The Dutch Files

David Foster Wallace on Civics

2011-10-18T09:22:00.000-07:00

We hear a lot about taxes these days because we have a budget crisis in this country, a ballooning Federal deficit that will soon top $15 trillion. The government can choose to either raise taxes or cut spending, or do some combination thereof. Republicans appear united in their opposition to tax increases, while the Democrat-backed plan floated by President Obama calls for them.

A central plot feature of David Foster Wallace’s unfinished IRS novel, The Pale King, takes a similar situation – a budget shortfall in the early 1980s brought on by President Reagan’s successful bid to lower taxes – and posits a fictional remedy. An obscure IRS memo, the Spackman Initiative, is rediscovered and its theory is implemented, solving the budget crisis and changing the basic operational approach of the IRS. Because a massive gap exists between the taxes that Americans owe the federal government and what the IRS is able to collect, the adoption of more stringent compliance standards (essentially more aggressive auditing practices) have increased tax revenue without any change to the tax code. What this means in the context of the book is that the IRS has recently seen its budget expanded, its regional offices deregulated, and its staff of rote examiners increased. In the process, the Service has moved away from its bureaucratic underpinnings, adopting a corporate philosophy in which profit is the only guiding principle. The changes at the IRS are a reflection of changes that have taken place in America, where corporate values are on the rise and civic responsibility is in decline.

It is on the subject of civics that we get the author’s most direct commentary in this protean, technocratic, occasionally stirring work. Wallace’s discussion of civics resonates in the context of today’s fractious national debate, where taxes are the touchstone. He uses an extended conversation in a stalled elevator between an examiner named Stuart Nichols and Regional Director DeWitt Glendenning to tease out the main point, that civics is dead. Modern-day Americans, emboldened by the anti-establishment zeal of the 60s, have (ironically) chosen to cede moral responsibility to the government in order to pursue a version of citizenship defined by individualism and personal freedom, ideals that have become little more than consumerist expressions and are marketed to the public by corporations, the American Dream meted out widget by widget. As Nichols notes ruefully, “‘Government’s only cultural role will be as the tyrannical parent we both hate and need.’”

Glendenning sees the IRS as executor of the ultimate civic responsibility. Accordingly, he resists the internal shift to a corporate approach to tax collection brought on by the Spackman Initiative. Wallace highlights this conflict in the book’s collection of notes and asides, painting Glendenning as “ineffectual – lost in a mist of civic idealism.” His resistance is futile, but Glendenning’s is still a voice of conscience:

None of this matters. And I’m not even really talking about what we do here except in the sense that it puts us in a position to see civic attitudes close up, since there’s nothing more concrete than tax payment, which after all is your money, whereas the obligations and projected returns on the payments are abstract, at the abstract level the whole nation and its government and the commonweal, so attitudes about paying taxes seem like one of the places where a man’s civic sense gets revealed in the starkest sorts of terms.

These words, though ostensibly uttered in the historical bubble of a nation on the cusp of Reaganomics, target the troubled state of American government in the 21st century. We can’t agree on taxes because we are at war with ourselves. Government has indeed become the tyrannical parent that we both hate and need. We hate pouring money down that bottomless maw, money for waste, money for pork, money for ineffectual wars and bloated bureaucracy, money for corporate bailouts and welfare handouts. Yet our expectations of government have never been higher. Unemployment is at its highest point in twenty years, and it is up to the government to create the jobs that will get us back on our feet, just as it’s the government’s responsibility to see to it that we can always be cared for when we’re sick, educated when we’re young, looked after when we’re old, protected when we’re threatened, pandered to when we feel like spending money, and coddled by the mantra that we remain “The Greatest Country On Earth.”

Everyone should know that a solution to our debt crisis that doesn’t involve tax increases and spending cuts - some Spackman-like miracle - is a pie in the sky. If we abdicate our civic responsibility in favor of some commodified ersatz of personal freedom, the vaunted American dream will be as well.

2009-12-04T04:19:00.000-08:00

View of the rift valley from the escarpment

In Defence of Roddick

2009-07-06T00:59:00.000-07:00

In the waning hours of July 4^th weekend, amidst some ancillary sports news that briefly commanded my attention – the Yankees continuing their roll against the Blue Jays (and I would appreciate it if a credentialed ornithologist would set the record straight for me about whether those oddly aggressive birds favor nectar north or south of the Canadian border), and the tragic death of great NFL QB Steve McNair, one story stood out in stark relief in my mind.

No, it wasn’t Roger Federer winning his record-setting 15^th major title at Wimbledon, his sixth in seven years, though that’s a great story. I do love the Rog. As a fan of tennis, I marvel at, and take a fan’s pride in, the Rog’s incredible ability.

Simply put, though, American Andy Roddick’s play inspired me. He was not perfect, as Federer has occasionally, and at times rightly, been accused of being. Hogwash. Roddick was not Nadalish – which is to say he did not possess a tennis amalgam of Kobe Bryant and an extremely motivated and possibly rabid border collie. Again, reader, allow me to introduce you to Today. I feel you two will get along famously.

No, Roddick’s Sunday at Wimbledon was start-to-finish a simple case of a guy going out and getting it done playing beautiful tennis. What I loved – loved – was how amazingly composed he was throughout the match. What it made me think, and I’m just some Yank watching the thing on TV from 5,000 miles away – was that my guy, the American – a guy who I’ve seen wilt on the big stage before, pressed the sublime Swiss to the very limit of anything I’ve seen on a tennis court. It made me feel proud. And nervous. That fifth set went longer than a Yankees-Sox game with no Buckie Dent or Aaron Boone on the bench. And yes, I do acknowledge the fact that these guys are more-or-less freaks. They are loveable freaks. They can power a tennis ball to ridiculous velocities with freakish precision.

On Sunday, June 5, 2009, Andy Roddick assaulted Roger Federer with a combination of 130+ mph serves, go-for-broke-ground strokes, and calculated net play that was effective. I’ll go on record saying he should have gone to the net more. Roddick played brilliantly, beautifully.

Federer won the match. It was 16-14 in the final set. Frankly, I’ve never seen anyone serve better than Federer with so much on the line. But for me, the story was Roddick playing the match of his life. Roddick played by far the best tennis that he has ever has played. I don’t think I need to have observed him as like a junior player or teenaged amateur to know that for a fact. I’ve seen Roddick plenty, in big matches with stuff on the line. Singles tennis, being basically a battle between two determined opponents, can’t always be evaluated according to ranking and prize money. Skill and pride is another story.

On numerous occasions playing Federer, Roddick had failed. He had lost 18 out of 20 matches to Federer going into Sunday’s Wimbledon final. But Roddick won the first set, and had a great opportunity to take the second in a tie-break with Federer down 6-2. The Rog battled back, relying on a serve that, given its smooth, unassuming delivery, doesn’t attract nearly enough attention. Federer ended the match with more than fifty aces. His serve was unequivocally the difference. Roddick, despite breaking him in each of the first two sets, could simply not get the best of Roger’s serve down the stretch.

The greatest players in the game’s history were spectators: Bjorn Borg, Rod Laver, and the man whose record Federer was looking to surpass for major titles in a career – Pete Sampras. Sampras was non-committal at the post-match press conference. But one had to guess that his reluctance to pronounce Federer the greatest of all time was to some degree a function of having witnessed his countryman, Andy Roddick, push Federer to the limit. Roddick was brilliant. As with no other match in his career, with the knowledge, of course, that he was facing the world’s best – maybe the best ever – he went for winners, and his balls were consistently true. But Federer is a savant, and held serve like a dynastic Ottoman Janissary holding a scepter in one hand, and a razor-sharp sword in the other. He could not be bested.

In the end it was the amazing and surprising pluck and execution of Andy Roddick that made this match. It was a battle of a good and dedicated player, one who has worked extremely hard on his game in the past 12 months, versus the world’s best, a cold-eyed assassin, in an instant classic. I have never seen Roddick perform like he did Sunday, providing the true grit that comprised the backbone of what could be called the greatest match ever played at the All-England Tennis and Croquet Club. Going forward, this match could be the foundation stone for a Yankee run at the U.S. Open Championship, and bragging rights that a lot of lusty American tennis fans crave. The man from Austin looked lithe, powerful, and at times he did something I’ve seen few tennis players do: He ran a personal favorite, Rogeay Fedray, all around the court.

Yazmina

2008-06-22T15:14:00.000-07:00

Cristobal Huet, Brilliance of

2008-04-17T22:27:00.000-07:00

The Frenchman had what I consider to be the best game played by a Capitals' goalie since Bob Mason in that legendary 4 OT playoff game versus the Islanders in 1987. If you need to brush up on that bit of obscure hockey lore, I encourage you to do so:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORigjzxY1wg

Like Mason, Huet lost this game, played one day shy of exactly 21 years later, when the Flyers scored about 5 minutes into the 2nd OT period. But I kindly direct you to this link, and submit this save as one of the best that I have ever seen:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkYyN_14jqs

Collage I

2008-04-15T09:29:00.000-07:00

Chit Chat

I counted the words, seventeen of them.

I counted on being able

to make seventeen words make sense.

Suspenseful

My mouth felt like a mealy mess of dry cake

And no milk.

"...nothing left in the tank," I sputtered

and those were the last five.

The All-Clear sounded:

It was a car horn--

The light was green.

Walking

By the time your boots were on

my shoes were off.

But by the time you'd walked the dog

I'd taken off.

You never asked me where I went

Ludlow Warriors Game 1

2008-04-13T19:28:00.000-07:00

New Yorker Cover

2008-02-24T06:22:00.000-08:00

Sean Taylor

2007-11-29T00:43:00.000-08:00

Michael Wilbon compared it to the death of Len Bias. Tony Kornheiser chose to highlight the reaction of his daughter, 24--the same age as the deceased--as representative of that of thousands, if not millions, of Redskins fans: tearful. When you love a team, you love the players, especially the ones who shape the team and, in football especially, make the team tough. Give the team teeth. Sean Taylor was on his way to becoming one of the very best players at a position where the impact is not so obvious. Yes, he was fearsome and feared on the field, with a dose of mercilessness and even that delectable joy that comes only from hitting, and in some cases hurting, members of the opposing team. He had that. You need that in that game. You need to be intense, but measured, precise, and Taylor was learning those qualities. And also winning games with his abilities, like last year against Dallas when he returned a blocked field goal just far enough to give the Skins' kicker a chance to win the game, which he did. I disagree strongly with some talkers who chose to roll this tragedy up with some of the more unsavory incidents to hit the NFL in recent years. However, I'm not blind to the fact that something was very wrong with this young man's life, no matter his efforts to change, but he was still very young. The coming weeks will tell us much, indeed, maybe more than we want to know about this incident. But the facts will remain constant: shot in his home, in the wee hours, by an intruder. Extrapolate all you want, the dismissive stance of "he had it coming" will not begin to tell the story of the death of this gifted football player.

The Road To Baghdad: Remembering Michael Kelly

2007-04-03T11:13:00.000-07:00

Four years ago today, Michael Kelly became the first journalist to lose his life in Iraq while covering The U.S.A.’s most recent war there. He was young, 46, and remarkably accomplished, having recently been named editor of a reinvigorated Atlantic Monthly. This after he had made a name for himself writing for some of the big boys, the Sun and the Globe, the Times and the Post, the New Yorker, and then editor of the New Republic at an age when many men these days are googling the term ‘quarter-life crisis’ on their under-used laptops. He was a rare individual, and he left behind a wife and two sons, aged 3 and 6, when he died.

