I could make that sort of sacrifice. The idea of spending upwards of forty days without the happy connection to my favorite songs at the push of a button? The music that I can take with me wherever I choose to go? Maybe it would be character-building. Or maybe my iPod wasn't among those that made up the tiny percentage of the ones that burst into flame. Was I willing to take that risk? They were doing me this solid of sending me an overnight express box to ship it back to them, but I'm not sure I can let it go. I know that change is scary, but this isn't change, it's replacement. And maybe that's what scares me the most.

That Girl

2011-11-25T06:16:00.000-08:00

"In all of this excitement, I've kind of lost track myself..." - Dirty Harry
I know that Inspector Callahan wasn't referring to Republican Presidential candidates, but it's kind of hard to remember a time when Sarah "Quitter" Palin was ruminating on the possibility of a chance that she might consider thinking about being a part of that field. These days the news is full of Herman Cain's call from God to be a part of a sexual harassment suit, and Newt Gingrich's improbable rise back the top of this barrel of fish, while Rick Perry stands in a corner trying to remember what that third government agency was. Debate after debate, someone always seems to show up as a new lightning rod for controversy, even if there is no clear front-runner. Sorry Mitt.
But what about Sarah? Sure, she's got books to write and TV shows to host, but what about her political career? Didn't she just fold the tents on her little circus back in October? Sure, it's not uncharacteristic for the former governor and almost vice-president to bail on a commitment, but as a paid correspondent of Fox "We Make It Up, You Figure It Out" News you would have thought that she would have given the scoop to her employer. She didn't. She picked Mark Lewis' radio show to make her announcement. No TV. No Fox. No thanks. "I paid her for two years to make this announcement on my network." A million dollars a year. Oh well, like the boys from Liverpool say, money can't buy you love. Or a political future.

Full Of Thanks

2011-11-24T06:46:00.000-08:00

At the end of the day I am full of thanks. I am full of pie. I am full of turkey and stuffed with stuffing. I am able to make it to the living room where the football and parades continue to dazzle me with the spectacle of living in America. I am thankful for the time to spend watching television, above and beyond the hours I might ordinarily. I shiver with anticipation, knowing that our next great chance to win back our economy begins in just a few short hours. I have consumed enough mashed potatoes, and now it's time to turn my attention to electronics and housewares.
I am thankful my city made it through another flurry of riots. I'm happy that the tear gas didn't make it to my neighborhood. I hope the rains will help keep the tempers down while we try and sort things out. I am thankful that anarchy doesn't appear to be the solution.
I am thankful for all the things my son is learning, in school and out. I am proud of the way he is digesting the feast we prepared and the knowledge he has been given over the past year. I am excited to imagine a world that uses his best ideas.
I am thankful for the love of my wife and the adventure that continues to be our life. Not too many alligators, and just enough quicksand balanced out with the smiles and surprises that being married to an artist brings.
I am thankful for the life I lead here and the lives that I touch every week. I am glad that I can continue to teach as I learn. I am happy to be able to share this with you.

Behind Door Number Three

2011-11-23T06:16:00.000-08:00

My wife and I stood in our driveway and looked back up into our garage. Our garage. Our driveway. Inside we could see our barbecue kettle and our lawnmower. Our barbecue kettle. Our lawnmower. We looked back at each other. How did we acquire all this stuff? How did we acquire this garage?
Fast forward a few more years. I'm standing in that same garage. The barbecue is still there. The lawn mower, recently repaired, is still there. A heavy bag hangs from one of the rafters which already support a goodly amount of lumber, pipe, and cardboard. There is a barrel full of sports equipment that has seen better days. Tennis racket? Who plays tennis? That's okay. If there is a tennis-related emergency, we know where we can go to fix the problem. And if there is an issue that involves drip irrigation, the shelves against the south wall hold all the parts we might need.
Then there's the counter we hauled out of our kitchen when we remodeled. In the cupboards and drawers below are stored the bits and pieces of household improvements attempted and completed over the past fifteen years: sandpaper, caulk, wood putty, and all those tools. Screwdrivers, wrenches, hammers, scrapers, and these are just the manual versions. Across the way are their powered cousins, corded and uncorded: saws and drills and more saws. I will work with all of these, but if I have to choose one, I'm going with the cordless drill. It's not much good for plumbing problems, but it has a way of solving and fixing the holes and loose hinges that occur over time.
And there's that big lump, sitting on the counter. It could be an albino turtle. It could be a blue whale's brain, but it's not. It's a wad of foam, left over from an experiment my son conducted when he shot most of the contents of a spray insulation into a shoe box. It's a relic, of sorts. It's a reminder of the holes we filled inside our house, to keep the outside out.
I know from whence all this all this stuff came. There are no secrets. Squirt guns, water toys and a wading pool waiting for the day when they make sense again. Until then, I know where they'll be.

Good Sport

2011-11-22T06:53:00.000-08:00

You don't have to watch "Rollerball," very long to start feeling uncomfortable. Not because of the seventies vision of the future supplied by art director Robert Laing, but because of the sadly prescient nature of this thirty-six year old B-movie. I was thirteen when I saw it the first time, and it seemed a little scary to think of a world that was controlled by corporations, with the extremely violent sport named in the title providing most of the entertainment as well as a method of solving disputes between factions. As the tagline promised, "In the future there will be no war. There will only be Rollerball."
The trouble begins when the globally recognized star of the sport, Jonathan E. begins to question his place in the scheme of things. He is given a luxurious lifestyle, and all of the comforts of the executive class, but none of the power. The executives, meanwhile, are concerned that a player has become more important than they are. Something must be done. If you haven't seen the movie, the last thing I want to do is to spoil it for you here, but I will say that it is odd how much of what seemed bizarre and futuristic thirty years ago now seems like part of the plan. For example, books have been transcribed into computers, and many have been classified. Men wear wear these great big collars, and the parties are out of this world. But it's not all jumpsuits and jetting around the world, playing a game. The executives want Jonathan dead because he reminds people that they are not corporations, and vice versa.
If it were a totally accurate portrayal of our dystopian existence, however, Jonathan would be forced into retirement by a union-related work stoppage. You wouldn't have to kill Jonathan, just make him play in Europe.

Running To Stand Still

2011-11-21T06:34:00.000-08:00

I am glad to have a week off. Once upon a time there was a need to keep kids in school until right before the day of much feasting. It became apparent, when checking attendance statistics, that our district had so many absences in the three days leading up to the Thanking Day it made sense to just cut our losses and give up on the entire week. As a result, I have become familiar over the past few years with this new rhythm. So have the kids.
The example I use is our Wednesdays: We call them minimum days, but somehow they end up feeling just as long as any other. It's almost as if the children sense the approaching void and start to cram in all the angst, ennui and drama they can into the time we have together. That extra hour at the end of the day after they have been dismissed often feels like recovery more than respite. We teachers catch our collective breath and prepare for the next two days.
And so it goes with this week in November. Last week I found myself coaching PE, running laps with a bunch of fourth graders. I kept a slow but steady pace, but found myself passing by clumps of listless kids who seemed to have plenty of better things to do. I was attempting to lead by example, and exhorted them to push themselves and try a little harder. To run. Some of them did just that, while others simply slowed down out of what I can only assume was plain old stubbornness. Later that day, as I headed to lunch, I stopped short as a gaggle of girls came roaring around a corner. Some of the same group who had been dragging their feet as I ran alongside them. "Please don't run in the hallway," I said with as much authority as I could muster. They giggled, "Sorry, Mister Caven," and off they went.
It's all about the timing, and I think its about time we had a break.

&

2011-11-20T06:25:00.000-08:00

The sign read: "John & Kim Gritton Real Estate." I have probably passed by it dozens of times, but I hadn't taken the time to internalize it. "John and Kim." I'm not guessing that they are brother and sister, since that ampersand fairly screams a union other than blood. It's much more comfortable than the apostrophe "N" apostrophe convention found in so many commercial enterprises to instill familiarity. No, this was a symbol of marital bliss.
I know this because I am sometimes guilty of truncating the "and" between my wife's name and my own by a single symbol. Not to denigrate our union, but to enhance it. We don't need a whole word to describe our union, not even a contraction. That's how comfortable we are together. But would I feel that way if we had signs posted around the city? Across the country?
Then I stopped to ponder just how incredibly functional John and Kim, pardon me, John & Kim must be to go into business with one another. My wife has often wished aloud, in my presence, of owning rental property. Extrapolationg that experience out into a world that could hold a real estate company run by the married couple that is comprised by myself and my wife gives me shivers.
Not that it would be all pain. Collaboration is a wonderful and amazing thing, but I know how challenging it is to get a single room in our own house painted. I don't know if there is a property that could withstand our process outside of our own. All of which makes me pleased and happy for John & Kim. Though I do imagine those tough moments when it comes down to a brass tacks discussion about French Provincial versus French Country.

Please, Mister Postman

2011-11-19T06:28:00.000-08:00

"No mail days are sad days." That was the caption underneath a drawing of a GI staring into an empty mailbox that my wife once sent to a friend. I understand this. For as long as I can remember, going to the mailbox to check the contents Monday through Saturday has been part of a life-affirming ritual. For a few years when I first moved to California, my wife and I had to walk up the street to retrieve all our letters, packages and postcards from one of those little post office boxes: with the key and the little door behind which all manner of circulars, magazines and catalogs could be stuffed. And every so often there would be a little slip of paper. I always greeted these with a mix of excitement and trepidation. If there was a package back there, somewhere, I could ring a bell and the mail droid would exchange the slip for a box at the window that opened at the far end.
Sometimes, no one was there, and I would have to walk down the street, poring over the letters and numbers on that slip, trying to figure out what might be waiting for me when the post office personnel returned the next day. Now I wonder how much more anticipation I will have to suffer as the United States Post Office expects to run out of cash in September of 2012. That could mean fewer deliveries. That could mean no more packages delivered or exchanged for those little slips. It will most definitely mean that stamps will be more expensive.
What am I willing to do to keep this from happening? Will I stop sending e-mail to friends and family? Can I imagine a form of communication that relies on the sure-footed clear heads of postal employees across this great land of ours? Could I have that package sent USPS instead of UPS?
Here's a little truth: My grandfather was a mailman. He delivered letters and packages and postcards back in Salina, Kansas seventy-some years ago. I never knew the man. When we finally met, he was in failing health on a bed in a rest home. Still, somehow I took this association as a badge of honor, much in the way that others salute the flag in honor of their grandfathers who fought in the war. I salute the mail carriers. I am considering printing this one out and putting copies in envelopes, the analog way. But don't sit by your mail box waiting.

Poster Child

2011-11-18T06:39:00.000-08:00

Please don't tell the girls on our playground about Justin Beiber's recent troubles. Not that all of the children at our school would be shocked and amazed at the news coming from the Beiber camp lately. The notion of a teenager fathering a child isn't bizarre to the kids at my school. The friction comes from what is their reality and what they wish it could be. All those T-shirts and back packs are dreams of a better existence. They could go home after school and watch couples scream at each other about paternity tests on the Maury Povich Show. There is plenty of that already in their world.
They need a fresh-faced idol to worship. They need someone to sing to them about feelings and experiences they can only begin to imagine in fourth grade. And it's not just the girls. The boys rally around their own hate-Beiber standard, as tradition demands. Like the hard feelings I had against Davids Cassidy and Jones. Yes, it was a simpler time. A world without blogs and tweets, unless you counted those you heard beneath the desks after lunch. But it was all in good fun and it was a treat to have someone who was squeaky clean enough to put on a lunch box.
I don't really care who Justin calls "Baby," so long as he remembers that time has a way of catching up to child stars. Just ask Lief Garret.

My Old Man

2011-11-17T06:03:00.000-08:00

On this, the occasion of my father's birthday, I often reflect on all the mighty and wonderful things that he did, and all the things that he gave me: most notably my sense of humor and a part that begins somewhere near the back of my head and spans most of the top of my skull. Humor and hair were not the only gifts he ever gave me, but he did win the "Get Out Early" sweepstakes. When my dad died sixteen years ago, just a couple weeks after his sixty-first birthday, he left a lot of unfinished business behind.
I understand that it is generally considered in poor taste to speak ill of the dead, especially when discussing the paterfamilias. But good taste was not one of the attributes that my father passed along to me. He was the funny one. He was the one who dragged us all around the neighborhood on our sleds behind the big Dodge station wagon. It was my mother who dealt with all the soggy clothes and shivering children when they finally came back inside. He was the one who gave his three boys a pat on the back when they deserved it, but it was my mom who was given the wooden spoon to paddle our backsides when we deserved that. I wouldn't say that my father avoided heavy lifting, but I know that he much preferred the happy, carefree times. Not surprising, considering he was human and all.
But as I grow older, and start passing milestones that my father passed a quarter century ago, I find myself wondering about the choices my dad made. He was coming up on what should have been his victory lap. All three of his sons were grown and moved out of the house, heading off on trajectories that would find them making their own families and fashioning homes and traditions that echoed the ones he helped instill. Instead, he split. He left my mom, and went off to start fresh. This wouldn't have been quite as objectionable if he had actually done something courageous and new. Instead, he continued to hang around the periphery of our family, continuing to contact our mother without ever giving her the space and time to adjust to life as separate individuals. He wanted all the connection that their years together allowed without the commitment.
At the time, I made all kinds of excuses for him. I couldn't understand why he was leaving, but since he hadn't gone very far, it didn't seem so bad. Now that I'm a husband and father myself, I can see how confounding the choices he made were for so many around him. When he left for good, after the plane crash took him away forever, we all set about grieving the man who had gone away years before. I miss him today, but now I can see why. And why not.