Twelve years before he left home for the last time, Michael Kelly, who was raised on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. (his parents and mine remain close friends and neighbors), wrote the definitive account of the Gulf War, the first Iraq War, also known as Operation Desert Storm. It was a war that went by many names, America’s 1991 military foray into the Persian Gulf. But the book goes by just one: Martyr’s Day: Chronicle of a Small War (Random House, 1992). It is based on the remarkably revealing, carefully crafted pieces that Kelly, stringing to the Boston Globe, GQ, and the New Republic while bouncing around the Middle East on some borrowed freelancer’s scratch, sent over the wire. Often mentioned in the same breath as Michael Herr’s searing account of the Vietnam War, Dispatches, Martyr’s Day stands among the very best in a decorated tradition of American war correspondence.

On April 3, 2003, Michael was no doubt pulsating with his writer’s instincts and observations, which surely would have become the follow up to Martyr’s Day. Embedded with the Third Infantry Division, U.S. Army, and headed down the road to Baghdad International Airport in a Humvee driven by an army staff sergeant, Michael was, as usual, in the right place at the right time: the city of Baghdad at that very moment was being liberated from Baath party control by the Marines. Here, on this very roadway perhaps, was an opportunity for Michael, twelve years removed from covering his first Iraq War, to reflect on the fact that this was the one event that neither he, nor anyone, had witnessed back in 1991: the fall of Saddam’s Baghdad. They took mortar fire, the Humvee went off the road, landing upside down in a ditch, and both Michael and the staff sergeant were killed.

* * *

In 1991, Iraq was a nation led by a belligerent, authoritarian dictator, Saddam Hussein, who had ordered Iraq’s tanks and battalions into the oil-wealthy and blithely vulnerable neighbor state of Kuwait. The ensuing military conflict pitted a coalition of many nations, with the U.S. in command, against the Iraq army. It was soon apparent to the reporters at the “front” that the Iraq army was comprised of men who felt about as much motivation to fight in defense of their tyrannical leader’s capriciousness as you might expect from right thinking, sane individuals--none at all. The rout was on.

Maybe the most indelible passage in Martyr’s Day is Kelly’s description of an encounter he had with a ragged band of Iraqi soldiers on the road to Kuwait City. He and another reporter were eager to chronicle the post-liberation conditions in the invaded capitol and were driving their rented pickup truck hard to get there. Their nervousness at seeing Iraqi soldiers on the road gave way to astonishment when the soldiers, unarmed, under-clothed, and numbering around ten, eagerly surrendered to them, two American journalists.

Now, said the lieutenant, he and his men were very cold and hungry and they would appreciate it if we would take them prisoner. I am five feet six inches tall and bespectacled and running slightly to poundage. Dan [Fesperman, Baltimore Sun reporter] is taller and doesn’t wear glasses, but he is not an overwhelming figure either. I don’t think either of us felt that we were the sort of men that take other men prisoner.

Instead, they gave the men food and water, and piled them into, and onto, the pickup, driving a ways down the road, where they ran into a Saudi army unit, out doing their part for the coalition, though there was nothing much to do.

It is at this point in the narrative, when the reader’s laughter at the perfect absurdity of the scene is beginning to subside, that Kelly brings it back to reality, to war, or the sobering specter of it. The Saudis, a bit starved themselves--for combat action--rounded up the Iraqis, now proper prisoners, and began hectoring them, and taking aim with their automatic rifles as though they meant to execute the men then and there.

They screamed and shouted and made as if, any moment, they were going to shoot. The Iraqis, stunned and terrified, sat down in the dirt, their hands on their heads still, and their faces to the wind, in a ragged little line. One man clutched his Koran to his chest for protection and rocked, moaning, back and forth on his haunches. Another cried for Allah, and wept, and clutched at his crotch and hair in little paroxysms of terror. I watched them weeping and begging for their lives, and I had to turn aside so they wouldn’t see me crying too.

Reading this passage reminded me of the battered canteen, olive green, and with liquid of dubious nature still sealed inside, that Michael gave to me upon his return. It belonged to an Iraqi soldier, he had said. I was fourteen years old. The soldier was probably dead.

* * *

As the subtitle suggests, the Gulf War was a “small” war. It was a nasty, pathetic affair. It was not World War II, so well chronicled in multiple theaters of battle by Ernie Pyle, whose collection of dispatches, Ernie’s War, remains a benchmark classic of war correspondence journalism. Pyle was killed by a Japanese sniper on a Pacific Island, his war then so close to its end.

What Kelly witnessed in 1991 was a far cry from Ernie’s War. And as a consequence, his book was necessarily more than blood-and-guts war journalism. This is not to say that the Gulf War was not a horrible, traumatizing, and often deadly experience for many people. Kelly describes many scenes of suffering. The squalid Kurdish refugee camps come to mind. But there is a bemused puzzlement, indeed, at times an absurdity to many of the proceedings. Kelly’s description of wartime Tel Aviv, under constant threat of a Saddam Scud missile attack, is memorable. What emerges is a vision of a modern day London during the Blitz--with kibbutz, and bits of rhinestone fashioned by the ladies to their government-issue gas mask kits, to match their eveningwear. The Scud raids were infrequent and ineffective, and on the whole you’d have to say that 1991 Tel Aviv, with its discotheques, its beaches, its conscripted, no-nonsense army, and its irrepressible pro-American fervor, was a safer place than London in ’40 and ’41.

Kelly’s engaging, funny, conversational writing, his man-on-the-street (of Baghdad, of Amman, Tel Aviv, Cairo, Dhahran, Kuwait City) perspective, assisted by his broad but honest impressions of some of the maddeningly complex political relationships among Middle Eastern states, regions, and peoples (of which there are a few), these qualities add much to Martyr’s Day. In addition to being a book about war, Martyr’s Day is history (the opening discussion of the history of Iraq from ancient empire to modern dictatorship comes to mind), and it is also armchair cultural anthropology: “I knew by now that in Arabia [Egypt in this case] office life was patterned after an older rhythm. An official in his government room received visitors in much the same fashion as his grandfather had in his courtyard—casually, endlessly, and with a good deal of overlapping, since no one was ever in any particular hurry. The love of talk and the love of manners dictated against hurrying into any matter at hand.” The book can sometimes sound like a very amusing travel guide to the Middle East, such as when Kelly describes the grand farce that is traveling into and out of Israel, for which he needed to carry two passports, one of which would never show a mark of having been to Judea, in order to appease the firm policy of non-recognition adhered to by Israel’s neighboring Palestinian nation states.

There is one final important tonal element to Martyr’s Day, and it emerges early on, as Kelly describes the culture of Baghdad, where he spent a good deal of time in the days leading up to January 17, 1991, when American bombs began to fall on the city. This final element is a mixture of pride and disgust. The disgust is evident in his appraisal of the Saddam Hussein regime, its moral bankruptcy, its physical and ideological feebleness, and the mostly closeted dissatisfaction of an Iraqi populace that had been too long under the thumb of a tyrant, but had not the first clue of how to live in any other way. The pride is that of a patriot: being on the right side of things was important to Michael. His book of collected writings--essays, dispatches, op-ed pieces and the like, published in 2004, is called Things Worth Fighting For, and the book is a testament to his conviction as a man, a father, husband, citizen, and reporter. The strength of this conviction is evident in his words, the words of someone who believed in America, and freedom, and the inalienable right to drive a pickup truck out into the Arabian desert in order to Get The Story, which for Michael was not so much a right as a need.

* * *

It is hard not to wonder where that need would have taken Michael Kelly if he were living today. It is hard to imagine that his pride in American global authority, so evident in Martyr’s Day, when the world really was on our side, would not now be muted, or questioned outright. He would have to confront the divisions in our society and in our government, divisions that have deepened as the state of the U.S.A.’s latest Iraq war has worsened, those heady days that witnessed the fall of Saddam four years ago slowly bleeding into a morass of sectarian violence and a mounting toll of American dead.

Sometimes it seems as though the needle in our country’s collective moral compass has been set spinning, as though in the presence of a malevolent magnetism. While I did not always agree with Michael’s opinions, I do believe that he was someone whose compass rarely failed him, and this sure-footed approach, honest, blue collar reporting, is something that is sorely lacking in our current climate of partisan rancor. I may not know exactly what he would write today, but I do know that he would make his voice heard, and do it with his unfailing wit, wisdom, and grace so that, agree or disagree, time spent reading his words would still be, as it always has been for me, time well spent.

My Uncle Muncie: A Study of Alter-Ego

2007-03-19T11:29:00.000-07:00

Every March I can expect to hear the familiar voice of my Uncle Muncie, and I know that it's tournament time. Muncie is a sports fan. More specifically, he is a fan of college basketball, and his team is the Tarheels of the University of North Carolina. Always has been; always will be. Muncie hates computers, but he enjoys filling out a tournament bracket with all of his picks (including the inevitable: Carolina winning it all), so I do it for him, faithfully recording his bracket, and entering him into my brother's group on Yahoo. Let the games begin.

An alter-ego means never having to say you're sorry, and, in a setting where trash talk is valued almost as highly as picking the right teams, Muncie never does. It's got me thinking about some other folks I have come to know over the years, as well as the others I might expect to walk through that door in years to come. It would seem that, like Elwood P. Dowd, I have crossed paths with a few pookas, and maybe at times even fancied myself one.

First, there was Maked Man, a youngster of around five years of age who, though singularly minimalist in his application of vestments, brought joy and laughter to the hearts of many. Maked Man's signature getup was the epitome of immodest anachronism: little cowboy boots on his little feet, a little belt with an outsized buckle on which hung a six shooter, constructed, it was rumored, completely of legos, a little cowboy hat pushed back upon his big round head, and finally, a cape, perhaps inspired by a certain dashing D'Artagnon appeal (though a pen knife would for Maked Man have to substitute for a sword, at least in those days.)

A few years later, when Maked Man had long since succumbed to the forces of age and social convention, a new character emerged. His name was simply Schneider, and he was forged in the icy furnaces of a French Canadian hockey rink. With a ferocity not seen before, and not since, Schneider would torment his opponents on the ice, the coolness of which could almost be felt through the battered carpeting of a basement wreck-room, on which my little brother would often lie dazed and bloodied and angry after having had an unfortunate encounter with the toothless, brooding Habitant.

There were others: Scotty Scotch, the inebriated lowlander of dubious descent, who entered the country on a student visa, only to disappear--and re-emerge at odd hours in back barrooms, possessing, it would seem, a sixth sense for late-night whiskey binges, and a disturbingly spotty memory for his lusty, provocative behavior during these same.

I suppose it's not so much the existence of these fellows that surprises me, but rather my extreme affection for them. They all seem to have something that I do not, some inner quality that makes them stand out. I love them, one and all, and, though I cannot say what the future might hold, it is comforting to me that I can always expect, when the calendar says March and the weather is just starting to turn, my dear old Uncle Muncie, dedicated sportsman and curmudgeon, will once again take center stage.

Janet Fitch In Black & White

2007-02-19T14:55:00.000-08:00

“Don’t read this book if you are depressed. Yikes..” --Amazon.com reader review of Paint It Black

Janet Fitch has a new book out, Paint It Black, and so that this dark etching might be properly framed, and hopefully some light then cast in its direction, some background information will prove useful. Fitch’s first book, White Oleander, was selected for Oprah’s Book Club shortly after it was published in 1999 (a movie followed in 2002.) This after Fitch had labored in relative obscurity for years in her home town, Los Angeles.

Oprah Winfrey, TV’s well-read matriarch-cum-regent, has anointed more than a few deserving authors over the years. Jonathan Franzen is a member of some standing, though he has openly discussed the stigma of being a Book Club boy or girl. Oprah has moved mountains by moving Americans to read more, more Faulkner, more Garcia Marquez, more Carol Oats, Steinbeck, and—Sydney Poitier? In any case, Oprah has also moved a few books for hucksters like James Frey, a few more for the good people at, oh, Amazon.com. A writer would be right to wonder about the implications of being in The Club, because they are probably not all as easy to recognize and identify as the sudden affirmative media attention--and the accompanying thunderclap of fall-off-your-chair sales figures. For instance, what if the follow-up to your breakout book just isn’t very good? Franzen has had less to say on that subject.

Without discernible irony, Janet Fitch once professed to maintain a shrine to Oprah in her home, something besides a television. And why should she not? After all, Oprah’s induction of White Oleander into The Club made Janet Fitch an overnight success, validating years of work. The question is, what reader has a shrine to Janet Fitch, whether the devout Oprah acolyte, or, like me, just someone who picked up White Oleander at the sincere urging of a non-televised friend? And how many of the Fitch faithful will keep the candles burning for her now that Paint It Black is out?

It is hard to imagine that, with Paint It Black, support from the Oprah camp—surely the rock on which Fitch’s wing of her publishing house, Little, Brown, rests—will not to some degree erode. More pointedly, Paint It Black will confound the serious reader engaged in a comparison of the book to its predecessor. It’s not just that Paint It Black is a weak sophomore effort. It’s that what preceded it was of such quality, and soared to such great heights.

White Oleander does run before some powerful winds. It is written with a soulful savagery, the language never failing to try and capture both the broadest sweep of earthly beauty and the innermost essence of personal pain. The narrator, Astrid Magnussen, is fourteen when she begins her journey down a twisted chain of ever more fantastic and frightening L.A.-area foster homes. Astrid’s mother, Ingrid, a noted poet, is sent to prison for poisoning a man who was her lover. Yet even in prison, where her notoriety and artistic standing seem only to grow, Ingrid Magnussen maintains a profound, almost malevolent influence over Astrid’s life. Central to the book’s success is Fitch’s inspired evocation of the psychological connection between this mother and daughter, in all its complex, contradictory, and adversarial intensity. So, White Oleander not only floats, it slices over water into which other books sink.

Of course, White Oleander has its little leaks, and its leaks hint at some of the problems that sink its successor. It is too long--too much ballast, as it were, in the form of at times achingly florid, fulsome prose. In this passage, Astrid’s voice rings with a concise clarity: “Niki and Yvonne had pierced my ears one day when they were bored. I let them do it. It pleased them to shape me. I’d learned, whatever you hung from my earlobes or put on my back, I was insoluble, like sand in water. Stir me up, I always came to rest on the bottom.” But it keeps going, so on the same page: “I had been in foster care almost six years now, I had starved, wept, begged, my body was a battlefield, my spirit scarred and cratered as a city under siege.” Fitch trips herself up when she indulges in such passages, running on (literally) with these broadest of brushstrokes. Then, maybe an author deserves to be spared the criticism of reaching a bit too far if she proves, as Janet Fitch has with White Oleander, that she is capable of rendering a nuanced beauty, and a dignity, out of the often pitiable human condition.

Enter Josie Tyrell, protagonist of Paint It Black. She is a humble Bakersfield bean sprout transplanted in the big, bad city. Josie’s Harvard rich kid-turned-artist boyfriend, Michael, has a problem: he has just killed himself. Now Josie must struggle to find out who he really was. It’s tough. Along the way, Josie forms an unlikely bond with Michael’s overbearing, patrician mother, while occasionally navigating her way through the cemetery at Griffith Park, and the wilds of the 1980 L.A. punk scene, as it were, as it was, as it may have been. The book opens with Josie observing how an artist friend of hers, whom she poses for, becomes misty-eyed while listening to a John Lennon album in his studio, Lennon having just been killed. Josie’s take: “people were playing the same fucking Beatles songs until you wanted to throw up.” This is her disposition before she learns of the death of the love of her own life, but in any case, we’re off.

The trade winds that propelled White Oleander to welcoming shores have somehow conflated into a perfect storm of literary peril, and Paint It Black is a balky boat. Like that of the former, the tone of the latter is heavy, yet somehow hollow, so that a passage such as the following: “How right that the body changed over time, becoming a gallery of scars, a canvas of experience, a testament to life and one’s capacity to endure it,” which so closely echoes the passages from W.O. cited above, here seems so painfully self-conscious, more of a glance behind the curtain than into the heart of the character on the stage. Fitch relies so heavily on this sort of weight-of-the-world internal monologue; it quickly becomes redundant, like slapping a corpse. Part of the comparative problem is the use of third person in Paint It Black, where White Oleander was told in the voice of Astrid Magnussen, who is, after all, a teenager, not to mention an extraordinarily compelling character. Josie Tyrell, not so much, though Fitch seems literally to want to crawl inside her skin, and maybe should have. It’s tempting to judge third person narration more of a challenge because, unlike first person where the story is one big stream of monologue, the protagonist’s voice does not automatically set the tone. To borrow a hackneyed writer’s workshop phrase, the omniscient narrator must rely more on show than tell.

Fitch still shows a lot, a lot of Los Angeles, between Josie’s two spheres, the jaded punk-rock bohemia, slowly choking on its own vomit; and the coldly cultured upper-crust, slowly, well, choking on its own vomit. There’s vomit and excrement in every corner of this town. Witness this exchange between Josie and an exiled German punk rock hellion, Lola Lola:

“Americans insist on the superior shit, consuming acres of bran cereal, the better to have big attractive ones. Did you know that all the best perfume has a little bit of shit in it?”

Josie shook her head. A little turd floating in the Chanel No. 5.

Still with us? Okay then; moving on.

Fitch does know L.A. and, like a Joan Didion or a Mike Davis with a novelist’s élan, she reaches yet again for something lofty: a description of the cultural anthropology of Los Angeles itself. White Oleander accomplished this feat so thoroughly that the book could be required reading in such a course of study. But in Paint It Black, the vision, the spheres, never coalesce into something true, or even plausible. Paint It Black is never quite dull, though, and therein lies perhaps the best evidence that the soulful savagery Fitch conjured in White Oleander still burns.

At bottom, what awaits people who read and enjoyed White Oleander when they pick up Paint It Black is perhaps just a letdown. This idea has something to do with the reason why White Oleander was chosen by Oprah for The Club, now 55 books strong, or thereabouts. The letdown has to do with confronting a character, a young female protagonist, Josie Tyrell, who, though outwardly similar in some ways to Astrid Magnussen, is in fact fundamentally her opposite. There may come a moment when the reader realizes that Josie Tyrell is categorically unstable, the anti-Astrid. The book as farce is an interesting way to read it. And maybe, just maybe, this is where Fitch jumps the mic on what was almost certain to be labeled an Oprah letdown, a sophomore slump, or what have you, this second novel of hers. Perhaps, shrine notwithstanding, Fitch was discerning when it came to confronting the curse of The Club, and set out to create the anti-Oleander, something cunningly irredeemable. Something for critics to crow about—or not, as the unfortunate case may be. And something for Oprah to ignore.

These two books are black and white, and there are exhausted homunculi out there for whom they may someday be read all over.

Concerning The Performance Mastery Of Levon Helm

2007-02-02T15:18:00.000-08:00

It has been long overdue, but i am compelled to scribble a little something about Levon Helm. Levon Helm played drums in the Band. The Band, for those of you who may be underexposed and confused by the generic name (they were originally The Hawks) were Bob Dylan's backing band for a time in the mid-60s. The late keyboardist Garth Hudson and guitarist Robby Robertson, who's given a bit more credit than the former, sometimes unfairly, both being true collaborators with Dylan, along with bassist Rick Danko, were the main instrumental contributors and, along with Helm, songwriters for one of the great bands of all time. The obscure recording sessions The Band did with Dylan have been dubbed the Basement Tapes, a name suggestive of the "loose" quality of many of the songs. "Loose" they may be, but the basement tapes contain many little-knonwn, quirky recordings. There's nothing loose about the arrangements, the harmonies, the orchestration on these songs. But The Basement Tapes do have this delightful homespun quality to them, sounding at times like what they pretty much were: some drunk guys in a basement manipulating powerful sonic machines, pressing RECORD on the four track, and singing their bloody lungs out.

Levon Helm, stalwart drummer and featured vocalist for the Band, had, as I understand it, a bit more of a contentious relationship with Dylan than his Band counterparts. In fact, I believe that he doesn't appear on many of the Basement Tapes tracks. He left in the midst of Dylan's 1965-66 tour, the pivotal period when Dylan, with the help of The Band, was changing from folkie to rocker. Apparently Helm didn't like the nonplussed, occasionally outright hostile reception that greeted Dylan and The Band at these shows, the patrons often unreceptive to Dylan's mainstream mutation. Legend has it, Helm worked on an oil rig during this time.

You always know Helm when you hear him. "Ain't No More 'Caine On The 'Rizon" he sings on one track from the Basement Tapes, southern twang resonating through the speakers, floating on the sit-up-and-take-notice power of his singing voice, which cuts through some pretty dense guitar, piano, and drums. Helm, the Arkansan, has a quality to his voice that makes it clearly surperior to those of the two Canadians, the loveable Hudson and the cranky Robertson.

The most well known songs by the Band are The Weight ("Take a load off, Fanny"), Cripple Creek, and The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, which evokes the plight of the beaten Confederate soldier at the end of the Civil War. It is a representatively anachronistic example, and there's genuine heartbreak to The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, Helm's ode to Virgil Kane. Helm sings lead on these and many more, including a song called "Don't Do It", which first appeared on The Band's 1972 Capitol Records double LP, Rock Of Ages, a live recording. The live setting, for this song in particular, showcases Helm's relentlessly soulful vocal mastery like none other (and the backing harmonies are enrapturing.) It's a flawless performance, one that could easily be mistaken for studio-generated--if not for the thunderous and extended applause at the end.

I was lucky enough to see the Black Crowes open their set at Jazz Fest in New Orleans in 2005, the last Jazz Fest before Katrina, with a cover of "Don't Do It", and I marveled then as I do now whenever I listen to the song, at its succinct and anthemic soul-blues-rock power. Hell of a horn part, too, to complement the song's simple rhythmic and melodic appeal. Chris Robinson sang it halfway decently that day on the stage at the fairground, and it was a homerun, as openers go.

All leading to my very simple, endlessly arguable conclusion that Levon Helm is the greatest singing drummer of all time. Far as I know, he's alive, kicking, and gigging. As for the Dylan feud, if it was even that, who knows. But I know this: though Dylan is often unfairly maligned as a singer, Levon Helm is twice the vocalist as he, and an underrated, funky, down-home drummer to boot.

Roger Federer Wins The Australian Open

2007-01-30T10:26:00.000-08:00

On Sunday at around 5:30 AM eastern standard time, Roger Federer capped what was arguably his best tournament effort to date by beating Fernando Gonzalez in straight sets, 7-6 (2), 6-4, 6-4 to win the 2007 Australian Open in Melbourne. "Speedy" Gonzalez, a lively Chilean who until recently had been known more for on-court emotional display than for his tennis, surprised the field with his outstanding play, beating four top 20 players, including Lleyton Hewitt, James Blake, and Raphael Nadal, en route to the final match.