Judge Not, Lest Ye - Oh What The Heck, Go Ahead And Judge Already

2011-11-16T06:28:00.000-08:00

My wife and I were afforded the opportunity to judge the writing of some high school authors. We were happy to share our opinions and took our job very seriously. Almost as seriously as the students who wrote their poems, essays, and stories. They all shared a common theme, as any good writing contest should: "Diversity Is." We were curious to see what a group of suburban high school kids from southern California would have to say on the subject.
What I was reminded of, almost immediately, is just how much high schoolers know. Their vocabulary was on full display, not unlike a verbose peacock. Every line and every paragraph was littered with adjectives and adverbs, and I wondered if any of these kids talked like they wrote. If so, it would be a very earnest encounter.
There were some that took a more jaundiced approach, pointing out the unfairness of it all and one even went so far as to question why they were being asked about diversity at all, since they were routinely asked to state their race on standardized forms. I felt their pain, but I couldn't fully connect. There's just something about being a teenager that turns all your injustice sensors on full.
And so we read. Some of them rhymed. Many of them made full use of their thesaurus. Many of them sought out our heartstrings. Some of them came close. Then there was this one that tried a different tack. This one didn't target the heart. It aimed a little wider: for our funny bone. It told the story of an intergalactic diversity training. Creatures with six eyes met with tentacled beasts who pulled diamonds out of their ears. It was clever and it was on topic. It made me think about what I know about diversity. It gave me hope. I gave it a ten.

Look Out, 'Cause Here It Comes

2011-11-15T06:21:00.000-08:00

I remember when I woke up with a start the first time I felt an earthquake. I had only lived in California for a few months, and I was unprepared for the experience. I woke up my then wife-to-be who assured me without opening her eyes that it was no big deal: "The closet's just shaking." The closet and most everything else around me.
And then it was over. Each time the ground beneath my feet has shifted it has become a little easier to accept. I know where the fault lies, and though I know there is nothing I can do to correct it, I have made it my concern. Not in a big way, mind you, but it's a good thing to be familiar with the forces of nature just in case you need to negotiate with them.
That's why I feel so embarrassed by the asteroid that narrowly missed us last week. It was as big as an aircraft carrier, and it came as close as anything like it to crashing into our planet in the past thirty-five years. Unless you count all those bits of space debris that continues to drop out of the heavens because we forgot about them after they stopped doing their satellite duties. Or unless you think that two hundred thousand miles shouldn't qualify for "near miss."
Okay, maybe it's not something that Morgan Freeman should be disturbed for, or for which we need to enlist Bruce Willis' aid. It wasn't a big enough deal to construct a space ark or generate international cooperation to ward off the impending doom. It was as if our galactic closet was shaking. Now we can all go back to sleep.

The Human Drama Of Athletic Competition

2011-11-14T06:48:00.000-08:00

"A riot is an ugly thing." That's the first thing that Inspector Kemp says, through a thick German accent in "Young Frankenstein." Then he finishes with, "and I think it's about time we had one." Why not? Riots are very much in vogue right now. It used to be a more isolated tactic, used primarily to celebrate the end of a championship season by the local sports franchise. The release of all that tension that feels like celebration at first turns into ugly unchecked violence after all the beer is gone. The curiosity being, of course, that you would expect that the losing team would be the ones whose fans would take exception to the outcome, but generally that's not the case.
Then there are those nutty soccer fans: the ones who can't wait for the game to be over before the tumult is unleashed. These guys might just burn down the stadium before the match can be completed. That's how committed they are. Or perhaps they should be committed, that's the answer.
Which brings us to the unrest last week in State College, Pennsylvania. Upon hearing that their football coach and semi-major demigod, Joe Paterno, had been fired for his part in an expanding the scandal surrounding accusations that a former assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky, sexually assaulted young boys. To be clear, these students were not enraged by the football program's involvement in the abuse of children, they were incensed that their beloved leader, "JoPa," had been relieved of his position. That's when they took to the streets.
“Of course we’re going to riot,” said Paul Howard, twenty-four, an aerospace engineering student. “What do they expect when they tell us at ten o’clock that they fired our football coach?”
“We got rowdy, and we got Maced,” said Jeff Heim, nineteen, rubbing his red, teary eyes. “But make no mistake, the board started this riot by firing our coach. They tarnished a legend.”
Tarnished legend? I guess they don't teach irony at Penn State.

A Brief Encounter

2011-11-13T06:22:00.000-08:00

In the midst of a reverie concerning the pending closure of five Oakland schools, I was surprised to hear a voice from behind me: "Excuse me, sir?"
I stopped pedaling, assuming that the only person that could possibly be addressed in the early morning hours on this side street was me. I was also curious to see who would be calling after me in such a polite fashion on my ride to work.
It was another biker. This guy was much younger than I, and as he coasted to a stop next to me, I briefly admired the bright red paint job his bicycle was sporting. Then my fellow two-wheeler asked, "Is that your only bike?"
For a moment I considered my responses: What business is it of yours? No, I have several back in the bike port. This is the only one that I know of. So many sarcastic responses, so many layers of uncertainty. I settled on the truth: "Nope. This is the only one."
"Man," the young dude exclaimed, "I been seeing you ride through here for years, and I was sure that you had lots of different bikes."
"Same one I've had for years," I assured him adding, "Just a new inner tube now and then, but this is it."
"Wow. I was sure that you must have a bunch of bikes."
Then came the awkward pause. I didn't have a clue about where else this line of discussion was going to go. Maybe, "Well, now you've got no bikes," as his accomplice emerged from the bushes and pushed me to the ground. Or, "I don't really need this one. How would you like a new bike?" When neither side of the spectrum emerged, I smiled and nodded. "Have a good ride," I told him as I got back up on my pedals and headed off in the direction of my school. He waved goodbye and rode off in the opposite direction.
I started thinking about all the possibilities.