But "outstanding" hardly captures the level of play that Federer sustained over the two weeks of the tournament. Federer demands new levels of hyperbole from sportswriters attempting to describe his superlative play. When he served an ace to close out the final match, he had them running for their thesauruses once again. Luckily for Roger Federer, the vocabulary of his tennis game is prodigious, and with that final ace as exclamation point, he authored maybe the greatest performance of all time in Melbourne. He dropped not a single set in seven matches there. He even fought off a double set point in the first set of the championship, battling back to break Gonzalez's serve, ultimately taking the set in a decisive tie-break. It was as close as Gonzalez would come to hanging with the world's top player. No player since Bjorn Borg in the 1980 French Open had won a major without dropping a set.

Federer, 25, secured his 10th major open championship, drawing one closer to Pete Sampras' open-era record of 14. Sampras was 31 when he won his last major championship, the 2002 U.S. Open. Federer could reach 14 as early as next season's Australian Open. The final in Melbourne on Sunday was also the Swiss's career-best 36th consecutive match win.

The statistics show that Roger Federer has, at a relatively tender age, become one of the greatest tennis players of all time (as mentioned above, verbal descriptions of his game often fall short.) Like Tiger Woods, he is on pace to shatter all relevant records relating to tournament success in his sport. Woods and Federer have struck up a much publicized friendship, no doubt cemented by their mutual understanding of peerless excellence in individual sports (Woods, meanwhile, won the Buick Open on Sunday, his sventh straight tournament victory.)

Federer's sublime performance in Melbourne was best exemplified by his complete destruction of the top U.S. player, Andy Roddick, 6-4, 6-0, 6-2, in the semi-finals. Federer showcased his usual barrage of brilliant shots from all over the court. At one point, a frustrated Roddick placed the butt-end of his racket to his head and pantomimed his own execution. Federer possesses a Euclidian understanding of lines and angles to complement his bedrock mastery of the basics--forehand, backhand, offense, defense, side to side. But it was his extraordinary vision on display when he successfuly challenged no less than three of the umpire's calls in the Roddick match. Federer had described the new challenge system implemented at the Aussie Open as "nonsense", feeling that it took too much pressure off of the umpire and linespeople. "I don't want to have to call my own lines," he said. Ironically, he ended up doing just that: his challenges were all upheld, proving that in each instance the official call was erroneous (the system employs a virtual replay in which the path of the ball is tracked to the exact spot where it met the surface of the court.) Federer won another couple of challenges in the final against Gonzalez, including one shot, a cross-court backhand from deep in his own end, officially ruled out, where the virtual replay showed the ball to have caught the smallest sliver of the line. Federer's eyesight is clearly as good as his game, and both are as close to perfection as tennis has ever seen.

Federer's win down under sets the stage for an intriguing French Open, the next major tounament of the season, which starts on May 27 in Paris. Federer has never won the championship on the slow-playing red clay of Stade Roland Garros. His clay court nemisis, the left-handed Spaniard Raphael Nadal, ranked number 2 in the world, has bounced him from the last two French Opens, most notably in last year's final match. If Federer can maintain his current, unprecedented level of dominance over the rest of the field, if he can survive the beguiling clay and the wily Spaniard who has bested him there, if he succeeds and hoists the trophy at the French Open, he will move one step closer to completing that most elusive of tennis achievements, the Grand Slam--all four major championships in the same calendar year. This feat has not been accomplished by a man since the great Aussie Rod Laver did it in 1969. Regardless of Federer's performance at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open thereafter, if he can win the French, he will join an almost-as-exclusive club of just five men who have won all four majors in their career, a club that includes Laver and Andre Agassi.

Stay tuned; it should be a thrilling summer for the tennis fan.

David Lee Tips A Win For The Knickerbockers

2007-01-03T16:55:00.000-08:00

The Lay of the Land, by Richard Ford, Reviewed

2006-12-11T20:42:00.000-08:00

Frank Bascombe, the narrator of Richard Ford’s The Lay of the Land, must be the most eloquent real estate agent on God’s green earth. Indeed, he once was a writer, as those who have read the other two Bascombe books, The Sportswriter (1986) and Independence Day (1995), will recall. The latter garnered Ford some impressive hardware, both the Pulitzer and Pen/Faulkner awards, and put Frank Bascombe on the literary map. So, The Lay of the Land is like a delicate piece of urban planning, with Ford endeavoring to expand on the Bascombe legacy while avoiding largess and sprawl.

What is the Bascombe legacy, after all? It’s a question that Bascombe himself is forced to confront from the first pages of The Lay of the Land, because he is now 55 years old and has recently had radioactive BB’s fired into his cancerous prostate. The prospect of death from within is all the more troubling because it is from within, exclusively, that Frank Bascombe’s life on the page has been recounted, with solipsistic alacrity. A great part of the Bascombe legacy, then, is his voice, honed to near perfection over the course of three books: funny with a sardonic edge, searching and unsure, eschewing lapidary truths, reveling in life’s persistent ambiguities. Wives, ex-wives, and women have passed before his eyes, children, too, both dead and living; great professional successes and profound failures have been endured, all recounted by this voice, which in the end (and it is probably the end: Ford has said that this is the last of the Bascombe books), and like many great literary voices, is both unique, and, somehow, universal.

What emerges is a struggle to separate the permanent from the protean. Frank Bascombe has entered into what he calls life’s “permanent period”, where the forks in the road have all been taken, and what’s left is to sort out what it all means, and, simply, how, or even if, he will be remembered: “But very little about me, I realized—except what I’d already done, said, eaten, etc.—seemed written in stone, and all of that meant almost nothing about what I might do. I had my history, okay, but not really much of a regular character, at least not an inner essence I or anyone could use as a predictor. And something, I felt, needed to be done about that.”

It’s soulful stuff, with a definite Eastern orientation--the enduring quality of the soul—hinted at during Frank’s often humorous interactions with his business partner, a Tibetan with the unlikely name Mike Mahoney (make money?), who has given Frank a book on the teachings of the Dalai Lama, but who also displays a framed picture of Ronald Reagan above his desk.

Frank has fled from the formerly idyllic township of Haddam, New Jersey, now a phantasmagoria of suburban development gone awry, for the seaside calm of the Shore. His house faces East to the open ocean, from whence he, and all others, came. Haddam is a not so shining example of change, as it’s now devoid of the less-spoiled innocence of the Shore, bloated, a mockery (place where his ex-wife lives--in his old house no less.) And Frank, as a purveyor of land, is in as good a position as any to make observations about Haddam, though he sometimes sounds like he’s dictating a real estate primer. The implication is that, unlike that of the human character once it has reached the permanent period, the lay of the land, that which is observable, ownable, is in a constant state of flux. Uncertainty reigns over the American landscape. It is, finally, The Year 2000, and, after the great millennial let-down, the country must now watch the disputed presidential election play out (Frank voted for Gore, the apparent loser.)

And perhaps the economic boom of the last decade is ready to go bust? And perhaps other storm clouds are brewing, misfortune of a different sort set to make landfall in the not-too-distant future? It is a deep source of interest, setting the book at this pivotal time in American history, and Ford evokes the turmoil skillfully, the problems inherent to “progress” as described by an older and undeniably crankier Frank Bascombe, with just enough veiled reference to future events to make the narrative seem retroactively prescient without being (too) smug.

But, with a nod to almost every aspect of modern American life that you can name, the book is ultimately about death. And one cannot discuss America and death without discussing violence, too. Surprisingly, violence plays an important part in the narrative. As a device, its presence seems meant to allow Frank to cross that last hurdle, to allow the lay of the land around him, so troubling at times, fraught with worry and doubt and misfortune, to fall away, his body an ephemeral shell, his greater consciousness, which is all that the reader has had all along, taking finally its proper place as all that is permanent.

Frank Bascombe has always been obsessed with the notion of “disappearing into your life”. It is a condition borne in on an existential rip tide that sucks men into obscurity, nothing to show for themselves at the End save for the mundane details: the family, the career, the political affiliations, the kind of car you drove (a Chevy Suburban, in Frank’s case, one of many little ironies from the sometimes impish Ford). These contours in life’s landscape, this glorious topography, is not mundane when lived, only when surveyed from a distance, a process for which Frank Bascombe has a singular talent. He recognizes that this territory has been negotiated before in past American lives, where second acts are hard to come by, if for no other reason than because it is damn near impossible to lower the curtain on the first.

The Departed Soundtrack

2006-11-13T11:23:00.000-08:00

The new Martin Scorsese film The Departed has a crackerjack cast. It even features one of its stars being dropped off a building, proving, for me at least, that slow motion can make unintentionally hilarious a scene that otherwise would be all gravity.

The Departed also features a beefy soundtrack of obscure 70’s rock numbers that you won’t be hearing on the radio anytime soon, unless you’re tuned to the deep cuts channel on Sirius. The film’s leitmotif, which plays ominously at moments when craggy old Jack Nicholson is cocking a hirsute eyebrow skyward, is the Rolling Stones’ Gimme Shelter. The wrath of the Irish mob is “just a shot away”, as is, rather unfortunately, full frontal nudity from the pride of Neptune, New Jersey.

Scorsese likes his classic rock. Who could ever hear the song Layla by Derek and the Dominos, also known as Eric Clapton and Some Other Guys, without thinking of the movie Goodfellas? Melodramatic filmmaking, it seems, is a dish best served with liberal amounts of moody electric guitar, especially for a film set in Boston, where classic rock can be found very much alive on local radio, rumors of its demise having been exaggerated. Wishful thinking from the new new wave 80’s crowd, no doubt.

When was the last time you heard Comfortably Numb, the Van Morrison version? It’s on The Departed soundtrack, as are selections from Roy Buchanan, Joe Cuba, Plastic Ono Band, and The Allman Brothers. It’s not quite thrilling, but it sure as hell beats the Forest Gump soundtrack, and people bought that by the bucketload in the days before lickety-split downloads and Sweet Home Alabama on TV commercials for KFC (by the way, don’t bother trying iTunes for Baby Blue: it ain’t there, to the credit of whoever owns the Badfinger publishing.)

The moral of this story is that come December 24^th when desperation has set in, The Departed soundtrack may be just the ticket for that thirty something rocker living in your basement who may or may not be your brother. And after all, there is a piece of that basement-dwelling brother in all of us.

Treasure Island Revisited

2006-11-08T19:04:00.000-08:00

Whether it’s hordes of pint-sized pirates giggling by on Halloween or the Jolly Roger flying from tidy sailboats in Nantucket harbor, it seems that pirates are everywhere these days. Hollywood’s recent success with the Pirates of the Caribbean movies is one big reason. But the archetypal fortune hunter of the high seas, patch over his eye, hoops in his ears, face swarthy, scarred and with great black beard; gold on his teeth, rum on his breath, and lust in his eyes for money and blood, is an image that has long captured our imagination. And one work started it all: Treasure Island.

Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson, was first published in 1883, but it is set at least a century earlier. Neat, episodic chapters move the action along, and there’s plenty of it packed into the short narrative. It is very much within the reach of a young reader, and it gets better when read aloud and with vigor (just be ready to sing Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!). Indeed, it seems most people have read Treasure Island at some point, and on returning to it, eyes will fall on ‘the black spot’, ‘shiver my timbers’, and ‘pieces of eight’ with warm familiarity. The story concerns the discovery of a mysterious map in a dead buccaneer’s sea chest and the subsequent expedition to find the treasure that lies buried on the remote, uncharted island. You knew that. But don’t write off Treasure Island as shop-worn and hackneyed: it remains a thrilling read. And there’s literature buried on them shores, and you can lay to that, matey.

Simply put, Stevenson is a prose master. With absolute command of detail and description and the canny ability to spin a good yarn, Stevenson cooks up something delicious and sustaining, but not too heavy. The key ingredient: character.

The narrator, young Jim Hawkins, must help his mother to keep the family inn after the death of his father, and in the shadow of a crusty old buccaneer, Billy Bones, who has taken up residence there, a fugitive. The antics of this salty dog propel the first part of the story to the inevitable arrival of real trouble at the Admiral Benbow Inn. You guessed it: pirates.

From the start, it is clear that Jim Hawkins is a young man whose resourcefulness and bravery are surpassed only by his talent for serendipity at key moments in the story, and whose unassailable honesty validates his telling of it. Jim is pure of heart, though discerning, and these qualities make him a model character, especially for younger readers who will recognize that at every turn it is through Jim’s actions alone that the treasure hunters manage to avoid complete disaster.

Then there is the duo of Doctor Livesey and Squire Trelawney, Jim’s benefactors, who possess the means to set the voyage in motion. The Doctor is particularly finely drawn, a no-nonsense man of science, and he and the Squire, a more voluble sort, represent the noble and sea-worthy British gentry, who come to hold sway over one half of Jim’s conscience.

These upright Englishmen stand in sharp contrast with the colorful cast of pirates. One such scoundrel, Black Dog by name, is marked “not sailorly, but he had a smack of the sea about him too,” an important distinction. Sailors are sailors, honest men. Pirates are pirates, plunderers. It makes for satisfying good guys-bad guys fare once the line is drawn in the sand.

Which brings us to the most celebrated pirate of them all: Long John Silver. In the character of Silver, Stevenson weds bad and good. It’s a tempestuous union, and the result is a presence that dominates the pages of Treasure Island and leaves such a profound impression upon Jim as to become the other half of the boy’s divided conscience. Like Dr. Jekyll, he of another of Stevenson’s tales, Long John Silver is two-faced, as money hungry and murderous as any pirate, but with something approaching a sense of honor. Most important, Silver comes to have a bond with Jim that is cemented when he talks his pirate brood down from the brink of killing the boy: “’I’m cap’n here because I’m the best man by a long sea-mile. You won’t fight as gentlemen o’ fortune should; then, by thunder, you’ll obey . . . I like that boy, now; I never seen a better boy than that. He’s more a man than any pair of rats of you . . . Let me see him that’ll lay a hand on him—that’s what I say, and you may lay to it.’” So Silver, the one-legged sea-cook, becomes an unlikely father-figure to Jim Hawkins, even as he remains, as ever, a ‘gentleman o’ fortune’. His is a personality in which sycophantic charm mixes with raw brutality, and, with his penchant for rousing oratory, Long John Silver’s voice will long echo in the mind of the reader.

The last important character in Treasure Island is the island itself. On the shores of this god-forsaken piece of Caribbean rock the action unfolds, honorable English speculators versus riled, rummy pirates. The idea for Treasure Island is said to have sprung from a fanciful map that Stevenson drew for a child, and the precision with which Stevenson describes the wild topography of the island underscores the importance the writer placed on the look and feel of one’s surroundings. Battle scenes are recounted with the zeal of a military strategist. Jim’s own knowledge of the island, gleaned from exhaustive study of the map, helps him throughout, even as he is haunted by the ghosts of the men who gave up their lives on those fateful shores for the promise of silver and pieces of eight.

There is more to be found on Treasure Island than treasure, of course, and in the end, the treasure is almost an afterthought. What the reader will find is something just as good, and far more enduring.

In Defense of Zidane on Bastille Day

2006-07-14T13:25:00.000-07:00

Ah, looks like i've got you a little worked up, defending Zidane's legacy even after his infamous finale. You stated that the French lost the game as a result of the play. I disagreed. I likened Zidane's situation now to that of Bill Buckner 20 years ago this October.

The comparisson is not perfect, but by citing Buckner, i wished to make a point about individual plays and the players who made them, to protest the great degree to which plays such as Buckner's boot and Zidane's headbutt, especially and perhaps exclusively occurring in the arena of Team Sports, take on historical lives of their own that often distort the event, while scapegoating the player. The widely accepted Sports Truth, number 78, sub-clause 10, paragraph 01, states that, and I quote, "Buckner lost the game for the Red Sox". But it's hardly accurate, or a fair assessment of the play. Buckner booted the ball, but the Red Sox had dug a hole for themselves by allowing runners to get on base. if there are no runners on base obviously the error becomes far less consequential, etc.

To me, Zidane's name is actually much more defendable than Buckner's. Arguing about causation and determination is an exercize in futility because you never know for sure, so in considering Zidane, shouldn't his actual and provable contributions to the team in the game count for far more than mere speculation about What Could Have Happened If yadda yadda? my point: You unfairly place far too much blame on ZZ for France's loss, when it seems to me, and this IS just an opinion, that Italy would have won anyway, and in the face of massive and provable contributions by the Z man. to close, history will not make a Buckner of Zidane.

Joy, Thy Name Is Jorge

2006-05-18T16:38:00.000-07:00

Mr. Flat Fix

2006-04-19T23:46:00.000-07:00

The tire: a car’s most fundamental component. Problem is, they blow, and then you have to change them. But if you live in a certain part of Brooklyn, New York, or more exactly, if you happen to be in a certain part of Brooklyn when your tire goes flat (which is more likely if you live there) then the process of getting the old rust bucket back on the road is considerably easier. Put it this way: you got options.

The way up 4^th Avenue, from maybe 36^th Street almost to Flatbush Avenue is lined with tire-changing stations. Many are greasy one room shops where a guy can pick up some shiny, if not in every case new, rims for the ride—just in time for the Puerto Rican Day Parade. But these places do one thing an awful lot, and that’s change tires.

Ever change a tire?

I have, once, and on 4^th Avenue at that, where I could have limped the car to any number of little flat fix shops and watched a guy with a hydraulic jack and a shirt with a patch bearing his name on it do the same job, in a quarter of the time, for a robust $7. However, I was with a girl at the time, driving her car, actually.

Everyone knows that changing a tire is the quintessential test of manhood. I could not very well pay a man to do a job that I could do myself, especially this particular job, which is so loaded with masculinity ramifications. Failure was not an option, so I spent a good forty-five minutes in very close contact with the hot blacktop of a gas station parking lot and the underside of her Corrola. I suppose it worked out: I butchered my hands using the broken-off end of a screwdriver to crank the jack and working the lug nuts loose, but was rewarded with the knowledge that I was indeed a man.

Flash forward five years to the present: I’m still a man and I still live just off 4^th Avenue in Brooklyn. So, when my girlfriend came home announcing that our 1992 Volvo had a flat, I knew just what to do. Without hesitation I asked her for $7 and took a little stroll down to the local flat fix shop at the end of the block—much closer than the one a block over.

The guy there fixed the tire, removing the screw that had embedded itself in the rubber and patching the hole, a process that was interesting to observe. I also liked the way he gave me a rusty canister of compressed air with which I re-inflated the tire before driving the car down to the shop. He seemed skeptical when I assured him that I knew how to operate this simple device. Hey buddy, I know how to change a tire, okay, I think I can handle this. Great, another gringo with masculinity issues, he probably thought. His name was Ramon.

A few days later I noticed that the rear tire on my bike was flat. Another slow leak, another challenge to my resourcefulness. Usually, I would take my bike to my neighborhood bike shop where they would charge me $30 for the application of a new tire and tube. I had a different thought this time: again, I strolled down to the flat fix shop.

I lucked out because there was nothing going on there when I came in, wheeling my bike. Ramon gave me a quizzical look. I explained that I was tired of not knowing how to fix my things when they broke, tired of the helplessness that the modern world, with all of its conveniences and amenities, engenders in us all. Ramon’s eyebrows went up. Can you show me how to fix this? He smiled and nodded.

Fifteen minutes later I was riding down 4^th Ave wearing a smile of my own. Ramon had carefully disassembled the tire, removing it from the frame of the bike, then removing the inner-tube from the tire and inflating it. He placed the tube in water and worked it around until the water bubbled showing him the location of the hole. He marked the spot on the tube with a white marker, then patched it with epoxy and a bike tube patch that I had found deep in a desk drawer, the one thing I brought to the table. After placing the tube back into the tire, fitting the tire back onto the wheel, and attaching the wheel to the frame of the bike, he had finished. I’m not sure that I could do the same job without certain tools, but I more or less absorbed the process. I thanked Ramon and gave him five bucks for a job well done, feeling not exactly like Mr. Resourceful, and definitely not like Mr. Manhood, but like someone who could get around the neighborhood on his very own bike, and maybe, just maybe, make a go at fixing his very own bike the next time it broke. Call him Mr. Flat Fix, because that would be a long last name.

T

2006-04-10T22:25:00.000-07:00

Musings on the "Gospel of Judas"

2006-04-07T13:41:00.000-07:00

Yesterday the National Geographic Society officially presented to the world a bound papyrus codex (a manuscript volume of scriptural content—I looked it up), discovered in the Egyptian desert and RC-dated to around 400 AD. The text is in the ancient language of Coptic, and there are approximately 20 people in the world who are qualified to read and translate Coptic (for more on this theme, please see John Irving’s very funny book The Water Method Man, in which the main character labors over a translation of an epic poem, written in an obscure Norse language, before deciding he will simply make it up, reasoning that no one will ever know or care). The story of how a Team Of Experts rehabilitated the badly deteriorated manuscript and translated it is an interesting one, but what is more interesting is what they found that it said.

The text presents a story of Judas Iscariot that is far different from that found in the traditional Christian Bible. Bibleheads like Elaine Pagels (an expert on the so-called Gnostic Gospels, authenticated writings that were banned by the early early early Christian Church) are calling it The Gospel of Judas. According to her and others, the scroll basically presents a story that is far different from what appears in the modern Bible. It states that Jesus and Judas shared a mysterious bond, that Judas was the most favored of the disciples. More surprising, the text implies that there was some sort of agreement entered into between the two, even that what Christians commonly consider the betrayal of Jesus by Judas was in some way prearranged by the two men, or one man and one, well, God, if that’s what you believe. Whatever the specifics, what emerges is a far different portrayal of Judas than what’s found in the New Testament, and, perhaps even more provocatively, a different view of Jesus, too.

Now, I have lived through the popular resurgence of a lot of formerly reviled personages. Richard Nixon comes to mind. Sure, in the national zeitgeist Nixon is still the heavy-browed, heavy-jowled, swarthy shyster that he always was, but it’s undeniable that, perhaps beginning with his death in 1994, there has been a softening in the public’s perception of him, if not so much for the fact that he “ended the Vietnam War” and did “all sorts of other good stuff that went way under the Watergate radar,” than for his portrayal in such movies as Dick. Funny. Avuncular. Oddly similar in appearance to actor Dan Hedaya.