OCDTV

2011-11-12T06:26:00.000-08:00

I can remember how important television schedules used to be to me. When the new TV Guide arrived at my mother's house, I would peruse the fine print page by page, taking careful note of the prime time and late-night Friday and Saturday grids. I was planning my week's viewing in advance so that I could politely decline any invitations that might interfere with this program or that, and eagerly anticipating that weekend's slate of science fiction and horror movies. In high school the night that I looked forward to most was Thursday, when I could be lulled into quiet familiarity by "Happy Days," and later assaulted by this bright young comedian, Robin Williams, on the spin-off, "Mork and Mindy." It was a time that I paid close attention to the goings-on in a sit-com world. Others had moved on to "Dallas" and "The Love Boat," but my attention span was rigidly fixed at thirty minutes. Even special two-part episode arcs bothered me, because this meant carrying the thread of a story across the hustle and bustle of a busy week. I wanted resolution, and I needed that tag after the last commercial.
When ABC moved on, and these shows were shifted in order to fill gaps in programming elsewhere, they eventually lost their mojo and went to TV heaven. I watched my fill of television after that, but it took me years to recover and I had a difficult time trusting networks and their machinations. Then, after decades, NBC gave me "Must See TV." It was a time that included such conveniences as home video taping machines, but the water cooler aspect of watching the shows with a wider community meant that you needed to stay current with Monica, Chandler and the rest of the Friends, and was Paul Reiser really married to Helen Hunt?
That time passed too. Now we have two Tivo boxes monitoring all broadcasts coming into our home, recording those we have asked it to save, and even adding in some of their own helpful suggestions. Nowadays, I don't even watch "The Daily Show" on a daily basis. I try and stay current, but I'm almost always a day behind, and there are weeks that go by when my family's favorite shows stack up on the hard drive, waiting to be seen. Sometimes it's because we have plenty of other important things to do: homework, meetings, exercise, chores. But most of the time it's because we're busy watching something else. Like reruns of "Mork and Mindy."

The Family Circle Of Life

2011-11-11T07:23:00.000-08:00

It was the circle at the bottom of the comics page that I avoided: The Family Circus. Even in the days when I was a voracious enough comics reader to take in all the drama of Rex Morgan M.D., I couldn't bring myself to read the single panel of benign humor. There was something about it that was just a little too precious, a tad too sentimental for my very mature tastes. I preferred the bone-dry wit of "Peanuts," or the racial diversity of "Wee Pals." I wasn't going to fall into that saccharine trap. I still had "Hagar the Horrible" to read.

By the time I got to college, I realized that what Bil Keane was offering us all a convenient target for our angst. We could all roll our eyes collectively at the antics of Jeffy and Dolly. We could sneer with contempt at the relative struggles of P.J. and little Billy. What was their life if not a sardonic comment on the state of the American dream for the rest of us.

I had forgotten that Bil Keane was the illustrator of Erma Bombeck's "Just Wait Until You Have Children Of Your Own." This guy knew what was going on. He lived through the same reality we all did, and as a parent, I began to sneak a peek in that corner of the page, after I had read everything else. It turns out that he was doing that thing that artists are encouraged to do: He wrote about what he knew. And he drew pictures. He was friends with Charles Schultz. He had a dog in his strip that was named "Barfy." Not exactly subversive, but kind of funny that no one fussed about it for fifty years. Then there's this: Apparently Billy and Zippy the Pinhead were pals.

Aloha, Bil. See you in the funny papers.

Didja Ever Notice....

2011-11-10T06:28:00.000-08:00

I have waited a while to comment on the passing of Andy Rooney. It has little to do with any other pressing matters and everything to do with my ambivalent feelings toward the man's impact on popular culture. Not the man himself. We should all devote ourselves to our career and family the way he was able to, and his devotion to both are examples to us all. Married to the same woman for sixty-two years, until death did part them, he made his last appearance on "Sixty Minutes" just three weeks before he died at the age of ninety-two.
So what is my beef with Andy Rooney? It probably has something to do with the way he was able to forge a life's work out of the mundane. Missing socks and other tiny elements of our modern life never escaped his ridicule: "I don't like food that's too carefully arranged; it makes me think that the chef is spending too much time arranging and not enough time cooking. If I wanted a picture I'd buy a painting." So much of what he wrote and reported from his cramped office each Sunday evening was a complaint: "The dullest Olympic sport is curling, whatever 'curling' means." He was the quintessential grumpy old man, inviting us all to listen to one last harangue before he told us to get off of his lawn.
And I will miss him. Not because I agreed with everything that he had to say, but because he is probably as responsible as anyone for the words you are reading here. Andy Rooney may have been the alchemist behind Short-Attention-Span-Theatre. A few minutes with Andy Rooney was not unlike a few paragraphs with Dave. And maybe in another forty years, I'll feel comfortable with that comparison.

Making Hay

2011-11-09T06:10:00.000-08:00

I remember sitting in my apartment, back in my college days, listening to the campus radio station and hearing the DJ bristling with discontent about USA for Africa's recording, "We Are The World." "Feed the world. Great," he snarled, "I know one thing: Somebody's getting rich." Well, as it turns out, it was a rare example of true altruism, with ninety percent of the money raised going to famine in Africa, and the other ten percent being used to feed the hungry here in America. Who would have guessed that such a thing was possible? Certainly not the cynic behind the microphone way back then.
And this mild sense of hope is what I confronted when I read the story of a local Oakland merchant who was having himself a bonanza as a result of the Occupy Movement. Our local Army Surplus store can't keep gas masks on the shelves. "They (the protesters) want to take precautionary measures," said store owner Moiz Raniji, pleased by the uptick in sales at his East Oakland outlet. He had sold at least fifty in the past ten days. At forty bucks a pop, that's a pretty nice bump in your autumn sales.
And it's not just here in Oakland where there is money to be made in Occupation. There are plenty of online opportunities to stock up on t-shirts and tote bags in all colors and styles for the well-dressed activist. While it is true that no one will probably hop tax brackets based on the profits they are making, it has opened the door for a more contentious point: Who owns the rights to "occupy" and "99%?" If you want to get in on the ground floor of the new world order, you had better have a good lawyer, and you had better move fast.

Wired

2011-11-08T06:41:00.000-08:00

I sat in front of my personal computer the other day, feeling quite clever at my own personal evolution into the digital world. I was listening to my favorite music and reading the news while in the background I was keeping track of the scores from the gridiron. If I had half a mind to, I could make a couple more clicks and start watching the most recent releases from Hollywood, the ones I missed because I was far too busy at my computer. That's when I read the article. The one that changed my rosy outlook to dusky gray.
It seems that I was operating technology from the last epoch. I still own not one but two video cassette recorders. I have found myself on the cusp of buying the Star Wars trilogies in yet another permutation. I own the VHS version. I sold my laser discs of Episodes IV through VI along with the player I was using to show off my devotion to all things cinema back in the nineties. The box set of DVDs have had some use over the years, but now when we need to reference a scene or line of dialogue, we call it up on YouTube. We have all this software, and now we are being told that it's really not necessary.
I remember how I had to reconcile my sadness in losing the artwork of my vinyl LPs first for cassette tapes and then for compact discs. Now I occasionally take the time to download some of the liner notes on those special edition mp3s, but mostly I'm storing bits and bytes on my hard drive with the intent of reproducing them for the moment of playback. Amazon and Apple will be happy to store those for me as well, even if it costs me a few dollars a year. I won't have to worry about space.
I used to have a video camera. Actually, I have owned a number of video cameras over the years. Mostly they were replaced by better, smaller, flashier versions, until just recently when my son took most of our family vacation videos with his phone, much in the way our snapshots have become an almost purely digital domain.
And here I sit at my antiquated desktop machine, plugged into a bunch of cables sprouting from the wall. A tablet would be so much less effort and one less dimension. A single flat surface that could maintain and retrieve all the media that I could possibly care about. That can take pictures and video and send them to a storage farm someplace on a cloud, or somewhere in the Midwest.
Or maybe I should anticipate a time when the relics that I use currently carry the same cachet as the wind-up Victrola my wife inherited from her father so many years ago. And I await the eventual implant in my skull for receiving and transmitting data. Until that becomes passe.