Trends are trends, and no people embrace their trends more than Americans. We go up and down like republicans at a state of the union address. Reality TV. Poker. (In fact, according to James McManus in his awesome book, Positively Fifth Street, Nixon was a lights-out, leather-assed poker assassin, as those who were in the Navy with him can attest, poor souls.) And with regards to historical figures, yes, people do come back to the warm fireside of popularity from the cold exile of public revulsion, or, even worse, ambivalence. The comeback is as American as apple pie eaten at a NASCAR event with a spork. There are second acts in American lives, Mr. Fitzgerald. Marion Barry. Martha Stewart. Even Trump hit hard times a few years back, I recall. John Travolta, John Dillinger (bank robber, or . . . Robin Hood?), John Smith (ugh, wait till that Pocahontas movie comes out). The popular perception of many a historical figure is like the weather. If you don’t like it, just wait ten minutes.

Even Jesus Christ was terribly unpopular early on, renounced by his own people, tortured, executed, etc., his followers persecuted. But man, his followers were really good. You’ve got to hand it to the early Christians for keeping that flame lit, and oh so gradually transforming their main persecutor, Rome, into their mainstay. It’s incredible; it’s like the entire Arab world being Jewish in another thousand years or so. And I think it is safe to say that Jesus’ reputation remains strong, no matter what those evangelicals are up to down there.

Judas, though: that’s a tough one. That’s John Wilkes Booth and Benedict Arnold with a dash of Hitler thrown in for some extra kick. The man whose very name is synonymous with betrayal is now seemingly waging a PR campaign from beyond the grave. Screw the grave: Holmes has got to own prime real estate just off the roundabout in the ninth circle of hell (indeed, in Inferno Dante witnesses Satan consuming Judas’ severed head, without end, along with the bodies of those other famed traitors, Brutus and Cassius. I swear to God, the NY City Council considered building a stadium there). But, with the emergence of this mysterious text, it seems that Judas, like George Jefferson, could be moving on up to slightly better digs.

The American fondness for the comeback has something to do with the idea of forgiveness. And forgiveness has a lot to do with Christianity, or Christianity with forgiveness, if you will. It’s like, only one of the most important of Jesus’ teachings, or something. So is it now time, in light of this incredible find, for Christians to forgive Judas? And if Judas can be forgiven, or if one of the “Gospel Truths” of the Bible, that Judas was the ultimate betrayer, can be recast in a different light, what are the implications in our own time? These are interesting questions that impact many aspects of our lives, from the way we handle criminals to the way organized religion tends to seize on certain principles or teachings while ignoring others. I mean, who decided that these Gnostic Gospels should be excluded from the New Testament, anyway? Jesse Helms is behind this in some way; I’m sure of it.

And here’s the kicker: where does Jesus fall in all this? Is Time magazine or Newsweek or whichever one does that thing where they have a person with an arrow, up or down, next to them, indicating their rise or fall in public esteem over the last week, are they going to have a picture of Jesus with a big fat downward-pointing arrow next to him: “Revelations indeed, Christ implicated in conspiracy to orchestrate his own death.” Not likely, but it should make people think. Jesus was certainly no lightweight in the brains department, and he must have known that his story just would not have the same gravity without it ending in a grand-mal seizure of a betrayal. Most good stories do. So maybe he did orchestrate his own death. I’m no Bible expert, but from what I do know of the New Testament, there are suggestions to that effect all over the place. After all, with the power of God on his side, it’s hard to believe that anything would happen to Jesus without him orchestrating it. Or, if you believe that Jesus was not God, but a sort of savvy marketing guru, the same remains true: he’d have to pull some serious strings to get things to come out the way they did.

Maybe Jesus Christ and Judas Iscariot were thick. For me, what I understand of the so-called Gospel of Judas serves to humanize Jesus, and this may be a very bad thing for some people, but for me, it’s a good thing. Even if you are a card carrying bible thumper, you believe that Jesus was a man, in addition to being other things, and if he was a man, he did things that men do, and if what he was trying to do was to assure the rise of the Church according to the principles of the Lord God Almighty, then he did what he had to do, and I can’t blame him--it’s all sort of Machiavellian. But it is a shame about Judas, if indeed, as implied through the decoding of this new “Gospel”, he has been miscast through history. Let’s take a moment to reexamine Judas, and in doing so, our society, our perceptions, ourselves.

Grey

2006-03-29T01:16:00.000-08:00

in a world where color rules,
how can it be denied?
Grey
and all the subtle shite that goes along with it.

Grey can be my favorite color
it's non-committal
it's neutral without being so . . .
it's lupine
it's tough to figure out.

Grey things and the people that love them
because they have few things to love , of any color.
Grey may be a cloudy sky
gunmetal; confederate uniforms
Grey is this but it's--
Grey may be--
something to hang your hat on.

Grey happened, without warning.
Grey descended from the sky
Grey felt sorrow but was brutally honest with itself
Grey means no easy answer
no matter what the controversy,
Grey takes you by surprise.

Grey likes long explanations
is a panacea
and a killjoy
assassin with a conscience.
the thoughts of a sinner and a saint are Grey.
and it's always
reliably
blah

Notes to the Photos that Follow

2006-03-28T14:08:00.000-08:00

My Peru pics are submitted for your viewing enjoyment. i chose what i thought were the best, and most representative ones. All of the photos were taken on disposable cameras, mostly Kodak, though i think we used a Fuji too, and there was one black and white cam that Abby and i agreed would make for some artsy shots, though i'm disappointed that one photo i took of a nearly full moon rising over the town of Puno on Lake Titicaca didn't come out (and is therefore not featured here). there were bunches of rejects: early on, the tendency is to embrace those out-the-window-of-the-bus shots as gold, pure, mom-pleasing gold, but they rarely come out. Another seducer of the tourist with camera is the landscape shot, and in a place with the geography (topography) of Peru, landscapes unfold around every corner. our trip to Colca Canyon, reachable from Arequipa by car (though, as we learned later, we payed way too much to the small tour company), should have offered vistas unrivaled in the west hemisphere, as the Canyon is said to be deeper, and more dramatic-looking, than our own Grand Canyon. unfortunately, as you can see from the photos, the giant cloud that engulfed the overlook rendered the canyon completely and utterly hidden from view, meaning no breathtaking sightings of soaring condors, majestic scavengers. there are shots of us looking out at the Colca Valley, west of the canyon and uncovered by clouds; you can make out the ancient agricultural terraces carved into the sides of the rocky terrain to maximize land area and facilitate easier irrigation, feats performed by the Pre-Columbian peoples of that region a long time ago (there's a picture of Abby and Sean, metaphorically connected by a tiny bridge over the Colca River, tiny because of how far off it is, though in reality likely large and certainly more recently constructed). Our Machu Picchu shots are easy to identify, as they include numerous views of the ancient Inca holy city-retreat, constructed, i think, in the 15th century, then abandoned when the Inca went to war with the Spanish. Despite vanquishing and all but obliterating the Inca, who were an elite ruling-class of people, distinct from the indigenous pre-Columbians who had lived there for thousands of years before the rise of the Inca, the Spanish never found Machu Picchu. the sacred valley is fed by the Urubamba River, which surrounds the Machu Picchu site on three sides, thousands of feet below. It is an incredible natural site, one that offers incredible natural sights, and it is thrillingly extreme because of both the wonderous setting of mountain peaks and valley vistas, and, more cerebrally, for its very remoteness--surely there can be no place like this on earth-- and for the staggering knowledge of how much human effort went into the construction of the city (coupled with the knowledge of how little concrete knowledge we actually have of the Inca). i chewed coca while exploring the site, which was lush and green. the coca helped me combat the exhaustion of hiking on little sleep, and yeah, we were at close to 10,000 feet. Coca, a leaf, is and was revered as a holy substance by Inca and pre-Columbian peoples alike (the Quechua, Aymara "Indians", and others, the Amazonian peoples), and has been cultivated by humans for 20,000 years. the leaf, chewed or brewed in tea, is non-narcotic, but it has a noticeable, though subtle effect. Check out our photos of Lake Titicaca: Abby and i took a bunch of shots from our day on the lake, which was sunny and beautiful and required vigilance with regards to sunscreen. there's a black and white one of me swimming in the lake, which i did for approximately 30 seconds, though it was refreshing and not so cold. Lake Titicaca's claim to fame is its absurd name, and the fact that it rests at a robust 13,000 or so feet above sea level, making it the highest altitude navigable lake in the world. it was hard to sleep in Puno the first two nights, pulse racing, emotions high. then there is Cusco, the old Inca capitol; a bunch of photos, many B & W's, and a few featuring William, a friend we made there. William sold finger puppets to tourists, mainly by throwing them a game of guilt and charm, not necessarily in that order. often, a tourist in Peru finds him or herself being approached by people selling things, and the phrase that one employs most often is "no gracias". but in William's case, he quickly realized that i wasn't going to be buying so many hand puppets, but was susceptible to more subtle courtship. he would bound over to us frequently, and we spent one of our last days in Peru with him, at the courtyard of a church overlooking Cusco, playing with a beat-up hackey-sack of his, and i broke my flip-flop, to his great delight. if i ever return to Peru, one thing i'll do, and maybe even the secret reason why i would return, would be to find William. i love that kid. lastly, there are pictures from Lima, featuring our little band of brothers and a sister or two. more later: for now, enjoy.

Peru Pics I

2006-03-22T21:36:00.000-08:00

Peru Pics II

2006-03-22T21:16:00.000-08:00

Peru Pics III

2006-03-22T21:10:00.000-08:00

Peru Pics IV

2006-03-22T20:56:00.000-08:00

Peru Pics V

2006-03-22T20:49:00.000-08:00

Peru Poems

2006-03-20T09:49:00.000-08:00

Away

A hemisphere away
tears fall from cheek to shoe
you make it seem like being blue is something to write home about
I drink a beer that shares the name of this city-town
a long way down
a lonely road paved with no gold
porque people came and took it away
long ago

Ride To Colca

from sleeping sound and still to riding away
from Arequipa
still sleeping, or trying to, being in the back of a minivan
while a man downshifts
and powers up
(a growl that nags my ears)
and up and
through the clouds
How the fuck can he see through foggy-dark abyss?
through closed eyes, i sit and wonder
(the roads "extremely dangerous")
Doze
altiplano
hu, jeez, cold as llama tits now
and out the window it looks like the naked face of the moon
i doze again wearing fleecy gloves
but jerk awake as we round a bend
afraid but then
the sun breaks through the mist
and from a stupendous height
we stare down
down down
and it's green all around

Untitled

Want to feel so small
want to
Want to feel so small
feel so small

Man and mountain
make me miss
make me kiss and tell
My primordial journey

Paragraph and page
words eroding
petrified
the tale of time and Force

Forced to forget and unable to remember
an old melody
we hummed along with

So, high our spirits--
hey, soaring condors
and umade beds
left like a trail of tears in a hundred little hotels
a hundred dreams, most forgotten
a hundred letters
written home
a hundred crosses on the side of the road

We stopped at scrabble towns
dust and ash
hard burnt friendly faces abounded
and a kid with a slingshot, he pantomimed
shoots me
i felt small, i pretend to fall

Oh boy

Three, Two, One . . .

In being all together like this
can it be possible that in one instant we would stop?