Things That Go Boom

2011-11-07T06:43:00.000-08:00

I'm not much for first-person shooter games. Way back when the whole Columbine thing came to pass, I had a demo version of Doom on my computer. If you haven't spend your own requisite amount of time sitting in front of a screen, chasing monsters and ghouls with shotguns and assorted automatic weapons and killing them in ghastly ways, then you wouldn't have to worry about deleting it from your hard drive when your conscience woke you up in the middle of the night.
I was never one of those who felt that video games were to blame for any shootings, high school or drive-by. By that measure, we should have many more professional football players and rock guitar prodigies, based on the sales of video games. The reason I retired from the dungeons of Doom was that I didn't feel comfortable hunting humanoids in what was then a moderately realistic setting. I didn't make it a campaign of any sort, and when it came time for my son to ask if he could play the Star Wars version, the one where you could zap droids and Wookies with your T-16, I felt the need to talk with him about the difference between fantasy and reality, and how seeing things on a screen is different from seeing them in the real world.
To which he replied, "No duh, dad."
Now the video game shelves are chock full of war: Modern Warfare, Call of Duty. You can go around the world and across time to be part of an army that shoots, stabs, and blows up other humans to generate cyber-victory. It brings to mind the moment in "True Lies" when Jamie Lee Curtis confronts her super-spy husband Arnold Schwarzenegger about all the people he has killed in his career. "Yeah," the once and future governator sighs, "but they were all bad." And that's what we can do to tell ourselves that this experience is completely harmless. Unless you recall the dustup when a version of Call of Duty was released where players could control Taliban units.
And suddenly I'm transported to that moment when my son finished reading "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card. If you missed this one because you were too busy playing first-person shooter games on your PC, it concerns a future where the best and brightest of Earth's future are trained via computer simulation to deal with the invasion of an alien race. Since that time, my son has left the guns and ammo behind, preferring instead to focus on driving fast through city streets in fantastically expensive cars. In a video game. The good news is that if the Formics land on our planet tomorrow, he might not be available to eradicate the insect hordes, but he will be able to drive away. Really fast.

A Mighty Wind

2011-11-06T06:36:00.000-08:00

The streets of our city were littered with debris again. Branches and trash cans were strewn about, awaiting the day that they could all be carted away and order could be restored to the chaos from the night before. It happened over a couple of nights. The first one was a very literal storm with winds of up to seventy miles an hour that knocked things down and turned things over. The second was the trailing end of a peaceful protest that didn't stay that way. Windows were broken and fires were set.
No police were needed to quell the wind storm. The riot squad responded to the fires in the street. Both events could have been predicted, forecasted, but they both left the city worse for the wear the next day. Atmospheric disturbances don't specify targets, and sometimes I wonder if angry mobs are any more discerning.
Somebody has to clean this mess up. It won't be done for free. The costs for the people who are making their way to and from work to earn a paycheck haven't been figured into the equation. When a grocery store is closed and the employees are sent home because of a broken window, it doesn't matter if it was a tree branch that came through or a rock. Those people aren't getting paid. Force of Nature or Act of Force, the result is the same.

Relative Growth

2011-11-05T06:31:00.000-07:00

The door to my wardrobe is a magical place. Not quite in a league with the one that C.S. Lewis wrote about. No one is getting to Narnia from that corner of my bedroom, but we can travel into the past. More specifically, we can travel into my son's past. It is on this door that my wife and I have been marking his progress through the years, and the inches from babyhood to teenageness.
It used to be that one of us would have to hold him steady as the other carefully marked, with permanent marker, the most accurate accounting of his growth to that point. In the beginning, we were fascinated enough by the way he grew that we felt compelled to mark it every six months. When I look at those initial lines on the door, I wonder how all that personality ever fit in something so small.
Eventually, he became as interested as we were in his relative height. That's when he started asking if it was time to measure again. It has been no secret that his peers have stretched out in advance of him, and he remains optimistic about his chances to reach six feet. He has seen the days when he was turned away at amusement parks because he was shorter than the clown pass. He can now stride directly past that turnstile with impunity.
The door itself ends five feet nine inches off the ground, the same height as his father. I know that I am done ascending, and my gradual descent is imminent. I remember that when I was my son's age I dreamed of being just a shade taller than my own dad. It was a mark my older brother reached, and I'm fairly certain that my younger brother would be looking at our father squarely in the eye if dad had lived this long.
That's what I 'm looking forward to. Instead of the fear that my son will surpass my in any way, I greet the idea with the same anticipation he does. Like the magnolia tree we planted in our front yard the week that he was born, I hope that he will someday tower above me. And I will take refuge in his shade.

Forward Into The Past

2011-11-04T06:35:00.000-07:00

"In a Democracy, the people get the government they deserve," wrote Alexis de Tocqueville. That may be a little fatalistic, but what would you expect from a Frenchman? A recent poll suggests that the government we wish deserve is Ronald Reagan. Second place went to Franklin Roosevelt.
The poll, conducted by 60 Minutes and Vanity Fair, asked which president Americans would like to see take over in the White House if little complications such as history and death were no obstacle. Reagan got thirty-six percent to Roosevelt's twenty-nine. On the opposite end of the spectrum was William Henry Harrison with just one percent. This was the one percent of clever people who thought that picking a president who lasted only one month in office before he died of pneumonia was an amusing gambit. There was a pretty steep drop off after first and second place, with Thomas Jefferson picking up third with fourteen percent.
Really? The man who wrote the Declaration of Independence came in third? Fourth place went to Harry Truman who gathered in just eight percent. Where did Abraham Lincoln show up? How about Teddy Roosevelt? John Kennedy? What dead guy or gal would you like to see running our country? Who would you choose to be our first zombie president? Does it have to be a former president? As long as this is a wish-based experience, why not pick Steve Jobs?

Occupy Earth

2011-11-03T06:36:00.000-07:00

With all this occupation of this city and that city across this great land of ours, I continue to be impressed by the wide array of responses the ninety-nine percent have to the one percent. Making tent cities is the most prevalent, with tear gas and public urination being featured elements of many of these experiences. And all the while, the earth continues to shrug. Literally.
Over the past three weeks, the three weeks that the Oakland encampment has been in place, there have been four earthquakes within a five mile radius of city hall. It is a reminder that we are only renters, whether we are ninety-nine or one percent. This vision was never more clear than when I was looking at the pictures of those who were displaced by the most recent earthquake in Turkey. Thousands of people driven out of their homes, living in tents, waiting for relief from this natural disaster.
I was struck by this image, because my family owns a tent, and we have our rolling box of disaster supplies, and we are waiting for the little temblors we have felt over the past few weeks to become something more assertive. And destructive. It is a great leveler in a very literal sense. It won't matter what your tax bracket is when an eight point oh hits. Everybody is going to be living in the parks. I suppose the ones who are already there will get the best spots.

Listening And Relistening

2011-11-02T06:17:00.000-07:00

Drove downtown in the rain
Nine-thirty on a Tuesday night
just to check out the late-night record shops -"Brian Wilson" by the Barenaked Ladies
It's been a long time since I've been in any kind of record store, late-night or otherwise. This is unfortunate, since I live just down the road from some pretty tremendous examples of such retailers up in Berkeley. Of course, nowadays, the very soft, paper and vinyl thump that I fondly remember as the sound of hunting and gathering new sounds to bring home to my music machine has been replaced by the clackity-clack of the plastic stems that compact discs are stuck inside to create a deterrence to thieves who might otherwise simply pocket the little wafers in their trench coats and wander out into the darkness.
The iPod is ten years old. That's old enough that the word iPod doesn't cause my spell-check to flinch anymore. It is what it is: a brand name just like Band-Aids or Kleenex. Steve Jobs left us with the eponymous mp3 player, and that's where my Tuesday nights have gone. I don't get in my car. I log on to Al Gore's Internet and go searching for music, old and new, that I can play without packaging. No soft vinyl thud. No plastic clackity-clack. Just point and click. The rhythm of my life hasn't changed much, but the activity is much more sedentary. Buying new music could be done from anyplace with an Internet connection. Like a sandbox in your living room, for example.

Food For Thought: Brains!

2011-11-01T06:31:00.000-07:00

One of the things I learned pretty late in the teaching game was this: Kids are weird. Just when you think you've got things figured out, they turn around and prove that, once again, you have failed to understand their motivations. I would imagine, as a practicing adult, that children who wanted to go to lunch would understand that the simple requirement of a quiet line would be a simple enough expectation to meet in order to achieve the stated goal. Not so. Instead, there are plenty of classrooms full of ravenous pre-teens who seem completely content to poke and prod one another, sing and hum, dance and wiggle, all while the clock continues to creep forward into the sacred time of lunch recess.
I learned a while back that all those rhetorical questions mean absolutely nothing to the minds of an elementary school student. "Why can't you stand still?" "Do you want to stand here all day?" "Do you want to miss lunch completely?" The answers are, "I dunno," "Sure, why not?" and "No." Not that anyone of them would bother answering any of them since, after all, they are rhetorical.
Which leads me to PE last week. I ruminated long and hard, and my wife helped me find a special game to play in anticipation of Halloween: Zombie Tag. It was hip, it was happening, and it was so simple, even a child could play it. For those of you who have never played Zombie Tag, it can best be described as a dry land version of Marco Polo. When the blindfolded zombie growls, the fleeing humans have to growl back, giving the zombie some idea of where the fresh brains are located. All the kids I taught grasped this portion of the game immediately. There was plenty of snarling and even a little moaning. The problem was, there was no sense of danger. Rather than being terrified at the notion of being touched by a member of the undead, these kids seemed intent on putting themselves directly in the clutches of the zombie. To be fair, it wasn't every child, but enough that it made each game last only a few seconds. Most of them seemed to be intent on becoming "it." They felt no stigma at becoming a member of the walking dead. Perhaps this means that our children have become even more accepting of all living creatures, and those not so much.
Or maybe kids are just weird.

All Hallow's Eve

2011-10-31T06:37:00.000-07:00

Back on the couch again. This time I'm watching the credits begin to pop up for "Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers." I can feel myself tense as I begin to anticipate the measured and deliberate dismemberment of another slew of teenagers in a small Illinois town. I am thinking about what a well timed showing this turns out to be, and how lucky I am to have access to the wide variety of broadcasting offered by cable television. I am looking at a movie that I watched with this same fevered anticipation back in 1988. Then I started to remember the formula by which these teenagers would be killed, with the wicked intent of generating yet another sequel. I was twenty-six when I first saw "Halloween 4." I was sixteen when I saw the first one.
I remember sitting in the band room of our high school with my friend Clark and I sat slack-jawed as Lance Hardesty, who was a year ahead of us, gave a shot-by-shot re-enactment of John Carpenter's magnum opus. We were transfixed, and when we finally went to see the film ourselves a few nights later, it was a terrifying experience that had not been dulled by Lance's bravura performance.
Now I'm creeping toward fifty, and outside the tear gas has dissipated from Oakland's most recent riot. The homicide rate for the year in this city is climbing toward one hundred. The news magazines and Internet are still awash with the matter-of-fact photos of the bloody corpse of Muammar Qaddafi. When I was ten, Halloween was about costumes and Trick-or-Treating. When I was twenty it was about drunken debauchery and pushing back the veil of night. When I was in my thirties I watched my son begin his own pilgrimage up to the porch to beg for candy dressed as a truck. In my forties I have started to wonder what Halloween really is.
I switched the channel to watch the World Series.

Michael Moore's Address To The Occupy Oakland Protesters

2011-10-30T06:53:00.000-07:00

I want you folks to remember that no bastard ever won a demonstration by getting hit in the head for his cause. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard get hit in the head for his cause. All this stuff you’ve heard about the ninety-nine percent not wanting to fight, wanting to stay out of jail, is a lot of horse hockey. Americans love to demonstrate. All real Americans love the stink and clash of sleeping out in a park. When you were kids, you all admired the sit-ins, the thinnest member of the hunger strike, the big league hippies, and the highest -grossing documentary film makers. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to a tie all the time. I wouldn’t give a hoot in heck for a man who lost and laughed. That’s why Americans have never lost and will never lose a non-violent demonstration. The very thought of losing is hateful to Americans. An occupying non-violent cooperative is a team. It lives, eats, sleeps, and fights as a team. This individuality stuff is a bunch of hooey. The ninnies who write that silly stuff about individuality for the Utne Reader, don’t know any more about real protest than they do about hydroponic gardening. We have the finest food and equipment, the best spirit, and the best men, women and children in the world. I pity those poor authority-types we’re going up against. We’re not just going to sit here, we’re going to mess up their parks and public plazas and use them as our personal waste stations. We’re going to annoy those lousy one-percenters by the bushel basket. Some of you are wondering whether or not you’ll chicken out under fire. Don’t worry about it. I can assure you from my office in Los Angeles that you’ll all do your full duty. The Man is the enemy. Wade into them. Spill their Jamba Juice. Tip over thier garbage cans. When you put your hand into a bunch of poo, that a moment before was in your best friend, you’ll know what to do. There’s another thing I want you to remember. I don’t want to get any messages saying we’re advancing constantly. We’re holding our position, and we’re not interested in advancing onto anything except the next patch of dead grass. We’re going to hold onto ourselves and we're going to hug each other. We’re going to hug each other all the time. We’re going to sit here like geese. There’s one thing you folks will be able to say when you get back home, and you may be thankful for it. Thirty years from now, when you’re sitting around your fireside, with your grandson on your knee, and he asks, “What did you do in the great Occupy Wall Street Demonstration?” You won’t have to say, “Well, I watched it on TV.” Alright, you sons of factory workers, you know how I feel. I’ll be proud to lead you wonderful guys into non-violent demonstration anywhere, anytime, but right now I'm late for a taping of Bill Maher's show. Oh, and don't forget that "Capitalism: A Love Story" is available on Blu-Ray and DVD from Amazon.