'it's not a lie if you believe it's true'

I stop and stare at soap
and brightly colored woven wares
and promptly knock my head against a low hanging awning
yawning and rubbing my eyes

I'm starting to realize that it probably doesn't matter and that i shouldn't lie.
To myself, oh sure, but something else . . .
something a little more-
shouldn't lie
believe it's true

I believe the both of you, and more

My eyes burned
You, sir, are in a state of flux
Flux to you all
it's just my luck
locked up like
braces, stubborn, then, unstuck
Fick as Fieves and feverish
blinded
i stared at the eclipse
thought of escape
to live like this, such a mistake
to think, we burned so bright
so upright and true
you and me and manny others counted in our ranks
brothers, sisters
I'm all thumbs now
maestro with paulsey
but i remember, i crawled
my left hand stratched out before me

-3/12/06

William, et. al.

Nighttime on a plane is a time to reflect on things, that is, if you are still awake
Every little shimmy that shakes the passengers makes my pen pause
Past is present at this moment
Thinking back
Wondering what i'll think of the voyage if i make it home tomorrow
Tomorrow does not consider the people i met along the way and what they might be doing with themselves, a world away
Not so far from my thoughts
A man in his mid-forties runs a comb through his long hair and decides that he need not trim his beard
And William, god willing, sleeps a blessed sleep, growing boy with aging soul
The plane rocks and sways and i stop again, for the time being
I'm never sure of what lies written on the page
I only hope the page endures, tucked into the pages of a book
I hope someday to finish

Catharsis

2006-02-20T23:30:00.000-08:00

and so it came to this, some radical changes to be made in a short amount of time. a departure, an arrival, a journey. these are things to get fired up about. decisions need making, plans laid out. logistics, schedules, dates, and deadlines. it all adds up to one hell of a February, one bloody heck of a March.

i need to be out by March 1, so i've been gearing up. i picked up some leftover Priority Mail boxes from the warehouse on North Third with Manny but they turned out to be pretty small. Resourceful Abby scored some boxes from the Eagle grocery on 5th and we were off and running. Plus i've got a bunch of old boxes at my place and not too too much shite to pack up.

packing up is like making out your last will + testament. if my own theory holds, whatever you pack first, that's your most prized possession. and so on and so forth. in my case, my books were the first thing to gett boxed up and moved out. this could be because books are relatively easy to box and carry. however, i would observe that while i sold the bookshelf for $20, i would not consider selling off my books.

packing up for me is like a sick experiment in obsessive/compulsive disorder. i just make smaller and smaller piles: now, by the end, the piles look like one) a hair drier, shower attachment, super 8 video cam (this is probably objectively the most valuable pile) two) one video game attachment that i just simply have no idea what it does, a towel very clean, one canister silicone waterproofing spray for shoes or boots. the important shite, like my Gibbs hat, has already been removed. there are two dominos sets, like new. these have been very popular: i had seven before.

and yet, the entire operation has been nothing short of cathartic. and i am guilty as charged: this whole blug entry has been nothing but an exaggerated excuse to use the word cathartsis. and golly, i used it in the damn title so i almost needn't have bothered. funny how things just work out perfectly like that.

giddyup. what are you waiting for, anyway. i never bargained for this. it's nothing like i imagined. i'm lost here. i'm grasping blindly. i'm not fit. i don't care what you say. it feels wrong. i can't rationalize. i can't see. i'm plagued by something. feverish. a devilish humming in my right ear. something like an old time plague. something sort of ugly and mysterious. curses rain down on me like, well, rain. or perhaps hail, but only if golfball sized or plus.

Things Overheard

2006-02-02T22:49:00.000-08:00

Strenuous observance of certain basic principles designed in part to sustain mutual enjoyment.

Despite repeated violent objections on the part of Bishop Lamberton, the heathen Rite of Spring was observed that year right in the middle of olde town square, to the great enjoyment of the gardeners.

In peacetime, these puppies are used for ballast.

Semi-literate walking public service announcement.

Don’t forget, you’re smaller than a breadcrumb.

A river runs through it, and now, that river is polluted.

I bought a pair of shoes at the foot locker down on the third street promenade and those two shoes are now tied together by their laces and dangling from a lamppost at the corner of Crenshaw and Slausson, and yet here I am, telling the tale.

To whom, from whom, or what?

Enter the world’s greatest accordion player, to the chagrin of all save William.

When was the last time you saw them?

Stuffin.

2006-01-26T22:18:00.000-08:00

i got some coffee this morning at the internet cafe on 5th Ave. i noticed that they sell 5th Avenue candy bars there as a sort of homage. when i voiced my approval the guy behind the counter smiled and said, "yeah, classy, right?" that gave me pause because frankly, and in all seriousness, that's my word. well, i got to credit Manny too. he helped.

It started about the time we went down to New Orleans last May. Manny and i were just hitting our stride to where everything that met with our approval was "classy" and not only that, but something that really impressed us and demanded a more effusive declaration would illicit the words "classy, distinguished and refined," voiced in a high- volume growl that was aided by a steady stream of Crown Royal and Coke. and the world has been getting classier ever since.

slang is a code. one appealing thing about using particular words and phrases like classy is that you exert ownership over language while communicating something more than the words themselves to those who share in the patois. so when i say classy, it satisfies me and signals to my compatriot, "hey, we know what it's all about."

and so, for the first time, i present to you, faithful reader, the Dutch Classy List:

Classy

fireplaces
Abe Lincoln
East Coast Sour Diesel
eating outmeal for breakfast
Roger Federer
Spoon live at Warsaw in November
free pool
"dope"
Gibbs
jive honkies
5th Avenue bars (especially when sold on 5th Avenue)
sticky fingers
cabooses
the law, and our rigid adherence to it
boogers
Peruvian Inca-style caps
hanging johnny
Cowboy Junkies
nice boots
a roof over your head
to do lists

Not Classy

Jack Abramoff
gruesome discoveries
spilling

Sample Code

2005-12-16T17:04:00.000-08:00

Don't You Miss Your Water, Momma?

2005-12-14T21:40:00.000-08:00

With her hands folded, palms down on the bar, Momma said that she can't suffer pets in the home but loves it when people "make babies." i think she said she had six kids, and she mentioned that one of her children had died very young. in the old world, children increase the relative wealth of a household, but in the new world it gets complicated. Momma knew what she was talking about. she had years to draw upon, and her origins, El Salvador, when she was young and in love. she talked of her husband and of marriage. her husband is gone, too. recall the feeling of passionate love and the world does stand still for a moment, this woman, a certain light in her eye, suggested, her mouth softening somewhat. she treated these matters with much gravity, though. and she cautioned us, or she seemed to be cautioning us, me and Abby, advising us that marriage was nothing to enter into lightly, sacred, to be honored. of course, no divorce, no surprise here, no one likes divorce, but especially Catholics. i listened intently. was she speaking to us directly or just making casual conversation?

Momma called the card room the boom-boom room because she walked in on a couple have sex in there one time. bada-bing. i watched two black guys play ping pong in the back. they were both wearing shorts, which struck me as odd considering the single digit temperature outside. they were both damned good ping pong players. Abby told me that they come every wednesday and have with them matching blue gatorades. i unerstand that that's an extreme flavor, relatively speaking.

i'll have the crab juice, personally. Diet Sip, which is a fictional brand of soda for which i used to do mock-believe television commercials when i was a kid, comes to mind. Diet Sip. Sippidy-doo-da, Sippidy-ay, Have You Had Your Diet Sip Today? that's . . . i just made that up on the spot, nothing like that but a lot of long, glass-draining gulps of water with lime in it. We used to make ominous concoctions: into regular tonic water (which my brother loved to drink) we would squeeze lime or lemon juice, using whatever was on hand (what else were we going to do?) if only we had stopped there; what would start as an inviting potable would always end up like a science experiment -- pickle juice, milk, you name it. always my brother would have to drink. the beauty of Diet Sip, what really sold it to consumers the world over, was the fact that, when you stripped away the name, the brand, the image, and got right down to the essence of Diet Sip, Diet Sip was nothing but regular ice water. that's it.

looking back, i just may have been on to something. water. selling water. how could i have known at age ten, about the rise of the bottled water industry? Diet Sip. Water. Poland Spring. Deer Park (the water that deers park their behind in and go you know what, hee-hee. little propaganda there, Diet Sip style.) vitamin water, meet my friend, smart water. hey, who invited Snapple? water in every color of the rainbow. water from every corner of the globe: the French Alps, Fiji, Maine. they should sell an Antarctica water. or water bottled fresh from the melting polar ice caps.

i notice they sell no water bottled from the icy-clear streams of Iraq. it would probably be something like the water that remained inside the canteen that Michael Kelly gave me, one that had belonged to an Iraqi soldier, one who was quite possibly killed in action, as Michael was more than ten years later when he went back. back then, the Iraqi soldiers were the enemy, but now we are trying to train them all over again from scratch. the desert is still the desert though, and water is still water.

"Old Dan and I with throats burned dry and hearts . . . that cry . . . for water . . .

Cool, Clear water."

The Street Explodes

2005-12-10T13:30:00.000-08:00

There was a fire engine at the top of my street where it meets the Avenue. i was coming home from work and it was already dark. i walked to the top of the hill and past my house, which was only a few yards away from some serious activity. yellow police tape cordoned off the intersection. my feet crunched over shattered glass as i lifted the tape and ducked under, because there was no reason not to continue on to the corner and get a better look. my neighbor's mom was there at the corner and we exchanged amazed pleasantries, marveling at the hole in the street. i surmised that there had been an explosion. further on, some firemen were finishing up with what had been a burning car and was now a steaming, blackened shell of metal. behind me, the classy real-estate brokers/art gallery stood. it's front window was shattered. the glass i had walked over came from the third floor window of the apartments above it: the rest of the window hung dangerously in its frame.

a small young woman said, "what happened?" and Margie, my neighbor's mom, who is no taller than 5', told her something, but it was still not exactly clear, what had gone down. i said something about the hole being about the size of an average New York City pothole and the small young woman laughed and Margie nodded and smiled. it was actually much bigger and perfectly rectangular, and what appeared to have happened, i thought, was that the hole had been covered by a heavy cast iron grate. well, something solid enough to be taken for part of the street, when it wasn't exploding. the grate lay in two pieces some distance from the hole. one of the pieces was resting a few feet from me, so i could nearly stretch my leg out and toe it from where i stood at the head of the curb. Jeez, i thought solemnly, someone could have been seriously effed up here. i went inside.

and to my surprise, the Red Cross was on the scene. i passed their mobile command center a short time later as i walked down 5th. they were a couple blocks from the hole and the burnt out car. i didn't see anyone receiving aid. i wondered what kind of aid was available. i passed a cop sitting motionless in his patrol car, which was parked in the intersection of 5th and Berkeley. the presence of three huge Con Edison trucks back toward my street and numerous Con Ed workers told me that what had happened was related to the electrical. sometimes in Winter the salt-melt they set down on the street ends up melting more than the snow. last winter a woman had been killed while walking her dog in the East Village. her dog walked over a manhole cover that had become charged with electricity from corrupted cables below the street level. the woman was electrocuted when she tried to help her dog. i stepped gingerly off the curb.

when i got home again i turned on the news to see if they were reporting on the explosion. the anchor man said, "dogs are shocked by a live mahole cover on the upper west side, when we return from these messages." outside, the grinding of of heavy generators and machinery. the lights in my apartment flickered. i massaged my right shoulder with my left hand and switched the channel.