Dawn

2011-10-29T06:45:00.000-07:00

I see Dawn just about every morning when I ride to work. She's the neighborhood bag lady. I don't use this term in a derogatory way, it is simply the best way I know to describe her. She has bags full of different things, depending on the day. She could be cleaning up the street, or she might be collecting treasure. Some days she looks up from her chores and smiles. Others she keeps her head down, focusing on the task in front of her, whatever that task might be. I've stopped on a couple of occasions to talk, but these chats usually dissolve after a few moments. Maybe it's me, but they don't track very well.
Consequently, I don't know a lot about Dawn outside of our brief encounters on my ride to school. She may be at home the rest of the day, busy making wads of cash on her E-Trade account. She may be living in a mansion up on the hill, making her way down to this corner of the 'hood to help out in any way she can. I do know that Dawn has been having some trouble getting around lately. I watched her negotiate a curb a few weeks ago, and that meant she needed to set her bags down, get herself up out of the street, then pick up the bags again. I didn't see her again for a couple of weeks, and I wondered if she had to retire.
Happily, this week I saw that she had acquired a shopping cart to aid in her constitutionals. I waved, but she was intent on keeping the wheels on the sidewalk, moving straight ahead. She had someplace she needed to be.

To B53 Or Not B53

2011-10-28T06:39:00.000-07:00

Another execution took place in Texas. Only this one probably won't have the same groups up in arms as the last one. In Amarillo, the last of the United States B53 nuclear bombs was dismantled. This delivery system for death from above, hundreds of times more powerful than the one that was dropped on Hiroshima, is being taken out of service. The disassembling is taking place one year ahead of schedule as part of the President's goal of reducing our nuclear stockpile.
First put into service in 1962, when Cold War tensions peaked during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the B53 weighed ten thousand pounds and was the size of a minivan. The significant difference would be that you probably couldn't use it to drive the kids to soccer. It was designed to be carried by B-52 bombers with the stated purpose of destroying underground bunkers. Since the Cold War ended a few decades ago (you can blame Ronald Reagan for that), there isn't as big a need to destroy underground bunkers. Instead, our efforts in national defense center around shoes, underwear, and model planes, not to mention the occasional minivan.
It's a different world, and you can expect that we will continue to take apart those weapons of mass destruction as part of our dedication to peace. That's the kind of job creation I'm happy to see. Now there's just about nine thousand, nine hundred left to go.

That Bites

2011-10-27T06:52:00.000-07:00

I thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster for delivering with his noodly appendages such a character as Pat Robertson. Over the years he has redefined ridiculous with his moral outrage. He has found ways to connect God to any number of triumphs and tragedies in ways that can best be described as conspiratorial. Usually there is some punishment involved for some perceived oversight or misdeed on the part of the unbelievers. Hurricanes seem to seek out those who don't see the world the way the Reverend Pat does. Death awaits those who don't fall into line with the Gospel According to Robertson.
It happened again last week in Zanesville, Ohio. Terry Thompson, who had recently been released from jail for a gun conviction, chose to settle the accounts of his disturbed life by setting free the fifty-six wild animals that he kept on his farm, including eighteen Bengal tigers. These were among the dozens of animals that were killed as authorities attempted to deal with the bizarre occurrence. While the debate rages on about how the animals were dealt with, both in Mister Thompson's care and after they were set loose on an unsuspecting populace, God's Little Elf has the answer: “God allowed those wild animals to escape because he wanted them to find gay people and bite them.” Citing the Book of Revelation he made explicit reference to “escaped lions, tigers and bears running around Ohio biting gay people” as a prelude to the Rapture.
Pastor Harold Camping reportedly smacked himself in the forehead sighing, "If only I could have seen the signs."

A League Of Their Own

2011-10-26T06:58:00.000-07:00

Like every good American, I was watching the World Series on Saturday night, primarily because the college football games were ending and because I wanted to see what was becoming a monumental display of hitting a baseball. Albert Pujols of the St. Louis Cardinals was putting on a show with his bat. He hit three home runs, batting in six runs. All of these were tape-measure jobs that seemed to leap out into the Texas night like fireworks. It was an exhibition. I made a point of sharing it with my son, and later my wife, who asked "Was it steroids?"Initially I was shocked. How cynical could this woman be? Degrading our national pastime with such talk. Here's this stunning achievement, and all she can do is imply some sort of conspiracy. How about a little simple appreciation for the physical feat? Under pressure with a worldwide television audience? Can't she just pause long enough to be impressed by the spectacle? Not every professional athlete is fueled by stimulants and bovine growth hormones.Then I noticed a face peering out from the Cardinal dugout. A little older, and perhaps a little wiser: Mark McGwire. One of the original Bash Brothers. The guy who hit seventy home runs in a season. The guy who whiffed mightily in front of Congress when he was asked about taking steroids to enhance his performance on the baseball diamond. He later got around to crying about it to Bob Costas.I guess it would have been better if he had talked to Tom Hanks. There is no crying in baseball. But thanks to guys like Mark, there will always be plenty of questions.

Shocked And Awed

2011-10-25T06:12:00.000-07:00

Is anybody keeping score out there? Yes, I know the economy is still in the tank, and there's probably very little a jobs program or a flat tax or anything short of a redistribution of wealth will fix anytime soon. But didn't I just read that the war in Iraq is over, at least for Americans. The troops are coming home.
Then there's that little matter of Libya, where regime change was accomplished without U.S. soldiers on the ground. The dictator was toppled the old fashioned way: by the people he was oppressing. Okay, maybe the NATO air strikes played a part, but after forty years, the Mad Dog of the Middle East has been put down. And the mastermind behind the Taliban and al-Qaeda was dispatched with quiet efficiency as well. Over the past six months, a great many of the "bad guys" have been sent packing. It's almost as if there was a list or something.
And so it doesn't quite stand up to the image of Hope and Change we might have all imagined on that November evening three years ago, but things are happening. "Terrorists and dictators, lacking the filibuster, have no effective defense against Barack Obama," tweeted Democratic strategist Rebecca Kirszner Katz this past week. It's kind of sad that all of a sudden we have traded our Presidential image from Martin Sheen to Arnold Schwarzenegger, but these are curious times. Maybe some Navy Seals could push through some education reform.

The Road Home

2011-10-24T06:35:00.000-07:00

I have a lot of memories of Darren. There aren't many days that go by that I don't reference the Okie from Muskogee at some level. I should also point out that one of Darren's chief annoyances was that Merle Haggard had never visited his hometown before he wrote a song about it. I know how deeply connected he was to the wide open plains of Oklahoma. He was proud. And he was lonely.
Part of the reason we became friends in our freshman year of college was that we could not abide by our assigned room mates. Along with another like-minded pal, we forged a bond of laughter and forgetting. The three of us would meet up in the hallway after dinner and we would keep each other company as we navigated the uncertain path of that first year of higher education. They looked at me with mild disdain as I hopped in my car each Friday afternoon and drove a hundred miles back to my home, where my family and girl friend were waiting. Couldn't I just stick around for one weekend?
I never did. I heard stories about the debauchery that took place on our wing while I was gone, and I shared my own about the adventures I had in my home town. I must have been persuasive, since eventually, I managed to get Darren to come along. By the time Spring rolled around, he was making the trip almost as often as I was. By the next fall, he had decided to transfer to the University of Colorado with me.
We got an apartment, found another pair of roommates for the other bedroom, and we set up our bachelor pad. Life was a giddy adventure for a month or two. Then one day I came home from class and found Darren in our room, lying face down on my bed. If he had been drunk, it would have been part of the plan, but instead when he rolled over, I could see that he had been crying. Then it all came out in a rush: He really wanted to go home. He had been on the phone with his father, and he was taking a long weekend to drive back to Oklahoma. "I just need to be home for a while," he explained.
And that was the moment that we stopped being friends in that hungry drunk boy way. Now I understood that part of him that was just like me. He was as connected to the place where he grew up as I was, and his batteries were in need of recharge. When he came back the next week, he regaled me with tales of the three days he spent in Muskogee: curb parties, cruising in the Dyno-Buick, having dinner with the 'rents. It wasn't anything special, but it was incredibly important. We didn't talk about what brought all that travelling on again. We didn't need to. We were friends and always would be.

Isolated Variable

2011-10-23T06:27:00.000-07:00

When I dropped out of Elementary Functions in my senior year of high school, I didn't flinch when I dropped into Selected Topics in Math. "Sel Top," as we used to call it, fulfilled my math requirements for graduation, and it gave me plenty of time to catch up on the notes I needed to be writing to my girl friend. Sure, there was a part of me that wished that I could be cruising along at that elevated level of math genius with my very clever friends, but math had suddenly ceased to be a priority for me. On the contrary. I felt released.
From the time I had entered junior high, I was uncomfortably ensconced in the upper echelon of mathematics class. I tested high, so that's where I was placed. The trouble I encountered was that I was much better at taking tests than I was at doing class work. I struggled mightily with the repetition of problem after problem, knowing that there was an answer: one correct answer. That answer routinely sat just outside of my understanding as the hours passed and my homework became a struggle that confounded me on many occasions.
But I continued to pound away, and in spite of my parents' suggestions that I go in early or stay late for help, I was determined to do it myself. This nose to the grindstone ethic kept me going for nearly six years, and when I was confronted by my Elementary Functions teacher, not about my frustrations with the math but rather my flippant attitude in class, I was relieved to be shown the way out. In my mind, there was this thought, the one that echoes in the heads of countless teenagers: "When am I going to use this stuff anyway?"
Now I have the answer: the answer is now. Now I have a son who is doing much of the same math that perplexed me when I was his age. Now he's coming to me for help. Now I am working toward a supplemental math credential. Now I understand rational numbers and domain and range and matrices. Now I understand irony. It comes right after functions.

Signs O' The Times

2011-10-22T06:34:00.000-07:00

There have been a number of amusing signs on display at the various "Occupy" demonstrations across the planet. There have been still more on Al Gore's Internet. The message of discontent continues to roil about out there in parks and streets across this great land of ours. While the world continues to sort out just where they stand on this "one percent versus ninety-nine" confrontation. Republicans would like to call it class warfare. Democrats would like to adopt it as their own version of the Tea Party. Plenty of millionaires have offered to pay their fair share. Whatever that is.
"Fair is when everyone gets what they need." These words keep ringing in my head as I consider the way our planet has become so oddly top-heavy. How could it be that one percent of the population controls more than forty percent of the wealth? This didn't happen overnight. Or years. Or even decades. We've had Rockefellers and Kennedys throughout our history. They are routinely held up as "success stories," but how much success does one really need? What about the bottom one percent?
I remember a comedian suggesting that if you are a homeless person with a "funny sign," you haven't been homeless long enough. Back at the "Occupy" camps, sometimes the sentiments are clear, other times they are obscure, but one thing's for sure: sign makers are making a killing off of this.

Valhalla

2011-10-21T06:28:00.000-07:00

We live in a world where things fall apart. If you've read the the name of this blog on your way to my typically pithy comments, you understand that I tend to revel in the amount of disorder in a system. Things move from an ordered state to a less ordered state. It's not just a good idea, it's the law.
That's why I expect to have to repair and replace things on a regular basis. The older I get, the more resistant I am to simply scrapping whatever appliance or household item when their usefulness begins to deteriorate. This ensures that we will go through our share of duct tape and glue. We will, as a household, have a vast array of screwdrivers for opening up small cavities to see if the batteries are, in fact, replicable. I will admit that a good deal of this mania is built upon my wife's insistence that we never add to the ever expanding landfill. It also brings great satisfaction to me when a machine can be resurrected. Having that power over life and death, at least in the appliance world, is completely gratifying.
Then there was the matter of our bathroom scale. I went to step on it the other day, and the digital readout came back as a black splotch. I tried to make sense of this information, assuming that I no longer weighed anything, and all of my exercise goals had been achieved. Then I decided to inspect further, using a big toe to try and clear whatever gunk might have been obscuring the screen. I understand that using all these technical terms like "splotch" and "gunk" may be causing some of you to lose the thread of this story, but what I eventually concluded was that the liquid crystal display had been cracked. The scale was, alas, a goner.
I carried the carcass to the front door, where my wife told me she was willing to take it the final few yards to our electronic waste pile. She confessed to having dropped our Sonicare toothbrush on the scale, causing the crack and we both shared a moment of silence at the passing. And then we took come solace in the notion that she would eventually cart the scale and a number of other dead soldiers off to a facility that makes a project out of reinvigorating the damaged and defective appliances that have exceeded our patience and abilities. It goes now to a better place.