Pains, Stains, and Occasional Rains

2005-11-10T21:20:00.000-08:00

Real life has a way of crashing down on you. Failure, dissatisfaction, insecurity, malaise. Plain old misfortune, too. it can be funny at times, though. like when you get fish juice on the book you're reading, which happens to be your friend's first novel, which you're three quarters of the way through. or when a dog pees on your floor. or when you play a show and it rains, hard, as it has the last three times you played a show, and no one shows, and you know if you look up for a second, instead of focusing on the kit, you will stare down a near empty room. this last is funny only if you have to lug gear up seven flights of steps afterwards because the elevator is broken. a funny thing happened: I was folding my laundry and noticed that the shirt that Ife gave to me, the one from American Apparel, blue and tight fitting and comfy, was mysteriously stained-- a biggish, teardrop shaped smudge on the chest. How can a shirt become stained in the process of being washed? And how, exactly, can something so perfectly representative happen in the first place? i mourned the shirt as i mourned my little band. fuck it. i'll get a new shirt and a new band too. I will shout that shit out. incidentally, she did not participate in the late night gear lugging.

Back to the fish juice. the curious reader will wonder how this is accomplished, getting fish juice on your only copy of the only book that your friend has ever published. well, it involves equal quantities of poor quality pre-prepared salmon, faulty containers, and the lack of a proper book bag in which to place the book, thereby keeping it separated from the salmon. the result is that your book is rendered something on the order of radioactive, as you will only discover the next day, when you wonder why your fingers smell like piss, and, over time and many hand-washings, figure it out (the book is currently being blowdried in front of a fan after a somewhat experimental soap-and-water session).

Speaking of smelling piss, the dog. oh that cursed dog. see previous posts for more on that dog.

Well, as the song goes, you get down sometimes, but it could always be worse and it can be amusing. sometimes it just hurts though. i'll leave it to that ever curious, ever faithful reader, probably a relative, to figure out which is which. no, it's not the shirt, or the piss, Chris, Go to bed.

Lok-Town, Coming To Town

2005-11-02T23:50:00.000-08:00

Loki, the Corgi. he's a perfectly sweet four-legger. but some might say animals are a human indulgence,and they would say so frowning on you for taking the lil' guy out for a walk at 7:00 am, when he seems to demand it, and petting the shit out of him becaue he's so gall-derned friendly, and has such a soft coat. it's not the way, the Buddhist might enchime, for lo these long years, you may find yourself reincarnated as a housepet, and then, what then? tricks? being struck and killed by a passing rickshaw? a life of mundane amusements punctuated by routine bouts with the masters of the house, who knock you repeatedly across the face with yellowed newspapers?

i don't believe that being a pet is a bad existence. for one thing, you are immortalized by the thinking, feeling entities known as the little girl who buys crickets from the petstore so that you, oh ugly lizard, may take your pick as to which furry legged exoskeleton shall be first down your gullet. my sister has always cherished her pets. in addition to the lizard, a skink, i think, she once tried to carry a French snail all the way back to the States in a custom-outfitted shoebox. it was the most intense part of a four week European vacation, my mother and sister with friends of the family; and it was the Dad who ultimately discovered the coverup, around when the stewardesses were distributing customs forms throughout the 747, which was by that time hurtling past Iceland. These forms queried the innocent travelers about carrying with them certain live objects like plants or (gasp) animals as they prepared to reenter the belly of the beast. My mother was sympathetic but could not bring herself to lie on those forms, and therefore, my sister's friend's dad made them march forward to the lavatory, where he had them dump the contents of their respective shoebox-snail habitats, along with the snails, into the toilet. the subsequent flushing was a perfunctory end to two weeks of joy and secrecy among the two young girls. to this day, all those that hear the tale are comforted by the idea that the two wayward snails, Slimey and Slimer, as they came to be called, who survived two weeks on the road, traveling through France in shoeboxes, with an unmistakable aplomb, if my sister is to be believed, these two crustaceans may have hit open water and lived on, successfully reacclimating to the rigours of life in the wild, and, in the end, little the worse for wear. humans suck, i guess. i like Loki though. he's pretty cute.

Periwinkle Pumpernickel

2005-11-02T18:28:00.000-08:00

to be fair, these words can easily be confused when one is speaking while drunk. example: i hate Trent Lot's pumpernickel suit. um, do you mean his periwinkle blue suit, because i think that it does a nice job of setting off his eyes. which are the eyes of the devil's bitch.

Please pass the apple schnapps.

Finely Woven Steel Organza

2005-10-27T17:49:00.000-07:00

steel organza: different from most other organza, i imagine. i imagine it offers a micro-thin layer of protection, worn around the shoulders in Autumn, when it's undoubdtedly most effective. steel. woven into organza. superman's cape, you might compare it to. organza. a pleasant word to say for its connotive qualities--its similarity to the word 'orgasm'. in this respect it has something in common with the word 'organism', which is strangely not as connotive of a coital power shot of love from the groin to the cerebral cortex, but instead reminds me of biology class. organza. sounds Italian. sounds like 'organized'. a good quality to have, being organized. staple the brain to the desk; don't ever lose it. mske sure everything is in small, neat piles. rinse, repeat, save to disk with hardcopy double spaced, clear and concise, with bullet points, succinctly, um, parsed out, codified, and arranged by height in ascending order.

handy-wipes. Handy Fucking Wipes. handy fucking wipes, which are actual fact known as handy-wipes, without the fucking, which would probably not go over with those that buy them, have to have the most perfect and literal name of anything on earth. they are handy. they wipe. used in hand, they are a handy way to wipe things, these simple little wipes, we call them. wipes. little handy wipes. handy. wipe.

recently, i ended up alone in a strange apartment, with a strange man there, a man who i barely knew--an older man, in an apartment that looked out over the East River from the Brooklyn side, with the Williamsburg Bridage behind, and an impressive view of the two other bridges a half a mile or so down a straight channel of fast moving water, under fast moving white clouds.

i wondered whether this man, who was my boss, was going to make some sort of sexual pass at me, or do something that might require me to bop him over the head with something. he had already showed himself to be eccentric. energetic and absent minded, liberal politically but prone to hire white males, effusive and demanding, with grey hair and long fingernails.

with regards to the apartment, he seems not to like anyone "foreign", meaning any outsider, to use his toilet. he is something of a germaphobe. our weekly staff meeting this past wednesday ended with him explaining that the proper use of a toilet is to flush it only with the lid and cover down, because otherwise a "fine mist of bacteria" is loosed in all directions. he can't possibly deny me the privalege, though (he could be sued for substandard working conditions), so i piss in his pot. i ponder the odd scene while i squeeze out a pee and examine his bathroom, which is bare and sterile, a toothbrush, toothpaste, a razor (which he looks not to have used recently), soap. i worry little about the disturbing thought of this man attempting to molest me. but there is something weird about him and he did just get me very, very stoned.

Franklin Zabor is a work in progress.

Truth and Fiction

2005-10-22T12:29:00.000-07:00

my dad urged me to get a job because being idle was "not healthy". i am in qualified agreement because, while having a steady has helped my mental health, i feel that the workaday lifestyle has done little to improve my physical well-being. exhaustion can be fun; a strange euphoria sets in, you float around on wings and forget things in coffee shops without really caring, enjoying a natural high. the disconnected feeling insulates you from the things people do that you would otherwise find annoying. but like any high, you crash. then you're just tired. you get tired, you get sick. you get sick, you miss work. you miss work, your kids don't eat. you don't eat. your kids probably still eat. i'm not a barbarian. i also don't have kids, so, in all likelihood, since they don't exist, they don't eat. fact.

if the bird flu ends up washing ashore here. and by if i would like to mean if, not when, which is what we all fear. if the bird flu washes ashore here, two things will happen. one, innocent birds will die, and two, there will be a decline in public demand for chicken dinners. an added bonus is that many innocent people, may die. whether Chinese restaurants would suffer is a question for debate. flu season would have a whole new meaning. plague season. pestilence season. viruses holding people up at knifepoint in back alleys around the city. cold little turnabout streets in Chinatown, Beyard, Pell, would be referred to as ground zero. flu season, i guess it's on the way, right? pretty much here? i never thought much about it and i still don't.

i ate at Joe's the other night with my friend Pan, who enjoys teaching me about the finer points of Asian dining (the tea acts as immolient, cleansing the mouth. he also got me into chopsticks, which i use religiously and with relish at such times). Pan enjoys a bit of banter with the waiter so he can show off a little Taiwan Mandarin. i think i saw the waiter ask him to repeat himself at one point, but you have to forgive Pan if his accent is rusty for he hasn't been back to his island since he was a boy. he'll get to go back soon enough: one of the privaleges of a greencard is that the government lets you travel to foreign lands. Pan is marrying an American girl in January.

Cherelyn's family hails originally from mainland China. they met in a class they had together back in school. i was in that class too, as were Rory and Duke. we were all roommates. Even completed the Circle Of Trust.

Even's girlfriend, Leelee, is also Chinese. well, she's really an Amercian girl like Cherelyn, but her family is. she and her man, who calls himself Even, are currently in an unnamed South American country whose capital may or may not be either Lima or Montevideo.

Another close friend of mine, Leffe (LEFF-fuh), is currently in a country whose capital may or may not be Dar es Salaam. okay, i'll just say it, Tanzania. he is assisting in the prosecution of Rwandan war criminals. he's a long way from home so i'll just give him a shoutout. i encourage you to track his adventures here http://mzungudiaries.blogspot.com. the truth: stranger, somehow, than fiction.

my girlfriend gave me a beautiful pocketwatch for my birthday, which was ten days ago. it's silver, and it has my initials on it. i listen to it tick, an act that is satisfying, i've discovered, especially on rainy days. soon, if i press the button to trigger the clasp and open the cover, stare at the face, which has roman numeral hours and, strikingly, individually numbered seconds for the delicate second hand to single out as it sweeps around, if i do choose to examine those hands, measure out the long and the short of it, and read the writing on the wall, it will tell me that i need to be somewhere in thirty minutes. if i don't choose to open it, if i forget, i may not get there.

Ecchinacea

2005-10-19T21:07:00.000-07:00

i just looked this word up quickly, googled it to be exact, and discovered that i had spelled it right the first time, was proud of myself, then had a crushing realization that i was getting a little too proud of myself. earlier i was attempting to figure out how to fix a digital camera, which i'd like to think is broken because i was not able to fix the problem, which may be a machine malfunction, but is more likely old fashioned human error at work in the workplace. things can go wrong and sometimes they do go wrong, all at once, though in a very boring and tedious way, nothing spectacular like sparks flying out of things. i had a brief thought: trapped in a blaze in the oldest, shabbiest office building in Downtown Brooklyn. what a fucking view though. 25th floor, facing due north. a view to a kill, or maybe a death, from smoke inhalation. that or some sort of freak accident--the old 'box falling off the top of the pile onto someone's unsuspecting noggin routine. an infinitely more ignominious (and possibly more likely) end.

i'm doing the old Texas Two Step and almost falling over. it's midday there and the rain is coming down in buckets, pales, and seemingly every other container known to purvey rainwater from heaven to earth. i tripped on something. it's better than it used to be but still a cluttered office. i'm having a shitty time because nothing is going right. downtown Manhattan is a memory as clouds roil and spill their pissy rain all over things. misty, at that. and it's not going well inside; the day is slowly decaying, and no one is really too uptight about it. pays not to be. patientce will pay off. patience. so long as, and this is another small problem, we get paid once in a while.

Ayoob

2005-10-17T20:27:00.000-07:00

Booya spelled backwards. Also the name of the starting quarterback for the Bears of Berkley, Cal.